Chains of Gold (22 page)

“Hardly,” I said. She was there, was she not?

“You say … I let my sons go … to the oak.…”

She gulped and shuddered, and tears trickled down with the sweat on her face. She stood still, and the file fell from her slackened fingers, fell with a clang to the stone floor.

“Erta,” I urged her, “finish it. There is just a little more to do.”

She did not move.

“Erta!” I pleaded. Then I looked at her face and saw that her mind had broken. I could hope for no more help from her.

I could not reach the rasp or the half-cut link. And the elder Gwyneda would be back at any moment, I felt sure of it. I stifled a sob of desperation, then rose as far as I was able and threw all the weight of my body against my bonds. I shoved against the wall with my legs, straining. My bruised foot hurt fiercely, and iron bracelets cut into my wrists. I jerked against them harder, I shrieked—and there was a snap, and I fell back on the stone floor.

Panic got me up within the moment, though I could scarcely see for pain. “Which way?” I muttered.

Erta was standing motionless, looking at me without comprehension. I grasped her by the arm and hurried her through the door, into the corridor. “Which way is out?” I demanded.

Vaguely she gestured to the left. Somewhere I heard the sound of footsteps. I ran, ignoring the throbbing of my bruised foot, and left her standing there.

It was not as difficult as I had feared to find my way out. The hold of the goddess was small enough when sorcery did not enlarge it, and it was merely a matter of going up the spiral stairs and out at a portal into morning light—I had spent but one long night there. River to either side, glimpsed through willows. My father's encampment on the eastern shore of the Naga. I turned toward the opposite side of the island and ran down toward the water. Heavy chains trailed from my wrists, burdening me, but I would swim if I had to, and in all likelihood drown. I would gladly have drowned rather than let them force me to betray Arlen. Thicket of willow and water's edge—

And something the color of a tree trunk moved. A figure in a robe of gray-green-brown came slowly toward me. The hood was drawn down completely over its face. I stood trembling with the thought of help but at the same time poised to flee, fearful of treachery. “Ophid?” I whispered. “Please, Ophid, let me see you.”

“I can see you well enough.” Nevertheless, he raised the hood, peered at me with pale blue eyes under brows the color of tow. “It is true,” he muttered. “About the babe. But I don't understand how I can have been so wrong.”

“
Ophid
,” I said urgently, “what are you doing here? Can you help me get away? Please—”

A shriek sounded from the hold behind me, a chilling scream of anger, fearsome as a harpy's scream, and then another shriek, a long, gurgling cry of pain.

“They've found me gone already!” I cried.

“This way.” He turned and led me swiftly, half running, through a band of willows and down into a small cove or inlet, and there floated his boat. It was in the shape of a cormorant, the snake bird, brown and, to my eyes, beautiful. We splashed through the shallows and blundered on board, and the boat pointed its sharp-beaked prow toward midstream and swam. More swiftly than the swan boats it swam, with head held high and alert, and I could have wept with relief as the Sacred Isle grew smaller behind me.

“I will take you to yon shore,” said Ophid. “No farther.”

The western shore, where no one but heroes trod, where my father and his minions could not reach me. It seemed fair enough, for the time. But Ophid went on as if I had reproached him.

“The Gwyneda allow me about and give me their good graces, as I am a harmless sort of half-woman creature,” he said edgily, “and I have no wish to change that. I hope they have not seen me with you. The mist may have hidden us.”

There was little mist that morning. I looked at him and wondered. “Ophid,” I asked, “how did you come to be at hand when I was most sorely in need?”

“The Island of Passages has ears,” he grumbled. “Now, listen!”—before I could speak again. “Go northward along the Naga until you come to the Island of Fugitives; it lies in the southern reaches of the Blackwater. If once you can come to that island and hang your chains on the holy ash that grows in the midst of the grove there, no one will ever again be able to pursue you to capture you. You will be under the protection of the Gwyneda themselves.”

“The Island of Fugitives,” I murmured. I had heard of it. Folk said the tree hung thick with chains.

With a small bump the cormorant brought us to shore. Ophid helped me out—or urged me, rather.

