"Go!" Cei mouths, and angrily motions for him to depart.
Arthor bolts from the pavilion. He would give Cei his own sword, but Kyner has not yet returned it to him. It will be returned in time, he knows—when next Kyner needs him in battle. For now, he must find another weapon.
But where? he asks himself, scanning the wide fields that slope and roll on all sides. Everywhere, the Celtic clans and British families mingle in summer activities: feasting, dancing, and competing. Who among them would have a sword for Cei?
He must go to Cold Kitchen and find the lane of armorers and weapon-makers. For payment, he will offer his word as Chief Kyner's ward, and if that is not sufficient, he will offer his palfrey.
That decided, he runs to the sprawling grove of elms at a rill under a mossy bluff, where the horses are stabled. The draft horses of the caravan wagons are still being unbridled and led to water. His palfrey stands at the rill with the other warriors' steeds, its saddle still on. Even his shield has not yet been removed from the saddle peg.
Out of a haze of horseflies, he rides from under the giant elms to the road that leads to Cold Kitchen. Dust from passing wagons glistens in the heat, and though he wants to gallop, he knows his horse is tired and does not hurry it. There is much to ponder. Merlin is the gleeman, and he stands this minute in the same tent with Morgeu the Fey, who ensorcelled Arthor with his love for Melania. Why?
He recalls the wounded elf-prince who returned the shield with the icon of the Virgin telling him that all would come clear in time. Portent rises with the dust. Thinking of the knowing way that the wizard and the sorceress looked at him, he feels pale and smoky, as if with a sudden turn of wind he might blow away.
At Cold Kitchen, he moves slowly among the merchants' stalls, where yet more goods are being packed and loaded for the climb to Camelot. The alley of armorers is empty. A portly woman in a flour-dusted apron steps from the adjacent lane of bakeries to inform him that the armorers and swordmakers have gone to Mons Caliburnus this afternoon to display their wares before the visitors who gather to gawk at Excalibur.
Arthor feels he must hurry now. Surely, the conference in the pavilion is concluded, and Cei waits impatiently for his sword. A smile flickers over his face as he rides fast out of the hamlet and descends past staunch maples into the cooler emerald light of the river gorge. In times past, he would have let Cei muddle about for his own sword. No warrior in his right mind would loan Cei theirs, knowing what a brutish swordsman he is. By the time he found one, the day's contests would be over, and he would spend the night lamenting about the victories deprived him. At least now, if Arthor hurries, Cei will win or lose by his own merit, and the evening feast will be more pleasant for all.
Invisible chains of birdsong link the branches of the overarching trees that flank the road to the river. At the approaching thunder of hooves, rabbits startle from bushes in the roadside ditch and jitter across his path. The algal scent of the river's dark measure sweeps over him with a deeper coolness, and the air hums with the current of water-rubbed rocks.
He slows to pass through a line of cross-bearing pilgrims in wet loincloths, straggly hair, and beards heavy and still dripping from their baptisms in the Amnis. With hands to their hearts, they salute him, fellow travelers along the spirit trail.
The river swings into view at a bend of mulberry trees and lime shrubs, presenting its murky burden of tree litter, shadows, and sliding light. Yarrow-wild banks line the road to the gravel fan, where a score of horses stand tethered to a broken-down sycamore or wander grazing through a field of ryegrass and cowslip.
He dismounts and ties the palfrey's reins to a lime shrub and runs uphill past more dense shrubs to where saffron banners wag in the river breeze. There, a small but eager crowd has gathered around a long table, upon which are displayed thirty or more swords.
Arthor shoulders among the men viewing the swords, selects a hefty weapon that has the sturdy aspect he knows Cei favors, and declares, "I will have this one."
"A mighty blade," the jowly swordmaker across the table concurs. "If you've enough gold coin, this Saxon-slayer can be yours."
"I've no coin at all," Arthor says. "But I can guarantee payment."
"Of course!" The swordmaker laughs skeptically. "And you'll swear on the Bible itself and every prophet in it, will you not?"
