speaks with a certainty her men need to hear after the murder of their reckoner by a Roman hand. "As Raglaw was the stitch that bound the old ways to the new, so this man shall be the binding scar where the stitch had been.
And he shall be known among us and in the world at large by the name of this place where the honor and duties of Raglaw have passed to him. Henceforth, he is no longer Lailoken the demon visitor. Instead, he shall be our spirit reckoner, and he shall be called our Man of Maridunum—
Myrddin!'
Among the assembled, a triumphant shout exclaims,
"Myrddin!"—and the wizard blinks back at the crowd with
surprise. He is not ready to be so quickly thrust into prominence, he who, for ages, has worked secretly and in dark places.
The queen turns, and Lailoken follows her into the
central hall. He glances back once, numbly, and in those few moments sees that the fiana have already removed Raglaw's corpse and workers in hide breeches are busy sponging away the gore and igniting incense trays to
fumigate the recent violence.
Ygrane leads the wizard silently past long dining
tables, chambers hung with saffron draperies from which harp music and plangent singing sifts, and map rooms
where scribes busily scribble, oblivious to the bloodletting only paces away.
Finally, the queen takes her new spirit reckoner
down a steamy stairwell that leads to the baths. Servants crisscross among the hallways, bearing scrolls to the scribes and trays of savory foods to the music chambers.
The death of Raglaw seems of no greater consequence to them than the passing of a cloud across the sun.
"Today we celebrate a military victory over the sea rovers," Ygrane explains, recognizing his bafflement. Her voice has regained its composure. "And now, we will honor as well the triumphant passing to the Greater World of the wise woman Raglaw—and the arrival of the wizard
Myrddin. There is much for the scribes to record."
Through an archway of blue-veined marble, they
enter an open-walled gallery under a rose arbor canopy that overlooks spacious parkland of flowering hedges.
They sit at a slate table on facing settles whose backs have been carved into dragoncoils. Handmaidens in sea-green camisas serve pear wine, smoked salmon, and black bread with currant jam.
Lailoken leans his staff against a railing graced with finny-winged sea horses and observes the gentle rain
dimpling the birdbaths.
"You are surrounded by beauty and power," he says, and sips the wine and nibbles the bread to fulfill the queen's obligation of hospitality. "My lady," he continues with a tone of grave doubt, "I must tell you, I am not worthy to replace Raglaw as your spirit reckoner."
"Myrddin, let there be no false modesty between
us—please." Ygrane turns her leonine profile toward the tree-rough fringing the garden, and the wizard notices suddenly how careworn and tired her face looks in this light. "Surely, you have no doubt Raglaw saw you for who you are? She was the previous queen's reckoner, you
know. And the queen before that. She could see deeper into things. From her, after the Druids brought me here, I
learned how to understand what I see."
Her voice frays toward a whisper: "Her death is not, as you might have thought, wholly unexpected. She would have passed to the Greater World by leaf-fall. We both saw it. But she did surprise us all today, letting her death stand defiantly against the duke—as a life for a life. It was her last act of magic . . . for me."
"But I don't understand," Myrddin speaks. "Why did Gorlois kill her?"
"They were enemies to be sure," the queen answers matter-of-factly. "Raglaw reminded him of his place, and she never let him forget he was a foreigner in these lands.
As I've told you, it was the Druids arranged for my marriage to Gorlois as a political expediency. His kingdom stood in dire jeopardy from the Saxon sea rovers. With the Roman navy long gone, the barbarians commanded his coasts and before long assured of mounting his head on a pike. That none of the Roman families left in Britain could spare their forces to aid him without jeopardizing their own domains weighed on him as a humiliation. It forced him to fend for himself. The Druids offered him Celtic might if he would agree to marry their queen."
"Why?" the wizard puzzles aloud. "What advantage for you to marry the arrogant invader?"
