The Crystal Cave

by Mary Stewart

  On the eighth day of our stay we set off for home, and the High King himself, with an escort a hundred strong, went with us to set us on our road.

  The first part of the way lay along a wooded gorge where a river ran fast and deep, and where the horses had to go singly or two abreast between the cliffs and the water. There was no danger for so large a party, so we went at ease, the gorge ringing with the sound of hoofs and bridle-chains and men's voices, and the occasional croak overhead as the ravens sailed off the cliffs to watch us. These birds do not wait, as some say, for the noise of battle; I have seen them follow armed bands of men for miles, waiting for the clash and the kill.

  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 adi
t, 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 adit I heard him, muttering still, dragging up handfuls of dry stuff to make a torch.

  Just inside the adit 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 faggot 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 adit 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?"

  "You do not. What are you doing?"

  "He's stunned. If we leave him here he'll freeze to death in an hour. I'm taking him."

  "Take care! That's a grown falcon —"

  "He'll not hurt me." I picked up the merlin; he had fluffed his feathers out against the cold, and felt soft as a young owl in my hands. I pulled my leather sleeve down over my left wrist, and he took hold of this, gripping fiercely. The eyelids were fully open now, and the wild dark eyes watched me. But he sat still, with shut wings. I heard Cerdic muttering to himself as he bent to retrieve my things from the place where I had taken my meal. Then he added something I had never heard from him before. "Come on then, young master."

  The merlin stayed docile on my wrist as I fell in at the back of my grandfather's train for the ride home to Maridunum.

  10

  NOR DID IT ATTEMPT TO LEAVE me when we reached home. I found, on examining it, that some of its wing feathers had been damaged in that hurtling crash after the ring-dove, so I mended them as Galapas had taught me, and after that it sat in the pear tree outside my window, accepting the food I gave it, and making no attempt to fly away.

  I took it with me when next I went to see Galapas.

  This was on the first day of February, and the frost had broken the night before, in rain. It was a grey leaden day, with low cloud and a bitter little wind among the rain. Draughts whistled everywhere in the palace, and curtains were fast drawn across the doors, while people kept on their woollen cloaks and huddled over the braziers. It seemed to me that a grey and leaden silence hung also over the palace; I had hardly seen my grandfather since we had returned to Maridunum, but he and the nobles sat together in council for hours, and there were rumours of quarrelling and raised voices when he and Camlach were closeted together. Once when I went to my mother's room I was told she was at her prayers and could not see me. I caught a glimpse of her through the half-open door, and I could have sworn that as she knelt below the holy image she was weeping.

  But in the high valley nothing had changed. Galapas took the merlin, commended my work on its wings, then set it on a sheltered ledge near the cave's entrance, and bade me come to the fire and get warm. He ladled some stew out of the simmering pot, and made me eat it before he would listen to my story. Then I told him everything, up to the quarrels in the palace and my mother's tears.

  "It was the same cave, Galapas, that I'll swear! But why? There was nothing there. And nothing else happened, nothing at all. I've asked as best I could, and Cerdic has asked about among the slaves, but nobody knows what the kings discussed, or why my grandfather and Camlach have fallen out. But he did tell me one thing; I am being watched. By Camlach's people. I'd have come to see you sooner, except for t
hat. They've gone out today, Camlach and Alun and the rest, so I said I was going to the water-meadow to train the merlin, and I came up here."

  Then as he was still silent, I repeated, worried into urgency: "What's happening, Galapas? What does it all mean?"

  "About your dream, and your finding of the cavern, I know nothing. About the trouble in the palace, I can guess. You knew that the High King had sons by his first wife, Vortimer and Katigern and young Pascentius?"

  I nodded.

  "Were none of them there at Segontium?"

  "No."

  "I am told that they have broken with their father," said Galapas, "and Vortimer is raising troops of his own. They say he would like to be High King, and that Vortigern looks like having a rebellion on his hands when he can least afford it. The Queen's much hated, you know that; Vortimer's mother was good British, and besides, the young men want a young king."

  "Camlach is for Vortimer, then?" I asked quickly, and he smiled.

  "It seems so."

  I thought about it for a little. "Well, when wolves fall out, don't they say the ravens come into their own?" As I was born in September, under Mercury, the raven was mine.

  "Perhaps," said Galapas. "You're more likely to be clapped in your cage sooner than you expected." But he said it absently, as if his mind were elsewhere, and I went back to what concerned me most.

  "Galapas, you've said you know nothing about the dream or the cavern. But this — this must have been the hand of the god." I glanced up at the ledge where the merlin sat, broodingly patient, his eyes half shut, slits of firelight.