thick."
"Many a man will think otherwise, that I promise you."
"Father says I should be thinking of marriage. He wants me wed to Roman nobility. So, he invites families from Armorica and Dumovaria to Tintagel when I am there.
And they come, because he is the duke of the Saxon
Coast and a great Roman— but none of them will have
me."
"Nonsense. You're still a child. In two years, you won't be able to choose among the many clamoring for
your hand."
"No, Mother, I'm telling you, those old families want nothing to do with me. They whisper about you—about the heathen queen Gorlois sired me upon. The tribeswoman
too barbaric ever to be seen at court. They would never let Father hear, of course. He'd whip them into the sea. But I've seen their looks. They think me some oddity, some queer child begotten on a witch."
Ygrane stands stricken, then opens her arms for her
daughter and moves to embrace her, but Morgeu pushes
her away.
"If you won't have Father, then you won't have me anymore, either."
"Morgeu—" Ygrane beckons. "Come, child. I know too well what you are feeling."
"How can you know? You have never loved
anyone."
Ygrane drops her arms.
"Why do you not come to Tintagel and live with your husband? Father needs you at his side."
"Does he?" Ygrane cocks her head slightly. "Or is it
you who wants me at his side? Shall I become Christian, as well, and be a pious Roman wife?"
Morgeu stares bleakly at her mother. "When I was a child, I wanted to be like you. I thought you were the most beautiful, most powerful woman in the world."
"And now?"
"Now I tell my young friends at Tintagel about the pale people who used to play with us in the fields—and the unicorn I used to sneak away at night to ride—and you know, Mother, they think I'm lying."
"Our magic is rare."
"Too rare. Sometimes it frightens me—whispered
voices in the wind, transparent faces in the hedges."
"The Sid have come to you?" she asks with genuine surprise.
"Yes." Morgeu's face softens. "They have come to me. The unicorn, too. Only now and then when I'm alone in a wild place and if I call for a long time." Her eyes look dazed as she remembers, then focus sharply again. "When I'm with Father, I never think about the faerie. All that seems like some childish daydream. Father's world is of horses, ships, hunts, and battles. And when I'm here with you those earthly things themselves seem so small and unimportant." She tosses her hair from her shoulders impatiently. "I'm not coming back here again. I've decided to stay at Tintagel, Mother. Father needs a woman at his side, and if it won't be you, then it must be me."
"Child, you were conceived of two worlds, so you belong in both." The queen holds out a hand. "Stay with me for a time, Morgeu. We will dance with the faerie
together and ride the unicorn once more."
"No, Mother." She sets her shoulders adamantly and whatever regret she may have been feeling vanishes behind her bravado. "Unless you come to Tintagel and be a proper consort to your husband, you'll be no mother to me."
She spins away and leaves as hurriedly as she
arrived—and Ygrane thinks she sees her daughter clothed in pulsing ruby-fire, her young body shining nakedly
through a diaphanous veil of crimson shimmering flames.
*
The City of the Legion, built up of black granite and shale over four centuries, has an oppressive, evil aspect.
Caged torches flare from spiked bulwarks, and the bulky fortress seen at night on the treeless horizon appears like a fiery cinder-cone.
That is Myrddin's first view of the martial city in five
years, since he had passed through on his way east. Then, as upon his return, the custom prevailed to flog beggars and undesirables out the gates and onto the moors.
He had left under the whip of a city guardian during
his initial visit. This time, entering on foot—having lost his horse in another province to an indigent farmer using his children as sowers while he dragged a plow through the stony fields—he does not hide from the guards.
Five years of wandering the ravaged landscape of
Britain have honed Lailoken's skill at using his demon powers from inside his mortal body. He strides directly to the main pylon, its lashed timbers black with age, and, ignoring the harking cries of the sentinels, shouts a cry that budges open the gate's man-size doorway. He enters and puts to sleep the soldiers and aggressive dogs awaiting him.
