The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis cc-6

by Jack Whyte

  . "And when he turns to rend you limb from limb, what then, Ironhair?"

  "He never will. He loves me, in his own demented way. I am the only friend that he has ever known, and he trusts me completely. And now I must go. Release me, if you will. "

  "Presently I will, but you have much to answer for. The assault on our children, years ago, and the murder during that assault of Hector's wife, Julia, a blameless woman if there ever was one. The recent death of my own wife, Tressa. The death of my good friend Dedalus, and much, much more, the tally of which has barely begun—"

  He made a tutting noise, cutting me short. "These charges are nonsense, Britannicus. I know nothing of this woman Julia, although I'll take your word that she was killed. That was unfortunate and incidental to the main concern, which was to stifle the Pendragon brat. In that, I struck at you, once and no more. I was displeased with you. Mind you, had I known then what I know now, I might have tried the harder, but that was before dear Carthac came into my life.

  "As for your wife and friends, what fault lies there of mine? Yours was the choice to come thus howling home, abandoning the simplest steps that might have saved their lives. You were the one who rode though unknown land with no protective scouts ahead of you.. And why? I have yet brought no threat to bear on Camulod, nor will I, till I'm done in Cambria. Really, you must admit I am blameless, there. "

  "What about Horsa?" |

  "What about him? I required mercenaries, and he provided them."

  "He is a Dane, an Outlander!"

  "He is a mercenary, Merlyn! He fights for payment"

  "Aye, and for land and plunder and rapine. He slaughtered Vortigern, who was more than good to him and his kind. You'd turn his people loose among your own?"

  His lip curled in a sneer. "What's this about my own? I have no people of my own, other than those I own by right of purchase. Spare me these minatory mouthings and let me go."

  I nodded to him and lay back. "Go then, but be prepared for me. I'm coming for you, Ironhair, and I will find you"

  He smiled again and began to fade from my sight, tin light that revealed him to me dimming slowly. "I have told you, Merlyn, you will not find me. Look to yourself, and to your charge, Arthur Pendragon. There is the one you should be grieving for and fretting over... He is accursed... much like you..."

  When the room was completely dark and he was gone, I tried to shift myself upright but could not move. I raised my voice, instead, and was answered by another, coming from beyond the door. Then the door swung open and a young woman came in, bearing a lamp with a brazen reflector.

  "Master Merlyn? Can I do aught for you?"

  "No," I replied, pleased to hear that my voice was as strong as it had ever been. "What is your name?"

  I cannot recall her name, but she told me she had heard me talking in my sleep, and I smiled and told her that I had been dreaming. She left me alone again, and I lay staring up at the darkened ceiling in wonder, stroking my fingers up and down the roughened surface of my scaly, dry skinned chest. Her lamp had been bright, amplified by the polished brass reflector. It should have dazzled me, after hours in a darkened room, but it had not. My eyes had grown accustomed to bright light before she entered.

  I have never since been able to explain it, but I believe that Ironhair was in my room that night, and I have often wondered if he knew of it.

  I was fully recovered and up and about a week later, little the worse for my strange illness, save that my skin was still rough and reddened. I checked myself and found nothing in the least resembling lesions; rough, scaly skin was all I had to show for my exposure on the night of the storm. Rough, scaly skin externally, and an equally rough, scaly texture to what lay inside me.

  I reviewed everything that had happened prior to our arrival, and by the time Philip and Rufio and Falvo brought the remainder of my thousand back to Camulod, I had everything in hand, functioning efficiently.

  Connor had seen the Danish fleet on its arrival, after it came around the tip of Cornwall's peninsula. He had spied it sailing downwind from afar and fled ahead of it with his two biremes and his fifteen escorting galleys. Vastly outnumbered—his estimate of the enemy's fleet was two hundred sails—he made no attempt to linger and fight but struck northward instantly, intent on gathering his own fleet. In passing, nonetheless, he dispatched two groups of messengers to bring warning to us and to Huw Strongarm, who lay encamped at Caerdyff. He would return, he said, when he could fight effectively against such numbers.

  When the word arrived in Camulod, Ambrose was left with little choice but to ride to Huw's assistance. A fleet so large would land four thousand warriors, at the minimum of twenty men to a craft, and he knew the Danes used crew of at least thirty, and would be over crewed with warriors seeking spoil. He reckoned on six thousand warriors, and would not have been surprised to learn that they were eight or even ten thousand.

