Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  And he had been witness to the supernatural before. When the young boy Arthur had pulled the sword that no grown knight could budge from the stone, he had known he was witnessing a miracle. The stone had lain at the Abbey of Glastonbury since time out of mind, inscribed with its ancient Celtic message: Whoso pulleth this sword from this stone shall be named rightwise king.

  No one knew who had written the inscription, or how the stone became fused to the magnificent sword. Some said that it had been the sword of Macsen, the great Celt who had been crowned Emperor Maximus of Rome generations before. Others claimed that the sword Excalibur had been invested of a life of its own by the fairy folk in the far distant past. But no one knew. Even the druids, with their ancient memories, could not divine its mystery. And yet the boy had taken the sword without effort, and the knights had bowed down to him on the spot.

  Later, after the strange story of Arthur's magical feat had traveled throughout Britain, whispers arose that Merlin himself had used his sorcery to loosen the sword from the stone. They claimed that Arthur was the wizard's son, and that Merlin had conjured up powerful spirits to gain the throne of the High King for the boy.

  These stories amused Merlin, since he knew the limitations of his power. It was true, yes, that he could sometimes divine some trace of people's thoughts; it was an ability he had possessed since childhood. But it was an incomplete thing, giving him only images and intuitions. Even after his training with the druids, Merlin often thought that his "gift" may have been nothing more than the ability to observe people closely. The rest of what the common folk called "magic" was simply education, which had been in woefully short supply since the Romans left Britain.

  Merlin's family had had strong ties with the Romans, as well as a history of rule in Britain. His ancestors had been petty kings since the time of the Celts. When the Romans first came to the island, Merlin's people had been among the first to be "civilized"—that is, awarded Roman status and offered Roman education for their children. His father, Ambrosius, had been reared in the Roman manner, even though the Romans themselves were long gone by his time, and in turn he reared his own children the same way.

  Much of Ambrosius' schooling was lost on his oldest son, Uther, who nevertheless grew up to become one of the strongest kings in Britain. Uther had been a truculent and stubborn boy who cared little for books. He was shrewd, but not much concerned with matters of thought. Ambrosius' other sons were much the same. During their lessons they would sit numbly through their father's lectures, longing to be back astride their ponies or practicing with the lance.

  It was probably his disappointment in his legitimate sons that prompted Ambrosius to include Merlin in the lessons. Merlin was a bastard and would not normally have been admitted into the household, but as his mother had died in childbirth, and Ambrosius' wife was already a year dead by that time, the old chief saw no reason to let the infant starve. Of course, the boy was not permitted to practice the arts of war; his half-brothers would not have stood for that. Even as a child, Uther jealously guarded his right to eventual kingship, and Ambrosius knew that to dangle Merlin in front of him would be to sanction the boy's murder.

  Besides, Merlin seemed to have no inclination toward battle. He was a gentle boy with an extraordinary mind, who showed an affinity for learning from his youngest years. This delighted Ambrosius, who would not have been a king himself if he had not been born to it, and who had loved Merlin's mother deeply.

  She had been a young girl when he met her just after the death of his wife, and had never known much about her. Illya was a creature of the woods, a healer whom the peasants called a witch, but to whom they went with all their own ailments as well as sick animals. She had healed Ambrosius, too, with her love, but she had never told him about her past or her family or why she lived alone in the forest. When she revealed that she was with child, Ambrosius had been tempted to marry her, although he knew it would have been a dangerous decision, frowned upon by the other kings of Britain. But things never came to that. Illya had refused him gently, saying that she had no desire to change the place or the manner in which she lived.

  At the time, Ambrosius had given little thought to his unborn child. He already had three sons, and his mistress was offering no difficulty. Indeed, during the last months of her pregnancy, they had frolicked together like children. It had been the happiest time of Ambrosius' life. And then, overnight, she was gone.

