“Panic achieves nothing,” Bartlemy said, as if hearing his thoughts. “What’s more, it scrambles the brain—and you need your brain unscrambled, if you are to be of any use to anyone. Try to relax, if you can.”
“I can’t,” Nathan said. “Tonight is just too long to wait. Anyway, I’m afraid I’m so wound up I won’t sleep. What can I do?”
“Go to bed,” said Bartlemy, prosaically, “with a very dull book.”
The day dragged. Nathan knew he should talk to Woody about his discovery in the Deepwoods, or call Hazel—she hadn’t even sent him a text message all week—but although he gained nothing from doing nothing, he still feared any distraction. Annie stayed to supper at Thornyhill but Nathan excused himself, for once indifferent to good food, and walked home alone. At the bookshop there was little to do but worry, so he kept on walking, through the sleepy Sunday village and down to the river. Why he went that way he couldn’t have said—he’d always preferred to walk in the woods, but he might meet Woody there, or even the dwarf, and he wanted no company that day. Something drew him toward the Glyde, a tugging at his mind so imperceptible he barely felt it. The river path was a popular route for dog walkers, who would impinge on his solitude, but he saw none. He flopped down by the same willow-stump where Ellen Carver had sat, earlier that week, and he plucked a grass stem, fiddling with it—preoccupation for his hands—while restless thoughts continued to circle around and around in his head.
But gradually his thoughts slowed. The drowse of a bee investigating a nearby clump of clover soothed his ears. It had rained recently but now it was very hot, and a mist seemed to be rising from the water or the damp ground, turning the sunshine to a golden haze. The bee song became the sound of someone humming, quite close at hand, though there was nobody there. The water was all but silent, meandering lazily with the outgoing tide, but there were the little noises of the riverbank, the plop of a diving frog, the mute splashing of a duck or moorhen looking for food. Nathan found himself hearing the echo of the rhyme from long before.
Reed in the river pool
weed in the stream;
one there a-sleeping
too deep to dream.
Effie Carlow floating in the still water—hadn’t it been a Sunday when they found her? A warm, lazy Sunday just like this. His imagination pictured her—a hunk of sodden clothing tide-driven against the bank—an outflung arm, a drifting hand—algae in her hair. And a little farther down was Riverside House, where Nenufar the sea spirit had risen from the water and tried to drown Annie. Death from the deep sea… Strange to think that violence and pain could come here, where the pace of life was slow-to-stop, and everything was so peaceful, so quiet, save for the river song running through his head…
The humming deepened and changed, becoming the buzz of an engine from somewhere upstream, drawing nearer. Presently a boat came into view, a white motor launch chugging slowly downriver. Despite its leisurely passage it looked designed for speed, gleaming with luxury and expense. It should have been too big for the Glyde, but somehow it wasn’t, and in the hazy sunshine it seemed curiously insubstantial, like a ghost-ship seen through the mist on some haunted coastline far away. Nathan couldn’t see who was steering but a woman stood in the bows, a woman as beautiful as the launch, with long pale hair fanning out in a breeze as faint as a sigh. As the boat drew level with Nathan she turned to look at him, and beckoned.
The murmur of the engine didn’t stop, but it seemed to him the boat waited. The river flowed on, and the afternoon drifted, but the launch remained motionless, he didn’t know how, holding against the current. The fancy came to him that it was about to set off on some wonderful voyage, to seas of emerald teeming with jeweled fish, and islands of coral and palm trees, and there was room on board for one last passenger, and somehow—because he was there, because of some chance or fate—that one was him. The boat appeared to be close to the bank, and the woman held out her hand, and he knew he had only to jump, and he would land on the deck, and the engine would rev, and he would be speeding downriver to the sea. He was already on his feet when he heard the dog bark.
A man was coming along the path, still some way off, but the dog was running ahead of him—a dog Nathan had seen around the village before, an elderly black Labrador with a graying muzzle. It seemed to be barking at the boat. The engine accelerated, no longer a gentle hum but suddenly harsh, and the woman drew back, and the launch moved on, blurred by the heat haze, vanishing at last around a bend in the river.
