Silver on the Tree (19 page)

Laughter swelled in the crowded square, from a circle of
grinning faces watching a juggler. Marvelous smells wafted past from stalls selling food. A fine spray caressed Will's face, and he saw the glittering drops of a fountain, tossed in a diamond stream up to the sun and down again. He saw Bran in front of him, pale face alight behind the dark lenses, laughing as he shouted something to Gwion. Then there was a stir in the crowd, heads turning; bodies pressed back against Will. He heard the hooves of horses, the jingling of harness, a creaking and a rambling of wheels; through the heads of the crowd he could glimpse riders bobbing by, bareheaded, dressed in blue. The rumbling grew; he could see a coach now, its roof dark blue and splendidly curlicued in gold, and blue plumes tossing before it from the foreheads of tall midnight-black horses.

Hoofbeats slowed, wheels squeaked on the stone street; the coach stopped, rocking gently to and fro. Gwion was close again, drawing Will and Bran forward. The crowd parted easily, respectfully, each one making way instantly at the sight of Gwion's erect grey head. Then the coach was before them, suddenly enormous, like a shining blue ship swaying there on strong leather straps hung from a highwheeled curved frame. A crest was engraved in gold on the glossy door, higher than Will's head. The black horses stamped and blew. There was no coachman to be seen.

Gwion opened the coach door and, reaching inside, swung down a step for mounting.

“Come, Will,” he said.

Will looked up, uncertain. Shadows hid the inside of the coach.

“No harm,” Gwion said. “Trust your instinct, Old One.”

Will looked sharply, curiously, at the smile-creased eyes in the strong face. He said, “Do you come too?”

“Not yet,” Gwion said. “You and Bran, at first.”

He helped them up, and shut the door. Will sat looking out. Around Gwion the crowd eddied and chattered once more, beginning to resume its own affairs, patchwork-bright in the sunshine. The coach, inside, was cool and dim-lit,
with deep padded benches, leather-smelling. A horse whinnied; hooves clattered, and the coach began to move.

Will sat back, looking at Bran. The white-haired boy pulled off his glasses and grinned at him.

“First horses, then a coach-and-four. What'll they offer us next, then? Think they'll have a Rolls-Royce?” But he was not listening to himself; he blinked at the buildings moving past the windows, and propped the dark glasses back on his nose.

“A great bird,” Will said softly. “Or a griffon, or a basilisk.” He too looked out again at the brightness, moving with the jolting sway of the leather-slung coach. Few people were to be seen here. They were moving along a broad street lined by curving arcades of houses that seemed to him startlingly beautiful, with their clear lines and arched doors and wide-set, even windows, and walls of warm golden stone. It had never really occurred to him to think of buildings as beautiful before.

Bran said haltingly, speaking the same thought, “It's such a … well-made place.”

“Everything the right shape,” Will said.

“That's right. I mean, look at that!” Bran leaned forward, pointing. Set among the houses was the high curving entrance to a magnificent pillared courtyard. But the coach had passed before they could see what lay inside.

The world seemed to dim a little; Will saw that the sunlight was gone. They sat swaying in the coach, hoofbeats loud in their ears. Still the light seemed to die.

Will frowned. “Is it getting dark?”

“Must be clouds.” Bran stood, braced between seats, and gazed out, clutching the door. “Yes, there are. Big grey clouds, up there. Looks like a real summer storm cooking up.” Then his voice rose a little. “Will—there were riders dressed in blue in front of us, weren't there?”

“That's right. Like in a procession.”

“No one there now. Nothing ahead. But something … following.”

The tightness in his voice brought Will jerking to his feet, to peer out past the white head. Outside their rocking small space the broad street had grown so murky now that it was hard to see clearly; a dark group of figures seemed to be moving behind them, keeping the same speed, coming a little closer perhaps. He thought he could hear other hoofbeats behind the clatter of their own. Then instinct struck at him and his hand tightened on the window-frame: something was coming, something back there, of which he should be afraid.

