The Grey King Read online

  Will heard himself say, “Two dogs?”

  John Rowlands looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You have some unexpected ideas, Will, for one not brought up on a farm . . . yes, two dogs together could drag a sheep. But how would they do it without leaving a great flat trail? And anyway, how could two or twenty dogs open that door?”

  “Goodness knows,” Will said. “Well—perhaps it wasn’t any animal. Perhaps somebody drove by and heard the sheep bleating and got it out of the cottage and took it away. I mean they couldn’t know we were coming back.”

  “Aye,” John Rowlands said. He did not sound convinced. “Well, if any did that, we shall find the sheep at home when we get there, for it has the Pentref mark on its ear and any local man would know that we winter Williams Pentref’s ewes. Come on, now.” He whistled to Pen.

  They were silent on the drive home, each lost deep in concern and baffled conjecture. John Rowlands, Will knew, was worrying over the need to find the sheep quickly, to doctor its wound. He, Will, had his own worries. Although he had not mentioned it to Rowlands, and hardly dared even to think what it might mean, he knew that in the moment when the wounded sheep had staggered and fallen beside the flock, he had seen something more than that formless twitch of motion in the bracken where the attacker fled. He had seen the flash of a silvery body, and the muzzle of what had looked very much like a white dog.

  Music was flowing out of the farmhouse in a golden stream, as if the sun were inside the window, shining out. Will paused, astonished, and stood listening. Somebody was playing a harp, long rippling arpeggios soaring out like birdsong; then without a break the music changed to something like a Bach sonata, notes and patterns as precise as snowflakes. John Rowlands looked down at him with a smile for a moment, then pushed open the door and went in. A side door was open into a little parlour that Will had never noticed before; it looked like a creaky-neat Best Room, tucked away from the big kitchen-living room where all the real life of the house went on. The music was coming from this parlour; Rowlands stuck his head round the door, and so did Will. Sitting there, running his hands over the strings of a harp twice his own height, was Bran.

  He stopped, stilling the strings with his palms. “Hullo, then.”

  “Much better,” said John Rowlands. “Very much better, that, today.”

  “Good,” Bran said.

  Will said, “I didn’t know you could play the harp.”

  “Ah,” Bran said solemnly. “Lot of things the English don’t know. Mr. Rowlands teaches me. He taught your auntie too, this is hers I’m at.” He ran one finger across the lilting strings. “Freezing in the winter in this room, always, but it keeps better in tune than in the warm. . . . Ah, Will Stanton, you don’t know what a distinguished place you are in. This is the only farm in Wales where there are two harps. Mr. Rowlands has one in his house too, you see.” He nodded through the window, at the trio of farm cottages across the yard. “I practise there mostly. But Mrs. Rowlands is busy cleaning today.”

  “Where is David Evans?” said John Rowlands.

  “In the yard with Rhys. Cowshed, I think.”

  “Diolch.” He went out, preoccupied.

  “I thought you’d be at school,” Will said.

  “Half-holiday. I forget why.” Bran wore the protective smoky glasses even indoors; they made him look eccentric and unreal, the inscrutable dark circles taking all expression out of his pale face. He was wearing dark trousers too, and a dark sweater, making his white hair still more striking and unnatural. Will thought suddenly: He must do it on purpose; he likes being different.

  “An awful thing happened,” he said, and told Bran about the sheep. But again he left out the quick glimpse of the attacker that had made him think it was a white dog.

  “Are you sure the sheep was alive when John left it?” Bran said.

  “Oh, yes, I think so. There’s always the chance someone just stopped and took it away. I expect John’s checking.”

  “What a weird business,” Bran said. He stood up, stretching. “I’ve had enough practising. Want to come out?”

  “I’ll go and tell Aunt Jen.”

  On the way out, Bran picked up his flat leather schoolbag from a chair beside the door. “I must drop this off at home. And put the kettle on for Da. He comes in for a cuppa, round about now, if he’s working nearby.”

  Will said curiously, “Does your mother work too?”

