The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [17]
We pitched camp on the rising ground in the lee of the woods. While this was being done, Arthur, with Ynyr and Gwilim, the kings of Guent and Dyfed, went on a tour of exploration, then after supper he sat in his tent to receive the headmen from the settlements nearby. Numbers of the local folk crowded to see the new young King, even the fisher folk who have no homes but the cliff caves and their frail-skinned coracles. He spoke with them all, accepting homage and complaint alike. After an hour or two of it, I asked leave with a look, got it, and went out into the air. It was a long time since I had smelled the hills of my own country, and besides, there was a place nearby that I had long wanted to visit.
This was the once-famous shrine of Nodens, who is Nuatha of the Silver Hand, known in my country as Llud, or Bilis, King of the Otherworld, whose gates are the hollow hills. He it was who had guarded the sword after I had raised it from its long grave below the floor of Mithras' temple at Segontium. I had left it in his keeping in the lake cave that was known to be sacred to him, before carrying it finally up to the Green Chapel. To Llud, also, I had a debt to pay.
His shrine by the Severn was far older than Mithras' temple, or the chapel in the forest. Its origins had long been lost, even in song or story. It had been a hill fortress first, with maybe a stone or a spring dedicated to the god who cared for the spirits of dead men. Then iron was found, and all through Roman times the place was mined, and mined richly. It may have been the Romans who first called the place the Hill of the Dwarfs, after the small dark men of the west who worked there. The mine had long since been closed, but the name persisted, and so did the stories, of the Old Ones who were seen lurking in the oak woods, or who came thronging out of the earth's depths on nights of storm and starlight to join the train of the dark king, as he rode from his hollow hill with his wild rout of ghosts and enchanted spirits.
I reached the top of the hill behind the camp, and walked down between the scattered oaks toward the stream at the valley's foot. There was a ripe autumn moon that showed me my way. The chestnut leaves, already loosened and drifting, fell here and there quietly to the grass, but the oaks still held their leaves, so that the air was full of rustling as the dry boughs stirred and whispered. The land after the rain smelled rich and soft, ploughing weather, nutting weather, the squirrel-time for winter's coming.
Below me on the shadowed slope something moved. There was a stirring of grasses, a pattering, then, like the sound of a hail-storm sweeping past, a herd of deer went by, as swiftly as swallows flying. They were very near. The moonlight struck the dappled coats and the ivory tips of the tines. So close they were that I even saw the liquid shine of their eyes. There were pied deer and white, ghosts of dapple and silver, scudding as lightly as their own shadows, and as swiftly as a sudden squall of wind. They fled by me, down to the valley foot, between the breasts of the rounded hills and up round a curve of oak trees, and were gone.
They say that a white deer is a magical creature. I believe that this is true. I had seen two such in my life, each one the herald of a marvel. These, too, seen in the moonlight, scudding like clouds into the trees' darkness, seemed things of magic. Perhaps, with the Old Ones, they haunted a hill that still held an open gate to the Otherworld.
I crossed the stream, climbed the next hill, and made my way up toward the ruinous walls that crowned it. I picked my way through the debris of what looked like ancient outworks, then climbed the last steep rise of the path.