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

“I don’t think we’ll need it,” said Thorgil.

“You think they’ll come to us?” Jack said.

“If she sings.”

Jack had to fight back a moment of jealousy. His voice was good. It was more than good. It was better than the Bard’s had ever been, or Rune’s. It had pleased the yarthkins once they had arrived. But it was Pega who had called them.

She sang with the voice of the earth itself, with a power bards could only dream of. Jack knew then that he would never be the equal of her. He struggled to rise above the bitterness that filled his soul.

“Sing, Pega,” he commanded her. “Give them the hymn the angel taught to Caedmon.”

She turned toward the warm darkness of a yarthkin tunnel and called, “Erce, Erce, Erce”with her arms outstretched. “Come, oh, come,” she begged, and then she sang. First it was “Caedmon’s Hymn”, followed by a Yule song, “The Holly and the Ivy”. The next offering was “The Wife of Usher’s Well”, about a woman who called her sons home, not realizing they had perished under the sea. And the sons didreturn in the middle of the night, covered with seaweed and clam shells.

Jack thought that ballad might be unwise so near to the Hall of Wraiths. He was happier when she changed to a nursery rhyme. But really, it didn’t matter what Pega sang. All of it was beautiful.

In the distance Jack heard a whispering and a twittering. The darkness in the throat of the tunnel thickened. Something oozed from the walls and fell to the ground with a heavy plop.The hair on Jack’s arms stood up. He grasped his staff and placed himself between Pega and the advancing horde. Thorgil joined him.

Along the floor of the tunnel—and the sides and the ceiling—clustered knots of hair as pale as summer wheat. Long, earth brown fingers pulled them along. Bright, black eyes observed the children with a frightening intensity. Thorgil held her knife in her left hand. Jack had no doubt she could emulate Olaf, if attacked, right down to the kicking and headbutting. “Don’t do anything,” he whispered. “I think they’re friendly.”

“They’re landv?ttir,” she murmured. “It is always dangerous to draw their attention. Olaf used to remove the dragon head from the prow of his ship when he came to shore, to keep from offending them.”

“I don’t remember that,” said Jack, keeping his eyes on the steadily advancing mass of little haystacks.

“You weren’t paying attention. It’s fine to display the dragon head at sea, but the landv?ttirconsider it a challenge. By Thor and Odin! Stop touching me!” By now the haystacks had reached Jack and Thorgil, and the pressure of their bodies brought forgotten dreams to the surface. They were the ones Jack tried to forget the moment he woke up, of sinking into mud or being swallowed by a giant snake.

“I’m not your enemy!” cried Thorgil, hurling the knife away. The ring of yarthkins opened out, and Jack breathed more easily. Pega stopped singing. Her face was chalk white.

One of the creatures stood apart from the mass. Jack assumed it was the same one he’d spoken to before and bowed politely. “Thank you for coming,” he said.

How didst thou find Din Guardi, children of earth?the creature said.

“Thoroughly nasty,” replied Jack.

And thy people? How were they?

“They weren’t even there,” Jack said. “My da and the Bard are at St. Filian’s Monastery. So is Brother Aiden. And now our friends are in danger.”

“Please, please help us,” cried Pega, breaking in. “King Yffi is going to kill the hobgoblins. Please—you offered us a boon before. We’re asking for it now. Save them! Save our friends! Destroy their enemies!”

“Be careful what you ask for,” murmured Thorgil.

Shield maiden,said the yarthkin, turning toward the girl. All of his followers did the same with a rustling and a twittering. Thy mother honored us. We do not forget.

“My—my mother?” gasped Thorgil. Jack knew she hardly had known her mother and had been ashamed of her because she was a thrall.

Thy mother asked us to watch over thee. She does so still.

“How can that be? She’s dead! I saw them cut her throat,” cried Thorgil.

We will help thee, children of earth,said the yarthkin, ignoring her outburst. The whole group began to move forward, out of the tunnel and into the muted light of late afternoon. Jack, Pega, and Thorgil were forced to go ahead of them. The thought of being overwhelmed by the little haystacks—of being crept onby them—was more than anyone could stand.

The sea clashed against the invisible barrier. The clouds lowered as though they, too, were trying to break through. Jack and his companions passed over, with Jack being swept by a familiar sensation of dizziness. They turned to look.

The yarthkins were halted at the border.

“Well, that was a waste of time,” said Thorgil.

Pega ran back. “What do we have to do? How can we break the spell that keeps the old gods out?”

Spell?said the head yarthkin. There is no spell.

“We were told about it,” said Jack. “The Man in the Moon did something bad. I don’t know what it was, but he was exiled to the moon, and the rest of you were forbidden to enter his fortress.”

The Man in the Moon wished to rule the green world,said the yarthkin in his whispery, twittering voice. He would have slain all to gain power, and to this end, he made an ally of Unlife. It waswe who exiledhim. But we have not been able to undo his harm. It is Unlife that keeps us out.

“I don’t know how to help you,” Jack cried. “The Bard might, but I can’t get to him.”

Thou hast the means,said the yarthkin, and his thousands upon thousands of followers rustled their agreement. Thy staff drew fire from the heart of Jotunheim. It is a branch of the Great Tree.

“Yggdrassil?” Jack was bewildered. He knew his staff was more than a mere piece of wood, but this? How could he have owned such a thing of power and not known it? And why hadn’t the Bard told him?

Lay thy staff across the ring of Unlife that we may pass over.

Jack paused for a moment. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what was going to happen, and he wanted to keep the talisman he’d unwittingly brought from Jotunheim. It was black as coal but hard as flint. He hadn’t used it much, not nearly enough. He didn’t really understand it, although once he’d called up an earthquake with it.

“Jack. Remember the hobgoblins,” said Pega.

The boy shook himself. Of course. Even now, King Yffi’s men might be dragging the Bugaboo and the Nemesis to the fire. He raised the staff and felt the familiar thrum of life within it. Then he laid it across the barrier.

Chapter Forty-seven

THE LAST OF DIN GUARDI

The head yarthkin advanced, pulling himself along by his long, brown fingers. He touched the staff, and Jack held his breath.

The air chimed like a bell. It was as though the sky itself were trembling. The earth answered with a faint thunder. A light as pure as a spring dawn spread over the sea. It flowed up the grim walls of Din Guardi and down into the tunnel. The breeze carried a fragrance that was something like a meadow after a thunderstorm, but much cleaner and fresher.

Green.That was the word for it. The air smelled green, and it made Jack glad to breathe it.

He looked down. The staff that he had won in Jotunheim, the staff that told the world that he, Jack, was a true bard and the heir to Dragon Tongue, had dissolved into ash. Even as he watched, the silvery dust was lifted by the breeze and blown away.

“Here they come!” shouted Thorgil. The yarthkins flowed over the broken barrier in a vast tide. Rustling and whispering, they swarmed past the children. Jack, Thorgil, and Pega clung to one another, scarcely daring to breathe as wave after wave of wheat-colored haystacks surged past them.