Willow Read online

  The child laughed, and although he was filthy, and exhausted, and very frightened still, Willow laughed, too.

  So, laughing, they rode through the last wisps of smoke and into the valley of Tir Asleen, a place that fulfilled all of Willow’s dreams. It was rich and fertile, as green as Nockmaar was dark, as abundant as Nockmaar was sterile. Great pastures stretched up the gentle slopes of the mountains, dotted with oak forests and beeches in the lower regions, fringed with pines and firs toward the top, tonsured around the peaks with the low shrubbery of mountain meadows. The road to the castle lay as it always had, gleaming white, paved with marble cut centuries before from the quarries of the elves. Willow could imagine how welcoming was that broad and tree-lined avenue to all the pilgrims who had trekked to Tir Asleen. He could imagine the gatherings of their tents in the meadows, and the festivities that would go on for days, with music and wine and fellowship, while the good king passed freely among his people.

  So it would soon be again!

  “Tir Asleen, Elora! There it is! We’re safe!”

  Fin Raziel uttered a long, falling cry of ecstasy, and drifted down over the valley.

  “Come on, little friend,” Madmartigan said. “Let’s ride!”

  And so they did, urging their tired mounts into a trot, they rode the last half league down the road and onto that marble avenue.

  The castle rose ahead, the most magnificent structure Willow had ever seen. Built of the same marble as the road, it glowed so pure and white under the full sun that it seemed a source of light itself. Two corbeled towers rose like welcoming arms beside the lowered drawbridge. Sunlight glinted on the banners on their flagstaffs, and on the crenels and merlons of the battlements. Sunlight flashed on the silver surface of the moat. It seemed to Willow as they approached that a party of knights must come riding out to welcome them.

  But there were no knights. There was no welcome. The closer they came to the castle of Tir Asleen, the more Willow’s joy and relief shifted to foreboding and unease. No birds sang in the oaks through which they rode. No animals moved in the fields and forests. Although a breeze coursed through the valley, the king’s banner did not flutter on its staff. Frozen, Willow thought. It hung as if it had been frozen, beyond any warmth in the natural world to thaw it.

  Most disquieting was that they saw no people. No one waved from the gardens. No one stood in the doorways. No horses ran beside them in the fenced meadows. No cattle grazed. No sheep raised browsing heads to watch them pass.

  “Something wrong here, Peck,” Madmartigan muttered as they rode. “Not what we expected. Slow down! Watch out for trouble!”

  Not until Fin Raziel had swooped over the castle walls and uttered a long and despairing cry at what she saw, and until they themselves had clattered across the drawbridge and into the courtyard, did they understand the depth of the horror that had befallen Tir Asleen.

  “Cursed!” Raziel shrieked, flapping in little circles in the dust. “Bavmorda has frozen everything!”

  It was true. Although the sun shone and the breezes were fair, arctic cold hung in that place. It came from several large blocks of crystal quartz standing here and there in the courtyard, on the steps leading up to the king’s apartments, beside the well, around the winches that raised the drawbridge.

  “No,” Raziel moaned, flitting from one of these blocks to the next, finally settling on one of them. “Oh no!”

  A human being stood inside.

  A trapped woman, one of the servants of Tir Asleen, was captured there in the act of drawing water from the well, exactly as she had been at the moment of Bavmorda’s awful curse. She was a young woman, and pretty. She had been lifting her head, smiling up at a lark or a lover on the parapet just as the curse struck.

  All the inhabitants had been similarly trapped in their everyday tasks. Here was the blacksmith in the act of shoeing a horse, his hammer raised. Here was a milkmaid bent against a mild brown cow, and a pair of children running forever together in a game of hide-and-seek, and a thatcher at work on one of the roofs. Here were soldiers, and matrons with babes in arms, and farmers bringing harvest from the fields, and chambermaids shaking blankets through the high windows. One by one Willow and Madmartigan inspected them, shivering, for the air close to them was filled with deathly chill.

  All their eyes were happy.

  “No warning,” Madmartigan said. “Never knew what hit them.”

  Willow shook his head, horrified and disbelieving. “Will they be like that . . .”

