“The crows will feast tomorrow,” Bors said grimly.
“And the wolves tonight,” added Sir Kay, limping from a slash in his right leg as he led his panting, lathered horse away from
the carnage.
Night fell and the knights huddled around fitful campfires, sheltering beneath the flat-sided tents erected by their churls. But repose was not for me. I followed a summons implanted in my mind and headed off to the distant graveyard.
Like an automaton, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings, I walked through the pelting, freezing rain. The night was black and cold. I reached
the scant shelter of a crumbling archway, its ancient stones dripping and slimy with green moss. Icy mist rose from the graveyard beyond the arch like ghostly spirits rising from the dead. It was easy to see how the people of this era believed in their supernatural terrors. Ignorance and superstition always go hand in hand.
I was soaked to the skin, despite the heavy woolen cloak I had draped
over my tunic and chain mail. My body automatically clamped down my peripheral blood vessels, to keep as much body heat within me as possible.
The rain was turning into sleet. Back south where Ambrosius ruled as High King in Cadbury castle it was harvest time with bright golden days and a smiling orange full moon. Here along Hadrian’s Wall it was almost winter; snow was on the way. Arthur’s long
campaign against the barbarians was grinding to a halt.
I waited in the freezing rain beneath the dripping stones of the ancient archway. I half expected Aten or one of the other Creators to rise out of the mists in the graveyard. Instead, I saw the cloaked and hooded figure of a monk making his way around the perimeter of the cemetery, head bent and shoulders stooped against the pelting rain.
He carried a lantern that flickered fitfully against the miserable night. Once he reached me, he lifted it high enough to see my face.
“You are Orion?” he asked, in a voice thick with age and rheumy congestion.
“I am,” I said. “And you?”
“I am but a humble messenger sent to fetch you. Follow me.”
Coughing fitfully, he led me around the edge of the graveyard, not daring to cut through it toward
his destination. Dark bare trees stood along the muddy path, their empty arms clacking fitfully against the cloud-covered sky. At last we reached a small dome made of stones. A monk’s desolate cell, I realized. A place built for solitary prayer and penitence. A place, I thought, for hunger and pneumonia. Through the rain-soaked darkness I could hear waves crashing against a craggy cliff. The
sea was not far off.
I had to duck low to get through the cell’s entrance, and once inside I could stand straight only in the center of the cramped little dome. It was a relief to get out of the rain, although the stones of the cell’s interior were slimy with mold and dripping water. The beehive-shaped cell was empty. In the dim light of the monk’s lamp I could see that there was no chair, no
hearth, not even a blanket to sleep upon. Nothing but a few tufts of straw thrown on the muddy ground.
“Wait here,” wheezed the monk.
Before I could reply or ask a question, he stepped outside into the icy rain and disappeared in the darkness.
“Orion.”
I turned to see Merlin. The old wizard stood before me in a circle of light, his dark robe reaching to the ground, his ash-white hair neatly
combed and tied back, his long beard trim and clean, rather than in its usual knotted filthy state. He had stayed behind at Cadbury castle, many weeks’ travel from this place; yet he was here.
“My lord Merlin,” I said, as befitted a squire addressing his master’s mentor, a man reputed to be a mighty wizard.
He smiled wanly. “No need for obsequies, Orion. We can speak frankly to one another.”
“As you wish,” I said cautiously.
He gazed at me for a long, silent moment, those piercing eyes beneath the shaggy brows inspecting me like X-ray lasers.
“You are one of Aten’s creatures, obviously.”
“And which of the Creators are you?” I countered.
“Why are you resisting Aten’s commands?”
I was cold, wet, tired from the long day’s fighting, weary of being Aten’s pawn. This wizened old man,
so shriveled and frail I could snap his spine like a dry twig, was toying with me and I resented it.
“Aten hasn’t told you?” I asked. “Why don’t you look into my mind and find out for yourself?”
He shook his head. “Aten has built blocks into your mind. Limitations. Do you recall when you first met Arthur?”
“At Amesbury fort, last spring,” I said.
Again he shook his head. “No. Years before
that. Arthur was merely a lad then.”
I tried to remember. I could feel my face wrinkling into a frown of concentration.
