Children of the Gates (10 page)

“That’s not what I meant—” began Nick when she interrupted.

“I know. You mean—like telepathy, don’t you? Why do you ask? Has Lung been reading your mind?” She might have asked that derisively, but he thought her tone was rather one of deep interest.

“No. But I think that Jeremiah has.”

“Jeremiah!” Linda gazed beyond the fire at the cat curled up now at Mrs. Clapp’s feet, and her expression was not altogether approving. “They keep telling me, Jean and Mrs. Clapp, about how wonderful that cat is, how he can let them know when there’s any of the People around, or a bad influence, or something like that. You’d think he was a marvel. Now you come and tell me that he can read minds! I think you’re all crazy!”

“But,” Nick persisted, “have you tried finding out if there is any change in Lung?”

“You mean there might be something in this place that does produce mind reading and all that? But why not us, then, instead of the animals?”

“I don’t know.” He had to answer with the truth.

“Lung.” Linda shoved the filled bowl into Nick’s hands. Her attention was on the Peke. “Lung—”

The dog gave another soft bark, put his front paws on her knee as she sat down cross-legged and held out her hands to him. Gathering him up, she held him as Nick had seen her do before, with those bulbous dark eyes on a level with her own. “Lung, can you read my mind?”

Nick watched them. Was she serious with that question, or was it a jeer aimed at him?

Linda was silent, staring intently into the Peke’s eyes. The dog made a dart with his head, his tongue went out to lick her chin. The girl gave a muffled exclamation, pulled him tightly against her until he woofed in protest.

“You—you are right. Lung knows.”

“How can you tell?” Nick demanded. Now all his own objections to such a belief came to life again. He did not want confirmation, he realized, he wanted denial.

“I know.” She did not enlarge on that. “Nick—we have to get away—back home!”

She sounded so afraid Nick was once more startled. It was as if during that long moment of confrontation with Lung she had learned something that made her whole world unsafe.

“We can’t very well leave now,” he pointed out. “You know as well as I do what we’d run into out there.”

“They—” Linda’s voice became a whisper. “Their plan for hiding out here—Nick—that can’t go on much longer. The food is very low. And as for going downriver on a raft—” The note in her voice underlined her honest opinion of that. “Nick, whatever, whoever is chasing all the drifters we’ve seen, it’s got to be something everyone has good reason to fear. If we just stay on here—Nick, we can’t!”

Those were his own thoughts put into words. But would she accept his only other suggestion—the city?

“Nick, if we went back—right back to where we were when it all began, do you think we could get back to our own world?”

He shook his head. “There was a history of disappearances in our world for a long time—and no returns. It could not be for want of trying, I’m sure of that.”

She leaned forward so her cheek was against the Peke’s soft fur. Her hair was tied back with the red yarn still, but a piece of it was loose enough to fall over her eyes like a half veil.

“Nick, I’m scared! I’m scared the worst I’ve ever been in my life.”

“I think we all are. I know I am.” He matched her frankness. “But we’ve got to hold on. I think
here
, if you lose your grip, you’re really lost.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m the most afraid of now, Nick. They—Jean—Mrs. Clapp, Lady Diana—they all seem to be able to take it and it doesn’t matter. Mrs. Clapp—she’s old and thinks that this is like a test of her belief that being good will help a person. She’s talked to me about it. And Lady Diana, all her life she’s been fighting for things—Mrs. Clapp told me about her, too. She’s done a lot for the village where she lived. She sort of bullies people into doing what they should. I can’t imagine her being afraid. And Jean—you know, Nick, she’s in love with Barry. As long as she’s near him and all’s right as far as he is concerned, then she doesn’t care about anything else. All that hurts her is that he still wants Rita—

“But not one of them is afraid the way I am. And, Nick, I’m so afraid I am going to break wide open, and then all of them will despise me.” Her head sank lower and the lock of hair now hid most of her features.

“Not one of them will!” Nick tried to find the right words. “You’re wrong, Linda. If you
could
read minds, I’d swear to it you’d find every one of them has a limit of control. Maybe they haven’t reached it yet—but it’s there. You’re hinting we ought to go by ourselves? But we have a better chance of sticking it out here, at least for now.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed dully. “But I wish—No, I can’t let myself wish, can I? I have to accept what’s here and now and go on from there. But, Nick, we can’t possibly stay here and starve. What can we do?”

Before he could control his tongue he answered: “There’s the city—”

“The city? What do you mean?”

“That’s really safe—at least from the saucers. We saw that proven.” Now he was driven to get her reaction to his half-plan. “Suppose we could get into the city—”

“We can, easily enough. Accept the Herald’s bargain, as Rita did. But, Nick, the way they talk about that—there must be something terrible happens when you do.”

