The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (36 page)

“How could there be so many pagans in all the world?” cried Lucan, slapping his sword on his glass shield to drive out his fright.

The galley slaves fled screaming into the trees.

We the war band on stamping, anxious horses jeered the Saxon vanguard.

Guenevere galloped up from the beach, Lancelot running alongside.  He was sea-stained, sand-covered, his long black hair sweat-matted.  But he was still beautiful as he jumped – shield in one hand, sword in the other – onto a war horse.

Guenevere took the lead, her treasure sacks banging on the flanks of her horse, as we stampeded west and north away from the Saxons, whooping with the joy of fast horse and cannibals in pursuit.

The galley slaves leaped from their forest hideouts to run alongside.  What else could they do?  They grabbed up branches for clubs and rocks for axes and were ready to fight for their lives.

The first volley of Saxon arrows howled down around us, driving into the earth with a speed that made them seem to sprout from the dirt like quills from a hedgehog.

Slaves, ladies, and lifeguards were stapled to the ground, screaming in terror and pain.

Arthur hauled up his shield and charged his horse across the rear of our party, catching the next killing arrowfall on his shield.  He shook off the shield heavy for its burden of arrows and called for another and caught the next volley, and another shield for the next, as the war band whipped on the terrified slaves and howled for Guenevere to speed the gallop.

At the forest’s edge, with the sight of the Saxon archers drawing bow again, Arthur threw off the last shield pierced by a thousand arrows and raised his middle finger in a Roman salute to the Saxons.

Then he and I, his comrades and his Breton princess, drove our war horses snorting into the trees, all of us howling with fear and excitement, running away.

We galloped deeper into the forest as Saxon arrows clattered through the upper tree branches, broken leaves fluttering down about us.  We had escaped.  We were happy and proud.

But, when we climbed trees to take bearings from the land, we saw we had not outrun the enemy.  Colgrin’s hordes had merely fired a few thousand arrows to chase us off as an irritation, as a horse tail-flicks a fly.

We watched Colgrin’s vast army pull a dust cloud across the south as though drawing a curtain to seal off Saxon from British territory.

“Great gods,” gasped Lucan.  “How do we fight three hundred thousand of them?

“If we put all the fighting men of the Island in one field, we’d have just one-tenth Colgrin’s force,” said Bedivere.  “And Colgrin’s is just one Saxon army.”

Guenevere said, “There also are the Scots to fight, and the Picts, Irish, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, King Lot in Orkney who has Mordred…”

Kay whacked his sword in the brush in frustration.  “How do we fight all of them?”

Lancelot kicked over sprouted toadstools and cursed the pagan gods of the Saxons.

The Spellcaster and Gwrhyr huddled together miserably cold, trees dripping onto them the wetness from a passing fog.

“Chase off the damp, for Juno’s sake,” Gwrhyr said to Menw.

“This is a Christian land and that’s a Christian fog, you unlettered idiot,” said the Spellcaster.  “Who has power over that?”

Then Menw gestured toward Arthur.  “But look at him!”

Arthur stared gloomy and desperate into the flames of our campfire.

I looked into the fire to see what Arthur was so hungry to see – Mordred’s child’s face.

Arthur put his hand into the fire to touch the image of his son.

Gwrhyr said to Menw, “Be useful.  Give him some Christian cure for his soul’s misery.”

But Menw hissed, “Merlin, look!”  He soul-pointed into the trees.  “What demon’s that?”

An immense figure rose up in the forest gloom.

The others huddled around us in their chill misery saw nothing.

The creature was a withered giant shrunken and twisted by battle wounds and disease to the seven foot size of an ordinary Saxon.  It had a long Saxon face with pendant earlobes, nose, and chin.  The tattoos striping its bare chest were inlaid into the flesh with gold and rubies.  Its hair was true yellow, not limed, and its eyes were colorless.  Its curved fingernails were stained with the blood of its cannibal victims.  In its eyes was the flame of manic fury.

The monster spoke Latin in a voice as sweet as a child’s, saying, “Merlin, Merlin, Princess of Mystery, do you know me?”

Only the Spellcaster and Arthur saw the monster with me and heard it speak.  My screaming shield heard and was reduced to a mumbling terror.

I hadn’t risen from where I squatted by the fire.  I had in my hand a water cup.

“You’re Colgrin,” I said.

For a creature I had never seen in any life and never wanted to see again, Colgrin was unmistakable.

“‘The mighty mythic Colgrin?’” it said in its child’s sweet voice.

