“I have something to say…” Merlin’s voice rose above the drone, distant and unearthly in his own ears. It was like the voice of someone else, someone older, stronger and more powerful. An ancient, long-gone Merlin, speaking from beyond the veil…“It is my turn, and I have words of greater importance than these pretty tales!”
“You are an insolent brat!” Tyllion roared petulantly, heaving his huge bulk up and clawing for the haft of his axe, but Ambris laid a firm hand on his shoulder and pushed him back to the ground.
“Remember where you are, Tyllion. Under our Law, the boy has the right to speak. He has said nothing so far, while you and Uinious have spoken enough for ten!”
Merlin glanced around him, in strange ghost-world born of his potion. At his feet, by the little cairn of stones on the Midsummer alignment of the temple, a ghostly child was playing with a pebble. She was a small thing, bird-frail, with eyes of mismatched colours. She was touched by the gods, like Merlin himself, but her fate was not his—though he nearly had shared hers, at Vhortiern’s circle.
“Help us, Merlin of Albu,” she said in her whispery ghost-voice. “Or my sacrifice will mean nothing, and my grave will lie forgotten beneath burnt timbers.” She knelt on the cairn of flints before the cove, stroking the stones with thin white fingers.
Merlin reached out to touch her cheek, but his hand went through her and touched the flint that topped her grave instead. “A child lies here,” he murmured, quietly but loud enough that the surrounding priests could hear, “her head was split so that her spirit could guard this place with her ardent innocence. She will weep for an eternity if either of these blusterers becomes a temple priest; they are old and the world they knew is passing. It is time for youth to triumph, for youth to build this land anew!”
The onlookers gasped at the young man’s presumption. Ambris smiled behind the rim of the Beaker of Peace. Merlin rose, gesturing for the gathered assembly to follow him. Arms held aloft, he walked between the posts of Woodenheart and out into the night, where the rising gale went screaming around the settlement and over the plain, dispelling the last scraps of ground-fog on its boreal breath.
In the distance the hump of the Great Spirit-Path, a linear earthwork far older than Khor Ghor itself, stretched out across the fields like the white leg-bone of a fallen giant. A thousand stars crowned its bank, twinkling like watchful eyes. Some said stars were the most ancient of the dead, set in the firmament to watch over their descendants. If so, they were all out to witness the events of this momentous night.
“Why have you brought us here?” Merlin heard Uinious’s dismissive snarl. “There’s nothing to see… it is cold, and dark… A waste of our precious time!”
“Silence!” ordered Merlin. “And behold!”
In the North-Western sky, beyond the end of the Spirit-Path, a flash of light tore the blackness asunder. Merlin went cold, then hot, then cold again, as if spirits were touching him, passing through his body. He gave a shuddering cry of ecstasy and, ignoring those around him, began to run towards the light in the heavens. Behind him he could hear shouts and cries, but he paid them no heed.
Out in the field beyond Woodenheart he paused by the Khu Stone, the Stone of Hounds. He could now see the guardian spirit-dogs, snarling around the menhir, red-eared and red-eyed, their bodies white as the chalk of the plain. They ceased their growling and yipped in delight as he raced towards them and sprang upon the stone, teetering on its tip with his arms outstretched toward heaven.
“Sacrilege!” he heard someone bellow and he knew that many arrows were aimed at his back. He did not care. They would not slay him. The signs were in the sky, and he could read them.
He, alone.
“Look you!” he cried. “In the North-West there sails a comet, an omen from the gods! It is a portent.”
Behind him he heard puffing and mumbling, and he was vaguely aware of a growing crowd, furled by the shadows.
“And what do you think this comet betokens, Merlin?" He heard Ambris’s muffled voice. “Speak now, or speak never again in this company.”
Merlin took a deep breath, the cold night air searing his lungs. His head reeled and his tongue felt swollen, hanging heavy in his dry mouth. Letting the trance-state of the mistletoe engulf him, he rocked drunkenly on the Khu-stone, and gestured to the sky.
To the comet with a great bright tail that sailed through the Western heavens, emerging from the Deadlands to betoken new Life.
