by Mike Ashley
By dawn my limbs were ready to crack and my beard was stiff with freezing air. Behind me the fire had died and I too wished to allow myself that luxury. If I sat a little while longer and allowed sleep to overcome me, I might become my spirit self. Then I should fly, fly as the peregrine with its keen eye. Soar as the gull on broad motionless wings, buoyed by currents of air. Streak as the swift and journey to a far country where death might at last claim my soul. Instead an eternity of sour memories left me distraught and wide awake.
As I pondered upon my desires, I became aware of movement among the fruit trees and my mood was disturbed. Ye t there was no lumbering human form about to greet me.
Unexpectedly, a stag came and gazed quietly upon me, motionless except for the cloudy tempest from his nostrils. He was a giant, his brown fur shaggy in winter cloak, his antlers convoluted and rearing above the tallest frozen branches of the apple trees. Presently, he passed by. When the wolf followed the stag and gleamed his yellow eye upon me, without fear, yet without malice, I knew not to disregard the omen. He was so large a wolf I thought I might have fitted into his belly with little discomfort. But if he was hungry, it was not for human meat, and the wolf went about his business.
The strange behaviour of the two lords of the forest galvanized me into standing up so that I could warm my limbs with activity, and presently I set off to collect wood to re-light the fire.
The foot-worn track, leading from the glade down the slope of the mountain, was invisible beneath the snow. I was forced to use trees to mark my way, and eventually came to the naked bluff which overlooks the pass between the high peak of Hart Fell and its distant cousin. A hundred feet below me a stream cascaded, deep cut into the rock and overhung with icicles. Beside it a path mimicked its course, but hidden beneath snowdrifts. Further down the pass, in more clement weather, could be seen where the track diverged, one fork leading up here, to the sacred grove.
I stood for a moment and gazed gloomily across the ravine to the distant snow peak. The wind was sharp, carrying with it tiny ice crystals that stung my face. Ice sculpted one massive slope and drew the eye down along its grandeur. And my eye was thus caught by movement deep in the valley.
Seeming no larger than a blackbird at the distance, its clothes flapping as though the bird was injured, someone was laboriously struggling up the valley. He bore a staff with which he prodded the snow before attempting to take a step into what might be a deep crevasse. A wise precaution, even though I knew the route was safe.
I watched for a considerable time as the wanderer strove up the valley towards the higher slopes. I wondered where he was heading with such determination. Stopping for a while, he lay on his stomach before the stream and reached out his hands to cup a drink of water. He took several. The weather was bitingly cold, but the man must have been thirsty with so difficult a task manoeuvring himself through the drifts. My thoughts were on the whole quite idle and so it was a great surprise when I saw the traveller veer away from the stream, which gave him at least guidance, and head up the incline which led to the apple grove. Within minutes he was hidden among trees, but I did not doubt his intention. Unless he were mad and had wandered off the path through the blinding effect of the snow, the man was intending to come this way.
The traveller must know of the hallowed glade of the apples in the mountains of Caledonia.
Realizing I had held my breath in astonishment, I exhaled a cloud of mist, which turned to minute droplets in the wind and was carried off. Hastily I moved away from the crag and began to scour for dead branches. In a while I had a bundle of wood, which I tied together with some strips of leather I had brought with me. I then returned to the cave, staggering under the weight of my burden.
Although in my misery I had allowed my fire to dwindle, I found that there remained an ember, bright under charred timbers. With the few dry twigs that remained I coaxed a flame and hunched shadows of myself were cast familiarly about the walls of the cave. I unstrapped the bundle of wood, and selecting the least sodden pieces, I placed these close to the fire to dry. I busied myself and felt curiously nervous at the thought of welcoming a visitor into my lonely existence.
As I tidied my living quarters and immersed myself in commonplace thoughts, the traveller approached unnoticed. Only when his shadow momentarily screened off half the daylight from the cleft of the cave’s narrow opening did I realize he had entered.
I turned.