"I've no need to swear," Arthor answers irately, resenting the titters from the crowd. "I am Chief Kyner's ward. He will pay me.
"Fine, lad," the portly artisan agrees. "And when the good chieftain pays me, you may have this sword."
"I need it now," Arthor stresses. "It's for my brother, Cei."
The weaponsmith puts a gruff hand on Arthor's wrist and removes the sword from his grip. "Listen to me, lad. I worked many a day to craft this bone-breaker. You're not walking away with it unless I'm paid first."
"Is there anyone here who will sell me a sword upon the good word of Chief Kyner?" Arthor calls out.
Laughter runs the length of the table, and the swordmakers shake their heads and wave him away. A foot soldier in the black-and-green colors of Bors Bona's army slaps his back and guffaws, "If you want a sword without paying, lad, then try your hand up there." He points uphill to the sword in the stone. "That's the only sword that's here for anyone to take."
"I've a palfrey," Arthor offers. "You can have my horse for a sword. Any sword."
"We're not horse traders," the jowly swordsman gripes. "Be off with you, boy!"
Reluctantly, Arthor turns away. Head hung, kicking at weed tufts, he climbs the mount. He regrets disappointing Cei on his very first attempt to serve his elder brother, and he is not eager to return to Camelot.
He looks up wistfully at the star stone. It appears so black it seems to suck light into it. And there is much light at the summit to feed upon, for the sword the stone holds upright shines with an almost inexplicable brightness. Its beauty draws him closer.
Light pulses in the gold hilt, and the simple glyph of the hand-guard appears slick as a flame. He wants to touch the sword, even though that makes him feel silly, because he is not some simple-minded pilgrim happy to brag that he has been to Camelot and touched Excalibur. Yet, the blade is truly remarkable—clear and deep as a mirror, as if it has been cored out of the air itself.
He stands in silence before its beauty. A chill snakes through him with the abrupt realization that this sword looks very much like the terrible weapon the dwarf Brokk carried in the hollow hills, and that the viper-priest raised over him—the sword that the gleeman—Merlin himself—flung out of the mansnake's hand to wound the god of wrath.
Can it be one and the same? he asks, trembling as though the heart of the earth had throbbed beneath him.
He trudges forward as in a dream. Before him, Excalibur, wiped with radiance, shimmers like running starlight. It is the supernatural sword that nearly took his life in the hollow hills!
His whole body twitches to face this talismanic weapon here, at the crux of his convergence with the gleeman Merlin and the undisguised enchantress who mocked his hope of love with lust. Now he can no longer deny a fateful complicity between these magical personages and his own destiny—but to what intent he cannot guess.
He thinks for an instant of fleeing. Instead, he draws closer to the weapon, fascinated to see it held inert in the stone. Even still, motion glows from within. He stands transfixed by this thing that once almost killed him. It has the enormous presence of something other than a weapon and embodies lucidities that carry far more than the wounds of war promised by other swords.
It shines in his wide eyes full of marvel, full of fright, proffering truths as much of terror as of beauty. If he puts his hand out, if he takes it, he senses with prescient certitude that he will touch what cannot be touched, what already touches him at the heart of everything he believes to be beautiful and true. He does not understand this. Yet, he knows that in his inmost heart he already holds this sword—and that is why it did not kill him when he stoo
d before the mad god of war. It did not kill him, because it belongs to him.
Filled with holy passion, Arthor reaches out and takes Excalibur in his hand.
Chapter 32: World of Light
Merlin stands on the riverbank under Mons Caliburnus. Having sloshed through floating green beds of milfoil and watercress, his feet and the hem of his robe are soaked, yet, he has succeeded in arriving unseen at this secluded scarp. His magic remains too weak to baffle people, and he feels proud that by cunning and physical effort alone he has positioned himself here, ready to manipulate the magnetic counterstone that will release Excalibur and make Arthor king.
Morgeu the Fey knew exactly where Merlin was headed when he left the pavilion claiming he needed rest. Of course, she made no move to hinder him. She wants Arthor as high king. She wants legitimacy for their incest child.