When the man was in earshot Nathan said: “That was a big boat to see on the Glyde. I’m surprised it was allowed.”
“What boat?”
“The motor launch that went past just now. Your dog was barking at it.”
“Don’t know what made the dog bark: he knows you. There’s no boat, lad. You’ve been dreaming.”
“I do that,” Nathan admitted. He was fussing over the dog, ruffling its ears and tickling it under the chin. He knew he hadn’t dreamed. He, of all people, could tell the difference.
“Hot afternoon,” said the walker. Nathan couldn’t recall the man’s name, but he knew his face, and most of the residents in Eade knew him. “You dropped off. They’ve been working you too hard at that school of yours.”
“I expect so,” Nathan said.
He walked home thoughtfully, his mind on something other than the princess.
ANNIE DIDN’T return till after dark, and Nathan was in the kitchen making himself a sandwich when he heard the singing. Not the soothing murmur of the river song but a child’s voice, clear and sexless.
The white ship waits by the river strand
for one who will not go.
The silver witch holds out her hand
and sings the river’s flow.
Follow the wake of the sea mew’s flight
ride on the white wave’s crest;
follow the stars of the ocean night
into the dark of the west.
There are stars beneath the rolling wave
that never saw the sky
and burning fish light up the grave
where mermaids go to die.
The white ship waits by the river shore
for one who cannot stay;
the witch will wait a sennight more
to steal your soul away.
The song came from the garden. Nathan opened the back door and stared out. For a second he thought he saw a pale figure, child-sized, glimmering in the shadows; but it was gone before he could be certain. He remembered hiding in the kitchen at Thornyhill while his uncle drew the magic circle, and one of the spirits he summoned there, with the face of a child, and a choirboy’s voice, and eyes as old as Time.
“Thank you for the warning,” he called out, though he wasn’t sure if it had been a warning. It might have been a promise.
There was a sound of laughter, clear as a peal of bells, yet afterward he thought it held a note of malice—a pure silvery malice untouched by conscience or maturity.
Nathan closed the door and went back to his sandwich.
Later, in bed at last, he took his uncle’s advice, deciding Walter Scott was dull enough (The Heart of Midlothian), besides being full of people speaking Scottish. The print was small, the paragraphs long, the pages thin and crinkly. The words began to shrink and run together; the paper rustled like dead leaves on a forest floor. He was asleep even before he had switched off the light.
But he wasn’t in the wood.
There was music coming from somewhere nearby, the kind of music that is played on the lute and tabor, with a piper leading the tune, piping with enough energy to charm a townful of rats from their holes. Nathan was standing in a courtyard, and the music came from beyond a set of double doors, flung wide onto a great hall or ballroom. People were dancing there, performing the stylized steps and dance figures that Nathan associated with period films. The room was hung with colored lanterns and garlands of autumn leaves, and the dancers wore the medieval costume of
Wilderslee, but richer and more sumptuous, with embroidery on cuff and lapel, and borders of fur, and bright jewels peeping out between folds of velvet and silk. He looked for Nell but there was no sign of her, though he was sure this was Carboneck—a different Carboneck from the one he knew, the Carboneck of shadows and decay. Perhaps this was Carboneck in the future, when the curse had gone and Nell had left to marry her preordained prince…That day in the woods was all they had had, all they would ever have, and now he was invisible again, the ghost of a thought haunting a party to which he wasn’t invited, looking for someone who had gone.
Proceeding down the line of dancers was a man whose face was vaguely familiar, a chubby man with a high color wearing what Nathan guessed was a doublet, the blue outer sleeves slashed to show red sleeves underneath. Costumes of that kind tended to layers, sleeves within sleeves, overskirts, underskirts—perhaps because there was no central heating. He had a crown on his head, not a heavy serious crown but a lightweight coronet like an item of fancy dress. Nathan remembered the sick king lying in the bed with his leg plastered in honey, and realized with a shock that it was the same man. This isn’t the future, he thought. This is the past—before the king lifted the Traitor’s Sword. If Nell’s around, she’ll be just a toddler. There was a gallery at the far end of the hall, overlooking the dance floor, and, gazing up, he made out a small face peering through the balustrade, but, though he hoped, he couldn’t be sure it was her.
