Silver on the Tree (23 page)

“We both should have done. Oh well.” The horses were walking again now. Bran pushed one arm across his forehead. “Lord, it's hot. The sun's still high.”

The woodland was sparse and open at first, leafy with bracken and undergrowth, still bright through the dappling shade. The road, though narrowed to a track, wound through the trees clear and sandy, but gradually it became less distinct, with patches of grass growing in the sand and the arms of creeping plants reaching across, and now the air was cool as the wood grew deeper. The horses stepped warily, in single file. Few birds sang here. Will and Bran began to be conscious of the silence. The trees were larger and thicker; the wood went on and on.

Will tried for as long as he could to ignore the feeling drifting insidiously into his mind as the light grew dim and the trees more dominant, but he knew he was afraid.

There was nothing to be heard now but the soft rise and fall of the horses' feet. The path they trod was completely overgrown yet still visible; covered, as if to mark it from its surroundings, by a mat of some small creeping weed with dark green leaves. Somewhere among the trees edging the path ahead, a bird whirred abruptly away; the horses checked nervously.

“They're as scared as I am,” Will said, trying to brighten his voice. A branch rustled nearby in the wood, and he jumped.

Bran looked round in the gloom. He said uneasily, “Should we go back?” But as if in answer the horses began walking steadily forward again. Will stroked the light mane on the neck before him; the horse's ears were laid back flat, but still he went doggedly on.

“Perhaps it's just a … barrier,” he said suddenly. “Like the maze. Perhaps they know there's not really anything to be scared of.”

Some unseen creature rose in the underbrush beside the path and went crashing off through the still trees and the green seas of fern all around; Will and Bran gasped, but this time the horses walked on unheeding. The trees interlaced overhead. Will rode with his teeth clenched, fighting off panic, comforted only by the steady swaying of his tall horse. The air was cool and damp; they crossed a small sluggish stream half-buried in fern. Then almost imperceptibly, the horses' pace began to quicken. Light began to filter through the branches overhead once more; sand appeared between the tight-woven green leaves of the matted path.

“We're coming out!” Bran said in a half-whisper high with relief. “You were right, the horses knew it was just spookiness. We're coming out!”

The horses began to trot, an easy swinging motion; they tossed their heads as if from a sense of release. Will felt the pounding of his heart slide back to normal; he sat up straighter, ashamed of his fear, and looked up at the thinning trees.

“Blue sky again, look. Ouf, what a difference!”

And so they were both relaxed in the saddle, holding loose reins, looking up unprepared, when suddenly one of the horses gave a high terrified whinny, and both shied, rearing, as something large and loud rushed at them out of the trees. And before they knew it Will and Bran were jerking backward, clutching wildly for rein or saddlebow, tumbling
helpless to the ground. The two golden horses bolted in panic across the rough sedgy pasture that stretched away from the wood.

Will had a quick glimpse of the thing that was chasing them. He cried out, in horror and disbelief,
“No!”

Bran gave a croaking shout without words, and they stumbled up and fled unthinking over the fields. In the heat of the summer sunshine Will felt cold. His head sang. He wanted to be sick. He was too frightened even to think of fear.

It was the skeleton of a giant horse, staring with the blind eye-sockets of a skull, running and leaping and prancing on legs of bone driven by ghostly muscles long rotted away. It caught them almost at once. Faster than any living horse it galloped, and without any sound. Silently it overtook them, head turned, grinning, an impossible horror. The white bones of its great rib-cage glittered in the sun. It tossed its dreadful silent head, and red ribbons dangled and fluttered like long banners from the grinning lower jaw.

The creature was playing with them, driving them this way and that, as a kitten plays with a beetle. It leapt to and fro before them, then stopped in its tracks, hooves skidding in the sandy soil. Then with the leering skull thrust out, jaws open wide, it charged at them in terrible silence—and was suddenly past them, behind them, waiting again. Swinging round wildly, Bran stumbled and fell.

The skull tossed on the spine that was a neck; the teeth glittered, the red ribbons danced round a strange broken stump in the centre of the bony forehead. In the same soundless menace it stood watching them out of the blind skull, hoof and bone pawing at the ground. Will swallowed.

