The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [98]
There was the faintest of whispers from the crystal cave, a ghostly sweet humming like the music I had once listened for in the night. Nothing human; I had not expected it. But still I climbed up to the ledge, knelt down and peered in.
The torchlight caught the crystals, and threw the shadow of my harp, trembling, clear round the lighted globe. The harp stood, undamaged, in the center of the cave. Nothing else, except the whisper dying round the glittering walls. There must be visions there, in the flash and counterflash of light, but I knew I would not be open to them. I put a hand down to the rock and vaulted, torch streaming, back to the floor of the cave. As I passed the tilted mirror I caught a glimpse of a tall youth running in a swirl of flame and smoke. His face looked pale, the eyes black and enormous. I ran out on to the grass. I had forgotten the torch, which flamed and streamed behind me. I ran to the edge of the cliff, and cupped a hand to my mouth to call Cadal, but then a sound from behind me made me whip round and look upwards.
It was a very normal sound. A pair of ravens and a carrion crow had risen from the hill, and were scolding at me.
Slowly this time, I climbed the path that led up past the spring and out on the hillside above the cave. The ravens went higher, barking. Two more crows made off low across the young bracken. There was a couple still busy on something lying among the flowering blackthorn.
I whirled the torch and flung it streaming to scatter them. Then I ran forward.
There was no telling how long he had been dead. The bones were picked almost clean. But I knew him by the discoloured brown rags that flapped under the skeleton, and the one old broken sandal which lay flung nearby among the April daisies. One of the hands had fallen from the wrist, and the clean, brittle bones lay near my foot. I could see where the little finger had been broken, and had set again, crookedly. Already through the bare rib-cage the April grass was springing. The air blew clean and sunlit, smelling of flowering gorse.
The torch had been stubbed out in the fresh grass. I stooped and picked it up. I should not have thrown it at them, I thought. His birds had given him a seemly way-going.
A step behind me brought me round, but it was only Cadal.
"I saw the birds go up," he said. He was looking down at the thing under the blackthorn bushes. "Galapas?"
I nodded.
"I saw the mess down by the cave. I guessed."
"I hadn't realized I had been here so long."
"Leave this to me." He was stooping already. "I'll get him buried. Go you and wait down where we left the horse. I can maybe find some sort of tool down yonder, or I could come back -- "
"No. Let him lie in peace under the thorn. We'll build the hill over him and let it take him in. We do this together, Cadal."
There were stones in plenty to pile over him for a barrow, and we cut sods with our daggers to turf it over. By the end of summer the bracken and foxgloves and young grasses would have grown right over and shrouded him. So we left him.
As we went downhill again past the cave I thought of the last time I had gone this way. I had been weeping then, I remembered, for Cerdic's death, for my mother's loss and Galapas', for who knew what foreknowledge of the future? You will see me again, he had said, I promise you that. Well, I had seen him. And some day, no doubt, his other promise would come true in its own fashion.
I shivered, caught Cadal's quick look, and spoke curtly. "I hope you had the sense to bring a flask with you. I need a drink."
4
Cadal had brought more than a flask with him, he had brought food -- salt mutton and bread, and last season's olives in a bottle with their own oil. We sat in the lee of the wood and ate, while the cob grazed near us, and below in the distance the placid curves of the river glimmered through the April green of the fields and the young wooded hills. The mist had cleared, and it was a beautiful day.
"Well," said Cadal at length, "what's to do?"
"We go to see my mother. If she's still there,