Neither Emrys' teacher Bleys nor any Druid he'd met had ever uttered such words, but Emrys recognized them as a song.
"It was Balboa, not Cortez," the man replied, "but I do understand the 'wild surmise' part, my dear. You think we're 'first looking into Chapman's Mallory'?" he asked.
"Perhaps not Mallory, but definitely Geoffrey of Monmouth, or even Nennius," Catherine replied. She looked out across the plain where no standing stones had ever risen nor, if the task were left to Emrys' feeble powers, ever would.
She paused, then grinned at her husband.
"Sprague, don't you know Merlin when you see him?"
Her husband laughed a mighty laugh, then wiped his eyes. Emrys hastened to offer him more wine. " 'There really are more things in heaven and earth… " the man murmured. "Catherine, let's look at the data at hand. In our world and our time, the stone circle we know as Stonehenge predates Dark Age Britain by… a considerable amount. Say two thousand years. And the menhirs and dolmens were transported not from Ireland but from the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire, while the altar stone probably came from Milford Haven. Possibly the idea was to throw down the cult of the death goddess in Wales…"
"Oh, Sprague… surely you're not going to quote The White Goddess at me?"
Emrys made the Sign.
Sprague snorted. "The words are marvelous, but the whole book's superstitious nonsense."
"Occam's Razor," swore his wife. "Least common denominator. We see a boy who calls himself Emrys. He's vowed to deck his father's grave with the light itself, assuming Mary Stewart will forgive me for stealing that line. If we were in our own world, Stonehenge would already be standing. But it's not, so, I think we've got to assume we haven't just traveled back in time, we've jumped universes."
Maybe Emrys had only thought he understood what the newcomers were talking about. Now, they were talking as if they'd been translated from some other world. Some happier world, no doubt, where boys like him were spared the consequences of their bragging.
The sunlight was slanting down on the henge. Sooner, rather than later, he'd have to go in and face sidelong looks, questions about "well, when do we set off for Ireland?" and whispers, hissing closer and closer until one night, men and knives would come for him, or he'd convulse and die with wolfsbane in his wine or some such.
Such a world probably didn't exist. Emrys shook his head to clear it, then returned to the problem at hand: his boast, his impending failure, and the doom that would surely follow.
"I swore it by the king's grave. You should swear things like that," he muttered.
"No, you shouldn't," said the man. "So it looks very much as if you're honor bound to have to assemble the Giants' Dance here. Can't say I envy you, interesting problem in engineering though it is. But it may be that I can help you. In fact, I'll have to help you if Catherine and I are to have any chance of getting home because I don't believe our meeting is a coincidence at all."
Emrys started to throw himself to the ground in the prostration given to the emperors in the East. "I prayed, and you were?you were sent to help me!"
That the man called Sprague had said that "it"?and surely «it» must be some great power or talisman?rested near his father's grave made him shudder. Emrys told himself that Sprague and Catherine had sat at his table, warmed themselves at his hearth, and couldn't possibly mean to defile it or betray him. And he believed it, he told himself. He believed it.
"Oh dear God, Spraguie, if you don't set him straight, he's going to decide we're gods or demons, and I don't know which one would be worse. Look at the boy. He's shaking like a leaf."
The man's hand was on his shoulder, traveling to his chin, turning his face up. "Boy," he called. "Emrys! I give you my word, we're not gods or demons, but flesh and blood like you. Look!" He drew Emrys' knife and cut his hand. "It bleeds. Would a god bleed? Would a fraud show you blood or try to convince you that he had powers you lacked?"
"It didn't work for the man who would be king in Kafiristan," Catherine muttered, drawing a flashing grin from her husband. One day, Emrys promised himself, he'd have read enough that he'd know the heroes the lady talked about.
"But you knew. I didn't tell you, and you knew," Emrys protested.
"We're students of history. And we know a story… very like your own. Besides, in addition to history, I studied at Caltech?that's a school, lad, where they train engineers like you get in the Legions. I served in the Navy. And I've been to Easter Island where they have standing stones sculptured like giant heads. I've even seen the pyramids in Egypt. Let us help you."
The Giants' Dance was supposed to have come from Africa, and Emrys' guest was an engineer. For the first time, Emrys felt not just the stirrings of hope, but real hope that his guests might help him devise some practical plan.
Emrys looked away from the tall man to the seated woman whose eyes and jewels glowed in the light of late afternoon. A breeze sprang up, drying the cold sweats that had hit Emrys from time to time ever since he'd blurted out his idiot boast.
The lady was watching him. For all their brightness, her eyes were soft and very kind. "I think you've been through some rough times," she said. "It sounds to me as if you found your father after you'd been missing one for a long time. And you loved him very much. And now you're alone again."
"No, I'm not," Emrys said, furiously knuckling away what he told himself was not tears. "They're watching me. Uther's men and the monks. That Gildas. They're always watching me."
"Kind of young to have the ward heelers on your tail, aren't you, son?"
"What demons are those?"
"The very worst," said Sprague. "Petty demons."
"Now, Spraguie… stop playing word games. Let's help the boy move mountains, and then we can go home." She smiled at the tall man and at Emrys himself, and he thought it might not be the worst thing in the world?in all the worlds these strangers talked of?if they had to stay. If he could stay with them.
One thing about being even a bastard prince: Emrys could bring in guests, and they would be well treated. After they were warmed at his hearth, offered food, water, and linen, he realized his servants had decided they should be treated royally.
His guests looked magnificent. Lady Catherine's white linen, now topped by a great cloak, swept the ground, and she wore bracelets and earrings of amber the color of her hair. Sprague fastened a huge penannular brooch on a cloak in subtly woven plaids atop a green tunic. A sword that looked like the ones carried by Uther's guards hung at his belt.
Emrys pulled up heavy chairs for his guests at the trestle table that groaned with food: chickens, venison, a roast of boar, bread that tempted even Emrys' fledgling appetite, and grapes.
"I haven't been this dressed up since Bob and Pam Adams' wedding!" Sprague announced. "When they fired up the baths, did you see how they operated? It was just fascinating."
Catherine tapped her foot against the battered mosaic of the floor. In the soft shoe she now wore, it wasn't as impressive as her foot stamps earlier in the day, but she made her point.
"Now," said Sprague, "let's sit down and eat. Then, we'll make some plans."
"I have to confess," Emrys said. "I'm not really a prophet."
"That's as may be. One thing's certain: You're a scared boy, and you've got reason to be scared. Let's look at the situation. You may not be a magician, but you're shrewd. And any art that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."
Never mind the bards. Martial himself could not have composed a better aphorism, Emrys was sure. He waved away the servants, and cut his guests' meat with his own hands.