Hide yourself, she urged the sprite. Danger approaches. Do not go near the creature at the base of your tree. Avoid her eyes.
The wood sprite snuffed the air. Yes, danger does approach. With a flick of its long tail, the sprite scampered down the trunk and disappeared into a crack.
Having done what she could, Connie grasped the branch more firmly in her hands and waited for the battle to begin.
Once out of sight of the crowd, Col slowed Skylark to a trot.
We’d better be more careful, he told the pegasus. Kullervo is bound to have set some lookouts. We don’t know who or what we’ll have to get past.
Where are we going? Skylark asked.
Merlin’s Oak.
There was a flap of wings and a scratching noise from the top of Col’s helm. With a leap that pushed down on his head, Argand took off into the air, flashing gold among the branches.
Off to find the universal, observed Skylark. Let us follow her. She may have sensed her presence.
Col nodded and together they wound their way through the thickets of trees, chasing the golden spark that darted ahead. Argand appeared to want them to follow her, for each time she disappeared from sight she would double back and wait for them to catch up.
I think Kullervo will be expecting a full blown assault, Col told Skylark as they followed their guide. He knows that I’ve seen his army, so he knows that the Society believes Connie’s well defended. If I’m right, I don’t think he’ll be looking out for a single human on a horse. I’m hoping he’ll think we are just strays from the procession and not unleash his attack on us.
I hope so, too, Skylark agreed wryly. But why not attack at once? What is he waiting for?
I think he’ll want the road builders to make the first move before he acts, to prove to mythical creatures that he had to fight us. He’s probably waiting for the bulldozers to start rolling—that’ll show we didn’t stop them from tearing down the wood, but we did act when he attacked the people. That’ll turn many of you away from us humans. It’ll destroy the Society—rip it apart. I’m guessing he’s got his forces hidden somewhere deeper in the wood, waiting for his signal to strike.
Hoping and guessing, Companion, you trust much to luck and your understanding of Kullervo.
Well, if there is one thing I can claim to know, Col said with a shudder, it’s the mind of Kullervo. He lived in me for many days, remember. He’s dark and devious. He’s not interested in a straight fight—he wants to trick us into being the bad guys—it’ll amuse him to make us hated by you creatures. He’ll be taking great pleasure in observing us all perform the parts he’s given us. I expect he’s somewhere up there, watching the skies for the first squadron of dragons, bursting to bring this all out in front of the cameras.
The beech trees were giving way to thickets of oak and holly. The dark green glossy spikes of the holly leaves tugged at the horse-cloth. Col ripped it free, leaving strands of scarlet waving in the wind. After a few hundred feet of heavy going, they broke out into a wide space under the boughs of an old tree with the girth of a bull elephant and bark as wrinkled as its skin. A thick, dark-green canopy of leaves, shot through with autumn gold, rustled overhead. It seemed very quiet and still after the bustle and noise of the procession. There was no sign of Connie.
Suddenly, Argand sped back to them, hissing excitedly, before shooting up into the air and out of view.
What do you think that means? Col wondered, his heart picking up its pace as he sensed peril near at hand.
I think it means we are in danger—mortal danger. Skylark gave a frightened whinny, nostrils flaring, and began to back away. I smell that snake creature.
Col looked wildly around but could see nothing. He, too, could now smell something—the acrid scent he associated with the gorgon’s cave. It was strong. The gorgon must be very close, but he could see no sign of her. The wood was suspiciously silent, the only sound coming from the leaves whispering to one another in the old oak tree they were under.
Then, with a screech like a whistling kettle, Argand dove out of the sky, colliding with Col’s helm, bringing the visor crashing down over his eyes. Col did not need to be a companion to dragons to know what that meant.
Move! he urged Skylark.
The pegasus bounded forward. Crash! Out of the branches above them leapt the gorgon, eyes blazing, snake-hair writhing to bite Col. He ducked. She missed him by a hair and fell to the forest floor, momentarily dazed by her fall. Col had only a second in which to act.
Don’t look at her! he warned Skylark as he turned his mount to face the gorgon. We’re going to charge her down.
