Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, but they don't know sh*t. There was never a painting that showed the true Britain, that clogged sewer Rome abandoned just as soon as it could. A Britain where petty warlords murdered each other in the mud, while all the while the Angles and Saxons and worst of all the Jutes, were coming over here and taking our lands and taking our jobs and taking our women. You want to know the truth? Are you sure you can handle the truth? Arthur? An over-promoted gangster, in thrall to that eldritch parasite, Merlin. Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer. The Grail Quest? Have you no idea about the aliens and the radioactive blight? Well, you'd better read this then. “Lavie Tidhar bears comparison with the best of Philip K. Dick” FINANCIAL TIMES
Release date:
August 11, 2020
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
400
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King Vortigern, the usurper, sits upon his throne and waits for the end of the world. Outside the castle walls, the invaders slaughter his men and are slaughtered in turn, and the air fills with the stench of blood and the cries of the dying. King Vortigern, the usurper, is no longer a young man, and the joints of his fingers are inflamed with arthritis, but by damn he can still hold a sword.
He sits upon his throne. It is his by right. He had schemed for it and he had killed for it and it is his by force alone. The throne is carved of old cedar brought long ago from across the sea. It had been decorated in the past with intricate inlays of Welsh gold and set with amethyst, but the usurper had ripped those and many other valuables when he took the castle and now his throne is bare.
He prefers it that way.
In the old days, traveling through the deep, dark forests of the land, preying on travelers or hiring out, they had slept in burrows in the earth, by burning fires, and sat on fallen trunks and logs. Sometimes he misses them, those who were there, those who had gone. Many had taken the fairy roads and were vanished, erased, but he remained, and he was hungry, and strong, and now the throne is his by right, by force alone.
The last vestiges of battle can be heard. Sunlight drapes across the room. The king hears the gates fall and the invaders storm into his sanctum. He hears the clash of steel on steel. The throne smells pleasantly of cedar.
After a time, there is silence. King Vortigern, the usurper, hears the tread of heavy footsteps outside his door. They come closer, unhurried, and the doors of the throne room are thrown open. First through the doors comes the tossed corpse of his son, hurled like a rag doll onto the floor. Half of his son’s face is gone and his left leg below the knee, and his sword arm hangs crooked and bent backward, broken in several places like kindling for the fire. Vortigern looks on his son, whom he had held in his arms when he first came out wailing into the world from his mother’s quim, when he had placed a kiss upon his forehead, his first boy. He remembers how small he was, how strange it was to hold this tiny, defenseless animal with something like love.
Behind the boy’s broken corpse comes a man. He is a tall man, and broad-shouldered, and his hair is yet strong and black, and his sword is bloodied. The man looks at Vortigern and smiles, and Vortigern is angered by how many teeth, healthy and whole, the man still has left in his mouth.
“Uther,” he says.
“Vortigern.”
They watch each other. And Vortigern remembers one night, it must have been December, and the woods filled with snow, and the moon aglow over the trees, casting down molten silver. They had chased three Jutes across the forest, their breath foggy in the cold, and no sound but the breathing of the chasers and the chased, until they came upon their quarry like two foxes on a brace of hares, and made easy work of them until the snow was dark with the Jutes’ blood. Who the Jutes were and what they were doing this far from home and on a night like that he never knew, but they had emptied their purses all the same and stripped them of their coats and boots until the three lay naked on the snow. More snow fell then. They raised their heads and watched the moon glow through the flurry of snowdrops. He remembers that night, the silence, and the three naked bodies on the ground. How still it was.
“My wife,” Vortigern says now. “Did you—?”
“You mean, your daughter?”
“What’s mine is mine,” Vortigern says; and that’s all there is to say. “But is she—”
“Dead?”
Vortigern nods. “I sent her away,” he says, unwillingly. “But I did not know if she made it out in time.”
“Who gives a fuck?”
Vortigern rises from the throne. The great sword, how easy it was to once lift it. Uther smiles. He waits, at ease.
“As it comes to me it will come to you,” Vortigern says.
Their swords clash. Uther kicks the other man in the ribs and as he falls he lunges with the hidden knife and buries it in Vortigern’s neck. The blood spurts out, so much blood. It sprays the throne, the floor, Uther’s face. Vortigern raises his head one last time. For a moment he thinks he sees Merlin, standing quietly by the drapes, near the window.
