Legacy: Arthurian Saga (51 page)

"Tell Cadal he is to give you the
silver cross with the amethysts."

We faced one another in a small
silence. I was almost as tall as he. He said, gently: "So now it is
goodbye."

"How does one say goodbye to a King
who has been given immortality?"

He gave me a strange look. "Shall we
meet again, then?"

"We shall meet again,
Ambrosius."

It was then I knew that what I had
prophesied for him was his death.

10

Killare, I had been told, is a
mountain in the very center of Ireland. There are in other parts of
this island mountains which, if not as great as those of our own
country, could still merit the name. But the hill of Killare is no
mountain. It is a gentle conical hill whose summit is, I suppose,
no more than nine hundred feet high. It is not even forested, but
clothed over with rough grass, with here and there a copse of
thorn-trees, or a few single oaks.

Even so, standing where it does, it
looms like a mountain to those approaching it, for it stands alone,
the only hill at the center of a vast plain. On every hand, with
barely the least undulation, the country stretches flat and green;
north, south, east, west, it is the same. But it is not true that
you can see the coasts from that summit; there is only the
interminable view on every hand of that green gentle country, with
above it a soft and cloudy sky.

Even the air is mild there. We had
fair winds, and landed on a long, grey strand on a soft summer
morning, with a breeze off the land smelling of bog myrtle and
gorse and salt-soaked turf. The wild swans sailed the loughs with
the half-grown cygnets, and the peewits screamed and tumbled over
the meadows where their young nestled down between the
reeds.

It was not a time, or a country, you
would have thought, for war. And indeed, the war was soon over.
Gilloman, the king, was young -- they said not more than eighteen
-- and he would not listen to his advisers and wait for a good
moment to meet our attack. So high was his heart that, at the first
news of foreign troops landing on the sacred soil of Ireland, the
young king gathered his fighting men together, and threw them
against Uther's seasoned troops. They met us on a flat plain, with
a hill at our backs and a river at theirs. Uther's troops stood the
first wild, brave attack without giving ground even a couple of
paces, then advanced steadily in their turn, and drove the Irish
into the water. Luckily for them, this was a wide stream, and
shallow, and, though it ran red that evening, many hundreds of
Irishmen escaped. Gilloman the king was one of them, and when we
got the news that he had fled west with a handful of trusted
followers, Uther, guessing he would be making for Killare, sent a
thousand mounted troops after him, with instructions to catch him
before he reached the gates. This they just managed to do, coming
up with him barely half a mile short of the fortress, at the very
foot of the hill and within sight of the walls. The second battle
was short, and bloodier than the first. But it took place in the
night, and in the confusion of the mêlée Gilloman himself escaped
once more, and galloped away with a handful of men, this time
nobody knew where. But the thing was done; by the time we, the main
body of the army, came to the foot of Mount Killare, the British
troops were already in possession, and the gates were
open.

A lot of nonsense has been talked
about what happened next. I myself have heard some of the songs,
and even read one account which was set down in a book. Ambrosius
had been misinformed. Killare was not strong-built of great stones;
that is to say, the outer fortifications were as usual of
earthworks and palisades behind a great ditch, and inside that was
a second ditch, deep, and with spikes set. The central fortress
itself was certainly stone-walled, and the stones were big ones,
but nothing that a normal team, with the proper tackle, could not
handle easily. Inside this fortress wall were houses, of the most
part built of wood, but also some strong places underground, as we
have in Britain. Higher yet stood the innermost ring, a wall round
the crest of the hill like a crown round the brow of a king. And
inside this, at the very center and apex of the hill, was the holy
place. Here stood the Dance, the circle of stones that was said to
contain the heart of Ireland. It could not compare with the Great
Dance of Amesbury, being only a single circle of unlinked stones,
but it was impressive enough, and still stood firm with much of the
circle intact, and two capped uprights near the center where other
stones lay, seemingly without pattern, in the long
grass.

I walked up alone that same evening.
The hillside was alive with the bustle and roar, familiar to me
from Kaerconan, of the aftermath of battle. But when I passed the
wall that hedged the holy place, and came out towards the crest of
the hill, it was like leaving a bustling hall for the quiet of some
tower room upstairs. Sounds fell away below the walls, and as I
walked up through the long summer grass, there was almost silence,
and I was alone.

