Merlin's Ring

by H. Warner Munn

  Now the Cornubian hills were plain to see. Other boats were out, mostly taking pilchards and mullet, but the fishermen had no eyes for anything but their work.

  The voyagers sailed on undisturbed. Although they still wore armor, they were not remarked for that reason. South Wales was under Norman domination and Cornwall had rendered lip service to the invaders, who were already working the tin mines. Normans were no strangers there, al-though it was not wise for them to wander alone after dark.

  Gwalchmai had made a wide sweep to come up thus from the south, as though the boat had come across from Brittany, thinking to reach his destination under cover of darkness, but the wind had been stronger than he had estimated.

  Now he was glad that he still had an hour or more of daylight. Near the fantastic pinnacles of the headland, where the Channel currents met the rushing waves of the Atlantic, were seething eddies and whirlpools. Once through the rip tide, he breathed easier.

  There was calm water in the bay beyond. People waved to them in a friendly manner, looking up from hanging their nets or mending lobster pots. They waved back. The Norman armor seemed to be of no importance to the fishermen.

  They came in on a falling tide, dropped anchor, and beached the boat upon a sandy shore. As it appeared that they were among a friendly folk, they changed into clothing from a sea chest in the little cabin and went ashore.

  Now Gwalchmai seemed to be a tanned, ruddy sailor, for there were many whom the winds had leathered to his hue. Corenice looked like a dark Welsh boy, her rather short hair bidden under a stocking cap.

  There was not much to see. It was a small fishing village, which had been left undisturbed by the Normans and which profitted by their trade. Norman coin was welcome in the single tavern and the food and ale were good.

  After eating, the two went out and strolled the waterfront.

  The boat was canted over on the sand, until the tide returned. They sat on the sloping deck and looked out to sea. About a third of a mile away lay an island with a high peak of granite.

  Upon this, crowning its summit, was a small priory, a cell to the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy. This too was a place of pilgrimage, like its more famous sister peak, but the priory was its only building.

  On the side facing the shore, a causeway permitted access by foot, at low tide. Looking at this, in the dusk of evening, Gwalchmai had a sudden impulse to put off no longer that which he had come to do.

  With a word to Corenice, they set the anchor far up the beach, on a long cable, then, from the cabin, he brought out Arthur’s sword, wrapped in a cloth. Both he and Corenice had worn their own swords while they ate, not so much out of fear of the villagers as because in their role as outlanders it would have seemed unusual if they had not. Thus armed and carrying Excalibur, they walked across the narrowing causeway toward the island.

  The tide was on the turn and rising against their path, but they crossed it dryshod and kept toward the lower peak across a flat expanse of pebbled shore and rocky slabs. Looking back, they could see stumps and gnarled roots in the shallow water.

  Gwalchmai said, “In the time of my father, this mountain stood in a broad forest. He called it ‘the white rock.’ Merlin stayed upon it for three days, working a magic, alone with the body of Arthur, and all that time a black cloud, filled with mutterings, hung about it—while he labored on Arthur’s tomb.”

  There was still a remnant of the forest between the shore and the peak. They passed almost through it and came to a spot where a cleft, which seemed natural,-reached like an avenue into the living rock.

  Now, all about them, they heard whisperings—in the trees, in the grass, on the rocks above them—and Gwalchmai remembered Merlin’s words, that there were Watchers set to guard the tomb, which must be appeased.

  There was a feeling of being watched. Both knew that many fierce eyes were upon them, but those who watched were wary, not inimical to the pair as yet

  Gwalchmai unwrapped Excalibur and went forward into the cleft. Corenice followed, pressing close behind. The rock walls pinched together after a few steps, until they could touch the cold granite on either side.

  At this juncture there were sounds of little following footsteps behind them and a scratching as of claws upon the stone above their heads. There was still light to see by, and although they could discern no definite forms there was a misty gathering all about and they knew that they were surrounded.

