The Lad of the Gad (8 page)

The hag said, “You are alone, son of Irrua. Bad is the night on which you have come.”

“I am not alone, hag,” said Lusca. “I have you.”

“It is not you who have me,” said the hag, “but I who have you, unless you pay me tribute.”

“What tribute is that?” said Lusca.

“The length of my foot of fair gold,” said the hag.

“Will you not take silver of me?” said Lusca.

“I will not,” said the hag.

“For what cause,” said Lusca, “do you have that tribute abroad on everyone?”

“This hill is my hill,” said the hag, “and the man that makes fire on my hill is my man; and I must have ransom of gold or ransom of the head of the man himself or would you spend this night with me?”

“If a hag more ugly than you,” said Lusca, “were to offer me rest I should accept it this night.”

Lusca shook from him his suit of battle. The hag gave a goblet of precious stones into his hand, and he drank a drink out of that goblet.

“Take a blessing and a victory for the drink,” said Lusca.

The hag said, “Whatever man shall drink from that goblet every day, neither age nor misery rest upon him through time eternal.”

Lusca said, “Is it the balm of healing?”

The hag said:

“It is not the balm of healing,

Nor the Great Dug of the World.

It will not bolt the gate of your side.

It will not close the blue mouth.

It will not stop the dark blood.

Only the maker of iron

Can seal the road that iron makes.

I have no skill in the matter of your anguish.

I cannot grasp the flame of agony.

Look for a man

Born on a black rock

Grown on a burnt hill:

Shasval the Smith:

Born at night, in the Upland of Grief

He walks on boundaries, on the wolf's track,

He hammers the moon.”

Lusca said, “How shall I find the Upland of Grief?”

“There is a cave below here,” said the hag. “The Upland of Grief is by that way.”

Lusca rested the night with the hag, and no one was earlier on his feet the next day than he. He went down to the cave and found it open, a thin road in it. He followed the road until he came to a smooth plain and a little yellow island and a sea on each side of it. He went up the island, and in the middle of it he chanced upon a fair lake. A beautiful flock of bright-white birds was ever-rising out of the middle of the lake, and never a bird of them was going down again, but always they were rising up.

Lusca said, “What is the place that bright birds
come from?”

He lay on the lake and went under it to the bed and the gravel. He looked about to a tower of gold at a distance from him, and he went up and entered.

There was a girl in a room of the tower, a covering upon her head, with gems and with purple-white shimmerings, and silver jewels in her hair; a cloak of satin around her; a cushion of satin under her; that is how she was.

She had a white rod in her hand, a knife in the other hand, slicing the rod. Every whittle she took from the rod went up and out, as a bright bird, through the window of the tower.

The girl looked at him and said, “Which of us does not wonder at the other, for you wonder at me, and I wonder at you? I am Grian Sun-face, and take you this rod to whittle it a while.”

Lusca took hold of the rod and whittled it for a while. With every whittle, every evil and every feebleness that he had met before did not put upon him its hurt, except for the wound of the Big Mokkalve in his side.

“It is a rod never to be whittled away,” said Grian Sun-face, “but to be whittled for ever. My father gave it to save me from thinking long.”

Lusca was filled with a need to be from the place, for the whittle of the rod was great. He said, “My life is not to be for ever making bright birds.” He left the girl in the tower and went back to the shores of the lake, not a hair of his clothing wet on
him.

It was only a small time from that out when Lusca passed from the island into a country where there was neither day nor night but a dusk without moon or stars. No one did he see there, there were no creatures, but the land lay in a sweat of hideousness and the trees were broken. High on a hill there was a castle, and in it Lusca found no people except a white-haired warrior, a beardless lad, and an ancient bent grey coughing woman. Between them they had a ball of black iron in the fire round which they lay.

Lusca sat down at the fire, and when he sat down the iron ball turned through blackness to redness in the fire, and the people there rose up and gave Lusca three kisses. Lusca said, “What is that din of dinging I hear?”

