by Chris Page
Mael nodded, then held out his hand to the boy. “Come here, young man,” he said quietly. Twilight looked at the long magus, received a nod of affirmation, then walked through the ring of otters who, despite the sudden intrusion of the boy and Merlin, had not taken their eyes from Mael’s face. Leaning the gnarled stick against his bare leg Mael reached out with both hands and ran them gently down the side of the boy’s head and shoulders and then back again. He paused before speaking.
“As I move ever closer to my destiny stone, my faculties diminish. My sight left me forty days ago, and other functions are beginning to cause some discomfiture. Merlin will understand the signs, having watched his own mentor go through the same diminishing process during the last few days of the hundred-year lifespan. However, I still have twenty days to go, and much can be accomplished in that time if the will exists. The strength, intelligence, and youthfulness of your aura give me that will. As you no doubt are aware, there is a great deal resting upon your young shoulders.”
“I know,” said the boy simply. “Why did you say the long magus was ‘overdue’?”
Mael sighed and turned his sightless eyes toward Merlin.
“Because he was the only one who could help with my Elelendise problem, I needed to talk to him, explain the whys and wherefores of a very complicated situation. I could not visit you in Wessex because she was always by my side. I started right at the beginning of our relationship by codifying as much as I could about her in order to alert you without arousing her suspicion. I did this through her name and left-handedness in the hope that he would understand and visit me, eh, long magus.”
Merlin nodded and came closer. “And by convincing her that your one-hundred-year term was one year earlier. That, if I may say so, was a stroke of genius.”
Mael smiled. “It was interesting to see how quickly she left my side and ran off to join Penda when she thought the end was approaching. She didn’t even wait to place me under my destiny stone.”
“When the time comes I will ensure that task is accomplished correctly,” said Merlin. “You are liege-lord of the otter?”
Mael nodded. “They have been my devoted companions for seventy-five years. Otters are all blessed with a unique ability to sense any form of impurity in humans or other animals. Only those of irreproachable states of grace and impeccable intentions toward me are acceptable to these around me. You will be pleased to know that both of you have passed their test and are deemed worthy of inclusion within the semicircle. Otherwise there would have been an almighty fuss as they called all the others here to defend me. There are over two hundred of them hereabouts. In my younger days the otter and I would spend all day frolicking in the water. These around me now are the great, great grandchildren of my first animals. They know of my impending demise and have formed a semicircle around me that will not be broken until I go to the great stone. Your kind offer to place me there is a great relief. It was worrying me that such a task would be beyond any local humans. As you know, the stone is very heavy and requires the enchantments to move it.”
The long magus glanced at the simple shelter of interlaced boughs placed against the tree line.
“I see you live a very simple life.”
“I follow the ways of the Cynic - own no possessions or clothes and live as a beggar. I am entirely sustained by the Pantheon of the enchantments.”
Merlin smiled. “A student and follower of Diogenes eh, the leader of the Cynics who practiced and preached the laws of anti-possessions. Lived, if I recall, in a barrel.”
“You are learned in the ways of the ancient Greeks, long magus?” Mael asked.
“I am a devotee of all things Greek and eagerly consume all I can about their ways,” replied Merlin. “Some of their stratagems are proving useful in our current struggle.”
Mael nodded and gestured toward the dirty loincloth around his middle. “I have only recently begun wearing this. The monks from Lindisfarne have taken to visiting regularly since my demise nears. My nakedness causes them some embarrassment.”
“We met his holiness Aidan. He directed us to you,” said Twilight.
“A good man,” replied Mael. “Consumed with furor scribendi annales - a passion for writing chronicles. Now tell me, young man, what animals are in ligamen to you?”
“The pica.”
Mael nodded. “An excellent and intelligent species with an eye for a bright bauble and a cocky, indomitable spirit. They will serve you well and loyally as, no doubt, do the falcons named after the long magus. There are many of both species in the hillside behind us, and we would be surrounded by them if they knew you were here, eh.”
“When did the wolves become in ligamen to Elelendise?” asked the boy.
“Come and sit down and I’ll start from the very beginning,” said Mael, gripping his stick with both hands. “Some of it you will have already guessed, long magus, some is rhetorical, some absurd, and some has reasoning so dense as to be almost impenetrable. I think I have a good grasp of it all but would value your opinion. And I must say that it will be a relief to share it with kindred spirits, even if one of them is a reformed old warmonger …”
“And scallywag,” said Twilight.
“Twenty years ago I found my own tyro veneficus to train and eventually take over for me. His name was Simeon. He was seventeen winters old and came from a family of Romany wanderers whom he had left when he was twelve. For five years he had lived by his wits and nature without realizing that his gifts - the very knowledge that had sustained him - were special. He arrived here en route to Lindisfarne where it was his intention to train as a monk. Recognizing his aura, I asked him the key question …”
“Upon what day was he born,” interrupted Twilight.
“He wasn’t sure but thought it was All Hallows Day, the thirty-first day of October,” continued Mael with a nod in the direction of the boy. “For the next three and a half years we worked together on the processes that you and the long magus have embarked upon - building and refining his knowledge and use of the enchantments. He was a most promising and engaging companion …” Mael’s quivering voice stopped, and he wiped away a tear.
