Merlin's Mirror (16 page)

At first he believed that he faced the dead, cunningly preserved after no fashion this world knew. Then he stared more closely, even venturing to tap with one fingertip against the now transparent panel. There was a swirl of small particles across the face of the girl in answer. She stood there fully engulfed in liquid, just as he had lain under the protection of the mirror so that he might live, not die as Nimue willed.

Nimue was once rumored to have brought someone here—Morgause, Uther’s daughter! But this was only a girl. She could not be the mother of Modred, a fully grown youth . . . unless she had been so imprisoned shortly after her son’s birth! When Merlin studied her longer he
was sure he could indeed trace a faint likeness to Uther, but certainly none to the dark-browed Modred!

Why did Nimue hold her prisoner so? The Lady of the Lake must foresee some future use for Uther’s daughter, not as she would have been if time had dealt commonly with her, but as she was when Uther had sent her forth from his court. And, knowing Nimue, Merlin did not believe that that purpose could be any good one.

He inspected the box carefully for any fastening or latch. It seemed sealed on all four corners as well as the top. Perhaps it was the sort of coffer which could only be released by the right word, spoken in just the proper tone. Though he pitied the girl who slept, he could see no way of freeing her.

Oddly enough, that opaque backing which had been dislodged by his wand was beginning to gather again, spreading over the inner surface as frost covered a stone. It was thickening and for that he was glad, since the fewer signs left of his visit here the better.

Now he went past Morgause’s strange prison to an object made of fine wires spun with ribbons of metal. This was woven into a crown-like head covering, though some of the wire rose up from the top of that crown into a tall pillar standing behind it, where they were swallowed into the substance of the pillar itself.

Before that pillar on Merlin’s side was a bench, on which the crown waited. He considered the whole thing carefully. Then suddenly he was excited. He had the mirror and the voice; this crown might be a device for communication just as the mirror was for him! If that were so...

Merlin edged around to the back of the pillar. It was entirely smooth and rose nearly to the ceiling overhead. There was a space about half the length of Merlin’s wand between its top and the overhead beams. Some glistening rods about the thickness of his little finger jutted into that space from the crest of the pillar at irregular lengths, no two the same.

Not even in his dreams of the lost cities had Merlin ever seen its like, but if this was Nimue’s link with those who had set her tasks here on this earth, and if it could be destroyed__

He had a hearty respect for anything fashioned by the Star People and so little knowledge—simply because he
had none of their devices in common use—of what they might be, that he was loath to interfere with any of this. Yet he also knew that he finally had before him the chance to deal his enemy the greatest defeat

The wand warned him of force inside the pillar, such a flow of force that he dared not test it. However, the reaction was far less when he pointed the off-world gem in the direction of the crown on the bench. And those wires that wedded crown to pillar looked very fragile.

Merlin drew a deep breath. Even if he awoke here such a force as would sweep him into death, defeating Nimue and those behind her would be worth such an ending. He had obeyed the orders laid on him—the beacon was set to bring in those of his kin; Arthur knew what they would have of
him
—so what matter if he died now, as long as he took with him Nimue’s greatest tool?

Slowly, with caution and all the skill he could bring to the task, Merlin slid the tip of the wand along the surface of the bench until it lay directly under, but not touching, the wires that led up to the pillar. Then, just as he had used the knife blade to compel the King Stone to his will, now he began tapping with the metal-encased gem. And in a low voice he chanted. Tap—chant—tap—

He made no move to touch the crown, but bent his will on its anchorage. Slowly the crown itself lifted from the surface of the bench. It rose by jerks, as if it were a sentient thing fighting against his control. But still it rose. Now it was higher than Merlin’s head as he stood there, and the wires to the pillar were pulled taut as harp strings.

Merlin did not hesitate. Tap—chant—tap—

He sensed that beyond the reach of his own mind there were things gathering, prowling unseen, moving on a level not open to the eyes of man. But he would not give heed to those things, concentrating his whole will on what he would do.

The crown tugged fiercely at the wires that held it, bobbing down to strain upward again with a quick snap. Still those thread-like filaments held. But Merlin persevered.

There was a sharp ringing sound. One of the wires had at last broken, trailing back against the pillar limply. The crown, freer now on one side than the other, made desperate swoops and soars to win loose in answer to Merlin’s command.

Another snap. It was held now by a single thread only.
Merlin did not allow any feeling of triumph to slow his invocation. The crown dipped low like a tethered bird, nearly flying into Merlin’s face as if it resented what he would make it do and was now minded to attack. He did not flinch but his tapping grew stronger and he raised his voice a fraction, uttering a single loud ringing word of command.

