Cart and Cwidder (24 page)

Then he looked down into the pass where Olob's body lay in the middle of the road. The nearest riders were not so far from it now. He struck one sharp, rolling chord, and the power in the cwidder swelled with it. There was no humming, but he could feel the power. “You're not coming North,” he said to the jostling riders. “And this is why.” He struck two more chords. The power almost choked him. The answer was a great dagger of lightning, green and perilous, lancing down over the cliffs. A peal of thunder followed, and Moril led it on, pealing the lowest note of the cwidder, so that the power in it could grow. When it stopped, he spoke, in the way the singers spoke an incantation. He said:

He struck another chord, followed by a swinging, hanging, frantic phrase, and felt the power in the cwidder grow again. Then he said:

He struck a sharp chord and a rolling one. The first horsemen were now right beneath him. They did not pause when they came to Olob but trampled over him and on. Moril saw, but he looked beyond them, to the center of the pass. Tholian was there, jostled on either side by his favorite friends. Moril waited, quite confident and implacable, and let them come on while the power in the cwidder grew yet again. Then he spoke his last stave:

He struck the cwidder again, and again, and yet a third time, vengefully. The power grew enormous, until it possessed Moril, the sky, the clouds, and the entire pass. Then, as Moril had known they would, the hills began to walk.

They started mildly and slowly, as if the mountains on either side of the pass were shrugging their shoulders. But in a second or so, the shrugging was a deep rhythmic jigging. The tops of the cliffs bent and marched, regularly inward and downward, walking, piling, inescapably trudging together to fill the pass. The thunder pealed and was drowned in the grinding of ton after ton of rock, moving and jogging inward. Almost lost in the greater din was the lesser screaming of men and horses. At the far end of the pass Moril could see riders swirling and struggling to get back or get out. But leisurely, sleepily, rhythmically, the mountains were filling the center. The cliff Moril was on marched with the rest, downward and forward. Moril leaned backward to keep his balance and let it take him, until he was standing at the head of a heap of jumbled rocks, almost over the place where Olob had been shot. The rocks were piled into the rift, choking it so that it was no longer a pass.

Moril did not spend long looking, because the rain came down, and the torn surfaces of the rocks were black with it. But he knew, as he turned round to keep the cwidder from the worst of the wet and stripped off his coat to cover it, that Tholian was underneath somewhere and Barangarolob had plenty of company. He looked across to see that the fort was safe, as he had intended. It was there, standing on a steep-sided block of steady rock, and Keril was picking his way over the ruin of the cliff toward him.

“I've just done something really horrible,” Moril said to him. “Haven't I?”

Keril jumped from one rock to another and then onto the one where Moril stood. “I don't think we had much chance of holding the pass otherwise,” he said.

“You don't understand,” said Moril. “I did it because of Olob.” He leaned against Keril and burst into tears. Keril took off his own coat, wrapped it round Moril, and led him quietly back over the rocks to the fort.

They left the fort the following day, after a big force of men from the North Dales arrived there to make sure the Southerners did not attempt to attack over the fallen rocks. Moril did not see as much of the journey to Hannart as he would have liked. He was exhausted and spent most of the time asleep in one of the wagons. Every so often he woke to find they were on a green road, or in a wood where the trees were still only budding in the later spring of the North, and went to sleep happy. He was awake to see the Falls at Dropwater, which he would not have missed for worlds. And by the time they reached Hannart he had come to himself again.

He was disappointed, but not really surprised, to find Hannart a city far larger than Neathdale, in the center of a big valley. Flags were flying in honor of their arrival. There were crowds of people carrying flags or flowers. Hannart was full of flowers in fields, in gardens, on trees, and growing wild, thick as the grass, on the steep sides of the mountains. Moril could smell them as soon as they entered the valley. At the end of the valley was a great tall thing, like a castle four times life-size, picked out in gold and blue and green.

Moril stared at it. “Whatever is that?”

“That's the steam organ,” said Kialan. “Haven't you heard about it? They'll probably play it tonight. It makes the most splendid noise.”

“I wish someone had told me,” said Moril.

There was a feast that night, in their honor, and as Kialan had thought, the steam organ played. In a strong steamy smell of coal and oil, it thundered out well-known tunes, like a mountain singing, or the grandfather of all music, and made Brid and Moril laugh. It seemed most fitting that Hannart should own such a thing, because the place was full of music, not only then, but at all times. Cowbells clinked in the steep meadows. Women called the cows home in a kind of song, not unlike Brid's “Cow-Calling” song. In the city there were tunes for crying everything that was on sale and for telling the hours of the watch. There was singing and dancing somewhere almost every night. The saying was that you could tell someone came from Hannart because whatever they did, they sang, and if they did not sing, they whistled.

Keril lived right in the center of the city, in a house twice the size of Ganner's. Unlike Ganner's house, it was always open. The cheerful people of Hannart seemed to use its front courtyard as another part of the main square. There was always someone there, gossiping or selling something, and, if anything unusual happened, they came on into the rest of the house to tell Keril about it. Since there were also large numbers of people who actually lived in the house, Moril found it almost impossible to sort out who came from where.

Brid loved it. She had never been happier in her life. “I often remembered it, but I didn't think it was real!” she was fond of saying.

Moril enjoyed it, too. He liked the liveliness, the carelessness, and the way people rushed up to Keril and said what they pleased. He could not imagine anyone doing that in the South. Moril liked Keril. He liked Halida, Kialan's mother. He enjoyed being with Kialan, and he loved the perpetual music. But he was too hot in the city and far too hot in the house. He kept having to go out on the hillsides. At night it was worse, and he slept in one of the gardens when he could. When Halida realized this, she gave him a room on the ground floor, opening on one of the gardens. Moril was grateful, but he hardly went into the room, and he only slept there if it was raining.

