The Crystal Cave

1

I was five years with Ambrosius inBrittany . Looking back now, I see that much of what happened has been changed in my memory, like a smashed mosaic which is mended in later years by a man who has almost forgotten the first picture. Certain things come back to me plain, in all their colours and details; others — perhaps more important — come hazy, as if the picture had been dusted over by what has happened since, death, sorrow, changes of the heart. Places I always remember well, some of them so clearly that I feel even now as if I could walk into them, and that if I had the strength to concentrate, and the power that once fitted me like my robe, I might even now rebuild them here in the dark as I rebuilt the Giants' Dance for Ambrosius, all those years ago.

Places are clear, and ideas, which came to me so new and shining then, but not always the people: sometimes now as I search my memory I wonder if here and there I have confused them one with another, Belasius with Galapas, Cadal with Cerdic, the Breton officer whose name I forget now with my grandfather's captain in Maridunum who once tried to make me into the kind of swordsman that he thought even a bastard prince should want to be.

But as I write of Ambrosius, it is as if he were here with me now, lit against this darkness as the man with the cap was lit on that first frost-enchanted night inBrittany . Even without my robe of power I can conjure up against the darkness his eyes, steady under frowning brows, the heavy lines of his body, the face (which seems so young to me now) engraved into hardness by the devouring, goading will that had kept his eyes turned westward to his closed kingdom for the twenty-odd years it took him to grow from child to Comes and build, against all the odds of poverty and weakness, the striking force that grew with him, waiting for the time.

It is harder to write of Uther. Or rather it is hard to write of Uther as if he were in the past, part of a story that has been over these many years. Even more vividly than Ambrosius he is here with me; not here in the darkness — it is the part of me that was Myrddin that is here in the darkness. The part that was Uther is out there in the sunlight, keeping the coasts ofBritain whole, following the design I made for him, the design that Galapas showed to me on a summer's day inWales .

But there, of course, it is no longer Uther of whom I write. It is the man who was the sum of us, who was all of us — Ambrosius, who made me; Uther, who worked with me; myself, who used him, as I used every man who came to my hand, to make Arthur forBritain .

From time to time news came fromBritain , and occasionally with it — through Gorlois of Cornwall — news of my home.

It seemed that after my grandfather's death, Camlach had not immediately deserted the old alliance with his kinsman Vortigern. He had to feel himself more secure before he would dare break away to support the "young men's party," as Vortimer's faction was called. Indeed, Vortimer himself had stopped short of open rebellion, but it seemed clear that this must come eventually. King Vortigern was back between the landslide and the flood; if he was to stay King of the British he must call on his Saxon wife's countrymen for help, and the Saxon mercenaries year by year increased their demands till the country was split and bleeding under what men openly called the Saxon Terror, and — in the West especially, where men were still free — rebellion only waited for a leader of leaders. And so desperate was Vortigern's situation becoming that he was forced against his better judgement to entrust the armed forces in the West more and more to Vortimer and his brothers, whose blood at least carried none of the Saxon taint.

Of my mother there was no news, except that she was safe in St. Peter's. Ambrosius sent her no message. If it came to her ears that a certain Merlinus Ambrosius was with the Count of Brittany, she would know what to think, but a letter or message direct from the King's enemy would endanger her unnecessarily. She would know, said Ambrosius, soon enough.

In fact it was five years before the break came, but the time went by like a tide-race. With the possibility of an opening developing inWales andCornwall , Ambrosius' preparations accelerated. If the men of the West wanted a leader he had every intention that it should be, not Vortimer, but himself. He would bide his time and let Vortimer be the wedge, but he and Uther would be the hammer that drove after it into the crack. Meanwhile hope in Less Britain ran high; offers of troops and alliances poured in, the countryside shook to the tramp of horses and marching feet, and the streets of the engineers and armourers rang far into the night as men redoubled their efforts to make two weapons in the time that before it had taken to make one. Now at last the break was coming, and when it came Ambrosius must be ready, and with no chance of failure. One does not wait half a lifetime gathering the material to make a killing spear, and then loose it at random in the dark. Not only men and materials, but time and spirit and the very wind of heaven must be right for him, and the gods themselves must open the gate. And for this, he said, they had sent me to him. It was my coming just at such a time with words of victory, and full of the vision of the unconquered god, which persuaded him (and even more important, the soldiers with him) that the time was at last approaching when he could strike with the certainty of victory. So — I found to my fear — he rated me.

Be sure I had never asked him again how he intended to use me. He made it clear enough, and between pride and fear and longing I fought to learn all that I could be taught, and to open myself for the power which was all I could give him. If he had wanted a prophet ready to hand he must have been disappointed; I saw nothing of importance during this time. Knowledge, I suppose, blocked the gates of vision. But this was the time for knowledge; I studied with Belasius till I outran him, learning, as he had never done, how to apply the calculations which to him were as much an art as songs were to me; even songs, indeed, I was to use. I spent long hours in the street of the engineers, and had frequently to be dragged by a grumbling Cadal from some oily piece of practical work which unfitted me, as he said, for any company but a bath-slave's. I wrote down, too, all I could remember of Galapas' medical teaching, and added practical experience by helping the army doctors whenever I could. I had the freedom of the camp and the town, and with Ambrosius' name to back me I took to this freedom like a hungry young wolf to his first full meal. I learned all the time, from every man or woman I met. I looked, as I had promised, in the light and the dark, at the sunshine and at the stale pool. I went with Ambrosius to the shrine of Mithras below the farmstead, and with Belasius to the gatherings in the forest. I was even allowed to sit silently at meetings between the Count and his captains, though nobody pretended that I would ever be much use in the field, "unless," said Uther once, half amused, half malicious, "he is to stand above us like Joshua holding the sun back, to give us more time to do the real work. Though joking apart, he might do worse...the men seem to think of him as something halfway between a Courier of Mithras and a splinter of the True Cross — saving your presence, brother — and I'm damned certain he'd be more use stuck up on a hill like a lucky charm where they can see him, than down in the field where he wouldn't last five minutes." He had even more to say when, at the age of sixteen, I gave up the daily sword practice which gave a man the minimum training in self-defense; but my father merely laughed and said nothing. I think he knew, though as yet I did not, that I had my own kind of protection.

So I learned from everyone; the old women who gathered plants and cobwebs and seaweeds for healing; the travelling peddlers and quack healers; the horse doctors, the soothsayers, the priests. I listened to the soldiers' talk outside the taverns, and the officers' talk in my father's house, and the boys' talk in the streets. But there was one thing about which I learned nothing: by the time I leftBrittany at seventeen, I was still ignorant of women. When I thought about them — which happened often enough — I told myself that I had no time, that there was a lifetime still ahead of me for such things, and that now I had work to do which mattered more. But I suppose the plain truth is that I was afraid of them. So I lost my desires in work, and indeed, I believe now that the fear came from the god.

So I waited, and minded my own business, which — as I saw it then — was to fit myself to serve my father.

One day I was in Tremorinus' workshop. Tremorinus, the master engineer, was a pleasant man who allowed me to learn all I could from him, gave me space in the workshops, and material to experiment with. This particular day I remember how when he came into the workshop and saw me busy over a model at my corner bench, he came over to have a look at it. When he saw what I was doing he laughed.

"I'd have thought there were plenty of those around without troubling to put up any more."

"I was interested in how they got them there." I tilted the scale model of the standing stone back into place.

He looked surprised. I knew why. He had lived in Less Britain all his life, and the landscape there is so seamed with the stones that men do not see them any more. One walks daily through a forest of stone, and to most men it seems dead stone...But not to me. To me they still said something, and I had to find out what; but I did not tell Tremorinus this. I added, merely: "I was trying to work it out to scale."

"I can tell you something straight away: that's been tried, and it doesn't work." He was looking at the pulley I had rigged to lift the model. "That might do for the uprights, but only the lighter ones, and it doesn't work at all for the cap-stones."

"No. I'd found that out. But I'd had an idea...I was going to tackle it another way."

"You're wasting your time. Let's see you getting down to something practical, something we need and can use. Now, that idea of yours for a light mobile crane might be worth developing..."

A few minutes later he was called away. I dismantled the model, and sat down to my new calculations. I had not told Tremorinus about them; he had more important things to think about, and in any case he would have laughed if I had told him I had learned from a poet how to lift the standing stones.

It had happened this way.

One day about a week before this, as I walked by the water that guarded the town walls, I heard a man singing. The voice was old and wavering, and hoarse with over-use — the voice of a professional singer who has strained it above the noise of the crowd, and through singing with the winter cold in his throat.

What caught my attention was neither the voice nor the tune, which could hardly be picked out, but the sound of my own name.

Merlin, Merlin, where art thou going

He was sitting by the bridge, with a bowl for begging. I saw that he was blind, but the remnant of his voice was true, and he made no gesture with his bowl as he heard me stop near him, but sat as one sits at a harp, head bent, listening to what the strings say, with fingers stirring as if they felt the notes. He had sung, I would judge, in kings' halls.

Nowadays this song is as well known as the one of Mary the Maiden, or the King and the Grey Seal, but it was the first time I had heard it. When he knew who it was who had stopped to listen, he seemed pleased that I should sit beside him on the bank, and ask questions. I remember that on that first morning we talked mostly of the song, then of himself; I found he had been as a young man on Mona, the druids' isle, and knew Caer'n-ar-Von and had walked onSnowdon . It was in the druids' isle that he had lost his sight; he never told me how, but when I told him that the sea-weeds and cresses that I hunted along the shore were only plants for healing, not for magic, he smiled and sang a verse I had heard my mother sing, which, he said, would be a shield. Against what, he did not say, nor did I ask him. I put money into his bowl, which he accepted with dignity, but when I promised to find a harp for him he went silent, staring with those empty eye-sockets, and I could see he did not believe me. I brought the harp next day; my father was generous, and I had no need even to tell him what the money was for. When I put the harp into the old singer's hands he wept, then took my hands and kissed them.

After that, right up to the time I leftBrittany , I often sought him out. He had travelled widely, in lands as far apart asIreland andAfrica . He taught me songs from every country, Italy and Gaul and the white North, and older songs from the East — strange wandering tunes which had come westward, he said, from the islands of the East with the men of old who had raised the standing stones, and they spoke of lores long forgotten except in song. I do not think he himself thought of them as anything but songs of old magic, poets tales; but the more I thought about them, the more clearly they spoke to me of men who had really lived, and work they had really done, when they raised the great stones to mark the sun and moon and build for their gods and the giant kings of old.

I said something once about this to Tremorinus, who was kindly as well as clever, and who usually managed to find time for me; but he laughed and put it aside, and I said no more. Ambrosius' technicians had more than enough to think about in those days, without helping a boy to work out a set of calculations of no practical use in the coming invasion. So I let it be.

It was in the spring of my eighteenth year that the news came finally fromBritain . Through January and February, winter had closed the seaways, and it was not till early March, taking advantage of the cold still weather before the gales began, that a small trading boat put into port, and Ambrosius got news.

Stirring news it was — literally so, for within a few hours of its coming, the Count's messengers were riding north and east, to gather in his allies at last, and quickly, for the news was late.

It appeared that Vortimer had finally, some time before, broken with his father and the Saxon Queen.

Tired of petitioning the High King to break with his Saxon allies and protect his own people from them, several of the British leaders — among them the men of the West — had persuaded Vortimer to take matters into his own hands at last, and had risen with him. They had declared him King, and rallied to his banner against the Saxons, whom they had succeeded in driving back south and eastwards, till they took refuge with their longships in theIsle of Thanet . Even there Vortimer pursued them, and through the last days of autumn and the beginning of winter had beleaguered them there until they pleaded only to be allowed to depart in peace, packed up their goods, and went back toGermany , leaving their women and children behind them.

But Vortimer's victorious kingship did not last long. It was not clear exactly what had happened, but the rumour was that he had died of poison treacherously administered by a familiar of the Queen. Whatever the truth of the matter, he was dead, and Vortigern his father was once more in command. Almost his first act had been (and again the blame was imputed to his wife) to send yet again for Hengist and his Saxons to return toBritain . "With a small force," he had said, "nothing but a mobile peace-keeping force to help him impose order and pull together his divided kingdom." In fact, the Saxons had promised three hundred thousand men. So rumour said, and though it was to be supposed that rumour lied, it was certain at any rate that Hengist planned to come with a considerable force.

There was also a fragment of news from Maridunum. The messenger was no spy of Ambrosius; the news we got was, as it were, only the larger rumours. These were bad enough. It seemed that my uncle Camlach, together with all his nobles — my grandfather's men, the men that I knew — had risen with Vortimer and fought beside him in the four pitched battles against the Saxons. In the second, at Episford, Camlach had been killed, along with Vortimer's brother Katigern. What concerned me more was that after Vortimer's death reprisals had been levelled at the men who had fought with him. Vortigern had annexed Camlach's kingdom to join his own lands of Guent, and, wanting hostages, had repeated his action of twenty-five years earlier; he had taken Camlach's children, one of them still an infant, and lodged them in the care of Queen Rowena. We had no means of knowing if they were still alive. Nor did we know if Olwen's son, who had met the same fate, had survived. It seemed unlikely. Of my mother there was no news.

Two days after the news came, the spring gales began, and once more the seas were locked against us and against news. But this hardly mattered; indeed, it worked both ways. If we could get no news fromBritain , they could have none of us, and of the final accelerated preparations for the invasion ofWestern Britain . For it was certain that the time had now come. It was not only a case of marching to the relief of Wales and Cornwall, but if there were to be any men left to rally to the Red Dragon, the Red Dragon would have to fight for his crown this coming year.

"You'll go back with the first boat," said Ambrosius to me, but without looking up from the map which was spread on the table in front of him.

I was standing over by the window. Even with the shutters closed and curtains drawn I could hear the wind, and beside me the curtains stirred in the draught. I said: "Yes, sir," and crossed to the table. Then I saw his finger was pointing on the map. "I'm to go to Maridunum?"

He nodded. "You'll take the first westbound boat, and make your way home from wherever it docks.

You are to go straight up to Galapas and get what news there is from him. I doubt if you would be recognized in the town, but take no risks. Galapas is safe. You can make him your base."

"There was no word fromCornwall , then?"

"Nothing, except a rumour that Gorlois was with Vortigern."

"With Vortigern?" I digested this for a moment. "Then he didn't rise with Vortimer?"

"As far as my information goes, no."

"He's trimming, then?"

"Perhaps. I find it hard to believe. It may mean nothing. I understand he has married a young wife, and it may only be that he kept within walls all winter to keep her warm. Or that he foresaw what would happen to Vortimer, and preferred to serve my cause by staying safe and apparently loyal to the High King. But until I know, I cannot send to him directly. He may be watched. So you are to go to Galapas, for the news fromWales . I'm told Vortigern's holed up there somewhere, while the length ofEastern Britain lies open to Hengist. I'll have to smoke the old wolf out first, then weld the West against the Saxons. But it will have to be fast. And I want Caerleon." He looked up then. "I'm sending your old friend with you — Marric. You can send word back by him. Let's hope you find all well. You'll want news yourself, I dare say."

"It can wait," I said.

He said nothing to that, but raised his brows at me, and then turned back to the map. "Well, sit down and I'll brief you myself. Let's hope you can get away soon."

I indicated the swaying curtains. "I shall be sick all the way."

He looked up from the map, and laughed. "By Mithras, I hadn't thought of that. Do you suppose I shall be, too? A damned undignified way to go back to one's home."

"To one's kingdom," I said.

2

I crossed in early April, and on the same ship as before. But the crossing could not have been more different. This was not Myrddin, the runaway, but Merlinus, a well-dressed young Roman with money in his pocket, and servants in attendance. Where Myrddin had been locked naked in the hold, Merlinus had a comfortable cabin, and marked deference paid him by the captain. Cadal, of course, was one of my servants, and the other, to my own amusement though not his, was Marric. (Hanno was dead, having overreached himself, I gathered, in a little matter of blackmail.) Naturally I carried no outward sign of my connection with Ambrosius, but nothing would part me from the brooch he had given me; I wore this clipped inside the shoulder of my tunic. It was doubtful whether anyone would have recognized in me the runaway of five years ago, and certainly the captain gave no sign, but I held myself aloof, and was careful to speak nothing but Breton.

As luck would have it, the boat was going straight to the mouth of the Tywy and would anchor at Maridunum, but it had been arranged that Cadal and I were to be put off by boat as soon as the trader arrived in the estuary.

It was, in fact, my previous journey in reverse, but in the most important respect there was no difference.

I was sick all the way. The fact that this time I had a comfortable bunk and Cadal to look after me, instead of sacks and a bucket in the hold, made not the slightest difference to me. As soon as the ship nosed out of theSmallSea , and met the windy April weather of the Bay, I left my brave stance in the bows and went below and lay down.

We had what they tell me was a fair wind, and we crept into the estuary and dropped anchor just before dawn, ten days before the Ides of April.

