Remembering the way the cwidder seemed to play his thoughts, Moril set himself to imagine Tholian’s noose pulling and twisting Kialan into that unnatural position. It was horrible. His arms ached and sweat dropped out from under his hair. He thought fiercely, This must stop! and gently touched the slack bottom string.
It chimed like a soft, deep bell. Moril braced himself against the humming, but it did not come. Its effect, though it was not at all what he expected, was on Kialan alone. He saw Kialan’s head suddenly drop and his knees give. He did not move, and it was clear that only the ropes were holding him up. Terrified, Moril clapped his hand across the string and stopped it vibrating.
Brid rounded on Moril with tears whisking down her cheeks. “You stupid idiot! You’ve killed him!”
“Shut up!” Moril whispered, anxiously watching both Kialan and the soldiers just beyond him. “They’ll realize. Look. He’s breathing. He’s only passed out.”
“But what about the ropes?” Brid whispered.
Moril shook his head. “I can’t. I was trying to. I think I can only make it work on people.”
One of the soldiers turned and saw Kialan sagging. When Tholian came back from talking to the captains, they pointed Kialan out to him. Tholian simply shrugged and passed by on his way somewhere else.
“I hate Tholian!” said Brid.
Moril said nothing. He knelt on the ground, nursing his cwidder, thinking as he had never thought in his life before. The soldiers, meanwhile, looked at one another, looked around to see how far away Tholian was, and undid the noose from Kialan’s hands, so that Kialan slid to his knees with his head hanging almost upside down.
“Look, Moril,” Brid whispered. “You did undo the ropes, sort of.”
Moril had seen perfectly well, though he gave no sign of it. He was as alert as he had been in the jail in Neathdale. He could have told Brid exactly how many captains, troops, and horsemen there were in the part of the valley they could see. He was aware of every time a group of new recruits came marching in, and how many came in each group. Four groups arrived while he knelt and thought and while Kialan hung in a heap, head downward. Moril saw that they did not come by the road, but down through the woods, to keep their mustering secret. He also saw that almost every new arrival was miserable. They trailed their feet and held their heads at that sullen angle Kialan and Dagner had both held theirs when they knew they were caught. He could see that few of them had joined Tholian’s army willingly. But he was thinking, thinking. For he was sure that the cwidder he was hugging on his knees was capable of saving all three of them and getting them North with news of Tholian’s army. He knew how it could be done. The only thing he did not know was how to call up the power in the cwidder to do it.
Since it was his thoughts the cwidder responded to, Moril tried to understand how he might feed his entire self through it into the enormous power he knew was needed. His father had said Moril was in two halves. “Come together,” Clennen had said, “and there’s no knowing what you might do.” Moril supposed Clennen had meant the way Moril was incorrigibly dreamy and also unbelievably alert at times, just as he was now. But as Kialan had noticed, he was often both at the same time, unless he went vague in self-defense. Moril thought that could not quite be it.
But there was another way he was in two halves. His mother was a Southern aristocrat, and his father a freedom-fighting singer from the North. As Dagner had said, there was no doubt it was a weird mixture. It was cold and hot, strict and free, restrained and outspoken, all at once. The trouble was, this did not quite add up to Moril. He did not think he had inherited much from his Southern ancestry—certainly none of the unfeeling tyranny that made his distant cousin Tholian so detestable.
But Tholian’s calm cruelty had, in a horrible way, reminded him of Lenina. Moril remembered Kialan saying, “Your mother’s a cool one.” And that was it, of course. Lenina never lost her head, and neither did Moril. He knew that, if Brid had only let him, he could coolly have led Tholian to believe that none of them had ever set eyes on Kialan, just as Lenina might have done. Keeping your head was part of the strict standard of the South. It was the same strict standard that had kept Lenina so loyal to Clennen, even though she hated life in the cart and disagreed with the freedom fighting. And Moril saw that it was the same kind of strict loyalty that had brought him North—only, with him, it was loyalty to the North.
