“Merlin!” he rasped, his throat raw from thirst and his previous lamentations. “What’s happened?”
“Come and see.”
He gladly sat up and eased himself aching from that dark space, but the sunlight did not warm him. It came through heavy clouds and fog, and the ruins around him were as dismal and weird as a disordered graveyard of unmarked tombstones, all heaped upon one another.
He had been freed from one Purgatory only to step into another.
“What is this place?” he whispered, for its silence imposed respect upon him, as though the dead were very near and did not wish to be disturbed.
“Why,” said Merlin, gesturing to encompass the foggy ruins with his staff, “this is what remains of the Castle Carbonek and the kingdom of Lystenoyse, which you arrived in only three days ago.”
Balin tested his stiff joints and leaned against an upright block. His breath puffed out in clouds. It seemed to add to the stuff that hung all about. “Three days?”
“Three days have passed since you took up the spear of Longinus and struck King Pellam the Dolorous Stroke.” Merlin climbed over a pile of stone and pointed down to something jutting from the rubble.
Balin came over and looked. It was the broken door he had burst through to enter the chamber at the top of the tall tower.
He could see the emblems carved onto the door closer now. There a hammer and three long nails, a cross with a cock perched upon the top, a scourge, a long reed and sponge, and a lance very like the one he had wielded before the room had apparently collapsed.
But no, it had not been only the room. He stumbled away from the door and saw the broken head of one of the stone cherubs lying nearby. He picked it up and held it in his hands.
These were the remains of Carbonek. The beautiful Palace Adventurous had been destroyed. The full weight of what he had done settled on him like a descending vulture on his shoulders. In his mad flight, he had burst into the very reliquary and profaned the sacred treasures of Christ Himself. The Holy Grail. The Lance of Longinus. He’d drawn blood with a weapon which had last been turned against Lord Jesus Christ on Golgotha.
He felt sick, and he let the broken carving drop from his fingers. For a terrible instant, he fancied he saw that face recoil in silent terror before it shattered to fragments on the ground.
He pitched forward, legs trembling, and caught himself on a broken block, where his guts heaved and wrung bile from his empty belly in violent surges. He stumbled on, not wanting to believe it, hoping it was some wizardry of Merlin’s, hoping he could find the edge of this fog and ruin as he had found the boundary of the Garden of Joy. He could peak through the hedge and find Lorna Maeve again, break through and run to her this time.
He found a place where the ruins gave way to boggy ground and could see the choked river they had crossed over together and laughed to see the boy struck with wet laundry by the washerwoman. There was no joy anywhere in that river. It was only mud and stagnant, fly haunted pools now. The village looked deserted and rundown.
A chill wind blew up from somewhere, pestilent and foul smelling. It parted the fog briefly, allowing him a glimpse of dead trees, dead fields, dead, bloated animals.
His action had done this?
Then he must rectify it. He turned back toward the rubble with a passion and found Merlin standing behind him, impassive.
“Don’t bother looking, Balin. The holy treasures are not here. They have gone. And no man knows where.”
Balin sought to argue but could not summon the will. He knew the enchanter spoke true.
“What can I do?”
“Here?” said Merlin. “Nothing more.” He pointed with his staff. “There is your horse, and your armor, and your precious sword.”
Balin looked and saw Ironprow tethered to a gnarled, withered tree. He couldn’t remember seeing him there before, but he could have overlooked him in his shock at the change in Lystenoyse. The horse at least, though wet and sullen looking, was alive.
“What about the Fisher King?” Balin murmured.
“Only the Grail can heal him, but it’s not for you to find, Balin.”
Merlin’s robes rustled, and he went alongside Balin and took him by the shoulder, guiding him toward the horse.
Balin stopped rigidly. “Merlin,” he said, not daring to ask, knowing he must. He put his heart in the wizard’s hands. “There was a nobleman, and a lady with me.”
Merlin frowned and sighed. He pointed with his staff, back toward the ruins.
Balin began to sob. He threw off Merlin’s arm and ran pell-mell at the ruined castle, turning uncertainly.
