by Mary Stewart
"Again?" said Vortigern briefly.
"Aye, my lord, and there's no one can say that it's a fault of ours, that I'll swear, any more than last time, or the times before. You saw yesterday how we were laying it this time. You saw how we cleared the whole site, to start again, and got right down to solid rock. And it is solid rock, my lord, I'll swear it. But still the wall cracks." He licked his lips, and his glance met mine and slid away from it, so that I knew he was aware of what the King and his soothsayers planned. "You're going up now, my lord?"
"Yes. Clear the men off the site."
The man swallowed, turned and ran up the twisting track. I heard him shouting. A mule was brought and the King mounted. My wrist was tied roughly to the harness. Magician or no, the sacrifice was to be given no chance of escape until he had proved himself. My guards kept close to my side. The King's officers and courtiers crowded round us, talking in low voices among themselves, but the priests held back, aloof and wary. I could see that they were not much afraid of the outcome; they knew as well as I did how much their magic was the power of their gods and how much illusion working on faith. They were confident that I could do no more than they; that even if I were one of their own kind they could find a way to defeat me. All I had to put against their smooth-worn rites was, they thought, the kind of bluff they were familiar with, and the luck that had stopped the rain and brought the sun out when I spoke.
The sun gleamed on the soaked grasses of the crag's crest. Here we were high above the valley where the river wound like a bright snake between its green verges. Steam rose from the roofs of the King's camp. Round the wooden hall and buildings the small skin tents clustered like toadstools, and men were no bigger than wood-lice crawling between them. It was a magnificent place, a true eagle's eerie. The King halted his mule in a grove of wind-bitten oaks and pointed forward under the bare boughs.
"Yesterday you could have seen the western wall from here."
Beyond the grove was a narrow ridge, a natural hog's back or causeway, along which the workmen and their beasts had beaten a wide track. King's Fort was a craggy tower of rock, approached on one side by the causeway, and with its other three sides falling steeply away in dizzy slopes and cliffs. Its top was a plateau perhaps a hundred by a hundred paces, and would once have been rough grass with outcropping rock and a few stunted trees and bushes. Now it was a morass of churned mud round the wreck of the ill-wished tower. On three sides the walls of this had risen almost to shoulder height; on the fourth side the wall, newly split, sagged out in a chaos of piled stones, some fallen and half buried in mud, others still precariously mortared to outcrops of the living rock. Heavy poles of pine wood had been driven in here and there and canvas laid across to shelter the work from the rain. Some of the poles had fallen flat, some were obviously newly splintered by the recent crack. On those which were whole the canvas hung flapping, or had stretched and split with the wet. Everything was sodden, and pools stood everywhere.
The workmen had left the site and were crowded to one side of the plateau, near the causeway. They were silent, with fear in their faces. I could see that the fear was not of the King's anger at what had happened to the work, but of the force which they believed in and did not understand. There were guards at the entrance to the causeway. I knew that without them not one workman would have been left on the site.
The guards had crossed their spears, but when they recognized the King they drew them back. I looked up. "Vortigern, I cannot escape from you here unless I leap off the crag, and that would sprinkle my blood just where Maugan wants it. But neither can I see what is wrong with your foundations unless you lose me."
He jerked his head, and one of my guards freed me. I walked forward. The mule followed, stepping delicately through the thick mud. The others came after. Maugan had pressed forward and was speaking urgently to the King. I caught words here and there: "Trickery...escape...now or never...blood..."
The King halted, and the crowd with him. Someone said, Here, boy," and I looked round to see the greybeard holding out a staff. I shook my head, then turned my back on them and walked forward alone."
Water stood everywhere, glinting in soggy pools between the tussocks, or on the curled fingers of young bracken thrusting through the pallid grass of winter. The grey rock glittered with it. As I walked slowly forward I had to narrow my eyes against the wet dazzle to see at all.
