Merlin's Booke (20 page)

“I am Wind on Sea,” Morgan chanted.

“Morgan,”
warned Argente.

“Do not stop her,” commanded Merlin. “She is
vates,
afire with the word of the Gods. My god or your god, they are the same. They speak with tongues of fire and they sometimes pick a warped reed through which to blow a particular tune.”

Argente bowed her head once to him but Morgan was already finished. She looked across the table at Hesta, her eyes preternaturally bright. “I know things.” she said.

“It is clear that I have come at a moment of great power,” said Merlin. “‘I am the point of a Weapon' say the gods to us. And my dreams these past months have been of sword point, but swords that are neither
gladius
nor
spatha
nor the far tribes'
ensis.
A new creation. And where does one come for a sword of power, but here. Here to Ynis Evelonia.”

Mother Argente smiled. “We have many swords ready, arch-mage.”

“I need but one.” He did not return her smile, staring instead into his cup of wine.

“How will we know this sword of power?” Argente asked, leaning forward.

“I will know,” intoned Morgan.

Sonda, taking a sip of her wine, put her head to one side like a little bird considering a tasty worm. “And what payment, arch-mage?”

“Ah, Mother Sonda, that is always the question they leave to you. What payment indeed.” Merlin picked up his own glass and suddenly drained it. He set the glass down gently, contemplating the rim. Then he stroked his long beard. “If I dream true—and I have never been known to have false dreams—then you shall
give
me this particular sword and its maker.”

“Give
you? What a notion, Merlin.” Mother Argente laughed, but there was little amusement in it. “The swords made of Evian Steel are never given away. We have too many buyers vying for them. If you will not pay for it, there will be others who will.”

There was a sudden, timid knock upon the door. Sonda rose quietly and went to it, spoke to the Mother who had interrupted them, then turned.

“It is nearing noon, Mother. The sun rides high. It is time.” Sonda's voice was smooth, giving away no more than necessary.

Mother Argente rose and with her the others rose, too.

“Stay, Arch-Mage, there is food and wine enough. When we have done with our … obsequies … we shall return to finish our business with you.”

The five Mothers left and so did not hear the man murmur into his empty cup, “This business will be finished before-times.”

The entire company of women gathered at the river's edge to watch. The silver vat, really an overlarge bowl, was held by Mother Morgan. The blood-tinted water reflected only sky.

Veree, in the white silken shift, stood with her toes curling under into the mud. Elaine could see the raised goose bumps along her arms, though it was really quite warm in the spring sun.

Mother Hesta held a sword on the palms of her upturned hands. It was a long-bladed double edge sword, the quillon cleverly worked. The sword seemed afire with the sun, the shallow hollow down its center aflame.

Veree took the sword from Hesta and held it flat against her breast while Mother Argente anointed her forehead with the basin's water. With her finger she drew three circles and three crosses on Veree's brow.

“Blood to blood, steel to steel, thee to me,” said Mother Argente.

Veree repeated the chant. “Blood to blood, steel to steel, I to thee.” Then she took the sword and set it into the basin.

As the sword point and then the blade touched the water, the basin erupted in steam. Great gouts of fire burst from the sword and Mother Argente screamed.

Veree grabbed the sword by the handle and ran down into the tidal pool. She plunged in with it and immediately the flames were quenched, but she stayed under the water and Elaine, fearful for her life, began to cry out, running down to the water's edge.

She was pushed aside roughly by a strong hand and when she caught her breath, she saw it was the arch-mage himself, standing knee deep in water, his hands raised, palms down, speaking words she did not quite understand.

Bedevere? Did he mean Veree?
Elaine wondered, and then had time to wonder no further for the waters parted before the arch-mage and the sword pierced up into the air before him.

He grasped the pommel in his left hand and with a mighty heave pulled the sword from the pool. Veree's hand, like some dumb, blind thing, felt around in the air, searching.

Elaine waded in, dived under, and wrapping her arms around Veree's waist, pushed her out of the pool. They stood there, trembling, looking like two drowned ferrets, unable to speak or weep or wonder.

“This is the sword I shall have,” Merlin said to Mother Argente, his back to the two half-drowned girls.

“I do not understand …” began Mother Argente. “But I
will
know.”

“I
know
things,” said Morgan triumphantly.

Mother Argente turned and spoke through clenched teeth, “Will someone shut her up?”

Hesta smiled broadly. “Yes, Mother. Your will is my deed.” Her large right hand clamped down on Morgan's neck and she picked her up and shook her like a terrier with a rat, then set her down. Morgan did not speak again but her eyes grew slotted and cold.

Marta began to sob quietly until nudged by Gale, but the other girls were stunned into silence.

“Now, now,” murmured Sonda to no one in particular. “Now, now.”

Mother Argente walked over to Veree who straightened up and held her chin high. “Explain this, child.”

Veree said nothing.

“What blood was used to quench the sword?”

“Mother, it was my own.”

Elaine interrupted. “It was. I saw it.”

Mother Argente turned on her. “You
saw
it? Then it was your watching that corrupted the steel.”

Merlin moved between them.
“Mater.
Think. Such power does not emanate from this child.” He swung his head so that he was staring at Veree. “And where did the blood come from?”

Under his stare Veree lowered her eyes. She spoke to the ground. “It is a woman's secret. I cannot talk of it.”

The arch-mage smiled. “I am man and woman, neither and both. The secrets of the body are known to me. Nothing is hidden from me.”

“I have nothing to tell you if you know it already.”

“Then I will tell it to thee,” said Merlin. He shifted the sword to his left hand, turned to her, and put his right hand under her chin. “Look at me, Gwyneth, called here Vireo, and deny this if you can. Last night for the first time you became a woman. The moon called out your blood. And it was this flux that you used, the blood that flows from the untested womb, not the body's blood flowing to the heart. Is it so?”

