Legacy: Arthurian Saga (217 page)

"Ah, so Nimue sent for you? She told
me you were coming, but she did not tell me when, or
why."

Mordred stared. "She said I was
coming? How could she? I hardly knew it myself. I -- there was
something I wanted to ask her, so I rode here, you might say on
impulse."

"Ah," said Arthur. He regarded Mordred
with what looked like amusement.

"Why do you smile, sir?" Mordred was
thinking, with thankfulness: He cannot begin to guess what was in
my mind. Surely he cannot guess. But Nimue...?

"If you have never met Nimue, then
gird your loins and put up your shield," said Arthur, laughing.
"There's no mystery, at least not the kind ordinary mortals such as
you and I can understand. She would know you were coming because
she knows everything. As simple as that. She will even know
why."

"That must save a world of words,"
said Mordred dryly.

"I used to say that. To Merlin." A
shadow touched the King's face, and was gone. The amusement came
back. "Well, good luck to you, Mordred. It is time you met the
ruler of your ruler." And still laughing, he rode down the hill to
the road.

Mordred left his horse at the archway
that led into the courtyard, and went in. The place was full of
flowers, and the scent of herbs and lavender, and doves crooned on
the wall. There was an old man by the well, a gardener by his
clothes, drawing water. He glanced up, touched a hand to his brow,
and pointed the way to the tower door.

Well, thought Mordred, she is
expecting me, isn't she?

He mounted the stone steps and pushed
open the door.

The room was small and square, with
one large window opening to the south, and beneath it a table. The
only other furnishings were a cupboard, a heavy chair, and a couple
of stools. A box stood on the table with books, neatly rolled,
inside it. By the table, with her back to it and facing the door,
stood a woman.

She neither spoke nor made any
movement of greeting. What met him, forcibly as a cold blast, was
her inimical and chilling gaze. He stopped dead in the doorway. A
feeling of dread, formless and heavy, settled on him, as if the
vultures of fate clung to his shoulders, their claws digging into
his flesh.

Then it cleared. He straightened. The
weight was gone. The tower room was full of light, and facing him
was a tall, arrow-straight woman in a grey robe, with dark hair
bound back with silver, and cool grey eyes.

"Prince Mordred."

He bowed. "Madam."

"Forgive me for receiving you here. I
was working. The King comes often, and takes things as he finds
them. Will you sit?"

He pulled a stool towards him and sat.
He glanced at the littered table. She was not, as he half expected,
brewing some concoction over the brazier. The "work" consisted,
rather, of a litter of tablets and papers. An instrument which he
did not recognize stood in the window embrasure, its end tilted
towards the sky.

Nimue seated herself, turned to
Mordred, and waited.

He said directly: "We have not met
before, madam, but I have seen you."

She looked at him for a moment, then
nodded. "The castle at Luguvallium? I knew you were nearby. You
were hiding in the courtyard?"

"Yes." He added, wryly: "You cost me
my liberty. I was trying to run away."

"Yes. You were afraid. But now you
know that there was no reason for your fear."

He hesitated. Her tone was cold still,
her look hostile. "Then why did you stop me? Did you hope then that
the King would have me put to death?"

Her brows went up. "Why do you ask
that?"

"Because of the prophecy."

"Who told you about it? Ah, yes,
Morgause. No. I warned Urbgen to keep you close and see that you
got to Camelot, because it is always better to keep a danger where
one can see it, than let it vanish, and then wonder from what
direction it will strike."

"So you agree that I am a danger. You
believe in the prophecy."

"I must."

"Then you have seen it, too? In the
crystal, or the pool, or--" He glanced towards the instrument by
the window. "--The stars?"

For the first time there was something
other than hostility in her look. She was watching him with
curiosity, and a hint of puzzlement. She said slowly: "Merlin saw,
and he made the prophecy, and I am Merlin."

"Then you can tell me why, if Merlin
believed his own prophetic voices, he let the King keep me alive in
the first place? I know why Morgause did; she saved me because she
thought I would be his bane. She told me so, and then when I was
grown she tried to enlist me as his enemy. But why did Merlin even
let her bear me?"

She was silent for a few moments. The
grey eyes searched him, as if they would draw the secrets from the
back of his brain. Then she spoke.

"Because he would not see Arthur
stained with the wrong of murder, whatever the cause. Because he
was wise enough to see that we cannot turn the gods aside, but must
follow as best we can the paths they lay out for us. Because he
knew that out of seeming evil can come great good, and out of well
doing may come bane and death. Because he saw also that in the
moment of Arthur's death his glory would have reached and passed
its fullness, but that by that death the glory would live on to be
a light and a trumpet-call and a breath of life for men to
come."

When she stopped speaking it seemed as
if a faint echo of her voice, like a harp string thrumming, wound
on and on in the air, to vibrate at last into silence.

At length Mordred spoke. "But you must
know that I would not willingly bring evil to the King. I owe him
much, and none of it evil. He knew this prophecy from the start,
and, believing it, yet took me into his court and accepted me as
his son. How, then, can you suppose that I would willingly harm
him?"

She said, more gently: "It does not
have to be by your will."

"Are you trying to tell me that I can
do nothing to avert this fate that you speak of?"

"What will be, will be," she
said.

"You cannot help me?"

"To avoid what is in the stars?
No."

Mordred, with a movement of violent
impatience, got to his feet. She did not move, even when he took a
stride forward and towered over her, as if he would strike
her.

"This is absurd! The stars! You talk
as if men are sheep, and worse than sheep, to be driven by blind
fate to do the will of some ill-wishing god! What of my will? Am I,
despite anything I may wish or do, condemned to be the death or
bane of a man I respect, a king I follow? Am I to be a sinner --
more, the worst of sinners, a parricide? What gods are
these?"