“Lorna Maeve! My Lady!” he called.
Merlin stood in the wreckage, looking down at a pile of stone near the edge of the ruin, though Balin had not seen him move.
He looked dourly in Balin’s direction and pointed down at his feet with his staff.
Balin stumbled, tripped a few times, dashing his knees and cutting his elbow on the jutting rubble.
He came to where Merlin stood, pointing down at a thick slab of cracked white marble.
Balin whimpered but stooped to attack the stone. He strained to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. He kicked it, clawed at it, struck it with his fists.
Merlin drew him aside.
“Get back,” he said and struck the center of the marble a blow with the end of his staff.
A web of cracks burst out from the point of impact, and the stone crumbled, so Balin, digging in his fingernails, could pick the block apart.
His fingers were bleeding by the time he uncovered the pale face of the Lady Lorna Maeve, framed in stone like the carved face of a guardian angel on a tomb.
She was perfect, unmarred, eyes closed, lips parted slightly so that he could see her white teeth. Only unconscious, he thought desperately.
He touched her cold cheek, leaving a streak of his own blood. He cursed that and tried to wipe it away with the edge of his hand.
She did not react.
Balin scrabbled at the stone, praying aloud, though the words were jumbled and made little sense.
Then he began to see, the odd shape of her breast beneath her gown, the stone jutting into her torso.
His prayer became a wail, and a scream.
He got up and staggered, tumbled over a stone and fell to his knees on the earth outside the ruin’s edge. He drove his fists into the mud, then ploughed his face into it.
He felt as if a spade had gouged his chest and extricated his heart and buried it here somewhere. He dug at the ground like a dog at a fox den. He lay doubled up there, pulling his hair and howling into the mud and ashes, thinking of her bright, unexpected smile, pining for the feel of that ridiculous hair in his hands, and the precious laughter he had heard once and would never hear again.
It was too much to bear.
“This is the grave of many men and women,” Merlin said, compounding Balin’s misery just when his rage and sorrow had subsided enough for the stillness to descend once more. “Count Oduin, too, and Pellam’s queen.”
“God, Merlin,” Balin croaked. “What can I do? What can I do to amend? How can I…? I’m lower than Cain. I have slain the world!”
“You have wounded it,” Merlin assented. “Grievously.”
“Is that all the wisdom you can offer me now?” Balin gasped, sitting up.
Merlin said nothing.
Balin looked out across the stones and wiped the mud from his eyes with his sleeves.
His heart lay beneath Carbonek with Lorna Maeve, and with Oduin, whose son would die in agony now.
Yet still, it beat. Why?
Why had God spared him in the middle of this catastrophe? There had to be a purpose, still. He had become an instrument of the will of God and also a tool of demons, of that there was no doubt. He reflected that he had seen so much of magic and miracles lately. Merlin was the master of that magic.
Who then on earth was the lord of miracles?
For all his esteemed trappings and lineage,
for all his stewardship of the sacred Sangreal, it had not been Pellam. He had been but a man in the end, driven to blood and vengeance over the death of as bad a villain as Balin had ever known. He had harbored his murdering, godless brother for decades, hadn’t he? Surely, he had known he was a villain as far back as Agrippe’s time. Well might his line been, chosen by God as custodians, but he was no better or worse a king than Rience had been in the end.
He was a king, but not God’s king. There was still Arthur.
Arthur who had proven his right to rule under God with the sword of Macsen, Arthur who had inspired the very people to rally around him at Caerleon, Arthur who had kept the serpents of Avalon at bay and brought God’s justice to the Saxons and Rience at Cameliard, and whose castle now housed the miraculous Round Table.
To undo what he had done would take a miracle. He would have to return to the place where miracles could happen, to Camelot.
“I’ll go back to Camelot,” Balin mumbled. “I’ll tell Arthur what’s happened, what I’ve done. If you have no guidance for me, I can at least inform the king. Maybe I can’t reclaim the Grail. Maybe I’m not worthy, but Arthur and the Round Table are.”
“Already in Camelot they have begun to feel what has happened here,” said Merlin.
