Legacy: Arthurian Saga (93 page)

The torch in my hand threw firelight,
glimmering through moving smoke, round the globed walls of crystal.
Here as a boy I had seen my first visions in the leap and flash of
moving flame. Here I had seen myself begotten, the old King dead,
the tower of Vortigern built on water, the dragon of Ambrosius
leaping to victory. Now the globe was empty but for the harp which
stood there, with its shadow thrown clear round the sparkling
walls.

I glanced down at the boy's face. Awe
was stirring in it, even at the empty globe and the empty
shadows.

"Listen," I said. I said it loudly,
and as my voice stirred the still air the harp whispered, and the
music ran humming round and round the crystal walls.

"I was going to show you the cave," I
said. "If ever you want to hide, hide here. I did myself, as a boy.
Be sure the gods will watch over you, and you will be safe. Where
safer, than right in God's hand, in his hollow hill? Now, go and
see to Strawberry. I'll bring the harp down myself. It's time I was
gone."

When morning came I was fifteen miles
away, riding north through the oak forest which lies along the
valley of the Cothi. There is no road there, only tracks, but I
knew them well, and I knew the glassblowers' hut deep in the wood.
At this time of the year it would be empty.

I and my mare shared its shelter half
that December day. I watered her at the stream, and threw fodder
that I had brought into a corner of the hut. I myself was not
hungry. There was something else for me to feed on; that deep
excited feeling of lightness and power which I recognized. The time
had been right, and something lay ahead of me. I was on my
way.

I drank a mouthful of wine, wrapped
myself warmly in Abba's sheepskins, and fell asleep as soundly and
thoughtlessly as a child. I dreamed again of the sword, and I knew,
even through the dream, that this came straight from the god.
Ordinary dreams are never so clear; they are jumbles of desires and
fears, things seen and heard, and felt though unknown. This came
clear, like a memory.

I saw the sword close for the first
time, not vast and dazzling, like the sword of stars over Brittany,
or dim and fiery as it had shimmered against the dark wall in
Ygraine's chamber. It was just a sword, beautiful in the way of a
weapon, with the jewels on the hilt set in gold scrollwork, and the
blade glimmering and eager, as if it would fight of itself. Weapons
are named for this; some are eager fighters, some dogged, some
unwilling; but all are alive.

This sword was alive; it was drawn,
gripped in the hand of an armed man. He was standing by a fire, a
camp fire lit apparently in the middle of a darkened plain, and he
was the only person to be seen in all that plain. A long way behind
him I saw, dim against the dark, the outline of walls and a tower.
I thought of the mosaic I had seen in Ahdjan's house, but it was
not Rome this time. The outline of the tower was familiar, but I
could not remember where I had seen it, nor even be sure that I had
not seen it only in dreams.

He was a tall man, cloaked, and the
dark cloak fell in a long heavy line from shoulder to heel. The
helmet hid his face. His head was bent, and he held the sword naked
across his hands. He was turning it over and over, as if weighing
its balance, or studying the runes on the blade. The firelight
flashed and darkened, flashed and darkened, as the blade turned. I
caught one word, KING, and then again, KING, and saw the jewels
sparking as the sword turned. I saw then that the man had a circle
of red gold on his helmet, and that his cloak was purple. Then as
he moved the firelight lit the ring on his finger. It was a gold
ring carved with a dragon.

I said: "Father? Sir?" but, as
sometimes happens in dreams, I could make no sound. But he looked
up. There were no eyes under the peak of the helmet. Nothing. The
hands that held the sword were the hands of a skeleton. The ring
shone on bone.

He held the sword out to me, flat
across the skeleton hands. A voice that was not my father's said:
"Take it." It was not a ghost's voice, or the voice of bidding that
comes with vision: I have heard these, and there is no blood in
them; it is as if the wind breathed through an empty horn. This was
a man's voice, deep and abrupt and accustomed to command, with a
rough edge to it such as comes from anger, or sometimes from
drunkenness; or sometimes, as now, from fatigue.

