Pattern

Outside in the yard, most of the farm people were gathered in a tight group. They were staring up towards the mountain, and it didn't take Poldarn long to figure out why.

A column of crow-black smoke was rising out of a red gash in the mountainside, just to the right of the rather crooked summit.

Chapter Four

'What do you suppose that's in aid of?' someone asked. Nobody seemed disposed to reply. The red gash was flickering in and out of sight, sporadically masked by plump white clouds-steam, presumably.

'How long has it been doing that?' Poldarn asked the man standing next to him, a long-barn hand called Rook.

'Well, since the noises,' Rook replied, as if stating the obvious.

'What noises?'

Rook shifted his gaze from the mountain and gave Poldarn a curious stare. 'The three loud bangs,' he said. 'You didn't hear them, then?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I was in the forge.'

'Three loud bangs,' Rook said, 'and when we stopped for a look, there was all that black stuff coming out the top.' He frowned. This was clearly something outside his experience, and it occurred to Poldarn that these people-his people-probably didn't come across something new and unknown more than once or twice in a lifetime. 'You were abroad all those years,' Rook said. 'You got any idea what it is?'

Poldarn nodded. 'I think so,' he said. 'I think it's a-' He paused. No word in their language, his language, for volcano. 'I've never seen anything like it that I can remember,' he said carefully. 'But yes, I think I know what it is. Where's Halder?'

Rook indicated with a sideways nod of his head. 'So what is it, then?'

'It's a mountain with its head on fire,' Poldarn replied. 'What does it look like?'

He pushed his way through the crowd until he was standing next to Grandfather. 'So,' he said, 'what do you make of that?'

Grandfather shrugged. 'Beats me,' he said.

'I think there's a word for it in one of the languages I know. Basically, it's a mountain that gets stuffed up with fire, like a boil or an abscess under a tooth; and when it gets full, it bursts.'

'Oh.' Grandfather was frowning. 'Is it bad?'

'Usually,' Poldarn replied. 'Unfortunately, you now know as much about volcanoes-that's the foreign word for them-as I do.'

'Volcanoes.' Grandfather repeated the word a couple of times, as if trying out a new tool for balance and fit. 'How is it bad?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I don't honestly know,' he admitted. 'But if that red stuff is fire and the white cloud is steam, chances are it's melting a lot of the pack snow, at the very least. Has the river ever flooded, do you know?'

Halder rubbed his chin. 'Once,' he said, 'when I was a boy. But that was just months of heavy rain, and everything got so waterlogged there was nowhere for it to go.'

'Fine,' Poldarn replied. 'All I'm thinking is, if there's a whole lot of melt water coming off the mountain all at once, it's got to go somewhere.'

'Not here,' Halder said, after a moment's thought. 'Come summer thaw, the melt always runs off down the other fork of the valley, out to Lyatsbridge and Colscegsford.' He pursed his lips. 'Colsceg's pretty high up, but I wouldn't want to be in Lyat's house if you're right about a spate coming down.'

Rook, who'd been listening in on the conversation, said, 'Maybe I'd better get over there, in case they haven't figured it for themselves.'

'The black mare's saddled,' Halder replied. 'I was going to ride back with Colsceg when he went on.'

Rook hurried off; and Poldarn noticed out of the corner of his eye that the stablehands had the horse outside and waiting for him some time before he reached the stable door. 'What happens next?' Halder asked.

'No idea,' Poldarn said. 'You sure it's never done anything like this before?'

'Could well have done, before we were here to see it. But not since we've been here.'

They stood and watched for a while, but nothing else seemed to be happening. Gradually, people started drifting away, back to work. They seemed uneasy, though, as if they'd suddenly woken up after an hour's unscheduled and unexplained sleep. 'Bloody thing,' Halder muttered resentfully. 'Always something.'

Indeed, Poldarn said to himself; how thoughtless of the mountain to catch on fire, just when everything was going so smoothly. 'Is Lyatsbridge a big place?' he asked, by way of making conversation.

