* * *
Tristam played his harp at Yseult's feet. She leaned forward in her seat and smiled. Behind her, dagger upraised, King Mark rose up out of gloom.
The tapestry glowed, the figures almost moved, in the light of a bronze lamp set on the floor. Other tapestries covered the round wall of the small room, each one lit by its own bronze lamp. One showed the Holy Grail, a golden dish borne aloft by winged spirits. One showed Arthur, knee-deep in lake water, taking Caliburn from the Lady's hand.
No rushes matted the floor, but rather a green and blue carpet stitched with intricate designs. In the center stood a heavy, round table; and facing us across this table, young Arthur sat over a chess board.
This was almost the man who once chased a white doe into an enchanted forest. My heart leapt like an unborn child at sight of him.
Then I saw that he was younger, slighter, and that his aura, dim in the lamp light, was a sickening gray laced with black.
Mellias, his back turned to us, leaned over the table.
"Arthur" looked up at us and leered.
In two strides I was at Mellias's side. "Mellias!" He never stirred. He was frozen, leaning on his hands on the table; he might have been carved from wood. His eyes were glazed.
"Arthur" turned back to the game. His fingers, even-lengthed like my own, reaching for a black queen on the chess board, hinted at power; but I felt a much larger power nearby, compared to which "Arthur" was a mere decoy, like a wooden duck floating near a hunter's blind.
Merlin and Aefa moved up beside me. Merlin growled, "We have come from far off to speak with the Lady Morgan."
Grinning up at Merlin, "Arthur" touched the black queen. Now I wished I had learned chess when Merlin had offered to teach me. Then I could have read the message laid out on this board. I knew enough to recognize the white king and abbot, in line with the black queen.
Merlin betrayed impatience. Merlin was old now. He had ridden hard for days, and camped in the rain outside Morgan's door. He was through with games, hints, mental duels.
Like a hound that tracks otter and ignores the hare in his path, he prepared to charge straight through "Arthur" to Morgan, his quarry. Black anger flared in his aura. His brows and beard twisted, he pointed a knob-boned finger at "Arthur."
"Arthur" swept the black queen across the board and knocked the white abbot off.
Merlin drew breath to curse. I touched his elbow.
Large shadows swooped around the wall like bats. Like a smell, a perception pervaded the room. It tightened skin and shortened breath.
Aefa gasped and turned a slow, dizzy circle. I reeled and leaned on the table beside Mellias.
"Arthur's" gray eyes smiled at me, like the King's eyes when he first saw me come through his hall, past his giants and hounds. "Arthur" leaned back and folded his arms—the King's very gesture.
Then he diminished. His gray aura flickered and dimmed as the perceived power drew near.
Aefa drew her knife, and fainted on the carpet.
I was going to be sick.
Quickly I gathered my spirit and sent it up through my head to sit in air just under the ceiling, a drifting mist of consciousness apart from my body. Merlin was up there with me; I heard him think, Just in time, Niviene.
Free now of physical sensations I came fully alive to every breath of underground air. I expanded my consciousness to fill the small room. Another consciousness pulsed in and out of my own, dark, gloating, confident of victory. I felt it laugh without mirth.
The Holy Grail tapestry trembled; shook, tightened, lifted. Light flowed from behind it; and in the light stood a tall, graceful figure, one hand holding back the tapestry, the other wielding a wand.
Morgan le Faye stepped into the room. The tapestry dropped back in place behind her.
She wore a gold torque at her throat, a black tunic and white overgown; neck, ears, loose black hair, wrists, brow, and nostril were studded with gleaming gems. Her aura was a huge silver mist matching Merlin's, that stretched halfway around the room. Its edges burst into happy little flames. Already, Morgan regarded us as her prisoners.
She nodded merrily to Merlin and spoke to him in Latin. I tried vainly to read her mind. It was closed to me, sealed tighter than her door.
In Angle, Merlin answered her:
"Why have you done this, Morgan le Faye?
Why have you stolen your brother's prize?
Arthur's Peace has made you wealthy.
Arthur should be as a pearl in your eyes."
Laughingly, Morgan replied,
"Before he was born, he was my foe.
Well I remember that night of woe.
Why did you carry the child away,
Whom Uther sought, at break of day?"
Merlin said,
"He could not know the child his own, Conceived before Gorlois's death was known."
And Morgan:
"A good thing, that! Why did you meddle?"
Merlin:
"I knew that child had kingly mettle, And would not let the Saxons settle.
He needed but raising, humble and hidden; He would come forth to rule when he was bidden."
Morgan:
"By you, of course! The wise king-maker!"
Merlin:
"Not to be thwarted by a sword-taker."
Morgan laughed.
"What have the Saxons done to me? But Arthur! That you plainly see.
He came from nowhere, humble and hidden,
Drew sword from stone, as he was bidden.
