by Susan Cooper
Premonition prickled like some fast-crawling creature all across Will’s body; it sang in his mind: Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word…. But Gwion showed no hint of reaction; he simply moved forward, as if the Black Rider had not been there, and strode past him to the enormous sturdy oak tree in whose shade the dark figure stood.
“No leaf-collecting here, little player,” the Rider said mockingly. “The king of trees is out of your reach, I think.”
The warning shudder ran through Will even more strongly. Gwion’s face was impassive. Carefully and with dignity he reached up one lean brown arm to its full length; caught a jagged-leaved branch, snapped it, and broke it into three.
The Rider said sharply, “I promise you, minstrel, that if you get into that tower, you will never come out again.” They saw the dreadful scar on the side of his face as he turned his head.
“You can do nothing to prevent us, my lord,” Will said. Drawing Bran with him, he went towards Gwion and the great oak.
The Black Rider relaxed suddenly, smiling. “Oh, I have no need,” he said, and slowly he eased his marvellous night-black stallion to sidestep away so that there was a clear view of the rearing glass tower before Will and Bran.
Will stopped, with a groan of dismay that he could not hide. The Black Rider gave a high snickering laugh. It was all too plain now what he had meant.
The great door of Caer Wydyr was visible at last, high on the rocky base at the top of a steep rough-hewn flight of steps. But it was a door barred against entry by an enchantment Will could never have imagined. Before it, spinning so fast that it was like a bright disc, hung a gigantic wheel. There was no axle, nor any kind of support. The wheel hung there in the air, deadly, forbidding approach, flashing round and round with a speed that gave out a menacing hum.
Bran said in a whisper, “No!”
From the Lords of the Dark on their black and white horses, stirring among the trees, there came a rustling of mockery, of malice satisfied. The Black Rider laughed again, an unpleasant menacing sound.
Swinging round in hopeless confusion, Will caught Gwion’s bright eyes gazing at him, holding him, gleaming over the strong face and the strange dark stripe of its grey beard. Saying: I must tell you but I cannot tell you—think—
And Will thought and suddenly knew.
“Come on!”
Seizing Bran by the arm, he broke into a run and rushed up the steps of the great rock on which the tower stood, away from the mocking Dark, until he was on the top step, so close to the whirling wheel that it seemed likely to cut him in half. The humming shriek of its spinning filled their minds. Gwion was behind them, white teeth flashing in eager delight. Will bent to Bran’s baffled, anxious face and said in his ear: “And what last thing did the Lady say?”
He saw relief break like a wave, and heard the words choke out: “Only the horn can stop the wheel—”
And Will reached to his belt and took the little gleaming hunting-horn that hung there. He paused, drew in a deep breath, put back his head and blew a single long clear note, high and lovely, singing out like a harmonic over the terrible hum of the spinning sharp wheel. And the wheel spun down at once to a halt, as if an immense force were stopping it, while a long howling shriek of rage rose from the Riders of the Dark below. Will and Bran had an instant to see that the wheel had four spokes, quartering the circle, before Gwion was urging the two of them in turn through the nearest quarter, and slipping through after them.
Gwion pressed the bunch of seven twigs that he held into Will’s hand, and without looking at him Will knew now what to do. Seizing the twigs from Bran’s hand too, so that he held all three bunches together, he reached out urgently through the spokes of the wheel, where a surge of darkness and fury and menace was streaming towards them up the steps to the tower. With all the force he could manage, he flung the twigs out into the Dark. An immense force like a soundless explosion swept outwards from the tower, and the great wheel began to spin again.
Faster and faster it whirled. The hum rose, the entrance was barred by spinning enchantment with the frustrated Dark screaming in shock and rage below, and Will and Bran and Gwion stood in a soft translucent brightness inside the glass tower of the Lost King.
• The King of the Lost Land •
They stood staring at one another. Outside the tower the fury of the Dark rose as if the whole world were roaring; Will hunched his shoulders instinctively, feeling the force of it like a blow.
