The ragged, dark riders watched as our boats grounded on Ynys Mon. The boatmen helped us lift Merlin and the ponies safe ash.o.r.e, then they ran their boats back into the sea.

'Shouldn't we have kept the boats here?' Galahad asked me.

'How?' I asked. 'We'd have to divide the men, some to guard the boats and some to go with Ceinwyn and Nimue.'

'So how do we get off the island?' Galahad asked.

'With the Cauldron,' I adopted Nimue's confidence, 'all things will be possible.' I had no other answer to give him and dared not tell him the truth. That truth was that I felt doomed. I felt as though the curses of those ancient Druids were even now congealing around our souls. We struck north from the beach. Gulls screamed at us, whirling around us in the flying sleet as we climbed up from the rocks into a bleak moorland broken only by outcrops of stone. In the old days, before the Romans came to destroy Ynys Mon, the land had been thick with sacred oaks amongst which the greatest mysteries of Britain were performed. The news of those rituals governed the seasons in Britain, Ireland, and even Gaul, for here the G.o.ds had come to earth, and here the link between man and the G.o.ds had been strongest before it had been sundered by the short Roman stabbing swords. This was holy ground, but it was also difficult ground, for after just an hour's walking we came to a vast bog that seemed to bar our path into the island's interior. We ranged along the bog's edge, seeking a path, but there was none; so, as the light began to fade, we used our spear-shafts to discover the firmest pa.s.sage through the spiky tussocks of gra.s.s and the sucking, treacherous patches of marsh. Our legs were soaked in freezing mud and the sleet found its way inside our furs. One of the ponies became stuck and the other began to panic, so we unloaded both beasts, distributed their remaining burdens amongst ourselves, then abandoned them.

We struggled on, sometimes resting on our circular shields that served like shallow coracles to support our weight until, inevitably, the brackish water seeped over their edges and forced us to stand again. The sleet became harder and thicker, whipped by a rising wind that flattened the marsh gra.s.s and drove the cold deep into our bones. Merlin was shouting strange words and thrashing his head from side to side, while some of my men were weakening, sapped by the cold as well as by the malevolence of whatever G.o.ds now ruled this ruined land.

Nimue was the first to reach the bog's far side. She leapt from tussock to tussock, showing us a path, and finally reached firm ground where she jumped up and down to show us that safety was close. Then, for a few seconds, she froze before pointing Merlin's staff back the way we had come. We turned to see that the dark riders were with us, only now there were more of them; a whole horde of tattered Bloodshields was watching us from the bog's far side. Three ragged banners were hoisted above them, and one of those banners was lifted in ironic salute before the riders turned their ponies eastwards. 'I should never have brought you here,' I said to Ceinwyn.

'You didn't bring me, Derfel,' she said. 'I came of my own will.' She touched a gloved finger to my face. 'And we shall leave the same way, my love.'

We climbed up from the bog to find, beyond a low crest, a landscape of small fields that lay between lumpish moors and sudden rock outcrops. We needed a refuge for the night and found it in a settlement of eight stone huts that were circled by a wall the height of a spear. The place was deserted, though people clearly lived there for the small stone huts were swept clean and the ashes in the hearth were still just warm to the touch. We stripped the turf roof off one hut and cut the roof timbers into shreds with which we made a fire for Merlin, who was now shivering and raving. We set a guard, then stripped off our furs and tried to dry our sopping boots and wet leggings.

Then, as the very last of the light seeped from the grey sky, I went to stand on the wall and searched all about the landscape. I saw nothing.

Four of us stood guard for the first part of the night, then Galahad and another three spearmen watched through the rest of that rainy darkness and not one of us heard anything other than the wind and the crackle of the fire in the hut. We heard nothing, we saw nothing, yet in the morning's first wan light there was a newly severed head of a sheep dripping blood on one part of the wall. Nimue angrily pushed the sheep's head oft the wall's coping, then screamed a challenge towards the sky. She took a pouch of grey powder and scattered it on the fresh blood, and afterwards she rapped the wall with Merlin's staff and told us the malevolence had been countered. We believed her because we wanted to believe her, just as we wanted to believe that Merlin was not dying. But he was deathly pale, breathing shallowly and making no sound. We tried to feed him with the last of our bread, but he clumsily spat the crumbs out. 'We must find the Cauldron today,' Nimue said calmly, 'before he dies.'

