Ka’hai opened his mouth as if to protest, but Merlin’s eyes glowed like brands, feral and bright, and the warrior dashed off into the gloom, returning shortly with a fine, grey-maned horse. “This is Per-Adur’s steed. He is injured and will not ride again for a long time, maybe never again. Take it, with his blessings, and may the spirits smile on you and on my chief—and foster-brother—Ardhu Pendraec.”
Merlin clumsily pulled himself up onto the horse’s back; he was never much of a rider, less so with his weak elf-shotten side. But he would do what he had to. “Watch these dogs well,” he said, pointing with a sideways motion of his chin toward Wyzelo and his loutish fellows as they lounged about inside the Hall. “I think they have been fed scraps that tempt them, and would soon gladly bite the hand that feeds.”
Clapping heels to the grey mare’s flanks, he shot out of the wooden gates of Kham-El-Ard and into the night, heading toward the circles, avenues and ditches of Suilven, and the great Hill of the Eye in its pool of moon-silvered water.
*****
The second night at Suilven rolled round. Ardhu himself had gone for purification and blessing at the springhead near the Hill of Zhel, and none were allowed to witness this ritual cleansing of a King save Priestess Mako’sa and her acolytes. Even the lesser holy men and women were forced to wear blindfolds and masks to hide their eyes from what it was forbidden to see.
Sitting alone on the towering bank of the henge, watching the sharp sickle of the moon rise in the east, Mordraed felt uneasy and restive, eager to be off. Too many women here, intelligent fierce women whose sharp gazes could scry a man’s soul. Too much like his mother, only worse, for they did not hold him dear. He feared to look them in the eye, lest the truth of his heart be read and they should fall upon him, rending him limb from limb in fury and feeding his blood to the earth.
His blood instead of Ardhu’s; he—Mordraed—the tanist sent to try and appease the Spirits so that the old king could live to fight another day…
He shook his head angrily. Such an end would be unnatural and wrong… the young should not die before the old; the weak should not hope that the young offer themselves up to the gods in their place.
Suddenly he heard a noise, the faint thud of hooves on chalk. Turning, he peered into the gloom, his keen eyes catching sight of a figure at the end of the avenue of stones that ran from the portals of Suilven to the Sanctuary on its plateau overlooking the shallow vale.
A man on a horse, riding at great speed toward the sacred Circles. Riding as if he fled from, or to, the world’s ending.
A sense of alarm filled him, though he did not know why, and slinging his bow across his shoulders, he leapt from the bank and jogged down the Avenue, keeping close to the flanks of the giant pillars that marched away into the gloom, an army of stalwart stone.
The thundering hooves drew closer, and he could hear the heavy laboured breathing of a horse pushed almost beyond its endurance. Hastily he slunk into the lee of an enormous diamond-shaped menhir, leaning against its craggy face, willing himself to appear invisible, to become part of the stone itself. He could feel its cold surface burning into his back through his thin summer tunic, and see the rough lichens that made patterns like gurning faces on its broad spine.
Out of the gloom the rider came flying… grey-white steed, grey-white man with long hair and beard a ghost-like misty trail on the wind. He caught a brief glimpse of an intense hawk-like face, withered as an old apple, but with eyes burning like fire, like fallen suns.
A face he knew and had hoped never to see again.
The face of Ardhu’s counsellor, the shaman Merlin.
Merlin, who had used his unclean magics so that U’thyr could bed Y’gerna of Belerion and beget Ardhu, throwing Mordraed’s mother aside as if she were an unclean rag, taking her inheritance and birthright from her. His mother, who was a powerful magic-woman in her own right, who could have been as great as the Merlin himself if given a chance. Or so she had always told him…
Like most of the others in Kham-El-Ard and Deroweth, Mordraed had thought Merlin was dead when he vanished without a word… or that he had become crazed and run amok in the woods as his kind were wont to do, struck moon-mad by their constant communication with the spirit-world and by the potions they consumed all their adult lives.
“You may wish you were dead, old man,” he muttered between clenched teeth, sliding out from behind the great stone, a darker shadow blending with other shadows. “And then you may well find yourself in the spirit-world in truth!”
