Either way he was disturbed. Though he might deal with certainty and wisdom with everything else in this world, yet this woman could stir his emotions and make him as awkward as any untried youth. It was not the strength she might summon and control, as he summoned and controlled forces, which made him uneasy. No, it was that subtler, other influence which reached the man in him no matter how he tried to control such longings. He knew they endangered all he could command, and that he would be far less than he now was if he were to yield to them.
For a long moment after the disappearance of the illusion Merlin stood waiting where he was, half expecting it to form again, but it did not. Now, feeling like a hunted fugitive, he splashed on, setting the best pace he could out of that evil wood.
Did Nimue know from a distance what damage he had wrought in her tower? He was willing to attribute all kinds of knowledge to her. And had his destruction of the crown defeated her future plans in anyway? He knew so little and needed to know so much!
Breathing faster but turning his head from side to side, gripping the wand so he would feel the first stirring it might give, he pushed on steadily. It seemed to him that gloom gathered under the trees on either side of the stream, folding in thicker, almost like the curtain he had dispensed at the tower. And behind that—what prowled behind? He closed the door of his imagination, refused to allow such speculation. To look for that kind of attack was often to open a way for it.
No birds twittered in this woods now. Merlin could no longer pick up the smallest hint of any animal life-force. When no other manifestation rose to confront or threaten him, he began to believe that Nimue’s image had been random only, set up in simple expectation that some day he might venture here, and was not keyed to this one exploit of his.
The moon necklace she had worn—that he knew. Not from any teaching of the mirror, rather from the legends of his mother’s people. It was the sign of one of the three who were chosen in the old days to serve the Earth Mother: Maid there always was, with the new moon for her ranking. Mother, with the full moon. Old woman with her waning orb. Why had Nimue chosen such an archaic symbol? This countryside was sparsely settled and he knew that the people here might well cling to the old ways. It could be that many, perhaps the women chiefly, secretly worshiped the Old Goddess. At that thought a small unexplainable shiver ran down his spine. This matched that faint scent of evil he had detected in the herb chamber, a hint of something that was a warning, but so veiled a one he could not understand it.
Merlin breathed deeply with relief as he came at last out from under the daunting canopy of the trees, but the sun would not be with him much longer. This time he got well away from the fringe of the woods before he sat down, his damp breeches and boots clammy on his body, to eat and drink.
Tonight there would be a full moon, ripe and yellowwhite in the sky. Merlin licked crumbs from his lips. He was very tired; the outflow of energy which had obeyed his will to destroy Nimue’s crown had closed down on him. To go on when he felt so weak and tired was folly. Still, even in this open, he was not easy of mind. He sat cross-legged, his wand lying on his knees, and realized he was listening, listening with a fervor he could not understand. Listening for what? Who?
Twilight faded and still he sat there, every sense alert.
He often stared at the black blot of the woods, but it was not from there that this feeling of dark awareness came. He also watched the slopes of open land around him. He was sure they had once been cleared by the hands of men and then abandoned to the wilds, so that shrubs and bushes had begun to reclaim the forest’s territory.
Merlin heard the bark of a fox, the rustle of some flying thing swooping low near him, perhaps to make a hunting kill. The night was alive again, but that life was normal to it. Why then did he sit waiting?
Now and then he glanced down at the wand. Its white length was barely discernible, and the gem and metal on its point did not gleam. He began to believe that whatever threatened was not a weapon of Nimue’s armory, at least no off-world one. There were times when he tried to compose himself to sleep, (he light drowse he had known the night before, but that inner sentinel his mind had set refused to be ignored.
The moon rose, as whole as a piece of Roman gold tossed into the sky to overawe the stars with its light. Then, very far away, there began a disturbance which Merlin could not hear; he could only feel it like a vibration through earth and air picked up by his inner sense, not any outer one. It grew stronger until at last he heard as well as felt it.
There was a chanting which raised the hairs along his neck, made him breathe more quickly, his heart beat faster. Though he dealt with words of Power and knew what could channel through them, still this was wholly alien to his own forces. There was something utterly strange and wild in that wail in which he could not yet distinguish any words. Old, old, said his own knowledge, back, far back. This was nothing of the Star People, but entirely of a young earth before the coming of their ships.
The chanting broke into a series of shrill yelps. At last Merlin knew.
There was a hunt up under the moon, and he was the quarry. The goddess whose symbol Nimue’s illusion had worn also had her dark side. To that portion of her character men had shed blood—the blood of their own kind. She had two faces, that goddess, as well as three ages, and the second face was turned to the outer Darkness, which men had always feared and tried to propitiate.
The Great Mother—and the Great Destroyer—of mankind!
Yet yielding to atavistic fear meant utter defeat. Merlin swallowed twice, working to calm the beating of his heart, to marshal what he knew, the forces he himself controlled. There must be an answer—and that was not to run. For if he gave way to that…
He shook his head. There was an answer! It lingered in the far part of his mind, overlaid by all the mirror had taught him. This was not of the mirror, however, it was of his own world alone.
The Great Mother and her priestesses who watered the earth with the blood of men—
The Great Mother and—
From that far-hidden place in his memory Merlin dragged what Lugaid had once told him very long ago. The Mother had her rival. In latter years that rival became her mate: the Homed God, to whom hunters paid tribute that they might ever find the herds they preyed on. The Homed God … and how greatly did these priestesses hold him in awe?
There was little time for self-questioning. He could either run, which his nature forbade and which he knew would condemn him anyway, or he could stand. In his standing, he would have to-hold the strongest illusion he had tried for years. It had to be strong, for the power of the Mother was not like any force he had faced before.
Merlin rose to his feet. He deliberately shut out as best he could the screams of the huntresses. He steadied his mind, concentrating, hoping with every breath he drew that his command over his own powers had not been too devastated by what he had wrought at the keep in the lake. There was no mirror fronting him now in which he could check the illusion. He could only hold the picture in his mind.
They were close enough now so he could see their whites bodies darting in and out among the scrub bushes, the tossing of their hair. Like Nimue, they wore no clothing, but had necklaces of acorns. And the pack was of all girls scarcely into puberty, matrons with sagging breasts which had nursed children, hags so old their skin was seamed leather under the moon.
As they drew in on him, now, their faces showing only the frenzy which was the dark aspect of their goddess, their clamor stilled. There was an avid blood lust in their eyes, just so had they once gathered to slay the Winter King. Merlin must not allow himself to think of anything but the protection he had woven for himself.