The Book of Avalon Eternal

Gawain's sleep is dreamless, mercifully, after he succumbs to the sedative with his last vision being of the horned beast-man and the strange figure that smells of death His next sensation is that of a hand gently stroking his forehead and wiping it with a warm damp cloth. He blinks his eyes and finds that his sight returns quicker this time, and the bright glow that shrouded everything the first time has gone away. As his eyes focus, he looks up into the face of the druid healer Meurig: gentle, kind Meurig who was brought to Britain as a child by Gallic slave traders. He knew very little of his past except that his parents had left the Vandal kingdom in Africa when he was three years old. Hating the Vandals for the way they treated their people, his parents traveled north into Hispania. And there a raiding party sailed by night to the shore where a camp of refugees lay sleeping. The raiders were of Gallic and Germanic tribes, and they killed Meurig's parents and took him as a slave.

So Meurig arrived in Britain an orphan, alone and terrified. At the market in Adurni, he was bought by a group of druids who were traveling through the town that day. They brought him north to Chriostal, where he was presented to Merlin. And Merlin accepted him into the training of the druids.

Now Meurig is tending Gawain's left leg, which has been broken where it is largest between the knee and the hip. 'Good morning, Gawain,' says Meurig. He is unable to respond, his throat too parched to speak. Meurig takes a sponge, wets it in a jar of water, and moistens Gawain's lips with it. The liquid relieves the tight, cracked feeling of his lips for the moment. Meurig leans over him and softly lifts his chest and head and brings a small cup of water to his lips. Blessed water, the silkiness of it sliding down his throat, wetting it and quenching his thirst.

'Good morning,' he says, now that he can speak.

'You have been asleep for a long time.'

'How long?'

'It has been six days since the battle. The Battle of Camlann.' Meurig looks at him gravely.

Surprised, Gawain says: 'Six days? What has happened in six days?'

'That is not a story for me to tell. Besides, I don't know much anyway. I have been in this room tending and caring for you most of the day and night.'

'When can I get out of this bed?'

'You can get out now, but carefully and slowly.'

'Can you help me get to that chair by the window?'

Nodding, Meurig laces his arms under Gawain's and pulls him up with a strength that is not obvious at all from his slight form. Putting him into a sitting position on the side of the bed, he lifts Gawain into a standing position and moves him towards the chair, carefully supporting the broken and fractured bones.

Before he is halfway to the chair, he hears a creak of the door hinge. He looks over his shoulder and sees in the crack of the door Nimue, staring in at him. Losing his balance momentarily but held up by Meurig, he makes the chair and is settled softly into it by Meurig, who covers him with a blanket and strokes him on the head.

'I will leave for a while. She can give you anything you need in my absence. And of course I will return for the afternoon, and the night.' Smiling benevolently down at Gawain, he then crosses the room in slippered feet and exits through the door, opening it further as he passes by Nimue who still stands at the threshold.

Gawain looks at her silently for a moment before she enters the room, padding over to his chair on bare feet, and sits on the bench under the window beside his chair. Her hair has been washed and shines black in the sunlight, her face is cleansed of mud and dirt, and her sleeveless shift has been washed and is cinched at her small waist with a silver belt.

'The nature of our relationship has changed,' she says, without preamble. Gawain raises his eyebrows expectantly.

She continues: 'Morgan and Arthur are gone - '

'Where have they gone?' he interrupts.

She pauses and looks down before responding: 'I am not able to share that with you in a way that you would understand.'

Gawain scowls, feeling insulted. She does not respond and instead resumes her previous line of thought. 'Morgan and Arthur are gone. It is not likely that they will return soon. Merlin is, of course, absent and will be absent until I call him back.'

'Will you call him back? If we do not need him now, then when do we need him?'

'I will not call him back now. It does not suit my purpose.'

'Nimue, he is your teacher. He is Arthur's teacher.'

'Yes, Merlin taught me many things. Some things he taught me I did not wish to learn, not at so young an age, and certainly not from him.' At this Gawain is silent and looks out the window at the cloudy day and his view of the western rampart that stretches beyond to the forest.

'Morgan and Arthur, and Merlin too - they are all gone, and that means that you and I assume their roles,' Nimue continues.

'That is a bold assumption.'

