Apollo's Raven

by Linnea Tanner

  The king frowned. “What did this woman look like?”

  “She had coppery hair and wolf eyes, the color of amber like Marrock’s. He was also there, a few feet behind her. He looked only about eight years old.”

  A lump moved down Amren’s throat. “What did you see next?”

  “You accused the woman of treason and cut off her head with one swing of your sword. Her head flew off and slipped through the hands of a little girl standing next to Marrock. When the girl spoke, her earth-brown eyes glowed.”

  “The girl is Agrona,” Amren said with a faded voice. “How do you interpret this vision?”

  “Rhan did not die that day. Her essence possessed Agrona because of touching her severed head. Rhan’s soul now lives in Agrona. When I confronted Agrona about this, she drugged me and melded my thoughts with hers. I resisted her evil attempt at possession for a time, but then she succeeded in breaking me down.” Catrin paused, recalling the slimy feeling of Agrona’s thoughts crawling in and out of her mind like a maggot. “She wanted my magical powers. Why did you not suspect that Rhan possessed Agrona?”

  Amren muttered, as if struggling to comprehend what Catrin had just told him. His words became crisper as he uttered, “I believed the gods spoke through Agrona. She had been mute since birth, but spoke for the first time at Rhan’s execution. She declared me to be the king of truth and light. Agrona told me things that only Rhan could have known. I completely trusted her.”

  “She tricked you,” Catrin exclaimed, “like she did with me.”

  “I am not so sure about that ...” Amren squeezed his eyelids shut and moaned, “Give me poppy for my pain.”

  Catrin whiffed each pouch at her side until she found the poppy’s distinct spicy scent. She pinched some of the brown powder into a cup of water, then returned to her father and held his head so he could drink it. A few moments later, he relaxed and asked her to help him lean against the stone wall. Though the pacing of his speech was slower, his voice became stronger as he continued, “Trystan told me Cynwrig found you naked with Marcellus in the woods. Your mother questioned Marcellus about what he had done to you before you were stricken. He finally confessed that he had pledged his love to you before Mother Goddess … that can only mean that you consummated what you believed was marriage.”

  A sob clutched in Catrin’s throat when her father glared at her. “Yes, I love Marcellus.”

  “You did this knowing I was negotiating your betrothal to Cunobelin’s son?”

  Catrin dropped her eyes. “Yes. I felt you betrayed me by doing this without my permission.”

  “What in the name of the gods have you done?” Amren said, raising his voice. “The queen showed Trystan the dagger on which I inscribed Rhan’s curse. The blade was glowing as if it had been pulled out of a furnace. Words were melting away and being replaced by others. Your mother quickly put the dagger in the case and locked it, fearing the curse was transforming again.”

  The revelation stunned Catrin.

  Amren proclaimed, “I believe your act of love altered the curse.”

  She shook her head in denial.

  No. No. This can’t be. Our love is blameless. Something else caused this to happen.

  “Find your tongue,” Amren demanded.

  Catrin knew that no matter the repercussions, she had to tell her father the truth. “This has nothing to do with Marcellus. It was during this time when my raven sent me a vision that explained how my Druidic powers worked. It said that I always had these abilities, but didn’t know how to use them correctly.”

  “And what are these abilities?” asked Amren.

  Catrin drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly to steady herself. “I can travel to other realms in my raven’s mind. One place is a transitional barrier where the mortal world and the Otherworld of the spirits meet. The raven called this the Wall of Lives. On its surface are life-threads of every living human being. The threads weave into a fluid tapestry that flows through the portal into the Otherworld. It is where the past, the present, and the future merge into one. I discovered that I could shift the future by manipulating the threads.”

  “How is that?”

  Catrin explained, “I can change when someone dies by pulling a person’s life-thread out of the portal and reweaving it into other strands in the tapestry.”

  “No mortal has that power,” Amren said, incredulous.

