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"Something old in the wanting has been fulfilled,"
the queen murmurs, her voice frayed.
Uther presses closer and prays with her, as she
taught him the day they first met. "In you, God, there is no evil that is not a greater good."
He orders a bed set next to hers so they can share
their helplessness. Seeing themselves so weak, so small, the king and queen of the land laugh with brittle darkness.
The incessant groans of the wounded in the war camp
nearby remind them how far they have come from the
blithe figures who met in a shrine of peace but seven moons ago.
Wrung tired, exhausted from the unicorn's pain and loss, and with no countervailing magic left to bolster her, Ygrane glides in and out of consciousness. "Theo—" she whispers down the slip face of her wakefulness. Though they laughed together, darkness shines in her husband's drawn features, and she reaches for the words to reassure him before she glides into sleep again. "Do not doubt us ...
though war has brought us together ... love binds us ...”
Uther clutches her hand as she slides into sleep—or
is it death?
He bends to listen to her breath until he feels
assured she slumbers. Then he stands and stares down at her, memorizing the wracked exhaustion in her glossy
eyelids and settled features that open a deeper beauty for his inspection.
If she lives, her work will be far harder than dying.
He shudders with marrow-cold remembrance of the battle.
A fatigue wider than the numb ache of his tendons and joints saturates him. Seeking courage, he places his hand on his wife's stomach. From here, there will be no dragon-magus to rise up and win battles. Whoever this child is, such a soul will have to cut his own way through the war-torn world.
"You must be strong," he whispers to the unborn child. "Very strong to make a difference in this world, without a dragon." A ripple of movement under his fingertips charges him with an even brighter alertness, as if the future listens. Against the livid groans of the wounded, he does not raise his voice only whispers even more softly,
"There will be Merlinus, of course. He will protect you, as he protected me—" He tastes the saltiness before he realizes that he weeps. He wipes his eyes, rejecting
sorrow, wanting a greater blessing for his child. "To help the world, to help all other souls of your age, child, you will have to be much more than protected. You must live your days noble of heart—worthy of the greatness Christ
proved."
Sacrifice. The thought makes him wonder what alchemy of blood and mud and these infernal cries of
suffering work in him.
He kisses his wife's forehead, proud of her, and
straightens. Her cadaverous chill surprises him enough to feel again for her life. Assured that yet she lives, he rises, and on his face, there is a change—no tears any longer, rather a look of resolution, proud as clouds folding away from the sun.
*
With an escort of bowmen, Merlinus carries the sword Lightning to the queen's camp. The king, in black cavalry armor over a purple tunic, has already mounted and waits for the wizard outside the camp. He calls
Merlinus aside and dismisses the bowmen.
When he and the wizard ride off alone on the tamed
battlefield, he sheathes the sword and points to the billows of pyre smoke blowing wider across the sky. "Our enemies are dead, Merlinus. My work is done."
"Only begun, lord," Merlinus corrects.
"No. I am not the one destined to serve. You know that, wizard." He holds up a tiny, finger-length scroll of poplar bark tied with a lock of hair.
"I have fulfilled my destiny," he says with flat certitude. "There is nothing more I can give—unless I accept the elk-king's offer."
Merlinus squints with surprise. He did not see this
with his strong eye. He reaches from his heartflow, feels the king's tight, unrelenting weariness, and mutters, "The kingdom needs you here, my lord."
"No." He shakes his head to keep from laughing maniacally in the wizard's face. "This land does not need a king unhappy with war. I've already told the Druids, and Dun Mane has given me this. It's a spell I am to read—
when we are well away from here. The Druid wrote it for me on the spot with a stick of charcoal and tied it off with a lock of corpse hair. I'm not to open it until we are three leagues due west." He points his horse in that direction and spurs it to a smart canter. "Come, Merlinus. We are off to the Raven Spring."
"Lord, I do not think this is wise," Merlinus says, hurrying to keep up. "It will be dark soon."
"Now, Merlinus." The king directs his steed away from the killing plains toward a copse of blossoming cherry trees. Petals blow about them in flurries of spring snow.
"Drinking from the Raven Spring defies your faith,"
the wizard sputters.
"Another discourse with Optima's wise demon?" he asks with a sad smile. "Do you know how tired I am, Merlinus?"
"Then stop. Come back to camp," Merlinus presses.
"Make this decision with a clearer head."
"My head has never been clearer," he answers, his voice hollow. They shoot out of the cherry grove into open, empty grassland. Across the feathery field to the tall chine of the hill, they gallop and then settle to an easy gait.
Below, the wide river plains of the Tamesis shine
with all the laminated distances of Britain—the golden sea to the south climbing west in darkening stains of swales,
rising from green effluvial basins in the east, through blue hills stacking northward, to the purple gutters of the sky.
Merlinus sees he will not be able to sway Uther from
his plan easily. To fill the silence, they talk faith and philosophy, as once they discoursed among the weed-lots beside the horse stables in the City of the Legion. The spell of ease that the wizard twice chanted over the king has given Uther some respite from his physical weariness.
Merlinus seriously contemplates talking sleep to him.
