Legacy: Arthurian Saga (26 page)

Behind Uther the horses snorted and
tossed their heads, scenting it, and the men looked at one another.
I saw the torch-bearers eyeing me askance, and the guard beside me
muttered something under his breath.

Uther said, violently: "By all the
gods below, so that was it! One of them, by Mithras! I should have
known, I can smell the holy smoke on you from here! All right,
bastard, you that's so mighty free with my brother's name, and so
high in his favor, we'll see what he has to say to this. What have
you to say for yourself now? There's not much point in denying it,
is there?"

I lifted my head. Sitting the big
mare, I could meet him almost eye to eye. "Deny? I'm denying that
I've broken a law, or done anything the Count wouldn't like -- and
those are the only two things that matter, my lord Uther. I'll
explain to him."

"By God you will! So Ulfin took you
there?"

I said sharply: "Ulfin had nothing to
do with it. I had already left him. In any case, he is a slave, and
does as I bid him."

He spurred his horse suddenly, right
up to the mare. He leaned forward, gripping the folds of my cloak
at the neck, and tightening the grip till he half-lifted me from
the saddle. His face was thrust close to mine, his armed knee
hurting my leg as the horses stamped and sidled together. He spoke
through his teeth.

"And you do as I bid you, hear that.
Whatever you may be to my brother, you obey me, too." He tightened
the grip still further, shaking me. "Understand, Merlin
Emrys?"

I nodded. He swore as my brooch-pin
scratched him, and let me go. There was a streak of blood on his
hand. I saw his eyes on the brooch. He flicked his fingers to the
torch-bearer, and the man pushed nearer, holding the flame high.
"He gave you that to wear? The red dragon?" Then he stopped short
as his eyes came up to my face and fixed there, stared, widened.
The intense blue seemed to blaze. The grey stallion sidled and he
curbed it sharply, so that the foam sprang.

"Merlin Emrys..." He said it again,
this time to himself, so softly that I hardly caught it. Then
suddenly he let out a laugh, amused and gay and hard, not like
anything I had heard from him before.

"Well, Merlin Emrys, you'll still have
to answer to him for where you've been tonight!" He wheeled his
horse, flinging over his shoulder to the men: "Bring him along, and
see he doesn't fall off. It seems my brother treasures
him."

The grey horse jumped under the spur,
and the troop surged after him. My captors, still holding the brown
mare's bridle, pounded after, with me between them.

The druid's robe lay trampled and
filthy in the dirt, where the troop had ridden over it. I wondered
if Belasius would see it and take warning.

Then I forgot him. I still had
Ambrosius to face.

Cadal was in my room. I said with
relief: "Well, thank the gods you didn't come back after me. I was
picked up by Uther's lot, and he's blazing mad because he knows
where I went."

"I know," said Cadal grimly, "I saw
it."

"What do you mean?"

"I did ride back for you. I'd made
sure you'd had the sense to run for home when you heard
that...noise, so I went after you. When I saw no sign of you on the
way I just thought you must have got a tidy turn of speed out of
the mare -- the ground was fair smoking under me, I can tell you!
Then when --"

"You guessed what was happening? Where
Belasius was?"

"Aye." He turned his head as if to
spit on the floor, recollected himself, and made the sign against
the evil eye. "Well, when I got back here, and no sign of you, I
knew you must've gone straight down to see what was going on.
High-handed little fool. Might have got yourself killed, meddling
with that lot."

"So might you. But you went
back."

"What else could I do? You should've
heard what I was calling you, too. Proper little nuisance was the
least of it. Well, I was about half a mile out of town when I saw
them coming, and I pulled aside and waited for them to pass. You
know that old posting station, the ruined one? I was there. I
watched them go by, and you at the back under guard. So I guessed
he knew. I followed them back to town as close as I dared, and cut
home through the side streets. I've only just got in. He found out,
then?"

I nodded, beginning to unfasten my
cloak. "Then there'll be the devil to pay, and no mistake," said
Cadal. "How did he find out?"

"Belasius had put his robe in my
saddle-bag, and they found it. They think it was mine." I grinned.
"If they'd tried it for size they'd have had to think again. But
that didn't occur to them. They just dropped it in the mud and rode
over it."

"About right, too." He had gone down
on one knee to unfasten my sandals. He paused, with one in his
hand. "Are you telling me Belasius saw you? Had words with
you?"

"Yes. I waited for him, and we walked
back together to the horses. Ulfin's bringing Aster, by the
way."

He ignored that. He was staring, and I
thought he had lost color.

"Uther didn't see Belasius," I said.
"Belasius dodged in time. He knew they'd heard one horse, so he
sent me forward to meet them, otherwise I suppose they'd have come
after us both. He must have forgotten I had the robe, or else
chanced their not finding it. Anybody but Uther wouldn't even have
looked."

"You should never have gone near
Belasius. It's worse than I thought. Here, let me do that. Your
hands are cold." He pulled the dragon brooch off and took my cloak.
"You want to watch it, you do. He's a nasty customer -- they all
are, come to that -- and him most of all."

"Did you know about him?"

"Not to say know. I might have
guessed. It's right up his street, if you ask me. But what I meant
was, they're a nasty lot to tangle with."

"Well, he's the archdruid, or at least
the head of this sect, so he'll carry some weight. Don't look so
troubled, Cadal, I doubt if he'll harm me, or let anyone else harm
me."

"Did he threaten you?" I laughed.
"Yes. With a curse."

"They say these things stick. They say
the druids can send a knife after you that'll hunt you down for
days, and all you know is the whistling noise in the air behind you
just before it strikes."

"They say all sort of things. Cadal,
have I another tunic that's decent? Did my best one come back from
the fuller? And I want a bath before I go to the Count."