It was a still dawn, misty and cold. It was very quiet. The tide was just on the turn, beginning its flow up the estuary, and as our boat left the ship's side the only sound was the hiss and chuckle of water along her sides, and the soft splash of the paddles. Far away, faint and metallic, I could hear cocks crowing.

Somewhere beyond the mist lambs were crying, answered by the deeper bleating of sheep. The air smelled soft, clear and salty, and in some curious way, of home.

We kept well out to the center of the stream, and the mist hid us from the banks. If we spoke at all, it was in whispers; once when a dog barked from the bank we heard a man speak to it almost as clearly as if he had been in the boat with us; this was sufficient warning, and we kept our voices down.

It was a strong spring tide, and took us fast. This was as well, for we had made anchor later than we should, and the light was growing. I saw the sailors who rowed us glance anxiously upwards and then lengthen their stroke. I leaned forward, straining my eyes for a glimpse of the bank I could recognize.

Cadal said in my ear: "Glad to be back?"

"That depends on what we find. Mithras, but I'm hungry."

"That's not surprising," he said, with a sour chuckle. "What are you looking for?"

"There should be a bay — white sand with a stream coming down through trees — and a ridge behind it with a crest of pines. We'll put in there."

He nodded. The plan was that Cadal and I should be landed on the side of the estuary away from Maridunum, at a point I knew from which we could make our way unseen to join the road from the south. We would be travellers fromCornwall ; I would do the talking, but Cadal's accent would pass with any but a native Cornishman. I had with me some pots of salve and a small chest of medicines, and if challenged could pass as a travelling doctor, a disguise that would serve as a pass to more or less anywhere I wanted to go.

Marric was still on board. He would go in with the trader, and disembark as usual at the wharf. He would try to find his old contacts in the town, and pick up what news he could. Cadal would go with me to thecaveofGalapas , and act as connecting link with Marric to pass over what information I got. The ship was to lie for three days in the Tywy; when she sailed Marric would take the news back with her.

Whether I and Cadal would be with him would depend on what we found; neither my father nor I forgot that after Camlach's part in the rebellion Vortigern must have been through Maridunum like a fox through a hen-run, and maybe his Saxons with him. My first duty was to get news of Vortigern, and send it back; my second to find my mother and see that she was safe.

It was good to be on land again; not dry land, for the grass at the head of the ridge was long and soaking, but I felt light and excited as the boat vanished under the mist and Cadal and I left the shore and made our way inland towards the road. I don't know what I expected to find in Maridunum; I don't even know that I cared overmuch; it was not the homecoming that made my spirits lift, but the fact that at last I had a job to do for Ambrosius. If I could not yet do a prophet's work for him, at least I could do a man's work, and then a son's. I believe that all the time I was half hoping that I would be asked to die for him. I was very young.

We reached the bridge without incident. Luck was with us there, for we fell in with a horse-trader who had a couple of nags in hand which he hoped to sell in the town. I bought one of them from him, haggling just enough to prevent suspicion; he was pleased enough with the price to throw in a rather worn saddle.

By the time the transaction was finished it was full light and there were one or two people about, but no one gave us more than a cursory glance, except for one fellow who, apparently recognizing the horse, grinned, and said — to Cadal rather than to me — "Were you planning to go far, mate?"

I pretended not to hear, but from the corner of my eye saw Cadal spread his hands, shrug, and turn his eyes up in my direction. The look said, all too plainly, "I only follow where he goes, and he's crazy anyway."

Presently the towpath was empty. Cadal came alongside, and hooked a hand through the neck-strap.

"He's right, you know. This old screw won't get you far. How far is it, anyway?"

"Probably not nearly as far as I remember. Six miles at the outside."

"Uphill most of the way, you said?"

"I can always walk." I smoothed a hand along the skinny neck. "He's not as much of a wreck as he looks, you know. There's not much wrong that a few good feeds won't put right."

"Then at least you won't have wasted your money. What are you looking at over that wall?"

"That's where I used to live."

We were passing my grandfather's house. It looked very little changed. From the cob's back I could just see over the wall to the terrace where the quince tree grew, its brilliant flame-coloured blossoms opening to the morning sun. And there was the garden where Camlach had given me the poisoned apricot. And there the gate where I had run in tears.

The cob plodded on. Here was the orchard, the apple trees already swelling with buds, the grass springing rough and green round the little terrace where Moravik would sit and spin, while I played at her feet. And here, now, was the place I had jumped over the wall the night I ran away; here was the leaning apple tree where I had left Aster tethered. The wall was broken, and I could see in across the rough grass where I had run that night, from my room where Cerdic's body lay on its funeral pyre. I pulled the cob to a halt and craned to see further. I must have made a clean sweep that night: the buildings were all gone, my room, and along with it two sides of the outer court. The stables, I saw, were still the same; the fire had not reached them, then. The two sides of the colonnade that had been destroyed had been rebuilt in a modern style that seemed to bear no relation to the rest, big rough stones and crude building, square pillars holding up a timber roof, and square, deep windows. It was ugly, and looked comfortless; its only virtue would be that it was weatherproof. You might as well, I thought, settling back in the saddle and putting the cob in motion, live in a cave...

"What are you grinning at?" asked Cadal.

"Only at how Roman I've become. It's funny, my home isn't here any more. And to be honest I don't think it's in Less Britain either."

"Where, then?"

"I don't know. Where the Count is, that's for sure. That will be this sort of place, I suppose, for some time to come." I nodded towards the walls of the old Roman barracks behind the palace. They were in ruins, and the place was deserted. So much the better, I thought; at least it didn't look as if Ambrosius would have to fight for it. Give Uther twenty-four hours, and the place would be as good as new. And here was St. Peter's, apparently untouched, showing no sign either of fire or spear. "You know something?" I said to Cadal, as we left the shadow of the nunnery wall and headed along the path towards the mill. "I suppose if I have anywhere I can call a home, it's thecaveofGalapas ."

"Doesn't sound all that Roman to me," said Cadal. "Give me a good tavern any day and a decent bed and some mutton to eat, and you can keep all the caves there are."

Even with this sorry horse, the way seemed shorter than I remembered it. Soon we had reached the mill, and turned up across the road and into the valley. Time fell away. It seemed only yesterday that I had come up this same valley in the sunshine, with the wind stirring Aster's grey mane. Not even Aster's —

for there under the same thorn tree was surely the same half-wit boy watching the same sheep as on my very first ride. As we reached the fork in the path, I found myself watching for the ring-dove. But the hillside was still, except for the rabbits scuttering among the young bracken.

Whether the cob sensed the end of his journey, or whether he merely liked the feel of grass under his feet and a light weight on his back, he seemed to quicken his step. Ahead of me now I could see the shoulder of the hill beyond which lay the cave.

I drew rein by the hawthorn grove.

"Here we are. It's up there, above the cliff." I slipped out of the saddle and handed the reins to Cadal.

"Stay here and wait for me. You can come up in an hour." I added, on an afterthought: "And don't be alarmed if you see what you think is smoke. It's the bats coming out of the cave."

I had almost forgotten Cadal's sign against the evil eye. He made it now, and I laughed and left him.

3

Before I had climbed round the little crag to the lawn in front of the cave, I knew.

Call it foresight; there was no sign. Silence, of course, but then there usually had been silence as I approached the cave. This silence was different. It was only after some moments that I realized what it was. I could no longer hear the trickle of the spring.

I mounted to the top of the path, came out on the sward, and saw. There was no need to go into the cave to know that he was not there, and never would be again.

On the flat grass in front of the cave-mouth was a scatter of debris. I went closer to look.

It had been done not so very long ago. There had been a fire here, a fire quenched by rain before everything could properly be destroyed. There was a pile of sodden rubbish — half-charred wood, rags, parchment gone again to pulp but with the blackened edges still showing. I turned the nearest piece of scorched wood over with my foot; from the carving on it I knew what it was; the chest that had held his books. And the parchment was all that remained of the books themselves.

I suppose there was other stuff of his among the wreck of rubbish. I didn't look further. If the books had gone, I knew everything else would have gone too. And Galapas with them.

I went slowly towards the mouth of the cave. I paused by the spring. I could see why there had been no sound; someone had filled in the basin with stones and earth and more wreckage thrown out of the cave.

Through it all the water welled still, sluggishly, oozing in silence over the stone lip and down to make a muddy morass of the turf. I thought I could see the skeleton of a bat, picked clean by the water.

Strangely enough, the torch was still on the ledge high beside the mouth of the cave, and it was dry.

There was no flint or iron, but I made fire and, holding the torch before me, went slowly inside.

I think my flesh was shivering, as if a cold wind blew out of the cave and went by me. I knew already what I should find.

The place was stripped. Everything had been thrown out to burn. Everything, that is, except the bronze mirror. This, of course, would not burn, and I suppose it had been too heavy to be looted. It had been wrenched from the wall and stood propped against the side of the cave, tilted at a drunken angle.

Nothing else. Not even a stir and whisper from the bats in the roof. The place echoed with emptiness.

I lifted the torch high and looked up towards the crystal cave. It was not there.

I believe that for a couple of pulses of the torchlight I thought he had managed to conceal the inner cave, and was in hiding. Then I saw.

The gap into the crystal cave was still there, but chance, call it what you will, had rendered it invisible except to those who knew. The bronze mirror had fallen so that, instead of directing light towards the gap, it directed darkness. Its light was beamed and concentrated on a projection of rock which cast, clear across the mouth of the crystal cave, a black wedge of shadow. To anyone intent only on the pillage and destruction in the cave below, the gap would be hardly visible at all.

"Galapas!" I said, trying it out on the emptiness. "Galapas?"

There was the faintest of whispers from the crystal cave, a ghostly sweet humming like the music I had once listened for in the night. Nothing human; I had not expected it. But still I climbed up to the ledge, knelt down and peered in.

The torchlight caught the crystals, and threw the shadow of my harp, trembling, clear round the lighted globe. The harp stood, undamaged, in the center of the cave. Nothing else, except the whisper dying round the glittering walls. There must be visions there, in the flash and counterflash of light, but I knew I would not be open to them. I put a hand down to the rock and vaulted, torch streaming, back to the floor of the cave. As I passed the tilted mirror I caught a glimpse of a tall youth running in a swirl of flame and smoke. His face looked pale, the eyes black and enormous. I ran out on to the grass. I had forgotten the torch, which flamed and streamed behind me. I ran to the edge of the cliff, and cupped a hand to my mouth to call Cadal, but then a sound from behind me made me whip round and look upwards.

It was a very normal sound. A pair of ravens and a carrion crow had risen from the hill, and were scolding at me.

Slowly this time, I climbed the path that led up past the spring and out on the hillside above the cave.

The ravens went higher, barking. Two more crows made off low across the young bracken. There was a couple still busy on something lying among the flowering blackthorn.

I whirled the torch and flung it streaming to scatter them. Then I ran forward.

There was no telling how long he had been dead. The bones were picked almost clean. But I knew him by the discoloured brown rags that flapped under the skeleton, and the one old broken sandal which lay flung nearby among the April daisies. One of the hands had fallen from the wrist, and the clean, brittle bones lay near my foot. I could see where the little finger had been broken, and had set again, crookedly.

Already through the bare rib-cage the April grass was springing. The air blew clean and sunlit, smelling of flowering gorse.

The torch had been stubbed out in the fresh grass. I stooped and picked it up. I should not have thrown it at them, I thought. His birds had given him a seemly way-going.

A step behind me brought me round, but it was only Cadal.

"I saw the birds go up," he said. He was looking down at the thing under the blackthorn bushes.

"Galapas?"

I nodded.

"I saw the mess down by the cave. I guessed."

"I hadn't realized I had been here so long."

"Leave this to me." He was stooping already. "I'll get him buried. Go you and wait down where we left the horse. I can maybe find some sort of tool down yonder, or I could come back —"

"No. Let him lie in peace under the thorn. We'll build the hill over him and let it take him in. We do this together, Cadal."

There were stones in plenty to pile over him for a barrow, and we cut sods with our daggers to turf it over. By the end of summer the bracken and foxgloves and young grasses would have grown right over and shrouded him. So we left him.

As we went downhill again past the cave I thought of the last time I had gone this way. I had been weeping then, I remembered, for Cerdic's death, for my mother's loss and Galapas', for who knew what foreknowledge of the future? You will see me again, he had said, I promise you that. Well, I had seen him. And some day, no doubt, his other promise would come true in its own fashion.

I shivered, caught Cadal's quick look, and spoke curtly. "I hope you had the sense to bring a flask with you. I need a drink."

4

Cadal had brought more than a flask with him, he had brought food — salt mutton and bread, and last season's olives in a bottle with their own oil. We sat in the lee of the wood and ate, while the cob grazed near us, and below in the distance the placid curves of the river glimmered through the April green of the fields and the young wooded hills. The mist had cleared, and it was a beautiful day.

"Well," said Cadal at length, "what's to do?"

"We go to see my mother. If she's still there, of course." Then, with a savagery that broke through me so suddenly that I had hardly known it was there: "By Mithras, I'd give a lot to know who did that up yonder!"

"Why, who could it be except Vortigern?"

"Vortimer, Pascentius, anyone. When a man's wise and gentle and good," I added bitterly, "it seems to me that any man's, every man's hand is against him. Galapas could have been murdered by an outlaw for food, or a herdsman for shelter, or a passing soldier for a drink of water."

"That was no murder."

"What, then?"

"I meant, that was done by more than one. Men in a pack are worse than lone ones. At a guess, it was Vortigern's men, on their way up from the town."

"You're probably right. I shall find out."

"You think you'll get to see your mother?"

"I can try."

"Did he — have you any messages for her?" It was, I suppose, the measure of my relationship with Cadal that he dared to ask the question.

I answered him quite simply. "If you mean did Ambrosius ask me to tell her anything, no. He left it to me.

What I do tell her depends entirely on what's happened since I left. I'll talk to her first, and judge how much to tell her after that. Don't forget, I haven't seen her for a long time, and people change. I mean, their loyalties change. Look at mine. When I last saw her I was only a child, and I have only a child's memories — for all I know I misunderstood her utterly, the way she thought and the things she wanted.

Her loyalties may lie elsewhere — not just the Church, but the way she feels about Ambrosius. The gods know there'd be no blame to her if she had changed. She owed Ambrosius nothing. She took good care of that."

He said thoughtfully, his eyes on the green distance threaded by the glinting river: "The nunnery hadn't been touched."

"Exactly. Whatever had happened to the rest of the town, Vortigern had let St. Peter's be. So you see I've to find out who is in which camp before I give any messages. What she hasn't known about for all these years, it won't hurt her to go on not knowing for as many more days. Whatever happens, with Ambrosius coming so soon, I mustn't take the risk of telling her too much."

He began to pack away the remains of the meal while I sat, chin on hand, thinking, my eyes on the bright distance.

I added, slowly: "It's simple enough to find out where Vortigern is now, and if Hengist's landed already, and with how many men. Marric will probably find out without too much trouble. But there were other soundings the Count wanted me to take — things they'll hardly know about in the nunnery — so now that Galapas is dead, I'll have to try elsewhere. We'll wait here till dusk, then go down to St. Peter's. My mother will be able to tell me who I can still go to in safety." I looked at him. "Whatever king she favours, she's not likely to give me away."

"That's true enough. Well, let's hope they'll let her see you."

"If she knows who's asking for her, I imagine it will take more than a word from the Abbess to stop her from seeing me. Don't forget she's still a king's daughter." I lay back on the warm grass, my hands behind my head. "Even if I'm not yet a king's son..."

But, king's son or no, there was no getting into the nunnery.

I had been right in thinking there had been no damage done here. The high walls loomed unbroken and unscarred, and the gates were new and solid, of oak hinged and bolted with iron. They were fast shut.

Nor — mercifully — did any welcoming torch burn outside. The narrow street was empty and unlit in the early dusk. At our urgent summons a small square window in the gate opened, and an eye was applied to the grille.

"Travellers fromCornwall ," I said softly. "I must have word with the Lady Niniane."

"The Lady who?" It was the flat, toneless voice of the deaf. Wondering irritably why a deaf portress should be put at the gate, I raised my voice a little, going closer to the grille.

"The Lady Niniane. I don't know what she calls herself now, but she was sister of the late King. Is she with you still?"

"Aye, but she'll see nobody. Is it a letter you have? She can read."

"No, I must have speech with her. Go and take word to her; tell her it's — one of her family."

"Her family?" I thought I saw a flicker of interest in the eyes. "They're most of them dead and gone. Do you not get news inCornwall ? Her brother the King died in battle last year, and the children have gone to Vortigern. Her own son's been dead these five years."

"I knew that. I'm not her brother's family. And I'm as loyal as she is to the High King. Go and tell her that. And look — take this for your...devotions."

A pouch passed through the grille and was grabbed in a quick monkey-snatch. "I'll take a message for you. Give me your name. I don't say she'll see you, mind, but I'll take her your name."

