The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [40]
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 eyes, 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.
And tonight there would be no one waiting and listening for me, to let me in.
Though the need for haste was breathing on the back of my neck, I kept the impatient pony to a walk, and rode quietly along under the palace wall in the direction of the bridge. This and the road leading to it were alive with people and torches and noise, and twice in the few minutes since I had come in sight of it a horseman went galloping headlong out over the bridge, going south.
Now the wet, bare trees of the orchard overhung the towpath. There was a ditch here below the high wall, and over it the boughs hung, dripping. I slid off the pony's back and led him in under my leaning apple-tree, and tethered him. Then I scrambled back into the saddle, got unsteadily to my feet, balanced for a moment, and jumped for the bough above me.
It was soaking, and one of my hands slipped, but the other held. I swung my legs