I tried to move, but I could not, any
more than I could speak. I have never feared a spirit, but I feared
this man. From the blank of shadow below the helmet came the voice
again, grim, and with a faint amusement, that crept along my skin
like the brush of a wolf's pelt felt in the dark. My breath stopped
and my skin shivered. He said, and now I clearly heard the
weariness in the voice: "You need not fear me. Nor should you fear
the sword. I am not your father, but you are my seed. Take it,
Merlinus Ambrosius. You will find no rest until you do."

I approached him. The fire had
dwindled, and it was almost dark. I put my hands out for the sword,
and he reached to lay it across them. I held still, though my flesh
shrank from touching his bony fingers; but they were not there to
touch. As the sword left his grip it fell, through his hands and
through mine, and between us to the ground. I knelt, groping in the
darkness, but my hand met nothing. I could feel his breath above
me, warm as a living man's, and his cloak brushed my cheek. I heard
him say: "Find it. There is no one else who can find it." Then my
eyes were open and it was full noon, and the strawberry mare was
nuzzling at me where I lay, with her mane brushing my
face.

8

December is certainly no time for
traveling, especially for one whose business does not allow him to
use the roads. The winter woods are open and clear of undergrowth,
but there are many places in the remoter valleys where there is no
clear going save along the streamside, and that is tortuous and
rough, and the banks are apt to be dangerously broken -- or even
washed right away -- with floods and bad weather. Snow, at least, I
was spared, but on the second day out of Bryn Myrddin the weather
worsened to a cold wind with flurries of sleet, and there was ice
in all the ways.

Going was slow. On the third day,
towards dusk, I heard wolves howling somewhere up near the
snowline. I had kept to the valleys, traveling in deep forest
still, but now and again where the forest thinned I had caught
glimpses of the hilltops, and they were white with fresh snow. And
there was more to come; the air had the smell of snow, and the soft
cold bite on one's cheek. The snow would drive the wolves down
lower. Indeed, as dark drew in and the trees crowded closer I
thought I saw a shadow slipping away between the trunks, and there
were sounds in the underbrush which might have been made by
harmless creatures such as deer or fox; but I noticed that
Strawberry was uneasy; her ears flattened repeatedly, and the skin
on her shoulders twitched as if flies were settling
there.

I rode with my chin on my shoulder and
my sword loose in its sheath. "Mevysen" -- I spoke to my Welsh mare
in her own language -- "when we find this great sword that Macsen
Wledig is keeping for me, you and I will no doubt be invincible.
And find it we must, it seems. But just at the moment I'm as scared
of those wolves as you are, so we'll go on till we find some place
that's defensible with this poor weapon and my poorer skill, and
we'll sit the night out together, you and I."

The defensible place was a ruinous
shell of a building deep in the forest. Literally a shell; it was
all that remained of a smallish erection the shape of a kiln, or a
beehive. Half of it had fallen away, leaving the standing part like
an egg broken endways, the curving halfdome backed against the wind
and offering some sort of protection from the intermittent sleet.
Most of the fallen masonry had been removed -- probably stolen for
building stone -- but there was still a ragged rampart of broken
stuff behind which it was possible to take shelter, and conceal
myself and the mare.

I dismounted, and led her in. She
picked her way between the mossed stones, shook her wet neck, and
was soon settled quietly enough with her nosebag, under the dry
curve of the dome. I set a heavy rock on the end of her rope, then
pulled the dead fronds of some fern from a dry corner under the
wall, dried her damp hide with it, and covered her. She seemed to
have lost her fears, and munched steadily. I made myself as
comfortable as I could with one saddlebag for a dry seat, and what
remained to me of food and wine. I would have dearly liked to light
a fire, as much against the wolves as for comfort, but there might
be other enemies than wolves looking for me by now, so, with my
sword ready to hand, I huddled into my sheepskins and ate my cold
rations and fell at last into a waking doze which was the nearest
to sleep that danger and discomfort would allow.

