"Nay, master. When I sleep, I sleep sound," said the smith.
"And the god-stone? How far?"
The smith ran his expert's eye over Mordred's horse. "Yon's a good beast you've got there, master, but you've come a long ways, maybe? I thought so. Well, then, not pressing him, say by sunset? And from there, a short half hour to the sea. It is a good road. You'll be safe at Caer Mord, and no mishaps, well before dark."
"That I doubt," said Mordred, setting spurs to his horse, and leaving the smith staring.
3
To Mordred the Orkney man the god-stone, standing alone on the rolling moor, was a familiar sight. And yet not quite familiar. It was a tall standing stone, set in the lonely center of the moor. He had passed its mate many a time, single, or standing with others in a wide ring, on the Orkney moors; but there the stones were thinly slabbed and very high, toothed or jagged as they had been broken from the living cliff. This stone was massive, of some thick grey whinstone carefully shaped into a thick, tapering pillar. There was a flat altar-like slab at its base, with a dark mark on it that might be dried blood.
He reached it at dusk, as the sun, low and red, threw its long shadow across the black heather. He trotted the tired horse up to it. At its base the track forked, and he turned the beast's head to the south-east. From the pale wild look of the sky ahead, and something more than familiar in the air that met him, he knew that the sea could not be far away. Ahead, on the edge of the heather moor, was a thick belt of woodland.
Soon he was among the trees, and the horse's hoofs fell silently on the thick felt of pinedrift and dead leaves. Mordred allowed it to drop to a walk. He himself was weary, and the horse, which had gone bravely through the day, was close to exhaustion. But they had travelled fast, and there was a chance that he might still be in time.
Behind him the clouds, piling up, stifled the colors of sunset. With the approach of evening, a wind got up. The trees rustled and sighed. Sooner than he expected, the forest began to thin, and lighter sky showed beyond the trunks. There was a gap there; the gap, perhaps, where the road ran?
He was answered almost immediately. There must have been other sounds, of hoofs and clashing metal, but the wind had carried them away from him, and the sighing of the trees had drowned them. But now, from almost straight ahead, there came a cry. Not of warning, or of fear, or anger, but a cry of joy, followed by a shout of triumph, and then a yell of laughter, so wild as to sound half mad. The horse's ears pricked, then went flat back to its skull, and its eyes rolled whitely. Mordred struck the spurs in, and the tired beast lurched into a heavy canter.
In the forest's darkness he missed the narrow track. The horse was soon blundering through a thicket of undergrowth, bramble and hazel twined with honeysuckle, and fly-ridden ferns belly high. The canter slowed, became a trot, a walk, a thrusting progress, then stopped as Mordred sharply drew rein.
From here, hidden from sight in the deep shadow of the trees, he could see the level heath that stretched between the woodland and the sea, and, dividing it, the white line of the roadway. On this lay Lamorak, dead. Not far off his horse stood with heaving sides and drooping head. Beside the body, their arms flung round one another, laughing and pounding each other's shoulders, were Agravain and Gaheris. Their horses grazed nearby unheeded.
At that moment, in a lull of the wind, came the sound of horses. The brothers stiffened, loosened one another, ran for their own beasts and mounted hastily. For a moment Mordred thought they might ride for cover into the wood where he stood watching, but already it was too late.
Four horsemen appeared, approaching at a gallop from the north. The leader was a big man, armed, on a splendid horse. Straining his eyes in the twilight, Mordred recognized the leader's device: It was Drustan himself, come riding with a couple of troopers to meet the expected guest.
And beside him, of all men in the world, rode Gareth, youngest of Lot's sons.
Drustan had seen the body. With a ringing shout, he whipped his sword out and rode down upon the killers.
The two brothers whirled to face him, dressing themselves to fight, but Drustan, appearing suddenly to recognize the two assassins, dragged his horse to a halt and put up his sword. Mordred stayed still in shadow, waiting. The matter was out of his hands. He had failed, and if he rode forward now, nothing he, could say would persuade the newcomers that he had had no part in Lamorak's murder, nor any knowledge of it. Arthur would know the truth, but Arthur and his justice were a long way away.