He drove the Saxons from the land,
Then in my country took his stand.
Now I dwell under my magic hill,
Where old bones lie and ghosts roam still,
While Arthur feasts in my banquet hall,
And you feast beside his earthen wall."
Merlin lowered his staff slightly. In an almost plaintive voice, he said,
"Lest the Saxons fall on the innocent,
On rape and pillage and murder bent,
Leave Caliburn in Arthur's hand.
Let him defend your peoples' land."
Morgan:
"The innocent? Now who are they?"
Merlin:
"Those who follow the Goddess's way, Planting and harvesting, doing no harm—"
Morgan:
"There is no innocent under the sky
Save maybe the grass that lives to die
So man and beast can live and feast!
If there were innocence found in man
—As there has not been since the race began—
You yourself would innocent be,
For folly and innocence brothers be.
You came for the sake of your precious lord,
Thinking to save him his famous sword."
Morgan's sneer would have frozen my blood, had I sat in my body.
"Enough of this talk! Merlin, be mouse! Squeak and skitter through my house!"
Saying this, Morgan swept her glowing wand in a circle. Sparks flew at Merlin and glowed momentarily in his white hair and beard and on his homespun cloak. She stepped forward to strike him with the wand, but Merlin and I together raised a shield of power before him.
Never had I felt so threatened. For the first time in my life I saw Merlin as possibly vincible. If Morgan broke the shield and touched him, I thought she might truly send him skittering and squeaking away like a mouse. I had never before come up against such power as hers.
Morgan stopped, baffled by our shield. She could not know that we were using all our combined power to hold it in place. I felt as though I were holding a heavy shield up in both hands; my body, below me, broke out in actual sweat.
For the first time she noticed me.
"Aha!" She murmured, frowning. "And who is this boy, this child you have brought to defend you? He will make a good servant when I have tamed him."
Merlin managed to answer, though his voice trembled. "You know better than that, Morgan."
I felt his p
ower sinking away. He could make no further effort.
Morgan purred, "I suppose this is your consort, Niviene, famous at my brother's court. And this is why you are now my captive; for this mistress of yours has drained your power."
I said courteously, "You are mistaken, Witch Morgan. At your brother's court I am known as Virgin Niviene. You did not know that?"
She did not. Her gray eyes, so like Arthur's, widened briefly. I smiled at her, openmouthed.
She actually drew back a step. We felt the air lighten, and Morgan's power withdraw, as a serpent withdraws the better to strike. She said, "You are Fey."
In the moment of her withdrawal, Merlin and I swooped down into our bodies. Now we were subject to sweat and trembling and nausea, but the effort of holding the shield was easier with this leverage.
I tried to hold Morgan's attention. "I am Fey like you, Morgan."
"No, no. I am Human. My father was Duke Gorlois, Lady Ygraine's husband."
"Are you sure of that?" I grinned widely. "Who can be sure of her father? Merlin magicked Ygraine so that she thought Uther her husband, so we are told. Could not a Fey magician have done the same and slept with her himself? The lady cannot have been very wise."
Now I had her attention! She leaned forward, her wand drooped toward the floor. I was delighted to see anger in her face.
"That is a lie!" she cried. "Merlin's lie!"
From the corner of my eye, I saw the young man at the table stir. "Mother," he murmured, "Mother, calm—"
She snapped her wand at him and he fell silent.
Witch Morgan had given way to passion. Anger ruled her. We felt her power ebbing from all around the room, like an out-flowing tide, as anger consumed its energy. Just as I was catching my first easy breath, I felt the pressure of her force double. I sank to my knees, perplexed, barely holding the shield intact. Whence came the sudden force? Not from the witch. It was almost as if…as if…
Merlin had let go.
I heard a familiar sound from beside me…music?…just before I fainted.
I came to, apparently seconds later. Music filled the room, the notes falling like blessed raindrops on a parched field, leaving no space for thought, feeling or action outside itself. Morgan's wand tip was sinking toward the floor. Her son sat tranced, soft mouth hanging open.
Merlin was singing of a dun under siege, a different tale from that he usually sang to the world outside…
The red and black pennants snapped in the wind,
While Uther stared fixedly at Gorlois's dun.
Little cared he for the booty within.
His men dreamed of gold, enamel and cloth; Uther dreamed only of Gorlois's wife.
Inside paced the lady, who wrung her hands;
She feared for her safety, and that of her girls.
Crouched by the wall behind tapestries,
The girls watched their mother pace and ponder.
Two children sick with bewildered fright.
Hearing the shouting, horn-blowing and hoof-thunder.
Morgan felt strongly her mother's fear.
She watched Ygraine sweep back and forth,
Hands twisting together like mating snakes.
Morgan twisted her sister's hand likewise.
