The Lad of the Gad

by Alan Garner

  And after that time he was under spells that he should not kill a musical harper for ever, except with his own harp.

  He heard weeping about the field. “Who is that?” he called.

  “Your three true foster-brothers,” they said, “looking for you from place to place today.”

  “I am stretched here,” he said, “blood and sinews and bones in torment.”

  “If we had the Great Dug of the World that the hag has, the mother of Dark of Dim,” they said, “we should not be long in healing you.”

  “She is dead herself up there,” he said, “and she has nothing you may not get.”

  And they said, “We are out of her spells for ever.”

  They brought down the Great Dug of the World and bathed him with the stuff that was in it, and he rose up, the Warrior of the Red Shield, as whole and as healthy as he had ever been. He went home with them, and they passed the night in pleasure.

  The next day, the three foster-brothers looked out and they saw the Warrior in the Wet Cloak, the Big Son of the Son of All, coming to the town. And he was their true foster-brother also.

  They went to meet him, and they said, “Man of my love, avoid us and the town this day.”

  “Why?” said the Big Son of the Son of All.

  “The Warrior of the Red Shield is here, and he is looking for you to kill you because of the fist that you put over the day you took the three teeth from the king’s mouth.”

  “Go home,” said the Big Son of the Son of All, “and tell him to run away and to flee, or else I shall take the head off him.”

  And although this was secret, the Warrior of the Red Shield knew: and he went out on the other side of the hall, and he struck a shield blow and a fight kindling.

  The Big Son of the Son of All went after him, and they began at one another.

  There was no trick done by shield man or skiff man

  Or with cheater’s dice

  That the heroes did not do:

  The pen trick, trick of nicking, trick of notches,

  The apple of the juggler throwing it catching it

  Into each other and their laps,

  Frightfully, furiously,

  Bloodfully, groaning, hurtfully,

  They would drive three red sparks from their armour,

  Driving from the shield wall, and flesh

  Of their breasts and tender bodies,

  As each one slaughtered the other.

  “Are you not silly?” said the Big Son of the Son of All, “To hold wrestle and combat against me?”

  “How am I silly?” said the Warrior of the Red Shield.

  “Because there is no warrior in the great world alive that can kill me till I am hit above the top of my britches,” said the Big Son of the Son of All. “And the king’s three teeth are in my pouch. Try if it will be you that shall take them out.”

  When the Warrior of the Red Shield heard where the Big Son of the Son of All kept his death, he had two blows for the blow, two stabs for the stab, and the third into the earth, till he had dug a hole. Then he jumped backwards.

  The Big Son of the Son of All, the Warrior in the Wet Cloak, sprang towards him, and did not see the hole, and he went down into it to the covering of his britches.

  Then the Warrior of the Red Shield reached to him and threw off his head. He put his hand in the pouch, and he found the king’s three teeth in it, and he took them with him and returned to the castle.

  “Make a way for me for the leaving of this island,” he said to his three true foster-brothers, “as soon as you can.”

  “We have no way by which you can leave,” they said. “Stay with us for ever, and you shall not want for meat and drink.”

  “Unless you make a way for me to go,” he said, “I shall take the heads and necks out of you.”

  “A coracle is here,” they said, “and we shall send it with you.”

  “How shall I go in it?” he said.

  “The side that you set the prow to, there it will go,” they said, “and the coracle will come back here of itself. And there are three pigeons for you, to keep you company: and they, too, will return.”

  He set the coracle out beyond the flames of the island, turned the prow to the known, the stern to the unknown, and made no stay till he came again to his own shore.

  And if the coracle was quick in coming, it was quicker in going, and he set free the three pigeons as he left the strange country: and he was sorry that he had let them away, for the music that they had was beautiful.

  There was now a great river between the Warrior of the Red Shield and the king’s house.

  When he reached the bank, he saw an old man.

  “Oh, sir, stay where you are,” said the old man, “until I take you over on my back, for fear the river should wet you.”

  “Are you the porter on the river?” said the Warrior of the Red Shield.

  “I am,” said the old man.

  “Who set you here?”

  “I shall tell you,” said the old man. “A warrior struck a fist on the king and drove out three teeth, and his two sons went to take vengeance. There went with them a foolish lad, a little young boy, that was son to me. And when they went to manhood, he went to faintness. It was a sorry thing for them to make me porter on the river for the sake of that.”

  “Poor man,” said the Warrior of the Red Shield, “that is no reproach. I myself was a lad before now. I shall not leave this town until you have justice.”

  The Warrior of the Red Shield seized and lifted the old man and set him sitting in the chair against the king’s shoulder.

  “Are you not silly?” said the Prince of Cairns. “To come to the town and to set that old wretch sitting at my father’s shoulder?”

  The Warrior of the Red Shield threw the Prince of Cairns against the earth and bound him straitly, painfully, and kicked him over the seven highest rafters that were in the hall, under the dripping of the torches and under the feet of dogs. And he did the same to the Prince of Blades.