The wizard shakes his head. Every act has its consequences, he recites to himself this first tenet of wisdom. And consequences become themselves acts and ripple into further consequences. In this way, no prophecy is certain, for the future hides within itself.
Briefly, Merlin recalls his mortal mother, Optima, the saint who adopted his demon spirit out of the void and made a place for him in her womb and in her heart. The place of her womb became his body: an ugly, grotesque body born old and growing younger year by year. The place of her heart became his heart, a site of compassion and love for all of God's creation, so that now the gruesome memories of his long existence as a demon cause him profound remorse. He has not forgotten his cruel past. He has not forgotten evil.
The enormous amount of work that Merlin has accomplished to bring Arthor to this bodeful moment is only a beginning. The real struggle with evil lies ahead. The wizard will need all his magic for that. And the boy, surely the boy will have to be a man, and the man surely will have to be a king, a true king, to fulfill the great hope of this orphaned island.
With that thought, Merlin returns his attention to the immediate task. Timing now is crucial. If the wizard releases the magnetic hold of the star stone too soon, the sword will fall before the boy touches it. Too late, and Arthor will lose faith that he can budge it at all.
To assure success, Merlin intends to use what little magic he has left to reach upward with his heart's brails and touch the young man when he stands before Excalibur. But first, the wizard must find the magnetic counterstone.
Wading through spike rush and bur reeds, he gropes with his staff in the ivy tendrils, knocking against the rock wall until he locates the crevice where the sliding stone sits. His bare hand clears away clots of starwort before seizing the lozenge of meteoric rock. One tug and it will release the sword.
Eyes closed, the wizard tries to reach out from the feeling center of himself. Wrens chatter, frogs tock, dragonflies whir, yet he hears none of it. He remains attentive to the quiet within and to the greater silence inside that stillness.
Moments lapse to minutes before he manages to extend his awareness upward, out of his body, to where Arthor comes walking through yellow clover, kicking at hawkweed and dandelions. Merlin feels the youth's disappointment unravel to awe at the sight of Excalibur. Then comes the shocked awareness that this is the sword that threatened him in the hollow hills.
The wizard experiences the debates within Arthor as though they are Merlin's own: Should he flee? No. Inward mastery holds him in place, then draws him closer. He wants to face his destiny. He wants to understand the forces that have led him on his circular journey from anonymity in Kyner's clan to the mystery of this sword. His hand reaches out and grasps the hilt of Excalibur.
Merlin's eyes snap open. A dove perches on a jut of rock at eye level, white as winter. When the wizard heaves his whole body into moving the magnetic stone, the dove bursts away. Filled with the full frost of noise from the scraping stone, it soars.
As the white bird comes clear of the ivy wall at Mons Caliburnus, a flash of reflected sunlight from the summit startles it higher. The hot reflection dazzles several times more, casting from the hillcrest sharp rays of sunlight like beams of a beacon.
The dove climbs away from this startling light, rises far above the snake curves of the river, and glides upward with the wind, over tilled fields, toward umber mountains and absolute blue.
Atop a rocky pinnacle, the dove alights. It blazes luminously in a shaft of white sunlight let down from a zenith of towering cumulus. For a while, it becomes more than it obviously is.
To mortal eyes, the angel is invisible, his face this lambent sunbeam, robes bundles of wind stirring gorse on the higher slopes of the mountain. The angel steps down among bluebells, moving toward an ancient notch-stone erected by the nameless Neolithic people who lived here before the Celts.
For one day each solar season, the angle of the sun aligns properly with this primeval stone so that the notches cast shadow-patterns that briefly spell words none among the living know how to read. That day has come and gone and will come again.
The angel well remembers what the inscription of shadows says, and in honor of the star of reflected sunlight that shines from atop Mons Caliburnus, he speaks the secret words aloud:
"The truth of this dreaming world is the turning of the stars, and as the seasons return after long rest, this marks the land where dream returns to its native ground, truth. Here reigns the true ruler of these islands in memory and in promise. Great is the burden of this care."