“What's the matter?” Bran said; and gasped, as a sudden lurch sent him sprawling back onto the seat of the coach. Will staggered back, dropping beside him. The noise of the coach grew, jingling, thundering; they were flung to and fro, from side to side, as the coach pitched and tossed like a boat on an angry sea.

Bran yelled, “We're going too fast!”

“The horses are frightened!”

“What of?”

“Of … of … back there.” Words would not come; Will's throat was dry. Bran's white face danced before him; the Welsh boy had pulled off the sheltering glasses again in the gloom, and there was fear in his strange tawny eyes. Then the eyes widened; Bran clutched Will's arm.

Outside, a flurry of dark figures came whirling past, on either side; horses furiously galloping, manes and tails flying on the wind, and dark cloaks streaming out behind the figures of hooded men riding. Here and there one figure was white-cloaked among the dark mass. They saw no faces inside the hoods. Nothing but shadow. There was no telling whether any faces were there to be seen.

But one figure, taller, came galloping past to the window of the flying coach, swaying out there in the grey half-light. The head turned towards them. Will heard Bran's stifled gasp.

The head tossed, flicking back the side of the flowing hood. And there was a face: a face which Will recognized
with dread as it stared at him, filled with hatred and malevolence, bright blue eyes burning into his own.

Will heard a husky croak that was his own voice.

“Rider!”

White teeth flashed in the face, in a dreadful mirthless smile, and then the hood fell back. The cloaked figure leaned forward, urging on its horse, and vanished ahead of them into the dark mass of riding shadows. Hoofbeats thickened the air, beat at their hearing; then began to fade.

The world seemed to grow a little less dark, the frantic tossing of the coach to slow gradually down.

Bran was staring at Will, rigid.
“Who was that?”

Will said emptily, “The Rider, the Black Rider, one of the great Lords of the Dark—” Suddenly he sat straight, fierce-eyed. “We mustn't let him go, now he's seen us, we must follow him!” His voice rose, shrill and demanding, calling as if to the whole coach, as if it were a live thing. “Follow! Follow him! Follow!”

The coach lurched faster again, the noise grew, the horses flung themselves frantically forward. Bran grabbed for support. “Will, you're mad! What are you doing? Follow …
that?”
His horror brought the word out in a half-shriek.

Will crouched in a swaying corner, his face set. “We must … we have to know…. Hold on. Hold on.
He
makes the terror, by his riding—if we chase, it grows less. Hold tight, wait and see….

They were moving fast now, but without the wildness of panic. The horses kept up a steady strong gallop, swinging the coach like a child's toy on a string. The light grew and grew as if no cloud were anywhere near, and soon sunlight was shafting in again at them through the open windows. Arched stone buildings still edged one side of the broad street, but on the other side now they saw tall trees and smooth grass, stretching into a green distance; paths and gravelled walks criss-crossed the sweep of the grass, here and there.

“It must be … that park.” Bran's voice swung in gulps
between one bounce and the next. “The one we saw … at the beginning … from the roof.”

“Perhaps it is. Look!”

Will pointed; ahead, two riders had turned from the road and were cantering, without apparent haste now, down one of the small roads across the park. A strange pair they made, two ritualistic figures like images from a chessboard: a rider in black hood and cloak on a coal-black horse, a rider in white hood and cloak on a horse white as snow.

“Follow!” Will called.

Bran peered back up the long empty sweep of the road as they turned from it. “But there were so many—like a big dark cloud. Where did they go?”

“Where the leaves go in autumn,” Will said.

Bran looked at him and seemed suddenly to relax; he grinned. “There's poetic, now.”

Will laughed. “It's true. Of course, the trouble with leaves is, they grow again….”

But his attention was on the two tall riding figures starkly outlined ahead against the soft green of the park. In a few moments the White Rider, as he felt he must call him, dropped aside and trotted quietly away. The coach went on, following the black upright form of the other.

Bran said, “Why should some of the Riders of the Dark be dressed all in white and the rest all in black?”

“Without colour….” Will said reflectively. “I don't know. Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes—blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads.”

