The Crystal Cave

1

The day my uncle Camlach came home, I was just six years old.

I remember him well as I first saw him, a tall young man, fiery like my grandfather, with the blue eyes and reddish hair that I thought so beautiful in my mother. He came to Maridunum near sunset of a September evening, with a small troop of men. Being only small, I was with the women in the long, old-fashioned room where they did the weaving. My mother was sitting at the loom; I remember the cloth; it was of scarlet, with a narrow pattern of green at the edge. I sat near her on the floor, playing knuckle-bones, right hand against left. The sun slanted through the windows, making oblong pools of bright gold on the cracked mosaics of the floor; bees droned in the herbs outside, and even the click and rattle of the loom sounded sleepy. The women were talking among themselves over their spindles, but softly, heads together, and Moravik, my nurse, was frankly asleep on her stool in one of the pools of sunlight.

When the clatter, and then the shouts, came from the courtyard, the loom stopped abruptly, and with it the soft chatter from the women. Moravik came awake with a snort and a stare. My mother was sitting very straight, head lifted, listening. She had dropped her shuttle. I saw her eyes meet Moravik's.

I was halfway to the window when Moravik called to me sharply, and there was something in her voice that made me stop and go back to her without protest. She began to fuss with my clothing, pulling my tunic straight and smoothing my hair, so that I understood the visitor to be someone of importance. I felt excitement, and also surprise that apparently I was to be presented to him; I was used to being kept out of the way in those days. I stood patiently while Moravik dragged the comb through my hair, and over my head she and my mother exchanged some quick, breathless talk which, hardly heeding, I did not understand. I was listening to the tramp of horses in the yard and the shouting of men, words here and there coming clearly in a language neither Welsh nor Latin, but Celtic with some accent like the one of Less Britain, which I understood because my nurse, Moravik, was a Breton, and her language came to me as readily as my own.

I heard my grandfather's great laugh, and another voice replying. Then he must have swept the newcomer indoors with him, for the voices receded, leaving only the jingle and stamp of the horses being led to the stables.

I broke from Moravik and ran to my mother.

"Who is it?"

"My brother Camlach, the King's son." She did not look at me, but pointed to the fallen shuttle. I picked it up and handed it to her. Slowly, and rather mechanically, she set the loom moving again.

"Is the war over, then?"

"The war has been over a long time. Your uncle has been with the High King in the south."

"And now he has to come home because my uncle Dyved died?" Dyved had been the heir, the King's eldest son. He had died suddenly, and in great pain, of cramps in the stomach, and Elen his widow, who was childless, had gone back to her father. Naturally there had been the usual talk of poison, but nobody took it seriously; Dyved had been well liked, a tough fighter and a careful man, but generous where it suited. "They say he'll have to marry. Will he, Mother?" I was excited, important at knowing so much, thinking of the wedding feast. "Will he marry Keridwen, now that my uncle Dyved —"

"What?" The shuttle stopped, and she swung round, startled. But what she saw in my face appeased her, for the anger went out of her voice, though she still frowned, and I heard Moravik clucking and fussing behind me. "Where in the world did you get that? You hear too much, whether you understand it or not. Forget such matters, and hold your tongue." The shuttle moved again, slowly. "Listen to me, Merlin. When they come to see you, you will do well to keep quiet. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mother." I understood very well. I was well accustomed to keeping out of the King's way. "But will they come to see me? Why me?"

She said, with a thin bitterness that made her look all at once older, almost as old as Moravik: "Why do you think?"

The loom clacked again, fiercely. She was feeding in the green thread, and I could see that she was making a mistake, but it looked pretty, so I said nothing, watching her and staying close, till at length the curtain at the doorway was pushed aside, and the two men came in.

They seemed to fill the room, the red head and the grey within a foot of the beams. My grandfather wore blue, periwinkle colour with a gold border. Camlach was in black. Later I was to discover that he always wore black; he had jewels on his hands and at his shoulder, and beside his father he looked lightly built and young, but as sharp and whippy as a fox.

My mother stood up. She was wearing a house-robe of dark brown, the colour of peat, and against it her hair shone like corn-silk. But neither of the two men glanced at her. You would have thought there was no one in the room but I, small as I was, by the loom.

My grandfather jerked his head and said one word: "Out," and the women hurried in a rustling, silent group from the chamber. Moravik stood her ground, puffed up with bravery like a partridge, but the fierce blue eyes flicked to her for a second, and she went. A sniff as she passed them was all that she dared. The eyes came back to me.

"Your sister's bastard," said the King. "There he is. Six years old this month, grown like a weed, and no more like any of us than a damned devil's whelp would be. Look at him! Black hair, black eyes, and as scared of cold iron as a changeling from the hollow hills. You tell me the devil himself got that one, and I'll believe you!"

My uncle said only one word, straight to her: "Whose?"

"You think we didn't ask, you fool?" said my grandfather. "She was whipped till the women said she'd miscarry, but never a word from her. Better if she had, perhaps — some nonsense they were talking, old wives' tales of devils coming in the dark to lie with young maids — and from the look of him they could be right."

Camlach, six foot and golden, looked down at me. His eyes were blue, clear as my mother's, and his colour was high. The mud had dried yellow on his soft doeskin boots, and a smell of sweat and horses came from him. He had come to look at me before even taking the dirt of travel off. I remember how he stared down at me, while my mother stood silent, and my grandfather glowered under his brows, his breath coming harsh and rapid, as it always did when he had put himself in a passion.

"Come here," said my uncle.

I took half a dozen steps forward. I did not dare go nearer. I stopped. From three paces away he seemed taller than ever. He towered over me to the ceiling beams.

"What's your name?"

"Myrddin Emrys."

"Emrys? Child of light, belonging to the gods...? That hardly seems the name for a demon's whelp."

The mildness of his tone encouraged me. "They call me Merlinus," I ventured. "It's a Roman name for a falcon, the corwalch."

My grandfather barked, "Falcon!" and made a sound of contempt, shooting his arm-rings till they jingled.

"A small one," I said defensively, then fell silent under my uncle's thoughtful look.

He stroked his chin, then looked at my mother with his brows up. "Strange choices, all of them, for a Christian household. A Roman demon, perhaps, Niniane?"

She put up her chin. "Perhaps. How do I know? It was dark."

I thought a flash of amusement came and went in his face, but the King swept a hand down in a violent gesture. "You see? That's all you'll get — lies, tales of sorcery, insolence! Get back to your work, girl, and keep your bastard out of my sight! Now that your brother's home, we'll find a man who'll take the pair of you from under my feet and his! Camlach, I hope you see the sense of getting yourself a wife now, and a son or two, since this is all I'm left with!"

"Oh, I'm for it," said Camlach easily. Their attention had lifted from me. They were going, and neither had touched me. I unclenched my hands and moved back softly, half a pace; another. "But you've got yourself a new queen meantime, sir, and they tell me she's pregnant?"

"No matter of that, you should be wed, and soon. I'm an old man, and these are troubled times. As for this boy" — I froze again — "forget him. Whoever sired him, if he hasn't come forward in six years, he'll not do so now. And if it had been Vortigern himself, the High King, he'd have made nothing of him. A sullen brat who skulks alone in corners. Doesn't even play with the other boys — afraid to, likely. Afraid of his own shadow."

He turned away. Camlach's eyes met my mother's, over my head. Some message passed. Then he looked down at me again, and smiled.

I still remember how the room seemed to light up, though the sun had gone now, and its warmth with it.

Soon they would be bringing the rushlights.

"Well," said Camlach, "it's but a fledgling falcon after all. Don't be too hard on him, sir; you've frightened better men than he is, in your time."

"Yourself, you mean? Hah!"

"I assure you."

The King, in the doorway, glared briefly at me under his jutting brows, then with a puff of impatient breath settled his mantle over his arm. "Well, well, let be. God's sweet death, but I'm hungry. It's well past supper-time — but I suppose you'll want to go and soak yourself first, in your damned Roman fashion? I warn you, we've never had the furnaces on since you left..."

He turned with a swirl of the blue cloak and went out, still talking. Behind me I heard my mother's breath go out, and the rustle of her gown as she sat. My uncle put out a hand to me.

"Come, Merlinus, and talk to me while I bathe in your cold Welsh water. We princes must get to know one another."

I stood rooted. I was conscious of my mother's silence, and how still she sat.

"Come," said my uncle, gently, and smiled at me again.

I ran to him.

I went through the hypocaust that night.

This was my own private way, my secret hiding-place where I could escape from the bigger boys and play my own solitary games. My grandfather had been right when he said I "skulked alone in corners," but this was not from fear, though the sons of his nobles followed his lead — as children do — and made me their butt in their rough wargames whenever they could catch me.

At the beginning, it is true, the tunnels of the disused heating-system were a refuge, a secret place where I could hide and be alone; but I soon found a curiously strong pleasure in exploring the great system of dark, earth-smelling chambers under the palace floors.

My grandfather's palace had been, in times past, a vast country-house belonging to some Roman notable who had owned and farmed the land for several miles each way along the river valley. The main part of the house still stood, though badly scarred by time and war, and by at least one disastrous fire, which had destroyed one end of the main block and part of a wing. The old slaves' quarters were still intact round the courtyard where the cooks and houseservants worked, and the bath-house remained, though patched and plastered, and with the roof rough-thatched over the worst bits. I never remember the furnace working; water was heated over the courtyard fires.

The entrance to my secret labyrinth was the stoke-hole in the boiler-house; this was a trap in the wall under the cracked and rusting boiler, barely the height of a grown man's knee, and hidden by docks and nettles and a huge curved metal shard fallen from the boiler itself. Once inside, you could get under the rooms of the bath-house, but this had been out of use for so long that the space under the floors was too cluttered and foul even for me. I went the other way, under the main block of the palace. Here the old hot-air system had been so well built and maintained that even now the knee-high space under the floors was dry and airy, and plaster still clung to the brick pillars that held up the floors. In places, of course, a pillar had collapsed, or debris had fallen, but the traps which led from one room to another were solidly arched and safe, and I was free to crawl, unseen and unheard, even as far as the King's own chamber.

If they had ever discovered me I think I might have received a worse punishment than whipping: I must have listened, innocently enough, to dozens of secret councils, and certainly to some very private goings-on, but that side of it never occurred to me. And it was natural enough that nobody should give a thought to the dangers of eavesdropping; in the old days the flues had been cleaned by boy-slaves, and nobody much beyond the age of ten could ever have got through some of the workings; there were one or two places where even I was hard put to it to wriggle through. I was only once in danger of discovery: one afternoon when Moravik supposed I was playing with the boys and they in turn thought I was safe under her skirts, the red-haired Dinias, my chief tormentor, gave a younger boy such a shove from the roof-tree where they were playing that the latter fell and broke a leg, and set up such a howling that Moravik, running to the scene, discovered me absent and set the palace by the ears. I heard the noise, and emerged breathless and dirty from under the boiler, just as she started a hunt through the bath-house wing. I lied my way out of it, and got off with boxed ears and a scolding, but it was a warning; I never went into the hypocaust again by daylight, only at night before Moravik came to bed, or once or twice when I was wakeful and she was already abed and snoring. Most of the palace would be abed, too, but when there was a feast, or when my grandfather had guests, I would listen to the noise of voices and the singing; and sometimes I would creep as far as my mother's chamber, to hear the sound of her voice as she talked with her women. But one night I heard her praying, aloud, as one does sometimes when alone, and in the prayer was my name, "Emrys," and then her tears. After that I went another way, past the Queen's rooms, where almost every evening Olwen, the young Queen, sang to her harp among her ladies, until the King's tread came heavily down the corridor, and the music stopped.

But it was for none of these things that I went. What mattered to me — I see it clearly now — was to be alone in the secret dark, where a man is his own master, except for death.

Mostly I went to what I called my "cave." This had been part of some main chimney-shaft, and the top of it had crumbled, so that one could see the sky. It had held magic for me since the day I had looked up at midday and had seen, faint but unmistakable, a star. Now when I went in at night I would curl up on my bed of stolen stable-straw and watch the stars wheeling slowly across, and make my own bet with heaven, which was, if the moon should show over the shaft while I was there, the next day would bring me my heart's desire.

The moon was there that night. Full and shining, she stood clear in the center of the shaft, her light pouring down on my upturned face so white and pure that it seemed I drank it in like water. I did not move till she had gone, and the little star that dogs her.

On the way back I passed under a room that had been empty before, but which now held voices.

Camlach's room, of course. He and another man whose name I did not know, but who, from his accent, was one of those who had ridden in that day; I had found that they came fromCornwall . He had one of those thick, rumbling voices of which I caught only a word here and there as I crawled quickly through, worming my way between the pillars, concerned only not to be heard.

I was right at the end wall, and feeling along it for the arched gap to the next chamber, when my shoulder struck a broken section of flue pipe, and a loose piece of fireclay fell with a rattle.

The Cornishman's voice stopped abruptly. "What's that?"

Then my uncle's voice, so clear down the broken flue that you would have thought he spoke in my ear.

"Nothing. A rat. It came from under the floor. I tell you, the place is falling to pieces." There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and footsteps going across the room, away from me. His voice receded.

I thought I heard the chink and gurgle of a drink being poured. I began slowly, slowly, to edge along the wall towards the trap.

He was coming back.

"...And even if she does refuse him, it will hardly matter. She won't stay here — at any rate, no longer than my father can fight the bishop off and keep her by him. I tell you, with her mind set on what she calls a higher court, I've nothing to fear, even if he came himself."

"As long as you believe her."

"Oh, I believe her. I've been asking here and there, and everyone says the same." He laughed. "Who knows, we may be thankful yet to have a voice at that heavenly court of hers before this game's played out. And she's devout enough to save the lot of us, they tell me, if she'll only put her mind to it."

"You may need it yet," said the Cornishman.

"I may."

"And the boy?"

"The boy?" repeated my uncle. He paused, then the soft footsteps resumed their pacing. I strained to hear. I had to hear. Why it should have mattered I hardly knew. It did not worry me overmuch to be called bastard, or coward, or devil's whelp. But tonight there had been that full moon.

He had turned. His voice carried clearly, careless, indulgent even.

"Ah, yes, the boy. A clever child, at a guess, with more there than they give him credit for...and nice enough, if one speaks him fair. I shall keep him close to me. Remember that, Alun; I like the boy..."

He called a servant in then to replenish the wine-jug, and under cover of this, I crept away.

That was the beginning of it. For days I followed him everywhere, and he tolerated, even encouraged me, and it never occurred to me that a man of twenty-one would not always welcome a puppy of six for ever trotting at his heels. Moravik scolded, when she could get hold of me, but my mother seemed pleased and relieved, and bade her let me be.

2

It had been a hot summer, and there was peace that year, so for the first few days of his homecoming Camlach idled, resting or riding out with his father or the men through the harvest fields and the valleys where the apples already dropped ripe from the trees.

South Wales is a lovely country, with green hills and deep valleys, flat water-meadows yellow with flowers where cattle grow sleek, oak forests full of deer, and the high blue uplands where the cuckoo shouts in springtime, but where, come winter, the wolves run, and I have seen lightning even with the snow.

Maridunum lies where the estuary opens to the sea, on the river which is marked Tobius on the military maps, but which the Welsh call Tywy. Here the valley is flat and wide, and the Tywy runs in a deep and placid meander through bog and water-meadow between the gentle hills. The town stands on the rising ground of the north bank, where the land is drained and dry; it is served inland by the military road from Caerleon, and from the south by a good stone bridge with three spans, from which a paved street leads straight uphill past the King's house, and into the square. Apart from my grandfather's house, and the barrack buildings of the Roman-built fortress where he quartered his soldiers and which he kept in good repair, the best building in Maridunum was the Christian nunnery near the palace on the river's bank. A few holy women lived there, calling themselves the Community of St. Peter, though most of the townspeople called the place Tyr Myrddin, from the old shrine of the god which had stood time out of mind under an oak not far from St. Peter's gate. Even when I was a child, I heard the town itself called Caer-Myrddin ["dd" is pronounced "th" as in thus. Myrddin is, roughly, Murthin. Caer-Myrddin is the modern Carmarthen.]: it is not true (as they say now) that men call it after me. The fact is that I, like the town and the hill behind it with the sacred spring, was called after the god who is worshipped in high places. Since the events which I shall tell of, the name of the town has been publicly changed in my honour, but the god was there first, and if I have his hill now, it is because he shares it with me.

My grandfather's house was set among its orchards right beside the river. If you climbed — by way of a leaning apple-tree — to the top of the wall, you could sit high over the towpath and watch the river-bridge for people riding in from the south, or for the ships that came up with the tide.

Though I was not allowed to climb the trees for apples — being forced to content myself with the windfalls — Moravik never stopped me from climbing to the top of the wall. To have me posted there as sentry meant that she got wind of new arrivals sooner than anyone else in the palace. There was a little raised terrace at the orchard's end, with a curved brick wall at the back and a stone seat protected from the wind, and she would sit there by the hour, dozing over her spindle, while the sun beat into the corner so hotly that lizards would steal out to lie on the stones, and I called out my reports from the wall.

One hot afternoon, about eight days after Camlach's coming to Maridunum, I was at my post as usual.

There was no coming and going on the bridge or the road up the valley, only a local grain-barge loading at the wharf, watched by a scatter of idlers, and an old man in a hooded cloak who loitered, picking up windfalls along under the wall.

I looked over my shoulder towards Moravik's corner. She was asleep, her spindle drooping on her knee, looking, with the white fluffy wool, like a burst bulrush. I threw down the bitten windfall I had been eating, and tilted my head to study the forbidden tree-top boughs where yellow globes hung clustered against the sky. There was one I thought I could reach. The fruit was round and glossy, ripening almost visibly in the hot sun. My mouth watered. I reached for a foothold and began to climb.

I was two branches away from the fruit when a shout from the direction of the bridge, followed by the quick tramp of hoofs and the jingle of metal, brought me up short. Clinging like a monkey, I made sure of my feet, then reached with one hand to push the leaves aside, peering down towards the bridge. A troop of men was riding over it, towards the town. One man rode alone in front, bareheaded, on a big brown horse.

Not Camlach, or my grandfather; and not one of the nobles, for the men wore colours I did not know.

Then as they reached the nearer end of the bridge I saw that the leader was a stranger, black-haired and black-bearded, with a foreign-looking set to his clothes, and a flash of gold on his breast. His wristguards were golden, too, and a span deep. His troop, as I judged, was about fifty strong.

King Gorlan of Lanascol. Where the name sprang from, clear beyond mistake, I had no idea. Something heard from my labyrinth, perhaps? A word spoken carelessly in a child's hearing? A dream, even? The shields and spear-tips, catching the sun, flashed into my eyes. Gorlan of Lanascol. A king. Come to marry my mother and take me with him overseas. She would be a queen. And I...