“The Armed King-Dragon rises in his chariot of stars…” Words tumbled from his lips, flowing like water from somewhere deep inside him, without thought or rehearsal. “But ascending his realm, he shall fall, crown shattered, while Firetail, the Dragon of the Flaming Star beats the drum of War with his bright tail. Strife is coming to the shores of Prydn, but so too the Bear in the Wain, the Dragon’s heir with his shield of the sky; and he will be known unto you as Bronze-Wielder, Hammer-Hand, Stone Lord. But the child who will become the man is not yet born upon earth, and those who will give him blood and sinew know not yet their part in destiny’s play. I, the Merlin, shall be the one who moves them in this game, and when the Stone Lord is grown to man, he and I shall weave a tale betwixt us that will last ten thousand years!”
Face flushed with ecstasy, Merlin turned from the streaking comet and stared down at the gathered sea of faces, some approving, some shocked, a few openly hostile. But none disbelieved his words, his prophecy; he could see fear and elation, hope and worry within their watchful eyes.
The stars spun above, and suddenly he felt the world lurch, and then he was falling…falling…tumbling from the top of the standing stone, while the phantom hounds bounded in excitement. His brow caught an edge of the sarsen and blood sprang out, which the hounds lapped with their ghostly tongues.
“Blood,” he murmured, as black spots spun before his eyes, “is this what you still want from me? Well, I swear if you will give me what I desire, you will have me in the end—not in one death but Three.”
The stone seemed to shudder under his touch, and then Merlin fell down into merciful blackness.
*****
Merlin woke around the middle of the next day, his head pounding like a solstice drum and his hair clogged with dried blood. He was lying on a bier of woven withies inside Ambris’s house, with a warm and woolly sheepskin over him. The high priest was sitting cross-legged on a fur by the fire-pit, arms folded and eyes closed as he meditated on events beyond the world. Slowly he opened one keen eye, and fixed his young guest with a stare. “So you are awake.”
Merlin sat up, clutching his cramping stomach. The headache and nausea always came after close contact with the spirit-world. He could barely recall all that happened the night before, only that he had spoken words of prophecy to the gathered priests. Tidings of a king, yet to be born. A Great King that was to come. “It is dawn…that means the choosing is over. Where are Uinious and Tyllion? Did they…”
Ambris shook his head. “They are gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” Merlin had an unsettling vision of both men striding arrogantly up the Avenue to be initiated as priests of the Temple, congratulating each other that even though neither had been deemed supreme, they had both trumped the mad boy from the West.
“Gone home,” said Ambris quietly. “Where else?”
Merlin sprang to his feet, despite his heaving guts and reeling head. “You…you mean…”
“Aye,” Merlin,” said the high priest. “It is you who passed the test. After that show you gave us last night, few supported those two tedious bores from afar!” He laughed quietly, his face breaking into a thousand merry lines.
Merlin staggered out of the hut into the hazy morning mist that hung over the settlement. A thin trickle of black smoke rose between the oak pillars of Woodenheart, while away in the culthouse a drum was beating, its rhythm matching the beat of his blood. Overhead the Sun’s eye was a bleary orange ball, looking down upon him with favour.
Merlin fell face forwar
d onto the packed chalk, kissing the blessed earth, taking the crumbs into his mouth. He belonged here, he had always known this was so, and now he had proved it. “Ancestors, Lord Bhel and Lady Moon, I thank you for this honour. I will not shame you. I will honour you in life and in death.”
Ambris came up beside him, and raised him from the ground, brushing the chalk from his clothes. Merlin leaned over and grabbed the hem of Ambris’s robe, raising it to his lips. “I will serve you and the temple well; I swear it, my Master. I am young but I beg you—do not doubt me.”
“I do not doubt you,” said Ambris. “The truth is clear for those who have eyes to see.”
“I am here for the sake of Albu, high one. I am here to usher in a time when the people will have no fear of raiders from afar…. Though it will not be through feats of arms on my part. I am many things, but no warrior.”
