by Mike Ashley
We stood aghast as Myrdhinn urged us to join the party.
“Come quickly! Tarry not! The mistake will soon be discovered. Let us get far from this evil place.”
“What is back there?” I gasped.
“Vivienne’s pet, the Avanc. The Worm of the Mere. We have cheated it and her as well. She is probably jealous that I have aided Arthur and she is surely enraged at the loss of Caliburn, which was due her by the terms of the loan.
“Listen, my good wife, and heed!” He called into the fog. “I hold Arthur’s sword, and shall now keep it. This to repay for my years of imprisonment in the Ring of Smoky Air.
“Run, for your lives, men, run!”
We ran, beside the trotting horse. For the first few minutes all was still; then the ground surged in waves beneath us like an angry sea. Once, twice, thrice it rolled and threw us from our feet. We picked ourselves up and ran blindly in the fog.
Then somewhere a crash, as though the ocean-sea was hurling itself violently upon the bloody shore, and a long silence, followed by a second mighty roar of waves now mercifully far away. Silence again.
In the fog, just outside our vision, a woman laughed. Long, low and inexpressibly evil! Musically lovely, but oh, so wicked!
Just a laugh, nothing more, but in it was hinted the knowledge of something that we could not then know or guess; something that we should and must know, but which was withheld from us.
We looked at Myrdhinn. He shook his head without speaking.
Something had been done by the Lady of the Lake, to repay insults, to avenge Lanceloc (said to be her kin) and to injure us all, but what it was we did not know.
We went our way again, deeper and deeper inland, on into the fog. And behind us, till we had gone so far we could not hear it, rippled that lovely musical laughter, chilling the blood in our veins.
III
There is no need, my Emperior, to weary you with dry details of all we said and thought and did during the next few days. It is not for that reason I am writing. Briefly, then: We marched for several nights, through hostile country, picking up stragglers as we went, and hiding until we numbered forty men and could march by day. Twice we fought wandering bands of Saxons as we pressed on westward toward Arthur’s homeland of Lyonesse, for he had often expressed a wish to be buried in his natal village of Avalon. But as we neared it, we met wild-eyed refugees, fleeing a more dire peril than the sea raiders – the sea itself! For, we learned, on the very eve of that fatal field of Camlan, the fertile and populous province of Lyonesse had sunk beneath the sea!
Yea, sixty villages and towns, each with its church and wealth and people, among them Arthur’s own Avalon, lay drowned and nothing remained to mark the spot but a few scattered hilltops, now islands in a sea of yellow muddy waters.
“Vivienne, think you?” I asked Myrdhinn.
He nodded without speaking, but his nine bards, in tones as solemn as a peal of drowned bells, answered, “Aye.”
We hurried on through a thick wood and came to a shallow place where the ebbing tide had filled the underbrush with mud, corpses, bodies of horses and cattle, fish with their bellies burst open by the underwater explosions which had accompanied the sinking of the land.
Myrdhinn leading to a goal he had decided upon, we followed: first, the nine bards; then myself and the charger which bore Arthur’s body, very yellow and unbreathing, though warm and flexible; then the legionaries, who accepted me as centurion, though only two were from my century, and most of the others were unknown to me.
We passed through the wood and arrived at a great hoar rock, almost a mountain, and up this we climbed and rested. For a long time we looked out over the drowned land murdered by sorcery and spite, watching the tide come in and cut us off from the mainland, while Myrdhinn sat apart, considering the future.
Then, on the ebbing of the tide, we returned to the wood and left the seer alone with the sleeper. We made camp beyond the deathly wood and waited – three days. During all that time a thick black cloud, neither fog nor smoke, hung about the summit of the mount, unmoving in the fiercest wind, and those among as with sharp ears claimed to hear mutterings in an unknown language issuing from the cloud. Likewise, it seemed, they heard various invisible hurrying creatures passing through the air above, speeding toward the mount, conversing as they came.
For myself, I heard none of this, and it was very likely but the stirring of volcanic activity still busy near the sunken province.