"Is there any other reason but power, Myrddin?" the queen replies sourly. "With so many of our tribes become Christian, the Druids had reason enough to want an
alliance with the Romans. Marrying me off to a Christian duke who needed our soldiers, that protected their
interests, did it not? The Romans of the Saxon Coast have foresworn sending missionaries into our land. And, indeed, the loss of the old ways has been slowed here in Cymru."
She returns her stare to the oaks and evergreen
magnolias. Lailoken thinks that perhaps it is her
melancholy that makes her so beautiful. In her face shines a wisdom born of suffering.
"Make no mistake, Myrddin," the queen continues. "I know this life is not my own, that I am but an effigy, fabricated by the Druids who control me. But even as this thing they have made me, I have a soul. It is my people.
Whatever I can do to help them, I will.
"As a queen, I am pleased to preserve my people's culture—but as a woman—" She stops. "I have told this to no one—only Raglaw knows . . . knew." She pauses to regard him closely. "She would have slain the unicorn—
sacrificed it to the Dragon. I stopped her, because I believe there is a better way. Yes, the Dragon, strengthened by the sacrifice of the unicorn, would help us defeat the invaders in a battle or two. I have a wider plan, and Raglaw affirmed
that with her vision—a vision she shared with you, Myrddin."
"The king—" he mutters. "She showed me the king who will father a savior."
"Yes. He is the consort of my destiny."
"What of Gorlois? He does not seem a man likely to tolerate a rival."
The green of Ygrane's eyes appears to brighten. "I
... I yearn for a love, Myrddin—a true love. Not political expediency. Gorlois has never loved me, nor I him, as is evident to all, I know. I suffered one night of his lewd attentions when I was but fifteen and conceived Morgeu.
Since then, I have allowed him to use my soldiers and my forts but never again my body." She places an imploring weight of hope on him, reaches out, and takes his hand in a hard grip. "Myrddin, I cannot, will not, believe that the story I have seen so often in my visions is a false one, a cruel hoax that will lead to a life of useless misery. Why would God permit that? I can endure suffering, I swear, if there is a use to it. I wish only to fulfill the ancient story that took me away from my simple home in the hills. I want you to find for me my true love, the intended one of my visions.
Raglaw herself said he is a real man. She has seen him, and she has shown him to you. I want you to go now and find him."
Lailoken's incredulous voice breaks from his throat
before he can even think, "I am a demon. What do I know of love? All I ever knew was my mother's love—hardly the love of which you speak now."
"Not unlike," Ygrane says with heartful trust, searching his haggard face for some glimmer of
understanding. "To fulfill my destiny, I must probably take another husband from among the Romans. I dream this
time of a true husband—a good man, not a brute like
Gorlois, nor a champion of men on the battlefield; I dream of a gentle man, one who neither speaks too loud nor
ignores evil. I pray to my gods for such a like-minded mate, who will be ever for me like harmony to music, virtue to the soul, prosperity to the state ..."
"And forethought to the universe," he concludes the famous old simile and casts an entreating look at her. He can hardly believe they are having this conversation just moments after the crone's gory de
mise. Death and sex, the twined serpents of mortal life, tighten their coils about him.
He sighs and wags his head hopelessly. "I don't know of such a love. And that is not false modesty, Your Majesty.
How can I find for you what I myself do not know?"
The queen's face brightens. "A favor for a favor, then. You shall have the power that you seek, for I can
help you capture the unicorn and ride it. That is what you want, yes?" She passes a hopeful smile to the wizard.
"Last night, Raglaw came to me in trance. She told me that she gave you a vision of a time to come, as she and I had agreed after I convinced her not to sacrifice the unicorn.
She claimed that in that prophetic fit, you saw the man who is to be my destiny—the true king who will be my lover and the father of our people's hope."
"Yes, perhaps—the crone showed me a man—but I
am unsure—" He frowns. "My lady, the man Raglaw showed me is a Christian."
