by Andre Norton
The window was already well open to the night; the curtain of hide and the shutter meant to keep out the chill were both pushed far back. He made sure they would remain so. The woman on the bed muttered drowsily, her words not meant for him but for the vision he had planted in her mind.
Outside there was a fluttering sound. Myrddin averted his head and went swiftly from the chamber, threading his way, his heart beating fast in spite of his struggle for control. A guard stood at the postern and yet did not see the slight man who flitted by.
When he reached his previous observation point, a height above Goloris’ hold, Myrddin turned. The moon was bright and clear. Some distance away flames leaped, where the lesser folk were celebrating Beltane. His night had been well chosen: only a small fraction of the keep’s inhabitants would be within the walls tonight.
He could not see the window which lay to the seaward side of the tower. What happened there now was not his affair, he must only preserve the hallucination with Uther. With a heavy burden of weariness resting on him, Myrddin made his way back again to the hidden camp and sat for long hours there by the sleeping men.
With dawn Uther stirred. Though he opened his eyes he did not look about him with any recognition. Instead he got to his feet like a dazed man, his hands reaching forth to grasp something which was not there.
Myrddin scrambled up quickly. With the very tip of a finger he touched the king’s uplifted head, directly above and between the eyes. And from his mind flashed the signal he had waited so long to give.
“Awake!”
Uther blinked, looked about him in the gray light. He yawned and then saw Myrddin. A frown knotted between his eyebrows.
“So, sorcerer, it would seem your magic works!” He spoke with a sour note in his voice. “You have done as you promised.” There was no triumph or satisfaction in his tone. Instead his eyes avoided Myrddin’s and he turned his shoulder to the younger man, shutting him out, or hoping to.
And Myrddin realized that, having slaked his lust, as he believed, Uther now felt shame for the act. He would not welcome in his sight the one who had aided him to an action he wished to repudiate.
“If I have done as I promised, and to your satisfaction, Lord King, then let me depart. For I have no liking for courts,” Myrddin wearily made answer. He had half expected that Uther would turn on him, but not so suddenly. And he did not want to lose the High King’s favor entirely, for this night’s work was not yet complete and his further part required some thread of connection with the court.
“Well enough.” Uther had turned completely away. He did not even glance in the other’s direction, but regarded his sleeping men. “Ride where you will, when you will.”
Myrddin accepted the dismissal with a dignity of his own, not bowing his head in any courtesy he did not feel, but rather walking back to where their mounts had been tethered. There he loosed his pony—for that means of returning to his own place he believed Uther owed him—and he rode away, without a single glance toward the King, nor beyond to where that keep rose beside the sea. But he was no more than over the crest of a small hillock when he heard the thud of hooves, saw a man riding at the best speed to which he could push his foam-bespattered mount.
“The High King?” he shouted at Myrddin. “Where is Uther?”
That anyone would know of this secret expedition was a vast surprise to the youth. Yet so certain seemed this rider that Uther was in the neighborhood that obviously whatever message he bore was of the utmost urgency, enough to break the veil of secrecy.
“Why do you seek the High King?” Myrddin demanded. Any change in the state of affairs was of importance for his plans also. “Have the Saxons sounded their war horns?”
The man shook his head. “Duke Goloris—he was slain in battle yesterday. The King must know—”
Myrddin pointed to the way he had come. “You will find the High King thereabouts—”
The messenger spurred on before he had even completed his sentence. As Myrddin kicked his own horse into a steady trot, he considered the importance of what he had just heard. Duchess Igrene would learn only too soon that her lord had been dead before that hour she would remember on Myrddin’s implanted orders. And Uther would now find his way clear to take openly the woman he had professed to find desirable above all others. What bearing would such a marriage have on the life Myrddin was certain Igrene now bore within her body?
Would the High King, relying on his own memory, accept the child to come as his own? And what would happen if and when Uther discussed this happening with the Duchess? Myrddin had read the King’s self-disgust clearly in the few words they had exchanged. What would come out of that shame?
