Free Legacy: Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart

and small, made of hornbeam, with the curve and
fore-pillar of red sallow from the Tywy, and strung with hair from
my pony's tail, where the harp of a prince (said Galapas) should
have been strung with gold and silver wire. But I made the
string-shoes out of pierced copper coins, the key and tuning-pins
of polished bone, then carved a merlin on the sounding-board, and
thought it a finer instrument than Olwen's. Indeed it was as true
as hers, having a kind of sweet whispering note which seemed to
pluck songs from the air itself. I kept it in the cave: though
Dinias left me alone these days, being a warrior while I was only a
sucking clerk, I would not have kept anything I treasured in the
palace, unless I could lock it in my clothes-chest, and the harp
was too big for that. At home for music I had the birds in the pear
tree, and Olwen still sang sometimes. And when the birds were
silent, and the night sky was frosted with light, I listened for
the music of the stars. But I never heard it.
    Then one day, when I was twelve years
old, Galapas spoke of the crystal cave.
     
    7
     
    It is common knowledge that, with
children, those things which are most important often go
unmentioned. It is as if the child recognizes, by instinct, things
which are too big for him, and keeps them in his mind, feeding them
with his imagination till they assume proportions distended or
grotesque which can become equally the stuff of magic or of
nightmare.
    So it was with the crystal
cave.
    I had never mentioned to Galapas my
first experience there. Even to myself I had hardly admitted what
came sometimes with light and fire; dreams, I had told myself,
memories from below memory, figments of the brain only, like the
voice which had told me of Gorlan, or the sight of the poison in
the apricot. And when I found that Galapas never mentioned the
inner cave, and that the mirror was kept covered whenever I was
there, I said nothing.
    I rode up to see him one day in winter
when frost made the ground glitter and ring, and my pony puffed out
steam like a dragon. He went fast, tossing his head and dragging at
the bit, and breaking into a canter as soon as I turned him away
from the wood and along the high valley. I had at length grown out
of the gentle, cream-colored pony of my childhood, but was proud of
my little Welsh grey, which I called Aster. There is a breed of
Welsh mountain pony, hardy, swift, and very beautiful, with a fine
narrow head and small ears, and a strong arch to the neck. They run
wild in the hills, and in past times interbred with horses the
Romans brought from the East. Aster had been caught and broken for
my cousin Dinias, who had overridden him for a couple of years and
then discarded him for a real warhorse. I found him hard to manage,
with rough manners and a ruined mouth, but his paces were silken
after the jogging I was used to, and once he got over his fear of
me he was affectionate.
    I had long since contrived a shelter
for my pony when I came here in winter. The hawthorn brake grew
right up against the cliff below the cave, and deep in the thickest
part of it Galapas and I had carried stones to make a pen of which
the back wall was the cliff itself. When we had laid dead boughs
against the walls and across the top, and had carried a few armfuls
of bracken, the pen was not only a warm, solid shelter, but
invisible to the casual eye. This need for secrecy was another of
the things that had never been openly discussed; I understood
without being told that Galapas in some way was helping me to run
counter to Camlach's plans for me, so -- even though as time went
on I was left more completely to my own devices -- I took every
precaution to avoid discovery, finding half a dozen different ways
to approach the valley, and a score of stories to account for the
time I spent there.
    I led Aster into the pen, took off his
saddle and bridle and hung them up, then threw down fodder from a
saddle-bag, barred the entrance with a stout branch, and