“Take you a blessing and a victory for freeing us,” said the white-haired warrior, “and it is Shasval the Smith.”

“I do not free you,” said Lusca. He rose and went from the castle to where the din of dinging was. He found a cave, and before it a dark smith at a red forge, hammering a Sword of Light.

Lusca said, “The Big Mokkalve opened the gate of my side and I must get healing.”

The smith answered nothing and hammered the sword.

Lusca went back to the castle and sat near the fire. The ball of iron there turned through blackness to
redness and the warrior, the lad and the woman gave him three kisses. “Take a blessing and a victory for your coming, and free us from fear,” said the warrior.

“I do not free you,” said Lusca. He went out again to the smith. “The Big Mokkalve opened the gate of my side and I must get healing.”

The smith answered nothing and hammered the sword.

Lusca went to the castle and sat near the fire. The ball of iron turned through blackness to redness and the warrior, the lad and the woman gave him three kisses.

“Take a blessing and a victory for your coming,” said the warrior. “Isbernya is the land in which you are now. There visited us a worm, and she swallowed our heavy flocks and our people after them, and she slaughtered our hosts, both young and old, so that none are alive except the three you see here. But our wise men left prophecy for us, that when the ball in the fire should turn through blackness to redness, Lusca, son of the King of Irrua, should come to free us from fear and to slay that wonderful worm.”

Lusca was attended, nobly and honourably. The old warrior said, “Son of Irrua, I and that lad have the same father, and the woman there is our mother, and we are of one birth. But poison was the first food given to the lad; whoever is reared upon poison at the first, neither age nor harm affect him
through time eternal.”

Lusca said, “Let me be shown the way to that mighty worm.”

Lusca and the lad went to where the worm was. They found her looking about to go round the castle, trying if she could get in. When she was not able to get in, she coiled herself on the castle. Lusca gave a cast of a royal javelin that was in his hand at the worm, so that he sent the spear through her and through two windows of the castle and through the coil on the other side. There was the worm, unable to loose herself. Then Lusca took his sword and cut the head from her. The blood made the blade green.

Great joy of that worm seized the warrior, the lad and the woman. They flung their arms about Lusca; but he felt his life going from him with the wound of the Big Mokkalve.

Lusca went and said to the smith, “I must get healing.”

The smith said, “Who are you to come here? A boatful of blood has gone from your side. Bigger things have been stopped.”

The smith took ointment to the wound of the Big Mokkalve. The side healed.

“The gate of my side is bolted,” said Lusca. “The blue mouth is closed. If there is the Great Dug of the World, it must be with you.”

“The Great Dug of the World,” said the smith, “is not with me. The Great Dug of the World is at the Forest of Wonders. Do not go after it. The way
of the forest is this: there is a Tree of Splendour in the forest, and one of every colour on that tree. There is no fruit of the fruits of life that is not on that tree, and it is hard for any man who sees it to part from it for its marvellous splendour. No man has ever gone into that forest who ever came out of it again for its enchantment. Do not look for the Dug, till the womb of judgment or the end of life.”

“Even if you were to have the Great Dug with you now,” said Lusca, “I would not go from here without seeing this forest, for your report of it. But who is the master of the Sword of Light?”

The smith said, “It is for Lurga Lom to take with him on the day that he shall go against the City of the Red Stream. Until that day, he shall not know it: but, on that day, it shall know him.”

“Where is the Forest of Wonders?” said Lusca.

“The Forest of Wonders is far from you,” said the smith. “Beware of the Forest of Wonders. There is no hideous thing in hollow nor in the dreadful clouds of air that will not come to you then. It is impossible to count or to tell all the evil and the confusion of enchantment that will be in the forest at the joint of that hour.”

“No more the less shall I go there,” said Lusca, and departed.

It was then Lusca faced for the Forest of Wonders. He saw at a distance from him the Tree of Virtues. He saw the colours and the fruits beneath the branches wide-sweeping of that flower-marvellous
tree.

