Legacy: Arthurian Saga (97 page)

A stone face; a familiar face once
seen at every crossways. One of the first Old Ones, the god of
going, the other Myrddin whose name was Mercury, or Hermes, lord of
the high roads and bearer of the sacred snake. As one born in
September, he was mine. He lay back now, the old Herm who had once
stood out in the open watching the passersby, head propped against
the wall, the moss and lichen on him long since dried to powdered
grey. Clearly under the blurred and fretted lines of carving I
recognized the flat face rimmed with beard, the blank eyes as oval
and bulging as grapes, the hands clasped across the belly, the once
protruding genitals smashed and mutilated.

"If I had known you were there, Old
One," I said, "I would have poured the wine for you."

The smith had reappeared at my elbow.
"He gets his rations, never fear. There's none who serves the road
would dare neglect him."

"Why did you bring him in?"

"He never stood here. He was at the
ford I told you of, where the old track that they call Elen's
Causeway crossed the river Seint. When the Romans built their new
road to Segontium they put their post station right in front of
him. So he was brought here, I never heard how."

I said slowly: "At the ford you told
me of? Then I think I must go that way after all." I nodded to the
smith, then raised a hand in salute to the god. "Go with me now," I
said to him, "and help me find this way which it is impossible to
miss."

He went with me for the first part of
the way; indeed, so long as the track clung to the river's bank it
could hardly be missed. But towards late afternoon, when the dim
winter sun hung low to its setting, a mist began to gather and hang
near the water, thickening with dusk into a damp and blinding fog.
It might have been possible to follow the sound of water, though
under the mist this was misleading, sometimes loud and near at
hand, at others muted and deceivingly distant; but where the river
took a bend, the track cut straight across, and twice, following
this, I found myself astray and picking a way through the deep
forest with no sign or sound of the river. In the end, astray for
the third time, I dropped the reins on Strawberry's neck, and let
her pick her own way, reflecting that, ironically, had I risked the
road I would have been safe enough. I would have heard the troopers
approaching, and have been safe from their eyes had I withdrawn
only a few yards into the fogbound forest.

There must be a moon above the
low-lying mist. This drifted like lighted cloud, not solid, but
rivers of vapor with dark between, banks of pale stuff clinging
round the trees like snow. Through it, hiding and showing, the
gaunt trees laced their black boughs overhead. Underfoot the forest
floor was thick as velvet and as quiet to walk on. Strawberry
plodded steadily on, without hesitation, following some path unseen
to me, or some instinct of her own. Now and again she pricked her
ears, but at something I could neither hear nor see, and once she
checked and flung up her head sideways, coming as near as she ever
did to shying, but before I could pick up the reins again, she
slacked her ears, dropped her head, and quickened her pace along
the invisible line of her choosing. I let her alone. Whatever was
drifting past us in the misty silence, it would do us no harm. If
this was the way -- and I was sure now that it was -- we were
protected.

An hour after full dark, the mare
carried me softly out of the trees, across a hundred paces or so of
flat ground, and came to a halt in front of a looming square of
blackness that could only be a building. There was a water trough
outside. She lowered her head, blew, and began to drink.

I dismounted and pushed open the door
of the building. It was the posting station the smith had told me
of, empty now and half derelict, but apparently still in use by
travelers such as myself. In one corner a pile of half-charred logs
showed where a fire had been lit recently, and in another stood a
bed made from some tolerably clean planks laid across stones to
raise it from the draught. It was rough comfort, but better than
some we had had. I fell asleep within the hour to the sound of
Strawberry's munching, and slept deeply and dreamlessly till
morning.

When I woke, it was in the dusk of
dawn, the sun not yet up. The mare dozed in her corner,
slack-hipped. I went out to the trough for water to wash
with.

