The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [127]
By land and water shall it go home, and be hidden in the floating stone until by fire it shall be raised again. So had the Old Ones said, and they would have recognized this place as I did; as the dead fisherman did who came back from the Otherworld raving of the halls of the dark King. Here, in Bilis' antechamber, the sword would be safe till the youth came who had the right to lift it.
I waded forward through the pool. The floor sloped and the water deepened. Now I could see how the dark passageway ran on, back and down behind the stone table, until the roof met the water's surface and the passage vanished below the level of the lake. Ripples ringed and lapsed against the rock, and the echoes ran round the walls and broke between the pillars. The water was ice-cold. I laid the sword, still wrapped as I had found it on the stone table. I went back across the pool. The place sang with echoes. I stood still, while they sank to a humming murmur and then died. My very breathing sounded all at once too loud, an intrusion. I left the sword to its silent waiting, and went quickly back up towards daylight. The shadows parted and let me through.
2
April came, when Ector was expected home. For the first week of the month it rained and blew, weather like winter, so that the forest roared like the sea and the draughts through the shrine kept the nine lights plunging sidelong and smoking. The white owl watched from the place where she sat her eggs in the roof.
Then I woke in the night to silence. The wind had dropped, the pines were still. I rose and threw my cloak about me and went out. Outside the moon was high, and there in the north the Bear wheeled so low and brilliant that one felt one could reach up and touch it, were it not that its touch would burn. My blood ran light and free; my body felt rinsed and new clean as the forest. For the rest of the night I slept no more than a lover does, and at first light rose and broke my fast and went to saddle Strawberry.
The sun rose brilliant in a clear sky, and its early light poured into the glade. Yesterday's rain lay thick and glittering on the grasses and the new young curls of fern; it dripped and steamed from the pines so that their scent pierced the air. Beyond their bloomed crests the encircling hills smoked white towards the sky.
I let the mare out of the shed, and was carrying the saddle over to her when suddenly she lifted her head from her grazing, and put her ears up. Seconds later I heard what she had heard, the beat of hoofs, coming at a fast gallop, far too fast for safety on a twisting path seamed with roots and overhung by branches. I set the saddle down, and waited.
A neat black horse, galloped hard on a tight rein, burst out of the forest, came to a sliding stop three paces from me, and the boy who had been lying along his back like a leech slid, all in the same movement, to the ground. The horse was sweating hard, and the bit dripped foam. Red showed inside the blown nostrils. That neat-footed gallop and the collected stop had been a matter of hard control, then. Nine years old? At his age I had been riding a fat pony which had to be kicked to a trot.
He gathered the reins competently in one hand and held the horse still when it tried to thrust past him to the water. He did it absently; his attention was all on me.
"Are you the new holy man?"
"Yes."
"Prosper was a friend of mine."
"I'm sorry."
"You don't much look like a hermit. Are you really keeping the chapel now?"
"Yes."
He chewed his lip thoughtfully, regarding me. It was a look of appraisal, a weighing-up. Under it, as under no other I had encountered, I could feel my muscles clench themselves to hold nerves and heart-beats steady. I waited. I knew that, as ever, my face gave nothing away. What he must be seeing was merely a harmless-looking man, unarmed, saddling an undistinguished