Old Kingdom 04: Across the Wall (25 page)
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INTRODUCTION TO HEART’S DESIRE
T
HAT PESKY ARTHURIAN MYTHOS JUST
keeps on coming back. Every time it crosses my path, I tell myself I still dislike it, and every time, I end up writing a story set in the world of Arthurian legend.
‘Heart’s Desire’ was written for an anthology called
The Road to Camelot
, edited by Sophie Masson. The basic premise for the anthology was to write stories about the famous characters of the Arthurian legends when they were children or teens, or just getting started on their road to … well … Camelot.
By the time I agreed to get involved, most of the better-known characters had already been snapped up by other authors. Which was just as well, really, since I didn’t have any ideas about how to write a different and interesting story about Arthur, or Lancelot, or Merlin. So I started looking at some of the characters associated with the main players, like Lancelot’s wife, Elaine, or King Lot, father of the Orkney lads. But I kept coming back to the fact that the character I was most interested in was Merlin, and in turn Merlin’s relationship with Nimue (sometimes called Viviane).
Basically, I never bought the standard-issue version of the Merlin-Nimue story, which stripped to its essence is that the old Merlin is besotted with Nimue and entrapped by her. Part of my problem with that story is that Merlin can actually foretell the future. Older men get besotted by younger women all the time, and, as they say, ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’ But not, I would think, if that older man could accurately tell exactly what was going to happen.
Unless there was something about that future that meant he would go along with whatever was going to happen, which he presumably wouldn’t if he knew Nimue didn’t really love him at all but just wanted his power. After all, not only would Merlin find himself entombed, but he would be abandoning Arthur, who is not only a kind of foster son but in many ways also Merlin’s life work.
That’s where ‘Heart’s Desire’ came from: a desire on my part to retell the Merlin-Nimue story in a different light, with different motivations, while still staying within the broad boundaries of the best-known versions of the original story.
HEART’S DESIRE
‘ T
O CATCH A STAR, YOU MUST KNOW ITS
secret name and its place in the heavens,’ whispered Merlin, his mouth so close to Nimue’s ear his breath tickled and made her want to laugh. Only the seriousness of the occasion stopped a giggle. Finally, after years of apprenticeship, Merlin was about to tell her what she had always wanted to know, what she had worked toward for seven long years.
‘You must send the name to the sky as a white bird. You must write it in fire upon a mirror. You must wrap the falling star with your heart’s desire. All this must be done in the single moment between the end of night and the dawning of the day.’
‘That’s it?’ breathed Nimue. ‘The final secret?’ ‘Yes,’ said Merlin slowly. ‘The final secret. But remember the cost. Your heart’s desire will be consumed by the star. Only from its ashes will power come.’
‘But my heart’s desire is to have the power!’ exclaimed Nimue. ‘How can I gain it and lose it at the same time?’
‘Even a magus may not know his own heart,’ said Merlin heavily. ‘And it will be the whole desire of your heart, from past, present, or future. You will be giving up something that may yet come to pass, if you choose not to take a star from the sky.’
Merlin looked at her as she stared up at the sky, watching the stars. He saw a young woman, with the dark face and hair of a Pict, her eyes flashing with excitement. She was not beautiful, or even pretty, but her face was strong and lively, and every movement hinted at energy barely contained. She wore a plain white dress, sleeveless but stretching to her ankles, and bracelets of twisted gold wire and amethysts. Merlin had given her the bracelets, and they were invested with the many lesser magics that Nimue had learned from him in the last three years.
There were other things that Merlin saw, out of memory and with the gift he had taken from a falling star.
There was the past, beginning when a headstrong girl no more than fourteen years old sought him out in his simple house upon the Cornish headland. He had turned her away, but she had sat on his doorstep for weeks, living off shellfish and seaweed, until at last he had relented and taken her in. At first he had refused to teach her magic, but she had won that battle as well. He could not deny that she had the gift, and he could not deny that he enjoyed the teaching. Over the years that enjoyment in teaching her had become something else, though Merlin had never shown it. He was nearly three times her age, and he had spent many years before Nimue’s arrival preparing himself for the sorrow that must come. He had not expected it to be as straightforward as simply falling in love with an impossible girl, but there it was.
There was the present, the two of them standing upon the black stone with the new sun shining down upon them.
The future, so many possible roads stretching out in all directions. If he wished, Merlin could try to steer Nimue toward one future. But he did not. The choice would be hers.
‘My heart’s desire is to gain full mastery of the Art,’ Nimue said slowly. ‘I can gain that mastery only by the capture of a star, yet that capture depends upon the sacrifice of my heart’s desire. An interesting conundrum.’
‘You should stay here and think on it,’ said Merlin. He stepped down from the black stone, the centerpiece of the ring of stones that he had built almost twenty years before. The black stone had been the most difficult, though it was small and flat, unlike the standing monoliths of granite. He had drawn it out of the very depths of the earth, and it had smoked and run like water before he had forced it into its current shape. ‘But breakfast calls me and I wish to answer.’
