The Land of the Silver Apples - Farmer Nancy (читать книги онлайн без txt) 📗

Vines curled up from the ground. Flowers blossomed from arbors rising from the earth. Stars reappeared in the sky, and the moon—

The moon!

A wail of anguish rose from the elves. Partholis screamed. Partholon shouted. Even Jack felt afraid. The moon had a bite out of its side! Time had cast its shadow on the Silver Apple.

“Quick! Quick!” bellowed Partholon. “We must repair the damage!”

“And blow out that candle!” shrieked Partholis.

“Run!” ordered the Nemesis, throwing off his cloak. He grabbed Jack’s arm and the Bugaboo took Pega’s.

“I won’t leave Thorgil,” Jack cried. The Nemesis cursed him but made a detour and yanked the shield maiden up by her hair. It was brutal and Jack wouldn’t have done it, but it had the desired effect. Thorgil stopped moaning and joined the escape.

“Where’s Father Severus?” shouted Pega.

“I have him,” panted Ethne. She was supporting his weight on her shoulders and was urging him to make haste. The Bugaboo quickly lifted the monk in his arms and carried him along. Jack saw, to his surprise, that Ethne’s face in the light of the candle was still beautiful. She was older and her hair had lost some of its brightness, but Jack thought she looked nicer that way.

The elves were too distracted to pursue them far. Jack raised his staff, ready to do battle with the Picts, but he needn’t have worried. The Picts were completely undone. They howled like dogs. They frothed at the mouth. The candlelight had aged them dreadfully, and it was a wonder such withered creatures were alive at all. Frail, bent, toothless, they mourned the passing of the time when they had been young and had killed Romans.

Jack found himself climbing up, not down, so the direction of the hallway had indeed been an illusion. But presently, the ground seemed to shift and go down. Tapestries sprouted from the walls, gilded tiles spread across the floor.

“Faster! Faster!” snarled the Nemesis. Try as Jack would to imagine himself climbing up, the magic was too strong. All his senses told him they were fleeing into the heart of the earth with a mountain of rock overhead. His senses dulled. He stopped, wondering why he was running, but the Nemesis kicked him and forced him to go on.

After a while the walls reverted to dirt again and the floor to gravel. “You can rest,” panted the Nemesis. “Glamour doesn’t reach here.” They all collapsed on the ground. The Bugaboo propped Father Severus against a wall, and the monk gazed at the hobgoblin in utter amazement.

“You aren’t—you wouldn’t happen to be—an imp?” he said.

“See, that’s the kind of slander we have to live with,” complained the Nemesis. “Mud men!”

“We’re honest hobgoblins,” explained the Bugaboo, “notto be confused with devils, imps, demons, unclean spirits, or fiends. Or, indeed, with full-blown goblins,” he added, warming to his subject. “They’re fond of dining on monks, but we’d never do that.”

Father Severus felt for his cross and realized he’d left it behind with Guthlac.

“We’re good Christians, too,” said the Bugaboo.

“You are?” the monk said doubtfully.

“We like nothing better than a good sermon—by the way, I thought your speech to the Elf Queen was excellent.”

“It wasn’t as good as the one Columba gave the Picts,” the Nemesis argued.

“True, but he was a saint,” the Bugaboo said. “What a glorious chase! And what a rescue! I imagine they’ll be making poems about us for centuries, eh, Pega? ‘The Hobgoblin King and His Bride’.”

“I’m not your bride,” said Pega.

Thorgil was sunk in gloom, but Ethne looked radiant. “I’m free,” she exulted. “I can hardly wait to become a nun, to wear hair shirts, go without food, and endure public floggings.”

“You don’t have to go as far as that,” Father Severus said.

“Oh, but I want to suffer! I will strive for Heaven like a martyr, welcoming each new pain with joy!”

The monk frowned slightly. “People do better with ordinary goodness—feeding the hungry, caring for orphans. That sort of thing. You shouldn’t take pride in suffering.”

“Oh, I won’t,” cried Ethne, clasping her hands. “I’ll never be proud again. I’ll be the most humble servant God has ever had!”

Father Severus sighed. “We’ll work on humility later—if we get out of here.”

“No problem,” said the Bugaboo. “There’s an excellent way out via your old cell. We tried to get to you earlier, but the door was too closely guarded.”

They went on, more slowly this time. Thorgil continued to hide her hand, and Pega tried to keep Jack between her and the hobgoblin king. They found the prison door open. To one side was the chain that had been used to tether Guthlac. “If ever I’m tempted to feel sorry for those wretched elves,” said Father Severus, “I’ll remember what they did to Guthlac.”

“Where is he now?” Jack asked.

“Called to judgment, as all of us shall be. I hope Heaven is kind to him, for he suffered much.” Once inside, Father Severus lit a lamp and Pega blew out her candle. The light became dimmer, and some of the warmth went out of the room.

“It’s so small,” mourned Pega, for barely half of the candle remained.

“But it did great service,” said the Bugaboo.

Jack found Thorgil’s knife under the fallen benches. He handed it to her, certain it would revive her spirits, but she turned away. “You take it. I can never use it again.”

“The fire was an illusion,” Jack insisted.

“Then how do you explain this?” Thorgil held out the hand she’d been hiding. It was an odd, silvery color. “I can’t move my fingers. I’m paralyzed.” She laughed bitterly. “Once, Frith Half-Troll threatened to cut off my right hand so I could be a warrior no more. It seems she got her wish.”

“We’ll find a wise woman. Someone will know how to cure you.”

Thorgil looked at him scornfully. “One thing a Northman never indulges in is false hope.”

“What in blazes were you doing?” said the Nemesis, looking at the holes hacked in the wall.

“Trying to escape,” said Jack. “We figured there was only a short distance between the ceiling and the outside.”

The hobgoblin chuckled. “There’s an even shorter distance from that spring at the back of the dungeon. Trust mud men to get it all wrong.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for the longest time,” said Jack. “Why do you keep calling us mud men?”

“Because God made Adam from the dust of the earth, idiot,” said the Nemesis. “Honestly! Some people never go to church.” He started digging by the spring and soon uncovered a stone circle with a ring in it. He and the Bugaboo moved it away to reveal an opening.

“We go down?” said Jack. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does when you’re at the top of a mountain,” said the Nemesis. “Elfland lies deep. The tunnel went up until it was high above the earth, but you didn’t know it because of the glamour. You’ll drop from here into a stream. Then it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to Middle Earth.”

“I can hardly wait!” said Pega, her eyes shining.

“Me neither.” The Bugaboo swept her up in his arms and jumped into the hole. Jack heard a splash not far below and a shriek from Pega.

“I forgot to mention the water’s cold,” the Nemesis said with an evil grin.

Ethne insisted on going next. “I abandon Elfland,” she said solemnly. “I forswear all pleasures and embrace the sorrows of mortality, the better to gain entry into Hea—”

“Enough nitter-natter,” grunted the Nemesis, dropping her down the hole. Jack heard a splash and a scream an instant later. Then Jack and Thorgil went.

“Troll spit!” swore the shield maiden. “He wasn’t joking about the cold!”

The water was like liquid ice and so was the air. Jack’s breath came out as a plume of fog. “Up you go,” said the Bugaboo, lifting them onto the bank. Pega and Ethne were already there, teeth chattering and bodies shaking. The hobgoblin king waded into the stream, and the Nemesis lowered Father Severus into his arms. “Can’t get you wet, can we?” the Bugaboo said cheerfully. “You’re so skinny, you’d freeze like an icicle.” The Nemesis came down last.