Finally Myrdhinn came to us, and the cloud disappeared as had Arthur and the glory and honor of his reign. Where he had been laid with Caliburn, his famed sword, fast in his grip, Myrdhinn would not say, except that he was in a secure spot not to be found by man until the time was come for the waking of him.
Be not concerned for Britain’s champion, oh my Emperor, for I have the sure word of Myrdhinn the wise that Arthur shall one day wake! There will be a mighty war in which all the tribes shall engage which possess the tiniest drop of British blood. Then Arthur will wake, make himself known and with Caliburn carry carnage into the lands of Britain’s enemies. And war shall be no more and peace shall reign forever over all of Earth!
This, Myrdhinn told us. He told us also that he had writ this in enduring letters of Cymric, Ogham and Latin, about the walls of Arthur’s abode, sealing the entrance thereto with a rock cunningly fixed and inscribed:
Here Arthur lies. King once and king to be.
Lest, Emperor (if Britain has by now been reclaimed by Roman legions), they should be tempted to search for and enter this secret place, be warned. Myrdhinn has set watchers there. Arthur cannot and must not be awakened before the appointed time. The watchers will see to that. They are not human, they will not sleep or rest, they do not eat or drink, tire or forget or die! They are there to keep the entrance inviolate. Be warned! They are dangerous and will wait as Myrdhinn commanded, till Arthur wakes, be it one or three thousands of years. I do not know, nor does it concern us. They are there, the Guardians – the Watchers!
The next morning, again we marched, following the coastline westward, and after some time we reached the very end of land, where beyond lay nothing but the boundless ocean. Here on the brink of a high raw cliff stood a monstrous boulder so cleverly poised that the touch of a hand might rock it, but many oxen could not pull it from its place, though bar and pry might dislodge it.
Myrdhinn drew from his robes a bronze plate already prepared and inscribed with an account of what we had done, instructions for entering Arthur’s chamber and a warning to the unwary.
Again we left him alone; again we saw the black cloud gather and from a distance saw a marvel hard to explain. The massive and ponderous boulder rose in air to the height of a tall man!
This work, which would have taxed the powers of a Titan, was done noiselessly and with apparent ease. Myrdhinn merely touched it, so far as we could judge, and it rose.
He stooped, put the plate beneath it, and the rocking stone descended upon it, holding it safe there until such time as Myrdhinn described, upon joining us:
“When the moment is come for Arthur’s awaking, the earth will shake, the rocking stone will topple down the cliff and Lyonesse will rise from the sea. Then, according to my vision, men will find my hidden words, will read, understand and obey. Then, when the drowned lands are fertile enough so that apple blossoms blow again in Avalon, in apple blossom time, men will enter his sleeping-chamber, waking him without fear of the watchers, and the era of peace on earth will begin.”
You, my Emperor, may think this fantastic, but had you heard the words of the ancient, you could not have doubted. It may occur to you that Myrdhinn was a sorcerer, and it is true that at times he did use sorcery, as will be shown, but he dreaded it mightily. His Christian beliefs warred with his Druidic learning and he had the feeling that he was risking hellfire by the use of Black Magic.
He was an heir to all the lost lore of the ancients, and much of his sorcery was marvelous tricks with quite natural exp
lanations, but the basic facts which made them possible were hidden from the rabble. The world is hoary with years and has forgotten much.
Now, our mission accomplished, we must needs look to our own welfare and so held a council to decide our future, and found that we were of several minds.
Some were for striking deep into the hills and gathering other fugitives about us until we were able to strike again for freedom. Sir Bedwyr proposed this plan and many agreed with him, but I disputed, it seeming wiser to take ship and sail across to Armorica, where we might find kinsmen who would see us on the road to Rome.
Here, I suggested, a punitive expedition might be sent as had been once before from Gaul. Surely, I argued, Britain was too valuable a part of the Empire to be lost – and then Myrdhinn ended the bickering.
“You, Sir Bedwyr, and you, Centurion, think of nothing but the regaining of Britain, but believe me when I tell you this is not possible. The Empire itself is dying; the seat of power is shifting eastward. Britain has been lost for a generation and its only hope of Romano-British domination died when treachery and intrigue brought us to Camlan field. Gaul is going down the same road and soon will be lost forever to Rome.
