Authors: James Mallory
“They can say so much more than words,” Merlin
answered. “They can welcome, beg, pray—” His hands made graceful gestures in the air. “They can even pluck down the moon for
you.”
He reached up toward the night sky, his thumb and forefinger framing the edges of the radiant moon. “If only we could keep
everything simple, like the roundness of the moon. Look at its simplicity, Nimue. Everything equal, no part more important
than the rest.”
He gestured, and Nimue’s eyes grew round. She was seeing what Merlin meant her to see; the moon, like a round silver penny,
running over his fingers like a magician’s coin-trick. He closed his fingers over its light and offered the hand to Nimue.
Her hands cupped his own. Her face was flushed with awe.
“Ah, but the moon’s not so easy to catch and hold. …” Merlin grinned, opening his fist to reveal emptiness.
Nimue glanced up toward the sky to where the moon rode serenely, and laughed with delight. “I thought you weren’t going to
do any magic,” she said, her face clouding with worry.
“That wasn’t magic,” Merlin told her gently. “Magic’s real. That was a trick.”
“How did you do it?” she demanded eagerly.
“Ah,” said Merlin wisely. “It’s a secret … and if I told you it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.”
Nimue shook her head, smiling at his foolery. “Can you tell me something plain … without tricks, Merlin?”
“Yes. Just ask.” In that moment he would have given her anything.
“What do you want?” Nimue asked seriously.
“I want you,” Merlin said. And in that moment it was all the truth in the world. If he could have Nimue he would want nothing
more.
But Nimue was shaking her head. “That’s not what I meant. What do you want from life?”
And to that question, the young wizard had no answer.
Plans for the coming spring’s battle went forward in the autumn days that followed. Vortigern was confident that his plan
to attack Uther in winter would succeed, but he also had to convince his officers to follow it. The weight of custom was a
heavy yoke: to wage a winter war, supplies must be gathered, horses shod, arrows fletched out of season. Without the force
of the king’s will, everyone would settle back into the traditional ways, doing nothing. But by spring Uther might be strong
enough to cause real trouble. Vortigern’s days were full.
Messengers rode back and forth between Pendragon Castle and the sprawling army camp that grew beside it. Scouts rode north
to spy out the extent of Uther’s defenses at Winchester, and to tally the number of soldiers loyal to him. Vortigern was mindful
that the young prince should gain no information about his forces in return, and stationed sentries everywhere.
And one morning, when the sun was only a few hours high, Vortigern’s outriders rode for Pendragon with an incredible tale.
It was amazing enough to bring
the king from a conference with his generals to stand upon the wooden stairway that led down into the castle courtyard. Vortigern
stood and watched as the wooden gates of Pendragon swung inward to admit a woman like no woman he had ever seen.
She wore strange silver armor and shining black robes, and she rode a magnificent white horse whose silken tail brushed the
ground. Her hair was braided with jewels, and her lips were a glistening inhuman violet. Nine maidens in hooded black gowns,
crowned with golden diadems, rode behind her, each horse as spotlessly white as their queen’s. No one moved to stop her; soldiers
and peasants alike were struck spellbound by this strange apparition. At a majestic walk, she rode forward until she was directly
beneath the stairway.
“Hail, Vortigern, King of Britain. I am Mab, Queen of the Old Ways,” she said, raising her hand in salute.
Vortigern stared at her with narrowed eyes. As if he had always remembered it, a moment more than half his life ago came vividly
into his mind. A landless Saxon raider had dreamed of seizing the throne of Britain. Though she had clouded his mind afterward,
Mab had been with him that night, urging him forward for her own purposes.
“Who are you?” asked the Saxon warlord he had been on a night long ago
.
“One who can give you what you desire,” Queen Mab had answered. “Land. Power. A kingdom. A name that will live forever. You
will have power and rich
lands beyond imagining. You are Pagan, and I do not care who rules there so long as the people return to the Old Ways,” Mab
had said
.
She had been the most beautiful creature he had ever seen—ravishing and terrifying at once. But still Vortigern had broken
their pact—if pact it had been. He’d cared not what gods or spirits existed or didn’t so long as he ruled. Britain had become
Vortigern’s kingdom, not Mab’s. He’d slaughtered her priestesses and looted her shrines, and she had done nothing.
