"Gorlois, you fool!" Merlin shouted. "What you are doing defyeth heaven! No good can come of thith."
"No good for you!" Tears of mirth ran from the dragon sockets of Gorlois face down the long ravines of his cheeks. "Now let us depart this gloomy place and return to the world of the living, where I belong!"
"We'll do no thuch thing." Merlin squirmed in Gorlois' grasp, short legs running futilely in the air. "Let me down."
Gorlois glanced about at the sullen trees silhouetted in sunset's tinctures. "Which way do we go?"
"I'll not tell you." Merlin shook his fist defiantly. "You're in the hollow hillth—the kingdom made of twilight—and here you'll thtay until your thoul giveth back my body."
"Don't you dare disobey me, Lailoken!" Gorlois shook Merlin to a blur. "I'll smash your head like a melon and send your soul to dance in the Happy Woods!"
Dagonet, wearing his beloved monkey's body, leaped onto Gorlois' arm and fiercely bit his wrist. With a shriek of pain, the duke dropped Merlin and swatted at the monkey.
The animal bounded off—following the dwarf and disappearing into the tangled underbrush, leaving Gorlois clutching his wounded wrist and bellowing curses.
Balm in Gilead
King Arthor and his retinue arrived with loud fanfare at the Spiral Castle. Elephants trumpeting, pipers, drummers, horn-blowers making joyous noise, tumblers leaping hoops, jugglers catching spinning swords, the caravan entered the stockaded ward of the fortress to the cheers of the northern clans.
The Spiral Castle itself consisted of the contorted landscape, wide as the horizon. The only way in, apart from scaling the cliff walls, opened through a narrow defile and the wooden palisade that had been thrown wide at Arthor's approach.
Lot led the way on his sturdy battle-horse with his sons at his side. The occupants of the fortress bent their knees as he passed, then stood again to point at the boy-king and his elephants and performers.
To Arthor, these people of the north appeared as denizens of an archaic time, for they dressed in the old-fashioned kirtles and tunics that had been popular two centuries and more ago, when the Romans held these lands. Even their hairstyles—skull-shorn for the men and tiered in ringlets for the women—remembered the old Romans. And yet, these clans were Celtic—devotees of the old gods.
"Pagans!" Kyner called them, and he and Cei immediately began preaching the good news of the Savior, unfurling their chi-rho banners and shouting from their horsebacks, "We bring you balm from Gilead to heal the wounds of your souls!"
Aidan, the chieftain of the Spiral Castle, emerged from his timber mead hall with his wife, young son, and daughters. He paid obeisance to Lord Lot, offering a bronze sword of ancient lineage, a cloak of wolf fur, and two hunting mastiffs. Lot accepted graciously, speaking in Gaelic, and slipping into Latin when he introduced the young king. "Aquila Regalis Thor has come to win your pledge and your promise to hold the Spiral Castle against the Picts."
"You arrive in good time, Aquila Regalis Thor," Aidan spoke in fluent Latin. Tall, ruddy, with a smashed nose and one severed ear, he wore hoops of leather around his torso, joined by similar hoops passing over his shoulders, the lorica of an old Roman soldier. "A warband of Picts led by the ferocious wayfarer Guthlac has dared scale the northern walls of my citadel and hides now somewhere in its maze. He offers good terms of alliance with his huge army to the north—if I will open these gates to him."
"I will offer you better terms, Aidan," Arthor promised at once. "I have viewed your Spiral Castle, and though small bands of brigands may sneak in, no army could hope to overrun it—if you are willing to defend its walls."
Before Aidan could reply, a loud commotion from beyond the imposing elephants interrupted him. Bedevere stepped close to the king, saying, "Your stepfather, sire. He has riled up the people by calling them pagans. They know Latin well enough to understand he has called them 'worshipers of false gods.' There are scuffles."
Aidan glared at Arthor. "Have you come to seek alliance—or to press your nailed god upon us?"