With the lance held firmly under his arm, Col crouched low on Skylark’s back. He could see very little through his visor. Holding up his tin shield he glimpsed the reflection of the gorgon getting to her feet and raising her face to him.
Charge! he yelled, shutting his eyes tightly against her gaze.
Skylark sprang forward, pounding the turf with heavy hooves. With a shuddering jolt the lance collided with something hard. Col was thrown by the impact. His armor clanged as he hit the stony ground at the roots of the tree and his helm rolled off into the bracken. Staring up into the canopy above for a few confused moments, Col wondered what had happened. Why was the gorgon not leaping on him as he lay defenseless on the ground? Had he managed to hit her? Rolling painfully over, he risked a look to his right and saw the gorgon slumped at the foot of the tree, her bronze wings crumpled around her and the lance in two pieces by her side. The lance must have thrown her back against the tree when he struck and she was either stunned or…or dead?
Skylark galloped back to his companion, bursting through the trees like a white light into the dark shadows under the oak.
Are you all right? he asked anxiously, nuzzling Col to see if he was injured.
Fine—just winded. Col clambered back to his feet unsteadily and then pulled himself onto the pegasus’s back. I think this means that we’ve found Connie. But we’ll have to go up to get her. There’s a clearing nearby—we can take off from there.
Col steered Skylark to the woodland spot where he and Rat had first seen his mother all those weeks ago. On finding the way open before him, Skylark picked up his pace.
At last! he rejoiced as he unfurled his wings. The tattered scarlet cloth flapped back over Col’s legs as Skylark spiraled upward.
Not too high! Col warned. We don’t want the people to see, or we might as well have called in the dragons.
Leveling out, Skylark flew at treetop height, skimming across the forest roof. A flicker of gold flashed ahead and Col cried out: There she is!
Skylark saw Connie clinging to her frail perch with Argand dancing at her side. The dragonet had a piece of rope like a long worm dangling from her jaws. The pegasus kicked toward them, skillfully dodging in and out of branches that stretched up to the sky as if to grasp his legs and prevent him from reaching the universal.
“Col!” Connie screamed. “Skylark! Be careful!”
Skylark swerved down toward her, with Col already reaching out to pull her to safety.
“Behind you!” she shrieked.
Col caught a glimpse of dark wings soaring at him, but he was not going to break off their rescue attempt now. He snatched at Connie’s outstretched hand as they swooped past; as he did so he clung onto a thick fistful of Skylark’s mane to stop them both from sliding off. The pegasus climbed up with difficulty because Connie was now dangling over his shoulder, impeding his left wing.
“Try and swing up!” Col shouted at Connie who was hanging on, white-faced, by one hand. He could feel her palm beginning to slip out of his grip. “Grab my belt.” Connie flailed around in the air trying to grasp hold of something, pulled on the scarlet cloth but it ripped.
At that moment, a midnight blue eagle dropped out of the sky like an arrow flying to its target, talons stretched out to tear at the pegasus who had had the audacity to slip under its guard. One talon raked across Skylark’s hindqua
rters, leaving a bright red trail against the white flesh. The pegasus reared in pain, Col struggled to retain his seat—and Connie’s hand slid from his grasp.
“Connie!” Col almost flung himself after her as he watched his friend fall backward toward the trees, her arms and legs thrashing helplessly in the air.
But then something strange seemed to be happening to her: her descent was slowed, she became wrapped in a blue mist, and swirled this way and that like an autumn leaf carried on the breeze. She disappeared from view into the trees.
We must land! Col shouted urgently.
Skylark turned and prepared to descend. But before he had got far, a blue-black pegasus burst out of the trees and came charging toward them, nostrils flaring and his fiery eyes blazing at them with hatred. His wings swept great gusts of air down onto the branches below, driving flurries of brown leaves up into the sky as if they had been struck by a tornado.
You think you have been so clever, boy, Kullervo sneered at Col, his detested voice ringing through Col’s mind as he forced entry again, trespassing on the bond between pegasus and rider. Col crumpled forward onto Skylark’s neck, disabled by an intense pain in his temples. You forget—I know you too well to be caught by any trick of yours.
