King of The World's Edge Read online

  It was open talk afterward that Myrdhinn had engineered this attack and rescue to bring about his own plans, but I know nothing of the matter, having been far away. I believe him capable of it, for his mind worked in devious ways and he was not a man to do a thing in a simple way if something spectacular could complicate it.

  This tune, however, if he was at bottom of the matter, his love for a brave show ruined himself, Arthur, Gwenhyvar—and Britain. You see, Gwenhyvar was already in love with a young man named Lanceloc.

  Arthur was approaching middle age, Gwenhyvar and Lanceloc much younger. Theirs was the proper union, but how could an ambitious father refuse the great Pendragon, savior of the city? Laodegaji commanded, Gwenhyvar obeyed like a dutiful child, and evil began.

  “Forbidden fruit the sweetest of all”—so runs the ancient saw. Others knew what went on in all its seamy detail, but noble Arthur, the soul of bravery and honor, remained in ignorance for years.

  Then Agrivain and Medrawd, kinsmen who aspired to be mighty themselves and who thought that could be best done by bringing low those already mighty, came sneaking, telling tales, spewing venom upon all that Arthur held dear, and down crashed our hopes for Britain.

  Lanceloc, Agrivain and Medrawd fled into Wessex, fleeing their outraged ruler, taking their kinsmen, their vassals, and their friends.

  Here they allied themselves with what remained of Saxon power, sending word overseas that it was safe again for pirates to come and murder, rape and pillage, for Arthur was stricken to the heart and Rome had forgotten her lost colony.

  So the Sixth marched and the Saxons marched, and both great armies came toward the fatal field of Cam-Ian—and the end of all glory!

  2 Arthur, Cyrdhinn—and Vivlenne

  It is not for me to describe that tragic calamity to my Emperor, feeling certain that during the passage of these many years the sad events of that cursed day have been so fully described to you that by now you must have a clearer picture of the battle than any I could give. After all, I was but a centurion, nor had I any knowledge of the whole plan of battle. Still, all plans were frustrated by a thick cold fog that shrouded us from the beginning, so that soon we broke up into troops hunting for similar small enemy bands, killing and being killed in many bitter encounters.

  Then as the daylight grew more dim, the clash of arms became feebler, and wandering alone, separated from my century, I dismounted from a charger I had previously found running masterless through the slaughter, and now led him along a beach where the waves of an ebbing tide came slowly in, whispering a mournful requiem to all my hopes. The clammy, darkening fog seemed pressing down upon my very soul.

  The narrow strand separated the ocean-sea from a small brackish lake at which I meant to water my steed. So I turned to my left, hearing the plash of little waves among the sedges of the salty marsh surrounding the fresher water. There was no other sound, save the occasional croak of a sea bird flying blindly through the mist.

  My horse was raising his head from his drink, with a long sigh, when the fog abruptly lifted and gave me a clear view of perhaps a hundred yards. We were standing at the edge of a narrow inlet, and upon its other shore I saw the wreckage of a furious encounter.

  Dead men lay in the water and carpeted the sand beyond as far as I could see into the farther haze. But not all there were corpses.

  One lay bleeding, partly raised upon an elbow, while bending over him was a ghastly knight. Much of their armor was hacked away and that remaining was dabbled with blood. I recognized the pair.

  The dying man was Arthur; the other, with whom he weakly argued, was Sir Bedwyr, one of the most trusted of his knights. I hailed them, but Arthur was too far gone or too absorbed to hear me, though Sir Bedwyr looked across the water and lifted his hand for silence.

  Again Arthur commanded and this time Sir Bedwyr agreed, picked up Arthur’s great sword, Caliburn, and walked away into the mist. Then the cold gray curtain fell again, and through it I rode around the inlet until the sound of voices halted me.

  “This time you did not fail me?” queried Arthur.

  “Regretfully I obeyed, my King.”

  “And what did you see and hear?”

  “I threw the sword into the mere, as you commanded, and as it circled flashing, something cried out most dolefully, while up from the mere there raised a long arm in a flowing sleeve of white samite. Caliburn was caught, brandished thrice and drawn under, while from all the mere rose up a various keening of sorrowful voices.”

