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by A. A. Attanasio

Beginning with Rna and following the Graal through the line to the auburn adolescent, they speak in turn: "The pagan tribes who scorn the Prince of Peace amass on our eastern shores and descend from the highlands."

  "They worship murder. They drink from the skulls of the slain."

  "The meek are sacrificed animals to their gods."

  "All hope of peace rests in your sacred war, Uther Pendragon."

  "History is a black beast. Be proud, rider."

  "The light of the burial wagons shows the way

  through that darkness."

  "Protect us from the raiders in the storm and the angels of death."

  "Stop the invaders from overrunning this island, where Miriam, mother of Jesus, lived out her days."

  "Take this jorum. We have fashioned it in honor of the vessel from which Jesus drank at his last meal—and so we call it the Holy Graal. It is consecrated by our prayers for peace and will bring blessings from God."

  The youngest places it in Uther's hands, and the

  king's arms stagger with the surprising weight of it. "I accept for all Christendom," he affirms, and cringes within for his lusty memories of the elk-king's musical forest.

  Ygrane kisses each of the cenobites, and they bless

  her and the child in her womb and depart in reverse order, the youngest leading out of the citadel and back into the snowfields.

  Sunrise curls on the horn of the unicorn, which

  prances around the cenobites until they enter the crystal woods.

  After their departure—as sudden and solemn as

  their arrival—a holy hush settles over the hall. Uther passes the Graal to Ygrane, who handles it lightly. It feels like spun glass to her.

  "What does this mean, Myrddin?" she asks in wonderment, and hands him the sleek chalice.

  The wizard peers into the wet shadows in the hollow

  of the cup and sees the turquoise light from the hall doorway pooling at the bottom. A moment's concentration reveals that the metal goblet serves as an antenna;

  Merlinus turns it in his hands and feels the power ebb and stream. "My lady—this is a magic vessel. The Annwn have fashioned it to receive power from the heavens. This will amplify your magic manyfold."

  He returns the Graal to her, and, marveling, she rotates it as the wizard did and feels, too, the flux of power it focuses out of the air. The invigorating current relaxes the guilty cramp in her chest. Now she has the power to revive the dragon-magus.

  "It is a miracle," she finally manages to say. "With this—and the sword Lightning at our side—we cannot fail."

  "We can too easily fail," Merlinus warns hotly. "We are battling demons and gods who are fearless of evil. We must be careful not to become as they are."

  Uther slides to his knees, ashamed of his disloyalty

  to this life, and Ygrane joins him, believing he kneels in prayerful thanks. With woeful joy the king lifts his face from the moment of proof and sends his personal guard to

  escort the nuns back to their chapel.

  The nuns are gone. When the soldiers reach the

  tree line, the tracks in the snow end. The final steps widen to a stride impossible for any mortal gait.

  *

  Winter is busy. Despite an unusual number of

  blizzards and sea storms, emissaries arrive from Armorica, the Visigothic Kingdom, Pope Simplicius in Rome, the

  eastern patriarchs in Antioch, and the boy emperor

  Romulus Augustulus in Ravenna. Celtic seers and

  Christian mystics visit from distant villages and hermitages to bless the unborn child Ygrane carries, and they convey awareness from the most remote corners of the kingdom that something momentous is soon to happen.

  As Ygrane swells, Merlinus spends his time alert,

  watching out for Morgeu and her Y Mamau. Though he

  knows that Falon has been sent to drive Ethiops away, the wizard well knows that Morgeu's hatred of him is stronger than the demon.

  Reports from traders and pilgrims tell of a

  murderous cult in Inchtuthil devoted to the Devourer of All Things. The dread Morgeu does not make her nefarious

  presence, or her alliance with the Furor, felt that whole winter. Not in Tintagel.

  Merlinus is unable to bring himself to use the strong eye again, to slip out of his body and visit the unholy shrine himself. His energy feels torpid and uncontrollable. Time, too, opens into a swifter dimension. Days topple by.

