The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [21]
As I followed him his father, settling himself once more in his blankets by the hearth, said the time-honoured words of the healing-place.
"Sleep soundly, friend, and may the god send you a dream."
***
Whoever sent it, the dream came, and it was a true one.
I dreamed of Morgause, whom I had driven from Uther's court at Luguvallium, with an escort detailed to take her with safe ceremony across the high Pennines, and then southeast to York, where her half-sister Morgan lay.
The dream came fitfully, like those hilltop glimpses one gets through blowing cloud on a dark day. Which, in the dream it was. I saw the party first on the evening of a wet and windy day, when fine rain blowing downwind turned the gravel of the road into a slippery track of mud. They had paused on the bank of a river swollen by rain. I did not recognize the place. The road led down into the river, in what should have been a shallow ford, but now showed as a racing tumble of white water which broke and foamed round an island that split the flood like a ship sailing. There was no house in sight, not even a cave. Beyond the ford the road twisted eastward among its sodden trees, and up through rolling foothills toward the high fells.
With dusk falling fast, it seemed that the party would have to spend the night here, and wait for the river to go down. The officer in command of the party seemed to be explaining as much to Morgause; I could not hear what was said, but he looked angry, and his horse, tired though it was, kept on the fret. I guessed that the choice of route had not been his: the normal way from Luguvallium is by the high moorland road that leaves the west highway at Brocavum and crosses the mountains by Verterae. This last, kept fortified and in fine repair, would have offered the party a staging post, and would have been the obvious choice for a soldier. Instead, they must have taken the old hill road which branches southeast from the five-way crossing near the camp on the River Lune. I had never been that way. It was not a road that had been kept in any kind of order. It led up the valley of the Dubglas and across the high moors, and thence through the mountains by the pass formed by the Tribuit and the Isara rivers. Men call this pass the Pennine Gap, and in past time the Romans kept it fortified and the roads open and patrolled. It is wild country -- and still, among the remote summits and cliffs above the tree line, are caves where the Old Ones live. If this was indeed the road Morgause was taking, I could only wonder why.
Cloud and mist; rain in long grey showers; the swollen river piling its white bow-waves against the driftwood and bending willows of the river island. Then darkness and a gap of time hid the scene from me.
Next time I saw them they were halted, somewhere high in the pass, with tree-hung cliffs to the right of the road, and to the left a wide, falling prospect of forest, with a winding river at the foot of the valley, and hills beyond. They had halted by a milestone near the crest of the pass. Here a track branched off downhill to where, in a distant hollow of the valley, lights showed. Morgause was pointing toward these, and it seemed that there was an argument in progress.
Still I could hear nothing, but the cause of the dispute was obvious. The officer had thrust forward to Morgause's side and was leaning forward in his saddle, arguing fiercely, pointing first at the milestone and then at the road ahead. A late gleam from the west showed, etched by shadow on the stone, the name OLICANA. I could not see the mileage, but what the officer said was clear; that it would be folly to forgo the known comforts that awaited them in Olicana for the chance that the distant house (if such it was) could accommodate the party. His men, crowding near, were openly supporting him. Beside her, Morgause's women watched her anxiously, one might have said beseechingly.
After a while, with a resigned gesture, Morgause gave way. The escort re-formed. The women closed up beside her, smiling. But before the party had