The boy stared at them balefully for a while before replying gruffly. ‘There’ll be no shelter there. You’d be best going back aways.’
‘We saw no houses back there,’ Gerin complained.
‘Morgan’s farm,’ the youth insisted.
‘We saw no farm.’
‘Them what’s blind can’t expect to see,’ the herd-boy grunted and turned his back on them. Cockily he whistled to his lumbering charges, who had taken advantage of the pause to start cropping the verges.
At this point the others joined them, and Elined slid down from her horse and ran up to grasp his arm.
‘Please,’ she said, tears in her appealing blue eyes, ‘I can go no further. I am almost ill with weariness.’
As he looked at her he unconsciously straightened his back until he was taller than she. She was a fine lady with skin as white as a rose petal and hair the colour of wheat at harvest.
‘There’s no comfort there for the likes of you,’ he said at last, grudgingly.
‘I need no great comfort,’ Elined said. ‘A barn would do . . . anything . . .’
‘A barn would be all you’d get,’ the boy said, his eyes moving up and down her figure, lingeringly.
Cai moved forward aggressively. ‘We’re coming with you, whatever you say. The farmer himself will decide the issue.’
The boy merely shrugged and turned back to his task. They followed slowly behind: so slowly indeed that they found it difficult to contain their impatience.
At their approach the farm dogs came racing out to meet them, barking furiously, as bad tempered as the boy himself.
Two small, unkempt girls came timidly from the house and stood staring at them solemnly. Olwen thought she detected just a glimmer of friendliness in their eyes, but they were too afraid to follow it through. Behind them suddenly loomed a large man with a shaggy grey beard, to see what the commotion was about. His resemblance to the herd boy, even down to the sullen expression, was unmistakable. He snarled at the dogs, giving the nearest one a brutal kick. They both retreated instantly, whimpering.
As Gerin asked about shelter for the night, Olwen was already pulling at his sleeve and whispering that she did not like the feeling of the place, and that they must move on.
‘There’s no lodging here,’ the man growled. ‘The wife is ill.’
The boy was moving off with his cows, but he gave a backward glance, as much as to say: ‘I told you so!’
‘It’s a warm night,’ Olwen murmured to Elined. ‘We can easily sleep in the woods.’
‘Not I,’ said Elined, moving towards the man, and swaying slightly as though about to faint. ‘Please, sir, I too am ill – with weariness and lack of food. Surely there is a place at your hearth for friends of the king? You will be well rewarded, I promise.’
The charm worked and they were shown into the house, the two nervous little girls clinging like limpets to Olwen’s skirt.
The low farmhouse was built of stone and wood, the thatch roof in bad repair and green with moss and grass, the smoke from the kitchen fire seeping out where it could. Inside, several lamps were lit, but it remained dim and gloomy. There was just one long room for all purposes, and the children’s pallets lay on the floor. But one area was curtained off, and they presumed that it was here the farmer’s wife lay ill. At a great iron stove the eldest daughter, a slatternly thirteen-year-old, was stirring a cauldron of steaming broth. The smell of it made Olwen quite faint with hunger.
An old woman, probably grandmother of the children, was laying out wooden bowls and wooden spoons for the evening meal. She peered at them suspiciously through wrinkled eyelids that had no lashes.
She was informed brusquely that they had guests and must look after them, then the farmer strode over to the curtained area and disappeared behind the heavy homespun cloth. They could hear a steady groaning from behind it.
Olwen touched Gerin’s arm. ‘I really think we shouldn’t stay.’
‘We’re staying,’ Cai said firmly. ‘Even if we have to sleep in the barn. Elined must have shelter.’
Neither the old woman nor the girl said anything. The girl continued stirring, her mouth set in the hard line that continual despair sometimes brings to a face. She had the look of one who had never been allowed to be a child, and was no longer expecting it.
The old woman hobbled off to fetch some more bowls and spoons from a shelf stacked precariously high with bags of flour and beans, twigs and sheaves of dried herbs, cracked earthenware jars and sagging baskets.
