The Last Enchantment (2 page)

But this he would not have. The servant was sent with the message, and then, as naturally as he had done in the past when he was a boy, Ralf helped me himself. He took the bedgown from me and folded it, and gently, with care for my stiff limbs, eased me into a day-robe, then knelt to put my sandals on and fasten them.

"Did the day go well?" I asked him.

"Very well. No shadow on it."

"Lotof Lothian?"

He glanced up, grimly amused. "Kept his place. The affair of the chapel has left its brand on him...as it has on all of us." The last phrase was muttered, as if to himself, as he bent his head to buckle the second sandal.

"On me, too, Ralf," I said. "I am not immune from the god's fire, either. As you see. How is Arthur?"

"Still on his own high and burning cloud." This time the amusement held affection. He got to his feet. "All the same, I think he's already looking ahead for storms. Now, your girdle. Is this the one?"

"It will do. Thank you. Storms? So soon? I suppose so." I took the girdle from him and knotted it. "Do you intend to stay with him, Ralf, and help him weather them, or do you count your duty done?" Ralf had spent the last nine years in Galava of Rheged, the remote corner of the country where Arthur had lived, unknown, as the ward of Count Ector. He had married a northern girl, and had a young family.

"To tell you the truth I've not thought about that yet," he said. "Too much has happened, all too quickly."

He laughed. "One thing, if I stay with him, I can see that I'll look back with longing on the peaceful days when I had nothing to do but ride guard on those young dev — that is, on Bedwyr and the King! And you? You will hardly stay here as the hermit of the Green Chapel now? Will you come out of your fastness, and go with him?"

"I must. I have promised. Besides, it is my place. Not yours, though, unless you wish it. Between us, we made him King, and that is the end of the first part of the story. You have a choice now. But you'll have plenty of time to make it." He opened the door for me, and stood aside to let me pass him. I paused.

"We whistled up a strong wind, Ralf. Let us see which way it will blow us."

"You'd let it?"

I laughed. "I have a speaking mind that tells me I may have to. Come, let us start by obeying this summons."

There were a few people still in the main antechamber to the King's apartments, but these were mostly servants, clearing and bearing away the remains of a meal that the King had apparently just finished.

Guards stood woodenly at the door to the inner rooms. On a low bench near a window a young page lay fast asleep; I remembered seeing him when I had come this way three days ago to talk with the dying Uther. Ulfin, the King's body-servant and chief chamberlain, was absent. I could guess where he was. He would serve the new King with all the devotion he had given to Uther, but tonight he would be found with his old master in the monastery church. The man who waited by Arthur's door was a stranger to me, as were half the servants there; they were men and women who normally served Rheged's own king in his castle, and who were helping with the extra pressure of work brought by the occasion, and the High King's presence.

But they all knew me. As I entered the antechamber there was a sudden silence, and a complete cessation of movement, as if a spell had been cast. A servant carrying platters balanced along his arm froze like someone faced with the Gorgon's head, and the faces that turned to me were frozen similarly, pale and gape-mouthed, full of awe. I caught Ralf's eye on me, sardonic and affectionate. His brow quirked. "You see?" it said to me, and I understood more fully his own hesitation when he came to my room with the King's message. As my servant and companion he had been close to me in the past, and had many times, in prophecy, and in what men call magic, watched and felt my power at work; but the power that had blazed and blown through the Perilous Chapel last night had been something of quite a different order. I could only guess at the stories that must have run, swift and changing as the wildfire itself, through Luguvallium; it was certain that the humbler folk had talked of nothing else all day. And like all strange tales, it would grow with the telling.

So they stood staring. As for the awe that frosted the air, like the cold wind that comes before a ghost, I was used to that. I walked through the motionless crowd to the King's door, and the guard moved aside without a challenge, but before the chamberlain could lay a hand to the door it opened, and Bedwyr came out.

