Merlin's Mirror (3 page)

The tunic which Julia had enlivened with a chaining of red thread about neck and cuffs was torn and mud-bespattered, and his long breeches of green and white checked woolen stuff were tucked into ankle-high laced boots. Down the breast of his tunic dangled his one ornament, the claw of an eagle fastened to a red cord, and there was a streak of dried mud on his chin, a briar scratch on his cheek. Though his clothing was warm and of good quality of cloth, Julia’s own weaving, he did not go as splendid as a chief’s grandson might. In fact only the good knife sheathed at his leather thong of a belt suggested that he was more than huntsman or spearman’s son.

Myrrdin raised his hands now, brushing back his tumble of hair. This, he decided, was a place where one should
come with some pride. Perhaps whoever had spoken thought him, at second glance, to be a person of such little account that there was no need to answer—

“You are”—startling him once more, that voice rang out without warning—“awaited, Merlin.”

Merlin? They—he—it who stayed here wanted someone called Merlin. Myrddin’s fear woke up again. What would happen when they—he—it found there was a mistake? Again he drew a deep breath and faced the mirror stoutly, mainly because somehow seeing himself on its surface gave him a small measure of confidence.

“You, you are wrong,” he forced his voice out loudly. “I am Myrddin of the House of Nyren.”

Stiffly he awaited some reprisal. He fully expected to be hurled out on the mountainside again, at the least. And somehow he longed deeply to remain where he was, to learn what this place might be and most of all who spoke to him, calling him by that strange name.

“You are Merlin,” the voice replied firmly. “You are he for whom all has been prepared. Rest your body, son, and see what you are and learn.”

From one of the squares—that to his right—there swung out a solid bar. Myrddin felt it gingerly. It was wide enough to accommodate his small bottom and seemed solid enough to support his weight. Also, he thought there was no use arguing with the voice. It was far too authoritative in its statement.

Warily he seated himself on the bar facing the mirror. Oddly enough, though its surface appeared so solid, it seemed to yield a little under his slight weight, accommodating itself to form the most comfortable seat he had ever known. The reflection of Myrddin in the mirror flashed into nothingness. Before he had time to feel any alarm at this seeming erasure of himself there was another image there. And Myrddin’s education began.

At first there was an odd inhibition placed on Myrddin so that he could not share his very strange adventure with anyone, even Lugaid, whom of all the clan he thought might understand. But there was no barrier on his thoughts or memories. And sometimes he was so excited by what he had learned from the mirror that back at the clan house he went about in a kind of daze.

Lugaid, who might have suspected a little, was at that
time absent, acting as messenger between Nyren and certain other chiefs and petty kings, trying to hammer into being an alliance which would hold, even among hereditary enemies, until after this season’s raids on the Saxon encroachers. For Ambrosius did not often have the forces to take the field boldly against the Winged Hats and Vortigen’s traitorous followers; he had, rather, to employ other means of whittling down their strength, mainly swift punitive raids across the unrecognized border lands.

Thus Myrddin was enabled, during the years which followed, to slip away to the cave often and there lose himself for long hours with the mirror. He did not at first grasp much of what he was shown. He was too young, too limited in experience. But the mirror’s succession of scenes, while not repetitious in detail, did repeat over and over certain facts until they became as much a part of the boy’s memory as incidents of his daily life had always been.

Myrddin tentatively began to put into practice what he learned. He discovered that the information imparted through and by the mirror had practical use. And young as he was, for short times he was able to influence the boys nearly old enough to take weapons in the war bands. He learned early that apparently no one else could see the crevice in the mountainside through which he was able to enter the place of the mirror, though he had no knowledge of distorters in action.

In addition to the fact that he could thus vanish without a trace, he could also implant in the minds of any companions he might have on the hillside during hunts, or herding, the idea that he had been with them throughout the day, even though he had been spending those same hours in the chamber of the mirror.

As eager as he might have been to use this talent for his own end, however, there had been planted with the knowledge of how to use it a kind of safeguard blockage which, when he tried twice to make Julia see what was not there, prevented him from achieving his goal. Thus he learned that his new weapon-tool was not to be used for any light purpose, but mainly to cover his time of schooling.

News trickled in very slowly to the mountain fastness. Lugaid did not return. They learned instead that he had gone on a journey of even greater length to some mysterious Place of Power, inspired by some desire of his own.
And Myrddin took this ill, for he had hoped to share with the Druid some of the wonder of his own discoveries, feeling that he could only communicate them to the one man of Nyren’s people who already held some bits and pieces of the ancient knowledge.