  “I have that power,” Catrin proclaimed. “When I pulled a life-thread out of the portal and rewove it into the tapestry, I extended a person’s life. The only problem, though, is I don’t know how the future changes for others because the tapestry then rippled out like water.”

  “Whose life did you extend?” Amren asked. “Mine?”

  Catrin’s voice cracked with emotion when she burst out, “I saved Marcellus!”

  “Cursed gods above!” Amren’s blue eyes blazed from the torch flame when he pointed to his abdomen. “The slash in my belly is from your lover’s blade. By saving an enemy, he almost killed me!”

  Horror sheared into Catrin’s heart. Marcellus could not have done this! He knows how much I love him … my father. Why had I not foreseen this? She tore her eyes from her father’s burning stare and shrilled, “Oh gods no! I wanted to save Marcellus, but I never meant to harm you.”

  “Nothing good came out of this!” Amren snarled. “I saw Marcellus fall from an arrow shot into his chest.”

  “No, father, he is alive! I summoned a white raven to take the brunt of the arrow before it could pierce his heart.”

  Amren’s fingers clawed into the cave’s dirt floor like a crab’s pincers. “This is the disloyal act of a stupid girl blinded by love—not a noble princess I raised to put family and kingdom first. I must now go to war against my own banished son and rival king. The Romans will likely join their cause after we killed so many of their soldiers today. Just when I needed your magical powers, you let me down. Far worse, you betrayed me and my people when you slept and abetted the Roman enemy. And finally, your actions altered the curse by changing the future. In what way, I can’t be certain until I inspect the dagger’s inscription. You’ve left me with no choice but to charge you with treason and put you on trial for your crimes.”

  Catrin felt as if a mule had kicked her in the stomach. She gasped, “Father, you cannot mean this.”

  “I always mean what I say,” Amren said coldly, then shifted his eyes toward the back of the cave and called out, “Trystan, come here!”

  The commander walked out of the shadows and presented himself. The pallor of Amren’s face turned leaden as he ordered, “Detain Catrin as prisoner until she is tried for treason.”

  The king’s lips abruptly turned ice blue, and he crumpled on the cave’s muddy floor.

  Conflicting emotions of shock, fear, love and hate whirled inside Catrin like a storm as she pressed trembling fingers on her father’s neck for a pulse. When she could not feel a heartbeat, she gasped and pressed harder.

  Then suddenly, the king’s hand swatted her fingers as if they were flies on a corpse. Startled, she lurched back and filled with terror when his eyes froze on her. He barked at Trystan, “Do what I said. Take her as prisoner.”

  Catrin gaped in horror at Trystan. He flinched, but then he clenched her arm and the floor seemed to sweep underneath her feet as he forced her up. She pleaded with her eyes for him to show mercy.

  He showed none and dragged her away like a carcass through the cave’s entrance. Outside, he ordered a warrior to tether her to a tree until they could return home the next morning.

  In the night’s dark gloom, unforgiving rain washed tears of remorse from her face that she had lost her father’s trust and was branded as a traitor for loving Marcellus.

  2

  BETRAYAL

  “Two of my soldiers were not killed in battle. They were pecked to death by thos
e demonic creatures.”

  At times feverish, Marcellus languished during the arduous five-day wagon ride to the Roman encampment near the Catuvellauni capital of Camulodunon. Today, he took the tribune’s advice and told the driver to distance their wagon from the Roman troops and two wagons full of injured soldiers. The constant jostling aggravated his chest pain. The soldiers’ open contempt that he had betrayed them by saving Catrin at the prison exchange grated like salt into a festering wound.

  The first soldier who treated his wound spat on the bandage before covering the dressing on his chest. At the time, Marcellus tried to humor himself. Undoubtedly, he gave me an offering for the healing process.

  Another cavalryman with two swollen black eyes offered him another round of sputum on his bandage and said contemptuously, “Why would you save a Celtic cunni after she led our men into an ambush?”

  If the wound in his chest had not hurt so much, Marcellus would have knocked the foul-mouthed horseman off his mount and whip-fisted him. Weakened and his mobility limited by stabbing pain, he only had enough rage to grumble, “Keep your nose out of my affairs.”