The night streets stand empty, and he makes his
way unchallenged among tiered stone houses, each with its iron fence, nervous guardsmen, and hungry, ferocious dogs, protecting themselves from the old families locked in other rock palazzi conniving murder.
Only once does the street challenge him, when he
turns a corner to confront a city patrol with baleful lanterns and raised whips. He uses his magic to send them howling down the cobbled lanes flagellating themselves.
Emboldened by that victory, he chooses houses
randomly and uses his spells to get past every obstacle and inspect the premises, searching for Ygrane's consort.
The startled people he confronts in their nightshirts and gowns bear no resemblance to the visage from
Raglaw's prophecy. He sends them all back to sleep with a muttered chant and wanders their houses meditating on the feeling center in his heart, hoping to sense a direction.
House after splendid house, he comes up empty,
though he is careful not to leave any of these mansios without first visiting the strong rooms and helping himself to a handful of gold coins. If his travels through this hapless world have taught him anything, it is the uselessness of gold in strongholds and the beauty of it, with proper measure, in the hands of the poor.
After he has garnered more than twenty handfuls of
gold coins in as many houses, Myrddin begins to suspect that these affluent surroundings may be the wrong place to look. At dawn, he has a stray dog help him bury his gold, and he returns to the narrow streets with their overhanging balconies and many oblique alleys and crisscrossing
wynds.
Methodically, he inspects each quarter of the city.
Midday finds him under the west wall, behind the barracks,
in the stink of the stable yards, having searched everywhere to no avail. He sits on a curbstone, weary of heart, watching sweaty, fly-twitching horses clop into a rickety pen under a horseshoe arch of raw timber and a sign branded with the scorched words:
Equerry
Brothers Aurelianus
Above the primitive sign, a wind sock in the shape of a dragon ripples in the sultry afternoon breeze. Under that martial emblem, the wizard sees him.
Larger and older than in Raglaw's vision, he has the
same sable hair, only thinner, and the same striking, saffron eyes, though less gentle, with the princely squint of an archer, calculating, almost cunning.
He appears older, Myrddin figures, because the
spirit reckoner has taken years to find him. And, as the demon has finally come to accept, the man he seeks is no king. He wears the leather breeches and wrist straps of a stable master, a quirt dangling from his belt, and his naked shoulders shiny with the exertion of handling the muscular, spirited warhorses that the barracks men have left in his care.
Stunned to have found him at last, Myrddin sits on
the curbstone and watches. Even with a laborer's back cobbled with muscles, this man of destiny carries himself regally, Myrddin wants to believe, even as the groom
stomps among horse droppings. The animals like him.
Myrddin can tell by the way they gentle at his touch, and he is sensitive to them, knowing at once which beasts need drink, which fodder, and which require some time
expe
nding nervous strength in the running yard behind the hayricks.
As soldiers tie their steeds to the hitching posts
before the water trough, the stable master hurries among the mounts, unsaddling them, talking to them, and, after a quick brush down, leading them to the stalls before they drink too much.
Proudly, Myrddin approaches to inform him of his
destiny. "Sir—"
"Blow off, you old fart," he barks, not bothering to look at the hoary man directly, hauling two saddles at once toward the neighboring leather shop.
"Sir—I bring glad tidings—"
He drops the saddles, yanks the quirt from his belt,
and slashes at the old man with it. "I said blow!"
Myrddin staggers back, so astonished by the man's
violence that he trips into the street and falls to his back in
the dung.
"I don't want any glad tidings of life after death, no glad news of salvation, no gospel noise about Jesus' love for me or Mithras's victory for my soul."
"Wait," Myrddin implores. "You don't understand." In his eagerness to reach him, the wizard slips in the manure as if yanked into the air by his ankles and smites his head on the curb.
Stars flicker in the sunlight glowing on the dung, and the strength to rise flees from his limbs.