The crown flew from him as if to escape whatever fate he laid upon it, rising in a whirl of motion overhead, and the last wire parted. Now all virtue went out of the crown; it fell to lie at Merlin’s feet and he deliberately set his boot on it, crushing its fragile weaving into a mass of broken wire. Raising the tangle by the tip of his wand, being careful not to touch it with his bare hand, he carried it before him as he went.

The last of the installations he did not understand was another pillar, but this had no crown, no wires, no surface break, not even any flashing lights along its front. He could make nothing of it ... And those presences he sensed when he had attacked the crown were growing more restive.

He did not know them, could only feel that in some way they were akin to the watchers in the forest. His own inner force had been badly eroded by his destruction of the crown so it seemed better to meet out in the open any attack which might be aimed at him now—not facing it in Nimue’s own fortress where the unseen attackers might be able to draw upon energies he could not locate. In spite of Nimue’s usurpation of this section of the forest, Merlin had some strengths which the earth itself would feed and nurture.

He ran through the doorway, out of that well-lighted room. When he reached the break in the causeway he turned and hurled the wreckage of the crown far out into the lake, where the glittering water swallowed it. It would have been better to bury it in the earth—for this water had been englamoured by his enemy—but Merlin now needed his hands free for what might come.

What did happen surprised him so much that he nearly lost control for a startled moment. He had been dreading the return across those slippery stones. Not only did he know that he was already under a silent attack which sucked at his control and his inner powers, but he feared
that Nimue’s forest servants had been alerted. Caught on those slimed rocks he would be easy meat

However, when he turned to look in the direction of the land, he glimpsed something that was not the false sheen of the water, but was suspended above it like a nearly invisible link between the two broken portions of the causeway. If water itself could form a bridge, Merlin believed, it would look so.

Dare he trust it? This might be a subtle trap. He thought he had the way of testing that. Leaning forward a little, Merlin stretched out his wand to touch what he could hardly see at all. The stone-metal point thudded down against a surface which was very real indeed.

Thus, tapping gingerly before him with the tip of the rod as he went, Merlin stepped onto the invisible bridge, forcing himself not to see with his eyes but with his mind, to
know
that he had footing even if it appeared to be only empty air.

16.

He gained no confidence during that crossing, even though his wand continued to report that steady footing formed the bridge. Only when he was down again on that other length of stone he could see as well as feel did Merlin give a great sigh of relief. Yet this was no time to relax his guard.

Facing the trees in the dark wood through which the trace of that very ancient road ran, he stiffened. They were alert at last, those eerie guardians Nimue had set to patrol her boundaries, and they were closing the path before him. There remained the way he had taken in, the stream. With the memory of the serpent still paramount in his mind, though, descending again into any water fed by this lake was a task which needed firm willing.

Merlin dropped down into the deeper runnel, his wand in hand, feeling the slight swing of that which, added to his extra sense, would be his warning of any imminent attack. The water here was not as clear as it had been farther down the stream and, as he walked, slipping and sliding across a very uneven footing, clouds of silt rose to make it more murky.

He was well down that water road, near the turn where it became a more honest and natural stream, when his wand turned sharply in his hand. At the same moment a strong warning of his sense of Power brought him half around.

He expected to see a monster, perhaps the same monster he had beguiled in the lake. Not—not a woman standing as if her sandals were set on the surface of the water, which had now become a firm flooring at her command.

She smiled lingeringly. As he had first seen her on that night he held the barrow sword, so did Merlin see Nimue now. She made no attempt to conceal her slim white
body, which was all woman’s curves; she even shook back her cloak of hair to display herself more wantonly. She was bare save for a girdle of stones as milky white as her skin, two wide armlets of the same and a neck chain which held a single stone carved into the sickle of a new moon, hanging between the proud upsurge of her breasts.

She shook her head in the mock playfulness one might use toward a child who had done ill but did not understand.

“Merlin—” His name came like the sighing of the wind, yet he noted sharply that her lips had not shaped it. And with that small hint of what she might be, he lifted the wand and struck—even as if he handled a spear in battle.

That point fashioned of metal and gem pierced between her breasts just below the moon pendant. There was a flurry in the air, then nothingness. Illusion!

But the fact that the illusion had called his name was highly disturbing. Nimue must have suspected that he would come or else she would not have fashioned such an apparition. Or did she know from afar of his invasion, from Camelot itself?

Either way he was disturbed. Though he might deal with certainty and wisdom with everything else in this world, yet this woman could stir his emotions and make him as awkward as any untried youth. It was not the strength she might summon and control, as he summoned and controlled forces, which made him uneasy. No, it was that subtler, other influence which reached the man in him no matter how he tried to control such longings. He knew they endangered all he could command, and that he would be far less than he now was if he were to yield to them.