"Yes, Myrddin. That must be so—to fulfill the
prophecy." She squeezes his hand and sits back with a look of fragile satisfaction. "Love is what I seek. A love I have known in other lives, not yet in this. Faith is no distraction to me. Haven't I already given myself to a Christian for political advantage? Why not, then, for love and the salvation of my people?"
"Will he love you back?" the wizard wonders. "Is prophecy enough to inspire love? We both know that the timewind shifts and what we have seen is not necessarily what will be."
"Don't you understand, Myrddin?" A bedazzled flush lights her face from within. "If in the mind of God we are destined to meet, he already loves me."
*
From the ramparts of the south wall, Morgeu
watches the fiana carry the corpse of the crone Raglaw out of Maridunum. The child has disobeyed her mother so that she might wave farewell to her father. The duke and his men have already departed. Dust from their horses hangs above the rutted road in an amber haze, marking where the company turned the bend that descends toward the
sea and the invaders they are sworn to fight.
Morgeu climbs steep stairs that lead toward a cirrus
sky and the highest parapet of the south wall. Around her gather verdant hills, smoke blue horizons of mountains, and the distant sea.
Below, tiny as thumblings, her mother and the
wizard Lailoken stroll together in the parkland within the city's walls. Hidden from their view by the ivy-splashed walls, Falon carries a sack bulging knobbily with the corpse of Raglaw.
Pride flushes through Morgeu. The faerie-tale
enchantress she will someday become has slain the crone.
She only wishes that the curse had not chosen her father to do the deed. The vision of him in a plunge of fright
squats like nausea in her.
Six fiana accompany Falon on his march across cow pastures toward the cavernous forest. They wedge-flank their captain as though expecting an enemy to
challenge them for the hag's bones. Each of them feared the crone as much as Morgeu, and the child wonders what they intend to do with her body.
Her mother seems wholly indifferent. She and the
wizard wade among lavender asters to the squared ledge of a Roman fountain, conversing earnestly.
The unicorn is nowhere to be found. Morgeu has not
seen it since Lailoken drove it off, and she has been calling imploringly for it to return.
Morgeu is confused. Everything has changed. The
crone is dead and a future self, an unexpected self, has come to life. Her young mind glows with the promise of this strength and cannot yet grasp the cruel seasons or the fierce and mortal weakness that require such strength.
The thought of herself as a sorceress continues to
surprise her, because she has none of her mother's
powers—no healing green touch, no recollection of former lives, no long sight either—at least not until Raglaw touched her. Morgeu cannot imagine how she will grow up so vehemently purposeful.
Her father's realm holds far more fascination for her than the boring naturalistic world of magic. The Roman court, with all its pageantry and obvious importance, has intrigued her since she first looked up from her dolls and began paying attention to the world.
She enjoys being the duke's daughter and admires
his authority, the way he is always central, all others moving around him, meshing their lives to follow him. His decisiveness and strength awe her.
Her mother is the duke's opposite. She disappears
into her world. In her gardens and on her forest trods, she is ever gathering, sorting, preparing ingredients for her magical rinses. Her earthy handmaids work with her as casually as though she were one of their own common lot.
And the Druids, who are supposed to serve and
obey her, spend more time with the duke's ministers
scheming advantages for their own clans. Only the fiana offer genuine devotion, and even they bicker with her when she gets too dreamy.
The dreaminess is why Morgeu has had no interest
in magic. Without the sight, she does not see what her mother sees. Until the unicorn, magic looked to her like little more than spellbound silence.
Now, the unicorn is gone—and Lailoken has arrived.
Lailoken—a demon disguised as a man. She has listened
in rapt fright to the tales of demonic possession and devil hauntings told by her Christian governess at Tintagel, and she knows with a child's certitude that no good can come of this lanky old man.
She is glad that her father will be sending for her in a few days to join him on the Saxon Coast. Without the unicorn, she feels no joy in her mother's faraway presence.
