The Grey King

  “John?” said cosy Megan Jones, wiping floury hands on her apron. “There now, what a shame, you have missed him. Idris and he went off to Abergynolwyn half an hour ago. They will not be back until dinner, and that will be late today. . . . You want to see him urgently, is it, Mr. Prichard?”

  Caradog Prichard stared at her vacantly and did not answer. He said, in a high tight voice, “Is Rowlands’s dog here?”

  “Pen? Goodness no,” Mrs. Jones said truthfully. “Not with John gone.” She smiled amiably at him. “Is it the man you want to see, or the dog, then? Well, indeed, you are welcome to wait for them here, though as I say, it may be quite a time. Let me get you a cup of tea, Mr. Prichard, and a nice fresh Welshcake.”

  “No,” said Prichard, running his hand distractedly through his raw red hair. “No . . . no, thank you.” He was so lost in his own mind that he scarcely seemed to be aware of her at all. “I will be off to town and see if I find them there. At the Crown, perhaps. . . . John Rowlands has some business with Idris Ty-Bont, does he?”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Jones comfortably, “he is just visiting. Since he had something to do in Abergynolwyn anyway. Just a call, you know, Mr. Prichard. Like your own.” She beamed innocently at him.

  “Well,” said Caradog Prichard. “Thank you very much. Good-bye.”

  Megan Jones looked after him as he swung the grey van hastily round and drove away down the lane. Her smile faded. “Not a nice man,” she said to the farmyard at large. “And something is going on behind those little eyes of his that is not nice at all. A very lucky thing it was that young Will happened to take that dog for a walk just now.”

  Will pedalled hard, blessing the valley road for its winding flatness, and freewheeling only when his pounding heart seemed about to leap right out of his chest. He rode one-handed. He had said nothing about his hurt arm, and Bran had not noticed, but it hurt abominably if he so much as touched the handlebars with his left hand. He tried not to think about the way it would feel when carrying the golden harp.

  That was the only thing to be done, now. The music of the harp was the only magic within his reach that would release Pen from the power of the warestone. In any case, it was time now to bring the harp to the pleasant lake, to accomplish its deeper purpose. Everything was coming together, as if two roads led to the same mountain pass; he could only hope that the pass would now be blocked by some obstacle able to hinder both at once. This time more than ever, the matter of holding the Dark at bay depended as much on the decisions and emotions of men as on the strength of the Light. Perhaps even more.

  Broken sunlight flickered in and out of his eyes, as clouds scudded briskly over the sky. At least, he thought wryly, we’ve got a good day for it all. His wheels sang on the road; he was nearly at Clwyd Farm now. He wondered how he was to explain his sudden arrival, and equally sudden departure afterwards, to Aunt Jen. She would probably be the only one there. She must have been there for Caradog Prichard’s appearance earlier that morning, and the changing of his two mutilated tyres. Perhaps he could say that he had come to get something to help put Prichard off the scent, to keep him from finding Pen . . . something John Rowlands had suggested . . . but still he would have to leave the house with the golden harp. Aunt Jen would not be likely to let that sacking-swathed object past her sharp eye without at least enquiring what was wrapped up in there. And what possible reason could anyone have, least of all her nephew, for not letting her see?

  Will wished, not for the first time, that Merriman were with him, to ease such difficulties. For a Master of the Light, it was no great matter to transport beings and objects not only through space but through time, in the twinkling of an eye. But for the youngest of the Old Ones, however acute his need, that was a talent too large.

  He came to the farm; rode in; pushed through the back door. But when he called, no one came. He realised suddenly with a great lightening of the spirits that he had seen no cars in the yard outside. Both his aunt and uncle must have gone out; that was one piece of luck, at any rate. He ran upstairs to his bedroom, said the necessary words to release the golden harp from protection, and ran down again with it under his arm, a rough sacking-wrapped bundle of odd triangular shape. He was halfway across the yard to the bicycle when a Land-Rover chugged in through the gate.

  For a second Will froze in panic; then he walked slowly, carefully, to the bicycle, and turned it ready to leave.

