The Farthest-Away Mountain Read online

  Suddenly a sharp voice said, “Password.”

  Dakin froze. The evil smell she’d noticed before was all about her. She saw a round, greenish light, and a strange figure behind it.

  “Dragon’s fin!”

  “Too late for that,” said the voice.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the artist whose painting you destroyed with your clumsy feet,” said the voice softly.

  “You are also the Master of the mountain,” said Dakin, and wondered what had made her say anything so dangerous.

  There was a silence, and then the voice, sounding somehow much more menacing than before, said: “Those who have betrayed me shall be punished. And you shall see it done.”

  The horror of the ogre’s nail feeling for her in the cave, the horror of Graw’s wing brushing her face, the horror of the slimy caterpillars and all the other signs of evil at work: none had turned her blood to ice as that voice did. How much more terrifying it was when, without warning, she felt a cold, clammy hand suddenly clutch her wrist and begin dragging her along, back the way she just had come.

  With her free hand she pulled and scratched at the thing that held her, but it was like tearing at an iron band. Willy-nilly she was pulled along, stumbling over the rocks, and finally she could see the cave mouth with the starlight twinkling in it.

  “Oh, Og! Oh, Vog! Oh, Zog!” was all she could think through her terror, for the feeling of the Lithy Water was still strong, protecting but what about them? How could she save them?

  For a moment something black blocked the mouth of the cave as the witch scrambled through, then Dakin was pulled through after her. The next thing she knew was that she was standing out on the ledge.

  A full moon was rising over the valley, bathing everything in a cold, eerie light. A white light. The witch, a withered-looking crone dressed in rags of many colors, all bleached and unnatural in the moonlight, immediately shrank from the white moon and made a flickering, jerky movement in front of her eyes with her free hand. At once, to Dakin’s astonishment—it seemed so very odd—a pair of dark glasses, just like the ones the blind man in her village wore, appeared on the witch’s nose. From her arm hung the silver witch ball, giving off a cold green light. It shone upon the most terrible face Dakin had ever seen or dreamed of.

  Dakin thought she heard a faint, frightened hiss behind her. Stealthily groping with her free hand, she felt Zog huddling against the clifF face. She dared to cuddle him, and in turn she felt him breathing on her hand with all his might. A great wave of strength went up her arm.

  “Now, meddlesome girl,” said the witch, “we will talk. But first..With a sudden jerk, Dakin was pulled away from the cliff, leaving Zog exposed. He curled his neck and tried to hide his face, but the witch pointed her bony finger at him.

  “You,” she said in a voice so full of menace that Drackamag’s loudest roar seemed like the purr of a kitten beside it. “Go and fetch your brothers. Do not try to escape, for my power is upon you all! Enjoy the little moments of life and the freedom to move and speak that are still left to you. Go.”

  With a whimper of terror, and one piteous look at Dakin, poor Zog slipped away around the corner.

  “What are you going to do to them?” cried Dakin.

  “You shall see it all,” said the witch in a cruel, singsong voice. “You shall see how, with the edge of my hand, I can strike them from their roots in the rock and send them tumbling down the cliff to smash into a thousand lifeless pieces of stone at the bottom!”

  “Oh no! Oh no!”

  “They have lived too long. They are only slaves, and they have disobeyed my orders. I shall send them to their deaths, as I have already sent their brother Gog.”

  As she said these words, the witch jerked Dakin sharply toward her by the wrist and peered closely into her face. The smell of evil nearly made Dakin sick.

  “Have you nothing to say?” the witch hissed.

  The last thing Dakin wanted to do was to tell this dreadful, wicked creature the truth about Gog, her troll. Yet something in the eyes that seemed to flicker through the dark glasses forced her to speak when she had not meant to.

  “Gog isn’t dead,” she gasped.

  “Ah!”

  The clutch on Dakin’s wrist tightened.

  “But he is outside your power. He is off the mountain!” Dakin added.

  “I knew it!” hissed the witch. “Signs and portents! Signs and portents! I have my ways! And he is down there in the valley, and my ring with him!”

  “He has no ring!” said Dakin. “He is only small—I can hold him in my hand! I could have seen if he had a ring anywhere about him.”

  She stopped, her free hand to her mouth. She was remembering how her troll had looked as he had stood on her hand in the Wicked Wood. And suddenly she saw the ring—she knew where it was!

  Clearly it came back to her: Gog, her little brass troll, standing on her palm, with a thick gold belt around his tiny waist, a smooth belt with no buckle. She had thought it brass, like himself, but now she knew it was the very Ring of Kings that he had stolen. It had become a part of him when the spell, flung down the mountain after him by the Master, had changed him into a brass figure.

  16

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Story of the Mountain

  It was a terrible moment, because she knew now that the witch had power to force her to speak the truth against her will. The witch must have seen Dakin’s change of expression when she realized where the ring was. In another second she would make her say what her thought had been.

  Dakin had to do something instantly.

  Her free right hand, still tingling from Zog’s breath, acted by itself. Her fingers hooked themselves around the tops of the witch’s glasses, pulled them off, and flung them down the cliff.