[]
Mother Mary, thank you, your Son, and God our Father for sending me Bedevere. Even when I don't see him, I know he is there, watching the shadows, protecting me from assassins. My Da—your Son's servant, Kyner—he means well, bringing the good news to the north clans. But their hearts are hardened against our Savior, and Kyner and my brother Cei are not the most patient messengers of the Lord's word. They have incited anger among many of these fiercely proud people. If not for Bedevere, I would fear for my life. My talks with Chief Aidan are all-consuming, and I cannot always be looking over my shoulder. Aidan hopes to inflame me with harsh rhetoric even as he plies me with fine foods and wine. I am obedient to your Son's teachings and ever turn the other cheek. These dour people are frankly amazed—and perhaps disappointed—that I take no offense from their insults. Now if only Bedevere could protect me from Morgeu. She is in her element in this wild north country, and I fear what she is about. Where is Merlin, Mother Mary? Where is my wizard?
Under the Moon's Paw
King Arthor spent the entire day in negotiations with Aidan, and into the night he was still trying to assuage the offended vanity of the clan chief. Lot sat with them in the mead hall, enjoying with his sons the Celtic hospitality of their host, savoring platters of meat in fruit sauces, bowls of whortleberry pudding, and baskets of honey apple dumplings, all washed down with ale and cider.
Left to her own devices, Morgeu departed the stockade unobserved through a servant's entrance. No one noticed. The people gawked about, distracted with parading elephants, dancing bears, and outlandish performers accompanied by the passionate music of the king's musicians. More solicitously than before, Kyner and his towering son Cei moved among the amused clansfolk and preached their good news.
Morgeu left the fortress, because she felt a blood-tug in her womb—as if the soul that had been stolen from her unborn called to her. Under the moon's paw, she found her way to a birch grove. Merlin's phantom awaited among the pale boles, beckoning her closer.
"Begone to your Christian hell, demon!" Morgeu cursed when she recognized the ghost and turned to go.
"Daughter, wait!" Gorlois cried. "I am not the demon Lailoken. I am your father—Marius Sidonius Gorlois."
"What evil is this you hope to work on me, Merlin?" Morgeu spat angrily. "You cannot deceive me. I see what you are."
"Morgeu, I am not what I seem." Gorlois reached for her, and she backed away. "The demon carried my soul into the underworld. The elk-headed god cast him out—and our souls topsy-turvy fell into different bodies. Lailoken now occupies a dwarf. And I—I am here, daughter, in his abominable body. I am lost in this nether realm. I have been calling for you. I have been calling! And now you have come."
Morgeu squinted suspiciously at him and through his transparent body to the skeleton-head moon. "I don't believe you."
"Then listen, Morgeu, and I will tell you things only I, your father, could know."
With her hands crossed over her womb, Morgeu listened to the ghost describe the intimate details of her childhood with him—memories many of which she had forgotten herself until he reminded her. Her blood listened. She asked questions, and he answered each correctly and with the emotional valence she expected from her father—an imperious, short-tempered brusqueness. "Father—I hear the truth of you!"
"Daughter, you must help me." He opened his arms, mystified. "I don't know where I am."
"Father—you wander the hollow hills! Only the bloodbond with the childflesh I weave in my womb allows me to see and hear you."
"Help me!" he called, his eyes of crushed ice bent with woe.
Morgeu passed her hands through his emptiness. "I will—somehow. But I don't know yet how. You must show patience."
Before she could say more, the wind coughed in the birches, and the wraith faded away.
The Gentle Wound
Aidan's only unmarried daughter, Eufrasia, a young woman of sixteen summers, served
her father and his guests throughout the night as they discussed the politics of the north, the hopes and fears of the clans, and the dangerous plight of the Britons and Celts who held the south.
Was it the harp and zither music that the young king had brought into the mead hall with him that created for her an exotic atmosphere of far-flung places come to visit? Or was it the youth of the king, a full year younger than she, that so intrigued her with his manly presence?
Maybe the manner in which he parlayed so earnestly with her father intrigued her. He cast not even a curious glance her way, and that made her take closer notice of him.
Throughout the north, Eufrasia had won renown for her beauty, and her suitors came from every notable clan between the lake country and the Antonine Wall. She had received marvelous gifts—a swift, shadow-thin stallion bred from the steeds of a desert kingdom, wolfhounds out of the Isle of the Scoti, a silver goshawk, and jewelry and fine silks imported from the ancient and distant kingdom of the Medes—all these fine things freely given for the liberty to look upon her. And this king paid her no more heed than if she were a scullery maid.
