Willow (22 page)

Urging his horse close, Willow saw a narrow opening, so tall that its top was lost in frozen mist, and so positioned that the mirror-walls of ice utterly obscured it. In they went, leaving Kael and their pursuers behind.

A tunnel led into the last domain of the northern elves, before they had finally been annihilated by the mountain trolls. It was a still, vast network of ice caves. Dim light filtered down from apertures high in the cliffs, and the scene glowed with the muted radiance of a winter evening. Workshops and equipment stood ready for use, just as they had been left, for these elves of the mountains had been armorers and metal workers, the best in all the kingdoms. Now, their forges were cold. Narrow ladders stretched up to their dwellings, high in the ice walls. Chains and ropes hung from winches and scaffolds, glimmering like crystal snakes.

Nothing lived in that frozen place. At last, the trolls had found it and invaded it, and the horrible remnants of the final battle lay where they had fallen. Corpses sprawled everywhere—elves slaughtered even as they were stripping off their leather aprons and reaching for their swords. The bodies of women and children hunched where they had been dropped. Raziel uttered plaintive cries as she drifted above this carnage. But in spite of the surprise the elves had acquitted themselves well, for there were many troll corpses too, their gruesome fingers splayed, their faces frozen forever in the grimaces of death.

They moved slowly, letting the horses pick their way. Behind, Kael’s roars of rage echoed as he galloped back and forth, unable to find the entrance. Ahead, the caverns opened one into another, in what seemed an unending maze. Fin Raziel, however, remembered the way from long ago. She soared on, a black shadow in the eerie light, occasionally hovering to point a change of direction with her wingtip, and at last she led them out again, through another magically hidden opening, onto a black slope.

She fluttered her wings for silence. “Nockmaar Valley!” she hissed.

There before them, the volcano growled and grumbled. Sour smoke drifted down from it, and as Willow looked a plume of hot ash shot up and reached toward them. He felt sharp dread, as if some troll like those whose corpses lay in the caves had sunk talons into his belly. He knew how Vohnkar must have felt, perhaps at this very place.

Acrid and sulphurous, the smoke moved sluggishly, clearing enough for Willow to glimpse parts of the castle. It looked as if it had torn itself out of the ground through sheer, malignant will. Guttering flambeaux burned on the ramparts. Massive corner towers loomed with their loopholes and sluggish banners. Bavmorda’s black tower rose in the center like a dragon’s head, watchful in all directions.

“Oh Elora,” Willow said, holding the child close. “What an awful place! I hope I never see it again. I hope you never have to come here again. Ever!”

To his surprise, the child was not whimpering. She was gazing at Nockmaar through solemn and unblinking eyes.

“Wait!” Fin Raziel hovered, holding them back, watching the drifting smoke and mist. “Bavmorda will feel us. She’ll know we’re close. If we’re not careful, she’ll see us, too.”

“See us!” Madmartigan exclaimed. “But the place is two leagues distant!”

“She has ways,” Raziel croaked. “Ways other than human eyes.”

Sorsha suddenly lunged, making a try for freedom, but Madmartigan gripped her tight. “Fool!” Sorsha hissed. “She’s right. The bird’s right. The dogs are already on their way. Soon they’ll be here!”

“This way,” Raziel beckoned. “Now!”

Smoke had hidden the castle again, and they hurried across a half-league of open space and into cover before it cleared and left them visible to watchers in the black tower.

“Ride on! Straight ahead.” Raziel circled back to make sure that there were no Death Dogs on their trail. When she returned she drifted down beside Willow as he rode. “The next passage will be hard, Willow.”

“What is it?”

“The labyrinth. The maze that Bavmorda created long ago around Tir Asleen. No one has been through it since that day. I have never been through it. We shall have to pick our way carefully, and there may come a time when you shall have to use your sorcery.”

“I—I’d rather try to transform you again, Raziel. I’d rather let you . . .”

“No, no. We have no time now for that. I shall try to lead you through the passages, but if we encounter an obstacle, be ready to work a charm.”

Willow swallowed hard. “I—I’ll try.”

The way grew tortuous. The canyons became craggier, steeper, narrower. Snakelike they twisted back upon each other, and only by peering far ahead was Fin Raziel, hovering high, able to guide the little party through them.

