The Lad of the Gad (9 page)

The wailing of the creatures

The sound of a great wind against rough hills

Eyes in their heads like stars.

But that rock, Lusca, son of the King of Irrua, was unchanged in shape or sense or form, his speech unwandering, listening to great evils.

He went a second time and gave a hand about the creatures, so that he drove them into the same cave again. He followed them up the bed of the cave, and there is no knowledge of what direction they went from him then.

Lusca came back. It seemed to him that none the less for all the loss of creatures he wrought was the
malignity of the forest. He came to the fire. He did not find one spark of it alive, nor a hut, but a close coppice oak-wood of thin trees, smooth and very high, and bitter quick venomous winds, and wet, heavy snow bending those trees and cold linns of spring water welling there.

It could not be told then all the destruction of enchantment that was throughout the Forest of Wonders.

Next Lusca met a giant, with two grey goat horns through his skull. A round, black hand he had, and one leg like the mast of a ship under him.

“What news?” said Lusca.

“I have no mind to tell news,” said the giant, “except only this. It was night-straying that brought me into the forest.”

Lusca gave a stroke of his sword through the giant's head, and the sound of the giant was the noise of an oak falling. But the giant gave a twist to his body until he came standing again on the one leg, the sword through his head, Lusca on his shoulder with two hands in the grip of the sword that could not let go.

Then Lusca took hold firmly and squeezed. He made little fragments of the handle and fell off backwards from the shoulder of the giant to the ground. He turned his head. This is what he saw: a pillar of stone, the sword through it from one side to the other.

He climbed the stone, but he could not draw out
the sword, so he went back through the forest to the coppice of thin trees. He found both trees and earth in one slab of ice. It was not a good camp for him to stay that night.

“I am a stranger,” said Lusca, “and I have come a long way to be at the Forest of Wonders, but I shall not be the better for it, if I am alive tomorrow.”

He did not know what to do. The water of the forest was as cold as drowned sally; the air was full of ghosts, so that if a kindred friend had come close to a man he would not hear him for the talk and the shouting.

“It is not a danger to me,” said Lusca. “They are not things of fight or conflict.”

He saw a shining lamp lit up, a girl bearing the lamp, and that the girl was Grian Sun-face, from the gold tower under the lake.

She said, “Come with me to my father's castle. He is the King of the Forest of Wonders. The Great Dug of the World is with him.”

The King of the Forest of Wonders rose up and took Lusca by the hand and put him sitting in the king's place.

“Who is the young hero?” said the king to Grian Sun-face.

“Lusca, son of the King of Irrua, is that man,” she said, “and give him everything he shall ask of you, for he is able to take it against your will. Though your hosts are many they are very little in his hands, for it was by him that the battle was broken on the
Big Mokkalve in the Lands of Sorcha. Many, too, were the horrors of your forest, yet they fell by him. It is better to give him everything he shall ask of you.”

“What thing will he ask?” said the king.

“I am sure that he is on the track of the Great Dug of the World,” said Grian Sun-face.

“It is well we did not meet at the beginning of this night,” said the king. “But now what good thing would you have of the forest?”

“The thing I would have is the Great Dug of the World,” said Lusca.

“The Great Dug of the World is not with me,” said the king. “The Cat of the Free Isle has it, for she brought it away before you, to make alive again the Kurrirya Crookfoot and your two brothers.”

“Sweet is that to hear,” said Lusca, and he went straight to the battle-hill in the Lands of Sorcha, Grian Sun-face with him.

They found the hag, sitting by the fire, the Great Dug of the World next to her, and the dead Kurrirya next to that, in the grave of green cresses. But of the cat or of his brothers Lusca had no sign.

The hag said, “This hill is my hill, and the man who makes fire on my hill is my man; and I must have ransom of gold or ransom of the head of the man himself or would you spend this night with me?”

“Lay aside your silly talk,” said Lusca. “Where are my brothers?”

“The Cat of the Free Isle made them alive,” said the hag. “They have gone after her to find the place where she is in.”

Lusca knelt by the Kurrirya.

The hag said, “Get him from uselessness: up from dreaming.”

He took the Great Dug of the World and bathed the Kurrirya with the stuff that was in it.

The hag said, “Where life ran let words come. Join the silver bone: bond the gold vein. Drench death down.”

The Kurrirya rose up as whole and as healthy as he had ever been.

Lusca said, “My foster-brother and my kindred friend. And the gate of my side is closed.”

“The woman you must find,” said the Kurrirya, “is at the City of the Red Stream. I came through the world and death to give you this; but you did not, and you would not, as I told you.”

“And me you left,” said the hag.

Lusca made a look at the hag. She changed misshape for shapeliness before him. She stood, Behinya, the treasure of a woman, sister to Bright-eyed Faylinn, the Cat of the Free Isle.

Then they welcomed each other in words of the olden time, kissed lovingly and told their adventures from first to last.

“Now tell me of the city,” said Lusca.

The Kurrirya said, “Here is how the city is: there are three chieftain streams around it, and they are in
a crimson-lit flame. For the heat and the fire no man dare approach the city. Whoever sees it will never have his health from all the flame and the heat. Every evil that ever was met was good when put against the ills of that city. In the city is the woman. That is the place where she is in.”

Lusca, the Kurrirya, Behinya and Grian Sun-face then took the good and the ill of it upon themselves and put the ship out over the back-ridges of each deep sea till they came to the City of the Red Stream.

They found the big brother and the little brother of Lusca sitting outside the walls of the city by the three chieftain streams of flame. The brothers had taken all the third plunder division of the world on their way to the city, but the city itself they could not reach for the full-red lake.

“There are no men in it,” said the big brother, “except a hundred only; and they are the Kings of the World.”

