Silver on the Tree Read online

  “Madam?” Jane said at once, and without any self-consciousness she bowed her head and dipped one knee almost to kneeling, oblivious of her jeans and anorak, as if she were dropping a deep curtsey of respect, out of another age.

  The Lady said clearly, “You must tell him that they must go to the Lost Land, in the moment when it shall show itself between the land and the sea. And a white bone will prevent them, and a flying may-tree will save them, and only the horn can stop the wheel. And in the glass tower among the seven trees, they will find the crystal sword of the Light.”

  Her voice wavered, ending in a gasp, as if clutching for some last strength.

  Jane said, struggling to hold the words, struggling to hold her image of the Lady, “In the glass tower among the seven trees. And—a white bone will prevent them, and a flying may-tree save them. And only the—the horn will stop the wheel.”

  “Remember,” the Lady said. Her white form was beginning to fade, and the glow dying in the rose of the ring. The voice grew softer, softer. “Remember, my daughter. And be brave, Jane. Be brave … brave….”

  The sound died, the wind whirled; Jane stared desperately out into the grey mist, searching to see the clear blue eyes in the old, lined face as if only they could fix the words in her memory. But she was alone among the dark hills and the lake with the low clouds blowing, and in her ears only the wind and the last imagined thread of a dying voice. And, now, as if it had never left her consciousness from the first instant, there came instead the clear high echo-twined melody of Will’s voice, that had seemed to her like the mountains singing.

  Suddenly the singing broke off. Will’s voice flung through the air in a hoarse, urgent shout. “Jane! Jane!” The echo followed it “… Jane! … Jane! …” like a whispered warning. In quick instinct Jane swung round towards the voice, but saw only the green slope of the hill.

  Then she looked back at the lake, and found that in the brief moment of her turning, such horror had arisen before her that panic engulfed her like ice-cold water. She tried to scream, and brought out only a strangled croak.

  Out of the dark water an immense neck rose, swaying before her, dripping, tipped by a small pointed head, open-mouthed, black-toothed. Two horn-like antennae moved sluggishly to and fro on the head, like the horns of a snail; a fringe like a mane began between them and ran down the whole length of the neck, bent to one side by the water that hung from it, dripping slimily into the lake. The neck rose higher and higher, huge, endless. Gazing in motionless terror Jane saw that it was everywhere a dark green, shot with a strange dull iridescence, except on the underside that faced her, a dead silvery-white like the belly of a fish. High over her head the creature towered and swayed, menacing; the air was filled with a stench of weed and marsh-gas and decaying things.

  Jane’s arms and legs would not move. She stood, staring. The great serpent lunged to and fro towards her, nearer, nearer, blindly searching. Its mouth hung open. Slime dripped from the black jaws. It swung close to her, reeking, dreadful, and seemed to sense her; the head drew back to strike.

  Jane screamed, and closed her eyes.

  • Afanc •

  In the Hollow beside the echo rock, all other sound had seemed to die away when Will began to sing. The loud wind dropped, and Simon, Bran and Barney stood motionless, astonished, listening. The music fell through the air like sunlight; a strange, haunting melody, like nothing they had ever heard before. Will sang, standing there unselfconscious and relaxed, with his hands in his pockets, his high clear choirboy’ voice singing words of a tongue none of them could recognize. They knew that this was the music of the Old Ones, shot through with an enchantment that was more than melody. The clear voice soared through the mountains, entwining with its echoes, and listening they stood rapt, caught up out of time.

  But then suddenly the song broke off in the middle of a note, and Will reeled back as if he had been struck in the face. They saw his face twisted by horror, and he threw back his head and yelled, in dreadful unboyish warning, “Jane! Jane!”

  The echo threw the words back at them: “Jane … Jane!”

  But before the first echo came, Bran had begun to move. He came rushing past Simon and Barney, as if flung forward by the same urgent impulse that had hold of Will. His cap tumbled off, his white hair blew like a flag as he went leaping over the grass and the rocks, away towards the Bearded Lake, away on a pursuit of something none of them could see.

