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by A. A. Attanasio

Aurelianus. That brother died today on the battlefield with his commander."

  Theo's numb face flinches with comprehension, and

  his eyes brighten toward tears.

  "Today, a new soul comes to Earth," Merlinus continues, pitching his voice to reach the troops who lie sprawled on the terraces below. "Today we have a new Dragon Lord." He touches his staff to Uther's heart and announces, "Uther Pendragon."

  From below, some of the troops who understand call

  back, "Pendragon!"

  The commanders on the balcony raise their arms in

  Roman salute and offer their pledges by declaring, "Uther Pendragon!"

  Uther sweeps a hot yet level gaze over his generals,

  meeting and holding each of their stares. When he meets the wizard's eyes, Merlinus reaches into him again, and the spirit reckoner feels the loneliness of Theo's sorrow and fear opening into something awesome and ineffable—a

  new being in which the deathless strength of his brother lives in him, strangely fused with that tenderest part baptized within—a murderous, unstoppable strength in

  union with the love of Jesus.

  And Myrddin thinks of Ygrane and her need for the

  magnificent destiny that has torn her from her family and the faerie gentleness that loves her. They seem alike as brother and sister, these two orphaned by their stricken people. And though they are miles apart and indeed have never met, yet they have never been separate.

  They are lovers to the beginning and the end, the wizard already sees, appointed to each other by God's prosperous love.

  Book Two

  Mistress of the Unicorn

  Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? Canst thou bind the unicorn?

  -Job 39:9

  The Palace Shaped Like Fire

  Uther Pendraqon does not speak a word for three

  days after the death of his brother. He sits in a tall-backed chair on the highest balcony of the palace's tallest spire and stares out over the river plains and the distant

  seaboard weather where the Furor angrily paces.

  Merlinus knows that Uther does not see the god, or

  the Tamesis, either, not even when the summer sun crazes its broad surface and makes him squint. His inwrought sight, both cruel and timid, looks for where his brother's ghost has gone. He returns to a landscape in Armorica, the

  "Little Britain," where they once lived, twenty years together. All so much ghost-filled nostalgia now.

  From behind him, Merlinus uses his magic to feel

  what Uther is feeling. Memories smolder, and the space of his life has a measurement like music. The past is

  weightless laughter, a child's tuneful happiness, and the droning chants of the Church.

  The song is changing. The old heart of the young

  king, double-chambered, half-childish pleasure, half-

  mournful faith of Church and family vendetta, has broken.

  Broken-hearted, all pleasure has spilled away. Vengeance has lost its purpose. And faith, greater than any purpose, cannot help him anymore. The song inside him has

  changed.

  Language fails these changes in him. He does not

  know what has become of him. Merlinus finally accepts that he will have to tell him.

  "Uther," the wizard says softly on the fourth day, as the mournful man munches an apple with desultory

  thoroughness and scans the compelling river. His inward vision lingers over slow barges and feathery banks of rhubarb and burdock. "Uther—your army awaits your command."

  "I'm hungry," he answers. "Isn't that strange, Merlinus? I mean, if you think about it, it's very strange."

  "Yes, I know what you mean," Merlinus says. "Life, like death, is much beyond choice."

  Uther bites off a small mouthful, nibbles it

  ruminatively for a while, then says, "I only wanted to be a priest. I wanted to worship God, love all people, help the suffering, preserve their souls for heaven. Ambrosius wanted revenge. Not I."

  Merlinus leans against the balustrade and nods

  compassionately. "And now he is gone, and you are the high king of the Britons. Ironic as that must seem ..."

  "Exactly. How absurdly ironic. What right have I to

  this position?" With a distasteful expression, he tosses the apple away, and it plunges into a reflecting pool on the terrace below. "I'm no one's king. Not yours, not theirs.

  Ambrosius had the mettle for that. Not I."

  "Uther, you are king. Chance alone elected you

  king. This is God's work."

