Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  But that was nonsense, he told himself. The creature probably had a protector somewhere nearby, some great hairy male beast of her own kind who would come looking for her with a club in his hand.

  Saladin stretched and rose to untie his horse.

  "Get away," he told the girl. "Go on now, go." He pushed her.

  She fell onto the earth with a hurt expression on her dirty face. Saladin ignored her and climbed onto the saddle.

  The docks were filled with fishing boats, small craft that could not carry a horse. Saladin's horse was a good one, an Arabian stallion which he had brought to Rome himself from Persia. Even the strong animals from Gaul, used by most of the Roman officers, were no match for the swift-legged piece of living flesh that was Saladin's prized steed. The great sculptor Devinius had begged Saladin to allow him to sketch the horse, but Saladin had refused. If such a statue were made, the horse would have been stolen. The emperor himself would have wanted it.

  To give up the stallion for a boat ride was not a price Saladin wanted to pay.

  "When do you expect a bigger ship to dock here?" he called to some fishermen.

  They looked up, but did not answer him. He called again; this time one of them shouted something in the same ugly-sounding language his forest girl had used.

  Imagine, Saladin thought angrily. After almost four hundred years of Roman rule, these barbarians had lost the Latin language in less than half a century. How was he supposed to talk to these people? By the gods, his horse was more intelligent than the natives here.

  He turned away, wanting nothing more than to get away from this place. The wind was cold today. Soon winter would come, and with it the certainty that no ship from any civilized place would make its way to the northern wasteland where he was stranded.

  Saladin had no doubt that a British winter would be unlike anything he had ever experienced. There was said to be snow here. Not just on the mountaintops, where Roman nobles would send slaves to collect it for dessert at dinner parties, but everywhere. And, too, the land was apparently beset by other barbarians. Roman officers who had campaigned in Britain had mentioned a race of light-haired warriors called Saxons who made infrequent raids on outpost hill forts. The legionnaires had regarded them as more of a nuisance than any real menace.

  "Beasts, that's what they are," one old soldier had said while recounting his experiences. "They don't look like humans, they don't talk like humans." He had made a face. "And, believe me, they don't smell like humans."

  It almost made him laugh. Even the Visigoths would find nothing of value to plunder in Britain. Whoever these Saxons were, they had to be truly desperate to consider looting this frozen, barren, impoverished dung heap.

  The horse reared up. Caught daydreaming, Saladin brought the animal under control at the same time as he reached for his sword.

  It was the girl, running out of the woods toward him.

  "You again!" Saladin said with distaste.

  She was carrying two dead squirrels by their tails. She came up to him, smiling timidly, and offered the two small bodies to him.

  He hesitated for a moment, but the girl nodded her head and stretched out her arms.

  Saladin took the squirrels. It would save him hunting later.

  "How long have you been following me?" he demanded, then chided himself for wasting his time talking to her. In the sunlight, the color of her hair was extraordinary. It was curly as well as tangled, and surrounded her head and shoulders like a gigantic halo.

  Why, she might be a Saxon, he thought. She certainly seemed to fit the old Roman soldier's description. But she was no warrior. Running out of the woods toward his horse had been the act of a fool. Any other man would have killed her on the spot.

  He was about to ride on when she touched his ankle.

  "Get away from me!" he said, jerking his foot back.

  She pointed down the road, or what passed for a road.

  "What?"

  She pointed again, ran a few steps back toward the woods, beckoned to him, then darted into the trees and disappeared.

  He listened. There were horses coming from a distance. He cantered toward them. Once he got a look at whoever was approaching, he could outrun them if he had to.

  To his surprise, the horsemen were soldiers, of a sort. They wore some kind of armor, although every man seemed to have outfitted himself in his own fashion, and they rode with no sense of rank or form.

  But they did carry a banner, a rather beautifully embroidered red dragon on a field of white. Clearly, Saladin thought, this was an entourage of one of their chieftains. Even in this desolate place, there might be some men of learning who could at least speak enough Latin to direct Saladin toward a decent place to spend the night. His best chance was with these nobles.

  "Ave!" he called when the group was within earshot.

  The soldiers surrounded him at once, their weapons drawn. With a flourish Saladin bowed to them, although his great height combined with the size of the stallion he rode set him far above the Britons on their shaggy little ponies.

  "I am a stranger in your land, and I beg your indulgence in granting me an interview with your liege lord," he said in his most elegant Latin.

  The men murmured among themselves, again in the unpleasant language of the land. But their eyes never left his horse. One of them actually rode up and touched the animal.

  Saladin had the stallion stomp a warning. The soldiers gasped at this simple feat of horsemanship.

  "I demand to see whoever's in charge!" Saladin snapped. He looked down the line of riders. They all appeared to be soldiers with the exception of two, at the end of the line, one very old, the other young. The younger was common-looking, red-haired and plainly dressed. The old man appeared to be a priest of some kind, dressed in a long shapeless robe with a cloak thrown over his shoulders. Both rode the same undistinguished beasts as the soldiers. Not a litter or carriage among them.

  Exasperated, he turned to go, but the soldiers stopped him with their swords.

