Tethion ran back to the room and shook his head. “No one else is here.”
Dybris and Safrowana glanced at each other.
The swordsman with the girls, a bully of a man with his front teeth missing, snarled and shook his blade at them. “I gots ‘em, Ivort, I gots the two! Does I’s gets a reward?”
Vortigern stepped over and cuffed the man across the face. “Not them … that’s not them.” He swiveled to face Safrowana. “Where are they — Uther’s girls? We’re here to … bring them back to their clan … protect them.”
At these words, the man with the spear upon the monk blinked at Vortigern, confused.
Safrowana said nothing. Her chin was out in defiance, but Mórganthu could see the corners of her eyes twitching.
Vortigern grabbed onto her hair and yanked it back, almost pulling her over. But he held her close, suspended against his chest — neck out and face up. Then he pulled out a short blade and brought the tip near her eyes.
“Tell me now. Where did the girls go?”
Mórganthu looked up at Vortigern’s blade. Would he kill Safrowana? Mórganthu would dearly like that, and it made his slight delay revealing himself and the truth well worth it … a small bit of revenge for all his troubles.
Someone banged a loud gong in the central hall, waking Merlin up. It was almost mid-day and the time for the ninth year feast had come, but Merlin wanted to visit Natalenya before the festival meal. She had informed Colvarth that she was not going to attend so that she could rest. Her sickness had taken a turn for the worse during their recent journey.
Her room faced north at the far end of the highest inhabitable level of Atle’s hall, and Merlin climbed the stairs up three floors to reach her. As he approached the door, he found it ajar, and peeking in, he saw Loth sitting in a chair near her bed. They were chatting.
Merlin knocked and pushed the door open.
Loth stood to face Merlin. “Ye’ve come at ane good time,” he said. “I hae just brought this beautiful lass a trencher from our feast, and was preparing tae leave.” He gave a slight bow to Natalenya and then slipped past Merlin without making eye contact.
“What was that about?” Merlin asked, taking the seat where Loth had sat. It was warm. At a small table nearby lay a pewter mug full of red wine and a tray of sliced meats, cheeses, and bread.
“He’s quite nice, you know.”
“And handsome.”
Natalenya pulled up the blanket and faced the wall. “He looks like you —”
“Without the scars. Yes, I know.” He reached up to his face and traced the lines again — the ever-present curses.
She spun back, her face pinched. “Loth is helping me with my sickness. The royal physician has already been up twice to visit me.”
“And that’s more than I’ve ever done. You don’t need to —”
“What? I don’t need to get better? The sickness has wormed its way into my bones now — I can feel it — and unless I get help I’m going to die. Can’t you understand that, Merlin? But you’re too trapped in the prison of your own scars.”
She threw the mug at him. It missed and thudded into the wall, splashing its blood upon the rotting wood.
Her tears flowed freely now, and her voice was hoarse. “Your eyes can see, but I think you’re just as blind as ever.”
She might as well have plunged a knife in.
He reached out and took her trembling hand. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say, and it was true. He had come expecting her to be happy that their slavery had ended — but she wasn’t. Of course not! And he’d been a fool to think it. What did slavery to the Picts matter when her very veins were enslaved by this sickness? He’d reveled in his freedom, his cleanliness, his new clothes, in Arthur’s recovery — but none of these things mattered to her.
“I’m sorry for everything. I don’t know how to help anymore, and I’ve failed you.”
But it wasn’t just him that had failed her. Why hadn’t the Sangraal healed her? Had Merlin been a fool to trust God?
Maybe Atle’s physician could help.
She pulled her hand away and didn’t say anything, and so he picked up the empty mug, set it on her table once again, and left.
Merlin could hear the revelers down below, and he looked over the rail as he descended. The central hearth had been lit and veritable racks of hot meats roasted in its steady blaze — beef, fowl, mutton, venison, and a small boar. And there was seafood too — huge fish, speared, and dripping their rich fat over the fires next to pots of boiling rust-colored crustaceans.