Bow in hand, he began to track the trail of the Merlin across the circles of Suilven. His face became very still and white, intense, between the midnight wings of his hair. All his senses felt heightened; he knew he was on the edge of something great, something terrible, something that would change the course of his life forever.
Tonight Mordraed was what his mother had taught him to be.
Tonight he was the Hunter and the Merlin was his prey.
*****
Merlin rode his lathered horse over the fields and into the sacred hollow near the springhead of Suilven. Ardhu’s ceremony was over and the King was gone, returned with his retinue to the Palisades, but Mako’sa remained at the spring, reading things from past and future in the deep, clean water that flowed from the body of the Earth in that hallowed space. The masks of her followers, removed once Ardhu’s cleansing was over, had been thrown into the bubbling waters where they hovered and eddied a few inches below the surface, like the images of strange otherworldly creatures, unravelling and unbinding as the gentle current buffeted them to and fro. Torches set along the banks sent fiery ripples across the swell and made strange shadows dance.
Mako’sa watched, visage solemn, painted with white chalk so that her long thin face almost appeared a skull. A time of unravelling and unbinding… a time for new beginnings. Kneeling on the flat sarsen stones that spanned the spring, she drank of the holy water, hoping to receive blessing and wisdom.
And saw, to her surprise, a reflection appear in the water behind her left shoulder, grey and ghostly, as if an Ancestor had wandered from the old chambered barrow on the hill and come to gaze upon her rites. She sat up immediately and turned, the decorative bronze wires and faience beads on her elaborate hairpiece clattering and clacking with the speed of her motion. Her hand went to the little flint dagger, sharp as a razor, that hung at her belt, its blade painted with protective symbols. It was the life-seeker for taking sacrifice, but it could also command the dead should they rise from their sleep as fractious ghosts.
But it was no ghost that stood before her, silvered in the starshine, hair and beard wildly tangled and his robes drenched with sweat. She knew that face, lean as her own, a bird’s face within a man’s. It was the Merlin, chief priest of Khor Ghor.
Merlin, who Ardhu had told her was reckoned amongst the dead. But who was clearly not, his breath steaming hot with life before his cracked lips.
“High one,” she said “why do you come to me like this, weary and wind blown? Where have you been for so long, O wise one, making the song-singers and the priests and priestesses mourn you as one who has gone over the Plain in the Snare of Nud the Catcher?”
“A prisoner have I been,” he answered, “held by ones who I never thought would mean me ill.” He was at the top of the little dell that encircled the spring, still mounted on his froth-mouthed steed. Carefully he slid from its back, letting the reins dangle, and walked stiffly towards Mako’sa. “But no more. I seek Ardhu Pendraec, to advise him as I have always done. To keep him safe.”
Her brows rose slightly. “He is not some youth to keep safe anymore, Merlin. He will be what he will be. He has proposed a quest of great holiness and he has had blessing from the Eye of Suilven, and bathed in the blood of the Great One who birthed the Sun Himself, whose body is represented in the Holy Hill. He will fare forth to Ibherna with his band of chosen men to find the Cup of Plenty, which lies in the valley of the River of the Great White Cow—
locked within Spiralfort, fortress of the Flaming Door, where the lamps of Uffern burn both night and day.”
Merlin seemed to sag, his shoulders slumping. “I can see no good in this quest. Only death. A symbol of Hope he seeks and maybe he will find it… but I feel it will be bought at a terrible price.”
“What would you have me say, Merlin?” said Mako’sa quietly. “Should I have denied my blessing? He would have gone anyway, without even asking the spirits to strengthen his hand.”
Merlin knelt by the water, staring at his own ragged reflection. The ends of his beard and his snarled hair fanned out on the swell. “Does the Land need blood so much?” he said hoarsely.
“The Land fails… the Moon is red, Bhel himself bleeds and turns his Eye from us. Ash of the pyre has fallen in the North.”
“Could I not stand for him? It was done so in older times, Mako’sa.”
She pulled her cloak around her, as if suddenly chilled by the wind. “No. I think you know that you have grown too old to take his place.”
