Текст книги "Quest for the Faradawn"

Автор книги: Richard Ford

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Beth found it hard to focus at first and she had difficulty for a second or two in appreciating where she was. The last thing she could remember was waking up feeling faint in a deep green hollow; now here she was in a hay loft. Oh and it was so beautifully warm! The warmth under the hay brought life hack to every part of her body and she closed her eyes again for a second or two to bathe in the luxury of it. Then she vaguely recalled Nab’s kiss and looking at him she reached her hand out from under the hay and grasped his where it lay by her side. She felt peaceful, content and happy. They stayed like that for a long time; looking deep into each other’s eyes with their hands squeezed tightly together. Nab’s other hand gently stroked her cheek and straightened her hair where it lay spread out in its tousled fan under her head. Only the grunts and snuffles of Perryfoot and Brock as they slept broke the stillness of the loft. The only light came from the little window at the far end where a fitful moon threw the occasional shaft of silver on to the hay and silhouetted Warrigal where he stood on the sill looking out into the night. Finally the warmth and their exhaustion spread over them and they both fell asleep with Nab curled up in a ball by her side.

When they awoke next morning Beth felt a lot better and the colour had returned to her face. Nab showed her the eggs and she forced herself to eat them raw; breaking the shells carefully and then pouring the contents quickly down her throat. They would do her good anyway, she thought and indeed as the day progressed she grew stronger. In the afternoon Sam and Warrigal fetched three more and, later, three more for the evening. It poured with rain all day, pattering down on the roof and dripping off the eaves. In the morning Beth and Nab went over to the window where Warrigal had kept lookout and they stared out at the sheets of rain as they bucketed down from the heavens and swept across the green fields and valleys, filling the rivers and streams and saturating the ground. There was something very comforting and cosy about watching the rain from inside; Beth had loved to look out through her bedroom window at home when storms broke, and it reminded Nab of the times he had stared out from his rhododendron bush in Silver Wood. As they sat together by the window Beth decided that she would begin trying to teach Nab her language and perhaps she could learn his. Now would be a good opportunity to start when there was nothing else to think about and there were no distractions. She pointed outside and then cupped her hand under a drip from the eaves. ‘Rain,’ she said and then pointed to Nab’s mouth hoping he would understand that she wanted him to repeat it. He did so slowly and carefully and then she pointed to him to tell her his word for it. Nab quickly understood what she wanted. ‘Ashgaroth ẙ Draish,’ he said. To Beth it sounded like a lot of squeaks and grunts for there are no alphabets and letters as the Urkku know them; only sounds. Nevertheless, difficult though it was, she attempted to copy the noises made by Nab and her attempt sent him into a fit of laughter which was so infectious that she too began to laugh. Then she tried again and Nab nodded and smiled to show that she was nearer.

After this she taught the boy her name which he found easy to say and he taught her his which, because it was short and only consisted of one sound, she found relatively simple. They went on like this for most of the rest of the afternoon, pointing to or touching things around them. Generally Nab found it easier to learn her words than she did to repeat his, and she found his even more difficult to remember, if not virtually impossible. Still she made up her mind to persevere; at least they had made a start and she was surprised at how quickly and easily Nab had taken to human speech.

When evening came the skies began to clear and the rain finally stopped. Warrigal flew down from the rafter where he had perched, sleeping all day, and spoke to Nab.

‘We should be making a move,’ he said. ‘How is she, d6 you think?’ /

‘Much better,’ Nab replied. ‘I’ll try and indicate to her what we think and ask if she’s ready.’

He did so; pointing outside and then to all the animals and then outside again. Beth understood. She nodded her head to show him that she thought she was all right now although she would really have liked another night in the barn. Still, she definitely felt much improved and since the night was clear it was probably as good a time as any to start out again. The three of them went back to where Perryfoot and Brock were still sleeping, roused them and then, after Beth had carefully put the three remaining eggs in an inside pocket of her cape, they went down the stairs, with the hare once more in his sling, and, fetching Sam who had been lying on the bottom step, squeezed through the partly open door and went out into the night.

