Hollow Hills (41 page)

Strange tales came north. A druid had run mad and attacked Uther for leading the country away from the Old Religion; and a Christian bishop stood up in church and railed against him for being a pagan. There was a story of an attempt on the King's life, and of the hideous way in which the King had punished the men responsible.

So spring and summer wore through, in disaster, and by the beginning of autumn the country lay like a waste land. People died of starvation. Folk talked of a curse laid on the country; but whether God was angry because the country shrines still claimed their sacrifices, or whether the old gods of hill and woodland exacted vengeance for neglect, no one was sure. All that was certain was that there was a blight on the land, and the King ailed. There was a meeting of nobles in London demanding that Uther should name his heir. But it seemed — Ector told me this — as if he still feared, not knowing friend from foe; all he would say was that his son lived and thrived, and would be presented to the nobles at the next Easter feast. Meanwhile his daughter Morgian passed her twelfth birthday, and would be taken north for her wedding at Christmas.

With the autumn the weather changed, and a mild, dry season set in. It was too late to help the crops or the dying cattle, but grateful to men starved of the sun, and the bright weather came in time to ripen some of the fruit that the spring storms and the summer rot had left on the trees. In the Wild Forest the mists curled through the pines in the early morning, and the September dews glittered everywhere on the cobwebs. Ector left Galava to meet with Rheged and his allies at Luguvallium. The King of Ireland had sailed for home and there was still peace in Strathclyde, but the defense line along the Ituna Estuary from Alauna to Luguvallium was to be manned, and there was talk of Ector as its commander. Cei went with his father. Arthur, scarce three months from his fourteenth birthday, tall enough for sixteen, and already (according to Ralf) a notable swordsman, fretted visibly, and grew daily more silent. He spent all his days now in the forest, often with me (though not so much as formerly), but most of the time, Ralf told me, hunting or taking breakneck rides through the rough country.

"If only the King would make some move," said Ralf to me. "The boy will kill himself else. It's as if he knew that there was something in the future for him, something un-guessed at, but that gives him no peace. I'm afraid he'll break his neck before it happens. That new horse of his — Canrith he calls it — I wouldn't care to get astride it myself, and that's the truth. I can't think what possessed Ector to give it to him; a guilt gift perhaps."

I thought he was right. The white stallion had been left for Arthur when Ector took Cei up to Luguvallium with him. Bedwyr had gone, too, though he was no older than Arthur. Ector was hard put to it to explain to Arthur why he could not go. But until Uther spoke, we could do nothing.

The full moon came, the September moon that they call the harvester. It shone out in a dry mild night over the rotting fields, doing no good that anyone could see except light the outlaws who crept out of their fastnesses to pillage the outlying farms, or the troops who were constantly on the move these days to one or the other point of threat.

I could not sleep. My head ached, and phantoms crowded close, as they do when they bring vision; but nothing came forward into light or shape; nothing spoke. It was like suffering the threat of thunder, as close as the blankets that wrapped me, but without the lightning to break it, or the cleansing rain to bring a clear sky. When day broke at last, grey and misty, I rose, took bread, and a handful of olives from the crock, and went down through the forest to the lake, to wash the aching of the night away.

It was a quiet morning, so still that you could not tell where the mist ended and the surface of the lake began. The water met the flattened shingle of the beach without movement and without sound. Behind me the forest stood wrapped in the mist, its scents still sleeping. It seemed a kind of desecration to break the hush and plunge into that virgin water, but the fresh chill of it washed away the clinging strands of the night, and when I came out and was dry again and dressed, I ate my breakfast with pleasure, then settled down with my fishing rod to wait for the morning rise, and hope for a breeze at sun-up to ruffle the glassy water.

The sun came up at last, pale through the mist, but brought no breeze with it. The tops of the trees swam up out of the greyness, and at the far side of the lake the dark forest lifted, cloudy, towards the smoking hilltops. The water was bloomed with mist, like a pearl.

No ring or ripple broke the glassy water, no sign of a breeze to come. I had just decided that I might as well go, when I heard something coming fast through the forest at my back. Not a horseman; too light for that, and coming too fast through the brake.

