by Joan Aiken
'Don't tell the queen that Rex Atahallpa is back.'
'Who?'
'Atahallpa. Artaius. Don't tell her.'
'Why not?' said Dido sourly.
'Because if she knows that he is back, and has not made haste to join her, she will be so angry that she will probably have your tongues cut out on the spot.'
'But why should you care?' said Dido. Partly she was playing for time; anything to keep the old witch talking; but also she wondered why it mattered to Lady Ettarde.
'Never you mind!' rasped the Mistress of the Robes, and hobbled on again.
As Dido followed, the answer came to her. Of course she don't want Mr Holystone to turn up here and settle down as Queen Ginevra's ever-loving husband. Because when he does, it's crowns to cake-crumbs as her turn'll be over; the queen won't pay heed to her any more. Likely she's sorry he ever came back, and wishes him at Jericho.
Now they were led into the queen's presence.
Ginevra hardly seemed to have moved since Dido saw her last. She still reclined, fatly, in her loose white gown, among cobwebby grey curtains. But she looked older, Dido thought; her face was drawn and haggard, there was no coyness or sentimentality about it today. Her eyes were strangely dull; except that every now and then, even though she was not wearing her glasses, they suddenly, for a moment, would become purely reflectors and mirror the scene in front of her. This, when it happened, was horribly disconcerting, as if she had stopped being a real person at all, and was just a piece of machinery, mechanically carrying out her own wishes.
'Here are the two girls, Your Mercy,' said Lady Ettarde. 'Mabon's daughter and the other one.'
Ginevra did not show any particular triumph or pleasure. Her head turned slowly, surveying the girls; her eyes played their odd trick, shining, turning glassy; then, after a moment, they became eyes again, and she said,
'Has Mabon returned my lake?'
Lady Ettarde looked inquiringly at the Grand Inquisitor, who had followed them. He said,
'Your Mercy, he has begun sending it back. It is being flown over the mountains in leather water-skins, borne by small air-balloons. The thongs are waxed, so that they melt and discharge their contents into the lake-basin.' He had made this report in a dispassionate, formal manner, but he concluded with some enthusiasm, 'And I must say, it was a capital notion of King Mabon's! Highly ingenious! He must have some excellent designers. As I have often said to Your Mercy, if he were only our ally -'
'Quiet, fool! How long will it take? How soon will the lake be filled again?'
'At the rate the water-skins are discharging, I would guess, about thirty-six hours, Ma'am.'
Now Elen spoke up.
'How dare you take us prisoner, when my father has honourably fulfilled his undertaking to return the lake?'
Her voice was brave, but she flinched a little when the queen turned those glassy eyes on her.
Ginevra did not address her, however, but said to Lady Ettarde,
'When is the new moon?'
'In three days, Your Mercy.'
Ignoring a sick feeling in her inside, Dido bluntly addressed the queen.
'If you were thinking of having us tossed in the lake, Your Royalty, you might as well know that your Rex Quondam is back; so there ain't no need!'
She heard a sort of growl from Lady Ettarde, behind her, and thought she saw something black and furry detach itself from that lady's full skirts and scurry in her direction.
Now the queen's shining, sightless eyes were staring at her. To avoid their unnerving stare, she looked down at the floor. Yes, it was a spider the size of a hairy grapefruit; it was on the point of climbing up her leg.
On a step of the dais, lying disregarded where Gine-vra had dropped it, was the chunk of raw sapphire that Bran had given the queen. Dido snatched it up and used it to deal the spider a satisfactory, crunching thwack. The spider rolled over, its legs thrashing, then folding in death.
Don't I just wish Bran was here, Dido thought, clutching the stone. But even the memory of him was comforting.
Queen Ginevra said,
'The High King is back? Back where?'
'He was up at Lake Arianrod,' Dido said. 'Now he's in Lyonesse.'
'Is this true?'
'Oh yes, it's true,' said Elen wearily. 'My father has sworn fealty to him.'
The queen turned her mirror-eyes on Lady Ettarde.
'Why was I not told?'
'Ma'am, how do we know whether the girls are speaking truth?' 'It may be only a rumour,' Lady Ettarde and the Grand Inquisitor said together.
