The Grey King

by Susan Cooper

  “No,” Will said.

  “What, then?”

  Will beamed at him confidentially. “Nothing, really. They were just nonsense words that seemed to go with the tune. You know.”

  But the fish did not bite. Prichard’s eyes narrowed. He looked in a quick nervous movement up the valley towards the mountains, and then back at Will. He said abruptly, “I don’t like you, English boy. Something funny about you, there is. All this about songs and singing does not explain why you are standing here on my land.”

  “Taking a short cut, that’s all,” Will said. “I wasn’t hurting anything, honestly.”

  “Short cut, is it? From where to where? Your uncle’s land is all over there, where you came from, and nothing is on the other side of us except moor and mountain. Nothing for you. Go back to Clwyd, nightingale, back to your snivelling little friend who lost his dog. Off. Off out of here!” All at once he was shouting, the pudgy face dusky red. “Get out! Get out!”

  Will sighed. There was only one thing to be done. He had not wanted to risk attracting the closer attention of the Grey King, but it was impossible to leave the harp vulnerable to Caradog Prichard’s eye. The man was glaring at him now, clenching his fists in a fit of the same unaccountable vicious rage that Will had seen overtake him before. “Get out, I tell you!”

  There in the open field under the still, grey sky, Will stretched out one arm, with all five fingers stiff and pointing, and said a single quiet word. And Caradog Prichard was caught out of time, immobile, with his mouth half-open and his hand raised pointing, his face frozen in exactly the same ugly anger that had twisted it when he shot the dog Cafall. It was a pity, Will thought bitterly, that he could not be left that way forever.

  But no spell lasts forever, and most for only a short breath of time. Quickly Will went forward to the stone shelter, reached in between the bales of hay, and pulled out the gleaming little golden harp. One corner of its frame was caught on an old tattered sack left among the bales; impatiently he tugged both harp and sacking free, bundled them together under his arm. Then he moved round to stand behind Caradog Prichard. Once more he pointed a stiff-fingered hand at him, and spoke a single word. And Caradog Prichard, as if he had never intended to do anything else, plodded off across the field towards his farmhouse without once turning round. When he arrived there, Will knew, he would be convinced that he had gone straight home from the day’s work, and he would have not an ounce of memory of Will Stanton standing in a field singing to the sky.

  The plodding, paunchy form disappeared over the stile at the end of the field. Will untangled the old sack from the harp’s intricate golden frame, and was about to toss it aside when he realised how useful it would be as a covering; a nameless bundle under his arm could be explained away, if he should meet someone, rather more easily than a gleaming and obviously priceless golden harp. As he slid the harp carefully inside the sack, wrinkling his nose at the hay dust puffing out, a movement across the field caught his eye. He glanced up, and for a moment even the harp left his mind.

  It was the great grey fox, king of the milgwn, creature of the Brenin Llwyd, loping fast along the hedge. In sudden furious hatred Will flung out one pointing arm and shouted a word to stop it, and the big grey animal, no longer on its master’s land, tumbled backwards in mid-stride as if it had been snatched up by a sudden tremendous high wind. Picking itself up, it stood staring at Will, red tongue lolling. Then it lifted its long muzzle and gave one low howl, like a dog in trouble.

  “It’s no good calling,” said Will under his breath. “You can just stand there till I decide what to do with you.”

  But then, involuntarily, he shivered. The air seemed suddenly colder, and across the fields, all around him, he could see creeping in a low groundmist that he had not noticed before. Slowly it came pouring over the fences, relentless, like some huge crawling creature. From every direction it came, from the mountain, the valley, the lower slopes, and when Will looked back at the grey fox standing stiff-legged in the field, he saw something else that gave a chill of new terror to the mist. The fox was changing colour. With every moment, as he watched, its sleek body and bushy tail grew darker and darker, until it became almost black.

  Will stared, frowning. He thought irrelevantly, It looks just like Pen. And instantly he caught his breath, realising something that was not irrelevant at all—that it was John Rowlands’s dog Pen who, with Cafall, had been accused by Caradog Prichard of the sheep attacks made in reality by the foxes of the Grey King.

