The Crystal Cave

1

Men said afterwards that the great dragon star which blazed at Ambrosius' death, and from which Uther took the royal name of Pendragon, was a baleful herald for the new reign. And indeed, at the start, everything seemed to be against Uther. It was as if the falling of Ambrosius' star was the signal for his old enemies to rise again and crowd in from the darkened edges of the land to destroy his successor. Octa, Hengist's son, and Eosa his kinsman, counting themselves freed by Ambrosius' death from their promise to stay north of his borders, called together what force they could still muster for attack, and as soon as the call went out, every disaffected element rose to it. Warriors greedy for land and plunder crowded over afresh from Germany, the remnants of Pascentius' Saxons joined with Gilloman's fleeing Irish, and with whatever British thought themselves passed over by the new King. Within a few weeks of Ambrosius' death Octa, with a large army, was scouring the north like a wolf, and before the new King could come up with him had destroyed cities and fortresses clear down from the Wall of Hadrian to York. At York, Ambrosius' strong city, he found the walls in good repair, the gates shut, and men ready to defend themselves. He dragged up what siege engines he had, and settled down to wait.

He must have known that Uther would catch up with him there, but his numbers were such that he showed no fear of the British. Afterwards they reckoned he had thirty thousand men. Be that as it may, when Uther came up to raise the siege with every man he could muster, the Saxons outnumbered the British by more than two to one. It was a bloody engagement, and a disastrous one. I think myself that Ambrosius' death had shaken the kingdom; for all Uther's brilliant reputation as a soldier, he was untried as supreme commander, and it was already known that he had not his brother's calmness and judgement in the face of odds. What he lacked in wisdom, he made up in bravery, but even that would not defeat the odds that came against him that day at York. The British broke and ran, and were saved only by the coming of dusk, which at that time of year fell early. Uther — with Gorlois of Cornwall, his second in command — managed to rally his remaining force near the top of the small hill called Damen. This was steep, and offered cover of a kind, cliffs and caves and thick hazelwoods, but this could only be a temporary refuge from the Saxon host which triumphantly circled the base of the hill, waiting for morning.

It was a desperate position for the British, and called for desperate measures. Uther, grimly encamped in a cave, called his weary captains together while the men snatched what rest they could, and with them thrashed out a plan for outwitting the huge host waiting for them at the foot of the hill. At first nobody had much idea beyond the need to escape, but someone — I heard later that it was Gorlois — pointed out that to retreat further was merely to postpone defeat and the destruction of the new kingdom: if escape was possible, then so was attack, and this seemed feasible if the British did not wait until daylight, but used what element of surprise there was in attacking downhill out of the dark and long before the enemy expected it. Simple tactics, indeed, that the Saxons might have expected from men so desperately trapped, but Saxons are stupid fighters, and as I have said before, lacking in discipline. It was almost certain that they would expect no move till dawn, and that they slept soundly where they had lain down that night, confident of victory, and with any luck three parts drunken on the stores they had taken.

To do the Saxons justice, Octa had posted scouts, and these were wide enough awake. But Gorlois' plan worked, helped by a little mist which crept before dawn up from the low ground and surrounded the base of the hill like a veil. Through this, twice as large as life, and in numbers altogether deceiving, the British came in a silent, stabbing rush at the first moment when there was light enough to see one's way across the rocks. Those Saxon outposts who were not cut down in silence, gave the alarm, but too late.

Warriors rolled over, cursing, snatching their weapons up from where they lay beside them, but the British, silent no longer, swept yelling across the half-sleeping host, and cut it to pieces. It was finished before noon, and Octa and Eosa taken prisoner. Before winter, with the north swept clear of Saxons, and the burned longboats smoking quietly on the northern beaches, Uther was back in London with his prisoners behind bars, making ready for his coronation the following spring.

His battle with the Saxons, his near defeat and subsequent sharp, brilliant victory, was all that the reign needed. Men forgot the bale of Ambrosius' death, and talked of the new King like a sun rising. His name was on everyone's lips, from the nobles and warriors who crowded round him for gifts and honours, to the workmen building his palaces, and the ladies of his court flaunting new dresses like a field of poppies in a colour called Pendragon Red.

I saw him only once during these first weeks. I was at Amesbury still, superintending the work of raising the Giants' Dance. Tremorinus was in the north, but I had a good team, and after their experience with the king-stone at Killare, the men were eager to tackle the massive stones of the Dance. For the raising of the uprights, once we had aligned the stones, dug the pits and sunk the guides, there was nothing that could not be done with rope and shear-legs and plumb-line. It was with the great lintels that the difficulty lay, but the miracle of the building of the Dance had been done countless years before, by the old craftsmen who had shaped those gigantic stones to fit as surely one into the other as wood dovetailed by a master carpenter. We had only to find means to lift them. It was this which had exercised me all those years, since I first saw the capped stones in Less Britain, and began my calculations. Nor had I forgotten what I had learned from the songs. In the end I had designed a wooden crib of a kind which a modern engineer might have dismissed as primitive, but which — as the singer had been my witness — had done the task before, and would again. It was a slow business, but it worked. And I suppose it was a marvellous enough sight to see those vast blocks rising, stage by stage, and settling finally into their beds as smoothly as if they had been made of tallow. It took two hundred men to each stone as it was moved, drilled teams who worked by numbers and who kept up their rhythms, as rowers do, by music. The rhythms of the movement were of course laid down by the work, and the tunes were old tunes that I remembered from my childhood; my nurse had sung them to me, but she never sang the words that the men sometimes set to them. These tended to be lively, indecent, and intensely personal, and mostly concerning those in high places. Neither Uther nor I was spared, though the songs were never sung deliberately in my hearing. Moreover, when outsiders were present, the words were either correct or indistinguishable. I heard it said, long afterwards, that I moved the stones of the Dance with magic and with music. I suppose you might say that both are true. I have thought, since, that this must have been how the story started that Phoebus Apollo built with music the walls of Troy. But the magic and the music that moved the Giants' Dance, I shared with the blind singer of Kerrec.

Towards the middle of November the frosts were sharp, and the work was finished. The last camp fire was put out, and the last wagon-train of men and materials rolled away south back to Sarum. Cadal had gone ahead of me into Amesbury. I lingered, holding my fidgeting horse, until the wagons had rolled out of sight over the edge of the plain and I was alone.

The sky hung over the silent plain like a pewter bowl. It was still early in the day, and the grass was white with frost. The thin winter sun painted long shadows from the linked stones. I remembered the standing stone, and the white frost, the bull and the blood and the smiling young god with the fair hair. I looked down at the stone. They had buried him, I knew, with his sword in his hand. I said to him: "We shall come back, both of us, at the winter solstice." Then I left him and mounted my horse, and rode towards Amesbury.

2

News came of Uther in December; he had left London and ridden to Winchester for Christmas. I sent a message, got no reply, and rode out once more with Cadal to where the Giants' Dance stood frostbound and lonely in the center of the plain. It was the twentieth of December.

In a fold of the ground just beyond the Dance we tethered our horses and lit a fire. I had been afraid that the night might be cloudy, but it was crisp and clear, with the stars out in their swarms, like motes in moonlight.

"Get some sleep, if you can in this cold," said Cadal. "I'll wake you before dawn. What makes you think he'll come?" Then, when I made no reply: "Well, you're the magician, you should know. Here, just in case your magic won't put you to sleep, you'd better put the extra cloak on. I'll wake you in time, so don't fret yourself."

I obeyed him, rolling myself in the double thickness of wool, and lying near the fire with my head on my saddle. I dozed rather than slept, conscious of the small noises of the night surrounded by the immense stillness of that plain; the rustle and crack of the fire, the sound of Cadal putting new wood on it, the steady tearing sound of the horses grazing at hand, the cry of a hunting owl in the air. And then, not long before dawn, the sound I had been expecting; the steady beat of the earth beneath my head which meant the approach of horses.

I sat up. Cadal, blear-eyed, spoke morosely. "You've an hour yet, I reckon."

"Never mind. I've slept. Put your ear to the ground, and tell me what you hear."

He leaned down, listened for perhaps five heartbeats, then was on his feet and making for our horses.

Men reacted quickly in those days to the sound of horsemen in the night. I checked him. "It's all right. Uther. How many horses do you reckon?"

"Twenty, perhaps thirty. Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. Now get the horses saddled and stay with them. I'm going in."

It was the hour between night and morning when the air is still. They were coming at a gallop. It seemed that the whole of the frozen plain beat with the sound. The moon had gone. I waited beside the stone.

He left the troop some little way off, and rode forward with only one companion. I did not think they had yet seen me, though they must have seen the flicker of Cadal's dying fire in the hollow. The night had been bright enough with starlight, so they had been riding without torches, and their night sight was good; the two of them came on at a fast canter straight for the outer circle of the Dance, and at first I thought they would ride straight in. But the horses pulled up short with a crunch and slither of frost, and the King swung from the saddle. I heard the jingle as he threw the reins to his companion. "Keep him moving," I heard him say, and then he approached, a swift striding shadow through the enormous shadows of the Dance.

"Merlin?"

"My lord?"

"You choose your times strangely. Did it have to be the middle of the night?" He sounded wide awake and no more gracious than usual. But he had come.

I said: "You wanted to see what I have done here, and tonight is the night when I can show you. I am grateful that you came."

"Show me what? A vision? Is this another of your dreams? I warn you —"

"No. There's nothing of that here, not now. But there is something I wanted you to see which can only be seen tonight. For that, I'm afraid we shall have to wait a little while."

"Long? It's cold."

"Not so long, my lord. Till dawn."

He was standing the other side of the king-stone from me, and in the faint starlight I saw him looking down at it, with his head bent and a hand stroking his chin. "The first time you stood beside this stone in the night, men say you saw visions. Now they tell me inWinchester that as he lay dying he spoke to you as if you were there in his bedchamber, standing at the foot of the bed. Is this true?"

"Yes."

His head came up sharply. "You say you knew on Killare that my brother was dying, yet you said nothing to me?"

"It would have served no purpose. You could not have returned any sooner for knowing that he lay sick.

As it was, you journeyed with a quiet mind, and at Caerleon, when he died, I told you."

"By the gods, Merlin, it was not for you to judge whether to speak or not! You are not King. You should have told me."

"You were not King either, Uther Pendragon. I did as he bade me."

I saw him make a quick movement, then he stilled himself. "That is easy to say." But from his voice I knew that he believed me, and was in awe of me and of the place. "And now that we are here, and waiting for the dawn, and whatever it is you have to show me, I think one or two things must be made clear between us. You cannot serve me as you served my brother. You must know that. I want none of your prophecies. My brother was wrong when he said that we would work together for Britain. Our stars will not conjoin. I admit I judged you too harshly, there in Brittany and at Killare; for that I am sorry, but now it is too late. We walk different ways."

"Yes. I know."

I said it without any particular expression, simply agreeing, and was surprised when he laughed, softly, to himself. A hand, not unfriendly, dropped on my shoulder. "Then we understand one another. I had not thought it would be so easy. If you knew how refreshing that is after the weeks I've had of men suing for help, men crawling for mercy, men begging for favours ... And now the only man in the kingdom with any real claim on me will go his own way, and let me go mine?"

"Of course. Our paths will still cross, but not yet. And then we will deal together, whether we will or no."

"We shall see. You have power, I admit it, but what use is that to me? I don't need priests." His voice was brisk and friendly, as if he were willing away the strangeness of the night. He was rooted to earth, was Uther. Ambrosius would have understood what I was saying, but Uther was back on the human trail like a dog after blood. "It seems you have served me well enough already, at Killare, and here with the Hanging Stones. You deserve something of me, if only for this."

"Where I can be, I shall be at your service. If you want me, you know where to find me."

"Not at my court?"

"No, at Maridunum. It's my home."

"Ah, yes, the famous cave. You deserve a little more of me than that, I think."

"There is nothing that I want," I said.

There was a little more light now. I saw him slant a look at me. "I have spoken to you tonight as I have spoken to no man before. Do you hold the past against me, Merlin the bastard?"

"I hold nothing against you, my lord."

"Nothing?"

"A girl in Caerleon. You could call her nothing."

I saw him stare, then smile. "Which time?"

"It doesn't matter. You'll have forgotten, anyway."

"By the dog, I misjudged you." He spoke with the nearest to warmth I had yet heard from him. If he knew, I thought, he would have laughed.

I said: "I tell you, it doesn't matter. It didn't then, and less than that now."

"You still haven't told me why you dragged me here at this time. Look at the sky; it's getting on for dawn — and not a moment too soon, the horses will be getting cold." He raised his head towards the east. "It should be a fine day. It will be interesting to see what sort of job you've made of this. I can tell you now, Tremorinus was insisting, right up to the time I got your message, that it couldn't be done. Prophet or no prophet, you have your uses, Merlin."

The light was growing, the dark slackening to let it through. I could see him more clearly now, standing with head up, his hand once more stroking his chin. I said: "It's as well you came by night, so that I knew your voice. I shouldn't have known you in daylight. You've grown a full beard."