“Then I had the first of three dreams warning me that Simeon was not the chosen one and must therefore be replaced … after the third dream he disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again.”
“Someone wanted Simeon removed to make way for another?” asked the long magus.
Mael changed tack. “Long magus, have you ever had contact by any means with our supposed venefical creator and ruler, Tiresias, the Seer of Thebes?”
“No. The only time I am aware of his presence is when I make the annual appearance at the Stonehenge Equinoctial Festival of the Dead. His presence is vague, a sort of all-embracing shadow over everything against which my powers are rendered useless. As you may know, it is the only time that selections of the cowering dead from the relentless sarcophagal mists are allowed to make representations to me. His unseen and unheard presence looms over every action of that day. I feel he sits in judgment on every word, yet I have never had any direct contact with him. Was he the purveyor of your dreams?”
“It couldn’t have been anyone else. The first dream contained a deep, disembodied voice warning me that Simeon was not the chosen one and he would be replaced. He disappeared the following day. In the second dream the same voice warned me that I was to provide the full range of the enchantments to a replacement who would be a young female; and the third dream warned me that if I did not train this female with every skill at my command, the entire species of my beloved otter would be exterminated by an immediate pestilence throughout the land. To illustrate the power of the dream-maker, twenty local otter would die of the pestilence that very day …” Mael paused to wipe away another tear.
Merlin spoke quietly. “Their twenty small stones are, no doubt, adorning the ground around the site where your o
wn destiny stone will stand.”
“They are, along with others, including one for Simeon.”
“Then the girl arrived?” said the boy.
“That was the beginning. Two days later a young girl wandered into the clearing here and told me in no uncertain terms that she was the chosen one and I was to teach her the enchantments. She said her name was Sarah Walters. She was just thirteen years of age, the same as you are now, and came from a settlement on the other side of these hills.”
“Was she born on All Hallows as well?” asked Twilight.
“She was, or said she was. As with Simeon I had no way of verifying it. I was about to visit her settlement and speak with her parents when it was conveniently burned to the ground by raiding brigands and everyone killed. She certainly didn’t show any grief over the supposed death of her parents. Her aura, although undeveloped, manifested all the characteristics of a tyro veneficus except one. It was somehow flawed, like a great jewel with a small crack in the center.”
“I never noticed the flaw in her aura,” said the long magus, stroking his chin.
“By the time you met her she had long since learned to disguise it, along with one or two other things,” replied Mael.
“Oh?”
“I’ll come to that in good time because it could be important.” The old northern magus smiled, fully aware that he was slowing them down. “Because of the deterioration in my system I must take matters as they occurred or I might miss something important.”
“You mentioned earlier that the otter have an uncanny ability to sense impurity in humans. Did they detect the flaw in Elelendise … or Sarah Walters as she was then?” asked the boy.
“Immediately she entered the clearing here. It was all I could do to keep them from attacking her. It took a long time and much coaxing by me to get them to accept her, albeit even then with extreme caution. In truth they were always very wary around her, and when she finally left a year ago, their joy was unbounded.”
“How did she take to your way of life?”
“If you mean my nudity, it didn’t seem to bother her. She built her own shelter, which was much more a proper dwelling than my simple shelter. It was over there.” He waved at a patch of worn, bare earth on the other side of the clearing. “The ways of the Cynic did not impress her at all. She was very material and wanted for much in the way of clothing and household frippery. I dispensed with all of it as soon as she left.”
“Did you start to teach her the enchantments right away? Was she any good at it to begin with? How long before the wolves came along?” Twilight was full of questions and eager for answers.
Patiently the old veneficus plodded on at his own pace. “No. I stalled for a good while under the pretext that we had plenty of time. I needed time to think through her arrival and try and make some sense of it. She was eager and asked lots of questions - like someone else I know - and proved to be a quick learner. The wolves did not come for some time, at least two winters, and only then after she had rejected two other species as being too docile and not aggressive enough.”
“It was during these early days that you decided to become a year older and put the signs in place that would mark her out - name her Elelendise and teach her to become dominant with the left hand?” the long magus asked.
“I knew now that she had been deliberately placed with me, probably by Tiresias. A perfectly good tyro had been dispatched, probably killed, and I had lost twenty fine otter. I had no choice in the matter but to comply. It was a most foul and wretched plot, and although its final purpose eluded me for some time, I got there in the end. Her first few months here revealed a cruel, vindictive streak that seemed to revel in the pain of others and the destruction of nature. It became apparent that I needed a way of warning others … you specifically, long magus. Only a veneficus would understand the signs and perhaps have a chance of stopping her. As far as I knew, you and I were the only two in the land. Regardless of what I thought of you and your pursuit of battle glory at the side of the odious Arthur, we were kindred spirits. I just had to hope that your silence for many years signaled some sort of redemption - although, of course, I didn’t tell her that. In the event I had to train and nurture a fanatical pariah for fifteen abhorrent years - a process that was like breaking my own bones every day - to ultimately perform one monumental task …”
“To take over from me,” said Merlin.
