Legacy: Arthurian Saga

  It was called a chapel now -- the Perilous Chapel, Arthur had named it -- but it had been a holy place long before men had laid stone on stone and raised the altar. It was sacred first to the gods of the land itself, the small spirits that haunt hill and stream and forest, together with the greater gods of air, whose power breathes through cloud and frost and speaking wind. No one knew for whom the chapel had first been built. Later, with the Romans, had come Mithras, the soldiers' god, and an altar was raised to him within it. But the place was still haunted with all its ancient holiness; the older gods received their sacrifices, and the ninefold lights still burned unquenched by the open doorway.

  All through the years when Arthur had been hidden, for his own safety, with Count Ector in the Wild Forest, I had stayed near him, known only as the keeper of the shrine, the hermit of the Chapel in the Green. Here I had finally hidden the great sword of Maximus (whom the Welsh called Macsen) until the boy should come of an age to lift it, and with it drive the kingdom's enemies out and destroy them. The Emperor Maximus himself had done so, over a hundred years before, and men thought of the great sword now as a talisman, a god-sent sword of magic, to be wielded only for victory, and only by the man who had the right. I, Merlinus Ambrosius, kin to Macsen, had lifted it from its long hiding-place in the earth, and had laid it aside for the one to come who would be greater than I. I hid it first in a flooded cave below the forest lake, then, finally, on the chapel altar, locked like carving in the stone, and shrouded from common sight and touch in the cold white fire called by my art from heaven.

  From this unearthly blaze, to the wonder and terror of all present, Arthur had raised the sword. Afterwards, when the new King and his nobles and captains had gone from the chapel, it could be seen that the wildfire of the new god had scoured the place of all that had formerly been held sacred, leaving only the altar, to be freshly decked for him alone.

  I had long known that this god brooked no companions. He was not mine, nor (I suspected) would he ever be Arthur's, but throughout the sweet three corners of Britain he was moving, emptying the ancient shrines, and changing the face of worship. I had seen with awe, and with grief, how his fires had swept away the signs of an older kind of holiness; but he had marked the Perilous Chapel -- and perhaps the sword -- as his own, beyond denying.

  So all through that day I worked to make the shrine clean again and fit for its new tenant. It took a long time; I was stiff from recent hurts, and from a night of sleepless vigil; besides, there are things that must be performed decently and in order. But at length all was done, and when, shortly before sunset, the servant of the shrine came back from the town, I took the horse he had brought, and rode down through the quiet woods.

  It was late when I came to the gates, but these were open, and no one challenged me as I rode in. The place was still in a roar; the sky was alight with bonfires, the air throbbed with singing, and through the smoke one could smell roasting meats and the reek of wine. Even the presence of the dead King, lying there in the monastery church with his guards around him, could not put a bridle on men's tongues. The times were too full of happening, the town too small: only the very old and the very young found sleep that night.

  I found none, certainly. It was well after midnight when my servant came in, and after him Ralf.

  He ducked his head for the lintel -- he was a tall young man -- and waited till the door was shut, regarding me with a look as wary as any he had ever given me in the past when he had been my page and feared my powers.

  "You're still up?"

  "As you see." I was sitting in the high-backed chair beside the window. The servant had brought a brazier, kindled against the chill of the September night. I had bathed, and looked to my hurts again, and let the servant put me into a loose bedgown, before I sent him away and composed myself to rest. After the climax of fire and pain and glory that had brought Arthur to the kingship, I, who had lived my life only for that, felt the need for solitude and silence. Sleep would not come yet, but I sat, content and passive, with my eyes on the brazier's idle glow.

  Ralf, still armed and jeweled as I had seen him that morning at Arthur's side in the chapel, looked tired and hollow-eyed himself, but he was young, and the night's climax was for him a new beginning, rather than an end. He said abruptly: "You should be resting. I gather that you were attacked last night on the way up to the chapel. How badly were you hurt?"

  "Not mortally, though it feels bad enough! No, no, don't worry, it was bruises rather than wounds, and I've seen to them. But I'm afraid I lamed your horse for you. I'm sorry about that."