CHAPTER XVI

All through the cold crisp days of January they trudged on across the plain. The cloak of winter was heavy on the land; the trees were bare and stark, the grass cropped short and the fields frozen. There was some snow but no rain; it was too cold for that and the animals were grateful, for rain brings damp and damp is the enemy of every wild creature. So the snow froze, coating the trees with glitter which glinted in the moonlight and covering the fields with a crisp white surface which was easy to walk on and left no footprints. But although they were free of rain there was an icy cutting wind which swept down from the hills they had just crossed and nagged at them until it found a way through to their bodies. Beth was grateful for her cloak and all her layers of clothing which, although heavy and cumbersome to walk in, kept her at least moderately warm.

They kept to the same pattern as before; by day sleeping under hedges or in hollows and then as the sun started to go down in the late afternoon, setting out to walk through cold clear nights when the stars twinkled at them and the moon lit their way. For much of the time the Scyttel of standing stones which they were heading for was out of sight but Nab had no difficulty in feeling the currents of Roosdyche. Sometimes as they travelled they would come across a smaller Scyttel quite accidentally; it would perhaps have been marked by a stone or else it would simply be a little mound or a copse of trees or a place where water welled up from the earth. At other times it took the form of a grotto by a stream or a collection of huge rocks. They would stop by these places for a while and feel the power of the Scyttel giving them energy, strength and clarity of thought and, if they were lucky enough to come across one around dawn, they would sleep there for the day and awake feeling marvellously refreshed and invigorated.

Sam’s injuries were almost perfectly healed now and he was in the peak of condition; his coat a deep shining gold and his eyes clear and bright. Perryfoot too was better and had been ejected unceremoniously from his sling by Nab one night when it was thought that things had got to the stage when he was simply cadging a free ride. In fact, without his lift he would never have got better or even survived but now, although he still had a bad limp and would never be able to recapture his former speed, he was very nearly back to normal.

Beth found that she had got used to the grasses, roots, berries and toadstools that Nab found for her and had even begun to enjoy some of them. They at least now kept her going and she looked forward to the spring and summer when she knew there would be far more variety and choice. Now she was able to recognize some and, although Nab always insisted that he look at them before she ate in case they were poisonous, she gathered most of her food herself.

The teaching and the learning of each other’s language, which had begun in the hay bam, continued as they walked along together through the nights and it was not long before Nab had enough command of Beth’s language to be able to tell her of his life and of the purpose of their mission together. She listened in amazement and fascination as he told her of his early days with Brock and Tara in the sett and of how he had been found, and of his adventures and friendships with the other animals in Silver Wood. He related to her the tales and legends of the members of the Council; Rufus, Bruin, Sterndale and Pictor, all of them now dead, and he told her the stories which he had been told of the great heroes of the past and of the early days when the Urkku were first on the earth and of the myths of the time Before-Man. Slowly, as their journey together continued, Beth felt a whole new world revealed to her; a world of whose existence she had previously been almost totally unaware and a world over which the shadow of the Urkku loomed, omnipresent, dark and forbidding. She felt as if her eyes were being slowly opened and when finally Nab retold to her, as best he could, the saga which had been related to him by the Lord Wychnor, then the answers to so many questions which had worried her and puzzled her for so long became clear; now the jigsaw became complete. She felt humble and proud to have been the one chosen by Ashgaroth to accompany Nab and she was pleased that the significance of her dreams had been explained. And she was to play a part in this saga; a part which she and the others would only fully understand at the end when they had completed their mission and Ashgaroth revealed it to them. When Nab had finished he buried his hand beneath his raiments of bark and, finding the casket on the Belt of Ammdar which contained the Ring, he pressed the catch and put his fingers inside to pull it out.

‘Here; this belongs to you. It is your gift from Ashgaroth; given to me as a sign for you by the Lord Wychnor,’ Nab said tenderly.