All this wafted upward with the smoke, but his stomach was sour, slowing his descent.
As he walked along the final landing, he could see that the area all around the hearth had been filled with guests — warriors and their wives — seated at tables piled high with cheeses, trenchers of dried apples and berries, baskets filled with steaming flatbreads, and pots of hearty broth. There were also bowls of nuts, toasted and salted, along with platters of orange and white boiled roots, smothered with melted butter.
Stepping onto the main floor, Merlin approached the table where his entire party sat and pulled up a low bench between Bedwir and Garth. The boy had just drained some scalded cream with curds from a bowl and had a white moustache draped across his upper lip.
“We told him to wait until Atle officially starts the feast,” Peredur said, leaning over and crunching on some nuts. “But he just wouldn’t wait.”
Atle stood, shakily, and declared to the crowd, “Velcome, family, friends, and distant kin. We haf gathered, upon de day o’ de great departure o’ de glorious ninth year — and ve are ready, yes, ve are ready — danks to our guest o’ honor.”
And here he pointed to Arthur, smartly dressed in a red tunic and sitting upon a little raised throne beside Atle’s. Before him lay a platter of succulent venison, bread smeared with raspberry preserves, and fresh honeyed apples. The boy had a finger in his mouth, and seemed both pleased and confused at the cheers that arose from the crowd.
“Life! Tonight ve celebrate life! Given by the good Woden to all who valk upon de earth andd sail upon de deep.”
The king talked on and on like this and Merlin ignored his speech, as well as the barking dog that ran around the room eating scraps the warriors threw him. Instead, he turned his attention to the two barrels in the center of their table — one of ale, and another of spiced cider that Garth kept glugging down. Merlin set his mug below the ale spigot and pulled the plug.
Today, he needed to forget.
Mórganthu held his breath as Vortigern moved the knife closer to Safrowana’s face.
She spoke. “My husband took them on a trip. He’ll be back next month.” She grabbed onto Vortigern’s tunic to keep from falling.
Vortigern brought the blade closer and let it hover over her eyes. “A trip? Is that right? And why would he take Uther’s girls and not these, eh?”
“That’s my daughter. She … she’s my helper with the … loom.”
“And the other?” Vortigern said. He was baiting her and trying to get her talking, Mórganthu thought, for the man knew the answer to this question.
“She’s not one of Uther’s daughters, I promise … We were given charge of her.”
“By who?”
“Merlin.” She reached into a small bag hanging from her belt and slipped out a pewter ring with a white stone in it. “Merlin gave us … some money to care for her … and this ring to prove the authority. It was her father’s. Please, I’m telling the truth.”
Mórganthu had never seen this trinket before, and it meant nothing to him — but it must have meant something to his granddaughter. Upon hearing Merlin’s name and seeing the ring, Ganieda shrieked and yelled. She splashed a dye vat onto her guard’s feet, poked him in the ribs with her soup spoon, and slipped around his drooping blade.
Screaming, she ran out the open front door and was gone.
Merlin drank until his stomach loosened and he was able
to eat. The food satisfied him in a way he’d thought impossible over the last six months. Slabs of bumpy white cheese. Salted roast boar and a savory mutton leg. Slices of saffroned fish as thick as any steak, yet it would flake apart at the slightest touch. Ale. Bread, warm and soft upon his tongue. Fruit. Crab appendages, sucked sweet from their shells. Ale, and more ale, until he felt so full he could hold no more. Everyone else joined in with relish. Even Colvarth ate more than expected. But Garth topped them all — the boy ate four full trenchers of food and by the end looked so sleepy that Merlin could have pushed him over by squishing the cheese curd stuck to his cheek.
Then one of Atle’s bards got up and sang a lingering, slow ballad about a battle from times of yore. It seemed to be about the warriors from Dinpelder repelling an attack from the Picts, but the details became a bit fuzzy to Merlin. Somehow the Romans were involved. Or were they? Merlin was confused.
Throughout the song, Peredur’s face leaned closer and then faded backward. Why couldn’t the man sit still, his jaw flapping as he ate, fergoodnesssakes?