"My name's Emrys." I hesitated. "She knew me once. Tell her that. And hurry. We'll wait here."

It was barely ten minutes before I heard the steps coming back. For a moment I thought it might be my mother, but it was the same old eyes that peered at me through the grille, the same clawed hand laying hold of the bars. "She'll see you. Oh no, not now, young master. You can't come in. Nor she can't come out yet, not till prayers is over. Then she'll meet you on the river walk, she says; there's another gate in the wall there. But not to let anyone see you."

"Very well. We'll be careful."

I could see the whites of the eyes turning, as she tried to see me in the shadows. "Knew you, she did, straight away. Emrys, eh? Well, don't worry that I'll say aught. These be troubled times, and the least said the better, no matter what about."

"What time?"

"An hour after moonrise. You'll hear the bell."

"I'll be there," I said, but the grille was already shut.

There was a mist rising again from the river. This would help, I thought. We went quietly down the lane which skirted the nunnery walls. It led away from the streets, down towards the towpath.

"What now?" asked Cadal. "It's two hours yet till moonrise, and by the look of the night we'll be lucky if we ever see a moon at all. You'll not risk going into the town?"

"No. But there's no sense in waiting about in this drizzle. We'll find a place out of the wet where we can hear the bell. This way."

The stableyard gate was locked. I wasted no time on it, but led the way to the orchard wall. No lights showed in the palace. We scrambled over where the wall was broken, and walked up through the damp grass of the orchard and into my grandfather's garden. The air was heavy with the smell of damp earth and growing things, mint and sweetbriar and moss and young leaves heavy with wet. Last year's ungathered fruit squelched under our feet. Behind us the gate creaked, emptily.

The colonnades were empty, the doors shut, the shutters fastened close over the windows. The place was all darkness and echoes and the scuttle of rats. But there was no damage that I could see. I suppose that, when Vortigern took the town, he had meant to keep the house for himself, and had somehow persuaded or forced his Saxons to bypass it in their looting as — from fear of the bishops — he had forced them to bypass St. Peter's. So much the better for us. We should at least have a dry and comfortable wait. My time with Tremorinus had been wasted indeed if I could not have picked every lock in the place.

I was just saying as much to Cadal when suddenly, round the corner of the house, treading softly as a cat on the mossy flagstones, came a young man walking fast. He stopped dead at the sight of us, and I saw his hand flash down to his hip. But even while Cadal's weapon hissed free of its sheath in reply the young man peered, stared, and then exclaimed: "Myrddin, by the holy oak!"

For a moment I genuinely didn't recognize him, which was understandable, since he was not much older than myself, and had changed as much in five years. Then, unmistakably, I saw who it was; broad shoulders, thrusting jaw, hair that even in the twilight showed red. Dinias, who had been prince and king's son when I was a nameless bastard; Dinias, my 'cousin," who would not even recognize that much of a tie with me, but who had claimed the title of Prince for himself, and been allowed to get away with it."

He would hardly now be taken for a prince. Even in that fading light I could see that he was dressed, not poorly, but in clothes that a merchant might have worn, and he had only one jewel, an arm-ring of copper. His belt was of plain leather, his sword-hilt plain also, and his cloak, though of good stuff, was stained and frayed at the edge. About his whole person was that indefinable air of seediness which comes from relentless calculation from day to day or perhaps even from meal to meal.

Since in spite of the considerable changes he was still indisputably my cousin Dinias, it was to be supposed that once he had recognized me, there was little point in pretending he was wrong. I smiled and held out my hand. "Welcome, Dinias. Yours is the first known face I've seen today."

"What in the name of the gods are you doing here? Everyone said you were dead, but I didn't believe it."

His big head thrust out, peering close as the quick eyes looked me up and down. "Wherever you were, you've done all right, seemingly. How long have you been back?"

"We came today."

"Then you've heard the news?"

"I knew Camlach was dead. I'm sorry about that...if you were. As you'll know, he was no friend of mine, but that was hardly political..." I paused, waiting. Let him make the moves. I saw from the corner of an eye that Cadal was tensed and watchful, a hand still to his hip. I moved my own hand, palm downwards in a slight flattening movement, and saw him relax.

Dinias lifted a shoulder. "Camlach? He was a fool. I told him which way the wolf would jump." But as he spoke I saw his eyes slide sideways towards the shadows. It seemed that men watched their tongues these days in Maridunum. His eyes came back to me, suspicious, wary. "What's your business here, anyway? Why did you come back?"

"To see my mother. I've been in Cornwall , and all we got there was rumours of fighting, and when I heard Camlach was dead, and Vortimer, I wondered what had happened at home."

"Well, she's alive, you'll have found that out? The High King" — rather loudly — "respects the Church. I doubt if you'll get to see her, though."

"You're probably right. I went up to the nunnery, and they wouldn't let me in. But I'll be here for a few days. I'll send a message in, and if she wants to see me, I imagine she'll find a way of doing so. But at least I know she's safe. It's a real stroke of luck, running into you like this. You'll be able to give me the rest of the news. I had no idea what I might find here, so as you see, I came in this morning quietly, alone with my servant."

"Quietly is right. I thought you were thieves. You're lucky I didn't cut you down and ask questions afterwards."

It was the old Dinias, the bullying note there again, an immediate response to my mild, excusing tone.

"Well, I wasn't taking any risks till I knew how the family stood. I went off to St. Peter's — I waited till dusk to do that — then I came to take a look round here. Is the place empty then?"

"I'm still living here. Where else?"

The arrogance rang as hollow as the empty colonnade, and for a moment I felt tempted to ask him for hospitality and see what he would say. As if the thought had struck him at the same moment he said quickly: "Cornwall, eh? What's the news from there? They say Ambrosius' messengers are scuttling across the Narrow Sea like waterflies."

I laughed. "I wouldn't know. I've been leading a sheltered life."

"You picked the right place." The contempt that I remembered so well was back in his voice. "They say old Gorlois spent the winter snugged down in bed with a girl barely turned twenty, and left the rest of the kings to play their own games out in the snow. They say she'd make Helen of Troy look like a market-woman. What's she like?"

"I never saw her. He's a jealous husband."

"Jealous of you?" He laughed, and followed it with a comment that made Cadal, behind me, suck in his breath. But the jibe had put my cousin back in humour, and off his guard. I was still the little bastard cousin, and of no account. He added: "Well, it would suit you. You had a peaceful winter, you with your goatish old Duke, while the rest of us tramped the country after the Saxons."

So he had fought with Camlach and Vortimer. It was what I had wanted to know. I said mildly: "I was hardly responsible for the Duke's policy. Nor am I now."

"Hah! It's as well for you. You knew he was in the north with Vortigern?"

"I knew he had left to join him — at Caer'n-ar-Von, was it? Are you going up there yourself?" I put the gentlest of queries into my voice, adding meekly: "I wasn't really in a position to hear much news that mattered."

A chill current of air eddied, loaded with damp, between the pillars. From some broken gutter above us water suddenly spilled over, to splash between us on the flagstones. I saw him gather his cloak round him. "Why are we standing here?" He spoke with a brusque heartiness that ran as false as the arrogance.

"Come and exchange news over a flask of wine, eh?"

I hesitated, but only for a moment. It seemed obvious that Dinias had his own reasons for keeping out of the High King's eye; for one thing, if he had managed to live down his association with Camlach, he would surely be with Vortigern's army, not skulking here in this threadbare fashion in an empty palace.

For another, now that he knew I was in Maridunum, I preferred to keep him under my eye than leave him now to go and talk to whom he would.

So I accepted with every appearance of flattered pleasure, only insisting that he must join me for supper, if he could tell me where a good meal was to be found, and a warm seat out of the wet...

Almost before the words were out he had me by the arm and was hurrying me across the atrium and out through the street door.

"Fine, fine. There's a place over on the west side, beyond the bridge. The food's good, and they get the kind of clients that mind their own business." He winked. "Not that you'll be wanting to bother with a girl, eh? Though you don't look as if they'd made a clerk of you after all...? Well, no more for now, it doesn't do to look as though you've too much to talk about these days...You either fall foul of the Welsh or you fall foul of Vortigern — and the place is crawling with his spies just now. I don't know who it is they're looking for, but there's a story going about — No, take your trash away." This to a beggar who thrust a tray of rough-cut stones and leather laces in front of us. The man moved back without a word. I saw that he was blind in one eye from a cut; a hideous scar ran right up one cheek, and had flattened the bridge of the nose. It looked as if it had been a sword cut.

I dropped a coin on the tray as we passed, and Dinias shot me a look that was far from friendly. "Times have changed, eh? You must have struck it rich in Cornwall. Tell me, what happened that night? Did you mean to set the whole damned place on fire?"

"I'll tell you all about it over supper," I said, and would say no more till we reached the shelter of the tavern, and got a bench in the corner with our backs to the wall.

5

I had been right about Dinias' poverty. Even in the smoky murk of the tavern's crowded room I could see the threadbare state of his clothes, and sense the air half of resentment, half of eagerness, with which he watched while I ordered food and a jug of their best wine. While it was coming I excused myself and had a quick word aside with Cadal.

"I may get some of the facts we want from him. In any case I thought it better to stick to him — I'd rather he came under my eye for the moment. The odds are he'll be drunk enough by moonrise to be harmless, and I'll either get him bedded down safe with a girl, or if he's past it I'll see him home on my way to the nunnery. If I don't look like getting out of here by moonrise, get over yourself to the gate on the towpath to meet my mother. You know our story. Tell her I'm coming, but I fell in with my cousin Dinias and have to get rid of him first. She'll understand. Now get yourself some food."

"Watch your step, I would, Merlin. Your cousin, did you say? Proper daisy he is, and no mistake. He doesn't like you."

I laughed. "You think that's news? It's mutual."

"Oh. Well, as long as you watch it."

"I'll do that."

Dinias' manners were still good enough to make him wait till I had dismissed Cadal and sat down to pour the wine. He had been right about the food; the pie they brought us was stuffed full of beef and oysters in a thick, steaming gravy, and though the bread was made from barley meal it was fresh. The cheese was not, and was excellent. The tavern's other wares seemed to match the food; from time to time one got a glimpse of them as a girl peered giggling in through a curtained door, and some man put his cup down and hurried after her. From the way Dinias' eyes lingered on the curtain even while he ate, I thought I might have little difficulty in getting rid of him safely once I had the information I wanted.

I waited until he was halfway through his pie before I started asking questions. I hardly liked to wait longer for, from the way he reached for the wine-jug almost — in spite of his hunger — between every mouthful, I was afraid that if I left it too long he would not be clear-headed enough to tell me what I wanted.

Until I was quite sure how the land lay I was not prepared to venture on ground that might be tricky, but, my family being what it was, I could glean a good deal of the information Ambrosius wanted from simply asking questions about my relatives. These he answered readily enough.

To begin with, I had been presumed dead ever since the night of the fire. Cerdic's body had been destroyed, and the whole of that side of the courtyard along with it, and when my pony had found its way home and there was no sign of me, it could only be presumed that I had perished along with Cerdic and vanished the same way. My mother and Camlach had sent men out to search the countryside, but of course found no trace of me. It appeared there had been no suggestion of my having left by sea. The trading ship had not put in to Maridunum, and no one had seen the coracle.

My disappearance — not remarkably — had made very little stir. What my mother had thought about it no one knew, but she had apparently retired into the seclusion of St. Peter's very soon afterwards.

Camlach had lost no time in declaring himself King, and for form's sake offered Olwen his protection, but since his own wife had one son and was heavy with another, it was an open secret that Queen Olwen would soon be married off to some harmless and preferably distant chieftain...And so on, and so on.

So much for news of the past, which was none of it news to me or news for Ambrosius. As Dinias finished his meal and leaned back against the wall loosening his belt, relaxed by the food and wine and warmth, I thought it time to steer near more immediate questions of the present. The tavern had filled up now, and there was plenty of noise to cover what we were saying. One or two of the girls had come out from the inner rooms, and there was a good deal of laughter and some horseplay. It was quite dark now outside, and apparently wetter than ever; men came in shaking themselves like dogs and shouting for mulled drinks. The atmosphere was heavy with peat smoke and charcoal from the grills and the smells of hot food and the reek of cheap oil-lamps. I had no fear of recognition: anyone would have had to lean right over our table and peer into my face to see me properly at all.

"Shall I send for more meat?" I asked.

Dinias shook his head, belched, and grinned. "No thanks. That was good. I'm in your debt. Now for your news. You've heard mine. Where have you been these past years?" He reached again for the jug of wine and up-ended it over his empty cup. "Damned thing's empty. Send for more?"

I hesitated. It appeared he had a poor head for wine, and I didn't want him drunk too soon.

He mistook my hesitation. "Come on, come on, you surely don't grudge me another jug of wine, eh? It isn't every day a rich young relative comes back from Cornwall . What took you there, eh? And what have you been doing all this time? Come on, young Myrddin, let's hear about it, shall we? But first, the wine."

"Well, of course," I said, and gave the order to the pot-boy. "But don't use my name here, if you don't mind. I'm calling myself Emrys now till I see which way the wind blows."

He accepted this so readily that I realized things were even trickier in Maridunum than I had thought. It seemed it was dangerous to declare oneself at all. Most of the men in the tavern looked Welsh; there were none I recognized, which was hardly surprising, considering the company I had kept five years ago.

But there was a group near the door who, from their fair hair and beards, might have been Saxon. I supposed they were Vortigern's men. We said nothing until the pot-boy had dumped a fresh flask on the table in front of us. My cousin poured it, pushed his plate aside, leaned back and looked at me enquiringly.

"Well, come on, tell me about yourself. What happened that night you left? Who did you go with? You couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen when you went, surely?"

"I fell in with a pair of traders going south," I told him. "I paid my way with one of the brooches that my gr — that the old King gave me. They took me with them as far as Glastonbury . Then I had a bit of luck — fell in with a merchant who was travelling west into Cornwall with glass goods from the Island , and he took me along." I looked down as if avoiding his eye, and twisted the cup between my fingers. "He wanted to set up as a gentleman, and thought it would do him credit to have a boy along who could sing and play the harp, and read and write as well."

"Hm. Very likely." I had known what he would think of my story, and indeed, his tone held satisfaction, as if his contempt of me had been justified. So much the better. It didn't matter to me what he thought.

"Then?" he asked.

"Oh, I stayed with him for a few months, and he was pretty generous, he and his friends. I even made a fair amount on the side."

"Harping?" he asked, with a lift of the lip.

"Harping," I said blandly. "Also reading and writing — I did the man's accounts for him. When he came back north he wanted me to stay with him, but I didn't want to come back. Didn't dare," I added, disarmingly frank. "It wasn't hard to find a place in a religious house. Oh, no, I was too young to be anything but a layman. To tell you the truth, I quite enjoyed it; it's a very peaceful life. I've been busy helping them to write out copies of a history of the fall of Troy ." His expression made me want to laugh, and I looked down at my cup again. It was good ware, Samian, with a high gloss, and the potter's mark was clear. A.M. Ambrosius made me, I thought suddenly, and smoothed the letters gently with my thumb as I finished for Dinias the account of the five harmless years spent by his bastard cousin. "I worked there until the rumours started coming in from home. I didn't pay much heed to them at first — rumours were always flying. But when we knew that it was true about Camlach's death, and then Vortimer's, I began to wonder what might have happened in Maridunum. I knew I had to see my mother again."

"You're going to stay here?"

"I doubt it. I like Cornwall , and I have a home there of a sort."

"Then you'll become a priest?"

I shrugged. "I hardly know yet. It's what they always meant me for, after all. Whatever the future is there, my place here is gone — if I ever had one. And I'm certainly no warrior."

He grinned at that. "Well, you never were, exactly, were you? And the war here isn't over; it's hardly begun, let me tell you." He leaned across the table confidentially, but the movement knocked his cup so that it rocked, and the wine washed up to the rim. He grabbed and steadied it. "Nearly spilled that, and the wine's nearly out again. Not bad stuff, eh? What about another?"

"If you like. But you were saying — ?"

"Cornwall, now. I've always thought I'd like to go there. What are they saying there about Ambrosius?"

The wine was already talking. He had forgotten to be confidential; his voice was loud, and I saw one or two heads turn in our direction.

He took no notice. "Yes, I imagine you'd hear down there, if there was any news to hear. They say that's where he'll land, eh?"

"Oh," I said easily, "there's talk all the time. There has been for years, you know how it is. He hasn't come yet, so your guess is as good as mine."

"Like a bet on it?" I saw he had reached into the pouch at his waist and brought out a pair of dice, which he tossed idly from hand to hand. "Come on, give you a game?"

"No, thanks. At any rate, not here. Look, Dinias, I'll tell you what, we'll get another flask, or two if you like, and go home and drink them there?"

"Home?" He sneered, loose-lipped. "Where's that? An empty palace?"

He was still talking loudly, and from across the room I noticed someone watching us. Nobody I knew.

