With one word, "Sleep," the wet nurse and the child plunge into dreamless slumber among plumes of fern and a spurt of dandelions. He puts his full wherewithal into the vertical river of an oak. He becomes the brilliant silence in the blazing brazier of its topmost branches. The cold gaze of the strong eye passes over them, and they are not seen.
*
The scent is unfamiliar, the taste of the milk strange.
Arthor cries for his mother, and the nipple chokes him.
After the recent comfort of his mother's warmth and before that the blissful uterine darkness out of which he grew, the forest feels alien. Wild rays of late sunlight hurt his eyes.
Bird shrieks startle him. And the rooty smells of leaf rot and animal droppings cloud him with confused feelings. Where is the warmth that made him? Where is his mother?
He cries, and again the unfamiliar breast smothers
him.
Far back in his nascent mind, this distress stirs
shapeless memories. They flinch through him, viscerally reconstructing the first pain of losing the warmth that has nourished him always. In the crossbones of his shoulders spasming pain lives on from that fierce moment when his head was born. Squinting with unglued eyes, he struggled with purple effort in his mother's birth-hold, and light burned his brain even as cold burned his flesh.
Then, a dreamlike hallucination floated across his
stuck body—a carnal vision of the kind that precedes
reincarnation. And in that gruesome vision, the horror and agony informed not birth but death. The pain in his
shoulders became leather straps that secured him upright to a pole—a staff, no, a spear. His own spear, firmly stabbed into the ground. He hung from it, bound by
tightening thongs of animal cord, so that he would die standing.
That was important. He forgets now why.
Swollen and grotesque from his wounds, he did not
recognize himself as he stood apart, free of his body, watching himself die. His throttled throat wheezed blood, and his bloated head swung and drooled. Naked but for a golden ring about his throat, gold varnished with blood. His long hair, plastered with gore, hung in hanks from his bowed head. The skin had split across his brow, and pink skull shone through.
"Cuchulain!" someone cried in overlapping echoes.
A war whoop jumped out as if by miracle from that
broken body, and the gory figure slumped dead. Stars of blood darkened in the dust at his bruised feet.
Arthor floated between two existences.
The dead body of his former self bled radiance from
its many wounds. Gaseous solar light hovered and swayed like ignis fatuus before the corpse, pulsing brighter yellow and more sunlike. In its glare, the dead body faded to pastels.
Another figure appeared, strolling out of the
sunfire—a smaller man and darker, wearing Roman armor of black leather. Uther Pendragon advanced amidst the solar haze, though Arthor-Cuchulain had no idea who he was. Another warrior—
"Yes," Uther spoke, "there will be war. And you must be a warrior again—for your people. We need you, the
greatest warrior born of this land from all times past. We need you to defend your people."
A voice Arthor does not recognize—his own voice—
answered: "I am sick of killing."
"There is balm for that sickness where you are
going."
"No balm save death," answered the warrior's soul.
"The world is a battlefield. Happy are the dead."
"No." Uther spoke kindly. "There is another balm, a greater balm, that I have denied myself so that you may have it. It belongs to the living and the dead."
"A brave death is a warrior's only balm," the unknown voice that was his own spoke. "All else is false joy."
Behind the shocking pain that still throbbed from the battle wounds and the birth-grip of the future, other memories flowed with pleasure and tumbled about each
other excited and bubbling—a wonderful, enticing
seductiveness of the Happy Land where the proud dead
go. The lovely, unearthly side of him wanted to return there at once.
"Leave me dead—" he whispered, not strong
enough to voice such weakness loudly.
"You are already born," Uther said, "as I am already dead. You will have my place in the world and I yours in the all beyond."
A great wave of sadness swept through Arthor-
Cuchulain. "Then death enshadows me yet again."
"You have the strength to contend with the strongest of the living," the dark man with the amber eyes assured.
"That is why your living god has chosen you."
"The Great Dagda has chosen me?" The sun fog breathed brighter and abruptly warmer. "Then I am born of noble parents?"