  As the witch turned to try to grab them, she was faced with the moon, now clear of the horizon and shining, huge and white. With a scream, the witch let go of Dakin and covered her eyes with both hands. When her hands came down a second later, another pair of dark glasses was on her nose, and the next thing Dakin knew was that she had been pulled off her feet and was hanging by her hands ofF the edge of the ledge, her feet dangling clear over a thousand-foot drop.The witch, still on the ledge, bent down and peered, laughing, into her terrified face.

  “Now you are no danger to me,” she said. “I should have thought of that before. We can talk like this, and when we have finished talking, if I find I have no more use for you, I can just—”

  A long, black foot appeared, just over one of Dakin’s hands which was clutching the ledge. It pressed down on her fingers for a fearful moment, then withdrew.

  The witch sat down, arranging her wild-colored tatters around her as if making herself very comfortable. Dakin felt about with her feet. One toehold she found, and rested part of her weight on it.

  “Do you like stories?” the witch asked. “I will tell you one. Many years ago, among all the old, dead mountains in this land, there was one mountain different from all the others. This mountain was not dead. It had a soul. In the old days, you may know, men believed that many things had souls—trees, wells, fields, lakes... Nowadays no one believes this, and it is, in general, no longer true. But this one mountain had kept its soul within it from those past times.

  “Because of its soul, the mountain had strange powers. Men who tried to come near it found it always got farther and farther away, so none could reach it, except a few whom the soul of the mountain called. Because the soul was a good soul”—and here the witch shuddered—”it called only to those who were very good among men, or trolls; and those it called would come, and live on its slopes, and create gardens, and plant forests. They were few, but they were very happy.” The witch shuddered again.

  “But then,” she went on, chuckling a little, “something went wrong. Some two hundred years ago, the mountain nodded to a young man who then lived in the very same village where you dwell. This young man was something extr
aordinary even among the good people of the world. He was a scholar, gentle, kind, learned, and generous.” After each of these words, the witch grimaced as if saying them gave her pain. “But he was not wise. He had among his pupils a boy, the son of a magician, who was as filled with wickedness as his teacher was filled with goodness. When the young man, whose name was Ravik, received his call from the mountain, he was full of joy, for he knew he was going to a place like heaven on earth; and he decided to take with him this boy, in order to rid the village of his dangerous magic, and believing that the good influence of the mountain would change the boy’s wicked ways.

  “So he led him to the mountain. The boy walked behind him, and as he walked the green of the slopes withered to blackness where he trod, the trees died, and the birds fell out of them, the sun grew dark, and all life fled away. All the good people of the mountain gathered together. They saw this Evil One approaching and cried out to young Ravik: ‘What are you bringing upon us? Take it away! Take it away!.’ for the boy could not disguise his true nature from their eyes. But Ravik said, ‘Enough good will outweigh evil. Among so many who are good, his wickedness will get lost, and he will be cured But they ran from him and left him alone with his pupil.

  “Now, this mountain was magic, and its magic was strong upon all those people. Yet for all their goodness, they had too little courage, and when they ran away they left an emptiness which the Evil Boy filled. As the young man Ravik turned to him in dismay and saw for the first time the trail of death and destruction his passing had left, the boy seemed to grow and grow before his eyes, looming above him; and Ravik fell backward, covering his eyes. And when he opened them again, he was a little, helpless frog.”

  “Oh, my poor Croak!” thought Dakin, holding on with all her might.

  “After that, the Evil Boy took over the mountain. Its soul could not be destroyed, but was put to sleep, deep in the heart of the rock. The Evil One summoned slaves and created a monster to do his bidding. He brought back to life a creature long passed from the world, to guard it and do his will. He made the mountain the home of evil. He tried to extend his powers, but this he could not do without the help of a magic ring owned by the kings of the world of men below. Once, it was almost within his grasp, but a worthless slave of a troll fled from his Master and escaped somehow...” The witch gnashed her teeth and howled with fury, remembering this.

  “And now the Evil One, as punishment for this one piece of carelessness, must give all his time to searching and searching for this ring, that he may spread his reign over all the world of men, destroying what is good and increasing what is bad until the whole world is like this mountain—a black fountain of evil, pouring over all!”

  Horrified and frightened as she was, Dakin refused to let her fear overpower her. The lesson of the story was clear. It wasn’t enough to be good. One had to be wise and brave as well. The young man Ravik had been good, but not wise, and so he had brought evil into the magic mountain. The people of the mountain had been good, but not brave: they had run away and left the mountain in the power of the Evil Boy, who now, two hundred years later, was both the Master and the witch.

  Whether she herself was good or not. Dakin did not stop to think. What mattered now was to be wise and brave. The witch must be destroyed before morning came and she vanished again. She must be destroyed even sooner, before the gargoyles returned to meet their awful punishment.

  17

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  The Witch Ball

  Her hands and arms, even with the magic of Zog’s breath to strengthen them, were beginning to ache dreadfully. She doubted very much if even the Lithy Pool water could save her life if she fell. How long could she hang on here? And if she made any move, would the witch now carry out her threat to tread on her fingers and make her let go?

  Dakin knew there was only one hope. It was terribly dangerous.

