The Last Enchantment

1

TO THE EAST OF CAER CAMEL the land is rolling and wooded, ridges and hills of gentle green, with here and there, among the bushes and ferns of the summits, traces of old dwelling-places or fortifications of past time.

One such place I had noticed before, and now, casting about among the hills and valleys, I looked at it once more, and found it good. It was a solitary spot, in a fold between two hills, where a spring welled from the turf and sent a tiny brook tumbling down to meet a valley stream. A long time ago men had lived there. When the sun fell aright you could see the soft outline of ancient walls beneath the turf. That settlement had vanished long since, but since then some other settler, in harder times, had built himself a tower, the main part of which still stood. It had been built, moreover, with Roman stone taken from Caer Camel. The squared shapes of the chiselled stone showed still clean-edged beneath the encroaching saplings and those stinging ghosts that cluster wherever man has been, the nettles. Even these weeds were not unwelcome; they are sovereign for many ailments, and I intended, as soon as the house was done, to plant a garden, which is the chief of the arts of peace.

And peace we had at last. The news of the victory at Badon reached me even before I had paced out the dimensions of my new home. From the account Arthur sent me of the battle it seemed certain that this must be the final victory of the campaign, and now the King was imposing terms, being set on the decisive fixing of his kingdom's boundaries. There was no reason to suppose, his message ran, that there would be any further attack or even resistance for some time to come. I, not having seen the battlefield, but knowing what I knew, prepared to build for a time of peace, where I might live in the solitude I loved and needed, at due remove from the busy center where Arthur would be.

Meanwhile it would be wise to get hold of all the masons and craftsmen I should require before Arthur's own great schemes for his city began to burgeon. They came, shook their heads over my plans, then set cheerfully to work to build what I wanted.

This was a small house, a cottage, if you will, set in the hollow of the hillside, and facing south and west, away from Caer Camel, toward the distant swell of the downs. The place was sheltered from north and east, and, by a curve of the hill below, from the few passers-by on the valley road. I had the tower rebuilt on its old pattern, and the new house constructed against this, single-storeyed, with behind it a square courtyard or garth in the Roman style. The tower formed a corner of this between my own dwelling and the kitchen quarters. At the side opposite the house were workshops and sheds for storage. On the north side of the garth was a high wall coped with tiles, against which I hoped to set some of the more delicate plants. I had long thought of doing what now the masons shook their heads over: the wall was built double, and the hypocaust led warm air into it. Not only in winter would the vines and peaches be safe, but the whole garth would, I thought, benefit from the warmth, as well as from the sunlight it would catch and hold. This was the first time I had seen such an idea put into practice, but later it was done at Camelot, and at Arthur's other palace at Caerleon. A miniature aqueduct led water from the spring into a well at the garth's center.

The men, finding it a pleasant change from the years of military building, worked quickly. We had an open winter that year. I rode to Bryn Myrddin to oversee the moving of my books and certain of the medical stores, then spent Christmas at Camelot with Arthur. The carpenters went into my house early in the New Year, and the work was done and the men free in time to start the permanent building at Camelot in the spring.

I still had no servant of my own, and now had to set myself to find one — not an easy task, for few men can settle happily in the kind of solitude I crave, and my ways have never been those of the ordinary master. The hours I keep are strange ones; I require little food or sleep, and have great need of silence. I could have bought a slave who would have had to put up with whatever I wanted, but I have never liked bought service. But this time, as always before, I was lucky. One of the local masons had an uncle who was a gardener; he had given him, he said, an account of the building of the heated wall, and the uncle had shaken his head and muttered something about newfangled foreign nonsense, but had since evinced the liveliest curiosity about every stage of the building. His name was Varro. He would be glad to come, said the mason, and his daughter, who could cook and clean, would come with him.

So it was settled. Varro started the clearing and digging straight away, and the girl Mora began to scrub and air, and then, in one of those lucid and lovely spells of early weather, with primroses already showing under the budding hawthorns, and lambs couched warm beside the ewes in the hollows of flowering whin, I stabled my horse and unpacked my big harp, and was home.

Soon after, Arthur came to see me. I was in the garth, sitting in the sunshine on a bench between the pillars of the miniature colonnade. I was busy sorting seeds collected last summer and packed away in twists of parchment. Beyond the walls I heard the stamp and jingle of the King's escort, but he came in alone. Varro went past with a stare and a salute, carrying his spade. I got to my feet as Arthur raised a hand in greeting.

"It's very small," were his first words, as he looked about him.

"Enough. It's only for me."

"Only!" He laughed, then pivoted on his heel. "Mmm... if you like dog-kennels, and it seems you do, then I must say it's very pleasant. So that's the famous wall, is it? The masons were telling me about it. What are you planting there?"

I told him, and then took him on a tour of my little garth. Arthur, who knew as much about gardens as I about warfare, but who was always interested in making, looked and touched and questioned; he spent a lot of time at the heated wall, and on the construction of the small aqueduct that fed the well.

"Vervain, Camomile, Comfrey, Marigold..." He turned over the labelled packets of seed lying on the bench. "I remember Drusilla used to grow marigolds. She gave me some concoction of them when I had the toothache." He looked round him again. "Do you know, there is already something of the same peace here that one had at Galava. If only for my sake, you were right in refusing to live in Camelot. I'll feel I have a refuge here, when things are pressing on me."

"I hope you will. Well, that's all here. I'll have my flowers here, and an orchard outside. There were a few old trees here already, and they seem to be doing well. Would you like to come in now and see the house?"

"A pleasure," he said, in a tone so suddenly formal that I glanced at him, to see that his attention was not on me at all, but on Mora, who had come out of a doorway and was shaking a cloth in the breeze. Her gown was blown close against her body, and her hair, which was pretty, flew in a bright tangle round her face. She stopped to push it back, saw Arthur, blushed and giggled, then ran indoors again. I saw a bright eye peep through a crack, then she caught me watching, and withdrew. The door shut. It was apparent that the girl had no idea who the young man was who had eyed her so boldly.

He was grinning at me. "I am to be married in a month, so you can stop watching me like that. I shall be the most model of married men."

"I am sure of it. Was I watching you? It's no concern of mine, but I should warn you that the gardener is her father."

"And a tough fellow he looks. All right, I'll keep my blood cool until May. God knows it's landed me in trouble before, and will again."

" 'A model married man?' "

"I was talking about my past. You warned me that it would reach into my future." He said it lightly; the past, I guessed, was well behind him now. I doubted if thoughts of Morgause still troubled his sleep. He followed me into the house and, while I found wine and poured it, went on another of his prowling tours of discovery.

There were only two rooms. The living-chamber took two-thirds of the length of the house, and its full width, with windows both ways, on garth and hill. The doorway opened on the colonnade that edged the garth. Today for the first time the door stood open to the mild air, and sunlight fell warmly across the terra-cotta tiles of the floor. At the end of the room was the place for the fire, with a wide chimney to take the smoke outside. In Britain we need fires as well as heated floors. The hearthstone was of slate, and the walls, of well-finished stone, were hung with rich rugs I had brought back with me from my travels in the East. Table and stools were oak, from the same tree, but the great chair was of elm wood, as also the chest under the window, which held my books. A door at the end of the room led to my bedchamber, which was simply furnished with bed and clothes chest. With some memory, perhaps, of childhood, I had planted a pear tree outside the window.

All this I showed him, then took him to the tower. The door to this led off the colonnade in the corner of the garth. On the ground floor was the workroom or still-room, where the herbs were dried, and medicines made up. There was no furniture but a big table, and stools and cupboards, and the small brick stove with its oven and charcoal burner. A stone stair against one wall led to the upper room. This was the chamber I meant to use as my private study. Here there was nothing as yet but a work-table and chair, a couple of stools and a cupboard with tablets and the mathematical instruments I had brought from Antioch. A brazier stood in one corner. I had had a window made looking out to the south, and this was covered with neither horn nor curtain. I do not readily feel the cold.

Arthur moved round the tiny room, stooping, peering, opening boxes and cupboards, leaning on his fists to gaze out of the window, filling the small space with his immense vitality, so that even the stout, Roman-built walls seemed barely to contain him.

In the main chamber, once more, he took a goblet from me and raised it. "To your new home. What will you call it?"

"Applegarth."

"I like that. It's right. To Applegarth then, and your long life here!"

"Thank you. And to my first guest."

"Am I? I'm glad. May there be many more, and may they all come in peace." He drank and set the goblet down, looking about him again. "Already it is full of peace. Yes, I begin to see why you chose it... but are you sure it is all you want? You know, and I know, that the whole of my kingdom is yours by right, and I do assure you I'd let you have half of it for the asking."

"I'll let you keep it for the present. It's been too much trouble for me to envy you overmuch. Have you time to sit for a while? Will you eat? The very idea will frighten Mora into an epilepsy, because you can be sure she has been out to ask her father who the young stranger is, but I'm certain she can find something —"

"Thank you, no, I've eaten. Have you just the two servants? Who cooks for you?"

"The girl."

"Well?"

"Eh? Oh, well enough."

"Which means you haven't even noticed. For God's sake!" said Arthur. "Let me send you a cook. I don't like to think of you eating nothing but peasant messes."

"Please, no. The two of them round me by day are all I want, and even they go to their own home at night. I do very well, I assure you."

"All right. But I wish you would let me do something, give you something."

"When I find something I want, be sure I'll ask you for it. Now tell me how the building is going. I'm afraid I've been too occupied with my dog-kennel to pay much attention. Will it be ready for your wedding?"

He shook his head. "By summer, perhaps, it might be fit to bring a queen to. But for the wedding I'll go back to Caerleon. It will be in May. Will you be there?"

"Unless it's your wish that I should be there, I would prefer to stay here. I begin to feel I've had too much travelling in the past few years."

"As you wish. No, no more wine, thank you. One thing I wanted to ask you. You remember, when first the idea of my marriage was mooted — the first marriage — you seemed to have some doubts about it. I understood that you had had some sort of presentiment of disaster. If so, you were right. Tell me, please — this time, have you any such doubts?"

They tell me that when I guard my face, no man can read what is in my mind. I met his eyes level. "None. Need you ask me? Have you any doubts yourself?"

"None." The flash of a smile. "At least, not yet. How could I, when I am told that she is perfection itself? They all say she is lovely as a May morning, and they tell me this, that and the other thing. But then, they always do. It will suffice if she has a sweet breath and a compliant temper... Oh, and a pretty voice. I find that I care about voices. All this granted, it couldn't be a better match. As a Welshman, Merlin, you ought to agree."

"Oh, I do. I agree with everything Gwyl said, there in the hall. When do you go to Wales to bring her to Caerleon?"

"I can't go myself; I have to ride north in a week's time. I'm sending Bedwyr again, and Gereint with him, and — to do her honour, since I can't go myself — King Melwas of the Summer Country."

I nodded, and the conversation turned then on the reasons for his journey north. He was going, I knew, mainly to look at the defensive work in the northeast. Tydwal, Lot's kinsman, held Dunpeldyr now, ostensibly on behalf of Morgause and Lot's eldest son, Gawain, though it was doubtful if the queen's family would ever leave Orkney.

"Which suits me very well," said the King indifferently. "But it creates certain difficulties in the northeast."

He went on to explain. The problem lay with Aguisel, who held the strong castle of Bremenium, in a nest of the Northumbrian hills, where Dere Street runs up into High Cheviot. While Lot had ruled to the north, Aguisel had been content to run with him, "as his jackal," said Arthur contemptuously, "along with Tydwal and Urien. But now that Tydwal sits in Lot's chair, Aguisel begins to be ambitious. I've heard a rumour — I have no proof of it — that when last the Angles sent their ships up the Alaunus River, Aguisel met them there, not in war, but to speak with their leader. And Urien follows him still, brother jackals, playing at being lions. They may think they are too far away from me, but I intend to pay them a visit and disillusion them. My excuse is to look at the work that has been done on the Black Dyke. From all I hear, I should like a pretext to remove Aguisel for good and all, but I must do it without rousing Tydwal and Urien to defend him. The last thing I can afford, until I am sure of the West Saxons, is a break-up of the allied kings in the north. If I have to remove Tydwal, it may mean bringing Morgause back to Dunpeldyr. A small thing, compared with the rest, but the day she sits in a mainland castle again cannot be a good day for me."

"Then let us hope the day will never come."

"As you say. I'll do my best to contrive it so." He looked round him again as he turned to go. "It's a pleasant place. I'm afraid I shan't have time to see you again before I ride, Merlin. I go before the week is out."

"Then all the gods go with you, my dear. May they be beside you, too, at your wedding. And some day, come and see me again."

He went. The room seemed to tremble and grow larger again, and the air to settle back into tranquillity.

2

AND TRANQUILLITY WAS THE sum of the months that followed. I went over to Camelot soon after Arthur's departure for the north, to see how the building work was going; then, satisfied, left Derwen to complete it, and retired to my new-made fastness with almost the same feeling of homecoming as I felt at Bryn Myrddin. The rest of that spring I spent about my own affairs, planting my garden, writing to Blaise, and, as the country-side burgeoned, collecting the herbs I needed for a renewal of my stores.

I did not see Arthur again before the wedding. A courier brought me news, which was brief but favourable. Arthur had found proof of Aguisel's villainy and had attacked him in Bremenium. The details I did not know, but the King had taken the place and put Aguisel to death; and this without rousing either Tydwal or Urien, or any of their kinsmen against him. In fact, Tydwal had fought beside Arthur in the final storming of the walls. How the King had achieved this, the report did not say, but with the death of Aguisel the world would be cleaner, and, since he died without sons, a man of Arthur's choosing could now hold the castle that commanded the Cheviot pass. Arthur chose Brewyn, a man he could be certain of, then went south to Caerleon well content.

The Lady Guinevere duly arrived in Caerleon, royally escorted by princes — Melwas and Bedwyr and a company of Arthur's knights. Cei had not gone with the party; as Arthur's seneschal his duty lay in the palace at Caerleon, where the wedding was celebrated with great splendour at Pentecost. I heard later that the bride's father had suggested May Day, and that Arthur, after the briefest hesitation, had said, "No," so flatly that eyebrows were raised. But this was the only shadow. All else seemed set fair. The pair were married late in the month on a glorious day of sunshine, and Arthur took a bride to bed for the second time, with, now, days and nights to spare. They came to Camelot in early summer, and I had my first sight of the second Guinevere.

Queen Guinevere of Northgalis was more than "well enough and with a sweet breath"; she was a beauty. To describe her, one would have to rob the bards of all their old conventions; hair like golden corn, eyes like summer sky, a flower-fair skin and a lissom body — but add to all this the dazzle of personality, a sort of outgoing gaiety, and a way of communicating joy, and you will have some idea of her fascination. For fascinating she was: on the night she was brought to Camelot I watched her through the feasting, and saw other eyes than the King's fixed on her throughout the evening. It was obvious that she would be Queen not only of Arthur, but of all the Companions. Except perhaps Bedwyr. His were the only eyes that did not seek hers constantly; he seemed quieter even than usual, lost in his own thoughts, and as for Guinevere, she barely glanced his way. I wondered if something had happened on the journey from Northgalis that stung his memory. But Melwas, who sat near her, hung on her every word, and watched her with the same eyes of worship as the younger men.

That was a beautiful summer, I remember. The sun shone blazing, but from time to time the sweet rains came and the soft wind, so that the fields bore crops such as few men could remember, and the cattle and sheep grew sleek, and the land ripened toward a great harvest. Everywhere, though the bells rang on Sundays in the Christian churches, and crosses were to be seen nowadays where once cairns of stone or statues had stood by the wayside, the countryfolk went about their tasks blessing the young King for giving them, not only the peace in which to grow their crops, but the wealth of the crops themselves. For them, both wealth and glory stemmed from their young ruler, as, during the last year of the sick Uther's life, the land had lain under the black blight. And the common folk waited confidently — as at Camelot the nobles waited — for the announcement that an heir was begotten. But the summer wore through, and autumn came, and, though the land yielded its great harvest, the Queen, riding out daily with her ladies, was as lissom and slender as ever, and no announcement was made.

And here in Camelot, the memory of the girl who had conceived the heir and died of him troubled no one. All was new and shining and building and making. The palace was completed, and now the carvers and gilders were at work, and women wove and stitched, and wares of pottery and silver and gold came into the new city daily, so that the roads seemed full of coming and going. It was the time of youth and laughter, and building after conquest; the grim years were forgotten. As for the "white shadow" of my foreboding, I began to wonder if it had indeed been the death of the other pretty Guenever that had cast that shadow across the light, and seemed to linger still in corners like a ghost. But I never saw her, and Arthur, if he once remembered her, said nothing.

So four winters passed, and Camelot's towers shone with new gilding, and the borders were quiet, the harvests good, and the people grew accustomed to peace and safety. Arthur was five and twenty, and rather more silent than of old; he seemed to be away from home more, and each time for longer. Cador's duchess bore him a son, and Arthur rode down into Cornwall to stand sponsor, but Queen Guinevere did not go with him. For a few weeks there was whispered hope that she had a good reason for refusing the journey; but the King and his party went and returned, and then left again, by sea, for Gwynedd, and still the Queen at Camelot rode out and laughed and danced and held court, as slim as a maiden, and, it seemed, as free of care.

Then one raining day of early spring, just as dusk fell, a horseman came thudding to my gate with a message. The King was still away, and was not looked for yet for perhaps another week. And the Queen had vanished.

The messenger was Cei the seneschal, Arthur's foster-brother, the son of Ector of Galava, a big man, some three years older than the King, florid and broad-shouldered. He was a good fighter and a brave man, though not, like Bedwyr, a natural leader. Cei had neither nerves nor imagination, and, while this makes for bravery in war, it does not make for good leadership. Bedwyr, the poet and dreamer, who suffered ten times over for one grief, was the finer man.

But Cei was staunch, and now, since he was responsible for the ordering of the King's household, had come himself to see me, attended only by one servant. This, though he bore one arm in a rough sling, and looked tired and worried out of his slow mind. He told me the story, sitting in my room with the firelight flickering on the ceiling rafters. He accepted a cup of mulled wine, and talked quickly, while, at my insistence, he removed the sling and let me examine his injured arm.

"Bedwyr sent me to tell you. I was hurt, so he sent me back. No, I didn't see a doctor. Damn it, there hasn't been time! Anything could've happened, wait till I tell you... She's been gone since daybreak. You remember how fair it was this morning? She went out with her ladies, with only the grooms and a couple of men for escort. That was usual — you know it was."

"Yes." It was true. Sometimes one or more of the knights accompanied the Queen, but frequently they were occupied on affairs more important than squiring her on her daily rides. She had troopers and grooms, and nowadays there was no danger, so near Camelot, from the kind of wild outlaw who had frequented lonely places when I was a boy. So Guinevere had risen early on what promised to be a fine morning, mounted her grey mare, and set out with two of her ladies, and four men, of whom two were soldiers. They had ridden out across a belt of dry moorland bordered to the south by thick forest. To their right hand lay the marshlands, where the rivers wound seaward through their deep, reedy channels, and to the east the land showed rolling and forested toward the high lift of the downs. The party had found game in plenty; the little greyhounds had run wild after it, and, said Cei, the grooms had their hands full riding after them to bring them back. Meantime, the Queen had flown her merlin after a hare, and had followed this herself, straight into the forest.

Cei grunted as my probing fingers found the injured muscle. "Well, but I told you that it was nothing much. Only a sprain, isn't it? A pulled muscle? Will it take long? Oh, well, it's not my sword arm... Well, she galloped the grey mare in, and the women stayed back. Her maid's no rider, and the other, the lady Melissa, is not young. The grooms were coming back with the greyhounds on the saddle, and were still some way off. Nobody was worrying. She's a great horsewoman — you know she even rode Arthur's white stallion and managed it? — and besides, she's done it before, just to tease them. So they took it easy, while the two troopers rode after her."

The rest was easy to supply. It was true that this had happened before, with no chance of ill, so the troopers spurred after the Queen at no more than a hand-gallop. They could hear her mare thudding through the thick forest ahead of them, and the swish and crackling of the bushes and dead stuff underfoot. The forest thickened; the two soldiers slowed to a canter, ducking the boughs which still swung from the Queen's passing, and guiding their horses through the tangle of fallen wood and water-logged holes that made the forest floor such dangerous terrain. Half cursing, half laughing, and wholly occupied, it was some minutes before they realized that they could no longer hear the Queen's mare. The tangled underbrush showed no trace of a horse's passing. They pulled up to listen. Nothing but the distant scolding of a jay. They shouted, and got no answer. Annoyed rather than alarmed, they separated, riding one in the direction of the jay's scolding, the other still deeper into the forest.

