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by A. A. Attanasio

  "Unless, Uther, we can make a deal, as you say. Can we come to a true accord powerful enough to stave off the invading Northmen?"

  Out of mists that willow away over shattered

  masonry, a narrow figure approaches. Her gray hair floats about her in wisps, vaporous as cobwebs.

  "Raglaw—" Merlinus calls, weak with surprise.

  "Why so amazed, Myrddin?" she asks in her wheezy voice. "You saw me depart the sun's proud world—"

  "Merlinus," Uther whispers, "who is this woman?"

  "I am the crone Raglaw, Your Highness." Mist shreds from her skeletal frame as she floats closer. "I am your wife's spirit counselor, the very one who taught your Ygrane how to read sense into her visions."

  "What do you want with us?" Uther asks, unnerved by the hag's cadaverous appearance.

  "Want?" She cackles. "I am beyond want, King Uther. By and by, I shall be parted once more from the dead to continue my round—I, who was once the least

  possible capable of life and the nearest possible to

  absolute death. I who came in every form and went in

  every form capable of body and life. I who am not

  accomplished yet. I stand as witness to your entry into the Land of the Dead."

  "Greetings, good Raglaw," the elk-king calls out heartily, and the shadowy hag jolts briefly out of her trance.

  "Glad news to bid you on your way—this young Roman king comes to make alliance with the Celts—"

  "This is known, this is known," the crone mutters.

  Like smoke, she drifts obliquely away through low

  sandhills, the white pumice eroded from shrines and walls of dead empires. "I saw it all, you know. Remember, Myrddin?" she calls back. "We saw it all—all of it—the blood-soaked earth—ghostly armies—a king baffled by his choice. This is the one, isn't he? This is he who has married my dearest Ygrane. Yes, I still remember it all. He will father the king with the humility to serve the just. Only, that is, if he unbaffles himself in time. In time, so much is baffled—Mercy without hope—Mercy—"

  She passes out of earshot and soon mist veils her

  again.

  "My most holy God!" Uther cries softly. "I don't like this place, Merlinus."

  "If we are to save Ygrane," the wizard reminds him,

  "we must go on."

  Uther clutches Merlinus' arm. "What did the crone mean—mercy without hope?"

  King Someone Knows the Truth answers, striding

  forward through the frail fog. "During her life, Dame Raglaw

  had the gift of the strong eye—"

  "The gift of prophecy," Merlinus explains.

  "Yes, the strong eye," the elk-king repeats, lowering a dark look at the demon for interrupting. "With it, she has seen an age of twilight darkness descending on our

  island—an apocalyptic age lasting centuries. Our alliance alone may provide some succor—some mercy—for our

  peoples to the ends of darkness. But no hope to undo

  fate—no hope defiant of disaster."

  "Then, why strive?" Uther asks bitterly.

  "Why, indeed," the elk-king answers. "It all comes to this broken field sooner or later."

  Merlinus stamps his staff hard, and the sand-muffled

  shale underfoot gives out no sound. "For that despair, you and all the Celts need a Christian king— this king. And the one who will follow him. This is the purpose of our striving, to bring nobility to a savage time."

  They have come to the boundary of the burial field,

  where dwarfed pines claw their way down a rocky

  precipice. The elk-king stops and faces the two men,

  mighty hands on his hips. His mantle billows behind in an updraft from the cliff, exposing fleecy legs and a fur-sheathed pizzle. "Explain yourself, demon."

  "The Celts are an eternal race," Merlinus begins, in a far more diplomatic tone. "You heard Raglaw. She speaks for all your people. Life goes to life until it perfects itself. For you, death is always a beginning. Even the death of your race may be endured. So why bother, indeed?" He touches his staff to Uther's shoulder, to the scar of the wound Ygrane has healed with her magic. "This Christian king believes much as your enemy the Furor believes—

  that life leads to death and death ends life in this world.

  The Celtic soul returns to this natural life, in one form or another. The Christian soul leaves forever, for heaven or hell. And for the Furor, the world itself goes to Apocalypse and to the end of all time. This king, this man Uther, will be a strong ally to your people, for his faith demands that he strive here and now to make good of this life—for this life is the only good he has."

