by Lisa Cach
I smiled against his chest. “Galloping like a runaway horse.”
His body tensed and he tugged my hand from his hair, lifting his head and turning it. “No. Listen.”
I heard it then, a faint whisper of sound upon the wind.
Screaming.
8
“Stay here,” Maerlin ordered me, then paused in the doorway with a grimace pulling at his mouth; it might have been a smile, if he were a fox. “This may be the time for brute force.” He disappeared out the doorway bearing a brace of knives in his belt and two swords in his hands, one long, one short. He’d dressed and armed himself while I was still struggling to pull my gown over my head and to find my shoes.
I was no idiot: I would do as told and stay in the protection of the workshop walls. I had experienced enough violence up close to know that I was helpless against a warrior, and, worse yet, could be a burden and distraction to those fighting on my side.
I stood in the doorway, listening to distant shouts and screams. The moonlight cast moving shadows across the valley and the villa, and the orange dots of torches carried on horseback moved like fireflies through the campsites. I could make no sense of what was happening, beyond an attack: Ambrosius’s precious pact of peace destroyed before it could begin.
As some had doubtless planned all along.
I closed my eyes and searched for the traces of men here from whom I had taken seed, trying to find an essence to follow back to its source. Druce, his son Pyrs, Mordred, Terix, Arthur, Maerlin.
There. A fleeting glimpse: Arthur.
Lying in bed, a great pain in his side, a servant gazing down at him in horror and then calling for help. Arthur’s shocked memory of waking with a knife in his gut, Wynnetha snarling at him with her hair undone, her eyes crazed, her bloody hand on the hilt. He’d reached for her, but she leapt from the bed and fled.
Oh gods and goddesses, preserve him! My legs lost their strength and I sank to the ground, leaning against the door frame.
Arthur’s awareness dimmed and then darkened. I let out a cry of despair.
Let him only be unconscious! He needed help; he needed Daella. She could patch him up better than anyone, she could prevent infection.
My thoughts were frantic. A gut wound. He wasn’t dead yet, I was sure of it; I could still feel some dim sense of him, couldn’t I? But a gut wound . . . so often, they festered.
As if controlled by a power beyond me, my head turned and I looked back into the workshop, to the shelf holding the hidden chalice.
My vision: Wynnetha walking through blood and bones, taking Arthur’s hand, and stepping into the cauldron. The cauldron splitting to reveal the green stone.
The stone was an essential part of Skalibur. It was Britannia. It was Arthur.
And Skalibur meant “immortal.”
Daella wasn’t going to save Arthur. The chalice was.
I scrambled to my feet and ran to the shelf. I was about to lay my hands on it when a noise behind me made me turn around, Maerlin’s name on my lips.
Only it wasn’t Maerlin.
Three armed men I vaguely recognized from Calleva had come in, short swords in their hands. Saxons, in service to Horsa and Wynnetha.
The hair rose on the back of my neck and my heart plunked like a stone thrown in a pond. This could not be good. “What do you want?” I asked carefully in Frankish, knowing they’d be able to understand. My eyes stayed on them, but in my head I was doing an inventory of the room, searching for weapons, for something to defend myself with—anything.
“It’s a pity to kill something as pretty as you,” one of them said.
“Then don’t.”
He shook his head and two of them stalked toward me, leaving the third to keep guard at the door. “My lady’s orders.”
Wynnetha. She wasn’t taking any chances that Mordred might find me and want to keep me. Is that why she’d stabbed Arthur, to free herself for Mordred? If so, she was mad. War would come of this.
I pushed my back up against the shelves, my eyes round, my hands searching behind me for something, anything, to use against them. “Wouldn’t you like to rape me first?”
They both blinked at that, their steps faltering. “She warned us you were a sorceress,” the second one said. “She made us swear we wouldn’t touch you except with this.” He lifted his blade.