“No, and neither am I, nor many who have followed the path of communion with the spirits,” said Ambris. “Like you, I have been looking for many years among the tribes, seeking one who can take the role of High Chief of Albu. Five hundred years has it been since there was one ruler over the Five Cantrevs of the West; the Great Trilithon has stood empty, home only to the spirits and the dying Sun. I have searched and have seen many chiefs with strength and heart, but none have been the One who can lead all men, rallying their hearts, and strengthening their hands, no matter their differences of birth or custom.…Our people have one great fault, Merlin, and it is that they spend too much time fighting amongst themselves to see the danger all Prydn faces if the Sea-Raiders are not halted.”
Merlin clenched his fists. “The omens in last night’s sky foretell the ascendance of the King we seek. He will come, even if the Wise must meddle with the hearts and minds and flesh of ordinary men.”
Ambris leaned heavily on his oak staff."I am old now, Merlin. The quest, I fear, is no longer for me to pursue. But I shall tell you of one that might be of interest... my sister’s son, who dwells in the land of Dwr. I read the stars at the hour of his birth, and saw portents there, although there was…weakness too, a shadow in him that I do not understand.”
Merlin glanced up with interest. “Tell me more of this kinsman of yours, Lord Ambris”
Ambris’s eyes glinted beneath his snowy brows. “He is fourteen summers, tall as a spear and good enough to look upon. His hand is steady on the bow and he fights with the courage of the bear. His name? It is U’thyr. U’thyr Pendraec of the Dragon Path of Dwr.”
PART TWO — U’THYR: MOONSET
CHAPTER FOUR
U’thyr marched along the long white back of the Sacred Dragon mound, the winter wind clawing his dark braids back from his face. On one side of him the fields of the Dwr, the People-of-the-Water, undulated and rolled away into an icy fog. Near the sides of the Dragon mound, a spirit-road that ran nearly a mile across Dwr territory and dwarfed the similar monument near Khor Ghor, burial mounds clustered like children round a great mother, their summits yellow with old dry grass that had withered after the summer.
Reaching to his belt, U’thyr lifted up a severed head, gaunt and stinking. He dangled it on high by its thick bush of tangled black hair. Its tongue protruded as if poking out disrespectfully at the ancient dead in their clustered mounds. “Ancestors!” shouted U’thyr. “I bring you the head of the leader of those scavengers who dared set foot on Dwr soil, bringing violence and grief to its rightful peoples. Let it be known that while there is breath in my body, none of this creature’s kind shall ever settle on Dwr lands, or even have the right to walk here as free men!”
He tossed the head from him; it bounced on the mound’s bank, and rolled into the half-silted ditch. Immediately a flock of rooks descended, eager to taste its flesh.
U’thyr, the Pendraec, the Terrible Head, stood upon the top of the bank, feeling the current run beneath his feet, in the soil. He spread out his arms, buffeted by the wind, and, he was sure, by the fleeting spirits of those who had passed before, generation upon generation, their bones mingling with the earth, making it rich and fertile for their descendants through the ages.
He felt good. There was nothing he liked better than a good battle, and to slay a few of the hateful invaders. Smiling, he took his dagger from its calfskin sheath and examined it. Bright bronze, the colour of the dying Sun, reddened and strengthened by the blood of enemies of Prydn. Carefully, he took the flint knife he always carried at his belt as a back-up weapon, and used it to make a notch in the polished antler hilt of his dagger. Eleven Sea-Pirates under his belt. And he was still only ten and seven years old.
He longed to tell Merlin, high priest of Khor Ghor, of his latest victory. Merlin had mentored him since U’thyr was a boy, taking over from his Uncle Ambris, when Ambris sickened with fever one winter and went to the heavenly Ancestors. Merlin, in fact, took a bit too much interest in him, always questioning him about when he would take a wife, wanting to know what girls he bedded, or wanted to bed…and then chiding him if he thought they were ‘unsuitable.’ Embarrassing stuff, for, as young chief of the Dwr, he was enjoying having his choice of the willing village girls, and heard no complaints from amongst them.
Still, he would be glad to see Merlin again and share meat and tales of battle with him at the Great Midwinter Feast of Deroweth, when the Sun died and was reborn at Khor Ghor, and men could celebrate that winter and shadow would not endure. The feasting would go on for over a week; there would be dancing and drinking and song, and babies and marriages would be made and alliances between clans forged…and sometimes broken.
