Merlin's Ring Page 20

  They entered this small enclave and suddenly a sense of trespassing came over them all. It was as though they trod upon tragic ground, where a doom had befallen and which even now held something of its horror. They paused, as with one assent, although no word had been spoken.

  Jaun looked up and gestured, with a sweeping hand along the edge of the heights on either side.

  “There stood the men and women of Escual-Herria— waiting. On the road we have followed, the Moorish army was coming to avenge the attack upon Zaragoza. When they arrived here’they found none but the dead. Just at this spot, the rearguard of tke French army was slaughtered.

  “There the Paladins stood back to back. There the finest of the champions planted his gonfalon—there he defended it in a ring of the slain. Yonder boulder still bears the mark of the mighty blows he dealt it to destroy his sword. Upon it he leaned in mortal extremity and blew upon his horn, not to summon help as some traducers say, but to warn Great Carlos to beware, for he knew the Moors were pressing close.

  “It was so that the Warden Ruotland died, defending the retreat of the main army. It was a knightly deed. We Eskualdunak are proud of him too. We have often wished he had been one of ours.

  “Yet before the Moors arrived, the treasure was gone, and they got nothing but wounds, for the army returned and the struggle was bitter. So, both to us and them, this small meadow will remain forever French although all the hills around it be Spanish.”

  “I was never a war-chief,” said Gwalchmai, reflectively, looking at the heights, almost hidden now by the stealthily lowering ceiling of mist “If I had been in command here, I would have sent my Valiants ahead to first clear and hold the ridges. Then I would have brought my columns through. This Charles may have been a great king, but he was not a wise general.”

  They had progressed a little farther while speaking. Suddenly a branched and blinding stream of lightning ripped down through the eddying whorls above them, striking the old oak, splitting it asunder along the line of decay that ran down the center of its trunk.

  Part of it remained upright, but seared and smoking. The remainder fell into the pool and the water therein splashed out of it in a double wave to either side, leaving the pebbled bottom of the pool bare.

  Jaun fell on his knees, his teeth chattering. He crossed himself fervently.

  “Saint Michel, a fistful of candles! I promise them! Protect us now, Saint Jago of Compostella, from the Powers of Darkness and the perils of storm!”

  Under other circumstances Gwalchmai might have laughed, but he also had seen what had frightened the Basque.

  It was a giant laughing face, formed for a split second by the disturbed and tumbling mist, the beard colored red by the upward striking glow from the burning part of the oak that still stood. It hung there, hardly longer than the flash itself, but long enough for Gwalchmai to recognize the features and long enough to see the eyes survey them and then turn toward the oak.

  At once the thunder pealed, shaking the very hills, and the face disappeared, but Gwalchmai followed the direction of that gaze and saw in the exposed hollow of the tree a bright gleam of metal.

  A long straight sword, with a cruciform hilt, embedded there, where it had been placed so long ago!

  He knew then that it had been no dream, when he thought he had listened to the colloquy of the gods. Thor had kept his promise. Here, at last, was Roland’s sword!

  He strode quickly across the greensward and lifted it from its hiding place. In all that time of concealment, since the Valkyrie had caused it to be removed from under the Paladin’s body—before other looters could find it and before Charlemagne’s host returned to drive them away and meet the pursuing Moors again in battle, the sword had gathered but little rust

  The edge was still keen, the hilt unmarred by time.

  “Ah, beautiful, dangerous Durandall” thought Gwalchmai. “You splendid blade, fit for a king’s hand—never touched before by any but Christendom’s champion; how shall I ever ^dare to hold or wield you? Thor, you have given me more than I asked—more than I should have had. You have given me too much!”

  He stroked his palm down the long clean line of the double-edged blade. He caressed it from tang to point and a few flakes of rust fell away. Under his hand he felt a vibrancy, a responsive thrill in the metal as though it was glad to come into the light again.

  Just under the crossguard, five little crosses were stamped into the blade. He raised the sword to his lips and kissed them.

