Silverlock (Prologue Books)

by John Myers Myers

  “Well, I’m glad she’s through with him anyway.”

  “You don’t know Nimue,” Gwynn chuckled, “if you think that.” I could tell from their voices they were cutting a circle around me, and I scrouged closer to the ground. “She’s never through with anybody — anybody masculine, that is — and I know from experience they never quite get away from her, either.” He chuckled again. “Unless Nimue has had a yen for you — ”

  “Or to kill you,” Golias offered.

  “That’s right.” Gwynn laughed delightedly. “Remember how she sicked that young what’s-his-name on me?”

  “Accolon.”

  “Yes, that’s the fellow. And I don’t forget you’re the one who found out about it and tipped off Uwaine.”

  “Oh, you’d have been able to take care of yourself.”

  “Maybe. Anyhow Nimue’s quite a girl. Someday we’ve got to make up and have a — Oh, oh. I was so busy gabbing I nearly stepped on him. Is this what’s left of your friend?”

  Crouched down beside me, Golias didn’t answer him. “Shandon,” he said, shaking me when I refused to look up. “Shandon!”

  Because his persistence irritated me, I finally raised my head. “What in hell do you want?”

  He paid no attention to my testy greeting. “Come on; we’re getting out of here.”

  “You are?” I retorted. “Good-bye.”

  “No, you, too. Lucius is waiting for us — counting on us.”

  I avoided looking at Gwynn, but out of the corner of my eye I could see him watching me quizzically. That annoyed me more than his indignation would have done.

  “Give Lucius my regards when you see him,” I told Golias. Then I put my head down and folded my arms around it.

  After he had tried a couple more times, I could sense that Golias rose. “Just so I’ll know what the score is,” he said to the king, “will Nimue stop him from leaving?”

  “Not when I say he can go,” Gwynn asserted. “Speaking of pants, as we were a moment back, I still wear the only pair that’s in the family legally. Of course, there’ll be ructions.”

  “Thanks, Gwynn.”

  “Glad to do it if only to get him out of my sight. I don’t mind a moping bloodhound looking like a moping bloodhound, but my tolerance doesn’t reach as far as a man.”

  “It would be easier if he was willing.” Golias’ voice was troubled. “Got any ideas?”

  “Let’s see, Amergin. No, that wouldn’t do.” The king was silent for a minute. “Do you happen to know Avarta?”

  “He was pointed out to me the last time I was here. I don’t know him personally.”

  “Well, on the way back I’ll show you where he lives. Wait for him if he’s not around and tell him I said you were to have his nag for as long as you need it.”

  They left me then. I meant to find another hiding place when they were gone; but my mind turned to Nimue again, and I forgot about them until they came back. At least Golias did. I could tell by his voice that the fellow with him wasn’t Gwynn.

  By then I was worn out with reviewing my grief. I was therefore resigned rather than combative when I sat up to talk with them.

  “Hello, Golias,” I mumbled.

  He brightened at finding even that much of a reception. “You seem to be feeling better, though you still look like a hangover in an earthquake.”

  I glanced at his companion before I took the trouble to answer. A tall, handsome galoot, he was stroking the muzzle of a horse. He had to reach up to do this, and the horse had to bend his neck to let him. It was a monstrous, hideous, boney beast with hair like a mangy camel’s.

  “I’m all right,” I said at length.

  “Sure you are,” Golias agreed. “But you’ll be better when you get out of here, won’t you?”

  As I had reached one of my occasional semi-lucid periods, I knew almost as well as he that everything was wrong with me. I knew Golias might be able to help me, too. But the thought of what he wanted to do for me brought my mind back to Nimue, and I was off again.

  “I don’t want to get out of here.”

  “Well, suppose we go for a ride, just for a change of pace.”

  If I had been anything of an equestrian, that nag still wouldn’t have attracted me. And it didn’t have a saddle to shield a man from the spiny ridges of his back.

  “I may be in bad shape, but I haven’t got that big a hole in my head,” I told him. “You ride him.”

