The Third Magic (30 page)

THE WHEAT KING

T
here was darkness in
the Summer Country.

"Are you hiding?" the Innocent's voice spoke into the void.

Taliesin started. "I beg your pardon," he said dispiritedly. "I thought I was alone."

"Would you like to be?"

"No, no, Madam. You're quite welcome, as ever." With an effort, Taliesin popped into view amidst a bank of fluffy white clouds. "There," he said. "I've made myself visible."

"Not on my account, I hope," the Innocent said dryly. "I'm blind, remember?"

He looked about, distracted. "Oh, quite. That is..."

"My, my, little bard. You are upset."

He turned away. "Well, why wouldn't I be? Things are ruddy awful."

"Yes," she agreed with a sigh. "That they are." There was a long silence in which Taliesin waited for his teacher to offer some helpful advice. She did not.

"Well, it's damned disconcerting, not being able to at least see the expression on your face."

"Very well." The old woman's head materialized on Taliesin's lap. "Is my expression satisfactory?" she asked, grinning.

With a shriek he leaped up, the disembodied head springing off his garment like a ball on a trampoline and sailing off into the clouds. "How could you!" Taliesin seethed.

Her laughter echoed riotously around him.

"That wasn't funny."

"I thought it was," she said, giggling. "Now hold out your arms. Here I come."

A baby appeared, apparently affixed to the old man's chest. He grabbed it awkwardly. "Oh, for Mithras's sake," he grumbled. "Can't you just be a... a person?"

"I am a person," the Innocent said. "I'm a nine-month-old infant of the Waura tribe. Normally I dwell in the southeastern region of the Brazilian rain forest."

He looked down at the baby with disdain, although he could not help but notice that she was rather appealing, with her black hair sticking straight out from her scalp like porcupine quills and her bright little eyes which examined his face intently.

"You can see!" he said.

"The better to help you discern my facial expressions," the baby said sardonically, her words sounding slightly distorted since her mouth contained only four small teeth. "That was what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Er... Is it very different for you—having sight, I mean?"

"Oh, no," she answered. "It's a wonderful treat, actually." She gurgled as she waved her chubby hands in front of her face. "If I were ever to be human again, this is who I would want to be."

"Then why do you—forgive me, Innocent—why do you choose to remain blind, even in the Summer Country?"

She stared ahead blankly for a moment before answering. "It is an atonement," she said quietly.

"What? You? But what could you possibly have done that would require your sight as penance?"

"It isn't penance," she said simply. "Just a choice." The baby patted the old man's face. "You really ought to do something about the hairs in your nose," she lisped. "Some are so long, you could weave them into sweaters."

"Thank you," Taliesin said blandly.

"Now, what were we talking about?" The Innocent settled herself comfortably in the old man's lap. "Oh, yes. Your failure with the Second Magic."

"It wasn't a failure!” the old man snapped. "I brought them all back. I gave the King back his life. I..."

Inexplicably, his eyes filled with tears, and he found it impossible to go on speaking.

"You didn't know that Arthur Blessing would come to mean something to you," the Innocent said gently. "To all of you."

"I didn't know a lot of things," Taliesin said. "He's like a clock that knows when his own mechanism will break."

"Yes," the Innocent agreed. "This Arthur is extraordinary, but finite. He isn't immortal, but he's not quite human, either. You had too much of a hand in his making."

"But how are humans—real humans—different?"

She blinked her shiny black eyes thoughtfully. "Fate is not a paved road meant to be walked upon, Merlin," she said. "We build the road as we go. Things change all the time, and nothing is 'meant to be.' There is only what is. That becomes what was, and leads, vaguely, to what will be. But there is no right way or right thing. There are no mistakes, even for wizards. Only what was, what is, and what lessons we learn...."

"Until we know everything?"

She smiled, shrugged. "I suppose."

"And so to change one's stars ..."

"One must let go of one's expectations," the Innocent said. "Forget all the rules, Merlin. Everything I taught you. Stop being a craftsman, and become an artist. And then let your creations run away."