He was already setting his horse at the hill. I began to half-slither, half-scramble, down the tree.

And if she refuses him? I recognized that voice; it was the Cornishman's. And after him my uncle's: Even if she does, it will hardly matter...I've nothing to fear, so even if he came himself...

The troop was riding at ease across the bridge. The jingle of arms and the hammering of hoofs rang in the still sunlight.

He had come himself. He was here.

A foot above the wall-top I missed my footing and almost fell. Luckily my grip held, and I slithered safely to the coping in a shower of leaves and lichen just as my nurse's voice called shrilly:

"Merlin? Merlin? Save us, where's the boy?"

"Here — here, Moravik — just coming down."

I landed in the long grass. She had left her spindle and, kilting up her skirts, came running.

"What's the to-do on the river road? I heard horses, a whole troop by the noise — Saints alive, child, look at your clothes! If I didn't mend that tunic only this week, and now look at it! A tear you could put a fist through, and dirt from head to foot like a beggar's brat!"

I dodged as she reached for me. "I fell. I'm sorry. I was climbing down to tell you. It's a troop of horse — foreigners! Moravik, it's King Gorlan from Lanascol! He has a red cloak and a black beard!"

"Gorlan of Lanascol? Why, that's barely twenty miles from where I was born! What's he here for, I wonder?"

I stared. "Didn't you know? He's come to marry my mother."

"Nonsense."

"It's true!"

"Of course it's not true! Do you think I wouldn't know? You must not say these things, Merlin, it could mean trouble. Where did you get it?"

"I don't remember. Someone told me. My mother, I think."

"That's not true and you know it."

"Then I must have heard something."

"Heard something, heard something. Young pigs have long ears, they say. Yours must be for ever to the ground, you hear so much! What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing."

She set her hands on her hips. "You've been listening to things you shouldn't. I've told you about this before. No wonder people say what they say."

I usually gave up and edged away from dangerous ground when I had given too much away, but excitement had made me reckless. "It's true, you'll find it's true! Does it matter where I heard it? I really can't remember now, but I know it's true! Moravik —"

"What?"

"King Gorlan's my father, my real one."

"What?" This time the syllable was edged like the tooth of a saw.

"Didn't you know? Not even you?"

"No, I did not. And no more do you. And if you so much as breathe this to anyone — How do you know the name, even?" She took me by the shoulders and gave me a sharp little shake. "How do you even know this is King Gorlan? There's been nothing said of his coming, even to me."

"I told you. I don't remember what I heard, or where. I just heard his name somewhere, that's all, and I know he's coming to see the King about my mother. We'll go to Less Britain, Moravik, and you can come with us. You'll like that, won't you? It's your home. Perhaps we'll be near —"

Her grip tightened, and I stopped. With relief I saw one of the King's body-servants hurrying towards us through the apple-trees. He came up panting.

"He's to go before the King. The boy. In the great hall. And hurry."

"Who is it?" demanded Moravik.

"The King said to hurry. I've been looking everywhere for the boy —"

"Who is it?"

"King Gorlan fromBrittany ."

She gave a little hiss, like a startled goose, and dropped her hands. "What's his business with the boy?"

"How do I know?" The man was breathless — it was a hot day and he was stout — and curt with Moravik, whose status as my nurse was only a little higher with the servants than my own. "All I know is, the Lady Niniane is sent for, and the boy, and there'll be a beating for someone, by my reckoning, if he's not there by the time the King's looking round for him. He's been in a rare taking since the outriders came in, that I can tell you."

"All right, all right. Get back and say we'll be there in a few minutes."

The man hurried off. She whirled on me and grabbed at my arm. "All the sweet saints in heaven!"

Moravik had the biggest collection of charms and talismans of anyone in Maridunum, and I had never known her pass a wayside shrine without paying her respects to whatever image inhabited it, but officially she was a Christian and, when in trouble, a devout one. "Sweet cherubim! And the child has to choose this afternoon to be in rags! Hurry, now, or there'll be trouble for both of us." She hustled me up the path towards the house, busily calling on her saints and exhorting me to hurry, determinedly refusing even to comment on the fact that I had been right about the newcomer. "Dear, dear St. Peter, why did I eat those eels for dinner and then sleep so sound? Today of all days! Here" — she pushed me in front of her into my room — "get out of those rags and into your good tunic, and we'll know soon enough what the Lord has sent for you. Hurry, child!"

The room I shared with Moravik was a small one, dark, and next to the servants' quarters. It always smelled of cooking smells from the kitchen, but I liked this, as I liked the old lichened pear tree that hung close outside the window, where the birds swung singing in the summer mornings. My bed stood right under this window. The bed was nothing but plain planks set across wooden blocks, no carving, not even a head or foot board. I had heard Moravik grumble to the other servants when she thought I wasn't listening, that it was hardly a fit place to house a king's grandson, but to me she said merely that it was convenient for her to be near the other servants; and indeed I was comfortable enough, for she saw to it that I had a clean straw mattress, and a coverlet of wool every bit as good as those on my mother's bed in the big room next to my grandfather. Moravik herself had a pallet on the floor near the door, and this was sometimes shared by the big wolfhound who fidgeted and scratched for fleas beside her feet, and sometimes by Cerdic, one of the grooms, a Saxon who had been taken in a raid long since, and had settled down to marry one of the local girls. She had died in childbed a year later, and the child with her, but he stayed on, apparently quite content. I once asked Moravik why she allowed the dog to sleep in the room, when she grumbled so much about the smell and the fleas; I forget what she answered, but I knew without being told that he was there to give warning if anyone came into the room during the night.

Cerdic, of course, was the exception; the dog accepted him with no more fuss than the beating of his tail upon the floor, and vacated the bed for him. In a way, I suppose, Cerdic fulfilled the same function as the watchdog, and others besides. Moravik never mentioned him, and neither did I. A small child is supposed to sleep very soundly, but even then, young as I was, I would wake sometimes in the middle of the night, and lie quite still, watching the stars through the window beside me, caught like sparkling silver fish in the net of the pear tree's boughs. What passed between Cerdic and Moravik meant no more to me than that he helped to guard my nights, as she my days.

My clothes were kept in a wooden chest which stood against the wall. This was very old, with panels painted with scenes of gods and goddesses, and I think originally it had come fromRome itself. Now the paint was dirty and rubbed and flaking, but still on the lid you could see, like shadows, a scene taking place in what looked like a cave; there was a bull, and a man with a knife, and someone holding a sheaf of corn, and over in the corner some figure, rubbed almost away, with rays round his head like the sun, and a stick in his hand. The chest was lined with cedarwood, and Moravik washed my clothes herself, and laid them away with sweet herbs from the garden.

She threw the lid up now, so roughly that it banged against the wall, and pulled out the better of my two good tunics, the green one with the scarlet border. She shouted for water, and one of the maids brought it, running, and was scolded for spilling it on the floor.

The fat servant came panting again to tell us that we should hurry, and got snapped at for his pains, but in a very short time I was hustled once more along the colonnade, and through the big arched doorway into the main part of the house.

The hall where the King received visitors was a long, high room with a floor of black and white stone framing a mosaic of a god with a leopard. This had been badly scarred and broken by the dragging of heavy furniture and the constant passing of booted feet. One side of the room was open to the colonnade, and here in winter a fire was kindled on the bare floor, within a loose frame of stones. The floor and pillars near it were blackened with the smoke. At the far end of the room stood the dais with my grandfather's big chair, and beside it the smaller one for his Queen.

He was sitting there now, with Camlach standing on his right, and his wife, Olwen, seated at his left. She was his third wife, and younger than my mother, a dark, silent, rather stupid girl with a skin like new milk and braids down to her knees, who could sing like a bird, and do fine needlework, but very little else.

My mother, I think, both liked and despised her. At any rate, against all expectation, they got along tolerably well together, and I had heard Moravik say that life for my mother had been a great deal easier since the King's second wife, Gwynneth, had died a year ago, and within the month Olwen had taken her place in the King's bed. Even if Olwen had cuffed me and sneered at me as Gwynneth did I should have liked her for her music, but she was always kind to me in her vague, placid way, and when the King was out of the way had taught me my notes, and even let me use her harp till I could play after a fashion. I had a feeling for it, she said, but we both knew what the King would say to such folly, so her kindness was secret, even from my mother.

She did not notice me now. Nobody did, except my cousin Dinias, who stood by Olwen's chair on the dais. Dinias was a bastard of my grandfather's by a slave-woman. He was a big boy of seven, with his father's red hair and high temper; he was strong for his age and quite fearless, and had enjoyed the King's favour since the day he had, at the age of five, stolen a ride on one of his father's horses, a wild brown colt that had bolted with him through the town and only got rid of him when he rode it straight at a breast-high bank. His father had thrashed him with his own hands, and afterwards given him a dagger with a gilded hilt. Dinias claimed the title of Prince — at any rate among the rest of the children — from then on, and treated his fellow-bastard, myself, with the utmost contempt. He stared at me now as expressionless as a stone, but his left hand — the one away from his father — made a rude sign, and then chopped silently, expressively, downwards.

I had paused in the doorway, and behind me my nurse's hand twitched my tunic into place and then gave me a push between the shoulder-blades. "Go on now. Straighten your back. He won't eat you." As if to give the lie to this, I heard the click of charms and the start of a muttered prayer.

The room was full of people. Many of them I knew, but there were strangers there who must be the party I had seen ride in. Their leader sat near the King's right, surrounded by his own men. He was the big dark man I had seen on the bridge, full-bearded, with a fierce beak of a nose and thick limbs shrouded in a scarlet cloak. On the King's other side, but standing below the dais, was my mother, with two of her women. I loved to see her as she was now, dressed like a princess, her long robe of creamy wool hanging straight to the floor as if carved of new wood. Her hair was unbraided, and fell down her back like rain. She had a blue mantle with a copper clasp. Her face was colourless, and very still.

I was so busy with my own fears — the gesture from Dinias, the averted face and downcast eyes of my mother, the silence of the people, and the empty middle of the floor over which I must walk — that I had not even looked at my grandfather. I had taken a step forward, still unnoticed, when suddenly, with a crash like a horse kicking, he slammed both hands down on the wooden arms of his chair, and thrust himself to his feet so violently that the heavy chair went back a pace, its feet scoring the oak planks of the platform.

"By the light!" His face was mottled scarlet, and the reddish brows jutted in knots of flesh above his furious little blue eyes. He glared down at my mother, and drew a breath to speak that could be heard clear to the door where I had paused, afraid. Then the bearded man, who had risen with him, said something in some accent I didn't catch, and at the same moment Camlach touched his arm, whispering.

The King paused, then said thickly, "As you will. Later. Get them out of here." Then clearly, to my mother: "This is not the end of it, Niniane, I promise you. Six years. It is enough, by God! Come, my lord."

He swept his cloak up over one arm, jerked his head to his son, and, stepping down from the dais, took the bearded man by the arm, and strode with him towards the door. After him, meek as milk, trailed his wife Olwen with her women, and after her Dinias, smiling. My mother never moved. The King went by her without a word or a look, and the crowd parted between him and the door like a stubble-field under the share.

It left me standing alone, rooted and staring, three paces in from the door. As the King bore down on me I came to myself and turned to escape into the anteroom, but not quickly enough.

He stopped abruptly, releasing Gorlan's arm, and swung round on me. The blue cloak swirled, and a corner of the cloth caught my eye and brought the tears to it. I blinked up at him. Gorlan had paused beside him. He was younger than my uncle Dyved had been. He was angry, too, but hiding it, and the anger was not for me. He looked surprised when the King stopped, and said: "Who's this?"

"Her son, that your grace would have given a name to," said my grandfather, and the gold flashed on his armlet as he swung his big hand up and knocked me flat to the floor as easily as a boy would flatten a fly.

Then the blue cloak swept by me, and the King's booted feet, and Gorlan's after him with barely a pause.

Olwen said something in her pretty voice and stooped over me, but the King called to her, angrily, and her hand withdrew and she hurried after him with the rest.

I picked myself up from the floor and looked round for Moravik, but she was not there. She had gone straight to my mother, and had not even seen. I began to push my way towards them through the hubbub of the hall, but before I could reach my mother the women, in a tight and silent group round her, left the hall by the other door. None of them looked back.

Someone spoke to me, but I did not answer. I ran out through the colonnade, across the main court, and out again into the quiet sunlight of the orchard.

My uncle found me on Moravik's terrace.

I was lying on my belly on the hot flagstones, watching a lizard. Of all that day, this is my most vivid recollection; the lizard, flat on the hot stone within a foot of my face, its body still as green bronze but for the pulsing throat. It had small dark eyes, no brighter than slate, and the inside of its mouth was the colour of melons. It had a long, sharp tongue, which flicked out quick as a whip, and its feet made a tiny rustling noise on the stones as it ran across my finger and vanished down a crack in the flags.

I turned my head. My uncle Camlach was coming down through the orchard.

He mounted the three shallow steps to the terrace, soft-footed in his elegant laced sandals, and stood looking down. I looked away. The moss between the stones had tiny white flowers no bigger than the lizard's eyes, each one perfect as a carved cup. To this day I remember the design on them as well as if I had carved it myself.

"Let me see," he said.

I didn't move. He crossed to the stone bench and sat down facing me, knees apart, clasped hands between them.

"Look at me, Merlin."

I obeyed him. He studied me in silence for a while.

"I'm always being told that you will not play rough games, that you run away from Dinias, that you will never make a soldier or even a man. Yet when the King strikes you down with a blow which would have sent one of his deerhounds yelping to kennel, you make no sound and shed no tear."

I said nothing.

"I think perhaps you are not quite what they deem you, Merlin."

Still nothing.

"Do you know why Gorlan came today?"

I thought it better to lie. "No."

"He came to ask for your mother's hand. If she had consented you would have gone with him to Brittany."

I touched one of the moss-cups with a forefinger. It crumbled like a puff-ball and vanished.

Experimentally, I touched another. Camlach said, more sharply than he usually spoke to me: "Are you listening?"

"Yes. But if she's refused him it will hardly matter." I looked up. "Will it?"

"You mean you don't want to go? I would have thought..." He knitted the fair brows so like my grandfather's. "You would be treated honourably, and be a prince..."

"I am a prince now. As much a prince as I can ever be."

"What do you mean by that?"

"If she has refused him," I said, "he cannot be my father. I thought he was. I thought that was why he had come."

"What made you think so?"

"I don't know. It seemed — " I stopped. I could not explain to Camlach about the flash of light in which Gorlan's name had come to me. "I just thought he must be."

"Only because you have been waiting for him all this time." His voice was calm. "Such waiting is foolish, Merlin. It's time you faced the truth. Your father is dead."

I put my hand down on the tuft of moss, crushing it. I watched the flesh of the fingers whiten with the pressure. "She told you that?"

"No." He lifted his shoulders. "But had he been still alive he would have been here long since. You must know that."

I was silent.

"And if he is not dead," pursued my uncle, watching me, "and still has never come, it can surely not be a matter for great grief on anyone's part?"

"No, except that however base he may be, it might have saved my mother something. And me." As I moved my hand, the moss slowly unfurled again, as if growing. But the tiny flowers had gone.

My uncle nodded. "She would have been wiser, perhaps, to have accepted Gorlan, or some other prince."

"What will happen to us?" I asked.

"Your mother wants to go into St. Peter's. And you — you are quick and clever, and I am told you can read a little. You could be a priest."

"No!"

His brows came down again over the thin-bridged nose. "It's a good enough life. You're not warrior stock, that's certain. Why not take a life that will suit you, and where you'd be safe?"

"I don't need to be a warrior to want to stay free! To be shut up in a place like St. Peter's — that's not the way — " I broke off. I had spoken hotly, but found the words failing me. I could not explain something I did not know myself. I looked up eagerly: "I'll stay with you. If you cannot use me I — I'll run away to serve some other prince. But I would rather stay with you."

"Well, it's early yet to speak of things like that. You're very young." He got to his feet. "Does your face hurt you?"

"No."

"You should have it seen to. Come with me now."

He put out a hand, and I went with him. He led me up through the orchard, then in through the arch that led to my grandfather's private garden.

I hung back against his hand. "I'm not allowed in there."

"Surely, with me? Your grandfather's with his guests, he'll not see you. Come along. I've got something better for you than your windfall apples. They've been gathering the apricots, and I saved the best aside out of the baskets as I came down."

He trod forward, with that graceful cat's stride of his, through the bergamot and lavender, to where the apricot and peach trees stood crucified against the high wall in the sun. The place smelled drowsy with herbs and fruit, and the doves were crooning from the dove-house. At my feet a ripe apricot lay, velvet in the sun. I pushed it with my toe until it rolled over, and there in the back of it was the great rotten hole, with wasps crawling. A shadow fell over it. My uncle stood above me, with an apricot in each hand.

"I told you I'd got something better than windfalls. Here." He handed me one. "And if they beat you for stealing, they'll have to beat me as well." He grinned, and bit into the fruit he held.

I stood still, with the big bright apricot cupped in the palm of my hand. The garden was very hot, and very still, and quiet except for the humming of insects. The fruit glowed like gold, and smelled of sunshine and sweet juice. Its skin felt like the fur of a golden bee. I could feel my mouth watering.

"What is it?" asked my uncle. He sounded edgy and impatient. The juice of his apricot was running down his chin. "Don't stand there staring at it, boy! Eat it! There's nothing wrong with it, is there?"

I looked up. The blue eyes, fierce as a fox, stared down into mine. I held it out to him. "I don't want it. It's black inside. Look, you can see right through."

He took his breath in sharply, as if to speak. Then voices came from the other side of the wall; the gardeners, probably, bringing the empty fruit-baskets down ready for morning. My uncle, stooping, snatched the fruit from my hand and threw it from him, hard against the wall. It burst in a golden splash of flesh against the brick, and the juice ran down. A wasp, disturbed from the tree, droned past between us.

Camlach flapped at it with a queer, abrupt gesture, and said to me in a voice that was suddenly all venom:

"Keep away from me after this, you devil's brat. Do you hear me? Just keep away."

He dashed the back of his hand across his mouth, and went from me in long strides towards the house.

I stood where I was, watching the juice of the apricot trickle down the hot wall. A wasp alighted on it, crawled stickily, then suddenly fell, buzzing on its back to the ground. Its body jack-knifed, the buzz rose to a whine as it struggled, then it lay still.

I hardly saw it, because something had swelled in my throat till I thought I would choke, and the golden evening swam, brilliant, into tears. This was the first time in my life that I remember weeping.

The gardeners were coming down past the roses, with baskets on their heads. I turned and ran out of the garden.