  “So Caliburn returns to the hand that gave it, to be held in trust for another who shall succor Britain. Strange that I heard no sound.”

  “Sadly I say it, my King, but your ears are becoming attuned to other rhythms than those of earth.”

  “So soon? With my work barely begun?”

  With that exclamation his eyes closed. As I ap-preached, I could not tell if Death had touched him or if it was but a swoon.

  Sir Bedwyr met me before I reached Arthur, and explained, whispering, the scene I had just witnessed.

  “He seems out of his head with despair. His wounds are grievous, but I think not fatal could I only stop the bleeding. I think it is his soul that is dying. He is firmly convinced that the end is come, for himself, for all of us, and for Britain. That is why he bade me cast his great sword into the mere.

  “God forgive me! I am a forsworn knight! I have lied to a dying man. You can understand, Centurion? How could I cast it away? The brand has become a symbol to men. With Arthur gone, the scraps of our army will rally only to something they cherish. You know how the rabble need something to follow, a hero, an eagle, a sacred relic. With something to protect or follow they are giants; without it they are only men, afraid of death, afraid of pain. They would fight like demons to keep Arthur’s sword out of the hands of the Saxons.”

  I had dropped upon my knees, examining the deep wounds in side and thigh, but my efforts at stanching were no better than the other’s had been, and we worked together while he continued:

  “So I cast the jeweled scabbard into the mere and lied! There was no arm in white samite, no wailing, only ripples on the mere and a sea bird’s croak!”

  “Nor would there have been more had you hurled the sword after the scabbard,” I grunted. “Hand me more of that linen shirt.”

  He smiled sadly.

  “Now if he dies, he will die happy in that respect, thinking I obeyed him, and if he lives he will understand I meant it for the best and will forgive me, I hope. Do you think I was right?”

  “Unquestionably,” I agreed. “With Arthur’s sword in our hands we can flee to the hills, gather strength and strike again. If I could only stop this cursed blood!”

  His lips had become the color of clay, and I marveled that he still breathed, for it seemed that each faint gasp would be his last.

  Hearing the approach of a company, I looking up and clutched my own sword, then relaxed. Robed men, sagely bearded, were about me. Myrdhinn and his Nine Bards had come, and never had I been so glad to see that mysterious person as now.

  He wasted no words, but brushing us both away, deftly probed the wounds, pressed at the base of the skull and at two places upon Arthur’s back, then motioned for us to stand guard.

  “The great Pendragon is departing.”

  The bards began a sorrowful keening, cut short by the sage.

  “Peace! That will not help us. I cannot cure him. Time only can do that, but I can prevent a further sinking while we seek safety.”

  The groping tendrils of fog swirled thicker about us all as we watched those nimble fingers. Deftly he bound up those dreadful wounds from which the blood no longer pumped, his lips moving in a swift patter of mumbled words. Here was a scrap of Latin or a Cymric phrase, but mostly it was merely a sibilant hissing which belonged to no language of our ken.

  And it seemed to us that in the pause between the longer incantations the mist becam
e thicker and thicker yet, while just beyond the circle of our vision there sounded muttered rejoinders, as though Myrdhinn prayed for the life of Arthur and the cold lips of that great host of British dead on Camlan field must supply the responses.

  And ever through the mist came the lapping of water on the distant shore. But was it distant? The sound seemed closer than it had been.

  Once Myrdhinn paused to listen, but went on to complete his charm.

  A^ cold touch lapped my ankles. I was in a puddle of lake water without having realized the fact. I moved closer to the mound upon which the others stood.

  “Is he dead?” gasped Sir Bedwyr, and Myrdhinn shook his head.

  “He would have been by now, but his breathing has stopped and he will live.”

  “Stopped his breathing? Then he must die!”

  “Not entirely stopped, perhaps,” smiled Myrdhinn. “He will breathe possibly once a day, until he has recovered during a long sleep the energy and the blood he has lost He has been almost drained dry. We will take him to a safe and secret place where I can hide him away until he is recovered and ready to fight again for Britain.”