  Something immeasurably strong was pushing against him, breaking his own enchantment. Whilst Will stood for a moment confused and powerless, the big fox, now black as coal, gave its strange small exultant leap into the air, grinned deliberately at him, and was off, running swiftly across the field. It vanished through the far hedge, in the direction that Caradog Prichard had taken, towards his farm. Will knew exactly what was likely to happen when it got there, and there was nothing he could do. He was held back by the power of the Grey King, and reluctantly now he was facing an idea to which he had not given a thought before: the possibility that this power, much greater than his own, was in fact so great that he might never be able to accomplish his allotted quest.

  Setting his teeth, he gripped the shrouded harp beneath his arm and set off across the field towards Clwyd Farm. Carefully he slipped under the barbed wire edging the field, crossed the corner of the next, clambered over the stile leading into the lane. But all the time his steps grew slower and slower, his breathing more laboured. Somehow, there beneath his arm, the harp was growing heavier and heavier, until he could scarcely move for the weight of it. He knew that it was not a matter of his own weakness. Against his resistance, some great enchantment was giving to the precious Thing of Power in his arm a heaviness impossible for any human strength to support. Clutching at the harp, he gasped with pain at its impossible weight, and sank down with it to the ground.

  As he crouched there he raised his head and saw that the mist swirled everywhere round him now; all the world was grey-white, featureless. He stared into the mist. And gradually, the mist took shape.

  The figure was so huge that at first he could not realise it was there. It stretched wider than the field, and high into the sky. It had shape, but not recognisable earthly shape; Will could see its outline from the corner of his eye, but when he looked directly at any part of it, there was nothing there. Yet there the figure loomed before him, immense and terrible, and he knew that this was a being of greater power than anything he had ever encountered in his life before. Of all the Great Lords of the Dark, none was singly more powerful and dangerous than the Grey King. But because he had remained always from the beginnings of time in his fastnesses among the Cader Idris peaks, never descending to the valleys or lower slopes, none of the Old Ones had ever encountered him, to learn what force he had at his command. So now Will, alone, last and least of the Old Ones, faced him with no defence but the inborn magic of the Light and his own wits.

  A voice came from the misty shape, both sweet and terrible. It filled the air like the mist itself, and Will could not tell what language it spoke, nor whether it spoke to the hearing of the ears; he knew only that the things it said were instantly in his own mind.

  “You may not wake the Sleepers, Old One,” said the voice. “I will prevent you. This is my land, and in it they shall sleep forever, as they have slept these many centuries. Your harp shall not wake them. I will prevent you.”

  Will sat in a small crumpled heap, his arms across the harp he could no longer hold. “It is my quest,” he said. “You know that I must follow it.”

  “Go back,” said the voice, blowing through his mind like the wind. “Go back. Take the harp safely with you, a Thing of Power for the Light and your masters. I shall let you go, if you go back now and leave my land. You have won that much.” The voice grew harder, more chill than the mist. “But if you seek the Sleepers, I shall destroy you, and the golden harp as well.”

  �
��No,” Will said. “I am of the Light. You cannot destroy me.”

  “It will not differ greatly from destruction,” the voice said. “Come now. You know that, Old One.” It grew softer, more sibilant and nasty, as if caressing an evil thought; Will suddenly remembered the lord in the sky-blue robe.

  “The powers of the Dark and the Light are equal in force, but we differ a little in our . . . treatment . . . of those we may bring under our will.” The voice crawled like a slug over Will’s skin. “Go back, Old One. I shall not warn the Light again.”

  Summoning all his confidence, Will scrambled up, leaving the harp on the ground at his feet. He made a mocking little bow to the grey mistiness that he knew, now, he must not look at directly. “You have given your warning, Majesty,” he said, “and I have heard it. But it will make no difference. The Dark can never turn the mind of the Light. Nor may it hinder the taking of a Thing of Power, once it has been rightly claimed. Take your spell off the golden harp. You have no right to touch it with enchantment.”

