02 - The Land of the Silver Apples

  “Most large tunnels are made by elves. The Lady of the Lake has a close friendship with the Queen of Elfland, and I imagine that’s where she’s hiding.”

  “Have you been there, sir?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, yes,” replied the old man with a not-completely-happy expression on his face. “What bard would not want to hear that music? But…” He fell silent. Jack was surprised. The Bard was usually so confident. He could control winds and call up fire with his very words. It was for that the Northmen honored him and named him Dragon Tongue.

  “Are elves as wonderful as the tales say?”

  “Of course,” the Bard said irritably. “They’re elves, aren’t they? Only…”

  “They have no hearts. Good and evil swirl together in them, and they stand neither on the one side nor the other,” said Brother Aiden.

  “They’re perilously fair, which even the wisest can mistake for goodness.” The old man sighed. “Men have abandoned their families to starve, to follow after elves.”

  “Seems to me that’s the men’s fault,” said Pega. “I wouldn’t take after an elvish knight no matter how many times he snapped his fingers.”

  “You’re still a child. You don’t know,” the Bard said.

  “I suppose Elfland is where the Lady took Lucy,” said Jack as a strange sensation fluttered along his nerves. “I suppose that’s where we have to go.”

  “Yes,” said the Bard without any enthusiasm.

  “Hurrah!” cried Brutus. “We’re going to have a wonderful, exciting, fantastic adventure!” His face was so transformed by joy, Jack forgot how spineless the slave could be.

  “It is a quest.” The boy sighed. The image of a ship sailing north on a foam-flecked sea with merry berserkers singing “Fame Never Dies” rose in his mind. He discarded the memory of smelly boots and sloshing bilge as unimportant. Such things didn’t matter on quests.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Pega interrupted. “You said most of the large tunnels were made by elves. Who made the other ones?”

  The Bard looked down at his hands. “Dragons.”

  “Dragons!” cried Brutus. “I’ll slay them and rescue princesses.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” said Jack.

  “But that’s highly unlikely here,” the old man insisted. “The Lady of the Lake wouldn’t take a path inhabited by dragons. Water and fire don’t mix. Now let’s get on with the packing. Time is short, and I need to explain the ground rules for visiting elves.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE HALF-FALLEN ANGELS

  “First, of course, you have to find elves,” said the Bard, opening a large, ornately carved chest in the corner of his room. Jack had not paid attention to it before—all houses contained chests. Even the humblest cottage lacking chairs or tables had a place to store valuables. This chest, he had supposed, held bedding, crockery, and other day-to-day necessities. “Elves don’t welcome visitors except on Midsummer’s Eve.”

  “You don’t want to be around then,” said Brother Aiden.

  “Why? What happens then?” asked Jack, but the two men ignored him.

  “I’ve taught you to dowse for water—you’ve been doing the exercises, haven’t you?” The Bard removed a Y-shaped stick from the chest and handed it to Jack. The boy nodded. It was, in fact, difficult not to find water around his village. Every time he practiced dowsing, the stick dragged him into a bog or sinkhole. Once, out of curiosity, he’d pointed it at the sea and was pulled right off a cliff.

  “If you can track water, you should be able to follow the Lady of the Lake. Elf tunnels are littered with wood. They like carrying leafy branches with them when they travel. They build bowers to sleep in and don’t bother to clean up afterward. You can use these for campfires, but don’t build one near any black lumps you might find.”

  “Why? What are the black lumps?” Jack asked.

  “Dragon poop. It’s flammable.”

  “Elves are unbelievably trashy,” said Brother Aiden. “I put it down to all the mead they drink.”

  “You can also use the discarded wood for torches,” said the Bard. “Remember to check which way the smoke is blowing. Never go into a tunnel with no air movement.”

  “It will either be a dead end or a knucker hole,” explained Brother Aiden. “You definitely don’t want to explore a knucker hole. If the ground sucks at your feet, that’s a bad sign.”

  “What’s a knucker? Why does the ground suck at your feet?” cried Jack.