Ignoring them, Ginevra clapped her hands.
'Have the coronation regalia brought out, so that I may inspect it! Send my chief herald to me. Where is my sooth-sayer? Fetch him here!'
'Your Mercy, nobody knows where he is -
Lady Ettarde was red-faced, flustered and gasping.
'Have those two girls sent up, under double escort, to the city of Sul,' the queen went on. 'Give this message to the Guardian.' She scribbled on the tablets a scribe brought her. 'Ettarde! I shall need ten new gowns. And my lord will doubtless require a royal wardrobe – and a coronation robe. Let tailors be sent for -'
'Of course, Your Mercy-' Lady Ettarde looked relieved at this evidence that her sphere of usefulness was not yet ended. 'What shall I -'
'Quiet! Leave me now. I must have rest and quiet. I must think. I must remember.'
She lay back on her cushions. The girls were hustled away. Once they were out of sight, Lady Ettarde gave Dido a box on the ear that rattled her teeth together.
'That's for disobeying me, you little hussy!'
Their journey to the Temple of Sul was also taken by underground train through the silver-mines. Too bad the queen didn't tell us this way before, Dido thought; saved us a deal of travel, that would, and poor Plum wouldn't have been took by the Aurocs. But then, she reflected, I wouldn't have found the sword, and Elen wouldn't have been rescued. Though what's the good of that now?
Dido felt very low-spirited; the death of poor Mr Multiple had upset her dreadfully, the interview with Queen Ginerva had not cheered her at all, and besides that, it was now three-quarters through the day, and she felt hollow and lightheaded from lack of food and sleep.
The train they rode on this time, however, was far more comfortable, apparently the queen's private conveyance to the Temple of Sul. The cars had glass windows like small hackney coaches, and wool-stuffed cushions. These pits were still being actively worked, and miners could sometimes be seen through the windows hacking at rock-faces or carrying the ore in baskets strapped to their backs. There were a great many women and children at work too. Elen was shocked to see this.
'Small children pulling those heavy trolleys along the rails? It is disgraceful!'
'Keeps them out o' the way of the Aurocs,' Dido pointed out.
'It should not be allowed. It is not so in Lyonesse.'
'It is in England.' Dido had never set foot in an English mine, but she knew that quite small children did work there.
'Well, when I see – if I see Gwydion again, I shall tell him he should have it stopped.'
'Yes, you do that,' said Dido soothingly, and then both girls fell into a despondent silence.
One thing, though, thought Dido, her spirits picking up again, it's good to know that old Cap'n Hughes got himself out o' the pokey; I wouldn't a thought he had the gumption! I wonder who Lady Ettarde's nephew is, that she spoke of, and why he was in there? Could it be – but no, the idea was too preposterous.
Lady Ettarde had accompanied them on this journey, along with a troop of the silent, grey-uniformed guards. But the Mistress of the Wardrobe was preoccupied, and sat in a separate car, busy making sketches of coronation robes. Dido and Elen travelled in a car with two guards, who sat facing them, but did not speak.
Towards the end of the journey the train evidently began to climb an exceedingly steep ascent; the guards had much ado to keep from sliding off their seat, and the girls we
re tipped against the back of theirs; the train laboured more and more slowly, wheezing, hissing and wailing. At last it ground to a stop.
'Hope we ain't going to slip backwards,' said Dido.
However it seemed they had reached their destination. The guards, who carried pikes, gestured that the girls were to alight, and they did so, finding themselves in a large cold cave, dimly lit by oil lamps hanging on the walls. They were led out under an imposing arched entrance, past piles of crushed rock, and then up a steep but well-paved road. As they climbed higher they could see, below and to the right, the familiar star-shaped basin of Lake Arianrod. But what a drop! It must be well over a thousand feet below.
The paved road zig-zagged to and fro over the mountainside and now, looking up, Dido could see high walls above them, built from huge massive blocks of stone, each probably weighing more than four hundred tons. The walls were fortified with towers at regular intervals and circled the mountain, crossing gullies and ravines, perching on the edge of precipices.
