A Different Kingdom(54)

'I don't see any Howe.' Laughter beat about the trees. 'Well might he not!'

'Someone open the front door for him!'

Mirkady bowed deeply again, and the fireflies clustered around his temples like a burning circlet.

'Your pardon. Our manners are not all they might be. Let me be the first to welcome you to Gallow's Howe, Michael-?' He made it a question.

'Fay,' said Michael, just as Cat's elbow drove the breath out of his ribs.

'Fay.' Mirkady looked strangely thoughtful. 'Now there's a name to conjure with. Is it apt, I wonder?' And his hellish eyes studied Michael with something like seriousness.

'You know how he is called now, Mirkady,' Cat grated. 'He gave the name in blind trust. If you abuse him I swear I'll have it out of your hide.'

Mirkady held up a long hand. 'Fear not, Cat. It may be l know more of this whole drama than you.' He smiled a smile that seemed almost human in its warmth. 'Let the door be opened.'

A hush fell, and beyond the glimmer of the fireflies Michael saw that they were at the foot of a mound. It was dark and bare, the grass free of the leaves that carpeted the wood floor, and at its summit a stark old tree squatted, its trunk as thick and round as a hay rick. The branches splayed out overhead, and from them dark bundles swayed and swung, some small, some large—and from these the sweet decaying smell drifted.

Corpses.

Some were men, some small enough to be children; but there were dogs and cats, sheep, even a horse, all hanging cadaverous and rotting from the huge limbs of the tree. Strips of long moss and ivy hung there also, like tom funeral shrouds, and here and there in. the grass Michael could make out bumps and hummocks that were the remnants of other offerings, fallen like overripe fruit from the boughs.

But there was a new thing. A blade of light appeared like a misplaced sunbeam, stabbing from the mound itself. There was a snatch of music, exquisite as a ripple of silver bells, and the light broadened, rays lancing out to throw Michael and the others in relief and send shadows streaming behind them into the trees. A door rose out of the mound, flooded with light, and all the while that maddening, beautiful music tinkled, tugging and evocative. Michael walked forward into the light without a thought in his head save the music, and was conscious only that there was a great crowd, a host, a throng, pressed around him and laughing, saying welcome.

HE REMEMBERED TALL walls rearing up in sunshine, white as chalk. There were battlements and flapping flags, and men in bright armour mounted on huge horses. There was a bridge spanning a wide, glittering river with girls plashing and diving, sleek as salmon. And there was a vast hall hung with golden tapestries and gleaming weapons, its long table set with silver goblets and sparkling crystal. The bread he ate there melted in his mouth, and the mead filled his belly with fire. The people were beautiful: stately and royal. Mirkady was a wise king, grey-haired and venerable, his fingers sparkling with rings and a crown of bronze oak leaves on his head. Dwarmo was a broad-shouldered knight whose dark curls cascaded around a shining cuirass, and who clinked glasses with him and laughed like a gale. Other lords and ladies sat in robes trimmed with ermine and beaver, circlets of thin gold around their brows. The men were athletic, dark, the women coy and graceful, like half-tame deer, and they shot veiled glances down the table at Mirkady's guests.

Only Cat remained the same, dressed in her stolen clothes and smelling of sweat and earth. Midnight hair hung round her face like a hood, and her eyes were two emeralds in a face still smudged with smoke.

Wonderland. He had found it.

Things became blurred. He remembered leaning on Dwarmo, the pair of them drunk as coots, a dizzy gliding drunkenness that made Michael's tongue free and easy. They stood on a battlement that looked out on' to a sea, an ocean of trees extending away out of sight, hung over with a golden haze to infinity. Michael had the feeling that he had gone deeper, had travelled down some tunnel into a more faraway place, and he knew with sudden certainty that there was an infinity of such places, one for every dreamer in the world, perhaps. But the moment was smothered with laughter and the feel of Cat, warm but unyielding beside him. That was somehow sobering.

'Where is this place?'

It was the king, Mirkady, who answered.

'The Wildwood, where else?' Then he smiled at Michael's puzzled face. His eyes were green, like Cat's, but a darker, murkier green, like the weed that floats on a stagnant pond.

'Think of the world as a glove,' he said. 'One garment, many fingers, each leading away to its own place, and the glove itself is meant but to fit something larger.'

That made no sense, and Michael's bubbling happiness was marred by bafflement.

'The world is the ground beneath your feet. As long as it stays there you can walk on it. It is a road the same as any other.' It was Dwarmo. He looked like a statue hewn out of silver and the goblet was as small as an eggcup in one knotted fist. When he smiled Michael saw that his canines were longer than they should have been. Muzzily, he wished he had not drunk so much mead at the feast.