"More kingly, eh? There was no time to do anything else on campaign. By the time we got to the Humber..." He started to tell me about it, talking, for the first time since I had known him, quite easily and naturally. It may have been that now I was, of all his subjects, the only one kin to him, and blood speaks to blood, they say. He talked about the campaign in the north, the fighting, the smoking destruction the Saxons had left behind them. "And now we spend Christmas at Winchester. I shall be crowned in London in the spring, and already —"

"Wait." I had not meant to interrupt him quite so peremptorily, but things were pressing on me, the weight of the sky, the shooting light. There was no time to search for the words that one could use to a king. I said quickly: "It's coming now. Stand with me at the foot of the stone."

I moved a pace from him and stood at the foot of the long king-stone, facing the bursting east. I had no eyes for Uther. I heard him draw breath as if in anger, then he checked himself and turned with a glitter of jewels and flash of mail to stand beside me. At our feet stretched the stone.

In the east night slackened, drew back like a veil, and the sun came up. Straight as a thrown torch, or an arrow of fire, light pierced through the grey air and laid a line clear from the horizon to the king-stone at our feet. For perhaps twenty heartbeats the huge sentinel trilithon before us stood black and stark, framing the winter blaze. Then the sun lifted over the horizon so quickly that you could see the shadow of the linked circle move into its long ellipse, to blur and fade almost immediately into the wide light of a winter's dawn.

I glanced at the King. His eyes, wide and blank, were on the stone at his feet. I could not read his thoughts. Then he lifted his head and looked away from me at the outer circle where the great stones stood locked across the light. He took a slow pace away from me and turned on his heel, taking in the full circle of the Hanging Stones. I saw that the new beard was reddish and curled; he wore his hair longer, and a gold circle flashed on his helm. His eyes were blue as woodsmoke in the fresh light.

They met mine at last. "No wonder you smile. It's very impressive."

"That's with relief," I said. "The mathematics of this have kept me awake for weeks."

"Tremorinus told me." He gave me a slow, measuring look. "He also told me what you had said."

"What I had said?"

"Yes. 'I will deck his grave with nothing less than the light itself.'"

I said nothing.

He said slowly: "I told you I knew nothing of prophets or priests. I am only a soldier, and I think like a soldier. But this — what you have done here — this is something I understand. Perhaps there is room for us both, after all. I told you I spend Christmas at Winchester. Will you ride back with me?"

He had asked me, not commanded me. We were speaking across the stone. It was the beginning of something, but something I had not yet been shown. I shook my head. "In the spring, perhaps. I should like to see the crowning. Be sure that when you need me I shall be there. But now I must go home."

"To your hole in the ground? Well, if it's what you want...Your wants are few enough, God knows. Is there nothing you would ask of me?" He gestured with his hand to the silent circle. "Men will speak poorly of a King who does not reward you for this."

"I have been rewarded."

"At Maridunum, now. Your grandfather's house would be more suitable for you. Will you take it?"

I shook my head. "I don't want a house. But I would take the hill."

"Then take it. They tell me men call it Merlin's Hill already. And now it's full daylight, and the horses will be cold. If you had ever been a soldier, Merlin, you would know that there is one thing more important even than the graves of kings: not to keep the horses standing."

He clapped me on the shoulder again, turned with a swirl of the scarlet cloak, and strode to his waiting horse. I went to find Cadal.

3

When Easter came I still had no mind to leave Bryn Myrddin (Uther, true to his word, had given me the hill where the cave stood, and people already associated its name with me, rather than with the god, calling it Merlin's Hill) but a message came from the King, bidding me to London. This time it was a command, not a request, and so urgent that the King had sent an escort, to avoid any delay I might have incurred in waiting for company.

It was still not safe in those days to ride abroad in parties smaller than a dozen or more, and one rode armed and warily. Men who could not afford their own escort waited until a party was gathered, and merchants even joined together to pay guards to ride with them. The wilder parts of the land were still full of refugees from Octa's army, with Irishmen who had been unable to get a passage home, and a few stray Saxons trying miserably to disguise their fair skins, and unmercifully hunted down when they failed.

These haunted the edges of the farms, skulking in the hills and moors and wild places, making sudden savage forays in search of food, and watching the roads for any solitary or ill-armed traveller, however shabby. Anyone with cloak or sandals was a rich man and worth despoiling.

None of this would have deterred me from riding alone with Cadal from Maridunum to London. No outlaw or thief would have faced a look from me, let alone risked a curse. Since events at Dinas Brenin, Killare, and Amesbury my fame had spread, growing in song and story until I hardly recognized my own deeds. Dinas Brenin had also been renamed; it had become Dinas Emrys, in compliment to me as much as to commemorate Ambrosius' landing, and the strong-point he had successfully built there. I lived, too, as well as I ever had in my grandfather's palace or in Ambrosius' house. Offerings of food and wine were left daily below the cave, and the poor who had nothing else to bring me in return for the medicines I gave them, brought fuel, or straw for the horses' bedding, or their labour for building jobs or making simple furniture. So winter had passed in comfort and peace, until on a sharp day in early March Uther's messenger, having left the escort in the town, came riding up the valley.

It was the first dry day after more than two weeks of rain and sleety wind, and I had gone up over the hill above the cave to look for the first growing plants and simples. I paused at the edge of a clump of pines to watch the solitary horseman cantering up the hill. Cadal must have heard the hoofbeats; I saw him, small below me, come out of the cave and greet the man, then I saw his pointing arm indicating which way I had gone. The messenger hardly paused. He turned his beast uphill, struck his spurs in, and came after me.

He pulled up a few paces away, swung stiffly out of the saddle, made the sign, and approached me.

He was a brown-haired young man of about my own age, whose face was vaguely familiar. I thought I must have seen him around Uther's train somewhere. He was splashed with mud to the eyebrows, and where he was not muddy his face was white with fatigue. He must have got a new horse in Maridunum for the last stage, for the animal was fresh, and restive with it, and I saw the young man wince as it threw its head up and dragged at the reins.

"My lord Merlin. I bring you greetings from the King, in London."

"I am honoured," I said formally.

"He requests your presence at the feast of his coronation. He has sent you an escort, my lord. They are in the town, resting their horses."

"Did you say 'requests'?"

"I should have said 'commands,' my lord. He told me I must bring you back immediately."

"This was all the message?"

"He told me nothing more, my lord. Only that you must attend him immediately inLondon ."

"Then of course I shall come. Tomorrow morning, when you have rested the horses?"

"Today, my lord. Now."

It was a pity that Uther's arrogant command was delivered in a slightly apologetic way. I regarded him.

"You have come straight to me?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Without resting?"

"Yes."

"How long has it taken you?"

"Four days, my lord. This is a fresh horse. I am ready to go back today." Here the animal jerked its head again, and I saw him wince.

"Are you hurt?"

"Nothing to speak of. I took a fall yesterday and hurt my wrist. It's my right wrist, not my bridle hand."

"No, only your dagger hand. Go down to the cave and tell my servant what you have told me, and say he is to give you food and drink. When I come down I shall see to your wrist."

He hesitated. "My lord, the King was urgent. This is more than an invitation to watch the crowning."

"You will have to wait while my servant packs my things and saddles our horses. Also while I myself eat and drink. I can bind up your wrist in a few minutes. And while I am doing it you can give me the news from London, and tell me why the King commands me so urgently to the feast. Go down now; I shall come in a short while."

"But, sir —"

I said: "By the time Cadal has prepared food for the three of us I shall be with you. You cannot hurry me more than that. Now go."

He threw me a doubtful look, then went, slithering on foot down the wet hill-side and dragging the jibbing horse after him. I gathered my cloak round me against the wind, and walked past the end of the pine wood and out of sight of the cave.

I stood at the end of a rocky spur where the winds came freely down the valley and tore at my cloak.

Behind me the pines roared, and under the noise the bare blackthorns by Galapas' grave rattled in the wind. An early plover screamed in the grey air. I lifted my face to the sky and thought of Uther and London, and the command that had just come. But nothing was there except the sky and the pines and the wind in the blackthorns. I looked the other way, down towards Maridunum.

From this height I could see the whole town, tiny as a toy in the distance. The valley was sullen green in the March wind. The river curled, grey under the grey sky. A wagon was crossing the bridge. There was a point of colour where a standard flew over the fortress. A boat scudded down-river, its brown sails full of the wind. The hills, still in their winter purple, held the valley cupped as one might hold in one's palms a globe of glass...

The wind whipped water to my eyes, and the scene blurred. The crystal globe was cold in my hands. I gazed down into it. Small and perfect in the heart of the crystal lay the town with its bridge and moving river and the tiny, scudding ship. Round it the fields curved up and over, distorting in the curved crystal till fields, sky, river, clouds held the town with its scurrying people as leaves and sepals hold a bud before it breaks to flower. It seemed that the whole countryside, the whole of Wales, the whole of Britain could be held small and shining and safe between my hands, like something set in amber. I stared down at the land globed in crystal, and knew that this was what I had been born for. The time was here, and I must take it on trust.

The crystal globe melted out of my cupped hands, and was only a fistful of plants I had gathered, cold with rain. I let them fall, and put up the back of a hand to wipe the water from my eyes. The scene below me had changed; the wagon and the boat had gone; the town was still.

I went down to the cave to find Cadal busy with his cooking pots, and the young man already struggling with the saddles of our horses.

"Let that alone," I told him. "Cadal, is there hot water?"

"Plenty. Here's a start and a half, orders from the King.London , is it?" Cadal sounded pleased, and I didn't blame him. "We were due for a change, if you ask me. What is it, do you suppose? He" — jerking his head at the young man — "doesn't seem to know, or else he's not telling. Trouble, by the sound of it."

"Maybe. We'll soon find out. Here, you'd better dry this." I gave him my cloak, sat down by the fire, and called the young man to me. "Let me see that arm of yours now."

His wrist was blue with bruising, and swollen, and obviously hurt to the touch, but the bones were whole. While he washed I made a compress, then bound it on. He watched me half apprehensively, and tended to shy from my touch, and not only, I thought, with pain. Now that the mud was washed off and I could see him better, the feeling of familiarity persisted even more strongly. I eyed him over the bandages.

"I know you, don't I?"

"You wouldn't remember me, my lord. But I remember you. You were kind to me once."

I laughed. "Was it such a rare occasion? What's your name?"

"Ulfin."

"Ulfin? It has a familiar sound...Wait a moment. Yes, I have it. Belasius' boy?"

"Yes. You do remember me?"

"Perfectly. That night in the forest, when my pony went lame, and you had to lead him home. I suppose you were around underfoot most of the time, but you were about as conspicuous as a field mouse. That's the only time I remember. Is Belasius over here for the coronation?"

"He's dead."

Something in his tone made me cock an eye at him over the bandaged wrist. "You hated him as much as that? No, don't answer, I guessed as much back there, young as I was. Well, I shan't ask why. The gods know I didn't love him myself, and I wasn't his slave. What happened to him?"

"He died of a fever, my lord."

"And you managed to survive him? I seem to remember something about an old and barbarous custom—"

"Prince Uther took me into his service. I am with him now — the King."

He spoke quickly, looking away. I knew it was all I would ever learn. "And are you still so afraid of the world, Ulfin?"

But he would not answer that. I finished tying the wrist. "Well, it's a wild and violent place, and the times are cruel. But they will get better, and I think you will help to make them so. There, that's done. Now get yourself something to eat. Cadal, do you remember Ulfin? The boy who brought Aster home the night we ran into Uther's troops by Nemet?"

"By the dog, so it is." Cadal looked him up and down. "You look a sight better than you did then. What happened to the druid? Died of a curse? Come along then, and get something to eat. Yours is here, Merlin, and see you eat enough for a human being for a change, and not just what might keep one of your precious birds alive."

"I'll try," I said meekly, and then laughed at the expression on Ulfin's face as he looked from me to my servant and back again.

We lay that night at an inn near the crossroads where the way leads off north for the Five Hills and the gold mine. I ate alone in my room, served by Cadal. No sooner had the door shut behind the servant who carried the dishes than Cadal turned to me, obviously bursting with news.

"Well, there's a pretty carry-on in London, by all accounts."

"One might expect it," I said mildly. "I heard someone say Budec was there, together with most of the kings from across the Narrow Sea, and that most of them, and half the King's own nobles, have brought their daughters along with an eye to the empty side of the throne." I laughed. "That should suit Uther."

"They say he's been through half the girls in London already," said Cadal, setting a dish down in front of me. It was Welsh mutton, with a good sauce made of onions, hot and savoury.

"They'd say anything of him." I began to help myself. "It could even be true."

"Yes, but seriously, there's trouble afoot, they say. Woman trouble."

"Oh, God, Cadal, spare me. Uther was born to woman trouble."

"No, but I mean it. Some of the escort were talking, and it's no wonder Ulfin wouldn't. This is real trouble. Gorlois's wife."

I looked up, startled. "The Duchess of Cornwall? This can't be true."

"It's not true yet. But they say it's not for want of trying."

I drank wine. "You can be sure it's only rumour. She's more than half as young again as her husband, and I've heard she's fair. I suppose Uther pays her some attention, the Duke being his second in command, and men make all they can of it, Uther being who he is. And what he is."

Cadal leaned his fists on the table and looked down at me. He was uncommonly solemn. "Attention, is it? They say he's never out of her lap. Sends her the best dishes at table each day, sees she's served first, even before he is, pledges her in front of everybody in the hall every time he raises his goblet. Nobody's talking of anything else from London to Winchester. I'm told they're laying bets in the kitchen."

