The Hallowed Isle Book Four

by Diana L. Paxson

  And each day the hours of twilight lengthened as the season turned towards the solstice, all powers drawing together to resolve the conflict that had unbalanced the land.

  At the Isle of Maidens, Morgause woke from evil dreams. It lacked a week to midsummer, and the priestesses were preparing for the festival, but her nightmares had been filled with blood and battle. She saw Artor and Medraut facing each other in battered armor, fury stamping their faces with its own likeness, and felt the perspiration break out on her brow. In that confrontation she sensed some great turning of fate, and it filled her with fear.

  She left her chamber, calling to her maidens. “Pack journey food and blankets. Nest and Verica, you will come with me.”

  “But Lady,” they protested, “what about the sacred rites, the festival?”

  “This year the Lady of Ravens is celebrating her own ritual,” she said heavily. “I must be at the Wall by Midsummer Day. . . .”

  “Midsummer Eve . . .” said Goriat, surveying the winding river and the bluff above it, where lights twinkled from the old fortress. “At home, the clans will be gathering to light their solstice fires, throwing flaming brands high into the air to make the crops grow, and carrying the torches through the fields.”

  “In the South, also,” answered Artor.

  He felt as if he were thinking with two minds, one part evaluating the site’s military potential while the other appreciated the beauty of the scene. The fort stood on a crag with a steep escarpment. Below stretched flats through which a small river wound. The higher ground was astir with men and horses as the Britons settled in.

  “How strange that this stream should also have the name of Cam,” the younger man said then.

  The king shrugged. “Britannia is full of rivers that turn and wind in their courses, and I suppose many of them must bear that name.” He walked along the riverbank, his officers following.

  “You must wish it was the one that runs near Camalot.”

  “Only if I were inside its walls,” Artor answered with grim humor. “If I must attack a fortress, I am glad it is not a place of my own building. Camboglanna was strong once, but now it is in disrepair, and Medraut is not provisioned for a seige.”

  “He has trapped himself, then—” Goriat grinned.

  Vortipor shook his head. “Not if the Picts arrive to relieve him. That’s our danger. He can’t outrun us, so he hopes to outwait us—”

  “—Until he outnumbers us. I see.” Goriat squinted up at the fort. “The old Romans built well. To see that ragtag of northerners occupying Camboglanna galls my soul! An attack uphill from this side would be difficult, and I don’t suppose the far side is any better.”

  Peretur shrugged. “The Wall joins the edge of the fort on both sides and there is only one gate, still in good repair.”

  Goriat turned to Artor. “We’ll have to winkle him out of there somehow, my lord.”

  Artor’s gaze was still on the river—the gleam of late sunlight on the water shone like Guendivar’s hair. I have been fighting too long. He sighed. I want to take her with me somewhere they have never heard of warfare— perhaps the Blessed Isles. But he had to fight one more battle. If he could win that one perhaps he would be done.

  “I’ll send a message. Medraut has run from me twice now. If force won’t budge him, we’ll see what shame will do.”

  They gazed up at the road that crossed the overgrown vallum ditch before the walls. Dark figures moved on the walkway above it, bows in their hands.

  “I’ll deliver it,” said Goriat with a sigh. “We were brothers once. He might hesitate before ordering those archers to shoot me. . . .”

  Above Camboglanna, two ravens circled, then swung out over the river and settled, calling, in the branches of a gnarled thorn tree.

  Raven wings filled Merlin’s vision with fragments of shadow. He clung to the saddle bow, drawing breath harshly, willing the wheeling world to slow. Over the tumult in his head he heard someone calling him—

  “My lord, I have found the spring!”

  He opened his eyes and found Ninive, a fixed point around which the world stilled to comprehensible shape and meaning. The ravens were at Camboglanna. Here, there were only the irregular flitterings of wren and tit, and the musical gurgle of a tiny stream.

  Before him, the narrow leaves of young rowan trees moved gently in the breeze, their edges gilded by the westering sun. Below spread a hawthorne to whose twigs a few fading white blossoms still clung. Beyond them he saw a noble oak tree.