  The elk-king slides his jaw to one side, ruminating

  on this. "You make a strong case for your king, Myrddin. I think I will call you demon no more." He pulls himself around and leads the men on. "Come. We have a deal to conclude. I will show this Christian king a Celtic deal, the sort for which we are justly famous."

  He guides them down a crumbling switchback trail,

  through looms of shining haze and rifts of the starry sky.

  The damp odor of ruined stone that hangs in the air

  sharpens with the resinous fragrance of stunted

  eucalyptus, and thunder mumbles across some unreckonable distance.

  At the base of the cliff, they find themselves finally before the black maw of a cavern. Tendrils of niter drool like frozen saliva from the roof of the cave mouth, and a chill, subterranean wind exhales a musty reptilian scent.

  "Theo—" a haunted echo wobbles from within.

  Uther jerks taller. "Ambrosius?" The king steps toward the lightless cave, and Merlinus stays him with a hand on his shoulder.

  "Wait," the wizard advises. "He is coming."

  A shadow separates from the tenebrous depths of

  the cavern and edges into the open. Haggard and red-

  eyed, Ambrosius totters forth feebly, eyes filled with despair. "Theo—not you—not yet—"

  "Stand back, shade," the elk-king orders. "You are in the presence of the living."

  "Theo—alive yet?" Ambrosius still wears the armor in which he died but displays no wounds, only exhaustion.

  He frowns, his gaze sullen and burning. "What are you doing in this place?"

  Uther throws off Merlinus' restraining hand and

  rushes to his brother.

  "No!" the wizard shouts, too late.

  Uther embraces Ambrosius, and the Dragon Lord

  screams in pain and writhes free.

  "Stand away from him!" the elk-king berates. "The dead cannot bear the heat of the living."

  "Ambrosius—I—I'm sorry!" Uther cries, falling to his knees beside his collapsed brother.

  With Roman stoicism, the Dragon Lord twists

  himself upright, the thews of his face taut. "To touch you again— alive! —this pain is—is my great joy."

  "Brother, why are you here in this cave?" Uther stares at him bleakly from his knees. "You died for your people. You should be in heaven."

  "I died—for vengeance," he answers grimly. "The reward for which I now stand at the threshold of hell."

  "No!" Uther clenches his fists and stands. "Who judges you?"

  Ambrosius shakes his head, eyes squeezed tight

  against the shuddering cold replacing the scalding heat of his brother's embrace. "No one—has judged me—but myself. No matter, little brother. I am here—with

  Grandfather Vitki—the dragon-face of your dreams—close to you—as I can get."

  "Dragon-face?" Uther puzzles a frown. "Wray Vitki is here?"

  "The Dragon Aurelianus—" Ambrosius stretches a

  pale smile. "Surely you remember? Our forefather's dragon. Did you not see him? You carry his mark. He

  helped you, you know—at Londinium."

  Uther looks at him uncomprehending. "Is this so?"

  the king asks Merlinus.

  Merlinus nods. "I saw him myself, lord. The dragon-magu
s about whom I told you. He remains your ally."

  "At ... Londinium?"

  "He came to you there, Uther."

  Uther sits down limply, heavy with amazement. He

  reassesses his memory of that tragic day and stares at the ghost of his brother sadly. "I miss you, Ambrosius."

  "Grandfather Vitki talks to me. He tells me—you

  hold liege pledges from all the Roman warlords of Britain—

  and the wild Celts." A hint of his old cunning shows through his exhaustion. "You must be more cautious—than father—

  or I. I lived—for rage."

  Uther stares through brimful tears.

  Merlinus whispers, "The shades of the dead do not change, Uther. As we learned from Homer. We must free him from the dragon-magus."

  "Ambrosius," Uther speaks plaintively, "you must not stay here any longer. Not for me. I can't bear to think of you suffering like this."

  "I want to be near you—to watch for you."

  "You must stop worrying about me. You can't help me. I wish you could. I know I'm doing your work—father's work— You must get away from this dismal place and go to God for your reward."

