My grandfather Gwyn was there, looming above her on his white mare. His cloak clapped about in the snow and strips of bloody horsehide swirled from his standard. All his people were behind him, dimly visible in the mist and the snow.
“About time, too!” Sybil shouted up at him. “You should obey when I call! Kill this boy at once. We want your stake through his heart according to the ritual.”
Nick sat up at this and scrambled round on his knees.
My grandfather Gwyn did not look at him. He said to Sybil, “No. I warned you, but you never listened, did you now? You have called me three times already. Now you have called me yet again, and I have the right to call you. And I now call you.”
Here, for a while, so many things happened at once that I have had to ask the others what they saw and did. I was mostly watching Sybil. I think she truly saw Grandfather Gwyn for the first time then. She stared up at him, and her face was like uncooked prettybread, blotched with red over yellow-white. Her mouth came open, and she flopped to her knees with her hands clasped. “Spare me,” she said.
“No,” my grandfather said. “From now on, you follow me.”
He started to ride forward. Sybil was scrambling round on her knees to obey him—she never argued or even tried to protest—when more riders loomed through the fog and the snow, coming from the opposite direction. The one in front was wearing a dark red cloak which billowed and whirled around his armor. He saw Grandfather Gwyn and his people and stopped. I had just a glimpse of the elegant, practiced way his gloved left hand drew up his reins, and of the way his horse tossed its head and champed, not at all willing to stop, while the rider raised his right hand courteously to my grandfather. Then I had to look at the upheaval going on beside me.
Grundo says that a piece of the wet, snowy grass unfolded beside him to let a crowd of Little People come swarming out on their bent-back legs. I think they were the ones I had felt watching so anxiously. They wanted Grundo and Toby for some reason. Grundo says he had no idea why, but he knew at once that they wanted him. He grabbed Toby and got clear. I didn’t see any of that. All I saw was a seething struggle between Little People and snow-sodden royal pages, human youngsters being seized around the legs and bitten by long sharp teeth, and the humans kicking and punching in return. I had a flying glimpse of Grundo with his hair filled with snow, forging through the other side of the struggle, and I nearly went to help him. Then I thought that this was what he had bespelled me to do, and I stopped. And then I thought that you helped people if they needed it, and I started forward again. But it was over by then. The Little People dragged Alicia away through the open fold and the fold slid shut.
Do you know, I envied Alicia! I still do. What an interesting thing to happen to her, I thought. It’s not fair!
When I looked out into the driving, spiraling snow, Grandfather Gwyn had almost finished riding round the open space, selecting people from the crowd to follow him. He had Sybil and most of the other Court wizards walking obediently behind his line of horses by then. I think one of the other people may have been Toby’s father.
NICK
I suppose I’d better tell this bit. Roddy says she was busy trying to convince the royal pages that Alicia had gone for good. And they wanted to know where, but she had no more idea than they did.
I was so dazed and scared, and sore and frozen, that it all seemed more like a tumultuous dream than anything. I sat on the sopping grass, with snow catching on my eyelashes, and watched Gwyn ap Nud greet the Count of Britain—at least, they call him the Count of Blest here, but I call him the Count of Britain. I think he was King Arthur once, but I’m not sure.
They were very courtly and stately with one another, and you could see they were equals. The Count of Blest in his red cloak said, “Well met in this time of change, Prince. Are you taking all here?”
Gwyn ap Nud bowed. He has the most terrible grim smile. “Well met indeed, Majesty. I am taking in my harvest, but there is one that must be yours.” He pointed with his flapping grisly horsehead to the man Roddy says was Sir James. Then he rode away, and I didn’t see him anymore.
The Count of Blest beckoned with his free hand to someone behind him. “Take him and tie him to the tail of the last horse,” he said. And that person—he was a big, muscular knight—leaned down and dragged Sir James away to somewhere behind. Sir James was going on about this being an outrage, but nobody took any notice, and after a while he stopped, and I didn’t see him anymore either. But the Count of Blest began slowly riding on again, while I sat and noticed in a dazzled way that the swirls of snow from the blizzard were following exactly the lines of the vortex and sort of centering over that smoking bucket that Japheth had left standing there.
I looked up because the King—the present-day King of Blest, that is—was trying to catch hold of the Count of Blest’s bridle. The poor man looked almost as miserable as I felt. His face was the bright red that you go in snow, and his beard was fluffy with white flakes. “Forgive me,” he said, looking up at the Count of Blest. “I haven’t exactly done well, have I?”
“Others have done almost as badly,” the Count of Blest said, quite kindly, riding on. He kept going, so that the King had more or less to trot beside him. “It is no easy matter to hold a kingdom in trust.”
“I know, I know!” the King cried out. “I’ll do better from now on, I swear! How long have I got?”
I think this was what the King really wanted to know, but the Count of Blest answered, “That is not a question I should answer or one you should ask. But choose your advisers more carefully in future. Now, forgive me. I have to ride the realm.”
He rode away, and lots of tall horse legs went past me, some with armed men, some with incredible-looking ladies, and some with weirder people. The King hurried after them for a while, looking snubbed and despairing, and then gave up. Endless riders went mistily past us both.
At the same time—Grundo says it had been going on all this while—hosts of the transparent folks came hurtling down from the spirals of snow, and a lot of others came with them, who looked to be the dark, riotous, bloodthirsty invisibles that usually only came out at night. And the whole lot came sweeping crosswise
through the circle of people who had been watching. They kept pouring through, hundreds of them, thousands. They ought to have got in the way of the Count of Blest’s riders, but in some queer way, they seemed to be on a different band of space. I sat watching them streaming by me and all the people who hadn’t run for cover in those buses, including the two Archbishops, running away from them madly. And, at the same time, I watched princely knights and great ladies riding through the same spot. It was really odd.
The dragon came back in the midst of it all. Everything got darker underneath him. When I looked up through the driving, winding snow, I could faintly see the vast gray shape of him hovering above the weather. His huge voice boomed down to me.
“GIVE ME THE END OF IT.”
I knew what he meant. I got up and tottered through the streams of transparent people, and among horses’ legs that went past without touching me, to Japheth’s smoking bucket. Grundo and Toby were there, trying to shelter behind it—not that they could, because the snow was blinding in from all directions. I was really glad to see them. I was shaky all over, and I kept jerking with the salamander magic. I knew I couldn’t manage on my own.
“Help me,” I said. “We’ve got to get the end of this vortex up to the dragon.”
They looked pretty scared, but they put out their arms and helped me try to lift it. It was surprisingly easy. Toby said, “It’s quite loose!” It was, and it wasn’t heavy either, just awkward. I had to lift it by myself the last foot or so, because I was so much taller than they were, and it hummed and slithered and wobbled in my arms, but I managed to hang on to it until a great shiny claw reached down through the storm and hooked it off me.
“NOW FOR CHANGES,” the dragon said.
I am not sure what he did. I heard his wings thunder. Then things went different. About ninety degrees different, and then stuck there. Magic was different, all over everywhere.