“Not the bargain, Linda. But suppose we were able to follow the Herald in somehow. Or, get out of him how to do it.” Nick’s plan was still only a suggestion to which his thoughts continued to turn.

“I don’t believe you could.” Linda replied so flatly he was momentarily deflated. Then he reacted to the deflation as swiftly, with the determination that he would at least try. But he would not give her the satisfaction of a protest. Instead he started eating.

“Are you going to try something like that?” His silence appeared to irritate her.

Nick shrugged. “How can I? At the present time I don’t see any chance.”

“Of course not! And there never was!” With that parting shot she arose and walked over to join Mrs. Clapp who was plucking the feathers from Jeremiah’s addition to their larder.

Nick finished the stew, washed his bowl in the dribble of water that came out of the wall in one of the small alcoves cut in the cave, a dribble that found its way out again along a trough chiseled in the floor. But he set the bowl down there and did not return to the center portion of the cave. Instead he edged along through a narrow slit Crocker had earlier pointed out, one indeed too narrow for Stroud to negotiate, which led to another cave and a passage, and finally a very narrow opening on the world.

Just now Nick wanted no company, rather a chance to think without interruption. He had a puzzle. Perhaps it could not be solved, perhaps it could. But it must be faced and struggled with.

Nick worked his way up to that slit opening on the world. But, as he placed his hand on the side of the opening to steady himself, earth and a stone gave way under his weight. He snapped on the flash from his belt and under its bright light he could see where other stones had been rammed in to close an opening once much larger. Those stones were no longer so well bedded, they could be worked out with a little effort.

He began to pick and pull, laying the flashlight on a projection of the wall to give him light. The barrier needed only a little loosening. He would crawl out to prove that and then wall it up more securely.

Nick thrust with his shoulders, kicked and wriggled. Then he was out. It was only in that moment when he had achieved his purpose that he became aware of more than the action that had absorbed him. Crouched, his hands on the ground, his back hunched, he looked down the slope.

A cloud shielded the brilliance of the sun. But it could not dim the splash of color there. As he slowly rose to his feet, Nick saw he had his perhaps dangerous wish. It was the Herald.

10

Nick’s first impulse was to dodge back into the cave. But it was already too late for that. He knew the Herald had sighted him. And he did not want to reveal even more this back door to the cave. Nick moved farther into the open to face the alien.

To his eyes this was the same Herald he had seen riding over the ridge to the city. The man (if man he really was) matched him in height, though his body was more slender than Nick’s. His green breeches and undercoat were dulled by the brilliance of the stiff tabard with its wealth of color and glittering embroidery.

The tabard was divided into four quarters, each of which bore a different intricate device. Over each shoulder was a small half-cape with the same designs repeated in miniature. His four-pointed cap, beneath which his hair was so sleeked against his head as to appear painted on his skull, was stiffened by a band of gold like a small crown circlet.

His face was expressionless, impassive, and his skin very white so that the bracketing of moustaches about his mouth might have been drawn in ink. He did not move at once, but before Nick was more than three or four strides from the hole he was on his way to meet him, his walk an effortless glide.

Thus they came face to face with only an arm’s length between them. And in all that time the Herald kept silent, nor did his set, smooth expression change. When he did speak it was startling, as if a painted puppet had been given a voice.

“I am Avalon.”

There was a pause that he did not break. Nick gathered it was his turn for self-introduction.

“I am Nicholas Shaw.” He stated his name formally, sensing the occasion demanded that.

The Herald made a slight inclination with his head.

“To that which is of Avalon, and of Tara, of Brocéliande, of Carnac, may you be welcome, Nicholas Shaw, if it be of your own will and choice that this be so.”

So, this was it, the stating of the bargain. Nick thought furiously—he must stall, try to learn all he could without giving a quick denial. But to play such a game with this stranger would, he was sure, be very difficult.

“This is not a land to make one welcome.” He sought for words that might in return bring some of the answers he wanted. “I have seen things here that are dangers past my own world’s knowing.” Even as he spoke he felt a faint surprise at his choice of words. It was as if he tried to speak a foreign language, yet they were of his own tongue, merely ones he would not naturally have selected.

“This is a land of strangers. Those who accept the land will find that it accepts them, and there are, then, not the perils you have seen.”

“And the manner of this acceptance?”

Avalon slipped his hand beneath the stiff front of his tabard. He withdrew it, holding a small box, which he snapped open. The box was round, and nested in it was a single fruit, a golden apple, gold that is for the most part, but with a beginning blush of red on one side. From it, or the box that cradled it, came an aroma to entice the sense of smell, as it also enticed the eyes.

“Of this you eat, for it is of Avalon. Thus Avalon enters into you and you are a part of it, even as it is a part of you. Having so taken Avalon, you are a freeman of all it has to offer.”