  “Oh, she’s dead. Died when I was a baby, I don’t remember her at all.” Bran gave him a strange sideways look. “Nobody told you about me, then? My dad and I, we’re a bachelor household. Mrs. Evans is very nice, always. We eat supper at the farm, weekends. Of course, you haven’t been here at a weekend yet.”

  “I feel as if I’d been here for weeks,” Will said, putting his face up to the sun. Something in the way Bran spoke was making him oddly uneasy, and he did not want to think about it too closely. He pushed it to the back of his mind, to join that image of the flicker of a white muzzle through the bracken.

  “Where’s Cafall?” he said.

  “Oh, he will be out with Da. Thinking I am still at school.” Bran laughed. “The time we had when Cafall was young, trying to persuade him that school is for boys, not puppies. When I went to primary school in the village, he used to sit at the gate all day, just waiting.”

  “Where do you go now?”

  “Tywyn Grammar. In a bus.”

  They scuffed their feet through the dust of the path down to the cottages, a path made by wheels, two ruts with hummocky grass growing between. There were three cottages, but only two were occupied; now that he was closer, Will could see that the third had been converted into a garage. He looked beyond, up the valley, where the mountains rose blue-hazed and beautiful into the clear sky, and he shivered. Though the mystery of the wounded sheep had taken up the front of his mind for a while, the deeper uneasiness was swelling back again now. All around, throughout the countryside, he could feel the malevolence of the Dark growing, pushing at him. It could not focus upon him, follow him like the gaze of a great fierce eye; an Old One had the power to conceal himself so that his presence could not at once be sensed so precisely. But clearly the Grey King knew that he was bound to come, soon, from somewhere. They had their prophecies, as did the Light. The barriers had gone up, and were growing stronger every day. Will felt suddenly how strange it was for him to be the invader; for the Light to be advancing against the Dark. Always before, through all the centuries, it had been the other way round, with the powers of the Dark sweeping in fearsome recurrent attack over the land of men protected in gentleness by the Light. Always the Light had been the defenders of men, champions of all that the Dark came to overturn. Now, an Old One must deliberately reverse the long habit of mind; now he must find the thrust of attack, instead of the resolute sturdy defence which for so long had kept the Dark at bay.

  But of course, he thought, this attack itself is a small part of a defence, to build resistance for that other last and most dreadful time when the Dark will come rising again. It is a quest, to awaken the last allies of the Light. And there is very little time.

  Bran said suddenly, uncannily echoing the last thread of his thought, “Hallowe’en, tonight.”

  “Yes,” Will said.

  Before he could say more, they were at the door of the cottage; it was half-open, a low heavy door set in the stone wall. At Bran’s footstep the dog Cafall came bounding out, a small white whirlwind, leaping and whining with pleasure, licking his hand. It was noticeable that he did not bark. From inside, a man’s voice called, “Bran?” and began speaking in Welsh. Then as Will followed Bran through the door, the man speaking, standing shirtsleeved at a table, turned in mid-sentence and caught sight of him. He broke off at once and said formally, “I beg your pardon.”

  “This is Will,” Bran said, tossing his bag of books on the table. “Mr. Evans’s nephew.”

  “Yes. I thought perhaps it was. How do you do, young man?” Bran’s father came forward,
holding out his hand; his gaze was direct and his handshake firm, though Will had an immediate curious feeling that the real man was not there behind the eyes. “I am Owen Davies. I have been hearing about you.”

  “How d’you do, Mr. Davies,” said Will. He was trying not to look surprised. Whatever he had expected in Bran’s father, it was not this: a man so completely ordinary and unremarkable, whom you could pass on the street without noticing he had been there. Someone as odd as Bran should have had an odd father. But Owen Davies was all medium and average: average height, medium-brown hair in a medium quantity; a pleasant, ordinary face, with a slightly pointed nose and thin lips; an average voice, neither deep nor high, with the same precise enunciation that Will was beginning to learn belonged to all North Welshmen. His clothes were ordinary, the same shirt and trousers and boots that would be worn by anyone else on a farm. Even the dog that stood at his side, quietly watching them all, was a standard Welsh sheepdog, black-backed, white-chested, black-tailed, unremarkable. Not like Cafall: just as Bran’s father was not at all like Bran.

