Arthur came to the lower valley that afternoon. The glue holding the sc.r.a.ps of bone were still drying in Hywelbane's hilt as his warriors filled the trees on Cwm Isaf's southern slope that faced our small house. The spearmen did not come to threaten us, but had merely diverted themselves from their long march home to comfortable Dumnonia. There was no sign of Lancelot, nor of Guinevere, as Arthur walked alone across the stream. He carried no sword or shield.

We met him at our door. He bowed to Ceinwyn, then smiled at her. 'Dear Lady,' he said simply.

'You are angry with me, Lord?' she asked him anxiously.

He grimaced. 'My wife believes I am, but no. How can I be angry? You only did what I once did, and you had the grace to do it before the oath was given.' He smiled at her again. 'You have, perhaps, inconvenienced me, but I deserved that. May I walk with Derfel?'

We followed the same path that I had taken that morning with Ceinwyn, and Arthur, once he was out of sight of his spearmen, put an arm about my shoulders. 'Well done, Derfel,' he said quietly.

'I am sorry if it hurt you, Lord.'

'Don't be a fool. You did what I once did and I envy you the newness of it. It just changes things, that's all. It is, as I said, inconvenient.'

'I won't be Mordred's champion,' I said.

'No. But someone will. If it was up to me, my friend, I would take you both home and make you champion and give you all I had to give, but things cannot always be as we want.'

'You mean,' I said bluntly, 'that the Princess Guinevere will not forgive me.'

'No,' Arthur said bleakly. 'Nor will Lancelot.' He sighed. 'What shall I do with Lancelot?'

'Marry him to Gwenhwyvach,' I said, 'and bury them both in Siluria.'

He laughed. 'If only I could. I'll send him to Siluria, certainly, but I doubt Siluria will hold him. He has ambitions above that small kingdom, Derfel. I'd hoped that Ceinwyn and a family would keep him there, but now?' He shrugged. 'I would have done better to give the kingdom to you.' He took his arm from about my shoulders and faced me. 'I do not release you from your oaths, Lord Derfel Cadarn,' he said formally, 'you are still my man and when I send for you, you will come to me.'

'Yes, Lord.'

'That will be in the spring,' he said. 'I am sworn to three months' peace with the Saxons and I will keep that peace, and when the three months are up the winter will keep our spears stacked. But in the spring we march and I shall want your men in my shield-wall.'

'They will be there, Lord,' I promised him.

He raised both hands and put them on my shoulders. 'Are you also sworn to Merlin?' he asked, staring into my eyes.

'Yes, Lord,' I admitted.

'So you'll chase a Cauldron that doesn't exist?'

'I shall seek the Cauldron, yes.'

He closed his eyes. 'Such stupidity!' He dropped his hands and opened his eyes. 'I believe in the G.o.ds, Derfel, but do the G.o.ds believe in Britain? This isn't the old Britain,' he said vehemently. 'Maybe once we were a people of one blood, but now? The Romans brought men from every corner of the world! Sarmatians, Libyans, Gauls, Numidians, Greeks! Their blood is mingled with ours, just as it seethes with Roman blood and mixes now with Saxon blood. We are what we are, Derfel, not what we once were. We have a hundred G.o.ds now, not just the old G.o.ds, and we cannot turn the years back, not even with the Cauldron and every Treasure of Britain.'

'Merlin disagrees.'

'And Merlin would have me fight the Christians just so his G.o.ds can rule? No, I won't do it, Derfel.'

He spoke angrily. 'You can look for your imaginary Cauldron, but don't think I'll play Merlin's game by persecuting Christians.'

'Merlin,' I said defensively, 'will leave the fate of the Christians to the G.o.ds.'

'And what are we but the G.o.ds' implements?' Arthur asked. 'But I won't fight other Britons just because they worship another G.o.d. Nor will you, Derfel, so long as you're oath-sworn.'

'No, Lord.'