Uther waits. The usurper falls.
Uther wipes the blade clean and takes his place on the throne.
2
The torches burn over Dinas Emrys. Uther’s soldiers are drunk on beer and mead. In the storerooms of the castle they had unearthed old Greek amphorae, imports from the vanished empire. Uther drinks the foreign wine, which tastes of the lead it is flavored with. He stares out over the valley. Vortigern’s corpse burns on the pyre outside the gates. The moon rises in the night sky. Uther traces features on its face, light and dark areas that could be valleys or seas. The Greek, Democritus, believed it was a ragged world, hanging in the sky, with lofty mountains and hollow valleys. And once, escorting an Irish chieftain in that barbarous northern land, they had come across an ancient mound, built there who knew when, and there, upon a stone, was carved a set of maps of the lunar face. He remembers tracing the dark features with his finger, and as the new moon rose its light traversed the passage until it hit upon that same carved stone. Uther wonders if it is possible to reach the moon, somehow, perhaps by hitching a skein of geese to a carriage, and if so, what manner of warriors would be found there. The Greek, Democritus, believed that the world and everything in it was made of tiny things called atoms, beyond which there was no division, with only a void between them. And he believed, further, that there were many worlds, some young and growing, some old and in decay. And some had moons and some had none, and some had suns and some lived in eternal darkness. And though the Greek was dead centuries before, who was to say he was wrong. For Uther too had been offered a glimpse of other worlds than this, and he had seen his fallen comrades rise, and cast in silver moonlight walk the fairy paths to the place where the fair folk dwell. He has no love for that realm or for those who dwell there. Now he drinks of the old Greek wine, and stares out into the darkness, and the charred smell of the burning corpses on the pyre fills the air. It makes his stomach rumble.
“My liege.”
“Pellinore. What word?”
The boy bobs his head. He has a long pale face and mournful eyes that remind Uther of a frog’s. He sways slightly on his feet, the effect of too much beer on someone ill accustomed to it. His shirt is specked with dried blood.
“The tally is complete. To wit, three working silver mines, a gold mine in Dolaucothi, fifteen garrisons collecting road toll, seven wineries of which only four are operational, five foundries, thirteen leatherworkers’ shops, fifteen hundred head of cattle…”
The list goes on. Uther nods in time to the words. His now, all his.
“Three sail ships, twenty skin boats, five flat-bottoms, one Roman warship, a quinquereme, unseaworthy and with no crew who has the knowledge to pilot her. Finally with regards to Dinas Emrys, a full inventory has been carried out. Three chests of coinage, five of jewelry, some of good quality, one hundred amphorae, seventeen serving girls in working order, thirteen hundred and twelve sacks of grain, a well-stocked library of seventeen books, my lord—”
Pellinore sounds wistful, here. Then he pauses, hesitant.
“Well, boy?”
“And one prisoner, sir.”
“A prisoner?”
“Perhaps it would be best if you saw him for yourself.”
Uther rises. The campfires burn to the horizon. Overhead the stars are thick as dust. This castle rises high above the hill, overlooking the river valley. Uther follows the page boy down and down and down, along a Roman spiral staircase, until it feels to him that he is burrowing into the ground, descending into the chute of a mine.
At last they reach a shaded glade. Though there are soldiers everywhere in the castle grounds, there are none here, and Uther’s skin itches. The glade is lit in molten moonlight and sitting at its heart is a calm pool of water. Uther can taste it on his tongue, the witchery of this place. He draws not his sword but a short, nasty blade he carries with him always. Meteorite iron, and crudely fashioned by a race of people who had lived and died long centuries before any Roman engineer ever set foot in this savage land of Britain.
The pool, he sees on his approach, is not abandoned. A youth lies on the bank, pale and pretty with straw-blond hair, naked from the waist up. He is chained in iron to a metal rod driven into the ground. The moon shines down on the youth, the pool, the short tended grass. Uther’s boots sink into the soft ground. Though Uther moves softly, the boy is aware of his approach. He turns his head and smiles.
It’s in the eyes, Uther thinks. The eyes that remind one of a cat or a lizard or a snake. Something not quite human, anyway. Disconcerting eyes. And the boy’s flesh is unmarred by life’s little indignities, no scars or blemishes of any sort, no pox, no acne. A lazy smile, for all that Uther is certain the iron shackles give the creature pain.
