by Anna Elliott
“Quiet!” Isolde felt the blade bite into her skin, and a warm trickle of blood start down her throat. “Not another word!” She felt Owain’s chest heave behind her as he drew a shaking breath. “Now,” he went on, still breathing hard, “my own men—to me. The rest of you stand aside.”
Owain must, Isolde thought, have been expecting trouble of some kind after all. As his men rose slowly to their feet, she saw that he’d brought with him a dozen or more fighting men—more by far than any of the other councilmen in the hall. They were young men, all of them, and their faces looked strained and set as they moved out of their places, hands on the hilts of their swords. Isolde wondered how much Owain had told them. Perhaps nothing at all. They’d all of them have given their blood-oath to follow him, though. To defend him to the death, if need be.
Isolde could feel the tension in the room, the lines of strain arcing the air, tight as the warp and weft of colored thread on a loom. Still with the feeling that time moved with an unnatural clarity, she watched as Owain’s men approached, swords drawn. And then it happened. Huel lurched to his feet, drawing his own sword and lunging forward with a wordless cry of rage.
Whether he’d decided her life wasn’t worth saving, or whether he’d simply lost his temper and acted without thinking at all, Isolde didn’t know. In a flash, though, he had made a quick, sharp thrust with his sword and run the first of Owain’s men through. The young man’s mouth opened, his eyes widening with shock. Blood spurted from his chest as Huel jerked his blade free. And then the man crumpled to the floor with a dull, meaty thud.
Instantly, the lines of tension that had held the rest of the room still snapped and broke, the anger and hunger for violence that had simmered in the room from the first surging to the surface in a rush. All along the hall, men sprang to their feet, drawing their own weapons, even as the remainder of Owain’s men leapt to their fellow’s defense. In a moment, Owain’s men had formed a tight circle about the fallen man, backs turned inward, hacking and slashing outward with their swords at any who approached. They were outnumbered, by far—but there were enough of them to make the fight likely to be a long and bloody one. The hall rang with the clash of swords, the furious shouts of fighting men, and high, angry screams as the wounded went down.
THEY SAY THAT WHEN YOU SET out on revenge, you dig two graves, one of them your own. Maybe that’s true. For I’m dying now. My body’s gone numb and cold, and there’s a weight on my chest like stone.
Man and woman alike, we all come to a death. And so this, then, is mine. I wonder if all who come to this moment feel this way. As though what we’d died for wasn’t worth death at all. As though we’d barter away our souls for just another day of life. Another hour. Another breath.
If all of us, men and women alike, are afraid.
A voice speaks, suddenly, beside me. Clear and sweet and low. For a moment, I can’t make out the words. And then I can. A tale of Avalon, where nine priestesses tend the Goddess flame, and the grief of any wound can be healed. Where time is a curve, without beginning or end.
Almost, I can hear a distant chime, like silver bells.
ISOLDE WAS STILL, LISTENING TO THE echoing voice die away. And then, with a start, she realized that Owain’s arm about her had gone slack as he watched the seething mass of fighting men, the knife hand dropping slightly from her throat. Only slightly—but it was enough. In a single quick movement she had ducked under his hand and twisted free of his grasp.
“Stop!”
It was likely pure surprise that made the men stop fighting momentarily and look up at her shout. Even Owain, reaching for her, knife still drawn, froze in place. The pause was long enough for Madoc, still standing close by, to come up behind the other man and grasp him by the shoulders, jerking him backwards and at the same time twisting one of Owain’s arms behind his back. Owain let out a sharp cry of mingled surprise and pain, then was still.
Isolde looked over the hall, at the several men who lay already unmoving on the floor. And at those standing, panting as they gripped their daggers and swords or pressed their hands to bleeding wounds. She remembered Madoc accusing her, once, of trying to cast a spell over the king’s council, to trap them in a net of pretty words.
Pitching her voice to carry to the far end of the hall, Isolde said, “My lords, I spoke to you once before of the need to unite in the face of a common foe. And if ever there was a time when Britain needed such unity, surely it is now.”
