The Enchanter Completed

Father Figures Susan Shwartz

Emrys sat alone under a tree trying not to panic. If he really were a prophet, he'd have no cause to panic because he'd know. But all Emrys knew was that Uther's men, who watched him from a hundred vantage points near the great circular embankment, whispered that he was damned well prophet and wizard and they'd kill him if he proved them wrong.

And then there were the black-robed priests who had called him a devil's son and longed to send him back to hell. They bore a remarkable resemblance to Vortigern's evil wizards who'd been ready to sacrifice him for being the boy without a father. So far, he'd managed to bite his tongue on that observation.

So maybe Emrys was a prophet, and maybe he'd just been damned lucky?unfortunate as the choice of words was.

What he was now, beyond all doubt, was a fool. What had possessed him to declare at Aurelius Ambrosius' funeral feast that he would deck the High King of Britain's grave with nothing less than the light itself?

The boy's drunk. He could see Uther's warriors mouthing that to one another and, pretty much in their cups themselves, grinning at the idea. Emrys had almost been insulted. You could expect that kind of stupidity from a descendant of Hengist or Horsa, drunk out of what few wits they had. Besides, Emrys hadn't even had that much to drink. He'd been blind with grief, not mead.

Uther had to understand that; with a gesture like the slash of a knife, he'd silenced his retainers. But he couldn't silence young Gildas, whose limp made him as useless a warrior as Emrys. And Gildas had his brother monks to protect him and honey over his mutterings that Emrys had been Aurelius' catamite.

For all that, some gossips probably believed him. Uther Pendragon wasn't one such, at least not toward the end. But he had never loved his brother's son.

"Let's just see what you can do, bastard," the new High King had muttered out of the side of his mouth. He'd barely spoken except to hail his brother's memory as one might salute an emperor. And even then, he could barely control his voice.

Bastard. Emrys had never known his father or, for that matter, who his father was. So he'd been ripe for the taking when Vortigern's wizards proclaimed that only a boy without a father could shore up the renegade king's fortress' foundation. They had expected to use his blood: his counterplan had been to use his wits and some scanty engineering knowledge pried from watching engineers who treasured learning said to have been handed down from the days when the Legions occupied Britain.

Instead, he'd blacked out. By the time he'd waked, Vortigern's wizards were shorter by their heads; masons were rebuilding the foundations with stone and mortar?but no blood; and Emrys had been named prophet?an honor he could have lived without and run considerably fewer risks?to a traitor.

Fearing that his next summons by Vortigern would be the death of him, Emrys eluded his guards and fled to join the High King, new-come from Little Britain. If he'd been a true prophet, would he?the boy without a father?have truly been so astonished to learn who his father had actually been? Emrys had felt like he was living in a dream. In the twinkling of an eye, he'd been promoted from potential sacrifice to king's son?even if he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Filial loyalty replaced hero worship, at least most of the time, and Emrys, called Merlinus by the High King's Romanized troops after the hawks he loved, had served Aurelius as faithfully as any true-born son might serve his father.

And then the High King died.

Being what they were, wary and even jealous of each other, Uther and Emrys couldn't even comfort each other for the loss of the man who'd been an absent father to his son, and raised his brother as if they, not Ambrosius and Emrys, had been parent and child. Uther had never forgiven Emrys the bastard for existing, let alone claiming a share of his elder brother's love. No doubt he'd be glad to see Emrys fail. Uther was a practical man, with no use for histrionics or failures, especially those standing too near his Purple. Unless Emrys could make good on his boast, he didn't have to be a prophet to know Uther would rid the world of him.

What if he succeeded? Wouldn't he be even more of a threat?

Quite probably. But the problem was: he had made a solemn vow that he'd be damned if he didn't keep. In more ways than one.

For now, though, Emrys was alive and boy enough to rejoice in the beauty of the day and a handful of moist, crumbling cakes (his servants liked him even if no one else did and were constantly trying to fatten him up so he wouldn't look like some changeling from under the hill). Munching, he glanced out over the curved embankment, trying to see massive stones, bigger than those in the circles in Little Britain, jutting up from Sarum Plain. He hadn't just been an idiot; he'd been an idiot in detail, vowing to cross the sea, uproot the Giants' Dance from Eire?over what were likely to be emphatic armed objections of the local fighters, no doubt?and float them back to Britain before dragging them over land and setting them up here above Ambrosius' grave. No doubt Uther's men expected the stones to swim or dance the whole damned way.

The late afternoon sun pierced through the cloud cover, half-blinding Emrys. Or maybe it wasn't the sun after all.

If he ran away, Uther would send men after him, to haul him back in disgrace. Perhaps, if he admitted what Uther most likely knew?that he might be his bastard nephew but no kind of a wizard at all and flung himself on the High King's mercy?Uther might merely pack him off to a monastery. Or kill him quickly, disgusted at his cowardice. Either might be better than this silent apprehension while he waited to be found out.

A raven, larger brother to the brand of the Legion's God that Emrys bore, flew across the plain. Emrys raised a hand in salute, knowing that men would mark the gesture and report it to the new High King. Young Gildas was probably lurking somewhere, scribbling, eternally scribbling. The fact that both he and Emrys were always writing or reading something should have been a bond between them. But Gildas never forgave himself for being less than perfect: he forgave Emrys even less.