  Every time he looked on Merlin's thin, serious face with his sensitive eyes and tender mouth, he thought of Illya cradling a fawn in her arms or walking through the fields, her arms overflowing with wildflowers. Her son, he knew, would never be king; yet still there was something remarkable about him.

  Merlin never told his father about his supernormal abilities, such as they were, and it nearly broke Ambrosius’ heart when Merlin left to see the world as a bard. During his travels, the "power" he possessed grew. The long years of living by his wits had undoubtedly sharpened his instincts. He found that he could communicate with animals to an uncanny degree, as his mother had, and that he often knew what men were thinking before they spoke their thoughts aloud. His ability had saved his skin more than once, but he knew that it was not developed to the point where it could be of any real use. If he could only harness this gift, cultivate it, he knew, he might open whole new worlds to himself.

  He joined the druids to do just that. And they did teach him many things—the healing arts, for which he had a natural talent, and the ancient knowledge of the Old Religion. But his extrasensory power remained rudimentary. After many years of study and practice, he was able to levitate objects to some degree, but Merlin viewed that as little more than a parlor trick. And he was able, quite uncannily, to transform images in his mind into external visions that others could see. The druids looked upon this as an extraordinary development, but to Merlin himself, it was a small achievement. The visions were a manifestation of his concentration, he explained, nothing more. What he was looking for was something far greater.

  "But we are the wizards and sorcerers the people whisper about," one of the priests had told him, not without amusement. "Our small powers are the things they spin into legends about men with lightning bolts shooting out of their fingers. Surely you don't aspire to that sort of thing."

  "I don't aspire to anything," Merlin said miserably. "I only know that I'm incomplete. It's as if . . ."

  He wasn't able to finish. It would have sounded pompous. But the truth was, Merlin often felt as if something of awesome energy were growing inside him. Like a bear, which at birth is no bigger than the first joint of a man's finger, the creature within him had grown to massive proportions and was straining to get out. And Merlin had spent half a lifetime trying to find the key to release it.

  Sometimes he felt as if it would devour him from inside. Even after Merlin made his way back home and was tolerated, if not exactly welcomed, at King Uther's court as a physician and occasional ambassador to other provinces, he felt a dreadful unease, as if whatever was growing inside him were about to split open his skin and burst out.

  And then, when he saw the boy Arthur—another bastard, Uther's, and thus Merlin's nephew—lift the magic sword from the stone, he realized at last what he must do. It suddenly all made sense: He was to use his small powers to protect the High King of Britain, to grant long life to the man who would rule as no sovereign had ever ruled before.

  Arthur was the king, the man meant to be king, the king now and forever. Even before he claimed the sword, Merlin had seen in the boy a spark of greatness: He had possessed from the beginning a sharp intelligence combined with the capacity for leadership, and all of it was tempered with what Merlin could only describe as grace. Fairness, mercy, purity of heart, personal austerity, humor . . . all of these were qualities which Arthur the boy, and later Arthur the king, evinced. He inspired not awe or fear, but a fanatical loyalty among those who served him. He was born to rule, and from the moment he came to power, Arthur had known
his mission: He was to unite the world in peace for all time.

  Such a king had never lived before or after. Oh, there had been rulers who sought to conquer all the lands they saw, be it for greed or for adventure, but none had seen beyond the boundaries of their own kingdoms.

  Arthur was different. His vision was one so grand that it would have shocked and appalled his contemporaries, or even world leaders well into the twentieth century and beyond. Merlin himself had been stunned when he had first heard of Arthur's plan. For what he wanted was no less than a global consensus of law.

  "I don't want to destroy the Saxons," he had confided to Merlin in a moment of reflection shortly after his coronation. "I just want to civilize them."

  Merlin had smiled. "There are those who might view that as an impossibility."

  "It's really just a matter of time," Arthur went on. "Once they learn how to farm, they'll stop attacking and come as peaceful settlers."

  Merlin found it hard to hide his astonishment. "You want them to settle here?"