"I've no doubt. And does Gorlois have anything to say?"

"Tried to pass it over at first, they say, but it got so that he couldn't go on pretending he hadn't noticed.

He tried to look as if he thought Uther was just doing the pair of them honour, but when it came to sitting the Lady Ygraine — that's her name — on Uther's right, and the old man six down on the other side — "

He paused.

I said, uneasily: "He must be crazed. He can't afford trouble yet — trouble of any kind, let alone this, and with Gorlois of all people. By all the gods, Cadal, it was Cornwall that helped Ambrosius into the country at all, and Cornwall who put Uther where he is now. Who won the battle of Damen Hill for him?"

"Men are saying that, too."

"Are they indeed?" I thought for a moment, frowning. "And the woman? What — apart from the usual dunghill stuff — do they say about her?"

"That she says little, and says less each day. I've no doubt Gorlois has plenty to say to her at night when they're alone together. Anyway, I'm told she hardly lifts her eyes in public now, in case she meets the King staring at her over his cup, or leaning across at the table to look down her dress."

"That is what I call dunghill stuff, Cadal. I meant, what is she like?"

"Well, that's just what they don't say, except that she's silent, and as beautiful as this, that and the other thing." He straightened. "Oh, no one says she gives him any help. And God knows there's no need for Uther to act like a starving man in sight of a dish of food; he could have his platter piled high any night he liked. There's hardly a girl in London who isn't trying to catch that eye of his."

"I believe you. Has he quarrelled with Gorlois? Openly, I mean?"

"Not so that I heard. In fact, he's been over-cordial there, and he got away with it for the first week or so; the old man was flattered. But Merlin, it does sound like trouble; she's less than half Gorlois' age and spends her life mewed up in one of those cold Cornish castles with nothing to do but weave his war-cloaks and dream over them, and you may be sure it's not of an old man with a grey beard."

I pushed the platter aside. I remember I still felt wholly unconcerned about what Uther was doing. But Cadal's last remark came a little too near home for comfort. There had been another girl, once, who had had nothing to do but sit at home and weave and dream...

I said abruptly: "All right, Cadal. I'm glad to know. I just hope we can keep clear of it ourselves. I've seen Uther mad for a woman before, but they've always been women he could get. This is suicide."

"Crazed, you said. That's what men are saying, too," said Cadal slowly. "Bewitched, they call it." He looked down at me half-sideways. "Maybe that's why he sent young Ulfin in such a sweat to make sure you'd come to London. Maybe he wants you there, to break the spell?"

"I don't break," I said shortly. "I make."

He stared for a moment, shutting his mouth on what, apparently, he had been about to say. Then he turned away to lift the jug of wine. As he poured it for me, in silence, I saw that his left hand was making the sign. We spoke no more that night.

4

As soon as I came in front of Uther I saw that Cadal had been right. Here was real trouble.

We reached London on the very eve of the crowning. It was late, and the city gates were shut, but it seemed there had been orders about us, for we were hustled through without question, and taken straight up to the castle where the King lay. I was scarcely given time to get out of my mud-stained garments before I was led along to his bedchamber and ushered in. The servants withdrew immediately and left us alone.

Uther was ready for the night, in a long bedgown of dark brown velvet edged with fur. His high chair was drawn to a leaping fire of logs, and on a stool beside the chair stood a pair of goblets and a lidded silver flagon with steam curling gently from the spout. I could smell the spiced wine as soon as I entered the room, and my dry throat contracted longingly, but the King made no move to offer it to me. He was not sitting by the fire. He was prowling restlessly up and down the room like a caged beast, and after him, pace for pace, his wolfhound followed him.

As the door shut behind the servants he said abruptly, as he had said once before:

"You took your time."

"Four days? You should have sent better horses."

That stopped him in his tracks. He had not expected to be answered. But he said, mildly enough: "They were the best in my stables."

"Then you should get winged ones if you want better speed than we made, my lord. And tougher men.

We left two of them by the way."

But he was no longer listening. Back in his thoughts, he resumed his restless pacing, and I watched him.

He had lost weight, and moved quickly and lightly, like a starving wolf. His eyes were sunken with lack of sleep, and he had mannerisms I had not seen in him before; he could not keep his hands still. He wrung them together behind him, cracking the finger-joints, or fidgeted with the edges of his robe, or with his beard.

He flung at me over his shoulder: "I want your help."

"So I understand."

He turned at that. "You know about it?"

I lifted my shoulders. "Nobody talks of anything else but the King's desire for Gorlois' wife. I understand you have made no attempt to hide it. But it is more than a week now since you sent Ulfin to fetch me. In that time, what has happened? Are Gorlois and his wife still here?"

"Of course they are still here. They cannot go without my leave."

"I see. Has anything yet been said between you and Gorlois?"

"No."

"But he must know."

"It is the same with him as with me. If once this thing comes to words, nothing can stop it. And it is the crowning tomorrow. I cannot speak with him."

"Or with her?"

"No. No. Ah, God, Merlin, I cannot come near her. She is guarded like Danaë."

I frowned. "He has her guarded, then? Surely that's unusual enough to be a public admission that there's something wrong?"

"I only mean that his servants are all round her, and his men. Not only his bodyguard — many of his fighting troops are still here, that were with us in the north. I can only come near her in public, Merlin. They will have told you this."

"Yes. Have you managed to get any message to her privately?"

"No. She guards herself. All day she is with her women, and her servants keep the doors. And he — "

He paused. There was sweat on his face. "He is with her every night."

He flung away again with a swish of the velvet robe, and paced, soft-footed, the length of the room, into the shadows beyond the firelight. Then he turned. He threw out his hands and spoke simply, like a boy.

"Merlin, what shall I do?"

I crossed to the fire-place, picked up the jug and poured two goblets of the spiced wine. I held one out to him. "To begin with, come and sit down. I cannot talk to a whirlwind. Here."

He obeyed, sinking back in the big chair with the goblet between his hands. I drank my own, gratefully, and sat down on the other side of the hearth.

Uther did not drink. I think he hardly knew what he had between his hands. He stared at the fire through the thinning steam from the goblet. "As soon as he brought her in and presented her to me, I knew. God knows that at first I thought it was no more than another passing fever, the kind I've had a thousand times before, only this time a thousand stronger —"

"And been cured of," I said, "in a night, a week of nights, a month. I don't know the longest time a woman has ever held you, Uther, but is a month, or even three, enough to wreck a kingdom for?"

The look he gave me, blue as a sword-flash, was a look from the old Uther I remembered. "By Hades, why do you think I sent for you? I could have wrecked my kingdom any time in these past weeks had I been so minded. Why do you think it has not yet gone beyond folly? Oh, yes, I admit there has been folly, but I tell you this is a fever, and not the kind I have had before, and slaked before. This burns me so that I cannot sleep. How can I rule and fight and deal with men if I cannot sleep?"

"Have you taken a girl to bed?"

He stared, then he drank. "Are you mad?"

"Forgive me, it was a stupid question. You don't sleep even then?"

"No." He set down the goblet beside him, and knitted his hands together. "It's no use. Nothing is any use. You must bring her to me, Merlin. You have the arts. This is why I sent for you. You are to bring her to me so that no one knows. Make her love me. Bring her here to me, while he is asleep. You can do it."

"Make her love you? By magic? No, Uther, this is something that magic cannot do. You must know that."

"It is something that every old wife swears she can do. And you — you have power beyond any man living. You lifted the Hanging Stones. You lifted the king-stone where Tremorinus could not."

"My mathematics are better, that is all. For God's sake, Uther, whatever men say of that, you know how it was done. That was no magic."

"You spoke with my brother as he died. Are you going to deny that now?"

"No."

"Or that you swore to serve me when I needed you?"

"No."

"I need you now. Your power, whatever it is. Dare you tell me that you are not a magician?"

"I am not the kind that can walk through walls," I said, "and bring bodies through locked doors." He made a sudden movement, and I saw the feverish brightness of his eyes, not this time with anger, but I thought with pain. I added: "But I have not refused to help you."

The eyes sparked. "You will help me?"

"Yes, I will help you. I told you when last we met that there would come a time when we must deal together. This is the time. I don't know yet what I must do, but this will be shown to me, and the outcome is with the god. But one thing I can do for you, tonight. I can make you sleep. No, be still and listen...If you are to be crowned tomorrow, and take Britain into your hands, tonight you will do as I say. I will make you a drink that will let you sleep, and you'll take a girl to your bed as usual. It may be better if there is someone besides your servant who will swear you were in your own chamber."

"Why? What are you going to do?" His voice was strained.

"I shall try to talk with Ygraine."

He sat forward, his hands tight on the arms of the chair. "Yes. Talk to her. Perhaps you can come to her where I cannot. Tell her —"

"A moment. A little while back you told me to 'make her love you.' You want me to invoke any power there is to bring her to you. If you have never spoken to her of your love, or seen her except in public, how do you know she would come to you, even if the way were free? Is her mind clear to you, my lord King?"

"No. She says nothing. She smiles, with her eyes on the ground, and says nothing. But I know. I know.

It is as if all the other times I played at love were only single notes. Put together, they make the song. She is the song."

There was a silence. Behind him, on a dais in the corner of the room, was the bed, with the covers drawn back ready. Above it, leaping up the wall, was a great dragon fashioned of red gold. In the firelight it moved, stretching its claws.

He said suddenly: "When we last talked, there in the middle of the Hanging Stones, you said you wanted nothing from me. But by all the gods, Merlin, if you help me now, if I get her, and in safety, then you can ask what you will. I swear it."

I shook my head, and he said no more. I think he saw that I was no longer thinking of him; that other forces pressed me, crowding the firelit room. The dragon flamed and shimmered up the dark wall. In its shadow another moved, merging with it, flame into flame. Something struck at my eyes, pain like a claw.

I shut them, and there was silence. When I opened them again the fire had died, and the wall was dark. I looked across at the King, motionless in his chair, watching me. I said, slowly: "I will ask you one thing, now."

"Yes?"

"That when I bring you to her in safety, you shall make a child."

Whatever he had expected, it was not this. He stared, then, suddenly, laughed. "That's with the gods, surely?"

"Yes, it is with God."

He stretched back in his chair, as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. "If I come to her, Merlin, I promise you that whatever I have power to do, I shall do. And anything else you bid me. I shall even sleep tonight."

I stood up. "Then I shall go and make the draught and send it to you."

"And you'll see her?"

"I shall see her. Good night."

Ulfin was half asleep on his feet outside the door. He blinked at me as I came out.

"I'm to go in now?"

"In a minute. Come to my chamber first and I'll give you a drink for him. See he takes it. It's to give him sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day."

There was a girl asleep in a corner, wrapped in a blue blanket on a huddle of pillows. As we passed I saw the curve of a bare shoulder and a tumble of straight brown hair. She looked very young.

I raised my brows at Ulfin, and he nodded, then jerked his head towards the shut door with a look of enquiry.

"Yes," I said, "but later. When you take him the drink. Leave her sleeping now. You look as if you could do with some sleep yourself, Ulfin."

"If he sleeps tonight I might get some." He gave a flicker of a grin at me. "Make it strong, won't you, my lord? And see it tastes good."

"Oh, he'll drink it, never fear."

"I wasn't thinking of him," said Ulfin. "I was thinking of me."

"Of you? Ah, I see, you mean you'll have to taste it first?"

He nodded.

"You have to try everything? His meals? Even love potions?"

"Love potions? For him?" He stared, open-mouthed. Then he laughed. "Oh, you're joking!"

I smiled. "I wanted to see if you could laugh. Here we are. Wait now, I won't be a minute."

Cadal was waiting for me by the fire in my chamber. This was a comfortable room in the curve of a tower wall, and Cadal had kept a bright fire burning and a big cauldron of water steaming on the iron dogs. He had got out a woollen bedgown for me and laid it ready across the bed.

Over a chest near the window lay a pile of clothes, a shimmer of gold cloth and scarlet and fur. "What's that?" I asked, as I sat down to let him draw off my shoes.

"The King sent a robe for tomorrow, my lord." Cadal, with an eye on the boy who was pouring the bath, was formal. I noticed the boy's hand shaking a little, and water splashed on the floor. As soon as he had finished, obedient to a jerk of Cadal's head, he scuttled out.

"What's the matter with that boy?"

"It isn't every night you prepare a bath for a wizard."

"For God's sake. What have you been telling him?"

"Only that you'd turn him into a bat if he didn't serve you well."

"Fool. No, a moment, Cadal. Bring me my box. Ulfin's waiting outside. I promised to make up a draught."

Cadal obeyed me. "What's the matter? His arm still bad?"

"It's not for him. For the King."

"Ah." He made no further comment, but when the thing was done and Ulfin had gone, and I was stripping for the bath, he asked: "It's as bad as they say?"

"Worse." I gave him a brief version of my conversation with the King.

He heard me out, frowning. "And what's to do now?"

"Find some way to see the lady. No, not the bedgown; not yet, alas. Get me a clean robe out — something dark."

"Surely you can't go to her tonight? It's well past midnight."

"I shall not go anywhere. Whoever is coming, will come to me."

"But Gorlois will be with her —"

"No more now, Cadal. I want to think. Leave me. Good night."

When the door had shut on him I went across to the chair beside the fire. It was not true that I wanted time to think. All I needed was silence, and the fire. Bit by bit, slowly, I emptied my mind, feeling thought spill out of me like sand from a glass, to leave me hollow and light. I waited, my hands slack on the grey robe, open, empty. It was very quiet. Somewhere, from a dark corner of the room, came the dry tick of old wood settling in the night. The fire flickered. I watched it, but absently, as any man might watch the flames for comfort on a cold night. I did not need to dream. I lay, light as a dead leaf, on the flood that ran that night to meet the sea.

Outside the door there were sounds suddenly, voices. A quick tap at the panel, and Cadal came in, shutting the door behind him. He looked guarded and a little apprehensive.

"Gorlois?" I asked.

He swallowed, then nodded.

"Well, show him in."

"He asked if you had been to see the King. I said you'd been here barely a couple of hours, and you had had time to see nobody. Was that right?"

I smiled. "You were guided. Let him come in now."

Gorlois came in quickly, and I rose to greet him. There was, I thought, as big a change in him as I had seen in Uther; his big frame was bent, and for the first time one saw straight away that he was old.

He brushed aside the ceremony of my greeting. "You're not abed yet? They told me you'd ridden in."

"Barely in time for the crowning, but I shall see it after all. Will you sit, my lord?"

"Thanks, but no. I came for your help, Merlin, for my wife." The quick eyes peered under the grey brows. "Aye, no one could ever tell what you were thinking, but you've heard, haven't you?"

"There was talk," I said carefully, "but then there always was talk about Uther. I have not heard anyone venture a word against your wife."

"By God, they'd better not! However, it's not that I've come about tonight. There's nothing you could do about that — though it's possible you're the only person who could talk some sense into the King. You'll not get near him now till after the crowning, but if you could get him to let us go back to Cornwall without waiting for the end of the feast...Would you do that for me?"

"If I can."

"I knew I could count on you. With things the way they are in the town just now, it's hard to know who's a friend. Uther's not an easy man to gainsay. But you could do it — and what's more, you'd dare. You're your father's son, and for my old friend's sake —"

"I said I'd do it."

"What's the matter? Are you ill?"

"It's nothing. I'm weary. We had a hard ride. I'll see the King in the morning early, before he leaves for the crowning."

He gave a brief nod of thanks. "That's not the only thing I came to ask you. Would you come and see my wife tonight?"

There was a pause of utter stillness, so prolonged that I thought he must notice. Then I said: "If you wish it, yes. But why?"

"She's sick, that's why, and I'd have you come and see her, if you will. When her women told her you were here in London, she begged me to send for you. I can tell you, I was thankful when I heard you'd come. There's not many men I'd trust just now, and that's God's truth. But I'd trust you."

Beside me a log crumbled and fell into the heart of the fire. The flames shot up, splashing his face with red, like blood.

"You'll come?" asked the old man.

"Of course." I looked away from him. "I'll come immediately."

5

Uther had not exaggerated when he said that the Lady Ygraine was well guarded. She and her lord were lodged in a court some way west of the King's quarters, and the court was crowded with Cornwall men at arms. There were armed men in the antechamber too, and in the bedchamber itself some half dozen women. As we went in the oldest of these, a greyhaired woman with an anxious look, hurried forward with relief in her face.

"Prince Merlin." She bent her knees to me, eyeing me with awe, and led me towards the bed.

The room was warm and scented. The lamps burned sweet oil, and the fire was of applewood. The bed stood at the center of the wall opposite the fire. The pillows were of grey silk with gilt tassels, and the coverlet richly worked with flowers and strange beasts and winged creatures. The only other woman's room that I had seen was my mother's, with the plain wooden bed and the carved oak chest and the loom, and the cracked mosaics of the floor.

I walked forward and stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at Gorlois' wife.

If I had been asked then what she looked like I could not have said. Cadal had told me she was fair, and I had seen the hunger in the King's face, so I knew she was desirable; but as I stood in the airy scented room looking at the woman who lay with closed eyes against the grey silk pillows, it was no woman that I saw. Nor did I see the room or the people in it. I saw only the flashing and beating of the light as in a globed crystal.

I spoke without taking my eyes from the woman in the bed. "One of her women stay here. The rest go.

You too, please, my lord." He went without demur, herding the women in front of him like a flock of sheep. The woman who had greeted me remained by her mistress's bed. As the door shut behind the last of them, the woman in the bed opened her eyes. For a few moments of silence we met each other eye to eye. Then I said: "What do you want of me, Ygraine?"

She answered crisply, with no pretense: "I have sent for you, Prince, because I want your help."

I nodded. "In the matter of the King."

She said straightly: "So you know already? When my husband brought you here, did you guess I was not ill?"

"I guessed."

"Then you can also guess what I want from you?"

"Not quite. Tell me, could you not somehow have spoken with the King himself before now? It might have saved him something. And your husband as well."

Her eyes widened. "How could I talk to the King? You came through the courtyard?"

"Yes."

"Then you saw my husband's troops and men at arms. What do you suppose would have happened had I talked to Uther? I could not answer him openly, and if I had met him in secret — even if I could — half London would have known it within the hour. Of course I could not speak to him or send him a message. The only protection was silence."

I said slowly: "If the message was simply that you were a true and faithful wife and that he must turn his eyes elsewhere, then the message could have been given to him at any time and by any messenger."

She smiled. Then she bent her head.

I took in my breath. "Ah. That's what I wished to know. You are honest, Ygraine."

"What use to lie to you? I have heard about you. Oh, I know better than to believe all they say in the songs and stories, but you are clever and cold and wise, and they say you love no woman and are committed to no man. So you can listen, and judge." She looked down at her hands, where they lay on the coverlet, then up at me again. "But I do believe that you can see the future. I want you to tell me what the future is."

"I don't tell fortunes like an old woman. Is this why you sent for me?"

"You know why I sent for you. You are the one man with whom I can seek private speech without arousing my husband's anger and suspicion — and you have the King's ear." Though she was but a woman, and young, lying in her bed with me standing over her, it was as if she were a queen giving audience. She looked at me very straight. "Has the King spoken to you yet?"

"He has no need to speak to me. Everyone knows what ails him."

"And will you tell him what you have just learned from me?"

"That will depend."

"On what?" she demanded.

I said slowly: "On you yourself. So far you have been wise. Had you been less guarded in your ways and your speech there would have been trouble, there might even have been war. I understand that you have never allowed one moment of your time here to be solitary or unguarded; you have taken care always to be where you could be seen."

She looked at me for a moment in silence, her brows raised. "Of course."

"Many women — especially desiring what you desire — would not have been able to do this, Lady Ygraine."

"I am not 'many women.' " The words were like a flash. She sat up suddenly, tossing back the dark hair, and threw back the covers. The old woman snatched up a long blue robe and hurried forward. Ygraine threw it round her, over her white nightrobe, and sprang from the bed, walking restlessly over towards the window.

Standing, she was tall for a woman, with a form that might have moved a sterner man than Uther. Her neck was long and slender, the head poised gracefully. The dark hair streamed unbound down her back.

Her eyes were blue, not the fierce blue of Uther's, but the deep, dark blue of the Celt. Her mouth was proud. She was very lovely, and no man's toy. If Uther wanted her, I thought, he would have to make her Queen.

She had stopped just short of the window. If she had gone to it, she might have been seen from the courtyard. No, not a lady to lose her head.

She turned. "I am the daughter of a king, and I come from a line of kings. Cannot you see how I must have been driven, even to think the way I am thinking now?" She repeated it passionately. "Can you not see? I was married at sixteen to the Lord of Cornwall; he is a good man; I honour and respect him. Until I came to London I was half content to starve and die there in Cornwall, but he brought me here, and now it has happened. Now I know what I must have, but it is beyond me to have it, beyond the wife of Gorlois of Cornwall. So what else would you have me do? There is nothing to do but wait here and be silent, because on my silence hangs not only the honour of myself and my husband and my house, but the safety of the kingdom that Ambrosius died for, and that Uther himself has just sealed with blood and fire."

She swung away to take two quick paces and back again. "I am no trashy Helen for men to fight over, die over, burn down kingdoms for. I don't wait on the walls as a prize for some brawny victor. I cannot so dishonour both Gorlois and the King in the eyes of men. And I cannot go to him secretly and dishonour myself in my own eyes. I am a lovesick woman, yes. But I am also Ygraine of Cornwall."

I said coldly: "So you intend to wait until you can go to him in honour, as his Queen?"

"What else can I do?"

"Was this the message I had to give him?"

She was silent.

I said: "Or did you get me here to read you the future? To tell you the length of your husband's life?"

Still she said nothing.

"Ygraine," I said, "the two are the same. If I give Uther the message that you love and desire him, but that you will not come to him while your husband is alive, what length of life would you prophesy for Gorlois?"

Still she did not speak. The gift of silence, too, I thought. I was standing between her and the fire. I watched the light beating round her, flowing up the white robe and the blue robe, light and shadow rippling upwards in waves like moving water or the wind over grass. A flame leapt, and my shadow sprang over her and grew, climbing with the beating light to meet her own climbing shadow and join with it, so that there across the wall behind her reared — no dragon of gold or scarlet, no firedrake with burning tail, but a great cloudy shape of air and darkness, thrown there by the flame, and sinking as the flame sank, to shrink and steady until it was only her shadow, the shadow of a woman, slender and straight, like a sword. And where I stood, there was nothing.

She moved, and the lamplight built the room again round us, warm and real and smelling of applewood.

She was watching me with something in her face that had not been there before. At last she said, in a still voice: "I told you there was nothing hidden from you. You do well to put it into words. I had thought all this. But I hoped that by sending for you I could absolve myself, and the King."

"Once a dark thought is dragged into words it is in the light. You could have had your desire long since on the terms of 'any woman,' as the King could on the terms of any man." I paused. The room was steady now. The words came clearly to me, from nowhere, without thought. "I will tell you, if you like, how you may meet the King's love on your terms and on his, with no dishonour to yourself or him, or to your husband. If I could tell you this, would you go to him?"

Her eyes had widened, with a flash behind them, as I spoke. But even so she took time to think. "Yes."

Her voice told me nothing.

"If you will obey me, I can do this for you," I said.

"Tell me what I must do."

"Have I your promise, then?"

"You go too fast," she said dryly. "Do you yourself seal bargains before you see what you are committed to?"

I smiled. "No. Very well then, listen to me. When you feigned illness to have me brought to you, what did you tell your husband and your women?"

"Only that I felt faint and sick, and was no more inclined for company. That if I was to appear beside my husband at the crowning, I must see a physician tonight, and take a healing draught." She smiled a little wryly. "I was preparing the way, too, not to sit beside the King at the feast."

"So far, good. You will tell Gorlois that you are pregnant."

"That I am pregnant?" For the first time she sounded shaken. She stared.

"This is possible? He is an old man, but I would have thought —"

"It is possible. But I — " She bit her lip. After a while she said calmly: "Go on. I asked for your counsel, so I must let you give it."

I had never before met a woman with whom I did not have to choose my words, to whom I could speak as I would speak to another man. I said: "Your husband can have no reason to suspect you are pregnant by any man but himself. So you will tell him this, and tell him also that you fear for the child's health if you stay longer in London , under the strain of the gossip and the King's attentions. Tell him that you wish to leave as soon as the crowning is over. That you do not wish to go to the feast, to be distinguished by the King, and to be the center of all the eyes and the gossip. You will go with Gorlois and the Cornish troops tomorrow, before the gates shut at sunset. The news will not come to Uther until the feast."

"But" — she stared again — "this is folly. We could have gone any time this past three weeks if we had chosen to risk the King's anger. We are bound to stay until he gives us leave to go. If we go in that manner, for whatever reason —"

I stopped her. "Uther can do nothing on the day of the crowning. He must stay here for the days of feasting. Do you think he can give offense to Budec and Merrovius and the other kings gathered here?

You will be in Cornwall before he can even move."

"And then he will move." She made an impatient gesture. "And there will be war, when he should be making and mending, not breaking and burning. And he cannot win: if he is the victor in the field, he loses the loyalty of the West. Win or lose,Britain is divided, and goes back into the dark."

Yes, she would be a queen. She was on fire for Uther as much as he for her, but she could still think.

She was cleverer than Uther, clear-headed, and, I thought, stronger too.

"Oh, yes, he will move." I lifted a hand. "But listen to me. I will talk to the King before the crowning. He will know that the story you told Gorlois was a lie. He will know that I have told you to go to Cornwall .

He will feign rage, and he will swear in public to be revenged for the insult put on him by Gorlois at the crowning...And he will make ready to follow you to Cornwall as soon as the feast is over —"

"But meanwhile our troops will be safely out of London without trouble. Yes, I see. I did not understand you. Go on." She drove her hands inside the sleeves of the blue robe, and clasped her elbows, cradling her breasts. She was not so ice-calm as she looked, the Lady Ygraine. "And then?"

"And you will be safely at home," I said, "with your honour and Cornwall's unbroken."

"Safely, yes. I shall be in Tintagel, and even Uther cannot come at me there. Have you seen the stronghold, Merlin? The cliffs of that coast are high and cruel, and from them runs a thin bridge of rock, the only way to the island where the castle stands. This bridge is so narrow that men can only go one at a time, not even a horse. Even the landward end of the bridge is guarded by a fortress on the main cliff, and within the castle there is water, and food for a year. It is the strongest place in Cornwall. It cannot be taken from the land, and it cannot be approached by sea. If you wish to shut me away for ever from Uther, this is the place to send me."

"So I have heard. This will be, then, where Gorlois will send you. If Uther follows, lady, would Gorlois be content to wait inside the stronghold with you for a year like a beast in a trap? And could his troops be taken in with him?"

She shook her head. "If it cannot be taken, neither can it be used as a base. All one can do is sit out the siege."

"Then you must persuade him that unless he is content to wait inside while the King's troops ravage Cornwall, he himself must be outside, where he can fight."

She struck her hands together. "He will do that. He could not wait and hide and let Cornwall suffer. Nor can I understand your plan, Merlin. If you are trying to save your King and your kingdom from me, then say so. I can feign sickness here, until Uther finds he has to let me go home. We could go home without insult, and without bloodshed."

I said sharply: "You said you would listen. Time runs short."

She was still again. "I am listening."

"Gorlois will lock you in Tintagel. Where will he go himself to face Uther?"

"To Dimilioc. It is a few miles from Tintagel, up the coast. It is a good fortress, and good country to fight from. But then what? Do you think Gorlois will not fight?" She moved across to the fireside and sat down, and I saw her steady her hands deliberately, spreading the fingers on her knee. "And do you think the King can come to me in Tintagel, whether Gorlois is there or no?"

"If you do as I have bid you, you and the King may have speech and comfort one of the other. And you will do this in peace. No" — as her head came up sharply — "this part of it you leave with me. This is where we come to magic. Trust me for the rest. Get yourself only to Tintagel, and wait. I shall bring Uther to you there. And I promise you now, for the King, that he shall not give battle to Gorlois, and that after he and you have met in love,Cornwall shall have peace. As to how this will be, it is with God. I can only tell you what I know. What power is in me now, is from him, and we are in his hands to make or to destroy. But I can tell you this also, Ygraine, that I have seen a bright fire burning, and in it a crown, and a sword standing in an altar like a cross."

She got to her feet quickly, and for the first time there was a kind of fear in her eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed her lips again and turned back towards the window. Again she stopped short of it, but I saw her lift her head as if longing for the air. She should have been winged. If she had spent her youth walled in Tintagel it was no wonder she wanted to fly.

She raised her hands and pushed back the hair from her brows. She spoke to the window, not looking at me. "I will do this. If I tell him I am with child, he will take me to Tintagel. It is the place where all the dukes of Cornwall are born. And after that I have to trust you." She turned then and looked at me, dropping her hands. "If once I can have speech with him...even just that...But if you have brought bloodshed to Cornwall through me, or death to my husband, then I shall spend the rest of my life praying to any gods there are that you, too, Merlin, shall die betrayed by a woman."

"I am content to face your prayers. And now I must go. Is there someone you can send with me? I'll make a draught for you and send it back. It will only be poppy; you can take it and not fear."

"Ralf can go, my page. You'll find him outside the door. He is Marcia's grandson, and can be trusted as I trust her." She nodded to the old woman, who moved to open the door for me.

"Then any message I may have to send you," I said, "I shall send through him by my man Cadal. And now good night."

When I left her she was standing quite still in the center of the room, with the firelight leaping round her.

6

We had a wild ride to Cornwall.

Easter that year had fallen as early as it ever falls, so we were barely out of winter and into spring when, on a black wild night, we halted our horses on the clifftop near Tintagel, and peered down into the teeth of the wind. There were only the four of us, Uther, myself, Ulfin, and Cadal. Everything, so far, had gone smoothly and according to plan. It was getting on towards midnight on the twenty-fourth of March.

Ygraine had obeyed me to the letter. I had not dared, that night in London, to go straight from her quarters to Uther's chamber, in case this should be reported to Gorlois; but in any case Uther would be asleep. I had visited him early next morning, while he was being bathed and made ready for the crowning.

He sent the servants away, except for Ulfin, and I was able to tell him exactly what he must do. He looked the better for his drugged sleep, greeted me briskly enough, and listened with eagerness in the bright, hollow eyes.

"And she will do as you say?"

"Yes. I have her word. Will you?"

"You know that I will." He regarded me straightly. "And now will you not tell me about the outcome?"

"I told you. A child."

"Oh, that." He hunched an impatient shoulder. "You are like my brother; he thought of nothing else...Still working for him, are you?"

"You might say so."

"Well, I must get one sooner or later, I suppose. No, I meant Gorlois. What will come to him? There's a risk, surely?"

"Nothing is done without risk. You must do the same as I, you must take the time on trust. But I can tell you that your name, and your kingdom, will survive the night's work."

A short silence. He measured me with his eyes. "From you, I suppose that is enough. I am content."

"You do well to be. You will outlive him, Uther."

He laughed suddenly. "God's grief, man, I could have prophesied that myself! I can give him thirty years, and he's no stay-at-home when it comes to war. Which is one good reason why I refuse to have his blood on my hands. So, on that same account..."

He turned then to Ulfin and began to give his orders. It was the old Uther back again, brisk, concise, clear. A messenger was to go immediately to Caerleon, and troops to be despatched from there to North Cornwall. Uther himself would travel there straight from London as soon as he was able, riding fast with a small bodyguard to where his troops would be encamped. In this way the King could be hard on Gorlois' heels, even though Gorlois would leave today, and the King must stay feasting his peers for four more long days. Another man was to ride out immediately along our proposed route to Cornwall, and see that good horses were ready at short stages all the way.

So it came about as I had planned. I saw Ygraine at the crowning, still, composed, erect, and with downcast eyes, and so pale that if I had not seen her the night before, I myself would have believed her story true. I shall never cease to wonder at women. Even with power, it is not possible to read their minds. Duchess and slut alike, they need not even study to deceive. I suppose it is the same with slaves, who live with fear, and with those animals who disguise themselves by instinct to save their lives. She sat through the long, brilliant ceremony, like wax which at any moment may melt to collapse; then afterwards I caught a glimpse of her, supported by her women, leaving the throng as the bright pomp moved slowly to the hall of feasting. About halfway through the feast, when the wine had gone round well, I saw Gorlois, unremarked, leave the hall with one or two other men who were answering the call of nature. He did not come back.

Uther, to one who knew the truth, may not have been quite so convincing as Ygraine, but between exhaustion and wine and his ferocious exultation at what was to come, he was convincing enough. Men talked among themselves in hushed voices about his rage when he discovered Gorlois' absence, and his angry vows to take vengeance as soon as his royal guests had gone. If that anger were a little over-loud and his threats too fierce against a Duke whose only fault was the protection of his own wife, the King had been intemperate enough before for men to see this as part of the same picture. And so bright now was Uther's star, so dazzling the luster of the crowned Pendragon, that London would have forgiven him a public rape. They could less easily forgive Ygraine for having refused him.

So we came to Cornwall. The messenger had done his work well, and our ride, in hard short stages of no more than twenty miles apiece, took us two days and a night. We found our troops waiting encamped at the place selected — a few miles in from Hercules Point and just outside the Cornish border — with the news that, however she had managed it, Ygraine was fast in Tintagel with a small body of picked men, while her husband with the rest of his force had descended on Dimilioc, and sent a call round for the men of Cornwall to gather to defend their Duke. He must know of the presence of the King's troops so near his border, but no doubt he would expect them to wait for the King's coming, and could have as yet no idea that the King was already there.

We rode secretly into our camp at dusk, and went, not to the King's quarters, but to those of a captain he could trust. Cadal was there already, having gone ahead to prepare the disguises which I meant us to wear, and to await Ralf's message from Tintagel when the time was ripe.

My plan was simple enough, with the kind of simplicity that often succeeds, and it was helped by Gorlois' habit, since his marriage, of riding back nightly where he could — from Dimilioc or his other fortresses — to visit his wife. I suppose there had been too many jests about the old man's fondness, and he had formed the habit (Ralf had told me) of riding back secretly, using the private gate, a hidden postern to which access was difficult unless one knew the way. My plan was simply to disguise Uther, Ulfin, and myself to pass, if we were seen, as Gorlois and his companion and servant, and ride to Tintagel by night. Ralf would arrange to be on duty himself at the postern, and would meet us and lead us up the secret path. Ygraine had by some means persuaded Gorlois — this had been the greatest danger — not to visit her himself that night, and would dismiss all her women but Marcia. Ralf and Cadal had arranged between them what clothes we should wear: the Cornwall party had ridden from London in such a hurry on the night of the coronation feast that some of their baggage had been left behind, and it had been simple to find saddle-cloths with the blazon of Cornwall, and even one of Gorlois' familiar war cloaks with the double border of silver.

Ralf's latest message had been reassuring; the time was ripe, the night black enough to hide us and wild enough to keep most men within doors. We set off after it was full dark, and the four of us slipped out of camp unobserved. Once clear of our own lines we went at a gallop for Tintagel, and it would have been only the keen eye of suspicion which could have told that this was not the Duke of Cornwall with three companions, riding quickly home to his wife. Uther's beard had been greyed, and a bandage came down one side of his face to cover the corner of his mouth, and give some reason — should he be forced to talk — for any strangeness in his speech. The hood of his cloak, pulled down low as was natural on such a fierce night, shadowed his features. He was straighter and more powerful than Gorlois, but this was easy enough to disguise, and he wore gauntlets to hide his hands, which were not those of an old man.

Ulfin passed well enough as one Jordan, a servant of Gorlois whom we had chosen as being the nearest to Ulfin's build and colouring. I myself wore the clothes of Brithael, Gorlois' friend and captain: he was an older man than I, but his voice was not unlike mine, and I could speak good Cornish. I have always been good at voices. I was to do what talking proved necessary. Cadal came with us undisguised; he was to wait with the horses outside and be our messenger if we should need one.

I rode up close to the King and set my mouth to his ear. "The castle's barely a mile from here. We ride down to the shore now. Ralf will be there to show us in. I'll lead on?"

He nodded. Even in the ragged, flying dark I thought I saw the gleam of his eyes. I added: "And don't look like that, or they'll never think you're Gorlois, with years of married life behind you."

I heard him laugh, and then I wheeled my horse and led the way carefully down the rabbit-ridden slope of scrub and scree into the head of the narrow valley which leads down towards the shore.

This valley is little more than a gully carrying a small stream to the sea. At its widest the stream is not more than three paces broad, and so shallow that a horse can ford it anywhere. At the foot of the valley the water drops over a low cliff straight to a beach of slaty shingle. We rode in single file down the track, with the stream running deep down on the left, and to our right a high bank covered with bushes. Since the wind was from the south-west and the valley was deep and running almost north, we were sheltered from the gale, but at the top of the bank the bushes were screaming in the wind, and twigs and even small boughs hurtled through the air and across our path. Even without this and the steepness of the stony path and the darkness, it was not easy riding; the horses, what with the storm and some tension which must have been generated by the three of us — Cadal was as solid as a rock, but then he was not going into the castle — were wild and white-eyed with nerves. When, a quarter of a mile from the sea, we turned down to the stream and set the beasts to cross it, mine, in the lead, flattened its ears and balked, and when I had lashed it across and into a plunging canter up the narrow track, and a man's figure detached itself from the shadows ahead beside the path, the horse stopped dead and climbed straight up into the air till I felt sure it would go crashing over backwards, and me with it.

The shadow darted forward and seized the bridle, dragging the horse down. The beast stood, sweating and shaking.

"Brithael," I said. "Is all well?"

I heard him exclaim, and he took a pace, pressing closer to the horse's shoulder, peering upwards in the dark. Behind me Uther's grey hoisted itself up the track and thudded to a halt. The man at my horse's shoulder said, uncertainly: "My lord Gorlois...? We did not look for you tonight. Is there news, then?"

It was Ralf's voice. I said in my own: "So we'll pass, at least in the dark?"

I heard his breath go in. "Yes, my lord...For the moment I thought it was indeed Brithael. And then the grey horse...Is that the King?"

"For tonight," I said, "it is the Duke of Cornwall. Is all well?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then lead the way. There is not much time."

He gripped my horse's bridle above the bit and led him on, for which I was grateful, as the path was dangerous, narrow and slippery and twisting along the steep bank between the rustling bushes; not a path I would have wished to ride even in daylight on a strange and frightened horse. The others followed, Cadal's mount and Ulfin's plodding stolidly along, and close behind me the grey stallion snorting at every bush and trying to break his rider's grip, but Uther could have ridden Pegasus himself and foundered him before his own wrists even ached.

Here my horse shied at something I could not see, stumbled, and would have pitched me down the bank but for Ralf at its head. I swore at it, then asked Ralf: "How far now?"

"About two hundred paces to the shore, sir, and we leave the horses there. We climb the promontory on foot."

"By all the gods of storm, I'll be glad to get under cover. Did you have any trouble?"