And then he heard voices on the plain. A man's voice, a woman's, quarreling in no language he had ever heard. It bore some resemblance to Latin and some to the Saxon's tongue. He'd always been quick at music, quick at speech, quick to learn languages. Even his earliest teachers had called it a gift of God (when they didn't attribute it to the devil). In either event, they tended toward plans to shut him in a monastery to work off the sin of his birth as a harmless scribe.

Emrys set himself to listen. There were no crystals here, as there'd been inset in the womb of the cave that had been his study and his refuge when he was a child, but he stared into the sunlight until sweat scalded down his sides and tears ran down his face. As his vision whited out, a blaze of comprehension engulfed him.

"Something went wrong. The last time I…" The man's voice was well-modulated and restrained, as if he had studied rhetoric in Athens itself.

"The last time you and Fletcher Pratt went off on one of your little jaunts, you didn't just miss dinner, I didn't see you for three months. Isaac was ready to write a detective novel about it, and Robert managed to sell that time-travel story to Astounding!" The lady's voice, higher pitched and angry, cut across her companion's.

Emrys crept closer, to spy as well as eavesdrop on the quarreling strangers. A good thing he was thin and lithe and could crouch in what was exceedingly inadequate cover. He saw a tall, lean man who carried himself like one of his father's war leaders. But for all his leanness and energy, the man was quite old?oh, sixty, if he were a day. Strong lines bracketed his mouth, and his temples, below a plume of silvering hair, were hollowed.

"I'm sorry, Catherine, to drag you into this. There's one consolation, however. We are most definitely in England. Britain, I should say. Look at that henge. They haven't even begun to erect the stones. Neolithic, I should guess…"

"Lyon Sprague de Camp…" The lady stamped her foot. It wasn't much of a stamp, but then, it wasn't much of a foot: the lady was smaller than her lord by shoulders and a head. Her hair was gilded, but she could hardly be a Northerner, not with the saint's name she'd been called. "Oh, Spraguie, after all these years, do you think I'm going to let you go charging off into time again without me? At least, if things go wrong, we're together."

"We may be here for quite some time," the man said, pointing toward Aurelius' grave. "The transfer point's got to be there, or nearby. Along with what looks like a considerable war band."

Emrys squinted so he could examine the lady, in her strange white clothing and necklace of silver twisted in interlocking spirals, shells, and water-smoothed gems, more closely. Her hair was fair, her skin pale, and her lips red, almost the color of rowan in autumn. She carried herself like a queen.

Think, Emrys, the boy told himself. The lady's named after a saint, and the man bears several names. Or perhaps, the first name was a title. After all, Lion was one of the degrees of initiation into the cult of Mithras?and a higher degree at that than Raven, to which Emrys had attained.

Emrys came to what Bleys, his tutor, called a paradox. What was a senior initiate of Mithras doing with the Lady? The God of Legions had few dealings with women.

"The ground looks freshly turned in there. Probably a tomb from the size of the excavation. The installation's bound to be in there. But we're going to have to be careful finding access."

"I can't imagine the people here don't have… stringent punishments for tomb robbers." The lady flared her nostrils in distaste.

"Do you regret coming with me?" asked the man. He wore a gray robe, a little short for him, but then, he would have towered over any but the largest Saxons. And there were giants in the earth in those days… no, Emrys cautioned himself. You have no evidence to support that assumption. Mortal man, if unknown to me, and the Lady could be newly come from Rome. In that case, she'd probably be Christian, and it still makes no sense for her to consort with the Lion.

Emrys could not doubt her humanity, however, or at least her perfect use of human form, when she quite audibly sniffed. "Nonsense! I would regret only if we were parted, as I told you. And I have every expectation that we will either figure out a way to return, become Philadelphia Yankees in King Arthur's Court, or whenever we are, or that we'll be rescued by our friends. Besides, the sight of you stealing those clothes…"

She laughed merrily, like a much younger woman. "I suppose we shall have to find allies soon. And shelter. If the weather holds, I would truly prefer to sleep outside. Wattle and daub holds bugs, and old stonework probably even worse. And you can smell that camp from here… " She widened her eyes, and turned her head sideways, as if looking through Emrys toward where Uther's men were camped.

"There is one advantage," said her companion. "As you know, at this time in Britain's history, the climate could sustain viniferous grapes."

Lady Catherine laughed again and held up a hand. "Spare me the expository lump, dear. It all adds up to 'don't drink the water… Still, the air is very sweet. No smog." She nodded at what Emrys finally decided had to be her husband. With a speed Emrys hadn't expected in a man his size or age, the tall man whirled, leapt forward, crashed through the bush, grabbed him, and dragged him out to drop him, ignominiously, at the lady's feet.

Lady Catherine instantly leaned forward. "Why, he's only a boy!" she cried. "Can we help you?" She grimaced, bit her lip, then repeated the question in curiously accented Latin.

"Interesting choice, my dear," said the Lion, or Sprague of the Camps, as his lady had called him. "Why Latin?"

"Look at his knife and tunic. They look Celtic enough to me, but I never studied Welsh. Iron, no less. And that fibula's studded with garnets. We've taken ourselves a high-ranking hostage."

"Better keep back, in that case, dear. Teenagers were fully qualified fighting men in Dark Age Britain."

Lady Catherine sniffed. "I don't think he'll hurt me. I know teenagers, after all."

Sprague snorted, but didn't release his hold on Emrys' arm in the slightest. "Answer the lady, fili mei," he ordered. "Catherine, did I get the vocative right?"

"You know you did," she said. She looked narrowly into Emrys' eyes, then spoke in the odd jargon that she and her husband had used since Emrys had first heard them.

"Sprague, I think he's understood every word we said since we… arrived."

Emrys attempted innocence and suspected he didn't achieve it. It never had worked for him when he'd been growing up, the last of a gaggle of princelings, legitimate and otherwise.

"In that case, give me one good reason why I shouldn't take this wretched little spy out and slit his throat with his own knife?" Sprague laughed as Emrys jerked against his restraining arm. " 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive, " he added to Emrys. "Catherine, I agree. The boy's a natural linguist and the fastest study I've ever seen. Damn, I wish Professor Terman could have observed him; he makes the Stanford study group look like a class full of slow learners."

"Stop scaring him, Spraguie," said Catherine his wife. "Look how dirty you got him." She leaned forward and, taking a clean white cloth, rubbed at the Raven brand on his forehead until he squirmed.

"Stay still now," she scolded… "But that's not dirt."

"No," her husband said. "It's a brand. A raven. 'Mithras, God of the morning…' "

His grip relaxed momentarily, and Emrys scrambled to his feet, saluting him as befitted a lower- to a higher-grade initiate.

The Lion raised an eyebrow.

"He must have heard me call you Lyon, dear, and jumped to the obvious conclusion," said Catherine. "The one time I actually use your first name…»

"No good deed goes unpunished. And he may have done us a favor. In any rate, as Lion to Raven, I owe him protection. Can we help you?" Sprague asked again.

Emrys bowed his head. "No one can help me," he muttered despite inward, conflicting exhortations to stand straight and bow to his elders, or run as if the Wild Hunt were on his trail. Or tail, as the case probably was.

"That's as may be," the Lady Catherine said with some sharpness. "Why don't you tell us the whole story and let us be the judge of it."

"You won't believe me," Emrys said. "Nobody ever does." Except for the time, the first time in his life, he'd boasted as a man among men at his father's funeral feast. Nevertheless, he turned and led the way to the tree where he'd stretched out on his cloak and cursed the day he'd been born. He wasn't surprised to see that no one had touched his leather bottle of wine or the honeycakes, wrapped in a damp coarse cloth, that one of the cooks had pressed on him with a sigh of "poor lad, I mean, my lord."

After he and the older man had seated the lady carefully on the cleanest part of his cloak, he dropped to one knee, poured wine into the flask's attached cup and offered it to Lady Catherine. After she sipped and nodded politely, he wiped its rim and offered it to Lord Sprague.

"I suppose wine's a natural antiseptic," Catherine said as she watched her husband pour a libation before he drank.

"Not a bad week," Sprague said, wiping his lips, then his eyes. "Enough tannin in this to cure a vat of hides."

Catherine grimaced. "Well, cheers!" she said, taking the cup back. She sipped, grimaced again, and drank once more. "You know, I could get used to this," she said and broke off a piece of honeycake so that Emrys, too, could eat.

"Let's have the whole story, young man. Why were you spying on us? For that matter, why are you sitting out here all by yourself and looking as if the hounds of hell are about to be set loose? Sprague, tell him we won't let anyone hurt him!"

"I find myself unable to tell him anything of the sort, unless he cooperates with us," the man said. "Starting with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We're waiting. Let's start with your name, seeing as you've already learned ours."

Emrys hunched his shoulders as he had when he was a boy trying to postpone the moment of his inevitable thrashing for one of the misdeeds that had always come as natural to him as breathing.

Are you a man or a bastard brat? He scolded himself, and straightened before it all came out in a rush. "I'm called Emrys. After my father Aurelius Ambrosius. I told you you wouldn't believe me."

"Son, you'd be amazed at what we might believe. Six impossible things before breakfast," the man said.

Catherine drew a fast, deep breath and glanced out over the plain. "That looks like Stonehenge. But where's the standing stones?"

"In Ireland," said Emrys. "And that's the whole problem. I promised I'd bring them back to Britain and set them up here. In honor of the High King. He's buried there." He pointed with his chin, his hands busy with wine and honeycake.

"The High King Ambrosius," said Catherine, raising a hand to her lips. "Oh my. What're those lines from Keats? 'Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific?and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise?Silent on a peak in Darien. ' "

Neither Emrys' teacher Bleys nor any Druid he'd met had ever uttered such words, but Emrys recognized them as a song.

"It was Balboa, not Cortez," the man replied, "but I do understand the 'wild surmise' part, my dear. You think we're 'first looking into Chapman's Mallory'?" he asked.

"Perhaps not Mallory, but definitely Geoffrey of Monmouth, or even Nennius," Catherine replied. She looked out across the plain where no standing stones had ever risen nor, if the task were left to Emrys' feeble powers, ever would.

She paused, then grinned at her husband.

"Sprague, don't you know Merlin when you see him?"

Her husband laughed a mighty laugh, then wiped his eyes. Emrys hastened to offer him more wine. " 'There really are more things in heaven and earth… " the man murmured. "Catherine, let's look at the data at hand. In our world and our time, the stone circle we know as Stonehenge predates Dark Age Britain by… a considerable amount. Say two thousand years. And the menhirs and dolmens were transported not from Ireland but from the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire, while the altar stone probably came from Milford Haven. Possibly the idea was to throw down the cult of the death goddess in Wales…"

"Oh, Sprague… surely you're not going to quote The White Goddess at me?"

Emrys made the Sign.

Sprague snorted. "The words are marvelous, but the whole book's superstitious nonsense."

"Occam's Razor," swore his wife. "Least common denominator. We see a boy who calls himself Emrys. He's vowed to deck his father's grave with the light itself, assuming Mary Stewart will forgive me for stealing that line. If we were in our own world, Stonehenge would already be standing. But it's not, so, I think we've got to assume we haven't just traveled back in time, we've jumped universes."

Maybe Emrys had only thought he understood what the newcomers were talking about. Now, they were talking as if they'd been translated from some other world. Some happier world, no doubt, where boys like him were spared the consequences of their bragging.

The sunlight was slanting down on the henge. Sooner, rather than later, he'd have to go in and face sidelong looks, questions about "well, when do we set off for Ireland?" and whispers, hissing closer and closer until one night, men and knives would come for him, or he'd convulse and die with wolfsbane in his wine or some such.

Such a world probably didn't exist. Emrys shook his head to clear it, then returned to the problem at hand: his boast, his impending failure, and the doom that would surely follow.

"I swore it by the king's grave. You should swear things like that," he muttered.

"No, you shouldn't," said the man. "So it looks very much as if you're honor bound to have to assemble the Giants' Dance here. Can't say I envy you, interesting problem in engineering though it is. But it may be that I can help you. In fact, I'll have to help you if Catherine and I are to have any chance of getting home because I don't believe our meeting is a coincidence at all."

Emrys started to throw himself to the ground in the prostration given to the emperors in the East. "I prayed, and you were?you were sent to help me!"

That the man called Sprague had said that "it"?and surely «it» must be some great power or talisman?rested near his father's grave made him shudder. Emrys told himself that Sprague and Catherine had sat at his table, warmed themselves at his hearth, and couldn't possibly mean to defile it or betray him. And he believed it, he told himself. He believed it.

"Oh dear God, Spraguie, if you don't set him straight, he's going to decide we're gods or demons, and I don't know which one would be worse. Look at the boy. He's shaking like a leaf."

The man's hand was on his shoulder, traveling to his chin, turning his face up. "Boy," he called. "Emrys! I give you my word, we're not gods or demons, but flesh and blood like you. Look!" He drew Emrys' knife and cut his hand. "It bleeds. Would a god bleed? Would a fraud show you blood or try to convince you that he had powers you lacked?"

"It didn't work for the man who would be king in Kafiristan," Catherine muttered, drawing a flashing grin from her husband. One day, Emrys promised himself, he'd have read enough that he'd know the heroes the lady talked about.

"But you knew. I didn't tell you, and you knew," Emrys protested.

"We're students of history. And we know a story… very like your own. Besides, in addition to history, I studied at Caltech?that's a school, lad, where they train engineers like you get in the Legions. I served in the Navy. And I've been to Easter Island where they have standing stones sculptured like giant heads. I've even seen the pyramids in Egypt. Let us help you."

The Giants' Dance was supposed to have come from Africa, and Emrys' guest was an engineer. For the first time, Emrys felt not just the stirrings of hope, but real hope that his guests might help him devise some practical plan.

Emrys looked away from the tall man to the seated woman whose eyes and jewels glowed in the light of late afternoon. A breeze sprang up, drying the cold sweats that had hit Emrys from time to time ever since he'd blurted out his idiot boast.

The lady was watching him. For all their brightness, her eyes were soft and very kind. "I think you've been through some rough times," she said. "It sounds to me as if you found your father after you'd been missing one for a long time. And you loved him very much. And now you're alone again."

"No, I'm not," Emrys said, furiously knuckling away what he told himself was not tears. "They're watching me. Uther's men and the monks. That Gildas. They're always watching me."

"Kind of young to have the ward heelers on your tail, aren't you, son?"

"What demons are those?"

"The very worst," said Sprague. "Petty demons."

"Now, Spraguie… stop playing word games. Let's help the boy move mountains, and then we can go home." She smiled at the tall man and at Emrys himself, and he thought it might not be the worst thing in the world?in all the worlds these strangers talked of?if they had to stay. If he could stay with them.

One thing about being even a bastard prince: Emrys could bring in guests, and they would be well treated. After they were warmed at his hearth, offered food, water, and linen, he realized his servants had decided they should be treated royally.

His guests looked magnificent. Lady Catherine's white linen, now topped by a great cloak, swept the ground, and she wore bracelets and earrings of amber the color of her hair. Sprague fastened a huge penannular brooch on a cloak in subtly woven plaids atop a green tunic. A sword that looked like the ones carried by Uther's guards hung at his belt.

Emrys pulled up heavy chairs for his guests at the trestle table that groaned with food: chickens, venison, a roast of boar, bread that tempted even Emrys' fledgling appetite, and grapes.

