The Hawk's Gray Feather

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  Even that not always: Daronwy and Betwyr and Elen and Kei, each on separate occasion, had literally to be restrained from seeking Gwenwynbar's blood, in lawful combat or not as each's rage did require. It was Arthur, of course, did soothe and smooth the quarrels over; but in the end even he seemed to lose the will and the heart to do so.

  At the last the marriage seemed more habit and custom than aught else, at least on Arthur's side; on Gwenwynbar's, perhaps only reluctance to give up something in which she had invested so much over so many years. Whatever may have been the truth of it, it was clear to be seen that Arthur and his lady were not so much drifting apart as being sundered by a rising tiderip; whether it would engulf either, or both, was yet to be shown.

  The end came with merciful suddenness, cleanly, like a sword's fall; and though it was not a peaceful end, at the least it was a swift one, and its cause—as so often is the case in such matters—was an old and a small matter indeed.

  In all the seven years of her marriage, Gwenwynbar had not once been permitted to visit Coldgates. It was one of our most adamantine of rules among the Companions, that none should go there who had never been there, and even then as few of those as possible. It was purely for safety's sake: Many of our own sworn Companions, even, those who had joined us through the years at Llwynarth and had not been born or sheltered at Coldgates as had we others, had never come there and did not even know its location. And so Gwenwynbar, wife though she was to the Queen's son, continued to be denied both the going and the knowing.

  At first this had not seemed to trouble her—at least she had so said—but of late she had chafed more and more at the restriction, and at last had come to take Arthur's steadfast refusal as personal insult; and this it was that brought about the end.

  Their final quarrel was brief but ferocious, or at least Gwenwynbar's side of it was so: Though she could be heard shrieking over half Llwynarth, Arthur as usual had refused either to lose his own temper or to give in to his wife's demands, and his calm only fueled her fury. So that she brought up other matters long festering in silence: how she had never been granted the respect her rank deserved, how all the Companions secretly detested her, how Arthur himself did not pay her proper attention but would desert her any hour for a council or a raid.

  He did not trouble himself to make answer to her charges; for what reply could he have made save the truth, and that she knew already. We of the Companions did detest her, and not so secretly either; Arthur did neglect her, but his first loyalty had ever been to duty, even a wife could not alter that; never would Gwenwynbar be given the queen's honors she coveted, and thought herself entitled to—the only women rightly to queen it in Keltia were the Queen and the one who would become Queen, and both Ygrawn and Gweniver had far too much wit and sense and humor even to wish to try.

  Which was where they differed from their angry kinswoman: Gwenwynbar would never cease hungering for homage—those who did not deserve it seldom did—and that cold calculation that I shall always believe led her to wed Arthur in the first place led her to leave him in the end. If he would not give her what she wished, she would obtain it elsewhere; or so she must have thought, for the morning after the quarrel, Llwynarth woke up to find her gone.

  Informed of her going, Arthur declined to pursue her.

  "She ended the marriage by declaration"—he indicated a letter lying on the table between us, as I sat trying to console him, though he seemed not to need consolation—"and that is all the law requires. We were not wed at the stones, so a formal divorce is not needed; only either party's written or publicly spoken repudiation of the bond."

  "Well, Artos; but what about what you may require?" Though it chafed me to plead Gwenwynbar's possible return, it chafed me still more to see him so diminished; he seemed smaller, somehow, this morning, downcast and quiet, his usual vibrant fire banked low. And so strangely, sadly calm… "Did you not know when she went?"

  Arthur shook his head. "She slept apart from me last night. When she did not come to bed, I thought she must still be angered, and that it was best we spent the night away from each other. I fell straight to sleep, but plainly she did not sleep at all; only packed her gear and left. None saw her go; she used one of the unsentried gates, she knows—knew—the codes to raise the barriers."

  "Are you sorry, then, braud?" I asked after a little silence.

