But as he pulled her closer still, the thorn he had placed in his sleeve drove itself into his arm, piercing the flesh and drawing blood. The small pain found its echo on all the others within him, and in that moment, his head cleared and memory returned to him.
Gently, he pulled away, taking both her hands in his and laying them in her lap.
“I cannot do this,” he said hoarsely. “It is not love I seek.” Tears threatened behind his eyes as he spoke the words. It was as if winter descended into his heart and would never leave it.
She looked at him, and he saw her eyes were wide and green. “Is it not?” She saw his tears, he knew, but she also saw how he did not move.
“No.” He shook his head and dropped his gaze. He could not look at her anymore or he would weep like a babe. If he did that, he might seek his comfort in her, and this time he would not have the strength to leave it. “Nor will it be.”
He felt more than saw her draw away. Her shadow fell across him as she stood. Cold. Oh, so cold that shadow. “You have spoken a mighty thing here. Be sure you stand by your words, man, for I will not forget them.”
He was suffused with pitiless cold now, and all his pains returned to him. His heart beat heavily in his chest, even as he reclaimed his staff. He stood, making his bow as best he could. He kept his gaze lowered, stealing only the briefest of glances toward the lady. Her face was stern now, all her former delight vanished. She stood aside, and waved her fair hand. The door he had known beyond the blossoming trees opened at once. Merlin walked through.
With each step, his weariness grew. His heart within him beat so heavily, it seemed to be made of lead. He could not see the way forward. It was as if his eyes were still dazzled by the beauty of the lady left behind him. He ground his knuckles into his eyes and groaned aloud. Anger rose up from the depths of his soul. So simple a thing, the need of flesh and heart.
It will not defeat me, he told himself. I will not be lost to such a small thing.
One step at a time he forced himself forward. He staggered in the darkness, and his breath came ragged and rushed from his lungs. But he did not fall, and slowly, painfully, he was able to see another golden light flickering before him.
This new place was far different from the others. No paradise, wild or tamed, waited here. It was only a cavern of damp stone and rough earth and Merlin stumbled as he stepped into it, catching himself with his staff. The light was dim, and the stale air smelled of sea salt and rot. In the cavern’s center stood a man. He was tall and well built, with arms and hands hardened by much labor. His skin was seamed and tanned as that of someone who stands out of doors on all days, in all weathers. His hair and beard were dark, but his eyes sparkled brightly.
“God be with you, Merlin Ambrosius,” his voice echoed strongly against the close walls
Wearily, Merlin straightened himself, clutching his staff. “What are you?” he asked. His voice was harsh, chilled by the winter still within him.
The one before him cocked his head, and shrugged. “A man, as you are.”
Anger flowed sluggishly in Merlin’s veins. Anger and impatience. He was tired of games played against his life, and of riddling words and tests and trials. His hands hurt, his feet hurt, his king waited for him and he would be done! “I am in no humor for riddles, sir. Who are you?”
The man smiled. “I have had many names, even as you have.”
Merlin leaned heavily on his staff. He hurt. His stomach cramped with hunger, and all his efforts weighed down his shoulders. The anger pulsed in his blood, stronger now, anger for all he had to do and all he must do, anger at this… this thing standing in front of him. “Choose one and give it me, or stand aside.”
The ghost’s eyes twinkled at some silent jest. “My father called me Patricus,” he said.
The words fell against him as a wholly unexpected blow, and Merlin stared. “They speak in this land of a Christian man named Patrick.”
The man nodded. “So they do.”
“What would such a one as you be doing in this realm? Should you not be in Heaven?”
“I am where I am needed,” Patrick answered simply. “And I have come to stand before you and ask you to turn aside.”
Merlin’s cold, pained hands gripped his staff more tightly, and it seemed as if the floor shifted beneath him. He had thought himself well prepared for the tests he would meet here, but this he had no expectation of. This he did not understand. “How can this be?”
But Patrick’s face only grew grave at his words. “What you do, Merlin Ambrosius, will cause more harm than good.”
Merlin shook his head, unable to believe let alone to understand. “What say you?” he cried like a man gone deaf in his old age. “With this act I will break forever the power of the druid and the magic of the pagan in this land. The followers of Christ will spread and multiply, unimpeded. It was one of your own converts who gave me the knowledge of how to come to this place.”
