Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge)

by J. P. Reedman

  “Sleep now,” Merlin ordered, making a sign of protection over both young men. “Tomorrow you must be bright and alert. It will be a great day for Albu, the day the high one returns to the Temple and the Men of the Cantrevs!”

  *****

  Ardhu awoke with an aching head that beat like a drum. Outside the tent he could hear real drums, and the low, mournful bleating of horns. Scrambling up, his stomach lurched and he thought for a moment he would be sick.

  Instantly the Merlin was beside him, thrusting a beaker full of a foul-smelling liquid into his hands. “Drink swiftly—it will ease the griping of your belly,” he ordered. “Then you must get ready, we must hurry so that we can get a good position at the meeting.”

  Art hastily downed the brew and almost immediately felt less ill. Colour returned to his cheeks. He stood up and let the Merlin fuss around him like an old woman, greasing his dark hair with bear-fat and binding it back from his brow with a copper diadem wreathed in snake-like designs. Then the priest took a tunic of soft leather from a container of sweet-smelling bark, and pulled it over Ardhu’s head, fastening buttons of amber with golden crosses on them that were symbols of the Eternal Sun. It was a regal outfit and Ardhu’s eyes were round with amazement. Surely he would stand out a mile, and look too ostentatious amongst his elders and betters. But he dared not question Merlin’s motives. He kept his silence as the older man reached into his belt-pouch and drew out a tiny clay box, which held two very ancient hair-tresses made of beaten sheet gold. They were battered from wear; ancestral goods handed down from generation to generation, gathering power as they gathered years. Deftly he clipped them on to two small braids he had made in the front of Art’s hair.

  “I…I cannot accept this gift!” Art was stunned, since gold was only for great chiefs and their kin, and men of magic and art. Not for poor boys of unknown parentage. “This gold is an heirloom, belonging by rights only to the children of the last man who owned it.”

  Merlin looked at him solemnly. “And so it does, Ardhu. All I have given you—the tunic, the armbands and the hair tresses are your legacy. They have lain in wait for you many a year. There were your father’s possessions.”

  “My father!”

  “Did you not think you had one?” Merlin’s bushy eyebrows rose quizzically. “Did you think a spirit begat you, as is rumoured about the Merlin?”

  Ardhu flushed. “I never much thought on my blood-parents; Ech-tor and Ka’hai were father and brother to me… And you, Merlin, acted as the kindly grandfather.”

  “Not so kindly perhaps,” said Merlin, lips narrowing. "I had my reasons.”

  “So who am I?” Art turned and stared into Merlin’s eyes as if hoping to read the truth of his lineage there. “Who wore this tunic and ancient gold in his hair? And where is he now? Is he here? Is that why you brought me, so that he could witness my initiation as a Man-of-the-Tribe?”

  Merlin shook his head. “He is dead and in his barrow these ten years. He was a fine youth, but his head was hot, and the lure of the flesh led him astray. I had hopes he would be a great chief once, possibly the highest of all chiefs. But he locked himself away in his own little world with his woman, and turned his face from the greater matters of Albu…and in the end it proved his undoing. He trusted where no trust should have been given…and a feast in which he hoped to make pacts of peace, the men of the Sea pulled their curved knives and stabbed him to death.”

  Ardhu’s face was taut, full of mixed emotions. This news scarcely seemed real; it was like something from a tale told round the fires. “His name…you have not told me his name!”

  “Ardhu, your sire was U’thyr. U’thyr Pendraec, the Terrible Head. You are Ardhu Pendraec, true scion of Uthyr’s line and of the ancient house of Belerion through your mother, Y’gerna. You will be a leader like your father. And who knows what else you will be, Dark Bear.”

  *****

  Half in shock, Art followed Merlin out into the enclosure of Marthodunu. He was the son of U’thyr! Who had not heard the tales of the young chief who had fought many battles and stolen the dark-eyed wife of Gorlas of Belerion? The chief who had been Prydn’s great hope…until he vanished into the West, sequestering himself with his bride Y’gerna until his untimely death by treachery. They said that after his death, the tribe had feasted for ten weeks upon his burial mound, slaughtering cattle every night and tossing their remains into the ditch. Seven captive Sea-Raiders had been dispatched to the Otherworld with him, their cremations lying over his face in rough, squat urns, their spirits bound to serve him for eternity.

