by Alan Garner
“Have you the stone?” whispered Fenodyree incredulously.
“Nay, but it is in good hands!”
They came out from the cloakroom the mist had rolled away: in the distance a hound bayed.
“I could not kill the morthdoers, since their magic is greater than my sword, but they will feel her smarts for many a day.” Durathror chuckled. “I came to join you in the end, but, entering yonder room, I saw two things to make me pause. There is a cupboard against the wall, and a hound of the Morrigan made clamour against it but the door was closed, and I had seen what closed it—a small white hand, cousin, and Firefrost shone upon the wrist I slew the beast the rest you know.”
Fenodyree ran into the kitchen.
“Come out, children! Susan! Colin!” He seized the cupboard handle. Oh, you will be remembered when…” He stared into the shaft, and saw a square of wood begin to grow rapidly larger as it climbed towards him out of the far depths.
“And it was but luck that brought us to you when we were beyond hope!” said Durathror.
“If only we’d known!” cried Susan.
“Ay,” said Fenodyree; “ ‘if only’. We should have been in Fundindelve ere now.”
The children told their story, and when they described the crossing of the plank the dwarfs grew excited.
“Hair of the Moondog!” shouted Durathror. “And did you not go on?”
“Oh yes, said Colin, but the tunnel finished on a platform over a lake.”
Durathror put both hands to his head and groaned in mock despair.
“Had you but known it,” said Fenodyree sadly, “the water is little more than a foot deep, and the way from there leads to the gate, not half a mile distant.”
After such a revelation the children had not the heart to talk. They huddled, wrapped in their thoughts, and their thoughts were the same. Here they sat, at the bottom of a shaft, at the end of the world: they had gained the weirdstone of Brisingamen, but that success promised to be the beginning, and not the end of danger, and where it would lead them they dared not think.
“We must move now,” said Fenodyree.
When they switched on the light Colin and Susan examined their surroundings in detail for the first time: and an awful truth dawned on them. There was no obvious way out of the chamber. Two tunnels led off in opposite directions, but they were flooded, and the roofs dropped steadily to meet the green-tinged water.
“Fenodyree! How do we get out of here?”
“Ay, cousin,” said Durathror, “all the while since I came I have sought a way to leave, but I see none.”
Fenodyree nodded towards the smaller of the tunnels. “Did I not say that the road was hard? Colin, is the wrapping for your food proof against water?”
“Yes, I think so. But Fen… ! !”
“Then when we start, cover the light with it. You will have to trust to my eyes alone for a time.”
“And may I have your covering for Valham, my cloak?” said Durathror to Susan.
He unbuckled his feathered cloak and rolled it tightly to fit into the sandwich bag, and Susan fastened it in her pack, which if anything, seemed lighter for the load.
“Put out the light,” said Fenodyree. “And have courage.”
CHAPTER 14
The Earldelving
The water was so cold that it took their breath away. Even Durathror, the hardened warrior, could not stifle the cry that broke from his lips at the first shock.
They waded along the tunnel for a short distance before having to swim, and they had not gone much farther when Fenodyree stopped and told the others to wait while he went ahead. He drew a deep breath, there was a flurry and a splash, and he did not answer when Colin spoke.
“Where has he gone?” asked Susan.
“The roof and water meet where he left us,” said Durathror.
Two minutes passed before Fenodyree broke the surface again, and it was some time after that before he could speak.
“It is no distance, he said when at length his breathing was under control, and the air is fresh, but the root is low for many yards. so we must swim on our backs.”
Another swirl, and he was gone.
“I’ll wait about a minute,” said Susan. She was more frightened than she cared to admit, but she hoped Colin and Durathror would think that her teeth were chattering with the cold alone.
“Right: here goes.”
“She has great courage,” said Durathror. “She hides her fear better than any of us.”
“Are you scared too?” said Colin.