The mist had gone, and with it the
milder air. The ground was grey with frost. I looked about me. The
posting station stood a few paces back from the road which ran
straight as a spear from east to west through the forest. Along
this line the woodland had been cleared when the Romans made the
road, the trees felled and the undergrowth hacked down a hundred
paces back to either side from the gravelled way. Now saplings had
grown up again and the low growth was thick and tangled, but still,
near where I stood, I thought I could see under it the line of the
old track that had been there before the Romans came. The river,
smooth here and quiet-running, slid over the ruins of the causeway
that took the road through it, hock deep. Beyond this, at the
farther edge of the cleared land, I could see, black against the
grey winter oaks, the shaw of holly which marked my road to the
north.

Satisfied, I cracked the wafer of ice
on the water of the trough and washed. As I did so, behind me the
sun came up between the trees in the red of a cold dawn. Shadows
grew and sharpened, barring the stiff grass. The frost sparkled.
Light grew, like the smith's furnace under the bellows. When I
turned, the sun, low and dazzling, blazed into my eyes, blinding
me. The winter trees stood black and unbodied against a sky like a
forest fire. The river ran molten.

There was something between me and the
river, a tall shape, massive and yet insubstantial against the
blaze, standing knee deep in the underbrush at the edge of the
road. Something familiar, but familiar in another setting, of
darkness, and strange places, and outland gods. A standing
stone.

For a sharp moment I wondered if I was
still asleep, and this was my dream again. I put up an arm against
the light and narrowed my eyes under it, peering.

The sun came clear of the treetops.
The shadow of the forest moved back. The stone stood clear against
the sparkling frost.

It was not after all a standing stone.
Nothing strange at all, or out of place. It was an ordinary
milestone, perhaps two cubits taller than was normal, but bearing
only the usual inscription to an emperor, and below this the
message: A. SEGONTIO. M. P. XXII.

When I approached it I saw the reason
for its height; instead of being sunk in the turf it had been
mounted on a squared plinth of stone. A different stone. The plinth
where the Herm had stood? I stooped to push the frosted grass
aside. The red sunlight struck the stone, showing a mark on the
plinth that might have been an arrow. Then I saw what it was: the
remains of some ancient writing, the ogam letters blurred and worn
till they showed like the fletching on a shaft, and a barbed head
pointing westwards.

Well, I thought, why not? The signs
were simple, but messages do not always come from the gods beyond
the stars. My god had spoken to me before in ways as small as this,
and I had told myself only yesterday to look low as well as high
for the things of power. And here they were -- a cast horseshoe, a
word from a wayside smith, and some scratches on a stone --
conspiring to turn me aside from my northern journey and take me
westwards to Segontium. I thought again, why not? Who knew but that
the sword might really have been made down at the forge yonder, and
chilled in the Seint River, and that after his death they had
carried it home to his wife's country, where she lodged still with
his infant son? Somewhere in Segontium, the Caer Seint of Macsen
Wledig, the King's Sword of Britain might lie, waiting to be lifted
in fire.

10

The inn I stayed at in Segontium was a
comfortable one, at the edge of the town, but not serving the main
highway. A few travelers lodged there, but the place mostly served
food and drink to the local men who attended the market, or who
were on their way with goods down to the port.

The place had seen better days, having
been built to serve the soldiers at the vast barracks above the
town. It must have stood there, at the least, for a couple of
hundred years; originally it had been well built of stone, with one
handsome room, almost a hall, where a vast fireplace stood, and
oaken beams as solid as iron held up the roof. The remains of the
benches and the stout tables were still there, stained and burned,
and here and there hacked where the daggers of drunken legionaries
had carved their names, along with other things less respectable.
It was a marvel that anything remained: some of the stone had been
pillaged, and once at least the inn had been burned by raiders from
Ireland, so that now the stone oblong of the hall was all that
remained, and the blackened beams held up a roof of thatch instead
of tiles. The kitchen was no more than a lean to of daubed wattle
behind the great fireplace.

