Legacy: Arthurian Saga (65 page)

"How does the hand feel?"

"Better. There's no poison there; I
know the feel of it. I'll give you no more trouble, Gandar, so stop
treating me like a sick man. I'm well enough, now that I've slept.
Get yourself to bed, and forget about me. Good night."

When he had gone I lay listening to
the sounds of the sea, and trying to gather, from the god-filled
dark, the courage I would need for my visit to the dead.

Courage or no, another day passed
before I found the strength to leave my chamber. Then I went at
dusk to the great hall where they had put the old Duke's body.
Tomorrow he would be taken to Tintagel for burial among his
fathers. Now he lay alone, save for the guards, in the echoing hall
where he had feasted his peers and given orders for his last
battle.

The place was cold, silent but for the
sounds of wind and sea. The wind had changed and now blew from the
northwest, bringing with it the chill and promise of rain. There
was neither glazing nor horn in the windows, and the draught
stirred the torches in their iron brackets, sending them sideways,
dim and smoking, to blacken the walls. It was a stark, comfortless
place, bare of paint, or tiling, or carved wood; one remembered
that Dimilioc was simply the fortress of a fighting man; it was
doubtful if Ygraine had ever been here. The ashes in the hearth
were days old, the half-burned logs dewed with damp.

The Duke's body lay on a high bier in
the center of the hall, covered with his war cloak. The scarlet
with the double border of silver and the white badge of the Boar
was as I had seen it at my father's side in battle. I had seen it,
too, on Uther as I led him disguised into Gorlois' castle and his
bed. Now the heavy folds hung to the ground, and beneath them the
body had shrunk and flattened, no more than a husk of the tall old
man I remembered. They had left his face uncovered. The flesh had
sunk, grey as twice-used tallow, till the face was a moulded skull,
showing only the ghost of a likeness to the Gorlois I had known.
The coins on his eyes had already sunk into the flesh. His hair was
hidden by his war helm, but the familiar grey beard jutted over the
badge of the Boar on his chest.

I wondered, as I went forward
soft-footed over the stone floor, by which god Gorlois had lived,
and to which god he had gone in dying. There was nothing here to
show. Christians, like other men, put coins on the eyes. I
remembered other deathbeds, and the press of spirits waiting round
them; there was nothing here. But he had been dead three days, and
perhaps his spirit had already gone through that bare and windy gap
in the wall. Perhaps it had already gone too far for me to reach it
and make my peace.

I stood at the foot of his bier, the
man I had betrayed, the friend of my father Ambrosius the High
King. I remembered the night he had come to ask me for my help for
his young wife, and how he had said to me: "There are not many men
I'd trust just now, but I trust you. You're your father's son." And
how I had said nothing, but watched the firelight stain his face
red like blood, and waited my chance to lead the King to his wife's
bed.

It is one thing to have the gift of
seeing the spirits and hearing the gods who move about us as we
come and go; but it is a gift of darkness as well as light. The
shapes of death come as clear as those of life. One cannot be
visited by the future without being haunted by the past; one cannot
taste comfort and glory without the bitter sting and fury of one's
own past deeds. Whatever I had thought to encounter near the dead
body of the Duke of Cornwall, it would hold no comfort and no peace
for me. A man like Uther Pendragon, who killed in open battle and
open air, would think no more of this than a dead man dead. But I,
who in obeying the gods had trusted them even as the Duke had
trusted me, had known that I would have to pay, and in full. So I
had come, but without hope.

There was light here from the torches,
light and fire. I was Merlin; I should be able to reach him; I had
talked with the dead before. I stood still, watching the flaring
torches, and waited.

Slowly, all through the fortress, I
could hear the sounds dwindling and sinking to silence as men
finally went to rest. The sea soughed and beat below the window,
the wind plucked at the wall, and ferns growing there in the
crevices rustled and tapped. A rat scuttled and squeaked somewhere.
The resin bubbled in the torches. Sweet and foul, through the sharp
smoke, I smelled the smell of death. The torchlight winked blank
and flat from the coins on the dead eyes.

