Legacy: Arthurian Saga (151 page)

We halted for the last time just short
of the limits that are governed by Caer-luel, as the British call
Luguvallium. Here we rested the horses, while the servants busied
themselves over the burnishing of the harness and the washing of
the painted litters, and -- among the women -- some furbishing of
clothes and hair and complexions. Then the cavalcade reformed, and
we went on to meet the welcoming party, which met us well beyond
the city limits.

It was headed by King Urbgen himself,
on a splendid horse which had been a gift from Arthur, a bay
stallion decked with crimson and cloth of gold. Beside it a servant
led a white mare, bridled with silver and tasseled with blue, for
the princess. Urbgen was as splendid as his steed, a vigorous man,
broad-chested and strong-armed, and as active as any warrior half
his age. He had been a sandy-colored man, and now his hair and
beard, as is the way with sand-fair men, had gone quite white,
thick and fine. His face had been weathered by the summers of
warfare and the winters of riding his cold marches. I knew him for
a strong man, a stout ally, and a clever ruler.

He greeted me as civilly as if I had
been the High King himself, and then I presented Morgan. She had
dressed herself in primrose and white, and plaited the long dark
hair with gold. She gave him a hand, a deep curtsy, and a cool
cheek to kiss, then mounted the white mare and rode on beside him,
meeting the stares of his retinue, and his own assessing looks,
with unruffled composure. I saw Accolon drop back with a hot, sulky
look, as Urbgen's party closed round the three of us, and we rode
on at a gentle pace to the meeting of the three rivers where
Luguvallium lay among the reddening trees of autumn.

The journey had been a good one, but
its end was bad indeed, fulfilling the worst of my fears. Morgause
came to the wedding.

Three days before the ceremony a
messenger came galloping with the news that a ship had been sighted
in the estuary, with the black sail and the badge of the Orcadians.
King Urbgen rode to meet it at the harbor. I sent my own servant
for news, and he was back with it, hotfoot, before the Orkney party
could well have disembarked. King Lot was not there, he told me,
but Queen Morgause had come, and in some state, I sent him south to
Arthur with a warning; it would not be hard for him to find some
excuse not to be present. Mercifully, I myself had no need to look
far for a similar excuse: I had already arranged, at Urbgen's own
request somedays before, to ride out and inspect the signal
stations along the estuary shore. With some dispatch, and perhaps a
slight lack of dignity, I was gone from the city before Morgause's
party arrived, nor did I return until the very eve of the wedding.
Later I heard that Morgan, too, had avoided meeting her sister, but
then it had hardly been expected of a bride so deep in preparations
for a royal wedding.

So I was there to see the sisters
meet, at the very gate of the church where, with the Christian
rites, Morgan was to be married. Each of them, queen and princess,
was splendidly dressed and magnificently attended. They met, spoke,
and embraced, with smiles as pretty as pictures, and as fixedly
painted on their mouths. Morgan, I thought, won the encounter,
since she was dressed for her wedding, and shone as the bright
center-piece to the feast-day. Her gown was magnificent, with its
strain of purple sewn with silver.

She wore a crown on her dark hair, and
among the magnificent jewels that Urbgen had given her, I
recognized some that Uther had given Ygraine in the early days of
their passion. Her slim body was erect under the weight of her rich
robes, her face pale and composed and very beautiful. To me she
recalled the young Ygraine, full of power and grace. I hoped, with
fervor, that the reports of the sisters' dislike of one another
were true, and that Morgause would not manage to ingratiate
herself, now that her sister stood on the threshold of position and
power. But I was uneasy; I could see no other reason for the witch
to have come to see her sister's triumph and be outshone by her
both in consequence and beauty.

Nothing could take from Morgause the
rose-gold beauty which, with her maturity, was, if anything, richer
than ever. But it was whispered that she was once again with child,
and she had brought with her, besides, another child, a boy. This
was an infant, still in his nurse's arms. Lot's son; not the one
for whom, half in hope, half in apprehension, I was
looking.

