Part 19 (2/2)

Ignoring a sick feeling in her inside, Dido bluntly addressed the queen.

'If you were thinking of having us tossed in the lake, Your Royalty, you might as well know that your Rex Quondam is back; so there ain't no need!'

She heard a sort of growl from Lady Ettarde, behind her, and thought she saw something black and furry detach itself from that lady's full skirts and scurry in her direction.

Now the queen's s.h.i.+ning, sightless eyes were staring at her. To avoid their unnerving stare, she looked down at the floor. Yes, it was a spider the size of a hairy grapefruit; it was on the point of climbing up her leg.

On a step of the dais, lying disregarded where Gine-vra had dropped it, was the chunk of raw sapphire that Bran had given the queen. Dido s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and used it to deal the spider a satisfactory, crunching thwack. The spider rolled over, its legs thras.h.i.+ng, then folding in death.

Don't I just wish Bran was here, Dido thought, clutching the stone. But even the memory of him was comforting.

Queen Ginevra said, 'The High King is back? Back where?'

'He was up at Lake Arianrod,' Dido said. 'Now he's in Lyonesse.'

'Is this true?'

'Oh yes, it's true,' said Elen wearily. 'My father has sworn fealty to him.'

The queen turned her mirror-eyes on Lady Ettarde.

'Why was I not told?'

'Ma'am, how do we know whether the girls are speaking truth?' 'It may be only a rumour,' Lady Ettarde and the Grand Inquisitor said together.

Ignoring them, Ginevra clapped her hands.

'Have the coronation regalia brought out, so that I may inspect it! Send my chief herald to me. Where is my sooth-sayer? Fetch him here!'

'Your Mercy, n.o.body knows where he is - Lady Ettarde was red-faced, fl.u.s.tered and gasping.

'Have those two girls sent up, under double escort, to the city of Sul,' the queen went on. 'Give this message to the Guardian.' She scribbled on the tablets a scribe brought her. 'Ettarde! I shall need ten new gowns. And my lord will doubtless require a royal wardrobe and a coronation robe. Let tailors be sent for -'

'Of course, Your Mercy-' Lady Ettarde looked relieved at this evidence that her sphere of usefulness was not yet ended. 'What shall I -'

'Quiet! Leave me now. I must have rest and quiet. I must think. I must remember.'

She lay back on her cus.h.i.+ons. The girls were hustled away. Once they were out of sight, Lady Ettarde gave Dido a box on the ear that rattled her teeth together.

'That's for disobeying me, you little hussy!'

Their journey to the Temple of Sul was also taken by underground train through the silver-mines. Too bad the queen didn't tell us this way before, Dido thought; saved us a deal of travel, that would, and poor Plum wouldn't have been took by the Aurocs. But then, she reflected, I wouldn't have found the sword, and Elen wouldn't have been rescued. Though what's the good of that now?

Dido felt very low-spirited; the death of poor Mr Multiple had upset her dreadfully, the interview with Queen Ginerva had not cheered her at all, and besides that, it was now three-quarters through the day, and she felt hollow and lightheaded from lack of food and sleep.

The train they rode on this time, however, was far more comfortable, apparently the queen's private conveyance to the Temple of Sul. The cars had gla.s.s windows like small hackney coaches, and wool-stuffed cus.h.i.+ons. These pits were still being actively worked, and miners could sometimes be seen through the windows hacking at rock-faces or carrying the ore in baskets strapped to their backs. There were a great many women and children at work too. Elen was shocked to see this.

'Small children pulling those heavy trolleys along the rails? It is disgraceful!'

'Keeps them out o' the way of the Aurocs,' Dido pointed out.

'It should not be allowed. It is not so in Lyonesse.'

'It is in England.' Dido had never set foot in an English mine, but she knew that quite small children did work there.

'Well, when I see if I see Gwydion again, I shall tell him he should have it stopped.'

'Yes, you do that,' said Dido soothingly, and then both girls fell into a despondent silence.