'What? Oh, no, nothing much; not so big as here, or Colscegsford. Lyat was one of Colsceg's father's men, struck out on his own thirty years back. He took the ford because nobody wanted it, on account of the flooding.'

That seemed to cover that. 'Do you want to stay close to the house, in case something happens?' he asked.

Halder shook his head. 'Don't suppose there's anything to worry about,' he replied, in a voice that suggested he was making it so by saying it out loud. 'We might as well take that walk down as far as your wood, now you're here.'

And sure enough, Colsceg and his offspring were suddenly there, right behind him. Stands to reason they're invited too, Poldarn thought, since Elja's going to be living there one day. He looked up at the mountain again, just in case it had stopped performing while his back was turned; but it hadn't. 'Maybe Polden fell asleep,' he suggested, 'and his chimney caught alight.'

Halder didn't bother to reply to that.

Needless to say, nobody spoke, all the way from the house to the bottom meadow. When they reached the river, the whole party stopped; Poldarn wondered why, then realised that this was the last point from which they'd be able to see the mountain, without the reverse slope of the combe being in the way.

'Still at it, then,' Colsceg said.

He was right; the mountain was still pouring black smoke into the sky, like a leaking wineskin. They stood and scowled at it for a short while, then moved on.

More than once as they walked, Poldarn had looked sideways at Elja; but each time, she was looking straight ahead, absolutely no trace of an expression on her face. Egil, he noticed, stayed the other side of her, as far away from Poldarn as he could get, and he just looked bored and slightly constipated. Well, Poldarn thought, who wants chatty inlaws and a wife who talks all the time?

His first sight of the wood came as they rounded a slight bend in the river, where the western slope of the combe fell sharply down to the bank. Over its shoulder he could make out the tops of pine trees. The sight was extremely familiar-which didn't make any sense at all, he realised, since the last time he'd been here, the trees would have been too short to show above the hillside. He dismissed it as his imagination coining false memories for him.

The wood was smaller than he'd thought it would be; about six dozen tall, thin trees on a very gentle slope, next to a flat, bare platform standing on a pronounced mound; a highly suitable place to build a house, though the view wouldn't be up to much. As they approached, a mob of crows got up out of the treetops and flapped slowly, angrily away, like resentful tenants being evicted; not that far off the mark, Poldarn reckoned, since they'd lose their roost when the trees were taken down. Their problem, he told himself. As he watched them toiling laboriously into the air, he felt something on his face and the top of his head; a lighter touch than rain, more like snow. He ran his hand across his forehead and noticed a few specks of black ash. It reminded him of the awkward-to-walk-on black rocks on the mountain, between the snow and the grazing. If the others noticed it, they weren't curious enough to investigate, or else retrieving bits of debris off yourself in public was bad manners.

'Good lumber,' Barn said suddenly. It was the first thing Poldarn had heard him say.

'Scrawny,' Halder replied. 'Should've thinned them out fifteen years back. Didn't seem any point back then, though. Still,' he added, with a sigh, 'it'll have to do.'

It was just a clump of trees, a stand of timber-and then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, Poldarn caught his breath, because it wasn't just that. As he stared at the trees, he began remembering them, only he wasn't seeing them as they had been or even as they were now, but how they would be, one day, one day soon. Just to the right of the middle of the stand grew the roof-tree, the backbone of the house; surrounding it were the girts, joists, floorboards and rafters; below them, slightly asplay on the gentle gradient, stood the braces, sills and plates, with the cross-beams standing out above them. He could see them as trees, still cluttered with branches and clothed in bark. He could also see them as sawn, planed timber, a skeleton of a house (like the skeletons of dead animals and men that litter the ground on a battlefield that nobody's dared go near for twenty years, on account of ghosts and ill fortune); he could see them in place, slotted together, tenon mated into mortice, joints lapped, dowels clouted home, waiting to be cladded in green-sawn planking, or else the outer skin had rotted or burnt away, leaving only the naked frame.