“I would not,” Gawen said.
“No, not thee and not me,” the mage said, smiling inwardly at the boys earnestness. “But few else can make that claim.”
“Surely not Sir Kay,” Gawen said, nodding at Arthur’s stepbrother, who was standing at the far end of the courtyard staring fixedly at the stone, his hand playing with his luxuriant mustache.
“Do not worry,” said Merlinnus, putting a hand on the boy’s head. “He has not the strength to be king.”
Gawen turned his face up to the old man. “You do not mean strength of arm, Magister.” It was a statement, not a question.
I do like this boy, Merlinnus thought. Then he walked into the center of the courtyard and held up his hand, satisfied by the quick silence his presence brought to the place. Arthur had asked him to tell the legend again, and he had practiced how he would say it, all morning, alone in his room.
“You have heard many things about this sword and this stone,” he said, his voice as strong as a young man’s. “But I will tell you the truth of it.”
Or the perception of the truth.
Gawen and Arthur caught each others eyes. Clearly they had had the same thought at the same time. Almost as if he heard those thoughts, Merlinnus looked first at the boy and then at the king.
“The truth of it,” he said again, “is that whosoever can draw this sword from this stone will be in truth High King of all Britain.”
“It is a trick!” a man called out. No one saw who, but the word bubbled and ran through the crowd like a rushing stream.
“It is no trick. Look you—here is the stone and here is the sword,” Merlinnus said. “It is called Caliburnus and will belong to the man who pulls it free of its stone sheath.” Merlinnus opened his arms wide. “And upon so doing, that man—whosoever he shall be—will become High King of all Britain.”
“Who can try?” This time the speaker was Agravaine, as if he still did not believe what he had been told. He took a large step toward the stone, his hands trembling.
“Why, you can,” said Merlinnus plainly, pointing to the stone. “Will you be first today?”
But shaking his head, Agravaine moved back until he was safely with his brothers and Hwyll again.
Once against the crowd was silent.
“By the rood, I will try,” cried Sir Bors, a burly and sometimes surly man, with a large black beard that so covered his mouth, it was difficult to tell when he laughed and when he frowned. He stalked over to the stone, swept off his metal-covered leather cap, and set down his own long-bladed sword on the ground by the foot of the stone. “Not that I doubt your right, Arthur, to be High King. Not at all. I am your man. But someone has to try first, and why not me, eh?” He put his hand around the hilt, leaned forward, then back, hauling at the sword with a powerful tug.
It did not move.
“Ah,” he said, and let go as if the hilt were a panhandle hot from the fire.
A mighty sigh ran around the crowd. Then a hush.
Bors picked up his helmet and sword and stepped away from the stone.
“Anyone else?” Merlinnus asked.
When no answer was returned, Arthur said in a tight voice, “Who will be next?”
Again no one came forward.
Arthur’s jaw was set and he leaned slightly forward from the waist. “I command each of my knights to put a hand to the sword. Now.”
Lancelot walked briskly to the stone, where he carefully set his hand on the hilt of the sword. Then he took it off. He turned to the king. “Majesty, I have done exactly as you commanded. I have no wish to be king.”
The other knights lined up and each did the same as Lancelot, setting a hand to the hilt and no more.
As they filed past Arthur, his face was almost purple with frustration. He did not even give his men a nod. As soon as the last had gone by, he walked back to the stone and set his own hand upon it as if it were a household pet.
Pitching his voice so that everyone in the courtyard could hear, he said, “Think on it. You have one more week till the Solstice. One more week to try your hand at pulling the sword and becoming High King. I will have all of you try before then. And that is an order.” He turned and marched back to the castle with Merlinnus right behind him. The knights followed but several long steps behind.
Gawen stayed on, watching as a few of the townsmen came close to the stone and examined it on all sides. One fair-haired boy, not more than seven years old, put his hand on the stone carefully, as if greeting some sort of wild dog. A pocked-faced farmer touched the hilt of the blade with his forefinger. His wife brushed away his fingerprints with her skirt and tugged him home.
But no one tried to pull the sword out.
No one.
At last they all left the churchyard, and Gawen returned to the mages tower to give Merlinnus a report.
V
KING’S HAND/QUEEN’S MAGIC
The churchyard was deserted. The sun had burst full on the square and everything was bleached out in its light: church door, square, and the stone, now the color of the tops of waves. And the strange protuberance that stuck out from the stone, like a shaft of sunlight itself
29
May Queens All
MORGAUSE GROUND the pestle into the stone mortar with a heavy hand. She had already finished the first potion and drunk it down, but that one had been easy, made up as it was of the basic herbs she kept hanging in her herb cupboard: tansy, sweet balm, a single petal of aconite, several kinds of mallow, the whole sweetened with fresh milk, the cream skimmed off from the top. It was a potion against poison and a bane against other wizards.
But this one was the more difficult spell, including not only a paste of black millet, the ground liver of an unbaptized child—from a babe delivered well before its time—and the primary feathers of a male gannet. Plus, she had added the requisite herbs gathered at midnight and kept in her darkling cabinet against such a time and such a spell.
