by Chris Tookey
“Bedivere,” said the stranger. “Though I believe he responds to the name of Bed. Now, be off with you.”
The dwarf and unicorn flew off, with Drains still muttering something under his breath about being taken for granted.
Wyrd shivered. He cried out when he felt the ground shift beneath his feet.
“The earth is moving!” he said.
“Nonsense,” said the man. “That’s just a dragon you’re standing on. Say hallo to the boy, Azi Dahaka.”
The head of a jet-black dragon appeared in front of the boy and uncomfortably close to him. It had yellow eyes and its nostril spouted steam. It opened its mouth.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, boy,” said the dragon.
The dragon looked anything but pleased. And he sounded menacing. The boy shuddered and took a step backwards.
“No need to be frightened of Azi,” said the stranger. “As long as you don’t tread on his wings. Dragons don’t like that.”
“Is that how you arrived here?” the boy inquired nervously, sliding off the dragon’s back and being extremely careful not to go near its wings.
“Of course,” said the man. “Whenever I’m in a hurry, I take a dragon. Gryphons are faster, but a dragon affords real comfort. Oodles of leg room. And a much softer landing.”
“Oh,” said the boy.
The mysterious man bowed to the boy.
“But I am forgetting my manners. I truly regret the loss of your, er, family, which I observed in my palantir.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the boy. “But I’m not sure what a palantir is.”
“It’s a kind of crystal ball, in which one can see the present, as opposed to the future. Have you still the horn I gave you?”
The boy showed him the horn, which he had slung round his neck.
“It was you who gave me this?” asked the boy.
“Indeed I did. Though I’m sure you were too young to remember.”
The man examined the horn, turning it over in his hands to check it was intact.
“You know what this is made of?” he asked the boy.
“I don’t know, sir. Is it ram’s horn?”
“No, no. Too long for that and much too strong. It is a dragon’s tooth. Hollowed out. It has unique sonic properties, and long ago I cast a spell upon it to ensure that, wherever I was, I would hear it and be able to locate its owner.”
“Why did you give it to me?”
“Because you are Wyrd.”
“You know my name,” said Wyrd.
“I ought to,” said the stranger. “I gave it to you.”
Wyrd thought for a moment.
“Are you my father?” he asked.
“Heavens, no!” The old man smiled. “It was much better that no one knew your real name, so I simply gave you a different one.”
“And this horn.”
The wizard nodded.
“I feared some day you might need my protection,” said the wizard. “And so, alas, it has proved.”
The old man returned the horn to the boy.
“You may be needing it again. Troubled times, troubled times. Employ it sparingly, though. There are circumstances in which it might prove fatal. But I won’t bother you now with warnings that you’ll only forget. Just hang on to it, for some day your life may depend on it again.”
“I will, sir,” said the boy, “but right now I’m not sure where I am or who you are. Or even who I am.”
“Aha!” said the man. “I appreciate your predicament. Well, first things first. Where are you? You are on the westernmost point of Atlantis, which is an island to the west of Britain and the largest of the so-called Fortunate Isles. The Romans call it Scillonia, and the locals have shortened that to Scilly. A pleasant spot, though obviously you are hardly seeing it at its best. And the dark shape a long way over there,” he indicated to their right, “is Castle Otto, built by the King of Atlantis and named after him.”
The stranger indicated a massive building a few hundred yards away. Even from this distance, it was an enormous, brooding castle. Along the battlements could be seen flickering flames of torches and candlelight.
“And that,” continued the man, “is where you are heading.”
“Why?” asked the boy.
The man beamed at him and beckoned him to follow.
“An intelligent question, and one I shall be answering by and by.”
“And who are you?”
“Forgive me,” said the man. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Merlin.”
He paused, to see what effect the name had upon the boy. The boy shrugged apologetically.
“I’ve, er, never heard of you.”
“Excellent!” said Merlin, continuing to walk on ahead. “Just as it should be. Innocence is a precious bloom that must be tended with care. Once it has been blighted with the frost of knowledge, it must inevitably perish. Gunnar and Sieglinda have taught you well.”
“You knew my parents?”
“Of course! But you must never speak of them!” With a flash of anxiety, Merlin seized him by the shoulders and stared deep into his eyes. “How much have you been told about your… your father and mother?”
“Not much. Only that they were immigrants.”
“Immigrants?”
“From Scandinavia.”
The worried expression passed from the magician’s features.
“Ah, I thought you meant… Quite so. You refer to Gunnar and Sieglinda, as is only natural. Yes, yes, I met them on their way to Dumnonia. They were kind enough to bandage my blisters, and I took to them immediately. Salt of the earth, your father – and your mother, highly intelligent and an excellent cook. I knew they would bring you up far better than I could.”
“Was that when I was a baby?”
“Indeed it was. I had been carrying you on foot for some days and, frankly, I was anxious to be rid of you. Even then, my back was not as strong as it might have been. Changing nappies has never been my forte, and my parenting skills are, I freely confess it, negligible. I knew that Sieglinda would make a fine mother for you. And a male, middle-aged magician carrying a newborn baby was always liable to engender suspicion in, shall we say, the wrong quarters.”
