Corbenic

by Catherine Fisher

  At the blacksmith’s stall he found only a small boy; pushing him aside he grabbed the sword in its plastic bag. It gave him a sly dig of pain under one nail.

  The kid sputtered through a mouthful of crisps. “Hey! You can’t take that! My dad . . .”

  “Tell your dad I’ve changed my mind.”

  It was getting dark as he came around to the gate. The stalls were closing; snow lay on their awnings. Horses were being led out to vans, a warm, snuffling parade, steam rising from them. Somewhere in the castle Hawk was waiting for him. He turned away and walked into the falling snow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Everywhere he went he found the streets waste and the houses in ruins.

  Conte du Graal

  “This do?” The truck driver braked.

  “Oh . . . Yes. Thanks.” Jolted out of a half sleep, Cal opened his eyes and hastily grabbed his bag. They were in a busy street, packed with people.

  “It’s Market Day,” the driver said, changing gear. “Can’t stop.”

  “Right. Thanks again.”

  Cal scrambled awkwardly out of the cab and stood back in the doorway of an empty shop, while the truck wheezed and hooted its way down the congested street.

  People were everywhere. They walked in the road, chatted, waved. There were young girls dressed in fashionable clothes, old couples, boys on skateboards, farmers in a uniform of dark green worn coats and caps. This was Abergavenny. He’d never been here before.

  He picked up his bag wearily and slung it over one shoulder, and pushed along the pavement. The pressure of the crowd, its laughter and life, was warm; it caught him up and swept him into the market, and he wandered aimlessly among the bleating of sheep and the stalls, looking at antiques and old amber jewelry and books and china.

  He was so tired. Last night he had tried to sleep in a small hotel in Hereford, but something had been tapping on the window all night; it had woken him from broken dreams, and he had got up with a groan and staggered over. When he’d pulled back the curtains the osprey had been there.

  It wouldn’t fly away. All night it had shuffled and roosted on the windowsill; he had lain awake watching it, its yellow eyes open as if it slept like that, fixing him with fierce, unblinking scrutiny. Accusing him. Even when he had drawn the curtains again and turned his back on it he had felt that gaze, tried to shrink from it, hide under the blankets. But it was still there, like the hatred he had for himself.

  Then he had thought, if the bird was here, surely Corbenic must be near.

  Now, in the noisy, echoing racket of the street, he rubbed his face and longed for some coffee. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d give this up. He’d go back, right now, to Chepstow, and to the neat black-and-white bedroom at Trevor’s; he’d wear his suit and go to the office and to hell with them all, and their crazy disappearing castles. He’d dump the sword. He’d do that right now.

  He took it out, still in its plastic bag and thrust it blindly into a bin on the street and marched away; before he’d taken three steps a shriek of pain skewered him from behind.

  A little girl was standing by the bin and screaming. Her mother ran up, and swung the girl up in terror. “What’s the matter, darling?”

  “It bit me.” The child wailed, holding out a cut finger.

  “What did?”

  “It! That man left it there.”

  The woman grabbed the bag, opened it and stared in disbelief. Then she looked up and eyed Cal. He wanted to run but couldn’t. Passersby flowed around him, turning curiously.

  “What a stupid place to put something that sharp!” Furious, she flung it down on the pavement, a metallic crash.

  With great control, tense in every muscle, Cal bent and picked the bag up. He turned and walked away, hearing every syllable of the woman’s comforting of the child stab him like a knife in the back.

  “I’ll dump you so deep in the river,” he murmured, “you’ll never, ever trouble me again.”

  The sword settled in its bag smugly.

  At the cashpoint he put his card in, glancing quickly around in case anyone was watching. He punched the numbers; the machine made a small chuntering noise. Then, with shocking finality, it swallowed his card.

  Aghast, Cal stared. A stark, printed message came up on the screen. THIS CARD IS WITHHELD. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR BRANCH FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

  For an instant the implications didn’t hit him; when they did he turned and ran, down the street, around the corner, up a steep ramp into what seemed like a park, checking at every turn no one was following, sprinting up a flight of steps between wintry ruined flowerbeds and collapsing onto a park bench.

