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by A. A. Attanasio

Am I to laud them for that?"

  "You spoke of a deal, Your Majesty," Uther says, again adroitly shifting his tone. "Am I right to assume that—

  as with Ygrane's first husband—what you want to bargain is the promise to withhold Christian missions from the Celtic lands?"

  King Someone Knows the Truth smiles his eerie

  half-reindeer smile. "Aye. That was my compromise with Gorlois. I'll not compromise the same with you, Uther. It seems you are a true Christian, as he was not. So it takes no extraordinary sight to see you will prove a different negotiator where it concerns your faith."

  "It is so," Uther declares flatly. "You say you compromised with Gorlois. Then, you expect me to give you more than my promise to withhold Christian missions from your lands?"

  "Far more." The elk-king bows forward, like a parent to a child. "All right, then. This is my deal: I want nothing less than your soul, Uther Pendragon."

  Uther steps back, aghast.

  " Hah! That is the same look Gorlois gave me." The elk-king snorts derisively. "Does my bargain appall you, then? Only because you Christians have taken my image and made me into a demon. You call me Satan. I am no

  demon. Lailoken will tell you. I work with the Annwn—" He cants his fleecy, horned head toward Merlinus again.

  " Annwn—the Fire Lords—what does he call them, Myrddin?"

  "He knows them as angels, my lord," Merlinus says.

  "Messengers of God."

  "I work with the angels," he repeats to Uther. "I mediate between the Greater World of radiant energy and the Little World of dross and matter."

  Uther regards the elk-king with a level stare. "My only desire is to rescue Ygrane. To that end, this much I know, and this much I can tell you: My soul belongs to God. Jesus lived and died for the salvation of my soul."

  "That is precisely why I want it," the elk-king says almost capriciously. "My plan proposes to join intimately your faith to mine. To have a true believer, a true Christian soul, such as you, here among us, dancing and singing with us, subject to the same round, destined to be reborn,

  perhaps as one of us—as whatever God wills— that is what I want."

  Uther's face tightens with disbelief. "Why?"

  "To live." The elk-king shows his teeth in a rapturous grimace. "To live, King Uther. With you here among us, I can dream through you a stronger union between my

  people and all other Christians. With Jesus as Prince of Peace, the Celtic ways may continue. With the Furor, there is only death."

  "You will not save Ygrane unless I give you—my

  soul?" The young king peers hard at the bestial yet pontifical face.

  "Of course not. Ygrane is one of my own. To take her back from her kidnappers, I will fight the demons themselves if I must." He tugs at a tufted ear and shakes his head. "No, Uther, I am proposing a deal far grander. An exchange, if you will. In return for your soul to come willingly here among us, I promise to send you the soul of our greatest warrior—to be born as your son, yours and Ygrane's. And in time, I promise you, he will have the full support of the Daoine Sid. And when he becomes king of all Britain, we shall fight at his side against the Furor. It has been promised to me that with a great soul in mortal guise again, we will thus preserve our Celtic ways from total extinction.

  The elk-king's words electrify Merlinus. Is this not the prophecy? he thinks. The very story Optima has told me and that Raglaw has passed to Ygrane?

  He looks over at Uther, to see if he grasps the import of the elk-king's bargain. The young king shows nothing, or rather, his face conceals everything. The extent of what he knows, and what Merlinus has prepared him for, show not in his outer appearance only inside.

  With his heartflow, Merlinus feels Uther's wonder

  and fear annealed to each other, climbing like hills, like clouds, shadowing him smaller. The wizard fears that Uther will shrink into immobility. But the memory of Ygrane brings him back. He crosses his arms. "I thought you said you can make no destinies, shape no forms—that you cannot even predict when a soul will come or go?"

  "That is so. I can impel no one. But I have great suasion among my people." The sapience in his animal face startles the king. "I promise you, Uther Pendragon, a great warrior soul will come to Ygrane, when she conceives by you."

  "Did Gorlois refuse such an offer? Why?"

  "Superstitious fellow that he is, he knew with full conviction that I am Satan. He would not have me steal his soul away to eternal damnation." King Someone Knows the

  Truth sneers and shakes his woolly head scornfully.