  The badger-eyed horseman then contorted his face into the ugliest scowl Marcellus had ever seen and said, “The other day, I buried five of my friends. Two had their eyes gouged out by those damn ravens. I reckon that is my concern.” As the cavalryman left, Marcellus overhead him mumble, “Traitor.”

  The word “traitor” still resonated in Marcellus’s mind. Even now, he couldn’t explain what he was thinking when the centurion hurled Catrin on the ground and began stomping her abdomen. All he knew was his heart was torn with the horror that she might be raped and possibly killed. Love can make a man lose all reason.

  With the dark clouds billowing above, his mood now spiraled into a vortex of gloom. Not only did his chest stab with pain, his head throbbed with the constant clack, clack of the wagon wheels on the rough pathway. A pang of loneliness dug into his soul. At the moment he had lost all trust in Catrin to change his fate to die young, she proved him wrong. The white raven that she had summoned took the full force of the death arrow before it could pierce his heart. He had believed himself invincible, but death almost claimed him in Britannia. And now he must face two more attempts on his life that Catrin had prophesied. The first attacker would be her half-brother, Marrock—a shape-shifter who would take the form of a red wolf. A serpent would then strike him when he returned to Rome and reconnected with his married lover. To prevent this from happening, he resolved never to see her again.

  Marcellus drew in a grated breath. Not until he met Catrin did he realize how he had frittered his life away. His happiest moments were when he was a boy at his family’s villa that was nestled on a wooded hillside between the Saone and Roane Rivers. He play-acted as his great-grandfather, Mark Antony, on a quest with Julius Caesar to overcome the Celtic hoards at Alesia. Yet this whimsical role-playing never erased his resentment that his forefathers were considered traitors by Rome. Even his grandfather, Iullus Antonius, was branded a traitor for committing adultery with Augustus’s daughter, Julia, and was forced to commit suicide by falling on his sword. As a consequence, Marcellus’s father, Senator Lucius Antonius, was banished to Gaul.

  At age twelve, Marcellus recalled his father’s excitement announcing that Tiberius had pardoned him and they were moving back to Rome. Much to his chagrin, the sounds of the countryside that had been music to his ears was replaced by the urban clamor of shoppers in the Roman forum. Even with the approximately one million inhabitants scurrying in and out of multi-storied insulae in the city, loneliness plagued him. A gangling and unrefined boy, he never quite meshed with his more sophisticated peers.

  That all changed when he immersed himself in weapons training, military strategy, and oratory. He ultimately caught the eye of the consul’s wife almost twice his age. An exotic, dark haired beauty, she invited him over to her villa so they could read poetry together. In her bedchamber, she would undress him and stroke his manhood in elegiac couplet as she read Ovid’s Ars Amatoria:

  Woman cannot resist the flames and cruel darts of love, shafts which, methinks, pierce not the heart of man so deeply. Pluck, then, the rose and lose no time, since if thou pluck it not ’twill fall forlorn and withered, of its own accord.

  She likened lovemaking to military service. He lustily obeyed her every command. How could a young man resist such a duty? Yet she taught him the darker side of erotic pleasures that sometimes ended in opium-induced oblivion. He was at her every beck and call to satiate her needs … and, of course, his too.

  Once, her husband, a drooling silver haired ex-commander with crippling gout, almost limped in on them when his legs were entwined about his lover. The panic of getting caught made his heart leap to his throat as he scrambled to hide behind a large vase. At the time, he gave little thought of his mortality and the vengeance the consul might have exacted.

  Drawing out of his reverie, Marcellus lifted his eyes to the sun that was peering through thick clouds. He prayed silently.

  Apollo, show me how I can rise out of my ashes and ascend to the heavens.

  The name “Catrin” whispered into his mind and he released a long rueful sigh. At the moment he realized he had found his true love, Apollo snatched her away. He knew their relationship was impossible. Would she ever forgive him for stabbing her father?