We gathered our burdens, hoisted our shields onto our backs, picked up our spears and followed her northwards.

Nimue led us. Merlin had told her all he knew of the sacred isle and that knowledge took us northwards all morning long. The Blood-shields appeared soon after we had left our shelter and, now that we neared our goal, they became bolder so that at any one time there were always a score in sight and sometimes three times that number. They formed a loose ring about us, but took care to stay well outside the range of our spears. The sleet had stopped with the dawn, leaving just a cold, damp wind that bent the gra.s.s on the moors and lifted the black tatters of the dark riders' cloaks. It was just after midday that we came to the place Nimue called Llyn Cerrig Bach. The name means the 'lake of little stones' and it was a dark sheet of shallow water, surrounded by bogs. Here, Nimue said, the old Britons had held their most sacred ceremonies, and here too, she told us, our search would begin; but it seemed a bleak place in which to seek the greatest Treasure of Britain. To the west was a small, shallow neck of the sea beyond which lay another island, to the south and north were just farmlands and rocks, and to the east there rose a very small steep hill that was crowned with a group of grey rocks like a score of other such outcrops we had pa.s.sed that morning. Merlin lay as if dead. I had to kneel beside him and put my ear close to his face to hear the tiny scratching of each laboured breath. I laid my hand on his forehead and found it was cold. I kissed his cheek. 'Live, Lord,' I whispered to him, 'live.'

Nimue told one of my men to plant a spear in the ground. He forced the point into the hard soil, then Nimue took a half dozen cloaks and, by hanging them from the spear's b.u.t.t and weighting their hems with stones, she formed a kind of tent. The dark riders made a ring about us, but stayed far enough away so that they could not interfere with us, nor we with them.

Nimue groped under her otter skins and brought out the silver cup from which I had drunk on Dolforwyn and a small clay bottle stoppered with wax. She ducked under the tent and beckoned Ceinwyn to follow.

I waited and watched as the wind chased black ripples across the lake, then suddenly Ceinwyn screamed. She screamed again, terribly, and I started towards the tent, only to be stopped by Issa's spear. Galahad, who as a Christian was not supposed to believe in any of this, stood beside Issa and shrugged at me. 'We've come this far,' he said. 'We should see it to the end.'

Ceinwyn screamed again, and this time Merlin echoed the noise by uttering a faint and pathetic moan. I knelt beside him and stroked his forehead and tried not to think what horrors Ceinwyn dreamed inside the black tent.

'Lord?' Issa called to me.

I twisted round to see that he was looking southwards to where a new group of riders had joined the Bloodshields' ring. Most of the newcomers were on ponies, but one man was mounted on a gaunt black horse. That man, I knew, had to be Diwrnach. His banner flew behind him; a pole on which was mounted a crosspiece and from the crosspiece there hung two skulls and a clutch of black ribbons. The King was cloaked in black and his black horse was hung with a black saddle cloth, and in his hand was a great black spear that he raised vertically into the air before riding slowly forward. He came alone and when he was fifty paces from us he unslung his round shield and ostentatiously turned it about to show that he did not come looking for a fight.

I walked to meet him. Behind me Ceinwyn gasped and moaned inside the tent about which my men made a protective ring.

The King was dressed in black leather armour beneath his cloak and wore no helmet. His shield looked flaky with rust and I supposed the flakes had to be the layers of dried blood, just as its leather covering had to be the flayed skin of a slave girl. He let the grim shield hang beside his long black sword scabbard as he curbed his horse and rested the great spear's b.u.t.t on the ground. 'I am Diwrnach,' he said.

I bowed my head to him. 'I am Derfel, Lord King.'