  Attempting to get a grip on the slippery rush of time, the wizard attends the palace's many ceremonies—

  Christian benedictions, masses, candlelight processions—

  all accompanied by the monodic threnodies and liturgical chants of the choirs that have gathered at Tintagel from

  across the wintry countryside to worship the Holy Graal.

  Ygrane, too, and many of her fiana and Druids attend these sacred services. Sitting off to the side, they join their Celtic observances with the Christian ones, rapidly locking fingers in silent rune-sharing.

  The spiritual life of the diocese has never been more fervid, and Bishop Riochatus, who has carried a dour, emaciated countenance since his first meeting with the wizard, appears happy—actually rejuvenated, more full-fleshed, and spry. To everyone he meets—and to the bitter annoyance of the fiana and many Celts—he claims that an angel has answered his prayers and that the conversion of all Cymru has been promised by God's herald.

  He and Dun Mane spend hours at a time locked in

  vigorous debate about the scriptures, and the bishop

  comes away convinced by the Druid that he must imitate the Messiah by adhering to the dietary strictures of

  Leviticus and growing his beard and temple locks in the Hebraic manner.

  For Ygrane and Uther, this winter is their happiest

  time together. Four moons of joined magic, entwined

  understanding, proud purpose. Every night after the Graal celebration, they gather before a glorious hearthfire with the royal guests—foreign emissaries, long-traveled

  pilgrims, warriors, poets, and opportunists drawn to

  Tintagel—and enjoy communion with the human dream, in all its variety and manner of foibles.

  And each morning after more jubilation of bells and

  singing worship, a carnival mood possesses the terraced courtyards and tiered ranges of the palace as musicians break into smaller ecstatic groups and accompany the

  denizens to their work. The citadel has never been more productive.

  Many heartstrong tales play themselves out that

  winter. For Merlinus, the whole season distills to one vivid encounter: seeing Ygrane in her winter garden at the

  center of Tintagel, making her magic rinses as he watched her do seven years earlier and seventy leagues north in her summer garden at Segontium when, still garbed in

  animal skins, he first met her.

  As before, the unicorn is there. White as the snow, it stands barely visible against the frosted spires of poplar trees that wall off the circular garden. Like a sketch of itself, its virid eyes and silent hooves drift past as it circles the garden perimeter.

  Uther feeds the goblin braziers wood chips, saffron

  nodules of fragrant resins, and clear oils in separate bronze pans set on fire-trivets. Attentively, he watches the witch-queen steep small plaited bundles of herbs,

  mushrooms, mosses, ferns, bark, roots, kelp, and tiny shellfish, small whelks and periwinkles colorful as candy chips.

  Several hours every day in the cold with Uther at her side assisting her with the rinses, the fire, and the magic, she prepares quick-heal lotions for the battles of the spring.

  The Graal, placed atop a frozen birdbath, draws energy into itself from the Great Tree, and the queen frequently replenishes her strength by touching her brow to its brim.

  She requires a lot of energy, because she intends

  for every soldier, fiana and Christian, to have a phial of her healing balm. T
hat means leaving most of the work to her servants, most of them healers and priestesses in their own right. They work diligently in the citadel preparing medicaments from the bales of curative herbs the queen has brought with her from Maridunum, and she meets with them every day to work for several more hours.

  "I think you are doing too much," Uther complains even as he abets her by stirring the steeping potions and carefully controlling the heat of the aromatic flames.

  "Garner your strength for the spring and our child."

  "Merlinus, tell Uther I've too much energy, now that we have the bounty of the Graal," she replies. "How could I lie in bed all day? I must use this strength." She pauses to place her hands in steam wreathing from the hot pans. She closes her eyes and directs a flow of magic into the elixirs.

  Feeling from his chest, Merlinus senses the healing

  power as a warm earth smell in the stinging cold.