She scrutinized him as she came and went with drinking horns of fermented fruit ciders and ceremonial baskets of breads. For his age, he possessed a frame large across the shoulders and tall, yet his face belied his stature: those rosy, beardless cheeks and milk-pale skin belonged to a child.
The news of him from her father's counselors was that he had won a reputation as a formidable horseman and savage warrior, an 'iron hammer' renowned even among the battle-hardened invaders for his ferocity. Yet, his eyes—yellow as honey—had not the hardened gaze of a battle-lord. And the fact that a day of close talk had stretched into night without her father even once pounding the table and shouting attested to the tender and intelligent nature of the young king.
Confounded by King Arthor's indifference to her, Eufrasia retreated to her bedchamber and studied herself in the mirror. Was there some flaw that she and others had misperceived about the sheen of her exceedingly long and shining blonde tresses, the clarity of her winsome gray eyes, the smooth pallor of her skin, the confident curve of her jaw? She noticed nothing awry with her beauty.
And yet—and yet.
Something of her countenance had changed. Her maids noticed at once and giggled behind their hands. And then she perceived it, too—the gentle wound, the hurt joy, the quiet cry of a young woman in love.
Avalon
Merlin as a dwarf and the monkey that was Dagonet moved through the syrupy light of day's end. They kept low among gray bramble and cinereous shrubs of the crepuscular world, careful not to expose their position to Gorlois.
The monkey chirred inquisitively from Merlin's hunched shoulder. "Quiet, Dagonet. Thound twavels thwiftly in the hollow hillth. You'll thee where we're going when we get there."
Lightning wiped the sky behind him in the direction of the palace shaped like fire. Merlin quickly led them away from that dire place. Soon they climbed through bracken slopes of dense, nacreous fog, the heart of rainfall, and emerged into daylight bejeweled with dew. The monkey shook the moisture from its fur and breathed in the sour redolence of mulchy apples.
They stood beside a quicksilver trickle of water threading among mossy rocks down a hillside prosperous with ferns and club worts. From their vantage, they scanned morning hills, dells, and mountain cups crowded with apple trees. Everywhere, gnarly apple trees stood afoot in the mushy brown loam of their dropped fruit. And on every bluff and promontory hulked needle rocks—menhirs carved with futhorc incantations.
"Avalon," Merlin announced. "We have found our way to the Apple Isle where the Nine Queenth dwell. I am hoping they can help uth in our plight. Come, Dagonet."
Through wild orchids under a vivid blue sky, Merlin and bestial Dagonet traipsed. They descended to a central lake glittering with diamonds of reflected sunlight. "Here I wetheived Excalibur and firtht met the Nine Queenth. You know about them?"
The monkey shook his head, crouched at the bank, and drank a handful of water.
"The Annwn, whom I call the Fire Lordth, thelected one queen from each ten thouthand year epoch of matwiarchal wule and made them immortal. Ninety thouthand yearth of matwiarchal wule gathered here in nine queenth. Why, you athk? To change the human heart. You thee, Dagonet, what each one of uth thinketh—for good or ill—changeth all. The immortal queenth have been teaching the human heart love and caring for hundredth of thenturieth. But the latht queen wath brought here ten thouthand yearth ago. Thince then, kingth have ruled. And thoon, one queen shall be releathed, replathed by a king—King Arthor."
Dagonet looked about impatiently at the hillsides of tangled apple boughs and the blue lake reflecting seaborn cumulus clouds.
"Yeth, you're wight, Dagonet," Merlin conceded. "I've talked enough. Now I will thummon the Nine Queenth." He lifted his arms and tried to send forth the brailles of his heart to draw the queens to him. The brailles—the power cords that he had learned to extend through his heart's gateway to touch the world—once carried the strength of his demonic nature. Now, nothing happened. And he felt nothing happening.
His dwarf body did not possess gateways of power. At last, with a mournful look, he turned to the monkey and said flatly, "My God, Dagonet—I hope you wike appleth. I think we're thtuck here."
