Dawn of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

THE PRISONER RELIVED in dream the days before his capture and imprisonment here, of that I was almost sure. I caught occasional flashes from him, enough to know that he had been plunged into a waking version of the same nightmare he’d been trapped in before I came. A dream memory of a battle’s fearful aftermath, of fighting his way through a field of the dead and dying. Buzzing flies, ravens pecking at dead, staring eyes, and the awful, throat-clogging reek of blood.

  I closed my mind to it as much as I could as we made our way across Vortigern’s camp, weaving a path through the pitched tents of the warriors, past the reeking pens where the livestock were corralled.

  Vortigern’s warriors had not, you may be sure, foregone to carry their slave girls and army harlots along to this remote place. Vortigern allowed it, since without it many of them would not have stayed, might even have turned on him to overthrow his rule. He had even, in the last weeks, taken to doling out measures of his own expensive wine. On nights after the tower walls had fallen yet again, I had watched his warriors drink themselves into an angry, sullen stupor—or drag their slave girls off and use them hard enough to make them scream.

  Most of the men were content to be serviced in a shadowed corner of the fire hall, or outside, since the winter’s chill had held off so long. But I could not be certain—not entirely—that one of the older of Vortigern’s chiefs might not prefer the comfort of his own tent with whatever woman he chose for tonight.

  The night was dark, with only the faintest limpid crescent of a moon to light our way; that was an added blessing to count in our favor. But still my back felt as exposed as though I, and not the prisoner, had been stripped to the skin; with every step we took, I expected to hear a shout of alarm from behind, or the pounding of feet running after us in angry pursuit.

  Once as I guided him along a tumbled cairn of moss grown stones—part of the ancient hill fort that had once stood here—he himself gave a half-shout. His eyes had a blind, agonized cast in the pale moonlight, and he jerked his arm up as though to fend off a blow.

  The sound was naught but a rough, wordless gasp of air, really, but it sounded in my ears loud as a warrior’s battle cry and set my heart thumping. Still, I calmed him as best I could, spoke soft, soothing words as I would have done to a frightened child. Perhaps it helped, perhaps in some way he heard and was eased, I had no way of knowing for certain. The nameless man seemed no more aware of me than he was of the tents and heaps of raw building stones we passed. But at least he made no other sound. And he did not fight me off, but let me keep hold of his arm and guide his steps as I navigated what felt an agonizingly slow path towards the encampment’s edge.

  It was ill chance, pure and simple, that we were caught.

  Vortigern had not forces enough to maintain a constant and effective guard around the perimeter of his fort. He trusted in the rocky terrain, the steepness of the slopes on which Dinas Ffareon stood, the lack of tree cover, which would mean any attacking army would be slaughtered in a hail of arrows and spears before ever they gained the summit.

  That, indeed, was the reason entire that Bron and I had come here at all.

  Vortigern had concentrated most of his guard on the fortress’s southern side, where steep mountain paths led down to the River Glaslyn. He must needs maintain control of the routes by which he could resupply his fortress with fish and grain and ale if he hoped to survive there long.

  And so I had led the prisoner to the northern perimeter of the camp, where the hill face dropped away in an almost sheer wall of rock. Surely Vortigern would not have troubled to post a sentry there.

  But he had.

  He stood in the shadow of the fortress’s rough wooden palisade, which ran along the boundary of the ancient hill fort and was as yet a half-completed effort, like so much else at Dinas Ffareon. My skin had long since grown clammy beneath the dark woolen cloak I had thrown over my head and shoulders, and I might have cannoned straight into the sentry had the moonlight not glinted on the hilt of the sword he wore at his belt.

  I froze, one hand clenched tight on the arm of the prisoner beside me, willing him into immobility, as well. And for a moment, I thought we might be able to withdraw unseen. But it would seem whatever luck had carried us this far unhindered had run out, for the next instant the guard stiffened and straightened, then called out, “Who’s that?”

  He was not expecting trouble, not coming from within his own encampment. That was the only advantage we had, the only reason he did not at once draw his sword. Still, the knowledge thudded through me like the beat of a war drum that I could not hope to bluff my way out of this. Let him come close enough to recognize either the prisoner’s or my face and he would have us impaled on his sword point in less time than it would take him to spit on our dead bodies afterward. And Bron’s death would immediately follow, of that I had no doubt.

  Even as the thought flashed through my mind, my hands were already on the bow and arrow-bag strapped to my back, already plucking an arrow out and laying it on the bow’s stave, drawing the hemp cord back along my cheek.

  The man must have seen it, dark as it was, or at least sensed danger, in the way men do who are trained for war. He did draw his sword, and took a step forward, head turning as he strained to see in the dark.

