The High King cop-5

by Lloyd Alexander

  The High King

  ( Chronicles of Prydain - 5 )

  Lloyd Alexander

  In this final part of the chronicle of Prydain the forces of good and evil meet in an ultimate confrontation, which determines the fate of Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper who wanted to be a hero.

  The High King

  The fifth book in the Chronicles of Prydain series

  A novel by Lloyd Alexander

  Author's Note

  DESPITE THEIR SHORTCOMINGS, no books have given me greater joy in the writing than the Chronicles of Prydain. I come sadly to the end of this journey, aware of the impossibility of commenting objectively on a work which has absorbed me so long and so personally.

  I must, however, warn readers of this fifth chronicle to expect the unexpected. Its structure is somewhat different, its range wider. If there is more external conflict, I have tried to add more inner content; if the form follows that of the traditional hero-tale, the individuals, I hope, are genuinely human And although it deals with a battle on an epic scale, where Taran, Princess Eilonwy, Fflewddur Fflam, even the oracular pig Hen Wen, are pressed to the limits of their strength, it is a battle whose aftermath is deeper in consequences than the struggle itself. The final choice, which even faithful Gurgi cannot avoid, is almost too hard to bear. Fortunately, it is never offered to us in the real world― not, at least, in such unmistakable terms. In another sense, we face this kind of choice again and again, because for us it is never final. Whether the Assistant Pig-Keeper chose well, whether the ending is happy, heartbreaking, or both, readers must decide for themselves.

  Like the previous tales, this adventure can be read independently of the others. Nevertheless, certain long-standing questions are resolved here. Why was that sneering scoundrel, Magg, allowed to escape from the Castle of Llyr? Whatever became of the small-hearted giant, Glew? Can Achren really be trusted in Caer Dallben? And, of course, the secret of Taran's parentage. Readers who have been asking me these questions will see why I could not, until now, answer them fully without spoiling the surprises.

  As for Prydain itself, part Wales as it is, but more as it never was: at first, I thought it a small land existing only in my imagination. Since then, for me it has become much larger. While it grew from Welsh legend, it has broadened into my attempt to make a land of fantasy relevant to a world of reality.

  The first friends of the Companions are as steadfast today as they were at the beginning; many I thought were new have turned out to have been old friends all along. I owe all of them considerably more than they may suspect; and, as always, I offer these pages to them fondly, hoping they will find the result not too far below the promise. If time has tried their patience with me, it has only deepened my affection for them.

  -L.A.

  Chapter 1

  Homecomings

  UNDER A CHILL, GRAY SKY, two riders jogged across the turf. Taran, the taller horseman, set his face against wind and leaned forward in the saddle, his eyes on the distant hills. At his belt hung a sword, and from his shoulder a silver-bound battle horn. His companion Gurgi, shaggier than the pony he rode, pulled his weathered cloak around him, rubbed his frost-nipped ears, and began groaning so wretchedly that Taran at last reined up the stallion.

  "No, no!" Gurgi cried. "Faithful Gurgi will keep on! He follows kindly master, oh yes, as he has always done. Never mind his shakings and achings! Never mind the droopings of his poor tender head!"

  Taran smiled, seeing that Gurgi, despite his bold words, was eyeing a sheltering grove of ash trees. "There is time to spare," he answered. "I long to be home, but not at the cost of that poor tender head of yours. We camp here and go no farther until morning."

  They tethered their mounts and built a small fire in a ring of stones. Gurgi curled up and was snoring almost before he had finished swallowing his food. Though as weary as his companion, Taran set about mending the harness leathers. Suddlenly he stopped and jumped to his feet. Overhead, a winged shape plunged swiftly toward him.

  "Look!" Taran cried, as Gurgi, still heavy with sleep, sat up and blinked. "It's Kaw! Dallben must have sent him to find us."

  The crow beat his wings, clacked his beak, and began squawking loudly even before he landed on Taran's outstretched wrist.

  "Eilonwy!" Kaw croaked at the top of his voice. "Eilonwy! Princess! Home!"

  Taran's weariness fell from him like a cloak. Gurgi, wide awake and shouting joyfully, scurried to unloose the steeds. Taran leaped astride Melynlas, spun the gray stallion about, and galloped from the grove, with Kaw perched on his shoulder and Gurgi and the pony pounding at his heels.

