The Widow and the King Read Online Free Page A

room. And although he normally did not hug her very much, he curled up and clung to her like alittle child. She murmured to him, and rocked him, and told him it had only been a dream. But she could not comfort him, because he knew it was more than that. Somewhere, long ago, he had seen the Thing before.
    ‘You were safe, my darling,’ she said after a while. ‘They could not come at you.’
    So he knew it was a memory. Something had really happened. Anything that had happened once might happen again. He clung to her tightly and could not speak. They both stayed awake until dawn.
    ‘Very well,’ she said at last, as if she had decided something.
    With the light strengthening at the window she made him get up and dress. She led him out of the house before they had even had breakfast.
    She led him along the path, down into the chilly mountain-shadow. Then they turned left and began a long scramble straight up towards the ridge that soared away above them.
    They were climbing up towards the places where he was never, absolutely never, allowed to go.
    She did not allow it, because it was dangerous. It was not the same sort of danger there was at the streamside, because once she had taken him down to look at the water in spate, and had made him promise to take care, she had let him roam there at will. And it wasn't the sort of danger there was from the occasional wolf or lynx that she pointed out to him on the hillside, either. She always seemed to have her eye on the ways over or round to that side of the ridge, and whenever she saw him on them, or looking at them, she would call him sharply away.
    Now they were going there together. And it had something to do with his dream.
    He did not want to meet his dream. Not even in daylight. Not even with his mother by his side.
    His heart was beating hard with the climb, and his limbs felt hollow from effort without food. By the time they reached the top his whole body seemed to be trembling. He gathered breath, looking about him at the far mountainscapes: ridges and silent peaks, veiled with wisps of cloud. Opposite him, the mountain Beyah rose high in the sunrise.
    The ridge on which he stood was narrow. The ground was level for only a few paces. On the far edge was a tall white stone standing like a sentry among low thorn bushes. Beyond the sentry-stone the ground dropped again. He picked his way over to look down a slope he had never seen before. And he gasped.
    Sunk into the hillside before him was a great, circular pool. It lay among steep, tumbled sides to which thorns and scrub clung in patches. At their lowest, opposite him, the cliffs were little more than the height of a man. But from the highest point, near where he stood, they fell some fifty feet to the bottom. And all around the cliff-tops stood a ring of tall, grey-white stones.
    She put her hand on the nearest.
    ‘Try it,’ she said. ‘Push.’
    He put both hands on it. The surface was rough, and covered with old lines that must have been cut by men. He pushed. Nothing happened. He placed his feet carefully and pushed again, using his legs and all the column of his body. He might as well have been pushing at the mountain.
    ‘It's not going to move,’ he said.
    ‘No, it isn't.’
    Again Ambrose looked about him. Nothing seemed to have happened yet, but he was still nervous. The cold air made him shiver. At the same time he did not want her to know that he was afraid.
    ‘I could get a lever,’ he said stoutly. ‘And I could dig away the ground.’
    ‘You could. And in time you might move it. But I don't want you to. That stone is your safety, my darling. I've brought you up here to show it to you – and all its friends. Come, let's try the next.’
    Her voice was calm. Puzzled, Ambrose followed her.
    They picked their way down the rough, thorny slope to the next stone. This was balanced right on the very edge of the cliff. Surely, if he rocked it hard enough, it might go.
    He tried. It would not budge.
    ‘I