There would be more than half a year to pass before he could learn that. His own task had been made clear. The child born of this night’s work was to be hidden—hidden in the north with one who still had a fraction of the Old Ones’ blood and who would be alerted with certain words Myrddin could utter. He saw no reason why he should not make his preparations now, so he did not turn back by hidden tracks to the cave and his solitude, but rode north.
The Ector he sought, he discovered some weeks later, was lord of a small holding which lay high among crags and steep valleys. He was esteemed by his neighbors, but never mixed much with them except in times when they must unite for mutual defense. And his people were noted as being extraordinarily averse to letting strangers settle among them. Ector had taken his own cousin to wife, for his line was ever known to wed within certain bonds of kinship, and he was a young man.
Myrddin pieced together this fragmentary information from hints and bits he heard from traveling merchants, now beginning to venture forth again as the Saxon menace was kept under control: from a smith who had spent the winter season working in Ector’s hold but was now on the road that he might go to his ailing mother, from a bard traveling for the mere pleasure of finding new places. He was pleased with what he heard.
Ector was accorded by all with a keen wit and battle wisdom which had aided in keeping the district free of raiding Picts down from the north. His wife was a follower of the overseas faith, one of those they now termed Christians, and she had given refuge to an elderly priest of that god who was a noted healer. Though Ector kept his territory jealously inviolate, he was not one to draw sword without good cause, and those within his small holding were as prosperous as any could be in these troubled days.
When Myrddin at last came to the narrow pass which gave opening into Ector’s domain he found guards there. They were civil enough, though they detained him in their camp while one of their number rode on to the clan house with a message. Myrddin had drawn on a scrap of skin the spiral which was the sign of the older days and said he had private words for their lord.
He waited until nearly sundown before the rider returned, giving him free passage within Ector’s land and ready to be his guide. He found the lord of the holding waiting for him as he came into the central courtyard of the clan house. For a single moment of painful memory it was as if he had come home again and all the heavy years had been erased.
Just so had Nyren stood, his head bare, his features welcoming, to greet a guest in the times past. As a servant led away his weary horse, Ector’s hand touched his arm tightly. And Myrddin, seeing that they were nearly alone, repeated his words in a whisper.
Ector’s hair was as night-dark as his own. And his lips were clear cut, his nose narrow and high-bridged, his face long, shaping a pointed chin. It was like seeing his own countenance, somewhat older, and with slight differences; Ector’s face was enough like his own, even to the curiously marked eyelids which made the eyes appear almost triangular, so that they could be close kin.
“Welcome, brother,” was Ector’s reply, nor did he appear startled in the least at Myrddin’s whispering of words so old their real meaning had long since passed from the minds of men. “The kin house opens to you.”
In this part of his planning Myrddin’s path was made easy. Though nei
ther Ector nor his lady had had any contact with the Sky People, yet the tradition of such folk had lingered strongly in their clan history. They accepted without question what Myrddin could tell them. Though be did not explain the circumstances surrounding the babe he would find a refuge for, yet they were ready to aid him. Trynihid, even if she might follow in truth the new faith as preached by Nuth—a gentle, middle-aged man who tried to heal bodies as well as lighten minds with his teaching—was still of the kin clan and nodded her own head when Myrddin spoke of the importance of keeping the child safe.
She moved slowly, her own belly swelling with the long-wanted and hoped-for heir to Ector’s holding. And she rested her hands on that swelling as Myrddin spoke of the safekeeping, nodding her head.
Seeing her in her quiet happiness made Myrddin uncomfortable, and he kept from the upper apartments where she sat when there was any leisure in the clan house. He had never been attracted to any of the ladies he had seen at the High King’s court, nor to any girl of the clan house. Only once had desire stirred in his body: when he fronted Nimue in the night and she had challenged him to be a man to her woman, young though they were then.
