by Maples, Kit
Llew shouted to his apprentices and slaves climbing into the citadel, “Fire! Charcoal! Bellows! Hammers! Ring the gong again! We have the world sword to make!”
The warrior lords and ladies raising their tents on the mountain slope heard the unaccustomed second bang of the gong and knew that a great sword was about to be born. They cheered and roared, their howls muffling the gong’s echo among the mountain peaks.
I still had Urien across my knees. I stabbed the sword into the stone wall. Let it be the hanger for my tools.
The prince and I hauled on our leather aprons, gloves, and boots. We drove up the fire in the forge. We fed it and encouraged it. We prayed over it every incantation of every language and god, even the filthy Woden for who knows from which god comes the gravest power in a sword?
By late afternoon, the fire in the coals had settled to a searing yellow-white, pumped by the bellows and the wind howling through the citadel. Llew and I, awash in our sweat, shoved the bars and rods into the fire and watched them spit off the last of the wine bath, hissing and glowing.
It was a marvel to see the fierce fire detach itself from the coals and sink into the bars and rods. To see the components of the sword absorb the spirit of fire. To watch the iron suck heat so much out of the coals that the slaves at the bellows had to pump furiously and the wind to howl more wildly to keep the spitting fire alive.
At last the prince cried, “Now!” and we hauled the bars and rods out of the fire.
All of us, slaves and prince and merlin, hammered the gleaming hot metal, slaking off the last impurities and the threats of visiting demons. We hammered the bars into five long, rectangular bars of steely iron. We welded them together with heavy hammer blows on the yellow iron, the blows clattering in rhythm like a wagon wheel on a stony Roman road.
The gnome, curled in at the peak of the ceiling, sang the twisting song. We gripped the welded yellow bar with tongs at each end and twisted sun-wise to flake out the last corruption in the iron and to give the metal its spring strength.
We worked again on another welding of another set of five iron bars, heating and hammering and twisting, but turning this bar anti-sun-wise for a balancing of strength in the heart of the sword.
We did it all again and again until we had a by the Rule three broad iron bars with their complex in and out spiraling twists of power. We hammered and twisted another set of three.
We hammered out the heavy iron core of the blade, hammering to the rhythm dictated by the singing gnome.
At last, nearing evening and the promise of a full Moon, we had the pieces of the sword’s core ready – the two composite bars of steely iron to wrap around the heavy, springy core of pure iron that would be the spine and heart of the sword.
“The Moon!” cried the prince.
A full Moon, shining in silver, burst up over the valley. From the downslope tents I heard a howl of fright and then a moan of hunger like a cry for us to continue the making of the sword.
We all were scorched, pocked with spark burns, sweated out, battered by our massive labors. But none shouted for quarter, none wanted to stop.
Prince Llew shoved the two thick bars of twisted steel into the fire and the single bar of springy iron. They glowed into instant heat. I hauled them out with tongs, laying them on the anvil. A layer of steely iron first, then the layer of pure iron, finally another layer of steely iron in a composite of brave metals.
We returned to the fierce, rhythmic hammering and welded them all together. We hammered them flat and long to make the breadth and length of the sword.
The prince grabbed up the half-made blade and thrust it into fire again, driving up the heat in the metal until the color was a fierce gleaming gold. He shouted a prayer and hauled the blade out of the fire and drove it into the quenching bath of water from the Afon mixed with Mosella wine.
The water and wine burst up out of the stone quenching trough, steaming and spattering us all, but the raw blade had been made hard. Hard but too brittle to swing against a Saxon skull.
The prince shoved the blade into the fire again and watched it glow through the colors of heat until he measured with his eye the correct shade of yellow-orange. He dragged it out of the forge and slid it hissing into a tempering bath of oil.
The oil did not steam and splash as had the water and wine. It soothed the steel as the blade sank into it. Giving the steel flexibility and keenness of edge to add to the power of the quenched iron core.
“There it is,” said Prince Llew, withdrawing the blade from the tempering bath and holding it up by its narrow tang.
It was flattened metal in the general shape and outline of a sword blade but without a sword’s keen character.
I took the rough blade from the prince and found it gone bitter cold, like an icy wind promising sharp pain. I brought out the cutting tools and there, beneath the icy Moon and the flaming torches, in the howling wind of the citadel, began to cut and grind the sword, shaping it long and thick from tang to point, grinding and polishing into it two great cutting edges.
In the first gleam of morning, I held up the blade to catch the early sun. Light flickered and shouted from the sword.
“Quickly,” I said to the slaves and apprentices, “make the furniture for the hilt, carve out the pommel, build the scabbard and hangers!”
By noon all was done.
The sword lay on its stone worktable like a living thing, throbbing with heart’s blood, each movement of an interior vein make the surface metal glitter in the sunshine.
The slaves and apprentices cheered their own work.
The gnome in the vault sang its victory song.
“Toll the gong,” said the prince.
The gnome rang the gong.
The tents straggling down the mountain slope went silent at the sound. An even greater thing than the making of the sword was about to happen.
“Peace to you all,” the prince said to his retainers. “Leave us for the naming.”