  "Eternal damnation. What cruel hoax your priests have inflicted on your people. Souls change. Only God is

  eternal—and what kind of God would damn any created

  thing eternally? That is your faith. I'll not gainsay it further.

  Gorlois refused me his soul. Do you think he is in heaven now—or hell?"

  Merlinus deflects this challenge by asking, "Tell me, sire: Who is Morgeu? What manner of soul is she that

  came to Ygrane and Gorlois?"

  "Not of my choosing," the elk-king replies curtly.

  "She is an angry soul, to be sure. If I remember rightly, she is one of Boudicca's war chiefs, beheaded by the Romans, reborn by that union."

  Boudicca. Merlinus and Uther remember the name well, as every Roman Briton would. The woman was a

  warrior-queen who, almost four hundred years earlier, had led an uprising against the newly arrived Romans. Before her violent death, she wiped out an entire legion and massacred over seventy thousand Romans and their allies!

  In retaliation, the emperor Nero ordered her tribe

  annihilated.

  "Then, she is to be feared," Merlinus remarks with open trepidation. "Such rage would well serve the demons.

  How will you ever fight her?"

  "Fight her?" The elk-king splays a hand over his majestic chest in surprise. "Not I. That is not my domain. I said I would fight the demons themselves if I have to—but I won't have to, will I, Uther? It is you—you and your

  ancestor, the dragon-magus—who will do necessary battle to retrieve Ygrane, while I and my Daoine Sid need do no more than distract Morgeu's demons."

  "And if I must refuse you my soul?" Uther asks.

  The elk-king squints at him shrewdly. "Must you?"

  "I promised my brother I would join him in heaven."

  Merlinus takes Uther's elbow and pulls him away

  from the elk-king. "Do not make any deals with spirits, sire.

  I'm sure we can fulfill our terrestrial destiny on our own merits and God's grace."

  The beast-king slouches closer. "Myrddin, why do you speak against me?"

  Merlinus separates from Uther and stands openly

  before the mighty being. "Lord of the Wilds, I am sworn by my sainted mother to serve what is good. It is good that we save Ygrane at once. This talk is a dangerous distraction."

  With a gust of autumnal air scented of woodsmoke

  and leaf rot, the elk-king sighs. "Save yourself from the angry desert god, Uther. Do not do as Gorlois did. Accept my offer. Give me your soul, for however long God shall

  choose that you remain among us. Receive a powerful Celtic warrior for your son and king to your people and mine."

  King Uther remains silent. He knows this is the

  fulcrum of his destiny, and all he can think of is Ygrane.

  Not Ygrane the queen and not the military alliance that can thwart the Furor, but the caring, green-eyed woman he met in the chapel. She is in danger. His golden eyes hood sleepily as he prays for a way to appease the elk-king without forsaking his soul.

  Buying time to patch together a reply, Uther puts his face in his hands. Merlinus feels the king's mind racing, pacing his heart. The wizard can almost hear him thinking, What does God want?

  When Uther looks up, his jaw sets and his face

  appears tired with resignation. "Your Majesty, like you, I am the servant of my people. If this
is for their greater good, I will do this. On one further condition." He stands taller.

  "The soul you send to Ygrane and to me will embrace my faith and live as a Christian."

  "What?" The elk-king rocks forward. "And lose another soul—one of my greatest—to your strange oriental faith?"

  Uther does not flinch. "A soul for a soul, Your

  Majesty."

  King Someone Knows the Truth clutches his small

  beard and leans so far back he seems about to topple.

  When he sways upright, he slaps his fist to his palm.

  "Done! At the birth of your son, you are to go to Raven Spring—the Druids know of this place. Drink of its sweet poison, and your soul will come directly here."

  "After we have freed my wife," Uther retorts quickly,

  "I will consider your words, the words we have spoken here today, binding only if the sacrifice you ask does indeed serve my people's greater good."

  "Consider it well, then, King Uther. Few mortals are given the chance to see what you have seen and return to their old ways." His eyes narrow menacingly. "Do not bring a benighted soul into the world. As for you, Myrddin—"

  At the sound of his name, the wizard braces himself

  against his staff and lifts a brave face.

