Merlin, Page 2

  “To know things,” I answered, “to know about everything.”

  “And once you knew about everything, what would you do?”

  “I would be a king and tell everyone.”

  King, yes; it was in my mind even then that I would be a king. I do not think anyone had ever mentioned it to me before that time, but already I sensed the shape my early life would take.

  I can still hear Blaise’s reply as clearly as if he were speaking to me now: “It is a great thing to be a king, Hawk. A very great thing, indeed. But there is authority of a kind even kings must bend to. Discover this and whether you wear a torc of gold or beggar’s rags, your name will burn forever in men’s minds.”

  Of course, I understood nothing of what he told me then, but I remembered.

  So it was that the subject of age was still quite fresh in my mind when, the very next day, Grandfather Elphin arrived on one of his frequent visits. The travelers were still climbing down from their saddles and calling their greetings as I marched up to the Chief Druid, who, as always, had accompanied Lord Elphin. I tugged on his robe and demanded, “Tell me how old you are, Hafgan.”

  “How old do you think me, Myrddin Bach?” I can see his smoke-grey eyes twinkling with joy, although he rarely smiled.

  “Old as the oak on Shrine Hill,” I declared importantly.

  He laughed then, and others stopped talking to look at us. He took me by the hand, and we walked a little apart. “No,” he explained, “I am not as old as that. But in the measure of men, I am old. Still, what is that to you?—You who will live to be as old as any oak in the Island of the Mighty, if not far older.” He gripped my hand tightly. “To you is given much,” he said seriously, “and, as Dafyd tells me from his book, much will be required.”

  “Will I really be old as any oak?”

  Hafgan lifted his shoulders and shook his head. “Who can say, little one?”

  It is much to Hafgan’s credit that although he knew who I was, he never burdened me with that knowledge, or the expectations that surely went with it. No doubt, he had had ample experience with one like me before: I imagine my father had taught him much about nurturing a prodigy. Oh, Hafgan, if you could see me now!

  After that visit, although I do not recall it as special in any way, I began to travel further from home—at least, I began to visit the Summerlands regularly, and my view of the world enlarged accordingly. We called them the Summerlands because that is what my father, Taliesin, had called the land Avallach had given our people.

  Grandfather Elphin and Grandmother Rhonwyn were always happy to see me and devoted themselves to spoiling me on my visits, undoing months of my mother’s hard work. Charis never complained, never hinted at what she thought of their indulgence, but let them have their way with me. This eventually included weapons lessons undertaken by Lord Elphin’s battlechief, a crag of a man named Cuall, who strove with me and some of the younger boys, although he had a warband to look after as well.

  Cuall it was who made my first sword out of ashwood; my first spear also. The sword was thin and light and no longer than my arm, but to me it was a blade invincible. With that wooden weapon he taught me thrust and counter-thrust, and the quick, backhanded chop; and with the spear, to throw accurately with either hand off either foot. He taught me how to sit on a horse and guide it with my knees, and how, when need arose, to use the hapless beast as a shield.

  In my sixth year I spent all summer with Grandfather Elphin—Hafgan and Cuall all but fighting over me. Between them, I saw little of anyone else all summer. My mother came and stayed for a few days, and at first I was disappointed to see her, thinking that she would take me home again. But she just wanted to see how I fared.

  Once satisfied that it was right and necessary—as both Hafgan and Cuall insisted—she returned to Ynys Avallach and I stayed at Caer Cam. This began a pattern that was to continue for several years—winter at Ynys Avallach with Dafyd and Blaise, and summer at Caer Cam with Elphin and Cuall.

  Lord Elphin’s caer was a world apart from Avallach’s palace: one bespoke the cool heights of intellectual refinement and Otherworldly grace, the other the earthy reality of stone and sweat and steel. “Brains and blood,” Cuall aptly put it one day.

  “Lord?”

  “Brains and blood, boy,” he repeated; “that’s what you have, and what every warrior needs.”

  “Will I be a warrior?”

