“Nimue!”
He saw her laugh but heard the “Merlin!” There was mockery in the name as she said
“Brave warrior.” The girl’s light mockery stung, setting him, in his startlement, a little off guard. “What would you now do, strike me to earth with that weapon of yours after the manner of fighting men in this dark land?”
Myrddin lowered the sword. She made him feel foolish, childlike. Since he knew her to be what she was, though, he must not let her remain in control of their meeting.
“Those who flit in the dark,” he returned, “and come secretly so, must expect to see a bared blade awaiting them.”
“Do you believe that iron will master me. Merlin? Do you still cling to the superstitions of your kind?” Her eyes glistened like a cat’s in the light from the door. And she smiled. “Better waste your strength on such as them!” Nimue whirled and pointed back toward the stones from which she had come.
Things moved behind the rocks, things from a crazed man’s nightmares. But Myrddin knew that they were not really there. Just as he had drawn on his own dawning powers to make the High King see dragons at war, so was she now striving to frighten him with illusions. As he looked at them and away again, they faded and were gone.
The smile vanished from her face and her lips flattened against her teeth. She hissed like a serpent or an angry cat.
“Do you think,” she cried, “that you have all the learning of the Older Ones within you? You fool, it would take years upon years to even begin such studies. You are but a boy—“
“And you are a girl,” he made steady answer. “No, I do not claim more learning than I have. But such play as that is for those who are totally ignorant.”
She flung her head, so that her hair moved on her shoulders.
“Look on me,” she commanded. “Look on me, Merlin!”
Her ivory skin shone with a glow of its own, her features altering subtly. Beauty flowed about her like a cloak. Suddenly there was the flowering wreath of the Midsummer Maiden on her head, the perfume of the blossoms reaching his nostrils. Her garment of green was gone, her slender body fully revealed to his eyes.
“Merlin …” Her voice was honey-sweet and low; it promised much. She came closer to him hesitatingly, as if she would touch him and yet some maiden fears kept her aloof. “Merlin,” she crooned. “Put down that drinker of dead men’s blood, come with me. There is more in this world than you have dreamed of. It awaits you… Come!” She held out her hand.
Manhood stirred in him for the first time, hot and eager. He knew sensations he had never experienced before. The perfume of her flowers, the enticement of her body— his grip on the hilt of the ancient sword was not so tight. All of him which was of the earth wanted her.
“Merlin, they have deceived you,” she said softly. “This is life, not what they would make it for you, shutting you apart from everything within you, straining now for freedom. Come to me, learn what it is to be truly alive! Come, Merlin!”
She raised both her arms, held them out to him, inviting his embrace. Her eyes were slumberously heavy, her mouth curved, waiting for his kiss.
“Merlin …” Her voice faded to a whisper, a promise of things he only dimly understood.
It was the sword which saved him. Its cold length brushed against his leg as he nearly dropped it. From that touch came a kind of shock which alerted him to her enchantment. He spoke only one word:
“Witch!”
Once more her eyes glittered. The flower wreath disappeared and she was again covered by her rough green robe. Now she stamped her foot and the hands she had reached out to him became claw-like, extended to rip the flesh from his bones.
“Fool!” she cried loudly. “You have made your choice and you must abide by it from this hour forth. Between us there is only war, and do not think that I will be a weakling as a foe! At each triumph you shall find me waiting, and if my strength does not prevail tonight, there will be other days … and nights. Remember that. Merlin!”
As she had come out of the night, so did she mesh back into it, mingling so quickly with the shadows that he could not truly have said where she went. And with her went that feeling of being watched. Now he knew that he was free, for a while at least, so he drew a deep breath of relief.
But he waited for a long moment, listening, testing with that other sense the mirror had taught him to use. No, she was gone. There was nothing here but that sensation of long-ago Power which was the nature of the Place of the Sun. For where men have worshipped with their whole hearts—where they have wrought things that are unseen, unheard and cannot be grasped in hand, only in mind and heart—there remains forever the breath of that Power, diminished perhaps by the long passing of time, yet nonetheless abiding.
Holding the sword with both hands, Myrddin entered the hut, set about building up the fire. He kept the weapon ever by his side as he sought out food, put some of the coarse porridge which was Lugaid’s principal food in the pot to boil. As he worked he listened for the coming of the Druid, eager not to be left alone.
Not that he feared Nimue. He did not believe she could call up any strength to outweigh what he himself could summon. But her first attack was one he had not foreseen. He fought resolutely now against tile picture which memory kept presenting of Nimue ivory pale in the night, of that slumberous, beguiling voice. Not for him was any woman, that he understood. He must have no ties such as were the right of his human heritage, lest those ties blind him to the purpose which was meant to fill all his days.
“Who has been here?”
Myrddin was startled out of his inner turmoil by that sharp demand. Lugaid had looped back the door curtain, stood tall and frowning within the opening.
“How did you … ?” the boy began.
“How did I know? By what Power I have learned! There is a hostile force awake this night Yet it is not any guardian aprowl.” The Druid’s nostrils expanded as he turned his head slightly, half looking over his shoulder.
The skirts of his robe were heavily plastered with earth, his hands battered and bruised, soil caked under the nails.
“She was here, Nimue,” Myrddin said.
“Ah, that is evil hearing! Did she see the sword?”
“Aye. She—she strove to bind me to her.” Myrddin felt ill at ease, yet to share this with the Druid was to lighten somehow the burden of that memory, help to banish it from his mind.
“Like that, was it?” Lugaid nodded. “Aye, that would be the beginning with her. Perhaps if you had been older … No, I do not think she could reach you so. But be warned, now that she is on your trail you will not find her easy to put aside. The Dark Ones have their own Power and the beguiling of men is a large part of it. Yet I do not think she can come nigh or weave her spells too well when you have a hand on that.” He pointed to the sword.
“But as you have said, time may be growing short. I had not realized it. Thus I shall do as you have asked of me—I shall go to Ambrosius.”
Myrddin knew a sudden surge of relief. He sensed how dangerous it would be to linger too long here where Nimue had tracked him. Yet this was partly his own place. He felt a strange kinship with the stones, as if they had once possessed some life of their own and had given him some heritage with them.
The boy slept with the sword against his body that night, one hand lying on its hilt. And if the girl who had come to him in the dark strove to weave any spell about his dreams, she did not succeed, for he did not dream at all. Instead he awoke with the day not only refreshed but more confident that what he must do would indeed be done.
Lugaid rode away on the pony Myrddin had brought out of the hills. The boy saw him go before visiting two of the snares the Druid had set. He was lucky; both held game. He toasted meat on an improvised spit and ate lustily.
Later he fashioned a rude scabbard from sections of tree bark bound together with rags torn from his cloak and so wore the sword constantly in the daytime. Its marvelous blade hidden from view, he slept beside it at night. For hours he wandered among the stones, setting his hands at times to one or another, feeling a kind of renewal of spirit rise in him from that touch.