The Pale People
Gorlois wandered moaning through the netherworld, peering among dark, narrow trees at the watermelon twilight. The red sky's green rind worried him, for it spoke of storms—and he dreaded to think what a tempest in the hollow hills portended. He steered away from the strange sunset, toward darker horizons.
Not far along, he heard the voices of children, laughing, whispering mischievously. He searched for them and found only fireflies glittering in the lightless crannies of the gloomy forest. "Hail!" he called. "I hear you there. Come forth where I can see you."
Out of the night spaces, the pale people emerged. Not children at all, they assumed the forms of tall, narrow men and women with adder eyes, tufted ears, and flesh tinged blue as milk. Their red hair floated in the vesperal air like bloodsmoke. "Myrddin," they called, using Merlin's Celtic name. "Why are you here in the hollow hills?"
Gorlois' startled gaze narrowed. "Why—to find you. Of course!"
"Where is your staff, Myrddin?" The pale people giggled and began to spread out, encircling him, their vaporous raiment blurring with their movements like fog.
"Broken, alas." He shook his head unhappily. "I took a fall—back there." He looked over his shoulder and edged away. He leaned against an elder tree, protecting his back. "I must have hit my head, you see—for I have forgotten a great deal. I was hoping that you, the Daoine Sid, would help me remember myself."
The laughter of the pale people brightened, and they looked at each other with merriment in their green, viper eyes. "What do you need to remember, Myrddin?"
He stroked his wispy beard reflectively and jutted his lower lip. "Ah, well, perhaps you could show me the way out of here?"
"Oh, Myrddin," they chortled and their very long, very white fingers plucked at his robes of midnight blue. "We can do better than that for you. We can help you remember your magic, and then you can find your own way back to the world under the sun and the moon."
Gorlois pressed against the knobby tree. He feared that these supernatural beings taunted him, full aware of his true identity. Everyone knew that the pale people stole mortals away and enslaved them in the hollow hills or, worse, fed them to the Dragon. "I—I b-beg your help," he stammered. "And I will reward you all handsomely."
"Will you now?" They stroked the fabric of his robes. Their fingers traced the crimson stitching that patterned the cloth with astrologic and alchemic sigils.
"Yes, for certain I will reward you," he promised earnestly. "Just show me the way out of here."
"Will you give us your hat?" They tittered and pressed so close he could smell their mulchy scent of autumnal leaves.
Gorlois doff
ed the wide-brimmed and conical hat. "Here, take the hat."
They snatched the hat and passed it among them, marveling at the signs stitched upon it. "And your fine robes, as well."
Gorlois smashed himself against the tree. "I'll be naked..."
"As you first came into the world, Myrddin—so shall you return to it."
Skyward House
The Pictish wayfarer, Guthlac, stood a head shorter than most men. But his deep-hulled chest, his majestic shoulders thick as a bull's, his torso packed with muscle, and his powerful limbs displayed the strength of any two men. More crucial yet to his role as leader of a warband, his mason-block head atop the broad hump of his neck swarmed with clever battle stratagems, ever busy with warrior thoughts and lethal imaginings.
Bald, save for a skull-crest of bristly orange hair, the entire length of his thick, undulant body displayed blue tattoos. They described in intricate spiral detail the path from the battle plains of Middle Earth to Skyward House among the branches of the Storm Tree, the splendid home reserved exclusively for heroes slain in combat.
"Aidan entertains the Iron Hammer," Guthlac informed his warband of a dozen veteran Picts. Half-naked men, tattooed all, each individual wore their own distinctive war gear of crane feathers, leggings and boots of animal and human skins. Ears and nostrils pierced with bone, bone spliced among temple braids and topknots, faces grotesque with corpse-blue and death-white daubings, they cohered as a glorious battle squad, each man anointed in the blood of enemies they had faced and vanquished singlehandedly.
Guthlac had personally chosen each of them for this mission. War-tempered fighters, they had proven themselves cool-headed and hard-willed enough to infiltrate the Spiral Castle and secure either alliance with Aidan—or the trophy of his head.
Together, they squatted in an arboreal gulch beside a creek that chuckled past boulders masked with moss. "The doors of his ears are open wide to the Roman promises that fed his forefathers. He will not make agreement with us."
The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3) Page 6