Merlin's Ring Read online

  Marveling, shivering barbarians had watched them in dread, not understanding what they saw. From their tales, the stories had originated to explain the existence of flying monsters. Thus—the legendary griffin, that weird creature with legs, wings, and beak of steel, which stood guard over golden treasures and was consecrated to the sun!

  This was why they were said to inhabit Asiatic Scythia; this was why they were reported to be eight times larger than the largest lion!

  Somehow, through the ages, the memory of those vanished glories had come down, repeated and garbled in the remembrance. Somehow, back through those ages—by the good offices of the Spirit-of-the-Wave?—Gwalchmai had been spirited, to save his life from the dangers of the desert and his immortal soul from the malice of the Lord of the Dark Face. Now he could see for himself the wonders of which Corenice had told him.

  Even the hugest griffin would be small in comparison to the magnificent ship that now, proudly breasting the waves, moved with care into the shallows where he stood waiting, watching through the clear water the slow strokes of its paddling feet.

  The swan-ship came to rest. It lay there, rocking. A line splashed into the ripples beside him, from the narrow deck between the wings. Gwalchmai was drawn aboard to receive excited congratulations.

  His rescuers spoke the version of the ancient language he had learned from Corenice and Jaun, the Basque, although so much purer that they smiled politely at his barbarous accent.

  He followed them down a companionway, into the depths of the body. The Vimana was obviously a work vessel, armed with the dyro-blast for protection.

  It was this lethal gush of flame that had spouted from the swan-ship’s beak to deliver him from the menace of the ants. He could understand why the griffin was reputed to be death to horses and brave knights, incinerating whole armies that came against it.

  Thinking upon this, Gwalchmai murmured, under his breath, lines he had heard sung by a minstrel in the court of King_Brons:

  There was a dragon great and grymme,

  Full of fire and eke venymme;

  And as a lion were his fete,

  His tayle was long and full unmete;

  Between his head and his tayle,

  Was twenty-two foote withouten fayle;

  His body was like a round wine tun,

  He shone full bright against the sun;

  His eyes were bright as any glass,

  His scales were hard as any brass.

  Not too bad a description for a creature not actually seen for over ten thousand years, he thought.

  There was little time for musing. Already the Vimana had taken to the air, after running awkwardly along the surface of the sea to gain speed, in the manner of the bird it appeared to be.

  There was nothing ungainly about it as it flew, and it needed little attention from the crewman. Four of them, captain, engineer, and two deck hands, sat without regard for rank.

  In the center of this little group, which included Gwalch-mai not as a prisoner but as a guest, was an observation well in the bird’s belly. This was floored with transparent plates.

  Occasionally they looked down upon the flashing sea, in which the golden ship was reflected in beauty, while they listened to a brief recounting of Gwalchmai’s adventures. He edited them to reconcile his period of existence with that of his rescuers. He did not wish to task their credulity too much by telling them that he was a son of their far future. As it was, the Atlantideans often smiled politely and without belief at what he told them, but seemed to ignore discrepancies in any other way, not remarking in asides among themselves, perhaps setting down whatever they did not understand to an imperfect rendering of their language.

  The pilot was the only one absent from this colloquy. He guided the craft from his seat in the bird’s head, but listened through a communicator, occasionally breaking in with a question.

  So they talked while they flew on eastward over many islands. There were small and large ones, mostly unin-habited. A few bore what seemed to be factories—for smelting gold, or processing ore?—but most of the others with any sort of buildings upon them, Gwalchmai noticed, were crowned with pillared mansions with breezeways. Pathways led to the sea or landing ovals surrounded by greensward, and these were paved with colored stones set hi geometrical patterns meant to be admired from the ah*. The land was smoothed and terraced, the trees pruned into patterns and carefully spaced.

  Gwalchmai was amazed. This hideous desert, death trap for caravans, this frightful waste toward which for over a year he had looked forward with dread, had once been a pleasure archipelago for the citizens of Atlantis.