He smiled. 'Welcome to Ynys Mon, Lord Derfel Cadarn,' he said, and doubtless he wanted to surprise me by knowing my full name and t.i.tle, but he astonished me more by being a good-looking man. I had expected a hook-nosed ghoul, a thing from nightmare, but Diwrnach was in early middle age and had a broad forehead, a wide mouth and a short clipped black beard that accentuated his strong jawline. There was nothing mad about his appearance, but he did have one red eye and that was enough to make him fearsome. He leaned his spear against his horse's flank and took an oatcake from a pouch. 'You look hungry, Lord Derfel,' he said.

'Winter is a time for hunger, Lord King.'

'But you will not refuse my gift, surely?' He broke the oatcake into halves and tossed one half to me.

'Eat.'

I caught the oatcake, then hesitated. 'I am sworn not to eat, Lord King, till my purpose is finished.'

'Your purpose!' he teased me, then slowly put his half of the oatcake into his mouth. 'It wasn't poisoned, Lord Derfel,' he said when it was eaten.

'Why should it be, Lord King?'

'Because I am Diwrnach and I kill my enemies in so many ways.' He smiled again. 'Tell me about your purpose, Lord Derfel.'

'I come to pray, Lord King.'

'Ah!' he said, drawing the sound out as if to suggest that I had cleared up all the mystery. 'Are prayers said in Dumnonia so very ineffective?'

'This is holy ground, Lord King,' I said.

'It is also my ground, Lord Derfel Cadarn,' he said, 'and I believe strangers should seek my permission before they dung its soil or p.i.s.s on its walls.'

'If we have offended you, Lord King,' I said, 'then we apologize.'

'Too late for that,' he said mildly. 'You are here now, Lord Derfel, and I can smell your dung. Too late. So what shall I do with you?' His voice was low, almost gentle, suggesting that here was a man who would see reason very easily. 'What shall I do with you?' he asked again, and I said nothing. The ring of dark riders was unmoving, the sky was leaden with cloud and Ceinwyn's moans had subsided to small whimpers. The King lifted his shield, not in threat but because its weight rested uncomfortably on his hip, and I saw with horror that the skin of a human arm and hand hung from its lower edge. The wind stirred the fat fingers of the hand. Diwrnach saw my horror and smiled. 'She was my niece,' he said, then he stared past me and another slow smile showed on his face. 'The vixen is out of the covert. Lord Derfel,'he said.

I turned to see that Ceinwyn had come out from under the tent.

She had discarded her wolfskins and was dressed in the bone-white dress she had worn to her betrothal feast, its hems still soiled by the mud she had kicked onto the linen when she had run away from Caer Sws. She was barefoot, her golden hair had been unloosed and to me it seemed she was in a trance. 'The Princess Ceinwyn, I believe,' Diwrnach said.

'Indeed, Lord King.'

'And still a maid, I hear?' the King asked. I said nothing in answer. Diwrnach leaned forward to ruffle his horse's ears fondly. 'It would have been courteous of her, do you not think, to have greeted me when she arrived in my country?'

'She too has prayers to say, Lord King.'

'Then let us hope they work.' He laughed. 'Give her to me, Lord Derfel, or else you will die the slowest of deaths. I have men who can take the skin from a man inch by inch until he is nothing but a thing of raw flesh and blood and yet still he can stand. He can even walk!' He patted his horse's neck with a black-gloved hand, then smiled on me again. 'I have choked men on their own dung, Lord Derfel, I have pressed them beneath the stones, I have burned them, I have buried them alive, I have bedded them down with vipers, I have drowned them, I have starved them and I have even frightened them to death. So many interesting ways, but just give the Princess Ceinwyn to me, Lord Derfel, and I will promise you a death as swift as a bright star's fall.'

Ceinwyn had started to walk westwards and my men had s.n.a.t.c.hed up Merlin's litter, their cloaks, weapons and bundles, and were now going with her. I looked up at Diwrnach. 'One day, Lord King,' I said, 'I will put your head in a pit and bury it in slave dung.' I walked away from him. He laughed. 'Blood, Lord Derfel!' he shouted after me. 'Blood! It's what the G.o.ds feed on, and yours will make a rich brew! I'll make your woman drink it in my bed!' And with that he kicked back his spurred boots and wheeled his horse towards his men.