  Gwalchmai had been told of the invisible people of Cornwall—The Spriggans, the Piskies, and the Jacks-of-the-Lan-terns. He knew also that giants had dwelt here in times long gone. Who it was that guarded the tomb he did not know— but the ring was growing hot and danger must be close.

  He held up his hand and turned it about

  “We are come here on a mission for your Master, Merlin the Enchanter, who set you here as Watchers. View his ring, which I bear, and do it homage for his sake. Show me where lies the door that I may open it and enter to lay this blade in the hands of Arthur, the Undying!”

  There was a chorus of little muted voices. Surprise was in the tones and pleasure and a feeling of adoration all about the pair.

  The padding feet still circled them, but there was no scratching: the claws were sheathed. Then, just before them, at the height of a man’s eyes against the rock where the two walls of the cleft met, a spot of light came into being.

  A replica of the monogram upon the bezel of Merlin’s ring!

  Without hesitation, Gwalchmai at once fitted the engraved opal into the carving upon the granite. With a grinding, rushing sound the walls retreated on either side, disclosing a bronze door, above which was inscribed in deeply incised Roman lettering, in Latin:

  HERE ARTHUR LIES KING ONCE AND KING TO BE

  The door opened to a touch and Gwalchmai and Corenice stepped into a hushed and softly lighted room.

  It was a circular chamber, rich with subdued color. Around its circumference ran a mural divided into three sections by lines of shadow cast from three bars of gold which curved about a glowing ball of light. This hung from the domed ceiling on a long golden chain, set in the center of a flower with twelve petals. Each petal was named after a Roman month, the series beginning with April and ending with February, according to the Roman year.

  As the two of them entered and stirred the air, the delicate petals trembled. There was a tiny soft click and the lines of shadow moved forward along the mural by an infinitesimal degree. Three lines of letters moved with them along the upper border of the mural.

  Gwalchmai read: “THIS is WHAT WAS.” It stood above the first section. The pictures were not painted, but cast upon the wall by the light in the pendant globe. Here were displayed Saxon dragon-ships upon the sea, engaged in crashing battle against Romano-British galleys supported by one great dromon that rode the invading enemy down beneath its forefoot. Another row of pictures below this series showed Arthur’s twelve defeats of the Saxon hordes, and the third and last set forth, hi vivid scenes, the long journey of Merlin, which brought his wounded King to this safe place of refuge.

  Gwalchmai looked between the next two lines of shadow dividing the mural. “THIS is WHAT is,” he whispered into Corenice’s ear, as though by speaking he would disturb the sleeper who lay upon a bier beneath the globe.

  The man was heavily boned and heavily bearded. There was no mistaking the look of majesty in his face; it would have been recognized in any country or under any circumstance.

  Here reposed one who was born to rule—one who was still his nation’s hope—one who slept, biding a time of great need. Arthur, the Hoped-For! The Great Pendragonl Arthur, the Undying!

  “THIS is WHAT is,” Gwalchmai repeated and looked at the pictures before him on the wall.

  Here lay the sad representation of a conquered island. Saxons in submission, then1 stiff necks bowed. The fury was gone from their faces, replaced by calm resignation. Their hands held hoe and shovel instead of ax and buckler, for their wars were past, and Norman knigh
ts lorded it over them hi pride and arrogance. Norman keeps and Norman banners held the hills, the waterways, the forests, and the mountain passes, and Norman ships encumbered the sea.

  Yet there was one little spot that still was Britain—the mountains of the west, where dwelt the remnants of the people the Saxons had never conquered and who now alone defied the new invader. Here dragon standards still streamed above marching men and proudly marked the castles of the free.

  It was not yet time to wake from sleep and take up the sword for final battles. There was the third section to view:

  THIS IS WHAT IS TO COME

  Again the three strips of pictures covering the remaining wall from ceiling to floor. At the top, men warred against machines. The murky skies were lit by burning cities, through the smoke of which slipped sleek birds of death.

  The ground was alive with clanking flame-spouting horrors, but men survived.

