“You have summoned me,” said my grandfather, “and had the temerity to bind me to your will. I hereby warn you that you are permitted to summon me three times only. You can bind me no further than that.”
“It may be speaking,” the Merlin said, with a strained, listening look. “Wasn’t that some kind of protest?”
“Oh, they always grumble, these strong Powers,” Sir James cut in irritably. “Not used to bending their heads. Get on and instruct it, Sybil. I’m whacked.”
I suppose I should have stayed to hear what Sybil was going to say. I wish I had now. But a great disgust took me. I felt quite sick that these three unpleasant people should summon my grandfather and call him “it” and give him orders, when they couldn’t even see him and could barely hear him either. Besides, there was quite a bit of noise coming from the greensward near the gate where the other riders were, and I was curious to know what they were doing. I swooped back there.
They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Some of them were standing with their horses’ reins hitched on one arm, chatting cheerfully while they prepared some kind of torches and lit them from their little glimmering lanterns. The rest of them were quite deliberately making footprints in the grass. One man in a tight dark hood was stamping hard, over and over. Another was tramping round and round in a clockwise ring, chuckling as the marks in the grass showed deeper and darker. Most of the others were encouraging their mounts to stamp or rear in order to leave hoofprints, and one man was leading two of the strange beasts back and forth in the moist ground near the pool, coaxing and whistling as grooms do
to horses. The creatures hissed and rattled their wings and a peculiar smell came off them, but they obediently placed their two splayed feet over and over in the same places.
“Those are wyverns,” my grandfather said, coming down beside me on foot, leading the gray mare. He did not seem in the least surprised or annoyed to see me there.
“And what are the rest of them doing?” I asked.
He actually chuckled. “Leaving prints. We are not allowed to lie, but we can mislead. Wait here.” He unhitched the white standard from the mare’s saddle and strode up the rise beyond the trickling pool—surprisingly nimble for the father of my mother—where he rammed the thing upright in the soft turf. It went in a good foot and stood there, fluttering. As far as I could see in the gloom, it was a long skull shape on a stake, round which strips of leathery stuff were flapping. “I shouldn’t look too closely if I were you,” my grandfather said as he came back and gathered up the mare’s reins. “It is there as a mark and a warning.” And he mounted the mare as nimbly as he had climbed the rise.
I did look. I stared at the thing, even though it was queer and horrible. It seemed a desecration to plant it in this garden of gentle magics. But then, Sybil had already spoiled the magic by bespelling its waters, and I supposed Sir James deserved it.
While I was staring, all my grandfather’s people gave a great shout and rode at the mound where the warning was planted, whirling the flaring torches they had been preparing. It was as if each torch set fire to the very air around it. The whole mound was a great roaring bonfire in instants, with the standard in its blazing heart. It only lasted for seconds. I had a second’s clear sight of what the standard really was. It was a stake that had been pushed through the rotting skull of a horse, and then through the skull of a human above that, and the flapping pieces were skin, raw and bloody, flayed from horse and human. I had to turn away.
More of the knowledge from the woman with the smashed hip came to me and helped me while I was gagging. My grandfather was not a wizard. He was a Great Power, and great ones are governed by strange rules. Power and pain go together, as the woman had learned herself. And every fine, kindly thing is incomplete without a side that is less than pleasant.
“Fine, kindly thing!” I said aloud. “Grandfather Gwyn is fine all right, but kindly?” At that moment I thought I never wanted to speak to my grandfather again.
Then I came to myself to see that the garden was filling with the white mist of dawn. Sir James was coming striding down the side of the mound, holding a bottle and a wineglass. The other two followed him, sipping out of glasses as they came. None of them seemed to see the hideous standard rearing up by their shoulders, but they saw the lawn by the gate well enough. The dew of the grass there was smudged green and trampled brown with footprints, hoofmarks, and the shapes of huge three-clawed paws.
They rushed there and stared. After a moment they actually danced with delight. “We’ve real power to draw on now!” I heard Sybil say.
The Merlin positively giggled. “Yes, and we can use it to lay in even more!” he said.
I was disgusted again, and I left....
THREE
I woke up in bed. It was bright morning, and I was really worried. If Sybil and her friends could enslave Grandfather Gwyn, there seemed no reason why they should ever stop. No one and nothing was safe. I tried to convince myself I had merely had a peculiar dream, but I couldn’t. I was sure it had all really happened.
To prove me right, there were only Grundo and me at breakfast and only two places set. “Isn’t my grandfather here?” I asked Olwen when she came in with boiled eggs.
“He’s away on business,” she said, “riding the mare.”
“So much for your idea of asking Grandfather Gwyn for help,” I said glumly to Grundo when Olwen had gone.
“Well, he said he wouldn’t be able to,” Grundo answered, placidly tapping the tops of three eggs. “What’s the matter? Why are you looking so desperate?”
I told him about what I thought had happened in the night. It can’t have been pleasant for Grundo, hearing such things about his mother. He looked depressed. But he is used to Sybil. He ate his third egg in a resigned way and said, “There must be someone else you can ask for help. That’s why he sent you to get all that knowledge. Think about it.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I will.” I sat watching him eat toast while I tried to open file after file in my head. Teasel, Thistle, Ivy, Gorse, Bramble, Dog Rose, Goose Grass I went through, and several other prickly or dour-looking plants that I didn’t know the names of and only had pictures of in my head. It was odd. I knew each flower file was crammed full of magical facts. I even knew roughly what was in each one, but it all stayed misty to me. Even the one I had used last night without realizing what I was using—Red Artemis: out-of-body experiences—had gone misty to me now.
In the end I just ran through the scores of file headings one by one, until one appeared that didn’t stay misty. Harebells: dealings with magical folk who are visible. And a whole list of these magical folk: dragons, Great Powers, gods, Little People, kelpies, boggarts, haunts, elves, piskies … on and on. I hadn’t realized there were so many. And there was, I realized, another whole file—Mullein—about dealing with magical folk who were not visible, which put itself alongside Harebells in case I needed that, too. But the picture of a harebell was the one that was clearest in my mind’s eye. For a moment I distrusted it. It didn’t seem as dry and thorny as the rest of the hurt woman’s herbs. But though the pale blue bells of the flowers seemed almost juicy, I saw they grew on dry, wiry stems, as dry as anything in the other files. It seemed to be right. What we needed was one of the magical folk who could give us advice—someone wise.
I ran through the list of folk again. I expected the file to come up with dragon or god, but it didn’t, and when I thought about it, I realized that someone big like that would make an enormous magical disturbance coming to talk to us. If Sybil didn’t notice, the Merlin would. Realizing that made me feel almost hopeful, in a way. None of the three conspirators had the least idea that Grundo and I knew they were up to something, and we needed to keep them from knowing until we knew enough to stop them. The list ran through my head and stopped. Little People. It was obvious, really.
Grundo put the last piece of toast regretfully back in the toast rack. “Got it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Where do harebells grow?”
“There were lots in that ruined village,” Grundo said, “but that’s miles away. Wasn’t there a sort of bank of them on that slope across the valley? I thought I saw some just before we saw your grandfather waiting for us.”