For a long moment after the disappearance of the illusion Merlin stood waiting where he was, half expecting it to form again, but it did not. Now, feeling like a hunted fugitive, he splashed on, setting the best pace he could out of that evil wood.

Did Nimue know from a distance what damage he had wrought in her tower? He was willing to attribute all kinds of knowledge to her. And had his destruction of the crown defeated her future plans in anyway? He knew so little and needed to know so much!

Breathing faster but turning his head from side to side, gripping the wand so he would feel the first stirring it might give, he pushed on steadily. It seemed to him that
gloom gathered under the trees on either side of the stream, folding in thicker, almost like the curtain he had dispensed at the tower. And behind that—what prowled behind? He closed the door of his imagination, refused to allow such speculation. To look for that kind of attack was often to open a way for it.

No birds twittered in this woods now. Merlin could no longer pick up the smallest hint of any animal life-force. When no other manifestation rose to confront or threaten him, he began to believe that Nimue’s image had been random only, set up in simple expectation that some day he might venture here, and was not keyed to this one exploit of his.

The moon necklace she had worn—that he knew. Not from any teaching of the mirror, rather from the legends of his mother’s people. It was the sign of one of the three who were chosen in the old days to serve the Earth Mother: Maid there always was, with the new moon for her ranking, Mother, with the full moon, Old woman with her waning orb. Why had Nimue chosen such an archaic symbol? This countryside was sparsely settled and he knew that the people here might well cling to the old ways. It could be that many, perhaps the women chiefly, secretly worshiped the Old Goddess. At that thought a small unexplainable shiver ran down his spine. This matched that faint scent of evil he had detected in the herb chamber, a hint of something that was a warning, but so veiled a one he could not understand it.

Merlin breathed deeply with relief as he came at last out from under the daunting canopy of the trees, but the sun would not be with him much longer. This time he got well away from the fringe of the woods before he sat down, his damp breeches and boots clammy on his body, to eat and drink.

Tonight there would be a full moon, ripe and yellow-white in the sky. Merlin licked crumbs from his lips. He was very tired; the outflow of energy which had obeyed his will to destroy Nimue’s crown had closed down on him. To go on when he felt so weak and tired was folly. Still, even in this open, he was not easy of mind. He sat cross-legged, his wand lying on his knees, and realized he was listening, listening with a fervor he could not understand. Listening for what? Who?

Twilight faded and still he sat there, every sense alert.
He often stared at the black blot of the woods, but it was not from there that this feeling of dark awareness came. He also watched the slopes of open land around him. He was sure they had once been cleared by the hands of men and then abandoned to the wilds, so that shrubs and bushes had begun to reclaim the forest’s territory.

Merlin heard the bark of a fox, the rustle of some flying thing swooping low near him, perhaps to make a hunting kill. The night was alive again, but that life was normal to it. Why then did he sit waiting?

Now and then he glanced down at the wand. Its white length was barely discernible, and the gem and metal on its point did not gleam. He began to believe that whatever threatened was not a weapon of Nimue’s armory, at least no off-world one. There were times when he tried to compose himself to sleep, the light drowse he had known the night before, but that inner sentinel his mind had set refused to be ignored.

The moon rose, as whole as a piece of Roman gold tossed into the sky to overawe the stars with its light. Then, very far away, there began a disturbance which Merlin could not hear; he could only feel it like a vibration through earth and air picked up by his inner sense, not any outer one. It grew stronger until at last he heard as well as felt it.

There was a chanting which raised the hairs along his neck, made him breathe more quickly, his heart beat faster. Though he dealt with words of Power and knew what could channel through them, still this was wholly alien to his own forces. There was something utterly strange and wild in that wail in which he could not yet distinguish any words. Old, old, said his own knowledge, back, far back. This was nothing of the Star People, but entirely of a young earth before the coming of their ships.

The chanting broke into a series of shrill yelps. At last Merlin knew.

There was a hunt up under the moon, and he was the quarry. The goddess whose symbol Nimue’s illusion had worn also had her dark side. To that portion of her character men had shed blood—the blood of their own kind. She had two faces, that goddess, as well as three ages, and the second face was turned to the outer Darkness, which men had always feared and tried to propitiate.

The Great Mother—and the Great Destroyer—of mankind!

Yet yielding to atavistic fear meant utter defeat. Merlin swallowed twice, working to calm the beating of his heart, to marshal what he knew, the forces he himself controlled. There must be an answer—and that was not to run. For if he gave way to that...

He shook his head. There
was
an answer! It lingered in the far part of his mind, overlaid by all the mirror had taught him. This was not of the mirror, however, it was of his own world alone.

