The Merlin laughed too, like any young lad fascinated by talk of the secret rite between man and woman of which he had no real knowledge as yet. But he was more curious about other things Buan-ann had told him. “Who are these hunters; what is their tribe?”
“We do not know, for their tongue is like gravel falling from the hillsides! They were here before us, long before, and our fathers have been here long enough. They do not farm or build homes; they travel like the wind, eating only woodland berries and flesh of wild beasts. They are now almost gone; their life was a harsh one. Some eventually became farmers like us and hence our blood is mixed.”
Merlin nodded, glad to know that his father was perhaps not a forest-demon and but a man. He would not tell any but Buan-ann that, though—a suspected otherworldly origin could aid him in his role as magic man.
Buan-ann smiled at him, all gums save for one grizzled tooth. “Your secret is safe with me,” she laughed “Now come, I will teach you the song that pleases old River-woman, so that she will not suck you down to her reedy bed when you go swimming!”
*****
A year passed, and one night shortly after the Feast of Lambing, Buan-ann did not rise from her bed. The women attended her, but no potion could bring her back, and by dawn her spirit had begun the journey across the Great Plain to the Summerlands of the West.
She was carried from her hut on a plank of stout oak, held by the strongest youths of the tribe. She had been wrapped in deer hide and her hair combed and braided. Flowers wreathed her grey head and her neck was draped with amber, like golden tears on her silent breast. Beside her lay a rattle to show the gods in the Otherworld that she was a magic-woman and by her head was placed the ball of worn quartz in which she had divined the future. She was carried to a high hill with a flat top; a spirit-stone gazed out from here, pointing toward the dark slopes and rilled fangs of God-of-Bronze, which men whispered was an entrance to Ahn-un, Land-of-the-Dead.
Here she was laid out on a pyre of hazel-wood. The villagers milled round, women first, men following, singing and dancing as they circled her bier. Then, when they had whipped themselves into a frenzy of grief, they lit many torches and hurled them onto the pyre with much wailing and keening. The dry wood crackled and went up in great orange flames. Flesh hissed, and Buan-ann’s skull shrivelled and blackened, bowing down toward her ball of quartz, as if summoning its power to guide her upon her final journey.
Merlin sang and howled, leaping like a young deer beneath the smoke-filled sky and pretending it was rain on his cheeks and not tears. She had been a good friend—the first ever for friendless Lailoq, and he was grieved to lose her wisdom and companionship.
When the pyre had burnt to ashes, Merlin picked through the wreckage, muttering the chant that calmed dead souls. One by one, he placed the charred and fragmented shards that had once been his mentor in a wide-brimmed urn.
He halted for a moment, breath ragged, as he spotted something shining in the heap of ash and calcined bones.
The crystal ball, bright and pure as if the fire had not touched it.
He knew then: he was meant to have it. A final gift from Buan-ann as she departed to the Undying Land. A sign for him, that he was indeed the one to take her place and commune with both man and spirit. He placed the still-hot ball to his forehead and prayed, while the sky shone with all the fires of the gods and the women carried Buan-ann’s urn away to the river, to mingle her ashes with the waters that streamed out towards the flowing sea.
*****
As the year grew warmer and the feast of the Longest Day and Shortest Night came and went, Merlin sought audience with Vhortiern and announced that he would be going West, to continue learning the wise-man’s craft with the great high wizards who dwelt on Mhon. Grumpily, the chief granted his permission, but made Merlin swear not to stay past the autumn Equinox, the Day of Balance, when neither Light nor Dark had power over the other. “The traders come at that time,” he said, “and your slick tongue soothes them better than my rough one. You owe me that tongue, boy…I mean, Merlin; it is I who saw your… greatness… and spared your life. Remember that.”
So the Merlin set out for the North, carrying only his copper dagger, a bow and a shaman’s hazel staff, to visit the Oak-Seers who lived in the groves of Mhon, the Mother Isle, which jutted like a spear-head into the stormy seas between Prydn and its sister isle, Ibherna. He stayed with them awhile, and they taught him of the movements of Sun and stars, and how the great spirits had made them so, and what would please those heavenly beings and keep them upon a steady and favourable path. Then, with the Oak-Seer’s aid and blessing, he travelled onwards in a coracle of bark and skins, and, borne by a skirling tide, reached the shores of Ibherna itself, deep green under a red Sunset.
