Steel Magic (6 page)

“Kaaaw—”

Sara looked up. On a branch of tree which hung overhead teetered a big black bird. The sun did not make its feathers look shiny and bright, but dull and dusty. Even its feet and bill were black, but, as it turned its head to one side and looked down at her, its eye glinted red. Sara disliked it on sight.

“Kaaaw—” It spread wide its wings, and, after a few vigorous flaps, took to the air, diving at her head. Sara ducked as it circled her, its hoarse cries sounding like jeering laughter.

Sara ran back under the tree, hoping the thick branches would keep the bird off. But it settled on a limb above her, walking along the bark and watching her all the while.

“Go away!” Sara waved her arm.

“Kaaaw—” The bird jeered and flapped its wings, opening its bill to a wide extent, ending its cry with a hiss which was truly frightening.

Sara, holding to the basket, began to run. Once again the bird took off into the air and streaked down at her head. She jumped for the shelter of a bush, caught her foot on a root, and sprawled forward, scraping her knee painfully.

“Kaaaw—”

This time there was a different note in that sound, the jeer was gone. Sara sat up, nursing her skinned knee. The bush met in a green canopy over her head, and she could not see the bird, though she heard its cries plain enough.

Pattering into sight was the large fox she had met by the gate. With his attention fixed upon some point well above her head, he was snarling ferociously.

G
reg stood shivering in the middle of the moonlit road. He glanced back. Behind him was a dark valley, with no sign of the mirror through which he had come. A wind blew through the branches of the misshapen trees, finding a few leaves to move. It was a cold wind when it pushed against Greg. He hunched his shoulders against it and began to walk forward.

The road was not often used, he judged. In some places it was almost hidden by drifts of soil and in others the stone blocks of its surface were tilted up or down, with dried grass bunched in the cracks between them.

Now the road climbed, curving about the side of the rise. When Greg reached the top, he turned once more to look back. Only the road, running across a wasteland, was to be seen. No sign of any house or castle, nor could he sight any shelter ahead.

His legs began to ache with the strain of the steep climb.
Now and again he sat down on one of the boulders brought down in old landslides. But while he rested he could hear nothing save the moan of the wind.

There were no more trees here, only small, thorny bushes without leaves, which Greg avoided after one bad scratch. He was sucking his hand when he heard a faint howl with a dim echo, coming from some place far ahead.

Three times that chilling cry sounded. Greg shivered. Wolf? He swallowed and strained to catch the last echo of that wail.

Now he looked down at the fork he was carrying, wondering what sort of defense that small weapon could be against a wolf attack. As he held it in the moonlight, testing the sharpness of the tines with his thumb, it glittered as had the dwarf-made blade Huon carried.

“Iron, cold iron.” He repeated the words aloud without knowing just why. “Cold iron to arm me.”

Greg stood up. Again he did not know why he must do this, but he tossed the fork from one hand to the other, and each time he caught it anew it was heavier, longer, sharper, until at last he was holding a four-foot shaft ending in four wickedly sharp points. Maybe this was another of Merlin's spells. It was a queer-looking spear but one which, added to the thought of Merlin, gave Greg confidence in spite of that distant howling.

The road was more and more broken. Sometimes the blocks were so disturbed Greg seemed to be climbing the steps of a stairway. And twice he edged about falls of earth, digging the fork-spear into the ground as support and anchor.

The moonlight, which had been so fresh and bright, was beginning to wane. Greg, seeing how bad the footing was here, and disliking the growing pools of shadow about, decided to camp until morning. He crawled into a hollow between two boulders and put his spear pointing out to seal the entrance.

He awoke stiff and cramped, so cramped that it hurt to move as he wriggled out of his half cave. It must be day but there was no sun. The world was gray, cloudy, but lighter than night. Greg found the trickle of a spring and sucked water from the palm of his hand, taking care to eat bites of his own food with the drink.

