The Hallowed Isle Book Four (23 page)

Then she completed the spell, and he needed his control no longer, for the magic upheld him. Ninive was a spark of light before him, sensed rather than seen.

“The hour moves towards the triumph of the sun, the longest day! I summon you, O Prophet of Britannia, to say what shall come to this land.”

For a moment Merlin knew nothing. Then the daimon within him awakened and his mind reeled beneath the flood of foreknowledge.

“The Red Dragon gives birth to a Boar and a litter of little Foxes that between them shall tear and worry at the land. Men and women shall cry out and flee their rulers, and give their name to Armorica, for it is the princes of their own people that oppress them. And then the White Dragon shall rise from his sleep and devour them, from Land's End to the Orcades.”

Immensities of time and space rushed before him; he saw strange armies marching across Britannia, steel roads and devastated forests and cities covering the land. He saw a crossed banner that circled the world. The images he saw he could not comprehend, and presently he waited in silence once more.

“When these things come to pass, O Prophet, where will you be?” A new question came.

“I will be Lailoken in the court of Gwendoleu, and in the court of Urien I will be Taliessin. I shall not leave this land, but ever and again I will shape myself as her need compels me. Going in and out of the body, my voice will be heard in Britannia throughout the ages.” In vision, all those lives were clear before him, and Merlin laughed.

“The sun nears her nooning, master, and there is one thing more to ask. Say now what fate is twined for Artor the king!”

The vision that had spanned centuries folded cataclysmically inward, arrowing like lightning towards its goal. Merlin saw the bloody field of Camboglanna, and Artor, catching his breath as he leaned upon a broken spear. Goriat lay dead beside him, but his enemies were fleeing up the hill. Above them the God of the Sword and the Lady of Ravens hovered, invisible to mortal eyes. And then the air rang with the bitter music of warpipes, and from the fortress a troop of mounted men came riding, and Medraut sped before them.

The
bean-sidhe
is wailing-
thought Artor,
that doom-singing demon that Cunorix used to speak of so long ago.
He wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand and peered up at the fort, knowing already that it was something worse. The army he had faced was gone, but Medraut, whom he had sought in vain all through the battle, was coming out at last.
Now
, he thought despairingly,
when I am already tired.
But this was no time to stand swearing.

“Edrit, run—tell Vortipor to get ready!” he called to the warrior who bore his standard, and started to slog back to the high ground. Medraut had been clever to field a reserve force when the battle was almost done. But Artor had been clever too.

He heard a gleeful shout as the enemy sighted him, and struggled towards the line of willow trees.

On the other side, Vortipor waited with the best riders the British had. A boy was holding Artor's big black stallion, a descendent of the first Raven he had ridden to war. Edrit boosted him into the saddle and handed him a javelin and a horseman's round shield. Taking up the reins, he peered through the screen of branches. Medraut's troop had reached the bottom of the hill. They were losing speed as they spread out along the road.

He turned back to his men. “Has it been hot here, waiting? It was hot work down there too! But now it's your turn, my lads, and you are the veterans of Gallia. Keep your formation, and that rabble will scatter like bees from an overturned hive!”

Someone murmured, “But they can still sting!” And the others laughed.

They started forward, Vortipor taking the point and Artor riding among the men on the wing. As the rebels turned towards the river, the king's men burst through the willows, urging their mounts to full gallop as the slope lent them momentum.

“Artor!” cried the British riders. “Artor and Britannia!”

They were going to hit the enemy at an angle. The king wrapped his long legs around Raven's sides, dropped the knotted reins on the horse's neck, and cocked his arm, poising the javelin to throw.

He sighted on Medraut, then the point of the British wedge struck, and Artor was carried past him. Training ingrained to the point of instinct selected a new target; he cast, and a man fell. A spearpoint drove towards him; he lifted his shield and grunted as it took the weight of the weapon, shifted his weight and jerked as the horse moved, and felt the spear tear from the man's grip and clatter to the ground.

