The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [69]
The sky itself was moving. The earth held still, but heaven itself was moving. The Galaxy gathered and narrowed into a shaft of light, then froze still as a stream in the bite of winter. A shaft of ice -- no, a blade, it lay across the sky like a king's sword, with the great jewels blazing in the hilt. Emerald I saw, topaz, sapphires, which in the tongue of swords mean power and joy and justice and clean death.
For a long time the sword lay there, still, like a weapon newly burnished, waiting for the hand which will lift and wield it. Then, of itself, it moved. Not as a weapon is lifted in battle, or in ceremony, or sport. But as a blade slides home to its housing it slid, how gently, down towards the standing stone, dropping into it as a sword slips resting into its scabbard.
Then there was nothing but the empty field and the whistling wind, and a grey stone standing.
I woke to the darkness of the inn room, and a single star, small and bright, showing through a gap above the rafters. Below me the beasts breathed sweet breath, while all around were the snores and stirrings of the sleepers. The place smelled warmly of horses and peat smoke and hay and mutton stew.
I lay unmoving, flat on my back, watching the little star. I hardly thought about the dream. Vaguely, I remembered that there had been talk of a sword, and now this dream...But I let it pass me. It would come. I would be shown. God was back with me; time had not lied. And in an hour or two it would be morning.
BOOK II -- THE SEARCH
1
The gods, all of them, must be accustomed to blasphemy. It is a blasphemy even to question their purposes, and to wonder, as I had done, who they were or if they even existed is blasphemy itself. Now I knew my god was back with me, that his purpose was working, and though I still saw nothing clearly, I knew that his hand would be over me when the time was right, and I would be guided, driven, shown -- it did not matter which, nor in what form he came. He would show me that, too. But not yet. Today was my own. The dreams of the night had vanished with the stars that made them. This morning the wind was only the wind, and the sunlight nothing but light.
I do not think I even looked back. I had no fear for Ralf or the child. The Sight may be an uncomfortable thing to possess, but foreknowledge of catastrophe relieves the possessor of the small frets of day to day. A man who has seen his own old age and bitter end does not fear what may come to him at twenty-two. I had no doubts about my own safety, or the boy's whose sword I had seen -- twice now -- drawn and shining. So I was free to dread nothing worse than the next sea voyage, which took me, suffering but alive, to the port of Massilia on the Inland Sea, and landed me there on a bright February day which, in Britain, we would have called summer.
Once there, it did not matter who saw me and reported meeting me. If it should be noised abroad that Prince Merlin had been seen in Southern Gaul, or Italy, then perhaps Uther's enemies would watch me for a while, hoping for a lead to the vanished prince. Eventually they would give up and search elsewhere, but by that time the trail would be cold. In Kerrec the visit of the inconspicuous singer would be forgotten, and Ralf, quietly anonymous in the forest tavern, would be able to come and go without fear between Coll and the castle at Kerrec, with news of the child's progress for Hoel to transmit to me. So, once landed in Massilia, and recovered from my voyage, I set about making open preparations for my journey eastwards.
With no need this time for disguise, I travelled in comfort, if not in princely style. Appearances had never troubled me; a man makes his own; but I had friends to visit, and if I could not do them honour, at least I must not shame them. So I hired a body-servant and bought horses and baggage mules and a slave to look after them, and set off for my first destination, which was Rome.
The road out of Massilia is a straight, sun-beaten ribbon of white dust running along the