  Trevor had stopped his card. Furious, he ground his hands into fists and then thought, no, maybe not. Maybe he had just run out of money. In either case, the result was the same.

  He searched his pockets, dug out his wallet from the rucksack, gathered coins and notes. Fifteen pounds forty-two pence. Not enough for another night’s stay anywhere. Maybe enough for the train fare home. All his money gone and nothing to show for it! He thought of how he had once gloated over the bank statements. How he had felt so good about that.

  He put the money in his pocket and sat back, looking down on the flat, waterlogged river meadows that stretched out below him, their flooded paths iced to shining deathtraps where kids slid and screeched, tiny voices rising to him.

  He would not go to Otter’s Brook.

  He shivered, the cold wind cutting him. He had sworn he would find the Grail and he would find it. The osprey was here. The castle must be close. He got up and wandered along the path, thinking hard. He’d have to watch every penny. Eat carefully. Chips. Anything cheap. And sleep out. In January! The thought of that was appalling but he made himself face it. That was where he was going wrong. To find Corbenic he would have to give up everything, to walk right out of the world of towns and bed-and-breakfasts. To do what he had sometimes dreamed of sleepily on long train journeys, to walk into the greenwood and not come back.

  Wherever it was it was near, and far. Like Bron had been. Like his mother had been.

  The park curled around a castle. He stared up at the gray walls in dull, wry appreciation, not even surprised anymore. This whole borderland was a line of castles; they were passing him from one to the next, but none of them was the right one.

  He took a buttered roll from his bag and ate it; it was hard and crusty, left over from breakfast, but it was all he was allowing himself for now.

  Under it, still wrapped in its box and tissue paper, was the pale gray tie. Cal brought it out and opened it on his knee. The tie was beautiful. Its silk shone. It smelled of Thérèse’s expensive perfume. It was all the things he had ever desired, all the comfort and elegance and taste. For a long moment he let himself enjoy it, remembering the pleasure of buying it. Then he folded it up, his hands shaking with cold. He still had the receipt, and there was a branch of the shop just around the corner. It was one way to get some money.

  With the cash he bought cheap fruit in the market, and water, and matches and looked at the sleeping bags in the hiking shop, but they were too expensive. By the time he walked out of the town on a back lane that led up past farms and under the railway line into the countryside, it was past three and already getting dark. The osprey swooped overhead, a shadow in the growing twilight. Then it flew off to the west, and was gone.

  A mile or so down the lane he came to a stile on his right; above it a leaning metal post pointed. PUBLIC FOOTPATH, it said, in Welsh and English. Beyond it a scrubby ungrazed field stretched down to a small wood. Nothing moved in its stillness; no birds sang, there were no cattle or sheep. In the dim twilight over the trees a few faint stars shone.

  Cal climbed the gate, and entered the Waste Land.

  Chapter Twenty

  “If thou go there, thou wilt not come back alive.”

  “Wilt thou be a guide to me there?” asked Peredur.

  “I will show thee a way,” said she.
/>   Peredur

  She was screaming at him. It happened; usually she was tearful and slurred her speech, but sometimes, without warning, she was screaming. Only now it was in some other language, French maybe, and he couldn’t understand it. They were in Trevor’s immaculate room, and she snatched up the Greek vase from the glass table and threw it; it smashed in pieces against the pale walls.

  Cal said, “Look. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.” It was what he always said. Soothing noises. Anything.

  He couldn’t remember how the row had started. But it was his fault. He knew that.

  She flung a glass at him; he ducked and Guinness spattered the wall. He stared at it in horror. Now she was throwing cushions, and an ashtray, and the radio, which crashed into the glass shelves and brought the whole lot down on top of him, a showering of light fragments, cold, cutting.

  She was screaming in his ears, close to his face.

  He opened his eyes.

  The wind. It was the wind, howling, and it was snow that was falling on him; snow that had drifted in a great scatter from the laden branches of the hedge. He groaned, wormed farther in, sweating despite the raw weather. He didn’t want to wake, because that meant the cold came back, the terrible ache in his fingers, the numbness of his face, the shivering. But if he slept even for a moment he dreamed, and the dreams were worse, they were a torment, and there was no way away from them.

