Seaward (4 page)

The man shifted impatiently. “Listen, then,” he said. “I will tell you about yourself. You come from another
country. You are Westerly, travelling, and you fear those who perhaps follow you, and would kill you if they caught you. You are searching for your father.”

Westerly stood very still, listening.

“You travel seaward,” said the man in gold, “because your mother told you that it was the sea which would take you to him, though she did not tell you where, or when, or how.” He paused for a moment, looking round restlessly at the trees. “The nights are not your friend in this country, boy—you must come in. There are three things of which your mother did tell you. Have you forgotten them?”

Westerly heard in his mind his mother's voice, low and urgent, in the last moment that he had seen her.
“You will meet three that you can trust: a man with eyes like an owl, a girl with selkie hands, and a creature in a high place. Go bravely. I love you.”

He felt for the knife in his pack, to be sure that it was in easy reach. Then he went forward into the light, up to the doorway. The man in the golden robe stood there unmoving; Westerly looked up at him. He saw a lean, lively face under a tousle of gold-brown hair; the mouth had lines of laughter round it, and the eyes dancing at him were bright and strange, a tawny brown flecked with gold.

The man smiled a little. “Well?”

“Eyes like an owl,” Westerly said. “Weird.” He grinned suddenly, and went in through the log-framed door.

The brightness inside made him pause, blinking. It was a single arched room, running the length of the house; lanterns burned on all four walls and on a rough wooden table set in the middle, and flames leapt in a high stone fireplace that filled the far wall.

The man in gold latched the door behind them and swung off his long cloak; he was still a regal figure, in jerkin and trousers as tawny-gold as his eyes.

Westerly said, “Who are you?”

“I knew your mother once,” the man said.

“In that country or in this?”

“In both.”

“But who are you?”

“Lugan,” said the man. “You may call me Lugan. And while you are in my house, give no thought to those who may follow you. Sit down.”

He crossed to the fire and took the cover from a black iron pot standing beside it; the smell that rose filled Westerly's mouth with water, and his stomach felt suddenly as if it were flat and empty against his spine. Lugan filled two bowls with a thick aromatic soup heavy as a stew; set them on the table and broke chunks from a loaf of dark crusty bread. “Eat,” he said, smiling. “That was a small fish, and it was a long time ago.”

Westerly was too hungry for wonder; they sat opposite one another at the table, and there was no talk for a while.
Then he said through a mouthful, “D'you know
everything
that happens?”

Lugan sat playing with a piece of bread, frowning a little, the youthful lines of his face turned sombre with thought. He said at length, “I am your . . . watchman. As a hawk hangs watching in the sky, I see those things that happen to you—but only when they are happening, not before. Sometimes I may intervene. Not always. There are perils in this country, but there are also laws —and while you journey here, I watch that neither you nor anyone else break those laws.”

Westerly chewed on a crust. “You're a sort of policeman.”

The big man snorted with laughter, and shook his head. “I do what I choose. Did your mother never speak of me?”

Westerly shook his head. “She taught me—” He hesitated. “She taught me some things ordinary people don't learn. She was —special. She talked about my father a lot, and she always said that one day I'd go off to look for him. And that the same people who'd taken him away would come after me. She didn't say anything about you—or the lady.”

Lugan stood up abruptly, his head almost brushing the ceiling. “No. The Lady Taranis is not often spoken of, anywhere.” He sighed. “Taranis. She is brightness and she is darkness, she is kind and she is cruel. She is —unpredictable.
This is her country. And so perhaps is the one from which you came.”

He reached one long arm up to a shelf on the rough log wall, and brought down a wooden box. Westerly looked at it curiously. All its sides and top were intricately carved with the forms of dragons, coiling and interweaving, with tiny red gems set in their scaly heads for eyes. Lugan took a key from his pocket and unlocked the box.

“I cannot keep her from you,” he said. “She will come whenever she chooses. Sometimes she may help you, sometimes her treachery will engulf you like a wave. The only protection I can give you against the lady is this.”

He lifted the lid of the dragon box and took out a small bundle wrapped in red cloth, the corners knotted together over the top. He held it out. Westerly took it gingerly; it was heavy and oddly-shaped, but no larger than his fist.

Lugan said, “Do not untie the knots until you need strength. And then take care. She will—”

He broke off suddenly, his head up, listening. He said abruptly, “Cover your ears.”

But the sound was already filling Westerly's head and mind, the high sweet wordless singing, filling every corner of the room: soft, gentle, yet totally overwhelming. He felt the music all around him as if it were water, as if he were drowning; he could not tell where it came from. He clutched the edge of the table. In a blur he saw Lugan's lean face
dark with anger, but he too seemed held powerless by the singing. And then, out of the music, the Lady Taranis was in the room.

Her white hair glinted in the firelight; the blue robe shimmered like a sunlit sea. She stood beside them, looking bright-eyed at the little cloth-wrapped bundle in Westerly's hand.

“Presents,” he said petulantly, looking up at Lugan. “You never give
me
presents.”

His deep voice was expressionless. “You have always taken what you wanted.”

Taranis shook her head, smiling. “I try to,” she said. “But sometimes I am prevented.” She laughed, and turned her head to Westerly; he gazed fascinated at the brilliant blue of her eyes. “And here is our chance-taker,” she said, “who is travelling to the sea, and has the wit not always to do what he is told. I like that, Westerly. You will do well—if they do not catch you first.”

Westerly said, resentment making him bold, “And if I'm not turned into thin air, like a chessman off a board.”