  * * *

  The monstrous head swung past Jane’s face, once, twice, three times; not quite close enough to touch, but each time fanning past her a wave of abominable decay. Jane opened slits of eyes, peering through the shaking hands she held over her face, convinced she was still alive only by feeling a powerful urge to be sick. It was impossible that anything so hideous could exist; yet the creature was there. Her mind clutched for support, wavering beneath an awful awareness of evil. It was wrong this thing from the lake: malevolent, vicious, full of the festering resentment it had nursed through the centuries of some terrible nightmare sleep. She could feel its will groping for hers, just as the blind head groped through the air before her. And then breaking into her head like a howl, yet not with any sound to be heard with the ears, the voice came.

  “Tell!”

  Jane shut her eyes tight.

  “Tell me!” The command beat at her mind. “I am the afanc! Tell me the instruction that comes only through you!Tell!”

  “No!” Desperately Jane tried to shut off her mind and her memory. “Tell! Tell!”

  She tried to find images to hold as a defense against the hammer-blow demands; she thought of Will’s pleasant round face, with the straight brown hair falling sideways; she thought of Merriman’s fierce eyes beneath his bristling white brows; of a golden grail and the finding of it. Reaching closer, into the last few days in Wales, she thought of John Rowlands’ lean brown face, and the gentle kindly smile of his wife.

  But even as she began to find a steadiness, suddenly it shattered, and the high shrieking voice broke again into her mind and beat and beat at her, until she felt she would go mad. She whimpered, staggering, holding both hands to her head.

  And all at once, mercifully muffling the high shriek, came another voice, gentle, reassuring: It’s all right, Jenny, it’s all right, and relief flooded warm through her mind, and after it came only darkness….

  They saw her crumple and fall in a heap on the wet grass, as they came stumbling up from the echo rock. Simon and Barney started forward, but Will seized each of them in an astonishing grip, and even tall Simon was held helpless by the hand clamped like a steel band round his arm. They gasped at the sight of the afanc, thrashing furiously now in the lake with its great neck bending to and fro. And then they saw Bran, upright and bare-headed, standing angry in challenge before it on a tall rock, with his white hair blowing in the wind.

  The creature screamed in fury, stirring a foam in the lake, throwing it up to join the gusting ragged cloud and the blowing rain so that all the world seemed one whirling grey mist.

  “Go back!” Bran shouted across the lake towards it. “Go back where you should be!”

  From the horned head in the mist a high thin voice came, cold as death; they shuddered at the sound.

  “I am the afanc of Llyn Barfog!” the high voice cried. “This place is mine!”

  Bran stood unmoving. “My father cast you from it, away into Lyn Cau. What right had you to return?”

  Up on the hillside, Will felt Barney’s hand clutch convulsively at his sleeve. The younger boy was looking up at him, very pale. “His father, Will?”

  Will met his gaze, but said nothing.

  The water churned, the voice was angry and obstinate. “The Dark outlived that lord, the Dark brought me home. The Dark is my master. I must have what the girl will tell!”

  “You are a stupid creature,” Bran said, clear and contemptuous.

  The afanc roared and screamed and thrashed; its noise was terrifying. But gradually now, th
ey began to realize that it was no more than noise: that in spite of the creature’s horrifying bulk, it seemed to have the power only to utter threats. It was a nightmare—but no more than that.

  Bran’s white hair gleamed like a beacon through the grey mist; his lilting Welsh voice rang out over the lake. “And your masters are stupid too, to think that the mere force of terror could overcome one of the Six. This girl, she has seen more dreadful sights than you, and stood the test.” His voice hardened into a command, sounding suddenly deeper and more adult; he stood erect, pointing. “Go, afanc, back to the dark water where you belong! Go back to the Dark, and never come out again! Ewch nôl! Ewch y llyn!”

  And suddenly there was total silence over the lake, but for the wind whistling and the patter of the rain on their clothes. The huge green neck bowed and coiled in submission, dripping slime and weed; and the horned snail-like head dipped into the water and slowly the creature disappeared. A few large sluggish bubbles broke on the dark surface of the lake, their ripples spreading to be lost in the water-lily leaves. And then there was nothing.