  Huw's armies, Ambrose knew, had been disbanded in the.' aftermath of their victory on the coast by Dolaucothi. No one had expected Ironhair to raid again until the following year, and no one had expected to be confronted by another, vastly different army. Ambrose had not yet learned that these were Ironhair's new allies. It would take an entire month, at least, he reasoned, to rally Huw's Pendragon hostagain, for they were busy with their farms, ploughing the land in preparation for seeding. An army thousands strong; landed as unexpectedly as this one, would spread across the land like wildfire, gaining enormous impetus before it could be challenged or brought to fight. Only a mounted force; from Camulod had any chance of stopping them, for fearsome as they were aboard their swooping ships, once they were on the land they were mere infantry, immensely vulnerable to our massed horsemen.

  Within the week, Ambrose had taken two full legions of our total force—two thousand heavy horse, a thousand scouts, and three thousand foot—and entered Cambria, headed directly to the southern coast, to Caerdyff, where he hoped to find Huw Strongarm. Derek of Ravenglass had ridden with him. Behind him, in full charge of Camulod, Ambrose left Tertius Lucca with a holding force of two thousand, fully three fourths of those garrison foot soldiers. He had also left word for me, should I return before he did, that I should remain in place, looking to the defence of Camulod and all the lands about it—from the Appian Colony in the north all the way south to Ilchester and beyond—but that I should send on my thousand horse to him as reinforcements, under Tertius Lucca himself, should we remain unthreatened here at home.

  No word had come from Cambria of Arthur, and Ambrose had been gone for nigh on a month when we came home.

  On the day following the return of Philip and the others, two troopers came to my quarters in the fort, carrying a large, wooden chest. It was from Plato, majordomo of the Villa Britannicus, and there was a single sheet of paper affixed to the lid. In it, Plato expressed his condolences on the loss of my beloved lady and informed me that Derek had left it at the Villa for me before riding off with Ambrose. I sat staring at it for some time, knowing what it contained, before I took my knife and cut the cords that bound it shut, throwing back the lid to look inside.

  Beneath the carefully folded mass of his great red dyed war cloak, my cousin Uther's armour was intact, no single piece of it missing. It bore a few deep scores, but it was in fine condition. The helmet was more splendid than I remembered, crested with a fine display of stiff horsehair, dyed a deep scarlet; the visor band above the brows had been embossed with Uther's fiery dragon, enamelled in red. The same device, much larger, was engraved into the cuirass, the cuts of the engraving similarly packed with fired enamel, so that the device stood out sharp and clear against the dull matte of the bronze breastplate: a broad winged dragon, standing erect upon its strong rear legs and breathing curls of fire. I saw my cousin wearing it, and laughing at me, showing his strong, white, even teeth. He had told me once that I was too judgmental, and his opinion had wounded me deeply, before I realized that it was the simple truth.

  Suddenly I missed him, grievously.
I picked up his enormous, heavy cloak and spread it carefully out on the floor. Covering all the back of it in heavy layers of colourfully worked, rich needlecraft, that same great dragon reared its head and spread its wings over the wide stretched shoulders, this time done all in threads of pure, finely wrought! gold. Arthur would look magnificent in this, I thought, and turned my head to where Uther stood watching me still. He laughed again and said, "The boy's accursed..." in Ironhair's voice. I turned away again and slammed the lid on the; great box, then sat there looking at it while my mind recalled! the other two great chests I possessed, those that contained! the tools of death of two Egyptian warlocks. !

  "Ironhair," I whispered, "I have a gift for you." I attended a meeting of the Council of Camulod the day after that, and left before the business was concluded. I knew few of the Councillors after my absence of so many years, and I found I had no patience now with the minutiae of government. On leaving, I sought out Tertius Lucca and asked him to walk with me, and as we strolled outside the gates of the fort I informed him that I intended to ignore my brother's request to send him personally with the extra thousand horsed His place, I said, was here in Camulod, where he was particularly suited, both by nature and by training, to oversees the conduct of the collective garrisons of the surrounding outposts and to work with the Council. I would send Philip with the cavalry reinforcements, I told him, and would hand over full command again to Lucca, until such time as Ambrose returned.