The being before me was dressed from head to foot in rags. No warming furs covered shoulders or legs or feet. And his head was completely hooded from the weather with simple cloth, its weave impossible to have held at bay the ravening wind.
I shivered in horror for the dreadful torment this traveller must have suffered.
And my visitor shivered too. He was short in stature, though not as diminutive as I, and meagre of bone and muscle. Without a word he dropped to his knees before the fire, which now crackled cheerfully. The traveller stretched out his hands, which were small and quite white with the cold. A skin of ice, which had been welded by the tempest to one side of his garments, now began to fall away and melt on the floor.
I stepped towards the fire, so that the frozen being might see me better, thinking that perhaps he was unaware that I was, at that time, in residence.
“Welcome, stranger.” When I spoke, I found my voice hoarse and high of pitch, so long was it since I had uttered a word to any living soul. “Welcome,” I repeated, coughing first to clear my throat.
Without speaking, and with one trembling hand, the frozen traveller slowly slid back the soiled hood covering its face; and for the second time that morning I was astonished.
For my uninvited guest was a young woman.
After an hour she wordlessly accepted and drank some of the broth I had heated above the fire. I sat opposite to her and watched her through the flames as she shuddered and shivered away the last lingering chill that must have penetrated to her very soul. Her hunched shoulders visibly relaxed, as did her bent back. Her bone-white fingers clutching the soup bowl regained some of their natural flexibility. I saw all this, but it was her face to which my attention returned. She was noble of feature, with clear, pale skin; beneath heavy eyebrows, large, dark eyes gleamed despondently. Her cheekbones were high and her nose wide, as were her lips. She had her long black hair tied at the back.
She spoke at last, and her voice was pleasing to my ear.
“I am Olwyn,” she told me. “And you?”
I hesitated. Though months had elapsed since the awful day, whose events I strove to forget, I paused to give my true name. The guilty are rarely fogotten.
“Lleu,” I said, lying. And eager to know the reason for her travail to this neglected region, I continued, “You have obviously tormented yourself to the point of death reaching this place! To make such a pilgrimage in this weather . . .?”
“Were you at the battle of Arderydd?” she asked, ignoring my comments.
Her question stung me more than she could know, but of course I kept my emotions concealed.
“Why do you ask? It was many months ago and most would rather forget . . .”
“Tell me,” she demanded. Her eyes became fierce with an inner light, but it was not an anger she aimed in my direction.
“Yes. I was,” I confessed.
“They say,” Olwyn continued, “That king Gwenddolau was a fool to trust the shaman in his dotage.”
My heart shook with grief and horror at her words. My king, my patron, had been slain at Arderydd, by his Christianized foe, King Rhydderch. Even so, Gwenddolau’s blood was on my hands.
“You seem to have much knowledge of the defeat of Gwenddolau,” I said, struggling to maintain a voice measured and without sentiment. “Were you a fighter?”
“No.” She spat into the fire and there was a sizzling explosion behind her next words. “My husband was.”
I guessed the rest. “He was slain too,” I said, thinking that perhaps only now had she succumbed to t
he need to sojourn to a sacred place, where she might mourn his passing.
“In my arms he died. He lived to tell the battle’s tale, lived close to death for three months. Yet he rallied and seemed to recover a little from his wounds, and I rejoiced. But after our love was consummated anew, he faded . . . and never awoke to express his love again. Barely a month has passed since.”
“I lament for you in your distress. But it is right that you speak of your husband. I can see that you have remained silent for too long. There will be solace in talking about him.” Carefully, I then asked her, “What else did he tell you of Arderydd?”
Olwyn sat for a while, her eyes roving the fire, yellow miniatures of the flames reflected in those melancholy orbs. Wiping the dirty sleeve of her ragged coat across her eyes, to stem the first wellspring of tears, she made to speak, but stopped herself.
She was dwelling upon her husband, but try as I might to deflect my own thoughts to that subject, instead the sound of battle clamoured through my brain. The field of Arderydd, soaked in blood; Liddel Water running with blood; Gwenddolau’s fortress hard by . . . splattered with blood . . .
After a while, she said, “They say he was a giant. But ancient.”
