The Mammoth Book of Merlin

by Mike Ashley

  Still Merlin did not move, though imperceptibly he stood taller. Ambrosius put his hand on Merlin’s shoulders.

  “The boy is a reader of dreams,” said the mage. “What he dreams comes true.”

  “Is that so?” asked the soldier, looking around.

  “It is so,” said Viviane.

  Merlin closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, they were the color of an ocean swell, blue-green washed with gray. “It is so,” he said at last.

  From the hearth where he was basting the joints of meat, the cook called out, “It is true that the boy dreamed here today. About two dragons. I heard him cry out in his sleep.”

  The soldier, who had hopes of a captaincy, thought a moment, then said, “Very well, all three of you come with me. Up the stairs. Now.” He cornered young Stephen to carry the mage’s boxes, and marched smartly out the door.

  The others followed quickly, though Merlin hung back long enough to give the other boy a hand.

  Viviane sang first, a medley of love songs that favored the duke and his lady in turn. With the skill of a seasoned entertainer, she inserted the Lady Renwein’s name into her rhyme, but called the duke in the songs merely “The Duke of Carmarthen town.” (Later she explained to Merlin that the only rhymes she had for the duke’s name were either scurrilous or treasonous, and sang a couple of verses to prove it.) Such was her ability, each took the songs as flattering, though Merlin thought he detected a nasty undertone in them that made him uncomfortable. But Viviane was roundly applauded and at the end of her songs, two young soldiers picked her up between them and set her upon their table for an encore. She smiled prettily at them, but Merlin knew she hated their touch, for the smile was one she reserved for particularly messy children, drunken old men – and swine.

  Deftly beginning his own performance at the moment Viviane ended hers, Ambrosius was able to cover any unpleasantness that might occur if one of the soldiers dared take liberties with Viviane as she climbed down from the tabletop. He began with silly tricks – eggs, baskets, even a turtle was plucked from the air or from behind an unsuspecting soldier’s ear. The turtle was the one the mage had found when they had been fishing.

  Then Ambrosius moved on to finer tricks, guessing the name of a soldier’s sweetheart, finding the red queen in a deck of cards missing yet discovering it under the Lady Renwein’s plate, and finally making Viviane disappear and reappear in a series of boxes through which he had the soldiers thrust their swords.

  The last trick brought great consternation to the guards, especially when blood appeared to leak from the boxes, blood which when examined later proved to be juices from the meat which Viviane had kept in a flask. And when she reappeared, whole, unharmed, and smiling once the swords had been withdrawn from the box, the great hall resounded with huzzahs.

  The duke smiled and whispered to the Lady Renwein. She covered his hand with hers. When he withdrew his hand, the duke held out a plump purse. He jangled it loudly.

  “We are pleased to offer you this, Ambrosius.”

  “Thank you, my lord. But we are not done yet,” said the mage with a bow which, had it been a little less florid, would have been an insult. “I would introduce you to Merlin, our dream reader, who will tell you of a singular dream he had this day in your house.”

  Merlin came to the center of the room. He could feel his legs trembling. Ambrosius walked over to him and, turning his back to the duke, whispered to the boy. “Do not be afraid. Tell the dream and I will say what it means.”

  “Will you know?”

  “My eyes and ears know what needs be said here,” said Ambrosius, “whatever the dream. You must trust me.”

  Merlin nodded and Ambrosius moved aside. The boy stood with his eyes closed and began to speak.

  “I dreamed a tower of snow that in the day reached high up into the sky but at night melted to the ground. And there was much weeping and wailing in the country because the tower would not stand.”

  “The castle!” the duke gasped, but Lady Renwein placed her hand gently on his mouth.

  “Hush, my lord,” she whispered urgently. “Listen. Do not speak yet. This may be merely a magician’s trick. After all, they have been in Carmarthen for two days already and surely there is talk of the building in the town.”

