The Mammoth Book of Merlin

by Mike Ashley

  Clara turned her face to Lorn.

  “He told me he was happy – in his quest’s end,” she sighed.

  The young knight gazed at her with clear eyes.

  She sighed again.

  “But what of your quest?”

  He moved his right hand a little toward her; he found her left hand and clasped it.

  “I have forgotten what it was,” he answered.

  CAULDRON OF LIGHT

  DIANA L. PAXSON

  Diana L. Paxson (b. 1943) is a noted advocate of paganism worship and is a minister of the Fellowship of the Spiral Path. She also edits the journal Idunna for the Troth (www.thetroth.org), which promotes an understanding of the Germanic polytheistic religion of Asatru. She has written many novels that draw upon Celtic and other folk roots such as her Westria series, which began with Lady of Light (1982). Her Hallowed Isle series, which began with The Book of the Sword (1999), retells the Arthurian story. When Marion Zimmer Bradley wished to continue her Avalon series she recruited Paxson to work with her on Priestess of Avalon (2001) and Ancestors of Avalon (2004).

  Light glittered on the water, starry flashes reflecting a shifting glimmer across rock and tree and the face of the man who stood knee-deep in the pool. He blinked once, then stilled, allowing awareness to sink past that shimmering surface, seeking the silver flicker of the fish that drifted, suspended between earth and air, curving with the current of the stream.

  He had been a fish once, a great salmon, returning home from the sea. He knew the myriad subtle messages of taste and touch and pressure, more meaningful to him now than the ways of courts and kings. His mind became that of the salmon once more, while his hands, forgotten, drifted against the current like water-weed.

  The trout grew still, attention focused on the ceiling of light. The mind of the man floated with it, perceived the ripple as a fly touched the surface. Silver sides flexed; hands flickered, scooping the trout out of its element. It wriggled furiously, protesting the impossible emptiness of the world.

  Merlin straightened, his mind snapping free as the trout gasped out its life on the grass. He watched in unwilling sympathy – most of his life he had been out of his element, but Arthur, whom he had counselled and defended, was grown now, and a king. The mage was become a stranger to Camelot, his rightful home the wildwood, where he could be both more, and less, than a man.

  He winced as back muscles began to complain against the unnatural angle he had forced them to maintain, and stretched, long arms, pelted with hair whose brown was grizzled now to grey, reaching for the sky. When he was a child, he thought ruefully, he could do this all afternoon. Where once he had been as flexible as a sapling, he was aging like an old tree. How old, he wondered? An oak could live until felled by disease or lightning or the hand of man, growing larger and stronger with each year. He had fortunately ceased to grow when he was a half a head taller than most men, and hair and beard had silvered. But he was still strong.

  Merlin looked at the trout, whose colours were dulling already. One small fish was not much of a meal. The day before had been stormy, and he had huddled in his cave, fasting. He wondered if he could manage another fish, and bent once more to the stream.

  Wind gusted suddenly, whispering in the trees, lifting the sheltering branches so that light flared blindingly from the surface of the pool. He swayed, all other awareness fleeing as his mind filled with light. The whisper of wind became a woman’s voice that pierced the soul—

  “Merlin! The Grail is gone! Merlin, help me!’’

  The wind passed; the branches, subsiding, veiled his sight. The vision released him then, and he collapsed gently into the pool.

  The shock of the cold water brought Merlin upright, gasping. On her holy isle, the Lady of the Lake guarded the sacred Cauldron which was also called the Grail. He could not believe anyone had breached its wardings, but the Hallows sometimes moved of their own will. When they did so, kingdoms could fall.

  He clambered out of the pool, shaking himself like a wet dog. First, he needed food, and then he would be on his way. Skewering the trout on a piece of green wood, he began to kindle a fire.

  As Merlin moved south, he heard rumours. They spread across the land like a river in floodtime, murky with silt and choked with debris. Neither the Lady nor the Grail were at the Lake, cupped by its northern mountains. The only certainty was that the Hallow had appeared at Camelot, and now it was gone. Half of Arthur’s war band, it was said, had ridden out to search for it.

