Mad Merlin

 

 

For Elias the infant King who saved me

Everyone seems to know me. After fifteen hundred years, they remember me. Everyone knows Merlin. I am, of course, delighted.

You're smiling in recognition, aren't you?

There was a time when I didn't even know myself. I was mad. I was lost. The secret of my past was hidden even from me. To discover that secret, I walked an arduous and perilous road. I would not have survived that journey, except that I had a friend at my side, a young man everyone also knows.

This is the story of how we found out who we were. This is the story of King Arthur and mad Merlin ... .

1
 
The Heath Road
 
 
Go fetch mad Merlin!” griped Ulfius to himself. “Go fetch mad Merlin!”
The warrior was incensed. He yanked gauntlets from his hands as he strode up the heath road. Next, his helmet came off, spilling sweaty black curls to his shoulders. Droplets spattered his ring mail and glinted angrily in the afternoon sun. The Pendragon emblazoned on his tabard seemed to be spewing steam. Even the roadside gorse bushes looked frustrated. “Why do I get all the rotten jobs?”
In truth, there were no good jobs in Uther Pendragon’s army. Trench digging was one of the king’s favorite pastimes. Trenches for soldiers and for soldiers’ waste. Trenches to drain swamps and fill moats. Whenever Uther felt the slightest bit discontented, another ten trenches got dug. Just now, the king of Britannia was very discontented. He wanted Igraine, Duchess of Dumnonia. Two leagues’ worth of siege tunnels and a hundred tuns’ worth of latrines had not won her for him. Igraine’s husband, Duke Gorlois, remained with his noble retainers in Castle Terrabil, uncowed by all the impressive digging. And so—
“Go fetch mad Merlin!”
Ulfius glowered. Dark brows lowered stormily over steel-gray eyes. He was too old for this duty. At thirty-two, he was a seasoned fighter. He had fought for Ambrosius. He had fought against Vortigern. And now, he was Uther’s man. They were the greatest rulers Britannia had seen since the time of the Romans—if any ruler could be called great since the Romans. There had been Constantines and Caesars, true, but in name only. Even King Uther ruled only the lower third of the isle, and that tenuously. And whenever he or any other self-proclaimed king of Britannia grew vexed or perplexed, he sent for Merlin.
The mad mage was purported to reside above. The hill had a terrifying aspect. It seemed a giant’s head—a Pictish giant with savagely shaved temples and a violent shock of hair at its crown. Although sheep cropped the grass on the sides of the hill, they avoided the top. There, green blades reached a man’s hips and heath brushed his shoulders. It was a mad place, and even the sheep knew it. It was like many other such places in Britannia. Whenever a Roman road crossed desolate ground outside a city or fort, the route attracted beggars and tinkers and vagabonds. They huddled in what might loosely be considered a society—lunatics, brigands, demoniacs, and the occasional Caledonian. They lay there in wait of travelers too weak or stupid to defend themselves, or too soft-minded to resist tossing them a few coin.
That’s where Merlin would be, among the outcasts. That’s where Ulfius headed.
It was a weary climb. Ulfius fastened the gauntlets to his skirt of tasses. With each step he took, the metal gloves clanged against his left cuisse. He’d been advised not to ride his horse. Horses incited the lunatics. They thought a man on a horse was rich. Madmen fought with nails and teeth, sharp rocks and sticks—a dirty battle. And what honor was there in killing madmen?
“More honor than in becoming one,” Ulfius growled. Sweat nettled his neck. His mail-quilt seeped slowly. His hip-slung gauntlets kept coming unhinged and falling to the ground. He himself was coming unhinged. “Ah, there are the grubbers now.”
Beyond a corner of scrubby gorse, a squalid panorama opened. Hovels crowded both sides of the road. The best and tallest were round shelters of stick and sod, in the style of Celtic barbarians. Others were built of barrel sections, ruined wagons, remnants of crate, and whatever other debris could be tricked from passersby. A few shelters were no more than holes dug in the ground, with husks of oak bark perched above them to keep rain out. The folk who dwelt in them would have found Uther’s latrines spacious and bright.
The fairer structures dribbled gray soot from their roofs, evidence of a fire within and of a mind able to control fire. These would be brigands poised for highway robbery, or perhaps tinkers—wandering tricksters with the blood of Old Pharaoh in their veins. Even now, some of the inhabitants poked ruddy faces from their hovels. Eyes gleamed avariciously with the reflection of Ulfius’s armor.
