The boy closed a tight grip on the hilt of the Sky Sword. Merlin saw the rippling of muscles as his tunic tightened on shoulder and arm with the effort he put forth. His face was utterly serious. If no one else in this throng was wholly sure, Arthur was.
There came a protesting, grating sound. Slowly the sword loosened, came forth from the slit in which it had been set. Merlin heard the indrawn breaths, the gasps from those who watched. They had all tried—they knew this deed to be impossible—yet before their eyes Arthur was accomplishing that impossible feat.
He gave a last tug. The hilt fitted his hand as it never had Merlin’s narrower, long-fingered one. The blade was a fire as he gave a joyous laugh and swung it up through the air.
Merlin did not shout, but his words carried through all that company as if he had roared them forth full-lunged.
“Hail, Arthur Pendragon, High King of Britain, he who was, is and shall be!”
Awe conquered that moment. He saw even Lot’s drawn sword give a warrior’s salute to the chief. And Merlin felt the tension begin to ease out of him.
Then he chanced to glance at the gathering of women who stood a little apart. Queens and ladies had stood there watching, perhaps each hoping in her heart that the magic of this deed would favor her lord and that she might reign with him. But among them …
Merlin’s hands, hanging by his sides, clenched into fists, though he might have guessed she would be here, and in some trappings of state this time, no rough green square belted about her now. No, she was tall for a woman, and slender, with a grace which made most of her companions seem like women who labored in the fields. Her robe was green, right enough, but it was richly worked in fantastic patterns, and the thread of that working was silver, just as there was a silver circlet about her dark head, one which bore a green stone to rest in the middle of her forehead.
Her eyes met his and he saw a small, secret smile form on her lips. Straightaway all his feeling of accomplishment was threatened, he was on the defensive. If he only knew what powers she could summon! The mirror had said that in using her energy to imprison Merlin in the cave she had nearly exhausted what force she could summon. However, just as that field had waned over the years, could Nimue not in turn have regained at least partial command over what she had lost?
The lords of the company were coming to Arthur, to swear their faith to him. Merlin saw Ector, as always a little apart. Two strides closed the distance between them.
“Ector,” Merlin said in a voice masked by the clamor of those greeting Arthur, “who is that woman, she who is turning away now?”
He must know what standing Nimue had at court, how much opposition she might be able to summon, either openly or more subtly.
“They call her the Lady of the Lake. For she has ^a hold of her own, one people say was once a temple to some strange goddess who ruled springs and rivers. But she has great power of healing and has dwelt in the court lately tending Uther until his death. It is she who bore away Morgause, and perhaps keeps her in that tower which is her own. Men credit her with the old learning. Yet if she is of the kin, never has she moved to claim it with such as my own clan.”
“No!” Merlin exploded. “She is of the Dark Ones, Ector, and her true name is Nimue. It was by her will that I have lain in prison. We must set watch on her, for she will mean Arthur no good will, mainly because he is what he
“’But they were too late, for, when Ector had summoned two of his trusted valley men to set watch upon the Lady, they found her gone, no one knowing where. And Merlin was left with a shadow of fear of what might come to color his days and disturb his nights.
11.
Merlin stood once more within the Place of the Sun. Lugaid’s hut was just a tumble which could no longer be discerned as any habitation of man. He wondered, not for the first time, where the Druid had gone—if he was not indeed dead. He shivered as if some foot had pressed on his own grave barrow, and the loneliness which always lay in wait beyond the circle of his will stirred like some beast crouching ready to attack. Ector—Ector had gone down beneath a Saxon ax, two or three battles ago.
Time had become not a matter of the counting of seasons but rather of battles, for Arthur was the war leader whom they had long sought. He had in him more skill, even in his youth, than Uther had ever summoned for ridding Britain of the invaders; he had more flexibility than Roman-trained Ambrosius had been able to employ in his handling of the jealous, quick-to-anger clansmen.
His answer to the inroads of the Winged Hats had been cavalry—the Black Horsemen of the borders. Horses of the Friesian breed, larger and heavier than the native ponies, which had been auctioned off nearly a generation earlier when the cavalry left the wall, mated to the also dark-coated Fell Ponies of the north, producing a wiry and strong mount, able to carry a man wearing chain armor. The horses themselves also wore protection of stiffened leather oversewn with metal links.
The Saxons, in spite of their reverence for white horses, which they sacrificed to Wotan on suitable occasions, were not the horsemen most tribesmen were. And a quick cavalry charge, tearing into massed footmen, became Arthur’s way. Ambrosius had done well in his time, holding back the invaders, pushing out those Vortigen had welcomed as a buffer against Scotti and the Picts; Uther had held precariously to the gains his brother had made. But Arthur was ever pushing at the Saxons, forcing them back and out.
More and more of them had taken to their dragon-prowed boats with their women and children, their possessions; they headed overseas, away from Britain where the continual harassment of Arthur’s men kept them living with spear and ax to hand, with no surety at the rising of each day’s sun that they would be alive to see its setting.
In so much had Arthur won.
Merlin dismounted by the King Stone, his shoulders a little bent under his white robe.
He rested both palms on the surface of the block. How young, how filled with excitement and triumph he had been on the day it was set herel He had won so easily what he had given his life to obtain. A stone ferried back across the sea, planted in the earth of Britain—an act too small to be deemed a victory.
Now he sighed wearily. He had made Arthur king, yes. But the Arthur who now sat on the throne was not the king of his dreams, nor his labors. He listened to Merlin with courtesy. Sometimes—only sometimes—would he listen with agreement. The priests of the Christ were also near at hand. And they turned on Merlin when they could with a gabble of sorcery, raking up once more the old tale that he was demon-sired.
It seemed to him now that there was always a subtle flaw in all he planned. Only three things had he done without mistake: brought this stone back to its rightful place where it could serve as part of a future beacon, freed the Sky Sword and put it in Arthur’s hand and raised Arthur himself to the throne.
But Arthur did not have the learning which the future of the Sky People depended on. His character had been formed by others. And Merlin had long since learned that Nimue had her own ways of countering all he would do.
There was the matter of the Queen. Merlin’s mouth twisted in a grimace as if a mortal pain had struck him with that thought. A king’s daughter, of such beauty as made men’s breath catch in their throats when they first looked on her—outwardly a worthy mate for Arthur. Inwardly—what? A toy, a doll, a woman so obsessed with her own kind of power, of the body alone, that her eyes were never still when she was in company; rather they flitted here and there seeking out each man to see if he was smitten suitably by her grace of face and form. That was Guenevere.
And Merlin scented suspiciously something about her that was of Nimue, though he had never seen the Lady of the Lake since she had turned smiling from Arthur’s triumph with the sword. So long ago …
Merlin rubbed his hand across his forehead. He felt a great weariness of spirit, together with a foreboding he could not understand. Twice he had made the pilgrimage back to the cave, but the mirror was silent; he had not tried to break its silence, drawing instead what force lay within himself to carry on.