Two men in dark clothes, one with fringe of black beard, the other thin-faced and red-headed, with a long nose like a fox. Welshmen, by the look of them. They had a flask on a stool in front of them, and cups in their hands, but the flask had been at the same level now for a good half hour. I glanced at Dinias.

I judged he had reached the stage now of being disposed either to friendly confidences or a loud quarrel.

To insist on leaving now might be to provoke that quarrel, and if we were being watched, and if the crowd near the door were indeed Vortigern's men, it would be better to stay here and talk quietly than to take my cousin out into the street, and perhaps be followed. What, after all, did a mention of Ambrosius' name matter? It would be on every man's lips, and if, as seemed likely, rumours had been flying more thickly than usual of late, everyone, Vortigern's friends and enemies alike, would be discussing them.

Dinias had dropped the dice on the table, and was pushing them here and there with a reasonably steady forefinger. At least they would give us an excuse for a heads-together session in our corner. And dice might take his attention off the wine flask.

I brought out a handful of small coins. "Look, if you really want a game. What can you put on the table?"

As we played I was conscious that Blackbeard and the foxy man were listening. The Saxons near the door seemed harmless enough; most of them were three parts drunk already, and talking too loudly among themselves to pay attention to anyone else. But Blackbeard seemed to be interested.

I threw the dice. Five and four. Too good; I wanted Dinias to win something. I could hardly offer him money to get him behind the curtain with a girl. Meanwhile, to put Blackbeard off the scent...

I said, not loudly, but very clearly: "Ambrosius, is it? Well, you know the rumours. I've heard nothing definite about him, only the usual stories that have been going the rounds these ten years. Oh, yes, men say he'll come to Cornwall , or Maridunum, or London , or Avon-mouth — you can take your pick...Your throw." Blackbeard's attention had shifted. I leaned closer to watch Dinias' throw, and lowered my voice.

"And if he did come now, what would happen? You'll know this better than I. Would what's left of the West rise for him, or stand loyal to Vortigern?"

"The West would go up in flames. It's done that already, God knows. Double or quits? Flames like the night you left. God, how I laughed! Little bastard sets the place on fire and goes. Why did you? That's mine, double five. Throw you again."

"Right. Why did I go, you mean? I told you, I was afraid of Camlach."

"I didn't mean that. I mean why did you set the place on fire? Don't tell me it was an accident, because I don't believe you."

"It was a funeral pyre. I lit it because they killed my servant."

He stared, the dice for a moment still in his hands. "You fired the King's palace for a slave?"

"Why not? I happened to like my servant better than I liked Camlach."

He gave me a slightly fuddled look, and threw. A two and a four. I scooped back a couple of coins.

"Damn you," said Dinias, "you've no right to win, you've enough already. All right, again. Your servant, indeed! You've a mighty high tone for a bastard playing at being a scribe in a priest's cell."

I grinned. "You're a bastard, too, remember, dear cousin."

"Maybe, but at least I know who my father was."

"Keep your voice down, people are listening. All right, throw you again."

A pause while the dice rattled. I watched them rather anxiously. So far, they had tended to fall my way.

How useful it would be, I thought, if power could be brought to bear on such small things; it would take no effort, and make the way smoother. But I had begun to learn that in fact power made nothing smoother; when it came it was like having a wolf by the throat. Sometimes I had felt like that boy in the old myth who harnessed the horses of the sun and rode the world like a god until the power burned him to death. I wondered if I would ever feel the flames again.

The dice fell from my very human fingers. A two and a one. No need to have the power if you could have the luck. Dinias gave a grunt of satisfaction and gathered them up, while I slid some coins towards him. The game went on. I lost the next three throws, and the heap beside him grew respectably. He was relaxing. No one was paying us any attention; that had been imagination. It was time, perhaps, for a few more facts.

"Where's the King now?" I asked.

"Eh? Oh, aye, the King. He's been gone from here nearly a month. Moved north as soon as the weather slackened and the roads were open."

"To Caer'n-ar-Von, you said — Segontium?"

"Did I? Oh, well, I suppose he calls that his base, but who'd want to be caught in that corner between Y

Wyddfa and the sea? No, he's building himself a new stronghold, they say. Did you say you'd get another flask?"

"Here it comes. Help yourself, I've had enough. A stronghold, you said? Where?"

"What? Oh, yes. Good wine, this. I don't rightly know where he's building, somewhere inSnowdon .

Told you. Dinas Brenin...they call it...Or would, if he could get it built."

"What's stopping him? Is there still trouble up there? Vortimer's faction still, or something new? They're saying inCornwall that he's got thirty thousand Saxons at his back."

"At his back, on both sides — Saxons everywhere, our King has. But not with him. With Hengist — and Hengist and the King aren't seeing eye to eye. Oh, he's beset, is Vortigern, I can tell you!" Fortunately he was speaking quietly, his words lost in the rattle of dice and the uproar around us. I think he had half forgotten me. He scowled down at the table as he threw. "Look at that. The bloody things are ill-wished. Like King's Fort."

Somewhere the words touched a string of memory to a faint humming, as elusive and untraceable as a bee in the lime trees. I said casually, making my throw: "Ill-wished? How?"

"Hah, that's better. Should be able to beat that. Oh, well, you know these Northmen — if the wind blows colder one morning they say it's a dead spirit passing by. They don't use surveyors in that army, the soothsayers do it all. I heard he'd got the walls built four times to man height, and each time by next morning they'd cracked clear across...How's that?"

"Not bad. I couldn't beat it, I'm afraid. Did he put guards on?"

"Of course. They saw nothing."

"Well, why should they?" It seemed that the luck was against us both; the dice were as ill-wished for Dinias as the walls for Vortigern. In spite of myself I threw a pair of doubles. Scowling, Dinias pushed half his pile towards me. I said: "It only sounds as if he picked a soft place. Why not move?"

"He picked the top of a crag, as pretty a place to defend as you'll find in all Wales . It guards the valley north and south, and stands over the road just where the cliffs narrow both sides, and the road is squeezed right up under the crag. And damn it, there's been a tower there before. The locals have called it King's Fort time out of mind."

King's Fort...Dinas Brenin...The humming swelled clear into a memory. Birches bone-white against a milk-blue sky. The scream of a falcon. Two kings walking together, and Cerdic's voice saying, "Come down, and I'll cut you in on a dice game."

Before I even knew, I had done it, as neatly as Cerdic himself. I flicked the still turning dice with a quick finger. Dinias, up-ending the empty flask over his cup, never noticed. The dice settled. A two and a one.

I said ruefully: "You won't have much trouble beating that."

He did beat it, but only just. He pulled the coins towards him with a grunt of triumph, then sprawled half across the table, his elbow in a pool of spilled wine. Even if I did manage, I thought, to let this drunken idiot win enough money off me, I would be lucky if I could get him even as far as the curtain leading to the brothel rooms. My throw again. As I shook the box I saw Cadal in the doorway, waiting to catch my eye. It was time to be gone. I nodded, and he withdrew. As Dinias glanced to see whom I had signalled to I threw again, and flicked a settling six over with my sleeve. One and three. Dinias made a sound of satisfaction and reached for the box.

"Tell you what," I said, "one more throw and we'll go. Win or lose, I'll buy another flask and we'll take it with us and drink it in my lodgings. We'll be more comfortable than here." Once I got him outside, I reckoned, Cadal and I could deal with him.

"Lodgings? I could have given you lodgings. Plenty of room there, you needn't have sent your man to look for lodgings. Got to be careful these days, you know. There. A pair of fives. Beat that if you can, Merlin the bastard!" He tipped the last of the wine down his throat, swallowed, and leaned back, grinning.

"I'll give you the game." I pushed the coins over to him, and made to stand up. As I looked round for the pot-boy to order the promised flask, Dinias slammed his hand down on the table with a crash. The dice jumped and rattled, and a cup went over, rolled, and smashed on the floor. Men stopped talking, staring.

"Oh, no, you don't! We'll play it out! Walk out just as the luck's turning again, would you? I'll not take that from you, or anyone else! Sit down and play, my bastard cousin —"

"Oh, for God's sake, Dinias —"

"All right, so I'm a bastard, too! All I can say is, better be the bastard of a king than a no-man's-child who never had a father at all!"

He finished with a hiccup, and someone laughed. I laughed too, and reached for the dice. "All right, we'll take them with us. I told you, win or lose, we'd take a flask home. We can finish the game there. It's time we drank one another into bed."

A hand fell on my shoulder, heavily. As I twisted to see who it was, someone came on my other side and gripped my arm. I saw Dinias stare upwards, gaping. Around us the drinkers were suddenly silent.

Blackbeard tightened his grip. "Quietly, young sir. We don't want a brawl, do we? Could we have a word with you outside?"

6

I got to my feet. There was no clue in the staring faces round me. Nobody spoke.

"What's all this about?"

"Outside, if you please," repeated Blackbeard. "We don't want a —"

"I don't in the least mind having a brawl," I said crisply. "You'll tell me who you are before I'll go a step with you. And to start with, take your hands off me. Landlord, who are these men?"

"King's men, sir. You'd best do as they say. If you've got nothing to hide —"

" 'You've got nothing to fear'?" I said. "I know that one, and it's never true." I shoved Blackbeard's hand off my shoulder and turned to face him. I saw Dinias staring with his mouth slack. This, I supposed, was not the meek-voiced cousin he knew. Well, the time for that was past. "I don't mind these men hearing what you have to say. Tell me here. Why do you want to talk to me?"

"We were interested in what your friend here was saying."

"Then why not talk to him?"

Blackbeard said stolidly: "All in good time. If you'd tell me who you are, and where you come from —?"

"My name is Emrys, and I was born here in Maridunum. I went toCornwall some years ago, when I was a child, and now had a fancy to come home and hear the news. That's all."

"And this young man? He called you 'cousin'."

"That was a form of speech. We are related, but not nearly. You probably also heard him call me 'bastard'."

"Wait a minute." The new voice came from behind me, among the crowd. An elderly man with thin grey hair, nobody I recognized, pushed his way to the front. "I know him. He's telling the truth. Why, that's Myrddin Emrys, sure enough, that was the old King's grandson." Then to me, "You won't remember me, sir. I was your grandfather's steward, one of them. I tell you this" — he stretched his neck, like a hen, peering up at Blackbeard — "King's men or no King's men, you've no business to lay a hand on this young gentleman. He's told you the truth. He left Maridunum five years ago — that's right, five, it was the night the old King died — and nobody heard tell where he'd gone. But I'll take any oath you like he would never raise a hand against King Vortigern. Why, he was training to be a priest, and never took arms in his life. And if he wants a quiet drink with Prince Dinias, why, they're related, as he told you, and who else would he drink with, to get the news of home?" He nodded at me, kindly. "Yes, indeed, that's Myrddin Emrys, that's a grown man now instead of a little boy, but I'd know him anywhere. And let me tell you, sir, I'm mightily glad to see you safe. It was feared you'd died in the fire."

Blackbeard hadn't even glanced at him. He was directly between me and the door. He never took his eyes off me. "Myrddin Emrys. The old King's grandson." He said it slowly. "And a bastard? Whose son, then?"

There was no point in denying it. I had recognized the steward now. He was nodding at me, pleased with himself. I said: "My mother was the King's daughter, Niniane."

The black eyes narrowed. "Is this true?"

"Quite true, quite true." It was the steward, his goodwill to me patent in his pale stupid eyes.

Blackbeard turned to me again. I saw the next question forming on his lips. My heart was thumping, and I could feel the blood stealing up into my face. I tried to will it down.

"And your father?"

"I do not know." Perhaps he would only think that the blood in my face was shame.

"Speak carefully, now," said Blackbeard. "You must know. Who got you?"

"I do not know."

He regarded me. "Your mother, the King's daughter. You remember her?"

"I remember her well."

"And she never told you? You expect us to believe this?"

I said irritably: "I don't care what you believe or what you don't believe. I'm tired of this. All my life people have asked me this question, and all my life people have disbelieved me. It's true, she never told me. I doubt if she told anyone. As far as I know, she may have been telling the truth when she said I was begotten of a devil." I made a gesture of impatience. "Why do you ask?"

"We heard what the other young gentleman said." His tone and look were stolid. — " 'Better to be a bastard and have a king for a father, than a no-man's-child who never had a father at all!'"

"If I take no offense why should you? You can see he's in his cups."

"We wanted to make sure, that's all. And now we've made sure. The King wants you."

"The King?" I must have sounded blank.

He nodded. "Vortigern. We've been looking for you for three weeks past. You're to go to him."

"I don't understand." I must have looked bewildered rather than frightened. I could see my mission falling round me in ruins, but with this was a mixture of confusion and relief. If they had been looking for me for three weeks, this surely could have nothing to do with Ambrosius.

Dinias had been sitting quietly enough in his corner. I thought that most of what was said had not gone through to him, but now he leaned forward, his hands flat on the wine-splashed table. "What does he want him for? Tell me that."

"You've no call to worry." Blackbeard threw it at him almost disdainfully. "It's not you he wants. But I'll tell you what, since it was you led us to him, it's you who should get the reward."

"Reward?" I asked. "What talk is this?"

Dinias was suddenly stone sober. "I said nothing. What do you mean?"

Blackbeard nodded. "It was what you said that led us to him."

"He was only asking questions about the family — he's been away," said my cousin. "You were listening.

Anybody could have listened, we weren't keeping our voices down. By the gods, if we wanted to talk treason would we have talked it here?"

"Nobody mentioned treason. I'm just doing my duty. The King wants to see him, and he's to come with me."

The old steward said, looking troubled now: "You can't harm him. He's who he says he is, Niniane's son. You can ask her yourself."

That brought Blackbeard round to face him quickly. "She's still alive?"

"Oh, yes, she's that all right. She's barely a stone's throw off, at the nunnery of St. Peter's, beyond the old oak at the crossways."

"Leave her alone," I said, really frightened now. I wondered what she might tell them. "Don't forget who she is. Even Vortigern won't dare to touch her. Besides, you've no authority. Either over me or her."

"You think not?"

"Well, what authority have you?"

"This." The short sword flashed in his hand. It was sharpened to a dazzle.

I said: "Vortigern's law, is it? Well, it's not a bad argument. I'll go with you, but it won't do you much good with my mother. Leave her alone, I tell you. She won't tell you any more than I."

"But at least we don't have to believe her when she says she doesn't know."

"But it's true." It was the steward, still chattering. "I tell you, I served in the palace all my life, and I remember it all. It used to be said she'd borne a child to the devil, to the prince of darkness."

Hands fluttered as people made the sign. The old man said, peering up at me: "Go with them, son, they'll not hurt Niniane's child, or her either. There'll come a time when the King will need the people of the West, as who should know better than he?"

"It seems I'll have to go with them, with the King's warrant so sharp at my throat," I said. "It's all right, Dinias, it wasn't your fault. Tell my servant where I am. Very well, you, take me to Vortigern, but keep your hands off me."

I went between them to the door, the drinkers making way for us. I saw Dinias stumble to his feet and come after. As we reached the street Blackbeard turned. "I was forgetting. Here, it's yours."

The purse of money jingled as it hit the ground at my cousin's feet.

I didn't turn. But as I went I saw, even without looking, the expression on my cousin's face as, with a quick glance to right and left, he stooped for the purse and tucked it into his waistband.

7

Vortigern had changed. My impression that he had grown smaller, less impressive, was not only because I myself, instead of being a child, was now a tall youth. He had grown, as it were, into himself. It did not need the makeshift hall, the court which was less a court than a gathering of fighting chiefs and such women as they kept by them, to indicate that this was a man on the run. Or rather, a man in a corner. But a cornered wolf is more dangerous than a free one, and Vortigern was still a wolf.

And he had certainly chosen his corner well. King's Fort was as I remembered it, a crag commanding the river valley, its crest only approachable along a narrow saddleback like a bridge. This promontory jutted out from a circle of rocky hills which provided in their shelter a natural corrie where horses could graze and where beasts could be driven in and guarded. All round the valley itself the mountains towered, grey with scree and still not green with spring. All the April rain had done was to bring a long cascade spilling a thousand feet from the summit to the valley's foot. A wild, dark, impressive place. If once the wolf dug himself in at the top of that crag, even Ambrosius would be hard put to it to get him out.

The journey took six days. We started at first light, by the road which leads due north out of Maridunum, a worse road than the eastbound way but quicker, even slowed down as we were by bad weather and the pace set by the women's litters. The bridge was broken at Pennal and more or less washed away, and nearly half a day was spent fording the Afon Dyfi, before the party could struggle on to Tomen-y-mur, where the road was good. On the afternoon of the sixth day we turned up the riverside track for Dinas Brenin, where the King lay.

Blackbeard had had no difficulty at all in persuading St. Peter's to let my mother go with him to the King.