All about her, the men were starting to stir and shift uneasily. Isolde raised her voice and quickly went on.
“Whatever you think of me—whatever hatred you bear me because of my father’s treason—you can at least agree that it was war between my father and Arthur, Briton against Briton, that brought us to the state of siege we’re in now.”
She paused to draw breath. “The accusations I made against Owain and Marche are true—as Owain has just proved before you all. Marche and Octa will be upon us soon—may be moving toward us even now. If we let fighting take hold among ourselves, Britain will be blotted out entirely in the battle that is surely to come. Arthur’s Britain is gone. But we can still salvage what remains—and raise a new nation on what we hold fast.” She turned to Owain, still prisoned by Madoc’s grasp. “Even you, Owain. You’ve gambled for power and lost. Do you truly want to see Britain fall entirely into Saxon hands, as well?”
For a long, breathless, silent moment, Owain’s eyes held hers. It would, Isolde thought, have made for a good ending if she’d been able to read in his gaze any sign that he’d been changed—touched by what she said. But though she saw several emotions cross his face—fear…frustration…anger at being thus found out and trapped—it was cold, hard calculation that settled in his gaze at last. Isolde could almost hear the thoughts passing through his mind, hear him deciding that his best chance of survival lay in trying to win back as much favor with the king’s council as he could. And only then, slowly, did Owain shake his head.
Isolde felt suddenly exhausted, utterly spent. “Then call off your fighting men,” she said. “And tell us what you know of Marche’s plans.”
ISOLDE SAT AS SHE HAD ONCE before, listening to the stillness of the now-empty hall, watching the fire gradually burn itself out in the great central hearth. It must, she thought, be nearly dawn. After the dead and wounded had been carried away, the council had sat for hours, first hearing Owain’s testimony, then debating what measures both for attack and for defense ought to be taken in the days to come.
Now a step behind Isolde made her turn to find Madoc himself, his burned face looking as exhausted as she felt. He sat down beside her and they were both silent for a time. Then Madoc said, his mouth twisting slightly, his voice even more hoarse now with fatigue, “Strange. I won these scars in trying to prove the need for a High King was gone. And now I find that I am taking up the mantle myself.”
It had been the council’s final act before the meeting had broken up: the decision to choose Madoc as High King, to lead them through the current crisis and set a course as they prepared to face Octa and Marche.
And stranger still, Isolde thought, that she and Madoc should be sitting here together in the empty hall, speaking together like two survivors of a war. But Madoc seemed different, somehow. As I am. As are we all.
Isolde blinked the lingering glow of firelight from her eyes. “Maybe the man who makes the best king is one who would not have wished for the place at all.”
Madoc frowned, but then nodded. “Maybe.” He paused, then went on, still frowning, “It goes against the grain to have pardoned Owain. But I don’t see that I had any other choice but to let him go.”
Madoc’s first act as High King had been to declare formally, with the agreement of the rest of the council, that the charge of witchcraft against Isolde was withdrawn. His second act had been to face Owain and, his mouth grim, offer him pardon, as well, in token of the council’s gratitude for his having warned them of Marche’s planned attack.
“You could have done nothing else,” Isolde agreed. “Whatever he has done, he is still king of Powys—and we can ill afford to turn an entire kingdom against us just now. Do you think Owain’s loyalty will hold this time?”
Madoc gave a short laugh. “Owain has all the loyalty of a snake. But I don’t think he’ll run off to join Marche and Octa, at least. I doubt he has the nerve. And besides, the rest of us will be watching him. We couldn’t risk a formal execution for treason—but there are always such things as accidents. And stealth-killings, as well. He’ll not dare betray us again.”
Madoc was silent again, his eyes, too, on the fire. And then he turned to Isolde. “You never said, Lady Isolde, just how you knew of Owain’s alliance with Marche. Or how you could quote Marche’s exact words to him.”
A memory rose in Isolde of the presence of the standing stones and the moonlight. “No,” she said, after a moment. “I did not.”
