together. Then you must go ahead and catch up with the rest of the band.'
Hastily the companions mounted and urged their steeds toward the grove. Before they reached it, Taran's horse drew up sharply, then bore suddenly to the left. A loud whinny rose from the cover of trees along the shoulder of a hill. In astonishment, Taran slackened the reins and let the horse canter freely toward the sound. In another few moments he glimpsed a pale shape beyond the foliage. As the steed carried him closer, he recognized Rhun's piebald mare.
'See there!' he called to Fflewddur. 'Rhun can't be far. We must have gone by him during the night.'
Reining up, he leaped from the saddle. His heart sank. The horse stood riderless. At the sight of the other steeds, she raised her head, shook her mane, and whickered anxiously.
Fearing the worst, Taran hurried past the mare while Fflewddur and Gurgi dismounted and raced after him. He stopped short. Before him, in a clearing, stood something that looked at first like a huge straw beehive. Fflewddur by then had come up beside him. Taran raised a hand in warning and moved cautiously toward the strange hut.
The conical thatched roof, he now saw, had fallen away in many places. Rough stones, piled one on top of the other, formed a low side wall, a corner of which had collapsed into a heap of rubble. There were no windows, and the single, heavy door hung askew from sagging leather hinges. He stepped closer. The holes in the thatch stared at him like empty eyes.
Fflewddur glanced about him. 'I'm not too fond of going up and rapping on the door,' he whispered, 'and asking whoever's inside whether they've happened to see the Prince of Mona. Somehow, it seems the kind of place even Rhun would rather avoid. But I suppose there's no other way to find out.'
Just then the door was flung open from the inside. Gurgi, with a yell, sought safety by scrambling up a tree. Taran's hand went to his sword.
'Hullo, hullo!' Prince Rhun, beaming, stood in the doorway. Aside from looking a little sleepy, he appeared quite himself and altogether unharmed. 'I hope you've got some breakfast with you,' he added, rubbing his hands eagerly. 'I'm nearly starved to death. Have you ever noticed how the fresh air sharpens one's appetite? Most surprising!
'Come in, come in,' Rhun went on, while Taran stared speechless at him. 'You'd be amazed how comfortable it is. Surprisingly snug and cozy. Where did the rest of you pass the night? I hope you slept as well as I did. You can't imagine…'
Taran could control himself no longer. 'What have you done?' he burst out. 'Why did you leave the searching party? Count yourself lucky that getting lost was the worst that happened to you!'
Prince Rhun blinked and looked puzzled. 'Leave the searching party?' he asked. 'Why, I didn't actually leave it. Not on purpose, you understand. It happened when I fell off my horse and had to go chasing after her all over nowhere, until I found her near this hut. By then it was getting dark, so I went to sleep. That's only common sense, wouldn't you say? I mean, why sleep outdoors when you can put a roof over your head?
'As far as being lost goes,' Rhurt went on, 'it seems to me
'Yes, you command,' Taran flung back angrily, 'as you were born to, as a king's son.' He stopped abruptly. Another instant and he would have cried aloud his promise to King Rhuddlum,, and his oath to protect this witless Prince. Taran clenched his teeth. 'Prince Rhun,' he said coldly, 'you need not remind us we are under your orders. But for your own safety, I urge you to stay close to us.'
'And I advise you to stay away from strange huts,' put in Fflewddur. 'Last time I was in one, I almost got changed into a toad.' The bard shook his head. 'Shun them? huts, that is,' he added. 'You never know what disagreeable thing you'll run into? and by the time you find out, it's too late.'
'Changed into a toad?' cried Rhun, not the least dismayed. 'I say, that might be interesting. I should like to try it one day. But there's nothing like that to worry about. No one lives here. And they haven't for a long time.'
'Hurry, then,' Taran said, resolving never again to let Prince Rhun out of his sight. 'We must join the others. We'll have long, hard riding before we catch up to them.'
'Immediately!' said Rhun, who was wearing nothing but his shirt. 'I shall get my things together.'