  The mist swirled darker; the voice grew colder, more remote. “The harp is not spellbound, Old One. Take it from the sack.”

  Will bent down. He tried once more to pick up the sacking-wrapped harp, but it would not move; it might have been a rock rooted deep in the land. Then he pulled the sacking aside to uncover the harp, and took it up, and the shining gold thing came into his hand as lightly as ever it had.

  He looked down at the sack. “There is something else there.”

  “Of course,” said the Grey King.

  Will ripped the half-rotted sacking so that it lay open; it still seemed quite empty, as it had from the first. Then he noticed in one fold a small highly polished white stone, no bigger than a pebble. He bent to pick it up. It would not move.

  He said slowly, “It is a warestone.”

  “Yes,” the voice said.

  “Your warestone. A channel for the Dark. So that when it is left in a certain place, you may know all that is happening in that place, and may put into it your will to make other things happen. It was hidden in that old sack all the time.” A sudden memory flickered in his mind. “No wonder I lost my hold on the fox of the milgwn.”

  Out of the mist, laughter came. It was a terrifying sound, like the first rattle of an avalanche. Then instead, and worse, the voice came whispering. “A warestone of the Dark has no value for the Light. Give it me.”

  “You had put it on Caradog Prichard’s farm,” Will said. “Why? He is your creature anyway, you have no need of a warestone for him.”

  “That fool is none of mine,” the Grey King said contemptuously. “If the Dark showed itself to him he would melt with fear like butter in the sun. No, he is not of the Dark. But he is very useful. A man so wrapped in his own ill-will is a gift to the Dark from the earth. It is so easy to give him suitable ideas. . . . Very useful, indeed.”

  Will said quietly, “There are such men, of an opposite kind, who unwittingly serve the Light too.”

  “Ah,” said the voice slyly, “but not so many, Old One. Not so many, I think.” It sharpened again, and the mist swirled colder. “Give me the warestone. It will not work against you, but neither will it work for you. It will always cleave to the earth at the touch of the Light—as would a warestone of yours, if you had one, at my touch.”

  “I have no need of one,” Will said. “Certainly no need of yours. Take it.”

  “Stand away. I shall take it and be gone. And if in one night and one day you are not also gone, from this my land, you will cease to exist by the standards of men, Old One. You shall not hinder us, not with your six Signs nor your harp of gold.” The voice rose and swelled suddenly like a high wind. “For our time is almost come, in spite of you, and the Dark is rising, the Dark is rising!”

  The words roared through Will’s mind as the mist swirled dark and chill round his face, obscuring everything, even the ground beneath his feet. He could no longer see the harp, but only feel it clutched close in both his arms. He staggered giddily, and a terrible chill struck into all the length of his body.

  Then it was gone. And he stood in the lane between the hedges, with the harp clasped to his chest, and the valley was clear all about him under the grey sky, and at his feet an empty piece of old sacking lay.

  Shakily Will bent and wrapped the harp again, and set off for Clwyd Farm.

  He slipped upstairs to his room to hide the harp, calling a greeting to Aunt Jen. She called back over her shoulder without turning, stirring a pot carefully at the stove. But when Will came downstairs again, the big kitchen seemed full of people. His uncle and Rhys were roving restlessly about, faces taut with concern. John Rowlands had just come through the door.

  “Did you see him?” Rhys burst out anxiously to Rowlands.

  John Rowlands’s weather-lined brown face gained a few extra lines as his eyebrows rose. “Who should I have seen?”

  David Evans pulled out a chair and dropped wearily into it. He sighed. “Caradog Prichard was outside just now. There is no end to this madness. He claims that another of his sheep was worried by a dog this afternoon—killed, this one. He says that it happened right there in his yard, again, and that he and his wife saw everything. And he swears up and down that the dog was Pen.”

  “Waving his gun about, he was, the damn lunatic,” Rhys said angrily. “He would have shot the dog for sure, if you and Pen had been here. Thank God you were not.”