  Merlin, his eyes still closed, seemed not to hear them, but continued. “And then one man arose, a mage, who advised that the tower of icy water be drained in the morning instead of building atop it. It was done as he wished, though the soldiers complained bitterly of it. But at last the pool was drained and lo! there in the mud lay two great hollow stones as round and speckled and veined as gray eggs.

  “Then the mage draw a sword and struck open the eggs. In the one was a dragon the color of wine, its eyes faceted as jewels. In the other a dragon the color of maggots, with eyes as tarnished as old coins.

  “And when the two dragons saw that they were revealed, they turned not on the soldiers nor the mage but upon one another. At first the white dragon had the best of it and pushed the red to the very edge of the dry pool, but it so blooded its opponent that a new pool was formed, the color of the ocean beyond the waves. But then the red rallied and pushed the white back, and it slipped into the bloody pool and disappeared, never to be seen again whole.

  “And the man who advised began to speak once more, but I awoke.”

  At that, Merlin opened his eyes and they were the blue of speedwells on a summer morn.

  The Lady Renwein’s face was dark and disturbed. In a low voice she said, “Mage, ask him what the dream means.”

  Ambrosius bowed very low this time, for he saw that while the duke might be easily cozened, the Lady Renwein was no fool. When he stood straight again, he said, “The boy dreams, my lady, but he leaves it to me to make sense of what he dreams. Just as did his dear, dead mother before him.”

  Merlin, startled, looked at Viviane. She rolled her eyes up to stare at the broad beams of the ceiling and held her mouth still.

  “His mother was a dream reader, too?” asked the duke.

  “She was; though being a woman, dreamed of more homey things: the names of babes and whether they be boys or girls, and when to plant, and so forth.”

  The Lady Renwein leaned forward. “Then say, mage, what this dream of towers and dragons means.”

  “I will, my lady. It is not unknown to us that you have a house that will not stand. However, what young Merlin has dreamed is the reason for this. The house or tower of snow sinks every day into the ground; in the image of the dream, it melts. That is because there is a pool beneath it. Most likely the Romans built the conduits for their baths there. With the construction, there has been a leakage underground. The natural outflow has been damaged further by armies fighting. And so there has been a pooling under the foundation. Open up the work, drain the pool, remove or reconstruct the Roman pipes, and the building will stand.”

  “Is that all?” asked the duke, disappointment in his voice. “I thought that you might say the red was the Lady Renwein’s soldiers, the white mine or some such.”

  “Dreams are never quite so obvious, my lord. They are devious messages to us, truth . . .” he paused for a moment and put his hands on Merlin’s shoulders, “truth on the slant.”

  Lady Renwein was nodding. “Yes, that would make sense. About the drains and the Roman pipes, I mean. Not the dream. You need not have used so much folderol in order to give us good advice.”

  Ambrosius smiled and stepped away from Merlin and made another deep bow. “But my lady, who would have listened to a traveling magician on matters of . . . shall we say . . . state?”

  She smiled back.

  “And besides,” Ambrosius added, “I had not heard this dream until this very moment. I had given no thought before it to your palace or anything else of Carmarthen excepting the fair. It is the boy’s dream that tells us what to do. And, unlike his mother of blessed memory, I could never guess a baby’s sex before it was born lest she dreamed i
t. And she, the minx, never mentioned that she was carrying a boy to me, nor did she dream of him till after he was born when she, dying, spoke of him once. ‘He will be a hawk among princes,’ she said. So I named him Merlin.”

  It was two days later when a special messenger came to the green wagon with a small casket filled with coins and a small gold dragon with a faceted red jewel for an eye.

  “Her ladyship sends these with her compliments,” said the soldier who brought the casket. “There was indeed a hidden pool beneath the foundation. And the pipes, which were as gray and speckled and grained as eggs, were rotted through. In some places they were gnawed on, too, by some small underground beasts. Her lady begs you to stay or at least send the boy back to her for yet another dream.”