But this time, Col was not alone: Skylark, too, could hear the voice and whinnied angrily.
Boy? He is no boy of yours! Skylark declared, stamping out the voice that had infiltrated his bond with Col.
Die then, if you will, horseboy! Kullervo screamed as he quit Col’s mind, his counterfeit presence no match for the real thing. There is no universal to save you now!
His mind emptied of Kullervo’s polluting presence and his pain receding, Col turned in his seat to see the pegasus striding through the air toward them, his ebony hooves raised to strike, flecks of foam flying from his open mouth. Col knew then that Kullervo would not rest until both he and Skylark were dead. But having passed through so much anxiety today, brought face to face with the worst, Col was now beyond fear. He and Skylark had trained for just such an extremity. It was time to test if they had learned their lesson well.
Thessalonian roll! he commanded and Skylark swerved hard to the right.
Once he had carried her safely to the ground, Kullervo abandoned Connie at the foot of the tree. He was burning with anger, eager to return to punish the pegasus and rider; so he called on the stone sprites hiding in the roots of the tree to keep Connie there for him. His task would not take long; he would be back to deal with her, he had told them. On his call, gray fungal growths extruded from the soil, dividing and curling into shapes like the emaciated hands of a corpse. Driven by an unerring instinct for warm flesh, they gripped her ankles, pinching spitefully, anchoring her to the spot. Before Connie managed to raise her shield, she caught a glimpse of the cold nature of the creature that held her, sensing how it spent its days gnawing insatiably through the inner chambers of the earth. It hated warm blood and flesh, and with its touch tried to freeze her to be like itself.
Caught unprepared, Connie found the cold had crept to her ankles before she realized. It was like standing in a pool of iced water, numbing all sensation. Grappling for her shield, she repelled the attack forcefully, driving the cold back into the earth, so that frosted particles now glistened on the mossy stones under her feet. The inner assault beaten, and desperate to return to help her friends, Connie reached down to pry herself free, only to have her hand grasped by a third fist thrust out of the flinty soil.
This was how Mack found her when he crashed his way through the trees, having left his horse back among the beeches. He had been following the trail of tattered scarlet cloth left by Skylark, but he got more than he bargained for.
“What the hell!” he exclaimed, staring with horror at Connie, the stone hands, and the spread-eagled gorgon. “What’s been going on here?”
“Don’t come any nearer,” Connie shouted. “There are stone sprites everywhere in the roots of this tree.”
He halted in the very act of running to her side.
“How can I free you?” he asked, looking desperately around for inspiration.
“Don’t worry about me—worry about Col and Skylark. They’re fighting Kullervo up there!”
Further words were interrupted by someone else stumbling into the space at the foot of the tree. Connie looked around to see a woman sprinting across to the fallen gorgon, but the woman hesitated upon seeing them.
It was Cassandra.
17
Stone Sprites
“You evil snake!” Mack shouted at his ex-wife. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done!” He took a step toward her, but she was undaunted, her sole aim to reach her fallen companion. She dodged past him and ran toward the trunk. Mack lurched after her.
“Don’t!” Connie yelled, but it was too late. A crop of stony fingers burst through the soil like the spears of winter wheat, grasping the ankles of both Cassandra and Mack.
“Let go!” Cassandra screamed at them. “I’m on your side!” But stone sprites did not listen to humans who were not their companions; they hated pounding feet and the heat of human touch and did not care for “sides.”
“Get off!” yelled Mack, trying to fight the fingers which had gripped his shoes. “What are they doing?” he asked, now panic-stricken as he felt their cold creep up his body. He turned to Connie, his eyes wide with alarm. Cassandra moaned.
“It’s their touch—they are trying to make you as cold as they are. They only like corpses, not living bodies.” Connie did not want to explain that she could hold the sprites off with her shield for herself but was unable to aid them at this distance.