He found thirteen men on the outskirts of the forest, lacking heads, and in the middle of them lay a king-warrior, a mantle of fair gold about him, clustering golden hair and a diadem of gold on the head by the body. Lusca never beheld the same number of men who were more remarkable than that dead band.

There was a sandal of gold on the foot of the hero, and Lusca stretched out his hand to take it, but the foot cast him over seven ridges from it backwards. Then the head of the body spoke.

“This time yesterday,” said the head, “no man could have insulted that foot.”

“Head?” said Lusca. “Have you speech?”

“I have,” said the head.

“What is the story?” said Lusca.

“Dig a grave for my men and me,” said the head, “and you shall get the story.”

Lusca dug with the great broad spear that he had near his shield.

“The grave is ready,” said the head.

“It is ready now,” said Lusca.

“Gold-arm lollan is the man whose head I am,” said the head, “son of the King of the Birds. I could not but go to seek the Tree of Virtues, and my twelve foster-brothers came with me. But enchantment was worked upon us here: for the first we saw was a musical harper walking in the forest, and the little man reached over his fist and struck the man of
us who was nearest him between the nose and the mouth, and that man drew his sword to strike the musical harper, but it was not the harper he struck but the man next to himself; so that it was ourselves we beheaded, one after one, through the spells of the musical harper, and he took off the head of the last man with my own sword. But what marvel is that? There is many a greater marvel in the Forest of Wonders.”

Lusca put his hands around Gold-arm Iollan and laid him in the grave. He placed six on each side of him and covered them with earth.

After that work, Lusca looked at the forest until he saw a musical harper coming towards him, his harp with him, a rusty sword by his side. Lusca gave a leap at the harper without speaking, and smashed the harp on the rock of stone that was nearest him, sending fragments of the harp into every fifth of the forest. The musical harper gathered up the harp again, piece after piece, so that it seemed that neither stroke nor blow had ever touched it. Lusca took the harper and lifted his head from his body, but the little man departed with his head in his hand by the hair, his harp in the other hand, into the forest; and Lusca marvelled at that.

It was not long after the little man had gone that Lusca saw a wild ox. He smote a blow on it.

And there was never cat nor hag

Nor hideous senseless spectre

In crag nor in hollow

Nor in rock nor in house

Nor on land nor in the dreadful clouds of air

But came at the roar of that ox.

Lusca passed a hand round his great broad spear that was beside his shield. He gave a cast of it, so that he sent it through the ox. When the spear reached it, not greater was the screaming of any other beast than the screaming of the spear itself; and Lusca marvelled at the nature of that spear.

This is how the creatures of the forest were in that hour:

Some scream and

Some bellow and

Some moan and

Some of them stamp the ground

With their heads and their feet.

It is impossible to count or to tell all the evil and the confusion of enchantment that was in the forest at the joint of that hour, for there was neither stone nor tree in it but was in one shaking and in one thunder.

Lusca took out a venomous stone that was in the hollow of his shield, and he collected the senseless creatures, until he drove them into the mouth of a cave in the forest; and it had been a good cause of confusion to a bad hero in the Forest of Wonders at that time to be listening to the wailing, the screeching, the tremulous bellowing of those many-shaped spectres.

Lusca came back through the forest after that
work, tired, anxious, sorrowful; and many was the wandering wolf nimbly-going, rising up on every side of him. He did not overtake them, but they were going away from him in every fifth of the forest, in quick running throngs.

Lusca called with a loud great clear voice, “Not better would I like a sleeping-couch, if I had it tonight, than to be fighting with the monsters of this forest!” Then he went to the Tree of Virtues, and he bore off with him a great shoulder-load of the branches of that blossom-haunted tree, so that he made of it a hut in the forest. It was not under the protection of the forest that Lusca went that night, but of his own hand and of his own blade.

He blew a fire heap.

And it was the rushing of red wind

Or sound of wave down jagged waterfall