He sighed. 'I do hate all this rancour about G.o.ds. But then, Guinevere always tells me I am blind to the G.o.ds. She says it's my one fault.' He smiled. 'If you're sworn to Merlin, Derfel, then you must go with him. Where will he take you?'

'To Ynys Mon, Lord.'

He stared at me in silence for a few heartbeats, then shuddered.

'You go to Lleyn?' he asked incredulously. 'No one comes alive from Lleyn.'

'I shall,' I boasted.

'Make sure you do, Derfel, make sure you do.' He sounded gloomy. 'I need you to help me beat the Saxons. And after that, maybe, you can return to Dumnonia. Guinevere isn't a woman to hold grudges.' I doubted that, but said nothing. 'So I shall summon you in the spring,' Arthur went on, 'and pray you survive Lleyn.' He put an arm through mine and walked me back towards the house. 'And if anyone asks you, Derfel, then I have just reproved you angrily. I have cursed you, even struck you.'

I laughed. 'I forgive you the blow, Lord.'

'Consider yourself reproved,' he said, 'and consider yourself,' he went on, 'the second luckiest man in Britain.'

The luckiest in the world, I thought, for I had my soul's desire.

Or I would have it, the G.o.ds preserve us, when Merlin had his.

I stood and watched the spearmen go. Arthur's banner of the bear showed briefly in the trees, he waved, hoisted himself onto his horse's back and then was gone.

And we were alone.

So I was not in Dumnonia to see Arthur's return. I should have liked that, for he rode back a hero to a country that had dismissed his chances of survival and had plotted to replace him by lesser creatures. Food was scarce that autumn, for the sudden flare of war had depleted the new harvest, but there was no famine and Arthur's men collected fair taxes. That sounds like a small improvement, but after the recent years it caused a stir in the land. Only the rich paid taxes to the Royal Treasury. Some paid in gold, but most paid in grain and leather and linen and salt and wool and dried fish that they, in turn, had demanded from their tenants. In the last few years the rich had paid little to the King and the poor had paid much to the rich, so Arthur sent spearmen to inquire of the poor what tax had been levied of them and used their answers to make his own levy of the rich. From the proceeds he returned a third of the yield back to the churches and magistrates so that they could distribute the food in the winter. That action alone told Dumnonia that a new power had come to the land, and though the wealthy grumbled, none dared raise a shield-wall to tight Arthur. He was the warlord of Mordred's kingdom, the victor of Lugg Vale, the slaughterer of Kings, and those who opposed him now feared him. Mordred was moved into the care of Culhwch, Arthur's cousin and a crude, honest warrior who probably took small interest in the fate of a small and troublesome child. Culhwch was too busy suppressing the revolt that had been started by Cadwy of Isca deep in Dumnonia's west, and I heard that he led his spears in a swift campaign across the great moor, then south into the wild land on the coast. He ravaged Cadwy's heartland, then stormed the rebellious Prince in the old Roman stronghold of Isca. The walls had decayed and the veterans of Lugg Vale swarmed over the town's ramparts to hunt the rebels through the streets. Prince Cadwy was caught in a Roman shrine and there dismembered. Arthur ordered parts of his body to be displayed in Dumnonia's towns, and his head, with its easily recognizable blue tattoos on the cheeks, to be sent to King Mark of Kernow who had encouraged the revolt. King Mark sent back a tribute of tin ingots, a tub of smoked fish, three polished turtle sh.e.l.ls that had washed up on the sh.o.r.es of his wild country and an innocent disavowal of any complicity in Cadwy's rebellion. Culhwch, in capturing Cadwy's stronghold, found letters there that he sent to Arthur. The letters were from the Christian party in Dumnonia and had been written before the campaign that ended in Lugg Vale, and they revealed the full extent of the plans to rid Dumnonia of Arthur. The Christians had disliked Arthur ever since he had revoked High King Uther's rule that the church was to be exempt from taxes and loans, and they had become convinced that their G.o.d was leading Arthur to a great defeat at Gorfyddyd's hands. It was the prospect of that almost certain defeat that had encouraged them to put their thoughts into writing, and those same writings were now in Arthur's keeping. The letters revealed a worried Christian community who wanted Arthur's death, but also feared the incursion of Gorfyddyd's pagan spearmen. To save themselves and their riches they had been ready to sacrifice Mordred, and the letters encouraged Cadwy to march on Durnovaria during Arthur's absence, kill .Mordred and then yield the kingdom to Gorfyddyd. The Christians promised him help, and hoped that Cadwy's spears would protect them once Gorfyddyd ruled.