  "I've seen him. There's no real damage. It will take a week, no more. But you -- you look exhausted, Merlin. You should be given time to rest."

  "And am I not to be?" As he hesitated, I lifted a brow at him.

  "Come, out with it. What don't you want to say to me?"

  The wary look broke into something like a grin. But his voice, suddenly formal, was quite expressionless, the voice of the courtier who is not quite sure which way, as they say, the deer will run. "Prince Merlin, the King has desired me to bid you to his apartments. He wants to see you as soon as it is convenient for you." As he spoke his eye lingered on the door in the wall opposite the window. Until last night Arthur had slept in that annexe of my chamber, and had come and gone at my bidding. Ralf caught my eye, and the grin became real.

  "In other words, straight away," he said. "I'm sorry, Merlin, but that's the message as it came to me through the chamberlain. They might have left it till morning. I was assuming you would be asleep."

  "Sorry? For what? Kings have to start somewhere. Has he had any rest yet himself?"

  "Not a hope. But he's got rid of the crowd at last, and they cleared the royal rooms while we were up at the shrine. He's there now."

  "Attended?"

  "Only Bedwyr."

  That, I knew, meant, besides his friend Bedwyr, a small host of chamberers and servants, and possibly, even, a few people still waiting in the antechambers.

  "Then ask him to excuse me for a few minutes. I'll be there as soon as I've dressed. Will you send Lleu to me, please?"

  But this he would not have. The servant was sent with the message, and then, as naturally as he had done in the past when he was a boy, Ralf helped me himself. He took the bedgown from me and folded it, and gently, with care for my stiff limbs, eased me into a day-robe, then knelt to put my sandals on and fasten them.

  "Did the day go well?" I asked him.

  "Very well. No shadow on it."

  "Lot of Lothian?"

  He glanced up, grimly amused. "Kept his place. The affair of the chapel has left its brand on him...as it has on all of us." The last phrase was muttered, as if to himself, as he bent his head to buckle the second sandal.

  "On me, too, Ralf," I said. "I am not immune from the god's fire, either. As you see. How is Arthur?"

  "Still on his own high and burning cloud." This time the amusement held affection. He got to his feet. "All the same, I think he's already looking ahead for storms. Now, your girdle. Is this the one?"

  "It will do. Thank you. Storms? So soon? I suppose so." I took the girdle from him and knotted it. "Do you intend to stay with him, Ralf, and help him weather them, or do you count your duty done?" Ralf had spent the last nine years in Galava of Rheged, the remote corner of the country where Arthur had lived, unknown, as the ward of Count Ector. He had married a northern girl, and had a young family.

  "To tell you the truth I've not thought about that yet," he said.

  "Too much has happened, all too quickly." He laughed. "One thing, if I stay with him, I can see that I'll look back with longing on the peaceful days when I had nothing to do but ride guard on those young dev -- that is, on Bedwyr and the King! And you? You will hardly stay here as the hermit of the Green Chapel now? Will you come out of your fastness, and go with him?"

  "I must. I have promised. Besides, it is my place. Not yours, though, unless you wish it. Between us, we made him K
ing, and that is the end of the first part of the story. You have a choice now. But you'll have plenty of time to make it." He opened the door for me, and stood aside to let me pass him. I paused. "We whistled up a strong wind, Ralf. Let us see which way it will blow us."

  "You'd let it?"

  I laughed. "I have a speaking mind that tells me I may have to. Come, let us start by obeying this summons."

  There were a few people still in the main antechamber to the King's apartments, but these were mostly servants, clearing and bearing away the remains of a meal that the King had apparently just finished. Guards stood woodenly at the door to the inner rooms. On a low bench near a window a young page lay fast asleep; I remembered seeing him when I had come this way three days ago to talk with the dying Uther. Ulfin, the King's body-servant and chief chamberlain, was absent. I could guess where he was. He would serve the new King with all the devotion he had given to Uther, but tonight he would be found with his old master in the monastery church. The man who waited by

  Arthur's door was a stranger to me, as were half the servants there; they were men and women who normally served Rheged's own king in his castle, and who were helping with the extra pressure of work brought by the occasion, and the High King's presence.