  Owen Davies climbed out of the car and stood looking at him. He said, “Was it you left the gate open?”

  “Oh, gosh.” Will was genuinely shocked: he had committed the classical farm sin, without even noticing. “Yes, I did, Mr. Davies. That’s awful. I’m most terribly sorry.”

  Owen Davies, thin and earnest, shook his flat-capped head in reproof. “One of the most important things to remember, it is, to shut any gate you have opened on a farm. You do not know what livestock of your uncle’s might have slipped out, that should have been kept in. I know you are English, and no doubt a city boy, but that is no excuse.”

  “I know,” Will said. “And I’m not even a city boy. I really am sorry. I’ll tell Uncle David so.”

  Taken aback by this implication of honest confidence, Owen Davies surfaced abruptly from the pool of righteousness that had threatened to swallow him. “Well,” he said. “Let us forget it this time, both of us. I dare say you will not do it again.”

  His gaze drifted sideways a little. “Is that Bran’s bike you have there? Did he come with you?”

  Will pressed the shrouded harp tight between his elbow and his side. “I borrowed it. He was out riding, and I was . . . up the valley, walking, and I saw him, and we thought we’d have a go at flying a big model plane I’ve been making.” He patted the bundle under his arm, swinging his leg over the bicycle saddle at the same time. “So I’m going back now. Is that all right? You don’t need him for anything?”

  “Oh, no,” Owen Davies said. “Nothing at all.”

  “John Rowlands took Pen to Mr. Jones at Ty-Bont all safe and sound,” Will said brightly. “I’m supposed to be having dinner there, late-ish Mrs. Jones said—would it be all right if I took Bran back with me too, Mr. Davies? Please?”

  The usual expression of alarmed propriety came over Owen Davies’s thin face. “Oh, no, now, Mrs. Jones is not expecting him, there is no need to bother her with another—”

  Unexpectedly, he broke off. It was as if he heard something, without understanding it. Puzzled, Will saw his face become oddly bemused, with the look of a man dreaming a dream that he has dreamed often but never been able to translate. It was a look he would never have expected to find on the face of a man so predictable and uncomplicated as Bran’s father.

  Owen Davies stared him full in the face, which was even more unusual. He said, “Where did you say you and Bran were playing?”

  Will’s dignity ignored the last word. He kicked at the bicycle pedal. “Out on the moor. Quite a long way up the valley, near the road. I don’t know how to describe it exactly—but more than halfway to Mr. Jones’s farm.”

  “Ah,” Owen Davies said vaguely. He blinked at Will, apparently back in his usual nervous person. “Well, I daresay it would be all right if Bran goes to dinner as well, John Rowlands being there—goodness knows Megan Jones is used to feeding a lot of mouths. But you must be sure to tell him he must be home before dark.”

  “Thank you!” said Will, and made off before he could change his mind, carefully closing the gate after he had ridden through. He shouted a farewell, with just time to notice Bran’s father’s hand slowly raised as he rode away.

  But he was not many yards along the road, riding awkwardly one-handed and slowly with the harp clutched in his aching left arm, before all thought of Owen Davies was driven from his head by the Grey King. Now the valley was throbbing with power and malevolence. The sun was at its highest point, though no more than halfway up the sky in that November day. The last part of the time for the fulfilling of Will’s only separate quest had begu
n. His mind was so much occupied with the unspoken beginnings of battle that it was all his body could do to push the bicycle, and himself, slowly along the road.

  He paid little attention when a Land-Rover swished past him, going fast in the same direction. Several cars had passed him already, on both journeys, and in this part of the country Land-Rovers were common. There was no reason at all why this one should have differed from the rest.

  The Cottage on the Moor

  Alone with the motionless sheepdog, Bran went again to the pile of rubble in the corner of the room and stared at the warestone. So small, so ordinary: it was just like any other of the white quartz pebbles scattered over the land. He bent again and tried to pick it up, and felt the same throb of disbelief when it would not move. It was like the dreadful splayed attitude in which Pen lay. He was looking at the impossible.