  “Forever,” Fin Raziel wailed, her raven’s cry of anguish filling the courtyard and rising out over the green valley of Tir Asleen. “Forever, or until Bavmorda is destroyed.”

  “Oh Elora,” Willow said, holding the child close in his trembling arms. “I’m sorry. This is a terrible place!”

  “Peck, why’d I listen to you? ‘Everything’ll be all right when we get to Tir Asleen,’ isn’t that what you kept saying? ‘There’s a good king with a great army that will protect us.’ Well, I don’t see any king at all, and the only army I know about is the one that’ll come charging down that valley any moment—Kael’s!”

  “I’m sorry. Cherlindrea said we’d be safe here.”

  “Safe! Do these people look safe to you? Besides, look at that! Troll dung! There are trolls here! Probably watching us right now. Bah! I hate them!” Madmartigan fingered the hilt of his sword and peered up at the towers.

  Again Raziel cried out, this time as if her heart was breaking. They hurried over to a staircase where she had found yet another of the quartz blocks. Inside this one was a handsome man of perhaps thirty-five, with bright red hair and calm, wide-spaced eyes. He had been calling greetings to someone across the courtyard when Bavmorda’s spell had struck, and his hand was half-raised. “The king!” Raziel wailed.

  “Sorsha’s father?” Madmartigan leaned close.

  “Yes. Oh Willow, draw the wand. The wand! You must transform me now!”

  “Raziel, I don’t think . . .”

  “You must try! Trust yourself, Willow! And concentrate!”

  Madmartigan grunted. “We’ll need more than charms, Raziel. You go ahead, Peck. I’m going to find some real weapons.” He strode across the drawbridge of the moat around the central keep and into the armory on the ground floor. All the arsenal of Tir Asleen lay ready. Covered in a heavy layer of dust and cobwebs, the weapons rested as the defenders had left them—longbows and crossbows, spears, pikes and halberds, bolts and arrows of all descriptions. Scores of hauberks and suits of armor also waited for knights to put them on. On a pedestal in the center stood the king’s own armor, crafted of bronze and tempered gold, tailored long ago by elfin workmen. Madmartigan smiled. It was as if the king himself stood there with one arm outstretched to welcome him. Madmartigan walked admiringly around that armor. He tried a golden gauntlet on his own hand. It fitted. He took one of the golden greaves and strapped it to his own calf. Again, it fitted perfectly. He raised the golden helmet, shook its white plumes free of dust, and placed it on his head. It felt as if it had been designed for him. Quickly he strapped on the other parts of the suit—the neck guard and the pauldrons, the breast plate, the skirt and the tassets, the cuisses and sollerets. When he was dressed, Madmartigan picked a good sword and a crossbow from the arsenal. He gathered several bolts. He hesitated beside the golden shield, but decided against it, for it would be too cumbersome for the work he had to do.

  Thus resplendent, he strode back out onto the drawbridge of the keep. “Here they come!” he shouted, pointing through the gates and down the avenue of Tir Asleen.

  Willow was halfway through the Chant of Transformation when Madmartigan’s warning rang out. “Avalorium,” he said, his eyes closed tight in concentration, the trembling wand clenched in both hands. “Greenan luatha, tye thonda, peerstar . . .” And Fin Raziel, crouched in front of him, had begun to change from a raven into something else.

  Willow whirled around. The spell snapped. Raziel popped into the
form closest at that stage of her transition—a white goat—and pranced across the courtyard, bleating plaintively.

  Neither Madmartigan nor Willow had time to notice what had happened to her. Their attention was riveted on the charge of Kael’s troops through the meadows and down the avenue.

  The Battle of Tir Asleen had begun.

  “Arm that catapult!” Madmartigan shouted, pointing to a huge mangonel that stood ready on the parapet, lacking only its charge of spears.

  Willow tucked the wand into his pocket, snatched up Elora, and hurried up the gate-tower staircase to obey the order. He ran out onto the battlement. After that, events came so thick and fast that he would never remember them clearly, or remember their proper sequence. For him, the battle was a night-terror, a livid and horrible dream.

