“What you have done, laid the prophecy upon the forces of Vortigen in our favor, for that our thanks. And we shall strive mightily that the red dragon wins his battle, without sorcery. Call upon our people for a horse, for supplies, but get you from us and soon.”
Thus Myrddin, who had gone out of the mountains a captive and a bewildered, frightened boy, returned into those fastnesses still a boy in body, but in spirit and mind another. For he who has called upon such Powers leaps in that single moment from youth to manhood, and is never afterward the same. He carried enough provisions in his saddlebag to be able to avoid the dan house, riding straight to the cave instead.
He loosed his mount in the small valley beneath the slope on which the cave lay and climbed to edge through the crack and come down into the place of the mirror. When he reached that point, he was aware at once that something about the cave had altered, though at first sighting all was the same—the lines of light still flickered across the installations, the mirror faced him as it ever had.
That strength of will which had sustained him through his journey—from the town where Vortigen had been driven into flight and where the forces of Ambrosius were now camped—deserted him. He sank down on the seat before the mirror, deeply burdened with the fatigue of his journey, empty-minded and spent
Yet uneasiness pricked at him. Even in this secret place all was not well. He fumbled with his saddlebags, found dry bread and a small leather bottle of sour wine. Dribbling the wine on the bread, he ate only because he knew that his body needed the food. It was not the hearty fare he had shared with the soldiers, but it was all he had now.
As Myrddin chewed he looked at the mirror, seeing his own reflection once again: small, dark, with tumbled hair, a face in which, now that he looked more carefully, the planes differed from those of his fellows. Had that difference come from his Sky father? He had never seen, among the wealth of pictures the mirror had shown during the years of his instruction, any other person.
Wearily the boy chewed and swallowed, but now and again he glanced around him. For, though he could see the cave plainly, more than half of it also being reflected in the mirror, the feeling that he was not alone persisted. It was like a trace of some scent on the air. So he found himself sniffing as if, like one of the great hunting hounds, he might uncover the intruder.
Once his hunger was satisfied, Myrddin rose to begin a thorough search between the squares and cylinders, tracing each possible opening between them back to the stone of the walls. There was nothing, no one.
But if the intruder was not here now, had there been someone earlier? Though how he could sense that he did not understand. Back once more on the bench before the mirror, he subsided, his head in his hands. For the time being he had lost that sense of purpose which had drawn him on, and he shrank dully from any thought of the future.
There was a sharp, ringing sound, as a piece of bronze might sing when struck by another bit of metal. Myrddin raised his head. The mirror was awakening—his reflection had vanished from its surface. In place there was the familiar swirl of mist. That deepened, thickened …
He was staring at a girl. Her body was held tensely and she had the attitude of one listening for a sound she dreaded. Behind her lay a countryside he knew well, the slope which reached to the cave entrance.
But this was no maid from the clan house! Her body was very slight and thin, not yet showing the curves of womanhood. Her skin was pale, the color of sea-bleached ivory, against which her hair was a cloud of dark, but a dark in which queer red lights played as if the sun sought out its match in it.
Her face was nearly triangular, the cheekbones wide apart, the chin almost pointed. Myrddin realized suddenly that the planes of that other countenance were similar to his own.
She wore a single simple garment fashioned as if a square of green had had a hole cut in its center, through which she had thrust her head, and then she had drawn in the folds about her middle with a wide belt which was formed of chains of a silvery metal braided together. Ankle boots latched with the same metal covered her feet. But she had no bracelets or necklaces.
Now she raised long-fingered hands to push the wind-tossed hair away from her eyes and at that moment she no longer gazed about her but stared straight from the mirror at Myrddin. He was startled, half expecting her to see him. But there was no flash of recognition in her eyes.
Simple as was her garment, young as she appeared to be and odd as she looked in the wilderness of this mountain place, yet there was about her an air of authority such as the daughter of a chieftain might have. Myrddin pushed forward on his bench, intent on conning her features, for she interested him strangely, more than any girl or woman he had seen. He wondered who she was and how she had come to be on the mountain. Was she some visitor at the clan house? Yet never did the girls wander far from that haven of safety, not in these days when the land might well hold war bands on the prowl.
It was then that the voice which was so familiar to him but whose source he had never discovered, unless it issued in some manner from the mirror itself, spoke.
“This is Nimue and she is Merlin’s bane, for she is of the Others.”
“What others?” Myrddin was jolted into demanding. The mirror voice still called him by that strange name. He had come to accept it, but to himself he was always Myrddin.
“Those who would not raise man again,” returned the voice flatly. And after a moment’s silence it began anew:
“Listen well. Merlin, for the evil approaches and you must be armed against it. In the ancient days when our people came freely to this world there arose a mighty nation, great beyond the dreams of men living now. That knowledge which was of our gathering we offered freely to your people, those who could open their minds to it. And men prospered. Their daughters wived with the Sky Born. Children born from such unions were mighty heroes and people of Power. Nor did we then realize that within your species lay a flaw.
“But there were others like us who also took ships between the stars. And it was not to their minds that those of your kind should rise to greatness and knowledge. Thus they came secretly into your world and there they found the flaw, that your kind were prone to violence. They then used this flaw to their own purposes. And there followed such wars as your breed now has no knowledge of. For such were fought with lightning drawn from the skies and forces which overturned mountains, making land into sea and sea into land.
“Many of us died in those battles and those we had taught died also. Then the Dark Ones withdrew to the skies once more, exulting that man would not rise now to threaten their own rule, but would remain a brutish thing, unlearned and unlearning. Some of our children survived, and they attempted to keep alive the knowledge. But everything they had depended upon, such machines as you see about you now, had been swept away in the disasters of the earth. Metal could not be fashioned and man once more turned to stone and the bones of his prey for tools and weapons. Those who had begun their lives in great cities ended them in rude caves, with nothing but their hands and such knowledge as they could remember locked within their heads.
“Those of us who would have come again could not, for the lovers of the Dark controlled the roads between the stars. And if we ventured forth we were harried and destroyed. So passed ages beyond counting by your species. To all things comes a time of decay, however, and our enemies began to dwindle, though we, too, had lost very much. But we had not forgotten those of our own left helpless on this world and, gathering all that we had left, we fashioned certain ships which could cross the void. These had to be small and so could not transport us, but they could carry certain elements of life within them. And if any reached its goal, what it carried could start the renewal of our race. We launched these seed ships with hope, for the ships of the Dark Ones had not been seen in our heavens for a long time.