  “If I can do anything about it, you will right enough,” he said, resting his thick forearms on the pommel of his long sword. “Och, but you have Lleu’s own way about you: quick as water, and light of foot as a cat; already you tax my craft. All you want is muscle on those bones of yours, lad, and from the look of you that will come in time.”

  I was pleased with his pronouncement, and knew he was right. I was much quicker than the other boys; I could make good account of myself with boys twice my age, and fend off any two my own size. The ease with which my body accommodated whatever I asked of it seemed to some uncanny, but to me only natural. That everyone could not meld and move mind and body so skillfully was something new to me. And though it shames me to admit it, I did wear my prowess with insufferable conceit.

  Humility, if it comes at all, most always comes too late.

  * * *

  So, I learned two things early: I would live long, and I would be a warrior-king. The third thing, Blaise’s Mantle of Authority, would be discovered by me or it would not; I saw no reason to strive after it, so thought no more about it.

  But I badly wanted to be a warrior. Had I possessed even the tiniest suspicion of how heavily this aspiration weighed on my mother, I might have reined in my enthusiasm somewhat, at least in her presence. I was blind and silly with it, though, and talked almost of nothing else.

  No one labored harder, or enjoyed his labors more, than I. First awake among the boys in the boys’ house, and out on the yard before sunrise for sword practice, or riding, or throwing, or shieldwork, or wrestling…I embraced it all with the ardor of a zealot. And the summer passed in a white-hot blaze of youthful passion; I prayed that it would last forever.

  Nevertheless, the summer ended, and I returned to Ynys Avallach with Blaise and an escort of warriors. I remember riding through bright autumn days, passing fields ripening to harvest and small, prosperous settlements where we were greeted warmly and fed.

  My mother was overjoyed to see me home at last, but I sensed a sadness in her too. And I noticed that her eyes followed my every move and lingered on my face. Had I changed somehow in those few months at Caer Cam?

  “You are growing so fast, my little Hawk,” she told me. “Soon you will fly this nest.”

  “I will never leave here. Where would I go?” I asked, genuinely puzzled. The thought of leaving had never occurred to me.

  Charis shrugged lightly. “Oh, you will find a place somewhere and make it your own. You must, you see, if you are to be the Lord of Summer.”

  So that was on her mind. “Is it not a real place, Mother?”

  She smiled a little sadly and shook her head. “No—that is, not yet. It is up to you, my soul, to create the Kingdom of Summer.”

  “I thought the Summerlands—”

  “No,” she shook her head again, but the sadness had passed and I saw the light of the vision come up in her eyes. “The Summerlands are not the Kingdom, though your father may have intended them to be. The Kingdom of Summer is wherever the Summer Lord resides. It only waits for you to claim it, Hawk.”

  We talked about the Kingdom’ of Summer then, but our talk was different now. No longer was the Kingdom a story such as a mother might tell a child; it had changed. From that time I began to think of it as a realm that did exist in some way and only waited to be called into being. And for the first time I understood that my destiny, like my father’s, was woven thread and strand into his vision of that golden land.

  That autumn I resumed my studies with Dafyd, the priest at the shrine. I read from his holy texts, badly pat
ched and faded as they were, and we discussed what I read. At the same time, I continued my lessons with Blaise who instructed me in the druid arts. I could not imagine giving up either endeavor and in the following years gave myself mind and soul to my study, as I gave body and heart to my weapons each summer at Caer Cam.

  I confess it was not easy; I often felt pulled in all directions despite my various tutors’ attempts to ensure that I should not. Never did a boy have more caring teachers. Still, it is inevitable, I suppose, when someone desires so much so badly. My teachers were aware of my discomfort and felt it themselves.

  “You need not drive yourself so hard, Myrddin,” Blaise told me one drizzly, miserable winter evening as I sat struggling with a long recitation entitled “The Battle of the Trees.” “There are other things than being a bard, you know. Look around you—not everyone is.”

  “My father, Taliesin, was a bard. Hafgan says he was the greatest bard who ever lived.”

  “So he believes.”

  “You do not believe it?”

