The Stolen Lake Part 14

'Took long enough!' remarked the lieutenant. 'Did she -' He was evidently about to say, Did she give much trouble, but checked himself, seeing Dido's escort.

This here's Mr Bran, the Queen's Soothsayer,' said Dido.

'I say, sir, do you think there's any chance that Her Majesty will change her mind and let Cap'n Hughes out of jail?' the lieutenant asked. But the soothsayer shook his head.

'She will not let him out. But he will not be in prison for very long.' Then he glanced at the revolving door, which was stationary. Apparently it began to move only when it was in the correct position for people to use it. 'You have another five minutes to wait,' Bran said.

'When do the big doors open?' asked Dido. 'The ones that the whirling door's set into?'

'Not until the return of the king. On that day, and that day only, they will be opened.'

'I say, sir, isn't that a load of moons.h.i.+ne?' suggested Lieutenant Windward diffidently. 'I mean, about the king's return?'

'Moons.h.i.+ne? No indeed. All the omens predict that his return is close at hand.'

Mr Multiple, overjoyed to find someone both knowledgeable and prepared to answer questions, burst out with one that had been bothering him, 'I beg your pardon, sir but those heads! The ones on the waiting-room wall, you know are they real?'

'Certainly they are real.' Bran turned to glance through the waiting-room door at the rows of s.h.i.+ny, shrunken objects. 'There are tribes in the Forest of Broceliande who make them. It is an ancient skill. They extract the skull, insert a hot stone, then sew up the lips and the slit through which the skull was removed. The head is then hung upside down for a year, to appease the owner's spirit.'

'Wouldn't appease me,' said Dido.

'Foreign travellers buy many of them; they are one of c.u.mbria's principle exports.'

'I call that a bit much,' grunted Lieutenant Windward. 'I mean for the queen to have them in her palace -'

'She wishes to encourage native crafts,' said Bran. His face was quite devoid of expression. 'Now the door will start to revolve,' he added. 'You can tell because it begins to make that humming sound.' In a lower tone, covered by the hum of the door, he went on, 'Make all possible haste to leave Bath. And take your sick companion with you. Bath is excessively dangerous for any person suffering from a disorder of the consciousness. Or for children.'

'How did you know about Mr Holy?' Dido said.

But he had already turned and was beginning to ascend the great staircase.

The revolving door began to spin, and they hurried through it.

'I wish he could come with us,' said Dido, when they were outside.

'Him? Climb mountains with a wooden leg? Are you d.i.c.ked in the n.o.b?' said Mr Multiple.

'I say, don't the mountains look queersome, though,' said Dido. For the ring of great peaks, some of them spouting lurid smoke threaded with sparks, now stood silhouetted against the pale sunset sky, like a stony crown encircling the twilit town.

'We will start at dawn tomorrow,' decided Lieutenant Windward. 'I'll ask the hotel to provide us with a guide and provisions for the journey. Now we had best go back and study the map.'

8.

The hotel provided them with a dozen burros, for riders and baggage, and so they proceeded at donkey-pace. Two of the burros had a litter slung between them, into which the unconscious Mr Holystone was fastened. The procession was led by a guide, Marcus Dylan, who, with provisions for the journey, had also been supplied by the hotel.

'What did you do about paying?' Dido asked Lieutenant Windward, edging her burro alongside his. Captain Hughes had had much of the expedition's supply of ready cash about his person when he was imprisoned, and so they were short of funds.

'Oh, the management at the Sydney would give us anything when they saw the queen's permit! I told them that we would return in six or seven days, and that the captain would pay the whole shot at the end of our visit. I do not propose to fork out any of my own bezants while he is a prisoner. We may need what little money we have on our way to Lyonesse.'

'I dunno what we'd spend it on,' said Dido. 'I don't see too many hot-pie sellers or c.o.c.kle-stands round here.'

They were crossing the stony upland plain which surrounded Bath Regis. Much of the ground was rocky and uncultivated, studded, here and there, by sigse thorn and a species of cactus resembling a giant spiny hand. Not a human was in sight.

'It sure is a drearsome part.' Dido s.h.i.+vered. Yet, despite the cold, her spirits had lifted on leaving the town of Bath Regis. So had those of her companions. Even the waxen face of Mr Holystone had taken on a faint tinge of colour. Having left it, they realised for the first time to the full what a terribly oppressive atmosphere permeated Queen Ginevra's capital.