3

My room was empty even of the wolfhound. I climbed on my bed and leaned my elbows on the windowsill, and stayed there a long while alone, while outside in the pear tree's boughs the thrush sang, and from the courtyard beyond the shut door came the monotonous clink of the smith's hammer and the creak of the windlass as the mule plodded round the well.

Memory fails me here. I cannot remember how long it was before the clatter and the buzz of voices told me that the evening meal was being prepared. Nor can I remember how badly I was hurt, but when Cerdic, the groom, pushed the door open and I turned my head, he stopped dead and said: "Lord have mercy upon us. What have you been doing? Playing in the bull-shed?"

"I fell down."

"Oh, aye, you fell down. I wonder why the floor's always twice as hard for you as for anyone else? Who was it? That little sucking-boar Dinias?"

When I did not answer he came across to the bed. He was a small man, with bowed legs and a seamed brown face and a thatch of light-coloured hair. Standing on my bed as I was, my eyes were almost on a level with his.

"Tell you what," he said. "When you're a mite larger I'll teach you a thing or two. You don't have to be big to win a fight. I've a trick or two worth knowing, I can tell you. Got to have, when you're wren-size. I tell you, I can tumble a fellow twice my weight — and a woman too, come to that." He laughed, turned his head to spit, remembered where he was, and cleared his throat instead. "Not that you'll need my tricks once you're grown, a tall lad like you, nor with the girls neither. But you'd best look to that face of yours if you're not to scare them silly. Looks as if it might make a scar." He jerked his head at Moravik's empty pallet. "Where is she?"

"She went with my mother."

"Then you'd best come with me. I'll fix it up."

So it was that the cut on my cheek-bone was dressed with horse-liniment, and I shared Cerdic's supper in the stables, sitting on straw, while a brown mare nosed round me for fodder, and my own fat slug of a pony, at the full end of his rope, watched every mouthful we ate. Cerdic must have had methods of his own in the kitchens, too; the barn-cakes were fresh, there was half a chicken-leg each as well as the salt bacon, and the beer was full-flavoured and cool.

When he came back with the food I knew from his look that he had heard it all. The whole palace must be buzzing. But he said nothing, just handing me the food and sitting down beside me on the straw.

"They told you?" I asked.

He nodded, chewing, then added through a mouthful of bread and meat: "He has a heavy hand."

"He was angry because she refused to wed Gorlan. He wants her wed because of me, but till now she has refused to wed any man. And now, since my uncle Dyved is dead, and Camlach is the only one left, they asked Gorlan from Less Britain. I think my uncle Camlach persuaded my grandfather to ask him, because he is afraid that if she marries a prince inWales —"

He interrupted at that, looking both startled and scared. "Whist ye now, child! How do you know all this? I'll be bound your elders don't tattle of these high matters in front of you? If it's Moravik who talks when she shouldn't —"

"No. Not Moravik. But I know it's true."

"How in the Thunderer's name do you know any such thing? Slaves' gossip?"

I fed the last bite of my bread to the mare. "If you swear by heathen gods, Cerdic, it's you who'll be in trouble, with Moravik."

"Oh, aye. That kind of trouble's easy enough to come by. Come on, who's been talking to you?"

"Nobody. I know, that's all. I — I can't explain how. And when she refused Gorlan my uncle Camlach was as angry as my grandfather. He's afraid my father will come back and marry her, and drive him out. He doesn't admit this to my grandfather, of course."

"Of course." He was staring, even forgetting to chew, so that saliva dribbled from the corner of his open mouth. He swallowed hastily. "The gods know — God knows where you got all this, but it could be true. Well, go on."

The brown mare was pushing at me, snuffing sweet breath at my neck. I handed her away. "That's all. Gorlan is angry, but they'll give him something. And my mother will go in the end to St. Peter's. You'll see."

There was a short silence. Cerdic swallowed his meat and threw the bone out of the door, where a couple of the stableyard curs pounced on it and raced off in a snarling wrangle.

"Merlin —"

"Yes?"

"You'd be wise if you said no more of this to anyone. Not to anyone. Do you understand?"

I said nothing.

"These are matters that a child doesn't understand. High matters. Oh, some of it's common talk, I grant you, but this about Prince Camlach — " He dropped a hand to my knee, and gripped and shook it. "I tell you, he's dangerous, that one. Leave it be, and stay out of sight. I'll tell no one, trust me for that. But you, you must say no more. Bad enough if you were rightwise a prince born, or even in the King's favour like that red whelp Dinias, but for you..." He shook the knee again. "Do you heed me, Merlin? For your skin's sake, keep silent and stay out of their way. And tell me who told you all this."

I thought of the dark cave in the hypocaust, and the sky remote at the top of the shaft. "No one told me. I swear it." When he made a sound of impatience and worry I looked straight at him and told him as much of the truth as I dared. "I have heard things, I admit it. And sometimes people talk over your head, not noticing you're there, or not thinking you understand. But at other times" — I paused — "it's as if something spoke to me, as if I saw things...And sometimes the stars tell me...and there is music, and voices in the dark. Like dreams."

His hand went up in a gesture of protection. I thought he was crossing himself, then saw the sign against the evil eye. He looked shamefaced at that, and dropped the hand. "Dreams, that's what it is; you're right.

You've been asleep in some corner, likely, and they've talked across you when they shouldn't, and you've heard things you shouldn't. I was forgetting you're nothing but a child. When you look with those eyes —

" He broke off, and shrugged. "But you'll promise me you'll say no more of what you've heard?"

"All right, Cerdic. I promise you. If you'll promise to tell me something in return."

"What's that?"

"Who my father was."

He choked over his beer, then with deliberation wiped the foam away, set down the horn, and regarded me with exasperation. "Now how in middle-earth do you think I know that?"

"I thought Moravik might have told you."

"Does she know?" He sounded so surprised that I knew he was telling the truth.

"When I asked her she just said there were some things it was better not to talk about."

"She's right at that. But if you ask me, that's her way of saying she's no wiser than the next one. And if you do ask me, young Merlin, though you don't, that's another thing you'd best keep clear of. If your lady mother wanted you to know, she'd tell you. You'll find out soon enough, I doubt."

I saw that he was making the sign again, though this time he hid the hand. I opened my mouth to ask if he believed the stories, but he picked up the drinking horn, and got to his feet.

"I've had your promise. Remember?"

"Yes."

"I've watched you. You go your own way, and sometimes I think you're nearer to the wild things than to men. You know she called you for the falcon?"

I nodded.

"Well, here's something for you to think about. You'd best be forgetting falcons for the time being. There's plenty of them around, too many, if truth be told. Have you watched the ring-doves, Merlin?"

"The ones that drink from the fountain with the white doves, then fly away free? Of course I have. I feed them in winter, along with the doves."

"They used to say in my country, the ring-dove has many enemies, because her flesh is sweet and her eggs are good to eat. But she lives and she prospers, because she runs away. The Lady Niniane may have called you her little falcon, but you're not a falcon yet, young Merlin. You're only a dove.

Remember that. Live by keeping quiet, and by running away. Mark my words." He nodded at me, and put a hand down to pull me to my feet. "Does the cut still hurt?"

"It stings."

"Then it's on the mend. The bruise is nought to worry you, it'll go soon enough."

It did, indeed, heal cleanly, and left no mark. But I remember how it stung that night, and kept me awake, so that Cerdic and Moravik kept silent in the other corner of the room, for fear, I suppose, that it had been from some of their mutterings that I had pieced together my information.

After they slept I crept out, stepped past the grinning wolfhound, and ran along to the hypocaust.

But tonight I heard nothing to remember, except Olwen's voice, mellow as an ousel's, singing some song I had not heard before, about a wild goose, and a hunter with a golden net.

4

After this, life settled back into its peaceful rut, and I think that my grandfather must eventually have accepted my mother's refusal to marry. Things were strained between them for a week or so, but with Camlach home, and settling down as if he had never left the place — and with a good hunting season coming up — the King forgot his rancour, and things went back to normal.

Except possibly for me. After the incident in the orchard, Camlach no longer went out of his way to favour me, nor I to follow him. But he was not unkind to me, and once or twice defended me in some petty rough-and-tumble with the other boys, even taking my part against Dinias, who had supplanted me in his favour.

But I no longer needed that kind of protection. That September day had taught me other lessons besides Cerdic's of the ring-dove. I dealt with Dinias myself. One night, creeping beneath his bedchamber on the way to my "cave," I chanced to hear him and his pack-follower Brys laughing over a foray of that afternoon when the pair of them had followed Camlach's friend Alun to his tryst with one of the servant-girls, and had stayed hidden, watching and listening, to the sweet end. When Dinias waylaid me next morning I stood my ground and — quoting a sentence or so — asked if he had seen Alun yet that day. He stared, went red and then white (for Alun had a hard hand and a temper to match it) and then sidled away, making the sign behind his back. If he liked to think it was magic rather than simple blackmail, I let him. After that, if the High King himself had ridden in claiming parentage for me, none of the children would have believed him. They left me alone.

Which was just as well, for during that winter part of the floor of the bath-house fell in, my grandfather judged the whole thing dangerous, and had it filled in and poison laid for the rats. So like a cub smoked from its earth, I had to fend for myself above ground.

About six months after Gorlan's visit, as we were coming through a cold February into the first budding days of March, Camlach began to insist, first to my mother and then to my grandfather, that I should be taught to read and write. My mother, I think, was grateful for this evidence of his interest in me; I myself was pleased and took good care to show it, though after the incident in the orchard I could have no illusions about his motives. But it did no harm to let Camlach think that my feelings about the priesthood had undergone a change. My mother's declaration that she would never marry, coupled with her increased withdrawal among her women and her frequent visits to St. Peter's to talk with the Abbess and such priests as visited the community, removed his worst fears — either that she would marry a Welsh prince who could hope to take over the kingdom in her right, or that my unknown father would come to claim her and legitimate me, and prove to be a man of rank and power who might supplant him forcibly.

It did not matter to Camlach that in either event I was not much of a danger to him, and less than ever now, for he had taken a wife before Christmas, and already at the beginning of March it seemed that she was pregnant. Even Olwen's increasingly obvious pregnancy was no threat to him, for Camlach stood high in his father's favour, and it was not likely that a brother so much younger would ever present a serious danger. There could be no question; Camlach had a good fighting record, knew how to make men like him, and had ruthlessness and common sense. The ruthlessness showed in what he had tried to do to me in the orchard; the common sense showed in his indifferent kindness once my mother's decision removed the threat to him. But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power — they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it. He would never rest until he saw me priested and safely out of the palace.

Whatever his motives, I was pleased when my tutor came; he was a Greek who had been a scribe in Massilia until he drank himself into debt and ensuing slavery; now he was assigned to me, and because he was grateful for the change in status and the relief from manual work, taught me well and without the religious bias which had constricted the teaching I had picked up from my mother's priests. Demetrius was a pleasant, ineffectually clever man who had a genius for languages, and whose only recreations were dice and (when he won) drink. Occasionally, when he had won enough, I would find him happily and incapably asleep over his books. I never told anyone of these occasions, and indeed was glad of the chance to go about my own affairs; he was grateful for my silence, and in his turn, when I once or twice played truant, held his tongue and made no attempt to find out where I had been. I was quick to catch up with my studies and showed more than enough progress to satisfy my mother and Camlach, so Demetrius and I respected one another's secrets and got along tolerably well.

One day in August, almost a year after the coming of Gorlan to my grandfather's court, I left Demetrius placidly sleeping it off, and rode up alone into the hills behind the town.

I had been this way several times before. It was quicker to go up past the barrack walls and then out by the military road which led eastwards through the hills to Caerleon, but this meant riding through the town, and possibly being seen, and questions being asked. The way I took was along the river-bank.

There was a gateway, not much used, leading straight out from our stableyard to the broad flat path where the horses went that towed the barges, and the path followed the river for quite a long way, past St. Peter's and then along the placid curves of the Tywy to the mill, which was as far as the barges went.

I had never been beyond this point, but there was a pathway leading up past the millhouse and over the road, and then by the valley of the tributary stream that helped to serve the mill.

It was a hot, drowsy day, full of the smell of bracken. Blue dragonflies darted and glimmered over the river, and the meadowsweet was thick as curds under the humming clouds of flies.

My pony's neat hoofs tapped along the baked clay of the towpath. We met a big dapple grey bringing an empty barge down from the mill with the tide, taking it easy. The boy perched on its withers called a greeting, and the bargeman lifted a hand.

When I reached the mill there was no one in sight. Grainsacks, newly unloaded, were piled on the narrow wharf. By them the miller's dog lay sprawled in the hot sun, hardly troubling to open an eye as I drew rein in the shade of the buildings. Above me, the long straight stretch of the military road was empty. The stream tumbled through a culvert beneath it, and I saw a trout leap and flash in the foam.

It would be hours before I could be missed. I put the pony at the bank up to the road, won the brief battle when he tried to turn for home, then kicked him to a canter along the path which led upstream into the hills.

The path twisted and turned at first, climbing the steep stream-side, then led out of the thorns and thin oaks that filled the gully, and went north in a smooth level curve along the open slope.

Here the townsfolk graze their sheep and cattle, so the grass is smooth and shorn. I passed one shepherd boy, drowsy under a hawthorn bush, with his sheep at hand; he was simple, and only stared vacantly at me as I trotted past, fingering the pile of stones with which he herded his sheep. As we passed him he picked up one of them, a smooth green pebble, and I wondered if he was going to throw it at me, but he lobbed it instead to turn some fat grazing lambs which were straying too far, then went back to his slumbers. There were black cattle further afield, down nearer the river where the grass was longer, but I could not see the herdsman. Away at the foot of the hill, tiny beside a tiny hut, I saw a girl with a flock of geese.

Presently the path began to climb again, and my pony slowed to a walk, picking his way through scattered trees. Hazel-nuts were thick in the coppices, mountain ash and brier grew from tumbles of mossed rock, and the bracken was breast-high. Rabbits ran everywhere, scuttering through the fern, and a pair of jays scolded a fox from the safety of a swinging hornbeam. The ground was too hard, I supposed, to bear tracks well, but I could see no sign, either of crushed bracken or broken twigs, that any other horseman had recently been this way.

The sun was high. A little breeze swept through the hawthorns, rattling the green, hard fruit. I urged the pony on. Now among the oaks and hollies were pine trees, their stems reddish in the sunlight. The ground grew rougher as the path climbed, with bare grey stone outcropping through the thin turf, and a honeycombing of rabbit burrows. I did not know where the path led, I knew nothing but that I was alone, and free. There was nothing to tell me what sort of day this was, or what way-star was leading me up into the hill. This was in the days before the future became clear to me.

The pony hesitated, and I came to myself. There was a fork in the track, with nothing to indicate which would be the best way to go. To left, to right, it led away round the two sides of a thicket.

The pony turned decisively to the left, this being downhill. I would have let him go, but that at that moment a bird flew low across the path in front of me, left to right, and vanished beyond the trees. Sharp wings, a flash of rust and slate-blue, the fierce dark eye and curved beak of a merlin. For no reason, except that this was better than no reason, I turned the pony's head after it, and dug my heels in.

The path climbed in a shallow curve, leaving the wood on the left. This was a stand mainly of pines, thickly clustered and dark, and so heavily grown that you could only have hacked your way in through the dead stuff with an axe. I heard the clap of wings as a ring-dove fled from shelter, dropping invisibly out of the far side of the trees. It had gone to the left. This time I followed the falcon.

We were now well out of sight of the river valley and the town. The pony picked his way along one side of a shallow valley, at the foot of which ran a narrow, tumbling stream. On the far side of the stream the long slopes of turf went bare up to the scree, and above this were the rocks, blue and grey in the sunlight.

The slope where I rode was scattered with hawthorn brakes throwing pools of slanted shadow, and above them again, scree, and a cliff hung with ivy where choughs wheeled and called in the bright air.

Apart from their busy sound, the valley held the most complete and echoless stillness.

The pony's hoofs sounded loud on the baked earth. It was hot, and I was thirsty. Now the track ran along under a low cliff, perhaps twenty feet high, and at its foot a grove of hawthorns cast a pool of shade across the path. Somewhere, close above me, I could hear the trickle of water.

I stopped the pony and slid off. I led him into the shade of the grove and made him fast, then looked about me for the source of the water.

The rock by the path was dry, and below the path was no sign of any water running down to swell the stream at the foot of the valley. But the sound of running water was steady and unmistakable. I left the path and scrambled up the grass at the side of the rock, to find myself on a small flat patch of turf, a little dry lawn scattered with rabbits' droppings, and at the back of it another face of cliff.

In the face of the rock was a cave. The rounded opening was smallish and very regular, almost like a made arch. To one side of this, the right as I stood looking, was a slope of grass-grown stones long ago fallen from above, and overgrown with oak and rowan, whose branches overhung the cave with shadow.

To the other side, and only a few feet from the archway, was the spring.

I approached it. It was very small, a little shining movement of water oozing out of a crack in the face of the rock, and falling with a steady trickle into a round basin of stone. There was no outflow. Presumably the water sprang from the rock, gathered in the basin, and drained away through another crack, eventually to join the stream below. Through the clear water I could see every pebble, every grain of sand at the bottom of the basin. Hart's-tongue fern grew above it, and there was moss at the lip, and below it green, moist grass.

I knelt on the grass, and had put my mouth to the water, when I saw there was a cup. This stood in a tiny niche among the ferns. It was a handspan high, and made of brown horn. As I lifted it down I saw above it, half-hidden by the ferns, the small, carved figure of a wooden god. I recognized him. I had seen him under the oak at Tyr Myrddin. Here he was in his own hill-top place, under the open sky.

I filled the cup and drank, pouring a few drops on the ground for the god.

Then I went into the cave.

5

This was bigger than had appeared from outside. Only a couple of paces inside the archway — and my paces were very short — the cave opened out into a seemingly vast chamber whose top was lost in shadow. It was dark, but — though at first I neither noticed this nor looked for its cause — with some source of extra light that gave a vague illumination, showing the floor smooth and clear of obstacles. I made my way slowly forward, straining my eyes, with deep inside me the beginning of that surge of excitement that caves have always started in me. Some men experience this with water; some, I know, on high places; some create fire for the same pleasure: with me it has always been the depths of the forest, or the depths of the earth. Now, I know why; but then, I only knew that I was a boy who had found somewhere new, something he could perhaps make his own in a world where he owned nothing.

Next moment I stopped short, brought up by a shock which spilled the excitement through my bowels like water. Something had moved in the murk, just to my right.

I froze still, straining my eyes to see. There was no movement. I held my breath, listening. There was no sound. I flared my nostrils, testing the air cautiously round me. There was no smell, animal or human; the cave smelt, I thought, of smoke and damp rock and the earth itself, and of a queer musty scent I couldn't identify. I knew, without putting it into words, that had there been any other creature near me the air would have felt different, less empty. There was no one there.

