Merlin Redux

by Dave Duncan

  praise for dave duncan and the enchanter general series

  “Enjoyable characters, a detailed setting, and atmospheric adventure intertwine in this multilevel mystery. Durwin is a congenial and persistent investigator, and readers will look forward to his future adventures.”—Publishers Weekly

  “An entertaining, fast-paced read that will please readers looking for mystery and enchantment.”—Kirkus Reviews

  “Ironfoot is gritty, magical, at times brutal, but above all humane. This is historical fantasy pulled off spectacularly well.”—Greg Keyes, author of The Briar King and The Reign of the Departed

  “A fantastic murder mystery firmly anchored in real history, plus a generous mix of arcane magic.”—Glenda Larke, author of The Lascar’s Dagger

  “I was surprised by how compelling it was . . . I would recommend this.”—Milliebot Reads

  “An enjoyable easy read . . . hopefully there’s a sequel in the not too distant future.”—Cannonball Read

  “[Duncan has] rich, evocative language and superior narrative skills . . . one of the leading masters of epic fantasy.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Dave Duncan writes rollicking adventure novels filled with subtle characterization and made bitter-sweet by an underlying darkness. Without striving for grand effects or momentous meetings between genres, he has produced one excellent book after another.”— Locus

  “An exceedingly finished stylist and a master of world building and characterization.”—Booklist

  “Duncan writes with unusual flair, drawing upon folklore, myth, and his gift for creating ingenious plots.”—Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror

  “One of the best writers in the fantasy world today. His writing is clear, vibrant and full of energy. His action scenes are breathtaking and his skill at characterization is excellent.”—Writers Write

  “Duncan’s prose avoids the excessively florid in its description and the archaic in its dialogue, opting instead for simpler narration and contemporary parlance . . . serves as a refreshing reminder that epic fantasy need not always be doorstops filled with manly men speaking in overblown rhetoric and grasping their swords.”— SFF World

  “Duncan produces excellent work in book after book . . . a great world-builder. His fantasy worlds are not mere medieval societies with magic added but make organic sense.”—SFReview

  “Dave Duncan has long been one of the great unsung figures of Canadian fantasy and science fiction, graced with a fertile imagination, a prolific output, and keen writerly skills.”—Quill and Quire

  merlin redux

  by dave duncan

  The Seventh Sword

  The Reluctant Swordsman

  The Coming of Wisdom

  The Destiny of the Sword

  The Death of Nnanji

  A Man of His Word

  Magic Casement

  Faery Lands Forlorn

  Perilous Seas

  Emperor and Clown

  A Handful of Men

  The Cutting Edge

  Upland Outlaws

  The Stricken Field

  The Living God

  Omar

  The Reaver Road

  The Hunters’ Haunt

  The Great Game

  Past Imperative

  Present Tense

  Future Indefinite

  The Years of Longdirk (as Ken Hood)

  Demon Sword

  Demon Rider

  Demon Knight

  The King’s Blades

  Tales of the King’s Blades

  The Gilded Chain

  Lord of the Fire Lands

  Sky of Swords

  Chronicles of the King’s Blades

  Paragon Lost

  Impossible Odds

  The Jaguar Knights

  The King’s Daggers

  Sir Stalwart

  The Crooked House

  Silvercloak

  Dodec

  Children of Chaos

  Mother of Lies

  Nostradamus

  The Alchemist’s Apprentice

  The Alchemist’s Code

  The Alchemist’s Pursuit

  Brothers Magnus

  Speak to the Devil

  When the Saints

  The Starfolk

  King of Swords

  Queen of Stars

  The Enchanter General

  Ironfoot

  Trial by Treason

  Merlin Redux

  Standalone Novels

  A Rose-Red City Shadow

  West of January

  Strings

  Hero!

  The Cursed

  Daughter of Troy (as Sarah B. Franklin)

  Ill Met in the Arena

  Pock’s World

  Against the Light

  Wildcatter

  The Eye of Strife

  The Adventures of Ivor

  Irona 700

  Eocene Station

  Portal of a Thousand Worlds

  the enchanter genenral

  merlin redux

  dave Duncan

  Night Shade Books

  New York | New Jersey

  Copyright © 2019 by Dave Duncan

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Start Publishing, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Jersey City, NJ 07302.

  Night Shade Books® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.nightshadebooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on-file.

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949102-03-1

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949102-04-8

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-59780-639-8

  Cover illustration by Stephen Youll

  Cover design by Shawn King

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to its author, our beloved Papa. We are so grateful your fantastical worlds and clever words will live on forever.

  —The Duncan Family

  1189

  it began on St. Theodore’s Day—Tuesday, July 4th. That unhappy day was when I first sang the ancient enchantment I called the Myrddin Wyllt.

