A Hawk In Silver Part 17

"Bit careless with it, weren't you?" But she smiled to show she didn't mean it.

"That was ill-luck, to lose it out of the Hills, and in the human town-for I had to put blame on something, and chose a Well-coin for similarity; hoping I could get it back, and my folk not see it closely."

"You should've come for it."

"How could I, and I an elukoi? I had no choice but to send the boy, a human among humans."

"But you came to my house last autumn..." she stopped. She remembered the disguise he had used. And she remembered the man she had seen reflected in a gla.s.s window the day she found the coin. I knew it was him, she thought, I just never made the connection.

She frowned. "That night, after I found the coin..."

"I sent Scathlach." He cupped his hand to his shoulder. As in Orione months ago, she saw a small grey animal there-a mouse. "He's not clever, but has a fondness for harper's music, and is an excellent small spy. But that time he failed, and came back in panic fear-do you maybe have a cat?"

"We've got a dog," Holly prevaricated, remembering that reality had seemed a dream.

They turned and began to trudge up the hill again towards Brancaer. Holly saw frantic activity, and realised how fast her last morning was pa.s.sing.

"What about Orione?" She wanted him to deny it. "Did you tell the morkani it was unguarded?"

"Listen, there was a choice. Elathan's way, to fight. My way, the summons-the which was no more than delay."

He saw her surprise. "I did not believe Fyraire would come. Or if he did, there be legends of him-dark and b.l.o.o.d.y and savage. He is wild. I thought if the caverns were destroyed, then also the Harp. Then no summoning, and no war either, for a time..."

Savage? Holly recalled the beach. Yes. When I think what he might have done.

Under Brancaer's trees, the sun made white hollow caves of the groves, and diamond lights of every icicle and pane of gla.s.s.

"I sent a message for all to come to the Council from the caverns, I wanted no elukoi hurt. Do you believe that?"

"You know me. I believe you."

"And when I thought Eilunieth was dead-"

"Every sword has two edges." It was Eilunieth, inhumanly impa.s.sive. She favoured one hip, as if that leg had not healed, and an ugly red scar puckered the left side of her face. With her was Tanaquil. One in blue, one in green with russet hair; they were bright against the snow as a stained-gla.s.s window.

Holly saw Tanaquil's face soften, meeting Mathurin's yellow eyes. Again she was jealous, but thought, He came to me to explain. I can remember that, when this is finished.

He said, "The rest you know."

"There was one thing you could've done-you knew Chris was gonna help at midwinter. If she hadn't, they might not have fought. You could've had something happen to her."

"But I did not. I could not."

"No," She was rea.s.sured. "I know."

Tanaquil's deep voice came in. "Many of us would have paid that price for peace, an we had known, but not he. Ah, those were bad times. Fiorin had the power of Domnu, and led us all. You do not know what that was like."

"I don't, at any rate." Holly asked, "What was Domnu?"

Tanaquil shook her head. "We can hardly guess... mother of all sea-life; some vast half-animal half-vegetable thing rooted in the Abyss... her tentacles embrace all deeps and shallows. And her cold mind has tentacles too, bitter and malevolent, to reach out into the minds of elukoi and morkani, through Caer Ys to the Hills, and mayhap even to Faerie itself... you couldnever destroy her; she retreats into the dark gulfs and cannot be reached..."

As in Orione, a cold horror sickened Holly. She was glad then not to be near the sea.

"Things have not ended so ill as they might." Eilunieth had no anger in her. She awed Holly. "We are for the most part alive and well, and bound for Faerie. I mind that Mirror-mere is dry and broken, and those bright caverns dark now; but those we would be leaving anyway... we are going home. Let that end all enmities. Soon these exiled years on Earth will be no more than the dream of a dream. It has pa.s.sed. It has ended. Let it be forgot."

They came past the Great Hall for the last time. The world was heavy, white and golden. Holly zipped up her anorak. She missed a familiar face then, and wondered where Sandys was. Seeing the rest had turned aside, she followed them, meaning to ask.