“And?”
Isolde met Madoc’s gaze, and saw that the doubt and the slight, uneasy fear were still there. Diminished, maybe, but present nontheless. And she knew that he knew it, too. From outside the hall, she heard the thud of horses’ hooves, the clink of bridles, and the murmurs of voices. The men were beginning to muster, preparing to ride out and meet the Saxon advance head on, as planned. In the stable yard, a rooster’s crow heralded the coming dawn.
“And are you sure,” she said, “that you want to ask me that now?”
There was another short silence while Madoc’s eyes remained locked on her own. And then, abruptly, Madoc rose to his feet.
“Good night, Lady Isolde,” he said. “Good night and thank you for all that you have done.”
Chapter Thirty-one
ISOLDE WOKE IN THE GREAT carved bed in her own quarters to find pale gray morning light streaming in through the tapestried hangings. Her head was throbbing fiercely, almost as it had done after a coming of the Sight, and she had only the vaguest memory of making her way here from the council hall, and none at all of falling asleep. She’d not even undressed—she was still wearing the gown—now crumpled and filthy—in which she’d fled Tintagel, all those days ago.
Isolde pushed back the fur-lined blankets, then froze, trans-fixed by the sight of her own hand lying palm-down on the quilted coverlet. The knuckles were chapped and reddened, the nails still dirty and torn from her time outdoors. She moved her fingers, watching the fragile bones glide beneath the skin. She’d not thought, three nights ago, that she would live another day. And earlier, when she’d looked down at Con in his coffin, swearing that Marche would not take the throne, she’d even—if she were honest—half hoped that the fight might cost her her life.
And yet here she was. Alive. Alive, she thought. And sleeping in the queen’s quarters once more.
Slowly, she turned her hand over and stared at a faint pink line across her palm, the mark of an old scar. Then she rose, going to the washbasin to bathe the several days’ worth of dust and dirt from her face and hands, then shaking out a clean overtunic and gown from where Hedda had folded them away. There would be time, now, to grieve. Time to mourn for Hedda—and for Con—and Brychan and Myrddin and all the rest. And for Morgan, as well.
And time, too, to put the memories that had come back to her somewhere she could bear to keep them from now on. The memories of Marche—and the memories of all that she’d locked away those seven years ago, as well. She’d not chosen to remember. And yet, somehow, she wouldn’t choose to forget again. Fragments, she thought, all of them. And for the first time since she’d fled Tintagel, she felt as though those fragments were reshaping themselves into a whole—different, maybe, but complete.
Isolde looked from the overtunic and gown in her hands to the bronze scrying bowl, still in its accustomed place by the hearth. Despite the throbbing pain in her temples, she could feel nothing now in the space where the Sight had once come—no more than she had in the council hall the night before. And yet…
And yet she remembered that moment in her workroom, when Hedda’s hands had fastened round her throat. Her lips had moved in words she thought she’d forgotten, and she’d felt that brief, blazing flare of pain. And then—
Isolde’s hands moved to her throat, touching the bruises left by Hedda’s grasp. She’d not seen, herself, whatever Hedda had. But she remembered the Saxon girl’s scream. No—you’re dead. I killed you.
And maybe that, Isolde thought, is a reason to hope, as well.
ISOLDE STEPPED INSIDE HER WORKROOM, DIM and shadowed in the gray light of early morning. Her eyes went at once to the bench where she’d left Trystan asleep the night before, but the man she found there wasn’t Trystan. Ector was seated with his head tipped back against the wall, hands folded across his middle, narrow chin sunk on his chest. He looked up sharply as Isolde entered, his wizened face as forbidding as ever, his mouth grim. The bandages, Isolde saw, were gone from his foot, and he wore now a pair of cracked leather boots of incredible dirtiness and age.
“Did you want me to look at your foot?” she asked him, after she’d bidden him good morning.
Ector scowled. “No, I don’t,” he snapped. “I’ll thank you to just leave my foot alone. Wound’s healed. You’ve no excuse to go poking and prying at it anymore.”