  My arrow took him in the throat.

  In that moment, everything seemed unnaturally razor keen and clear; even the faint stars above grew sharp as ice slivers, bright enough to hurt my eyes. I saw the man stagger backwards, hands scrabbling frantically at the bolt in his neck, saw the hot welling of blood around the wound.

  I had already before that night seen men in their death-throes many, many times. Too many to count; any healer will say the same. But never had I had to stand by and watch a man die of a wound I had given him. Never had I seen a man wounded and in pain and done nothing to give him ease.

  The breath rattled in the dying man’s throat.

  It was a horrible sound, horrible, and it seemed to go on an eternity while I stood there, too sick and frozen to move. I felt my muscles shaking, as with fever. Once the guard cried out, a low, choked cry of pain, and at the sound the prisoner beside me tensed and instantly thrust me behind him, one arm flung out to form form a barrier of protection across my body.

  His eyes were wide and still blind in the moonlight. The protective gesture nothing to do with me, only part of the nightmare memory into which he’d been plunged. Still, it was an anchor to cling to, the warmth of his body against mine, the solid strength of the muscles of his arm.

  Finally the guard stopped thrashing on the ground and lay still. And somehow I made myself move, forced myself to stumble past his body, drawing the prisoner with me beyond the fortresses defenses.

  Rocks rolling beneath my feet, tree branches that scraped at my face and caught like claws at my hair and clothes: I felt as though I had joined the prisoner in the depths of waking nightmare, and in truth I remember little of the descent from the summit of Dinas Ffareon.

  When I came to myself, we were, I suppose, perhaps halfway down, though well into the thick screen of trees that grew beneath the rockiest stretch of the slope. I was retching up the contents of my stomach into the carpet of scrub and dried leaves underfoot. Though—lest he do aught that would give away our position—I somehow managed to keep one hand holding tightly to the prisoner’s arm.

  A strange sort of inverse, I thought distantly, of the way the prisoner and I had begun this in Vortigern’s prison cell on the morning before.

  And then the prisoner woke.

  I felt the arm I held quiver and jerk under my fingers, heard him give a choking gasp, like a swimmer breaking the water’s surface for air. And then he launched himself sideways at me, throwing me to the ground and pinning me fast, one forearm braced against my throat while his other hand held my arms down.

  I could scarce feel shock for that, or blame him; the last he had known he had been stripped and bound and awaiting certain death
; he had no idea what had happened or how we had come here, to this dark and deserted spot. But I felt still as though echoes of the dying guardsman’s last rattling breaths were being pounded into my ears like spikes. And I would never have killed him, would never have been here at all tonight if not for this man.

  I brought my knee up, driving it hard against the prisoner’s cracked ribs. He cried out, a choked, raw cry that brought back echoes of the dying guard and made bile rise in my own throat all over again. But he rolled off me and lay half-curled on the ground, eyes closed, muscles shaking, jaw tight as though he were trying to hold back another groan or cry. The faint, silver light of moon and stars that filtered through the branches above showed a sheen of sweat on his brow.

  I have said, and it is true, that he could not have stopped me leaving him lying bound in Vortigern’s chambers. I could have left him just as easily now.

  He was fevered, weak, wounded, still disoriented and dazed. If I ran—and a faint voice in my mind shouted at my muscles to do it—he would never be able to follow.

  And yet I stayed.

  There are those who imagine the healer’s path one for the tender-hearted. To them, let me say this: you are wrong. I have been a healer all my life. And anyone over-kind or soft of heart would shred themselves to pieces grieving for the pain a healer must willingly see and cause.

  I had, even before that night, sawed through muscle and sinew and bone to take off warriors’ legs or arms that had gone green and swollen with poisoned wounds. I had heard them scream, and yet gone on, because if the poison were allowed to spread beyond the affected limb, the men would die.

  To a healer, compassion is neither gentle nor tender, but hard and keen as a blade.

  But yet it was my healer’s vow that held me fast and kept me now from turning away. That, and the memory of Vortigern’s guard, clutching the arrow in his throat with lifeless hands. Once already tonight I had broken faith with my vows in denying comfort to him, a wounded man, albeit one wounded by my own hand. Now here was another man lying sick and hurting on the ground before me. And almost before I knew I had decided, I was dropping to my knees beside him on the ground.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so truly sorry.” I smoothed the wheat-blond hair back from his brow, made my voice a soothing murmur, counterpoint to all the soft, rustling sounds of the night forest all about.