But then, Uther didn’t have the power to stop him, either, and Uther was beginning to be actively annoying.
“What brings you here, Madame?” he said slowly. Vortigern was determined not to be impressed. If Mab had truly possessed the
power to stop him, he told himself, she would have done it years before.
The woman below him raised her head proudly and stared into his face with inhumanly-bright eyes. “I can tell you how to defeat
Uther,” she said.
The morning sunlight slanted through the high windows of the Great Hall. It stood empty, its door barred, save for two figures.
Vortigern sat upon the throne he had taken from Constant, crowned and armored as the king he had become. Across the room,
Queen Mab stood facing him across the straw-strewn floor, veiled in the power of the Old Ways.
“What will this alliance cost me, Madame?” Vortigern
asked, breaking the silence. “There’s a price for everything.”
Mab regarded Vortigern with grudging respect. He had betrayed her years before when she had chosen him as her champion to
wrest Britain away from the Christian King constant. Mab had set Merlin in his place, and she did not intend to give Vortigern
the opportunity to foil her plans again. Let him think she had come to aid him in fear of Uther and his Christian priests,
or to take simple vengeance upon her renegade wizard. Once Merlin had returned to her side she could dispense with Vortigern.
She would need no other allies!
“The wizard, Merlin. I want him,” Mab said.
Vortigern settled back on his throne, smiling faintly. This was a game he knew well.
“He’s too valuable to me. He sees things—he has visions.”
She had not known that—it was nothing she had taught him—but Mab dismissed it easily. “Anyone can have visions. Don’t you
see visions? Don’t you see yourself winning?” she asked persuasively.
“Always. But I don’t see why you would want to help me,” Vortigern said cynically.
He was more clever than she’d thought; a scornful realist in a world of frightened, superstitious fools.
Just as she was.
“I’d rather see you on the throne than Uther,” Mab told him truthfully, walking toward the throne. The fact that she would
rather see Merlin on the throne than either one of them was something that need not be mentioned.
“Why?” Vortigern demanded again. “I don’t believe in your Old Ways.”
“You don’t believe in anything!” Mab said indignantly, stopping in front of his throne.
Vortigern leaned forward until their faces were very close.
“I believe in me,” he said fiercely.
“It’s not enough to make us win!” Mab answered with equal fierceness. If only Merlin had been as true to her vision as Vortigern
was to his own, she would have accomplished wonders by now. The New Religion would have been swept away, Avalon destroyed,
and the Old Ways would reign supreme once more.
But Vortigern discerned something she hadn’t intended him to discover. He smiled.
“I understand,” he said, sitting back and smirking. “Uther will bring Christianity to the people and that will be the end
of you.”
He was too stubborn! Mab raged. Vortigern was blind to his own advantage while he sought the hidden motives of others. She
could not persuade him to aid her, and it was far too late to try any of her old tricks. She would have to find another way.
Perhaps Uther would be more sensible. Mab turned away.
“All right,” Vortigern said unexpectedly. “You can have your wizard. But how do I defeat Uther?”
You never will
, Mab vowed. It would be Merlin who defeated the Christian king. But Vortigern did not need to know that. Not yet.
“Sacrifice Nimue to the Great Dragon,” she said.
Let Vortigern think that this was what would bring him victory, and Merlin’s life was merely a price for
the knowledge. But Nimue’s death was the linchpin of Mab’s plan. Even if Merlin would not use magic to save his own life,
he would use it to save his beloved’s.
And then Merlin would belong to her.
But once more the king balked. “That’s not so easy,” he said slowly.
“Ethics?” Mab mocked, cocking her head with a birdlike gesture.
“Politics,” the king answered. “I’m holding Nimue hostage so her father won’t join Uther.”
Mab nodded, understanding her ally’s misgivings completely. Vortigern would sacrifice anything to victory, but he would not
sacrifice victory itself.
Frik!
she demanded silently.
In the empty hall outside the royal chamber, the air flickered and the black-clad form of Mab’s gnomish servant appeared.