“But why were you carrying me? Who are – or were – my real parents?”
“Ah,” said the wizard evasively. “I’m afraid I cannot tell you that. Not quite yet. For your own safety, you understand.”
“But I don’t understand anything! Why am I here on Stupid?”
“Not Stupid,” said Merlin. “Scilly, with a C. Though I prefer to call it Atlantis, for old times’ sake.”
Is this all something to do with that castle?” guessed the boy. “Am I… I don’t know… Am I King Otto’s rightful heir?”
“Certainly not,” said Merlin. “And if you go round saying that kind of thing, it will be an extremely quick way to ensure that your shoulders part company with your head.”
“Then why have you brought me here?” cried the boy.
“You are here because, for the moment, this is the safest place in Britain, or – should I say – off the coast of Britain. Or to be totally accurate, off the coast of Lyonesse, which is in turn off the coast of Britain.”
“Am I in danger?”
“I would have thought the events of tonight would have made that of crystalline clarity. I imagine someone – or something – has placed a considerable price upon your head. Why else would a raiding party of bugbears try to kill you?”
“So, I am to blame,” said the boy bitterly, feeling tears well up.
“Blame? My dear boy,” said the wizard, patting him on the shoulder, “no blame attaches itself to you. Whatever makes you say such a thing?”
“It’s because of me that my parents died. And Herdis. And Hogfrid… And Rulf.”
“If anyone is to blame,” said Merlin, “it is I. I believed you would be safe living in obscurity in Dumnonia, and I was wrong. But Atlantis is even more geographically remote, so perhaps you will pass unnoticed here.”
“But how can you know that I’ll be safe?”
“Ah, well, that’s quite a simple question to answer,” replied Merlin, with a wise nod. “I can’t.”
“But can’t you make me safe? I mean, you are a wizard.”
“Being a wizard does not mean that I’m all-powerful, or infallible.”
“It means you’re wise,” said Wyrd. “Doesn’t it?”
“Charming of you to say so, but unfortunately not. I’ve met some extremely foolish wizards in my time. Evil ones, too.”
Wyrd looked at the castle, which lowered threateningly in the distance.
“Couldn’t I go home with you? You could make me your trainee. I could learn how to be a wizard.”
“A boy wizard? What a preposterous idea!” Merlin chuckled. “Anyway, there are quite enough wizards in the world already. Besides, I am far too well known. And I fear that my association with your true father and mother would mean that your identity would be guessed within a week. And within a day of that…”
The wizard drew his hand expressively across his throat.
“But surely you could protect me?”
“Wyrd, there are considerably more powerful forces in this world than I,” said the wizard, “and most of them desire your demise. I could furnish you with a list, but the length of it would only depress you.”
“But why? I’m not important.”
“You’re quite right. You’re not. Yet. But a lot of people think you might become important, which puts you in just as perilous a position.”
“So, do they know my name?” asked Wyrd.
“They know the name you will be called by,” said Merlin, “but not, I think, the name by which you are known at the moment. Unless you know anything different?”
Wyrd tried to remember if his cousin Herdis had named him to the bugbear pedlar. He thought not. And the bugbears had called him ape-boy, which suggested they didn’t know his name. Wyrd shook his head.
“The bugbears didn’t seem to know my name,” he said.
“That’s good at any rate,” said Merlin. “So, let’s keep calling you Wyrd. But we must be quick.”
“Are we in danger?”
“Mainly from the weather. I can see you are walking with difficulty on bare feet that need bandaging and hands that also need attention. Burns from climbing up a recently used chimney? Yes, I thought so. You are also shivering, either with delayed shock or the cold. It would be a shame if, having survived so exceptionally nerve-wracking an ordeal, you were to succumb to something as mundane as a chill.”
Merlin uttered a few incomprehensible words to Azi Dahaka, and the great black dragon melted into the darkness.
“It would be better for Azi to keep his distance from the castle,” said Merlin. “Some people are mistrustful of dragons. Especially those that breathe fire.”
“Azi does that?” asked the boy.
“Indeed he does,” said Merlin, “but only in battle. Perhaps one day you’ll see him in action. It’s a marvellous sight, unless of course you happen to be the one breathed on.”
They drew up to within two hundred yards of the castle drawbridge, and Merlin stopped.
“In a twinkling of a bat’s behind,” said Merlin, “I shall take you to the kitchen entrance of the castle. It will be better if you can avoid using the drawbridge even by night. There are spies everywhere.”
“How will I know who to trust?”
“You won’t,” said Merlin, sadly. “Not knowing whom to trust is part of the human, and indeed the wizarding, condition. Somewhere that appears safe may well be unsafe, and somewhere perilous may turn out to be your sanctuary. But believe me when I say that there is much good in Castle Otto, and in the world.”
“How can I believe that, after tonight?”
“I know,” the wizard nodded sympathetically. “But you will get nowhere through being always bitter, perpetually angry. Wyrd, you have seen things tonight that no boy of your age should have seen and experienced emotions that no child should ever feel. Yet many in this world have witnessed the most savage brutalities, and even more will do so in the future. Try to rise above disaster, remember the better times that have passed, and try not to dwell on the hatred and feelings of revenge that are only natural for you to feel. There is no end to hatred, and no revenge that you may perpetrate could ever make up for the lives that have been lost.”