Morgeu skips along the parapet walkway, imagining
that she is flying away, and then stops to watch the fiana fade into the forest. She wishes she could observe what they are doing with the severed head and stiffening body of Raglaw. Will they bury her or leave her for the beasts? She knows what her mother would say: The elf-folk will take her.
Like an explosion blasting debris outward, a huge
flock of black birds erupts out of the forest canopy in a tight, swirling vortex. Fox fire runs rapidly among the trees, green flames shot by arrows. Moments later, the fiana dash from the woods, running in a mad scramble, hardy faces smeared with fright.
Morgeu crouches at the parapet wall. The fox fire
has vanished. Over the treetops, the maelstrom of black birds rises, and the child quakes, expecting them to form the crone's visage. They scatter haphazardly across the day sky, like pieces of night surprised to find themselves in a strange land.
*
The Dragon curls upon itself, listening to the
dreamsongs that sift to earth out of the starry depths. The music from its other selves, from the Dragons of other worlds, arrives both fast and still, opening amorous joys in the liquid of its brain.
Spellbound by this bliss, it wants to sing with the
sweetness that comes from great strength. But it lacks that power. And that lack is an estranging grief.
Mind inwrought, the Dragon feels torn and alone.
The dreamsongs strung on the starwinds curl directly
through the desiring center of its need. Stars fall through the cold. The others are so far away.
Somehow, it must reach them, must gather the force
from its ragged limits so that it can sing loudly enough to share in the endless genesis of the Dragon.
For now. it curls upon itself in its own mortal circle, listening, yearning. Stars fall through the cold. Galaxies turn in their windy spirals. And the Dragon dreams of the first song, the first music of the Lords who set fire in the Earth.
Uther
The wizard keeps to himself on the rutted and torn
roads of Britain and avoids any settlement smaller than what the Romans called the municipia, the major towns.
There, he encounters the
persistent memory of bygone
glory.
The cosmopolitan Romans imported entertainment
from the most exotic reaches of their empire, and though they departed this distant post of their imperial kingdom half a century ago, the remnants of their maudlin carnival linger behind in the larger cities.
Between regular bear-baiting events and public
executions, jugglers, acrobats, and fire-eaters perform in the main courtyards of the walled municipalities. Defiant of the old Roman edict prohibiting prophecy and the latest Christian promulgations against it, astrologers and
soothsayers proliferate—as do fakirs with their nail beds walkways of hot embers. Gypsy healers, miracle workers, rain dancers, and sleight-of-hand magicians abound.
For five years, Myrddin sees them all. He looks into
every male face in all the municipia he visits, searching for Ygrane's king. The yellow-eyed young man with raven hair could be disguised as anyone, perhaps even a beggar or a clown. The demon-wizard does not exclude the possibility that the man already reigns as king—for there are
numerous kings in this chaotic time.
Among the remaining great families who have not
already fled Britain, plotters and poisoners erect and topple monarchs seasonally. There are no 'kings' between
municipia, only roving marauders known as wildwood gangs, who raid villages and slaughter each other. It is not unusual for Myrddin to find twenty or thirty men slain upon the decayed roads, corpses sometimes piled in a charred heap or left as tarry lumps in a ditch
At times, these maniac destructions that he
witnesses oppress him, and to cleanse himself, he visits with Ygrane—that is, in trance, he seems to float
disembodied in her presence, witnessing small scenes of her life. He hovers nearby as she plies her healing potions among ailing countryfolk and kneels in her walled garden of fruit and flowers, cosseting her unicorn.
Myrddin wakes refreshed from these dreams. The
destiny leading Ygrane leads him, as well—the joy of a vital conjunction yet to come, a love that, somehow, will create something of prestige for the broken lives in this land. He wants that to be true, for Ygrane, for his mother's earnest prayers, and, most important of all, for Her.
p1b6fn7sdh1ln0g4v1pkvkuqim54 Page 13