“So others have said… but I am still the Merlin!”
“And may you be long among us, with your wisdom. But making of yourself a sacrifice will not avert Ardhu’s doom. I certainly will not be the one to lay hand upon you, nor would any of the wise.”
Merlin’s shoulders slumped. “I would speak to him at least.”
She touched his arm lightly, an expression of pity on her face. “There will be no harm in that. You were as a father to him as well as mentor.”
Suddenly the Merlin raised his head. His eyes narrowed, became secretive, and his nostrils flared as if he was scenting the breeze like a beast. A strange expression crossed his thin features and he licked his lips in nervous agitation. He was gazing intently over Mako’sa’s shoulder and the priestess felt a shudder of fear ripple up her spine.
She wondered if her initial thought had been correct… that an old spirit was indeed wandering about out of its bone-chamber, creeping closer to the place of power where the water flowed from the womb of the earth, feeding the Khen and the great pool at the foot of Zhel’s hill. “What do you see, O Merlin?” she asked.
He shook his head. “N… nothing… just an old man’s fancy.” He knelt on the sarsen stepping-stone bridge again. “Lady, would it be possible for me to stay here awhile on my own? To pray to all the Mighty Ones that these troubles will pass?”
Mako’sa hesitated then nodded. “To any other I would give only refusal. But you are the Merlin, and the events of these grim times are bound to you, heart and soul and body. Stay here awhile, as you wish. I will not stop you. I will go to the Palisades where the feasting has begun.”
She bowed to him and then, drawing her cape around her, walked away beyond the ring of flickering torchlight and out across the fields of blowing grass. She did not gaze back… perhaps was afraid to, fearful of what she might witness.
Merlin wiped a hand across his sweat-stained face and clumsily rose to his feet, stepping off the bridge and raking the nearby shrubbery and trees with a burning gaze. His stance was not one of a man about to pray to his gods but one who expected to face an enemy “Come out, son of pestilence,” he snapped. “I know you are out there. Let us not play these games but put an end to this foolery for once and for all.”
The bushes rustled, and it was not the wind.
Out of a haze of green boughs stepped Mordraed, the Moon shining behind his dark head, the light of the guttering torches around the spring giving a bloody hue to his features. He looked so like Ardhu at the same age that a terrible pang of sadness ripped through the Merlin—sorrow for what was gone, for what was fading from Prydn, for all the bright summers of the past years that were now blurred into a rosy memory. He even sorrowed for Mordraed, beautiful but twisted, child of a broken taboo, pawn of a malevolent mother who had groomed him to the darkness for so long he could never see the light.
“What do you stare at, old man?” Mordraed’s voice was cool, silken, deadly.
“A traitor. A would be kin-slayer.” Merlin spoke softly.
“You presume.”
“I know.”
“And why are you here, after going missing for many months? Your own loyalty is in question, vanishing when Ardhu Pendraec needed your counsel most!”
“I do not tell serpents such as you my business. Step aside, Mordraed. I will go now to Ardhu’s side and speak to him.” He took a long, determined stride in Mordraed’s direction.
The young man blocked him, sneering down into his face. “What lies will you whisper to him, old man? He doesn’t need to hear the prattling of one nearly in his dotage!”
“I’ll tell him the truth and he will believe me. The truth that you seek his chieftaincy, to cast him down. You have already cut him like a dagger when you disgraced his queen…”
“The whore disgraced herself…” retorted Mordraed.
“And caused him to drive away his strongest warrior…”
“A traitor of the greatest kind… I would have killed An’kelet for his actions had it been up to me!” Mordraed tossed back his hair, his eyes on fire. “Besides, you can say what you will… he has heard all these things about me and more and still has allowed me into his band. You tell him nothing new.”
“But there is more, and this will interest him—your trips to the hut of your mother, Morigau, who was forbidden to meet with you. What does she tell you, what has she given you for your journey to the West? Come, Mordraed, we both know she is a master poisoner! And the red-haired girl that you rut with down by the river; who is she? Not a local woman, that is for sure. My watchers have said you call her wife and that her belly is full. And even if your sly secret doings do not move Ardhu to anger, I will lie to him of more dark deeds… not because untruths fall easy from my tongue, but because I know what you are and what you will do. He will believe any tale I tell him of you, for he trusts me… and not you.”