  "No reward for me, Theo." Ambrosius remains erect though the flesh of him quakes. "I am but a lowly murderer."

  "Leave judgment to God, Ambro." Uther lifts his face to the elk-king. "Where is the Christian domain in this Land of the Dead?" he demands.

  King Someone Knows the Truth points past a

  jumble of fallen rock and wind-blasted yews to a notch in the rimstone.

  Making his way to it, the others following, Uther

  peers dimly across a terraced landscape. The lowest

  ledges ripple with draperies of heat and spires of butyl blue flames. Above that, a thorny garden overhangs the torched plateland. Broken stobs of cacti and spined trees flourish in a maze of black rocks.

  On the highest entablatures, carpeted meadows of

  wildflowers, verdant lawns, sprawling trees, and gleaming waterways from misty falls bedazzle the darkland. Those top slopes shine with morning light that falls in luminous sheets from a high country obscured by snowy peaks.

  "Ambrosius, come here," Uther calls.

  The shade limps to his brother's side and surveys

  the prospect of the Christian afterworld. "I see Hell,"

  Ambrosius says. "And there, purgatory—as the priests warned us. As you warned me, Theo."

  "Yes, purgatory, I'm sure," Uther says. "The first step into heaven. I'm taking you there, Ambrosius."

  "No, Theo. I'm afraid."

  Uther's nostrils widen, and he breathes deeply to

  keep from buckling before the sorry spectacle of his

  brother's fear. "God will not judge you harshly, Ambrosius. I will come with you and bear testimony to your goodness."

  "Ha!" the elk-king shouts, and all jump, even the ghost. "Not unless you want to leave your mortal life and Ygrane behind. He will be speaking for himself alone. None who pass this notch in the rimstone can come back—not even I. Ambrosius goes alone or not at all."

  Across their chasm of life and death, Uther and

  Ambrosius gaze resignedly at each other.

  "Go, Ambrosius. Trust in our God. He made us who we are. He cannot hold that against us."

  "What of you, Theo? You were to serve as a priest.

  Now you must rule as a king."

  "I rule by love, Ambrosius. Love alone makes me

  king." He passes a hand over his distraught face. "Go now, brother, please. Pass through. No one lives long in life. I'll be with you again soon enough."

  "Seeing you—like this—" Ambrosius opens his arms in amazement. "Seeing you—a king—it matters not if I go—to hell."

  Uther feels split between flesh and mind—deed and

  thought. His heart yearns to embrace his brother again—

  but he knows this is not Ambrosius, just his wraith,

  divorced from flesh and deed. And his mind knows only weariness, the exhaustion of the fateful, who must go on living among hardships and wantonness to fulfill a destiny inherited from the dead.

  Ambrosius recognizes his brother's suffering.

  Standing this close to the living torments the ghost, and he lingers only briefly—one last hungry look—before he steps forever through the notched rimstone. As if in an undertow, he moves quickly into the distance and turns only once to raise his arm in Roman salute before dwindling from sight.

  At his passing, thunder rolls from the cavern, and a

  cold, sonorous wind swirls around the visitants, lifting caked ash to dusty spin-devils.

  The elk-king turns his face to the wind. "The dragon-magus senses you," he states. "We must move on."

  King Someone Knows the Truth guides the two

  men, Uther visibly distraught, along the rimstone wall, between huge talus rocks to where a sandy path scampers uphill into knee-high heather. There, they reach a pine wood. Quite unexpectedly, they hear the sound of frenzied laughter and carnival noise swirling from somewhere

  further up the shrubbed paths.

  "Not to fear," the elk-king says. "Only my people know I am here."

  Uther and Merlinus gaze up at the long pine valleys

  that float like islands among blue fields of glaciers.

  Moonglow draws mentholated incense from the firs, and a warm breeze descends softly, carrying the busy labor of bees and a tinkling and braying of distant sheep. The elk-king leads them upward, and the sky pales to opal hues and soon streaks with raspberry smudges and lemon rinds of dawn clouds.

  By then, they have attained a height that affords a

  vista of sprawling meadowlands and blue-smoke forests.