Shortly after the message concerning Lugaid, a deeper and more tragic word came with a handful of broken and beaten men, some only keeping in the saddles of their wiry mountain-bred ponies by strong will or their comrades’ ropes. For Nyren’s force had met with betrayal during a foray and their chieftain and more than half of their people were cut down. The harried survivors made their way home through the heavy mists and torrential rains of late autumn, and they brought such ill tidings with them that all in the clan house cowered, waiting for the blow to strike them down.

When there was no swift pursuit they brightened a little, but the house was a place of mourning and dread. Gwyn the One-Handed, younger brother of Nyren, took command of the house, since Nyren had left no son. Gwyn could not truly be named chief because of his maiming, though he had a clever arrangement of bronze which he could strap to his left wrist to serve him as a mighty war club.

Had Myrddin been older he might have claimed kin right, but this was no time for a child lord, and the men accepted Gwyn by acclamation. This was a season when men garnered in the harvest—what remained in their small fields—looking over their shoulders constantly, spear or sword to hand. And the watchmen in the heights kept vigil near beacons piled ready for the torch.

Myrddin found little chance now to slip away to the mirror cave and sometimes he chafed with impatience, but he did not realize how much of the teaching he had absorbed. One afternoon he was finally able to edge through the slit to face once more that magic mirror. Perhaps it was chance alone, perhaps it was something more, which kept him overlong at his lesson that day. But when he edged out through the slit he found that twilight was already gathering.

Afraid that the outer gate would already be barred, he scrambled down the slopes, dodging in and out among the stone spurs of the mountain’s ribs, intent only on reaching the clan house as soon as possible. Thus he went unheeding
of certain shadows which slipped from place to place, unheeding until a hand shot out and closed about his ankle. He took a hard fall, which nearly jarred all the breath from his body.

There was a heavy arm across him, pinning him easily to the ground in spite of all his vain struggles. Then a hand twisted painfully in his hair, jerking up his head so that his face could be seen.

“By the Grace of the Three,” someone said explosively, “this is the very brat! He’s come to our hand as easily as a cockerel follows a trail of grain.”

Myrddin had no time to assess his captors. Now over him dropped a cloak which smelled sourly of human and horse sweat mingled. And that was speedily tied about him, making him into as helpless a bundle as any pack trader could fling across a horse. And like such a bundle he was hoisted to lie at a painful angle, bent over a horse which moved at a bone-shaking trot.

3.

At first the boy thought he must have fallen into the hands of a Saxon war band. But why had they not slain him out of hand? Then, as he tried to order his wits, the words he had heard spoken in his own tongue came clearly to mind. He was “the brat” of whom they had plainly been in search. But why was he of any importance to strangers?

Myrddin fought for breath in the stifling folds of the cloak and struggled within himself for courage. Obviously he was of value . . . as a slave? No, there were slaves in plenty. Because he was who he was, the close kin of Nyren? But Gwyn was the lord of the clan. . . .

His head hanging against the horse’s flank throbbed from the awkwardness of his position and he began to feel queasy. Besides, it was very hard to hold to any defense against fear.

How long his ordeal lasted Myrddin did not know. He was only half conscious when he was lifted from the horse and thrown without ceremony and with bruising force to the ground.

“Mind yourself!” ordered another voice. “They would have this one living, not dead, remember.”

“Devil’s brat, ill luck rides with such,” growled a second.

Someone clawed off the cloak, but Myrddin was too spent to move. And he had no chance for freedom as hands closed brutally about his thin wrists, wrapping a length of hide into bonds he could not hope to loosen. The man who handled him so roughly was only a dark shape in the night. When his captor gave a last jerk to make sure of the strength of his ties, the boy roused enough to try to see more of the company about him.

Shapes came and went so that he was not sure of the count, and he could hear horses stamping. The night was
very cold, with the chill of the ground on which he lay bringing on a fit of shivering he could not control. But his captors were all remarkably quiet and he was no wiser as to the identity of this group, except that he was now sure they were not Saxons.

Another one came riding into the small hollow where they had halted. One of the squatting shadows rose to his feet, went to stand beside the newcomer.

“We have him, lord.”

The answer to that was a grunt but the mounted man added: “Ride, then. This is no time to sit idle on your haunches. After all he is of Nyren’s blood in part, and clan pride will bring out trackers. Get you going. There will be fresh mounts waiting at the Giant’s Tooth.”

Having given his orders, the newcomer vanished back into the blackness of the night. Around him Myrddin heard the grumbling of men who were not pleased, but who seemed bound by obedience to a strong commander.

Once more the boy was hoisted up on a horse. Only this time he was fastened in the saddle, a rope beneath the mount’s belly linking ankle to ankle, then the cloak was thrown over him. His head ached savagely and he fought against swaying, lest he crash to the ground and be dragged to his death before his captors could rein in his horse.