Close to the wall of the Hall the snow was disturbed, and there was a newly-made mound and three single graves. In the fresh yellow-brown earth of the mound twenty or so spears were thrust, point upwards, and two banners were there also: on one a raven, on the other a stooping hawk.

Holly stopped without realising it. She knew the look of that fresh-turned earth. For her now it was not winter but early harvest-time, not snow-bright but sunlight; and there was a deep sickness inside her.

I was right , she thought, I was right. Anything's better than this. It's not many. But even one is too many.

She found Silverleaf at her side, sternly remote, and managed to ask, "Who are they?"

"Those who died last night, all in one tomb."

Holly counted the spears. Twenty-seven. "The two graves with hawk-banners?"

"Fiorin died last night. The other-Dalziel d'Ys, a Master Sorcerer."

The third grave had a white banner with a star on it. Silver, still without expression, said, "There is the last of the House of Diamond. There is Sandys."

"But he's a healer, not a fighter-"

"He is not either, being dead. I hate this place," she said, and still she would not cry. "He has been taken from me; and now must I hate you also, for you take my brother, too."

"Hold on," Holly protested, "it ain't me that's doing that. He don't even know I'm a girl, for Christ's sake."

Silver looked at her as if she spoke a foreign language. "I mean not you, but your world; all of you, out there."

She walked away, and Holly was left staring at the grave, eyes stinging; earth and snow suddenly blurred together. She thought, Sandys wanted Faerie as bad as any of them, and they've cheated him out of it, and he wasn't even armed.

She saw the elukoi were moving out. They had horse-drawn carts with hugely spoked wheels pulled up in a line through the city from the Hall to the river. Groups of elukoi and morkani with beasts stood arguing good-naturedly over this piece of furniture or that tapestry, or they rushed out with forgotten things that wouldn't fit on the carts anywhere, or poured hot wine for themselves while they stood back and watched the bustle. They had forgotten everything but their exodus, and Holly found herself drawn into their mood.

I'm alive, she thought, almost ashamed to be young and healthy and unhurt. Alive and glad of it.

She fell in with the others, walking beside Chris, and they went along the line of wagons towards its head.21 The White City The sun was only a hand's breadth over the horizon.

"It's early-we might get back without being copped."

"And if we don't?" Chris kicked moodily at the snow.

Holly a.s.sumed an innocent expression. "Well, I got up early to come over and see you..."

"And what did I do?"

"...you got up early to come and see me! They won't get narky. It's too near Christmas."

"So it is... I won't be sorry to get back, neither."

"I will."

"Oh, you would! It's too G.o.ddamm exhausting for me, all this. Me for a nice quiet Christmas at home."

They pa.s.sed through Brancaer, its houses empty and echoing now, the doors bare of their embroidered hangings. The snow-bound gardens were disturbed and bare. Holly noticed several carts loaded with young saplings, cuttings from trees, and sacks of seed. The elukoi were taking all they could.

But what about Fletch? Holly kept turning Silver's remarks over in her mind. She saw him then, but he was with Elathan.

Many greeted their party, saluting Oberon as King. Holly heard Eilunieth's name called, and the Harper's, and Tanaquil's.

To her surprise there were many who called out to Chris; she was well known to the elukoi from the visits she had made to the Hills that autumn. Holly was not jealous. She preferred to be out of the limelight.

Fyraire was waiting at the head of the line to lead them, and he was brighter than the snow with the sun full on it. As they came up Hawkhunter sounded a long ringing call on his horn, and the whole cavalcade moved off at the speed of a slow walk towards the Gate. Holly, looking back, saw the long line of carts rutting the snow, the hill-dwellers and sea-people walking together, their pennants proud in the wind -the Hawk, the Rowan and the Raven. Early sunlight glittered on the windows of the deserted city.