It seemed, though, that Arthur's justice ran even here.
Drustan, spurring forward with his troopers at his back, was questioning the brothers. Gareth had jumped from his horse and was kneeling in the dust beside Lamorak's body. Then he ran back to the group of horse men, and grabbed Gaheris's rein, gesticulating wildly, trying to talk to him.
The brothers were shouting. Words and phrases could be heard above the intermittent rushing of the wind in the branches. Gaheris had shaken Gareth off, and he and Agravain were apparently challenging Drustan to fight. And Drustan was refusing. His voice rang out in snatches, clear and hard and high.
"I shall not fight you. You know the King's orders. Now I shall take this body to the castle yonder and give it burial...Be assured that the next royal courier will take this news to Camelot...As for you..."
"Coward! Afraid to fight us!" The yells of rage came back on the wind. "We are not afraid of the High King! He is our kinsman!"
"And shame it is that you come of such blood!" said Drustan, roundly. "Young though you are, you are already murderers, and destroyers of good men. This man that you have killed was a better knight than you could ever be. If I had been here--"
"Then you would have gone the same way!" shouted Gaheris. "Even with your men here to protect you--"
"Even without them, it would have taken more than you two younglings," said Drustan with contempt. He sheathed his sword and turned his back on the brothers. He signaled to the men-at-arms, who took up Lamorak's body, and started back with it the way they had come. Then, hanging on the rein, Drustan spoke to Gareth, who, mounted once more, was hesitating, looking from Drustan to his brothers and back again. Even at that distance it could be seen that his body was rigid with distress. Drustan, nodding to him, and without another glance at Gaheris and Agravain, swung round to follow his men-at-arms.
Mordred turned his horse softly back into the wood. It was over. Agravain, seemingly sober now, had caught at his brother's arm and was holding him, apparently reasoning with him. The shadows were lengthening across the roadway. The men-at-arms were out of sight. Gareth was on Gaheris's other side, talking across him to Agravain.
Then, suddenly, Gaheris flung off his brother's hand, and spurred his horse. He galloped up the road after Drustan's retreating back. His over-ready sword gleamed in his hand. Agravain, after a second's hesitation, spurred after him, his sword, too, whipping from its sheath.
Gareth snatched for Agravain's bridle, and missed. He yelled a warning, high and clear: "My lord, watch! My lord Drustan, your back!"
Before the words were done Drustan had wheeled his horse. He met the two of them together. Agravain struck first. The older knight smashed the blow to one side and cut him across the head. The sword's edge sliced deep into metal and leather, and bit into the neck between shoulder and throat. Agravain fell, blood spurting. Gaheris yelled and drove his horse in, his sword hacking down as Drustan stooped from the saddle to withdraw his blade. But Drustan's horse reared back. Its armed hoofs caught Gaheris's mount on the chest. It squealed and swerved, and the blow missed. Drustan drove his own horse in, striking straight at Gaheris's shield, and sent him, off-balance as he was, crashing to the ground, where he lay still.
Gareth was there at the gallop. Drustan, swinging to face him, saw that his sword was still in its sheath, and put his own weapon up.
Here the men-at-arms, having left their burden, came hastening back. At their master's orders, they roughly bound Agravain's wound, helped Gahe
ris, giddy but unharmed, to his feet, then caught the brothers' horses for them. Drustan, coldly formal, offered the hospitality of the castle "until your brother shall be healed of his hurt," but Gaheris, as ungracious as he had been treacherous, merely cursed and turned away. Drustan signed to the troopers, who closed in. Gaheris, shouting again about "my kinsman the High King," tried to resist, but was overpowered. The invitation had become an arrest. At length the troopers rode off at walking pace, with Gaheris between them, his brother's unconscious body propped against him.
Gareth watched them go, making no move to follow. He had not stirred a hand to help Gaheris.
"Gareth?" said Drustan. His sword was clean and sheathed. "Gareth, what choice have I?"
"None," said Gareth. He shook the reins and brought his horse round alongside Drustan's. They rode together towards Caer Mord.
