The Castle of Llyr: Chapters 11–15

With a lopsided gait he shambled toward the companions.

“Are you really trembling?” he asked in an anxious voice. “You’re not doing it just to be obliging?”

Instead, evidently pleased by the consternation he had wrought among the companions, he was looking down at them with an expression of satisfaction all the more intense because it was so large.

“I didn’t want to be a giant,” protested Glew, “not at first anyway. I thought, once, I should be a famous warrior. I joined the host of Lord Goryon when he marched against Lord Gast. But I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. It turned me green, green as grass. And those battles! Enough to make your head swim! All that clashing and smiting! The din alone is more than flesh can bear! No, no, it was absolutely out of the question.”

“I didn’t want to be a giant,” protested Glew, “not at first anyway. I thought, once, I should be a famous warrior. I joined the host of Lord Goryon when he marched against Lord Gast. But I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. It turned me green, green as grass. And those battles! Enough to make your head swim! All that clashing and smiting! The din alone is more than flesh can bear! No, no, it was absolutely out of the question.”

“It wasn’t the years of study,” explained Glew in a voice that would have been forlorn had it not been so loud.

“We grieve for you,” interrupted Taran, shifting restlessly, “but we cannot tarry here.”

Glew’s cleverness in devising makeshift pestles and mortars, cook-pots and basins from painstakingly hollowed-out stones surprised Taran and filled him with a pitying admiration for the desperate giant.

While Gurgi, jabbering furiously, beat his fists against the unyielding stone, Taran plunged against it once more.

“Even now,” he added plaintively, “I don’t know how I’ll ever bring myself to pick out one of you. No, no, I can’t. I haven’t the heart. Don’t ask me to put myself through that torment...."

Taran and Gurgi unsheathed their blades and, side by side, attacked the ground beneath the ponderous stone.

He played the bauble’s light over the walls, sending the beams upward to the sloping ceiling of rock, scanning each crevice and outcropping, but saw only a few shallow niches from which some ancient stone had fallen.

He tumbled against a pile of stones that gave way with a clatter, and went sliding into a stream of noisome liquid.

Taran raised his sword high above his head in a last futile gesture of defense.

“You saved our lives,” replied Taran. He clasped Rhun’s hand. “I only reproach you for risking your own.”

Hands on hips, the bard was looking down at the prostrate form of Glew.

“Not quite,” replied Taran to the despondent Prince. “We can hoist you up as we did before, and this time you can lower something for the rest of us. But we must make haste.”

He put the leather-bound volume into Taran’s hand. “Look,” he said. “What a pity. Every page is marred. It’s really useless now.”

Taran, who had grown more and more restless as the day waned, urged the companions to press on rather than wait the night on shore, and they clambered aboard.

The shore lay silent, flanked by brooding hills.

Fflewddur had not entirely lost his disquiet over the strange book.

A scent of brine and brackish water reached Taran’s nostrils.

Perched on Gwydion’s shoulder, Kaw blinked and ruffled his feathers, indignant at being awakened; seeing Taran, however, he bobbed his head and began croaking with excitement.

Prince Rhun, waving his sword with great vigor and making as fierce a face as he could, hastened to join Taran.

“In the little time I remained there, I could not discover where the Princess is held. Though I saw that Achren has but a paltry company of warriors—hirelings and outlaws who have cast their lot with her. None of Arawn’s deathless Cauldron-Born is among them.”

“In the little time I remained there, I could not discover where the Princess is held. Though I saw that Achren has but a paltry company of warriors—hirelings and outlaws who have cast their lot with her. None of Arawn’s deathless Cauldron-Born is among them.”

He smiled bitterly. “Without the protection of the Lord of Annuvin, haughty Achren commands only lackeys.”

The gates faced the sea, but, since the castle had sunk lower, they stood half-submerged in the restless water. Waves churned and beat against them, as though to take the ruins by storm and wreak their last destruction.

Kaw had already flown to the walls, and Taran envied the crow his wings as he saw the sheer facing of stone and the broken parapets brooding high above.

Gwydion led them along the base of the wall toward the heavy lintels of the gates.

The bastion was cleft as though by a sword stroke, and loose rubble had fallen into the breach.

The bastion was cleft as though by a sword stroke, and loose rubble had fallen into the breach.

The bastion was cleft as though by a sword stroke, and loose rubble had fallen into the breach.

“Achren pays for a poor vigil,” Gwydion said with a hard smile. “One sentinel watches landward, another leans drowsing on his sword. The others sleep.”

A sharp gust of sea wind buffeted him. For an instant he swung free of the tower.