The Stolen Lake (26 page)

"Small children pulling those heavy trolleys along the rails? It is disgraceful!"

"Keeps them out o' the way of the aurocs," Dido pointed out.

"It should not be allowed. It is not so in Lyonesse."

"It is in England." Dido had never set foot in an English mine, but she knew that quite small children did work there.

"Well, when I see—
if I
see Gwydion again, I shall tell him he should have it stopped."

"Yes, you do that," said Dido soothingly, and then both girls fell into a despondent silence.

One thing, though, thought Dido, her spirits picking up again—it's good to know that old Cap'n Hughes got himself out o' the pokey. I wouldn't a thought he had the gumption! I wonder who Lady Ettarde's nephew is, that she spoke of, and why he was in there? Could it be—? But no, the idea was too preposterous.

Lady Ettarde had accompanied them on this journey, along with a troop of the silent, gray-uniformed guards. But the mistress of the wardrobe was preoccupied, and sat in a separate car, busy making sketches of coronation robes. Dido and Elen traveled in a car with two guards, who sat facing them but did not speak.

Toward the end of the journey the train evidently began to climb an exceedingly steep ascent; the guards had much ado to keep from sliding off their seat, and the girls were tipped against the back of theirs. The train labored more and more slowly, wheezing, hissing, and wailing. At last it ground to a stop.

"Hope we ain't going to slip backwards," said Dido.

However, it seemed they had reached their destination. The guards, who carried pikes, gestured that the girls were to alight, and they did so, finding themselves in a large, cold cave, dimly lit by oil lamps hanging on the walls. They were led out under an imposing arched entrance, past piles of crushed rock, and then up a steep but wellpaved road. As they climbed higher they could see, below and to the right, the familiar star-shaped basin of Lake Arianrod. But what a drop! It must be well over a thousand feet below.

The paved road zigzagged to and fro over the mountainside, and now, looking up, Dido could see high walls above them, built from huge, massive blocks of stone, each probably weighing more than four hundred tons. The walls were fortified with towers at regular intervals and circled the mountain, crossing gullies and ravines, perching on the edge of precipices.

"Not a place you'd get into if they didn't want you," panted Dido to Elen, as the party turned to take breath on a hairpin curve. "But I thought it was a temple? That place looks twice the size of Bath."

"It is a town," said Elen. "But nobody lives there now."

"Be quiet, girls!" snapped Lady Ettarde. "You are entering Sul's sacred city."

Lady Ettarde was being borne upward in a sedan chair. Lucky for the carriers that she's so short, Dido thought. They must need a half a dozen to tote the queen along when
she
comes up.

A great stone stairway led down into a dry moat, then up again to a huge gateway. They passed through this, and on up a steep, silver-cobbled hill.

"Mystery me," muttered Dido to herself. "I never thought I'd see a whole empty town. Wonder what
happened
to all the folk?"

It was plain that the city of Sul had been uninhabited not for ten, or a hundred, but for many, many hundreds of years. Great forest trees had grown among the temples, palaces, baths, and blocks of dwellings. Near the outer wall the houses were mere cobblestone hovels, but farther in the buildings were splendid, constructed from huge chunks of white granite, roofed with masses of peaked gables, interwound with countless stone stairways. What a deal of years the place must have taken to build, thought Dido; it covers the whole blessed mountaintop. Looking back, as they toiled ever upward, she could see three different mountain ranges in the distance, and great masses of white cloud, tinged with sunset pink, floating far away, over what must be the forest of Broceliande.

The whole city was completely silent.

They reached a sloping oblong space, five hundred yards in length, evidently the main square of the city. At the upper end of this was a massive building with no windows at all, and but one entrance, a plain square doorway, on the broad lintel of which was carved the same woman's head, with snakes for hair, that Dido had seen in Bath. The guards bowed reverently before it, and Lady Ettarde clambered out of her sedan chair to make a stiff curtsy. Apparently this was the Temple of Sul.

The entrance was approached by a flight of steps. At the top of them old Caradog the guardian stood waiting.

"Welcome," he said simply, and to Elen, "Those who were once lost are doubly welcome."

