'So we shall!' exclaimed Fflewddur, drawing his sword. 'I'll not have my friends turned into frogs!'
'No, no!' shouted Gurgi. 'Froggies are froggies, but friends are friends!'
'Attack Morda?' Doli replied. 'Are you out of your heads? You'll end up in the same pickle as me. No, you can't risk it. Eiddileg must be warned, but before that I must finish my task. Find out more of Morda's powers and how he means to use them. There's no hope of Fair Folk standing against him unless we know better what we have to deal with. Take me back to Morda's stronghold. Somehow I'll get to the bottom of his scheme. Then carry me to a way post, so I can get word to Eiddileg and spread the alarm.'
A sudden-spasm convulsed him; for an instant Doli seemed about to choke, then a racking sneeze nearly flung him out of the puddle. 'Curse this dampness!' he sputtered. 'Curse that black-hearted Morda! He's given me all the bad points of being a frog and none of the good!' Doli began coughing violently. 'Blast it! Dow I ab losigg by voice! Bake haste! Bake haste! Pick be up. I'll show you the way. There's doe tibe to waste!'
THE COMPANIONS HURRIEDLY mounted. With Doli clinging to his saddle horn, Taran galloped where the dwarf commanded. But the forest thickened and slowed their pace, and often in the tangle of branches they were forced to dismount and go afoot. Doli had assured them the distance was not great, but his usually unfailing sense of direction had grown confused. At times the dwarf was uncertain which path to follow, and twice the companions reined up and retraced their steps.
'Dote blade be!' snapped Doli. 'I cabe over this ladd crawligg odd by belly. It's dot the sabe, seeigg it frob up here.'
To make matters worse, Doli began to shake and shudder. His eyes bleared; his nostrils streamed; and even as a frog he looked altogether miserable. With constant fits of sneezing and coughing, Doli's voice grew so hoarse he could barely force out a feeble, croaking whisper, which did nothing to improve the state of his disposition or the clarity of his directions to Taran.
Until now there had been no sign of Kaw. When the companions had first hastened to follow Doli's orders, the crow had chosen this of all moments to be exasperatingly disobedient. He flapped into the woods, stubbornly refusing to heed Taran's pleas to come back. At last Taran left him behind, sure the crow would rejoin them when he saw fit; but as the companions made their way deeper into the forest, Taran had grown more anxious for the impudent bird. Thus, when they halted to set Doli on the ground? where the dwarf insisted he could better regain his bearings? Taran was too relieved to scold the crow when Kaw finally appeared. The prankster, Taran saw, had been up to his old tricks, for he bore some glittering find in his beak.
Squawking proudly, Kaw dropped the object into the surprised Taran's hands. It was the fragment of polished bone.
'What have you done?' Taran cried in dismay, as Kaw, overweeningly pleased with himself, rocked back and forth and bobbed his head.
'The jackanapes!' burst out Fflewddur. 'He's gone back and rifled the coffer. I thought us well rid of that enchanted toothpick, now we've got it again. A sour jest, you magpie!' he exclaimed, flapping his cloak at the bird, who nimbly dodged away. 'A Fflam is fun-loving, but I see no joke in this at all. Throw it away,' he urged Taran, 'toss it into the bushes.'
'I dare not, if indeed it's a thing of enchantment,' Taran replied, though he felt as uneasy as the bard, and heartily wished Kaw had left the coffer undisturbed. A strange thought, vague and unformed, stirred in his mind, and he knelt, holding out the fragment to Doli. 'What can this be?' he asked, after briefly telling how the sliver had first come into their hands. 'Could Morda himself have hidden it?'
'Who dose?' croaked Doli. 'I've dever seed eddythigg like it. But it's edchadded, you cad be sure. Keep it, id eddy case.'
'Keep it?' cried the bard. 'We'll have nothing but ill luck from the cursed thing. Bury it!'
Swayed by Fflewddur's vehemence yet reluctant not to follow Doli's counsel, Taran stood uncertain what to do. At last, with strong misgivings, he tucked the fragment into his jacket.