  “The water flows from that outcrop of rock just beyond the trees—” Ninive danced back across the jumble of fallen leaves and mossy boulders. Through the tangle of branches loomed the side of the hill.

  “It is the place. . . . The headwaters of the Cam,” he muttered, nodding as he recognized each feature of the image that had haunted his dreams. “And the day—have we come too late? Tell me, what is the day?”

  “By the calculations you gave me at the beginning of this journey, this will be the shortest night of the year,” she replied.

  He sat back with a long sigh. “Midsummer Eve. They will fight tomorrow by the river.”

  “Can you help?” asked the girl. “Will the water carry your power to Artor?”

  “Can anyone turn fate?” he murmured. “Now, at least, I have a chance to try!”

  He slid from the pony’s back, and with Ninive and the Spear to prop him, made his way to the oak, whose knobbed root made a seat above the stream. There he sat, extending his senses to encompass every part of the wood around him, and waited, as at Camboglanna two armies were waiting, for the dawning of the longest day.

  The first sunlight gleamed from the river and from the helmets of the men who stood beside it: Artor’s army, in full battle array. Medraut could see them clearly. So could his men. They were talking about the damned letter. Did they think he could not hear?

  He had burned the parchment, but the words were burned in his memory.

  “You boast of your courage, but twice now you have run from my wrath. You boast of your right to rule, but the queen has fled you and returned to my bed. . . .”

  Guendivar! Oh, Artor had known that would enrage him. In dreams he still held her rounded body in his arms.

  The hateful words echoed in his inner ear—his mother’s scolding voice, speaking his father’s words.

  “Like a greedy child, you have tried to seize your inheritance, and by doing so, forfeited all claim! You are coward and craven— tainted in blood and corrupt in mind.”

  And if I am, Mother, he thought in bitter reply, I am what you and he have made me! And still the accusations rolled on.

  “And these things all men shall know for truth if you do not come out and face me, body to body and soul to soul!”

  Ravens were circling in the air below, calling out to their goddess the tally of the slain. He had only to wait, Medraut thought furiously, and they would all be safe. But these bloodthirsty fools whom he commanded were chafing to avenge their defeat at Luguvalium.

  “My lord,” said Bleitisbluth, “the men are angry. The enemy have been shouting evil things. The Rome-king left a garrison in Luguvalium, and we outnumber them. Better to order our warriors to attack while you still can!”

  The raven voices grew louder, blended to a single voice, calling to him. Guendivar is lost to me, he thought, I must serve the Lady of Ravens now. . . .

  “Very well—if they are so eager for battle, fight they shall!” Certainty came to Medraut like a spark kindling tinder, and with it a fierce exultation. He reeled off a list of chieftains, their order and numbers. “The remainder will form a reserve force, hidden here, with me.”

  Medraut watched from the gatehouse as his army rolled down to meet the waiting force below. The men of the North rode their sturdy ponies to battle, but they fought on foot, with shield and spear. The narrow flats by the river favored them. He had expected that Artor would not be able to use his cavalry to full advantage, and indeed, he cou
ld see that the king himself was fighting dismounted.

  As the morning passed, the purple cloak was everywhere on the field, the pendragon floating above it as Artor’s standard bearer strove to keep up with him. As noon drew nearer, the sun’s strength grew.

  He is an old man, thought Medraut, and it’s getting hotter. Soon, he will fail!

  From below came clouds of dust, stopping the throat and stinging the eyes. The only color was the crimson of blood, bright as the cloak of the goddess of battles in the pitiless radiance of Midsummer Day.

  What kept Merlin upright was the Spear. He had taken his stand in the space between the oak, the mountain ash trees, and the thorn, just where the waters of the Cam emerged from the stone. His heart galloped like Artor’s warhorse, vision pulsing in time to its beat. Increasingly he relied on inner senses, extending them through air and soil until his body no longer contained his awareness. He risked losing focus entirely, but his control would last long enough, he thought, for what he had to do.