'We have several hundred miles to go before reaching Lyonesse,' pointed out the lieutenant. 'There must be towns or villages along the way.'

'Hope so,' grunted Multiple. 'Or it's going to be sharp sleeping at night.'

The pre-dawn air was razor-cold. As they left the plain and began to crawl at what seemed snail's pace up the vast slopes of Mount Damyake, the increasing alt.i.tude rendered breathing harder and harder. Lieutenant Windward had, however, prudently seen that the party was equipped with a large bundle of the rumirumi lilies, wrapped in damp moss, for the use of the travellers when distressed by lack of oxygen. The donkeys, fortunately, seemed unaffected by the thinness of the air. Dido was very glad of her mount; she was not certain that she would have been able to walk far on her own; moreover it was comfortably warm, like riding on a barrel of hot tar covered by a hearth-rug.

Presently, however, the sun shot up, and at once began to send down rays of such torrid heat that they made haste to don the straw hats with which Windward, on the advice of the guide, had also provided them.

'Awkward sort o' climate,' remarked Dido. 'Freezing one minute; roasting the next. Hey, Noah don't you want to lay a hat over poor Mr Holy's face? No sense in getting him sunstrook on top of all else.'

During the days of Mr Holystone's illness no one had shaved him, and his beard, of a brownish-gold colour, had grown several inches; so had his hair, which, previously, he had worn very short. He's a right good-looking fellow with a beard, Dido thought, as Noah carefully balanced a sombrero over the invalid's face.

As the sun climbed higher it illuminated the gigantic symmetrical cones, the fantastic snow-covered peaks and pinnacles, like spectral cities of ice, that surrounded them on every side. Bath Regis was now a mere dot in the distance.

When they reached the top of a lofty ridge Dido, looking back, let out a cry of wonder.

'What's to do?' inquired Mr Multiple, kicking his burro till it came level with hers.

'Look at all that flat land we been riding across, Mr Mully. See them lines on the rock?'

'I could hardly miss them,' he said. 'I reckon they are geological strata. They are far too huge for people to have had anything to do with them. Why, some of them must be more than fifty miles long!'

From side to side of the upland plain long lines were to be seen, as if some G.o.d or giant had leaned down from the heavens and with an idle fingernail sc.r.a.ped a series of huge drawings over the countryside. More and more of the pattern became visible as the party mounted higher.

And when they halted for the noon meal, Dido said, 'Well: I wasn't certain before, but now I am! Look, Mr Windward, ain't those marks down there the exact same as Mr Holystone's birthmark?'

'Holystone's birthmark? Can't say as I even knew he had one,' Mr Windward said rather sceptically. However Dido rolled back the blanket to show the sick man's forearm, and he was obliged to agree that there was a remarkable likeness.

'I often noticed that mark when he was a-peeling spuds,' said Dido.

'It must be nothing more than a coincidence,' observed Windward. 'For why should a man have a mark on his arm that's the same as one n.o.body can see unless they're on top of a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain?'

'I dunno,' said Dido. 'But I reckon it's lucky for us as we brought Mr Holy along. Looks like he belongs to these parts all right.'

Lieutenant Windward absently pulled his chronometer from his pocket to check it against the position of the sun in the sky, and uttered an exclamation.

'What's up?' said Multiple.

'It's started going again!' He set it to the correct time.

'So's mine,' said Multiple, pulling out his turnip watch. 'Well, if that don't beat c.o.c.kfighting!'

They soon started off again. Dylan the guide, a wizened, talkative little man, was emphatic that they must reach the valley of Lake Arianrod before dusk, and not risk being overtaken by night on the bare mountainside, or they would freeze to death, not to mention having their blood drained by vampires or being pecked to pieces by giant owls.

'Aurocs bad along here, etiam atque etiam; yet remains a long way to go, sirs,' he kept saying anxiously.

Dido felt she would be quite pleased to see an Auroc; she had heard them mentioned so frequently, without ever actually encountering one, that she had begun to doubt their existence and wondered if they were not bearing the blame for somebody else's activities.

'Which is Mount Arrabe?' she asked Dylan.

He pointed ahead and to the left.

'We now go round, circ.u.mvenimus, back of Mount Damyake. Lacus sacratissimus Arianrodwater is lying between Damyake, Arrabe, Calabe and Catelonde mountains; Arrabe not first mountain you see, but second; having two big teeth like cayman. Very bad mountain, Arrabe!'