In a moment he had transformed himself from an obsequious gnome into the image of the timid Sir Egbert. Vortigern trusted
Sir Egbert as much as he trusted any of his captains, knowing that if Sir Egbert could manage to nerve himself up to mention
something, it was something worth hearing. In this disguise, Frik flung open the doors of the throne room and assumed a look
of frantic agitation.
“Urgent news, Sire! Lord Ardent has defected! He’s joined Prince Uther!” He dropped to one knee and gazed up gogglingly at
Vortigern, and at Mab standing behind him.
“How convenient, Madame,” Vortigern said. He doubted the spontaneity of Ardent’s defection, but if
Mab had the power to arrange that, then she certainly still had the power to make Vortigern’s battle with Uther end in his
victory as well.
“For both of us,” Mab pointed out. She gestured, and Frik scampered away. It wouldn’t do for the
real
Sir Egbert to appear while her gnomish servant was impersonating him.
“The girl dies,” Vortigern agreed.
“Let Merlin watch …” Mab hissed.
Merlin slept, in a sleep too profound for even dreams to reach him. Dimly he could hear the shouts of fleeing soldiers, and
the clatter of horses’ hooves on the stone as their riders made their escape. But a closer sound penetrated the veils of sleep,
a rhythmic sorrowful sound whose source Merlin thought he should know. Eventually its riddle forced him awake to the sound
of weeping.
“Merlin!” Nimue screamed his name as she saw him move.
Slowly Merlin puzzled out his surroundings. It was just before dawn, and he was tied to a tree at the bottom of a deep gorge
cut through the bones of the earth. He could not remember when he’d fallen asleep, or imagine how it was that he’d come here.
He had passed this place with Lailoken several weeks ago, on his way to meet Vortigern. This place was near the site where
Vortigern had sought to construct his ill-omened tower.
The ground around him was littered with bones, some charred to black, some grey-white with the
weathering of passing years. A few yards away an iron stake, thick as a man’s arm, was bedded deep into the rock—and Nimue
was bound to the stake, her fine gown muddy and torn.
Just as the first rays of dawn touched the valley floor, Merlin heard a rasping sound coming from behind him, a sound as if
a chain-mail shirt were being dragged over the rock. Suddenly he smelled a faint musky stench, recognizing its source with
a flash of horror.
Dragon. Draco Magnus Maleficarum, the Great Dragon of the North—and Vortigern was offering Nimue to it. The creature was used
to receiving offerings here, just outside its lair. In moments Nimue would be dead.
No!
He could not bear the thought of seeing her die. But to save her would take magic.
Magic he had sworn not to use.
There must be another way!
Even as his thoughts tumbled wildly, he struggled like a madman to free himself.
He could not break his oath.
He could not let Nimue die.
The unbearable choice paralyzed his brain as his body struggled instinctively. In moments he was rewarded by a loosening of
the soil about the roots of the tree.
He could see the dragon now as it slithered along the ground toward its prey. Its thick leathery hide was green and yellow,
almost the color of the lichen-covered boulders here in the valley. It stopped, seeing Nimue, and reared up on the hindmost
pair of several
sets of legs. Wings like pleated parchment fans snapped out from its sides, giving the dragon the terrifying aspect of a monstrous
insect. It whipped back its long narrow head and roared.
Nimue screamed, and at that instant Merlin would have been willing to perform any feat of magic to save her. He would break
his oath—dishonor his mother’s memory—anything! But the crowning irony was still to come. Merlin was as powerless as any mortal.
For all his training on the Land Under Hill, Merlin was only a Hand-Wizard—one whose magic was invoked through gestures of
the hands and fingers—and his hands were bound.
Nimue screamed once more, in an agony of helpless terror, and Merlin struggled harder against his bonds. Suddenly the roots
of the tree to which Merlin was lashed came loose. Merlin staggered forward, unbalanced by the weight and length of the trunk
still bound to him. His magic forgotten, all he could think of was placing himself between Nimue and the dragon. He bent forward,
and the crown of the tree lashed the rearing dragon across the face, startling it. Caught off balance, the dragon dropped
back to all sixes again, lashing its long serpentine neck back and forth and belching a great gout of flame at its tormentor.