Jim Baen’s Universe
Page 42
On the other side of the fence, the sisters of the house passed to and fro between the buildings. All of them, the old and the young, dressed alike in their simple white robes and brown cloaks and wooden crosses. They stared, perhaps longer than was courteous, at the man tending their geese. But Merlin made no move to speak to any of them, nor for a moment did he neglect the task to which he had been set.
At last, the goose-woman returned. Beside her walked the sister now called Agnes. If she was truly a girl as Lasair had called her, she had left that girlhood behind years ago. She was a square woman, her aspect bespeaking strength rather than beauty. Her hands were large, and her face was tanned and lined as one who worked hard and did not fear to do so. Despite this, she looked at him with apprehension bordering on alarm.
“I do not know you,” she said, hanging back.
Merlin straightened, his knees popping as he did. He bowed. “I am Merlin Ambrosius, and I am come from the land of the Britons and the king Uther Pendragon only that I may speak with you, Sister.”
Agnes clenched her jaw, clearly not knowing what to make of this. If the flattery touched her, it was brushed away by her uncertainty. “What could such a one have to say to me? I am no one.”
Merlin smiled at this modesty and glanced at the goose-woman. “If I may have a word with your sister privately?”
The goose-woman considered this, but nodded. “Don’t fear him, Agnes,” she said to the other woman, laying a reassuring hand on her arm. “I’ll be here if you’ve need of me.” And she stomped back to her geese, where she would no doubt count them carefully to make sure he had done his work well.
Agnes faced the sorcerer, her eyes cast down and her fingers tightly laced together. She said nothing.
“I have been to see your former teacher,” ventured Merlin.
At these words, Agnes glanced upwards, but dropped her gaze at once. “How does she?” she whispered hoarsely.
“She is old, and lonely,” replied Merlin gently, trying to catch her eye.
Agnes sighed and twisted her hands more tightly together, looking away down the rolling slopes toward the distant fens, even as her teacher had looked up those same slopes. Two longing gazes missing each other for the want of time and faith. “I am sorry for her.” Some memory had her snared, and Merlin strained to understand what it might be. “If she were to renounce her pagan ways and follow Christ, we would gladly care for her here.” They were pious words, and deeply felt, but there was something else, something old and secret locked away.
Merlin nodded in sympathy at her words. “Alas,” he said, twisting his staff as she twisted her hands. “There is another power that holds her.”
“What do you mean?” Curiosity made her flick her eyes sideways toward him.
Casting a glance over his shoulder at the goose-woman who now stood with her broad back to them, Merlin took a step forward. “She still believes she guards the voice that waits and sleeps,” he murmured. “While she remains sure of that, she will never turn to a new path.”
The wind blew hard and cold between them. It smelled of rain and of the distant ocean and the damp rot of autumn. “I believe that you are right,” said Agnes. The words were nothing, polite agreement with a stranger, nothing more. She was caught in other memories. They thronged thick behind the eyes she would raise to him only for the barest second. Memories perhaps of her leave-taking, or of the years before and since.
“Were the voice to be silenced, it would no longer drown out the voice of God in her ears.”
Agnes swallowed, her face sad and sober. Merlin realized she had thought of this before. “I will turn my prayers to it.” Again, a politeness, a nothing. She wanted him to leave her, to not remind her of other times and places.
“Sister,” said Merlin as gently as he had ever spoken in his life. “I am come to silence the voice, but I do not know how to find it. Do you?”
Look at me. Look at me, he commanded silently. But she did not. Agnes only looked at her hands, laced so tightly together. The wind tugged at her graying hair, teasing out elf locks to hang around her ears. “I cannot tell you that,” she whispered.
“Cannot or will not?”
She bit her lips. “I swore I would not.” Her voice grew stronger, and Merlin cursed that strength. “When I heard the word of Christ and chose the virgin's path, I swore before God that I would not ever tell what I had formerly known.” Her eyes were bright with the glimmer of tears, and Merlin remembered the tears that had also been in Lasair eyes. “It was only that oath that made her let me go.”
Merlin mustered all the patience he had. If he faltered now, all would be lost. The barest hint of anger or impatience would harden her against him. “How can you hold to an oath that keeps her from God?”
Agnes lifted her head. “Because I swore,” she answered and for the first time Merlin heard in her voice that strength which was so evident in her form. “Because she was mother and teacher to me for many long years. It would be sin not to keep my oath to her. God commands we honor mother and father.”
But she looked at him, and he could hold her gaze now. “God also commands you destroy the ways of the pagan, sister. How can you refuse this battle for her soul?”
He reached for her, willing her understanding, her acceptance of what he said. But to his astonishment, she only glared at him. “I swore my oath. I will not break it.”