If he had used the same tactics as with me, this was understandable enough, but I had no opportunity to ask her, or even to find out if she knew any more than I did why Vortigern wanted us. A closed litter had been provided for her, and two women from the religious house travelled with her. Since they were beside her day and night it was impossible for me to approach her for private speech, and in fact she showed no sign of wanting to see me alone. Sometimes I caught her watching me with an anxious, even perhaps a puzzled look, but when she spoke she was calm and withdrawn, with never so much as a hint that she knew anything that Vortigern himself might not overhear. Since I was not allowed to see her alone, I had judged it better to tell her the same story I had told Blackbeard; even the same (since for all I knew he had been questioned) that I had told Dinias. She would have to think what she could about it, and about my reasons for not getting in touch with her sooner. It was, of course, impossible to mention Brittany, or even friends fromBrittany , without risking her guess about Ambrosius, and this I dared not do.

I found her much changed. She was pale and quiet, and had put on weight, and with it a kind of heaviness of the spirit that she had not had before. It was only after a day or two, jogging north with the escort through the hills, that it suddenly came to me what this was; she had lost what she had had of power. Whether time had taken this, or illness, or whether she had abnegated it for the power of the Christian symbol that she wore on her breast, I had no means of guessing. But it had gone.

On one score my mind was set at rest straight away. My mother was treated with courtesy, even with distinction as befitted a king's daughter. I received no such distinction, but I was given a good horse, housed well at night, and my escort were civil enough when I tried to talk to them. Beyond that, they made very little effort with me; they would give no answer to any of my questions, though it seemed to me they knew perfectly well why the King wanted me. I caught curious and furtive glances thrown at me, and once or twice a look of pity.

We were taken straight to the King. He had set up his headquarters on the flat land between the crag and the river, from where he had hoped to oversee the building of his stronghold. It was a very different camp even from the makeshift ones of Uther and Ambrosius. Most of the men were in tents and, except for high earthworks and a palisade on the side towards the road, they apparently trusted to the natural defenses of the place — the river and crag on one side, the rock of Dinas Brenin on the other, and the impenetrable and empty mountains behind them.

Vortigern himself was housed royally enough. He received us in a hall whose wooden pillars were hung with curtains of bright embroidery, and whose floor of the local greenish slate was thickly strewn with fresh rushes. The high chair on the dais was regally carved and gilded. Beside him, on a chair equally ornate and only slightly smaller, sat Rowena, his Saxon Queen. The place was crowded. A few men in courtiers' dress stood near, but most of those present were armed. There was a fair sprinkling of Saxons.

Behind Vortigern's chair on the dais stood a group of priests and holy men.

As we were brought in, a hush fell. All eyes turned our way. Then the King rose and, stepping down from the dais, came to meet my mother, smiling, and with both hands outstretched.

"I bid you welcome, Princess," he said, and turned to present her with ceremonial courtesy to the Queen.

The hiss of whispers ran round the hall, and glances were exchanged. The King had made it clear by his greeting that he did not hold my mother accountable for Camlach's part in the recent rebellion. He glanced at me, briefly but I thought with keen interest, gave me a nod of greeting, then took my mother's hand on his arm and led her up on to the dais. At a nod of his head, someone hurried to set a chair for her on the step below him. He bade her be seated, and he and the Queen took their places once more.

Walking forward with my guards at my back, I stood below the dais in front of the King.

Vortigern spread his hands on the arms of his chair and sat upright, smiling from my mother to me with an air of welcome and even satisfaction. The buzz of whispers had died down. There was a hush. People were staring, expectant.

But all the King said was, to my mother: "I ask your pardon, Madam, for forcing this journey on you at such a time of year. I trust you were made comfortable enough?" He followed this up with smooth trivial courtesies while the people stared and waited, and my mother bent her head and murmured her polite replies, as upright and unconcerned as he. The two nuns who had accompanied her stood behind her, like waiting-women. She held one hand at her breast, fingering the little cross which she wore there as a talisman; the other lay among the brown folds on her lap. Even in her plain brown habit she looked royal.

Vortigern said, smiling: "And now will you present your son?"

"My son's name is Merlin. He left Maridunum five years ago after the death of my father, your kinsman.

Since then he has been inCornwall , in a house of religion. I commend him to you."

The King turned to me. "Five years? You would be little more than a child then, Merlin. How old are you now?"

"I am seventeen, sir." I met his gaze squarely. "Why have you sent for my mother and myself? I had hardly set foot in Maridunum again, when your men took me, by force."

"For that I am sorry. You must forgive their zeal. They only knew that the matter was urgent, and they took the quickest means to do what I wished." He turned back to my mother. "Do I have to assure you, Lady Niniane, that no harm will come to you? I swear it. I know that you have been in the House of St.

Peter now for five years, and that your brother's alliance with my sons was no concern of yours."

"Nor of my son's, my lord," she said calmly. "Merlin left Maridunum on the night of my father's death, and from that day until now I have heard nothing from him. But one thing is certain, he had no part in the rebellion; why, he was only a child when he left his home — and indeed, now that I know he fled south that night, to Cornwall, I can only assume he went from very fear of my brother Camlach, who was no friend to him. I assure you, my lord King, that whatever I myself may have guessed of my brother's intentions towards you, my son knew nothing of them. I am at a loss to know why you should want him here."

To my surprise Vortigern did not even seem interested in my sojourn in Cornwall , nor did he look at me again. He rested his chin on his fist and watched my mother from under his brows. His voice and look were alike grave and courteous, but there was something in the air that I did not like. Suddenly I realized what it was. Even while my mother and the King talked, watching one another, the priests behind the King's chair watched me. And when I stole a glance out of the corners of my eyes at the people in the hall I found that here, too, there were eyes on me. There was a stillness in the room now, and I thought, suddenly: Now he will come to it.

He said quietly, almost reflectively: "You never married."

"No." Her lids drooped, and I knew she had become suddenly wary.

"Your son's father, then, died before you could be wed? Killed in battle, perhaps?"

"No, my lord." Her voice was quiet, but perfectly clear. I saw her hands move and tighten a little.

"Then he still lives?"

She said nothing, but bowed her head, so that her hood fell forward and hid her face from the other people in the hall. But those on the dais could still see her. I saw the Queen staring with curiosity and contempt. She had light blue eyes, and big breasts which bulged milk-white above a tight blue bodice.

Her mouth was small. Her hands were as white as her breasts, but the fingers thick and ugly, like a servant's. They were covered with rings of gold and enamel and copper.

The King's brows drew together at my mother's silence, but his voice was still pleasant. "Tell me one thing, Lady Niniane. Did you ever tell your son the name of his father?"

"No." The tone of her voice, full and definite, contrasted oddly with the posture of bowed head and veiled face. It was the pose of a woman who is ashamed, and I wondered if she meant to look like this to excuse her silence. I could not see her face myself, but I saw the hand that held the fold of her long skirt.

I was sharply reminded of the Niniane who had defied her father and refused Gorlan, King of Lanascol.

Across that memory came another, the memory of my father's face, looking at me across the table in the lamplight. I banished it. He was so vividly in front of me that it seemed to me a wonder that the whole hall full of men could not see him. Then it came to me, sharply and with terror, that Vortigern had seen him.

Vortigern knew. This was why we were here. He had heard some rumour of my coming, and was making sure. It remained to be seen whether I would be treated as a spy, or as a hostage.

I must have made some movement in spite of myself. My mother looked up, and I saw her eyes under the hood. She no longer looked like a princess; she looked like a woman who is afraid. I smiled at her, and something came back into her face, and I saw then that her fear was only for me.

I held myself still, and waited. Let him make the moves. Time enough to counter them when he had shown me the ground to fight from.

He twisted the big ring on his finger. "This is what your son told my messengers. And I have heard it said that no one else in the kingdom ever knew the name of his father. From what men tell me, Lady Niniane, and from what I know of you, your child would never be fathered by anyone base. Why not, then, tell him? It is a thing a man should know."

I said angrily, forgetting my caution: "What is it to you?"

My mother flashed me a look that silenced me. Then to Vortigern, "Why do you ask me these questions?"

"Lady," said the King, "I sent for you today, and for your son, to ask you one thing only. The name of his father."

"I repeat, why do you ask?"

He smiled. It was a mere baring of the teeth. I took a step. "Mother, he has no right to ask you this. He will not dare —"

"Silence him," said Vortigern.

The man beside me slapped a hand across my mouth, and held me fast. There was the hiss of metal as the other drew his sword and pressed it against my side. I stood still.

My mother cried out: "Let him go! If you hurt him, Vortigern, king or no king, I will never tell you, even if you kill me. Do you think I held the truth from my own father and my brother and even from my son for all these years, just to tell you for the asking?"

"You will tell me for your son's sake," said Vortigern. At his nod the fellow took his hand from my mouth, and stood back. But his hand was still on my arm, and I could feel the other's sword sharp through my tunic.

My mother had thrown back her hood now, and was sitting upright in her chair, her hands gripping the arms. Pale and shaken as she was, and dressed in the humble brown robe, she made the Queen look like a servant. The silence in the hall now was deathly. Behind the King's chair the priests stood staring. I held tightly to my thoughts. If these men were priests and magicians, then no thought of Ambrosius, not even his name, must come into my mind. I felt the sweat start on my body, and my thoughts tried to reach my mother and hold her, without forming an image which these men could see. But the power had gone, and there was no help here from the god; I did not even know if I was man enough for what might happen after she told them. I dared not speak again; I was afraid that if they used force against me she would speak to save me. And once they knew, once they started to question me...

Something must have reached her, because she turned and looked at me again, moving her shoulders under the rough robe as if she felt a hand touch her. As her eyes met mine I knew that this was nothing to do with power. She was trying, as women will, to tell me something with her eyes. It was a message of love and reassurance, but on a human level, and I could not understand it.

She turned back to Vortigern. "You choose a strange place for your questions, King. Do you really expect me to speak of these things here, in your open hall, and in the hearing of all comers?"

He brooded for a moment, his brows down over his eyes. There was sweat on his face, and I saw his hands twitch on the arms of the chair. The man was humming like a harp-string. The tension ran right through the hall, almost visibly. I felt my skin prickle, and a cold wolfspaw of fear walked up my spine.

Behind the King one of the priests leaned forward and whispered. Then the King nodded. "The people shall leave us. But the priests and the magicians must remain."

Reluctantly, and with a buzz of chatter, people began to leave the hall. The priests stayed, a dozen or so men in long robes standing behind the chairs of the King and Queen. One of them, the one who had spoken to the King, a tall man who stood stroking his grey beard with a dirty ringed hand, was smiling.

From his dress he was the head of them. I searched his face for signs of power, but, though the men were dressed in priests' robes, I could see nothing there but death. It was in all their eyes. More than that I could not see. The wolfspaw of cold touched my bones again. I stood in the soldier's grip without resistance.

"Loose him," said Vortigern. "I have no wish to harm the Lady Niniane's son. But you, Merlin, if you move or speak again before I give you leave, you will be taken from the hall."

The sword withdrew from my side, but the man still held it ready. The guards stood back half a pace from me. I neither moved nor spoke. I had never since I was a child felt so helpless, so naked of either knowledge or power, so stripped of God. I knew, with bitter failure, that if I were in the crystal cave with fires blazing and my master's eyes on me, I should see nothing. I remembered, suddenly, that Galapas was dead. Perhaps, I thought, the power had only come from him, and perhaps it had gone with him.

The King had turned his sunken eyes back to my mother. He leaned forward, his look suddenly fierce and intent.

"And now, Madam, will you answer my question?"

"Willingly," she said. "Why not?"

8

She had spoken so calmly that I saw the King's look of surprise. She put up a hand to push the hood back from her face, and met his eyes levelly.

"Why not? I see no harm in it. I might have told you sooner, my lord, if you had asked me differently, and in a different place. There is no harm now in men knowing. I am no longer in the world, and do not have to meet the eyes of the world, or hear their tongues. And since I know now that my son, too, has retired from the world, then I know how little he will care what the world says about him. So I will tell you what you want to know. And when I tell you, you will see why I have never spoken of this before, not even to my own father or to my son himself."

There was no sign of fear now. She was even smiling. She had not looked at me again. I tried to keep from staring at her, to school my face into blankness. I had no idea what she planned to say, but I knew that here would be no betrayal. She was playing some game of her own, and was secure in her own mind that this would avert whatever danger threatened me. I knew, for certain, that she would say nothing of Ambrosius. But still, everywhere in the hall, was death. Outside it had begun to rain, and the afternoon was wearing on towards twilight. A servant came in at the door bearing torches, but Vortigern waved him back. To do him justice, I believe he was thinking of my mother's shame, but I thought to myself: There can be no help even there, no light, no fire...

"Speak, then," said Vortigern. "Who fathered your son?"

"I never saw him." She spoke quite simply. "It was no man that I ever knew." She paused, then said, without looking at me, her eyes still level on the King: "My son will forgive me for what he is soon to hear, but you have forced me, and this he will understand."

Vortigern flashed me a look. I met it stonily. I was certain of her now.

She went on: "When I was only young, about sixteen, and thinking, as girls do, of love, it happened one Martinmas Eve, after I and my women had gone to bed. The girl who slept in my room was asleep, and the others were in the outer chamber, but I could not sleep. After a while I rose from my bed and went to the window. It was a clear night, with a moon. When I turned back to my bed-place I saw what I took to be a young man standing there, full in the middle of my bedchamber. He was handsome, and young, dressed in a tunic and long mantle, with a short sword at his side. He wore rich jewels. My first thought was that he had broken in through the outer chamber while my women slept; my second was that I was in my shift, and barefoot, with my hair loose. I thought he meant mischief, and was opening my mouth to call out and wake the women, when the youth smiled at me, with a gesture as if to tell me to be quiet, he meant me no harm. Then he stepped aside into the shadow, and when I stole after, to look, there was no one there."

She paused. No one spoke. I remembered how she would tell me stories when I was a child. The hall was quite still, but I felt the man beside me quiver, as if he would have liked to move away. The Queen's red mouth hung open, half in wonder, half (I thought) in envy.

My mother looked at the wall above the King's head. "I thought it had been a dream, or a girl's fancy bred of moonlight. I went to bed and told no one. But he came again. Not always at night; not always when I was alone. So I realized it was no dream, but a familiar spirit who desired something from me. I prayed, but still he came. While I was sitting with my girls, spinning, or when I walked on dry days in my father's orchard, I would feel his touch on my arm, and his voice in my ear. But at these times I did not see him, and nobody heard him but I."

She groped for the cross on her breast and held it. The gesture looked so unforced and natural that I was surprised, until I saw that it was indeed natural, that she did not hold the cross for protection, but for forgiveness. I thought to myself, it is not the Christian God she should fear when she lies; she should be afraid of lying like this about the things of power. The King's eyes, bent on her, were fierce and, I thought, exultant. The priests were watching her as if they would eat her spirit alive.

"So all through that winter he came to me. And he came at night. I was never alone in my chamber, but he came through doors and windows and walls, and lay with me. I never saw him again, but heard his voice and felt his body. Then, in the summer, when I was heavy with child, he left me." She paused.

"They will tell you how my father beat me and shut me up, and how when the child was born he would not give him a name fit for a Christian prince, but, because he was born in September, named him for the sky-god, the wanderer, who has no house but the woven air. But I called him Merlin always, because on the day of his birth a wild falcon flew in through the window and perched above the bed, and looked at me with my lover's eyes."

Her glance crossed mine then, a brief flash. This, then, was true. And the Emrys, too, she had given me that in spite of them; she had kept that much of him for me after all.

She had looked away. "I think, my lord King, that what I have told you will not altogether surprise you.

You must have heard the rumours that my son was not as ordinary boys — it is not possible always to be silent, and I know there have been whispers, but now I have told you the truth, openly; and so I pray you, my lord Vortigern, to let my son and me go back in peace to our respective houses of religion."

When she had finished there was silence. She bowed her head and pulled up her hood again to hide her face. I watched the King and the men behind him. I thought to see him angry, frowning with impatience, but to my surprise his brows smoothed out, and he smiled. He opened his mouth to answer my mother, but the Queen forestalled him. She leaned forward, licking her red lips, and spoke for the first time, to the priests.

"Maugan, is this possible?"

It was the tall man, the bearded high priest, who answered her. He spoke without hesitation, bland and surprisingly emphatic. "Madam, it is possible. Who has not heard of these creatures of air and darkness, who batten on mortal men and women? In my studies, and in many of the books I have read, I have found stories of children being born into the world in this fashion." He eyed me, fondling his beard, then turned to the King. "Indeed, my lord, we have the authority of the ancients themselves. They knew well that certain spirits, haunting the air at night between the moon and the earth, cohabit at their will with mortal women, in the shape of men. It is certainly possible that this royal lady — this virtuous royal lady — was the victim of such a creature. We know — and she has said herself — that this was rumoured for many years. I myself spoke with one of her waiting-women who said that the child could surely be begotten of none but the devil, and that no man had been near her. And of the son himself, when he was a child, I heard many strange things. Indeed, King Vortigern, this lady's story is true."