  I moved out of the water again. Was I sinking in a marsh? The ground seemed solid.

  “How long must he sleep?” Again Sir Bedwyr questioned.

  “Longer than you would believe. Your bones will be mold and your very tomb forgotten, before Arthur has well begun to sleep! I cannot explain now—hear that clank of arms? Enemies are prowling in the mist! Quick, Varro, help my men to lift him across your saddle. We must flee!”

  As I moved to obey, I saw again that I stepped from water to reach higher ground. I looked about me. Un-perceived by us, the water of the mere was stealthily rising to surround and cut us off.

  Quietly I showed Myrdhinn. His eyes widened. Then he laughed.

  “Ah, Bedwyr. It would have been better had you returned Caliburn to the lady who loaned it. My wife, Vivienne, a somewhat grasping person. She may bear us a grudge for cheating her. She held me ensorceled in the wood of Broceliande for some time, I remember very vividly. Come quickly, before the water rises!”

  A huge wave came up from the mere and hurled itself along the inlet, swirled about our knees and fell back as though loath to release us.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” urged Myrdhinn.

  Again we heard the clinking of accouterments, this time much closer, and soon the gruff words of Saxons could be distinguished.

  They were hard upon us. Sir Bedwyr looked at me, and I at him. We were the only armed men in the party. With common consent we turned back, but for only a few steps when we again heard the rumble of a monstrous wave breaking upon the lowland we were leaving.

  This time other sounds followed—cries of horror, of pain; the screams of tortured men; then groans, and bitter sobbing, awfully intermingled with mumbling, munching sounds, as though in the fog mercifully hidden from us some monstrous thing was feeding.

  We stood aghast as Myrdhinn urged us to join the party.

  “Come quickly! Tarry not! The mistake will soon be discovered. Let us get far from this evil place.”

  “What is back there?” I gasped.

  “Vivienne’s pet, the Avanc. The Worm of the Mere. We have cheated it and her as well. She is probably jealous that I have aided Arthur and she is surely enraged at the loss of Caliburn, which was due her by the terms of the loan.

  “Listen, my good wife, and heed!” He called into the fog. “I hold Arthur’s sword, and shall now keep it. This to repay for my years of imprisonment in the Ring of Smoky Air.

  “Run, for your lives, men, run!”

  We ran, beside the trotting horse. For the first few minutes all was still; then the ground surged in waves beneath us like an angry sea. Once, twice, thrice it rolled and threw us from our feet. We picked ourselves up and ran blindly in the fog.

  Then somewhere a crash, as though the ocean-sea was hurling itself violently upon the bloody shore, and a long silence, followed by a second mighty roar of waves now mercifully far away. Silence again.

  In the fog, just outside our vision, a woman laughed. Long, low and inexpressibly evil! Musically lovely, but oh, so wicked!

  Just a laugh, nothing more, but in it was hinted the knowledge of something that we could not then know or guess; something that we should and must know, but which was withheld from us.

  We looked at Myrdhinn. He shook his head without speaking.

  Something had been done by the Lady of the Lake, to repay insults, to avenge Lanceloc (said to be her kin) and to injure us all, but what it was we did not know.

  We went our way again, deeper and deeper inland, on into the fog. And behind us, till we had gone so far we could not hear it, rippled that lovely musical laughter, chilling the blood in our veins.

  3 The Sleeper and the Seer

  There is no need, my Emperor, to weary you with dry details of all we said and thought and did during the next few days. It is not for that reason I am writing. Briefly, then: We marched for several nights, through hostile country, picking up stragglers as we went, and hiding until we numbered forty men and could march by day. Twice we fought wandering bands of Saxons as we pressed on westward toward Arthur’s homeland of Lyonesse, for he had often expressed a wish to be buried in his natal village of Avalon. But as we neared it, we met wild-eyed refugees, fleeing a more dire peril than the sea raiders—the sea itself! For, we learned, on the very eve of that fatal field of Camlan, the fertile and populous province of Lyonesse had sunk beneath the sea!