Instead it brought them punishment. King Melwas of the Iklgae, a client King who had sided with the Christians who opposed Arthur, was made the new ruler of Cadwy's land. It was hardly a reward, for it took Melwas far away from his own people to a place where Arthur could keep him under close watch. Nabur, the Christian magistrate who had held Mordred's guardianship, and who had used that guardianship to raise the party that opposed Arthur and who was the writer of the letters suggesting Mordred's murder, was nailed to a cross in Durnovaria's amphitheatre. These days, of course, he is called a saint and martyr, but I only remember Nabur as a smooth, corrupt liar. Two priests, another magistrate and two landowners were also put to death. The last conspirator was Bishop Sansum, though he had been too clever to let his name be put into writing, and that cleverness, together with his strange friendship for Arthur's maimed pagan sister, Morgan, saved Sansum's life. He swore undying loyalty to Arthur, put a hand on a crucifix and swore he had never plotted to kill the King, and so remained as the guardian of the shrine of the Holy Thorn at Ynys Wydryn. You could bind Sansum in iron and hold a sword to his throat, and still he would slither free.

Morgan, his pagan friend, had been Merlin's most trusted priestess until the younger Nimue usurped that position, but Merlin and Nimue were both far away and that left Morgan as virtual ruler of Merlin's lands in Avalon. Morgan, with her gold mask hiding her fire-ravaged face and her black robe shrouding her flame-twisted body, a.s.sumed Merlin's power and it was she who finished the rebuilding of Merlin's hall on the Tor, and she who organized the tax-collectors in the northern part of Arthur's land. Morgan became one of Arthur's most trusted advisers; indeed, after Bishop Bedwin died of a fever that autumn, Arthur even suggested, against all precedence, that Morgan be named as a full councillor. No woman had ever sat on a King's Council in Britain and Morgan might well have been the first, but Guinevere made sure she was not. Guinevere would let no woman be a councillor if she could not be one herself, and besides, Guinevere hated anything that was ugly and, the G.o.ds know, poor Morgan was grotesque even with her gold mask in place. So Morgan stayed in Ynys Wydryn, while Guinevere supervised the building of the new palace at Lindinis.

It was a gorgeous palace. The old Roman villa that Gundlcus had burned was rebuilt and extended so that its cloistered wings enclosed two great courtyards where water flowed in marble channels. Lindinis, close to the royal hill of Caer Cadarn, was to be Dumnonia's new capital, though Guinevere took good care that Mordred, with his twisted left foot, was allowed nowhere near the place. Only the beautiful were allowed in Lindinis, and in its arcaded courtyards Guinevere a.s.sembled statues from villas and shrines throughout Dumnonia. There was no Christian shrine there, but Guinevere made a great dark hall for the women's G.o.ddess Isis, and she provided a lavish suite of rooms where Lancelot could stay when he visited from his new kingdom in Siluria. Elaine, Lancelot's mother, lived in those rooms and she, who had once made Ynys Trebes so beautiful, now helped Guinevere make Lindinis's palace into a shrine of beauty.