No one looked any longer at Niniane. Every eye in the place was on me. I could see in the King's face nothing that was not at once ferocious and innocent, a kind of eager satisfaction like a child's, or a wild beast's when it sees its prey loitering nearer. Puzzled, I held my tongue and waited. If the priests believed my mother, and Vortigern believed the priests, then I could not see where danger could come from. No faintest hint had turned men's thoughts towards Ambrosius. Maugan and the King seemed to hurry with eager satisfaction down the path that my mother had opened for them.

The King glanced at my guards. They had moved back from me, no doubt afraid to stand so near a demon's child. At his sign they closed in again. The man on my right still held his sword drawn, but down by his side and out of my mother's view. It was not quite steady. The man on my left surreptitiously loosened his own blade in its sheath. Both men were breathing heavily, and I could smell fear on them.

The priests were nodding sagely, and some of them, I noticed, held their hands in front of them in the sign to ward off enchantment. It seemed that they believed Maugan, they believed my mother, they saw me as the devil's child. All that had happened was that her story had confirmed their own belief, the old rumours. This, in fact, was what she had been brought here for. And now they watched me with satisfaction, but also with a kind of wary fear.

My own fear was leaving me. I thought I began to see what they wanted. Vortigern's superstition was legendary. I remembered what Dinias had told me about the stronghold that kept falling down, and the reports of the King's soothsayers that it was bewitched. It seemed possible that, because of the rumours of my birth, and possibly because of the childish powers I had shown before I left home, to which Maugan had referred, they thought I could advise or help them. If this was so, and they had brought me here because of my reputed powers, there might be some way in which I could help Ambrosius right from the enemy's camp. Perhaps after all the god had brought me here for this, perhaps he was still driving me. Put yourself in his path...Well, one could only use what was to hand. If I had no power to use, I had knowledge.

I cast my mind back to the day at King's Fort, and to the flooded mine in the core of the crag, to which the dream had led me. I would certainly be able to tell them why their foundations would not stand. It was an engineer's answer, not a magician's. But, I thought, meeting the oyster eyes of Maugan as he dry-washed those long dirty hands before him, if it was a magician's answer they wanted, they should have it. And Vortigern with them.

I lifted my head. I believe I was smiling. "King Vortigern!"

It was like dropping a stone into a pool, the room was so still, so centered on me. I said strongly: "My mother has told you what you asked her. No doubt you will tell me now in what way I can serve you, but first I must ask you to keep your royal promise and let her go."

"The Lady Niniane is our honoured guest." The King's reply seemed automatic. He glanced at the open arcade that faced the river, where the white lances of the rain hissed down across a dark grey sky. "You are both free to go whenever you choose, but this is no time to begin the long journey back to Maridunum. You will surely wish to lie the night here, Madam, and hope for a dry day tomorrow?" He rose, and the Queen with him. "Rooms have been prepared, and now the Queen will take you there to rest and make ready to sup with us. Our court here, and our rooms, are a poor makeshift, but such as they are, they are at your service. Tomorrow you will be escorted home."

My mother had stood when they did. "And my son? You still have not told us why you brought us here for this?"

"Your son can serve me. He has powers which I can use. Now, Madam, if you will go with the Queen, I will talk to your son and tell him what I want of him. Believe me, he is as free as you are. I constrained him only until you told me the truth I wished to hear. I must thank you now for confirming what I had guessed." He put out a hand. "I swear to you, Lady Niniane, by any god you like, that I do not hold his birth against him, now or ever."

She regarded him for a moment, then bowed her head and, ignoring his gesture, came down to me, holding out both her hands. I crossed to her and took them in my own. They felt small and cold. I was taller than she was. She looked up at me with the eyes that I remembered; there was anxiety in them, and the dregs of anger, and some message urgently spoken in silence.

"Merlin, I would not have had you know it this way. I would have spared you this." But this was not what her eyes were saying.

I smiled down at her, and said carefully: "Mother, you told me nothing today that shocked me. Indeed, there's nothing you could tell me about my birth that I do not already know. Set yourself at rest."

She caught her breath and her eyes widened, searching my face. I went on, slowly: "Whoever my father was, it will not be held against me. You heard what the King promised. That is all we need to know."

Whether she got this part of the message I could not guess. She was still taking in what I had said first.

"You knew? You knew?"

"I knew. You surely don't imagine that in all the years I've been away from you, and with the kind of studies I've undertaken, I never found out what parentage I had? It's some years now since my father made himself known to me. I assure you, I've spoken with him, not once but many times. I find nothing in my birth of which I need to be ashamed."

For a moment longer she looked at me, then she nodded, and the lids drooped over her eyes. A faint colour had come up into her face. She had understood me.

She turned away, pulling her hood up again to hide her face, and put her hand on the King's arm. She went from the room, walking between him and the Queen, and her two women followed them. The priests remained, clucking and whispering and staring. I took no notice of them, but watched my mother go.

The King paused in the doorway, and I heard his voice bidding my mother goodbye. There was a crowd waiting in the outer porch. They made way for Rowena and my mother, and the half-dozen women who were there followed them. I heard the swish of their dresses and the light voices of the women fade into the sound of the rain. Vortigern stood still in the doorway, watching them go. Outside the rain fell with a noise like a running river. It was darkening fast.

The King swung round on his heel and came back into the hall, with his fighting men behind him.

9

They crowded round me, muttering noisily, but holding back in a circle, like hounds before they close in for the kill. Death was back in the hall; I could feel it, but could not believe or understand it. I made a movement as if to follow my mother, and the swords of my guards lifted and quivered. I stood still.

I said sharply, to the King: "What's this? You gave your word. Are you so quickly forsworn?"

"Not forsworn. I gave my word that you should serve me, that I would never hold your birth against you.

This is true. It is because of what I know about you, because you are the child of no man, that I have had you brought to me today. You will serve me, Merlin, because of your birth."

"Well?"

He mounted the steps to the throne and sat down again. His movements were slow and deliberate. All the men of the court had crowded in with him, and with them the torch-bearers. The hall filled with smoky light and the rustle and creak of leather and the clank of mail. Outside the rain hissed down.

Vortigern leaned forward, chin on fist. "Merlin, we have learned today what in part we already suspected, that you are the child of no man, but of a devil. As such, you require mercy from no man. But because your mother is a king's daughter, and therefore something is due to you, I shall tell you why I brought you here. You know perhaps that I am building a stronghold here on the rock they call the Fortress?"

"Everyone knows it," I said, "and everyone knows that it will not stand, but falls down whenever it reaches man height."

He nodded. "And my magicians and wise men here, my advisers, have told me why. The foundations have not been properly laid."

"Well," I said, "that sounds remarkably like sense to me."

There was a tall old man to the King's right, beside the priests. His eyes were a bright angry blue under jutting white brows. He was watching me fixedly, and I thought I saw pity in his look. As I spoke, he put a hand up to his beard as if to hide a smile.

The King seemed not to have heard me. "They tell me," he said, "that a king's stronghold should be built on blood."

"They are talking, of course, in metaphors?" I said politely.

Maugan suddenly struck his staff on the floor of the dais. "They are talking literally!" he shouted. "The mortar should be slaked with blood! Blood should be sprinkled on the foundations. In ancient times no king built a fortress without observing this rite. The blood of a strong man, a warrior, kept the walls standing."

There was a sharp pause. My heart had begun to beat in slow, hard strokes that made the blood tingle in my limbs. I said, coldly: "And what has this to do with me? I am no warrior."

"You are no man, neither," said the King harshly. "This is the magic, Merlin, that they have revealed to me, that I should seek out a lad who never had a father, and slake the foundations with his blood."

I stared at him, then looked round the ring of faces. There was shifting and muttering, and few eyes met mine, but I could see it in all their faces, the death I had smelled ever since I entered the hall. I turned back to the King.

"What rubbish is this? When I left Wales , it was a country for civilized men and for poets, for artists and for scholars, for warriors and kings who killed for their country, cleanly and in daylight. Now you talk of blood and human sacrifice. Do you think to throw modern Wales back to the rites of ancient Babylon and Crete ?"

"I do not speak of 'human' sacrifice," said Vortigern. "You are the son of no man. Remember this."

In the stillness the rain lashed into the bubbling puddles on the ground outside. Someone cleared his throat. I caught the fierce blue glance of the old warrior. I had been right; there was pity there. But even those who pitied me were not going to raise a hand against this stupidity.

It had all come clear at last, like lightning breaking. This had been nothing to do with Ambrosius, or with my mother. She was safe enough, having merely confirmed what they wanted confirmed. She would even be honoured, since she had provided what they desired. And Ambrosius had never even entered their thoughts. I was not here as his son, his spy, his messenger; all they wanted was the "devil's child" to kill for their crude and dirty magic.

And, ironically enough, what they had got was no devil's child, not even the boy who once had thought to have power in his hands. All they had got was a human youth with no power beyond his human wits.

But by the god, I thought, those might yet be enough...I had learned enough, power or no power, to fight them with their own weapons.

I managed to smile, looking beyond Maugan at the other priests. They were still making the sign against me, and even Maugan hugged his staff against his breast as if it had the power to protect him. "And what makes you so sure that my father the devil will not come to my aid?"

"Those are only words, King. There's no time to listen." Maugan spoke quickly and loudly, and the other priests pressed forward with him round the King's chair. They all spoke at once. "Yes, kill him now.

There's no time to waste. Take him up to the crag and kill him now. You shall see that the gods will be appeased and the walls stand steady. His mother will not know, and even if she does, what can she do?"

There was a general movement, like hounds closing in. I tried to think, but I was empty even of coherent thought. The air stank and darkened. I could smell blood already, and the sword blades, held openly now against me, flashed in the torchlight. I fixed my eyes on the fireshot metal, and tried to empty my mind, but all I could see was the picked skeleton of Galapas, high on the hill in the sunlight, with the wings of the birds over him...

I said, to the swords: "Tell me one thing. Who killed Galapas?"

"What did he say? What did the devil's son say?" The question buzzed through the hall. A harsh voice said, loudly: "Let him speak." It was the old grey-bearded warrior.

"Who killed Galapas, the magician who lived on Bryn Myrddin above Maridunum?"

I had almost shouted it. My voice sounded strange, even to me. They fell silent, eyeing one another sideways, not understanding. Vortigern said: "The old man? They said he was a spy."

"He was a magician, and my master," I said. "And he taught me, Vortigern."

"What did he teach you?"

I smiled. "Enough. Enough to know that these men are fools and charlatans. Very well, Vortigern. Take me up to the crag and bring your knives with you, you and your soothsayers. Show me this fortress, these cracking walls, and see if I cannot tell you, better than they, why your fort will not stand. 'No man's child'!" I said it with contempt. "These are the things they conjure up, these foolish old men, when they can think of nothing else. Does it not occur to you, King, that the son of a spirit of darkness might have a magic that outstrips the spells of these old fools? If what they say is true, and if my blood will make these stones stand, then why did they watch them fall not once, not twice, but four times, before they could tell you what to do? Let me but see the place once, and I will tell you. By the God of gods, Vortigern, if my dead blood could make your fortress stand, how much better could my living body serve you?"

"Sorcery! Sorcery! Don't listen to him! What does a lad like him know of such matters?" Maugan began to shout, and the priests to cluck and chatter. But the old warrior said gruffly and sharply: "Let him try.

There's no harm in that. Help you must have, Vortigern, be it from god or devil. Let him try, I say." And round the hall I heard the echoes from the fighting men, who would have no cause to love the priests: "Let him try."

Vortigern frowned in indecision, glancing from Maugan to the warriors, then at the grey arches where the rain fell. "Now?"

"Better now," they said. "There is not much time."

"No," I said clearly, "there is not much time." Silence again, all eyes on me. "The rain is heavy, Vortigern.

What kind of king is it whose fortress is knocked down by a shower of rain? You will find your walls fallen yet again. This comes of building in the dark, with blind men for counsellors. Now take me to the top of your crag, and I will tell you why your walls have fallen. And if you listen to me instead of to these priests of darkness, I will tell you how to rebuild your stronghold in the light."

As I spoke, like the turning off of a tap, the downpour stopped. In the sudden quiet, men's mouths gaped. Even Maugan was dumb. Then like the pulling aside of a dark curtain, the sun came out.

I laughed. "You see? Come, King, take me to the top of the crag, and I will show you in sunlight why your walls fell down. But tell them to bring the torches. We shall need them."

10

Before we had fairly reached the foot of the crag I was proved right. The workmen could be seen crowded to the edge of the rock above, waiting for the King, and some of them had come down to meet him. Their foreman came panting up, a big man with rough sacking held gripped round his shoulders like a cloak, still sluicing with wet. He seemed hardly to have realized that the rain had stopped. He was pale, his eyes red-rimmed as if he had lacked sleep for nights. He stopped three paces away, eyeing the King nervously, and dashing the wet back of a hand across his face.

"Again?" said Vortigern briefly.

"Aye, my lord, and there's no one can say that it's a fault of ours, that I'll swear, any more than last time, or the times before. You saw yesterday how we were laying it this time. You saw how we cleared the whole site, to start again, and got right down to solid rock. And it is solid rock, my lord, I'll swear it. But still the wall cracks." He licked his lips, and his glance met mine and slid away from it, so that I knew he was aware of what the King and his soothsayers planned. "You're going up now, my lord?"

"Yes. Clear the men off the site."

The man swallowed, turned and ran up the twisting track. I heard him shouting. A mule was brought and the King mounted. My wrist was tied roughly to the harness. Magician or no, the sacrifice was to be given no chance of escape until he had proved himself. My guards kept close to my side. The King's officers and courtiers crowded round us, talking in low voices among themselves, but the priests held back, aloof and wary. I could see that they were not much afraid of the outcome; they knew as well as I did how much their magic was the power of their gods and how much illusion working on faith. They were confident that I could do no more than they; that even if I were one of their own kind they could find a way to defeat me. All I had to put against their smooth-worn rites was, they thought, the kind of bluff they were familiar with, and the luck that had stopped the rain and brought the sun out when I spoke.

The sun gleamed on the soaked grasses of the crag's crest. Here we were high above the valley where the river wound like a bright snake between its green verges. Steam rose from the roofs of the King's camp. Round the wooden hall and buildings the small skin tents clustered like toadstools, and men were no bigger than wood-lice crawling between them. It was a magnificent place, a true eagle's eyrie. The King halted his mule in a grove of wind-bitten oaks and pointed forward under the bare boughs.

"Yesterday you could have seen the western wall from here."

Beyond the grove was a narrow ridge, a natural hogsback or causeway, along which the workmen and their beasts had beaten a wide track. King's Fort was a craggy tower of rock, approached on one side by the causeway, and with its other three sides falling steeply away in dizzy slopes and cliffs. Its top was a plateau perhaps a hundred by a hundred paces, and would once have been rough grass with outcropping rock and a few stunted trees and bushes. Now it was a morass of churned mud round the wreck of the ill-wished tower. On three sides the walls of this had risen almost to shoulder height; on the fourth side the wall, newly split, sagged out in a chaos of piled stones, some fallen and half buried in mud, others still precariously mortared to outcrops of the living rock. Heavy poles of pine wood had been driven in here and there and canvas laid across to shelter the work from the rain. Some of the poles had fallen flat, some were obviously newly splintered by the recent crack. On those which were whole the canvas hung flapping, or had stretched and split with the wet. Everything was sodden, and pools stood everywhere.

The workmen had left the site and were crowded to one side of the plateau, near the causeway. They were silent, with fear in their faces. I could see that the fear was not of the King's anger at what had happened to the work, but of the force which they believed in and did not understand. There were guards at the entrance to the causeway. I knew that without them not one workman would have been left on the site.

The guards had crossed their spears, but when they recognized the King they drew them back. I looked up. "Vortigern, I cannot escape from you here unless I leap off the crag, and that would sprinkle my blood just where Maugan wants it. But neither can I see what is wrong with your foundations unless you loose me."

He jerked his head, and one of my guards freed me. I walked forward. The mule followed, stepping delicately through the thick mud. The others came after. Maugan had pressed forward and was speaking urgently to the King. I caught words here and there: "Trickery...escape...now or never...blood..."

The King halted, and the crowd with him. Someone said, Here, boy," and I looked round to see the greybeard holding out a staff. I shook my head, then turned my back on them and walked forward alone."

Water stood everywhere, glinting in soggy pools between the tussocks, or on the curled fingers of young bracken thrusting through the pallid grass of winter. The grey rock glittered with it. As I walked slowly forward I had to narrow my eyes against the wet dazzle to see at all.

It was the western wall that had fallen. This had been built very near the edge of the crag, and though most of the collapse had been inwards, there was a pile of fallen stuff lying right out to the cliff's edge, where a new land-slip showed raw and slimy with clay. There was a space in the north wall where an entrance was to be built; I picked my way through this between the piles of rubble and workmen's gear, and into the center of the tower.

