by Joan Aiken
"They are made of wild silk," Elen said sadly. "Used for irrigation in the highlands. Why doesn't Papa stop sending them? I don't understand it."
Dido was visited by a depressing idea.
"Perhaps old Gomez, when he nabbled us, left a note, as it might be from you or me, saying, 'Don't worry, gone off with Mr. Mully to pick up diamonds in the lake bed,' or summat of the sort."
"Surely Papa would not be so foolish as to believe such a story?"
But no other possible explanation occurred to them.
Most of the balloons came drifting over the shoulder of Mount Catelonde, the heat of which was sufficient to melt the wax on the fastenings and make them discharge their contents into the lake bed. But a small number floated over the crater itself, through the reddish-black column of smoke that came coiling sluggishly from the volcano's open jaws. Then that particular load of water never reached the lake, but fell down into the heart of the volcano, like a teacupful of water dropped into a furnace. And as the furnace sizzles and spits when water is dropped into it, so Mount Catelonde rumbled and hissed and spat out jets of red-hot ash and lava each time this occurred.
"If enough water got spilt into the crater," said Elen thoughtfully, "I shouldn't wonder but what it might start a full-scale eruption."
"What would happen then?"
"It would be like a saucepan boiling over. Only what comes out of a volcano is lava—boiling rock, thick as molasses, rolling down the mountain. Of course, it might just roll down into Lake Arianrod; but if it went down the other side of the mountain—or if there were a big explosion and part of the mountain blew off—it might be dangerous for the city of Bath. Oh, how I wonder if Gwydion has got there yet! If he has—if he learns what has happened to us—he will surely come to rescue us!"
"I wouldn't depend on that," Dido said. "Who'd tell him? If you ask me, it's no use expecting other people to help you ... What's that thing down there, d'you suppose?"
A flight of steps led down the steep hillside from the terrace on which they stood. Below, extending outward from the hillside, rather like a diving board, was a narrow natural tongue or spur of rock, perhaps ten feet long and three or four feet wide. Below it, the cliff fell sheer, more than a thousand feet, to the blue waters of Lake Arianrod.
Elen looked down and shivered.
"Can't you guess? That's the Tongue of Sul—where we shall be thrown into the lake. I believe we aren't really thrown—just pushed out along the rock and left to stand there until we fall off. I should think it would not take long—you would soon become giddy on that narrow tip. Some people jump off, I've heard, so as to get it over sooner."
Now it was Dido's turn to shiver.
"Brrr! What a spooky spot. Let's get away from here. I'm sorry I asked—I wouldn't have come thisaway if I'd known. Maybe it's dinner time—the sun's moved quite a bit since we've been here."
But Elen, walking dejectedly after Dido, burst out, "I don't know that I mind being thrown into the lake, Dido! I really love Cousin Gwydion. I always have. I can feel it here"—she thumped her chest. "If I can't marry him, I might just as well be in that lake. Or—or go back to England and teach mathematics! I'm certainly not going to stay in Lyonesse and marry one of those Ccapacs."
"But Elen," said Dido, shocked, "how can you marry him? He's married already. And anyway, you've hardly met him—how can you be sure?"
"You forget. I was partly brought up with him. I loved him then. Oh, if only he were just Cousin Gwydion!"
If only, thought Dido sadly, he was just my Mr. Holystone.
Trying to retrace their steps to the Temple of Sul, they became confused among a maze of narrow, cobbled ways, and came out on a dry, dusty shelf above a ravine which was quite narrow—only about ten feet across—but unbelievably deep.
"Watch out, Elen," Dido said anxiously. "Don't go too near that gritty edge."
A mountain hare, sunning itself among a tangle of wild fig and cactus on the far side of the gully, started up and bolted away across the mountainside. To the girls' utter amazement, Hapiypacha cleared the gully in one effortless bound and shot off in pursuit of the hare, going so fast that he seemed to float over the ground. In twenty seconds he had caught it, and he returned with it in his jaws, leaping back over the gully with the same unconcerned ease, before settling down in a patch of shade to demolish his prey in four bites.