Sorsha complained bitterly all the way. “You’re holding me too tight!” she said, after striking her head on an outcrop. “Let me duck, at least.”

Madmartigan laughed. “Oh no. I’m not letting you get away, Princess.”

“Why? Because I’m your sun? Your moon? Your starlit sky?”

“Did I really talk such drivel?”

“Yes. You said you loved me, too.”

“Unbelievable! I remember nothing of that!”

“So you lied.”

“No. I mean yes. I mean, I wasn’t myself last night.”

Sorsha laughed sarcastically. “Enchanted, I suppose. You were helpless against my spell!”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“And then what happened?”

“It . . . went away.”

“Went away? ‘I dwell in darkness without you,’ and it
went away
?” She elbowed Madmartigan hard in the stomach and twisted against the arm clamping her tight. “You’re a jackass!”

“Not anymore.” Madmartigan laughed. “I told you, I’m fine now! My normal self! Handsome, intelligent, and the best swordsman in the world!”

The canyons had become much tighter, like narrow, twining passageways. The horses stumbled often. But from her vantage point high above, Raziel insisted they were on the right track. “A barrier!” she called down. “A wall of thorns ahead, and the way broadens beyond it. Get ready, Willow!”

“Can you at least tell me what’s happening?” Sorsha asked. “Am I a hostage? Are you going to trade me for something you
really
want?”

“I told you. We’re taking you to Tir Asleen. To see your father.”

“And I told
you
: you’ll never get past my mother’s barrier. Kael will hack you up for dog meat!” She rode a little way in silence. “Besides, I don’t even remember my father.”

“He’s a great king. When Tir Asleen is set free . . .”

“Kael!” Raziel warned, pointing back down the canyon they were wending their way through. Madmartigan twisted around. In the same instant his horse stumbled and Sorsha slammed her elbow into his stomach again, this time hard enough to tip him off balance and break free. The next moment she was running back down the canyon toward the hoofbeats they could all now hear, coming fast. Madmartigan leaped out of the saddle and after her, despite Raziel’s frenzied warnings. He caught her just as she was crossing a muddy stream. He tackled her and they splashed down together, Sorsha kicking and punching viciously, Madmartigan gradually overwhelming her. At last he dragged her out of the water and pinned her to the ground.

“Leave her!” Raziel fluttered down. “Hurry!”

Madmartigan hesitated, then ran for his horse. When he looked back, Sorsha was on her feet, looking after them in silence.

In minutes they reached the wall of thorns Raziel had seen from farther down the canyon. It seemed an impenetrable barrier. Massive, spikey vines rose thickly intertwined as far as they could see.

Madmartigan cursed. “Impossible! No one can get through there! You’ve brought us all this way to . . .”

Raziel swooped down. “Quick! Light three fires three paces apart!”

Madmartigan did that, hurriedly using flint and steel from the saddlebag to chip sparks into a tinder of dried leaves and grass. Three frail flames wavered at the bottom of the wall.

“Now Willow! The Fourth Chant of Unity! Join the flames!”

“Tuatha lum
. . .”

“Use the wand!”

“Oh yes!” He dug into his cloak and found it, holding it out with both hands.
“Tuatha luminockt tuatha!”
It burned and trembled in his palms, but the fires grew only a little.

“Too slow! Both of you!”

Madmartigan whirled around. He had drawn his sword, ready to fight the Nockmaars, who were almost upon them. “What, me? Charms?”

“Yes! Say it!”

“Tuatha luminockt tuatha,”
Willow chanted again, pointing the wand.

Madmartigan imitated him.
“Tuatha . . . loom
. . . What is it?”

Already the combined charm had begun to work. Flames stretched up from the fires like reaching arms.

“Together!”

“Tuatha luminockt tuatha!”

Now the flames leaped and the wall blazed, opening a smoking arch. They urged their frightened horses through. As soon as they were inside, the whole wall blazed, and moments later, when Sorsha, Kael, and the Nockmaar troops arrived, they faced an inferno. Their horses reared away from it.

“There must be another way!” Sorsha shouted above the roar of the flames.

Kael cursed. “None! Unless we go back and around, a full day’s ride. No, they’ve escaped us, Princess, but not for long. We’ll trap them in the castle and kill them like rats! Besides, we need time for our reinforcements to come up from Nockmaar.” He waved his men back. “Dismount! Water your horses!”

