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.On emerging from the amphitheater we almost immediately met Bran, who had started out to look forVivian and me, and was naturally dismayed to see our unexpected escort.Bran, and later the others, were astonished to see Vivian and me returning in the company of Hakon and his fellows, who had literally sprung up out of the earth.Vivian continued to speak to the newcomers in her idea of elegant speech, using the lofty, remote tones that she supposed a priestess ought to Page 52ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmluse, and meanwhile I said hardly a word.I watched Bran eagerly as soon as he came into sight, in hopes that he would give me a clue as to what my new role was to be.Bran and the other members of our troupe all grasped the essentials of the situation with reassuring quickness and played along.If some of them seemed confused at first, why that was only to be expected when more than a dozen armed men turned up on the doorstep, well within what we had come to think of as our protective wall.Soon Bran was performing introductions.He named us all, himself included, by our true names-that was simpler than suddenly thrusting unfamiliar aliases upon us, and these alien newcomers could have no idea that our proper names belonged to a troupe of traveling entertainers.Bran of course awarded himself the title of high priest of this facility, and introduced Jandree- when Hakon finally saw her-as his reveredconsort.Vivian and I were both assigned the roles of what might now be called sensitives, channels through which the power of the oracle spoke to mere humanity.Flagon-dry and Maud, as could be seen from the elegance of their apparel, were also functionaries worthy of respect.This was established by the way the high priest spoke to them, but their duties were left undefined.Ivald was out of sight for the time being, in his chapel as usual I supposed, and Bran was probably relieved that our visitors' encounter with him could be postponed.Bran and the rest of us, who had made ourselves the new proprietors of the Oracle of Merlin's Bones, were of course now locked into our roles by the presence of the Northmen.No longer having to ourselves the space inside the walls, we former fugitives, having posed as seers, could hardly admit that we were only frauds.Now Hakon boldly demanded that the seeress provide him with a prophecy.Vivian coolly put him off, saying that the conditions were not favorable just now.When the man we had known as Ivald, attracted by the strange voices, came to see what was going on, he was as surprised as the rest of us had been to see the new arrivals.But soon he was exchanging a few words with them in some incomprehensible Norse dialect.Meanwhile I watched our one-armed comic juggler, wondering.This man had been a berserk? Amaddened warrior? We had never given Ivald a title, but had we done so it must have been the Harmless.Since I had known him he had never demonstrated anything but fear and loathing when the subject of martial matters came up.On the other hand I had more than once seen him take an interest in babies and small children in the village audiences, petting them and trying to make them laugh.And now we had to explain convincingly to the Northmen about the Oracle of Merlin's Bones.For several years before Bran, and we who were his followers, reached Merlin's Rock, the world had been full of reports of how Arthur had fallen in battle.The stories were compounded with rumors, often conflicting, of the final fate of the late king and his court.The Northmen even in their own distant land had known of Arthur-we supposed at the time that everyone in the world must be familiar with that name-and they had heard several versions of these tales, just as we had.There were also various stories concerning Merlin, but these agreed at least on one essential fact: his sad fate at the hands of the treacherous young woman who'd used his own magic to put him away under the ground.The tales regarding Arthur varied wildly, even on points one would have thought essential.Some mourned the fact that he was irretrievably dead.Others blithely denied the great king's mortality, maintaining that he had been carried badly wounded from the field and borne off to some remote place Page 53ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlof safety, where he would eventually be healed, and from whence he had promised to return.One narrative gave it as certain that the king had been baptized a Christian.Another provided vivid details of how he had utterly rejected that alien creed.Yet another affirmed that Arthur's nephew Mordred, who some said was really his bastard son, had fought at the king's side and had fallen trying to defend him.Not so, said others; Mordred and Arthur had led opposing forces, and had slain each other with simultaneous strokes of spear and sword.It seemed that no one in the land, at least no member of a band of wandering entertainers, or of pillagingVikings either, could be certain of the truth regarding King Arthur's fate-except that he was unquestionably gone.No one doubted the existence of the fortified city of Camelot, but its location was hazy, to say the least."Who was Merlin?" I asked this question of Bran as soon as I could do so out of hearing of the Northmen.There had been moments in my past relationship with Bran when I had convinced myself that he knew everything.Bran in his thoughtful way refused to give me any quick answer to my query.But Maud had heard me ask, and she was never wary of quick answers.Maud was washing her hands at a kitchen sink, which was fed by a water pipe from a cistern just below the unfinished roof."He's dead now-or some say, confined by magic under a rock.Everyone knows that.""Bran, when he was telling the story, said under a rock [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]