  Several times that winter, the wizard wants to open

  the strong eye again, to see if the child Ygrane carries is indeed male. He worries that this may not be the future king but another Morgeu. His life-force is not focused enough for him to dare to step from his body. As it is, the very flow of time baffles him with its wind-rush. The strong eye is far too vigorous for him to use without the centering presence of more concentrated beings, like the unicorn or the Nine Queens.

  Uther flicks a spark of glowing cinder at the wizard.

  "Merlinus, you've been in a daze since we left Maridunum."

  "Since he rode the unicorn from Avalon," Ygrane corrects. "He drifts."

  "Is that why children sing stories about you now?"

  the king asks with a wink. Merlinus bows his head before this embarrassing truth. In his attempt to keep busy, he has gotten himself involved in several misadventures in the citadel and nearby hamlets, creating trouble where he had tried to benefit others.

  "Mother Optima asked you to do good," Ygrane says to him that cold, clear morning in the winter garden.

  "Saint that she was, she had the heart to tell you the truth.

  You are not the savior."

  "No." Merlinus pivots slowly around his staff, following the prancing circuit of the unicorn. The

  treacherous bliss he enjoys whenever he touches the

  creature troubles his heart with memories, and he chews his mustache.

  Uther blows warmth into his hands and approaches

  the unicorn. He knows well enough not to get too close.

  The animal shies from him and twice before has reared dangerously. One glance of those glassy hooves and no spell the wizard knows can call him back.

  "Look at this magnificent being," the king says, pointing to the pink gashes of vertical nostrils jetting steam.

  "It is the most beautiful beast on Earth." Green curved eyes close and the horn slashes like an ice dagger.

  Merlinus cautiously pulls him away. "You cannot

  command this creature, Uther. The beast that waits on your will dwells in the underworld."

  "I would not call Grandfather Vitki a beast," Uther mildly protests.

  "He is far more beast than man now," the queen replies. She knows, because she feeds Wray Vitki each night with the Graal. A tower chapel has been erected for this purpose.

  At midnight, with the auroras furling in the starwinds, Ygrane raises the Graal to heaven and directs the flow of celestial power down through her body, through the tower rocks, into the planetary spaces below. Most of the current sluices through the honeycomb caverns to the Dragon. Its mane smokes in steam off the wintry ocean. Wray Vitki receives enough to grow stronger.

  "Beast or not," the king confides, "he is in my dreams again—though now as a man. Wholly a man. He

  looks as my father did, from the death mask I've seen of him."

  "Yes," Merlinus understands. "He wears his human face for you a last time. Even with the might of the Graal, his life will not endure the spring. We must use him wisely in battle."

  The anticipation of war, as ever, hardens the king's

  expression, and he turns again toward the unicorn. "The time for war is not yet.

  Merlinus passes a knowing, unhappy look to

  Ygrane, and neither of them has the heart to say what they both know and, surely, what the king must know in his heart—that war does not have a time.

  *

  Falon wanders the winter world. Through sleet winds and landscapes anonymous under their snow

  burdens, he travels north. Ygrane's talismans ward off were-animals and vampyres, and he makes good progress through the stormy terrain.

  Three horses he wears out in the cold and blue

  forests. Twice, he uses the queen's gold to purchase new mounts from the stables of coloniae he passes through on his northward trek. The third new horse, he steals from an encampment of Picts, and flees across a frozen river that breaks apart behind him under the galloping impact of the horse's hooves.

  In the wild uplands, he encounters a hermitage

  beset by marauders. The dozen Scoti raiders do not see him until he crashes through a thicket of icicles and is immediately among them. His sword flashes in lethal arcs.

  Three are dead before the others turn on him.

  Valiantly, with the enormous western sun boiling at

  his back among storm clouds above the gray forest, he slays five more. The others flee, and Falon slumps from his steed, a wound under his arm dyeing scarlet the hoof-broken snow.

  The hermits find him unconscious. After staunching

  his bleeding, they carry him to their stone sanctuary, a cluster of crude, beehive-shaped buildings on a rocky promontory. They bring him into the nearest of the cells and lower him onto a straw pallet.

