The Grey King (15 page)

He looked down at the sack. “There is something else there.”

“Of course,” said the Grey King.

Will ripped the half-rotted sacking so that it lay open; it still seemed quite empty, as it had from the first. Then he noticed in one fold a small
highly polished white stone, no bigger than a pebble. He bent to pick it up. It would not move.

He said slowly, “It is a warestone.”

“Yes,” the voice said.

“Your warestone. A channel for the Dark. So that when it is left in a certain place, you may know all that is happening in that place, and may put into it your will to make other things happen. It was hidden in that old sack all the time.” A sudden memory flickered in his mind. “No wonder I lost my hold on the fox of the
milgwn.”

Out of the mist, laughter came. It was a terrifying sound, like the first rattle of an avalanche. Then instead, and worse, the voice came whispering. “A warestone of the Dark has no value for the Light. Give it me.”

“You had put it on Caradog Prichard's farm,” Will said. “Why? He is your creature anyway, you have no need of a warestone for him.”

“That fool is none of mine,” the Grey King said contemptuously. “If the Dark showed itself to him he would melt with fear like butter in the sun. No, he is not of the Dark. But he is very useful. A man so wrapped in his own ill-will is a gift to the Dark from the earth. It is so easy to give him suitable ideas. . . . Very useful, indeed.”

Will said quietly, “There are such men, of an opposite kind, who unwittingly serve the Light too.”

“Ah,” said the voice slyly, “but not so many, Old One. Not so many, I think.” It sharpened again, and the mist swirled colder. “Give me the warestone. It will not work against you, but neither will it work for you. It will always cleave to the earth at the touch of the Light—as would a warestone of yours, if you had one, at my touch.”

“I have no need of one,” Will said. “Certainly no need of yours. Take it.”

“Stand away. I shall take it and be gone. And if in one night and one day you are not also gone, from this my land, you will cease to exist by the standards of men, Old One. You shall not hinder us, not with your six Signs
nor your harp of gold.” The voice rose and swelled suddenly like a high wind. “For our time is almost come, in spite of you, and the Dark is rising,
the Dark is rising!”

The words roared through Will's mind as the mist swirled dark and chill round his face, obscuring everything, even the ground beneath his feet. He could no longer see the harp, but only feel it clutched close in both his arms. He staggered giddily, and a terrible chill struck into all the length of his body.

Then it was gone. And he stood in the lane between the hedges, with the harp clasped to his chest, and the valley was clear all about him under the grey sky, and at his feet an empty piece of old sacking lay.

Shakily Will bent and wrapped the harp again, and set off for Clwyd Farm.

H
e slipped upstairs to his room to hide the harp, calling a greeting to Aunt Jen. She called back over her shoulder without turning, stirring a pot carefully at the stove. But when Will came downstairs again, the big kitchen seemed full of people. His uncle and Rhys were roving restlessly about, faces taut with concern. John Rowlands had just come through the door.

“Did you see him?” Rhys burst out anxiously to Rowlands.

John Rowlands's weather-lined brown face gained a few extra lines as his eyebrows rose. “Who should I have seen?”

David Evans pulled out a chair and dropped wearily into it. He sighed. “Caradog Prichard was outside just now. There is no end to this madness. He claims that another of his sheep was worried by a dog this afternoon—killed, this one. He says that it happened right there in his yard, again, and that he and his wife saw everything. And he swears up and down that the dog was Pen.”

“Waving his gun about, he was, the damn lunatic,” Rhys said angrily. “He would have shot the dog for sure, if you and Pen had been here. Thank God you were not.”

John Rowlands said mildly, “I am surprised he was not waiting for us at the gate.”

“I told him you were out late on the mountain, after some ewes,” said Will's uncle, his neat head bent, despondent. “No doubt the fool will be out there looking for you.”

“Shoot a sheep, he will, I shouldn't be surprised,” John Rowlands said. “If he can find the black ewe, that is.”