Fflewddur groaned. 'Meddling! We'll only gain trouble, mark my words. A Fflam is fearless, but not when there's unknown enchantment lurking in someone's pocket.'
As they pressed on Taran shortly came to believe he had decided wrongly and that Fflewddur's unhappy prediction was well-founded. Doli had taken a turn for the worse; he could gasp no more than a word or two at a time. The frog's body trembled as in the grip of a painful ague; a sickness, Taran was sure, owing to Doli's grueling crawl overland. To keep his skin from parching, the companions drenched him regularly; while the treatment, on the one hand, kept him alive, on the other it added to his misery. Under the stream of water he sneezed, choked, and sputtered. Soon he sprawled listlessly, too feeble even to be bad-tempered.
The day had waned quickly and the companions halted in a glade, for Doli had given them to understand that from now on they must travel with utmost caution. Setting the frog carefully in the folds of a dampened cloak, Taran drew Fflewddur aside and spoke hurriedly with him.
'He has no strength for his task,' Taran murmured. 'We dare not let him go on.'
Fflewddur nodded. 'I doubt he could, even if he wanted to.' The bard's face, like Taran's, was drawn tightly with concern.
Taran was silent. What he must do was plain to him; yet, despite himself, he shrank from facing it. His mind groped for another, better plan, but found none, returning always to the same answer. What kept him from taking the clear course was not reluctance to help a close companion, for this he would have done gladly. Nor was it fear for his life, but terror that he might share Doli's fate; not only that his own quest would fail but that he might himself be imprisoned, hapless in some pitful creature shape, captive forever.
He knelt at Doli's side. 'You must stay here. Fflewddur and Gurgi will watch over you. Tell me how I may find Morda.'
Chapter 8
The Walls of Thorns
HEARING THIS, DOLI KICKED weakly and croaked an incomprehensible protest, though nothing else could he do but agree to Taran's plan. With Kaw on his shoulder, Taran set off afoot through the woods. Behind him loped Gurgi, who had insisted on going with him.
After a time Taran shortened his stride and finally halted to glance around him at the forest now thick with brambles. High thorn bushes rose amid the trees in a tangled, impassable screen. Taran realized he had found what he sought. The tall bushes were no haphazard growth, but had been craftily twined into a dense barrier, a living wall nearly twice his height, bristling with spines sharper than the talons of a gwythaint. Taran drew his sword and strove to cut an opening in the thicket.
The brambles were hard as cold iron and Taran blunted both his strength and his blade against them. All he gained for his labor was a tiny hole to which he pressed his eye; he made out nothing more than a dark mound of boulders and black turf surrounded by rank weeds and burdock. What first seemed the lair of a wild beast he saw to be a rambling, ill-shaped dwelling of low, squat walls roofed with sod. There was no movement, no sign of life, and he wondered if the wizard had left his fastness and the companions had come too late. The thought only put a sharper edge to his uneasiness.
'Somehow Doli forced his way in,' Taran murmured, shaking his head. 'But his skill is greater than mine; he must have struck on an easier passage. If we try climbing over,' Taran added, 'we risk being seen.'
'Or caught on brambles with jabbings and stabbings!' Gurgi replied. 'Oh, bold Gurgi does not like climbing walls without knowing what lies in lurkings beyond.'
Taran took the crow from his shoulder. 'Morda surely has his own passage: a breach in the thorns, or perhaps a tunnel. Find it for us,' he said urgently to Kaw. 'Find it for us, old friend.'
'And hasten, too,' Gurgi put in. 'No jokings and trickings!'
Silent as an owl, the crow flew upward, circled the barrier, then dropped out of sight. Taran and Gurgi crouched waiting in the shadows. After some while, when the sun had dipped below the trees and dusk had gathered with still no tidings from Kaw, Taran began to fear for the bird. Prankster though he was, Kaw understood the seriousness of his mission, and Taran knew it was more than whim that delayed the crow's return.
At last Taran dared wait no longer. He strode to the barrier and carefully began to climb. The branches writhed
