Merlin's Harp (21 page)

  I thought,
In the forest, he will heal. He will come back to his true
self…if it was his true self…He will come back to the Lugh he used to
be, the big, blunt, straightforward brother I remember.

  I was glad that Lugh led us. His responsibility for us held him together under grief and remorse and self-horror.

  Behind Lugh, Mellias led Merlin's pony on a trace. Merlin slumped sideways. We stopped where we found occasional shelter to dress his wound, which kept breaking out and bleeding afresh. And in the shade I saw that his aura had shrunk from an extensive white mist to a narrow orange flicker.

  As the sun bent toward the western hills Lugh waved an arm and pointed, and we saw on the horizon a low, dark smudge, a forest. This forest was not ours. We had taken a new track, swinging wide of the area Arthur would search. But forest it was, dark, sheltered, homelike. Even bent, gasping Merlin smiled.

  Closer, we paused to deck ourselves and Lugh's charger with identifying herbs. Small, dark children might wait for us in the trees, gleefully counting their poisoned darts.

  We entered at sunset. The horses bridled and snorted as the forest dark reached out to them, laden with wild smells.

  Merlin lay flat along his pony's back and buried his face in its mane. His wound had opened and was dripping a faint blood trail. We three slid down and led our mounts along the narrow trail, between snatching brambles and under arching branches. Lugh went first, then Merlin, then myself, and Mellias last.

  I watched the highest treetops, still sunbright above us. Birds and squirrels flew and chattered, but I was sure no invisible cloak swirled, no glinting dark eyes followed our progress with hostile curiosity, no fingers itched to let fly a dart.

  Mellias said softly, "Fey are gone from this forest. Only wolves will greet us."

  No one questioned him. Lugh was searching the trail. I was relaxing, breathing moss, bracken, fern, serpent, toad, Goddess in the air.

  Twenty years gone, returning to Avalon after the Children's Guard, I had felt like this. Coming home to our forest from Arthur's kingdom I had always felt like this, as though I woke from a troubled dream and found my mother's arm thrown lightly over me in the safe warmth of our bed robe.

  Yew and oak and ash embraced each other over the vanishing trail. Small creatures fled through bracken. The Goddess leaned from the darkening sky and breathed upon us. The uneven trail led across Her knees. Her spread hands received us.

  Surely the Goddess was my enemy. For fifteen years I had not sacrificed to Her. My one child was dead, and my fruitful years were passing. The day would come when I could no longer accept Her gift of life and give life back to Her. Surely She hated me.

  But I walked gladly into Her hands. I rejoiced as I felt Her breath on my face. Does a mother hate her rebellious child? And what little one, tantrum over, does not return trustfully to its mother's arms? Like such a little one, I returned to the breast of the Goddess.

  Out in the kingdom the sun was now set. Our trail darkened till our Fey eyes widened; Human Lugh could most likely not see at all.

  "Lugh," I said, "we should stop. Merlin—"

  Merlin heaved himself upright and urged his pony past the charger. "Here," he croaked, pointing. "We go in there." And he rode straight into the dark between two towering beeches.

  Lugh stood amazed. He had led us to this point; now sick old Merlin suddenly seized command and left him blind in the dark.

  "Catch him," Mellias advised in a voice touched by laughter. I turned to him, happily surprised. I had not heard that note in his voice for days. Mellias, like me, revived in the forest. His small dim figure had straightened, his eyes glinted.

  Lugh mumbled a curse, dismounted, and led the charger after Merlin. The great horse could not easily step through underbrush, and moved slowly. We followed his pale rump through thick young trees. "Lugh," I ventured, "I could go first." With my Fey night vision.

  The charger stopped and blew. Past him, I saw a small red flicker—a fire in a stone circle. Cautiously, Lugh pulled the horse forward. We followed them into a dim-lit clearing where Merlin stood, bent over, clasping his side.

  In the midst reared a giant oak fringed with mistletoe. A rickety ladder led up to a wicker tree house that reminded me of Aefa's old den. A rich scent of cooking nut mast filled the clearing and waked hunger. Chestnuts, beechnuts, and hickory nuts roasted in an iron pan on the firestone. I licked my lips and swallowed. We had last eaten at Arimathea.