“Britain belongs now to the strongest and will be dismembered among them. It is for us to flee, not to Rome, whose power is waning, but to another land of which the ancients tell.
“Suppose, now, that there was a land, beyond the western ocean, so far away that it is unknown to the Jutes and Angles, the Saxons and the Norse – known to Rome long ago, but forgotten by all except scholars. Would it not be worth visiting, exploring, conquering perhaps, to furnish for us poor exiles a new home, a new domain into which Rome might send fleets and colonies should the barbarians press too hard? I am certain that there is such a land.
“Firstly, it is said that King Solomon of the Jews obtained precious metals from its mines, brought hence by the men of Tyre. Homer, of the Greeks, speaks of a westerly land beyond the seas, locating, as does Pliny, the Western Ethiopians in this land. Plato tells us of a sunken continent named Atlantis, but this is not the same, for Anaxagoras also tells of a great division of the world beyond this ocean, dry and unsubmerged.
“The historian Theopompus tells us of the Meropians and their continent beyond the western ocean, larger, he says, than all our known world, and Aristotle says that the Carthaginian explorers discovered and settled a part of the southern country, until their Senate decreed that no one should voyage thither, killing all the settlers, lest it no longer remain a secret; for the Carthaginians wished this country to be kept as a refuge for themselves if ever a disaster befell their republic, but lost their shipping in the Punic Wars.
“Statius Sebosius calls this land ‘the two Hesperides’ and tells us that forty-two days’ sailing will bring us there. Could you ask for better proof than all of this?”
“Ridiculous!” snorted Sir Bedwyr. “There is not a vessel in Britain that could be equipped for such a voyage! Far better to recruit, build up strength and have at the Saxons again.”
“You are forgetting the Prydwen. Arthur’s own dromon lies safe at Isca Silurum, if the Saxon dragon-ships have not raided and burned the city. If we find her whole, will you sail with us?”
“Not I,” quoth he, stoutly. “I live and die in Britain. What! Should I venture to sea in a ship so weighted down with metal that a puff of breeze might founder her? Let steel kill me, not tin!”
Here he spoke of a novelty, which the Cornish tin miners had conceived. They had sent great stores of this metal, without cost, to Arthur for embellishment of his ship, and the Imperator had sheathed the Prydwen with it, from stem to stern, above and below water, knowing it to be protection agains fireballs above and barnacles below. This made the Prydwen glitter so handsomely that many called her “The House of Glass.”
“Your fears are unfounded. I feel it in my prophetic soul, that I and all who sail with me shall see this land which may indeed prove to be the Isles of the Blest of which you have all heard at your mother’s knee. Why not? The wise geographer, Strabo, believed in it. Shall we consider him a romancer? It may indeed be that the Meropians have already sailed eastward and discovered Europe; for Cornelius Nepos, the eminent historian, says that when Q. Metellus Celer was proconsul in Gaul, certain peculiar strangers were sent to him as a gift from the King of the Batavi. They said that they had been driven from their own land, eastward over the oceans until they had landed on the coast of Belgica.
“This may have inspired Seneca, one hundred and thirteen years thereafter, to prophesy in his tragedy of Medea, as follows:
“‘In later years an age shall come, when the ocean shall relax its bonds, a great continent shall be laid open and new lands revealed. Then Thule shall not be the remotest land known on the earth.’
“Four hundred and fifty years have elapsed since that prediction. If we sail and discover, we cannot now call ourselves the first, because we shall but follow in the footsteps of others who have traveled in less stout vessels than ours.
“Fishers from Armorica, our own kinsfolk, have visited its northern fishing-grounds yearly, in their ridiculous craft, while Maeldune of Hibernia, with seventeen followers, less than a hundred years ago, was blown to sea in flimsy skin currachs, and claimed to have reached a large island where grew marvelous nuts with insides white as snow.