Beth took the precious ring, which she remembered so clearly from her dreams, and as she did so the silvery threads of mist deep inside it shimmered and moved gracefully in the golden light given off by the jewel deep in the shank. She placed it slowly and carefully on the long middle finger of her right hand and it seemed to cast an aura of light around her, so powerful was its glow. There it remained for ever, never to be removed, and the strength of its beauty never failed to fill Beth with wonder whenever she looked at it, and to help her through the difficult times ahead whenever she felt doubt or fear or uncertainty. It was her link with the world which Nab had shown her; her proof that she was truly chosen, and a constant reminder of the power and magic of that world and the depth of its mysteries.

The country through which they were going was not as flat as it had appeared from their first view of it; little streams and valleys cut it up and there were large areas of woodland and these they passed quickly in case they were seen by any of the travellers living in them. The existence of Nab and Beth must be kept secret until the end, and talk within a wood would soon find its way out to Dréagg through careless conversations. As they passed on across the plain the land became more fertile, the fields smaller and the Urkku dwellings more numerous. Farms were everywhere and sometimes it was impossible to avoid being within sight of one and they would find themselves crawling along ditches or by the side of hedges as lights from the farm windows blazed out across the fields and the noise of the cows being milked in the shippens, the hum of milking machines or the clatter of pails drifted out on the frosty air. At other times a dog would bark and the travellers would freeze where they were as a door opened and an Urkku stared out into the night to see what had caused the disturbance. Then they would wait until the door had closed again before venturing forward like silent shadows.

It was also at this time that they came across roads; the great bands of concrete which cut across the face of the land. Beth explained the purpose of them to Nab and he in turn told the others although they had all seen them before. Beth told them of the dangers if they were crossing when one of the Urkku vehicles was travelling along, and she always led the way over them, standing on the verge looking out for headlights and beckoning them to go over one by one when she thought it was safe. Sometimes two of them would be safely on the far side, normally Perryfoot and Brock as they went first, and then a stream of cars would appear from nowhere and the animals would lie terrified behind a bank, or hidden in a ditch by the verge, while the cars roared past in a thundering storm of noise and light, choking them with dust and fumes and leaving them shaking with fear. Once they had been crossing on a bend and Beth, thinking it was safe, had motioned Perryfoot across. He had just hopped on to the tarmac when a car screamed around the corner trapping him in its lights. The hare had frozen, mesmerized as Nab remembered from the incident he’d seen in the field at the front of Silver Wood, but fortunately Beth had just had time to leap out and pull him back before he was crushed under the wheels. The driver had seen the girl in the glare of his headlamps and had pulled to a halt further up the road. Beth had gone up to him when he got out and told him that it was her little dog he had almost run over and that she had left him tied to a tree at the side of the road in the ditch. He offered her and her dog a lift home as it was a cold night and it was past eleven o’clock, but she had politely declined the offer explaining that she did not live far away and was just taking the dog out for its last walk. The man had then wished her goodnight, walked back to his car and driven off, feeling slightly bemused by the sight of the wild-looking pretty young girl in the brown tweed cape whose eyes had seemed to transfix him with their depth and intensity and whose blonde hair had tumbled like a mane around her shoulders. She did not live far away, she had said, and yet the nearest house he had passed was eight miles back. Once back in the familiar surroundings of his own car, it was almost as if he had dreamt the entire incident.

Some time later they came across their first town. The previous night they had noticed a red glow in the dark sky and had wondered where it came from. They had stopped at dawn by the base of a huge oak tree and rested all day. That evening they set off again and the glow had still been there ahead of them until, towards midnight, they became aware of a constant hum coming to them on the wind. It was such an indistinguishable mass of sound that it could almost be forgotten about and it reminded the animals of a strong wind rushing through trees. As they got nearer the glow became brighter and the noise louder and more jagged so that now, over and above that level hum, could be heard the occasional horn of a car or the sound of a heavy lorry churning its way through the streets or a motor cycle buzzing along an empty road.