  Will let out a yell of exuberant relief, and with Simon and Barney he went slithering and sliding down the grassy slope. Jane was sitting at the bottom of the slope, on the grass edging the reeds that fringed the lake; her face was pale.

  Simon crouched beside her. “Are you all right?”

  Jane said, illogically, “I was watching him.”

  “But you didn’t hurt yourself? When you fell?”

  “Fell?” Jane said.

  Will said gently, “She’ll be all right now.”

  “Will?” Jane said. She was looking out across the lake, to where Bran still stood motionless on his rock. Her voice shook. “Will … Who—what—is Bran?”

  Simon helped her to her feet, and the four of them stood looking at Bran. The white-haired boy turned slowly away from the lake, pulling his coat closer at the collar, shaking his head dog-fashion to get rid of the rain.

  “He is the Pendragon,” Will said simply. “The son of Arthur. Heir to the same responsibility, in a different age…. When he was born, his mother Guinevere brought him forward in Time, with Merriman’s help, because once before she had deceived her lord and she was afraid Arthur would not now believe that Bran was truly his son. And she left him here, so that he grew up in our time in Wales, with a new father who adopted him. So he belongs to this age just as much as we do, yet at the same time he does not…. And sometimes I think he is exactly aware of all this all the time, and other times I think one side of his life is for him no more than a dream….” His voice quickened, became more matter-of-fact. “I can’t tell you any more now. Come on.”

  They went, each one hesitant, to meet Bran, through the rain that was growing heavier again now. He grinned cheerfully at them, totally without strain, and wrinkled his nose. “Daro!” he said. “What a nasty!”

  “Thank you, Bran,” Jane said.

  “O’r gore,” said Bran. “You’re welcome.”

  “Will it really never come back ever?” Barney said, looking fascinated at the lake.

  “Never,” Bran said.

  Simon took a deep breath and let it out again. “I shan’t laugh at stories of the Loch Ness Monster from now on.”

  “But this one was a creature of the Dark,” Will said. “Made out of the stuff of nightmare, in order to break Jane. Because they wanted something that she had.” He looked at her. “What happened?”

  “It was when you sang,” Jane said. “And the echo sang with you. It sounded … it sounded…”

  “The mountains are singing,” Bran said slowly. “And the Lady comes.”

  Jane said, “And she did come.”

  There was silence.

  Will said nothing. He stood staring at Jane with a strange medley of emotions crossing his face: blank astonishment, chased by envy, followed by the dawning of an understanding that relaxed into his usual amiable look. He said softly, “I didn’t know.”

  “This … Lady—” Simon said. He stopped.

  “Well?” said Jane.

  “Well … where did she come from? Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. Either of those things. She just … appeared. And she said—” Jane paused, a warmth running through her as she remembered those things the Lady had said for her, Jane, alone. Then she put them aside. “She said, tell him, that they must go to the Lost Land, when it shows itself between the shore and the sea. She said, a white bone will prevent them, and a—a flying may-tree will save them. And—” She shut her eyes, trying desperately to remember the right words. “And only the horn will stop the wheel, she said. And they will find the crystal sword of the Light in the glass tower among the seven trees.”

  She let out a quick breath, and opened her eyes. “That’s not perfect, but it’s what she said. And then she … went away. She seemed awfully tired, she just sort of faded out.”

  “She is very tired indeed,” Will said soberly. He touched Jane’s shoulder briefly. “You did marvelously. The moment the Dark sensed she had told you, they must have come rushing, sending the afanc to shock you into giving up what she had said. That was their only possible way—they couldn’t have heard it for themselves. There is a protection sometimes round the Six, through which the Dark cannot see or hear.”

  “But there’s only five of us,” Barney said.

  Bran chuckled. “That one is so sharp he will cut himself.”

  Barney said hastily, “I’m sorry—I know. Of course things work just the same whether it’s five or six. But where is Great-Uncle Merry?” For a moment his voice dropped unwittingly into the unselfconscious plaint of a small child.

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “He’ll come, Barney. When he can.”

