But the wind began to whip through the rasping chapel door. A small animal pawed through the crack and jumped onto an unsteady bench several feet in front of Merlin.
The creature began to purr.
Soon the cat fell silent, but Merlin felt it watching him. He held his staff between himself and the black shadow where the cat wisped its tail. He kept praying, but it was hard to keep his mind on the words.
More cats arrived. One by one, they crept hush-clawed into the chapel until Merlin was surrounded by a coven of silent felines. Some on benches, some on the floor, and some on the table near the far wall.
Fear crawled into his heart, but he kept praying for his father despite the unnerving presence of the abbey’s sudden guests.
They hissed. Then they began to yowl, and the din of it unnerved Merlin. If the cats attacked, what would he do? He wanted to make a mad dash for the door and slam it closed behind him. That would leave the animals locked inside with … with … Prontwon’s body! The desire to defend the poor abbot and the desire to flee overwhelmed him. His stomach began to burn.
“God,” he called amid the angry spitting of the cats. “Protect me now. Protect your servant.” Even as the words died on his lips, a melody came to him, an old song Prontwon had written based upon a psalm.
Merlin hadn’t tried to memorize it, but the monks had sung it many times. He slid his harp from its bag, and with shaky hands plucked out the melody. His voice rose above the vehemence of the cats.
Yet their hissing grew louder, and their paws crept closer.
Merlin imagined their angry claws digging into his flesh. He drew his harp tighter against his body and continued to play the notes. Flaming his courage with a spark of love for his father, he sang the song with a wavering voice.
A cat landed on each side of his bench, and Merlin flinched. They let forth a terrible screech so that he almost fled — only his commitment to the abbot kept him firm. His heart pounded as they scratched at the wood and splintered its surface like an old bone dug up from a grave.
Owain lay on the grass, rigid and unable to move. Two druidow grabbed his wrists and stretched his arms above his head. They pulled him onto his back and slowly dragged his heavy frame across the grass.
One of the druidow swore. “Why do we get all the lugging jobs? ‘Take him to the Stone,’ the arch druid says, and so we do, but why pick someone as thick-limbed as this lout?”
Owain’s head slung backward, and he saw their heels kick, kick, kick. Finally a heel bashed him in the nose. The blood ran down his cheek and onto his ear. He blinked and through the haze saw the Druid Stone draw closer as they heaved his body forward.
Strangely, Owain felt relief that his struggle would soon be over. Twice before in his life he’d felt this way. The first time he was very young — the day after Whitsuntide when his family had been visiting relatives who lived in a crennig built out on a lake for the natural defense it offered. That day, while playing on the house’s ledge, he’d tripped and sunk into the cold water. He had flailed and kicked, sure, but nothing brought him up to air. He gave up the struggle then too … but why couldn’t he recall the rest of the story anymore?
The druidow dragged him closer to the Stone, and, upside down, he saw another man kneeling with his hands on it. Brioc. Upon his head sat his tricornered leather hat.
As if reacting to Owain’s presence, the Stone raged forth bright blue fire. Brioc yanked his hands away from the Stone and held them before his face.
Owain smelled burning flesh. He closed his eyes and wished his ears were covered too, as Brioc shrieked and ran away.
The druidow dropped Owain’s leaden arms onto the grass. “Get a gander at the Stone,” one said. “Mórganthu’s right that a man should never anger it!”
“Stop gawkin’, fool, and roll this ‘un over. We’ve orders to lay his hands on the Stone.”
Merlin’s jaw trembled as the cats scratched closer, their shrieks so near that his arms felt the spit from their fangs.
But a memory flickered like a candle, brighter than his fear. It was his mother, visiting him where he lay in bed crying from his father’s chastisement. Her oval face bent down to him, framed by her wavy red hair. She smiled and placed her warm hands on his cheeks. He could smell the sweetness of heather on her clothes.
