But the two men he’d never met. The bearded man holding the spear wore a finely woven dark-blue tunic, a match to Safrowana’s. The old man was about Garth’s height and wore sea-green clothes and a black cloak. At his throat lay a white-gold torc, and his hair and beard were like frosted ocean waves.
All of them stared in awe as if Garth were a ghost ship.
“Garth,” Safrowana exclaimed. “God be praised, come in, come in! We were just praying for you.”
“Prayin’ … for me?” Garth thought it a joke until he saw the old man’s eyes dancing with delight despite his craggy brow. And then two of the girls, each wearing fine dresses smeared in blood, ran forward and took Arthur from him.
They were crying, but these were happy tears.
The soup-mum came and put a warm arm around his neck. “You’ve come back to your Kyallna. Ah, my dear one, my sweet keronen.” And she pinched Garth’s cheek. “You’re thinner than last I laid eyes on you. Come sit at the hearth, as I’ve brought over me soup!”
Garth dodged another pinch and was about to slip inside between the adults when he changed his mind about sneaking in. He bowed to her. “I was … was hopin’ for that, mum. Smelled it down the road, I did, as me tummy’s sore an’ rumblin’.”
The old man gripped Garth by the elbow. “First, you and I need to talk for a … minute.” Because of his grip, Garth expected the old man to be angry, but instead there was joy mixed with sadness on his face. Garth went with him through the back room of the house and out into the weaver’s high-walled pasture, where a few sheep grazed quietly.
Sitting down on a rock, the old man stared at Garth with piercing eyes. Garth found a spot next to him, if only to avoid his stare.
“I am named … Colvarth. I am Chief Bard of the … Britons, and I serve the High King. How did you come to the island to save the … life of Arthur? Did you come with that peculiar man whose boat I borrowed?”
Garth shifted. “No … no, sir! I … I guided the Eirish warriors to the island, but didn’t know their purpose till too late.”
“You have brought great … evil upon everyone. But know this,” Colvarth said as he put a hand on Garth’s shoulder. “Where evil and calamity lurk, there … God is hiding as well, ready with His grace, planned long before the world began. I praise Jesu that the … Almighty took hold of you. Great good may yet … come of your deed.”
“I’m sorry, sir!” Garth stammered. And he wanted tears to flow to show his remorse, but his stomach hurt too intensely. “It’s all my fault.”
“Not so,” the bard said. “Uther’s battle chief, … Vortigern, bears the true blame, for I think he has betrayed his king into the hands of the … druidow. Now Arthur is found, and I must gather those who will try to save the child.”
“Uther’s own men betrayed him?”
“Not all, no, but they are led by … Vortigern and will be deceived.”
“A traitor!” The image of Uther lying dead in the boat came back to him, igniting his anger. “Where’re the king’s warriors? I heard lots o’ horses up on the Tor. Could the horses be theirs?”
“Doubtless it is true. They were told to take the … fortress, so perhaps they are there now. We must be very … careful.”
A woman opened the back door and dashed over to Colvarth. She fell at his feet, panting and weeping. At first Garth thought it was Natalenya, but he soon saw this woman was older, more careworn.
Colvarth took a cloth from a bag at his belt and handed it to the weeping woman. “Trevenna, wife of Tregeagle! A night … of tears, is it not?”
“King’s … bard … I … saw my husband … running … Came as quickly … to find help … Took the high path over the mountain … Troslam saw me…. Help.”
“Slow down, my … daughter.”
“I am told … the High King … is slain by Vortigern!”
Colvarth grimaced and closed his eyes. “It is as I feared.”
“Owain, Merlin, and Dybris have … taken the Stone to destroy it … And now my husband … all the warriors … they and the druidow are in pursuit!”
Colvarth stared unblinking. “Uther’s … warriors? Preventing the Stone’s … destruction? Now I see, yes, the false source of … Vortigern’s betrayal. It is as Merlin feared.”
