by Chris Page
“There is something else in the casket with him. He is buried with the chalice known as the Holy Grail.”
The long magus looked at the boy and his mother in turn as they digested this information.
“So now you both know one of the great secrets of Celtic lore, the whereabouts of the bones of King Arthur and the Holy Grail itself. Grail Seekers, of which there are many of all denominations, would give everything and anything to have that knowledge. They scour the land for the location in the belief that the myth that goes with it - that of the reincarnation of Arthur to his former glory - can be achieved with the chalice. Believe you me, it cannot. As you can see from the strength of her emotions, this gentle lady would be the first to bring him back if it were possible. Guard this information with the utmost care. It must not be known outside of the four of us here.”
Emboldened by Guinevere’s frankness Leah began to talk of her life in the settlement of Malmesbury before the wolves came. Although they had been known as free cultivators under the old Roman system of land allocation, meaning they owned the right to cultivate the small parcel of land allocated to them known as a hide, their holding would not support two adults and the six children who arrived in the first eight years. Life was hard and a constant struggle, and then there had been Will’s silence. Six years during which he had not uttered a single word or even grunt. Even so, the day that her husband Sam decided to take him away to the long magus had been, for her, a very black one indeed.
As she spoke, Twilight cast his mind back to the parting. Leah had refused to let the old cob with him and Sam Timms on its back go and had clung to its neck fiercely. Only after Sam Timms had dismounted and struck her down did the old horse move on. He could still hear the heart-rending shrieks with which she had wailed them into the distance. Yet he hadn’t fought it. Somehow he knew it was the right decision despite his beloved mother being beaten into the dirt.
Leah’s arm tightened around Will’s shoulders as she looked at him.
“From that moment on something inside me died as well. You’d think with six children I wouldn’t miss one, but even though he had not spoken for six years I knew, with a mother’s certainty, that there was nothing wrong with him. He was special, gifted, different, and it was because of that difference Sam Timms, advised by the Settlement Council of Elders, wanted to put him with the long magus. They thought he was mad, demented, called him a devil child and a pariah because of his silence and ability to move things and apparently make people do things against their will. As it turned out, going to you, long magus, was the right thing to do.”
“And you have also had that rare and beautiful ability to communicate with each other over great distances,” said Merlin. “Something that I have never had with anyone.”
“That happened just before the wolves came. Suddenly I was communicating with Will in my mind.”
Leah looked at the long magus for a long moment, opened her mouth, and then, as if deciding that what she was about to say was too controversial, snapped it shut. The old astounder smiled at her, nodded, and then spoke gently.
“Go on, Leah, it is time.” All the old private doubts and insecurities welled up in her. The great secret that she had squirreled away in her innermost consciousness for fourteen years and hardly dared to even contemplate was about to be revealed. Trembling she looked at Guinevere, who nodded encouragement. Then, almost reluctantly, she engaged her son’s black opals and took a deep breath.
“Two weeks before I went through the hand-fasting marriage ceremony with Sam Timms, I met an old but fascinating stranger with great powers. On the breeze-brushed grass of a green hill above the settlement of Malmesbury, that stranger and I lay together and had congress. It is a hill where the white dove has flown, a hill with my great secret. You are the result of that union. You were conceived on that hill. Although your brothers and sisters are Sam’s, he never knew that you had a different father. I kept it from him, from everyone. I was just fifteen years old at the time.”
She began to weep. Guinevere comforted her.
Twilight said nothing for a long time as he digested his mother’s words. Finally he spoke.
“I suppose there’s little point in asking who the ‘old but fascinating stranger with great powers’ was?”
“It was me,” said the long magus quietly. “I am your father.”
“My problem,” said Merlin as he and Twilight walked around the island the next morning, “was that I was seventy-eight years of age and had still not found a tyro to train to take over from me. For the first time in its known history Wessex would be without a veneficus. It was a disaster in waiting. I was getting desperate and had to do everything in my power to make it happen.”
The boy smiled. “Now I am getting used to the idea. I quite like it … Father!”
As they walked they stopped from time to time to talk to a leper working on the land. Many of them found great difficulty in talking due to the advanced stage of their disease, their ulcerated, misshapen faces assuming all manner of contortions to croak the words out. Sitting alongside them were several who had gone blind through the disease. Taking the fresh air of the island was all they had left; once blindness set in, the end was not far away. But every one of them was happy, and some even managed to sing at their labors. There was, however, one abiding theme that came from them: their love and complete devotion to Guinevere. Her achievements here in giving their lives dignity, order, and some purpose were venerated with an adoration verging on unctuous devotion.
They watched a number of male lepers haul in the drift nets. The twinkling of silver scales gilled in the fine mesh spoke of fish on the table that evening. They paused by the burial grounds, then continued to the headland at the far end of the island. The long magus pointed to the highest point of the headland. He didn’t need to say anything; the boy knew the importance of what rested there.
“Before we came here you said you wanted to show me a special secret. Have I seen it yet?”