Morgause had seen me looking. She
smiled that little smile of hers as she made her reverence, then
swept on into the church with her train. I, as Arthur's vicar in
this, waited to present the bride. Obedient to my message, the High
King was busying himself elsewhere.

Any hopes I had had of being able to
avoid Morgause further were dashed at the wedding feast. She and I,
as the two princes nearest to the bride, were placed side by side
at the high table. The hall was the same one where Uther had held
the victory feast that led to his death. In a room of this same
castle she had lain with Arthur to conceive the child Mordred, and
the next morning, in a bitter clash of wills, I had destroyed her
hopes, and driven her away from Arthur's side. That, as far as she
knew, had been our last encounter. She was still in ignorance -- or
so I hoped -- of my journey to Dunpeldyr, and my vigil
there.

I saw her watching me sideways, under
the long white lids. I wondered suddenly, with misgiving, if she
could be aware of my lack of defense against her now. Last time we
had met she had tried her witch's tricks on me, and I had felt
their potency, closing on the mind like a limed web. But she could
no more have harmed me then than a she-spider could have hoped to
trap a falcon. I had turned her spells back on herself, bearing her
fury down by the sheer authority of power. That, now, had left me.
It was possible that she could gauge my weakness. I could not tell.
I had never underrated Morgause, and would not now.

I spoke with smooth civility. "You
have a fine son, Morgause. What is he called?"

"Gawain."

"He has a strong look of his
father."

Her lids drooped. "Both my sons," she
said gently, "have a strong look of their father."

"Both?"

"Come, Merlin, where is your art? Did
you believe the dreadful news when you heard it? You must have
known it was not true."

"I knew it was not true that Arthur
had ordered the killing, in spite of the calumny you laid on
him."

"I?" The lovely eyes were wide and
innocent.

"Yes, you. The massacre may have been
Lot's doing, the hot fool, and it was certainly Lot's men who threw
the babies into the boat and sent them out with the tide. But who
provoked him to it? It was your plan from the first, was it not,
even to the murder of that poor child in the cradle? And it was not
Lot who killed Macha, and lifted the other child out of the blood
and carried him into hiding." I echoed her own half-mocking tone.
"Come, Morgause, where is your art? You should know better than to
play the innocent with me."

At the mention of Macha's name I saw
fear, like a green spark, leap in her eyes, but she gave no other
sign. She sat still and straight, one hand curved round the stem of
her goblet, turning it gently, so that the gold burned in the hot
torchlight. I could see the pulse beating fast in the hollow of her
throat.

It was a sour satisfaction, at best. I
had been right. Mordred was alive, hidden, I guessed, somewhere in
the cluster of islands called the Orkneys, where Morgause's writ
ran, and where I, without the Sight, had no power to find him. Or,
I reminded myself, the mandate to kill him if found.

"You saw?" Her voice was
low.

"Of course, I saw. When could you hide
things from me? You must know that everything is quite clear to me,
and also -- let me remind you -- to the High King."

She sat still, and apparently
composed, except for that rapid beat under the creamy flesh. I
wondered if I had managed to convince her that I was still someone
to be feared. It had not occurred to her that Lind might have come
to me; and why should she ever remember Beltane? The necklet he had
made for her jumped and sparkled on her throat. She swallowed, and
said, in a thin voice that hardly carried through the hubbub of the
hall: "Then you will know that, even though I saved him from Lot, I
don't know where he is. Perhaps you will tell me?"

"Do you expect me to believe
that?"

"You must believe it, because it is
true. I don't know where he is." She turned her head, looking full
at me. "Do you?"

I made no reply. I merely smiled,
picked up my goblet, and drank from it. But, without looking at
her, I sensed in her a sudden relaxation, and wondered, with a
chill creeping of the skin, if I had made a mistake.