One thing, though, thought Dido, her spirits picking up again, it's good to know that old Cap'n Hughes got himself out o' the pokey; I wouldn't a thought he had the gumption! I wonder who Lady Ettarde's nephew is, that she spoke of, and why he was in there? Could it be but no, the idea was too preposterous.

Lady Ettarde had accompanied them on this journey, along with a troop of the silent, grey-uniformed guards. But the Mistress of the Wardrobe was preoccupied, and sat in a separate car, busy making sketches of coronation robes. Dido and Elen travelled in a car with two guards, who sat facing them, but did not speak.

Towards the end of the journey the train evidently began to climb an exceedingly steep ascent; the guards had much ado to keep from sliding off their seat, and the girls were tipped against the back of theirs; the train laboured more and more slowly, wheezing, hissing and wailing. At last it ground to a stop.

'Hope we ain't going to slip backwards,' said Dido.

However it seemed they had reached their destination. The guards, who carried pikes, gestured that the girls were to alight, and they did so, finding themselves in a large cold cave, dimly lit by oil lamps hanging on the walls. They were led out under an imposing arched entrance, past piles of crushed rock, and then up a steep but well-paved road. As they climbed higher they could see, below and to the right, the familiar star-shaped basin of Lake Arianrod. But what a drop! It must be well over a thousand feet below.

The paved road zig-zagged to and fro over the mountainside and now, looking up, Dido could see high walls above them, built from huge ma.s.sive blocks of stone, each probably weighing more than four hundred tons. The walls were fortified with towers at regular intervals and circled the mountain, crossing gullies and ravines, perching on the edge of precipices.

'Not a place you'd get into if they didn't want you,' panted Dido to Elen, as the party turned to take breath on a hairpin curve. 'But I thought it was a temple? That place looks twice the size of Bath Regis.'

'It is a town,' said Elen. 'But n.o.body lives there now.'

'Be quiet, girls!' snapped Lady Ettarde. 'You are entering Sul's sacred city.'

Lady Ettarde was being borne upwards in a sedan chair. Lucky for the carriers that she's so short, Dido thought. They must need a half-a-dozen to tote the queen along when she comes up.

A great stone stairway led down into a dry moat, then up again to a huge gateway. They pa.s.sed through this, and on up a steep, silver-cobbled hill.

'Mystery me,' muttered Dido to herself. 'I never thought I'd see a whole empty town. Wonder what happened to all the folk?'

It was plain that the City of Sul had been uninhabited not for ten, or a hundred, but for many, many hundreds of years. Great forest trees had grown among the temples, palaces, baths and blocks of dwellings. Near the outer wall these were mere cobblestone hovels, but farther in the buildings were splendid, constructed from huge chunks of white granite, roofed with ma.s.ses of peaked gables, interwound with countless stone stairways. What a deal of years the place must have taken to build, thought Dido; it covers the whole blessed mountain-top. Looking back, as they toiled ever upwards, she could see three different mountain ranges in the distance, and great ma.s.ses of white cloud, tinged with sunset pink, floating far away, over what must be the Forest of Broceliande.

The whole city was completely silent.

They reached a sloping oblong s.p.a.ce, five hundred yards in length, evidently the main square of the city. At the upper end of this was a ma.s.sive building with no windows at all, and but one entrance, a plain square doorway, on the broad lintel of which was carved the same woman's head, with snakes for hair, that Dido had seen in Bath Regis. The guards bowed reverently before it, and Lady Ettarde clambered out of her sedan chair to make a stiff curtsey. Apparently this was the Temple of Sul.

The entrance was approached by a flight of steps. At the top of them old Caradog the Guardian stood waiting.

'Welcome,' he said simply, and to Elen, 'Those who were once lost are doubly welcome.'

Lady Ettarde hobbled up the steps and kissed him. Seeing them together, both short, long-nosed, narrow-lipped, with deep-set eyes, Dido realised they must be brother and sister. What a clunch I am, she thought; they're as like as two peas in a pod. Why didn't I notice before?

In fact Caradog was saying, 'Will you stay the night, sister?'

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