I tried a word, softly, in Welsh. "Greetings." The whisper came straight back at me in an echo so quick that I knew I was very near the wall of the cave, then it lost itself, hissing, in the roof.

There was movement there — at first, I thought, only an intensifying of the echoed whisper, then the rustling grew and grew like the rustling of a woman's dress, or a curtain stirring in the draught. Something went past my cheek, with a shrill, bloodless cry just on the edge of sound. Another followed, and after them flake after flake of shrill shadow, pouring down from the roof like leaves down a stream of wind, or fish down a fall. It was the bats, disturbed from their lodging in the top of the cave, streaming out now into the daylight valley. They would be pouring out of the low archway like a plume of smoke.

I stood quite still, wondering if it was these that had made the curious musty smell. I thought I could smell them as they passed, but it wasn't the same. I had no fear that they would touch me; in darkness or light, whatever their speed, bats will touch nothing. They are so much creatures of the air, I believe, that as the air parts in front of an obstacle the bat is swept aside with it, like a petal carried downstream. They poured past, a shrill tide of them between me and the wall. Childlike, to see what the stream would do — how it would divert itself — I took a step nearer to the wall. Nothing touched me. The stream divided and poured on, the shrill air brushing both my cheeks. It was as if I did not exist. But at the same moment when I moved, the creature that I had seen moved, too. Then my outstretched hand met, not rock, but metal, and I knew what the creature was. It was my own reflection.

Hanging against the wall was a sheet of metal, burnished to a dull sheen. This, then, was the source of the diffused light within the cave; the mirror's silky surface caught, obliquely, the light from the cave's mouth, and sent it on into the darkness. I could see myself moving in it like a ghost, as I recoiled and let fall the hand which had leapt to the knife at my hip.

Behind me the flow of bats had ceased, and the cave was still. Reassured, I stayed where I was, studying myself with interest in the mirror. My mother had had one once, an antique fromEgypt , but then, deeming such things to be vanity, she had locked it away. Of course I had often seen my face reflected in water, but never my body mirrored, till now. I saw a dark boy, wary, all eyes with curiosity, nerves, and excitement. In that light my eyes looked quite black; my hair was black, too, thick and clean, but worse cut and groomed than my pony's; my tunic and sandals were a disgrace. I grinned, and the mirror flashed a sudden smile that changed the picture completely and at once, from a sullen young animal poised to run or fight, to something quick and gentle and approachable; something, I knew even then, that few people had ever seen.

Then it vanished, and the wary animal was back, as I leaned forward to run a hand over the metal. It was cold and smooth and freshly burnished. Whoever had hung it — and he must be the same person who used the cup of horn outside — had either been here very recently, or he still lived here, and might come back at any moment to find me.

I was not particularly frightened. I had pricked to caution when I saw the cup, but one learns very young to take care of oneself, and the times I had been brought up in were peaceful enough, at any rate in our valley; but there are always wild men and rough men and the lawless and vagabonds to be reckoned with, and any boy who likes his own company, as I did, must be prepared to defend his skin. I was wiry, and strong for my age, and I had my dagger. That I was barely seven years old never entered my head; I was Merlin, and, bastard or not, the King's grandson. I went on exploring.

The next thing I found, a pace along the wall, was a box, and on top of it shapes which my hands identified immediately as flint and iron and tinderbox, and a big, roughly made candle of what smelled like sheep's tallow. Beside these objects lay a shape which — incredulously and inch by inch — I identified as the skull of a horned sheep. There were nails driven into the top of the box here and there, apparently holding down fragments of leather. But when I felt these, carefully, I found in the withered leather frameworks of delicate bone; they were dead bats, stretched and nailed on the wood.

This was a treasure cave indeed. No find of gold or weapons could have excited me more. Full of curiosity, I reached for the tinderbox.

Then I heard him coming back.

My first thought was that he must have seen my pony, then I realized he was coming from further up the hill. I could hear the rattling and scaling of small stones as he came down the scree above the cave. One of them splashed into the spring outside, and then it was too late. I heard him jump down on to the flat grass beside the water.

It was time for the ring-dove again; the falcon was forgotten. I ran deeper into the cave. As he swept aside the boughs that darkened the entrance, the light grew momentarily, enough to show me my way. At the back of the cave was a slope and jut of rock, and, at twice my height, a widish ledge. A quick flash of sunlight from the mirror caught a wedge of shadow in the rock above the ledge, big enough to hide me.

Soundless in my scuffed sandals, I swarmed on to the ledge, and crammed my body into that wedge of shadow, to find it was in fact a gap in the rock, giving apparently on to another, smaller cave. I slithered in through the gap like an otter into the river-bank.

It seemed that he had heard nothing. The light was cut off again as the boughs sprang back into place behind him, and he came into the cave. It was a man's tread, measured and slow.

If I had thought about it at all, I suppose I would have assumed that the cave would be uninhabited at least until sunset, that whoever owned the place would be away hunting, or about his other business, and would return only at nightfall. There was no point in wasting candles when the sun was blazing outside.

Perhaps he was here now only to bring home his kill, and he would go again and leave me the chance to get out. I hoped he would not see my pony tethered in the hawthorn brake.

Then I heard him moving, with the sure tread of someone who knows his way blindfold, towards the candle and the tinderbox.

Even now I had no room for apprehension, no room, indeed, for any but the one thought or sensation — the extreme discomfort of the cave into which I had crawled. It was apparently small, not much bigger than the large round vats they use for dyeing, and much the same shape. Floor, wall and ceiling hugged me round in a continuous curve. It was like being inside a large globe; moreover, a globe studded with nails, or with its inner surface stuck all over with small pieces of jagged stone. There seemed no inch of surface not bristling like a bed of strewn flints, and it was only my light weight, I think, that saved me from being cut, as I quested about blindly to find some clear space to lie on. I found a place smoother than the rest and curled there, as small as I could, watching the faintly defined opening, and inching my dagger silently from its sheath into my hand.

I heard the quick hiss and chime of flint and iron, and then the flare of light, intense in the darkness, as the tinder caught hold. Then the steady, waxing glow as he lit the candle.

Or rather, it should have been the slow-growing beam of a candle flame that I saw, but instead there was a flash, a sparkle, a conflagration as if a whole pitch-soaked beacon was roaring up in flames. Light poured and flashed, crimson, golden, white, red, intolerable into my cave. I winced back from it, frightened now, heedless of pain and cut flesh as I shrank against the sharp walls. The whole globe where I lay seemed to be full of flame.

It was indeed a globe, a round chamber floored, roofed, lined with crystals. They were fine as glass, and smooth as glass, but clearer than any glass I had ever seen, brilliant as diamonds. This, in fact, to my childish mind, was what they first seemed to be. I was in a globe lined with diamonds, a million burning diamonds, each face of each gem wincing with the light, shooting it to and fro, diamond to diamond and back again, with rainbows and rivers and bursting stars and a shape like a crimson dragon clawing up the wall, while below it a girl's face swam faintly with closed eyes, and the light drove right into my body as if it would break me open.

I shut my eyes. When I opened them again I saw that the golden light had shrunk and was concentrated on one part of the wall no bigger than my head, and from this, empty of visions, rayed the broken, brilliant beams.

There was silence from the cave below. He had not stirred. I had not even heard the rustle of his clothes.

Then the light moved. The flashing disc began to slide, slowly, across the crystal wall. I was shaking. I huddled closer to the sharp stones, trying to escape it. There was nowhere to go. It advanced slowly round the curve. It touched my shoulder, my head, and I ducked, cringing. The shadow of my movement rushed across the globe, like a wind-eddy over a pool.

The light stopped, retreated, fixed glittering in its place. Then it went out. But the glow of the candle, strangely, remained; an ordinary steady yellow glow beyond the gap in the wall of my refuge.

"Come out." The man's voice, not loud, not raised with shouted orders like my grandfather's, was clear and brief with all the mystery of command. It never occurred to me to disobey. I crept forward over the sharp crystals, and through the gap. Then I slowly pulled myself upright on the ledge, my back against the wall of the outer cave, the dagger ready in my right hand, and looked down.

6

He stood between me and the candle, a hugely tall figure (or so it seemed to me) in a long robe of some brown homespun stuff. The candle made a nimbus of his hair, which seemed to be grey, and he was bearded. I could not see his expression, and his right hand was hidden in the folds of his robe.

I waited, poised warily.

He spoke again, in the same tone. "Put up your dagger and come down."

"When I see your right hand," I said.

He showed it, palm up. It was empty. He said gravely: "I am unarmed."

"Then stand out of my way," I said, and jumped. The cave was wide, and he was standing to one side of it. My leap carried me three or four paces down the cave, and I was past him and near the entrance before he could have moved more than a step. But in fact he never moved at all. As I reached the mouth of the cave and swept aside the hanging branches I heard him laughing.

The sound brought me up short. I turned.

From here, in the light which now filled the cave, I saw him clearly. He was old, with grey hair thinning on top and hanging lank over his ears, and a straight growth of grey beard, roughly trimmed. His hands were calloused and grained with dirt, but had been fine, with long fingers. Now the old man's veins crawled and knotted on them, distended like worms. But it was his face which held me; it was thin, cavernous almost as a skull, with a high domed forehead and bushy grey brows which came down jutting over eyes where I could see no trace of age at all. These were closely set, large, and of a curiously clear and swimming grey. His nose was a thin beak; his mouth, lipless now, stretched wide with his laughter over astonishingly good teeth.

"Come back. There's no need to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid." I dropped the boughs back into place, and not without bravado walked towards him. I stopped a few paces away. "Why should I be afraid of you? Do you know who I am?"

He regarded me for a moment, seeming to muse. "Let me see you. Dark hair, dark eyes, the body of a dancer and the manners of a young wolf...or should I say a young falcon?"

My dagger sank to my side. "Then you do know me?"

"Shall I say I knew you would come some day, and today I knew there was someone here. What do you think brought me back so early?"

"How did you know there was someone here? Oh, of course, you saw the bats."

"Perhaps."

"Do they always go up like that?"

"Only for strangers. Your dagger, sir."

I put it back in my belt. "Nobody calls me sir. I'm a bastard. That means I belong to myself, no one else.

My name's Merlin, but you knew that."

"And mine is Galapas. Are you hungry?"

"Yes." But I said it dubiously, thinking of the skull and the dead bats.

Disconcertingly, he understood. The grey eyes twinkled. "Fruit and honey cakes? And sweet water from the spring? What better fare would you get, even in the King's house?"

"I wouldn't get that in the King's house at this hour of the day," I said frankly. "Thank you, sir, I'll be glad to eat with you."

He smiled. "Nobody calls me sir. And I belong to no man, either. Go out and sit down in the sun, and I'll bring the food."

The fruit was apples, which looked and tasted exactly like the ones from my grandfather's orchard, so that I stole a sideways glance at my host, scanning him by daylight, wondering if I had ever seen him on the river-bank, or anywhere in the town.

"Do you have a wife?" I asked. "Who makes the honey cakes? They're very good."

"No wife. I told you I belonged to no man, and to no woman either. You will see, Merlin, how all your life men, and women too, will try to put bars round you, but you will escape those bars, or bend them, or melt them at your will, until, of your will, you take them round you, and sleep behind them in their shadow...I get the honey cakes from the shepherd's wife, she makes enough for three, and is good enough to spare some for charity."

"Are you a hermit, then? A holy man?"

"Do I look like a holy man?"

"No." This was true. The only people I remember being afraid of at that time were the solitary holy men who sometimes wandered, preaching and begging, into the town; queer, arrogant, noisy men, with a mad look in their eyes, and a smell about them which I associated with the heaps of offal outside the slaughter-pens. It was sometimes hard to know which god they professed to serve. Some of them, it was whispered, were druids, who were still officially outside the law, though in Wales in the country places they still practiced without much interference. Many were followers of the old gods — the local deities — and since these varied in popularity according to season, their priests tended to switch allegiance from time to time where the pickings were richest. Even the Christian ones did this sometimes, but you could usually tell the real Christians, because they were the dirtiest. The Roman gods and their priests stayed solidly enshrined in their crumbling temples, but did very well on offerings likewise. The Church frowned on the lot, but could not do much about it.

"There was a god at the spring outside," I ventured.

"Yes. Myrddin. He lends me his spring, and his hollow hill, and his heaven of woven light, and in return I give him his due. It does not do to neglect the gods of a place, whoever they may be. In the end, they are all one."

"If you're not a hermit, then, what are you?"

"At the moment, a teacher."

"I have a tutor. He comes from Massilia, but he's actually been toRome . Who do you teach?"

"Until now, nobody. I'm old and tired, and I came to live here alone and study."

"Why do you have the dead bats in there, on the box?"

"I was studying them."

I stared at him. "Studying bats? How can you study bats?"

"I study the way they are made, and the way they fly, and mate, and feed. The way they live. Not only bats, but beasts and fish and plants and birds, as many as I see."

"But that's not studying!" I regarded him with wonder. "Demetrius — that's my tutor — tells me that watching lizards and birds is dreaming, and a waste of time. Though Cerdic — that's a friend — told me to study the ring-doves."

"Why?"

"Because they're quick, and quiet, and keep out of the way. Because they only lay two eggs, but still though everybody hunts them, men and beasts and hawks, there are still more ring-doves than anything else."

"And they don't put them in cages." He drank some water, regarding me. "So you have a tutor. Then you can read?"

"Of course."

"Can you read Greek?"

"A little."

"Then come with me."

He got up and went into the cave. I followed him. He lit the candle once more — he had put it out to save tallow — and by its light lifted the lid of the box. In it I saw the rolled shapes of books, more books together than I had ever imagined there were in the world. I watched as he selected one, closed the lid carefully, and unrolled the book.

"There."

With delight, I saw what it was. A drawing, spidery but definite, of the skeleton of a bat. And alongside it, in neat, crabbed Greek letters, phrases which I immediately, forgetting even Galapas' presence, began to spell out to myself.

In a minute or two his hand came over my shoulder. "Bring it outside." He pulled out the nails holding one of the dried leathery bodies to the box-lid, and lifted it carefully in his palm. "Blow out the candle. We'll look at this together."

And so, with no more question, and no more ceremony, began my first lesson with Galapas.

It was only when the sun, low over one wing of the valley, sent a long shadow creeping up the slope, that I remembered the other life that waited for me, and how far I had to go. I jumped to my feet.

"I'll have to go! Demetrius won't say anything, but if I'm late for supper they'll ask why."

"And you don't intend to tell them?"

"No, or they'd stop me coming again."

He smiled, making no comment. I doubt if I noticed then the calm assumptions on which the interview had been based; he had neither asked how I had come, nor why. And because I was only a child I took it for granted, too, though for politeness' sake I asked him:

"I may come again, mayn't I?"

"Of course."

"I — it's hard to say when. I never know when I'll get away — I mean, when I'll be free."

"Don't worry. I shall know when you are coming. And I shall be here."

"How can you know?"

He was rolling up the book with those long, neat fingers. "The same way I knew today."

"Oh! I was forgetting. You mean I go into the cave and send the bats out?"

"If you like."

I laughed with pleasure. "I've never met anyone like you! To make smoke signals with bats! If I told them they'd never believe me, even Cerdic."

"You won't tell even Cerdic."

I nodded. "That's right. Nobody at all. Now I must go. Goodbye, Galapas."

"Goodbye."

And so it was in the days, and in the months, that followed. Whenever I could, once and sometimes twice in the week, I rode up the valley to the cave. He certainly seemed to know when I was coming, for as often as not he was there waiting for me, with the books laid out; but when there was no sign of him I did as we had arranged and sent out the bats as a smoke signal to bring him in. As the weeks went by they got used to me, and it took two or three well-aimed stones sent up into the roof to get them out; but after a while this grew unnecessary; people at the palace grew accustomed to my absences, and ceased to question them, and it became possible to make arrangements with Galapas for meeting from day to day.

Moravik had let me go more and more my own way since Olwen's baby had been born at the end of May, and when Camlach's son arrived in September she established herself firmly in the royal nursery as its official ruler, abandoning me as suddenly as a bird deserting the nest. I saw less and less of my mother, who seemed content to spend her time with her women, so I was left pretty much to Demetrius and Cerdic between them. Demetrius had his own reasons for welcoming a day off now and again, and Cerdic was my friend. He would unsaddle the muddy and sweating pony without question, or with a wink and a lewd remark about where I had been that was meant as a joke, and was taken as such. I had my room to myself now, except for the wolfhound; he spent the nights with me for old times' sake, but whether he was any safeguard I have no idea. I suspect not; I was safe enough. The country was at peace, except for the perennial rumours of invasion from Less Britain; Camlach and his father were in accord; I was to all appearances heading willingly and at high speed for the prison of the priesthood, and so, when my lessons with Demetrius were officially done, was free to go where I wished.

I never saw anyone else in the valley. The shepherd only lived there in summer, in a poor hut below the wood. There were no other dwellings there, and beyond Galapas' cave the track was used only by sheep and deer. It led nowhere.

He was a good teacher, and I was quick, but in fact I hardly thought of my time with him as lessons. We left languages and geometry to Demetrius, and religion to my mother's priests; with Galapas to begin with it was only like listening to a story-teller. He had travelled when young to the other side of the earth, Aethiopia andGreece andGermany and all around theMiddleSea , and seen and learned strange things.

He taught me practical things, too; how to gather herbs and dry them to keep, how to use them for medicines, and how to distil certain subtle drugs, even poisons. He made me study the beasts and birds, and — with the dead birds and sheep we found on the hills, and once with a dead deer — I learnt about the organs and bones of the body. He taught me how to stop bleeding, how to set a broken bone, how to cut bad flesh away and cleanse the place so that it heals cleanly; even — though this came later — how to draw flesh and sinews into place with thread while the beast is stunned with fumes. I remember that the first spell he taught me was the charming of warts; this is so easy that a woman can do it.

One day he took a book out of the box and unrolled it. "Do you know what this is?"

I was used to diagrams and drawings, but this was a drawing of nothing I could recognize. The writing was in Latin, and I saw the words Aethiopia andFortunateIslands , and then right out in a corner, Britannia. The lines seemed to be scrawled everywhere, and all over the picture were trails of mounds drawn in, like a field where moles have been at work.

"Those, are they mountains?"

"Yes."

"Then it's a picture of the world?"

"A map."

I had never seen a map before. At first I could not see how it worked, but in a while, as he talked, I saw how the world lay there as a bird sees it, with roads and rivers like the radials of a spider's web, or the guidelines that lead the bee into the flower. As a man finds a stream he knows, and follows it through the wild moors, so, with a map, it is possible to ride fromRome to Massilia, orLondon to Caerleon, without once asking the way or looking for the milestones. This art was discovered by the Greek Anaximander, though some say the Egyptians knew it first. The map that Galapas showed me was a copy from a book by Ptolemy of Alexandria. After he had explained, and we had studied the map together, he bade me get out my tablet and make a map for myself, of my own country.