"Let him go?" The old man stood up abruptly. "Are you telling me to let Arthur go forever?"

"Yes."

"But—"

"The way I've let you go."

"Oh," he said.

"Too difficult?"

"Well, it's just that... it ought to be more than that, I should think. It doesn't seem that letting go of what I want would accomplish much of anything."

"Perhaps that is because you don't want to let go," she said.

"No, I was only saying—"

A glass globe appeared in the baby's hands. She held it up to him. "Take us back to Camelot, Merlin. You may find what you need there, after all."

"Oh, all right." The Innocent was pulling his chain again, talking in circles. Letting go. That wasn't the problem at all.

"Focus," she said.

Taliesin allowed the place in the globe to exist. From the depths of his soul he brought forth the sounds of wind and birdsong and the smell of rye grass. The castle stood new, its stone still sharp enough to cut flesh. And inside, beyond the great hall, in the chamber of the King, stood a man struggling to keep his shoulders back and his head erect.

"Who's that?" Taliesin asked. "And what's he saying?"

"Go there," the Innocent whispered.

"Y
ou are the land
, and the land is you," Ector said somberly.

He was an old man by then, and meant well, but his nearsighted, almost mythical loyalty to the King he had known as a boy could be unnerving.

"Thank you," Arthur said, looking up from his work with a weak smile.

"When you recover, the land will once again bring forth an abundant harvest."

"I hope you're right, Ector." He nodded in dismissal. Ector bowed, wobbling precariously on his arthritic knees before walking backward out of the chamber.

Arthur sighed, putting down the quill in his hand. Ector, unfortunately, was not the only one in Britain who blamed the poor harvests of the past three years on their King. The legend of the Wheat King, the Earth-Goddess's consort whose sacrifice ensures the success of the next season's crop, was still firmly embedded in the consciousness of the people.

Despite the inroads made by the Christian church, farmers and their wives still copulated in the middle of their fields, making sure to spill the man's seed onto the ground as a sacrifice to the Goddess. She, the Primal Mother, Earth, was still a living force to these people. And to the Goddess, men—even Kings—were temporal things to be replaced when their time was done in order to keep the earth alive.

In truth, Arthur's malaise was not unrelated to the failed crops. In addition to the monumental tasks of keeping the clans united so that the Saxons would not be tempted to invade again, now the King also had to find a way to keep his people from outright starvation.

The past three years had been identical: a spring so rainy that roots had rotted in the sodden ground, followed by a dry, hot summer with scorched fields in which nothing grew. By September's meager harvest, new parents looked with fear upon their sleeping infants, wondering how they would survive the coming winter, and the old people shivered even before the first frost came.

T
he cycle had occurred
three times. Now the people were looking at their High King, asking silently if he had lost favor with the Goddess. If it was time for the Wheat King's sacrifice.

"It's a natural assumption," Merlin said, pouring a glass of wine.

Arthur took it, but did not drink. He had no appetite for food or drink, and had grown thin and gray within the span of little more than a year.

"The common folk love you, Arthur. They believe you to be some sort of Messiah."

The King buried his head in his hands. '"What an obscene joke that is," he muttered.

"Well, you did rout the Saxons. Before you took the crown, no man could go to bed with any certainty that his family wouldn't be slaughtered and his home burned before daybreak."

"I could have brought peace fifteen years ago, if the petty chiefs had listened to me," Arthur said bitterly.

"Yes, yes." Merlin was becoming bored with the King's harping on the intransigence of the tribal chieftains. It had been Arthur's idea to accommodate the Saxons rather than obliterate them. The fighting, which had been going on ever since the Romans left Britain and the Saxons looked to the divided land as a place to settle, was accomplishing nothing.

Arthur had pleaded with the chiefs to think differently about the situation. He suggested that each of the petty kings give over a small portion of their lands to new Saxon settlers. The chieftains would be permitted to charge rent and receive a portion of the tenants' crops. This plan worked until the first accusation from one of the chiefs that the Saxon farmers were plotting an insurrection.