  "Why not? There's plenty of space. They could bring part of their own culture here. We'd be all the richer for it."

  "Arthur," Merlin said worriedly, "You've just become king. I must urge you most strongly not to bruit these ideas about to the petty chieftains—"

  Arthur burst out laughing. "Can you imagine what they'd say? No, I plan to keep my thoughts to myself for the moment."

  Merlin rolled his eyes in relief.

  "For the chiefs to support me as High King, I'll have to give them what they want—battles and victories. Right now, that's the only thing the Saxons understand, anyway. But the time will come when our nation and theirs will live together, trade, work together for mutual benefit . . ." His eyes sparkled. "Wouldn't it be wonderful, Merlin, if we could talk with people from all the lands that lie beyond Gaul and Rome?"

  "Heaven forbid," Merlin said. "They may be as bad as the Saxons."

  "At first, I suppose, they would. But someday they might be allies." He sighed. "I wonder if one lifetime will be enough."

  The old man smiled. "It's never enough," he said gently.

  "Is that why things never change?" Arthur asked.

  "Perhaps."

  He had left the boy-king then, and Arthur did not mention his radical thoughts during all the years of his growing power. Instead, he proved himself in battle time and again, gaining the great respect of the petty chieftains and their vassal knights through his courage on the battlefield. Merlin began to think that the king had forgotten his childish dream when Arthur announced, just before leaving for one of the endless battles against the Saxons, that he had just granted settler's rights to a band of Germans who had been beaten by Arthur's knights during an attempted attack on a northern village.

  "Are you mad?" Merlin stormed. "They came to invade your country."

  "But they didn't. And so instead of slaughtering them and then waiting for their neighbors to attack in a second wave, I have welcomed them and asked them to help in our defense against the Saxons."

  "You've done what?" Merlin was aghast. "You've got one bunch of barbarians to fight another bunch of barbarians?"

  Arthur only smiled. "Come now, Merlin. Many of the petty chiefs have been using German mercenaries for years to help them defend against the Saxons."

  "But they were paid and then sent home. They weren't invited to take over our country."

  "They're not taking over. They're settling here as farmers, subject to our laws."

  "Good God, Arthur, they know no laws. They're barbarians!"

  "That's a meaningless word," Arthur said. "To the emperor of Rome, we ourselves are barbarians."

  "But it's . . . it's indecent," Merlin sputtered. "The whole concept is indecent."

  "Why? See how it works." He pointed to the door separating his private apartments from the Great Hall. "Out there are the kings of twenty tribes. Until a few years ago, each of them was sworn by generations of blood feud to kill the others. Now they dine together at my table, working toward a common good."

  "But the Germans . . ."

  "Yes. And, in time, the Saxons, too. Together we'll build roads and coin our own money and trade in all sorts of goods. We'll read one another's books. We'll develop fair laws that apply to everyone, everywhere."

  "Rome already tried that sort of thing," Merlin said.

  "No, it didn't. Rome tried to make everything Roman. The laws were Roman laws. The language was Latin. The leaders of government were all Romans. Every nation under Rome's influence was a slave state, conquered by Rome and never allowed to forget it. I want something different—autonomous nations working peacefully and in concert with one another. A free world, ruled by free men."

  Merlin shook his head. "Your heart is good, but I'm afraid you're still too young to understand the lure of power," he said.

  "Power is only desirable to those who don't possess it," Arthur said lightly. "I don't plan to take anything away from anybody."

  "How could you understand? You became king by the most extraordinary circumstance I've ever witnessed. Most don't. Most men come to power through violence or trickery. And it's the power they want, Arthur. Oh, they may start out thinking as you do, wanting to be part of a better world, but in this consortium of kings you're talking about, you can be sure that one king will try to gobble up another as soon as he's got the chance. And more than one will be looking to the High King's throne, to gobble up everything else, including you. It's human nature, Arthur."