It was the western wall that had fallen. This had been built very near the edge of the crag, and though most of the collapse had been inwards, there was a pile of fallen stuff lying right out to the cliff's edge, where a new land-slip showed raw and slimy with clay. There was a space in the north wall where an entrance was to be built; I picked my way through this between the piles of rubble and workmen's gear, and into the center of the tower.
Here the floor was a thick mess of churned mud, with standing puddles struck to blinding copper by the sun. This was setting now, in the last blaze of light before dusk, and glared full in my eyes as I examined the collapsed wall, the cracks, the angle of fall, the tell-tale lie of the outcrops.
All the time I was conscious of the stir and mutter of the crowd. From time to time the sun flashed on bared weapons. Maugan's voice, high and harsh, battered at the King's silence. Soon, if I did nothing and said nothing, the crowd would listen to him.
From where he sat his mule the King could see me through the gap of the north entrance, but most of the crowd could not. I climbed -- or rather, mounted, such was my dignity -- the fallen blocks of the west wall, till I stood clear of the building that remained, and they could all see me. This was not only to impress the King. I had to see, from this vantage point, the wooded slopes below through which we had just climbed, trying, now that I was clear of the crowd and the jostling, to recognize the way I had taken up to the adur, all those years ago.
The voices of the crowd, growing impatient, broke in on me, and I slowly lifted both arms towards the sun in a kind of ritual gesture, such as I had seen priests use in summoning spirits. If I at least made some show as a magician it might keep them at bay, the priests in doubt and the King in hope, till I had had time to remember. I could not afford to cast falteringly through the wood like a questing dog; I had to lead them straight and fast, as the merlin had once led me.
And my luck held. As I raised my arms the sun went in and stayed in, and the dusk began to thicken.
Moreover, with the dazzle out of my eyes, I could see. I looked back along the side of the causeway to the curve of the hill where I had climbed, all those years ago, to get away from the crowd round the two kings. The slopes were thickly wooded, more thickly than I remembered. Already, in the shelter of the corrie, some early leaves were out, and the woods were dark with thorn and holly. I could not recognize the way I had gone through the winter woods. I stared into the thickening dusk, casting back in memory to the child who had gone scrambling there...
We had ridden in from the open valley, along that stream, under the thick trees, over that low ridge and into the corrie. The kings, with Camlach and Dinias and the rest, had sat on that southern slope, below the knot of oaks. The cooking fires had been there, the horses there. It had been noon, and as I walked away -- that way -- I had trodden on my shadow. I had sat down to eat in the shelter of a rock...
I had it now. A grey rock, cleft by a young oak. And on the other side of the rock the kings had gone by, walking up towards King's Fort. A grey rock, cleft by a young oak beside the path. And straight from it, up through the steep wood, the flight-path of the merlin.
I lowered my arms, and turned. Twilight had fallen quickly in the wake of the grey clouds. Below me the wooded slopes swam thick with dusk. Behind Vortigern the mass of cloud was edged sharply with yellow, and a single shaft of misty light fell steeply on the distant black hills. The men were in dark silhouette, their cloaks whipping in the wet breeze. The torches streamed.
Slowly I descended from my viewpoint. When I reached the center of the tower floor I paused
, full in the King's view, and stretched my hands out, palms down, as if I were feeling like a diviner for what lay below the earth. I heard the mutter go round, and the harsh sound of contempt from Maugan. Then I dropped my hands and approached them. "Well?" The King's voice was hard and dry with challenge. He fidgeted in the saddle.
I ignored him, walking on past the mule and heading straight for the thickest part of the crowd as if it was not there. I kept my hands still by my sides, and my eyes on the ground; I saw their feet hesitate, shuffle, move aside as the crowd parted to let me through. I walked back across the causeway, trying to move smoothly and with dignity over the broken and sodden ground. The guards made no attempt to stop me. When I passed one of the torch-bearers I lifted a hand, and he fell in beside me without a word.