“Merlin, sweet bairn, do ya ken how much Father loves ya? Gruff like a bear he is, but don’t shut yer heart to him. He needs ya! And he desperately loves ya. Always love him.”
Her face faded like a phantom, and in her memory he sang out the last verse of the abbot’s hymn with all his strength. When the song was finished, Merlin called out before the evil assembly of felines, “Begone! In the name of the Lord God of Hosts. In the name of Jesu the Messiah. In the name of the Sanctifying Spirit. Leave this place!” He set down his harp and picked up his staff. Gripping it in the middle, he jerked it left and right to knock the cats off the bench.
But nothing was there.
The howling and manifest switching of their tails faded, and the room became silent. The cats had vanished. The sun shone again through the hole in the ceiling, lighting up Merlin where he’d fallen on his knees in sweet praise to God.
He pleaded again in earnest for his father.
Someone shoved Owain facedown in the moist grass.
“Here, Podrith, pull him forward a bit more. Don’t grab his sleeve; you’re just tearin’ it. C’mon, like this.”
They grasped his hands, and Owain’s mind flashed back to his near drowning. The water had filled his lungs, and the light above had faded. But someone grabbed his hand. His own father pulled him from the water to the bright day and the sweet air. His father had found him. There was life. And air!
Only because of his father’s love did he survive to tell the tale to his own son. To Merlin.
Why had he forgotten his son?
Merlin’s face appeared before his darkened eyes. He could see the handsome curly black hair, his grin, and the innocent mischievousness. He could see the man Merlin was becoming. The strength in his back, legs, and arms. The self-assurance despite his limitations.
And Owain could see the scars — the scars that stabbed at his own heart every time he looked at them. Failure. You failed him. You didn’t protect him that day. But oh how he loved his son. If he could just say it instead of hurting him. Instead of insulting Merlin’s God.
God?
Was it God who gave Merlin the ability to resist? To keep struggling for air? To cling to life even when it beat him down? Owain had always puzzled over his son’s inner strength. His own power was fueled by anger at the injustices he’d suffered, as well as the fear of failure. And his fear stoked the anger like fire heating iron until he was able to bend those emotions to his will. Able to survive the calamities of his life.
But what of the Christ — the Messiah — whom Merlin professed? When he was young, Owain had known Jesu. Or so he’d thought. Had he believed only because his father believed?
When the prayers of the monks failed, and he’d been forced to accept that his beloved Gwevian had drowned, he’d given up his own slim faith. Blamed God. Just forgotten. Why had he forgotten? Had not the Christ suffered for him? Had not the Christ —
The armband burned with renewed fire, and the Stone rose up before his darkened vision. His hands floated so close, he could feel its frozen heat sucking the life from his bones. Chilling his heart and suffocating him so he no longer felt the love of his friends, his family, his God.
His God!
It was as if something snapped, releasing his imprisoned body. Owain yelled, kicked, and fought once more. Just as in the water when his father had taken his hand and given him hope.
There was hope. There was always hope.
He fought like a man possessed, and the druidow let go. More of the beasts surrounded him and tried to hold him down, but he climbed onto his knees and burst up with strength forged from long hours pounding out iron. Lashing out, he struck down one dr
uid with the side of his arm and smashed another with his elbow. Flailing his fists, Owain soon scattered them and, rising, sprinted away.
He had to get to the one place he thought safe: his smithy. But the covenant armband from Mônda burned hotter and hotter, and her voice and footsteps haunted him from behind.
CHAPTER 17
SHACKLED SECRETS
Stop pulling me, Mônda!” Owain swore as he used a poker to unbury the red coals from the ashes of the forge and layered some grass, twigs, and bark upon them. “Why did you follow me here?”
“Come back to the Stone.” Her eyes pleaded with him, and his heart longed for her love. But what she wanted for him would destroy him. Didn’t she know that? She took hold of his hand the way she had done the day they’d first met, and her tender touch sent shivers up his arm. He had fallen in love with her that day, hadn’t he? She was still beautiful, wasn’t she? But now she was asking him to gaze at the Stone.
