The Crystal Cave

1

The way the chronicles tell it, you would think it took Ambrosius two months to get himself crowned King and pacify Britain. In fact, it took more than two years.

The first part was quick enough. It was not for nothing that he had spent all those years in Less Britain, he and Uther, developing an expert striking force the like of which had not been seen in any part of Europe since the disbanding nearly a hundred years ago of the force commanded by the Count of the Saxon Shore. Ambrosius had, in fact, modelled his own army on the force of the Saxon Shore, a marvellously mobile fighting instrument which could live off the country and do everything at twice the speed of the normal force. Caesar-speed, they still called it when I was young.

He landed at Totnes in Devon , with a fair wind and a quiet sea, and he had hardly set up the Red Dragon when the whole West rose for him. He was King of Cornwall and Devon before he even left the shore, and everywhere, as he moved northwards, the chiefs and kings crowded to swell his army. Eldol of Gloucester, a ferocious old man who had fought with Constantine against Vortigern, with Vortigern against Hengist, with Vortimer against both, and would fight anywhere for the sheer hell of it, met him at Glastonbury and swore faith. With him came a host of lesser leaders, not least his own brother Eldad, a bishop whose devout Christianity made the pagan wolves look like lambs by comparison, and set me wondering where he spent the dark nights of the winter solstice. But he was powerful; I had heard my mother speak of him with reverence; and once he had declared for Ambrosius, all Christian Britain came with him, urgent to drive back the pagan hordes moving steadily inland from their landing-places in the south and east. Last came Gorlois of Tintagel in Cornwall, straight from Vortigern's side with news of Vortigern's hasty move out of the Welsh mountains, and ready to ratify the oath of loyalty which, should Ambrosius be successful, would add the whole kingdom of Cornwall for the first time to the High Kingdom of Britain.

Ambrosius' main trouble, indeed, was not lack of support but the nature of it. The native Britons, tired of Vortigern, were fighting-mad to clear the Saxons out of their country and get their homes and their own ways back, but a great majority of them knew only guerrilla warfare, or the kind of hit-and-ride-away tactics that do well enough to harass the enemy, but will not hold him back for long if he means business.

Moreover, each troop came with its own leader, and it was as much as any commander's authority was worth to suggest that they might regroup and train under strangers. Since the last trained legion had withdrawn from Britain almost a century before, we had fought (as we had done before the Romans ever came) in tribes. And it was no use suggesting that, for instance, the men of Devet might fight beside the men of North Wales even with their own leaders; throats would have been cut on both sides before the first trumpet ever sounded.

Ambrosius here, as everywhere, showed himself master. As ever he used each man for what that man's strength was worth. He sowed his own officers broadcast among the British — for co-ordination, he said, no more — and through them quietly adapted the tactics of each force to suit his central plan, with his own body of picked troops taking the main brunt of attack.

All this I heard later, or could have guessed from what I knew of him. I could have guessed, also, what would happen the moment his forces assembled and declared him King. His British allies clamoured for him to go straight after Hengist and drive the Saxons back to their own country. They were not unduly concerned with Vortigern. Indeed, such power as Vortigern had had was largely gone already, and it would have been simple enough for Ambrosius to ignore him and concentrate on the Saxons.

But he refused to give way to pressure. The old wolf must be smoked out first, he said, and the field cleared for the main work of battle. Besides, he pointed out, Hengist and his Saxons were Northmen, and particularly amenable to rumours and fear; let Ambrosius once unite the British to destroy Vortigern, and the Saxons would begin to fear him as a force really to be reckoned with. It was his guess that, given the time, they would bring together one large force to face him, which might then be broken at one blow.

They had a council about it, at the fort near Gloucester where the first bridge crosses the Sefern river. I could picture it, Ambrosius listening and weighing and judging, and answering with that grave easy way of his, allowing each man his say for pride; then taking at the end the decision he had meant to take from the beginning, but giving way here and there on the small things, so that each man thought he had made a bargain and got, if not what he wanted, then something near it, in return for a concession by his commander.

The upshot was that they marched northwards within the week, and came on Vortigern at Doward.

Doward is in the valley of the Guoy, which the Saxons pronounce Way or Wye. This is a big river, which runs deep and placid-seeming through a gorge whose high slopes are hung with forests. Here and there the valley widens to green pastures, but the tide runs many miles up river, and these low meadows are often, in winter, awash under a roaring yellow flood, for the great Wye is not so placid as it seems, and even in summer there are deep pools where big fish lie and the currents are strong enough to overturn a coracle and drown a man.

Well north of the limit of the tidal floods, in a wide curve of the valley, stand the two hills called Doward.

The one to the north is the greater, thick with forest and mined with caves inhabited, men say, by wild beasts and outlawed men. The hill called Lesser Doward is also forested, but more thinly, since it is rocky, and its steep summit, rising above the trees, makes a natural citadel so secure that it has been fortified time out of mind. Long before even the Romans came, some British king built himself a fortress on the summit which, with its commanding view, and the natural defenses of crag and river, made a formidable stronghold. The hill is wide-topped, and its sides steep and rough, and though siege engines could at one point be dragged up in dead ground, this ended in crags where the engines were useless.

Everywhere except at this point there was a double rampart and ditch to get through before the outer wall of the fortress could be reached. The Romans themselves had marched against it once, and only managed to reduce it through treachery. This was in the time of Caratacus. Doward was the kind of place that, likeTroy , must be taken from within.

This time also, it was taken from within. But not by treachery; by fire.

Everyone knows what happened there.

Vortigern's men were hardly settled after their headlong flight from Snowdon , when Ambrosius' army came up the valley of the Wye, and encamped due west of Doward Hill, at a place called Ganarew. I never heard what store of provisions Vortigern had; but the place had been kept prepared, and it was well known that there were two good springs within the fortress which had not yet been known to fail; so it might well have taken Ambrosius some time to reduce it by siege. But a siege was just what he could not afford, with Hengist gathering his forces, and the April seas opening between Britain and the Saxon shores. Besides, his British allies were restless, and would never have settled down for a prolonged siege.

It had to be quick.

It was both quick and brutal. I have heard it said since that Ambrosius acted out of vengeance for his long-dead brother. I do not believe this to be true. Such long-standing bitterness was not in his nature, and besides, he was a general and a good fighting commander before he was even a man. He was driven only by necessity, and in the end, by Vortigern's own brutality.

Ambrosius besieged the place in the conventional way for about three days. Where he could, he drew up siege engines and tried to break the defenses. He did indeed breach the outer rampart in two places above what was still called Romans Way, but when he found himself stopped by the inner rampart and his troops exposed to the defenders, he withdrew. When he saw how long the siege would take, and how, even in the three days, some of his British troops quietly left him and went off on their own, like hounds after the rumour of Saxon hares, he decided to make an end quickly. He sent a man to Vortigern with conditions for surrender. Vortigern, who must have seen the defection of some of the British troops, and who well understood Ambrosius' position, laughed, and sent back the messenger without a message, but with the man's own two hands severed, and bound in a bloody cloth to the belt at his waist.

He stumbled into Ambrosius' tent just after sundown of the third day, and managed to stay on his feet long enough to give the only message he was charged with.

"They say that you may stay here, my lord, until your army melts away, and you are left handless as I.

They have food in plenty, sir, I saw it, and water —"

Ambrosius only said: "He ordered this himself?"

"The Queen," said the man. "It was the Queen." He pitched forward on the word at Ambrosius' feet, and from the dripping cloth at his belt the hands fell, sprawling.

"Then we will burn out the wasps' nest, queen and all," said Ambrosius. "See to him."

That night, to the apparent pleasure of the garrison, the siege engines were withdrawn from Romans'

Way and the breached places in the outer rampart. Instead, great piles of brushwood and hewn branches were stacked in the gaps, and the army tightened its ring round the crest of the hill, with a circle of archers waiting, and men ready to cut down any who should escape. In the quiet hour before daylight the order was given. From every quarter the arrows, pointed with flaming, oil-soaked rags, showered into the fortress. It did not take long. The place was largely built of wood, and crowded with the wagons, provisions, beasts and their fodder. It burned fiercely. And when it was alight the brushwood outside the walls was fired, so that anyone leaping from the walls met another wall of fire outside. And outside that, the iron ring of the army.

They say that throughout, Ambrosius sat his big white horse, watching, till the flames made the horse as red as the Red Dragon above his head. And high on the fortress tower the White Dragon, showing against a plume of smoke, turned blood red as the flames themselves, then blackened and fell.

2

While Ambrosius was attacking Doward I was still at Maridunum, having parted from Gorlois on the ride south, and seen him on his way to meet my father.

It happened this way. All through that first night we rode hard, but there was no sign of pursuit, so at sunup we drew off the road and rested, waiting for Gorlois' men to come up with us. This they did during the morning, having been able, in the near-panic at Dinas Brenin, to slip away unobserved. They confirmed what Gorlois had already suggested to me, that Vortigern would head, not for his own fortress of Caer-Guent, but for Doward. And he was moving, they said, by the east-bound road through Caer Gai towards Bravonium. Once past Tomen-y-mur, there was no danger that we would be overtaken.

So we rode on, a troop now about twenty strong, but going easily. My mother, with her escort of fighting men, was less than a day ahead of us, and her party, with the litters, would be much slower than we were. We had no wish to catch up with them and perhaps force a fight which might endanger the women; it was certain, said Gorlois to me, that the latter would be delivered safely to Maridunum, "but," he added in his sharp, gruff way, "we shall meet the escort on their way back. For come back they will; they cannot know the King is moving east. And every man less for Vortigern is another for your father.

We'll get news at Bremia, and camp beyond it to wait for them."

Bremia was nothing but a cluster of stone huts smelling of peat smoke and dung, black doorways curtained from wind and rain with hides or sacking, round which peered scared eyes of women and children. No men appeared, even when we drew rein in the midst of the place, and curs ran yapping round the horses' heels. This puzzled us, till (knowing the dialect) I called out to the eyes behind the nearest curtain, to reassure the people and ask for news.

They came out then, women, children, and one or two old men, crowding eagerly round us and ready to talk.

The first piece of news was that my mother's party had been there the previous day and night, leaving only that morning, at the Princess's insistence. She had been taken ill, they told me, and had stayed for half the day and the night in the head-man's house, where she was cared for. Her women had tried to persuade her to turn aside for a monastic settlement in the hills nearby, where she might rest, but she had refused, and had seemed better in the morning, so the party had ridden on. It had been a chill, said the head-man's wife; the lady had been feverish, and coughing a little, but she had seemed so much better next morning, and Maridunum was not more than a day's ride; they had thought it better to let her do as she desired...

I eyed the squalid huts, thinking that, indeed, the danger of a few more hours in the litter might well be less than such miserable shelter in Bremia, so thanked the woman for her kindness, and asked where her man had gone. As to that, she told me, all the men had gone to join Ambrosius...

She mistook my look of surprise. "Did you not know? There was a prophet at Dinas Brenin, who said the Red Dragon would come. The Princess told me herself, and you could see the soldiers were afraid.

And now he has landed. He is here."

"How can you know?" I asked her. "We met no messenger."

She looked at me as if I were crazed, or stupid. Had I not seen the firedrake? The whole village knew this for the portent, after the prophet had spoken so. The men had armed themselves, and had gone that very day. If the soldiers came back, the women and children would take to the hills, but everyone knew that Ambrosius could move more swiftly than the wind, and they were not afraid...

I let her run on while I translated for Gorlois. Our eyes met with the same thought. We thanked the woman again, gave her what was due for her care of my mother, and rode after the men of Bremia.

South of the village the road divides, the main way turning south-east past the gold mine and then through the hills and deep valleys to the broad valley of the Wye whence it is easy riding to the Sefern crossing and the south-west. The other, minor, road goes straight south, a day's ride to Maridunum. I had decided that in any case I would follow my mother south and talk to her before I rejoined Ambrosius; now the news of her illness made this imperative. Gorlois would ride straight to meet Ambrosius and give him the news of Vortigern's movements.

At the fork where our ways parted we came on the villagers. They had heard us coming and taken cover — the place was all rocks and bushes — but not soon enough; the gusty wind must have hidden our approach from them till we were almost on them. The men were out of sight, but one of their miserable pack-donkeys was not, and stones were still rolling on the scree.

It was Bremia over again. We halted, and I called out into the windy silence. This time I told them who I was, and in a moment, it seemed, the roadside was bristling with men. They came crowding round our horses, showing their teeth and brandishing a peculiar assortment of weapons ranging from a bent Roman sword to a stone spearhead bound on a hay-rake. They told the same story as their women; they had heard the prophecy, and they had seen the portent; they were marching south to join Ambrosius, and every man in the West would soon be with them. Their spirit was high, and their condition pitiful; it was lucky we had a chance to help them.

"Speak to them," said Gorlois to me. "Tell them that if they wait another day here with us, they shall have weapons and horses. They have picked the right place for an ambush, as who should know better than they?"

So I told them that this was the Duke of Cornwall, and a great leader, and that if they would wait a day with us, we would see they got weapons and horses. "For Vortigern's men will come back this way," I told them. "They are not to know that the High King is already fleeing eastwards: they will come back by this road, so we will wait for them here, and you will be wise to wait with us."

So we waited. The escort must have stayed rather longer than need be in Maridunum, and after that cold damp ride who could blame them? But towards dusk of the second day they came back, riding at ease, thinking maybe of a night's shelter at Bremia.

We took them nicely by surprise, and fought a bloody and very unpleasant little action. One roadside skirmish is very like another. This one differed only from the usual in being better generalled and more eccentrically equipped, but we had the advantages both of numbers and of surprise, and did what we had set out to do, robbed Vortigern of twenty men for the loss of only three of our own and a few cuts. I came out of it more creditably than I would have believed possible, killing the man I had picked out before the fighting swept over and past me and another knocked me off my horse and would possibly have killed me if Cadal had not parried the stroke and killed the fellow himself. It was quickly over. We buried our own dead and left the rest for the kites, after we had stripped them of their arms. We had taken care not to harm the horses, and when next morning Gorlois said farewell and led his new troops south-east, every man had a horse, and a good weapon of some kind. Cadal and I turned south for Maridunum, and reached it by early evening.

