@Copyright Heather Albano 2005. All rights reserved.

"The Tale of the Traveler", my first professional sale, appeared in the March 2005 edition of Aoife's Kiss.

*

"Your report is most unsatisfactory." The curved walls caught the words, deepened them, amplified them, focused them directly on the man who stood in the room's center, with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes fixed on the high dais.

The last time he had stood here, the setting had awed him -- but much had happened since then. He had been gone only weeks by the time of this world, and the sixty or so years he had spent on Earth should have counted little to a species that measured its lifespan in millennia. Nevertheless, he had found that one simply could not live a lifetime in the reckoning of any world, and be unaffected by it. He had seen too much, done too much, endured too much to have any patience left for this empty ritual.

The last time, he had felt privileged to be included in a full Council meeting, and had stood proudly in the center, answering respectfully only when spoken to, careful to do nothing that might disturb the solemnity of the gathering. Now as he stood again in the center, going over the essence of his report for the second time and trying to do it in a polite tone of voice, all he was able to think was how much his neck ached from looking up at the absurdly gowned Councilors sitting on the equally absurd dais. He wished they could all just get this over with.

"Your report is most unsatisfactory." The speaker, the Presider of the Council, was looking directly at him, and her gaze was cold.

"I cannot see how, madam Presider," he answered, his tone just a note on the safe side of respectful. "I have done as the Council asked. You have the object."

"You have also done much that the Council did not ask," she replied, and the chamber rang again with her rebuke. "Much, in fact, that the Council has expressly forbidden -- to you, and to all Travelers. Your mission was to act as one of them only so far as it was necessary to gain their confidence. To get the object, deal with the traitor, and leave -- not to spend a lifetime there enjoying yourself and playing with their history. The role we gave you to play should have made no ripples, should have warranted nothing more than a parenthetical reference in someone's memoirs -- if that. Instead, your 'Merlin' became one of the most powerful players of the day."

With some difficulty, he kept his voice low-pitched. "As I have already explained, madam, becoming 'one of the most powerful players of the day' was hardly my fault. I was thrust into the role by circumstance -- by the imprecise technology which landed me in the right place thirty years before the right time, and by the bad luck of being asked my name before I knew the year."

He was surprised at how vivid the memory was, after all this time. With the words, it was as though he was back there again, stepping out of the time machine and onto the soft soil, nervous and exhilarated at once, carefully repeating his story to himself. "I am Merlin now; I am Merlin..." Watching to make sure the time machine disguised itself, and then turning to take in his surroundings. Thinking, Yes, this must be the right place -- undoubtedly the Avalon of which the Council had told him, and through the orchard there would be the Lady's dwellings. He had started for those dwellings to ask her help in his task, as the Councilors had instructed him to do. "Show her something she can perceive as magic," they had said, "and she will be more than willing to assist you." And then a man had burst from the woods at his right --

 *

He jerked around, startled, but no less startled was the soldier who faced him. "Who are you?" the man barked.

Trembling and trying to hide it, the young Traveler had drawn himself up to his full height. "Who asks?" he demanded, and his booming baritone echoed throughout the surrounding wood.

"A King's man," the soldier returned, intimidated enough by the voice and the surroundings not to insist to an answer to his question first. And the Traveler had relaxed, for King Arthur had been named as a potential ally as well. What luck!

"Good, then! for I seek the King," he announced.

"Who are you?" the soldier repeated. In his face was not fear -- exactly -- but wariness and suspicion.

"Merlin the Enchanter."

"Merlin? Who?... You don't mean Merlin, the boy without a father who defied old Vortigern all those years ago!" The suspicion was growing greater. "Why, he's been dead for years!"

He who had named himself Merlin took a step closer. "I did not die," he intoned, repeating the story as the Council had told it to him. "I removed to a secluded place for a time, and spent years in study. I emerge now, thrice as powerful as before, to offer my services to your good King."

The soldier seemed convinced, or perhaps terrified. "And isn't that a piece of luck!" he said, trying to appear easy. "This way, my lord, I'll take you to him... His Majesty's in need of your services, and no mistake -- he's just sent me to ask the help of the Lady of Avalon, and that's a shock as you can imagine, sir, for there's no love lost between them. None of us realized till then that he really meant what he said when he declared he'd use any means, fair or foul, to win the lady Ygraine..."

Ygraine? the Traveler thought. There was something wrong about that. Surely...

Still chattering, the soldier led him into the clearing where the King was camped. "Ralf, tell the guard there's an enchanter here to see King Uther!" he ordered, and the Traveler seemed to feel his stomach fall right through the forest floor. King Uther? He was too early, twenty years or more too early. He remembered this part of the story now, and Merlin had no business having anything to do with it.