The forest stood silent, leafless, smothered in snow. Branches bent under four times their own thickness of it; the east side of every tree-bole was plastered thick and foamy. Bare bark showed dark and wet. A pale sky was s.h.i.+ning through stiff twigs.

Holly saw the Harper fall back to let Tanaquil talk privately with Oberon, that father and daughter so long sundered from each other. Then Westwind came up beside her and Chris with a flagon of pale golden wine. They drank. It was searingly cold, but it spread in Holly like fire.

She heard a harp strike up ahead in the knife-edge wind, and a song was taken up by many voices, but Mathurin Harper's over all: "True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank And a marvel he there did see: A maid with name-red hair unbound Come riding by the Eildon Tree.

Her dress was of the gra.s.s-green silk, Her mantle of the velvet fine; At every lock of her horse's mane Hung fifty silver bells and nine."

The wagons creaked and the hounds bayed and the silence of the woods was broken as they pa.s.sed.

Holly, seeing a shadow out of the corner of her eye, found Fletcher by her side.

"That's a compliment to us," he said gravely. "The song is human, heard in elukoi halls in the high days that are gone: Thomas the Rhymer."

She saw Chris had gone off on her own, talking with elukoi whose names and faces she was unsure of: Starkweather, Greyeyes, Westwind.

"Fletcher-what are you going to do?"

"True Thomas he pulled off his cap And bowed him low down on his knee: 'Hail to thee, Mary, Queen of Heaven!

For thy peer on earth could never be.'

'O no, O no; True Thomas mine, That name does not belong to me.

I am the Queen of fair Elfland And came full far to visit thee.' "

"How d'you mean 'do'?"

"Don't give me that. I been talking to Silver. She says you're not going with them. Why not?"

"It's no choice. Elathan's explained that. There's no way a human could live in Faerie, not now, not even one brought up in the Hills like me."

She saw he was empty-handed, bringing nothing of his former life out of the Hills with him. They walked silent underthe great beeches. The snow was pocked with animal tracks, fox and badger and others less recognisable.

" 'Harp and sing, Thomas,' she said, 'Come with me to my own country.

I'll give to you a harp of gold, A silken cloak, and kisses three.'

'To me the priest would bar the church If I hazard my soul with thee- I'll not come for harp and cloak But I'll come for your kisses three.'"

"I didn't know what you'd want to do-I didn't know you wouldn't have a choice."

"Nor did I-Holly, it wouldn't be so bad if I did. I want to stay. And I want to go, because I think, how can I leave him?"

You'll be better off when you have, boy. Holly still didn't like Elathan at all. "It's final, then."

"It's final."

"She's mounted on her milk-white steed, She's taken True Thomas up behind; The silver bells at the bridle ring, The steed runs faster than the wind."

"I'm sorry about what I said in the Park."

"Oh h.e.l.l-me too," Holly admitted, "I've got a lousy temper sometimes. And it wasn't true."

"Nor what I said; I know that now."

"So-forget it, right?" And she felt warm.

" 'O see that road so hard to pa.s.s, So narrow it is and so straight?

You'll find on that no priest or friar For it leads to Heaven's gate.

'And see that other, easy, road So broad and free from mire?

Though fair with flowers be the start Its end is in h.e.l.l's fire.

'But see the path that winds away By bracken and by white birch tree?

A pleasant road to fair Elfland, This night thou'lt be there with me.'"

It hadn't occurred to Holly before. "Fletch-how are they going to get there?"

"The Gate, he said, "the Gate, and the Lord of Stars."

"O they rode on and further on And they waded rivers above the knee; And they saw neither sun nor moon But they heard the roaring of the sea.

He has gotten a cloak and a golden harp, And kisses three from the elven Queen; But seven hundred years were gone and past Till Thomas ever on earth was seen."

They came to the Gate and Hawkhunter blew the halt. Holly saw Chris go forward to say goodbye, but she hung back.

An idea had come to her.

Fletcher went again to Elathan, and the man who had been his father embraced and kissed him, and they did not speak.