He was pressed flat against the rock; all Janet could see was his back and the top of his head and the arm he had flung sideways to grab at the roots of a bush. She could hear him panting in great gasps, as if he had run too far, too fast. He was only about twenty feet below her, but it might as well have been a mile.
"Hey!" Janet called, unable to think of anything else. "Hey, are you all right?"
The boy on the rocks raised his head and stared blindly upward. "Who's that?" he said. "You don't sound like— Who is it?"
"Dan?" Janet said incredulously. "Dan Carpenter?" Hearing herself, she realized that deep down inside she hadn't really believed any of this until now—not the missing boy, nor the odd quiet of the air, and most especially not the Lorelei witch leaning against the iron rail a few feet away and watching with enigmatic eyes.
"Who is it?" Dan said again, and this time his voice didn't sound quite as strained as before.
"It's me, Jan Laine. I came out looking for . . ." Janet let the sentence trail off, unable to explain in any convincing manner just how she happened to be there. Especially not to Dan.
"Has she gone, then?" Dan demanded.
Before Janet could answer, the Lorelei began to sing again. Her voice was low and soft and sweet, but it had the penetrating quality of Holly Fitzgerald's flute when she was trying to hit the top note loudly and missing. The words of the song seemed to flow together and twine around each other, and Janet could not catch any of them clearly. Underneath the words, behind the music, Janet could hear something strong and wild and fearful, but it could not touch her. The song and the dangerous underside of the song streamed past Janet and down the cliffside.
Dan's face twisted as the Lorelei's singing reached him. He began scrambling up the rocky cliff toward Janet, moving with reckless speed. Janet could see dark scratches on his face and hands, and she was terrified that at any moment he would slip. She crouched beside the railing, holding her breath and wishing she had a rope or a belt or anything she could throw down to Dan. She didn't think she could stand watching him roll and slip and crash down the side of the cliff, even if she didn't like him much. "Stop it!" she screamed at the Lorelei.
The Lorelei did not seem to hear; her eyes and all her attention were on Dan. Her expression was not emotionless anymore; there was a fierce pleasure in it, and an eager anticipation. Janet stood up and started toward the creature. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she had to make the Lorelei stop singing.
The Lorelei stopped. Janet was completely taken aback for a moment; then she turned and saw Dan climbing under the guardrail onto the cliff top. His shirt was torn, and Janet could see the mud stains on his jeans even in the moonlight. She let out a breath of relief. Behind her, the Lorelei laughed.
Janet looked back at the Lorelei. The witch smiled her pointed smile; then her figure shimmered and spread like moonlight on the river below. An instant later, she was gone.
Janet stared. Finally she drew a deep breath. "Well," she said in a shaky voice, "well, that's good, anyway."
"She's just playing cat-and-mouse," Dan said. "She's been playing it with me for—for quite a while, I think."
"Then let's get out of here before she comes back," Janet said, and started for the Gasthaus.
"It won't do any good," Dan said, without moving. "Do you think I haven't tried?"
"What do you mean?"
"I told you, she's playing. She lets me get three or four steps, and then the singing starts again. Once she let me get all the way to the end of the path before she hauled me back."
"I can go, though. I can get Mrs. Craig." Janet knew, even as she said it, that this would do no good at all, even if she could get away from the charmed cliff top, even if she could think up a story Mrs. Craig would believe. The Lorelei had slipped and let Janet through into this strange, silent world, but she would not slip twice. If Janet left now, she would not be able to get back until the Lorelei's games were over, any more than Beth had been able to follow Janet into the Lorelei's world.
"You know better," Dan said.
"You suggest something, then!" Janet said, but as she spoke the singing started again.
This time the song came from the foot of the cliff. Dan made a gasping noise and lurched across the rock toward the guardrail. Janet stood motionless for a moment, in a frozen rage at the Lorelei witch, who had found this new game to play when the rocks in the river were blown up and her songs could no longer lure boatmen to crash on them. Like a German Siren, Mr. Norberg had said . . .
