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"I dare not, if indeed it's a thing of enchantment," Taran replied,
though he felt as uneasy as the bard, and heartily wished Kaw had left the
coffer undisturbed. A strange thought, vague and unformed, stirred in his
mind, and he knelt, holding out the fragment to Doli. "What can this be?" he
asked, after briefly telling how the sliver had first come into their hands.
"Could Morda himself have hidden it?"
"Who dose?" croaked Doli. "I've dever seed eddythigg like it. But
it's edchadded, you cad be sure. Keep it, id eddy case."
"Keep it?" cried the bard. "We'll have nothing but ill luck from the
cursed thing. Bury it!"
Swayed by Fflewddur's vehemence yet reluctant not to follow Doli's
counsel, Taran stood uncertain what to do. At last, with strong misgivings, he
tucked the fragment into his jacket.
Fflewddur groaned. "Meddling! We'll only gain trouble, mark my
words. A Fflam is fearless, but not when there's unknown enchantment lurking
in someone's pocket."
As they pressed on Taran shortly came to believe he had decided
wrongly and that Fflewddur's unhappy prediction was well-founded. Doli had
taken a turn for the worse; he could gasp no more than a word or two at a
time. The frog's body trembled as in the grip of a painful ague; a sickness,
Taran was sure, owing to Doli's grueling crawl overland. To keep his skin from
parching, the companions drenched him regularly; while the treatment, on the
one hand, kept him alive, on the other it added to his misery. Under the
stream of water he sneezed, choked, and sputtered. Soon he sprawled
listlessly, too feeble even to be bad-tempered.
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The day had waned quickly and the companions halted in a glade, for
Doli had given them to understand that from now on they must travel with
utmost caution. Setting the frog carefully in the folds of a dampened cloak,
Taran drew Fflewddur aside and spoke hurriedly with him.
"He has no strength for his task," Taran murmured. "We dare not let
him go on."
Fflewddur nodded. "I doubt he could, even if he wanted to." The
bard's face, like Taran's, was drawn tightly with concern.
Taran was silent. What he must do was plain to him; yet, despite
himself, he shrank from facing it. His mind groped for another, better plan,
but found none, returning always to the same answer. What kept him from taking
the clear course was not reluctance to help a close companion, for this he
would have done gladly. Nor was it fear for his life, but terror that he might
share Doli's fate; not only that his own quest would fail but that he might
himself be imprisoned, hapless in some pitful creature shape, captive forever.
He knelt at Doli's side. "You must stay here. Fflewddur and Gurgi
will watch over you. Tell me how I may find Morda."
Chapter 8
The Walls of Thorns
HEARING THIS, DOLI KICKED weakly and croaked an incomprehensible
protest, though nothing else could he do but agree to Taran's plan. With Kaw
on his shoulder, Taran set off afoot through the woods. Behind him loped
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Gurgi, who had insisted on going with him.
After a time Taran shortened his stride and finally halted to glance
around him at the forest now thick with brambles. High thorn bushes rose amid
the trees in a tangled, impassable screen. Taran realized he had found what he
sought. The tall bushes were no haphazard growth, but had been craftily twined
into a dense barrier, a living wall nearly twice his height, bristling with
spines sharper than the talons of a gwythaint. Taran drew his sword and strove
to cut an opening in the thicket.
The brambles were hard as cold iron and Taran blunted both his
strength and his blade against them. All he gained for his labor was a tiny
hole to which he pressed his eye; he made out nothing more than a dark mound
of boulders and black turf surrounded by rank weeds and burdock. What first
seemed the lair of a wild beast he saw to be a rambling, ill-shaped dwelling
of low, squat walls roofed with sod. There was no movement, no sign of life,
and he wondered if the wizard had left his fastness and the companions had
come too late. The thought only put a sharper edge to his uneasiness.
"Somehow Doli forced his way in," Taran murmured, shaking his head.
"But his skill is greater than mine; he must have struck on an easier passage.
If we try climbing over," Taran added, "we risk being seen."
"Or caught on brambles with jabbings and stabbings!" Gurgi replied.
"Oh, bold Gurgi does not like climbing walls without knowing what lies in
lurkings beyond."
Taran took the crow from his shoulder. "Morda surely has his own
passage: a breach in the thorns, or perhaps a tunnel. Find it for us," he said
urgently to Kaw. "Find it for us, old friend."
"And hasten, too," Gurgi put in. "No jokings and trickings!"
Silent as an owl, the crow flew upward, circled the barrier, then
dropped out of sight. Taran and Gurgi crouched waiting in the shadows. After
some while, when the sun had dipped below the trees and dusk had gathered with
still no tidings from Kaw, Taran began to fear for the bird. Prankster though
he was, Kaw understood the seriousness of his mission, and Taran knew it was
more than whim that delayed the crow's return.
At last Taran dared wait no longer. He strode to the barrier and
carefully began to climb. The branches writhed like serpents and tore
viciously at his hands and face. Wherever he sought a foothold the thorns
turned against him as with a will of their own. Just below, he heard Gurgi
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panting, as the sharp points struck through the creature's matted hair. Taran
paused to catch his breath while Gurgi clambered up beside him. The top of the
wall was almost within reach.
With a sudden lashing and rattling among the thorns, a slipnoose
tightened around Taran's upraised arm. He shouted in alarm and in that instant
glimpsed the terrified face of Gurgi as loops of finely knotted cords whipped
over the creature's body. A bent sapling sprang upright, pulling the ropes
with it. Taran felt himself ripped from the brambles and, dangling on the end
of the strong cord, flung upward and over the barrier. Now he understood the
words Doli had striven to gasp out: traps and snares. He fell, and darkness
swallowed him.
A BONY HAND GRIPPED his throat. In his ears rasped a voice like a
dagger drawn across a stone. "Who are you?" it repeated. "Who are you?"
Taran struggled to pull away, then realized his hands were bound
behind him. Gurgi whimpered miserably. Taran's head spun. The guttering light
of a candle stabbed his eyes. As his sight cleared, he saw a gaunt face the
color of dry clay, eyes glittering like cold crystals deep set in a jutting
brow as though at the bottom of a well. The skull was hairless; the mouth a
livid scar stitched with wrinkles.
"How have you come here?" demanded Morda. "What do you seek of me?"
In the dimness Taran could make out little more than a low-ceilinged
chamber and a fireless hearth filled with dead ashes. He himself had been
propped in the angle of a low wall. Gurgi lay sprawled on the flagstones
beside him. He glimpsed Kaw pinioned in a wicker basket set on a heavy oaken
table, and he cried out to the bird.
"What then," snapped the wizard, "is this crow yours? He found one
of my snares, as you did. None enters here without my knowledge. This much
have you already learned. Now it is I who shall learn more of you." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]