What’s Merlin gotten himself into? What’ve I gotten into?
Trevenna wept again. “Colvarth, anyone —”
But her words were cut short as shouts echoed from the village below.
Garth sat up straight. “What’s that noise?”
“I hear … nothing,” Colvarth said, cocking his head to the side.
Garth ran to a granite boulder lying next to the wall, and hoisting himself up, he gazed down the mountainside. There, far to the east, was a wagon being pulled down the road by a large horse. The wagon box blazed out orange flames, and in the center sat a dark object with a deep-blue glow that pierced the night.
“The Stone!” he shouted. “They’ve got it, an’ they’re takin’ it away in a wagon.”
As Garth looked at the Stone, even at such a distance it seemed to grow and fill his vision. Closing his eyes, he turned his head away. “The nasty thing’s callin’ me, but I’m not listenin’ anymore!”
Trevenna and Colvarth joined him next to the wall.
Merlin’s there, Garth thought. The memory flooded back of the great debt he owed Merlin for taking his whipping. He heard again the ripping of Merlin’s shirt and remembered the bloody gashes striping his friend’s back. His friend’s back. His friend.
And Garth now saw what he’d missed before. Scores of men running after the wagon, some bearing torches.
“They’re bein’ chased, just like you said, ma’am!”
The door creaked open behind them, and Kyallna hobbled out with a tray holding three ceramic mugs of steaming soup. Taking one, she held it out to Garth. “Here, love, to fill yer empty stomach.”
Garth snapped up the mug. Holding it close, he sucked in the aroma of wild garlic and goat, letting it dive deep into his lungs.
He sighed, and his mouth began to water.
He lifted the wooden spoon to his lips — but let it splash down again.
“It’s not right!”
“But you haven’t tasted it, love.” Kyallna’s puckered face looked up at him.
“Not the soup, ma’am. I mean it’s not right for me to eat while my friend Merlin and the others are in danger.”
The wagon was gone from his sight now, but the entire road, far below, was filled with the shouting men, both druidow and Vortigern’s warriors.
Carefully handing the soup back to Kyallna, he licked his dry lips. “I’ve got somethin’ to do!” He jumped down from the rock and ran back into the house. There at the hearth fire, he snatched three burning branches, ran out the front door past the startled weaver, and disappeared into the night.
“Dybris, do you see the bar for the doors?” Merlin yelled.
But the monk was helping Merlin’s father carry the Stone inside the smithy. Using two leather aprons, they placed it upon the great anvil.
Natalenya ran over to a workbench and pulled the bar from underneath it. She placed the bar in Merlin’s hands, but he hesitated. “You should go,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
Natalenya turned to face him, and the flickering light from the newly lit forge reflected off her cheeks and forehead. “I’m not leaving you.”
Outside, the yelling of men could be heard in the distance.
He dropped the bar into place, and her hand found his and squeezed.
“Merlin!” his father called. “We need your help holding up the Stone. Natalenya, keep watch through the crack between the doors.”
Merlin found his way over to the anvil and grabbed the corners of the leather apron from his father. He could feel the heat of the Stone before him, and from deep within he heard a rumbling. His father set a chisel on top and smashed his hammer down upon it.
Clank!
And ag
ain.
Clishink!
Ten more times Owain drove the chisel into the Stone, each blow becoming wilder than the last. Merlin knew his father’s strength and expected chips of rock to fly, but nothing happened.
“Is it breaking, Tas?”
“No!”
“There are torches outside,” Natalenya called. “They’ve come. I can see druidow and lots of warriors. Even the villagers.”
The Stone flared up with a bright blue flame, and Dybris yelled.
Merlin backed up as the burning tentacles of fire pulled at his fingers.
Owain threw the chisel down and took up his biggest hammer. He waited for the flames to die down and then smashed down with all his strength.
Crack!
Once more.
Cracsh!
Again and again his father’s iron-forged arms tried to split the Druid Stone asunder, but the sound of the hammer blows did not change, and Merlin could tell that the Stone hadn’t fractured.
