The baby is taken out of reach

Anyone who had seen Myrddin hurrying down the cloistered walk at that moment would have been astounded to see such nimble feet on such an old man. Certainly, he had spent the last few hours shuffling meekly along frosty forest paths, the very image of eld.

He had gone out in search of the elf Vash, and he had returned with only a canker of bitter frustration eating at his heart. He had thought he had learned patience during his long imprisonment, but now that he was free, he wanted everything at once – and Nimea first. The elf was an obnoxious obstacle, but Myrddin dared not threaten him for fear of angering the mother of his race. She was, so far as he knew, still far more powerful than he.

But it seemed that the night would not be wasted after all.

In the far corner of the cloister, near the steps that led out into the vegetable plots and the forest beyond, there lay a tiny baby on a tiny skin. Its little body was illuminated by a clutch of the fat, foul-​​smelling candles the outlaw elves used in their lair.

Myrddin gently scooped the baby up and looked it over. It was a newborn, but this was no unwanted infant abandoned by some wretched peasant girl or a mother too poor to feed it. There was magic in the little body, and a strange fire.

Myrddin peeked beneath the cloth that was tied around the baby’s hips. It was a boy child.

Later he would be furious at Dantalion for having apparently revealed to the elves for whom the child was truly intended. It had been incredibly foolish to leave the baby where any of the monks or lay brothers might have found it. But for now Myrddin was too delighted to waste his time gnashing his teeth over catastrophes that might have been. This wait, at least, was over.

“Let’s just go see what you are,” he chuckled softly. “Let’s go see just what sort of creature your papa is. Man or beast? Elf or troll or demon?”

He made it halfway down the walk before he saw that the shadow on the wall between the refectory door and the wash-​​basin was not a shadow at all, but the silhouette of a man. Myrddin froze in mid-​​stride, with one heel still raised.

“Brother Myrddin.” The voice was low and cold and painfully familiar, like the draft that blew nightly through that detestable dormitory. It was the voice of the man who tried Myrddin’s patience more than any other. It was the Abbot.

“I found a little baby boy over there, Lord Father,” Myrddin grinned. “Can you believe that? On such a cold night? Poor little mite.”

The Abbot did not smile. “Bring him to me.”

Myrddin took a few shuffling steps forward, but he hesitated when he reached the door to the warming house. “I was just going to take him in here, and sit with him by the fire a little before I told you.”

“Bring him to me, Brother.”

Myrddin was confounded. He had laid such a spell of sleep over the abbey that the very mice were bound to leave the grain alone on this night. How had the Abbot awoken? Had Dantalion brought the baby himself and then visited the Abbot, as Myrddin had forbidden him to do?

His festering hatred for the man flared up in his heart, but he handed him the baby.

The Abbot did not even look at the child. He was wise enough or wary enough not to look away from Myrddin’s gaze. Myrddin stared back at him with his mild eyes that were blue and white like pretty clouds.

The Abbot, however, seemed to see or sense the hatred roiling behind. He backed slowly to the wall, never looking away. Myrddin could not resist following him. He believed he had the priest intimidated, and he was not afraid to use against him at least the unnerving power of his own eeriness.

Myrddin could not see what the Abbot was doing, but he seemed to shift the baby to one arm, and a quick movement of the other was followed by a crackling sound like shattered glass. Myrddin realized he had punched through the thin sheet of ice that had formed over the wash-​​basin during the night.

Never turning his gaze from Myrddin’s face, the priest lifted his dripping fingers to the baby’s forehead. “Benedicte, ego baptizo te, in nomine Patris…”

Myrddin sucked in his breath. The dripping hand came up again, and the baby squirmed in annoyance.

“…et Filii…”

Myrddin could do nothing more than stare with all the unholy mildness of his blue eyes, but the priest stared back into them without fear. Nor did the baby cry.

“…et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

Myrddin blinked, and the priest finally looked down at the baby.

“Benedict,” he smiled. His hands shook now, though whether with fear or relief or merely with the fatigue of too much fasting, Myrddin could not say. “May you be blessed. What a good little boy!” he cooed in Danish. “Didn’t cry a peep.”

Myrddin thought that cold, low voice speaking gently to an infant must seem as unnatural as the latent hatred in his own mild blue eyes. But the priest had stared into his eyes without fear, and the baby stared up at the priest’s gaunt face with perfect faith.