“You all right? Get up!”

Bran was sitting up, blinking wide tawny eyes; his glasses were gone. “The
Mari Llwyd!”
he whispered. “The
Mari Llwyd!”
He was staring at the thing as if bewitched.

“Get up, quick!” Will had glimpsed a refuge nearby. In
panic he dragged Bran to his feet. The spectre began to circle them, slowly, silently.

“Over here! Come
on!”

It was a building, he saw. The strangest of buildings: a small low house made of blocks of grey stone, with a once-thatched roof covered in turf and straggling grass and a great swathe of branches blossoming white. A hawthorn tree was growing there from the ancient roof, a low tree not much bigger than a bush.

Bran stood transfixed, his eyes on the skeleton. “The
Mari Llwyd!”
he whispered again.

“Close your eyes!” Will said fiercely. He thrust his hand in front of Bran's face to cut off the sight of the monstrous horse, and in the same moment the right words came to him. “Quick, think, what did the Lady say?”

“The Lady?” Bran said dully. But his head turned.

“What did the Lady say to Jane? Think!”

“To Jane.” Bran's face began to clear. “To tell us … a white bone will prevent you … and a flying may-tree—”

“Will save you. Look at it. Look at it!” Will turned him to the stone house with the blossoming white tree growing from its roof. The thing stalking them wheeled closer, closer. With a sound like a sob Bran stumbled forward; Will pushed him in through the door and slammed it shut behind them. He stood leaning against it, gasping for breath. There was a prickling silence outside

Bran looked down at his hands. He was still clutching the saddlebag from his vanished horse, as if it were a lifebelt. Dropping it on the floor he rubbed his stiff fingers and looked at Will. “Sorry.”

But Will was not listening; he had crossed to the one small window that let in a dim shadowy light through the chunky stone wall. A broken shutter hung from the window-frame; there was no glass. Will's face was pale; Bran saw fear in it.

Will said huskily, “Can you look?”

“I'm all right now.” Bran came to stand beside him. And when he looked through the window he clutched Will's arm
without knowing it, so hard that the fingertips dug in deep and afterwards left a mark behind.

The great white skeleton of the horned horse, dead and yet alive, was wheeling to and fro in front of the cottage, to and fro, to and fro. Its four bony legs danced beneath the curving empty white strips of the rib-cage and the flattened arcs of the hip-blades. The long beribboned skull was jerking up and down in a dreadful dead frenzy, faster and faster; each time it faced the cottage it dropped its forehead like a charging bull and paused for an instant before turning restlessly away and wheeling to and fro once more.

Will whispered, “It's going to run at us. Charge at the door. What can we do?”

“Block the door? Would that stop it?”

“Not a hope.”

“Isn't there
anything
you can do, make happen—?”

“We're in the Lost Land….”

And the monstrous thing out there in the sunshine made one last great curving turn before it would charge at the door to burst in to their destruction. Wheeling deliberately close to the window of the house, out of its hollow-eyed skull the creature laughed dreadfully, soundlessly in at them for a second. It was the last second. As the thing passed so close, a long flurry like snow came down past the window of the house, from above, a fluttering flickering cloud of white flakes falling on the apparition, all the petals of the hawthorn tree falling, dropped in a long soft shower. And the horse that was the skeleton of a horse collapsed, as if the strings had been cut from a marionette, and fell apart. Every bone fell from every other bone, clattering down to the ground, rattling as clear now as all had been silent before. And nothing was left but a heap of white bones gleaming in the sun, bleached, long dead, with faded red ribbons drooping from the long grinning skull that lay askew on top of the pile.

Bran let out a long soft breath, his hands going up to cover his eyes; he swung aside and slumped gently down to
the floor. So it was only Will, standing wide-eyed in wonder beside the window, who saw the flurry of white petals rise again, fluttering, alive, like a great crowd of feathery white plume moths he had seen before, somewhere, somewhere—and rise flickering into the sky and out of sight, far away.

