Authors: Andre Norton
News came with the return of the smith. And Myrddin listened eagerly. The High King had indeed taken a wife—the Duchess Igrene. Yet he did not live with her, rather she dwelt among the holy women of the new faith, for she bore a child which was her first husband’s. Until she was delivered of that, the King would not truly claim her.
So the illusion had held with the Duchess, Myrddin thought. And Uther must have done nothing to challenge her belief. This would work better for his own need, for Uther would not want the coming child about the court.
Fostering was honorable, much used among people of higher birth. Even a king would send forth his sons, not only to have them away from the temptations which would easily surround them in his own house, but to protect their very lives. There was always a jealous claimant to believe that by a private killing the path to rule would be made free and easy.
He must ride south before the winter really closed in on this harsher northern country and seek out Uther. Once he had used mind-bending on the King and had succeeded. He would be a poor man of Power if he could not do so again—to the benefit of the plan in which he was a part.
During the summer Myrddin had again undergone one of those swift changes of body which came to him in place of the more smooth flowing growth of those of pure human blood. He was taller, a little heavier of shoulder. Catching sight of his face in a newly burnished shield, he was more than ever struck by the resemblance to Ector, though his face was less softened by the passing of emotion and his eyes were always half hooded, as if he kept them as weapons in reserve. His beard was sparse and did not grow fast. When he shaved he did not need to touch a blade to his skin again for several days. But work under the sun had somewhat browned his skin and given him new strength of hand and arm.
Before the Feast of Samain he rode forth from the holding, bearing the good wishes of these distant kin, well clothed if plainly, his sword now decently sheathed in leather, not in a patchwork of bark. Ector had been awed by the sword, yet he would not even put a hand to its hilt, saying that such blades of old were well known to tolerate only one master.
“Aye,” Myrddin had answered. “Yet I am not the master, Ector. He who comes will carry this into battle. I am but his servant in this as in other things.”
He led a pack pony with full supplies, for he determined to move south by the lesser known ways, letting no hint of his coming reach Uther, if possible. To take the High King by surprise would better open the way for his own desire.
Riding at an even pace, he made the rest of his way back to the cave, though he was twice delayed by storms which lasted more than a day. Snow lay white there as he climbed the path his feet would always find, whether the
eyes of men could see the way or not. There was a raucous call and a huge black bird coasted down to flap about him. Suddenly losing guard over his features, Myrddin held out his wrist and called joyfully: “Vran!”
Vran it was, planing in at once to settle claws on Myrddin’s glove, turning his head this way and that to eye him, croaking all the time in a coaxing way as the creature had learned to do when it begged for bits of meat.
“But give me time, Vran,” Myrddin promised, “and you shall be fed.”
The bird fluttered up to perch on a stone and the youth rummaged through his pack, bringing out a chunk of smoked pork which he tossed to the ground, only to have a black explosion of feathers fall on it.
There was no indication that any had been this way during the months of his absence. And he had come for only one reason. Myrddin unbuckled the belt which supported the sword and, taking that inside, hid the weapon in the darkest corner of the cave behind the largest of the installations. He noted that the majority of those were silent now. Only one still had a run of lights back and forth across its surface. For a long moment he stood before the mirror, seeing only his own reflection. Truly he looked older than his years now—a man as old as Uther had been when he had last seen him. His face was secret, closed, and the soberness of his choice of tunic and cloak made him a dark and brooding figure. Perhaps this was how a sorcerer was meant to appear in a world which relished light and color, the glitter of gems and the burnished wealth of gold.
He went again into the outer world. Vran was working on a few last beakfuls of the pork. And Myrddin found another lump for the raven before he mounted.
“Little brother,” he said, and at his words the raven stopped its fierce tearing of the meat, looking up at him with beads of eyes which seemed more knowing than any Myrddin had ever seen set in a bird skull. “Farewell, keep safe. When I return you shall feast again.”
So promising, he turned the horse toward the valley of the clan house, tugging at the lead so the pack pony followed.
It was well past Samain and the winter wolf had fastened his cruel ice jaws on man’s world when Myrddin
came into the room where High King Uther sat by a fire which roared mightily and yet gave little heat beyond the small radius of the hearth. The King was alone as Myrddin had guessed, for the symbol he had sent was one which Uther would know and, knowing, he would not want any to share his inner secrets.
“So you come again, sorcerer,” was his curt greeting. There was no welcome in either his face or his tone. “I have not summoned you.”
“Events have summoned me, Lord King,” Myrddin returned. “I served your desire and asked for no payment—”
Uther set his horn of wine down on the tabletop nearby with force enough to make its metal binding ring out. “If you value your life, sorcerer, keep a still tongue in that ugly head of yours!” he flared.
“I speak not of the past, Lord King, that is your own affair. What I must ask is of the future.”