Wyrd pondered the wizard’s homily for a moment.
“Well, that’s easier said than done,” he said.
“Of course. Almost everything is easier said than done,” said Merlin, cheerfully, “especially when you’re as clever and articulate as I am. By the way, did you know I am a shape-shifter?”
“What’s that?”
“Watch.”
So saying, Merlin turned himself into an extremely large, grey and white bird of prey. “You see? Now I’m not just Merlin. I’m a merlin.”
“I’ve seen merlins,” replied Wyrd, “when they were trying to kill our chickens, and they were a lot smaller than you.”
“Aha!” said the Merlin-sized merlin. “But if I was any smaller, I wouldn’t be able to pick you up with my feet and fly you to the castle. Would I?”
So saying, Merlin gathered up the shivering boy and bore him to the eastern side of the castle, overlooking a vertiginous drop of a hundred feet to the raging ocean. There was a huge door in the castle wall, and a clue to its function was a great contraption of wood, pulleys and rope that had been constructed nearby to hang out over the sheer cliff, presumably to bring up provisions from any boat that dared to moor in the tiny cove a hundred feet or more below.
Merlin put the boy down safely and reassumed wizard form. Wyrd looked up at the contraption and shook, not so much with cold as with fear. It reminded him of a cruel gibbet he had once seen at a roadside, with the skeleton of a man dangling from it. He stole a look over the side of the cliff. You didn’t have to have any experience of the sea to know that, on a night like this, any boat trying to moor below would be smashed to bits on the rocks. Merlin rapped loudly on the great, inhospitable door.
5
Castle Otto
In which our hero encounters a soulmate
Wenda jerked upright, awake and terrified. As a kitchen maid, she was used to having nowhere comfortable to sleep – just her tiny, cramped alcove, which was too far from the huge central cauldron for her to feel its heat for much of the night. But never before had she been woken up by beating on the kitchen door.
For as long as Wenda had known, the outside entrance to the kitchen, which was a thick wooden door set into the wall of the castle itself, had been used to take food in and garbage out. Nothing else.
Mrs Scraggs grumbled as she rose from her improvised bed in the opposite alcove to Wenda’s. Mrs Scraggs’ left leg, which was made of wood from the famed Atlantean Forest of Leafmould, hit the floor with a resounding thunk.
“All right, all right, keep your hair on!” she mumbled, as the knocking grew ever more urgent.
She rubbed her eyes and yawned as she reached for her walking stick, then waddled across to the kitchen door. She stood on arthritic tiptoe and opened a spy-hole. Because the spy-hole had been made by an ogre, it was generously proportioned – the size of a dinner plate. And because it hadn’t been used in many a year, the hinged cover to the spy-hole creaked a crotchety complaint when she pulled it open.
“Oh. You,” she muttered, with the enthusiasm of someone welcoming seawater into a sinking ship.
The old woman used her stick to unbolt the door at the top and signalled for the little girl to undo the bolt at the bottom.
The great door swung slowly open. An icy draught swept in, along with salty sea spray that stung the skin. Outside, as so often in this remote corner of the world, a wind was howling. Wenda’s thin blanket offered little protection, and she crept from the draught behind the door to a spot nearer the comforting warmth of the kitchen cauldron.
Wenda was nine years old, elfin-faced and dressed in a way that gave no clue as to whether she was girl or boy, or even completely human. She might just as easily have been an elf or a halfling; and this helped to explain her lowly status within the castle. Anyone suspected of a mongrel upbringing was traditionally consigned to servile tasks such as housework and cookery.
Wenda was temporarily missing her two front teeth, so shyness made her keep her mouth shut, which added to her look of seriousness. This, and a curious intensity of gaze, made many purebred humans uncomfortable when they found themselves in her company.
Even though she was little, Wenda had spent years watching Mrs Scraggs carefully with her piercing, blue eyes and had amassed a working knowledge of herbs and spices. She was eager to please Mrs Scraggs, who was the nearest she had to a mother. Wenda knew that the old woman was not capable of unconditional love. To gain even a modest amount of her affection, Wenda had had to prove herself a hard worker, even though she had to stand on a stool to grind peppercorns with a pestle and mortar, or wash up the wooden boards that served as dishes for the better-born within the castle.
Mrs Scraggs had told Wenda she might some day become a senior scullery maid, or even a cook. But right now Mrs Scraggs was not in an expansive mood. She scratched her generous behind ruminatively as a gaunt, cloaked man in a tall, pointy hat came in from the cold, flicking a gold coin in Mrs Scraggs’ direction, which the old woman caught with surprising agility.
“What do you want here?” she snarled.
“Why, my dear Mrs Scraggs, a tot of your finest mead would not go amiss,” said the stranger amiably.
Wenda watched curiously as he took off his hat to reveal brown curly hair and a long beard, flecked with grey. With his friendly, if quizzical, expression, he looked kindly but careworn, with a once handsome face that had become raddled with age or good living, or probably both.