  He listened, keeping his eyes cast down, and when I had completed what I had to say, he nodded, then saluted me, accepting my decree. I left him standing there beneath the walls and made my way to the bathhouse, feeling a grim excitement welling in my breast.

  A short time later, I sat alone again in my own chambers, bare to the waist, repeating something I had once seen Lucanus do. I held one of Tressa's longest needles in my hand and I was sticking it gently, but judiciously, into my chest, moving it from place to place and taking note of what I felt. In most places, I felt the pain of a piercing needle. In many others, however, at least half a score of them, the metal needle slipped into my flesh without producing any sensation at all. Eventually I stopped what I was doing and sat there, staring into nothingness, empty and unmoved by the discovery. I had noticed the discoloured patches while lying in the steam room earlier: areas of whitish, dead looking skin, roughly circular in shape, the body hair within their boundaries already turning grey. Not lesions, yet, but growing. Mucius Quinto's "minor ailment of the skin. " Leprosy.

  After a time, I rose and dressed again, wearing my finest leathers, and then sent for Philip, Falvo and Rufio. When they arrived, I told them to prepare to leave for Cambria in two days' time. I spent the remainder of the day poring through the warlocks' chests.

  That night, I sought out Donuil and Shelagh to tell them I would be leaving Camulod for a time, and that they should not worry about me. Donuil I charged with looking after things while I was gone; Shelagh I charged with looking after Donuil. When Donuil sought to embrace me, I thrust him away and he fell back, abashed. Shelagh merely kissed her own palm and then laid it gently on my cheek. I heaved a deep, shaking breath, swallowed hard and left them.

  Hours later, when the only people stirring were the night guards, I visited the stables, where I found a light, two wheeled cart and a plain, sturdy horse to pull it. I harnessed the animal and took it to my quartets, where I loaded four cases onto the cart. One of them contained Uther's armour.; Two more were the warlocks' chests. The last held a variety of things I thought I might need—clothing, and twine, a small hand axe, some coils of iron wire of varied thickness, some knives of varying sizes, fish hooks and lines, a matched set of shortsword and dagger, made by Publius Varrus, a polished mirror that had been my Aunt Luceiia's, my own long sword and Excalibur in its long, wooden case. ; I also took foodstuffs, scavenged from the kitchens: some? bread, slabs of both salted and smoked meat, a bag of flour, ; a smaller bag of salt, a clutch of onions and some corms of garlic, and the remainder of the olive oil, olives and wine brought to me by Germanus and carried safely home to me by the chief quartermaster. When I. had loaded everything,;! I swathed myself in an ankle length, black, threadbare garment which resembled a cloak, save that it had long, deep sleeves and a peaked, capacious hood that obscured my face. Then I hauled myself up to the cart's bench and set the horses moving, pulling the hood's deep cowl forward over my face. I had appropriated the garment that afternoon, from a peg outside the refectory where it had been; left hanging while its owner went in search of food. In return! I had left a heavy, woollen cloak of my own, sleeveless but" far finer than the one I took and much too fine for my intended purposes. As I expected, when I steered my cart out through the gates, shortly before dawn, the guards paid: no attention to my passing.

  I reached my little, hidden valley of Avalon as the sun climbed high enough to throw long shadows from the surrounding trees down onto the waters of the tiny lake concealed within its depths, and I was keenly aware that seven whole years and more had passed since I had last been here, and that my Tress had lived her life and died without knowing of its existence. Cassandra's grave was barely noticeable now, its mound sunken to the level of the surrounding ground, and the door to the stone hut was still securely closed. This was my sanctuary; the world held no dominion over me here. The ropes that formed the cradle of my old bed were still strong enough to bear my weight, and I soon fell asleep, only to awaken within the hour, well rested and filled with a profound sense of calm as I listened to the song of birds in the woodlands around the tiny lake.

  I spent some time thereafter gathering firewood, then lit a fire in the old firepit just beyond the door of the hut. I made a meal of cold, smoked meat and some of the bread that I had carried from the fort, and then I sat by the fire and opened up the warlocks' chests, retrieving my own copious notes and studying them closely. I must have been lost in them for many hours, because when I looked about again the sun had vanished and my fire was almost out, though I had fed it several times throughout the day. I coaxed it back to life again, noticing that the hoard of fuel I had amassed that morning now was almost gone, and thereafter I sat staring into the flames, lost in my thoughts as the light about me faded into dark.

