The Crystal Cave Read online

  "It would seem so."

  I hesitated. "Can't we find out what he — what it means?"

  "Do you want to go into the crystal cave again?"

  "N-no, I don't. But I think perhaps I should. Surely you can tell me that?"

  He said heavily, after a few moments: "I think you must go in, yes. But first, I must teach you something more. You must make the fire for yourself this time. Not like that — " smiling, as I reached for a branch to stir the embers. "Put that down. You asked me before you went away to show you something real. This is all I have left to show you. I hadn't realized... Well, let that go. It's time. No, sit still, you have no more need of books, child. Watch now."

  * * *

  Of the next thing, I shall not write. It was all the art he taught me, apart from certain tricks of healing. But as I have said, it was the first magic to come to me, and will be the last to go. I found it easy, even to make the ice-cold fire and the wild fire, and the fire that goes like a whip through the dark; which was just as well, because I was young to be taught such things, and it is an art which, if you are unfit or unprepared, can strike you blind.

  * * *

  It was dark outside when we had done. He got to his feet.

  "I shall come back in an hour and wake you."

  He twitched his cloak down from where it hung shrouding the mirror, put it round him, and went out.

  The flames sounded like a horse galloping. One long, bright tongue cracked like a whip. A log fell down with a hiss like a woman's sigh, and then a thousand twigs crackled like people talking, whispering, chattering of news...

  It faded all into a great brilliant blaze of silence. The mirror flashed. I picked up my cloak, now comfortably dry, and climbed with it into the crystal cave. I folded it and lay down on it, with my eyes fixed on the wall of crystal arching over me. The flames came after me, rank on bright rank, filling the air, till I lay in a globe of light like the inside of a star, growing brighter and ever brighter till suddenly it broke and there was darkness...

  * * *

  The galloping hoofs sparked on the gravel of the Roman road. The rider's whip cracked and cracked again, but the horse was already going full tilt, its nostrils wide and scarlet, its breath like steam in the cold air. The rider was Camlach. Far behind him, almost half a mile behind now, were the rest of the young men of his party, and still further behind them, leading his lamed and dripping horse, came the messenger who had taken the news to the King's son.

  The town was alive with torches, men running to meet the galloping horse, but Camlach paid no heed to them. He drove the spiked spurs into the horse's sides, and galloped straight through the town, down the steep street, and into the outer yard of the palace. There were torches there, too. They caught the quick glint of his red hair as he swung from the horse and flung the reins into the hands of a waiting slave. The soft riding boots made no sound as he ran up the steps and along the colonnade that led to his father's room. The swift black figure was lost for a moment in shadow under the arch, then he flung the door wide and went through.

  The messenger had been right. It had been a quick death. The old man lay on the carved Roman bed, and over him someone had thrown a coverlet of purple silk. They had somehow managed to prop his jaw, for the fierce grey beard jutted ceilingwards, and a little head-rest of baked clay beneath his neck held his head straight, while the body slowly froze iron-hard. There was no sign, the way he lay, that the neck was broken. Already the old face had begun to fall away, to shrink, as death pared the flesh down from the jut of the nose till it would be left simply in planes of cold candlewax. The gold coins that lay on his mouth and shut eyelids glimmered in the light of the torches at the four corners of the bed.

  At the foot of the bed, between the torches, stood Niniane. She stood very still and upright, dressed in white, her hands folded quietly in front of her with a crucifix between them, her head bent. When the door opened she did not look up, but kept her eyes fixed on the purple coverlet, not in grief, but almost as if she were too far away for thought.

  To her side, swiftly, came her brother, slim in his black clothes, glinting with a kind of furious grace that seemed to shock the room.

  He walked right up to the bed and stood over it, staring down at his father. Then he put down a hand and laid it over the dead hands clasped on the purple silk. His hand lingered there for a moment, then drew back. He looked at Niniane. Behind her, a few paces back in the shadows, the little crowd of men, women, servants, shuffled and whispered. Among them, silent and dry-eyed, Mael and Duach stared. Dinias, too, all his attention fixed on Camlach.