They were approaching the summit of a sharp rise in a meadow: suddenly they were at the top and there, stretched out in front of them, lay the town. It was not particularly big but to the animals it seemed as if it went on for ever. Their ears now felt as if they were being assaulted by the noise and the sky was ablaze with light; gone now was that comparatively gentle red glow, this was a maelstrom of reds, oranges and whites which carved away the darkness of the night in a huge arc above; and all around, like the crooked spolces of a giant wheel, stretched out ribbons of red as the street lights followed the roads out into the suburbs. Sometimes they could see twin pairs of lights travelling along as a car returned home late or a lorry made its lonely way through the town. As they turned a corner, these lights would sometimes, if they were on the outskirts, beam out into the darkness of the surrounding countryside and swing round as the car turned: once or twice they shone straight out at the animals, blinding them momentarily until they continued on their way.

The air was heavy with the sickly cloying smell of fumes and chemicals from a large industrial estate on one side; here also the lights were brighter and there was more noise and activity. The smell stuck in their nostrils and put a strange metallic taste at the back of their mouths; they felt unable to draw their breath properly and they became a little desperate and frightened as every time they breathed they felt this unfamiliar air go through their lungs and make them feel like retching.

They stood at the top of the rise for a while, scared but also fascinated by what seemed like a huge beast breathing fire and smoke and which even at rest was unable to stop the ceaseless turmoil within itself. Nab asked Beth lots of questions and she answered them as best she could because she was not very familiar with town life. As she told him all she knew he became cold with fear for he realized that he would be totally unable to survive in it; to live in the middle, surrounded by that mass of concrete and lights and noise, would be for him a nightmare.

‘We cannot go through it,’ he said to Warrigal, who was standing at his side. ‘I would not be able to feel the Roosdyche and we would lose our bearings. We shall have to go round and hope to pick it up on the other side.’

‘It will take us a long time,’ replied the owl.

‘We have no choice. If we got lost in there it would take us far longer. We should never get out. And we would be certain to be spotted. Beth has said untold numbers of Urkku dwell inside it. No; we must go round.’

They set off on a detour around the town, keeping the same distance away from it all the time. It took them fifteen nights; fifteen nights during which the town was their constant companion. By the end they almost felt as if they had come to know it; to become aware of its changing moods as the week wore on from the desperate gaiety of Saturday through the busy workday clatter of the week to the docile slothful slumber of Sunday, before the pattern began again, to repeat itself over and over, inexorably.

They had to go very slowly because of the multitude of outlying dwellings around the town and the busy main roads down which the cars screeched and thundered but there were no mishaps even though sometimes they were forced to go so close to a house that they could hear voices. When Beth heard the familiar household noises drift out through the night air, the clatter of plates in a kitchen or the whistle of a kettle boiling on a cooker or the thump of a pair of feet going upstairs, she felt very strange. They took her back to her other world, the one of which she had been part for so long and which she had now abandoned, and she was reminded of her parents and her home. At these times waves of nostalgia would sweep over her to vanish quickly in the tension of the moment as they crept behind a wall or through a hedge in a garden.

So, while people watched television or lay asleep in their beds, outside in the cool clear night the little band made their slow and careful way round the town until finally they caught sight of the Scyttel in the distance. It was not long then before Nab detected the earth currents which told him that they were once again on the old way and they set out towards the distant mound with excitement and relief; they felt that they were now well and truly on their way and that it would not be too long before they arrived at the place of the Sea Elves where they would meet the Elflord of the Sea and the first part of their journey would be over.