To worship it.
To touch it.
To give himself completely to it.
To bind himself to her forever.
But Merlin’s warning rang in his ears, and Kifferow’s dead body floated before his eyes. A fear and revulsion awoke in him, and Owain shook her off.
He needed to work on something — anything — to force the image of the Stone from his mind. “I choose the Carpenter! Away.”
Her expression changed, and she came at him again, this time with frantic clawing.
“By the holy name of Jesu, let me alone.”
She let go and fell to her knees, her tears spattering the dirt and ashes.
Owain’s voice turned gentler, and he set his poker down. “I relent. Stay here and choose Christ with me.” He sat beside her. “Don’t go back to your father and his curse of a Stone. You’re my wife and I love you. Stay!”
In one swift shrieking motion, Mônda ripped the covenant band off her arm and hurled it into the now-burning forge.
Owain’s eyes, heart, and hands went to where she threw it, and before he could turn back, she was gone, the door banging shut behind her.
Dust hung and swirled in the air like a phantom.
Owain staggered toward the ground.
Merlin was anxious by the time Dybris and the other monks prayerfully entered to take Prontwon’s body and build a cairn over it on top of the mountain.
A mournful lament rose as Merlin stepped outside and began tapping his way to find his father. He’d normally take the downhill path to the main road, but he hesitated. That would take him past the druidow and the Stone. Was his father there? Even if he was, Merlin feared facing the druidow without anyone to help him. Instead, he directed his urgent footsteps across the high road of the village and hoped, beyond mercy, he’d find his father at home.
Using his staff to find the large stones set at the corner of each intersection, he eventually chose a downhill path to the main road, turned west, and left behind the village green and the distant chanting of the druidow. After he passed the miller’s crennig, he sharpened his ears for any sound from his father’s smithy, but he heard none. He did, however, smell the whiff of the forge. His father must have lit it at some point in the last hour, and in that he found hope.
Finding the large stone that lay outside the blacksmith shop, he stopped to listen but again heard nothing. And the smell of the forge had faded, which made no sense. Why would his father light the forge, let it die, and not work?
He pushed the door open and entered. The blacksmith shop was cold, and nothing glowed within. He shivered. All was silent except for a slight scraping of the wind on the boarded, iron-grated window.
“Tas?”
A gasp escaped from near the coal box.
Working his way to the sound, Merlin discovered his father curled on the floor.
He took one of his father’s hands. The palm was hot, with wet pus oozing from some burns. His father moaned and fumbled with something in his other hand, a curved object, his covenant armband.
But no. Merlin grabbed his father’s arm to pull him up, and his fingers touched the thick metal band still coiled around the arm. Two bands? Puzzled, Merlin reached for the other mysterious object. This one was smaller, which meant it must be his stepmother’s matching armband.
A shuddering cry escaped his father’s lips as Merlin hefted him into a sitting position.
Merlin unclasped his father’s hand and took the object from him. What was it about these armbands?
Owain scratched at the dirt as if trying to find the band, moaning even louder.
Despite the coldness of the room, the bracelet was unusually warm. Merlin explored its shape, details, and gems. As his fingertips traced the hammered edge, the metal began to burn, singeing him. He dropped the bracelet. What bewitchment resides here?
Finding a thick leather rag on the tool table, he used it to pick up the bracelet and fling it in the quench barrel near the anvil.
A loud hissing escaped, and steam split the air. But the hissing didn’t stop as it should have. The water boiled and churned, and a sickly sweet smell filled the room.
Merlin’s limbs suddenly felt like slack ropes. He fumbled for the tongs to retrieve the bracelet, but they were nowhere to be found. Feeling lightheaded, he kicked over the barrel, sloshing water across the floor.
