Silver on the Tree Read Online Free PDF

outbuilding that was known, more romantically than it deserved, as the barn. Their house had once been a vicarage,never a farm, but the chickens and rabbits that their farmbred mother kept were enough to change its mood.
    James snapped on the electric light, and they paused, blinking; then collected hammer, pliers, stout nails, some chicken-wire and several pieces of left-over half-inch board.
    â€œJust right,” Stephen said.
    â€œDad made a new rabbit-hutch last week. Those are the bits.”
    â€œLeave the light on. It’ll shine out.”
    A shaft of light from the dusty window beamed out into the night. They began cutting chicken-wire and fitting together boards, on the far side of the hen-run where the mink had wriggled its way in.
    â€œWill—see if there’s another piece of board in there, about a foot longer than this one.”
    â€œRighto.”
    Will crossed the moonlit yard towards the stream of yellow light reaching out from the barn. Behind him the sound of Stephen’s hammer rang rhythmically over the still-restless murmur of the hens.
    And then the whirling took hold of his mind again, and caught his senses into confusion, and the wind seemed to blow in his face. Tap-tap-tap … tap-tap-tap … the hammering seemed to change, to a hollow metallic sound as of iron striking iron. Staggering, Will leaned against the wall of the barn. The shaft of light was gone, and the moon. The alteration came with no more warning than that: a time-slip so complete that in an instant he could see no trace of Stephen or James, nor any familiar thing or animal or tree.
    The night was darker than it had been. There was a creaking sound that he could not identify. He found he was standing against a wall still, but a wall of different texture; his fingers, which had been touching wood, discovered now large blocks of stone, mortared together. The air was still warm as in his own time. From the other side of the wall, he could hear voices. Two men. And both voices were so familiar to Will, out of the other side of his life that his familyhad never touched or seen, that the small hairs rose on the back of his neck and joy swelled in his chest like pain.
    â€œBadon, then.” A deep voice, expressionless.
    â€œIt will have to be.”
    â€œDo you think you can drive them back?”
    â€œI don’t know. Do you?” The second voice was almost as deep, but lightened by a warmth of feeling, like a profound amusement.
    â€œYes. You will drive them back, my lord. But it will not be forever. These men may be driven back, but the force of nature that they represent has never yet been driven back for long.”
    The warm voice sighed. “You are right. This island is doomed, unless…. I know you are right, my lion. I have known it since I was a boy. Since a day—” He stopped. There was a long pause.
    The first man said gently, “Do not think about it.”
    â€œDo you know, then? I have never spoken of it to anyone. Well, of course you must know.” He laughed softly; the sound held affection rather than amusement. “Were
you
there, Old One? You? I suppose you must have been.”
    â€œI was there.”
    â€œAll the best men of Britain slaughtered. Every one. Three hundred leaders at the one gathering,
three hundred!
Stabbed, strangled, clubbed, at one sign—I even saw him give the sign, do you know that? I, a boy of seven…. All dead. My father amongst them. The blood flowed and the grass was red, and the Dark began its rising over Britain—” He choked on the words.
    The deep voice said, grim and cold, “It shall not rise for ever.”
    â€œNo, by heaven it shall not!” He had collected himself again. “And a few days from now Badon shall show that.
Mons Badonicus, mons felix.
So let us hope.”
    â€œThe gathering is begun, and men come from every corner of your loyal Britain,” said the first. “And this