‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there was mention of a lake . . . and we will find the emerald!’
* * * *
And so the expedition set off: mounted on fresh horses, well clothed and full of hope.
They rode down narrow green lanes where chaffinches sang among the hawthorn branches; they crossed streams; they climbed grassy slopes, wading through tall, white, feathery yarrow flowers and the scarlet of poppies. No one accosted them. No one challenged them. There were times when the nature of their quest seemed totally unreal, and there were times when it seemed perfectly natural. They passed peasants and merchants, even a farmer guiding his cart down a rutted road, singing to his horse. He appeared embarrassed that they had overheard him and replied gruffly when they greeted him.
At midday they were given milk and good warm barley bread by some villagers.
In the late afternoon they reached a ridge of hills. The lower slopes were grassy and easy to climb, but nearer the top a great wall of dark sandstone formed a long barrier. They picked their way carefully along until they found a break in the rock, and then behind the ridge they found a sheltered place where they decided to make camp for the night. Others had used the place before them, for they saw the remnants of hut circles still containing blackened hearthstones and bleached animal bones.
Viviane and Caradawc climbed one of the highest rocks and stood clutching their woollen cloaks against the boisterous evening breeze. They were looking towards the eastern horizon, and below them lay a beautiful green land of field and forest; rivers like silver ribbons, and a small lake in the far distance gleaming like a diamond.
Gerin and Olwen meanwhile set about finding a suitable place for their overnight camp, talking quietly as they unsaddled the horses and rubbed the tired beasts down. Windblown bushes, bent and twisted into extraordinary shapes, provided them with kindling, and the broken wall of a ruined hut would shelter them from the wind.
Idoc had drawn away from the others, and was now perched on top of a rock, looking westwards, in the direction from which they had just come.
‘I wonder what he’s thinking,’ Caradawc murmured, gazing across at him musingly. ‘Why does he look back there? Do you think he’s still hankering for his tower?’
‘The tower is destroyed,’ said Viviane confidently. ‘He knows he can never go back there.’ But as she eyed him thoughtfully, she fancied she saw beside him the faint outline of the figure of the two-way-facing being who had spoken with her in the silver-birch grove. Idoc must understand the past, and let it go, before he could make something different of his future.
Caradawc shivered and turned his back on Idoc. ‘I’ve had enough of him for a while. This is the first time we’ve been alone . . . don’t let’s waste time thinking about him.’
He took her arm and helped her down, drawing her after him into a secluded alcove of rock. There they were out of sight of all their companions, and protected from the wind. Pushing her gently back against the lichen-covered rock, he could feel the whole length of her body against his. The kiss he was seeking came to him easily; she as anxious for his touch as he for hers.
The grass was soft as they slid down the wall to bed on it.
At the end they lay twined around each other like two vines, her shoulder to the rough rock, his head on her bare breasts, his breath so warm upon her nipple that it was as though he were touching it with his fingers.
They might have drifted off to sleep there, naked, in the nest of their discarded clothes, had Gerin not come upon them suddenly.
After attending to the horses and laying the fire, Gerin had gone to explore the sandstone cliffs that surrounded their eyrie. He told himself he was going to watch the sun set, but his heart knew that he was really seeking Viviane. He came upon her more suddenly than he expected, standing high above her and looking down. He stood transfixed, as though turned to stone, knowing that he should not linger yet unable to leave. The alcove they had found was now in shadow but he could still see clearly the two naked figures interlocked.
Lying beneath her lover, Viviane met Gerin’s eye, and it seemed they stared at each other for a long, long time before he turned abruptly and disappeared.
Urgently she shook Caradawc, who was on the verge of sleep. ‘My love,’ she whispered. ‘My love!’
He stirred and murmured, and moved his hand from her thigh to her breast, settling down even more comfortably.
‘No,’ she said firmly, and began to struggle out from under him. ‘We will have our future – but now we must join the others.’
‘The others can take care of themselves . . .’
‘No, they can’t. We must get up.’
For she had seen Olwen look at Gerin, and she had seen Gerin look at herself. She knew the passions that seethed under the surface of this little group, and how potentially destructive they could prove.
She managed to untangle herself from Caradawc, and quickly pulled on her clothes. It was already chilly and both of them were shivering, which soon persuaded Caradawc to dress. She dusted the grass off their garments and shook and smoothed them; then she drew Caradawc up to the top of the ridge to watch the sun set.
The great dark red orb had already started its descent into the underworld. All was still. The wind that had teased them earlier had dropped. The landscape beneath them seemed to be breathing out a faint blue mist which, mingling with the smoke from villages and farms, rose in the calm air to make a fine blue veil separating earth and sky. Below it the land was shadowy and insubstantial – trees became ghosts, and hills, islands . . . Above it, the sky in the west was a sombre crimson . . . in the east, the colour of old gold . . .
Idoc stood where they had last seen him, staring unblinkingly into the eye of the sun.
When it had finally set Viviane called out to him to come back to the fire with them.
He smiled ironically. ‘I feel no cold.’
‘Well, come and keep us company,’ she persisted, embarrassed that she had forgotten Idoc was no longer flesh and blood. The form he had taken was so lifelike it was difficult to remember that he had no physical substance, or none as dense as theirs.