“I must be off,” he said uneasily. “I am no hero, Rae. Fare well. The best of luck be with you.”

I smiled my thanks and started off.

“Go speedily,” he added, and then he went speedily himself, sending his cormorant skimming back downriver.

He need not have exhorted me. I wanted nothing more than to come to the Island of Fugitives before nightfall. I ran as far as I was able, limping, lifting my burden of chains, and then I walked until I had caught my breath, and then I ran again. But not too long, not too fast, not in panic; I ran as evenly as I was able. It would be of no use to exhaust myself, I reasoned. The way would lead through a long day—

And then I saw the swan boats coming up the Naga.

Instantly desperation seized me, and I ran as I would not have believed possible a moment before, my sore foot all but forgotten. I veered away from the riverbank, trying to put trees and thickets between me and those terrible white things, trying to hide—but I could not hide while I was moving, and I could not stray too far from the Naga, or I would never find the Island of Fugitives and the holy grove that grew on it. The going was harder father up the bank, in the thickets. Only when there were clearings could I run at speed, and then I was exposed to view. Two sorties they made and I crouched in the boskage and eluded them, but on the third try they spied me, and with cries like the blood-hungry cries of ravens they sent their swans sliding toward the shore.

I fled like a hunted deer, all the time trying to reason away my horror of them. Gently, I told myself, go more gently, keep a cool head. It was just the five of them, the five elders. Even lame, I ought to be able to outrun five old women—

And then a chill came upon me, a cold ghostly touch, and I knew most surely, knew to the marrow of my bones, that I stood upon sacred land.

White, white as milk and seemingly as dense, and larger than the tall oak trees, massive, larger even than mountain peaks—a presence. I knew presence by then. Presence not of death but of deity, rising from breast of earth, earth our mother, to meet me—or bar my way. Fog, some folk would have called it, but this was no mist such as that floating over the Naga. Enormous, opaque, shapeshifting—it seemed like a mighty ship, and then again like the old sow who eats her farrow, and then again like a huge mayblossom—moving, yet as solid of mien as a stronghold of ice, and as white. I stopped where I stood, glad that my feet were bare and my gown humble. I did not dare to venture near it.

Behind me, I heard the Gwyneda coming, and I turned to face them. Calm, I told myself, be calm. I would yet elude them somehow. They had no power of body; what could they do to me, to capture me?

No more than a short stone's throw away from me they stopped and formed a sort of arrowhead with the gray-faced eldest at its apex, nearest to me.

“Cerilla,” she said.

Then I comprehended the power of the Gwyneda. Serpent power, the power that tranfixes the bird before the eye of the snake, skewers the victim as firmly as if by a spear, rendering it helpless to flee. All my will was gone in horror; I could not move. They were no arrowhead, but the head of the adder, and they slithered toward me, shuffling along on slow old feet, and their leader held me in thrall with the unblinking stare of her eye.

“Cerilla,” she repeated, the word an exhalation, a hiss. “Cerilla.”

They drew closer. Indeed, they were almost on me. I could see the twin hairs on the old one's mole, hairs spread and seeking for all the world like an adder's black tongue.… Divinity to the back of me, white presence, I could feel it.

“Cerilla.…”

And as if by gift of that divinity, as if from some place beneath the soles of my bare feet, some hidden wellspring, a sudden insane glee bubbled up in me, and I threw back my head and laughed. It was not my true name! I yelled with laughter, and my movement broke the serpentine spell. As blithely as a teasing dog, I drew back.

“Come on, old women!” I cried, and lightly, forgetting my limp, I turned and ran. The white presence, the fog! But I was not afraid of it any longer. Heedlessly I ran into it, and it was warm, as warm as sunshine! I blinked in surprise. As warm as warm sleep, but I could not see much, not in the milky whiteness—but then it was gone as if it had never been, and I was running across a meadow, through a boggy glade, and up a small slope into a bramble thicket full of vine.