  Another scent lingered under the scent of food. The clearing smelled of…Human. A Human lived here alone. But the solitary life is contrary to Human nature. Humans live in packs.

  Ghosts drifted here too. My tingling skin signaled their presence—ghosts, and higher spirits, such as those that haunted the Arimathea chapel.

  I saw that Merlin did not dare raise his voice. The effort might open his wound. I whispered, "Lugh, call out. Announce us." For Lugh was staring about like a child who waits to be led.

  At my bidding, he called, "Hola, ho!" in Angle and "Hail, Friend," in Latin.

  "Hola," a gentle voice answered from above in rough, peasant Angle. "Merlin, old friend, is that you I see?" From the tree house leaned a dim face.

  Merlin raised his voice enough to say, "Caleb, it is I, with friends."

  "I must have known a crowd was coming, I cooked all my mast! But you are hurt…" For Merlin had folded to the ground.

  Mellias and Lugh settled Merlin leaning against the oak. Caleb climbed down, squirrel-quick. He was tall, but too thin and gentle to call a giant. Close to, he smelled sour. Between his rough brown hair and beard his face was ageless, unlined, utterly free of all traces of Human fantasy, greed, or grief. Such a face might belong to a Fey, or an idiot. But wisdom looked out of Caleb's eyes.

  "Let me tend that wound."

  From a storage hut back in the trees he brought herbs I did not know, and some kind of berry oil. From a nearby spring he brought clear water. While he dressed the wound he never glanced at the rest of us. He trusted us, for Merlin had named us friends.

  Mellias hobbled the horses. Lugh squatted by the fire and drooled at the roasting mast.

  Merlin's wound staunched and bandaged, Caleb sat back on his heels. And now he looked us over with quiet eyes.

  Merlin murmured, "Caleb is a Christian hermit."

  That much I had guessed. He reminded me of some of Gildas's brother monks, those with great white auras. In the dark I could not see his own.

  Merlin nodded toward Lugh. "Sir Lancelot is one of the King's knights…"

  Anywhere in the kingdom, those words would have raised excited hands and voices. I felt that Caleb had heard the name before, but seeing the man did not break his shell of calm. He looked past Lugh to Mellias and me.

  "Mellias," Merlin wheezed, "and…Niv…are of the Fey."

  Mellias and I bristled and crouched like hunting dogs, ready to spring. Never, in fifteen years, had Merlin announced this fact aloud. Humans fear and hate the Fey, and Christians connect them with their evil God Satan.

  Caleb sat on his heels, unmoved.

  And Merlin gasped, "Niv is a woman." So he took and tossed away our last armor of deceit.

  Caleb smiled at me and said, "A beautiful woman," like a courtier.

  His smile brightened the firelight. I took a deep breath and felt his aura brush peacefully against mine. I knew then that it was enormous. That aura could fill this clearing and expand into the forest, or seek out a spider in its web, if Caleb wished it.

  Mellias slumped down beside me. Caleb turned his smile to him and said, "The mast is cooked."

  We ate close around the little fire while the horses snuffled hungrily in the dark. "Keep them close," Caleb warned, "or wolves may get them."

  Otter Mellias said, "Wolves may get them here, Caleb."

  The hermit shook his head no.

  We ate the mast, not out of the pan, but from a treasure—a large, round dish that, in the firelight, glinted like silver. In truth, it was silver, tarnished and dented, but true. Now how had a greedfree hermit come by this grail?

  Around our circle it went, emptier at each passage. Caleb did not eat. He would hold the mast under his nose a moment, breathe in the mast aroma, then pass it on to Mellias. I wondered if he lived often on the smell of food. I had heard such tales of Christian saints, and Caleb was thin enough.

  The empty, finger-scraped dish ended in Merlin's hands. He lay down, rested his head on Mellias's knee and turned the grail around and around in his gaunt hands, learning it.

  At last he said, "This…rich treasure."

  I was embarrassed for him. I had never seen him so Human before—fussing like a housewife over a dish. "Where did you find this, Caleb?"

  "It was my mother's."

  "I'll wager it was her mother's too."

"You win your wager."