"I'll spare you the rest," said Cei. "You know how it is. After a bit they foregathered, and by then, of course, they were alarmed. They shouted some more, and the grooms heard them, and went in and joined the search. Then after a while they heard the mare again. She was going hard, they said, and they heard her whinnying. They struck their spurs in and went after her."

"Yes?" I settled the injured arm into the freshly tied sling, and he thanked me.

"That's better. I'm grateful. Well, they found the mare three miles off, lame, and trailing a broken rein, but no sign of the Queen. They sent the women back with one of the grooms, and they went on searching. Bedwyr and I took troops out, and for the rest of the day we've been quartering the forest as best we could, but nothing." He lifted his good hand. "You know what that country's like. Where it isn't a tangle of tree and scrub that would stop a fire-breathing dragon, it's marsh where a horse or a man would sink over his head. And even in the forest there are ditches as deep as a man, and too wide to leap. That's where I came to grief. Dead fir boughs spread over a hole, for all the world like a wolf-trap. I'm lucky to have got away with just this. My horse got a spike in the belly, poor beast. It's doubtful if he'll be good for much again."

"The mare," I said. "Had she fallen? Was she mired?"

"To the eyeballs, but that means nothing. She must have galloped through marsh and mire for an hour. The saddlecloth was torn, though. I think she must have fallen; I can't see the Queen falling off her else — unless she was swept off by a bough. Believe me, we must have searched every brake and ditch in the forest. She'll be lying unconscious somewhere... if not worse. God, if she had to do such a thing, why couldn't she do it when the King was at home?"

"Of course you have sent to him?"

"Bedwyr sent a rider before we left Camelot. There are more men out there now. It's getting too dark to find her, but if she's been lying unconscious, and comes round, maybe they'll hear her calling. What else can we do? Bedwyr's got men down there now with dragnets. Some of those pools are deep, and there are currents in that river to the west..." He left it there. His rather stupid blue eyes stared at me, as if begging me to do a miracle. "After I took my toss he sent me back to you. Merlin, will you come with me now, and show us where to look for the Queen?"

I looked down at my hands, then at the fire, dying now to small flames that licked round a greying log. I had not put my powers to the test since Badon. And how long before that since I had dared to call on the least of them? Nor flames, nor dream, nor even the glimmer of Sight in the crystal or the water-drops: I would not importune God for the smallest breath of the great wind. If he came to me, he came. It was for him to choose the time, and for me to go with it.

"Or even just tell me, now?" Cei's voice cracked, imploring.

Time was, I thought, when I would only have had to look at the fire, like this, to lift a hand, like this...

The small flames hissed, and leaped a foot high, wrapping the grey log with glazing scarves of light, and throwing out a heat that seared the skin. Sparks jumped, stung, with the old welcome, quickening pain. The light, the fire, the whole living world flowed upward, bright and dark, flame and smoke and trembling vision, carrying me with it.

A sound from Cei flicked my attention back to him. He was on his feet, backed away from the blaze. Through the ruddy light pouring over him I saw that he had gone pale. There was sweat on his face. He said hoarsely: "Merlin —"

He was already fading, drowned in flame and darkness. I heard myself say: "Go. Get my horse ready. And wait for me."

I did not hear him go. I was already far from the firelit room, borne on the cool and blazing river that dropped me, light as a leaf loosened by the wind, in the darkness at the gates of the Otherworld.

The caves went on and on for ever, their roofs lost in darkness, their walls lit with some strange subaqueous glow that outlined every ridge and boss of rock. From arches of stone hung stalactites, like moss from ancient trees, and pillars of rock rose from the stone floor to meet them. Water fell somewhere, echoing, and the swimming light rippled, reflecting it.

Then, distant and small, a light showed; the shape of a pillared doorway, formal and handsome. Beyond it something — someone — moved. In the moment when I wanted to go forward and see I was there without effort, a leaf on the wind, a ghost in a stormy night.

The door was the gateway to a great hall lighted as if for a feast. Whatever I had seen moving was no longer there; merely the great spaces of blazing light, the coloured pavement of a king's hall, the pillars gilded, the torches held in dragon-stands of gold. Golden seats I saw, ranged round the gleaming walls, and silver tables. On one of these lay a chessboard, of silver, dark and light, with pieces of silver gilt standing, as if half through an interrupted game. In the center of the vast floor stood a great chair of ivory. In front of this was a golden chessboard, and on it a dozen or so gold chessmen, and one half-finished, lying with a rod of gold and a file where someone had been working to carve them.

I knew then that this was no true vision, but a dream of the legendary hall of Llud-Nuatha, King of the Otherworld. To this palace had they all come, the heroes of song and story. Here the sword had lain, and here the grail and the lance might one day be dreamed of and lifted. Here Macsen had seen his princess, the girl whom in the world above he had married, and on whom he had begotten the line of rulers whose latest scion was Arthur.

Like a dream at morning, it had gone. But the great caves were still there, and in them, now, a throne with a dark king seated, and by him a queen, half-visible in shadows. Somewhere a thrush was singing, and I saw her turn her head, and heard her sigh.

Then through it all I knew that I, Merlin, this time of all the times, did not want to see the truth. Knowing it already, perhaps, beneath the level of conscious thought, I had built for myself the palace of Llud, the hall of Dis and his prisoned Persephone. Behind them both lay the truth, and, as I was the god's servant and Arthur's, I had to find it. I looked again.

The sound of water, and a thrush singing. A dim room, but not lofty, or furnished with silver and gold; a curtained room, well lighted, where a man and a woman sat at a little inlaid table and played at chess. She seemed to be winning. I saw him frown, and the tense set of his shoulders as he hunched over the board, considering his move. She was laughing. He lifted his hand, hesitating, but withdrew it again and sat awhile, quite still. She said something, and he glanced aside, then turned to adjust the wick of one of the lamps near him. As he looked away from the board, her hand stole out and she moved a piece, neat as a thief in the market-place. When he looked back she was sitting, demure, hands in lap. He looked, stared, then laughed aloud and moved. His knight scooped her queen from the board. She looked surprised, and threw up her hands, pretty as a picture, then began to set the chessmen afresh. But he, suddenly all impatience, sprang to his feet and, reaching across the board, took her hands in his own and pulled her toward him. Between them the board fell over, and the chessmen spilled to the floor. I saw the white queen roll near his foot, with the red king over her. The white king lay apart, tumbled face downward. He looked down, laughed again, and said something in her ear. His arms closed round her. Her robe scattered the chessmen, and his foot came down on the white king. The ivory smashed, splintering.

With it the vision splintered, broke in shadow that wisped, greying, back into lamplight, and the last glimmer from the dying fire.

I got stiffly to my feet. Horses were stamping outside, and somewhere in the garth a thrush was singing. I took my cloak from its hook and wrapped it round me. I went out. Cei was fidgeting by the horses, biting his nails. He hurried to meet me.

"You know?"

"A little. She is alive, and unhurt."

"Ah! Christ be thanked for this! Where, then?"

"I don't know yet, but I shall. A moment, Cei. Did you find the merlin?"

"What?" blankly.

"The Queen's falcon. The merlin she flew and followed into the forest."

"Not a sign. Why? Would it have helped?"

"I hardly know. Just a question. Now take me to Bedwyr."

3

MERCIFULLY, CEI ASKED NO MORE questions, being fully occupied with his horse as we slithered and bounded, alternately, over the difficult ground. Though, in spite of the rain, there was still sufficient light to see the way, it was not easy to pick a quick and safe route across the tract of water-logged land that was the shortest way between Applegarth and the forest where the Queen had vanished.

For the last part of the way we were guided by distant torchlight, and men's voices, magnified and distorted by water and wind. We found Bedwyr up to the thighs in water three or four paces out from the bank of a deep, still runnel edged with gnarled alders and the stumps of ancient oaks, some cut long ago for timber, and others blasted with time and storm, and growing again in the welter of smashed branches.

Near one of these the men were gathered. Torches had been tied to the dead boughs, and two other men with torches were out beside Bedwyr in the stream, lighting the work of dragging. On the bank, a short way along from the oak stump, lay a pile of sodden debris running with water, which glinted in the torchlight. Each time, one could guess, the nets would come up heavily weighted from the bottom, and each time all the men present would strain forward under the torchlight to see, with dread, if the net held the drowned body of the Queen.

One such load had just been tipped out as Cei and I approached, our horses slithering to a thankful stop on the very brink of the water. Bedwyr had not seen us. I heard his voice, rough with fatigue, as he showed the net-men where next to sink the drags. But the men on the bank called out, and he turned, then, seizing a torch from the man beside him, came splashing toward us.

"Cei?" He was too far gone with worry and exhaustion to see me there. "Did you see him? What did he say? Wait, I'll be with you in a moment." He turned to shout over his shoulder: "Carry on, there!"

"No need," I said. "Stop the work, Bedwyr. The Queen is safe."

He was just below the bank. His face, upturned in the torchlight, was swept with such a light of relief and joy that one could have sworn the torches burned suddenly brighter. "Merlin? Thank the gods for that! You found her, then?"

Someone had led our horses back. All around us now the men crowded, with eager questions. Someone put a hand down to Bedwyr, who came leaping up the bank, and stood there with the muddy water running off him.

"He had a vision." This was Cei, bluntly. The men went quiet at that, staring, and the questions died to an awed and uneasy muttering. But Bedwyr asked simply:

"Where is she?"

"I can't tell you that yet, I'm afraid." I looked around me. To the left the muddy channel wound deeper into the darkness of the forest, but westward, to the right, a space of evening light could be seen through the trees where it opened out into a marshy lake. "Why were you dragging here? I understood the troopers didn't know where she fell."

"It's true they neither heard nor saw it, and she must have fallen some time before they got on the track of her mare again. But it looks very much as if the accident happened here. The ground's got trampled over now, so you can't see anything much, but there were signs of a fall, the horse shying, probably, and then bursting away through these branches. Bring the torch nearer, will you? There, Merlin, see? The marks on the boughs and a shred of cloth that must have come from her cloak... There was blood, too, smeared on one of the snags. But if you say she's safe..." He put up a weary hand to push the hair from his eyes. It left a streak of mud right down his cheek. He took no notice.

"The blood must have been the mare's," said someone from behind me. "She was scratched about the legs."

"Yes, that would be it," said Bedwyr. "When we picked her up she was lame, and with a broken rein. Then when we found the marks here on the bank and among the branches, I thought I saw — I was afraid I knew what had happened. I thought the mare had shied and fallen, and thrown the Queen into the water. It's deep here, right under the bank. I reckoned she might have held on to the rein and tried to get the mare to pull her out, but the rein broke, and then the mare bolted. Or else the rein got caught on one of the snags, and it was only some time later that the mare could break loose and bolt. But now... What did happen?"

"That I can't tell you. What matters now is to find her, and quickly. And for that, we must have King Melwas' help. Is he here, or any of his people?"

"None of his men-at-arms, no. But we fell in with three or four of the marsh-dwellers, good fellows, who showed us some of the ways through the forest." He raised his voice, turning. "The Mere men, are they here still?"

It seemed that they were. They came forward, reluctant and over-awed, pushed by their companions. Two men, smallish and broad-shouldered, bearded and unkempt, and with them a stripling boy — the son, I guessed, of the younger man. I spoke to the elder.

"You come from Mere, in the Summer Country?"

He nodded, his fingers twisting nervously in front of him at a fold of his sodden tunic.

"It was good of you to help the High King's men. You shall not be the losers by it, I promise you. Now, you know who I am?"

Another nod, more twisting of the hands. The boy swallowed audibly.

"Then don't be afraid, but answer my questions if you can. Do you know where King Melwas is now?"

"Not rightly, my lord, no." The man spoke slowly, almost like one using a foreign language. These marsh people are silent folk, and, when about their own business, use a dialect peculiar to themselves. "But you'll not find him at his palace on the Island, that I do know. Seen him away hunting, we did, two days gone. 'Tis a thing he does, now and again, just him and one of the lords, or maybe two."

"Hunting? In these forests?"

"Nay, master, he went fowling. Just himself, and one to row the boat."

"And you saw him go? Which way?"

"Southwest again." The man pointed. "Down there where the causeway runs into the marsh. The land's dry in places thereabouts, and there be wild geese grazing in plenty. There's a lodge he has, a main beyond, but he won't be there now. It's empty since this winter past, and no servants in it. Besides, the news came up the water this dawning that the young King was on his way home from Caer-y-n'a Von with a score of sail, so he would be putting in at the Island, maybe with the next tide. And our King Melwas surely must be there to greet him?"

This was news to me, and, I could see, to Bedwyr. It is a constant mystery how these remote dwellers in the marshes get their news so quickly.

Bedwyr looked at me. "There was no beacon lighted on the Tor when news came about the Queen. Did you see it, Merlin?"

"No. Nor any other. The sails can't have been sighted yet. We should go now, Bedwyr. We'll ride for the Tor."

"You mean to speak with Melwas, even before we seek the Queen?"

"I think so. If you would give the orders? And see these men recompensed for their help?"

In the bustle that followed, I touched Bedwyr's arm and took him aside. "I can't talk now, Bedwyr. This is a high matter, and dangerous. You and I must go alone to seek the Queen. Can you manage this without being questioned?"

He frowned, searching my face, but said immediately: "Of course. But Cei? Will he accept that?"

"He's injured. Besides, if Arthur is due, Cei should be back in Camelot."

"That's true. And the rest can ride for the Island, to wait for the tide. It'll be dark enough soon for us to slip away from them." The day's strain hacked abruptly through his voice. "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?"

"I'll explain as we ride. But I want no one else to hear, not even Cei."

A few minutes later we were on our way. I rode between Cei and Bedwyr, with the men clattering behind us. They were talking lightheartedly among themselves, wholly reassured, it seemed, by my word that all was well. I myself, though still knowing only what the dream allowed me, felt curiously light and easy, riding at the urgent pace Bedwyr set through the treacherous ground, without thought or care, not even feeling saddle or bridle-rein. It was not a new feeling, but it was many years since it had come to me; the god's will streaming past, and myself going with it, a spark blown between the lasting stars. I did not know what lay ahead of us in that watery dusk, but only that the Queen and her adventure were but a small part of the night's destiny, shadows already blown aside by this great forward surge of power.

My memory of that ride is all confusion now. Cei's party left us, and shortly afterwards we found boats, and Bedwyr embarked half the party by the short route across the Lake. The rest he divided, some by the shore road, others by the causeway that led directly to the wharf. The rain had stopped now, and mist lay everywhere with the night coming; above it the sky was filling with stars, as a net with flashing silver fish. More torches were lit, and the flat ferries crammed with men and horses were poled slowly through misty water that streamed with reflected light like smoke. As the troops on shore broke and reformed, their horses shoulder-deep in the rolling mist, we saw the glimmer of a distant torch mounting the Tor. Arthur's sails had been sighted.

It was easy then for Bedwyr and myself to slip away. Our horses plunged down from the hard road, cantered heavily through a league of wet meadow-land, and gained the fast going of the road that led southwest.

Soon the lights and sounds of the Island sank behind us and away. Mist curled from the water on either hand. The stars showed the way, but faintly, like lamps along a road for ghosts. Our horses settled into their stride, and soon the way widened, and we could ride knee to knee.

"This lodge to the southwest." His voice was breathless. "Is that where we go?"

"I hope so. Do you know it?"

"I can find it. Is that why you needed Melwas' help? Surely, when he knows of the Queen's accident, he'll let our troops search his land from end to end. And if he's not at the lodge now —"

"Let us hope he is not."

"Is that a riddle?" For the first time since I had known him, his voice was barely civil. "You said you'd explain. You said you knew where she was, and now you're looking for Melwas. Well, then — ?"

"Bedwyr, haven't you understood? I think Guinevere is at the lodge. Melwas took her."

The silence that followed was more stormy than any oath. When he spoke I could hardly hear him. "I don't have to ask you if you're sure. You always are. And if you did have a vision, I can only accept it. But tell me how, and why?"

"The why is obvious. The how I don't yet know. I suspect he has been planning this for some time. Her habits of riding out are known, and she often goes to the forest that edges the marsh. If she encountered him there, when she was riding ahead of her people, what more natural than that she should stop her mare and speak to him? That might account for the silence, while the troopers tried to find her at first."

"Yes... And if he gripped the rein and tried to seize her, and she spurred her mare on... That would account for the broken rein and the marks we found by the banks. By all the gods, Merlin! It's rape you're talking about...! And you said he must have been planning this for some time?"

"I can only guess at it," I said. "It seems likely that he must have made a few false casts before the chance came; the Queen unattended, and the boat ready nearby."

I did not pursue my own thoughts further. I was remembering that lamplit room, so carefully prepared for her; the chess game; the Queen's demure composure, and her smiling look. I was thinking, too, of the long hours of daylight and dusk that had passed since she had vanished.

So, obviously, was Bedwyr. "He must be mad! A petty king like Melwas to risk Arthur's anger? Is he out of his mind?"

"You could say so," I said dryly. "It has happened before, where women are concerned."

Another silence, broken at length by a gesture, dimly seen, and a change in his horse's stride. "Slow here. We leave the roadway soon."

I obeyed him. Our horses slowed to a trot, a walk, as we peered around us in the mist. Then we saw it, a track leading, apparently, straight off into the marsh.

"This is it?"

"Yes. It's a bad track. We may have to swim the horses." I caught a glance back at me. "Will you be all right?"

Memory plucked at me. Bedwyr and Arthur, in the Wild Forest, riding, necks for sale, as boys will, but always with a care for myself, the poor horseman plodding at heel.

"I can manage."

"Then down here." His horse plunged down the narrow twist of mud among the reeds, then took the water like a boat launching; mine went after it, and we were forging, wet to the thigh, through the smooth water. It was a strange sort of progress, because the mist hid the water; hid even our horses' heads. I wondered how Bedwyr could see the way, then glimpsed, myself, far out across the gleam of water and banks of mist, and the black shapes of trees and bushes, the tiny glimmer of light that meant a dwelling. I watched it inching nearer, my mind racing this way and that with the possibilities of what must be done. Arthur, Bedwyr, Melwas, Guinevere... and all the time, like the deep humming that a harp builds up below an intricate web of music, was that other pressure of power which was driving me toward — what?

The horses heaved out of the water and stood, blowing and dripping, on a ridge of dry land. This stretched for some fifty paces ahead of us, and beyond it, some twenty paces farther, was the house, across another channel of water. There was no bridge.

"And no boat either." I heard him swear under his breath. "This is where we swim."

"Bedwyr, I'll have to let you do this last bit alone. But you —"

"Yes, by God!" His sword whispered loose in its scabbard.

I shot a hand out and gripped his horse's bridle above the bit. " — But you will do exactly as I tell you."

A silence. Then his voice, gentle and stubborn: "I shall kill him, of course."

"You will do no such thing. You will save the High King's name and hers. This is Arthur's business, not yours. Let him deal with it."

Another silence, a long one. "Very well. I will be ruled by you."

"Good." I turned my horse quietly into the cover of a clump of alder. His, perforce, followed, with me still gripping the bit. "Now wait. Look yonder."

I pointed to the northeast, the way we had come. Far away in the night across the flat marshlands a cluster of lights showed, high up, like stars. Melwas' stronghold, alight with welcome. Unless the king himself was there, home from hunting, it could only mean one thing: Arthur had come back.

Then, the sound so magnified by the water that it made us start, came the click and creak of a door opening nearby, and the soft ripple of a boat moving through the water. The sounds came from behind the house, where something invisible to us took to the water and moved away into the mist. A man's voice spoke once, softly.

Bedwyr moved sharply, and his horse flung up its head against my restraining hand. His voice was strained. "Melwas. He's seen the lights. Damn it, Merlin, he's taking her —"

"No. Wait. Listen."

Light still showed from the house. A woman's voice called something. The cry had in it some kind of entreaty, but whether of fear, or longing, or sorrow at being left alone, it was impossible to tell. The boat's sound dwindled. The house door shut.

I still held Bedwyr's bridle. "Now, go across and bring the Queen, and we will take her home."