“Do you remember Grendel and the cave where you found Excalibur?”
“Anya,” I said, as the memory of her matchless beauty surfaced in my consciousness. “She is the Lady of the Lake; she gave Excalibur to Arthur.”
“But you remember nothing of Grendel and Heorot?”
“Not much,”
I admitted.
“You see? Aten has blocked your mind. He allows you to know only enough to accomplish your mission.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“One of the Creators, as you guessed.”
“Which one?”
He tugged at his beard for a moment, then smiled in a scornful, mocking way. “Do you really want to know, Orion?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Very well.”
The light bathing him intensified, brightened until it
was almost too dazzling to look at. It turned red, slowly at first, but then its color deepened, redder than fire, redder than hot molten rubies fresh from the Earth’s fiery core. I felt its heat radiating against me, burning me, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut.
“Don’t be afraid, Orion. You may look upon me now.”
We were no longer in the monk’s cold, dank cell. We stood in a long columned
hall, thick stone pillars so tall their tops were lost in shadow. Torches burned in sconces between the pillars, throwing baleful ruby light across the hard polished stone floor. Before me stood a man in the full splendor of youthful adulthood, magnificently garbed in a sculpted uniform of gleaming jet-black armor inlaid with intricate traceries of blood red. His hair and beard were dark, his eyes
even darker, blazing like chips of onyx in the flickering light of the torches.
“You may call me Hades,” he said.
Hades. The Creators took pleasure in appearing to mere mortals as gods and goddesses. The Creator who commanded me styled himself Aten, an ancient sun god. To the classical Greeks he was Apollo, to the Incas he was Inti, to the Persians of Zoroaster’s time he called himself Ormazd,
the god of light.
How many wars through the long millennia had been started by their petty jealousies and rivalries? How many millions of humans had been sacrificed to their obsessions and hates?
This one styled himself Hades. In Greek mythology Hades was the brother of Zeus, lord of the underworld. Death was his domain.
“Where is Anya?” I asked.
“Far from here,” said Hades, his face grown
serious. “Aten knows that she opposes his desires concerning Arthur and he has stirred a disruption of the worldlines that she is striving to repair.”
“She saved my life when Morganna was ready to kill me,” I remembered.
“She won’t be able to help you when next you meet the bewitching Morganna.”
“Morganna seeks Arthur’s destruction,” I said.
Hades nodded solemnly. “She supports Aten in this.
Anya and a few of the other Creators oppose them.”
“And you?”
Hades smiled again, a coldly calculating smile. “I haven’t decided which way I will go. As Merlin, I have helped young Arthur. He could become a powerful force in human history. He just might be able to make Britain into a peaceful, prosperous island, a haven of civilization in a world darkened by the collapse of Rome. But I doubt
that he ever will. His time may already be past.”
“Aten wants Arthur out of the way so that the barbarians can engulf Britain,” I said. “He wants to see a barbarian empire covering all of the Old World, from Hibernia to the islands of Japan, all of them worshipping him.”
“There is much to be said for such a plan,” Hades said slowly. “It will bring about a millennium or so of disruption, but—”
“A thousand years of ignorance and war, of disease and death,” I said.
“What’s a thousand years?” he quipped, shrugging.
“What’s a few tens of millions of lives?” I retorted sarcastically.
“Orion, you bleed too much for these mortals.”
“I will not let Aten murder Arthur.”
His dark brows knit. “Bold talk for a creature. If Aten wills it, you will do whatever he wants.”
“No,” I insisted. “I’m
not a robot or a puppet.”
“He’ll let you die, then. Very painfully. And you will not be revived.”
If I can’t be with Anya, I thought to myself, I might as well die forever.
“And he’ll send another creature to carry out his commands. You’ll suffer great pain and final oblivion—for nothing.”
“I will not assassinate Arthur,” I repeated stubbornly. “As long as I live, I will protect him.”
Hades
stroked his beard thoughtfully, staring at me for a long, silent moment. “It will be interesting to see how long you can carry out your resolve. Aten will destroy you sooner or later, of course, but I wonder just how long you can get away with defying him.”
“You find this amusing?”