And then suddenly, it was gone. The tumult dropped, vanished altogether; they could hear nothing at all but the faint hum of the wheel whirling outside. The abrupt change was more unnerving even than the noise had been.
“What are they doing?” Bran said. He was taut as a tight-wound spring; Will could see a muscle twitching at the side of his jaw.
“Nothing,” Will said, with a confidence that was not real. “They can do nothing here. Forget them.” He stared round the square room, filling the length and breadth of the tower, into which they had just come. “Look!”
Brightness was everywhere: a soft, greenish light filtered through the quartz-like walls of the room. It could be a cave of ice, Will thought. But this was a cluttered, busy place, as if someone had left it in a hurry while preoccupied with some great complex matter. Piles of curling manuscript lay on the tables and shelves, and on the thick rush mat that covered the floor; against one wall an enormous heavy table was littered with strips of shining metal and chunks of glass and rock, red and white and greenish-blue, all among an array of delicate gleaming tools which reminded Will of the workshop behind his father’s jewellery shop at home. Then his eye was caught by something high on the wall: a plain round shield, made of gleaming gold.
Gwion leapt light-footed up on to a table and took the shield down from the wall. He held it out.
“Take this, Will. Three shields, once in the days of his greatness, King Gwyddno made for the Light. Two of them were taken by the Light to places where danger might come, and the third they left here. I have never known why—but perhaps this moment now is why, and has been all along. Here.”
Will took the round gleaming thing and slid his arm through the holding-straps on the inner side. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “And—so are the other two that he made. I have seen them, I think. In … other places. They have never been used.”
“Let us hope this one need not be used either,” Gwion said.
Bran said impatiently, “Where is the king?” He was looking up at a curving wrought-iron staircase, wonderfully curlicued, which spiralled its way up to disappear through an opening in the high glassy ceiling of the room.
“Yes,” Gwion said. “Up there. We shall go up, but you must let me lead. We shall come to certain rooms in which you will see no one, and at the last we shall come to the king.”
He set one hand on the curving rail of the staircase, and looked hard at Will. “Where is the belt of Signs?”
“It is at the Battle of Mount Badon,” Will said wistfully. “Where Merriman took it to the great king, for as much of the winning as can be achieved there. And it will be at the last encounter too, when the Lady comes and all the power of the Light is joined. But not until then. And then only if—” He stopped.
“Eirias,” Bran said, his voice tight. “Eirias.”
Gwion said swiftly, “Do not say the name yet! That must wait. Only in the sword’s own presence may it be named by its name, inside this tower. Come.”
They climbed the spiralling staircase, up and up through rooms that were scattered with the impedimenta of living, of eating and sleeping, and yet had, too, the strange deserted look of places left abandoned for a long time. And then Will, last in line, came up to find Bran and Gwion standing silent in a great room unlike any that had gone before. The light filtering through these walls was not cool and icy-green, but dimmer, more subdued, for they stood now inside a great hemisphere, banded in gold and translucent glass so that Will knew it must be the domed top of the tower, from
whose peak a golden arrow pointed out at the sea.
The dome was warm, its floor striped with the sunlight that slanted in through the banded roof; and yet it was a strangely gloomy place, bringing a heaviness to the senses. The room held only one square table, set to one side, a carved wooden screen, and a scattering of big high-backed chairs, as sturdy as if they were carved from solid blocks of wood.
“Gwion?” a voice said.
Soft echoes whispered round the dome. It was a husk of a voice, low and without strength. It came from a tall chair facing away from them on the far side of the dome; they could see nothing but the chair’s back.
“I am here, my lord,” Gwion said. His eyes were warm, and there was love and patience in his voice, as if he spoke to a troubled child. “And … and two from the Light are with me.”
There was a long pause, with no sound in it except the faint crying of a distant seagull outside the dome.
The voice said at last, cold and abrupt, “You betray me. Send them away.”