  “Art, stop dreaming…we are coming to the meeting place,” said Merlin, and glancing up, Ardhu saw that they were entering the amphitheatre where he had completed the manhood rites the night before.

  The same crowd of chiefs and warriors were there, but the mood had changed. Darkened. Some men were openly arguing, and Ardhu was alarmed to see that many openly carried axes or daggers. No one laughed in this grey morn, the ribaldry and merriment of the night past was forgotten.

  “Here is the Merlin, wise priest of Khor Ghor!” someone called, and Ardhu felt a hundred pairs of eyes swivel in his direction. He raised his chin, trying to look stern and unconcerned, despite feeling distinctly uncomfortable. “Ask his counsel in this matter!”

  The chief with the horsetail of yellow hair who Art had noticed the previous day stepped forward. “I am Per-Adur. I believe I should be battle-lord of Albu…no, all of Prydn! I have never been bested in battle, and show my enemies no mercy. None will set foot on our shores without meeting my blade and my arrows.”

  “No, you are too young and green for such an honour. I have taken more heads that you!” Ardhu saw Bohrs strutting about, a whole row of gleaming daggers thrust into his belt. “Merlin! Tell this fool that he is unsuitable!”

  Merlin frowned. “Same old arguments! Same old noise! I swear these fools would argue over each other’s prowess even as our shores burned!”

  The two rival chiefs were staring at Merlin, their faces grim and angry. “We have been talking and debating all night, magic man,” said Per-Adur. “Do not accuse us of taking this matter too lightly! Where were you when men spoke of the fate of Albu the White and Prydn last night?”

  “In my bed,” said Merlin dryly. “But I am sure many lands were rescued and foes slain in the bottom of your beaker!”

  “You mock me!”

  “I do! I mock all those who think the loudness of their shouts will put a claim on the lordship of Albu! No, there will be another way; I am high-priest of Khor Ghor and I have talked for many Moons…no, Sun-Turnings, even…with my fellow priests from the Great Temple, and from Marthodunu and Suilven and Arb-ar in the Land of the Mother Mountain. We have communed with the spirits, and they have told us a test must be performed… Man must do what is seemingly impossible to do!”

  “What is this test?” shouted Bohrs. “I will do it! I am not afraid.”

  Merlin crooked his hand. “Come, all those who would be master of the Isle of the Mighty. Follow me…if you dare.”

  *****

  Merlin, surrounded by a bevy of priests and seers from the various temples of the Five Cantrevs, left the entrance gap of Marthodunu, a crowd of warriors surging behind him. Ardhu and Ka’hai tagged along in the rear, intrigued, though Ardhu was less interested than he might have been yesterday. His mind was churning, filled with the wonder of his revealed parentage. He wondered if Ka’hai knew.

  Before long, the party reached the grove of birches where Merlin, Ardhu and Ka’hai had spent the night on their journey to Marthodunu. Merlin and the priests went in first, chanting and hailing the spirits, then, when they were satisfied that no malign forces denied entry to the wood, they beckoned the rest of the party into the trees.

  The chieftains poured into the grove, trampling the foliage, slipping on leaves and rotten mushrooms. Ardhu looked through the sea of foliage and moving bodies and saw the Merlin standing beside the huge burial cist with the cupmark
ed lid—the stone he had moved with his magic.

  “Below this capstone rests the bones of a great warrior,” Merlin said solemnly. “One who lived in the elder days, when men were as giants. Tall as a sapling he stood, so big that when he died the very flames of the pyre could not consume him, and his kindred had to pack his ashes into the straight bone of his back! But that was not all that was remarkable about him. He was a great man who knew the secret of bronze and the way of the warrior, and to mark his prowess he bore a knife from distant Ar-morah, land of our kin. Carnwennan it was named, and if his enemies saw it unsheathed, shining like the Sun itself, they trembled and quailed in fright. That blade lies in the tomb, waiting for a new great ruler to take it up. The man who moves this stone and takes up Carnwennan shall be the rightful master of the Five Cantrevs. He will be war-chief of Albu, and lord of the Great Trilithon, Door into Winter.”

  The chieftains murmured darkly, looking one to the other as if Merlin had gone mad. He was, after all rumoured to have run wild once, during his quests for wisdom as a youth.