  He then remembered the king lunging at him in the melee of battle. He had to defend himself or die. It was never his intent to harm him—the possibility that he had killed Catrin’s father gnawed at his every waking thought. Though she had changed his fate to die young, he never expected the future might shift in unpredictable and deadly ways. And soon, he must face his own father who surely must know the soldiers had branded him as a traitor.

  No longer able to tolerate the clicking of the wooden wheels, Marcellus shouted to the driver, “Stop. I need to get out!”

  “No need,” the driver replied. “We’re almost there.”

  Marcellus pulled himself up against the wagon’s side to look over. Ahead was the rectangular Roman encampment on top of a rolling hill. Riding beside the wagon was Decimus whose scarred face wore a perpetual scowl. The close-lipped tribune was an enigma to Marcellus. Rumors abound in Rome that his political career had floundered when he married a Gallic wench who died giving birth to their daughter—a tale of caution, his father Lucius told him, for any nobleman considering marrying a foreigner beneath his status.

  Lucius never seemed to give this gossip much credence as Decimus was the only man who could confront the senator and steer him to a steadier path. Marcellus had to admit he had grown to respect the commander’s rock-solid demeanor since their initial confrontation with King Amren. Yet the tribune’s silence on the trip to the Roman camp had roared disapproval of what Marcellus had done.

  Tribune glanced at Marcellus and reined his horse closer to the wagon.

  He said, “You look pale as a corpse. What did those savages do to you back there?”

  Marcellus hesitated. Exposing what he had been through as a prisoner could disrupt the political balance and endanger Catrin. He replied dryly, “Nothing much. The bleak weather has put me in a bad mood.”

  “Weather?” Decimus quipped. “The bruises on your face tell me otherwise.”

  Marcellus looked away. “It happened at the fight during the prisoner exchange.”

  “Those bruises were there before the conflict broke out,” Decimus said. “I’m still baffled why you attacked Priscus, so you could save that Celtic wench.”

  Marcellus stiffened. “Catrin helped me to escape.”

  Decimus spat on the ground. “Those Cantiaci warriors at the prisoner exchange who were ready to ambush us tell me otherwise. As I recall, you are the one who shouted the alert.”

  Marcellus gripped the side of the wagon as it bumped over a rough area of the road. He told Decimus, “Catrin didn’t
know this would happen. Besides, the Romans were ready to do the same thing.”

  “You mean ambush?”

  Marcellus nodded.

  Decimus’ jaw tensed. “As commander, I must prepare for any surprise. Don’t fool yourself. That wench knew exactly what she was doing. She lured us into a trap. It is best we got you away from her wiles. What else could explain why you turned on Priscus to save her, except that she bewitched you?”

  Marcellus glared at the tribune “She did no such thing. I protected her because she helped me. Quid pro quo. I betrayed no Roman.”

  Decimus fidgeted with his reins and stared at Marcellus. “I warned you that Catrin was a sorceress. What about those ravens that attacked our soldiers when the conflict broke out at the exchange? I’ve never seen such numbers swoop down like that. Two of my soldiers were not killed in battle. They were pecked to death by those demonic creatures. There is something evil about Catrin as there is Marrock.”

  “Her half-brother,” Marcellus’s voice spewed with disgust. “You lecture me about Catrin. Yet Father and you bargained with that monster. Marrock ignited the firestorm when I was held hostage. He must have stolen my father’s insignia ring and used it to imprint the wax seal on the fake message addressed to you, which was conveniently discovered on a dead courier. It was only after Queen Rhiannon read that Amren had been imprisoned and the Romans would soon attack her kingdom did she threaten to kill me. Didn’t you think of that when you broke the agreement at the prisoner exchange?”

  “Of course, I knew,” Decimus grunted, “but anyone could have sent that letter.”

  “It was Marrock,” Marcellus insisted. “You are a reasonable man. I am surprised you support my father in his dealings with Marrock.”