Merlin's Daughters Page 6

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  The Druid thought about his conversation with the Fairy Queen for a few days. He wanted to dismiss her warning as the hysterical rantings of an unstable female, who was not even Human. The problem was that the Queen's story rang true and he knew her to be anything but unstable. As a Human, the Druid did not like non-Humans, but after decades living on Avalon he had encountered many of them. Fairies were strange creatures but he knew them to be smart and courageous; they were also among the most honest beings of any of Earth's Realms. By reputation no monarch in the Nether World had ruled longer or better than the Fairy Queen. Something told him, he should heed her warning.

  He sent a group of young Druids to explore the Sorceress' abode. They came back and reported it was abandoned and appeared to have never been inhabited at all. The Druid wondered what kind of a creature the Sorceress was that she could disappear and remove all evidence of occupancy that, as he understood it, had spanned many centuries.

  The Druid instructed the acolytes to prepare the Sorceress' former abode into a hiding place. They were to install lights and store food and water in the deepest parts of the cave, exploring the various rooms as they went. The unstated but understood ancillary task was to search the interior of the Tor for the hiding place of the Grail Treasure. The Druid knew it was gone, but if he could find the place where it had been, he might find some clue as to what it was. He somehow knew that the Priestesses or the Sorceress probably eliminated all evidence that the Treasure had ever been there as well. Still, he could not resist taking the opportunity to look for clues.

  After a few days, the Druid decided he owed it to the people of the village to give them a warning of what was to come, even though he despised the Christians almost as much as non-Humans. Putting aside his feelings in the interest of the safety of Avalon, he went to the small monastery and asked for an audience with the abbot.

  Brother Peter was an old man who had led a small band of monks to Avalon when he was a newly professed monk. Their goal had been to convert the heathen inhabitants of Avalon to the Christian religion. They had utterly failed in that task, which was a foregone conclusion, because the only occupants of Avalon at the time included a coven of Druid priests and the Grail Priestesses: not one person in either of those groups was a candidate for conversion to Christianity. As Brother Peter saw it, Avalon was populated by unrepentant pagans (evil Druids and some kind of coven of priestess/witches) who were often visited by every manner of strange creature from the Nether World. Brother Peter was never sure whether or not those creatures qualified as pagans. In any case, they were not Human, which meant they had no souls; therefore, they were not worth his time. The Priestesses stayed away from Humans and he was never sure whether or not they were truly humans; in any case, they were merely women and he didn't care if they burned in hell. Despite everything, Brother Peter had never given up his vain hope of converting the Druids.

  In the early days the Druids welcomed the new settlement. They liked the fact that Humans were moving to Avalon, if only because it would be easier to obtain food and other supplies. The Druids knew that most of the Grail Priestesses were Human, but they had withdrawn from the Human Realm and involved themselves too much with the magic and beings from the Nether World. The Priestesses avoided contact with others. Avalon was a transitional land between the Human Realm and the Nether World, and the Grail Priestesses had turned themselves into almost a transitional species as well. The Druid had the sense that some of the older Priestesses had ceased to be Humans at all. Therefore, the Druids welcomed the new Human residents. That turned out to be huge mistake.

  The Druids soon learned that the Christians were determined to stamp out every vestige of the ancient religion, of which the Druids held themselves to be the priests and guardians. The Druids held the high ground on Avalon, literally. At first the Christians were few and poor and terribly ignorant. As their numbers grew, they remained poor and ignorant, but they became bolder. The Druid had heard terrible stories about what the Christians were doing to people they called “pagans” in the land across the deep water: they hunted them down and killed them, often after torturing them in an effort to get them to convert or at least to divulge the whereabouts of others of their kind. In less than a generation the Druids across the sea had been all but wiped out. The situation was not much better in the Human Realm near Avalon. There were still pockets of Druids in remote places, high in the mountains or on rocky islands off the coast. The Druid community at Avalon was the largest surviving community of practitioners of the ancient religion still in existence. For some time it grew to be larger than it ever had been as refugees arrived from other communities that had been under siege. In recent years, however, the community began to age and fewer new acolytes arrived every year. The old religion was dying.

  The Druid was tempted not to share the intelligence he had received from the Fairy Queen in the hope the Christians would be wiped out during the Trouble that was to come. Unfortunately, the Druid was a decent and ethical person, and he believed he had a duty to share the warning to his neighbors, as vile and mean as they were.