Here the floor was a thick mess of churned mud, with standing puddles struck to blinding copper by the sun. This was setting now, in the last blaze of light before dusk, and glared full in my eyes as I examined the collapsed wall, the cracks, the angle of fall, the tell-tale lie of the outcrops.

All the time I was conscious of the stir and mutter of the crowd. From time to time the sun flashed on bared weapons. Maugan's voice, high and harsh, battered at the King's silence. Soon, if I did nothing and said nothing, the crowd would listen to him.

From where he sat his mule the King could see me through the gap of the north entrance, but most of the crowd could not. I climbed — or rather, mounted, such was my dignity — the fallen blocks of the west wall, till I stood clear of the building that remained, and they could all see me. This was not only to impress the King. I had to see, from this vantage point, the wooded slopes below through which we had just climbed, trying, now that I was clear of the crowd and the jostling, to recognize the way I had taken up to the adit, all those years ago.

The voices of the crowd, growing impatient, broke in on me, and I slowly lifted both arms towards the sun in a kind of ritual gesture, such as I had seen priests use in summoning spirits. If I at least made some show as a magician it might keep them at bay, the priests in doubt and the King in hope, till I had had time to remember. I could not afford to cast falteringly through the wood like a questing dog; I had to lead them straight and fast, as the merlin had once led me.

And my luck held. As I raised my arms the sun went in and stayed in, and the dusk began to thicken.

Moreover, with the dazzle out of my eyes, I could see. I looked back along the side of the causeway to the curve of the hill where I had climbed, all those years ago, to get away from the crowd round the two kings. The slopes were thickly wooded, more thickly than I remembered. Already, in the shelter of the corrie, some early leaves were out, and the woods were dark with thorn and holly. I could not recognize the way I had gone through the winter woods. I stared into the thickening dusk, casting back in memory to the child who had gone scrambling there...

We had ridden in from the open valley, along that stream, under the thick trees, over that low ridge and into the corrie. The kings, with Camlach and Dinias and the rest, had sat on that southern slope, below the knot of oaks. The cooking fires had been there, the horses there. It had been noon, and as I walked away — that way — I had trodden on my shadow. I had sat down to eat in the shelter of a rock...

I had it now. A grey rock, cleft by a young oak. And on the other side of the rock the kings had gone by, walking up towards King's Fort. A grey rock, cleft by a young oak beside the path. And straight from it, up through the steep wood, the flight-path of the merlin.

I lowered my arms, and turned. Twilight had fallen quickly in the wake of the grey clouds. Below me the wooded slopes swam thick with dusk. Behind Vortigern the mass of cloud was edged sharply with yellow, and a single shaft of misty light fell steeply on the distant black hills. The men were in dark silhouette, their cloaks whipping in the wet breeze. The torches streamed.

Slowly I descended from my viewpoint. When I reached the center of the tower floor I paused, full in the King's view, and stretched my hands out, palms down, as if I were feeling like a diviner for what lay below the earth. I heard the mutter go round, and the harsh sound of contempt from Maugan. Then I dropped my hands and approached them.

"Well?" The King's voice was hard and dry with challenge. He fidgeted in the saddle.

I ignored him, walking on past the mule and heading straight for the thickest part of the crowd as if it was not there. I kept my hands still by my sides, and my eyes on the ground; I saw their feet hesitate, shuffle, move aside as the crowd parted to let me through. I walked back across the causeway, trying to move smoothly and with dignity over the broken and sodden ground. The guards made no attempt to stop me.

When I passed one of the torch-bearers I lifted a hand, and he fell in beside me without a word.

The track that the workmen and their beasts had beaten out of the hillside was a new one, but, as I had hoped, it followed the old deer-trod which the kings had taken. Halfway down, unmistakable, I found the rock. Young ferns were springing in the crevice among the roots of the oak, and the tree showed buds already breaking among last year's oak-galls. Without a moment's hesitation I turned off the track, and headed into the steep tangle of the woods.

It was far more thickly overgrown than I remembered, and certainly nobody had been this way in a long time, probably not since Cerdic and I had pushed our way through. But I remembered the way as clearly as if it had still been noon of that winter's day. I went fast, and even where the bushes grew more than shoulder height I tried to go smoothly, unregarding, wading through them as if they were a sea. Next day I paid for my wizard's dignity with cuts and scratches and ruined clothes, but I have no doubt that at the time it was impressive. I remember when my cloak caught and dragged on something how the torch-bearer jumped forward like a slave to loosen and hold it for me.

Here was the thicket, right up against the side of the dell. More rock had fallen from the slope above, piling between the stems of the thorn trees like froth among the reeds of a backwater. Over it the bushes crowded, bare elderberry, honeysuckle like trails of hair, brambles sharp and whippy, ivy glinting in the torchlight. I stopped.

The mule slipped and clattered to a halt at my shoulder. The King's voice said: "What's this? What's this?

Where are you taking us? I tell you, Merlin, your time is running out. If you have nothing to show us —"

"I have plenty to show you." I raised my voice so that all of them, pushing behind him, could hear me. "I will show you, King Vortigern, or any man who has courage enough to follow me, the magic beast that lies beneath your stronghold and eats at your foundations. Give me the torch."

The man handed it to me. Without even turning my head to see who followed, I plunged into the darkness of the thicket and pulled the bushes aside from the mouth of the adit.

It was still open, safely shored and square, with the dry shaft leading level into the heart of the hill.

I had to bend my head now to get in under the lintel. I stooped and entered, with the torch held out in front of me.

I had remembered the cave as being huge, and had been prepared to find that this, like other childhood memories, was false. But it was bigger even than I remembered. Its dark emptiness was doubled in the great mirror of water that had spread till it covered all the floor save for a dry crescent of rock six paces deep, just inside the mouth of the adit. Into this great, still lake the jutting ribs of the cave walls ran like buttresses to meet the angle of their own reflections, then on down again into darkness. Somewhere deeper in the hill was the sound of water falling, but here nothing stirred the burnished surface. Where, before, trickles had run and dripped like leaking faucets, now every wall was curtained with a thin shining veil of damp which slid down imperceptibly to swell the pool.

I advanced to the edge, holding the torch high. The small light of the flame pushed the darkness back, a palpable darkness, deeper even than those dark nights where the black is thick as a wild beast's pelt, and presses on you like a stifling blanket. A thousand facets of light glittered and flashed as the flames caught the sliding water. The air was still and cold and echoing with sounds like birdsong in a deep wood.

I could hear them scrambling along the adit after me. I thought quickly.

I could tell them the truth, coldly. I could take the torch and clamber up into the dark workings and point out faults which were giving way under the weight of the building work above. But I doubted if they would listen. Besides, as they kept saying, there was no time. The enemy was at the gates, and what Vortigern needed now was not logic and an engineer; he wanted magic, and something — anything — that promised quick safety, and kept his followers loyal. He himself might believe the voice of reason, but he could not afford to listen to it. My guess was that he would kill me first, and attempt to shore up the workings afterwards, probably with me in them. He would lose his workmen else.

The men came pouring in at the dark mouth of the adit like bees through a hive door. More torches blazed, and the dark slunk back. The floor filled with coloured cloaks and the glint of weapons and the flash of jewels. Eyes showed liquid as they looked around them in awe. Their breath steamed on the cold air. There was a rustle and mutter as of folk in a holy place, but no one spoke aloud.

I lifted a hand to beckon the King, and he came forward and stood with me at the edge of the pool. I pointed downwards. Below the surface something — a rock, perhaps — glimmered faintly, shaped like a dragon. I began to speak slowly, as it were testing the air between us. My words fell clear and leaden, like drops of water on rock.

"This is the magic, King Vortigern, that lies beneath your tower. This is why your walls cracked as fast as they could build them. Which of your soothsayers could have showed you what I show you now?"

His two torch-bearers had moved forward with him; the others still hung back. Light grew, wavering from the walls, as they advanced. The streams of sliding water caught the light and flowed down to meet their reflections, so that fire seemed to rise through the pool like bubbles in sparkling wine to burst at the surface. Everywhere, as the torches moved, water glittered and sparked, jets and splashes of light breaking and leaping and coalescing across the still surface till the lake was liquid fire, and down the walls the lightfalls ran and glittered like crystals; like the crystal cave come alive and moving and turning round me; like the starred globe of midnight whirling and flashing.

I took my breath in painfully, and spoke again. "If you could drain this pool, King Vortigern, to find what lay beneath it —"

I stopped. The light had changed. Nobody had moved, and the air was still, but the torchlight wavered as men's hands shook. I could no longer see the King: the flames ran between us. Shadows fled across the streams and staircases of fire, and the cave was full of eyes and wings and hammering hoofs and the scarlet rush of a great dragon stooping on his prey...

A voice was shouting, high and monotonous, gasping. I could not get my breath. Pain broke through me, spreading from groin and belly like blood bursting from a wound. I could see nothing. I felt my hands knotting and stretching. My head hurt, and the rock was hard and streaming wet under my cheekbone. I had fainted, and they had seized me as I lay and were killing me: this was my blood seeping from me to spread into the pool and shore up the foundations of their rotten tower. I choked on breath like bile. My hands tore in pain at the rock, and my eyes were open, but all I could see was the whirl of banners and wings and wolves' eyes and sick mouths gaping, and the tail of a comet like a brand, and stars shooting through a rain of blood.

Pain went through me again, a hot knife into the bowels. I screamed, and suddenly my hands were free.

I threw them up between me and the flashing visions and I heard my own voice calling, but could not tell what I called. In front of me the visions whirled, fractured, broke open in intolerable light, then shut again into darkness and silence.

11

I woke in a room splendidly lined with embroidered hangings, where sunlight spilled through the window to lay bright oblongs on a boarded floor.

I moved cautiously, testing my limbs. I had not been hurt. There was not even a trace of headache. I was naked, softly and warmly bedded in furs, and my limbs moved without a hint of stiffness. I blinked wonderingly at the window, then turned my head to see Cadal standing beside the bed, relief spreading over his face like light after cloud.

"And about time," he said.

"Cadal! Mithras, but it's good to see you! What's happened? Where is this?"

"Vortigern's best guest chamber, that's where it is. You fixed him, young Merlin, you fixed him proper."

"Did I? I don't remember. I got the impression that they were fixing me. Do you mean they're not still planning to kill me?"

"Kill you? Stick you in a sacred cave, more like, and sacrifice virgins to you. Pity it'd be such a waste. I could use a bit of that myself."

"I'll hand them over to you. Oh, Cadal, but it is good to see you! How did you get here?"

"I'd just got back to the nunnery gate when they came for your mother. I heard them asking for her, and saying they'd got you, and were taking the pair of you off to Vortigern at cocklight next day. I spent half the night finding Marric, and the other half trying to get a decent horse — and I might as well have saved myself the pains, I had to settle for that screw you bought. Even the pace you went, I was near a day behind you by the time you'd got to Pennal. Not that I wanted to catch up till I saw which way the land lay...Well, never mind, I got here in the end — at dusk yesterday — and found the place buzzing like a hive that's been trodden on." He gave a short bark of a laugh. "It was 'Merlin this', and 'Merlin that'...they call you 'the King's prophet' already! When I said I was your servant, they couldn't shove me in here fast enough. Seems there isn't exactly a rush to look after sorcerers of your class. Can you eat something?"

"No — yes. Yes, I can. I'm hungry." I pushed myself up against the pillows. "Wait a minute, you say you got here yesterday? How long have I slept?"

"The night and the day. It's wearing on for sunset."

"The night and the day? Then it's — Cadal, what's happened to my mother? Do you know?"

"She's gone, safe away home. Don't fret yourself about her. Get your food now, while I tell you. Here."

He brought a tray on which was a bowl of steaming broth, and a dish of meat with bread and cheese and dried apricots. I could not touch the meat, but ate the rest while he talked.

"She doesn't know a thing about what they tried to do, or what happened. When she asked about you last night they told her you were here, 'royally housed, and high in the King's favour.' They told her you'd spat in the priests' eyes, in a manner of speaking, and prophesied fit to beat Solomon, and were sleeping it off, comfortable. She came to take a look at you this morning to make sure, and saw you sleeping like a baby, then she went off. I didn't get a chance to speak to her, but I saw her go. She was royally escorted, I can tell you; she'd half a troop of horse with her, and her women had litters nearly as grand as herself."

"You say I 'prophesied'? 'Spat in the priests' eyes'?" I put a hand to my head. "I wish I could remember...We were in the cave under King's Fort — they've told you about that, I suppose?" I stared at him. "What happened, Cadal?"

"You mean to tell me you don't remember?"

I shook my head. "All I know is, they were going to kill me to stop their rotten tower from falling down, and I put up a bluff. I thought if I could discredit their priests I might save my own skin, but all I ever hoped to do was to make a bit of time so that maybe I could get away."

"Aye, I heard what they were going to do. Some people are dead ignorant, you'd wonder at it." But he was watching me with the look that I remembered. "It was a funny kind of bluff, wasn't it? How did you know where to find the tunnel?"

"Oh, that. That was easy. I've been in these parts before, as a boy. I came to this very place once, years ago, with Cerdic who was my servant then, and I was following a falcon through the wood when I found that old tunnel."

"I see. Some people might call that luck — if they didn't know you, that is. I suppose you'd been right in?"

"Yes. When I first heard about the west wall cracking above, I thought it must be something to do with the old mine workings." I told him then, quickly, all that I could remember of what had happened in the cave. "The lights," I said, "the water glittering...the shouting...it wasn't like the 'seeings' I've had before — the white bull and the other things that I've sometimes seen. This was different. For one thing, it hurt far more. That must be what death is like. I suppose I did faint in the end. I don't remember being brought here at all."

"I don't know about that. When I got in to see you, you was just asleep, very deep, but quite ordinary, it seemed to me. I make no bones about it, I took a good look at you, to see if they'd hurt you, but I couldn't find any sign of it, bar a lot of scratches and grazes they said you'd got in the woods. Your clothes looked like it, too, I can tell you...But from the way you were housed here, and the way they spoke of you, I didn't think they'd dare raise a finger to you — not now. Whatever it was, a faint, or a fit or a trance, more like, you've put the wind up them proper, that you have."

"Yes, but how, exactly? Did they tell you?"

"Oh aye, they told me, the ones that could speak of it. Berric — he's the one that gave you the torch — he told me. He told me they'd all been set to cut your throat, those dirty old priests, and it seems if the King hadn't been at his wits' end, and impressed by your mother and the way the pair of you didn't seem frightened of them, he never would have waited. Oh, I heard all about it, don't worry. Berric said he'd not have given two pennies for your life back there in the hall when your mother told her story." He shot me a look. "All that rigmarole about the devil in the dark. Letting you in for this. What possessed her?"

"She thought it would help. I suppose she thought that the King had found out who my father was, and had had us dragged here to see if we had news of his plans. That's what I thought myself." I spoke thoughtfully. "And there was something else...When a place is full of superstition and fear, you get to feel it. I tell you, it was breathing goose-pimples all over me. She must have felt it, too. You might almost say she took the same line as I did, trying to face magic with magic. So she told the old tale about my being got by an incubus, with a few extra flourishes to carry it across." I grinned at him. "She did it well. I could have believed it myself if I hadn't known otherwise. But never mind, go on. I want to know what happened in the cavern. Do you mean I talked some kind of sense?"

"Well now, I didn't mean that, exactly. Couldn't make head or tail of what Berric told me. He swore he had it nearly word for word — it seems he has ambitions to be a singer or something...Well, what he said, you just stood there staring at the water running down the walls and then you started to talk, quite ordinary to start with, to the King, as if you was explaining how the shaft had been driven into the hill and the veins mined, but then the old priest — Maugan, isn't it? — started to shout 'This is fools' talk,' or something, when suddenly you lets out a yell that fair froze the balls on them — Berric's expression, not mine, he's not used to gentlemen's service — and your eyes turned up white and you put your hands up as if you was pulling the stars out of their sockets — Berric again, he ought to be a poet — and started to prophesy."

"Yes?"

"That's what they all say. All wrapped up, it was, with eagles and wolves and lions and boars and as many other beasts as they've ever had in the arena and a few more besides, dragons and such — and going hundreds of years forward, which is safe enough, Dia knows, but Berric said it sounded, the lot of it, as true as a trumpet, and as if you'd have given odds on it with your last penny."

"I may have to," I said dryly, "if I said anything about Vortigern or my father."

"Which you did," said Cadal.

"Well, I'd better know; I'm going to have to stick by it."

"It was all dressed up, like poets' stuff, red dragons and white dragons fighting and laying the place waste, showers of blood, all that kind of thing. But it seems you gave them chapter and verse for everything that's going to happen; the white dragon of the Saxons and the red dragon of Ambrosius fighting it out, the red dragon looking not so clever to begin with, but winning in the end. Yes. Then a bear coming out ofCornwall to sweep the field clear."