The holy man’s bright eyes grew dim and distant. “And in so doing she broke the oath she gave to God. Her repentance will be long, and sore.” There was no humor in this, no calm acceptance, only a deep regret. Patrick cocked his head, and in his eyes Merlin saw the last thing he had ever expected to encounter in this realm of the otherworld. Pity. Plain, simple human pity. “You have eyes that see, Merlin,” he said. “How is it you are still blind?”
Merlin closed those eyes. They burned. They ached. “I am tired, holy Patrick,” he said with exhausted honesty. “I am sick and sore, and have endured much to aid my king, my people and my land. I will not turn aside.” Merlin rubbed his brow. He could not stand here. What remained of his strength was draining away as his blood had drained from his wounds. His time was short, terribly short, and yet he could not seem to make himself step forward while this shade stood in his way. “Why thwart me? Why leave this power to the Druids?”
He expected another riddle, or a quip, but instead the man spoke simply, and as he spoke Merlin felt a different strength surround him. This strength was greater than mountains. It lifted him up. It willed him to understand and to believe. “Because even in its shadow, God’s truth is proclaimed. Because there may yet arise in this land one greater than me who could make the voice beyond speak the glory of Christ.” Merlin did not know if he moved, or if the shade of Patrick moved, but they were closer together now. Patrick’s voice grew soft, soft as conscience, or hope. “How much would that do, if the voice of wisdom the druids hold proclaimed that greater truth? There would be no more doubt or hesitation. All would be done, and it would be done without jeopardizing the faith in the land of my birth, or in yours. Do not do this thing, Merlin Ambrosius.”
Merlin smiled, though he swayed on his feet and clutched his white staff. Without it he would fall, and yet he knew he was triumphant. “You lie, little ghost,” he said harshly. “No holy man would speak so. If you were in truth who you claim, you would welcome me to rid your land of the voice be
yond.”
But the shade before him did not waver, nor did it disperse as he had so deeply hoped it would. Instead, it moved even closer, meeting his eyes. He could not look away, no matter how much he wished to do so. “Ask the question, Merlin, the one that you have not dared to ask. Then you will know why I tell you not to do as you say.”
Merlin found he could not breathe. His thoughts swirled inside his skull, battering at each other, clawing and clinging together. Patrick stood before him, patient, hopeful. The sorcerer summoned all the will he had left within him and set the challenge aside. It did not matter. It was no part of his deed. It was as meaningless as the gold and the love that he had been offered. Only his task mattered, only his sworn duty, and that the doing of this great thing was wholly in his hands. That was the only truth. There was nothing else and nothing more. Not now.
One by one, Merlin dragged forth the words he must speak. “Will you prevent me from entering this chamber?”
Now it was Patrick who closed his eyes as if in pain. “I have not that power,” he said.
“Then stand aside.” Merlin raised his staff, holding it before him like a bar. He felt the power of his art rally within him, flowing with his thick, cold blood. “Stand aside!”
Patrick hung his head, and between one eye blink and the next was gone, silently and simply. Merlin stood alone in the cavern, and the light that had no source began to gutter. As swiftly as he could, Merlin hobbled to the last door and laid his palm upon it. It came open at his touch, and he entered the last chamber.
This too was a place of stone and earth. Four torches burned strongly at the four corners of the bier that waited in its center. Green boughs and blossom strewed the bier, as fresh as if they were laid only yesterday. Perhaps in this place, in this twist and fold of time, it had only been yesterday. It was bitter cold here. Merlin shuffled forward. His breath steamed in the air.
On the bier lay a shrouded man. He had been huge when he stood, a giant among all lesser men. The linen that lay over him was fine enough that through it Merlin could seen his face had been fair and fine. His hair was long and golden. A gold band circled his brow. A torque decorated with bulls circled his throat. Cuffs and rings of gold adorned head and wrist. But he needed no gold to make the beholder see that here lay a king among men. Merlin had stood before greatness, and he knew it well. Even in the stillness of death, he knew it.
“Fionn mac Cumhail,” Merlin whispered. The name moved harmlessly through the chamber. The time was not yet. This name might be shouted in this place, and it would not wake the one in front of him. It took far more words than those known to Merlin, or to Sister Agnes, to make a man who slept such a sleep waken, not whole as he was.
Holding his staff in the crook of his arm, Merlin gently drew the shroud down from the face of Fion mac Cumhail. “I am truly sorry, mac Cumhail,” said Merlin as he laid the noble face bare. It was perfect as it had been in life. Whatever held him, it was not death as other men would know death. “I would not disturb you, but I have no choice. You hold wisdom that cannot be gained any other way, and what I do, I do for my king. It is a thing you would understand. More than that, though. I have seen far, king of the Fian. If you are left here to whisper your wisdom to those who can find it, your people will rise high, but it would only be to crush mine down. I cannot permit that.”