Soon they reached the mound which they had kept in sight for so long. It was smaller than they had imagined from far off and was simply a large flat-topped hummock with a circle of large standing stones set in the grass. Some of the the first Urkku had, by means of logic, been able to recognize the magic power of these places and had attempted to concentrate and magnify their strength by placing these stones on them for, because magic had been denied to them, they were forced to use logic in order to be able to extract and make use of the power. It was only where the magic force was strongest that they were able to perceive the power of the place so there are myriads of lesser Scyttels totally unknown to them and of whose existence only the elves and the animals are aware, for it is only those who possess magic who can feel intuitively where they are. Thus it was only occasionally on their journey that the animals came across one of these larger and more powerful Scyttels. The day they spent at this one was a wild blustery day in early February when the sky was heavy with enormous dark clouds rolling after each other as the wind howled over the plain. They sat huddled behind one of the stones out of the wind, mesmerized by these armies of cloud passing overhead and letting the strength of the Scyttel flow into them. So aware were they of the energy of the place that they were unable to sleep and in fact they felt no need of it. Stretched out behind them they had a view of the entire plain over which they had travelled while ahead of them was a further small range of foothills to cross and they sensed that beyond those lay the sea.

When night-time came they set off across the small stretch of plain which lay between them and the hills and by midnight they were climbing. Soon the lush green pastures of the lowlands had been left behind and the ground became rocky; the grass poor and short, and instead of cows they saw only sheep picking at the sparse patches of green between the rock and the scrub. The following day the winds brought in snow and they awoke in the late afternoon to find everywhere covered with a thick blanket of white. Fortunately the snow had stopped and the sky had begun to clear so that the moon was shining clearly down on the hills. The going was easier now because the snow was freezing on top of the heather and scrub and they made good progress, particularly as up here there were no Urkku dwellings or any other sign of them.

It took them two more nights to reach the other side of the little range of hills. Eventually they found themselves standing on the top of a steep slope looking down on to a carpet of mist below. It was almost dawn so they rested and slept behind a crag before setting off in the evening down the slope. To their disappointment it had begun to rain again as the weather had grown warmer and soon the exhilaration of the clear crisp nights walking over the snow-covered heather with the moon and stars lighting up their path had evaporated under a pall of dampness.

There was no moon and the rain made it difficult for even Warrigal and Brock to see far ahead. They descended slowly down narrow paths turned slippery by the rain, which had not yet melted the ice but instead had polished them with a layer of water, making them treacherous. Several times Beth slipped and once she went rolling

down a steep bank until she came to a halt at the edge of a little stream. From then on Nab kept hold of her hand for some of the paths took them along the edge of deep drops falling into inky blackness which they guessed went a long way down.

When they reached the lowest of the foothills and were almost at the bottom, the visibility became suddenly much worse as they found themselves in the middle of a thick swirling mist. The rain had now stopped but the cold clammy dampness of the mist soaked them to the skin. They carried on for a while with Nab in the lead for he was able to follow the Roosdyche even more strongly than Warrigal, who was perched on his shoulder peering into the murk ahead and steering him as best he could along what seemed to be raised green footways on either side of which the ground appeared to fall away and become black and broken.

‘We cannot go much further tonight,’ Nab said suddenly. ‘I have lost the Roosdyche. We’ll wait here until dawn when we might be able to see where we are.' Warrigal flew down and perched on an old rotten treestump in front. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw with tiredness and his feathers rough and bedraggled with the wet. Behind them the others gathered in a little group, miserable and silent as the mist blew in wraiths about them.

‘We’ve decided to stay here until the morning,’ Nab announced, and without saying a word they all lay down on the saturated ground.