The king’s dancing partner was a woman with the figure of an egg timer in a dress that glittered and clung, showing off her tiny waist and the full curves above and below. Most of the ladies wore their hair tucked into tall headdresses or piled up in nets of gold and silver thread, but hers hung down her back in a single thick braid, very long and almost jet black. Her face was attractive in an earthy sort of way, with broad cheekbones and a sultry mouth. This must be Agnis, Nathan deduced, Agnis whom the king had loved, rejecting her—nobly—until his wound should heal. For a minute, he thought he recognized her, too, though he couldn’t recall from where. As he watched, the movement of the dance brought the king around to face her, and he seemed so happy that Nathan, remembering the hollow-eyed invalid in the four-poster bed, felt a stab of pathos.
Someone else was watching from the sidelines—a silent, solitary figure among the chattering courtiers. Instead of gaudy clothing he wore a long shapeless robe of no particular color, ribbed with darns and blotched with assorted stains—chemicals, ink, wine, soup. From a cord at his waist was suspended a magnifying glass, a pocket knife, and what looked like a corkscrew. His head was already bald but around it the fringe of his hair was thicker and darker than in later years, flowing over his shoulders, and a drooping mustache gave him a slight look of Don Quixote. He was studying the woman Agnis, and there was an intentness about his expression that Nathan found curiously disturbing. He had always thought Frimbolus Quayne slightly comic; now he seemed potentially sinister. He didn’t like Agnis, Nathan thought. He didn’t like her at all. Nathan had never seriously imagined it could be Quayne summoning the Urdemons, but suddenly he wasn’t certain.
He wanted to get out of the past, back to the woods and the princess. He tried to wrench his mind away, and the dancers blurred, melting into a dim swirl of color, and the music ceased, and his spirit landed back in his body with an impact so violent it jerked him wide awake. He opened his eyes on his own bedroom, sat up to switch off the light. When he lay down again, he was sucked back into a quagmire of sleep.
It was a confused night, a night of sleeping and waking, of brief, vivid dream journeys jumbled together like the visions of delirium, so that afterward he couldn’t remember every detail, or the sequence in which they occurred. When he didn’t materialize his experiences were always more surreal, closer to actual dreams. He found himself moving between worlds like a phantom, an awareness that hovered on the periphery of a scene and then fled, reappearing a moment later—a century later, a life age later—in another place, another cosmos.
He saw the Grandir in his high chamber in Arkatron, where the spy-crystals were suspended in darkness, enabling him to survey the multiverse. He held one globe between his hands, without touching it, and on the ceiling, upside down, was an image that must be Wilderslee. Nathan made out the causeway across the marshes, and a running figure, and a brown pool heaving with bubbles as something stirred beneath the water. Then he was there, no longer watching from outside but skimming the marsh, and the running figure was a boy with dark hair—he thought it was Roshan Ynglevere—sprinting for the city with one swift backward glance. The brown water bulged, and something burst out—something mud-colored and slime-colored, festooned with weed, dripping marsh ooze, rearing up—and up—and up…It was like the slug-creature he had seen in the city only far larger, a giant eyeless worm, its sides frilled with undulating flaps that drove it through the water, its open mouth salivating greenish froth. It arched above the causeway, lunging at the boy, but he managed a final desperate dash that left the marsh behind, and the danger, and the creature threw back its head, emitting an Urulation of frustrated hunger that carried over the swamp and was borne far away, reaching the Deepwoods as an evil wind that moaned in the branches.