"None, sir." He had to raise his voice to make me hear, but in that turmoil there was no fear of being heard more than three paces off. "My lady told Felix herself — that's the porter — that she had asked the Duke to ride back as soon as his troops were disposed at Dimilioc. Of course the word's gone round that she's pregnant, so it's natural enough she'd want him back, even with the King's armies so close. She told Felix the Duke would come by the secret gate in case the King had spies posted already. He wasn't to tell the garrison, she said, because they might be alarmed at his leaving Dimilioc and the troops there, but the King couldn't possibly be in Cornwall for another day at soonest...Felix doesn't suspect a thing.

Why should he?"

"The porter is alone at the gate?"

"Yes, but there are two guards in the guard-room."

He had told us already what lay inside the postern. This was a small gate set low in the outer castle wall, and just inside it a long flight of steps ran up to the right, hugging the wall. Halfway up was a wide landing, with a guardroom to the side. Beyond that the stairs went up again, and at the top was the private door leading through into the apartments.

"Do the guards know?" I asked.

He shook his head. "My lord, we didn't dare. All the men left with the Lady Ygraine were hand-picked by the Duke."

"Are the stairs well lighted?"

"A torch. I saw to it that it will be mostly smoke."

I looked over my shoulder to where the grey horse came ghostly behind me through the dark. Ralf had had to raise his voice to make me hear above the wind which screamed across the top of the valley, and I would have thought that the King would be waiting to know what passed between us. But he was silent, as he had been since the beginning of the ride. It seemed he was indeed content to trust the time. Or to trust me.

I turned back to Ralf, leaning down over my horse's shoulder. "Is there a password?"

"Yes, my lord. It is pilgrim. And the lady has sent a ring for the King to wear. It is one the Duke wears sometimes. Here's the end of the path, can you see? It's quite a drop to the beach." He checked, steadying my horse, then the beast plunged down and its hoofs grated on shingle. "We leave the horses here, my lord."

I dismounted thankfully. As far as I could see, we were in a small cove sheltered from the wind by a mighty headland close to our left, but the seas, tearing past the end of this headland and curving round to break among the offshore rocks, were huge, and came lashing down on the shingle in torrents of white with a noise like armies clashing together in anger. Away to the right I saw another high headland, and between the two this roaring stretch of white water broken by the teeth of black rocks. The stream behind us fell seawards over its low cliff in two long cascades which blew in the wind like ropes of hair.

Beyond these swinging waterfalls, and in below the overhanging wall of the main cliff, there was shelter for the horses.

Ralf was pointing to the great headland on our left. "The path is up there. Tell the King to come behind me and to follow closely. One foot wrong tonight, and before you could cry help you'd be out with the tide as far as the western stars."

The grey thudded down beside us and the King swung himself out of the saddle. I heard him laugh, that same sharp, exultant sound. Even had there been no prize at the end of the night's trail, he would have been the same. Danger was drink and dreams alike to Uther.

The other two came up with us and dismounted, and Cadal took the reins. Uther came to my shoulder, looking at the cruel race of water. "Do we swim for it now?"

"It may come to that, God knows. It looks to me as if the waves are up to the castle wall."

He stood quite still, oblivious of the buffeting of wind and rain, with his head lifted, staring up at the headland. High against the stormy dark, a light burned.

I touched his arm. "Listen. The situation is what we expected. There is a porter, Felix, and two men-at-arms in the guard-room. There should be very little light. You know the way in. It will be enough, as we go in, if you grunt your thanks to Felix and go quickly up the stair. Marcia, the old woman, will meet you at the door of Ygraine's apartments and lead you in. You can leave the rest to us. If there is any trouble, then there are three of us to three of them, and on a night like this there'll be no sound heard. I shall come an hour before dawn and send Marcia in for you. Now we shall not be able to speak again.

Follow Ralf closely, the path is very dangerous. He has a ring for you and the password. Go now."

He turned without a word and trod across the streaming shingle to where the boy waited. I found Cadal beside me, with the reins of the four horses gathered in his fist. His face, like my own, was streaming with wet, his cloak billowing round him like a storm cloud.

I said: "You heard me. An hour before dawn."

He, too, was looking up at the crag where high above us the castle towered. In a moment of flying light through the torn cloud I saw the castle walls, growing out of the rock. Below them fell the cliff, almost vertical, to the roaring waves. Between the promontory and the mainland, joining the castle to the mainland cliff, ran a natural ridge of rock, its sheer side polished flat as a sword-blade by the sea. From the beach where we stood, there seemed to be no way out but the valley; not mainland fortress, nor causeway, nor castle rock, could be climbed. It was no wonder they left no sentries here. And the path to the secret gate could be held by one man against an army.

Cadal was saying: "I'll get the horses in there, under the overhang, in what shelter there is. And for my sake, if not for yon lovesick gentleman's, be on time. If they as much as suspicion up yonder that there's something amiss, it's rats in a trap for the lot of us. They can shut that bloody little valley as sharp as they can block the causeway, you know that? And I wouldn't just fancy swimming out the other way, myself."

"Nor I. Content yourself, Cadal, I know what I'm about."

"I believe you. There's something about you tonight...The way you spoke just now to the King, not thinking, shorter than you'd speak to a servant. And he said never a word, but did as he was bid. Yes, I'd say you know what you're about. Which is just as well, master Merlin, because otherwise, you realize, you're risking the life of the King of Britain for a night's lust?"

I did something which I had never done before; which I do not commonly do. I put a hand out and laid it over Cadal's where it held the reins. The horses were quiet now, wet and unhappy, huddling with their rumps to the wind and their heads drooping.

I said: "If Uther gets into the place tonight and lies with her, then before God, Cadal, it will not matter as much as the worth of a drop of that sea-foam there if he is murdered in the bed. I tell you, a King will come out of this night's work whose name will be a shield and buckler to men until this fair land, from sea to sea, is smashed down into the sea that holds it, and men leave earth to live among the stars. Do you think Uther is a King, Cadal? He's but a regent for him who went before and for him who comes after, the past and future King. And tonight he is even less than that: he is a tool, and she a vessel, and I...I am a spirit, a word, a thing of air and darkness, and I can no more help what I am doing than a reed can help the wind of God blowing through it. You and I, Cadal, are as helpless as dead leaves in the waters of that bay." I dropped my hand from his. "An hour before dawn."

"Till then, my lord."

I left him then, and, with Ulfin following, went after Ralf and the King across the shingle to the foot of the black cliff.

7

I do not think that now, even in daylight, I could find the path again without a guide, let alone climb it.

Ralf went first, with the King's hand on his shoulder, and in my turn I held a fold of Uther's mantle, and Ulfin of mine. Mercifully, close in as we were to the face of the castle rock, we were protected from the wind: exposed, the climb would have been impossible; we would have been plucked off the cliff like feathers. But we were not protected from the sea. The waves must have been rushing up forty feet, and the master waves, the great sevenths, came roaring up like towers and drenched us with salt fully sixty feet above the beach.

One good thing the savage boiling of the sea did for us, its whiteness cast upwards again what light came from the sky. At last we saw, above our heads, the roots of the castle walls where they sprang from the rock. Even in dry weather the walls would have been unscalable, and tonight they were streaming with wet. I could see no door, nothing breaking the smooth streaming walls of slate. Ralf did not pause, but led us on under them towards a seaward corner of the cliff. There he halted for a moment, and I saw him move his arm in a gesture that meant "Beware." He went carefully round the corner and out of sight. I felt Uther stagger as he reached the corner himself and met the force of the wind. He checked for a moment and then went on, clamped tight to the cliff's face. Ulfin and I followed. For a few more hideous yards we fought our way along, faces in to the soaking, slimy cliff, then a jutting buttress gave us shelter, and we were stumbling suddenly on a treacherous slope cushiony with sea-pink, and there ahead of us, recessed deep in the rock below the castle wall, and hidden from the ramparts above by the sharp overhang, was Tintagel's emergency door.

I saw Ralf give a long look upwards before he led us in under the rock. There were no sentries above.

What need to post men on the seaward ramparts? He drew his dagger and rapped sharply on the door, a pattern of knocks which we, standing as we were at his shoulder, scarcely heard in the gale.

The porter must have been waiting just inside. The door opened immediately. It swung silently open for about three inches, then stuck, and I heard the rattle of a chain bolt. In the gap a hand showed, gripping a torch. Uther, beside me, dragged his hood closer, and I stepped past him to Ralf's elbow, holding my mantle tightly to my mouth and hunching my shoulders against the volleying gusts of wind and rain.

The porter's face, half of it, showed below the torch. An eye peered. Ralf, well forward into the light, said urgently: "Quick, man. A pilgrim. It's me back, with the Duke."

The torch moved fractionally higher. I saw the big emerald on Uther's finger catch the light, and said curtly, in Brithael's voice: "Open up, Felix, and let us get in out of this, for pity's sake. The Duke had a fall from his horse this morning, and his bandage is soaking. There are just the four of us here. Make haste."

The chain bolt came off and the door swung wide. Ralf put a hand to it so that, ostensibly holding it for his master, he could step into the passage between Felix and Uther as the King entered.

Uther strode in past the bowing man, shaking the wet off himself like a dog, and returning some half-heard sound in answer to the porter's greeting. Then with a brief lift of the hand which set the emerald flashing again, he turned straight for the steps which led upwards on our right, and began quickly to mount them.

Ralf grabbed the torch from the porter's hand as Ulfin and I pressed in after Uther. "I'll light them up with this. Get the door shut and barred again. I'll come down later and give you the news, Felix, but we're all drenched as drowned dogs, and want to get to a fire. There's one in the guard-room, I suppose?"

"Aye." The porter had already turned away to bar the door. Ralf was holding the torch so that Ulfin and I could go past in shadow.

I started quickly up the steps in Uther's wake, with Ulfin on my heels. The stairs were lit only by a smoking cresset which burned in a bracket on the wall of the wide landing above us. It had been easy.

Too easy. Suddenly, above us on the landing, the sullen light was augmented by that from a blazing torch, and a couple of men-at-arms stepped from a doorway, swords at the ready.

Uther, six steps above me, paused fractionally and then went on. I saw his hand, under the cloak, drop to his sword. Under my own I had my weapon loose in its sheath.

Ralf's light tread came running up the steps behind us.

"My lord Duke!"

Uther, I could guess how thankfully, stopped and turned to wait for him, his back to the guards.

"My lord Duke, let me light you — ah, they've a torch up there." He seemed only then to notice the guards above us, with the blazing light. He ran on and up past Uther, calling lightly: "Holà, Marcus, Sellic, give me that torch to light my lord up to the Duchess. This wretched thing's nothing but smoke."

The man with the torch had it held high, and the pair of them were peering down the stairs at us. The boy never hesitated. He ran up, straight between the swords, and took the torch from the man's hand. Before they could reach for it, he turned swiftly to douse the first torch in the tub of sand which stood near the guard-room door. It went out into sullen smoke. The new torch blazed cleanly, but swung and wavered as he moved so that the shadows of the guards, flung gigantic and grotesque down the steps, helped to hide us. Uther, taking advantage of the swaying shadows, started again swiftly up the flight. The hand with Gorlois' ring was half up before him to return the men's salutes. The guards moved aside. But they moved one to each side of the head of the steps, and their swords were still in their hands.

Behind me, I heard the faint whisper as Ulfin's blade loosened in its sheath. Under my cloak, mine was half-drawn. There was no hope of getting past them. We would have to kill them, and pray it made no noise. I heard Ulfin's step lagging, and knew he was thinking of the porter. He might have to go back to him while we dealt with the guards.

But there was no need. Suddenly, at the head of the second flight of steps, a door opened wide, and there, full in the blaze of light, stood Ygraine. She was in white, as I had seen her before; but not this time in a night-robe. The long gown shimmered like lake water. Over one arm and shoulder, Roman fashion, she wore a mantle of soft dark blue. Her hair was dressed with jewels. She stretched out both her hands, and the blue robe and the white fell away from wrists where red gold glimmered.

"Welcome, my lord!" Her voice, high and clear, brought both guards round to face her. Uther took the last half dozen steps to the landing in two leaps, then was past them, his cloak brushing the sword-blades, past Ralf's blazing torch, and starting quickly up the second flight of steps.

The guards snapped back to attention, one each side of the stair-head, their backs to the wall. Behind me I heard Ulfin gasp, but he followed me quietly enough as, calmly and without hurry, I mounted the last steps to the landing. It is something, I suppose, to have been born a prince, even a bastard one; I knew that the sentries' eyes were nailed to the wall in front of them by the Duchess's presence as surely as if they were blind. I went between the swords, and Ulfin after me.

Uther had reached the head of the stairway. He took her hands, and there in front of the lighted door, with his enemies' swords catching the torchlight below him, the King bent his head and kissed Ygraine.

The scarlet cloak swung round both of them, engulfing the white. Beyond them I saw the shadow of the old woman, Marcia, holding the door.

Then the King said: "Come," and with the great cloak still covering them both, he led her into the firelight, and the door shut behind them.

So we took Tintagel.

8

We were well served that night, Ulfin and I. The chamber door had hardly shut, leaving us islanded halfway up the flight between the door and the guards below, when I heard Ralf's voice again, easy and quick above the slither of swords being sheathed:

"Gods and angels, what a night's work! And I still have to guide him back when it's done! You've a fire in the room yonder? Good. We'll have a chance to dry off while we're waiting. You can get yourselves off now and leave this trick to us. Go on, what are you waiting for? You've had your orders — and no word of this, mark you, to anyone that comes."