“All men whine and beg at a king’s throne. What are your demands—gold, silver, a lordship?” Uther sneered. Yet his eyes were uneasy, wary, as if he did not like what he saw when he looked at Myrddin. He was even a little awed by the other’s composure.
“I want a fosterling, Lord King.”
“A fosterling—” Uther’s mouth gaped wide in startlement. Then his eyes narrowed threateningly. “What plot is this, sorcerer?”
“No plot, Lord King. There will be a child born shortly to one whom you greatly love. This child is a threat to you in a small way. To have such ever under your eyes—”
Uther pushed up from his chair in a half-leap in Myrddin’s direction. His hand had swung up as if to smash full into the younger man’s face. Then he stopped, mastering that flare of rage.
“Why do you want this child?” he demanded harshly.
“Because I am responsible in part for its birth, Lord King. I am a man of the Power; as such I betrayed much I believed in to aid you on that night. Now in conscience I must pay for my interference with events. The child will be safe; it shall be gently fostered. Men will forget it lives. There will be no more whispers in your court. You and your lady queen will be lighter of heart. If it remains here, though, there will be those who would use the child as a tool for revolt. Those who followed Goloris are not all dead even if they are now silent.”
Uther’s face grew thoughtful. He strode back and forth along the edge of the hearth, his face tense with concentration.
“Sorcerer, there is wisdom in what you say. I would have this coming baby apart from the court, both for the sake of my lady and for its own safety. As you have said, there are those who have not taken kindly to events in the past. Perhaps if the child is male they will cherish the idea of a new lord in years to come. My lady believes it is—she thinks—” Uther’s voice sank. “She sometimes thinks it was forced on her by a demon in her husband’s guise. She fears its coming as if it will be born a monster. Take it if you will, sorcerer, and do not let me know where it will be fostered, or by whom. It is better forgot for the good of all.”
“Well enough.” Myrddin relaxed inwardly. He had carried his point without tedious argument. “I am lodged at the Sign of the Rowan. Let me know the hour of the birth and I shall come and go—no man or woman being the wiser.”
At Uther’s assertive nod he left the room. There was much to be done. For all his power and knowledge he could not travel north with a newly born infant in the dead of winter. But he had deliberately chosen his inn with an eye to that matter. The wife of the host had recently given birth and was suckling a fine healthy child, the place was clean beyond most of its sort and Myrddin had the means within himself to silence questions and provide answers men could be brought to believe. Now he only had to wait.
9.
The message came to Myrddin on the eve of the Feast of Briganta. He had already made his own provisions for the care of the child. In the slave market he had ransomed one of the small, dark, Pictish women taken on a raid across the ancient wall of the Romans. She had borne a dead child three days earlier and was so sunk in despair that the dealer asked no great price. But Myrddin, using the powers of the mirror, was able to communicate with her, promising her eventual freedom if she would take care of the baby he would bring her. She might not have believed the truth of his promise, but she did not protest when he took her back to the inn, asked that she be given water to wash and then provided her with a plain woolen tunic and a cloak perhaps warmer than any she had ever known.
The child was a son, even as Myrddin had been sure. And, since there had been no name given him, just as Lugaid had once named him, standing in place of the father who should have held the babe in his arms, so did Myrddin look down into that small red face and call him after the name the mirror had spoken: “Arthur.”
Three weeks later he hired a horse litter and made contact with a levy of men riding to reinforce the northern borders, that they might ride with a measure of protection through lands which were still debatable. Thus they journeyed to Ector’s holding where he was welcomed as kin come home. Ector pressed Myrddin to stay there also. But such an uneasiness had ridden with the younger man since he had left the King’s house that he would not agree. The sooner he was well away from here, the less chance there would be of any secret man of the King or the King’s enemies tracing Arthur.
Myrddin doubted that Uther would mean the boy any
fatal harm, but the High King would doubtless be a happier man if he should lose this unwanted child overseas. And there were still many ties with families in Lesser Britain. Among those Uther could find someone to hide Arthur past any finding.
“When he is ready for schooling,” Myrddin had returned in answer to Ector’s urging, “then shall I come.” For he was certain that Arthur must be given those same sources of knowledge which had shaped his own life. “Until then, forget that he is not truly of your blood kin.”
And Trynihid, holding her own son Cei to her full breast, smiled.
“Kinsman, he shall abide safe.”
Ector nodded vigorously. “Blood oath on that if you wish—”
Myrddin smiled in return. “Kinsman, what need of oaths between those of one blood? I have no doubt that you will make him a true fosterling of this house.”
Thus he rode in the early spring, heading south, but setting to a path which would take him again to the Place of the Sun, for he was very lonely. Perhaps in Lugaid he could find a certain companionship. Such a way would also confuse his trail for anyone who followed, for he could not rid himself of the feeling that he was indeed the object of a hunt.
