Still he dreamed at times, and those dreams were able to nourish his will. He saw the cities which rose in the sky, the men who mastered the ability to fly, fashioned the land itself to suit their will as a potter slaps and pinches clay into a new form. He saw what man could create, and then he awoke to the squalor and the degradation of what man had come to in this age.
He had wisdom to offer, but who would accept his counseling? Arthur—when it suited his own plans. Others—a few who came to him for healing. But the majority listened to the priests from overseas, looking on everything that was not favored by their preaching as the outpouring of evil. How and why had he come to this low ebb?
He stood apart now as if encased in uncracking ice. He could feel compassion, but he was more kin to the beasts of the fields and the forests than to man. And always the loneliness gnawed him.
His very appearance set him apart, for it seemed that he did not age greatly now that he had reached man’s estate. He prudently used the arts of herbs to alter his face and hair, bringing about the effects of encroaching years; otherwise his continued youth would also awake hostility in men who feared most of all the failing of their own powers, the approach of age which meant death in the end.
Cold and dark—
Suddenly Merlin shook his head, stood straighter. He was letting his own uncertainties defeat him. Arthur was firmly on the throne of Britain. The King had forged that peace with the sword Merlin had put in his hand. No man could seize victory unless he had first tasted defeat. This was the hour at last, the hour toward which all his own life had been directed!
He looked about him with renewed vigor like one awakening from a dark dream. The stones stood tall and strong here, ancient as their setting had been. What had the mirror ever set in his mind—the Power that was, is and will be! And the “will be” lay before. He would bring Arthur here in spite of all the priests from overseas, take him on to the mirror. Why had he allowed shadows to lie heavy in his own mind, whisper dispiriting thoughts in his ears? He was Merlin of the Mirror, perhaps the last man of this world to hold so much of the old knowledge! He had wasted time too long. Now that Arthur did not need to hunt the invaders from his land he would be ripe and ready for the task he had been destined for, just as Merlin had been destined in turn.
It seemed to him as he threw aside that morbidity of mind that the stones blazed royally under the sun, with a flare like that of torches. They stood for torches in a manner, emblems of forgotten light in a dark world. He held his head high, straightened his shoulders.
Why had he allowed the cloak of doubt and a premise of defeat to rest on him lately? It was as if men’s talk of magic indeed held a core of truth and he had been firmly encircled by some spell, just as he had formerly been removed from the world by the action of the mirror to preserve his life. Flooding through him now was a realization of Power almost as strong as the day he had raised the King Stone from its bed of earth on the Western Isle.
Yet he also felt a reluctance to leave, to start back to the High King’s fortress-palace. These stones were closer to him in spirit than any man living. And he thought with deep regret of how he had longed for Arthur’s birth that there might be one other to share the alienation he always felt, most strongly when he was among a throng of men.
He whistled and the horse, which had strayed a little, grazing on the ragged grass about the standing stones, nickered an answer, trotted to him and butted its head against Merlin’s chest while he fondled its ears, the stand of mane between. It was one of the famous black mounts, larger and sturdier than the hill ponies Merlin had known years earlier, and more docile, lacking those quirks of independence which sometimes moved the ponies to resent the control of any rider.
After he swung up into the saddle Merlin still lingered to look on the stones wistfully. He could see the barrow they had raised over Ambrosius, that dark, forceful man who had endeavored so hard to bring back the past because only in its ways could he see any security.
Uther did not lie here. The foreign priests had claimed his body, set it under the floor of one of their rough-walled churches which had been erected on the site of a Roman temple, the very stones of that temple riven and reset to the service of this new god.
Merlin could see also the barrow they had invaded to bring forth the sword. Who had lain there? One of the true Sky Men who had come to death so far from his home? Or one like himself, a son of a mixed union? Merlin would never know, but now he found his hand rising in a warrior’s salute, not only to the man called the Last of the Romans, but also to that unknown one of a far earlier age.
As he rode out of the Place of the Sun he buttressed his own resolve. He would appeal to Arthur, take him to the mirror. Arthur was far from a stupid man; he could tell the difference between ancient knowledge and that which ignorant men of this age termed magic,
Also it was time, surely it was time that Merlin put the King Stone to its intended use. There was a certain object in the cave of the mirror. That must be brought forth, placed under the stone meant from the first to be its guardian, and then—then the summons would go forth!
Ships from the stars, ships which themselves were older than man could reckon, would come in answer. Once more men would rise to conquer sky, earth and sea! The glory of that belief exalted him, gave warmth to melt quickly the ice encasing his hopes. Man stood on the first step of a new and glorious age.
So was he borne up by his thoughts during the long journey back to Camelot, and his night dreams were the brightest he had ever had. Arthur and the nun-or—the signal and the stone—Days later Merlin rode up the rise of the ring-and-ditch fortress which Arthur had held and reworked into the most formidable hold in all of Britain. The guards knew turn well enough so that there was no challenge at the inner gates. And he paused only to change his travel-stained robe for one more in keeping with the splendor of the court before he sought out the King.
Arthur was inclined to be expansive. “Hail, Merlin.” He beckoned across the center of the board which was one of Merlin’s own ideas, a circular dining place where no quick-tempered chief or petty king could claim that he was slighted by being placed below another with a lesser claim for notice. Being round, none could say that his felloW was more advantageously placed than he.
“Hail, Lord King.” Merlin was quick to notice a new face among the familiar ones. Cei was no longer at Arthur’s right hand, though the foster brother, for all his uncertain temper, had been the King’s comrade from the beginning. No, here was a new youth, hardly more than a boy.
Looking on the dark face of that stranger, Merlin suppressed a sudden shiver. If Arthur had nothing in his features of the presence of the Blood, this youth showed it more plainly than Merlin had yet seen it, except in his own mirrored face.
Familiar was that look, yet also strange. For the eyes which peered from under the veiling lids were hard, unreadable. Those sullen and watchful eyes were old beyond the apparent years of the boy’s body; they more than hinted at some vengeance…
Merlin took his imagination firmly to task. He should be glad at this moment that one of the Old Race was here. Yet there was nothing in the youth to which he could warm.
“You are in time.” Arthur gestured and his own cupbearer hastened to produce another cup of hammered silver, fill it with the wine from overseas and hand it respectfully to Merlin. “You are in time, bard, to drink to the health of one of the Pendragon blood new come into our service.” He nodded to the youth. “This is Modred, who is son to the Lady Morgause, and so my own nephew.”
Merlin’s hand closed tightly about the goblet. He did not even need that sly, darting look from the boy’s eyes, a look which measured him in a way alerting him to danger, to know the truth.