lost so much." He shook his head regretfully. "So very
much of the knowledge which made men great enough to
challenge the stars themselves. We gabble odd tags of leg-
end and are not sure which is truth, which the embroidery
of some later man. But there is enough remaining that he
who is trained can sense the Power when it is at work.
"This 'son of no man' shall be great enough to make
and unmake kings. Yet I believe that was not what
he was sent to do. No, he is an opener of gates. And
when he comes to his full strength he will speak the High
Language and we shall see the beginning of a new world."
MERLIN'S MIRROR 19
The passion in his voice awed Julia and she took the
child back from Lugaid's hold, regarding the boy
strangely. For she knew that the Druid believed what he
had said. And from that moment she watched for any sign
of coming greatness in Myrddin, not knowing how that
might first manifest itself.
Myrddin walked when he was four and, as Lugaid had
said, he stepped out strongly from the first moment he
found his feet, not wavering or crawling as was normal. A
month later he spoke, and his words were as well pro-
nounced as those of a grown man.
But he made no attempt to join the other children at
their games. Nor did he ever show interest in sword play,
or hang about listening to the lounging warriors telling
their battle tales. Instead he tailed Lugaid whenever the
Druid was in sight. And it became accepted that Myrddin
would become a bard, or one of those learned in the law
and the descent of houses. Nyren agreed to this on one of
the rare intervals when he was at home.
For the chief had made his choice. He and his men
rode with Ambrosius, harrying both the High King who
had betrayed them and the Saxons he had brought in as
allies and who were now nearly his masters. The war band
was often gone from the mountain-hidden kin house, leav-
ing only a token force of defenders, with women and
slaves to work their few fields and herd the sheep which
. were their small wealth.
In Myrddin's fifth year, when he was pressed into aid as
a shepherd, the clan being nearly bereft of men, he found
the cave. He had gone higher among the lichen-tinted
rocks of the uplands than he had ever ventured before,