Merlin drew his sword of bloodied bronze and laid it against the throat of the giant on his bier, above the golden torque. He grit his teeth, and raised it up, and with all the strength of arm he had left, he brought the blade down.
And that is how Merlin Ambrosius stole the head of Fionn mac Cumhail and carried it back with him to the aisle of the Britons. There, he washed it in the waters of a certain well and wrapped it with silk and enchantment, and thus he was able to command it to speak to him whenever he had need. In so doing he learned the secrets of making the great stone circle on the plain of kings, and much else besides. And so it was that the men of Eire lost that wisdom for all time and could no more heal heart and self for they had lost the way of building a new heart for their land.
“So ends the tale of the thief of stones.”
*****
The voice of Fion mac Cumhail fell silent. The blank, blue eyes stared past the sorcerer, waiting. Merlin sat alone in his small pavilion with this grim oracle. Beyond the rippling cloth walls, he heard the sounds of the camp; the clank of metal, the rasp of swords, the harsh voices of tired, worried men.
Merlin Ambrosius licked his lips. “And what is the question Merlin was afraid to ask?” he whispered.
Mac Cumhail answered, its voice as flat and expressionless as its cold eyes. “Whether it was Uther Pendragon who would preside over the age of heroes, or another whom he might bring into being.”
Such as a son. Merlin covered his face with his hands, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the flickering light, against the shadows that went too and fro outside his tiny shelter that billowed in the wind sweeping down from the hills. When he could master his voice again, he asked harshly, “What else?”
“He never asked what Lasair would do when she felt the voice silenced.”
“And what did she do?”
Mac Cumhail’s voice was droning, unstoppable, uncaring. “She cursed him. She cursed him by all the names she knew. She cursed so that all he sought to build up by his theft would fall, that all he had seen and could see would never be enough to save what he held dear.”
Merlin lifted his gaze and looked at the oracle he had stolen so long ago. He remembered how strong and handsome Fion mac Cumhail had been when he first looked upon the ancient king’s form on its bier. No more. The features held suspended in that fold of sleep and time had slackened and turned deathly grey. The eyes were filmed over by visions of the past and future. His need had robbed the severed head of all that made it fair, and given nothing back. Merlin slumped back in his cleverly carved camp chair and looked at the thing he had ruined for its wisdom, the wisdom he had so misused.
What now? he wanted to ask. But he knew well enough that not even mac Cumhail could answer that simple question. What now?
“My lord?” called a tentative voice from outside his pavilion. Few soldiers in Uther’s army who would come up to Merlin’s door, even when it was just a length of cloth. “My lord? He… you’re sent for, my lord.”
Merlin laid his hand over Fionn mac Cumhail’s eyes, closing them. The oracle fell silent and Merlin, shuffling, ( like an old man), lifted the oracle and returned him to the casket of sweet-smelling wood. He closed the lid and carefully fastened the silver latch. Then, he straightened himself. His knees ached. His back hurt. Like an old man.
I am an old man. Older than I should be. Older than when I came in here to seek the council that I neglected before.
With his staff as his support, Merlin walked through the camp. The soldiers turned their heads to watch him. Conversati
on fell away as he approached and picked up again softly as he passed. Gossip. Rumor. From the corner of his eye, he saw how men nodded meaningfully toward the great slabs of stone that surrounded them all. The stones he had raised with the wisdom of Fion mac Cumhail. The stones that were supposed to save Uther, the king, from his greatest fear.
Not that any of the muttering soldiers knew that much. They only knew their king was dying. Someone, somehow, had poisoned him, as his brother had been poisoned, and as his father had been.
The guards on duty beside the great pavilion saluted Merlin as he entered. He pushed his way beneath the loose-hanging cloth to see Uther stretched out on his bed. The king’s hands trembled and twitched on the black bear pelt that covered him to his chin. The sweat had dried on his brow, making his skin dull and pallid, but his eyes shone fever-bright in the flickering firelight. Pale, golden Ygraine sat beside him, and the fury in her eyes lanced through Merlin as he knelt on his stiff knees to make his duty to the man who was lord and king to them both.
Uther drew in one rasping, rattling breath. “Sit and talk awhile with me, Merlin.”
Merlin opened his mouth, but Ygraine spoke more swiftly. “You should rest, my husband.”
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 44