  It occurred to him to wonder why he was not afraid. Perhaps it was because part of his mind did still believe these things impossible, even while he saw them clearly. What could a pebble do to him? He went to the door of the cottage and stood staring across the valley, towards Bird Rock. The Craig was hard to see from here: an insignificant dark hump, dwarfed by the mountain ridge behind. Yet that too had held the impossible; he had gone down into the depths of that rock, and in an enchanted cavern encountered three Lords of the High Magic there. . . . Bran had a sudden image of the bearded figure in the sea-blue cloak, of the eyes from the hooded face holding his own, and felt a strange urgent warmth in the remembering. He would never forget that figure, clearly the greatest of the three. There was something particular and close about him. He had even known Cafall.

  Cafall.

  “Never fear, boy. The High Magic would never take your dog from you. . . . Only the creatures of the earth take away from one another, boy. All creatures, but man more than any. Life they take. . . . Beware your own race, Bran Davies—they are the only ones who will ever hurt you. . . .”

  The pain of loss that Bran had begun to learn to conceal struck into him like an arrow. In a great rush his mind filled with pictures of Cafall as a wobble-legged puppy, Cafall following him to school, Cafall learning the signals and commands of the working sheepdog. Cafall wet with rain, the long hair pressed flat in a straight parting along his spine, Cafall running, Cafall drinking from a stream, Cafall asleep with his chin warm on Bran’s foot.

  Cafall dead.

  He thought of Will then. It was Will’s fault. If Will had never brought him to—

  “No,” Bran said aloud suddenly. He turned and glared at the warestone. Was it trying to turn his mind to thinking ill of Will, and so to divide them? Will had said, after all, that the Dark might try to reach at him in some way he would least expect. That was it, for sure. He was being influenced subtly to turn against Will. Bran felt pleased with himself for noticing so soon.

  “You can save the effort,” he said jeeringly to the warestone. “It won’t work, see?”

  He went back to the doorway and looked out at the hills. His mind drifted back to thought of Cafall. It was hard to keep away from the last image: the worst, yet precious because it was the closest. He heard again the shot, and the way it had echoed round the yard. He heard his father saying, as Cafall lay bleeding his life out and Caradog Prichard sneered with success: Cafall was going for the sheep, there is no question . . . I cannot say that I would not have shot him myself, in Caradog’s place. That is the right of it. . . .

  The right, the right. So very sure his father was always, of the right and the wrong. His father and all his father’s friends in chapel, and most of all the minister with his certain-sure preaching of good and bad, and the right way to live. For Bran it was a pattern of discipline: chapel twice on Sundays, listen and sit still without fidgeting, and do not commit the sins the Good Book forbids. For his father it was more: prayer meetings, sometimes twice a week, and always the necessity of behaving the way people expected a deacon to behave. There was nothing wrong with chapel and all of that, but Bran knew his father gave it more of himself than any other chapel member he had ever met. He was like a driven man, with his anxious face and hunched shoulders, weighed down by a sense of guilt that Bran had never been able to fathom for himself. There was no lightness in their lives; his father’s endless meaningless penance would not allow it. Bran had never been allowed to go to the cinema in Tywyn, and on Sundays he could do nothing at all except go to chapel and walk the hills. His father was reluctant to let him go to school concerts and plays. It had even taken John Rowlands a long time to persuade him to let Bran play the harp in contests at eisteddfodau. It was as if Owen Davies kept both of them, himself and Bran, locked up in a little box in the valley, bleak and lonely, out of contact with all the bright things of life; as if they were condemned to a life in jail.

  Bran thought: It’s not fair. All I had was Cafall, and now even Cafall is gone. . . . He could feel grief swelling in his throat, but he swallowed hard and gritted his teeth, determined not to cry. Instead rage and resentment grew in his mind. What right had his father to make everything so grim? They were no different from other people. . . .

