Hollow Hills (36 page)

I accepted, and they made me welcome, and found me all I needed, bread and meal and a skin of wine, sheeps' tallow to make candles, oil for the lamps and chopped feed for the mare. I paid for them, and Fedor — he told me his name — helped me pack my saddle-bags. I asked no more questions, but listened to all he told me of local news, and then, well content, rode back to the shrine. The news would get to Ector, and the name; he would be the one person who would immediately connect the new hermit of the Wild Forest with the Myrddin who had vanished with the winter from his cold hilltop in Wales.

I rode down again at the beginning of February, this time to the village itself, where I found that the folk knew all about my coming and, as I had guessed, accepted me already as part of the place. Had I tried to find a niche in village or castle I would still, I knew, have been "the foreigner" and "the stranger" and a subject of ceaseless gossip, but holy men were a class apart, and often wanderers, and the good folk took them as they came. I had been relieved to find that they never came up to the chapel; there was too much of its ancient awesomeness still hanging about the place. They were most of them Christians, and turned for their comfort to the community of brothers nearby, but old beliefs die hard, and I was regarded with more respect, I believe, than the abbot himself.

The same image of ancient holiness clung, I had found, about the island in the lake. I had asked one of the hill men about it. It was known, he told me, as Caer Bannog, which means the Castle in the Mountains, and was said to be haunted by Bilis the dwarf king of the Otherworld. It was reputed to appear and disappear at will, sometimes floating invisible, as if made of glass. No one would go near it, and though people fished on the lake in summer and animals were grazed on the flat grassland at the western end where the river flowed into the valley, no one ventured near the island. Once a fisherman, caught in a sudden storm, had had his boat driven onto the island, and had passed a night there. When he came home next day he was mad, and talked of a year spent in a great castle made of gold and glass, where strange and terrible creatures guarded a hoard of treasure beyond man's counting. No one was tempted to go and look for the treasure, for the fisherman was dead, raving, within the week. So no man set foot now on the island, and though (they said) you could see the castle clearly sometimes of a fine sunset evening, when a boat rowed nearer it vanished clear away, and it was well known that if you set foot on the shore, the island would sink beneath you.

Such stories are not always to be dismissed as shepherds' tales. I had thought about it often, this other

"isle of glass" that I found now almost on my doorstep, and wondered if its reputation would make it a safe hiding-place for Macsen's sword. It would be some years yet before the boy Arthur could take and lift the sword of Britain, and meanwhile it was neither safe nor fitting that it should be hidden in the roof of a beasts' shed out there in the forest. It was a marvel, I had sometimes thought, that it did not set light to the thatch. If it was indeed the King's sword of Britain, and Arthur was to be the King who would lift it, it must lie in a place as holy and as haunted as the shrine where I myself had found it. And when the day came the boy must be led to it himself, even as I had been led. I was the god's instrument, but I was not the god's hand.

So I had wondered about the island. And then, one day, I was sure.

I went down to the village again in March for my monthly supplies. When I rode back along the lake side the sun was setting, and a light mist wreathed along the water's surface. It made the island seem a long way off, and floating, so that one might well imagine it ghostly, and ready to sink under a random foot. The sun, sinking in splendour, caught the crags, and sent them flaming up from the dark hangers of trees behind. In this light the strange formations of the rock looked like high embattled towers, the crest of a sunlit castle standing above the trees. I looked, thinking of the legends, then looked again, and reined Strawberry in sharply and sat staring. There, across the flat sheen of the lake, above the floating mist, was the tower of my dream again, Macsen's Tower, whole once more and built out of the sunset. The tower of the sword.

I took the sword across next day. The mist was thicker than ever, and hid me from anyone who might have been there to see.

The island lay less than two hundred paces from the south shore of the lake. I would have swum the mare across, but found that she could go through breast high. The lake was still as glass, and as silent.

We forged across with no more splashing than the wild deer make, and saw no living thing but a pair of diver ducks, and a heron beating slowly past in the mist.

