By Force Alone

by Lavie Tidhar

‘What will it be, Merlin? Got Water of Lethe or Dionysian wine.’

  ‘…A beer.’

  He sits there sipping from his cup and thinking mathematics. The six kings are ranged against his lord and they have numbers on their side. More men, more arms, more territory. To live, his master must wage war. To win, he has need of a weapon.

  It’s never early and it’s never shut at The Grindylow but there’s not many people about just at this moment. Three boggarts at a table playing dice and drinking sour milk; a shug shelling hazelnuts by himself in a corner; an ogre feeding angrily on… Well, it is better not to look too closely at the smallish corpse. It gauges out eyes and pops them like a delicacy, it rips off an arm and gnaws on the fatty tissue.

  Things of the dark, these creatures of men’s mind. They have no place out in the sun. Merlin sips his beer, nibbles on a plate of fungal dead man’s fingers from the deep forests of Rutland.

  A ferryman slides into The Grindylow and onto a seat and chooses Water of Lethe. He places his lantern on the bar and stares into its steady flame. From somewhere, the Seikilos epitaph begins to play, an old Greek melody played on hidden strings, and Merlin whispers along with the tune, ‘While you live, shine, have no grief at all, life exists only for a short while and time takes its toll.’

  ‘What brings you in here, Merlin?’ the ferryman asks. He doesn’t take his eyes off the flame in his glass. ‘You hate the night creatures even more than you hate yourself.’

  ‘They are nothing but shadows,’ Merlin says, ‘when the sun rises again over the West it shall burn them away into nothing.’

  ‘Superstition is merely the child of fear,’ the ferryman says. ‘And fear is a condition of being human. If you expect an Enlightenment to occur centuries hence you are sure to be disappointed, wizard.’

  ‘Haros, why do you drink?’

  ‘I drink,’ Haros says, ‘to forget.’

  ‘Forget what?’

  ‘Forget that I’m drinking.’

  Haros smiles a thin-lipped smile at his own joke. Merlin looks at him sideways. He thinks of a vision he saw nearly two decades past. A fireball flaming low on the horizon, falling down to earth, a cloud the shape of a mushroom on impact. Others saw a dragon, he saw a star, or something else, he knew not what. That year there was no summer. In the years since he has searched for the site of the meteorite strike without luck.

  He dares not ask for it openly.

  Instead he says, ‘Have you had word of Nimue recently?’

  ‘The Lady of the Lake can usually be found where water is,’ Haros says.

  ‘You could say the same fucking thing about ferrymen.’

  ‘Ah, but for us it’s a job,’ Haros says. ‘For the lady it’s her nature.’

  Merlin accedes the ferryman’s point.

  ‘So, where?’ he asks.

  ‘Am I the lady’s keeper?’

  ‘You are a ferryman and ferrymen know water like your mother knew dicks, which is to say, intimately.’

  ‘You really are a rude little cunt,’ Haros says, but he says it without malice.

  ‘Is she still dealing arms?’

  ‘Do boggarts eat shit in the woods?’

  A sudden silence in the bar. From the corner – ‘What did you say, ferryman?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  The three boggarts rise. They flash dull copper knives.

  ‘You sure you want to make a thing of it?’ Merlin says calmly.

  The ferryman doesn’t stir from his seat and his gaze remains fixed on the light held captive in his lantern. But his shadow grows around him, and its outline is not entirely human. The shadow lengthens and becomes a darkened pool, and waves lap at the shore where the three boggarts stand as on a precipice, about to fall.

  The boggarts stare.

  ‘Ain’t worth the fucking trouble,’ one says at last, and spits. ‘Let’s split, boys.’

  ‘It’s like they let just anyone in here nowadays.’

  ‘Really gone downhill, The Grindylow. Let’s go steal some spoons and hobble dogs.’

  ‘Fucking ferrymen.’

  The boggarts vanish. Haros smiles that little tight-lipped smile. Motions the deer woman to refill his glass.

  ‘Fucking boggarts,’ he says.

  ‘Nimue,’ Merlin says patiently.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Merlin. Caledonia, last I heard, in some freezing backwater lake, trading swords with the local hicks. Didn’t she lock you up in a crystal cave once?’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Patch it up since, then?’