He thrust the shield outward to protect his body as he reached across his belly to grip the hilt of the Chalybe sword.
May the Defender be with me!
he prayed, and felt a tremor of eagerness shock through his hand. At the battle of Verulamium the god of the Sword had come himself to counter an
alien magic, but this was a battle of men, and Artor dared ask only for the strength to endure to the end.

The black horse was fresh and knew its trade, wheeling to knock a smaller beast sideways so that Artor could finish the rider with a slash of his sword. Then another shape loomed up before him. He struck, and struck again. The sweat ran hot beneath his armor, for the sun stood high. After each blow his arm came back up more slowly, yet still he slew, seeing Medraut's mocking face on every foe.

The sun stood high, and all the wood trembled beneath the weight of its glory. The circle of power where Merlin stood was a dazzle of light. But his inner sight was filled with the image of Artor, fighting on while all around him men fled or fell.

An enemy sword cracked the king's shield; Merlin saw him lose his balance and tumble from the horse's back. In the next moment his opponent was downed by a thrown javelin. Artor struggled to his knees at the water's edge, shieldless, but still clinging to his sword. The king looked up. Medraut stood before him.

Merlin gripped the shaft of the Spear. “Is it time?” he whispered, and the rune-carved wood quivered like a live thing in his hand. In all the forest, there was no sound but the sweet music of the infant stream. “This is my will,” he said aloud, “that my spirit shall neither sleep nor seek the Summerland, but continue to wander the world!

“I am the wind on the wave!” Merlin cried.

“I am the fire in the wood!

“I am the sun beneath the sea and the seed in the stone.

“Before time's beginning I was with the gods, and I will sing at its end.

“I am Wild Man and Witega, Druid and daimon—

“I invoke the land of Britannia to the aid of her king!”

The Spear whirled in his hand, and he plunged it, point downward, into the moist soil. Deep, deep it sank, to the roots of creation, but the wooden shaft was expanding, extending branches to embrace the sky. For an eternal moment, Merlin was the Tree, linking earth and heaven.

Then the world collapsed around him in a roar of falling stone. But the essence that had been Merlin was already shaping itself to root and branch, to soil and stone and the rising wind, but most powerfully to the winding waters at his feet. Swift as thought he sped southward towards Camboglanna.

A.D.
5l5

M
EDRAUT WAS A FACELESS SHADOW BETWEEN
A
RTOR AND
the sun.

“So, my lord father, you kneel before me! Will you admit you are beaten at last?”

The king squinted up at him, licking blood from a lip that had split when he hit the ground. His helmet had come off; the air felt cool on his sweat-soaked hair. It was a little past noon.

“I kneel to the earth, whose power brought me down,” he said evenly. “Are you going to let me get up, or do I have to fight you from my knees?” They were getting wet; he looked down and realized that he had fallen in the shallows at the edge of the stream.

Medraut slowly lifted his sword.
He's tired
, Artor observed, but he himself was exhausted. Perhaps it would be easier to fight from here. Or to let Medraut kill him. They were surrounded by the dead and dying. He had lost his army, he thought numbly, and Britannia.

The river ran purling past his foot, sweet and clear. When Medraut still did not answer, the king scooped up a handful of water.

His first thought was that he had not known he was so thirsty. He dipped up more, and felt his tissues expanding like parched earth in the rain. With the third mouthful, he sensed the triumphant surge of Merlin's spirit making him one with everything around him. The cool sweetness of water, the solid strength of earth, the dry heat of the air—he felt them all with an intensity that was almost pain.

A movement that would have been impossible a moment before brought the king to his feet. Medraut jumped back, staring.

“Thank you . . .” Artor whispered, but it was not his opponent to whom he was speaking. He swayed, and Medraut started forward, sword swinging high.

A smooth twist brought the king on guard, bringing up the Sword of the Defender two-handed to deflect Medraut's blow. The clangor as the two blades met echoed across the vale. Artor's knees bent slightly, the great sword drifting up to hover above his right shoulder.

“Why did you do this, Medraut? Why did you try to destroy Britannia?”