The lesser denizens of the heath emerged too. Those who had anything to sell brought it with them as they trundled toward the road. Chipped amphorae, stained scarves, worn-out bits, torn saddle blankets, skins said to contain ardent spirits, confiscated writs—anything that might bring Roman coin. The worst of the lot had nothing to sell—madmen, demoniacs, lepers, and the accursed. Beggars. They clawed their way as best they could from their foul holes.
Ulfius simultaneously felt his stomach sink and his bile rise. The next moments would be tricky. Merlin would be one of these tattered lunatics, yes, but to find him Ulfius would have to ask a brigand or a tinker. They ruled the heath—the more able and ruthless preying upon the less so. For all its disease and starvation and squalor, the heath bore a remarkable resemblance to Britannia as a whole.
Tyranny and want. They were the only means left to unite the people.
Ulfius carried no Roman coin. That’s what they really wanted. Other mints were mixed with iron. Pendragon shillings were as debased as the rest, but they were all Ulfius bore. Twenty shillings filled a pouch beneath his mail shirt. He had the uneasy premonition that shillings and shirt both would be gone soon enough.
He approached an old tinker woman who sat beside bundled faggots of oak. She was a toothless hag. Her skin was baked into cracked lines, and her eyes were little more than slits of white.
“Firewood,” she croaked as Ulfius stopped before her. “Firewood.”
Ulfius waved an off-putting hand. “Thank you, no. I don’t need firewood—”
“Everybody needs firewood.” The woman’s ragged clothing smelled of smoke and age.
“I’m looking for someone—”
“I’m someone—”
“A lunatic. The man I’m looking for is a lunatic, and you certainly aren’t a lunatic,” Ulfius flattered.
“Neither am I a man, but you didn’t mention that,” she replied.
A crowd of beggars was gathering, their hands held out imploringly to Ulfius. Each poured a lament past putrid teeth. One tried to snatch away his gauntlets.
Ulfius slapped the fingers. “Get back!”
The beggars cringed. They were well acquainted with the applications of fear. The effect lasted only a moment before they pressed again toward the soldier, their din resuming.
Ulfius shouted over them to the woman, “Do you know where I might find Merlin?”
The crone replied, “I sell firewood.”
Ulfius fished the coin bag from about his neck and jingled it once. “Were I to buy some firewood, might you tell me where to find Merlin?”
“I might,” the crone replied. “A Roman silver piece per bundle.”
“A Roman silver—!” Ulfius began in indignation. Gathering himself, he smiled. “I haven’t any Roman coins, but—” he gingerly plucked a shilling from the drawstring pouch “—I do have Pendragon coinage.”
She spat. “I’d not surrender good oak for your Pendragon coin. And I’d certainly not surrender Merlin for it. Go back to your stockades.”
Ulfius waved his hand, only then noting that his right gauntlet had disappeared among the pawing throng. “No. You misunderstand. I don’t want to imprison Merlin. I want to hire him.
“I’m Merlin!” interrupted a man wearing Ulfius’s left gauntlet.
The soldier grabbed back his gauntlet and considered the thief. He was white-haired, wild-eyed, rag-cloaked, gaunt, and craven. Ulfius had last seen Merlin a decade before, from a distance, but the sorcerer had looked no better than this.
“You are Merlin?”
Another lunatic, slightly more tattered and scrofulous than the first, answered, “No, I am Merlin.”
The cry was picked up through the dingy crowd. “No, I am Merlin!” “I am Merlin!” “I am Merlin!” Every idiot on the heath suddenly was the mad mage. Even the tinker with the firewood put in her bid. She was one of the few Ulfius could immediately eliminate. Most of the others could have been he. They pressed up around him, shouting, pawing, begging—each addled mind trying to use the name to his or her advantage.
“Enough!” Ulfius shouted, drawing his sword and waving it above their heads.
Lunatics fell back, trembling. The shouts ceased on their lips.
“That’s better. You all may look like Merlin, may sound like him and even smell like him, but only one of you could be he. Therefore, I propose a contest. The winner, the true Merlin, will receive this bag of coin and accompany me to aid Uther Pendragon—there to receive great riches.”
A happy sound moved among the tattered throng.
“Any losers, though—any who falsely claim to be Merlin and waste my time in proving the lie—will be slain immediately upon discovery. Now, who among you is he?”