4

ALMOST BEFORE I HAD FINISHED speaking he was off his horse, had dropped his heavy cloak across the saddle, and was in the water, swimming like an otter for the grassy slope before the door. He reached it, and began to draw himself up from the water. I saw him check, heard a grunt of pain, a stifled gasp, an oath.

"What is it?"

He made no reply. He got a knee to the bank, then pulled himself slowly, with the aid of a hanging willow, to his feet. He paused only to shake the wet from his shoulders, then trod up the slippery slope to the house door. He went slowly, as if with difficulty. I thought he was limping. As he went, his sword came rasping from the sheath.

He hammered on the door with the hilt. The sound echoed, as if from an empty house. There was no movement; no reply. (So much, I thought sourly, for the lady who waits for rescue.)

Bedwyr hammered again. "Melwas! Open to Bedwyr of Benoic! Open in the King's name!"

There was a long pause. It could be felt that someone within the house was waiting with held breath and beating heart. Then the door opened.

It was opened, not with a slam of defiance or bravery, but slowly, a crack only, which showed the small light of a taper, and the shadow of someone peering out. A slight figure, lissom and straight, with loose hair flowing, and a long gown of fine stuff with a creamy sheen.

Bedwyr said, and it came strangled: "Madam? Lady! Are you safe?"

"Prince Bedwyr." Her voice was breathless, but low, and apparently composed. "I thank God for you. When I heard you coming I was afraid... But then, when I knew it was you... How did you come here? How did you find me?"

"Merlin guided me."

I heard the swift intake of her breath clear from where I stood holding the horses. The taper lit the pale shape of her face as she turned her head sharply, and saw me beyond the water. "Merlin?" Then her voice was once more soft and steady. "Then I thank God again for his art. I thought no one would ever come this way."

That, I thought, I can well believe. I said aloud: "Can you make ready, madam? We have come to take you back to the King."

She did not answer me, but turned to go in, then paused, and said something to Bedwyr, too low for me to catch. He answered, and she pushed the door wide, and gestured him in after her. He went, leaving the door standing open. Inside the room I saw the pulsing ebb and flow of light that meant a fire. The room was softly lit by a lamp, and I caught glimpses through doorway and window of a room more richly furnished than any long-neglected hunting lodge could have shown, with gilded stools and scarlet cushions, and, through another half-open doorway, the corner of a bed or couch, with a coverlet thrown across a tumble of bed-linen. Melwas had prepared the nest well for her, then. My vision of firelight and supper table and the friendly game of chess had been accurate enough. The words that would tell Arthur moved and raced and re-formed in my brain. The mist smoked up round the house like white ghosts, white shadows...

Bedwyr emerged from the house. His sword was back in its sheath, and in one hand he carried a lamp; the other held a pole such as marsh-men use to push their flat-bottomed craft through the reeds. He approached the water's edge, moving cautiously. "Merlin?"

"Yes? Do you want me to swim the horses over?"

"No!" sharply. "There are knives set below the water. I had forgotten that old trick, and drove a knee straight into them."

"I thought you were limping. Are you badly hurt?"

"No. Flesh wounds only. My lady has dressed them for me."

"All the more reason why you can't swim back, then. How do you propose to get her over here? There must be some place where I can land the horses safely. Ask her."

"I have. She doesn't know. And there's no boat."

"So?" I said. "Has Melwas any gear that will float?"

"That's what I was thinking. There's sure to be something we can use; and the costlier the better." A shadow of amusement lightened the grim voice. But neither of us cared to comment on the situation across twenty feet of echoing water with Guinevere herself within earshot.

"She's dressing herself," he said shortly, as if in answer to my thought. He set the lamp down at the water's edge. We waited.

"Prince Bedwyr?"

The door opened again. She was in riding dress, and had braided her hair. Her cloak was over her arm.

Bedwyr limped up the bank. He held the cloak for her, and she drew it close and pulled the hood to cover the bright hair. He said something, then vanished indoors to reappear in a short while, carrying a table.

I suppose the next few minutes, if anyone had been in the mood to appreciate it, would have been rich in comedy, but as it was, Queen Guinevere on one side of the water, and myself on the other, stood in silence and watched Bedwyr improvising his absurd raft, then, as an afterthought, pitching a couple of cushions into it, and inviting the Queen to board it.

This she did, and they came across, an undignified progress, with the Queen crouched low, holding on to one carved and gilded table leg, while the Prince of Benoic poled the contraption erratically across the channel.

The thing came to the bank, and I caught a leg and held it. Bedwyr scrambled ashore, and turned to help the Queen. She came gracefully enough, with a little gasp of thanks, and stood shaking out her stained and crumpled cloak. Like her riding dress, it had been soaked and roughly dried. I saw that it was torn. Something pale shook from the folds and fell to the muddy turf. I stooped to pick it up. It was a chessman of white ivory. The king, broken.

She had not noticed. Bedwyr pushed the table back into the water, and took his horse's bridle from me. I handed him his cloak and said formally to the Queen, so formally that my voice sounded stiff and cold: "I am glad to see you well and safe, lady. We have had a bad day, fearing for you."

"I am sorry." Her voice was low, her face hidden from me under the hood. "I took a heavy toss when my mare fell in the forest. I — I don't remember much after that, until I woke here, in this house..."

"And King Melwas with you?"

"Yes. Yes. He found me lying, and carried me here. I was fainting, I suppose. I don't remember. His servant tended me."

"He would have done better, perhaps, to have stayed by you till your own people came. They were searching the forest for you."

A movement of the hand that held the hood close about her face. I thought it was trembling. "Yes, I suppose so. But this place was near, just across the water, and he was afraid for me, he said, and indeed, the boat seemed best. I could not have ridden."

Bedwyr was in the saddle. I took the Queen's arm, to help her up in front of him. With surprise — nothing in that small composed voice had led me to suspect it — I felt her whole body shaking. I abandoned the questioning, and said merely: "We'll take this ride easily, then. The King is back, did you know?"

I felt the shudder run through her, like an ague. She said nothing. Her body was light and slender, like a girl's, as I put her up in front of Bedwyr's saddle.

We went gently on the way back. As we neared the Island, it could be seen that the wharf was ablaze with lights, and milling with horsemen.

We were still some distance off when we saw, lit by their moving torches, a group of horsemen detach themselves from the crowd, and come at the gallop along the causeway. A man on a black horse was in the lead, pointing the way. Then they saw us. There were shouts. Soon they came up with us. In the lead now was Arthur, his white stallion black with mud to the withers. Beside him on the black horse, loud with relief and concern for the Queen, rode Melwas, King of the Summer Country.

I rode home alone. There was nothing to be gained, and too much to be lost, by confronting Arthur and Melwas now. So far, by Melwas' quick thinking in leaving the marsh house by the back way, and being present to greet Arthur as his ships put in to the wharf, the affair was saved from scandal, and Arthur would not be forced, whatever his private feelings when he found or guessed at the truth, into a hasty public quarrel with an ally. It was best left for the present. Melwas would take them all into his firelit palace and give them food and wine, and perhaps lodge them for the night, and by morning Guinevere would have told her story — some story — to her husband. I could not begin to guess what the story would be. There were elements in it which she would be hard put to it to explain away; the room so carefully ready for her; the loose robe she had worn; the tumbled bed; her lies to Bedwyr and myself about Melwas. And more than all, the broken chessman and its evidence of a true dream. But all this would have to wait until, at the very least, we were off Melwas' land, and no longer surrounded by his men-at-arms. As for Bedwyr, he had said nothing, and in the future, whatever his thoughts, his love for Arthur would keep his mouth shut.

And I? Arthur was High King, and I was his chief adviser. I owed him a truth. But I would not stay tonight, to face his questions, and perhaps evade them, or parry them with lies. Later, I thought wearily, as my tired horse plodded along the shore of the Lake, I would see more clearly what to do.

I went home the long way round, without troubling the ferryman. Even if he were willing to ply so late, I did not feel equal to his gossip, or that of the troops who might be making their way back. I wanted silence, and the night, and the soft veils of the mist.

The horse, scenting home and supper, pricked his ears and stepped out. Soon we had left the sounds and lights of the Island behind us, the Tor itself no more than a black shape of night, with stars behind its shoulder. Trees loomed, hung with mist, and below them lake water lapped on the flattened shingle. The smell of water and reeds and stirred mud, the steady plod of hoofs, the ripple of the Lake, and through it all, faint and infinitely distant, but tingling like salt on the tongue, the breath of the sea-tide, turning to its ebb here at its languid limit. A bird called hoarsely, splashing somewhere, invisible. The horse shook his damp neck, and plodded on.

Silence and still air, and the calm of solitude. They drew a veil, as palpable as the mist, between the stresses of the day and the night's tranquillity. The god's hand had withdrawn. No vision printed itself on the dark. About tomorrow, and my part in it, I would not think. I had been led to prevent trespass by a prophetic dream; but what "high matters" the sudden renewal of the god's power in me portended I could not tell, and was too weary to guess at. I chirrupped to the horse, and he quickened his pace. The moon's edge, above a shaw of elms, showed the night black and silver. In a short half-mile we would leave the Lake shore, and make for home along the gravel of the road.

The horse stopped, so suddenly that I was jerked forward on his neck. If he had not been so far spent, he would have shied, and perhaps thrown me. As it was he balked, both forefeet thrust stiffly in front of him, jarring me to the bone.

Here the way ran along the crest of a bank that skirted the Lake. There was a sheer drop, half the height of a man, down to the water's surface. The mist lay thickly, but some movement of air — perhaps from the tide itself — stirred it faintly, so that it swirled and rose in peaks like cream in a tub, or flowed, itself like water, thickened and slow.

Then I heard a faint splashing, and saw what my horse had seen. A boat, being poled along a little way out from shore, and in it someone standing, balancing as delicately as a bird balances on a rocking twig. Only a glimpse I had, dim and shadowlike, of someone young-seeming and slight, in a cloak-like garment that hung to the thwarts and over the boat's edge to trail in the water. The boy stooped, and straightened again, wringing the stuff out. The mist coiled and broke round the movement, and its pallid drift reflected, briefly, the starlight. I saw his face. I felt shock thud under my heart like an arrow to its target.

"Ninian!"

He started, turned, stopped the boat expertly. The dark eyes looked enormous in the pale face.

"Yes? Who's that?"

"Merlin. Prince Merlin. Do you not remember me?" I caught at myself. Shock had made me stupid. I had forgotten that when I fell in with the goldsmith and his assistant on the road to Dunpeldyr I had been in disguise. I said quickly: "You knew me as Emrys; that is my name. Myrddin Emrys from Dyfed. There were reasons why I couldn't travel under my own name. Do you remember now?"

The boat rocked. The mist thickened and hid it, and I knew a moment's blind panic. He had gone again. Then I saw him, still there, head on one side. He thought and then spoke, taking time about it, as always.

"Merlin? The enchanter? That is who you are?"

"Yes. I am sorry if I startled you. It was a shock seeing you like this. I thought you were drowned, that time at the Cor Bridge when you went swimming in the river with the other boys. What happened?"

I thought he hesitated. "I am a good swimmer, my lord."

There was some secret here. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. I had found him. This was what the night had been moving towards. This, not the Queen's trespass, was the "high matter" towards which the power had driven me. Here was the future. The stars flashed and sparkled as once they had flashed and sparkled on the hilt of the great sword.

I leaned forward over the horse's neck, speaking urgently. "Ninian, listen. If you don't want to answer questions, I'll ask none. All right, so you ran away from slavery; that doesn't matter to me. I can protect you, so don't be afraid. I want you to come to me. As soon as I saw you first, I knew what you were; you're like me, and, by the Sight that God has given me, I think you will be capable of the same. You guessed it, too, didn't you? Will you come to me, and let me teach you? It won't be easy; you're young yet; but I was younger still when I went to my master, and you can learn it all, I know. Trust me. Will you come and serve me, and learn as much of my art as I can give you?"

This time there was no hesitation at all. It was as if the question had been asked and answered long ago. As perhaps it had. About some things there is this inevitability; they were in the stars from the last day of the Flood.

"Yes," he said, "I'll come. Give me a little time, though. There are things to — to arrange."

I straightened. My rib-cage hurt from the long breaths I drew. "You know where I live?"

"Everyone knows."

"Then come when you can. You will be welcome." I added, softly, as much to myself as to him: "By God himself, you will be welcome."

There was no reply. When I looked again, there was nothing but the white mist with the starlight on it, bitter-white, and from below, the lap of the lake water on the shore.

Even so, it took me till I got to my own house to realize the very simple truth.

When I had seen the boy Ninian, and yearned to him as to the one human being I had known who could go with me wherever I had gone, it had been years ago. How many? Nine, ten? And he had been perhaps sixteen. Between a youth of sixteen and a man in his middle twenties there is a world of change and growing: the boy I had just recognized with such a shock of joy, the face I had remembered a score of times with grief — this could not be the same boy, even had he escaped the river all those years ago, and lived.

As I lay that night in bed, wakeful, watching the stars through the black boughs of the pear tree, as I had done when a child, I went through the scene again. The mist, the ghostly mist; the upward starlight; the voice coming as an echo from the hidden water; the face so well remembered, dreamed over these ten years; these, combining suddenly to waken a forgotten and futile hope, had deceived me.

I knew then, with tears, that the boy Ninian was truly dead, and that this encounter in the ghostly dark had only mocked my weariness with a confused and cruel dream.

5

HE DID NOT COME, OF COURSE. My next visitor was a courier from Arthur, bidding me to Camelot.

Four days had passed. I had half expected to be summoned before this, but, when no word came, assumed that Arthur had not yet decided what move to make, or that he was bent on hushing the affair up, and would not force a public discussion even in council.

Normally a courier passed between us three or four times a week, and any messenger whose commission took him past my house had long since formed the habit of calling at Applegarth to see if I had a letter ready, or to answer my questions. So I had kept myself informed.

I heard that, unbelievably, Guinevere was still on Ynys Witrin, where some of her ladies had joined her as guests of the old queen. Bedwyr, too, was still lodged in Melwas' palace; the knives had been rusty, and a couple of the wounds they made had become inflamed; added to this, he had taken a chill from wet and exposure, and was ill now with fever. Some of his own men were there with him, guests in Melwas' hall. Queen Guinevere herself, so said my informant, visited him daily, and had insisted on helping his nurses.

Another fragment of information I gathered for myself. The Queen's merlin had been found dead, hanging from its jesses in a high tree, near the place where Bedwyr had dragged the channel.

On the fifth day the summons came, a letter bidding me to confer with the High King about the new council hall, which had been finished while he was in Gwynedd. I saddled up and left immediately for Camelot.

Arthur was waiting for me on the western terrace of the palace. This was a wide paved walk, with formal garden beds wherein some of the Queen's roses bloomed, and pansies and the pretty summer flowers. Now, in the chilly spring afternoon, the only colour came from the daffodils, and the pale dwindling heads of the fair-maids.

Arthur stood by the terrace wall, looking out toward the distant, shining line that was the edge of the open sea. He did not turn to greet me, but waited until I was beside him. Then he glanced to make sure that the servant who had brought me to him had gone, and said abruptly:

"You will have guessed that it's nothing to do with the council hall. That was for the secretaries. I want to talk with you privately."

"Melwas?"

"Of course." He swung round with his back to the parapet, half leaning against it. He regarded me frowningly. "You were with Bedwyr when he found the Queen, and when he brought her back to Ynys Witrin. I saw you there, but when I turned to find you, you had gone. I am told, moreover, that it was you who told Bedwyr where to find her. If you knew anything about this affair that I do not, then why did you not wait and speak with me then?"

"There was nothing I could have told you then that would not have stirred up trouble that you could well do without. What was needed was time. Time for the Queen to rest; for you to talk with her; time to allay men's fears, not inflame them. Which you seem to have done. I am told that Bedwyr and the Queen are still on Ynys Witrin."

"Yes. Bedwyr is ill. He took straight to bed with a chill, and by morning was in a fever."

"So I heard. I blame myself. I should have stayed to dress those cuts. Have you talked with him?"

"No. He was not fit."

"And the Queen?"

"Is well."

"But not yet ready to make the journey home?"

"No," he said shortly. He turned away again, looking towards the distant gleam of the sea.

"I take it that Melwas must have offered some sort of explanation?" I said at length.

I expected the question to strike some kind of spark, but he merely looked tired, grey in a grey afternoon.

"Oh, yes. I talked with Melwas. He told me what had happened. He was fowling in the marshes, himself with one servant, a man called Berin. They had taken their boat into the edge of the forest, up the river that you saw. He heard the commotion in the forest, and then saw the Queen's mare plunge and slide in the mud of the bank. The Queen was thrown clear into the water. Her own people were nowhere to be seen. The two men rowed to her and pulled her out. She was unconscious as if she had struck her head in the fall. While they were doing this they heard her people go by at some distance, without coming near the river." A pause. "No doubt at this point Melwas should have sent his man after them, but he was on foot and they were mounted, and besides, the Queen was drenched and fainting, and very cold, and could hardly have been carried home, except by boat. So Melwas had the servant row to his lodge, and make a fire. He had food there, and wine. He had expected to go there himself to pass the night, so the place was ready."

"That was fortunate."

I kept the dryness from my voice, but he gave me a flick of a glance, sharp as a dagger. "Indeed. After a while she began to recover. He sent the servant with the boat to Ynys Witrin to bring help, and women to tend her, with either horses and a litter, or else a barge that could carry her in comfort. But before he had gone far the man returned to say that my sails were in sight, and that it looked as if I would land with the tide. Melwas judged it best to set off at once himself for the wharf to meet me, as his duty was, and to give me the news of her safety."

"Leaving her behind," I said neutrally.

"Leaving her behind. The only craft he had was the light skin boat that he used for his fowling trips. It was not fit for her — certainly not in the state she was in. You must have seen that for yourself. When Bedwyr brought her to me, she could do nothing but weep and shiver. I had to let the women take her straight away and put her to bed."

He pushed himself away from the parapet, and, turning aside, took half a dozen rapid steps away and back again. He broke off a sprig of rosemary, and pulled it to and fro in his hands. I could smell its peppery, pungent scent from where I stood. I said nothing. After a while he stopped pacing and stood, feet apart, watching me, but still pulling the rosemary in and out between his fingers.

"So that is the story."

"I see." I regarded him thoughtfully. "And so you spent the night as Melwas' guest, and Bedwyr is still there, and the Queen is lodged there as well... until when?"

"I shall send for her tomorrow."

"And today you sent for me. Why? It seems that the affair is settled, and your decisions have been made."

"You must know very well why I sent for you." His voice had a sudden rough edge to it that belied his previous calm. "What do you know that 'would have stirred up trouble' if you had spoken to me that night? If you have something to say to me, Merlin, say it."

"Very well. But tell me first, have you spoken with the Queen at all?"

A lift of the brows. "What do you think? A man who has been away from his wife for the best part of a month? And a wife who was in need of comfort."

"But if she was ill, being nursed by the women —"

"She was not ill. She was tired, and distressed, and she was very frightened."

I thought of Guinevere's composed, quiet voice, the careful poise, the shaking body.

"Not of my coming." He spoke sharply, answering what I had not said. "She feared Melwas, and she fears you. Are you surprised? Most people do. But she does not fear me. Why should she? I love her. But she was afraid that some evil tongue might poison me with lies... So until I went to her, and listened to her story, she could not rest."

"She was afraid of Melwas? Why? Was her story not the same as his?"

This time he did answer the implication. He sent the mangled sprig of rosemary spinning out over the terrace wall. "Merlin." It came quietly, but with a kind of hard-held finality. "Merlin, you do not have to tell me that Melwas lied to me, and that this was a rape. If Guinevere had been so badly hurt when she fell that she lay fainting for most of the day, then she could hardly have ridden home with you, or been as whole and sound as she was when I lay with her that night. She had sustained no hurt at all. Nothing but fear."

"She told you that his story was a lie?"

"Yes."

If Guinevere had told him a different tale, I thought I knew what she had not made clear. I said slowly: "When she spoke with Bedwyr and myself, her story was the same as Melwas'. Now you say that the Queen herself told you it was a rape?"

"Yes." His brows twitched together. "You don't believe either story, do you? Is that what you are trying to tell me? You think — by God, Merlin, just what do you think?"

"I don't yet know the Queen's story. Tell me what she said."

