Love is given in Nature… the qualities inducing love induce mutual approach.
Spells and magical acts in general draw men together and make them share experiences at a distance… a word spoken quietly acts on what is far off, and makes something separated by an enormous distance listen; and from this one can learn the unity of all.
- Plotinus, Enneads, c. 270 AD.
The soul is all things together… and since it is the centre of all things, it has the forces of all… it is the true connection of all things.
But why do we think that love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.
- Fr Marsilio Ficino, De Vita and De Amore (Latin commentary on Plato's Symposium), 1484. Translated by Jayne, 1985.
When Merlin recovered his senses, he was sprawled facedown on a stretch of sand. Raising himself and opening his eyes, he looked wildly around, and saw that he was in a small rock chamber, lighted by a single torch ensconced in a wall. By its light, he beheld that he was alone, but for a single damsel who stood watching him from a little distance away.
He scrambled to his feet, and he heard sounds echoing through the rock, which at first he took to be the surging and breaking of faraway ocean waves. Soon, however, he perceived they were the muted voices of hundreds of people, groaning and sighing together in some nightmarish chorus.
"No," he said, as he remembered all that had transpired, and recognised the features of the woman who stood in front of him. "Gwen? Why are you here? You're not… "
"Be not afraid," said the woman. Her voice was as soft as a silk train whispering on flagstones, yet metallic as a plucked harp string. "I wear the face of one you know, but I am no human woman. I am a Charis. In your language, I am a spiritus, or genius."
Merlin drew back involuntarily. "What do you want with me?" he said.
Now that Merlin looked at the creature properly, he saw that she was not an exact replica of Gwen. It was as though someone had painted a portrait of Guinevere imperfectly, from memory. For in some respects Gwen's features were too blemishless to be truly mortal, and in others, they were misty and unclear, with the quality of a reflection wavering in still water. The arrangement of the woman's hair was regal, and her pale rose-hued gown was likewise of a splendid appearance, though both were in a style that was antiquated and otherworldly. A brilliant light shone on her, though she stood some way from the single torch.
"I arrested your fall, young warlock," said the being. "I had thought to offer you aid in this place."
"And what do you want in return?" said Merlin, on his guard. Where were Finna and Elyan? "In my experience, magical beings don't offer help for nothing."
The spirit, whatever it was, did not move, but the light about its person blazed brighter, and its voice became louder, vibrating with brassy tones. "What payment did you expect when you saved the Druid boy's life? When you saved the Pendragon sorceress? When you spared the Great Dragon?"
"… nothing."
"And you are a magical being, Emrys, are you not?"
"I suppose I am," Merlin conceded.
"Then you have demonstrated that some magical beings act without self-interest. So why doubt my motives? In this realm, whatever you hold in your heart shapes the world around you. And there is much shadow inside you, Emrys, but there is light, also. That spark of fire within you called out to me. I saw you drowning in darkness, and I brought you to this place to recover."
"Then I suppose I owe you thanks," said Merlin.
"You owe me nothing," said the spirit. "I am what men in your world called Charity, or Grace, in earlier days, though they have forgotten my existence now. I am help given without forethought of return. I am virtue that is its own reward. I am no stranger to you, for I have lived within your breast since you were a boy."
Merlin was silent for a bit. Then he said, "Where are my companions? Elyan and Finna? Are they all right?"
"I cannot say."
"What is this place? Is this where men of the Old Religion go when they die? I need to find my father, Balinor. Can you tell me if any other Dragonlords are here?"
The spirit shook her head. "I am sorry, Emrys. Some of your questions I do not have leave to answer, for such knowledge is concealed until you pass beyond the Veil for the final time. And most of your questions I do not have the means to answer, for I am not a spirit of gnosis, to offer up the wisdom of the underworld. I have but the power to aid, not to teach."
"Then what can you tell me?"
"I cannot tell you where the Dragonlords lie. There is no one destination to which all men of the Old Religion go. For the paths that men tread after death are as many and varied as those they walk in life. As for this place, we are in a shifting world, somewhere between the living and the dead. There are numberless spirits here, and living souls who wander, trapped, like you. Many will never find their way back to life again..."
"Elyan's father... He said the Goddess had put her mark on me. That her servants wanted me."
