Merlin, I knew, could not be far ahead of me, and though I was two lifetimes younger than he, I neither caught up with him nor even heard him. I just heard the fading song and afterwards, when the singing had faded into the dark, I listened to the rill of the river running over the stones and the patter of rain falling in the leaves and the scream of a hare caught by a weasel and the shriek of a badger calling for her mate. I passed two crouching settlements where the dying glow of fires showed through the low openings beneath the bracken thatch. From one of those huts a man’s voice called out in challenge, but I called to him that I was travelling in peace and he quieted his barking dog. I left the road to find the narrow track that twisted up Dolforwyn’s flank and I feared the darkness would make me lose my way under the oaks that grew thick on the hill’s side, but the rain clouds thinned to let a wan moonlight drift through the wet heavy leaves and show me the stony path that climbed sunwise up the royal hill. No man lived here. It was a place of oaks, stone and mystery. The path led from the trees into the wide open space of the summit where the lone feasting hall stood and where the circle of standing stones marked where Cuneglas had been acclaimed. This summit was Powys’s most sacred place, yet for most of the year it stood deserted, used only at high feasts and at times of great solemnity. Now, in the wan moonlight, the hall stood dark and the hilltop seemed empty. I paused at the edge of the oaks. A white owl flew above me, its stubby body rushing on short wings close to my helmet’s wolf-tailed crest. The owl was an omen, but I could not tell whether the omen was good or evil and I was suddenly afraid. Curiosity had drawn me here, but now I sensed the danger. Merlin would not offer me my soul’s desire for nothing, and that meant I was here to make a choice, and it was a choice I suspected I would not want to make. Indeed, I feared it so much that I almost turned back into the dark of the trees, but then a pulse on the scar of my left hand held me in place. The scar had been put there by Nimue and whenever the scar throbbed I knew that my fate was gone from my choosing. I was oath-sworn to Nimue. I could not go back.
The rain had stopped and the clouds were tattered. There was a cold wind beating the treetops, but no rain. It was still dark. Dawn could not be far off, but as yet no hint of light rose across the eastern hills. There was only the glimmering wash of moonlight that turned the stones of Dolforwyn’s royal circle into silvered shapes in the dark.
I walked towards the stone circle and the sound of my heart seemed louder than the footfall of my heavy boots. Still no one appeared and for a moment I wondered if this was some elaborate jest on Merlin’s part, but then, in the centre of the stone ring, where the single stone of Powys’s kingship lay, I saw a gleam that was brighter than any reflection of misted moonlight from rain-glossed rock. I moved closer, my heart thumping, then stepped between the circle’s stones and saw that the moonlight was reflecting from a cup. A silver cup. A small silver cup which, when I came close to the royal stone, I saw was filled with a dark, moon-glossed liquid.
‘Drink, Derfel,’ Nimue’s voice said in a whisper that barely carried above the sound of the wind in the oaks. ‘Drink.’
I turned, looking for her, but could see no one. The wind lifted my cloak and flapped some loose thatch on the hall’s roof. ‘Drink, Derfel,’ Nimue’s voice said again, ‘drink.’
I looked up into the sky and prayed to Lleullaw that he would preserve me. My left hand, that was now throbbing in pain, was clasped tight about Hywelbane’s hilt. I wanted to do the safe thing, and that, I knew, was to walk away and go back to the warmth of Arthur’s friendship, but the misery in my soul had brought me to this cold bare hill and the thought of Lancelot’s hand resting on Ceinwyn’s slender wrist made me look down to the cup.
I lifted it, hesitated, then drained it.
The liquid tasted bitter so that I shuddered when it was all gone. The rank taste stayed in my mouth and throat as I carefully laid the cup back on the king’s stone.
‘Nimue?’ I called almost beseechingly, but there was no answer except for the wind in the trees.
‘Nimue!’ I called again, for my head was reeling now. The clouds were churning black and grey, and the moon was splintering into spikes of silvered light that slashed up from the distant river and shattered in the thrashing dark of the twisting trees. ‘Nimue!’ ‘ called as my knees gave way and as my head spun in lurid dreams. I knelt by the royal stone that suddenly loomed as large as a mountain before me, then I then fell forward so heavily that my sprawling arm sent the empty cup flying. I flit sick, but no vomit would come, there were just dreams, terrible dreams, shrieking ghouls of nightmare that screamed inside my head. I was crying, I was sweating and my muscles were twitching in uncontrollable spasms. Then hands seized my head. My helmet was dragged from my hair, then a forehead was pressed against mine. It was a cool white forehead and the nightmares skittered away to be replaced by a vision of a long, naked white body with slender thighs and small breasts. ‘Dream, Derfel,’ Nimue soothed me, her hands stroking my hair, ‘dream, my love, dream.’