A round moon stood low in the sky,
pale still, and smudged with shadow, and thin at one edge like a
worn coin. There was a scatter of small stars, with here and there
the shepherd stars herding them, and across from the moon one great
star alone, burning white. The shadows were long and soft on the
seeding grasses.

A tall stone stood alone, leaning a
little towards the east. A little further was a pit, and beyond
that again a round boulder that looked black in the moonlight.
There was something here. I paused. Nothing I could put a name to,
but the old, black stone itself might have been some dark creature
hunched there over the pit's edge. I felt the shiver run over my
skin, and turned away. This, I would not disturb.

The moon climbed with me, and as I
entered the circle she lifted her white disc over the cap-stones
and shone clear into the center of the ring. My footsteps crunched,
dry and brittle, over a patch of ground where fires had recently
been lit. I saw the white shapes of bones, and a flat stone shaped
like an altar. The moonlight showed carving on one side, crude
shapes twisted, of ropes or serpents. I stooped to run a finger
over them. Nearby a mouse rustled and squeaked in the grass. No
other sound. The thing was clean, dead, godless. I left it, moving
on slowly through the moon-thrown shadows. There was another stone,
domed like a beehive, or a navel-stone. And here an upright fallen,
with the long grass almost hiding it. As I passed it, searching
still, a ripple of breeze ran through the grasses, blurring the
shadows and dimming the light like mist. I caught my foot on
something, staggered, and came down to my knees at the end of a
long flat stone which lay almost hidden in the grass. My hands
moved over it. It was massive, oblong, uncarved, simply a great
natural stone on to which now the moonlight poured. It hardly
needed the cold at my hands, the hiss of the bleached grasses under
the sudden run of wind, the scent of daisies, to tell me that this
was the stone. All round me, like dancers drawing back from a
center, the silent stones stood black. On one side the white moon,
on the other the king-star, burning white. I got slowly to my feet
and stood there at the foot of the long stone, as one might stand
at the foot of a bed, waiting for the man in it to die.

It was warmth that woke me, warmth and
the voices of men near me. I lifted my head. I was half-kneeling,
half-lying with my arms and the upper part of my body laid along
the stone. The morning sun was high, and pouring straight down into
the center of the Dance. Mist smoked up from the damp grass, and
its white wreaths hid the lower slopes of the hill. A group of men
had come in through the stones of the Dance, and were standing
there muttering among themselves, watching me. As I blinked, moving
my stiff limbs, the group parted and Uther came through, followed
by half a dozen of his officers, among whom was Tremorinus. Two
soldiers pushed between them what was obviously an Irish prisoner;
his hands were tied and there was a cut on one cheek where blood
had dried, but he held himself well and I thought the men who
guarded him looked more afraid than he.

Uther checked when he saw me, then
came across as I got stiffly to my feet. The night must have shown
still in my face, for in the group of officers behind him I saw the
look I had grown used to, of men both wary and amazed, and even
Uther spoke a fraction too loudly.

"So your magic is as strong as
theirs."

The light was too strong for my eyes.
He looked vivid and unreal, like an image seen in moving water. I
tried to speak, cleared my throat, and tried again. "I'm still
alive, if that's what you mean."

Tremorinus said gruffly: "There's not
another man in the army would have spent the night
here."

"Afraid of the black
stone?"

I saw Uther's hand move in an
involuntary gesture as if it sprang of itself to make the sign. He
saw I had noticed, and looked angry. "Who told you about the black
stone?"

Before I could answer, the Irishman
said suddenly: "You saw it? Who are you?"

"My name is Merlin."

He nodded slowly. He still showed no
sign of fear or awe. He read my thought, and smiled, as if to say,
"You and I, we can look after ourselves."

"Why do they bring you here like
this?" I asked him. "To tell them which is the king-stone." Uther
said: "He has told us. It's the carved altar over
there."

"Let him go," I said. "You have no
need of him. And leave the altar alone. This is the stone." There
was a pause. Then the Irishman laughed.