The road appeared to lead nowhere except up and up. There were no tracks in the patches of earth covering it, no trace that anyone save himself had been foolish enough to go that way for years. But, though no sun rose, the gray continued to lighten. Greg topped a narrow pass between two huge pillars of rock and gazed down into the cup of a valley, where a river ran fast under a humpbacked bridge. About that bridge, on both sides of the stream, were clusters of stone cottages, patches of green growing about them.

With a cry Greg hurried forward, half sliding down one slope, running down the next in his haste to reach the village and to see another person again.

“Halloooo!” He cupped his hands about his mouth, called out with all the force of his lungs.

The sound rolled about the valley, magnified and bounced back at him from the mountain walls. But there was no answer, no stir on the crooked street of the village. Alarmed
now, Greg slowed his headlong pace, bringing his spear before him as he had the night before when he had taken refuge in the cave. He studied the huddle of dwellings with greater care. Most of them were small stone huts with thatched roofs. But now he could see that the thatch was missing in ragged patches, so that some of the houses were almost roofless.

However, just on the other side of the bridge, standing apart from the smaller buildings, was a square tower three stories high, with narrow slits of windows. And this did not seem so weatherworn.

Although Greg decided that the village had been long deserted, he was still alert. The green spots about the tumbledown cottages were rank with huge weeds with fat, unpleasant-looking leaves and small, dull purple flowers which gave out a sickly scent.

He hesitated on the bridge and then glanced quickly at the nearest cottage. The doorless entrance gaped like a toothless mouth, the window spaces were eye-holes lacking eyes. Yet Greg could not rid himself of the feeling that he was being spied upon, that someone or something was peering from that doorway, or from one of the windows, slyly—secretly—

As he moved, his spear struck against the stone parapet of the bridge with a clank of metal. And that sound, small as it was, was picked up, echoed through the empty village. Greg knew in that moment that he should never have shouted from the ridge, that perhaps he had drawn attention to himself in a manner he would regret.

Better to get out of the valley as quickly as he could. He
tried to keep all those cottages in sight, sure that, if he were lucky, or fast, or clever enough, he would sooner or later catch a glimpse of what must lurk there.

Crossing the bridge, Greg came out on a stretch of moss-greened pavement about the base of the tower. As he drew level with the door, his spear turned in his hands in spite of the firm grip with which he held it, hurting his skin with the force of the movement. Armed, he stumbled forward a step or two, drawn against the wall toward the interior of the tower by some force that seemed to guide his spear.

Then he discovered he would either have to abandon his weapon or continue on inside. And since he dared not leave the spear behind, Greg advanced reluctantly, the odd weapon light and free in his hold as long as he followed its direction.

Within the tower the light was dim, for it came only through narrow slits of windows. All the lower story was one square room, empty except for powdery drifts of old leaves. Against the far wall was a stairway leading to a hole in the ceiling. This Greg mounted warily one step at a time, still urged along by the spear.

At last he reached the third and top room, which was as bare as the other two had been, and he was completely bewildered. There were three windows here, one in each of the three walls at his sides and back. In the wall fronting him there was the outline of a fourth window which had been bricked up, as had the gate through which they had come to Avalon.

Moved by the power against which he no longer struggled,
Greg went to the fourth wall and pried at the sealing stones with his pronged spear. The mortar which had bound the stones must have been very weak, for at the first slight push they gave way, falling outward one after another.

Greg swung around to face the stairwell, sure that if any enemy lurked in the village the crash of the falling stones would bring him—or it—into the open.

But the echoes of the crash faded and there was no other sound. Was the blocked window another gate? But it couldn't be—there was only sky to be seen without.

Greg put his hand on the wide sill and pulled himself up for a better view. The ruinous state of the village was even more apparent from this height. There was not a whole roof on any of the cottages, no signs of cultivation in the old fields beyond.

The puzzle of why he had been brought here—for Greg was certain he had been guided—was still a mystery. He studied the ground below and saw a ragged bush tremble where there was no wind, as if something crept beneath its masking.

