On one tree at the same time? But it was there, solid to touch. With a sudden certainty she thought, I'll paint that one day, as it is, and it will be my best.

Ivy forested the walls at the entrance to the Hall, stems as thick as tree-boles. Inside, the Hall was all of light-coloured wood; floor, walls and high heavy-beamed ceiling; benches and tables too. At the far end was a raised platform with four carved chairs. The windows behind it were high and narrow, light slotting in dimly. There were tables where saffron candles stood by the hundred but no elukoi-except one.

It was Mathurin, without his harp. He saw them, smiled and came over.

Holly gazed round, puzzled. "Why do they call this the Hall of Three Ships? I don't see none."

"Three ships came out of Ys; Raven's Brandhu, Rowan's Quicken-Tree, and the White Dove of the House of Diamond. Here they remain. For we came ash.o.r.e and found the Hills, and took the ships apart to build shelter against that first freezing winter-we were all but in the shadow of the glaciers. And in later years we quarried the stone."

Holly wanted to make sure. "You were at Ys?"

"I was. I had a room at the top of a slim tower, wide-windowed and looking out over the sea. In the morning when the air was clear you could see the sun come up blood-red, making a scarlet track over the green waves; the white sea-walls would turn gold and the wind smelt of salt and sea-drift.

"And one time I woke early and went down the winding outer stair and up to the rose gardens atop the sea-wall. And I went down, for it was lowest tide, to the thin margin of shingle and watched the foam go from grey to blinding white and listened to the seamews calling, and saw the curving waves. On that same morning I saw the Unicorn, on the beach, warning us to take ship and avoid the treachery of Rak-Domnu. And it were easier looking full at the sun, than at the Unicorn in daylight. But Caer Ys we never saw again."

"Tell me," Holly said carefully, "about midsummer. And midwinter."

"What of them?"

"That's what I want to know."

She saw the harper look questioningly at Fletcher and then shrug. "Well, they have power, the solstices; longest and shortest days, both. Light and dark. We may use the mid-summer power, if we will it. And we fear-we know-the morkani will use midwinter against us; power of cold and dark and death. And we do not know which is right: to war against them to the uttermost-and then many will die-or else, or else..."

"What?" Chris asked, when he didn't continue. "What else is there but to fight?"

"This year the stars be right, this year alone and such a conjunction not to come again for uncounted ages. For they be now as they were when we came from Faerie; and so there might be an end to this exile at last, if we could but summon the Starlord to lead us home."

Holly thought: I never realised what homesickness was. But his voice... ah, no. n.o.body should want anything that badly.

"If we summon him at midsummer with the Harp of Math, that he loved above all, I think the Starlord would come, for he is not bound by Earth or Faerie. And if he comes, there is an end to war and to fighting and to growing old and to death, and there is our way home. It must be midsummer, if it is to be at all. And the King decides and will tell us soon. For we be all gathered together for this council; the House of Raven and such as remain of the Houses of Rowan and Diamond. Too, there is myself and Master Elathan and the Lady Eilunieth-"

"Is she here?" Fletcher cut in.

"So; and should she not be? Is this not the one day she leaves both Flame and Well? Surely she is here."

"I have not seen her. It is not her way to be late."

There was no time to go into it further. Holly, startled, realised the Hall had been filling up while they talked and now was crowded with elukoi. They watched her and Chris with varying expressions: shock, surprise, curiosity, even fear. Shethought, I bet they'd like to get their hands on Elathan. They don't like us being here at all.

A drum beat twice, heavy and deep, and silence fell. Then Oberon came into the Hall, Tarac on his shoulder.

The King's hair was white as Silverleaf's. He was tall and inhumanly thin, brown-skinned and golden-eyed and he wore a white robe embroidered in silver with signs ancient and pagan. He pa.s.sed Holly and Chris without noticing them, mounted the dais and seated himself in the greatest of the four carven chairs. One of the flamehead elukoi bore to him a sword with a bronze hilt and a pommel worked in the form of a golden apple; he laid the naked sword across his knees and then she saw his hands. The skin was mottled with darker brown freckles and the veins stood up as dark blue ridges. Oberon of Faerie was old.

"Now," whispered Elathan, suddenly and quietly at their side. "We break the morkani once and for all time."

"I have not heard that. Wait, before you begin your wars." Mathurin then signed for silence, as the King's deep voice came to them.

