by Jane Yolen
“I mean that if you were not cursed, we could not see. At least not so clearly. Your foot shall light our way to Bleakard’s castle.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” exclaimed Jared.
“That is what a friend is for,” replied Lann. “To turn a liability into an ability.”
“It sounds quite fine when you say it,” said Jared. “But it is one of those matters to which I will have to give a lot of thought.”
And so he did.
For a while neither of the new friends spoke, but walked on in silent companionship, accented only by the hissing of the flames and the twanging of the lute strings being tuned.
When at last the lute was tuned again—for lute strings need much attention, just as people do—Lann began a song especially for his new friend.
A friend is the other side of a coin,
A friend is an old song resung.
A friend is the other side of your moon,
A friend is an old lute restrung.
And if I never knew it before,
I guess I know it today.
And if I haven’t said it before,
Then this is the right time to say:
A friend is just you turned inside out,
A friend is yourself turned around.
And nothing’s as good in a darkling wood
As a friend who’s newly found.
Jared laughed then for the first time, and clapped Lann so hard on the back in his enthusiasm that Lann pitched forward into the dark and nearly smashed his lute upon a tree.
“Hold, friend Jared,” the minstrel called out. “I appreciate your gesture but not your gusto. Take care. The lute and I can be equally unstrung.”
At that Jared laughed again and promised to be gentler. And the two walked on singing Lann’s new-made song together. For the giant, as he had claimed, enjoyed a song and his voice was pleasing, if a bit too loud.
They had gone but a mile or maybe three when they heard the sound of fierce quarreling ahead. It was as if two men were screaming at one another at the top of their voices. Yet both voices were so similarly pitched that it was hard to distinguish one from the other.
“Hold, friend,” said Lann. “I will sneak on ahead. For with your hissing and sparking, we will never creep up on these battlers unawares.”
“Nay, you hold, friend,” replied Jared. “You are but a stripling and I am a giant of a man. What we lose in surprise we will gain in awe. For when these two fighters see me and my fiery foot, they will set to such a shaking and quaking that their bones will play a knocking to accompany your strings.”
But much to the giant’s relief, Lann would not hear of it. And so, after a few words more, the two decided to go on together, which is the way of friends.
Around a final bend in the road they could distinguish another clearing, smaller than the last. And when they had come to the road’s ending and the grass’s beginning, they saw the strangest sight either had ever seen.
Instead of two men quarreling in the meadow, there was but a single man, so small he could be nothing but a dwarf. Stranger yet, the dwarf had not one but two heads. And it was these two heads that were quarreling, the one with the other. They shouted, “I am,” and, “You are not, I am,” back and forth at one another, snarling and gnashing teeth, sticking out tongues and spitting. It was a thoroughly disgusting exhibition.
“Ho there,” called Lann and Jared together into one of the few silences.
The two heads turned toward the new voices at the same time. “Who speaks?” they said in unison.
“It is I, Lann, a wandering minstrel,” said the lad, strumming a chord on his lute, which was sadly out of tune again.
“And I, Jared, who once was a mighty king,” said the giant, stomping his left foot down with such violence that the flames shot high into the air. Lann looked over at him, and Jared added, “Well, maybe not so mighty.”
“And I am Coredderoc,” said the head on the right.
“He is not, I am Coredderoc,” said the head on the left.
“He is lying,” said the first head. “I always tell the truth.”
The second head spat at the first and missed. “He is the one who always lies, I am telling the truth.”
Lann put his head to one side and thought a minute. “It puts me in mind of an old paradox,” he said. “My mother taught it to me.”
“No,” said the first head. “You have it wrong. It is only a paradox if I say ‘I always lie.’”
“And you do,” added the second.
“I do not,” said the first.
“Well, it matters not,” said Lann pleasantly. “You both look equally like Coredderoc to me.”
“It matters indeed,” said the two heads together. “I am cursed. By the wicked wizard Bleakard, blast his black soul.” Both heads turned aside and spat on the ground at the wizard’s name. It seemed the only thing they could agree upon.
“Cursed?” asked Jared loudly.
“Yes. Once I was a royal minister to a truly great king who had recently lost his wife in childbirth. Bleakard was but a visiting magician, or so I thought at first. But when first the queen died, bless her beautiful soul, and then the royal children disappeared, I feared something evil in the air. I first curried Bleakard’s favor.” All this the first head said. And when it took a breath to continue, the second head broke in.
“And when I had discovered who he really was, I denounced him to the king. But the king was so besotted with the mage, he dismissed me as two-faced, And Bleakard came to my chamber that very night,” the second head said.
“And,” the first inserted, finishing the story in a rush, “he said, ‘Two-faced you are, then two-faced be.’ He brought his magic flute down upon my head. I must have fainted, for when I awoke I was as you see me now. And that is all I remember.”
Both heads turned and glared at one another for a moment, and then began to weep.
