A voice was shouting, high and monotonous, gasping. I could not get my breath. Pain broke through me, spreading from groin and belly like blood bursting from a wound. I could see nothing. I felt my hands knotting and stretching. My head hurt, and the rock was hard and streaming wet under my cheekbone. I had fainted, and they had seized me as I lay and were killing me: this was my blood seeping from me to spread into the pool and shore up the foundations of their rotten tower. I choked on breath like bile. My hands tore in pain at the rock, and my eyes were open, but all I could see was the whirl of banners and wings and wolves’ eyes and sick mouths gaping, and the tail of a comet like a brand, and stars shooting through a rain of blood.

Pain went through me again, a hot knife into the bowels. I screamed, and suddenly my hands were free. I threw them up between me and the flashing visions and I heard my own voice calling, but could not tell what I called. In front of me the visions whirled, fractured, broke open in intolerable light, then shut again into darkness and silence.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I WOKE in a room splendidly lined with embroidered hangings, where sunlight spilt through the window to lay bright oblongs on a boarded floor.

I moved cautiously, testing my limbs. I had not been hurt. There was not even a trace of headache. I was naked, softly and warmly bedded in furs, and my limbs moved without a hint of stiffness. I blinked wonderingly at the window, then turned my head to see Cadal standing beside the bed, relief spreading over his face like light after cloud.

“And about time,” he said.

“Cadal! Mithras, but it’s good to see you! What’s happened? Where is this?”

“Vortigern’s best guest chamber, that’s where it is. You fixed him, young Merlin, you fixed him proper.”

“Did I? I don’t remember. I got the impression that they were fixing me. Do you mean they’re not still planning to kill me?”

“Kill you? Stick you in a sacred cave, more like, and sacrifice virgins to you. Pity it’d be such a waste. I could use a bit of that myself.”

“I’ll hand them over to you. Oh, Cadal, but it is good to see you! How did you get here?”