Will turned unsteadily, uncertain whether to trust his knees. He stood gazing at the dim-lit room. It was a little while before he properly saw anything. But as his churning senses began to calm again, he found he was looking at the door: an ancient door of rotting, battered wood, which would have withstood no impact of any kind at all. He could see some words written over it, with the faint glimmer of gold in them. There was not enough light to read what they said. Will went shakily across and pushed open the door; brightness came in.

Bran said slowly, behind him, reading:
“I am the shield for every head.”

“And it's written inside, where we couldn't see it,” Will said, stepping back to peer up at the words. “So we might never have dared to come in, if it hadn't been for what the Lady said.”

Bran was sitting up, arms over his knees, white head drooping.
“Duw.
That … thing….”

“Don't talk about it,” Will said; a shiver went over him like a cold breeze. Then he remembered something. “But—Bran, what was the name you called it? When it had you … hypnotized … you called it something in Welsh.”

“Ah,” Bran said. “The original Nightmare, that thing. There is an old Christmas custom, in South Wales, of something called the
Mari Llwyd,
the Grey Mare—a procession goes through the streets, and a man dressed up in a white sheet carries the skull of a horse stuck up on a pole. He can make its jaws open and shut and pretend to bite people. And one Christmas when I was very small the Rowlands took us down there visiting, my Da and me, and I saw the
Mari Llwyd
and it frightened the lights out of me. Terrible. Screaming nightmares for weeks.” He looked up at Will
with a weak smile. “If anyone had really wanted to put me out of my head, they couldn't have chosen a better way.”

Will came back into the room, leaving the door open and sunlight shafting in. “Was it the Dark? Hard to tell. One way or another it must have been. Some ancient haunting of the Lost Land, woken by—”

“By the Riders, maybe,” Bran said thoughtfully. “The Riders, passing.” He reached for the saddlebag he had dropped on the rough slate floor, and looked inside. “Hey—food! You hungry?”

“A bit,” Will said. Prowling round the cottage, he peered into the only other room, at the back, but decided from the smell and tatters of ancient hay that it had only ever been used for animals. In the main room, the walls were dry-stone, heavy chunks of rock and slate fitted together without mortar; there was no furniture of any kind, though a few rough shelves were attached to one wall. It was a far cry from the sophisticated elegance of the City. But as he ran his finger idly along a shelf Will came upon one unexpected object: a small mirror, set in a heavy oak frame carved with a pattern of leaping fish. He rubbed the dirt from the glass with his sleeve, and propped the mirror up on its shelf.

Bran came up behind him. “Here, cup your hands, boy. Gwion's Health Food, we have here—two apples and a big bag of hazelnuts. Shelled, mind you. Have some, they taste wonderful.” Cheerfully chewing, he looked up and saw Will staring at the mirror. He grimaced.
“Ach y fi!
Haven't you had enough mirrors for a while?”

Will scarcely heard. Looking at Bran's reflection in the mirror, he could see another familiar face behind him.

“Merriman!” he cried joyously, whirling round.

But behind him he found only Bran, mouth half-open as the cheerful enjoyment on his face changed to alarm. The room was empty, save for the two of them.

Will looked back at the mirror, and Merriman was still there. The shadowed eyes in the angular face stared at him, from behind Bran's puzzled reflected head.

“I am here,” said Merriman to him out of the mirror. His face was drawn and anxious. “With you and yet not with you, and I must tell you that Bran can neither see nor hear me, since he is not yet grown to power…. I am not allowed to come to you, Will, or even speak in the ways of the Old Ones. As Gwion told you, I had only one moment in which to pass through the Law of the Lost Land, and just as that moment came, the craft of the Dark caught me back to another time. But we have this crack of an instant. You do well. Be confident. There is nothing you cannot do now, if you try.”

“Oh dear,” Will said. His voice sounded to him small and lost, and suddenly he felt small and lost indeed.

“What's the matter?” Bran said, perplexed.

Will did not hear him. “Merriman, are the others all right?”

“Yes,” Merriman said sombrely. “In danger—but all right for now.”

A panic of loneliness fluttered at the back of Will's mind, yet somehow the memory of the destruction of the nightmare horse helped to keep it at bay. “What must we do?” he said.