I stayed as I was, half-turned, waiting. A prickling ran up the skin of my back, and I remembered the night's sleepless pain. The tingling ran into my fingers; I found I was clutching the rod until it hurt the flesh.

All night, then, this had been coming. All night this had been waiting to happen. All night? If I was not mistaken, I had been waiting for this for fourteen years.

Fifty paces along the lake-side from where I sat, a stag broke cover. He saw me immediately, and stopped short, head high, poised to break the other way. He was white. In contrast the wide branches on his brow looked like polished bronze, and his eyes showed red as garnet. But he was real; there were stains of sweat on the white hide, and the thick hair of belly and neck was tagged with damp. A trail of yellow loosestrife had caught round his neck, and hung there like a collar. He looked back over his shoulder, then, stiff-legged, leaped from the bank into the water, and in two more bounds was shoulder-deep and swimming straight out into the lake.

The polished water broke and arrowed back. The splash was echoed by a crashing deep in the forest.

Another beast coming, headlong.

I had been wrong in thinking that nothing could come through the forest as fast as a fleeing deer. Arthur's white hound, Cabal, broke from the trees exactly where the stag had broken, and hurled himself into the water. Seconds later Arthur himself, on the stallion Canrith, burst out after it.

He checked his horse on the shore, bringing it up rearing, fetlock deep. He had his bow strung ready in his hand. He pulled the stallion sideways and raised the bow, sighting from the back of the plunging horse. But deer swim low; only the stag's head showed above water, a wedge spearing away fast, its antlers flat behind it on the surface like boughs trailing. The hound, swimming strongly, was in line with it.

Arthur lowered the bow, and turned the stallion back to breast the bank. In the moment before his spurs struck he saw me. He shouted something, and came cantering along the shingle.

His face was blazing with excitement. "Did you see him? Snow-white, and a head like an emperor! I never saw the like in my life! I'm going round. Cabal was closing, he'll hold him till I get there. Sorry I spoiled your fishing."

"Emrys —"

He checked impatiently. "What?"

"Look. He's making for the island."

He swung to look where I pointed. The stag had vanished into the mist, and the hound with him. There was no sign of them but the fading ripples flattening towards the shore.

"The island, is it? Are you sure?"

"Certain."

"All the devils of hell," he said angrily. "What a cursed piece of luck! I thought I had him when Cabal sprang him so close." He hung on the rein, hesitating, staring out over the clouded lake while the stallion fretted, sidling. I suppose he was as much in awe of the place as anyone brought up in that valley. Then he set his mouth, curbing Canrith sharply. "I'm going to the island. I can say goodbye to the stag, I suppose — that was too good to be true — but I'm damned if I lose Cabal. Bedwyr gave him to me, and I've no mind to lose him to Bilis or anyone else, either in this world or the other." He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled shrilly. "Cabal! Cabal! Here, sir, here!"

"It's no good, you'll hardly turn him now."

"No." He took a breath. "Well, there's nothing for it, it'll have to be the island. If your magic will reach that far, Myrddin, send it with me now."

"It's with you always, you know that. You're not going to swim him across, are you?"

"He'll go," said Arthur, a little breathlessly, as he forced the reluctant stallion towards the water. "It's too far to go round. If that beast rakes to the crags, and Cabal follows it —"

"Why not take the boat? It's quicker, and that way you can bring Cabal back."

"Yes, but the wretched thing'll need bailing. It always does."

"I bailed it this morning. It's quite ready."

"Did you? That's the first bit of luck today! You were going out, then? Will you come with me?"

"No. I'll stay here. Come now, Emrys, go and find your hound."

For a moment boy and horse were quite still. Arthur stared down at me, something showing in his face that was half speculation, half awe, but which was quickly swallowed up in the larger impatience. He slid off the stallion's back and pushed the reins into my hand. Then he unstrung his bow and slung it across his shoulder and ran to the boat. This was a primitive flat-bottomed affair which usually lay beached in a reedy inlet a short way along the shore. He launched it with one flying shove, and jumped in. I stood on the shingle, holding the horse, watching him. He poled it out through the shallows, then had the oars out, and began to row.