The roadway was empty in the growing dusk. A thin moon rose over the sea. Mordred, emerging at last from the shadow, rode south.
That night he slept in the woods. It was chilly, but wrapped in his cloak he was warm enough, and for supper there was something left of the bread and meat the girl had given him. His horse, tethered on a long rein, grazed in the glade. Next day, early, he rode on, this time to the south-west. Arthur would be on his way to Caerleon, and he would meet him there. There was no haste. Drustan would already have sent a courier with the news of Lamorak's murder. Since Mordred had not appeared on the scene the King would no doubt assume the truth, that the brothers by some trick had managed to evade him. His assignment had not been Lamorak's safety; that was Lamorak's own concern, and he had paid for the risk he had taken; Mordred's task had been to find Gaheris and take him south. Now, once the twins' hurts were healed, Drustan would see to that. Mordred could still stay out of the affair, and this he was sure the King would approve. Even if the brothers did not survive the King's anger, the other troublemakers among the Young Celts, assuming Mordred to be ambitious for whatever power he could grasp for himself, might turn to him and invite him to join their counsels. This, he suspected, the King would soon ask him to do. And if you do, murmured that other, ice-cold voice in his brain, and the campaign goes on that is to unseat Bedwyr and destroy him, who better to take his place in the King's confidence, and the Queen's love, than you, the King's own son?
It was a golden October, with chill nights and bright, crisp days. The mornings glittered with a dusting of bright frost, and in the evenings the sky was full of the sound of rooks going home. He took his time, sparing his horse, and, where he could, lodging in small, simple places and avoiding the towns. The loneliness, the falling melancholy of autumn, suited his mood. He went by smooth hills and grassy valleys, through golden woods and by steep rocky passes where, on the heights, the trees were already bare. His good bay horse was all the company he needed. Though the nights were cold, and grew colder, he always found shelter of a sort--a sheep-cote, a cave, even a wooded bank--and there was no rain. He would tether the bay to graze, eat the rations he carried, and roll himself in his cloak for the night, to wake in the grey, frost-glittering morning, wash in an icy stream, and ride on again.
Gradually the simplicity, the silence, the very hardships of the ride soothed him; he was Medraut the fisher-boy again, and life was simple and clean.
So he came at last to the Welsh hills, and Viroconium where the four roads meet. And there, at the crossways, like another welcome from home, was a standing stone with its altar at its foot.
He slept that night in a thicket of hazel and holly by the crossroads, in the lee of a fallen trunk. The night was warmer, with stars out. He slept, and dreamed that he was in the boat with Brude, netting mackerel for Sula to split and dry for winter. The nets came in laden with leaping silver, and across the hush of the waves he could hear Sula singing.
He woke to thick mist. The air was warmer; the sudden change in temperature overnight had brought the fog. He shook the crowded droplets from his cloak, ate his breakfast, then on a sudden impulse took the remains of the food and laid it on the altar at the foot of the standing stone.
Then, moved by another impulse which he would not begin to recognize, he took a silver piece from his wallet and laid it beside the food. Only then did he realize that, as in his dream, someone was singing.
It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, and the song was one that Sula had sung. His flesh crept. He thought of magic, and waking dreams. Then out of the mist, no more than twelve paces away, came a man leading a mule with a girl mounted sideways on its back. He took them at first for a peasant with his wife going out to work, and then saw that the man was dressed in a priest's robe, and the girl as simply, sackcloth and wimple, and the pretty feet dangling against the mule's ribs were bare. They were Christians, it appeared; a wooden cross hung from the man's waist, and a smaller one lay on the girl's bosom. There was a silver bell on the mule's collar, which rang as it moved.
The priest checked in his stride when he saw the armed man with the big horse, then, as Mordred gave him a greeting, smiled and came forward.
"Maridunum?" he repeated, in response to Mordred's query. He pointed to the road that led due west. "That way is best. It is rough, but passable everywhere, and it is shorter than the main road south by Caerleon. Have you come far, sir?"