The first person I saw as we rode down the street towards St. Peter's was my cousin Dinias. We came on him suddenly at a corner, and he jumped a foot and went white. I suppose rumours had been running like wildfire through the town ever since the escort had brought my mother back without me.

"Merlin. I thought — I thought —"

"Well met, cousin, I was coming to look for you."

He said quickly: "Look, I swear I had no idea who those men were —"

"I know that. What happened wasn't your fault. That isn't why I was looking for you."

" — and I was drunk, you know that. But even if I had guessed who they were, how was I to know they'd take you up on a thing like that? I'd heard rumours of what they were looking for, I admit, but I swear it never entered my head —"

"I said it wasn't your fault. And I'm back here again safely, aren't I? All's well that ends well. Leave it, Dinias. That wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about."

But he persisted. "I took the money, didn't I? You saw."

"And if you did? You didn't give information for money, you took it afterwards. It's different, to my mind. If Vortigern likes to throw his money away, then by all means rob him of it. Forget it, I tell you.

Have you news of my mother?"

"I've just come from there. She's ill, did you know?"

"I got news on my way south," I said. "What's the matter with her? How bad?"

"A chill, they told me, but they say she's on the mend. I thought myself she still looked poor enough, but she was fatigued with the journey, and anxious about you. What did Vortigern want you for, in the end?"

"To kill me," I said briefly.

He stared, then began to stutter. "I — in God's name, Merlin, I know you and I have never been...that is, there've been times — " He stopped, and I heard him swallow. "I don't sell my kinsmen, you know."

"I told you I believed you. Forget it. It was nothing to do with you, some nonsense of his soothsayers'.

But as I said, here I am safe and sound."

"Your mother said nothing about it."

"She didn't know. Do you think she'd have let him send her tamely home if she had known what he meant to do? The men who brought her home, they knew, you can be sure of that. So they didn't let it out to her?"

"It seems not," said Dinias. "But —"

"I'm glad of that. I'm hoping to get to see her soon, this time in daylight."

"Then you're in no danger now from Vortigern?"

"I would be, I suppose," I said, "if the place was still full of his men, but I was told at the gate that they've cleared out to join him?"

"That's so. Some rode north, and some east to Caer-Guent. You've heard the news, then?"

"What news?"

Though there was nobody else in the street, he looked over his shoulder in the old, furtive way. I slid down out of the saddle, and threw the reins to Cadal. "What news?" I repeated.

"Ambrosius," he said softly. "He's landed in the southwest, they say, and marching north. A ship brought the story yesterday, and Vortigern's men started moving out straight away. But — if you've just ridden in from the north, surely you'd meet them?"

"Two companies, this morning. But we saw them in good time, and got off the road. We met my mother's escort the day before, at the crossways."

" 'Met'?" He looked startled. "But if they knew Vortigern wanted you dead —"

"They'd have known I had no business riding south, and cut me down? Exactly. So we cut them down instead. Oh, don't look at me like that — it wasn't magician's work, only soldiers'. We fell in with some Welsh who were on their way to join Ambrosius, and we ambushed Vortigern's troop and cut them up."

"The Welsh knew already? The prophecy, was it?" I saw the whites of his eyes in the dusk. "I'd heard about that...the place is buzzing with it. The troops told us. They said you'd showed them some kind of great lake under the crag — it was that place we stopped at years ago, and I'll swear there was no sign of any lake then — but there was this lake of water with dragons lying in it under the foundations of the tower. Is it true?"

"That I showed them a lake, yes."

"But the dragons. What were they?"

I said, slowly: "Dragons. Something conjured out of nothing for them to see, since without seeing they would not listen, let alone believe."

There was a little silence. Then he said, with fear in his voice: "And was it magic that showed you Ambrosius was coming?"

"Yes and no." I smiled. "I knew he was coming, but not when. It was the magic that told me he was actually on his way."

He was staring again. "You knew he was coming? Then you had tidings in Cornwall ? You might have told me."

"Why?"

"I'd have joined him."

I looked at him for a moment, measuring. "You can still join him. You and your other friends who fought with Vortimer. What about Vortimer's brother, Pascentius? Do you know where he is? Is he still hot against Vortigern?"

"Yes, but they say he's gone to make his peace with Hengist. He'll never join Ambrosius, he wants Britain for himself."

"And you?" I asked. "What do you want?"

He answered quite simply, for once without any bluster or bravado. "Only a place I can call my own.

This, if I can. It's mine now, after all. He killed the children, did you know?"

"I didn't, but you hardly surprise me. It's a habit of his, after all." I paused. "Look, Dinias, there's a lot to say, and I've a lot to tell you. But first I've a favour to ask of you."

"What's that?"

"Hospitality. There's nowhere else I know of that I care to go until I've got my own place ready, and I've a fancy to stay in my grandfather's house again."

He said, without pretense or evasion: "It's not what it was."

I laughed. "Is anything? As long as there's a roof against this hellish rain, and a fire to dry our clothes, and something to eat, no matter what. What do you say we send Cadal for provisions, and eat at home?

I'll tell you the whole thing over a pie and a flask of wine. But I warn you, if you so much as show me a pair of dice I'll yell for Vortigern's men myself."

He grinned, relaxing suddenly. "No fear of that. Come along, then. There's a couple of rooms still habitable, and we'll find you a bed."

I was given Camlach's room. It was draughty, and full of dust, and Cadal refused to let me use the bedding until it had lain in front of a roaring fire for a full hour. Dinias had no servant, except one slut of a girl who looked after him apparently in return for the privilege of sharing his bed. Cadal set her to carrying fuel and heating water while he took a message to the nunnery for my mother, and then went to the tavern for wine and provisions.

We ate before the fire, with Cadal serving us. We talked late, but here it is sufficient to record that I told Dinias my story — or such parts of it as he would understand. There might have been some personal satisfaction in telling him the facts of my parentage, but until I was sure of him, and the countryside was known to be clear of Vortigern's men, I thought it better to say nothing. So I told him merely how I had gone to Brittany , and that I had become Ambrosius' man. Dinias had heard enough already of my "prophecy" in the cavern at King's Fort to believe implicitly in Ambrosius' coming victory, so our talk ended with his promise to ride westwards in the morning with the news, and summon what support he could for Ambrosius from the fringes of Wales. He would, I knew, have been afraid in any case to do other than keep that promise; whatever the soldiers had said about the occasion there in King's Fort, it was enough to strike my simple cousin Dinias with the most profound awe of my powers. But even without that, I knew I could trust him in this. We talked till almost dawn, then I gave him money and said good night.

(He was gone before I woke next morning. He kept his word, and joined Ambrosius later, atYork , with a few hundred men. He was honourably received and acquitted himself well, but soon afterwards, in some minor engagement, received wounds of which he later died. As for me, I never saw him again.) Cadal shut the door behind him. "At least there's a good lock and a stout bar."

"Are you afraid of Dinias?" I asked.

"I'm afraid of everybody in this cursed town. I'll not be happy till we're quit of it and back with Ambrosius."

"I doubt if you need worry now. Vortigern's men have gone. You heard what Dinias said."

"Aye, and I heard what you said, too." He had stooped to pick up the blankets from beside the fire, and paused with his arms full of bedding, looking at me. "What did you mean, you're getting your own place here ready? You're never thinking of setting up house here?"

"Not a house, no."

"That cave?"

I smiled at his expression. "When Ambrosius has done with me, and the country is quiet, that is where I shall go. I told you, didn't I, that if you stayed with me you'd live far from home?"

"We were talking about dying, as far as I remember. You mean, live there?"

"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps not. But I think I shall need a place where I can be alone, away, aside from things happening. Thinking and planning is one side of life; doing is another. A man cannot be doing all the time."

"Tell that to Uther."

"I am not Uther."

"Well, it takes both sorts, as they say." He dumped the blankets on the bed. "What are you smiling at?"

"Was I? Never mind. Let's get to bed, we'll have to be early at the nunnery. Did you have to bribe the old woman again?"

"Old woman nothing." He straightened. "It was a girl this time. A looker, too, what I could see of her with that sack of a gown and a hood over her head. Whoever puts a girl like that in a nunnery deserves— " He began to explain what they deserved, but I cut him short.

"Did you find out how my mother was?"

"They said she was better. The fever's gone, but she'll not rest quiet till she's seen you. You'll tell her everything now?"

"Yes."

"And then?"

"We join Ambrosius."

"Ah," he said, and when he had dragged his mattress to lie across the door, he blew out the lamp and lay down without another word to sleep.

My bed was comfortable enough, and the room, derelict or no, was luxury itself after the journey. But I slept badly. In imagination I was out on the road with Ambrosius, heading for Doward. From what I had heard of Doward, reducing it would not be an easy job. I began to wonder if after all I had done my father a disservice in driving the High King out of his Snowdon fastness. I should have left him there, I thought, with his rotten tower, and Ambrosius would have driven him back to the sea.

It was with an effort almost of surprise that I recalled my own prophecy. What I had done at Dinas Brenin, I had not done of myself. It was not I who had decided to send Vortigern fleeing out of Wales .

Out of the dark, out of the wild and whirling stars, I had been told. The Red Dragon would triumph, the White would fall. The voice that had said so, that said so now in the musty dark of Camlach's room, was not my own; it was the god's. One did not lie awake looking for reasons; one obeyed, and then slept.

3

It was the girl Cadal had spoken of who opened the nunnery gate to us. She must have been waiting to receive us, for almost as soon as Cadal's hand was lifted to the bell-pull the gate opened and she motioned us to come in. I got a swift impression of wide eyes under the brown hood, and a supple young body shrouded in the rough gown, as she latched the heavy gate and, drawing her hood closer over her face and hair, led us quickly across the courtyard. Her feet, bare in canvas sandals, looked cold, and were splashed with mud from the puddled yard, but they were slim and well-shaped, and her hands were pretty. She did not speak, but led us across the yard and through a narrow passage between two buildings, into a larger square beyond. Here against the walls stood fruit trees, and a few flowers grew, but these were mostly weeds and wild-flowers, and the doors of the cells that opened off the courtyard were unpainted and, where they stood open, gave on bare little rooms where simplicity had become ugliness and, too often, squalor.

Not so in my mother's cell. She was housed with adequate — if not royal — comfort. They had let her bring her own furniture, the room was limewashed and spotlessly clean, and with the change in the April weather the sun had come out and was shining straight in through the narrow window and across her bed. I remembered the furniture; it was her own bed from home, and the curtain at the window was one she had woven herself, the red cloth with the green pattern that she had been making the day my uncle Camlach came home. I remembered, too, the wolfskin on the floor; my grandfather had killed the beast with his bare hands and the haft of his broken dagger; its beady eyes and snarl had terrified me when I was small. The cross that hung on the bare wall at the foot of her bed was of dull silver, with a lovely pattern of locked but flowing lines, and studs of amethyst that caught the light.

The girl showed me the door in silence, and withdrew. Cadal sat down on a bench outside to wait.

My mother lay propped on pillows, in the shaft of sunshine. She looked pale and tired, and spoke not much above a whisper, but was, she told me, on the mend. When I questioned her about the illness, and laid a hand on her temples, she put me aside, smiling and saying she was well enough looked after. I did not insist: half of healing is in the patient's trust, and no woman ever thinks her own son is much more than a child. Besides, I could see that the fever had gone, and now that she was no longer anxious over me, she would sleep.

So I merely pulled up the room's single chair, sat down and began to tell her all she wanted to know, without waiting for her questions: about my escape from Maridunum and the flight like the arrow from the god's bow straight from Britain to Ambrosius' feet, and all that had happened since. She lay back against her pillows and watched me with astonishment and some slowly growing emotion which I identified as the emotion a cage-bird might feel if you set it to hatch a merlin's egg.

When I had finished she was tired, and grey stood under her eyes so sharply drawn that I got up to go.

But she looked contented, and said, as if it was the sum and finish of the story, as I suppose it was, for her:

"He has acknowledged you."

"Yes. They call me Merlin Ambrosius."

She was silent a little, smiling to herself. I crossed to the window and leaned my elbows on the sill, looking out. The sun was warm. Cadal nodded on his bench, half asleep. From across the yard a movement caught my eye; in a shadowed doorway the girl was standing, watching my mother's door as if waiting for me to come out. She had put back her hood, and even in the shadows I could see the gold of her hair and a young face lovely as a flower. Then she saw me watching her. For perhaps two seconds our eyes met and held. I knew then why the ancients armed the cruellest god with arrows; I felt the shock of it right through my body. Then she had gone, shrinking close-hooded back into the shadow, and behind me my mother was saying:

"And now? What now?"

I turned my back on the sunlight. "I go to join him. But not until you are better. When I go I want to take news of you."

She looked anxious. "You must not stay here. Maridunum is not safe for you."

"I think it is. Since the news came in of the landing, the place has emptied itself of Vortigern's men. We had to take to the hill-tracks on our way south; the road was alive with men riding to join him."

"That's true, but —"

"And I shan't go about, I promise you. I was lucky last night, I ran into Dinias as soon as I set foot in town. He gave me a room at home."

"Dinias?"

I laughed at her astonishment. "Dinias feels he owes me something, never mind what, but we agreed well enough last night." I told her what mission I had sent him on, and she nodded.

"He" — and I knew she did not mean Dinias — "will need every man who can hold a sword." She knitted her brows. "They say Hengist has three hundred thousand men. Will he" — and again she was not referring to Hengist — "be able to withstand Vortigern, and after him Hengist and the Saxons?"

I suppose I was still thinking of last night's vigil. I said, without pausing to consider how it would sound:

"I have said so, so it must be true."

A movement from the bed brought my eyes down to her. She was crossing herself, her eyes at once startled and severe, and through it all afraid. "Merlin — " but on the word a cough shook her, so that when she managed to speak again it was only a harsh whisper: "Beware of arrogance. Even if God has given you power —"

I laid a hand on her wrist, stopping her. "You mistake me, madam. I put it badly. I only meant that the god had said it through me, and because he had said it, it must be true. Ambrosius must win, it is in the stars."

She nodded, and I saw the relief wash through her and slacken her, body and mind, like an exhausted child.

I said gently: "Don't be afraid for me, Mother. Whatever god uses me, I am content to be his voice and instrument. I go where he sends me. And when he has finished with me, he will take me back."