The air soon cleared, and Merlin felt his strength return. There was only one solution for these fetters that had chained his father’s soul to Mônda for so long. He picked up the muddy jewlery with the leather rag and set it on the anvil. Then he slid the larger band from his father’s arm using the same rag.
A withering howl escaped from Owain’s lips.
Merlin felt the skin where it had rested and found thick scars from many burns. Why hadn’t he known of his father’s suffering before? Dear God, help me destroy them!
He set the second fetter on the anvil. After locating the hammer, he hit each piece with four merciless blows. The gems shattered, and the bracelets bent nearly flat.
Owain cried out, “No, no!” Lunging forward, he tried to snatch them, but Merlin pushed his father’s hands back. The wind outside whistled, and evil voices floated on the air as Merlin felt along the table for one of the chisels. Grasping the largest, he placed it over the flattened armbands, and lifting high the hammer, he let forth blow after blow until the armbands spewed forth sparks of light and finally split.
Merlin heard a hissing and frying, and harsh smoke made him back away. The wind ceased, and the bedeviled voices faded.
His father whispered, “Jesu holds me up.”
Working his way around the forge, Merlin knelt and planted his hand underneath his father’s damp and chilled neck. He laid his ear against Owain’s tunic and heard the steady rhythm of his father’s heart.
“Tas, I’m here.”
His father shook and said loudly, “I choose the Christ!”
Time passed while they held each other in a tight embrace, each warming and drawing strength from the other.
“Put some coals on the forge,” his father finally said. “We need to finish the new sword.”
“You have the strength?”
Owain tried to stand but fell back shakily. “It doesn’t matter. I need to give it to the High King.”
“But what of the man who asked for it?”
“He wagered away his money. I want to give it to Uther.”
Merlin stood. “We only have until tomorrow.”
“We. I like that word. Help me stand, son.”
Never in her life had Natalenya seen men act so crudely in her family’s hall. If her father stooped to host any of the locals, they dined in fear of his short temper.
But these brutes! As the High King’s men, they thought themselves due every privilege, yet they declined every grace. And why did her father insist on serving a meal of this size in the Roman style? To make her, Dyslan, and the hired help dish it up was preposterous. Pile high the meats in the center, she thought, and eat like proper Britons!
She wanted to get away, walk out under the bright stars, sing her songs, and most importantly, pray. How could her father ignore the tragedy happening to the village and make her wait on tables? But no, the men’s fat-smeared pewter trenchers emptied faster than she could load them, and the bones piled so high in the culina that their hounds could chew for a year and a day and not finish them off.
And she could barely stand to think about the drinking bowls.
Vortigern would burp louder than her disgusting brothers combined and bang his bowl on the table until she refilled it. And then he would sit there with such a saintly smile, she hardly noticed her father’s watered-down mead dripping from his beard onto his jerkin.
Such a beast! And her father not only suffered Vortigern and his boorish son, Vortipor, he even seemed to enjoy their company.
Men never had any sense.
To be fair, though, Natalenya realized that Vortipor was the real source of her loathing. Most of the others treated her with aloofness befitting the daughter of the magister, but not him. The rest just wanted their trenchers filled, while he seemed to want to fill his eyes with her every chance he could get. He’d even grabbed her twice by the sleeve and wouldn’t let go until she listened to his fermented utterances.
Her mother, the lonely female at the feast, sat at the head table next to Natalenya’s father, with Vortigern and Vortipor on his other side. Once, after Vortipor had accosted Natalenya, her mother’s eyes warned her to stay away. But her glory-fogged father would call her over to fill a bowl, clean a spill, or show off by answering a complicated question in Latin.
She found herself clenching her teeth so that a headache soon crept up her neck and settled behind her eyes. When would this night be over?
Then it got worse.
Vortigern rose unsteadily before the assembly. “Hear me! Warriors of Kembry, Kernow, Difnonia, and Gloui, warriors of Rheged, Elmekow, and Powys, and yes, even you softies of Lundnisow and Dubrae Cantii —”
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