Silver on the Tree (17 page)

Simon was never quite sure precisely what happened then. Fighting to drag Caradog Lewis away from John Rowlands' inert form, he found himself suddenly thrust down towards the sea in Lewis' grip, quite unable to resist. They splashed into the water together, still upright, still struggling, and suddenly Simon felt himself jerking outward, falling, falling, and the water closing cold over his head and no bottom to be felt with his feet beneath the sea. One brief touch of sand he had with one foot, and then the water was swinging him round, a current catching him, pulling him deeper, deeper, alone. He reached up for air, kicking desperately; caught one breath; was swung around again by an eddy, reached out in frantic efforts to swim, his arms and legs heavy with the weight of the old-fashioned suit. There was a roaring in his ears, a blurring in his eyes; the water whirled him round and around.

Simon fought to keep back panic. He had a secret and terrible fear of deep water, even though he could swim well; three years earlier in a dinghy race on the Thames he had fallen from a capsizing boat and come up underneath the floating mainsail, kept down from the air like a cork in a
sealed jar. He had panicked then, splashing wildly, only by pure chance reaching the edge of the sail, and then in a desperate gurgling flurry the shore. Now he could feel the same panic rising again in his throat and mind; rising like the waves that whirled him about with only an occasional snatch of breath; rising to blur his brain, to swamp out all thought—

He thrust it away. He fought and fought; fought to keep in his mind the feel of each arm, each leg; to move as he chose to move, to seek the rhythm of swimming instead of the mindless flurrying of horror and despair. So by great effort, he kept from panic.

But still the water was there all around, less violent now, cradling him, and again he was going down. Water pressed in on him, it was in his ears and his eyes and his nose. Now it seemed not frightening but lulling, mothering, as if it were not after all alien, but his own element. It welcomed him, gently, as if he quite naturally breathed water, like a fish. Gentle, gentle, all-enveloping, relaxing, like the feeling of the moment before falling gradually asleep….

Something, someone, seized Simon from behind in a fierce grip, two strong hands on his shoulders, pushing him upward, upward and out into bright air. Light cut into his eyes. Water bit the back of his throat. He gasped, retching, choking. The water swished in his lungs with each gurgling snatch at breath. Simon heard terrible frantic bubbling gasps and realized appalled that he was making them himself.

Then there was solid sand beneath his feet. The swimmer released him. Simon stumbled forward on to his hands and knees, and strong hands laid him on the beach, turned his head sideways and pressed down on his back. Water poured from his nose and mouth; he coughed, retching. The hands gently helped him to sit up. Simon sat with his head on his knees, breathing at last without the dreadful gurgling, without gasping, more slowly. He brushed his wet hair from his eyes, sniffing, and looked up.

First he saw Jane, wide-eyed, white-faced, crouching. Beside
her a man was bent on one knee, his great height apparent even while stooped. His dark clothes dripped water. The face frowning in concern into Simon's was angular and craggy, dark eyes shadowed in deep sockets, bristling white eyebrows dripping water down the sides of the beak-like nose. The thick white hair, grey with wetness, lay in a tangle of loops and horns all over his head.

Simon said, in a high weak husky voice that was not his own, “Oh Gumerry.”

He stopped, feeling a prickling in his eyes. He had not used that pet name for a long time.

“That was brave,” Merriman said.

He pressed one hand on Simon's shoulder, and glanced up at Jane, beckoning her closer. Then he stood up. Jane put a diffident arm round Simon's shoulder, to help as he turned to watch.

John Rowlands was standing close by on the beach, dripping from head and clothes. Jane said in Simon's ear, “He jumped in the sea after you, trying to reach you, when—” her voice seemed to dry into nothing; she swallowed—“when Great-Uncle Merry just … just came
up,
out of nowhere.”

Merriman loomed before them, angular in his wetness, tall as a tree. Before him on the beach, the men of the shipyard stood motionless in a group, with the two grey-whiskered captains angry and silent nearby. Caradog Lewis stood in the midst of the shipwrights, red hair gleaming. He was staring at Merriman transfixed, like some small animal caught in mid-stride by an angry badger or a fox.

