The King's Wizard (17 page)

To Ireland, perhaps. Or France. Or even Rome … somewhere far, far away from Uther and Britain.

As Merlin rode away from the castle he heard a faint wild scream cut through the dusk behind him. Turning, he saw a white
figure fall wailing from the highest tower of the castle onto the rocks below.

Igraine
.

The sudden horrible realization of what he had done was like a knife in his heart. Blinded by altruism, he had thought only
of Arthur, of Britain. He had never thought of Igraine, of what it would mean to her to mysteriously lose the child.

What can one more death matter among so many?
Merlin thought bleakly. But he knew the truth: every death mattered. And he had caused so many. …

But it ends here
, Merlin thought with desperate hope.
All the blood, all the pain, all the betrayal. Arthur will be free of it, and of the Old Ways. Nothing of them will touch
him, nothing!

As if aware of Merlin’s inner turmoil, the baby woke and began to cry. Merlin tucked the cloak around him gently, and rode
away from Tintagel—north, toward the Forest Sauvage.

By the following morning Merlin had reached the Forest Sauvage where Sir Hector lived with his good lady Hermesent. Though
they followed the New Religion, Sir Hector and his wife were not afraid of the Old Ways, for all who lived close to the land
possessed an innate understanding of its powers. Sir Hector was a good-hearted man more interested in farming than in fighting,
and Hermesent was a kindly woman who had long wanted a large family of her own, though they had only one child, Kay, a boy
about three years old.

Hermesent had found Merlin and nursed him back to health when Merlin had wandered the land, reckless with despair, in the
months after Cornwall’s death. Merlin did not think she would turn away a foundling child.

Or the wizard who brought it.

The dogs began to bark as Sir Rupert approached the comfortable old manor house where Sir Hector and Hermesent lived. The
horse threw up his head and stopped as the dogs galloped in circles around them, yelping like mad things. A few moments later
Sir Hector came out to see what all the noise was about.

“Merlin!” he said with pleasure. “Come in—come in—you know you are always welcome here.”

Perhaps I am welcome here
, Merlin thought as he dismounted, careful not to wake the sleeping baby,
but there is nowhere else in all Britain where that will be
true once Uther learns of this night’s work
. He patted Sir Rupert on the shoulder and walked toward his host.

“Eh?” Sir Hector said, noticing Merlin’s burden. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“A baby,” Merlin said. “He has no mother, and his father is a thoughtless and cruel man. I want him to grow up somewhere that
he can be safe and loved.”

As Sir Hector stared down at the child in astonishment, Lady Hermesent came out of the house. As if sensing help was near,
Arthur awoke and began to cry hungrily.

“It’s a baby,” Hermesent said in surprise, scooping Arthur from Merlin’s arms and folding back the blanket to inspect him.
“Wet and hungry, poor mite.” She studied Merlin critically. “And how did you come to have a baby, Master Merlin?

“Never mind,” she said, before he could answer. “I’m not sure I want to know. I’ll take care of him for you, never fear. No
man ever born, wizard or not, ever knew the first thing about children. There, there, child. Don’t fret,” she said to the
crying baby, turning away from the men and walking toward the house.

“His name is Arthur,” Merlin called after her.

“Arthur,” said Sir Hector. “Arthur. Well, well. A good name. And good lungs, as well,” he added, for the baby’s cries were
still audible in the distance. “I’d say you’ve done a good day’s work to bring him here, Master Merlin.”

“I suppose I have,” Merlin agreed, looking off toward the house. “I hope this won’t cause you any trouble. Or at least, not
too much of it.”

“Nonsense,” Sir Hector said, putting an arm
around Merlin’s shoulders and leading him toward the house. “How much trouble can one boy be?”

It would be several years before Arthur would need him again. Following his heart, Merlin rode south and west again, toward
Avalon Abbey and Nimue. But along the way, he stopped to revisit an old familiar locale that lay only a few hours from Sir
Hector’s manor house.

The round hut nestled in the clearing in the center of Barnstable Forest seemed unchanged, as if he had stepped away from
its door moments—not years—before. Leaving Sir Rupert to graze on the lush summer foliage, Merlin dismounted and walked inside.

It was hard to believe that it had been less than two years since he last stood before this hearth. So many things had happened
to him in that time, things both good and bad—Vortigern, Nimue, Uther. He had slain one king, and discovered that another
was greedy and weak. He had found his lost love, only to have her taken from him again by Mab’s plotting. He had killed, betrayed,
lied, murdered, stolen—and all for the king to come, the good king who would lead Britain out of the terrible darkness into
which the reigns of three bad kings had plunged her.

If he could. If anyone could.

Shaking his head at his black thoughts, Merlin turned to examine the hut. All the food that had been stored here was gone,
of course—stolen by mice and birds and squirrels—but his herbs and oils were safe in their sealed stone jars. He had lived
here simply, and most of his simple possessions were intact—the bed,
the stool, the table, the horn cups and wooden plates. An afternoon’s cleaning and Merlin could take up residence here once
more.

But was that what he wanted?

Merlin sighed wearily, rubbing his jaw. In truth, he no longer knew what it was that he wanted. He had fought for so long
against Mab that it seemed he had forgotten to fight
for
anything. And when he had tried, all he seemed to do was cause more suffering. The only thing that was still shining and
pure in his life was Nimue.

And even she did not belong to him wholly. There, it seemed, his rival was the god of her New Religion, the one that Queen
Mab hated so much, the one whose priesthood sought to put an end to the Old Ways for all time.