The thicket turned me aside. The Gwyneda had not followed me, nor were they in sight behind me. It would be some little while, I hoped, before they made their way back to their swan boats. I found the easier going, along the grassy bank of the Naga, and set myself to make the most of the time, starting off northward at my best speed. In the distance, on the far side of the river, I could see a troop of horsemen; that would be my father and his minions. Well, they could not harm me there. Nor would the Gwyneda harm me, ever again, I felt sure of it. I had bested them; the goddess had befriended me.

I should have known better. Within the hour the Gwyneda skimmed past me as I trotted along the riverbank, their faces full of fury and the looks they gave me nothing short of evil. I plunged away from the river, my chains falling from my upflung hands and catching on thorns. But they did not stop where they had seen me. They went on ahead of me somewhere. I understood. They knew I had to reach the Island of Fugitives, and they would stand ready to snare me.

Well, I thought, I am winded and in need of a rest.

Thickets were plentiful along the unsettled side of the Naga. I ran on until I found a lush boskage, and then I crept into the midst of it, sank down, and lay still, trying to quiet my breathing. Softly, softly, I told myself. My frock was not likely to betray me; it was old and drab, as ragged as dead leaves, and my skin from sun and weather was nearly as brown as the loam. I lay gratefully. As soon as I was able to breathe noiselessly, I listened. For what seemed like a parlous long time I lay watching and hearkening, and inwardly I began to fret and think of moving on—

When, forsooth, there at last they came, in line like so many beaters at a hunt, but drifting along as softly as swans, as clouds. I knew I would have to rush them to break through their line, and I felt once again the old horror of them. Stares that could transfix like so many lances, serpent power—but no power of body. I knew I could push aside their bodies, should I ever reach them. I would have to wait until they were quite close.

I eased myself up to my knees and tucked my feet under myself, preparing.

But the goddess must have been with me after all. I did not have to dare them. Some large animal, perhaps a deer, rustled the bracken a little distance behind me, and the Gwyneda hastened toward the sound, passing me by. In another moment I stole out of my thicket and started northward in silent haste, and as soon as I passed their swan boats I ran for all I was worth. I ran until my lungs ached, the pain of my bruised foot became agony—and I ran still.

As the sun dipped westward I reached the southern tip of the Blackwater.

It was a lake, but as smooth as a mere, shimmering like so much black glass, motionless except that sometimes the small black serpents who lived there made a delicate ripple, putting their heads out to look. I did not mind them, for by then there was very little that could have perturbed me. The island lay out beyond a stretch of water, darkly shadowed in its smooth surface, the trees on it, the sacred grove, soft and plumy with leaves and perfectly still, like something in a dream. On the far shore, beyond the island, stood my father and his minions, all too real and watching me like the snakes.

They could not hurt me there. I could hide, wait until after dark, make my attempt—

Far down the Naga white specks appeared: the swan boats. And I knew without looking long that they were coming closer.

There seemed nothing for it but to brave the black water at once.

I waded in with no clear idea of what I was doing, only determined to reach the Island of Fugitives or drown. Rather than let the Gwyneda take me again, I would let my chains sink me to the bottom, for Arlen's sake. I walked out as far as I could, the snakes scattering before me, and when the lake's surface lapped at my chin I hurled myself forward, thrashed, and went under.

There followed a time I yet remember, some nights, in horrible dreams. Blackwater: black water closing over me, a blinding, strangling blackness with a touch seemingly like that of scales, and the chains on my wrists like two cold and clinging serpents, dragging me down. I gulped a breath, sometimes, by springing up from the bottom and breaking the surface for a moment; then I would be swallowed up again at once. I do not know if I moved any closer to the island that was my goal; my heart pounded in mortal fear, and I saw only blackness. Wanderings full of fear and hatred and every sort of terror and pain.… I refused to realize that I was dying, even though my ears heard tolling bells and my eyes had gone blind. Then I felt movement. Something had seized my long, trailing hair and was tugging me upward.

The Gwyneda! I threw my head up wildly, striking out. At the surface of the water, I could breathe even though I could scarcely see, and I struggled frantically, pushing away from the touch of wood. I would not let them get me into the boat—