The Drawing of the Dark

Then Duffy met his gaze, and to his own surprise remembered having met and talked to the. old man, decades ago, while out on a boyhood ramble along the banks of the Liffey. 'Hello, sir,' Duffy said now. 'I thought you lived in Ireland.'

'I live in the west.'

Aurelianus was surprised and annoyed. 'What's this? Why didn't you tell me you'd met him?' he demanded of the King. 'I had to search twenty years for him.'

'Don't get upset, Merlin.' The old monarch smiled. 'You've found him now. In any case, I didn't know then who he was - just that he was something considerably more than the average eight-year-old.'

Duffy relaxed, and glanced around. On a table beside the bed lay an earthenware cup and a rusty lance head, both of archaic and evidently Mediterranean workmanship. He looked up with a grin, and was a little disconcerted to see expressions of anxious suspense on the faces of the King and Aurelianus. 'Uh,' Duffy said uncertainly, gesturing at the cup, 'I was just going to say that that cup will come in handy when it comes time to.. .have your swig of- the beer.' He had the feeling he'd unwittingly touched an awkward subject, but he decided he must have dealt with it correctly, for the two old men broke into reassured smiles; and he guessed, without knowing why, that this was the crucial matter Aurelianus had tried to warn him about as they'd been walking to the cabin. Somehow it was fortunate that he'd referred to the cup rather than the lance.

Bugge and his men grasped what was expected of them, and six of them proceeded gently to lift the Fisher King from the bed and hobble toward the door. Aurelianus halted them long enough to put a hat on the aged King, then waved them to go on.

- 'I don't suppose he can ride?' Duffy asked. 'It's going to be cramped in that wagon.

'No, he can't,' the sorcerer said. 'Even when he's well, he's not permitted to. There are all sorts of restrictions that apply to him - he can't wear a garment with knots in it, or a ring that's an unbroken circle, he can't touch a dead body or be where one is buried.. .he could never, for example, actually go down into the Zimmermann brewing cellar.. .hell, even that mud on the bed there is a requirement.'

Duffy's gray eyebrows were halfway to his hairline 'Huh! That's as bad as all the Old Testament do's and don't's.'

'Same kind of thing,' said Aurelianus, moving toward the door.

The Irishman followed him outside. 'How did you find me?' he asked. 'I gather Venice wasn't the first place you looked.'

The wizard sighed. 'It certainly wasn't. Anyone else I could have located in two hours by thaumaturgical means, but, as I told you, you're a walking blind-spot where those arts are concerned. So I simply had to travel about and look for you. You did leave indications of your passage here and there, which helped, but my real clue was a painting I found two years ago here in Vienna - Michael the Archangel by Gustav Vogel, which you were the model for.'

'That's right,' Duffy said. 'That was in 1512 or 13; he liked my face or something, and I liked his daughter. And I was recuperating from a wound and had nothing much else to do.'

The northmen had got the King to the wagon and were carefully raising him toward the back of it. Aurelianus seemed satisfied, for he didn't rush over to criticize their efforts. 'Yes,' he said reflectively, 'Vogel, in spite of being deeply religious - or because of it, conceivably -apparently recognized what sort of . . .thing. . .you are, and put it so clearly onto the canvas that I recognized you from it. He is allied with the new power in the world, the dawning day, if you prefer, which is blinding all the old magics, and -,

'Do you mean the Church?'

'More or less. And so he could recognize you more easily than I could. He has a real clairvoyant spark - it's too bad he's given up painting.'

'It certainly is,' agreed Duffy, without conviction.

'Look, they've got him in the wagon. Hadn't we better be going?'

'I guess we should,' said the wizard, starting across the grass. 'It's so pleasant out here, though.'

Duffy, who felt more comfortable in crowded, tangled city streets, where, for one thing, gravity was consistent and the sun moved slowly along a predictable course, didn't concur, but said nothing and followed Aurelianus to the wagon. -

The first ten minutes of the return trip passed quietly enough. Duffy again drove, and was almost beginning to get used to the tricks of the enchanted environment. A half-dozen of the northmen got out of the vehicle and paced alongside, kicking stones and branches out of the way of the wheels and giving the Irishman directions by pounding on the wagon's sides. The only disconcerting note was one he should have expected: the high-flying sentinels no longer circled over the cabin, but swung in wide arcs several hundred feet directly overhead. 'Those things are pacing us,' he remarked quietly to Aurelianus.

'You're damned right they are,' the wizard said with a pleased nod.

For several minutes then neither of them spoke, and the creak and rattle of the wagon, and the chatter of birds, were the only sounds.

Duffy had just wiped his forehead with his sleeve when he saw three of the winged guards stoop like striking falcons out of the sky, plummeting toward a point in the woods not far ahead. 'Look out,' he snapped, sitting up straight, 'I think someone followed us through your web of direction-confusion spells.'

For a while those were the last words he was to speak in German. He turned, and seemed to see Bugge and his men for the first time. 'Viking, rush ten of your men into

the trees ahead,' he barked, using an archaic Norse dialect, 'and have them conceal themselves on both sides of the path. Now!'

Bugge had heard that style of speech used by the very old folk in the Roskilde hills, and understood it well enough to follow the order. He snapped a quick phrase of clarification to his men, took in ten of them with a wave, and leaped over the side of the cart, followed a second later by the men he'd designated. Screams and sword-clangs had begun to sound from the woods ahead.

'You three take the King out of the chariot,' Duffy went on, and three northmen leaped up to obey him. 'Lay him down by the side of the path, out of sight; then race back here.' He turned to Aurelianus and spoke in Dumnoiic Celtic, 'Go, Merlin. Stay with the King.'

'Of course, Sire,' the sorcerer answered in the same tongue. He climbed down and followed the burdened northmen, who sprinted back to the wagon a few moments later.

The Irishman rummaged among the swords piled in the wagon bed as the three men clambered aboard, and sat back up with the heavy hilt of Calad Bolg in his fist. He whirled the long blade once in the air and stung the horses flanks with a snap of the reins. As the wagon surged forward he snarled up into the sky, 'Ride with us, Morrigan, and rend these dogs limb from socket!'