  Hang-Hai Lake, for now he must so call it, was far behind and they were soaring over the Gobi Sea. Was it possible that this scintillating expanse, surrounded by impressive snowcapped peaks crowned by twinkling beacons and guarding watchtowers, could so vanish with the elevating movements of the land, the cataclysmic destroying atom, and the passage of time?

  Ah, yes! Vanish it would. After its vanishing, Atlantis would likewise disappear, sinking slowly as other lands rose. The semi-continents of Ruta and Daitya first drowned, to leave Poseidonis Island for a little while; then this, too, would follow the remainder of the proud country beneath the ocean, leaving nothing but names, legends, and memories behind.

  Not even that would survive, within the Gobi, where only the dust-devils and the mourning winds peopled a scorching, freezing haunt. All gone, in a minuscule moment of geological time.

  While Gwalchmai meditated, the ship flew on toward the nearing shore of the vast sea. Upon it, backed by a high mountain pass, stood a magnificent city. Its impressive walls were pierced with arched gates, through which moved caravans of ponderously huge beasts, with long, reddish hair and curling tusks. They bore howdahs or immense burdens, or hauled heavy wains with ten-foot wheels. Mammoths, tamed to the use of man!

  ‘The Vimana swooped low. He watched the beasts plodding along boulevards, through the marketplaces, as it circled in a descending spiral toward the receiving quays in the harbor, where other boats with furled wings lay rocking. Over the golden domes and towering spires, the swan-ship slid down its airy slope.

  It swung around the high walls and crowded streets. Gwalchmai saw upturned faces of guards, ready at their posts, although no danger threatened.

  Down and down, closer to the water and the dock-men waiting to catch flung ropes and make hawsers fast to the bollards; down where boys pointed upward and girls waved fluttering ribbons to welcome the bird-men home; down to splash lightly hi the harbor and for just one second—for Gwalchmai to find himself struggling in it!

  The ship had disappeared! In an infinitesimal part of a second, the water vanished. The captain and crewmen, the docks, people, and animals, the city with its protecting walls and palaces, long to be remembered as the fabled home of Prester John, and the Gobi Sea itself—all disappeared into Gwalchmai’s past as he was rushed forward into his present— their distant future.

  All that remained were the mighty peaks, down which it seemed the snowline had instantaneously lowered itself for thousands of feet; the high pass between them, choked with snow and ice; and Gwalchmai, flat upon his face, making swimming motions upon another ancient beach, his mouth and nose filled with salty sand.

  He had crossed the greatest dangers by the favor of Ahunü, kind of goddess of the waters, and returned to his own time safely, but there were tears in his eyes.

  There was no city of John, the Priest; no Christian Emperor to help him to return to Alata and to accept the country as a part of a holy realm. He must wait longer to be discharged of his weary mission, which was sad enough, but, worst of all, he must seek farther still for the one he valued most—there was no Corenice.

  16

  Through the zJtCagic T)oor

  It was then that Gwalchmai felt a despondency deeper than any before in all of his long wanderings. In the vast expanse of desert that lay behind him nothing moved. Even the wind had stopped.

>   No mirages cast their deceptive visions to trick him into their pursuit; no delirium of thirst or hunger was enough to create an illusion of life in that deadly waste through the medium of inflamed sight or straining ears.

  The futility of this endless striving came upon him as it had not at any other time. To what end his searching? Toward what doom or joy was his mission leading him forever on, without hope or reward? Was there a purpose in existence in which his stubbornness played a part?

  His head sank down into the sand and he groaned. He was very near severing the tenuous thread that unites the soul to its body. As he prepared to recite the words that would bring about this irrevocable deed, he thought he heard a tiny voice—in his mind? In his heart? In his memory?