And the anger in Merriman's eyes as he looked at the red-haired man was of such depth that both Simon and Jane, watching, shrank from it. Caradog Lewis moved slowly back, cringing, seeking escape. Then Merriman reached out one arm with the first finger stiff, pointing, and the man froze, pinned into stillness once more.

“Go,” Merriman said softly, in his deep voice like black velvet. “Go, you who have sold yourself to the Dark, back
from this bright Aberdyfi of the river to Dinas Mawddwy where you came from. Go back to where the Dark lurks in the hills round Cader Idris in the realm of the Grey King, where others wait in black hope like yourself. But remember that since you have failed in this attempt here, your masters now will have no time for you. So beware after this, in years to come, that you keep your sons and your daughters, and the sons of your daughters, away from any trifling with the Dark. For the Dark in its vengefulness will surely destroy any one of them that it can take into its power.”

Without a word Caradog Lewis turned and walked away over the crackling grey slate, up the rough steps and away along the road, until they could no longer see him. Merriman looked at Simon and Jane; then he turned towards the sea, past the silent men and the shipyard huts and the half-built ship, and in a strange gentle gesture he opened his arms wide, like a man stretched on waking, looking up at the sky.

And out of nowhere a seagull came swooping past, low over the water, harshly crying. Their eyes followed it … followed….

… and when it rose again out of sight suddenly they found that they were dressed once more in the jeans and shirts of their own time, standing on a narrow slatey beach a few feet elow the level of the iron-railed pavement, alone with John Rowlands and Merriman. In Simon's right hand was a piece of flat slate; his first finger was curled round it as if for throwing. He looked down at it, shrugged, bent, and skimmed it over the surface of the water. It bounced impressively in a long skipping trail.

“Eight!” Simon said.

“You always win,” said Jane.

Their clothes were dry; only Jane's hair was damp still, from the rains of the morning. There was nothing to show that Simon, Merriman and John Rowlands had ever been in
the sea. Jane peeped at John Rowlands as he stood there blinking in perplexity, and she knew that he did not remember anything. He looked about, dazed; then he caught sight of Merriman and became very still. He stared at him for a long moment.

“Daro,”
he said at last, huskily. “What is this? You. You! I have never forgotten you, from when I was a boy. Do you remember? Is it you?”

Jane and Simon stood listening, puzzled.

“You were Will's age then,” said Merriman, looking at him with half a smile. “Up on your mountain. And you saw me … riding.”

John Rowlands said slowly, “Riding on the wind.”

“Riding on the wind. I wondered, after that, if you would remember. There was no harm in it, if you did—who would have believed you? But I put it into your mind that you had dreamed it, to leave you at rest.”

“And indeed I did think that I had dreamed it, until this moment that I see the same face again, unchanged after so long. And wonder why it is here.” John Rowlands turned his head and looked at Simon and Jane. “This is Will's master, is it not? And known to you as well.”

Simon said automatically, “Great-Uncle Merry.”

John Rowlands' voice rose, incredulous.
“Your great-uncle?”

“A name,” Merriman said. His eyes clouded; he looked away over the estuary at the sea. “I must go. Will needs me. As the Dark knew, Simon, when it caught you in peril in a time from which only I could ransom you, by leaving the place where I was.”

“Are they all right?” Simon said.

“They will be, if all goes well.”

Jane said anxiously, “What can we do?”

“Be on the beach at sunrise. Your beach,” Merriman said. He looked at her with an odd strained smile, and pointed up the road. “And take your small brother home to tea.”

Turning, they saw Barney's yellow-haired figure prancing towards them down the road, with Blodwen Rowlands in his wake; and when they turned back again to the beach and the sea, Merriman was not there.

Down through the bright haze the strange road brought them, arching like a rainbow. Will and Bran found that they made no move of their own. Once they had stepped on to its surface, the road took them up, took them through space and through time with a motion they could not afterwards describe. Then out of that brightness they were down in the Lost Land, and the road was gone, and all else vanished from their minds as they looked up at the place where they were.