Gwion crossed the room swiftly and dropped on one knee before the tall carved chair; in the hands of dim light through the roof they saw his lean brindle-bearded face up-turned to the unseen king. He said, loving loyalty bright as a flame in his face, “I betray you, my lord?”
“No, no,” the voice said wearily. “I know better. But you must send them away, minstrel. In that, you should know better.”
Will said impulsively, coming forward, “But Majesty, the danger is too great.” He paused just behind the chair; he could see one thin hand lying limp on the chair-arm, wearing on one finger a great dark-stoned ring like Gwion’s ring. He said, in as level a voice as he could manage, “My lord, the Dark is rising, in its last great attempt to take control of the earth from men. And we of the Light cannot prevent that attempt unless we are armed with all the Things of Power made for our purpose. We have all of them but the last, the crystal sword. Which long ago you made for us, my lord the king—and which now you guard.”
“I guard nothing,” the voice said listlessly. “I exist merely.”
Will said, “But the sword is here, as it has been always since its making.” His eyes were roving round the room in search as he spoke. “We may not take it unless you give it to us. Give it to us now, Majesty, I beg you.”
“Leave me alone,” the voice said. “Leave me alone.” It was full of an aching sadness that made Will long to give some comfort; but the urgency of his quest was louder yet in his mind.
“The sword is for the Light,” he said persistently, “and to the Light it must go.” He was looking at a wonderfully carved wooden screen that stood against the slanting wall of the dome, near where the king sat. Was it there simply as a lovely object to be looked at, or to hide something else from view?
The voice said with dull petulance, “You do not say ‘must’ to me, Old One. If Old One is what you are. I have forgotten all such names.”
Behind Will, Bran said sharply, “But we must have Eirias!”
The thin hand on the chair tightened briefly into life; the fingers curled, then fell back again. “Gwion,” said the empty voice, “I can do nothing for them. Send them away.”
Gwion still knelt, looking up, his face lined with concern. “You are weary,” he said unhappily, dropping all ceremony. “I wish you were not always alone.”
“Weary of life, minstrel. Weary of the world.” The voice was a winter leaf blown by the wind: withered, dry. “No purpose, no savour. Time tosses my mind where it will. And my useless life is the empty cawing of a crow, and any talent I once may have had is dead. Let the toys that it made die with it.”
The slow words came from so deep a despair, like a black pit giving back no sound when a stone is dropped in, that the small hairs crawled on the back of Will’s neck. It was like listening to a dead man speak.
Bran said clearly, coldly, “You speak like the Mari Llwyd, not like a king.”
The fingers of the hand curled in again briefly, and then again lay limp. Into the voice crept the weary contempt of long, long experience faced with the blind ignorant vigour of hope. “Boy, callow boy, do not speak to me of life that you have not lived. What do you know of the weight that drags down a king who has failed his people, an artist who has failed his gift? This life is a long cheat, full of promises that can never be kept, errors that can never be righted, omissions that can never be filled. I have forgotten as much of my life as I can manage to forget. Go away, so that I may be free to forget the rest.”
As Will stood, speechless, held by the dreadful deep self-loathing in the husky voice, Bran came up level with him. And all Will’s senses shouted at him suddenly that a change had begun; that from this moment Bran would no longer be merely the strange albino boy with the tawny eyes, obscure in a North Wales valley where the villagers looked at him sideways and the children mocked his pale face and white hair.
“Gwyddno Garanhir,” Bran said in a quiet command as cold and hard as ice, with the Welshness very strong in his voice, “I am the Pendragon, and the destiny of the Light is in my hands to be held or lost. I will not countenance despair. Eirias is my birthright, made by you at my father’s bidding. Where is the crystal sword?”
Will stood trembling, his fingernails digging into his palms.