  “Cast the circle, Ninive—”

  The girl’s voice rose and fell as she paced sunwise around him, sprinkling the sacred herbs, chanting in the old tongue of her mother’s people. She was weeping, but her voice stayed strong, and he had time for a moment of pride. Nine times she made the circuit, and with each circumnambulation the Druid’s consciousness drew inward, trading the diffuse awareness of his earlier state for a more powerful and precise connection with the space immediately around him, as if he stood within a pillar of crystal bounded by oak and ash and thorn.

  Then she completed the spell, and he needed his control no longer, for the magic upheld him. Ninive was a spark of light before him, sensed rather than seen.

  “The hour moves towards the triumph of the sun, the longest day! I summon you, O Prophet of Britannia, to say what shall come to this land.”

  For a moment Merlin knew nothing. Then the daimon within him awakened and his mind reeled beneath the flood of foreknowledge.

  “The Red Dragon gives birth to a Boar and a litter of little Foxes that between them shall tear and worry at the land. Men and women shall cry out and flee their rulers, and give their name to Armorica, for it is the princes of their own people that oppress them. And then the White Dragon shall rise from his sleep and devour them, from Land’s End to the Orcades.”

  Immensities of time and space rushed before him; he saw strange armies marching across Britannia, steel roads and devastated forests and cities covering the land. He saw a crossed banner that circled the world. The images he saw he could not comprehend, and presently he waited in silence once more.

  “When these things come to pass, O Prophet, where will you be?” A new question came.

  “I will be Lailoken in the court of Gwendoleu, and in the court of Urien I will be Taliessin. I shall not leave this land, but ever and again I will shape myself as her need compels me. Going in and out of the body, my voice will be heard in Britannia throughout the ages.” In vision, all those lives were clear before him, and Merlin laughed.

  “The sun nears her nooning, master, and there is one thing more to ask. Say now what fate is twined for Artor the king!”

  The vision that had spanned centuries folded cataclysmically inward, arrowing like lightning towards its goal. Merlin saw the bloody field of Camboglanna, and Artor, catching his breath as he leaned upon a broken spear. Goriat lay dead beside him, but his enemies were fleeing up the hill. Above them the God of the Sword and the Lady of Ravens hovered, invisible to mortal eyes. And then the air rang with the bitter music of warpipes, and from the fortress a troop of mounted men came riding, and Medraut sped before them.

  The bean-sidhe is wailing- thought Artor, that doom-singing demon that Cunorix used to speak of so long ago. He wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand and peered up at the fort, knowing already that it was something worse. The army he had faced was gone, but Medraut, whom he had sought in vain all through the battle, was coming out at last. Now, he thought despairingly, when I am already tired. But this was no time to stand swearing.

  “Edrit, run—tell Vortipor to get ready!” he called to the warrior who bore his standard, and started to slog back to the high ground. Medraut had been clever to field a reserve force when the battle was almost done. But Artor had been clever too.

  He heard a gleeful shout as the enemy sighted him, and struggled towards the line of willow trees.

  On the other side, Vortipor waited with the best riders the British had. A boy was holding Artor’s big black stallion, a descendent of the first Raven he had ridden to war. Edrit boosted him into the saddle and handed him a javelin and a horseman’s round shield. Taking up the reins, he peered through the screen of branches. Medraut’s troop had reached the bottom of the hill. They were losing speed as they spread out along the road.

  He turned back to his men. “Has it been hot here, waiting? It was hot work down there too! But now it’s your turn, my lads, and you are the veterans of Gallia. Keep your formation, and that rabble will scatter like bees from an overturned hive!”

  Someone murmured, “But they can still sting!” And the others laughed.

  They started forward, Vortipor taking the point and Artor riding among the men on the wing. As the rebels turned towards the river, the king’s men burst through the willows, urging their mounts to full gallop as the slope lent them momentum.

  “Artor!” cried the British riders. “Artor and Britannia!”

  They were going to hit the enemy at an angle. The king wrapped his long legs around Raven’s sides, dropped the knotted reins on the horse’s neck, and cocked his arm, poising the javelin to throw.