  Yes! It was echoing lines he had heard Flann read to Thyra from the tattered book of the Culdees, when he was instructing her in his faith. In Flann’s very tones, he heard the voice repeat:

  “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help; My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”

  He raised his head and stared wildly at the mountains. They were a blinding blur, bright with sunlight and snow. He blinked and wiped away the sand from his face and streaming eyes.

  Against the brilliance, he saw a circling black speck, which soared and spiraled outward in an ever-widening sweep. It rapidly came nearer and as though it had been seeking it now broke its circular swing and flew directly toward him. He saw that it was a raven.

  Thor’s messenger? Corenice, hi one of-her favorite guises? . He probed its mind as it swooped close, peering keenly at him. He lay as if dead. There was no feeling within its red thoughts, except that of a savage appetite. No essence of another entity, no sense of anything merciful or helpful in it. It dropped to the ground and hopped avidly to peck at his eyes.

  This was a carrion bird and a starving one at that.

  He allowed it to come close and then, as Corenice had taught him, he seized upon its consciousness and made its body his.

  Living the raven’s life, now Gwalchmai was borne into the air. Higher, higher, viewing the desert lands beneath him—farther into the steely, menacing hard blue of the cloudless sky. He looked down at his body as the raven had seen it, spread flatly, supine, helpless, thousands of feet below. He felt the thin wind through his feathers as he topped the mighty peaks. He was tortured by the raven’s hunger; he shared its weariness; and he looked beyond those jagged mountain barriers and saw green valleys where a road ran as a brown cord through emeralds, paralleling that forbidding range, and upon that highway moved people!

  A caravan trail! Here passed upon it swaying cameleers. Here traveled the sweating wheelbarrow men with the little sails that aided the wind hi pushing their heavy loads. Here he could see beneath him the patient, laden donkeys trotting with their bales of silk along the ancient route toward Persia and the markets of the west. With them moved the convoys.

  Soldiers, drovers, pack-bearers, wanderers, priests, storytellers, Mandarins in their palanquins, favored concubines in curtained chairs and litters—here was the life of the eastern world passing beneath his eyes and here was life for himself, if he could cross the mountains and reach that road.

  Swiftly the controlled raven returned to the uninhabited body below. Before it could blink or hop away or realize what had happened to it, Gwalchmai had returned to him-self. His strong hands shot out and grasped the dazed bird. Quickly, he wrung its neck.

  Not bothering to pluck the fowl, he split it from windpipe to tail with a single slash of his flint hatchet, tore skin and feathers away and made a meal of the rank, raw flesh. He gagged and retched, but managed to keep down the life giving food. Somewhat revived, he staggered toward the foothills and the pass he kad seen.

  There were little streams formed from the melting snows and there were green shoots growing along their edges, succulent and nourishing. There was a burgeoning hope in his heart to carry him on and there was the courage he had always had. It had not died as he had thought, but only slept for a little while.

  So he crossed the pass. No avalanche came near him, no other misfortune befell, and gaunt, weary, a ghost of himself, he stumbled at last upon that road. After only a half a day of waiting, he was found by a caravan bound eastward, with raw jade and raisins, fine horses and slaves.

  The children he passed pointed at the stumbling man who supported himself by clinging to the side of a baggage wagon, red-eyed with dust. They looked at his ruddy skin, his worn-out felt boots, his ragged sheepskins and said to themselves; “T’a! T’a!”—for they took him to be one of the nomads from the north, against whom the Great Wall had been built

  Thus he came to Cathay and by the Jade Gate entered the fabled Empire of Kublai, the Mongol conqueror, whom men called the Great Khan.

  Now began for Gwalchmai a new phase of existence. Had it not been for a feeling of expectation that might at any time be realized hi some unusual way, he could have been happy in Cathay.

  He fitted well into the scheme of living in which he found himself.

  The returning merchants who had found him had given him succor only out of mercy at first. When they were sure that he was not a robber or in some manner attempting to lead them into a trap, they made him more welcome.