All to the best, Myrddin thinks, not wanting to rise for this man who loves beasts more than men.
"Let me give you a hand, grandfather," a gentler voice speaks above Myrddin in the same Latin cadence the stable master used. Strong hands grab the wizard under the shoulders and lift him out of the gutter. "Ambrosius has no room in his heart for faith," the voice adds in the more archaic Latin of Britain, straining to show respect for an old British man. "Since our father's death, my brother's heart is filled only with contempt for the ways of God. Can you forgive him that?"
Hope jars the wizard. This young man wears the
seen-before face of Raglaw's vision. He even displays at his throat the jade cross. Wonder pulses like a blood beat.
"Theo!" Ambrosius shouts. "Get away from him. I've had it with zealots living off us."
"Don't mind him, grandfather," Theo says with easy assurance, wiping the larger clots of dung from the old man's robe. "If you're hungry, I can get you food, and I'll show you a place to sleep where the patrols won't bother you."
Myrddin leans heavily on his staff. "Why do this for me?"
Theo steps back before the old man's strange
countenance. Silver points in those dark eyes peer intently from under the ledged brow of a long and sallow skull. He has never seen a face so vividly ugly, and he must
summon all his Christian fervor to smile. He puts his hand on the cross tied about his neck. "No other reason than I am a Christian. What is your faith, grandfather?"
"Didn't you hear me?" Ambrosius calls, pulling his brother away from the old man by the back of his worn tunic. "Cut the religious ranting. Faith feeds souls not bodies. Back to work, Theo. And you, old man, follow your shadow now or—"
"Ambrosius," Theo protests, placing himself between the white-bearded traveler and his scowling
brother. "Show some charity. We'll just give him a bite for the road."
Ambrosius' impatience flickers before the younger man's earnest stare, and he steps back, shaking a finger.
"You give him a bite, little brother. You feed this vagabond and all the rest of the vagabonds with yours. Not mine."
"Come," Theo says to the old man, reverting again to archaic Latin. He places a comradely arm about the wizard's bony shoulders and leads him away. "What little food we have that is mine, you may have. But I have not an obol to give you. All the funds we make we must return to our investors. We've been masters of these stables only a few weeks, so we have saved nothing yet."
"From where do you hail, you and your brother?"
"Armorica." Theo leads the old man through the stables to a rude cottage pocked with straw-stuffed holes.
"In Brittany," the old man nods knowingly. "In Little Britain, sanctuary for the best Roman families. Ah, that explains the free and easy accent." The stranger slips into modern Latin himself: "Everybody on this island talks as though they were a hundred years old."
Theo laughs coolly at the odd fellow's facility with
language. "You're a surprising old rascal," he says, and is tempted to ask the traveler's name. He had sworn to
himself years ago as a child never to question strangers about their names and stories, because for a true Christian all strangers are Jesus.
"Why did you come here from Brittany?" the old man asks. "Most migrants are going the other way."
"Our family lived in a palazzo in Londinium before I was born. Our father wore the purple as a colonial
senator—until he was poisoned by a rival. My brother and mother fled to Gaul, to Armorica, with me in her womb. She swore us to vengeance before she died last winter." He gives a small, disquieted laugh. "Not a very Christian oath, I grant you. She was bitter. It's understandable."
He opens the slat door and reveals a musty, humble
interior: packed-dirt floor, a single battered chest that serves as a table, and broken barrels for chairs. "There's bread and wine in the larder—that box in the corner. Help yourself, grandfather. Just be sure you put the box back when you're done. Keeps out the mice."
"Won't you join me?"
"Can't." He shrugs haplessly. "Big brother wants me oiling and waxing the saddles while he deals with the horses. Since there's a moon tonight, we'll be patching worn leatherwork until it sets and won't be getting back here till quite late. Don't wait up for us. You can sleep in any free rick you find. Ambrosius won't bother you
anymore. He'll be too tired. Maybe in the morning we'll have a chance to talk. You haven't told me yet of your
faith."