She pressed the pestle into the grey stone cup, sweat breaking out on her brow, though it was cool enough in the tower room. Wiping the sweat away with the rough sleeve of her gown—she did not dare stop long, as the grinding had to be finished before morning or she would need to start again—she forced herself to breathe evenly. There was danger should any sweat get into the cup. It might damage the spell. And any sense of being rushed would find its way into the magic, too, and that in its turn could change the thing as well.
It was already past midnight, the forearm of morning. The only sound in the room besides her own breathing and the press of stone pestle on stone mortar was the susurration of the sea. She found herself working the pestle to the rhythm of waves coming onto the shore. It was a comforting, familiar sound. A sound of home, of childhood, the few short years of joy before Merlinnus had spoiled it all.
Still, it was dangerous to think while doing this spell or much could go wrong. So she emptied her mind of all but the rhythm of sea and stone, grinding the dark materials over and over and over again.
Finally the grinding was done. A grey silt, about a knuckle deep, sat in the bottom of the mortar. Morgause had to drink the stuff down in a single draft, and milk would not do as it was animal matter. It would corrupt the liver.
Reaching for a pitcher of Malmseyn, she poured it into the mortar, adding a touch of new ale, and a half cup of springwater that had flowed over twenty-one stones. This mixture she stirred with a small silver hammer, saying all the while, “Thrice I stir with holy crook: one for God, one for Wod, and one for Lok.”
She sniffed it. Foul and fair. Fair and foul. It reeked of power. She allowed herself a satisfied smile.
Raising the cup to her lips, she drank the potion all at once. The wine and ale and water made it palatable, but she had to breathe deeply so as not to throw up the concoction.
The liquid burned all the way down her throat. She could feel it settle uneasily in her belly. Cursing her weak stomach, she thought, It is the boys who made me thus. I was never
sick on a potion before having them. They changed me utterly. Yet she did not entirely wish them gone. Not entirely. They had their uses.
Now she just had to wait till morning.
Meanwhile there was still much to do.
Into a tiny leather flask she poured a third potion, made the day before and left out in sun and wind and rain. She had had to call the rain, but that was not difficult. Rainmaking had always been one of her most dependable spells.
She fastened the flask around her neck with a silver chain, then took off all her clothes: the three-quarter-length outer gown first, then the ankle-length tunic, finally the softer camisia. Folding them neatly, she put them into the cupboard. She slipped out of her sandals. The stone floor was cold on her bare feet.
Taking a sprig of fresh yarrow, she brushed herself with it head to foot, all the while reciting the old Celtic charm:
“May I be a rock on land,
May I be an island at sea,
Wound can I every man,
Wound can no man me.”
Then she looked around. All was done here. The wax image that lay on her bed would serve as her Other until she returned. She had given it soft eyes, a hard heart, and a bitter mouth, touched with another leaf of the aconite.
No one would miss her. No one would even know she was gone.
They might, she thought smiling wryly, prefer the wax image to the real thing.
Going outside, she unfastened the lock on the doocoot, leaving the door ajar. When it was morning, the doves would follow her lead. They had no choice, of course. Magic was a hard master and a strong persuader.
She looked up at the waning moon. It was yellow and old and pockmarked. “Selene,” she prayed aloud, “speed my travels.”
The wind ruffled her hair and raised small bumps on her skin with the cold. But she did not mind. The mixtures she had drunk down were warm inside her.
No—they were not just warm. They were hot. She was hot.
She was burning. With passion. With desire. With hate.
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
Like the sun.
IN THE EARLY MORNING a large white gannet flew across the roiling green-black seas, and behind it followed five plump grey doves. They flew straight to the mainland, then across the thick forests, along the spines of high-ridged mountains, and over the cultivated fields of Britain without stopping.
No one wondered that a gannet was so far from the sea.
No one wondered at the five doves behind it.
No one saw anything but a cloud across the sun, dove grey and gannet white.
It was the same all the way to a small squat and dank inn not far from King Arthur’s Cadbury. There gannet and doves fell like hawks in stoop, down to the bordering field, where they alighted full feathered, then arose as six naked women, high bosomed, small headed, with rounded hips, long hair, slim fingers, and short of utterance.
May Queens all.
30
At the Gate
FIVE DAYS had gone by and no one else had been seen trying the sword. But each morning when Gawen went out to look at the thing, the hilt was covered with fingerprints. There were big splayed prints and medium-sized whorls, and small finer prints all layered one atop another, as if some strange history had been written by a series of ghostly hands.
“I do not understand,” Gawen said to Merlinnus as they sorted herbs up in the tower. “Why not pull the sword during the day when they can see what they are doing? When everyone can see and declare them king?”
Merlinnus did not even bother to look up from the clear glass bottle he was holding over an orange flame. As the liquid inside turned first green, then brown, then clear, he shook his head and made a tch sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “And let the world watch them fail?” He shook the glass.
“But, Magister, failure is only a way stop on the road to success,” Gawen said.