  I had also lied to many a wounded man if the lie would give him a moment’s peace. But I spoke true now: I was sorry that I had lost my temper even for that brief moment. Now that I touched him again, I could feel along the thrumming channel still opened between us a glimmer of what he himself felt. Pain, of course, raw and stomach-churning from his many wounds. The lingering scum of nightmare, sticky as grease over his skin.

  But beyond that—

  Goddess Mother, I had felt nothing like it before, never, not even when Gamma unwound both past and future from the ancient spirals etched in the scrying bowl.

  A constant assault beat at the nameless prisoner like a cloud of stinging insects, and I felt it as I touched him now.

  He looked out into the shadowed forest and saw each leaf on every tree turning brittle and brown and falling to the ground; saw the sap cooling and turning sluggish as winter came on, then quickening with the spring. He heard the harsh cry of a night bird, and saw how before night’s end it would swoop low to snatch up a meadow vole in its claws. Saw how, three days hence, the night bird itself would die, thrashing on the point of a hunter’s arrow.

  He saw the vast, shadowed shape of the hill fort looming above us, and knew that before the moon had waxed and waned, the earth beneath its half-built walls would be soaked with blood and—

  Before I could See any more, he jerked away from me, gasping, his eyes wide and leeched of all color in the pale moonlight. Though there was, for the first time that night, a flicker of true awareness in their gaze.

  “Gods, you’re the one”—the words came out in short bursts of air—“who told Vortigern I was the fatherless child he wanted. Uther’s girl-child.”

  Compassion or no, I was not fool enough to think him no longer a threat. I held my muscles tensed, ready to spring back in an instant if he made a move towards me. And yet despite the lean warrior’s build, the muscles that bunched and tightened under his bruised skin, there was something lost about the look in his eyes, a kind of utter, weary fearlessness in the face of despair. It took little effort to make my voice gentle, soft as before.

  “Morgan, yes.”

  I saw a muscle jump into relief in the side of his jaw. “And what is Uther’s daughter and high seeress doing in Vortigern’s pay? Did your father send you here? Or have you decided to turn your allegiance and support Vortigern’s claim to the throne?”

  My fingers twitched, but I forced my hands not to clench. This man, whoever he was, had a body that bespoke a lifetime of battle, fear and pain. And now he had spent days in a cramped and airless cell, lashed and burned by Vortigern.

  “My father knows I am here, though he didn’t send me, not quite.” I heard my voice harden as I spoke the words. “Snow will fall on the midsummer fires of Beltaine before Uther Pendragon believes any but my brother Arthur can aid in Vortigern’s fall. But when a mission arises, he is still perfectly willing for his unwanted girl-child to take the part that promises almost inevitable death.”

  This was, all of it, the story I never told. But I could see some tiny measure of tension ease out of the prisoner’s frame as I spoke. And I could feel, still, that humming presence from somewhere in the earth itself. A chiming cadence like the most ancient of tales, whispering that I must give this man before me the truth, that there could be no half measures here.

  “My father Uther loved my mother, I think. Or he did once. But he wanted a son—a son she had not given him, not in ten years of marriage. And, once he had seen her, he wanted Ygraine of Cornwall. And what my father wants, he takes. I do not think he even intends to be cruel. Though whether that makes him a worse man or a better one, I don’t know. But he wanted a son, and he wanted Ygraine. So he accused my mother of lying with his guardsmen when he was away on campaign. Mayhap he even believed the charge. He wanted the charge to be true—and in his mind, so it was.”

  I felt my hands tighten. “She was burned at the stake, when I was four years old. I was taken in by a wise woman, guardian of the nemetons at Llyn y Fan Fach. Gamma. She told my father she had dreamed my coming to her.” From somewhere deep in the forest, and owl called, a single low, mournful cry, and I swallowed. “And my father scarcely cared where I went, or with whom. Though he did send Bron with me, as bodyguard. Bron taught me to shoot a bow and arrow and throw a knife. And Gamma taught me the healer’s craft. She was a healer, as well as a seer. She died this past spring.”

  For all the grief was months old, I felt my eyes stinging as I spoke the words. “I wanted to stay there, in the forest where she raised me. But she made me swear to return to my father’s court when she was gone.”

  Uther my father had professed himself more than glad to see me. And I even thought he spoke true. For the half-moment or two he looked at me before he was away with his warriors, planning their next campaign. But he had not even tried to barter me away in marriage for the sake of some strategic alliance, as many fathers would have done. I must—did, I suppose—grant him that much.

  Still, I felt my mouth twist again. “I found, when I returned, that my father had indeed married Ygraine of Cornwall. And paid his druids to prophesy that their son was the promised one, he who would turn back the Saxon tide. I’m sorry for my brother Arthur, in a way. I had never seen him before last spring. I scarcely know him now. But I imagine it’s been a heavy load for a boy of thirteen to carry, to have been promised such a destiny from birth.”

