“Bring them,” he commanded.
Two other caped figures emerged from the shadows. Uther recognized one. She was Vivian or the Vivian, one of the Vivians given to be the chief sorcerer’s “comfort.” Marriage wasn’t possible for him, wasn’t allowed. He could not leave sons, but his desires were recognized. Hence the Vivians. She was leading someone by a chain. This figure went to its knees before Merlin.
lgrane? Uther considered.
No, for Merlin laughed at the caped figure. “What?” he asked. “Shy? And at this late date? Strip him,” he said to the Vivian. She pulled away the dark mantle and revealed a young man that Uther recognized as one of Merlin’s personal guards. He was trembling.
“I don’t want to die,” he whimpered.
“Naturally,” Merlin answered almost sweetly. “No one does, but don’t give way so much to fear that may be groundless. We have done this before, and you didn’t die then, did you?”
“No, no,” the boy whispered, “but I almost did.”
Merlin laughed. “No, you never even came close.”
Just then, the sea breeze began to quicken before the sunrise swept the last clouds away from the moon, and the scene was brilliantly illuminated. The man kneeling before Merlin was naked. The Vivian had been leading him by a chain fastened to a huge cock ring. It was so large that it must have made normal sexual intercourse impossible. Merlin was stroking the boy’s cheek.
“I can tell you’re absolutely terrified,” he said. “If you don’t want to take part in the rite, I can always find someone else. If you want to go home, you have but to say so. However, it will be some time before I care to call on you again.”
“No, no,” the boy whimpered. “No. I want—I want to feel—that— again.”
“Well, then,” Merlin said, “reconcile yourself to the risks and prepare to show yourself submissive to my commands. Remember, I will not accept anything less than perfect obedience.”
“Yes, yes… my lord.”
“Oh, put a bit more conviction into it,” Merlin insisted.
“Yes, my lord,” was the reply.
“Very well. Stretch out on the stone facing the sea. Vivian,” he said to the girl, “tie him using the silk ropes, please. We wouldn’t want any bruises now, would we?”
The boy was tied. Vivian took her work seriously, and twice he cried out at the tightness of the trussing.
“Oh, be quiet,” Merlin said. “Otherwise, I’ll give you something to whine about.”
Thereafter, his victim was silent.
Then Igrane was there.
Where had she been hiding herself? Uther couldn’t guess, but one moment no one else but Merlin, Vivian, and the boy were on the shore, and the next she was there, wrapped in a dark mantle. It covered all her body but her head, and he could see how much age had taken her. Her remaining hair was white, and her face was lined and wrinkled. Uther gave a gasp of surprise. He turned to Arthur and was answered by the cold, opaque look he knew so well and a strange smile.
“You knew,” he mouthed.
Arthur nodded.
Merlin knelt on the rock behind his victim and began to caress the boy. He writhed in an ecstasy of pleasure. The moon was bright now, the sea gleaming like old silver. The boy began to plead for the final release. Merlin only laughed. The boy had an erection so stiff that it looked painful. The sorcerer was careful not to touch the genitals. He seemed to be waiting for something. He slapped the boy gently on the rump, then left him and walked through the pool to where his Vivian awaited him. The boy moaned in pain. Watching him, the three on the hill didn’t doubt he was suffering. Uther had never seen a male so engorged. His organ looked big as a horse’s.
But Merlin looked weary, as though nothing about the ceremony interested him very much. He had a preoccupied and businesslike air like that of a whore whose customer was maddened by lust but needed special handling to bring down. The boy suffered for a time, then it was obvious his desire began to ebb. Merlin took a drink from a cup the Vivian offered him, then returned to his subject.
This time the torment was worse. The boy was rendered incoherent and desperate. He was struggling so hard blood dripped from his wrists and ankles where the silk ropes bound him. This time Merlin gave a snort of satisfaction.
Cai leaned over and whispered in Uther’s ear, “Look at the spring.”
He did and felt his skin crawl. The water flowing from under the capstone had been a trickle, visible only as a gleaming wetness on the sand. Now it was a steady flow. Again the sorcerer took a rest and a drink, ignoring the now violent struggles of his creature. Again he allowed some of the boy’s tumescence to subside before again beginning to stroke him.
This time his subject began screaming.
The sorcerer was annoyed. None of those on the hill saw what he did, but he did something, because the screaming stopped. Then, when the sorcerer stepped away, they saw why. The end of the silk rope that held his captive was looped around his throat; and, as they watched, the sorcerer drew it tight, bending the boy’s body into a bow, his heels and wrists together, touching his spine. And as he did, the jerking body spent in wave after wave of sensation that appeared as incredibly pleasurable as it must have been horribly painful.
Merlin laughed again.
And Uther knew horror, disgust, admiration at watching a process so perfectly accomplished. The boy was reduced to nothing but the wild flow of sensation the dark sorcerer wanted him to feel. The little death. What would or could be left of a human being after such an experience? The passion in the boy’s body faded after who knew how many spasms. The spring was gushing like a woman in the throes of passion or struggling in childbirth. The boy’s seed mingled with the bubbling water. He was done, finished. Whether he would die or not depended on Merlin.
He cut the rope tying the wrists and ankles to the boy’s neck and rolled his body flat on the stomach, the boy’s face above the spouting spring. After perhaps half a minute, the boy began gasping for air. After another few moments, he was able to struggle and try to break Merlin’s grip on his hair. Merlin knelt on his back and held him there. When it was clear he was recovering, Merlin pushed his face into the water, then pulled it out and held his head back.
The men on the hill could hear the boy’s hoarse cries and even his wildly gasping breaths.
“See,” Merlin said. “You are alive. Did you know that?”
“Yes, yes,” was the hoarse reply. “Let me up. Please, please let me up.”
“Presently,” Merlin replied calmly.
He bent the boy’s head back, and the men on the hillside could see his face. Then, with one swipe of the knife he’d used to cut the ropes, he cut the boy’s throat. He almost decapitated him, and the neck and trunk of the body flopped forward as the last beats of the struggling heart drove the blood out of the body and into what was now the swirling maelstrom of the stream below.
She rose from the water, smoke, and dark clotted blood. She seized Merlin, and it was his turn to scream. She kissed the sorcerer, and Uther buried his face in his arms and pressed his body against the earth. He didn’t want to think what her kisses must be like, and he certainly didn’t want to see any more. She seemed made of water but clothed in the flashing lights that sparkled in the tides of winter. Her hair was made of serpents; and they coiled, falling down her neck and around her face, hissing and striking in all directions. But her face was the worst, the face of one drowned weeks ago—bloated, swollen, noseless and lipless.
He began to whisper a prayer, then to his shock found a hand clamped over his mouth.
“She is a mighty hag and will know if you speak a holy name. Be still, my lord,” Cai’s voice spoke.
“We must flee. Can we chance it?” Arthur whispered coolly.
“Wait,” Cai whispered, “just a moment.”
Suddenly the horrible apparition seemed to melt, folding into Merlin’s body. Igrane began screaming as it turned to her. Now it was no longer Merlin, but a wrack of things the sea cast ashore—nets, driftwood, broken floats, lengths of twisted, rotten rope, lashings of kelp and dulse—but the snakes were still present. The hair made from them curled, coiled, and writhed, hanging down as far as the ground. Uther watched in sick horror as it embraced Igrane, the serpents striking at her body again and again.
She was borne down under it to the spring, into the shallow water near the twisted remains of the sacrifice Merlin had offered. His head lay on one side of the still bubbling spring, his body on the other. Igrane gave a ghastly shiver, and Uther knew the thing had somehow managed to penetrate her body.
“Now,” Cai whispered.
The three crawled away from their shelter as quickly as they dared, then took to their heels. Uther found only after some miles had passed that he had outrun the two younger men.
When he entered the door, the first thing she did was slap Cai’s face. “You, you, filthy louse,” she screeched. “I thought you’d gone and abandoned me here with her, foul witch that she is.” Then she turned and saw Arthur and the king.
She went ghastly pale and fell to her knees. “Oh, my God, Christ, the saints—oh, God—I can’t remember a single one. Oh, God—you rat, why did you let me say such things before her husband and son?” This last addressed to Cai.
“We didn’t hear anything, did we, my son?” Uther said.
Arthur looked at him and said, “Hear what?”