Nimue smiled and sat cross-legged on the stone. She watched Merlin as he walked away. As he left the ring of stones, the air shimmered around him, bright shafts of light weaving and dancing around his head and arms. The light sank into his hair and skin, and when it finally settled, Merlin’s hair was white and he appeared to be much older than he really was. It was a magical disguise he had long assumed, Nimue knew. Age was associated with wisdom, and Merlin had also found it useful to appear aged and infirm. Nimue expected she would probably do the same when she came into her power. A crone was always much more convincing than a maiden.
Not that she expected to be a maiden too much longer. Nimue had her own plans for that step from maiden to woman grown. Merlin was part of that plan, though he did not know it. No village boy or even one of Arthur’s warriors would do for Nimue. Merlin was the only man she had ever wanted in her bed. There had been some who had tried to influence her choice over the past few years, against all her discouragement. A few were still around, croaking and sunning their warty hides down in the reedy margins of the lake. Nimue was surprised they had lived so long. Most men died from such transformations. Sometimes she fed them flies, but she never let them touch her, either as toads or men.
Nimue turned her thoughts from failed suitors back to the conundrum presented by Merlin. Her heart’s desire was to have the power, yet she would lose her heart’s desire to gain the power. How could this be?
She scratched her head and lay down on the rock, letting the heat from the sun fall upon her. Unconsciously, she turned her palms up to catch the rays. The sun was a source of power, one she used in many lesser magics. It was good to take in the sun’s power when the sky was clear, and she no longer needed to even think about it. Nimue could draw power from many sources: the sun, the earth, the moving stream, even the spent breath of animals and men.
What had Merlin lost? Nimue wondered. What was his heart’s desire? He must have wanted the power as she wanted it. He had gained it, and as far as she could see, he had lost nothing. He was the pre-eminent wizard of the age. The counsellor and maker of kings. There was no knowledge he did not have, no spell he did not know.
Perhaps there was nothing to lose, Nimue thought. Or if there was, it would be something she would never miss. A heart’s desire that could come to pass, but did not, was no loss. To see the future was not the same as to live it. Perhaps she would see her heart’s desire in the hearth fire, and would know it could never be. How much of a loss was that?
Nothing, thought Nimue. Nothing compared to the exhilaration of magic.
‘Tonight,’ she whispered, and she curled up on the black stone like a cat resting up in preparation for extensive wickedness. ‘Tonight, for everything.’ Merlin was not asleep when she came to his chamber. He lay on his bed, his eyes open, gleaming in the thin shaft of moonlight from the tower window. Nimue hesitated at the door, suddenly shy and afraid. She had chosen to come naked, but with her long dark hair artfully arranged to both cover and suggest. She had taken a long time to get her hair exactly right, and it was held in place with charms as well as pins.
‘Merlin,’ she whispered.
Merlin did not respond. Nimue drifted into the room. Her skin seemed to glow with an inner light, and her smile promised many pleasures. Any man would rise and take her to his bed in eager haste. But not Merlin.
‘Merlin. I shall go to the black rock before the dawn. But I would go as a woman, who has known her man. Your woman.’
‘No,’ whispered Merlin. He did not move, but lay as still as the chalk carving on the green of the hill. ‘There are men aplenty in the village. Two of Arthur’s knights are visiting tonight. They are both good men, young and unmarried.’
Nimue shook her head and stepped forward. Her hair fell aside as she knelt by the bed, her magic dissolving and the pins unable to hold on their own.
‘It is you I want,’ she said fiercely. ‘You! No one else. You want me too! I know it, as well as I know the ten thousand names of the beasts and the birds that you have taught me.’
‘I do,’ whispered Merlin. ‘But I am your teacher, and it is not meet that we should lie together now, unequal in years and power. Go back to your own place.’
Nimue frowned. Then she rose and stamped her foot, and whirled away, light and shadows dancing in her wake. At the door she looked back, and her smile shone through the dark room.
‘Tomorrow I shall be my own mistress and you will not be master,’ said Nimue. ‘I will catch my star and we can be as man and wife.’
Merlin did not move or answer. In an instant, Nimue was gone, and the room was silent once more. The shaft of moonlight slowly crawled over Merlin’s face, and darkness hid the tears that welled up out of his clear blue eyes. Young man’s eyes, unclouded by age or glamour.
‘Ah well,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Ah well.’
They were the words Merlin’s father had said upon his deathbed. Simple words, devoid of magic, greeting a fate that could not be turned aside.
Nimue did not go back to her own bed. Instead she put on her best linen dress, that she herself had dyed blue from isatis bark and stitched with silver thread that she had spun out of the deep earth.
The silver thread shone in the moonlight as she slipped out of the house and out onto the headland. There was a pool at the edge of the western cliff, a pool of soft water, fed by spring and rain. It was always placid, mirrorlike, in sharp contrast to the sea that crashed on the rocks only a few paces away, but two hundred feet below. An ancient hawthorn tree leaned over the pool, all shadows and spiky branches. It had often been mistaken in the dark for a giant, or some fell creature. Every midwinter night some hapless stranger would seek to use the power of the pool, only to flee in panic from the hawthorn. Invariably they found the cliff edge and the pounding sea that would grind their bones to dust.
Nimue stood at the edge of the pool and hugged herself against the bite of the wind, cold in this early morning. She whispered to herself, preparing for what must be done: