Merlin's Harp (11 page)

  Humans imagine us Fey as dangerous. Compared to them, we are simple wild creatures that bite when cornered. Humans love a few of their kind—usually one or two—with extraordinary passion. Their hate is equally passionate. I have seen the ashes of Angle villages burned by Saxons, simply because they were not Saxon. I have seen the ashes of one Angle village burned by Arthur's own knights, who for some reason fancied themselves insulted. Riding with Merlin, my heart used to leap into my throat when armed horsemen drew near us on the trail. They were probably indifferent, sometimes friendly. But you could never tell till they had passed.

  At the end of our first day's ride, Merlin drew rein before our first tavern. Aefa and I sat our tired ponies, equally tired ourselves, hunched down fearfully in our boys' clothes and "invisible" cloaks. (But out here invisibility was impossible. This fact frightened us more than the actual giants we had passed on the road.)

  Merlin dismounted and stood looking at the tavern. I saw him feeling himself in our boots, wondering how fearful we would find it. He sighed, squared his shoulders, and signaled to us to tie the ponies to the rail provided. Then he marched boldly to the door.

  All day we had not been so far away from Merlin! We exchanged a glance, and Aefa's fingers asked me, Shall we go in there? My fingers said, What else can we do? We trailed Merlin like a pair of exhausted hounds.

  Having lived at Lady Villa I was used to walls, floors, ceilings. Aefa told me later that following Merlin through that door was the hardest thing she had ever done. She felt like a fox creeping into a trap.

  We were used to smoke and cooking smells—but not as thick as here! Never, sneaking into the filthiest village hut, had breathing turned me so dizzy!

  But the giants—the monsters seated at tables or hurling darts, each shouting to be heard over the other, one stinking of manure and another from tanning, and all from ale, and none bathed in a season—the giants froze me with fear. I had stolen among many such who lay unconscious in the dark; but to walk visibly among them, to actually push past them, brushing their stiff sleeves in Merlin's wake, needed all my resolve.

  At one point I stiffened, trembled, and stopped. Aefa (terrified of walls and roof ) set a small hard fist in my back and pushed. Merlin led us to sit at a shadowed corner table out of the way. Then he made to leave us. Aefa gasped, "Merlin!"

  He paused, looked down, and saw how it was with us.
I'm going
over there,
he signaled.
Food. Ale. You sit quietly.
He left us.

  We sat at that table like two brown doe hares in brown bracken, circled by hounds. We twitched no whisker. Between us and Merlin the giants roared and hurled their darts. They were good at darts. That was the first thing I noticed as breath came slowly back to me. They might win a game or two off the Guard children, or even off Aefa and me!

  They paid no attention to us. Gradually I realized we might as well be wearing "invisible" cloaks; two half-grown children offered no entertainment or diversion to the giants. They had their own children, gratefully left at home.

  Merlin came back with two chickens, three small loaves, and ale. Fear-stiff as we were, we yet fell upon the food. And as we ate and drank and our warming bodies warmed our wet clothes, I began to watch the giants and listen to their uproar.

  They shouted a coarse Angle with an accent I had not overheard before. But I am quick with languages. As I chewed and listened, I made slow sense of it.

  They were arguing about the spring planting and the endless rain. One could not plant till the rain stopped. Would it ever stop, or had God decided to drown the world again? (Again?) Another feared that seed already planted would rot. A third rumbled, "It's the Goddess doing it!"

  "Aye!" several voices growled agreement. "Because of the Queen. The Queen and her…"

  "The fancy man!"

  "That best knight the rest of them don't dare breathe on."

  "And the King. What's he stand by and watch it for?"

  "It's rotting him like rain rots seed."

  "It's rotting his kingdom."

  "And what becomes of us, then? When the high folk anger the Goddess?"

  "The Saxons, Man. That's what becomes of us. You remember, when your home is a pile of ash and your family under it— remember to curse the Queen."

  A twanging ripple of music sliced the noise.

  Aefa and I exchanged alarmed glances. Without our noticing, Merlin had left us alone among the giants and taken a stool by the fire, where he now tuned Enchanter on his knee; those jangling untuned notes silenced the giants.

  One murmured, "I seen that harper before."

  Another answered, "That be the mage harper. Whisht, now."

  This song hushed all talk of the King and his honor, for Caliburn still hung in his hall, as everyone knew; and the Saxons had not returned, praise God and blessed Mary. (Mary?)

  Next, Merlin began a graceful ballad about the fair Elaine…

  The giants began to squirm and wave for more ale, and Merlin switched to a merry Miller's Daughter ballad. And while they bellowed the chorus and banged the tables, the harper vanished from his fireside stool.

  Next morning, riding through rain and mud, I asked Merlin, "This Lancelot. Arthur's best knight. Is he real?"

  "Is he real?" Laughter crinkled Merlin's eyes. "Is he real! Niviene, Lancelot is your brother Lugh!"

  I almost fell off the pony.

  "You did not know? You heard so many Lancelot stories, and you did not know?" Aefa nudged her pony up beside me and signaled,
What am I missing here?
Merlin spoke to her across me, "You remember one Lugh, son of the Lady, who went adventuring into the kingdom?"

  "And never came back. Yes. He and Niviene were brother and sister and they knew it. I envied them."

  "Niviene did not know that Lugh is now Sir Lancelot, Arthur's best knight."

  "Ah." Tactfully, Aefa studied the mud her pony squelched through. "I did not know that either. So the crazy maiden in the song—Elaine the Fair. She died for love of
Lugh
?"