“Very,” he admitted casually. “You know, I came to this placetime and took on the guise of Merlin to help Arthur
through his childhood. Aten wanted Arthur to succeed only far enough to force the barbarians to combine against him.”
“I understand that. Then Arthur is to be killed.”
“Thanks to you, Arthur is trouncing the barbarians, shattering their power. Aten wants him stopped. So does Morganna.”
“He doesn’t deserve to be murdered.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Hades mused. “Aten has been after me to join
his side in this. But you … you and your ridiculous insistence on defying him … I wonder how far you can carry it out?”
“Help me, then,” I blurted. “With your help Arthur can make Britain a beacon of civilization.”
He laughed. “Aten would be furious.”
“What of it? Is he more powerful than you?”
His laughter cut off. “I’ll go this far, Orion. I will not help Aten. Neither will I join the other
side. I will watch how far you can go. It will be an amusing game.”
That’s all that mortal misery and death meant to these Creators. We were a game to amuse them.
Then I recalled what he had said earlier. “Arthur will meet Morganna again?”
“Yes, and soon. You are on the edge of her domain now.”
“Bernicia.”
“Already she is laying her plans for him.”
“What plans?” I asked eagerly.
Instead
of answering, Hades disappeared. The torch-lit columned hall vanished. I was back in the cold, dripping monk’s cell again. Alone.
2
“I dreamed of Merlin last night,” Arthur told me when I met him the following morning.
I suppressed a smile and replied, “So did I, my lord.”
The rain had stopped at last. The clouds had cleared away. A pale northern sun shone out of a crisp blue sky. It wasn’t
warm, but compared to the miserable weather of the past few days, it seemed like midsummer to us.
The long summer’s fighting had toughened Arthur, matured him. To the casual eye he was still a very young man in his early twenties, broad of shoulder and strongly muscled. His sandy light brown hair fell to his shoulders; his beard was neatly trimmed. His gold-flecked light brown eyes were clear
and sparkling with energy.
We were breaking camp that morning. Arthur had decided to take his knights across Hadrian’s Wall into the land of the Scots, not so much to fight the tattered remains of their army as to show them that they had no refuge from his power. Ambrosius’ power, actually. Ambrosius, Arthur’s aging uncle, was the High King and Arthur his Dux Bellorum, fighting beneath his banner.
“It was a troubling dream,” he said as we walked slowly toward the makeshift corral where our horses awaited. Unfortunately, the wind was in our faces.
If the smell and the flies bothered Arthur, however, he gave no sign of it. He talked about his dream.
“It was very strange, Orion. Merlin appeared to me with a very lovely young girl at his side. An enchantress, it seemed to me.”
“Morganna?”
I asked.
He shook his head. “No, not her, thank God.” He crossed himself.
“Then who was she?”
“I don’t know. But she certainly seemed to have Merlin in her spell. He told me he was going away with her and I wouldn’t see him anymore.”
I could see that Arthur was clearly perplexed.
“You don’t think that Merlin would leave me, do you? He’s been like a father to me. I can’t remember a time when
he wasn’t there, helping me, showing me what I should do.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “you are old enough now to make your own decisions. Perhaps you no longer need Merlin.”
He looked alarmed at that thought. “I’ve sent a messenger to Cadbury castle. I want to make certain that Merlin is still there. That he’s all right. Perhaps this dream was a warning that he’s sick. He’s very old, you know.”
Older
than you can understand, I replied silently.
We rode that day through one of the gates in the wall built by the Romans nearly four centuries earlier. Even though Arthur’s knights numbered scarcely two hundred, it took all day for them and their squires and the footmen and churls and camp followers to get through that single unguarded gate.
On the far side of the Wall the land stretched out before
us in rolling green hills that led to misty blue mountains in the distance. We rode slowly along a broad dale covered with clover, with the footmen trudging behind us. Thick forest climbed up the hillsides on either side of us.
Sir Bors rode up to Arthur’s side, a rare smile on his doughty, battle-scarred face.
“North of the Wall,” he said proudly. “No civilized troops have been on this side
of the Wall since the legions left.”
Arthur smiled back at him, but said, “Detail some of the knights to ride ahead and along our flanks. Those woods could hide an army of ambushers easily.”