"There is only one God," she whispered.

I smiled at her. "That is what I am beginning to think. Now, go to sleep. I will come back in the morning."

I went to see my mother again next morning. This time I went alone. I had sent Cadal to find provisions in the market, Dinias' slut having vanished when he did, leaving us to fend for ourselves in the deserted palace. I was rewarded, for the girl was again on duty at the gate, and again led me to my mother's room.

But when I said something to her she merely pulled the hood closer without speaking, so that again I saw no more of her than the slender hands and feet. The cobbles were dry today, and the puddles gone. She had washed her feet, and in the grip of the coarse sandals they looked as fragile as blue-veined flowers in a peasant's basket. Or so I told myself, my mind working like a singer's, where it had no right to be working at all. The arrow still thrummed where it had struck me, and my whole body seemed to thrill and tighten at the sight of her.

She showed me the door again, as if I could have forgotten it, and withdrew to wait.

My mother seemed a little better, and had rested well, she told me. We talked for a while; she had questions about the details of my story, and I filled them in for her. When I got up to go I asked, as casually as I could:

"The girl who opened the gate; she is young, surely, to be here? Who is she?"

"Her mother worked in the palace. Keridwen. Do you remember her?"

I shook my head. "Should I?"

"No." But when I asked her why she smiled, she would say nothing, and in face of her amusement I dared not ask any more.

On the third day it was the old deaf portress; and I spent the whole interview with my mother wondering if she had (as women will) seen straight through my carefully casual air to what lay beneath, and passed the word that the girl must be kept out of my way. But on the fourth day she was there, and this time I knew before I got three steps inside the gate that she had been hearing the stories about Dinas Brenin.

She was so eager to catch a glimpse of the magician that she let the hood fall back a little, and in my turn I saw the wide eyes, grey-blue, full of a sort of awed curiosity and wonder. When I smiled at her and said something in greeting she ducked back inside the hood again, but this time she answered. Her voice was light and small, a child's voice, and she called me "my lord" as if she meant it.

"What's your name?" I asked her.

"Keri, my lord."

I hung back, to detain her. "How is my mother today, Keri?"

But she would not answer, just took me straight to the inner court, and left me there.

That night I lay awake again, but no god spoke to me, not even to tell me she was not for me. The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already.

By the last day of April my mother was so much better that when I went again to see her she was in the chair by the window, wearing a woollen robe over her shift, and sitting full in the sun. A quince tree, pinioned to the wall outside, was heavy with rosy cups where bees droned, and just beside her on the sill a pair of white doves strutted and crooned.

"You have news?" she asked, as soon as she saw my face.

"A messenger came in today. Vortigern is dead and the Queen with him. They say that Hengist is coming south with a vast force, including Vortimer's brother Pascentius and the remnant of his army. Ambrosius is already on his way to meet them."

She sat very straight, looking past me at the wall. There was a woman with her today, sitting on a stool on the other side of the bed; it was one of the nuns who had attended her at Dinas Brenin. I saw her make the sign of the cross on her breast, but Niniane sat still and straight looking past me at something, thinking.

"Tell me, then."

I told her all I had heard about the affair at Doward. The woman crossed herself again, but my mother never moved. When I had finished, her eyes came back to me.

"And you will go now?"

"Yes. Will you give me a message for him?"

"When I see him again," she said, "it will be time enough."

When I took leave of her she was still sitting staring past the winking amethysts on the wall to something distant in place and time.

Keri was not waiting, and I lingered for a while before I crossed the outer yard, slowly, towards the gate. Then I saw her waiting in the deep shadow of the gateway's arch, and quickened my step. I was turning over a host of things to say, all equally useless to prolong what could not be prolonged, but there was no need. She put out one of those pretty hands and touched my sleeve, beseechingly. "My lord —"

Her hood was half back, and I saw tears in her eyes. I said sharply: "What's the matter?" I believe that for a wild moment I thought she wept because I was going. "Keri, what is it?"

"I have the toothache."

I gaped at her. I must have looked as silly as if I had just been slapped across the face.

"Here," she said, and put a hand to her cheek. The hood fell right back. "It's been aching for days.

Please, my lord —"

I said hoarsely: "I'm not a toothdrawer."

"But if you would just touch it —"

"Or a magician," I started to say, but she came close to me, and my voice strangled in my throat. She smelled of honeysuckle. Her hair was barley-gold and her eyes grey like bluebells before they open.

Before I knew it she had taken my hand between both her own and raised it to her cheek.

I stiffened fractionally, as if to snatch it back, then controlled myself, and opened the palm gently along her cheek. The wide greybell eyes were as innocent as the sky. As she leaned towards me the neck of her gown hung forward slackly and I could see her breasts. Her skin was smooth as water, and her breath sweet against my cheek.

I withdrew the hand gently enough, and stood back. "I can do nothing about it." I suppose my voice was rough. She lowered her eyelids and stood humbly with folded hands. Her lashes were short and thick and golden as her hair. There was a tiny mole at the corner of her mouth.

I said: "If it's no better by morning, have it drawn."

"It's better already, my lord. It stopped aching as soon as you touched it." Her voice was full of wonder, and her hand crept up to the cheek where mine had lain. The movement was like a caress, and I felt my blood jerk with a beat like pain. With a sudden movement she reached for my hand again and quickly, shyly, stooped forward and pressed her mouth to it.

Then the door swung open beside me and I was out in the empty street.

4

It seemed, from what the messenger had told me, that Ambrosius had been right in his decision to make an end of Vortigern before turning on the Saxons. His reduction of Doward, and the savagery with which he did it, had their effect. Those of the invading Saxons who had ventured furthest inland began to withdraw northwards towards the wild debatable lands which had always provided a beachhead for invasion. They halted north of the Humber to fortify themselves where they could, and wait for him. At first Hengist believed that Ambrosius had at his command little more than the Breton invading army — and he was ignorant of the nature of that deadly weapon of war. He thought (it was reported) that very few of the island British had joined Ambrosius; in any case the Saxons had defeated the British, in their small tribal forces, so often that they despised them as easy meat. But now as reports reached the Saxon leader of the thousands who had flocked to the Red Dragon, and of the success at Doward, he decided to remain no longer fortified north of the Humber, but to march swiftly south again to meet the British at a place of his own choosing, where he might surprise Ambrosius and destroy his army.

Once again, Ambrosius moved with Caesar-speed. This was necessary, because where the Saxons had withdrawn, they had laid the country waste.

The end came in the second week of May, a week hot with sunshine that seemed to come from June, and interrupted by showers left over from April — a borrowed week, and, for the Saxons, a debt called in by fate. Hengist, with his preparations half complete, was caught by Ambrosius at Maesbeli, near Conan's Fort, or Kaerconan, that men sometimes call Conisburgh. This is a hilly place, with the fort on a crag, and a deep ravine running by. Here the Saxons had tried to prepare an ambush for Ambrosius' force, but Ambrosius' scouts got news of it from a Briton they came across lurking in a hilltop cave, where he had fled to keep his woman and two small children from the axes of the Northmen. So Ambrosius, forewarned, increased the speed of his march and caught up with Hengist before the ambush could be fully laid, thus forcing him into open battle.

Hengist's attempt to lay an ambush had turned the luck against him; Ambrosius, where he halted and deployed his army, had the advantage of the land. His main force, Bretons, Gauls, and the island British from the south and southwest, waited on a gentle hill, with a level field ahead over which they could attack unimpeded. Among these troops, medley-wise, were other native British who had joined him, with their leaders. Behind this main army the ground rose gently, broken only by brakes of thorn and yellow gorse, to a long ridge which curved to the west in a series of low rocky hills, and on the east was thickly forested with oak. The men from Wales — mountainy men — were stationed mainly on the wings, the North Welsh in the oak forest and, separated from them by the full body of Ambrosius' army, the South Welsh on the hills to the west. These forces, lightly armed, highly mobile and with scores to settle, were to hold themselves in readiness as reinforcements, the swift hammer-blows which could be directed during battle at the weakest points of the enemy's defense. They could also be relied upon to catch and cut down any of Hengist's Saxons who broke and fled the field.

The Saxons, caught in their own trap, with this immense winged force in front of them, and behind them the rock of Kaerconan and the narrow defile where the ambush had been planned, fought like demons.

But they were at a disadvantage: they started afraid — afraid of Ambrosius' reputation, of his recent ferocious victory at Doward, and more than both — so men told me — of my prophecy to Vortigern which had spread from mouth to mouth as quickly as the fires in Doward tower. And of course the omens worked the other way for Ambrosius.Battle was joined shortly before noon, and by sunset it was all over.

I saw it all. It was my first great battlefield, and I am not ashamed that it was almost my last. My battles were not fought with sword and spear. If it comes to that, I had already had a hand in the winning of Kaerconan before I ever reached it; and when I did reach it, was to find myself playing the very part that Uther had once, in jest, assigned to me.

I had ridden with Cadal as far as Caerleon, where we found a small body of Ambrosius' troops in possession of the fortress, and another on its way to invest and repair the fort at Maridunum. Also, their officer told me confidentially, to make sure that the Christian community — "all the community," he added gravely, with the ghost of a wink at me, "such is the commander's piety" — remained safe. He had been detailed, moreover, to send some of his men back with me, to escort me to Ambrosius. My father had even thought to send some of my clothes. So I sent Cadal back, to his disgust, to do what he could about Galapas' cave, and await me there, then myself rode north-east with the escort.

We came up with the army just outside Kaerconan. The troops were already deployed for battle and there was no question of seeing the commander, so we withdrew, as instructed, to the western hill where the men of the South Welsh tribes eyed one another distrustfully over swords held ready for the Saxons below. The men of my escort troop eyed me in something the same manner: they had not intruded on my silence on the ride, and it was plain they held me in some awe, not only as Ambrosius' acknowledged son, but as "Vortigern's prophet" — a title which had already stuck to me and which it took me some years to shed. When I reported with them to the officer in charge, and asked him to assign me a place in his troop, he was horrified, and begged me quite seriously to stay out of the fight, but to find some place where the men could see me, and know, as he put it, "that the prophet was here with them." In the end I did as he wished, and withdrew to the top of a small rocky crag hard by where, wrapping my cloak about me, I prepared to watch the battlefield spread out below like a moving map.

Ambrosius himself was in the center; I could see the white stallion with the Red Dragon glimmering above it. Out to the right Uther's blue cloak glinted as his horse cantered along the lines. The leader of the left wing I did not immediately recognize; a grey horse, a big, heavy-built figure striding it, a standard bearing some device in white which I could not at first distinguish. Then I saw what it was. A boar. The Boar of Cornwall . Ambrosius' commander of the left was none other than the greybeard Gorlois, lord of Tintagel.

Nothing could be read of the order in which the Saxons had assembled. All my life I had heard of the ferocity of these great blond giants, and all British children were brought up from babyhood on stories of their terror. They went mad in war, men said, and could fight bleeding from a dozen wounds, with no apparent lessening of strength or ferocity. And what they had in strength and cruelty they lacked in discipline. This seemed, indeed, to be so. There was no order that I could see in the vast surge of glinting metal and tossing horsehair which was perpetually on the move, like a flood waiting for the dam to break.

Even from that distance I could pick out Hengist and his brother, giants with long moustaches sweeping to their chests, and long hair flying as they spurred their shaggy, tough little horses up and down the ranks. They were shouting, and echoes of the shouts came clearly; prayers to the gods, vows, exhortations, commands, which rose towards a ferocious crescendo, till on the last wild shout of Kill, kill, kill!" the axe-heads swung up, glinting in the May sunlight, and the pack surged forward towards the ordered lines of Ambrosius' army."

The two hosts met with a shock that sent the jackdaws squalling up from Kaerconan, and seemed to splinter the very air. It was impossible, even from my point of vantage, to see which way the fight — or rather, the several different movements of the fight — was going. At one moment it seemed as if the Saxons with their axes and winged helms were boring a way into the British host; at the next, you would see a knot of Saxons cut off in a sea of British , and then, apparently engulfed, vanish. Ambrosius' center block met the main shock of the charge, then Uther's cavalry, with a swift flanking movement, came in from the east. The men of Cornwall under Gorlois held back at first, but as soon as the Saxons' front line began to waver, they came in like a hammer-blow from the left and smashed it apart. After that the field broke up into chaos. Everywhere men were fighting in small groups, or even singly and hand to hand. The noise, the clash and shouting, even the smell of sweat and blood mingled, seemed to come up to this high perch where I sat with my cloak about me, watching. Immediately below me I was conscious of the stirring and muttering of the Welshmen, then the sudden cheer as a troop of Saxons broke and galloped in our direction. In a moment the hilltop was empty save for me, only that the clamour seemed to have washed nearer, round the foot of the hill like the tide coming in fast. A robin lighted on a black-thorn at my elbow, and began to sing. The sound came high and sweet and uncaring through all the noise of battle. To this day, whenever I think of the battle for Kaerconan, it brings to mind a robin's song, mingled with the croaking of the ravens. For they were already circling, high overhead: men say they can hear the clash of swords ten miles off.

It was finished by sunset. Eldol, Duke of Gloucester, dragged Hengist from his horse under the very walls of Kaerconan to which he had turned to flee, and the rest of the Saxons broke and fled, some to escape, but many to be cut down in the hills, or the narrow defile at the foot of Kaerconan. At first dusk, torches were lit at the gate of the fortress, the gates were thrown open, and Ambrosius' white stallion paced across the bridge and into the stronghold, leaving the field to the ravens, the priests, and the burial parties.

I did not seek him out straight away. Let him bury his dead and clear the fortress. There was work for me down there among the wounded, and besides, there was no hurry now to give him my mother's message. While I had sat there in the May sunlight between the robin's song and the crash of battle, I knew that she had sickened again, and was already dead.

5

I made my way downhill between the clumps of gorse and the thorn trees. The Welsh troops had vanished, long since, to a man, and isolated shouts and battle cries showed where small parties were still hunting down the fugitives in forest and hill.

