Legacy: Arthurian Saga (27 page)

"If he'd bothered to look at you, or
listen to what folks were saying, he'd have known fast
enough."

"He knows now." I spoke with sudden,
complete certainty. "He saw it, back there on the road, when he saw
the dragon brooch the Count gave me. I'd never thought about it,
but of course he would realize the Count would hardly put the royal
cipher on his catamite. He had the torch brought up, and took a
good look at me. I think he saw it then." A thought struck me. "And
I think Belasius knows."

"Oh, yes," said Cadal, "he knows.
Why?"

"The way he talked...As if he knew he
daren't touch me. That would be why he tried to scare me with the
threat of a curse. He's a pretty cool hand, isn't he? He must have
been thinking very hard on the way up to the grove. He daren't put
me quietly out of the way for sacrilege, but he had to stop me
talking somehow. Hence the curse. And also -- " I
stopped.

"And also what?"

"Don't sound so startled. It was only
another guarantee I'd hold my tongue."

"For the gods' sake, what?"

I shrugged, realized I was still
naked, and reached for the bedgown again. "He said he would take me
with him to the sanctuary. I think he would like to make a druid of
me."

"He said that?" I was getting familiar
with Cadal's sign to avert the evil eye. "What will you
do?"

"I'll go with him...once, at least.
Don't look like that, Cadal. There isn't a cat's chance in a fire
that I'll want to go more than once." I looked at him soberly. "But
there's nothing in this world that I'm not ready to see and learn,
and no god that I'm not ready to approach in his own fashion. I
told you that truth was the shadow of God. If I am to use it, I
must know who He is. Do you understand me?"

"How could I? What god are you talking
about?"

"I think there is only one. Oh, there
are gods everywhere, in the hollow hills, in the wind and the sea,
in the very grass we walk on and the air we breathe, and in the
bloodstained shadows where men like Belasius wait for them. But I
believe there must be one who is God Himself, like the great sea,
and all the rest of us, small gods and men and all, like rivers, we
all come to Him in the end. -- Is the bath ready?"

Twenty minutes later, in a dark blue
tunic clipped at the shoulder by the dragon brooch, I went to see
my father.

12

The secretary was in the anteroom,
rather elaborately doing nothing. Beyond the curtain I heard
Ambrosius' voice speaking quietly. The two guards at the door
looked wooden.

Then the curtain was pulled aside and
Uther came out. When he saw me he checked, hung on his heel as if
to speak, then seemed to catch the secretary's interested look, and
went by with a swish of the red cloak and a smell of horses. You
could always tell where Uther had been; he seemed to soak up scents
like a wash-cloth. He must have gone straight to his brother before
he had even cleaned up after the ride home.

The secretary, whose name was Sollius,
said to me: "You may as well go straight in, sir. He'll be
expecting you."

I hardly even noticed the "sir." It
seemed to be something I was already accustomed to. I went
in.

He was standing with his back to the
door, over by the table. This was strewn with tablets, and a stilus
lay across one of them as if he had been interrupted while writing.
On the secretary's desk near the window a half-unrolled book lay
where it had been dropped.

The door shut behind me. I stopped
just inside it, and the leather curtain fell closed with a ruffle
and a flap. He turned. Our eyes met in silence, it seemed for
interminable seconds, then he cleared his throat and said: "Ah,
Merlin," and then, with a slight movement of the hand, "Sit
down."

I obeyed him, crossing to my usual
stool near the brazier. He was silent for a moment, looking down at
the table. He picked up the stilus, looked absently down at the
wax, and added a word. I waited. He scowled down at what he had
done, scored it out again, then threw the stilus down and said
abruptly: "Uther has been to see me."

"Yes, sir." He looked up under
frowning brows. "I understand he came on you riding alone beyond
the town." I said quickly: "I didn't go out alone. Cadal was with
me."

"Cadal?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's not what you told
Uther."

"No, sir." His look was keen now,
arrested. "Well, go on."

