The High King: Chapters 14–21

Biting, kicking, and scratching, Eilonwy struggled vainly to free herself from the burly man who had seized her. Another had flung Gurgi to the ground and, with dagger drawn, set his knee in the small of the hapless creature’s back.

“What have you found?”
“Lean pickings,” answered Eilonwy’s captor, dropping his furious burden to the turf beside Gurgi. “A brace of churls, for what they may be worth.”

The heavy-faced man spat in the fire. “You should have slit their gullets and spared yourself the burden.”

With a grimy, broken-nailed hand he seized Eilonwy by the throat as if he meant to throttle her.

Dorath gripped Eilonwy’s face and roughly turned it from side to side. “This beardless boy...” He grunted in surprise. “What, then? Boy? No boy at all! A wench!”

Dorath’s face had grown mottled. “You shall go free,” he said between his teeth, “after a time, my pretty Princess, after a time...."

Briavael, too, served as sentinel and guide, springing lightly to the rocky peaks, sniffing the air; then, with a gesture of her head, beckoning the companions to follow.

The wolf Brynach glanced at her, as though he had overheard Eilonwy’s words. He lolled out his tongue and blinked his yellow eyes. Around the sharp rows of gleaming teeth his lips turned slightly in an unmistakable smile.

The bard did not deign to answer the former giant’s whining outburst.

Taran glimpsed their campfires glowing like baleful eyes in the darkness.

Casting his doubts aside, Taran drew his sword and hewed at the branches.

All along the lake the torches of the Fair Folk flamed, then arced like shooting stars as the warriors flung them into the pyre.

The rushing waters and careening boulders flung back the warriors as they sought to scramble up the ravine.

“Slim hope,” Doli replied. “The Fair Folk can’t venture that far. It’s forbidden land. That close to Arawn’s realm, Fair Folk would die. Gwystyl’s way post was nearest to the Land of Death, and you’ve seen what it did to his digestion and disposition. The best we could do is to put you well on your way. One of us might go with you,” he added.

At his feet, Hen Wen stirred restlessly and whimpered in a high, plaintive voice.

“Yes, betrayed you,” Dallben said, his voice sharp and cold. “You thought to make him serve you. Yet all unwitting you have served him better than any of his hirelings. He sent you to slay me, and gave you the means to do it. Indeed, perhaps you shall slay me. But it will be Arawn’s triumph, not yours...."

“Yes, betrayed you,” Dallben said, his voice sharp and cold. “You thought to make him serve you. Yet all unwitting you have served him better than any of his hirelings. He sent you to slay me, and gave you the means to do it. Indeed, perhaps you shall slay me. But it will be Arawn’s triumph, not yours...."

“See from the window,” Dallben answered.
As he spoke, a crimson glow poured through the casement.

The King’s face had turned ashen. With a cry, he flung away the dagger and clutched at the huge book. Desperately his hands reached out as if they would rip it asunder.

Doli’s usually ruddy face had grown mottled and he breathed only in painful gasps.

When Taran urged him to rest, Doli angrily shook his head. “I said I’d find a passage for you,” he snapped. “And I mean to. Can’t stand a botched job. When the Fair Folk set about a task, they do it right, and don’t dawdle over it.”

All night the harp sang, and its melodies were of joy, sorrow, love, and valor. The fire never abated, and little by little new life and strength returned to the companions.

At times, the path skirted yawning chasms and more than once Taran stumbled, buffeted by a sudden chill blast that flung him against the walls.

Taran turned his face away and waited for the beak to rend his throat. Yet the gwythaint did not strike. Instead, it was pulling him from the rocks with a strength Taran could not resist.

A troop of Cauldron-Born, sighting the lone figure of Taran atop the mountain’s summit and the companions who now had crossed the ridge, broke from the main body of the host and turned their attack upon Mount Dragon. Brandishing their weapons, they sped up the slope.

At the highest peak of the dragon’s crest rose a tall rock. Time and tempest had gnawed it into a grotesque shape.

The wind, blowing through the eroded crannies and hollows, set up a baleful keening, and the stone shrieked and moaned as if with human tongue.

The Chief Steward’s face was ghastly white, his lips trembled and slavered, and his eyes rolled in his head.

“He has gone mad,” Taran murmured to Fflewddur, who stared in revulsion as the Chief Steward raised high the crown and gibbered to himself.

At last he rose from his pallet and stood, uneasy, by the chamber window.

“But no longer do I see mine clearly,” Taran cried. “No longer do I understand my own heart. Why does my grief shadow my joy? Tell me this much. Give me to know this, as one last boon.”

With this, Gurgi drew from his leather pouch a small, flame-scarred, battered coffer of unknown metal and held it out to Taran, who took it, studied it curiously, then broke the heavy seal which kept it locked.

“Evil conquered?” said Gwydion. “You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men’s hearts whose flame can never be quenched.”

Dallben nodded. “Yes,” he said gently. “Yet you shall always keep the magic and mystery all women share. And I fear that Taran, like all men, shall be often baffled by it. But, such is the way of it. Come, clasp hands the two of you, and pledge each other your troth.”

Yet long afterward, when all had passed away into distant memory, there were many who wondered whether King Taran, Queen Eilonwy, and their companions had indeed walked the earth, or whether they had been no more than dreams in a tale set down to beguile children.