pipes whining on, and again he sought to find the pattern and, finding none, ground his teeth and pressed the heel of his palm to his right ear to shut the sound off finally.
The cave. Go on. Go up and go into it. Turn your back on the drums. What are the drums to you? If they knew you were here, would they play a true song to draw you in? Are the songs even known to them anymore?
He pushed up and on, and coming round the boulder, he felt the cold surface of the rock with both hands. Twenty feet ahead, perhaps more, lay the mouth of the cave, overgrown, concealed perhaps from any other climber. But he knew the random formations of stone above it. He walked higher, with one steep, heavy step after another. The wind whistled here among the pines. He pushed at the heavy overgrowth, letting the small branches scratch at his hands and face. He didn’t care. At last he stepped into the blackness itself. And slumped, breathing heavily against the wall, and closing his eyes again.
No sound came to him from the depths. Only the wind sang as before, mercifully obscuring the distant drums if, indeed, they still made their awful ugly mayhem.
“I am here,” he whispered. And the silence leapt back from him, curling perhaps into the very depths of the cave. Yet nothing gave an answer. Dare he say her name?
He took a timid step and then another. He moved on, with both hands upon the close walls, his hair brushing the roof overhead, until the passage broadened and the very echo of his footfalls told him that the roof was rising above him to a new height. He could see nothing.
For one moment fear touched him. Perhaps he had been walking with his eyes closed; he didn’t know. Perhaps he had been letting his hands and ears guide him. And now, as he opened his eyes, as he sought to draw the light into them, there was only the blackness. He might have fallen, he was so afraid. A deep sense told him he was not alone. But he refused to run, refused to scramble out like some frightened bird, awkward, humiliated, perhaps even injuring himself in his haste.
He held fast. The darkness had no variation in it. The soft sound of his breath seemed to move out forever and ever.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’ve come again.” The words drifted away from him into nothingness. “Oh, please, once more, for mercy’s sake …” he whispered.
Silence answered him.
Even in this cold, he was sweating. He felt sweat on his back under his shirt, and around his waist, beneath the leather belt that tightened around his wool pants. He felt the wetness like something greasy and filthy on his forehead.
“Why have I come?” he asked, and this time his voice was small and distant. Then he raised it as loud as he could. “In the hope that you would take my hand again, here, as you did before, and give me solace!” The swollen words, dying away, left him shaken.
What collected in this place was no tender apparition, but the memories of the glen which would never leave him. The battle, the smoke. He heard the cries! He heard her voice again from the very flames:
“… cursed, Ashlar!” The heat and the anger struck his soul as it had struck his eardrums. He felt for a moment the old terror, and the old conviction.
“… may the world around you crumble before your suffering is ended.”
Silence.
He had to go back, he had to find the closer passage now. He would fall if he remained here, unable to see, unable to do anything but remember. In a panic, he pivoted and rushed forward, until he did feel the stone walls, harsh and closing in on him.
When at last he saw the stars, he breathed a sigh so deep that the tears threatened to come. He stood still, his hand over his heart, and the sound of the drums rose, perhaps because the wind had again died away, and there was nothing to prevent it from coming closer. A cadence had begun, quick and playful and then slow again, like the drums that beat for an execution.
“No, get away from me!” he whispered. He had to escape from this place. Somehow his fame and fortune had to assist him now to escape. He couldn’t be stranded on this high peak, faced with the horror of