“Who taught you that?” The wizards voice was sharp, but a touch of laughter hid just beneath the surface.
“My... mother,” Gawen said in a small voice.
“Of course,” Merlinnus told him, “your mother.”
“What do you mean?” Now it was Gawen’s voice that held the challenge.
“Only women think that way,” Merlinnus said. “And mages. Men think that failure unmans them. They do it at night. And alone.” He muttered something indecipherable at the glass, then said, “Get me the tongs.” Gawen found the iron tongs under the table. Days earlier when questioned about the iron—for supposedly cold iron foxed fairies and witches—the old mage had said that such was superstitious nonsense. Gawen handed the tongs to Merlinnus. “How many knights do you think have tried the sword, then, Magister?”
“How many do you think live hereabouts?” Merlinnus answered, swirling the glass once more. The liquid remained clear.
“Even Kay? Even Bedwyr? Even Lancelot and Gawaine?”
“Especially them.”
Gawen grabbed up a cloth that was hanging over a stool. “I do not believe you, Magister.”
“It is better to know than to believe,” said Merlinnus. He glared at the liquid, then dashed it into a stone bowl, where it slowly settled into something resembling clay.
“You mean I should see for myself,” Gawen said, heading out the door, cloth in hand.
When Merlinnus turned around, he found himself alone in the room. “Humph,” he snorted derisively. “And where is he going with that cloth?”
The mage went over to his scrying bowl. Pouring fresh water in it, he waited until the liquid had settled. At once a picture formed on the still surface: a clear sky, and crossing it, a gannet and five grey doves.
“What can this mean?” Merlinnus whispered to himself. He glanced up, as if expecting the picture to be less than magic, only a reflection of what was actually in the sky. But the sky was cloudless, and no birds were cleaving the air. He looked back at the scrying bowl. The water was empty. And dark.
But even that small amount of scrying left him exhausted. He lay down on his bed and fell into a troubled sleep.
WHERE GAWEN was going was down to the courtyard. It was a brilliant late-spring day, three days before the Solstice Eve, the sky bursting with lark song. Doves in their soft grey coats lined the chapel roof, cooing as if hoping for a downpour of bread crumbs. High above, a large buzzard circled once, twice, then flew off north.
Gawen scrambled up onto the stone and with the cloth began polishing the sword hilt. Up close and in daylight, the runes on the hilt were almost readable. Yet every time Gawen bent over to try to make out one sign or another, each rune seemed to change, crawling along the handle like a snake, or metamorphosing into another sign altogether.
Looking straight on at it makes my head hurt, Gawen thought. Though squinting made the runes stop crawling, they never made any more sense.
“Bother,” Gawen said aloud. I’ve neither the magic nor the learning to try to decipher them further. That sort of thing was best left to mages.
It was while Gawen was polishing the left side of the handle that the gates to the inner courtyard suddenly opened. Not with the usual yells from the guard, the noise of demands and passwords and identifications. This time the doors slid open silently, as if oiled.
Six unaccompanied ladies in grey-and-white feathery cloaks came through the gate.
Five of the women had long loops of golden hair bound up with silver pins to the sides of their heads so that the loops looked almost like wings. The women were all equally lovely to look at, with complexions the color of cream skimmed from milk. But the sixth woman had black hair in tangled elf knots, a sharp straight nose, and a broad forehead, yet she was the one who drew the eye.
The guards at the gate seemed stupefied by the beauty of the six women. They bowed to them in awed silence and spread their cloaks on the ground so the women’s little silver slippers would not be soiled by mud. Then they saluted the women with closed fists over
their hearts and bowed a second and a third time.
As if this were not strange enough, Gawen watched as the women raised their dove grey skirts to step on the cloaks spread before them. The dark woman had small, ordinary feet; the other women seemed to have oddly shaped shoes, almost as if each foot had three large splayed toes.
Realizing how silly that appeared, how impossible, Gawen simply slid off the stone and—leaving the cloth behind—scuttled away to the tower to tell Merlinnus what had just occurred.
“THE NORTH QUEEN!” Merlinnus said. “Of course.”
“‘Of course’?” Gawen did not see how the old man could jump to such a conclusion.
“I saw a gannet and five doves in the scrying bowl.” Merlinnus’ face darkened, and he looked over at the water basin.
“They flew here?” Gawen asked.
Merlinnus gave a short, barking laugh. “Of course not. Such magicks are beyond even my skills,” he said. “The scrying glass was a warning, that is all. But the North Queen and her women are here nonetheless. They will be exhausted by their travels. We must tell the king.”
He went to his wardrobe and drew out his second-best robe, a white garment with runes in black and red scrawled along the collar and hem and around the sleeves at the wrists.
“Should I wear something different, too?” Gawen asked.
Merlinnus turned and considered Gawen for a moment, then he came over and brushed a hand over the top of Gawen’s hair.
“You will do just as you are. Yes, indeed, you will do.”
31
Queen/King/Mage
THEY WENT DOWN the stairs at a slow pace, to accommodate the mage’s old bones, though Gawen wanted to run. Such news needed instant delivery.