Below, on the plain, the fighting was over. They were carrying the wounded into Kaerconan. Torches weaved everywhere, till the plain was all light and smoke. Men shouted to one another, and the cries and groans of the wounded came up clearly, with the occasional scream of a horse, the sharp commands from the officers, and the tramp of the stretcher-bearers' feet. Here and there, in the dark corners away from the torchlight, men scurried singly or in pairs among the heaped bodies. One saw them stoop, straighten, and scurry off. Sometimes where they paused there was a cry, a sudden moan, sometimes the brief flash of metal or the quick downstroke of a shortened blow. Looters, rummaging among the dead and dying, keeping a few steps ahead of the official salvage parties. The ravens were coming down; I saw the tilt and slide of their black wings hovering above the torches, and a pair perched, waiting, on a rock not far from me. With nightfall the rats would be there, too, running up from the damp roots of the castle walls to attack the dead bodies.

The work of salvaging the living was being done as fast and efficiently as everything else the Count's army undertook. Once they were all within, the gates would be shut. I would seek him out, I decided, after the first tasks were done. He would already have been told that I was safely here, and he would guess I had gone to work with the doctors. There would be time, later, to eat, and then it would be time enough to talk to him.

On the field, as I made my way across, the stretcher parties still strove to separate friend from foe. The Saxon dead had been flung into a heap in the center of the field; I guessed they would be burned according to custom. Beside the growing hill of bodies a platoon stood guard over the glittering pile of arms and ornaments taken from the dead men. The British dead were being laid nearer the wall, in rows for identification. There were small parties of men, each with an officer, bending over them one by one.

As I picked my way through trampled mud oily and stinking with blood and slime I passed, among the armed and staring dead, the bodies of half a dozen ragged men — peasants or outlaws by the look of them. These would be looters, cut down or speared by the soldiers. One of them still twitched like a pinned moth, hastily speared to the ground by a broken Saxon weapon which had been left in his body. I hesitated, then went and bent over him. He watched me — he was beyond speech — and I could see he still hoped. If he had been cleanly speared, I would have drawn the blade out and let him go with the blood, but as it was, there was a quicker way for him, I drew my dagger, pulled my cloak aside out of the way, and carefully, so that I would be out of the jet of blood, stuck my dagger in at the side of his throat. I wiped it on the dead man's rags, and straightened to find a cold pair of eyes watching me above a levelled short sword three paces away.

Mercifully, it was a man I knew. I saw him recognize me, then he laughed and lowered his sword.

"You're lucky. I nearly gave it to you in the back."

"I didn't think of that." I slid the dagger back into its sheath. "It would have been a pity to die for stealing from that. What did you think he had worth taking?"

"You'd be surprised what you catch them taking. Anything from a corn plaster to a broken sandal strap."

He jerked his head towards the high walls of the fortress. "He's been asking where you were."

"I'm on my way."

"They say you foretold this, Merlin? And Doward, too?"

"I said the Red Dragon would overcome the White," I said. "But I think this is not the end yet. What happened to Hengist?"

"Yonder." He nodded again towards the citadel. "He made for the fort when the Saxon line broke, and was captured just by the gate."

"I saw that. He's inside, then? Still alive?"

"Yes."

"And Octa? His son?"

"Got away. He and the cousin — Eosa, isn't it? — galloped north."

"So it isn't the end. Has he sent after them?"

"Not yet. He says there's time enough." He eyed me. "Is there?"

"How would I know?" I was unhelpful. "How long does he plan to stay here? A few days?"

"Three, he says. Time to bury the dead."

"What will he do with Hengist?"

"What do you think?" He made a little chopping movement downwards with the edge of his hand. "And long overdue, if you ask me. They're talking about it in there, but you could hardly call it a trial. The Count's said nothing as yet, but Uther's roaring to have him killed, and the priests want a bit of cold blood to round the day off with. Well, I'll have to get back to work, see if I can catch more civilians looting." He added as he turned away: "We saw you up there on the hill during the fighting. People were saying it was an omen."

He went. A raven flapped down from behind me with a croak, and settled on the breast of the man I had killed. I called to a torch-bearer to light me the rest of the way, and made for the main gate of the fortress.

While I was still some way short of the bridge a blaze of tossing torches came out, and in the middle of them, bound and held, the big blond giant that I knew must be Hengist himself. Ambrosius' troops formed a hollow square, and into this space his captors dragged the Saxon leader, and there must have forced him to his knees, for the flaxen head vanished behind the close ranks of the British. I saw Ambrosius himself then, coming out over the bridge, followed closely on his left by Uther, and on his other side by a man I did not know, in the robe of a Christian bishop, still splashed with mud and blood. Others crowded behind them. The bishop was talking earnestly in Ambrosius' ear. Ambrosius' face was a mask, the cold, expressionless mask I knew so well. I heard him say what sounded like, "You will see, they will be satisfied," and then, shortly, something else that caused the bishop at last to fall silent.

Ambrosius took his place. I saw him nod to an officer. There was a word of command, followed by the whistle and thud of a blow. A sound — it could hardly be called a growl — of satisfaction from the watching men. The bishop's voice, hoarse with triumph: "So perish all pagan enemies of the one true God! Let his body be thrown now to the wolves and kites!" And then Ambrosius' voice, cold and quiet:

"He will go to his own gods with his army round him, in the manner of his people." Then to the officer:

"Send me word when all is ready, and I will come."

The bishop started to shout again, but Ambrosius turned away unheeding and, with Uther and the other captains, strode back across the bridge and into the fortress. I followed. Spears flashed down to bar my way, then — the place was garrisoned by Ambrosius' Bretons — I was recognized, and the spears withdrawn.

Inside the fortress was a wide square courtyard, now full of a bustling, trampling confusion of men and horses. At the far side a shallow flight of steps led to the door of the main hall and tower. Ambrosius' party was mounting the steps, but I turned aside. There was no need to ask where the wounded had been taken. On the east side of the square a long double-storeyed building had been organized as a dressing station; the sounds coming from this guided me. I was hailed thankfully by the doctor in charge, a man called Gandar, who had taught me inBrittany , and who avowedly had no use for either priests or magicians, but who very much needed another pair of trained hands. He assigned me a couple of orderlies, found me some instruments and a box of salves and medicines, and thrust me — literally — into a long room that was little better than a roofed shed, but which now held some fifty wounded men. I stripped to the waist and started work.

Somewhere around midnight the worst was done and things were quieter. I was at the far end of my section when a slight stir near the entrance made me look round to see Ambrosius, with Gandar and two officers, come quietly in and walk down the row of wounded, stopping by each man to talk or, with those worst wounded, to question the doctor in an undertone.

I was stitching a thigh wound — it was clean, and would heal, but it was deep and jagged, and to everyone's relief the man had fainted — when the group reached me. I did not look up, and Ambrosius waited in silence until I had done and, reaching for the dressings the orderly had prepared, bandaged the wound. I finished, and got to my feet as the orderly came back with a bowl of water. I plunged my hands into this, and looked up to see Ambrosius smiling. He was still in his hacked and spattered armour, but he looked fresh and alert, and ready if necessary to start another battle. I could see the wounded men watching him as if they would draw strength just from the sight.

"My lord," I said.

He stooped over the unconscious man. "How is he?"

"A flesh wound. He'll recover, and live to be thankful it wasn't a few inches to the left."

"You've done a good job, I see." Then as I finished drying my hands and dismissed the orderly with a word of thanks, Ambrosius put out his own hand. "And now, welcome. I believe we owe you quite a lot, Merlin. I don't mean for this; I mean for Doward, and for today as well. At any rate the men think so, and if soldiers decide something is lucky, then it is lucky. Well, I'm glad to see you safe. You have news for me, I believe."

"Yes." I said it without expression, because of the men with us, but I saw the smile fade from his eyes.

He hesitated, then said quietly: "Gentlemen, give us leave." They went. He and I faced one another across the body of the unconscious man. Nearby a soldier tossed and moaned, and another cried out and bit the sound back. The place smelled vile, of blood and drying sweat and sickness.

"What is this news?"

"It concerns my mother."

I think he already knew what I was going to tell him. He spoke slowly, measuring the words, as if each one carried with it some weight that he ought to feel. "The men who rode here with you...they brought me news of her. She had been ill, but was recovered, they said, and safely back in Maridunum. Was this not true?"

"It was true when I left Maridunum. If I had known the illness was mortal, I would not have left her."

" 'Was' mortal?"

"Yes, my lord."

He was silent, looking down, but without seeing him, at the wounded man. The latter was beginning to stir; soon he would be back with the pain and the stench and the fear of mortality. I said: "Shall we go out into the air? I've finished here. I'll send someone back to this man."

"Yes. And you must get your clothes. It's a cool night." Then, still without moving: "When did she die?"

"At sunset today."

He looked up quickly at that, his eyes narrow and intent, then he nodded, accepting it. He turned to go out, gesturing me to walk with him. As we went he asked me: "Do you suppose she knew?"

"I think so, yes."

"She sent no message?"

"Not directly. She said, 'When we meet again, it will be soon enough.' She is a Christian, remember.

They believe —"

"I know what they believe."

Some commotion outside made itself heard, a voice barking a couple of commands, feet tramping.

Ambrosius paused, listening. Someone was coming our way, quickly.

"We'll talk later, Merlin. You have a lot to tell me. But first we must send Hengist's spirit to join his fathers. Come."

They had heaped the Saxon dead high on a great stack of wood, and poured oil and pitch over them. At the top of the pyramid, on a platform roughly nailed together of planks, lay Hengist. How Ambrosius had stopped them robbing him I shall never know, but he had not been robbed. His shield lay on his breast, and a sword by his right hand. They had hidden the severed neck with a broad leather collar of the kind some soldiers use for throat guards. It was studded with gold. A cloak covered his body from throat to feet, and its scarlet folds flowed down over the rough wood.

As soon as the torches were thrust in below, the flames caught greedily. It was a still night, and the smoke poured upwards in a thick black column laced with fire. The edges of Hengist's cloak caught, blackened, curled, and then he was lost to sight in the gush of smoke and flames. The fire cracked like whips, and as the logs burned and broke, men ran, sweating and blackened, to throw more in. Even from where we stood, well back, the heat was intense, and the smell of burnt pitch and roasting meat came in sickening gusts on the damp night air. Beyond the lighted ring of watching men torches moved still on the battlefield, and one could hear the steady thud of spades striking into the earth for the British dead.

Beyond the brilliant pyre, beyond the dark slopes of the far hills, the May moon hung, faint through the smoke.

"What do you see?"

Ambrosius' voice made me start. I looked at him, surprised. "See?"

"In the fire, Merlin the prophet."

"Nothing but dead men roasting."

"Then look and see something for me, Merlin. Where has Octa gone?"

I laughed. "How should I know? I told you all I could see."

But he did not smile. "Look harder. Tell me where Octa has gone. And Eosa. Where they will dig themselves in to wait for me. And how soon."

"I told you. I don't look for things. If it is the god's will that they should come to me, they come out of the flames, or out of the black night, and they come silently like an arrow out of ambush. I do not go to find the bowman; all I can do is stand with my breast bare and wait for the arrow to hit me."

"Then do it now." He spoke strongly, stubbornly. I saw he was quite serious. "You saw for Vortigern."

"You call it 'for' him? To prophesy his death? When I did that, my lord, I did not even know what I was saying. I suppose Gorlois told you what happened — even now, I couldn't tell you myself. I neither know when it will come, nor when it will leave me."

"Only today you knew about Niniane, and without either fire or darkness."

"That's true. But I can't tell you how, any more than how I knew what I told Vortigern."

"The men call you 'Vortigern's prophet.' You prophesied victory for us, and we had it, here and at Doward. The men believe you and have faith in you. So have I. Is it not a better title now to be

'Ambrosius' prophet'?"

"My lord, you know I would take any title from you that you cared to bestow. But this comes from somewhere else. I cannot call it, but I know that if it matters it will come. And when it comes, be sure I will tell you. You know I am at your service. Now, about Octa and Eosa I know nothing. I can only guess — and guess as a man. They fight still under the White Dragon, do they?"

His eyes narrowed. "Yes."

"Then what Vortigern's prophet said must still hold good."

"I can tell the men this?"

"If they need it. When do you plan to march?"

"In three days."

"Aiming for where?"

"York."

I turned up a hand. "Then your guess as a commander is probably as good as my guess as a magician.

Will you take me?"

He smiled. "Will you be any use to me?"

"Probably not as a prophet. But do you need an engineer? Or an apprentice doctor? Or even a singer?"

He laughed. "A host in yourself, I know. As long as you don't turn priest on me, Merlin. I have enough of them."

"You needn't be afraid of that."

The flames were dying down. The officer in charge of the proceedings approached, saluted, and asked if the men might be dismissed. Ambrosius gave him leave, then looked at me. "Come with me to York , then. I shall have work for you there. Real work. They tell me the place is half ruined, and I'll need someone to help direct the engineers. Tremorinus is at Caerleon. Now, find Caius Valerius and tell him to look after you, and bring you to me in an hour's time." He added over his shoulder as he turned away:

"And in the meantime if anything should come to you out of the dark like an arrow, you'll let me know?"

"Unless it really is an arrow."

He laughed, and went.

Uther was beside me suddenly. "Well, Merlin the bastard? They're saying you won the battle for us from the hilltop?" I noticed, with surprise, that there was no malice in his tone. His manner was relaxed, easy, almost gay, like that of a prisoner let loose. I supposed this was indeed how he felt after the long frustrations of the years in Brittany. Left to himself Uther would have charged across the Narrow Sea before he was fairly into manhood, and been valiantly smashed in pieces for his pains. Now, like a hawk being flown for the first time at the quarry, he was feeling his power. I could feel it, too: it clothed him like folded wings. I said something in greeting, but he interrupted me. "Did you see anything in the flames just now?"

"Oh, not you, too," I said warmly. "The Count seems to think all I have to do is to look at a torch and tell the future. I've been trying to explain it doesn't work like that."

"You disappoint me. I was going to ask you to tell my fortune."

"Oh, Eros, that's easy enough. In about an hour's time, as soon as you've settled your men, you'll be bedded down with a girl."

"It's not as much of a certainty as all that. How the devil did you know I'd manage to find one? They're not very thick on the ground just here — there's only about one man in fifty managed to get one. I was lucky."