"There is an aspect of the Goddess who rules over the land of Death. She marked you of old. Her servants hunt you even now. It were well you concluded your business swiftly and departed this place before they found you. I have concealed you, for a time, but they have much power here."
"What do they want with me?"
"Most of the Goddess' servants hold you a traitor to her will. They would bind you here, where they, as you, are stronger than in the world of flesh and blood."
"Then I will find my father and get out," said Merlin. "Please. Tell me how to find him."
"In this place," said the spirit, "your thoughts form the world around you. Your father is as near as your breath, yet farther than the stars. For the gulfs within the human heart dwarf any distance in space. But you possess a gift, Emrys, an advantage over most souls here. You are practised in shaping invisible things. Working the Art Magic is not so different from travelling in these lands."
"What must I do?"
"I can only aid you in remembering what you already know. What did you do when you looked in the Crystals? When you first spoke the Dragontongue? Perhaps you should recall when you hatched the new dragon into the world, for you brought something from death into life, then... Magic lies in knowing the true nature of a thing, and in seeing that all things are bound to each other. A sorcerer can draw fire to himself, or fling it away, just as the lodestone draws iron, and the lunar sphere pulls the tides. He must develop affinity with the thing he seeks..."
Merlin closed his eyes and went down on one knee, splaying his right hand on the floor of the chamber. He wiggled his fingers slightly, feeling every grain of sand rasping against his skin. He took a deep breath, giving his head a little shake, as if to throw off every distraction.
There was a pulse under the ground here, faint but insistent. Remembering the spirit's words about how this land shaped itself to a person's will, Merlin slowed his breathing, emptying himself of everything but the sensation of the sand particles sliding beneath his fingers. His heartbeat and the pulse in the ground slowly began to synchronise. The flow of his breaths, in and out, became one with the sighing and groaning borne on the wind.
In its rawest, purest form, his gift had manifested in childhood from something unbidden and untaught. That old magic, based on instinct and fancy, had faded as he'd grown older. He had gained control, but lost the spontaneity and freedom of his childish spellcraft. And yet there was a place in him where time stood still, where the playfulness of his childhood self still existed.
He had not known anything about the theory of sorcery in those early days. He had only desired things, and wished for them, with the simplicity of a babe. An infant was totally dependent, a screaming ball of needs. It cried out, with blind, trusting faith, for milk, for the warmth of an embrace, and the world shaped itself to its wanting. How could something so powerless make the adults around it dance like puppets on strings? It was because, Merlin realised, a bond of sympathy existed between the child and its caregiver.
Sympathy was what the scholars of magic termed an attractive force. Some named it Eros, calling it an angel or a daimon of desire. There were all kinds of sympathies in the natural world, such as those which drew the heavy elements to the centre of the Earth, or made Fire rise, or stirred the tides, or made the heavenly spheres revolve. And the child Merlin, somehow, had managed to create a sympathy not just with the people around him, but with the forces of Nature. No one had told him it was impossible. He had wished for things, and the raw matter of the world had shaped itself according to his desire. Perhaps even an adult sorcerer could, if he were audacious or child-like enough, stand as a fulcrum between all these great natural motions.
Merlin became vaguely aware that his fingers were tracing patterns in the soil, abstract shapes he did not consciously recognise, but which reminded him of the mystical glyphs used by magicians to amplify their power.
He remembered Finna telling him that he must be an intermediary, connected to the land in place of the Druids. He must be the anchor point for Arthur, for it was not sufficient for a king to be crowned by the bishops anointed with the Holy Spirit. The king must also be rooted in the soil of his country, in the Earth which the Druids tended.
I am the land, and the land is the king. The king's roots are within the land... the king is within me.
Dragons, Kilgharrah had said, are creatures of mind, and will, and speech. Language is essential to our nature.
There was a place within Merlin that still held the memory of Balinor. It was a place he had not returned to since that fateful day, for he had experienced so much death and loss in his life that he could not afford to dwell on any one memory for too long.
I felt him there with me, Gaius, Merlin had said, that very first night after he had used the Dragonlord's gift, and driven Kilgharrah away from Camelot.
He'll always be with you, Gaius had said.
I hope so.