  Then, slowly, they approached the capstone, long lines of men, grim faced and determined. Their usual bravado had vanished and been replaced by a steely determination. Their task was at hand—shouting and display would do no good. It would not move the impassive ancestral stone.

  Bohrs was the first. He whipped off his shaggy cloak and flexed arm muscles bulging under a lattice of tattooing. “I am known for my strength. I’ll wager that I am strongest amongst you. If any shall move this stone, it is likely to be me!”

  So saying, he leaned down and set his shoulder against the mighty capstone. He pushed. Nothing. Grunted and strained. Nothing. Red-faced he grabbed the stone in both arms, clasping it as he would a lover, and pushed, grappled, struggled. Curses fell from his lips, sweat channelled down his face. Still nothing happened.

  “Out of my way!” Another lordling pushed him aside. “You’ve failed. I will try my hand!”

  And so on it went, with both the mighty and the lesser all trying to move the stone. It would not budge, not even an inch. Men sweated and swore and called on the gods and spirits and the priests to bless them, but nothing seemed to work

  Ardhu, standing with Ka’hai at the back of all the activity, could only marvel at the vain display of strength. It seemed impossible that he had seen this very stone move under the hand of the ageing Merlin. He was beginning to wonder if he had dreamt the whole thing.

  “That is enough for the day!” Merlin’s sharp voice suddenly echoed through the grove. He stood forward, arm upraised to signal a halt. “The Ancestors have favoured no one who has tried to gain the dagger in the stone. You must retire for the night and begin again tomorrow when we are fresh and rested. I will stay here awhile to seek guidance”

  Grumbling, the chiefs and warriors left the grove and set up a temporary encampment around its periphery. Ka’hai and Ardhu had no tent, unlike the highest-born chiefs, whose followers had brought supplies from Marthodunu, but that did not bother them. They merely wrapped themselves in their cloaks and nestled down on the grass near a fire, where they lay staring up at the night sky, unable to sleep, still fired up by the excitement of the day.

  “What do you think will happen?” Ka’hai whispered to Ardhu sometime after midnight, when the fire at last fell to embers. Above the sky was a dark vault filled by pinpricks of light, a thousand watchful eyes, a thousand souls who had passed over the Great Plain to the Deadlands. “Do you suppose anyone will be able move that stone?”

  Ardhu took a deep breath; a strange excitement was knotting his belly. “Ka’hai…Don’t go to sleep just yet. Now that its dark and the fire’s out, I want to show you something. Quick, while no one’s looking…”

  Silently the two youths rose. Around them the camp slumbered, save for a few tottering drunks and a couple of bored guards who leaned on their bows, staring morosely into the night and dreaming of warm skins and sleep.

  Quickly and silently, they turned and entered the grove with its precious, hidden treasure. They glanced about furtively, in case they bumped into Merlin, who had still not returned to camp after the unsuccessful testing.“I don’t like it here!” whispered Ka’hai, his face white. “The old one in his tomb might not be happy with all that’s been going on. Merlin might not be happy either, to have us poking about…”

  Ardhu put a finger to his lips. “Hush, Ka’hai. Be brave. Can you see Merlin? Wherever he is, it isn’t here.”

  Side by side they approached the cist where Carnwennan lay amid the ashes of its long-dead master. Moonlight, slanting through the tree branches, danced on its capstone, the immovable stone that had been the cause of so much pain and frustration during the day. Fireflies wheeled in the air, filling the glade with an eerie, iridescent light.

  “What are you planning to do?” asked Ka’hai uneasily. “We’ve looked at this thing all day!”

  “Ka’hai, the night we bedded down here, Merlin brought me to this burial-stone. He showed me something I thought I would never see.”

  “What was that?”

  “How a man, an ordinary mortal man, might move a stone many times his weight.”

  “But Merlin…is half of the spirit world, you know that! The rest of us are of common flesh. You have seen how the mightiest warriors failed to shift the block.”

  “But Ka’hai, he told me, from his own lips, that it could be done. Told me, and showed me! He told me I could do it myself, if I had faith!”

  Ka’hai laughed. “You must be dreaming, little brother!”

  “Then if I am dreaming…let me wake!”