  "Then, I must step down," he determines, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His four-day-old beard lends a leonine cast to his tanned face, and he no longer looks like the youth Merlinus knew but some older cousin of himself. "I'll retire to a monastery. Let the title pass to another."

  "You would let death have dominion?" Merlinus edges his voice with brittle hurt.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're hungry," the wizard replies. "Those are your first words as Uther Pendragon. Uther's life wants to live.

  Don't shut your life in a monk's cell. Then death will have dominion over your brother. No. Ambrosius' death made you king. Now you must make significance of that. Do you hear me, Uther?"

  "Stop calling me that." He puts his feet on the chair and hugs his knees to his chest. "I'm Theodosius Aurelianus. And, yes, I am hungry—but not for war. I don't want to see anything of war again."

  Merlinus pushes off from the balustrade and leans

  close to him, says quietly, "As surely as you sit before me, the Saxons hired by the traitor Cocceius will ravage this land and kill its people—your people."

  "Leave me alone, Merlinus." Uther regards him with sleep-hooded eyes. "Let the warlords battle the Saxons.

  I'm sick of it."

  "Then death shall have dominion," Merlinus

  predicts, his voice drenched in disdain. "Ambrosius killed and died to avenge his father's name—yet his father's spirit remains unavenged. Your father's spirit. And your father's father and all the Aurelianus fathers who brought

  civilization to this wilderness have lost their spirit today. All they suffered to build for the good of all is no more, because you have made your selfish choice. So much for your faithfulness, yes? So much for Jesus and the Church you pretend to love. So much for the hopes of every

  Christian in Britain—"

  "Enough!" Uther yells. He sits up straight and leans so near to the wizard that he feels the heat of his face.

  "What do you want me to do? Burn down barbarian

  villages? March at the head of the army? Become my

  brother?"

  Merlinus does not flinch. "I want you to care." He

  holds his gaze tightly. "There is an ending to this story that you are living. There is an ending, and I want you to care that it will be the right one. Like it or not—you have a destiny."

  Anger falls off the king's whiskery face, and he looks at Merlinus for a moment as though surprised that the solution to the moiling feelings in him could be that simple.

  A story—with an ending.

  He pushes out of his chair and shoves past the

  wizard. "I'm hungry," he complains, and stalks into the domed anteroom behind the balcony. He pauses at the

  broad, spiral stairwell and glowers impatiently. "Well? Are you coming, Merlinus? Uther Pendragon, high king of the Britons, does not choose to eat alone."

  *

  Prince Bright Night sits up from the faerie's touch,

  his angular face dusted with gold dazzle. The faerie, having dutifully reported to its prince, streaks away and disappears among luminous vapors of the moon's milt. The elf prince stands, lighter from what he has learned.

  The Dark Dweller disguised as a human wandered

  into the world mad and useless—and now returns carrying a vision and the persuasive powers of a demon.

  The vision itself has always seemed questiona
ble to

  Bright Night. He has listened patiently to the crones of sixteen generations prophesy that the union of a Celtic queen and a Roman king would produce a savior. Until

  now, he has never believed that.

  Not that he has ever doubted the clarity of the

  crones' long sight, which has proved itself famously over hundreds of generations. Rather he does not believe that anyone can accurately predict the direction of the timewind in this turbulent modern age.

  What the faerie has revealed, however, changes the

  prince's opinion. Perhaps the crones are right, he thinks, strolling up the slip face of a dune. Raglaw said that she had successfully transmitted her vision of the Roman king to Lailoken. Perhaps she has.

  Atop the dune, Bright Night tilts his head back and

  gazes into the starry zenith. Up there, the Dark Dweller Lailoken once peered into the future. The timewind blows through this age to a greater epoch, invisible to the prince's eyes. Invisible until he glimpsed that futuristic vista through the demon's silver eyes.

  Briefly, but with the searing intensity of eternal

  remembrance, the elf witnessed gargantuan palace towers, extensive fields of glass towers, shining cities at the brink

  of Apocalypse.