There was silence for a while before the boy voiced the thought that was uppermost in all their minds.
“Why would Tiresias, the god and creator of the venefical system and our ultimate authority in the Presidium, want to replace the long magus, and presumably me, with such a ruthless evildoer?”
“I think the long magus now knows the answer to that,” said Mael quietly.
Twilight turned to his mentor.
“To release the cowering dead from the raging charnel house of the eternal mists in a screaming mass of undiluted hatred,” Merlin said in a whisper. “Probably as an amusement.”
As darkness began to fall over the lake and clearing where they sat, Twilight began to nod off to sleep. The long magus had explained to him that fully grown venefici didn’t sleep at all, but he would need sleep until he was a little stronger. As soon as he started to snore gently, Mael and Merlin switched to Latin. At intermediate periods throughout the night the boy would awaken to the rising and falling musical cadence of their conversation interspersed with much arm waving and exclamations of delight and whoops of surprise and wonder, only to quickly drift back into a deep but troubled sleep. When he finally awoke at dawn they were still going at it with as much gusto as they had begun.
The circle of otters around Mael had seemingly multiplied and still hung on every word that issued from the bald old sorcerer’s lips as if they understood him. Their pin bright brown eyes never once left his lined old face as he laughed and spun his tales and slapped his thigh in disbelief at the offerings coming back from the long magus. The two old spell-binders were having the time of their lives, living their collective magical exploits all over again.
Seeing the boy was awake, Merlin switched back to the common tongue.
“We have been catching up on a collective absence of about one hundred and ninety-three years of crinkum crankum,” he said gleefully. “You’ll never guess what this old astounder did when he was asked to discipline a local horse thief. He turned him into a brood mare and had him quartered with a very frisky stallion for a couple of nights! When he reversed the spell, the former horse thief devoted the rest of his life to tilling the land by hand - couldn’t bring himself to look even an old hack in the eye!”
They both began to squeal with childish delight.
Suddenly a small Merlin hawk, weak with exhaustion, fluttered into the clearing. As it landed on the ground alongside Merlin the otters instantly rounded upon it until a sharp word from Mael stopped them.
It was Rho and he had obviously made the long journey from Wessex.
Gently the long magus picked him up, stroked his shaking body, and calmed him with a few words. After a few moments the hawk managed a weak show of talons in salutation and in a screech cracked with fatigue delivered his message.
The long magus turned to Twilight. “The repellent wolf mistress has captured Godwinson,” he said. “It is time we returned. Mael, I leave this wonderfully brave hawk in your care for a couple of days until he has regained his strength for the return journey.”
There was a long silence as the three of them contemplated their parting. Prefaced with a sigh Mael was the first to speak.
“Your coming has been a great and wonderful salvation. I go to my stone with hope that you can undo my fifteen years with Elelendise and defeat her creator’s foul reasoning. Firmamentum propositi tenax, young Twilight. Stay firm of purpose.”
Too full of emotion to speak, the boy could only nod. There were tears
in the blind old eyes of the great northern magus as he turned to the long magus.
“Vivat venefici, great enchanter,” he said, standing up with difficulty to deliver a salute. “This boy is all our futures. Teach him well. In so doing your own redemption is assured.”
Merlin stepped forward and embraced him. With the bald head of the smaller Mael barely reaching his breastbone he spoke his final words.
“You have been a shining example of all that is gloriously noble about the holder of the enchantments. Truly a primus inter pare - a first among his equals. I will return when we have dealt with Penda and Elelendise to faithfully carry out my promise.”
Some of the leading cowerers, privileged perhaps by position or fate during their mortal life, had manifested their dread by taking the lives of others through self-proclaimed acts of war and conquest - a charade of domination that merely served to magnify their own inadequacies. Unable to understand the demeaning paradox of human folly - when fear takes over, the first recourse is to hurt someone else as a means of redemption, which brings greater fear - they pursued their crusades with a relentless single-mindedness. Fear-ridden cowerer fought stricken cowerer as they became caught up in the pursuit of power and domination by others and had nowhere to go. The stampede of shuddering dread gathered pace; soon the entire flock of Dark Ages mankind was looking over its shoulder.
The relentless pressure from behind made a way out imperative.
Chapter Thirteen
The young Gawain Godwinson had often wondered if his somewhat privileged upbringing as the son of a famous knight was an advantage, a freedom, or an obstacle.
Now, just moments before the first longbow shaft sliced into the yielding flesh of his right thigh, felling him on the spot, he had the answer. Young knights trying to replicate the resounding battle feats of their famous fathers are disadvantaged by immediate family history and their eagerness to live up to the mantle it cast for them. The flashing sword of the first enemy engagement and the exultant victory that follows cannot come soon enough. By the time the second arrow penetrated right through the calf muscles of his left leg, pinning him to the ground, he had already realized that his haste to achieve his first victory had been as much his enemy as the phalanx of Penda’s archers advancing toward him with sharp arrow tips straining for release against the bent thorn of their powerful longbows.