  "Sorry? Sorry that it did not prove to be my best, though it lasted longer than all you here might have thought—or hoped—at the start. Not sorry at all for that she is not now able to betray Coldgates, and the King, as well as Llwynarth." I gaped, for this most obvious of vengeances had not occurred to me. "Llwynarth! Would she do so?"

  "Nothing likelier." Arthur stretched, a bone-cracking, sinuous movement. "She will be feeling hurt and humbled; how better to take revenge on the one who has caused her such pain than to betray him, and his, to Owein? Any road, she promises as much—in this."

  He tossed me her letter, and after a moment's hesitation I began to read.

  "I was mistaken from the first, Talyn," he said presently. "I saw in her something that was never there save that I wanted it to be. But though she lacked that, still she was loving and cheerful and fair—' News to me, for though I might just allow 'fair,' never had I or any in Llwynarth save only, apparently, its master seen in Gwenwynbar the least trace of the other virtues he claimed for her. But perhaps as her husband he had seen more, and deeper, than the rest.

  "She says here she will have vengeance on you and all of us," I remarked, putting down the sheet—my othersenses were reeling, so imprinted was the paper with her hate.

  "It is no more than I am sure you heard her shouting last night." Arthur stretched again, and I was more than ever suspicious: He was taking this far too calmly even for him, or so it seemed to me. After all, the woman had been his wife for seven years… But before I could ask, he spoke again, and now he sounded almost his own old self. "The first thing we must do now is move Llwynarth."

  "Move it! But how? Where to?"

  "As to how, the same way we did build it. Where—almost anywhere; there is no lack of such cave systems in this part of Arvon. Time it was we moved on, any road; we have been here too long for strict safety." He smiled suddenly, and it was a real smile. "What say you, Talyn—it may be that Gwenar has done us a service after all."

  "Are you out of your wits entirely, or mad but for the moment?"

  The words—I had meant them as rhetorical, for surely no sane individual could have in seriousness put forth the proposal that Arthur had just put forth—hung in the air between us, until Arthur looked up at last to answer me.

  We were in our new refuge, the new Llwynarth; had been here barely two months, following our hasty and enforced removal from the first. The finding and fitting out of the second shelter had gone better than we could have dreamed, though there was still much to be done to add to our comfort; at the least—though scarcely least—nothing remained to be done to assure our safety there, and we had removed ourselves from our former home well within the deadline that Arthur had imposed.

  Though during the relocation we had dreaded every instant Owein Rheged, sent by a vengeful Gwenwynbar, falling upon us, had looked over our shoulders imagining fleets of Ravens raining fire and death, nothing of the like had happened. We had moved into the new refuge—as lovely as its predecessor, lovelier even, with a subterranean stream foaming and falling over the rocks—and destroyed the old one, without hindrance from our enemies and with no error of our own making.

  No error, until now—

  "Well, I had not thought myself either," said Arthur evenly. "But it seems you think I am mistaken. Say then the ground of your convincing."

  I threw back my head in boggled despair. "Oh, well, then, it must be that I am the madman here, to think I just now thought I heard you say you mean to go to Caer Dathyl, to have a look at Edeyrn when he comes on progress to visit Owein. But since you cannot possibly be so great a lunatic as to suggest so s
tupid a plan, then obviously I did not hear it, and so I must be mad."

  He laughed. "Come, Talyn, hold not back; tell me how you truly feel—Well, perhaps it is the thought of a madman, but I am going nonetheless."

  "In the Mother's name, whyfor?" gasped Grehan, as appalled as I at our friend's intention.

  "I have never seen Edeyrn," said Arthur after a little pause. "Nor Owein neither; and in the Fianna, did they not teach us to know our enemy?"

  "But you know perfectly well who your enemy is, both of them!" I shouted, cross with terror; for I knew that no matter all our protests, he was going and that was that.

  "I would see them all the same. But you need not come, Talyn," added Arthur kindly, "since you think it so ill-found a plan."

  "Oh, I know I need not, right enough," I said, in a voice that carried all the sarcasm and sting I could put into it. "But—with your leave—I think I am coming even so."