  Yea, sixty villages and towns, each with its church and wealth and people, among them Arthur’s own Avalon, lay drowned and nothing remained to mark the spot but a few scattered hilltops, now islands in a sea of yellow muddy waters.

  “Vivienne, think you?” I asked Myrdhinn.

  He nodded without speaking, but his nine bards, in tones as solemn as a peal of drowned bells, answered, “Aye.”

  We hurried on through a thick wood and came to a shallow place where the ebbing tide had filled the underbrush with mud, corpses, bodies of horses and cattle, fish with their bellies burst open by the underwater explosions which had accompanied the sinking of the land.

  Myrdhinn leading to a goal he had decided upon, we followed: first, the nine bards; then myself and the charger which bore Arthur’s body, very yellow and unbreathing, though warm and flexible; then the legionaries, who accepted me as centurion, though only two were from my century, and most of the others were unknown to me.

  We passed through the wood and arrived at a great hoar rock, almost a mountain, and up this we climbed and rested. For a long time we looked out over the drowned land murdered by sorcery and spite, watching the tide come in and cut us off from the mainland, while Myrdhinn sat apart, considering the future.

  Then, on the ebbing of the tide, we returned to the wood and left the seer alone with the sleeper. We made camp beyond the deathly wood and waited—three days. During all that time a thick black cloud, neither fog nor smoke, hung about the summit of the mount, unmoving in the fiercest wind, and those among us with sharp ears claimed to hear mutterings in an unknown language issuing from the cloud. Likewise, it seemed, they heard various invisible hurrying creatures, passing through the air above, speeding toward the mount, conversing as they came.

  For myself, I heard none of this, and it was very likely but the stirring of volcanic activity still busy near the sunken province.

  Finally Myrdhinn came to us, and the cloud disappeared as had Arthur and the glory and honor of his reign. Where he had been laid with Caliburn, his famed sword, fast in his grip, Myrdhinn would not say, except that he was in a secure spot not to be found by man until the tune was come for the waking of him.

  Be not concerned for Britain’s champion, oh my Emperor, for I have the sure word of Myrdhinn the wise that Arthur shall one day wake! There will be a mighty war in which all the tribes shall engage which possess the tiniest
drop of British blood. Then Arthur will wake, make himself known and with Caliburn carry carnage into the lands of Britain’s enemies. And war shall be no more and peace shall reign forever over all of Earth!

  This, Myrdhinn told us. He told us also that he had writ this in enduring letters of Cymric, Ogham and Latin, about the walls of Arthur’s abode, sealing the entrance thereto with a rock cunningly fixed and inscribed:

  HERE ARTHUR LIES. KING ONCE AND KING TO BE.

  Lest, Emperor (if Britain has by now been reclaimed by Roman legions), they should be tempted to search for and enter this secret place, be warned. Myrdhinn has set watchers there. Arthur cannot and must not be awakened before the appointed time. The watchers will see to that. They are not human, they will not sleep or rest, they do not eat or drink, tire or forget or die! They are there to keep the entrance inviolate. Be warned! They are dangerous and will wait as Myrdhinn commanded, till Arthur awakes, be it one or three thousands of years. I do not know, nor does it concern us. They are there, the Guardians—the Watchers!

  The next morning, again we marched, followed the coastline westward, and after some time we reached the very end of land, where beyond lay nothing but the boundless ocean. Here on the brink of a high raw cliff stood a monstrous boulder so cleverly poised that the touch of a hand might rock it, but many oxen could not pull it from its place, though bar and pry might dislodge it.

  Myrdhinn drew from his robes a bronze plate already prepared and inscribed with an account of what we had done, instructions for entering Arthur’s chamber and a warning to the unwary.

  Again we left him alone; again we saw the black cloud gather and from a distance saw a marvel hard to explain. The massive and ponderous boulder rose in air to the height of a tall man!

  This work, which would have taxed the powers of a Titan, was done noiselessly and with apparent ease. Myrdhinn merely touched it, so far as we could judge, and it rose.