Arthur, I know, was rarely at Lindinis. He was too busy preparing for the great war against the Saxons, to which end he began re-fortifying the ancient earth citadels in southern Dumnonia. Even Caer Cadarn, deep in our heartland, had its wall strengthened and new timber fighting platforms poised on its ramparts, but his greatest work was at Caer Ambra, just a half hour's walk east of the Stones, which was to be his new base against the Sais. The old people had made a fort there, but all that autumn and winter the slaves toiled to steepen the ancient earth walls and to make new palisades and fighting platforms on their summits. More forts were strengthened south of Caer Ambra to defend the lower parts of Dumnonia against the southern Saxons led by Cerdic, who were sure to attack us while Arthur a.s.saulted Aelle in the north. Not since the Romans, I dare say, had so much British earth been dug or timber split, and Arthur's honest taxes could never pay for half that labour. He therefore made a levy on the Christian churches that were plentiful and powerful in southern Britain, the same churches that had supported Nabur and Sansum's effort to topple him. That levy was eventually repaid, and it protected the Christians from the ghastly attentions of the Saxon heathens, but the Christians never forgave Arthur, nor did they notice that the same levy was taken from the handful of pagan shrines that still possessed wealth.

Not all the Christians were Arthur's enemies. At least a third of his spearmen were Christians and those men were as loyal as any pagan. Many other Christians approved of his rule, but most of the leaders of the church let their greed dictate their loyalty and they were the ones who opposed him. They believed that their G.o.d would one day return to this earth and walk among us like a mortal man, but He would not come again until all pagans had been converted to His faith. The preachers, knowing that Arthur was a pagan, hissed curses at him, but Arthur ignored their words as he made his ceaseless tours of southern Britain. One day he would be with Sagramor on Aelle's border, the next he would be fighting one of Cerdic's war-bands as it probed deep into the river valleys of the south, and then he would ride north through Dumnonia and across Gwent to Isca where he would argue with local chieftains about the number of spearmen who could be raised from western Gwent or eastern Siluria. Thanks to Lugg Vale Arthur was now far more than Dumnonia's chief lord and Mordred's protector; he was Britain's warlord, the undisputed leader of all our armies, and no King dared refuse him, nor, in those days, wanted to.

But all this I missed, for I was in Caer Sws and I was with Ceinwyn and I was in love. And waiting for Merlin.