Jared, who had been shaking his head slowly from side to side during the dwarf’s recital, suddenly spoke. “There is something familiar about your tale. And something familiar about your faces. But upon my very life, my head is a cloud and has been so since Bleakard enchanted me. I can think of nothing but my own sad fate. For look, friend, I too am cursed by that mage. So I have joined my young friend here to break the wizard as he has broken me.”
“But do you dare to go to his castle?” asked the dwarf, the two heads again united in the question. “He would kill you, as he threatened me that night, with worse than death if I return.”
“Could aught be worse than the way you are now?” asked Lann softly.
“Yes,” said the one head.
“No,” said the other.
“No,” agreed the first.
“Yes,” agreed the second.
And in the end, the two-headed dwarf joined the giant and the minstrel. As they left the meadow and entered the wood again, a wild goose and gander flew overhead in a direction opposite to that in which the friends were heading.
“Night is coming on,” said Lann, as he remarked the birds’ flight.
“How can you tell, with the sky so continually dark and the wood as black as a hole?” asked Coredderoc, both mouths working as one.
“Because the geese have flown home for their supper,” said Lann. And then he told them of Bred and Bridda and Sianna of the Song. Both Coredderoc and Jared marveled at the tale and said it recalled something to them. But what it recalled, none of them was sure.
So arm in arm in arm, the three marched down the forest path. And it was only when Lann wanted to tune his lute again that the three friends dropped hands.
5. The Edge of the Cliff
Since it was indeed dark in the woods, whether day or night, the three friends decided to push on. They sang with great gusto. It was, Lann remarked, the first time he had ever heard a trio that could sing in four parts.
They sang many of the old songs: “Hey to the Inn” and “A Lover and His Lady Fair” and
even “Lord Muskrat and Black Elinor.”
They sang some new songs, too. One was their special favorite, which Lann had made up for the occasion.
There once were three who would be four,
With a hey, hi, ho, and ho.
There once were three who would be four,
The tangled woods went to explore.
With a hey and away went they.
There once were four who would be three,
With a hey, hi, ho, and ho.
There once were four who would be three,
A pestilence to wizardry,
With a hey and away went they.
There once were three who well-a-day,
With a hey, hi, ho, and ho.
There once were three who well-a-day
A wicked wizard went to slay,
With a hey and away went they.
But as they got closer and closer to the end of the woods, the three friends with the four voices sang the last verse more and more quietly. Till at last they left off singing it altogether. “A pestilence to wizardry” was suddenly changed to “as penitents to wizardry.” None of the three friends would lay claim to authorship of the new line. They didn’t like it. It made no sense. But they found themselves singing it with quiet fervor as they drew closer to the wood’s edge and the wizard.
Though the woods were beginning to thin out, it was difficult to notice it at first, for night had indeed fallen. Yet no stars lit their path. What moon there was, a pale, thin splinter, was shrouded with a gray blanket of cloud. And even Jared’s flames were dulled. It was no wonder that they were practically at the edge of a cliff before they noticed they were out of the woods.
“The forest is behind us,” said Jared with relief.
“The worst is ahead of us,” said one of Coredderoc’s heads. The other nodded in bitter agreement.
“Come,” said Lann, “let us look around for a moment and then take turns standing watch. For sleep will be the great encourager. Only tired men are afraid.”
“Then I must be perennially tired,” muttered Jared, but softly so that only he himself heard it.
The dark was so deep that they could see nothing. The gray blanket never moved off the moon. The three friends huddled together for warmth. But warmth there was none.
Suddenly Lann remembered the feather inside his shirt. He took it out to see if there was some way he could share it with his friends. It felt unaccountably heavy, so he shook it. A down comforter sprang from the feather, soft and warm.
“Where does that come from?” asked Jared.
“From love,” said Lann. Then he added, “Here, friends, and welcome. I will stand the first watch.”
But first became last, for neither the giant nor the dwarf woke up until morning. Lann too fell asleep, his hand holding fast to his amulet.
When a wild goose and gander flew across the sky, they circled once around the sleeping friends, honking so loudly the three awoke at once. With great apologies to one another and waves for the departing birds, the three friends rose to greet the sun.
It was like no sun they had ever seen before. Instead of shedding a bright and cheery light, the sun looked thin and worn out, like an old penny. It hung forlornly over the edge of the cliff.
When Lann looked over the cliff’s edge he shivered. There was no way down.
Yet there, in the middle of a lake that began at the cliff’s bottom, was a huge crag of scaly gray-green rocks, and on the top, hunched like a vulture on dead meat, was a castle.
“Bleakard’s castle,” said Lann.
“How do you know?” asked his friends, though they knew in their hearts he was right.
Lann pointed.
Around the top of the castle, circling and circling and crying piteously into the wind, were the wild goose and gander.. Their cries carried clearly in the fetid air.
6. The Singing
“We must get down there and cross to the castle,” cried Lann, his eyes still on the circling birds.
Just as he spoke, a dreadful sound rent the air. It was a high, sinuous piping that repeated and repeated the same seven notes. It insinuated itself into the air, and the repetitions seemed to engrave the evil melody on their minds.