They rode throughout the night, halting once at a tall finger of rock which might indeed have been the fang pried out of some huge and fearsome mouth, to change to other mounts picketed out to wait for them. Myrddin had long since lapsed into a daze of fear, pain and bewilderment. None of them ever addressed him, or seemed to care about his welfare, except when they had to change him from one horse to a fresh one. His whole body became one sore bruise, so that every step the horse under him took jarred him into a new torment. He set his teeth firmly, determined even in that far-off place into which his consciousness seemed to retreat that he would not give voice to any cry of pain.

They came down out of the hills. Dawn found them trotting along the smoother surface of one of those roads which the Romans had built. Myrddin could see more of the company now. They were men very like those he had always known, only their faces were those of strangers. Of
the party of ten, all but two were spearmen such as might serve any clan chief as a levy, and those strung behind.

But the reins of Myrddin’s mount were held by one who wore a crimson cloak cunningly worked, if now sadly soiled and frayed, with wide bands of needlework. His hair, the color of polished bronze, swept well below his shoulders in the old way of the tribes. His thick-lipped mouth was bracketed by a heavy moustache and the first stubble of days without touching a razor bristled on his full cheeks.

He was a young man, beefy of shoulder, with bands of worked bronze on his thick arms. A sword of the Roman pattern slapped against his thigh and a small wooden shield with boss and rim of metal was slung between his shoulder blades. His eyes were puffy, as if he had been too long without sleep, and he yawned with jaw-cracking openness from time to time.

Myrddin’s companion to his left was in contrast to the other. He was a lean lath of a man, his chest covered by a dented, poorly mended cuirass. A helmet that had lost its crest was jammed well down on his narrow head, for it had been originally fashioned for a much larger man. His weapons were also a sword and a spear with a wickedly barbed point. And he did not ride lumpily, half asleep as did the tribesman, but rather sat stiffly upright in the saddle and kept glancing from side to side, as if he expected some force to burst upon them out of ambush at any moment.

Myrddin was so weary that he weaved back and forth in the saddle, but neither of his captors appeared to take notice of him. Nothing he had learned in his cave retreat told him what to expect now, except that the future these men intended for him held nothing good. And he no longer tried to imagine what that future might be. Nor did he attempt to take any interest for the moment either in his escort or his surroundings. This land, to one born and bred in the mountains, with no personal knowledge of the countryside below, was strange enough.

By noon they no longer traveled a deserted road. Parties of armed clansmen and three bands of Saxons grudgingly gave way to allow them quicker passage. Before them now rose buildings of stone, dressed and set after another fashion than that of a clan house wall.

Myrddin was both hungry and thirsty but he would not
beg from those he rode among. When they stopped at a spring to drink and then water their mounts, however, one of the lesser clansmen filled a small wooden cup and held it to the boy’s lips. Myrddin drank thirstily and his wits somewhat recovered. He studied this man who seemed less hardened than his companions.

He was much younger than the rest, a fair down on his chin in patches. And the eyes he raised to Myrddin’s were a pale, washed blue; his expression, sullen and heavy.

Myrddin swallowed and swallowed again. His throat felt swollen and sore. When he tried to speak his voice came as a croak.

“My thanks—” he got out before the man in the helmet swung around.

“Hold your tongue, Devil’s brat, or we’ll clip a wood splint on it.” He edged his horse closer, crowding against Myrddin’s weary mount “Aye, your magics we do not need either.” He reached over and jerked up the hood of the cloak, dragging that down to form a loose blindfold. “You fool”—he must be speaking now to the clansman who had brought the water—“do you want to be demon-haunted! This one, they say, young as he is, can well call up all ghosts!”

Myrddin heard a gasp, probably from his late benefactor, and was only glad that he had taken those mouthfuls of water before the second leader of the band had interfered. That bounty, small as it had been, had served to rouse him somewhat from the trance of pain and fear in which he had ridden for most of this night. He could hope for no more aid within this party, yet he was beginning to think again. It was as if the shock of his capture after his long visit to the cave had shut off in some strange fashion his ability to reason clearly, until the small gesture of feeling on the part of the hulking boy had roused him out of that daze.

What could he draw to his aid now? The bedazzlement which he had been able to use with the clan boys in order to conceal his visits to the cave? Young as he was, Myrddin’s knowledge now far outran his years. And there was something beginning to loom in his mind—no, rather in a part of him which did not truly think, but rather sensed that this adventure was part of the future which he was destined to face.