Trudging inward from the coast, over many days he sought out the sanctuary of the native goddess, Brygyndo, Fiery Arrow. Brygyndo was worshipped in a wooden temple in the heart of a great earthen ring; nearby were the tallest standing stones found in Ibherna, near equal in size to the great monoliths of Khor Ghor, that most famous of Temples that lay upon the Great Plain in the south of Albu.
Inside the temple precinct, an eternal flame burned before Brygyndo’s Three-faced effigy, and a priestess known as Brig-ahn who was healer, birthing-woman and deadly archer, tended the hearth and minded the statue.
This Brig-ahn, a tall woman with crimson-stained hair and ear and lips plugs of jet readily invited the Merlin into the sanctuary, as was the wont of her cult; no one seeking succour or solace was ever turned away from the Shrine of Fiery Arrow. Merlin made his offering to the Lady of that place—a gleaming lucite arrowhead with long barbs, so thin and painstakingly crafted it could only be used by the spirit-world—and then sat in meditation, breathing in the herb-scented smoke that coiled round the chamber. He had chosen to come here because he wished to follow the footsteps of another Merlin, who had visited Brygyndo’s shrine countless lifetimes ago, studying the Godstones that guarded the sanctuary. An ancient forebear Merlin who had brought his followers to the peaks of God-of-Bronze, where they quarried pillars of bluestone, a type of doleritic stone speckled with white flecks that made them resemble a starry night sky. These stones were dragged to the coast and sent on a perilous journey to the south, where they were used to build the inner circles of Khor Ghor, the Dance-of-Great-Spirits, on the barren expanse of the Great Plain.
The priestess Brig-ahn gazed at the youth, cross-legged amid the smoke, and her eyes were hooded, thoughtful. “Times of change come to our sister isles,” she said. “The world is changing, as the world must. Rumours have come that many great cities in the hot seas of the south have fallen into fiery ruin, that corsairs harry their shores and survivors have taken to the hills. We are more fortunate here, in our isolation, but even so there has been an increase in Sea-Raiders in the last year—black-bearded men from far in the East, the likes of which we have not seen before. Some call them demons, but they are only men. Greedy men. They seek gold, they seek tin, but they wish to take all for themselves and not to engage in legitimate trade. Several villages on our coasts have been burned by these raiders when they were denied access to our mines.”
Merlin nodded. “The rumours of these Sea-Pirates have come to my ears too, brought by the traders on the Golden Path that runs through God-of-Bronze, whose peaks gaze out towards Ibherna. But in the valleys my people have not encountered them; we have kept safe. The mountain regions have always repelled unwelcome visitors.”
“They will come, nonetheless,” said Brig-ahn, sighing deeply. “Their greed and fury will eventually make them leave their boats and fare far ashore. Even mountains will not hold them back, if they think there is plunder to be won, and foolish, timid people who will offer them no challenge.”
Merlin rubbed his chin, with its haze of youthful stubble. “If you can, Great Lady, give me counsel in this matter, as your predecessor of ancient days gave wisdom to the Merlin of old, the Merlin who raised the temple of Khor Ghor
with arts learned from Ibherna’s own Stones.”
The priestess sighed. “Our peoples are fractious and have ever been so. Prydn needs a chief who will be strong enough to gather the tribes together, to lead them against these incomers, using new ways of warfare that the invaders will not expect.”
“You are not thinking of my chief, Vhortiern, are you?” Merlin laughed mockingly. “He dreams of his days as a warrior, but his belly grows fat and his arm trembles.”
Brig-ahn shook her head. “In the south of Albu, men still gather every year at Khor Ghor. Back many lifetimes ago, five chiefs—Samothos, Sarron, Longho, Harbron and Gorbonian—came to that place, marked by five settings of stones that stretch to heaven, and they forged the laws that men of the Isle of Prydn lived by. Samothos held supreme sway above the rest, as king of the Great Trilithon, the place where the Sun dies at Midwinter, and under him the isle grew strong and prosperous. But then, plague laid the kings low and their line was extinguished. No high-king has ruled Albu the White for many generations. The time without a strong leader must come to an end, and a king return to Prydn. A king… and another Merlin like the Merlin of old.”
