Enchanted Pilgrimage (4 page)

As the sheepskin fell away, the object it had covered caught the light and blazed. Gib leaned forward, looking at it, entranced.

“A sword!” he said.

“A man's sword,” said Sniveley. “Too large, too long, too heavy for such as you or I. A fighter's sword. No flashy jewels, no fancy glitter. A tool just like your ax. An honest blade. In all the time that I've been here, the swords that we have made you can count upon the fingers of one hand. And this is by far the best of them.”

Gib reached out and touched the blade. “It has a personality,” he said. “It is the kind of weapon that one could give a name to. Old stories say that olden men often named their swords, as they would name a horse.”

“We found one small pocket of richer ore,” said Sniveley. “We took it out most carefully and have hoarded it away. Such ore you do not find too often. It shall be used for special things—like this blade and your ax.”

“You mean my ax …”

“The ax and sword are brothers.”

“Let us hope,” said Gib, “that the sword passes into worthy hands.”

“We shall make certain that it does,” said Sniveley.

“I brought you the old ax,” Gib said. “The metal still is good, but the bevel has worn so short it cannot be satisfactorily sharpened. There is no rust upon it. I thought perhaps you could reuse the metal. I expect no credit for it.”

He lifted it from the floor and handed it to the gnome.

“It was a good ax,” Sniveley said. “It was your father's ax?”

Gib nodded. “He gave it to me when I built my raft.”

“We made it for him,” said Sniveley. “It was a good ax. Not as good as yours.”

“My father sends you greetings. And my mother, too. I told them I'd be seeing you.”

“It is a good life that you have,” said the gnome. “All of you down in the marsh. For many years. You have no history, do you? You don't know how long.”

“We cannot write events,” said Gib. “We have only the old tales, passed on from father to son. There may be truth in them, but I don't know how much.”

“So long as the gnomes have been in the hills,” said Sniveley, “your people have been there. There before we came. We have our legends, too. About the one who discovered ore here and the development of the mine. As with you, we cannot judge the truth.”

Gib hoisted the hermit's bundle onto his shoulder. “I must get on,” he said. “The hermit's cave is a long climb. I want to reach home before the fall of night.”

Sniveley wagged his head. “It is good to do so. There are many wolves this year. More than I've ever known. If you are running late, stop here and spend the night. You would be most welcome.”

6

At first Gib thought the hermit was not at home, although that would have been passing strange. Of late years, since he had grown feeble, the hermit had never left the cave except to sally out on occasions to collect the roots, the herbs, the leaves, and barks that went into his medications.

The fire in the cave was out, and there was no smell of smoke, which meant it had been out for long. Dried egg yolk clung to the lone plate on the rough trestle table.

Gib peered into the darkness. “Hermit,” he said softly, half afraid to speak, stricken with a sudden apprehension that he could not understand. “Hermit, are you here?”

A weak sound came from a corner. It could have been a mouse.

“Hermit,” Gib said again.

The sound repeated.

Carefully Gib walked toward the corner, crouching to see better.

“Here,” said the hermit weakly. The voice was no louder than the fluttering of a leaf.

Then Gib, his eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, made it out—the low dark mound in the corner, the paleness of the face.

“Hermit, what is wrong?”

Gib crouched above the pallet and saw the wasted form, a blanket pulled up to the chin.

“Bend low,” the hermit said. “I can barely speak.”

“Are you sick?” Gib asked.

The pale lips barely moved. “I die,” they said. “Thank God that you came.”

“Do you want something? Water? Soup? I could make some soup.”

“Listen,” said the hermit. “Do not talk, but listen.”

“I'll listen.”

“The cabinet over against the wall.”

“I see it.”

“The key is around my neck. Cord around my neck.”

Gib reached out his hand.

“No, wait.”

“Yes?”

“In the cabinet—in the cabinet …”

The hermit struggled to talk.

“A book, leather-bound. A fist ax. Ax made out of stone. Take both to the bishop …”

“Which bishop?”

