The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [174]
I went, I believe, for nothing more than the comfortable memories of past power, and of love. I took no light with me, and looked for no vision. I simply lay, as I had done when a boy, belly down on the rough crystals of the floor, letting the heavy silence enclose me, and filling it with my thoughts.
What they were I cannot now remember: I suppose I was praying. I do not think I spoke aloud. But in a while I became conscious -- as, in a black night, a man realizes, rather than sees, the coming dawn -- of something that answered to my breathing. Not a sound, only the faintest echo of a breath, as if a ghost was waking, taking life from mine.
My heart began to thud; my breathing sharpened. Within the darkness the other rhythm quickened. The air of the cave hummed. Round the crystal walls ran, echoing, a whisper that I knew.
I felt the easy tears of weakness start into my eyes. I said aloud: "So, after all, they brought you back to your own place?" And, from the darkness, my harp answered me.
I groped forward towards the sound. My fingers met the live, silken feel of wood. The carved fore-pillar nestled into my hand as I had seen the hilt of the great sword slide into the King's grip. I backed out of the cave, silenced the harp's faint plaining against my breast, and picked my way carefully down again into my prison.
***
This was the song I made. I called it "Merlin's Song from the Grave."
Where have they gone, the bright ones?
I remember the sunlight
And a great wind blowing;
A god who answered me,
Leaning out from the high stars;
A star that shone for me,
A voice that spoke to me,
A hawk that guided me,
A shield that sheltered me;
And a clear way to the gate
Where they wait for me,
Where surely they wait for me?
The day wanes,
The wind dies.
They are gone, the bright ones.
Only I remain.
What use to call to me
Who have neither shield nor star?
What use to kneel to me
Who am only the shadow
Of his shadow,
Only the shadow
Of a star that fell
Long ago.
No song comes brand-fire-new and finished from the first playing, so that now I cannot recall just on which occasion, as I was singing it, I became conscious of an unusual sound that had been, as it were, tapping at the door of my brain for several staves. I let the chords die, laid a hand along the strings, and listened.
The beating of my heart sounded loud in the still, dead air of the cave. Below it went another throbbing, a distant beat coming seemingly from the heart of the hill. I can hardly be blamed, shut as I had been for too long from the ordinary traffic of the world, if the first thoughts that came crowding were winged with instinct born of ancient beliefs -- Llud of the Otherworld, the horses of the Wild Hunt, all the shadows dwelling in the hollow hills...Death for me at long last, on this still evening at the end of summer? Then, in less time than it takes for two short breaths, I had arrived at the truth -- and it was already too late.
It was the traveller I had waited for, and at length despaired of; he had ridden up above the cave, and halted by the cliff where the lantern opened on the air, and had heard the music. There was a pause, broken only by the sharp strike of nervous hoofs on stone as the horse fretted, held and sidling. Then a man's voice, calling out:
"Is there anyone there?"
I had already laid the harp aside and, with what speed I could, was scrambling through the half-dark toward the cave below him. As I went I tried to call out, but it was a moment or so before my thudding heart and dry throat would let me answer. Then I cried out:
"It is I, Merlin! Don't be afraid, I'm no ghost. I'm alive, and trapped here. Break a way out for me, in the King's name!"
My voice was drowned