Balin and Columbine (A Children of the May Novella - Book 1.5b)

Epilogue: The Harper's Road

She was limping up the northern road when she heard the castle begin to fall apart. Her climb down the walls of Castle Spar-Longius had not done her much good. She had slipped with twenty feet still to go, and now her right ankle was badly swollen. Nonetheless, as she heard the amazing racket some miles behind her, she ran up the nearest hill to look. What she saw split her mind in two. The compassionate, human part of her being ached for the human tragedies taking place on the great red rock; the cold, unflinching part of her mind, the part that gazed at horrors and turned them into songs, rejoiced. This was good stuff.

She sat on the top of that little hill and unhooked her harp. She strummed away, watching first the side-towers, and then the central thrust of the trident topple. It happened slowly, individual stones falling from the whole as if they had been held together by nothing but wishes. From her distance it looked as if the great revolving castle was melting like a candle.

 

Spar-Longius, Spar-Longius

Its fall was quite notorious

To remember its, uh, collapsius?

Do sing my little song –

 

 

Nah, perhaps it was too soon for silly rhymes. People might think it distasteful. They’d be wrong, but they might think that. The event was still in progress after all. She’d give her song on the subject some thought; it would come to her eventually.

By the time it was five minutes or so into its fall, Castle Spar-Longius had thrown up a huge column of dust that climbed into the early evening sky. Five minutes later the noise of the collapse had subsided entirely, and she heard the wailing, the sobbing and the screams. She heard them not as the voices of individuals, but as a single mass, a bubble of noise, a chorus of grief and survival. She could make out ants on the red rock, slowly creeping down its steep sides. One or two fell and moved no more. She heard voices on the far side of the rock, from the castle’s main gates and causeway, from the plain beyond.

She decided she would wait and see how the rest unfolded. To one of her selves the details would be grist to her mill; the other wanted to see if she could do anything to help. She couldn’t go back, they knew she had tried to steal the Spear of Longius with Balin – but if anyone came up the northern road she might be able to help them. Perhaps Balin – Sir Balin – and his goat-smelling girl themselves would come after her. She could see small groups of ants moving away from the castle, most of them heading towards the western valleys and the new fortress of Camelot.

The friction of the rocks rubbing together, and the dust in the air, created fire. She could have sworn she felt the glow on her face, as if the ruins of Spar-Longius were the sun brought down to Britain. The heat crackled as blue lightning within the dust cloud, and burned at points over the huge pile of glowing rubble.

After two hours, people stopped climbing down the rock. That was that. Everyone who was going to survive had, barring miracles or magic, made it out of King Pellam’s pile.

(Ha! King Pellam’s Pile. That was good – she’d have to remember that one.)

She frowned as several rocks left the pile and floated into the sky in different directions. They were massive, but looked weightless in the air. Several moments later she heard the noise, like the pop of air released from a tightly sealed bottle as its stopper is removed. The pop was followed by a resumption of the screams from around the base of the rock.

One of the floating rocks in particular seemed to be absolutely still. It was curious. She tilted her head to one side, examining the phenomenon. Well actually, she thought, perhaps it was getting a little bigger.

Her eyes widened. It was getting bigger. Quite a lot bigger. It was silently flying towards her.

She stood. She didn’t want to move. She couldn’t work out precisely where it was going to come down. It was glowing red-hot as it split the air, trailing smoke.

She threw herself down the hill. The huge rock gouged a deep wound of grass and rock from the place where she had been standing moments before. It bounced, and landed again four or five hundred yards beyond, in the fields of some unfortunate farmer. It tumbled on and on, for at least a mile, perhaps two. Every crater it created burned at the edges.

‘You see, my dear,’ she said to herself, ‘you’ve got to be there to get that kind of detail.’

Darkness had all but fallen when survivors of Spar-Longius started passing along the northern road. An odd assortment of pilgrims were the first to go by. She slung her harp over her back, and limped down the hill towards them.

‘Wotcher,’ she called to them, ‘were you over at Spar-Longius, then?’

They turned to face her. A couple of them were in a terrible state of disrepair. The two oldest helped each other along: a bent, but strangely beautiful old woman, and a tall, strong-looking, grey-haired man with a gorgeous jewelled sword, who was limping more badly than the harper herself. His lower legs were heavily bandaged, as if someone had sliced his hamstrings. A portly, miserable young man with tears in his eyes led an equally miserable-looking horse, on which a pretty, curly-haired young girl was riding. They were all covered in red dust and brown dirt. The young girl spoke first.

‘We were,’ she gestured at the fat boy. ‘He was down there for ages, until Merlin popped him and a few others out.’

The boy looked on glumly. ‘My mistress had to promise him the spear to buy our way out. She’d pulled it out of…’ he mumbled. ‘Won it with her… magic. But Merlin took it for Arthur. Then the… Slates took all my money and sent me away. That was my money.’ The fat lad sobbed, more with grief for his money than at the fall of Spar-Longius, the harper thought.

‘I see,’ said the harper, though she didn’t really. ‘And where are you lot heading now?’

‘North,’ said the tall man. ‘We’re going looking for the army of a great general. Mordred, I think his name is.’

‘Indeed we are, my dear,’ said the beautiful crone. ‘I have heard that my son is with him.’ Her voice was much younger than her face, though her eyes were every bit as aged as her appearance. It was a strange combination of sight and sound.

‘She was going to come with us too,’ said the grey-haired man, thumbing back down the road. ‘But then she had an argument with Norma here and refused to go any further.’

‘I merely promised her father I would take his daughter to safety,’ said the old woman.

‘She’s nasty and stupid and a whinge,’ said the young girl. ‘Rich girls aren’t all like that, you know, but she’s one of the ones that give them a bad name.’

The harper looked back down the road and saw the young woman of whom they were speaking sitting on a stone milepost. She was in the depths of despair; her silver headpiece was ruined, her sky blue dress tattered and torn.

‘Wait a moment, don’t I know you?’ said the portly boy, pointing at the harper. ‘Aren’t you her –’

But the harper was already half-way back to her mistress, limping at speed. ‘Wait for us. I know how to get her moving,’ Elia called over her shoulder. ‘Oi! Damosel B! Time to get shifted; we’ve a long road ahead.’