“So you see there are such lands and they can be reached! Moreover, in our own times, Brandon, the monk of Kerry, the same one who recently established the monastery at Clonfert, has been there not once only, but twice! He had no great warship, such as we, but a merchant vessel with strong hides nailed over it, pitched at the seams, and it took him and his people forty days (almost exactly as related by Statius Sebosius) to reach this mysterious country.
“Now who among you will come with me and call yourselves men?”
“There is nothing here for us but a choice between death or slavery and degradation. I say let us all go and find this paradise on earth, this land of Tir-nan-og, this country of Hy Bresail, these Fortunate and Blessed Isles!”
Thus I, carried away with enthusiasm.
Then, indeed, began much arguing pro and con, which in the end resolved itself into a division of our force. Many, fearing monsters of the deep, demons and other fantasies, elected to remain, and choosing Sir Bedwyr as their leader they marched off toward the wild mountains, and whether they died before they reached the safety of the hills or lived henceforward a life of skulking outlawry, I know not.
At a little port we bought skin currachs, and, hugging shore, passed through the muddy waters, left them for cleaner, and in the end we reached Isca Silurum, without seeing a Saxon sail. And mightily glad we were to see the glitter of the Prydwen’s sides and the golden glint of Isca’s guardian genius, high upon its pillar, for these things told us that we were sailing into a free and friendly province.
So we found it, a little section of free land, bounded by the four cities of Aquae Sulis, Corinium, Glevum and Gobannium – a little island of freedom in a barbarian sea, and we in its one safe port of Isca were loath to leave it for the dreaded Sea of Darkness.
Yet a month later we left it. One hundred fighting-men, besides a full complement of sailors, and thirty Saxons whose strong backs we thought would be useful when winds could not be found. These were prisoners doomed to execution, and we took them to make up a lack of rowers. Better for us if we had let them die by the ax!
So we turned our backs on Britain, never, any of us, to see it more.
MIDWINTER
DAVID SUTTON
The work of David Sutton (b. 1947) is better known to readers of horror and the supernatural rather than fantasy. He is probably best known as an editor, ever since the days of his amateur magazine Shadow in the late sixties, through his work on New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural to his work with Stephen Jones on Fantasy Tales and Dark Voices. He has been writing short fiction almost as long, some of which has been collected as Clinically Dead (2006
). Other stories include the Lovecraftian tale “Demoniacal” (Cthulhu #3, 1978) and the powerful story of ancient evil, “Those of Rhenea” (Skeleton Crew, November 1990). The following story brings us to the later legend of Merlin, long after the death of Arthur, in those dark days when the elder world has collapsed about him.
The winter was cold that year.
I had come to my place during autumn, when the trees were wreathed in a mist that brought to mind harrowing memories. Their branches dripped with sorrowful tears as if they were aware that some great disaster had befallen man. Only the apple trees in the grove were still joyous with fruit and I was able to feast in that sacred place, and lick my wounds.
I arrived with the furs of my raiment torn and stained with dried blood, and I likened myself to the living roedeer that is spiked with spears and struggles in its death throes. My ritual feathers were scalped, my headdress resembling an inexpertly plucked hen. Across my shoulder I clutched my leather satchel, but no longer was there left in it any of the apparatus of my profession.
But the cavern beyond the sacred grove on Hart Fell gave me shelter and the fruits and berries of the forest were my succour. And winter came . . .
The solstice night was marked by a blizzard that left a deep carpet of glistening snow throughout the spinney, and the pines on the mountain slopes bowed from the pressure of their fresh, thick white coats. The night should have been one for celebration. Ah, those past years, when I played to my audience with tricks and truths, and brought in the new season. There would be feasting and drinking; there would be the sacrifice and magic . . . Now no one visited the hallowed grove of apple trees and I spent that night at the mouth of my cave in sombre mood, transfixed as the crescent moon scooped away silver snow-clouds before it, as if it were a giant’s spoon. Although I shivered, I hoped someone would come this way and visit me. Anyone, with whom I might celebrate. They could sit at the fire which burned still within the cave and I would feed them the divine mushrooms and broth and tell them old stories. Even a Christian: yes I would welcome even a disciple of Gildas on that loneliest of nights. For I had not seen a living human soul since the eight month.