  No one answered these questions. The Bard rummaged under sheepskins and spare cloaks for the items he’d apparently been storing since arriving at the fortress. It was like him, Jack knew. No matter where he found himself, the old man gathered herbs, odd rocks, sticks, and potions. These things might look like trash to others, but to the Bard, they quivered with secret power. Jack had been trying to develop the same skill, with mediocre results.

  Meanwhile, Pega was packing oatcakes and skins of cider into carrying bags. She had her own little mesh bag with useful treasures, including the candle Mother had given her at the need-fire ceremony. Pega carried that everywhere.

  Jack wondered if Mother had any idea what was happening to them. He knew she could learn things by gazing into a bowl of water. The Bard called it “scrying” and said that it gave you only hints. When Jack was in Jotunheim, Mother had seen him in the middle of a swarm of bees. Where or when was unclear. And Heide had seen Olaf One-Brow dying in a dark forest, when he was to perish in an open valley fighting a troll-bear.

  The bags looked depressingly large, but Jack supposed he would be glad of them in the tunnel. Brutus did nothing. He hummed a happy little song and tapped the rhythm on his knees with his fingers. Jack promised to load him up with bags later.

  “I think you’re young enough to resist the lure of elves.” The Bard frowned. “It’s a curious thing, but this is one area where children are stronger than adults. They aren’t as easily taken in by illusions, and elves, above all else, are masters of illusion. That’s why they never come out into the light of day. Shadows, moonlight, mist… that’s their natural element.”

  “You sound as if you don’t like them,” Jack said.

  “Oh… I like them,” the old man said. His eyes seemed far away, as though he looked beyond the gray walls of the fortress into distances only guessed at.

  “So what’s wrong with them? What are elves?” Jack expected to be ignored again, but this time Brother Aiden answered.

  “Long ago,” he said, settling down in a way Jack knew signaled the beginning of a tale, “long ago they were angels.”

  Pega drew in her breath sharply, and Jack felt his world tilt to one side. Elves were angels? Father lumped them with demons, creatures to be hated and feared.

  “It happened at the beginning of the world,” said the little monk. “Adam and Eve had been driven from Paradise for eating of the tree of knowledge. Life was hard for them, poor sinners. Where once they had only to stretch out their hands to take honeycombs from the trees, now they toiled from dawn to dusk. Cold of winter and heat of summer tormented them. Dry winds withered their crops, and rain brought plague to their livestock. Even more terrible, one of their sons slew the other.”

  “That was Cain and Abel,” announced Pega, who listened to Brother Aiden’s tales every chance she got.

  “Yes, my dear,” the monk said. “Yet God did not entirely forget His children. He gave them good advice and He harkened to their prayers. Unfortunately, He was about to have trouble in His own home.”

  “Heaven,” Pega said contentedly.

  “Why don’t you keep quiet and let Brother Aiden tell the story?” said Jack.

  “Among the angels was a most beautiful and glorious being called Lucifer. Alas, he was consumed with jealousy and wanted Heaven for himself, and so he made war upon God.”

  “I didn’t know such things were possible,” said Jack.

  “They aren’t,” said Brother Aiden. “Any fool knows God is all powerful, but Lucifer wa
s an idiot. He recruited an army of other idiots and tried to take over.”

  Jack was enchanted by the little monk’s tale, which was completely new to him. The angels sounded just like a pack of Northmen. Only, of course, God wasn’t anything like Odin. “What happened next?” he asked.

  “The battle was very short,” said Brother Aiden. “Lucifer and his followers were tossed into Hell for all eternity, and I imagine the good angels had a victory feast afterward. Order was restored except for one little problem.”

  Pega, though she was listening carefully, was still tucking away odds and ends for the journey. A chunk of salt, fennel, sage, rosemary, and thyme were layered in a small parcel. Dried sea kale and fish filled a basket.

  “I was writing down this very story in the village,” said Brother Aiden. “God grant I return to finish it. There were the evil angels who followed Lucifer and the wise ones who followed God. But there was also a third group that refused to take sides. ‘We’ll wait to see how it comes out,’ they said. ‘We’re angels and above such things as war.’ They didn’t realize that the very job of angels is to come down on the side of good. There’s no room for moderates in Heaven.”