  "You really are beginning to annoy me," he said. "Let me pass."

  The soldiers stayed. One of them jabbed his sword in the air toward Saladin.

  "I told you buffoons to let me pass!" he roared as the stallion reared up majestically. He drew his own sword, curved and magnificent, the blade longer than his own arm, and swung it expertly over his head.

  "Now, now," came a quiet voice.

  The old man rode forward.

  The youth shouted something in the native tongue, and to Saladin's surprise, the soldiers backed off a few feet. But the young man himself did not approach.

  "Buffoons we may be," the old man said, "but we are not in the habit of threatening an army of armed men." His Latin was perfect.

  "Forgive me," Saladin said. He accorded the man the same bow he had given the soldiers. "I am stranded in a strange land where I can buy neither food nor shelter and cannot make myself understood to ask for these necessities. I forgot myself."

  "It is understandable, under the circumstances," the old man said pleasantly. "What do you call yourself?"

  "I am Saladin, lately of Rome and her empire. I am a physician and a nobleman, whose name is known."

  "Not here," the man said, smiling. "I'm afraid Rome has had little influence in Britain for some time."

  "That I have seen for myself. I wish to return to the Continent—" Or anywhere else, he thought wryly. "But I am having difficulty securing passage on a boat large enough to take my horse."

  The man stroked his white beard. "I believe a Roman ship is due shortly. They usually come to trade for wool and dogs before winter."

  "Yes, sire," Saladin said patiently. "In six weeks' time. It is too long to sleep in the woods. I stopped your men to ask about lodging. I will pay well."

  The old man looked surprised. "Lodging? With us?"

  The young man said something in the local language, quite casually, it seemed, and the men all burst out laughing.

  Saladin fel
t a flash of anger. The impudent pup! Apparently the nobles of this odious place felt no need to teach their children any manners. The little fool even had the temerity to ride up to join the two men.

  Then he surprised Saladin by speaking in flawless Latin. "Your circumstances are unfortunate, sir. Please accept our hospitality for as long as you require." He inclined his head briefly, then trotted his horse back into the line, speaking curtly to the men leading the procession.

  It moved forward. The old man gave Saladin a look of amusement. "Well, we'd best be going, then," he said. "Camelot is not far."

  "Camelot?"

  "The High King's winter quarters." He pointed toward the horizon. Some ten or twelve miles away, Saladin judged, sat what looked to be an enormous stone castle on a hill. In his reverie, he had not even noticed it.

  The youth passed by on his horse. Such an undistinguished-looking youth, with his shock of red hair and plain clothing.

  Saladin turned to the old man. "Is he the High King?" he asked.

  The old man nodded.

  "And you are regent?"

  "Oh, nothing so grand. I am Merlin. I'm afraid I don't have a title. I could be described as an old household retainer, I suppose."

  A servant, and riding beside the king! Saladin was confused. He did not know whether to continue speaking to the man or not.

  "I daresay we're not what you're accustomed to. But you'll get used to us."

  He led his pony forward to join the young king, gesturing to Saladin to join him.

  When all were gone and the dust had settled on the road, the girl emerged tentatively from the woods. The carcasses of the two squirrels had been trampled to pulp.

  The stranger had left her without a thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  "You looked so young," Saladin said to the sleeping boy. "Yet it was clear from the beginning that your knights adored you."

  It was that more than anything else, he supposed, that had started the first stirrings of ambition within himself.

  Saladin had never before aspired to power. Part of it may have been his youth, despite the fact that he had already lived nearly thirty-two centuries. Still, to outward appearances, he had been a fifteen-year-old boy for most of that time. Then, in what had seemed like an instant, he became a twenty-five-year-old man. That had been professionally useful: After his return from Judea, his fortune increased a thousand fold. People had sought him out as a physician.

  To be truthful, he was a very good doctor, even though he had never once used the metal sphere to cure a patient, not even when the patient was the emperor himself. It would have been a foolish risk. Besides, he was not particularly dedicated to keeping people alive. As someone immune to death, he understood with detachment that death was part of the natural order of things.

  But he was, to say the least, vastly experienced in his profession. Had he been more dedicated, he might have revolutionized the practices of medicine and surgery. As it was, he had discovered a way to resuscitate a stopped heart—a procedure which brought him so much renown that he feared he would have to leave Rome. He was alternately hailed as a saint and castigated as a sorcerer until finally Emperor Nero tipped the scales by summoning Saladin to the royal palace to treat a recurring case of gout. After that he was well regarded, even though he was not invited back after the emperor's next attack.

  His colleagues subtly chided Saladin for not making more of his opportunity to curry royal favor.

  "There was nothing to be done for him," he'd answered curtly. "Not with his eating habits."

  Actually, he had been relieved. If he had been selected as a personal physician to the emperor, it would eventually have become difficult to maintain the secret of his immortality. He would have remained a twenty-five-year-old man, while everyone around him, including the "divine" ruler, aged and died. No, the secret was too important to risk for a temporary moment in the sun. Why should he need power? He had life. Besides, Nero was a repulsive little pervert whose personal habits offended Saladin. He was not unhappy when Nero died shortly afterward and the name of Saladin faded from court circles.

