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sword in his fury at the Saracen's quiet declaration.
Merlin looked up at the man silently. Saladin stared back at him.
"Help him," the old man said at last. His voice was the merest
whisper.
Saladin turned toward the entrance of the room. Merlin ran after him,
touching his arm. "I beg this of you." The tall man took a deep
breath. "You're talking nonsense," he said.
But the old man followed after him doggedly. "The cup of Christ," he
pleaded. "You must use it to save the King." All of the assembled
knights and servants were watching them now.
Merlin and Saladin had spoken in Latin, so the others could not
understand them, but they would learn about the cup soon enough.
It was bound to come to this, Saladin thought. In thirty-two hundred
years, he had revealed the secret only once; but once, he knew, was one
time too many. Now the whole world would hunt him down to possess the
cup. "How dare you do this to me," Saladin hissed. He disengaged
Merlin's hand from his sleeve and flung it aside. "Let him die!" At
this, Launcelot lunged forward, his blade drawn. Saladin threw him off
with a strength Merlin had never witnessed before. The big knight
virtually flew away from him, crashed sprawling on the stone floor
beside the well. The force of Launcelot's fall caused the well's
handle to spin out of control, sending the big wooden bucket to the
bottom with a splash. "Do not set your dogs on me again, Merlin,"
Saladin warned. "I could kill Arthur and a thousand others like him.
Slowly he walked over to the table where the king lay. He leaned
across the Siege Perilous and touched Arthur almost lovingly. "Perhaps
I would wish to be king myself," he taunted. "A king among your
savages. I could be, as you well know. I would have a long, long
reign." With that he took a short, jeweled knife from his belt and
held it above Arthur's throat. "Far longer than your precious
Arthur's." The knife came down. One of the serving women screamed.
Launcelot scrambled to his feet. The other knights rushed forward.
Only Merlin did not move. At the moment when he realized that Saladin
meant to vent his anger at Merlin by murdering the king in front of
him, his eyes rolled back in his head. The movement was almost
involuntary, as was the welling of power he felt rising within him. It
was the creature, the unseen beast he had carried inside him for so
long, now standing, straining, exploding to life inside Merlin's body.
The power was blinding; the wizard's eyes were suffused with an
unearthly light that he could feel coiling through his viscera like a
great hot snake.
Slowly his hands raised, palms up, as the power focused in them and
crackled out through his fingers. He did not see the knife drop, as
the others did. He did not see the look of astonishment on Saladin's
face as the power pushed him backward like a wall, slow and inexorable
in its force, or the light which glowed in the space between the two
men like a flaring sun. Merlin saw nothing and felt nothing, not even
the remnants of anger toward the tall man who would see his king dead.
The power burned all emotion out of him, burned him pure. He was no
longer a man, he knew, but a receptacle for this shapeless, invisible
beast that had lain inside him for more than seventy years. He was the
power, and nothing--the gods help him, not even himself--could stop it.
Saladin resisted, holding his hands up in front of his face, squinting
against the awful glare. But the light only grew stronger, and the
invisible wall pressed against him, suffocating and relentless. With a
cry he slid backward, his shoes scraping against the stone flags of the
floor, until he slammed against the side of the well. His back
snapped.
Everyone heard that. And then his head lolled back, unconscious.
"He's falling in," someone said, but no one dared to intervene in the
terrible miracle they were witnessing.
A sound came from Saladin as he toppled backward into the well, a low
sigh that reverberated from the damp stones to the water below, so that
all that could be heard by the breathless spectators was an echo,
melancholy as the song of a wild bird. When Merlin came to himself,
Launcelot was on his knees, making the sign of the cross. Gawain still
held his hand to the hilt of his sheathed sword, the muscles in his
face working frantically. How could Merlin explain to them what had
happened?
He himself had no idea. And yet he knew that it was he who had called
the power forth and directed it at the man who had once saved his life.
In those first weak moments after he emerged from the thrall of the
power, when his human limbs felt as if they would shatter to fragments
and his heart pounded as if it were about to explode, he felt only
fear.
For there would be no rest for his soul now. He had trespassed beyond
the boundaries of everything mortal. And yet he would not have acted
otherwise. Not for the blessings of the gods themselves. "Bring him
up," he commanded hoarsely. The servants in the room drew away from
him. "I said bring him up!" Gawain leapt to the well, his grizzled
face registering relief at having a task to do. He began, slowly, to
bring up the big bucket with its heavy load. Launcelot rose to help
him.
Soon all the knights were clustered around the well, pulling on the
long rope, shouting orders at one another. Merlin moved back to Arthur
and touched his bloody face. He was still alive, though he had long
ago passed out of consciousness. The old man picked up the jeweled
knife that lay beside the king and waited. "The rope . . . It's
breaking!
I can feel . . ." Three of the men fell backward, the frayed rope
dangling from their hands. "A dead man in the well," one of them
moaned. "And the king not half-alive." One of the maidservants sobbed
hysterically. The steward came over to shake her. Merlin waited.
"We'll close it up," Gawain offered gruffly. "Close it up and dig
another . . ." And then Saladin came, as Merlin knew he would,
roaring with the voice of a caged beast as he clawed his way up the
sheer wall and burst out of the opening, arms outstretched, fingers
splayed to kill. The knights screamed. "Hold him!" Merlin shouted,
raising the knife.
They leapt on the tall stranger, the dead man brought back to life by
whatever evil demons he commanded, as Merlin cut the sodden velvet
pouch from Saladin's belt. At once he saw the superhuman strength
fade.
Kicking and flailing, Saladin had become no more than a man, angry,
terrified, panicked. And mortal. "You do not deserve to possess
this," Merlin said, holding the cup. The silence in the room was
charged. Then softly, bitterly, Saladin laughed. "That is what I said
to the man I stole it from." The old man blanched. "Don't be a
hypocrite, wizard.
You're as much a thief as I was." Gawain snaked the dagger to
Saladin's throat. "No!" Merlin shouted. "Let the barbarian kill me
here," Saladin drawled. "I'd rather not hang, if it's all the same to
you." Gawain pressed the knife more deeply against his neck.
"Enough!" Merlin slashed the air in front of him with his hand. "He
is to remain unharmed, do you understand?"
Gawain looked at the wizard in bewilderment. "But he tried to kill the
king." "Give him safe conduct to the open road. The Green Knight's
expression grew truculent. "He belongs in the dungeon--" "Do it!"
Merlin ordered. Another knight, Launcelot, put a restraining hand on
Gawain's arm, then nodded.
Gawain sheathed his knife. Saladin straightened out his wet clothing.
"A life for a life, eh, Merlin? Is that what you're offering me?"
"That is correct," the old man said. "My debt to you is now paid. I
owe you nothing." He gestured to the knights. "Take him. And do not
return to this hall. I must be alone with the king." The knights
pushed Saladin roughly toward the entrance. "I swear I will take back
what is mine!" Saladin whispered You're sure to try, Merlin thought
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