Gurgi, meanwhile, had clambered down from the tree. His curiosity getting the better of his prudence, he loped across the clearing and thrust his head into the doorway, at last venturing inside with Rhun. Fflewddur and the impatient Taran followed him.
It was, Taran saw, as the Prince had told them. A heavy layer of dust covered the wooden tables and benches. A spider had spun an enormous web in one corner, but even the web was deserted. On a broken hearthstone lay the charred remnants of a long-dead fire. Near the hearth, a number of large cookpots, dry and empty now, had been overturned. Earthen bowls and tall jars, shattered into fragments, were strewn about the floor. Through the holes in the roof the leaves of more than one autumn had fallen, nearly burying a stool whose legs had broken into splinters. The hut was silent; the noises of the forest did not enter. Taran stood uneasily while Prince Rhun fumbled with his gear.
Gurgi, fascinated by so many strange odds and ends, lost no time in poking through them. Suddenly he cried out in surprise. 'Look, look!' he called, holding up a sheaf of tattered parchment.
Taran knelt beside Gurgi and examined the ragged bundle. The fold mice, he realized, had discovered the packet long before. Many of the sheets had been gnawed away; others were rain sodden and blotted. The few undamaged pages were covered with cramped writing. Only at the bottom of the pile did Taran find pages in good repair. These had been carefully bound in leather to make a small tome, and their surface was clear and unmarked.
Prince Rhun, who still had not got around to buckling on his sword, came to peer over Taran's shoulder. 'I say!' he cried. 'What have you there? I can't guess what it is, but it looks interesting. And isn't that a handsome little book? I shouldn't mind having it to put down things I'm supposed to remember to do.'
'Prince Rhun,' Taran said, handing the undamaged volume to the Prince of Mona, who thrust it into his jacket, 'believe me, if there's anything that might ever help you do anything, you're welcome to it.' He went back to puzzling over the parchments. 'Between the mice and the weather,' he went on, 'there's not much to make out of this scrawl. There seems to be no beginning or ending, but as far as I can tell, these are recipes for potions.'
'Potions!' cried Fflewddur. 'Great Belin, that's something we've little use for!'
Taran, nevertheless, continued to scan and sort the pages. 'Wait, I think I've found the name of whoever wrote them. Glew, it looks like. And the potions, as it says here, are to'? his voice faltered and he turned anxiously to Fflewddur? 'to make yourself grow bigger. What can this mean?'
'How's that?' asked the bard. 'Bigger? Are you sure you haven't read it wrong?' He took the pages from Taran's hand and examined them carefully himself. When he had finished, he gave a low whistle.
'In my wanderings,' said Fflewddur, 'I've managed to learn a number of things, not least of which is don't meddle. I fear that's exactly what this fellow Glew did. Indeed, what he sought was a potion to make himself bigger and stronger. If those are Glew's boots over there,' he added, pointing to the corner, 'he surely needed one, for he must have been a little fellow.'
Half hidden by leaves, a pair of well-worn boots lay on their side. They were hardly large enough to fit a child and seemed, to Taran, pitiful in their smallness and emptiness.
'He must have been painstaking,' Fflewddur went on. 'I'll say that much for him. He describes everything he did, and set down all his recipes, quite carefully and methodically. As for his ingredients,' the bard said, making a sour face, 'I should rather not think about them.'
'I say,' Prince Rhun eagerly interrupted, 'perhaps we should try them ourselves. It would be interesting to see what happens.'
'No, no!' Gurgi shouted. 'Gurgi wants no tastings of nasty lotions and potions!'
'Nor do I,' said Fflewddur. 'And neither did Glew, for the matter of that. He had no wish to drink his concoctions until he had some hope they'd work? for which I can't blame him in the least. He went about it very cleverly.
'As I gather from what he's written down here,' continued the bard, 'he went out and trapped a mountain cat? a small one, I should think, since Glew himself was such a small person. He brought her back, put her in a cage, and fed her his potions as fast as he could cook them up.'
'Poor creature,' said Taran.