  He laughed. “Who could disagree with the Chief Druid?”

  “You have not answered the question, Blaise.”

  “Very well…” He paused and reflected long before answering. “Yes, your father was the greatest bard among us; and more, he was my brother and friend. But,” he held up a cautionary finger, “Taliesin was…” Again a long pause, and a slight lifting of the shoulders as he stepped away from saying what was in his mind. “But it is not everyone who can be what he was, or do the things that he did.”

  “I will be a bard. I will work harder, Blaise. I promise.”

  He shook his head and sighed. “It is not a question of working harder, Hawk.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I whined. “Just tell me.”

  His dark eyes were soft with sympathy; he was trying to help me in the best way he knew. “Your gifts are different, Merlin. You cannot be your father.”

  If they did not act in me at that moment, his words would come back to me many times.

  “I will be a bard, Blaise.”

  * * *

  I am Merlin, and I am immortal. A quirk of birth? A gift from my mother? The legacy of my father? I do not know how it is, but I know that it is true. Neither do I know the source of the words that fill my head and fall from my lips like firedrops onto the tinder of men’s hearts.

  The words, the images: what is, what was, and will be…I have but to look. A bowl of black oak water, the glowing embers of a fire, smoke, clouds, the faces of men themselves—I have but to look and the mists grow thin and I peer a little way along the scattered paths of time.

  Was there ever a time such as this?

  Never! And that is both the glory and the terror of it. If men knew what it was that loomed before them, within reach of even the lowest—they would quail, they would faint, they would cover their heads and stop their mouths with their cloaks for screaming. It is their blessing and their curse that they do not know. But I know; I, Merlin, have always known.

  2

  “The boy has the eyes of a preying bird,” Maximus said, resting his hand on my head and gazing down into my face. He should know; his own eyes had something of the predator as well. “I do not believe I have ever seen eyes of such color in a man before—like yellow gold.” His smile was dagger-sharp. “Tell me, Merlinus, what do you see with those golden eyes of yours?”

  An odd question to ask a child of seven. But an image formed itself in my mind:

  A sword—not the short, broad gladius of the legionary, but the long, tapering length of singing lightning of the Celt. The hilt was handsome bronze wrapped in braided silver with a great amethyst of imperial purple in the pommel. The jewel was engraved with the Eagle of the Legion: fierce and proud, catching sunlight in its dark heart, and smoldering with a deep and steady fire.

  “I see a sword,” I said. “The hilt is silver and bears a purple gem carved like an eagle. It is an emperor’s sword.”

  Both Maximus and Lord Elphin—my father’s father, who stood beside me—looked on me with wonder, as though I had spoken a prophecy great and terrible in its mystery. I merely told them what I saw.

  Magnus Maximus, Commander of the Legions of Britain, gazed thoughtfully at me. “What else do you see, lad?”

  I closed my eyes. “I see a ring of kings; they are standing like stones in a stone circle. A woman kneels in their midst, and she holds the Sword of Britain in her hands. She is speaking, but no one hears her. No one listens. I see the blade rusting and forgotten.”

  Although Romans were always keen for an omen, I do not think he expected such an answer from me. He stared for a moment; I felt his fingers go slack in my hair, and then he turned away abruptly. “King Elphin, you look fit as ever! This soft land has not softened you, I see.” He and my grandfather walked off, arms linked: two old friends met and recognized as equals.

  * * *

  We were there at Caer Cam the morning he arrived. I was training the pony Elphin had given me, desperate to break the wily creature to the halter so I could ride it home in a few days’ time. The little black-and-white animal seemed more goat than horse, and what had begun as a simple trial with a braided rope harness soon grew to an all-out war of wills, with mine suffering the worst of it.

  The sun was lowering and the evening mist rising in the valley. Wood pigeons were winging to their nests, and swallows swooped and dived through the still, light-filled air. Then I heard it—a sound to make me stop rock-still and listen: a rhythmic drumming in the earth, a deep, resonant rumble rolling over the land.