  But they all knew me. As I entered the antechamber there was a sudden silence, and a complete cessation of movement, as if a spell had been cast. A servant carrying platters balanced along his arm froze like someone faced with the Gorgon's head, and the faces that turned to me were frozen similarly, pale and gape-mouthed, full of awe. I caught Ralf's eye on me, sardonic and affectionate. His brow quirked. "You see?" it said to me, and I understood more fully his own hesitation when he came to my room with the King's message. As my servant and companion he had been close to me in the past, and had many times, in prophecy, and in what men call magic, watched and felt my power at work; but the power that had blazed and blown through the Perilous Chapel last night had been something of quite a different order. I could only guess at the stories that must have run, swift and changing as the wildfire itself, through Luguvallium; it was certain that the humbler folk had talked of nothing else all day. And like all strange tales, it would grow with the telling.

  So they stood staring. As for the awe that frosted the air, like the cold wind that comes before a ghost, I was used to that. I walked through the motionless crowd to the King's door, and the guard moved aside without a challenge, but before the chamberlain could lay a hand to the door it opened, and Bedwyr came out.

  Bedwyr was a quiet, dark boy, a month or two younger than Arthur. His father was Ban, the King of Benoic, and a cousin of a king of Brittany. The two boys had been close friends since childhood, when Bedwyr had been sent to Galava to learn the arts of war from Ector's master-at-arms, and to share the lessons I gave Emrys (as Arthur was then called) at the shrine in the Wild Forest. He was already showing himself to be that strange contradiction, a born fighting man who is also a poet, at home equally with action and with the world of fancy and music. Pure Celt, you might say, where Arthur, like my father the High King Ambrosius, was Roman. I might have expected to see in Bedwyr's face the same awe left by the events of the miraculous night as in the faces of the humbler men present, but I could see only the aftermath of joy, a sort of uncomplicated happiness, and a sturdy trust in the future.

  He stood aside for me, smiling. "He's alone now."

  "Where will you sleep?"

  "My father is lodging in the west tower."

  "Good night, then, Bedwyr."

  But as I moved to pass him he prevented me. He bent quickly and took my hand, then snatched it to him and kissed it. "I should have known you would see that it all came right. I was afraid, for a few minutes there in the hall, when Lot and his jackals started that treacherous fracas --"

  "Hush," I said. He had spoken softly, but there were ears to hear. "That's over for the present. Leave it. And go straight to your father in the west tower. Do you understand?"

  The dark eyes glimmered. "King Lot lodges, they tell me, in the eastern one?"

  "Exactly."

  "Don't worry. I've already had the same warning from Emrys. Good night, Merlin."

  "Good night, and a peaceful sleep to us all. We need it."

  He grinned, sketched a half-salute, and went. I nodded to the waiting servant and went in. The door shut behind me.

  The royal rooms had been cleared of the apparatus of sickness, and the great bed stripped of its crimson covers. The floor tiles were freshly scoured and polished, and over the bed lay new unbleached sheets, and a rug of wolfskin. The chair with the red cushion and the dragon worked on the back in gold stood there still, with its footstool and the tall tripod lamp beside it. The windows were open to the cool September night, and the air from them sent the lamp-flames sideways and made strange shadows on the painted walls.

  Arthur was alone. He was over by a window, one knee on a stool that stood there, his elbows on the sill. The window gave, not on the town, but on the strip of garden that edged the river. He gazed out into the dark, and I thought I could see him drinking, as from another river, deep draughts of the fresh and moving air. His hair was damp, as if he had just washed, but he was still in the clothes he had worn for the day's ceremonies; white and silver, with a belt of Welsh gold set with turquoises and buckled with enamel-work. He had taken off his sword-belt, and the great sword Caliburn hung in its sheath on the wall beyond the bed. The lamplight smouldered in the jewels of the hilt; emerald, topaz, sapphire. It flashed, too, from the ring on the boy's hand; Uther's ring carved with the Dragon crest.