"And finally it comes to this—" the king says. "This momentary thing called a decision. Did you not teach me that the right decision is a chisel? That it can cut the diamond of fate and shape time?"
"I might have said that," Merlinus admits reluctantly.
"That is not to say you should drink from the Raven Spring.
I have seen no such end for you in the strong eye. I saw your battles—neither defeat nor victory. I beg of you, my lord. You must stay alive to decide this outcome."
He shakes his head adamantly. "No, Merlinus.
Grandfather Vitki is dead. I felt him die around me—and inside me. Can you not see? War is over for me. I cannot fight for our people." He gives Merlinus a slantwise look, as if he has just realized something about them. "You think I'm sacrificing myself." He drops a hard laugh. "I am not sacrificing myself, Merlinus. What I am doing this day is selfish. My God, think of what Ygrane has yet to fulfill. My work is over. God made me king for this reason alone. To marry the souls of Christians and Celts. Today, the alliance is baptized in blood." He nods and holds his wizard's owling gaze, sure of himself. "And I want to go back to the elk-king. Remember that to the queen. I want to dance to that music—for a long, long time. Long enough to forget the screams."
"Yet not just now, Uther. What if Ygrane loses the child? What of the danger to come from the Furor?"
"That is why it must be now, Merlinus." He locks on to the wizard's dark gaze with an expression of incisive clarity. "I saw Ygrane. I spoke with her. Our child is alive in her. But she is dying. You know that, and you cannot stop it."
"The unicorn's shadow passed into her ..." Merlinus tugs his hair fretfully. He cannot think of a reasonable way to dissuade the king from the Raven Spring. And he frets, because he knows Optima would not want this. "Prayer may heal Ygrane. The Fire Lords may come—"
"She is dying."
steady stare. "Yes. The fatality of Morgeu's blow passed through the unicorn to Ygrane. She may well die. The blow
has already killed her magic."
The king gives one nod of unceasing conviction and
directs his gaze forward. "If I go to the elk-king, he will send her life. He promised me that. He must, to keep the child alive. He has sworn that my death will save them both."
"The one for the many," Merlinus says wearily, and they enter an oak forest pungent with damp decay and the hot pollen of flower carpets. "Who will rule the kingdom?"
"The great warrior soul that the Sid sends to be baptized my son.
"It will be a dozen or more years before he can
rule—"
The king shakes his head. "I have no answer for
that. I trust in providence—and in you, Merlinus. You are a demon, for God's sake. You will certainly not misjudge evil.
My son, my kingdom, my memory could be in no better
hands."
Merlinus looks at his knobby, mottled hands and
throws them up in despair. "So then—everything is in place, my lord. God has put it all together for you, hasn't She? The Britons and the Celts—Wray Vitki and the
unicorn—-Jesus and the elk-king—" He jabs his staff at the windows of heaven in the dark canopy. "Then why not trust in God? Why take fate into your own hands at all? Why drink of the Raven Spring?"
Uther smiles calmly, pleased with his wizard's
loyalty. "God made me king because He ... or She knows I can do this. I never wanted to be king, Merlinus. You know that."
"Yes, and for someone who wanted to be a priest,"
the wizard chides, "you are acting too much like a pagan.
Sacrificing yourself!"
"My soul is in no jeopardy," Uther assures him, quite seriously. "My faith is not contradicted. I go to a pagan place now—and something pagan comes into this world
Christian. What I am is not changed."
"Merely moved about in God's economy," Merlinus mocks him, then shakes his head solemnly. "Good cannot follow evil—even if done for the sake of good."
At this challenge, Uther holds himself poised in a
moment of self-reflection, then asks, "You believe my bargain with the elk-king is evil?"
Merlinus pauses. "I can guarantee no truths about good or evil. I beg you to consider that the faith of Optima that converted me from an incubus—that is what you are abandoning. Does that strike you as good?"
"I tell you, I am not abandoning my faith. That is not what the elk-king requires. I am a Christian now and
hence."
"It will be difficult to dwell in pagan paradise a Christian, my lord. They dance with animal gods, you
know."
"If God wills, I shall convert them." He dares a laugh, as if he well knows how frail his jest is. "What lies ahead will be easy for me. Going on will be far more
difficult for Ygrane."
In good conscience, Merlinus cannot allow the king
to drink from the Raven Spring. Not in his current state of mind. The man is wrung by battle fatigue and ranting about converting gods! Merlinus decides to stop him with a spell and let him rest before delivering so final a decision.
With a whistle, he calls the horse to a stop.
The king realizes instantly what his wizard is about
to do. He kicks his spurs hard, intending to dash away before Merlinus can enchant him. The spelled horse leaps up with a startled twist.
Aghast, Merlinus watches Uther fall. The wizard,
caught in midspell, cannot shout the levity that could soften this blow. The king's head strikes the ground first, then his body. He lies on the thick, happy grass of summer, empty.
Merlinus' heartflow clogs inside the hammering of
his own heart. He must force himself calm before he can reach into Uther to grasp his life. He finds only a husk—
abandoned bones, still heart, clotting blood.