'Why bad?' Dido wanted to know, studying Arrabe's towering twin peaks.

Dylan made the double-circle sign. 'Belong to King Arawn, king of the Black World! Aurocs roost on top, pecking at stars. Old Caradog the Guardian live there in the temple of Sul, in Sul's town. I not taking you past Arrabe. Ladies of Night come there, too.'

'Who,' inquired Dido, 'are the Ladies of Night?'

Dylan traced the two circles again, and squinted through them at Dido.

'Owl ladies. Better not speaking names.' He made a gesture as of snipping with shears. 'Queen owl ladies who make dress.'

'Do you mean,' said Dido, greatly puzzled, 'the queen's Mistress of the Robes? And her people? Lady Ettar -'

'Hssss.h.!.+' Dylan nodded nervously, glancing around as if on the lookout for eavesdroppers, then urged his donkey faster, to get away from Dido, who rode on very thoughtfully.

If this Elen, she thought, is a prisoner on Arrabe, I reckon I know who put her there. And I reckon I can guess why. But no use talking about it to Windward or Mr Mully! They'd think I'd got windmills in my head. I'll jist have to keep a sharp eye out myself. Best do that anyhows, if there's really Aurocs about.

The existence of Aurocs, which she had begun to doubt, was soon confirmed. A huge shadow drifted across the track, and all the burros s.h.i.+ed and brayed nervously. As they descended the pa.s.s, more of the great triangular shadows crossed the mountainside.

'Blimey,' said Dido to Mr Multiple, 'if we could put a couple of those on show at the Battersea Fun-fair, we'd all lay by enough mint-sauce to buy Threadneedle Street. Ain't they the ugliest monsters you ever saw?'

The Aurocs, becoming inquisitive, wheeled in closer and closer to the cavalcade, with hardly a flip of their great fur-covered, leathery wings. Their claws could clearly be seen, and their cruel beaks, with protruding tusks on either side. Though Dido tried to joke about them, it was plain they were no laughing-matter. They were evidently attracted by the sight of Mr Holystone, motionless on his litter; they drifted lower and lower. Once or twice Lieutenant Windward discharged his musket at them, and then they would flap away to a distance, with raucous shrieks, but they invariably returned, and their numbers increased as the day drew on.

Mr Multiple, an excellent marksman, managed to wing one with a pistol-shot; it fluttered wabbling away, squawking hideously, to a cactus-studded knoll a hundred yards from the track, and the travellers then witnessed a horrible spectacle, for the other Aurocs all swooped down on their wounded comrade and in a very short time devoured it completely, leaving nothing but a few shreds of fur and splinters of bone on the sandy ground.

'Ugh, the cannibals!' shuddered Noah Gusset. 'Still, at least it keeps their nasty minds off us!'

Unfortunately, by the time the Aurocs had finished their repulsive feast, the travellers had reached a very dangerous section of the pa.s.s they were traversing. This was a valley region of strange, heaving, pulsing bogs and quagmires, coloured in bright prismatic hues, dark-red, ochre-yellow, and sulphurous, iridescent blue; great gouts of steam drifted up from the ground and, from time to time, an explosive fountain of mud would suddenly spurt into the air, each time from a different spot.

'It is a thermal region,' said the knowledgeable Lieutenant Windward. 'I have seen such places in Iceland, when I was second mate on the Arctic Tern. These are geysers, caused by the volcanoes round about.'

'Careful! Quatn celerrime, here, sirs, but extra careful,' warned Dylan. 'Get stuck in mud here, you sink down, down, to King Arawn.'

The burros were evidently well aware of the danger; they flapped their long ears, hee-hawed, and stepped nervously and delicately along the narrow slippery path, which wound a circuitous way between heaving, steaming pools and spouting fountains. Every now and then the party were spattered by hot mud. A dismal stench hung around the place.

'Like unwashed Christmas socks full o' rotten potatoes,' as Dido said.

Strange vegetation grew in this valley, nurtured by its dank, unwholesome warmth; grey-green fleshy leaves cl.u.s.tered round the bubbling pools, and grotesque, sickly, scented flowers hung from fat pale stalks on the rock faces.

'I'll be glad when we get out o' here,' commented Mr Multiple, thumping his burro to make it go faster.