‘Let me help you.’ Olwen hurried over, reaching up to the shelf for her, while Elined and the others sank down on the wooden bench beside the table and eyed the cooking-pot ravenously.
The farmer did not return for the meal, but the herd boy came in and sat down at the table, his hands still grimy and his boots still muddy from the fields. He fixed his eyes instantly on Elined and did not look away from her all the time he was shovelling broth into his mouth. The two little girls ate fast and timidly, as though they half expected their food to be snatched away from them, and glanced nervously at their brother from time to time. Their fears seemed well grounded, for as he swallowed the last of his own broth, his arm shot out to seize the unfinished bowl of one of his sisters. She tried to hold it away, but her grandmother struck her hand with a wooden spoon and she withdrew. Her sister hastily pushed her own bowl towards him and he gulped that as well. He then took a hunk of bread and scoured out the serving bowl. The guests were not offered second helpings.
Meanwhile the groans behind the curtain were turning to intermittent shrieks. Several times Olwen offered to go and see to the poor woman, but the old crone sharply told her that her son could manage well enough.
At last Olwen could bear it no longer, and dashed towards the curtain before the old woman could stop her. Behind it she found Kicva, Goreu’s witch-woman, with blood up to her elbows. She was holding a newborn infant by its feet, its head immersed in a leather bucket of water. Olwen leapt forward and grabbed the child from her, the surprise of her unexpected arrival giving her a momentary advantage.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried. ‘You’ll drown it!’
Candles sputtered around the bed and the farmer’s wife lay twisted awkwardly, her face deathly pale, watching the scene with dark and desperate eyes. Beside her lay two creatures like skinned rabbits. Her husband stood at the foot of the bed, arms folded on his barrel chest, and his face stony.
The candlelight beneath it, Kicva’s furious face was grotesque with shadow. Olwen reeled back and the farmer seized her roughly by the arm.
‘This is none of your business,’ he snapped.
Olwen could see now that the newborn infants were all female. She had heard that ignorant people often looked on triplets, particularly females, as unnatural, boding misfortune for the family. She had even heard tales that the extra ones were drowned like kittens, but she had never thought to come upon such barbarism herself.
She wrenched her arm away from the man’s grasp, and flung herself forward to face Kicva, still clutching the tiny, mewling creature she had rescued.
Gerin appeared suddenly behind the angry farmer, in time to hear the stream of curses Olwen was being subjected to.
Instantly he seized Kicva’s shoulders and shook her violently. ‘Take back your curses, old woman,’ he yelled. ‘Or they’ll return on your own head!’
Kicva laughed scornfully. ‘It’s too late,’ she sneered. ‘Too late! She’ll never be loved by a man! She’ll never bear children!’ Her bony finger pointed straight at Olwen, who shivered at the old woman’s words, but did not turn from her task of trying to save the lives of the three hapless infants. Two of them were howling lustily, but the third, after being so roughly treated, was scarcely breathing.
The farmer’s wife had already borne him six daughters in all, and only one son. Three of the girls had died, to his great relief, but now the cursed woman had presented him with female triplets. He and the midwife Kic
va had agreed that the three were too sickly to live, and neither felt any compunction in hastening what to them was an inevitable and indeed a desirable outcome. His wife did not dare protest. She lived in terror of her husband’s rages. But now, angry as he was at the interference of the strangers, he was hesitant to continue with his original plan in front of them. He stood irresolute, no longer taking an active part in the affair.
‘lf you let them live,’ Kicva warned Olwen darkly, ‘there will be nothing but trouble in this house. Three curses will fall on it. Three times three will be their sorrows.’
‘How can you say that?’ cried Olwen indignantly. ‘Three daughters: three times blessed. Three times three will be their joys!’
Cai and Elined had now come to see what the commotion was about and, on seeing Elined, Kicva instantly cried out. ‘My lady Elined! What are you doing here?’ And then she noticed Cai and looked horrified.
Elined at once put her arm through his. ‘It’s all right, Kicva. It’s all right now. These are my friends.’