Dan had almost reached the railing. Janet ran forward and jumped onto his back. He staggered and they fell sideways together. Janet clapped her hands over his ears and clung tightly. Dan seemed dazed, unable to help or hinder.
Suddenly, the Lorelei's song changed, becoming softer and more plaintive. It tugged at Janet, and she became aware of how tired she was and of all the places where she had been bruised when she fell. She wanted to go back to the Gasthaus and relax in the light and warmth, to forget about all this unpleasantness and become absorbed in her embroidery . . .
Embroidery? "I don't sew," Janet said loudly. "And even if I did, I wouldn't let you have anybody just because I wanted to be comfortable for a few minutes. Maybe that's what people did three hundred years ago, but not anymore!"
The singing faltered, then changed again. This time it whispered promises. Janet saw herself at the center of a group of boys, all begging for dates. Even Peter Fletch, who was apologizing for ever having teased her about anything. The girls were there and liked her, too, and all of it could happen if she only let go of this one boy . . .
"I hate being the center of attention, and you can't have him!" Janet snarled.
The Lorelei's song changed key in a mournful run of notes and grew louder and more threatening. Janet was foolish to be so stubborn. She couldn't win, and in the end she would be blamed. Or perhaps the Lorelei would take her instead of Dan. She would fall down that dizzying slope and break to pieces on the rocks below, like the boats and the boatmen.
Janet took her left hand off of Dan's ear and clapped it against her own. The sick fear receded a little, but not enough . . . and Dan twisted and pulled away. Her other hand slipped. Dan twisted again and threw her off, then hoisted himself to his feet and started for the edge of the slope again.
Janet scrambled after him. The Lorelei's song rang in her ears, whispering that he would pull her over the cliff's edge with him if she tried to stop him again. Janet gritted her teeth and flung herself forward. She reached Dan just as he came to the guardrail, and slapped her hands over his ears. He stopped, staring at her, while the Lorelei sang fear and failure with renewed intensity.
She wasn't going to make it. She knew she wasn't, even without the growing triumph she could hear in the Lorelei's voice. In another minute, she would have to let go of Dan's ears to cover her own, she could feel it. She bit her lip, trying to distract herself, but it didn't help. And then Dan raised his hands and covered her ears.
The song diminished to a bearable level at once. Janet sighed in relief. Just in time, she remembered not to take her own hands away from Dan's ears. That really would be stupid. On the other hand, how long could they stand here like this? If only Beth would come, or Mrs. Craig, or somebody . . . But if they did, what would they think when they found her standing with Dan in the moonlight, each holding on to the other's ears? The image was too much, and she began to giggle. Dan looked down, startled, and the giggle turned into a laugh at the expression on his face. In another moment, Dan was laughing, too.
As they laughed, the remaining pressure on Janet vanished, and when she stopped chuckling she realized that the Lorelei's song had ceased. After a moment's hesitation, she slowly lowered her hands. Dan shivered, then did the same.
"Thanks," he said to Janet. He looked as if he would have liked to say more, but wasn't quite sure what.
Janet nodded, accepting both the spoken and the unspoken thought. "Thanks to you, too. She was
starting to get to me."
"I finally figured that out," Dan said. "I don't know why it took me so long. I— Heads up!"
Janet turned. The Lorelei was standing a few feet farther down the cliff's edge, watching them, her face an expressionless mask. Hastily, Janet reached for Dan's ears again, but the Lorelei shook her head.
"That is unnecessary now," the Lorelei said. "You have won." She gave Janet a long, measuring look. "I have never been defeated by ones as young as you before. You have great strength, girl."
Janet found herself unwilling to say anything to the Lorelei, so she settled for a shrug.
The Lorelei's gaze moved to Dan, and she smiled coldly. "You have learned something, I think. Do not forget it." She held Dan's eyes briefly, then looked back at Janet. "Go, then, the pair of you."