After this followed something very uncomfortable, which Moril would not have faced if he had not had such a pressing need to use the cwidder. He had to admit he had deserted Lenina. He had gone off and left her when she had been trying to make them happy. He hoped he had not made her too unhappy, because he knew that seeing Tholian in Markind had only given him the excuse he had been looking for to go North. And going off like that, he had been trying to deny the Southern part of him—all the strict, honorable things which were the good aspect of the South. It did not do to deny them, even though he thought he had been doing it out of loyalty to Clennen.
Then he tried to find out what he had got from Clennen. Goodness knew what strange blood the singers came from. They could all sing and play. They saw a little more than most people, and some of them dreamed dreams. But Moril knew that all he had got from Clennen himself were ideas of freedom and his love of the North. The rest was the common stock of the singers.
The puzzling part was that these two halves added up to three quite different people: Brid, Dagner, and Moril. Brid had Lenina’s sharpness and some of Lenina’s efficiency, and she had Clennen’s love of an audience, without Clennen’s gifts—though she thought she had them. Dagner had far more of the gifts, but he had all Lenina’s reserve, and more. In fact, it had been very much in Lenina’s manner that Dagner had set off North to finish Clennen’s work for him, knowing he had not the personality to do it. None of them had inherited the largeness that made Clennen what he was. And why had Clennen not told Brid or Dagner they were in two halves?
Moril found himself suddenly at a dead end. He saw he would have to get at the cwidder’s power some other way. He had to. The third batch of recruits had just arrived. The valley was filling with soldiers, and the North did not know. And the Earl of Hannart would not dare move because of Kialan. And Moril knew Kialan was actively in danger from Tholian. Tholian passed several times, and each time he looked at Kialan’s hanging body as if he wanted it awake and writhing.
Moril thought of the cwidder itself. Though Osfameron could use it on things, it seemed that Moril was only going to make it have an effect on people. That was right for music, in a way. You performed, and people listened and were affected by it. So what did you put into a performance to bring out the power?
Moril did not know. He had only the vaguest idea what he had done to make Kialan unconscious. All right, he thought. What didn’t my father do, that he could never use the power more than once? And he thought of Clennen, from day to day, as he had known him, huge, genial, and sociable—and boring Kialan stiff by telling the same story three times over. He thought of the way Clennen had been the Porter, quite openly, enjoying deceiving people by the simple fact that he did it all in public, as obviously as possible. Kialan had been positive that this was what Clennen enjoyed particularly. Then Moril thought of Clennen saying “Remember that” so often—almost as if he hoped one of them might write all his sayings down one day. Perhaps Brid would, Moril thought, smiling a little. Then he remembered a particular saying of Clennen’s, the day they picked Kialan up. Clennen had said the cart was like life. “You may wonder what goes on inside, but what matters is the look of it and the kind of performance we give.” Later on Clennen had asked Dagner about another saying, and Dagner had got this one wrong. “Something about life being only a performance,” Dagner had said.
And that was it, Moril thought. Clennen was all performance. Layers of performance. He was the best singer in Dalemark and he used it to play the Porter, and he was the Porter because he was using his sincere feelings about freedom to play
the singer—to and fro, over and under, Clennen had performed, even to his own family. His whole life had said, “Look at me!” He had known he was a performer, and he had used that knowledge, just as Brid had used her real sorrow to perform with in Neathdale. But he could not use the cwidder. It was not going to say, “Look at me!” It did not work like that.
If you did not say, “Look at me!” what was the right way? With a joyous feeling of being on the right track, Moril thought of Dagner next. Kialan had called what was really Dagner’s performance “a different kind of show.” Moril felt warmly grateful to Kialan. Kialan pointed things out. If only because of this, Kialan deserved to be rescued and taken back to the warm-hearted, cocksure, outspoken North where he belonged.
But Dagner—Dagner had been diffident. He had never said, “Look at me!” because he was shy when people did. What he did was to show people his thoughts—a little—in his songs. “Look here,” he seemed to say. “Excuse me. This is what I think. I hope you like it.” And people did like it—not in the way they appreciated Clennen but as if they had been told something new.