Balin rose and walked purposefully toward where Ironprow was tethered.
Merlin walked along behind him. Balin reached Ironprow and stripped off his torn tunic. Merlin seated himself on a stone.
Balin loosed his bundled armor with a clatter and stooped to sift through the components, selected his sabatons.
Merlin watched him strap the armor to his feet.
“The first time we met, Balin, was not the first time I saw you,” Merlin said.
Balin paused, then found his greaves and sat down to fit them over his legs. “I know,” he said. “Brulen told me. You were there the day our mother died.”
“She was a good woman,” Merlin said, not denying it, laying aside his staff.
“Not good enough for you to stop her death,” Balin said, picking out his cod piece and cuisses.
“Some things are unavoidable, Balin,” Merlin said, with an air of regret. “The hook must transfix the worm to bait the trout. The fisherman gives the worm and its loves and hates no thought. He only wants to feed his children and himself. The farmer who buys the fish so that he may have the strength to work his plough and harvest his field gives no thought to the worm, nor does the baker or the king who takes bread at his table. But without the sacrifice of the worm, none of these things can ever happen. And without the doings of baker and farmer, king and fisher, the worm, too, has no sustenance. There is a course to events, Balin. Everything is interwoven, like a tapestry on a loom. Certain things must trigger or desirable events may never come to pass.”
Merlin had come over while he spoke and picked up Balin’s gambeson. He held the arming doublet open for Balin.
Balin reached out and took the jacket from Merlin and shouldered into it himself. As Balin tied his laces, Merlin’s gaze lingered on him a moment. Then he went back to the stone and retrieved his staff.
Balin moved onto his cuirass, dwelling on the notion that his mother was but a worm in Merlin’s mind.
“Your brother understood this, I think,” Merlin said.
Balin looked at him.
“He told you of me,” Merlin said, looking wistfully now across the ruins, “and of May Day, too, I expect. I hated to shoulder him with such a dreadful task. But the line has to be cast, you see, if ever the fish is to be landed and it was Arthur’s will. Sometimes a king’s foresight surpasses even a wizard’s. Oh, but not to worry, my divinations all bore Arthur out. It really was the best thing we could do to correct his indiscretion with Morgause. Brulen did his duty to us admirably.”
“With Morgause?” Balin asked, aghast. Morgause was Arthur’s sister!
“I had heard that her sister Morgan was an acolyte of the Queen of Norgales, but I dismissed Morgause, as she had no power of her own.” Merlin scoffed. “No power? Only the greatest power given to womankind. Morgan distracted me, and I did not see the Queen’s plot until it was too late. Morgause visited Arthur at Caer Gai before he knew his own lineage. Before he knew she was his sister. He confessed it to me as soon as he learned, of course. He was young and flattered by her attentions. She conceived a son by him, and he was born on May Day. That alone I could learn from my divinations, but there was no boy baby among her husband Lot’s folk in the Orkneys. For a year I searched for him. By some spell of the Queen or of Morgan, he was hidden from me. I had to resort to mundane methods. Baptismal records, noble birth announcements. I narrowed it down to four boy children, born on May Day all about Albion and came to Arthur with my findings.”
Four children, Balin thought, stopping short in his work. A cold sweat blossomed on the back of his neck, though he wasn’t sure why. It was as if some danger were creeping upon him.
Four children. Four eggs. Four kings.
“Aguysans,” he mumbled.
“The King With A Hundred Nights, yes,” said Merlin with a heavy sigh. “And King Cradelment of North Wales and King Idres of Cornwall.”
“The fourth was…”
“A boy child belonging to Sir Morganore, the captain of Aguysans’ Hundred Knights. My suspicions were the strongest about that one,” Merlin said, “as Morgause had befriended Morganore in their youth, but I could prove nothing. My powers failed me.”
Balin stared at Merlin. The sweat was pouring down his back now. His pulse was racing.
“Arthur…Arthur commanded…”
“Arthur took a page from King Herod, and Pharaoh before him. Then Herod sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the magi.”
