The Enchanter General 03 - Merlin Redux by Dave Duncan

Author:Dave Duncan [Duncan, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Merlin Redux
ISBN: 9781949102048
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2019-09-29T23:00:00+00:00

From then on, wherever I happened to be, every day just before the night watch came on duty, either Fulk Gourand or some other royal aide would appear at my elbow to whisper passwords in my ear. I was usually so busy that I barely heeded them. Fortunately the Myrddin Wyllt never distracted me with visions when I was healing.

As Richard had known, rumors about the man with the cane being Merlin Redux were already circulating in the camp. I wasn’t happy about them, but I assumed that they would aid me rather than hinder, so I paid them no heed. I had a fairly imposing flaxen beard by then, which may have helped give me archaic status. I was also known as Three Legs, which I liked even less.

We soon discovered that there were more healers still around than Maur had known, mostly barons’ personal sages. All of them had been healing in secret, but their patients had been mostly knights and lords, not the common archers, men-at-arms, or servants. When we passed the word of our new royal authority and set to work, it did not take us long to find the best incantations for the local plagues, and soon we were hauling men away from death’s door by the wagon load. Those who were too far gone to give consent, as the king had required, we had to allow to die, but most of those had passed out of our reach anyway.

Soon I had organized teams, starting with cooperative priests or deacons, who began the process by explaining to each potential patient the Church’s official view that enchantment was devil worship. Knowing the chances of dying from whatever disease they had contracted, very few of them decided to refuse treatment. Next came a squire or page, who asked about symptoms, and thus was able to advise the enchanter and cantor of what they had to deal with—dysentery, typhoid, or tertiary fever. Those were by far the commonest, but there were a few others just as nasty.

One man I was happy to meet again was the king’s favorite minstrel, Blondel de Nesle, and we soon renewed the brief friendship we had struck three years earlier, in England. He came and listened to my chanting one morning, and after a while asked if he could try. He sang like an angel, that man, and the spirits rewarded his patient with a very fast recovery. Tall, slender, blond as his name implied, and a wry observer of mankind, he made an excellent enchanter, or cantor. And when a sufferer declined enchantment as devils’ work, Blondel would sing a psalm or two over him, which often seemed to help too.

I saw very little of William Legier. While I was busy healing, he was busy hunting Saracens. He went out daily with any scouting or foraging party he could find, but the enemy was rarely available for his murderous purpose. Lars had decided that my old friend had gone mad and I found that hard to deny with conviction.

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