Bedwyr was a quiet, dark boy, a month or two younger than Arthur. His father was Ban, the King of Benoic, and a cousin of a king ofBrittany . The two boys had been close friends since childhood, when Bedwyr had been sent to Galava to learn the arts of war from Ector's master-at-arms, and to share the lessons I gave Emrys (as Arthur was then called) at the shrine in theWildForest . He was already showing himself to be that strange contradiction, a born fighting man who is also a poet, at home equally with action and with the world of fancy and music. Pure Celt, you might say, where Arthur, like my father the High King Ambrosius, was Roman. I might have expected to see in Bedwyr's face the same awe left by the events of the miraculous night as in the faces of the humbler men present, but I could see only the aftermath of joy, a sort of uncomplicated happiness, and a sturdy trust in the future.

He stood aside for me, smiling. "He's alone now."

"Where will you sleep?"

"My father is lodging in the west tower."

"Good night, then, Bedwyr."

But as I moved to pass him he prevented me. He bent quickly and took my hand, then snatched it to him and kissed it. "I should have known you would see that it all came right. I was afraid, for a few minutes there in the hall, whenLot and his jackals started that treacherous fracas —"

"Hush," I said. He had spoken softly, but there were ears to hear. "That's over for the present. Leave it.

And go straight to your father in the west tower. Do you understand?"

The dark eyes glimmered. "King Lot lodges, they tell me, in the eastern one?"

"Exactly."

"Don't worry. I've already had the same warning from Emrys. Good night, Merlin."

"Good night, and a peaceful sleep to us all. We need it."

He grinned, sketched a half-salute, and went. I nodded to the waiting servant and went in. The door shut behind me.

The royal rooms had been cleared of the apparatus of sickness, and the great bed stripped of its crimson covers. The floor tiles were freshly scoured and polished, and over the bed lay new unbleached sheets, and a rug of wolfskins. The chair with the red cushion and the dragon worked on the back in gold stood there still, with its footstool and the tall tripod lamp beside it. The windows were open to the cool September night, and the air from them sent the lamp-flames sideways and made strange shadows on the painted walls.

Arthur was alone. He was over by a window, one knee on a stool that stood there, his elbows on the sill. The window gave, not on the town, but on the strip of garden that edged the river. He gazed out into the dark, and I thought I could see him drinking, as from another river, deep draughts of the fresh and moving air. His hair was damp, as if he had just washed, but he was still in the clothes he had worn for the day's ceremonies; white and silver, with a belt of Welsh gold set with turquoises and buckled with enamel-work. He had taken off his sword-belt, and the great sword Caliburn hung in its sheath on the wall beyond the bed. The lamplight smouldered in the jewels of the hilt; emerald, topaz, sapphire. It flashed, too, from the ring on the boy's hand; Uther's ring carved with the Dragon crest.

He heard me, and turned. He looked rarefied and light, as if the winds of the day had blown through him and left him weightless. His skin had the stretched pallor of exhaustion, but his eyes were brilliant and alive. About him, already there and unmistakable, was the mystery that falls like a mantle on a king. It was in his high look, and the turn of his head. Never again would "Emrys" be able to lurk in shadow. I wondered afresh how through all those hidden years we had kept him safe and secret among lesser men.

"You wanted me," I said.

"I've wanted you all day. You promised to be near me while I went through this business of hatching into a king. Where were you?"

"Within call, if not within reach. I was at the shrine — the chapel — till almost sunset. I thought you'd be busy."

He gave a little crack of laughter. "You call it that? It felt like being eaten alive. Or perhaps like being born...and a hard birth at that. I said 'hatching,' didn't I? Suddenly to find oneself a prince is hard enough, but even that is as different from being a king as the egg is from the day-old chick."

"At least make it an eaglet."

"In time, perhaps. That's been the trouble, of course. Time, there's been no time. One moment to be nobody — someone's unacknowledged bastard, and glad to be given the chance to get within shouting distance of a battle, with maybe a glimpse of the King himself in passing; the next — having drawn a couple of breaths as prince and royal heir — to be High King myself, and with such a flourish as no king can ever have had before. I still feel as if I'd been kicked up the steps of the throne from a kneeling position right down on the floor."

I smiled. "I know how you feel, more or less. I was never kicked half as high, but then I was a great deal lower down to start with. Now, can you slow down sufficiently to get some sleep? Tomorrow will be here soon enough. Do you want a sleeping potion?"

