Legacy: Arthurian Saga (123 page)

Afterwards, at the victory feast, Lot
headed a faction of rebel lords who opposed Uther's choice of heir.
At the height of the brawling, contentious feast, King Uther died,
leaving the boy, with myself beside him, to face and win them
over.

What happened then has become the
stuff of song and story. Enough here to say that by his own kingly
bearing, and through the sign sent from the god, Arthur showed
himself undoubted King.

But the evil seed had already been
sown. On the previous day, while he was still ignorant of his true
parentage, Arthur had met Morgause, Uther's bastard daughter, and
his own half-sister. She was very lovely, and he was young, in all
the flush of his first victory, so when she sent her maid for him
that night he went eagerly, with no more thought of what the
night's pleasure might bring but the cooling of his hot young blood
and the loss of his maidenhood.

Hers, you may be sure, had been lost
long ago. Nor was she innocent in other ways. She knew who Arthur
was, and sinned with him knowingly, in a bid for power. Marriage,
of course, she could not hope for, but a bastard born of incest
might be a powerful weapon in her hand when the old King, her
father, died, and the new young King took the throne.

When Arthur found what he had done, he
might have added to his sin by killing her, but for my
intervention. I banished her from court, bidding her take horse for
York, where Uther's true-born daughter Morgan was lodged with her
attendants, awaiting her marriage to the King of Lothian. Morgause,
who like everyone else in those days was afraid of me, obeyed me
and went, to practice her woman's spells and nourish her bastard in
exile. Which she did, as you will hear, at her sister Morgan's
expense.

But of that later. It would be better,
now, to go back to the time when, in the breaking of a new and
auspicious day, with Morgause out of mind and on her way to York,
Arthur Pendragon sat in Luguvallium of Rheged, to receive homage,
and the sun shone.

I was not there. I had already done
homage, in the small hours between moonlight and sunrise, in the
forest shrine where Arthur had lifted the sword of Maximus from the
stone altar, and by that act declared himself the rightful King.
Afterwards, when he, with the other princes and nobles, had gone in
all the pomp and splendor of triumph, I had stayed alone in the
shrine. I had a debt to pay to the gods of the place.

It was called a chapel now -- the
Perilous Chapel, Arthur had named it -- but it had been a holy
place long before men had laid stone on stone and raised the altar.
It was sacred first to the gods of the land itself, the small
spirits that haunt hill and stream and forest, together with the
greater gods of air, whose power breathes through cloud and frost
and speaking wind. No one knew for whom the chapel had first been
built. Later, with the Romans, had come Mithras, the soldiers' god,
and an altar was raised to him within it. But the place was still
haunted with all its ancient holiness; the older gods received
their sacrifices, and the ninefold lights still burned unquenched
by the open doorway.

All through the years when Arthur had
been hidden, for his own safety, with Count Ector in the Wild
Forest, I had stayed near him, known only as the keeper of the
shrine, the hermit of the Chapel in the Green. Here I had finally
hidden the great sword of Maximus (whom the Welsh called Macsen)
until the boy should come of an age to lift it, and with it drive
the kingdom's enemies out and destroy them. The Emperor Maximus
himself had done so, over a hundred years before, and men thought
of the great sword now as a talisman, a god-sent sword of magic, to
be wielded only for victory, and only by the man who had the right.
I, Merlinus Ambrosius, kin to Macsen, had lifted it from its long
hiding-place in the earth, and had laid it aside for the one to
come who would be greater than I. I hid it first in a flooded cave
below the forest lake, then, finally, on the chapel altar, locked
like carving in the stone, and shrouded from common sight and touch
in the cold white fire called by my art from heaven.

From this unearthly blaze, to the
wonder and terror of all present, Arthur had raised the sword.
Afterwards, when the new King and his nobles and captains had gone
from the chapel, it could be seen that the wildfire of the new god
had scoured the place of all that had formerly been held sacred,
leaving only the altar, to be freshly decked for him
alone.

I had long known that this god brooked
no companions. He was not mine, nor (I suspected) would he ever be
Arthur's, but throughout the sweet three corners of Britain he was
moving, emptying the ancient shrines, and changing the face of
worship. I had seen with awe, and with grief, how his fires had
swept away the signs of an older kind of holiness; but he had
marked the Perilous Chapel -- and perhaps the sword -- as his own,
beyond denying.

So all through that day I worked to
make the shrine clean again and fit for its new tenant. It took a
long time; I was stiff from recent hurts, and from a night of
sleepless vigil; besides, there are things that must be performed
decently and in order. But at length all was done, and when,
shortly before sunset, the servant of the shrine came back from the
town, I took the horse he had brought, and rode down through the
quiet woods.

It was late when I came to the gates,
but these were open, and no one challenged me as I rode in. The
place was still in a roar; the sky was alight with bonfires, the
air throbbed with singing, and through the smoke one could smell
roasting meats and the reek of wine. Even the presence of the dead
King, lying there in the monastery church with his guards around
him, could not put a bridle on men's tongues. The times were too
full of happening, the town too small: only the very old and the
very young found sleep that night.

I found none, certainly. It was well
after midnight when my servant came in, and after him
Ralf.

He ducked his head for the lintel --
he was a tall young man -- and waited till the door was shut,
regarding me with a look as wary as any he had ever given me in the
past when he had been my page and feared my powers.

"You're still up?"

"As you see." I was sitting in the
high-backed chair beside the window. The servant had brought a
brazier, kindled against the chill of the September night. I had
bathed, and looked to my hurts again, and let the servant put me
into a loose bedgown, before I sent him away and composed myself to
rest. After the climax of fire and pain and glory that had brought
Arthur to the kingship, I, who had lived my life only for that,
felt the need for solitude and silence. Sleep would not come yet,
but I sat, content and passive, with my eyes on the brazier's idle
glow.