  “I aim to.” Golias stopped wheedling and stuck out his chin at me before he addressed his companion. “Will you give me a hand, Avarta?”

  Taking in the implication, I began to smoulder. “Don’t be a damned idiot,” I warned him, as I got to my feet. “I can knock your block off, and I’ll be glad to do it if you start fooling around.”

  Lowering, I turned with him as he circled me. I was keeping an ear posted for Avarta, but it turned out to be inadequate security. I didn’t know he had sneaked behind me until he had pinned my arms to my sides.

  I couldn’t get free, and I missed my try at kicking Golias in his grinning face. The only thought in my brain was that they were trying to take me where I would never have a chance to win Nimue back again. The hope of regaining her favor was all I had to live for, and anybody who tried to scotch it was my mortal enemy. My rage would have made me deadly in fact to anyone less powerful than Avarta. Against his strength, however, I could do nothing.

  In spite of my struggles, oaths, and threats, he dragged me over to the gigantic horse. Then he picked me up.

  “Maybe you can put me on his back,” I said, “but you can’t make me stay there.”

  “We’ll try anyhow. Ready, Amergin?”

  “Heave him,” Golias responded; and Avarta took that literally.

  The toss he gave me landed me squarely on the brute’s back. My intention was to slide down the other side, so as soon as I was astride I tried it. It was no go. First I discovered I was butt-fast, then I found I couldn’t pull my hands free from where they were braced against the nag’s spine.

  From then on it wasn’t anger that gripped me. It was the insane panic of a dope addict faced with the iron cure. They were taking me away from Nimue, and she was necessary to my existence. It didn’t matter that she was tired of me now. She had loved me before, and she would again, because — well, because it was insupportable to think she wouldn’t. I tried to explain it to them. I pleaded with them. Then when they wouldn’t listen, I broke down and screeched my agony.

  While I was putting on that performance, Golias and Avarta were exchanging friendly farewells. Finally the latter gave the former a slap on the shoulder, gripped him below the arm pits, and gave him a basketball throw. I couldn’t free a hand to hit Golias when he landed just in front of me, nor was my prayer that the beast would prove balky effectual. With a snort the nag lunged forward and started rocketing over the grass tops.

  I was still trying to throw myself off when we dashed beneath a small but low-hanging cloud. It was a good thing that I couldn’t lose my seat, for our mount gave a great leap. By that I don’t mean that he merely jumped from one place to another. He took off into the air, soaring until he pierced the bottom of that cloud, which turned out to be considerably more than so much uncondensed vapor. Inside it there was absolute water; and still we went swiftly up.

  Perhaps the combination of madness and fright put me on ice. At any rate I didn’t suffer for lack of breathing while that horse mounted through vast depths. Another circumstance worth noting had to do with my shadow. Where we had met, Golias alone had owned one; but when the nag broke water and clambered out of a pool, I had one also. The horse alone was shadowless as it stood dripping in the sunlight.

  The beast was apparently waiting for directions, for Golias was gazing about as if to get his bearings. “This must be the place Kydnon took that beating,” he muttered. “It fits his description exactly. West with some southing but not too much,” he then said to the brute we straddled.

  While h
e was getting oriented, I was making discoveries of my own. My shadow wasn’t the only thing which had come back to me. My old clothes had for one thing, though that wasn’t important. What did matter was that I was in possession of my will again. That doesn’t mean I had forgotten Nimue. Whenever I thought of her I still wanted her. The big thing that had happened was that I found I could stop thinking about her.

  First my control was tremulous; but the farther away from her we got the better I felt. The wind made by our steed as it rushed over the ground blew the pain out of my brain and swept out the dimness. The process was steady rather than episodic, but it can best be described in stages. First I was fearful that the absence of Nimue from my thoughts would leave an unfillable vacuum. Next I began to wonder why I had let anybody so dominate my being. Then I felt a revulsion of shame. It seemed likely to be permanent, but it wasn’t. In the end I found that I could put that in its place likewise. I had had a fine time with Nimue — and I had loved it. I had had a bad time — one I didn’t like to remember, but would occasionally. Both were neither more nor less than a part of me, and neither stood in the way of whatever the future held.