Mordraed blanched. He had not thought the old man might have been having him watched. Nor that a holy priest of Khor Ghor would admit to telling blatant falsehoods to get what he wanted.
Merlin reached out, shoving Mordraed backwards with a sharp motion of his hand. A strange expression was in his eyes; desperate and feverish. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. “So out of my way, Mordraed son of Morigau.”
“You will tell my father nothing!” Mordraed flung down his bow onto the grass and caught the old man by the shoulders, whipping him around.
“You will have to kill me then.” Merlin’s eyes, struck by the moonlight, were two eerie silvered pools.
“I should have done so long before now!” cried Mordraed, and he lunged at Merlin catching him around the throat and hurling him down on the sarsen stone bridge that spanned the bubbling waters of the sacred spring.
Merlin’s head hit the ground with a crack and he lay there gasping. Mordraed was kneeling over him, hands clawing at his neck, seeking a stranglehold. Merlin choked and spluttered, writhing, but he managed to tear the clutching fingers away from his windpipe and throw the youth back, half into the water. “Come on…” the old man sneered, between gasps for breath, livid marks already glowing on his throat. “I am but a dry stalk, and you young and fresh… is that the best you can do? I had imagined your dam raised you as a killer…”
Mordraed flung himself forward, grabbing a handful of Merlin’s robes, pulling him off the bridge into the water. They stood together in the swell, facing each other, the old man all grey and white, a spectre seeming half of the spirit-world, and the youth all darkness and fire, with eyes like the night sky, sucking in the torchlight.
Mordraed lunged, throwing his adversary backwards in a violent motion. Merlin stumbled and his head struck the bridge with a crack. Blood suddenly poured into the swirling waters, curls of it flooding outwards to stain both opponents with red. Merlin raised a hand to the stream, his palm coming back crimson. Lights fragmented in his brain. “And so the first blow is struck…” his voice was tremulous and yet full of rap
ture at the same time.
Mordraed stared at him; he could almost fancy the old fool was laughing through his pain, while staring at the blood coming from his head as if it was a marvellous, wonderful thing. The most wonderful thing he had ever seen.
Mordraed snarled in perplexed frustration and laid hold of his adversary again, hurling him bodily into the shallows. He collapsed, face down, in mud and water and blood, his arms flung out, his fingers digging into the streambed. Panting, eager to end this madness for once and for all, Mordraed flung himself on the aged shaman and thrust his head under the water. Merlin jerked and writhed and blood-tinged bubbles rose to the surface, bursting horribly like boils on the swell.
Merlin went limp and Mordraed backed away, panting, but then he heard a tormented groan… he was still not dead, and there was a disturbing hint of mocking laughter even amidst his agony. He lifted his head and craned around, his bloody, muddied face staring up like some horror from the Unworld realms. “I thank you, Mordraed,” he croaked. “You have killed me by the sacred way, as no other dared to do—the threefold death of strangling, wounding, and drowning. My sacrifice may not save Ardhu, but maybe if the Ancestors are pleased it will give him more time, more strength. Strength to defeat the likes of you. And as a dying man, and high priest of the Door into Winter, I will speak one last prophecy meant just for you—you will never be king in Ardhu’s stead. By the Everlasting Sky, if I have to fight Hwynn and Nud themselves, I will return from the Otherworld to stop you!”
“Be silent!” Mordraed grabbed a heavy chunk of sarsen from the streambed and slammed it into his victim’s head.
Merlin ceased to move. Shaking, Mordraed pulled him into the centre of the spring and weighted his body down with stones. He yanked off Merlin’s talismanic pendant, the bronze-wrapped skull of his totem hawk, and tossed it far out into the water, in case the shaman’s spirit-beast might rise and attack him. Swiftly Merlin sank, bubbles rising and breaking around his body. The blood trails slowed to trickles and dispersed on the swell.
Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge Page 24