He departs, back to his bench in the leather shop,
and Myrddin sits in a white silence of wonder. There is music in that silence, not unlike the soundless music when the singer is finished and the song's reverence goes on.
Myrddin sits before the baked clay bricks of the
puny hearth, and he steeps in the cooked smell of horse dung and hot pollen as foraging bees in the cow parsley and catmint outside the hut drone like his own busy
thoughts: What am I to tell Theo of Ygrane? Should I use magic to encourage him to come with me to the Celtic queen? Is his brother to join us?
He plans and plots among the hum of bees until
drowsiness whelms, and he dozes off.
*
Ygrane stands naked before him in a meadow fiery
with summer blossoms—scarlet poppies, larkspur, ivory shepherd's purse, foxgloves, purple thistle, buttercups, pale dog roses, bryony, blue cornflowers, yellow
snapdragons, creamy honeysuckle—and her nutmeg red
hair floats unbraided around her like a drowned woman's.
Butterflies course everywhere, wind-tossed elementals with petal-wings of rust, sulfur, salt, copper, and smoke.
"Look at the joy you've made of me, Myrddin," she whispers, very close and heard from within. Her animal beauty shines sun-brushed, aureate, long limbs soft yet planed with muscle, pink of the magnolia petal shining from her breasts, and the tuft of her sex an autumn leaf.
"I will bring the young man to you," Myrddin swears, his head overflowing with clarity.
"Be patient," she urges. "Is a queen worthy of less than a king?"
"Of course—" He smacks his forehead,
remembering Raglaw's directive: "Find the king ..." As the heel of his hand strikes his brow, the vision scatters in a burst of butterflies.
*
He wakes to find himself lying on his back against
the packed-earth floor of the hovel. Nightfall stands in the doorway clad in purple, and he knows what has to be
done.
Myrddin returns to the wealthier district of the city and enters the garden lane at the bac
k of the large
mansion where he has buried his gold. He slips through
the servants' portal, and, with his magic, he has the cook prepare a wicker bushel filled with warm loaves of bread, flagons of the house's best wine, olive oil, honey, a straw-nest of duck's eggs, a sack of nuts and one of lettuce, onions, asparagus, parched peas, and fresh cauliflower, a pot of fish sauce, and a roast chicken packed with figs and wrapped in a coil of sausages.
He leaves the spellbound cook with several gold
coins from his treasure and on his way out snatches a bowl of pears and pastries, which he precariously balances atop the heavily laded basket. He needs his demon strength to carry the abundant load through the city and back to the cottage of the two brothers.
Chanting sternly, he drives all the mice from the
hovel, leaves the food and the sack of gold coins atop the makeshift table, and retires to a secluded hayrick in the stables.
That night, he enjoys his most restful sleep in five
years. He wakes wholly refreshed. Dawn spins her green wool above him, and the two brothers sit in the straw nearby, watching him with wolfish intensity.
"Who are you?" Ambrosius demands.
The old man sits up and plucks hay from his beard. I am a demon in human guise set on this quest by the queen of the Celts to find her destined king. "My name is Merlinus."
"And you are from?"
"All my long life, I have wandered widely. Having misspent my earlier years, I am dedicated now to acquiring knowledge."
"You are a philosopher."
"Philosophers seek wisdom. I am not wise."
Theo's intent stare brightens. "An itinerant scholar?
You've been in Rome, then?"
"Oh, yes. I've been in Rome. And Athens,
Alexandria, Antioch, Baghdad—"
"What about this money? And these victuals?"
Ambrosius wants to know. "Where'd you get them?"
"I accrued the coin in my wanderings. I have no
personal need for such pelf. For the kindness you have shown me, you are welcome to it all, as your needs are greater than mine."
Ambrosius cocks his handsome head shrewdly.
"What do you want, Merlinus? What's going on here?"
"I want only this—a home. I am content now to
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