  "You will stay out of this," the elk-king tells him sternly. '"Tis for you that the demons have allied with Morgeu. They want to rip you from your mortal body, and if you're there, for sure there'll be no stopping them. No, Myrddin. I have another task for you." His dark eyes like holes stare into Merlinus, and the wizard feels the rhyme of their darkness stir primal memories of his long, dreamless flights between the stars.

  "You shall ride the unicorn to Avalon. The creature knows the way from here."

  "Avalon?" Merlinus peeps, shaking off the lonely dreaminess that the god's wide stare inspires.

  "Avalon. An island in the western sea." His voice reverberates, as if from a cave, and Merlinus realizes that he is still dream-wrung, still under the god's mesmeric stare. "In Avalon you will find a cirque of standing stones, each twice the size of a man. That is the Dance of the Giants."

  "The Dance—"

  "Yes, Myrddin, the Dance of the Giants," the elk-king repeats, and the repetition is not purely for his benefit, Merlinus begins to understand. For the god is not

  hypnotizing the wizard but time itself, shaping events by his magical will. "At the center of the cirque is a smaller stone, big as a man yet very heavy. Made of star-stuff that fell to Earth long ago. Move it aside. Beneath it you will find a pool. The water-goddess that dwells there will give you a weapon crafted by the dwarf Brokk long ago—"

  "Brokk—" Merlinus wags his head, trying to shake off the god's trance hold. "Brokk is one of the Furor's craftsmen."

  The elk-king grins coldly. "Yes, indeed. He is the Furor's finest blacksmith, in fact. It was he fashioned this sword for the Furor when the one-eyed god shrank himself to a man's size in fear of the Old Ones. The Jute hero Siegfried slew a dragonish troll with it. The Annwn—the angels—have taken it from Brokk and given it to me to defend my people against the Furor. A fine work of

  craftsmanship it is, and imbued with a rare magic that serves the bearer. I want to see it used, as the Fire Lords intend—against the Furor! That will raise his hackles." He shakes his fists with glee, anticipating his age-old foe's rage. "Bring the sword Lightning and the star stone to Maridunum. King Uther will meet you there—with his

  bride."

  *

  Merlinus clambers down the pine-crest to the

  meadow where the unicorn grazes. It knows him and does not budge from its browsing until he is upon it. The animal raises its skinny, horned head. Its clear eyes, sentient of his purpose, waits for him to mount. At his touch, a cold charge of electricity shakes him and a blossom opens in his brain, a caramel fragrance of heaven.

  After that, Merlinus feels entranced, as blessed with joy as that known by the souls dancing in the faerie woods

  of the elk-king. He watches Uther raise his arm in Roman salute. And the wizard, gone from his king's side for the first time since Theo's days as a stable boy, feels no anguish.

  Clutching the unicorn's curly mane -with one hand,

  his staff with the other, Merlinus sits tall. They gallop across the meadow and into the woods. Green, pillared darkness blurs past, and Merlinus does not look back.

  Speed forks his beard over his shoulders, whips his robe, and bends his conical hat, but it does not blear his eyes.

  Before long, they are in the open again, charging toward the indigo light of the mountains.

  The unicorn swerves to a stop on a bluff overlooking

  morning hills, dells, and mountain cups of apple trees.

  Quicksilver cascades thread among contorted apple

  brambles on the high verdant promontories, blowing off the steep, craggy groves in wild vapors. The sour sweet frost of autumn-rotted apples buffets around him in a sea breeze sweeping off the rocky coast below.

  He dismounts, and the instant he breaks contact

  with the unicorn, black sorrow descends. Sick with

  remembered grief at the prosperous cruelty of the physical world, he gropes for the unicorn. It shies away. He

  stumbles after it, nauseated with the visceral heaviness of his life. And the beast bounces downhill and leads him, stumbling and lurching over apples melted in the sun, to a plain of wild orchids.

  Gnarled apple trees, afoot in the syrupy brown

  mulch of their dropped fruit, stand back in ragged

  circumference from the orchid field. At the center loom rough-hewn menhirs—-single upright stones—that pierce the flowery ground in a crude circle. His grief dims as he recalls what awaits him here.