I was crying helplessly. I was a warrior, a Lord of. Dumnonia, beloved of Arthur and so in his debt after the last battle that he would grant me land and wealth beyond my dreams, yet now I wept like an orphaned child. My soul’s desire was Ceinwyn, but Ceinwyn was being dazzled by Lancelot and I thought I could never know happiness again.
‘Dream, my love,’ Nimue crooned, and she must have swept a black cloak over both our heads for suddenly the grey night vanished and I was in a silent darkness with her arms about my neck and her face pressed close to mine. We knelt, cheek beside each other’s cheek, with my hands shuddering spasmodically and helplessly on the cool skin of her bare thighs. I let my body’s twitching weight lean on her slender shoulders and there, in her arms, the tears ended, the spasms faded and suddenly I was calm. No vomit edged my throat, the ache in my legs was gone and I felt warm. So warm that the sweat still poured off me. I did not move, I did not want to move, but just let the dream come. At first it was a wondrous dream for it seemed I had been given the wings of a great eagle and I was flying high above a land I did not know. Then I saw it was a terrible land, broken by great chasms and by tall mountains of jagged rock down which small streams cascaded white towards dark peaty lakes. The mountains seemed to have no end, nor any refuge, for as I coasted above them on the wings of my dream, I saw no houses, no huts, no fields, no flocks, no herds, no souls, but only a wolf running between the crags and the bones of a deer lying in a thicket. The sky above me was as grey as a sword, the mountains below were dark as dried blood and the air beneath my wings as cold as a knife in the ribs.
‘Dream, my love,’ Nimue murmured, and in the dream I swept low on my wide wings to see a road twisting between the dark hills. It was a road of beaten earth, broken by rocks, that picked its cruel way from valley to valley, sometimes climbing to bleak passes before it dropped again to the bare stones of another valley floor. The road edged black lakes, cut through shadowed chasms, skirted snow-streaked hills, but always led towards the north. How it was the north I did not know, but this was a dream in which knowledge needs no reason.
The dream wings dropped me down to the road’s surface and suddenly I was flying no longer, but climbing the road towards a pass in the hills. The slopes on either side of the pass were steep black slabs of slate running with water, but something told me the road’s end lay just beyond the black pass and that if I could just keep walking on my tired legs I would cross the crest and find my soul’s desire at the farther side.
I was panting now, my breath coming in agonized gasps as I dreamed my way up the last few paces of the road and there, suddenly, at the summit, I saw light and colour and warmth. For the road dropped beyond the pass to a coastline where there were trees and fields, and beyond the coast was a glittering sea in which an island lay, and in the island, shining in the sudden sun, was a lake. ‘There!’ I spoke aloud for I knew the island was my goal, but just when it seemed I was given a renewed energy to run down the road’s last m
iles and plunge into that sunlit sea, a ghoul sprang into my path. It was a black thing in black armour with a mouth spitting black slime and a black-bladed sword twice as long as Hywelbane in its black-clawed hand. It screamed a challenge at me. And I screamed too, and my body stiffened in Nimue’s embrace.
Her arms gripped my shoulders. ‘You have seen the Dark Road, Derfel,’ she whispered, ‘you have seen the Dark Road.’ And suddenly she pulled away from me and the cloak was whipped from my back and I fell forward onto Dolforwyn’s wet grass as the wind swirled cold about me. I lay there for long minutes. The dream had passed and I wondered what the Dark Road had to do with my soul’s desire. Then I jerked aside and vomited, and after that my head felt clear again and I could see the fallen silver cup beside me. I picked it up, rocked back onto my haunches and saw that Merlin was watching me from the far side of the royal stone. Nimue, his lover and priestess, was beside him, her thin body swathed in a vast black cloak, her black hair held in a ribbon and her golden eye shining in the moonlight. The eye in that socket had been prised out by Gundleus, and for that injury he had paid a thousandfold.