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-four

  In the end there were four of us did ride to Caer Dathyl: three too many to Arthur's way of thinking, and he was still vexed that he had not been taken at his word and allowed to go alone.

  Not likely!, I thought more times than a few, as we made our way cautiously eastward to Owein Rheged's stronghold. I kept from my fostern as best I might my real suspicion—more than suspicion, truly—my certain knowledge, then, that this insane venturing, and the months of near-as-reckless raiding and risking that had gone before it, signified more than military motive. To my mind, it was Arthur's way of dealing with the going of Gwenwynbar.

  In truth, I was not the only one who had looked on all this and wondered whether Arthur were trying to kill himself on another's sword: Grehan, and Kei, and Betwyr, and Tarian, and all the others closest to Arthur, had seen what I had seen, and, one by one, had come to me privately to voice the shared fear. And, one by one, we had each arrived at the same unwelcome conclusion: In his pain he was doing this, and despite our love for him, there was naught we might do either to halt him or even restrain him somewhat. All we could do was watch, and pray.

  Which was why Ferdia, Daronwy and I were now riding with him on this very maddest of exploits: In the end, only the fact that the three of us would be with him had won over the rest of the Companions to give grudging consent, and even then Grehan and Tarian had been slow to agree. It had been unanimously undertaken, almost without the words even needing to be spoken, that no smallest whisper of this venturing should reach the distant ears of Uthyr or Ygrawn.

  We went in the guise of travelling bards—it seemed the safest choice, as everyone in the party could handle a harp sufficiently well not to explode the fiction; though we were also agreed that if by bad luck it should ever come to actual bardery, I alone should be the one to save our honor—possibly also our necks—and play. Which led Ferdia, the only non-sorcerer among the four of us, to wonder why we did not simply cast a fith-fath upon ourselves and go so masked among our foes.

  "For you are both Druids, and Ronwyn is Ban-draoi," he had argued, "and therefore powerful enough in magic to manage a little glamourie for good cause."

  "And therefore too powerful in magic to dare wear it into Edeyrn's presence," countered Arthur. "Trust my saying, Feradach, he would pick us out in an eyeblink—we should do better, and last longer, did we wear signs proclaiming our names in foot-high script."

  At last Ferdia had given in, muttering what use was it to train and torture oneself into a magician if one could not use it when one needed. He was right, so far as he knew; but had we worn fith-faths, the Marbh-draoi would scarce need to be told our names—we would blaze like torches to his inner sight. So we wore openness instead, the best disguise there is; and he knew us soon enough as it was.

  Caer Dathyl, seat of the princes of Gwynedd since Gwynedd first was born, rises up like a gray ghost on the southeastern edge of the northern continent. It is the first settlement of all the Kymric worlds, and the castle at its heart is one of Keltia's great fortresses: Save for Ardturach on Erinna, and the royal palace of Turusachan on Tara, Caer Dathyl is the largest stronghold in the kingdom; and perhaps only Turusachan itself is more formidable, to approach or to escape. The Marbh-draoi himself would be there, in the ancient palace of the Princes of Don, and Owein who was now Gwynedd's master, and doubtless dozens of their creatures—Ravens and courtiers and lackeys all together; and here came too the four of us to invade it, armed only with our harps, and our hatred, and Arthur's wits.

  We were received with all courtesy at the great gates, as bards should be—and mostly were, even in these degenerate days; and from there we were passed up through the streets that climbed to the palace. Always our bardic garb gave us admittance, though I think we were all more than a little surprised that not once were we challenged to prove ourselves, by showing passes or tokens that we were indeed what we claimed to be. But apparently Owein in his traha deemed none dared approach the city, far less enter the palace, who had not been summoned or had no lawful business there; and never dreamed that his chiefest foe would dare far more.

  Any road, we arrived at last in the palace's main hall, just in time for the nightmeal, at which Edeyrn and Owein would surely preside. A harried-looking rechtair gave us place on the lower benches, among others of our assumed humble station who were already beginning to fill the long tables.