  Cuall, my grandfather’s battlechief, was watching me and became concerned. “What is it, Myrddin Bach? What is wrong?” Myrddin Bach, he called me: Little Hawk.

  I did not answer, but turned my face toward the east and, dropping the braided length of leather, ran to the ramparts, calling as I ran, “Hurry! Hurry! He is coming!”

  If I had been asked who was coming, I could not have made an answer. But the instant I peered between the sharpened stakes I knew that someone very important would soon arrive, for in the distance, as we looked down along the valley, we could see the long, snaking double line of a column of men moving northwest. The rumble I had heard was the booming cadence of their marching drums and the steady plod of their feet on the old hard track.

  I looked and saw the failing sunlight bright on their shields and on the eagle standards going before them. Dust trailed into the dusky sky at the rear of the column where the supply wagons came trundling on. There must have been a thousand men or more moving in those two long lines. Cuall took one look and sent one of the warband racing for Lord Elphin.

  “It is Macsen,” confirmed Elphin when he arrived.

  “Thought as much,” replied Cuall cryptically.

  “It has been a long time,” said my grandfather. “We must make ready to welcome him.”

  “You think he will turn aside?”

  “Of course. It will soon be dark, and he will need a place to sleep. I will send an escort to bring him.”

  “I will see to it, lord,” offered Cuall, and he strode away across the caer. Grandfather and I returned to the survey of the valley road.

  “Is he a king?” I asked, though I knew he must be, for I had never known anyone to travel with such an enormous warband.

  “A king? No, Myrddin Bach, he is Dux Britanniarum and answers only to Imperator Gratian himself.”

  I searched my scant Latin…dux…“Duke?”

  “Like a battlechief,” Elphin explained, “but far greater, he commands all Roman forces in the Island of the Mighty. Some say he will be imperator himself one day, although from what I have seen of emperors, a dux with a cohort at his back wields more power where it counts.”

  Not long after Cuall and ten of Elphin’s warband rode out, a party of about thirty men returned. The strangers were strange indeed to my eyes: big, thick-limbed men in hardened leather or metal breastplates, carrying short bulky swords and ugly iron-tipped jav
elins, their legs wrapped in red wool which was tied to mid-thigh by the straps of their heavy hobnailed sandals.

  The riders pounded up the twisting path to the gates of the caer, and I ran around the ramparts to meet them. The timber gates swung open, and the iron-shod horses galloped into the caer. Between two standard-bearers rode Maximus, his handsome red cloak stained and dusty, his sun-darkened face brown as walnut, a short fringe of a black beard on his chin.

  He reined the horse to a halt and dismounted as Elphin came to greet him. They embraced like friends long absent from one another, and I realized that my grandfather was a man of some renown. Seeing him next to the powerful stranger my heart soared. He was no longer my grandfather but a king in his own right.

  As other horsemen entered the caer Elphin turned to me and beckoned me to him. I stood at stiff attention while the Duke of Britain inspected me closely, his sharp, black eyes probing as spearpoints. “Hail, Merlinus,” he said in a voice husky with fatigue and road dust, “I greet you in the name of our Mother, Rome.”

  Then Maximus took my hand in his, and when he withdrew it I saw a gold victory coin shining there.

  That was my first introduction to Magnus Maximus, Dux Britanniarum. And it was before him then and there that I spoke my first prophecy.

  There was feasting that night. After all, it is not every day that the Duke of Britain visits. The drinking horns circled the hall, and I was dizzy trying to keep them filled. Through a timber hall dark with the smoke of roasting meat and loud with the chatter of warriors and soldiers regaling one another with lies of their exploits on the twin fields of bed and battle, I wandered, a jar of mead in my hands to refill the empty horns, cups, and bowls. I thought myself most fortunate to be included in a warrior’s feast—even if only as a serving boy.

  Later, when the torches and tallow lamps burned low, Hafgan, Chief Bard to my grandfather, brought out his harp and told the tale of the Three Disastrous Plagues. This brought forth great gales of laughter. And I laughed with the rest, happy to be included with the men on this auspicious night, and not sent down to the boys’ house with the others.