"Cadal always attends me, my lord.
He's -- more than faithful. We went north as far as the logging
track in the forest, and a short way along that my pony went lame,
so Cadal gave me his mare, and we started to walk home." I took a
breath. "We took a short cut, and came on Belasius and his servant.
Belasius rode part of the way home with me, but it -- it didn't
suit him to meet Prince Uther, so he left me."

"I see." His voice gave nothing away,
but I had the feeling that he saw quite a lot. His next question
confirmed it. "Did you go to the druids' island?"

"You know about it?" I said,
surprised. Then as he did not answer, waiting in cold silence for
me to speak, I went on: "I told you Cadal and I took a short cut
through the forest. If you know the island, you'll know the track
we followed. Just where the path goes down to the sea there's a
pine grove. We found Ulfin -- that's Belasius' servant -- there
with the two horses. Cadal wanted to take Ulfin's horse and get me
home quickly, but while we were talking to Ulfin we heard a cry --
a scream, rather, from somewhere east of the grove. I went to see.
I swear I had no idea the island was there, or what happened there.
Nor had Cadal, and if he'd been mounted, as I was, he'd have
stopped me. But by the time he'd taken Ulfin's horse and set off
after me I was out of sight, and he thought I'd taken fright and
gone home -- which is what he'd told me to do -- and it wasn't
until he got right back here that he found I hadn't come this way.
He went back for me, but by that time I'd come up with the troop."
I thrust my hands down between my knees, clutching them tightly
together. "I don't know what made me ride down to the island. At
least, I do; it was the cry, so I went to see...But it wasn't only
because of the cry. I can't explain, not yet..." I took a breath.
"My lord --"

"Well?"

"I ought to tell you. A man was killed
there tonight, on the island. I don't know who he was, but I heard
that he was a King's man who has been missing for somedays. His
body will be found somewhere in the forest, as if a wild beast had
killed him." I paused. There was nothing to be seen in his face. "I
thought I should tell you."

"You went over to the
island?"

"Oh, no! I doubt if I'd be alive now
if I had. I found out later about the man who was killed. It was
sacrilege, they said. I didn't ask about it." I looked up at him.
"I only went down as far as the shore. I waited there in the trees,
and watched it -- the dance and the offering. I could hear the
singing. I didn't know then that it was illegal...It's forbidden at
home, of course, but one knows it still goes on, and I thought it
might be different here. But when my lord Uther knew where I'd been
he was very angry. He seems to hate the druids."

"The druids?" His voice was absent
now. He still fidgeted with the stilus on the table. "Ah, yes.
Uther has no love for them. He is one of Mithras' fanatics, and
light is the enemy of darkness, I suppose. Well, what is it?" This,
sharply, to Sollius, who came in with an apology, and waited just
inside the door.

"Forgive me, sir," said the secretary.
"There's a messenger from King Budec. I told him you were engaged,
but he said it was important. Shall I tell him to wait?"

"Bring him in," said Ambrosius. The
man came in with a scroll. He handed it to Ambrosius, who sat down
in his great chair and unrolled it. He read it, frowning. I watched
him. The flickering flames from the brazier spread, lighting the
planes of the face which already, it seemed, I knew as well as I
knew my own. The heart of the brazier glowed, and the light spread
and flashed. I felt it spreading across my eyes as they blurred and
widened...

"Merlin Emrys? Merlin?"

The echo died to an ordinary voice.
The vision fled. I was sitting on my stool in Ambrosius' room,
looking down at my hands clasping my knees. Ambrosius had risen and
was standing over me, between me and the fire. The secretary had
gone, and we were alone.

At the repetition of my name I blinked
and roused myself. He was speaking. "What do you see, there in the
fire?" I answered without looking up. "A grove of whitethorn on a
hillside and a girl on a brown pony, and a young man with a dragon
brooch on his shoulder, and the mist knee-high."

I heard him draw a long breath, then
his hand came down and took me by the chin and lifted my face. His
eyes were intent and fierce.

