Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked her.

She took the Knife of Laufrodedd from the tortured clay skull. ‘Let her sleep,’ she crooned, ‘or maybe not?’ And with that she gave a mad laugh and snatched an iron ladle from the Basket of Garanhir, scooped some burning embers from the smoky fire and scattered the burning scraps over the body and I imagined Ceinwyn shuddering and screaming, her back arching with the sudden pain, and Nimue laughed to see my impotent rage. ‘Why am I doing it?’ she asked. ‘Because you stopped me from killing Gwydre. And because you can bring the Gods to earth. That is why.’

I stared at her. ‘You’re mad too,’ I said softly.

‘What do you know of madness?’ Nimue spat at me. ‘You and your little mind, your pathetic little mind. You can judge me? Oh, pain!’ And she stabbed the knife into the clay breasts. ‘Pain! Pain!’ The mad things behind me joined in her cry. ‘Pain! Pain!’ they exulted, some clapping their hands and others laughing with delight.

‘Stop!’ I shouted.

Nimue crouched over the tortured figure, her knife poised. ‘Do you want her back, Derfel?’

‘Yes,’ I was close to tears.

‘She is most precious to you?’

‘You know she is.’

‘You would rather lie with that,’ Nimue gestured at the grotesque clay figure, ‘than with Olwen?’

‘I lie with no woman but Ceinwyn,’ I said.

‘Then I will give her back to you,’ Nimue said, and she tenderly stroked the clay figure’s forehead. ‘I will restore your Ceinwyn to you,’ Nimue promised, ‘but first you must give me what is most precious to me. That is my price.’

‘And what is most precious to you?’ I asked, knowing the answer before she gave it to me.

‘You must bring me Excalibur, Derfel,’ Nimue said, ‘and you must bring me Gwydre.’

‘Why Gwydre?’ I demanded. ‘He’s not a ruler’s son.’

‘Because he was promised to the Gods, and the Gods demand what was promised to them. You must bring him to me before the next moon is full. You will take Gwydre and the sword to where the waters meet beneath Nant Dduu. You know the place?’

‘I know it,’ I said grimly.

‘And if you do not bring them, Derfel, then I swear to you that Ceinwyn’s sufferings will increase. I shall plant worms in her belly, I shall turn her eyes to liquid, I shall make her skin peel and her flesh rot on her crumbling bones, and though she will beg for death I will not send it, but only give her pain instead. Nothing but pain.’ I wanted to step forward and kill Nimue there and then. She had been a friend and even, once, a lover, but now she had gone so far from me into a world where the spirits were real and the real were playthings. ‘Bring me Gwydre and bring me Excalibur,’ Nimue went on, her one eye glittering in the cave’s gloom, ‘and I shall free Ceinwyn of her Otherbody and you of your oath to me, and I shall give you two things.’ She reached behind her and pulled out a cloth. She shook it open and I saw it was the old cloak that had been stolen from me in Isca. She fumbled in the cloak, found something, and held it up between a finger and thumb and I saw she was holding the little missing agate from Ceinwyn’s ring. ‘A sword and a sacrifice,’ she said, ‘for a cloak and a stone. Will you do that, Derfel?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, and not meaning it, but not knowing what else I could say. ‘Will you leave me with her now?’ I demanded.

‘No,’ Nimue said, smiling. ‘But you want her to rest tonight? Then this one night, Derfel, I shall give her respite.’ She blew the ashes off the clay, picked out the berries and plucked the charms that had been pinned to the body. ‘In the morning,’ Nimue said, ‘I shall replace them.’

‘No!’

‘Not all of them,’ she said, ‘but more each day until I hear you are come to where the waters meet at Nant Dduu.’ She pulled a burnt scrap of bone from the clay belly. ‘And when I have the sword,’ she went on, ‘my army of the mad will make such fires that the night of Samain Eve will turn to day. And Gwydre will come back to you, Derfel. He will rest in the Cauldron and the Gods will kiss him to life and Olwen will lie with him and he will ride in glory with Excalibur in his hand.’ She took a pitcher of water and spilt a little onto the figure’s brow, then smoothed it gently into the glistening clay. ‘Go now,’ she said, ‘your Ceinwyn will sleep and Olwen has another thing to show you. At dawn you will leave.’

I stumbled after Olwen, pushing through the grinning crowd of horrid things that pressed about the cave and following the dancing girl along the cliff face to another cave. Inside I saw a second clay figure, this one a man, and Olwen gestured to it, then giggled. ‘Is it me?’ I asked, for I saw the clay was smooth and unmarked, but then, peering closer into the darkness, I saw the clay man’s eyes had been gouged out.

‘No, Lord,’ Olwen said, ‘it is not you.’ She stooped beside the figure and picked up a long bone needle that had been lying beside its legs. ‘Look,’ she said, and she slid the needle into the clay foot. From somewhere behind us a man wailed in pain. Olwen giggled. ‘Again,’ she said, and slid the bone into the other foot and once again the voice cried in pain. Olwen laughed, then reached for my hand.

‘Come,’ she said, and led me into a deep cleft that opened in the cliff. The cleft narrowed, then seemed to end abruptly ahead of us, for I could see only the dim sheen of reflected firelight on high rock, but then I saw a kind of cage had been made at the gorge’s end. Two hawthorns grew there, and rough baulks of timber had been nailed across their trunks to make crude prison bars. Olwen let go of my hand and pushed me forward. ‘I shall come for you in the morning, Lord. There’s food waiting there.’ She smiled, turned and ran away.

At first I thought the crude cage was some kind of shelter, and that when I got close I would find an entrance between the bars, but there was no door. The cage barred the last few yards of the gorge, and the promised food was waiting under one of the hawthorns. I found stale bread, dried mutton and a jar of water. I sat, broke the loaf, and suddenly something moved inside the cage and I twitched with alarm as a thing scrabbled towards me.

At first I thought the thing was a beast, then I saw it was a man, and then I saw that it was Merlin.

‘I shall be good,’ Merlin said to me, ‘I shall be good.’ I understood the second clay figure then, for Merlin was blind. No eyes at all. Just horror. ‘Thorns in my feet,’ he said, ‘in my feet,’ then he collapsed beside the bars and whimpered. ‘I shall be good, I promise!’

I crouched. ‘Merlin?’ I said.

He shuddered. ‘I will be good!’ he said in desperation, and when I put a hand through his bars to stroke his tangled filthy hair, he jerked back and shivered.

‘Merlin?’ I said again.

‘Blood in the clay,’ he said, ‘you must put blood in the clay. Mix it well. A child’s blood works best, or so I’m told. I never did it, my dear. Tanaburs did, I know, and I talked to him once about it. He was a fool, of course, but he knew some few tawdry things. The blood of a red-haired child, he told me, and preferably a crippled child, a red-haired cripple. Any child will do at a pinch, of course, but the red-haired cripple is best.’

‘Merlin,’ I said, ‘it’s Derfel.’

He babbled on, giving instructions on how best to make the clay figure so that evil could be sent from afar. He spoke of blood and dew and the need to mould the clay during the sound of thunder. He would not listen to me, and when I stood and tried to prise the bars away from the trees, two spearmen came grinning from the cleft’s shadows behind me. They were Bloodshields, and their spears told me to stop my efforts to free the old man. I crouched again. ‘Merlin!’ I said.