"He's got his own way out, at all events," Dido said. "Guess the guardian don't know that."
An idea seized her so suddenly that her jaw went stiff and she stammered in her excitement. "Hey—P-P-P-Princess! He—he likes you!"
"Who does? What do you mean?"
"Why, old Puss there—" as Hapiypacha, having finished his lunch, came to rub his head against Elen's arm. "D'you reckon you could ride him? Get him to take you out of here?"
"You mean—over there?" Elen's eyes went huge with fright. She looked down into the terrifying gully.
"Go on! You said just now you wouldn't mind being thrown into the lake. At least there'd be some point to this!"
"But—but what about you?" Plainly, though, Elen had begun to consider the idea, instead of just dismissing it.
"Well," Dido, said reasonably, "it'd be no use my trying to ride him. He don't like me above half. It's you he's took sich a fancy to. So it's a case of you or nothing, ennit? But he's a right fast goer, our Happy Pussy; if you could get across that gully on him, and ride him over the mountain to Wandesborough, maybe you could give the alarm in time to send somebody and stop old Stone Eyes from dropping me in the lake. Or—or if not—it's better one should get away than both of us get polished off. And then—and then—you can tell your cousin Gwydion about Queen Ginevra's goings-on." She had to reiterate this argument a good many times before Elen could be brought to consider it.
But presently, after they had eaten their noon meal and Caradog was away feeding his beasts, Elen did try riding the leopard. At first it was doubtful whether he would sanction the idea at all; he hissed and spat and started away when, nervously tucking up her skirts, she attempted to bestride him. But by the end of the day he was cooperating tolerably well, though he did not look pleased about it; his ears were set back flat against his head and he mewled angrily to himself all the time she was on his back.
"Still, we're a-getting somewhere!" exulted Dido. "Who'd a thought, this morning, that he'd let you ride him so biddably? And it's still two days to the new moon. If you practice all day tomorrow—"
"All day!" shuddered Elen. "If you knew what it was like sitting on his back! There isn't any saddle-hollow—nothing but bony spine all the way along. It's all very well for you—"
She bit her lip and stopped suddenly.
"Don't you worry," said Dido. "Maybe the old boy will be so sore when he finds he's lost you and Hapiypacha that he'll be out a-hunting over the mountain, and I'll have a chance to get away too."
Though what could I do? she wondered. Steal a ride back on the silver train? Her private thoughts were not hopeful.
By the evening of the next day Elen was getting on much better with her wayward mount. She had learned that the usual taps or kick used to urge a horse to greater speed only put him in a bad temper, but he would respond very well to coaxing words if she leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
"I reckon now's as good a time as any," said Dido, who had discreetly removed Hapiypacha's breakfast of dried guinea pig when the guardian's back was turned, so as to render the leopard extra-hungry by evening. "Let's go up to that gully spot and hope for another hare."
At first they were afraid they were not going to be able to find the place again, as they wandered to and fro in a network of dusty silver-cobbled alleys, with late swallows and mountain falcons wheeling overhead in the last of the sun.
But at last they came out on the edge of the gully, and, as luck would have it, there was another hare, drowsing in exactly the same spot on the other side.
"Quick, Elen—before you've got time to get scared—
hop on him!" said Dido. Impulsively she gave the other girl a hug. "Go on now—don't be frit! Give my best regards to Mr. Holy if you find him—"
Elen scrambled herself onto Hapiypacha's bony withers. Leaning forward, she took a firm grip of the thick fur on his neck with both hands and whispered, "Go on now, Tomkin—after him!"
The leopard bounded, checked an instant, and then shot away, clearing the ravine with his usual carefree power, landing well over on the other side, despite the rider on his back.
"Grip with your knees!" shouted Dido, as Hapiypacha raced after the hare. "Good luck!"
And then she turned round to find herself staring straight into the indignant face of Caradog.
"You are a very, very wicked child!" he said wrathfully.