She did not reply. She tilted her head
back, still watching him steadily.

He said, angrily: "Very well. You have
said, and Merlin has said, and Queen Morgause, who like you was a
witch" -- her eyes nickered at that, perhaps with annoyance, and he
felt a savage pleasure at getting through to her -- "that through
me the King will meet his doom. You say I cannot avoid this. So?
How if I took my dagger -- thus -- and killed myself here and now?
Would that not avert the fate that you say hangs in the
stars?"

She had not stirred at the dagger's
flash, but now she moved. She rose from her stool and crossed to
the window. She stood there with her back to him, looking out.
Beyond the open frame was a pear tree, where a blackbird
sang.

She spoke without turning.

"Prince Mordred, I did not say that
Arthur would meet his doom by your hand or even by your action.
Through your existence is all. So kill yourself now if you will it,
but through your death his fate might come on him all the
sooner."

"But then--" he began
desperately.

She turned. "Listen to me. Had Arthur
slain you in infancy, it might have happened that men would have
risen against him for his cruelty, and that in the uprising he
would have been killed. If you kill yourself now, it might be that
your brothers, blaming him, would bring him to ruin. Or even that
Arthur himself, spurring here to Applegarth at the news, would take
a fall from his horse and die, or lie a cripple while his kingdom
crumbled round him." She lifted her hands. "Now do you understand?
Fate has more than one arrow. The gods wait behind
cloud."

"Then they are cruel!"

"You know that already, do you
not?"

He remembered the sickening smell of
the burned cottage, the feel of the sea-washed bone in his hand,
the lonely cry of the gulls over the beach.

He met the grey eyes, and saw
compassion there. He said quietly: "So what can a man
do?"

"All that we have," she said, "is to
live what life brings. Die what death comes."

"That is black counsel."

"Is it?" she said. "You cannot know
that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you cannot know what life
will bring. All I can tell you is this: that whatever years of life
are left for you and for your father, they will see ambition
realized, and will bring fulfilment and their need of glory, both
for him and for you."

He stood silent at that. It was more
than he had imagined or expected, that she would give him not only
a qualified hope, but the promise of a life fulfilled.

He said: "So it won't serve for me to
leave court, and stay away from him?"

"No." He smiled for the first time.
"Because he wants me where he can see me? Because the arrow by
daylight is better to face than the knife in the dark?" There was a
glimmer of a smile in reply. "You are like him," was all she said,
but he felt the interview begin to lighten. A somber lady, this
one. She was beautiful, yes, but he would as soon, he thought, have
touched a rousing falcon. "You can't tell me anymore?
Anything?"

"I do not know more."

"Would Merlin know? And would he tell
me?"

"What he knew, I know," she said
again. "I told you, I am Merlin."

"You said this before. Is it some kind
of riddling way of telling me that his power is gone, or just that
I may not approach him?" He spoke with renewed impatience. "All my
life I seem to have been listening to rumors of magical deaths and
vanishings, and they are never true. Tell me straightly, if you
will: if I go to Bryn Myrddin, will I find him?"

"If he wishes it, yes."

"Then he is still there?"

"He is where he always was, with all
his fires and travelling glories round him." As they talked the sun
had moved round, and the light from the window touched her face. He
saw faint lines on the smooth brow, the shadow of fatigue under the
eyes, a dew of transparency on her skin. He said abruptly: "I am
sorry if I have wearied you." She did not deny it. She said merely:
"I am glad you came," and followed him to the tower doorway. "Thank
you for your patience," he said, and drew breath for a formal
farewell, but a shout from the courtyard below startled him. He
swung round and looked down. Nimue came swiftly to his elbow.
"You'd better go down, and hurry! Your horse has slipped his
tether, and I think he has eaten some of the new seedlings." Her
face lit with mischief, young and alive, like that of a child who
misbehaves in a shrine. "If Varro kills you with his spade, as
seems likely, we shall see how the fates will deal with
that!"

He kissed her hand and ran down to
retrieve his horse. As he rode away she watched him with eyes that
were once again sad, but no longer hostile.

Mordred was half afraid that the King
would ask him what his business had been with Nimue, but he did
not. He sent for his son next day and spoke of the proposed visit
to the Saxon king, Cerdic.

"I would have left you in charge at
home, which would have been useful experience for you, but it will
be even more useful for you to meet Cerdic and attend the talks, so
as ever I am leaving Bedwyr. I might almost say as regent, since
officially I am leaving my own kingdom for a foreign one. Have you
ever met a Saxon, Mordred?"

"Never. Are they really all giants,
who drink the blood of babies?"

The King laughed. "You will see. They
are certainly most of them big men, and their customs are
outlandish. But I am told, by those who know them and can speak
their tongue, that their poets and artists are to be respected.
Their fighting men certainly are. You will find it
interesting."

"How many men will you
take?"

"Under truce, only a hundred. A regal
train, no more."

"You can trust a Saxon to keep a
truce?"

"Cerdic, yes, though with most Saxons
it's a case of trust only from strength, and keep the memory of
Badon still green. But don't repeat that," said Arthur.

Agravain was also in the chosen
hundred, but neither Gawain nor Gareth. These two had gone north
together soon after the council meeting. Gawain had spoken of
travelling to Dunpeldyr and perhaps thence to Orkney, and, though
suspecting that his nephew's real quest was far otherwise, Arthur
could think of no good reason for preventing him. Hoping that
Lamorak might have ridden westward to join his brother under
Drustan's standard, he had to content himself with sending a
courier into Dumnonia with a warning.