The Great Mother and her priestesses who watered the earth with the blood of men—

The Great Mother and—

From that far-hidden place in his memory Merlin dragged what Lugaid had once told him very long ago. The Mother had her rival. In latter years that rival became her mate: the Horned God, to whom hunters paid tribute that they might ever find the herds they preyed on. The Horned God . . . and how greatly did these priestesses hold
him
in awe?

There was little time for self-questioning. He could either run, which his nature forbade and which he knew would condemn him anyway, or he could stand. In his standing, he would have to hold the strongest illusion he had tried for years. It had to be strong, for the power of the Mother was not like any force he had faced before.

Merlin rose to his feet. He deliberately shut out as best he could the screams of the huntresses. He steadied his mind, concentrating, hoping with every breath he drew that his command over his own powers had not been too devastated by what he had wrought at the keep in the lake. There was no mirror fronting him now in which he could check the illusion. He could only hold the picture in his mind.

They were close enough now so he could see their white bodies darting in and out among the scrub bushes, the tossing of their hair. Like Nimue, they wore no clothing, but had necklaces of acorns. And the pack was of all ages, girls scarcely into puberty, matrons with sagging breasts which had nursed children, hags so old their skin was seamed leather under the moon.

As they drew in on him, now, their faces showing only the frenzy which was the dark aspect of their goddess,
their clamor staled. There was an avid blood lust in their eyes, just so had they once gathered to slay the Winter King. Merlin must not allow himself to think of anything but the protection he had woven for himself.

The first of the pack came within leaping distance, but now they faltered, their stares fixed, then wondering. If his own powers worked they saw no man, rather a dark figure bearing stag horns on his raised head—a figure which displayed no fear of their goddess-frenzy because the Horned Hunter was himself of the earth, the sky, the land about them.

The leader of the pack snarled, a tall woman with pendulous breasts who wore about her loins a thong supporting the disk of the full moon. Twice she started to reach for him with her long-nailed fingers, crooked to claw the flesh from his bones, but she still did not strike. Her following hung farther back, glancing uneasily from their priestess to Merlin.

He raised his wand, though the star things had no power against such as these. Yet with that in his hand Ms confidence was greater. Now he spoke:

“You do not hunt
me,
women of the Goddess.” He did not make that a question but a statement. “You may call the earth to answer you, to take the seed into it, to conceive, to bear the fruits of full harvest. But
I
command that which roams about the earth. Behold—”

With the wand he pointed to his left. There stood snarling the great Dire Wolf, a hound such as no living man had ever seen. And to the right he pointed, so that there crouched a giant cat with long fangs, and it hissed even as the wolf growled.

The women behind the priestess started back. But she stood her ground, and her teeth showed in a snarl as open as that of the cat’s.

“Hunter,” she spat, “do not try to oppose the Mother!”

“I am not a hunter,” Merlin replied, “I am
the
Hunter. The Mother knows me for I, too, am of her breed. I am no Spring King to share her bed for but a season. Look upon me, Priestess! I am of the wild kind and, as in the wild kind, so does my wrath rise! You serve your Mother—I do not bow knee at any shrine of hers. Thus between us lies a balance of power, each equal with the other. Is this thing not so?”

Very reluctantly the priestess inclined her head. But she did not surrender her fury.

“We hunt when the Mother is threatened,” she stated.

“Do I threaten her then, Priestess?”

For the first time she looked uncertain. “Perhaps—perhaps you are not the one we seek.”

“Yet it is to me you have brought your pack,” he countered. “I mean your lady no wrong, for both she and I serve the powers of earth life. Seek your man elsewhere, Priestess.”

She stared straight at him, puzzlement on her broad face. Then she backed away, her women scattering behind her. Merlin watched them go. He had no doubt that Nimue had somehow been at the bottom of this abortive attack. Had the Lady of the Lake brought back one of the oldest beliefs of all to cement new numbers of devoted followers to her?

The women were gone and once more he could hear their bare feet thudding against the earth around the bushes. Plainly they were indeed casting about for another trail. He hoped no wayfarer was abroad in this wasteland tonight for he was sure that, once balked of what they thought was their prey, they would take an added vengeance on any they found.

Was this how the Star Lords of his half kin first presented themselves to men, taking on some illusion of an earth god? He could almost believe that he had only followed a pattern of contact devised very long ago. Simple men needed symbols to tie themselves to their belief in the great Power which was beyond any man’s description. And there had been many forms of gods walking this earth. An ancient Sky Lord might have assumed the form of one—that would be the easiest way to make men listen, to direct them into new ways of living and thought.