Balinor was a warning, a vision of Merlin's future. He was a reminder of what a sorcerer would become if a wedge were driven between him and the king he served. Without his old king, without his fellow Dragonlords, his wife or kin, Balinor had stagnated like a tree cut off from its roots. We need connection to others to remain whole, Merlin realised. Perhaps sorcerers most of all. Maybe that was why I was so desperate to leave Ealdor. I knew I wouldn't survive without somewhere to belong...
And Uther was the inverse of Balinor, a reminder of what a king, alienated from the land and the Old Religion, could transform into. By destroying the practitioners of magic, he had stolen the hope of community from his own daughter, and sealed her doom as well. Merlin felt an echo of shame as he remembered his role in keeping Morgana isolated. I could have told her there were other people like her. I could have helped her. What might she have become instead...
That alienation will never happen to Arthur and me, Merlin thought. We are connected to each other still. And now he knows what I kept hidden, nothing else must be allowed to come between us. I cannot allow it. The consequences for either of us would be too dire...
But right at this moment, it was a connection to Balinor, not Arthur, that he needed.
There was silence in the chamber for several heartbeats. Then the warlock's dark head rose, with such gravity, it seemed to bear an invisible weight on its brow. The eyes snapped open, flaring with golden light.
"Balinor," Merlin said, and the ground quivered beneath his feet. The agitated sand under the warlock's right hand shone, lines of arcane fire tracing curves and angles in strange geometries. The torch flame on the wall streamed in a sudden burst of wind, and then went out, plunging all into darkness.
A moment later, light returned, and Merlin saw a portal in the rock face ahead of him, a pair of sturdy stone doors. He stood, and walked towards the exit.
The spirit which had taken Gwen's form was no longer to be seen.
Charity and grace have abandoned me, Merlin thought. Perhaps they have no power beyond this door.
Or perhaps, more comfortingly, as the spirit had said, those virtues were still within Merlin, even if they no longer took a visible form.
If he could call out to an unknown spirit in this place without even meaning to, surely that meant his magic could also span the distance between him and his father. But… did that mean there were other, darker things in this world that would also be alerted by his magic, things that would hear him blundering about in their realm?
It didn't matter. Whatever was waiting for him, he must pass through it to reach his father, to find Elyan and Finna, and to return to the land of the living before the dragon broke her peace. Before she vented her fury on the innocent citizens of Albion, and punished Arthur for his father's sins.
Merlin raised a hand, and the doors before him sprang open at his touch. He went through.
When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.
Arthur fell back, breathing hard, his sweat-soaked fringe plastered to his brow. He had thought the long hair of the Danes impractical at first, but he envied it now, for in battle they wore it tied back and cunningly braided so that it would not impair their vision.
When the combat had first begun, Arthur had determined to take the defensive, as he was in strange company and had multiple disadvantages. He had never seen Gunnar fight before, and although he had witnessed one or two Danish soldiers fighting in Camelot, those men had been more conventional fighters. There was something different about Holgier's men.
Gunnar's speed and strength were almost beyond Arthur's belief. The lad had sensed Arthur giving him an opening, and, perhaps emboldened by his familiarity with the weapons and the presence of his countrymen, had been only too happy to take the lead. He had come at Arthur in a direct assault, his feints deft and his footwork nimble, and when his blade struck, there was a tremendous amount of weight behind it, so that Arthur could scarcely credit that such power came from that slender, albeit well-muscled, frame.
Arthur had remained on the defensive for a long time, and he suspected the Northmen had developed doubts about his supposed valour. He began to get a read on Gunnar. The youth was an exceptional fighter, which fit with his station as a berserker. He was an elite warrior, accustomed to victory in the most deadly combat. But although Arthur and Gunnar were the same age, there was a difference between them.
Gunnar was no king. Arthur suspected he had no wife or children, either. He fought the way Arthur had done as the First Knight of Camelot, the way Arthur still did sometimes: with single-minded ferocity and no regard for his safety. He exerted his body to the point where it seemed superhuman, and he had no fear of death, only of dishonour. Perhaps he thought Arthur's initial caution shameful, or mistook it for indecision.
