Merlin’s Mirror
Andre Norton
1.
The beacon still called from deep within the rough-walled fastness of the cave. Its message was fainter now. Each planet year had put more strain upon this mechanism, though its creators had attempted to make it everlasting. They believed they had foreseen every eventuality. They had—except the weakness within their own rule and the nature of the world from which the beacon called. Time had been swallowed, was gone, and still the beacon kept to its task, while outside the cave nations had risen and decayed, men themselves had changed and changed again. Everything the makers of the beacon had known was erased during those years, destroyed by the very action of nature. Seas swept in upon the land, then retired, the force of their waves taking whole cities and countries. Mountains reared up, so that the shattered remains of once-proud ports were lifted into the thin air of great heights. Deserts crept in over green fields. A moon fell from the sky and another took its place.
Still the beacon called and called, summoning those who had vanished and left behind only legends, strange, time-distorted tales. And now there was another period of chaotic darkness in the affairs of men. An empire had crashed under its own unwieldy weight and the strain of years. Barbarians ravaged, picking its carcass like vultures. Fire and sword, death and the living death of slavery marched across the land. And yet the beacon called.
Its heart-fires were dim now. From time to time the call faltered, as a man in mortal danger might gasp for breath between shouts for aid.
Then that call, so faint now, was finally heard far out in space. A strange arrow of metal caught the impulse, and deep in this ship’s heart installations which had been silent and unresponding for centuries were activated. The arrow altered course, using the beam of the call as a line to draw itself down.
There was no living thing aboard that ship. It had been devised with desperate hope by entities close to the extinction of all they held important, more important than their own lives. They had sent six such arrows of life into the void, their only desire being that at least one of the searchers might find a goal their records said existed. Then they were overrun by their enemies.
Relay after relay clicked into life without a quiver of fault as the arrow sped toward earth. It represented the fruits of a thousand years of experimentation, the highest triumph of a race which had once traveled the starlanes with the ease of men walking familiar paths on brown earth. Made for one duty alone, it was now about to go into the action for which it was programmed.
It smoothly shifted into orbit about the planet and prepared to descend in answer to the beacon call. As it flashed across the sky men below watched its passage with primitive awe. The knowledge which had once been theirs was long since buried in myth.
Some cringed in skin tents as their shamans beat drums and howled strange guttural chants. Others stared wide-eyed and spoke of shooting stars which could be omens of good or evil. It neared the mountain where the cave of the beacon was hidden, then it broke apart.
The husk which had carried the so-precious cargo through space opened and from it issued other objects. They did not plunge instantly into the sea which was now fast coming under the arrow; they spun away rather, as if with volition of their own, winging for a mountainside.
They hovered for an instant or two in the air before drifting easily to the ground. And if anyone in those heights witnessed this, he did not speak of it again. These particles were protected by a distortion of the fields of visibility. The makers had taken all precautions they could foresee to protect their project.
Once on earth the jumble of objects produced appendages of their own and crawled steadily, with a mindless need to unite with the failing power of the beacon. They made their way into the cave.
In some places it was necessary to enlarge the passageway and that, too, had been foreplanned. But at length they were all sheltered in the depths about the beacon, where they proceeded to go to work. Some of them cut bases in the rock, settling themselves in with cable roots from which they could never be’ torn. Others rose from the surface of the cave, hovering back and forth like great mindless insects, except that they trailed coils of communicating wire from one based installation to the next.
Within a space of time which they had no reason to measure the net was complete; they were ready to begin the work for which they had been programmed. If this world had not been receptive there would have been no beacon. Therefore, in the memory banks of the largest of the based machines lay information that a systematic sampling would bring into use.
One of the hovering fliers swung to the entrance of the cave, sped outside. There was no moon that night; clouds hung heavy in the sky. The flying thing was not much larger than an eagle, and its distort had gone into action when it had emerged in the open. Now it began to scout in ever-widening circles, the photoeye it carried sending a stream of reports back to the cave.
There was a dusting of snow on the heights and the winds were sharp and cold, though the flying thing noted temperature only as another fact to be transmitted.
The fire in the center of the clan house was high. From the balcony which circled the sleeping family rooms, Brigitta could look down at the men gathered below on benches. The mingled smell of stable, cow byre, woodsmoke, food and drink was as thick as the smoke. Yet there was a solid, secure feeling when the clan house was closed at night against the outer dark, when the hum of voices flowed from chamber to chamber on the upper floor.
Brigitta shivered and drew her cloak closer about her shoulders. This was Samain, the time between one year and the next. Now the doors between this world and the Dark could open, and demons could caper through or crawl malevolently to attack man. There was safety here by the cheer of fire, in the voices she could hear, the snort of one of the horses stabled in the outermost circle of stalls below. She picked up the tankard she had set on the bench beside her and sipped at the barley ale it contained, making a little face at its bitter taste but relishing the warmth within her when she swallowed.
There were other women on the balcony benches, but none shared hers. Brigitta was the chief’s daughter and so took honor here. When the flames flickered they caught the gold bracelet on her arm, the wide plaque necklace of amber and bronze lying on her breast. Her red-brown hair flowed free, nearly touching the floor behind her as she sat, its color contrasting pleasantly with the strong blue of her cloak, the embroidered length of the saffron yellow robe beneath.
She was arrayed for a feast, yet this was no true. feast. She bitterly resented the news which had drawn the men to council and left the women to watch and yawn, gossip a little. It was even stale gossip, for they had been together for so long now that there was nothing new to say about each other or events.
Brigitta moved restlessly. War—war with the Winged Hats—that was all a man could think about. There was little betrothing or marrying nowadays. And she was growing older with every moon. Yet her father had not singled out any lord for her. There was gossip behind hands about that also, as. well she knew. If they had not already, in time they would give her some flaw of tongue or mind which would turn possible suitors from the door.
War. Brigitta gritted her teeth and the look with which she regarded the company below had little kindness in it. Man thought of fighting first and always. What did it matter if the invaders crept along valleys miles away? What difference should it make to the people of Nyren, safe in their upland fortress? And now this babbling about the evils wrought by the High King. She drank again.
So he had put aside his wife to wed the daughter of the Saxon overlord… Brigitta wondered what the new queen looked like. Vortigen was old; he had grown sons who would be quick to raise sword for their shamed mother. A messenger had brought the news that they were summoning near and far kin to that very effort now. But the Saxons would form a shield wall for the new queen, too. It was all war! She could not remember back to a time when there was not the clang of weapons about the clan house. She need only raise her head a little to see the line of weather-cleaned skulls set along the roof eaves above, the spoils of wars and past raids.