  Before thrashing that out with myself I couldn’t talk to Golias; and when I felt that I was able to, I still hesitated. After all, when he had last addressed me, I had made a deliberate effort to kick his teeth in.

  When I did speak, I was careful to be impersonal for a starter. “Where’d you leave Jones?”

  To my relief he was smiling when he looked over his shoulder. “Oh, you’re there now. Good. Why, I left him with Degare, in whose keeping I knew he’d be safe, which you can’t say of everybody in the Warlocks. We’ll be at his holding directly.”

  With an effort I got it out. “You were a good fellow to come and get me.”

  Implied in my tone if not my words was that I was sorry for having acted like a dope when he arrived. His look told me he caught it, while his words dismissed it as something that was done with.

  “What happened to you after you jumped in the river?”

  When I had sketched my experiences as far as Miles Cross, he nodded. “Bercilak’s quite a fellow, isn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “The green lad. I’m sorry I missed him this trip, but Lucius and I found a pass well south of the hermitage. We missed the raft, too — probably because we landed below where it hung up — and as I thought it was wrecked, I didn’t bother to look for it. Incidentally, if you want to wish somebody hard luck, wish that he has the job of steering a jackass out of a wide river with steep banks at night.” Golias shook his head at the recollection. “When we didn’t see any sign of you, I figured that the best course was to hit out for the Oracle. Jones wasn’t bad off, but I was naked as Conaire on coronation day and hungry as a valraven. Luckily we ran into Leoline down in the foothills boar hunting. He fed me and gave me this nifty outfit.”

  He kicked out first one leg then the other, so I could admire the respective blue and yellow in which they were cased. “We’d been on a southwesterly course that brought me to the old road a couple of days after we left Leoline. A little searching satisfied me you hadn’t preceded us, but I decided to keep going and chance it that you would find some other route to the Oracle.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Nothing until I ran into Groa. She loves to talk in riddles; but she’s a savvy old girl, and don’t forget it.”

  Golias looked at me to make sure I was impressed. “I ain’t arguing,” I told him. “Go on.”

  “On the chance she might have the answer, I reminded her I was a friend of Svipdag’s and asked if she knew where you were. She talked in her rigmarole, but the gist of it was that although you hadn’t just vanished like Kaikhosru and hadn’t learned to fly, you weren’t on earth. I knew pretty well where to look for you then, if I could only get there; and that’s when Lucius caused more trouble. I had to leave him; and I had to be careful where, or I’d come back to find some witch using him for cat meat. So I looked up Degare, who’s not only a reliable citizen but tough enough to see that other folks are reliable when he’s looking.

  “Lucius wasn’t much pleased at the delay, but as you’d got into a jam on my account, I had to get you out. Still it’s one thing to want to go to Avalon and another thing to get there. I covered the Warlocks from Mount St. Michael to the Venusberg but had no luck until I stumbled onto Laeg. He was doing some scouting for Cuchullain and had just found one of the routes used by the people from down under. I tagged along when he infiltrated, and — there’s Degare’s place just ahead.”

  There was Jones, too, munching grass by a ditch surrounding the castle in a manner suggesting that he had never been convinced it was food. I was wondering how we were going to hoist him on the horse’s back, but at a word from Golias the nag solved that problem. Lucius had barely had time to notice our arrival when the huge beast was on him. Picking him up in his teeth in the manner of a cat with a kitten, it set the donkey athwart its withers. From the way Jones laid back his ears and brayed, it was clear that he didn’t like the idea, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was stuck, just as I was, and couldn’t kick.

  “Take it easy, Lucius,” Golias advised him when he rolled his eyes toward us. “We’re on our way to find out how to snake you out of that jackass skin.”

  We were really on our way. That nag was making time to shame a diesel engine on level tracks. Fortunately its method of travel didn’t kick up any dust. When I turned my head away from the prop-wash, I could observe the country through which we were racing; and now that I had shaken off Nimue’s influence, I was interested enough to take a look.

