The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [179]
It was a grim business, and it took a long time, not least because, when he would have left me to go for help, I begged him, in terms of which I am now ashamed, not to leave me. He did not argue, but set himself to knotting the long, stout rope which he had found still attached to an ash sapling in the rock above the lantern. He finished it with a loop for my foot, then lowered it carefully. It reached the platform, with some length to spare. Then he let himself down into the shaft, and in a short space of time was beside me at the foot of the scaffolding. I think he would have gone on his knees, as his habit had been, to kiss my hands, but I gripped him so tightly that instead he held me, supporting me with his young strength, and then helped me back into the main cavern.
He found the one remaining stool for me, then lit the lantern and brought me wine, and after a while I was able to say, with a smile: "So now you know that I am a solid body, and no ghost? It was brave of you to come at all, and braver still to stay. What on earth brought you to this place? You're the last person who I'd have thought would go visiting a tomb."
"I wouldn't have come at all," he said frankly, "but that something I heard made me wonder if you were not dead after all, but living here alone. I knew you were a great magician, and thought that perhaps your magic would not let you die like other men."
"Something you heard? What was that?"
"You know the man I have to help me at the mill, Bran, he's called? Well, he was in town yesterday, and brought home some tale of a fellow who'd drunk himself silly in one of the taverns, and the story was going about that he had been up to Bryn Myrddin, and that the enchanter had come out of the tomb and spoken to him. People were standing him drinks and asking for more, and of course the tale as he told it was plainly lies, but there was enough to make me wonder..." He hesitated. "What did happen, lord? I knew someone had been here, because of the rope on the tree."
"It happened twice," I told him. "The first time it was a horseman riding over the hill...you can see how long ago, I marked it on the tally yonder. He must have heard me playing; the sound would carry up through the hole in the cliff. The second time was four -- five? -- days since, when some ruffian came to rob the tomb, and opened the cliff as you saw it, and let himself down with the rope." I told him what had happened. "He must have been too scared to stop and untie his rope. It's a mercy you heard his story, and came up before he got his courage back, and came back for it -- and perhaps dared the tomb again."
He gave me a sidelong, shamefaced look. "I'll not pretend to you, lord. It's not right you praising me for courage. I came up yesterday evening. I didn't want to come alone, but I was ashamed to bring Bran, and Mai wouldn't go within a mile of the place...Well, I saw the mouth of the cave was just as it had been, and then I heard the harp. I -- I turned and ran home. I'm sorry."
I said, gently: "But you came back."
"Yes. I couldn't sleep all night. You remember when you left me once to guard the cave, and you showed me your harp, and how it played sometimes by itself, just with the air moving? And how you gave me courage, and showed me the crystal cave and told me I would be safe there? Well, I thought of all that, and I thought of the times you were good to me, how you took me out of slavery and gave me freedom and the life I have now. And I thought: Even if it is my lord's ghost, or the harp playing by magic, alone in the hollow hill, he would never harm me...So I came again, but this time I came by daylight. I thought: If it is