Neither spoke, but just watched as I spat the last vomit from my mouth, cuffed at my lips, shook my head, then tried to stand. My body was still weak, or else my skull was still reeling, for I could not raise myself and so, instead, I knelt beside the stone and leaned on my elbows. Small spasms still made me twitch from time to time. ‘What did you make me drink?’ I asked, putting the silver cup back on the rock.
‘I made you drink nothing,’ Merlin answered. ‘You drank of your own free will, Derfel, just as you came here of your own free will.’ His voice, that had been so mischievous in Cuneglas’s hall, was now cold and distant. ‘What did you see?’
‘The Dark Road,’ I answered obediently.
‘It lies there,’ Merlin said, and pointed north into the night.
‘And the ghoul?’ I asked.
‘Is Diwrnach,’ he said.
I closed my eyes for I knew now what he wanted. ‘And the island,’ I said, opening my eyes again, ‘is Ynys Mon?’
‘Yes,’ Merlin said. ‘The blessed isle.’
Before the Romans came and before the Saxons were even dreamed of, Britain was ruled by the Gods and the Gods spoke to us from Ynys Mon, but the island had been ravaged by the Romans who had cut down its oaks, destroyed its sacred groves and slaughtered its guardian Druids. That Black Year had occurred more than four hundred years before this night, yet Ynys Mon was still sacred to the few Druids who, like Merlin, tried to restore the Gods to Britain. But now the blessed island was a part of the kingdom of Lleyn, and Lleyn was ruled by Diwrnach, the most terrible of all the Irish Kings who had crossed the Irish Sea to take British land. Diwrnach was said to paint his shields with human blood. There was no King in all Britain more cruel or more feared, and it was only the mountains that hemmed him in and the smallness of his army that kept him from spreading his terror south through Gwynedd. Diwrnach was a beast that could not be killed; a creature that lurked at the dark edge of Britain and, by common consent, he was best left unprovoked. ‘You want me,’ I said to Merlin, ‘to go to Ynys Mon?’
‘I want you to come with us to Ynys Mon,’ he said, indicating Nimue, ‘with us and a virgin.’
‘A virgin?’ I asked.
‘Because only a virgin, Derfel, can find the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn. And none of us, I think, qualifies,’ he added the last words sarcastically.
‘And the Cauldron,’ I said slowly, ‘is on Ynys Mon.’ Merlin nodded and I shuddered to think of such an errand. The Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn was one of the thirteen magical Treasures of Britain that had been dispersed when the Romans had laid waste Ynys Mon, and Merlin’s final ambition of his long life was to reassemble the Treasures, but the Cauldron was his real prize. With the Cauldron, he claimed, he could control the Gods and destroy the Christians, and that was why, with a bitter tasting mouth and a belly rank with sourness, I was kneeling on a wet hilltop in Powys. ‘My job,’ I said to Merlin, ‘is to fight the Saxons.’
‘Fool!’ Merlin snapped. ‘The war against the Sais is lost unless we regain the Treasures.’
‘Arthur doesn’t agree.’
‘Then Arthur is a fool as great as you. What do the Saxons matter, fool, if our Gods have deserted us?’
T am sworn to Arthur’s service,’ I protested.
‘You are sworn to my bidding too,’ Nimue said, holding up her left hand to show the scar that matched mine.
‘But I want no man on the Dark Road,’ Merlin said, ‘who does not come willingly. You must choose your loyalty, Derfel, but I can help you choose.’
He swept the cup off the rock and put in its place a heap of the rib bones that he had taken from Cuneglas’s hall. He knelt, picked up one bone and placed it in the centre of the royal stone. ‘That is Arthur,’ he said, ‘and this,’ he took another bone, ‘is Cuneglas, and this,’ he laid a third bone so that it made a triangle with the first two, ‘we shall speak of later. This,’ he laid a fourth bone across one of the triangle’s corners, ‘is Tewdric of Gwent, and this is Arthur’s alliance with Tewdric, and this is his alliance with Cuneglas.’ The second triangle was thus formed on top of the first and the two now resembled a crude, six pointed star. ‘This is Elmet,’ he began the third layer that was parallel with the first, ‘and this is Siluria, and this bone,’ he held up the last, ‘is the alliance of all those kingdoms. There.’ He leaned back and gestured at the precarious tower of bones standing at the stone’s centre. ‘You see, Derfel, Arthur’s careful scheme, though I tell you, I promise you, that without the Treasures the scheme will tail.’