Moril knew he was unable—at least for the present—to make something new, just as he was unable to use his real feelings for show, like Brid. That left the old songs, Moril’s own specialty. Did they help? Yes, they did—thanks to Kialan again. Kialan, just this morning, had sung that song of the Adon’s, and it might have been made about this very cwidder! Unbounded truth! Moril thought, in rising excitement. Not a thing cramped to time and bound in place! Neither was the cwidder when its power was used.
He had it, then. You performed. But you did not say “Look at me!” Nor could you say, like Dagner, “This is what I think.” If Dagner’s diffident way had been right, Clennen would have given the cwidder to Dagner. No. You had to stand up and come straight out with it. “This is true,” you had to say. “This is the truth. And, though I may not get it over very well, it just is.” And it was horribly difficult to do.
Moril blinked a little, nerving himself up. The fourth group of new recruits was shuffling its way through the valley, and Tholian was coming back again. With him were the same hearthmen who had been with him by the lake. They all had the same unpleasant look of purpose, too. When they reached Kialan, Tholian jabbed at him with the toe of his boot. Kialan flopped.
“Bring him round,” he said. “He’s going to write me a letter presently.” Then he looked across at Brid and Moril, and his eyes were like an owl’s caught in a strong light at night. They knew he had no intention of sending them back to Markind.
“Moril,” Brid said humbly, “do you think you can do anything?”
Moril scrambled stiffly to his feet, carefully not bumping the cwidder. “I’m going to try,” he said, and began to play.
He started with a little sequence of chords, repeated over and over, in a rocking rhythm. He had to start slowly, while he found the thought the cwidder would respond to. He was terrified that Tholian would realize what he was trying to do and stop him, but, though all the men round Kialan glanced irritably at Moril, they obviously had no idea that he was doing anything important. Moril’s fear faded. “Not all of you are bad,” he told them through the cwidder. “Some are just afraid, others are not good, and you are doing wrong.” Over and over, he told it.
And to his relief, the cwidder began to hum under his hands. He had got it right. Moril could feel the power gather in it and then, slowly, go humming out over Tholian and his men, right off down the valley, and turn the corner to the part out of sight. The movements of everyone he could see grew slack and a little aimless, and Tholian yawned. Moril thrummed on. He would have rejoiced, except that he knew he was going to have to bring the lowest string in soon, and he was afraid of it. If its power ate into his own head this time, that was the end of his plan. Cautiously he struck it. Sleep, it sang, heavily sweet, off down the valley, following the humming path of the power he had already built up. Sleep. Tholian’s head turned slowly, and he looked at Moril, mistily puzzled. Moril himself was wide awake. He knew it was all right. He had been caught in the power before because he had simply been thinking No, no, no! without meaning anything else. Now he meant Sleep, all you out there.
Tholian seemed to understand what Moril was doing. He came slowly toward Moril, lurching as if he was very tired. “Break that blessed thing!” he said. His voice was slurred, but he was fighting the cwidder’s power for all he was worth.
Quickly Moril passed into a proper tune, a lullaby.
“Go back to the time
When your feelings were blind
When they rocked you and sang
Go to sleep.”
If Moril had thought about it, he would have realized he was in fact making up something new. But he did not notice, because all he wanted to do was to put Tholian to sleep. The lullaby was like a gust of power. It held Tholian to the spot. Tholian knew what was happening, but he was helpless. Moril played the tune again, louder, and took pleasure in holding Tholian in place while the tune swept beyond him, out into the valley.