  Below, they behold the magnificent unicorn grazing, light playing iridescently across its white coat.

  Once again, giddy laughter chimes from out of the

  brightening dusk, and Merlinus senses happy, unseen

  presences nearby that somehow remind him, not of the

  Celts, but of the mythic Greek order of centaurs, satyrs, and Titans who ranged before Zeus.

  The wizard swings his staff about, and the giggling

  grows louder. A motley gang of startled figures laughing appears around them, not unlike the elk-king in form, only half-human—furry snouted, paw-limbed people with mossy hair and eyes green as sea pools.

  "These are the first people," the elk-king announces.

  "They attend me when I visit here."

  "Where is 'here'?" Uther inquires.

  "Here is the frontier of the Greater World, King Uther," the beast-lord answers. "Here, forms merge. In wild, discordant, humorous, and maddening ways, they

  merge—and delight in the merging. Here, forms fall away and souls stand alone, as radiant light awaiting the spirit laws, to shape them into ever new forms."

  "God's grace," Uther quietly murmurs, clearly awed by the unnatural beauty of these Elysian fields. His body unconsciously sways to the shrill, faint piping of the oldest music, a rhythm of wind and water—

  "Look more closely," King Someone Knows the Truth entreats. He points below to the luxuriant, fruitful valley, where foam of laughter and song rise from a

  tumultuous forest. Barely visible through the slanted apertures of the woods prance human shapes composed

  of no more than luminous mist, an entire assemblage of

  them frolicking and cavorting like fauns.

  This mysterious spectacle inspires within the two

  human witnesses the strange yet familiar sweetness of indecipherable magic—a feeling of peace and loveliness that they recall dimly, from far back in their fetal dreamings.

  "Those down there," the elk-king gestures, smiling upon them, "are the eternal dancers. I am their lord, their Pan. I serve them in this and the lesser world of mortal forms. My purpose is to tend to them as a gardener to his plants."

  "Are they elfin?" Uther asks, awestruck.

  "Not quite. They are people," the elk-k
ing answers vaguely. "Celts mostly. My people. They dwell here as bodiless souls until the new forms they need to fulfill their cosmic destinies call them back to the Little World of physical existence."

  "Cosmic destinies?" Uther does not remove his eyes from the phantom spectacle and presses his face more

  firmly into the lambent breath of hills and fields. "Who decides those destinies? Who chooses their new forms—

  their new lives in the world of the living? Do you, then?

  And, anyway, what has this to do with my Ygrane?"

  King Someone Knows the Truth blares a laugh that

  peals like lightning's thunderous echoes. The loud guffaw startles the unicorn to its hind legs and draws misty figures out of the bosky woods. Like passing smoke on a wintry river, the roisterous troupe dances along the skirt of the meadow in full view—spry figures of floss and cobwebs, lovely and gnomish in their tatterdemalion silks.

  They filter back into the forest's purple shadows,

  and the elk-king subdues his amusement enough to say,

  "This has plenty to do with your Ygrane, my boy. You must have patience. As for the destiny of these souls—no,

  Uther, I make no destinies—I shape no forms. You mistake me for a greater god. That power is so far removed from me, I can scarcely predict when a soul will come or go much less who will go where. Some stay among us for

  centuries, others transit here for mere days. I haven't the strong eye to see the fatefulness of souls. I merely tend them, with my fellow gods, the Piper and the Lady of the Wild Things. While these souls are here, their life-force belongs to me and the other Daoine gods. We are no more than the gathered energy of those who come to us. When the Celtic faith expires, we too shall pass away."

  "Your Celtic faith that is an enemy to mine," Uther says grimly, staring up into the giant's dark orbs. "Enough so that you dare to deride Jesus by calling him the nailed god."

  The elk-king directs an amused growl at Merlinus.

  "Your Uther is a combative king, Myrddin. No wonder the dragon-magus put his mark on him." He strokes his goat beard and cocks a bristly eyebrow at Uther. "Your faith is alien to me, mortal—a bizarre desert religion full of vehemence and sacrifice. I did not seek out its adherents. I did not journey to their barren lands. They have come to me and have taken souls from my fields, diminishing me.