The happiness of Trynihid and the care her lord wrapped now about her was a new thing to him. Because there were traces of the old inheritance in both of them, he felt more deeply akin to them than he had in any under his grandfather’s lordship. There was a warmth of belonging between these two which was like the life-giving fire of winter—yet to him such comfort was denied.
He grew restless and yet somehow he was tied to this place, and to leave it for the gaunt loneliness of the land about the cave was more than he could face. He went with Ector into the fields and helped to number the flock, doing all a smallhold lord would. And he worked steadily with his hands, tiring himself as much as he could, so that, exhaused, he fell into deep sleep at night.
News came with the return of the smith. And Myrddin listened eagerly. The High King had indeed taken a wife—the Duchess Igrene. Yet he did not live with her, rather she dwelt among the holy women of the new faith, for she bore a child which was her first husband’s. Until she was delivered of that, the King would not truly claim her.
So the illusion had held with the Duchess, Myrddin thought. And Uther must have done nothing to challenge her belief. This would work better for his own need, for Uther would not want the coming child about the court. Fostering was honorable, much used among people of higher birth. Even a king would send forth his sons, not only to have them away from the temptations which would easily surround them in his own house, but to protect their very lives. There was always a jealous claimant to believe that by a private killing the path to rule would be made free and easy.
He must ride south before the winter really closed in on this harsher northern country and seek out Uther. Once he had used mind-bending on the King and had succeeded. He would be a poor man of Power if he could not do so again—to the benefit of the plan in which he was a part.
During the summer Myrddin had again undergone one of those swift changes of body which came to him in place of the more smooth flowing growth of those of pure human blood. He was taller, a little heavier of shoulder. Catching sight of his face in a newly burnished shield, he was more than ever struck by the resemblance to Ector, though his face was less softened by the passing of emotion and his eyes were always half hooded, as if he kept them as weapons in reserve. His beard was sparse and did not grow fast. When he shaved he did not need to touch a blade to his skin again for several days. But work under the sun had somewhat browned his skin and given him new strength of hand and arm.
Before the Feast of Samain he rode forth from the holding, bearing the good wishes of these distant kin, well clothed if plainly, his sword now decently sheathed in leather, not in a patchwork of bark. Ector had been awed by the sword, yet he would not even put a hand to its hilt, saying that such blades of old were well known to tolerate only one master.
“Aye,” Myrddin had answered. “Yet I am not the master, Ector. He who comes will carry this into battle. I am but his servant in this as in other things.”
He led a pack pony with full supplies, for he determined to move south by the lesser known ways, letting no hint of his coming reach Uther, if possible. To take the High King by surprise would better open the way for his own desire.
Riding at an even pace, he made the rest of his way back to the cave, though he was twice delayed by storms which lasted more than a day. Snow lay white there as he climbed the path his feet would always find, whether the eyes of men could see the way or not. There was a raucous call and a huge black bird coasted down to flap about him. Suddenly losing guard over his features, Myrddin held out his wrist and called joyfully: “Vran!”
Vran it was, planing in at once to settle claws on Myrddin’s glove, turning his head this way and that to eye him, croaking all the time in a coaxing way as the creature had learned to do when it begged for bits of meat.
“But give me time, Vran,” Myrddin promised, “and you shall be fed.”
The bird fluttered up to perch on a stone and the youth rummaged through his pack, bringing out a chunk of smoked pork which he tossed to the ground, only to have a black explosion of feathers fall on it.
There was no indication that any had been this way during the months of his absence. And he had come for only one reason. Myrddin unbuckled the belt which supported the sword and, taking that inside, hid the weapon in the darkest corner of the cave behind the largest of the installations. He noted that the majority of those were silent now. Only one still had a run of lights back and forth across its surface. For a long moment he stood before the mirror, seeing only his own reflection. Truly he looked older than his years now—a man as old as Uther had been when he had last seen him. His face was secret, closed, and the soberness of his choice of tunic and cloak made him a dark and brooding figure. Perhaps this was how a sorcerer was meant to appear in a world which relished light and color, the glitter of gems and the burnished wealth of gold.