  Bolts and arrows sang around him, nipping at his clothes, ricocheting off the stone crenels, thumping into the hardwood of the mangonel. He reeled back, shielding Elora with his body and scrambling for the cover of the tower. Below in his golden armor, Madmartigan rushed to slam and bar the gates, just as Kael thundered across the drawbridge and drove his boot against them.

  “Battering ram!” Kael roared. “That tree!”

  Troopers hurried to obey, and soon a thick beech toppled. The Nockmaar force fell back and regrouped while this work went on, and through the slits of the tower Willow saw Kael and Sorsha on their prancing horses, pointing at the castle and discussing tactics.

  Down in the courtyard Madmartigan rigged booby traps and triplines and then, with the help of Raziel, who butted rocks across to him, loaded a catapult aimed right at the gate. “Spears, Willow!” he shouted up. “Load that catapult!”

  “But there are no spears!”

  “There! In the armory!”

  A bridge led straight from the gate-tower to the second floor of the keep, designed so that troops and ammunition could get to the battlements fast. Madmartigan was right; there would be spears over there. Lots of them. Willow laid Elora down in the safety of the tower and ran onto the bridge, heading for the open door of the armory.

  He never reached it. Up over the railing, blocking his way, scrambled a troll. It was a hideous creature—its nose cleft, its face a mass of pustulant sores and wrinkles, its bulbous lips curled back to reveal scraggly teeth. Lank hair hung to its waist; it slapped and scratched itself with long fingers. “Hungry!” it said, staring with red eyes at the gate-tower. “Me take baby!”

  “You will not!” Willow exclaimed. “Not unless you take me too!”

  The troll nodded eagerly. Its long fingers reached out. “Me take little man!” It advanced.

  “The wand, Willow!” Fin Raziel bleated from underneath. “Use the wand!”

  Willow looked down. Nockmaar troops had begun to batter through the gates. Already they had snapped the old bars. Lances jabbed through. Madmartigan crouched behind his catapult, ready to fire.

  “The wand!” Raziel bleated again. She was jumping up and down in a frenzy.

  With the troll’s obscene fingers only inches from his face, Willow groped desperately in the big pocket of his coat and drew out—not the wand, but one of his magician’s feathers, a leftover from the fair! “Oh no!” There was no time to reach again. Instead, he flourished the feather inches in front of the troll’s nose, making it disappear and appear again, making it perform a mesmerizing, swaying little dance in the air.

  The troll stopped. His eyes crossed. He gaped, beguiled by the antics of this magic feather. He grabbed for it and missed, grabbed again and missed. Groping for the wand, Willow waved the feather lower and lower until at last, when his hand closed on the magic weapon inside his cloak, the troll’s head was bowed in front of him.

  Willow whipped out the wand and raised it in both hands. “Avaggdu strockt!” he cried, and whacked it down on the troll’s head.

  There was no recoil, no searing pain. Instead, Willow felt tremendous energy roll through him and out of him. In the panic of the moment he had used a broad charm for the smiting of Evil, and so had no idea what the effect would be. The results astonished him. The troll turned to jelly. It became a gibbering, jiggling mass of shapeless goo, like a squashed polliwog. Hair, eyes, fingers—all vanished into a quivering glob. He kicked it off the bridge and into the moat below. The turgid water churned where it hit.

  Whunk! Madmartigan’s catapult cut loose, launching its charge of boulders into the massed Nockmaar forces at the gate. Several men screamed and crumpled like broken dolls, but others came on, driven by Kael behind them. Several died in Madmartigan’s booby traps and two more fell to bolts from his crossbow. Then the others were upon him, thrusting and jabbing, and he was into swordplay. He laughed. His golden armor shone and the white plumes on his helmet waved above the black uniforms of the Nockmaar troops. “So long, Peck!” he shouted up to Willow on the bridge. “At least we tried!”

  Relentlessly, the mass of men pushed him back toward the moat.