  Day and night they rode, hardly halting for a mouthful of food or a moment of sleep, urging all speed and strength from their mounts and from themselves, ever southward, down from the mountain valley and across Great Avren until, on a bright morning, the fields of Caer Dallben lay before them once again.

  FROM THE INSTANT Taran set foot across the threshold, such a commotion filled the cottage that he scarcely knew which way to turn. Kaw had immediately begun jabbering and flapping his wings; Coll, whose great bald crown and broad face shone with delight, was clapping Taran on the back; while Gurgi shouted in glee and leaped up and down in a cloud of shedding hair. Even the ancient enchanter Dallben, who seldom let anything disturb his meditations, hobbled out of his chamber to observe the welcomings. In the midst of it all, Taran could hardly glimpse Eilonwy, though he heard the voice of the Princess very clearly above the din.

  "Taran of Caer Dallben," she cried, as he strove to draw near her, "I've been waiting to see you for days! After all the time I've been away learning to be a young lady― as if I weren't one before I left― when I'm home at last, you're not even here!"

  In another moment he was at her side. The slender Princess still wore at her throat the crescent moon of silver, and on her finger the ring crafted by the Fair Folk. But now a band of gold circled her brow, and the richness of her apparel made Taran suddenly aware of his travel-stained cloak and muddy boots.

  "And if you think living in a castle is pleasant," Eilonwy went on, without a pause for breath, "I can tell you it isn't. It's weary and dreary! They've made me sleep in beds with goosefeather pillows enough to stifle you; I'm sure the geese needed them more than I did― the feathers, that is, not the pillows. And servitors to bring you exactly what you don't want to eat. And washing your hair whether it needs it or not. And sewing and weaving and curtsying and all such I don't even want to think about. I've not drawn a sword for I don't know how long…"

  Eilonwy stopped abruptly and looked curiously at Taran. "That's odd," she said. "There's something different about you. It's not your hair, though it does look as if you'd cropped it yourself with your eyes shut. It's― well, I can't quite say. I mean, unless you told someone they'd never guess you were an Assistant Pig-Keeper."

  Taran laughed fondly at Eilonwy's puzzled frown. "Alas, it's been long since last I tended Hen Wen. Indeed, when we journeyed among the folk of the Free Commots, Gurgi and I toiled at nearly everything but pig-keeping. This cloak I wove at the loom of Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman; this sword― Hevydd the Smith taught me the forging of it. And this," he said with a trace of sadness; drawing an earthen bowl from his jacket, "such as it is, I made at the wheel of Annlaw Clay-Shaper." He put the bowl in her hands. "If it pleases you, it is yours."

  "It's lovely," answered Eilonwy. "Yes, I shall treasure it. But that's what I mean, too. I'm not saying you aren't a good Assistant Pig-Keeper, because I'm sure you're the best in Prydain, but there's something more―"

  "You speak truth, Princess," put in Coll. "He left us a pig-keeper and comes back looking as if he could do all he set his hand to, whatever."

  Taran shook
his head. "I learned I was neither swordsmith nor weaver. Nor, alas, a shaper of clay. Gurgi and I were already homeward bound when Kaw found us, and here shall we stay."

  "I'm glad of that," replied Eilonwy. "All anyone knew about you was that you were wandering every which where. Dallben told me you were seeking your parents. Then you met someone you thought was your father but wasn't. Or was it the other way round? I didn't altogether understand it."

  "There is little to understand," Taran said. "What I sought, I found. Though it was not what I had hoped."

  "No, it was not," murmured Dallben, who had been watching Taran closely. "You found more than you sought, and gained perhaps more than you know."

  "I still don't see why you wanted to leave Caer Dallben," Eilonwy began.

  Taran had no chance to reply, for now his hand was seized and shaken vigorously.

  "Hullo, hullo!" cried a young man with pale blue eyes and straw-colored hair. His handsomely embroidered cloak looked as though it had been water-soaked, then wrong out to dry. His bootlacings, broken in several places, had been retied in large, straggling knots.

  "Prince Rhun!" Taran had almost failed to recognize him. Rhun had grown taller and leaner, though his grin was as broad as it had ever been.