She laughed again, like a delighted child. “How could you think I would let that happen?” The warmth in her voice was like an embrace; Westerly could feel it wrapping him round, easing away his wariness. He made himself resist it. Staring at her, he eased his hand down beside his chair to his pack; his fingers quietly slipped the
knotted bundle inside, and took firm hold of the carrying strap.

Taranis held his gaze. Her voice came low and coaxing. “Come with me, Westerly. I will take you to the sea, and there shall be no more pursuing and no more peril. Come with me, and I will send you over the ocean, to the land of the Tir n'An Og, the ever-young, where there is neither loss nor age nor pain. You will find your father there.”

Westerly could feel the tense stillness of Lugan's big figure across the table. He said, “That may be what I shall find, in the end. But I must go seaward on my own.”

Taranis said softly, “Oho.” She flicked a glance at Lugan, the blue eyes suddenly cold; then smiled again at Westerly. There was an edge to the voice now. “I could take you, if I chose. Because I like your looks. Oh yes, I could take you.”

Lugan's deep voice said quietly, “I think not.”

She swung round to him, glaring. “We shall see.”

Before Westerly could take a breath, she moved one swift step backwards, a whirl of blue and white, and she raised one arm and pointed. And from every stub and knot-hole in the logs that were the walls, all at once branches were growing, twining, reaching out; green leaves brushed their faces, and sprays of blossom fragrant as spring. The house was a woodland suddenly; there were no more walls, but a gentle jungle of leaves and bloom and scented air.
Westerly's fingers clenched hard round the strap that they held; it was the one firm point in a world of dream. He could no longer see Lugan through the leafy branches.

But he could see the Lady Taranis. She was younger now, many years younger, the blue eyes glowing in a smooth sweet face no older than his own. Her white-blonde hair was a cloud of curls like the tendrils of the honeysuckle twining over his shoulders, and she wore flowers in her hair. She laughed at him, and reached out her hands, white and young and beckoning. She belonged to the leaves and the blossom and the greenwood, and she was calling him there, to fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world. . . .

He ached suddenly with the burden of loneliness that he carried always now; he yearned for brightness and laughter and the spring. And perhaps he would have reached out his hand to hers and gone with her—but there was all at once a hissing through the rustle of the wind in the leaves, and a dark look of rage and alarm twisted Taranis' young face. And through the lovely wilderness around them came twining and twisting the scaly spined bodies of dragons, golden and green and brown. Like great armoured eels they crashed through the graceful trees, their spiny folded wings ripping the leaves, their long teeth agape and gleaming. Their red eyes shone like live coals fanned by the wind. Westerly leapt backwards, clutching
his pack like a shield, and a strong hand took him by the shoulder.

Lugan was towering over him, his craggy face stern. In his other hand he held the carved wooden box, and from its writhing sides the dragons were leaping out, growing monstrously as they came, hissing and crackling like fire. His deep voice came low and urgent.

“Go, boy—go westerly, as you are named. Go your own way to the sea, in what company you choose. Follow the sun. I shall watch for you.”

A high terrible shriek rose from the tumult around them.

“But Taranis —”

“Go!”

He swung Westerly about, and sent him stumbling through the trees.

And in a whirling moment all the turbulent noise was gone. There were no enveloping fragrant blossoms, no seething dragons; there was no Taranis, no Lugan. There was only a silent woodland of towering wide-set beech trees, their grey trunks reaching high to a green canopy overhead, and the only sound was the rustle of Westerly's feet treading the brown carpet of dead fallen leaves.

He walked blindly on through the wood, in the sunlight filtering down through the roof of branches, and he began to hear the music of water running. He came to a stream
tumbling through the trees, and he followed it to a place of slower, deeper music, where abruptly the woodland ended and the stream lost itself in the broad waters of a river.

Westerly stood on a rocky bluff, looking out. The river was wide and smooth as a giant highway; moving slowly, but ruffled by rapids in the distance where it turned a bend. Thickets of alder and poplar lined the far bank, with the beech trees rising again behind them. Looking directly down at the water from the high bank on which he stood, he saw a small boat moored below.

He scrambled down. It was a battered wooden dinghy with two thwarts: old, but dry inside. Two oars lay in the bottom, and a small anchor with a coil of line. The boat was tied up to an iron post set firmly into the bank; it lay there rocking gently, pulled backwards by the tug of the current.

Westerly hesitated for a moment, held by memories of all the hours he had spent helping boatmen on the broad river near his home. Then he threw his backpack into the boat and climbed in after it. Lying in the centre of the coil of anchor line he found three brass rowlocks. He picked them up, feeling the warmth of the sun in the metal, and looked for the holes set for them: two in the sides of the boat, one in the stern. The boat was an exact copy of those he had always known. He fitted in the stern rowlock, and pulled out one oar to be ready for it. Then he looked at
the bow line tied to the post, and hesitated again. Even in this country, he had scruples about taking a stranger's boat, uninvited. “There are laws,” Lugan had said.

But they were not the laws of policemen.

The dinghy rocked as Westerly moved, and below one thwart a bright point of light caught his eye. Crouching, he reached down. The light blinked red. He picked up a piece of wood half the length of his hand, hard to see against the wooden bottom of the boat. It was carved in the shape of a dragon, and set with two tiny red gems for eyes.

Westerly looked at the dragon: at the delicately carved scales and the small sharp teeth. Then he slipped it into his pack, and with a new confidence cast off the boat from the iron post. Its bow swung slowly round in the current. Westerly set the oar in the stem rowlock and stood there to scull. With a tug, the water caught the dinghy and carried it out into midstream, travelling with the river, travelling wherever the river might go.

In the blue sky overhead, a small hawk hung in the air, looking down, watching.