Later — he could not tell how much later or how soon — someone was splashing water on his face and saying, “It’s all right, m’lord.” Then he was lifted and slung across a shoulder and he tried to protest against it, but he couldn’t make a sound and he couldn’t move a muscle. All that he could do was sway and dangle on the shoulder.
6
There finally was existence. But that was all — existence. It was a purposeless existence that floated in a place without reference points. It floated in an emptiness that was tied to nothing. The emptiness was comfortable and there was no urge to escape from it or reach beyond it.
A tiny sound intruded: a faint, far-off chirping sound, and the emptiness of existence tried to push it off or shut itself against it. For it was not meet, it might be destructive, for even so slight a thing as a chirping sound to intrude upon it.
But the chirping sound persisted and it was nearer now or louder, and there was more of it, as if there might be many sources from which the chirps were coming.
The consciousness floated in the emptiness and listened with an enforced tolerance to the chirping sound. And the chirping brought a word. Birds. It was birds that were chirping. They were the ones that made the noise. The consciousness reluctantly struggled with the word, for it had no idea what the word might mean or if it had a meaning.
Then suddenly it did know what the word meant and that brought something else.
I am Duncan Standish, said the emptiness, and I am lying somewhere, listening to birds.
That was quite enough. That was all it needed, that was far more than it needed. It would have been content if nothing had come at all. For if this much came, there would be more yet to come and that was undesirable. The emptiness tried to shrink away, but that was impossible. Having come to something, it must then go on.
Duncan Standish, no longer an existence poised in a vault of emptiness, but Duncan Standish, something. A man, he (or it) thought, and what was a man?
Slowly he knew. Knew what he was and that he had a head and that a dull throbbing ache pulsed inside the head, with the comfort now all gone.
Duncan Standish, man, lying in some confined space, for now he became aware that he was confined.
He lay quietly to pull all his thoughts together, all those simple things that he had known at one time and only now was rediscovering. But even as he pulled his thoughts together, he kept his eyes tight shut, for he did not want to see.
If he did not see, perhaps he could go back to that emptiness and comfort he had known before.
It was no use, however. The knowledge first crept upon him slowly, then came on with a rush.
He opened his eyes and stared up at a high-noon sky seen through a leafy canopy. He raised a hand and a rough stone stopped it, bruising his knuckles. He lowered his eyes and saw the stone, a slab that covered him almost to his shoulders. Resting on the slab was the bole of a large oak tree, the bark scaling off it as if it suffered some ravaging disease.
The tomb, he thought, startled. The tomb of Wulfert, the wizard, unroofed many years ago by a falling tree. And now he was tucked into it.
It was Conrad, he told himself, who had tucked him in the tomb. It was the kind of stupid thing that Conrad would do, convinced all the time he was doing it that it was for the best, that it was perfectly logical and what any man might do.
It must have been Conrad, he told himself. Someone had talked with him, calling him “m’lord” while splashing water in his face, and no one but Conrad would have called him that. And after splashing water in his face, someone had lifted him and carried him on a shoulder, with no effort whatsoever, as if he had been no more than a sack of grain. And there was no one big enough and strong enough to do that as easily as it had been done other than Conrad. And then Conrad had crammed him in the tomb and there must surely have been a reason for doing what he did.
His first reaction was to scramble out, to free himself from the embrace of the tomb, but a sudden caution held him there. There had been danger and there might still be danger. He’d been hit on the head, probably by a thrown club, but while his head still throbbed and he was a little shaky, he seemed to be all right.
Except for the chirping of the birds there was no sound. He listened closely for the rustle of a fallen leaf, a snap of a twig that might tell him someone was nearby and moving. There were no such sounds; the birds, undisturbed, went on with their chirping.
He stirred a little, testing how he lay, and there was a dry rustling under him. Leaves, he thought, autumn-dead leaves that over the years had fallen into the tomb. Dry leaves and something else. Bones, perhaps, the bones of Wulfert, the wizard. With one hand he dug into the debris of the tomb. He could not see what his fingers brought up, for the stone slab cut off his vision, but his fingers told him — dry leaves and certain crumbling fragments that could be powdered bone. There was something, now that he had time to note it, that was digging into his left side, just below his shoulder blade. The skull, perhaps. Would the skull, he wondered, stand up, retain its shape and strength, longer than the other bones?
He shuddered, the fingers of superstitious dread reaching out to touch him, but he fought off the dread. He could not panic and surge howling from the tomb. For safety’s sake, he reminded himself sternly, he could share this space with the dead.
He wriggled a little, trying to shift the skull or whatever it might be that was pressing into his ribs. It would not shift and it seemed harder than a skull should be. Maybe, he told himself, a stone that someone, in a flush of mistaken bravado, had chucked into the tomb, before running away as if the Devil were at his heels.
Lying quietly, he listened intently. The birds, flitting from branch to branch, kept up their chirping, but there was no other sound. There was no wind and not a leaf was moving.
He shifted his hand to feel the scabbard at his side and found that the sword was in it. Conrad, meticulous even in the absurdity of what he had done, nevertheless had taken the time to make certain that the blade was secure and ready for use.
Cautiously, Duncan lifted his head to see outside the tomb. The gravestones drowsed in the sun. There was nothing else. Carefully he levered himself up and out, slid to the ground, and crouched beside the tomb. He noted that the stone of which it was constructed was covered by large patches of lichens.
From far down the hill, on the opposite side of the tomb, a twig broke with a snap. Feet scuffed through the fallen leaves.
Duncan quietly unsheathed his blade and, holding it before him, keeping well down so he’d be hidden by the tomb, crept along its base to reach the end of it in order to see who might be coming.
The scuff of leaves moved steadily up the hill. Duncan shifted his weight, getting set for swift action if it should be needed.
In a moment, he could see who it was and let the point of the blade drop to the ground. His breath came out of him with a gush of relief. He was surprised; he had not realized he had been holding his breath.
He stood erect and waved the sword in greeting to Conrad. Conrad came forward with a rush, stopping in front of him.
“Thank the good Lord,” he said. “You are all right.”
“And you? How are you?”