  In a little while we broke out of the woods to course through a curiously divided land. We ourselves were streaking across a prairie which extended to our left as far as the curve of the earth, at least. Not far to the right, however, the terrain was obscured by mist. In the main it was too thick to see through, yet every now and then it lightened enough to let me know that here was a different country. I don’t simply mean its geographic features, for I never got a clear view of them. What impressed me was that it was developed after a fashion unique to my experience with the Commonwealth.

  Occasionally I caught blurred glimpses of skyscrapers and factory chimneys, and twice I made out aerodromes. Yet it was the sounds — even the sounds of machine gun fire that I heard once — which made me homesick for the familiar. There was the purposeful racket of a riveter. There was the sweet hum of power plants. There were engines purring softly in the ground and roaring mightily in the air. Finest of all, there was the wailing whistle of a rail train in passage.

  We must have cut by one corner of the district, for in a little while we were leaving it behind. Absorbed, I had forgotten where I was until, as I turned from looking over my shoulder, I noticed Golias. He was gazing back also.

  “What’s that country?” I asked.

  “It’s the New Purchase, Shandon.” I could tell from his voice that he was as interested as myself. “Looks all right, doesn’t it?”

  “Couldn’t we take a look at it? After we get Lucius all fixed up, that is.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not a part of the Commonwealth yet, though, of course, it’s going to be.”

  “Well, who lives there then?”

  “Oh, a bunch of squatters as usual.” Golias reached forward and chased a horse fly away from Lucius. “Some of’em will be permanent settlers,” he went on, when he had straightened up, “but you can figure that most won’t be able to stick the competition after Annexation Day.”

  “When’s that?”

  “I couldn’t say exactly,” he shrugged, “but you can bank on it that I’m going to have a lot of fun and trouble there — maybe next trip, if I’m lucky.”

  The prairie gave way to a cedar forest, which in turn yielded to hills covered with vineyards and scrubby little orchards of what Golias said were olive trees. Most of the fruit was gone, but as I had never seen an olive outsi
de of a jar or a martini, I found this a novelty. Nor had it quite lost its shine when we reached the edge of a copper beech grove on a lookout over the sea.

  “Whoa!” Golias commanded.

  The nag deposited Jones on the ground. Finding I was no longer stuck, I slid down the great flanks and dropped to earth beside Golias.

  “Wait here for us,” the latter told Lucius. “I don’t think it’ll take long, though it may if we have to wait for a seance. Here we go, Shandon.”

  Although the sun was just going down, it was already twilight under the interlocking branches. The gray boles suspended from the thatch were not menacing; but they were so aloof I would never have dreamed of touching one. The indifference toward life that is one of the qualities of dusk in the woods flavored the atmosphere. A few birds sang, as they often do at sundown, in a way that is more cheerless than no song at all.

  Golias was walking more slowly than was normal with him, nor did he hurry when we turned into a path. A couple of minutes later this brought us to a facade in the side of a knoll.

  There was still enough light to see that the stone was adorned with carving. In fact the entrance piercing the rock was a centerpiece from which groups of men and animals radiated. If some of the forms and activities struck me as curious, all the work was beautifully done. Yet what held my eyes was the blank dark of the doorless entry.

  “Are we going in there?” I asked.

  “It’s a cinch Deiphobe won’t come out to us.” Golias’ voice was as low as my own. “You ready?”

  I vainly tried to peer through the doorway. “No, but let’s go.”

  Inside, as soon as we had advanced a few steps, we could see something after all. The stone beneath our feet was still lost in darkness, and the corridor through which we walked might as well have had no walls; but directly ahead of us I could make out a faint glow. It wasn’t as far away as I at first thought. Soon it took form as another doorway, and in a minute we had crossed its threshold into a cavern.

  The light which flooded it was provided by pools of some smokeless liquid held in silver containers. These did not suffice to show us the ceiling; and the far wall was likewise in shadow. Except for the lamps, if you could call them that, the place was unfurnished. It was also unoccupied.