"Oh, come on, mister!"
"My sister said you were a troublemaker! She was right!"
"Now listen here—"
"I let you and your companion go free, instead of locking you up, as I should otherwise have done (it is true," he added in parenthesis, "that Sul prefers a healthy, willing sacrifice; or so I have always thought)—and what happens? You act with outrageous deceitfulness and ingratitude—you seize the first opportunity to escape!"
"Well," Dido said reasonably, "what would you have done? Just sat down and waited to be chucked over the cliff?"
"If Sul wished it—yes!"
"Mister," said Dido—by this time the old man had grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and was marching her fiercely back in the direction of the temple, a most uncomfortable progress—"Mister," she said, screwing her neck round to look at him, "has it ever strook you that perhaps it was meant for Elen to escape?"
"Meant? What can you possibly mean?"
"Well, she managed it twice, didn't she? Once we and your High King just happened to be on the spot; and as for this time—well, no one but a noddy woulda left the girl to be guarded by a cat, when I'd a thought the whole population around here might know she dotes on the whole tribe o' cats and them on her—ouch!"—for the old man had now taken a firm grip on her ear.
"I wish to hear no more of your irreverent rubbish," he snapped. "Sul needed that girl. Nodens is angry. See how Catelonde burns and sulks—" gesturing across the valley to the volcano, which had just received two water-skins in its hot gullet and was vomiting out a fiery spray of lava.
"But don't you see, you old fossil, that's because—oh, well..."
Looking at his angry, implacable old face, Dido decided she might as well save her breath. He was not going to be convinced by anything she said. Instead she asked, "Who's Nodens?"
"He is the husband of Sul. He must be propitiated. Or he may wreak his vengeance on the whole city of Bath."
"If you ask me, the whole city of Bath could just about do with a tidy-up—hey! That hurts!"
Grasping her by both ears, he pushed her past the altar and with a final heave propelled her sharply through the door of her bedroom so that she fell on her face onto the stone floor. By the time she had picked herself up, he was nailing the door shut with furious bangs of a hammer.
"And there you stay!" he shouted through the door, "until tomorrow evening, when it is time for you to go to Sul. Hodie mihi, eras tibi! Nota bene! Respice finem! Suaviter in modo! Experto crede!"
And she heard him stomping off back into the temple, where he soothed his feelings and allayed his temper by making a lot of noise on various instruments and thumping some very cacophonous chords on the piano. Poor old boy, thought Dido, he ain't half sore that he lost Elen. I guess those old girls will be right mad with him.
And then Dido began to wonder and worry as to whether she had done the right thing in encouraging the princess to escape on Hapiypacha. Would the leopard really consent to be ridden all the way over the mountains to Wandesborough? Or would he toss Elen off into a sigse thorn thicket and then eat her? Or would she fall off his back? Or would they get lost, and fall asleep on the bare mountain slopes, and become the prey of aurocs?
Still, thought Dido, anything's better than waiting here to be chucked off a blessed rock into a perishing lake.
She had ample time to think this. It was a miserable night. The room was extremely dark with the door shut, since there was only one window, about the size of a brick, very high up. Dido groped her way to the heap of hair and curled up on it miserably. She felt, for the first time, horribly lonely—for Elen, for Mr. Multiple, for Holystone, for Noah Gusset—even for Captain Hughes and Hapiypacha. Where were they all, this night? Dido was very tired indeed, but it was a long time before she slept.
She woke up hollow with hunger—for the guardian's bean stew was not very nourishing, and it was many hours since she had eaten it—and also parched with thirst. She thought longingly of the water in the tank on the other side of the nailed-up door. The sun was up—she could tell that by the light in her window hole. Banging on the door, she shouted, "Lemme out!" For a long time there was no answer; then Caradog's voice replied, "Quiet, child, you interrupt my devotions. And in any case you cannot come out till moonrise. You had better think, meditate, put yourself in a proper frame of mind to go to Sul."
"I don't want to go to flaming Sul!"
