Arthurian Cultivation

“I’ll explain. Share the story I was told. Merlin was a cruel wizard, a man who ruined lives and whose name is cursed still in the most powerful halls. It is said he was raised by the Unseelie. A lie I’ve been told, but one so accurate in the image it conjures up that it may as well be truth.” Maeve began the story, her voice gentle at first, then she gathered herself and put a bit more strength into her words.

“He was a human made wild, raw and strange enough to match the fae. Twice gifted with dream, he was a seer without peer. It is said he could name every death that would come to a village by looking at its rooftops. He could taste a lie on the air, as you or I can taste smoke.”

I winced at that description. Was it just a coincidence or poetic licence?

“People say he worked wonders. That he found cures for the greatest sickness, or turned the tides of war with a single word. It would be more truthful to say he interfered. He turned up in places already teetering towards disaster, and with a word or gesture, pushed. When it led to good fortune people saw it as kindness, when it led to woe none lived to remember his cruelty.” Maeve leant on the strong box, staring into its depths, her voice clear and heavy with purpose.

“Still, he was not feared the way monsters are feared. Not yet. There was a sense of awe for him. He was not like other men, so perhaps he could save them from the ones who were worse.”

“But it did not last. He grew stranger with time. The words came harder, fractured by the many futures he saw. Prophecies slipped from him mid-sentence, leaving people with half complete pictures of their fates. It brought chaos, but by this point he’d risen to the power of Mithril, his wandering having led him through journeys stuffed with fortunate encounters that fuelled his cultivation.”

“Some treated him as a disaster to be avoided, a flood one can only hope to guide away from their home. Others welcomed him as a herald of fate. The one redeeming feature was that he didn’t seek others’ power, he didn’t covet wealth, or lust for flesh. That was until he started to speak of his dreams about one particular girl.”

She paused. I’d never heard Maeve tell a story so clearly before. She was, if I was honest, a poor storyteller. When I asked her to share her experiences before, I’d been given accurate and unimaginative reports of what happened. Yet now her words pinned us, holding us in place. What was strangest of all was that I got the sense I was hearing the tale from someone who’d lived it. The dark memories of someone who’d watched this madman strut across the world. I almost gasped as I realised what it was I was sensing.

She considered these words the absolute truth.

“He began to see her. Not at first clearly, just the shape of her, walking through his dreams, a girl with black hair and an intelligence to her that hurt to look at. He could not see her face. But she did not shrink from him. In every vision, she stood her ground.

And he began to search for her.

He was obsessed. He harassed the other Mithrils, as he hunted for a girl he only knew the shape of and had but a lone name for. Nimue.”

I pushed back against the wall. My spine grew sweaty and my teeth shut tight. I met Maeve’s eyes and she gave the smallest nod, confirming my suspicion. There was, after all, only one ‘Nimue’ we were both acquainted with, the elder witch who preferred the title ‘Miss Peaches’.

Now her tone made sense. This was a recollection, a story shared with her by either Nimue herself or perhaps her grandmother. She’d told me of her connection to Nimue, and when we next met her we were both going to do our best to quietly try to leverage her to help deal with Morgan Chox’s interest in our nuptials. However, to hear this part of the old witch’s history chilled me.

It is scary to imagine the old monsters growing up. It’s scarier to know that there was someone out there that Miss Peaches couldn’t kill. I hadn’t missed the implication of Maeve’s worries. Merlin wasn’t dead, he was at best sealed away. The idea that someone senior to Morgan Chox, and the King of Albion, had a foe out there that she couldn’t kill made me feel physically sick.

“He found her. A young witch that he stole away from her coven. He called her apprentice. Called her chosen. He spoke of fate, of power, of the world they’d rule between them. He taught her the secrets of his cultivation, the way of the wizard. Wizards were the first to refine runes, to master enchantment, and he was first among all wizards. Yet with every lesson, he took something from her. Space. Silence. Self.”

“He built a sanctum beneath one of the snow capped mountains of Albion to ‘protect’ her. But the walls were not for her safety.”

“They were for his control.”

“Nimue refused to become his thing. She wrung him dry of his lessons. Fortified herself against his madness and prophecy, and found a weakness in his greatest power. His visions of the future were thinnest when it came to his direct actions, his own works blinded him. It was why he lived as a vagrant, wandering through the world. Settling in one place robbed him of his power.”

“But his obsession with her drove him to forget this. She distracted him, keeping his present full of her presence, so he would not notice her absence from his future.”

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“She subtly stirred up his paranoia. Refining it like an alchemist might distil a poison. She whispered that others would steal her away, that people plotted against him. Enemies he’d made long ago, that even his visions couldn’t reliably spy, loomed large in his mind. And so he consented to have her aid him in layering fresh wards upon the mountain, runes of great majesty to ensure none might take her from his domain. All the while she built up to her greatest trick.”

“On the day she pledged to marry him, she sprung her trap. Turning the wards against him, twisting his spells, and sealing him beneath the stone he called home. Not in rage, but with precision, like closing a book. Then she walked away. And the mountain kept him.”

