by Mary Brown
The fish were delicious and fed all of us, one way and another, although in truth they were but one man's dinner, but I made oatcakes to go with them for Conn and myself, and we had the snow-fed waters of the stream to wash them down. That night we found an old barn and slept warm and dry in the last of the winter hay and woke early, for though none of us said so, I think we all felt that the end of our search was near. And as we walked that day it seemed that spring walked with us, or ran a little ahead and turned and beckoned so that we had no need to ask the way, and all our aches and pains were smoothed away and we paced as if in a dream . . .
And so we came to the barrier.
"We can't get through there," said Conn, scratching his head. "Not without an axe or two," for our way was blocked by a tangle of briars and thorns well above man-height. "We shall have to go round," and indeed the track we had been following branched off to the left and right as though there had never been a way through, though the barrier seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see without a break.
"But that's the way," I said, pointing ahead, as sure as eggs, though I could not have explained why.
"It can't be," said Conn. "You must be wrong. There's nothing behind there, there can't be . . ."
"There is," I insisted. "I'm sure of it. Come on," and without thinking I walked forward straight into—and through—the thorny mass, just as if it hadn't been there. Snowy followed by my side, the others on his back, but when we found ourselves on the other side and I turned to look for Conn, I found he had not followed us.
"Bother!" I said. "Conn?" Faintly, very faintly, I heard him call back, as though he were on the other side of a house, for the thorn hedge had closed behind us as though there had never been a way through. "I shall have to go back for him," I said, and started forward, but this time I merely scratched my hands and arms, for the thorns would not give way. I shook the branches frantically, but try as I would they did not shift, and all the time I could hear Conn calling, calling . . . Bursting into tears I tore and pulled at the thicket till I was covered in scratches, but it was no good.
Rushing over to Snowy I clasped him round the neck. "Help me, dear one, help me!"
He breathed gently down my neck. "There is no way back, only forward. He can come to you, but you cannot return to him. You will have to use your mind, make him believe he can walk through, just as we did . . . Concentrate: call him to you."
"Call him?" But even as I questioned I knew what to do. Kneeling down I heeled my palms over my eyes till all was blackness and dug my fingers into my ears till all was silence and thought hard of Conn, conjuring him up in my mind from feet to crown of head and then walking towards him in my mind, back through the hedge, till I stood again by his side and held out my hand.
"Come," I said. "Come with me. Don't be afraid . . ."
But he looked at me as though I were someone different.
"I cannot go through there: it is solid. Must be five or six feet thick."
"It's not there," I said. "Not there. It's an illusion . . . Close your eyes, take my hand, and believe!"
And I took his hand and led him through the way I had come.
"What on earth—Are you all right, Thingy?"
I opened my eyes and they hurt with sunlight and I took my fingers from my ears and they rang, and there was Conn coming across the grass towards us. I stumbled to my feet and hobbled towards him.
"I'm fine . . . You all right?"
"Think so . . . Extraordinary thing: one moment I thought I'd lost you all, and then there was this gap—What is this place?"
We were standing in a glade, full of sun and sound and smell. To our left was the hedge we had come through, but already it seemed some distance away, and between it and us there were trees, some blossoming, some in full leaf, others with the tints of autumn and bearing scarlet and yellow fruit. Before us a meadow, full of daisies and buttercups and clover and blue, white and yellow butterflies. Beyond that was what I thought might be the sea, now sparkling and blue, with little white lines dancing towards the shore. To the right were more trees, a wood of conifer, all greens from black to yellow. Squirrels ran up and down the trunks and along the branches, nuts in their mouths, and tall ferns rustled as deer came out from the shadows and sniffed the air and gazed at us, their furred ears swinging back and forth, their tails wagging. Behind us a little spring gushed out of the rock and ran away, disappearing into a shallow pool. And by the spring was a cave, and at the mouth of the cave lines of strata where martlet and martin bubbled and chattered. And I could hear the sea and the trees and the birds and the bees and the wind in the grass and smell pine and ripe apples and clover and—
And on a rock-seat in front of the cave, apparently asleep, sat the largest owl I had ever seen.
"It's an illusion," I said, but I wasn't quite sure.
"Not all of it," said Conn, plucking and scrunching a rosy apple from a nearby tree.
Snowy was cropping the short, sweet grass and, reassured, I lifted down Puddy, who made for the stones by the pond; next I put Moglet down, and she was off batting at butterflies in a blink, but never quite catching them. I carried Pisky over to the pond and submerged his crock. "There," I said. "I think it's all right . . ." Corby had not waited: turning over a pile of leaves he had found some grubs, or what looked like grubs.
"Have an apple," said Conn, already on his second, but I shook my head. At my feet the runners of a strawberry were thick with tiny pointed, scarlet fruit which burst in my mouth in an explosion of delight.
But things were just not right: they looked as they should, felt as they should, tasted and sounded as they should, but where in the world would you find a place that held all seasons as one? The promise of spring blossom, the warmth of summer sunshine, the fulfilment of autumn's apples, the consolation of winter's conifers . . . But it didn't feel bad, not as though it were an enchantment to thrall us into evil: there must be an explanation.