"That's what I mean," I said. "Given fifty men and only one woman amongst them, then Uther has the woman. That's what I call one of the certainties of life. Where will I find Caius Valerius?"

"I'll send someone to show you. I'd come myself, only I'm keeping out of his way."

"Why?"

"When we tossed for the girl, he lost," said Uther cheerfully. "He'll have plenty of time to look after you. In fact, all night. Come along."

6

We went into York three days before the end of May.

Ambrosius' scouts had confirmed his guess about York ; there was a good road north from Kaerconan, and Octa had fled up this with Eosa his kinsman, and had taken refuge in the fortified city which the Romans called Eboracum, and the Saxons Eoforwick, or York. But the fortifications at York were in poor repair, and the inhabitants, when they heard of Ambrosius' resounding victory at Kaerconan, offered the fleeing Saxons cold comfort. For all Octa's speed, Ambrosius was barely two days behind him, and at the sight of our vast army, rested, and reinforced by fresh British allies encouraged by the Red Dragon's victories, the Saxons, doubting whether they could hold the city against him, decided to beg for mercy.

I saw it myself, being right up in the van with the siege engines, under the walls. In its way it was more unpleasant even than a battle. The Saxon leader was a big man, blond like his father, and young. He appeared before Ambrosius stripped to his trews, which were of course stuff bound with thongs. His wrists likewise were bound, this time with a chain, and his head and body were smeared with dust, a token of humiliation he hardly needed. His eyes were angry, and I could see he had been forced into this by the cowardice — or wisdom, as you care to call it — of the group of Saxon and British notables who crowded behind him out of the city gate, begging Ambrosius for mercy on themselves and their families.

This time he gave it. He demanded only that the remnants of the Saxon army should withdraw to the north, beyond the old Wall of Hadrian, which (he said) he would count the border of his realm. The lands beyond this, so men say, are wild and sullen, and scarcely habitable, but Octa took his liberty gladly enough, and after him, eager for the same mercy, came his cousin Eosa throwing himself on Ambrosius' bounty. He received it, and the city of York opened its gates to its new king.

Ambrosius' first occupation of a town was always to follow the same pattern. First of all the establishment of order: he would never allow the British auxiliaries into the town; his own troops from Less Britain, with no local loyalties, were the ones that established and held order. The streets were cleaned, the fortifications temporarily repaired, and plans drawn up for the future work and put into the hands of a small group of skilled engineers who were to call on local labour. Then a meeting of the city's leaders, a discussion on future policy, an oath of loyalty to Ambrosius, and arrangements made for the garrisoning of the city when the army departed. Finally a religious ceremony of thanksgiving with a feast and a public holiday.

In York , the first great city invested by Ambrosius, the ceremony was held in the church, on a blazing day near the end of June, and in the presence of the whole army, and a vast crowd of people.

I had already attended a private ceremony elsewhere.

It was not to be expected that there was still a temple of Mithras in York. The worship was forbidden, and in any case would have vanished when the last legion left the Saxon Shore almost a century ago, but in the day of the legions the temple at York had been one of the finest in the country. Since there was no natural cave nearby, it had originally been built below the house of the Roman commander, in a large cellar, and because of this the Christians had not been able to desecrate and destroy it, as was their wont with the sacred places of other men. But time and damp had done their work, and the sanctuary had crumbled into disrepair. Once, under a Christian governor, there had been an attempt to turn the place into a chapel-crypt, but the next governor had been outspokenly, not to say violently, opposed to this.

He was a Christian himself, but he saw no reason why the perfectly good cellar under his house should not be used for what (to him) was the real purpose of a cellar, namely, to store wine. And a wine store it had remained, till the day Uther sent a working party down to clean and repair it for the meeting, which was to be held on the god's own feast day, the sixteenth day of June. This time the meeting was secret, not from fear, but from policy, since the official thanksgiving would be Christian, and Ambrosius would be there to offer thanks in the presence of the bishops and all the people. I myself had not seen the sanctuary, having been employed during my first days in York on the restoring of the Christian church in time for the public ceremony. But on the feast of Mithras I was to present myself at the underground temple with others of my own grade. Most of these were men I did not know, or could not identify by the voice behind the mask; but Uther was always recognizable, and my father would of course be there, in his office as Courier of the Sun.

The door of the temple was closed. We of the lowest grade waited our turn in the antechamber.

This was a smallish, square room, lit only by the two torches held in the hands of the statues one to either side of the temple door. Above the doorway was the old stone mask of a lion, worn and fretted, part of the wall. To either side, as worn and chipped, and with noses and members broken and hacked away, the two stone torch-bearers still looked ancient and dignified. The anteroom was chill, in spite of the torches, and smelled of smoke. I felt the cold at work on my body; it struck up from the stone floor into my bare feet, and under the long robe of white wool I was naked. But just as the first shiver ran up my skin, the temple door opened, and in an instant all was light and colour and fire.

Even now, after all these years, and knowing all that I have learned in a lifetime, I cannot find it in me to break the vow I made of silence and secrecy. Nor, so far as I know, has any man done so. Men say that what you are taught when young can never be fully expunged from your mind, and I know that I, myself, have never escaped the spell of the secret god who led me to Brittany and threw me at my father's feet.

Indeed, whether because of the curb on the spirit of which I have already written, or whether by intervention of the god himself, I find that my memory of his worship has gone into a blur, as if it was a dream. And a dream it may be, not of this time alone, but made up of all the other times, from the first vision of the midnight field, to this night's ceremony, which was the last.

A few things I remember. More torch-bearers of stone. The long benches to either side of the center aisle where men reclined in their bright robes, the masks turned to us, eyes watchful. The steps at the far end, and the great apse with the arch like a cave-mouth opening on the cave within, where, under the star-studded roof, was the old relief in stone of Mithras at the bull-slaying. It must have been somehow protected from the hammers of the god-breakers, for it was still strongly carved and dramatic. There he was, in the light of the torches, the young man of the standing stone, the fellow in the cap, kneeling on the fallen bull and, with his head turned away in sorrow, striking the sword into its throat. At the foot of the steps stood the fire-altars, one to each side. Beside one of them a man robed and masked as a Lion, with a rod in his hand. Beside the other the Heliodromos, the Courier of the Sun. And at the head of the steps, in the center of the apse, the Father waiting to receive us.

My Raven mask had poor eyeholes, and I could only see straight forward. It would not have been seemly to look from side to side with that pointed bird-mask, so I stood listening to the voices, and wondering how many friends were here, how many men I knew. The only one I could be sure of was the Courier, tall and quiet there by the altar fire, and one of the Lions, either him by the archway, or one of the grade who watched from somewhere along the makeshift benches.

This was the frame of the ceremony, and all that I can remember, except the end. The officiating Lion was not Uther, after all. He was a shorter man, of thick build, and seemingly older than Uther, and the blow he struck me was no more than the ritual tap, without the sting that Uther usually managed to put into it. Nor was Ambrosius the Courier. As the latter handed me the token meal of bread and wine, I saw the ring on the little finger of his left hand, made of gold, enclosing a stone of red jasper with a dragon crest carved small. But when he lifted the cup to my mouth, and the scarlet robe slipped back from his arm, I saw a familiar scar white on the brown flesh, and looked up to meet the blue eyes behind the mask, alight with a spark of amusement that quickened to laughter as I started, and spilled the wine.

Uther had stepped up two grades, it seemed, in the time since I had last attended the mysteries. And since there was no other Courier present, there was only one place for Ambrosius...

I turned from the Courier to kneel at the Father's feet. But the hands which took my own between them for the vow were the hands of an old man, and when I looked up, the eyes behind the mask were the eyes of a stranger.

Eight days later was the official ceremony of thanksgiving. Ambrosius was there, with all his officers, even Uther, "for," said my father to me afterwards when we were alone, "as you will find, all gods who are born of the light are brothers, and in this land, if Mithras who gives us victory is to bear the face of Christ, why, then, we worship Christ."

We never spoke of it again.

The capitulation of York marked the end of the first stage of Ambrosius' campaign. After York we went to London in easy stages, and with no more fighting, unless you count a few skirmishes by the way. What the King had to undertake now was the enormous work of reconstruction and the consolidation of his kingdom. In every town and strongpoint he left garrisons of tried men under trusted officers, and appointed his own engineers to help organize the work of rebuilding and repairing towns, roads and fortresses. Everywhere the picture was the same; once-fine buildings ruined or damaged almost beyond repair; roads half obliterated through neglect; villages destroyed and people hiding fearfully in caves and forests; places of worship pulled down or polluted. It was as if the stupidity and lawless greed of the Saxon hordes had cast a blight over the whole land. Everything that had given light — art, song, learning, worship, the ceremonial meetings of the people, the feasts at Easter or Hallowmass or midwinter, even the arts of husbandry, all these had vanished under the dark clouds on which rode the northern gods of war and thunder. And they had been invited here by Vortigern, a British king. This, now, was all that people remembered. They forgot that Vortigern had reigned well enough for ten years, and adequately for a few more, before he found that the war-spirit he had unleashed on his country had outgrown his control. They remembered only that he had gained his throne by bloodshed and treachery and the murder of a kinsman — and that the kinsman had been the true king. So they came flocking now to Ambrosius, calling on him the blessings of their different gods, hailing him with joy as King, the first "King of all Britain," the first shining chance for the country to be one.

Other men have told the story of Ambrosius' crowning and his first work as King of Britain; it has even been written down, so here I will only say that I was with him for the first two years as I have told, but then, in the spring of my twentieth year, I left him. I had had enough of councils and marching, and long legal discussions where Ambrosius tried to reimpose the laws that had fallen into disuse, and the everlasting meetings with elders and bishops droning like bees, days and weeks for every drop of honey.

I was even tired of building and designing; this was the only work I had done for him in all the long months I served with the army. I knew at last that I must leave him, get out of the press of affairs that surrounded him; the god does not speak to those who have no time to listen. The mind must seek out what it needs to feed on, and it came to me at last that what work I had to do, I must do among the quiet of my own hills. So in spring, when we came to Winchester , I sent a message to Cadal, then sought Ambrosius out to tell him I must go.

He listened half absently; cares pressed heavily on him these days, and the years which had sat lightly on him before now seemed to weigh him down. I have noticed that this is often the way with men who set their lives towards the distant glow of one high beacon; when the hilltop is reached and there is nowhere further to climb, and all that is left is to pile more on the flame and keep the beacon burning, why, then, they sit down beside it and grow old. Where their leaping blood warmed them before, now the beacon fire must do it from without. So it was with Ambrosius. The King who sat in his great chair at Winchester and listened to me was not the young commander whom I had faced across the map-strewn table in Less Britain, or even the Courier of Mithras who had ridden to me across the frostbound field.

"I cannot hold you," he said. "You are not an officer of mine, you are only my son. You will go where you wish."

"I serve you. You know that. But I know now how best I can serve you. You spoke the other day of sending a troop towards Caerleon. Who's going?"

He looked down at a paper. A year ago he would have known without looking. "Priscus, Valens. Probably Sidonius. They go in two days' time."

"Then I'll go with them."

He looked at me. Suddenly it was the old Ambrosius back again. "An arrow out of the dark?"

"You might say so. I know I must go."

"Then go safely. And some day, come back to me."

Someone interrupted us then. When I left him he was already going, word by word, through some laborious draft of the new statutes for the city.

7

The road fromWinchester to Caerleon is a good one, and the weather was fine and dry, so we did not halt in Sarum, but held on northwards while the light lasted, straight across the Great Plain.

A short way beyond Sarum lies the place where Ambrosius was born. I cannot even call to mind now what name it had gone by in the past, but already it was being called by his name, Amberesburg, or Amesbury. I had never been that way, and had a mind to see it, so we pressed on, and arrived just before sunset. I, together with the officers, was given comfortable lodging with the head man of the town — it was little more than a village, but very conscious now of its standing as the King's birthplace. Not far away was the spot where, many years ago, some hundred or more British nobles had been treacherously massacred by the Saxons and buried in a common grave. This place lay some way west of Amesbury, beyond the stone circle that men call the Giants' Dance, or the Dance of the Hanging Stones.

I had long heard about the Dance and had been curious to see it, so when the troop reached Amesbury, and were preparing to settle in for the night, I made my excuses to my host, and rode out westwards alone over the open plain. Here, for mile on mile, the long plain stretches without hill or valley, unbroken save for clumps of thorn-trees and gorse, and here and there a solitary oak stripped by the winds. The sun sets late, and this evening as I rode my tired horse slowly westwards the sky ahead of me was still tinged with the last rays, while behind me in the east the clouds of evening piled slate-blue, and one early star came out.

I think I had been expecting the Dance to be much less impressive than the ranked armies of stones I had grown accustomed to in Brittany, something, perhaps, on the scale of the circle on the druids' island.

But these stones were enormous, bigger than any I had ever seen; and their very isolation, standing as they did in the center of that vast and empty plain, struck the heart with awe.

I rode some of the way round, slowly, staring, then dismounted and, leaving my horse to graze, walked forward between two standing stones of the outer circle. My shadow, thrown ahead of me between their shadows, was tiny, a pygmy thing. I paused involuntarily, as if the giants had linked hands to stop me.

Ambrosius had asked me if this had been "an arrow out of the dark." I had told him yes, and this was true, but I had yet to find out why I had been brought here. All I knew was that, now I was here, I wished myself away. I had felt something of the same thing in Brittany as I first passed among the avenues of stone; a breathing on the back of the neck as if something older than time were looking over one's shoulder; but this was not quite the same. It was as if the ground, the stones that I touched, though still warm from the spring sunlight, were breathing cold from somewhere deep below.

Half reluctantly, I walked forward. The light was going rapidly, and to pick one's way into the center needed care. Time and storm — and perhaps the gods of war — had done their work, and many of the stones were cast down to lie haphazard, but the pattern could still be discerned. It was a circle, but like nothing I had seen in Brittany , like nothing I had even imagined. There had been, originally, an outer circle of the huge stones, and where a crescent of these still stood I saw that the uprights were crowned with a continuous lintel of stones as vast as themselves, a great linked curve of stone, standing like a giants'

fence across the sky. Here and there others of the outer circle were still standing, but most had fallen, or were leaning at drunken angles, with the lintel stones beside them on the ground. Within the bigger circle was a smaller one of uprights, and some of the outer giants had fallen against these and brought them flat.