"Even if I knew," she said, "how could
I have him by me, and he as like to his father as one drop of wine
to another?" She drank, set the goblet down, then sat back in her
chair, folding her hands over her gown so that the thickening of
her belly showed. She smiled at me, malice and hatred with no trace
of fear. "Prophesy about this, then, Merlin the enchanter, if you
won't about the other. Will this be another son to take the place
of the one I lost?"

"I have no doubt of it," I said
shortly, and she laughed aloud.

"I'm glad to hear it. I have no use
for girls." Her eyes went to the bride, sitting composed and
straight beside Urbgen. He had drunk a good deal, and the red stood
in his cheeks, but he kept his dignity, even though his eyes
caressed his bride, and he leaned close to her chair. Morgause
watched, then said with contempt: "So my little sister got her king
in the end. A kingdom, yes, and a fine city and wide lands. But an
old man, rising fifty, with sons already..." Her hand smoothed the
front of her gown. "Lot may be a hot fool, as you termed him, but
he is a man."

It was bait, but I did not rise to it.
I said: "Where is he, that he could not come to the
wedding?"

To my surprise she answered quite
normally, apparently abandoning the malicious game of chess. Lot,
it seemed, had gone east again into Northumbria with Urien, his
sister's husband, and was busying himself there overseeing the
extension to the Black Dyke. I have written of this before. It runs
inland from the northern sea, and provides some sort of defense
against incursions along the northeastern seaboard. Morgause spoke
of it with knowledge, and in spite of myself I was interested, and
in the talk that followed the atmosphere lightened; and then
someone asked me a question about Arthur's wedding and the new
young Queen, and Morgause laughed and said, quite naturally:
"What's the use of asking Merlin? He may know everything in the
world, but ask him to describe a bridal, and I'll wager he doesn't
even know the color of the girl's hair or her gown!"

Then talk around us became general,
with a lot of laughter, and speeches were made, and pledges given,
and I must have drunk far more than I was accustomed to, because I
well remember how the torchlight beat and swelled, bright and dark
alternately, while talk and laughter surged and broke in gusts, and
with it the woman's scent, a thick sweetness like honeysuckle,
catching and trapping the sense as a limed twig holds a bee. The
fumes of wine rose through it. A gold jug tilted, and my goblet
brimmed again. Someone said, smiling, "Drink, my lord." There was a
taste of apricots in my mouth, sweet and sharp; the skin had a
texture like the fur of a bee, or a wasp dying in sunlight on a
garden wall...And all the while eyes watching me, in excitement and
wary hope, then in contempt, and in triumph...The servants were
beside me, helping me from my chair, and I saw that the bride had
gone already, and King Urbgen, impatience barely held on a tight
rein, was watching the door for the sign that it was time to follow
her to bed. The chair beside me was empty. Round my own the
servants crowded, smiling, to help me back to my rooms.

6

Next morning I had a headache as bad
as anything that the aftermath of magic used to inflict on me. I
kept to my rooms all day. On the day following I took leave of
Urbgen and his queen. We had sat through a series of formal
discussions before Morgause's arrival, and now I could leave the
city -- how thankfully, it may be guessed -- and make my way
southwest through the Wild Forest, at the heart of which stood
Count Ector's castle of Galava. I took no leave of
Morgause.

It was good to be out again, and this
time with two companions only. Morgan's escort had been formed
mainly of her own people from Cornwall, who had remained with her
in Luguvallium. The two men who rode with me were deputed into my
service by Urbgen; they would go with me as far as Galava, then
return. It was vain for me to protest that I would rather go alone,
and would be safe; King Urbgen merely repeated, smiling, that not
even my magic would avail against wolves, or autumn fogs, or the
sudden onslaught of early snow, which in that mountainous country
can trap the traveler very quickly among the steep valley-passes,
and bring him to his death. His words were a reminder to me that,
armed as I was now with only the reputation of past power, and not
the thing itself, I was as subject to outrage from thieves and
desperate men as any solitary traveler in that wild country; so I
accepted the escort with thanks, and in so doing I suppose I saved
my life.