'Seventy-four of them,' Galahad told me as I caught up with him. 'Seventy-four men and spears. And we are thirty-six spears, one thing man and two women.'

'They won't attack yet,' I rea.s.sured him. 'They'll wait till we've discovered the Cauldron.'

Ceinwyn must have been freezing in her thin dress and without any boots, but she was sweating as if it was a summer's day as she staggered across the gra.s.s. She was finding it difficult to stand, let alone walk, and she was twitching just as I had twitched on Dolforwyn's summit after drinking from the silver cup; but Nimue was beside her, talking to her and supporting her, but also, oddly, tugging her away from the direction she wanted to take. Diwrnach's dark riders were keeping pace with us, a moving ring of Bloodshields that moved across the island in a loose, wide circle that was centred on our small party. Ceinwyn, despite her dizziness, was almost running now. She seemed barely conscious and was mouthing words I could not catch. Her eyes looked empty. Nimue constantly dragged her to one side, making her follow a sheep path that twisted north about the knoll that was crowned with grey stones, but the closer we came to those high and lichen-covered rocks the more Ceinwyn resisted until Nimue was forced to use all her wiry strength to keep her on the narrow path. The front edge of the ring of dark riders had already gone past the steep knoll so that it, like us, lay within their circle. Ceinwyn was whimpering and protesting, then she began to hit at Nimue's hands, but Nimue held her hard and dragged her on, and all the while Diwrnach's men moved with us.

Nimue waited until the path was at its closest point to the steep crest of rocks, then at last she let Ceinwyn run free. 'To the rocks!' she shrieked. 'All of you! To the rocks! Run!'

We ran. I saw then what Nimue had done. Diwrnach dared not touch us until he knew where we were going and if he had seen Ceinwyn heading for the rocky knoll he would surely have sent a dozen spearmen to garrison its summit, then sent the rest of his men to capture us. But now, thanks to Nimue's cleverness, we would have the steep jumble of huge boulders to protect us, the same boulders, if Ceinwyn was right, that had protected the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn through more than four and a half centuries of gathering darkness. 'Run!' Nimue screamed, and all about us the ponies were being whipped inwards as the ring of dark riders closed to cut us off.

'Run!' Nimue shrieked again. I was helping to carry Merlin, Ceinwyn was already clambering up the rocks and Galahad was shouting at men to find themselves places where they could stand amidst the stones and use their spears. Issa stayed with me, his spear ready to cut down any dark rider who came close. Gwilym and three others s.n.a.t.c.hed Merlin from us and carried him to the foot of the rocks just as the two leading Bloodshields reached us. They shrieked a challenge as they kicked their ponies up the hill, but I knocked the first man's long spear aside with my shield then swung my own spear so that its steel blade cracked like a club across the pony's skull. The beast screamed and fell sideways and Issa slid his spear into the rider's belly while I slashed my spear back at the second rider. His spear-shaft clattered on mine, then he was past me, but I managed to seize a handful of his long tattered ribbons and so dragged him backwards off the small beast. He flailed at me as he fell. I put a boot on his throat, raised the spear and rammed it hard down at his heart. There was a leather breastplate beneath his ragged tunic, but the spear cut through both and suddenly his black beard was frothing with a b.l.o.o.d.y foam.

'Back!' Galahad shouted at us, and Issa and I tossed our shields and spears to the men already safe on the high rocks' summit, then clambered up ourselves. A black-shafted spear clattered on the rocks beside me, then a strong hand reached down, grasped my wrist and hauled me up. Merlin had been similarly dragged up the rocks, then unceremoniously dropped in the summit's centre where, like a cup crowned by the ring of vast boulders, there was a deep stony hollow. Ceinwyn was in that hollow, scrabbling like a frantic dog at the little stones that filled the cup. She had vomited and her hands obliviously scratched among the mix of vomit and small cold stones.