From the village he looked to the far wall of the next mountain. The cloudiness of the day made it difficult to locate any landmarks ahead. Then Greg gripped his fork-spear tighter, for there was something—a pinprick of light far up, far beyond—a light which flickered as though it came from the leaping flames of a distant fire.

He realized that that distant gleam could not be sighted from any other point in the valley than where he now stood. And so it was easy to understand that that light was what he
had been brought here to see, that it must be the mysterious goal of his journey.

And now as Greg went downstairs and out into the open, his spear did not resist his going. Only three houses stood between him and the open country, and he was eager to be away from the dead village. However, that was not yet done, as he discovered when he rounded the last hut.

Between him and the first scrubby growth of trees masking the upward slope of the road were what had once been fields. When he had inspected these from the tower, they had appeared to be only weed-grown spaces bordered by the rotting remains of ancient fences. And between them the road ran straight, walled by borders of half-dead hedges.

Greg halted and lowered the fork. For, flowing out of the hedgerows now, was a company of animals. They moved silently, every head swung so that eyes, yellow and green and red, were on him. Wolves—certainly the larger shapes of silver-gray were wolves—minks, weasels—all hunters, all gray of coat.

They stood in a dead tangle of grass, their heads showing above it, the bolder creatures crouched at the verge of the road. But they did not advance any farther. The wolves sat on their haunches as if they were hounds, their pink tongues showing a little. Greg gained confidence. Step by wary step he passed along the lane they had left open for him.

He watched those beads of eyes move as he moved, he held his breath as he stepped between the two wolves. Not daring to quicken pace lest he provoke them into attack, he kept on walking slowly through that strange company. But
when he had reached the edge of the wood and dared to look back, the fields were as barren of life as they had been earlier. Whatever had been the purpose of that queer assembly, it had not meant danger for him.

Tired and hungry though he was, Greg began to climb again. He disliked that valley so much he did not want to pause again until he was safely out of it. But soon he ran into thickets of ripe berries and clipped them off in juicy handfuls, munching dry bits of sandwich between.

He spent that night in a rough lean-to he made by stacking branches together. And he slept soundly, though with troubled dreams. Then he awoke to another gray day.

Before he had gone a quarter mile the road forked. The wider, paved way he had followed since he had come through Merlin's mirror angled to the left. Another path, far less well marked and beginning with a very steep climb, went on ahead. And it was the latter which pointed in the direction of the spark he had sighted from the tower.

Greg studied the path. Up and up it angled, ending in the dark mouth of a deep cleft or cave. Again the fork-spear in his hands urged him up and into the very heart of that black opening. He tried to find a path around, but there was no possible one and the pull of the fork would not let him turn aside—unless he dropped it.

Greg crept forward and chill stone walls closed in on him far too quickly. Somewhere ahead he could hear the distant lap of water. He began to sound his way, rapping the fork against the rock flooring lest he fall into some underground stream.

The dark was so thick Greg had a queer feeling he could gather up its substance in his hands, hold it. When he glanced back, the entrance was a tiny glimmer of gray, so he could hardly distinguish it—then the passage climbed and there was only the terrifying dark, a dark which swallowed you up. He felt as if he could not breathe, that he was trapped. His heart pounded heavily. He wanted nothing so much as to turn and run and run—

Now he was listening, listening for all the things his imagination told him might lie in wait here. But somehow he kept going, his head swimming with the effort that determination cost him, not daring to pause lest he would hear something indeed.

“Iron, cold iron.” First he whispered those words and then said them aloud in a kind of chant. And the fork-spear swung in time to that. The feel of it in his hands began to give him confidence—until at last he saw another gleam of gray light and came out on a ledge a few feet above a wide plateau down to which he could easily leap.

At the far side of the level plateau was a paved surface, and Greg saw that it was a sort of road that wound about a series of strange pillars. At first Greg thought they might be columns of a ruined building. Then he saw that they were clustered in irregular groups or scattered singly with no plan.