Balin reeled and had to grip Ironprow’s saddle to keep from crashing down in his steel trousers.
“I had taken great pains to formulate some other way,” Merlin went on, “thinking to spare his sensibilities, but he had arrived at the natural solution immediately, as a king should.”
“You sent my brother to do this thing?” Balin hissed. “Brulen?”
“By Arthur’s decree, yes. Brulen, Sir Brastias, Sir Dagonet, and Sir Kay. The most loyal and unquestioning. I sent them out on May Day’s eve, each to steal a certain boy child, each one born on May Day, before their first birthdays. Then, in some secret place even I do not know, they were slain and buried.”
The magnitude, the vileness of this sin was too great for him to stomach. He fell to his knees and retched, his body trying to reject all memory of what he’d just heard.
That was the deed that Brulen had done for Arthur and Merlin, the task that had driven him forever and rightfully so, from the High King’s service.
The murder of three innocent children and the elimination of a bastard son born of incest.
He remembered kneeling at Arthur’s feet in the pavilion at Bedegraine and recalled the king’s words then.
I have no need for knights who follow unworthy orders without question.
But he had.
He had!
“I see,” said Merlin. “Brulen did not tell you everything, then. The boy would have grown to destroy Arthur.”
“Is Arthur worth so much?” Balin screamed. “Is he worth the soul of my brother and of three other knights? Is he worth the slaughter of babies?”
“As a knight of Camelot, don’t you love him best, Balin?” Merlin said.
Balin grabbed the hilt of the Adventurous Sword and tore it from its scabbard with a resounding ring. It quivered, even in both hands, he was shaking so badly.
Merlin stood, eyeing him warily.
“Love him?” Balin laughed madly. “I renounce him! And you, his conniving, damned, half-devil, black lapdog!”
Balin charged at Merlin and swung for his head. The blade whistled through the air, but he was blinded by his own tears.<
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The swing met nothing. It carried him completely around and severed the top of a dead tree with a crack, upsetting only Ironprow.
Merlin stood away, looking as if he hadn’t moved. Perhaps he had never been there to begin with, the old trickster.
“Stand still, you murdering hellspawn! I’ll take your head like I did your Avalon whore’s!”
“As to that,” Merlin said, with a dark and easy smile, “I am easy to find, Balin. Not so easy to kill, you will find.”
With that, he became once more, mockingly, the pied raven Brych, and his mottled wings carried him into the gray sky.
He soared north, and Balin screamed the whole time he was in sight.
So was Balin’s fate finally sealed, Merlin thought, as it had been, from the day that sword had left Avalon.
Merlin had been so busy with the rebellion, he almost hadn’t taken note of Nimue and the plot to kill Arthur with the Adventurous Sword. The fathers of the May Day children had come to suspect Arthur for the disappearance of their sons, probably due to the whispers of Morgause in Lot’s ear. After he had manipulated King Rience into silencing the three kings and Sir Morganore, Merlin had been about to depart Mount Aravius when he’d seen Nimue. After her offer to Rience, he had known only one knight in all Albion could claim that sword, and so he had gotten Dagonet to solicit Balin’s release from Bedegraine’s dungeon.
And now, with Balin’s love of Arthur expunged from his heart, at last, the king was safe. Another shield of lies to protect the king. Of course, Arthur had had no knowledge of what Merlin had ordered Brulen, Brastias, Dagonet, and Kay to do. The part of the story about Arthur confessing his unwitting incest had been true. The boy had been distraught, ready to relinquish his crown even before he wore it. A good boy, the makings of a great man. Merlin had had to talk him down, tell him they couldn’t be sure Morgause had conceived. Her base treachery exposed, even then Arthur couldn’t believe her seduction had been knowing and deliberate. He’d just assumed she had been as ignorant as he. He was naïve to the evils of the world. In that way, he was very like Sir Balin. So he, Merlin, had taken it upon himself to keep Arthur’s rule free of rumor. It had taken nearly four years to expunge the deed from history at last with the death of Lot. And there was still Morgause and her sister Morgan La Fey to worry about.
The Knight With Two Swords Page 36