Dan started toward the footpath at once, and Janet was not far behind him. As they crossed from the moon-made silver of the bare rock to the packed dirt of the footpath, the world seemed to tilt briefly and resettle itself in a different shape. They heard the sound of running feet in front of them. "Hey, look out!" Janet said.
"I'm looking, I'm looking." Beth panted as she came to a halt. "I see you found somebody."
"It's a good thing for me that she did," Dan said.
"Well, you were right here, weren't you?" Beth said indignantly. "I wasn't that far behind. Boy, you can really run, Jan. I thought I'd lost you for a minute."
"You did," Janet said. She snuck a quick look back over her shoulder. The Lorelei was gone.
"Oh?" Beth looked from Janet to Dan, noting Dan's torn shirt and muddy jeans. "I smell a tall tale. Come sit in the parking lot and tell me, and then we'll figure out what to say to Mrs. Craig." She flicked her flashlight on, and the three of them started back toward the Gasthaus.
* * *
Stronger Than Time
The keep rose high above the ring of brush and briars choking the once-clear lawn around its base. Even when the sun was high, the tower's shadow lay cold and dark on the twisted mass of thorns, and at dusk it stretched like a gnarled black finger across the forest and up the mountainside. Arven hated walking through that somber dimness, though it was the shortest way home. Whenever he could, he swung wide around the far side of the keep to stay clear of its shadow. Most people avoided the keep altogether, but Arven found its sunlit face fascinating. The light colored the stone according to the time of day and the shifting of the seasons, now milk white and shining, now tinged with autumn gold or rosy with reflected sunset, now a grim winter gray. The shadowed side was always black and ominous.
Once, when he was a young man and foolish (he had thought himself brave then, of course), Arven had dressed in his soft wool breeches and the fine linen shirt his mother had embroidered for him and gone to the very edge of the briars. He had searched all along the sunlit side of the keep for an opening, a path, a place where the briars grew less thickly, but he had found nothing. Reluctantly, he had circled to the shadowed side. Looking back toward the light he had just quitted, he had seen white bones dangling inside the hedge, invisible from any other angle: human bones entwined with briars. There were more bones among the shadows, bones that shivered in the wind, and leaned toward him, frightening him until he ran away. He had never told anyone about it, not even Una, but he still had nightmares in which weather-bleached bones hung swaying in the wind. Ever since, he had avoided the shadow of the keep if he could.
Sometimes, however, he miscalculated the time it would take to fell and trim a tree, and then he had to take the short way or else arrive home long after the sun was down. He felt like a fool, hurrying through the shadows, glancing up now and again at the keep looming above him, and when he reached his cottage he was always in a bad temper. So he was not in the best of humors when, one autumn evening after such a trip, he found a young man in a voluminous cloak and a wide-brimmed hat, sitting on his doorstep in the gray dusk, waiting.
"Who are you?" Arven growled, hefting his ax to show that his white hair was evidence of mere age and not infirmity.
"A traveler," the man said softly without moving. His voice was tired, bone tired, and Arven wondered suddenly whether he was older than he appeared. Twilight could be more than kind to a man or woman approaching middle age; Arven had known those who could pass, at twilight, for ten or fifteen fewer years than what the midwife attested to.
"Why are you here?" Arven demanded. "The road to Prenshow is six miles to the east. There's nothing to bring a traveler up on this mountain."
"Except the keep," said the man in the same soft tone.
Arven took an involuntary step backward, raising his ax as if to ward off a threat. "I have nothing to do with the keep. Go back where you came from. Leave honest men to their work and the keep to crumble."
The man climbed slowly to his feet. "Please," he said, his voice full of desperation. "Please, listen to me. Don't send me away. You're the only one left."
No, I was mistaken, Arven thought. He's no more than twenty, whatever the shadows hint. Such intensity belongs only to the young. "What do you mean?"