He was so angry that I thought he would leave me then and there. But after a turn or two along the terrace he came back to where I waited. He had almost the air of a man approaching single combat.

"Very well. You are my counsellor, after all, and it seems I shall be in need of counsel." He drew in his breath. The story came in brief, expressionless sentences. "This is what she says. She did not take a fall at all. She saw her falcon stoop, and catch its jesses in a tree. She stopped her mare, and dismounted. Then she saw Melwas, in his boat by the bank. She called to him for help. He came up the bank to her, but did nothing about the merlin. He started to talk to her of love; how he had loved her since the time they had travelled up from Wales together. He would not listen when she tried to stop him, and when she made to mount again he took hold of her, and in the straggle the mare broke free and bolted. The Queen tried to call out for her people, but he put a hand over her mouth, and threw her down into the boat. The servant thrust it off from the bank, and rowed them away. The man was afraid, she says, and made some sort of protest, but he did as Melwas bade him. He took her to the lodge. It was all ready, as if he expected her... or some other woman. You saw it. Was it not so?"

I thought of the fire, the bed, the rich hangings, the robe Guinevere had worn. "I saw a little. Yes, it was prepared."

"He had had her in his mind so long... He had only been waiting his chance. He had followed her before — it was well known that she had a habit of outriding her people." There was a film of sweat on his face. He put the heel of his hand up to his brow and wiped it away.

"Did he lie with her, Arthur?"

"No. He held her there all day, pleading with her, she says, begging for her love... He began with sweet speeches and promises, but when they got him nowhere, he grew crazed, she says, and violent, and began to see his own danger. After he sent his man away, she thinks he might have forced her, but the servant came quickly back to tell his master that my sails had been sighted, and Melwas left her in panic, and hurried to me to tell his lies. He threatened her that if she spoke the truth to me, he, Melwas, would say he had lain with her, so that I would kill her as well as him. She was to tell the same story as he would tell. Which you say she did, to you."

"Yes."

"And you knew it was not true?"

"Yes."

"I see." He was still watching me with that fierce but wary look. I was beginning to realize, but without much surprise, that even I could not keep secrets from him now. "And you thought she might have lied to me. That was the 'trouble' you foresaw?"

"Partly, yes."

"You thought she would lie to me? To me?" He repeated it as if it were unthinkable.

"If she were afraid, who could blame her for lying? Yes, I know you say she is not afraid of you. But she is only a woman, after all, and she might well be afraid of your anger. Any woman would lie to save herself. It would have been your right to kill her, and him, too."

"It is still my right to do that, whether there was a rape or not."

"Well, then — ? Could she have known that you would even listen to her, that you would be King and statesman before you allowed yourself to be the vengeful husband? Even I stand amazed, and I thought I knew you."

A flicker of grim amusement. "With Bedwyr and the Queen on the Island as hostages, you might say my hands were tied... I shall kill him, of course. You know that, don't you? But in my own time, and on some other cause, when all this is forgotten, and the Queen's honour cannot suffer from it." He swung away, and put his two hands on the parapet, looking out again across the darkening stretch of land toward the sea. Somewhere a beam broke through the clouds, and a shaft of dusky light poured down, lighting a distant stretch of water to a piercing gleam.

He spoke slowly, into the distance. "I've been thinking over the story I shall put about. I shall take a tale midway between Melwas' lie and what the Queen told me. She was there all day with him, after all, from dawn till dusking... I shall let it be given out that she fell from her horse, as Melwas said, and was carried unconscious to the hunting lodge, and there lay, shaken and fainting for most of the day. Bedwyr and you must bear this out. If it were known that she was not hurt at all, there are those who would blame her for not trying to escape. This, though the servant had the boat under his eyes all day, and even if she could have swum, there were the knives... She could, of course, have threatened them with my vengeance, but she saw that as the road only to her own end. He could have kept her there, and had his pleasure and then killed her. You know that her people had already accepted the fact of her death. Except you. That was what saved her."

I said nothing. He turned.

"Yes. Except you. You told them she was alive, and you took Bedwyr to her. Now, tell me how you knew. Was it a 'seeing'?"

I bent my head. "When Cei came for me, I called on the old powers, and they responded. I saw her in the flame, and Melwas, too."

A moment of suddenly sharpening concentration. It was not often that the High King searched me for truth as he was wont to search lesser men. I could feel something of the quality that had made him what he was. He had gone very still. "Yes. Now we come to it, don't we? Tell me exactly what you saw."

"I saw a man and a woman in a rich room, and beyond the door a bedchamber, with a bed that had been laid in. They were laughing together, and playing chess. She was clad in a loose robe, as if for night, and her hair was unbraided. When he took her in his arms the chessboard spilled, and the man trod on the pieces." I held out a hand to him, with the broken chessman. "When the Queen came out to us, this was caught in the fold of her cloak."

He took it, and bent his head over it, as if studying it. Then he sent it spinning after the sprig of rosemary. "So. It was a true dream. She said there was a table, and chessmen of ivory and ebony wood." To my surprise, he was smiling. "Is this all?"

"All? It is more than I would ever have told you, had I not owed it to you as your counsellor."

He nodded, still smiling. All the anger seemed to have gone. He looked out again over the dimming plain with its gleams of brightness and the shaft of wheeling light. "Merlin, a little while ago you said, 'She is only a woman.' You have told me many times that you know nothing of women. Does it never occur to you that they lead lives of dependence so complete as to breed uncertainly and fear? That their lives are like those of slaves, or of animals that are used by creatures stronger than themselves, and sometimes cruel? Why, even royal ladies are bought and sold, and are bred to lead their lives far from their homes and their people, as the property of men unknown to them."

I waited, to see his drift. It was a thought I had had before, when I had seen women suffer from the whims of men; even those women who, like Morgause, were stronger and cleverer than most men. They were made, it seemed, for men's use, and suffered by it. The lucky ones found men they could rule, or who loved them. Like the Queen.

"This happened to Guinevere," he went on. "You yourself said just now that I must still be a stranger to her in some respects. She is not afraid of me, no, but sometimes I think that she is afraid of life itself, and of living. And most certainly she was afraid of Melwas. Don't you see? Your dream was true. She smiled, and spoke him fair, and hid her fear. What would you have had her do? Appeal to the servant? Threaten the two of them with my vengeance? She knew that was the road only to her own end. When he showed her the bedchamber, to let her change her wet clothing (he takes women to that house sometimes, it seems, out of sight of the old queen his mother, and clothes are kept there, with things such as ladies like), she thanked him merely, then locked the door on him. Later, when he came to bid her to meat, she pretended faintness, but after a while he grew suspicious, then importunate, and she was afraid he would break the door, so she ate with him, and spoke him fair. And so, through the long day, till dusk. She let him think that, with nightfall, he would have his pleasure, while all the time she hoped for rescue still."

"And then it came."

"Against all hope, and thanks to you, it came. Well, that is her story, and I believe it." That quick turn of the head again. "Do you?"

I did not answer straight away. He waited, showing neither anger nor impatience — nor any shadow of doubt.

When at length I spoke, it was with certainty. "Yes. She told the truth. Reason, instinct, 'Sight' or blind faith, you can be sure of it. I am sorry I doubted her. You were right to remind me that I don't understand women. I should have known she was afraid, and knowing that, I might have guessed that what poor weapons she had against Melwas, she would use... And for the rest — her silence until she could speak with you, her care for your honour and the safety of your kingdom — she has my admiration. And so, King, have you."

I saw him notice the form of address. Through his relief came a glint of laughter. "Why? Because I did not fly out in a high royal rage, and demand heads? If the Queen, in fear, could play-act for a day, surely I could do it for a few short hours, with her honour and my own at stake? But not for longer. By Hades, not for longer!" The force with which he brought his clenched fist down on the parapet showed just what he had held in check. He added, with an abrupt change of tone: "Merlin, you must be aware that the people do not — do not love the Queen."

"I have heard whispers, yes. But this is not for anything she is, or has done. It is only because they look daily for an heir, and she has been Queen for four years, without bearing. It's natural that there should be disappointed hopes, and some whispering."

"There will be no heir. She is barren. I am sure of it now, and so is she."

"I feared it. I am sorry."

"If I had not planted other seed here and there," he said with a wry smile, "I might share some of the blame with her; but there was the child I begot on my first Queen, not to speak of Morgause's bastard by me. So the fault — if it is that — is known to be the Queen's, and because she is a Queen, her grief at it cannot be kept private. And there will always be those who start whispers, in the hope that I will put her away. Which," he added with a snap, "I shall not."

"It wouldn't occur to me to advise it," I said mildly. "What does occur to me is to wonder if this is the shadow that I saw once lie across your marriage bed... But enough of that. What we must do now is bring her back into the people's love."

"You make it sound easy. If you know how —"

"I think I do. You swore just now by Hades, and it broke a dream I had. Will you let me go to Ynys Witrin, and bring her back to you myself?"

He started to ask why, then half laughed and shrugged. "Why not? Maybe to you it is as easy as it sounds... Go, then. I'll send word for them to prepare a royal escort. I'll receive her here. At least it saves me having to see Melwas again. Will you, with all your wise counsels, try to stop me from killing him?"

"As effectively as a mother hen calling the young swan out of the water. You will do as you think fit." I looked out across the water-logged plain, toward the Tor and the low-lying shape of its neighbour island, where the harbour lay. I added, thoughtfully: "It's a pity that he sees fit to charge harbour dues — and exorbitant ones at that — to the war-leader who protects him."

His eyes widened speculatively. A smile tugged at his mouth. He said slowly: "Yes, isn't it? And then there's the matter of the toll on the road along the ridge. If my captains should by any chance refuse to pay, then no doubt Melwas will bring the complaint here himself, and who knows, it may even be the first that comes to the new council chamber? Now, since that is what I told the scribe you were coming for, shall we go and see it? And tomorrow, at the third hour, I'll send the royal escort, to bring her home."

6

WITH BEDWYR STILL ON YNYS Witrin, the royal escort was led by Nentres, one of the western rulers who had fought under Uther, and who now brought his allegiance and that of his sons to Arthur. He was a grizzled veteran, spare of body, and as supple in the saddle as a youth. He left the escort fidgeting under its Dragon banners on the road below my house, and came riding himself up the curving track by the stream, followed by a groom leading a chestnut horse trapped with silver. Horse and trappings alike were burnished to a glitter as bright as Nentres' shield, and jewels winked on the breast-band. The saddle-cloth was of murrey, worked with silver thread.

"The King sent this for you," he said with a grin. "He reckons your own would look like a dealer's throw-out among the rest. Don't look at him like that, he's much quieter than he appears."

The groom gave me a hand to mount. The chestnut tossed his head and mouthed the bit, but his stride was smooth and easy. After my stolid old black gelding he was like a sailing-boat after a poled barge.

The morning was cold, in the wake of the north wind that had frozen the fields since mid-March. At dawn that day I had climbed to the hilltop beyond Applegarth, and had felt against my skin that indefinable difference that heralds a change of wind. The hilltop thorns were no more than breaking into bud, but down in the valley one could see the green haze on the distant woods, and the sheltered banks nearby were thick with primroses and wild garlic. Rooks cawed and tumbled about the ivied trees. Spring was here, waiting, but held back by the cold winds, as the blackthorn flowers were locked in the bud. But still the sky was overcast and heavy, almost as if threatening snow, and I was glad of my cloak with all its regal splendours of fur and scarlet.

All was ready for us at Melwas' hall. The king himself was dressed in rich dark blue, and was, I noticed, fully armed. His handsome face wore a smile, easy and welcoming, but his eyes had a wary look, and there were altogether too many men-at-arms crowded into the hall, besides the full company outside, brought down at readiness from his hilltop fortress, to throng into the orchard-fields that served the palace for garden. Banners and bright trappings gave the welcome a festive air, but it was to be seen that every man wore both sword and dagger.

He had, of course, expected Arthur. When he saw me his look at first lightened with relief, then I saw the wariness deepen, and tight lines draw themselves around his mouth. He greeted me fairly, but very formally, like a man making the first move of a gambit at chess. I replied, with the long, studied speech of Arthur's deputy, then turned to the old queen, his mother, who stood beside him at the end of the long hall. She showed no such caution as her son's. She greeted me with easy authority, and made a sign toward a door on the right of the hall. There was a stir as the crowd parted, and Queen Guinevere came in among her ladies.

She, too, had expected Arthur. She hesitated, looking for him in the glitter of the packed hall. Her gazed passed me, unseeing. I wondered what god had moved her to wear green, spring green, with flowers embroidered on the breast of her gown. Her mantle was green, too, with a collar of white marten, which framed her face and gave her a fragile look. She was very pale, but bore herself with rigid composure.

I remembered how, that night, I had found her shaking in my grasp; and on the thought, as if I had been dipped in cold water, I saw that Arthur had been right about her. She might be a queen in bearing and in courage, but under it all there was a timid girl, and one looking, all the time, for love. The gaiety, the ready laughter and high spirits of youth, had masked an exile's eager search for friendship among the strangers of a court vastly different from the homely hearthstone of her father's kingdom. I would never, wrapped in Arthur as I had been for twenty years, even have troubled to think about her, except as his people thought: a vessel for his seed, a partner for his pleasure, a glowing pillar of beauty to shine, silver beside his gold, on the hilltop of his glory. Now I saw her as if I had never seen her before. I saw a girl, tender of flesh and simple enough of spirit, who had had the fortune to marry the greatest man of the age. To be Arthur's Queen was no mean burden, with all that it entailed of loneliness, and a life of banishment in an alien country, with, as often as not, no husband near to come between her and the flatterers, the power-hungry schemers, those envious of her rank or beauty, or — perhaps most dangerous of all — the young men ready to worship her. Then there would be those (and you could trust them to be many) who would tell her, over and over again, about the "other Guinevere," the pretty Queen who had conceived from the King's first bedding of her, and for whom he had grieved so bitterly. It would lose nothing in the telling. But all this would have been nothing, would have passed and been forgotten in the King's love, and her new, exciting power, if only she had been able to conceive a child. That Arthur had not used the Melwas affair to have her put aside, to take a fertile woman to his bed, was proof indeed of his love; but I doubted if she had yet had time to see it so. He had been right when he told me that she was afraid of life, afraid of the people round her, afraid of Melwas; and — I could see it now — more than any of them she was afraid of me.

She had seen me. The blue eyes widened, and her hands moved up to clasp the fur at her throat. Her step checked momentarily, then, once more held in that pale composure, she took her place beside the queen, on the side away from Melwas. Neither she nor the king had glanced at one another.

There was a resounding silence. Someone's robe rustled, and it sounded like a tree in the wind.

I walked forward. As if Guinevere had been the only person there, I bowed low, then straightened.

"Greetings, madam. It's good to see you recovered. I have come, with others of your friends and servants, to escort you home. The High King is waiting to receive you in your palace of Camelot."

The colour washed into her face. She only came up as high as my throat. I have seen eyes like hers on a young deer pulled down and waiting for the spear. She murmured something, and fell dumb. To cover it, and give her time, I turned to Melwas and his mother, and went smoothly into a courtly, over-elaborate speech, thanking them for their care of Queen Guinevere. It had become patent, while I was speaking, that Melwas' mother still had no idea that anything might be wrong. While her son watched me with a bold look glossing over that mixture of wariness and bravado, the old queen answered me with equally courtly thanks, messages for Arthur, compliments for Guinevere, and, finally, a pressing offer of hospitality. At that the young Queen looked up, briefly, then her eyelids hid her eyes again. As I declined, I saw her hands relax. I guessed that there had been no chance, since that parting in the marshes, for Melwas to speak with her and try to find out what she had told Arthur. I think, indeed, that he was going to insist on our staying, but something in my eyes stopped him, and then his mother, accepting the decision, came with obvious eagerness to the question that interested her.

"We looked for you that night, Prince Merlin. I understand that you were led by your vision to find the Queen, before even my son got back to the Island with the news. Will you not tell us, my lord, what this vision was?"

Melwas had jerked to attention. His bold look defied me to elaborate. I smiled, and my gaze bore his down. Without my prompting, the old woman had asked the very question that I wanted. I raised my voice.

"Willingly, lady. It is true that I had a vision, but whether it came from the gods of air and silence who have spoken to me in the past, or from the Mother Goddess to whose worship the shrine beyond those apple trees is sacred, I cannot tell. But I had a vision that led me straight through the marshland like a fledged arrow to its mark. It was a double vision, a bright dream through which the dreamer passes to a darker dream below; a reflection seen in deep water where the surface colour lies like glass over the dark world beneath. The visions were confused, but their meaning was clear. I would have followed them more quickly, but I think the gods willed it otherwise."

Guinevere's head came up at that, and her eyes widened. Again, in Melwas', that spark of doubt. It was the old queen who asked: "How otherwise? They did not want the Queen found? What riddle is this, Prince Merlin?"

"I shall tell you. But first I will tell you about the dream that came to me. I saw a king's hall paved with marble, and pillared with silver and gold, where no servants waited, but where the lamps and tapers burned with scented smoke, bright as day..." I had let my voice take on the rhythm of the bard who sings in hall; its resonance filled the room and carried the words right out through the colonnade to the silent crowds outside. Fingers moved to make the sign against strong magic; even Guinevere's. The old queen listened with evident satisfaction and pleasure; it was to be remembered that she was the chief patroness of the Goddess's sacred shrine. As for Melwas, as I spoke I watched him move from suspicion and apprehension into bewilderment, and, finally, awe.

To everyone there, already, the dream had taken on a familiar pattern, the archetype of every man's journey into the world from which few travellers return.

"... And on the precious table a set of gold chessmen, and nearby a great chair with arms curled like lions' heads, waiting for the King, and a stool of silver with doves' claws, waiting for the Lady. So I knew it for Llud's hall, where the sacred vessel is kept, and where once the great sword hung that now hangs on Arthur's wall in Camelot. And from overhead, in the sky beyond the hollow hill, I heard them galloping, the Wild Hunt, where the knights of the Otherworld course down their prey, and carry them deep, deep, into the jewelled halls of no return. But just as I began to wonder if the god was telling me the Queen was dead, the vision changed —"

To my right was a window, high in the wall. Outside was a prospect of sky, cloudy above the tops of the orchard trees. The budding apple boughs showed lighter, in their young sorrel-and-green, than the slaty sky. The poplars stood pale like spears. But there had been that breath of change in the morning; I felt it still; I kept my eye on that indigo cloud, and spoke again, more slowly.

"... And I was in an older hall, a deeper cavern. I was in the Underworld itself, and the dark King was there, who is older even than Llud, and by him sat the pale young Queen who was left from the bright fields of Enna and carried out of the warm world to be the Queen of Hell; Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the Mother of all that grows on the face of the earth —"

The cloud was moving slowly, slowly. Beyond the budding boughs I could see the edge of its shadow drawing its veil aside. From somewhere a breeze came wandering to shiver the tall poplars that edged the orchard.

Most of the people there would not know the story, so I told it, to the obvious satisfaction of the old queen, who must, like all devotees of the Mother's cult, be feeling the cold threat of change even here in this, its ancient stronghold. Once, when Melwas, doubting my drift, would have spoken, she silenced him with a gesture, and (herself perhaps with more instinctive understanding) put out a hand and drew the Queen closer to her side. I looked neither at the dark Melwas nor at Guinevere, pale and wondering, but watched the high window out of the side of my eye, and told the old tale of Persephone's abduction by Hades, and the long, weary search for her that Demeter, the Mother Goddess, undertook, while the earth, robbed of its spring growth, languished in cold and darkness.

Beyond the window the poplars, brushed with the early light, bloomed suddenly golden.

"And when the vision died I knew what I had been told. Your Queen, your young and lovely Queen, was alive and safe, succoured by the Goddess and waiting only to be carried home. And with her coming, spring will come at last, and the cold rains will cease, and we shall have a land growing rich once again to harvest, in the peace brought by the High King's sword, and the joy brought by the Queen's love for him. This was the dream I had, and which I, Merlin, prince and prophet, interpret to you." I spoke straight past Melwas to the old queen. "So I beg you now, madam, to let me take the Queen home, with honour and with joy."

And at that moment, the blessed sun came bursting out and laid a shaft of light clear across the floor to the Queen's feet, so that she stood, all gold and white and green, in a pool of sunshine.

We rode home through a brilliant day smelling of primroses. The clouds had packed away, and the Lake showed blue and glittering under its golden willows. An early swallow hawked for flies, close over the bright water. And the Spring Queen, refusing the litter we had brought for her, rode beside me.