Slipping his dagger back into its sheath he headed for his village, tucked into a hollow in the side of The Pen or Head hill, which overlooked the great twisting dragon-path as it snaked across the downs. He could smell the hearth-fires burning, and hear the village women singing as they packed for the long trek to Deroweth.
Passing the first hut, he saw his mother, Indeg, directing her serving girls to load the best woollen blankets and sheepskins on to a large cart. All around was hustle and bustle: other carts being loaded, women chasing over-excited children, sheep and cattle driven hither and thither by flushed-faced shepherds with yapping dogs. Only the very old and the sickly would remain at The Pen, guarded by a few unlucky men chosen to miss the festival.
U’thyr slipped up behind Indeg, made a playful grab for her. “I am back, mother, just in time for the Winter Celebration. The beaches are safe, probably till spring. The stories and tales of the strength of the men of Albu should keep the intruders away.”
Indeg hugged him, her face flushed. “I heard of your victory. The entire West knows that Indeg’s son is master not only of the Dwr, but of all Albu! Did you bring anything for me from your travels, my dearest son?”
“You will have an amulet made from the skull of the black-bearded leader of the Sea-Raiders,” promised U’thyr. “I will carve it myself and get my friend the Merlin to place charms upon it to benefit you. But first our friends the ravens and the rooks must feast upon the ugly creature’s flesh to clean it away… And now…” U’thyr nodded toward the weighted-down carts, groaning beneath excited celebrants and their goods, “we should put our thoughts to happier things, to meetings of friends and kin at Deroweth.”
“Maybe you will find a nice wife of noble status this year," said Indeg hopefully.
U’thyr snorted. “You’re nigh as bad as Merlin, marrying me off to every girl who has half-decent lineage and a face slightly more comely than an aurochs' arse! When the time comes, it will come. Now let’s get a move on! I’ve been travelling several days and look forward to feasting with my men and the other tribes of the West.”
*****
Nightfall three days hence found the people of the Dwr arriving at Deroweth. They were not the only arrivals; chieftains major and minor from all over the West and South of Albu had begun to descend on the site. A few had even journeyed from beyond Peak-land, tall men sweltering in furs too heavy for the temperate south-western climes. Tents and yurt
s were set up on the downs, while families of high status crowded into the empty wooden longhouses that thronged the bank of the Great Circle; their homes this time of the year alone. The whole site, usually reserved for the priests, was a buzzing hive of activity: traders setting up stalls, women and children thronging outside the temples, dogs running about half-mad with excitement, herdsmen driving wild-eyed cattle and shaggy brown sheep into pens where they would be either sold or slaughtered. In one corner, a huge wattle enclosure held dozens of half-grown pigs that squalled and dashed around crazily as children lobbed chunks of mud at them, eliciting the wrath of the pig-boy, who chased the giggling youngsters away with a big stick.
All the longhouses were decorated with holly and ivy, while the great cult houses gloried in renewed splendour, their timbers painted red and their internal hearths alight and puffing out great clouds of dark smoke into the faded winter sky. Skulls of beasts were affixed to their broad lintels, amid bunches of white-berried mistletoe, the plant none but the priests dared touch, sacred to both Sun and Moon, the symbol of peace and fertility. Drums were beating within the great circles, shaking the earth and summoning the tribesfolk to celebrate and chase the darkness of winter away.
Down by the banks of Abona torches glowed in the icy fog as womenfolk poured the ashes of their Ancestors, saved especially for this occasion, into the cleansing swell of the holy river. Their keening and lamenting rose to mingle with the primal thud-thud-thud of the great drums inside Woodenheart and the other cult houses.
U’thyr squatted on the chalk bank of the Great Circle, surveying the activity below him. People in all manner of array strode past. Beakers were raised and honey-mead and beer consumed until men went rolling down the banks into the ditch. There was much laughter and a lot of shouting, as a pair of young hotheads started pummelling each other over a rosy-faced girl with yellow hair, who was simpering and feigning horror, when one look at her round, flushed face told how much she was enjoying the whole sad spectacle.
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 7