On and on the bard droned, and the sunlight streaming into the hall seemed to become very bright as the ale cask emptied. Merlin laid his head down and closed his eyes against the glare. Thankfully, the grating voice of the bard faded and Merlin soon found himself in a tapestry of darknesses where uncounted days and nights passed, yet, strangely, the sun never rose to snuff out the stars that spun their winking heads. Below him the drifts of snow shone with thousands of gems, each laughing at Merlin’s frozen hands and windbitten face.
He trudged on through the snow, neither leaving footprints behind, nor finding any ahead. Over an endless plain he trudged until he came to a glade of trees. Upon one of the branches swayed a cloth — red and ragged. He pulled it off, smelled it, and held it to his frozen cheek, but could not remember where he had seen it before. It had an opening, smallish like, and he put his hand in as if it were a bag — thinking only to warm himself — and found three holes at the other end. It was a tunic. A small tunic with an opening for a young head. Two sleeves, finely stitched.
Arthur?
Merlin had last seen it on Arthur! Why was it here? He looked at it again, hoping to find some clue as to the mystery of its presence, but the red cloth broke into a cloud of fluttering moths, each bursting into droplets of blood that fell to the snow. The drops sprouted into lithe birch saplings, pushing upward like snakes. Thicker they grew until, twisting and coiling, a square table was formed with four benches.
And then, over the hill appeared an oxen, and upon it, a rider — a woman. Lissom she was, and her fair skin was wrapped in a thick fox skin fur of rusty orange. No sooner had she appeared than two more women followed behind. The first rode a black boar, and her tresses matched it for color, laying softly upon her leathern wrap. The third journeyed upon a massive ram, horned and fierce. Her dress was a magnificent white fleece, richly woven, well-waulked, brushed, and shorn. And the three were a marvel, for their faces were all alike, and a light shone from them, bright and warm as his hearth at home during the darkest days of winter.
“Who are you?” Merlin asked, but felt they would surely shame him for such an impertinent question.
“Are you worthy of me?” all of them said in unison, “Are you ready now to see?”
The three reached out their hands, and a thorny hedge grew up around the perimeter of the glade, enclosing them, the table, and Merlin within — thick and impassable. He could not leave, but neither could anyone else invade and take him away.
“For you know who we are,” they said in a soothing voice, “for we perceive you see far.”
They dismounted and approached the table, each one claiming a seat on three of the open benches. Merlin felt tired, and found himself resting upon his own bench, looking in wonder at the bowls and trenchers that had magically appeared. They were filled with fluffy creams, delicate cakes, honey crystal confections, and the most succulent fruits he had ever imagined.
“Take, gentle son, and eat,” they said, “for these shall surely taste sweet.”
A great desire to devour the luxuries washed over him. All his life he had been denied such things: the opulence of the rich; the extravagance of those who ruled all, owned all, and yet worked not. All day long they sat on their couches of gold being fed such things and growing fat off the hard work of others.
And Merlin’s six months of deprivation made his desires all the stronger. It was maddening to wait even a moment more, so he lifted up his hand and stole a cake, dipped it in the cream, and brought it to his lips. He sighed as its creamy sweetness and crunchy essence coated his tongue, filled his cheeks, and sunk softly down his throat.
Somewhere in the heavens, thunder rolled. Merlin did not even glance up as he pilfered one of the fruits by its stem and brought it to his lips. Plump it was, and its syrupy bouquet filled his nostrils even as its scarlet juice ran down his shaven chin and stained his tunic.
The three women all looked at him approvingly, and each of them took one of the fruits and bit, their actions of one mind.
The thunder rolled closer above him, but he ignored it again, for now his appetite could not be sated — the more he ate, the hungrier he became. He stuffed his cheeks with the cream, ate as many cakes as he could, and all the time the three joined him, nodding their approval and feasting upon the never-ending supply of the sumptuous fare.