  A long red bar of sunlight came in through the narrow window. The sun was setting, and for a moment all paused to watch. Jack thought about the hole that had opened up under St. Filian’s Well: Black as Satan down there, the men exploring it had said. Big enough for an army. He wondered whether they’d ever see sunlight again.

  “When the war was over,” Brother Aiden continued, “God called this third group before His throne. ‘Be gone from Heaven, you lukewarm cowards,’ He said. ‘You have lost your souls through indecision. Yet because you did not take up arms against Me, I will show you mercy. You will live among My children on earth and not be cast into Hell. Your years will be long and your powers great, but your path to Heaven will be hard. My mortal children have souls, but you must create yours through suffering and good deeds.’

  “With that, the lukewarm angels were sent swirling down to earth like so many autumn leaves. They landed in meadows, mud puddles, and streams. All their finery was stripped away. Their wings were gone. Though they were still as beautiful as the dawn, they felt ugly compared to what they had been. Full of sorrow, they crept into the hollow hills, far from where human eyes could see them. And there they built their halls.”

  “So that’s where elves came from,” said Pega. She had finished packing, but her hands, never idle, were still busy whisking last night’s straw into a tidy heap. “Even half-fallen angels must be happy.”

  “Not really,” said the little monk. “The elves live long with many pleasures, but true joy is hidden from them. In the end they fade like rainbows when the night comes on, and they reach neither Heaven nor Hell.”

  “Nor are they taken into the life force to be reborn,” added the Bard. “We bards have other tales of them, but all say the elves stepped out of the living stream long ago. They’re only shadows—beautiful shadows. Most amazingly beautiful.” The old man sighed.

  “To gain souls, elves must agree to endure the sorrows of humanity—hunger, illness, pain, and death,” Brother Aiden went on. “They have to do this willingly. No one can force them. Even then, an elf may not succeed, for he must also do good deeds. Kindness doesn’t occur naturally to him. He could walk by a drowning child and not think to stretch out his hand.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jack as a thought occurred to him. “Brutus called Lucy one of the Fair Folk. Does that mean—”

  “I’m afraid so,” Brother Aiden said. “I suspected it all along. When I saw her dancing in the fields, when I compared her with the other village children, I knew there was a mystery about her origins. Now I’m sure of it. The Lady of the Lake would not have taken a mortal child.”

  Suddenly, everything fell into place for Jack. Lucy’s selfishness, her lack of feeling for others, even her mad fantasies made sense if she was an elf and not a human.

  “I suppose that explains why she was such a pain,” mused Pega.

  “How can I ever get the Lady of the Lake to release her?” Jack said, thinking of Mother grieving and alone on the farm.

  Her true daughter was lost, her foster child cared not a whit about her. And if Jack didn’t find the Lady of the Lake, Father wouldn’t be coming home either.

  “That’s where Brutus can help you,” said the Bard, breaking into the boy’s thoughts. “He has skills few possess.”

  “Oh, sure! He can roll around on the ground and pass gas.”

  “Now, now. He hasn’t had a chance to show his true worth.”

  Jack glared at Brutus, who was hunkered down like a large, untidy hound. The slave was practically panting with the excitement of being taken along on a quest. If we do meet a dragon, I suppose he can take the edge off its appetite, the boy thought uncharitably.

  “As for weapons, he can use this,” said the Bard. The old man rummaged in the bedding chest and pulled out a long bundle tied with rope. A sour stench washed over Jack. Brother Aiden and Pega recoiled.

  “By the Lady, how did you find it?” cried Brutus. His eyes shone as he knelt to accept the gift.

  “Poking around. Don’t unwrap it yet,” warned the Bard. “Yffi’s been hunting it for years, tapping the walls for hidden chambers and so forth. Your mother was a wise woman as well as a queen. She knew he wouldn’t think of something so simple as a pigsty.”