"Children of Faerie, hear me. The solstice comes. I call the Harper, I call the Sorcerer, I call the Lady. I charge these ministers of mine to do my will. Let all be made ready; let the Harp be brought from the Well and at the right and proper time I charge you to summon the Lord of Stars, summon Fyraire to open the gates that are closed, summon the Unicorn to lead us home.

"As I have spoken, so let it be."

Holly heard Mathurin let out a long breath and saw him grip weakly at the table as the tension drained out of him.

Elathan, suddenly frowning, went up to speak with the King. And then down by the door was a sudden noise and confusion, the elukoi crowding out and raised voices heard.

"Stay. I'll discover what it is." Fletcher slid into the press of bodies.

"Christine; Holly-"

Holly swung round to see Elathan come down from speak-ing with Oberon. His face was bloodless.

"What's up?"

"You are to leave-both of you-now."

"Why?" Without reason she felt cold, sick. Fletcher's voice came clear from outside.

"Bring Sandys-quickly!"

"The Healer? Starlord, no! I was afraid of this."

She found Elathan's hand on her shoulder, was abruptly pushed through the crowd and outside the Hall. For a minute she was confused; then she noticed a knot of elukoi bending over something on the gra.s.s. As Sandys shouldered in, holding his satchel of herbs, she saw it was a body.

Chris leaned forward. "Christ! It's Eilunieth."

She lay sprawled on her back, arms and legs flung wide. Her skin was sickly white under dirt, her mouth blue and her eyes shut; and all the right side of her body was grazed and b.l.o.o.d.y. The leg was scabbed and crusted with blood. Holly couldn't take her eyes away.

Another elukoi knelt by her, dirty and utterly weary. As Silverleaf ran to him, he lifted his head.

"I have brought her from Orione. Well for you and her that I was there. None other could have done it." He spoke halt-ingly. "The caverns are gone. Fallen in. Rock everywhere. She was sorely hit."

Fletcher pushed nearer. "Is she dead?"

"Nay; but close." Sandys stood up briskly. "Help me move her. I can do nothing here."

Holly swallowed convulsively. As they carried the woman away, her head fell back and her mouth gaped open. Silver helped the other elukoi up and supported him as they followed her.

Elathan said, "You had best go. Now. While you can."

Chris snarled, "I don't know what you're talking about!"

"But I know. I know now what broke the binding spell on the coin. I know that same thing must have broken the guard-ing spells on Orione; and so the morkani have brought darkness down full-force on the caverns."

"What?"

"You-" his finger stabbed first at Holly, then at Chris "-and you."

"No!" Holly shouted. "You can't tell us that's our fault. There's no way."

"Human-both of you: human!" He spat it out like an obscenity.

Holly remembered, then. Fletcher had said: the heart of magic is Faerie, and far from here, and may be overwhelmed by things of Earth. And what belongs to Earth more than humans, who never quite believed in magic at all...

"We didn't know" she said.

"You think that matters? Lord, but I should never have taken you to Orione. Spells once broken, the sea-people do not sleep. And if all were known, may be they have done worse than kill Eilunieth-" control lost, the anger snarled out "-who knows what you have done to Brancaer already? Get out! Get out before you kill us all!"9 The Harp of Math Holly hummed a Davy Starren track absently, dawdling along the top path of Downdingle. It ran through a strip of woodland between the back gardens of the Cornton Estate and the ghyll itself. The stream here was only four or five feet below road level. A hundred yards on, where it dropped twenty feet, she had seen the gates of Orione open.

She stopped and whistled the dog b.u.mble out of the undergrowth. His walk was her sole excuse for being there.

So Elathan warned us off-but I reckon all the harm's been done. Eilunieth. Is she dead? G.o.dammit, somebody could've come and told us, that isn't much to ask.

A splintery paling fence blocked her way. Just beyond it a large notice proclaimed DANGER SUBSIDENCE!

Is that what they call it? If they only knew... what am I talking about? It must've been subsidence, what else?

"Holly." Fletcher was there among the hornbeam and brambles; somehow she hadn't seen him. "I thought I would see you."

Oh did you? Holly wasn't about to admit that was why she was there. "How's Eilunieth?"

"Living. She is in the house of Sandys the Healer."

"Will she be OK?"

"In time." Embarra.s.sed, she thought, Is he trying to get rid of me?

He reached over and pulled part of the fence aside. "Go down and look."

"Aren't you coming?" When he didn't move, she looped the dog's lead over the fence and made her way crabwise down the steep slope.

The local paper had headlined it Ma.s.sIVE SOIL ERO-SION and made Downdingle stream responsible for under-mining the banks. The small monochrome photograph had not prepared her for the reality.

