Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

“I have an unfinished task in Gaul, where the man who slew my parents and my grandfather yet rules in a kingdom that is rightfully mine, but although I intend to return there someday and claim his head in vengeance, I feel no burning urge to rush off and do it now. Part of me wishes to believe that my place is here, at this time, and yet I have no sense of … place—no sense of what awaits me or of what I should be doing next. I will meet the King soon, and that particular question may be resolved, but still I know nothing of what Germanus planned for me, if he planned anything. And so I must ask you more, and beg your understanding and indulgence. Did the bishop speak of me specifically? And if so, pray, what did he say?”

Merlyn grimaced, sucking breath between his teeth, then shook his head and blew out a great breath. “Damnation, Master Clothar,” he said, “you come upon me with this request at the worst time, because while I can answer you truthfully, I cannot tell you what you want to know.

“I have told you that he named you in his letter to me. But he has also enjoined me to be careful in what I say, to you or about you, until I have read everything that he has sent me. Don’t ask me why, boy, because I simply do not know why, and I will not until I have had time to read all this.”

“He told you to tell me nothing of what he has to say of me?”

“He told me to say nothing until I have learned everything there is to learn about you.”

“But what is there to learn that you do not already know?” I bit down on my anger yet again. “No, Master Merlyn. That makes no sense at all, because it makes too much of me, and for no adequate reason. Bishop Germanus was my mentor, but he was mentor to many others, too, all of them more worthy of his time and attention than I was. His interest in me, from the outset, was an obligation. He had been a close friend of my parents and my foster parents, too, and he had stood as godfather for me at my baptism, after the death of my parents and long before he became a bishop. So when I grew old enough, he took me into his school as a pupil. My father was a king, and he served in the legions with Germanus. But he is a dead king, eighteen years in his grave. He was murdered soon after I was born, and his lands usurped by his murderer, and in order to protect me and guard my identity after my father’s death, I was raised in secrecy by my uncle Ban, King of Benwick, in southern Gaul. That is my life, in its entirety. There is no more to learn.”

Merlyn shrugged. “Apparently that is not so. Perhaps you yourself do not know all that there is to know.”

“About myself? That is iniquitous,” I said, my anger spilling over. “Am I now to believe that I am unworthy to know some truth about myself—some arcane secret that no one thinks me capable of handling? Germanus himself told me nothing of what the letters contained regarding me before he sent me off to spend a year and more wandering through this land carrying his wallet. And now, having done so in all obedience and to the best of my ability, I feel slighted and insulted … deemed unworthy of trust, even with knowledge of myself.” Raising my voice to Merlyn Britannicus this way, this man I did not know but had every reason to treat with the utmost respect, appalled me, outraging every tenet of behavior with which I had been raised and leaving me with a sinking feeling of imminent remorse. But I had no way of stopping now. “Master Merlyn,” I continued, the bit between my teeth, “I know I have never done anything to earn, or to deserve, such treatment, and that makes me deeply angry, because I am utterly at a loss to understand why it happened, and that ignorance, that not knowing, is the most perplexing and infuriating thing about this whole situation.”

Merlyn rose fluidly to his feet, betraying no sign of any of the damage he had sustained from being burned in Carthac’s fire. “Very well, so be it,” he said, enunciating his words precisely and slowly. “This much I will promise you. I will tell you whatever is said about you in these documents, so be it I judge the information to be harmless to you. The only proviso I will add to that, having said it, is that I will pass along nothing that Germanus might ask me specifically, for whatever reason, to conceal from you. I say that because I cannot imagine him doing such a thing and then blithely sending you off to deliver the material to me in person. That kind of information only applies in situations that involve heinous crimes and shameful secrets, and Germanus himself clearly respected and admired you when he chose you for this task. He would never dream of using you so cruelly, so I believe you may set your mind at rest on that concern. Will that suffice?”

I nodded, mollified by his straightforwardness. “Thank you, Lord Merlyn, it will.”

“Good. But now I really must take leave of you. I have much to do, as you know, and there are other matters claiming my attention before I can be free to apply myself to our affairs.” He waved a thumb toward the door at his back. “I will have young Mark escort you back to the quarters assigned to you and your three friends, and you and I will talk at more length tomorrow, once I have mastered what you brought to me.” We exchanged nods of farewell, and he pulled his hood firmly forward to conceal his face again, then swept out, limping only very slightly.

Left alone in the room, I glanced down at the cup I held in my hands and was surprised to find it empty. I had no recollection of drinking its contents. I was still angry, too, although in the face of Merlyn’s courtesy and consideration I could not quite tell myself why that should be so. And then the answer came to me. Despite all his charm and courtesy, Merlyn had nonetheless committed himself only to telling me what he considered harmless to me. Any request from Germanus that specific information be kept from me, for whatever reason, would be sacrosanct in Merlyn’s eyes.

The anger boiling inside me grew stronger and I stormed out of the room, headed for the bright afternoon sunlight and spoiling for a fight with someone—anyone at all.

It was probably fortunate that I met no one during that angry journey from Merlyn’s quarters to my own, for my resentment continued to build, demanding an outlet. It was probably equally providential that when I arrived back at the accommodations assigned to us, neither Perceval nor Tristan were there and I could not even find young Bors, and that removed any possibility of venting my anger and unpleasantness on my uncomplaining friends. With no means of finding out where they had gone, however, the only options open to me were to remain in my quarters alone with my misery, or to go in search of them. I had paid little attention to the weather as I stalked from Merlyn’s place, but now that I was considering going out again, I had to acknowledge, albeit grumpily and with reluctance, that this was a perfect day on which to be walking and breathing deeply, savoring the scents of the world. It was one of those long, warm, late-summer afternoons that are so universally seductive and alluring, beguiling normally responsible people into neglecting and deserting their appointed tasks and wasting their time instead on frivolity and self-indulgence. At that moment, on that afternoon, having found no one on whom I could vent my anger, I was perfectly open to temptations of that kind, and in exactly the right frame of mind for them. I was in no mood to do anything constructive, aware that I would not be able to concentrate on anything except the questions that were threatening to drive me to distraction. Besides, I thought, if I went walking I might find someone, some stranger, I could provoke into a fight.

Bors had leaned my two quivers of throwing spears upright, as he always did, against the wall in one of the back corners of our quarters, and the long, needle-pointed metal heads gleamed dully in the afternoon light that filtered into the room. I caught sight of them as I moved to leave the room, and I hesitated there in the doorway for several moments, looking back at them and thinking that it had been far too long since I last practiced with them. The last time I had thrown one of them, in fact, had been that day at Saint Alban’s Shrine, when I watched the child Gwinnifer cast so surprisingly. The reminder of how quickly time had passed came as a shock, and shortly after that I found myself striding toward the stables, a small bundle of four spears tied with thongs and dangling behind my right shoulder.