  “I swear to you, Paladin Roland, this queen of weapons shall never be used in an unworthy cause. I am not the one to cany it. I will place it in trust, in the first safe place I find, for whomsoever shall come that next, by God’s will, shall be considered Champion of France, in whatever day another shall be needed.”

  He swung it through the air. It hummed and sang as though in answer. He looked around at the others. They had not been watching him. Instead, they were gathered in a little group around the pool, into which the water was now seeping back.

  A rather large bronze chest had been uncovered when the pool was emptied and Jaun and Arngrim were struggling with it They had tugged it almost up on the bank. Gwal-chmai went over to help and soon the three had it out of the deepening water. It was locked, but the hinges were only a mass of verdigris and a few sharp blows opened it. They forced back the lid and it fell away.

  The women cried out in wonder and the men drew a sharp intake of breath.

  Before them lay a part of the tribute wrested from Zara-goza. Golden coins, jeweled scimitar hilts, necklaces, crucifixes, all intermixed at random, as people had thrown them in to fill the chests with treasure and buy the city’s liberty from the besieging Franks.

  “See!” cried Jaun. “I told you she was a Xana! Now you will believe me! Now you know! They always make gifts of gold and jewels to those who find them.”

  “It is true I guarded it in the pool,” said Mairtre. “It is not true I am anything but a human girl. Under the spell that bound me I acted as its guardian, but I never did anyone harm.”

  “Yours is an odd name,” said Corenice. “I have never heard it before and yet it seems that I have known someone who bore it”

  “There have been three Mairtres in my family. If I had a harp I could sing you my lineage, for by music I was taught to remember it”

  “You are from Erin, then?” Gwalchmai casually asked.

  “Yes, my father was a horse-merchant He brought over stallions to sell to the Moors, to improve the Arabian breed. Our ship was wrecked on the Spanish coast, not far from here. All were lost except for myself, and while lying upon the beach, fialf-drowned, I fell into the hands of a sorcerer.”

  Gwalchmai looked narrowly at her. Again he thought he detected a resemblance to someone he had known extremely well That golden hair! Could it be?

  “Was your father’s name Flann?”

  Mairtre was astonished. “Yes, it was, and my grandfather’s! That is an old name in our family, too. Did you know him?”

  “I think I have heard of him before.”

  “He is well known hi Erin,” said Mairtre, proudly. She gestured at the ckest. “He has no need of such as this to be respected. It has little value to me, now that I have found my treasure.”

  She looked fondly upon the big Varangian and he pressed her to him in the crook of his arm. “Perhaps not to you, my love, but it is the greatest treasure I have ever seen.”

  “Then you should go to Cibola, where the very streets are spangled with it, or have walked in Poseidonis, where I have mentioned before how rain poured from the roofs through golden downspouts. This little heap is nothing to those sights.”

  Corenice’s tone was elaborately casual, but her eyes glistened as she looked upon the flashing jewels.

  “If it were mine, I would give it to all of you,” began Mairtre, “but it is not—”

  “Indeed, it is not!” A grim voice interrupted them and they turned in alarm.

  While their
attention was fixed upon the chest, a strange transformation had occurred.

  To the eyes of all but Gwalchmai, who saw everything as being oddly blurred, they now stood inside an impressive hall. The mist ceiling had curdled, had thickened, had become a vaulted canopy of huge dimensions. Around its perimeter, it was supported by ribbed columns that had previously appeared to be oaks, while other pillars, set with flambeaux, supported the center of the dome.

  The walls of the hall agreed in place to what had been the mounting slopes of the surrounding peaks. Now they were seen to be of cut stone, carved, decorated, but not in beauty, and hung with tapestries that pictured scenes most frightening. Here ghouls gamboled and fed upon ghastly battlefields under a gibbous moon. Here Herne, the Hunter, led his demon horsemen in mad pursuit of his fleeing quarry —a tattered man, clawed and stricken, who ran for his life across a gray moor where there was no covert

  They stood upon a thick, rich green carpet, their backs, now that they had turned, to a marble-rimmed fountain where water musically plashed and a vacant pedestal stood for some missing statue. Here lay sections of a fallen roof pillar and the floor was wet.