  While bustling to cleanse and dress the wound, they

  knock aside his travel pouch and spill a trove of heathen amulets and talismans—feathered rodent skulls in

  perplexing knots of hair, bone, and tendon, eyeholes

  gouged by quartz blades.

  A rock crusty with tiny mirrors is found in this

  abhorrent mess, and the whole damnable pouch is heaped up with blessed spindle wood, hard and hot-burning, and set ablaze in a lustration fire. Earnestly, they pray to dispel the deviltry befuddling this brave and wounded warrior and, lifting their voices higher, prepare to save his pagan soul from eternal damnation.

  Falon comes out of his stupor at the sound of

  fervent chanting and howls with horror to find his warding pouch gone and the fire in the hermitage yard spooling smoke through the slanting snow. He lurches from his sick cot with another wrenching cry and heaves aside the

  hermits, who try to restrain him. Plunging his left hand into the flames, he retrieves Ygrane's love charm, scorched yet intact.

  Falon does not wait for the mounting blizzard to

  abate before leaving the hermitage. He rides north into the blast of arctic night. Without his talismans, he is prey for every vile creature that the love charm attracts. Though he cannot feel the magic in the stone, wretched, soulless entities woven of shadow do.

  Shapeshifting were-beasts stalk him. These malefic

  night terrors exist as plasmic beings composed of the ichor that seeps out of wounds in the Great Tree. Magi inflict these wounds in the Tree to tap ichor, from which they create these mutable soldiers and servants. If they escape their masters, the rogue monsters lose access to the Storm Tree's sustaining sap and must consume the life-force of organic creatures to live. Most of these homicidal

  renegades are centuries old.

  Without the witch-queen's talismans to repulse

  astral predators, Falon must stay awake in the night. When the horribles crawl down from the World Tree, he slays them with his sword. By day, he rides north, sleeps briefly at midday, and hurries into the twilight, keeping as far from other people as he can. His fiana oath forbids him knowingly to carry harm to anyone except enemies of the queen. Unshielded by talismans, the witching charm is a brilliant
beacon to every ectoplasmic creature on the island.

  The more clever shapeshifters plead, wheedle, and

  threaten from the dark. Only their crimson eyes flicker in the fire-shadows. They offer him hidden treasures, secret knowledge, their lifelong fealty. Nothing they can say sways him. If his falls, they will seize the queen's talisman.

  He knows that with their evil intelligence, they will use this power to fling open the gates between the worlds.

  Falon calms himself with the knowledge that his

  queen has the sight. She can see the turbulent timewinds and read the flow of events that stream into the future. She witnesses this flux around every pebble, and surely she has studied the currents around this vital talisman. Ygrane knows that the course of events runs clear and

  unobstructed to her daughter. She would not throw him away on an impossible task.

  Confident as a boulder, the queen's soldier sits

  close to the fire, naked sword in his lap. He makes his body a shield, with the crystal charm tied to the back of his torque by plaited locks of his hair. Night after night, he sits thus, vigilant and untouched by the shapeshifters' ploys.

  In the solstice time, with a banshee wind yelling out of the highlands and the warding fire jumping and

  splashing sparks, the shapeshifters depart before a less gruesome yet far greater terror. A female vampyre visits his circle of light.

  She comes first as visions of Ygrane, naked. The white hourglass of her body dances provocatively. In this way, she weakens him from inside. As with each of the fiana, Falon's life is bound to the queen's while all sexual desire is denied, directed outward to the handmaidens from whom the fiana are expected to select their wives.

  Falon, who lost his first wife to Saxon raiders the

  winter before Ygrane summoned him, never chose

  another. The vampyre taunts him with images of Ygrane as his wife. The truth is that over the years pitiless desire for her has grown in him. Shame and greatness pivot on this desire. Yet, more than his fiana oath has kept him from feeling this truth until now. She is too old for him. She has been a witch-queen many lifetimes, while this is his first opportunity as a warrior.

  For several nights, the vampyre taunts him with

  impossible images of himself in the arms of his queen.