  Many years earlier, I had found some pieces of rat-chewed, mildewed vellum amid the rubbish in a castle cellar. Although the words on it were almost illegible and written in a very old dialect, they appeared to be parts of a single poem, and since then I had stumbled on more scraps of verse that I identified as being from slightly later copies of the same work. I had tried several times to fit it all together, filling in gaps with some hopefully inspired guesswork, but meeting with no success until the spring of 1189. Then, just before leaving for France, while hunting for something else in my “miscellaneous fragments” collection, I found two other pieces of what were obviously yet other copies, which I had previously overlooked. The fact that even traces of so many versions had survived for so long suggested that it must have been a highly valued work. Manuscripts of that age are very rare indeed, and I spent every moment I could spare trying to reconstruct the original version. That was a very busy time for me, between meetings of the king’s privy council, the betrothal negotiations for my younger daughter, Royse, and the annual college budgetary conference.

  When I had fitted it all together, the ancient song at last began to make sense. By convention, we use the opening words of an incantation as its title, and this one began, “Myrddin Wyllt beseeches thee,” so Myrddin Wyllt it became in my files. I knew that a man called Myrddin Wyllt had been a sixth-century prophet and madman in what we would now call southern Scotland. I wa
s soon to wish that I had never set eyes on it.

  It was midsummer before I could find enough time to get back to the work I enjoy most—repairing ancient spells that have become corrupted by time or the efforts of their original owners to keep them secret. I had invented this craft and was still better at it than anyone else. Early on that fateful morning, I went down to my workroom and eagerly read over what I put together the previous evening. I made a couple of trivial corrections, and then decided I would attempt to sing the whole song through, which I had never done before. Basically, the text was a prayer to Carnonos, the ancient antlered god of many names, lord of forests and good fortune. It was a hunter’s plea for guidance, and was obviously meant to be sung. I had no desire to go stalking venison through the streets of Oxford, but I dearly wanted to hear how the song would sound. The rhythm was obvious, but I had to guess at a suitable melody. I began to chant, and was soon caught up in the imagery, the invocation of trees and summer flowers, insects and peaceful wildlife, far from the muddling cares of mankind.

  To my astonishment, I felt myself sliding into trance. Many of our enchantments require two voices, and it is quite common for the supporting cantor to be entranced during the rite. I had never met a spell that entranced the enchanter himself, though. My voice seemed to fade away, and yet I could still hear myself in the distance, as if someone else were singing.

  By then I was standing on a hay meadow under a cloudless sky of deepest blue. The hills were richly clad in vineyards, but in the distance, I recognized the Vienne River and the distinctive mass of Chinon Castle, near Tours, in Touraine. This was the very heart of King Henry’s French domains.

  A party of about twenty horsemen was making its way slowly up the gentle slope in my direction. They were riding destriers— warhorses—but none bore weapons or armor, which meant that they were either going to a parley, or coming from one. The hayscented air was absolutely still and the noon sun blazed pitilessly overhead, although thunder clouds were building in the north. The cavalcade’s snail-like pace was due to more than the summer heat, which might be hard on the horses and was certainly good for the grapes, but must feel like the breath of hell to the dying man leading that procession.

  As they went by me, I barely recognized him: Henry by the Grace of God, king of England, duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Brittany, count of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, lord of Ireland. He seemed to have aged ten years in the six weeks or so since I had last seen him. He sat astride his horse, but it was being led by a mounted squire. A knight rode very close on either side of him, each ready to catch him if he started to fall. Obese and white-bearded, he was clearly in agony. For a third of a century he had ruled the greatest empire since Charlemagne’s, extending for a thousand miles from the Scottish border to the Spanish. I had a strong suspicion that it was not going to survive this parley.

  The men supporting him I recognized as Sir William Marshal and Geoffrey Fitzhenry, Bishop of Lincoln, commonly known as Geoffrey the Bastard, big men both. The last horse to go by me was a sumpter, bearing a bundle of poles and canvas that might be a small tent, but I guessed was a litter. Until very few years ago, the king had been an avid hunter, able to outride almost any man in his retinue. How are the mighty fallen!

  And up ahead, in the shadow of the towering plane tree? Three men were waiting there, two of them on horseback, with an entourage of supporters and horses standing nearby, out of earshot.

  One of the mounted men was unmistakable, a giant, well over a fathom tall, with a red-gold beard and icy blue eyes—Lord Richard, known as the Lionheart, the elder of Henry’s two surviving sons, a mighty warrior and a shameless traitor. The other beside him was a much less impressive person—Henry’s nemesis, King Philip of France, thirty-two years his junior, his liege lord for all his holdings in France, and now his master. Philip was short, ruddy, and seemed utterly insignificant, especially alongside the titanic Richard. He was reputed to be a clumsy and reluctant horseman, and certainly not a warrior, but he had no equal when it came to intrigue, scheming, and subterfuge.

  Standing beside the two horsemen was a tonsured clerk, clutching a satchel. I could see no fussy clerics in the background group, which meant that the parley had been set up by the participants themselves, not forced upon them by the Church, and so it was a genuine effort to achieve something, not just another of the futile brothers-in-Christ holy rituals that buzz like blow-flies around all quarrels.