Agnes turned on her heel and marched back through the gate. Merlin made to follow, but at once, the goose woman was in front of him, as if brought there by magic. Merlin looked into her stern aspect for a moment, and then bowed, retreating to the edge of the fence. There, he sat down, laying his staff across his knees, and prepared to wait.
The goose-woman stared in astonishment at him. Then, she turned her back, and tried fair to ignore him, though she cast many a disapproving glance in his direction. Merlin was not surprised that she took no further measures. To sit beside a doorway in patient fast was a gesture she would understand well. It had been used by petitioners to kings of Eire, and to stubborn brides. Usually, all that had to be done was to wait until the petitioner, ignored and humiliated, was driven away by cold or hunger.
The women beyond the fence came and went, rustling and whispering. Evening came, and the cold night afterwards. Clouds thickened, and rain came. Ciar whimpered and pressed close to Merlin. Merlin scratched the hound’s head and patted his side, and they shivered together without fire.
The morning came like a blessing and the fading autumn sun dried them both. Hunger tightened Merlin’s belly. Thirst parched his throat. But still he sat where he was and waited. The day passed. The women came and went behind their fence, much as the clouds scudded across the sky. The rains fell, and the sun reappeared. The cold deepened as night drew near. Ciar whimpered and barked. After awhile, he disappeared and ret
urned with a sparrow in his mouth, which he dropped at Merlin’s feet. He nosed at his master’s hand, urging him to eat the offering. Merlin patted Ciar’s great head, and waited.
When the first blue flush of twilight crept across the sky, Sister Agnes came to stand before him, hands on her hips and the flash of steel in her eyes. Merlin inclined his head to her.
“Leave here,” she said flatly.
Merlin lifted his eyes. “I will leave when I have learned what I need to know,” he croaked.
“You will starve then,” she told him.
Merlin shrugged and rested both hands on his staff. “Then I will starve.”
Agnes hissed wordlessly in her exasperation, and left.
So, the night came, and more rain with it. Merlin, despite all his strength of mind and training of body shivered beneath his cloak. He drank the rain as it fell, and as it ran down his face and fingertips. Ciar whined and trembled and would not leave even when Merlin commanded it, but only rested his head on his master’s knee. Merlin threw the end of his cloak over the dog, sharing what pitiful warmth there was. Wolves howled unseen in the forest, making the dog growl and bark in answer.
Morning came cold and grey. Mists rose in clouds and columns from the valleys and the folds in the hills. Once more, Sister Agnes marched through the gate. This time, she held a round loaf in her hand.
“Look, here is bread.” She held the before him and broke it in half so that the steam rose and warmed his face, bringing all the delicious odors of the oaten bread with it.
Merlin licked his lips, searching for some hint of moisture still there. “It is not bread I came for.”
“You cannot sit here until you die.” Beneath the annoyance he heard what he waited for. Worry had returned to Sister Agnes’s voice.
“If I must, I must, for I cannot leave.” He made himself shrug.
“I will not break the oath that set me free!” She cried, the force of her words straightening her back.
Mustering his strength, Merlin lifted his head and met her gaze, seeing how anger and concern warred within her. “Then your silence will be my death.”
She dropped the loaf on the ground, turned and left, walking too fast, not looking back. Merlin pushed the loaf toward Ciar. The dog whined and thumped his tail, and ate the bread. Merlin hoped that Sister Agnes saw this, or that one of her sisters did, and would tell her truly, but could not turn his head to see.
Another day and another dragged past. He shivered uncontrollably now, as if a fever wracked him. His cloak only dried slowly. Hunger and thirst became dull aches within him. His legs alternated between a cold numbness and a storm of prickling and heat burning through them as if his blood were made of pins. When darkness enveloped the world, the wolves moved closer now, and he could see their eyes shining in the bracken that edged the forest. Ciar’s hackles rose and he barked sharply, stalking forward, warning them with his bulk. They crept away, but they would return. Both master and hound knew it, but there was nothing to be done. Merlin dozed fitfully in the frigid darkness, dreaming many strange and troubling dreams, only to pry his eyes open at the grey dawn and Ciar’s bark, and look up.
Sister Agnes stood before him, her square face white and pinched. Her brown cloak was laced tightly against the cold, and she bit her lips as she looked down at him. She carried a bowl of water, a haunch of bread and a blanket of undyed wool in her hands.
With a groan, Merlin pushed himself into a sitting position, and dropped one hand across his staff. To his shame he was not sure he had the strength to lift it if he had the need. The relentless cold had robbed him of all such power. It seared a path down to his lungs even now as he tried to breathe.