  In the center strip, much time had passed. Here there were no more cities—seemingly no more people. Machines fought other machines. The landscape was littered with rusting, tortured metal, the hills and plains torn and blasted. The trees were gone and the stumps lay black and decayed like rotting teeth. Above the desolation drifted clouds of dreadful mist, glowing a hard and deadly blue, reflected in pools of luminous liquid in which nothing lived.

  Was there nothing green left then in this scabrous land?

  At the end of the ‘Sequence there was one tiny picture, not as large as a baby’s hand. It was bright and beautiful and Gwalchmai and Corenice bent to examine it closer.

  Like looking through the window of a doll house, they gazed out into a garden of flowers, tiny as a mosaic made of pin-point jewels. Bees hummed there and butterflies tasted honey in swooning ecstasy. It was a summer day and there was no hint of war. In the garden stood two figures—a young boy and a girl who gazed upon the flowers, or was it that they looked above them into each other’s eyes? They were embracing and about to kiss.

  Looking upon them and their dream of hope, Corenice’s own eyes were misty.

  The end had not yet come.

  There was one picture only, at the beginning of the third strip. All the, rest was blank. It showed the entrance to the tomb in which they stood. Framed within it, shown from the rear, was the figure of a man in full armor of shining steel. On his left arm he bore a shield, which carried the device of a bull. The ancient emblem of the Sixth Legion, Victrix! In that hand he carried a lance with a dragon pennon and in his right hand the unsheathed Excalibur was grasped.

  He stood against a flame-red sky seen beyond through the open door and just there, in his white robes, was a familiar figure to Gwalchmai’s eyes, waiting to welcome his King to be—Merlin, who had saved him for this day to lead the rejoicing armies that would end war forever.

  It was not for nothing after all, Gwalchmai thought. The weary hopeless years, the sadness and the desolation, the forgotten joys unknown to slaves; all those miseries had come and gone to teach men what must never be again.

  All was not lost. Arthur was not dead. His hie had been moved out of time for only a little while, or so it would seem to him when he awoke again to the culmination of his anciently planned destiny.

  His time was being measured by a clock that ticked off not hours and days but years and centuries. Upon the day of his waking he would look at the murals. He would know what had happened. He would know what he must do.

  Gwalckmai could not know what that destiny was to be, but he did know that he had done his own small part in making it come to pass. He had brought Arthur’s sword.

  He crossed the floor and laid Excalibur at Arthur’s side and placed the sleeper’s hand upon it. The fingers were warm; they opened and as slowly as the movement of a snail they closed upon the hilt

  A sigh stirred the beard at his lips; the eyelids opened a hairsbreadth only. The lips parted and Arthur spoke: “Is ———————————-it———time?”

  Gwalchmai put his mouth close to Arthur’s ear. “Sleep well and long, my beloved King! It is not yet time to wake.”

  The eyes closed again. The sleeper drifted back into his long, healing rest. Gwalchmai and Corenice tiptoed back into their own world—their own time—and the bronze door closed behind them.

  They walked a few steps away and looked back. The granite cleft was as it had been before. Nothing of the mystery was visible to them. All around were the small friendly sounds of the forest In the distance they could hear the waves and the wind.

  While they had been inside the mountain, the sun had set Sweetly now from above came down to them the chimes of compline from the priory, as the bells called the monks to prayer.

  Gwalchmai fell upon his knees. He had never felt closer to Merlin’s God than at this evidence of the beneficent wizardry that had been performed by his godfather. He felt certain that this was magic of the very whitest

  Corenice looked at the sea. He knew to whom she reverently gave praise. He longed to see her goddess. For a moment he felt an unworthy jealousy of the affection those two shared.

  About them, the couple sensed a gratefulness at their continued presence. The Watchers were pleased. It was well that the visitors had come. It would be well with Arthur and the world.