“I have been told”—Nick was cautious but hopeful of perhaps gaining a shred of answer—“that if one does this thing, becomes of Avalon, one is then apart from one’s past, no longer the person one was before—”

Still the Herald’s expression did not alter. “One makes choices, and each choice changes one a little. This is the way of life, one cannot avoid it. If you fear what Avalon has to offer, then you make one choice, and by that you must abide. There are those who will not become a part of the land, thereby the land rejects them, and they shall have no good of it, nor any peace.”

“There is peace then in Avalon?” Nick tried to get disbelief into his tone. “What I have seen here suggests that is not so. I have watched men entrapped by others, I have seen wanderers who cannot claim any portion of this world for home.”

“It was their choice to reject Avalon, therefore Avalon rejects them. They remain rootless, shelterless. And the day approaches when they shall find that, without roots, shelter, they are utterly lost.”

“Those truly of Avalon will turn against them?” Nick demanded. Was what he had just heard a threat or a warning?

“There is no need. Avalon is no man’s enemy. It is a place of peace and safety. But if one remains without, then comes darkness and ill. This has happened before, the evil lapping at the land. Where it meets Avalon and Tara, Brocéliande and Carnac, then it laps against walls it cannot overflow. But for those without those walls there is peril beyond reckoning. Alternately that evil flows and ebbs. This is a time of the beginning of the flow.”

“Is it this evil that brings such as me into Avalon in the first place?”

“Such questions are not for my answering, stranger. Accept of Avalon and you will understand.”

“I cannot decide right now—” Nick fenced.

Again the Herald inclined his head. “That is understood, for your race are not of controlled thought. Clear decisions come hard for you. I shall see you again.”

He closed the box, put it once more under his tabard, and turned from Nick, gliding away at such a pace Nick could not have matched unless he broke into a jog. But he was determined to follow, at least a little way. The Herald was not mounted, surely Nick could trail him—

With only that idea in mind Nick pushed through bushes, trying to keep in sight the blaze of that tabard. Meanwhile he thought about what Avalon had said. Apparently he called himself by the name of the land as if he were its official spokesman, identifying himself wholly with it. And had he threatened, or merely stated, that some great danger lay ahead for all those who were not protected by the People?

The mass migration of the drifters gave part proof. And what Nick had witnessed of the attacks from the saucers underlined the safety of the Herald and his city. On the other hand there was the manifest horror of his offer that the English displayed, though their reasons still seemed vague to Nick.

It was all—

Nick halted. The blaze of color had also stopped. Nick ducked into a bush. There was someone rising out of similar cover to confront the Herald, holding on high a pole topped with a cross of dull metal.

“Demon!” The figure used the cross-pole as a club, seeking to bring it down on the Herald’s head. But Avalon was not there to take the force of that blow. Instead his body was well to one side. Again that wild figure, wearing a tattered and mud-bespattered brown robe, with gray hair matted about his head and a beard of the same on his jaw, tried to do battle. This time the Herald vanished from sight.

“Stay!”

From behind Nick came a gust of foul odor, with a sharp prick in his mid-back to reinforce the order. A moment later the same voice called, in a thick gabble he could not understand, some summons.

The Herald’s would-be assailant was still moving about where Avalon had last disappeared, ramming the cross-pole into bushes, crying out in a high voice words Nick could not translate. His attitude was one of rage fed by bafflement.

At a second hail from behind Nick, he finally stopped beating the bushes and came toward the American in a lopsided gait that still let him cover the ground with speed.

His dress, Nick saw, as he came to a stop, leaning on the pole of his cross, was that of a monk. And the eyes in his grimy face were the burning ones of a fanatic.

“Up!” Pain in Nick’s back. The American got to his feet, raging both at the man behind him and at himself for being so blind as to be so easily captured.

The monk thrust his face close to Nick’s. His breath was foul and the rank odor of his body and ancient clothing was enough to sicken the captive. The fierce eyes swept up and down Nick.

“Demon!” He raised the cross and Nick thought it was about to thud home on his skull. He ducked and was rewarded by a cuff on the side of his head that sent him sprawling to his knees, his head ringing, half-dazed.

They gabbled over him, his captor and the monk. Hands caught and held him, one twisted in his hair so that he could not move his head. Again the cross loomed over him. And this time it was lowered so that its tip bit painfully into the skin on his forehead. The monk held it so for a long moment and then snatched it away, bending close to Nick to survey the result of that contact.

He grunted as if displeased, then gave some order to the other. Nick was pulled to his feet, his hands twisted behind him and secured there by a cord, which cut into his flesh. Then his hitherto-unseen captor came around to face the monk.