  On legs still numb from his magical ride, Merlinus

  leans strongly on his staff and staggers into the Dance of the Giants. The stone at the center has the wedged, flat-topped appearance of an enormous anvil cleaved by a

  frost giant's battle-ax. The twin lobes of the ferric stone glint silver-black with orange pollen flakes of rust strewn throughout, and the wizard imagines he can feel the slag humming under his touch with magnetic force.

  The star stone will not budge before his mortal

  might. It requires a strongly voiced barbarous chant and all the earthbound strength he can draw into his limbs to lift it aside.

  As the elk-king has foretold, a waterhole underlies

  the large stone. On his knees, Merlinus tries to peek past his own hairy reflection in the black water, then shouts his shock when a glossy hand shaped of water rises upward to

  its elbow, then sinks quickly again.

  Squatting before the hole like an amazed simian,

  Merlinus watches a sharp length of blue-white steel pierce the mirroring surface and lift slowly skyward. The beveled blade, so perfectly formed and polished, reflects the seaborn cumulus clouds above the tangled apple boughs clear as a window. Then the gold haft emerges, sunbright and roweled with interlocking circlets. Beneath a

  handguard like a long, slenderly curved Persian glyph, the spiral-carved helve rises, visible through the transparent grip of the water sprite.

  The sword Lightning, an elegantly clean weapon, in

  form hypnotically simple, displays no encrustations of gems or engraved scrollwork. Apart from the elfishly

  complex and minute torque design at the haft, it sports no ornament at all. Merlinus gawks at it admiringly a long time before the thought, the anticipation, that he is about to take the object in his very fingers shivers through him.

  At his touch, the watery hand splashes away, and

  he is left on his knees, holding the weapon. It balances like a living thing in his palm. Briefly, he hefts it, enjoying its substantial and buoyant weight, then brandishes it, awed by its lithe strength. It feels as though an extension of his arm.

  Merlinus' knees soak wet, and he looks down at the

  widening waterhole. He
gets to his feet, and, as he backs away, the pool irises larger. Orchids at the periphery crumble off in massive clots. Hurriedly, he scurries out of the Dance of the Giants and runs, sword in one hand, staff in the other, to the line of apple trees. Then, he rushes back to retrieve the star stone as the elk-king has

  instructed.

  Empowered by his anxiety at losing the aerolite, he

  chants vigorously and, hoisting with all his might, manages to steer the boulder like a bobbling wheelbarrow away from the water. He shoves it into the apple woods before looking back.

  When he turns about, he watches the menhirs

  sinking into the water vertically, soundlessly, leaving behind only the gentlest ripples, like fish whispering at the surface.

  Merlinus thinks that perhaps the whole island will be consumed, and it makes him despair to think of carrying the heavy stone, the sword, and his staff to wherever the unicorn might be. Trying to consolidate his burden, he props the sword slantwise into the cleft of the stone.

  The widening water stops at the trees. When he

  tries to lift the sword, it sticks firmly as if annealed to the rock. Panic assails him, and he tries chanting and levering

  the weapon with his earth-rooted strength, all to no avail.

  He consoles himself with the knowledge that King

  Someone Knows the Truth has decreed that the sword has magic. When he gets it to Maridunum, if need be he will petition the god for the necessary power to free it. For the time being, he resolves to accept it as it is, and he sits on the rock for a few minutes' rest before tackling the problem of transporting it across the sea to Ygrane's kingdom.

  As Merlinus grapples with the immovable sword, a

  line of swans descends from out of the woods and onto the water. He sits for a while watching them drift—pale and demure, proud and sad, over the slick black lake. Nine of them move single file across the surface, parading before him, carrying perfect reflections in a netherworld that is a dimmer pretense of our own. Watching them, he sinks

  again into the languorous sorrow that always comes after magical contact with the unicorn.

  He remembers Optima's cryptic foretelling of the

  pagan swan queens, and he sits up straighter. What was it she had said? He glances around, reassessing the moment, trying to gauge if he has been bewitched. The brails of his heart feel something like the strenuous darkness between the stars—such a depth of untouched