She spoke only once, and then briefly.

"I lied to you that night. You knew?"

"Yes."

"You do see, then? You really do? You see all?"

"I see a great deal. If I set out to look, and if God wills it, I see."

The colour came into her face, and her look lightened, as if something had set her free. Before, I had believed her innocent; now I knew it. "So you, too, have told my lord the truth. When he did not come for me himself, I was afraid."

"You have no need to be, now or ever. I think you need never doubt that he loves you. And I can tell you, too, Guinevere my cousin, that even if you never bear an heir for Britain, he will not put you aside. Your name will stand alongside his, as long as he is remembered."

"I will try," she said, so softly that I could hardly hear it. Then the towers of Camelot came in sight, and she was silent, bracing herself against what was to come.

So the seeds of legend were sown. During the golden weeks of spring that followed, I was more than once to hear men talking under their breaths of the "rape" of the Queen, and how she had been taken down almost to the dark halls of Llud, but brought back by Bedwyr, chiefest of Arthur's knights. So the sting of the truth was drawn; no shame attached to Arthur, none even to the Queen; and to Bedwyr was credited the first of his many glories, the story growing, and its hero gaining in stature, as his hurts healed and at last were well.

As for Melwas, in the way these things have, if the "Dark King" of the Underworld became linked in men's minds with the dark-avised king whose stronghold was the Tor, it was still without blame to Guinevere. What Melwas thought nobody knew. He must have realized that Guinevere had told Arthur the truth. He may have grown tired of being cast as the villain of the story, and of waiting (as everyone was waiting) for the High King to move against him. He may even have cherished hopes, still, that he might in some dim future come to possess the Queen.

Whatever the case, it was he who made the next move, and by doing so gave Arthur his way. One morning he rode to Camelot, and, perforce leaving his armed escort outside the council hall, took his seat in the Chair of Complaining.

The council hall had been built on the style of a smaller hall that Arthur had seen on one of the visits paid to the Queen's father in Wales. That had been merely a larger version of the daub-and-wattle round house of the Celts; this in Camelot was a big circular building, impressively built to last, with ribs of dressed stone, and between them walls of narrow Roman brick from the long-abandoned kilns nearby. There were vast double doors of oak, carved with the Dragon, and finely gilded. Inside, the place was open, with a fine floor of tiles laid out from the center, like a spider's web. And like the outer ring of a web, the walls were not curved, but sectioned off with flat panelling. These panels were covered with matting of a fine golden straw to keep out the draughts, but in time would be ablaze with needlework; Guinevere already had her maids set to it. Against each of these sections stood a tall chair, with its own footstool, and the King's was no higher than the next man's. This place was to be, he said, a hall for free discussion between the High King and his peers, and a place where any of the King's leaders could bring their problems. The only thing that marked Arthur's chair was the white shield that hung above it; in time, perhaps, the Dragon would shimmer there in gold and scarlet. Some of the other panels already showed the blazons of the Companions. The seat opposite the King's was blank. This was the one taken by anyone with a grievance to be settled by the court. Arthur had called it the Chair of Complaining. But in later years I heard it called the Perilous Chair, and I think the name was coined after that day.

I was not present when Melwas tabled his complaint. Though I had at that time a place in the Round Hall (as it came to be called), I seldom took it. If his peers were equal there to the King, then the King must be seen to match them in knowledge, and to give his judgements without leaning on the advice of a mentor. Any discussions Arthur and I had were held in private.

We had talked over the Melwas affair for many hours before it came to the council table. To begin with, Arthur seemed sure that I would try to stop him from fighting Melwas, but here was a case where the cold view and the hot coincided. To Arthur it would be satisfying and to me expedient that Melwas should suffer publicly for his actions. The lapse of time, and Arthur's silence, with the legend I had invoked, ensured that Guinevere's honour would not be in question; the people had taken her once more into their love, and wherever she went flowers strewed the way with blessings thrown like petals. She was their Queen — their darling's darling — who had almost been taken from them by death, and had been saved by Merlin's magic. So the story went among the common folk. But among the more worldly there were those who looked for the King to move against Melwas, and who would have been quick to despise him had he failed. He owed it to himself, as man and as King. The discipline he had imposed on himself over the Queen's rape had been severe. Now, when he found that I agreed with him, he turned, with a fierce joy, to planning.

He could, of course, have summoned King Melwas to the council hall on a trumped-up excuse, but this he would not do. "If we harass him until he makes a complaint himself, it comes to much the same thing in the sight of God," he said dryly, "but in terms of my conscience — or my pride, if you like — I will not use a false charge in the Round Hall. It must be known as a place were no man need fear to come before me, unless he himself is false."

So harass him we did. Situated as the Island was, between the High King's stronghold and the sea, it was easy enough to find causes. Somehow or another there came to be constant arguments about harbour dues, rights of free way, levies and taxes arbitrarily imposed and hotly contested. Any of the petty kings would have grown restive under the constant stream of minor vexations, but Melwas was even quicker to protest than most. According to Bedwyr (to whom I owed an account of the council meeting), it was apparent from the start that Melwas guessed he had been deliberately brought before the King to answer the older, more dangerous charge. He seemed eager to do so, but naturally enough allowed no hint of this to come into words: that must have meant his certain death for treason by the vote of the whole Council. So the grievances over dues and taxes, the arguments over the right levies for the protection offered by Camelot, took their long-drawn and tedious course, while the two men watched one another as swordsmen do, and at last came to the heart of the matter.

It was Melwas who suggested single combat. How he was brought towards this was not quite clear; my guess was that he took very little steering. Young, keen-tempered, a good swordsman, knowing himself to be in grave danger, he must have leaped at the chance of a quick decisive solution that gave him a half-hope of success. He may have counted on more. His challenge came at last, hotly: "A meeting to settle these matters here and now, and man to man, if we are ever to agree as neighbours again! You are the law, King; then prove it with your sword!"

Uproar followed, arguments flying to and fro across the hall. The older of those present found it unthinkable that the King should risk himself, but all had by this time some inkling that there was more at stake than harbour dues, and the younger knights were quite frankly eager to see a fight. More than one of them (Bedwyr was the most insistent) offered himself as combatant in Arthur's place, until finally the King, judging his moment, got decisively to his feet. In the sudden silence he strode to the round table at the hall's center, lifted the tablets where Melwas' grievances were listed, and sent them smashing to the floor.

"Now bring me my sword," he said.

It was midday when they faced one another on the level field in the northeast quarter of Caer Camel. The sky was cloudless, but a steady cool breeze tempered the warmth of the day. The light was high and even. The edge of the field was deep in people, the very ramparts furred with folk. At the top of one of Camelot's gilded towers I saw the cluster of azure and green and scarlet where the women had gathered to watch. The Queen, among them, was in white, Arthur's colour. I wondered how she was feeling, and could guess at the still composure with which she would hide her fear. Then the trumpet sounded, and silence fell.

The two combatants were armed with spears and shields, and each man had sword and dagger at his belt. Arthur was not using Caliburn, the royal sword. His armour — a light helmet and leather corselet — showed neither jewel nor device. Melwas' dress was more princely, and he was a shade the taller. He looked fierce and eager, and I saw him cast a look toward the palace tower where the Queen stood. Arthur had not glanced that way. He looked cool and infinitely experienced, listening apparently with grave attention to the herald's formal announcement.

There was a sycamore tree to one side of the field. Bedwyr, beside me in its shade, gave me a long look, and then drew a breath of relief.

"So. You're not worried. Thank God for that!"

"It had to come to this in the end. It's best. But if there had been danger for him, I would have stopped it."

"All the same, it's folly. Oh, I know that he wanted to, but he should never risk himself so. He should have let me do it."

"And what sort of showing would you make, do you suppose? You're still lame. You could have been cut down, if not worse, and then the legend would have had to start again. There are still simple folk who think that right is with the strongest sword."

"As it is today, or you'd not be standing idly by. I know. But I wish..." He fell silent.

"I know what you wish. I think you will have your wish, not once but many times, before your life's end."

He glanced sharply at me, started to say something more, but then the pennon fell, and the fight had begun.

For a long time the men circled one another, spears poised for the throw, shields ready. The light advantaged neither. It was Melwas who attacked first. He feinted once, then, with great speed and strength behind the throw, hurled the spear. Arthur's shield flashed up to deflect it. The blade slid screaming past the boss, and the spear buried itself harmlessly in the grass. Melwas, snatching for his sword-hilt, sprang back. But Arthur, in the same moment as he turned the spear aside, flung his own. By doing so he cancelled the advantage that Melwas' first thrown had given him; but he did not draw his own sword; he reached for the other's spent spear, upright by him in the turf, pulled it up, and hefted it, just as Melwas, abandoning his sword-hilt, sent the King's spear also whizzing harmlessly from his shield, and turned, swift as a fox, to pick it up in the same way and face spear with spear once more.

But Arthur's weapon, harder flung, and more desperately parried, flew spinning to one side, to bounce level along the turf and skid away from Melwas' hand. There was no hope of snatching it up before Arthur could throw. Melwas, shield at the ready, feinted this way and that, hoping to draw the other's spear and so regain the advantage. He reached the fallen weapon; he stooped for it where it lay, the shaft half-propped to his hand by a clump of thistles. Arthur's arm moved, and the blade of his spear flashed in the light, drawing Melwas' eye. Melwas ducked, throwing his shield up into the line of the cast, at the same time swerving down to grab the fallen weapon. But the King's move had been a false one; in the unguarded moment when Melwas stooped sideways for the other spear, the King's, thrown straight and low, took him in the outstretched arm. Arthur's sword whipped into his hand as he followed the spear.

Melwas staggered. As a great shout hit the walls and echoed round the field he recovered, grabbed the spear, and hurled it straight at the King.

Had he been any less fast, Arthur must have closed with him before he could use the spear. As it was, Melwas' weapon struck true when the King was halfway across the space between them. Arthur caught it on his shield, but at that short range the force was too great to turn. The long shaft whipped in a half-circle, checking the King's rush. With the sword still held in his right hand, he tried to tear the spear-point from the leather, but it had gone in close by one of the metal stays, and jammed there, caught by its barbs. He flung the shield aside, spear and all, and ran in on Melwas, with nothing to guard his naked side but the dagger at his left hand.

The rush gave Melwas no time to recover himself and grab a spear for a third cast. With the blood streaming down his arm, he dragged out his sword, and met the King's attack, body to body, with a slithering clash of metal. The exchange had left them still evenly matched, Melwas' wound, and the loss of strength in his sword against the King's unguarded side. Melwas was a good swordsman, fast and very strong, and for the first few minutes of the hand-to-hand struggle he aimed every stroke and slash at the King's left. But each one met iron. And step by step the King was pressing him; step by step Melwas was forced to give in front of the attack. The blood ran down, weakening him steadily. Arthur, as far as could be seen, was unhurt. He pressed forward, the ringing blows coming fast and hard, the whining whip and parry of the long dagger chiming between. Behind Melwas lay the fallen spear. Melwas knew it, but dared not glance to see where it lay. The dread of fouling it, and falling, made him slower. He was sweating freely, and beginning to breathe like a hard-ridden horse.

One of those moments came when, breast to breast, weapon to weapon, the men stood locked, totally still. Round the field the crowd was silent now, holding its breath.

The King spoke, softly and coldly. No one could hear what he said. Melwas did not reply. There was a moment's pause, then a swift movement, a sudden pressure, a grunt from Melwas, and some kind of growled answer. Then Arthur disengaged smoothly, and, with another low-spoken sentence, attacked afresh.

Melwas' right hand was a blur of glossy blood. His sword moved more slowly, as if too heavy for him. His breathing laboured, loud as a stag's in rut. With a great, grunting effort he brought his shield smashing down, like an axe, at the King. Arthur dodged, but slipped. The shield's edge took him on the right shoulder, and must have numbed the arm. His sword flew wide. There was a gasp and a great cry from the watching people. Melwas gave a shout, and swung his sword up for the kill.

But Arthur, now armed only with a dagger, did not spring back out of range. Before anyone could draw breath he had jumped forward, straight past the shield, and his long dagger bit into Melwas' throat.

And stayed still, followed only by a trickle of blood. No thrust followed. He spoke again, low and fierce. Melwas froze where he stood. The sword dropped from his lifted hand. The shield fell to the grass.

The dagger withdrew. The King stepped back. Slowly, in the sight of all that throng, the King's men and his own, and of the Queen watching from her tower, Melwas, King of the Summer Country, knelt on the bloody grass in front of Arthur, and made his surrender.

Now there was no sound at all.

With a movement so slow as to be almost ceremonial, the King lifted his dagger, and cast it, point down, to quiver in the turf. Then he spoke again, more quietly even than before. This time Melwas, with bent head, answered him. They spoke for some time. Finally the King, still with that ceremony of gesture, reached a hand, and lifted Melwas to his feet. Then he beckoned the defeated man's escort to him, and, as his own people came crowding, turned away among them and walked back toward the palace.

In later years I heard several stories about this fight. Some said it was Bedwyr who fought, not Arthur, but that is patently foolish. Others asserted that there was no fight, or Melwas would surely have been slain. Arthur and Melwas, they said, were brought by some mediator in the Council to agree on terms.

That is not true. It happened exactly as I have told it. Later I learned from the King what had passed between the two men on the field of combat: Melwas, expecting death, was brought to admit the truth of the Queen's accusation, and his own guilt. It is true it would not have served for Arthur to kill him, but Arthur — and this on no advice from me — acted with both wisdom and restraint. It is a fact that after that day Melwas was loyal to him, and Ynys Witrin was reckoned a jewel in the tally of Arthur's sovereignty.

It is a matter of public record that the King's ships paid no more harbour dues.

7

SO THE YEAR WENT BY, and the lovely month came, September, my birth-month, the wind's month, the month of the raven, and of Myrddin himself, that wayfarer between heaven and earth. The apple trees were heavy with fruit, and the herbs were gathered and drying; they hung in sheaves and bunches from the rafters in the outhouses at Applegarth, and the still-room was full of ranked jars and boxes waiting to be filled. The whole house, garden, tower and living quarters, smelled sweetly of herbs and fruit, and of the honey that welled from the hives; even, at the end of the orchard, from the hollow oak where the wild bees lived. Applegarth, it seemed, reflected within its small boundaries the golden plenty of the kingdom's summer. The Queen's summer, men called it, as harvest followed hay-time, and still the land glowed with the Goddess-given plenty. A golden age, they said. For me, too, a golden age. But now, as never before, I had time to be lonely. And in the evenings, when the wind was in the southwest, I could feel it in my bones, and was grateful for the fire. Those weeks of nakedness and hunger, and exposure to the mountain weather in the Caledonian Forest, had left me a legacy that even a strong body could not shake off, and were pricking me forward into old age.

Another legacy that time had left me; whether as a lingering after-effect of Morgause's poison, or from some other cause, I had, from time to time, brief attacks of something that I might have called the falling sickness, save that this is not a malady that comes in later years if it has not been felt before. The symptoms, besides, were not like those in cases that I had seen or treated. The fit had come three times in all, and only when I was alone, so none knew of it but myself. What happened was this: resting quietly, I had drifted off, it seemed into sleep, only to wake, cold and stiff and weak with hunger — though not inclined to eat — many hours later. The first time it was a matter of twelve hours or so only, but I guessed from the giddiness, and the light, exhausted feeling, that it had not been normal sleep. On the second occasion the lapse of time was two nights and a day, and I was lucky that the malady had struck me when I was safely in my bed.

I told no one. When the third attack was imminent I recognized the signs; a light, half-hungry sensation, a slight giddiness, a wish to rest and be silent. So I sent Mora home, locked the doors, and took myself to my bedchamber. Afterwards I felt as I sometimes had after a time of prophecy, borne up like a creature ready for flight, with senses rinsed and clean as if new-made, colours and sounds coming as fresh and brilliant as they must to a child. Of course I took to my books for enlightenment, but finding no help there, I put the matter aside, accepting it, as I had learned to accept the pains of prophecy, and their withdrawal, as a touch of the god's hand. Perhaps now the hand was drawing me closer. There was no fear in the thought. I had done what he had required of me, and when the time came, would be ready to go.

But he did not, I reckoned, require me to sacrifice my pride. Let men remember the royal prophet and enchanter who retired from men's sight and his King's service in his own time; not a dotard who had waited overlong for his dismissal.

So I stayed solitary, busying myself with the garden and my medicine, writing and sending long letters to Blaise in Northumbria, and being cared for well enough by the girl Mora, whose cooking was from time to time enriched by some gift from Arthur's table. Gifts went back from me, too; a basket of some especially good apples from one of the young trees; cordials and medicines; perfumes, even, that I concocted for the Queen's pleasure; herbs for the King's kitchen. Simple stuff, after the fiery gifts of prophecy and victory, but somehow redolent of peace and the age of gold. Gifts of love and contentment; now we had time for both. A golden time indeed, untroubled by foreboding; but with the prickling sense I recognized of some change to come; something undreaded, but ineluctable as the fall of the leaves and the coming of winter.

What it was, I would not allow myself to think. I was like a man alone in an empty room, contented enough, but listening for sounds beyond the shut door, and waiting with half a hope for someone to come, though knowing in his heart of hearts that he would not.

But he did.

He came on a golden evening, in about the middle of the month. There was a full moon, which had stolen, like a ghost, into the sky long before sunset. It hung behind the apple boughs like a great misty lantern, its light slowly waxing, as the sky around it darkened, to apricot and gold. I was in the stillroom, crumbling a pile of dried hyssop. The jars stood clean and ready. The room smelled of hyssop and of the racks of apples and plums laid on the shelves to ripen. A few late wasps droned, and a butterfly, snared by the room's warmth, flattened rich wings against the stone of the window-frame. I heard the light step behind me, and turned.

Magician they call me, and it is true. But I neither expected his coming nor heard him until I saw him standing there in the dusk, lit by the deepening gold of the moon. He might have been a ghost, so did I stand and stare, transfixed. The meeting in the mist on the Island's shore had come back to me frequently, but never as something real; with every effort of recall it became more and more of a dream, something imagined, a hope only.

Now the real boy was here, flushed and breathing, smiling, but not quite at ease, as if unsure of his welcome. He held a bundle which, I supposed, must contain his goods. He was dressed in grey, with a cloak the colour of beech-buds. He had no ornaments, and no weapons.

He began: "I don't suppose you remember me, but —"

"Why should I not? You are the boy who is not Ninian."

"Oh, but I am. I mean, it is one of my names. Truly."

"I see. So when I called you —"

"Yes. When you spoke first, I thought you must know me; but then — when you said who you were — I knew you were mistaken, and — well, I was afraid. I'm sorry. I should have told you straight away, instead of running away like that. I'm sorry."

"But when I told you that I wanted to teach you my art, and asked you to come to me, you agreed to do so. Why?"

His hands, white on the bundle, clenched and twisted in the fold of the cloth. He hung still on the threshold, as if poised to run. "That was... When you said that he — this other boy — had been the — the kind of person who could learn from you... You had felt it all along, you said, and he had known it, too. Well — " he swallowed, " — I believe that I am, too. I have felt, all my life, that there were doors in the back of the mind that would open on light, if one could only find the key." He faltered, but his eyes did not waver from mine.

"Yes?" I gave him no help.

"Then when you spoke to me like that, suddenly, out of the mist, it was like a dream come true. Merlin himself, speaking to me by name, and offering me the very key... Even when I realized that you had mistaken me for someone else, who was dead, I had a wild thought that perhaps I could come to you and take his place... Then of course I saw how stupid that was, to think I could deceive you, of all people. So I did not dare to come."

"But now you have dared."

"I had to." He spoke simply, stating a fact. "I have thought of nothing else since that night. I was afraid, because... I was afraid, but there are things that you have to do, they won't let you alone, it's as if you were being driven. More than driven, hounded. Do you understand?"

"Very well." It was hard to keep my voice steady and grave. There must have been some note in it of what my heart felt, because, faint and sweet from the upper room, I heard the answer of my harp.

He had heard nothing. He was still braced, braving me, forcing himself into the role of suppliant. "Now you know the truth. I'm not the boy you knew. You know nothing about me. Whatever I feel, here in myself" — a hand moved as if to touch his breast, but clenched itself again on the bundle — "you may not think I'm worth teaching. I don't expect you to take me in, or spend any time on me. But if you would — if you would only let me stay here, sleep in the stableplace, anything, help you with — well, with work like that" — a glance at the pile of hyssop — "until perhaps in time you would come to know..." His voice wavered again, and this time died. He licked dry lips and stood mute, watching me.