  “There is tea in the pot, Bran, if you would both like a cup,” Mr. Davies said. “I have had mine, I am off over to the big pasture. And I shall be going out tonight, there is a chapel meeting. Mrs. Evans will give you your supper.”

  “That’s good,” Will said cheerfully. “He can help me with my homework.”

  “Homework?” said Bran.

  “Oh, yes. This isn’t just a holiday for me, you know. They gave me all kinds of work from school, so I shouldn’t get behind. Algebra, today. And history.”

  “That will be very good,” Mr. Davies said earnestly, pulling on his waistcoat, “so long as Bran takes care to do his own work as well. Of course, I know he will do that. Well, it is nice to meet you, Will. See you later, Bran. Cafall can stay.”

  And he went out, nodding to them amiably but with complete seriousness, leaving Will to reflect that after all there was one thing about Owen Davies that was not altogether common; he had not a glimmer of laughter in him.

  There was no expression in Bran’s face. He said flatly, “My father is a big one for chapel. He is a deacon, and there are two or three meetings for him in the week. And we go twice on Sundays.”

  “Oh,” Will said.

  “Yes. Oh is right. Want a cup of tea?”

  “Not really, thank you.”

  “Let’s go out, then.” With absentminded conscientiousness Bran rinsed out the teapot and left it neatly inverted on the draining-board. “Tyrd yma, Cafall.”

  The white dog bounded happily beside them as they crossed the fields, away from cottage and farm, up the valley towards the mountains and the lone near peak. It stood at a right angle to the mountain behind it, jutting into the flat valley floor.

  “Funny how that rock sticks out like that,” Will said.

  “Craig yr Aderyn? That’s special, it’s the only place in Britain where cormorants nest inland. Not very far inland, of course. Four miles from the sea, we are here. Haven’t you been over there? Come on, we’ve got time.” Bran changed direction slightly. “You can see the birds fine from the road.”

  “I thought the road was that way,” Will said, pointing.

  “It is. We can cut across to it this way.” Bran opened a gate onto a footpath, crossed the path and scrambled over the wall on the other side. “The only thing is, you must go quietly,” he said with a grin. “This is Caradog Prichard’s land.”

  “Hush, Cafall,” Will said in a heavy stage-whisper, turning his head. But the dog was not there. Will paused, puzzled. “Bran? Where’s Cafall?”

  Bran whistled. They both stood waiting, looking back at the long sweep of the slate-edged stone wall along the stubbled field. Nothing moved. The sun shone. Far away, sheep called. Bran whistled again, with no result. Then he went back, with Will close behind, and they climbed over the wall again and went down to the footpath they had crossed.

  Bran whistled a third time, and called in Welsh. There was concern in his voice.

  Will said, “Wherever could he have gone? He was right behind me when I came over the wall.”

  “He never does this. Never. He will never go from me without permission, or not come when he is called.” Bran gazed anxiously up and down the footpath. “I don’t like it. I shouldn’t have let him come so near Mr. Prichard’s land. You and me is one thing, but Cafall—” He whistled again, loud and desperate.

  “You don’t suppose—” Will said. He stopped.

  “That Prichard would shoot him, the way he said?”

  “No, I was going to say, you don’t suppose Cafall wouldn’t come because he knew he shouldn’t go on Mr. Prichard’s land. But that’s silly, no dog could work out something like that.”

  “Oh,” Bran said unhappily, “dogs can work out things a lot more complicated than that. I don’t know. Let’s try this way. It leads to the river.”

  They set off along the path, away from the looming mass of the rock Craig yr Aderyn. Somewhere ahead of them, a long way off, a dog barked.

  “Is that him?” Will said hopefully.

  Bran’s white head was cocked on one side. The dog barked again, closer. “No. That’s John Rowlands’s big dog, Pen. But Cafall might have gone that way when he heard him—”

  They both broke into a run, along the stony, grass-patched path. Will very soon lost his breath and dropped behind. Bran disappeared round a bend in the path ahead of him. When Will turned the corner himself, two things slammed simultaneously into his consciousness: the sight of Bran—without Cafall—talking to his father and John Rowlands, and the sick certainty that something evil had taken control of everything that was happening now on Clwyd Farm. It was a recognition, like the sudden sensing of an overwhelming sound or smell.