“The king is dead,” the boy says. “Long live the king.”
“Why did Vortigern have you imprisoned here?” Uther inquires.
“He had asked for a prediction, and got one he didn’t like.”
“What did you predict him, boy?”
“His death. Your coming.”
“I can see how he would not take to it kindly,” says Uther.
The boy shrugs. “Many would make out that they want to know their fate,” he says. “But no one ever does, not really. Besides, what’s there to say? Every prediction ends in death.”
“An easy trade, then.”
“If you say so, liege.”
“You have a mouth on you, don’t you, boy.”
“Yet here I am,” the boy says, and laughs, and lifts his arms to rattle at the iron chains.
“You have a name?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“May I inquire what it is?”
“What’s in a name,” the boy says. “By giving names to things we lose perception, a way to see more clearly. We give a name to things and think, by doing so, we know them.”
“His name is Merlin, sire.”
The boy, this Merlin, sticks out his tongue.
“Profession listed as astrologer and wizard. Parentage, of no mortal man.”
“Such things as you I’ve seen, in villages and hamlets all across this land,” says Uther. “And usually with their skulls bashed in as infants. How is it that you live?”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
Uther sighs.
“I can see why Vortigern chained you up,” he says. “You’d try the patience of an Eastern saint.”
“Look, sire, bash my head or set me free, but I grow tired of this conversation. I mean you no harm.”
“What future do you see for me?”
“I told you, there is but one answer, lord.”
“Before my death, you impetuous cur.” But he says it without malice.
“You’ll live,” Merlin says, simply.
“Live well?”
“You are a king.”
Uther laughs. “Why should I let you go?”
“I bear you no ill will, King Uther. And perhaps I can be useful. Sire, you have power.”
“So?”
The boy licks his lips; perhaps nervously. Though Uther doesn’t think the boy does anything without a conscious purpose.
“As bees are drawn to flowers so it is with me, lord.”
“Bees feed on flowers,” Uther says. He frowns, for he does not like the implication.
“Yet they also help them.”
“Let him go,” Uther says. The page boy, Pellinore, just stares.
“I said, let him go!”
“Lord, he’s a—” Pellinore says, and then stops, confused. “I know not the word for such as he.”
“Never question me again, Pellinore.”
Uther strides to the chained boy. He kneels beside him and pulls roughly on the iron shackles. The boy grimaces with sudden pain, the iron chafes against his naked wrists and ankles. He hisses, like a snake.
“It burns,” he says.
Uther leans in close, speaks softly. “You will serve me?”
“I will serve.”
Perhaps it is that the ambiguity of the boy’s answer registers with Uther, but does not concern him overmuch. For he is king. He pulls on the chains one last time, until the boy lies sprawled belly-down on the grass, his head nearly touching water. Uther holds the back of Merlin’s head and pushes, until the boy’s face is submerged. He watches the bubbles rise and the boy’s slim, pale body buck and thrash. At last, as the boy’s struggle grows weak, he lets go. Merlin’s head rises above the water and he sucks in air, coughing and splattering water.
“Remember this moment, boy,” Uther says. “Remember I cupped your breath in my hand, so it would not extinguish.”
“And I am ever grateful, liege. Now will you let me go?”
“I will.”
He unties him. The chains, still tethered to the iron pole, flop to the ground, useless now. No longer earthed, the prisoner regains his smile. He rubs his wrists, but makes no mention of the pain.
“It’s funny,” he says. “I waited here for you all this time, yet when you came your eyes were green, not brown.”
“Get up, Merlin.”
“My king.”
Uther strides away. The banquet waits, his men, the flames, and seventeen serving girls in good working order. “Get him something to wear and some scraps from the kitchens,” he says.
“Yes, my lord,” Pellinore says.
And this is how they meet, more or less. It can’t have meant that much to Uther. The moon shines down on that quiet glade, the placid pool. They’re creatures with an affinity to water. As Pellinore goes to help the boy, Merlin lunges at him and Pellinore jumps back, frightened. Merlin laughs and shakes his arms at him. “Woooo…” he says.
“Freak!”
“I see a great big beast riding on your back,” says Merlin; but he says it without meaning harm, and perhaps Pellinore sees that, for again he offers Merlin his arm, and after a moment the wizard accepts and, leaning on the page boy, he accompanies him out of that place and back into the world.
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