Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

Mad, I thought, mad and heartbreakingly beautiful, as beautiful as Ceinwyn had once been, though this girl, unlike my pale-skinned and golden-haired Ceinwyn, was black-haired and her skin was sun-darkened. ‘Why do they call you Olwen the Silver?’ I asked her.

‘Because my soul is silver, Lord. My hair is dark, but my soul is silver!’ She spun on the path, then ran lithely on. I paused a few moments later to catch my breath and stared down into a deep valley where I could see a man herding sheep. The shepherd’s dog raced up the slope to gather in a straggler, and beneath the milling flock I could see a house where a woman laid wet clothes to dry on furze bushes. That, I thought, was real, while this journey through the hills was a madness, a dream, and I touched the scar on my left palm, the scar that held me to Nimue, and I saw that it had reddened. It had been white for years, now it was livid.

‘We must go on, Lord!’ Olwen called me. ‘On and on! Up into the clouds.’ To my relief she took her dress back and pulled it over her head and shook it down over her slim body. ‘It can be cold in the clouds, Lord,’ she explained, and then she was dancing again and I gave the shepherd and his dog a last rueful glance and followed the dancing Olwen up a narrow track that led between high rocks. We rested in the afternoon. We stopped in a steep-sided valley where ash, rowan and sycamore grew, and where a long narrow lake shivered black under the small wind. I leaned against a boulder and must have slept for a while, for when I woke I saw that Olwen was naked again, but this time she was swimming in the cold black water. She came shuddering from the lake, scrubbed herself dry with her cloak, then pulled on her dress. ‘Nimue told me,’ she said, ‘that if you lay with me, Ceinwyn would die.’

‘Then why did you ask me to lie with you?’ I asked harshly.

‘To see if you loved your Ceinwyn, of course.’

‘I do,’ I said.

‘Then you can save her,’ Olwen said happily.

‘How did Nimue curse her?’ I asked.

‘With a curse of fire and a curse of water and the curse of the blackthorn,’ Olwen said, then crouched at my feet and stared into my eyes, ‘and with the dark curse of the Otherbody,’ she added ominously.

‘Why?’ I asked angrily, not caring about the details of the curses, only that any curse at all should have been put on my Ceinwyn.

‘Why not?’ Olwen said, then laughed, draped her damp cloak about her shoulders and walked on.

‘Come, Lord! Are you hungry?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shall eat. Eat, sleep and talk.’ She was dancing again, making delicate barefoot steps on the flinty path. I noticed that her feet were bleeding, but she did not seem to mind. ‘We are going backwards,’ she told me.

‘What does that mean?’

She turned so that she was skipping backwards and facing me. ‘Backwards in time, Lord. We unspool the years. Yesterday’s years are flying past us, but so fast you cannot see their nights or their days. You are not born yet, your parents are not born, and back we go, ever back, to the time before there were kings. That, Lord, is where we go. To the time before kings.’

‘Your feet are bleeding,’ I said.

‘They heal,’ and she turned and skipped on. ‘Come!’ she called. ‘Come to the time before kings!’

‘Does Merlin wait for me there?’ I asked.

That name stopped Olwen. She stood, turned back again, and frowned at me. ‘I lay with Merlin once,’ she said after a while. ‘Often!’ she added in a burst of honesty. That did not surprise me. He was a goat. ‘Is he waiting for us?’ I asked.

‘He is at the heart of the time before kings,’ Olwen said seriously. ‘At its utter heart, Lord. Merlin is the cold in the frost, the water in the rain, the flame in the sun, the breath in the wind. Now come,’ she plucked at my sleeve with a sudden urgency, ‘we cannot talk now.’

‘Is Merlin a prisoner?’ I asked, but Olwen would not answer. She raced ahead of me, and waited impatiently for me to catch up with her, and as soon as I did she ran ahead again. She took those steep paths lightly while I laboured behind, and all the time we were going deeper into the mountains. By now, I reckoned, we had left Siluria behind and had come into Powys, but into a part of that unhappy country where young Perddel’s rule did not reach. This was the land without law, the lair of brigands, but Olwen skipped carelessly through its dangers.

The night fell. Clouds filled from the west so that soon we were in a complete darkness. I looked about me and saw nothing. No lights, not even the glimmer of a distant flame. It was thus, I imagine, that Bel found the isle of Britain when he first came to bring it life and light. Olwen put her hand into mine. ‘Come, Lord.’

‘You can’t see!’ I protested.

‘I see everything,’ she said, ‘trust me, Lord,’ and with that she led me onwards, sometimes warning me of an obstacle. ‘We must cross a stream here, Lord. Tread gently.’

I knew that our path was climbing steadily, but little else. We crossed a patch of treacherous shale, but Olwen’s hand was firm in mine, and once we seemed to walk along the spine of a high ridge where the wind whistled about my ears and Olwen sang a strange little song about elves. ‘There are still elves in these hills,’ she told me when the song ended. ‘Everywhere else in Britain they were killed, but not here. I’ve seen them. They taught me to dance.’

‘They taught you well,’ I said, not believing a word she said, but strangely comforted by the warm grip of her small hand.

‘They have cloaks of gossamer,’ she said.

‘They don’t dance naked?’ I asked, teasing her.

‘A gossamer cloak hides nothing, Lord,’ she reproved me, ‘but why should we hide what is beautiful?’

‘Do you lie with the elves?’

‘One day I shall. Not yet. In the time after the kings, I shall. With them and with golden men. But first I must lie with another salty man. Belly to belly with another dry thing from the Cauldron’s heart.’ She laughed and tugged at my hand and we left the ridge and climbed a smooth slope of grass to reach a higher crest. There, for the first time since the clouds had hidden the moon, I saw light. Far across a dark saddle of land there lay a hill, and in the hill there must have been a valley that was filled with fire so that the nearer brow of the hill was edged with its glow. I stood there, my hand unconsciously in Olwen’s hand, and she laughed with delight as she saw me gazing at that sudden light.

‘That is the land before kings, Lord,’ she told me. ‘You will find friends there, and food.’

I took my hand from hers. ‘What friend would put a curse on Ceinwyn?’

She took my hand back. ‘Come, Lord, not far now,’ she said, and she tugged me down the slope, trying to make me run, but I would not. I went slowly, remembering what Taliesin had told me in the magical mist he had drawn across Caer Cadarn; that Merlin had ordered him to save me, but that I might not thank him for it, and as I walked ever nearer that hollow of fire I feared I would discover Merlin’s meaning. Olwen chivvied me, she laughed at my fears and her eyes sparkled with the reflection of the fire’s glow, but I climbed towards the livid skyline with a heavy heart. Spearmen guarded the edge of the valley. They were savage-looking men swathed in furs and carrying rough-shafted spears with crudely fashioned blades. They said nothing as we passed, though Olwen greeted them cheerfully, then she led me down a path into the valley’s smoky heart. There was a long slender lake in the valley’s bed, and all around the black lake’s shores were fires, and by the fires were small huts among groves of stunted trees. An army of people was camped there, for there were two hundred fires or more.