Ralf, still armed and jeweled as I had
seen him that morning at Arthur's side in the chapel, looked tired
and hollow-eyed himself, but he was young, and the night's climax
was for him a new beginning, rather than an end. He said abruptly:
"You should be resting. I gather that you were attacked last night
on the way up to the chapel. How badly were you hurt?"

"Not mortally, though it feels bad
enough! No, no, don't worry, it was bruises rather than wounds, and
I've seen to them. But I'm afraid I lamed your horse for you. I'm
sorry about that."

"I've seen him. There's no real
damage. It will take a week, no more. But you -- you look
exhausted, Merlin. You should be given time to rest."

"And am I not to be?" As he hesitated,
I lifted a brow at him.

"Come, out with it. What don't you
want to say to me?"

The wary look broke into something
like a grin. But his voice, suddenly formal, was quite
expressionless, the voice of the courtier who is not quite sure
which way, as they say, the deer will run. "Prince Merlin, the King
has desired me to bid you to his apartments. He wants to see you as
soon as it is convenient for you." As he spoke his eye lingered on
the door in the wall opposite the window. Until last night Arthur
had slept in that annexe of my chamber, and had come and gone at my
bidding. Ralf caught my eye, and the grin became real.

"In other words, straight away," he
said. "I'm sorry, Merlin, but that's the message as it came to me
through the chamberlain. They might have left it till morning. I
was assuming you would be asleep."

"Sorry? For what? Kings have to start
somewhere. Has he had any rest yet himself?"

"Not a hope. But he's got rid of the
crowd at last, and they cleared the royal rooms while we were up at
the shrine. He's there now."

"Attended?"

"Only Bedwyr."

That, I knew, meant, besides his
friend Bedwyr, a small host of chamberers and servants, and
possibly, even, a few people still waiting in the
antechambers.

"Then ask him to excuse me for a few
minutes. I'll be there as soon as I've dressed. Will you send Lleu
to me, please?"

But this he would not have. The
servant was sent with the message, and then, as naturally as he had
done in the past when he was a boy, Ralf helped me himself. He took
the bedgown from me and folded it, and gently, with care for my
stiff limbs, eased me into a day-robe, then knelt to put my sandals
on and fasten them.

"Did the day go well?" I asked
him.

"Very well. No shadow on
it."

"Lot of Lothian?"

He glanced up, grimly amused. "Kept
his place. The affair of the chapel has left its brand on him...as
it has on all of us." The last phrase was muttered, as if to
himself, as he bent his head to buckle the second
sandal.

"On me, too, Ralf," I said. "I am not
immune from the god's fire, either. As you see. How is
Arthur?"

"Still on his own high and burning
cloud." This time the amusement held affection. He got to his feet.
"All the same, I think he's already looking ahead for storms. Now,
your girdle. Is this the one?"

"It will do. Thank you. Storms? So
soon? I suppose so." I took the girdle from him and knotted it. "Do
you intend to stay with him, Ralf, and help him weather them, or do
you count your duty done?" Ralf had spent the last nine years in
Galava of Rheged, the remote corner of the country where Arthur had
lived, unknown, as the ward of Count Ector. He had married a
northern girl, and had a young family.

"To tell you the truth I've not
thought about that yet," he said.

"Too much has happened, all too
quickly." He laughed. "One thing, if I stay with him, I can see
that I'll look back with longing on the peaceful days when I had
nothing to do but ride guard on those young dev -- that is, on
Bedwyr and the King! And you? You will hardly stay here as the
hermit of the Green Chapel now? Will you come out of your fastness,
and go with him?"

"I must. I have promised. Besides, it
is my place. Not yours, though, unless you wish it. Between us, we
made him King, and that is the end of the first part of the story.
You have a choice now. But you'll have plenty of time to make it."
He opened the door for me, and stood aside to let me pass him. I
paused. "We whistled up a strong wind, Ralf. Let us see which way
it will blow us."

"You'd let it?"

I laughed. "I have a speaking mind
that tells me I may have to. Come, let us start by obeying this
summons."

There were a few people still in the
main antechamber to the King's apartments, but these were mostly
servants, clearing and bearing away the remains of a meal that the
King had apparently just finished. Guards stood woodenly at the
door to the inner rooms. On a low bench near a window a young page
lay fast asleep; I remembered seeing him when I had come this way
three days ago to talk with the dying Uther. Ulfin, the King's
body-servant and chief chamberlain, was absent. I could guess where
he was. He would serve the new King with all the devotion he had
given to Uther, but tonight he would be found with his old master
in the monastery church. The man who waited by

Arthur's door was a stranger to me, as
were half the servants there; they were men and women who normally
served Rheged's own king in his castle, and who were helping with
the extra pressure of work brought by the occasion, and the High
King's presence.

But they all knew me. As I entered the
antechamber there was a sudden silence, and a complete cessation of
movement, as if a spell had been cast. A servant carrying platters
balanced along his arm froze like someone faced with the Gorgon's
head, and the faces that turned to me were frozen similarly, pale
and gape-mouthed, full of awe. I caught Ralf's eye on me, sardonic
and affectionate. His brow quirked. "You see?" it said to me, and I
understood more fully his own hesitation when he came to my room
with the King's message. As my servant and companion he had been
close to me in the past, and had many times, in prophecy, and in
what men call magic, watched and felt my power at work; but the
power that had blazed and blown through the Perilous Chapel last
night had been something of quite a different order. I could only
guess at the stories that must have run, swift and changing as the
wildfire itself, through Luguvallium; it was certain that the
humbler folk had talked of nothing else all day. And like all
strange tales, it would grow with the telling.