“But there are three thousand women in it,” said the little brother. “Over them all is the woman we must find.”

“It is by the women,” said the big brother, “that the greater portion of valour of life is remembered. Great is the fear, even for you, from them.”

They bore away that night until the morning of the morrow, until the day shone with its fierce light. Yet no less for that were the flames about the city burning.

There came out over the walls of the city Bright-eyed Faylinn. She had a cloak about her, the clustering hair over her shoulder, two spears of fire in her hand.

Then Lusca struck a shield blow and a fight kindling upon his shield. Faylinn said, “I never left corner nor country, nor islet nor island, on sea or on land, but I visited there; yet I never heard the like of that shield blow, for the whole city is in one quivering and one thunder.”

The Kurrirya said, “Lusca is here, and his two brothers are here, the sons of the King of Irrua; and Grian Sun-face, daughter of the King of the Forest of Wonders, and Behinya, your own half-sister, and I, the Kurrirya; I am here.”

Faylinn said, “No greater for that is the heed that we pay them.”

“Do not speak foolish and unprofitable words,” said the Kurrirya. “Except for the red stream you would know the strong man; the blue candle of valour, the right hand of heroes, the battle-prop of countries and the sustaining warrant of all; the king-tree of heroism, the mind without turning; Lusca, son of Dolvath, son of Libren, son of Loman, son of Cas, son of Tag of the kindred of Irrua.”

Faylinn said, “No greater for that is the heed that we pay them. You have not the crossing of the red stream.”

Lusca said, “What brings the wonderful heat into this flood beyond every other flood?”

Faylinn said, “I think it friendly to let you know it. Seven stones I have in that stream. It is a part of their virtue that whatever stream or river-mouth in which they are placed shall always turn to be a blaze of flame, so long as the stones shall be in it.”

Lusca said, “Is there anything that would prevent the heat of this full-red lake?”

Faylinn said, “I think it friendly to let you know it. There is knowledge and prophecy for us that a man shall come and shall quench the fire in our despite. Against him the flames shall grow cold. But the man is not Lusca, nor his big brother, nor his little brother, nor the Kurrirya Crookfoot. The man is Lurga Lom.”

Lusca heard this, and a fist upon manhood, a fist upon strengthening, a fist upon power went into him. He said, “If ever the earth has put on the ridge of its back such a man, let me see him.” He went from the city in the power of the sharp-travelling wind to the Upland of Grief in Isbernya, to the forge and the cave of Shasval the Smith. He stood at the cave and said, “Where is Lurga Lom?”

The smith said nothing and hammered a Sword of Light.

Lusca said, “Where is Lurga Lom?”

The smith said nothing and hammered the sword.

Lusca said, “Where is Lurga Lom?”

The smith said, “The sword is ready. Have you come?”

Lusca cast about him to find a man, but there was no man in that place if not himself.

The smith said, “The sword is ready. Have you come?”

Lusca cast about him again to find a man, but there was no man if not himself.

The smith said, “Have you come?”

Lusca took a step to the sword. He said, “And if I am not Lurga Lom.” He reached the sword. He said, “Yet I have come.” And the sword knew him.

Lusca went from there in the power of the sharp-travelling wind till he came again to the City of the Red Stream, the Sword of Light in his hand. He trod the brown flames and the stream was at once made cold and dried up, so that Lusca and his people crossed by the seven stones over to the city and gave shortness of life to all they found in it, except to the Kings of the World and to Faylinn alone.

It was then that Lusca was freed from his crosses and his spells; and Lurga Lom he became from that time out. His big brother took Behinya, and his little brother took Grian Sun-face, and he himself took to him Bright-eyed Faylinn, the Cat of the Free Isle; and they agreed.

The Kurrirya Crookfoot wrote this story in poet's wands; it is the fifth language into which it has been made.

And the Kings of the World were sent to their lands.

Alan Garner was born in Cheshire on the 17th October 1934, and his childhood was spent in Alderley Edge, where his family has lived for more than four hundred years. His attendance at the local primary school was interrupted by several serious illnesses, from three of which he nearly died.

At the age of eleven he went to Manchester Grammar School and became the fastest schoolboy sprinter in Britain.

Before going to Oxford, he spent two years' National Service as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. Realising then that his original ambition to become Professor of Greek was no longer valid, he decided to become a writer. He found his present mediaeval home, dug himself in, and wrote.

He has won many awards, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the Phoenix Award of America and the Karl Edward Wagner Special Award from the British Fantasy Society.

In 2001, Alan was awarded the OBE for services to literature, and in 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in recognition for his achievements in advancing the archaeological understanding of Cheshire.

“Mr Garner's renderings are alive, vigorous and occasionally poetic, singing of sea and islands and the wide wild spaces of north and west… He has brought us five fine tales and has told them so they fall well on the ear, hold the attention and stir the imagination.”

The Literary Review

T
HE
W
EIRDSTONE OF
B
RISINGAMEN

T
HE
M
OON OF
G
OMRATH

E
LIDOR

T
HE
O
WL
S
ERVICE

R
ED
S
HIFT

T
HE
S
TONE
B
OOK
Q
UARTET

T
HE
L
AD OF THE
G
AD

F
AIRY
T
ALES OF
G
OLD

B
OOK OF
B
RITISH
F
AIRY
T
ALES

A B
AG OF
M
OONSHINE

HarperCollins
Children's Books
is a division of
HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd,
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith,
London W6 8JB

First published in 1980 by
William Collins Sons & Company Ltd.

Reprinted by Collins in 1995

© Alan Garner 1980

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

Source ISBN 9780001847118

Ebook Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780007539109

Version 2013-08-05