Legacy: Arthurian Saga (11 page)

But that day we went safely, and near
midday we came to the place where the High King was to part from us
and ride back. This was where the two rivers met, and the gorge
opened out into a wider valley, with forbidding icebound crags of
slate to either side, and the big river running south, brown and
swollen with melting snow. There is a ford at the watersmeet, and
leading south from this a good road which goes dry and straight
over high ground towards Tomen-y-Mur.

We halted just north of the ford. Our
leaders turned aside into a sheltered hollow which was cupped on
three sides by thickly wooded slopes. Clumps of bare alder and
thick reeds showed that in summer the hollow would be marshland; on
that December day it was solidly frostbound, but protected from the
wind, and the sun came warmly. Here the party stopped to eat and
rest. The kings sat apart, talking, and near them the rest of the
royal party. I noticed that it included Dinias. I, as usual,
finding myself not of the royal group, nor with the men-at-arms,
nor yet the servants, handed Aster to Cerdic, then went apart,
climbing a short way among the trees to a wooded dell where I could
sit alone and out of sight of the others. At my back was a rock
thawed by the sun, and from the other side of this came, muffled,
the jingle of bits as horses grazed, the men's voices talking, and
an occasional guffaw, then the rhythmic silences and mutterings
that told me the dice had come out to pass the time till the kings
completed their farewell. A kite tilted and swung above me in the
cold air, the sun striking bronze from its wings. I thought of
Galapas, and the bronze mirror flashing, and wondered why I had
come.

King Vortigern's voice said suddenly,
just behind me: "This way. You can tell me what you
think."

I had whipped round, startled, before
I realized that he, and the man he was speaking to, were on the
other side of the rock that sheltered me.

"Five miles, they tell me, in either
direction..." The High King's voice dwindled as he turned away. I
heard footsteps on the frosty ground, dead leaves crackling, and
the jar of nailed boots on stone. They were moving off. I stood up,
taking it carefully, and peered over the rock. Vortigern and my
grandfather were walking up through the wood together, deep in
talk.

I remember that I hesitated. What,
after all, could they have to say that could not already have been
said in the privacy of Macsen's Tower? I could not believe that
Galapas had sent me merely as a spy on their conference. But why
else? Perhaps the god in whose way I had put myself had sent me
here alone, today, for this. Reluctantly, I turned to follow
them.

As I took the first step after them a
hand caught my arm, not gently. "And where do you think you're
going?" demanded Cerdic under his breath.

I shook him off violently. "Damn you,
Cerdic, you nearly made me jump out of my skin! What does it matter
to you where I'm going?"

"I'm here to look after you,
remember?"

"Only because I brought you. No one
tells you to look after me, these days. Or do they?" I looked at
him sharply. "Have you followed me before?"

He grinned. "To tell you the truth, I
never troubled. Should I have?"

But I persisted. "Did anyone tell you
to watch me today?"

"No. But didn't you see who went this
way? It was Vortigern and your grandfather. If you'd any idea of
wandering after them, I'd think again if I was you."

"I wasn't going 'after them,' " I
lied. "I was merely taking a look round."

"Then I'd do it elsewhere. They said
special that the escort had to wait down here. I came to make sure
you knew it, that's all. Very special about it, they was." I sat
down again. "All right, you've made sure. Now leave me again,
please. You can come and tell me when we're due to move
off."

"And have you belting off the minute
my back's turned?"

I felt the blood rise to my cheeks.
"Cerdic, I told you to go."

He said doggedly: "Look, I know you,
and I know when you look like that. I don't know what's in your
mind, but when you get that look in your eye there's trouble for
somebody, and it's usually for you. What's to do?"

I said furiously: "The trouble's for
you this time, if you don't do as I say."

"Don't go all royal on me," he said.
"I was only trying to save you a beating."

"I know that. Forgive me. I had --
something on my mind."