I knew of whom she spoke. Her mind nagged at the failure of the shaman as her tongue might continually prod the iron-taste cavity of a pulled tooth. She wanted reasons, answers, redress.
“Myrddin?” I asked in a voice as innocent as I could muster.
“The same. Seven feet tall, eight maybe. My husband said—”
“Did he see him?” I interrupted, and hoped the speed with which I did so would not arouse in her any suspicion. In any event, it was clear her husband had not clapped eyes on Gwenddolau’s shaman. Unless legend had fooled him into shortsightedness!
“My husband said he was a giant. That he carried sorcery like a cloak about him, but he was very old. At the end, how bitter was my man for the faith he placed in him!”
“Yes, he was elderly,” I conceded. “Many centuries. And actually wise for it.”
“Those long years weakened him.” Her voice was waspish, yet she spoke with assurance, as if she knew her words captured the truth. And I was stabbed to the heart with how perceptive indeed they were.
“Perhaps it was not Myrddin’s great age that sapped him of his powers. Perhaps it was the Romans and their priests . . . The new faith has made us all weak. Hadrian may have built his wall to protect his empire from the thirteen kings of the north, but still the Christians ventured beyond it, and their miasma has swept aside many of our kind.”
Olwyn replied bitterly, “There were heroic stories, of Myrddin. How could a few Christians defeat the one who raised the stones and made them fly? And who nurtured King Arthur to greatness?”
“Those accomplishments were many years ago,” I responded angrily. She could not have guessed why, though perhaps she wondered at the harshness of my response.
“What of Myrddin? You seek him too, eh? Else why are you here, living a hermit’s life? This was his place, you know it!”
The conversation had moved on. “Do you then seek him also?” I asked.
“To . . . to kill . . . perhaps.”
Ah, she wished to avenge her husband. How her anguish stained me. The battle of Arderydd had been fought on the pinnacle of my confident predictions, on the promise of the gathering of a spiritual host who, emerging from a supernatural vapour I raised, would take Gwenddolau’s forces through to Rhydderch’s mere human host . . . and defeat them. But the Celtic spirits failed to materialize and the bodies on the field of Arderydd were those of the army that marched with Gwenddolau. I saw again, in my mind’s eye, as the sounds of the dying lay hidden by the fog, the hill behind the fortress rise out of the mist at day’s end. The setting sun gleamed on the row of stakes and human skulls I had raised there. And those death’s heads glowered down with a vengeful and bloody light upon Arderydd.
And of the druid Myrddin? Should I tell her that I went mad that day? Did she need to know that I had slunk from the field in dishonour? Wounded I might have been, exhausted and scarred from innumerable fights with the enemy, but in disgrace and raving.
“To kill?” My response was sheathed in a haze of self-loathing which, before my eyes, became a wall of congealing blood. “Myrddin is already dead!” Oh how the agony of that desire drove my sad reminiscences to their height.
“Dead? How do you know, old man?”
Reply I could not, without admitting the grossness of my deception. Yet, to me, it was a falsehood of little measure, for in myself I was surely without life. And if Olwyn murdered me, what satisfaction could she gain for her husband? The satisfaction would, indeed, be all mine.
“His spirit . . . died in the battle.”
“You play with words, Lleu,” she replied. “Are you Myrddin’s servant? Why else are you here, in his cave, if not to await the return of the shaman?”
My voice was lost. I stared at the embers of the fire and the glowing timbers mesmerized me as I sunk deeper and deeper in despair.
“Old fool!’’ Olwyn jumped up, turned on her heel and stormed out of the cave.
I stared at the place where she had sat and realized there were her shoes, which she had removed in order to dry them. A wisp of steam drifted from the sodden fabric as I stood up to follow her.
I found Olwyn on the crag which watched over the valley, her bare feet buried in the snow. Her arms were hugged around her and the wind was visibly bending her towards the cliff’s edge. Lunging through the snow I came within spitting distance of the strong-willed woman.
Turning to face me, she said, “You! I should have realized at once. You are Myrddin!’’