The knoll was ideal for defence. Our enemy could only climb the rocks with hands and feet, while we could shelter in the clefts of the summit's crown to deal with them as they appeared. A few tried to reach us, and those men screamed as the blades slashed into their faces. A shower of spears was thrown at us, but we held our shields aloft and the weapons clattered harmlessly away. I put six men down in the central hollow and they used their shields to shelter Merlin, Nimue and Ceinwyn while the other spearmen guarded the summit's outer rim. The Bloodshields, their ponies abandoned, made one more rush and for a few moments we were busy stabbing and lunging. One of my men took a spear cut on his arm during that brief fight, but otherwise we were unhurt, while the dark riders carried four dead and six wounded men back to the knoll's foot. 'So much,' I told my men, 'for shields made of virgins' skins.'

We waited for another attack, but none came. Instead Diwrnach walked his horse up the slope alone.

'Lord Derfel?' he called in his deceptively pleasant voice and, when I showed my face between two rocks, he offered me his placid smile. 'My price has risen,' the King said. 'Now, in return for your swift death, I demand the Princess Ceinwyn and the Cauldron. It is the Cauldron that you've come for, is it not?'

'It is all Britain's Cauldron, Lord King,' I said.

'Ah! And you think I would be an unworthy guardian?' He shook his head sadly. 'Lord Derfel, you do insult a man so very easily. What was it to be? My head in a pit being dunged by slaves? What a paltry imagination you do have. Mine, I fear, sometimes seems excessive, even to me.' He paused and glanced towards the sky as if judging how much daylight remained. 'I have few enough warriors, Lord Derfel,' he went on in his reasonable voice, 'and I do not want to lose any more of them to your spears. But sooner or later you must come out of the rocks and I shall wait for you, and as I wait I shall let my imagination rise to new heights of achievement. Give the Princess Ceinwyn my greetings, and tell her I so look forward to a closer acquaintance.' He raised his spear in mocking salute, then rode back to the ring of dark riders who now had the knoll entirely surrounded.

I let myself down into the bowl in the knoll's centre and saw that whatever we found here would prove too late for Merlin; death was plain on his face. His jaw was hanging open and his eyes were as empty as the s.p.a.ce between the worlds. His teeth chattered once to show he was still alive, but that life was a thread now and it was fraying fast. Nimue had taken Ceinwyn's knife and was scratching and clawing at the small stones that filled the hollow of the summit, while Ceinwyn, her face looking exhausted, had slumped against a rock where she shivered and watched as Nimue dug. Whatever trance had possessed Ceinwyn had now pa.s.sed and I helped her clean the mess from her hands, found her suit of wolfskins and covered her over.

She pulled on her gloves. 'I had a dream,' she whispered to me, 'and saw the end.'

'Our end?' I asked in alarm.

She shook her head. 'Ynys Mon's end. There were lines of soldiers, Derfel, in Roman skirts and breastplates and bronze helmets. Great hunting lines of soldiers and their sword arms were b.l.o.o.d.y to their shoulders because they just killed and killed. They came through the forests in a great line, just killing. Arms going up and down, and all the women and children running away, only there was nowhere to run and the soldiers just closed on them and chopped them down. Little children, Derfel!'

'And the Druids?'

'All dead. All but three, and they brought the Cauldron here. They'd made a pit for it already, you see, before the Romans crossed the water, and they buried it here, then covered it with stones from the lake, and after that they put ashes on the stones and lifted fire with their bare hands so that the Romans would think nothing could be buried here. And when that was done they walked singing into the woods to die.'

Nimue hissed in alarm, and I twisted around to see that she had uncovered a small skeleton. She fumbled among her otter skins and brought out a leather bag that she tore open to take out two dried plants. They had spiky leaves and small, faded golden flowers and I knew she was placating the dead bones with a gift of asphodel. 'It was a child they buried,' Ceinwyn explained the smallness of the bones, 'the guardian of the Cauldron and the daughter of one of the three Druids. She had short hair and a fox-skin bracelet on her wrist, and they buried her alive so she would guard the Cauldron till we found it.'

