Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge

by J. P. Reedman

  She looked at him, her countenance suddenly grown very white. “Merlin… my bees have gone.”

  He looked quizzically at her, not understanding. “Gone?”

  “Fled away. Flown in a great cloud to the south. I do not know why. And the plants I grow with Nin-Aeifa, she of Great Esteem, they have not sprouted, or if they have, they turn to slime when we harvest them. The Great Lady herself has dreamed and spoken in her dream-state; she told of a far-off mountain that breathes flame straight from a pit where malignant fire-spirits dwell… and with the coming of the flame and smoke there will be a year of no summer, a year when night and day are much the same. A time when Bhel will weaken when he should wax strong.”

  Merlin tried to laugh. The sound fell dead amidst the pillars of Khor Ghor. “Bad years come… it has happened before in my long life. They pass. As for this dream of Nin-Aiefa’s… surely it is but an unsettling dream, or betokens other than it seems.”

  Mhor-gan glanced at the sky; ragged clouds were covering the Moon, wrapping the stars, making them wink out, one by one. “The worst has not come yet, Merlin. But it is coming, I am sure of it. Have you not noticed? On some nights Bhel’s visage is bloody… as it is in Winter. The Sky looks streaked by blood. Even the Moon’s face is sometimes tinged with red. It is the beginning… of what could be the end of time.”

  Merlin hunched over, suddenly looking as old as the Stones themselves, a creature old as the time that Mhor-gan thought might end. “We must fight against this threat if we can.”

  “But can we?” said Mhor-gan. “It is not a battle for blades and arrows… though they may have their part.” She tossed back her head, scenting the air. “I can almost smell ash upon the wind, the scent of crops rotting in the fields. The Land is losing its power, Merlin… can you not feel it in the earth below, the air above?”

  Merlin’s voice emerged a harsh croak; he despised himself for the feebleness of it. “I can feel it, Lady Mhor-gan. And if it is my counsel you seek, I can tell you nothing… only that I am afraid. There… I have said it. The great Merlin, high priest of Khor Ghor, is full of fear.”

  “And where is Ardhu, my brother, in this time of peril…” Mhor-gan said softly. “The King who is the Land itself, bound body and blood to earth and stone, who lies with the White Phantom, daughter of Intoxicator?”

  “You know where he is, lady. He seeks the Maimed King in the East, to put right what has gone wrong in that domain.”

  “Do you think he will succeed?”

  Merlin stared at the ground; he spat the next word out like venom. It hung between them on the cold night air. “No.”

  Mhor-gan moved forward, touching the old man’s shoulder. “Merlin, we must speak more of this matter… in the presence of Nin-Aeifa. Come with me to our House of the Spirits in the land of the Lakes. It is not good for you to be out here in these cold mists so long; you are not well… I can see the frailty in you.”

  Merlin pursed his lips, shaking his head. He tried to avoid Nin-Aeifa, the only woman he had ever loved, long ago beneath the apple-blossoms of the Isle of Afallan where the fey King Afalak harvested the sacred fruit for his brother, Hwynn the White Fire, to succour the dead passing West into immortality. They had come together like the clash of swords, the snarl of summer lightning, but had parted at destiny’s whim, their individual paths mapped out by the powers that moved the earth and sky. He feared her now, old and strange, with her one blind eye that gazed into Otherness… She was at the Beginning of him, and perhaps she too would have a part in his Ending…

  Mhor-gan took Merlin’s arm like a solicitous daughter. He could smell the scent of her—Abona’s water and wildflowers. “Come,” she said, her voice kindly, warm.

  He peered into her face, so like her malevolent sister’s, yet like Ardhu’s too. Dark and light, foul and fair. Shadows coiled in her eyes; he could not read her thoughts there.

  A shiver of fear rippled through him; in the Stones, the black-plumaged birds that nested under the lintels let out a harsh cawing and flapped up into the heavens, disturbed by something unseen, perhaps a passing fox that ran between the uprights.

  What would be, would be.

  Huddling into his cloak, he let himself be led like a sacrificial beast on the long path over the barrow-downs to the House of the Ladies of the Lake.