Merlin and Nimue came to Cwm Isaf just days before the winter solstice. Dark clouds were pressing close above the bare oak tops on the ridges, and the morning frost had lingered well into the afternoon. The stream was a patchwork of ice ledges and trickling water, the fallen leaves were crisp and the valley's soil as hard as stone. We had a fire in the central chamber so our house was warm enough, though it was choking with the smoke that billowed about the un-trimmed beams before finding the small hole in the roof's ridge. Other fires smoked from the shelters that my spearmen had made across the valley; stout little huts with walls of earth and stone supporting roofs of timber and bracken. We had made a beast shed behind the house where a bull, two cows, three sows, a boar, a dozen sheep and a score of chickens were penned at night to protect them from the wolves. We had plenty of wolves in our woods and their howling echoed at every dusk, and at night we would sometimes hear them scrabbling beyond the beast shed. The sheep would bleat piteously, the hens would set up a cackling panic, and then Issa, or whoever else stood guard, would shout and hurl a firebrand into the wood's edge and the wolves would skitter away. One morning, going early to fetch water from the stream, I came face to face with a big old dog wolf. He had been drinking, but as I stepped out of the bushes he raised a grey muzzle, stared at me, then waited for my salute before he loped silently upstream. It was, I decided, a good omen and, in those days as we waited for Merlin, we counted the omens. We also hunted the wolves. Cuneglas gave us three brace of longhaired wolfhounds that were bigger and s.h.a.ggier than the famous Powysian deerhounds like those Guinevere kept in Dumnonia. The sport kept my spearmen active and even Ceinwyn liked those long cold days in the high woods. She wore leather breeches, high boots and a leather jerkin, and hung a hunter's long knife at her waist. She would braid her fair hair into a knot at the back of her head, then scramble up rocks and down gullies and over dead trees behind her brace of hounds who were leashed on long horsehair ropes. The simplest way to hunt wolves was with a bow and arrow, but as few of us possessed that skill we used the dogs, war spears and knives, and by the time Merlin returned we had a pile of pelts stacked in Cuneglas's store hall. The King had wanted us to move back to Caer Sws, but Ceinwyn and I were as happy as our antic.i.p.ation of Merlin's ordeal allowed us and so we stayed in our small valley and counted the days. And we were happy in Cwm Isaf. Ceinwyn took a ridiculous pleasure in doing all the things that till now had been done for her by servants, though strangely she was never able to wring a chicken's neck and I always used to laugh when she killed a hen. She had no need to do it, for any one of the servants could have killed the fowl and my spearmen would do anything for Ceinwyn, but she insisted on sharing the work, though when it came to killing hens, ducks or geese she could not make herself do it properly. The only method she ever devised was to lay the poor creature down on the earth, put a small foot on its neck and then, with her eyes tight closed, give the head one quick decisive tug. She was more successful with the distaff. Every woman in Britain, save for the very richest, was forever with a distaff and spindle, for spinning wool into thread was one of those endless jobs that will presumably last until the sun has made its last turn about the earth. As soon as one year's fleeces had been turned into yarn, so the next year's fleeces came to the storehouses and the women would collect their ap.r.o.nfuls, wash and comb the wool, then start spinning the thread again. They spun when they walked, they spun as they talked, they spun whenever there was no other task needing their hands. It was monotonous, mindless work, but not unskilled; at first Ceinwyn could only produce pathetic little tatters of wool, but she became better, though never as quick as those women who had spun the wool since the very first day their hands were big enough to hold the distaff. She would sit of an evening, telling me about her day, and her left hand would turn the staff and her right would flick the weighted spindle that hung from the distaff to elongate and twist the emerging thread. When the spindle reached the floor she would wind the thread around it, fix the spooled yarn with the bone clip on the spindle's top and then start spinning again. The wool she made that winter was often lumpy, or else fragile, but I loyally wore one of the shirts she made from that thread until it fell apart.

Cuneglas visited us often, though his wife, h.e.l.ledd, never came. Queen h.e.l.ledd was truly conventional and she disapproved deeply of what Ceinwyn had done. 'She thinks it brings disgrace on the family,'

Cuneglas told us cheerfully. He became, like Arthur and Galahad, one of my dearest friends. He was, I think, lonely in Caer Sws, for other than Iorweth and some of the younger Druids he had few men with whom he could talk of anything but hunting and war, and so I replaced the brothers he had lost. His older brother, who should have become King, had been killed in a fall from a horse, the next son had died of a fever and the youngest had been killed fighting the Saxons. Cuneglas, like me, deeply disapproved of Ceinwyn's going on the Dark Road, but he told me that nothing short of a sword blow would ever stop her. 'Everyone always thinks she's so sweet and kind,' he told me, 'but there's a will of iron there. Stubborn.'

'Can't kill chickens.'

'I can't even imagine her trying!' he laughed. 'But she is happy, Derfel, and for that I thank you.'

It was a happy time, one of the happiest of all our happy times, but always shadowed by the knowledge that Merlin would come and demand the fulfilment of our oaths. He came on a frosty afternoon. I was outside the house, using a Saxon war axe to split newly chopped logs that would fill our house with smoke, and Ceinwyn was inside, hushing a squabble that had risen between her maidservants and the fiery Scarach, when a horn sounded across the valley. The horn was a signal from my spearmen that a stranger approached Cwm Isaf and I lowered the axe in time to see Merlin's tall figure striding among the trees. Nimue was with him. She had stayed a week with us after the night of Lancelot's betrothal and then, without a word of explanation, had slipped away one night, but now, dressed in black beside her lord in his long white robe, she returned. Ceinwyn came from the house. Her face was smudged with soot and her hands bloodied from a hare she had been jointing. 'I thought he was bringing a war-band,' she said, her blue eyes fixed on Merlin. That was what Nimue had told us before she left; that Merlin was raising the army that would protect him on the Dark Road.