It was impossible to sleep. Somehow an air of evil hung about the place; the mist seemed to form itself into figures which danced and leered at them through the gloom, racing on to be replaced by another and another, each one different to the last until their minds became numb with a kind of dull sick horror. Tiredness eventually overcame Beth and she fell into a restless fitful sleep in which the evil figures which had paraded before her in the mist assumed gigantic proportions. They laughed down at her from the heavens and their long fingers wrapped themselves around her body and picked her up, tossing her like a rag doll from one to the other. Their flesh seemed to be made of some sort of slimy gelatinous substance so that where they touched her she felt terribly wet and cold and the dampness went right through her body, wrapping its icy fingers around her soul and tugging at it as if trying to shake it free. She struggled and fought to release herself from their grip but they only laughed and threw her up in the air again where she waved her arms about in panic until she was caught by another. A terrible fear spread over her, freezing her heart and turning her legs to jelly as the utter helplessness of her situation forced itself into her consciousness. She was about to give up her struggles and abandon herself to despair when she felt herself shaken by another warmer grip and heard her name called insistently by a familiar voice. ‘Beth, Beth,’ it said, and slowly she shook off the webs of the nightmare as the voice brought her back to wakefulness. She opened her eyes to see Nab’s anxious face looking down at her. Although it was so cold she felt little beads of perspiration mingling with the damp on her forehead.

‘Hold me,’ she said in a small frightened voice and he did so, reviving her body with life and melting the chill in her soul with the warmth of love.

‘You were tossing in your sleep, and crying out. We were afraid for you,’ he said.

She told him of her dream and the others sat around and listened in fear. There was silence when she finished; they sat in the damp half-light of the early morning not knowing what to think or to do. Soon a pale watery sun began to try to filter through the mist and around them they saw a bleak landscape of twisted, stunted trees and flat bog which lay dark and oozing for as far as they could see in the unreal light. They had been walking along one of a number of raised paths on which grass grew but the one they were on now came to an end just a few paces further on and sank back into the quagmire. The heavy dank smell of decaying vegetation hung over everything, and they could see, protruding from the bog like fingers, the dead rotten stumps of old trees covered in fungi and lichens and mosses which dripped continuously into the bog.

‘This is an evil place,’ whispered Warrigal quietly to himself as if he was afraid that the bog might hear.

‘We must go back and try to find another path,’ said Nab, but he didn’t move for his body seemed to be sunk into a deep trough of despair and apathy from which he was unable to raise it.

Suddenly Brock exclaimed loudly, ‘What’s that! Look; walking through the mist.’

They could faintly see a tall white figure walking slowly and deliberately through the bog towards them and they could just about make out the regular splashing of delicate footsteps in water.

‘It’s a heron,’ Brock said. The bird walked towards them picking up its long spindly legs and placing them down carefully in the bog and as it did so its head, with the deadly sharp pointed beak, moved backwards and forwards in time with the rhythm of its walk. The animals had occasionally seen such a creature before as herons had sometimes come to the stream at the back of Silver Wood but that had been a rare occurrence and they had never been this close to one before. It stood before them, its long white wings folded in on either side of its body and reaching down at the back to a little rounded peak, reminding Beth of an old-fashioned tail coat. From each eye to the top of its head stretched a narrow spherical black marking that seemed to continue on into its plume which now was held down so that it pointed from the back of its head at an angle to the ground. To Beth it looked as if it was wearing a pair of glasses with thick black rims. When it spoke the long neck, which was tucked in between its shoulders, quivered slightly.

‘I am Golconda, the Great White Heron; Guardian of the Marshes of Blore. I have been awaiting your arrival for some time since the Sea Elves warned me of your coming. My task is to see the traveller safely through the marshes. We must beware, for with your presence here the atmosphere is thick with goblins. A band of them reside in the marsh and normally we live in an uneasy truce. However they are aware of your importance if not of your purpose and they will do all they can to stop you.’

‘But no one saw us,’ said Nab. ‘We took the greatest care. How could they know we are here?’

The heron laughed; a deep rasping noise which seemed to grate its way up from the bottom of his legs.

‘You cannot escape the eyes of Dréagg. His spies are everywhere. He knew where you were from the moment you left your wood. Do not underestimate him. Now follow me, but be extremely cautious. There is but one way through the marshes. If you step off the way you will swiftly be submerged in the ooze.’

They set off through the marsh, each of them following exactly in the footsteps of the other except for Warrigal, who once again sat perched on Nab’s shoulder. As they walked Nab asked the heron why he was unable to feel the Roosdyche here.