  He heard me, and turned. He looked rarefied and light, as if the winds of the day had blown through him and left him weightless. His skin had the stretched pallor of exhaustion, but his eyes were brilliant and alive. About him, already there and unmistakable, was the mystery that falls like a mantle on a king. It was in his high look, and the turn of his head. Never again would "Emrys" be able to lurk in shadow. I wondered afresh how through all those hidden years we had kept him safe and secret among lesser men.

  "You wanted me," I said.

  "I've wanted you all day. You promised to be near me while I went through this business of hatching into a king. Where were you?"

  "Within call, if not within reach. I was at the shrine -- the chapel -- till almost sunset. I thought you'd be busy."

  He gave a little crack of laughter. "You call it that? It felt like being eaten alive. Or perhaps like being born...and a hard birth at that. I said 'hatching,' didn't I? Suddenly to find oneself a prince is hard enough, but even that is as different from being a king as the egg is from the day-old chick."

  "At least make it an eaglet."

  "In time, perhaps. That's been the trouble, of course. Time, there's been no time. One moment to be nobody -- someone's unacknowledged bastard, and glad to be given the chance to get within shouting distance of a battle, with maybe a glimpse of the King himself in passing; the next -- having drawn a couple of breaths as prince and royal heir -- to be High King myself, and with such a flourish as no king can ever have had before. I still feel as if I'd been kicked up the steps of the throne from a kneeling position right down on the floor."

  I smiled. "I know how you feel, more or less. I was never kicked half as high, but then I was a great deal lower down to start with. Now, can you slow down sufficiently to get some sleep? Tomorrow will be here soon enough. Do you want a sleeping potion?"

  "No, no, when did I ever? I'll sleep as soon as you've gone. Merlin, I'm sorry to ask you to come here at this late hour, but I had to talk to you, and there's been no chance till now. Nor will there be tomorrow."

  He came away from the window as he spoke, and crossed to a table where papers and tablets were lying. He picked up a stilus, and with the blunt end smoothed the wax. He did it absently, his head bent so that the dark hair swung forward, and the lamplight slid over the line of his cheek and touched the black lashes fringing the lowered lids. My eyes blurred. Time ran bac
k. It was Ambrosius my father who stood there, fidgeting with the stilus and saying to me: "If a king had you beside him, he could rule the world..."

  Well, his dream came true, and the time was now. I blinked memory away, and waited for the day-old King to speak.

  "I've been thinking," he said abruptly. "The Saxon army was not utterly destroyed, and I have had no firm report yet about Colgrim himself, or Badulf. I think they both got safely away. We may hear within the next day or so that they have taken ship and gone, either home across the sea or back to the Saxon territories in the south. Or they may simply have taken refuge in the wild lands north of the Wall, and be hoping to regroup when they have gathered strength again." He looked up. "I have no need to pretend to you, Merlin. I am not a seasoned warrior, and I've no means of judging how decisive that defeat was, or what the possibilities are of a Saxon recovery. I've taken advice, of course. I called a quick council at sunset, when the other business was concluded. I sent for -- that is, I would have liked you to be there, but you were still up at the chapel. Coel couldn't be there, either...You'd know he was wounded, of course; you probably saw him yourself? What are his chances?"

  "Slight. He's an old man, as you know, and he got a nasty slash. He bled too much before help got to him."

  "I was afraid of it. I did go to see him, but was told he was unconscious, and they were afraid of inflammation of the lungs...Well, Prince Urbgen, his heir, came in his stead, with Cador, and Caw of Strathclyde. Ector and Ban of Benoic were there, too. I talked it over with them, and they all say the same thing: someone will have to follow Colgrim up. Caw has to go north again as soon as may be; he has his own frontier to hold. Urbgen must stay here in Rheged, with his father the king at death's door. So the obvious choice would be Lot or Cador. Well, it cannot be Lot, I think you will agree there: For all his oath of fealty, there in the chapel, I won't trust him yet, and certainly not within reach of Colgrim."

  "I agree. You'll send Cador, then? You can surely have no more doubts of him?"