It was Lot of Rheged who had complained, of course. Lot, who had resisted the idea of having any Saxons on British soil from the beginning, mentioned that a number of Saxons were living in the forests of Britain.

This was true. After each sea raid, a few Saxon warriors found themselves on enemy territory without weapons, homes, or means to return to their homeland. After several decades, their number had grown to the point where the Saxons were a real, albeit powerless, presence. It was these people, many of whom could no longer even remember their native land, whom Arthur had in mind when he suggested a peaceful Saxon settlement.

Some had already taken British wives and started families. Their number would only grow, and Britain, whose own population was kept low as a result of unrelenting tribal warfare, needed the extra hands to wrest the land back from the abyss into which it had plunged after the departure of the Romans and their advanced civilization.

But Lot—and, if the truth be told, a number of the other petty kings—could never adjust to the idea of Saxons living on more or less equal footing with native Britons. As soon as Lot voiced his complaint about the so-called "army" of disenfranchised Saxons living in the wilderness, "getting ready to kill us all in our sleep like the savages they are," as he put it, a nervous rumbling echoed throughout every chiefdom. Weapons were forged, warriors trained, food supplies stored.

And then, in a night raid which Lot subsequently explained away with a feeble excuse, the men of Rheged attacked every unarmed Saxon tenant holding in the chiefdom.

The action brought out the Saxons who had been hiding in the forests. They attacked not only Rheged but every British farm and hill fort they could breach, fighting with rusted battle axes, broken swords, stones, slings, and makeshift bows.

Within days Britain was in the throes of a full-scale war, although the outcome was never in doubt. In the end, the Saxons were slaughtered, almost to a man, their families wiped out, their few farms burned. Feasts were held, and songs written about the valor of each chieftain who had successfully defended his land from the vicious Saxons.

Only Lot had commanded the bards to write the songs of victory about Arthur.

Soon the other chiefs followed suit. Yes, Arthur had routed the Saxons from the land, just as St. Patrick had rid Ireland of snakes. Arthur was toasted in every hall and castle. Arthur's name was spread among the peasantry and the fighting men. Arthur the High King had brought peace to Britain at last.

And Lot had laughed to himself as Arthur had been forced to smile in acknowledgement. The King's plan had failed utterly.

"Well, whatever you may think of it, you'll be known as the King who drove the Saxons out of Britain," the Merlin said.

"For how long?" After a short period of peace, Arthur knew, in which the Saxons regrouped to heal their wounds and train a larger righting force, the invasions would begin all over again. "The Saxons are so populous their borders can't contain them... while here in Britain, after the flight of the bloody Romans, and the plagues, and the constant wars we love to wage on each other, we've hardly enough men to defend ourselves.

"The Saxons were willing to abandon their culture. Merlin. The ones who homesteaded here were more than willing to become completely British in their ways in exchange for having a little land to till. But we couldn't have that, no. Foreigners on our soil? Never!"

He slapped the arm of his chair with his fist in imitation of the petty kings. "The chiefs conveniently forget that most of them have more Roman blood in their veins than Celtic."

Arthur himself was of a Romano-British line, as were Merlin and most of the other educated people on the island. "God knows, without any foreign influence, we'd all be like Octa and those thickheaded dolts from Orkney."

"Nevertheless. Highness," Merlin said, reminding Arthur with a raised eyebrow of his obligations to his people, "the chiefs are grateful that you led them to victory."

"They're just pleased to have been able to fight again," Arthur said. "They like it."

"Oh, really—"

"Of course they do. We haven't come far from the days when we painted our faces blue and ran screaming toward wild boar with pointed sticks in our hands."

The old man sighed. "Well, all right. Ours is a warrior race, it's true. In many cases, how well a man fights is the measure of him. That's why the chiefs respect you, Arthur. Because you fight well."

"I hate fighting," Arthur said sullenly.

"Nevertheless, you are the King of this fighting race."

"And so I must die by the sword, is that what you're saying?"