Silver on the Tree (25 page)

They had come to an end of the scattering of wind-curved oak and pine that fringed this edge of the river. Before them now was the Castle of the Lost Land, a shining tower rising over a circle of tall trees.

Gwion was suddenly sober; he dropped his arms, and stood for a moment as if he had forgotten Will, Bran, himself and everything except the sight of the lonely glittering tower there before him.

“Caer Wydyr,”
he said softly, almost whispering. “As beautiful as it has always been. And my great grieving king shut away inside never seeing its beauty. With indeed no one at all, in all the Lost Land, able to see its beauty except the Lords of the Dark.”

Will looked all around, restlessly. “And they are everywhere, and yet not to be seen.”

“Everywhere,” Gwion said. “Among the guardian trees. But they cannot harm the trees, just as they cannot touch the king or his castle.”

The great trees grew round the tower in an irregular circle, lapping it with their leaves and branches; it rose from them like an island from a green sea.

“Seven trees, the Lady said.” Bran turned to Will. “Seven trees. Just as the seven Sleepers woke over Llyn Mwyngil, once before our eyes, to ride away into tomorrow.” The tawny eyes were glittering in his pale face; he stared all around, unafraid, as if in challenge, caught up for a moment in a feverish confidence Will had not seen before.

Will said slowly, “But there were six Sleepers.”

“Seven there will be,” Bran said, “seven at the end. And not then Sleepers by name, but Riders, like the Lords of the Dark.”

“Here is the first tree,” Gwion said. His voice was without expression, but Will felt he was deliberately turning the talk aside. Facing them, close to the river, was a crowded clump of slender trunks, green-barked, with broad round dancing leaves.

“Y gwernen,”
Bran said. “Alder. Growing with its feet wet, the way it does in our valley too, with John Rowlands cursing it up and down for a weed.”

Gwion broke three small twigs from an alder branch, taking each at the joint where it would not bend or fray. “A weed-wood sometimes perhaps, but a wood that will neither split nor decay. The tree of fire, is alder. There is in it the power of fire to free the earth from water. And that we may need. Here.” He gave each of them a twig and went on, towards the broad sweeping canopy, slender-branched, long-leafed, of a willow tree. Again he broke off three sprays and held out two.

“Willow, the enchanter's tree,” Will said, his mind flickering a long way back to a certain ancient book shown him by
Merriman when he was learning how to use the gifts of an Old One.
“Strong as a young lion, pliant as a loving woman, and bitter to the taste, as all enchantment in the end must be.”
He smiled wrily at Gwion. “They taught me my trees once, a while ago.”

Gwion said quietly, “So they did indeed. Tell me the next.”

“Birch,” said Will. A great knotted white tree rose before them, hard catkins dancing from its long thin brown twigs. Beneath the fluttering green leaves it was an old, old tree, with white-spotted scarlet toadstools growing between its roots and the long self-healed split of an ancient wound bringing the first signs of decay to its trunk.

Bran said in unthinking surprise, “I never saw a birch tree out here before.” Then he looked at Will and grinned, mocking himself. “No—nor a great glass tower either, nor a may-tree growing from a roof.”

“You say nothing foolish,” said Gwion mildly, giving them twigs from the birch tree. “In this my time it is warmer and drier here in Wales than in yours, and we have forests of alder and birch and pine trees, where you have only oaks and the foreign trees that will be brought in by new men. And those”—he paused for an instant—“not in quite the same place as these trees of my day.”

A kind of terror caught at Will's mind for a moment as he realized what Gwion must mean; but the Welshman drew them swiftly on, past the big birch tree, and suddenly the glass tower, Caer Wydyr, was facing them, visible for the first time from bottom to top, and they saw that it rose not from the ground, from the golden sand and green bank of the estuary, but from a great jagged rock. The stone was unfamiliar; it was neither the spangled grey of granite nor the grey-blue of slate, but a deep blue-black, studded here and there with bright slabs of white quartz. And they saw now that the sides of the tower itself were built too of a glassy rocklike quartz, white, translucent, with a strange milky glow. Slits of windows were set into the circling walls, here and there, and the surface was totally smooth.