'Maybe he's left them at the river?' I suggested.

She pushed a lock of hair away from her face, adding a smudge of blood to the soot. 'Aren't you cold?' she asked, for I had been stripped to the waist as I chopped the wood.

'Not yet,' I said, though I pulled on a wool shirt as Merlin leapt long legged over the stream. My spearmen, antic.i.p.ating news, trailed from their huts to follow him, but they stayed outside the house when he ducked his tall figure under our low lintel.

He offered us no greeting, but just went past us into the house. Nimue followed him, and by the time Ceinwyn and I entered they were already squatting beside the fire. Merlin held his thin hands to the blaze, then seemed to give a long sigh. He said nothing, and neither of us wanted to ask his news. I, like him, sat at the fire's edge while Ceinwyn put the half jointed hare into a bowl then wiped her hands free of blood. She waved Scarach and the servants out of the house, then sat beside me. Merlin shivered, then seemed to relax. His long back was bowed as he hunched forward with his eyes closed. He stayed thus for a long time. His brown face was deeply lined and his beard a startling white. Like all Druids he shaved the front part of his skull, but now that tonsure was smothered with a fine layer of short white hair, evidence that he had been a long time on the road without a razor or a bronze mirror. He looked so old that day, and hunched by the fire he even looked feeble. Nimue sat opposite him, saying nothing. She did rise once to take Hywelbane from its nail hooks in the main beam and I saw her smile as she recognized the two strips of bone set into the handle. She unsheathed the blade, then held it into the smokiest part of the fire, and once the steel was covered in soot she carefully scratched an inscription into the soot with a piece of straw. The letters were not like these I write now, that both we and the Saxons employ, but were older magical letters, mere strokes slashed by bars, that only the Druids and sorcerers used. She propped the scabbard against the wall and hung the sword back on its nails, but did not explain the significance of what she had written. Merlin ignored her.

He opened his eyes suddenly, and the appearance of feebleness was replaced by a terrible savagery.

'I put a curse,' he said slowly, 'on the creatures of Siluria.' He flicked his fingers towards the fire and a puff of brighter flame hissed in the wood. 'May their crops be blighted,' he growled, 'their cattle barren, their children crippled, their swords blunted and their enemies triumphant.' It was, for him, a mild enough curse, but there was a hissing malevolence in his voice. 'And on Gwent,' he went on, 'I give a murrain, and frosts in summer and wombs shrivelled to dry husks.' He spat into the flames. 'In Elmet,' he said, 'the tears will make lakes, plagues will fill graves, and rats shall rule their houses.' He spat again. 'How many men will you bring, Derfel?'

'All I have, Lord.' I hesitated to admit how few that was, but I finally gave him the answer, 'Twenty shields.'

'And those of your men who are still with Galahad?' He gave me a quick glance from beneath his bushy white eyebrows. 'How many of those?'

'I have heard nothing from them, Lord.'

He sneered. 'They form a palace guard for Lancelot. He insists on it. He makes his brother into a doorkeeper.' Galahad was Lancelot's half-brother and as unlike him as any man could be. 'It is a good thing, Lady,' Merlin looked at Ceinwyn, 'that you did not marry Lancelot.'

She smiled at me. 'I think so, Lord.'

'He finds Siluria tedious. I can't blame him for that, but he'll seek Dumnonia's comforts and be a snake in Arthur's belly.' He smiled. 'You, my Lady, were supposed to be his plaything.'

'I had rather be here,' Ceinwyn said, gesturing at our rough stone walls and smoke-stained roof beams.

'But he'll try to strike at you,' Merlin warned her. 'His pride climbs higher than Lleullaw's eagle, Lady, and Guinevere is cursing you. She killed a dog in her temple of Isis and draped its pelt on a crippled b.i.t.c.h that she gave your name.'

