“Derfel can tell it to Arthur.” A voice spoke from the hall and I turned to see Ligessac, sly Ligessac, once commander of Nor-wenna’s guard and now a traitor in Gundleus’s service. He pointed to me. “That man is Arthur’s sworn man, High King. I swear it on my life.”
The hall seethed with noise. I could hear men shouting that I was a spy and others demanding my death. Tanaburs was staring at me intently, trying to see past my long, fair beard and thick moustaches, then suddenly he recognized me and screamed, “Kill him! Kill him!”
Gorfyddyd’s guards, the only armed men in the hall, ran towards me. Gorfyddyd checked his spearmen with his raised hand that slowly silenced the noisy crowd. “Are you oath-bound to the whore-lover?” the King asked me in a dangerous voice.
“Derfel is in my service, High King,” Galahad insisted.
Gorfyddyd pointed at me. “He will answer,” he said. “Are you oath-bound to Arthur?”
I could not lie about an oath. “Yes, Lord King,” I admitted.
Gorfyddyd stepped heavily off the platform and stretched his one arm towards a guard, though he still stared at me. “Do you know, you dog, what we did to Arthur’s last messenger?”
“You killed him, Lord King,” I said.
“I sent his maggot-ridden head to your whore-lover, that is what I did. Come on, hurry!” he snapped at the nearest guard who had not known what to put in his King’s outstretched hand. “Your sword, fool!” Gorfyddyd said, and the guard hastily drew his sword and gave it hilt first to the King.
“Lord King.” Galahad stepped forward, but Gorfyddyd whirled the blade so that it quivered just inches from Galahad’s eyes.
“Be careful what you say in my hall, Galahad of Benoic,” Gorfyddyd growled.
“I plead for Derfel’s life,” Galahad said. “He is not here as a spy, but as an emissary of peace.”
“I don’t want peace!” Gorfyddyd shouted at Galahad. “Peace is not my pleasure! I want to see Arthur weeping as my daughter once wept. Do you understand that? I want to see his tears! I want to see him pleading as she pleaded with me. I want to see him grovel, I want to see him dead and his whore pleasuring my men. No emissary from Arthur is welcome here and Arthur knows that! And you knew that!” He shouted the last four words at me as he turned the sword towards my face.
“Kill him! Kill him!” Tanaburs, in his raggedly embroidered robe, leaped up and down so that the bones in his hair rattled like dried beans in a pot.
“Touch him, Gorfyddyd,” said a new voice in the hall, ‘and your life is mine. I shall bury it in the dung heap of Caer Idion and call the dogs to piss on it. I shall give your soul to the spirit children who lack playthings. I shall keep you in darkness till the last day is done and then I shall spit on you till the next era begins, and even then, Lord King, your torments will hardly have begun.”
I felt the tension sweep out of me like a rush of water. Only one man would dare speak to a High King thus. It was Merlin. Merlin! Merlin who now walked slow and tall up the hall’s central aisle, Merlin who walked past me and with a gesture more royal than anything Gorfyddyd could manage, used his black staff to thrust the King’s sword aside. Merlin, who now walked to Tanaburs and whispered in his ear so that the lesser Druid screamed and fled from the hall.
It was Merlin, who could change like no other man. He loved to pretend, to confuse and to deceive. He could be abrupt, mischievous, patient or lordly, but this day he had chosen to appear in stark, cold majesty. There was no smile on his dark face, no hint of joy in his deep eyes, just a look of such arrogant authority that the men closest to him instinctively sank to their knees and even King Gorfyddyd, who a moment before had been ready to thrust the sword into my neck, lowered the blade. “You speak for this man, Lord Merlin?” Gorfyddyd asked.