When I had done he looked at it. "This in the center, what is it?"

"Maridunum," I said in surprise. "See, there is the bridge, and the river, and this is the road through the market place, and the barrack gates are here."

"I see that. I did not say your town, Merlin, I said your country."

"The whole ofWales ? How do I know what lies north of the hills? I've never been further than this."

"I will show you."

He put aside the tablet, and taking a sharp stick, began to draw in the dust, explaining as he did so.

What he drew for me was a map shaped like a big triangle, notWales only, but the whole ofBritain , even the wild land beyond the Wall where the savages live. He showed me the mountains and rivers and roads and towns,London and Calleva and the places that cluster thick in the south, to the towns and fortresses at the ends of the web of roads, Segontium and Caerleon and Eboracum and the towns along the Wall itself. He spoke as if it were all one country, though I could have told him the names of the kings of a dozen places that he mentioned. I only remember this because of what came after.

Soon after this, when winter came and the stars were out early, he taught me their names and their powers, and how a man could map them as one would map the roads and townships. They made music, he said, as they moved. He himself did not know music, but when he found that Olwen had taught me, he helped me to make myself a harp. This was a rude enough affair, I suppose, and small, made of hornbeam, with the curve and fore-pillar of red sallow from the Tywy, and strung with hair from my pony's tail, where the harp of a prince (said Galapas) should have been strung with gold and silver wire.

But I made the string-shoes out of pierced copper coins, the key and tuning-pins of polished bone, then carved a merlin on the sounding-board, and thought it a finer instrument than Olwen's. Indeed it was as true as hers, having a kind of sweet whispering note which seemed to pluck songs from the air itself. I kept it in the cave: though Dinias left me alone these days, being a warrior while I was only a sucking clerk, I would not have kept anything I treasured in the palace, unless I could lock it in my clothes-chest, and the harp was too big for that. At home for music I had the birds in the pear tree, and Olwen still sang sometimes. And when the birds were silent, and the night sky was frosted with light, I listened for the music of the stars. But I never heard it.

Then one day, when I was twelve years old, Galapas spoke of the crystal cave.

7

It is common knowledge that, with children, those things which are most important often go unmentioned. It is as if the child recognizes, by instinct, things which are too big for him, and keeps them in his mind, feeding them with his imagination till they assume proportions distended or grotesque which can become equally the stuff of magic or of nightmare.

So it was with the crystal cave.

I had never mentioned to Galapas my first experience there. Even to myself I had hardly admitted what came sometimes with light and fire; dreams, I had told myself, memories from below memory, figments of the brain only, like the voice which had told me of Gorlan, or the sight of the poison in the apricot. And when I found that Galapas never mentioned the inner cave, and that the mirror was kept covered whenever I was there, I said nothing.

I rode up to see him one day in winter when frost made the ground glitter and ring, and my pony puffed out steam like a dragon. He went fast, tossing his head and dragging at the bit, and breaking into a canter as soon as I turned him away from the wood and along the high valley. I had at length grown out of the gentle, cream-coloured pony of my childhood, but was proud of my little Welsh grey, which I called Aster. There is a breed of Welsh mountain pony, hardy, swift, and very beautiful, with a fine narrow head and small ears, and a strong arch to the neck. They run wild in the hills, and in past times interbred with horses the Romans brought from the East. Aster had been caught and broken for my cousin Dinias, who had overridden him for a couple of years and then discarded him for a real warhorse. I found him hard to manage, with rough manners and a ruined mouth, but his paces were silken after the jogging I was used to, and once he got over his fear of me he was affectionate.

I had long since contrived a shelter for my pony when I came here in winter. The hawthorn brake grew right up against the cliff below the cave, and deep in the thickest part of it Galapas and I had carried stones to make a pen of which the back wall was the cliff itself. When we had laid dead boughs against the walls and across the top, and had carried a few armfuls of bracken, the pen was not only a warm, solid shelter, but invisible to the casual eye. This need for secrecy was another of the things that had never been openly discussed; I understood without being told that Galapas in some way was helping me to run counter to Camlach's plans for me, so — even though as time went on I was left more completely to my own devices — I took every precaution to avoid discovery, finding half a dozen different ways to approach the valley, and a score of stories to account for the time I spent there.

I led Aster into the pen, took off his saddle and bridle and hung them up, then threw down fodder from a saddle-bag, barred the entrance with a stout branch, and walked briskly up to the cave.

Galapas was not there, but that he had gone only recently was attested by the fact that the brazier which stood inside the cave mouth had been banked down to a glow. I stirred it till the flames leapt, then settled near it with a book. I had not come today by arrangement, but had plenty of time, so left the bats alone, and read peacefully for a while.

I don't know what made me, that day out of all the days I had been there alone, suddenly put the book aside, and walk back past the veiled mirror to look up at the cleft through which I had fled five years ago.

I told myself that I was only curious to see if it was as I had remembered it, or if the crystals, like the visions, were figments of my imagination; whatever the reason, I climbed quickly to the ledge, and dropping on my hands and knees by the gap, peered in.

The inner cave was dead and dark, no glimmer reaching it from the fire. I crawled forward cautiously, till my hands met the sharp crystals. They were all too real. Even now not admitting to myself why I hurried, with one eye on the mouth of the main cave and an ear open for Galapas' return, I slithered down from the ledge, snatched up the leather riding jerkin which I had discarded and, hurrying back, thrust it in front of me through the gap. Then I crawled after.

With the leather jerkin spread on the floor, the globe was comparatively comfortable. I lay still. The silence was complete. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I could see the faintest grey glimmer from the crystals, but of the magic that the light had brought there was no sign.

There must have been some crack open to the air, for even in that dark confine there was a slight current, a cold thread of a draught. And with it came the sound I was listening for, the footsteps of someone approaching over the frosty rock...

When Galapas came into the cave a few minutes later I was sitting by the fire, my jerkin rolled up beside me, poring over the book.

Half an hour before dusk we put our books aside. But still I made no move to go. The fire was blazing now, filling the cave with warmth and flickering light. We sat for a while in silence.

"Galapas, there's something I want to ask you."

"Yes?"

"Do you remember the first day I came here?"

"Very clearly."

"You knew I was coming. You were expecting me."

"Did I say so?"

"You know you did. How did you know I would be here?"

"I saw you in the crystal cave."

"Oh, that, yes. You moved the mirror so that the candlelight caught me, and you saw my shadow. But that's not what I was asking you. I meant, how did you know I was going to come up the valley that day?"

"That was the question I answered, Merlin. I knew you were coming up the valley that day, because, before you came, I saw you in the cave."

We looked at one another in silence. The flames glowed and muttered between us, flattened by the little draught that carried the smoke out of the cave. I don't think I answered him at first, I just nodded. It was something I had known. After a while I said, merely: "Will you show me?"

He regarded me for a moment more, then got to his feet. "It is time. Light the candle."

I obeyed him. The little light grew golden, reaching among the shadows cast by the flickering of the fire.

"Take the rug off the mirror."

I pulled at it and it fell off into my arms in a huddle of wool. I dropped it on his bed beside the wall.

"Now go up on the ledge, and lie down."

"On the ledge?"

"Yes. Lie on your belly, with your head towards the cleft, so that you can see in."

"Don't you want me to go right in?"

"And take your jerkin to lie on?"

I was halfway up to the ledge. I whipped round, to see him smiling.

"It's no use, Galapas, you know everything."

"Some day you will go where even with the Sight I cannot follow you. Now lie still, and watch."

I lay down on the ledge. It was wide and flat and held me comfortably enough, prone, with my head pillowed on my bent arms, and turned towards the cleft.

Below me, Galapas said softly: "Think of nothing. I have the reins in my hand; it is not for you yet. Watch only."

I heard him move back across the cave towards the mirror.

The cave was bigger than I had imagined. It stretched upwards further than I could see, and the floor was worn smooth. I had even been wrong about the crystals; the glimmer that reflected the torchlight came only from puddles on the floor, and a place on one wall where a thin slither of moisture betrayed a spring somewhere above.

The torches, jammed into cracks in the cave wall, were cheap ones, of rag stuffed into cracked horns — the rejects from the workshops. They burned sullenly in the bad air. Though the place was cold, the men worked naked save for loincloths, and sweat ran over their backs as they hacked at the rock-face, steady ceaseless tapping blows that made no noise, but you could see the muscles clench and jar under the torchlit sweat. Beneath a knee-high overhang at the base of the wall, flat on their backs in a pool of seepage, two men hammered upwards with shortened, painful blows at rock within inches of their faces.

On the wrist of one of them I saw the shiny pucker of an old brand.

One of the hewers at the face doubled up, coughing, then with a glance over his shoulder stifled the cough and got back to work. Light was growing in the cave, coming from a square opening like a doorway, which gave on a curved tunnel down which a fresh torch — a good one — came.

Four boys appeared, filthy with dust and naked like the others, carrying deep baskets, and behind them came a man dressed in a brown tunic smudged with damp. He had the torch in one hand and in the other a tablet which he stood studying with frowning brows while the boys ran with their baskets to the rock-face and began to shovel the fallen rock into them. After a while the foreman went forward to the face and studied it, holding his torch high. The men drew back, thankful it seemed for the respite, and one of them spoke to the foreman, pointing first at the workings, then at the seeping damp at the far side of the cave.

The boys had shovelled and scrabbled their baskets full, and dragged them back from the face. The foreman, with a shrug and a grin, took a silver coin from his pouch and, with the gambler's practiced flick, tossed it. The workmen craned to see. Then the man who had spoken turned back to the face and drove the pick in.

The crack widened, and dust rushed down, blotting out the light. Then in the wake of the dust came the water.

"Drink this," said Galapas.

"What is it?"

"One of my brews, not yours; it's quite safe. Drink it."

"Thanks. Galapas, the cave is crystal still. I — dreamed it differently."

"Never mind that now. How do you feel?"

"Odd...I can't explain. I feel all right, only a headache, but — empty, like a shell with the snail out of it.

No, like a reed with the pith pulled out."

"A whistle for the winds. Yes. Come down to the brazier."

When I sat in my old place, with a cup of mulled wine in my hands, he asked: "Where were you?"

I told him what I had seen, but when I began to ask what it meant, and what he knew, he shook his head. "I think this has already gone past me. I do not know. All I know is that you must finish that wine quickly and go home. Do you realize how long you lay there dreaming? The moon is up."

I started to my feet. "Already? It must be well past supper-time. If they're looking for me —"

"They will not be looking for you. Other things are happening. Go and find out for yourself — and make sure you are part of them."

"What do you mean?"

"Only what I say. Whatever means you have to use, go with the King. Here, don't forget this." He thrust my jerkin into my arms.

I took it blindly, staring. "He's leaving Maridunum?"

"Yes. Only for a while. I don't know how long."

"He'll never take me."

"That's for you to say. The gods only go with you, Myrddin Emrys, if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage. Put your jerkin on before you go out, it's cold."

I shoved a hand into the sleeve, glowering. "You've seen all this, something that's really happening, and I — I was looking into the crystals with the fire, and here I've got a hellish headache, and all for nothing...Some silly dream of slaves in an old mine. Galapas, when will you teach me to see as you do?"

"For a start, I can see the wolves eating you and Aster, if you don't hurry home."

He was laughing to himself as if he had made a great jest, as I ran out of the cave and down to saddle the pony.

8

It was a quarter moon, which gave just enough light to show the way. The pony danced to warm his blood, and pulled harder than ever, his ears pricked towards home, scenting his supper. I had to fight to hold him in, because the way was icy, and I was afraid of a fall, but I confess that — with Galapas' last remark echoing uncomfortably in my head — I let him go downhill through the trees a good deal too fast for safety, until we reached the mill and the level of the towpath.

There it was possible to see clearly. I dug my heels in and galloped him the rest of the way.

As soon as we came in sight of town I could see that something was up. The towpath was deserted —

the town gates would have been locked long since — but the town was full of lights. Inside the walls torches seemed to be flaring everywhere, and there was shouting and the tramp of feet. I slipped from the saddle at the stableyard gate, fully prepared to find myself locked out, but even as I reached to try it the gate opened, and Cerdic, with a shaded lantern in his hand, beckoned me in.

"I heard you coming. Been listening all evening. Where've you been, lover-boy? She must have been good tonight."

"Oh, she was. Have they been asking for me? Have they missed me?"

"Not that I know of. They've got more to think about tonight than you. Give me the bridle, we'll put him in the barn for now. There's too much coming and going in the big yard."

"Why, what's going on? I heard the noise a mile off. Is it a war?"

"No, more's the pity, though it may end up that way. There's a message come this afternoon, the High King's coming to Segontium, and he'll lie there for a week or two. Your grandfather's riding up tomorrow, so everything's to be got ready mighty sharp."

"I see." I followed him into the barn, and stood watching him unsaddle, while half-absently I pulled straw from the pile and twisted a wisp for him. I handed this across the pony's withers. "King Vortigern at Segontium? Why?"

"Counting heads, they say." He gave a snort of laughter as he began to work the pony over.

"Calling in his allies, do you mean? Then there is talk of war?"

"There'll always be talk of war, so long as yon Ambrosius sits there in Less Britain with King Budec at his back, and men remember things that's better not spoken of."

I nodded. I could not remember precisely when I had been told, since nobody said it aloud, but everyone knew the story of how the High King had claimed the throne. He had been regent for the young King Constantius who had died suddenly, and the King's younger brothers had not waited to prove whether the rumours of murder were true or false; they had fled to their cousin Budec in Less Britain, leaving the kingdom to the Wolf and his sons. Every year or so the rumours sprang up again; that King Budec was arming the two young princes; that Ambrosius had gone to Rome; that Uther was a mercenary in the service of the Emperor of the East, or that he had married the King of Persia's daughter; that the two brothers had an army four hundred thousand strong and were going to invade and burn Greater Britain from end to end; or that they would come in peace, like archangels, and drive the Saxons out of the eastern shores without a blow. But more than twenty years had gone by, and the thing had not happened. The coming of Ambrosius was spoken of now as if it were accomplished, and already a legend, as men spoke of the coming of Brut and the Trojans four generations after the fall of Troy, or Joseph's journey to Thorny Hill near Avalon. Or like the Second Coming of Christ — though when I had once repeated this to my mother she had been so angry that I had never tried the joke again.

"Oh, yes," I said, "Ambrosius coming again, is he? Seriously, Cerdic, why is the High King coming toNorth Wales ?"

"I told you. Doing the rounds, drumming up a bit of support before spring, him and that Saxon Queen of his." And he spat on the floor.

"Why do you do that? You're a Saxon yourself."

"That's a long time ago. I live here now. Wasn't it that flaxen bitch that made Vortigern sell out in the first place? Or at any rate you know as well as I do that since she's been in the High King's bed the Northmen have been loose over the land like a heath fire, till he can neither fight them nor buy them off.

And if she's what men say she is, you can be sure none of the King's true-born sons'll live to wear the crown." He had been speaking softly, but at this he looked over his shoulder and spat again, making the sign. "Well, you know all this — or you would, that is, if you listened to your betters more often, instead of spending your time with books and such like, or chasing round with the People from the hollow hills."

"Is that where you think I go?"

"It's what people say. I'm not asking questions. I don't want to know. Come up, you!" This to the pony as he moved over and started work, hissing, on the other flank. "There's talk that the Saxons have landed again north of Rutupiae, and they're asking too much this time even for Vortigern to stomach. He'll have to fight, come spring."

"And my grandfather with him?"

"That's what he's hoping, I'll be bound. Well, you'd best run along if you want your supper. No one'll notice you. There was all hell going on in the kitchens when I tried to get a bite an hour back."

"Where's my grandfather?"

"How do I know?" He cocked his head at me, over the pony's rump. "Now what's to do?"

"I want to go with them."

"Hah!" he said, and threw the chopped feed down for the pony. It was not an encouraging sound.

I said stubbornly: "I've a fancy to see Segontium."

"Who hasn't? I've a fancy to see it myself. But if you're thinking of asking the King..." He let it hang. "Not but what it's time you got out of the place and saw a thing or two, shake you a bit out of yourself, it's what you need, but I can't say I see it happening. You'll never go to the King?"

"Why not? All he can do is refuse."

"All he can do — ? Jupiter's balls, listen to the boy. Take my advice and get your supper and go to bed.

And don't try Camlach, neither. He's had a right stand-up fight with that wife of his and he's like a stoat with the toothache. — You can't be serious?"

"The gods only go with you, Cerdic, if you put yourself in their path."

"Well, all right, but some of them have got mighty big hoofs to walk over you with. Do you want Christian burial?"

"I don't really mind. I suppose I'll work my way up to Christian baptism fairly soon, if the bishop has his way, but till then I've not signed on officially for anyone."

He laughed. "I hope they'll give me the flames when my turn comes. It's a cleaner way to go. Well, if you won't listen, you won't listen, but don't face him on an empty belly, that's all."

"I'll promise you that," I said, and went to forage for supper. After I had eaten, and changed into a decent tunic, I went to look for my grandfather.

To my relief Camlach was not with him. The King was in his bedchamber, sprawled at ease in his big chair before a roaring log fire, with his two hounds asleep at his feet. At first I thought the woman in the high-backed chair on the other side of the hearth was Olwen, the Queen, but then I saw it was my mother. She had been sewing, but her hands had dropped idle in her lap, and the white stuff lay still over the brown robe. She turned and smiled at me, but with a look of surprise. One of the wolfhounds beat his tail on the floor, and the other opened an eye and rolled it round and closed it again. My grandfather glowered at me from under his brows, but said kindly enough: "Well, boy, don't stand there. Come in, come in, there's a cursed draught. Shut the door."

I obeyed, approaching the fire.

"May I see you, sir?"

"You're seeing me. What do you want? Get a stool and sit down."

There was one near my mother's chair. I pulled it away, to show I was not sitting in her shadow, and sat down between them.

"Well? Haven't seen you for some time, have I? Been at your books?"

"Yes, sir." On the principle that it is better to attack than to defend, I went straight to the point. "I...I had leave this afternoon, and I went out riding, so I —"

"Where to?"

"Along the river path. Nowhere special, only to improve my horsemanship, so —"

"It could do with it."

"Yes, sir. So I missed the messenger. They tell me you ride out tomorrow, sir."

"What's that to you?"

"Only that I would like to come with you."

"You would like? You would like? What's this, all of a sudden?"

A dozen answers all sounding equally well jostled in my head for expression. I thought I saw my mother watching me with pity, and I knew that my grandfather waited with indifference and impatience only faintly tempered with amusement. I told the simple truth. "Because I am more than twelve years old, and have never been out of Maridunum. Because I know that if my uncle has his way, I shall soon be shut up, in this valley or elsewhere, to study as a clerk, and before that happens —"

The terrifying brows came down. "Are you trying to tell me you don't want to study?"