Within these again, marking the center, was a horse-shoe of enormous stones, crowned in pairs. Three of these trilithons stood intact; the fourth had fallen, and brought its neighbour down with it. Echoing this once again was an inner horse-shoe of smaller stones, nearly all standing. The center was empty, and crossed with shadows.

The sun had gone, and with its going the western sky drained of colour, leaving one bright star in a swimming sea of green. I stood still. It was very quiet, so quiet that I could hear the sound of my horse cropping the turf, and the thin jingle of his bit as he moved. The only other sound was the whispering chatter of nesting starlings among the great trilithons overhead. The starling is a bird sacred to druids, and I had heard that in past time the Dance had been used for worship by the druid priests. There are many stories about the Dance, how the stones were brought from Africa , and put up by giants of old, or how they were the giants themselves, caught and turned to stone by a curse as they danced in a ring. But it was not giants or curses that were breathing the cold now from the ground and from the stones; these stones had been put here by men, and their raising had been sung by poets, like the old blind man of Brittany . A lingering shred of light caught the stone near me; the huge knob of stone on one sandstone surface echoed the hole in the fallen lintel alongside it. These tenons and sockets had been fashioned by men, craftsmen such as I had watched almost daily for the last few years, in Less Britain, then in York, London, Winchester. And massive as they were, giants' building as they seemed to be, they had been raised by the hands of workmen, to the commands of engineers, and to the sound of music such as I had heard from the blind singer of Kerrec.

I walked slowly forward across the circle's center. The faint light in the western sky threw my shadow slanting ahead of me, and etched, momentarily in fleeting light, the shape of an axe, two-headed, on one of the stones. I hesitated, then turned to look. My shadow wavered and dipped. I trod in a shallow pit and fell, measuring my length.

It was only a depression in the ground, the kind that might have been made, years past, by the falling of one of the great stones. Or by a grave...

There was no stone nearby of such a size, no sign of digging, no one buried here. The turf was smooth, and grazed by sheep and cattle, and under my hands as I picked myself up slowly, were the scented, frilled stars of daisies. But as I lay I had felt the cold strike up from below, in a pang as sudden as an arrow striking, and I knew that this was why I had been brought here.

I caught my horse, mounted and rode the two miles back to my father's birthplace.

We reached Caerleon four days later to find the place completely changed. Ambrosius intended to use it as one of his three main stations along with London and York , and Tremorinus himself had been working there. The walls had been rebuilt, the bridge repaired, the river dredged and its banks strengthened, and the whole of the east barrack block rebuilt. In earlier times the military settlement at Caerleon, circled by low hills and guarded by a curve of the river, had been a vast place; there was no need for even half of it now, so Tremorinus had pulled down what remained of the western barrack blocks and used the material on the spot to build the new quarters, the baths, and some brand-new kitchens. The old ones had been in even worse condition than the bathhouse at Maridunum, and now, "You'll have every man in Britain asking to be posted here," I told Tremorinus, and he looked pleased.

"We'll not be ready a moment too soon," he said. "The rumour's going round of fresh trouble coming.

Have you heard anything?"

"Nothing. But if it's recent news I wouldn't have had it. We've been on the move for nearly a week.

What kind of trouble? Not Octa again, surely?"

"No, Pascentius." This was Vortimer's brother who had fought with him in the rebellion, and fled north after Vortimer's death. "You knew he took ship to Germany ? They say he'll come back."

"Give him time," I said, "you may be sure he will. Well, you'll send me any news that comes?"

"Send you? You're not staying here?"

"No. I'm going on to Maridunum. It's my home, you know."

"I had forgotten. Well, perhaps we'll see something of you; I'll be here myself a bit longer — we've started work on the church now." He grinned. "The bishop's been at me like a gadfly: it seems I should have been thinking of that before I spent so much time on the things of this earth. And there's talk, too, of putting up some kind of monument to the King's victories. A triumphal arch, some say, the old Roman style of thing. Of course they're saying here in Caerleon that we should build the church for that — the glory of God with Ambrosius thrown in. Though myself I think if any bishop should get the credit of God's glory and the King's combined it should be Gloucester — old Eldad laid about him with the best of them. Did you see him?"

"I heard him."

He laughed. "Well, in any case you'll stay tonight, I hope? Have supper with me."

"Thanks. I'd like to."

We talked late into the night, and he showed me some of his plans and designs, and seemed flatteringly anxious that I should come back from Maridunum to see the various stages of the building. I promised, and next day left Caerleon alone, parrying an equally flattering and urgent request from the camp commandant to let him give me an escort. But I refused, and in the late afternoon came, alone, at last in sight of my own hills. There were rain clouds massing in the west, but in front of them, like a bright curtain, the slanting sunlight. One could see on a day like this why the green hills of Wales had been called the Black Mountains , and the valleys running through them the Valleys of Gold. Bars of sunlight lay along the trees of the golden valleys, and the hills stood slate-blue or black behind them, with their tops supporting the sky.

I took two days for the journey, going easily, and noticing by the way, how the land seemed already to have got back its bloom of peace. A farmer building a wall barely looked my way as I rode by, and a young girl minding a flock of sheep smiled at me. And when I got to the mill on the Tywy, it seemed to be working normally; there were grain sacks piled in the yard, and I could hear the clack-clack-clack of the turning wheel.

I passed the bottom of the path which led up to the cave, and held on straight for the town. I believe I told myself that my first duty and concern was to visit St. Peter's to ask about my mother's death, and to see where she was buried. But when I got from my horse at the nunnery gate and lifted a hand to the bell, I knew from the knocking of my heart that I had told myself a lie.

I could have spared myself the deception; it was the old portress who let me in, and who led me straight, without being asked, through the inner court and down to the green slope near the river where my mother was buried. It was a lovely place, a green plot near a wall where pear trees had been brought early into blossom by the warmth, and where, above their snow, the white doves she had loved were rounding their breasts to the sun. I could hear the ripple of the river beyond the wall, and down through the rustling trees the note of the chapel bell.

The Abbess received me kindly, but had nothing to add to the account which I had received soon after my mother's death, and had passed on to my father. I left money for prayers, and for a carved stone to be made, and when I left, it was with her silver and amethyst cross tucked into my saddle-bag. One question I dared not ask, even when a girl who was not Keri brought wine for my refreshment. And finally, with my question unasked, I was ushered to the gate and out into the street. Here I thought for a moment that my luck had changed, for as I was untying my horse's bridle from the ring beside the gate I saw the old portress peering at me through the grille — remembering, no doubt, the gold I had given her on my first visit. But when I produced money and beckoned her close to shout my question in her ear, and even, after three repetitions, got through to her, the only answer was a shrug and the one word,

"Gone," which — even if she had understood me — was hardly helpful. In the end I gave it up. In any case, I told myself, this was something that had to be forgotten. So I rode out of town and back over the miles to my valley with the memory of her face burned into everything I saw, and the gold of her hair lying in every shaft of the slanting sunlight.

Cadal had rebuilt the pen which Galapas and I had made in the hawthorn brake. It had a good roof and a stout door, and could easily house a couple of big horses. One — Cadal's own, I supposed — was already there.

Cadal himself must have heard me riding up the valley, because, almost before I had dismounted, he came running down the path by the cliff, had the bridle out of my hand, and, lifting both my hands in his, kissed them.

"Why, what's this?" I asked, surprised. He need have had no fears for my safety; the messages I had sent him had been regular and reassuring. "Didn't you get the message I was coming?"

"Yes, I got it. It's been a long time. You're looking well."

"And you. Is all well here?"

"You'll find it so. If you must live in a place like this, there's ways and ways of making it fit. Now get away up, your supper's ready." He bent to unbuckle the horse's girths, leaving me to go up to the cave alone.

He had had a long time in which to do it, but even so it came with a shock like a miracle. It was as it had always been, a place of green grass and sunlight. Daisies and heartsease starred the turf between the green curls of young bracken, and young rabbits whisked out of sight under the flowering blackthorn. The spring ran crystal clear, and crystal clear through the water of the well could be seen the silver gravel at the bottom. Above it, in its ferny niche, stood the carved figure of the god; Cadal must have found it when he cleared the rubbish from the well. He had even found the cup of horn. It stood where it had always stood. I drank from it, sprinkled the drops for the god, and went into the cave.

My books had come from Less Britain; the great chest was backed against the wall of the cave, where Galapas' box had been. Where his table had stood there was another, which I recognized from my grandfather's house. The bronze mirror was back in place. The cave was clean, sweet-smelling and dry.

Cadal had built a hearth of stone, and logs were laid ready across it to light. I half expected to see Galapas sitting beside the hearth, and, on the ledge near the entrance, the falcon which had perched there on the night a small boy left the cave in tears. Deep among the shadows above the ledge at the rear was the gash of deeper shadow which hid the crystal cave.

That night, lying on the bed of bracken with the rugs pulled round me, I lay listening, after the dying of the fire, to the rustle of leaves outside the cave, and, beyond that, the trickle of the spring. They were the only sounds in the world. I closed my eyes and slept as I had not slept since I was a child.

8

Like a drunkard who, as long as there is no wine to be had, thinks himself cured of his craving, I had thought myself cured of the thirst for silence and solitude. But from the first morning of waking on Bryn Myrddin, I knew that this was not merely a refuge, it was my place. April lengthened into May, and the cuckoos shouted from hill to hill, the bluebells unfurled in the young bracken, and evenings were full of the sound of lambs crying, and still I had never once gone nearer the town than the crest of a hill two miles north where I gathered leaves and cresses. Cadal went down daily for supplies and for what news was current, and twice a messenger rode up the valley, once with a bundle of sketches from Tremorinus, once with news from Winchester and money from my father — no letter, but confirmation that Pascentius was indeed massing troops in Germany, and war must surely come before the end of summer.

For the rest I read, and walked on the hills, and gathered plants and made medicines. I also made music, and sang a number of songs which made Cadal look sideways at me over his tasks and shake his head.

Some of them are still sung, but most are best forgotten. One of the latter was this, which I sang one night when May was in town with all her wild clouds of blossom, and greybell turned to bluebell along the brakes.

I stood still with all my dignity round me like a robe, and under it my body fretting like a horse that feels curb and spur at the same time. I wondered if she were going to kiss my hand again, and if so, what I would do. "Keri! What are you doing here?"

"Why, gathering bluebells." The wide innocence of her look robbed the words of pertness. She held them up, laughing at me across them. God knows what she could see in my face. No, she was not going to kiss my hand. "Didn't you know I'd left St. Peter's?"

"Yes, they told me. I thought you must have gone to some other nunnery."

"No, never that. I hated it. It was like being in a cage. Some of them liked it, it made them feel safe, but not me. I wasn't made for such a life."

"They tried to do the same thing to me, once," I said.

"Did you run away, too?"

"Oh, yes. But I ran before they shut me up. Where are you living now, Keri?"

She did not seem to have heard the question. "You weren't meant for it, either? Being in chains, I mean?"

"Not those chains."

I could see her puzzling over this, but I was not sure what I had meant myself, so held my tongue, watching her without thought, feeling only the strong happiness of the moment.

"I was sorry about your mother," she said.

"Thank you, Keri."

"She died just after you'd left. I suppose they told you all about it?"

"Yes. I went to the nunnery as soon as I came back to Maridunum."

She was silent for a moment, looking down. She pointed a bare toe in the grass, a little shy dancing movement which set the golden apples at her girdle jingling. "I knew you had come back. Everyone's talking about it."

"Are they?"

She nodded. "They told me in the town that you were a prince as well as a great magician..." She looked up then, her voice fading to doubt, as she eyed me. I was wearing my oldest clothes, a tunic with grass stains that not even Cadal could remove, and my mantle was burred and pulled by thorns and brambles.

My sandals were of canvas like a slave's; it was useless to wear leather through the long wet grass.

Compared even with the plainly dressed young man she had seen before, I must look like a beggar. She asked, with the directness of innocence: "Are you still a prince, now that your mother is gone?"

"Yes. My father is the High King."

Her lips parted. "Your father? The King? I didn't know. Nobody said that."

"Not many people know. But now that my mother is dead, it doesn't matter. Yes, I am his son."

"The son of the High King..." She breathed it, with awe. "And a magician, too. I know that's true."

"Yes. That is true."

"You once told me you weren't."

I smiled. "I told you I couldn't cure your toothache."

"But you did cure it."

"So you said. I didn't believe you."

"Your touch would cure anything," she said, and came close to me.

The neck of her gown hung slack. Her throat was pale as honeysuckle. I could smell her scent and the scent of the bluebells, and the bittersweet juice of the flowers crushed between us. I put out a hand and pulled at the neck of the gown, and the drawstring snapped. Her breasts were round and full and softer than anything I had imagined. They rounded into my hands like the breasts of my mother's doves. I believe I had expected her to cry out and pull away from me, but she nestled towards me warmly, and laughed, and put her hands up behind my head and dug her fingers into my hair and bit me on the mouth.

Then suddenly she let her whole weight hang against me so that, reaching to hold her, plunging clumsily into the kiss, I stumbled forward and fell to the ground with her under me and the flowers scattering round us as we fell.

It took me a long time to understand. At first it was laughter and snatched breathing and all that burns down into the imagination in the night, but still held down hard and steady because of her smallness and the soft sounds she made when I hurt her. She was slim as a reed and soft with it, and you would have thought it would make me feel like a duke of the world, but then suddenly she made a sound deep in her throat as if she was strangling, and twisted in my arms as I have seen a dying man twist in pain, and her mouth came up like something striking, and fastened on mine.

Suddenly it was I who was strangling; her arms dragged at me, her mouth sucked me down, her body drew me into that tight and final darkness, no air, no light, no breath, no whisper of waking spirit. A grave inside a grave. Fear burned down into my brain like a white hot blade laid across the eyes. I opened them and could see nothing but the spinning light and the shadow of a tree laid across me whose thorns tore like spikes. Some shape of terror clawed my face. The thorn-tree's shadow swelled and shook, the cave-mouth gaped and the walls breathed, crushing me. I struggled back, out, tore myself away and rolled over apart from her, sweating with fear and shame.