His son looked at him uncomprehending. “I wanted to rule—”

Artor shook his head. “The land cannot be ruled, only served.”

Medraut's mouth twisted and he lunged. “You left her! You left
me
!”

For a moment the king hesitated, the truth of that accusation piercing more deeply than any enemy sword. Then strength surged up from the soil once more and he knew that he was still the Lady's Champion.

Artor leaped back, sword sweeping down and to the side, knocking his son's weapon away and spinning him so that for a moment they stood with shoulders touching, as if they met in the dance.

“I was promised everything, and then betrayed,” hissed Medraut. “I came to you, since my mother had cast me aside like a tool she no longer wanted to use. And you banished me to the barbarians and
forgot
me! I've had to fight for my
life, my name. . . .” He whirled away, the rest hanging unspoken between them—
for Guendivar. . . .

“Surrender and you shall rule the North,” said Artor, his breath coming fast.

“I could win it all yet,
Father. . . .”
Medraut advanced with a series of flashing blows that kept the king busy defending.

“Not while I live!” Artor knocked the younger man's last stroke aside with a force that sent him reeling.

“You will die, at my hand, or the hand of time—” answered Medraut, panting. “The heirs of Britannia are young foxes, eager to gnaw out their own little kingdoms, and that will be the end of your dream.”

Instinctively Artor settled to guard, but his mind was whirling. He bore the Sword of the Defender, but what could a dead man defend? He looked up at the mocking face of his son. Men called Medraut the Perjurer, but surely Deceiver would be a better name, sent to tempt him to despair. And yet the power of that impossible moment of connection with the land still sang in his veins.

“Oh Medraut, is there room for nothing in your heart but hate?”

“You took the only thing I might have loved!” Medraut cried out in answer, and ran at him with wildly swinging sword.

Artor retreated, using all his skill to fend that blade away. The boy was a good swordsman, but he was battering with berserker fury as if he meant to obliterate, not merely kill. Forty years of experience kept the king's weapon between him and that deadly blade. It was those same battle-trained reflexes, not Artor's will, that halted Medraut's charge at last with a stop-thrust that pierced through hauberk and breastbone and out the other side.

For a moment they stared into each other's eyes. Then Medraut's features contorted. His weapon slipped from his hand, and Artor felt the weight of the boy's body begin to drag down the sword. He stepped back, and the blade slid free as Medraut fell, the bright blood—his son's blood—staining the steel.

The air rang with silence.

“Father. . . .” A little blood was running from Medraut's mouth. The king knelt beside him, laying down the Chalybe sword, reaching to ease off his son's helm and smooth back the hair from his brow as if he had been a little child. Medraut's eyes widened, meeting his father's gaze unbarriered at last, shock transmuting gradually into an appalled understanding.

Then he twisted, hand clutching at his side. “It is not
my
blood,” he whispered, “that will consecrate the ground—”

He convulsed once more, thrusting the dagger that had been sheathed at his hip up beneath Artor's mail. It seared along the old scar where Melwas had wounded the king long ago and stabbed upward into his groin.

For a moment all other awareness disappeared in a red wave of agony. When it began to recede, Artor looked down and saw that Medraut lay still and sightless, his face upturned to the sun.

Oh, Lady
— thought the king,
is this your sacrifice?

He could feel the warm seep of blood across his thigh and the beginnings of a deeper agony. Slowly he lowered himself to the earth beside the body of his son, vision flashing dark and bright with each pulse, fixing on the pebble that lay beside him. A glowing spiral spun within the stone. Artor's fingers closed upon its solid certainty.

This is the king stone . . . the heart of Britannia. It was beneath my feet all along.

His hearing must be going too, he thought then, for his head rang with strange music . . . like Gaulish battle horns. . . .

Guendivar gasped and reached out to Peretur for support as pain stabbed upward through her womb.

“My lady, what is it? Are you ill?”

She tried to straighten, staring round at the men who had come with her to the marketplace. Blood and dust and sunlight filled her vision; she saw an old fortress on a hill.