Tholian rubbed his eyes and tried to take a grip on himself. Beyond him, the men round Kialan yawned and the marching and cursing in the valley faded away. The air was clear for the full force of the song, and Moril gave it to them. Go to sleep. It went down the valley in slow waves, washing first over Tholian, then on and out. Tholian’s eyelids drooped, his knees bent, and he dropped forward onto the trampled ground with his head in his arms. There he made one final movement of resistance and fell asleep. After him, the other people dropped down, too, back and back into the valley. Horses stood still and men keeled over beside them and lay sleeping. Beside Moril, Brid fell sideways and slept curled up as if she was still kneeling. That was a pity, but Moril did not see how he could have excluded her. He played on, sending out wave after wave of sleep-song, until the valley seemed thick with it, and he could almost see it hanging in the air and pulsing gently. Under it every soul was dead to the world.
At last, a little apprehensively, Moril left the cwidder still humming, hoping like that to make the power last, and went through the heavy, silent air to Kialan. He was still tied up. Tholian’s friends had not untied him, though they had been about to. Moril went back through the humming silence and fetched the knife out of Brid’s boot. “Thanks,” he whispered, and he thought Brid stirred a little. With the knife he hacked through rope after tough rope, until Kialan rolled loose on the grass. He was still unconscious.
Moril bent down and shook him. “Kialan!” he said.
Kialan came round as he heard his name. Moril was almost sorry, because Kialan’s face was suddenly full of pain and misery.
“It’s all right,” Moril whispered. “Everyone’s asleep. Quick. I don’t know how long it’ll last.”
Kialan climbed to his feet. He was very stiff and winced with every movement. He stared at Tholian, lying on the earth with his head in his arms, at Brid, and out at the silent, humming valley, full of a sleeping army. “Ye gods!” he said. “Was that the cwidder?”
“Yes,” said Moril. “Quick.” He ran back to Brid and shook her. Brid rolled about, but she did not wake.
Kialan came limping after him. “Suppose you leave her asleep?” he suggested. “Then when she wakes up, you’ll know it’s worn off.”
Moril saw that was an excellent idea. The thing about Kialan, he thought as he raced for the cart, was that he had brains. Olob was dozing, too, which was more serious. Moril snapped his fingers under his nose. “Olob! Barangarolob!” And Olob shook his head and looked at Moril wonderingly. Moril untied Olob and brought him toward Brid at a run, much though Olob objected to going near even sleeping enemies. As he hauled on the bridle, he thought how queer the valley looked with everyone in it lying asleep except for the lonely upright figure of Kialan. He dragged Olob up to Brid and opened the tailgate of the cart to make it easier to get her in. Then he gently put the cwidder back in its rack. It was still vibrating faintly.
“Throw the wine jar ou
t,” said Kialan. “Let’s make the cart as light as we can.”
Moril heaved out the great jar. It landed with a sploshy thump that ought to have woken the dead, but Brid, who was nearest, did not stir.
Kialan laughed. “Present for Tholian. Information he knows and money he doesn’t want. He can drink our health.”
Moril gave a muffled giggle at the idea, but he did not speak. He had a feeling that the one thing most likely to wake the sleepers was his voice. He climbed into the cart and threw out most of Dagner’s purchases: candles, flour, lentils, and the remains of the rhubarb.
“Oh, he’ll love those!” panted Kialan. Though he was still very stiff, he managed to lift the head and shoulders of Brid and heave the upper half of her into the cart. Moril took her shoulders and dragged her right in, where she settled with a little sigh. Kialan climbed in beside her. Moril latched the tailgate and got onto the driving seat.
“Now, Olob,” he whispered. “Run. Run for your life.”
Olob tossed his head and set off. He did not exactly run, but he took the cart briskly across the trampled earth to the road by which they had entered the valley. Moril looked over his shoulder as they went under the trees. Tholian was lying beside their heap of provisions. Beyond him, Moril thought he could see a faint haze vibrating quietly over the whole valley. The cwidder’s power still held.
“What about those soldiers by the trestle?” Kialan said, as Olob clattered down the steep road.
“I don’t know,” Moril said anxiously. He had no idea how far the cwidder’s power spread, and the trestle had been behind him as he played. When they came to the main road, Moril held his breath and Kialan craned sideways to get a sight of the trestle.
Cart and Cwidder Page 13