  "You called her Elana."

  True to my word to her, I had all but forgotten Elana. Even Elaine's flowering barge had not quite reminded me. Now again I saw the flowery coffin float downstream, swan-guarded. I saw myself poling home to Apple Island, grieving for my brother and my friend, so innocently unaware of the power waking and stretching within me!

* * *

All this I now remembered clearly, riding between Merlin and Aefa through spring rain, on my first venture into the kingdom.

  To help Merlin save Arthur's Peace, and our forest with it, I had learned to ride. I had learned Angle and Latin, Human custom and courtesy. I hoped to forget Bran out here in the kingdom, and for the most part I did forget. But sorrow waited for me in ambush. Sorrow might surround me at a word, or a harp chord plucked, or a familiar face.

  Merlin brought us to Arthur's dun.

  The dun was a huge, circular village. Small dens built of wicker or wattle and daub lined planned, circular streets full of hurrying Humans. A massive earthen wall, a mountain, higher than the dens, higher than King's Hall in the center, encircled the whole. Like Lady Villa, this mountain had been built by Human hands. I accepted this as fact, astonished as my child-self had been by the villa's history.

  By now we had passed through many villages. We trusted our disguises, and Merlin's guidance. Yet, to enter this great dun through the guarded gate, we called upon courage we did not know we had. Courage is a Human trait.

  Merlin led us first to the stables, where we left our ponies in Human hands. On foot now, and trapped within the earthwork wall, we followed Merlin to his wicker hut that crouched beside the wall. Within, the hut reached down a tunnel some way back into the wall.

  The hut was almost bare. Beside a central hearth several sleeping pallets were stacked. But around the walls stood chests, carved with pictures from Merlin's many stories. (I saw Tristam and Yseult pictured there, Queen Boadiccea, giants, dragons, Romans, Christian saints—and little figures meant to be Fey.)

  Out of these chests Merlin brought bright, new gowns, such as those he gave to the Lady. Together, Aefa and I gasped and drew back.

  "Come, dress yourselves," he invited us, holding out embroidered folds. "You must weary of being little boys."

  I swallowed surprise, mingled with surprising desire. "But…all those Humans out there…"

  "When we travel the world," Merlin told us, "you must be boys. But this is King Arthur's dun, civilized center of the kingdom. For you to disguise your sex here would insult Arthur and his Peace."

  That same day, Merlin brought me to King's Hall, in the center of the dun. Dressed now daintily in a white gown, crowned with mistletoe, I paused in the great, carved doorway. The hall was the largest building I had yet seen, or have yet to see. No Fey could have simply entered it, unhesitating, as Merlin had strictly commanded me to do. I paused like a vixen before a trap, sweeping the immense space with cautious eyes.

  At the famous round table in the midst of the room, Arthur's knights ripped bread and meat and tossed bones to waiting hounds. Merlin had designed this table round as the sun so that none who sat there could claim that he sat in a higher or more prestigious spot than another. All were equal. Fey would not have given that matter a thought; naturally, all the Goddess's children are equal. Fey would also not have gathered at that table, tens together, wolfing food and shouting so that the hall echoed.

  On a dais above and behind the table, the King sat enthroned; on the wall above him hung sheathed Caliburn, the magic sword in his magic sheath; beside him, a round, bright-painted shield.

  Merlin was pacing past the round table toward the King. He felt me not behind him, paused, and turned. His eyes flashed annoyance. He had bade me not hesitate, to walk directly behind him, head high, looking only at the King.

  Hesitating still, I grasped the carved doorpost. The enclosed, airless place stank of Human sweat and roasted flesh. The hounds stank of blood. Great growling beasts, taller than the wolves they chased, they glared up at me from their bone scraps and rumbled deep in wide chests.

  I raised and cast wide about me a silver cloud like a veil, like a cloak; and one by one the hounds silenced and shrank. I let loose of the doorpost. I lifted the hem of my gown up above the dirty strewn rushes and stepped slowly forward.

  Arthur's knights gaped at me over the bones they gnawed. Those whose backs were toward me swung around to see, goblets in hand. They could not see my silver cloud. What they saw was a small, brown maiden robed in white, white berries caught in her flowing black hair. And they saw their hounds, who should be roaring around her, silent and still. And they saw Merlin, the King's honored mage, impatiently awaiting her; and like the dogs, they fell silent.

  But as I glided past them through the new, heavy silence, lifting the hem of my gown, an odor I knew well arose from each and every giant body. Ordinarily I count the smell of lust no insult. But rising, as it did then, from tens of giants together, it startled me. Even frightened me. In truth, my heart stood in my mouth.

  These were big men even by Human standards. Many of them carried famous names, known to bards. Their combined aura was an orange fire that filled the shadowy hall—except for the King's dais. That dais was haloed in triple lights.

  Drawing near, I felt Mellias's crystal suddenly warm at my throat, and the pouch at my girdle suddenly heavy. One of the keepsakes within had stirred to life. I could not tell which one. But it dragged on me so that I slowed, and Merlin beckoned impatiently.

  I glanced up then at King Arthur. He sat massively, ringed hands square on red-robed knees, watching me approach. Close around him his aura glowed red as his robe. A broad orange band circled the red, and a huge golden mist circled the orange, as wide as Merlin's white mist.

  I looked within the triple aura at the King's strong face, into his hard, gray eyes. I stood rooted. Merlin, mounting the dais steps, turned and beckoned me, scowling.