‘What have they done to you, lady? They’ve turned your mind!’
‘No. No, truly. They’re my friends.’
‘Your father and your brother are frantic with worry. Hundreds have been killed in trying to rescue you! And here you stand and talk of friendship!’
Elined put her face against Cai’s shoulder and began to sob.
‘Leave her alone!’ Cai warned fiercely. ‘If Huandaw had not been so impatient to rush to war without finding out the true facts, those men would be alive today.’ He drew Elined gently away from the fierce and accusing eyes of the old woman.
Kicva glared after them for a moment and then turned her attention back to Olwen, who had meanwhile started quietly and competently clearing things up. She had ordered the farmer to fetch water and he, somewhat caught off guard by the turn of events, had sullenly gone off to the well in the yard. Gerin was helping her to arrange the woman more comfortably. The candlelight fell on a scene in which Kicva now had no part to play.
She turned on her heel and picked up her shawl. At the door she paused and looked back. ‘You’ll be sorry,’ she warned darkly. ‘You’ll be sorry.’ And then she left.
Through the open doorway they could see the blackness of a night without moon and without stars.
Suddenly a flash of lightning rent the sky.
* * * *
Idoc was waiting for Viviane in his tower. It was he who had put the thought into her mind to come there, and he watched her progress on Hunydd with amused interest. Not once did she hesitate, though he knew that Caradawc was trying desperately to turn her around. He was pleased that he had not lost his old skills though he was encased in the body of someone not a master of invocation nor a high adept in sorcery. He leant back in his carved ebony chair and put his feet up on the bronze table. He was totally relaxed, totally confident. He intended to drive that spark of consciousness that was the soul of Caradawc to such depths of despair and frustration that it would choose to give up the Great Journey and abandon itself among the flotsam and jetsam of outer darkness. Viviane he would bind to himself so utterly that she would have no hesitation in following him wherever he would lead, nor cast a backward glance to the lost soul of her handsome, immature lover. He had the spells prepared, he had his infernal helpers ready. All he need do now was to wait. He could not proceed until they arrived, for, just as the ancient stone circle with its powerful energies was the only place his enemies could have cast that particular binding spell on him, so this tower with its particular concentration of energy was the only place in which he could be sure his present scheme would work.
Viviane finally reached the foot of the hill beneath the tower and, for the first time, paused to consider what she was doing. At first very faintly, but more vividly with every passing moment, she began to remember the Green Lady who had given her the green silk cord she now wore at her waist. Nervously she fingered it, wondering at the words spoken by the being who had returned it to her in the grove of silver birch trees. She looked around and it seemed to her that on the slope leading up to the tower much of the plant life was pale, weak and struggling. The only things that grew with any vigour were poisonous plants: henbane and black nightshade, hemlock and bittersweet. If she stepped down, as she would soon have to, burs and thistles, stinging nettles and brambles were waiting for her. She looked back and saw that beyond the reach of the tower’s shadow, the countryside was lush and fertile. Each plant, each tree, each blade of grass seemed to have taken on a rich distinction: a glow, a certain magic. She could feel her skin prickling as though she were in the presence of a great being. Did she see a movement there among the trees, the bare shoulder of the Green Lady as the sunlight blazed through the leaves?
Idoc suddenly leaned forward in his chair, concentrating on the shew-stone in his hand – the piece of broken obsidian mirror. Surely they were not going to slip through his fingers after all? Damn that Caradawc! He must have learned something as his apprentice in those ancient days, and was using his knowledge now to break through Idoc’s calling spell. Damn that interfering Green Lady, the Earth Spirit whose powerful energy could transform bare rock into garden, desert into orchard. She who reclaimed sacked cities and battlefields with nothing more than the lily and the poppy; she who covered graveyards with daisies and distilled pure water from cesspits. Damn her!