  "Ah. And that is why…you keep it by you…this share of greed and sin?"

  "I see no greed in it, Merlin. No sin." Caleb reached for his grail, but Merlin hugged it.

  "Men would do murder for this dish," he chuckled, and stiffened in pain.

  Caleb warned, "You are talking too much."

  Merlin struggled to sit up, but lay on his elbow instead, staring down into the grail under his nose. He cleared his throat, spat to the side, and announced, "This silver dish of your mothers is in truth the Holy Grail, for which knights seek and monks pray. You did not know this?"

  Caleb's eyes widened. I had not believed the Grail existed. I sat up straighter, eyes fixed upon it.

  Merlin tried to sing. He quavered, "
The Holy Grail we see, angel
revealed to me, Tarnished though it may be, Christ's cup verily…
Oh, Gods!" He spat blood.

  Caleb said only, "Merlin, do not sing. Do not talk."

  Merlin set the Grail down close to his side, raised his hands and signaled,
You knew this!

  We watched, dumbfounded. I had never before seen a Human follow finger-talk. I had somehow assumed that they could not, that they were debarred from learning.

  Caleb answered aloud. "No. I knew only that it came from my family."

  
You never felt power flow from it?

  "Only the power of love."

  "If I could sing! I would sing of the folk who wait for the Grail to shine on them. Knights. Merchants. Peasants. Romans. And here you eat nuts from it! Any church or monastery in the world would give all they possessed to keep this Grail for the healing of the world!"

  And Caleb said, "Merlin. Take the Grail. Bestow it where you will, for the healing of the world."

  Merlin beamed embarrassing, greedy joy. Then he sobered. "Friend," he said softly, "I know your sacrificial heart. Can you… live without the grail of your mothers?"

  Caleb shrugged. "If I cannot live without this thing, or any other thing, I might as well go back to the civilized world with you." Merlin nodded and stroked the Grail as he might stroke a cat. "But you cannot leave here soon, Merlin."

  "In the morning."

  Caleb shook his head. "That wound…"

  Merlin spoke to Caleb with his fingers.

  Very quietly, I reached and took the Grail. I fingered it, caressed it, rubbed till it shone; with the shine came faint impressions, through my fingers, or through other senses. Had I my full power they would have been much stronger. But I was pleased to find any impressions. Maybe, I thought, my power was creeping back to me…or maybe the Grail's power augmented mine.

  I felt the warmth that Caleb claimed to feel; a warmth of love, that same presence I used to feel in Human huts which, as a child, I entered to rob. I heard soft voices, as of a family beside a hearth; I smelled oats, bran, peas. At one moment the Grail weighed in my hands as though laden with a feast; the next moment it practically floated away, light as an empty stomach. I saw a mother spread a few peas in the dish to look like many. I saw her watch the children eat. Silently I asked the Grail, Ho
w
were you made?

  Long, long ago in Roman days the Grail was fashioned by a coarse-muscled giant who sang at his task and sold the piece for bread. He had no thought of power beyond the power of making.

  I heard Caleb say, "If only you could sing for us!"

  Faintly, Merlin whispered, "I could try…Enchanter is yonder, on the pony."

  "Do not joke, Merlin." And Caleb said to Mellias and Lugh, "You know, Merlin can sing tales of the saints, as well as tales of knightly combat."

  Merlin chuckled and boasted, "A real bard can sing any tale, anywhere. Any language."

  No spiritual power dwelt in the Grail, nor ever had.

  Merlin was lying.

* * *

Wolves came in the night.

  Caleb had warned us. "Give them no power," he said. "Pay them no heed." ( Just as the Lady had once said of my ghosts, "Give them no power." But these were material wolves.)

  The ponies did not understand this. Their whickers and whinnies woke us to the sight of lean, dark shapes circling the clearing.

  Caleb had told us that most nights he slept up in the tree house. But the house could not hold us all, nor could Merlin climb the ladder; so in courtesy Caleb lay with us close to the fire, and shared his flea-hopping blankets with us. Now he sat up and spoke firmly to the wolves. "Shoo," he told them, as a peasant might tell his dogs, "Out. Go. These folk are my guests, and the horses too. Leave them alone."