But even as Nathan approached the trees the dream changed, and he was somewhere else. The desert of Ind, on Eos, and the moon was rising—Astrond, the Red Moon of Madness, staining the sands with its dull ruby light. A wild white xaurian like the one he had once ridden wheeled above him; its breast gleamed pale in a roving beam from somewhere on the ground. There was a noise like zzzip, and a flash. The xaurian jerked abruptly and plummeted earthward. A voice Nathan thought he recognized said: “It has served its purpose. I will not risk it interfering again.” Nathan felt a surge of anger and grief, though he couldn’t tell if it was his xaurian—the xaurian that had saved his life—nor imagine why anyone would wish to kill it.
But his fury went with the dream, and he moved on. He was in a world he had visited before, two or three times, a world all sea. His former visits had shown him a tropical archipelago overwhelmed by a great storm; now he was near one of the poles, but he knew somehow it was the same place. It was a feature of his dreaming that after a while he could identify instinctively which world he was in. The sea here was a cold deep green, and huge ice floes drifted past, one as big as a whole island, with a cluster of penguins on board. On another, he saw something that gave him a thrill of startled wonder. A mermaid had pulled herself up out of the water and leaned there, supported on her hands, her tail fin dipping in the sea. But as he drew closer he saw her tail wasn’t that of a fish: it was a seal. Her skin was snow-petal white, her eyes dark and large, her long straight hair silvery gray like seal fur. He thought: She’s not a mermaid, she’s a selkie. A real selkie…
She turned suddenly and slid off the floe back into the sea. He had a fleeting glimpse of her streaking through the water, the light rippling in bewildering patterns along her body—then there was only a seal, diving down into the green deeps.
There were other dreams, other worlds. He was back in Wilderslee, in a small round room with no windows or door. A tower room, he concluded, or a circular dungeon below ground level—a room where something important was kept, or dark deeds were about to take place. In both medieval palaces and futuristic skyscrapers, secrets and crimes always seemed to happen in rooms at the very top, or subterranean basements far below. This room was illuminated only by the daylight that filtered through a louver in the roof—or perhaps there were a couple of tiles missing and, it being Carboneck, no one had climbed up to repair them. He could make out a pedestal in the center of the chamber, and a long chest on top, heavy with ironwork. He couldn’t lift it—he had neither substance nor form—but from the shape it was easy to guess what it contained.
Suddenly a section of the wall slid back with the grinding noise of stone on stone, and a light came in. An oil lamp, held aloft by an unsteady hand, and followed by a face—the king, no longer in party mode, l
ooking both anxious and daring, like a schoolboy egged on by his fellows to some questionable act. The woman Agnis came behind him, in a dress even more clinging than the one she had worn at the ball, her black hair loosened and falling nearly to her waist. She seemed to be hanging back, hesitant or afraid, and in the shadow of her hair her expression looked surreptitious and sly.
“Is it here?” she whispered, glancing from side to side. “The spirit-guardian—is it here?”
“It’s in the sword.” The king didn’t whisper, but his voice was stiff with tension.
“Will we see it? How does it show itself?”
“I don’t know.” The king approached the chest, setting the lamp down on the pedestal beside it. “I’ve—I’ve never actually seen the sword.”
“But it’s your family heirloom!” Surprise made her forget to whisper. “You said your father—”
“He brought me here when I was a boy—showed me the chest—but he wouldn’t open it. He said best not. We guard it; we don’t need to see it. Some things should be left alone.” He was staring at the chest as if he agreed with his parent.
“Weren’t you ever curious?” Agnis said in the accents of Pandora.
“Not really. It’s a sword—brings bad luck—you can’t even touch it. Not a good idea to be too curious about that. Are you sure you—”
“Yes.” Agnis sounded resolute. “I just want to see it. Only once. I won’t marry you with some dark mystery hanging over us. Anyway, how do you know it’s still there?”
“Of course it’s there. Where would it go?”
“Somebody might have stolen it.”
“Not possible. I told you—”
“With all this secrecy and security,” Agnis said, “your ancestors must’ve been worried about thieves.”
“Don’t think they were trying to keep anyone out,” the king said unhappily. “More like something in.”
The Sword of Straw Page 21
