The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [152]
I smiled. "No, on yours. If I seemed to take the credit for the seeing I am sorry. But the matter was urgent, and he might not have believed you as readily."
"Of course not. But you saw it, too?"
"I saw nothing."
He looked startled. "But you believed me straight away."
"Of course. Because I did not share it, it doesn't mean it was not a true dream."
He looked worried, then rather scared. "But, Merlin, do you mean that you knew nothing about this before I told you my dream? I mean, about Heuil's turning pirate...I should say, his intention to turn pirate? That you sent the King off to the north on my word alone?"
"That is what I mean, yes."
A silence, while worry, apprehension, excitement, and then joy showed in his face as clearly as the reflection of light and cloud blowing across the waters of his native lake. He was still taking in the implications of power. But when he spoke he surprised me. Like Arthur, he saw straight past those implications to others, that were my concern, not his. And his next words were an exact echo of Arthur's. "Merlin, do you mind?"
I answered him as simply. "Perhaps. A little, now. But soon, not at all. It's a harsh gift, and perhaps it is time that the god handed it on to you, and left me in peace to sit in the sun and watch the doves on the wall."
I smiled as I spoke, but there was no answering glimmer in his face. He did a strange thing then. He reached for my hand, lifted it to his cheek, then dropped it and went back upstairs to his room without another word or look. I was left standing there in the sun, remembering another, much younger boy, riding downhill from the cave of Galapas, with the visions swirling in his head, and tears on his face, and all the lonely pain and danger hanging in the clouds ahead of him. Then I went indoors to my own room, and read beside the fire till Mora brought the midday meal.
8
Arthur rode out next day for the north, and thereafter we got no more news. Ninian went about the place with a half-dazed look, compounded, I think, of wonder at himself and the "true vision," and at me for not seeming distressed at the way it had passed me by. For myself, I admit I was divided; looking back on that day, I knew that I had been lingering in the edges of the poisoned dream that was my sickness; but even after Arthur's visit and acceptance of Ninian's prophecy, nothing had come to me out of the dark, either of proof or denial. For all that I seemed to feel, in the rich quiet of the days, a tranquil approval. It was like watching a shadow that slowly, as the distant clouds move, withdraws from one field or forest, and passes on to shroud the next. I had been shown, gently enough, where happiness now lay; so I took it, preparing the boy Ninian to be as I had been, and myself for some future half seen and guessed at many times, but now seen more clearly and no longer dreaded, but moved toward, as a beast moves toward its winter sleep.
Ninian, more even than before, seemed to withdraw into himself. On one or two occasions, lying wakeful in the night, I heard him cross the garth soft-footed, and then run, like a young thing released, down the valley to the road. Twice, even, I sought to follow him in vision, but he must have taken care to cloud himself from me, for I saw no farther than the roadway, then the slight figure running, running, into the mist that lay between Applegarth and the Island. It did not trouble me that he had secrets, any more than it troubled me to hear him and the girl Mora talking -- sometimes at great length -- in the still-room or the kitchen. I had never counted myself lively company, and with age tended to be even more withdrawn. It only pleased me that the young people should find common interests, and keep each other contented in my service.
For service it was. I worked the boy harder than any slave. This is the way of love, I find; one longs so fervently for the beloved to achieve the best ends that