“Mortally. I will pit my wits and sword against all odds, and take joy in it. But that is not courage. Courage is fear mastered, and in battle I am not afraid. Here, though, the enemy has no guile to he countered, no substance to be cast down. Victory or defeat mean nothing to it. Whether we win or lose affects us alone. It challenges us by its presence, and the real conflict is fought without ourselves. And so I am afraid, and I know not courage.”
“Oh.” said Colin. He felt less isolated now, less shut in with his fears. “Well, I’d better be on my way.”
“Good luck to you,” said Durathror.
Colin held his dive as long as possible, but the icy water constricted his lungs, and he soon was in need of air. He rose to what he implored would be the surface. but his hands and the back of his head scraped against the roof. Flustered, he kicked himself into a shallow dive, his stomach tightening, and his head seeming about to burst. This time. No! Again he struck the roof. What was wrong? Why was there no air? Fenodyree had said… ah! He remembered! Swim on your back the roof is low. That’s it Colin turned frantically on to his back: the knapsack pulled at his shoulders and began to tilt him upside-down. He threshed the water and managed to right himself. And then his lips broke surface. The air rushed out of his lungs, and Colin promptly sank, swallowing a lot of water. He kicked off so violently from the tunnel floor that he nearly stunned himself on the roof, but it quelled the panic, and he lay on his back, breathing air and water by turns.
The roof was certainly low. In order to keep his lips above water he had to squash his nose against the rough stone of the ceiling, which made progress as painful as it was difficult.
After twenty yards, Colin was relieved to find that the distance between surface and roof was increasing, and, before long, he was able to turn on to his face and swim more naturally. But where were the others? He trod Water.
“Hallo! Ahoy! Sue!”
“Here!”
It was Susan’s voice, and not far ahead, either. Almost at once the water grew shallow, and then he was knee-deep in mud, and Fenodyree’s arm was about him.
“Oh, let me sit down!”
Durathror joined them presently, and he was in great distress.
“Squabnose,” he gasped, “I have been near death many times, but never has he stretched out his hand so close, or looked more terrible’’
Colin unwrapped the lamp to discover how it had withstood the rough passage. It was none the worse, and by its light the children saw that they were lying on a bank of red mud, soft and very sticky. Ahead of them was a tunnel, but it was far different from any in West Mine. The roof ran square to the walls, and nowhere was more than a yard high. The colours were striking, for the walls were of a deep-red shale, and the roof was a bed of emerald copper ore.
The going was difficult enough without the mud. It was no so bad for the dwarfs, but Colin and Susan developed a severe ache in neck and back very quickly. The tunnels never ran straight, and they would branch five times in as many yards. Caves were few, and seldom bigger than an average room. Water was everywhere; and what few shafts barred the way were flooded, and therefore easily crossed.
After half a mile the relatively open passages were left behind, and now even the dwarfs were forced to crawl all the time. Roof falls became frequent, too, and negotiating them was an arduous business. The children were continually surprised by the way in which it was possible to force their bodies through holes
and cracks that looked as though they would have been a squeeze for a kitten, but they found that, no matter how impracticable a gap appeared, if a head and one arm could be pushed through together, then the rest of the body would, eventually, follow.
Now and again they would come upon a stretch of rock over which the water had washed a delicate curtain. This was to be found where a vein of ore lay just above the roof: the water, trickling through the copper, over the years had spread a film of colour down the wall, ranging from the palest turquoise to the deepest sea-green.
The tunnels grew more constricted and involved. Susan particularly disliked having to worm herself round two corners, at once. She thought of the picture of Alice in the White Rabbit’s house, with an arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney.
“That’s just how it is here,” she grumbled; “only this ceilings lower!”
Fenodyree called a halt in a cave into which they fitted like the segments of an orange. But they could stand partially upright, which was some relief.
“We have put the greatest distance behind us,” said Fenodyree, “but it is from here that our chief dangers lie. Between Durathror’s feet is the passage that will take us to the light.”