  *****

  The house within the Lake was lit with tallow cups when Merlin and Mhor-gan arrived. Nin-Aeifa sat cross-legged on a cowskin, eyes closed, deep in meditation, the yellowish light flickering over the sharp planes of her face. Her hair had turned stone-grey over the years, but she had caked it with chalk paste and twisted it into braids that had solidified and fanned out from her head like pale, frozen snakes. A necklace made of faience baubles and hundreds of tiny pink shells from the distant shore swung around her neck, and from her belt, cinched tight at the waist with a clasp of polished antler, dangled perforated lumps of shale, amber and quartz, their surfaces pecked with designs.

  “Merlin… it has been long since we have met,” she murmured, without even opening her eyes. Her voice was deep, rich as wood smoke… unchanged from what he remembered from his youth.

  “Nin-Aeifa…” he breathed her name, could say no more. He felt suddenly dizzy and weak. The herbs she burned in a hearth behind her set up a stink that made his eyes water and his head spin.

  Mhor-gan guided him to a small wooden stool near her mistress and helped him to sit comfortably, then brought out a red, handled beaker filled with rich, thick mead. “The last for a while, I fear,” she said sorrowfully. “Now that my bees have gone.”

  Merlin took a draught of the mead; the potent liquor steadied him. Nin-Aeifa opened her eyes and fluidly rose to her feet; in silence, she glided towards him. He could have almost sworn her bare feet did not touch the clay floor.

  “Merlin,” she said. “You see the world of beyond even as I do.”

  “It has been my gift and my curse. As it is yours.”

  “You have seen then the darkness and the cold that is to come, the withering of the land?”

  “Seen it? Lady Nin-Aeifa, already there are a trickle of people arriving at the gates of Kham-El-Ard, homeless and starving. I have done more than merely ‘seen’ it in a dream. It is here, though as yet the trickle has not become a flood.”

  “Then you will not be angered by what I have to say to you.”

  He spread out his thin, knotted hands on his skin-clad knees. “I will make no promises on that, Nin-Aeifa. Speak.”

  She took a deep breath, clutching her quartzes and ambers and stroking them like talismans. “The King is the Land and the Land is the King… Merlin, my brother, my lover—the reign of Ardhu Pendraec is nearly at an end. The hand that was strong begins to grow weak. The Sun that was bright is eclipsed by a dark Moon. The skies grow dim with ash and winter grows long. The White Queen who was the earth that mated with the son of the Sun turns her face away… her favours granted elsewhere. What will save the Land? I do not know if anything will. But, time out of mind such bleak events lead to one thing… the Great Sacrifice. The Greatest Sacrifice of all.”

  Merlin coughed, mead spewing from his damaged mouth and running into his long grey beard. His eyes were wild. “No! You speak madly, woman, seeress or not! Kham-El-Ard and Khor Ghor are still beacons to men, a hope for peace and for alliances. Ardhu may no longer be young, but he is hale… gods, no! He…” the words slurred between his wet and shaking lips, ‘he is like a son to me, the son I was denied when I chose my calling. At first, yes, he was only a pawn, a boy born of a union I devised; I was great in ambition then. But as time passed by, he became more to me… no, do not speak to me of the Great Rite and of Ardhu! It will never happen by my hand.”

  “If you will not, then you must at least step aside and let the Wheel of Fate turn as it will, making no interference. Fate may well play its own hand before these days are over…” Nin-Aiefa’s voice was a rasping whisper like the wind in fallen autumn leaves. A haunting so
und. Merlin remembered suddenly their first meeting in Afallan, near the Holy Tor of Hwynn son of Nud, where she had held a rapier to his throat. Fair and perilous she had been, and though her beauty had now faded into Winter, she was still perilous… the Lady of the Lake and its dark secrets and woman-magic.

  He struggled to his feet despite his weakened left side, ignoring the cries of Mhor-gan, who tried to comfort him, to pull him back down onto the stool. “I will listen no longer to this madness! And if I hear you plot against the lord of Kham-El-Ard, I will send the Stone-Lord’s warband to burn this hovel to the ground!”

  “You accuse me of speaking madness?” cried Nin-Aeifa. “You refuse to listen, although the signs are there for all with eyes to see! You threaten those whose serve the Immortal King Afalak, and Hwynn son of Nud? You have passed from wisdom, old man… the dictates of your heart have addled your brain!”