For a horrified span, he listens to the crepitant noise of the body's capillaries closing, joints creaking as ligaments begin their slow, sure tightening toward rigor mortis. Then the wizard lets go and closes the king's eyes.
Uther Pendragon is dead. Merlinus' spells are of no
avail, he knows. Theo's soul has been knocked out of him and already dances to the Piper's tune.
*
Merlinus reels about, horrified that he has killed the king. "Not willfully!" he calls aloud, to the shard of moon. "I only tried to stop him from killing himself!"
Madness whines a shrill note in the demon visitor's
nerves, like a tsetse carrying its lethal chill to his pith. He drops his staff and paces circles around the broken body, hands tugging at his hair, distraught, helpless. The angry thought tightens on him that he should kill himself.
Frantically, he grabs the king's buckler and tugs at
the sword Lightning. As the blue blade rings free of its scabbard, he staggers backward. Finding himself with the maker of death in his hands, a grimace of determination seizes him. He drops to the ground and begins gouging a hole in the mulchy earth beside the king's body, wanting to
brace the long sword firmly, blade up.
Groans wrack Merlinus as he works, spilling his
rage at himself. When he is done, the sword stands buried to the hilt beside Uther, at a convenient slant for the wizard to impale himself. Having spent so much strength erecting the blade, he does not have the necessary fury left for the deed.
He stands swaying before the lucid steel, crazy-
eyed. The taut strings of his face strum. Behind him, blue space charges off in every direction, carrying the full freight of summer—brains of clouds, bird flights, streaking
dragonflies, wind-borne blossoms.
Merlinus cannot kill himself. All that he lives for
denies him that fulfillment. What horrible thing he has done, contravening all his mother's prayers. He will have to live with this death, warped in his heart. He grabs the sharp blade in both hands and slides forward, slicing open his palms, feeding the pain to his hopeless remorse.
The wizard writhes on the ground, bumping his brow
against the dead king's thigh, clutching his cold hand.
"You are changed utterly, Lailoken," a dark, gleaming voice speaks from above him. "I had never thought I'd live to see a demon sobbing for a dead
gutsack."
Merlinus' smeared sight touches boot-tips of yellow
leather, and he lifts his woeful face to the tall, angular frame of Prince Bright Night. The elf's rubescent hair flows in an unfelt breeze across his dimpled, grinning face. The scars from his battle with the demons at the royal wedding have faded to thin pale lines in the ruddy hues of his complexion. He has picked up the wizard's staff, and he leans on it. His green, tapered eyes gaze down upon
Lailoken.
"I killed the king!" Merlinus blubbers.
"Did you now?" The prince extends a hand and raises Merlinus upright. "And look at your hands!" He clucks and tears a linen strip from his blue tunic. Then, he bites the hem and rips the strip in two. "You've become near as foolish as any mereling, Lailoken. I wouldn't have believed this were I not now seeing it with my own eyes."
Merlinus stands numb as water as the elf prince
binds his cut hands. "Uther is dead," the wizard mumbles.
"Of course." He ties off the bandages, tightening the knots with his teeth. "He gave himself to the elk-king, did he not? They struck a deal."
"But I am the one who killed him," Merlinus moans.
"Not so, Lailoken." Bright Night places the sole of his boot against the sword Lightning and kicks it over. "I chose this very stone for his last pillow. And I pulled him
from his steed myself."
"You—"
Bright Night passes a hand through his loose, bright
hair, bends down,
and plucks from the king's glove the tiny scroll given by the Druid. He tugs loose the lock of corpse hair, unfurls the birch strip, and passes it to Merlinus.
Written in futhorc, the spell reads:
Each pore of the flesh is the Raven Spring—A wish is enough to join the Elfin King.
Merlinus gapes at the note, reading it repeatedly.
When the sense of it finally penetrates his anguish, he falls to his knees and retches emptily into the happy grass.
*
Ygrane wakes refreshed and empty of pain, and she
knows at once. Gone, what he was to her becomes more
true. Loss and fear clash with the bounteous joy of her child's health. Life fits her sweetly. And death escapes with her mate.
She prays for Theo. She prays to his God, to her
God now, and their child's God, to watch over him. And she weeps to think of him, a Christian, fulfilling the ancient love of the sacrificed king.
After her prayers, Ygrane goes directly to Morgeu,
determined to end their bitterness. The fiana hold the young enchantress in a small tent encircled by torch
lanterns. No one has dared raise the tent flap since they brought her here after her attack on the wizard.
Ygrane dismisses her fiana and enters the dark tent alone. Animal humidity encloses her, and the interior throws shadows from her lamp. Morgeu lies on a straw
mat, curled up under her wolf pelts, asleep. Without her magic, the queen does not feel the fateful imprint of the demon in her daughter.
The queen sits proudly for a while beside her,
listening to her breathe. Her child sleeps untroubled by dreams, let alone demons. Ethiops is back in his hell and Morgeu belongs again to herself. And for that, Ygrane is glad that the last magic she worked was for love.
*
Prince Bright Night helps Merlinus fashion a travois
from saplings and boughs. They place the king's body on the litter behind his horse, arms crossed over his naked sword.