Viviane shivered; feeling his malevolence – torn between a growing sense of unease and her conviction that the only way to rescue Caradawc was to confront Idoc in the tower. If the Green Lady did not want her to proceed, why did she not come forward to stop her? It seemed to her that the green fields and the forest were calling to her, but the tower’s call was stronger. She dismounted slowly, gingerly stepping down among the thorns and nettles, her heart beating wildly. She assured herself that though she had hitherto been riding ‘blind’, she was now very well aware of what she was doing. She might have been lured as far as this by the power of Idoc, but she was determined to stay on her own terms. She could feel Caradawc’s fear, his doubt that they could ever outwit Idoc on his own ground. It made her waver momentarily, but she knew that what had to be done had to be done soon, or it would be too late. She had come this far, and was not prepared to back out now.
Idoc relaxed again. ‘They’ll come,’ he thought with satisfaction. ‘Let her bring whom she will to help her. They can do nothing against me in this tower.’
He began to walk the chamber, tracing on the floor, with fine sulphur powder, the various figures he required for his spells. On either side of the door he placed one of his familiars ready to seal it as soon as the two invited guests had passed through.
Viviane took out her amethyst crystal and held it up for clear-sight. On every branch of every tree the little brown sight-seekers, the voyeurs, were perched, their eyes bulging with anticipation, their ears flexing constantly for every sound. How she hated them! She detested the feeling of always being watched.
‘Don’t be distracted,’ Caradawc whispered urgently. ‘Call for help. We can’t face Idoc alone.’
She sent out the call . . . but even as it left her she felt an irresistible pull towards the tower.
‘They’ll come,’ she said to Caradawc. ‘But we can’t wait for them . . .’
Ignoring the thorns that tore at her flesh and the nettles that stung her, she set off up the hill.
‘Viviane!’ Caradawc’s disembodied voice was like the call of a distant bird – a cry so distant, so sad, it would have brought tears to her eyes at any other time. But now she hardly noticed it. Another voice was calling; strong, powerful, commanding – a voice she had loved, a voice she still thrilled to in spite of everything.
‘Viviane!’ said Idoc quietly at the centre of the pentagram of calling, and smiled to see the eagerness with which she rushed towards him. Was there something left, after all, of her old desire for him? A desire Caradawc could not completely satisfy, just as he himself could not completely satisfy her need f
or a steadier, deeper kind of love. Well, if it was so, it would make his task that much easier.
She took the stairs two and three at a time, and only paused at the threshold of the final door. It lay open, the chamber beyond well lit with lamps. The blank wall where the obsidian mirror had been was hung now with a tapestry of rich and glowing colours. She could not see the design, but was instantly curious. There was no sign of Idoc, and she was shocked at the disappointment that she felt.
As she took a step forward into the room she experienced an extraordinary chill. Her skin was suddenly goose-pimpled from scalp to toe; her teeth began to chatter. From a hot summer’s evening she had been plunged into mid-winter. Terrified she tried to withdraw, but the door had swung shut behind her. She could hear the wheels turning in the elaborate lock, though there was no hand there to turn them.
‘We’re trapped!’ Caradawc’s panic almost choked her.
‘No, we’re not!’ she replied fiercely, trying to convince herself as much as him. The sudden chill had passed, yet she still shivered.
‘Welcome,’ said a smooth voice, and she spun round to find Idoc standing there after all. It was strange to see him, knowing that he was Idoc, yet his every feature was Caradawc’s: those sea-blue eyes; that curly chestnut hair; the slender yet muscular figure. Idoc himself had been a much heavier man, even when young: a man of dark, penetrating eyes and hair the colour of a raven’s wing . . .
She still clutched the amethyst that gave her clear-sight, and, with its power, she saw behind him, and partially enclosing him like a sheath, another figure, almost transparent, the colour of smoke from rotting rags, its face so hideous that she could not bear to look upon it, an angel of darkness, long enemy of the light. This was their real antagonist: and Idoc did not even know that he was there. How could a man so brilliant and so skilled be so deluded?
She looked around the chamber hoping to find some hint of how she could start the process of disentanglement; perhaps something that would let her stall for time until those she called on would arrive. Her eye fell on the tapestry that had not been there before.
The Tower and the Emerald Page 17