But David Evans was too shaken to smile. “Let him do that, and I will have him off to Tywyn police station, dogs or no dogs. I don't like it, John Rowlands. The man is acting as if . . . I don't know, I really think that his wits have begun to turn. Raving, he was. Dogs killing sheep is a bad thing, heaven knows, but he was acting as wild as if it was children had been killed. If he had had children. I think it is as well he has not.”

“Pen has been with me all day, without a break,” John Rowlands said, his deep voice tranquil.

“Of course he has,” said Rhys. “But Caradog Prichard would not believe that even if he had watched you every minute of the day with his own eyes. He is that bad. And he will be back tomorrow, there is no doubt at all.”

“Perhaps Betty Prichard will be able to make him see reason before then,” Aunt Jen said. “Though she has never had much luck before, goodness knows. He must be a hard man to be married to, that one.”

John Rowlands looked at Will's uncle. “What shall we do?”

“I don't know,” David Evans said, shaking his head morosely. “What do you think?”

“Well,” John Rowlands said, “I was thinking that if you are not using the Land-Rover in the morning, I might go very early up the valley and leave Pen for a few days with Idris Jones Ty-Bont.”

Will's uncle lifted his head, his face brightening for the first time. “Good. Very good.”

“Jones Ty-Bont owes you a favour, for borrowing the tractor this summer. He is a good fellow anyway. And one of his dogs is from the same litter as Pen.”

“That is a very good idea,” Rhys said simply. “And we are out of plugs for the chain saw. You can pick one up in Abergynolwyn coming back.”

Rowlands laughed. “All settled, then.”

“Mr. Rowlands,” Will said. “Could I come too?”

They had not noticed he was there; heads turned in surprise to where he stood on the stairs.

“Come and welcome,” John Rowlands said.

“That would be nice,” Aunt Jen said. “I was just thinking yesterday that we hadn't taken you to Tal y Llyn yet. That's the lake, up there. Idris Jones's farm is right next to it.”

“Caradog Prichard will not dream that the dog might be there,” said David Evans. “It will give him time to cool off.”

“And if the sheep-killing goes on—” Rhys said. Deliberately he left the sentence hanging.

“There's a thought now,” Will's aunt said. “We must make sure Caradog thinks Pen is still here. Then if he sees Pen with his own eyes savage a sheep again tomorrow, there will be a quick answer for him.”

“Good, then,” John Rowlands said. “Pen is at home having his supper, I think I will go and join him. We will leave at five-thirty, Will. Caradog Prichard is not the earliest riser in the world.”

“Perhaps young Bran would like to go with you, being a Saturday,” said David Evans, leaning back relaxed now in his chair.

“I don't think so,” Will said.

W
ill expected to be the only one stirring in the house, at five in the morning, but his Aunt Jen was up before him. She gave him a cup of tea, and a big slab of homemade bread and butter.

“Cold out there, early,” she said. “You'll do better with something inside you.”

“Bread and butter tastes five times as good here as anywhere else,” said Will. Glancing up as he chewed, he saw her watching him with a funny, wry half-smile.

“The picture of health you are,” she said. “Just like your big brother Stephen, at your age. Nobody would guess how ill you were, not so long ago. But my goodness me, it's not exactly a rest cure we've been giving you. The fire, and all this business with the sheep-killing—”

“Exciting,” said Will, muffled, through a mouthful.

“Well, yes,” said Aunt Jen. “Indeed, in a place where nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, usually, from one year's end to the next. I think I have had enough excitement to be getting along with, for now.”

Will said lightly, deliberately, “I suppose the last real stir was when Bran's mother came.”

“Ah,” his aunt said. Her pleasant, cosy face was unreadable. “You've heard about that, have you? I suppose John Rowlands told you. He is a kind soul,
Shoni mawr,
no doubt he had his reasons. Tell me, Will, have you had some sort of a quarrel with Bran?”

Will thought:
and that's what you wanted to ask me, with the cup of tea, because you are a kind soul too, and can feel Bran's distress. . . . And I wish I could be properly honest with you.

