The Last Enchantment (41 page)

Melwas' right hand was a blur of glossy blood. His sword moved more slowly, as if too heavy for him.

His breathing laboured, loud as a stag's in rut. With a great, grunting effort he brought his shield smashing down, like an axe, at the King. Arthur dodged, but slipped. The shield's edge took him on the right shoulder, and must have numbed the arm. His sword flew wide. There was a gasp and a great cry from the watching people. Melwas gave a shout, and swung his sword up for the kill.

But Arthur, now armed only with a dagger, did not spring back out of range. Before anyone could draw breath he had jumped forward, straight past the shield, and his long dagger bit into Melwas' throat.

And stayed still, followed only by a trickle of blood. No thrust followed. He spoke again, low and fierce.

Melwas froze where he stood. The sword dropped from his lifted hand. The shield fell to the grass.

The dagger withdrew. The King stepped back. Slowly, in the sight of all that throng, the King's men and his own, and of the Queen watching from her tower, Melwas, King of the Summer Country, knelt on the bloody grass in front of Arthur, and made his surrender.

Now there was no sound at all.

With a movement so slow as to be almost ceremonial, the King lifted his dagger, and cast it, point down, to quiver in the turf. Then he spoke again, more quietly even than before. This time Melwas, with bent head, answered him. They spoke for some time. Finally the King, still with that ceremony of gesture, reached a hand, and lifted Melwas to his feet. Then he beckoned the defeated man's escort to him, and, as his own people came crowding, turned away among them and walked back toward the palace.

In later years I heard several stories about this fight. Some said it was Bedwyr who fought, not Arthur, but that is patently foolish. Others asserted that there was no fight, or Melwas would surely have been slain. Arthur and Melwas, they said, were brought by some mediator in the Council to agree on terms.

That is not true. It happened exactly as I have told it. Later I learned from the King what had passed between the two men on the field of combat: Melwas, expecting death, was brought to admit the truth of the Queen's accusation, and his own guilt. It is true it would not have served for Arthur to kill him, but Arthur — and this on no advice from me — acted with both wisdom and restraint. It is a fact that after that day Melwas was loyal to him, and Ynys Witrin was reckoned a jewel in the tally of Arthur's sovereignty.

It is a matter of public record that the King's ships paid no more harbour dues.

So the year went by, and the lovely month came, September, my birth-month, the wind's month, the month of the raven, and of Myrddin himself, that wayfarer between heaven and earth. The apple trees were heavy with fruit, and the herbs were gathered and drying; they hung in sheaves and bunches from the rafters in the outhouses at Applegarth, and the still-room was full of ranked jars and boxes waiting to be filled. The whole house, garden, tower and living quarters, smelled sweetly of herbs and fruit, and of the honey that welled from the hives; even, at the end of the orchard, from the hollow oak where the wild bees lived. Applegarth, it seemed, reflected within its small boundaries the golden plenty of the kingdom's summer. The Queen's summer, men called it, as harvest followed hay-time, and still the land glowed with the Goddess-given plenty. A golden age, they said. For me, too, a golden age. But now, as never before, I had time to be lonely. And in the evenings, when the wind was in the southwest, I could feel it in my bones, and was grateful for the fire. Those weeks of nakedness and hunger, and exposure to the mountain weather in theCaledonianForest , had left me a legacy that even a strong body could not shake off, and were pricking me forward into old age.

Another legacy that time had left me; whether as a lingering after-effect of Morgause's poison, or from some other cause, I had, from time to time, brief attacks of something that I might have called the falling sickness, save that this is not a malady that comes in later years if it has not been felt before. The symptoms, besides, were not like those in cases that I had seen or treated. The fit had come three times in all, and only when I was alone, so none knew of it but myself. What happened was this: resting quietly, I had drifted off, it seemed into sleep, only to wake, cold and stiff and weak with hunger — though not inclined to eat — many hours later. The first time it was a matter of twelve hours or so only, but I guessed from the giddiness, and the light, exhausted feeling, that it had not been normal sleep. On the second occasion the lapse of time was two nights and a day, and I was lucky that the malady had struck me when I was safely in my bed.