"I haven't been this dressed up since Bob and Pam Adams' wedding!" Sprague announced. "When they fired up the baths, did you see how they operated? It was just fascinating."

Catherine tapped her foot against the battered mosaic of the floor. In the soft shoe she now wore, it wasn't as impressive as her foot stamps earlier in the day, but she made her point.

"Now," said Sprague, "let's sit down and eat. Then, we'll make some plans."

"I have to confess," Emrys said. "I'm not really a prophet."

"That's as may be. One thing's certain: You're a scared boy, and you've got reason to be scared. Let's look at the situation. You may not be a magician, but you're shrewd. And any art that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."

Never mind the bards. Martial himself could not have composed a better aphorism, Emrys was sure. He waved away the servants, and cut his guests' meat with his own hands.

The lady leaned over the table. "From what I gather?that story in our own world, as we told you, plus the scrolls and codices I see you've collected, you're a good mathematician. What you've got here is partly an engineering problem. For that, Sprague can help you, none better. And the rest of it is logistics: getting your people where you need them and making sure they have what they need to do what they have to do."

"What we haven't got is time!" Emrys protested.

"We have all the time in the worlds," said Sprague. "But you're grieving, you're way out on a limb, and naturally, at your age, you're in a hurry. You won't believe me now, no one your age ever does, but you'd be wise to plan now so you won't have to play catch-up later. And listen to my wife: she studied economics at Columbia along with languages."

"Emrys, you may as well accept that moving these stones is going to take time. The more people, the less time. That's only logical. But, if you have too many people, you'll run into a whole other set of logistical problems: they'll get in each other's way, and if you've pick the wrong people, from warring clans or people who aren't honest, they'll probably start a war."

A chill ran down Emrys' spine. He had not lived among ill-wishers, either in his grandfather's house, Vortigern's household, or now without being able to sense?no magic about it, just sharp eyes and ears?when he was being spied on. "They're watching," he mouthed at his guests.

Sprague raised an eyebrow, then dropped a hand to the pouch at his finely tooled belt. He rose and went to the fire, began to chant, and extended his hands. The fire erupted with a roar loud enough to drive the eavesdroppers away.

"Not the catalogue of ships again," his wife complained. "We may get a spy who's read Homer, and then what will you do? To say nothing of what happens when you run out of filings. No, don't tell me you've brought along iron or magnesium filings, too."

"The thing about clich?s, my dear," said the man, "is that they work."

Emrys went to the door, where one guard, more valiant than the rest, lingered by the wall.

"Young Gildas almost pissed himself when that fire went off," the guard said, grinning. Did Emrys really have allies among the guards? That was useful to know. "It's worth being that close to… what you do to have seen the expression on his face."

"It is forbidden to interfere when I and my guests speak together. They are great teachers."

Emrys could practically hear the guard's jaw clench as he snapped to attention and closed the door.

"Nice going, son," said Catherine. "But I wouldn't get any ambitions about being a boy actor, if I were you, though. They're a dime a dozen in Hollywood."

"What shrine is the Holly Wood?" asked Emrys. He should have known the lady was a priestess. Since the monks had swarmed all over Britain, he had known few Druids who dared to speak this openly.

"Never mind," she said, a little sharply. "Let's talk about logistics."

As Sprague watched with an expression of pleased?no, he wasn't surprised?he expected her to take charge, Emrys blinked. He supposed he should have been able to puzzle out «logistics» word from the Greek he'd learned.

"Robert?he's a… a wise man of our acquaintance, Emrys?says that dilettantes talk strategy, amateurs talk tactics, and real professionals talk logistics. Let's evaluate the situation."

"How could I have been so stupid as to say I'd adorn Aurelius' grave with the Giants' Dance?" Emrys lamented again. "The stones are enormous, and there's no one alive strong enough to move them."

"Man makes engines," said Sprague. "Pity you couldn't think of stones closer to home."

"It had to be these stones. It couldn't be stones from Little Britain; besides, they're allies. These stones belong to Gillomanus, a king in Ireland. They're big enough and important enough to be a proper monument for my… my father. Besides, if you pour water over them and bathe in it, they'll heal you. Or the water can be mixed with herbs and used to cure wounds. There isn't a single stone in the whole Giants' Dance that doesn't have some medicinal property." He paused to draw a breath.

"And besides," he said, "I promised. I've been doing some calculating…" He reached for wax tablets and stylus, rough parchment and pen, and pulled them forward, the wax half-smoothed from the last time he'd used it, the parchment already smudged and scraped. "Uther says he's damned if he's going to give me the fifteen thousand men he says it'll take to do the job right."

"The job being what? War with Gillomanus' Ireland or bringing home the memorial stones?"

"Probably both," Emrys said. "Gillomanus will never surrender the stones, I know that. We'll have to take them by force."

"You're a noncombatant," said Lady Catherine. "After they have their war, your work starts. Now, I don't need to be an engineer like Sprague here to know that brute strength won't work on those stones. You're going to need cranes and levers and ropes. Probably sledges or logs to get the stones to the ships once you take them down. But you men can talk," she said, rising and stretching, lithe as a cat. "I'm going to bed."

