Legacy: Arthurian Saga (113 page)

I heard his voice, thin with effort
now, asking me something. Not asking, no. Uther the High King was
begging me to stay beside Arthur, to finish the work I had begun,
to watch him, advise him, guard him...

His voice faded, but the eyes watched
me, intent, and I knew what they were saying. "Tell me the future,
Merlin, prophet of kings. Prophesy for me"

"I shall be with him," I said, "and
the rest of it I have said before. He will bear a king's sword, and
with that sword he will do all and more than men hope for. Under
him the countries will be one, and there shall be peace, and light
before darkness. And when there is peace I myself will go back into
my solitude, but I will be there, waiting, always, to be called up
as quickly as a man might whistle for the wind."

I was not speaking with vision: this
was something which has never come to me when asked for, and
besides, visions did not live easily in the same room as Uther. But
to comfort him I spoke from remembered prophecies, and from a
knowledge of men and times, which sometimes comes to the same
thing. It satisfied him, which was all that was needed.

"That is all I wanted to know," he
said. "That you will stay near him, and serve him at all
times...Perhaps, if I had listened to my brother, and kept you near
me...You have promised, Merlin. There is no man who has more power,
not even the High King."

He said it without rancor, in the tone
of one making a plain statement. His voice was tired suddenly, the
voice of a sick man.

I got to my feet. "I'll leave you now,
Uther. You had better sleep. What is the draught Morgause gives
you?"

"I don't know. Some poppy-smelling
thing; she puts it in warm wine."

"Does she sleep here, near
you?"

"No. Along the corridor, in the first
of the women's rooms. But don't disturb her now. There's some of
the drug still in that jar yonder."

I crossed the room, picked up the jar,
and sniffed it. The potion, whatever it was, was already mixed in
wine; the smell was sweet and heavy; poppy there was and other
things I recognized, but it was not quite familiar. I dipped a
finger in and put it to my lips. "Has anyone touched it since she
mixed it?"

"Eh?" He had been drifting away, not
in sleep, but as sick men do. "Touched it? No one that I have seen,
but there's no one will try to poison me. It's well known that all
my food is tasted. Call the boy in, if you wish."

"No need," I said. "Let him sleep." I
poured some into a cup, but when I lifted it to my mouth he said
with sudden vigor: "Don't be a fool! Let be!"

"I thought you said it would not be
poisoned."

"No matter of that, we'll not take the
chance."

"Do you not trust
Morgause?"

"Morgause?" He knitted his brows, as
if at an irrelevancy. "Of course, why not? When she has cared for
me all these years, refusing to wed, even when...But no matter of
that. Her fate is 'in the smoke,' she says, and she is content to
wait for it. She riddles like you, sometimes, and I've scant
patience with riddles, as you may remember. No, how could I doubt
my daughter? But tonight of all nights we must be wary, and of all
men, except my son, I can least spare you." He smiled then,
momentarily the Uther that I remembered, hard and gay, and slightly
malicious. "At least, not until he is proclaimed, and then no doubt
you and I will well spare one another."

I smiled. "Meantime I'll taste your
wine. Calm yourself, I can smell nothing hurtful, and I assure you
that my death is not yet."

I did not add, "So let me make sure
that you live to proclaim your son tomorrow." This strange shadow
that brooded still behind my shoulder, it could not be my own
death, nor (I knew) was it Arthur's, but it might, against all
probability, be the King's. I took a sip, letting the wine rest for
a moment on my tongue, then swallowed. The King lay back on his
pillows and watched me, tranquil once more. I sipped again, then
crossed the room to sit down by the great bed, and, more idly now,
we talked: of the past seamed with memories; of the future, shadows
still across glory. We understood one another tolerably well at the
last, Uther and I. When it was patent that the wine was harmless I
poured a draught for him, watched him drink it, then called his
servant Ulfin, and left him to sleep.