“What?” cried Susan. “But that’s only a rabbit-hole!”
“If it were the eye of a needle, we should still have to pass through it to gain the upper world. But do not despair: we are not the first to come this way, though I think we shall be the last. My father travelled the Earldelving seven times, and he was an ample dwarf by our reckoning.
“Now we must make ready. Take note of what I say, for this is the last chance of speech until we come to safety, and there will be no room for error.”
Under Fenodyree’s instructions Colin and Susan took off their knapsacks—a complicated manoeuvre in that space—and fastened them by the strap to one ankle. Susan’s pack held Durathror’s cloak, and Colin was still carrying the lemonade bottle: this he discarded. Fenodyree advised him to put away his lamp, for, he said. hands would be needed more than eyes.
He bade Durathror take off his sword.
“Keep her ever before you,” he said, “and so neither Dyrnwyn nor the son of Gondemar will be lost.”
And he unbuckled his own sword and pushed it into the opening.
* * *
Durathror stood alone in the silence of the underworld, He took the empty bottle that Colin had thrown down, and set it upright in the middle of the floor. A wry smile touched his lips as he looked at it. And shortly afterwards the cave was empty, save for this one monument to Wild endeavour…
* * *
Both the children had the greatest difficulty in entering the tunnel. For the first yard or so it sloped downwards and then turned uphill, not sharply, but enough to cause acute discomfort at the bend. Sand choked the entrance, though even when that was behind them the tunnel was so heavily silted that it was almost beyond the children to move at all. They lay full length, walls, floor, and roof fitting them like a second skin. Their heads were turned to one side, for in any other position the roof pressed their mouths into the sand and they could not breathe. The only way to advance was to pull with the fingertips and to push with the toes, since it was impossible to flex their legs at all, and any bending of the elbows threatened to jam the arms helplessly under the body.
The tunnel was unlike any they had met in the Earldelving, for, although it was not straight, it did not branch. This factor, and the plugging of the tunnel by four bodies, meant that the leader was the only one to be able to breathe at all well.
They became unbearably hot. Sand lodged in every fold of skin, and worked into mouth, nose, and ears.
Colin found that he had to rest more and more frequently. He thought of the hundreds of feet of rock above and of the miles of rock below, and of himself wedged into a nine-inch gap between.
“I’m a living fossil! Suppose I stick here: that’ll make archaeologists sit up!”
Ahead. Fenodyree was battling with a fresh difficulty. He had reached a spot where the tunnel bent abruptly under upon itself like a hairpin, and teasing Widowmaker’s rigid blade through the angle, at arm’s length, was no simple task. Strained nerves and muscles are not an aid to fine judgement. He succeeded, but it was some time before he was in any condition to follow his sword. Fenodyree was coming to the end of his last reserve of strength.
Susan felt the obstacle with dismay. It was not possible! But where was Fenodyree? He must have found a way round, so perhaps, like most hazards underground, it was easier than it looked. Anyway, lying there thinking about it would not do much good, so she tucked in her head, and jack-knifed round into the lower level. It was unpleasant, especially when her heels scraped the roof, but her weight carried her down, and it was soon over.
Colin was an inch taller than his sister, and that was disastrous. His heels jammed against the roof: he could move neither up nor down, and the rock lip dug into his shins until he cried out with pain. But he could not move.
Durathror, coming up behind, took in the situation at once.
“Can you hear?” he shouted at Colin’s ankles.
“Yes.”
“The reply was barely audible, “Try—to—turn—to—your—side! Then—to—your—belly! I—shall—guide—your—feet! Are—you— ready?”
“Yes.”
Durathror’s sword jutted beside Colin’s feet, and although it was in its scabbard, matters would not be improved if it became entangled with Colin’s wildly jerking legs.
Colin screwed himself round in the tunnel. It was really not possible, but desperation tipped the scales; and once he was on his stomach, his knees bending with the tunnel, there was just enough play for Durathror to force Colin’s legs round the angle, and from then on Colin was better off than any of the others, because they were now lying on their backs, and in that position movement was even more exhausting and unpleasant.