I left the mare grazing, and carried the sword up through the trees till I reached the foot of the towered crags. I think I knew what I would find. Bushes and young trees grew thickly along the scree at the foot of the cliffs, but the boughs were barely budding, and through them I could see an opening, giving on a narrow passageway which led steeply downwards into the cliffs. I had brought a torch with me. I lit it, then went quickly down the steep passage, and found myself in a deep inner cavern where no light came.

In front of my feet lay a sheet of water, black and still, flooring half the cavern. Beyond the pool, against the back of the cavern, stood a low block of stone; I could not tell if it was a natural ledge, or if men's hands had squared it, but it stood there like an altar, and to one side of it a bowl had been hollowed in the stone. This was full of water, which in the smoky torchlight looked red as blood. Here and there from the roof water welled slowly, dripping down. Where it struck the surface of the pool the water broke with the sound of a plucked harp-string, its echo rippling away with the widening rings of torchlight. But where it dripped dull on stone it had not, as you might expect, worn the rock into hollows, but had built pillars, and above these from the dripping rocks hung solid stone icicles that had grown to meet the pillars below. The place was a temple, pillared in pale marble and floored with glass. Even I, who was here by right, and hedged with power, felt my scalp tingle.

By land and water shall it go home, and be hidden in the floating stone until by fire it shall be raised again. So had the Old Ones said, and they would have recognized this place as I did; as the dead fisherman did who came back from the Otherworld raving of the halls of the dark King. Here, in Bilis'

antechamber, the sword would be safe till the youth came who had the right to lift it.

I waded forward through the pool. The floor sloped and the water deepened. Now I could see how the dark passageway ran on, back and down behind the stone table, until the roof met the water's surface and the passage vanished below the level of the lake. Ripples ringed and lapsed against the rock, and the echoes ran round the walls and broke between the pillars. The water was ice-cold. I laid the sword, still wrapped as I had found it on the stone table. I went back across the pool. The place sang with echoes. I stood still, while they sank to a humming murmur and then died. My very breathing sounded all at once too loud, an intrusion. I left the sword to its silent waiting, and went quickly back up towards daylight.

The shadows parted and let me through.

April came, when Ector was expected home. For the first week of the month it rained and blew, weather like winter, so that the forest roared like the sea and the draughts through the shrine kept the nine lights plunging sidelong and smoking. The white owl watched from the place where she sat her eggs in the roof.

Then I woke in the night to silence. The wind had dropped, the pines were still. I rose and threw my cloak about me and went out. Outside the moon was high, and there in the north the Bear wheeled so low and brilliant that one felt one could reach up and touch it, were it not that its touch would burn. My blood ran light and free; my body felt rinsed and new clean as the forest. For the rest of the night I slept no more than a lover does, and at first light rose and broke my fast and went to saddle Strawberry.

The sun rose brilliant in a clear sky, and its early light poured into the glade. Yesterday's rain lay thick and glittering on the grasses and the new young curls of fern; it dripped and steamed from the pines so that their scent pierced the air. Beyond their bloomed crests the encircling hills smoked white towards the sky.

I let the mare out of the shed, and was carrying the saddle over to her when suddenly she lifted her head from her grazing, and put her ears up. Seconds later I heard what she had heard, the beat of hoofs, coming at a fast gallop, far too fast for safety on a twisting path seamed with roots and overhung by branches. I set the saddle down, and waited.

A neat black horse, galloped hard on a tight rein, burst out of the forest, came to a sliding stop three paces from me, and the boy who had been lying along his back like a leech slid, all in the same movement, to the ground. The horse was sweating hard, and the bit dripped foam. Red showed inside the blown nostrils. That neat-footed gallop and the collected stop had been a matter of hard control, then. Nine years old? At his age I had been riding a fat pony which had to be kicked to a trot.

He gathered the reins competently in one hand and held the horse still when it tried to thrust past him to the water. He did it absently; his attention was all on me.

"Are you the new holy man?"

"Yes."

"Prosper was a friend of mine."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't much look like a hermit. Are you really keeping the chapel now?"

"Yes."

He chewed his lip thoughtfully, regarding me. It was a look of appraisal, a weighing-up. Under it, as under no other I had encountered, I could feel my muscles clench themselves to hold nerves and heart-beats steady. I waited. I knew that, as ever, my face gave nothing away. What he must be seeing was merely a harmless-looking man, unarmed, saddling an undistinguished horse for his routine ride down the valley for supplies.