And dreamed again. No dream, this
time, of kings or swords or stars moving, but a dream halfwaking,
broken and uneasy, of the small gods of small places; gods of hills
and woods and streams and crossways; the gods who still haunt their
broken shrines, waiting in the dusk beyond the lights of the busy
Christian churches, and the dogged rituals of the greater gods of
Rome. In the cities and the crowded places men have forgotten them,
but in the forests and the wild hill country the folk still leave
offerings of food and drink, and pray to the local guardians of the
place who have dwelled there time out of mind. The Romans gave them
Roman names, and let them be; but the Christians refuse to believe
in them, and their priests berate the poorer folk for clinging to
the old ways -- and no doubt for wasting offerings which would do
better at some hermit's cell than at some ancient holy place in the
forest. But still the simple folk creep out to leave their
offerings, and when these vanish by morning, who is to say that a
god has not taken them?

This, I thought, dreaming, must be
such a place. I was in the same forest, and the apse of stone where
I sat was the same, even to the rampart of mossed boulders in front
of me. It was dark, and my ears were filled with the roaring of the
upper boughs where the night wind poured across the forest. I heard
nothing approaching, but beside me the mare stirred and breathed
gustily into the fodder-bag, and lifted her head, and I looked up
to see eyes watching me from the darkness beyond the
rampart.

Held by sleep, I could not move. In
equal silence, and very swiftly, others came. I could discern them
only as shadows against the cold darkness; not wolves, but shadows
like men; small figures appearing one by one, like ghosts, and with
no more sound, until they ringed me in, eight of them, standing
shoulder to shoulder across the entrance to my shelter. They stood
there, not moving or speaking, eight small shadows, as much part of
the forest and the night as the gloom cast by the trees. I could
see nothing except -- when high over the bare trees a cloud swept
momentarily clear of the winter stars -- the gleam of watching
eyes. No movement, no word. But suddenly, without any conscious
change, I knew I was awake. And they were still there.

I did not reach for my sword. Eight to
one is not a kind of odds that makes sense, and besides, there are
other ways to try first. But even those I never got a chance to
use. As I moved, taking breath to speak, one of them said
something, a word that was blown away in the wind, and the next
thing I knew I was being thrown back forcibly against the wall
behind me, while rough hands forced a gag into my mouth, and my
hands were pulled behind my back and the wrists bound tightly
together. They half lifted, half dragged me out of the walled
shelter, and flung me down outside with my back against the
bruising stones that formed the rampart. One of them produced flint
and iron, and after a long struggle managed to set light to the
twist of rag stuck in a cracked ox horn which did duty as a torch;
the thing burned sullenly with a feeble and stinking light, but
with its help they set to work to hunt through the saddlebags, and
examine the mare herself with careful curiosity. Then they brought
the torch to where I sat with two of them standing over me and,
thrusting the reeking rag almost into my face, examined me much as
they had done the mare.

It seemed clear from the fact that I
was still alive that they were not simple robbers; indeed, they
took nothing from the saddlebags, and though they disarmed me of
sword and dagger, they did not search me further. I began to fear,
as they looked me over closely with nods and grunted comments of
satisfaction, that they had actually been looking for me. But in
that case, I thought, if they had wanted to know my destination, or
had been paid to find it out, they would have done better to stay
invisible, and follow me. No doubt I would have led them in the end
to Count Ector's doorstep.

Their comments told me nothing about
their business with me, but they did tell me something as
important: these men spoke in a tongue I had never heard before,
but all the same I knew it; the Old Tongue of the Britons, which my
master Galapas had taught me.

The Old Tongue has still something the
same form as our own British language, but the people who speak it
have for so long lived away from other men that their speech has
altered, adding its own words and changing its accent until now it
takes study and a good ear to follow it at all. I could hear the
familiar inflections, and here and there a word recognizable as the
Welsh of Gwynedd, but the accent had changed, slurred and strange
through five hundred years of isolation, with words surviving that
had long fallen out of use in other dialects, and sounds added like
the echoes of the hills themselves, and of the gods and wild
creatures that dwell there.