The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [194]
"I was in yours," he said. "Why did you ride alone? You should have known there was danger."
"I knew there was death, but I wanted no more deaths on my hands. Pain is another thing, and is soon over." I got to my feet, stiffly. "If I'm ever to move again, Mab, I must move now. My clothes?"
The clothes were wet still, a mass of mud and rents. But apart from the sheepskins there was nothing else; the hill people are small, and nothing of theirs would have fitted me. I shrugged myself into what was left of my court clothing, and took the bridle of a stolid brown horse from one of the men. The wound in my thigh was bleeding again, and from the feel of it there were splinters there. I got them to sling one of the sheepskins over the saddle, and climbed gingerly on.
"Shall we come with you?" they asked me.
I shook my head. "No. Stay and see the road cleared. In the morning, if you wish, come to the shrine. There will be a place there for you all."
***
The moonlit space at the forest's center was as still as a painted picture, and as unreal as a midnight dream. Moonlight edged the chapel roof and silvered the furred tops of the surrounding pines. The doorway showed an oblong of gold, where the nine lamps shone steadily round the altar.
As I rode softly round to the back the door opened there, and the servant peered fearfully out. All was well, he told me; no one had been by. But his eyes stretched wide when he saw the state I was in, and he was obviously glad when I handed the bridle to him and told him to leave me. Then I went in thankfully to the firelight to tend my hurts and change my clothing.
***
Slowly the silence seeped back. A brush of soft wind over the tree-tops swept the last sound of retreating hoofs away; it crept in through the chapel, thinning the lamp flames and drawing thin lines of smoke which smelled like sweet gums burning. Outside in the clearing the moon and stars poured their rare light down. The god was here. I knelt before the altar, emptying myself of mind and will, till through me I felt the full tide of God's will flowing, and bearing me with it.
The night lay silver and quiet, waiting for the torches and the trumpets.
11
They came at last. Lights and clamour and the trampling of horses flowed nearer through the forest, till the clearing was filled with flaring torchlight and excited voices. I heard them through the waking sleep of vision, dim, echoing, remote, like bells heard from the bottom of the sea.
The leaders had come forward. They paused in the doorway. Voices hushed, feet shuffled. All they would see was the swept and empty chapel, deserted but for one man standing facing them across the stone altar. Round the altar the nine lamps still dealt their steady glow, showing the carved stone sword and the legend MITHRAE INVICTO, and lying across the top of the altar the sword itself, unsheathed, bare on the bare stone.
"Put out the torches," I told them. "There will be no need of them."
They obeyed me, then at my signal pressed forward into the chapel.
The place was small, the throng of men great. But the awe of the occasion prevailed; orders were given, but subdued; soft commands which might have come from priests in ritual rather than warriors recently in battle. There were no rites to follow, but somehow men kept their places; kings and nobles and kings' guards within the chapel, the press of lesser men outside in the silent clearing and overflowing into the gloom of the forest itself. There, they still had lights; the clearing was ringed with light and sound where the horses waited and men stood with torches ready; but forward under the open sky men came lightless and weaponless, as beseemed them in the presence of God and their King. And still, this one night of all the great nights, there was no priest present; the only intermediary was myself, who had been used by the driving god for thirty years, and brought at last to this place.
At length all were assembled, according to order and precedence. It was as