  Ambrosius accepted the casket solemnly, but shook his head. “Tell her ladyship that – alas – there is but one dream per prince. And we must away. The fair here is done and there is another holy day fair in Londinium, many days’ journey from here. Even with such a prize as her lady has gifted us, Ambrosius the Wandering Mage and his company can never be still long.” He bowed.

  But Ambrosius did not proffer the real reason they were away: that a kind of restless fear drove him on, for after the performance when they were back in the wagon, Merlin had cried out against him. “But that was not the true meaning of the dream. There will be fighting here – the red dragon of the Britons and the Saxon white will fight again. The tower is only a small part – of the dream, of the whole.”

  And Ambrosius had sighed loudly then, partly for effect, and said, “My dear son, for as I claimed you, now you are mine forever, magecraft is a thing of the eye and ear. You tell me that what you dream comes true – but on the slant. And I say that to tell a prince to his face that you have dreamed of his doom invites the dreamer’s doom as well. And, as you yourself reminded me, it may not be all of the truth. The greatest wisdom of any dreamer is to survive in order to dream again. Besides, how do you really know if what you dream is true or if, in the telling of it, you make it come true? We are men, not beasts, because we can dream and because we can make those dreams come true.”

  Merlin had closed his eyes then, and when he opened them again, they were the clear vacant blue of a newborn babe. “Father,” he had said, and it was a child’s voice speaking.

  Ambrosius had shivered with the sound of it, for he knew that sons in the natural order of things o’erthrew their fathers when they came of age. And Merlin, it was clear, was very quick to learn and quicker to grow.

  THE TEMPTATIONS OF MERLIN

  PETER TREMAYNE

  Peter Tremayne is no stranger to the Arthurian world. Under his real name of Peter Berresford Ellis (b. 1943) he has written over a dozen books on Celtic history and mythology, including the definitive The Celtic Empire (1990) and Celt and Saxon (1993), plus A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (1992). Under the Tremayne alias he has written nearly thirty books, including two excellent collections of Irish horror and fantasy stories, My Lady of Hy-Brasil (1987) and Aisling (1992). He has more recently found fame with his novels about Sister Fidelma, a seventh-century advocate and investigator of the Brehon Court, whose adventures are set to rival Brother Cadfael’s. The series begins with Absolution By Murder (1994) and Shroud for an Archbishop (1995). The following long story endeavours to present the historical Celtic world of Merlin.

  I

  The tall man paused in mid-stride. He stood head to one side in a listening attitude. A frown disfigured the ugly features of his black bearded face. Then he scowled, making his expression even more hideous.

  He was a heavily built man, a warrior by the cut of his clothes, his breastplate and helmet. He carried his double-edged sword in his right hand while a small rounded shield protected his other side, hanging from his left shoulder. Great muscles rippled under the bronzed skin of the giant, for he stood not short of seven feet in height. His features were marred by a grim and repulsive countenance accentuated with a white weal of a scar running from the corner of his left eye across his cheek before disappearing into his bushy beard. Even in repose, as he stood listening, his whole appearance was threatening.

  He waited a moment in the narrow defile of a forest path, hemmed in by towering oaks and closely growing undergrowth. It was dark among the trees although, beyond the flickering branches above him, there was an impression of sunshine and blue skies.

  The big warrior sniffed the air suspiciously, inhaling the musty smells of the dank forest.

  To his ears came the sound of rushing water, the babbling of a fast flowing stream, not too far away.

  He grimaced again and eased the weapon in his grip before continuing his forward movement along the path. In spite of his big frame and his heavy build, the warrior moved quietly. His feet seemed to meet the earth so lightly that no twig snapped nor leaf rustled under their impact.

  He came upon the bank of the stream with an abruptness, moving from the darkness of the forest into an area of bright noonday light where the broader defile of a swift flowing mountain stream snaked its way through the tightly growing trees. The stream gushed and bubbled in its downward path over grey granite rocks, heading down the slopes of the mountain towards the valley below.

