The Chessboard Queen (38 page)

Nothing seemed real to her until she felt Cei take her hand and place the ring on it. She slipped her hand back beneath the veil and caressed the solid circle on her finger. That would not turn to moonshine at dusk. There was a long benediction and then Cei lifted the veil and kissed her. At that moment she didn’t care if the whole world was watching. She wanted to shout and run and sing. But strict training prevailed and her only outward sign was a face so clearly joyful that her father had to rub his nose and eyes, muttering about the sawdust not being swept out from the building.

When they turned from the altar, Lydia gasped in amazement. Sunlight was pouring in through the window slots and, on every wall, across the people and dappling the floors, were a thousand tiny rainbows.

Arthur nudged Merlin. “You must have worked on that all night. Everyone will think it was magic.”

Merlin dusted his fingers together. “It’s not bad. I thought it might make a nice swan song.”

Arthur did not hear him. The singers had started the epithalamium and the procession was leaving. Cei and Lydia were led to the room prepared for them. After the obligatory speeches and jokes, they were left alone. For everyone else, there was a feast, a riotous celebration in the courtyard that lasted until well past dawn the next day.

The sky was turning gray when Arthur and Guinevere finally staggered to their rooms.

“I’m glad Cei got her,” Arthur observed as he undressed. “He’s spent too many years always doing second best. Even when we were boys, people gave me more than they did him. And, apart from rubbing my face in the dirt occasionally, he never complained.”

“That’s nice,” Guinevere mumbled from the pillows.

“It didn’t seem to hurt them to wait a year,” Arthur continued. “I sometimes think we might have been too quick to get married. You didn’t really know me well, did you? I’ve always had to spend most of each year away from you. I won’t be needing to do that anymore. We’re young yet, Guinevere. Maybe we could—”

He was interrupted by a sonorous snore. Guinevere had succumbed to the alcohol and the hour and hadn’t heard a thing. Arthur lay down beside her with a feeling of despair.

“No,” he thought. “I don’t suppose we could.”

• • •

The next morning the packing began for the annual trek back to Caerleon. Arthur had volunteered Agravaine, Torres, Cheldric, and Bedevere to do the work Cei usually did. It took all four of them to do it, plus Lancelot and Gawain helping Briacu. Guinevere had no more chances to discuss anything with Lancelot. She barely saw him in all the confusion. When they met, he treated her politely, spoke the same worn greetings. Yet it was different.

Those five minutes in the tower had altered her forever, but for a long time she refused to examine why. He loved her. She had always known that. To be loved was nothing new. Even knowing that he wanted her was nothing shocking. She had seen lust in men’s eyes before. What was it in that flash of time that had changed everything?

It came to her one day as she sat alone in her empty room, waiting for Arthur to finish giving orders so they could leave. She was looking at her hands, idly thinking that she must get some cream from Risa to soften their sunburnt roughness. It would be terrible if Lancelot felt they were too harsh against his skin.

Lancelot.

It was like an unexpected brilliant flash of light, showing her all the shapes and corners once decently shadowed. She did not want to look. But it was etched there before her. She loved him. She wanted him with her now and forever. She needed him to be with her and touch her and to hold him as she had never needed anyone before.

Just as she was beginning to absorb this frightening revelation, came another one which caused her to blush from the soles of her feet to her hairline. This was not her private discovery. She covered her face, remembering.

“I told him,” she whispered. “I never even thought to deny it. Oh my Lord, what must he think?”

“Guinevere.” Arthur was worried and rushed. He did not notice her confusion. “Merlin is gone. I can’t find him anywhere. Are you ready to go?”

“Yes, all the other bags have been sent down. Merlin probably decided to travel by himself again. Don’t worry. He’ll be waiting for you at Caerleon.”

“No, he never leaves without telling me. And almost all of his things are here.”

“Really?” She wasn’t terribly interested. Merlin had never been one of her favorite people.

“Guinevere, something is wrong, I know it. He’s been acting odd all year, telling me not to depend on him anymore, forcing me to make my own decisions. I think I should send out a search party.”

