The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [149]
Quick footsteps on a stone stair startled me awake. I looked up. Ninian came hurrying down from his room, but with uncertain steps, as if it were he, not I, who was half-drugged, or even ill. He kept a hand on the stone wall, as if without its guidance he would have stumbled. Still unsteadily, he crossed the colonnade, and came out into the sunshine. He paused there, with a hand to one of the pillars for support. His face was pale, his eyes enormous, the black pupils swimmingly overspreading the iris. His lips looked dry, but there was damp on his forehead, and two sharp lines of pain gouged down between his brows.
"What is it?" I began in alarm to get to my feet, but he put out a hand to calm me, then came forward. He sank down on the flags at my feet in the sun.
"I've had a dream," he said, and even his voice was unlike itself. "No, I wasn't asleep. I was reading by the window. There was a spider's web there, still full of drops from last night's rain. I was watching it as it shook in the sunlight..."
I understood then. I put a hand down to his shoulder and held it steadily. "Sit quiet for a moment. You will not forget the dream. Wait there. You can tell me later."
But as I got to my feet he shot a hand out and grabbed at my robe. "You don't understand! It was a warning! I am sure of that! There's some sort of danger -- "
"I understand quite well. But until the headache goes, you will remember nothing clearly. Now wait. I'll be back soon."
I went into the stillroom. As I busied myself mixing the cordial I had only one thought in my mind. He, sitting reading and thinking, had had vision brought to him in a dewdrop's spark of light; I, waiting idly and with passive mind in full sunlight, had seen nothing. I found that my hand shook a little as I poured the cordial for him; it would take love, I thought, to stand peacefully aside and watch the god lift his wing from over me, and take another into its shadow. No matter that the power had brought pain and men's fear and sometimes hatred; no one who has known power like that has any wish to abdicate it to another. Not to anyone.
I carried the goblet out into the sunlight. Ninian, still curled on the flagstones, had his head down, a fist pressed tightly against his brow. He looked very slight and young. He raised his head at my step, and the grey eyes, swimming with tears of pain, looked at me blindly. I sat down, took his hand in mine, and guided the goblet to his mouth. "Drink this. It will make you feel better presently. No, don't try to talk yet."
He drank, then his head went down again, this time against my knee. I laid a hand on his hair. For some time we sat like that, while the doves, disturbed by his coming, flew down again onto the coping of the wall, and once more took up their gentle courtship. Beyond the stables the monotonous sound of Varro's spade went on and on.
Presently Ninian stirred.
I lifted my hand. "Better?"
He nodded and raised his head. The lines of pain had gone. "Yes. Yes, it's quite gone. It was more than a headache; it was like a sharp pain right through the brain. I've never felt anything like that before. Am I ill?"
"No. You are merely a seer, an eye and a voice for a most tyrannous god. You have had a waking dream, what men call a vision. Now tell me about it, and we shall see if it is a true one."
He drew his knees up, clasping them with both hands. He spoke, looking past me at the wall with the black branches and red cups of the quince. His eyes were still dark, dilated with vision, and his voice was low and even, as if reciting something learned by rote.
"I saw a stretch of grey sea, whipped with storm winds, breaking white over rocks like wolves' fangs. There was a beach of pebbles, grey too, and streaming with rain. The waves came in over the beach, and with them came broken spars and casks and torn sails -- pieces of wreckage. And people; drowned bodies of men and women. One of