But nothing she said could elicit any further response from the guardian; she heard him from time to time chanting and playing on his instruments. Then there was a long silence; perhaps he was away seeing to his beasts.
The day dragged. It is bad enough at any time being shut up in a room in the dark with nothing to do; but the prospect of being a human sacrifice at the end of it makes the whole situation incomparably worse.
Dido's thirst, hardly bearable at the beginning of the day, was so acute by nightfall that she could hardly speak when at last the guardian wrenched open the door and let her out. She had to work her sore throat several times before she could get out the word Water in a hoarse wheezing whisper.
"Thirsty, are you?" said Caradog sourly. "No more than you deserve. Water's not what you need, with a thirst like that; what you need is a cup of my willow tea." He had a cup ready brewed, which he handed to her; for the second time within two days Dido thought of Mr. Holystone's admonition: Always throw away the first cupful from a stranger. But she was too thirsty to throw away this cupful; she grasped the cup with shaking hands and tipped the contents eagerly down her painful throat, which was almost closed up with dryness. The willow tea tasted stale and metallic, like water that pennies have been soaked in. But then, all the guardian's concoctions tasted peculiar; Dido thought nothing of it.
"Now I want some cold water," said she, and before he could stop her she walked into the room with the tank and swigged down about four cupfuls, one after the other. Caradog wagged his head angrily.
"Not good, not good!" he said. "You should go empty to the sacrifice!"
"Croopus!" said Dido. "I'm the one as is going to be sacrificed. You oughter be giving me crumpets and plum jam and haddock kedgeree and pancakes."
Caradog looked at her as if she had gone mad.
"Condemned person's breakfast," explained Dido. "Who's a-coming to the ceremony?"
The one thing that had cheered her (and that not much) during her hours of incarceration had been the thought of a huge crowd with the queen, the grand inquisitor, the mistress of the robes, and the rest of them, come to see her jump to her doom. She would make a speech, which she had been preparing, giving them a piece of her mind, telling them what she thought of them. But the guardian undeceived her.
"Ceremony?" he said. "You mean the sacrifice? Nobody comes. Only you and I. Come along—it is time."
He picked up a thing like a witch's broom, a long stake with a bundle of ichu grass tied at one end, and with it gestured Dido toward the doorway. She had intended to put up a vigorous struggle, but to her surprise and rage she found herself obeying him with dreamy docility, walking peacefully along, putting one foot in front of the other.
"Blister it, mister," she muttered, yawning, "I reckon you put some hocus-pocus in that cup of tea, yo
u wicked old wretch, didn't you? What a noddy I was to go and drink it. Mighta known you'd be up to tricks. Should have remembered what Mr. Holy told me...." She yawned again.
"Just keep walking," said the guardian.
Outside, it was not so dark as it had seemed in Dido's room; a mild blue dusk filled the silver-cobbled streets. Beyond the twin peaks of Ertayne and Elamye the evening star shone clear, and the slopes of Mount Catelonde were turning a soft velvety red. A few birds still keened and whistled overhead; and, when they climbed higher, Dido, looking down, saw that Lake Arianrod had been completely refilled, and now lay among its mountains like a calm, steel-blue star.
"When you think about it," she said to the guardian—she could still argue, though she seemed to have lost command over her arms and legs—"when you think about it, there wasn't no need for Mabon to send back the lake."
"Why not?" grunted Caradog.
Dido, turning to look at him, observed that he had donned formal clothes for the ceremony—a frock coat and black stovepipe hat.
"Why not? She wanted it back so her Rex Quondam could come out of it, didn't she? But he'd already come! And you're throwing me in, like you did all the other poor gals—and hundreds of other guardians before you, I suppose—so as to keep her alive till he gets back. Well, he's got back. And she's still alive. So what's the point?"
"Keep moving," the guardian said. He gestured with the hand that held the broom. The other clasped a silver-tipped wand of office. He added, "Even though Artaius has returned, his lady is still of immense age. Married to a much younger king, she will need more care and support than ever before."