The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [76]
"Do you know anything about dreams?"
I was startled. "Dreams? Well, I have had them."
A glint of amusement. "Yes, that was a foolish question, wasn't it? I meant, can you tell me what they mean, other men's dreams?"
"I doubt it. When my own mean something, they are clear beyond doubt. Why, has your sleep been troubled?"
"For many nights now." He hesitated, shifting the things on the table. "It seems a trivial thing to trouble over, but the dream is so vivid, and it's always the same..."
"Tell me."
"I am alone, and out hunting. No hounds, just myself and my horse, hard on the track of a stag. This part varies a bit, but I always know that the chase has been going on for many hours. Then, just as we seem to be catching up with the stag, it leaps into a brake of trees and vanishes. At the same moment my horse falls dead beneath me. I am thrown to the turf. Sometimes I wake there, but when I go back to sleep again, I am still lying on the turf, by the bank of a stream, with the dead horse beside me. Then suddenly I hear sounds coming, a whole pack of them, and I sit up and look about me. Now, I have had the dream so many times that even while dreaming, I know what to expect, and I am afraid...It is not a pack of hounds that comes, but one beast -- a strange beast, which, though I have seen it so many times, I can't describe. It comes crashing through the bracken and underbrush, and the noise it makes is like thirty couple of hounds questing. It takes no heed of me or my horse, but stops at the stream and drinks, and then goes on and is lost in the forest."
"Is that the end?" I asked, as he paused.
"No. The end varies, too, but always, after the questing beast, comes a knight, alone and on foot, who tells me that he also has killed a horse under him in the quest. Each time -- each night it happens -- I try to ask him what the beast is, and what is the quest, but just as he is about to tell me, my groom comes up with a fresh horse for me, and the knight, seizing it without courtesy, mounts and prepares to ride away. And I find myself laying hands on his rein to stop him, and begging him to let me undertake the quest, 'for,' I say, 'I am the High King, and it is for me to undertake any quest of danger.' But he strikes my hand aside, saying, 'Later. Later, when you need to, you may find me here, and I shall answer for what I have done.' And he rides away, leaving me alone in the forest. Then I wake, still with this sense of fear. Merlin, what does it mean?"
I shook my head. "That I can't tell you. I might be glib with you, and say that this was a lesson in humility: that even the High King does not need to take all responsibility -- "
"You mean stand back and let you take the blame for the massacre? No, that's too clever by half, Merlin!"
"I said I was being glib, didn't I? I have no idea what your dream meant. Probably nothing more than a mixture of worry and indigestion. But one thing I can tell you, and it's the same one that I keep repeating: what dangers lie in front of you, you will surmount, and reach glory; and whatever has happened, whatever you have done, or will do, you will die a worshipful death. I shall fade and vanish like music when the harp is dead, and men will call my end shameful. But you will live on, in men's imagination and hearts. Meanwhile, you have years, and time enough. So tell me what happened in Linnuis."
We talked for a long time. Eventually he came back to the immediate future.
"Until the ways open with spring, we can get on with the work here at Caerleon. You'll stay here for that. But in the spring I want you to start work on my new headquarters." I looked a query, and he nodded. "Yes, we spoke of this before. What was right in Vortigern's time, or even in Ambrosius', will not serve in a year or so from this. The picture is changing, over to