The Forever King Molly Cochran

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

And it's the power they want, Arthur. Oh, they may start out thinking
as you do, wanting to be part of a better world, but in this COnsortium
of kings you're talking about, you can be sure that one king will try
to gobble up another as soon as he's got the chance. And more than one
will be looking to the High King's throne, to gobble up everything
else, including you. It's human nature, Arthur." He was beginning to
feel irritated. Romantic idealism was tolerable in a young man with
nothing more to do than look after his fields, but it was a dangerous
quality in a king. If Arthur was so naive as to think that he could
offer Britannia to the Saxons without their seizing power, he was a
fool who would lead his country into oblivion. "You ought to be with
your men," Merlin said finally. "I suppose so. But my idea could
work. With laws and a good army--" "And an uncorruptible king who
lived a thousand years," Merlin snapped.
Arthur smiled. "Do you think you could arrange that? They do say
you're a wizard." Merlin got up grumpily, bowed to the king he now
thought of as a naive child, and stomped away, leaving Arthur laughing
as he buckled on his chain mail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Arthur did not live a thousand years, of course; he died young, despite
Merlin's efforts, without ever having fulfilled his mission.
In the centuries to come, Merlin might have forgiven himself for
Arthur's early death, if it had not been for the dream. It came on the
night of their discussion about the Germans.
Merlin went to bed feeling annoyed, as one would with an adolescent son
who has announced that he will spend his life in some frivolous
pursuit: It would pass in time, but the passage was bound to be
unpleasant. He did not understand Arthur, really, until the dream. In
it, he stood at the far end of a long table in the king's Great Hall,
watching the approach of another man. The visitor was dressed
strangely, in long loose robes, like the garb of an angel, and was
surrounded by light. At first Merlin took him to be a priest of some
kind, perhaps a druid come bearing a gift for him, for the man held
something in his two hands. But as he moved nearer, Merlin saw that
the man was not a priest at all, but the one the Christians believed to
have been the living god, Jesus the Christ, and above his outstretched
hand floated something shiny and hard, draped in glittering white
samite. Merlin was about to speak to the man, to ask him what he was
doing in the court of the king, when he noticed that Arthur was
standing beside him, his eyes fixed on the approaching stranger's.
Arthur's arms raised and the object moved toward him, slowly as a
whisper, down the length of the table. "Arthur, take it!" Merlin
shouted. As he spoke, the glittering cloth unfurled from the object
and it hovered alone in the air, metallic and curved, the circle within
the circle, the symbol of perfection, of eternity, of life without end
.... "Take it!" But the cup and the man behind it were already
beginning to vanish. The king reached out, but made no attempt to
grasp the cup. Before it arrived at the end of the table, it was as
transparent as a insect's wing. And when it vanished, so did the king,
disappearing into the mists as if he had never existed. "Arthur!
Arthur!" The old man awoke in a sweat. For surely he had just seen
Arthur's death, and the means to prevent it. Saladin's cup had healed
Merlin's own stopped heart. It had brought him back from the dead. It
had protected Saladin from all injury during the rockslide in the cave.
Saladin, the young man with the old eyes and the knowledge of a
thousand lifetimes. Saladin, who was only twenty-five years old and
yet knew the secrets of the pharaohs.
It feels more like twenty-five centuries, he had said.
But of course, he had meant that literally! The cup had the power to
heal and protect the human body indefinitely. Saladin had lived
forever.
But the cup was not meant to be his. It belonged to Arthur, to the one
man who could not be corrupted by it. To the forever king, who would
use it to fulfill a great destiny and hold that destiny until the
Creator Himself came back to claim the earth that Arthur had made holy
for him.
The dream frightened him. While it was still dark outside, Merlin
slipped away from the castle to the forest and walked through the windy
December cold to the secret glen where the druids performed their
ageless rites. There he stood, clearing his mind of all thought except
for the image of the cup as it had touched his dying breast. He felt
its warmth again, its perfection.
The Christians talked about the Second Coming, when their god would
return in wrath and glory to condemn the wicked to eternal fire and
lead the godly to paradise. Merlin did not know where he himself would
stand in such a judgment, as he was not a Christian. Yet the dream had
been clear: The cup had passed from the Christ to Arthur. The king was
meant to drink from the cup of immortality.
In the darkness Merlin caused the image of it to project from his mind
into the space before him. It was an illusion, but with solidity and
dimension. He examined it. Could this, then, be the hallowed Grail,
this common-looking object?
It had to be. And it was meant to stay in Arthur's keeping. But what
about Saladin? The man had done Merlin and the others at Camelot no
harm. If he did not offer the precious cup as a gift to the king,
whose place was it to take it from him? To steal the cup would be a
lowly act. Arthur would never even accept the cup under such
circumstances.
The image dissolved before Merlin's eyes.
Them was the dilemma. To acquire Arthur's immortality, Merlin would
have to cheat another man of it--a man who had saved Merlin's own life.
And yet to let it go . . .
To let it go would be to see the awful dream become a reality: Arthur
dying, still young, his vision forgotten, the world fallen back into
chaos and savagery.
He left the grove in full daylight feeling tired and even older than
his years. He would have gone back to bed if it were not for the
commotion at the main gate. Horses were stamping, their armored riders
covered with blood, as the servants poured out of the castle, wailing
as they carried in a blood-soaked litter.
Merlin's heart quickened in his chest. He knew that this was more than
the usual check of the wounded and dead after battle. He ran up to the
litter, barely able to breathe. "Arthur!" he whispered. "He took an
arrow in his back." This from Launcelot himself, the greatest of
Arthur's warriors, who was said, because of his purity, to have healing
in his hands. He was sobbing as he helped carry the litter inside. "I
touched him. He's breathing, but there's nothing, nothing I can feel .
. ." He turned his head angrily, his great dark mane stiff with the
blood of his king. "You must heal him, wizard!" he demanded, the
words filled with helpless violence.
But Merlin knew he could not. He had not even known that the king had
been wounded. Last night's dream had been a premonition of immediate
danger, and he, Merlin, the gmat sorcerer, had not even recognized it.
He was overcome with self-loathing as the knights lay Arthur on the
rough oaken table near the castle's well. The king's wounds, Merlin
saw, were mortal. "Shall we take him up to the sollar, sir?" Gawain
asked politely. He was a rough man, used to action. In the stillness
of the silent stone walls, Gawain seemed to want only to do something,
anything, rather than stand by uselessly while his king died.
Merlin shook his head. The narrow curved stairs leading to Arthur's
private rooms would be too difficult to negotiate. It would only
hasten his death.
Then he remembered his dream again, and his breath caught. He could
not save the king, but another could.
As if his thoughts had been spoken aloud, a voice answered them: He is
dying." Saladin was standing behind him, looking down over Merlin's
shoulder at the blood-covered king. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Wątki