4

All was so far well. Even if Uther
died tonight -- and nothing in his look or in my bones told me that
he would -- all was surely still set fair. I, with Cador's backing
and Ector's support, could proclaim Arthur to the nobles as well as
the King could, and prestige with power behind it had every chance
of forcing the thing through. The King's gesture in flinging his
sword to the boy in battle would be, to many of the soldiers, proof
enough of Arthur's right to succeed him, and the warriors who had
followed him so gladly today would follow him still. It was surely
only the dissidents of the north-east who would not rejoice to see
the days of uncertainty finished, and the succession pass clear and
undoubted into Arthur's hands. Then why, I thought, as I trod
quietly along the corridors towards my own chamber, was my heart so
heavy in me; what was this foreboding black enough for a death?
Why, if this was a heavy matter that my blood prophesied, could I
not see it? What shadow hung, clawed and waiting, over the day's
bright success?

A moment later, as I nodded to the
guard outside my antechamber, and went quietly through into the
room itself, I saw the edge of the shadow. Beyond the doorway
connecting Arthur's room to my own I could see his bed. It was
empty.

I went quickly back to the
antechamber, and had stooped to shake the sleeping servant awake,
when my nostrils caught a familiar smell, the drug that had been in
the King's wine. I dropped the man's shoulder and left him snoring,
and in three swift strides was back in the corridor. Before I had
said a word, the guard flattened himself back against the wall, as
if afraid of what he saw in my face.

But I spoke softly: "Where is
he?"

"My lord, he's safe. There's no reason
for alarm...We had our orders, there was no harm could come to him.
The other guard saw him right to the door, and stayed there
--"

"Where is he?"

"In the women's rooms, my lord. When
the girl came to him --"

"Girl?" I asked sharply.

"Indeed, my lord. She came here. We
stopped her, of course, wouldn't let her in, but then he came out
to the door himself..." Reassured now by my silence, the man was
relaxing. "Indeed, my lord, all's well. It was one of the Lady
Morgause's women, the black-haired one, you may have noticed her,
plump as a robin, and the prettiest, as was proper for my young
lord this night --"

I had noticed her; small and rounded,
with a high color and black eyes bright as a bird's. A pretty
creature, very young, and healthy as a summer's day. But I bit my
lip. "How long ago?"

"Two hours, as near as might be." A
grin touched his mouth. "Time enough. My lord, where's the harm?
Even if we'd tried, how could we have stopped him? We didn't let
her in; we'd had our orders, and he knew it; but when he said he'd
go with her, what could we do? After all, it's a fair end to a
man's first battle day."

I said something to him, and went back
into my room. The fellow was right enough, the guards had done
their duty as they saw it, and this was one situation in which no
guard would have interfered. And where indeed was the harm? The boy
had seized one half of his manhood today out under the sun; it was
inevitable that the rest should come to him tonight. As his sword
had quenched its lust for blood, so the boy would burn alive till
he quenched his own excitement in a girl's body. Anybody, I thought
bitterly, but a god-bound prophet would have foreseen this. Any
normal guardian would let this night take its normal course. But I
was Merlin, and the room was full of shadows, and I was
afraid.

I stood there alone, with the shadows
pressing round me, controlling myself to coldness, facing the fear.
The blackness came from my mind; very well, was it human merely,
was it black jealousy, that Arthur at fourteen should take so
easily a pleasure that at twenty I had burned for even as he, and
had fumbled, failing? Or was it a fear worse than jealousy, the
fear of losing or even sharing a love so dear and lately found; or
was I fearful only for him, knowing what a girl could do to rob a
man of power? And as this thought struck me I knew I was acquitted;
the shadows were not from this. I had known, that day at twenty,
when I fled from the girl's angry and derisive laughter, that for
me there had been a cold choice between manhood and power, and I
had chosen power. But Arthur's power would be different, that of
full and fierce manhood, that of a king. He had shown me often
enough that however much he might love and learn from me, he was
Uther's son in the flesh; he wanted all that manhood could give. It
was right that he should lie with his first girl tonight. I ought
to smile, like the sentry, and go to bed myself and sleep, leaving
him to his pleasure.