Cai pulled her to her feet. “This is… Ena.” He was holding her left wrist, and she drew her right hand back for another slap. Cai said, “No, one is all you get.”
She stared back at him mutinously. “And you’ll do what?” she snapped. Then she pulled her wrist free and stalked away to the other side of the room. “All right, all right, I won’t hit you anymore. Besides, your mother reared a strong one. It only hurts my hand.”
“Tell them about the queen, Ena,” Cai prompted.
“She is young. I swear, she now looks younger than me. All her hair is back and down to her waist and—and—and I want to go home.”
“Your family will give you the very devil,” Cai said. “Go to my grandmother.” He turned to Uther. “She’s pregnant by me. The arrangement was a proper one, but she’s a Saxon.”
“And,” Ena broke in, “they won’t understand at all. They will call me a trollop.”
“Go to Morgana,” Cai insisted. “She will understand and care for you.”
Ena stamped her foot and shouted, “What? Give myself into the keeping of one of those wild bitch women of yours that will bestride a man as quickly as a horse and master both of them?”
“Morgana will be no end pleased by that description of her,” Uther contributed mildly.
Ena slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, God,” she screeched between her fingers. “You—” This to Cai. “You, why do you let me say such things when and where I shouldn’t?”
“The problem is not ordering the course of your speech. It’s shutting you up in the first place,” Cai said.
Arthur spoke quietly. “The Saxons don’t understand our domestic arrangements, that is true, but Cai is my close friend and a tolerable match anywhere in the kingdom, Ena. Your family won’t be displeased. I think you would like Morgana, and I don’t believe she would be entirely displeased by your description of her.”
“Especially since there’s a great deal of truth in it,” Uther ventured shrewdly.
Ena was weeping now. Cai crossed the room and embraced her. “Yes, come with us. We are going back there.”
“The queen, how can she make herself young again?” Ena sounded desperate and frightened at the same time. “What did you see last night? What did she and Merlin do?”
Arthur, Cai, and Uther exchanged glances.
“Don’t trouble yourself about it,” Uther said, suddenly becoming very much the awesome winter king. “Cai, go to her quarters and help her pack. Don’t leave her alone—not now, not any time until we are away from Tintigal. Far away.”
“Father?” Arthur asked.
Uther put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
Uther had just realized something that had been tugging at the edges of his consciousness since last night. He understood why Arthur had been allowed to enter his chamber so silently. His men were efficient guardians. No one, no one, had ever been able to creep up on him while he slept before. The only reason that Arthur had been allowed to do so was because some watcher hoped that he was sneaking in to murder his father. So a gentle, subtle spell had been cast to facilitate his actions. The fortress must be filled with Merlin’s eyes and ears.
“Last night was not the end but the beginning, and I want no one that I love or who has served me well within the queen’s reach after I am gone.”
Ena’s mouth opened.
“No, no more talk. Be quiet, girl, and do as I say. We ride within the hour.”
Cai spun Ena around and marched her out of the room.
“Arthur,” his father repeated, “do as I say and do it now!”
Arthur bowed, then left.
Uther was Morgana’s half brother, so the blood was thinner in him, but enough of her powerful gift of prophecy was part of his nature to be able to warn him that Igrane and the dark sorcerer were planning something. Something big. The sacrifice last night told him they were ready to employ the darkest means to achieve their ends. Uther knew they must leave now, before nightfall, while those two serpents were quiescent, or they might never be able to go at all.
Arthur went to his own quarters. His rooms were spartan, and seeing them, no one would have guessed he was a king. For even if by courtesy, the winter king was supreme, the summer king was associated with him in ruling. He had brought very little with him when he came to the fortress. He had a few fine clothes, because a king must always appear in splendor to his people. Otherwise, only his weapons were present: crossbows and boar spears on the wall for hunting, another mace of the kind Cai favored—it took the arm of a bear to swing that one—and a few pikes, and two precious old swords.
He paused. For a moment, he felt a strangeness. Then understood why.
He was alone.
People were seldom alone. Men of his rank, almost never. His father’s oath men were always within sight of the king, even if not always within earshot. Their lives depended on Uther’s; they were sworn to fight beside him on the battlefield, to die one by one rather than allow him to be killed. And should he fall to bow or flying spear, to die to a man rather than return without him.