“I see you and I know you,” said Arthur.

“I wish I couldn’t see you!” said Menw, cowering.

“See and know this,” Colgrin said.  “I am all fire.  I am the destroyer of worlds.  Spare yourselves the loss of everything you own and love.  Join me as my vassal princes.  I’ll make you, Arthur, a kinglet powerful beyond anything you can do for yourself on this pathetic little island.  You, Merlin, I will make queen of all the world’s magicians.”

“Do you know the Persians?” Arthur said, the horror of facing Colgrin making his voice too loud.

“I had them all read to me before I burned their lying texts and the readers with them.”

“But you’ll remember Cyrus speaking to Pharaoh.”

“Do I?” said Colgrin.

Arthur said, “‘I’d rather be a king in the desert than a slave on the Nile.’”

Colgrin laughed his child’s voice.

“Proof,” he said, “I should have you as my vassal!”

Colgrin said to me, “You join me, too, Lady Merlin.”

“I haven’t in a hundred lives before,” I said.  “Why should I now?”

“Because this could be your last cycle before Hell.”

“You can conquer Britain easily enough with your hundreds thousands,” I said.  “Why take us for accomplices?”

The monster swept nearer me without walking, its presence driving back the flame of our campfire as though Colgrin himself were a blaze that frightened any ordinary fire.

Colgrin shouted in a child’s petulant voice, “It’s enough for Colgrin to want!”

“Say it out into the air to make it palpable in the world,” Arthur said.

The child voice shouted in fury, “I’m the exterminator of Britain!”

I watched the water in my cup settle after his shout, waiting for Colgrin’s childish fury to calm sufficient for him to hear me.

“This is the third time we ask it, Colgrin,” I said.  “According to the rule of three, a third time compels an answer.  Why choose us?”

Colgrin shrieked in frustration.  “Because Merlin created the World Sword and Arthur will be its master!”

“That thing stuck in the Brutus stone?” said Arthur, startled enough to laugh.  “I can’t draw that sword.”

“You’re the only man or woman alive who can,” said Colgrin, struggling to control his tantrum.  “I’ve seen it written in the records of Weird.”

“You can read Fate?” I cried.

“I’m Colgrin.  I can do anything.”

“Fire and water,” I said.  “Did you read that, too?”

I threw the cup water at Colgrin and the demon blazed up and vanished.

He howled in pain loud enough to be heard at last by the others around us at the campfire.  They grabbed up swords but there was nothing there to fight.  Only the memory of what Colgrin had said hung heavy in the air around us.

Bedivere shouted, “What was that awful cry?”

“Colgrin himself,” Guenevere said.  The fright-sweat on her hand let her sword slide out of her grip and clatter among tree roots.

“It’s not Britain he wants,” said Lancelot, as though he had heard some of Colgrin’s speech.  “It’s Arthur’s sword.”

“The sword in the stone?” said Percival.  “What’s that but a conjurer’s trick?”

“He called it the World Sword,” Arthur said.

Kay said, “Will he conquer Britain and enslave us all to have one sword?”

“Arthur with the World Sword in his hand can defend Britain against three hundred thousand Colgrins,” I said.

“Let’s go to the stone,” Lancelot said.  “You try it again, Arthur.”

“Orkney first,” said Arthur.  “To rescue my son before Colgrin’s hundred-thousands trample him into the mud.  Then I’ll try the damned sword once more.”

Yes!
I wanted to shout. 
To Orkney.  To stick my knife into Mordred before Arthur draws Excalibur and Camelot can begin.

I felt a sudden strange confusion in my soul, as though I’d tumbled out of my life’s purpose into a nightmare with no light or warmth and I was lost.  I was becoming too much an ordinary woman with too much of the human creature in me, too much heart, and too little of the merlin who must…

But what must I do?  Good God, must I do
that?

* * *

I led the march north toward Orkney Islands, moving fast, dragging all the others along behind me, hauling the Round Table in its cart, my checked shield nagging me to march faster.  We crossed all of Britain in a day, exhausting work for a merlin weakening toward childhood, but I still had enough magic to do it.  I was determined to break quickly my confusion and discover what I had to do to get Arthur to draw the sword.

In my hot anxiety, I saw an image of Mordred full-grown, copper-haired and beautiful as Arthur his father, lounging with his ghittern by a brook singing to a girl named Flavia.  The innocent Flavia he murdered and dumped into a merlin’s grave with me.

