For the first time he thought objectively about the training of the mirror. Much of what he had been told by that bodiless voice he could not use, for the metal wonders of the Sky People could no longer be made on his own world. These required too much in the way of special learning. What he had absorbed was, he guessed, only a very small portion of the knowledge which had once been common to his kind.
He could summon illusions as he had for Vortigen, hold them for a short space. He knew a little of healing, not only through the use of herbs from the fields and woods, but also by the laying on of hands and an ability to “see” the source of others’ ills of mind or body. Thereafter, he might concentrate on rebuilding that which had been injured or harmed through sickness. But such an art required in return the belief of the victim that he could so be healed. And Myrddin doubted whether many now living could retain that belief. It was too close to what men looked down on, naming it sorcery.
He had been given the magic of tongues so that he could listen to the speech of a stranger and, by concentrating on the sounds, sort out in part the thoughts which had given birth to the words. He knew the magic of weightlessness—he had briefly applied it in this very place to the fallen stone—and he would have to draw on it in full if he was going to complete the task set him.
Now, as he wandered among the stones, he evaluated his learning critically. Perhaps he had more than Lugaid, but his knowledge was far less than it might have been had his race not fallen so far back into barbarism. He knew this, and it created a feeling of frustration within him. It was like standing in the door of a hall rich in treasure, knowing that the treasure was freely given to any man who might lay a hand on it, yet not having the power to cross the barrier between himself and the hall.
Yet he drew comfort from the stones, anticipation from the sword he wore with its bark concealment well lashed about it. And he often wondered for whom that weapon of the Sky metal had actually been forged. Had that other been one like himself, the son of no father? For the voice had shown him enough of the wonders of that other age to let him know that the Sky People did not fight so, man against man, face to face. Rather they commanded lightning flash and thunderbolt to slay horribly from a distance. He had shuddered and been vilely ill when the mirror had once reflected a clear picture from the final days when the world itself, so deeply injured by the wrath of being against being, had burst forth with inner flames. Seas boiled, mountains and land rose and fell as Myrddin himself might now idly toss a clod of soil about.
The boy longed to try the power of the sword and the chant, to return to its upright base one of the fallen stones. However, caution held him from such a trial. He did not know whether using his gift could recall Nimue, so he waited with a patience he schooled into himself for the return of the Druid.
It was spring now, though he had lost the strict measurement of days. The grass about the stones took on a new greenness, as fresh blades pushed up to hide the brittle skeletons of those frost had killed. He found small flowers budding, some already in bloom. Birds were in song, and twice he watched quietly as fox and vixen leaped and played among the stones. In himself there was a restlessness he tried to subdue. Twice he dreamed of Nimue, and awoke with a feeling of shame that his own self wished to betray what was the most steadfast in him. And always he watched the faint trace of path down which Lugaid had gone.
He counted off the days by putting small stones in a line from the hut door. And it was when he had put down the fifteenth of those that the Druid returned. He did not ride alone but headed a company of six spearmen of the tribes, who lagged behind as they approached the Place of the Sun, sending glances of uneasiness at the standing stones.
Lugaid gave a grunt of relief as he slid from the back of Ifae pony. He raised a hand in greeting as Myrddin ran toward him, for that moment all boy in his excitement and relief.
“It is well?” he demanded as he neared the Druid. But there was no lighting of the other’s face and Myrddin slowed, looking uncertainly beyond at the men who clustered now together, not dismounting, but rather looking like they would boot their horses into a gallop to be free of this place at the slightest excuse.
“Only in part,” Lugaid returned. “Ambrosius is dead.”
Myrddin came to an abrupt stop. “How did he die—in battle?”
“Not so. He died by the will of that she-wolf from overseas, though her hand reached from the grave to do it. For she and her High King had perished in the flames of their clan tower only one day earlier. The fate she had sent to her enemy still reached him through the hands of one of her maids. The truth was known too late.”
A death in battle, Myrddin thought, like his clan kin, would have been fitting. Such an ending as this was a blackness for Ambrosius, who had deserved a clean severence of his life’s cord with good sword steel.
“Peace on him,” said the boy softly. “He was one whose like we shall not see again.” Something stirred in him which was perhaps a fragment of memory. But it was not yet time for that to ripen into action and it was quickly gone.
“Aye, he was a hero. And as a hero he will lie here!” Lugaid pointed to the Place in the Sun. “Your quest comes oddly to fruiting, Myrddin. Ambrosius’ half brother now leads the war host. He is of the tribes in his ways and so would follow the old pattern. I have spoken to Uther, who men now call Pendragon, and he is willing that the Stone of Kings be brought from the hold of the overseas barbarians back to Britain again, that it may mark the grave of a hero.”
Odd indeed were the quirks of fate. At that moment, great as Myrddin’s desire was to fulfill the order he had been given, he wished as strongly that it might have come about in another way and that death had not been a part of it. He tried to remember Uther and summoned up only a fleeting mind-picture of a tall young man, his red-gold hair on his shoulders after the old fashion, his face ruddy, his mouth curved in laughter. But in that picture dwelt little of the force which he had felt in the dark, clean-shaved, Roman-seeming Ambrosius.
“We ride for the coast with this guard the King has sent. There shall be a ship waiting, and with it a company of warriors. For it may be that we must fight our way to the stone, buying it back in blood,” the Druid was continuing.
Myrddin shook his head slowly. “I would we did not take it by force…”
Yet he knew that in the end they would do whatever they must to get the Stone of Kings.
As they journeyed Lugaid told him more of the new ruler.
Ambrosius had never claimed that title, holding strictly to the one granted by the Emperor overseas, Dux Britanniae. But it seemed with Vortigen dead, his forces crushed or withdrawing sullenly from the field after an overwhelming defeat, Uther was willing to reach his hand for the High King’s crown and no man protested.
“He has the tribes declaring for him,” Lugaid remarked, “more so than they would for one of Roman blood. Yet those who followed his brother will also cleave to him, since he is now the only hope left. The Saxons have suffered such a pounding as they will not forget for a space. Still, I think Pendragon’s men will ride often and swords will not rest long or easily in their sheaths.
“Uther has all the virtues, and also the faults of the tribes. Because he is a mighty fighter, they will follow him as they have always followed an open-handed hero. But such a hold on one’s men is hard to keep. He lacks, I think, the deep-rooted fervor of his brother. Ambrosius knew only one task in all his life, to restore safe rule to Britain, though he was wrong in believing that it would come again from Rome. The day of emperors overseas is done. We fight our own battles and do not expect to see tile Eagles march again along the roads they built.”