  “I wish I had never laid eyes on you,” he snarled, shaking with rage. “You hard, unnatural bitch. And, you, Mhor-gan of the Korrig-han, you wish me to tear the heart from your own brother… but maybe I should not be surprised… all the spawn of Y’gerna are the same except for Ardhu, who was tempered by my hand.”

  He stumbled toward the door, desperate to be away. Suddenly, his head lolled forward, and there was a sensation of something dropping away within his skull. Lights scintillated in the corners of his eyes. He had been drugged.

  “No!” he howled, falling to his knees, thrashing the air around him with his arms. His staff fell with a clatter, the jawbone on the end snapping and rolling away across the floor.

  Mhor-gan hurried to his side. “Merlin, you must heed our words. Do not fight us. We have no wish to harm you, who are a priest of high esteem, one of the greatest of your order.”

  “You have betrayed me, and betrayed Ardhu and Albu the White…” he gasped, striking out at her with a bunched fist that had no more clout than a falling leaf.

  Nin-Aeifa glided over to him and stared down; her visage pinched, twisted with a bitter sorrow. “Mhor-gan, take him to the holy place as planned. All has been made ready for him.”

  Mhor-gan pulled Merlin to his feet, trying to be gentle. He fought her but she was the stronger, and he found himself being propelled out into the dawn. In the East the Eye of Bhel was just rising, a red ball over the edge of the Great Plain. Bloody light flooded the fields and the swells of the river Abona became a stream of gore.

  Merlin was taken up a rise, past many a death-house grown with grass. Skylarks soared overhead and other birds darted and skimmed in the waving grasses; the souls of the dead taking flight on this morning of ill-omen.

  Up ahead by a stand of trees he could see a shallow barrow, a cup-like depression that surrounded a hole that gaped like an ebony mouth in the verdant earth. A small wooden shrine shaped like a miniature trilithon marked the crater and protected whatever lay below from the worst excesses of the weather. The place exuded a certain menace, and Merlin’s heart banged against his ribcage in sudden frenzy.

  He should have known what this place might be, but in his old age he seldom came past the Down of Kings, leaving the land between the barrow-hills and the shores of Abona to the ministrations of the Ladies of the Lake and those from the Deepwood Valley who followed them. He wondered what had been happening here, out of sight and out of mind, and thought again of the feel of Nin-Aeifa’s cold blade against his youthful throat.

  Mhor-gan was pressing him on toward the mounded ring that circled the black pit, and he could see that her face was drawn and uneasy, as if she hated what she was about to do. “Mhor-gan…” he said, using no formalities of title, speaking to her as an equal and Ardhu’s sister. “Think, woman, of what you do! Think of your brother… surely you do not wish to see him die!”

  “All men must die, Merlin,” she responded, her voice a mere whisper, and she dragged him on until they stood together on the edge of the shadowy crater, staring into the heart of the earth.

  Merlin writhed, trying to free himself one more time. Gazing down the shaft, he could see that it descended deep into the bowels of Prydn, reaching toward the Underworld and, perhaps, the realms of the restless dead—those who were the shades of evil men, who sucked marrow from bones and were in constant need of supplication lest they cause havoc amongst the living. The tunnel was at least a hundred feet deep, cut straight into the chalk with picks of antler, and a hemp rope ladder dangled down the side and vanished into its depths. A charnel smell wafted up from the hidden depths, tainting the fresh morning air with the hint of old death.

  “Merlin, you must go down,” said Mhor-gan. “I beg you not to fight me. I have no wish to bring you harm.”

  “Are you to kill me too… make of me a sacrifice?” A sudden hopeful light gleamed in his tired old eyes. “Could you do this—and spare Ardhu?”

  She looked him up and down in sorrow, the scrawny legs and arms, the mouth that now hung at a crooked angle from being elf-shot. “No, your blood would not suffice. Though you are wisest of the wise, you can not stand in for him, his tanist. Maybe once, many years ago, but not now.”