“What for? They can’t find Merlin if he doesn’t want them to.”

“But he may be ill. I should have paid more attention to him. Guinevere, I’m afraid he may have gone off somewhere to die.”

“Someone like Merlin? Why would he want to do that?”

Arthur ran his hands through his hair. “Perhaps he had no choice. What other explanation could there be? He took no clothes nor coin, not even a cup. Everything of his is in his room, except his prisms.”

“His what?”

“You know. Those pieces of glass he uses to make rainbows with.”

Gawain and Torres had gone to the town below Camelot, asking for news of Merlin, but they reported that no one had seen him. Lancelot overheard and offered to try to track him.

“If he left this morning, there may still be some trace for me to follow. If I find him, Clades is strong enough to carry us both to you at Caerleon.”

In his mind’s eye, Arthur saw Merlin’s face: worn, graying, tired beyond belief from juggling men’s lives. Then he remembered it again, patterned by the rainbows in the chapel. It might have been a trick of the colors, but he seemed almost young again. He had watched the dancing bands of light with an expression of hope Arthur had never seen in him before. And the rainbows had gone with him.

“No, Lancelot. Thank you, but I don’t think he wants us to find him.” Arthur sighed. Now Merlin. They kept slipping away from him. Soon who would he have left that he could really talk to?

“Arthur?” Lancelot’s hand was on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

For a moment, Arthur was afraid to look into Lancelot’s face, fearing to uncover hidden deceit. But he saw only concern. Not yet.

“Yes, I’m all right. It’s getting late. We must start out. Ride with me, Lancelot. We have a long journey before us and I need a friend beside me.”

• • •

It had taken Merlin most of the year to discover the magic in the ring. He had found it almost by accident when, late one night, he had nearly fallen into a dark passage suddenly opening before him. The ring blazed in the cold vacuum and, gasping, he fell back. The light faded as the doorway vanished. His heart pounded in terror. Was that what they must step into? There had been nothing at all there. It was as if he had stood on the edge of the universe.

But Nimuë had sent him the ring.

It took some time before he discovered how to make the door appear. He made himself stand steadily before it as the searching winds of eternity billowed toward him, trying to pull him in. He peered into the blackness, begging for a speck, a spark of light. How could he force himself to leap blindly into the dark? He struggled with it, wrestling day and night until people were nothing but shadows in his path. He had spent his life in making dark visions clear, in weaving all the threads into patterns that would lead to Arthur. If only he could find the thread in this, only one place to see, to touch, to grasp in his human hand.

There was none. Slowly it came to Merlin that he must pass into that void on nothing but faith and love. He packed his rainbows and left to find his fate.

The rain was falling on the Lake in steady, individual spheres. When the ring brought Merlin to it, he sat on the edge of it, heedless of the wet, and waited for Nimuë.

After a long time, the waters separated as if cut by the prow of a ship. In the parting Nimuë appeared. She ran across the Lake’s brindled surface to meet him.

“You found it,” she wept as they embraced. “I could not make it work, but the Lady always said it was a key to other worlds. You have not come to tell me that you failed?”

He tried to ignore his own tears as he held her. She was clad in only a rough tunic of coarse wool. It did not repel the water as her other clothes had.

“I stole it from the house where Lancelot stayed,” she admitted. “I cannot take anything with me that belongs to the Lady. I am already stealing myself and that may be more than she will allow. Do you still want me?”

“More than ever,” he answered. “But before you decide, you must see where it is that we must go.”

He stretched out his arm with the ring and the blackness rose before them. Nimuë clutched at him lest she fall.

“What is it?” she screamed.

“The borders of doom, for all I can tell,” he shouted back above the wind’s roar. “If we enter this, we may simply fall into infinity and never land. Or it may be an illusion or a passageway. There is only one way we will know. Would you prefer to return to the Lake?”

She stared into the emptiness with round, childlike eyes. Then she took his hands.

“If you will hold me as we fall, even eternity will be not long enough.”

Merlin took a firmer grip on her hands and smiled. Then his face clouded.