Lady Ettarde hobbled up the steps and kissed him. Seeing them together, both short, long nosed, narrow lipped, with deep-set eyes, Dido realized they must be brother and sister. What a clunch I am, she thought; they're as like as two peas in a pod. Why didn't I notice before?

In fact Caradog was saying, "Will you stay the night, Sister?"

But she replied, "No, I thank you, Brother, I must return to the queen.
That
ill-conditioned child"—she cast an angry glance at Dido—"revealed that Artaius had returned, as you had already told me by carrier pigeon; Her Mercy wants coronation robes prepared."

"The news could not have been withheld from her for long," Caradog said calmly.

"Where is Artaius now?"

"With Mabon."

Both of them glanced at the sky. Dido, following the direction of their eyes, saw a tear-shaped globe drifting over the peaked and gabled roofs. It was pale yellow in color; below it, on cords, swung a barrel-shaped leather vessel. It was hard to guess how big the balloon was, up there in the sky; perhaps about the size of a pig. "Look!" Dido said, nudging Elen. But the princess, at this evidence of her father's honorable nature, appeared very downcast.

"I wonder he hasn't stopped sending them," she said.

The balloon vanished from view behind a high, round tower at the top of the town.

Now Dido watched with astonishment as a dozen of the gray-clad guards came staggering across the square carrying an upright piano, which had evidently been brought up on the train along with the prisoners.

"What you want a
piano
for..." said Lady Ettarde to her brother, in a tone of mystification, as it was heaved up the steps of the temple.

"It is so silent up here, just myself and Grandmother Sul," explained Caradog, inclining his head to the carving above the lintel. "I thought she might enjoy a different music."

Lady Ettarde sniffed. "Fanciful nonsense! The old ways were better—nothing but bocinas when I was a young gel. Good-bye, brother—I must be getting back to the queen. Her Mercy won't be best pleased at being left alone all this time with no one but old Mag Morgan. I'll leave you the guards."

"No need; I don't wish for them," he said. "Tell them to lock the town gate as they go out. Then the young ladies will be safe enough—unless they have a taste for flying."

"Are you
certain
?" His sister looked very doubtful. "We want no repetition—"

"Whose idea
was
that cave? They will be far safer here. Hapiypacha will watch over them. Farewell. Until the Day of Sul."

"Until the Day of Sul," Lady Ettarde said, and climbed back into her sedan chair. The guards, having delivered the piano somewhere inside the building, carried the chair across the square and disappeared down the hill.

Caradog turned and surveyed his prisoners.

"Are you hungry?" he asked unexpectedly.

"Ain't we jist!" said Dido.

"Then you had better come inside."

The interior of the temple was a huge space shaped like a long isosceles triangle, tapering not quite to a point but to a high narrow wall at the far end, pierced by three lancet windows. These were the only windows in the place, which was very dim; the long side walls were blank, broken only by niches alternating with protruding cylindrical stones.

Under the three windows—which admitted pink sunset light—stood a huge stone altar block, fourteen feet long by five feet high. On this, rather unexpectedly, lay various musical instruments: bamboo flutes, a harp, a lute, several crumhorns, and a rebeck.

"Material offerings are of little interest to Sul," Caradog explained, as Dido glanced inquisitively at these. "The sound of music, or the human voice, is to her what burnt offerings are to lower gods." He gave an explanatory nod at the piano, which had been set down not far from the altar.

What about chucking us in the lake? Dido wanted to ask. What does Sul think about that? It ain't Sul who wants us in the lake, it's that greedy queen.

Caradog led the girls on through a door beside the altar into what was plainly the priest's house. This was a bare stone building, scantily furnished with carved stone couches and tables; however, there was a fireplace, where blazed a fire of thorn and fig branches, filling the air with aromatic smoke. Ordering the girls to sit down on one of the stone couches, Caradog presently handed them each a bowl of rather tasteless bean-and-yucca stew. This was accompanied by ancient, slightly moldy bread and weak willow-leaf tea. Being exceedingly hungry, the prisoners ate uncritically and began to feel, if not cheerful, at least somewhat better.