The great bushy eyebrows went up in glee.
“No, you have not. I’m glad you reminded me. We will attend to that just as soon as we get back to the leprosaria.”
When they got back the long magus obtained a huge iron key from Guinevere and led the boy to the rear of the building. At the end of a dark passage he inserted the key into a hole in a sturdy-looking door and opened it. Lit by a small, high window, the room contained many solid-looking oak shelves around its walls that were crammed to overflowing with dusty scrolls, tablets, piles of inscribed vellum, papyrus, and wood boards covered in great flowing arcs of text.
The long magus waved his arm to encompass the entire room. “Here we have my special surprise, my collection of every kind of ancient literary material I could lay my hands on. Most of this is between five hundred and one thousand years old. The collective recordings of the great minds of that time, an enormous narrative on the cradle of our history.”
“Where did it all come from?” asked the boy.
“The Romans, bless ‘em. They spent over four hundred years here building roads, villas, huge municipal baths and spa towns, setting up local and regional governance, taxation, and land allocation systems. And, of course, bibliotheca - libraries. Purely for their own use, of course, or mostly anyway, for the average Celt, Jute, or Saxon could not then, as now, read a single written word. Being an educated lot, most Romans could read and therefore required the means to so do. When they left, most of the libraries were ransacked, and a great deal of this stuff was burned or lost. During my many years in the compound I made it my business to track down much that was left … and here it all is.”
“So this is where you acquired all your knowledge about the Greeks?”
“And the Persians, Etruscans, Macedonians, Romans, Spartans, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Thracians, the Fates and Deities, and pretty much all else you are growing accustomed to heari
ng me rattle on about. Here I have proclamations, speeches, laws, tracts, poems, ballads, marching songs, arguments, legends, plays, prayers, homilies, sermons, compendiums, fables, criticisms, romances, battle formations, anthologies, public and senate orations, maps, manifestos, philosophy, oaths, jottings, and stories of every kind.”
He began to walk around the room pointing out sections as he went.
“Here are the inventions of Archimedes, the philosophy of Aristotle, the imagination of Plato, the wisdom of Critias, and the virtues of Charmides. Over here we have the greatest of all war poems - Homer’s Iliad - lying next to Euclid’s book called Elements, the first great discourse on mathematics. Here are Pliny, Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Martial, Seneca, and the poetry of Solon.”
He paused to blow dust from a pile of papyrus. “The rites and rituals of the temple priests of Babylon, the great Persian kings, Xerxes and Darius, the story of the goddess Athena, founder of that great city state Athens, the first democracy. Here we read of that great beauty of the Nile, Queen Cleopatra, whose parents called her Halcyon and who, with her lover Anthony, was defeated by Octavian at sea in the battle of Actium. Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome who was assassinated on the steps of the senate, and Nero, another Roman emperor who burned the city down. Augustus, Tiberius, and Titus, the Julian Laws promoting morality and regulating divorce, the cruel and tyrannical Caligula …”
He paused to catch his breath for a moment, eyes shining. “This section is mainly about battles and the men who fought in them. Thermopylae, the heroic stand by three hundred Spartans led by Leonidas against many tens of thousands of invading Persians. The battles at Artemisium, Plataea, Marathon, Carthage, Carrhae, Pharsalus, and Philippi. The wooden horse of Troy, the great sea battle on the Hellespont at Salamis, the revolt of the slaves led by Spartacus, great gladiatorial contests, and the rampaging legions of Rome. Woven into these conflicts are the stories of individual fighters - their bravery and great acts of skill and leadership. Apollo, the son of Zeus and archer lord of the silver bow, Achilles and his mortal enemy Hector, the mighty Ajax, Heracles and his great strength, Nestor the spear thrower, Hermes the giant killer, Agamemnon, supreme commander of the Greek armies, Ares the Trojan god of war, Odysseus, warlord of Ithaca and lone traveler, Jason, commander of the Argonauts, Chiron the centaur, half man and half horse, who taught Achilles in his cave on Mount Pelion, Sisyphus, the hero of Corinth, and many, many more. And mixed in with all of it, of course, a great swathe of writing about the gods. Ever watchful from their eyrie on Mount Olympus, they control everything and meddle when it suits them.”
“I find myself beguiled by the elegance of the names. Such evocative symmetry, the names of the heroes and places are an elegy to the great deeds and battles that took place under them. It’s no wonder they have echoed with such resonance down the years. Have you read everything here?” asked Twilight.
“All of it. Every word and symbol. Don’t forget I have had a great deal of time to do so, having not done much - apart from attending to my annual duties at Stonehenge - for fifty years. At one time all of this was stored at the compound in the forest giving me easy access, but I began to fear for its safety and transferred it here five years ago.”
“What will happen to it?”
The long magus looked at him. “You, my little skirmisher, are now officially my next of kin and therefore will inherit everything I own when I am under my mighty destiny stone. Not much of a legacy, for this is all I own.”