  For a moment, the swirling blood and water in Gamma’s scrying bowl stood before my gaze. I shut my eyes to clear them. “Yet I think, from what I
have seen of him, that he carries the burden well. So well, indeed, that the prophesies may even prove true. He may be Britain’s savior from the Saxon hordes. If”—a shiver danced across my skin—“if he lives through the battles he and my father now fight. Lives long enough to grow to a man.”

  I stopped again for breath, then said, still meeting the prisoner’s eyes, “A band of my father’s warriors has dug a tunnel, beneath this hill.” The owl called again as I gestured to the forested slope above and around. “Beneath Vortigern’s fortress. That is the true reason Vortigern’s walls will not stand. My father is, whatever else, a great warrior. He saw this place and knew he had no hope of mounting an open attack. Too many men would die before the summit of Dinas Ffareon could be gained. And so he set his builders to devising a tunnel, to carrying away the soil and bracing the tunnels walls. They have worked in secret these last weeks, night after night. Covering the mouth of the tunnel with branches and dry brush every morning at dawn. Though, truly, it has not been so hard to hide. Vortigern has not men enough to spare to send many out beyond the fortress on patrol. My part—my part and Bron’s—was to gain entrance in Bron’s guise of wandering druid, mine of his serving boy. To give Vortigern a false prophesy about the blood of a fatherless child, so that he would look no further for the reason his tower walls fell.”

  I drew another breath, then said to the prisoner, my voice quiet in the larger hush of night, “You forced my hand when you nearly made Vortigern doubt me, doubt Bron. I told the first lie I could think of to make you stop, and to win back Vortigern’s trust. But I could not have let you to pay for the lie with your life.”

  The prisoner ran a hand down his face. There was just light enough that I could read his expression: dazed confusion as he struggled to block out the visions long enough that he might take in the meaning of what I had told him. That, mixed with wary disbelief. Then both were gone, replaced by something hard and dully angry at the back of his gaze. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to die. That was all I wanted. Death. Is that so goddamned much to ask? For Vortigern to kill me and put an end to this—”

  He made a quick, angry gesture and I saw a shudder twist through him as his gaze traveled around the night-dark forest. The shudder was instantly controlled, though; whoever he was, the force of discipline was deep in him and strong.

  He stilled and looked back at me, the dead-eyed, stony look back in place. “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Morgan, Daughter of Uther. But you should go. Go to your father’s men and carry out your mission, if you will. But leave me here to finish mine.”

  “No.” I was sick, still, and filled with a chill shaking that felt as though my bones had been turned to ice. I spoke almost before I knew—but if I am honest, in that moment, I could not have said whether I refused because some larger purpose spoke through me or whether I simply could not face the thought of going off into the night alone.

  Above us, Vortigern’s fortress still loomed like a great, hulking beast ready to strike. But the woods here, the forest quiet, was at least a little like the forest of oaks where I had been raised. No walls, here, nor anything to keep the night breeze from stirring my hair, lifting the fear from my skin and blowing it free like dandelion seed.

  I put my hand on the prisoner’s arm, not a gentle touch, this time, but a hard grip that made his head come up sharply and his muscles tense.

  “A god rides your brow, whoever you are. And that is not an easy nor a comfortable gift. Believe me, I have cause to know. But I can’t let you stay here and get yourself recaptured and killed. There’s too much at stake.” I drew in another breath, still gripping his arm. “I need you to come with me now. And if anything happens to me, if Vortigern’s men find us, and I’m the one captured, I need you to swear to me that you’ll run—as fast as you can—to where my father’s men are. I’ll draw you a map on the ground here, now. And you must swear to me that if anything happens to me, you’ll get to my father’s men and deliver the message that they must make ready to attack.”

  I saw him start to shake his head, saw him open his mouth to refuse again. I tightened my grasp. “You must! Would you have Vortigern remain king thanks to you? The man who gave you these?” I touched the raw lash marks on his back. “Would you let your choice tonight keep that man on Britain’s throne?”

  I could see the fine tremor of a muscle on the side of his jaw, and realized just how on edge his nerves were, how close to the point of breaking.

  The moment lengthened, stretched out, the night silence grew and swelled between us, broken only by the harsh bark of a fox from somewhere not far distant, the creak of the branches above as they swayed in the night breeze.

  Then, finally, the prisoner jerked his head in a wordless nod. He grimaced as the movement jarred his injuries, but spread his hand out, palm up.

  “Go. I’ll follow. I swear to it. As you asked.”

  * * *