The young shaman was silent, but his heart suddenly leaped, beating like a wild, trapped thing against his ribs. Khor Ghor, the temple of the Ancestors, receptacle of Sun-Face and Moon’s eye! Khor Ghor, a mighty marvel begun by his own namesake, the Merlin of ancient times, one of a long line of Merlins. Perhaps he would be next in that illustrious line, the next to reap undying fame amidst the frowning pillars of that great structure, unique among the monuments of the tribes of Prydn. A place some called, in dread, the Tomb of all Hope, with its five inner trilithons forming portals that led into the Otherworld.
Brig-ahn smiled at him, almost slyly, cobweb creases fanning out from her pale blue eyes and too-rich mouth. She had seemed quite youthful at first, with her flame hair and painted cheeks, but now she had suddenly grown old, an ancient crone, both wise and deadly, hiding behind the veneer of youth. She might be twenty summers old, or two thousand. “Your eyes are on fire at the mention of that dread place! It is in your heart, is it not? And so it might well be. For are you not known as the Merlin, like he who raised the first stones? Are you not Chosen, the child of no mortal man? Yes, even here, the rumours have come of a fatherless boy who found two Wyrms that fought beneath the earth and tamed them.”
Merlin scowled, looking like a petulant lad rather than a powerful, albeit youthful, shaman. “My chief, Vhortiern, has bound me to him, by my blood. I may not leave Faraon while he lives. So I have sworn”
“Blood.” The Priestess stoked up the sacred fire. Shadows leaped around the thatched temple, stretching long from the triadic carving of Fiery-Arrow on its plinth before the hearth. “Blood bond may be broken in many ways. Think on this. You know it to be true, and you will know, when the time comes, what you must do… But do not think too long; for if action is delayed, the sea-men will come and destroy all you hold dear.”
Pondering the Priestess’s words, the Merlin left the sanctuary of Fiery Arrow the next morn and began his arduous journey back to Prydn. Journeying to the seastrand, where men fished along the shore, he gained passage across the waters by offering a fisherman a weather-spell to protect his coracle from the tumultuous tides of Mahn-an the Sea-lord. Reaching the coast of Prydn after a long but uneventful crossing, the shaman bade the old sailor farewell, then shouldered bow and staff and began a forced march toward the stark silhouette of God-of-Bronze. He reached the boundaries of Vhortiern’s territory close to the Time of Balance, just as he had promised.
As he arrived in the village, coming on weary feet down the long track over the moor, he felt a creeping unease. All looked the same, the clustered huts with their belching smoke-holes, the pigsties and the heaped midden, the little stream where the women beat clothes on rocks. But he felt a change, subtle and indescribable, as if, in the time he was absent, all he knew best had been wiped away, making it a very different place to that which he had left.
His unease heightened when one of the village children, recognising him, rushed forward with a loud squeal. “Merlin, Merlin, you’ve come back to us! Look what I’ve got, Merlin!”
The child, a little lad named Starn, held up his arm. On his wrist was a beaded bracelet. Merlin had not seen its like before, tiny seed-like beads in rainbow colours sewn on to a strip of cloth. He knew, though, that it was cheap and ill-made, and there was a smoky, unknown fragrance that clung to it, an alien perfume that reeked of faraway places.
“Starn, where did you get this thing?” he asked sternly.
The child looked afraid; he hid his arm with the cloth bracelet behind his back as if fearing Merlin would snatch his prize from him. "Just some traders, Merlin. They have been in Faraon since the day after you left. They are funny men, Merlin. Their hair curls like sheep’s wool, and they pour oil on it—how it stinks! They paint their eyes too, like women. But they are rich; they have many good things that we have never seen before. They tell such wonderful stories of faraway lands where the Sun is always shining.”
“They have been here a long time for traders,” Merlin muttered, half to himself.
“Yes. But that is because chief Vhortiern plans to wed one of the stranger’s women.”