The track that the workmen and their beasts had beaten out of the hillside was a new one, but, as I had hoped, it followed the old deer-trod which the kings had taken. Halfway down, unmistakable, I found the rock. Young ferns were springing in the crevice among the roots of the oak, and the tree showed buds already breaking among last year's oak-galls. Without a moment's hesitation I turned off the track, and headed into the steep tangle of the woods.
It was far more thickly overgrown than I remembered, and certainly nobody had been this way in a long time, probably not since Cerdic and I had pushed our way through. But I remembered the way as clearly as if it had still been noon of that winter's day. I went fast, and even where the bushes grew more than shoulder height I tried to go smoothly, unregarding, wading through them as if they were a sea. Next day I paid for my wizard's dignity with cuts and scratches and ruined clothes, but I have no doubt that at the time it was impressive. I remember when my cloak caught and dragged on something how the torch-bearer jumped forward like a slave to loosen and hold it for me.
Here was the thicket, right up against the side of the dell. More rock had fallen from the slope above, piling between the stems of the thorn trees like froth among the reeds of a backwater. Over it the bushes crowded, bare elderberry, honeysuckle like trails of hair, brambles sharp and whippy, ivy glinting in the torchlight. I stopped.
The mule slipped and clattered to a halt at my shoulder. The King's voice said: "What's this? What's this? Where are you taking us? I tell you, Merlin, your time is running out. If you have nothing to show us --"
"I have plenty to show you." I raised my voice so that all of them, pushing behind him, could hear me. "I will show you, King Vortigern, or any man who has courage enough to follow me, the magic beast that lies beneath your stronghold and eats at your foundations. Give me the torch."
The man handed it to me. Without even turning my head to see who followed, I plunged into the darkness of the thicket and pulled the bushes aside from the mouth of the adur.
It was still open, safely shored and square, with the dry shaft leading level into the heart of the hill.
I had to bend my head now to get in under the lintel. I stooped and entered, with the torch held out in front of me.
I had remembered the cave as being huge, and had been prepared to find that this, like other childhood memories, was false. But it was bigger even than I remembered. Its dark emptiness was doubled in the great mirror of water that had spread till it covered all the floor save for a dry crescent of rock six paces deep, just inside the mouth of the adur. Into this great, still lake the jutting ribs of the cave walls ran like buttresses to meet the angle of their own reflections, then on down again into darkness. Somewhere deeper in the hill was the sound of water falling, but here nothing stirred the burnished surface. Where, before, trickles had run and dripped like leaking faucets, now every wall was curtained with a thin shining veil of damp which slid down imperceptibly to swell the pool.
I advanced to the edge, holding the torch high. The small light of the flame pushed the darkness back, a palpable darkness, deeper even than those dark nights where the black is thick as a wild beast's pelt, and presses on you like a stifling blanket. A thousand facets of light glittered and flashed as the flames caught the sliding water. The air was still and cold and echoing with sounds like birdsong in a deep wood.
I could hear them scrambling along the adur after me. I thought quickly.
I could tell them the truth, coldly. I could take the torch and clamber up into the dark workings and point out faults which were giving way under the weight of the building work above. But I doubted if they would listen. Besides, as they kept saying, there was no time. The enemy was at the gates, and what Vortigern needed now was not logic and an engineer; he wanted magic, and something -- anything -- that promised quick safety, and kept his followers loyal. He himself might believe the voice of reason, but he could not afford to listen to it. My guess was that he would kill me first, and attempt to shore up the workings afterwards, probably with me in them. He would lose his workmen else.
The men came pouring in at the dark mouth of the adur like bees through a hive door. More torches blazed, and the dark slunk back. The floor filled with colored cloaks and the glint of weapons and the flash of jewels. Eyes showed liquid as they looked around them in awe. Their breath steamed on the cold air. There was a rustle and mutter as of folk in a holy place, but no one spoke aloud.
I lifted a hand to beckon the King, and he came forward and stood with me at the edge of the pool. I pointed downwards. Below the surface something -- a rock, perhaps -- glimmered faintly, shaped like a dragon. I began to speak slowly, as it were testing the air between us. My words fell clear and leaden, like drops of water on rock.
