For all that, some gossips probably believed him. Uther Pendragon wasn't one such, at least not toward the end. But he had never loved his brother's son.
"Let's just see what you can do, bastard," the new High King had muttered out of the side of his mouth. He'd barely spoken except to hail his brother's memory as one might salute an emperor. And even then, he could barely control his voice.
Bastard. Emrys had never known his father or, for that matter, who his father was. So he'd been ripe for the taking when Vortigern's wizards proclaimed that only a boy without a father could shore up the renegade king's fortress' foundation. They had expected to use his blood: his counterplan had been to use his wits and some scanty engineering knowledge pried from watching engineers who treasured learning said to have been handed down from the days when the Legions occupied Britain.
Instead, he'd blacked out. By the time he'd waked, Vortigern's wizards were shorter by their heads; masons were rebuilding the foundations with stone and mortar?but no blood; and Emrys had been named prophet?an honor he could have lived without and run considerably fewer risks?to a traitor.
Fearing that his next summons by Vortigern would be the death of him, Emrys eluded his guards and fled to join the High King, new-come from Little Britain. If he'd been a true prophet, would he?the boy without a father?have truly been so astonished to learn who his father had actually been? Emrys had felt like he was living in a dream. In the twinkling of an eye, he'd been promoted from potential sacrifice to king's son?even if he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Filial loyalty replaced hero worship, at least most of the time, and Emrys, called Merlinus by the High King's Romanized troops after the hawks he loved, had served Aurelius as faithfully as any true-born son might serve his father.
And then the High King died.
Being what they were, wary and even jealous of each other, Uther and Emrys couldn't even comfort each other for the loss of the man who'd been an absent father to his son, and raised his brother as if they, not Ambrosius and Emrys, had been parent and child. Uther had never forgiven Emrys the bastard for existing, let alone claiming a share of his elder brother's love. No doubt he'd be glad to see Emrys fail. Uther was a practical man, with no use for histrionics or failures, especially those standing too near his Purple. Unless Emrys could make good on his boast, he didn't have to be a prophet to know Uther would rid the world of him.
What if he succeeded? Wouldn't he be even more of a threat?
Quite probably. But the problem was: he had made a solemn vow that he'd be damned if he didn't keep. In more ways than one.
For now, though, Emrys was alive and boy enough to rejoice in the beauty of the day and a handful of moist, crumbling cakes (his servants liked him even if no one else did and were constantly trying to fatten him up so he wouldn't look like some changeling from under the hill). Munching, he glanced out over the curved embankment, trying to see massive stones, bigger than those in the circles in Little Britain, jutting up from Sarum Plain. He hadn't just been an idiot; he'd been an idiot in detail, vowing to cross the sea, uproot the Giants' Dance from Eire?over what were likely to be emphatic armed objections of the local fighters, no doubt?and float them back to Britain before dragging them over land and setting them up here above Ambrosius' grave. No doubt Uther's men expected the stones to swim or dance the whole damned way.
The late afternoon sun pierced through the cloud cover, half-blinding Emrys. Or maybe it wasn't the sun after all.
If he ran away, Uther would send men after him, to haul him back in disgrace. Perhaps, if he admitted what Uther most likely knew?that he might be his bastard nephew but no kind of a wizard at all and flung himself on the High King's mercy?Uther might merely pack him off to a monastery. Or kill him quickly, disgusted at his cowardice. Either might be better than this silent apprehension while he waited to be found out.
A raven, larger brother to the brand of the Legion's God that Emrys bore, flew across the plain. Emrys raised a hand in salute, knowing that men would mark the gesture and report it to the new High King. Young Gildas was probably lurking somewhere, scribbling, eternally scribbling. The fact that both he and Emrys were always writing or reading something should have been a bond between them. But Gildas never forgave himself for being less than perfect: he forgave Emrys even less.
And then he heard voices on the plain. A man's voice, a woman's, quarreling in no language he had ever heard. It bore some resemblance to Latin and some to the Saxon's tongue. He'd always been quick at music, quick at speech, quick to learn languages. Even his earliest teachers had called it a gift of God (when they didn't attribute it to the devil). In either event, they tended toward plans to shut him in a monastery to work off the sin of his birth as a harmless scribe.
Emrys set himself to listen. There were no crystals here, as there'd been inset in the womb of the cave that had been his study and his refuge when he was a child, but he stared into the sunlight until sweat scalded down his sides and tears ran down his face. As his vision whited out, a blaze of comprehension engulfed him.
"Something went wrong. The last time I…" The man's voice was well-modulated and restrained, as if he had studied rhetoric in Athens itself.
"The last time you and Fletcher Pratt went off on one of your little jaunts, you didn't just miss dinner, I didn't see you for three months. Isaac was ready to write a detective novel about it, and Robert managed to sell that time-travel story to Astounding!" The lady's voice, higher pitched and angry, cut across her companion's.
Emrys crept closer, to spy as well as eavesdrop on the quarreling strangers. A good thing he was thin and lithe and could crouch in what was exceedingly inadequate cover. He saw a tall, lean man who carried himself like one of his father's war leaders. But for all his leanness and energy, the man was quite old?oh, sixty, if he were a day. Strong lines bracketed his mouth, and his temples, below a plume of silvering hair, were hollowed.
"I'm sorry, Catherine, to drag you into this. There's one consolation, however. We are most definitely in England. Britain, I should say. Look at that henge. They haven't even begun to erect the stones. Neolithic, I should guess…"
"Lyon Sprague de Camp…" The lady stamped her foot. It wasn't much of a stamp, but then, it wasn't much of a foot: the lady was smaller than her lord by shoulders and a head. Her hair was gilded, but she could hardly be a Northerner, not with the saint's name she'd been called. "Oh, Spraguie, after all these years, do you think I'm going to let you go charging off into time again without me? At least, if things go wrong, we're together."
"We may be here for quite some time," the man said, pointing toward Aurelius' grave. "The transfer point's got to be there, or nearby. Along with what looks like a considerable war band."
Emrys squinted so he could examine the lady, in her strange white clothing and necklace of silver twisted in interlocking spirals, shells, and water-smoothed gems, more closely. Her hair was fair, her skin pale, and her lips red, almost the color of rowan in autumn. She carried herself like a queen.
Think, Emrys, the boy told himself. The lady's named after a saint, and the man bears several names. Or perhaps, the first name was a title. After all, Lion was one of the degrees of initiation into the cult of Mithras?and a higher degree at that than Raven, to which Emrys had attained.
Emrys came to what Bleys, his tutor, called a paradox. What was a senior initiate of Mithras doing with the Lady? The God of Legions had few dealings with women.