  John Rowlands said mildly, “I am surprised he was not waiting for us at the gate.”

  “I told him you were out late on the mountain, after some ewes,” said Will’s uncle, his neat head bent, despondent. “No doubt the fool will be out there looking for you.”

  “Shoot a sheep, he will, I shouldn’t be surprised,” John Rowlands said. “If he can find the black ewe, that is.”

  But David Evans was too shaken to smile. “Let him do that, and I will have him off to Tywyn police station, dogs or no dogs. I don’t like it, John Rowlands. The man is acting as if . . . I don’t know, I really think that his wits have begun to turn. Raving, he was. Dogs killing sheep is a bad thing, heaven knows, but he was acting as wild as if it was children had been killed. If he had had children. I think it is as well he has not.”

  “Pen has been with me all day, without a break,” John Rowlands said, his deep voice tranquil.

  “Of course he has,” said Rhys. “But Caradog Prichard would not believe that even if he had watched you every minute of the day with his own eyes. He is that bad. And he will be back tomorrow, there is no doubt at all.”

  “Perhaps Betty Prichard will be able to make him see reason before then,” Aunt Jen said. “Though she has never had much luck before, goodness knows. He must be a hard man to be married to, that one.”

  John Rowlands looked at Will’s uncle. “What shall we do?”

  “I don’t know,” David Evans said, shaking his head morosely. “What do you think?”

  “Well,” John Rowlands said, “I was thinking that if you are not using the Land-Rover in the morning, I might go very early up the valley and leave Pen for a few days with Idris Jones Ty-Bont.”

  Will’s uncle lifted his head, his face brightening for the first time. “Good. Very good.”

  “Jones Ty-Bont owes you a favour, for borrowing the tractor this summer. He is a good fellow anyway. And one of his dogs is from the same litter as Pen.”

  “That is a very good idea,” Rhys said simply. “And we are out of plugs for the chain saw. You can pick one up in Abergynolwyn coming back.”

  Rowlands laughed. “All settled, then.”

  “Mr. Rowlands,” Will said. “Could I come too?”

  They had not noticed he was there; heads turned in surprise to where he stood on the stairs.

  “Come and welcome,” John Rowlands said.

  “That would be nice,” Aunt Jen said. “I was just thinking yesterday that we hadn’t taken you to Tal y Llyn yet. That’s the lake, up there. Idris Jones’s farm is right next to it.�
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  “Caradog Prichard will not dream that the dog might be there,” said David Evans. “It will give him time to cool off.”

  “And if the sheep-killing goes on—” Rhys said. Deliberately he left the sentence hanging.

  “There’s a thought now,” Will’s aunt said. “We must make sure Caradog thinks Pen is still here. Then if he sees Pen with his own eyes savage a sheep again tomorrow, there will be a quick answer for him.”

  “Good, then,” John Rowlands said. “Pen is at home having his supper, I think I will go and join him. We will leave at five-thirty, Will. Caradog Prichard is not the earliest riser in the world.”

  “Perhaps young Bran would like to go with you, being a Saturday,” said David Evans, leaning back relaxed now in his chair.

  “I don’t think so,” Will said.

  The Pleasant Lake

  Will expected to be the only one stirring in the house, at five in the morning, but his Aunt Jen was up before him. She gave him a cup of tea, and a big slab of homemade bread and butter.

  “Cold out there, early,” she said. “You’ll do better with something inside you.”

  “Bread and butter tastes five times as good here as anywhere else,” said Will. Glancing up as he chewed, he saw her watching him with a funny, wry half-smile.

  “The picture of health you are,” she said. “Just like your big brother Stephen, at your age. Nobody would guess how ill you were, not so long ago. But my goodness me, it’s not exactly a rest cure we’ve been giving you. The fire, and all this business with the sheep-killing—”

  “Exciting,” said Will, muffled, through a mouthful.

  “Well, yes,” said Aunt Jen. “Indeed, in a place where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, usually, from one year’s end to the next. I think I have had enough excitement to be getting along with, for now.”