I shouted in fright, startling the war band, and the image passed.

Now I saw Morgause, queen of Orkney, gazing at me across from where she stood on her castle’s battlements, telling me that, while my merlin’s powers withered, she, living in the normal direction of life, was gathering strength to make herself a witch to exceed a merlin.

I spurred on my horse and splashed across the surface of the sea to Orkney Island, fishing boats fleeing away from me, the war band and the others strung out behind me, terrified to be galloping across water but determined to keep up with Arthur and me.

We raced out of the sea and through a forest and over rain-muddied fields toward the castle set on an outcrop.  The sea crashed blue and gray beneath it, causing the castle to shiver.  But it had good Roman stone walls with well-placed forts roofed in fire-resistant red tile.  The rampart-men were soldiers, not warriors.  They studied us with method and care and laughed at our paltry numbers.

The Orkney red raven banner flapped and cracked over King Lot’s palace.  With it were the battle standards of princes from Iceland and Norway who had brought him reinforcements.

Around us were the shouts of terrified peasants who ran from their plows and digging sticks to squeeze into the castle.  Fishermen hauling their boats out of the sea for safe hiding.  Alarm trumpets from the surrounding villages.

I had another waking dream of Morgause.

She came to me on a red horse whose flesh rippled like her own flowing blue silks.  She said, “Have you come to kill my son, Lady Merlin?  I won’t let you.  Not for Arthur, not for ‘Camelot,’ not to save the world.  What’s ‘Camelot’ but the diseased imaginings of a merlin who’s barely a merlin anymore?  A girl-fraud who claims she’s lived a thousand years backward through time? That’s Greek fantasy!  Or a pagan nightmare worth making a cleansing bonfire of your flesh and bones!”

Morgause swept me into the castle.  “Look what
I
see, Merlin,” she said.

She showed me the Scandinavian princes in battle dress, drinking and howling with their war bands, ready to smash Arthur or any other power sent against Orkney.  King Lot in his sick bed, still broken and bleeding from our single combat at York, but furious to fight me again.  The huddling masses of witches and trolls she had recruited to defend the castle with magic and spirits.

At the castle’s center was a holy oak tree and a triple altar with a triple throne – one each for Lot, Morgause, and Mordred, now nearly four years old.

The boy playing on his throne looked at me with Arthur’s beautiful face and Uther’s startling red hair.  He smiled the thin smile I remembered from Prince Mordred when he dumped the slaughtered Flavia in my grave.

I shouted in a bizarre loving horror.  Here was the son of my Arthur!  Here was the murderer of my Arthur!

The castle trembled at my shout.  Warriors screamed out their fright.  Lot writhed in his sick bed.  Morgause vanished in shattered pieces, like dust floating in sunlight.

Mordred, fading on his throne, stared out at me and commanded Morgause, “Mother, kill Merlin for me now...”

He had Arthur’s voice as a child.

How could I kill this boy?

I wept.  I wept with the sound of a howling forest fire, of the crashing fall of ruined battlements, of a sky that grinds everything beneath it to dust and blood.

I saw the Scandinavian princes and princesses with their warriors run down to their longships and put out to sea for home, fleeing my weeping.  I saw palace witches and trolls vanish into the Pictish north.  Lot’s own war band flee in terror and shame.  Servants and slaves run howling away.  The terror stampede of horses and cattle.  The screeching escape of hawks.  The scurry into the deep earth of worms and rats.

The castle was abandoned.

King Lot in his bloody bandages held the red Orkney greatsword in his trembling hands.  He said, stunned, horrified, fading away from me, “Holy Jesu, what have you done to me, witch?”

But who did he mean?

* * *

“You’re a merlin yet, Mother!” said Arthur, cheering for me as he, Guenevere, and his war band, hauling the round Table, stampeded through the castle’s open-hanging battle gate into the dusty ward.

The ramparts above us in the ward were empty of guards.  No archers in the battle towers.  Not even a drunken slave in the stables, or a horse or goat.

“Search the palace!” Arthur shouted to his war band.  “Find my son!”

King Lot shoved open the massive door of his palace and came into the ward.

He wore the red raven crest on his ready shield and held his red Orkney greatsword.  He was bandaged and staggered from the half-healed wounds I’d given him at York a year before.

“I’m the army and shield of my castle and family, Arthur.  I’m the last here with a sword.  Fight me if you dare!”

“Arthur, he’s holding a greatsword,” said Lancelot.  “None of us has anything to match it.”