The Grey King Read Online Free Page A

to Bardsey—and so, they say, there is an old pilgrims’ road that goes over the mountain from Machynlleth to Tywyn, past Abergynolwyn. And along the side of this valley, no doubt. Or perhaps higher up. Most of the old ways go along high places, they were safer there. But nobody knows where to find Cadfan’s Way now.”
    â€œI see,” said Will. It was more than enough; he knew that now he would be able to find the Way, given time. But increasingly he felt that there was very little time left; that it was urgent for this quest, so oddly lost by his memory, to be accomplished very soon. On the day of the dead. . . . And what was the quest, and where, and why? If only he could remember . . .
    John Rowlands turned towards the hedge again. “Well—”
    â€œI’ll see you later,” Will said. “Thank you. I’m trying to walk all round the edge of the farm.”
    â€œTake it gently. That is a long walk for a convalescent, the whole of it.” Rowlands straightened suddenly, pointing a finger at him in warning. “And if you go up the valley and get to the Craig yr Aderyn end—that way—make sure you check the boundaries on your map, and do not go off your uncle’s land. That is Caradog Prichard’s farm beyond, and he is not kind with trespassers.”
    Will thought of the malicious, light-lashed eyes in the sneering face he had seen from the Land-Rover with Rhys. “Oh,” he said. “Caradog Prichard. All right. Thanks. Diolch yn fawr. Is that right?”
    John Rowlands’s face broke into creases of laughter. “Not bad,” he said. “But perhaps you should stick to just diolch.”
    The gentle thud of his axe dwindled behind Will and was lost in the insect-hum of the sunny afternoon, with the scattered calls of birds and sheep. The way that Will was going led sideways across the valley, with the grey-green sweep of the mountain rising always before him; it blocked out more and more of the sky as he walked on. Soon he was beginning to climb, and then the bracken began to come in over the grass in a rustling knee-highcarpet, with clumps here and there of spiky green gorse, its yellow flowers still bright among the fierce prickling stalks. No hedge climbed the mountain, but a slate-topped drystone wall, curving with every contour, broken now and then by a stile-step low enough for men but too high for a sheep.
    Will found himself losing breath far more quickly than he would normally have done. As soon as he next came to a humped rock the right size for sitting, he folded thankfully into a panting heap. While he waited for his breath to come properly back, he looked at the map again. The Clwyd farmland seemed to end about halfway up the mountain—but there was, of course, nothing to guarantee that he would come across the old Cadfan’s way before he reached the boundary. He found himself hoping a little nervously that the rest of the mountain above was not Caradog Prichard’s land.
    Stuffing the map back into his pocket, he went on, higher, through the crackling brown fronds of the bracken. He was climbing diagonally now, as the slope grew steeper. Birds whirred away from him; somewhere high above, a skylark was pouring out its rippling, throbbing song. Then all at once, Will began to have an unaccountable feeling that he was being followed.
    Abruptly he stopped, swinging round. Nothing moved. The bracken-brown slope lay still beneath the sunshine, with outcrops of white rock glimmering here and there. A car hummed past on the road below, invisible through trees; he was high above the farm now, looking out over the silver thread of the river to the mountains rising green and grey and brown behind, and at last fading blue into the distance. Further up the valley the mountainside on which he stood was clothed dark green with plantations of spruce trees, and beyond those he could see a great grey-black crag