  Facing the heavy boulder, which had borne the savage dints of Roland’s furious strokes, they saw instead a high-backed and ornate throne.

  Seated there, leaning casually against a heavy design wherein men suffered at the teeth and talons of grinning monsters, a thin black man observed them. By his dress, he appeared to be a Moor. He was wirily bearded. His left hand held a Wand of Power, translucently glittering and ominously pointed at them, while his other grasped the leash of a snarling creature that strained against it, as though it was mad to leap upon them.

  This strange beast was long of body and the size of a coursing hound. It was covered, as with, armor, by a tightly joined integument of shining ebony scales, edged with brilliant poisonous viridescent rims, which, as it writhed serpent-like, appeared and disappeared, causing it to constantly take on new configurations in design.

  Its razor-sharp claws dug deep into the carpet as it fought the restraining fingers of the master who held it in, and its long tail lashed to and fro, slapping viciously against the throne.

  It faced them and hissed like an escaping jet of steam. Its breath came to them as a putrid gust and although it could not see the intruders, for its snaky head was covered by a leather hood, it knew well their position. The blinded eyes were obviously following their movements, for the head‘ swung from one to another of the group.

  Among all the transformations of the mountain meadow, one thing only remained the same. Everything else, to Gwalchmai’s eyes, was surrounded with the same hazy outline that had clothed Mairtre with unreality until touched by the moly powder.

  The unchanged article was the treasure chest. Its edges were clear and sharp and it was still filled with precious objects.

  The wizard chuckled, as his eyes followed Gwalchmai’s glance.

  “Aintzina, robbers!” he said, witfc a sardonic smile. “I have been warned against your coming and now you are here. Shall you go away again, I wonder? I believe you are the one, ruddy man, who was told to beware of f ailing into sin, lest you fall also into a greater danger? What would you call theft? Is that sin or no?”

  Gwalchmai started at that sinister mirth. The voice held the same glutinous tone he had heard coming up from below when the elves were menaced by the Worm. For an instant, a cold evil greater than the wizard’s looked out of the wizard’s eyes and“ it made his former mocking gaze appear like the frank open stare of a baby.

  Gwalchmai realized that the trick of possession was not practiced by Corenice alone. Was this the Lord of the Dark Face in person, or did Oduarpa inhabit this evil being briefly for his own ends?

  The wizard spoke again. “The wealth is not hers to give, but mine. I give nothing that belongs to me. Back upon your pedestal, nymph, and guard it again!”

  Mairtre was moving forward and Arngrim, despite his fear, tried to stop her, but Gwalchmai had already placed himself before the creature upon the throne, just out of reach of the snarling beast

  He raised Roland’s sword and held it out. “By the crosses upon the blade and by the relics in its hilt, I command you to depart!”

  The wizard laughed and let slip a few inches of the leash. Gwalchmai held his ground.

  “Now shall I loose my pet upon you? Perhaps I should watch you run a little while. Come back to me, Barbo, my sweet basilisk, you King of Serpents, and allow me to un-hood your eyes that you may gaze lovingly upon these trespassers!”

  He drew the creature back and Gwalchmai took another step toward it, this time with hilt in hand. He swung up Durandal.

  The movement caught the wizard’s eye and he lifted the Wand. A fury of sparks darted against Gwalchmai, but at that instant a streaming curtain of light, as impenetrable as diamond and as transparent, surrounded the whole group. It touched the floor tightly, circling their feet, and rose to an apex at the ring on Gwalchmai’s upraised hand.

  The light surged along Durandal in cold waving ripples. The sword gleamed a noble and menacing blue.

  The wizard eyed it closely and the hand that bore it. He seemed to shrink slightly into his seat. The basilisk crouched as though to spring. He drew it gently back.