  ‘We have an understanding.’

  ‘Well, good luck.’ Haros downs his drink and stands. ‘I’ll be seeing you round, Merlin.’

  ‘See you, Haros.’

  Then he, too, is gone. The ogre’s finished his meal and left earlier, leaving behind him a small pile of bones and a tip. The shug in the corner’s asleep. The bar’s quiet.

  ‘Nimue, Merlin?’ the deer woman says. She polishes a mug with a piece of dirty cloth. ‘If you ask a ferryman all you get is gossip and lies. By this time tomorrow word will be everywhere.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I thought you conducted your business in a more circumspect way.’

  Merlin sighs. ‘I just want to know where she is.’

  ‘Fairyland,’ the deer woman says.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Merlin says. ‘Really?’

  The deer woman shrugs.

  ‘I hate that fucking place.’

  ‘Well, then you’re out of luck, wizard.’

  ‘Why did it have to be Elfland?’

  The Summer Country. It has so many names for a place that isn’t even real. It’s just a twilight world, conjured up by humans when they’re dreaming. People cannot go there consciously. It’s but a glimpse, sometimes, when they’re asleep or close to death. The place where bogies live and wills-o’-the-wisp light the way. It’s where ferrymen ferry their barges.

  People can’t go but Merlins can.

  It’s just that this Merlin doesn’t really want to.

  ‘Why there?’ he says at last.

  ‘A convocation of the ladies of the lakes and streams,’ the deer woman says. ‘You know what they’re like when they get going.’

  ‘And you are sure? Nimue is there?’

  ‘Just what I heard, wizard. Take it or not, it is up to you.’

  Merlin tosses a handful of porthmeion coins on the bar. Burial money, death coins that serve as the fee for ferrying. Regular coins don’t count in this particular bar.

  He says, ‘For services rendered.’

  ‘Bring your master sometimes,’ the deer woman says.

  ‘Thought you didn’t serve mortal-kind.’

  ‘For a king I will make an exception.’ She gives him a leer. ‘Besides, they say he’s hung like a Greek war elephant.’

  ‘A dick’s a dick, when all is said and done. One is much like another.’

  ‘Oh, Merlin. I think you really do worry about him, don’t you?’ the deer woman says. ‘That’s sweet. I heard he’s off to council with the kings. Word to the wise – those boys play dirty.’

  ‘No shit, Serena.’

  ‘Well, good luck,’ Serena says. ‘Come back sometimes, why don’t you.’

  ‘I will.’ He reconsiders. ‘You hear a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘This and that.’

  ‘You ever hear of a falling star? It would be somewhere on this island.’

  Her face closes. ‘One shouldn’t meddle with the stars.’

  ‘I’m only asking.’

  ‘Be careful what you ask, then.’

  ‘Is that a warning?’

  ‘Take it as you will.’

  She tries to tell him something without saying. He nods.

  ‘Thanks, Serena.’

  Gets up to leave.

  ‘See you, Merlin.’

  The deer woman returns to her scarab stew.

  Merlin departs. He just needs to find a temple.

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sp; 29

  ‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ Merlin says.

  He’s found a temple to old Moccus, the god of pigs. It is beyond the great bend in the river, east of Londinium. A wild land with wild horses running in the marshes, and no people for miles, nothing but a great barren silence, and reeds, and mud, and larks or whatever birds they are.

  He likes it.

  The temple’s been abandoned for a century at least. It’s really nothing more than a stone altar that, in all honesty, could have been just a rock.

  But Merlin can sense it. The residue of worship in the old stone and the trees. People had come here. They had prayed. They poured their hopes and fears and dreams into this air, they murdered pigs here and the hot blood spilled and stained the ground. It’s in the roots and in the bark. Its faith. He smells it.

  The way to Fairyland is easy. Just walk around the temple widdershins three times. Only he’s done it, now – and nothing happened.

  ‘Come on!’ Merlin says.

  He tries it again but the road, stubbornly, refuses to open. Usually there’d be a soft suffused glow, some reddish outline, the sky would flatten and his ears would pop but… nothing.