  Camlach spoke very softly, straight to Niniane. "They told me it was an accident. Is this true?"

  She neither moved nor spoke. He stared at her for a moment, then with a gesture of irritation, looked beyond her, and raised his voice.

  "One of you, answer me. This was an accident?"

  A man stepped forward, one of the King's servants, a man called Mabon. "It's true, my lord." He licked his lips, hesitating.

  Camlach showed his teeth. "What in the name of the devils in hell's the matter with you all?" Then he saw where they were staring, and looked down at his right hip, where, sheathless, his short stabbing dagger had been thrust through his belt. It was blood to the hilt. He made a sound of impatience and disgust and, pulling it out, flung it from him, so that it skittered across the floor and came up against the wall with a small clang that sounded loud in the silence.

  "Whose blood did you think?" he asked, still with that lifted lip. "Deer's blood, that's all. When the message came, we had just killed. I was twelve miles off, I and my men." He stared at them, as if daring them to comment. No one moved. "Go on, Mabon. He slipped and fell, the man told me. How did it happen?"

  The man cleared his throat. "It was a stupid thing, sir, a pure accident. Why, no one was even near him. It was in the small courtyard, the way through to the servants rooms, where the steps are worn. One of the men had been carrying oil around to fill the lamps. He'd spilled some on the steps, and before he got back to wipe it up the King came through, in a bit of a hurry. He — he hadn't been expected there at the time. Well, my lord, he treads in the oil, and goes straight down on his back, and hits his head on the stone. That's how it happened, my lord. It was seen. There's those that can vouch for it."

  "And the man whose fault it was?"

  "A slave, my lord."

  "He's been dealt with?"

  "My lord, he's dead."

  While they had been talking, there had been a commotion in the colonnade, as the rest of Camlach's party arrived and came hurrying along to the King's room after him. They had pressed into the room while Mabon was speaking, and now Alun, approaching the prince quietly, touched his arm.

  "The news is all round the town, Camlach. There's a crowd gathering outside. A million stories going round — there'll be trouble soon. You'll have to show yourself and talk to them."

  Camlach flicked him a glance, and nodded. "Go and see to it, will you? Bran, go with him, and Ruan. Shut the gates. Tell the people I'm coming out soon. And now, the rest of you, out."

  The room emptied. Dinias lingered in the doorway, got not even a glance, and followed the rest. The door shut.

  "Well, Niniane?"

  In all this time she had never looked at him. Now she raised her eyes. "What do you want of me? It's true as Mabon tells you. What he didn't say was that the King had been fooling with a servant-girl and was drunk. But it was an accident, and he's dead... and you with all your friends were a good twelve miles away. So you're King now, Camlach, and there is no man can point a finger at you and say: 'He wanted his father dead.'"

  "No woman can say that to me either, Niniane."

  "I have not said it. I'm just telling you that the quarrels here are over. The kingdom's yours — and now it's as Alun says, you had better go and speak to the people."

  "To you first. Why do you stand like that, as if you didn't care either way? As if you were
scarcely with us here?"

  "Perhaps because it's true. What you are, brother, and what you want, does not concern me, except to ask you one thing."

  "And that is?"

  "That you let me go now. He never would, but I think you will."

  "To St. Peter's?"

  She bent her head. "I told you nothing here concerned me any more. It has not concerned me for some time, and less than ever now, with all this talk about invasion, and war in the spring, and the rumours about shifts of power and the death of kings... Oh, don't look at me like that; I'm not a fool, and my father talked to me. But you need not be afraid of me; nothing I know or can do can ever harm your plans for yourself, brother. I tell you, there is nothing I want out of life now except to be allowed to go in peace, and live in peace, and my son too."

  "You said 'one thing.' That makes two."