"No. It's what I want more than anything in the world. But study means more if one has seen just a little of the world — indeed, sir, it does. If you would allow me to go with you —"

"I'm going to Segontium, did they tell you that? It's not a feast-day hunting-party, it's a long ride and a hard one, and no quarter given for poor riders."

It was like lifting a heavy weight, to keep my eyes level on that fierce blue glare. "I've been practicing, sir, and I've a good pony now."

"Ha, yes, Dinias' breakdown. Well, that's about your measure. No, Merlin, I don't take children."

"Then you're leaving Dinias behind?"

I heard my mother gasp, and my grandfather's head, already turned away, jerked back to me. I saw his fists clench on the chair arm, but he did not hit me. "Dinias is a man."

"Then do Mael and Duach go with you, sir?" They were his two pages, younger than myself, and went everywhere with him.

My mother began to speak, in a breathless rush, but my grandfather moved a hand to stop her. There was an arrested look in the fierce eyes under the scowling brows. "Mael and Duach are some use to me. What use are you?"

I looked at him calmly. "Till now, of very little. But have they not told you that I speak Saxon as well as Welsh, and can read Greek, and that my Latin is better than yours?"

"Merlin — " began my mother, but I ignored her.

"I would have added Breton and Cornish, but I doubt if you will have much use for these at Segontium."

"And can you give me one good reason," said my grandfather dryly, "why I should speak to King Vortigern in any other language but Welsh, seeing that he comes from Guent?"

I knew from his tone that I had won. Letting my gaze fall from his was like retreating with relief from the battlefield. I drew a breath, and said, very meekly: "No, sir."

He gave his great bark of laughter, and thrust out a foot to roll one of the dogs over. "Well, perhaps there's a bit of the family in you after all, in spite of your looks. At least you've got the guts to beard the old dog in his den when it suits you. All right, you can come. Who attends you?"

"Cerdic."

"The Saxon? Tell him to get your gear ready. We leave at first light. Well, what are you waiting for?"

"To say good night to my mother." I rose from my stool and went to kiss her. I did not often do this, and she looked surprised.

Behind me, my grandfather said abruptly: "You're not going to war. You'll be back inside three weeks. Get out."

"Yes, sir. Thank you. Good night."

Outside the door I stood still for a full half minute, leaning against the wall, while my blood-beat steadied slowly, and the sickness cleared from my throat. The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage.

I swallowed the sickness, wiped the sweat off my palms, and ran to find Cerdic.

9

So it was that I first left Maridunum. At that time it seemed like the greatest adventure in the world, to ride out in the chill of dawn, when stars were still in the sky, and make one of the jostling, companionable group of men who followed Camlach and the King. To begin with, most of the men were surly and half asleep, and we rode pretty well in silence, breath smoking in the icy air, and the horses' hoofs striking sparks from the slaty road. Even the jingle of harness sounded cold, and I was so numb that I could hardly feel the reins, and could think of nothing else but how to stay on the excited pony and not get myself sent home in disgrace before we had gone a mile.

Our excursion to Segontium lasted eighteen days. It was my first sight of King Vortigern, who had at this time been High King of Britain for more than twenty years. Be sure I had heard plenty about him, truth and tales alike. He was a hard man, as one must be who had taken his throne by murder and held it with blood; but he was a strong king in a time when there was need for strength, and it was not altogether his fault that his stratagem of calling in the Saxons as mercenaries to help him had twisted in his hand like an edged sword slipping, and cut it to the bone. He had paid, and paid again, and then had fought; and now he spent a great part of every year fighting like a wolf to keep the ranging hordes contained along the Saxon Shore. Men spoke of him — with respect — as a fierce and bloodthirsty tyrant, and of his Saxon Queen, Rowena, with hatred as a witch; but though I had been fed from childhood on the tales of the kitchen slaves, I was looking forward to seeing them with more curiosity than fear.

In any event, I need not have been afraid; I saw the High King only from a distance. My grandfather's leniency had extended only to letting me go in his train; once there, I was of no more account — in fact of much less — than his pages Mael and Duach. I was left to fend for myself among the anonymous rabble of boys and servants, and, because my ways had made me no friends among my contemporaries, was left to myself. I was later to be thankful for the fact that, on the few occasions when I was in the crowd surrounding the two Kings, Vortigern did not lay eyes on me, and neither my grandfather nor Camlach remembered my existence.

We lay a week at Segontium, which the Welsh call Caeryn-ar-Von, because it lies just across the strait from Mona, the druids' isle. The town is set, like Maridunum, on the banks of an estuary, where theSeintRiver meets the sea. It has a splendid harbour, and a fortress placed on the rising ground above this, perhaps half a mile away. The fortress was built by the Romans to protect the harbour and the town, but had lain derelict for over a hundred years until Vortigern put part of it into repair. A little lower down the hill stood another more recent strong-point, built, I believe, by Macsen, grandfather of the murdered Constantius, against the Irish raiders.

The country here was grander than inSouth Wales , but to my eyes forbidding rather than beautiful.

Perhaps in summer the land may be green and gentle along the estuary, but when I saw it first, that winter, the hills rose behind the town like storm-clouds, their skirts grey with the bare and whistling forests, and their crests slate blue and hooded with snow. Behind and beyond them all towers the great cloudy top of Moel-y-Wyddfa, which now the Saxons call Snow Hill, orSnowdon . It is the highest mountain in allBritain , and is the home of gods.

Vortigern lay, ghosts or no ghosts, in Macsen's Tower. His army — he never moved in those days with less than a thousand fighting men — was quartered in the fort. Of my grandfather's party, the nobles were with the King in the tower, while his train, of which I was one, was housed well enough, if a trifle coldly, near the west gate of the fort. We were treated with honour; not only was Vortigern a distant kinsman of my grandfather's, but it seemed to be true that the High King was — in Cerdic's phrase — "drumming up support." He was a big dark man, with a broad fleshy face and black hair as thick and bristled as a boar's, growing grey. There were black hairs on the back of his hands, and sprouting from his nostrils.

The Queen was not with him; Cerdic whispered to me that he had not dared bring her where Saxons were so little welcome. When I retorted that he was only welcome himself because he had forgotten his Saxon and turned into good Welsh, he laughed and cuffed my ear. I suppose it was not my fault that I was never very royal.

The pattern of our days was simple. Most of the day was spent hunting, till at dusk we would return to fires and drink and a full meal, and then the kings and their advisers turned to talk, and their trains to dicing, wenching, quarrelling, and whatever other sports they might choose.

I had not been hunting before; as a sport it was foreign to my nature, and here everyone rode out hurly-burly in a crowd, which was something I disliked. It was also dangerous; there was plenty of game in the foothills, and there were some wild rides with necks for sale; but I saw no other chance of seeing the country, and besides, I had to find out why Galapas had insisted on my coming to Segontium. So I went out every day. I had a few falls, but got nothing worse than bruises, and managed to attract no attention, good or bad, from anyone who mattered. Nor did I find what I was looking for; I saw nothing, and nothing happened except that my horsemanship improved, and Aster's manners along with it.

On the eighth day of our stay we set off for home, and the High King himself, with an escort a hundred strong, went with us to set us on our road.

The first part of the way lay along a wooded gorge where a river ran fast and deep, and where the horses had to go singly or two abreast between the cliffs and the water. There was no danger for so large a party, so we went at ease, the gorge ringing with the sound of hoofs and bridle-chains and men's voices, and the occasional croak overhead as the ravens sailed off the cliffs to watch us. These birds do not wait, as some say, for the noise of battle; I have seen them follow armed bands of men for miles, waiting for the clash and the kill.

But that day we went safely, and near midday we came to the place where the High King was to part from us and ride back. This was where the two rivers met, and the gorge opened out into a wider valley, with forbidding icebound crags of slate to either side, and the big river running south, brown and swollen with melting snow. There is a ford at the watersmeet, and leading south from this a good road which goes dry and straight over high ground towards Tomen-y-Mur.

We halted just north of the ford. Our leaders turned aside into a sheltered hollow which was cupped on three sides by thickly wooded slopes. Clumps of bare alder and thick reeds showed that in summer the hollow would be marshland; on that December day it was solidly frostbound, but protected from the wind, and the sun came warmly. Here the party stopped to eat and rest. The kings sat apart, talking, and near them the rest of the royal party. I noticed that it included Dinias. I, as usual, finding myself not of the royal group, nor with the men-at-arms, nor yet the servants, handed Aster to Cerdic, then went apart, climbing a short way among the trees to a wooded dell where I could sit alone and out of sight of the others. At my back was a rock thawed by the sun, and from the other side of this came, muffled, the jingle of bits as horses grazed, the men's voices talking, and an occasional guffaw, then the rhythmic silences and mutterings that told me the dice had come out to pass the time till the kings completed their farewell. A kite tilted and swung above me in the cold air, the sun striking bronze from its wings. I thought of Galapas, and the bronze mirror flashing, and wondered why I had come.

King Vortigern's voice said suddenly, just behind me: "This way. You can tell me what you think."

I had whipped round, startled, before I realized that he, and the man he was speaking to, were on the other side of the rock that sheltered me.

"Five miles, they tell me, in either direction..." The High King's voice dwindled as he turned away. I heard footsteps on the frosty ground, dead leaves crackling, and the jar of nailed boots on stone. They were moving off. I stood up, taking it carefully, and peered over the rock. Vortigern and my grandfather were walking up through the wood together, deep in talk.

I remember that I hesitated. What, after all, could they have to say that could not already have been said in the privacy of Macsen's Tower? I could not believe that Galapas had sent me merely as a spy on their conference. But why else? Perhaps the god in whose way I had put myself had sent me here alone, today, for this. Reluctantly, I turned to follow them.

As I took the first step after them a hand caught my arm, not gently. "And where do you think you're going?" demanded Cerdic under his breath.

I shook him off violently. "Damn you, Cerdic, you nearly made me jump out of my skin! What does it matter to you where I'm going?"

"I'm here to look after you, remember?"

"Only because I brought you. No one tells you to look after me, these days. Or do they?" I looked at him sharply. "Have you followed me before?"

He grinned. "To tell you the truth, I never troubled. Should I have?"

But I persisted. "Did anyone tell you to watch me today?"

"No. But didn't you see who went this way? It was Vortigern and your grandfather. If you'd any idea of wandering after them, I'd think again if I was you."

"I wasn't going 'after them,' " I lied. "I was merely taking a look round."

"Then I'd do it elsewhere. They said special that the escort had to wait down here. I came to make sure you knew it, that's all. Very special about it, they was."

I sat down again. "All right, you've made sure. Now leave me again, please. You can come and tell me when we're due to move off."

"And have you belting off the minute my back's turned?"

I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. "Cerdic, I told you to go."

He said doggedly: "Look, I know you, and I know when you look like that. I don't know what's in your mind, but when you get that look in your eye there's trouble for somebody, and it's usually for you. What's to do?"

I said furiously: "The trouble's for you this time, if you don't do as I say."

"Don't go all royal on me," he said. "I was only trying to save you a beating."

"I know that. Forgive me. I had — something on my mind."

"You can tell me, can't you? I knew there'd been something biting you this last few days. What is it?"

"Nothing that I know of," I said truthfully. "Nothing you can help with. Forget it. Look, did the kings say where they were going? They could have talked their fill at Segontium, surely, or on the ride here?"

"They've gone to the top of the crag. There's a place up there at the end of the ridge where you can look right up and down the valley, all ways. There used to be an old tower there, they say. They call it Dinas Brenin."

"King's Fort? How big's the tower?"

"There's nothing there now but a tumble of stones. Why?"

"I — nothing. When do we ride home, I wonder?"

"Another hour, they said. Look, why don't you come down, and I'll cut you in on a dice game."

I grinned. "Thanks for nothing. Have I kept you out of your game, too? I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it. I was losing anyway. All right, I'll leave you alone, but you wouldn't think of doing anything silly now, would you? No sense in sticking your neck out. Remember what I told you about the ring-dove."

And at that exact moment, a ring-dove went by like an arrow, with a clap and whistle of wings that sent up a flurry of frost like a wake. Close behind her, a little above, ready to strike, went a merlin.

The dove rose a fraction as she met the slope, skimming up as a gull skims a rising wave, hurtling towards a thicket near the lip of the dell. She was barely a foot from the ground, and for the falcon to strike her was dangerous, but he must have been starving, for, just as she reached the edge of the thicket, he struck.

A scream, a fierce kwik-ik-ik from the falcon, a flurry of crashing twigs, then nothing. A few feathers drifted lazily down, like snow.

I started forward, and ran up the bank. "He got her!" It was obvious what had happened; both birds, locked together, had hurtled on into the thicket and crashed to the ground. From the silence, it was probable that they both now lay there, stunned.

The thicket was a steep tangle almost covering one side of the dell. I thrust the boughs aside and pushed my way through. The trail of feathers showed me my way. Then I found them. The dove lay dead, breast downwards, wings still spread as she had struck the stones, and with blood smearing bright over the iris of her neck feathers. On her lay the merlin. The steel ripping-claws were buried deep in the dove's back, the cruel beak half driven in by the crash. He was still alive. As I bent over them his wings stirred, and the bluish eyelids dropped, disclosing the fierce dark eye.

Cerdic arrived, panting, at my shoulder. "Don't touch him. He'll tear your hands. Let me."

I straightened. "So much for your ring-dove, Cerdic. It's time we forgot her, isn't it? No, leave them. They'll be here when we come back."

"Come back? Where from?"

I pointed silently to what showed ahead, directly in the path the birds had been taking. A square black gap like a door in the steep ground behind the thicket; an entrance hidden from casual sight, only to be seen if, for some reason, one pushed one's way in among the tangled branches.

"What of it?" asked Cerdic. "That's an old mine adit, by the look of it."

"Yes. That's what I came to see. Strike a light, and come along."

He began to protest, but I cut him short. "You can come or not, as you please. But give me a light. And hurry, there isn't much time." As I began to push my way towards the adit I heard him, muttering still, dragging up handfuls of dry stuff to make a torch.

Just inside the adit there was a pile of debris and fallen stone where the timber props had rotted away, but beyond this the shaft was smooth enough, leading more or less levelly into the heart of the hill. I could walk pretty nearly upright, and Cerdic, who was small, had to stoop only slightly. The flare of the makeshift torch threw our shadows grotesquely in front of us. It showed the grooves in the floor where loads had been dragged to daylight, and on walls and roof the marks of the picks and chisels that had made the tunnel.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Cerdic's voice, behind me, was sharp with nerves. "Look, let's get back. These places aren't safe. That roof could come in."

"It won't. Keep that torch going," I said curtly, and went on.

The tunnel bent to the right, and began to curve gently downhill. Underground one loses all sense of direction; there is not even the drift of wind on one's cheek that gives direction even on the blackest night; but I guessed that we must be winding our way deep into the heart of the hill on which had stood the old king's tower. Now and again smaller tunnels led off to left and right, but there was no danger of losing our way; we were in the main gallery, and the rock seemed reasonably good. Here and there had been falls from roof or wall, and once I was brought to a halt by a fall of rubble which almost blocked the way, but I climbed through, and the tunnel was clear beyond.

Cerdic had stopped at the barrier of rubble. He advanced the torch and peered after me. "Hey, look, Merlin, come back, for pity's sake! This is beyond any kind of folly. I tell you, these places are dangerous, and we're getting down into the very guts of the rock. The gods alone know what lives down here. Come back, boy."

"Don't be a coward, Cerdic, there's plenty of room for you. Come on through. Quickly."

"That I won't. If you don't come out this minute, I swear I'll go back and tell the King."

"Look," I said, "this is important. Don't ask me why. But I swear to you there's no danger. If you're afraid, then give me that torch, and get back."

"You know I can't do that."

"Yes, I know. You wouldn't dare go back to tell him, would you? And if you did leave me, and anything happened, what do you suppose would happen to you?"

"They say right when they say you're a devil's spawn," said Cerdic.

I laughed. "You can say what you like to me when we're back in daylight, but hurry now, Cerdic, please.

You're safe, I promise you. There's no harm in the air today, and you saw how the merlin showed us the door."

He came, of course. Poor Cerdic, he could afford to do nothing else. But as he stood beside me again, with the torch held up, I saw him looking at me sideways, and his left hand was making the sign against the evil eye.

"Don't be long," he said, "that's all."

Twenty paces further, round a curve, the tunnel led into the cavern.

I made a sign to him to lift the torch. I could not have spoken. This vast hollow, right in the hill's heart, this darkness hardly touched by the torch's flare, this dead stillness of air where I could hear and feel my own blood beating — this, of course, was the place. I recognized every mark of the workings, the face seamed and split by the axes, and smashed open by the water. There was the domed roof disappearing into darkness, there in a corner some rusty metal where the pump had stood. There the shining moisture on the wall, no longer a ribbon, but a curtain of gleaming damp. And there where the puddles had lain, and the seepage under the overhang, a wide, still pool. Fully a third of the floor was under water.

The air had a strange smell all its own, the breath of the water and the living rock. Somewhere above, water dripped, each tap clear like a small hammer on metal. I took the smouldering faggot from Cerdic's hand, and went to the water's edge. I held the light as high as I could, out over the water, and gazed down. There was nothing to see. The light glanced back from a surface as hard as metal. I waited. The light ran, and gleamed, and drowned in darkness. There was nothing there but my own reflection, like the ghost in Galapas' mirror.

I gave the torch back to Cerdic. He hadn't spoken. He was watching me all the time with that sidelong, white-eyed look.

I touched his arm. "We can go back now. This thing's nearly out anyway. Come on."

We didn't speak as we made our way back along the curving gallery, past the rubble, through the adit and out into the frosty afternoon. The sky was a pale, milky blue. The winter trees stood brittle and quiet against it, the birches white as bone. From below a horn called, urgent, in the still metallic air.

"They're going." Cerdic drove the torch down into the frozen ground to extinguish it. I scrambled down through the thicket. The dove still lay there, cold, and stiff already. The merlin was there too; it had withdrawn from the body of its kill, and sat near it on a stone, hunched and motionless, even when I approached. I picked up the ring-dove and threw it to Cerdic. "Shove it in your saddle-bag. I don't have to tell you to say nothing of this, do I?"

"You do not. What are you doing?"

"He's stunned. If we leave him here he'll freeze to death in an hour. I'm taking him."

"Take care! That's a grown falcon —"

"He'll not hurt me." I picked up the merlin; he had fluffed his feathers out against the cold, and felt soft as a young owl in my hands. I pulled my leather sleeve down over my left wrist, and he took hold of this, gripping fiercely. The eyelids were fully open now, and the wild dark eyes watched me. But he sat still, with shut wings. I heard Cerdic muttering to himself as he bent to retrieve my things from the place where I had taken my meal. Then he added something I had never heard from him before. "Come on then, young master."