"You can tell me, can't you? I knew
there'd been something biting you this last few days.

What is it?"

"Nothing that I know of," I said
truthfully. "Nothing you can help with. Forget it. Look, did the
kings say where they were going? They could have talked their fill
at Segontium, surely, or on the ride here?"

"They've gone to the top of the crag.
There's a place up there at the end of the ridge where you can look
right up and down the valley, all ways. There used to be an old
tower there, they say. They call it Dinas Brenin."

"King's Fort? How big's the
tower?"

"There's nothing there now but a
tumble of stones. Why?"

"I -- nothing. When do we ride home, I
wonder?"

"Another hour, they said. Look, why
don't you come down, and I'll cut you in on a dice
game."

I grinned. "Thanks for nothing. Have I
kept you out of your game, too? I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it. I was losing
anyway. All right, I'll leave you alone, but you wouldn't think of
doing anything silly now, would you? No sense in sticking your neck
out. Remember what I told you about the ring-dove."

And at that exact moment, a ring-dove
went by like an arrow, with a clap and whistle of wings that sent
up a flurry of frost like a wake. Close behind her, a little above,
ready to strike, went a merlin.

The dove rose a fraction as she met
the slope, skimming up as a gull skims a rising wave, hurtling
towards a thicket near the lip of the dell. She was barely a foot
from the ground, and for the falcon to strike her was dangerous,
but he must have been starving, for, just as she reached the edge
of the thicket, he struck.

A scream, a fierce kwik-ik-ik from the
falcon, a flurry of crashing twigs, then nothing. A few feathers
drifted lazily down, like snow.

I started forward, and ran up the
bank. "He got her!" It was obvious what had happened; both birds,
locked together, had hurtled on into the thicket and crashed to the
ground. From the silence, it was probable that they both now lay
there, stunned.

The thicket was a steep tangle almost
covering one side of the dell. I thrust the boughs aside and pushed
my way through. The trail of feathers showed me my way. Then I
found them. The dove lay dead, breast downwards, wings still spread
as she had struck the stones, and with blood smearing bright over
the iris of her neck feathers. On her lay the merlin. The steel
ripping-claws were buried deep in the dove's back, the cruel beak
half driven in by the crash. He was still alive. As I bent over
them his wings stirred, and the bluish eyelids dropped, disclosing
the fierce dark eye.

Cerdic arrived, panting, at my
shoulder. "Don't touch him. He'll tear your hands. Let me." I
straightened. "So much for your ring-dove, Cerdic. It's time we
forgot her, isn't it? No, leave them. They'll be here when we come
back."

"Come back? Where from?"

I pointed silently to what showed
ahead, directly in the path the birds had been taking. A square
black gap like a door in the steep ground behind the thicket; an
entrance hidden from casual sight, only to be seen if, for some
reason, one pushed one's way in among the tangled
branches.

"What of it?" asked Cerdic. "That's an
old mine adur, by the look of it."

"Yes. That's what I came to see.
Strike a light, and come along." He began to protest, but I cut him
short. "You can come or not, as you please. But give me a light.
And hurry, there isn't much time." As I began to push my way
towards the adur I heard him, muttering still, dragging up handfuls
of dry stuff to make a torch.

Just inside the adur there was a pile
of debris and fallen stone where the timber props had rotted away,
but beyond this the shaft was smooth enough, leading more or less
levelly into the heart of the hill. I could walk pretty nearly
upright, and Cerdic, who was small, had to stoop only slightly. The
flare of the makeshift torch threw our shadows grotesquely in front
of us. It showed the grooves in the floor where loads had been
dragged to daylight, and on walls and roof the marks of the picks
and chisels that had made the tunnel.

"Where the hell do you think you're
going?" Cerdic's voice, behind me, was sharp with nerves. "Look,
let's get back. These places aren't safe. That roof could come
in."

"It won't. Keep that torch going," I
said curtly, and went on.