Mordred answered him civilly, giving him what news he could. The man did not speak with a peasant's accent. He might have been someone gently bred, a courtier, even. The girl, Mordred saw now, was beautiful. Even the bare feet, dangling by the mule's ribs, were clean and white, fine-boned and veined with blue. She sat silently watching him, and listening, in no way discomposed by his look. Mordred caught the priest's glance at the altar stone where the silver coin gleamed beside the food. "Do you know whose altar this is? Or whose stone at the crossways?"
The man smiled. "Not mine, sir. That is all I know. That is your offering?"
"Yes."
"Then God knows who will receive it," said the man, gently, "but if you have need of blessing, sir, then my God can, through me, give it to you. Unless," he added, on a troubled afterthought, "there is blood on your hands?"
"No," said Mordred. "But there is a curse that says I shall have. How do I lift that?"
"A curse? Who laid it?"
"A witch," said Mordred, shortly, "but she is dead."
"Then the curse may well have died with her."
"But before her, a fate was spoken of, and by Merlin."
"What fate?"
"That I cannot tell you."
"Then ask him."
"Ah," said Mordred. "Then it is true he is still there?"
"They say so. He is there in his cave on the hill, for those who have the need or the fortune to find him. Well then, sir, I cannot help you, other than give you my Christian blessing, and send you on your way."
He raised a hand, and Mordred bowed his head, then thanked him, hesitated over a coin, decided against it, and rode on. He took the west road to Maridunum. Soon the mule's bell died out in the distance, and he was alone again.
He came to the hill called Bryn Myrddin at dusk, and slept again by a wood. When he woke there was mist again, with the sun rising behind it. The haze was tinged with rose, and a faint glimmer showed on the grey trunks of the beech trees.
He waited patiently, eating the hard biscuit and raisins that were his breakfast ration. The world was silent, no movement but the slow eddying of the mist between the trees, and the steady cropping of the horse. There was no haste. He had ceased to feel any curiosity about the old man whom he sought, the King's enchanter of a thousand legends who had been his enemy (and since Morgause had said so, he took it without question as a lie) since the day of his conception. Nor was there any apprehension. If the curse could be lifted, then no doubt Merlin would lift it. If not, then no doubt he would explain it.
Quite suddenly, the mist was gone. A slight breeze, warm for the time of year, rustled through the wood, swept the eddies aside and dispersed them down the hillside like smoke from a bonf
ire. The sun, climbing the hilltop across the valley, blazed scarlet and gold into his eyes. The landscape dazzled.
He mounted, turning towards the sun. Now he saw where he was. The travelling priest's directions had been accurate and vivid enough to guide anyone even through this rolling and featureless landscape.
"By the time you reach the wood, you will have gone past the upper slopes of Bryn Myrddin. Go down to the stream, cross it, and you will find a track. Turn uphill again and ride as far as a grove of thorn trees. There is a little cliff, with a path curling up beside it. At the head of the cliff is the holy well, and by it the enchanter's cave."
He came to the thicket of whitethorn. There, beside the cliff, he dismounted and tied the horse. He trod quickly up the path and came out on level ground and into mist again, thick and still and stained red gold by the sun, standing as still as lake water over the turf. He could see nothing. He felt his way forward. The turf was level and fine. At his feet, peering, he could just discern small late daisies, frost-nipped, and shut against the damp. Somewhere to his left was the trickle of water. The holy well? He groped forward, but could not find it. He trod on a stone, which rolled away, almost bringing him to his knees. The silence, broken only by the trickle of the spring, was eerie. In spite of himself, he felt the chill prickles of sweat creep down his spine.
He stopped. He stood squarely, and shouted aloud.
"Ho, there! Is anyone there?"
An echo, ringing from the wall of mist, rebounded again and again from the invisible depths of the valley, and died into silence.
"Is anyone there? This is Mordred, Prince of Britain, to speak with Merlin his kinsman. I come in peace. I seek peace."
Again the echo. Again the silence. He moved cautiously towards the sound of water, and his groping fingers touched the stone rim of the well. He stooped towards the water. Breaths of mist furred and fumed from the smooth glass of the surface. He bent nearer. Below that glass the clear depths, darkly shining, led the eye down, away from the mist. At the bottom of the well was the gleam of silver, the offerings to the god.