The wheels made a crunching sound on the path. They began to see formally patterned flowerbeds laid out at either side, with white stone seats set between them, and here and there people sitting on the seats, or strolling, or children playing. Not one of these gave more than a brief glance of mild interest at the Black Rider stalking ahead on his tall black horse, or the plumed stallions pulling the swaying blue coach with its gold-crested door.

Bran watched one old man glance up, look at the coach, and turn back at once to his book. “They can see us, now. But they seem … they don't
care.”

“Maybe they will, later,” Will said. The coach stopped. He opened the door, pushing the step down with his foot. They jumped down to the crunching gravel of the white path; then, as they saw what was all around them, both paused, held for a moment by delight.

The air was heavy with fragrance, and everywhere there were roses. Squares, triangles, circles of bright blossom patched the grass all around, red and yellow and white and all colours between. Before them was the entrance to an enclosed circular garden, a tall arch in a high hedge of tumbling red roses. They walked through, almost giddy with the scent. In the great circle of the garden inside, formal balustrades and seats of white marble were set round a glittering fountain where three white dolphins endlessly leapt, spouting a high triple spray of tasselled drops with a faint arching rainbow caught over all by the sun. And as if to offset the cool lines of the marble, mounds of roses billowed everywhere, enormous bushes growing rampant, tall as trees.

Before one of the largest shrubs, a spreading sweetbriar with small pink flowers and a fragrance wafting from it sweet as apples, there stood like a black brand the figure of the Rider on his tall dark horse.

Will and Bran drew level with the fountain and paused, facing the man and horse a little way off. The black horse side-stepped, stamping, restless; the Rider twitched sharply at his rein. He put back his hood a little way, and Will saw the fierce, handsome face that he had seen earlier in his life, and a glint of the red-brown hair.

“Well, Will Stanton,” said the Rider softly. “It is a long road from the valley of the Thames to the Lost Land.”

Will said, “And a long road from the ends of the earth, to which the Wild Hunt harried the Dark.”

A grimace like pain flicked over the Rider's face; he
turned his head a little so that it was shadowed by the hood, though not quickly enough to hide a dreadful scar across all his further cheek. But the turning was brief; in another instant he was erect again, his back a straight proud line.

“That was one victory for the Light, but one only,” he said coldly. “There will be no other. We have reached our last rising, Old One; we are at the flood. You have no way of stopping us now.”

“One way,” Will said. “Just one.”

The Rider turned his bright blue eyes from Will to Bran. He said formally, almost chanting, “The sword has not the power of the Pendragon until it is in his hand, nor does the Pendragon exist in his own right until his hand is on the sword.” The blue eyes shifted back to Will, and the Rider smiled, but the eyes stayed cold as ice. “We are before you, Will Stanton. We have been here since first this land was lost, and you may try as you will to take Eirias the sword from the hand that holds it now, but you will not succeed. For that hand is ours.”

Will could feel Bran turn to him in quick baffled concern, but he did not look at him; he was studying the Rider. The confidence in the man's face and bearing was immense, seeming a total arrogance, and yet something in Will's instincts told him that it was not altogether complete. Somewhere vulnerability lay; somewhere there was a crack, a tiny crack, in the Dark's certainty of triumph. And in that crack was the only hope the Light had left, now, to check the rising of the Dark.

He said nothing, but stared at the Rider for a long time, steadily, holding his gaze, until at last the blue eyes flickered briefly aside like the eyes of an animal. Then he knew that he was right.

The Rider said lightly, to cover the movement, “You would do well to forget the foolishness of pursuing impossible ends, while you are here, and instead enjoy the wonders of the Lost Land. There is none here to help the Dark, and equally there is none here to help you. But there is much to enjoy.”

The black horse shifted restlessly, and he twitched at the rein, turning the horse a few steps towards a climbing rose brilliant with enormous buds and full, down-curved yellow flowers.

With an assured, almost affected gesture the Rider bent and broke off one yellow rose and sniffed it. “Such flowers, now. Roses of all the centuries.
Maréchal Niel,
here, never such a scent anywhere … or that strange tall rose beside you with the small red flowers, called
moyesii,
that goes its own way. Sometimes blooming more heavily than any other rose and then perhaps for years not blooming at all.”