  “I’m going to fall!” she cried out suddenly.

  “Fall then,” said the witch coldly. “It will please me to watch it.”

  “But you forget, Master of the Mountain!” cried Dakin. “You forget the ring!”

  “Ah!” hissed the witch. “Then you know where it is?”

  “Of course I know. Get me up and I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me first!”

  “No. Pull me up, and I’ll not only tell you where the ring is, I’ll get it for you.”

  The witch hesitated. Then she took hold of Dakin’s wrists in her clammy hands and lifted her back onto the ledge. Then, to Dakin’s astonishment, she let her go.

  “Stand still,” she hissed. “Look!”

  She lifted the witch ball by its string, which hung from her arm, and slowly passed it to and fro in front of Dakin’s eyes.

  “Look into my witch ball!” she said.

  But Dakin did not look. Another voice—a voice she had heard only once before—spoke inside her head.

  “Do not look at it,” said the voice. “If you do you will become helpless. Look into the witch’s eyes.”

  Dakin gasped. The voice was the same she had heard in her sleep, the morning the mountain had called her.

  With all the strength of her will, she kept her eyes away from the glowing greenish ball, swinging back and forth before her face. She fixed them instead upon the two dark circles through which the witch’s eyes glittered.

  “Are you looking at the ball?” asked the witch in a low monotonous voice.

  “Yes,” said Dakin.

  “Then tell me the truth about the ring.”

  “Do you know how to answer?” asked the voice in Dakin’s head.

  And, strangely, Dakin did.

  “It is in the Lithy Pool,” said Dakin clearly.

  The witch gave a long-drawn-out hiss and seemed to shrink into her colored tatters. She let the witch ball fall from her fingers. It was still swinging to and fro, and the sudden jerk as it dropped to the end of its string made it fly against the cliff wall.

  It shattered. But the sound was not just the clash of thin glass. It was an explosion, with a blinding green flash and a puff of evil-smelling green smoke. The witch reeled back and would have fallen if she had not clutched at Dakin.

  “My witch ball! My witch ball!” she shrieked. Then she turned to Dakin in wild fury. “See what you’ve done! You’ll pay for this! You’ll pay!”

  “Yes, I’ll pay,” said Dakin quickly. “I’ll pay by getting you the ring.”

  18

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Doom

  The witch stared at her, her breath coming in gasping wheezes. She no longer looked sure of herself, and Dakin guessed that part of her power had left her when the witch ball smashed.

  “Yes. The ring,” she whispered at last. “Quickly. We must get it quickly, before day comes. Come here!”

  With a quick, jerky movement, the witch pulled Dakin up against her and threw her ragged cloak around her until she was completely covered by it. Almost overpowered by being so close to the source of evil, Dakin nearly fainted, and did not know what happened next; but it seemed only a few seconds later that the smelly cloak was whisked off again.

  She found herself standing in Croak’s cabin.

  It was very dark in there (the moon was on the other side of the mountain), but a trace of reflected starlight came through the windows and glittered faintly on the surface of the Lithy Pool.

  The witch seemed oddly nervous and agitated.

  “Now,” she hissed. “Be quick!””You’ll have to give me some light,” said Dakin, thinking furiously.

  The witch made some sharp, jerky passes in the air with her hands. A very faint light appeared in the cabin, and Dakin immediately gave a quick look around for Croak, but couldn’t see him—he was probably hiding. Almost at once, the light faded again. She heard the witch muttering curses, and saw her moving her hands as before, only more frantically.

  And suddenly Dakin realized what was wrong with her. The nearness of the Lithy Pool was sapping what little powe
r she still had. To stand beside it like this, without her witch ball to protect her, was exhausting her.

  The faint green light appeared again, weaker than before.

  “There!” said the witch, and now she seemed to be gasping for breath. “Go in and get it! If you cannot, nothing will save you—nothing!”

  “I must have more light,” said Dakin, for now an idea was forming in her mind. “I need enough light to shine down through the water.”

  “The pool has no bottom,” hissed the witch. “That is known.”

  “Nonsense,” said Dakin, trusting that the witch’s natural fear of the pool would have prevented her checking for herself how deep it was. “It’s quite shallow. By day I could see the ring twinkling on the bottom.”

  “What? How did it get there?”

  “I threw it in myself, yesterday,” said Dakin carelessly.

  The witch gave a snarl of rage. But she could do nothing except exert every effort to brighten the light. She muttered a spell, and worked and labored over it until the whole crooked body seemed to be jerking and writhing. At last she succeeded. A series of bright green flashes lit up the cabin, throwing the witch’s angular, twisting shadow onto the walls.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” shrieked the witch.

  Dakin did hurry. She dared not stop to think about the danger. With one hand she reached for the witch’s dark glasses, snatched them off as before, and threw them into the pool. At the same moment, with the other, she pulled off her white stocking cap and waved it in front of the witch’s face.

  The witch screamed and hid her eyes.

  Dakin knew from the last time that in a matter of a second the witch would have made another pair of glasses to protect her from the dreaded whiteness. But in that one instant, Dakin got behind her and pushed with all her might.