  Later, Gwalchmai and Corenice went down into the forest before the dark of darkness. They found a dry hollow out of the wind. Soft leaves made them a bed. Here they lay in peace, watching the slow wheel of the stars. They talked of many things. After they had loved, it was here they waited for the tide to turn and uncover the causeway—and while they waited, they slept.

  Now, as Gwalchmai slept, it seemed to him that he awoke. He looked about and saw that his darling was close at his side and that they both were cradled closely in the embrace of a giant woman.

  The bare arms that held them were cool and soft. He knew that she was friendly and he knew no fear. Then he noticed that the arms bore no soft down of hair as human arms do, but were faintly scaled and smelled of salt. He looked up and saw hovering over him a huge, but lovable, smiling face.

  In his dream, it seemed to Gwalchmai quite natural that the eyes were square instead of being oval. This motherly figure could be no other than Corenice’s goddess—Ahuni-i, the Spirit of the Wave—whom the People of the Dawn knew as Squant.

  He was not afraid. The Abenaki had none but pleasant legends of her doings in the sea. It was obvious that she was benign.

  But there was another here, who was no friend. A red-bearded Titan who leaned upon a tremendous hammer and who spoke in the rumbling tones of distant, rolling thunder. These two were discussing the sleeping pair.

  “The man is a thief!” growled the colossus. “Give him to me!”

  She smiled tenderly .down upon them. Her arms cradled them a little closer. “He is so small. Have pity upon him, Thor. It was not his thought to rob you. He was told what he must do.”

  “It was he who stole from me. It is he who must be punished.”

  “Then make his punishment light for my sake. He is loved by one who loves me. I do not wish that she shall be hurt.

  You know he has a geas upon him already. It binds him and he will suffer by it. Let that be enough. I will see that he gives back the torque. Forgive him, Thor.“

  Then it seemed that Gwalchmai spoke in his dream, and he said, “I will indeed return the gold, now that it has fallen into my hands for a second time. But if I do this thing, which I am not obliged to do, and promise it only for the love of justice and not for fear, what then will Thor do for me? It comes to me that justice is a two-edged sword and cuts both ways. I have been plagued already, inasmuch as I too have been robbed of something I valued highly. Thunder-God—nothing for nothing!

  “You stole my sword with your lightning and your rain, by rusting it away in Getain’s howe! Give me another in exchange and you shall have your pretty toy.”

  Thor chuckled grimly. “You see how men bargain, Elder Cousin? How he puts me in the wrong? This scoundrel knows I can
not return his own sword, for it is gone forever, so he makes it seem that I owe him a sword and he owes me nothing! He wants to trade something that is not his for a thing he has lost! Where then is the punishment? Stand aside and I will flatten him with my hammer!”

  Then Ahuni-i stroked back the hair of Corenice with one huge finger and bent over her fondly. She whispered and in her breath was the susurration of little waves that tenderly caress the shore without violence and with no anger.

  “Quiet, thou great and clumsy Thunderer, or you will awake my sleeping one. She is-only a wife for a little while. Would you so soon make her a widow?

  “Now if I were to rouse my father, Poseidon, against you—who still lives as you know, under many another name —I think you would find him more powerful than yourself. That Ancient of Days will be feared and respected when you and I are long forgot!

  “You should raise your hammer not to threaten these tiny people, but to consecrate their vows. It ill behooves one thief to criticize another thief!”

  Then Gwalchmai unwound the torque from about Corenice’s slim waist, where she still wore it for safekeeping and held it up—or so it appeared to him in his dream, and boldly said:

  “It comes to me that this trinket has been so many times stolen that it can now belong only to the last pair of hands to hold it, for surely it could never pass back into those which held it first.

  “Therefore, it should he truly mine or perhaps hers who was wearing it, for Getain did not hinder her in its taking. Yet, I will return it to you, if you promise me a blade of fine quality and of equal value to the one you filched from jne.”

  Thor tugged at his beard and frowned, pretending to consider. He covertly eyed the torque. The corners of his lips twitched with mirth and it was obvious that he had already made up his mind.

  “And if I do? Will you render me your homage?”