  He was beginning to feel irritated. Romantic idealism was tolerable in a young man with nothing more to do than look after his fields, but it was a dangerous quality in a king. If Arthur was so naive as to think that he could offer Brittania to the Saxons without their seizing power, he was a fool who would lead his country into oblivion.

  "You ought to be with your men," Merlin said finally.

  "I suppose so. But my idea could work. With laws and a good army—"

  "And an incorruptible king who lived a thousand years," Merlin snapped.

  Arthur smiled. "Do you think you could arrange that? They do say you're a wizard."

  Merlin got up grumpily, bowed to the king he now thought of as a naive child, and stomped away, leaving Arthur laughing as he buckled on his chain mail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Arthur did not live a thousand years, of course; he died young, despite Merlin's efforts, without ever having fulfilled his mission.

  In the centuries to come, Merlin might have forgiven himself for Arthur's early death, if it had not been for the dream.

  It came on the night of their discussion about the Germans. Merlin went to bed feeling annoyed, as one would with an adolescent son who has announced that he will spend his life in some frivolous pursuit. It would pass in time, but the passage was bound to be unpleasant. He did not understand Arthur, really, until the dream.

  In it, he stood at the far end of a long table in the king's Great Hall, watching the approach of another man. The visitor was dressed strangely, in long loose robes, like the garb of an angel, and was surrounded by light.

  At first Merlin took him to be a priest of some kind, perhaps a druid come bearing a gift for him, for the man held something in his two hands. But as he moved nearer, Merlin saw that the man was not a priest at all, but the one the Christians believed to have been the living god, Jesus the Christ, and above his outstretched hand floated something shiny and hard, draped in glittering white Samite.

  Merlin was about to speak to the man, to ask him what he was doing in the court of the king, when he noticed that Arthur was standing beside him, his eyes fixed on the approaching stranger's. Arthur's arms raised and the object moved toward him, slowly as a whisper, down the length of the table.

  "Arthur, take it!" Merlin shouted.

  As he spoke, the glittering cloth unfurled from the object and it hovered alone in the air, metallic and curved, the circle within the circle, the symbol of perfection, of eternity, of life without end . . .<
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  "Take it!"

  But the cup and the man behind it were already beginning to vanish. The king reached out, but made no attempt to grasp the cup. Before it arrived at the end of the table, it was as transparent as a insect's wing. And when it vanished, so did the king, disappearing into the mists as if he had never existed.

  "Arthur! Arthur!"

  The old man awoke in a sweat. For surely he had just seen Arthur's death, and the means to prevent it. Saladin's cup had healed Merlin's own stopped heart. It had brought him back from the dead. It had protected Saladin from all injury during the rockslide in the cave. Saladin, the young man with the old eyes and the knowledge of a thousand lifetimes. Saladin, who was only twenty-five years old and yet knew the secrets of the pharaohs.

  It feels more like twenty-five centuries, he had said.

  But of course, he had meant that literally! The cup had the power to heal and protect the human body indefinitely.

  Saladin had lived forever.

  But the cup was not meant to be his. It belonged to Arthur, to the one man who could not be corrupted by it. To the forever king, who would use it to fulfill a great destiny and hold that destiny until the Creator Himself came back to claim the earth that Arthur had made holy for him.

  The dream frightened him. While it was still dark outside, Merlin slipped away from the castle to the forest and walked through the windy December cold to the secret glen where the druids performed their ageless rites. There he stood, clearing his mind of all thought except for the image of the cup as it had touched his dying breast. He felt its warmth again, its perfection.

  The Christians talked about the Second Coming, when their god would return in wrath and glory to condemn the wicked to eternal fire and lead the godly to paradise. Merlin did not know where he himself would stand in such a judgment, as he was not a Christian. Yet the dream had been clear: The cup had passed from the Christ to Arthur. The king was meant to drink from the cup of immortality.