They had called him “Devil’s brat”, a name he had
heard before, though it had never been said to his face. Nyren’s blood had certain rights no clansman—or woman—could deny. But that his father was not one of the fabled Sky Men, but rather a demon, that was an old accusation. Was it not true that he had been conceived on Samain Eve when all manner of evil spirits roamed free? If he had not found the cave of the mirror, he might even have accepted that reasoning himself, it fitted so well the facts which most knew. But the cave was surely of the vanished Sky People, and he had already learned there that he had been born to a certain task; he must dedicate his lifetime to its accomplishment.

Still, he had no enemies he knew about. Gwyn ruled the clan and he himself would never protest that for he was pledged to a different life than a battle leader. And it was already accepted among his kin that he would go to Lugaid’s kind when the time came, to be taught such of the mysteries as survived.

To what other man could he possibly be a threat? His mind played with that puzzle as they came into the town which claimed Vortigen as ruler. For, as they rode, his captors now talked a little, and the boy speedily discovered that this was their goal. Was he then to be hostage for his people? But with Nyren gone Myrddin’s kin were not of such account as to make a hostage worth maintaining.

He roused from his thoughts to look around him, though the hood was drawn down so far on his head that what he could see was limited mainly to the road underfoot, with here or there an edge of stone wall. Though half blind, he could listen. At first his ears, in the past only attuned to the noises of what was a very small clan settlement, were almost deafened. He found it hard to separate one noise from the other.

At last their lagging mounts came to a stop and the rope which held Myrddin’s feet twitched, fell away. A heavy hand swept him out of the saddle, shoving him roughly ahead as his feet nearly buckled under him. So he entered a confined place of vile smells where the cloak was whipped away. He could see that he stood in a stone-walled cubby of a room which had only a length of pitted stone against one wall for a bench or bed, and only a slit high in that same wall for a window.

The bonds fell in turn from his wrists, but his arms
were leaden, his hands numb from the hours of their lashing. It was the man in the helm who had cut him free; now he gave the boy a last shove toward the bench.

“You wait on the High King’s pleasure,” he grunted. And he was gone, slamming the door behind him, immediately plunging Myrddin into a gloom as deep as the twilight in which he had first been taken.

The King. Myrddin shaped those words but did not say them aloud. There was only one king here, though his rule rested mainly on the will of those Saxons he had invited overseas to bolster his armies, first against the raiding Scotti, and then against those of his own blood who might be rivals. Vortigen, Myrddin had been taught from the time he could understand, was a traitor, a nothing man who now listened to the orders of the Winged Hats and cut down his close kin at their pleasure.

And what did Vortigen want of him, Myrddin?

Thinking made his headache worse. He sat on the stone of the bench, rubbing one hand against the other, striving to keep from whimpering as the pain of the returning circulation in his puffed hands was almost more than he could silently bear.

He tried now to call to mind all he had lately heard concerning the High King. The last rumor to reach as far into the mountains as the House of Nyren had been that Vortigen was planning a great fortress tower, one which would rival anything the Romans had built in their day.

But the drifting one-armed trader who had brought the story had also said that there were difficulties in that building, that what was carefully laid stone upon stone on one day was discovered the next morning to be broken away, or set awry enough to be useless. It was said that magic overcame all the efforts of man in constructing the fortress.

Myrddin leaned his head back against the wall. He was so tired that, uncomfortable as he was, sleep pressed upon him until finally he could answer no more to the searching of his thoughts, but rather subsided into a darkness heavier than that of the cell which imprisoned him.

When he woke it was to find a flickering of light about him and for a moment or two he thought he was back in the place of the mirror and those colored squares of radiance which snapped on and off across the squares now faced him. When he opened his eyes fully and pulled himself
up on the bench, however, he saw that a pine knot had been thrust into a ring high on the wall. A man stood under that torch, eyes resting directly on Myrddin.

And the boy knew a sudden lift of heart. Such a robe of white he had never seen worn except by Lugaid on high feast days, though this lacked that spiral of gold on the breast which Lugaid’s had borne. Yet if he was of the bardic brotherhood, then indeed he could be hailed as friend. And Myrddin knew the words which could claim protection. He was about to repeat the sentence Lugaid had long ago—or so it seemed to the boy—drilled into him, when the other spoke:

“Son of a demon, son of no man living, I order that you use not any devilish wiles. Be warned that there has been laid upon you the greater and the lesser obedience, those bonds of spirit which you cannot break.”

As he spoke, his words following a kind of chant, he pointed to Myrddin with a staff, white in part, the rest a rusty red as if it had been dyed with blood.

It was as if the boy’s nose was suddenly filled with a vile scent. Myrddin shook his head to try to escape the unseen cloud which surrounded this man who was certainly not of Lugaid’s kind. At the same time he realized that all the fear he had felt before was nothing to what he experienced now. For this was not only a threat to his body, but rather also to what he was. And he began to repeat, not the words of greeting which had been on his lips, but rather others which Lugaid had also taught him.