The Lion of Mithras who called himself Sprague paced in front of the dying fire, discoursing of siege engines and the Bible. At least, that's what the talk of the megalithic yards, fathoms, and cubits as opposed to what he called the "Stonehenge cubit" sounded like. "As my… my magister for these arts, Aubrey Burl, a learned man who went up and down the Isles seeking out these stones, taught… " Lord Sprague went on. "Oh never mind! It's in Pythagoras. I'm assuming you've studied geometry. The square of the hypotenuse…"

Emrys scrambled down from his chair, snatched a charred stick from the fire, and sketched the right triangle that had been one of his earliest lessons.

"Good boy!" the man approved. "Now," he said, "what do you know about counting and arithmetic in different bases…"

Emrys settled his chin on his hand, smearing ash over his face, he had no doubt, and listened as if his soul depended on it. As his life assuredly did.

Sprague continued to pace before the flames, occasionally dropping down beside Emrys to correct his triangles. The light waxed and waned, waxed and waned. Emrys' charred stick fell from his hand, and he stared into the fire. No white dragon. No red dragon. Not even a salamander. He'd been prophet to two kings, and he couldn't even summon up a damn lizard.

Back and forth.

"It's a formula," came the man's voice from a distance that sounded far greater than his height. Perhaps the old curates' theory that you can attribute everything to solar myths actually means something. Hmmm. If I remember right, the meaning of the thirty posts of the inner circle is plain. Last time I let Catherine tease me about The WhiteGoddess. Let's see if I can remember what Graves said."

Sprague's voice took on the cadence of a Druid, summoning wisdom from his trained memory. " 'The thirty arches of the outer circle and the thirty posts of the inner circle stood for the days of the ordinary Egyptian month; but the secret enclosed by these circles was that the solar year was divided into five seasons, each in turn divided into three twenty-four day periods, represented by the three stones of the dolmens'… hmmm, hmmm, and what's the point? 'For the circle was so sited that at dawn of the summer solstice the sun rose exactly at the end of the avenue in dead line with the altar and the Hell Stone; while of the surviving pair of the four undressed stones, one marks the sun's rising at the winter solstice, the other its setting at the summer solstice. ' "

Emrys could see it now: the massive arches, darker for the brilliance of the dawn, with the great fire of the sun blazing through the entryway and glorifying his father's tomb with long beams of light.

It would be beautiful. It would be breathtakingly simple, a matter, as Lady Catherine had said before retiring, of fulcrums, levers, ropes, and enough men to do the heavy lifting?assuming they survived the war they'd have to fight with Gilloman. And the honor would be his, all his… just as the blame would be if he failed.

The hearth seemed to expand before Emrys' eyes, then spin as the room around them went darker than the sky right before dawn. The air glittered, and his temples pounded the way they'd done as he'd stood before Vortigern in a ruined fortress and the tale of the white dragon and the red ripped out of him.

They were back, those winged creatures, fanning his hearthfire; although they were much too big to occupy the firepit, they would rend the room from its foundation as they had done the traitor's fortress…

Dimly, Emrys heard the Lion shout, "Catherine, get me a cloth! Boy's having some sort of seizure" before the roar of the comets that dazzled him as they exploded somewhere behind his eyes engulfed his consciousness.

He felt his mouth stretch open?" Get that cloth in there before he bites his tongue; what's that he's saying?"?and he fought to get out the infinitely important words: "This world is profitless, uncertain, a transient possession of everyone in turn, every day. Everyone that has been, everyone that will be, has died, will die, has departed, will depart. Each night I behold fire-breathing Phoebus with Venus, and watch by night the stars wheeling in the firmament; and they will teach me about the future of the nation…"

"This isn't epilepsy, Sprague," came the lady's voice. "He's hallucinating. It can't be ergot; the bread they served us was white bread, at any rate, or we'd be showing symptoms too."

"Emrys," came Sprague's voice, close to his face. "Boy… Merlin! Can you hear me?"

I can hear you, my lord, Emrys wanted to say. Other words tore out, hurting as they fled the prison of his skull. "I was taken out of my true self, I was as a spirit and knew the history of people long past and could foretell the future. I knew then the secrets of nature, bird flight, star wanderings and the way fish glide."

Hard hands were holding on to him, keeping him from flying through the fire and up into the night. Let me go, let me go! He thought he screamed that before the blackness, tinged with red and flame at the edges, engulfed him.

Emrys found himself lying upon stone, warmed by a fire onto which his guest heaped fresh wood so that it roared up like something in Emrys' visions. His visions…

The room reeked of his sweat and worse. At the last, he'd lost control again, like a baby or a man in his second childhood.

"It is quite all right," Lady Catherine spoke over the level of his aching skull to people visible only as long legs and shadowy robes. Some of them were black. "Nursing is the province of women."

As her husband bent to poke the fire, he turned and his shoulders shook.

The monks murmured, but Emrys' head hurt too badly to follow. Damned blackrobes: why couldn't they speak up like a man, or like the lady there?

"I have raised young children, I'm used to caring for the sick," Lady Catherine said. White ringed hands bathed his forehead, attesting the truth of her words. "Rest easy, brothers. Between the prince's servants and me, he will fare well enough."

More muttering, to which Emrys added words of his own. "Get those damned stormcrows out of here."