“Bishop of the Tower. Up the river, north and west. Ask. People will tell you.”

Gib waited. The hermit did not speak. He did not try to speak.

Gently, Gib reached out a hand, found the cord that lay against the hermit's neck. He lifted the hermit's head to slip it free. A small key dangled at the end.

He let the hermit's head fall back against the pillow.

He waited for a moment, but the hermit did not stir. He rose to his feet and went across the cave to unlock the cabinet. The book was there, a small book bound in leather. Beside it lay the ax. It was like no ax Gib had ever seen before. It was made of stone and was pointed at one end. Even made of stone, it had the smooth look of metal. Only by looking closely could one see where the chips had been flaked off to shape it.

There were other items in the cabinet—a razor, a pair of shears, a comb, a small vial half filled with a blue substance.

He took out the book and ax and went back to the pallet.

The hermit opened bleary eyes and looked at him. “You have them? Good.”

“I'll take them to the bishop.”

“You are Gib. You've been here before.”

Gib nodded.

“You'll wait?”

“I'll wait. Is there nothing I can do? No water?”

The hermit rolled his head from side to side. “Nothing,” he said.

Gib waited, on his knees beside the pallet. The hermit's breathing was so shallow that his chest scarcely moved and it was a long time between breaths. Occasionally hairs on the upper lip of the hermit's bearded face fluttered slightly when the breath came from his nostrils.

Once the hermit spoke. “I am old,” he said. “It is time. Past time.” Then he lapsed back into silence. The shallow breathing went on. Twice Gib was almost convinced it had stopped entirely. But it had not stopped. It was only faint.

“Gib?”

“Yes?”

“Leave me here. When it is done, leave me here.”

Gib did not answer. The silence hummed. The shallow breathing still went on.

Then: “Wall up the cave. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” said Gib, “I will.”

“I would not want the wolves …”

He did not finish the sentence. Gib continued sitting beside the pallet. Once he went to the cave mouth and looked out. The sun had passed the zenith and was inclining toward the west. From the high point of the cave he could see that part of the marsh from which he had set out that morning. He could see almost to the river.

Gib went back and resumed his vigil. He tried to think and found that he could not think. There were too many things to think, too much to think about. He could not get it sorted out. There was confusion in his mind.

For some time he had not been watching the hermit, but simply sitting there. When he did look at him, he could detect no breathing movement. He waited, remembering there had been times before when he could detect no movement. But time stretched out and there was no flutter of the whiskers on the upper lip, no sign of life at all. He bent his head close against the chest and could detect no heartbeat. He rolled a lid back from an eye and the eye stared back in glassiness.

The hermit, he knew, was dead. But he continued to sit beside him, as if the mere fact of continuing the vigil would beat back the fact of death. He found that now he could think, while he had not been able to before. Had there been, he wondered, anything that he could have done? He remembered in horror that he had not even tried to give the hermit any water. He had asked and the hermit had said that he had no need of water. But even so, should he have tried to give him some? Should he have tried to bring some help? But where could he have gone for help? And who could have been of help? And, he told himself, he could not have brought himself to leave a dying man, to let him die alone.

The hermit, he thought, had been an old man and had not been afraid of death. He wondered if he might not have looked on death as a welcome friend. This very morning Drood had wondered what the hermit had gotten out of life and that, of course, was a question still unanswered. But, Gib told himself, he must have gotten something out of life, perhaps a great deal out of life, to have been able to face death so serenely.

Now there were things to do, he told himself, and the afternoon was waning. He pulled back the blanket and crossed the hands of the hermit decently on his chest, then pulled the blanket up to cover his face. Having done that, he went outside to search for boulders he could use to block the entrance to the cave.

7

Hal of the Hollow Tree climbed over the rail fence and entered the cornfield. He was safe, he knew. The moonshiner and his sons were husking on the other side of the field and the moonshiner's dogs were sleeping off, beneath the stilted corncrib, the effects of last night's hunt.