They all, the gnome with them, fled the citadel and stood in a far field staring back at us in the citadel’s howling wind, waiting for the wonder of the naming of so fabulous a sword.
“Will it stretch to kill the king’s enemies?” I asked Prince Llew.
“It will. I had my hands on it and it will.”
Llew took up the sword and swung it around his head to test its balance and hissing power. The glory of it made him cheer. He threw a rag of silk into the air and let it drift over the blade. The blade cut the rag by the silk’s own weight.
He swung the blade into the window through which howled a morning wind. The blade thrust out to skewer a flower across the valley and bring it back to us in the citadel.
The flower smelled of the happen return of spring and the promise of Arthur king once more.
The prince, with regret, handed me the blade and said, “But will it cut anvils?”
“It will,” I said. “I had my hands on it and it will.”
I laid the sword’s edge on the anvil and, by the sword’s own weight, it sank into the iron and stuck fast.
“Draw it out,” said the prince.
I put my hand on the hilt and hauled but the sword would not draw.
The prince keened in agony.
I held out my hand toward the sword’s hilt.
The sword and I said together, “Excalibur!”
The sword rose out of the anvil into my hand.
“All my lords!” said the prince. “Is that its name? What kind of word is that? What language? By the Hero Jesu, did you make a Druid sword?”
“This is,” I said, watching the blade flash out light reflected from the sun, “the greatest battle sword for the greatest king to win the world back for us!”
“‘Excalibur,’” whispered the prince. “Even the sound has power.”
A mild spring wind ran across the forge like wondering sigh, kissing past Excalibur.
“What’s happening?” cried the prince, startled at the change in wind.
The black hound Caval was there with us.
“So soon?” Llew said to the hound. “Not yet, no, not yet! Let me marvel at this sword until I die again before the Lady takes it away.”
The hound was silent in its reply.
“What does he want you to do?” the prince said to me.
“Quest to find the king.”
“The High King’s been dead nineteen years. Leave him dead another season. That’s so short a time, really, Lady Merlin. Let me sit here and marvel at this perfect sword...”
I shoved the blade into its new-made fleece scabbard.
The prince groaned.
I shook out my hair sweated to my head in the forge’s heat. I stripped and bathed in the quenching bath of Afon’s water. I rubbed myself with oil from the tempering bath. I pulled on my finest rags. Pulled on my worn boots.
I pulled on mail. I pulled Urien out of the stone wall in which it had waited for me and slung it on a belt over my back. I slung Excalibur in its scabbard there, too.
I hauled down an undamaged proofing shield from the wall. I put on an unmarked iron helmet and pushed it onto the back of my head to kiss the prince farewell.
The rush of the spring breeze stopped in the citadel.
The prince said, “You wouldn’t consider leaving me the lesser of your two swords so I could make myself at least a little emperor in this harsh world? With Excalibur, why do you need Urien?”
“For myself,” I said, “to defend Arthur until he’s ready to be king.”
“What do you mean? Won’t that happen now? You find his hollow hill and slice it open it and give him the sword and he’s lord again, right?”
“He’s not Arthur until he learns to be Arthur,” I said.
“You’re going to teach him?” said the prince, startled. “You, as ignorant as you are, can raise up a high king?”
“I’m desperately ignorant. But I was chosen merlin for this task and I’ll learn the world it to teach the truth to Arthur.”
“How will you do that?”
“I’m waiting for Fate to tell me.”
“Oh, my,” Prince Llew said. “I see now this world’s cycle with you at its fulcrum is going to be all chaos and lunacy. I need your brave sword to survive another season. Give me Urien.”
The gnome had crawled into the high vault of the ceiling and began to sing of a future too perfect to risk for a prince’s fear.
“Oh, sobeit,” said Llew.
“Sobeit,” I said.
He kissed me farewell. It was a young man’s hungry kiss and an old man’s desperate kiss, both anxious for life.
I grabbed up my travel packs and blanket-cloak.
“Now find the man to kill and temper the sword in his blood,” said the prince.
Great gods, I’d forgotten that.
“He’s waiting for you,” said the prince.
* * *
I went down the mountain trail out of the citadel, past the tents of those seeking blades from Prince Llew, all of them marveling at the light gleaming through the scabbard on my back. I climbed down past steaming hermit caves, each old man and woman shouting blessings at me. I heard behind me the soft tread of Caval, as though the hound were herding me toward something fierce and strange.
I turned to face the beast but it was not there. Only its silence was left behind.
I climbed down into the valley as the first gray of evening spread across the road leading south to Cornwall, Carbonek Castle, and old Queen Morgause. That was the only direction I knew in which to search for the High King to give him the sword that would bring him back to life.
I stepped out on the road. A voice called, “Stand!”
Rising up from his squat by the road as a shaft of evening found him, a figure threw back its cloak and stood there in full armor. A knight with a glass shield, black breastplate and mail, black helmet, and veil. The warrior raised his sword over his head and it too was black.
I knew all these marks as Galabes had taught them to me. Here was Lucan, the fabled last knight of Camelot. I nearly shouted in my joy and fright at seeing him.