The time crawled by. My eyes ached
with the flame, and the pain from my hand, like a biting fetter,
kept me penned in my body. My spirit was pared down to nothing,
blind as the dead. Whispers I caught, fragments of thought from the
still and sleepy guards, meaningless as the sound of their
breathing, and the creak of leather or chime of metal as they
stirred involuntarily from time to time. But beyond these, nothing.
What power I had been given on that night at Tintagel had drained
from me with the strength that had killed Brithael. It had gone
from me and was working, I thought, in a woman's body; in Ygraine,
lying even now beside the King in that grim and battered near-isle
of Tintagel, ten miles to the south. I could do nothing here. The
air, solid as stone, would not let me through.

One of the guards, the one nearest me,
moved restlessly, and the butt of his grounded spear scraped on the
stone. The sound jarred the silence. I glanced his way
involuntarily, and saw him watching me.

He was young, rigid as his own spear,
his fists white on the shaft. The fierce blue eyes watched me
unwinkingly under thick brows. With a shock that went through me
like the spear striking I recognized them. Gorlois' eyes. It was
Gorlois' son, Cador of Cornwall, who stood between me and the dead,
watching me steadily, with hatred.

In the morning they took Gorlois' body
south. As soon as he was buried, Gandar had told me, Uther planned
to ride back to Dimilioc to rejoin his troops until such time as he
could marry the Duchess. I had no intention of waiting for his
return. I called for provisions and my horse and, in spite of
'Gandar's protestations that I was not yet fit for the journey, set
out alone for my valley above Maridunum and the cave in the hill
which the King had promised should remain, in spite of everything,
my own.

3

No one had been inside the cave during
my absence. This was hardly to be wondered at, since the people
held me in much awe as an enchanter, and moreover it was commonly
known that the King himself had granted me the hill Bryn Myrddin.
Once I left the main road at the watermill, and rode up the steep
tributary valley to the cave which had become my home, I saw no
one, not even the shepherd who commonly watched his flocks grazing
the stony slopes.

In the lower reaches of the valley the
woods were thick; oaks still rustled their withered leaves,
chestnut and sycamore crowded close, fighting for the light, and
hollies showed black and glinting between the beeches. Then the
trees thinned, and the path climbed along the side of the valley,
with the stream running deep down on the left, and to the right
slopes of grass, broken by scree, rising sharply to the crags that
crowned the hill. The grass was still bleached with winter, but
among the rusty drifts of last year's bracken the bluebell leaves
showed glossy green, and blackthorn was budding. Somewhere, lambs
were crying. That, and the mewing of a buzzard high over the crags,
and the rustle of the dead bracken where my tired horse trod, were
all the sounds in the valley. I was home, to the solace of
simplicity and quiet.

The people had not forgotten me, and
word must have gone round that I was expected. When I dismounted in
the thorn grove below the cliff and stabled my horse in the shed
there I found that bracken had been freshly strewn for bedding, and
a netful of fodder hung from a hook beside the door; and when I
climbed to the little apron of lawn which lay in front of my cave I
found cheese and new bread wrapped in a clean cloth, and a goatskin
full of the local thin, sour wine, which had been left for me
beside the spring.

This was a small spring, a trickle of
pure water welling out of a ferny crack in the rock to one side of
the entrance to the cave. The water ran down, sometimes in a steady
flow, sometimes no more than a sliding glimmer over the mosses, to
drip into a rounded basin of stone. Above the spring the little
statue of the god Myrddin, he of the winged spaces of the air,
stared from between the ferns. Beneath his cracked wooden feet the
water bubbled and dripped into the stone basin, lipping over into
the grass below. Deep in the clear water metal glinted; I knew that
the wine and bread, like the thrown coins, had been left as much as
an offering to the god as to me; in the minds of the simple folk I
had already become part of the legend of the hill, their god made
flesh who came and went as quietly as the air, and brought with him
the gifts of healing.