His father gasped. “It’s not breaking!”
The wood of the doors groaned and then splintered.
“They’re trying to smash in,” Natalenya yelled.
Owain called to Dybris, “Take this sword. Everyone else push benches against the doors. If they break in, we’re outnumbered ten to one.”
Garth ran up the stony path toward the fortress with all the speed he could muster. His empty stomach groaned, and his lungs burned like the bundle of three ember-tipped branches he held. But up he climbed without fail, passing Tregeagle’s shadowed house, until he arrived at the first ring of the old earthworks. There he sat behind a boulder to rest a bit, keeping the branches lit by fanning them.
“ ‘Never let your fellow sailor down’, me father’d say, an’ he’d be happy I was helpin’.”
Far to the west, lightning ripped the heavens.
“Better do this before it rains!”
Garth stood and faced the fortress, whose staved wooden walls seemed to soar into the night sky. Studying the top of the walls and tower, he couldn’t see anyone on lookout. He listened, and the multitude of horses neighed as before. He bent over — hopefully unseen — and snuck around the outside of the wall to the right, where the ground was higher.
Now where did I see that huge pile o’ hay inside the fortress? He thought back to the time when Merlin had taken him to the tower for a tour. Before he’d borrowed the wagon … well, stolen it, to be truthful. If only he had done right back then.
Ah, he remembered where the hay was. Inside the wall, right up against the timber-built tower! Finding a high spot near a bush, Garth held the branches close together upside down and blew them to flame. He closed his eyes and uttered his first prayer in a long while.
Scrunching up his nose, he threw the first branch over the fortress wall. The second branch went wide, hit the wall, and fell. The third went over like the first. Garth scampered to the one that fell, backed up, and lobbed it over.
Then he ran back down the hillside as fast as he could without tripping in the dark.
Bedwir stood next to two other warriors, and at Vortigern’s orders, they slammed their shoulders into the doors for the tenth time. At first the doors had moved and cracked, but now something heavy halted their momentum.
“What about the other door?” Vortipor asked his father.
“Eeh, these double doors look weaker. Grab the tree trunk, you softies!” Vortigern roared. “We’ll get that Stone or you’ll break your backs.”
Bedwir looked at Vortigern in confusion. Get the Stone? Uther had commanded it destroyed. And why had Vortigern forced them to make this mad chase after calling off the attack on the druidow, who now stood idly by, chanting their twaddle?
A voice rang out, “The Tor, look at the Tor!”
Bedwir glanced up to where the warrior pointed, and there, halfway up the mountain, flames and smoke surged upward from behind the fortress walls.
“A fire! Our horses!” the warriors shouted.
Vortigern cursed and blew a blast on his horn. “Save the horses. Everyone up the hill!”
Garth watched with glee from the shadow of Troslam’s house as the hay inside the fortress caught fire and flashed a glow upon the tower. Soon the flames roared up the central tower itself. Within moments the fortress gate was drawn up and the horses driven out, followed by a few guards. The flames climbed higher, and soon there must have been fifty horses galloping around, neighing and kicking.
A few found the path downward, away from the blaze, and others followed.
Garth glanced down the hillside at the warriors heading toward the blaze and danced a little jig. “Yes!”
Numerous horses raced onto Troslam’s road, and four of them slowed to a trot nearby. Ah, they were beautiful stallions. Shiny coats all, and high striding as well! Two brown, a bay, and a black. They seemed lost.
Garth stepped out and grabbed their reins. He coaxed them forward and led them to the weaver’s high wall and wooden gate. Finding the gate unbarred, he swung it wide and brought the horses in.
“Good hobbhow, go and eat grass!” He barred the gate from within the yard and ran back inside the house, to the surprise of all. Finally, he took up his mug, still warm from where Kyallna had placed it on the hearth, and sat down to his soup!
The beating on the doors ceased.