“Is there no door?” Bran said.

Gwion gave no answer, but led them over the long coarse grass towards two other full, massive trees. The first was not tall, but broad and spreading, with the blunt rounded leaves and budding feathery nuts of half the hedges of England and Wales.

“Hazel for healing,” Gwion said, taking three twigs.

“And for feeding starving travellers,” said Bran.

Gwion laughed. “Were they good, then?”

“Marvellous. And the apples too.”

Will said, remembering, “Apple is another of the trees.”

“But first, holly.” Gwion turned to a forbidding dark mound of a tree with a smooth grey trunk, its glossy dark green leaves sharp-spined on the lower branches and mild ovals above. He picked only the twigs with prickled leaves, and again handed them one each.

“And from the apple,” he said, smiling, “you may take fruit as well. But I must be the one to pluck the twigs, from every tree.”

“Why?” Bran said, as they went on through the grass.

“Because otherwise,” Gwion said simply, “the tree would cry out, and the law would come into force, by which neither Light nor Dark may make any move for their own ends within the Lost Land.” He paused for a moment, looking at them intently, fingering the neat dappled grey beard. His voice was grave. “Make no mistake now, the Lost Land is not a gentle place. There is a hardness here, and an indifference to all emotions other than those belonging to the Land, that is another face of the beauty of the rose garden, and the skill of the craftsmen, the makers. Do not underestimate that.”

Bran said, “But only the Dark really stands in our way.”

Gwion tilted his chin in a curious arrogant motion, yet with lines of pain clear about the mouth. He said quietly, “Where do you think the
Mari Llwyd
was called from, to drive you out of your wits almost, Bran Davies? Who do you think devised the mirrored maze? What is it that faces you now in the untasted despair of the task that is almost
impossible, the task of reaching the Lost King and his crystal sword? Do you think the Dark has much to do with all this? Oh no. Here the Dark is next to helpless, compared to the powers that belong to this place. It is the Lost Land that you pit yourself against here, with all to win or all to lose.”

“And that is the Wild Magic,” Will said slowly. “Or something very close.”

“A form of it,” Gwion said. “And more besides.”

Bran was standing uncertain, blinking at him. “And you are part of it?”

“Ah,” Gwion said reflectively. “I am a renegade part, going my own way. And although I love my own land most deeply, no good will come to me here.” He turned his broad smile on Bran suddenly like a beam of warmth, nodding ahead. “Look there—go on, help yourself.”

An ancient, sprawling apple tree curved to the ground before them like a bent-backed ancient man; it was the only tree that grew low and spreading, and did not tower above their heads. Small yellow apples, and others smaller yet but bright green, studded its dark branches among the sparse leaves. Bran stared. “Last year's apples as well as this year's?” He pulled off a yellow apple and bit into its juicy hardness.

Gwion chuckled. “Two years they hang there sometimes. This is a pippin from a long time before your own, remember. There are many things in your own day that were not dreamed of, except by Old Ones, in this age when the Land was lost. But equally there were once other remarkable things that have vanished forever, lost with the Land.”

Will said gently, “Forever?” He picked a yellow apple and held it up, his eyes smiling at Gwion.

Gwion looked back at him with a strange faraway look on his strong bearded face. “For ever and ever, we say when we are young, or in our prayers. Twice, we say it, Old One, do we not? For ever and ever … so that a thing may be for ever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet begin again, and be for ever just as before. And any ending that may seem to
come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die. Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time.”

Bran stood turning his pale face from one to the other of them, chewing his apple, saying nothing.

Will said, “And here we stand in a time long gone, that has not yet come.
Here.”

Bran said suddenly, unexpectedly, “I have been here before.”

“Yes,” Gwion said. “You were born here. Among many trees like this one.”

Will glanced up quickly, but the white-haired boy said nothing more. Nor did Gwion, but moved forward and broke three blackish gnarled twigs from the old apple tree.