But he was in the story now. And with the guards all around him, and the King coming to his tentflap to greet him, it was too late to run the other way.

 *

"As I explained, by the time I realized the problem, so many had seen me that I could not simply vanish and reappear thirty years later."

"You were thrust into the role by circumstance -- agreed," the Presider said. "But you could have thrust yourself right back out of it -- hidden in a cave in the woods, perhaps, until the time came for you to do what you were sent to do. Instead, you chose to remain a key player. Not only that, you engineered a plot that affected that portion of the world for the next forty years and beyond." Her voice dropped, became silken, sarcastic: it was, the Traveler thought, like nothing so much as a knife blade stroked across the cheek -- one of the things that had happened to him since he had last stood here, so he knew the comparison was apt. "In case you have forgotten, Traveler, you were sent to prevent interference, not to cause it."

"Madam Presider -- " he barely caught back the words, for the last time --  "I did not engineer the plot. I was asked for my help, and I feared that if I withheld it, history would be irrevocably changed. And after I became the King's advisor," he went on, anticipating the words as they rose to her lips -- almost interrupting her, a discourtesy unheard-of --  "I gave only advice that would have been given by someone else if I had not been there -- doses of common sense, not insights into the future or blueprints to build advanced technology. The only exception was when the advice concerned our renegade, and then I did try to impact the world around me -- in order to prevent her interference." There was a definite edge to his tone now. He did not bother to hide it. "I myself never once interfered with their history as it would have played out."

"No?" The Presider curled her lip, just slightly. "This woman," she said, and glanced down at her notes. "Viviane. You do not call that interference? I have never traveled, of course -- " the sarcasm dripped like honey --  "but it seems to me that your -- interaction -- with her ran counter to every single one of our regulations and laws. I am sure that you have a glib explanation, however. The Council would be most interested to hear it."

What can I say? he thought. You would not understand the truth, any of you. I could say that my relationship with her was nothing but a ploy to bring me closer to the scabbard -- that would make sense to you. Or I could say, 'Forgive me, madam, I know I have done great wrong -- it started as a manipulation to advance the mission, but then lust and loneliness controlled me, and it got out of hand.' You would understand that too. But neither is the truth. The truth is only that I loved her. It is that simple. When I met her, so much time had passed that I was Merlin -- I was Merlin and she was Viviane and we loved each other. And that is all there is to it.

There was silence in the curved chamber. After a moment he said, slowly and with difficulty, "I have done nothing unethical." He lifted his head. "I submit to you, madam, that you were not there, and so cannot evaluate my actions."

The sheer unexpectedness of the challenge in his voice lifted her eyebrows. "Is that all you will say?"

"Yes."

"Your explanation leaves something to be desired," she said dryly, "but at least it is not as flippant as I had feared. I would hope you have a better one prepared for your blasphemy in letting that human king possess -- touch, handle, even use -- the most sacred of our holy objects."

"I did not give it to him," the Traveler said. His impatience was growing, for he had explained this before. "Viviane did. I was there, yes, but I did not even know that Morgaine -- that our renegade had given the scabbard to Avalon. I could not naturally prevent Viviane giving what was hers to give. And I was afraid that if I tried, a rift would develop between Avalon and the crown -- which would constitute interference, madam Presider. Furthermore, rescuing the scabbard was only part of my mission. Dealing with Morgaine was the other, and she had disappeared once she hid the scabbard at Avalon. I thought it best to leave the scabbard in Arthur's keeping, so that I could catch her when she came back to steal it."

 *

He reached the lake and stood panting. Morgaine was perhaps a dozen paces before him, turning the intricately worked scabbard over and over in her hands. The wind fluttered her grey cloak around her.

He mustered enough of his spent breath for a shout. "Morgaine." It came out sounding more like a croak.

"Merlin." She did not even turn her head; there was no surprise in her tone. He had not realized until that moment that she knew who and what he was.

"Give it up, cousin," he heard himself say, softly, sadly; and she jerked around at that.

"'Give it up'?" she repeated, responding to the literal meaning of the words. "Do you have any idea what I went through to get it?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact." He was suddenly weary of playing this game. "We know -- I know the intricacies of your plot to take it from the Council chambers. I know how you stole a time machine, and how you learned to program it to take you long ago and far away. I know that when you arrived here, you took on the persona of the King's sister, Urien's wife, who went mad and disappeared from her husband's castle two years ago -- suddenly she reappeared in a nunnery, cured, saying she had spent the two years with the faery, and it seemed to be only a night -- and any change in her has been put down to that experience. I know that you gave the scabbard to Viviane, so that it would be hidden in Avalon from the Traveler you knew the Council would send after you, and that you planned to steal it back when you felt  you were safe."