The tunnel bent to the right, and
began to curve gently downhill. Underground one loses all sense of
direction; there is not even the drift of wind on one's cheek that
gives direction even on the blackest night; but I guessed that we
must be winding our way deep into the heart of the hill on which
had stood the old king's tower. Now and again smaller tunnels led
off to left and right, but there was no danger of losing our way;
we were in the main gallery, and the rock seemed reasonably good.
Here and there had been falls from roof or wall, and once I was
brought to a halt by a fall of rubble which almost blocked the way,
but I climbed through, and the tunnel was clear beyond.

Cerdic had stopped at the barrier of
rubble. He advanced the torch and peered after me. "Hey, look,
Merlin, come back, for pity's sake! This is beyond any kind of
folly. I tell you, these places are dangerous, and we're getting
down into the very guts of the rock. The gods alone know what lives
down here. Come back, boy."

"Don't be a coward, Cerdic, there's
plenty of room for you. Come on through. Quickly."

"That I won't. If you don't come out
this minute, I swear I'll go back and tell the King."

"Look," I said, "this is important.
Don't ask me why. But I swear to you there's no danger. If you're
afraid, then give me that torch, and get back."

"You know I can't do that."

"Yes, I know. You wouldn't dare go
back to tell him, would you? And if you did leave me, and anything
happened, what do you suppose would happen to you?"

"They say right when they say you're a
devil's spawn," said Cerdic.

I laughed. "You can say what you like
to me when we're back in daylight, but hurry now, Cerdic, please.
You're safe, I promise you. There's no harm in the air today, and
you saw how the merlin showed us the door."

He came, of course. Poor Cerdic, he
could afford to do nothing else. But as he stood beside me again,
with the torch held up, I saw him looking at me sideways, and his
left hand was making the sign against the evil eye.

"Don't be long," he said, "that's
all." Twenty paces further, round a curve, the tunnel led into the
cavern. I made a sign to him to lift the torch. I could not have
spoken. This vast hollow, right in the hill's heart, this darkness
hardly touched by the torch's flare, this dead stillness of air
where I could hear and feel my own blood beating -- this, of
course, was the place. I recognized every mark of the workings, the
face seamed and split by the axes, and smashed open by the water.
There was the domed roof disappearing into darkness, there in a
corner some rusty metal where the pump had stood. There the shining
moisture on the wall, no longer a ribbon, but a curtain of gleaming
damp. And there where the puddles had lain, and the seepage under
the overhang, a wide, still pool. Fully a third of the floor was
under water.

The air had a strange smell all its
own, the breath of the water and the living rock. Somewhere above,
water dripped, each tap clear like a small hammer on metal. I took
the smouldering block from Cerdic's hand, and went to the water's
edge. I held the light as high as I could, out over the water, and
gazed down. There was nothing to see. The light glanced back from a
surface as hard as metal. I waited. The light ran, and gleamed, and
drowned in darkness. There was nothing there but my own reflection,
like the ghost in Galapas' mirror.

I gave the torch back to Cerdic. He
hadn't spoken. He was watching me all the time with that sidelong,
white-eyed look.

I touched his arm. "We can go back
now. This thing's nearly out anyway. Come on."

We didn't speak as we made our way
back along the curving gallery, past the rubble, through the adur
and out into the frosty afternoon. The sky was a pale, milky blue.
The winter trees stood brittle and quiet against it, the birches
white as bone. From below a horn called, urgent, in the still
metallic air.

"They're going." Cerdic drove the
torch down into the frozen ground to extinguish it. I scrambled
down through the thicket. The dove still lay there, cold, and stiff
already. The merlin was there too; it had withdrawn from the body
of its kill, and sat near it on a stone, hunched and motionless,
even when I approached. I picked up the ring-dove and threw it to
Cerdic. "Shove it in your saddle-bag. I don't have to tell you to
say nothing of this, do I?"