  Because Merlin had once known a Chinese wanderer from Scythia, who had given him a fish compass, he had made a study of this acquaintance’s language. Gwalchmai, while he wore Merlin’s ring, found himself in possession of enough words to make himself understood by the traders, although their dialect as a whole was quite different Still, with such a beginning, communication became increasingly easier as time went on, especially since he had a working knowledge of Persian and some Turkish and Arabic, picked up on his three years of traveling from Rome.

  When it became known that he was not a Tartar, but had journeyed from Europe, the merchants encouraged him to remain with them.

  He made himself useful in several ways as they journeyed into the Lower Kingdom, but their chief interest in him was what he could tell them of those far lands through which he had passed, for they had a childlike curiosity in the strange and bizarre.

  Moving slowly as they did,, word of him went ahead and eventually reports sifted as far as the City of the Khan, Khan-baliq as the Mongols had named the new metropolis, recently built in place of the one Genghis, Kublai’s grandfather, had destroyed a lifetime earlier.

  In this magnificent city, which had awed Marco Polo and who called it Cambaluc, Gwalchmai came to earn an honored place, purely by chance.

  The Emperor had called Gwalchmai before him, upon arrival, for much the same reasons“ that the merchants had listened to tnose tales he had to offer of the western world.

  His meeting with Kublai might have been no more than perfunctory had not the Mongols been arming at the time for an invasion of Japan, which they knew as Nihon. The Khan held great delight in learning of strange countries, their manners and oddities, but he was a busy and energetic ruler, with many interests.

  However, Gwalchmai had kept his eyes open during his passage through the Khanate and was able to suggest some improvements in the catapults being constructed to arm the fleet, for he had seen the improved designs being then used throughout Europe and knew something of the intricate engines developed to reduce strong fortifications.

  He was offered the post of second-class commissioner, or agent hi charge of ordnance, attached to the imperial council, and he accepted with alacrity.

  There were two reasons for this. Wherever a man dwells, if he would eat he must either work at something or steal. Furthermore, Gwalchmai felt that if he were to attain a position of even minor importance it might be easier for Corenice to find him, if she were reborn anywhere in this part of the world.

  He had no compunctions against casting his lot with the Cathayans and their war to come against the inhabitants of Nihon, whom they referred to disparagingly as dog-devils. He had never seen one, nor did he ever expect to do so.


  He lost no opportunity to make himself known, by name and by his rising reputation, and as both became bruited about with increasing frequency, his hope grew that it would not be long before he met his love again.

  As it turned out, word of the tall ruddy man—who looked so dignified with his short brown hair, now slightly sprinkled with gray, his splendid robes, and square cap with vermilion buttons, who disdained a palanquin, but walked like common men—did spread amazingly fast, but purely by accident.

  Many had sought his advice, for although his face appeared so young, all knew him to be wise and they were surprised at his quick grasp of their involved and honorific manner of speech.

  One of these, a head-bobbing underling, approached Gwalchmai upon his regular tour of inspection of the ordnance depot.

  “All-knowing one, Most Beneficent Magnificence, may there never lie stones in your path,” he remarked in sincere tones, bowing almost to the ground.

  “An extremely pleasant thought and one that does credit to the assiduous labors of the aged parent who doubtless has pride in the superior qualities of his noble son. I trust he is in good health and enjoys his rice?”

  “Alas! This lowly person’s degraded father mounted the Dragon in great haste these many years past and was carried to his ancestors.”

  “Such an event, though inevitable to all, saddens us ”both with regret,“ Gwalchmai commiserated, preparing to depart. ”Still, unless the lamentable fact, which will doubtless cast an aura of melancholy upon the remainder of our day, has some bearing upon the present hours of labor that concern us, I must confess that pressing matters await my immediate attention.“

  “It has indeed, High Excellence, for the manner of his rejoining his welcoming forefathers was most unusual and this insignificant and stunted individual has made the subject of his unfortunate studies a long and fruitful endeavor.