  The big warrior smiled, dropped to one knee and, swiftly moving his sword from right to left hand, placed his hand into the water. It was icy cold to his touch. His smile broadened and he looked carefully about him, transferring his weapon back to his sword hand again. Rising to his full height again, he began to move cautiously downstream.

  He had not gone many yards before he saw the figure.

  Seated with his back to him in the middle of that icy stream was a naked youth. The cold waters pounded against him, the white foam gushed over his pale skin and the youth’s long, silver-blond hair, which fell over his shoulders, sparkled with the droplets of its spray. The youth was seated alone in the middle of the surging current, crossed legs, hands resting loosely in his lap. His age could have been no more than a score of years.

  The giant warrior’s grim smile widened now and he carefully picked his way along the bank. Hardly a sound came from his stealthy movement. And if a sound were made, surely it would have been silenced by the surge of the mountain current?

  Yet, suddenly, the body of the youth, still with his back to the oncoming warrior, stiffened almost imperceptibly and then relaxed again.

  “I hear you, Mawr,” the youth called. His voice was strong, belying the fragility of his slight frame.

  The warrior halted and blinked. A slight look of annoyance crossed his features. He let out a soft exhalation of breath.

  “Then come out and defend yourself, Plentyn-Maeth,” he commanded.

  The youth rose from his sitting position in the cold waters which now came up to just above his knees. Slowly he turned to face the giant warrior.

  The youth’s body was white-skinned and not well-muscled. At first glance, it seemed frail-looking, but the sinews were stringy and disguised a toughness. It was a lean body, perhaps a little too thin. But it was not the body that attracted the attention so much as the hard, angular face of the youth. The features were not handsome but they were commanding. The long silver-blond hair was striking and enhanced the eyes which, initially, seemed deep blue but on a closer look were orbs of near sapphire without pupils. They flickered with a strange light. The mouth was thin, the lips unusually red, as if the effect were achieved by artificial means.

  It was clear that the youth was deathly cold from sitting in meditation in the icy current, yet he held his body easily and made no attempt to move his limbs to restore his stunted circulation.

  “Well, Mawr?”

  In spite of the fact that the youth had no weapon and was naked, the giant warrior fell into a fighting crouch, the tip of his sword started to describe wicked little circles in the air.

  With deliberate slowness of motion, the youth moved to the bank of the stream and emerged to stand a few feet away from the menacing warrior.
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  He stood still, no emotion showing on his features.

  Suddenly the warrior gave a roar, undoubtedly meant to freeze his prey, for surely the naked youth was no opponent, and rushed forward, his sword swinging.

  It was difficult to see what happened exactly. One second it seemed that the youth was about to be spitted on the end of the mighty blade of the warrior, the next the warrior was sprawling on the ground and the youth was standing staring down at him with folded arms. There was no expression on the angular face.

  The warrior leapt to his feet with a swiftness that belied his huge bulk.

  The sword swung again.

  The youth moved with a precipitance that no eye could follow. He rushed in under the sword arm, twisting slightly as his hands caught at the wrist of the giant. There was a rapid motion, and the warrior was sprawling on his back again, staring stupidly up at the youth.

  Again, with an alacrity that was scarcely credible for his bulk, the warrior was on his feet once more, roaring in battle fury and striking out left, right and centre.

  The naked youth responded to the strokes as if he were engaged in some awesome dance, playing with death itself. The grim dance ended with the great warrior sprawled against a tree, gasping for breath, for the youth had kicked out with both feet into the tall man’s solar plexus in a two-footed blow that sent the warrior flying.

  The youth stood, hands on hips, frowning down at the tall man.

  “Well, Mawr?” he asked laconically.

  The giant warrior shook his head as if to clear his confused thoughts. Then he lifted it back and gave a great roar. This time it was not a roar of battle anger but a great guffaw of laughter that set his giant frame quivering. He stabbed his sword into the ground and reached forward an outsized hand to the boy.

  “You have done well, Plentyn-Maeth! Now the pupil has become the master.”