The heath was silent save for two idiots—the two who had first laid their claims. Perhaps one was the mage. Perhaps neither was. Perhaps both were too mad to understand the consequences of a lie.
Ulfius was chagrined. What honor was there in killing lunatics?
He sheathed his sword and waved the men toward a clear spot, where the grass had been trampled flat. “Let’s spread out a little bit, provide some room. There we are, and may the best Merlin win.” That proposal sent a shiver through Ulfius. “Right, then. Merlin One—that is your official contest title—you must prove your magical might by lifting…” Ulfius cast his glance around the trammeled spot. His eyes settled on a likely stone, half buried among tall grasses. “Yonder stone overhead, using only enchantment.”
The madman clumped over to the spot and squatted, staring at the smooth curve of the stone. He rumpled his brow. “It’ll be quite a feat—”
“Not greater than the great Merlin,” Ulfius pointed out.
“No,” Merlin One allowed with a kind of growl. “No, indeed.” He cracked his knuckles, spit on his hands, and launched into a dance.
Ulfius crossed arms over his chest—and noted both his gauntlets were missing. He snarled and studied the crowd. The gloves were nowhere to be seen. Only wide, imploring eyes greeted him. Someone in this press of unwashed bodies had a knack for sleight-of-hand.
Merlin One did not. He culminated his summonation spell with a series of ineffectual hand gestures. Giving up, he said, “The stone is too large. It is too well lodged.”
Ulfius felt his stomach clench. What could he do with this wretch? “You can’t possibly be the true Merlin.”
Merlin One snorted. With renewed vigor, he resumed his artless clog dance.
Merlin Two watched with impatient amusement. “What do you expect from the son of an incubus?”
And then, what no one expected occurred. The rock shifted. It more than shifted. It jiggled and struggled up from the embrace of earth and grass.
Ulfius gaped in astonishment. The stone was rising from the ground.
Though momentarily stunned immobile, Merlin One resumed his dance. He accentuated the shoving motions that had given the stone its first magical jolt. It more than jolted now. The ground rumbled. The grassy verge around it split. The rock that emerged shrugged off crumbling earth to reveal an edge four feet—eight feet—twelve feet in length. Its lower reaches were wet and black.
“Merlin?” Ulfius gasped, disbelieving.
The block, twice the height of a man and perhaps equal to one of the Avebury megaliths, broke free of the soil. A gaping hole lay beneath it. Mud sloughed from the edges of the stone, falling into the hole.
Merlin One stood to one side of the mammoth rock and gestured excitedly at it. “Do you see? I am Merlin. I am Merlin!” He seemed as surprised by this conclusion as anyone. “Where would you like me to put the stone?”
Breathless, Ulfius shrugged and muttered, “Anywhere.”
A pernicious impulse jagged across the madman’s eyebrow. He crooked a pair of index fingers toward Merlin Two. Without hesitation, the massive stone slammed down atop the astonished impostor. A dark pool seeped out from beneath the stone.
“You said the false Merlin would die immediately,” Merlin One reminded.
“I…I…You killed him!” Ulfius gabbled.
The stone shifted again. It vaulted up suddenly from the bashed ground where it had landed. In the well beneath it, blood and mashed bone reassembled themselves. Merlin Two formed under the hovering stone. Humors fled into once-ruptured membranes, which sealed themselves into a pair of glowering eyes.
Merlin Two was displeased with the result of the contest. He clapped his hands together. A sound like lightning came from him. The megalith split into two halves, a pair of hands poised to smash a fly between them.
Merlin One was that fly.
There came a second gory moment. The first Merlin sprayed out evenly across the others gathered there.
“You—you killed…You are Merlin?”
The drops lingered for a mere instant on the uplifted faces. Red liquid converged in the gap and hurled the halves of stone apart. Merlin One re-formed. He too was angry. He flung his hands up. The two hunks of stone leaped outward.
Ulfius had to duck to avoid being walloped by a slab of rock. When he rose, he found himself in the midst of an impromptu spell battle.
Merlins One and Two were at the heart of it, but every last lunatic competed. Lightning bolts lashed from one woman’s hands. A putrid cyclone made its unwanted way through the crowd. A few of the idiots grew great fangs and claws. Others transformed into half animals.
“They cannot all be Merlin!”
 
Copyright © 2000 by J. Robert King