I pulled the rolled cloth from behind the horse's saddle, slung it over the animal's steaming back, then tethered him where he could graze, and went back to my seat at the edge of the lake.

The sun was well up now, and gaining power. A kingfisher flashed by. Gauze-winged flies danced over the water. There was a smell of wild mint, and a dabchick crept out from a tangle of water forget-me-not. A dragonfly, tiny, with a scarlet body, clung pulsing to a reed. Under the sun the mist moved gently, smoking off the glassy water, shifting and restless like the phantoms of the night, like the smoke of the enchanted fire...

The shore, the scarlet dragonfly, the white horse grazing, the cloudy forest at my back, faded, became phantoms themselves. I watched, my eyes wide and fixed on that silent and sightless cloud of pearl.

He was rowing hard, chin on shoulder as he neared the island. It loomed first as a swimming shape of shadow, growing to a shoreline hung over with the low boughs of trees. Behind the trees, misty and unreal, the shapes of rocks soared like a great castle brooding on its crag. Where the strand met the water lay a line of gleaming silver, drawn sharp between the island and its image. The cloudy trees and the high towers of the crags floated weightless on the water, phantoms themselves in the phantom mist.

The boat forged ahead. Arthur glanced over his shoulder, calling the hound's name.

"Cabal! Cabal!"

The call echoed loudly across the water, swam up the high crags, and died. There was no sign of either hound or stag. He bent to his oars again, sending the light boat leaping through the water.

Its bottom grated on shingle. He jumped out. He pulled it up and trod up through the narrow verge of grass. The light was stronger now as the sun rose higher, reflecting from white mist and white water. Over the shore the boughs of birch and rowan reached low, still heavy with moisture. The rowan berries were red as flame, and glossy. The turf was powdered with daisies and speedwell and small yellow pimpernel.

Late foxgloves crowded down the banks, their spires thrusting through the trails of blackberry.

Meadowsweet, rusting over with autumn, filled the air with its thick honey-scent.

The boy thrust the hanging boughs aside, plunged through the bramble trails, and stood squarely on the flowery turf, narrowing his eyes at the crags above him. He called again, and again the sound echoed away emptily, and died. The mist was lifting faster now, rolling upwards towards the tops, showing the lower reaches of rock bathed in a clear but swimming light. Suddenly he stiffened, gazing upwards.

Midway up the crags, along what looked no more than a seam in the rock, the white stag cantered easily, light as a drift of the mist that wreathed away to air below it.

Arthur ran forward up the slope. His footsteps on the thick turf made no sound. He brushed waist-high through brakes of yellowing fern, sending the bright drops scattering, and came out at the foot of the cliff.

He paused again, looking about him. He seemed held by the same awe that had touched him earlier. He looked, not afraid, but as a man looks who knows that by a movement he may start something of which he cannot see the end. He craned his neck, searching the towering crags above him. There was no sign of the white stag, but the rocks looked more than ever like a castle crowned with the sun.

He took a breath, shaking his head as if he came out of water, then he spoke again, but quietly. "Cabal?

Cabal?"

From somewhere very near him, bursting the awed silence, came the baying of the hound. There was something in it of excitement, something of fear. It came from the cliff. The boy looked round him, sharply. Then, behind the green curtain of the trees, he saw the cave. As he started forward Cabal bayed again, not in fear or pain, but like a beast questing.

With no more hesitation, Arthur plunged into the darkness of the cave.

He could never say afterwards how he found his way. I think he must have picked up the torch and flint I had left there, and lit it, but he remembers nothing of that. Perhaps what he does remember is the truth: there seemed, he said, to be everywhere some faintly diffused and swimming light, as if reflected from the burnished surface of the pool deep in the pillared cave.

There, beyond the shining pool, the sword lay on its table. From the rock above a trickle of water had run and dripped, the lime on it hardening through the years until the oiled leather of the wrappings, though proof enough to keep the metal bright, had hardened under the dripping till it felt like stone. In this the thing had rested, the crust of lime forming to hide all but its shape, the long slenderness of the weapon and the hilt formed like a cross.