A voice came from behind their backs instead: a soft voice, with an unidentifiable accent to it. “And the boy who was born here may well find himself staying here—for ever and ever.” A malicious mockery sharpened the tone, flicking like a whip. “And that is a very long time, my friends, however metaphysical we may become about its meaning.”

Will turned slowly, deliberately, to face the tall dark-cloaked figure seated on the great black stallion. The Black Rider had put back his hood; the sunlight glinted on his thick chestnut hair, with its reddish glitter like the fur of a fox, and his bright eyes blazed like blue coals. Behind him, further away, other mounted figures stood silently waiting, riders all in black or all in white, one beside every tree and others scattered further back than Will could plainly see.

“There are no more warnings now, Old One,” the Black Rider said. “Now it will be a matter of simple challenge, and threat. And of promise.”

Gwion said, his voice strong and deep, “Dark promises have no force in this land, my Lord.”

The Black Rider glanced down at him as he might have glanced at a dog, or a toddling child. He said contemptuously, “It is wiser to fear the word of a Lord of the Dark than to heed that of a minstrel to a lost king.”

Premonition prickled like some fast-crawling creature all across Will's body; it sang in his mind:
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word….
But Gwion showed no hint of reaction; he simply moved forward, as if the Black Rider had not been there, and strode past him to the enormous sturdy oak tree in whose shade the dark figure stood.

“No leaf-collecting here, little player,” the Rider said mockingly. “The king of trees is out of your reach, I think.”

The warning shudder ran through Will even more strongly. Gwion's face was impassive. Carefully and with dignity he reached up one lean brown arm to its full length; caught a jagged-leaved branch, snapped it, and broke it into three.

The Rider said sharply, “I promise you, minstrel, that if you get into that tower, you will never come out again.” They saw the dreadful scar on the side of his face as he turned his head.

“You can do nothing to prevent us, my lord,” Will said. Drawing Bran with him, he went towards Gwion and the great oak.

The Black Rider relaxed suddenly, smiling. “Oh, I have no need,” he said, and slowly he eased his marvellous night-black stallion to sidestep away so that there was a clear view of the rearing glass tower before Will and Bran.

Will stopped, with a groan of dismay that he could not hide. The Black Rider gave a high snickering laugh. It was all too plain now what he had meant.

The great door of Caer Wydyr was visible at last, high on the rocky base at the top of a steep rough-hewn flight of steps. But it was a door barred against entry by an enchantment Will could never have imagined. Before it, spinning so fast that it was like a bright disc, hung a gigantic wheel. There was no axle, nor any kind of support. The wheel hung there in the air, deadly, forbidding approach, flashing round and round with a speed that gave out a menacing hum.

Bran said in a whisper,
“No!”

From the Lords of the Dark on their black and white
horses, stirring among the trees, there came a rustling of mockery, of malice satisfied. The Black Rider laughed again, an unpleasant menacing sound.

Swinging round in hopeless confusion, Will caught Gwion's bright eyes gazing at him, holding him, gleaming over the strong face and the strange dark stripe of its grey beard. Saying: I must tell you but I cannot tell you
—think—

And Will thought and suddenly knew.

“Come on!”

Seizing Bran by the arm, he broke into a run and rushed up the steps of the great rock on which the tower stood, away from the mocking Dark, until he was on the top step, so close to the whirling wheel that it seemed likely to cut him in half. The humming shriek of its spinning filled their minds. Gwion was behind them, white teeth flashing in eager delight. Will bent to Bran's baffled, anxious face and said in his ear: “And what last thing did the Lady say?”

He saw relief break like a wave, and heard the words choke out:
“Only the horn can stop the wheel—”

And Will reached to his belt and took the little gleaming hunting-horn that hung there. He paused, drew in a deep breath, put back his head and blew a single long clear note, high and lovely, singing out like a harmonic over the terrible hum of the spinning sharp wheel. And the wheel spun down at once to a halt, as if an immense force were stopping it, while a long howling shriek of rage rose from the Riders of the Dark below. Will and Bran had an instant to see that the wheel had four spokes, quartering the circle, before Gwion was urging the two of them in turn through the nearest quarter, and slipping through after them.