"No one else will talk about the keep. I need— I need to know more about it. You live on the mountain; the keep is less than half a mile away. Surely you can tell me something."
"I can only tell you to stay away from it, lad." Arven set his ax against the wall and looked at the youth, who was now a gray blur in the deepening shadows. "It's a cursed place."
"I know." The words were almost too faint to catch, even in the evening stillness. "I've . . . studied the subject. Someone has to break the curse, or it will go on and on and . . . Tell me about the keep. Please. You're the only one who might help me."
Arven shook his head. "I won't help you kill yourself. Didn't your studies teach you about the men who've died up there? The briars are full of bones. Don't add yours to the collection."
The youth raised his chin. "They all went alone, didn't they? Alone, and in daylight, and so the thorns killed them. I know better than that."
"You want to go up to the keep at night?" A chill ran down Arven's spine, and he stared into the darkness, willing his eyes to penetrate it and show him the expression on the other's face.
"At night, with you. It's the only way left to break the curse."
"You're mad." But something stirred within Arven, a longing for adventure he had thought buried with Una and the worn-out rags of the embroidered linen shirt he had worn on their wedding day. The image of the keep, shining golden in the autumn sun, rose temptingly in his mind. He shook his head to drive away the memories and pushed open the door of his cottage.
"Wait!" said the stranger. "I shouldn't have said that, I know, but at least let me explain."
Arven hesitated. There was no harm in listening, and perhaps he could talk the young fool out of his suicidal resolve. "Very well. Come in."
The young man held back. "I'd rather talk here."
"Indoors, or not at all," Arven growled, regretting his momentary sympathy. "I'm an old man, and I want my dinner and a fire and something warm to drink."
"An old man?" The other's voice was startled, and not a little dismayed. "You can't be! It didn't take that long—" He stepped forward and peered at Arven, and the outline of his shoulders sagged. "I've been a fool. I won't trouble you further, sir."
"My name is Arven." Now that the younger man was turning to go, he felt a perverse desire to keep him there. "It's a long walk down the mountain. Come in and share my meal, and tell me your story. I like a good tale."
"I wouldn't call it a good one," the young man said, but he turned back and followed Arven into the cottage.
Inside, he stood uneasily beside the door while Arven lit the fire and got out the cider and some bread and cheese. Una had always had something warm ready when Arven came in from the mountain, a savory stew or thick soup when times were good, a vegetable pottage when things were lean, but since her death he had grown accustomed to a small, simple meal of an evening. The young man did not appe
ar to notice or care until Arven set a second mug of warm cider rather too emphatically on the table and said, "Your story, scholar?"
The young man shivered like a sleepwalker awakened abruptly from his dreams. "I'm not a scholar."
"Then what are you?"
The man looked away. "Nothing, now. Once I was a prince."
That explained the world-weariness in his voice, Arven thought. He'd been raised to rule and then lost all chance of doing so before he'd even begun. Probably not long ago, either, or the boy would have begun to forget his despair and plan for a new life, instead of making foolish gestures like attempting the keep. Arven wondered whether it had been war or revolution that had cost the young prince his kingdom. In these perilous times, it could have been either; the result was the same.
"Sit down, then, Your Highness, and tell me your tale," Arven said in a gentler tone.
"My tale isn't important. It's the keep—"
"The keep's tale, then," Arven interrupted with a trace of impatience.
The prince only nodded, as if Arven's irritability could not touch him. "It's not so much the story of the keep as of the counts who lived there. They were stubborn men, all of them, and none so stubborn as the last. Well, it takes a stubborn man to insult a witch-woman—even if he was unaware, as some have claimed—and then refuse to apologize for the offense."
Without conscious thought, Arven's fingers curled into the sign against evil. "The count did that? No wonder the keep is cursed!"
The prince flinched. "Not the keep, but what is within it."
"What?" Arven frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. Trust a nobleman to make hash of things instead of telling a simple, straightforward tale. "Go on."
Book of Enchantments Page 11