  For the first time something came to life in her eyes; it might have been fear. She said swiftly: "It was always the plan for him, your plan, even before it was my father's. Surely, after the day Gorlan went, you knew that even if Merlin's father could come riding in, sword in hand and with three thousand men at his back, I would not go to him? Merlin can do you no harm, Camlach. He will never be anything but a nameless bastard, and you know he is no warrior. The gods know he can do you no harm at all."

  "And even less shut up as a clerk?" Camlach's voice was silky.

  "Even less, shut up as a clerk. Camlach, are you playing with me? What's in your mind?"

  "This slave who spilled the oil," he said. "Who was he?"

  That flicker in her eyes again. Then the lids dropped. "The Saxon. Cerdic."

  He didn't move, but the emerald on his breast glittered suddenly against the black as if his heart had jumped.

  She said fiercely: "Don't pretend you guessed this! How could you guess it?"

  "Not a guess, no. When I rode in the place was humming with whispers like a smashed harp." He added, in sudden irritation: "You stand there like a ghost with your hands on your belly as if you still had a bastard there to protect."

  Surprisingly, she smiled. "But I have." Then as the emerald leapt again: "No, don't be a fool. Where would I get another bastard now? I meant that I cannot go until I know he is safe from you. And that we are both safe from what you propose to do."

  "From what I propose to do to you? I swear to you there is nothing —"

  "I am talking about my father's kingdom. But let it go now. I told you, my only concern is that St. Peter's should be left in peace... And it will be."

  "You saw this in the crystal?"

  "It is unlawful for a Christian to dabble in soothsaying," said Niniane, but her voice was a little over-prim, and he looked sharply at her, then, suddenly restless, took a couple of strides away into the shadows at the side of the room, then back into the light.

  "Tell me," he said abruptly. "What of Vortimer?"

  "He will die," she said indifferently.

  "We shall all die, some day. But you know I am committed to him now. Can you not tell me what will happen this coming spring?"

  "I see nothing and I can tell you nothing. But whatever your plans for the kingdom, it will serve no purpose to let even the smallest whisper of murder start, and I can tell you this, you're a fool if you think that the King's death was anything but an accident. Two of the grooms saw it happen, and the girl he'd been with."

  "Did the man say anything before they killed him?"

  "Cerdic? No. Only that it was an accident. He seemed concerned more for my son than for himself. It was all he said."

  "So I heard," said Camlach.

  The silence came back. They stared at one another. She said: "You would not."

  He didn't answer. They stood there, eyes locked, while a draught crept through the room, making the torches gutter.

  Then he smiled, and went. As the door slammed shut behind him a gust of air blew through the room, and tore the flames along from the torches, till shadow and light went reeling.

  * * *

  The flames were dying, and the crystals dim. As I climbed out of the cave and pulled my cloak after me, it tore. The embers in the brazier showed a sullen red. Outside, now, it was quite dark. I stumbled down from the ledge and ran towards the doorway.

  "Galapas!" I shouted. "Galapas!"

  He was there. His tall, stooping figure detached itself from the darkness outside, and he came forward into the cave. His feet, half-bare in his old sandals, looked blue with cold.

  I came to a halt a yard from him, but it was as if I had run straight into his arms, and been folded against his cloak.

  "Galapas, they've killed Cerdic."

  He said nothing, but his silence was like words or hands of comfort.

  I swallowed to shift the ache in my throat. "If I hadn't come up here this afternoon... I gave him the slip, along with the others. But I could have trusted him, even about you. Galapas, if I'd stayed — if I'd been there — perhaps I could have done something."

  "No. You counted for nothing. You know that."

  "I'll count for less than nothing now." I put a hand to my head: it was aching fiercely, and my eyes swam, still half-blind. He took me gently by the arm and made me sit down near the fire.

  "Why do you say that? A moment, Merlin, tell me what has happened."

