The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [26]
Half an hour before dusk we put our books aside. But still I made no move to go. The fire was blazing now, filling the cave with warmth and flickering light. We sat for a while in silence.
"Galapas, there's something I want to ask you."
"Yes?"
"Do you remember the first day I came here?"
"Very clearly."
"You knew I was coming. You were expecting me."
"Did I say so?"
"You know you did. How did you know I would be here?"
"I saw you in the crystal cave."
"Oh, that, yes. You moved the mirror so that the candlelight caught me, and you saw my shadow. But that's not what I was asking you. I meant, how did you know I was going to come up the valley that day?"
"That was the question I answered, Merlin. I knew you were coming up the valley that day, because, before you came, I saw you in the cave."
We looked at one another in silence. The flames glowed and muttered between us, flattened by the little draught that carried the smoke out of the cave. I don't think I answered him at first, I just nodded. It was something I had known. After a while I said, merely: "Will you show me?"
He regarded me for a moment more, then got to his feet. "It is time. Light the candle."
I obeyed him. The little light grew golden, reaching among the shadows cast by the flickering of the fire.
"Take the rug off the mirror."
I pulled at it and it fell off into my arms in a huddle of wool. I dropped it on his bed beside the wall.
"Now go up on the ledge, and lie down."
"On the ledge?"
"Yes. Lie on your belly, with your head towards the cleft, so that you can see in."
"Don't you want me to go right in?"
"And take your jerkin to lie on?"
I was halfway up to the ledge. I whipped round, to see him smiling.
"It's no use, Galapas, you know everything."
"Some day you will go where even with the Sight I cannot follow you. Now lie still, and watch."
I lay down on the ledge. It was wide and flat and held me comfortably enough, prone, with my head pillowed on my bent arms, and turned towards the cleft.
Below me, Galapas said softly: "Think of nothing. I have the reins in my hand; it is not for you yet. Watch only."
I heard him move back across the cave towards the mirror.
***
The cave was bigger than I had imagined. It stretched upwards further than I could see, and the floor was worn smooth. I had even been wrong about the crystals; the glimmer that reflected the torchlight came only from puddles on the floor, and a place on one wall where a thin slither of moisture betrayed a spring somewhere above.
The torches, jammed into cracks in the cave wall, were cheap ones, of rag stuffed into cracked horns -- the rejects from the workshops. They burned sullenly in the bad air. Though the place was cold, the men worked naked save for loincloths, and sweat ran over their backs as they hacked at the rock-face, steady ceaseless tapping blows that made no noise, but you could see the muscles clench and jar under the torchlit sweat. Beneath a knee-high overhang at the base of the wall, flat on their backs in a pool of seepage, two men hammered upwards with shortened, painful blows at rock within inches of their faces. On the wrist of one of them I saw the shiny pucker of an old brand.
One of the hewers at the face doubled up, coughing, then with a glance over his shoulder stifled the cough and got back to work. Light was growing in the cave, coming from a square opening like a doorway, which gave on a curved tunnel down which a fresh torch -- a good one -- came.
Four boys appeared, filthy with dust and naked like the others, carrying deep baskets, and behind them came a man dressed in a brown tunic smudged with damp. He had the torch in one hand and in the other a tablet which he stood studying with frowning brows while the boys ran with their baskets to the rock-face and began to shovel the fallen rock into them. After a while the foreman went forward to the face and studied it, holding his torch high. The men drew back, thankful it seemed