Very slowly, the figure in the chair leaned forward a little and turned towards them, and they saw the face of the king just as they had seen it in the rainbow over the fountain in the rose garden, a little and a long while before. It was unmistakable: a thin face with cheekbones high as wings and lines carved deep in the flesh by sadness. Great channels of despair slanted down from nose to jaw, and shadows lay round the eyes like dark mountain pools. The king glanced first at Will, and then he saw Bran. His face changed.
He sat there motionless, dark eyes staring. There was a long moment of silence, and then the king said, whispering, “But it was a dream.”
Gwion said softly, “What was a dream, Majesty?”
The king turned his head to Gwion; there was a heart-breaking simplicity in him suddenly, like a small child telling a secret to a friend.
“I dream, endlessly, my minstrel,” he said. “I live in my dreams—they are the only thing this emptiness has not touched. Oh sometimes they are. black and dreadful, nightmares from the pit…. But most of them are wonderful, full of happiness and lost joy, and delight in making and being. Without my dreams, I should have gone mad long ago.”
“Ah,” Gwion said wrily, “that is true of many men in this world.”
“And I dreamed,” the king said, looking wonderingly again at Bran, “of a white-headed boy who would come and bring both an end and a beginning. The son of a great father, with all his father’s strength in him and more besides. And it seemed to me that I had known the father once, long ago—though I cannot tell where or when, through the mist the emptiness has put in my mind. The white-haired boy… there was no colour in him anywhere, in my dream. He had a white head, and white brows, and white lashes to his eyes, and he wore dark circles of glass to protect those eyes from the sun, but when the circles were taken away you could see that the eyes were enchanted, the golden eyes of an owl.”
He stood up, shakily supporting his thin frame on one hand against the chair. Gwion lunged forward to help, but the king raised his other hand.
“He came running,” he said, “he came running to me across the room there, and the sunlight was in his white hair and he laughed at me, and it was the first music of that kind that this castle has heard for so long, so very long.” There was a softening in the grim-set features like a faint glimmer of sunshine in a cloud-grey sky. “He brought an end, but a beginning. He took away the haunting of this place. He kneeled down before me, in my dream, and he said—”
Bran laughed softly; Will could feel all the angry tension fall away out of him. The white-haired boy took a few quick steps forward and knelt before the king, and said, smiling up at him, “And he said, There are five barriers to be broken to reach the crystal
sword, and they are told in five lines that are written in letters of golden fire over the sword itself Shall I tell you what they are?”
The king stood looking down at him with a life waking in his eyes that had not been there before. “And I said, Yes, tell me.”
“And when I have told you,” Bran was looking up into his eyes in a closeness like an embrace, no longer quoting now, “then that will be a falling away of the fifth barrier, Majesty, is not that so? For we have come through four of them already—the words are witness. And if I can break open your despair, which is the tomb of all your hope, then will you let me take the sword?”
The king said, his eyes fast on Bran, “Then it will be yours.”
Bran slowly stood up before him, and took a breath, and in the Welsh music of his voice the words came out as a lilting chant.
“I am the womb of every holt,
I am the blaze on every hill
I am the queen of every hive,
I am the shield for every head,
I am the tomb of every hope—
I am Eirias!”
And King Gwyddno let out a long, long sigh like the sound of a wave of the sea washing over sand, and with a sudden crash the carved wooden screen that stood against the wall of the dome fell apart in two pieces, and lay on the ground. And glowing in golden letters on the banded wall they saw the lines that Bran had just spoken aloud, clearly written, and below them on a slab of slate lay like a bright icicle a crystal sword.
The king moved slowly, stiffly, across the smooth rush-matted floor; on the back of the dark green surcoat he wore over his white robe they saw embroidered in gold the royal crest with its roses and leaping fish. King Gwyddno took the sword in his hand, and turned his melancholy drooping body towards them again. He ran one finger along the chased flat side of the sword blade, wonderingly, as if in disbelief that he could ever have made so lovely a thing. Then taking the sword by the cross-piece of its hilt, so that it hung pointing downwards, he held it out to Bran.