  What brave men might accomplish, they would do. It seemed to Merlin that he would accomplish little by running after them. Better to be still, and wait for wisdom like a fisherman at a weir. In time, he heard that the Cauldron had mysteriously returned to the Isle of Maidens. But men still sought the Grail. To Merlin, its true nature was now an even greater mystery.

  As summer faded into fall, he settled finally in the woods near the ruined fortress of Mediolanum, where the road that angled across southern Britannia toward Londinium met the longer tracks that linked the north with the south and west. There he built himself a little hut of branches and heaped stones. Less visible, but stronger, was the net of power that he laid across the roads to catch the fragments of truth and the men who bore them.

  On an autumn afternoon Merlin heard a horse approaching. The hoofbeats stopped outside his hut, and someone called for water. He emerged from the hut, head bowed and body hidden by the voluminous white wool of a Druid’s robe, a wooden bowl brimming in his hands.

  “Holy father, I thank you, in Christ’s name—”

  Merlin repressed a smile, understanding that the boy had taken him for one of those hermits who sought the wilderness, finding even a monastery too worldly for their needs. No doubt he had joined Arthur’s band since the last time Merlin visited the king.

  “In the name of the god you serve, you are welcome,” he answered gravely. “You look weary. Alight, and share my simple meal, and tell me of your journey.”

  “I suppose it is no sin to accept the hospitality of a holy man,” the boy said, frowning. “My name is Amminius son of Lucius, a warrior of Arthur’s Companions, and indeed I am in need of counsel.”

  “Then you are welcome,” Merlin answered him.

  “It is not a journey, but a quest that I am on,” said Amminius when he had slaked his thirst and they were seated by the hearth. “Perhaps you will have heard?”

  Merlin nodded, and put another stick on the fire. “There have been many rumours. What did you see?”

  “It was the night of the great storm—” the young man began. “All the folk in Camelot were gathered in the great hall, listening to the timbers groan and the wind whistle through the thatching, and praying to whatever gods they knew. It was close to midnight when the doors were flung open. A woman screamed – we all thought our last hour had come. And then there was a great light, and a stillness, as if we lay in the eye of the storm. The light moved through the hall, and before each one, it paused . . .” He lifted the beaker to his lips and drank.

  “And what was it?” asked Merlin then.

  “In truth, I do not know,” Amminius replied. “I know what I saw and heard, but I have spoken to others, whose experience was quite different. To me,” he continued, “it was a chalice, such as the priest uses at the mass. But this one was far richer, and it shone. And there was a Voice that spoke to me,” he added, but he did not tell what it had said.

  Merlin did not expect it. His own visions had taught him how difficult it was to convey their real meaning in human words.

  “I think it was the Cup of Christ’s passion that I saw, but on the next day word came that the Cauldron they keep at the Isle of Maidens had been stolen. So I do not know now what it is I am searching for, or why—”

  “Do you not? When you spoke, the memory of what you saw shone in your eyes. To deny that truth is to deny yourself!”

  Amminius shook his head. “I was brought up in the faith, but I have never been devout. I always mea
nt to be a warrior . . .”

  “And now—”

  “Now my only desire is to see that vision again! But I know that once I am back at court I will forget, and so I wander—”

  “You are not searching for the Grail, you are fleeing the world.” Merlin searched his memory for the teachings of the priests he had heard at the court of Vor-Tigernus when he was young. “If you follow this path you will remain in limbo, able to attain neither heaven nor hell.”

  “But what must I do?”

  Merlin shook his head. He could preach Christian doctrine, but he refused to take responsibility for this boy’s soul. “You must choose . . .”

  For a long moment Amminius sat with head bowed. When he looked up at last, the memory of glory shone in his eyes.

  “Oh, good father, thank you!” His voice rang out joyously. “In the hills above my home there is a cave. I will go there, and live on berries and roots and the water from the stream. And perhaps, if I purify my heart and wait patiently, the Grail will come to me . . .”