I told no one. When the third attack was imminent I recognized the signs; a light, half-hungry sensation, a slight giddiness, a wish to rest and be silent. So I sent Mora home, locked the doors, and took myself to my bedchamber. Afterwards I felt as I sometimes had after a time of prophecy, borne up like a creature ready for flight, with senses rinsed and clean as if new-made, colours and sounds coming as fresh and brilliant as they must to a child. Of course I took to my books for enlightenment, but finding no help there, I put the matter aside, accepting it, as I had learned to accept the pains of prophecy, and their withdrawal, as a touch of the god's hand. Perhaps now the hand was drawing me closer. There was no fear in the thought. I had done what he had required of me, and when the time came, would be ready to go.

But he did not, I reckoned, require me to sacrifice my pride. Let men remember the royal prophet and enchanter who retired from men's sight and his King's service in his own time; not a dotard who had waited overlong for his dismissal.

So I stayed solitary, busying myself with the garden and my medicine, writing and sending long letters to Blaise in Northumbria, and being cared for well enough by the girl Mora, whose cooking was from time to time enriched by some gift from Arthur's table. Gifts went back from me, too; a basket of some especially good apples from one of the young trees; cordials and medicines; perfumes, even, that I concocted for the Queen's pleasure; herbs for the King's kitchen. Simple stuff, after the fiery gifts of prophecy and victory, but somehow redolent of peace and the age of gold. Gifts of love and contentment; now we had time for both. A golden time indeed, untroubled by foreboding; but with the prickling sense I recognized of some change to come; something undreaded, but ineluctable as the fall of the leaves and the coming of winter.

What it was, I would not allow myself to think. I was like a man alone in an empty room, contented enough, but listening for sounds beyond the shut door, and waiting with half a hope for someone to come, though knowing in his heart of hearts that he would not.

But he did.

He came on a golden evening, in about the middle of the month. There was a full moon, which had stolen, like a ghost, into the sky long before sunset. It hung behind the apple boughs like a great misty lantern, its light slowly waxing, as the sky around it darkened, to apricot and gold. I was in the stillroom, crumbling a pile of dried hyssop. The jars stood clean and ready. The room smelled of hyssop and of the racks of apples and plums laid on the shelves to ripen. A few late wasps droned, and a butterfly, snared by the room's warmth, flattened rich wings against the stone of the window-frame. I heard the light step behind me, and turned.

Magician they call me, and it is true. But I neither expected his coming nor heard him until I saw him standing there in the dusk, lit by the deepening gold of the moon. He might have been a ghost, so did I stand and stare, transfixed. The meeting in the mist on theIsland 's shore had come back to me frequently, but never as something real; with every effort of recall it became more and more of a dream, something imagined, a hope only.

Now the real boy was here, flushed and breathing, smiling, but not quite at ease, as if unsure of his welcome. He held a bundle which, I supposed, must contain his goods. He was dressed in grey, with a cloak the colour of beech-buds. He had no ornaments, and no weapons.

He began: "I don't suppose you remember me, but —"

"Why should I not? You are the boy who is not Ninian."

"Oh, but I am. I mean, it is one of my names. Truly."

"I see. So when I called you —"

"Yes. When you spoke first, I thought you must know me; but then — when you said who you were —

I knew you were mistaken, and — well, I was afraid. I'm sorry. I should have told you straight away, instead of running away like that. I'm sorry."

"But when I told you that I wanted to teach you my art, and asked you to come to me, you agreed to do so. Why?"

His hands, white on the bundle, clenched and twisted in the fold of the cloth. He hung still on the threshold, as if poised to run. "That was...When you said that he — this other boy — had been the —

the kind of person who could learn from you...You had felt it all along, you said, and he had known it, too. Well — " he swallowed, " — I believe that I am, too. I have felt, all my life, that there were doors in the back of the mind that would open on light, if one could only find the key." He faltered, but his eyes did not waver from mine.

"Yes?" I gave him no help.

"Then when you spoke to me like that, suddenly, out of the mist, it was like a dream come true. Merlin himself, speaking to me by name, and offering me the very key...Even when I realized that you had mistaken me for someone else, who was dead, I had a wild thought that perhaps I could come to you and take his place...Then of course I saw how stupid that was, to think I could deceive you, of all people. So I did not dare to come."