"A bear? You mean the Boar, surely; that'sCornwall 's badge. Hm. Then he may be still for my father after all..."

"Berric said a bear. Artos was the word...he took notice, because he wondered about it himself. But you were clear about it, he says. Artos, you called him, Arthur some name like that. You mean to tell me you don't remember a word of it?"

"Not a word."

"Well look, now, I can't remember any more, but if they start coming at you about it, you could find some way of getting them to tell you everything you said. It's quite the thing, isn't it, for prophets not to know what they were talking about? Oracles and that?"

"I believe so."

"All I mean is, if you've finished eating, and if you really feel all right, perhaps you'd better get up and dress. They're all waiting for you out there.'"

"What for? For the god's sake, they don't want more advice? Are they moving the site of the tower?"

"No. They're doing what you told them to do."

"What's that?"

"Draining the pool by a conduit. They've been working all night and day getting pumps rigged up to get the water out through the adit."

"But why? That won't make the tower any safer. In fact it might bring the whole top of the crag in. Yes, I'm finished, take it away." I pushed the tray into his hands, and threw back the bed-covers. "Cadal, are you trying to tell me I said this in my — delirium?"

"Aye. You told them to drain the pool, and at the bottom they'd find the beasts that were bringing the King's Fort down. Dragons, you said, red and white."

I sat on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands. "I remember something now...something I saw. Yes, that must be it...I did see something under the water, probably just a rock, dragon-shaped...And I remember starting to say something to the King about draining the pool...But I didn't tell them to drain it, I was saying 'Even if you drained the pool, it wouldn't help you.' At least, that's what I started to say." I dropped my hands and looked up. "You mean they're actually draining the place, thinking some water-beast is there underneath, rocking the foundations?"

"That's what you told them, Berric says."

"Berric's a poet, he's dressing it up."

"Maybe. But they're out there at it now, and the pumps have been working full blast for hours. The King's there, waiting for you.'"

I sat silent. He threw me a doubtful look, then took the tray out, and came back with towels and a silver basin of steaming water. While I washed he busied himself over a chest at the far side of the room, lifting clothes from it and shaking out the folds, while he talked over his shoulder. "You don't look worried. If they do drain that pool to the bottom, and there's nothing there —"

"There will be something there. Don't ask me what, I don't know, but if I said so...It's true, you know.

The things I see this way are true. I have the Sight."

His brows shot up. "You think you're telling me news? Haven't you scared the toe-nails off me a score of times with what you say and the things you see that no one else can see?"

"You used to be scared of me, didn't you, Cadal?"

"In a way. But I'm not scared now, and I've no intention of being scared. Someone's got to look after the devil himself, as long as he wears clothes and needs food and drink. Now if you're done, young master, we'll see if these things fit you that the King sent for you."

"The King sent them?"

"Aye. Looks like the sort of stuff they think a magician ought to wear."

I went over to look. "Not long white robes with stars and moons on them, and a staff with curled snakes? Oh, really, Cadal —"

"Well, your own stuff's ruined, you've got to wear something. Come on, you'll look kind of fancy in these, and it seems to me you ought to try and impress them, the spot you're in."

I laughed. "You may be right. Let me see them. Hm, no, not the white, I'm not competing with Maugan's coven. Something dark, I think, and the black cloak. Yes, that'll do. And I'll wear the dragon brooch.'"

"I hope you do right to be so sure of yourself." Then he hesitated. "Look, I know it's all wine and worship now, but maybe we ought to make a break for it straight away, not wait to see which way the dice fall? I could steal a couple of horses —"

" 'Make a break for it'? Am I still a prisoner, then?"

"There's guards all round. Looking after you this time, not holding on to you, but by the dog, it comes to the same thing." He glanced at the window. "It'll be dusk before long. Look, I could spin some tale out there to keep them quiet, and maybe you could pretend to go to sleep again till dark —"

"No. I must stay. If I can get Vortigern to listen to me. Let me think, Cadal. You saw Marric the night we were taken. That means the news is on its way to my father, and if I'm any judge, he will move straight away. So far, lucky; the sooner the better; if he can catch Vortigern here in the West before he gets a chance to join again with Hengist... "I thought for a moment. "Now, the ship was due to sail three — no, four days ago —"

"It sailed before you left Maridunum," he said briefly.

"What?"

He smiled at my expression. "Well, what did you expect? The Count's own son and his lady hauled off like that — nobody knew for sure why, but there were stories going about, and even Marric saw the sense in getting straight back to Ambrosius with that tale. The ship sailed with the tide the same dawn; she'd be out of the estuary before you'd hardly ridden out of town."

I stood very still. I remember that he busied himself around me, draping the black cloak, surreptitiously pulling a fold to cover the dragon brooch that pinned it.

Then I drew a long breath. "That's all I needed to know. Now I know what to do. 'The King's prophet,' did you say? They speak truer than they know. What the King's prophet must do now is to take the heart out of these Saxon-loving vermin, and drive Vortigern out of this tight corner of Wales into some place where Ambrosius can smoke him out quickly and destroy him."

"You think you can do this?"

"I know I can."

"Then I hope you know how to get us both out of here before they find out whose side you're on!"

"Why not? As soon as I know where Vortigern is bound for, we'll take the news to my father ourselves."

I settled the cloak to my shoulders, and grinned at him. "So steal those horses, Cadal, and have them waiting down by the stream. There's a tree fallen clear across the water; you can't miss the place; wait there where there's cover. I'll come. But first I must go and help Vortigern uncover the dragons."

I made for the door, but he got there ahead of me, and paused with his hand on the latch. His eyes were scared. "You really mean leave you on your own in the middle of that wolfpack?"

"I'm not on my own. Remember that; and if you can't trust me, trust what is in me. I have learned to. I've learned that the god comes when he will, and how he will, rending your flesh to get into you, and when he has done, tearing himself free as violently as he came. Afterwards — now — one feels light and hollow and like an angel flying...No, they can do nothing to me, Cadal. Don't be afraid. I have the power."

"They killed Galapas."

"Some day they may kill me," I said. "But not today. Open the door."

12

They were all gathered at the foot of the crag where the workmen's track met the marshy level of the corrie. I was still guarded, but this time — at least in appearance — it was a guard of honour. Four uniformed men, with their swords safely sheathed, escorted me to the King.

They had laid duckboards down on the marshy ground to make a platform, and set a chair for the King.

Someone had rigged a windbreak of woven saplings and brushwood on three sides, roofed it, and draped the lot with worked rugs and dyed skins. Vortigern sat there, chin on fist, silent. There was no sign of his Queen, or indeed of any of the women. The priests stood near him, but they kept back and did not speak. His captains flanked his chair.

The sun was setting behind the improvised pavilion in a splash of scarlet. It must have rained again that day; the grass was sodden, every blade heavy with drops. The familiar slate-grey clouds furled and unfurled slowly across the sunset. As I was led forward, they were lighting the torches. These looked small and dull against the sunset, more smoke than flame, dragged and flattened by the gusty breeze.

I waited at the foot of the platform. The King's eyes looked me up and down, but he said nothing. He was still reserving judgement. And why not, I thought. The kind of thing I seemed to have produced must be fairly familiar to him. Now he waited for proof of at least some part of my prophecy. If it was not forthcoming, this was still the time and the place to spill my blood. I wondered how the wind blew from Less Britain. The stream was a full three hundred paces off, dark under its oaks and willows.

Vortigern signed to me to take my place on the platform beside him, and I mounted it to stand at his right, on the opposite side from the priests. One or two of the officers moved aside from me; their faces were wooden, and they did not look at me, but I saw the crossed fingers, and thought: Dragon or no dragon, I can manage these. Then I felt eyes on me, and looked round. It was the greybeard. He was gazing fixedly at the brooch on my shoulder where my cloak had blown back from it. As I turned, his eyes lifted to mine. I saw his widen, then his hand crept to his side, not to make the sign, but to loosen his sword in its scabbard. I looked away. No one spoke.

It was an uncomfortable vigil. As the sun sank lower the chilly spring wind freshened, fretting at the hangings. Where puddles lay in the reedy ground the water rippled and splashed under the wind. Cold draughts knifed up between the duckboards. I could hear a curlew whistling somewhere up in the darkening sky, then it slanted down, bubbling like a waterfall, into silence. Above us the King's banner fluttered and snapped in the wind. The shadow of the pavilion lengthened on the soaked field.

From where we waited, the only sign of activity was some coming and going in the trees. The last rays of the sun, level and red, shone full on the west face of King's Fort, lighting up the head of the crag crowned with the wrecked wall. No workmen were visible there; they must all be in the cave and the adit. Relays of boys ran across and back with reports of progress. The pumps were working well and gaining on the water; the level had sunk two spans in the last half hour...If my lord King would have patience, the pumps had jammed, but the engineers were working on them and meanwhile the men had rigged a windlass and were passing buckets...All was well again, the pumps were going now and the level was dropping sharply...You could see the bottom, they thought...

It was two full hours of chill, numb waiting, and it was almost dark, before lights came down the track and with them the crowd of workmen. They came fast but deliberately, not like frightened men, and even before they came close enough to be clearly seen, I knew what they had found. Their leaders halted a yard from the platform, and as the others came crowding up I felt my guards move closer.

There were soldiers with the workmen. Their captain stepped forward, saluting.

"The pool is empty?" asked Vortigern.

"Yes, sir."

"And what lies beneath it?"

The officer paused. He should have been a bard. He need not have paused to gather eyes: they were all on him already.

A gust of wind, sudden and stronger than before, tore his cloak to one side with a crack like a whip, and rocked the frame of the pavilion. A bird fled overhead, tumbling along the wind. Not a merlin: not tonight.

Only a rook, scudding late home.

"There is nothing beneath the pool, sir." His voice was neutral, carefully official, but I heard a mutter go through the crowd like another surge of wind. Maugan was craning forward, his eyes bright as a vulture's, but I could see he did not dare to speak until he saw which way the King's mind was bending. Vortigern leaned forward.

"You are certain of this? You drained it to the bottom?"

"Indeed, sir." He signed to the men beside him, and three or four of them stepped forward to tip a clutter of objects in front of the platform. A broken mattock, eaten with rust, some flint axe-heads older than any Roman working, a belt buckle, a knife with its blade eaten to nothing, a short length of chain, a metal whip-stock, some other objects impossible to identify, and a few shards of cooking pots.

The officer showed a hand, palm up. "When I said 'nothing,' sir, I meant only what you might expect.

These. And we got as near to the bottom as made no difference; you could see down to the rock and the mud, but we dredged the last bucket up, for good measure. The foreman will bear me out."

The foreman stepped forward then, and I saw he had a full bucket in his hand, the water slopping over the brim.

"Sir, it's true, there's naught there. You could see for yourself if you came up, sir, right to the bottom. But better not try it, the tunnel's awash with mud now, and not fit. But I brought the last pailful out, for you to see yourself."

With the word, he tipped the full bucket out, deluging the already sodden ground, and the water sloshed down to fill the puddle round the base of the royal standard. With the mud that had lain in the bottom came a few broken fragments of stone, and a silver coin.

The King turned then to look at me. It must be a measure of what had happened in the cavern yesterday that the priests still kept silent, and the King was clearly waiting, not for an excuse, but an explanation.

God knows I had had plenty of time to think, all through that long, cold silent vigil, but I knew that thinking would not help me. If he was with me, he would come now. I looked down at the puddles where the last red light of sunset lay like blood. I looked up across the crag where stars could be seen already stabbing bright in the clear east. Another gust of wind was coming; I could hear it tearing the tops of the oaks where Cadal would be waiting.

"Well?" said Vortigern.

I took a step forward to the edge of the platform. I felt empty still, but somehow I would have to speak.

As I moved, the gust struck the pavilion, sharp as a blow. There came a crack, a flurry of sound like hounds worrying a deer, and a cry from someone, bitten short. Above our heads the King's banner whipped streaming out, then, caught in its ropes, bellied like a sail holding the full weight of the wind. The shaft, jerked sharply to and fro in soft ground loosened further by the thrown bucketful of water, tore suddenly free of the grabbing hands, to whirl over and down. It slapped flat on the sodden field at the King's feet.

The wind fled past, and in its wake was a lull. The banner lay flat, held heavy with water. The white dragon on a green field. As we watched, it sagged slowly into a pool, and the water washed over it.

Some last faint ray from the sunset bloodied the water. Someone said fearfully, "An omen," and another voice, loudly, "Great Thor, the Dragon is down!" Others began to shout. The standard-bearer, his face ashen, was already stooping, but I jumped off the platform in front of them all and threw up my arms.

"Can any doubt the god has spoken? Look up from the ground, and see where he speaks again!"

Across the dark east, burning white hot with a trail like a young comet, went a shooting star, the star men call the firedrake or dragon of fire.

"There it runs!" I shouted. "There it runs! The Red Dragon of the West! I tell you, King Vortigern, waste no more time here with these ignorant fools who babble of blood sacrifice and build a wall of stone for you, a foot a day! What wall will keep out the Dragon? I, Merlin, tell you, send these priests away and gather your captains round you, and get you away from the hills ofWales to your own country. King's Fort is not for you. You have seen the Red Dragon come tonight, and the White Dragon lie beneath him.

And by God, you have seen the truth! Take warning! Strike your tents now, and go to your own country, and watch your borders lest the Dragon follow you and burn you out! You brought me here to speak, and I have spoken. I tell you, the Dragon is here!"

The king was on his feet, and men were shouting. I pulled the black cloak round me, and without hurrying turned away through the crowd of workmen and soldiers that milled round the foot of the platform. They did not try to stop me. They would as soon, I suppose, have touched a poisonous snake.

Behind me, through the hubbub, I heard Maugan's voice and thought for a moment they were coming after me, but then men crowded off the platform, and began thrusting their way through the mob of workmen, on their way back to the encampment. Torches tossed. Someone dragged the sodden standard up and I saw it rocking and dripping where presumably his captains were clearing a path for the King. I drew the black cloak closer and slipped into the shadows at the edge of the crowd. Presently, unseen, I was able to step round behind the pavilion.

The oaks were three hundred paces away across the dark field. Under them the stream ran loud over smooth stones.

Cadal's voice said, low and urgent: "This way." A hoof sparked on stone. "I got you a quiet one," he said, and put a hand under my foot to throw me into the saddle.

I laughed a little. "I could ride the firedrake itself tonight. You saw it?"

"Aye, my lord. And I saw you, and heard you, too."

"Cadal, you swore you'd never be afraid of me. It was only a shooting star."

"But it came when it came."

"Yes. And now we'd better go while we can go. Timing is all that matters, Cadal."

"You shouldn't laugh at it, master Merlin."

"By the god," I said, "I'm not laughing."

The horses pushed out from under the dripping trees and went at a swift canter across the ridge. To our right a wooded hill blocked out the west. Ahead was the narrow neck of valley between hill and river.

"Will they come after you?"

"I doubt it."

But as we kicked the beasts to a gallop between ridge and river a horseman loomed, and our horses swerved and shied.

Cadal's beast jumped forward under the spur. Iron rasped. A voice, vaguely familiar, said clearly: "Put up. Friend."

The horses stamped and blew. I saw Cadal's hand on the other's rein. He sat quietly.

"Whose friend?"

"Ambrosius'."

I said: "Wait, Cadal, it's the greybeard. Your name sir? And your business with me?"

He cleared his throat harshly. "Gorlois is my name, of Cornwall ."

I saw Cadal's movement of surprise, and heard the bits jingle. He still had hold of the other's rein, and the drawn dagger gleamed. The old warrior sat unmoving. There was no sound of following hoofs.

I said slowly: "Then, sir, I should rather ask you what your business is with Vortigern?"

"The same as yours, Merlin Ambrosius." I saw his teeth gleam in his beard. "I came north to see for myself, and to send word back to him. The West has waited long enough, and the time will be ripe, come spring. But you came early. I could have saved myself the pains, it seems."

"You came alone?"

He gave a short, hard laugh, like a dog barking. "To Vortigern? Hardly. My men will follow. But I had to catch you. I want news." Then, harshly: "God's grief, man, do you doubt me? I came alone to you."

"No, sir. Let him go, Cadal. My lord, if you want to talk to me, you'll have to do it on the move. We should go, and quickly."

"Willingly." We set the horses in motion. As they struck into a gallop I said over my shoulder: "You guessed when you saw the brooch?"

"Before that. You have a look of him, Merlin Ambrosius." I heard him laugh again, deep in his throat.

"And by God, there are times when you have a look of your devil-sire as well! Steady now, we're nearly at the ford. It'll be deep. They say wizards can't cross water?"

I laughed. "I'm always sick at sea, but I can manage this." The horses plunged across the ford unhindered, and took the next slope at a gallop. Then we were on the paved road, plain to see in the flying starlight, which leads straight across the high ground to the south.

We rode all night, with no pursuit. Three days later, in the early morning, Ambrosius came to land.