“But I’m like all those other Celts, Jutes, and Saxons. I can’t read Greek or Latin!” exclaimed the boy.
“As I said before you will soon learn. With your excellent vocabulary and venefical gifts it won’t take very long. The very least a princess can expect from her consort is that he can scribe and give voice to a half-decent love poem!”
It was time for Tiresias to decide who would represent the cowerers to the veneficus at the Equinoctial Festival. The representation would be nothing but a screaming rant; the inhabitants of the charnel mists could not express themselves any other way. There was no form or understanding, no pause or acceptance of a reply, not even a variance of pitch - just an obnoxious, screaming voice that eventually petered out to be replaced by another going through the same process.
Tiresias smiled inwardly; the choice would be interesting … someone who had a direct interest in matters as they stood.
He saw Zeus give the signal to Ganymede. The cup bearer began to serve the ambrosia.
The show was about to begin.
Chapter Seventeen
“This,” said the long magus, waving his arm in a circle, “is where the ultimate fight between the odious wolf-woman and I will take place within the next two days.”
The boy and his mentor were perched upon the ramparts of Cadbury Castle in the spot that had almost become their second home. Around them on each corner stood the four towers.
“My guess is that she will choose the top of that tower over there as her starting place because it is the highest point.” He pointed to one of the front towers on the eastern corner. “It also commands a view across the hills and drawbridge.”
“What form will the fight take? Will you both stand on these towers and hurl thunderbolts at each other?”
The long magus chuckled. “I hope not. I would not last very long at that rate because of her greater power. One well-aimed thunderbolt could finish me off, or at least render me incapable of a strong response. The wolf-woman can throw them in salvoes, groups of three or four at a time, but my tactics will be a little different from the mere return of thunderbolts. I need to wear her out before we can compete on even terms.”
“Hit and run?”
“Not so much hitting but a great deal of running, and running, and then running some more. Run for my life and run down her power. Now you see me, now you don’t. Dodging, disappearing, hiding, and reappearing. I’ll have to return the occasional thunderbolt to keep her firing, but my usage must be frugal. With every move I must conserve a little more power than she expends. Gradually we will reach parity. Then she will begin to fall behind. With luck she will be so carried away with the explosions and smoke she is making and my flight, she won’t notice what’s happening. When the moment is right we will strike.”
“I am to take part in the actual fight?”
“At a certain point I will need your power as a backup. Coupled with my own it should be enough to subdue her when she has run hers down. Whilst she is chasing me all over the castle you will be out of range over that hill. I will come and get you or signal for you to join me when the time is right.”
The long magus paused for a moment and then disappeared. Almost immediately he appeared on the far tower where he expected Elelendise to stand. In a twinkling he was back alongside Twilight.
“What are you doing?” the boy asked.
The old sorcerer’s eyes glowed in satisfaction.
“Checking my secret weapon,” he said conspiratorially.
“Oh?”
“I was thinking last night about this problem of venefical auras and how we leave a trail that other venefici can follow. Everywhere we go, every transformation and item we create, change or touch can be traced back to us because of the individual aura we leave in our wake like a meteor trail. It isn’t important in conflicts against humans - they do not have the ability to detect our auras - but against other venefici it is a giveaway. My thoughts led me to a potential solution, which I have just tried.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know,” replied the old astounder. “We cannot detect our own auras. You will have to see. Go to that tower and see if you can detect my presence there a few moments ago.”
The boy went through the same process.
“There is no aura, no sign of your journey there or presence,” he said, reappearing. “Nor any sign of your aura coming back here.”
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“Good, good.” Merlin chuckled. “A bit of special crinkum crankum, eh, skirmisher?”
“What did you do?”
“It was quite simple really, once I’d worked out the physics. As I said, a venefical aura is like a trail behind a shooting star, albeit invisible. All I did was to arrange for the space occupied by the trail - our aura - to revert to what was there before we went through it - clear space - by manipulating the time-lag phenomena.”
Twilight pondered on this for a while. “So the clear space that was there before we, or our projected object, passed through it is replaced in its original position to hide the aura trail?”
“Precisely!” The old sorcerer beamed. “And I have applied it to both of us.”
“Does this mean that the repellent one will not know where we have been in the past, and, if invisible, our current whereabouts will be a mystery as well?”
“It does. We have become untraceable,” said Merlin. “All we have to do is render ourselves invisible, take a few paces in any direction from where we were - and that’s it. Gone. No trace, no footprint in the clear space, no venefici trail. This bit of relatively simple sorcery removes all clues to our whereabouts. It has also reopened my eyes to other opportunities presented to the holders of the enchantments. For many years I have been guilty of inertia and apathy in that direction by ignoring any opportunities to innovate. I have kept to the stale old runes, the tried and tested crinkum crankum. Not anymore. It has taken my battle with her to open up the possibilities and force new ideas. We are capable of becoming more than just local manipulators of phenomena with an annual equinoctial mandate. If you and subsequent holders keep this firmly in mind, venefici can become almost immortal. One day we will go to the stars!”