"Yes," Uther acknowledged with a proud nod. "In this life you are noble. To fulfill that birthright, you must serve again your people with your very life."
"I tell you, I am sick of killing. Leave me in the Happy Land."
"And I tell you, I have the balm for that sickness—
here." Uther began untying a cord from about his neck.
"Stranger, there can be no greater largeness of
heart than to sacrifice one's life in battle for the love of one's own people. The letting of that blood is sacred."
"That is the truth," Uther agreed. "And here is the one who sacrificed his life for the love of all people—even his enemies."
From under his ebony breastplate, he pulled forth a
small crucifix delicately carved in green stone. For all its tininess, the image bore lifelike traits, replete with wounds as gory as the badges of hell that Cuchulain's corpse had worn with distinction.
The crucifix rose before him, and shafts of dazzling
radiance rayed from those many wounds and coalesced
into the naked sun. That vision broke apart into the
scalding colors of infant Arthor's just-opened eyes.
Placental blood splashed beneath him, and as he skidded wholly forth, all memory of his former life slipped into a bottomless night lit with the untethered stars of the inner sky.
Those psychic fires glisten behind his shut eyes
under the soft weight of the nurse's breast. She shifts her weight so that the warm flesh pulls away from his tiny face, and earthy fragrances of the forest wash over him. He is frightened. He wants the familiar, trusted warmth again. He wants her back. And, as he blinks into the last brown rays of the day, his deepest self knows he will spend the rest of his fateful life returning to her.
*
Arthor remains in grave danger of exposure to his
enemies so long as he is in Merlinus' presence. Swiftly as he can, the demon-wizard escorts the nurse and baby far into the wilderness, to the hill kingdom of Kyner. Merlin has chosen him because he is Christian and a Celt. The future king will learn well from him both the new faith of love and peace, as well as the timeless lore of his mother's people.
His heart's brails lead Merlin directly to White Thorn, the sanctuary of the warlord. Snaking coils of smoke twist above the treetops from the timber-walled enclave. The gates stand open before a group of hunters returning with a stag trussed on a carrying pole. This seems to the
sorcerer a propitious time to call for Kyner. From the emerald shadows of the forest, Merlinus feels with his brails through the busyness of the camp for the chief of the hill tribes.
He finds Kyner in the chief's long hall, under a wall mounted with antlers, teaching his young son, Cei, how to hold a sword. Cei is but a toddler and the wooden sword too heavy. The linen-diapered lad holds the hilt in both hands and pushes the blade along the ground like a plow.
Kyner's booming laughter summons the nursemaids, who
snatch the child away and leave the chief wiping merry tears from his eyes.
With a soft spell chanted over and over, Merlinus
inst
ills Kyner with the wish to stroll outside his camp. The chieftain emerges with both his hands in his red hair, elbows high, stretching, breathing deeply of the afternoon's sylvan warmth. Adjusting his kilt, he marches into the forest, florid face uplifted to the shattered sunlight of the dense canopy.
Merlinus hushes the wet nurse to sleep out of sight
under a hawthorn bush and places the infant naked on a bed of mushroom-riddled leaves between the root boles of
an oak. The sorcerer waits behind the oak until Kyner spots the drowsy child and stalks toward it suspiciously. He swings his gaze all around and even searches up in the oak, looking for the child's mother. When he bends down and lifts the baby, Merlinus steps out.
"Myrddin!" Kyner gruffs, frowning off his startlement at the old man's unexpected appearance.
"You do not see me, Kyner."
"I see you—" His blue eyes slim. "What deviltry are you about? I have no dealings with demons or wizards, Myrddin. I am a Christian man. Off with you!"
"I will be going, soon." Merlin chants a spell that widens the chief's eyes and opens the ears of his soul.
"Now listen carefully to me, Kyner. When I depart, you will utterly forget that you saw me here. The child you hold in your arms, you will adopt as your own. He is to be named Arthor—Eagle of Thor—for he is a rape-child, inflicted by a barbarian on some anonymous village woman. She
brought the infant here to lose its small life in the forest."