Ceinwyn looked pale, made the sign against evil and spat into the fire. Merlin shrugged. 'I have countered the curse. Lady,' he said, then stretched his long arms and bent his head back so that his ribboned plaits almost touched the rush-covered floor behind him. 'Isis is a foreign G.o.ddess,' he said, 'and her power is feeble in this land.' He brought his head forward again, then rubbed his eyes with his long hands, I have come empty-handed,' he said bleakly. 'No man in Elmet would step forward, and none elsewhere. Their spears, they say, are dedicated to Saxon bellies. I offered them no gold, I offered no silver, only a fight on behalf of the G.o.ds, and they offered me their prayers, then let their womenfolk talk to them of children and hearths and cattle and land and so they slunk away. Eighty men! That's all I wanted. Diwrnach can field two hundred, maybe a handful more, but eighty would have sufficed, yet there were not even eight men who would come. Their Lords are sworn to Arthur now. The Cauldron, they tell me, can wait till Lloegyr is ours again. They want Saxon land and Saxon gold and all I offered them was blood and cold on the Dark Road.'

There was a silence. A log collapsed in the fire to spring a constellation of sparks toward the blackened roof. 'Not one man offered a spear?' I asked, shocked at the news.

'A few,' he said dismissively, 'but none I would trust. None worthy of the Cauldron.' He paused, then looked tired again. 'I am struggling against the lure of Saxon gold and against Morgan. She opposes me.'

'Morgan!' I could not hide my astonishment. Morgan, Arthur's eldest sister, had been Merlin's closest companion until Nimue usurped her place, and though Morgan hated Nimue I did not think that hatred extended to Merlin.

'Morgan,' he said flatly. 'She has spread a tale through Britain. The tale says that the G.o.ds oppose my quest and that I am to be defeated, and that my death will embrace all my companions. She dreamed the tale and folk believe her dreams. I am old, she says, and feeble, and loose-witted.'

'She says,' Nimue spoke softly, 'that a woman will kill you, not Diwrnach.'

Merlin shrugged. 'Morgan plays her own game and I don't yet understand it.' He rooted about in a pocket of his gown and brought out a handful of dried knotted gra.s.ses. Each knotted stem looked alike to me, but he sorted through them and selected one that he held towards Ceinwyn. 'I release you from your oath, Lady.'

Ceinwyn glanced at me, then looked back to the knot of gra.s.s. 'Will you still take the Dark Road, Lord?' she asked Merlin.

'Yes.'

'But how will you find the Cauldron without me?'

He shrugged, but offered no answer.

'How will you find it with her?' I asked, for I still did not understand why a virgin must find the Cauldron, or why that virgin should have to be Ceinwyn.

Merlin shrugged again. 'The Cauldron,' he said, 'was ever under the guard of a virgin. One guards it now, if my dreams tell me correctly, and only another virgin can reveal its hiding-place. You will dream it,' he said to Ceinwyn, 'if you are willing to come.'

'I shall come, Lord,' Ceinwyn said, 'as I promised you.'

Merlin pushed the gra.s.s knot back into the pocket before rubbing his face again with his long hands.

'We leave in two days,' he announced flatly. 'You must bake bread, pack dried meat and fish, sharpen your weapons, and make sure you have furs against the cold.' He looked at Nimue. 'We shall sleep at Caer Sws. Come.'

'You can stay here,' I offered.

'I must speak to Iorweth.' He stood, his head level with the rafters. 'I release you both from your oaths,' he said very formally, 'but pray you will come anyway. But it will be harder than you know and harder than you fear in your worst dreams, for I have pledged my life on the Cauldron.' He looked down at us and his face was immensely sad. 'The day we step on the Dark Road,' he told us, 'I shall begin to die, for that is my oath, and I have no certainty that the oath will bring me success, and if the search fails then I shall be dead and you will be alone in Lleyn.'

'We shall have Nimue,' Ceinwyn said.