Agnes knelt beside him, laying the things she’d brought in her lap. She made no greeting, but only leaned close to him. “Is it true what you said? It is only the voice that keeps her from God?”
Merlin nodded, and his trembling increased.
“I have prayed long over this.” She bit her lips again. “I sin, no matter what I do, but if what you say is so, then I cannot let my mother and teacher die without baptism when my actions might bring her to God.” Her voice eased and strengthened. “I will tell you what I know.”
“All you know?” he whispered. “You swear it?”
“All I know, and I do swear.”
Merlin closed his eyes and reached one shaking hand for the water bowl she brought. He drank long of the clear water as Sister Agnes threw the warm blanket about his shoulders. She helped him tear and soften the bread so that he might eat of it. Slowly, the strength returned to his limbs and the clarity of thought to his mind.
When his trembling had ceased, Sister Agnes, bent close to him, whispering so that only he could hear. “This is what she told me, and I swear before God this is the whole of it. She told me that atop the tallest mountain of Beanncarrig, there stands an ancient tomb. Anyone who stands inside at dawn on the day of the new year will see a door. A t that moment any who asks for entry in the name of the one who raised the tomb will be able to open that door and follow the path downward. He will pass three more rooms, and three more doors. The first is opened with a truth, the second with a lie, the third with all he has. Inside the last room is the voice and the blessing, and all questions will be answered there.”
Merlin closed his eyes, in weariness and in gratitude. “Thank you, Sister Agnes,” he murmured. “May God bless you.”
She gathered up the bowl and blanket, all of her uncertainty coming over her again. “Come to me on your return and tell me I may go minister to my old teacher.” She stood hastily, making to depart. To pray, Merlin thought, to try to make peace with what she had done.
“Will you care for my dog?” Merlin asked abruptly. “He cannot follow the road I must take.”
She looked at the great black hound, thinking perhaps of the geese and the sheep, but also of the wolves that howled in the night. She nodded. “Go with God then.”
“I thank you, Sister.”
Leaning on his staff, Merlin got himself to his feet. With only slightly more difficulty, he persuaded Ciar to follow Agnes through the gate. He watched them both go with something like regret, but then turned his face westward, looking toward the taller mountains waiting there.
With a sigh, Merlin began once more to walk.
*****
It was a long walk, for he must husband his strength. But the cold was deepening the sky and the wind both told him the eve of the new year quickly approached. With this knowledge driving him, Merlin hurried as much as he dared. He clambered over the rocky slopes by day, finding much to drink but little to eat. He laid down beneath thick blankets of leaves at night and woke to find frost on his hood and ice in the streams that sustained him. Cold stiffened his hands and his legs. His breath came out in white clouds when the weather was clear, and in harsh gasps when the rain poured down. There were none up here to witness his passage, but neither were there any to offer him shelter. By
his art he had fire at night, but not all the power he knew could keep the rain from his back without a roof and the higher he climbed, the more sparse the forest became, until there were not even branches nor leaves to help shelter him.
Bent almost double from the steepness of the climb, Merlin came at last to the height of Beanncarrig to see the tomb just where Agnes said it would be. It was an ancient place, sturdily built after the pattern of the dwellings of the living-a huge round house of stone with a conical roof of timbers, lime and slate. A stone cross thick with carvings of knots and ribbons stood before it, but that was a new thing compared to the tomb itself, and the carvings on its walls showed as much. Here were the ribbons and the knots, but no sign of cross or Christ. On the sides of the tomb Merlin found the white mare and the raven, the salmon, the bull and the boar. The horned god held court there and the goddess rode in her chariot.
If there had once been a portal set in the stone threshold, it had long since rotted away. In its place now waited two tangled thorn bushes, their barbs thrusting outward. Merlin broke off a small twig from one and tucked it into his sleeve as he made his way between them, careful to break no other branch nor tear off any of the dying leaves.
Inside the tomb was only darkness. The clouds hung so low and so thick outside, no sun streamed through the doorway. The air was dank, still and cool, with only the lightest draft to touch its fingers to the back of Merlin’s neck. Before him in the gloom, he saw the dead.
They lined the walls laid out in carved niches, three high. Their names had been carved there in the oldest runes of all. They had been there as long as the tomb, these corpses, and now were nothing more than bones beneath shrouds that a breath would have turned to a shower of dust. Still, they waited, grey bones, ruined cloth and empty eyes. Here and there a jewel flashed or a ring of gold on finger bone or wrist. Merlin touched none of this. By his art, he made himself a fire and sat beside it. He ate some of the nuts and withered apples he had gathered on the lower slopes, and then stretched out before the doorway to sleep. He missed Ciar’s solid warmth beside him but rolled himself in his cloak and let exhaustion carry him away.