The King’s men, he believed, would be more open in their seeking, if Uther had changed his mind. No, this was more subtle, like being pursued by a shadow, a cloud, something he could not seize on nor confront, but which was there. And he knew only one who could command such a shadow—Nimue.
There could be, he speculated, some way in which each use of his powers might be made known, wherever Nimue hid to weave her spells. And, because he had no inkling of the depth of her knowledge, a prudent man would assess her skill at maximum in order to go prepared. So his haunted feeling as he rode north meant that she had now learned of Arthur.
His first fear lay with the child. If, when he himself traveled forth from Ector’s land, that sensation of being watched vanished, then it must be the child who was in danger. Learning that, he himself would return immediately to make other plans, set up such protective barriers
as he could. But, to his relief on that point, he went accompanied by the invisible watcher.
Now he searched the land around as he rode, set up certain mind-alarms of his own each night while he slept, lest he be ambushed unaware. Still there came no attack, only that continual foreboding feeling. . . .
He thought he could perhaps throw it off when he reached the Place of the Sun, remembering that sense of renewed power which had flowed into him when he touched those tall-standing sentinels of a lost age. How strong was Nimue? So much depended on the answer to that question. And what moves had she been making over the years since their last meeting? For he was certain that she had not been idle.
So he came into the giant circle of standing stones and there dismounted and stood to watch dawn banished by the rising sun. He had been right: here he was free of surveillance for the first time. Yet he knew he must not allow Nimue to be baffled long; there was always the fear in his mind that she might backtrail—that she would strike at Arthur. Above all else, Arthur must endure!
Myrddin crossed the turf to the hut Lugaid had built. He urgently wanted the advice the Druid might give him, the feeling of one comrade on his side if a strange battle was to be enjoined. But even before he reached the crude building he saw that its roof of branches was broken, that it no longer was the home place of any man.
“Lugaid!” He could not choke back his own dispairing cry, though the name seemed to ring far too loudly in the air. The hide curtain was gone from the doorway, so he could look into the cramped single room. No one had been here for a long time.
A little forlornly he stooped and went in, kicking at the powdery ash which had been a fire. The bronze cooking pot, the wooden bowls and spoons were gone. There was nothing left to say when or where the Druid had left. At least Myrddin could read no sign of violence—Lugaid had not fallen prey to any roving war band or slinking outlaws such as might visit this deserted place.
Slowly the youth returned to the King Stone, setting his hands palm-down on its rough surface. This was indeed a thing of power! Within him he could feel his own energy and will rising to blend with the emanation from the stone.
That confidence which had ebbed when he found Lugaid gone came back to him.
There were things he could do here, certain forces he could evoke, which he thought would make Arthur secure, remove from his own journey that watching presence. And those he did, using word and thought, a certain rhythm beat on the rock face with the blade of his belt knife. He felt the answer from the stones, the gathering of what was like an invisible war band. And he marshaled that force, aimed it—released it like an arrow from a bow toward the north and Ector’s small valley.
Then he was tired, drained. He dropped down in the grass, his shoulders against the King Stone, his eyes on the sky where clouds whiter than the whitest linen sailed slowly and impressively to affairs outside the understanding of man. Beyond the clouds, beyond the higher sky, lay other worlds, many more than a man might count. Life inhabitated those distant worlds—though the mirror had shown him little of that and only fleetingly. Yet, if the Sky People returned, their ships would be bridges to those worlds. Would he have the courage to voyage outward, seeking another sun? He did not know, though the idea excited him. How long would the waiting continue?
Men thought in years, in seasons; the Star Lords in centuries. Man’s life was short. How long was that of a Star Lord? Perhaps three, four, a hundred times that of man? At the moment he felt all man, awed, a little afraid of those who would come to his summoning if he could fulfill everything the voice of the mirror asked of him.
Myrddin slipped into a half-sleep as his pony cropped the new-springing grass around the stones. In that sleep his imagination woke and showed him even stranger things than the mirror had ever hinted at. Yet there was nothing threatening in those sights, unearthly as they were. He only felt wonder and delight.
Cities—such cities!—with shining towers of rainbow glass reached high into skies that were not the blue of the earth he knew. And some others were set under the restless waves of seas, sharp pinnacles, as red as the precious coral he had seen shown by merchants from the southern lands. Yes, he could imagine the cities, but he could not bring to life the people who had built them. Perhaps man could only see life equal to his own image. That was the fatal shortness of man’s sight.
The sun passed behind one of the clouds; more were gathering. Myrddin was roused by a wind with a sharp promise of rain and storm. He caught at the reins of the pony, started back to the hut which had been Lugaid’s. He sheltered there that night while wild winds raged across the land. Twice he cowered as lightning struck with explosive force against the King Stone, as if that rock drew the full fury of what lashed across the sky.