  "King Rhun, actually," the young man answered, "since my father died last summer. That's one of the reasons why Princess Eilonwy is here now. My mother wanted to keep her with us on Mona to finish her education. And you know my mother! She'd never have left off with it, even though Dallben had sent word Eilonwy was to come home. And so," he proudly added, "I finally put my foot down. I ordered a ship fitted out, and off we sailed from Mona Haven. Amazing what a king can do when he sets his mind to it!

  "We've brought someone else along, too," Rhun continued, gesturing toward the fireside where Taran for the first time noticed a pudgy little man sitting with a cook-pot between his knees. The stranger licked his fingers and wrinkled a flabby nose at Taran. He made no attempt to rise, but only nodded curtly while the scraggly fringe of hair around his bulbous head stirred like weeds under water.

  Taran stared, not believing what he saw. The little man drew himself up and sniffed with a mixture of haughtiness arid wounded feelings.

  "One should have no trouble remembering a giant," he said testily.

  "Remember you?" replied Taran. "How could I not! The cavern on Mona! Last time I saw you, though, you were― bigger, to say the least. But it is you, nevertheless. It is, indeed! Glew!"

  "When I was a giant," Glew said, "few would have forgotten me so quickly. Unfortunate that things worked out as they did. Now, in the cavern―"

  "You've started him off again," Eilonwy whispered to Taran. "He'll go on like that until you're fairly wilted, about the glorious days when he used to be a giant. He'll only stop talking to eat, and only stop eating to talk. I can understand his eating, since he lived on nothing but mushrooms for so long. But he must have been wretched as a giant, and you'd think he'd want to forget it."

  "I knew Dallben sent Kaw with a potion to shrink Glew back to size," Taran answered. "Of what happened to him since then, I've had no word."

  "That's what happened to him," said Eilonwy. "As soon as he got free of the cavern, he made his way to Rhun's castle. No one had the heart to turn him away, though he bored us all to tears with those endless, pointless tales of his. We took him with us when we sailed, thinking he'd be grateful to Dallben and want to thank him properly. Not a bit of it! We almost had to twist his ears to get him aboard. Now that he's here, I wish we'd left him where he was."

  "But three of our companions are missing," Taran said, glancing around the cottage. "Good old Doli, and Fflewddur Fflam. And I had hoped Prince Gwydion might have come to welcome Eilonwy."

  "Doli sends his best wishes," said Coll, "but we shall have to do without his company. Our dwarf friend is harder to root out of the Fair Folk realm than a stump out of a field. He'll not budge. As for Fflewddur Fflam, nothing can keep him and his harp from any merrymaking, whatever. He should have been here long since."

  "Prince Gwydion as well," Dallben added. "He and I have matters to discuss. Though you young people may doubt it, some of them are even weightier than the homecomings of a Princess and an Assistant Pig-Keeper."

  "Well, I shall put this on again when Fflewddur and Prince Gwydion arrive," said Eil­onwy, taking the golden circlet from her brow, "just so they can see how it looks. But I won't wear it a moment longer. It's rubbed a blister and it makes my head ache― like someone squeezing your neck, only higher up."

  "Ah, Princess," Dallben said, with a furrowed smile, "a crown is more discomfort than adornment. If you have learned that, you have already learned much."

  "Learning!" Eilonwy declared. "I've been up to my ears in learning. It doesn't show, so it's hard to believe it's there. Wait, that's not quite true, either. Here, I've learned this." From her cloak she drew a large square of folded cloth and almost shyly handed it to Taran. "I embroidered it for you. It's not finished yet, but I wanted you to have it, even so. Though I admit it's not as handsome as the things you've made."

  Taran spread out the fabric. As broad as his outstretched arms, the somewhat straggle-threaded embroidery showed a white, blue-eyed pig against a field of green.

  "It's meant to be Hen Wen,"' Eilonwy explained as Rhun and Gurgi pressed forward to study the handiwork more closely.

  "At first, I tried to embroider you into it, too," Eilonwy said to Taran. "Because you're so fond of Hen and because― because I was thinking of you. But you came out looking like sticks with a bird's nest on top, not yourself at all. So I had to start over with Hen alone. You'll just have to make believe you're standing beside her, a little to the left. Otherwise; I'd never have got this much done, and I did work the summer on it."