  "Don't you know?" I said, surprised. "He was filling the lamps in the colonnade, and some oil spilled on the steps, and the King slipped in it and fell and broke his neck. It wasn't Cerdic's fault, Galapas. He spilt the oil, that's all, and he was going back, he was actually going back to clean it up when it happened. So they took him and killed him."

  "And now Camlach is King."

  I think I stared at him for some time, unseeing with those dream-blinded eyes, my brain for the moment incapable of holding more than the single fact.

  He persisted, gently: "And your mother? What of her?"

  "What? What did you say?"

  The warm shape of a goblet was put into my hand. I could smell the same drink that he had given me before when I dreamed in the cave. "Drink that. You should have slept till I wakened you, then it wouldn't have come like this. Drink it all."

  As I drank, the sharp ache in my temples dulled to a throb, and the swimming shapes round me drew back into focus. And with them, thought.

  "I'm sorry. It's all right now, I can think again, I've come back... I'll tell you the rest. My mother's to go into St. Peter's. She tried to make Camlach promise to let me go too, but he wouldn't. I think..."

  "Yes?"

  I said slowly, thinking hard now: "I didn't understand it all. I was thinking about Cerdic. But I believe he's going to kill me. I believe he will use my grandfather's death for this; he'll say that my slave did it... Oh, nobody will believe that I could take anything from Camlach, but if he does shut me up in a religious house, and then I die quietly, a little time after, then by that time the whispers will have worked, and nobody will raise a voice about it. And by that time, if my mother is just one of the holy women at St. Peter's, and no longer the King's daughter, she won't have a voice to raise, either." I cupped my hands round the goblet, looking across at him. "Why should anyone fear me so, Galapas?"

  He did not answer that, but nodded to the goblet in my hands. "Finish it. Then, my dear, you must go."

  "Go? But if I go back, they'll kill me, or shut me up. Won't they?"

  "If they find you, they will try."

  I said eagerly: "If I stayed here with you — nobody knows I come here — even if they found out and came after me, you'd be in no danger! We'd see them coming up the valley for miles, or we'd know they were coming, you and I... They'd never find me; I could go in the crystal cave."

  He shook his head. "The time for that isn't come. One day, but not now. You can no more be hidden now, than your merlin could go back into its egg."

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the ledge where the merlin had sat brooding, still as Athene's owl. There was no bird there. I wiped the back of a hand across my e
yes, and blinked, not believing. But it was true. The firelit shadows were empty.

  "Galapas, it's gone!"

  "Yes."

  "Did you see it go?"

  "It went by when you called me back into the cave."

  "I — which way?"

  "South."

  I drank the rest of the potion, then turned the goblet up to spill the last drops for the god. Then I set it down and reached for my cloak.

  "I'll see you again, won't I?"

  "Yes. I promise you that."

  "Then I shall come back?"

  "I promised you that already. Some day, the cave will be yours, and all that is in it."

  Past him, in from the night, came a cold stray breath of air that stirred my cloak and lifted the hairs on my nape. My flesh prickled. I got up and swung the cloak round me and fastened the pin.

  "You're going, then?" He was smiling. "You trust me so much? Where do you plan to go?"

  "I don't know. Home, I suppose, to start with. I'll have time to think on the way there, if I need to. But I'm still in the god's path. I can feel the wind blowing. Why are you smiling, Galapas?"

  But he would not answer that. He stood up, then pulled me towards him and stooped and kissed me. His kiss was dry and light, an old man's kiss, like a dead leaf drifting down to brush the flesh. Then he pushed me towards the entrance. "Go. I saddled your pony ready for you."

  * * *

  It was raining still as I rode down the valley. The rain was cold and small, and soaking; it gathered on my cloak and dragged at my shoulders, and mixed with the tears that ran down my face.

  This was the second time in my life that I wept.

  11

  THE STABLEYARD GATE WAS LOCKED. This was no more than I had expected. That day I had gone out openly enough through the main yard with the merlin, and any other night might have chanced riding back the same way, with some story of losing my falcon and riding about till dark to look for it. But not tonight.