Kyner listens attentively to this lie, hugging the baby protectively to his strong bosom.
"You will rear Arthor a Christian," Merlinus commands, "and you will personally train him in all the manly arts. You will love him as you love your own son, Cei."
"Love him ..." Kyner mumbles.
Merlinus slips back behind the oak and waits.
Kyner snaps alert as soon as the sorcerer passes
from his sight and lets out a loud call that startles the infant to crying. Instantly flustered, the chief rocks the baby in his thick arms and hurries back toward the camp, where
soldiers already rush forth to answer his call.
Merlinus gathers the wet nurse and takes her
deeper into the forest. Arthor dwells in God's hands now.
The sorcerer has done all he can to provide sanctuary for him, and he moves rapidly away from that place. So long as he is nowhere in the vicinity of the child, Morgeu, the Furor, and the demons can in no way identify this infant as the future king.
Eventually, Merlinus returns the wet nurse to
Tintagel. He does not go there himself. He purges the woman's mind of all she has witnessed and substitutes a fanciful memory of a treasure hunt, rewarding her with a pouch of gold coins his heartflow finds under an elm, in the skeleton grasp of a long-dead legionnaire.
Tracks covered, Merlin turns his attention to his next task, his last work for the dead king. He must retrieve the sword Lightning from the grave of Uther Pendragon.
*
Like ever-widening rings on water, eddies of sunset
sweep aloft from a notch in the mountains where the day has died. The Furor strides over the alpine forests, wind and weather in his beard, scanning below among birch and fire-colored ash trees for Lailoken. He wants revenge. With his own hands, he wants to rip apart the fleshly body the demon has possessed and hurl the Dark Dweller back into the House of Fog.
The Furor knows he will not have that satisfaction
this night. Wily Lailoken has learned much since their first meeting in the kingdom of Cos—how long ago? To the
one-eyed shaman that seems only a moment ago. Lailoken had appeared such a pathetic thing then. How came he to possess the strength to deflect Blood Drinker?
"Demon!" he shouts in rage, and thunder lumbers across the horizon. He cannot accept that his Gulf spell has come to this—his magic broken, his conquest denied, and the whole world rolling faster toward Apocalypse. Irony scalds him. The one Dark Dweller that his Gulf spell
inadvertently flung to Earth has become the lethal sword of the Fire Lords. Lailoken must be found and destroyed, his hot blood cries.
The fires of his warrior's love for life, for his people, for the fertile, green-furred world burn more urgently in this defeat. He fights for more than himself and his clan. His furious passion is to defy a thing so profoundly terrible that it is greater than the gods and so to win he must be greater than himself.
Stooping through high mist to peer into dark gorges,
he humbles himself in his desperate search. He bends low enough to see cinnamon fern and edelweiss choking the ravines. His ivory fury even drives him to sniff for scent of his prey, and his lungs fill with the thick humus smell of autumn. Human musk remains absent, and frustration bites his heart.
Since the death of Horsa, the Furor has vainly
stalked these isles for Lailoken. Even the runes reveal nothing of the demon.
That tempers the Furor's wrath with a little fear. If the Dark Dweller can hide from the runes, he poses a
deadly threat, for that means he moves tangential to fate.
He possesses magic, the true will that obeys its own
divination.
The Furor chides himself for having thought that the
madness from the touch of his spear-tip could incapacitate a creature from the abyss. He should have gutted that helpless-looking old man when he had the chance, he
realizes now. The arrogance of his mockery, that is what poisoned his Gulf spell.
Sparrows bound down the wind away from the
thunderstorm fragrance of the god as he rises and climbs into the sky with slow, stamping rage. The red of sunset has drained away, and startling drifts and depths of
luminous clouds blue as moonlight ascend the cobalt
heights.
Hawks spin their rings on the wind, spiraling higher
in the wake of the Furor's climb. Down the westward rim of the world stands the sickle moon following the sun behind the Earth. Sun-fire brightens the horizon at the altitude where the sky reaches the first auroral selvage of the Heights.
