Hollow Hills (2 page)

One of the officers — it was Caius Valerius, who rode at the King's shoulder — leaned forward and said something, but Uther might never have heard. I saw Valerius look doubtfully back at me, then with a half-shrug, and a half-salute to me, he rode on. Unsurprised, I watched them go.

The sound of hoofs dwindled sharply down the track towards the sea. Above my head, between one wing-beat and the next, the lark's song shut off, and he dropped from the bright silence to his rest in the grass.

Not far from me a boulder jutted from the turf. I led the horse that way and somehow, from the boulder's top, scrambled into the saddle. I turned the beast's head east by north for Dimilioc, where the King's army lay.

Gaps in memory can be merciful. I have no recollection of reaching the camp, but when, hours later, I swam up out of the mists of fatigue and pain I was within doors, and in bed.

I awoke to dusk, and some faint and swimming light that may have been firelight and candle flame; it was a light hazed with colour and drowned with shadows, threaded by the scent of wood-smoke and, it seemed distantly, the trickle and splash of water. But even this warm and gentle consciousness was too much for my struggling senses, and soon I shut my eyes and let myself drown again. I believe that for a while I thought I was back in the edges of the Otherworld, where vision stirs and voices speak out of the dark, and truth comes with the light and the fire. But then the aching of my bruised muscles and the fierce pain in my hand told me that the daylight world still held me, and the voices that murmured across me in the dusk were as human as I.

"Well, that's that, for the moment. The ribs are the worst of it, apart from the hand, and they'll mend soon enough; they're only cracked."

I had a vague feeling that I knew the voice. At any rate I knew what he was: the touch on the fresh bandages was deft and firm, the touch of a professional. I tried to open my eyes again, but the lids were leaden, gummed together and sticky with sweat and dried blood. Warmth came over me in drowsy waves, weighting my limbs. There was a sweet, heavy smell; they must have given me poppy, I thought, or stunned me with smoke before they dressed the hand. I gave up, and let myself drift back from the shore. Over the dark water the voices echoed, softly.

"Stop staring at him and bring the bowl nearer. He's safe enough in this state, never fear." It was the doctor again.

"Well, but one's heard such stories." They were speaking Latin, but the accents were different. The second voice was foreign; not Germanic, nor yet from anywhere on theMiddleSea . I have always been quick at languages, and even as a child spoke several dialects of Celtic, along with Saxon and a working knowledge of Greek. But this accent I could not place.Asia Minor , perhaps?Arabia ?

Those deft fingers gently turned my head on the pillow, and parted my hair to sponge the bruises. "Have you never seen him before?"

"Never. I hadn't imagined him so young."

"Not so young. He must be two and twenty."

"But to have done so much. They say his father the High King Ambrosius never took a step, in the last year or two, without talking it over with him. They say he sees the future in a candle flame and can win a battle from a hilltop a mile away."

"They would say anything, of him." The doctor's voice was prosaic and calm.Brittany , I thought, I must have known him inBrittany . The smooth Latin had some overtone I remembered, without knowing how.

"But certainly Ambrosius valued his advice."

"Is it true he rebuilt the Giants' Dance near Amesbury, that they call the Hanging Stones?"

"That's true enough. When he was a lad with his father's army inBrittany he studied to be an engineer. I remember him talking to Tremorinus — that was the army's chief engineer — about lifting the Hanging Stones. But that wasn't all he studied. Even as a youth he knew more about medicine than most men I've met who practise it for a livelihood. I can't think of any man I'd rather have by me in a field hospital. God knows why he chooses to shut himself away in that godforsaken corner ofWales now — at least, one can guess why. He and King Uther never got on. They say Uther was jealous of the attention his brother the King paid Merlin. At any rate, after Ambrosius' death, Merlin went nowhere and saw no one, till this business of Uther and Gorlois' Duchess. And it seems as if that's brought him trouble enough...Bring the bowl nearer, while I clean his face. No, here. That's right."

"That's a sword cut, by the look of it."

"A glancing scratch from the point, I'd say. It looks worse than it is, with all the blood. He was lucky there. Another inch and it would have caught his eye. There. It's clean enough; it won't leave a scar."