  Although I had been schooling myself against it, in the end I could not help it: My gaze flew at once to the high table at the far end of the room. Some of the mighty who were soon to sup there were already in their chairs, or standing in small groupings behind the goldware-bedecked, silk-clothed board, conversing idly amongst themselves. I dared not stare overlong, lest my scrutiny should itself be scrutinized, but I did not see anyone I could recognize as Owein, and I assumed he would enter later, in full pomp, escorting his exalted guest.

  At my right elbow I could follow Arthur taking mental note of everything he saw and sensed, as he had been doing on all our long ride here: Everything from the state of repair of the roads and the mood of the tavernkeepers to Caer Dathyl's defenses to the names and faces of the folk in the seats of honor was being sorted and salted away in that prodigious memory.

  I could put names to a few of the faces myself, mostly lords and ladies of opportunistic houses, lesser lines, seeking increase in their own fortunes by having allied with the power that now ruled. And also there were those whom the Marbh-draoi himself had created—his creatures in the true sense of the word—men and women jumped-up by treason and boot-kissing to ranks they could never have hoped otherwise to attain. Some were trimmers, thinking to run with the hounds and yet still scratch among the other hares; but many had dedicated their hearts and souls and bodies to the Marbh-draoi's cause, and these it was that Arthur feared the most.

  "It will be easy enough to buy the others back," he had said on the journey here. "What was once bought can be repurchased anew for the proper coin… I shall not be buying the best goods, truly, but at least I shall be buying us some peace and easy roads. But the ones who have gone in loyalty to Edeyrn—they will not be bought and cannot be turned; and therefore they must be destroyed."

  For the moment, though, it seemed that we might be ourselves destroyed before ever that time should come; before even our meal came, perhaps. Notice had been taken of us by some of our neighbors at table, and though I prayed with all the fervor of my being it was but casual suppertime interest in unexpected strangers, I had the most terrible feeling that it was more, and worse.

  "This is insanity," I whispered savagely to Arthur in a lull in the converse around us, then switched to thought-speech, hoping beyond all hope that Edeyrn, or indeed others, would not sense it.

  We must risk it, came my fostern's reply in the familiar mind-voice. I must know my enemy.

  Then do you see to it that he does not likewise know you! I snapped, and felt the flashing warmth of his mental grin. But I sensed too that he would obey: Edeyrn would not know Arthur by anything Arthur might do.
It was what Edeyrn might do that had me worried.

  I felt his presence before he came into the hall; indeed, had been feeling it from the moment we passed within Caer Dathyl's walls. And I saw him now with othersight before I viewed him with the eyes of the body: Edeyrn, son of Seli and Rhun. He was clad in some dark plain stuff, wore no jewel or sign of rank—a relief to Ferdia, who had, I think, expected him to enter wearing the Copper Crown itself—and, save for one who could be none but the mighty Owein, was unattended.

  I found that I could not take my eyes from him. It was his aspect that astonished: Edeyrn looked to have fewer years on him than Merlynn, though I knew very well that he had seen twice my teacher's span, and maybe longer still. His eyes were dark and deep-set in a face the color of ivory; the thick hair brushed back from the high brow was a rich charcoal hue, neither black nor gray, and fell to his shoulders. And he was tall and straight, where I had been resolutely picturing him as small and hunched, misformed and ill-shapen as a duergar, ugsome, shadowed with the dark wing of his own evil. I had not thought to see him so—a controlled majestic presence, confident with power.

  He swept his glance just then over the hall—all of us had risen for his entrance, and now we bowed deeply as he acknowledged us, much though it grated the four of us to do so—and as that distant glance passed over me palpable as a cold wind I felt it check an instant, as if it were caught by us, as the wind may be caught in a tree's branches. Though his gaze can have rested upon us for mere seconds, no more than five altogether, in those few seconds I felt Arthur kindling to wrath beside me, and Ferdia to cold panic.