  The appearance of a double identity passed from his face. Whatever had dwelt there briefly now deserted him and departed to its own place, leaving him to face the Paladin’s blade alone. He was not daunted.

  “I have been entrusted to give you a further warning. Enrage my master no longer, lest your soul perish. Be warned that he who lives longer than other men must also rest longer than others do. Remember also that while one sleeps one is helpless and it is well that a sleeping man has no enemies.

  “I am not otherwise advised of your attainments or qualities, nor do I wish to learn more, but I bow to the power of your ring. The emblem it bears is well known to me. I pray you, approach in peace and tell me something of it and the Mage who bore it.”

  As he spoke, his eyes never leaving Gwalchmai’s, his fingers were fumbling with the fastening of the basilisk hood.

  Corenice whispered, but Gwalchmai had already seen. Before those deadly eyes could be unveiled, Durandal flashed down.

  The reptilian head leapt from the wildly flailing neck, from which blood spouted as from a hose.

  The wizard’s face contorted with hate. Again the Wand swung up, but as his eyes narrowed with the intent, the sword of Roland was midway in its sweep.

  Durandal passed through the body of the dark man like a. wisp of vapor and clanged upon the throne. As it made contact, everything changed. Like a bursting bubble, the surrounding phantasms passed away.

  The pillars of the hall were once more broad-branched trees. Mist hung again above them and the furnishings were gone. All this in the time in which the sword continued on and struck sparks once more from the boulder upon which dying Roland had sought to shatter it.

  The steel rang like a bell, but did not break. Its edge was keen and unbanned.

  The five looked around as though waking from a dream. The treasure chest was still full, the meadow was empty and safe. There was only one difference that could be noted from before, to prove to them that what they had seen had been no illusion and that they had stood in a very real danger.

  Wherever the blood of the basilisk had fallen, the grass beneath those flying drops lay dead and withered.

  “Jesu maitia!” exclaimed Jaun. “I shall go no farther. You people doubtless have busy angels to protect you, but I am not so sure that mine are as hard-working as yours. Gaichoa, friends! This is where we part.”

  “You were to guide us through the mountains, comrade,” remonstrated Arngrim. “We are still among them.”

  “If you get lost here, you will have to climb the peaks to do it. Keep on down the pass. It leads into France, but I think if I take that road my wife will be a lonely widow.”

  “Then, cot so hastily. Let us first share out the wizar
d’s gold. Perhaps, when she sees what you have brought, you may get a better welcome.”

  “Xana’s gold!” corrected the Basque. “Xanas always reward their friends with gifts.”

  There was still a hanging back among them. No one seemed to want to be first to approach the opened chest again, possibly feeling that the action might call the enchanter back.

  Finally Mairtre, for she had been its guardian, set her little hands to the task of overturning the heavy box; Arngrim hurriedly moved to help her and all gathered around the tumbled riches lying upon the greensward.

  No enchanter appeared. It was not long before a rough division of the treasure had been made. With the remainder of the wine they drank a kantu to each other and to their lucky future, as they hoped it would prove to be. After this sincere toast, they sorrowfully parted, heavily laden and looking back over their shoulders—waving and calling goodbyes until they could no longer see Jaun.

  They went on a little faster then, as the pass widened and their way dropped down into Gascony. They did not speak very much, for they had grown to like the Basque and all partings bring home a sense of melancholy and man’s mortality.

  Often, in later years, Arngrim wondered about his oar companion. He never heard what the future brought him, but Gwalchmai, by accident, did.

  Much time had passed by. He was looking over a book of maps, in a library in Byzantium, compiled by Idrisi, the Arab cartographer, when his eyes fell upon a familiar name. He read eagerly on. It was the tale of the brothers Magrurin, who had sailed from Lisbon to find out “what it is that encloses the ocean, and what its limits are.”

  They had assembled a group of eight, all kinfolk, and set out. After eleven days’ journeying westward, with a fast wind, they entered a sea choked by weed—“the waves were thick,” said the chronicle of Idrisi. They found no land and were obliged to turn back, making landfall in Africa.