He went again into the outer world. Vran was working on a few last beakfuls of the pork. And Myrddin found another lump for the raven before he mounted.
“Little brother,” he said, and at his words the raven stopped its fierce tearing of the meat, looking up at him with beads of eyes which seemed more knowing than any Myrddin had ever seen set in a bird skull. “Farewell, keep safe. When I return you shall feast again.”
So promising, he turned the horse toward the valley of the clan house, tugging at the lead so the pack pony followed.
It was well past Samain and the winter wolf had fastened his cruel ice jaws on man’s world when Myrddin came into the room where High King Uther sat by a fire which roared mightily and yet gave little heat beyond the small radius of the hearth. The King was alone as Myrddin had guessed, for the symbol he had sent was one which Uther would know and, knowing, he would not want any to share his inner secrets.
“So you come again, sorcerer,” was his curt greeting. There was no welcome in either his face or his tone. “I have not summoned you.”
“Events have summoned me, Lord King,” Myrddin returned. “I served your desire and asked for no payment—”
Uther set his horn of wine down on the tabletop nearby with force enough to make its metal binding ring out. “If you value your life, sorcerer, keep a still tongue in that ugly head of yours!” he flared.
“I speak not of the past, Lord King, that is your own affair. What I must ask is of the future.”
“All men whine and beg at a king’s throne. What are your demands—gold, silver, a lordship?” Uther sneered. Yet his eyes were uneasy, wary, as if he did not like what he saw when he looked at Myrddin. He was even a little awed by the other’s composure.
“I want a fosterling, Lord King.”
“A fosterling—” Uther’s mouth gaped wide in startlement. Then his eyes narrowed threateningly. “What plot is this, sorcerer?”
“No plot, Lord King. There wil
l be a child born shortly to one whom you greatly love. This child is a threat to you in a small way. To have such ever under your eyes—”
Uther pushed up from his chair in a half-leap in Myrddin’s direction. His hand had swung up as if to smash full into the younger man’s face. Then he stopped, mastering that flare of rage.
“Why do you want this child?” he demanded harshly.
“Because I am responsible in part for its birth, Lord King. I am a man of the Power; as such I betrayed much I believed in to aid you on that night. Now in conscience I must pay for my interference with events. The child will be safe; it shall be gently fostered. Men will forget it lives. There will be no more whispers in your court. You and your lady queen will be lighter of heart. If it remains here, though, there will be those who would use the child as a tool for revolt. Those who followed Goloris are not all dead even if they are now silent.”
Uther’s face grew thoughtful. He strode back and forth along the edge of the hearth, his face tense with concentration.
“Sorcerer, there is wisdom in what you say. I would have this coming baby apart from the court, both for the sake of my lady and for its own safety. As you have said, there are those who have not taken kindly to events in the past. Perhaps if the child is male they will cherish the idea of a new lord in years to come. My lady believes it is—she thinks—” Uther’s voice sank. “She sometimes thinks it was forced on her by a demon in her husband’s guise. She fears its coming as if it will be born a monster. Take it if you will, sorcerer, and do not let me know where it will be fostered, or by whom. It is better forgot for the good of all.”
“Well enough.” Myrddin relaxed inwardly. He had carried his point without tedious argument. “I am lodged at the Sign of the Rowan. Let me know the hour of the birth and I shall come and go—no man or woman being the wiser.”
At Uther’s assertive nod he left the room. There was much to be done. For all his power and knowledge he could not travel north with a newly born infant in the dead of winter. But he had deliberately chosen his inn with an eye to that matter. The wife of the host had recently given birth and was suckling a fine healthy child, the place was clean beyond most of its sort and Myrddin had the means within himself to silence questions and provide answers men could be brought to believe. Now he only had to wait.