  How alien those glass pinnacles looked without the

  foliations in marble and wood popular among Romans and Celts and indeed all tribes. How strange to see a future of featureless spires devoid of statuary, scrollwork, friezes—

  devoid of all organic tribute, either to nature or to humanity.

  Into what bizarre, abstract world does the timewind carry us?

  Bright Night looks west, toward Avalon. If only he

  could go there and meet with the Fire Lords, he knows they could explain the beauty of such a mineral landscape to him—they whose desert tribes speak of a God

  unknowable, without name or feature. Surely, this city empty of icons, stripped bare of ornamental representation, this purely geometric hive is a city of their God.

  And what of the blinding holocaust? In Lailoken's vision, Bright Night has seen the white glare that shatters the city.

  Agog, he watched the Dark Dweller call the proud

  spires out of the firestorm with his story—as though the spell of his telling could in itself avert Apocalypse. What manner of magic is this?

  Time has shown that it is of a higher order than the

  sorcery of the gods. They rely more on the electric strength of their bodies than the subtle but pervasive magic of the mind. The Fire Lords teach psychic powers that seem

  hardly substantial at all—runes and sums—yet the stories they spell with their runes and the numberings their sums weave are far greater than even the might of the Dragon.

  These thoughts inspire Prince Bright Night with new

  hope. Perhaps the crones are right after all! Perhaps our savior will in truth be born from the marriage of two enemies. Perhaps he will break the Furor and open a way for the Sid to return to the Great Tree.

  With this prayerful hope, the prince of elves salutes Avalon hidden beneath the horizon's dripping stars. He salutes the Fire Lords, who first taught the Sid magic. And he salutes the king to come, the prophesied one whose magic will endure after all the kingdoms of this age have turned to air.

  *

  Once Theodosius accepted himself as his brother's

  heir, Merlinus might have told him then about the unicorn and why he has striven so obsessively for him to be king.

  He might have told him he had manipulated events to set the whole fateful dream of Uther Pendragon in motion, so that he could fulfill a promise he had made, years ago now,

  to the queen of the Celts.

  Merlinus did not explain anything, because he

  began to believe in something greater than his own magic.

  Across the heartbridge, the new being inside Theo made himself known to Merlinus hours after Ambrosius died. The wizard had simply named him.

  And then, there was the comet. That was not my

  doing, Lailoken is sure. Its appearance validated Uther Pendragon's authority, for it was seen by all, over many provinces, demesnes, and kingdoms, and well into the

  summer.

  Merlinus employed no magic whatsoever to inspire

  Theo to charge after his brother and break the attack of the Saxons. That was entirely his doing.

  And Wray Vitki, the dragon-magus that Theo's

  righteous wrath called forth, is his ally. Though Merlinus employed his magical spell to behold that being and

  though Morgeu believes his power inspired the attack that elevated Theo to Uther and killed her father, the truth remains: Merlinus merely witnessed events.

  So, Merlinus does not tell Uther of his designs and

  instead devotes himself to helping the high king with the business at hand—securing the kingdom.

  Morgeu has fled west with a handful of servants

  even before her father's remains are buried, and though the wizard is relieved she is gone, he knows that when he sees her next, it will be a murderous time.

  Uther, lacking his brother's Roman arrogance,

  readily agrees that the Celts have as much reason to

  defend their territory against the barbarians as the Britons, and that an alliance will favor both. With Gorlois' death, someone among the Britons must be dispatched to secure the Celtic queen's continued goodwill and a guaranty of access to her valuable warriors.

  None of Gorlois' officers, least of all his nephew and heir to his title, Marcus Domnoni, want the task, claiming they fear the wrath of the duke's ghost. And no volunteers come forward from the other noble houses, for Gorlois has troubled them all with tales of his wife's pagan witchery.