And just as Merlin reached for one more cake, the middle of the table flashed so brightly that it blinded him for a moment. Fingers of lightning curled outward and singed the table and food. Merlin’s hands were burned, the thunder exploding around him, enveloping him, shaking his bones, and rattling his teeth.
When he opened his eyes again, the scene before him had changed. The three women — those whose smooth faces had been filled with such merriment — had become ugly, ugly beyond imagining. Scabs covered their skin. Patches of infections leaked out filthy, green liquids. Their hair was disheveled, torn from their scalps and matted. Their noses had warts upon warts, and their shaking, bony fingers ended in nails long and sharp.
And their teeth, broken and hideously soiled, crunched upon worms, which they devoured with delight. Merlin looked at the food in his own hand and found the sumptuious foods before him were now transformed into maggoty, revolting dishes beyond his worst nightmares.
He retched.
“O mortal, what have you done?” the witches said with their forked, green-scaled tongues. “You’ve broke the web Brigit spun!”
A fierce wind blew in, scattering the hideous remains of the feast, and blowing the three witches backward. They cried out as the sharp thorns of the bushes pierced their flesh.
Merlin’s legs flew backward as well and he seized the edge of the table. Rain pelted his face, then ice, and finally hail. The branches of the table began to crack, and just when the last one broke, the wind died. He fell to the snow, and a glorious light filled the grove, shining from above. A man, an angel, descended within the radiance, and stood upon the remains of the table. His palms burned with a luminous fire, more pure than the sun, and the heat melted the snow and set the table and benches ablaze.
Merlin fell to his knees.
“Arise, O wayward son — for the Lord, whom you have failed to trust in, is the Holy One who has been with you in your sufferings, and is with you now. Open your eyes and see!”
Merlin looked up and saw played out before him all the scenes of their slavery, but now angels aided them. They had been invisible to his mortal eyes before, yet now he saw them revealed in their glory: sustaining, protecting, and guiding.
But then an image of Atle flashed in front of him, and he saw him for what he was … a man dry as a husk and ready to blow away in the wind. But there was malevolence in his eyes as he looked down upon the old, bent woman who cowered at the base of his throne.
Her gaudy purple hat lay twisted in her hands, and she moaned, “But he … he ess de son … of Theneva … Theneva Gweviana! He ess nott
to be left out o’ de ninth year!”
The king kicked her. “Down to de dungeon vit ye, Kensa! Away from me sight! Dis pompous grandson o’ mine shall neither hear yerr prattling nor partake o’ me undying strength. I vil nott let him judge de truth o’ yerr tales.”
Nearby warriors took a key from the king and dragged her toward an iron plate in the floor — one that Merlin had not noticed before. One of them lit a torch while another inserted the key into the center of the plate, slid it to the side, and raised it up. They dragged her, whimpering, down the steep stairs and into the darkness.
The scene vanished. The angel bent over and rested his hand upon Merlin’s head.
A burning, painful lightness filled him — a searing away that bit deeply into his soul.
“The snake has snuck into your nest and you have let him escape. The time has now come to perform the task that has been set before you.”
Merlin shook his head. He’d been given a task? Had he forgotten? His mother had said something to him, long ago, it seemed. “What am I to do?” he said, feeling foolish to even ask.
“Leave behind those who cannot. Bring all those who dare. Freedom for those in darkness is hidden in the throne. Judge by neither skin nor bones. Follow the light that you have been given — but you must AWAKE!”
The flames and the grove faded. Deep sleep fell upon Merlin, and he closed his eyes.
But someone kept shoving his shoulder. A voice called to him, distantly. He wanted to sleep, but the words strengthened until it became a scream. “Merlin!”
It was Natalenya’s voice. What was she doing here? He mumbled that he needed more sleep. That she should go away. Leave him alone.
She called again, more insistently.
This time someone slapped him in the face.
He opened his eyes, and his bleary vision cleared. A pewter mug lay on its side right in front of him, and its contents lay spilled upon the table.
Natalenya came into view. Her mouth was drawn tight, tears covered her cheeks, and her lips trembled as she spoke.
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