For a moment no one moved or spoke as Merlin and the others waited for something — anything — to happen. When no horns blew, no battering ram burst through the door, and no fire lapped at the walls, the four of them slid into motion once more.
“Merlin, get around to the bellows and work ‘em double fast,” Owain said. “Maybe I can break the Stone if we heat it.”
Avoiding the still-pulsing rock, Merlin made his way around to the bellows and set to work. Just that morning he had gripped these warm handles, but now it seemed like months ago. He looked out the iron bars of the window, and there, surrounding the smithy, floated hundreds of hazy torches like the lanterns of dead spirits. The druidow’ chanting hung eerily in the air.
Up and down he pumped the bellows, and the air blew through the forge, causing the coals to spark and dance. When they glowed hot and red again, Owain and Dybris picked up the Stone by the leather aprons and, shuffling over to the forge, rolled it onto the mound of flaming charcoal.
The room darkened as the Stone blocked the light of the forge. Merlin tried to pump with even more strength, but the bellows just wouldn’t blow any harder.
His father told Dybris to guard the doors, and Natalenya made her way over to Merlin. “Can I help?” she asked.
Her voice was tired, and he sensed fear there — the same fear that filled his heart. What if they couldn’t break the Stone?
In answer, he took her hands and placed them on the left handle of the bellows, situating his own hands so they could work together. “On the downstrokes, put your weight on the handle.” Her pressing barely helped, but having her hands near his comforted him. If he could only see her, hold her gaze with his own and forget for a moment their danger.
Upward and downward they drove the bellows, and heat filled the room. Never had the forge been jammed with so much coal, never had the fire been so hot. This kind of heat would swiftly scar any iron with a white, sparking heat. What of the Stone?
“What’s happening, Tas?”
From deep within, the Stone glowed whitish-blue.
“It’s changing color, but I don’t know if that’s good. I’ll try to break it again.”
Without warning, the doors splintered as if someone had hit them with a massive war hammer.
“They’ve got a battering ram!” Dybris yelled.
Five druidow backed up McEwan as they heaved the tree into the center of the double doors. This time the stubborn timbers cracked and pushed inward a little.
McEwan smiled.
But just as the tree slammed into the doors for the second time, a long sharp blade sliced out of the crack and almost nicked his forearm.
Mórganthu walked forward to survey the situation. “Trivial, trivial, I say. Are you not my finest warrior?”
“Sure, an’ I’m your last one. O’Sloan an’ the others fell at the circle!”
“The easier to reward you. Kill those inside, and I will give you triple the price of the finest kern warrior.”
“But if me hand is cut off —”
Mórganthu forced the tip of his staff into McEwan’s chin. “Do you fear their blades? A smith, a monk, and an imbecile?”
“I fear none if I got me own good club. But when the doors bust open, I’ll ha’ naught but a lug o’ tree.”
“Nevertheless, I command you to break them down. The Stone calls to me. Kill those inside and bring it out!”
McEwan grimaced but nodded his assent.
Backing up until he was out of the blade’s range, he and the druidow picked up the tree again and, with one mighty heave, rushed at the door.
CHAPTER 36
THE FORGE OF SUFFERING
Merlin paused at the bellows and yelled, “Is the Stone breaking?”
“No,” Natalenya answered. “Nothing seems to hurt it.”
Again the hammer clanged against the Stone. Merlin’s father backed away from the smoking forge and sucked in cleaner air.
Off in the distance, thunder roared and shook the smithy.
“They’re coming,” Dybris yelled.
With a loud boom, the doors cracked.
“Use the sword!” Merlin’s father called as he slammed the hammer into the Stone, causing flames to shoot upward from the coals.
“Too late to —”
This time the blow from the battering ram snapped the bar in two, and the doors burst inward. Chunks of wood flew across the room as the workbenches overturned.
Merlin released the bellows and drew his dirk. As he moved forward, he squeezed Natalenya’s trembling hand. “Pray.” I’ll need it.
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