Fenodyree jerked his way along with renewed vigour, for this bend was the last great hazard, according to his lore. Imagine, then, his horror when his sword splashed in water. He twisted his head all ways. He could not see; but his hands brought him bad news. The tunnel dipped, and was flooded to the roof. This had not been so in his father’s time: so much for the elder days!
The end of the tunnel was not yet. How far did the water lie? Inches? Yards? He would have to squirm along, holding his breath (and he was panting uncontrollably at the start!), in the hope that he would come to air. Retreat would be impossible, as it was now. And that decided him. Better a quick road to forgetfulness than a lingering one. But it called for nerves of steel to edge forward into the water, and, at the last, under.
This moment was to be endured three times more as Susan, Colin, and Durathror made the choice that was no choice. But once they grappled with the terror it did not last: for the water had collected in a shallow, U-shaped bend, not two yards long, and they all emerged on the other side before their lungs were drained of air. They cried or laughed, each according to his nature, but the sound in all cases was the same.
Not much later the floor began to drop away from the roof, and it was possible to crawl on hands and knees. The children wrestled with the sodden webbing of their packs and talked rapidly and loudly of the perils they had faced, and said how good it was to move freely again.
“Taken all in all,” said Fenodyree, “the Earldelving has not used us ill: I had feared it would be more cruel. From here we shall be in little danger, provided that we respect the smaller risks.”
They now pressed on with all speed, for there could be scarcely an hour of daylight left, and the prospect of having to spend the night in wet clothes, with mud for a bed, was in no way appealing.
After a time, Susan thought she saw a faint grey blur ahead of them past Fenodyree’s shoulder. She switched off the lamp.
“Here, Sue What are you playing at?”
“Look! Daylight!”
It was and soon they had reached it. They were at the en
d of the tunnel, and at the bottom of a shaft. The converging lines of its gleaming, wet sides mounted to a tiny square of blue, a whole world away.
“We’ve not got to climb up this shaft, have we?” said Colin.
“Nay.” laughed Fenodyree, “we shall be in dire straits ere I ask that of you! Our way is easier by far.”
He raked about with his feet behind the pile of rubbish at the bottom of the shaft.
“It is somewhere… ah, I have it!”
He dragged to one side a mass of decaying branches to reveal a hole in the floor.
“Here is the exit from the Earldelving: once through here, we cannot return.”
It was a sloping continuation of the shaft, though only half its breadth, and it was cut through stiff clay that glistened without ledge or fissure.
“It is a pleasant ride,” said Fenodyree, seating himself on the edge, and grinning at Susan. He peered down between his feet, nodded, and let go. A faint splash marked the end of his glissade, and his voice sounded cheerily a long way below.
Susan lowered herself into the hole with extreme caution, but the edge crumbled beneath her hand, and yet again she disappeared from view like a bullet from a gun. She careered over the greasy surface, faster and faster, and landed waist-deep in a mixture of water and mud that broke her fall, but had little else to recommend it.
“Oh!”
“If you put your hand out to your left.” said Fenodyree close behind her, “You will find a corner of rock pull yourself out with that. Good. Now feel your way round to the tunnel. We shall soon be out of here.”
The tunnel was flooded to a depth of three feet, and was sticky with clay, but it was high, and not long. At its end rose a shaft that offered few difficulties, for it was composed of a series of inclined pitches, connected by wide shelves, so that it was more like scrambling up a giant stairway then climbing a shaft. Only the last dozen feet were at all dangerous here the rock was vertical, but the holds were many, and the top was gained without trouble. From there a short passage led into a circular cave—and daylight; real, accessible daylight. A tree trunk resting against the wall took Fenodyree, with the others packed behind him up into a gully that overlooked the cave: the gully became a ravine and above was open sky; cold, crisp, dry air filled their lungs.
