"Mary Stewart - The Arthurian Saga 02 - The Hollow Hills" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

I was soon answered, but it was an answer I would not accept. The westering sun was dropping red
past the boughs at the cave mouth, and the logs were still unkindled, when finally I gave up, with the
sweat running scalding on my body under my gown, and my hands, outstretched for the magic, trembling
like those of an old man. I sat by the cold hearth and ate my supper of bread and cheese and watered
wine in the chill of the spring dusk, before I could gather even strength enough to reach for the flint and
tinder and try with them.

Even this, a task that every wife does daily and without thought, took me an age, and set my maimed
hand bleeding. But in the end fire came. A tiny spark flew in among the tinder and started a slow,
creeping flame. I lit the torch from it, and then, carrying the flame high, went to the back of the cave.
There was something I still must do.

The main cavern, high-roofed, went a long way back. I stood with the torch held high, looking up. At the
back of the cave was a slope of rock leading up to a wide ledge, which in its turn climbed into the dark,
high shadows. Invisible among these shadows was the hidden cleft beyond which lay the inner cave, the
globed cavity lined with crystals where, with light and fire, I had seen my first visions. If the lost power lay
anywhere, it lay there. Slowly, stiff with fatigue, I climbed the ledge, then knelt to peer through the low
entrance to the inner cave. The flames from my torch caught the crystals, and light ran round the globe.
My harp still stood where I had left it, in the center of the crystal-studded floor. Its shadow shot towering
up the shimmering walls, and flame sparked from the copper of the string-shoes, but no stir of the air set
it whispering, and its own arching shadows quenched the light. I knelt there for a long time, eyes wide
and staring, while round me light and shadow shivered and beat. But my eyes ached, empty of vision, and
the harp stayed silent.

At length I withdrew, and made my way down into the main cave. I remember that I picked my way
slowly, carefully, like a man who has never been that way before. I thrust the torch under the dry wood I
had piled for a fire, till the logs caught, crackling; then went out and found my saddle-bags, and lugged
them back into the human comfort of the firelight, and began to unpack them.


My hand took a long time to heal. For the first few days it pained me constantly, throbbing so that I was
afraid it was infected. During the day this did not matter so much, for there were tasks to do; all that my
servant had done for me for so long that I hardly knew how to set about it; cleaning, preparing food,
tending my horse. Spring came slowly toSouth Wales that year, and there was no grazing yet on the hill,
so I had to cut and carry fodder for him, and walk farther than I cared to in search of the healing plants I
needed. Luckily food for myself was always forthcoming; gifts were left almost daily at the foot of the
small cliff below the lawn. It may have been that the country folk had not yet heard that I was out of
favour with the King, or it may simply have been that what I had done for them in the way of healing
outweighed Uther's displeasure. I was Merlin, son of Ambrosius; or, as the Welsh say it, Myrddin
Emrys, the enchanter of Myrddin's Hill; and in another way, I suppose, the priest of the old god of the
hollow hill, Myrddin himself. What gifts they would have brought for him they brought now for me, and in
his name I accepted them.

But if the days were full enough, the nights were bad. I seemed always wakeful, less perhaps from the
pain of my hand than from the pain of my memories: where Gorlois' death chamber had been empty, my
own cave was full of ghosts. Not the spirits of the loved dead whom I would have welcomed; but the
spirits of those I had killed went past me in the dark with thin sounds like the cry of bats. At least, this is
what I told myself. I believe now that I was often touched with fever: the cave still housed the bats that
Galapas and I had studied, and it must have been these I heard, passing to and from the cave mouth