The merlin stayed docile on my wrist as I fell in at the back of my grandfather's train for the ride home to Maridunum.

10

Nor did it attempt to leave me when we reached home. I found, on examining it, that some of its wing feathers had been damaged in that hurtling crash after the ring-dove, so I mended them as Galapas had taught me, and after that it sat in the pear tree outside my window, accepting the food I gave it, and making no attempt to fly away.

I took it with me when next I went to see Galapas.

This was on the first day of February, and the frost had broken the night before, in rain. It was a grey leaden day, with low cloud and a bitter little wind among the rain. Draughts whistled everywhere in the palace, and curtains were fast drawn across the doors, while people kept on their woollen cloaks and huddled over the braziers. It seemed to me that a grey and leaden silence hung also over the palace; I had hardly seen my grandfather since we had returned to Maridunum, but he and the nobles sat together in council for hours, and there were rumours of quarrelling and raised voices when he and Camlach were closeted together. Once when I went to my mother's room I was told she was at her prayers and could not see me. I caught a glimpse of her through the half-open door, and I could have sworn that as she knelt below the holy image she was weeping.

But in the high valley nothing had changed. Galapas took the merlin, commended my work on its wings, then set it on a sheltered ledge near the cave's entrance, and bade me come to the fire and get warm. He ladled some stew out of the simmering pot, and made me eat it before he would listen to my story. Then I told him everything, up to the quarrels in the palace and my mother's tears.

"It was the same cave, Galapas, that I'll swear! But why? There was nothing there. And nothing else happened, nothing at all. I've asked as best I could, and Cerdic has asked about among the slaves, but nobody knows what the kings discussed, or why my grandfather and Camlach have fallen out. But he did tell me one thing; I am being watched. By Camlach's people. I'd have come to see you sooner, except for that. They've gone out today, Camlach and Alun and the rest, so I said I was going to the water-meadow to train the merlin, and I came up here."

Then as he was still silent, I repeated, worried into urgency: "What's happening, Galapas? What does it all mean?"

"About your dream, and your finding of the cavern, I know nothing. About the trouble in the palace, I can guess. You knew that the High King had sons by his first wife, Vortimer and Katigern and young Pascentius?"

I nodded.

"Were none of them there at Segontium?"

"No."

"I am told that they have broken with their father," said Galapas, "and Vortimer is raising troops of his own. They say he would like to be High King, and that Vortigern looks like having a rebellion on his hands when he can least afford it. The Queen's much hated, you know that; Vortimer's mother was good British, and besides, the young men want a young king."

"Camlach is for Vortimer, then?" I asked quickly, and he smiled.

"It seems so."

I thought about it for a little. "Well, when wolves fall out, don't they say the ravens come into their own?"

As I was born in September, under Mercury, the raven was mine.

"Perhaps," said Galapas. "You're more likely to be clapped in your cage sooner than you expected." But he said it absently, as if his mind were elsewhere, and I went back to what concerned me most.

"Galapas, you've said you know nothing about the dream or the cavern. But this — this must have been the hand of the god." I glanced up at the ledge where the merlin sat, broodingly patient, his eyes half shut, slits of firelight.

"It would seem so."

I hesitated. "Can't we find out what he — what it means?"

"Do you want to go into the crystal cave again?"

"N-no, I don't. But I think perhaps I should. Surely you can tell me that?"

He said heavily, after a few moments: "I think you must go in, yes. But first, I must teach you something more. You must make the fire for yourself this time. Not like that — " smiling, as I reached for a branch to stir the embers. "Put that down. You asked me before you went away to show you something real.

This is all I have left to show you. I hadn't realized...Well, let that go. It's time. No, sit still, you have no more need of books, child. Watch now."

Of the next thing, I shall not write. It was all the art he taught me, apart from certain tricks of healing. But as I have said, it was the first magic to come to me, and will be the last to go. I found it easy, even to make the ice-cold fire and the wild fire, and the fire that goes like a whip through the dark; which was just as well, because I was young to be taught such things, and it is an art which, if you are unfit or unprepared, can strike you blind.

It was dark outside when we had done. He got to his feet.

"I shall come back in an hour and wake you."

He twitched his cloak down from where it hung shrouding the mirror, put it round him, and went out.

The flames sounded like a horse galloping. One long, bright tongue cracked like a whip. A log fell down with a hiss like a woman's sigh, and then a thousand twigs crackled like people talking, whispering, chattering of news...

It faded all into a great brilliant blaze of silence. The mirror flashed. I picked up my cloak, now comfortably dry, and climbed with it into the crystal cave. I folded it and lay down on it, with my eyes fixed on the wall of crystal arching over me. The flames came after me, rank on bright rank, filling the air, till I lay in a globe of light like the inside of a star, growing brighter and ever brighter till suddenly it broke and there was darkness...

The galloping hoofs sparked on the gravel of the Roman road. The rider's whip cracked and cracked again, but the horse was already going full tilt, its nostrils wide and scarlet, its breath like steam in the cold air. The rider was Camlach. Far behind him, almost half a mile behind now, were the rest of the young men of his party, and still further behind them, leading his lamed and dripping horse, came the messenger who had taken the news to the King's son.

The town was alive with torches, men running to meet the galloping horse, but Camlach paid no heed to them. He drove the spiked spurs into the horse's sides, and galloped straight through the town, down the steep street, and into the outer yard of the palace. There were torches there, too. They caught the quick glint of his red hair as he swung from the horse and flung the reins into the hands of a waiting slave. The soft riding boots made no sound as he ran up the steps and along the colonnade that led to his father's room. The swift black figure was lost for a moment in shadow under the arch, then he flung the door wide and went through.

The messenger had been right. It had been a quick death. The old man lay on the carved Roman bed, and over him someone had thrown a coverlet of purple silk. They had somehow managed to prop his jaw, for the fierce grey beard jutted ceilingwards, and a little head-rest of baked clay beneath his neck held his head straight, while the body slowly froze iron-hard. There was no sign, the way he lay, that the neck was broken. Already the old face had begun to fall away, to shrink, as death pared the flesh down from the jut of the nose till it would be left simply in planes of cold candlewax. The gold coins that lay on his mouth and shut eyelids glimmered in the light of the torches at the four corners of the bed.

At the foot of the bed, between the torches, stood Niniane. She stood very still and upright, dressed in white, her hands folded quietly in front of her with a crucifix between them, her head bent. When the door opened she did not look up, but kept her eyes fixed on the purple coverlet, not in grief, but almost as if she were too far away for thought.

To her side, swiftly, came her brother, slim in his black clothes, glinting with a kind of furious grace that seemed to shock the room.

He walked right up to the bed and stood over it, staring down at his father. Then he put down a hand and laid it over the dead hands clasped on the purple silk. His hand lingered there for a moment, then drew back. He looked at Niniane. Behind her, a few paces back in the shadows, the little crowd of men, women, servants, shuffled and whispered. Among them, silent and dry-eyed, Mael and Duach stared.

Dinias, too, all his attention fixed on Camlach.

Camlach spoke very softly, straight to Niniane. "They told me it was an accident. Is this true?"

She neither moved nor spoke. He stared at her for a moment, then with a gesture of irritation, looked beyond her, and raised his voice.

"One of you, answer me. This was an accident?"

A man stepped forward, one of the King's servants, a man called Mabon. "It's true, my lord." He licked his lips, hesitating.

Camlach showed his teeth. "What in the name of the devils in hell's the matter with you all?" Then he saw where they were staring, and looked down at his right hip, where, sheathless, his short stabbing dagger had been thrust through his belt. It was blood to the hilt. He made a sound of impatience and disgust and, pulling it out, flung it from him, so that it skittered across the floor and came up against the wall with a small clang that sounded loud in the silence.

"Whose blood did you think?" he asked, still with that lifted lip. "Deer's blood, that's all. When the message came, we had just killed. I was twelve miles off, I and my men." He stared at them, as if daring them to comment. No one moved. "Go on, Mabon. He slipped and fell, the man told me. How did it happen?"

The man cleared his throat. "It was a stupid thing, sir, a pure accident. Why, no one was even near him.

It was in the small courtyard, the way through to the servants rooms, where the steps are worn. One of the men had been carrying oil around to fill the lamps. He'd spilled some on the steps, and before he got back to wipe it up the King came through, in a bit of a hurry. He — he hadn't been expected there at the time. Well, my lord, he treads in the oil, and goes straight down on his back, and hits his head on the stone. That's how it happened, my lord. It was seen. There's those that can vouch for it."

"And the man whose fault it was?"

"A slave, my lord."

"He's been dealt with?"

"My lord, he's dead."

While they had been talking, there had been a commotion in the colonnade, as the rest of Camlach's party arrived and came hurrying along to the King's room after him. They had pressed into the room while Mabon was speaking, and now Alun, approaching the prince quietly, touched his arm.

"The news is all round the town, Camlach. There's a crowd gathering outside. A million stories going round — there'll be trouble soon. You'll have to show yourself and talk to them."

Camlach flicked him a glance, and nodded. "Go and see to it, will you? Bran, go with him, and Ruan.

Shut the gates. Tell the people I'm coming out soon. And now, the rest of you, out."

The room emptied. Dinias lingered in the doorway, got not even a glance, and followed the rest. The door shut.

"Well, Niniane?"

In all this time she had never looked at him. Now she raised her eyes. "What do you want of me? It's true as Mabon tells you. What he didn't say was that the King had been fooling with a servant-girl and was drunk. But it was an accident, and he's dead...and you with all your friends were a good twelve miles away. So you're King now, Camlach, and there is no man can point a finger at you and say: 'He wanted his father dead.'"

"No woman can say that to me either, Niniane."

"I have not said it. I'm just telling you that the quarrels here are over. The kingdom's yours — and now it's as Alun says, you had better go and speak to the people."

"To you first. Why do you stand like that, as if you didn't care either way? As if you were scarcely with us here?"

"Perhaps because it's true. What you are, brother, and what you want, does not concern me, except to ask you one thing."

"And that is?"

"That you let me go now. He never would, but I think you will."

"To St. Peter's?"

She bent her head. "I told you nothing here concerned me any more. It has not concerned me for some time, and less than ever now, with all this talk about invasion, and war in the spring, and the rumours about shifts of power and the death of kings...Oh, don't look at me like that; I'm not a fool, and my father talked to me. But you need not be afraid of me; nothing I know or can do can ever harm your plans for yourself, brother. I tell you, there is nothing I want out of life now except to be allowed to go in peace, and live in peace, and my son too."

"You said 'one thing.' That makes two."

For the first time something came to life in her eyes; it might have been fear. She said swiftly: "It was always the plan for him, your plan, even before it was my father's. Surely, after the day Gorlan went, you knew that even if Merlin's father could come riding in, sword in hand and with three thousand men at his back, I would not go to him? Merlin can do you no harm, Camlach. He will never be anything but a nameless bastard, and you know he is no warrior. The gods know he can do you no harm at all."

"And even less shut up as a clerk?" Camlach's voice was silky.

"Even less, shut up as a clerk. Camlach, are you playing with me? What's in your mind?"

"This slave who spilled the oil," he said. "Who was he?"

That flicker in her eyes again. Then the lids dropped. "The Saxon. Cerdic."

He didn't move, but the emerald on his breast glittered suddenly against the black as if his heart had jumped.

She said fiercely: "Don't pretend you guessed this! How could you guess it?"

"Not a guess, no. When I rode in the place was humming with whispers like a smashed harp." He added, in sudden irritation: "You stand there like a ghost with your hands on your belly as if you still had a bastard there to protect."

Surprisingly, she smiled. "But I have." Then as the emerald leapt again: "No, don't be a fool. Where would I get another bastard now? I meant that I cannot go until I know he is safe from you. And that we are both safe from what you propose to do."

"From what I propose to do to you? I swear to you there is nothing —"

"I am talking about my father's kingdom. But let it go now. I told you, my only concern is that St. Peter's should be left in peace...And it will be."

"You saw this in the crystal?"

"It is unlawful for a Christian to dabble in soothsaying," said Niniane, but her voice was a little over-prim, and he looked sharply at her, then, suddenly restless, took a couple of strides away into the shadows at the side of the room, then back into the light.

"Tell me," he said abruptly. "What of Vortimer?"

"He will die," she said indifferently.

"We shall all die, some day. But you know I am committed to him now. Can you not tell me what will happen this coming spring?"

"I see nothing and I can tell you nothing. But whatever your plans for the kingdom, it will serve no purpose to let even the smallest whisper of murder start, and I can tell you this, you're a fool if you think that the King's death was anything but an accident. Two of the grooms saw it happen, and the girl he'd been with."

"Did the man say anything before they killed him?"

"Cerdic? No. Only that it was an accident. He seemed concerned more for my son than for himself. It was all he said."

"So I heard," said Camlach.

The silence came back. They stared at one another. She said: "You would not."

He didn't answer. They stood there, eyes locked, while a draught crept through the room, making the torches gutter.

Then he smiled, and went. As the door slammed shut behind him a gust of air blew through the room, and tore the flames along from the torches, till shadow and light went reeling.

The flames were dying, and the crystals dim. As I climbed out of the cave and pulled my cloak after me, it tore. The embers in the brazier showed a sullen red. Outside, now, it was quite dark. I stumbled down from the ledge and ran towards the doorway.

"Galapas!" I shouted. "Galapas!"

He was there. His tall, stooping figure detached itself from the darkness outside, and he came forward into the cave. His feet, half-bare in his old sandals, looked blue with cold.

I came to a halt a yard from him, but it was as if I had run straight into his arms, and been folded against his cloak.

"Galapas, they've killed Cerdic."

He said nothing, but his silence was like words or hands of comfort.

I swallowed to shift the ache in my throat. "If I hadn't come up here this afternoon...I gave him the slip, along with the others. But I could have trusted him, even about you. Galapas, if I'd stayed — if I'd been there — perhaps I could have done something."

"No. You counted for nothing. You know that."

"I'll count for less than nothing now." I put a hand to my head: it was aching fiercely, and my eyes swam, still half-blind. He took me gently by the arm and made me sit down near the fire.

"Why do you say that? A moment, Merlin, tell me what has happened."

"Don't you know?" I said, surprised. "He was filling the lamps in the colonnade, and some oil spilled on the steps, and the King slipped in it and fell and broke his neck. It wasn't Cerdic's fault, Galapas. He spilt the oil, that's all, and he was going back, he was actually going back to clean it up when it happened. So they took him and killed him."

"And now Camlach is King."

I think I stared at him for some time, unseeing with those dream-blinded eyes, my brain for the moment incapable of holding more than the single fact.

He persisted, gently: "And your mother? What of her?"

"What? What did you say?"

The warm shape of a goblet was put into my hand. I could smell the same drink that he had given me before when I dreamed in the cave. "Drink that. You should have slept till I wakened you, then it wouldn't have come like this. Drink it all."

As I drank, the sharp ache in my temples dulled to a throb, and the swimming shapes round me drew back into focus. And with them, thought.

"I'm sorry. It's all right now, I can think again, I've come back...I'll tell you the rest. My mother's to go into St. Peter's. She tried to make Camlach promise to let me go too, but he wouldn't. I think..."

"Yes?"

I said slowly, thinking hard now: "I didn't understand it all. I was thinking about Cerdic. But I believe he's going to kill me. I believe he will use my grandfather's death for this; he'll say that my slave did it...Oh, nobody will believe that I could take anything from Camlach, but if he does shut me up in a religious house, and then I die quietly, a little time after, then by that time the whispers will have worked, and nobody will raise a voice about it. And by that time, if my mother is just one of the holy women at St.

Peter's, and no longer the King's daughter, she won't have a voice to raise, either." I cupped my hands round the goblet, looking across at him. "Why should anyone fear me so, Galapas?"

He did not answer that, but nodded to the goblet in my hands. "Finish it. Then, my dear, you must go."

"Go? But if I go back, they'll kill me, or shut me up. Won't they?"

"If they find you, they will try."

I said eagerly: "If I stayed here with you — nobody knows I come here — even if they found out and came after me, you'd be in no danger! We'd see them coming up the valley for miles, or we'd know they were coming, you and I...They'd never find me; I could go in the crystal cave."

He shook his head. "The time for that isn't come. One day, but not now. You can no more be hidden now, than your merlin could go back into its egg."

I glanced back over my shoulder at the ledge where the merlin had sat brooding, still as Athene's owl.

There was no bird there. I wiped the back of a hand across my eyes, and blinked, not believing. But it was true. The firelit shadows were empty.

"Galapas, it's gone!"

"Yes."

"Did you see it go?"

"It went by when you called me back into the cave."

"I — which way?"

"South."

I drank the rest of the potion, then turned the goblet up to spill the last drops for the god. Then I set it down and reached for my cloak.

"I'll see you again, won't I?"

"Yes. I promise you that."

"Then I shall come back?"

"I promised you that already. Some day, the cave will be yours, and all that is in it."

Past him, in from the night, came a cold stray breath of air that stirred my cloak and lifted the hairs on my nape. My flesh prickled. I got up and swung the cloak round me and fastened the pin.

"You're going, then?" He was smiling. "You trust me so much? Where do you plan to go?"

"I don't know. Home, I suppose, to start with. I'll have time to think on the way there, if I need to. But I'm still in the god's path. I can feel the wind blowing. Why are you smiling, Galapas?"

But he would not answer that. He stood up, then pulled me towards him and stooped and kissed me.

His kiss was dry and light, an old man's kiss, like a dead leaf drifting down to brush the flesh. Then he pushed me towards the entrance. "Go. I saddled your pony ready for you."

It was raining still as I rode down the valley. The rain was cold and small, and soaking; it gathered on my cloak and dragged at my shoulders, and mixed with the tears that ran down my face.

This was the second time in my life that I wept.

11

The stableyard gate was locked. This was no more than I had expected. That day I had gone out openly enough through the main yard with the merlin, and any other night might have chanced riding back the same way, with some story of losing my falcon and riding about till dark to look for it. But not tonight.

And tonight there would be no one waiting and listening for me, to let me in.

Though the need for haste was breathing on the back of my neck, I kept the impatient pony to a walk, and rode quietly along under the palace wall in the direction of the bridge. This and the road leading to it were alive with people and torches and noise, and twice in the few minutes since I had come in sight of it a horseman went galloping headlong out over the bridge, going south.

Now the wet, bare trees of the orchard overhung the towpath. There was a ditch here below the high wall, and over it the boughs hung, dripping. I slid off the pony's back and led him in under my leaning apple-tree, and tethered him. Then I scrambled back into the saddle, got unsteadily to my feet, balanced for a moment, and jumped for the bough above me.