  Merlin stared at him in amazement. “Do not thank me, but the god within you—” he said at last. He has found his Grail, he thought, though he may not yet realize it. But if it is the Chalice of the Christians, what then is the Cauldron?

  On the heels of a winter storm another traveller found his way to Merlin’s door. This one was older, a dour, heavyset man called Cunobelin, who had served with Arthur since the Saxon wars. In the old days, the mage had known him well. The mage came upon him as he led a limping horse down the road.

  “What are you doing here?” he said as Merlin moved out from among the leafless trees. Cunobelin had never been one of those who made the sign of the Horns if they touched the mage’s shadow, nor did he follow the Christians. Indeed, Merlin doubted the man had faith in anything at all.

  “Waiting for you—” he answered. “Or someone like you. I have a shelter nearby. Come rest your horse and eat a bowl of soup by my fire.”

  For a moment Cunobelin considered him, then he nodded. “A friendly face and a little warmth will be welcome. This wind blows chill.”

  Merlin waited until the man had eaten before he questioned him about the Grail.

  “What did I see?” Cunobelin laughed harshly. “A bright light that moved through the hall. So in truth I do not know what we are all seeking, but it is clear that I am not the one to find it. I am returning now to Camelot.”

  “You speak as one who has failed—”

  “Is it not so?” Cunobelin asked bitterly.

  “Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong place.”

  “What do you mean?” The warrior frowned.

  “I think that you are one who must be able to see the object of his adoration. It is in this world, not the Other, that you will find what you are looking for.”

  “The sun and the moon are still in the heavens, as anyone can see, but no one has suggested we search for them!’’

  Merlin shook his head. “Surely the heavens hold wonders, but they do not make your spirit soar. Think back. Is there anything else that has made you feel as you did in the moment when the light passed through the hall? A person, an experience – in the Otherworld, things do not have to be alike to be the same.”

  “A person?” whispered Cunobelin. He closed his eyes. “Nothing that anyone else would think worth remembering . . .” For a time he was silent. When he spoke again, it was as one in a dream.

  “I was very young when I first came to Londinium to serve the king. The lads wormed out of me that I’d never lain with a woman, and they took me to a courtesan. I was ashamed of my ignorance, but she . . . was kind to me. And when she received me into her arms, it was like a great light breaking around me . . .” He shook his head and looked up, an unaccustomed colour in his cheeks. “But surely to remember that is blasphemy, when everyone is talking of a holy thing!”

  “For you, her embrace was holy,” said Merlin. “Why have you never married? You deny your nature.”

  “What could I offer a wife, when I was always going off to war? But I’ve dreamed of finding a woman who would come with me to one of those abandoned farms I’ve seen in my travels and make it bloom again.” He stopped short, staring at Merlin. “Have you bespelled me? I have never told anyone these things!”

  “I have cast no spells,” the mage said softly. “I only point the way—”

  Cunobelin was never seen at Arthur’s court again. All that winter season, other men came to Merlin’s hut in the forest, eager or disillusioned, proud in their strength or feverish with wounds. The weak he nursed and the strong he counselled, and from each one he learned something of the Hallow they were all seeking.

  He had heard once an ancient tale of the blind men who were asked to describe an elephant, their reports all different, and all accurate descriptions of the part of the beast each man had found. On the Isle of Maidens, the priestesses guarded a Cauldron. He had seen it, and knew it for a thing of power. But was that the Grail, or only one appearance of something whose true nature could only be known by combining the myriad visions of those to whom it called?

  Merlin’s last visitor came riding by on a day when spring had drawn her first veil of greenery across the land and the skies were clamorous with returning waterfowl, borne north on the warm breath of the wind. Merlin had thrown off the heavy Druid’s robe and donned his garment of skins. The hut where he had spent the winter seemed cramped and odorous, as tattered as the winter pelts the beasts were shedding to make way for the new growth of spring. His muscles twitched with the urge to action, yet still he tarried. When he met the young warrior’s dazzled gaze, he understood what he had been waiting for.