He fell silent. I stared at the nine bones. All of them, except for the mysterious third bone, were still hung with scraps of meat, tendon and gristle. It was just that third bone that had been scraped clean and white. I touched it very gently with my finger, taking care not to disturb the fragile balance of the squat tower. ‘And what is the third bone?’ I asked.
Merlin smiled. ‘The third bone, Derfel,’ he said, ‘is the marriage between Lancelot and Ceinwyn.’ He paused. ‘Take it.’
I did not move. To take the third bone would be to collapse Arthur’s fragile network of alliances that were his best, indeed his only hope of defeating the Saxons.
Merlin sneered at my reluctance, then he took hold of the third bone, but he did not pull it free. ‘The Gods hate order,’ he snarled at me. ‘Order, Derfel, is what destroys the Gods, so they must destroy order.’ He pulled the bone out and the pile immediately collapsed into chaos. ‘Arthur must restore the Gods, Derfel,’ Merlin said, ‘if he is to bring peace to all Britain.’ He held the bone out to me. ‘Take it.’
I did not move.
‘It is just a pile of bones,’ Merlin said, ‘but this bone, Derfel, is your soul’s desire.’ He held the clean bone towards me. ‘This bone is Lancelot’s marriage to Ceinwyn. Snap this bone in two, Derfel, and the marriage will never happen. But leave this bone whole, Derfel, and your enemy will take your woman to his bed and maul her like a dog.’ He thrust the bone towards me again, and again I did not take it. ‘You think your love for Ceinwyn isn’t written all over your face?’ Merlin asked derisively. ‘Take it! Because I, Merlin of Avalon, grant you, Derfel, power of this bone.’
I took it, the Gods help me, but I took it. What else could I do? I was in love and I took that cleansed bone and I placed it in my pouch.
‘It won’t help you,’ Merlin mocked me, ‘unless you break it.’
‘It may not help me anyway,’ I said, at last discovering that I could stand.
‘You are a fool, Derfel,’ Merlin said, ‘But you are a fool who is good with a sword and that is why I need you if we’re to walk the Dark Road.’ He stood. ‘It’s your choice now. You can break the bone and Ceinwyn will come to you, that I promise, but you will then be sworn to the Cauldron’s quest. Or you can marry Gwenhwyvach and waste your life battering Saxon shields while the Christians connive to take Dumnonia. I leave
the choice to you, Derfel. Now close your eyes.’
I closed my eyes and dutifully kept them closed for a long time, but at last, when no more instructions were given, I opened them.
The hilltop was empty. I had heard nothing, but Merlin, Nimue, the eight bones and the silver cup were all gone. Dawn showed in the east, the birds were loud in the trees and I had a clean-picked bone in my pouch.
I walked downhill to the road beside the river, but in my head I saw the other road, the Dark Road that led to Diwrnach’s lair, and I was frightened.
We hunted boar that morning and Arthur deliberately sought my company as we walked out of Caer Sws. ‘You left early last night, Derfel,’ he greeted me.
‘My belly, Lord,’ I said. I did not want to tell him the truth, that I had been with Merlin, for then he would have suspected that I had not yet abandoned the Cauldron’s quest. It was better to lie. ‘I had a sour belly,’ I explained.
He laughed. ‘I never know why we call them feasts,’ he said, ‘for they’re nothing but an excuse to drink.’ He paused to wait for Guinevere, who liked to hunt and who was dressed this morning in boots and leather trews that were strapped tight to her long legs. She hid her pregnancy beneath a leather jerkin over which she wore a green cloak. She had brought a brace of her beloved deerhounds and she handed me their leashes so that Arthur could carry her through the ford that lay beside the old fortress. Lancelot offered the same courtesy to Ceinwyn who cried out in evident delight as Lancelot swept her into his arms. Ceinwyn was also dressed in men’s clothes, but hers were not cut close and subtle like Guinevere’s. Ceinwyn had probably borrowed whatever hunting clothes her brother did not want and the baggy, over-long garments made her look boyish and young beside Guinevere’s sophisticated elegance. Neither woman carried a spear, but Bors, Lancelot’s cousin and his champion, carried a spare weapon in case Ceinwyn wanted to join a kill. Arthur had insisted that the pregnant Guinevere should not carry a spear. ‘You must take care today,’ he said as he restored her to her feet on the Severn’s southern bank.
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