Nimue, the dead soul of the Cauldron's guardian placated by the asphodel, dragged the girl's bones from the small stones, then attacked the deepening hole with her knife and snapped at me to come and help her. 'Dig with your sword, Derfel!' she ordered, and I obediently thrust Hywelbane's tip into the pit. And found the Cauldron.

At first it was just a glimpse of dirty gold, then a sweep of Nimue's hand showed a heavy golden rim. The Cauldron was much bigger than the hole we had made and so I ordered Issa and another man to help make it wider. We scooped the stones out with our helmets, working in a desperate haste for Merlin's soul was flickering out the very last of his long life. Nimue was panting and weeping as she attacked the tight packed stones that had been brought to this summit from the sacred lake of Llyn Cerrig Bach.

'He's dead!' Ceinwyn cried. She was kneeling beside Merlin.

'He is not dead!' Nimue spat between clenched teeth, then she seized the golden rim with both her hands and began to tug at the Cauldron with all her strength. I joined her, and it seemed impossible that the huge vessel could be moved with all the weight of stones that still pressed into its deep belly but somehow, with the G.o.ds' help, we shifted that great thing of gold and silver out of its dark pit. And thus we brought the lost Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn into the light. It was a great bowl as wide as a man's outstretched hands and as deep as the blade of a hunting knife. It was made of thick uneven silver, stood on three short golden legs and was decorated with lavish traceries of gold. Three golden hoops were fixed to its rim so that it could be hung above a fire. It was the greatest Treasure of Britain and we ripped it from its grave, shedding stones, and I saw how the gold that decorated it was shaped into warriors and G.o.ds and deer. But we had no time to admire the Cauldron, for Nimue frantically scattered the last stones from its belly and placed it back in the hole before tearing the black furs from Merlin's body. 'Help me!' she screamed, and together we rolled the old man into the pit and down into the belly of the great silver bowl. Nimue tucked his legs inside the golden rim and laid a cloak over him. Only then did Nimue lean back against the boulders. It was freezing, but her face was shining with sweat.

'He's dead,' Ceinwyn said in a small, frightened voice.

'No,' Nimue insisted tiredly, 'no, he's not.'

'He was cold!' Ceinwyn protested. 'He was cold and there was no breath.' She clung to me and began weeping softly. 'He's dead.'

'He lives,' Nimue said harshly.

It had begun to rain again; a small, spitting, wind-hurried rain that slicked the stones and beaded our bloodied spear-blades. Merlin lay shrouded and unmoving in the Cauldron's pit, my men watched the enemy across the tops of the grey stones, the dark riders ringed us and I wondered what madness had brought us to this miserable place at the dark cold end of Britain.

'So what do we do now?' Galahad asked.

'We wait,' Nimue snapped, 'we just wait.'

I will never forget the cold of that night. Frost made crystals on the rock and to touch a spear-blade was to leave a sc.r.a.p of skin frozen to the steel. It was so bitterly cold. The rain turned to snow at dusk, then stopped, and after the snow's pa.s.sing the wind dropped and the clouds sailed off to the east to reveal an enormous moon rising full above the sea. It was a moon full of portent; a great swollen silver ball that was hazed by a shimmer of distant cloud above an ocean crawling with black and silver waves. The stars had never seemed so bright. The great shape of Bel's chariot blazed above us, eternally chasing the constellation we called the trout. The G.o.ds lived among the stars and I sent a prayer winging up through the cold air in the hope that it would reach those far bright fires. Some of us dozed, but it was the shallow sleep of weary, cold and frightened men. Our enemies, ringing the knoll with their spears, had made fires. Ponies brought the Bloodshields fuel and the flames burned vast in the night to spew sparks into the clear sky.