"I rather thought it was you," she said. "But I couldn't be sure. And I had to try to get it back, anyway, even with it in Arthur's hands and you so close nearby. I couldn't wait any longer." She smiled a little. "And even with you so close, I almost succeeded."

"Almost."

"You can't be such a fool," she said, "as to think that I'm going to let it go now. You always were naive, but I can't imagine that naive…You think I am just going to hand it back over to the Council?"

"You might as well," he said. "You must have figured out by now that it doesn't work here. It will still exert a forcefield to protect its bearer from harm, but it has no other power." He paused. "Maybe it never did."

"I am still not going to just meekly hand it over," she said.

"Then don't. Throw it away. Do what you like with it. Only do not -- I have no power to command you, and would not use it if I did, but I ask you -- do not use it against the people of this world. They have done nothing to deserve harm from this thing you have brought among them."

"Is that what the Council said?" she mocked.

"No," he retorted. "It is what I say."

She was silent at that. "Perhaps you are not so naive as I thought," she said then. She lifted her arms, and he heard the splash somewhere out of sight in the fog-shrouded water.

"No one shall have it," she said.

He sighed. And then there was no more time for procrastination. Knowing the scabbard could no longer protect her, he reached out quickly and touched his fingertips to her skin. She made no move to avoid  him. "The Council divests you of your powers," he said. "You are no longer a Traveler; no time machine will open its doors to you. Your days shall be as the days of any woman of this world, and they shall be spent here." The words sounded like a curse, echoing over the lapping water. Like a malediction from the lips of Merlin the enchanter.

She smiled slightly. "I knew you were going to do that. It doesn't matter. I would just as soon live out my life here as anywhere. There are enough opportunities in this world for a woman such as I." She smiled again, with disconcertingly glee. "No matter how it turned out," she said, "I am glad I disturbed the tranquillity of the Council." And she was gone.
 

*

"And after you dealt with her and reclaimed the object," the Presider said, "you stayed. For ten more of their years."

"Yes." He stood silent a moment. "I -- needed to finish what I had begun," he said slowly. "It would not have been natural for Merlin to just disappear then -- and besides, Morgaine was still there, and might have tried some damage -- " But he wasn't sure he believed those reasons even himself. Would Morgaine have really tried evil? "I judged it to be the best thing to do," he said at last. "And once more I submit to you, madam, that you were not there, and so cannot evaluate my actions. You do not know -- none of you know -- " and his voice rang suddenly as he turned to encompass the entire chamber " -- what it is to be a member of another society. None of you have traveled for centuries, if at all -- the days of the explorers are eons gone -- you do not know."

His voice quieted. "My mission is completed," he said. "The object is returned to the Council, with no harm done to the primitive culture. The ends speak for themselves. And I stand by the means I used.

"Furthermore -- " he took a breath " -- I have a request to make of the Council. I wish to use the time machine to return to Earth. For personal business."

Even after all he had done and seen, he was a little discomfited by the roomful of surprised eyes suddenly fixed on him. The thing was unheard-of. She raised her eyebrows. "Personal -- business?" she repeated carefully, as though she could not possibly have heard him correctly.

"Yes." He drew another breath. "I have -- some loose ends to tie up."

 *

She lay on the bed before him, limp and still. He stood in the doorway, panting, dripping on the polished stone, unaware of the servants and acolytes that huddled behind him in the corridor. He had ridden all night through the rain in response to Nyneve's message. Viviane had been attacked. One of Arthur's own knights -- Balin was the man's name -- had ambushed her as she returned to Avalon from some journey. Before her men could fight him off, Viviane had been grievously injured, and the stress of the attack had caused too soon the birthing of the child she carried. They had saved the child -- though small, it had an excellent change of living -- but Viviane --

He had flung himself in search of his horse while the messenger was still speaking, and ridden headlong into the black and blowing night. Now he stood looking down at her still, pale face. He brushed a hand through her hair, and his fingers caught on the tangles; he reached to touch her bruised cheek, her closed eyelids, and felt the cry rise up fiercely within him: Viviane --

He did not let it escape his lips. As those in the hallway watched, still not daring to say a word, he jerked his hand back as though it burned, whirled towards the door, and clattered down the stairs and through the courtyard. He spurred his horse through the orchard, and the page they sent running after him saw him yank it to a stop in front of an oak tree, dismount, and speak a word of command. The page swore that the oak tree opened, and that within was a room of unspeakable wonders, like a cave of shimmering crystal. Merlin slammed his hand down on the controls, took the time machine to the far future, dug up from what had once been a lake the scabbard Morgaine had flung over the water, and started the complicated journey home without another look back at Avalon.