She whispered, “It is so.”

Argente put a hand to her breast. “That is foul. Unclean.”

“It is the more powerful thereby,” Merlin answered.

“Take the sword, arch-mage. And the girl. And go.”

“No!”
Elaine dropped to her knees by Veree's side and clasped her legs. “Do not go. Or take me with you. I could not bear to be here without you. I would die for you.”

Merlin looked down at the little girl and shook his head. “You shall not die yet, little Elaine. Not so soon. But you shall give your life for her—that I promise you.” He tucked the sword in a scabbard he suddenly produced from inside his cloak. “Come, Gwyneth.” He held out his hand.

She took his hand and smiled at him. “There is nothing here to pity,” she said.

“I shall never give you pity,” he said. “Not now or ever. You choose and you are chosen. I see that you know what it is you do.”

Mother Argente smoothed her skirts down, a gesture which seemed to return them all to some semblance of normality. “I myself will row you across. The sooner she is gone from here, the better.”

“But my clothes, mother.”

“They shall be sent to you.”

The arch-mage swung the cape off his shoulders and enfolded the girl in it. The cape touched the ground, sending up little puffs of dirt.

“You shall never be allowed on this isle again,” said Mother Argente. “You shall be denied the company of women. Your name shall be crossed off the book of the Goddess.”

Veree still smiled.

“You shall be barren,” came a voice from behind them. “Your womb's blood was given to cradle a sword. It shall not cradle a child. I
know
things.”

“Get into the boat,” instructed Merlin. “Do not look back, it only encourages her.” He spoke softly to Mother Argente, “I am glad,
Mater
that
that
one is
your
burden.”

“I give you no thanks for her,” said Mother Argente as she pushed the boat off into the tide. She settled onto the seat, took up the oars, feathered them once, and began to pull.

The coracle slipped quickly across the river.

Veree stared out across the gray waters that gave scarcely any reflection. Through the mist she could just begin to see the far shore where the tops of thatched cottages and the smoky tracings of cook fires were taking shape.

“Shapwick-across-the-flood,” mused Merlin. “And from there we shall ride by horse to Camlann. It will be a long and arduous journey, child. Your bones will ache.”

“Pitying me already?”

“Pitying
you?
My bones are the older and will ache the more. No, I will not pity you. But we will all be pitied when this story is told years hence, for it will be a tale cunningly wrought of earth, air, fire—and blood.”

The boat lodged itself clumsily against the Shapwick shore. The magician stood and climbed over the side. He gathered the girl up and carried her to the sand, huffing mightily. Then he turned and waved to the old woman who huddled in the coracle.

“Ave, mater.”

“Ave, magister,”
she called back, “Until we must meet again.”

Ynis Evelonia, the Isle of Women, lies within the marshy tidal river Tamor that is itself but a ribbon stretched between the Mendip and the Quantock hills. The isle is scarcely remarked from the shore. It is as if Manannan MacLir himself had shaken his cloak between.

On most days there is an unsettling mist obscuring the irregular coast of the isle; and only in the full sun, when the light just rising illuminates a channel, can any passage across the glass-colored waters be seen. And so it is that women alone, who have been schooled in the hidden causeways across the fen, mother to daughter down through the years, can traverse the river in coracles that slip easily through the brackish flood.

By ones and twos they come and go in their light skin boats to commerce with the Daughters of Eve who stay in holy sistership on the isle, living out their chaste lives and making with their magics the finest blades mankind has ever known.

The isle is dotted with trees, not the great Druidic oaks that line the roadways into Godney and Meare and tower over the mazed pathways up to the high tor, but small womanish trees: alder and apple, willow and ash, leafy havens for the migratory birds. And the little isle fair rings with bird song and the clanging of hammer on anvil and steel.

But men who come to buy swords at Ynis Evelonia are never allowed further inland than the wattle guest house with its oratory of wicker wands winded and twisted together under a rush roof. Only one man has ever slept there and is
—
in fact
—
sleeping there still. But that is the end of this story
—
which shall not be told
—
and the beginning of yet another.

… it fell so that Merlin fell in a dotage on the damosel that King Pellinore brought to court, and she was one of the damosels of the lake, that hight Nimue. But Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her. And ever she made Merlin good cheer till she learned of him all manner thing that she desired; and he was assotted upon her, that he might not be from her.

—Le Morte D'Arthur

by Sir Thomas Malory

H
E WOKE TO WOOD
and the underside of bark. There had been no death, at least none that he remembered. Just a long, final breath, part kiss and part spell. A name formed on his mouth, a name he could not quite shape, though he was sure it began with an
n.

“Nnnnn,” he murmured tentatively.

Reaching upward, his hands touched wood. He felt wood on all sides, a coffin of it, rounded without the square, hammered pegs. Pushing desperately against it, he was surprised that it had a give to it, as of a living thing. He scratched it with his fingernails and a soft, meaty substance peeled downward.

“Where am I?” he cried out, his words strangely muffled.

In the dark.
It was a woman's voice that answered him, but not aloud.
In the dark.

Where is this dark?
he thought to himself, hesitating to frame the question with his mouth.

It did not matter. The woman's voice, low and throaty, still answered him.
In the wood.

In the dark. In the wood. Bottled up like a cask of wine. They were answers that meant nothing to him. But remembering little else, he knew he was a man used to riddles. They had been—of this one thing he was sure—his lifework. He had moved from riddle to answer, from answer to riddle down through his days. In this dark and in this wood he would unravel this final riddle. And then, like a weaver woman with a fleece, skirting the bad parts and spinning out the thread, he would wind it up again.