Merlin’s eyes widened in shock and anger, but he fought to hide his rage from the child. “You have done well to tell me, Starn. Now, run along, I must see Vhortiern at once.”
Grasping the hilt of his dagger, he slowly entered the village and approached Vhortiern’s large hut with its carved doorposts all bloodied from offerings to household spirits. The skin flap across the door was pinned aside, and he could hear raucous laughter and the clink of drinking beakers within.
He pushed his way into the hut and stood blinking, forcing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Vhortiern sat cross-legged on a fur, decked out in his chieftain’s finery, three golden buttons on his tunic, his dagger and axe on one knee and Good Striker upon the other. His wives, Kymidei and Tyndri squatted beside him, dripping with necklaces of blue and honey-coloured beads. They were entertaining several well-fed men with wiry black hair and prominent features, whose long curled beards gleamed under coatings of scented oil. They wore tunics in colours Merlin had only even seen in rainbows, and the swords at their belts were long and grooved.
“Merlin, my friend, you’ve returned!” shouted Vhortiern, his face flushed from the honey-drink he had imbibed. “Meet Kaash and Ven, traders from afar. They have come seeking tin. Our tin. They have offered us great things in exchange, barrels of the magic drink of their land, fine jewels that will make us the envy of Albu…Even a fair daughter of the tribe, the Rho-han.” He pointed to a sullen dark girl crouched by one of the woolly-bearded strangers, her brown eyes mutinous, her lower lip in a sullen pout.
Merlin did not like the look or stance of these men, or the girl, and wouldn’t have even had not Brig-ahn warned him of the Sea-Raiders. “I would not rape the wealth of our mountains for a mere tub of foreign drink," he said harshly. “Or the unwilling flesh of a woman scarce better than a slave.”
One of the foreigners, Ven, spread his beringed hands and flashed a wide grin. His face was long and his teeth were large, like a horse’s teeth. “Do not fear, my friend.”He spoke the language of Prydn in a thickly accented voice. “I forgive you your distrust and harsh words. But your folk have so much tin and gold, what little we take will not harm your supply at all. As your chieftain,” he stressed the word, “has realised, your tribe will most fortunate if you cooperate with us. Just think of the treasures that we could bring you from our homelands! No enmity need be between our peoples; once Rho-han and Vhortiern wed, we will be almost as kin.”
Merlin’s face darkened with fury. He was young but no fool. Unlike Vhortiern, he could see the cold insincerity in Ven’s eyes, the disdain for northern savages who would gladly trade their tribe’s freedom for a few baubles. “Our tin lies in the heart of the mountain known as God-of-Bronze,"
he said between clenched teeth. “It is a sacred mountain. It is said to be one of the entrances to the Deadlands of Ahn-un. If you strangers go there uninvited, I will call the wrath of the mountain down upon you!”
The dark-bearded men cast each other angry, darting looks. Vhortiern’s face purpled. “Merlin! They are to give us swords and spears, arms such as we have never owned! We could rule the entire West—or more! None surely would have the strength to stand against us, with the sea-strangers at our backs.”
“At our backs, ready to stab us with their sharp daggers!” cried Merlin, and he whirled around and grabbed the tunic of one of the foreign men, dragging him from the mat where he squatted and hauling him to his feet.
“Where are the rest of your men? What have you planned? That we show you our mines, then you slaughter us all?”
The man flailed clumsily, his teeth bared like a mad dog’s against his raven beard. Merlin slung him towards Vhortiern and the girl Rho-han. He fell with a crash at Rho-han’s feet, crushing pottery beneath him. The girl leapt up with an angry shriek and fled from the hut into the twilight while Ven shouted furiously after her.
Vhortiern bellowed and drew his dagger from its horn sheath; it glowed like a tongue of flame in the gloomy hut. Merlin’s eyes sparked in his thin, dark face, already weather-beaten despite his youth. “Do you dare, chief? Do you raise hand to one who speaks with the spirits? Think deeply before you strike, what that deed could bring you!”
At that moment, the hanging in the door of the hut was torn aside and two village youths tumbled in, panting and wild-eyed. “What do you want?” roared Vhortiern, striding towards the pair with dagger in hand, ready to strike anything, anyone, in his anger.
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 2