  I moved my point of view closer, hoping to hear what the horsemen were saying, but they were studying the approaching party in silence. So Henry was about to die? Triumph for Philip, but what of his companion? Did Richard feel no guilt?

  The agenda would almost certainly include the English king’s abject surrender. The feud had been long and complicated. Its ultimate cause was that Henry’s duchies and counties covered the entire western half of France, but France was Philip’s kingdom, so Henry was his vassal, owing him homage for all those lands. Henry paid lip service to the principle, but he was not a man to truckle to an overlord. Nor could he see any contradiction in the fact that he demanded absolute obedience from his own vassals, the earls and barons of England.

  The immediate cause, boiling up over the last year or so, was that all three—King Philip, King Henry, and Duke Richard—had sworn to go on Crusade, to help wrest the holy city of Jerusalem back from the Saracen heathens. Henry was now far too sick to think of going, but he stubbornly refused to name Richard as his heir. Many years ago he had so honored his oldest son, another Henry, even having him crowned, so that he became known as “the young king.” The result had been feud and rebellion. Ultimately the young king had died in a tournament, and King Henry had not made the same mistake again, keeping Richard in doubt, constantly hinting that he might leave his empire to John, his youngest son. So Richard dared not go on crusade, lest his father die during his absence and his brother steal the throne. Likewise, Philip dared not go and leave Richard behind—he no longer feared the ailing Henry, but Richard had been a notable warrior since he was sixteen, aiding the young king’s rebellion.

  Henry advanced with only his two supporters, leaving the rest of his retinue behind. All three halted.

  Philip spoke and beckoned to a shadowy follower to come forward with a cloak to spread on the grass for the invalid. Philip’s show of pity failed to hide the delighted mockery beneath. Henry refused the mercy angrily.

  The king of France turned to his clerk and ordered him to read out the terms. They were even worse than I expected. Henry must do homage in person to Philip, an act he had long managed to shun by sending sons in his place. He must acknowledge Richard as his heir throughout his empire, must pay a huge indemnity to Philip, and must give up certain key castles. And, of course, in the final insult, he must pardon all the nobles who had rebelled against him, and the list that the clerk handed to William Marshal was several pages long.

  Henry had been my mentor. He had made my life. Seeing me first as a gawky youth, a crippled Saxon nothing, he had recognized my skill at enchantment and financed the rest of my education. The first task he had set me when I graduated as a sage had seemed to be a trivial matter, but turned out to be a major conspiracy. He had rewarded my success with a knighthood and the office of enchanter general. Now I watched my liege being destroyed, a once-mighty monarch being robbed of everything by a pair of greedy nobodies. I wept, but my tears fell far away.

  Stone-faced, Henry heard the sentence, and then just muttered, “Agreed.”

  But, as he gave his son the kiss of peace, I heard him whisper something that sounded very much like a promise of revenge.

  Then I heard someone calling my name from a great distance, felt someone shaking me. I fell out of my trance and was back at my desk in Oxford.

  Lovise was beside me, holding my hand and regarding me with concern. “Darling! What were you doing? You were weeping, I was frightened. I thought I would never manage to waken you.”

  Feeling as if I had been beaten ab
out the head with iron rods and then strangled, I scooped up my scattered wits. Such after-effects show that a trance-inducing enchantment is badly worded and needs more work. A raging thirst burned in my throat.

  “Need a drink,” I mumbled.

  She ran over to the table where I keep a carafe of wine and one of water. She filled a beaker with half of each and brought it to me as I struggled to sit up. I drained it.

  “How long have you been gone?” Now she had jumped from worried to angry. “Lucky I found you! I brought down some invoices for you to approve.”

  Lovise not only supervised the healing classes in the College, but was herself the most sought-after women’s healer in Oxford. She was no longer the sylphlike maiden I had married. Twenty-three years and four children had made her buxom, but she was still tall and blonde. Her eyes were still as blue as sapphires. And in my eyes, she was still the loveliest woman in England.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t mean to go into a trance, I was just trying to hear how it sounded.” I was babbling. “It’s a very old enchantment, so it’s oddly structured.”

  She peered at the vellum. “What does ‘Myrddin Wyllt’ mean?”

  “It’s a man’s name.” I recounted the horrors I had seen, and Lovise listened in amazement. She knew as much about enchantment as I did and could tell when rules were being broken. Only very rarely had we met a spell that could show visions, certainly none so detailed and credible. We had certainly never found any magic that could reach across the Narrow Sea.

  “How far can you trust that vision? If it was a sending from Hell, you ought to burn the fair copy and all your notes immediately.”

  “But if I was seeing real events, then I have been shown a page of history turning, for obviously King Henry is very close to death.”

  And then we should have a new king—Lord Richard, surely. Please God, never his brother, Lord John!