  Curled, he closed his eyes tight, feeling the tiny rustle of dried leaves against his cheek, the icy mud soft and yielding, the infinitesimal patter of snow. All across the fields it was falling, tiny hard flakes, and it was settling and not melting, and since late that afternoon the land had been turning white. Only the trees were dark; stark leafless shapes.

  It was his third night in the dark land. Or third week? For a moment he couldn’t remember and snapped his eyes open in alarm, staring at the black thorns and briars above him.

  He had been walking so long his body ached and his legs felt trembly; he had been hungry days ago but that had gone now, leaving a sort of light-headed emptiness. The food had more or less run out; he had some hazelnuts and rock-hard cheese but those had to be kept. Supplies. He grinned, weakly. Like the games he had played years back, with the other kids in the park. Survival. Camouflage.

  Snow drifted into his eyes. He closed them again, and the darkness seemed warmer.

  Shadow and Hawk were pulling him into the van. It was a long way up, there were too many steps, and over the door was a sign saying VACANCIES. It made him laugh; he couldn’t stop. Weakly he giggled, and Shadow snapped, “What? What’s so funny?” But before he could tell her, the microwave pinged, and Hawk went to it.

  “No!” Cal jumped up out of the warm chair. “Don’t open that!”

  Slowly, with a deliberate grin, Hawk opened it. Fish poured out, a shining, slithering, stinking mass. They cascaded out, onto the floor, filling the van up, more and more of them, and Leo flung his net out and Bron sat in the boat and said, “One day, we may catch a real treasure, a fish with a ring in its belly. Like the old tales.”

  Cal sat up, pushing the fish away, and his hands were cold and the icy mush plopped and slid. He was on a slab in a market stall. He was under the hedge. He was freezing.

  Get up. Get up and walk. You had to. If you didn’t you’d go to sleep and never wake up, all the books told you that. Find shelter. Light a fire.

  He staggered up, scratching his face on the brambles. The rucksack was light; he barely felt it now as he flung it on and climbed out of the ditch. At once the wind struck him. He bent, wrapping his arms around his body, clutching his thin coat tight, struggling over the humped, tussocky, boggy field. There had to be a road, a way back.

  But he had been looking forever. It was as if he had entered some other world. This was not Wales. This was not England. He had fallen into the crack between them. He had walked off the map. There were no birds and no houses. In the night no lights shone, not even the distant red glimmer of town streetlights reflecting on cloud. He had walked on and on in a landscape of overgrown meadows and desolate hillsides, of small, cascading streams, bitter cold to drink from, tasting of ice. Long ago he had told himself he was a fool, and had tried to head back to the road, but there was no road, anywhere, anymore, and none of the maps were any use because this place was not real anyway. He had burned them, crouching in a small copse, holding his swollen fingers over the useless yellow flames.

  Once a knight had jumped out from under a stone, and fought him. He had the bruises. He knew it had happened.

  And now there were these sheep. A field of them, white sheep, and then a river, narrow and stony, and beyond it a field sloping, and the sheep in that were all black. As he stumbled down the frozen slope he saw a white ewe cross the stream, slithering in and splashing across. It came out, and it was black. It cropped the grass. He stopped dead, watching. After a while a black sheep came this way. It came out of the water white. His eyes had been on it all the time. He hadn’t seen when it changed.

  Taking a drink from the plastic water bottle, he rubbed a hand down his stubbly face and walked on. His lips felt cracked; his skin raw with the frost. As he walked among them the sheep moved apart, watching, chewing solidly, and at the stream he knelt and fearfully touched the surface with his finger. The rocky bed had a reddish tinge. Weeds hung under it.

  He stood up, and waded across.

  Did he change? He was colder, certainly; he shivered, his feet were soaked, and there were holes in the cheap boots that he hadn’t noticed before.

  The land had changed though, it was steeper and rockier, and there were mountains now; it was darker. Time had passed. Where had it gone?