  “What is it?” said Jack, annoyed beyond endurance by the Bard’s obvious respect for the slave.

  “Shh. We must not draw the guards’ attention.”

  And, indeed, the guards were at the door. They tramped in and roughly ordered Jack, Pega, and Brutus outside. “Be gentle with them,” begged Brother Aiden, which only made the guards smile unpleasantly and shove harder. But the Bard raised his staff and sent a swirl of bedding straw around the warriors’ heads. Their smiles vanished instantly, for all knew the power of bards to drive men mad by blowing on a wisp of straw.

  “You can ride with me,” the captain of the guard growled when they got to the gate. Jack frowned, remembering how his hands had been tied and how he’d been forced to run behind the horses all the way to the fortress. But there was no point holding a grudge. The Bard’s threat had at least ensured them decent treatment on the way back to St. Filian’s Well.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE HOLLOW ROAD

  Darkness was falling swiftly as they rode out. It was not the gentle dusk of a seaside evening, for there was no mist to soften the air. No high, thin clouds caught the last rays of the sun, for there were no clouds. Night fell, rather, like an axe. By the time they reached the dense line of yew trees that stood between the fortress and the outside world, darkness was complete.

  The trees spread out on either side in a thick, living wall. Only one iron gate formed an opening in that barrier, and it led to a long tunnel fringed with leaves. Jack had been too dazed on the trip to Din Guardi to react to it. Besides, it had been day. Now, with no light at all except the dim lanterns the king’s men carried, the tunnel seemed endless. Back, back, thought Jack as the branches closed in.

  The air was dusty and still. It caught in his throat. But more than that, Jack felt a resentment in the trees massed around them. You think you’re the masters with your scurrying feet, the trees seemed to say. We were here first.

  “Keep away,” the boy cried as a branch swept across his face.

  “Don’t talk,” said the captain of the guard.

  Then they were out into the clean night air. A thousand stars spread across a moonless sky, and the men began to speak quietly. Jack felt blood on his face where the tree had struck him.

  “Not so nice, eh, little wizard?” said the captain.

  “What was that?” asked Jack, striving to keep his teeth from chattering.

  “That was the Hedge. It’s better than any wall.”

  “It protects the fortress?” said Jack, anxious to keep talking.

  “I
don’t know about protect.” The man laughed harshly. “It keeps its distance from us, and we keep our distance from it. It has been there since time out of mind.”

  “It grew up when the Lord of the Forest laid siege to the Man in the Moon,” came Brutus’ voice from out of the dark.

  “What do you know, you sniveling wretch?” snarled the captain.

  “Nothing, noble master,” whined the slave. “Brutus is as dumb as pig flop.”

  “Now look what you’ve done! You’ve started him up,” complained one of the soldiers.

  And for the rest of the journey Brutus moaned about how disgusting he was and how he was really, really, really sorry about it. It was extremely irritating, and more than once Jack heard a slap as someone attempted to shut the slave up, but nothing worked.

  Burning torches outlined the black opening of the pit at St. Filian’s. Slaves were constructing a fence around it under the nervous eyes of the monks. Jack noticed that the monks had St. Oswald’s casket for extra defense. Against what? he thought. Yet he, too, felt a nameless dread. If the saint could repel whatever lurked below, he was all for it.

  “Who’s that?” asked Pega, peering at the portrait carved on the stained, ivory box.

  “Good old Oswald,” replied Brutus. “They always bring him out when the going gets tough.” The saint was portrayed lying outstretched on a bed of leaves. Vines twisted around him like snakes. “That’s a picture of his battle with the Lord of the Forest. Looks like the Forest Lord is winning.”

  “Silence, you heathen!” roared one of the monks, aiming a blow at the slave’s head. Which, of course, set Brutus off on another fit of groveling.

  A long rope with knots tied in it snaked over the side of the pit and disappeared into the dark. “How long must we stay down there?” Jack asked.

  “You heard the king. Until you find water,” the captain of the guard said.

  Jack, like any farm boy, had much experience with climbing trees and hills. He had a good head for heights.