Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

He crept nearer, sniffing. ‘Derfel?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Lord.’

He groped for me, and I gave him my hand and he clutched it hard. Then, still holding my hand, he sank onto the ground. ‘I’m mad, you know?’ he said in a reasonable voice.

‘No, Lord,’ I said.

‘I have been punished.’

‘For nothing, Lord.’

‘Derfel? Is it really you?’

‘It is me, Lord. Do you want food?’

‘I have much to tell you, Derfel.’

‘I hope so, Lord,’ I said, but he seemed incapable of ordering his wits, and for the next few moments he talked of the clay again, then of other charms, and he again forgot who I was for he called me Arthur, and then he was silent for a long while. ‘Derfel?’ he finally asked again.

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘Nothing must be written, do you understand?’

‘You’ve told me so many times, Lord.’

‘All our lore must be remembered. Caleddin had it all written down, and that’s when the Gods began to retreat. But it is in my head. It was. And she took it. All of it. Or almost all.’ He whispered the last three words.

‘Nimue?’ I asked, and he gripped my hand so terribly hard at the mention of her name and again he fell silent.

‘She blinded you?’ I asked.

‘Oh, she had to!’ he said, frowning at the disapproval in my voice. ‘No other way to do it, Derfel. I should have thought that was obvious.’

‘Not to me,’ I said bitterly.

‘Quite obvious! Absurd to think otherwise,’ he said, then let go of my hand and tried to arrange his beard and hair. His tonsure had disappeared beneath a layer of matted hair and dirt, his beard was straggly and flecked with leaves, while his white robe was the colour of mud. ‘She’s a Druid now,’ he said in a tone of wonder.

‘I thought women couldn’t be Druids,’ I said.

‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel. Just because women never have been Druids doesn’t mean they can’t be!

Anyone can be a Druid! All you need do is memorize the six hundred and eighty-four curses of Beli Mawr and the two hundred and sixty-nine charms of Lieu and carry in your head about a thousand other useful things, and Nimue, I must say, was an excellent pupil.’

‘But why blind you?’

‘We have one eye between us. One eye and one mind.’ He fell silent.

‘Tell me about the clay figure, Lord,’ I said.

‘No!’ He shuffled away from me, terror in his voice. ‘She has told me not to tell you,’ he added in a hoarse whisper.

‘How do I defeat it?’ I asked.

He laughed at that. ‘You, Derfel? You would fight my magic?’

‘Tell me how,’ I insisted.

He came back to the bars and turned his empty eye sockets left and right as though he were looking for some enemy who might be overhearing us. ‘Seven times and three,’ he said, ‘I dreamed on Cam Ingli.’ He had gone back into madness, and all that night I discovered that if I tried to prise out of him the secrets of Ceinwyn’s sickness he would do the same. He would babble of dreams, of the wheat-girl he had loved by the waters of Claerwen or of the hounds of Trygwylth who he was persuaded were hunting him. ‘That is why I have these bars, Derfel,’ he said, pounding the wooden slats, ‘so that the hounds cannot reach me, and why I have no eyes, so they cannot see me. The hounds can’t see you, you know, not if you have no eyes. You should remember that.’

‘Nimue,’ I said at one point, ‘will bring the Gods back?’

‘That is why she has taken my mind, Derfel,’ Merlin said.

‘Will she succeed?’

‘A good question! An excellent question. A question I ask myself constantly.’ He sat and hugged his bony knees. ‘I lacked the nerve, didn’t I? I betrayed myself. But Nimue won’t. She will go to the bitter end, Derfel.’

‘But will she succeed?’

‘I would like to have a cat,’ he said after a while. ‘I do miss cats.’

‘Tell me about the summoning.’

‘You know it all already!’ he said indignantly. ‘Nimue will find Excalibur, she will fetch poor Gwydre, and the rites will be done properly. Here, on the mountain. But will the Gods come? That is the question, isn’t it? You worship Mithras, don’t you?’

‘I do, Lord.’

‘And what do you know of Mithras?’

‘The God of soldiers,’ I said, ‘born in a cave. He is the God of the sun.’

Merlin laughed. ‘You know so little! He is the God of oaths. Did you know that? Or do you know the grades of Mithraism? How many grades do you have?’ I hesitated, unwilling to reveal the secrets of the mysteries. ‘Don’t be absurd, Derfel!’ Merlin said, his voice as sane as it had ever been in all his life.

‘How many? Two? Three?’

‘Two, Lord.’

‘So you’ve forgotten the other five! What are your two?’

‘Soldier and Father.’

‘‘ Miles and Pater, they should be called. And once there were also Leo, Corax, Perses, Nymphus and Heliodromus. How little you know of your miserable God, but then, your worship is a mere shadow worship. Do you climb the seven-runged ladder?’

‘No, Lord.’

‘Do you drink the wine and bread?’

‘That is the Christian way, Lord,’ I protested.

‘The Christian way! What halfwits you all are! Mithras’s mother was a virgin, shepherds and wise men came to see her newborn child, and Mithras himself grew to become a healer and a teacher. He had twelve disciples, and on the eve of his death he gave them a final supper of bread and wine. He was buried in a rock tomb and rose again, and he did all this long before the Christians nailed their God to a tree. You let the Christians steal your God’s clothes, Derfel!’

I gazed at him. ‘Is this true?’ I asked him.

‘It is true, Derfel,’ Merlin said, and raised his ravaged face to the crude bars. ‘You worship a shadow God. He is going, you see, just as our Gods are going. They all go, Derfel, they go into the void. Look!’

He pointed up into the clouded sky. ‘The Gods come and the Gods go, Derfel, and I no longer know if they hear us or see us. They pass by on the great wheel of heaven and now it is the Christian God who rules, and He will rule for a while, but the wheel will also take Him into the void and mankind will once again shiver in the dark and look for new Gods. And they will find them, for the Gods come and they go, Derfel, they go and they come.’

‘But Nimue will turn the wheel back?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps she will,’ Merlin said sadly, ‘and I would like that, Derfel. I would like to have my eyes back, and my youth, and my joy.’ He rested his forehead on the bars. ‘I will not help you break the enchantment,’ he said softly, so softly I almost did not hear him. ‘I love Ceinwyn, but if Ceinwyn must suffer for the Gods, then she is doing a noble thing.’

‘Lord,’ I began to plead.

‘No!’ He shouted so loudly that in the encampment behind us some dogs howled in reply. ‘No,’ he said more quietly. ‘I compromised once and I will not compromise again, for what was the price of compromise? Suffering! But if Nimue can perform the rites, then all our suffering will be done. Soon be done. The Gods will return, Ceinwyn will dance and I shall see.’

He slept for a while and I slept too, but after a time he woke me by putting a claw-like hand through the bars and seizing my arm. ‘Are the guards asleep?’ he asked me.

‘I think so, Lord.’

‘Then look for the silver mist,’ he whispered to me.

I thought for a heartbeat he had slipped back into madness. ‘Lord?’ I asked him.

‘I sometimes think,’ he said, and his voice was quite sane, ‘that there is only so much magic left on the earth. It fades like the Gods fade. But I did not give Nimue everything, Derfel. She thinks I did, but I saved one last enchantment. And I have worked it for you and for Arthur, for you two I loved above all men. If Nimue fails, Derfel, then look for Caddwg. You remember Caddwg?’