Nothing moved in the Cauldron's pit where Merlin's cloaked body was shadowed from the moon by the loom of high rock where we took turns to watch the riders' shapes against the fires. At times a long spear would fly out of the night and its head would glitter in the moonlight before the weapon clattered harmlessly against the stones.

'So what will you do with the Cauldron now?' I asked Nimue.

'Nothing till Samain,' she said dully. She lay crumpled near the heap of discarded bundles that had been thrown into the summit's hollow, her feet resting on the spoil we had scrabbled so desperately from the pit. 'Everything has to be right, Derfel. The moon must be full, the weather right and all the thirteen Treasures a.s.sembled.'

'Tell me of the Treasures,' Galahad said from the hollow's farther side. Nimue spat. 'So you can mock us, Christian?' she challenged him.

Galahad smiled. 'There are thousands of folk, Nimue, who mock you. They say the G.o.ds are dead and that we should put our faith in men. We should follow Arthur, they say, and they believe your search for cauldrons and cloaks and knives and horns is so much nonsense that died with Ynys Mon. How many Kings of Britain would send you men for this search?' He stirred, trying to find some comfort in this cold night. 'None, Nimue, none, because they mock you. It's all too late, they say. The Romans changed everything and sensible men say that your Cauldron is as dead as Ynys Trebes. The Christians say you are doing the devil's work, but this Christian, dear Nimue, carried his sword to this place and for that, dear lady, you owe me at least civility.'

Nimue was not used to being reprimanded, except perhaps by Merlin, and she stiffened at Galahad's mild rebuke, but then at last she relented. She pulled Merlin's bearskin about her shoulders and hunched forward. 'The Treasures,' she said, 'were left to us by the G.o.ds. It was long ago, when Britain was quite alone in all the world. There were no other lands; just Britain and a wide sea that was covered by a great mist. There were twelve tribes of Britain then, and twelve Kings and twelve feasting halls and just twelve G.o.ds. Those G.o.ds walked as we do on the land and one of them, Bel, even married a human; our Lady here,' she gestured towards Ceinwyn, who was listening as avidly as any of the spearmen, 'is descended from that marriage.'

She paused as a shout sounded from the ring of fires, but the shout presaged no threat and silence fell on the night again as Nimue went on with her tale. 'But other G.o.ds who were jealous of the twelve who ruled Britain came from the stars and tried to take Britain from the twelve G.o.ds, and in the battles the twelve tribes suffered. One spear stroke from a G.o.d could kill a hundred people, and no earthly shield could stop a G.o.d's sword, so the twelve G.o.ds, because they loved Britain, gave the twelve tribes twelve Treasures. Each Treasure was to be kept in a royal hall and the presence of the Treasure would keep the spears of the G.o.ds from falling on the hall or any of its people. They were not grand things. If the twelve G.o.ds had given us splendid things then the other G.o.ds would have seen them, guessed their purpose and stolen them for their own protection. So the twelve gifts were just common things: a sword, a basket, a horn, a chariot, a halter, a knife, a whetstone, a sleeved coat, a cloak, a dish, a throw-board and a warrior ring. Twelve ordinary things, and all the G.o.ds asked of us was that we should cherish the twelve Treasures, to keep them safe and offer them honour, and in return, as well as having the protection of the Treasures, each tribe could use its gift to summon their G.o.d. They were allowed one summons a year, only one, but that summons gave the tribes some power in the terrible war of the G.o.ds.'

She paused and pulled the furs tighter about her thin shoulders. 'So the tribes had their Treasures,' she went on, 'but Bel, because he loved his earthly girl so very much, gave her a thirteenth Treasure. He gave her the Cauldron and he told her that whenever she began to grow old she had only to fill the Cauldron with water, immerse herself, and she would be young again. Thus, in all her beauty, she could walk beside Bel for ever and ever. And the Cauldron, as you saw, is splendid; it is gold and silver, lovely beyond anything man can make. The other tribes saw it and were jealous, and in this way the wars of Britain began. The G.o.ds warred in the air and the twelve tribes warred on earth, and one by one the Treasures were captured, or else they were bartered for spearmen, and in their anger the G.o.ds withdrew their protection. The Cauldron was stolen, Bel's lover grew old and died, and Bel placed a curse on us. The curse was the existence of other lands and other peoples, but Bel promised us that if one Samain we drew the twelve Treasures of the twelve tribes together again and made the proper rites, and filled the thirteenth Treasure with the water that no man drinks but without which no man can live, then the twelve G.o.ds would come to our aid again.' She stopped, shrugged and looked at Galahad. 'There, Christian,'

she said, 'that is why your sword came here.'