It was soaking, and one of my hands slipped, but the other held. I swung my legs up, cocked them over the bough, and after that it was only the work of moments to scramble over the wall, and down into the orchard grasses.

There to my left was the high wall which masked my grandfather's garden, to the right the dovecote and the raised terrace where Moravik used to sit with her spinning. Ahead of me was the low sprawl of the servants' quarters. To my relief hardly a light showed. All the light and uproar of the palace was concentrated beyond the wall to my left, in the main building. From even further beyond, and muted by the rain, came the tumult of the streets.

But no light showed in my window. I ran.

What I hadn't reckoned on was that they should have brought him here, to his old place. His pallet lay now, not across the door, but back in the corner, near my bed. There was no purple here, no torches; he lay just as they had flung him down. All I could see in the half-darkness was the ungainly sprawled body, with an arm flung wide and the hand splayed on the cold floor. It was too dark to see how he had died.

I stooped over him and took the hand. It was cold already, and the arm had begun to stiffen. I lifted it gently to the pallet beside his body, then ran to my bed and snatched up the fine woollen coverlet. I spread it over Cerdic, then jerked upright, listening, as a man's voice called something in the distance, and then there were footsteps at the end of the colonnade, and the answer, shouted:

"No. He's not come this way. I've been watching the door. Is the pony in yet?"

"No. No sign." And then, in reply to another shout: "Well, he can't have ridden far. He's often out till this time. What? Oh, very well..."

The footsteps went, rapidly. Silence.

There was a lamp in its stand somewhere along the colonnade. This dealt enough light through the half-open door for me to see what I was doing. I silently lifted the lid of my chest, pulled out the few clothes I had, with my best cloak, and a spare pair of sandals. I bundled these all together in a bag, together with my other possessions, my ivory comb, a couple of brooches, a cornelian clasp. These I could sell. I climbed on the bed and pitched the bag out of the window. Then I ran back to Cerdic, pulled aside the coverlet, and, kneeling, fumbled at his hip. They had left his dagger. I tugged at the clasp with fingers that were clumsier even than the darkness made them, and it came undone. I took it, belt and all, a man's dagger, twice as long as my own, and honed to a killing point. Mine I laid beside him on the pallet. He might need it where he had gone, but I doubted it; his hands had always been enough.

I was ready. I stood looking down at him for a moment longer, and saw instead, as in the flashing crystal, how they had laid my grandfather, with the torchlight and the watchers and the purple. Nothing here but darkness, a dog's death. A slave's death.

"Cerdic." I said it half aloud, in the darkness. I wasn't weeping now. That was over. "Cerdic, rest you now. I'll send you the way you wanted, like a king."

I ran to the door, listened for a moment, then slipped through into the deserted colonnade. I lifted the lamp from its bracket. It was heavy, and oil spilled. Of course; he had filled it just that evening.

Back in my own room I carried the lamp over to where he lay. Now — what I had not foreseen — I could see how he had died. They had cut his throat.

Even if I had not intended it, it would have happened. The lamp shook in my hand, and hot oil splashed on the coverlet. A burning fragment broke from the wick, fell, caught, hissed. Then I flung the lamp down on the body, and watched for five long seconds while the flame ran into the oil and burst like blazing spray.

"Go with your gods, Cerdic," I said, and jumped for the window.

I landed on the bundle and went sprawling in the wet grass, then snatched it up and ran for the river wall.

Not to frighten the pony, I made for a place some yards beyond the apple-tree, and pitched the bag over the wall into the ditch. Then back to the tree, and up it, to the high coping.

Astride of this, I glanced back. The fire had caught. My window glowed now, red with pulsing light. No alarm had yet been given, but it could only be a matter of moments before the flames were seen, or someone smelled the smoke. I scrambled over, hung by my hands for a moment, then let myself drop. As I got to my feet a shadow, towering, jumped at me and struck.

I went down with a man's heavy body on top of me, pinning me to the muddy grass. A splayed hand came hard down on my face, choking my cry off short. Just near me was a quick footstep, the rasp of drawn metal, and a man's voice saying, urgently, in Breton: "Wait. Make him talk first."

I lay quite still. This was easy to do, for not only had the force of the first man's attack driven the breath right out of my body, but I could feel his knife at my throat. Then as the second man spoke, my captor, with a surprised grunt, shifted his weight from me, and the knife withdrew an inch or two.

He said, in a tone between surprise and disgust: "It's only a boy." Then to me, harshly, in Welsh: "Not a sound out of you, or I'll slit your throat here and now. Understood?"

I nodded. He took his hand from my mouth, and getting up, dragged me to my feet. He rammed me back against the wall, holding me there, the knife pricking my collarbone. "What's all this? What are you doing bolting out of the palace like a rat with the dogs after it? A thief? Come on, you little rat, before I choke you."

He shook me as if I were indeed a rat. I managed to gasp: "Nothing. I was doing no harm! Let me go!"

The other man said softly, out of the darkness: "Here's what he threw over the wall. A bag full of stuff."

"What's in it?" demanded my captor. And to me, "Keep quiet, you."

He had no need to warn me. I thought I could smell smoke now, and see the first flicker of light as my fire took hold of the roof beams. I flattened myself back even further into the black shadow under the wall.

The other man was examining my bundle. "Clothes...sandals...some jewelry by the feel of it..."

He had moved out on to the towpath, and, with my eyes now used to the darkness, I could make him out. A little weasel of a man, with bent shoulders, and a narrow, pointed face under a straggle of hair. No one I had ever seen.

I gave a gasp of relief. "You're not the King's men! Who are you, then? What do you want here?"

The weaselly man stopped rooting in my bag, and stared.

"That's no concern of yours," said the big man who held me. "We'll ask the questions. Why should you be so scared of the King's men? You know them all, eh?"

"Of course I do. I live in the palace. I'm — a slave there."

"Marric" — it was the Weasel, sharply — "look over there, there's a fire started. They're buzzing like a wasp's nest. No point in wasting time here over a runaway slave-brat. Slit his throat and let's run for it while we can."

"A moment," said the big man. "He may know something. Look now, you —"

"If you're going to slit my throat anyway," I said, "why should I tell you anything? Who are you?"

He ducked his head forward suddenly, peering at me. "Crowing mighty fine all of a sudden aren't you?

Never mind who we are. A slave, eh? Running away?"

"Yes."

"Been stealing?"

"No."

"No? The jewelry in the bundle? And this — this isn't a slave's cloak." He tightened his grip on the stuff at my throat till I squirmed. "And that pony? Come on, the truth."

"All right." I hoped I sounded sullen and cowed enough for a slave now. "I did take a few things. It's the prince's pony, Myrddin's...I — I found it straying. Truly, sir. He went out today and he's not back yet.

He'll have been thrown, he's a rotten horseman. I — it was a bit of luck — they won't miss it till I'm well away." I plucked at his clothes beseechingly. "Please, sir, let me go. Please! What harm could I do — ?"

"Marric, for pity's sake, there's no time." The flames had taken hold now, and were leaping. There was shouting from the palace, and the Weasel pulled at my captor's arm. "The tide's going out fast, and the gods only know if she's there at all, this weather. Listen to the noise — they'll be coming this way any minute."

"They won't," I said. "They'll be too busy putting the fire out to think of anything else. It was well away when I left it."

"When you left it?" Marric hadn't budged; he was staring down at me, and his grip was less fierce. "Did you start that fire?"

"Yes."

I had their full attention now, even Weasel's.

"Why?"

"I did it because I hate them. They killed my friend."

"Who did?"

"Camlach and his people. The new King."

There was a short silence. I could see Marric better now. He was a big, burly man, with a bush of black hair, and black eyes that glinted in the fire.

"And," I added, "if I'd stayed, they'd have killed me, too. So I burned the place and ran away. Please let me go now."

"Why should they want to kill you? They'll want to now, of course, with the place going up like a torch — but why, before that? What had you done?"

"Nothing. But I was the old King's slave, and...I suppose I heard things. Slaves hear everything. Camlach thinks I might be dangerous...He has plans...I knew about them. Believe me, sir," I said earnestly, "I'd have served him as well as I did the old King, but then he killed my friend."

"What friend? And why?"

"Another slave, a Saxon, his name was Cerdic. He spilled oil on the steps, and the old King fell. It was an accident, but they cut his throat."

Marric turned his head to the other. "Hear that, Hanno? That's true enough. I heard it in the town." Then back to me: "All right. Now you can tell us a bit more. You say you know Camlach's plans?"

But Hanno interrupted again, this time desperately. "Marric, for pity's sake! If you think he's got something to tell us, bring him along. He can talk in the boat, can't he? I tell you, if we wait much longer we'll lose the tide, and she'll be gone. There's dirty weather coming by the feel of it, and it's my guess that they won't wait. And then in Breton: "We can as easy ditch him later as now.

"Boat?" I said. "You're going on the river?"

"Where else? Do you think we can go by road? Look at the bridge." Marric jerked his head sideways.

"All right, Hanno. Get in. We'll go."

He began to drag me across the towpath. I hung back. "Where are you taking me?"

"That's our affair. Can you swim?"

"No."

He laughed under his breath. It was not a reassuring sound. "Then it won't matter to you which way we go, will it? Come along." And he clapped his hand once more over my mouth, swung me up as if I had been no heavier than my own bundle, and strode across the path to the oily dark glimmer that was the river.

The boat was a coracle, half hidden under the hanging bank. Hanno was already casting off. Marric went down the bank with a bump and a slither, dumped me in the lurching vessel, and clambered after me. As the coracle rocked out from under the bank he let me feel the knife again against the back of my neck. "There. Feel it? Now hold your tongue till we're clear of the bridge."

Hanno thrust off, and guided us out with the paddle into the current. A few feet from the bank I felt the river take hold of the boat, and we gathered speed. Hanno bent to the paddle and held her straight for the southern arch of the bridge.

Held in Marric's grip, I sat facing astern. Just as the current took us to sweep us southwards I heard Aster's high, frightened whinny as he smelt the smoke, and in the light of the now roaring fire I saw him, trailing a broken rein, burst from the wall's shadow and scud like a ghost along the tow-path. Fire or no fire, he would make for the gate and his stable, and they would find him. I wondered what they would think, where they would look for me. Cerdic would be gone now, and my room with the painted chest, and the coverlet fit for a prince. Would they think I had found Cerdic's body, and in my fear and shock had dropped the lamp? That my own body was there, charred to nothing, in the remains of the servants' wing? Well, whatever they thought, it didn't matter. Cerdic had gone to his gods, and I, it seemed, was going to mine.

12

The black arch of the bridge swooped across the boat, and was gone. We fled downstream. The tide was almost on the turn, but the last of the ebb took us fast. The air freshened, and the boat began to rock.

The knife withdrew from my flesh. Across me Marric said: "Well, so far so good. The brat did us a good turn with his fire. No one was watching the river to see a boat slip under the bridge. Now, boy, let's hear what you have to tell us. What's your name?"

"Myrddin Emrys."

"And you say you were — hey, wait a minute! Did you say Myrddin? Not the bastard?"

"Yes."

He let out a long whistling breath, and Hanno's paddle checked, to dip again hurriedly as the coracle swung and rocked across the current. "You heard that, Hanno? It's the bastard. Then why in the name of the spirits of lower earth did you tell us you were a slave?"

"I didn't know who you were. You hadn't recognized me, so I thought if you were thieves yourselves, or Vortigern's men, you'd let me go."

"Bag, pony, and all...So it was true you were running away? Well," he added thoughtfully, "if all tales be true, you're not much to be blamed for that. But why set the place on fire?"

"That was true, too. I told you. Camlach killed a friend of mine, Cerdic the Saxon, though he had done nothing to deserve it. I think they only killed him because he was mine and they meant to use his death against me. They put his body in my room for me to find. So I burnt the room. His people like to go to their gods like that."

"And the devil take anyone else in the palace?"

I said indifferently: "The servants' wing was empty. They were all at supper, or out looking for me, or serving Camlach. It's surprising — or perhaps it isn't — how quickly people can switch over. I expect they'll put the fire out before it reaches the King's apartments."

He regarded me in silence for a minute. We were still racing with the turning tide, well out in the estuary now. Hanno gave no sign of steering to the further bank. I pulled my cloak closer round me and shivered.

"Who were you running to?" asked Marric.

"Nobody."

"Look, boy, I want the truth, or bastard prince or not, you'll go over the side now. Hear me? You'd not last a week if you hadn't someone to go to, to take service with. Who did you have in mind? Vortigern?"

"It would be sensible, wouldn't it? Camlach's going with Vortimer."

"He's what?" His voice sharpened. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. He was playing with the idea before, and he quarrelled with the old King about it. He and his lot would have gone anyway, I think. Now, of course, he can take the whole kingdom with him, and shut it against Vortigern."

"And open it for who else?"

"I didn't hear that. Who is there? You can imagine, he wasn't being very open about it until tonight, when his father the King lay dead."

"Hm." He thought for a minute. "The old King leaves another son. If the nobles don't want this alliance—"

"A baby? Aren't you being a bit simple? Camlach's had a good example in front of him; Vortimer wouldn't be where he is if his father hadn't done just what Camlach will do."

"And that is?"

"You know as well as I do. Look, why should I say any more till I know who you are? Isn't it time you told me?"

He ignored that. He sounded thoughtful. "You seem to know a lot about it. How old are you?"

"Twelve. I'll be thirteen in September. But I don't need to be clever to know about Camlach and Vortimer. I heard him say so himself."

"Did you, by the Bull? And what else did you hear?"

"Quite a lot. I was always underfoot. Nobody took any notice of me. But my mother's going into retirement now at St. Peter's, and I wouldn't give you a fig for my chances, so I cleared out."

"To Vortigern?"

I said, honestly: "I've no idea. I — I have no plans. It might have to be Vortigern in the end. What choice is there but him, and the Saxon wolves hanging at our throats for all time till they've tornBritain piecemeal and swallowed her? Who else is there?"

"Well," said Marric, "Ambrosius."

I laughed. "Oh, yes, Ambrosius. I thought you were serious. I know you're from Less Britain, I can tell by your voices, but —"

"You asked who we were. We are Ambrosius' men."

There was a silence. I realized that the river-banks had disappeared. Far off in the darkness to the north a light showed; the lighthouse. Some time back the rain had slackened and stopped. Now it was cold, with the wind off shore, and the water was choppy. The boat pitched and swung, and I felt the first qualm of sickness. I clutched my hands hard against my belly, against the cold as much as the sickness, and said sharply: "Ambrosius' men? Then you're spies? His spies?"

"Call us loyal men."

"Then it's true? It's true he's waiting in Less Britain?"

"Aye, it's true."

I said, aghast: "Then that's where you're going? You can't imagine you can get there in this horrible boat?"

Marric laughed, and Hanno said sourly, "We might have to, at that, if the ship's not there."

"What ship would be there in winter?" I demanded. "It's not sailing weather."

"It's sailing weather if you pay enough," said Marric dryly. "Ambrosius pays. The ship will be there." His big hand dropped on my shoulder, not ungently. "Never mind that, there's still things I want to know."

I curled up, hugging my belly, trying to take big breaths of the cold clear air. "Oh, yes, there's a lot I could tell you. But if you're going to drop me overboard anyway, I've nothing to lose, have I? I might as well keep the rest of my information to myself — or see if Ambrosius will pay for it. And there's your ship. Look; if you can't see it yet, you must be blind. Now don't talk to me any more, I feel sick."

I heard him laugh again under his breath. "You're a cool one, and no mistake. Aye, there's the ship, I can see her clearly enough now. Well, seeing who you are, we'll take you aboard. And I'll tell you the other reason; I liked what you said about your friend. That sounded true enough. So you can be loyal, eh? And you've no call to be loyal to Camlach, by all accounts, or to Vortigern. Could you be loyal to Ambrosius?"

"I'll know when I see him."

His fist sent me sprawling to the bottom of the boat. "Princeling or not, keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of him. There's many a hundred men think of him as their King, rightwise born."

I picked myself up, retching. A low hail came from near at hand, and in a moment we were rocking in the deeper shadow of the ship.

"If he's a man, that'll be enough," I said.

The ship was small, compact and low in the water. She lay there, unlighted, a shadow on the dark sea. I could just see the rake of her mast swaying — sickeningly, it seemed to me — against the scudding cloud that was only a little lighter than the black sky above. She was rigged like the merchantmen who traded in and out of Maridunum in the sailing weather, but I thought she looked cleaner built, and faster.

Marric answered the hail, then a rope snaked down overside, and Hanno caught it and made it fast.

"Come on, you, get moving. You can climb, can't you?"

Somehow, I got to my feet in the swinging coracle. The rope was wet, and jerked in my hands. From above an urgent voice came: "Hurry, will you? We'll be lucky if we get back at all, with the weather that's coming up."

"Get aloft, blast you," said Marric, roughly, giving me a shove. It was all it needed. My hands slipped, nerveless, from the rope, and I fell back into the coracle, landing half across the side, where I hung, gasping and retching, and beyond caring what fate overtook me or even a dozen kingdoms. If I had been stabbed or thrown into the sea at that point I doubt if I would even have noticed, except to welcome death as a relief. I simply hung there over the boat's side like a lump of sodden rags, vomiting.

I have very little recollection of what happened then. There was a good deal of cursing, and I think I remember Hanno urgently recommending Marric to cut his losses and throw me overboard; but I was picked up bodily and, somehow, slung up and into the waiting hands above. Then someone half-carried, half-dragged me below, and dropped me on a pile of bedding with a bucket to hand and the air from an open port blowing on my sweating face.

I believe the journey took four days. Rough weather there certainly was, but at least it was behind us, and we made spanking speed. I stayed below the whole time, huddled thankfully in the blankets under the port-hole, hardly venturing to lift my head. The worst of the sickness abated after a time, but I doubt if I could have moved, and mercifully no one tried to make me.

Marric came down once. I remember it vaguely, as if it were a dream. He picked his way in over a pile of old anchor chain to where I lay, and stood, his big form stooping, peering down at me. Then he shook his head. "And to think I thought we'd done ourselves a good turn, picking you up. We should have thrown you over the side in the first place, and saved a lot of trouble. I reckon you haven't very much more to tell us, anyway?"

I made no reply.

He gave a queer little grunt that sounded like a laugh, and went out. I went to sleep, exhausted.

When I woke, I found that my wet cloak, sandals and tunic had been removed, and that, dry and naked, I was cocooned deep in blankets. Near my head was a water jar, its mouth stoppered with a twist of rag, and a hunk of barley bread.

I couldn't have touched either, but I got the message. I slept.

Then one day shortly before dusk, we came in sight of theWildCoast , and dropped anchor in the calm waters of Morbihan that men call theSmallSea .