I looked around me again for some sort of clue to these contradictions. My friends seemed to find nothing strange in the situation: they were peaceful and happy enough for the moment. I supposed I was meant to be too, but somehow I felt annoyed with whatever-it-was for presuming I could be so easily lulled into compliant acceptance of the situation. For something to do I picked and ate another strawberry, appreciating its tart sweetness, the gritting of pips in my mouth. One got stuck between my teeth, and I nudged it loose with my tongue; if anything were designed to convince one that life was normal a pip between one's teeth was the thing . . .
I felt a tickly feeling between my shoulder blades and whirled round: the owl was shutting his eyes again.
"All right," I said. "Explain!"
But the bird remained silent, eyes firmly shut, feathers fluffed, just as we had first seen him. I was sure now that I was right so I marched up to where he was sitting in the bright sunshine on that throne-like chair, and addressed him again. "I know you're foxing," I told him. "Tawnys don't sit out like that in the sunshine at midday. And all the rest of this," I waved my hand, "is just too perfect. So, bird, tell me what all this is about or I'll—I'll break your blasted neck!"
There was a little silence. The others left off eating or playing and came up behind me, Pisky swimming up the stream to where the spring gushed out, Corby wiping his feathers with his beak, Puddy damp, Moglet with pollen on her flanks, Conn with an applecore in his hand, Snowy smelling of new grass.
The owl opened one eye. "Just try it, that's all: just try it!"
He closed the eye again. He had spoken so Conn and I could understand, man-speech, but even as I registered this I realized he had also answered so the others could understand as well, the different sounds and attitudes echoing one behind the other with the fraction of a second between so that only I, and most probably Snowy, would know this was some kind of magic. I shook my head: only one way to deal with this. I did the same thing, talked so they could all understand, but whereas the owl had talked to each in their indiv
idual speech, I just used human speech and the special language my friends used. It was still like trying to do five things at once.
"I will, don't think I won't! We haven't travelled all this way to find a magician, a wise man, just to be put off by apples and strawberries and—and things! Now then, I know this is the right place, so please tell us where we may find your master?"
The owl opened his eyes again, and now they were full open, considering. "What business have you with The Ancient?"
"That's ours to say, to him. Tell your master we are here!" I sounded bold, but inside I was shaking. For the last few minutes—hours?—since we had arrived, ever since we had come across the thorny hedge in fact, I had seemed to assume charge, and now I realized how that was entirely against my nature; with Conn and Snowy so much better qualified than I, the strain began to tell. So I repeated what I had just said, but my voice was uncertain, to my ears anyway. "Tell him we're here . . ."
The owl shifted on his perch. "You're too late."
"Too late?"
"Too-hoo late. By about two-hoo hundred years . . ."
"What do you mean?" But even as I spoke I could feel the frustration, the despair of having walked so many, many miles for nothing, and my stomach contracted as it used to when we were with the witch, and it seemed the others were similarly affected, for I heard a curse from Corby, a wail from Moglet and sympathetic noises from the others, echoing my distress.
"Do you mean, by all the saints, that we've come all this way for nothing?" began Conn angrily, and it was only Snowy who said nothing, his large, dark eyes switching from me to the owl and back again. Somehow this gave me confidence, and I looked hard at the fluffy bird again. There was something cloudy, undefined about the area behind him, something not quite right . . .
"You say your master died—er, two hundred years ago? Can you prove this?" I spoke carefully, politely.
"Why, of course! Come this way," and he waved an inviting wing.
Conn had learnt enough about my friends by now to go back for Pisky's bowl without being asked, and we all followed the owl as he flew into the cave. Inside it was light, dry and airy, about twenty feet long by ten or twelve wide; torches burned quietly in sconces and there was no need for the owl to indicate a recess in the right-hand corner, for we could not have missed it.
Behind a kind of crystal curtain hung a suit of clothes, enclosing a skeleton. The clothes were ornate, jewel-encrusted, richly embroidered; the skeleton was—a skeleton, with a few wisps of greying hair still adhering to the skull. Though there can have been no wind behind that curtain, yet the whole thing swayed, very gently, back and forth.
The owl waved his wing again. "There you see the mortal remains of my dearly beloved master, trapped into a living death by a treacherous maiden," he intoned. "Here he wasted away, imprisoned by the webs you see fastening his legs and arms, enchanted by the power of a woman's wiles. For weeks he endured, railing against his fate, but at last he succumbed . . ." The owl wiped his eye, visibly affected. "With his last breath he forgave the errant maid who enslaved him, and now his remains are a reminder to mortal man that even the greatest may not be proof against female pulchritude and greed . . ."
It might have been a servant showing unexpected guests around a castle in the owner's absence, and I didn't believe a word of it. Conn, on our travels, had sometimes beguiled us with folk tales and legends, and among the latter I remembered various episodes in the life of one Artorius, a Romano-Saxon king of Wessex and his magician friend Myrddin of Cymri—but even Conn sometimes mixed these tales with others about an Arthur Pendragon of the Old Lands and a shaman of Scotia called Merlon—and although all these tales bore some similarity and indeed did have a treacherous maiden in them, sometimes it was the king who fell foul of her and other times the magician, so this hotch-potch of the owl's was obviously meant to beguile the superstitious into connecting a very-present enchantment with something that happened, or might have happened, two hundred years ago, and was obviously intended to deter us from further inquiries, pack ourselves up and go away.