He's swift, Arthur had thought. Yet he hits with deadly force. His blade moves with the speed of a rapier and cuts like a broadsword. I have no armour, and can't afford to take a direct hit. I will have to wear him down slowly. This will be a war of attrition; it will be good if he thinks me cowardly and expends his strength against my shield.
The Dane lad moved like nothing Arthur had seen before, but over time he observed a pattern in the Northman's approaches. When Gunnar's movements were most controlled, most like conventional fighters, his blows were less forceful. It was when Gunnar put on a burst of speed or unnatural strength that something changed, and Arthur saw Gunnar's balance shift more recklessly. The way he lunged at those times reminded Arthur of the tales that berserkers got their strength from wild beasts.
When he is pressing me hard he gives me an opening, Arthur thought.
His first counter-strike took the Dane by surprise. He put all his strength behind the blow, and his blade slipped over Gunnar's shield and bit into the left shoulder. Instantly, Arthur danced away, knowing he could not afford to take a hit in return. When he was safely out of range he looked at Gunnar in satisfaction.
The Dane's shoulder had been cut, but it bled no more than a drop or two.
It was Arthur's turn to be surprised. I felt the cut go deeper than that. By the saints… is it true the skin of these warriors turns the very blade?
It was going to be a longer combat than Arthur anticipated.
The fight stretched on, Arthur and the Dane exchanging several blows. Arthur was more controlled, more strategic, and landed more hits than his opponent. But since Gunnar's arm was hefty, and he seemed to shrug off even direct cuts, and barely tired for all his exertions, Arthur looked much the worse for it. Both men had sweat pouring down their limbs, but the liquid on Arthur's body ran with more red.
This can't go on, Arthur thought. He'll wear me down first at this rate. If I'm to win, to survive, I must change the game. An idea came into his mind. It was audacious, and he would only get one chance to attempt it. He returned to the defensive, conserving his strength and speed. He hoped that Gunnar, with the self-assurance born of sheer strength, would assume Arthur was merely tiring from the unrelenting assault and loss of blood. And, after all, Arthur was.
When he saw the next opening, Arthur took it without hesitation. He turned his shield, angling it so that he deflected Gunnar's strike away. At the same time he feinted, and then his blade doubled back past Gunnar's shield in two swift motions. The first cut struck Gunnar's sword arm at the wrist joint, weakening his grasp on his weapon, and with the second sweep, the edge of Arthur's blade hooked under the hilt of Gunnar's sword, and tossed it into the air.
Arthur did not have the finesse or showmanship of Gawaine, from whom he'd learnt this technique, and he didn't have a free arm to catch Gunnar's sword in any case. But he sent the Northman's blade tumbling away, almost beyond the circle of his compatriots, and then Arthur's own sword was at the thunderstruck Gunnar's throat.
"Yield," said Arthur, loudly and forcefully. "I have bested you."
A sudden bestial fury burned in Gunnar's brown eyes, but he controlled himself, and his gaze darted towards Holgier.
Holgier gave a guffaw of approval. "I thought Utherson would disappoint us! The cunning dragon was hiding his tricks all along. Well, Gunnar has lost the combat, Utherson. His life is in your hands. By right it belongs to you."
Arthur, now that he had assurance the fight was over, pulled his weapon away from Gunnar's throat immediately, feeling weariness crash over his body. "I have no desire to harm any of you. Much less such a valiant warrior, who acquitted himself so well against an unknown foe."
"Gracious in victory, and humble," said Holgier. "Perhaps there are things we may learn from you, too, Utherson. The combat is concluded!"
Immediately the men in the circle moved, some going to Gunnar, while others went to Arthur. The two combatants were bade sit down, and offered beer and smoked meats. A fire was kindled. Rough-handed men washed the blood from Arthur's wounds, before cleansing them with wine, and rubbing balsam on the cuts with surprising tenderness. Arthur, remembering the times Gaius had fussed over him after jousts, and the touch of Gwen's gentle hands as she'd bound his wounds, felt a wave of homesickness.
Holgier was absorbed in some deep conversation with two of his older warriors. After a while, he came and sat beside Arthur.
"I do not think you realise what you achieved by enduring against one of our own," Holgier said to Arthur. "Berserkers have no fear of death, because we have already visited its domain."