'There is no greater witch, or mage, in all of Britain now - than me,' she replies, raising her head and chin proudly.

'But there is a process of selecting the next king. We must abide by the laws of the realm. And I don't know how the Council of Witches decides on a leader, given the secrecy that you operate with, but you cannot simply take a position that you want - '

'I have already taken it,' she says bluntly. 'That matter is closed. I am the chief of the Council of Witches, and I intend to gather and take all the power that Merlin and Morgan ever wielded, and more.'

Gawain meditates on that for several minutes. Nimue too looks out the window, examining the cloud formations as they drift ponderously across the sky.

'How has the nature of our relationship changed?' Gawain asks after a time.

'You are Arthur's heir.'

Gawain had been worried she would say this. 'He did not name me heir.'

'He did. He spoke of you as his heir many times, and as recently as this past winter's feast - only three months ago.'

'He did not formally name any heir. And I have no valid claim, at least not one that doesn't have many more valid claims before it. Gwydre, or Amhar - '

'Gwydre and Amhar are fools. Arthur hated them.' Nimue said dismissively.

'Nimue, they are his sons.'

'And fools nonetheless. And he did hate them.'

Gawain lets this line of conversation drop. 'Even if they are fools, they will have a stronger claim than me, and there are at least ten knights who will also try to assert a claim, valid or not. Bedivere and Percival, for example. Both of whom are older and stronger than me.'

Nimue looked at him out of the corner of her eye. 'Gawain, you will be the king, and I am going to make sure of it. This is what I want, and I assure you my desires will be accomplished. I will not be denied, and no one will stand against me. Not even you.'

Gawain stares at her for a few moments, and she does not break his gaze. Her eyes glisten with something like defiance, or perhaps mirth.

'Tell me what happened after you cast the spell on the hillside.'

Nimue's brow furrows, and she says: 'Meurig has not spoken to you about this?'

'He has not. I have only just now woken up. Well, I woke up once before, sometime in the last six days, and had a horrible vision.'

Nimue looks as if she is about to ask what the vision was, but then she shifts her attention back to the matter of the spell.

'When I cast the last spell, I sent a protective hedge over you and the other knights. I did not want to harm you, but in my effort to protect you, I was forced to harm you. I put the traitors under a paralysis spell that would last for eternity, unless I break it. They could not see, hear, or think, but they were alive and at my disposal. I placed five of the younger knights to guard their bodies, and then I went to deal with the matter of the captives.'

Gawain stares at her expressionless, fearing what he will hear next.

Nimue resumes her account: 'I directed the captives to be held in the dungeon beneath the palace. Then I returned to the traitors and had them bound hand to foot. Once they were secured, I released them from the spell. And then I gave them a choice.'

'What was the choice?' he replies in a thin voice, dreading but also shamefully and deeply excited by what might come next.

'I informed them that one hundred and eleven of their men were taken prisoner and were now at my disposal in the dungeon of Camlann. Then I told them my intention was to invert the Roman practice of decimation and instead of killing one of every ten prisoners, I will kill nine of every ten. But the choice I gave them was to play a game of chance, and if they agreed to do so, then I would follow the Roman practice instead.'

'And what was the game?'

Smirking, she went on: 'The game of chance was that they should cast lots to determine which of them will be selected by the gods to have the opportunity to save the lives of one hundred men. The one who is chosen by the gods must then choose: to submit to castration by my hand and thereby save one hundred of his men, or to deny me this and thereby sentence one hundred men to death.'

Gawain swallowed. 'Who was chosen by the gods?'

'Eormenric.'

Gawain felt a small surge of satisfaction, but then chastised himself for it. 'And what was his choice?'

'He chose for one hundred men to die, so that he could keep the pathetic thing between his legs. And so I spared them the traitor's death sentence, and instead burned the Rune of Damnation on each of their foreheads. I sent them back to their peoples so that the Rune will shame them for the rest of their days and they will be cast out from their tribes and families on the very day that they return to them.'

Gawain leans back in his chair, absorbing what Nimue has just told him. A knock at the door pulls Gawain's and Nimue's attention towards it.

'Come!' says Gawain.

It is Sagramor who opens the door and steps into the room, and he says breathlessly: 'Sir Gawain and my lady Nimue. Mordred's body has been found and brought to the gate of Camlann.'