He came apparently to a decision. "You won't tell anyone you saw me?"

"Why, who's looking for you?"

His lips parted, surprised. I got the impression that I had been supposed to say: "Very well, sir." Then he turned his head sharply, and I heard it, too. Hoofs coming, soft on the mossy ground. Fast, but not so fast as the hard-ridden black.

"You haven't seen me, remember?" I saw his hand start towards his pouch, then stop halfway. He grinned, and the sudden flash startled me: till that moment he had been so like Uther, but that sudden lighting of the face was Ambrosius', and the dark eyes were Ambrosius', too. Or mine.

"I'm sorry." He said it politely, but very fast. "I do assure you I'm not doing anything wrong. At least, not very. I'll let him catch me soon. But he won't let me ride the way I like to." He grabbed the saddle, ready to mount.

"If you ride like that on these tracks," I said, "I don't blame him. Do you need to go? Get inside there while I throw him off the scent, and I'll put your horse somewhere to cool off."

"I knew you weren't a holy man," he said, in the tone of someone conveying a compliment, and throwing me the reins, he vanished through the back doorway.

I led the black horse across to the shed, and shut the door on him. I stood there for a moment or two, breathing deeply as a man does when he comes out of rough water, steadying myself. Ten years, waiting for this. I had broken Tintagel's defenses for Uther, and killed Brithael its captain, with a steadier pulse than I had now. Well, he was here, and we should see. I went to the edge of the clearing to meet Ralf.

He was alone, and furious. His big chestnut came up the track at a slamming canter, with Ralf crouched low on its neck. There was a thin scarlet mark on one cheek where a branch had whipped his face.

The sun was full on the clearing, and he must have been dazzled. I thought for a moment he was going to ride right over me. Then he saw me, and reined his horse hard to its haunches.

"Hey, you! Did a boy ride through here a few minutes ago?"

"Yes." I spoke softly, and put my hand up to the rein. "But hold a moment —"

"Out of the way, fool!" The chestnut, feeling the spurs go home, reared violently, tearing the rein from my hand. On the same breath Ralf said, thunderstruck: "My lord!" and hauled the horse sideways. The striking hoofs missed me by inches. Ralf came out of the saddle as lightly as the boy Arthur, and reached for my hand to kiss it.

I drew it back quickly. "No. And get off your knee, man. He's here, so watch what you do."

"Sweet Christ, my lord, I nearly ran you down! The sun in my eyes — I couldn't see who it was!"

"So I imagined. A rather rough welcome, though, for the new hermit, Ralf? Are those the usual manners of the north?"

"My lord — my lord, I'm sorry. I was angry..." Then, honestly: "Only because he fooled me. And even when I sighted the young devil I couldn't come up with him. So I..." Then what I had said got through to him. His voice trailed off, and he stood back, taking me in from head to foot as if he could hardly believe his eyes. "The new hermit? You? You mean you are the 'Myrddin' of the shrine?...Of course! How stupid of me, I never connected him with you...And I'm sure no one else has — I haven't heard so much as a hint that it might be Merlin himself —"

"I hope you never will. All I am now is the keeper of the shrine, and so I shall remain, as long as it's necessary."

"Does Count Ector know?"

"Not yet. When is he due home?"

"Next week."

"Tell him then."

He nodded, and then laughed, the surprise giving way to excitement, and what looked like pleasure. "By the Rood, it's good to see you again, my lord! Are you well? How have you fared? How did you come here? And now — what will happen now?"

The questions came pouring out. I put up a hand, smiling. "Look," I said quickly, "we'll talk later. We'll arrange a time. But now, will you go and lose yourself for an hour or so, and let me make the boy's acquaintance on my own?"

"Of course. Will two hours do? You'll get a lot of credit for that — I'm not usually thrown off his track so easily." He glanced round the glade, but with his eyes only, not moving his head. The place was still in the morning sun, and silent but for the cock thrush singing. "Where is he? In the chapel? Then in case he's watching us, you'd better do some misdirecting."