It was my gaze that faltered, not his. I turned aside to hide the joy that I could feel mantling my cheeks. I plunged my hands wrist-deep in the fragrant herbs, and rubbed the dry fragments between the fingertips. The scent of hyssop, clean and pungent, rose and steadied me.

I spoke slowly, to the herb jars. "When I called to you by the Lake, I took you for a boy with whom I travelled north many years ago, and who had a spirit that spoke to mine. He died, and ever since that day I have grieved for his death. When I saw you, I thought I had been mistaken, and that he still lived; but when I had time to think about it, I knew that now he would be a boy no longer, but a grown man. It was, you might say, a stupid error. I do not commonly make such errors, but at the time I told myself it was an error bred of weariness and grief, and of the hope that was still alive in me, that he, or such another spirit, would one day come to me again."

I paused. He said nothing. The moon had moved beyond the window-frame, and the door where the boy stood was almost in darkness. I turned back to him.

"I should have known it was no error. It was the hand of the god that crossed your path with mine, and now has driven you to me, in spite of your fear. You are not the boy I knew, but if you had not been just such another, you can be sure I would not have seen you, or spoken to you. That night was full of strong magic. I should have remembered that, and trusted it."

He said eagerly: "I felt it, too. You could feel the stars like frost on the skin. I'd gone out to catch fish... but I let them be. It was no night for death, even for a fish." Dimly, I saw that he smiled, but when he drew breath, it came unsteadily. "You mean I may stay? I will do?"

"You will do." I lifted my fingers from the hyssop, and let it trickle back onto the cloth, dusting my fingertips together. "Which of us, after this, will dare to ignore the god who drives us? Don't be afraid of me. You are very welcome. No doubt I'll warn you, when I have time to be cautious, of the heavy task you're undertaking, and all the thorns that lie in the way, but just at this moment I dare say nothing that will frighten you away from me again. Come in, and let me see you."

As he obeyed me, I lifted the unlit lamp from the shelf. The wick caught flame from the air, and flared high.

In full light I knew that I could never have mistaken him for the goldsmith's boy, but he was very like. He was taller by a thumb's breadth, and his face was not quite so thin in outline. His skin was finer, and his hands, as fine-boned and clever-looking as the other boy's, had never done slave's work. His hair was the same, a thick dark mane, roughly cut just short of his shoulders. His mouth was like, so like that I could have been deceived again; it had the gentle, dreaming lines that — I suspected — masked a firmness, even obstinacy, of purpose. The boy Ninian had shown a quiet disregard of anything that he did not want to notice; his master's discourses had gone unheeded over his head while he took refuge in his own thoughts. Here was the same soft stubbornness, and in these eyes, too, the same half-absent, dreaming look that could shut the world out as effectively as dropped eyelids. They were grey, the iris rimmed with black, and had the clarity of lake water. I was to find that like lake water they could reflect colour, and look green or blue or black-stormy as the mood came. Now they were watching me with what looked like a mixture of fascination and fear.

"The lamp?" I said. "You've not seen the fire called before? Well, that's one of the first things you'll learn; it was the first my own master taught me. Or was it the jars? You're looking at them as if you thought I was bottling poison. I was packing the garden herbs for winter's use."

"Hyssop," he said. I thought there was a glint of mischief, which in a girl I might have called demure. " 'To be burned with brimstone for inflammations of the throat; or boiled with honey to help pleurisy of the lungs.' "

I laughed. "Galen? Well, it seems we have a flying start. So you can read? Do you know — ? No, it must wait till morning. For the present, have you had supper?"

"Yes, thank you."

"You said that Ninian was 'one of your names.' What do you like to be called?"

"Ninian will do... that is, unless you would rather not use it. What happened to him, the boy you knew? I think you said he was drowned?"

"Yes. We were at Corstopitum, and he went swimming with some other boys in the river beside the bridge where the Cor flows into the Tyne. They came running back to say he had been swept away."

"I'm sorry."

I smiled at him. "You will have to work very hard to make good his loss. Come, then, we must find you a place to sleep."

That was how I acquired my assistant, and the god his servant. He had had his hand over both of us all that time. It seems to me now that the first Ninian was but a forerunner — a shadow cast before — of the real one who came to me later, from the Lake. From the start it was apparent that instinct had deceived neither of us; Ninian of the Lake, though knowing little of the arts I professed, proved a natural adept. He learned quickly, soaking up both knowledge and art as a cloth soaks up clear water. He could read and write fluently, and though he had not, as I in my youth had had, the gift of languages, he spoke a pure Latin as well as the vernacular, and had picked up enough Greek to be able to read a label or be accurate about a recipe. He had once, he told me, had access to a translation of Galen, but knew nothing of Hippocrates beyond hearsay. I set him to reading in the Latin version I had, and found myself, in some measure, sent back to school by the score of questions he asked, of which I had taken the answers so long for granted that I had forgotten how they were reached. Music he knew nothing of, and would not learn; this was the first time I came face to face with that gentle, immovable stubbornness of his. He would listen, his face full of dreaming light, when I played or sang; but sing himself, or even try to sing, he would not; and after a few attempts to teach him his notes on the big harp, I gave it up. I would have liked it if he had had a voice; I would not have wanted to sit by while another man made music with my harp, but now with age my own voice was not as good as it had once been, and I would have liked to hear a young voice singing the poems I made. But no. He smiled, shook his head, tuned the harp for me (that much he could and would do), and listened.

But in everything else he was eager and quick to learn. Recollecting as best I could the way old Galapas, my master, had inducted me into the skills of magic, I took him, step by step, into the strange and misty halls of art. The Sight he had already in some degree; but where I had surpassed my master from the start, Ninian would do well if in time he could equal me, and he was still a stranger to the flights of prophecy. If he went half as far as I, I would be content. Like all old men, I could not believe that that young brain and gentle body could withstand the stresses that I myself had withstood many times. I helped him, as Galapas had done me, with certain subtle yet safe drugs, and soon he could see in the fire or the lamp, and wake from the vision afterwards no more than weary, and, at times, disturbed by what he had seen. As yet he could not put truth together with vision. I did not help him to; and indeed, in those peaceful months of his apprenticeship there was little happening of enough moment to set prophecy stirring in the fire. Once or twice he spoke to me, in a kind of confusion, about the Queen, and Melwas and Bedwyr and the King, but I put the visions aside as obscure, and pursued them no further.

He steadfastly refused to tell me about himself or whence he came. He had lived most of his life, he said, on or near the Island, and allowed me to gather that his parents had been poor dwellers in one of the outlying Lake villages. Ninian of the Lake, he called himself, and said it was enough; so as such I accepted him. His past, after all, was nothing; whatever he was going to be, I would make. I did not press him; I had had enough, as a bastard and a child with no known father, of the shame of such questioning; so I respected the boy's silences, and asked no more than he would tell me.

All the practical side of healing, the study of anatomy, and the use of drugs, he was interested in, and good at. He could also, as I never could, draw with real skill. He began, that first winter, for sheer delight in the work, to compile a local herbal of his own, though most of the seeking and identifying of the plants, which is more than half the doctor's art, would have to wait till spring. But there was no hurry for it. He had, he told me, for ever.

So the winter passed in deep happiness, each day too short for all it could be filled with. To be with Ninian was to have everything; my own youth again, eager and quick to learn, with life unfolding full of bright promise; and at the same time the pleasures of quiet thought and of solitude. He seemed to sense when I needed to be alone, and either withdrew physically from my presence to his own room, or fell silent, and apparently into some deep abstraction, which left my thoughts free of him. He would not share the house with me, preferring, he said, to have rooms of his own where he need not disturb me, so I had Mora get ready the upper rooms that would have housed the servants, had any lived with me. The rooms were above the workshop and storeroom, facing west, and though small and low under the rafters, were pleasant and airy. I did wonder at first if Mora and he had come to some sort of understanding; they spent a lot of time talking together in the kitchen, or down by the stream where the girl did some of the washing; I would hear them laughing, and could see that they were easy together; but there was no sign of intimacy, and in time I realized that Ninian, from things he let fall in talk, knew as little about love as I myself. Which, from the way the power grew in him, palpably week by week, I took to be only natural. The gods do not give two gifts at once, and they are jealous.

Spring came early the next year, with mild sunny days in March, and the wild geese going overhead daily, toward their nesting sites in the north. I caught some kind of chill, and kept to the house, but then one fine day went outside to sit in the little garth, where the doves were already busy about their love-making. The heated wall made the place as pleasant as a fireside; there were rosy cups of quince against the stone, and winter irises full out at the wall's base. In the gardens beyond the stable buildings I could hear the thud of Varro's spade, and thought idly of the planting I had planned. Nothing was in my mind beyond vague, pleasant plans of a domestic sort, and the sight of the pink sheen on the breast feathers of the doves, and the sleepy sound of their cooing...

Later, looking back, I wondered if for a brief hour my malady had blanketed me from consciousness of the present. It would have pleased me to think so. But it seems probable that the malady that overtook me was age, and the weakness left by the chill, and the lulling drug of contentment.

Quick footsteps on a stone stair startled me awake. I looked up. Ninian came hurrying down from his room, but with uncertain steps, as if it were he, not I, who was half-drugged, or even ill. He kept a hand on the stone wall, as if without its guidance he would have stumbled. Still unsteadily, he crossed the colonnade, and came out into the sunshine. He paused there, with a hand to one of the pillars for support. His face was pale, his eyes enormous, the black pupils swimmingly overspreading the iris. His lips looked dry, but there was damp on his forehead, and two sharp lines of pain gouged down between his brows.

"What is it?" I began in alarm to get to my feet, but he put out a hand to calm me, then came forward. He sank down on the flags at my feet in the sun.

"I've had a dream," he said, and even his voice was unlike itself. "No, I wasn't asleep. I was reading by the window. There was a spider's web there, still full of drops from last night's rain. I was watching it as it shook in the sunlight..."

I understood then. I put a hand down to his shoulder and held it steadily. "Sit quiet for a moment. You will not forget the dream. Wait there. You can tell me later."

But as I got to my feet he shot a hand out and grabbed at my robe. "You don't understand! It was a warning! I am sure of that! There's some sort of danger —"

"I understand quite well. But until the headache goes, you will remember nothing clearly. Now wait. I'll be back soon."

I went into the stillroom. As I busied myself mixing the cordial I had only one thought in my mind. He, sitting reading and thinking, had had vision brought to him in a dewdrop's spark of light; I, waiting idly and with passive mind in full sunlight, had seen nothing. I found that my hand shook a little as I poured the cordial for him; it would take love, I thought, to stand peacefully aside and watch the god lift his wing from over me, and take another into its shadow. No matter that the power had brought pain and men's fear and sometimes hatred; no one who has known power like that has any wish to abdicate it to another. Not to anyone.

I carried the goblet out into the sunlight. Ninian, still curled on the flagstones, had his head down, a fist pressed tightly against his brow. He looked very slight and young. He raised his head at my step, and the grey eyes, swimming with tears of pain, looked at me blindly. I sat down, took his hand in mine, and guided the goblet to his mouth. "Drink this. It will make you feel better presently. No, don't try to talk yet."

He drank, then his head went down again, this time against my knee. I laid a hand on his hair. For some time we sat like that, while the doves, disturbed by his coming, flew down again onto the coping of the wall, and once more took up their gentle courtship. Beyond the stables the monotonous sound of Varro's spade went on and on.

Presently Ninian stirred.

I lifted my hand. "Better?"

He nodded and raised his head. The lines of pain had gone. "Yes. Yes, it's quite gone. It was more than a headache; it was like a sharp pain right through the brain. I've never felt anything like that before. Am I ill?"

"No. You are merely a seer, an eye and a voice for a most tyrannous god. You have had a waking dream, what men call a vision. Now tell me about it, and we shall see if it is a true one."

He drew his knees up, clasping them with both hands. He spoke, looking past me at the wall with the black branches and red cups of the quince. His eyes were still dark, dilated with vision, and his voice was low and even, as if reciting something learned by rote.

"I saw a stretch of grey sea, whipped with storm winds, breaking white over rocks like wolves' fangs. There was a beach of pebbles, grey too, and streaming with rain. The waves came in over the beach, and with them came broken spars and casks and torn sails — pieces of wreckage. And people; drowned bodies of men and women. One of the men's bodies rolled near me, and I saw he had not been drowned; there was a deep wound in his neck, but the blood had all been washed away by the sea. He looked like an animal that has been bled. There were dead children, too, three of them. One was naked, and had been speared. Then I saw, out beyond the breakers, another ship, a whole ship, with sails furled in the wind, and with oars out, holding her steady. She waited there, and I saw that she was low in the water as if heavily laden. She had a high, curved prow, with a pair of antlers fastened to it; I couldn't see if they were real, or carved in wood. I could see her name, though; it was King Stag. The men in the ship were watching the bodies tumbling on shore, and they were laughing. They were a long way off across the sea, but I could hear what they said, quite clearly... Can you believe that?"

"Yes. Go on."

"They were saying, 'You were guided, by God! Who could have told that the old scow was so richly found? Luck like yours, and a fair division of the spoils, and we'll all make our fortunes!' They were speaking to the captain."

"Did you hear his name?"

"I think so. They called him Heuil."

"Was that all?"

"No. There was a sort of darkness, like a mist. Then the King Stag had gone, but near me on the shore there were horsemen, and some of them had dismounted and were looking at the bodies. One man lifted a piece of broken planking with something on it that might have been the name of the wrecked ship, and carried it across to where another was sitting on his horse. He was a dark man, carrying no device that I could see, but he was obviously their leader. He looked angry. He said something, and the others got to their horses again, and they all galloped up off the beach, through the dunes and the long grasses. I was left there, and then even the dead bodies were gone, and the wind was blowing into my eyes and making them water... That was all. I was looking at the spider's web, and the drops had melted in the sunlight. A fly was caught there, shaking the web. I suppose that was what woke me. Merlin —"

He stopped abruptly, and cocked his head to listen. Now I could catch, from the road below, the sounds of a troop of horsemen, and a distant command to halt. A single rider detached himself, and approached at a rapid canter.

"A messenger from Camelot?" I said. "Who knows, perhaps this is your vision coming home."

The horse stopped. There was the jingle of the bridle being thrown to Varro. Arthur came in through the archway.

"Merlin, I'm glad to see you about. They told me you had been ill, and I came to see for myself." He paused, looking at Ninian. He knew, of course, that the boy was with me, but they had not met before. Ninian had refused to go with me to Camelot, and whenever the King had visited me, had made some excuse and retired to his rooms. I did not press him, knowing the awe that the people of the Lake villages felt for the High King.

I was on my feet, just beginning, "This is Ninian," when the boy himself interrupted me. He came to his feet in one swift movement, as fast as a snake uncurling, and cried out:

"That's the man! That's the one! It was a true dream then, it was true!"

Arthur's brows shot up, not, I knew, at the lack of ceremony, but at the words. He looked from Ninian back to me. "A true dream?" He said it softly. He knew the phrase of old.

I heard Ninian gasp as, through the dregs of the vision, he came back to the present. He stood there blinking, like someone thrust suddenly into bright light. "It's the King. So it was the King."

Arthur said, sharply now: "So what was the King?"

Ninian, flushing, began to stammer. "Nothing. That is, I was just talking to Merlin. I didn't know you at first. I —"

"Never mind. You know me now. What is this about a true dream?"

Ninian looked appealingly at me. Telling me his dream was one thing; making his first prophecy to the King's face was quite another. I said across to him, to the King: "It seems that an old friend of yours is indulging in piracy, or some villainy uncommonly like it, somewhere in his home waters. Murder and robbery, and peaceful traders looted and then wrecked, and no one left alive to tell the story."

He frowned. "An old friend of mine? Who, then?"

"Heuil."

"Heuil?" His face darkened. Then he stood for a few moments in thought. "Yes, it fits. It fits. I had news a while back from Ector, and he said Caw was failing, and that wild brood of his looking around them like idle dogs for something to tear. Then three days ago I heard from Urbgen, my sister's lord in Rheged, of a village on the coast attacked and looted, and the folk killed or scattered. He was inclined to blame the Irish, but I doubted that; the weather's been too rough for anything but local raiding. Heuil, is it? You don't surprise me. Shall I go?"

"It seems you had better. My guess is that Caw is dead, or dying. I can't believe that Heuil would dare, otherwise, to do anything to provoke Rheged."

"Your guess?"

"That is all."

He nodded. "It seems likely. In any case, it will answer very well. I had been almost ready to invent some pretext for a foray to the northward. With Caw's grip slackening, and that black dog Heuil collecting a following that could contest his brother's claim to the rulership of Strathclyde, I would like to be there to see things for myself. Piracy, eh? You did not see where?"

I glanced at Ninian. He shook his head. "No," I said, "but you'll find him. You will be there, on the shore, while the wreckage and the bodies still lie there. The raiders' ship is King Stag. That's all we know. You should be able to fasten the guilt where it belongs."

"I'll do that, never fear." He was grim. "I'll send north to Urbgen and Ector tonight to expect me, and I'll ride myself in the morning. I'm grateful. I've been looking for an excuse to cut my lord Heuil out of the pack, and now you give me this. It may be just the chance I need to get another agreement ratified between Strathclyde and Rheged, and throw my weight in behind the new king. I don't know how long I shall be away. And you, Merlin? All is really well with you?"

"All is very well."

He smiled. He had not missed the glance that had gone between Ninian and myself. "It seems you have someone to share your visions with, at last. Well, Ninian, I am glad to have met you." He smiled at the boy, and said something kind. Ninian, staring, made some sort of answer. I had been wrong, I saw, about him; he was not awed by the presence of the King, and there was a quality in the way he looked at Arthur, something I could not quite put a name to; none of the worship that I was used to seeing in men's eyes, but a steady appraisal. Arthur saw it, looked amused, then dismissed the boy and turned back to me, asking for messages for Morgan and Ector. Then he said his goodbyes and went.

Ninian looked thoughtfully after him. "Yes, it was a true dream. The dark leader on the white horse, with the white shield shining, and no blazon on it but the light of the sky. It was Arthur beyond doubt. Who exactly is Heuil, and why does the King want an excuse to cut him down?"

"He's one of the sons of Caw of Strathclyde, who has been king on Dumbarton Rock since before I can remember. He's very old, and has sired nineteen sons on various women. There may be daughters, too, but those wild northern men make little of their girls. The youngest of the brood, Gildas, has recently been sent to my old friend Blaise, whom you know of, to learn to read and write. He, at least, will be a man of peace. But Heuil is the wildest of a wild breed. He and Arthur have always disliked one another. They fell out and fought, once, over a girl, when Arthur was a boy in the north country. Since then, with Caw's health failing, the King has seen Heuil as a danger to the balance of peace in the north. He would do anything, I think, to harm Arthur, even ally himself with the Saxons. Or so Arthur believes. But now that Heuil has taken to rapine and murder, he can be hunted down and destroyed, and the greater danger will be averted."

"And the King takes an army north, just like that, on your word?" There was awe in his face now, but not the awe of kings or their counsels. He was, for the first time, feeling the power in himself.

I smiled. "No, on yours. If I seemed to take the credit for the seeing I am sorry. But the matter was urgent, and he might not have believed you as readily."

"Of course not. But you saw it, too?"

"I saw nothing."

He looked startled. "But you believed me straight away."

"Of course. Because I did not share it, it doesn't mean it was not a true dream."

He looked worried, then rather scared. "But, Merlin, do you mean that you knew nothing about this before I told you my dream? I mean, about Heuil's turning pirate... I should say, his intention to turn pirate? That you sent the King off to the north on my word alone?"

"That is what I mean, yes."

A silence, while worry, apprehension, excitement, and then joy showed in his face as clearly as the reflection of light and cloud blowing across the waters of his native lake. He was still taking in the implications of power. But when he spoke he surprised me. Like Arthur, he saw straight past those implications to others, that were my concern, not his. And his next words were an exact echo of Arthur's. "Merlin, do you mind?"

I answered him as simply. "Perhaps. A little, now. But soon, not at all. It's a harsh gift, and perhaps it is time that the god handed it on to you, and left me in peace to sit in the sun and watch the doves on the wall."