  A treasure of a woman, seated by the king, gave a laugh.

  “Death wrappings upon you,” said the king. “My two sons saved you from the island of fire, and you have been meat and drink companion to me for a year, and I never saw smile or laugh from you till now, when my sons are being disgraced.”

  “King,” she said, “I have knowledge of my own.”

  “King,” said the Warrior of the Red Shield, “what is the screech of a scream that I have heard ever since I came to the town?”

  “My sons brought back three teeth,” said the king, “and they have been driving them into my head with a hammer every day for a year, until my head has gone through other with heartbreak and torture and pain. I think that they are the teeth of a horse.”

  “What would you give to a man that would put your own teeth into your head without hurt and without pain?” said the Warrior of the Red Shield.

  “Half my land while I am alive,” said the king, “and all my land together when I go.”

  The Warrior of the Red Shield sent for a can of water, and he put the teeth from out of his purse into the water.

  “Drink this,” he said to the king.

  The king drank, and his own teeth went into his head, firmly and strongly, as well as they ever were, and every one in the place where it had first grown.

  “I am at rest,” said the king. “It was you that did the deeds of adventure, not my set of sons.”

  “He is the one,” said the woman. “It was not your set of sons. They would be stretched to be seaweed seekers when he has gone to glory.”

  “Fetch faggots of grey oak,” said the king. “I shall not eat and I shall not drink and I shall not hear music till I see my two sons burnt tomorrow.”

  On the morning of the morrow, the earliest on his knee at the king’s bed was the Warrior of the Red Shield.

  “Rise from that,” said the king. “What could you ask of me that you would not get?”

  “King,” said the
Warrior of the Red Shield, “it would be better to let your sons go.”

  “Why?” said the king.

  And he said, “When I was the Lad of the Gad, no hero warrior was I, nor half a warrior, and the esteem of a warrior was not mine. I was to find death in a bog, or in rifts of rock, or in a land of holes or the shadow of a wall. But now I am the Warrior of the Red Shield, and I cannot be in any place where I may see the Prince of Cairns and the Prince of Blades both spoiled.”

  “What shall I do to them?” said the king.

  “Do bird clipping and fool clipping to them, and let them go.”

  The king was pleased. Bird clipping and fool clipping were done to them, and they were sent out, the dogs and big vagabonds after them, each a shorn one and bare alone.

  The treasure of a woman and the Warrior of the Red Shield were married, and agreed. And I left them dancing, and they left me, and I went away on a road of glass, over darkness and the foam of horses, till you found me sitting here within.

  Lurga Lom

  Have you heard of the fame and the name that belong to Lusca, son of Dolvath, son of Libren, son of Loman, son of Cas, son of Tag of the kindred of Irrua?

  One day the hero, the warrior son, went hunting on the Isle of Birds, to the north side of Irrua. He looked at the sea, and there was a boat coming to him with many striped sails on it. Lusca gripped his spear against the war hosts of the boat, but there came down a woman, alone, the most beautiful of women, and a red gold pin blazed at her shoulder.

  The woman said, “I set it as crosses and as spells, and as the decay of the year on you, that you put neither stop to your foot nor pillow to your head till you search all that is high and all that is low in the seven red rungs of eternity to find the place where I am in.”

  Then the woman went to the boat, and the boat moved away over the back-ridge of the waves and the strong waves of ocean and the mane of the sea, so that Lusca did not know into what part of water or of sky that woman had gone from him. He himself went home from the Isle of Birds to the Town of the Heads in Irrua and sat in his chair. He gave a sigh, and the chair split around him and broke.

  “It was the sigh of a man under crosses and spells broke that chair,” said his father.

  “It was,” said Lusca.

  “What is the cause of the sigh?” said his father.

  “The cause of the sigh is that a thing in a boat came over the sea today. And,” said Lusca, “I am in cow fetters to find her.”

  “I shall go with you,” said the big brother of Lusca.

  “I shall go, too,” said the little brother.

  “Let us meet our crosses and our spells,” said Lusca, “and put neither stop to our foot nor pillow to our head till we search all that is high and all that is low in the seven red rungs of eternity to find the place where the woman is in.”

  Lusca and his brothers built a ship:

  Every other plank

  Blue plank

  Red plank

  Green plank

  Black plank

  Yellow plank

  White plank:

  Tent to the deck

  Tent to the prow

  Tent to the stern:

  Weapons in the place of throwing,

  Gold in the place of giving.

  They took the good and the ill of it upon themselves, and put her out, and faced the flowing of the green sea.

  And after they had reached the closeness of the waves and the heel of ocean they were looking around them, and they were not long in this when they saw the shadow of a shower coming from the west and going to the east, and a warrior on a horse was in it. The warrior twisted the tail of the horse about the mast of the ship, and set off, riding up and down about the world, with the ship behind. Sea and land were one to him.