He had weathered such storms before, but it seemed to him that he had never faced one with such fury wrapped within it. He plugged his ears with his fingers, closed his eyes—still he could not escape either sight nor sound. There was a strange odor in the air. . . . This was the force men could never hope to control, now gone mad and striving to wipe the earth clean of life.
In spite of his fear Myrddin was also gripped by a wild exultation which made him wish to run out into that chaos, leap and shout, abandon all to become a part of the fury, free himself from restraint, of his mind’s control.
But in the morning there was nothing to show the passing of such force. Not until he had ridden outward from the circle did he see trees overthrown, their roots pointing accusingly like crooked fingers at the sky from which their deathblows had come. In Myrddin there was a new kind of peace. The storm might have drawn with its disappearance all his unease, his fears. He still had some of the freedom which had grown in him during those dark hours.
His sense of being spied on was also gone with the storm. Yet he took no chances and approached the cave only after some days of travel by a circuitous route, using the caution he had always maintained. This time Vran did not greet him, even though he whistled for the raven and laid out an offering on the ground. In fact he became aware, as he watched and listened, that there was an odd silence over the slope. There were no other birds. Even the wind had ceased to blow here.
He listened not only with his ears, but also with that mental sense. The very absence of any life was in itself a warning. And he could guess what might have happened; he had been too sure he had thrown off that questing. The mind so engaged had not wasted time trying to trail him, instead it had come straight here!
Nimue!
He stripped saddle and bridle from the pony and turned
the animal loose, trying to conceal any outward sign that he was conscious of what might soon face him here. He decided, after several quick glances in that direction that the crevice entrance to the cave was undisturbed. Stones he had piled there to hide the opening had not been moved. It was the sword which lay at the back of his mind now. He was sure it would be impossible to transport any of the space things from here—they were all too large to be drawn through the crevice. How they had entered into the mountain he never knew; perhaps they had been left there through the centuries.
But the sword was a different matter and Nimue knew that he possessed it. It could well be that she wished to take the weapon from him. He shifted his plump saddle-bags to his shoulder, went to the crevice. This Nimue knew also, so he was betraying no secret. But let him get inside and she would discover that she had been left behind. He well understood that the mirror had its own safety devices and that he alone was able to approach it.
He worked quickly, refusing to turn around, to look over one shoulder or the other. There was a growing pressure on him, a command—but not to the extent that his own will could not counter it. As if he could hear her laughter ringing again, he believed she was watching— waiting—applying the burden of her will, intent on making him obey. But she was too confident, too sure of her own use of the power. He must not be so overconfident in return; rather he must be wary.
Perhaps she had easily been able to compel obedience by use of the same hallucinations which he had employed to his own purposes during the years. Now her confidence was supreme, because she had not previously met resistance such as he could offer.
So far he had not resisted because his will marched with hers: she wanted him in the cave, he wanted to make sure that the sword was safe. The last stone was aside; he stooped to wriggle through. Once more he discovered that not even the enlarged entrance was big enough to admit him without a struggle. His tunic tore on hip and shoulder and skin beneath suffered painful grazes.
The cave was deeper in gloom, with only one small line of lights alive. Myrddin dropped his saddlebags, went directly to the niche where he had concealed the sword. The wrapped bundle lay there in safety, but he stripped off the
sheath to make sure that the blade still rested within. In the dark it shone with a wan light of its own, and he held the hilt in his right hand, ran the fingertips of the left along that smooth length. Like the stone, this touch reported to him the feeling of unleashed strength, of energy which might be released on command. This was more an object of destiny than just a tool to move the King Stone. It had a future use also, and that he would learn in time. But now it was safe and he wound the wrappings about it again hiding its luminosity.
“Merlin!” A voice, but not the familiar one.
He rounded the nearest square to look into the dark surface of the mirror. There was a strange silvery sheen across it and in the midst of the eerie light stood Nimue. She was now a woman and that quality in her which had moved Myrddin at the Place of the Sun was stronger, far stronger. He was dazzled by the woman who looked at him as if she were indeed behind the mirror, her eyes meeting his.
“Merlin!” Now she made his name not a demand for attention, but a soft greeting which stirred an answer within him. Breed called to breed in spite of all he knew.
“Alas, poor Merlin.” Her voice held no mockery, though he might have expected it, rather a touch of pity. “You have entered the trap and it is sprung. All your meddling with the affairs of man—and woman—will be put to naught by time itself. Clever are those who fashioned you to carry out their actions, be their hands and feet in this tormented land. But not quite clever enough. They set guards about their mirror and everything else they landed from star voyages, but perhaps they did not know that guards can be placed around guards. Merlin, you have gone to earth like the fox which is hunted, but unlike the canny fox you will not come forth again!