The ground crumbled away in front of her. Both the high banks had torn away from their foundations and spilled downstream. Four great elm trees lay uprooted down the choked watercourse, branches torn and roots spidering naked to the sky. The gates of Orione no longer existed; for fifty yards upstream the land had collapsed to the level of the lower river-bed.

Light struck down, glittering silver on the rocks, the mud, the stream. Water collected in murky pools.

What a mess... Holly turned and climbed away, feeling sick.

"The fault was not yours." Fletcher held out a hand and pulled her up the last steep bank. Replacing the fence, he added, "Elathan knows that, but he was angered at the Council."

There's an understatement for you. We were thrown out. That led her thoughts back to the Council, and a question that had been troubling her. "Here-what about the Harp? Did it survive?"

"None knows. There are spells on the wreckage that prevent us even going close." He caught her expression of disbelief.

"The morkani, having one claw-hold on land, are able to bar us from Orione, even though they may not themselves come ash.o.r.e."

"But Mathurin said it had to be that harp."

"So; and the King will not go back on his word. The harper must play a common harp, and hope." He eyed her speculatively for a moment. "Listen, tell me what you think of this-the sole way that coin could have got from Mirror-mere to your town, is that one of the elukoi took it. Also this: none knew the spells guarding Orione had been broken. Yet the morkani knew. How so? Elathan swears there was no sea-magic put on the caverns before their destruction. The morkani were told. And by who? By one or more of us, the elukoi..."

Holly shoved her hands in her pockets and stared down towards the wreckage. "That's nasty. I mean, it sounds as if it's true, and if one of your lot is on the other side-and caused this-that's nasty. Does Elathan know?"

"Yes, but he does not believe. True, I half-think he is right, for who could it be?"

"I don't know." Behind them the traffic growled through the Estate. A thrush sang in Downdingle. Briefly Holly thought of falling stones, shuddering earth and pain and chaos in the dark. "That one that brought Eilunieth out-he must've had a h.e.l.l of a time."

"He came out by the Deepway, that now is fallen in." Fletcher turned back towards the wood. "I do not know what may chance at midsummer, but certainly the morkani will have no time for humans. You and Chris are free of this."

And he was gone.

But-oh, d.a.m.n! She walked thoughtfully home in the golden evening. Friday, the end of a week of exams, the weekend ahead... she was depressed. Tomorrow's mid-summer, she thought. And what's going to happen to Fletcher and Mathurin and Silver and the rest? And Brancaer...

Leaving the Hills, she had looked back once at Brancaer. It was that hour of the evening when the June sun loses its fierce heat and hammering white light and turns a wine-amber colour in the air. This gold was diffused among the tawny brick houses and the tops of verdant orchards, the grey towers and the distant and strangely-forested horizon. It washed in like a sea over Brancaer and brought Holly's heart aching into her throat.

Later she went over to Chris to discuss things.

"Out of it, are we?" Chris said at the door, when she left. "I'm not so sure. The Harp... there's something there I can almost work out. No good tonight. I'll sleep on it. Come round tomorrow morning, OK?"

"OK. About nine. Though I don't know what good you think you'll do.""Nor do I-yet."

It was one of those hot mornings with an amber haze filming the blue sky, the horizon dirty with low cloud.

"I've got it."

"Really? I hope it ain't catching!"

"Funny ha ha."

Chris slammed the gate behind her and started up Park Road towards St Kevins. "We gonna find Fletcher. I'll explain then."

"Hey-!"

"We haven't got time to go through it twice. From what you said, he's keeping an eye on Orione for Elathan. We'll try there first. Catch a bus by the church."

"If you say so."

A light wind saved the day from being stifling. Chris was cool in skirt and blouse; Holly was hot in denim, and plaited her hair to keep it out of her face. As ever, most of England seemed to have come to the south coast, but as the bus moved into urban back streets they lost the crowds.

The bus left them at the bridge over the Dingle. They climbed down into the ravine and trotted upstream. At the barbed-wire fence they were met by a barking dog; rough-coated, alert, and white save for one red ear... then a voice called "Holdfast!" and the hound was silent.

"Well?" Fletcher at the fence, not looking pleased to see them.

"Very well, thanks." Chris grinned disarmingly. "Hey, can we get to where we were first time, the pool and the gate?"

"I could show you, from here. To go there... there have been further rockfalls, there may be more."

Holly heard Chris's indrawn breath when she saw the wreckage; she had decided, in revenge for being mystified, to give Chris no warning.

"Jesus Christ. This is gonna be trickier than I thought."