I watched as her voice fought against the growing tempest. “I cannot kill you now, though my heart aches for revenge. You are too wretched a creature. You are ugly and a dwarf. My husband must have been bewitched.”
And all the rest of those brave fighters too, I added to myself.
Did I see into her mind, or did I guess, that Olwyn, having failed to find the courage to murder me, intended to cast herself from the bluff? She shuffled her feet forwards and the slope of loose snow began to carry her towards the precipice. Her arms spiralled, but not to save herself. Instead they tried to propel her the faster, to bring this day to an end for her forever.
I lunged forwards but stumbled into the snow. As a flurry of snow billowed before my eyes, Olwyn tilted out of sight.
Impotently I raged against the stag and the wolf who had presaged these events. And I called to book the spirits of the dead who had failed to ignite Gwenddolau’s men in battle fury, cursing them for deserting their charges. And thereby causing yet one more death this day.
After lying in the snow for a short time I lifted myself up, and followed the footprints of Olwyn to the edge of the crag. Peering down through the howling tempest I saw the stag that had earlier visited me. He was nimbly climbing a narrow ledge of rock that had been laid bare by the wind. Lying across his back, and clinging on with the determination of one who has recently seen death face-to-face, was Olwyn.
The stag reached the top of the bluff and as Olwyn slipped from his hide, he trotted off into the trees. Quickly, but with some difficulty, I carried the half-conscious woman to the cave. As I approached, a wolf – I have no doubt it was the same as I had before seen – came out of the entrance and sloped away.
Once inside and by the fire, I saw the blood and the still warm body of the hare the wolf had left us. That night I roasted it and the hot meat helped revive Olwyn.
“You saved my life,” she cried with humility.
Not I, I thought.
“You are truly Lord of the Wild Hunt, Myrddin. If he had seen what happened this day, my husband would surely agree!”
It had been so many years. So many and I had forgotten that the animals of the forest are sometimes bid by my unconscious desires. I knew then that the magic was returned to me.
I gazed upon the woman, cons
cious of a wonderful certainty beyond her afflicted features. And I knew that the magic of prophecy was also restored to me as a luminous revelation made my eyes bright with tears of joy. The wolf and the stag were an omen of death, my death, not long hence, but my soul was to be recast nevertheless. And my next utterance was bold with the foreknowledge, and with unrestrained euphoria.
“Eat well and gain strength, Olwyn,” I said. “For you are pregnant with your husband’s child.”
THE DEATH OF NIMUë
ESTHER FRIESNER
Esther Friesner (b. 1951) is known for her humorous novels, which include the Demon series, Here Be Demons (1988), Demon Blues (1989) and Hooray for Hellywood (1990), and a wonderful Victorian romp, Druid’s Blood (1988). Here, though, she gives a more serious and poignant treatment to the final denouement of the relationship between Merlin and Nimuë.
“Are we there yet, child?” asked the old woman. Her eyes, once blue and bottomless as the waters of the holy lake, were filmed with age. She rested her ringless hand on her guide’s slim shoulder, feeling with satisfaction the thick silk of the younger woman’s cloak. By my power, she said inwardly. Mine.
“I think so, Mother,” came the reply. She was small, the old woman’s daughter, but straight as a poplar, her pearly face framed in a tangle of blue-black curls. Her mother named her Raven; the last-born, the best-loved. “You said it was an oak?”
“An oak, aye. You would not mistake it, once having seen it. Here, take my eyes, child.”
The old woman laid her hands across her sightless eyes, then groped for her daughter’s face. Obediently the girl tilted back her head to receive her mother’s soft finger tips across her eyelids. The old woman felt the thick lashes kiss her hands like frightened butterflies. Sunlight fell greet through the arched branches. The forest was heavy with summer, thick with the earth-smells, the old, familiar calls from root and fruit and flower. Under the moss, hidden in the shadows of a vixen’s cub-filled lair, half-dreaming in the murmur of a running stream, the voices sang. Come away Oh, come away But the old woman would not listen and the young one could not hear.