"He looks like death, Gandar. Will he recover?"

"Of course. How not?" Even through the lulling of the nepenthe, I recognized the quick professional reassurance as genuine. "Apart from the ribs and the hand, it's only cuts and bruising, and I would guess a sharp reaction from whatever has been driving him the last few days. All he needs is sleep. Hand me that ointment there, please. In the green jar."

The salve was cool on my cut cheek. It smelled of valerian. Nard, in the green jar...I made it at home.

Valerian, balm, oil of spikenard...The smell of it took me dreaming out among the mosses at the river's edge, where water ran sparkling, and I gathered the cool cress and the balsam and the golden moss...

No, it was water pouring at the other side of the room. He had finished, and had gone to wash his hands. The voices came from farther off.

"Ambrosius' bastard, eh?" The foreigner was still curious. "Who was his mother, then?"

"She was a king's daughter, Southern Welsh, from Maridunum in Dyfed. They say he got the Sight from her. But not his looks; he's a mirror of the late King, more than Uther ever was. Same colouring, black eyes, and that black hair. I remember the first time I saw him, back inBrittany when he was a boy; he looked like something from the hollow hills. Talked like it, too, sometimes; that is, when he talked at all.

Don't let his quiet ways fool you; it's more than just book-learning and luck and a knack of timing; there's power there, and it's real."

"So the stories are true?"

"The stories are true," said Gandar flatly. "There. He'll do now. No need to stay with him. Get some sleep. I'll do the rounds myself, and come and take a look at him again before I go to bed. Good night."

The voices faded. Others came and went in the darkness, but these were voices without blood, belonging to the air. Perhaps I should have waited and waked to listen, but I lacked the courage. I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket, muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark.

When I opened my eyes again it was to darkness lit by calm candle-light. I was in a small chamber with a barrel roof of stone and rough-hewn walls where the once bright paint had darkened and flaked away with damp and neglect. But the room was clean. The floor of Cornish slate had been well scrubbed, and the blankets that covered me were fresh-smelling and thick, and richly worked in bright patterns.

The door opened quietly, and a man came in. At first, against the stronger light beyond the doorway, I could only see him as a man of middle height, broad shouldered and thickly built, dressed in a long plain robe, with a round cap on his head. Then he came forward into the candle-light, and I saw that it was Gandar, the chief physician who travelled with the King's armies. He stood over me, smiling.

"And about time."

"Gandar! It's good to see you. How long have I slept?"

"Since dusk yesterday, and now it's past midnight. It was what you needed. You looked like death when they brought you in. But I must say it made my job a lot easier to have you unconscious."

I glanced down at the hand which lay, neatly bandaged, on the coverlet in front of me. My body was stiff and sore inside its strapping, but the fierce pain had died to a dull aching. My mouth was swollen, and tasted still of blood mingled with the sick-sweet remnants of the drug, but my headache had gone, and the cut on my face had stopped hurting.

"I'm thankful you were here to do it," I said. I shifted the hand a little to ease it, but it was no use. "Will it mend?"

"With the help of youth and good flesh, yes. There were three bones broken, but I think it's clean." He looked at me curiously. "How did you come by it? It looked as if a horse had trodden on you and then kicked your ribs in. But the cut on your face, that was a sword, surely?"

"Yes. I was in a fight."

His brows went up. "If that was a fight, then it wasn't fought by any rules I ever heard of. Tell me —

wait, though, not yet. I'm on fire to know what happened — we all are — but you must eat first." He went to the door and called, and presently a servant came in with a bowl of broth and some bread. I could not manage the bread at first, but then sopped a little of it in the broth, and ate that. Gandar pulled a stool up beside the bed, and waited in silence till I had finished. At length I pushed the bowl aside, and he took it from me and set it on the floor.

"Now do you feel well enough to talk? The rumours are flying about like stinging gnats. You knew that Gorlois was dead?"

"Yes." I looked about me. "I'm in Dimilioc itself, I take it? The fortress surrendered, then, after the Duke was killed?"

"They opened the gates as soon as the King got back from Tintagel. He'd already had the news of the skirmish, and the Duke's death. It seems that the Duke's men, Brithael and Jordan, rode to Tintagel as soon as the Duke fell, to take the Duchess the news. But you'd know that; you were there." He stopped short, as he saw the implications. "So that was it! Brithael and Jordan — they ran into you and Uther?"