I smiled as I spoke, but there was no answering glimmer in his face. He did a strange thing then. He reached for my hand, lifted it to his cheek, then dropped it and went back upstairs to his room without another word or look. I was left standing there in the sun, remembering another, much younger boy, riding downhill from the cave of Galapas, with the visions swirling in his head, and tears on his face, and all the lonely pain and danger hanging in the clouds ahead of him. Then I went indoors to my own room, and read beside the fire till Mora brought the midday meal.

8

ARTHUR RODE OUT NEXT DAY for the north, and thereafter we got no more news. Ninian went about the place with a half-dazed look, compounded, I think, of wonder at himself and the "true vision," and at me for not seeming distressed at the way it had passed me by. For myself, I admit I was divided; looking back on that day, I knew that I had been lingering in the edges of the poisoned dream that was my sickness; but even after Arthur's visit and acceptance of Ninian's prophecy, nothing had come to me out of the dark, either of proof or denial. For all that I seemed to feel, in the rich quiet of the days, a tranquil approval. It was like watching a shadow that slowly, as the distant clouds move, withdraws from one field or forest, and passes on to shroud the next. I had been shown, gently enough, where happiness now lay; so I took it, preparing the boy Ninian to be as I had been, and myself for some future half seen and guessed at many times, but now seen more clearly and no longer dreaded, but moved toward, as a beast moves toward its winter sleep.

Ninian, more even than before, seemed to withdraw into himself. On one or two occasions, lying wakeful in the night, I heard him cross the garth soft-footed, and then run, like a young thing released, down the valley to the road. Twice, even, I sought to follow him in vision, but he must have taken care to cloud himself from me, for I saw no farther than the roadway, then the slight figure running, running, into the mist that lay between Applegarth and the Island. It did not trouble me that he had secrets, any more than it troubled me to hear him and the girl Mora talking — sometimes at great length — in the still-room or the kitchen. I had never counted myself lively company, and with age tended to be even more withdrawn. It only pleased me that the young people should find common interests, and keep each other contented in my service.

For service it was. I worked the boy harder than any slave. This is the way of love, I find; one longs so fervently for the beloved to achieve the best ends that he is spared nothing. And that I loved Ninian there could no longer be any doubt; the boy was myself, and through him I would go on living. As long as the King should need the vision and the power of a King's prophet, he would find it, as ready to his hand as the royal sword.

One evening we built the fire up high against the chill wind of April, and sat beside it, watching the flames. Ninian settled straight down in his usual place, on the rug before the hearth, chin on fist, the grey eyes narrowed against the flames. Gradually, on the fine pale skin, the gleam of sweat showed, a film which caught the firelight and limned his face with a pure line, damping the edges of his hair, and fringing the black lashes with rainbows. I, as lately more and more often, found myself watching him, rather than reaching after my own power. It was a mixture of deep contentment, and a cruelly disturbing love that I made no attempt either to check or to understand. I had learned the lessons of the past; I went with the time, believing that I was master enough of myself and my thoughts to do the boy no harm.

There was a change in his face. Something moved there, a reflection of grief or distress or pain, like something seen faintly in a glass. Sweat was running into his eyes, but he neither blinked nor moved.

It was time I went with him. I stopped watching him, and turned my eyes to the fire.

I saw Arthur straight away. He was sitting his big white horse at the edge of the sea. It was a pebbled strand, and I recognized the crag-fast castle above: Rheged's sea-tower, which commands the Ituna estuary. It was dusk, and the stormy sky piled indigo clouds behind a grey sea lighter than its own horizon. Foam-filled waves dashed down on the stones and raced hissing up the shore, to die in creamy froth and drag back through hissing pebbles. The white stallion stood fast, with the foam swirling round his fetlocks; his splashed and gleaming flanks, and Arthur's grey cloak blown with the horse's mane, looked part of the scene, as if the King had ridden out of the sea.

A man, a peasant by the look of him, was by Arthur's bridle, talking earnestly, and pointing seaward. The King followed the gesture, then sat straight in the saddle, his hand to his eyes. I saw what he was looking at: a light, far out toward the horizon, tossing with the tossing sea. The King asked a question, and the man pointed again, this time inland. The King nodded, something passed from hand to hand, then he turned his stallion's head and lifted an arm. The white horse went up the sea at a gallop, and through the thickening mists of the vision I could see the troopers pressing after him. Just before the vision faded I saw, at the head of the cliff, lights pricking out in the tower.

I came back to the firelit room to find that Ninian was there before me. He was kneeling, or rather crouching, on the rug, with his head in his hands.

"Ninian?"

No movement but a slight shake of the head. I gave him a moment or two, then reached for the cordial I kept to hand.

"Come. Drink this."

He sipped, and his eyes thanked me, but still he did not speak.

I watched him for a few minutes in silence, then said: "So it seems that the King has reached the shores of the Ituna, and has found out about the pirates. He rests in Rheged's sea-tower, and with morning, I have no doubt, he will be hard on Heuil's tracks. So what is it? Arthur is safe, your vision was true, and he is doing what he set out to do."

Still nothing, but that look of white distress. I said quickly: "Come, Ninian, don't take it to heart so. For Arthur this is a small matter. The only hard thing about it is that he must punish Heuil without offending his brothers; and even that won't be too difficult. It's a long time since Heuil — metaphorically speaking — spat on his father's hearthstone and went out to do his mischiefs in his own way. So even if old Caw is still alive, I doubt if he'll repine; and as for the elder sons, I've no doubt Heuil's death would come as a relief." I added, more sharply: "If it was tragedy you saw, or disaster, it's all the more important to speak of it. Caw's death we expected; whose, then? Morgan, the King's sister? Or Count Ector?"

"No." His voice sounded strange, like an instrument meant for music that is blown through by a gritty wind. "I did not see the King at all."

"You mean you saw nothing? Look, Ninian, this happens. You remember that it happened the other day, even to me. You must not let it distress you. There will be many times when nothing will come to you. I've told you before, you must wait for the god. He chooses the time, not you."

He shook his head. "It isn't that. I did see. But not the High King. Something else."

"Then tell me."

He gave me a desperate look. "I can't."

"Look, my dear, as you do not choose what you are shown, so neither do you choose what you will tell. There may come a time when you use your judgement in the halls of kings, but with me you tell me all that you see."

"I cannot!"

I waited. "Now. You saw in the flames?"

"Yes."

"Did what you saw contradict what came before, or what I think I have just seen?"

"No."

"Then if you are keeping silent out of fear of me, or fear that I may be angry for some reason —"

"I have never been afraid of you."

"Then," I said patiently, "there can surely be no reason to keep silent, and every reason to tell me what you think you saw. It may not be the tragedy you so obviously think it is. You may be interpreting it wrongly. Has that not occurred to you?"

A flash of hope, soon shut out. He took a shaky breath, and I thought he would speak, then he bit his lip and remained silent. I wondered if he had foreseen my death.

I leaned forward and took his face in my hands and forced it up towards me. His eyes came reluctantly up to meet mine. "Ninian. Do you think I cannot go where you have just gone? Will you put me to that trouble and stress, or will you obey me now? What was it that you saw in the flame?"

His tongue came out to wet dry lips, and then he spoke, in a whisper, as if he was afraid of the sound. "Did you know that Bedwyr is not with the High King? That he stayed behind in Camelot?"

"No, but I could have guessed it. It was obvious that the King must leave one of his chief captains to keep his stronghold and guard the Queen."

"Yes." He licked his lips again. "That's what I saw. Bedwyr in Camelot — with the Queen. They were — I think they are —"

He stopped. I took my hands away, and his eyes fell, how thankfully, away from mine.

There was only one way to interpret his distress. "Lovers?"

"I think so. Yes. I know they are." Then, in a rush now: "Merlin, how could she do this thing? After all that has happened — after all he has done for her! The Melwas affair — everyone knows what happened there! And Bedwyr, how could he so betray the King? The Queen — a woman to look aside from such a man, such a King... If only I could believe that this was no true dream! But I know it's true!" He stared at me, with eyes still dilated with the dream. "And, Merlin, in God's name, what must we do?"

I said slowly: "That I cannot tell you yet. But put it from you if you can. This is one burden that you must not be asked to share with me."

"Will you tell him?"

"I am his servant. What do you think?"

He bit his lips again, staring into the fire, but this time, I knew, seeing nothing. His face was white and wretched. I remember feeling vaguely surprised that he should, apparently, blame Guinevere more for her weakness than Bedwyr for his treachery. He said at length: "How could you tell him such a thing?"

"I don't know that yet. Time will show me."

He lifted his head. "You're not surprised." It sounded like an accusation.

"No. I think I knew, that night when he swam across to Melwas' lodge in the lake. And afterwards, when she nursed him... And I remember how, when she first came to Caerleon for her wedding, Bedwyr was the only one of the knights who would not look at her, nor she at him. I think they had already felt it, on the journey from Northgalis, before ever she saw the King." I added: "And you might say that I was told clearly enough many years ago, when they were still boys together, and no woman had yet come, as women will, to disturb their lives."

He got abruptly to his feet. "I'll go to bed," he said, and left me.

Alone, I went back into the flames. I saw them almost straight away. They were standing on the western terrace, where I had talked with Arthur. Now the palace was in darkness, but for the dispersed sparkle of the stars, and one shaft of lamplight that lay slanting over the tiles between the tubs of budding rose-trees.

They were standing silent and stock-still. Their hands were locked in each other's, and they were staring at one another with a kind of wildness. She looked afraid, and tears stood on her cheeks; his face was haunted, as if the white shadow sapped his spirit. Whatever kind of love had them in its claws, it was a cruel one, and, I knew, neither of them as yet had dared to let it kill their faithfulness.

I watched, and pitied, then turned from the smoking logs and left them to their privacy.

9

EIGHT WEEKS LATER THE KING came home. He had caught up with Heuil, beaten him in fair fight, burned his ships, and levied a fine which would keep him singing small for some time to come.

Once again he had crushed back his instincts in favour of policy. He had been met on his journey north with the tidings that Caw of Strathclyde had died, quietly in his bed. Quietly, that is, for Caw; he had spent the day hunting and half the night feasting, then, when the inevitable penalties struck his ninety-year-old body in the small hours of the dawning, had died, surrounded by such of his sons and their mothers as could get to the death-bed in time. He had also named his heir, the second son Gwarthegydd (the eldest had been badly maimed in fighting some years back). The messenger who brought Arthur the news also carried assurances of Gwarthegydd's friendship. So Arthur, till he had met and spoken with Gwarthegydd, and seen how he stood with his brother Heuil, would not put the friendship at risk.

He need not have been so careful. It was said that when Gwarthegydd heard the news of Heuil's defeat he let out a guffaw almost as hearty as his father's great bellow, and drank down a full horn of mead to Arthur's health. So the King rode north with Urbgen and Ector into Dumbarton and sat down with Gwarthegydd for nine days, and watched him crowned at the end of it. Then, well satisfied, he rode south again. He went by the east road to Elmet, found the Vale and the Saxon lands quiet, then crossed the country by the Pennine Gap to Caerleon. There he stayed for a month, and in the first days of June came home to Camelot.

It was time. Again and again in the fire I had seen the lovers, tossed between desire and faith, Bedwyr finedrawn and silent, the Queen with great eyes and nervous hands. They were never again alone: always with them her ladies sat and sewed, or his men rode in attendance. But they would sit or ride a little way apart from the rest, and talk and talk, as if in speech, and now and again a light and desperate touch, there was comfort to be had.

And they watched day and night for Arthur's coming: Bedwyr, because he could not quit his post of torment without the King's leave; Guinevere with the forebodings of a lonely young woman who is half in awe of her husband, but has to depend on him for protection and comfort and what companionship he has time to give.

He was home in Camelot for ten days or so before he came to see me. It was a soft bright morning in June. I had risen soon after dawn, as was my habit, and went walking across the rolling hilltops above the house. I went alone; there was usually no sign of Ninian until Mora called him to breakfast. I had walked for an hour, thinking, and pausing from time to time to gather the plants I was looking for, when, beyond a fold of the downs, I heard hoof-beats, coming easily. Don't ask me how I knew it was Arthur; one hoof-beat is very like another, and there was no foresight in the air that day; but love has stronger wings than vision, and I merely turned and waited for him, in the lee of one of the groves of thorn that here and there break the pale sweep of the high downlands. The thorn trees crowned the edge of a little valley where ran a track as old as the land itself. Up this, presently, I saw him coming, sitting at ease on a pretty bay mare, and with his young hound, Cabal's successor, at heel.

He lifted a hand to me, turned the mare up the slope, then slid from the saddle, and greeted me with a smile.

"Well, so you were right. As if I had to tell you that! And now I suppose I don't even have to tell you what happened? Have you ever thought, Merlin, what a dull thing it is to have a prophet who knows everything before it has happened? Not only can I never lie to you, but I can hardly even come to you afterwards and boast about it."

"I'm sorry. But I assure you, this time, your prophet waited for your dispatches just as eagerly as anyone else. Thank you for sending the letters... How did you find me? Have you been to Applegarth?"

"I was on the way there, but a fellow with an oxcart — one of the sawyers — said he had seen you come this way. Are you going farther? I'll walk with you if I may."

"Of course. I was just going to turn for home... Your letters were very welcome, but I still want to hear everything at first hand. It's strange to think that old Caw has gone at last. He's been sitting on that crag of his at Dumbarton for as long as I can remember. Do you think Gwarthegydd can hold his own now?"

"Against the Irish and the Saxons, yes, I wouldn't doubt him there. How he makes out with the seventeen other claimants to the kingdom is another matter." He grinned. "Sixteen, I suppose, since I clipped Heuil's wings for him."

"Make if fifteen. You can hardly count young Gildas, since he went to serve Blaise as his clerk."

"That's true. A clever boy, that, and was always Heuil's shadow. I fancy that when Blaise dies he'll be headed for a monastery. Perhaps it's as well. Like his brother, he has never loved me."

"Then it's to be hoped he can be trusted with the master's papers. You should get some of your own scribes to set your records down."

He cocked a brow at me. "What's this? A prophet's warning?"

"Nothing of the kind. A passing thought, merely. So Gwarthegydd is your man? There was a time when he threw Caw off and wooed the Irish kings."

"He was younger then, and Caw's hand was heavy. That's over. I think he will be well enough. What really matters at this stage is that he agrees with Urbgen..."

He talked on, telling me all the burden of the weeks away, while we walked slowly back across the downs with the mare following, and the great hound coursing, nose down, in widening circles round our path.

In essence, I thought, listening, nothing had changed. Not yet. Less and less did he need to come to me for counsel, but, as always since his boyhood, he needed the chance to talk over — to himself as much as to me — the course of events, and the problems of the newly built concourse of kingdoms as they arose. Usually, at the end of an hour or two, after a conversation to which I might have contributed much, or sometimes nothing at all, I could both hear and see that the knots were in a fair way to being unravelled. Then he would rise suddenly, stretch, give me farewell, and go; an abrupt disappearance with anyone else, but between us there was no need for more. I was the strong tree on which the eagle alighted in passing, for rest or thought. But now the oak showed a withered bough or two. How long would it take the sapling to be up to his weight?

He had come to the end of his narrative. Then, as if my thoughts had communicated themselves to him, he gave me a long look, with trouble in it. "Now, about you. How have you been during these last weeks? You look tired. Have you been ill again?"

"No. My health need not trouble you."

"I've thought more than once about my last visit to you. You said that it was this — " he hesitated over it, " — your assistant who 'saw' Heuil and his rabble at their work."

"Ninian. Yes, it was."

"And you yourself saw nothing?"

"Yes," I said. "Nothing."

"So you told me. I still find that strange. Don't you?"

"I suppose so. But if you remember, I wasn't well that day. I suppose I had not fully recovered from that chill I caught."

"He's been with you — how long?"

"He came in September. That makes it, what? Nine months?"

"And you have taught him all you know?"

I smiled. "Hardly. But I have taught him a good deal. You need never lack a prophet, Arthur."

He did not smile in response. He was looking deeply troubled. He walked on across the flinty turf, with the mare's nose at his shoulder, and the hound running ahead. It was quartering the acres of furze with their loads of scented yellow blossom. Wherever it went it dislodged the tiny blue butterflies in clouds, and scattered the glossy scarlet of the ladybirds. There had been a plague of them that spring, and the furze bushes held them in their hundreds, like berries on the thorn.

Arthur was silent for a space, frowning at his thoughts. Then he came, apparently, to a sudden decision. "Do you trust him?"

"Ninian? Of course. Why not?"

"What do you know about him?"

"As much as I need to," I said, perhaps a little stiffly. "I told you how he came to me. I was certain then, and I am still certain, that it was the god who drew us together. And I could not have an apter pupil. Everything I have to teach him he is more than eager to learn. I don't have to drive him; I have to hold him back." I glanced at him. "Why I would have thought you had seen the proof of his aptitude. His vision was true."

"Oh, I don't doubt his aptitude." He spoke dryly. I caught the faintest of emphasis on the last word.

"What then? What are you trying to say?" Even I was not prepared for the degree of cold surprise in my voice.

He said quickly: "I'm sorry, Merlin. But I have to say this. I doubt his intentions toward you."

Though he had signalled the blow, it still struck with paralyzing force. I felt the blood leave my heart. I stopped and faced him. Around us the scent of the gorse rose, sweet and strong. With it, unconsciously, I recognized thyme and sorrel and the crushed fescue as the bay mare put her head down and tore at a mouthful of grass.

I am not lightly made angry, least of all by Arthur. It was only a moment or two before I could say, levelly: "Whatever you have to say, you had certainly better say now. Ninian is more than my assistant, he bids fair to be my second self. If I have ever been a staff to your hand, Arthur, he will be such another when I am dead. Whether or not you like the boy — and why should you not, you hardly know him? — you may have to accept him so. I shall not live for ever, and he has the power. He has power already, and it will grow."

"I know. That is what troubles me." He looked away from me again. I could not judge if it was because he could not face me. "Don't you see, Merlin? He has the power. It was he who had the vision. And you did not. You say you were tired, you had been ill. But when did your god ever take that into account? This was no trivial 'seeing'; it was not something that normally you would have missed. Because of it I was already there, on the borders of Rheged, when Caw died, and was able to support Gwarthegydd and prevent God knows how much trouble among those warring princes. So why did no vision come to you?"

"Must I keep repeating it? I —"

"Yes, you were ill. Why?"

Silence. A breeze came across the miles of downland, smelling of honey. Under it, through the immense stillness of the day, the grasses rustled. The mare cropped eagerly; the hound had come back to its master's feet and sat there, tongue lolling. Arthur stirred, and began to speak again, but I forestalled him.

"What are you saying?... No, don't answer. I know quite well what you are saying. That I have taken in this unknown boy, become infatuated, opened to him all the secret lore of drugs, and something of magic, and now he schemes to take my place and usurp my power. That he cannot be acquitted of using my own drugs against me. Is that it?"

Something of a smile touched his lips, though without lightening his grim look. "You never did deal in ambiguities, did you?"

"I never hid the truth, least of all from you."

"But then, my dear, you do not always see the truth."

For some reason the very gentleness of the reply touched me with foreboding. I looked at him, frowning. "I am willing to accept that. So now, since I hardly imagine that all this springs from some vague suspicion, I must assume that you know something about Ninian that I don't. If that's so, why not tell me, and let me be the judge of its importance?"

"Very well. But — " Some change in his expression made me turn and follow his gaze. He was looking past me, away beyond the shoulder of the down, where a little valley held a stream fringed with birch and willow. Beyond this rose the green hill that sheltered Applegarth. Among the willows I caught a glint of blue, and then saw Ninian, who must have been up early after all, stooping over something at the edge of the stream. He straightened, and I saw that his hands were full of greenstuff. Watercress grew there, and wild mint among the king-cups. He stood for a moment, as if sorting the plants in his hands, then jumped the stream and ran away up the far slope, with his blue cloak flying out behind him like a sail.

"Well?" I said.

"I was going to say, let's go down there. We have to talk, and there must be more comfortable ways of doing it than standing face to face on top of the world. You unnerve me still, you know, Merlin, even when I know I'm right."

"That wasn't my intention. By all means let us go down."