Once Merlin had believed that the enemy of his enemy was his ally, but Uther had taught him what a delusion that was. Merlin
did not hate the New Religion, but he did not love it, either—and he did not know how to fight it. If Nimue loved her strange
foreign god more than she loved him, then Merlin would lose his love to prayers and chanting and the stone walls of Avalon.
The only way to halt that for certain was with magic—and if he stooped to using magic simply for his own convenience, Merlin
would have become as vile as Queen Mab.

No. There must be another way. Merlin knew that he had done great evil in the name of good, but he must put both his guilt
and his blame behind him. Now more than ever Merlin must strive to be a good man—to renounce the flashy, easy tricks of magic
not because
of Mab, but for his own good, and seek the deep hidden wisdom to be found in the contemplation of the natural world, the wisdom
that lay in prophecy and in dreams.

Arthur’s birth had changed him more than he knew—now Merlin realized that he must be good to teach goodness, and he wondered
if he was still capable of what he had once thought was so simple a thing.

Perhaps Nimue could teach him.

If she loved him still.

It was high summer once more, a few weeks after Arthur’s birth, and at Avalon Abbey, all drowsed beneath the shimmering heat.
Merlin had managed to coax Nimue to walk in the garden with him, but she had found it was too hot even for that, and they
sat at the foot of a tree, resting in its meager shade.

The Father Abbot, there to chaperon Nimue, was frankly asleep at the window that overlooked the close, and the only one watching
the lovers was a marmalade cat that lay half-dozing upon the slanting Abbey roof.

Everything is regimented and orderly here
, Merlin mused.
They try to shut out the outside world, that disorderly place full of magic and wonder, but try as they might, some part of
it always sneaks in
. He plucked up the blown dandelion that had invaded Avalon’s gardens and studied its downy white puffball. Even though his
touch had been gentle, seeds lofted from the white silky head in clouds of fluff, soaring into the sky on the gentle summer
breeze.

“You can’t believe that you truly belong here,”
Merlin continued persuasively. “Locking yourself away like this. You’ve committed no crime. It’s foolish and wrong.”

Nimue hung her head, and pulled her scarf protectively closer around her face. “I can’t stand the thought of people peering,
whispering, pointing at me …” she said, looking away.

“We’ll live in the forest. Animals don’t point and whisper,” Merlin argued.

“But it’s a dream, Merlin,” Nimue protested.

My dream—but not yours?
Merlin wondered, not for the first time. “I want to make it real,” he said, taking her hand. He was a wizard, trained in
the Old Ways. Surely his magic would give him the words to convince her.

But Nimue shook her head, though she did not withdraw her hand. “I’ve found a peace here in prayer and meditation. It is a
peace I’ve never known before. It passes my understanding.”

“To be honest, Nimue, it passes my understanding, too,” Merlin answered, faintly cross. “Why do you shut yourself away here?”
He asked the unanswerable question despite himself, knowing that they were drifting once more into the helpless, circuitous
arguments.

“To be nearer my God,” Nimue whispered.

Merlin shook his head. “The nearer you are to Him, the further you are from me,” he protested. He had been raised in the Old
Ways—to him the gods were real and tangible, as objective as rain and bread. He did not understand how anyone could draw comfort
from the Christians’ silent god of the spirit. “Will you take off that veil?”

Nimue cringed away as Merlin gently unwound the kerchief from her face. Her scars were purple-grey and rigid against the living
skin of her face, their presence turning a beautiful woman into a monster.

But Merlin loved them, because he loved her. Only Love did not conquer all, as the poets insisted. Love solved nothing at
all. Gently, Merlin kissed her cheek. Nimue wept silently. Once again there were no answers, and no solutions.

T
he slanting rays of the afternoon sun shone through the door of the room Sir Hector had designated as the schoolroom. Sir
Hector himself discussed weighty matters such as the coming harvest and the price of flour with two of his tenants at the
back door. Through the door that had been left open because of the heat came the interesting smells of the kitchen where Hermesent
was overseeing the preparation of the evening meal for the residents of the tiny farm holding.

Arthur and Kay were at their lessons—Kay bored and fidgeting, Arthur doing his best to listen to his tutor’s words. The heat,
the quiet hum of voices, and the smell of baking pies all made it very hard to concentrate.

“Consider the moon. In her fullness, she is a perfect circle, but what constitutes her perfection? It is the
fact that in a circle every part is equal, and no part is more important than the rest. Thus we may state that equality is
perfection, for the attempt to gain supremacy over another directly convenes the natural law which the moon shows to us. …”

It was amazing how much all this brought back his own days as a student in the Hollow Hills, Merlin thought. What an ungrateful
pupil he had been—and how Frik had suffered with him! It hurt to look back at those days of his long-vanished childhood and
think about how happy he had been. Even though it had been a joy founded on ignorance of terrible truths, those now seemed
to him to have been carefree, innocent days, days when his future stretched before him as a wonderland of bright possibility.

But while his own childhood was long dead, those of his pupils had just begun.

Merlin had presented himself as a tutor for the boys three years ago, when Arthur was seven and Kay was ten. Despite Hermesent’s
misgivings, Merlin had no intention of passing on to either boy the magical curriculum that he’d learned in the Hollow Hills,
but rather, the things that his own first teacher, Blaise, had taught him when he’d lived in the forest: ethics, morals, how
to choose the right path through life.

As well as a little reading, writing, and good plain Latin.

“The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Now by ‘others’ I don’t mean your family or your friends,
because it’s easy to do the right thing for them. But for strangers or enemies, people you would ordinarily turn aside from—”

Arthur had raised his hand to ask a question. “But if you do right by them, why are they your enemies? Ow!” he added, because
Kay had kicked him.