Merlin

Yes, but there is more to Arthur than his birth. To understand him you have to understand the land, this land, this island of the mighty. And you have to understand me, for I am the man who made him. Book One King Chapter One Many years have come and gone since I awakened in this world's realm. Too many years of darkness and death, disease, war, and evil. Yes, very much evil. But life was bright once, bright as sunrise on the sea and moonglow on water, bright as the fire on the hearth, bright as the red-gold torch around my grandfather Elfin's throat. Bright, I tell you, and full of every good thing. I know that every man recalls something of the same golden shield in life's beginning, but my memories are not less real or true for that. Merlin, a curious name, perhaps. No doubt my father would have chosen a different name for his son, but my mother can be forgiven for her lapse. Merlin, Myrthin, among my father's people, suits me. Yet every man has two names, the one he is given, and the one he wins for himself. Emrys is the name I have won among men, and it is my own. Emrys Immortal, Emrys Divine, Emrys Vledig, King and Prophet to his people. Ambrosius it is to the Latin speakers, and Embrys to the people of southern Britain and Logres. But Myrthin Emrys am I to the Kimry of the hill-bound fastness of the West, and because they were my father's people I feel they are my own as well. Although my mother long ago taught me the folly of this belief, it comforts me, much, I suppose, as it must have comforted my father in his times of doubt. And as there is much evil in the world, there is much doubt also. This is not the least of the adversary's servants, and there are so many others. Well and well, get on with it, mumbler. What treasures from your plundered store will you lay before us? I take up my staff and stir the embers, and I see again the images of my earliest memory. In is Avarsac, the Isle of Avarsac. It is the home of my grandfather, King Avarsac, the Fisher King, and the first home I ever knew. It was here, in these polished halls of his palace, that I took my first faltering steps. See, here are the white-blossomed apple-groves, the salt-marshes, and mirror-smooth lake below the looming Tor, the whitewashed shrine on the nearby hill. And there is the Fisher King himself, dark and heavy-browed like a summer thunderstorm. Stretched on his pallet of red silk, Avarsac was a fearful figure to a child of three. No kind as the heart within him would allow. And here is my mother, Kharis, tall and slim, of such regal bearing as to shame all pretenders, and possessing a grace that surpasses mere beauty. Golden-haired daughter of Theu's son, Lady of the Lake, Mistress of Avalon, Queen of the Fairy. Her names and titles, like my own, proliferate with time. All these and more men call her, and they are not wrong. I was, I knew, the sole treasure of my mother's life. She was never at any pains to disguise the fact. Good Daphid, the priest, gave me to know that I was a beloved child of the living God, and his stories about God's son, Jesu, kindled my soul with an early longing for Paradise, as Hafgan, chief druid, wise and true, faithful servant in his own way, taught me the taste of knowledge, awakening a hunger I have never satisfied. If there was want in the world, I knew nothing of it, neither did I know fear or danger. The days of my childhood were blessed with peace and plenty. On Inis Avarsac, at least, time and the events of the wider world stood off, remote. All was heard merely as a muted, distant murmur, soft, like the wailing of the Fëan Sida, the little dark people, the hill-folk, in the stone circles on the far hill-tops. Distant as the roar of a winter storm cresting mighty Irwitschwe, in the rock-bound north.