  Ardhu sprang forward, placing his hands upon the capstone. It was cold to touch, ice-cold, the lichens and moss slimy with night-dew. “Spirits, be with me this hour!” he whispered, and then he pushed with all his might, using the sideways movement he had seen Merlin use.

  At first nothing happened. Ka’hai shook his head. “Come away before we’re in trouble!”

  Ardhu ignored him and pushed again, shoving the cist-lid in a Sunwise direction as if he sought to spin it in a circle. And suddenly there was a noise, as before, a deep, ominous groan as if the stone itself cried out, then the sound of pebbles being crushed and stone grinding fitfully on stone.

  “By the Everlasting Sky, it’s moving!” Ka’hai yelped, his eyes bulging in terror and amazement.

  Ardhu kept pushing. The stone was turning swiftly now, shifting to one side, arching out and away from the granite cist below. Air full of the scent of cold earth and ancient decay blasted up into his face.

  “I…I’ve done it!” He dropped to his knees beside the stone, gasping, breathless with exertion and excitement.

  Ka’hai ran over, throwing himself down beside the younger boy. He peered into the cist. “Look, there, I can see it, I can see it!”

  He pointed downwards with a tremulous hand. Ardhu, still gasping for air, peered into the cist. Deep below, he could see carvings on the stone, a pattern of human feet that symbolised the walk of the dead from life. A broken urn, lying on its side, spilled out ash and bone…and a short, broad dagger of archaic design. Its bronze blade was green from the long passage of years, but the hilt, wrought of antler and affixed with rare, white-gold rivets, still gleamed like the rising Moon, as fair and unmarred as the day it was made.

  “I can’t believe it!” Ka’hai sprawled over the edge of the burial-chest, reaching down. Carefully he brought up the dagger Carnwennan, frail but beautiful in the Moon’s misted glow. “Art, you’ve done it…This must mean…you…”

  At that moment a torch flared in the glade. Then another. And another. The Merlin strode out of the shadows, his eyes like obsidian flakes, and his mouth drawn into a severe line. Behind him were other holy men from Marthodunu and elsewhere, and, hard on their heels, packs of craning chieftains and warriors.

  “What is going on here?” demanded Merlin, striking the tip of his staff into the earth with a noise like muffled thunder. “Why have you come to this holy
place, unbidden, when all others are abed? This is not a place for childish games!”

  The two youths sat motionless, dazzled by the torchlight and by Merlin’s anger, too ashamed and fearful to speak.

  It was one of the warriors who spoke instead: “Lord Merlin, what is in the big lad’s hand?”

  Merlin rounded on the youth. “Show me, Ka’hai!”

  Ka’hai lifted up Carnwennan, proffering it to the priest. “Merlin, please don’t be angry. Ardhu was just showing me….”

  An expression of genuine shock rushed over Merlin’s face. His visage became skull-white, drawn. “The dagger! The sign of lordship! Ka’hai…was it you who moved the stone to get it?”

  Ka’hai licked his lips. A look of longing filled his eyes. “Yes…Yes…it was me… I moved the stone and claimed Carnwennan! Does that make me lord?”

  He turned and suddenly met Ardhu’s shocked, reproachful gaze. Instantly, he hung his head in shame, tears burning his eyes. “No, I lie. Forgive me. I did not touch the stone. Ardhu was the one who moved it…Ardhu is the one who rightfully has won the sword.”

  So saying, he turned to Ardhu and bowed low, handing the fragile blade to its rightful owner.

  “The sword has been taken from the stone!” cried Merlin, striding over to Ardhu and holding out his torch so that the flickering light fell over the youth’s face, revealing him fully to the throng. “The spirits have spoken. Prydn has a new leader, come to raise our isle to the greatness of old and to repel our sworn enemies!”

  There was an angry murmur from the tribesmen; a hum like a hive of infuriated bees. “But he is only a boy!” someone shouted. “A beardless lad!”

  “Yesterday you saw this boy made a man,” said Merlin sternly. “Now you see the man become your King. Praise him! Ardhu, lord of the West, the chosen one.” Turning, he knelt in the leaf-mulch by Ardhu’s feet, his head bowed. “I, the Merlin of Khor Ghor, do swear to serve you until the breath is gone from my body or the sky falls, whichever comes first.”