Keeper of the Dusk Apples waits there, having
watched the Furor's wild pacing from above. She has drunk the least of the sleeping potion and is the first to wake.
Platinum hair, wind-tangled by her long stay on this wild shore, covers her face, and the Furor turns away, not wanting to see her mocking smile.
"One Eye," she calls, her voice gentle.
Fah! Not mockery but pity! the Furor thinks, and walks away, toward the brighter heights that lead to Home.
"One Eye!" Keeper calls petulantly. "Wait!"
The Furor pauses. "Keeper, I have no heart now for this. Leave me to myself."
"We have a bargain to conclude," she says, and sweeps back her knotted hair with one hand and offers a dusk apple with the other.
"What is this?" the Furor asks, frowning. "Don't mock me, Keeper."
"Lord," she says, and kneels formally, "I offer the reward I promised you for your conquest of the West Isles."
The Furor glowers. "Are you blind, woman? My
enemies defeated me. The leader of my storm-warriors in the West Isles is dead. The Fire Lords have broken the Dark Dwellers I summoned from the House of Fog. I have lost."
"No, lord," Keeper says as the Furor helps her to rise. "Far below in the field you could not see. From the Heights I have seen, and I tell you, One Eye, you have won." She puts her hand to his cheek as he shakes his head. "The armies arrayed against you have already disbanded. Their leader is dead. You know that."
"A Sid prince killed him," he mumbles. "Queer blood, those brethren. They slew their own king."
"As in Mother's time," Keeper says, shaking her head. "They sacrificed him to Elk-Head."
"Yes—Elk-Head," the Furor mutters. "I faced him
down there."
"I know. You harried him bravely."
"Harried—yes, that's all I managed."
"No, lord. Yo
u did far more than that. You proved to me and to all the gods that the West Isles are ours. Our enemy's victory is hollow, and your defeat is only apparent, an illusion time will dispel. They have no one king to lead them against us, either among the mortals or the gods. Elk-Head must contend with the nailed god of the Fire Lords.
They fight each other. I tell you, One Eye, they are divided and we have never been more united."
The Furor feels his heart thudding, no longer with ire but with thrill. "What you say is true," he admits, "because I want to believe it." He takes her ardent face in his hands and presses his brow to hers. She shivers to taste his hot odor with its acrid tinge of the battlefield.
Their rapport is tender, sharing, enfolding, and it
shakes her, weakens her. That the king of the north gods needs her to know his strength both frightens and ennobles her.
"I had thought you would mock me," the Furor confesses, stepping back from her, yet keeping his thick hand on her arm. "I deserve mockery for my arrogance. I promised to take these isles so readily." His lone eye crinkles kindly. "Now I see, you are gentler to me in defeat than I can be to myself."
"Not defeat, lord—not even a setback," she asserts proudly. "A biding time. And I—and all the gods who witnessed your bravery—we will all bide with you." She offers the dusk apple with both hands. "You have won this."
The Furor demurs with a stern frown. "No—not yet. I will not taste of the dusk apple until we walk together among our people in the West Isles."
Accepting these words, Keeper of the Dusk Apples
lowers her face.
The Furor lifts her chin and says, "Come, we will talk with the others, and together we will find the best way to break our enemies and spare the world Apocalypse."
Keeper, touched by some of the prescience that
haunts her lord, well knows that the firey end of the world will come in its time and cannot be diminished. Yet, she smiles softly and takes his heavy arm. They walk slowly and steadily, with the majesty of a certain future. Under the prosperous stars, they mount proudly toward the
fluorescent summit of Home.
*
In Londinium, the Aurelianus brothers lie beside each other in the marmoreal vaults atop the centuries-old columbaria of the Romans. Merlinus enters the funeral grounds at night. The torchlights of the city glimmer like tiers of attending souls on platforms stacked against the moonless sky. Above, starlight blows thinly, very thinly indeed, through the unspeakable darkness.
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