  But here, in this strange and barbaric land, things were different. This was not Rome, where holding power meant forever watching one's back. Here the High King lived as a normal man and regarded the kingship as a job.

  Arthur commanded the forces at Camelot with an easy hand. Where the Roman emperors had held themselves up as living deities, this king behaved like a leader among equals. He was, they said, a great warrior, going into the thick of battle himself and living no better in the field than the lowliest of his soldiers.

  At the castle, he disdained finery and diversions. Except for public ceremonies, he did not even wear a gold circlet around his head to signify his rank. Entertainments at Camelot were simple, a harper or a storyteller. The food was plain. The stone castle itself was rough, though immense. He had even constructed a round table where he met with his most favored knights. Saladin had seen it himself. The king's chair was no higher than the rest.

  Such a man, Saladin thought, could not command respect for long. Love, yes. The men loved him for his very ordinariness, for his Spartan purity. He was one of them. But he was not a king, not of the sort Saladin had known.

  "Do you read Celtic?" Merlin asked, interrupting his reverie. Saladin had been standing at the carved wooden bookcase in a parlor off the Great Hall. It was an odd room, furnished only with a low bench and a rush mat on the floor in addition to the small cabinet. But it was fairly sunny compared with the other slit-windowed chambers in the drafty stone keep of the castle, and considerably warmer than his own small sleeping room on the upper level.

  Saladin had taken to spending most of his days there, looking through the meager collection of writings. There were copies of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Ethics, written in Greek on pages of yellowed linen, Emperor Claudius' autobiography in Latin, some writings of Julius Caesar, and the Orations of Cicero, which Saladin knew so well he had almost memorized it. There were works in Frankish as well, folk tales he had found amusing, and several beautifully illuminated works in a language he could not read. It was one of these that he was holding when the mysterious "court retainer" named Merlin had come upon him.

  Saladin nearly jumped. He had grown unaccustomed to being spoken to in the castle. No one, apparently, understood Latin except for Merlin and the king, and Saladin rarely saw either of them. As for the others, they were like a wild bunch of boys, spending their days outdoors hunting or practicing the arts of warfare. Neither activity would have appealed much to Saladin even if the weather had been warm; as it was, he thought the knights must have been mad to venture outdoors when it was not absolutely necessary. Each day grew colder than the last. The trees were almost bereft of leaves already, and at night the chill wind blew mercilessly into the sleeping rooms, freezing Saladin to the bone.

  "Celtic?" He looked down at the beautiful manuscript. "Is that what you call your language?"

  "No. We speak English here," the old man said, "although it may have been Celtic at one time, long ago. It's an ancient language, older even than Latin." He recited a poem of some sort, the sounds dolorous and musical. When he was finished, he smiled.

  "That was beautiful," Saladin said, immediately embarrassed at paying the compliment.

  "It's still spoken in Ireland, across a sea to the far north. The place is even wilder than Britain. But they love to speak and sing. The Irish have a tradition of storytelling that's as old as the sea."

  "And how do you know it?"

  "I've traveled there," Merlin said. "In my youth, I was a bard. My voice was never as good as some of them, particularly the Irish, who sing like angels, but I played the harp and learned the old stories. I found these books there. All of them were written by women."

  "Women!" Saladin was aghast. "They waste learning on women?"

  Merlin nodded. "But it's a rare art, in any case. The oral tradition is very strong here. The bards themse
lves are quite powerful. They're regarded rather as magicians."

  Saladin's eyes narrowed. There was something in what the man said that sparked his curiosity. "That's how you're treated," he said. “As a magician.”

  "Oh, nothing of the kind." He laughed self-deprecatingly. "The king tolerates me because I had a hand in his education."

  "These books are yours," Saladin said.

  "Yes. I put them here so that Arthur might read them. I suppose I could have given them to him outright, but I really couldn't bear to part with them. Do you read Greek?"

  "Of course." He saw Merlin's look of amusement and added, "But education is easily come by in Rome. May I ask how you achieved such scholarship?"

  Merlin shrugged. "If the truth be told, there was probably more of it around in my day. The Saxons hadn't burned everything, and the cities weren't the mess they are now. But I imagine all old men speak of the past as if it had been a better time than the present. All it means, really, is that we liked living better back then, because we were young."

  Saladin put the book back on the shelf. "You are more right than you know. The times were better sixty years ago. In Rome, a man could walk the streets without fear for his life. Now, thanks to the mobs within and the invaders without the city, there is no safety, no peace."

  "Those sound like bitter thoughts for one so young."

  "Young?" He blinked. He had forgotten himself with the old man. "Yes, of course." He forced a smile, an expression with which he had never felt comfortable. "With experience comes optimism, I'm told. Perhaps I've yet to attain that."

  He had almost slipped, almost exposed the secret of his life for a moment's conversation with a near-stranger! Nothing like that had ever happened to him before. Yet, he thought, there was something about the old man that seemed to draw him out, as if Merlin could read his mind.

  "Excuse me," Saladin said abruptly, and walked away, not knowing exactly where he would go.