One of the guards, settling his sword home, turned straight back into the guard-room, but the other hesitated, glancing up towards me. "My lord Brithael, is that right? We go off watch?"

I started slowly down the stairs. "Quite right. You can go. We'll send the porter for you when we want to leave. And above all, not a word of the Duke's presence. See to it." I turned to Ulfin, big-eyed on the stairs behind me. "Jordan, you go up to the chamber door yonder and stand guard. No, give me your cloak. I'll take it to the fire."

As he went thankfully, his sword at last ready in his hand, I heard Ralf crossing the guard-room below, underlining my orders with what threats I could only guess at. I went down the steps, not hurrying, to give him time to get rid of the men.

I heard the inner door shut, and went in. The guardroom, brightly lit by the torch and the blazing fire, was empty save for ourselves.

Ralf gave me a smile, gay and threadbare with nerves. "Not again, even to please my lady, for all the gold in Cornwall!"

"There will be no need again. You have done more than well, Ralf. The King will not forget."

He reached up to put the torch in a socket, saw my face, and said anxiously: "What is it, sir? Are you ill?"

"No. Does that door lock?" I nodded at the shut door through which the guards had gone.

"I have locked it. If they had had any suspicion, they would not have given me the key. But they had none, how could they? I could have sworn myself just now that it was Brithael speaking there, from the stairs. It was — like magic." The last word held a question, and he eyed me with a look I knew, but when I said nothing, he asked merely: "What now, sir?"

"Get you down to the porter now, and keep him away from here." I smiled. "You'll get your turn at the fire, Ralf, when we have gone."

He went off, light-footed as ever, down the steps. I heard him call something, and a laugh from Felix. I stripped off my drenched cloak and spread it, with Ulfin's, to the blaze. Below the cloak my clothes were dry enough. I sat for a while, holding my hands before me to the fire. It was very still in the firelit chamber, but outside the air was full of the surging din of the waters and the storm tearing at the castle walls.

My thoughts stung like sparks. I could not sit still. I stood and walked about the little chamber, restlessly.

I listened to the storm outside and, going to the door, heard the murmur of voices and the click of dice as Ralf and Felix passed the time down by the gate. I looked the other way. No sound from the head of the stairs, where I could just see Ulfin, or perhaps his shadow, motionless by the chamber door...

Someone was coming softly down the stairs; a woman, shrouded in a mantle, carrying something. She came without a sound, and there had been neither sound nor movement from Ulfin. I stepped out on to the landing, and the light from the guard-room came after me, firelight and shadow.

It was Marcia. I saw the tears glisten on her cheeks as she bent her head over what lay in her arms. A child, wrapped warm against the winter night. She saw me and held her burden out to me. "Take care of him," she said, and through the shine of the tears I saw the treads of the stairway outline themselves again behind her. "Take care of him..."

The whisper faded into the flutter of the torch and the sound of the storm outside. I was alone on the stairway, and above me a shut door. Ulfin had not moved.

I lowered my empty arms and went back to the fire. This was dying down, and I made it burn up again, but with small comfort to myself, for again the light stung me. Though I had seen what I wanted to see, there was death somewhere before the end, and I was afraid. My body ached, and the room was stifling.

I picked up my cloak, which was almost dry, slung it round me, and crossed the landing to where in the outer wall was a small door under which the wind drove like a knife. I thrust the door open against the blast, and went outside.

At first, after the blaze of the guard-room, I could see nothing. I shut the door behind me and leaned back against the damp wall, while the night air poured over me like a river. Then things took shape around me. In front and a few paces away was a battlemented wall, waist high, the outer wall of the castle. Between this wall and where I stood was a level platform, and above me a wall rising again to a battlement, and beyond this the soaring cliff and the walls climbing it, and the shape of the fortress rising above me step by step to the peak of the promontory. At the very head of the rise, where we had seen the lighted window, the tower now showed black and lightless against the sky.

I went forward to the battlement and leaned over. Below was an apron of cliff, which would in daylight be a grassy slope covered with sea-pink and white campion and the nests of seabirds. Beyond it and below, the white rage of the bay. I looked down to the right, the way we had come. Except for the driving arcs of white foam, the bay where Cadal waited was invisible under darkness.

It had stopped raining now, and the clouds were running higher and thinner. The wind had veered a little, slackening. It would drop towards dawn. Here and there, high and black beyond the racing clouds, the spaces of the night were filled with stars.

Then suddenly, directly overhead, the clouds parted, and there, sailing through them like a ship through running waves, the star.

It hung there among the dazzle of smaller stars, flickering at first, then pulsing, growing, bursting with light and all the colours that you see in dancing water. I watched it wax and flame and break open in light, then a racing wind would fling a web of cloud across it till it lay grey and dull and distant, lost to the eye among the other, minor stars. Then, as the swarm began their dance again it came again, gathering and swelling and dilating with light till it stood among the other stars like a torch throwing a whirl of sparks. So on through the night, as I stood alone on the ramparts and watched it; vivid and bright, then grey and sleeping, but each time waking to burn more gently, till it breathed light rather than heat, and towards morning hung glowing and quiet, with the light growing round it as the new day promised to come in clear and still.

I drew breath, and wiped the sweat from my face. I straightened up from where I had leaned against the ramparts. My body was stiff, but the ache had gone. I looked up at Ygraine's darkened window where, now, they slept.

9

I walked slowly back across the platform towards the door. As I opened it I heard from below, clear and sharp, a knocking on the postern gate.

I took a stride through to the landing, pulling the door quietly shut behind me, just as Felix came out of the lodge below, and made for the postern. As his hand went out to the chain-bolt, Ralf whipped out behind him, his arm raised high. I caught the glint in his fist of a dagger, reversed. He jumped cat-footed, and struck with the hilt. Felix dropped where he stood. There must have been some slight sound audible to the man outside, above the roaring of the sea, for his voice came sharply: "What is it? Felix?" And the knocking came again, harder than before.

I was already halfway down the flight. Ralf had stooped to the porter's body, but turned as he saw me coming, and interpreted my gesture correctly, for he straightened, calling out clearly:

"Who's there?"

"A pilgrim."

It was a man's voice, urgent and breathless. I ran lightly down the rest of the flight. As I ran I was stripping my cloak off and winding it round my left arm. Ralf threw me a look from which all the gaiety and daring had gone. He had no need even to ask the next question; we both knew the answer.

"Who makes the pilgrimage?" The boy's voice was hoarse.

"Brithael. Now open up, quickly."

"My lord Brithael! My lord — I cannot — I have no orders to admit anyone this way..." He was watching me as I stooped, took Felix under the armpits, and dragged him with as little noise as I could, back into the lodge and out of sight. I saw Ralf lick his lips. "Can you not ride to the main gate, my lord?

The Duchess will be asleep, and I have no orders —"

"Who's that?" demanded Brithael. "Ralf, by your voice. Where's Felix?"

"Gone up to the guard-room, sir."

"Then get the key from him, or send him down." The man's voice roughened, and a fist thudded against the gate. "Do as I say, boy, or by God I'll have the skin off your back. I have a message for the Duchess, and she won't thank you for holding me here. Come now, hurry up!"

"The — the key's here, my lord. A moment." He threw a desperate look over his shoulder as he made a business of fumbling with the lock. I left the unconscious man bundled out of sight, and was back at Ralf's shoulder, breathing into his ear:

"See if he's alone first. Then let him in."

He nodded, and the door opened on its chain-bolt. Under cover of the noise it made I had my sword out, and melted into the shadow behind the boy, where the opening door would screen me from Brithael.

I stood back against the wall. Ralf put his eye to the gap, then drew back, with a nod at me, and began to slide the chain out of its socket. "Excuse me, my lord Brithael." He sounded abject and confused. "I had to make sure...Is there trouble?"

"What else?" Brithael thrust the door open so sharply that it would have thudded into me if Ralf had not checked it. "Never mind, you did well enough." He strode in and stopped, towering over the boy. "Has anyone else been to this gate tonight?"

"Why, no, sir." Ralf sounded scared — as well he might — and therefore convincing. "Not while I've been here, and Felix said nothing...Why, what's happened?"

Brithael gave a grunt, and his accoutrements jingled as he shrugged. "There was a fellow down yonder, a horseman. He attacked us. I left Jordan to deal with him. There's been nothing here, then? No trouble at all?"

"None, my lord."

"Then lock the gate again and let none in but Jordan. And now I must see the Duchess. I bring grave news, Ralf. The Duke is dead."

"The Duke?" The boy began to stammer. He made no attempt to shut the gate, but left it swinging free. It hid Brithael from me still, but Ralf was just beside me, and in the dim light I saw his face go pinched and blank with shock. "The Duke — d-dead, my lord? Murdered?"

Brithael, already moving, checked and turned. In another pace he would be clear of the door which hid me from him. I must not let him reach the steps and get above me.

"Murdered? Why, in God's name? Who would do that? That's not Uther's way. No, the Duke took the chance before the King got here, and we attacked the King's camp tonight, out of Dimilioc. But they were ready. Gorlois was killed in the first sally. I rode with Jordan to bring the news. We came straight from the field. Now lock that gate and do as I say."

He turned away and made for the steps. There was room, now, to use a sword. I stepped out from the shadow behind the door.

"Brithael."

The man whirled. His reactions were so quick that they cancelled out my advantage of surprise. I suppose I need not have spoken at all, but again there are certain things a prince must do. It cost me dear enough, and could have cost me my life. I should have remembered that tonight I was no prince; I was fate's creature, like Gorlois whom I had betrayed, and Brithael whom I now must kill. And I was the future's hostage. But the burden weighed heavy on me, and his sword was out almost before mine was raised, and then we stood measuring one another, eye to eye.

He recognized me then, as our eyes met. I saw the shock in his, and a quick flash of fear which vanished in a moment, the moment when my stance and my drawn sword told him that this would be his kind of fight, not mine. He may have seen in my face that I had already fought harder than he, that night.

"I should have known you were here.Jordan said it was your man down there, you damned enchanter. Ralf! Felix! Guard — ho there, guard!"

I saw he had not grasped straight away that I had been inside the gate all along. Then the silence on the stairway, and Ralf's quick move away from me to shut the gate told its own story. Fast as a wolf, too quickly for me to do anything, Brithael swept his left arm with its clenched mailed fist smashing into the side of the boy's head. Ralf dropped without a sound, his body wedging the gate wide open.

Brithael leapt back into the gateway. "Jordan!Jordan ! To me! Treachery!"

Then I was on him, blundering somehow through his guard, breast to breast, and our swords bit and slithered together with whining metal and the clash of sparks.

Rapid steps down the stairs. Ulfin's voice: "My lord — Ralf —"

I said, in gasps: "Ulfin...Tell the King...Gorlois is dead. We must get back...Hurry..."

I heard him go, fast up the stairs at a stumbling run. Brithael said through his teeth: "The King? Now I see, you pandering whoremaster."

He was a big man, a fighter in his prime, and justly angry. I was without experience, and hating what I must do, but I must do it. I was no longer a prince, or even a man fighting by the rules of men. I was a wild animal fighting to kill because it must.

With my free hand I struck him hard in the mouth and saw the surprise in his eyes as he jumped back to disengage his sword. Then he came in fast, the sword a flashing ring of iron round him. Somehow I ducked under the whistling blade, parried a blow and held it, and lashed a kick that took him full on the knee. The sword whipped down past my cheek with a hiss like a burn. I felt the hot sting of pain, and the blood running. Then as his weight went on the bruised knee, he trod crookedly, slipped on the soaked turf and fell heavily, his elbow striking a stone, and the sword flying from his hand.

Any other man would have stepped back to let him pick it up. I went down on him with all the weight I had, and my own sword shortened, stabbing for his throat.

It was light now, and growing lighter. I saw the contempt and fury in his eyes as he rolled away from the stabbing blade. It missed him, and drove deep into a spongy tuft of sea-pink. In the unguarded second as I fought to free it, his tactics shifted to match mine, and with that iron fist he struck me hard behind the ear, then, wrenching himself aside, was on his feet and plunging down the dreadful slope to where his own sword lay shining in the grass two paces from the cliff's edge.

If he reached it, he would kill me in seconds. I rolled, bunching to get to my feet, flinging myself anyhow down the slimy slope towards the sword. He caught me half on to my knees. His booted foot drove into my side, then into my back. The pain broke in me like a bubble of blood and my bones melted, throwing me flat again, but I felt my flailing foot catch the metal, and the sword jerked from its hold in the turf to skid, with how gentle a shimmer, over the edge. Seconds later, it seemed, we could hear, thin and sweet through the thunder of the waves, the whine of metal as it struck the rocks below.

But before even the sound reached us he was on me again. I had a knee under me and was dragging myself up painfully. Through the blood in my eyes I saw the blow coming, and tried to dodge, but his fist struck me in the throat, knocking me sideways with a savagery that spread-eagled me again on the wet turf with the breath gone from my body and the sight from my eyes. I felt myself roll and slip and, remembering what lay below, blindly drove my left hand into the turf to stop myself falling. My sword was still in my right hand. He jumped for me again, and with all the weight of his big body brought both feet down on my hand where it grasped the sword. The hand broke across the metal guard. I heard it go.