But I had no intention of going away; here we were and here we stayed until we got some of the right answers, at least. I would have to be careful, though, and play it just right.
"Thank you, O Guardian of the late-lamented One," I said, bowing to the owl. "May we now go back outside? I find this sad atmosphere somewhat oppressive, and I am sure my companions do also," and I rushed back into the open, hoping for a glimpse of that shadowy something I thought I had detected behind the owl. Nothing. Still . . .
"What the hell are you doing?" queried Conn, but I turned my back to the cave and gave him a big wink.
"Trust me . . ." I turned to the owl, back once more on his perch on the stone. "May I question you a little further before we gather up our belongings and take our leave of this fair place?"
"But of course," said the owl, fluffing up his feathers and mollified, no doubt, by my obsequious tone. "Pray proceed."
"Your master (rest his soul) has been dead—or in this state in which we found him—for two hundred years, you said?"
"Alas yes, almost to the day. And many the pilgrims, like yourselves, who have passed this way to marvel and to mourn . . ."
"Alack-a-day," I said, and bowed my head. "It is the world's loss . . . Men say he could have been the greatest sorcerer and magician since the world began—"
"The greatest," asserted the owl, nodding his head wisely. "Indubitably."
"Yet I question this," I said. "Tell me—"
"Question it?" said the owl in a different voice. I looked again: yes, I was not mistaken. There was a sort of greyish, wavery background to the bird.
"Yes," I hurried on, for I was almost sure now: "for I have heard of other such who gave counsel and comfort to the great ones of the land who were accounted less great than this Ancient One we came to seek, and then lived their allotted span and passed away amid scenes of universal grief: they did not succumb to mortal wiles, they—"
"My master was greater far than these—these minor tricksters you speak of," said the owl, and he was definitely becoming more ruffled. "My master is—was—the greatest sorcerer the world has ever seen! Master of the Art of Illusion, Traveller in Time, Licentiate of Language, Far-Seer . . . Why, he was a man so great that the kings of the world came to him on bended knee asking him to solve their problems, work out their battle strategy, choose their companions, and would not rest until he had seen them and given them the benefit of his experience. It's not my fault if they didn't listen . . ."
I pretended not to hear this last. "Yet he succumbed to a bronze-coin's-worth of tawdry female," I said warmly. "Just like any other male. No magician worth his salt would even admit to—"
"Do you dare to question The Ancient?"
"Oh, I don't question his mortality, his frailty: I do question, yes, whether he ever was the great magician he claimed to be!"
"Not claimed to be: is! Er . . . was."
"No! For no magician as great as that could possibly behave as vulnerably as you say; no sorcerer with his reputation could be so reduced by a mere woman—" I moved closer. "And no Master of Illusion worth anything could resist the temptation to try and con ordinary people into believing he was dead and gone, if only because he was too lazy to—"
"Lazy!" came an indignant voice. "I've never been accused of being lazy all my life! And I am the greatest!"
"Then stop mucking about, Ancient or whatever you call yourself," I said.
"Right! You've asked for it," he said, and materialized behind the owl.
The Gathering
The Ancient
“You've asked for it!" repeated The Ancient crossly, swatting at the owl, who fluttered onto his shoulder and shut its eyes again. "I'm not used to visitors, don't want visitors! Anyway, you've come too soon—stop digging your claws in, Hoowi!—and I'm not ready . . ." and he went on grumbling and grousing to himself, a seamed old man with nut-brown wrinkles, bright blue eyes,
long white hair and a longer tri-forked beard dyed yellow, red and blue. He wore a lopsided paper crown that kept slipping to one side, a mothy green velvet cloak edged with tarnished gold braid, and what looked like a rather lived-in yellow-woolly night robe. His feet were shoved in scuffed purple slippers; his fingernails looked chewed, although what teeth he had were decidedly rocky. His voice was high, nasal and singsong; not lilting like Conn's. His nose was rather large and definitely hooked; his ears stuck out, and behind the one that wasn't saving the paper crown was a quill pen; round his neck hung a rope of blue glass beads.
"Done weighing me up?" he snapped, but I fancied the snap was as harmless as an old dog threatening flies.
I bowed: time for politeness and diplomacy. I had tried him very hard and he had let me, but I thought that so far he was merely amusing himself, pretending wrath merely to see me crumple at his feet in awe. My bow extended so far I could almost bump my forehead with my knees, for this man was an unknown quantity.
"Dear Sir," I began. "Am I correct in supposing that we have reached journey's end? That I am, in fact, addressing The Ancient, a magician and sorcerer without parallel, whose reputation reaches far across the land?"
"That's not what you said two minutes ago . . ."
"Ah, but then you were playing games with us. I may have seemed presumptuous, but I assure you it was the presumption of desperation. We have come so far, and it has been such a hard journey, and we are so—so in need of your help . . ." My voice quavered: I couldn't help it.