It had been a long hunt and apparently an unsuccessful one. Hal and Coon had sat for hours outside the hollow tree and listened to its progress. The dogs had barked “treed” once, but the coon must have gotten away, for soon after they struck out on the trail again. Several times the two listeners had seen the lights of the lantern as the moonshiner and his sons had followed the hounds.

The corn crop had been good this year. Not that the moonshiner and his loutish family had contributed to it with outstanding husbandry. They hadn't; the corn had been hoed only two or three times and not at all in the later period of its growth and, as a result, weeds grew thickly between the rows. But the ears hung heavy, and it seemed there were more of them than usual.

Hal went into the corn patch five or six rows. Although there was no great evidence of it, he knew that some of the outer rows had been pilfered by coons and squirrels. That was why, he knew, the moonshiner hunted coons, or at least why he said he hunted them—to cut down their depredations on his corn patch. But it was not entirely that; coonskins had some value and could be sold. Moonshine, coonskins, and hog meat were this farm's stock-in-trade, and with them the family managed to get along.

Hal began husking, moving rapidly, unwilling to stay longer than he had to. Even learning from earlier counting where the family members were, he had no intention of being apprehended. Choosing the best ears, he stripped down the husk, broke the ears free and dropped them in the sack he carried.

Out at the edge of the field bluejays screeched in the autumn sunshine. In a grove of walnut trees, their golden leaves a burst of color against the drabber oaks, squirrels chattered as they went about their harvest. He liked autumn, Hal told himself, best of all the seasons. In these mellow, tawny days, blue hazed and warm, the land came to fruition and one could sense the satisfactory closing of a long season of growth. It was a respite before the cold closed down again and the long snow came. This year, he knew, he would be well provisioned against the winter. He had bins of nuts and corn, dried berries, a good supply of roots and seeds. One of these days he'd have to go down to the marsh and see if he could trade for some dried fish with his friend, Gib, or perhaps old Drood or some of the other People of the Marsh. Thinking of this, he suddenly realized that it had been a long time since he had seen Gib and now looked forward to a chance to talk with him again.

He hoisted the sack and it was heavier than he had expected; he had picked more ears than he had intended. He wrestled the sack to his shoulder and judged that he could handle it. When he reached the edge of the field, he stopped to look and listen. There seemed no one about. Heaving the heavy sack over the rail fence, he vaulted after it, grabbed the sack and scurried into the woods.

He felt safe now. There was nothing that could catch him in the woods. The woods were home. He knew this forest for miles about, every cranny of it. Angling swiftly down the hill, he headed for the huge hollow oak. As he went, his eyes sought and noted, without too much effort or attention, many different things—the flaming crimson of the ripened berries of the jack-in-the-pulpit, the fact that a small cluster of black haw trees were loaded with fruit that would become edible with the first coming of a killing frost, the heavily laden grapevines, which in many cases masked the very trees in which they grew, the silvery glint of a shed snakeskin left over from the summer, now half concealed in the fallen leaves.

In half an hour or so he reached the oak, a giant that measured at its base a good ten feet in diameter. Twenty feet up its trunk gaped a hole some two feet across. A series of pegs, driven into the wood, formed a ladder by which it could be reached.

There was no sign of Coon. He was probably off somewhere, investigating. It was unlikely, Hal reminded himself, that at this time of day he'd still be inside sleeping.

Hal leaned the sack of corn against the oak, swarmed up the ladder, and crawled through the hole, then climbed down another series of pegs.

The entire interior of the oak was hollowed out. Perhaps not a great deal more than a foot of shell surrounded the cavity. Someday, Hal knew, a wind might snap it off and he'd have to find another home. But here, deep in the forest, the wind was broken up by the many trees, and the oak was further protected by a high, flinty ridge, cutting the course of the prevailing westerlies. The cavity extended up for another twenty feet or so above the opening and here and there the shell was pierced by other smaller holes, admitting some daylight. The floor was made of dry decayed wood, which through the centuries had fallen from the sides of the hole.