I lifted down the cup of horn which
stood above the spring, filled it from the goatskin, then poured
wine for the god, and drank the rest myself. The god would know
whether there was more in the gesture than ritual homage. I myself
was tired beyond thought, and had no prayer to offer; the drink was
for courage, nothing more.

To the other side of the
cave entrance, opposite the spring, was a tumble of grass-grown
stones, where saplings of oak and mountain ash had seeded
themselves, and grew in a thick tangle
against the rocky face. In summer their boughs cast a wide
pool of shade, but now, though overhanging it, they did nothing to
conceal the entrance to the cave. This was a smallish arch, regular
and rounded, as if made by hand. I pushed the hanging boughs aside
and went in.

Just inside the entrance the remnants
of a fire still lay in white ash on the hearth, and twigs and damp
leaves had drifted over it. The place smelled already of disuse. It
seemed strange that it was barely a month since I had ridden out at
the King's urgent summons to help him in the matter of Ygraine of
Cornwall. Beside the cold hearth stood the unwashed dishes from the
last, hasty meal my servant had prepared before we set
out.

Well, I would have to be my own
servant now. I put the goatskin of wine and the bundle of bread and
cheese on the table, then turned to remake the fire. Flint and
tinder lay to hand where they had always lain, but I knelt down by
the cold faggots and stretched out my hands for the magic. This was
the first magic I had been taught, and the simplest, the bringing
of fire out of the air. It had been taught me in this very cave,
where as a child I had learned all I knew of natural lore from
Galapas, the old hermit of the hill. Here, too, in the cave of
crystal which lay deeper in the hill, I had seen my first visions,
and found myself as a seer. "Someday," Galapas had said, "you will
go where even with the Sight I cannot follow you." It had been
true. I had left him, and gone where my god had driven me; where
none but I, Merlin, could have gone. But now the god's will was
done, and he had forsaken me. Back there in Dimilioc, beside
Gorlois' bier, I had found myself to be an empty husk; blind and
deaf as men are blind and deaf; the great power gone. Now, weary
though I was, I knew I would not rest until I saw if, here in my
magic's birthplace, the first and smallest of my powers was left to
me.

I was soon answered, but it was an
answer I would not accept. The westering sun was dropping red past
the boughs at the cave mouth, and the logs were still unkindled,
when finally I gave up, with the sweat running scalding on my body
under my gown, and my hands, outstretched for the magic, trembling
like those of an old man. I sat by the cold hearth and ate my
supper of bread and cheese and watered wine in the chill of the
spring dusk, before I could gather even strength enough to reach
for the flint and tinder and try with them.

Even this, a task that every wife does
daily and without thought, took me an age, and set my maimed hand
bleeding. But in the end fire came. A tiny spark flew in among the
tinder and started a slow, creeping flame. I lit the torch from it,
and then, carrying the flame high, went to the back of the cave.
There was something I still must do.

The main cavern, high-roofed, went a
long way back. I stood with the torch held high, looking up. At the
back of the cave was a slope of rock leading up to a wide ledge,
which in its turn climbed into the dark, high shadows. Invisible
among these shadows was the hidden cleft beyond which lay the inner
cave, the globed cavity lined with crystals where, with light and
fire, I had seen my first visions. If the lost power lay anywhere,
it lay there. Slowly, stiff with fatigue, I climbed the ledge, then
knelt to peer through the low entrance to the inner cave. The
flames from my torch caught the crystals, and light ran round the
globe. My harp still stood where I had left it, in the center of
the crystal-studded floor. Its shadow shot towering up the
shimmering walls, and flame sparked from the copper of the
string-shoes, but no stir of the air set it whispering, and its own
arching shadows quenched the light. I knelt there for a long time,
eyes wide and staring, while round me light and shadow shivered and
beat. But my eyes ached, empty of vision, and the harp stayed
silent.

At length I withdrew, and made my way
down into the main cave. I remember that I picked my way slowly,
carefully, like a man who has never been that way before. I thrust
the torch under the dry wood I had piled for a fire, till the logs
caught, crackling; then went out and found my saddlebags, and
lugged them back into the human comfort of the firelight, and began
to unpack them.