"Not into Uther, no. They never saw him; he was still with the Duchess. I was outside with my servant Cadal — you remember Cadal? — guarding the doors. Cadal killedJordan , and I killed Brithael." I smiled, wryly, with my stiff mouth. "Yes, you may well stare. He was well beyond my weight, as you can see. Do you wonder I fought foul?"

"And Cadal?"

"Dead. Do you think otherwise that Brithael would have got to me?"

"I see." His gaze told again, briefly, the tally of my hurts. When he spoke, his voice was dry. "Four men.

With you, five. It's to be hoped the King counts it worth the price."

"He does," I said. "Or he will soon."

"Oh, aye, everyone knows that. Give him time only to tell the world that he is guiltless of Gorlois' death, and to get him buried with honour, so that he can marry the Duchess. He's gone back to Tintagel already, did you know? He must have passed you on the road."

"He did," I said dryly. "Within a yard or two."

"But didn't he see you? Or surely — he must have known you were hurt?" Then my tone got through to him. "You mean he saw you, like that, and left you to ride here alone?" I could see that he was shocked, rather than surprised. Gandar and I were old acquaintances, and I had no need to tell him what my relationship had been with Uther, even though he was my father's brother. From the very beginning, Uther had resented his brother's love for his bastard son, and had half feared, half despised my powers of vision and prophecy. He said hotly: "But when it was done in his service —"

"Not his, no. What I did, I did because of a promise I made to Ambrosius. It was a trust' he left with me, for his kingdom." I left it at that. One did not speak to Gandar of gods and visions. He dealt, like Uther, with things of the flesh. "Tell me," I said, "those rumours you were talking of. What are they? What do people think happened at Tintagel?"

He gave a half-glance over his shoulder. The door was shut, but he lowered his voice. "The story goes that Uther had already been in Tintagel, with the Duchess Ygraine, and that it was you who took him there and put him in the way of entering. They say you changed the King by enchantment into a likeness of the Duke, and got him past the guards and into the Duchess's bedchamber. They say more than that; they say she took him to her bed, poor lady, thinking he was her husband. And that when Brithael and Jordan took her the news of Gorlois' death, there was 'Gorlois' sitting large as life beside her at breakfast.

By the Snake, Merlin, why do you laugh?"

"Two days and nights," I said, "and the story has grown already. Well, I suppose that is what men will believe, and go on believing. And perhaps it is better than the truth."

"What is the truth, then?"

"That there was no enchantment about our entry into Tintagel, only disguise, and human treachery."

I told him the story then, exactly as it had happened, with the tale I had given the goat-herd. "So you see, Gandar, I sowed that seed myself. The nobles and the King's advisers must know the truth, but the common folk will find the tale of magic, and a blameless Duchess, better to believe — and, God knows, easier — than the truth."

He was silent for a while. "So the Duchess knew."

"Or we would not have got in," I said. "It shall not be said, Gandar, that this was a rape. No, the Duchess knew."

He was silent again, for rather longer. Then he said, heavily: "Treachery is a hard word."

"It is a true one. The Duke was my father's friend, and he trusted me. It would never have occurred to him that I would help Uther against him. He knew how little I cared for Uther's lusts. He could not guess that my gods demanded that I should help him satisfy this one. Even though I could not help myself, it was still treachery, and we shall suffer for it, all of us."

"Not the King." He said it positively. "I know him. I doubt if the King will feel more than a passing guilt.

You are the one who is suffering for it, Merlin, just as you are the one who calls it by its name."

"To you," I said. "To other men this will remain a story of enchantment, like the dragons which fought at my bidding under Dinas Emrys, and the Giants' Dance which floated on air and water to Amesbury. But you have seen how Merlin the King's enchanter fared that night." I paused, and shifted my hand on the coverlet, but shook my head at the question in his face. "No, no, let be. It's better already. Gandar, one other truth about that night must be known. There will be a child. Take it as hope, or take it as prophecy, you will see that, come Christmas, a boy will be born. Has he said when he will marry her?"