'Not a place you'd get into if they didn't want you,' panted Dido to Elen, as the party turned to take breath on a hairpin curve. 'But I thought it was a temple? That place looks twice the size of Bath Regis.'
'It is a town,' said Elen. 'But nobody lives there now.'
'Be quiet, girls!' snapped Lady Ettarde. 'You are entering Sul's sacred city.'
Lady Ettarde was being borne upwards in a sedan chair. Lucky for the carriers that she's so short, Dido thought. They must need a half-a-dozen to tote the queen along when she comes up.
A great stone stairway led down into a dry moat, then up again to a huge gateway. They passed through this, and on up a steep, silver-cobbled hill.
'Mystery me,' muttered Dido to herself. 'I never thought I'd see a whole empty town. Wonder what happened to all the folk?'
It was plain that the City of Sul had been uninhabited not for ten, or a hundred, but for many, many hundreds of years. Great forest trees had grown among the temples, palaces, baths and blocks of dwellings. Near the outer wall these were mere cobblestone hovels, but farther in the buildings were splendid, constructed from huge chunks of white granite, roofed with masses of peaked gables, interwound with countless stone stairways. What a deal of years the place must have taken to build, thought Dido; it covers the whole blessed mountain-top. Looking back, as they toiled ever upwards, she could see three different mountain ranges in the distance, and great masses of white cloud, tinged with sunset pink, floating far away, over what must be the Forest of Broceliande.
The whole city was completely silent.
They reached a sloping oblong space, five hundred yards in length, evidently the main square of the city. At the upper end of this was a massive building with no windows at all, and but one entrance, a plain square doorway, on the broad lintel of which was carved the same woman's head, with snakes for hair, that Dido had seen in Bath Regis. The guards bowed reverently before it, and Lady Ettarde clambered out of her sedan chair to make a stiff curtsey. Apparently this was the Temple of Sul.
The entrance was approached by a flight of steps. At the top of them old Caradog the Guardian stood waiting.
'Welcome,' he said simply, and to Elen, 'Those who were once lost are doubly welcome.'
Lady Ettarde hobbled up the steps and kissed him. Seeing them together, both short, long-nosed, narrow-lipped, with deep-set eyes, Dido realised they must be brother and sister. What a clunch I am, she thought; they're as like as two peas in a pod. Why didn't I notice before?
In fact Caradog was saying, 'Will you stay the night, sister?'
But she replied, 'No, I thank you, brother, I must return to the queen. That ill-conditioned child -' she cast an angry glance at Dido – 'revealed that Artaius had returned, as you had already told me by carrier-pigeon; Her Mercy wants coronation robes prepared.'
'The news could not have been withheld from her for long,' Caradog said calmly.
'Where is Artaius now?'
'With Mabon.'
Both of them glanced at the sky. Dido, following the direction of their eyes, saw a tear-shaped globe drifting over the peaked and gabled roofs. It was pale-yellow in colour; below it on cords swung a barrel-shaped leather vessel. It was hard to guess how big the balloon was, up there in the sky; perhaps about the size of a pig. 'Look!' Dido said, nudging Elen. But the princess, at this evidence of her father's honourable nature, appeared very downcast.
'I wonder he hasn't stopped sending them,' she said.
The balloon vanished from view behind a high round tower at the top of the town.
Now Dido watched with astonishment as a dozen of the grey-clad guards came staggering across the square carrying an upright piano, which had evidently been brought up on the train as well as the prisoners.
'What you want a piano for. . .' said Lady Ettarde to her brother, in a tone of mystification, as it was heaved up the steps of the temple.
'It is so silent up here, just myself and Grandmother Sul,' explained Caradog, inclining his head to the carving above the lintel. 'I thought she might enjoy a different music'
Lady Ettarde sniffed. 'Fanciful nonsense! The old ways were better – nothing but bocinas when I was a young gel. Goodbye, brother – I must be getting back to the queen; Her Mercy won't be best pleased at being left alone all this time with no one but old Mag Morgan. I'll leave you the guards.'
'No need; I don't wish for them,' he said. 'Tell them to lock the town gate as they go out. Then the young ladies will be safe enough – unless they have a taste for flying.'