I felt the story end. The aura in the room shifting, like a name of great power had just been spoken.

As if I needed more reason to be scared of Miss Peaches.

“Well that’s terrifying,” Tristan muttered. The man looked pale. I briefly remembered that he’d done something to upset Miss Peaches when they’d met. Had he also worked out the connection? Or was he just showing the suitable amount of fear when faced with a story of old monsters.

“What is worse is that many wizards idolise him,” Maeve breathed out with a sigh of frustration.

“I’m not familiar with wizards?” I offered. I knew of them in stories and song but not as a real force in the world. My education had been varied, but it wasn’t like the Harkleys made a business of sharing the ‘heathen’ paths of cultivation.

“They are a rare breed of cultivator. Focused on runes and cultivation through understanding like the witches, but with a focus almost exclusively on projecting glamour into ‘spells’, that are just ranged techniques. Mostly extinct now, many of them took exception to Nimue’s binding of the man who was basically their patriarch. She did not entertain their criticism politely.” Maeve gave a small, dangerous smile.

“Did she wipe them out?” I asked tentatively. I could certainly imagine such a response.

“No, they did that to themselves. There would probably be more of them alive if they didn’t keep plotting to try and free the cur. Basically anyone who catches wind of a wizard near the Hollow Mountain offs them. Cultivator or cultist, everyone swats them down, like keeping flies from honey. No one wants Merlin back.”

“So this conman might be a wizard then?” Sephy asked, her brow creased with concentration.

“That or a very well read academic. Still, he’s a fool for trying to walk down such a cursed path.”

“Probably both. So he’s like Vermald?”

“Yes, the names and titles are used by a lot of idiots, mortal and errant cultivator alike. It’s fallen out of common use, but sorcerer is basically the equivalent of squire for wizards. I didn’t put Vermald down as a wizard as his runes were terrible, even with him being gifted in the discipline. I would be surprised if he knew much of their philosophy, but given we know he colluded with this Merlin character, it’s possible he was associated with them. Maybe he had some of their books? Kind of wish we didn’t burn everything so thoroughly now.” Maeve winced.

“How does this help us? From what I know it’s a philosophy. It’s not like they’re an organisation like a coven,” Sephy asked aloud. Her question sought to guide us back to the task at hand. Yes, finding the empty strong box, sans Grail, was a kick in the teeth, made all the worse by the sense of threat that the presence of the cultists had cast over us. What really mattered was that we had a lead. It seemed we knew where the Grail used to be, we knew whose hands it’d last been in. And we had an inkling as to his profile.

“Witches understand the world around them and their place in it, working out how to guide their power to shape both. Wizards understand the world around them and how to apply pressure to change the world to their whims. It’s fundamentally apart. They treat the world as their laboratory, never truly connecting. They only interact with each other to exchange notes on their experiments.”

“The bounties. We need to review the bounties. Maybe someone else has heard of him,” I muttered.

“That and the dossier from Phischer. I might not like the man, but his level of petty hate makes me believe he’s got to have done some real work in finding ‘Merlin’,” Maeve added.

It took us a long while to manoeuvre the box through the dungeon. The weight was manageable, but it’d been down there so long that the fortress had grown around it. We had to remove doors from hinges just to get it out.

The king’s aide paused to drop off a dense sheaf of papers on us as we hauled the box out. The stack was impressive, and as I scanned through it I couldn’t help but be impressed with the thoroughness of the note taking. I was, of course, excused from manual labour, only having one arm, but the others certainly seemed to find it aggravating.

It was well past midnight when we arrived back at the fortress. All but those on watch were gathered to watch Rowena as she carefully lifted the book, bound in rune covered fabric, and slid it into the likely opening.

It slid in perfectly.

Around me, frantic discussions started. I saw Rowena frown when ‘Merlin’ was mentioned. Clearly she was aware of the origin of the name and no more fond of it than us.

I stayed out of the way. I was feeling tired and sapped. The poison had drained me, but still I sat on the floor, cross referencing the bounties to the extensive and detailed notes we’d been given by the king.

Phischer had never given up on capturing the man, and as I looked at the stacks of paper, which were extra costly up in the mountains, I had to wonder how much he’d spent driven by his hate. None could claim the king didn’t forget a slight.

Beside me, Tristan, back in his normal garb, had pulled out a small fold out desk and was going through the paperwork, hunting down place names and notices, and plotting them on a map of the mountains.

Rowena was inspecting the strong box with Marek. She intended to ship the book back to the Golden Order later tonight, and was checking if there was any good reason not to use the clearly custom built strong box to help hide it. So far it seemed that the runes embedded into it would only be a boon, stopping any scrying and ensuring its power didn’t leak and draw unwanted attention.

The entire group was galvanised. We had a purpose and a lead. Better than we had fared for the last few months.

Now we just had to find an elusive wizard, who’d spent the last two decades armed with an artefact of unspeakable power.

No pressure.