'And she is all you will have,' Merlin said darkly, then ducked out of the door. Nimue followed him. We sat in silence. I put another log on the fire. It was green, for all our firewood was fresh-cut unseasoned timber which was why it smoked so badly. I watched the smoke thicken and swirl about the rafters, then took Ceinwyn's hand. 'Do you want to die in Lleyn?' I chided her.

'No,' she said, 'but I want to see the Cauldron.'

I stared into the fire. 'He will fill it with blood,' I said softly. Ceinwyn's fingers caressed mine. 'When I was a child,' she said, 'I heard all the tales of old Britain, how the G.o.ds lived among us and everyone was happy. There was no famine then, and no plagues, just us and the G.o.ds and peace. I want that Britain back, Derfel.'

'Arthur says it can never return. We are what we are, not what we once were.'

'So who do you believe?' she asked. 'Arthur or Merlin?'

I thought a long time. 'Merlin,' I finally said, and perhaps that was because I wanted to believe in his Britain where all our sorrows would be magically taken away. I loved the idea of Arthur's Britain too, but that would take war and hard work and a trust that men would behave well if they were treated well. Merlin's dream demanded less and promised more.

'They we'll go with Merlin,' Ceinwyn said. She hesitated, watching me. 'Are you worried by Morgan's prophecy?' she asked.

I shook my head. 'She has power,' I said, 'but not like his. And not like Nimue, either.' Nimue and Merlin had both suffered the Three Wounds of Wisdom, and Morgan had only endured the wound to the body, never the wound to the mind or the wound to pride; but Morgan's prophecy was a shrewd tale, for in some ways Merlin was defying the G.o.ds. He wanted to tame their caprices and in return give them a whole land dedicated to their worship, but why would the G.o.ds want to be tamed? Maybe they had chosen Morgan's lesser power to be their instrument against Merlin's meddling, for what else could explain Morgan's hostility? Or maybe Morgan, like Arthur, believed that Merlin's quest was a nonsense, an old man's hopeless search for a Britain that had vanished with the coming of the Legions. For Arthur there was only one fight, and that was to hurl the Saxon Kings from Britain, and Arthur would have supported his sister's whispering tale if that meant no British spears were to be wasted against Diwrnach's blood-painted shields. So perhaps Arthur was using his sister to make certain that no precious Dumnonian lives were to be thrown away in Lleyn. Except for my life, and my men's lives, and my beloved Ceinwyn's life. For we were oath-sworn.

But Merlin had released us from our oaths and so I tried one last time to persuade Ceinwyn to stay in Powys. I told her how Arthur believed that the Cauldron no longer existed, how it must have been stolen by the Romans and taken to that great sink of treasure, Rome, and melted down to make hair-combs or cloak-pins or coins or brooches. All that I told her, and when I was done she smiled and asked me once again who I believed, Merlin or Arthur.

'Merlin,' I said again.

'And so do I,' Ceinwyn said. 'And I'm going.'

We baked bread, packed food and sharpened our weapons. And the next night, the eve of our going on Merlin's quest, the first snow fell.

Cuneglas gave us two ponies that we loaded with food and furs, then we slung our star-painted shields on our backs and took the northern road. Iorweth gave us a blessing and Cuneglas's spearmen accompanied us for the first few miles, but once we had pa.s.sed the great ice wastes of the Dugh bog that lay beyond the hills north of Caer Sws those spearmen stepped aside and we were alone. I had promised Cuneglas that I would protect his sister's life with my own and he had embraced me, then whispered in my ear. 'Kill her, Derfel,' he said, 'rather than let Diwrnach have her.'

There were tears in his eyes and they almost made me change my mind. 'If you order her not to go, Lord King,' I said, 'she might obey.'

'Never,' he said, 'but she is happier now than she has ever been. Besides, Iorweth tells me you will return. Go, my friend.' He had stepped back. His parting gift had been a bag of gold ingots that we stowed on one of the ponies.