Though in build he was much like Stroud, he was far removed otherwise from the Warden in appearance. His face was largely covered with a greasy mat of beard, which climbed so high on his cheekbones that it was nearly entangled with brows as full and shaggy. On his head was a metal helmet, dented, rust streaked, which sprouted a piece to hide his nose. The rest of his clothing was in keeping, rusty mail over leather so old and filthy that it was near black. His slightly bowed legs were covered with tight-fitting but hole-filled hose, and boots that were close to complete disintegration.

But he was armed. A sword was belted on, and a dagger nearly as long as Nick’s forearm balanced that. Over his shoulder arose the curve of a crossbow. He had drawn the dagger and leered at Nick as he set it with the point aimed at the American’s throat.

The monk shook his head with the jerky violence that characterized all his movements and spat some order. The other grinned, his mouth a broken-toothed gap in that noisome brush of beard. Seizing Nick by his shoulder, he gave him a shove after the monk who hobbled on, his cross-pole upheld as if it were both a banner and a threat.

That he had fallen into the hands of a drifter band was plain. Nick, shaken by his own folly in allowing himself to be caught, could not yet think straight. He doubted more strongly every minute that these people could in any way be appealed to as fellow refugees. The soldier, if soldier were his occupation, who kept him going with bruising slaps and punches, exuded such brutality as Nick had never before encountered. And the monk’s attitude was, to his mind, no better.

They came into an open space by a small stream to meet the rest of this company. There were three more of the soldiers, as like his original captor as if they were all brothers. But the authority was not theirs. Rather it seemed divided between the monk and another who sat with her back against a rock. She was tearing at a piece of half-cooked meat from a supply speared on sticks and set to roast at the edge of a fire.

Grease glistened on her chin, dripped to the front of the laced bodice of her gown where it joined and reinforced the stiffened evidence of many other such meals. Her skin was gray with ancient grime, her hair braids lusterless with neglect. But her features were those which, had she been clean and well cared for, might have made her a beauty even in Nick’s world. And her foully used dress was patterned with what once had been fine embroidery, just as her girdle and the rings she wore on each finger and thumb were bejeweled. There was a gold circlet on her head with a setting of a dull blue gem above her forehead. She was like some princess out of a fairy-book illustration completely degraded.

At the sight of Nick she threw away the bone she gnawed. Sitting up straighter, she pointed to him imperiously and uttered some command he could not understand. Yet there were word sounds in it that were familiar. When he did not answer, his captor cuffed him again.

But the monk waved the soldier away, voiced a furious objection. The vicious amusement that had come into the woman’s face at her underling’s correction of their prisoner dulled with disappointment. She shrugged and gestured. One of the other men hastened to uproot another spit of meat and take it to her.

However, the monk planted himself directly before Nick and spoke slowly, spacing a breath between each word. It was all incomprehensible and Nick shook his head. Now his captor advanced again. He addressed the monk with grudging respect, then he turned to Nick.

“Who—you?” The accent was very guttural but the question made sense.

“Nicholas Shaw—and you are?”

The soldier grinned evilly. “Not matter. You demon spawn.” He spat. “We keep—demons see—They give us sword—we give you sword!”

Now the monk broke into speech again, plainly demanding some response from the soldier. The woman, licking her fingers, interrupted. At her words the four soldiers laughed heartily. But the monk whirled to face her, waving his pole. She continued to smile but remained silent under his spate of speech. However, the soldiers stopped laughing.

Nick was jerked over to a convenient tree, his back planted against its trunk and a length of twisted hide rope used to anchor him securely. The monk surveyed the operation with approval and satisfaction. Then Nick was left to his own devices and his thoughts, while the rest tramped back to squat by the fire and eat.

The smell of the meat made him hungry. The stew Linda had given him now seemed very far in the past. But he was even more thirsty than hungry, and to see the ripple of water beyond was an aggravation that increased as the afternoon passed.

It would seem that this party was in no haste to travel on. One of the soldiers (or, Nick decided, they might better be termed “men-at-arms” since their shabby trappings were certainly more akin to that time labeled “Middle Ages” than his own) went behind a screen of bushes to return leading a heavy-footed, uncurried horse, its ribs too plain beneath its hide, and a mule with one lop ear. These he guided down to the water and let drink, before herding them back into the bushes again.

The monk stretched out on the ground well away from the fire as the heat of the afternoon increased. His hands were crossed on his breast, under them the pole of his strange weapon. The men-at-arms, drawing away from their betters, did the same, though they took turns on guard, prowling in and out of the bushes.

Having finished her meal, the woman wiped her hands on a tuft of grass, the first gesture toward cleanliness Nick had seen her make. She went to the brook, drank from her cupped hands, wiped them this time on her skirt. She stood, eyeing the sleeping monk and the soldiers. Then she gave a quick glance at Nick before returning to her rock-backed seat.