"This is the magic, King Vortigern, that lies beneath your tower. This is why your walls cracked as fast as they could build them. Which of your soothsayers could have showed you what I show you now?"
His two torch-bearers had moved forward with him; the others still hung back. Light grew, wavering from the walls, as they advanced. The streams of sliding water caught the light and flowed down to meet their reflections, so that fire seemed to rise through the pool like bubbles in sparkling wine to burst at the surface. Everywhere, as the torches moved, water glittered and sparked, jets and splashes of light breaking and leaping and coalescing across the still surface till the lake was liquid fire, and down the walls the lightfalls ran and glittered like crystals; like the crystal cave come alive and moving and turning round me; like the starred globe of midnight whirling and flashing.
I took my breath in painfully, and spoke again. "If you could drain this pool, King Vortigern, to find what lay beneath it --"
I stopped. The light had changed. Nobody had moved, and the air was still, but the torchlight wavered as men's hands shook. I could no longer see the King: the flames ran between us. Shadows fled across the streams and staircases of fire, and the cave was full of eyes and wings and hammering hoofs and the scarlet rush of a great dragon stooping on his prey...
A voice was shouting, high and monotonous, gasping. I could not get my breath. Pain broke through me, spreading from groin and belly like blood bursting from a wound. I could see nothing. I felt my hands knotting and stretching. My head hurt, and the rock was hard and streaming wet under my cheekbone. I had fainted, and they had seized me as I lay and were killing me: this was my blood seeping from me to spread into the pool and shore up the foundations of their rotten tower. I choked on breath like bile. My hands tore in pain at the rock, and my eyes were open, but all I could see was the whirl of banners and wings and wolves' eyes and sick mouths gaping, and the tail of a comet like a brand, and stars shooting through a rain of blood.
Pain went through me again, a hot knife into the bowels. I screamed, and suddenly my hands were free. I threw them up between me and the flashing visions and I heard my own voice calling, but could not tell what I called. In front of me the visions whirled, fractured, broke open in intolerable light, then shut again into darkness and silence.
11
I woke in a room splendidly lined with embroidered hangings, where sunlight spilled through the window to lay bright oblongs on a boar
ded floor.
I moved cautiously, testing my limbs. I had not been hurt. There was not even a trace of headache. I was naked, softly and warmly bedded in furs, and my limbs moved without a hint of stiffness. I blinked wonderingly at the window, then turned my head to see Cadal standing beside the bed, relief spreading over his face like light after cloud.
"And about time," he said.
"Cadal! Mithras, but it's good to see you! What's happened? Where is this?"
"Vortigern's best guest chamber, that's where it is. You fixed him, young Merlin, you fixed him proper."
"Did I? I don't remember. I got the impression that they were fixing me. Do you mean they're not still planning to kill me?"
"Kill you? Stick you in a sacred cave, more like, and sacrifice virgins to you. Pity it'd be such a waste. I could use a bit of that myself."
"I'll hand them over to you. Oh, Cadal, but it is good to see you! How did you get here?"
"I'd just got back to the nunnery gate when they came for your mother. I heard them asking for her, and saying they'd got you, and were taking the pair of you off to Vortigern at cocklight next day. I spent half the night finding Marric, and the other half trying to get a decent horse -- and I might as well have saved myself the pains, I had to settle for that screw you bought. Even the pace you went, I was near a day behind you by the time you'd got to Pennal. Not that I wanted to catch up till I saw which way the land lay...Well, never mind, I got here in the end -- at dusk yesterday -- and found the place buzzing like a hive that's been trodden on." He gave a short bark of a laugh. "It was 'Merlin this', and 'Merlin that'...they call you 'the King's prophet' already! When I said I was your servant, they couldn't shove me in here fast enough. Seems there isn't exactly a rush to look after sorcerers of your class. Can you eat something?"