  She gave him a gentle push from behind and, hands shaking, he began to climb down the rope ladder. Turgid darkness embraced him and the chalk walls rising on either side sweated water and other noxious substances. After what seemed an eternity of dangling in the darkness, his feet touched a solid surface. He released the rope ladder and it was hastily snatched up by Mhor-gan, out of reach. He found himself standing on a packed chalk floor beside a stout post the height of a man; he leaned upon it to steady himself then grimaced as he saw the brown, congealed mess that smeared the wood and the white animal bones strewn at its foot. On the ground beside the post were sleeping furs, baskets of food, jugs of water and mead.

  The trap had been waiting for him for some time, it seemed, and he had fallen straight into it.

  “I will come back each day to check that you are hale and to bring you food and drink.” Hearing Mhor-gan’s voice from above, he glanced up and saw her head silhouetted against a tiny circle of brightening sky. “I pray soon this time of evil will pass and a new day dawn, and then you will be freed again to live your last years with the honour you deserve.”

  He spat at her and hurled a curse, which she deflected with a movement of her hand. Then he crouched amidst the congealed flesh and bones and howled in bleak despair.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BETRAYAL OF LOVE

  Mordraed lounged in the corner of the grounds of Kham-El-Ard, his back against the wattle wall and his legs stretched out before him. Battle-training was nearly over for the day and he was surrounded by a dozen other youths, laughing amongst themselves, showing off bruises they had obtained from mock-fights with the likes of the Lord An’kelet and the twin warriors Ba-lin and Bal-ahn. Agravaen was out on the training ground now, Ba-lin facing him as his opponent—he looked big, red and sweaty, like a trussed pig, though Mordraed uncharitably, his eyes narrowing as his half-brother shuffled and puffed around the marked-off ring, thudding clumsily from side to side on his graceless feet. Agravaen would have looked almost comical, a buffoon to jeer at, except for the obvious power in his bull-neck and muscled shoulders, and the determined expression in his eyes.

  He wanted to be a warrior. He wanted to be firmly placed at the Stone Lord’s side.

  His desire was perfect for Mordraed’s plans, for it would cloud Agravaen’s already dim thoughts…

  Smiling, Mordraed turned his attention to his fellows. His keen gaze drifted past those who were the sons of Ardhu’s favourites and sought out those who were… different. A rag-tag of boys who had come from across the Plain in hopes of being one of the chosen men; youths who were clearly unsuitable and would never be picked by Ardhu for his warband—those quick to violence, who loved to kill or torture; those unable to take orders, always angry and restive, their own wants placed before others’; and those who were simple, easily swayed and easily impressed, not knowing their own minds yet… if they ever would. T
hese youths had warmed to Mordraed over the past weeks, clustering around him like moths drawn to flame, impressed by his prowess with weapons, his slick tongue and dark wit, and the kinship he shared with the Stone Lord of Khor Ghor.

  Little did they realise how Mordraed despised them, hating their fawning, their crudeness, their stupidity…

  But they could be useful.

  “How do you find the training?” he asked breezily of one dullard sporting a black eye and with teeth already bashed in during some earlier brawl.

  The youth, Wyzelo, wiped his sweaty, flushed face on his arm and sidled over to Mordraed. “Good enough. But I’m tired of all this playing at being a warrior. Why can’t we join the Stone Lord’s band and fight our enemies for real, bashing in their skulls and winning glory?”

  “Why indeed?” Mordraed shrugged gracefully. “Haven’t you guessed, my friend?”

  The thick-head glanced at Mordraed, big pale eyes stupidly bovine in the red platter of his face. “No…”

  Mordraed flashed him another smile, full of false ruefulness. “Well, the sons of his first faithful are always going to take precedence over other contenders, are they not? They even rank above me, though I am the King’s… nephew. As you know, I have not been inducted into the Stone-Lord’s warband as yet. Who knows?—if it pleases my uncle I may never well be. The same goes for you.”

  “That is not fair!” Wyzelo cried. “I’m as good as any of them, if not better…”

  Mordraed raised his hand. “Peace, friend. It would not do well to have the Lord An’kelet or Ba-lin and Bal-ahn overhear your words. You’d be cast out for certain. And I, for one, know your value, and would not see you sent away.” He sighed, staring at the sky. “One day I may reclaim all the lands that should be mine. I would need a warband like Ardhu’s then. If that should happen, would you be my man, Wyzelo? My main warrior, ready with axe and arrow to defend what is mine by right?”