"Visited it?" asked Arthur, feeling light-headed. The beer he'd gulped down was strong, and had a strange taste in it. "What do you mean? A sorceress conjured the shade of my mother, once… I got to speak with her, or at least something resembling her. But you are no sorcerer, are you?"
"The poets say," replied Holgier, "there was a time when warriors and sorcerers were not different from each other. In our age everything has become divided. Men are specialised, and spend their whole lives learning one craft: war, priestcraft, sorcery, smithing. In the old days our ancestors mastered many arts. Perhaps they lived longer, or were merely more powerful in those days. But, even now, just as a sorcerer may pick up a sword, a warrior may call upon forces that are magical."
"Is this how you fight dragons?" Arthur said. "Will you explain it to me now?"
"We believe," said Holgier, "that you are worthy to learn something of our craft. Had we time, we could have initiated and tested you properly. But the skalds speak of a great king in the south who unites the Brythons. And, we shall know soon enough… " He paused. "A long time ago, our ancestors, who were great warriors, learnt the trick of parting their souls from their bodies."
Arthur's head began to pound. "How does that help you fight?" he asked. He was just now feeling the exhaustion of the long trek through the woods, the terrible fight, the many wounds he'd taken and the blood he'd lost. He remembered riding into the flames of the dragon, ready to welcome death. After all, the beast had said he'd see his father again, and sometimes, the prospect of dying didn't seem so bad. If it weren't for the duty he owed to his people by ruling them, wouldn't it be restful to lay this burden down? Even for just a little while...
"We are hunters," said Holgier. "In order to hunt a beast, we must first develop a bond with it. Understand its heart. Study its ways. Speak to it, soul to soul."
"Like Merlin did with the dragon," said Arthur. "Do you say there are people who can commune with beasts, even without sorcery?"
"Indeed," said Holgier. "And one can do more than that. One can take the soul of a beast into his own body."
A strange feeling began to steal over Arthur, almost of dread. "The stories… that you can become animals… "
"None of us have that power," said Holgier. "Though perhaps we could acquire it, if we wished. Among us, when we hunt a wolf or a bear, we borrow the strength of the hunter after we kill it. We consume it, take its power into us. Just as they do when they hunt us. The priests understand. This is my body, they say, when they offer us the Host. And this is my blood. There are ways to take the nature of a thing into oneself..."
"Is that why you want the dragon?"
"There is nothing strange in it. The world is made up of hunters and prey. Dragons feast on us when they can. Why shouldn't we feast on them? They drove us before them like vermin, once, until our ancestors rose up and learnt how to slay them. Dragons are the greatest of hunters, the most magical of creatures. A drop of blood from one's heart makes one a poet, with knowledge of all languages. Smearing their blood on one's flesh makes one invulnerable... you are squeamish, Pendragon. I told you we were hunters, as the dragon is. Don't despise a predator for its nature."
Arthur shook his head. "I just don't see how this is going to help me fight a dragon."
"You will see soon," said Holgier, "for when one eye closes, the other opens. To fight a dragon, we must take on the dragon-nature. You must learn to change your nature."
"And how do I do that?"
"By learning to part your soul from your body."
The flesh on the back of Arthur's neck prickled. "That sounds like dying."
"I told you we do not fear death, because we have seen it."
Arthur looked around. The other Danes had stopped talking, and had taken up positions around the clearing again, mirroring the circle they had made during the combat. They bore weapons and strange tools in their hands. Arthur felt drunk and light-headed. His head swam, and his vision seemed altered. The fire burned strangely slowly, and he could see each individual flame curling and dancing like a living thing, smoke twining upwards like ash ribbons. His eye was drawn to a drop of sweat on Holgier's brow, which gleamed golden in the firelight as it traced a path down his skin.
Arthur stood up suddenly. "So this is what you meant to show me. A ritual. Some kind of warrior rite that will bring me to the verge of death, and make me a berserker if I survive. Is that correct? I have heard of such things being practiced in the olden times."
"That is correct," said Holgier, watching him intently. His eyes were so blue Arthur felt he could fall into them.
"You know that magic is still against the law in most kingdoms. The Church condemns it."
"We all saw," said Holgier, "what happened when the Archbishop tried to enforce that rule on your Herald. You of all people cannot mistrust sorcery."