"You really shouldn't swear. But what's that you say, dear?" Lady Catherine asked. She raised his head so that it rested against her breast, effectively muffling his words. "Sprague, if you could hand me that cup…"

Her husband bent with a speed that must have made him a formidable warrior in his prime and handed her the cup with a bow. Neither allowed the blackrobes to come anywhere near it.

"Drink," the lady murmured, and he obeyed.

Willow, Emrys thought, and herbs heavier and darker. No wine. How had people that wise prepared a potion and left out the wine?

His head felt heavy, as it always did when the fits struck him.

Her arms, holding him, tightened. "I told you, we will care for him. We have no wish to draw you from your prayers. To which you have our leave to return." The lady's voice whipcracked, sending them away. Gildas turned in the doorway, glaring in a way Emrys knew well, then limped out.

The Lady had taken his enemies upon herself and her husband. Why? Emrys took the enigma down into a deep, black sleep like a well. If fortune favored him, he would find a solution at the bottom.

I'm getting better at this, Emrys told himself the next time he struggled out of a sleep about the size and depth of a pit. Someone?and he suspected he could put names to the people, because his servants were too afraid of him to tend him that intimately?had bathed him, wrapped him in a fresh robe, rolled him onto a pallet of silky furs, and covered him warmly. He had broken into a light sweat as you do when you get over a fever. His head no longer ached, and the vile taste in his mouth seemed remote, as if no concern of his.

He felt curiously light, his thoughts more clear than they had ever been.

Behind him, at the table, a chair scraped back, and long strides brought the man over, towering above him. "I copied over our triangles," said his guest. "When you fell, you smeared the drawings on the hearth. Are you well?"

"Better than I have a right to be," said Emrys. "Of your kindness, sir, please lend me an arm. I want to stand."

"Catherine!"

"What's he doing, Spraguie? Standing up? Oh, no, you don't, child. You're going nowhere but your own bed today," she told him, taking him by the arm and leading him toward his room.

"But I must," he said. He was unsteady on his feet, and that was not good. He would have to be in shape to walk some distance and, if needs be, run and even fight. But he would need strength and for that, rest. He surrendered and allowed himself to be put to bed like a child. He would let himself enjoy the illusion of being a favored, well-tended child. Just for a little while.

The lady bent over him, smoothing back his hair in a gesture that made his throat tighten. His mother had given herself to holiness when he was very young; he could not remember a time when she had cared for, cosseted him the way a mother would care for a beloved child. He would have asked little better than to let her soothe him, perhaps feel her lips brush his forehead, then watch as she bustled about his room. Instead, as she bent closer, he whispered, "I've got to get you out of here tonight. Tell the Lion."

Emrys' guests carried their chairs into his room as if watching over him, concerned for his illness. He let himself fall into a doze, secure in their protection, knowing how much stronger he would feel when he awoke. From time to time he woke and measured the day's passage by the way the sunbeams drifted across his face.

When he woke for the fourth time, it was late afternoon. His guests had drawn their chairs closely together and were speaking, low-voiced, in the odd language they had used before they first saw him.

"He's concerned for us, Catherine. You were perhaps unduly harsh with those monks?"

"And this is the man who laughed when I said 'nursing is the province of women'? Better I than men who hate him and have access to an herb garden. Remember that monkshood took out King John."

"And none too soon," the man agreed. "But it couldn't be better. I wish we could stay and see the boy through this project of his, but I've given him everything he needs, except perhaps, confidence to do it. So I think it's only fair: let the lad keep his bargain and help us get home. Two strangers, wandering by the High King's grave? They've got two chances to enter it: slim and none. The guests of a bastard prince who's known to be a wizard? They'll be so afraid we'll turn them into toads that we'll have a free hand. Catherine, we could be back in Philadelphia before dawn!"

"I admit, I would like that. The people here are perfectly charming about heating water, but I would like a bath that's less labor-intensive. And I do not like the way those monks looked at young Emrys."

"When you're in a court, it's only necessary that there are court intrigues. Fascinating as it would be to meet King Uther, I think we'd better go home. And if Emrys is willing to help us, I think it's our best opportunity."

His first teacher had showed him how to keep his breaths regular, to appear to be sleeping, or preparing to meditate before the fire. But it was a struggle not to try to see his guests from beneath his eyelashes.

Light footsteps, a drift of fragrance, and Lady Catherine rose to check on him, then return to his chair. "I hate to leave him like this," she said. "He's a good boy. Sprague…?" Her voice arched up in a question.

"In our world, this lad is absolutely essential to the future of the British Isles. If we took him back with us, we'd be meddling with history… I like him too…"

Emrys' eyes were welling. In a moment, the tears would spill out, and they'd know he'd been listening.

"But we can't take the risk. It's not our world."

Both adults sighed heavily, and something in Emrys' heart chilled, probably forever. He let his awareness drift away. At least, when his guests went back to their rightful place in that Philadelphia?how civilized it must be, like Egypt, perhaps, or Athens, he'd be able to remember that they wanted to take him home with them, but he had a destiny to fulfill.

Damn his destiny. Whatever it was.