  "If I was in your thoughts then," Taran said, "your work gladdens me all the more. No matter that Hen's eyes are really brown."

  Eilonwy looked at him in sudden dismay. "You don't like it."

  "I do, in all truth," Taran assured her. "Brown or blue makes no difference. It will be use­ful―"

  "Useful!" cried Eilonwy. "Useful's not the point! It's a keepsake, not a horse blanket! Taran of Caer Dallben, you don't understand anything at all."

  "At least," Taran replied, with a good-natured grin, "I know the color of Hen Wen's eyes."

  Eilonwy tossed her red-gold hair and put her chin in the air. "Humph!" she said. "And very likely forgotten the color of mine."

  "Not so, Princess," Taran answered quietly. "Nor have I forgotten when you gave me this," he added, taking up the battle horn. "Its powers were greater than either of us knew. They are gone now, but I treasure it still because it came from your hands.

  "You asked why I sought to know my parentage," Taran went on. "Because I hoped it would prove noble, and give me the right to ask what I dared not ask before. My hope was mistaken. Yet even without it―"

  Taran hesitated, searching for the most fitting words. Before he could speak again, the cottage door burst open, and Taran cried out in alarm.

  At the threshold stood Fflewddur Fflam. The bard's face was ashen, his ragged yellow hair dung to his forehead. On his shoulder he bore the limp body of a man.

  Taran, with Rhun behind him, sprang to help. Gurgi and Eilonwy followed as they lowered the still figure to the ground. Glew, his pudgy cheeks quivering, stared speechless. At the first instant, Taran had nearly staggered at the shock. Now his hands worked quickly, almost of themselves, to unclasp the cloak and loosen the torn jacket. Before him, on the hard-packed earth, lay Gwydion Prince of Don.

  Blood crusted the warrior's wolf-gray hair and stained his weathered face. His lips were drawn back, his teeth set in battle rage. Gwydion's cloak muffled one arm as though at the last he had sought to defend himself with this alone.

  "Lord Gwydion is slain!" Eilonwy cried.

  "He lives― though barely," Taran said. "Fetch medicines," he ordered Gurgi. "The healing herbs from my saddlebags―" He stopp
ed short and turned to Dallben. "Forgive me. It is not for me to command under my master's roof. But the herbs are of great power. Adaon Son of Taliesin gave them to me long ago. They are yours if you wish them."

  "I know their nature and have none that will serve better," Dallben answered. "Nor should you fear to command under any roof, since you have learned to command yourself. I trust your skill as I see you trust it. Do as you see fit."

  Coll was already hurrying from the scullery with water in a basin. Dallben, who had knelt at Gwydion's side, rose and turned to the bard.

  "What evil deed is this?" The old enchanter spoke hardly above a whisper, yet his voice rang through the cottage and his eyes blazed in anger. "Whose hand dared strike him?"

  "The Huntsmen of Annuvin," replied Fflewddur. "Two lives they almost claimed. How did you fare?" he urgently asked Taran. "How did you outride them so quickly? Be thankful it went no worse for you."

  Taran, puzzled, glanced up at the distraught bard. "Your words have no meaning, Fflewddur."

  "Meaning?" answered the bard. "They mean what they say. Gwydion would have traded his life for yours when the Huntsmen set upon you not an hour ago."

  "Set upon me?" Taran's perplexity grew. "How can that be? Gurgi and I saw no Huntsmen. And we have been at Caer Dallben this hour past."

  "Great Belin, a Fflam sees what he sees!" cried Fflewddur.

  "A fever is working in you," Taran said. "You, too, may be wounded more grievously than you know. Rest easy. We shall give you all the help we can." He turned again to Gwydion, opened the packet of herbs which Gurgi had brought, and set them to steep in the basin.

  Dallben's face was clouded. "Let the bard speak," he said. "There is much in his words that troubles me."

  "Lord Gwydion and I rode together from the northern lands," Fflewddur began. "We'd crossed Avren and were well on our way here. A little distance ahead of us, in a clearing…" The bard paused and looked directly at Taran. "I saw you with my own eyes! You were hard pressed. You shouted to us for help and waved us onward.