“The Edling is well?” Gundleus spoke for the first time since entering the hall.
“Praise God and His Saints,” Norwenna answered, ‘he is.”
His left foot?” Gundleus asked untactfully. “Does it mend?”
“His foot will not stop him from riding a horse, wielding a sword or sitting upon a throne,” Norwenna answered firmly.
“Of course not, of course not,” Gundleus said and glanced across at the hungry babe. He smiled, then stretched his long arms and looked about the hall. He had said nothing of marriage, but he would not in this company. If he wanted to marry Norwenna then he would ask Uther, not Norwenna. This visit was merely an opportunity for him to inspect his bride. He spared Norwenna a brief disinterested look, then gazed again about the shadowed hall. “So this is Lord Merlin’s lair, eh?” Gundleus said. “Where is he?”
No one answered. Tanaburs was scrabbling beneath the edge of one of the carpets and I guessed he was burying a charm in the earth of the hall floor. Later, when the Silurian delegation was gone, I searched the spot and found a small bone carving of a boar that I threw on the fire. The flames burned blue and spat fiercely, and Nimue said I had done the right thing.
“Lord Merlin, we think, is in Ireland,” Bishop Bedwin at last answered. “Or maybe in the northern wilderness,” he added vaguely.
“Or maybe dead?” Gundleus suggested.
“I pray not,” the Bishop said fervently.
“You do?” Gundleus twisted in his chair to stare into Bed win’s aged face. “You approve of Merlin, Bishop?”
“He is a friend, Lord King,” Bedwin said. He was a dignified, plump man who was ever eager to keep the peace between the various religions.
“Lord Merlin is a Druid, Bishop, who hates Christians.” Gundleus was trying to provoke Bedwin.
“There are many Christians in Britain now,” Bedwin said, ‘and few Druids. I think we of the true faith have nothing to fear.”
“You hear that, Tanaburs?” Gundleus called to his Druid. “The Bishop doesn’t fear you!”
Tanaburs did not answer. In his questing around the hall he had come to the ghost-fence that guarded the door to Merlin’s chambers. The fence was a simple one: merely two skulls placed on either side of the door, but only a Druid would dare cross their invisible barrier and even a Druid would fear a ghost-fence placed by Merlin.
“Will you rest here tonight?” Bishop Bedwin asked Gundleus, trying to change the subject away from Merlin.
“No,” Gundleus said rudely, rising. I thought he was about to take his leave, but instead he looked past Norwenna to the small, black, skull-guarded door in front of which Tanaburs was quivering like a hound smelling an unseen boar. “What’s through the door?” the King asked.
“My Lord Merlin’s chambers, Lord King,” Bedwin said.
“The place of secrets?” Gundleus asked wolfishly.
“Sleeping quarters, nothing more,” Bedwin said dismissively.
Tanaburs raised his moon-tipped staff and held it quivering towards the ghost-fence. King Gundleus watched his Druid’s performance, then drained his wine and tossed the drinking horn on to the floor. “Maybe I shall sleep here after all,” the King said, ‘but first let us inspect the sleeping quarters.” He waved Tanaburs forward, but the Druid was nervous. Merlin was the greatest Druid in Britain, feared even beyond the Irish Sea, and no one meddled in his life lightly, yet the great man had not been seen for many a long month and some folk whispered that Prince Mordred’s death had been a sign that Merlin’s power was waning. And Tanaburs, like his master, was surely fascinated by what lay behind the door for secrets could lie there that would make Tanaburs as mighty and learned as the great Merlin himself. “Open the door!” Gundleus ordered Tanaburs.
The butt of the moon staff moved tremulously towards one of the skulls, hesitated, then touched the yellowing bone dome. Nothing happened. Tanaburs spat on the skull, then tipped it over before snatching his staff back like a man who has prodded a sleeping snake. Again nothing happened and so he reached his free hand towards the door’s wooden latch.
Then he stopped in terror.