The words of the angel shimmer to rain in the chill mountain air and ride the wind down the slopes of gorse and across the conifer highlands. The lustrous torrent finally blows over the broad tableland where Camelot rises in lordly stature above river forests. The sunny downpour sweeps into the round dances and the martial contests and turns up the amazed faces of the people to its fragrant coolness.
Standing inside the pavilion, warlords and chieftains watch sparkling veils of rain riffle in the wind and steam across the fields. A rainbow, bright and hard as candy, stands as a bower over the citadel.
Kyner recognizes at once that something wonderful has happened in heaven, and he rushes out to receive the good news, dragging Cei after him. The old war chief laughs uproariously and swings his grouchy son around him in a wide frolicking step.
Morgeu, too, feels the magic of the sun-shot rain, and she takes Lot by the arm and, with a charmed whisper in his ear, leads him smiling into the brilliant shower. Gawain and Gareth, who have been tossing horseshoes behind the pavilion, run laughing to their parents and hold hands in a gleeful dance.
Soon, Urien, Marcus, and Bors Bona join them, and they kick up their heels in the wet, radiant wind and link arms with Morgeu and her family. Elemental joy pulls Kyner and Cei into their jubilant circle, and Celt and Briton, Christian and pagan hold hands and merge in a dance of heaven's celebration.
Even Severus Syrax throws up his hands in dismay when he finds himself alone in the pavilion and prances into the glittering rainfall. His face paint blears away in greasy streaks, and he laughs giddily as he skips with the others, hooking elbows and spinning like a child.
All across the fields of Camelot, crowds rollick. The rain, brisk and cold, splashes off the people in a burnished glow. And the angel himself dances among them, visible to their eyes as sunshine, unfurling in each raindrop a world of radiance.
* * *
Author's Postscript
The legend of King Arthur is very much a living myth. A lot of the fairy tale and nursery rhyme imagery we grow up with—hamlets and hedgerows, meadows and dells—is a deep cultural memory of Roman Britain.
When Julius Caesar explored Britannia in 55 BCE, primeval forests covered the island. Four centuries later, at the time of King Arthur, Roman rule had established numerous thriving cities, including Londinium, and a prosperous agricultural society connected by paved highways.
Roman Britain offers many famous storybook images of Arthurian fantasy: castle towns, rolling pastureland and deep, dark forests. I think that this historical community appeals to us so stron
gly because this was our last glimpse of civilization before the Dark Ages descended. Soon after, the Roman Empire collapsed and Europeans forgot how to make cement.
Roman Britain is a vanished age; yet, we see it vividly in our collective imagination. It is a threshold world, between history and fantasy, a shared realm where the known and the unknown cross. The supernatural exists here.
King Arthur's story has endured for over a thousand years, because the way this myth relates to the supernatural fascinates us. Arthur and his knights smuggle dangerous, supernatural objects out of the dream world and into our waking lives: the sword in the stone as well as the magic sword from the Lady in the Lake, the round table, the siege perilous and, of course, the Grail.
Though I say 'smuggle,' these objects are not generally recognized as dangerous, only as imaginary. But they are dangerous. They defy the reality principle. The more time we spend with them, dwelling on their mysterious presence over the centuries and their enigmatic significance, the more they suggest a wider reality than the commonplace. They inform us with wonder and hermetic wisdom that reality is far more than meets the eye—far stranger than we know or can know.
In this sense of being unknowable, ultimately unpredictable, Nature is lawless. King Arthur and his knights show us, by the way that they relate to the supernatural, how to maintain our dignity outside the law.
"The law is a wall," says the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. And the legend of Arthur opens a doorway through that wall.
Civilization, which Rome imposed on the tribes of aboriginal Europe with the Pax Romana, erected a magical wall in the Western psyche. That magical wall is writing.
Behind that wall, animistic intimacy with nature disappeared, written over with edicts and deeds of property and architectural plans. The wall is the world that can be written (science) and the written world (history)—the coordinate axes of Cartesian thought, of the technological empowerment that has spread Western values globally even as it has obliterated nature.
The Eagle and the Sword (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 2) Page 32