"I mistrust it not from Merlin," said Arthur. "Because I know him, and what he has done for me. But my sister is a sorcerer. The majority of attempts on my life have come from sorcerers. I may grudgingly trust magic in the hands of someone I trust as my own self, but I am still wary of it."
"A wise choice," said Holgier. "But remember what you thought of dragons before you heard the Dragon Queen speak. It was only after you encountered her that you saw there was beauty in them, that they were not all evil. I think your Herald has begun to show you that the same truth applies to sorcery. But if you are to be king in Albion, king of all Albion, you cannot simply take the word of your counsellors. You will never be a sorcerer, but there are truths of magic you can experience directly. They are your right, if you are a true warrior."
Arthur took a deep breath. This was beyond the pale of foolishness.
"Describe the rite to me," he said.
"It is very simple," said Holgier. "When our youths are initiated, they are cast out of their homes, driven to the borders of our civilisation. They must learn to survive and live as wild beasts, and find their way back home. Once they have proven their hardiness, they are welcomed back into our fellowship."
"But you said you don't have time to initiate me."
"No, Arthur Utherson," said Holgier. "Yours will be the final test, a mirror of the first initiation. Every man in this clearing has lived through it. In this rite, your body will be wounded unto the point of mortal peril. Your soul will be cast out of its home, this body, to wander the wilderness. If it finds its way back, if the body and soul reunite and knit together, they become something strong beyond imagining."
"If they fail?" said Arthur.
"Then the body dies, and the soul passes on to its next resting place," said Holgier.
"This is deep and dangerous magic," said Arthur. "It is folly to risk a king's body like this, when my Herald will return soon, and overpower the dragon himself."
"Arthur Utherson," said Holgier. "You risk your kingly body every day you ride on the battlefield, or joust, or charge a dragon, and for far less potential return. We have heard of your deeds in the North. You are not like other southern kings, who think the royal body is a corpse to sit at home in a jewelled vault, embalmed and dressed in fine silks before its time, protected from the elements. You understand that in the Old Way, the king's body belongs to the land and its people, and is the first to be offered up for them. We saw you do so for your Herald, whom others called a boy of no consequence.
"Tell me truly, does it sit well with you that your Herald should risk all for you, sojourning to the realms of magic to gain wisdom and power, perilling his own body, while you do nothing?"
"Indeed it does not," said Arthur. "And would that I could aid him with the warrior's art that I know. But this… ritualism, combining swordcraft with magics of the Old Religion, is strange to me."
"This is not so strange to you as you think, Pendragon. When you southerners are knighted, you spend the final Vigil in fasting and prayer, emptying your body of all impurities, filling it with the Holy Ghost. After meditation you are anointed by the Archbishop, and you receive a quest in a vision… is this not your final rite? Our way is the older way. We require no priest's mediation. Your body is emptied in a more brutal fashion. This is the warrior's initiation. This is how knights are made among us. It is no different to your rite, only older and fiercer."
"Do you really think this will make me able to withstand a dragon?" Arthur asked.
"Pendragon," said Holgier, "the power one acquires during this quest depends on his soul's nature. Some warriors gain the ferocity of the wolf, others the strength of the bear, yet others the cunning of the raven. You will come back with as much glory as you are able to win for yourself, just as a knight who raids an enemy's fort brings back as much treasure as his valour affords him. It depends on how long you can endure the final sacrifice… what visions you see, and what insights you bring back, only you can know. What nature of beast are you?"
Arthur did not know what made him assent to this madness. He felt he was being borne by some impetus beyond his control, and yet, paradoxically, he felt he was making a free choice for the first time in years, breaking free of the restraints placed upon him as king.
Things moved quickly after that. Holgier brought forth a goblet filled with mead, and mixed into it a dark liquid from an ornate bottle. He bade Arthur drink it, and the concotion felt like liquid fire, burning Arthur's throat and warming him all the way down to his insides, where the warmth spread to his extremities and filled him with a tingling energy. He felt a sudden roaring in his ears.
"What was that?" he asked.
"Dragon's blood," said Holgier.
"Dragon's blood!" Arthur spluttered. "Isn't that poison?"
"The dose makes the poison," Holgier said. "It may kill or cure, depending on the constitution."
