The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis cc-6 Read online

  The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis

  ( Camulod Chronicles - 6 )

  Jack Whyte

  Amazon.com Review

  Jack Whyte continues his long, thoughtful exploration of one of our most resonant myths, the legend of Camelot.The Sorcerer: Metamorphosisis the sixth book in his Camulod Chronicles, and it takes up the story just as Arthur makes the transition from boy to man. Whyte's focus, however, is on Caius Merlyn Britannicus. Merlyn, descended from Britain's Roman rulers, is one of the co-rulers of Camulod, a stronghold of civilization under perpetual threat from invading Saxons and Danes. Merlyn leads an eventful yet happy life: he has a loving fiancjée, Tressa; a fine ward, Arthur; a magnificent black horse, Germanicus; many allies; and grand plans for Camulod's expansion and Britain's safety. Merlyn's reflections on one campaign sum up his easy victories throughout the first half of the book: "It was slaughter--nothing less. One pass we made, from west to east, and scarce a living man was left to face us."

  But even the mightiest ship must one day be tested on the shoals. The suspense gains momentum when Whyte breaks Merlyn free of his brooding, reactive role and propels him and his companions into danger. In despair, Merlyn takes a new, subtler tack against his archenemies Ironhair and Carthac ("And then I truly saw the size of him. He towered over everyone about him, hulking and huge, his shoulders leviathan and his great, deep, hairless chest unarmoured").

  Whyte shines at interpreting the mythos of Camelot in a surprising yet believable way. He can squeeze a sword out of a stone without opting for the glib explanations of fantasy-land magic. The Camulod Chronicles, andThe Sorcerer: Metamorphosisin particular, provide an engaging take on the chivalric world of knights and High Kings.

  From Library Journal

  As the forces of Peter Ironhair threaten the land of Camulod, Merlyn Britannicus realizes that the time has come for his ward, Arthur Pendragon, to claim the skystone sword Excalibur and take his rightful place as High King of Britain. The latest volume of Whyte's epic retelling of the Arthurian cycle marks the end of Arthur's childhood training and the beginning of the legend that surrounds his career. Whyte firmly grounds his tale in historical detail, personal drama, and political intrigue, combining realism and wonder in a fortuitous blend. Compellingly told, this addition to Arthurian-based fiction belongs in most libraries.

  To my wife Beverley

  and to my grandson, David Michael Johns, who finally got old enough to read his Grandpa's books

  MAP LEGEND

  1. Glannaventa (Ravenglass)

  2. Mediobogdum (The Fort)

  3. Galava (Ambleside)

  4. Manx (Isle of Man)

  5. Brocavum (Brougham)

  6. Mamucium (Manchester)

  7. Deva (Chester)

  8. Lindum (Lincoln)

  9. Londinium (London)

  10. Verulamium (St Albans)

  11. Corinium (Cirencester)

  12. Glevum (Gloucester)

  13. Aquae Sulis (Bath)

  14. Lindinis (Ilchester)

  15. Camulod (Camelot)

  16. Venta Silurum (Caerwent)

  17. Isca Silurum (Caerleon)

  18. (Cardiff)

  19. Nidum (Neath)

  20. Moridunum (Carmarthen)

  21. Cicutio (Y Gaer)

  22. (Castel Collen)

  Key: Roman place names (English/Welsh in brackets)

  The Legend of the Sky Stone *

  Out of the night sky there will fall a stone

  That hides a maiden born of murky deeps,

  A maid whose fire-fed, female mysteries

  Shall give life to a lambent, gleaming blade,

  A blazing, shining sword whose potency

  Breeds warriors. More than that,

  This weapon will contain a woman's wiles

  And draw dire deeds of men; shall name an age;

  Shall crown a king, called of a mountain clan

  Who dream of being drawn from dragon's seed;

  Fell, forceful men, heroic, proud and strong,

  With greatness in their souls.

  This king, this monarch, mighty beyond ken,

  Fashioned of glory, singing a song of swords,

  Misting with magic madness mortal men,

  Shall sire a legend, yet leave none to lead

  His host to triumph after he be lost.

  But death shall ne'er demean his destiny who,

  Dying not, shall ever live and wait to be recalled.

  Threats against the life of the young Arthur Pendragon have forced Caius Merlyn Britannicus to take the boy away from Camulod. With a small group of followers he travels to the port town of Ravenglass, in far north-western Britain, looking for sanctuary.

  In exchange for the promise of military support, King Derek of Ravenglass agrees to let Merlyn and his followers make their new home in a long abandoned Roman fort high on a mountain plateau, an isolated place known as Mediobogdum, meaning "in the bend of the river." In order to deflect attention, Merlyn then surrenders his identity as the party's leader and, to the outside world, he and Arthur become known as the farmer "Master Cay" and his young ward. With the help of his closest friends and companions, Merlyn teaches Arthur about justice, honour, his Christian faith and the responsibilities of leadership.

  Arthur begins to show the wisdom, common sense and regard for justice that will one day make him a legendary king, and Merlyn sees the day fast approaching when the boy will need to wield the king's sword, Excalibur. Arthur is taught the techniques that will enable him to fight with the new sword, while the smiths in Camulod, in utmost secrecy, fashion two new practice swords from the last of the skystone metal, weapons that will be identical to Excalibur in everything but its glorious appearance.

  Merlyn enjoys many peaceful years in Mediobogdum, luxuriating in the new love he has found with Tressa and watching Arthur, along with his constant companions Gwin, Ghilleadh and Bedwyr, grow towards manhood. Connor MacAthol, whose fleet has been transporting King Athol's Scots to their new lands in Alba, comes often to Ravenglass and

  keeps him up to date on affairs in Eire, while Merlyn's

  brother Ambrose visits when he can bringing cheering news of life back in the growing community of Camulod. The only matter that troubles Merlyn is the mark on his chest that he fears might be leprosy, until the physician Lucanus consults his medical authorities and declares it benign, putting Merlyn's mind at rest.

  But beyond their peaceful isolation, violent forces are rising to threaten the tenuous peace of Camulod Ambrose sends word one day of trouble in Northumbria, the land of King Vortigern. Vortigern's Danish ally Hengist is dead, and the fragile peace that existed there is now threatened by the advances of Hengist's hot headed son Horsa and his landless, discontented warriors. More urgently, the powerful forces of Merlyn's old enemy Peter Ironhair are gathering strength in Cornwall, while in Cambria, Dergyll ap Griffyd, who rose to lead the Pendragon people after the death of Uther, has been killed by Ironhair's ally, the monstrous Carthac, who has a claim to the Cambrian kingship. Merlyn further learns that a former comrade, Owain of the Caves, might have been acting as a spy for Ironhair in Camulod. Does Ironhair know where Arthur is hiding, and will he seek to have the boy killed, seeing Arthur's claim to Cambria as a formidable threat to his ambitions?

  Fearing for Arthur's safety, and concerned that the future king's education can go no further in their remote home in Mediobogdum, Merlyn makes the decision to return with his party to Camulod in the spring and prepare to meet Ironhair in battle.

  PART ONE

  Camulod

  ONE

  There is no more important day in a man's life than the day he formally takes
up a sword for the first time. At that fateful and long anticipated moment when a youth extends his hand for the first time, witnessed formally by both his elders and his peers, to grip the hilt of the sword that will be his own, his life and his world are changed forever. In the eyes of men, he has become a man, and his boyhood is irrevocably and publicly discarded for all time, much like the shed skin of a serpent. Far more important and traumatic than his first knowledge of a woman, the commitment of taking up the sword is the last and greatest rite of the passage across the gulf between boyhood and manhood.