He eyed me sideways as he reached in
the clothes-chest for another tunic. "Uther will have gone straight
to him. You know that?" I laughed. "Of course. I warn you, I shall
tell Ambrosius the truth."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

"Well, I suppose that's best," he
said. "If anyone can protect you from them --"

"It's not that. It's simply that he
ought to know. He has the right. Besides, what have I to hide from
him?"

He said uneasily: "I was thinking
about the curse...Even Ambrosius might not be able to protect you
from that."

"Oh, that to the curse." I made a
gesture not commonly seen in noblemen's houses. "Forget it. Neither
you nor I have done wrong, and I refuse to lie to
Ambrosius."

"Someday I'll see you scared,
Merlin."

"Probably."

"Weren't you even scared of
Belasius?"

"Should I be?" I was interested.
"He'll do me no harm." I unhooked the belt of my tunic, and threw
it on the bed. I regarded Cadal. "Would you be afraid if you knew
your own end, Cadal?"

"Yes, by the dog! Do you?"

"Sometimes, in snatches. Sometimes I
see it. It fills me with fear."

He stood still, looking at me, and
there was fear in his face.

"What is it, then?"

"A cave. The crystal cave. Sometimes I
think it is death, and at other times it is birth or a gate of
vision, or a dark limbo of sleep...I cannot tell. But someday I
shall know. Till then, I suppose I am not afraid of much else. I
shall come to the cave in the end, as you -- " I broke
off.

"As I what?" he said quickly. "What'll
I come to?" I smiled. "I was going to say 'As you will come to old
age.'"

"That's a lie," he said roughly. "I
saw your eyes. When you're seeing things, your eyes go queer; I've
noticed it before. The black spreads and goes kind of blurred,
dreaming-like -- but not soft; no, your whole look goes cold, like
cold iron, as if you neither saw nor cared about what's going on
round you. And you talk as if you were just a voice and not a
person...Or as if you'd gone somewhere else and left your body for
something else to speak through. Like a horn being blown through to
make the sound carry. Oh, I know I've only seen it a couple of
times, for a moment, but it's uncanny, and it frightens
me."

"It frightens me, too, Cadal." I had
let the green tunic slide from my body to the floor. He was holding
out the grey wool robe I wore for a bedgown. I reached absently for
it, and sat down on the bed's edge, with it trailing over my knees.
I was talking to myself rather than Cadal. "It frightens me, too.
You're right, that's how it feels, as if I were an empty shell with
something working through me. I say things, see things, think
things, till that moment I never knew of. But you're wrong in
thinking I don't feel. It hurts me. I think this may be because I
can't command whatever speaks through me...I mean, I can't command
it yet. But I shall. I know this, too. Someday I shall command this
part of me that knows and sees, this god, and that really will be
power. I shall know when what I foretell is human instinct, and
when it is God's shadow."

"And when you spoke of my end, what
was that?"

I looked up. Oddly enough it was less
easy to lie to Cadal than it had been to Uther. "But I haven't seen
your death, Cadal, no one's but my own. I was being tactless. I was
going to say 'As you will come to a foreign grave somewhere...' " I
smiled. "I know this is worse than hell to a Breton. But I think it
will happen to you...That is, if you stay as my
servant."

His look lightened, and he grinned.
This was power, I thought, when a word of mine could frighten men
like this. He said: "Oh, I'll do that all right. Even if he hadn't
asked me to, I'd stay. You've an easy way with you that makes it a
pleasure to look after you."

"Have I? I thought you found me a
high-handed little fool, and a nuisance besides?"

"There you are, you see. I'd never
have dared say that to anyone else your class, and all you do is
laugh, and you twice royal."

"Twice royal? You can hardly count my
grandfather as well as my -- " I stopped. What stopped me was his
face. He had spoken without thought, then, on a quick gasp, had
tried to catch the words back into his mouth and unspeak
them.

He said nothing, just stood there with
the soiled tunic in his hand. I stood up slowly, the forgotten
bedgown falling to the floor. There was no need for him to speak. I
knew. I could not imagine how I had not known before, the moment I
stood before Ambrosius in the frosty field and he stared down in
the torchlight. He had known. And a hundred others must have
guessed. I remembered now the sidelong looks of the men, the
mutterings of the officers, the deference of servants which I had
taken for respect for Ambrosius' commands, but which I saw now was
deference to Ambrosius' son.

The room was still as a cave. The
brazier flickered and its light broke and scattered in the bronze
mirror against the wall. I looked that way. In the firelit bronze
my naked body showed slight and shadowy, an unreal thing of
firelight and darkness shifting as the flames moved. But the face
was lit, and in its heavily defined planes of fire and shadow I saw
his face as I had seen it in his room, when he sat over the brazier
waiting for me to be brought to him. Waiting for me to come so that
he could ask me about Niniane.

And here again the Sight had not
helped me. Men that have god's-sight, I have found, are often
human-blind.

I said to Cadal: "Everybody
knows?"

He nodded. He didn't ask what I meant.
"It's rumored. You're very like him sometimes."

"I think Uther may have guessed. He
didn't know before?"

"No. He left before the talk started
to go round. That wasn't why he took against you."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said. "What
was it, then? Just because I got across him over that business of
the standing stone?"

"Oh, that, and other
things."

"Such as?"

Cadal said, bluntly: "He thought you
were the Count's catamite. Ambrosius doesn't go for women much. He
doesn't go for boys either, come to that, but one thing Uther can't
understand is a man who isn't in and out of bed with someone seven
nights a week. When his brother bothered such a lot with you, had
you in his house and set me to look after you and all that, Uther
thought that's what must be going on, and he didn't half like
it."

"I see. He did say something like that
tonight, but I thought it was only because he'd lost his
temper."