But the Aurocs, emboldened by the slow pace of the travellers, now circled in closer and closer; one of them wheeled so near to Plum's donkey that it panicked and s.h.i.+ed away sideways, slipping off the track and tossing its rider into a great heaving pool of mud. Plum yelled frenziedly, trying to extricate himself from the gluey, dripping mora.s.s.

'Keep still, man!' shouted Lieutenant Windward. 'We'll throw you a rope! Don't struggle you will only sink yourself faster!'

But before Windward could drag a rope from his saddlebag, the hovering Aurocs, a.s.sured of a helpless prey, had swooped down in a flurry of black hairy wings, snapping beaks, and flailing talons. Two of them fought for the donkey, and the larger won; with a screech of triumph it s.n.a.t.c.hed up the wretched animal by its saddle and flapped away, dwindling in no time to a speck in the distance. Meanwhile two others had dragged poor Plum out of the mud-pool and were battling over him while Windward and Multiple, cursing with frustration, waited for a chance to shoot without injuring their companion. No such chance was given; while the two Aurocs were fighting, a third swooped in, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the hapless man, suddenly soared on a rising current of hot air, and disappeared behind a crag. Windward and Multiple both fired at it, but both missed.

'Devil take the brute!' cried Windward, reloading with shaking hands. 'We must go after it. We must rescue Plum!' He kicked his burro to urge it to a gallop.

'No, sir, no gallop, no gallop!' shouted Dylan urgently. 'Festina lente! You go in mud, we all go, Aurocs eat the lot of us. No possible save that h.o.m.o. He done for. Aurocs eat quick.'

Remembering the hideous speed with which the Aurocs had devoured their own companion, Lieutenant Windward was reluctantly obliged to give way.

'He's right, sir, I'm afraid,' said Multiple, and Noah Gusset muttered, 'Ay, those greedy monsters can swallow a man before you can prime your pistol. Poor old Plum's mincemeat by now, no doubt of that. Ah, he had a rare voice for a shanty when he were in the mood; and he could knit faster than anyone in the fo'c'sle.'

Daunted and appalled by this horrid mishap, the remaining five travellers drew closer together, Mr Multiple riding alongside the sick man with his pistol ready c.o.c.ked. Fortunately they soon left the thermal region, climbed up through a narrow rocky defile, and presently came in sight of their first objective.

'Arianrod,' said Dylan briefly, pointing ahead and downwards.

For a moment the travellers were deluded into thinking that the lake was full of water.

'Can the queen have been mistaken?' exclaimed Mr Multiple. 'Or King Mabon have restored it already?'

'Perhaps a spring has replenished it,' said Lieutenant Windward.

But then they realised that the vast, star-shaped basin lying among the four mountains was filled only with white mist, which billowed and heaved like the waves of an insubstantial sea.

They spent the night on a rock ledge above the great hollow. Dylan kindled, a fire to keep off jaguars and mountain lions, which it successfully did. The fire was of small use for cooking, since they were so high, up here, that water boiled at a very low temperature, but they toasted plantains on sticks, and ate hunks of barley bread. Then, wrapped in ruanas and vicuna fleeces, they lay down to a cold and uneasy night's rest, with the burros tethered in a ring round them for added protection.

'What about Aurocs?' Dido said to Mr Multiple.

'Dylan says they all go to roost at night; they have weak vision. And they don't like dark or cloudy weather. At least we shan't have to worry about them till sun-up.'

But Dido could not easily dismiss the thought of the horrible ereatures; they flapped and shrieked through her dreams. Mr Holystone, too, seemed troubled by nightmares; he tossed and moaned, and cried out words in some foreign tongue. Dido remembered that he had said he was found as a baby on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Arianrod; she wondered if the knowledge that he was so close to his birthplace had somehow penetrated his slumbers.

Long before dawn Dylan was up and feeding the burros.

'I go now, sirs; I leaving you here,' he announced briefly. 'Arianrod you see below: you keeping south, sun behind you ' he gestured along the basin, between the steeply angled sides of Calabe and Catelonde 'you soon coming to Pa.s.s of Nimue. Lyonesse on ahead. You finding stable of Caradog the Guardian down below. Sul's temple up above on mountain. You showing permit to Caradog, he let you through pa.s.s.'

Windward and Multiple tried to persuade Dylan to accompany them farther, but he shook his head emphatically.

'Arianrod nogood place, sirs. Benigne. I coming no farther, I going now, celerrime.''

'But what about the Aurocs, man, on the way back? How the deuce will you ever get through safely on your own?'