  But Madmartigan was not to die on their swords or spears, or to be brained by Kael’s mace as the general pushed through to strike him. Long ago, Bavmorda had summoned another guardian to that moat. Out of the night she had summoned it, out of the thick and murky air above the swamps where primeval creatures struggled into life. Out of the darkness she had summoned it, out of the chaos beyond all time. It had risen to do her bidding. Into the moat of the Tir Asleen keep she had sent it, and there it had lain, waiting in the mud, feeding through its skin, breathing through the spiny fins that rose above the surface. It lay in wait, its claws sunk deep in earth to sense its trembling under the hooves of horses, its ears touching the surface to hear the clash of arms. It knew nothing of right and wrong, good and evil. It cared nothing for the conflicts of humanity. It knew only that men were now disturbing the malevolent tranquility it was summoned to preserve.

  The guardian’s four eyes opened. Its two necks tensed. It rose through the scum of the moat, inhaling so hugely that gales whipped the courtyard.

  “An Eborsisk, by the gods!” Kael shouted above the roar and clamor. “Kill it! Forget the man! Slay the beast before it breathes!”

  Too late!

  Madmartigan spun to see the dragon’s two great heads loom above him, its two mouths yawning to belch fire into the Nockmaar horde. Never had he pitied the Nockmaars, but he had pity now. He had pity for the poor wretches caught directly by that blast and changed to white ash, whirled away by the wind. He had pity for those who lived an instant or two, whose skin bubbled and writhed as if there were living creatures under it. Most of all he had pity for those whose clothing was ignited by that fiery belch, who spent the last moments of their lives shrieking and rolling in the dirt while their skin charred.

  One head swung up toward the bridge, while the other drew breath for a second blast at the courtyard. Madmartigan found himself recoiling with Nockmaar troopers from the beast, found himself bumping into an armored body in the melee and looking into the frightened eyes of Sorsha. He grasped her. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  “Down! Get down!” He pulled her behind a buttress just as the gout of flame smashed into it, spilling around it, sucking away all oxygen. Both fell gasping to their knees. On and on the blast went, roaring like a hurricane across the mouth of a mountain tunnel. When it ended, more screams of agony echoed around them as men and horses shriveled to crisp and unrecognizable shapes. For a split second in that chaos, Sorsha’s eyes held Madmartigan’s and her hand touched his arm. Then he was off, sword flashing, taking the tower steps two at a time, rushing out to that place on the burning bridge where Willow was being pushed back toward the fire by two more trolls. Before Madmartigan got to them, Willow had struck at one with his wand and missed. He had thrown the second of his precious acorns, and missed. With two blows, Madmartigan cut them in half and kicked the parts into the moat behind the Eborsisk.

  “Back to the tower, Willow! Get Elora!”

  Willow scrambled around him, but Nockmaar troops had al
ready reached the top of the stairs and were advancing reluctantly onto the bridge, cringing from those swaying dragonheads. Kael drove them on from below. “Attack! Attack, if you know what’s good for you! Kill that man and find the baby!”

  Madmartigan moved to engage them, and Willow shrank down, caught between the fire and the fight.

  Several Nockmaar arrows bristled in the necks of the Eborsisk. Viscous pus drained from the wounds. The maddened monster hissed and lunged, churning the foul waters of the moat, twisting one of its heads to blast the combatants on the bridge. The Nockmaars retreated to the tower, but Madmartigan leaped onto one of the creature’s heads and, with a mighty two-handed thrust, drove his sword straight down through its skull. Then, as the gasses gathered in the creature’s throat for another gout of fire, and the head rose with the sword plunged in it to the hilt, pinning its jaws shut, Madmartigan leaped off, seized one of the gargoyles’ heads projecting from the tower, swung to a ledge lower down, and dropped to the ground. Above him, the dragon’s fire turned inward, and its head blew away in a fountain of flame and foul liquid.

  Howling in agony, the other head lashed itself against the stone wall of the keep, drooping lower as the beast died, until at last it collapsed into the courtyard.

  Chaos reigned below. Dead and dying men littered the courtyard. The putrid odor of the dragon, the roasted flesh, the excrement of horses, the rankness of the moat—all mingled in a fetid stench in Sorsha’s nostrils. She staggered away from the fray, gagging. This was not the clean thrill of the chase, the purity of fair combat. This was something mindless, something inhuman, something woefully beneath any honorable warrior!