  Arthur Pendragon's transition, and the ritual entailed in it, was a source, for me at least, of joy, wonder, great satisfaction and an immense, deep glowing pride. It has been extremely difficult to condense into mere words. A score of times I have set out to write of it and ended up with ink stained fingers, a blotted, much scratched sheet of papyrus and a quill destroyed because its feathered end is chewed, matted and soggy with my own sucking. Only recently, after many attempts, have I been able to assemble a coherent account of the occasion, and of the events leading up to it, from countless scraps and annotations. Even so, I fear it resembles less a chronology than an anthology of incidents and impressions. Each of those incidents, however, had a direct bearing upon the way in which Arthur came to that threshold of manhood.

  Did ever a more alienating gulf exist than that which stretches between boy and man? Few things can be more difficult or vexing than the task a grown man will face in the attempt to recall how it felt, or what it meant, to be a boy. The very coin of life in which the two must deal is different. Boys in their prime, between the ages of eight years and twelve, are yet unburdened by sexuality; they are consumed by other, no less insistent forms of curiosity, and are intent upon learning and discovering everything there is to know about being male and potent, powerful and victorious. Men, on the other hand, may still be curious in their prime, but all their curiosity is tainted by their sexuality: for the ruck of men, all that they do is dominated by the urge for gratification of their sexual needs.

  Because of my unique relationship with Arthur Pendragon

  throughout his life, I was able to observe him closely as he made the transition from one state to the other, but analyse it as I will, I can recall no catalytic moment that marked the transition from boyhood to manhood in the youth whom I had come to regard as my own son. The outward, public moment is a matter of history, but I cannot tell, to this day, when the boy became the man within himself. I know only that I was, and I remain, grateful that all I had loved most in the boy remained present and vibrant in the man. His adult sexuality, all consuming though it frequently appeared to be, never quite broke free of the restraints imposed by his gentle nature and his fierce, boyhood sense of justice and the fitness of things.

  In the years that elapsed between the destruction of the enemy Erse fleet at Ravenglass in the great storm and the day when Arthur Pendragon took up his sword, many of the goals I set out for myself were accomplished, and many of my schemes were set in motion; conversely, many planned events did not transpire. I never got the chance to leave Mediobogdum and travel with Arthur as I intended to. Fear for his safety, and a threat to die safety of our Colony on two fronts, in Cambria and in Vortigern's lands to the northeast, eventually dictated our return to Camulod that spring. And so our final winter in Mediobogdum came and passed with a swiftness I would not have believed possible.

  Connor arrived in February, a full month and more sooner than any of us could have thought to look for him. Though an unseasonably early snow had spoiled much of our harvest and threatened a harsh winter, the ensuing season, in fact, had been so mild as to have been no winter at all. In Mediobogdum, the dark, intervening months between the snowfall and the first promise of spring brought almost incessant rain and heavy cloud cover that seldom broke. Only the high peaks of the Fells above our heads showed their normal whiteness. The fierce winter storms that normally ravaged the coastal waters did not occur that year. All of Britain, it seemed, enjoyed the unprecedented warmth and calm.

  Connor, never one to linger safe at home when there were things he might be doing, had taken full advantage of the mild weather, keeping much of his fleet afloat year round for the first time in die memory of his people. Normally, his vessels would have been beached all winter long, for the annual cleaning of their hulls, but, defying all the gods of sea and storm, Connor had kept them in the water, plying up and down the hundreds of miles of coastline of his father's new northern holdings and dispatching galleys individually, in rotation, to have their hulls cleaned and stripped whenever he or his captains came upon a suitable expanse of beach.

  He arrived in Ravenglass without warning, and then appeared at our gates the following day, accompanied by a smiling Derek and riding in his flamboyant personal chariot at the head of a cavalcade. And of course, as it always did, his advent brought joyful chaos for the length of time it took everyone to grow used to his mercurial presence and the excitement caused by the appearance and behaviour of his colourful companions.