“Nimuë! It’s Arthur! I forgot to tell him. I should have warned him about Modred! . . . And Lancelot! How could I have forgotten? Nimuë, what can I do?”

She tightened her hold. “You can leave me now and go back. Or . . . you can let them go from you.”

Duty and a sense of destiny had nipped at his heels all his life, never letting him rest. He shook his head. It was time to send them away to torment some other poor visionary.

“I imagine,” he admitted, “that the stars will manage to rise and set without my help. And Arthur will manage, too. Shall we now find out what is at the end of the dark?”

Together they stood in the doorway and allowed the winds to pull them through and into the vortex. Merlin could see and hear nothing, not even the wind, and only the touch of Nimuë’s hands kept him from screaming.

There was no time or place as they whirled down. They were hypnotized by motion and silence. Merlin was so lulled that he felt no sense of surprise when they finally stopped in their descent. The forces that tried to wrench him from Nimuë slowly abated, and she moved closer into his arms.

Was it the winds beginning again that he heard or was it . . . cheering? It sounded like a huge crowd of people, all laughing and talking at once and, over it, someone calling his name!

With no warning, the light returned.

Merlin choked. “I have gone totally mad. Nimuë, look around you, tell me where we are.”

She gazed around. “It seems to be a large field near a forest. There are hills in the distance and a small stream running nearby. Beyond it there are so many people! Are we imagining them?”

“We must be. We can’t be here. This is the road to my cousin Guenlian’s home.”

“Merlin! Over here!” the voice called again. “Welcome home!”

He knew who it was. He shaded his eyes and saw the speaker. “You died,” he said. “I saw your body.”

There stood Geraldus, ten years younger at least. Strangers dressed in a myriad of fashions were gathered around him, and a naked, brown child clung to his legs. Geraldus laughed.

“No, Merlin,” he replied. “I finally began to live. Come. Join us.”

He reached out his hands to them, and, like joyful children, Nimuë and Merlin crossed the water to begin their lives.

Chapter Twenty-one

There was nothing that Caerleon in winter loved more than a thick, meaty piece of gossip. It was a sure and certain cure for boredom and the nerves brought on by close quarters. At the end of November some news came that guaranteed excitement enough to keep tongues exercised until spring. Morgause, sister to the King, and, some said, a sorceress of rare talent, was coming to keep Christmas with Arthur. Even better, she was bringing with her that Elaine who claimed to have borne a child by Sir Lancelot. The final added spice was that Elaine was bringing the baby. Arthur had often said that he would like to clear out the theater at Verulamium, which had become a garbage midden, and stage the old plays. But until he got around to it, the arrival of Morgause and Elaine would do for drama.

The day of the great arrival, Guinevere woke up with a fever and chills. Her head felt swathed in linen and she could not stop shivering. Arthur was torn between frantic concern for her and the necessity of having everything ready for his sister. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hand clutching hers, and debated what to do.

Risa gently drew him away. “You mustn’t worry, my Lord. I know how to care for her. This is a very mild case. I’ll give her a posset and let her sleep. She’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

Still Arthur watched his wife, tossing and murmuring, unaware of him. “I’ve never seen her ill before. She has always been untouched by any weakness.”

Risa was trying to hurry him. She was afraid of what Guinevere might say at this stage of the fever.

“You weren’t with us those three years at Cador, my Lord. She spent most of each winter like this. It flares up from time to time. It’s nothing for you to bother about. She won’t like it, knowing you’ve seen her looking so.”

Grudgingly, Arthur left. Risa sat down, her knees weak with relief. Twice already Guinevere had called out and it was not for Arthur.

Half of Arthur’s mind was up in the tower that day, worrying. The other was waiting impatiently for Morgause. He gave a fleeting thought to Merlin, wondering where he had gone and wishing that he had stayed. Would he have known how to deal with that woman?

They arrived shortly after the midday meal. The tables had been cleared but not put away and most people had settled into the afternoon activities. When the guard called out that he saw her, Arthur decided not to go out to meet her. He waited for her to be brought to him and properly announced. He felt a strong need to remind her that he was not just her bastard brother but the King.