But there was a big fire of logs
blazing, and a smell of good ale, with bread baking in the oven
outside; and a shed with decent bedding and fodder for the mare. I
saw her warm and groomed and fed before I went into the inn myself
to bespeak a bedplace and a meal.At that time of year the port was
all but closed to traffic; few travelers were on the roads, and men
did not stay out late drinking, but got themselves home to their
beds soon after dusk. No one looked curiously at me, or ventured a
question. The inn was quiet early, and I went to bed and slept
soundly.

In the morning it was fine, with one
of those glittering sharp days that December sometimes throws down
like bright gold among the lead of winter's coinage. I breakfasted
early, looked in at the mare, then left her resting and went out on
foot.

I turned east, away from the town and
the port, along the river's bank where, on rising ground about half
a mile above the town, stood the remains of Segontium Roman
fortress. Macsen's Tower stands just outside it, a little way down
the hill. Here the High King Vortigern had lodged his men when my
grandfather the King of South Wales had ridden up from Maridunum
with his train to talk with him. I, a boy of twelve, had been with
them, and on that journey had discovered for the first time that
the dreams of the crystal cave were true. Here, in this wild and
quiet corner of the world, I had first felt power, and found myself
as a seer.

That had been a winter journey, too.
As I walked up the weedy road towards the gateway set between its
crumbling towers, I tried to conjure again the colors of cloaks and
banners and bright weapons where now, in the blue shadows of
morning, lay only the unprinted frost.

The vast complex of buildings was
deserted. Here and there on the naked and fallen masonry the black
marks of fire told their story. Elsewhere you could see where men
had taken the great stones, stripping the very paving from the
streets and carrying it off for their own building. There were dry
thistles in the window spaces, and young trees rooted on the walls.
A wellshaft gaped, choked with rubble. The cisterns brimmed with
rain water, which slopped out through the grooves on the edge where
men had sharpened their swords. No, there was nothing to see. The
place was empty, even of ghosts. The winter sun shone down on a
wide and crumbling waste land. The silence was complete.

I remember that as I walked through
the shells of the buildings I was thinking, not of the past, not
even of my present quest, but practically, as Ambrosius' engineer,
of the future. I was weighing up the place as Tremorinus the chief
engineer and I had been used to do: shifting this, repairing that,
making the towers good, abandoning the north-easterly blocks to
make good the west and south...Yes, if Arthur should ever need
Segontium...

I had come to the top of the rise, the
center of the fort where the Commandant's house -- Maximus' house
-- had stood. It was as derelict as the rest. The great door still
hung on rotting hinges, but the lintel was broken and sagging, and
the place was dangerous. I went cautiously inside. In the main
chamber there was daylight spilling through gaps in the roof, and
piles of rubble half hid the walls where paint still showed, flaked
and dark with damp. In the dimness I could see the remains of a
table -- too massive to take away, and not worth chopping for
kindling -- and behind it the shredded remnants of leather hangings
on the wall. A general had sat here once, planning to conquer Rome,
as formerly Rome had conquered Britain. He had failed, and died,
but in failing he had sown the seeds of an idea which after him
another king had picked up. "It will be one country, a kingdom in
its own right," my father had said, "not merely a province of Rome.
Rome is going, but for a while at least, we can stand." And through
this came the memory of another voice, the voice of the prophet who
sometimes spoke through me: "And the kingdoms shall be one Kingdom,
and the gods one God."

It would be time to listen to those
ghostly voices when a general sat there once again. I turned back
into the bright morning stillness. Where, in this waste land, was
the end of my quest?

From here you could see the sea, with
the small crowded houses of the port, and across from this the
druids' isle that is called Mona, or Von, so that the people call
the place Caeryn'ar Von. To the other side, behind me, reared the
Snow Hill, Wyddfa, where if a man could climb and live among the
snows, he would meet the gods walking. Against its distant
whiteness showed, dark and ruined, the remains of Macsen's Tower.
And suddenly, from this new angle, I saw it afresh. The tower of my
dream; the tower in the picture on Ahdjan's wall...I left the
Commandant's house and walked quickly out of the fortress gate
towards it.