“No,” he said. “But losing Cafall has been so bad for him that I think he just wants to be alone. For a while.”

“Poor lad.” She shook her head. “Be patient with him. He's a lonely boy, and had a strange life, in some ways. It's been wonderful for him having you here, until this spoiled everything.”

A small pain shot through Will's forearm; he clutched it, and found it came from the scar of the Light, his burned-in brand.

He said suddenly, “Did she never come back at all, ever, Auntie Jen? Bran's mother? How could she just go off and leave him, like that?”

“I don't know,” his aunt said. “But no, there was no sign of her ever again.”

“In one minute, to go away forever . . . I think that must bother Bran a lot.”

She looked at him sharply. “Has he ever said anything about it?”

“Oh, no, of course not. We've never talked about that. I just felt—I'm just sure it must bother him, underneath.”

“You're a funny boy yourself,” said his aunt curiously. “Sometimes you sound like an old man. Comes from having so many brothers and sisters older than you, I suppose. . . . Perhaps you understand Bran better than most boys could.”

She hesitated for a moment, then drew her chair closer. “I will tell you something,” she said, “in case it might help Bran. I know you have sense enough not to tell him about it. I think Gwen, his mother, had some great trouble in her life past that she could do nothing about, and that because of that she felt she had to give Bran a life that would be free of it. She knew Owen
Davies was a good man and would look after the boy, but she also knew that she simply did not love Owen as deeply as he loved her, not enough to marry him. When things turn out like that, there is nothing a woman can do. It is kindest to go away.” She paused. “Not kind to leave Bran, you might say.”

“That was just exactly what I was going to say,” said Will.

“Well,” said his aunt. “Gwen said something to me, in those few days she was here, when we were alone once. I have never talked about it, but I have never forgotten. She said:
‘If you have once betrayed a great trust, you dare not let yourself be trusted again, because a second betrayal would be the end of the world.'
I don't know if you can understand that.”

“You mean she was frightened of what she might do?”

“And more frightened of what she had done. Whatever it was.”

“So she ran away. Poor Bran,” said Will.

“Poor Owen Davies,” said his aunt.

There was a gentle knock at the door, and John Rowlands put his head inside.
“Bore da,”
he said. “Ready, Will?”

“Bore da,
John,” said Aunt Jen, smiling at him.

Pulling on his jacket, Will turned suddenly and gave her a clumsy hug. “Thank you, Aunt Jen.”

The smile brightened with pleasure and surprise. “We'll see you when we see you,” she said.

John Rowlands said, as he started the car outside the farm gate, “Fond of you, your auntie.”

Will held open the door for Pen to scramble up; the dog jumped over the seat into the back, and lay docile on the floor.

“I'm fond of her too, very. So's my mum.”

“Be careful then, won't you?” Rowlands said. His seamed brown face was innocent of all expression, but the words had force. Will looked at him rather coldly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Rowlands said carefully, turning the Land-Rover into the road. “I am not at all sure what it is that is going on all around us, Will
bach,
or where it is leading. But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law, or the white burning of the sun.” Suddenly his voice sounded to Will very strong, and very Welsh. “At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. Like the old Crusaders—oh, like certain groups in every belief, though this is not a matter of religion, of course. At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe.”

His warm, deep voice ended, and there was only the roar of the engine. Will looked out over the grey-misted fields, silent.

“There was a great long speech, now,” John Rowlands said awkwardly. “But I was only saying, be careful not to forget that there are people in this valley who can be hurt, even in the pursuit of good ends.”

Will heard again in his mind Bran's anguished cry as the dog Cafall was shot dead, and heard his cold dismissal:
go away, go away. . . .
And for a second another image, unexpected, flashed into his mind out of the past: the strong, bony face of Merriman his master, first of the Old Ones, cold in judgment of a much-loved figure who, through the frailty of being no more than a man, had once betrayed the cause of the Light.