  He tries it again and now he can feel the resistance, like something or someone fighting to keep the doors closed against his transgressing.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Merlin says. He lifts a yew branch and knocks heavily, making an ungodly racket in that other place.

  ‘What!’ a voice says. A Jenny Greenteeth emerges out of the canopy of the tree and crawls head first down the trunk. She stops at head height and hisses at him. A spider flops out of her hair, starts to fall, then stops on the end of a rope of silk and starts climbing back up.

  ‘I was asleep,’ the Jenny says. Her hair is mussed. Her eyes are puffy.

  ‘Apologies, mistress. But the road is blocked.’

  ‘A Merlin, are you? Such a dainty little creature. Climb up to my tree and you can be my supper.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ Merlin says.

  ‘My, my. So touchy. Well, what is it you want?’

  ‘The road, Mistress Greenteeth. It’s blocked.’

  The Jenny hisses. She twists her neck and sticks her head up in the canopy. She rummages. Returns.

  ‘Not to me it ain’t,’ she says.

  ‘What does that mean!’

  ‘It means fuck off, you little weasel. The road is closed. Begone with you. Shoo. Shoo!’

  The spider trembles on the end of its rope. The Jenny Greenteeth flicks her tongue and catches it. She chews and swallows.

  ‘Well? Are you still here?’

  Merlin stares at her, perplexed. He tries again. The Jenny watches. Cackles. Merlin can feel the road resisting him. The path remains blocked. He shrugs.

  ‘Who doesn’t want me going?’ he says.

  ‘Who does!’ the Jenny says, and farts. She starts to laugh.

  ‘I’ll just have to go the long way,’ Merlin says.

  ‘Stubborn little thing, aren’t you,’ the Jenny says. She sticks her tongue out at him, then climbs back up the tree and disappears. He hears her rustling up there, then a silence.

  Fine.

  He’ll do this the hard way.

  *

  Transformed into a crow he flies across a darkening skies. Merlin speeds away from Londinium until the city vanishes from sight, and the island spreads out before him.

  His home. The contours of its coasts are the walls of his existence. Merlin is bound to the land, the sea around it is his gaoler and womb. He dreams, sometimes. He dreams of Constantinople where they say a thousand thousand books are held in the Imperial Library, where they say the Emperor’s palace has fabulous automatons of hummingbirds and flowering trees. Merlin dreams of mechanics and artifice. He dreams of sunny Athens where mathematicians congregate like flies. ‘I wish everything was mathematics,’ said Marinus of Neapolis. Merlin dreams of prime numbers, which are infinite and mysterious; their correlation, if it exists, might reveal a deeper underlying reality.

  This is what they don’t understand, these people among whom he lives. Mathematics is magic. And he, a man of learning, cannot leave this island – but why must he, when in contemplating the infinite he is truly free. He could be anywhere, even locked up in a crystal cave, like that shithole Nimue once trapped him in, when they’d had that disagreement – she was fucking him at the time in exchange for his teaching her Greek mathematics. Ancient history, anyway. He had no beef with her now. She knew her Euclid.

  He just wishes sometimes he’d been born in a different time and in a different place. He often thinks about the future and what it might look like. More of the same, perhaps. Strongmen and warlords with the might of the sword, holding on to power, by force alone.

  Perhaps. But Merlin likes to imagine impossible things, machines that can fly and medicines that heal, tall buildings that reach for the skies, pictures that move and talk by themselves and tell stories – it’s all magic, man! he thinks to himself. But that’s not to say it’s impossible.

  Now he flies as the sun sets over Britannia, and down below he can see the world in the twilight of its cycle. The fairy roads shine white as they criss-cross the land and fade into the distance that is that other place. He sees the hill figures come alive then, their ghostly geoglyphs outlined in chalk – the naked giant on a hill with his erect penis, the wild man with his staves, and all the white horses, and the stags and giants. Who put them there, who carved them into hillsides far and wide, he doesn’t know, but they have magic in them too, or maybe you could call it art. He’s not sure what’s the difference.

  He needs something old, to start with. Something old and something new, something borrowed, something blue. The crow flies fast, the sun goes down, a flight of goshawks swoops high in the distance, notice him – give chase.