  Most pressing of all, the young alliance among the

  Britons themselves remains in jeopardy. The great families of Londinium, who accommodated Vortigern and profited from his alliance with the Saxons, plot Uther's demise.

  When river fog coughs in over the city and the world

  seems a shadow of itself, the wizard's wraith slips down avenues and boulevards, penetrates the large old houses, and listens to the regicidal strategies hatching there.

  Merlinus understands—it is time for the king to get away.

  That opportunity comes with a herald from Cymru,

  who bears a message from the Celtic government, the Druids. Aware of Gorlois' demise, the Druids propose a marriage of their queen with Briton's high king.

  Uther objects. He is a Christian, after all, and the

  Druids make clear in their missive that they desire the same terms they enjoyed with Gorlois. In exchange for their military cooperation, they want assurances that Christian missionaries will avoid their western kingdom.

  "I'll be no party to that," Uther vows. "Saint Non has already brought the glad news of Jesus to the Celtic tribes.

  Her son David carries on her noble work this very day. I'll not suppress my own faith for political expediency—nor for any reason."

  Merlinus says nothing, because the British bishops

  argue for him. They are fierce adherents of Christian pragmatism, promoted by their country's own theologian, Pelagius. This monk believes that all persons, possessed of free will, must make their own peace with God.

  The bishops advise the king to marry the queen in

  name only, for the sake of the country's survival in the face of the barbarian threat. After all, they point out, Pelagius'

  chief rival, Saint Augustine, diminished the flexibility of his Roman leaders and their alliances by stubbornly refusing to relinquish the dogma of the Church—and was himself burned alive by Vandals in North Africa.

  What ultimately—and most oddly and

  serendipitously—settles matters for Uther is the opportunity to meet personally a Celtic queen resistant to Christianity.

  Theo, the priest that still resides in Uther, craves the chance to convert, at least once
, a heathen noblewoman to the glory of his faith. He hopes to do so in a way that the coarse Gorlois never could. Reluctantly, he allows the bishops to draft his acceptance of the Druids' offer.

  Then, aware that the approaching cold season

  offers its own best defense of the lowlands, Uther formally announces his plans to journey to the mountain kingdom of Cymru and secure from the ferocious Celts an alliance that will at last repel the invaders.

  In a remarkable display of political acumen,

  Pendragon summons Severus Syrax and, in the presence

  of the bishop, the city's ecclesiastics, and the elders of the great families, reappoints him as magister militum of Londinium. Thus, restored to power and pledged before God to support Uther Pendragon, the Syrax family cannot publicly foment rebellion against the high king in his absence.

  The aged statesman and champion of the families,

  Aulus Capimandua, would have been proud of such a

  sensible display of diplomacy—but he has already

  departed the capital, intent on retiring to the garden city of Venonae before the plotting and intrigues begin again in Londinium.

  With an able military guardian installed in

  Londinium, Uther leads his army west. Along the way, he returns soldiers to the coloniae where they originated, and he receives personal pledges of fealty from the dignitaries of those provinces. His prolonged ecclesiastic training and noble upbringing serve him well on this diplomatic tour, and, to his face at least, none question his regal authority.

  Uther's shoulder wound presents the most troubling

  and immediate problem. It refuses to heal. The healing energy Merlinus directs with his heartflow into the sliced flesh does not abate the pain or the weeping pustulence.

  Neither does his magical chanting.

  All Merlinus can do is leave the king to the surgeons'

  care and their insistence on washing the gash with

  tinctures of verbena and hellebore and exposing it to daily sunlight. To his credit, Uther does not complain. Merlinus suspects he is secretly glad to keep the wound, this

  physical emblem of his inner suffering.

  Departing from the vision Raglaw has imparted to

  the wizard, Uther begins wearing a beard. Trimmed to

  outline the strong breadth of his jaw, the black whiskers accentuate the sharp planes of his face, all the more keen since the death of his brother. He has the carved visage of a chesspiece, and if he should ever smile, Merlinus