  More or less against his better judgment, he sought out the abbot and warned him of the Trouble that threatened to overtake them. The abbot laughed at the thought that a mere Fairy could cause any trouble for his monastery or the village that surrounded it. He did not take creatures from the Nether World seriously, most especially not female creatures who claimed to have magical powers. He said his god would protect the village and, if the Druid were smart, he would swear fealty to the Christian god and accept his protection as well. The Druid thanked the abbot for the offer, but declined.

  The Druid returned to his cell, feeling both sad and fearful. He recognized that if his community were – by some miracle – to survive the coming of the Black Fairy, it would ultimately succumb to the onslaught of the Christians who were systematically stamping out old gods, old religions, old ways of all types – and the priests and practitioners who held the knowledge about those ways. The Druid felt old. And tired. And useless.

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  Merlin, in the meantime, had presented himself to Uthur and requested to be assigned as mentor and teacher to Arthur. He told Uthur that the household where Arthur was being apprenticed was a wonderful home and Sir Hector was providing an appropriate education for a knight, but Merlin suggested that a future High King needed education beyond what his guardians were able to provide. Without going into any detail, Merlin told Uthur that he had reason to expect trouble from the Nether World and he thought that Arthur would benefit from special training that only Merlin could provide.

  At first Uthur was reluctant to agree to Merlin's request. He knew (from hard personal experience) how meddlesome Merlin could be, and how Merlin's lack of understanding about some important aspects of Humanity caused him to do stupid (and often dangerous) things. On the other hand, Uthur acknowledged that it would be a good idea for Arthur to have some special training in dealing with the various species that inhabited other Realms of Earth beyond the Human. Uthur himself had been tripped up by his own ignorance about the magic and powers of the non-Human creatures who shared the Earth. He would have preferred Arthur to obtain that education from a teacher other than Merlin, but Merlin was the only wizard Uthur knew. With great reluctance, Uthur agreed to Merlin's proposal.

  Uthur wrote a sealed message to Sir Hector, asking him to welcome Merlin into his household as Arthur's tutor. Merlin carried the letter of introduction to Sir Hector's castle and presented it to the Lord. Sir Hector had little use for wizards, or any teachers who used books, for that matter. Hector was a knight and the lord of a large and rich feudal estate, which he managed well. He was illiterate himself as was almost everyone in his household, and he was suspicious of teachers, especially those with other-worldly roots and magical powers. />
  Arthur had been sent to Hector when he was a baby; Hector's instructions were to raise Arthur as a foster child, and not to tell Arthur he was the Uthur's son. Hector assumed that meant Arthur was a bastard, in which case the best future Arthur could hope for would be to become a knight, and maybe, if he were very lucky, marry into a family that owned an estate. Hector believed all Arthur needed to know was how to take care of his weapons and to fight like a beast, first and foremost. He also thought Arthur should learn a little about animal husbandry in the event he got lucky in marriage, or – more likely – if he did not make a good knight and might have to make his living doing more menial jobs on an estate. Arthur didn't need books or wizards for the kind of future Hector anticipated he would face.

  Nevertheless, Uthur was High King and he asked Sir Hector to accept Merlin as Arthur's tutor. Hector would not turn Merlin away, despite his reservations about having such a being under his roof for the next few years until Arthur. He allowed Merlin full access to Arthur, but ordered his other sons and all the rest of the castle residents to stay away from Merlin as much as possible.

  Arthur questioned why he was singled out for such special treatment. Hector told him that it was by orders of his father. Arthur demanded to know who his father was and Hector refused to tell him. Arthur was a small boy at the time, but he was not stupid. Because Hector did not even try to hide his distaste for Merlin's presence, but allowed him to live in the castle and act as tutor for Arther, Arthur deduced that his father was a lord who outranked Hector. That was the first clue he ever had about his parentage, and he seized it.

  He asked Merlin about his parentage. Merlin thought about it for a while and eventually promised to tell Arthur the whole story when he was older. He asked Arthur to refrain from asking questions to anyone until the appropriate time came for Merlin to share the story. Arthur agreed, and never asked another question about his father, but Merlin knew that Arthur remained alert for any clues Merlin might accidentally drop.

  Arthur did ask questions about everything else on Earth, and beyond. Hector insisted that Arthur continue his regular training in horsemanship and combat, leaving only a few hours of each day for him to spend with Merlin. During those few hours, he assaulted Merlin with a barrage of questions that he had thought up and saved during the day. He was curious about everything, and the more he learned the more he wanted to know. Merlin fell more in love with Arthur with every lesson he taught. Arthur's insatiable curiosity combined with his quick mind were a teacher's dream. Hector and his sons taught Arthur to fight and to ride. Merlin taught him everything else Merlin thought he needed to know.

  It never occurred to any of them to teach him about women.