  He sighted on Medraut, then the point of the British wedge struck, and Artor was carried past him. Training ingrained to the point of instinct selected a new target; he cast, and a man fell. A spearpoint drove towards him; he lifted his shield and grunted as it took the weight of the weapon, shifted his weight and jerked as the horse moved, and felt the spear tear from the man’s grip and clatter to the ground.

  He thrust the shield outward to protect his body as he reached across his belly to grip the hilt of the Chalybe sword. May the Defender be with me! he prayed, and felt a tremor of eagerness shock through his hand. At the battle of Verulamium the god of the Sword had come himself to counter an alien magic, but this was a battle of men, and Artor dared ask only for the strength to endure to the end.

  The black horse was fresh and knew its trade, wheeling to knock a smaller beast sideways so that Artor could finish the rider with a slash of his sword. Then another shape loomed up before him. He struck, and struck again. The sweat ran hot beneath his armor, for the sun stood high. After each blow his arm came back up more slowly, yet still he slew, seeing Medraut’s mocking face on every foe.

  The sun stood high, and all the wood trembled beneath the weight of its glory. The circle of power where Merlin stood was a dazzle of light. But his inner sight was filled with the image of Artor, fighting on while all around him men fled or fell.

  An enemy sword cracked the king’s shield; Merlin saw him lose his balance and tumble from the horse’s back. In the next moment his opponent was downed by a thrown javelin. Artor struggled to his knees at the water’s edge, shieldless, but still clinging to his sword. The king looked up. Medraut stood before him.

  Merlin gripped the shaft of the Spear. “Is it time?” he whispered, and the rune-carved wood quivered like a live thing in his hand. In all the forest, there was no sound but the sweet music of the infant stream. “This is my will,” he said aloud, “that my spirit shall neither sleep nor seek the Summerland, but continue to wander the world!

  “I am the wind on the wave!” Merlin cried.

  “I am the fire in the wood!

  “I am the sun beneath the sea and the seed in the stone.

  “Before time’s beginning I was with the gods, and I will sing at its end.

  “I am Wild Man and Witega, Druid and daimon—

  “I invoke the lan
d of Britannia to the aid of her king!”

  The Spear whirled in his hand, and he plunged it, point downward, into the moist soil. Deep, deep it sank, to the roots of creation, but the wooden shaft was expanding, extending branches to embrace the sky. For an eternal moment, Merlin was the Tree, linking earth and heaven.

  Then the world collapsed around him in a roar of falling stone. But the essence that had been Merlin was already shaping itself to root and branch, to soil and stone and the rising wind, but most powerfully to the winding waters at his feet. Swift as thought he sped southward towards Camboglanna.

  X

  RAVEN OF THE SUN

  A.D. 5l5

  MEDRAUT WAS A FACELESS SHADOW BETWEEN ARTOR AND the sun.

  “So, my lord father, you kneel before me! Will you admit you are beaten at last?”

  The king squinted up at him, licking blood from a lip that had split when he hit the ground. His helmet had come off; the air felt cool on his sweat-soaked hair. It was a little past noon.

  “I kneel to the earth, whose power brought me down,” he said evenly. “Are you going to let me get up, or do I have to fight you from my knees?” They were getting wet; he looked down and realized that he had fallen in the shallows at the edge of the stream.

  Medraut slowly lifted his sword. He’s tired, Artor observed, but he himself was exhausted. Perhaps it would be easier to fight from here. Or to let Medraut kill him. They were surrounded by the dead and dying. He had lost his army, he thought numbly, and Britannia.

  The river ran purling past his foot, sweet and clear. When Medraut still did not answer, the king scooped up a handful of water.

  His first thought was that he had not known he was so thirsty. He dipped up more, and felt his tissues expanding like parched earth in the rain. With the third mouthful, he sensed the triumphant surge of Merlin’s spirit making him one with everything around him. The cool sweetness of water, the solid strength of earth, the dry heat of the air—he felt them all with an intensity that was almost pain.

  A movement that would have been impossible a moment before brought the king to his feet. Medraut jumped back, staring.