'Are you certain?' His sister looked very doubtful. 'We want no repetition – '
'Whose idea was that cave? They will be far safer here. Hapiypacha will watch over them. Farewell. Until the Day of Sul.'
'Until the Day of Sul,' Lady Ettarde said, and climbed back into her sedan chair. The guards, having delivered the piano somewhere inside the building, carried the chair across the square and disappeared down the hill.
Caradog turned and surveyed his prisoners.
'Are you hungry?' he asked unexpectedly.
'Ain't we, jist!' said Dido.
'Then you had better come inside.'
The interior of the temple was a huge space, shaped like a long isosceles triangle, tapering not quite to a point but to a high narrow wall at the far end, pierced by three lancet windows. These were the only windows in the place, which was very dim; the long side walls were blank, broken only by niches alternating with protruding cylindrical stones.
Under the three windows – which admitted pink sunset light – stood a huge stone altar-block, fourteen feet long by five feet high. On this, rather unexpectedly, lay various musical instruments: bamboo flutes, a harp, a lute, several crumhorns and a rebeck.
'Material offerings are of little interest to Sul,' Caradog explained, as Dido glanced inquisitively at these. 'The sound of music, or the human voice, is to her what burnt offerings are to lower gods.' He gave an explanatory nod at the piano, which had been set down not far from the altar.
What about chucking us in the lake? Dido wanted to ask. What does Sul think about that? It ain't Sul who wants us in the lake, it's that greedy queen.
Caradog led the girls on through a door beside the altar into what was plainly the priest's house. This was a bare stone building, scantily furnished with carved stone couches and tables; however there was a fireplace, where blazed a fire of thorn and fig branches, filling the air with aromatic smoke. Ordering the girls to sit down on one of the stone couches, Caradog presently handed them each a bowl of rather tasteless bean-and-yucca stew. This was accompanied by ancient slightly mouldy bread and weak willow-leaf tea. Being exceedingly hungry, the prisoners ate uncritically and began to feel, if not cheerful, at least somewhat better.
The meal finished, Caradog led them back to the temple again. Here he began to play on various of the instruments, fetching strange quavering sounds from the bocinas, plucking on the harp and lute, blowing through the crumhorns; the noises he made we
re very uncouth. Dido did not think highly of his performance; nor, to judge from the grimace she made, did Elen, who presently volunteered,
'I can play on the piano – if you would like me to? I learned in England – '
'Can you, though?' Old Caradog's deep eyes lit up; he dragged a stone block up to the piano – since a stool had not been provided; Elen sat down on this, rather uncomfortably, and proceeded to play a waltz.
The Guardian was amazed. He stood with his eyes shut in ecstasy, swaying the upper part of his body about in time with the music. When it was ended he opened his eyes again and sighed, as if his spirit had returned from another, far-distant region. Dido, too, was greatly impressed with Elen's proficiency. She herself had not the slightest notion of how to play on the piano.
'Oh!' sighed Caradog. 'If I could but keep you here long enough to teach me that art!'
This depressing remark spoilt the more cordial atmosphere that had been building up between the Guardian and his prisoners; looking at the light, which was almost gone, he said shortly,
'Come; it is time you retired for the night,' and took them back into his house. 'This is your room – ' indicating a small chamber, stone-floored, and with no furnishings at all except what looked uncomfortably like a large heap of human hair in one corner. 'There is water in the room next door,' said Caradog, and there was, a large stone tank of it. 'Now,' he continued, 'I will introduce you to Hapiypacha, who will watch over you from now on.'
At the end of a passage he pulled back an iron-barred gate as big as a door. From the darkness beyond came a loud, yawning growl – the sound made by someone who is roused too suddenly from sleep and not best pleased about it.
'Hapiypacha is kept hungry through the night,' said Caradog. 'I feed him at dawn.'
As Caradog said this, Hapiypacha emerged from his sleeping-quarters in one long fluid bound. He snarled and spat sideways at the Guardian as he passed; the old man stood his ground, remarking calmly, 'Hapiypacha has an unfriendly disposition; but he knows I am his master.'