  Merlin dives, the goshawks follow, their talons flash, their plumage startles, the fuckers have the blood lust and Merlin is their quarry.

  He swoops, dives, rises, but you cannot outfly a goshawk, and the fucks are sticky. They don’t let go of prey.

  Then he spots it, low on the horizon – an ancient long barrow from some vanished tribe, half-hidden with the grass growing around it, but distinct enough, and old, and he can taste it. People died and were buried in the stones and there’s a path that opens there if you have eyes to see it.

  He swoops, he dives – the fucking goshawks follow, close on his tail. They’re so silent and all he can hear is the wind. He dives to the old barrow where people have died and were buried long before Romans came. The goshawks are so close, a talon slices at his wing and Merlin tumbles. He rights himself but spirals, falling. Down and down towards the ancient tomb, something old and something new—

  ‘Oh, fuck this,’ the crow says. He twists mid-air and grabs the nearest goshawk in a hug and pummels down onto stone, the goshawk first, its skull bashed in, new blood on old stone—

  Merlin falls through into the other place.

  *

  He turns back into a man in the ruins of the temple. Not ruins, exactly, and not a temple, either – it’s nothing but a folly, the fae love nothing more than old and ruined things, they litter Fairyland with faux-antiquity and garish architecture. They have no class, the wizard thinks. Fairyland is peopled by the creatures of man’s imagination and, as such, they have no imagination of their own.

  He looks around. A blood moon peers down from behind a shroud of clouds. Cheesy is the word that comes to mind. He’s somewhere on the outskirts of Fairyland, he thinks. A shining path emerges through the thicket, leading further on. The branches of the trees screech-scratch against each other like bony fingers. An owl hoots. He hears the sound of bubbling water in the distance. It’s cold and damp and dismal.

  Fucking Fairyland, he thinks.

  30

  There is always a Fairyland. There has been one around for as long as there have been people. It is the twilight realm where dreamers go in dreams, the place that children see whe
n they awaken in the dead of night. It is the place where ghosts and ghoulies come from.

  In this place the ghosts of vanished hominids still roam, the early nomads who predate humanity, who for a time lived with modern humans and interbred with them, and died. In this place the spirits of stoneworkers still chase megaherbivores and giant birds they’d since hunted into extinction in the other place, the one that people live in. The world of Fairyland is but a dull reflection of the real world, containing all its ghosts and echoes, the shards of memories and dreams.

  It is a shithole, Merlin thinks. But he shrugs his shoulders and he marches onto the road, figuring whoever’s tried to block his entry might have forgotten about this one.

  An enormous wooden club with studded iron spikes swings at his head. He ducks – it whooshes over and a stench he should have noticed explodes in his nose.

  Two giant figures step out of the foliage and block the road. Two ugly mountain-creatures, knobbly and hairy, their skin like melted wax, their eyes like nasty little blackbirds’ eyes. They grin. Their teeth could grind a femur into dust.

  ‘Merlin.’

  ‘Fancy running into you here.’

  Fucking trolls. How much he hates the fucking trolls.

  ‘Grendel,’ he says, ‘and Mami Grendel – what brings you both this far into the sticks?’

  ‘What do you think, magician?’

  ‘Care to venture a guess?’

  They leer. Their clubs are deadly, and so are they. Two nasty trolls-for-hire, but they are not usually found this far from the court.

  He measures out his options. They block the road. He knows their strength. He says, ‘Who sent you, then?’

  ‘You know we never divulge the name of a client.’

  ‘And we always carry a job through.’

  ‘I’m hungry, Mami. Can I eat him?’

  ‘Wizards are bad for your digestion, Grendi.’

  ‘But Mami!’

  ‘Besides, we like our Merlin, don’t we, boo? We have no wish to hurt him.’

  The trolls smile. There is nothing, Merlin thinks, as ugly as a smiling troll.

  ‘Was it Morgan?’

  He thinks it must be. Morgan has her own designs on Arthur. She hungers for the power, same as him. She thinks Londinium is hers and doesn’t like that Merlin’s gaining influence. With Merlin out of the way she could have Arthur for herself.