None of his servants thought it at all amiss that Emrys would wish to show his guests, who had been so kind to him, the High King's grave. But his servants all went in healthy awe of him, Emrys thought. The real test would be whether he could guide his friends through the labyrinth of guards and other unfriends and hold them off while they sought whatever shrine they claimed lay within the henge.

He had not had their company that long; but the certainty that they wished to depart, coupled with what he knew the need for their departure was?for their own lives, if not for his?weighed on his heart even more than the day, remembered now as a sorrow long ago, his mother had left for the convent, abandoning him to his grandfather's fosterage.

In those days, he'd gone up into the hills and found Bleys, his master.

It was not inconceivable that, in the years to come, he would find others, equally as dear.

He unfastened his pouch and handed it to Emrys. "As a parting gift, my bag of tricks," he said. "You may find some of them useful after we leave."

He handed it to Emrys and clasped his arm, as if they'd been warriors together. Then, he held up his free hand. Light gleamed from off a gold ring.

"We're close," he whispered to his lady. "Look for any stonework that looks more… more modern than the rest." He stopped and turned to face Emrys again.

"I want to thank you," he began, as Catherine drew closer, setting her hands upon Emrys' shoulders.

"You know," said Lady Catherine, tightening her hands, "it isn't inconceivable we could meet again. In the tales of our world, you disappear, shut up in an oak tree, underground… Yes, none of it sounds particularly pleasant, but consider the possibility that you come to us instead. It wouldn't hurt…"

"No?" asked her husband. "My dear, you're breaking the prime directive. And besides, if Emrys came to us in Philadelphia, you'd only drag him to the dentist."

No real mirth underlay their laughter, but Emrys made himself laugh too.

And then, too quickly, fell silent.

"We're being followed," he said. He froze where he stood, listening with all his being. One step, then a pause, then a drag, as if the man who followed them limped.

"Gildas," he said, more in exasperation than fear.

Would the young monk never leave Emrys alone? Was it just that they were rivals for a scholar's praise? Or that Emrys wore the Raven's brand? Probably, he would never know.

One thing he did know: let Gildas find him aiding his friends to enter Aurelius' tomb?or let Gildas concoct a plausible tale of grave-robbing?and swift death, far preferable to execution, could be the best that he?or all of them?could hope for.

He took the torch Lady Catherine carried and snuffed it on the ground. Let Gildas find them in the dark: he carried light; he could be tracked.

He gestured his friends on ahead. What if he did not see them depart? If all went well, they would be gone and he?this was his world. He had coped with its spites, petty and great, before.

The Lion set out across the turf, his wife at his side. Quickly, she turned, rushed back to Emrys, and kissed him, fast and hard, then followed her husband. The tomb was ringed with fire. Emrys could remember when it was built and where?atop ancient stonework. Perhaps hidden in that wall was the door they sought to their home. He would have to have faith they succeeded.

He would never know now, he thought.

He turned to wait for Gildas, watching the light bobbing toward him as the monk limped as fast as he could. He should never have come out alone, Emrys thought. If he were what Gildas thought, what qualm should he have about killing him?

Not very logical, his Gildas, but a good hater. Emrys dropped a hand to the pouch the Lion had given him, withdrew what he sought, and waited.

Gildas' torch drew closer, close enough for the monk to see that Emrys stood alone, as always.

"Where are your demons?" demanded the young monk. He stood unevenly, the firelight gleaming off the cross hung round his neck. "I heard them speaking of forbidden magics."

Forbidden to whom? Gildas never quite understood that not everyone was a Christian. Or cared.

"My guests are gone." Where you will never find them.

"To rob the High King's tomb?"

"Have you been swilling sacramental wine again?" Emrys asked. No need to waste what he was coming to think of as his gift, or curse, or even logic when insults would do.

"Blasphemer!" With the high hot temper of the Celt, Gildas rushed him, torch out to strike and maim.

It was the moment Emrys had been waiting for.

He threw the handful of metal filings he had drawn from the Lion's pouch onto the torch, then hurled himself back as it exploded into violent light.

Gildas shrieked and fell, but not before the torch set his robe ablaze.

Emrys kicked out the fire?perhaps more vigorously than need be. Thoroughness, his teachers had always said, was a virtue.

When the fire was out, and Gildas safely unconscious, Emrys hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him to the nearest guards, dropping hints the monk had wrestled with a demon and been saved through Emrys' wisdom.

After all, if Gildas was going to hate him, he might as well have some grounds for his grudge.

He could just imagine how his guests would smile if only they knew.

If only.

He waited until the guards had left before he sighed and returned to his quiet rooms.

None of the servants had touched the triangles inscribed the night before: how should they dare? Emrys set the pouch down, and carefully arranged the parchments.

He clapped his hands for his body-servant. The man entered so fast that Emrys knew he was under constant scrutiny. He knew that, from now on, he would always be watched, and awe?maybe turning to respect should he deserve it?struck him as better than hatred and suspicion.

"Set out clean clothes for me. Then go and ask whether the High King will receive me."

He washed, then smoothed his hair and dressed as neatly as if Lady Catherine were going to approve him. He was attaching his new pouch to his finest belt when the word came: Uther would indeed grant him audience.

Picking up the parchments that showed him how to satisfy his boast?perhaps for all times, he swung his cloak about himself and went to see the king.

He had a vow to fulfill.