Above, the hermits squatted in the steaming mouths of their caves to watch.
Caval stepped out of the glooming evening to take station at the roadside.
I threw down my travel packs and blanket-cloak. “Lord Lucan!” I shouted. “Show me the way to the king! I bring him his sword!”
I drew Excalibur from its fleece bed. I felt the electric charge of the steel. I heard a whistle as the evening breeze sliced across the blade.
I cheered and shouted, “We stand, Merlin and Excalibur with Lucan, in quest for the king!”
“Know the man you fight.”
Lucan dropped his veil – he was Galabes.
“Father!” I dropped guard and ran across the road to him.
“Stand and fight!” Lucan said. “Prove Excalibur by killing me back to Camlann. Restart the epic. Bring us Arthur!”
“I can’t kill you…”
“Then die!”
Lucan smashed his sword into my shield and split the feeble wood and iron.
I stumbled back, confused, shaking off the broken shield, only the fighting boss around my fist.
Lucan swung his great black sword to slice my legs from their body.
I parried and fell back again, more confused, ready to panic.
Lucan shouted, “I’ll kill you if you don’t kill me!”
He attacked. I dodged. I parried and boss-shoved him away from me.
In all that whistle of steel and rattle of armor, our blades did not cross. We banged one another with mailed fists, head-butted, jostled and clubbed, sweated, stumbled, spun and counterattacked. But we avoided the challenge of steel. He was my father and I his daughter.
Lucan stood back gasping for breath, leaning on his black sword.
I said, “We can’t fight like this, Father. Let’s have peace and go through the world together as father and daughter champions...”
“That’s not why I created you. Lay on!”
Lucan charged and drove his sword cutting into my makeshift armor, shearing away metal and leather until I was stripped to jerkin, leggings, boots, Urien over my back, Excalibur in my hands, cold night wind whistling through my sweat-wet hair.
Lucan shouted a sobbing victory cry and swung the killing blow.
I threw up Excalibur to stop my killing.
Our two blades clashed and spat sparks streaking across the night.
Lucan’s great black sword shattered.
With the automatic backstroke to which I had been trained by Galabes-Lucan, I lopped off my father’s head.
The corpse stood upright a moment, stiffened by its armor. I caught the body and lowered it into the dust. The corpse did not bleed. The mark Excalibur had made through Lucan’s neck was laid on the scar he had carried away from Camlann.
I wept picking up his head to kiss my father farewell.
Lucan said to me in his fading soul’s voice, “I’ve made you Merlin now. Live again! Find Arthur, make him a true king, create Camelot…”
* * *
Lucan’s shriveling head fell from my hands. I saw him thrown backward in time through a suffocating arrowstorm onto Camlann’s bloody field. He lay beside his dying king, the last of Arthur’s war band to join the High King in death.
Out of that furious battle night, Lucan’s black armor swept toward me from the desiccating corpse and clapped itself to my body. His battle cloak whirled around my shoulders. The glass shield fitted itself over my arm. Caval was there with me, too.
I bent down to the silent hound for its comfort but it became a strange beast rushing from hound to pup to embryo to shoot of its father’s essence as though it had lost the proper direction of life.
Caval hound was running away from death toward birth. Then running past birth toward the birth of its father and its father’s father, the famous Cabal that belonged to Arthur.
The hound was not alone in its
strange backwards rush through life. All around me I saw people and cities, animals, armies, roads, nations, take the wrong course through time, driving not toward death but toward birth. Burrowing deeper into time to become their own ancestors. All as though the course of life were reversed everywhere.
I saw myself in the gleam of Excalibur’s steel. I alone on Earth was not living backwards. I was ageing forward through the seven stages of man. Death rushed toward me as fast as birth ran toward everyone else.
I saw that my black armor was no longer a perfection. It was as rusted as an armor left to dream in a tomb, its mail age-split, its leather and padding rotted. The glass shield was hazed with age. Urien slung over my shoulder was rotted, too.
I had a Druid’s forked beard of snakes on my woman’s face!
I was becoming an old woman, already triple the fourteen years I had been when Lucan as Galabes had taken me from Carbonek and Queen Morgause.
I began to scream at the wildness of the world, the crazed senselessness of time. What was happening to me? What was happening to the world around me?
I thrust Excalibur toward heaven and shouted the sword’s name and time stopped.
* * *
In the Julian Year 5250 and of Our Lord 537
The world ceased to grow younger.
I ceased to grow older.
Time stopped its wild backward flight and I was there in the golden age of Arthur and Camelot where I was meant to begin my merlin’s life.
I saw no more of the flower that shrinks in seconds to a seed that infects its parent with birth pangs. Life once more moved in its slow, stately cycles, but cycles that were backwards to my perception, with sons and daughters the fathers and mothers to their own parents.
Despite this strangeness, I recognized the world had not changed fundamentally. It still was a world in which a daughter or son could expect the same life led by a mother or father with the same duties to village, lord, and king. Life led toward the completion of a world cycle after which, for the Children of the Fighting Woden, it all would begin again just the same. For the Children of Peaceful Jesu, it would lead to the narrow doors of Heaven and the wide doors of Hell.