  Simon suddenly gave a gigantic sneeze, ducking his head. Rainwater ran off the edge of his hood in a thin stream. No mist blew over the lake now, and the clouds seemed higher, broken, racing across the sky in a wind they hardly felt, there below. But the rain fell steadily.

  “Where is the Lost Land?” said Barney.

  “We shall find it,” Will said. “When the time comes. No question. Come on, let’s go down before we all get pneumonia.”

  They went single file back over the path edging the lake, hopping over puddles, skirting patches of mud; then trooped through the long wet grass towards the little grey outcrop of Cam March Arthur, and the path back over the ridge. Jane turned for one last look at the lake, but it was hidden by the slope.

  “Will,” she said. “Tell me something. Just about a second before I saw that—that thing, I heard you shout Jane! Like a warning.”

  Barney said promptly, “Yes, he did. He looked awful—as if he could already see it.” He realized what he had said, and looked thoughtfully at Will.

  “Could you?” Jane said.

  Will brushed his hand over the top of the slate marking Cam March Arthur, which Bran, ahead of them, had passed without a glance. He walked on in silence. Then he said, “When the Dark comes, anywhere, we can feel it. It’s like, I dunno, like an animal smelling man. So I knew—and I knew you were in danger, so I had to yell.” He glanced back at Jane over his shoulder with a shy half-grin. “Halloo your name to the reverberate hills,” he said.

  “Huh?” said Simon, beside her.

  “You aren’t the only one who knows a few bits of Shakespeare,” Will said.

  “What’s that one?”

  “Oh—just some speech we had to learn last term.”

  “The reverberate hills,” said Jane. She looked back at the hill that rose behind them now, masking the echo rock. Then she frowned. “Will—if you could sense the Dark, why couldn’t you sense the Light?”

  “The Lady?” Will shook his head. “I don’t know. That was her doing. For her own reasons. I think—I think perhaps there will be a test for each of us, before all this is done. Each time different and each time unexpected. And maybe the Bearded Lake was yours, Jane, yours on your own.”

  “I hope mine i
sn’t like that,” Barney said cheerfully. He pointed. “Look—the clouds are breaking up.”

  Hints of blue were emerging in the sky to the west, among the racing ragged clouds; the rain had dwindled to a fine sprinkle, and was dying altogether now. They went on down the hill, past the small white farm built sturdy as a fort against winter gales; through other gates, over the clanking metal pipes of a cattle grid set to keep the wandering Welsh Black bullocks within bounds. The Happy Valley unfolded far below them again, the last low shreds of mist blowing away past the mountains of its further side. Sunshine flickered now and then through the clouds, and the air grew warmer; jackets were opened, and raincoats shaken free of water. As if to give final proof that the rain was over, a small car came humming up the hill past them, bringing the first of the next flow of visitors to wander the hillside among the sheep-droppings and rabbit holes; to collect feathers, and the tufts of greyish wool that barbed-wire fences grab from sheep, and small rough pebbles of white quartz. Will found himself trying hard to remember that he had no right whatsoever to resent these people wandering through the bracken and the heather, the gorse and the harebells, dropping their cigarette ends on the short, spring grass.

  Seagulls keened in the distance. As the track swung round a hill, suddenly there ahead they saw the sea, and the broad estuary of the Dyfi, with the silver thread of the river wandering through glistening stretches of golden low-tide sand.

  They all stopped to stand and gaze. Sunshine shafting out from between the clouds sparkled on the river, glimmered on the sandy bar that lay across its entrance to the sea.

  “I’m hungry,” Barney said.

  “Now that’s a good idea,” said Simon. “Lunch?”

  Bran said, “Rocks to sit on, though—try up here.”

  They clambered up the slope edging the track, to the unfenced land where the cattle grazed. Several large black bullocks lumbered reproachfully out of their way. In a few moments they were over the crest of a small ridge, with the track out of sight behind them and the sea and the estuary lying spread below. They perched on humps of slatey rock and fell upon their sandwiches. The wet grass smelt clean, and somewhere a skylark bubbled its long ecstatic song. High overhead a small hawk hung in the air.