  And a tree on the bank of a different river was burning, root to tip, half in leaf and half in flames, and as he backed around its trunk the heat of it scorched him, and on the leafy side birds sang, unsinged.

  The sky darkened, lit, darkened. Moon and stars flashed over him; the sun circled like a hidden eye, watching.

  He was wandering in his own delirium, his own nightmares. Sometimes he didn’t know if he walked awake or asleep; people opened secret doors in his head and came out and were trudging with him; Kai once, and the Grail girl, wrapped in a green brocade cloak, nagging at him. And behind him, always, so that he didn’t even have to turn and check she was there anymore, walked his mother, her hair with strange blond highlights that didn’t suit her, her clothes new, a red skirt, a gray sweater, and no mud on her, and no snow.

  She pursued him; stumbling on the furrows, he knew she was there and said, “Leave me alone.”

  But she only answered what she always answered, a whisper that was almost a threat. “I love you, Cal.”

  He tripped and fell, full length in the dark, a jarring thud. Breathless, he lay there. He wouldn’t get up. He couldn’t. His eyes were blind with water, hot tears that swelled from somewhere deep; he sobbed silently, then aloud, a yell of anguish.

  “Bron!” he screamed. “I’m here! I’m looking for you! I can’t do anymore.”

  Silence. Only the hiss of snow. And far off, the faint creaking of burdened trees, an eerie, terrible sound.

  Cal pulled himself up on knees and elbows, a convulsion of despair. “For God’s sake show me the way out!”

  The reply came from behind him. With a gasp he whipped around, saw the glimmer of it move down the hedgerow. An animal. Big. Four legs. He scrambled up. It was hard to see, in the driving snow. White. A deer. A dog?

  Floundering, he dragged his feet out of the mud and went after it, crazily swaying, because it would have shelter, it might be a farm dog, there might be a lighted window and a door that would open for it, a voice, calling out, a fire.

  Snow drifted in his face. Wiping it away he slid and hurried down the rough grass slope, the blur of white far in front, and as it jumped the ditch into the copse down there he was sure it was a sheep, but when he reached the frozen reeds and crunched over them, lurching on the tilted slabs, he cau
ght sight of it again, a narrow face, and it was slimmer, a white deer. It turned and entered the wood. With barely a hesitation, he went after it.

  Usually, he avoided woods. They were too silent. You never knew what might be lurking in them. But now he went straight on, ducking under the low outer branches of pliant hazel, the snow dusting down on his head and shoulders. It was dark. There was no wind in here. Ahead, lost in shadows, the animal rustled.

  He had to fight his way through, thorns snagging him and briars whipping back to scratch his face, and he was sure, suddenly and joyfully, that he was in the right place. The garden at Corbenic had been like this; he’d had to fight his way out, and that strange, childish idea came back to him of the castle in the fairy tale, hidden behind its tangle of growth.

  His foot slipped; he reached out to steady himself. He caught hold of something slim and tall, a pole. As his hand came away it was wet and sticky with some dark mess; he jerked back, hissing with terror, rubbing his palm frantically on his sleeve, because into his mind with lightning clarity had come the image of the spear that bled. Then, carefully, he looked closer. It was a broken fence. Long ruined. Bending, he scraped through.

  On the other side, a green mass rose up in front of him: ivy-covered walls, ghostly now with a phosphorescence of snow, ruinous and shapeless.

  Just at his right, a small panting sound. In the dark, his fingers stretched out, groping, searching; he almost dreaded what he would touch, but when he found it it was a familiar shock, the slightly greasy wet fur, the lick of a hot rough tongue. A dog.

  The dog did not bark, or whimper. It moved, padding and snuffling its way through the undergrowth, and Cal went with it, whispering, “Wait. Wait, boy,” terrified that it would leave him.

  Under the walls of the building they went, a progression of rustles, and when Cal paused and hissed, “Where are you?” the night was silent. But not dark.

  Light was coming from somewhere above him; he looked up and saw the moon, the frostiest of crescents, caught in a sudden gap of cloud, and the moon shone on an image that seemed to hang in the black and silver of the walls, an image of a golden cup, held in two hands.