They stood high up, on a golden roof, behind a low lattice of wrought gold. Behind them, and at either side, stretched the roofs of a great city, gleaming, spires and towers and turrets crowding the skyline, some golden as the place where they stood, some dark as black flint. The city was very quiet. This seemed to be early morning, cool and silent. Before them, as far as they could see, a luminous white mist lapped round the broad-topped trees of a park. Dew glistened on the trees. Somewhere, beyond the park, the sun was rising into a haze of cloud.

Will gazed out at the trees. They were not packed close together in the random clusters of the wild, but well-spaced, each broad and proud and full; they rose out of the mist like glimmering green islands in a grey-white sea. He saw oak and beech and chestnut and elm; the shapes were as familiar as the buildings around him were strange.

Bran said softly, at his side, “Look!”

He was pointing past Will's back. Turning, Will saw among the peaks and ridges of the roofs a great golden dome, topped with a gold arrow pointing westward to the blue horizon-line of the sea. The sides of the dome caught the early sun, glittering; he realized that they were banded, up and down, with panels of crystal running between strips of gold.

Bran peered, cupping his hands around his smoky glasses. “Is it a church?”

“Could be. Looks a bit like St. Paul's.”

“Or one of those Arab whatsits. Mosques.”

They spoke in whispers, by instinct. The place was so quiet. Nothing anywhere broke the silence of the city, except once, for a few seconds, somewhere far off among the tops of the trees, a seagull's plaintive cry.

Will looked down at his feet. The roof on which they stood seemed to enclose them, its latticework of wrought gold stretching all round like a fence. He reached out. The top bar would not move. It was perhaps half his height; he thought of climbing over, but changed his mind at the sight of the sheer drop, twenty feet down to the next roof, on the other side.

Bran too reached out and took hold of the lattice in front of him; then suddenly he gasped. Beneath his touch, the whole criss-cross panel moved; swung free, balanced on a lower bar, then dropped down from his hands over the edge of the roof, lengthening in hinged sections as it fell, like a folded ladder opening.

“Clang! … clang! … clang! … clang! …” The metallic sounds rang out over the roofs, cracking the silence, ending in a resonant crash as the final section of the ladder-like golden framework hit the roof below. All over the silent city the echoes rose like birds.

Will and Bran stared about them, watching for movement, for the waking of someone, somewhere, that such a clattering must surely bring. But there was nothing.

“Dozy place, isn't it?” said Bran, a small shake in his
voice beneath the bravado; and with Will following close after, he swung himself over the edge and clambered down the ladder of gold.

They stood now on a broad lower roof, slanting more gently downward, crossed with raised strips of some darker metal that served as ridges down which they could walk. At the bottom edge of this roof, expecting to find themselves over a perpendicular wall, they found instead a great sweeping stairway of grey stone, with the glitter of granite, stretching down, down from the very rim of the roof, far down into the mist and the trees.

Together they ran down the steps, keeping close, and as they ran, the mist below them faded into nothing, falling back so that the trees stood clear over a sweep of green grass. And they saw at the bottom of the stone steps, waiting, two horses standing saddled and bridled; untethered, with the reins laid loose over their necks. They were beautiful gleaming animals, lion-coloured, their long manes and tails yellow-white against the golden hide. The bits between their teeth, and their stirrups, were of silver, and the reins were red plaited silk. Will went up to the first and laid a wondering hand on its neck, and the horse blew softly through its nose and ducked its head as if inviting him to mount.

Bran said, gazing bemused at the horses, “Can you ride, Will?”

“Not really,” Will said. “But I don't think that will matter.” And he put one foot in the horse's stirrup and without sound or effort he was up on its back, smiling down, gathering up the reins. The second horse pawed the ground, and nudged gently at Bran's shoulder with its nose.

“Come on, Bran,” Will said. “They've been waiting for us.” He sat there, self-possessed as a huntsman, a small stocky figure in blue jeans and sweater on the tall golden horse, and Bran shook his head in wonder and reached for the saddlebow. He was up, mounted, before he had a
chance to think about it. The horse tossed its head and Bran caught the reins as they fell towards him.