"It's true, then, this Sight of yours.
I have been so sure, and now -- now, beyond all doubt, it is true.
I thought it was, that first night by the standing stone, but that
could have been anything -- a dream, a boy's story, a lucky guess
to win my interest. But this...I was right about you." He took his
hand from my face, and straightened. "Did you see the girl's
face?"

I nodded.

"And the man's?"

I met his eyes then. "Yes,
sir."

He turned sharply away and stood with
his back to me, head bent. Once more he picked up the stilus from
the table, turning it over and over with his fingers. After a while
he said: "How long have you known?"

"Only since I rode in tonight. It was
something Cadal said, then I remembered things, and how your
brother stared tonight when he saw me wearing this." I touched the
dragon brooch at my neck.

He glanced, then nodded. "Is this the
first time you have had this -- vision?"

"Yes. I had no idea. Now, it seems
strange to me that I never even suspected -- but I swear I did
not."

He stood silent, one hand spread on
the table, leaning on it. I don't know what I had expected, but I
had never thought to see the great Aurelius Ambrosius at a loss for
words. He took a turn across the room to the window, and back
again, and spoke. "This is a strange meeting, Merlin. So much to
say, and yet so little. Do you see now why I asked so many
questions? Why I tried so hard to find what had brought you
here?"

"The gods at work, my lord, they
brought me here," I said.

"Why did you leave her?"

I had not meant the question to come
out so abruptly, but I suppose it had been pressing on me so long
that now it burst out with the force of an accusation. I began to
stammer something, but he cut me short with a gesture, and answered
quietly.

"I was eighteen, Merlin, with a price
on my head if I set foot in my own kingdom. You know the story --
how my cousin Budec took me in when my brother the King was
murdered, and how he never ceased to plan for vengeance on
Vortigern, though for many years it seemed impossible. But all the
time he sent scouts, took in reports, went on planning. And then
when I was eighteen he sent me over myself, secretly, to Gorlois of
Cornwall, who was my father's friend, and who has never loved
Vortigern. Gorlois sent me north with a couple of men he could
trust, to watch and listen and learn the lie of the land. Someday
I'll tell you where we went, and what happened, but not now. What
concerns you now is this...We were riding south near the end of
October, towards Cornwall to take ship for home, when we were set
upon, and had to fight for it. They were Vortigern's men. I don't
know yet whether they suspected us, or whether they were killing --
as Saxons and foxes do -- for wantonness and the sweet taste of
blood. The latter, I think, or they would have made surer of
killing me. They killed my two companions, but I was lucky; I got
off with a flesh wound, and a knock on the head that struck me
senseless, and they left me for dead. This was at dusk. When I
moved and looked about me it was morning, and a brown pony was
standing over me, with a girl on his back staring from me to the
dead men and back again, with never a sound." The first glimmer of
a smile, not at me, but at the memory. "I remember trying to speak,
but I had lost a lot of blood, and the night in the open had
brought on a fever. I was afraid she would take fright and gallop
back to the town, and that would be the end of it. But she did not.
She caught my horse and got my saddle-bag, and gave me a drink,
then she cleaned the wound and tied it up and then -- God knows how
-- got me across the horse and out of that valley. There was a
place she knew of, she said, nearer the town, but remote and
secret; no one ever went there. It was a cave, with a spring --
What is it?"

"Nothing," I said. "I should have
known. Go on. No one lived there then?"

"No one. By the time we got there I
suppose I was delirious; I remember nothing. She hid me in the
cave, and my horse too, out of sight. There had been food and wine
in my saddle-bag, and I had my cloak and a blanket. It was late
afternoon by then, and when she rode home she heard that the two
dead men had already been found, with their horses straying nearby.
The troop had been riding north; it wasn't likely that anyone in
the town knew there should have been three corpses found. So I was
safe. Next day she rode up to the cave again, with food and
medicines...And the next day, too." He paused. "And you know the
end of the story."