  “Go you,” said Lusca to his big brother, “and cut the tail through with your sword.”

  The big brother went, and neither blade nor edge would cut the tail.

  “Go you,” said Lusca to his little brother, “and cut the tail through with your sword.”

  The little brother went, and neither blade nor edge would cut the tail.

  “Try if you shall cut one hair,” said Lusca to his brothers, “and I shall cut the rest.”

  But neither blade nor edge would cut a hair of the hair of the enchanted tail, and behind that horse they journeyed for a year.

  On a day when they were travelling they saw a waterfall in the sky, and in it a venomous otter springing forward tremendously towards them through the waves. There was one kind of every kind of colour on her, her eyes flaming in her head, a blazing ball of fire in her throat. The warrior, when he saw the venomous otter, loosed the tail from the mast, the horse threw the water of the sea to the air, the venomous otter followed the horse, and they parted from the sons of the King of Irrua.

  Lusca sailed the ship onward for another year until he saw the bulk of a land and the making of an island far from them. He faced the prow to the island and drew the ship up her own seven lengths on dry dried land, and went with his brothers about and through the green isle, but nothing did they find before they came to the middle of the isle, where there was a white castle, but they found no one, alive or dead, except a very wondrous cat, and that cat was herself playing about the pillars of the hall.

  There was a table spread in the hall, and on it was every food that was better than another waiting for them; meat of each meat, draught of each drink; while in the air around there was a harp playing, but neither harp nor musical harper did Lusca and his brothers see.

  The next morning, when they prepared to go from the castle to the ship, the cat stood at the threshold and would not let them pass, and the brothers were a second night in the castle, with meat and drink and music, yet no one did they see. In the morning they rose, and the cat stood at the threshold, and they were a third night in the castle. The next morning the cat stood at the threshold, and Lusca said, “The cat will not part with us. Let us go.” So they went to their ship. “But I am sad,” said Lusca, “to leave without the story of the very wondrous cat.”

  Lusca and his brothers gathered the fruits of the island and came to their ship and were a year sailing over the strong sea till they came to another island and went on shore.

  There was music: there were crystal stones; lovely streams; noble tables at a kingly court. But no one did they find in it except a treasure of a woman, who, in shape and form and make, was like the one who had put crosses on Lusca. And when they met this woman she shed desperate showers of tears.

  “What news?” said Lusca.

  “What news from yourself?” said the woman.

  “I give you news without disputing,” said Lusca. He told her all the adventures until that time out.

  “And my news is this,” said the woman, and began to speak.

  “A crowned king there was in the Land of Speckled Peaks. His name was Yohy Sharp-arm, son of Maidin. He had to him no children but two daughters only, and even they had not the same mother. The first daughter was Bright-eyed Faylinn; and if there were to be a single king over the three plunder divisions of the world, she would be his match of a wife, for there was not in her own time a woman of better beauty than she.

  “The queen died, and Yohy Sharp-arm married another, the daughter of the King of Dreolann, and she bore him another daughter and no more. I am that daughter. Behinya is my name.

  “Then my mother grew hatred against Faylinn, and took her to swim by the waterfall of Eas Bomaine. When Faylinn was in the water, my mother worked enchantment on her and put her under crosses and spells to be a year in the shape of a beast, and a year in the shape of another beast, and to go, beast into beast, and year into year for ever, unless a man should find her in her own shape, for she is her own shape on one day of every year, to give her grief at every other. And if a man should find her in the shape of a cat he should claim her. There is no doubt but that you found my sister upon that island. Free Isle is the name pf that island itsel
f, and Faylinn is the Cat of the Free Isle. But you did not know her.”

  “And that same Bright-eyed Faylinn is the woman who has me under fetters of going and straying to find her,” said Lusca. “Is there no other way to fetch the woman?”

  “There is no other. Crosses on the top of water are not forgiven. But go from here quickly,” said Behinya. “This island belongs to one fearful-ugly-monstrous Fomor. Blacker than a coal of sally drowned in cold iced water is every joint and feature of the Great Man. There is nothing of him that is not black but his two eyes, and they are red. He holds me here. I have never seen of the people of the world, all the time I am on this island, but you alone. The day he stole me from my father’s court I asked him to do me no harm till the end of a year; and he has me for a year all but today, and, my friends,” she said, “go quickly from the Great Man. You will not escape from him without death.”

  “I would not take the gold of the world and not wait for tidings of the Fomor,” said Lusca.

  At once they saw him coming; the Fomor; the Great Man, This was the way of him.

  There were the skins of horned deer clashing on him

  And a thick iron club in his round hand.

  Seven sides upon the club,

  Edge of a razor on every side of seven,

  And seven chains about,

  An iron apple-knob on every chain of seven,

  And seven spikes about.

  He never left horror or wild creature

  Or senseless spectre in crag

  Or hollow or rock or river mouth

  That he did not rouse