There was a long silence. The moonlight slid down the rocks, creeping ever nearer to the pit where Merlin lay beneath the thin cover of a cloak.

'And you have all twelve Treasures?' Ceinwyn asked.

'Most,' Nimue said evasively. 'But even without the twelve, the Cauldron has immense power. Vast power. More power than all the other Treasures together.' She looked belligerently across the pit towards Galahad. 'And what will you do, Christian, when you see that power?'

Galahad smiled. 'I shall remind you that I carried my sword in your quest,' he said softly.

'We all did. We are the warriors of the Cauldron,' Issa said quietly, displaying a streak of poetry I had not suspected in him, and the other spearmen smiled. Their beards were frosted white, their hands were wrapped in strips of cloth and fur and their eyes looked hollow, but they had found the Cauldron and the pride of that achievement filled them, even if, at first light, they must face the Bloodshields and the dawning knowledge that we were all doomed.

Ceinwyn leaned against me, sharing my wolfskin cloak. She waited till Nimue was sleeping, then tipped her face up to mine. 'Merlin's dead, Derfel,' she said in a small sad voice.

'I know,' I said, for there had been neither motion nor sound from the Cauldron's pit.

'I felt his face and hands,' she whispered, 'and they were cold as ice. I put my knife blade beside his mouth and it didn't cloud. He's dead.'

I said nothing. I loved Merlin because he had stood to me as a father and I could not truly believe he had died at this moment of his triumph, but nor could I find the hope to see his life's soul again. 'We should bury him here,' Ceinwyn said softly, 'inside his Cauldron.' Again I did not speak. Her hand found mine. 'What shall we do?' she asked.

Die, I thought, but still I said nothing.

'You will not let me be taken?' she whispered.

'Never,' I said.

'The day I met you, Lord Derfel Cadarn,' she said, 'was the best day of my life,' and that made my tears come, but whether they were tears of joy or a lament for all that I would lose in the next cold dawn, I do not know.

I fell into a shallow sleep and dreamed I was trapped in a bog and surrounded by dark riders who were magically able to move across the soaking land, and then I found I could not raise my shield arm and I saw the sword coming down on my right shoulder and I woke with a start, reaching for my spear, only to see that it was Gwilym who had inadvertently touched my shoulder as he clambered up the rock to take over guard duty. 'Sorry, Lord,' he whispered.

Ceinwyn slept in the crook of my arm and Nimue was huddled on my other side. Galahad, his fair beard whitened by frost, was snoring gently and my other spearmen either dozed or else lay in cold stupefaction. The moon was almost above me now, its light slanting down to show the stars painted on my men's stacked shields and on the stony side of the pit we had scrabbled in the summit's hollow. The mist that had shimmered the moon's swollen face when it had hung just above the sea was gone and now it was a pure, hard, clear, cold disc etched as sharp as a newly minted coin. I half remembered my mother telling me the name of the man in the moon, but I could not pin the memory down. My mother was a Saxon and I had been in her belly when she had been captured in a Dumnonian raid. I had been told she was still alive in Siluria, but I had not seen her since the day the Druid Tanaburs had s.n.a.t.c.hed me from her arms and tried to kill me in the death pit. Merlin had raised me after that, and I had become a Briton, a friend of Arthur and the man who had taken the star of Powys from her brother's hall. What an odd thread of life, I thought, and how sad that it would be cut short here on Britain's sacred isle.

'I don't suppose,' Merlin said, 'that there is any cheese?'

I stared at him, thinking I must still be dreaming.