  Carthac was fearless, utterly so; Ironhair had said so in my dream. Strongarm had said the same: invincible, invulnerable, fearless, afraid of neither man nor beast. Horsa's Danes were fearless, too, according to all reports that I had heard. Savage, they were; invincible in their ferocity; implacable in their fierce hatred of any that withstood them or sought to thwart them; afraid, in all their godless pride and arrogance, of neither man nor beast.

  My men were fearless, too, in war: invincible in their sure strength and confident that no mere human force could withstand diem. And yet I knew my men, in Camulod, had once known fear of me when I was young—not of my human strength, but of the mere suggestion that I, Merlyn, possessed powers that were more than human. Their fears had been unfounded, for the deeds that awed diem had all been achieved by trickery and mere suggestions fed by me into their willing minds. The most notorious of those had concerned the disappearance of Cassandra from a guarded room in the dead of night, and that had been no mere mischief. I had feared for the girl's life at the hands of some unknown assailant and had smuggled her away unseen before the guards were set to protect an empty room. The mystery came later, when I claimed to have been wakened by a dream that she was gone, and a subsequent search had proved this to be true. For years thereafter, soldiers walked in awe of me and watched me surreptitiously, awaiting further marvels. Those fearless soldiers, scorning man and beast, had nonetheless feared me and what I whispered to their minds of darknesses where their swords could not save them.

  Now I had ranged before me, in the flickering firelight, an entire armoury of dark and fearsome tools, all of which could bring death and other terrifying effects, all of them garnered by two men whose evil minds possessed no other wish than to bring terror to the min
ds of ordinary men by causing death through awesome, mystifying and unnatural means. I had small, black, envenomed thorns that would bring instant, painful death to anyone they pricked, and I possessed a green and noxious paste that carried fiery poison that would burn a man to death from within, from the merest scratch. I had tray upon tray of unguents and oils and powders and salts and crystals, dried, withered berries, seeds and nuts, and crushed admixtures of all kinds; grasses and twigs and unknown, fibrous substances that burned with noxious, stultifying smoke; and all of these things brought death, in one form or another.

  I would teach Carthac fear, I had resolved, and Ironhair, and all his swarming men. They would know fear the like of which they never could have dreamed: the fear of living death and magical enchantment; the fear of darkness and the stinking, evil things that crawled therein; the fear of being naked in the path of ravening beasts whose shapes could neither be imagined nor endured, grim, unseen creations from the human mind's darkest recesses. I, Merlyn, would teach them how to fear.

  But before I could achieve any part of what I planned, I also had practical considerations to resolve, all of them dealing with the bulk of what lay spread about me. How much of it could I take with me, and how would I carry it? I would be journeying alone, a solitary man, so I would be a fool to carry anything that might appear worth stealing. I would be walking, too, once I reached Cambria, since a horse would attract attention where I wanted none. And I would be unarmoured to the point of appearing weaponless, although I would have both shortsword and dagger concealed beneath my cloak. It was my hope to travel by night, most of the time, and then I would be aided by the dark and by my long, black robe. But how much of this portable mass of death could I take with me?

  Then I remembered Lucanus, and I smiled. Luke had been a gatherer of all things medicinal—leaves and herbs and roots and pods and berries—and he had devised a means of garnering and saving them that left his hands free of the need to carry them. He had had several robes made to his precise design, and had thereafter worn one every time he ventured out on any errand of collection. They were long and black and sleeveless, made of strong, homespun cloth in double thickness. Belted at the waist, they were open from neckline to ankle, and completely festooned with pouches and pockets, each strongly sewn in place and all overlapping one upon the other as they hung. I recalled the pride and enjoyment with which he had demonstrated it, when it was new. I had made some comment on its appearance, and he had brushed that aside, entreating me to think of its function rather than its look; the capacity to carry large quantities of different plants, berries and leaves, without the fear of losing them or mixing them together. Luke was long dead, but one of those garments hung in my own quarters in Camulod, where he had left it and forgotten it years earlier, before we went to Ravenglass. I had noticed it mere days before, hanging still in place, but had thought nothing of it at the time. Now I knew that I had to return to Camulod to collect it.