They stripped Arthur then, anointing him with strange unguents, and afterwards placing a loincloth on him of barbaric design, with nothing else to preserve his modesty. Holgier stood in front of Arthur, sipped a few drops of dragon's blood from the bottle, and suddenly spat in Arthur's eye. Arthur felt fire spreading through the organ, and his head felt fit to burst.
"You've blinded me," he said.
"It is but temporary," said Holgier. "The Eye of Flesh must close, so that the Eye of Spirit may open."
As Arthur reeled from the overwhelming sensations punishing his body, men came to either side of him, bracing him. They began to lead him towards the edge of the clearing, towards a gigantic tree.
What had Holgier said? That the taste of dragon's blood could give one knowledge of all languages? Perhaps that were true, because the forest around Arthur seemed to be roaring with sounds now. As well as the pounding in his ears, he could hear the grass and trees themselves whispering to him. The calls of the birds and the cries of beasts seemed like the war cries of his vassals in Camelot, acclaiming him as the lord of hunters.
And perhaps Holgier was right about the Eye of Spirit opening - or was Arthur merely hallucinating? What would ingesting raw dragon's blood do to a man's mind and vision? For as they approached the tree, which had been inscribed with mystic runes by the knives of the Danes, Arthur seemed to see through the soil itself. The roots of the tree snaked downwards, writhing on and on, until they struck into the very heart of the world. And the trunk of the tree was all afire with burning runes, and its branches stretched impossibly high, reaching into the heavens, holding up the sky, and its leaves unfolded as a billion shining stars, each containing entire worlds.
They bound Arthur's arms and legs with rope, and hoisted him off the ground, like a prisoner about to be executed by crucifixion. He swung in the air for a moment, suspended from a branch, and then the men down below pulled the ropes tight, and Arthur's back was slammed against the massive trunk. The bark of the tree pressed against Arthur's flesh, and the tree seemed to bind to his own nerves, so that he could almost feel its roots questing in the dark earth, and its branches waving in the sky.
He looked down at the men below him, gathered around the tree's base, singing in a foreign language. The words rang in Arthur's mind, the meanings clear as a bell.
This is Gungnir, the Holy Spear.
This is the Weapon of the King of Men,
The God Who Sacrifices Himself to Himself.
This is the Rite of the Quest-Giver,
The Wayfarer, Battle-Friend,
Who Passes Beyond Death and Returns.
They brought forth a long spear, each of them holding it with an attitude of reverence. Holgier looked up at Arthur, seeming to take aim, and Arthur realised that they meant to slay him with it.
But why do they call that weapon Gungnir, he thought. Surely this is the Trident of the Fisher King. Or the Lance of Longinus, which pierced the body of Our Lord.
And Arthur remembered Merlin prattling on the way back from the Perilous Lands.
The Druids say the king and his land are one, Merlin had said. When the Fisher King failed in his destiny, he lost the protection of the Old Religion. His body was wounded, and his land was wounded also. When the king and land are not one, when they turn against each other, they sicken in spirit. When they come together they are healed.
And he remembered Sister Flavia's words, long ago. Remember that true valour lies not in spilling the blood of others. Remember another king who shed his own blood, that all of his people might live…
And Arthur understood what he must endure, and bowed his head.
The lance pierced his side, and the pain was so great that he cried out. It seemed to him that the whole forest cried out with him. Great flocks of birds took flight, lamenting their king, and a host of ravens gathered in the branches, cawing, and watching the blood flow down Arthur's flank. He saw blood pouring on the roots, nourishing the great tree, which drank up his life greedily. He felt his own life-fore flowing into the soil, restoring its vitality, nourishing its spirit.
Let the land be healed, Arthur thought, from whatever damage my father and I have done to it.
The pain in his side grew greater and greater as the blood drained from him. His strength slackened, and his body hung limp and exhausted, dangling broken in the ropes, as the fire of the dragon's blood purged him clean. He felt darkness clouding the edge of his vision, saw the shadows of death's wings approaching.
He lifted his head one final time, and exhaled, and the ravens opened their wings with a great clamour and took flight from the tree's branches, and it seemed to Arthur that his body was left behind hanging empty, while his soul took flight with the dark-winged birds, rising into fire and light.