by Sarah Zettel
“Donal, wake the herald,” ordered Agravain. “Mayhap Urien’s lieutenant will be better minded to bargain now.”
The boy bowed hastily and sprinted off into the teeming camp. Agravain sheathed his sword, and unafraid turned his back on the river.
“What tale is this, brother?” he asked.
Geraint chuckled. “A long one. Will you hear it?”
Agravain’s gaze slid from Geraint to Elen and back again. “I had better. Come then.” He began trudging back towards the tents and the brightening camp fires. “Bring your wife.”
“Thank you brother,” said Geraint to his back.
He got no answer, so Geraint smiling, took her hand and Elen walked with husband and brother toward the morning that was to come.
Epilogue
The river Usk flowed black and silver beneath the moon. A woman, clad in black cloak and black dress raised her tin lantern high as she picked her careful way down the bank to stand beside a drooping willow tree. Behind her, two men followed, grave and quiet. She pointed to a still shadow in the rippling water. Without hesitation, they waded into the ice-cold shallows, freed the shadow from the entangling roots, turning it it so that the dead man’s white face could be clearly seen. Straining, they lifted it from the river. Water sluiced off, a chittering silver cascade. The two men laid the corpse on the bank, straightening it as best they could and then they stepped back, their heads bowed in respect so that the black-clad woman could kneel beside the dead man.
Morgaine knelt. The blow that had taken his life and driven her brooch into the flesh of his throat. She laid her hand there, feeling how terribly cold it was. She looked a moment into his eyes gone white and grey, all their color washed away by the river’s tears.
“You were not hers to take,” she said, the fury in her words as cold as the death beneath her hand. “Never hers. Nor yet was it Geraint’s place to bring you down. You were mine. Mine!” She lifted her head, her face white as the moon. “Listen to me sister. Hear me well where you have gone. I might have spared them. I might have at the last remembered they were yours and remembered they share blood with my own son. But your son has killed my love. Your son, all your sons will pay at the last, no matter what mercy they may beg for themselves or theirs.”
She stood then, and turned without glancing backward. With her pale lantern to light the way, she led her men, the living and the dead, away into darkness.
The End
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Copyright © 2005 by Sarah Zettel
Cover images istockphoto.com/©Diana Hirsch, ©Olga Brovina
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Published in association with Athans & Associates Creative Consulting
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4369-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4369-2
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4368-2
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4368-5