Mack, infuriated by his powerlessness, turned to the only object present on which he could vent his anger. “You…you traitor! Don’t you know that your precious Kullervo is trying to kill our son up there!” He jerked his head to the sky above, but the screen of leaves hid all that was happening from them.
His words were like a slap in the face for Cassandra. She stopped trying to reach out to the gorgon and now stared frantically up. “No! It can’t be true! He promised he wouldn’t hurt my young!”
“Ha! You believed the promises of that shape-shifting liar! You’re even dumber than you look, Cassie. Aargh!” Mack’s last cry had nothing to do with her but the cold that had crept to his waist, pinching his stomach in its grip.
“If I’m so dumb, why are you also standing here being turned to ice? Not such a big man now, are you?” Though Cassandra was suffering, she seemed to derive vindictive pleasure from the fact that Mack was enduring the same pain.
“Will you both shut up!” Connie shouted, driven to distraction by the bickering pair. Her back was aching as the stone sprite pulled on her wrist to bend her closer to the ground. “You’re both about to die if I can’t think of a way to help you—and I can’t think if you’re both arguing with each other. So just be quiet!”
They whirled around to look at her in surprise, torn from their private feuding by her blunt words.
“These things kill?” Mack asked hesitantly.
Connie nodded curtly, biting her bottom lip as she tried to remember something from her reading that would help. But she had learned so little, barely scratched the surface of what she needed to know as a universal. If only she had been allowed to continue her training properly!
Cassandra had fallen very quiet. “I want you to understand, Mack, I never wanted Colin to get hurt,” she muttered, barely audibly.
“What?”
“I had to save the gorgon; Kullervo was the only one who’d help us. What good was the Society wringing its hands when she was about to be crushed?” Cassandra stopped. A horse screamed overhead. “What was that?”
“Skylark!” shrieked Connie, feeling the pegasus’s pain as if it were her own. Frantically, she redoubled her efforts to free herself.
“Skylark?” echoed Cassandra. “It’s true then? They’re fighting him up there?”
“Of course, it’s true. Kullervo lik
es killing—that’s all he likes. It looks to me as if you’ve got to decide if your loyalty lies with her,” Mack nodded stiffly at the gorgon, “or with our boy.”
“I…I can’t choose,” whispered Cassandra, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
Mack sighed, but with difficulty as the cold had now reached his lungs and he was struggling to breathe.
“Perhaps you won’t have time to choose. But it looks as if your gorgon will pull through,” he said in a hoarse whisper. A snake-lock was beginning to stir.
“That’s good,” Cassandra said huskily. “She’s the last of her kind. I did it for her.”
“I know.”
Cassandra looked over at Mack with new respect. “You knew?”
“Sure, I did. But that doesn’t mean I think you were right.”
Connie had not been listening to this exchange but had sunk deep into the earth to plead with the stone sprites. They had recognized her, but refused to relent. Instead they gnawed at the edge of her shield, attempting to lure her to join them.
Darkness, silence, emptiness—these are what we offer you! they called to her.
Chilled by their words and their hunger for oblivion, Connie gave up in disgust. She groped her way to the surface, reaching out to the tree roots to guide her back. The living energy of the oak flowed through her like a healing spring. She heard the wood sprite in her mind again.
Companion, you are sad.
Yes, these people will die—will be felled—unless I can help them, she told it. Connie opened her eyes to hear the leaves whispering overhead and to see the lower branches swaying. The tree itself was disturbed by the evil taking place in its shelter.
That must not be, the leaves whispered.
Connie felt something move at her feet. Fearing to see yet more stone fingers reaching out to grip her, she looked down. A root was breaking through the earth and slowly sliding toward the hand that grasped her wrist. It was like watching the film of the growth of many seasons, sped up so that it happens in a few moments. Two more earthy tendrils were winding toward the fingers clasped around her legs. The roots twisted around the hands, seeking out minute cracks in their surface. Once any weakness was found, the tendrils burrowed in and began to split the stone apart. She could feel the rock creaking as it resisted the pressure of the tree, but suddenly, the hands cracked apart with an explosion that sent clouds of dust into the air. She was free!
The Gorgon's Gaze Page 18