Olwen was sitting alone by the fire, her cloak pulled close around her. Viviane could see at once that something was wrong.
‘Where’s Gerin?’ she asked quickly, noting with some alarm that his horse was missing.
‘He’s gone,’ Olwen said sadly. ‘He leapt on his horse and rode off without a word.’
‘Why on earth . . .?’exclaimed Caradawc in puzzlement.
‘I called out after him,’ Olwen continued sadly, ‘but he paid no attention.’ She looked at Viviane. ‘He seemed very angry.’
Viviane’s anxiety was so evident that Caradawc felt alarmed. ‘Do you want me to ride out after him?’ he asked, looking uneasily at the gathering dark.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘He’s free to leave us or come with us as he pleases.’
She could see Olwen was disappointed at this decision and she tried to put a sympathetic arm around the girl’s shoulder, but Olwen pulled away sharply. Viviane pretended she hadn’t noticed the resentment in her eyes – and moved away to attend to the fire. Idoc watched every move, but made no comment.
* * * *
After they had eaten they settled down by the embers of the fire to sleep. But Viviane lay on her back awake, watching the stars, wondering how long they would have to wait for a clue – a way-guide. Olwen was on her side a short distance from her, her cloak drawn right up over her head. Even in the dark Viviane could see her shoulders shaking as she tried to stifle her sobs.
As the moon and the stars wheeled slowly across the sky Viviane sank into a strange state that was not quite sleep, yet not wakefulness either. She gazed around and could not see Idoc. She stood up at once and started to search for him, stumbling over the hilltop in the dark, calling out his name, peering behind rock after rock, a growing sense of panic telling her that he was in danger.
She found him at last
in a place she had not noticed in the daylight. It was a kind of funnel of rock, and as they stood at the bottom of it, the sky with all its stars appeared as a small circular hole immensely far above them. No breath of air stirred. She reached for his hand but he slipped from her grasp. His mood had changed, and she could feel the darkness returning to his heart.
‘Idoc,’ she implored, ‘I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself!’
Though she could not see his eyes, she could sense the bitterness in them.
He spoke at last. ‘There’s no future for me if you won’t leave Caradawc and come with me.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘Then I will leave you,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in staying if I can’t have you. Gerin was wise to go!’
It seemed to her that he was beginning to shrink, to dissolve, to disappear.
‘Idoc!’ she cried frantically. ‘Gerin is flesh and blood. I am flesh and blood. You . . .’
‘I am nothing . . . I have ceased to be . . .’
His voice was fading.
‘No,’ she cried, trying to hold his hands, but they slipped like icy mist through her fingers. ‘No, you are soul. You are spirit. You are eternal being! Please believe that!’
‘I was once . . . but now there is no point.’
She heard the despair in the shadow of his voice.
‘You are . . . You can be!The will to live is all you need . . . We’ll find the emerald and we’ll give you the strength you need to start the great Journey again. But you have to stay with me . . .’
‘Stay with you? Ah – that is the mockery . . .’
She heard an eerie high-pitched sound – a strange music made up of millions of tiny squeaks. She heard the fluttering of wings . . . and pouring down the funnel towards them swooped a million bats. She felt the draught from their wings, but although they came very close, somehow none of them touched her. It seemed they were after Idoc, for he was screaming and beating about his head. It appeared he wanted to live after all! His form grew more distinct with every effort he made to fight his assailants off. Suddenly she felt the ground surge beneath her feet, and looked down with horror to see it was completely covered with rats. These too, rivers of them, were surging around Idoc, biting and tearing.
She remembered the cruel experiments undertaken on such animals in his tower . . .
‘Idoc,’ she cried, ‘think back to your past. Regret what you have done! Ask forgiveness.’
The creatures were all over him, like ants over the carcase of a dead fly.
‘Idoc!’ She tried to drag him free. ‘Ask for help! Ask! Believe! Oh angels from the upper realms please help us!’ His arm was half eaten away and she could see the bone . . . How human he felt now! Frantically she beat the air around him. ‘Leave him alone!’ she shrieked. ‘He asks your forgiveness!’
But no one being can repent on behalf of another, and the creatures did not let up their savage onslaught for a moment.
At last, groaning, with his head buried in his arms, he pleaded for help, and he believed that help would come even to him, who now acknowledged that he had done so much wrong.
Instantly the rats retreated . . . the bats spiralled up through the funnel and were gone. Viviane fell on the ground beside him and gathered him in her arms to rock him back and forth like a child . . . She loved him again as she had loved him long ago – Idoc, and not Ny-ak. Idoc the young man, her lover – before he had turned his own dreams to nightmares.
When she looked up again the stars shone peacefully down and they lay on an open hillside. There was now no sign of that imprisoning funnel of rock that had held them so fearfully close.
She put her cheek against his.
‘I promise I’ll not leave you,’ she whispered, ‘until you yourself tell me that I may go.’