But the cold in my entrails and the
sweat on my face were not there for nothing. I stood still, while
the lamp flared and dimmed and flared again, and
thought.

Morgause, I thought, one of Morgause's
girls. And she'd drugged my servant, who might have come to tell me
that Arthur had gone two hours since to her chamber...And Morgause
is Morgian's half-sister, and might be in Lot's pay, with the
promise of some rich future should Lot become King. True, she had
made no attempt on the King, but she knew he always used a taster,
and it would have served no purpose to be rid of him until Lot was
married to Morgian and able to declare himself legitimately heir to
the High Kingdom. But now Uther was dying, and Arthur had appeared,
with a claim which would eclipse Lot's. If Morgause was indeed an
enemy, and wanted Arthur put out of the way before tomorrow's
feast, then the boy might even now be drugged, captive in Lot's
hands, or dying...

This was folly. It was not for death
that the god had given him the sword and shown him to me as High
King. There was no reason for Morgause to wish him ill. As his
half-sister she might expect more from Arthur as King than from
Lot, her sister's husband. Arthur's death, I thought coldly, would
not profit her. But death was here, in a form and with a smell I
did not know. A smell like treachery, something remembered dimly
from my childhood, when my uncle planned to betray his father's
kingdom, and to murder me. It was not a matter of reason, but of
knowing. Danger was here, and I had to find it. I could not walk
through the house, asking where Arthur was. If he was happily
bedded with a girl, this was something he would never forgive me. I
would have to find him by other means, and since I was Merlin, the
means were here. Standing rigid there in the dim chamber, with my
hands held stiff-fisted at my sides, I stared at the
lamp...

I know that I never moved from the
place or left my chamber, but in my memory now it seems as if I
went out, silent and invisible as a ghost, across the antechamber,
past the guard, and along the dim corridor towards Morgause's door.
The other sentry was there; he was full awake, and watching, but he
never saw me. There was no sound from within. I went in.

In the outer room the air was heavy
and warm, and smelled of scents and lotions such as women use.
There were two beds there, and sleepers in them. On the threshold
of the inner chamber Morgause's page was curled on the floor,
sleeping. Two beds, each with its sleeper. One was an old woman,
grey-haired, mouth open, snoring slightly. The other slept
silently, and over her pillow the long black hair lay heavy,
braided for the night. The little dark girl slept alone.

I knew it now, the horror that
oppressed me; the one thing that, looking for larger issues of
death and treachery and loss, I had never thought of. I have said
men with god's sight are often human-blind: when I exchanged my
manhood for power it seemed I had made myself blind to the ways of
women. If I had been simple man instead of wizard I would have seen
the way eye answered eye back there at the hospital, have
recognized Arthur's silence later, and known the woman's long
assessing look for what it was.

Some magic she must have had, to blind
me so. It may be that now, knowing I could do nothing, she let the
magic lapse and thin; or let it waver as she sank towards sleep. Or
it may be only that my power outstripped hers, and she had no
shield against me. God knows I did not want to look, but I was
nailed there by my own power, and because there is no power without
knowledge, and no knowledge without suffering, the walls and door
of Morgause's sleeping chamber dissolved in front of me, and I
could see.

Time enough, the guard had said. They
had indeed had time enough. The woman lay, naked and wide-legged,
across the covers of the bed. The boy, brown against her whiteness,
lay sprawled over her in the heavy abandonment of pleasure. His
head was between her breasts, half turned from me; he was not
asleep, but the next thing to it, his face close and quiet, his
blind mouth searching her flesh as a puppy nuzzles for its mother's
nipple. Her face I saw clearly. She held his head cradled, and
about her body was the same heavy languor, but her face showed none
of the tenderness that the gesture seemed to express. And none of
the pleasure. It held a secret exultation as fierce as I have ever
seen on a warrior's face in battle; the gilt-green eyes were wide
and fixed on something invisible beyond the dark; and the small
mouth smiled, a smile somewhere between triumph and
contempt.