The sword snapped upwards like a trap springing and caught him across his outstretched hand. He cursed in a gasp, without words, and recoiled momentarily. Somehow, I had the sword in my left hand.

He came in again as quickly as before, and even as I tried to drag myself away, he made a quick stride forward and stamped again on my broken hand. Somebody screamed. I felt myself thrash over, mindless with pain, blind. With the last strength I had I jabbed the sword, hopelessly shortened, up at his straddled body, felt it torn from my hand, and then lay waiting, without resistance, for the last kick in my side that would send me over the cliff.

I lay there breathless, retching, choking on bile, my face to the ground and my left hand driven into the soft tufts of sea-pink, as if it clung to life for me. The beat and crash of the sea shook the cliff, and even this slight tremor seemed to grind pain through my body. It hurt at every point. My side pained as though the ribs were stove in, and the skin had been stripped from the cheek that lay pressed hard into the turf.

There was blood in my mouth, and my right hand was a jelly of pain. I could hear someone, some other man a long way off, making small abject sounds of pain.

The blood in my mouth bubbled and oozed down my chin into the ground, and I knew it was I who was groaning. Merlin the son of Ambrosius, the prince, the great enchanter. I shut my mouth on the blood and began to push and claw my way to my feet.

The pain in my hand was cruel, the worst of all; I heard rather than felt the small bones grind where their ends were broken. I felt myself lurching as I got to my knees, and dared not try to stand upright so near the cliff's edge. Below me a master wave struck, thundered, fountained up into the greying light, then fell back to crash into the next rising wave. The cliff trembled. A sea-bird, the first of the day, sailed overhead, crying.

I crawled away from the edge and then stood up.

Brithael was lying near the postern gate, on his belly, as if he had been trying to crawl there. Behind him on the turf was a wake of blood, glossy on the grass like the track of a snail. He was dead. That last desperate stroke had caught the big vein in the groin, and the life had pumped out of him as he tried to crawl for help. Some of the blood that soaked me must be his.

I went on my knees beside him and made sure. Then I rolled him over and over till the slope took him, and he went after his sword into the sea. The blood would have to take care of itself. It was raining again, and with luck the blood would be gone before anyone saw it.

The postern gate stood open still. I reached it somehow and stood, supporting myself with a shoulder against the jamb. There was blood in my eyes, too. I wiped it away with a wet sleeve.

Ralf had gone. The porter also. The torch had burnt low in its socket and the smoky light showed the lodge and stairway empty. The castle was quiet. At the top of the stairway the door stood partly open, and I saw light there and heard voices. Quiet voices, urgent but unalarmed. Uther's party must still be in control; there had been no alarm given.

I shivered in the dawn chill. Somewhere, unheeded, the cloak had dropped from my arm. I didn't trouble to look for it. I let go of the gate and tried standing upright without support. I could do it. I started to make my way down the path towards the bay.

10

There was just light enough to see the way; light enough, too, to see the dreadful cliff and the roaring depths below. But I think I was so occupied with the weakness of my body, with the simple mechanics of keeping that body upright and my good hand working and the injured hand out of trouble, that I never once thought of the sea below or the perilous narrowness of the strip of safe rock. I got past the first stretch quickly, and then clawed my way, half crawling, down the next steep slide across the tufted grasses and the rattling steps of scree. As the path took me lower, the seas came roaring up closer beside me, till I felt the spray of the big waves salt with the salt blood on my face. The tide was full in with morning, the waves still high with the night's wind, shooting icy tongues up the licked rock and bursting beside me with a hollow crash that shook the very bones in my body, and drenched the path down which I crawled and stumbled.

I found him halfway up from the beach, lying face downwards within an inch of the edge. One arm hung over the brink, and at the end of it the limp hand swung to the shocks of air disturbed by the waves. The other hand seemed to have stiffened, hooked to a piece of rock. The fingers were black with dried blood.

The path was just wide enough. Somehow I turned him over, pulling and shifting him as best I could till he was lying close against the cliff. I knelt between him and the sea.

"Cadal. Cadal."

His flesh was cold. In the near-darkness I could see that there was blood on his face, and what looked like thick ooze from some wound up near the hair. I put my hand to it; it was a cut, but not enough to kill.

I tried to feel the heartbeat in his wrist, but my numbed hand kept slipping on the wet flesh and I could feel nothing. I pulled at his soaked tunic and could not get it open, then a clasp gave way and it tore apart, laying the chest bare.

When I saw what the cloth had hidden I knew there was no need to feel for his heart. I pulled the sodden cloth back over him, as if it could warm him, and sat back on my heels, only then attending to the fact that men were coming down the path from the castle.

Uther came round the cliff as easily as if he were walking across his palace floor. His sword was ready in his hand, the long cloak gathered over his left arm. Ulfin, looking like a ghost, came after him.

The King stood over me, and for some moments he did not speak. Then all he said was:

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"AndJordan ?"

"Dead too, I imagine, or Cadal would not have got this far to warn us."

"And Brithael?"

"Dead."

"Did you know all this before we came tonight?"

"No," I said.

"Nor of Gorlois' death?"

"No."

"If you were a prophet as you claim to be, you would have known." His voice was thin and bitter. I looked up. His face was calm, the fever gone, but his eyes, slaty in the grey light, were bleak and weary.

I said briefly: "I told you. I had to take the time on trust. This was the time. We succeeded."

"And if we had waited until tomorrow, these men, aye, and your servant here as well, would still be living, and Gorlois dead and his lady a widow...And mine to claim without these deaths and whisperings."

"But tomorrow you would have begotten a different child."

"A legitimate child," he said swiftly. "Not a bastard such as we have made between us tonight. By the head of Mithras, do you truly think my name and hers can withstand this night's work? Even if we marry within the week, you know what men will say. That I am Gorlois' murderer. And there are men who will go on believing that she was in truth pregnant by him as she told them, and that the child is his."

"They will not say this. There is not a man who will doubt that he is yours, Uther, and rightwise King born of all Britain."

He made a short sound, not a laugh, but it held both amusement and contempt. "Do you think I shall ever listen to you again? I see now what your magic is, this 'power' you talk of...It is nothing but human trickery, an attempt at statecraft which my brother taught you to like and to play for and to believe was your mystery. It is trickery to promise men what they desire, to let them think you have the power to give it, but to keep the price secret, and then leave them to pay."

"It is God who keeps the price secret, Uther, not I."

"God? God? What god? I have heard you speak of so many gods. If you mean Mithras —"

"Mithras, Apollo, Arthur, Christ — call him what you will," I said. "What does it matter what men call the light? It is the same light, and men must live by it or die. I only know that God is the source of all the light which has lit the world, and that his purpose runs through the world and past each one of us like a great river, and we cannot check or turn it, but can only drink from it while living, and commit our bodies to it when we die."

The blood was running from my mouth again. I put up my sleeve to wipe it away. He saw, but his face never changed. I doubt if he had even listened to what I said, or if he could have heard me for the thunder of the sea. He said merely, with that same indifference that stood like a wall between us:

"These are only words. You use even God to gain your ends. 'It is God who tells me to do these things, it is God who exacts the price, it is God who sees that others should pay...' For what, Merlin? For your ambition? For the great prophet and magician of whom men speak with bated breath and give more worship than they would a king or his high priest? And who is it pays this debt to God for carrying out your plans? Not you. The men who play your game for you, and pay the price. Ambrosius. Vortigern. Gorlois. These other men here tonight. But you pay nothing. Never you."

A wave crashed beside us and the spume showered the ledge, raining down on Cadal's upturned face. I leaned over and wiped it away, with some of the blood. "No," I said.

Uther said, above me: "I tell you, Merlin, you shall not use me. I'll no longer be a puppet for you to pull the strings. So keep away from me. And I'll tell you this also. I'll not acknowledge the bastard I begot tonight."

It was a king speaking, unanswerable. A still, cold figure, with behind his shoulder the star hanging clear in the grey. I said nothing.

"You hear me?"

"Yes."

He shifted the cloak from his arm, and flung it to Ulfin, who held it for him to put on. He settled it to his shoulders, then looked down at me again. "For what service you have rendered, you shall keep the land I gave you. Get back, then, to your Welsh mountains, and trouble me no more."

I said wearily: "I shall not trouble you again, Uther. You will not need me again."

He was silent for a moment. Then he said abruptly: "Ulfin will help you carry the body down."

I turned away. "There is no need. Leave me now."

A pause, filled with the thunder of the sea. I had not meant to speak so, but I was past caring, or even knowing, what I said. I only wanted him gone. His sword-point was level with my eyes. I saw it shift and shimmer, and thought for a moment that he was angry enough to use it. Then it flashed up and was rammed home in its housings. He swung round and went on his way down the path. Ulfin edged quietly past without a word, and followed his master. Before they had reached the next corner the sea had obliterated the sound of their footsteps.

I turned to find Cadal watching me.

"Cadal!"

"That's a king for you." His voice was faint, but it was his own, rough and amused. "Give him something he swears he's dying for, and then, 'Do you think I can withstand this night's work?' says he. A fine old night's work he's put in, for sure, and looks it."

"Cadal —"

"You, too. You're hurt...your hand? Blood on your face?"

"It's nothing. Nothing that won't mend. Never mind that. But you — oh, Cadal —"

He moved his head slightly. "It's no use. Let be. I'm comfortable enough."

"No pain now?"

"No. It's cold, though."

I moved closer to him, trying to shield his body with my own from the bursting spray as the waves struck the rock. I took his hand in my own good one. I could not chafe it, but pulled my tunic open and held it there against my breast. "I'm afraid I lost my cloak," I said. "Jordan's dead, then?"

"Yes." He waited for a moment. "What — happened up yonder?"

"It all went as we had planned. But Gorlois attacked out of Dimilioc and got himself killed. That's why Brithael and Jordan rode this way, to tell the Duchess."

"I heard them coming. I knew they'd be bound to see me and the horses. I had to stop them giving the alarm while the King was still..." He paused for breath.

"Don't trouble," I said. "It's done with, and all's well."

He took no notice. His voice was the merest whisper now, but clear and thin, and I heard every word through the raging of the sea.

"So I mounted and rode up a bit of the way to meet them the other side of the water...then when they came level I jumped the stream and tried to stop them." He waited for a moment. "But Brithael...that's a fighter, now. Quick as a snake. Never hesitated. Sword straight into me and then rode over me. Left me for Jordan to finish."

"His mistake."

His cheek-muscles moved slightly. It was a smile. After a while he asked: "Did he see the horses after all?"

"No. Ralf was at the gate when he came, and Brithael just asked if anyone had been up to the castle, because he'd met a horseman below. When Ralf said no he accepted it. We let him in, and then killed him."

"Uther." It was an assumption, not a question. His eyes were closed.

"No. Uther was still with the Duchess. I couldn't risk Brithael taking him unarmed. He would have killed her, too."

The eyes flared open, momentarily clear and startled. "You?"

"Come, Cadal, you hardly flatter me." I gave him a grin. "Though I'd have done you no credit, I'm afraid.

It was a very dirty fight. The King wouldn't even know the rules. I invented them as I went along."

This time it really was a smile. "Merlin...little Merlin, that couldn't even sit a horse...You kill me."

The tide must be on the turn. The next wave that thundered up sent only the finest spray which fell on my shoulders like mist. I said: "I have killed you, Cadal."

"The gods..." he said, and drew a great, sighing breath. I knew what that meant. He was running out of time. As the light grew I could see how much of his blood had soaked into the soaking path. "I heard what the King said. Could it not have happened without...all this?"

"No, Cadal."

His eyes shut for a moment, then opened again. "Well," was all he said, but in the syllable was all the acquiescent faith of the past eight years. His eyes were showing white now below the pupil, and his jaw was slack. I put my good arm under him and raised him a little. I spoke quickly and clearly:

"It will happen, Cadal, as my father wished and as God willed through me. You heard what Uther said about the child. That alters nothing. Because of this night's work Ygraine will bear the child, and because of this night's work she will send him away as soon as he is born, out of the King's sight. She will send him to me, and I shall take him out of the King's reach, and keep him and teach him all that Galapas taught me, and Ambrosius, and you, even Belasius. He will be the sum of all our lives, and when he is grown he will come back and be crowned King at Winchester."

"You know this? You promise me that you know this?" The words were scarcely recognizable. The breath was coming now in bubbling gasps. His eyes were small and white and blind.

I lifted him and held him strongly against me. I said, gently and very clearly: "I know this. I, Merlin, prince and prophet, promise you this, Cadal."

His head fell sideways against me, too heavy for him now as the muscles went out of control. His eyes had gone. He made some small muttering sound and then, suddenly and clearly, he said, "Make the sign for me," and died.

I gave him to the sea, with Brithael who had killed him. The tide would take him, Ralf had said, and carry him away as far as the western stars.

Apart from the slow clop of hoofs, and the jingle of metal, there was no sound in the valley. The storm had died. There was no wind, and when I had ridden beyond the first bend of the stream, I lost even the sound of the sea. Down beside me, along the stream, mist hung still, like a veil. Above, the sky was clear, growing pale towards sunrise. Still in the sky, high now and steady, hung the star.

But while I watched it the pale sky grew brighter round it, flooding it with gold and soft fire, and then with a bursting wave of brilliant light, as up over the land where the herald star had hung, rose the young sun.