by Mary Stewart
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 grea
t 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, Y 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.
It stood in a wilderness of tumbled stones, but I knew that near it, dug into the side of the little valley beyond the gate, and running in almost beneath the tower itself, was the temple of Mithras; and on the thought I found that my feet had led me, with no will of my own, down the path which led to the Mithraeum door.
There were steps here, cracked and slippery. Halfway down the flight one tread thrust upwards vertically, half blocking the stairway, and at the foot was a pile of mud and shards, fouled by rats and prowling dogs. The place stank of damp and dirt and some ancient noisomeness that might have been spilled blood. On the ruined wall above the steps some roosting birds had whitened the stones; the dung was greening over now with slime. A jackdaw's perch, perhaps? A raven of Mithras? A merlin? I trod cautiously forward over the slimy flags, and paused in the temple doorway.
It was dark, but some sunlight had followed me in, and there was enough light from a hole broken in the roof somewhere, so that I could see dimly. The temple was as filthy and forlorn as the stairway that led to it. Only the strength of the vaulted roof had saved the place from falling in under the weight of the hillside above. The furnishings had gone long since, the braziers, benches, carvings; this, like the scoured ruin overhead, was a shell empty of its tenant. The four lesser altars had been broken and defaced, but the central altar stood there still, fixed and massive, with its carved dedication to the unconquered god, MITHRAE INVICTO, but above the altar, in the apse, axe and hammer and fire had obliterated the story of the bull and the conquering god. All that remained of the picture of the bull-slaying was an ear of wheat, down in one corner, its carving still sharp and new and miraculously unspoiled. The air, sour with the smell of some fungus, caught at the lungs.
It seemed fitting to say a prayer to the god departed. As I spoke aloud, something in the echo of my voice came, not like an echo, but an answer. I had been wrong. The place was not yet empty. It had been holy, and was stripped of its holiness; but something was still held down to that cold altar. The sour smell was not the smell of fungus. It was unlit incense, and cold ashes, and unsaid prayers.
I had been his servant once. There was no one here but I. Slowly, I walked forward into the center of the temple, and held out my open hands. Light, and color, and fire. White robes and chanting. Fires licking upwards like light blowing. The bellow of a dying bull and the smell of blood. Outside somewhere the sun blazing and a city rejoicing to welcome its new king, and the sound of laughter and marching feet. Round me incense pouring heavy and sweet, and a voice that said through it, calm and small: "Throw down my altar. It is time to throw it down."
I came to myself coughing, with the air round me swirling thick with dust, and the sound of a crash still echoing round and round the vaulted chamber. The air trembled and rang. At my feet lay the altar, hurled over on its back into the curve of the apse.
I stared, dazed still and with swimming sight, at the hole it had torn in the floor where it had stood. My head sang with the echo; the hands I held stiffly before me were filthy, and one of them showed a bleeding gash. The altar was heavy, of massive stone, and in my right mind I would never have laid hands to it; but here it lay at my feet, with the echo of its fall dying in the roof, followed by the whisper of settling masonry as the crumbled pavement began to slide down into the hole where the altar had stood.
Something showed in the depths of the hole: a hard straight edge and a corner too sharp for stone. A box. I knelt down and reached for it.
It was of metal, and very heavy, but the lid lifted easily. Whoever had buried it had trusted the god's protection rather than a lock. Inside, my hands met canvas cloth, long rotten, which tore; then inside that again, wrappings of oiled leather. Something long and slender and supple; here at last it was. Gently, I took the wrappings off the sword and held it naked across my hands.
A hundred years since they had put it here, those men who had made their way back from Rome. It shone in my hands, as bright and dangerous and beautiful as on the day it had been made. It was no wonder, I thought, that already in that hundred years it had become a thing of legend. It was easy to believe that the old smith, Weland himself, who was old before the Romans came, might have made this last artifact before he faded with the other small gods of wood and stream and river, into the misty hills, leaving the crowded valleys to the bright gods of the Middle Sea. I could feel the power from the sword running into my palms, as if I held them in water where lightning struck. Whoso takes this sword from under this stone is rightwise King born of all Britain...The words were clear as if spoken, bright as if carved on the metal. I, Merlin, only son of Ambrosius the King, had taken the sword from the stone. I, who had never given an order in battle, nor led so much as a troop; who could not handle a war stallion, but rode a gelding or a quiet mare. I, who had never even lain with a woman. I, who was no man, but only eyes and a voice. A spirit, I had said once, a word. No more.
The sword was not for me. It would wait. I wrapped the beautiful thing up again in the filthy wrappings, and knelt to replace it. I saw that the box was deeper than I had thought; there were other objects there. The rotten canvas had fallen away to show the shape, gleaming in the dimness, of a wide-mouthed dish, a krater such as I had seen on my travels in countries east of Rome. It seemed to be of red gold, studded wi
th emeralds. Beside it, still half muffled in wrappings, gleamed the bright edge of a lancehead. The rim of a platter showed, crusted with sapphire and amethyst.
I leaned forward to lay the sword back in its place. But before I could do it, without any warning, the heavy lid of the box fell shut with a crash. The noise set the echoes drumming again, and brought down with it a cascade of stone and plaster from the apse and the crumbling walls above. It happened so quickly that in the single moment of my own sharp recoil the box, hole and all had vanished from view under the rubble.
I was left kneeling there in the choking cloud of dust, with the shrouded sword held fast in my filthy and bleeding hands. From the apse, the last of the carving had vanished. It was only a curved wall, showing blank, like the wall of a cave.
11
The ferryman at the Deva knew the holy man of whom the smith had spoken. It seemed he lived in the hills above Ector's fortress, at the edge of the great tract of mountain land they call the Wild Forest.
Though I no longer felt myself to need the hermit's guidance, it would do no harm to talk to him, and his cell — a chapel, the ferryman called it — lay on my way, and might give me lodging until I considered how best to present myself at Count Ector's gates.
Whether or not the possession of the sword had in fact carried power with it, I traveled fast and easily, and with no more alarms. A week after leaving Segontium we — the mare and I — cantered easily along the green margin of a wide, calm lake, making for a light which showed pale in the early dusk, high as a star among the trees on the other shore. It was a long way round the lake, and it was full dark when at last I trotted the tired mare up the forest track into a clearing and saw, against the soft and living darkness of the forest, the solid wedge of the chapel roof.