"What's the matter?" Even her voice sounded blind. Her hands still moved over the space of air where I had been.

"I'm sorry, Keri. I'm sorry."

"What do you mean? What's happened?" She turned her head in its fallen flurry of gold. Her eyes were narrow and cloudy. She reached for me. "Oh, if that's all, come here. It's all right, I'll show you, just come here."

"No." I tried to put her aside gently, but I was shaking. "No, Keri. Leave me. No."

"What's the matter?" Her eyes opened suddenly wide. She pushed herself up on her elbow. "Why, I do believe you've never done it before. Have you? Have you?"

I didn't speak.

She gave a laugh that seemed meant to sound gay, but came shrilly. She rolled over again and stretched out her hands. "Well, never mind, you can learn, can't you? You're a man, after all. At least, I thought you were..." Then, suddenly in a fury of impatience: "Oh, for God's sake. Hurry, can't you? I tell you, it'll be all right."

I caught her wrists and held them. "Keri, I'm sorry. I can't explain, but this is...I must not, that's all I know. No, listen, give me a minute."

"Let me go!"

I loosed her and she pulled away and sat up. Her eyes were angry. There were flowers caught in her hair.

I said: "This isn't because of you, Keri, don't think that. It has nothing to do with you —"

"Not good enough for you, is that it? Because my mother was a whore?"

"Was she? I didn't even know." I felt suddenly immensely tired. I said carefully: "I told you this was nothing to do with you. You are very beautiful, Keri, and the first moment I saw you I felt — you must know what I felt. But this is nothing to do with feeling. It is between me and — it is something to do with my — " I stopped. It was no use. Her eyes watched me, bright and blank, then she turned aside with a little flouncing movement and began to tidy her dress. Instead of "power," I finished: " — something to do with my magic."

"Magic." Her lip was thrust out like a hurt child's. She knotted her girdle tight with a sharp little tug, and began to gather up the fallen bluebells, repeating spitefully: "Magic. Do you think I believe in your silly magic? Did you really think I even had the toothache, that time?"

"I don't know," I said wearily. I got to my feet.

"Well, maybe you don't have to be a man to be a magician. You ought to have gone into that monastery after all."

"Perhaps." A flower was tangled in her hair and she put a hand up to pull it out. The fine floss glinted in the sun like gossamer. My eye caught the blue mark of a bruise on her wrist. "Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

She neither answered nor looked up, and I turned away. "Well, goodbye, Keri."

I had gone perhaps six steps when her voice stopped me. "Prince —"

I turned.

"So you do answer to it?" she said. "I'm surprised. Son of the High King, you say you are, and you don't even leave me a piece of silver to pay for my gown?"

I must have stood staring like a sleepwalker. She tossed the gold hair back over her shoulder and laughed up at me. Like a blind man fumbling, I felt in the purse at my belt and came out with a coin. It was gold. I took a step back towards her to give it to her. She leaned forward, still laughing, her hands out, cupped like a beggar's. The torn gown hung loose from the lovely throat. I flung the coin down and ran away from her, up through the wood.

Her laughter followed me till I was over the ridge and down in the next valley and had flung myself on my belly beside the stream and drowned the feel and the scent of her in the rush of the mountain water that smelled of snow.

9

In June Ambrosius came to Caerleon, and sent for me. I rode up alone, arriving one evening well past supper-time, when the lamps had been lit and the camp was quiet. The King was still working; I saw the spill of light from headquarters, and the glimmer on the dragon standard outside. While I was still some way off I heard the clash of a salute, and a tall figure came out whom I recognized as Uther.

He crossed the way to a door opposite the King's, but with his foot on the bottom step saw me, stopped, and came back. "Merlin. So you got here. You took your time, didn't you?"

"The summons was hasty. If I am to go abroad, there are things I have to do."

He stood still. "Who said you were to go abroad?"

"People talk of nothing else. It's Ireland, isn't it? They say Pascentius has made some dangerous allies over there, and that Ambrosius wants them destroyed quickly. But why me?"

"Because it's their central stronghold he wants destroyed. Have you ever heard of Killare?"

"Who hasn't? They say it's a fortress that's never been taken."

"Then they say the truth. There's a mountain in the center of all Ireland, and they say that from the summit of it you can see every coast. And on top of that hill there's a fortress, not of earth and palisades, but of strong stones. That, my dear Merlin, is why you."

"I see. You need engines."

"We need engines. We have to attack Killare. If we can take it, you can reckon that there'll be no trouble there for a few years to come. So I take Tremorinus, and Tremorinus insists on taking you."

"I gather the King isn't going?"

"No. Now I'll say good night; I have business to attend to, or I would ask you in to wait. He's got the camp commandant with him, but I don't imagine they'll be long."

On this, he said a pleasant enough good night, and ran up the steps into his quarters, shouting for his servant before he was well through the door.

Almost immediately, from the King's doorway, came the clash of another salute, and the camp commandant came out. Not seeing me, he paused to speak to one of the sentries, and I stood waiting until he had done.

A movement caught my eye, a furtive stir of shadow where someone came softly down a narrow passage between the buildings opposite, where Uther was housed. The sentries, busy with the commandant, had seen nothing. I drew back out of the torchlight, watching. A slight figure, cloaked and hooded. A girl. She reached the lighted corner and paused there, looking about her. Then, with a gesture that was secret rather than afraid, she pulled the hood closer about her face. It was a gesture I recognized, as I recognized the drift of scent on the air, like honeysuckle, and from under the hood the lock of hair curling, gold in the torchlight.

I stood still. I wondered why she had followed me here, and what she hoped to gain. I do not think it was shame I felt, not now, but there was pain, and I believe there was still desire. I hesitated, then took a step forward and spoke.

"Keri?"

But she paid no attention. She slid out from the shadows and, quickly and lightly, ran up the steps to Uther's door. I heard the sentry challenge, then a murmur, and a soft laugh from the man.

When I drew level with Uther's doorway it was shut. In the light of the torch I saw the smile still on the sentry's face.

Ambrosius was still sitting at his table, his servant hovering behind him in the shadows.

He pushed his papers aside and greeted me. The servant brought wine and poured it, then withdrew and left us alone.

We talked for a while. He told me what news there was since I had left Winchester; the building that had gone forward, and his plans for the future. Then we spoke of Tremorinus' work at Caerleon, and so came to the talk of war. I asked him for the latest about Pascentius, "for," I said, "we have been waiting weekly to hear that he had landed in the north and was harrying the countryside."

"Not yet. In fact, if my plans come to anything, we may hear nothing more of Pascentius until the spring, and then we shall be more than prepared. If we allow him to come now, he may well prove more dangerous than any enemy I have yet fought."

"I've heard something about this. You mean the Irish news?"

"Yes. The news is bad from Ireland. You know they have a young king there, Gilloman? A young firedrake, they tell me, and eager for war. Well, you may have heard it, the news is that Pascentius is contracted to Gilloman's sister. You see what this could mean? Such an alliance as that might put the north and west of Britain both at risk together."

"Is Pascentius in Ireland ? We heard he was in Germany, gathering support."

"That is so," he said. "I can't get accurate information about his numbers, but I'd say about twenty thousand men. Nor have I yet heard what he and Gilloman plan to do." He lifted an eyebrow at me, amused. "Relax, boy, I haven't called you here to ask for a prediction. You made yourself quite clear at Kaerconan; I'm content to wait, like you, on your god."

I laughed. "I know. You want me for what you call 'real work.'"

"Indeed. This is it. I am not content to wait here in Britain while Ireland and Germany gather their forces and then come together on both our coasts like a summer storm, and meet in Britain to overwhelm the north.Britain lies between them now, and she can divide them before ever they combine to attack."

"And you'll take Ireland first?"

"Gilloman," he said, nodding. "He's young and inexperienced — and he is also nearer. Uther will sail for Ireland before the month's end." There was a map in front of him. He half turned it so that I could see.

"Here. This is Gilloman's stronghold; you'll have heard of it, I don't doubt. It is a mountain fortress called Killare. I have not found a man who has seen it, but I am told it is strongly fortified, and can be defended against any assault. I am told, indeed, that it has never fallen. Now, we can't afford to have Uther sit down in front of it for months, while Pascentius comes in at the back door. Killare must be taken quickly, and it cannot — they tell me — be taken by fire."

"Yes?" I had already noticed that there were drawings of mine on the table among the maps and plans.

He said, as if at a tangent: "Tremorinus speaks very highly of you."

"That's good of him." Then, at my own tangent: "I met Uther outside. He told me what you wanted."

"Then will you go with him?"

"I'm at your service, of course. But sir" — I indicated the drawings — "I have made no new designs.

Everything I have designed has already been built here. And if there is so much hurry —"

"Not that, no. I'm asking for nothing new. The machines we have are good — and must serve. What we have built is ready now for shipping. I want you for more than this." He paused. "Killare, Merlin, is more than a stronghold, it is a holy place, the holy place of the Kings of Ireland. They tell me the crest of the hill holds a Dance of stone, a circle such as you knew in Brittany . And on Killare, men say, is the heart of Ireland and the holy place of Gilloman's kingdom. I want you, Merlin, to throw down the holy place, and take the heart out of Ireland."

I was silent.

"I spoke of this to Tremorinus," he said, "and he told me I must send for you. Will you go?"

"I have said I will. Of course."

He smiled, and thanked me, not as if he were High King and I a subject obeying his wish, but as if I were an equal giving him a favour. He talked then for a little longer about Killare, what he had heard of it, and what preparations he thought we should make, and finally leaned back, saying with a smile: "One thing I regret. I'm going to Maridunum, and I should have liked your company, but now there is no time for that. You may charge me with any messages you care to."

"Thank you, but I have none. Even if I had been there, I would hardly have dared to offer you the hospitality of a cave."

"I should like to see it."

"Anyone will tell you the way. But it's hardly fit to receive a King."

I stopped. His face was lit with a laughter that all at once made him look twenty again. I set down my cup. "I am a fool. I had forgotten."

"That you were begotten there? I thought you had. I can find my way to it, never fear."

He spoke then about his own plans. He himself would stay in Caerleon, "for if Pascentius attacks," he told me, "my guess is that he will come down this way" — his finger traced a line on the map — "and I can catch him south of Carlisle. Which brings me to the next thing. There was something else I wanted to discuss with you. When you last came through Caerleon on your way to Maridunum in April, I believe you had a talk with Tremorinus?"

I waited.

"About this." He lifted a sheaf of drawings — not mine — and handed them across. They were not of the camp, or indeed of any buildings I had seen. There was a church, a great hall, a tower. I studied them for a few minutes in silence. For some reason I felt tired, as if my heart were too heavy for me. The lamp smoked and dimmed and sent shadows dancing over the papers. I pulled myself together, and looked up at my father. "I see. You must be talking about the memorial building?"

He smiled. "I'm Roman enough to want a visible monument."

I tapped the drawings. "And British enough to want it British? Yes, I heard that, too."

"What did Tremorinus tell you?"

"That it was thought some kind of monument to your victories should be erected, and to commemorate your kingship of aunited kingdom . I agreed with Tremorinus that to build a triumphal arch here in Britain would be absurd. He did say that some churchmen wanted a big church built — the bishop of Caerleon, for instance, wanted one here. But surely, sir, this would hardly do? If you build at Caerleon you'll have London and Winchester, not to mention York, thinking it should have been there. Of them all, I suppose,Winchester would be the best. It is your capital."

"No. I've had a thought about this myself. When I travelled up from Winchester, I came through Amesbury..." He leaned forward suddenly. "What's the matter, Merlin? Are you ill?"

"No. It's a hot night, that's all. A storm coming, I think. Go on. You came through Amesbury."

"You knew it was my birthplace? Well, it seemed to me that to put my monument in such a place could give no cause for complaint — and there is another reason why it's a good choice." He knitted his brows.

"You're like a sheet, boy. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Perfectly. Perhaps a little tired."

"Have you supped? It was thoughtless of me not to ask."

"I ate on the way, thank you. I have had all I needed. Perhaps — some more wine —"

I half rose, but before I could get to my feet he was on his, and came round the table with the jug and served me himself. While I drank he stayed where he was, near me, sitting back against the table's edge.

I was reminded sharply of how he had stood this way that night in Brittany when I discovered him. I remember that I held it in my mind, and in a short while was able to smile at him.

"I am quite well, sir, indeed I am. Please go on. You were giving me the second reason for putting your monument at Amesbury."

"You probably know that it is not far from there that the British dead lie buried, who were slain by Hengist's treachery. I think it fitting — and I think there is no man who will argue with this — that the monument to my victory, to the making of one kingdom under one King, should also be a memorial for these warriors." He paused. "And you might say there is yet a third reason, more powerful than the other two."

I said, not looking at him, but down into the cup of wine, and speaking quietly: "That Amesbury is already the site of the greatest monument in Britain ? Possibly the greatest in the whole West?"

"Ah." It was a syllable of deep satisfaction. "So your mind moves this way, too? You have seen the Giants' Dance?"

"I rode out to it from Amesbury, when I was on my way home from Winchester."

He stood up at that and walked back round the table to his chair. He sat, then leaned forward, resting his hands on the table. "Then you know how I am thinking. You saw enough when you lived in Brittany to know what the Dance was once. And you have seen what it is now — a chaos of giant stones in a lonely place where the sun and the winds strike." He added more slowly, watching me: "I have talked of this to Tremorinus. He says that no power of man could raise those stones."

I smiled. "So you sent for me to raise them for you?"

"You know they say it was not men who raised them, but magic."

"Then," I said, "no doubt they will say the same again."

His eyes narrowed. "You are telling me you can do it?"

"Why not?"

He was silent, merely waiting. It was a measure of his faith in me that he did not smile.

I said: "Oh, I've heard all the tales they tell, the same tales they told in Less Britain of the standing stones.

But the stones were put there by men, sir. And what men put there once, men can put there again."

"Then if I don't possess a magician, at least I possess a competent engineer?"

"That's it."

"How will you do it?"

"As yet, I know less than half of it. But it can be done."

"Then will you do this for me, Merlin?"

"Of course. Have I not said I am here only to serve you as best I can? I will rebuild the Giants' Dance for you, Ambrosius."