* * * *
Viviane could never understand how the birds seemed to know the moment just before daylight began to return to the land. They began their song and only then a slow, almost imperceptible, change occurred. She heard a faint, fine trill of birdsong and the darkness seemed almost to take a deep breath and poise, listening. From another direction came another thin run of notes: and then another. The breath was exhaled and with it the light grew stronger, the air becoming cacophonous with bird-song: every type from the busy, domestic chatter of families waking, to the sheer liquid beauty of the dawn hymn of the lark.
Her companions were still fast asleep, but Viviane was restless. She slipped away across the cool, dew-laden grass. And, exhilarated by the dawn chill, she ran barefoot, hair flying and cheeks glowing until she found the vantage point she wanted for viewing the greatest natural wonder of any world: the rising of its sun.
Like the priestess of an ancient religion she felt the urge to raise her arms, to reach out in yearning to the light. The distant landscape shimmered behind its veil of mist, deep white at first, then gradually turning the colour of her rose-crystal sphere. The sky flushed pink, and then deepened and deepened to the colour of ruby – reaching at last a brilliant climax and burnishing the rims of the hills with fiery gold. The misty veil over the low-lying areas drew aside to reveal tree and meadow and stream in exquisite detail . . . clusters of houses and winding paths . . . strip fields and pastures . . .
The sun was now almost too bright to look at, yet Viviane felt impelled to continue gazing. Her eyes ached, yet still she felt that out of the sun her message would come. And out of the sun it did come: at first no more than a tiny speck. And then she saw a giant bird, its powerful wingspan greater than a golden eagle’s – every feather numinous with light – leaving its nest of fire and winging its way across the sky.
It circled above her three times, coasting and gliding on the thermals . . . light glancing and shimmering from its feathers. And then it flew away. She called after it. She reached out. She stumbled and might have fallen to the valley far below had Idoc not suddenly appeared beside her and held her back.
‘Look,’ he said, as he steadied her.
The bird was circling again . . . now a small shape in the vast sky . . . but still so distinctive as not to be mistaken for any other bird. There was a flash of sunlight glancing off it, then one of its feathers began to fall to earth, spiralling slowly, gracefully – holding their attention so completely that they did not notice that the bird itself had disappeared. They noted exactly where the feather finally fell, thinking this must surely be the clue for which they had been waiting.
‘What are you pointing at?’ Caradawc’s voice so close behind startled them. They swung round. Idoc’s form was now almost exactly what it had been in those ancient times. He was no longer the shrunken shadow they had found among the ruins of the tower. ‘Would it be possible . . .?’Caradawc thought, but, no, their substance was of different realms – there could be no meeting in that sense.
‘We have a message at last,’ Viviane was saying as Caradawc forced himself to reject the suspicions that crossed his mind on seeing them so close together.
‘What message? Where?’ He peered at the pale dawn landscape below them. She pointed to where she had seen the feather land.
‘In that lake, see . . .’ his eyes followed her index finger and he saw a gleam of water – a polished silver coin lying between breasts of green silk. But it was a great distance away, and there was some rough country in between.
‘Surely it wouldn’t be so easy to find?’
‘Well,’ Viviane laughed, ‘we’re not there yet. But remember the Green Lady’s words? “Look into the eye of the dawn . . . See the fire that burns all darkness . . . the lake that slakes all thirst . . .”.’
Caradawc became as excited as she was. But just at that moment Olwen called them. She had prepared breakfast and was impatient for their return.
‘I dreamt about a lake,’ she told them as soon as they arrived. ‘We were all fishing in a lake. It was very strange and beautiful.’
‘Did we catch anything?’ Viviane asked at once, re
membering where the feather had landed.
‘I don’t remember,’ Olwen sighed. ‘I just remember casting in the nets and thinking how important it was that we caught something.’
Viviane told her about the feather and how it had landed in a lake. Olwen was delighted.
As soon as they’d eaten, they packed up and prepared to leave.
Viviane was cheerful. The sunshine, the golden bird, the shining silver lake . . . and now Olwen’s dream! She was very confident that they would succeed in their quest.
* * * *
The day became very hot and after several hours they decided to rest. There was still no sign of the lake.
Viviane felt the need to be by herself for a while, and wandered off. She left the well-worn road they had been following and walked through the long grass, glad to be out of the saddle. A lapwing hovered high above her, its attention on some little creature nearby which Viviane couldn’t even see. She wished she could hover thus, and see at once so far, and so precisely. The land sloped gently up to a copse of beech trees and she sought their shade. There she rested for a while, cradled in a nest of roots that had been exposed to the air when the heavy rains had leached away the soil. She dozed off, and when she woke she set off, half dazed, to find that she had emerged from the copse on the wrong side. Her companions were nowhere to be seen, and she was facing the steep grass-covered earth walls of what she thought must once have been an old circular hill fort.
Not sure how long she’d slept, she knew she ought to return to the others, but curiosity made her decide to spend at least a few moments exploring. She didn’t feel like climbing the steep bank of the earthwork on such a hot day, so she walked around its base. It was not long before she found what must have been the entrance – a great gash in the bank. But beyond it, she could see another wall of earth, a second line of defence. Whatever enemy managed to break through this far would have had to slow down and divert to left or right in search of another entrance.
The Tower and the Emerald Page 21