"Faith, if you bring the King's
enchanter himself, what hope has a poor poet? It was written in the
stars that you would take it, and indeed, it is nothing but
justice. It's not the heart of Ireland that that stone has been but
the curse of it, and maybe Ireland will be all the better to see it
go."

"How so?" I asked him. Then, to Uther:
"Tell them to loosen him." Uther nodded, and the men loosened the
prisoner's hands. He rubbed his wrists, smiling at me. You would
have thought we two were alone in the dance. "They say that in
times past that stone came out of Britain, out of the mountains of
the west, in sight of the Irish Sea, and that the great King of all
Ireland, Fionn Mac Cumhaill was his name, carried it in his arms
one night and walked through the sea with it to Ireland, and set it
here."

"And now," I said, "we carry it a
little more painfully back to Britain." He laughed. "I would have
thought the great magician that's yourself would have picked it up
in one hand."

"I'm no Fionn," I said. "And now if
you are wise, poet, you will go back to your home and your harp,
and make no more wars, but make a song about the stone, and how
Merlin the enchanter took the stone from the Dance of Killare and
carried it lightly to the Dance of the Hanging Stones at Amesbury."
He saluted me, laughing still, and went. And indeed he did walk
safely down through the camp and away, for in later years I heard
the song he made. But now his going was hardly noticed. There was a
pause while Uther frowned down at the great stone, seeming to weigh
it in his mind. "You told the King that you could do this thing. Is
that true?"

"I said to the King that what men had
brought here, men could take away." He looked at me frowningly,
uncertainly, still a little angry. "He told me what you said. I
agree. It doesn't need magic and fine words, only a team of
competent men with the right engines. Tremorinus!"

"Sir?"

"If we take this one, the king-stone,
there will be no need to trouble overmuch with the rest. Throw them
down where you can and leave them."

"Yes, sir. If I could have Merlin
--"

"Merlin's team will be working on the
fortifications. Merlin, get started, will you? I give you
twenty-four hours."

This was something the men were
practiced at; they threw down the walls and filled in the ditches
with them. The palisades and houses, quite simply, we put to the
flame. The men worked well, and were in good heart. Uther was
always generous to his troops, and there had been goods in plenty
to be looted, arm-rings of copper and bronze and gold, brooches,
and weapons well made and inlaid with copper and enamel, in a way
the Irish have. The work was finished by dusk, and we withdrew from
the hill to the temporary camp which had been thrown up on the
plain at the foot of the slope.

It was after supper when Tremorinus
came to me. I could see the torches and the fires still lit at the
top of the hill, throwing what was left of the Dance into relief.
His face was grimy, and he looked tired.

"All day," he said bitterly, "and
we've raised it a couple of feet, and half an hour ago the props
cracked, and it's gone back again into its bed. Why the hell did
you have to suggest that stone? The Irishman's altar would have
been easier."

"The Irishman's altar would not have
done."

"Well, by the gods, it looks as if you
aren't going to get this one either! Look, Merlin, I don't care
what he says, I'm in charge of this job, and I'm asking you to come
and take a look. Will you?"

The rest is what the legends have been
made of. It would be tedious now to relate how we did it, but it
was easy enough; I had had all day to think about it, having seen
the stone and the hillside, and I had had the engines in my mind
since Brittany. Wherever we could we took it by water -- downriver
from Killare to the sea, and thence to Wales and still as far as
possible by river, using the two great Avons, with little more than
a score of dry miles to cross between them. I was not Fionn of the
Strong Arm, but I was Merlin, and the great stone traveled home as
smoothly as a barge on an untroubled water, with me beside it all
the way. I suppose I must have slept on that journey, but I cannot
remember doing so. I went wakeful, as one is at a death-bed, and on
that one voyage of all those in my life, I never felt the movement
of the sea, but sat (they tell me) calm and silent, as if in my
chair at home. Uther came once to speak to me -- angry, I suppose,
that I had done so easily what his own engineers could not do --
but he went away after a moment, and did not approach me again. I
remember nothing about it. I suppose I was not there. I was
watching still between day and night in the great bedchamber at
Winchester.