The Spellcoats (The Dalemark Quartet 3)

“He was before the River, and he made it,” Gull said. He paced seriously and frowned as he tried to explain. Gull is not a thinker like Hern or Duck. “Making the River, he was bound as the One. He is the River, in a way, or its source at least.”

“But the River is people’s souls,” I said. “And it’s water, too.”

“It’s all those things,” said Gull. “But … well, if anyone’s really the River, I think Mother is.”

“Mother!” I exclaimed.

“I can’t explain,” said Gull. “But I’ve talked to Mother a lot. I don’t think the One likes it, but he doesn’t stop me. Mother’s not bound, you know, but she’s in disgrace for marrying Father. She’s told me all sorts of things. You wouldn’t believe all the strange places and strange sorts of Undying there are in the land. When we’re unbound, I want to go and see some of them. That’s what I want to do. I shall have much more fun doing that than what Hern’s going to do, I can tell you!”

I remember looking down at the Riverbed while Gull said this. It was narrower by then—a sort of rocky split—and there were far fewer people hurrying along it.

“What is Hern going to do?” I said.

Gull laughed. “I’m not telling. You won’t believe me.”

“Do you know what we’re all going to do?” I asked eagerly. “What about me?”

“That I can’t tell you,” said Gull. “It would be terrible bad luck on you. But our Mallard’s going to be a mighty mage—I’ll tell you that. We go down here. Take careful hold. The rocks are slippery.”

The sides of the split were wet. It was the first moisture I had seen in that place.

I would have expected moss or mold or green things growing, but there was nothing but wetness. I went down, clenching my hands on rock and feeling my feet slide. Gull came after me more easily, but I saw he was taking care, too.

When we were down, the rocks of the sides were high above our heads, and between them was dimness. Though the place was dark, there was a yellow-greenness everywhere, by which we could see. I looked back down the narrow channel. It was empty where we stood, but there were people behind us, two or three or more, always hurrying away from us. I never saw where they came from. In front of us were rock and an oddly shaped dark hole.

“We go in there,” said Gull.

He stooped and went into the hole. I edged in after him. How I felt is hard to explain. I was not frightened. I still went as you do in dreams. Yet there was a terror that was like part of the dream which, had I been really dreaming, would have woken me screaming. Gull moved to one side, and I followed him. It was soft and silent inside the hole. As soon as I moved from the entry, I could see. It was a cave, where the light fell greenish on the rocky back, and it fell in the shape of a figure with a bent head and a nose that was neither straight nor hooked, but both at once. I looked at the hole we had come in by. That was the same shape. Both were the shape of the shadow in my rugcoat. The cave was wet. Drops of moisture stood like dew underfoot and overhead, but the dew neither dripped nor trickled. It was a deep empty silence we stood in.

“Where—where is the One?” I whispered.

“Here,” Gull said. “Can’t you feel? This is all there ever is.”

It was perplexing. I could not put a coat on nothing. If I had been alone, I would have got as bad as Robin and started weeping and wringing my hands. But Gull was there, and he was not worried. In the end I took the golden image of the One out of my shirt. He was so small that it was ridiculous, but there seemed nothing else I could do. I placed him carefully on the dewy rock, so that he stood in the center of the green manshaped light. “Give me the rugcoat,” I said to Gull. Gull did so, and I placed the coat over the golden figure so that the head showed but the rest was heaped round with my weaving. I spread the cloth out and stood back to watch.

Nothing happened.

“We haven’t got it right!” I said. “What shall we do? We’ve got to do something before Kankredin gets here!”

“Wait,” said Gull. “Feel.”

There was warmth growing in the cave. Almost as Gull spoke, it grew from dead chill to the heat of a body. Gull and I both sweated, in big drops, as if we were part of the walls of the cave. Steam gathered about us.

But that was all. We stood and waited in the heat, but nothing else happened. The small golden figure still stood swamped by my rugcoat. The green-yellow light was unchanged, except by the haze of steam.

“What shall we do?” I said.

“You’ve done something,” Gull said thoughtfully. “It’s never been warm here before. But I don’t think that’s enough. There’s something else we have to do, I think—and I simply don’t know what.”

We stood again, and still there was nothing. At last, I could bear it no longer and cried out. “Grandfather!” I cried. “Grandfather, show me what to do!”

There was a green sliding in the cave. I could not see the rocks or the One in my rugcoat, but I could see Gull. He was bent and pallid and out of shape, like a person swimming underwater. Then I could not see him. I was in a still white place, with water roaring and rushing nearby. The sliding came again. This time a chilly wind came with it. I shivered, but I was glad of it after the heat of the cave. After that I was out on a cold hillside in the light of a golden evening. The first things I saw were heavy rain clouds, swimming away to the west in a green sky and limned with a dazzle of gold. Green turf sloped sharply from my feet. Somewhere to my right, water poured shouting downward, tolling an echo like a bell. And beside me more water ran and spread on the turf from steep rocks behind, which were smoking like a fire.

I felt heavy tears dragging in my nose and eyes, but I stopped them. “My grandfather,” I said, “has turned me out. I call that ungrateful.” Then I looked at my hands, thinking I was carrying my rugcoat again. I was not. My hands were gripped on a bobbin wound with a dark yarn that glistered faintly. And I could feel that the heavy weight of the One was missing from my shirt.

I felt desolate. I knew how Robin felt that morning we woke and found Tanamil had left us. I knew how Hern has felt, knowing he had failed. But neither of them had just lost Gull for a second time. I walked with my strange bobbin across the soaked and steaming grass, not caring or noticing that my clothes were dry where they should have been wet, and barely grateful for the cold wind on my face. I told myself I was going to look down at the thundering water I could hear.

I believed I could throw myself down it, but I had to stop before I came to the brink of the turf. It was too high and too steep. The green country and the purple hills spread like the whole world below and seemed to wheel sickeningly. Almost at my feet was the beginning of our River. It poured in a white cataract from my turfy shelf to somewhere far, far below. It roared as it fell, and everything beneath it was lost in floating smokes and small drifting rainbows. Beyond, and away below, I thought I could see the lake where we had sheltered from the rain, as a bright lozenge laid in the wheeling steepness. I had to take my eyes away and fix them on my tall black shadow, lying nearby across the turf.