He tugged the mare's head up from the grass, and led the way downhill to where the little wood crowded along the stream's edge. The trees were mostly birches, with here and there a twisted trunk of alder, overgrown with bramble and honeysuckle. One birch tree lay newly fallen, clean with silver bark. The King loosed a buckle from the mare's bit, tied one end of the rein to a sapling, then left her to graze, and came back to sit beside me on the birch trunk.

He came straight to the point. "Has Ninian ever told you anything about his parentage? His home?"

"No. I never pressed him. I suspected base origins, or at any rate bastardy — he hasn't the peasant look or way of speech. But both you and I know how little those questions can be welcomed."

"I have not had your scruples. I have wondered about him since that day when I met him with you at Applegarth. Since I came home I have asked about him."

"And found out what?"

"Enough to know that he has been deceiving you from the beginning." Then, striking a fist to his knee, with a sudden violence of exasperation: "Merlin, Merlin, are you so blind? I would swear that no man could be so deceived, except that I know you... Even now, a few minutes ago, watching him down here by the stream, you saw nothing?"

"What should I see? I imagine he had been collecting alder bark. He knew we needed more, and you can see where that tree has been stripped. And he was carrying watercress."

"You see? Your eyes are good enough for that, but not to see what any other man in the world would have seen — if not straight away, then within days of meeting him! I suspected it in those first few minutes there in your courtyard, while you told me the 'true dream,' and then when I made inquiries I found that it was true. We both watched the same person running uphill just now. You saw a boy carrying watercress, but what I saw was a girl."

I cannot recall at what point during his speech I knew what he was going to tell me; before he got halfway it came like a truth already known; the heat before the lightning strikes, the silence after the lightning that is filled with the coming thunder. What the wise enchanter with his god-sent visions had not perceived, the young man, versed in the ways of women, had seen straight away. It was true. I could only marvel, dumbly, that I had been so easy to deceive. Ninian. The dim-seen figure in the mist, so like the lost boy that I had greeted her and put the words "boy" and "Ninian" into her head before she could even speak. Told her I was Merlin; offered her the gift of my power and magic, gifts that another girl — the witch Morgause — had tried in vain to prise from me, but which I had hastened eagerly to lay at this stranger's feet.

Small wonder that she had taken time to think, to arrange her affairs, to cut her hair and change her dress and gather her courage, before coming to me at Applegarth. That she had refused to share the house, preferring the rooms off the colonnade with their separate stair; that she had taken no interest in Mora, but that the two of them were so easy together. Mora had guessed, then? I swept the thought aside as others crowded. The speed with which she had learned from me; the power, with all its suffering, already accepted with dread, with resignation, and finally with willing joy. The grave, gentle look, the gestures of a worship carefully offered, and as carefully constrained. The way she had gone from me when I spoke so lightly of women disturbing men's lives. Her swift condemnation of Guinevere, rather than of Bedwyr, for giving way to a hurtful love. Then, with quickening memory, the feel of her dark hair under my hand, the sweet bones of her face, and the grey eyes watching in the firelight, and the disturbing love that had so troubled me, and now need trouble me no more. It came to me, like the sunlight breaking through the birch trees on the forgotten bluebells of the copse where, long ago, a girl had offered me love, then mocked me for impotence, that this time no jealous god need come between us. At last I was free to give, along with all the rest of the power and effort and glory, the manhood that until now had been the god's alone. The abdication I had feared, and feared to grudge, would not be a loss, but rather a new joy gained.

I came back to the sunshine and a different birch-wood and the faded bluebells of June, to see Arthur staring.

"You don't even look surprised. Did you guess?"

"No. But I should have done; if not by any of the signs that were obvious to you, then by the way I felt... and feel now." I smiled at his look. "Oh, yes. An old fool if you like. But now I know for certain that my gods are merciful."

"Because you think you love this girl."

"Because I love her."

"I thought you were a wise man," he said.

"And because I am a wise man, I know too well that love cannot be gainsaid. It's too late, Arthur. Whatever comes of it, it is too late. It has happened. No, listen. It has all come clear now, like sunlight on water. All the prophecies I have made, things in the future that I have foreseen with dread... I see them approaching me now, and the dread has gone. I have said often enough that prophecy is a two-edged sword; the gods are delphic; their threats, like their promises of fortune, turn in men's hands." I lifted my head and looked up through the gently moving leaves. "I told you that I had seen my own end. There was a dream I had once, a vision in the flame. I saw the cave in the Welsh hillside, and the girl my mother, whose name was Niniane, and the young prince my father, lying together. Then through and over the vision I saw myself, grey-haired, and a young girl with a cloud of dark hair, and closed eyes, and I thought that she, too, was Niniane. And so she was. So she is. Do you see? If she has any part in my end, then it will be merciful."

He got to his feet so abruptly that the hound, curled there, jumped aside, ridge-backed and looking round for danger. Arthur took three steps away from me, and three back to stand in front of me. He drove one fist into the other palm with such violence that the mare, a dozen paces away, startled and then stood, ears erect, trembling. "How do you expect me to sit here and listen to you talking of your death? You told me once that you would end in a tomb, alive, you thought it would be in Bryn Myrddin. Now, I suppose, you will ask me to let you go back there so that this — this witch can leave you there entombed!"

"Not quite. You have not understood —"

"I understand as well as you do, and I think that I remember more! Have you forgotten Morgause's curse? That women's magic would snare you at the end? And what was promised you once by the Queen Ygraine, my mother? You told me what she said. That if Gorlois of Cornwall died, then she would spend the rest of her life praying to any gods there are that you would die betrayed by a woman."

"Well?" I said. "And have I not been snared? And have I not been betrayed? And this is all it is."

"Are you so sure? Forgive me for reminding you yet again that you don't know women. Remember Morgause. She tried to persuade you to teach her your magic, and when you would not, she took power another way... the way we know about. Now this girl has succeeded where Morgause failed. Tell me one thing: if she had come to you as herself, as a woman, would you have taken her in and taught her your skills?"

"I can't tell you that. Probably not. But the point is, surely, that she did not? The deception was not hers in the first instance; it was forced on her by my error, and that error in its turn was forced on me by the chance that led me first to meet and love the boy Ninian who was drowned. If you cannot see the god at work there, I am sorry."

"Yes, yes — " impatiently, " — but you have just reminded me that this is a delphic god. What you see now as a joy may be the very death you have dreaded."

"No," I said. "You must take it the other way. That a fate long dreaded can prove, in the end, merciful, like this 'betrayal.' My long nightmare of entombment in the dark, alive, may prove to be such another. But whatever it is, I cannot avoid it. What will come, will come. The god chooses the time and the form. After all these years, if I did not trust in him, I would be the fool you think me."

"So you'll go back to this girl, keep her by you, and go on teaching her your art?"

"Just that. I could hardly stop now. I have sown the seeds of power in her, and as surely as if it were a tree growing, or a child I had begotten, I cannot stop it. And the other seed has been sown, for good or ill. I love her dearly, and were she ten times an enchantress, I can only thank my god for it, and take her to me more nearly than before."

"I cannot bear to see you hurt."

"She will not hurt me."

"If she does," he said evenly, "witch or no witch, lover or no lover, I shall deal with her as she deserves. Well, it seems there is no more to be said. We had better go back. That basket looks heavy. Let me take it for you."

"No, a moment. There is one more thing."

"Yes?"

He was standing straight in front of me where I still sat on the birch log. Against the delicate boughs of the birches and the shifting of the leaves in the soft breeze he looked tall and powerful, the jewels at shoulder and belt and sword-hilt glittering as if with their own life. He looked, not young, but full of the richness of life, a man in the flower of his strength; a leader among kings. His face was contained. There was nothing to tell me what he would say, what he might do, after I had spoken.

I said slowly: "Since we have been talking of last things, there is one other thing I have to tell you. Another vision, which it is my duty to bring to you. It's something that I have seen, not once but several times. Bedwyr your friend, and Guinevere your Queen, love one another."

I had been looking away from him as I spoke, not wanting to see how the wounding stroke went home. I suppose I had expected anger, an outburst of violence, at the very least surprise and furious disbelief. Instead there was silence, a silence so drawn out that at length I looked up, to see in his face nothing of anger or even surprise, but a kind of sternly held calmness that tempered only compassion and regret.

I said, not believing it: "You knew?"

"Yes," he said, quite simply, "I know." There was a pause, while I looked for words and found none. He smiled. There was something in the smile that did not speak of youth or power at all, but of a wisdom perhaps greater, because more purely human, than is ascribed to me. "I do not have vision, Merlin, but I see what is before my eyes. And do you not think that others, who guess and whisper, have not been at pains to tell me? It sometimes seems to me that the only ones who have given no hint by-word or look have been Bedwyr and the Queen themselves."

"How long have you known this?"

"Since the Melwas affair."

And I had never guessed. His kindness to the Queen, her relief and growing happiness, had told me nothing. "Then why did you leave Bedwyr with her when you went north?"

"To let them have something, however little." The sun was in his eyes, making him frown. He spoke slowly. "You have just been telling me that love cannot be ruled or stopped. If you are prepared to accept love, knowing that it may well bring you to your death, then how much more should I accept this, knowing that it cannot destroy friendship or faith?"

"You believe that?"

"Why not? Everything else you have ever told me has been true. Think back now over your prophecies about my marriage, the 'white shadow' that you saw when Bedwyr and I were boys, the guenkwyvar that touched us both. You said then that it would not blur or destroy the faith we had in one another."

"I remember."

"Very well. When I married my first Guenever you warned me that the marriage might be unwholesome for me. That little girl 'unwholesome'?" He laughed, without mirth. "Well, now we know the truth of the prophecy. Now we have seen the shadow. And now we see it falling across Bedwyr's life and mine. But if it is not to destroy our faith in one another, what would you have me do? I must give Bedwyr the trust and freedom to which he is entitled. Am I a cottager, with nothing in my life but a woman and a bed I am to be jealous of, like a cock on his dunghill? I am a king, and my life is a king's; she is a queen, and childless, so her life must be less than a woman's. Is she to wait year by year in an empty bed? To walk, to ride, to take her meals with an empty place beside her? She is young, and she has a girl's needs, of companionship and of love. By your god or any god, Merlin, if, during the years of days that my work takes me from court, she is ever to take a man to her bed, should I not be thankful it is Bedwyr? And what would you have me do, or say? Anything I say to Bedwyr would eat at the root of the very trust we have, and it would avail nothing against what has already happened. Love, you tell me, cannot be gainsaid. So I keep silent, and so will you, and by that token will faith and friendship stay unbroken. And we can count her barrenness a mercy." The smile again. "So the god works for us both in twisted ways, does he not?"

I got to my feet. The birches moved and the sun poured down. The stream glittered against my eyes, so that they watered.

I said quietly: "You see? This is the final mercy. You no longer need either my strength or my counsel. Whatever you may need after this of warning or prophecy, you can still find at Applegarth. As for me, let your servant go in peace, back to my own home and my own hills, and whatever waits for me there." I picked the basket up and handed it to him. "But in the meantime, will you come back with me to Applegarth, and see her?"

10

WHEN WE REACHED APPLEGARTH IT seemed deserted. It was still very early. Varro had not yet come to start work, and I had seen Mora from a distance, making her way toward the village market with her basket on her arm.

The mare knew the way to the stables, and trotted off, with a clap on the flank. We went into the house. The girl was there, sitting on her accustomed stool in the window embrasure, reading. Not far from her, on the stone sill, perched a redbreast, picking up the crumbs she had scattered.

She must have heard the horse, and assumed either that I had ridden that morning, instead of walking, or that a messenger had come very early from Camelot. She had obviously not expected the King himself. When I went into the room she looked up, with a smile and a "Good morning," and then, seeing Arthur's shadow fall across the doorway behind me, got to her feet and let the book roll together between her hands. "I'll leave you to talk, shall I?" she said, and turned, in no haste, to go.

I started to warn her. "Ninian — " I began, but then Arthur came quickly past me into the room, and stopped just inside the door, his eyes on her face.

Be sure that I was staring, too.

Now that I knew, I wondered how I had not always known. For eighteen, it was hardly a man's face; an immature eighteen might have had that smooth cheek and sweet mouth, and her body under the shapeless clothing was as slim as a boy's but the hands were not a young man's hands, nor were the slender feet. I can only think that my own memory of the boy Ninian had kept me, blindly, to the image of him as he had been at sixteen: my desire to have him had been strong enough to let me re-create him, first in the dimly seen ghost of the Lake, then in this girl, so near to me, so closely watched, and yet not seen, through all the past long months. And then, perhaps (I thought), she had been able to use a little of my own magic against me, to keep me blind — and so to keep herself beside me, until her purposes were served.

She stood straight as a wand, facing us. I suppose it needed no magic for her to tell that we knew. The grey eyes met mine for the fraction of a moment, then she faced the King.

What happened then is difficult to describe. There was the quiet, everyday room, filled with the scents and sounds of the summer morning; sweet briar and early roses and the gilly-flowers she had planted outside the window; last night's burned logs (the nights could still have a chill in them, and she had insisted on making a fire for me to sit by); the sweet sub-song of the redbreast as he flew up into the apple boughs outside. A summer room, where, to anyone of normal perceptions, nothing passed at all. Just three people, in a pause of silence.

But to me the air tingled suddenly over the skin, like water when lightning strikes. I felt the flesh creep on my bones, and the small hairs on my arms fur up; my nape stirred like the ruff of a dog in a thunder-storm. I do not think I moved. Neither the King nor the girl seemed to notice anything. She watched him gravely, unalarmed, I might have thought unmoved and barely interested, if I had not been getting these fearsome currents washing over and through my flesh as the tide washes over a rock lying on the shore. Her grey eyes held his; his dark ones bored into her. I could feel the force as the two of them met. The air trembled.

Then he nodded, and put up a hand to loosen the cloak from his shoulder. I saw her mouth move with the shadow of a smile. The message had passed. For my sake, he would accept her. And for my sake, she would stand the trial. The room steadied, and I said: "Let me," and took his cloak from him to lay it down.

The girl said: "Shall I bring you some breakfast? Mora left it ready, but you were late, so she went to market. She says the best things are taken if she is not there early."

She went. The platters were laid ready on the table, and we took our places. She brought bread, and the crock of honey, and a pitcher of milk along with one of mead. She set the latter down at the King's hand, then without a word took her usual place across from me. She had not looked at me again. When I poured a cup of milk for her she thanked me, but without lifting her eyes. Then she spread honey on her bread, and began to eat.

"Your name," said the King. "Is it Niniane?"

"Yes," she said, "but I was always called Nimuë."

"Your parentage?"

"My father was called Dyonas."

"Yes. King of the River Islands?"

"The same. He is dead now."

"I know that. He fought beside me at Viroconium. Why did you leave your home?"

"I was sent to the Lady's service, in the Isle of Glass. It was my father's wish." The glimmer of a smile. "My mother was a Christian, and when she lay dying she made him promise he would send me to the Island; I know she intended me for the service of the church there. I was only six years old, but he promised her. He himself had never held with what he called the new God; he was an initiate of Mithras — his own father took him there in the time of Ambrosius. So when the time came for him to keep his promise to my mother, he did indeed take me to the Island, but to the service of the Good Goddess, in the shrine below the Tor."

"I see."

So did I. As one of the ancillae of the shrine she would have been there on the occasion of Arthur's thanksgiving after Caer Guinnion and Caerleon. Perhaps she had glimpsed me there, beside the King. She must have known that, for her, there was small chance of coming any nearer to the prince-enchanter, and learning any of the greater arts. Then on that misty night I had put the key into her hand. It had taken courage to grasp it, but God knew she had plenty of that.

The King was still questioning her. "And you wanted to study magic. Why?"

"Sir, I cannot say why. Why does a singer first want to learn music? Or a bird want to try the air? When I first went to the Island, I found some traces of it, and learned all they had to teach, but still I was hungry. Then one day I saw..." She hesitated for the first time. "I saw Merlin in the shrine. You will remember the day. Later, I heard he had come to live here at Applegarth. I thought, If only I were a man I could go to him. He is wise, he would know that magic is in my blood, and he would teach me."

"Ah, yes. The day we gave thanks for our victories. But if you were there, how is it that you failed to recognize me, the first time you saw me here?"

She went scarlet. For the first time her gaze dropped from his. "I did not see you, sir. I told you, I was watching Merlin."

There was a flat pause of silence, as when a hand is laid across the harp-strings, killing the sound. I saw Arthur's mouth open and shut, then the flash of a vivid laughter in his face. She, looking steadfastly at the table, saw nothing of it. He shot me a look brimful of amusement, then drained his cup and sat back in the chair. His voice never altered, but the challenge had gone; he had lowered his sword.

"But you knew that Merlin was not likely to accept you as a pupil, even if the Lady could be persuaded to let you leave her cloisters."

"Yes. I knew that. I had no hope. But after that I settled even less easily into the life there among the other women. They seemed, oh, so contented to be penned there with the small magics and the prayers and spells, and looking backward always toward the times of legend... It's hard to explain. If there is something within oneself, something burning to be free, one knows of it." A look straight at him, equal to equal. "You must have known it. I was still unborn, hammering at the egg, to get out into the air. But the only way I could have escaped from the Island would have been if some man had offered for me, and for that I would not have gone, nor would my father have made me."

He gave a brief nod, of acceptance and, I thought, of understanding. "So?"

"It wasn't easy, even, to find time to be alone. I would watch and wait my chance, and slip out sometimes, only to be alone with my own thoughts, and with the water and sky... Then, on the night when Queen Guinevere was missing, and the Island was in uproar, I — I'm afraid all I thought of was my chance to get out without being missed... There was a boat I sometimes borrowed. I went out. I knew no one would see me in the mist. Then Merlin came along the Lake road, and spoke to me." She paused. "I think you must know the rest."

"Yes. So when chance — the god, you would say, if you are Merlin's pupil — made Merlin mistake you for the boy Ninian, and ask you to come and learn from him, you made the second chance for yourself."

She bent her head. "When he spoke first, I was confused. It was like a dream. Afterwards I realized what had happened, that he had mistaken me for some boy he had known."

"How did you get free of the shrine in the end? What did you tell the lady?"

"That I had been called for higher service. I did not explain. I let her think I was going back to my father's house. I think she imagined that I had to go back to the River Isles, perhaps to be married to my cousin, who rules there now. She did not ask. She put no rub in my way."

No, I thought to myself; that imperious lady would be glad to rid herself of an adept who must have bidden fair to outshine her. Among those white-robed girls this young enchantress must have shone out like a diamond in white flax.

Behind me, the redbreast flew back to his perch on the window-sill, and tried a stave of song. I doubt if either Nimuë or Arthur heard it. His questions had changed direction: "Do you need fire for the vision, or can you see, like Merlin, in the small drops of dew?"

"It was in dewdrops that I saw the vision of Heuil."

"And that was a true one. So. It seems you already have something of the greater power. Well, there is no fire, but will you look for me again, and tell me now if there is any other warning in the stars?"

"I can see nothing to order."

I bit my lip. It was my own voice as a young man, confident, perhaps a little pompous. He recognized it, too. He said gravely: "I am sorry. I should have known."

He got to his feet then, and reached for the cloak that I had laid across a chair. There was a perceptible flaw in her composure, as she hurried to help him with it. He was saying goodbye to me, but I hardly heard him. My own composure bade fair to be in ruins. I, who was never at a loss, had not had time to think what I must say.

The King was in the doorway. The sun caught him and sent his shadow streaming back between us. The great emeralds on Caliburn's hilt flashed in the light.

"King Arthur!" said Nimuë sharply.

He turned. If he found her tone peremptory he gave no sign of it.

She said: "If your sister, the lady Morgan, comes to Camelot, lock up your sword and watch for treachery."

He looked startled, then said harshly: "What do you mean by that?"

She hesitated, looking in her turn surprised by what she had said. Then she lifted her palms out, in a gesture like a shrug. "My lord, I don't know. Only that. I am sorry."

"Well..." said Arthur. He looked across at me, lifted his brows, then shrugged in his turn, and went out.

Silence, so long that the robin hopped right into the room and onto the table where the breakfast lay, barely touched.

"Nimuë," I said.

She looked at me then, and I saw that although she had stood in no awe of the King, she was afraid to meet my eyes. I smiled at her, and saw to my amazement the grey eyes fill with tears.

I put out both my hands. Hers met them. In the end there was no need of words. We did not hear the King's horse go down the hill, or, much later, Mora come back from the market to find the breakfast still uneaten.