The meal finished, Caradog led them back to the temple again. Here he began to play on various of the instruments, fetching strange quavering sounds from the bocinas, plucking on the harp and lute, blowing through the crumhorns; the noises he made were very uncouth. Dido did not think highly of his performance; nor, to judge from the grimace she made, did Elen, who presently volunteered, "I can play on the piano, if you would like me to. I learned in England."

"Can you, though?" Old Caradog's deep eyes lit up; he dragged a stone block up to the piano, since a stool had not been provided. Elen sat down on this, rather uncomfortably, and proceeded to play a waltz.

The guardian was amazed. He stood with his eyes shut in ecstasy, swaying the upper part of his body about in time with the music. When it was ended, he opened his eyes again and sighed, as if his spirit had returned from another, far-distant region. Dido, too, was greatly impressed with Elen's proficiency. She herself had not the slightest notion of how to play on the piano.

"Oh!" sighed Caradog. "If I could but keep you here long enough to teach me that art!"

This depressing remark spoiled the more cordial atmosphere that had been building up between the guardian and his prisoners. Looking at the light, which was almost gone, he said shortly, "Come; it is time you retired for the night," and took them back into his house.

"This is your room"—indicating a small chamber, stone floored, and with no furnishings at all except what looked uncomfortably like a large heap of human hair in one corner. "There is water in the room next door," said Caradog; and there was, a large stone tank of it. "Now," he continued, "I will introduce you to Hapiypacha, who will watch over you from now on."

At the end of a passage he pulled back an iron-barred gate as big as a door. From the darkness beyond came a loud, yawning growl—the sound made by someone who is roused too suddenly from sleep and not best pleased about it.

"Hapiypacha is kept hungry through the night," said Caradog. "I feed him at dawn."

As Caradog said this, Hapiypacha emerged from his sleeping quarters in one long, fluid bound. He snarled and spat sideways at the guardian as he passed; the old man stood his ground, remarking calmly, "Hapiypacha has an unfriendly disposition; but he knows I am his master."

Hapiypacha was an ounce, or mountain leopard; he stood four feet high at the shoulder and was about nine feet long, including his tail. He had a pale gray coat, dotted over with large, dark rosettes, and three black stripes along his back; his black ears were tasseled, and he had two dark "tear marks"—stripes—down his cheeks, white whiskers, green luminous eyes, and a no-nonsense expression. Wrinkling up his black nose as he snarled again, he loped to the temple entrance, passed through, and could be seen in front of the altar, pacing up and down as if he were keeping guard over it. A strong musky smell came from him: like cheese with dried fish, Dido thought.

"Now," said the guardian, "behave yourselves, keep quiet, and Hapiypacha will do you no harm. But if you make any sudden move—or shout—or break into a run—he is trained to overtake a running quarry, and he can catch anything on four legs or two. I do not advise you to try it.... Good night."

He left them at the entrance to their room and returned to the temple.

There was no means of fastening their door, they discovered; if they pushed it to, it merely swung open again. In the end they managed to wedge it shut with a handful of hair from the heap—which was indubitably human. Deeply depressed by this circumstance, they spread out their cloaks on it, and combed their own hair with their fingers. "We'll look for some ichu grass tomorrow," said Dido. Then, silently, they lay down to sleep. They were in no mood for chat.

Their bed was soft enough, despite its frightening implications. But Dido's sleep was broken by miserable dreams. She heard Mr. Multiple scream as he was thrown over the waterfall; she saw poor Plum carried off by aurocs; fiery-eyed owls dashed at her; snakes wriggled among the heap of hair. Mr. Holystone stood on the far side of a ravine, with Caliburn in his hand, but looking away from her, in the wrong direction.

Toward dawn she woke, parched with thirst, and, in some trepidation, padded next door carrying a wooden cup Caradog had left them, to fetch herself a drink of water from the stone tank. As she came back, it struck her that their bedroom door had been ajar; someone must have opened it while they were asleep. And, returning to bed, she discovered who: sprawled out beside Elen, with his chin comfortably supported by her ankles, lay Hapiypacha, fast asleep.

Dido regarded him rather doubtfully for a moment. Then she knelt and set the wooden cup of water down on the ground. As she did so, for some reason, she remembered Mr. Holystone saying, "Never drink the first cup of liquid offered you by a stranger."