"But now you have dared."

"I had to." He spoke simply, stating a fact. "I have thought of nothing else since that night. I was afraid, because...I was afraid, but there are things that you have to do, they won't let you alone, it's as if you were being driven. More than driven, hounded. Do you understand?"

"Very well." It was hard to keep my voice steady and grave. There must have been some note in it of what my heart felt, because, faint and sweet from the upper room, I heard the answer of my harp.

He had heard nothing. He was still braced, braving me, forcing himself into the role of suppliant. "Now you know the truth. I'm not the boy you knew. You know nothing about me. Whatever I feel, here in myself" — a hand moved as if to touch his breast, but clenched itself again on the bundle — "you may not think I'm worth teaching. I don't expect you to take me in, or spend any time on me. But if you would

— if you would only let me stay here, sleep in the stableplace, anything, help you with — well, with work like that" — a glance at the pile of hyssop — "until perhaps in time you would come to know..." His voice wavered again, and this time died. He licked dry lips and stood mute, watching me.

It was my gaze that faltered, not his. I turned aside to hide the joy that I could feel mantling my cheeks. I plunged my hands wrist-deep in the fragrant herbs, and rubbed the dry fragments between the fingertips.

The scent of hyssop, clean and pungent, rose and steadied me.

I spoke slowly, to the herb jars. "When I called to you by theLake , I took you for a boy with whom I travelled north many years ago, and who had a spirit that spoke to mine. He died, and ever since that day I have grieved for his death. When I saw you, I thought I had been mistaken, and that he still lived; but when I had time to think about it, I knew that now he would be a boy no longer, but a grown man. It was, you might say, a stupid error. I do not commonly make such errors, but at the time I told myself it was an error bred of weariness and grief, and of the hope that was still alive in me, that he, or such another spirit, would one day come to me again."

I paused. He said nothing. The moon had moved beyond the window-frame, and the door where the boy stood was almost in darkness. I turned back to him.

"I should have known it was no error. It was the hand of the god that crossed your path with mine, and now has driven you to me, in spite of your fear. You are not the boy I knew, but if you had not been just such another, you can be sure I would not have seen you, or spoken to you. That night was full of strong magic. I should have remembered that, and trusted it."

He said eagerly: "I felt it, too. You could feel the stars like frost on the skin. I'd gone out to catch fish...but I let them be. It was no night for death, even for a fish." Dimly, I saw that he smiled, but when he drew breath, it came unsteadily. "You mean I may stay? I will do?"

"You will do." I lifted my fingers from the hyssop, and let it trickle back onto the cloth, dusting my fingertips together. "Which of us, after this, will dare to ignore the god who drives us? Don't be afraid of me. You are very welcome. No doubt I'll warn you, when I have time to be cautious, of the heavy task you're undertaking, and all the thorns that lie in the way, but just at this moment I dare say nothing that will frighten you away from me again. Come in, and let me see you."

As he obeyed me, I lifted the unlit lamp from the shelf. The wick caught flame from the air, and flared high.

In full light I knew that I could never have mistaken him for the goldsmith's boy, but he was very like. He was taller by a thumb's breadth, and his face was not quite so thin in outline. His skin was finer, and his hands, as fine-boned and clever-looking as the other boy's, had never done slave's work. His hair was the same, a thick dark mane, roughly cut just short of his shoulders. His mouth was like, so like that I could have been deceived again; it had the gentle, dreaming lines that — I suspected — masked a firmness, even obstinacy, of purpose. The boy Ninian had shown a quiet disregard of anything that he did not want to notice; his master's discourses had gone unheeded over his head while he took refuge in his own thoughts. Here was the same soft stubbornness, and in these eyes, too, the same half-absent, dreaming look that could shut the world out as effectively as dropped eyelids. They were grey, the iris rimmed with black, and had the clarity of lake water. I was to find that like lake water they could reflect colour, and look green or blue or black-stormy as the mood came. Now they were watching me with what looked like a mixture of fascination and fear.