Brid and Kialan consulted about it and went to see what Keril thought.

“Yes,” said Keril. “I'm afraid he'll be off again, one of these days. I hope not yet, though. I owe it to Clennen to see he has an education.”

After that Brid watched Moril like a hawk. Moril showed no sign of wanting to leave. He seemed perfectly happy getting the education Keril thought he should have. He spent long hours playing his cwidder with Kialan, arranging songs and trying to make new ones. He rode with Kialan and Brid and walked on the hills with them. It was just that he was too hot indoors, and there was something at the back of his mind he did not want to think about yet.

Now Flennpass was blocked, there was very little news from the South. It was nearly a month before some fishermen brought news that Tholian had indeed been killed by the fall of rocks, and his army, most of it having been unwilling, anyway, had packed up and gone home. Some time after that, a trader arrived to say that things had gone very quiet in the South. Yes, he said, when Keril questioned him, the lords and earls were very shaken. But the cause of the quiet was the ordinary people. They did nothing, but they seemed powerful. The earls were afraid of them. They dared not even try for peace with the North, in case that stirred up a revolution.

A month later still a cart drove into Hannart. By the black mud on its axles, it had clearly come north through the Marshes. Apart from the mud, it was gaily painted in green and gold, and trim enough. It was driven by a very pretty girl. Beside her on the driving seat sat a dreamy-looking man with a thin face and a thin, graying beard, who smiled round at the gaiety of Hannart with a look of mild pleasure. The small gold lettering on the side of the cart said he was
HESTEFAN THE SINGER
.

The people of Hannart realized that here would be both music and more news of the South. Numbers followed the cart as it jogged through the streets and drove into the front court of the Earl's house.

“Oh look! A singer!” Brid said to Kialan.

“Do you know him?” Kialan asked Moril.

“I've heard of him,” said Moril. He looked at Hestefan's mild face and dreamy eyes, and it came to him that he would probably look like that when he was older.

The cart stopped. The mottled gray horse blew, as much as to say, “Good—that's enough for today, thank you.” The canvas cover came back a little, and a third traveler rather hesitantly stood up in the cart.

“Dagner!”
shrieked Brid, Moril, and Kialan.

They rushed up and hurled themselves on him. Dagner, grinning and blushing mauve with pleasure, climbed out of the cart and was thrown against it by their onrush.

“What happened?” said Brid.

“How did you get out of prison?” said Moril.

“Ganner got me out,” Dagner said when he had got his breath back. “Ganner's a good fellow. I got to like him a lot. He did follow us, you know, but he went back to Markind when he didn't find us. Then—I don't know what you said to that old snob of a justice, Moril, but when they had me up in front of them again, they didn't seem at all sure I was guilty and kept asking me about Ganner. So I told them he was marrying Mother, and they sent all the way to Markind to ask if it was true. It was marvelous. As soon as Ganner heard I was in prison, he came to Neathdale and raised a real stink. And while he was doing it, news came that Tholian was dead. Ganner upped and sacked the justice, and said he was in charge now. It was marvelous! He let half the other prisoners go, too. But seeing that I really had been passing information, Mother thought I'd better go North for a while and got Hestefan to take me.”

“How is Mother?” asked Moril.

“Terribly happy,” said Dagner. “Runs about all the time laughing. I don't know why—she laughed when she heard Flennpass was blocked and said you and Brid must have made it to the North. She sent me with a letter for you both.”

Brid and Moril snatched the letter and bent over it eagerly. It was a good long letter, all about Lenina's doings in Markind. Lenina wrote of everything from the speckled cows to the roof where Moril had walked, and reminded Brid of this and Moril of that, and sent Ganner's love—and to Moril, it was like a letter from a distant acquaintance. He felt it might just as well have been written to the baker's boy round the corner. He was sad that he should feel like that, but he could not help it.

“What a lovely letter!” said Brid. “I shall keep it.”

While they were reading it, Hestefan's pretty daughter had driven the cart away to the stables. Moril was annoyed, because he had wanted to talk to Hestefan. He dashed away to the stables, but the green cart was already standing empty in the coach house beside their battered and faded pink one. Moril went back to the courtyard, where Dagner, delighted to see them all again, was being uncharacteristically chatty.

“Shall I tell you something really silly?” he said to Kialan as Moril came up. “You won't believe this!”

“Try me,” said Kialan.

“Well,” said Dagner, “I'm the Earl of the South Dales. They won't have me,” he said hastily, as Kialan burst out laughing. “Nothing will possess them to invest me. But it's true. Tholian wasn't married, and all his cousins were killed, too, when Flennpass collapsed—you
must
tell me about that, by the way—and the only living heir left was me. And Moril after that. Honestly.”

Moril stood silent in the crowded courtyard and left Brid and Kialan to do the exclaiming. Now he knew
what it was that he had not wanted to think about. He had done that. He had worked a huge destruction and killed so many people that Dagner was now an earl. Everyone no doubt thought he had done right. He had saved the North, prevented a war, and avenged Clennen and Konian. But Moril knew he had not done right. He had done it all because Olob was killed. With the cwidder in his hands, he had behaved as if it was for Konian, for Clennen, for Dagner, and for the North, but it had all been for Olob, really. He was ashamed. What he had done was to cheat the cwidder. That was the worst thing. If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever. Moril saw that he was neither old enough nor wise enough to have charge of such a potent thing as that cwidder.