"No, no, when did I ever? I'll sleep as soon as you've gone. Merlin, I'm sorry to ask you to come here at this late hour, but I had to talk to you, and there's been no chance till now. Nor will there be tomorrow."

He came away from the window as he spoke, and crossed to a table where papers and tablets were lying. He picked up a stilus, and with the blunt end smoothed the wax. He did it absently, his head bent so that the dark hair swung forward, and the lamplight slid over the line of his cheek and touched the black lashes fringing the lowered lids. My eyes blurred. Time ran back. It was Ambrosius my father who stood there, fidgeting with the stilus and saying to me: "If a king had you beside him, he could rule the world..."

Well, his dream had come true at last, and the time was now. I blinked memory away, and waited for the day-old King to speak.

"I've been thinking," he said abruptly. "The Saxon army was not utterly destroyed, and I have had no firm report yet about Colgrim himself, or Badulf. I think they both got safely away. We may hear within the next day or so that they have taken ship and gone, either home across the sea or back to the Saxon territories in the south. Or they may simply have taken refuge in the wild lands north of the Wall, and be hoping to regroup when they have gathered strength again." He looked up. "I have no need to pretend to you, Merlin. I am not a seasoned warrior, and I've no means of judging how decisive that defeat was, or what the possibilities are of a Saxon recovery. I've taken advice, of course. I called a quick council at sunset, when the other business was concluded. I sent for — that is, I would have liked you to be there, but you were still up at the chapel. Coel couldn't be there, either...You'd know he was wounded, of course; you probably saw him yourself? What are his chances?"

"Slight. He's an old man, as you know, and he got a nasty slash. He bled too much before help got to him."

"I was afraid of it. I did go to see him, but was told he was unconscious, and they were afraid of inflammation of the lungs...Well, Prince Urbgen, his heir, came in his stead, with Cador, and Caw of Strathclyde. Ector and Ban of Benoic were there, too. I talked it over with them, and they all say the same thing: someone will have to follow Colgrim up. Caw has to go north again as soon as may be; he has his own frontier to hold. Urbgen must stay here in Rheged, with his father the king at death's door. So the obvious choice would beLot or Cador. Well, it cannot beLot , I think you will agree there: For all his oath of fealty, there in the chapel, I won't trust him yet, and certainly not within reach of Colgrim."

"I agree. You'll send Cador, then? You can surely have no more doubts of him?"

Cador, Duke of Cornwall, was indeed the obvious choice. He was a man in the prime of his strength, a seasoned fighter, and loyal. I had once mistakenly thought him Arthur's enemy, and indeed he had had cause to be; but Cador was a man of sense, judicious and far-sighted, who could see beyond his hatred of Uther to the larger vision of a Britain united against the Saxon Terror. So he had supported Arthur.

And Arthur, up there in the Perilous Chapel, had declared Cador and his sons the heirs to the kingdom.

So Arthur said merely: "How could I?" and scowled for a moment longer at the stilus. Then he dropped it on the table, and straightened. "The thing is, with my own leadership so new — " He looked up then, and saw me smiling. The frown vanished, to be replaced by a look I knew: eager, impetuous, the look of a boy, but behind it a man's will that would burn its way through any opposition. His eyes danced. "Yes, you're right, as usual. I'm going myself."

"And Cador with you?"

"No. I think I must go without him. After what happened, my father's death, and then the — " he hesitated — "then what happened up in the chapel yonder...if there is to be more fighting, I must be there myself, to lead the armies, and be seen to finish the work we started."

He paused, as if still expecting question or protest, but I made none.

"I thought you would try to prevent me."

"No. Why? I agree with you. You have to prove yourself to be above luck."

"That's it exactly." He thought for a moment. "It's hard to put it into words, but ever since you brought me to Luguvallium and presented me to the King, it has seemed — not like a dream exactly, but as if something were using me, using all of us..."

"Yes. A strong wind blowing, and carrying us all with it."

"And now the wind has died down," he said, soberly, "and we are left to live Life by our own strength only. As if — well, as if it had all been magic and miracles, and now they had gone. Have you noticed, Merlin, that not one man has spoken of what happened up yonder in the shrine? Already it's as if it had happened well in the past, in some song or story."