 *

The Presider's eyes were on him, unmoving.

He drew another breath, trying hard now to be respectful, lest he anger her into refusing the request that was so vitally important. "Madam, I could say that leaving this end untied would result in terrible interference," he said. "I could say that if it were false, assured that that would be the only thing that would prompt you to assent. But I say it because it is true." He did not drop his gaze though hers was penetrating, and said, "Please. It is essential that I be allowed to correct this."

She released him from her gaze at last, and sat for a moment with her eyes on her notes. Finally she lifted her head. "I suppose every tradition was once unprecedented and unheard-of," she said. "And I know you, Traveler. Your methods may be dangerously unorthodox, but you would not ask such a thing flippantly. If you ask it, the reason must warrant it.

"You may go."

* 

He who was once called Merlin of Britain stepped out of the time machine and onto the rich soil. Behind him, the door snicked shut, and a moment later the machine had taken on the form of an oak tree, indistinguishable from any other tree in the surrounding forest.

He looked around. This was unquestionably Avalon: a good thing, but not really a surprising one; he had not anticipated any trouble with finding the correct place. Finding the correct time was much more problematic: so "Avalon when?" was really the question. He did not have the right night, he knew that much, for it had been storming and windy then. Did he have the right year at least? Was he too early? Too late? How could he tell?

Those apple trees had been saplings when he last stood here. They were slender young trees now, so he was too late, by some six or seven years. And then he was too late in truth -- out of time to return to the machine and try again -- for a woman had come out of the orchard, and seen him, and was now running towards him. Nyneve.

Before she could marshal her shocked wits enough to greet him, he stepped forward quickly and greeted her. He begged her pardon for his behavior on the night of Viviane's death, and explained that he had been trying to return to Avalon from his homeland practically ever since, but that his grief and loss had weakened his magical powers, and he had not been able to complete the trip before. Then, tentatively, he asked after the child. Did his -- did Viviane's daughter still live?

Nyneve smiled. "Yes indeed, my lord. She lives and thrives. Here, come this way, and you shall see her."

She led him through the orchard, and to a little garden. They stopped while still sheltered by trees, but even from there Merlin could clearly see the forms of little girls playing some game or another.

"We have called her Nimue," Nyneve whispered beside him, keeping her voice low so as not to attract the attention of the playing children. "She is that one, there -- "

But Merlin knew without being told. The little one in the pale blue dress, over at the edge of the crowd. She was small for six years, and astonishingly graceful in her movements, and her hair was long and silky and dark -- Viviane in miniature, he thought, until she chanced to turn in his direction, and he saw that the eyes were his.

 *

After much discussion, the rulers of Avalon agreed that Nimue should go with Merlin her father. She would have come into great things had she stayed until adulthood, for as Viviane's daughter she would have been reared to be Lady of Avalon in her place -- but Nyneve had a daughter now who could inherit; and all of them at Avalon had always rather thought that Merlin's daughter was intended for something else.

Nimue herself was willing to go -- enthusiastic, in fact, at the thought of living with the father she had so often wondered about -- even when told that she would probably never return to the lake. She did love Avalon, and the people there, but even at six was more interested in discovering what more the world had to offer.

Nyneve her aunt said farewell to her at the edge of the forest that surrounded Avalon, bidding her to go with the Lady's blessing. Then she looked at Merlin, and she found that she could not decipher the look in his eyes.

"Nyneve..." he said at last. "Tell me one thing. My magic deals in things other than what your Sight reveals, and I would know this if I may. What will they say of me?"

"They will say that Merlin the Enchanter was imprisoned," Nyneve said. "In an oak tree, or within a crystal cave of matchless wonders, and that his love for a woman named Viviane -- some will name her Nimue -- made him willing to be imprisoned there. And they will say that Merlin will come again to Britain, and awaken Arthur from his sleep at Avalon, and that together they will rule even more gloriously than before. And now, brother, answer me one question -- for I have seen some of this myself. I have seen Arthur's death, and in a dream I saw you standing again by the lake of Avalon. Was it a true vision? Will you come again?"

"Yes... yes, I shall return to Britain in the future," he said -- but he said it oddly, and he looked down at his nails as he did so, as though there were caked cold earth there.  "But I do not think... It will not be in your lifetime. We shall not meet again, Nyneve."

"I did not really think we would," she said, and sighed. "Go well, then, Merlin my brother."

"Stay well, little sister," he answered. "Keep Avalon safe." And he stepped into the oak. Nyneve could glimpse wonders within, as of the fabled crystal cave, and then there was a glimmering before her eyes. When she could see again, she found that she could not tell which oak of all those in the forest it was.