“My head is cracking from that sound,” said Jared.
“Your head!” cried Coredderoc. “Pity me. I have two.”
“It must be Bleakard’s tune. That infernal piping,” shouted Lann above the noise. “How can one think above it?”
“Think we must,” shouted one of Coredderoc’s heads.
“Without thought, man is an animal,” stated the other, and was immediately shushed by his friends.
“There is only one way to battle a spell of music,” said Lann. “Or at least that is what my mother taught me.”
“Well, hurry, whatever the way,” said the giant with a shout. “My ears will turn to stone if I listen a moment more. All I can think of is that one hideous tune.”
“Only music can defeat music,” Lann shouted back. “And love, hate,” he added in an undertone as if to remind himself.
He took his lute from the ground where it had lain all night. Without even stopping to tune, for tuning with that constant piping was not possible, he began a song.
With their ears covered, the others could barely hear him. But if they could have listened with care, they would have heard the same seven notes of Bleakard’s piping. But oh, the change! Lann’s song took the seven notes and turned them inside out. He gentled them, calmed them, made them sing of love, not hate.
My love is like a silver bird
That flies to me when night is near.
My love is like a silver bird,
And oh, I wish my love were here.
My love is like a silver boat
That crests the currents of the air.
And should I sink or should I float,
It’s oh, I wish my love were here.
My love is like the fount of life
That sprays into the summer air.
My love is of my very life,
And oh, I know my love is here.
At first Lann’s song was as gentle as lapping waves. But like the waves, his song was also persistent. And as the song continued, Lann’s voice became stronger. The lute, which had sounded flat and brittle because it was untuned and playing against the strident piping, became richer and rounder and stronger, too. Till at last Lann’s song filled the cliffside entirely, drowning out the grating flute. And when the three friends with the four voices finished singing the last chorus together, there was no pipe to be heard at all.
The moment the piping ended, the wild goose and gander stopped circling the castle. They hesitated for a moment in flight, and stood in the air like two figures in a tapestry. Then, banking sharply to the right, they flew toward the cliff, their powerful wings beating in unison.
“We have won,” shouted Jared, leaping into the air like a mighty fish out of the water. Where he leaped up, flowers sprang too. But when he came down on his left foot, flames shot out.
“We have just begun,” said Lann. “For when one battles wizards, all things come in threes.”
“Three?” asked the giant fearfully.
“Yes,” replied Lann. “As my mother taught me—first the singing, then the seeming, and last the slaying. If there is any need for a last.”
“What does that all mean?” asked Jared.
“I am not entirely sure,” admitted the minstrel.
Jared shook his head and tried again. “What I mean is, are we the ones who do the slaying? Or are we the ones who are to be slain?”
“I don’t know,” replied Lann. “All I know is that my mother is always right.”
“A pox on mothers who are always right,” said the giant, and he turned away. “I think I will go back to my forest home.”
“Stay, friend,” said Lann. “Perhaps this time she is not right.”
“I fear she is right again,” said Coredderoc with one head. “I seem
to recall such an unholy trinity.”
“I know she is right,” said the other head. “Look!”
The friends looked where he was pointing, at the crags beneath the castle. The very rocks seemed to unwind themselves, and a giant gray-green serpent uncoiled and stretched, turning its ugly head in their direction.
As it uncurled, it moved its shoulders. Two giant wings began to unfurl.
“If that is a seeming,” said the giant, “I do not like what it seems to be.”
“What if it flies up to us here?” asked Coredderoc fearfully. “We have no weapons.”
“Except my lute,” said Lann.
“I fear that is not enough, friend,” said Jared. “If that great scaly worm decides to fly here and have us for dinner, I fear it is not nearly enough. And as your revered mother has said, after the singing and the seeming comes the slaying. I fear, friends, we are all dead men.”
Almost as if it heard the giant’s voice, the great lizard pumped its mighty wings. The vast winds it created stirred the waters of the lake. And with an awful scream, which sounded like the seven notes of Bleakard’s song, the dragon flung itself into the air and plunged after the wild goose and gander that were fleeing toward the cliff.
7. The Seeming
As the great dragon came closer, the goose and gander, who had been flying wing to wing, suddenly parted. They circled separately to each side of the gray-green monster. Then each by each, they struck at the dragon’s sides. The blows they gave it were but light little flecks. But like the kingbirds which can drive off the larger crows and hawks with many petty pecks, the goose and gander annoyed the monstrous worm. It stopped its headlong flight toward the cliff to try to strike its tiny tormentors.
The goose and gander flew out of range over and over again. When one was in danger, the other would swoop down upon the dragon. And in that way, the silver birds delayed the dragon’s descent upon the three friends on the cliff.
“Quick,” said Coredderoc, “I have a plan. I was a king’s minister and I remember something of war.”
“Tell us what to do,” replied Lann, “and it will be done.”
“First strip your lute of its strings,” said the dwarf’s first head.
“But it will never sing again,” protested the minstrel.