Merlin sang all this as though he had hidden behind the tapestry himself. Witch Morgan leaned against the wall, gray eyes wide with remembrance, brimming with tears.
Small Morgan wanted the uproar gone.
She wanted her mother's arms around her.
She wanted her corn-doll, who lay far away;
In the rushes it lay, near Ygraine's foot.
Ygraine swung away; her back was turned;
Little Morgan darted out to snatch up the doll.
A giant burst open the chamber doors.
Morgan stared up his massive length.
His tunic crawled with red and black dragons,
Each one larger than Morgan's whole.
In one mailed hand gripped he a naked sword,
bloody tip eye-to-eye with the child.
The other hand shot out and grabbed her braid. Ygraine swung about, saw, cried out.
Listening, Morgan cried out. Frost-pale, she dropped her wand. Her son rose from his seat.
Before he could move I ran to Morgan, seized her loose black hair in one hand and drew my knife with the other.
This stopped the son in his tracks. Morgan's gray eyes snapped back to life, snapped fire. Half-hypnotized, she struggled to surface, to regain control. But my hold was firm, and the battle was ended.
Almost as if rubbing salt in the wound, Merlin never missed a beat. He sang, damp harp strings slipping out of tune, of Uther's advance upon Ygraine.
Uther let go of Morgan le Faye.
He sheathed his sword with a screech and a clank.
Backing Ygraine against a table;
He tore her skirt as she started to scream.
Morgan tried to run back to her sister;
But the concealing tapestry was too far.
Her small legs fright-weakened, her knees a-tremble, She sank down on the rushes and sobbed.
So did Lady Morgan sink to her rich carpet, head hung: I sank with her, knife to throat.
Merlin swept the harp strings roundly and slung Enchanter back over his shoulder. His work was done.
Had I a heart I would have been undone as Morgan by this terrible tale. I later wondered why the Goddess allows the race of Humans to sully her earth. Their savagery, I thought, was matched only by that of spider and mantis.
At the moment, my concern was before me; but, between her memories and her defeat, Morgan was lost. She leaned against the wall, eyes glazed, no threat to us now—or to Arthur's Peace. I rose and stood back, sheathing my knife.
Merlin nodded to "Arthur." Silently obedient, the young man left the room by way of the Grail tapestry.
Next, Merlin turned to Aefa and helped her to her feet. She leaned dizzily on the table while Merlin waked Mellias from his trance with three hand-passes. Mellias whipped out his knife, looked around, saw the vanquished Morgan and sheathed it.
Back through the Grail tapestry came young "Arthur," bearing in both small, even-fingered hands a dark-sheathed sword which he laid on the table before Merlin. The mage drew the sword from its sheath. The blade shone like lightning. Ogham writing engraved on the blade flamed its message around the room. Merlin nodded.
"Ah," he breathed. "Caliburn himself." And he bowed to the sword, and said to us, "Children, look well. You may never see Caliburn shine like this again."
But I was looking at the young man, Morgan's son. He was beautiful, young Arthur without the driving energy. (Arthur would have grabbed Merlin by his stringy throat before ever a note was sung.) As I scanned his dark face and averted eyes, a nightingale seemed to trill in a far forest.
I probed his mind. Entering easily, I drifted in mist with an indoor, underground feeling. Uneasily I sought a door. I found one, drifting up against it in the soupy mist, but I could not open it. It was made of…iron, and barred shut. I could neither open it nor float through it; it was more closely sealed than the door to Morgan's Hill. Whatever hid behind that door would hide forever. And there, I thought, hid the real man, the wellsprings of him, his past, his truth, forever beyond my reach—and his.
I turned away. A light flickered, the mist parted, and I saw Caliburn shine in my mother's hand raised above the water. And Arthur—our real, gray-haired Arthur—took Caliburn from the Lady's hand, and turned, and handed him to…Morgan's son. Arthur's nephew. Whose name, I knew now, was Mordred.
And there stood Witch Morgan on an edge of light, a shadow but for her gleaming, reflecting jewels; torque, bracelets, pendants, rings, and the gold-worked hem of her gown.
Morgan had taught her son this vision of Arthur, Caliburn, and himself. This was her mother-gift to him.
I came back gratefully to outer reality to hear Merlin say, "Morgan, your son will come with us as Arthur's hostage."
Mordred's dark lashes fluttered in surprise. He backed slowly away, edging around the table. But Morgan answered flatly, "So be it. Mordred should meet his uncle."
And Mordred stood still as a puppet hung from a stick that passes from hand to hand. I did not want to move again into that dark mind and know its thoughts. I shook his spiritual touch off me like dried mud. But I knew I did not care to ride all the way back to Arthur's dun with this beautiful, rotten young man. Guarding him—and ourselves from him—would require endless wakefulness.
Merlin's Harp Page 12