  He came panting up to them, as Bran said, “. . . heard Pen bark, and thought he might have come this way, so we came running.”

  “And you saw nothing at all?” Owen Davies said. His face was tight with some deep concern. Looking at it, Will felt foreboding clutch at the pit of his stomach.

  John Rowlands said, his deep voice strained, “And you, Will? Did you see anyone, anything, on the path just now?”

  Will stared. “No. Only Cafall, before, and now we’ve lost him.”

  “No creature came past you?”

  “Nothing at all. Why? What’s wrong?”

  Owen Davies said, bleakly, “In the big pasture up the way, there are four dead sheep with their throats torn out, and there is no gate open or any sign of what can have attacked them.”

  Will looked in horror at John Rowlands. “Is it the same—?”

  “Who can tell?” said the shepherd bitterly. Like Davies, he seemed caught between distress and rage. “But it is not dogs, I do not see how it could be dogs. It looks more like the work of foxes, though how that can be, I do not know.”

  “The milgwn, from the hills,” said Bran.

  “Nonsense,” his father said.

  “The what?” said Will.

  “The milgwn,” Bran said. His eyes were still darting round in search of Cafall, and he spoke automatically. “Grey foxes. Some of the farmers say there are big grey foxes that live up in the mountains, bigger and faster than our red foxes down here.”

  Owen Davies said, “That is nonsense. There are no such things. I have told you before, I will not have you listening to those rubbishy old tales.”

  His tone was sharp. Bran shrugged.

  But across the front of Will’s mind there came suddenly a brilliant image, clear as a film thrown on a screen: he saw three great foxes trotting in line, enormous grey-white animals with thick coats growing to the broadness of a ruff round their necks, and full brushlike tails. They moved across a hillside, among rocks, and for an instant one of them turned its head and looked full at him, with bright unwinking eyes. For that instant he could see them as clearly as he could see Bran. Then the image was gone, they were vanished, and he was standing again in the sunshine, mute, dazed, knowing that in one
of the brief communications that can come—very rarely, only very rarely—unguarded from one Old One to another, his masters had sent him a warning picture of the creatures of the Grey King, agents of the Dark.

  He said abruptly, “They aren’t tales. Bran is right.”

  Bran stared at him, shaken by the crisp certainty in his voice. But Owen Davies looked across in chilly reproof, the corners of his thin mouth turned down. “Don’t be foolish, boy,” he said coldly. “What can you know of our foxes?”

  Will never knew what he could have said in answer, for breaking into the tense stillness of the sunlit afternoon came a shout from John Rowlands, urgent, loud.

  “Tân! Look over there! There is fire on the mountain! Fire!”

  Fire on the Mountain

  There was not much smoke, for so much fire. In a line along the lower slope of the mountain, which they could only just see above the hedge from where they stood, flames were blazing in the bracken. It was like a long wound, a gash in the peaceful brown slope, quivering with deadly, ominous life. Yet there was little colour in it, and they were too far away to hear any sound. For a moment Will was conscious only of wonder that John Rowlands should have caught sight of it at all.

  Then they were deep in instructions, and the urgency of Rowlands’s soft voice. “Off to the farm, both of you, quick. Call the fire from Tywyn and the police, and then come back with anyone who is there. All the hands you can get. And bring more fire brooms, Bran, you know where they are. Come on, Owen.”

  Both men ran up the path across the valley, and the boys dived for the gate that led over the fields to Clwyd Farm. Bran swung his head round in a whirl of white hair: “Take it gently, now,” he said earnestly, “or you’ll be worse ill—” and he was off like a sprinter, leaving Will to close the gate and trot resignedly in his wake.

  The telephoning was done by the time he caught Bran up at the farm. David Evans took them with him in the Land-Rover, with Rhys and a tall thin farmer called Tom Ellis who had been there when they arrived. The back of the little car had been hastily filled with fire brooms and sacking, and several buckets that Will’s uncle seemed to have small hope of using. The dogs, for once, were left behind.