Merlin's Bones by Fred Saberhagen

Author:Fred Saberhagen [Saberhagen, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Fantasy Fiction, Arthurian romances, Merlin (Legendary character)
ISBN: 9780812533491
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1996-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

I saw that the elder druids and their white-robed acolytes had begun elaborate preparation for the sacrifice that seemed certain to take my life, and Vivian and Hakon's, too.

The early stages of this ceremony included a ritual beating of wooden shields with spear shafts by Vortigern's massed warriors, who also chanted, hundreds of arms and voices producing a sea of sound orchestrated by the magicians.

My wrists were seized and held as I was dragged about. But still Merlin's old cloak-no one but I seemed to notice that it was suddenly shrunken to no more than a tattered scarf-clung to my shoulders and wrapped itself protectively around my neck as the men dragged us out of doors and to the center of the monument. There, as we stood surrounded by the churned earth and other evidences of Vortigern's failed construction, half a dozen of the magicians who meant to kill us went into action, chanting and gesturing. Their swaying, stamping dance encircled an ancient stone the size of a kitchen table, whose flat top was encrusted with dark and ugly stains.

Vortigern had been told by his wizards that some foreign material placed under the monument by his enemies prevented the Giants' Dance being integrated into his plan. And that material had to be found and removed before his work could go forward. Until I, along with my two companions, was dragged into the middle of the monument, I had been given no chance to make anything like a thorough study of the phenomenon now called Stonehenge. But by the time the ceremony began my perception of the magic underlying the whole area had been enhanced. When fear, horror at the sight of the first preliminary sacrifice, made me pull Merlin's diminished cloak tightly over my face and close my eyes, I was able to perceive certain things that were still invisible to others. And now I began to gain insight into the reasons for the difficulties encountered by King Vortigern's planners and builders.

The turmoil of strange forces in the middle of Stonehenge, swelling like an onrushing thunderstorm, had created an environment whose peculiarity resembled the strangeness of our journey. Here, too, among the tremendous stones of the Giants' Dance, the ordinary course of Time had been perturbed, even as it had been while we were traveling. Indeed, the upheaval under Stonehenge had been far more drastic, the gulf of the distortion was far greater than a mere fifty or sixty years. Powers from the far future were here at work, in some way interfering with, opposing, the work ordained by Vortigern.

The king and a small knot of his close advisers were standing near enough for us to hear their conversation. It became apparent that Vortigern's ultimate goal, which had been urged on him by the more fanatic of his druid counselors, was to incorporate the ancient construction into a new temple for Wodan. This projected temple, supposedly greater than any ever built, was to be a structure containing and incorporating the

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