Beyond the fire, Willow crouched low over his mount’s neck, drawing a blanket across Elora’s face to shield her from the whirling smoke. He could hear Madmartigan coming close behind and Raziel calling encouragement from ahead, but he could see neither of them. Choking in the smoke, he gripped the pommel and gave the horse its head.

“We’ll soon be there, Elora. You’ll be safe there, at Tir Asleen. The good king will protect you. Maybe someday, when it’s safe again, we’ll all come to see you, Mims and Ranon and Kiaya and I. Meegosh too. And Vohnkar.”

The child stared up at him, apparently oblivious to the swirling smoke. Looking at her, Willow felt again the strange sensation he had had often since Elora came into his care—that time itself had ended. He felt that he might go on living forever, perhaps not in the form of Willow Ufgood, but part of all that had been and would ever be. He felt as if he were expanding infinitely, growing larger than any Daikini, larger than Bavmorda.

The child laughed, and although he was filthy, and exhausted, and very frightened still, Willow laughed, too.

So, laughing, they rode through the last wisps of smoke and into the valley of Tir Asleen, a place that fulfilled all of Willow’s dreams. It was rich and fertile, as green as Nockmaar was dark, as abundant as Nockmaar was sterile. Great pastures stretched up the gentle slopes of the mountains, dotted with oak forests and beeches in the lower regions, fringed with pines and firs toward the top, tonsured around the peaks with the low shrubbery of mountain meadows. The road to the castle lay as it always had, gleaming white, paved with marble cut centuries before from the quarries of the elves. Willow could imagine how welcoming was that broad and tree-lined avenue to all the pilgrims who had trekked to Tir Asleen. He could imagine the gatherings of their tents in the meadows, and the festivities that would go on for days, with music and wine and fellowship, while the good king passed freely among his people.

So it would soon be again!

“Tir Asleen, Elora! There it is! We’re safe!”

Fin Raziel uttered a long, falling cry of ecstasy, and drifted down over the valley.

“Come on, little friend,” Madmartigan said. “Let’s ride!”

And so they did, urging their tired mounts into a trot, they rode the last half league down the road and onto that marble avenue.

The castle rose ahead, the most magnificent structure Willow had ever seen. Built of the same marble as the road, it glowed so pure and white under the full sun that it seemed a source of light itself. Two corbeled towers rose like welcoming arms beside the lowered drawbridge. Sunlight glinted on the banners on their flagstaffs, and on the crenels and merlons of the battlements. Sunlight flashed on the silver surface of the moat. It seemed to Willow as they approached that a party of knights must come riding out to welcome them.

But there were no knights. There was no welcome. The closer they came to the castle of Tir Asleen, the more Willow’s joy and relief shifted to foreboding and unease. No birds sang in the oaks through which they rode. No animals moved in the fields and forests. Although a breeze coursed through the valley, the king’s banner did not flutter on its staff.
Frozen,
Willow thought. It hung as if it had been frozen, beyond any warmth in the natural world to thaw it.

Most disquieting was that they saw no people. No one waved from the gardens. No one stood in the doorways. No horses ran beside them in the fenced meadows. No cattle grazed. No sheep raised browsing heads to watch them pass.

“Something wrong here, Peck,” Madmartigan muttered as they rode. “Not what we expected. Slow down! Watch out for trouble!”

Not until Fin Raziel had swooped over the castle walls and uttered a long and despairing cry at what she saw, and until they themselves had clattered across the drawbridge and into the courtyard, did they understand the depth of the horror that had befallen Tir Asleen.

“Cursed!” Raziel shrieked, flapping in little circles in the dust. “Bavmorda has frozen everything!”

It was true. Although the sun shone and the breezes were fair, arctic cold hung in that place. It came from several large blocks of crystal quartz standing here and there in the courtyard, on the steps leading up to the king’s apartments, beside the well, around the winches that raised the drawbridge.

“No,” Raziel moaned, flitting from one of these blocks to the next, finally settling on one of them. “Oh no!”

A human being stood inside.

A trapped woman, one of the servants of Tir Asleen, was captured there in the act of drawing water from the well, exactly as she had been at the moment of Bavmorda’s awful curse. She was a young woman, and pretty. She had been lifting her head, smiling up at a lark or a lover on the parapet just as the curse struck.