  He came, as usual, burdened with gifts—for me, a claspknife, made of bronze and iron, its handle clad in plates of polished ram's horn mounted in silver. He tossed it to me as soon as I arrived to welcome him, almost running in my haste to greet him before anyone else could. He had not yet climbed down from his chariot and he paused halfway, with his false leg suspended before him, before lobbing his gift to me. For an instant, before he began to move, I saw an unknown, yet strangely familiar face beyond his shoulder. I had only a momentary glimpse of it, however, before I had to concentrate on catching the magnificent knife, and for the next few moments I was caught up in admiring it, depressing the bronze dorsal spine with my thumb to release the iron blade from its clasp, then flicking my wrist, allowing the blade to spring open. Connor came striding over immediately in his swinging, wooden legged gait and paused in front of me while I examined it, then stepped forward with a great grin to throw his arms about me when I looked up to thank him. As I embraced him, I looked again for the face I had seen behind him, and saw the stranger being embraced by Donuil. The family resemblance was unmistakable.

  "Welcome, old friend," I said into Connor's ear, hugging him hard. "I see you've brought another brother with you this time. Which one is this?"

  "That's Brander." He released me and turned to where Donuil and Brander were talking together, looking each other over in the way people do when they meet after having been apart for many years. "Brander! Come you here and meet the man you should have met long years ere now."

  Brander and Donuil approached us, their heads close together as Donuil finished saying something to his eldest brother. Brander laughed, and then looked directly into my eyes as he stretched out his hands to me.

  "Merlyn Britannicus, finally. I feel as though we have been friends for years."

  I clasped hands with him, liking the man immediately. "Brander Mac Athol, Admiral of the Northern Seas. You are welcome here in Mediobogdum, as you will be in Camulod should you ever come that way. Your brothers, and indeed your father, when I met him, have had nothing but good to say of you, and your deeds on behalf of your people ensure you of a place of honour in our homes."

  Brander inclined his head and smiled. "They were right, my brethren. They told me you had a golden tongue and more charm than you need to hide the iron in you. I thank you for your courtesy." He paused, his head tilted slightly to one side. "You look... perplexed. Is something wrong?'

  "No, not at all! Forgive me, it is more curiosity than concern you saw." I glanced from him to Connor, and then back to Brander, shrugging my shoulders. "I simply never thought to see both of King Athol's admirals together in one place without their fleets. Who have you left in charge, up in the north?"

  Both men laughed together, but for a fleeting moment I thought I detected a hint, the most fleeting suggestion, of something unspoken, some minor tension, passing between them.

  "Oh, the fleet is in good hands," Brander an
swered me. "I've always thought the best thing that die Romans left for men like me and my brother, here, was a single word: delegation. Authority passed downward from the commander, is that not what it means?"

  "Aye, it is, from the Legate." I had to fight to suppress the smile tugging at my lips. "I'll admit to you, though, Admiral, I have not heard the word itself in many years, and never thought to hear it used by an Erseman."

  "I'm not an Erseman, Merlyn Britannicus, I'm a Gael." He pronounced it "Gaul" as in the name of the country across the Southern Sea, but there was no rebuke in his words. "All of us came from Gaul once, long ago. Didn't you know that? Julius Caesar did! So we have taken once again to calling ourselves by the ancient name, in order to distinguish ourselves and our blood lines from the likes of the Sons of Condran and the Children of Gar, who are barely human, and who remain, you will note, in Eire while we seek sustenance in a new land. So we will be Gaels, henceforth."

  "Why not Scots?"

  He gazed at me with narrowed eyes, apparently considering my words, then nodded. "It's a Roman name, but it sits well on the tongue." I waited, but it was plain he had finished.

  "So," I looked again from the one seaman to the other. "What is it that brings you here?"

  "Lust," said Connor, laughing explosively, so that heads turned our way. "Brander has finally fallen to the common fate of men. He has married."

  "It's true," Brander admitted. "I have never had a wife till now. Never had time to see to it. But now the wars have , slacked a bit. The Sons of Condran and the others from Eire have not dared to show their faces in our north these past three years, and will not do so again, I judge. So I have had time to spend ashore, and there I met—" He broke off, turning to look about him, and his brother cut in.

  "The fair Salina! Merlyn, I watched the dissolution of this man, this dauntless warrior, from the moment he first set eyes on the woman who is now his wife."