Isolde smiled faintly. “And that’s why you’re here? To tell me that?”
Ector looked away at that, shifting uneasily, and made an awkward, uncomfortable noise in his throat. “Mmmph. Well.” He stopped, then looked round the workroom, at the rows of salves and ointments, tinctures and pills, at the ceiling strung with drying herbs.
“Got a good bit in the way of medicines in here, haven’t you?” he said abruptly.
Isolde’s eyes, too, went round the room, surveying the carefully prepared herbs and cures. “Some,” she said. “But not enough. There’s a battle coming. A bad one—perhaps the worst since Camlann. There’ll be wounded—many of them—here before long.”
Ector was silent, his gaze on the floor. When he spoke, his voice was gruff, and Isolde thought there was a faint tinge of color in the wizened cheeks. “Well,” he said, “they might do worse than land in your care.”
Isolde smiled again. “Thank you,” she said. She paused. “And you’re welcome, as well.”
Ector’s eyes remained fixed firmly on the toe of his right boot, but the grizzled head jerked in the briefest of nods. “Mmmph,” he said again.
Isolde hesitated, then asked, “Ector, did you see a man here when you came in? A tall man—badly burned about the back and arms?”
Ector grunted and looked up. “If you mean the man who was asleep on this here bench when I came in, he’s gone.”
Isolde stared. “Gone? What do you mean?”
Ector’s face had settled into its usual dour lines, and he moved his shoulders irritably. “Gone’s gone, isn’t it? He woke when I came in. Asked me did I know the way to the stables. I told him, and he left. Said he was—”
But already Isolde had turned and was gone, passing through the door into the great courtyard and crossing toward the stable yard.
SHE FOUND HIM AT THE FAR end of the stables, checking the bridle on a dappled gray mare that was used by the army as a pack animal. A clean tunic covered the burns on his shoulders and back, but the bruises stood out on his face, livid patches of purple and black. Isolde approached quietly, but all the same he looked up when she was still at least ten paces away. He didn’t speak, though, and after a moment Isolde said, “How did you get them to give you the horse?”
Trystan shrugged, his face expressionless. “Told them it was on your orders. The stable hands have other things to worry about just now than what happens to a lone pack mare.”
“I suppose they do.”
Trystan turned away, slipping the bit into the horse’s mouth, rubbing the dappled neck with a practiced hand when the mare tossed her head and tried to protest. There was a moment’s silence, and then he said, without looking up, “So the king’s council’s dec
ided you’re not a witch after all?”
Isolde crossed the remaining distance between them, smoothing a stray lock of hair, still slightly damp from the washing with lavender water she’d given it before dressing in her rooms. It still felt strange to be clean after so many days of sleeping outdoors—to be dressed in a gown not stiff with sand and dried mud.
“No,” she said. “But they’re willing to pretend not to believe it—for now. As you said, there are other things to worry about. More important than deciding whether I’m guilty of sorcery or no.”
Trystan nodded, but he didn’t speak. His head was bent to the task of harnessing the horse, and Isolde studied his face again: the sharply defined curve of his cheek and jaw—stubbled, now, with several days’ growth of gold-brown beard—the slanted brows and clear blue eyes, the left one still with a fading bruise.
He looked, she thought, terribly tired. Hardly surprising, after what he’d endured these last few days. She tried to trace in his features the echo of the boy she’d known, all those years ago. Tried to fit the two images together, the boy she remembered and the man standing before her. He’d be—how old, now? Twenty-two, Isolde thought. If I’m twenty.
The silence stretched out, and then Isolde said, “You were just going to slip away? Leave without a word?”
Trystan’s shoulders lifted again, and he turned, heaving the saddle up onto the horse’s back in a single, fluid movement.
“What was there to say?”
“What was there—?” Isolde forced herself to sound calm—brittlely so, but still calm. “For one thing, you might tell me how it was you left me out on the moor.”
Trystan did glance up, briefly, at that. “I thought you’d made up your mind already what I’d done.”