  But that’s wrong, said a voice in his mind. You are different. You are the freak with the white hair, and the pale skin that will not brown in the sun, and the eyes that cannot stand bright light. Whitey, they call you at school, and Paleface, and there is one boy from up the valley who makes the old sign against the Evil Eye in your direction if he thinks you are not looking. They don’t like you. Oh, you’re different, all right. Your father and your face have made you feel different all your life, you would be a freak inside even if you tried to dye your hair, or paint your skin.

  Bran strode up and down the cottage room, furious and yet puzzled. He banged one hand against the door. He felt as though his head were about to burst. He had forgotten the warestone. It did not occur to him that this haunting too might be brought by the subtle workings of the Dark. Everything seemed to have vanished from the world except the resentful fury against his father that flooded his mind.

  And then outside the cottage’s broken front door there was the crunch and squeal of a car drawing up, and Bran looked out just in time to see his father jump out of the Land-Rover and stride towards the cottage.

  He stood still, his head singing with rage and surprise. Owen Davies pushed open the door and stood looking at him.

  “I thought you would be here,” he said.

  Bran said curtly, “Why?”

  His father made the strange ducking movement of his head that was one of his familiar nervous gestures. “Will was up at the farm, fetching something, and he said you were both up here, somewhere . . . he should be along soon.”

  Bran was standing stiffly. “Why are you here? Did Will make you think something was wrong?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Owen Davies said hastily.

  “Well then, what—”

  But his father had seen Pen. He stood very still for a moment. Then he said gently, “But something is wrong, isn’t it?”

  Bran opened his mouth, and shut it again.

  Owen Davies came further into the room and bent over the helpless sheepdog. “How is he hurt, then? Was it a fall? I never saw an animal lie so . . .” He stroked the dog’s head, and felt along his legs, then moved his hand to pick up one paw. Pen gave an almost inaudible whine, and rolled his eyes. The paw would not move. It was not rigid, or stiff; it was simply bound fast to the earth, like the warestone. Bran’s father tried each of the four paws in turn, and each time could not move any a fraction of an inch. He stood up and backed slowly away, staring at Pen. Then he raised his head to look at Bran, and in his eyes a terrible fear was mingled with accusation.

  “What have you been doing, boy?”

  Bran said, “It is the power of the Brenin Llwyd.”

  “Nonsense!” Owen Davies said sharply. “Superstitious nonsense! I will not have you talk of those old pagan stories as if they were true.”

  “All right, Da,” Bran said. “Then it
is superstitious nonsense that you cannot move the dog.”

  “It is some kind of rigor of the joints,” his father said, looking at Pen. “It seems to me he has broken his back, and the nerves and the muscles are all stiffened up.” But there was no conviction in his voice.

  “There is nothing wrong with him. He is not hurt. He is like that because—” Bran felt suddenly that it would be going much too far to tell his father about the warestone. He said instead, “It is the malice of the Brenin Llwyd. Through his trickery Cafall was shot when he should not have been, and now he is trying to make it easy for that crazy Caradog Prichard to get Pen as well.”

  “Bran, Bran!” His father’s voice was high with agitation. “You must not let yourself be carried away so by Cafall dying. There was no help for it, bachgen, he turned into a sheep-chaser and there was no help for it. A killer dog has to be killed.”

  Bran said, trying to keep his voice from trembling, “He was not a killer dog, Da, and you do not know what you are talking about. Because if you do, why can you not get Pen to move one centimetre from where he is lying? It is the Brenin Llwyd, I tell you, and there is nothing you can do.”

  And he could tell from the apprehension in Owen Davies’s eyes that deep down, he believed it was the truth.

  “I should have known,” his father said miserably. “When I found you here in this place, I should have known such things were happening.”

  Bran stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  His father did not seem to hear him. “Here of all places. Blood will tell, they say. Blood will tell. She came here out of the mountains, out of darkness to this place, and so this is where you came too. Even without knowing, you came here. And evil comes of it again.” His eyes were wide and he was blinking very fast, looking at nothing.

  Suspicion of his meaning began to creep into Bran’s mind like an evening mist over the valley. “Here. You keep saying, here. . .”