The Last Enchantment Read Free

seeing him when I had come this way three days ago to talk with the dying Uther. Ulfin, the King's body-servant and chief chamberlain, was absent. I could guess where he was. He would serve the new King with all the devotion he had given to Uther, but tonight he would be found with his old master in the monastery church. The man who waited by Arthur's door was a stranger to me, as were half the servants there; they were men and women who normally served Rheged's own king in his castle, and who were helping with the extra pressure of work brought by the occasion, and the High King's presence.
    But they all knew me. As I entered the antechamber there was a sudden silence, and a complete cessation of movement, as if a spell had been cast. A servant carrying platters balanced along his arm froze like someone faced with the Gorgon's head, and the faces that turned to me were frozen similarly, pale and gape-mouthed, full of awe. I caught Ralf's eye on me, sardonic and affectionate. His brow quirked. "You see?" it said to me, and I understood more fully his own hesitation when he came to my room with the King's message. As my servant and companion he had been close to me in the past, and had many times, in prophecy, and in what men call magic, watched and felt my power at work; but the power that had blazed and blown through the Perilous Chapel last night had been something of quite a different order. I could only guess at the stories that must have run, swift and changing as the wildfire itself, through Luguvallium; it was certain that the humbler folk had talked of nothing else all day. And like all strange tales, it would grow with the telling.
    So they stood staring. As for the awe that frosted the air, like the cold wind that comes before a ghost, I was used to that. I walked through the motionless crowd to the King's door, and the guard moved aside without a challenge, but before the chamberlain could lay a hand to the door it opened, and Bedwyr came out.
    Bedwyr was a quiet, dark boy, a month or two younger than Arthur. His father was Ban, the King of Benoic, and a cousin of a king ofBrittany . The two boys had been close friends since childhood, when Bedwyr had been sent to Galava to learn the arts of war from Ector's master-at-arms, and to share the lessons I gave Emrys (as Arthur was then called) at the shrine in theWildForest . He was already showing himself to be that strange contradiction, a born fighting man who is also a poet, at home equally with action and with the world of fancy and music. Pure Celt, you might say, where Arthur, like my father the High King Ambrosius, was Roman. I might have expected to see in Bedwyr's face the same awe left by the events of the miraculous night as in the faces of the humbler men present, but I could see only the aftermath of joy, a sort of uncomplicated happiness, and a sturdy trust in the future.
    He stood aside for me, smiling. "He's alone now."
    "Where will you sleep?"

    "My father is lodging in the west tower."
    "Good night, then, Bedwyr."
    But as I moved to pass him he prevented me. He bent quickly and took my hand, then snatched it to him and kissed it. "I should have known you would see that it all came right. I was afraid, for a few minutes there in the hall, whenLot and his jackals started that treacherous fracas —"
    "Hush," I said. He had spoken softly, but there were ears to hear. "That's over for the present. Leave it.
    And go straight to your father in the west tower. Do you understand?"
    The dark eyes glimmered. "King Lot lodges, they tell me, in the eastern one?"
    "Exactly."
    "Don't worry. I've already had the same warning from Emrys. Good night, Merlin."
    "Good night, and a peaceful sleep to us all. We need it."
    He grinned, sketched a half-salute, and went. I nodded to the waiting servant and went in. The door shut behind me.
    The royal rooms had been cleared of the apparatus of sickness, and the great bed stripped of its crimson covers. The floor tiles were