"A strong symbol for Britain." He spoke broodingly now, frowning down at his hands. "I shall be buried there, Merlin, when my time comes. What Vortigern wanted to do for his stronghold in darkness, I shall do for mine in the light; I shall have the body of her King buried under the stones, the warrior under the threshold of all Britain."

Someone must have drawn the curtains back from the door. The sentries were out of sight, the camp silent. The stone doorposts and the heavy lintel lying across them framed a blue night burning with stars.

All round us the vast shadows reared, giant stones linked like pleached trees where some hands long since bone had cut the signs of the gods of air and earth and water. Someone was speaking quietly; a king's voice; Ambrosius' voice. It had been speaking for some time; vaguely, like echoes in the dark, I heard it.

"...and while the King lies there under the stone the Kingdom shall not fall. For as long and longer than it has stood before, the Dance shall stand again, with the light striking it from the living heaven. And I shall bring back the great stone to lay upon the grave-place, and this shall be the heart of Britain, and from this time on all the kings shall be one King and all the gods one God. And you shall live again in Britain, and for ever, for we will make between us a King whose name will stand as long as the Dance stands, and who will be more than a symbol; he will be a shield and a living sword."

It was not the King's voice; it was my own. The King was still sitting on the other side of the map-strewn table, his hands still and flat on the papers, his eyes dark under the straight brows. Between us the lamp dimmed, flickering in a draught from under the shut door.

I stared at him, while my sight slowly cleared. "What did I say?"

He shook his head, smiling, and reached for the wine jug. I said irritably: "It comes on me like a fainting fit on a pregnant girl. I'm sorry. Tell me what I said?"

"You gave me a kingdom. And you gave me immortality. What more is there? Drink now, Ambrosius' prophet."

"Not wine. Is there water?"

"Here." He got to his feet. "And now you must go and sleep, and so must I. I leave early for Maridunum.

You are sure you have no messages?"

"Tell Cadal he is to give you the silver cross with the amethysts."

We faced one another in a small silence. I was almost as tall as he. He said, gently: "So now it is goodbye."

"How does one say goodbye to a King who has been given immortality?"

He gave me a strange look. "Shall we meet again, then?"

"We shall meet again, Ambrosius."

It was then I knew that what I had prophesied for him was his death.

10

Killare, I had been told, is a mountain in the very center of Ireland. There are in other parts of this island mountains which, if not as great as those of our own country, could still merit the name. But the hill of Killare is no mountain. It is a gentle conical hill whose summit is, I suppose, no more than nine hundred feet high. It is not even forested, but clothed over with rough grass, with here and there a copse of thorn-trees, or a few single oaks.

Even so, standing where it does, it looms like a mountain to those approaching it, for it stands alone, the only hill at the center of a vast plain. On every hand, with barely the least undulation, the country stretches flat and green; north, south, east, west, it is the same. But it is not true that you can see the coasts from that summit; there is only the interminable view on every hand of that green gentle country, with above it a soft and cloudy sky.

Even the air is mild there. We had fair winds, and landed on a long, grey strand on a soft summer morning, with a breeze off the land smelling of bog myrtle and gorse and salt-soaked turf. The wild swans sailed the loughs with the half-grown cygnets, and the peewits screamed and tumbled over the meadows where their young nestled down between the reeds.

It was not a time, or a country, you would have thought, for war. And indeed, the war was soon over.

Gilloman, the king, was young — they said not more than eighteen — and he would not listen to his advisers and wait for a good moment to meet our attack. So high was his heart that, at the first news of foreign troops landing on the sacred soil of Ireland, the young king gathered his fighting men together, and threw them against Uther's seasoned troops. They met us on a flat plain, with a hill at our backs and a river at theirs. Uther's troops stood the first wild, brave attack without giving ground even a couple of paces, then advanced steadily in their turn, and drove the Irish into the water. Luckily for them, this was a wide stream, and shallow, and, though it ran red that evening, many hundreds of Irishmen escaped.

Gilloman the king was one of them, and when we got the news that he had fled west with a handful of trusted followers, Uther, guessing he would be making for Killare, sent a thousand mounted troops after him, with instructions to catch him before he reached the gates. This they just managed to do, coming up with him barely half a mile short of the fortress, at the very foot of the hill and within sight of the walls.

The second battle was short, and bloodier than the first. But it took place in the night, and in the confusion of the mêlée Gilloman himself escaped once more, and galloped away with a handful of men, this time nobody knew where. But the thing was done; by the time we, the main body of the army, came to the foot of Mount Killare, the British troops were already in possession, and the gates were open.

A lot of nonsense has been talked about what happened next. I myself have heard some of the songs, and even read one account which was set down in a book. Ambrosius had been misinformed. Killare was not strong-built of great stones; that is to say, the outer fortifications were as usual of earthworks and palisades behind a great ditch, and inside that was a second ditch, deep, and with spikes set. The central fortress itself was certainly stone-walled, and the stones were big ones, but nothing that a normal team, with the proper tackle, could not handle easily. Inside this fortress wall were houses, of the most part built of wood, but also some strong places underground, as we have in Britain . Higher yet stood the innermost ring, a wall round the crest of the hill like a crown round the brow of a king. And inside this, at the very center and apex of the hill, was the holy place. Here stood the Dance, the circle of stones that was said to contain the heart of Ireland. It could not compare with the Great Dance of Amesbury, being only a single circle of unlinked stones, but it was impressive enough, and still stood firm with much of the circle intact, and two capped uprights near the center where other stones lay, seemingly without pattern, in the long grass.

I walked up alone that same evening. The hillside was alive with the bustle and roar, familiar to me from Kaerconan, of the aftermath of battle. But when I passed the wall that hedged the holy place, and came out towards the crest of the hill, it was like leaving a bustling hall for the quiet of some tower room upstairs. Sounds fell away below the walls, and as I walked up through the long summer grass, there was almost silence, and I was alone.

A round moon stood low in the sky, pale still, and smudged with shadow, and thin at one edge like a worn coin. There was a scatter of small stars, with here and there the shepherd stars herding them, and across from the moon one great star alone, burning white. The shadows were long and soft on the seeding grasses.

A tall stone stood alone, leaning a little towards the east. A little further was a pit, and beyond that again a round boulder that looked black in the moonlight. There was something here. I paused. Nothing I could put a name to, but the old, black stone itself might have been some dark creature hunched there over the pit's edge. I felt the shiver run over my skin, and turned away. This, I would not disturb.

The moon climbed with me, and as I entered the circle she lifted her white disc over the cap-stones and shone clear into the center of the ring. My footsteps crunched, dry and brittle, over a patch of ground where fires had recently been lit. I saw the white shapes of bones, and a flat stone shaped like an altar.

The moonlight showed carving on one side, crude shapes twisted, of ropes or serpents. I stooped to run a finger over them. Nearby a mouse rustled and squeaked in the grass. No other sound. The thing was clean, dead, godless. I left it, moving on slowly through the moon-thrown shadows. There was another stone, domed like a beehive, or a navel-stone. And here an upright fallen, with the long grass almost hiding it. As I passed it, searching still, a ripple of breeze ran through the grasses, blurring the shadows and dimming the light like mist. I caught my foot on something, staggered, and came down to my knees at the end of a long flat stone which lay almost hidden in the grass. My hands moved over it. It was massive, oblong, uncarved, simply a great natural stone on to which now the moonlight poured. It hardly needed the cold at my hands, the hiss of the bleached grasses under the sudden run of wind, the scent of daisies, to tell me that this was the stone. All round me, like dancers drawing back from a center, the silent stones stood black. On one side the white moon, on the other the king-star, burning white. I got slowly to my feet and stood there at the foot of the long stone, as one might stand at the foot of a bed, waiting for the man in it to die.

It was warmth that woke me, warmth and the voices of men near me. I lifted my head. I was half-kneeling, half-lying with my arms and the upper part of my body laid along the stone. The morning sun was high, and pouring straight down into the center of the Dance. Mist smoked up from the damp grass, and its white wreaths hid the lower slopes of the hill. A group of men had come in through the stones of the Dance, and were standing there muttering among themselves, watching me. As I blinked, moving my stiff limbs, the group parted and Uther came through, followed by half a dozen of his officers, among whom was Tremorinus. Two soldiers pushed between them what was obviously an Irish prisoner; his hands were tied and there was a cut on one cheek where blood had dried, but he held himself well and I thought the men who guarded him looked more afraid than he.

Uther checked when he saw me, then came across as I got stiffly to my feet. The night must have shown still in my face, for in the group of officers behind him I saw the look I had grown used to, of men both wary and amazed, and even Uther spoke a fraction too loudly.

"So your magic is as strong as theirs."

The light was too strong for my eyes. He looked vivid and unreal, like an image seen in moving water. I tried to speak, cleared my throat, and tried again. "I'm still alive, if that's what you mean."

Tremorinus said gruffly: "There's not another man in the army would have spent the night here."

"Afraid of the black stone?"

I saw Uther's hand move in an involuntary gesture as if it sprang of itself to make the sign. He saw I had noticed, and looked angry. "Who told you about the black stone?"

Before I could answer, the Irishman said suddenly: "You saw it? Who are you?"

"My name is Merlin."

He nodded slowly. He still showed no sign of fear or awe. He read my thought, and smiled, as if to say,

"You and I, we can look after ourselves."

"Why do they bring you here like this?" I asked him.

"To tell them which is the king-stone."

Uther said: "He has told us. It's the carved altar over there."

"Let him go," I said. "You have no need of him. And leave the altar alone. This is the stone."

There was a pause. Then the Irishman laughed. "Faith, if you bring the King's enchanter himself, what hope has a poor poet? It was written in the stars that you would take it, and indeed, it is nothing but justice. It's not the heart of Ireland that that stone has been but the curse of it, and maybe Ireland will be all the better to see it go."

"How so?" I asked him. Then, to Uther: "Tell them to loose him."

Uther nodded, and the men loosed the prisoner's hands. He rubbed his wrists, smiling at me. You would have thought we two were alone in the Dance. "They say that in times past that stone came out of Britain, out of the mountains of the west, in sight of the Irish Sea, and that the great King of all Ireland, Fionn Mac Cumhaill was his name, carried it in his arms one night and walked through the sea with it to Ireland, and set it here."

"And now," I said, "we carry it a little more painfully back to Britain."

He laughed. "I would have thought the great magician that's yourself would have picked it up in one hand."

"I'm no Fionn," I said. "And now if you are wise, poet, you will go back to your home and your harp, and make no more wars, but make a song about the stone, and how Merlin the enchanter took the stone from the Dance of Killare and carried it lightly to the Dance of the Hanging Stones at Amesbury."

He saluted me, laughing still, and went. And indeed he did walk safely down through the camp and away, for in later years I heard the song he made.

But now his going was hardly noticed. There was a pause while Uther frowned down at the great stone, seeming to weigh it in his mind. "You told the King that you could do this thing. Is that true?"

"I said to the King that what men had brought here, men could take away."

He looked at me frowningly, uncertainly, still a little angry. "He told me what you said. I agree. It doesn't need magic and fine words, only a team of competent men with the right engines. Tremorinus!"

"Sir?"

"If we take this one, the king-stone, there will be no need to trouble overmuch with the rest. Throw them down where you can and leave them."

"Yes, sir. If I could have Merlin —"

"Merlin's team will be working on the fortifications. Merlin, get started, will you? I give you twenty-four hours."

This was something the men were practiced at; they threw down the walls and filled in the ditches with them. The palisades and houses, quite simply, we put to the flame. The men worked well, and were in good heart. Uther was always generous to his troops, and there had been goods in plenty to be looted, arm-rings of copper and bronze and gold, brooches, and weapons well made and inlaid with copper and enamel, in a way the Irish have. The work was finished by dusk, and we withdrew from the hill to the temporary camp which had been thrown up on the plain at the foot of the slope.

It was after supper when Tremorinus came to me. I could see the torches and the fires still lit at the top of the hill, throwing what was left of the Dance into relief. His face was grimy, and he looked tired.

"All day," he said bitterly, "and we've raised it a couple of feet, and half an hour ago the props cracked, and it's gone back again into its bed. Why the hell did you have to suggest that stone? The Irishman's altar would have been easier."

"The Irishman's altar would not have done."

"Well, by the gods, it looks as if you aren't going to get this one either! Look, Merlin, I don't care what he says, I'm in charge of this job, and I'm asking you to come and take a look. Will you?"

The rest is what the legends have been made of. It would be tedious now to relate how we did it, but it was easy enough; I had had all day to think about it, having seen the stone and the hillside, and I had had the engines in my mind since Brittany. Wherever we could we took it by water — downriver from Killare to the sea, and thence to Wales and still as far as possible by river, using the two great Avons, with little more than a score of dry miles to cross between them. I was not Fionn of the Strong Arm, but I was Merlin, and the great stone travelled home as smoothly as a barge on an untroubled water, with me beside it all the way. I suppose I must have slept on that journey, but I cannot remember doing so. I went wakeful, as one is at a death-bed, and on that one voyage of all those in my life, I never felt the movement of the sea, but sat (they tell me) calm and silent, as if in my chair at home. Uther came once to speak to me — angry, I suppose, that I had done so easily what his own engineers could not do — but he went away after a moment, and did not approach me again. I remember nothing about it. I suppose I was not there. I was watching still between day and night in the great bedchamber at Winchester.

The news met us at Caerleon. Pascentius had attacked out of the north with his force of German and Saxon allies, and the King had marched to Carlisle and defeated him there. But afterwards, safely back at Winchester, he had fallen ill. About this, rumours were rife. Some said that one of Pascentius' men had come in disguise to Winchester where Ambrosius lay abed of a chill, and had given him poison to drink.

Some said the man had come from Eosa. But the truth was the same; the King was very sick at Winchester.

The king-star rose again that night, looking, men said, like a fiery dragon, and trailing a cloud of lesser stars like smoke. But it did not need the omen to tell me what I had known since that night on the crest of Killare, when I had vowed to carry the great stone from Ireland, and lay it upon his grave.

So it was that we brought the stone again to Amesbury, and I raised the fallen circles of the Giants' Dance into their places for his monument. And at the next Easter-time, in the city of London, Uther Pendragon was crowned King.