  “Eliuc—” Softly he called his name, waiting for the wide eyes to track slowly downward, for recognition to focus there.

  “It is you . . .” the boy said at last. “I sought you . . . because you might understand . . .”

  “Why? Who do you think I am?”

  “You are the Wild Man of the Woods, yourself half of faerie,” the answer came.

  Merlin grunted. This boy was too young to recognize him, but in a way, his words were true.

  “Were you not one of those who rode out to seek the Grail? Your face seems to say that you have found it—” he said when the horse had been unsaddled and tethered to graze.

  Eliuc sank down on an outcropping of stone. “I found . . . something. It haunts my dreams.” His skin was luminous in the dappled shade of the young leaves.

  “Tell me—”

  Haltingly, the story came – the privations of a quest pursued through winter weather until despair was near. Eliuc had taken refuge at last with a shepherd, earning his keep by guarding the ewes as they dropped their lambs and keeping off the wolves. When the weather warmed, he set off again, letting the horse choose the way.

  One night, he had made camp beside a small spring. He woke to the touch of moonlight that glimmered through the branches and reflected from the pool in a haze of light. He sat up, staring, for in that light a figure was forming, slender, luminous, beautiful beyond mortal ken.

  “She smiled at me . . . she held out a vessel of pure silver, rimmed with river pearls, and I took it from her hand. It was brimming with what looked like water, but the taste of it overwhelmed my senses. I was lost, to myself, to the world, overcome by joy.”

  “And then?” asked Merlin, seeing him begin to drown once more in that rapture.

  “Then it was morning, and I was alone.” The desolation in Eliuc’s tone made the mage’s eyes prick in sympathy. “For a week I waited, but she did not come again. Since then I have wandered. Food has no savour, even my dreams are pale echoes of what I have seen. Was it in truth the Grail that I found?”

  “For you it was,” Merlin said gravely. “You have tasted the wine of the Otherworld. Be grateful for what you have seen, and do not seek to recapture it.”

  “That is cold comfort! How can I live in a world from which the magic is gone?”

  “There
are many kinds of magic—” Merlin began, but Eliuc shook his head.

  “I will go back to the spring. Perhaps if I am patient, one day she will open the door to me once more!” He leapt to his feet, eyes once more afire with remembered glory, and before the mage could speak again, had run to his horse and was gone.

  Arthur will not thank me for this day’s work, Merlin thought sadly. The king’s men had sought the Grail to bring healing to the kingdom, but too many, one way or another, had been lost to king and kin. To each of them, it brought the fulfilment most desired – for one, the Christos, for another, a woman’s body, and the ecstasy of the Otherworld for a third.

  It was time for the hermit to leave the forest. The lure had become too strong – the Grail had appeared to him, if only through other men’s eyes, and he had now no choice but to search for it.

  What face, he wondered, will the Grail wear for me?

  Merlin’s way led toward the Lake and the Isle of Maidens. The Grail, it was clear, was not the same as the Cauldron, and yet by taking the Cauldron into the lands of mortal men, a way had been opened for the Grail to appear, establishing a connection between the Hallow and the men who sought it. For all his wizardry, he could take no path but the one the Hallow had already chosen.

  He came in the evening, as the light of the setting sun, reflected from the heavens, was filling the Lake with gold.

  Merlin had known the Lady since they both were young, and insofar as it was given to him to feel for a mortal woman, loved her. There had always been respect between them, but she faced him with hostility now.

  “By blood you are priest of the Sword, and the god of the Saxons has given you his spear. By what right do you claim access to the Cauldron? It is a Woman’s Mystery!”

  “A woman bears the Grail, but it calls to men and women alike. Arthur is the Defender of Britannia, but I am his mage. When magic touches the land, it is my responsibility, and my right, to understand it. And it is your duty as Guardian of one of the Hallows to assist me.”