My hand found one of Maerlin’s little pots of substances. I dug at the cork with my nails, trying to pry it free behind my back. “She knows I’m too good in bed,” I said, my voice cracking with fear. I licked my lips and forced my gaze to wander down the nearest one’s body.
He turned his head sideways—looking at me out of the corner of his eye like a dog uncertain if it’s going to be kicked. “Something’s wrong with you.”
The other raised his blade. “Our lady warned us she was dangerous. Better to kill her quick.”
I popped the cork free and got a grip on the pot with one hand. The other I brought forward and clamped over my cunny, rubbing, and then I started moaning as if in sexual ecstasy, though my voice was too high and quavered. It was all I could think of, to keep them off balance.
The Saxons made low cursing noises and slowed their advance yet more, shuffling forward with their eyes near rolling with fear and confusion. This was not how a woman about to lose her life was supposed to act.
“Don’t make me die without feeling a cock in me,” I whined, and started toward them. “Please . . .”
“You stay back!”
“Just one cock. One big, fat cock, with hairy balls to bounce upon. Which of you has the thickest? I want the thickest and longest, with a nice fat, round head, big as my fist.”
As I said fist I swung my arm from behind and flung the contents of the pot at them. Blue powder sprayed across their faces and one of them started shrieking and pawing at his eyes. I took advantage of their surprise to dart past, and scooped up the pestle as I was passing the bed. I ran straight at the man in the doorway, screaming at him in a mad mix of anger and terror; I barreled into his chest and he grabbed the back of my gown, pulling me off him. He never saw my stone cudgel coming for the side of his head.
He went down so quickly, he took me with him. I struggled free and lurched outside, and had started to run down the hill when one of the men from indoors tackled me, knocking the wind from my lungs. I lay powerless, my mouth gasping like a fish and getting no air as he hauled me upright by a fist wrapped into my hair. I saw his blade, raised for the decisive blow.
And I saw the shadow rise behind him, moonlight glinting off a metal arm, a silver eye, and a blade swinging through the darkness. The Saxon’s head was there one moment, and the next was tumbling to the side like a roast capon sliding off a plate. Blood spurted from the neck stump as the body fell and the Saxon’s dead hand released my hair. I collapsed backward, still struggling for breath as Brenn stepped past me and engaged in battle with another man.
I rolled onto my stomach and got my hands and knees under me as my breath came wheezing back.
A few grunts, clangs, and thumps later, and the second Saxon had been dispatched. Then Brenn was leaning over me, his false hand on my back. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, and let him help me back to my feet. “How did you know to come?”
Even through the charcoal of night I could see the joyous wonder fluttering across his face. “Ligeia. I heard her voice.”
I grasped his good arm. “She’s alive!”
“She knew, so many years ago, that I would be needed for this moment. To save our child.” He was still lost in awe.
“And I’m needed now, for Arthur—I must bring the chalice to him.” I dashed back into the workshop, stepping over the soldier in the doorway. “Wynnetha stabbed him,” I said over my shoulder, “but he still lives. And he shall live once I—”
There came a grunt
and the great thump of a body hitting the ground, a shout and a struggle. I whirled around to see the doorway Saxon and Brenn on the floor, and the Saxon plunging a dagger into Brenn’s chest.
I screamed, and my body reacted without thought. Before I knew what I was doing, the heavy stone mortar was in my hands and I was smashing it down onto the head of the Saxon. His skull crunched like an eggshell, and then I was on my knees beside Brenn, holding his face, crying his name.
His good eye was empty of life. His false eye of silver and tiger stone gleamed in the faint orange light from the brazier; he must have put it in for the festivities, a touch of humor and vanity for the wedding feast.
“No, no, no,” I cried, my heart rending. “You can’t be gone. Come back, Brenn. Come back!” I reached for him through my hands, searching out a flame of life still within him.
I found only empty darkness.
There was no answer to my cry, nor would there be. I could feel it in my hands, that he was gone from this world. There would be no return.
With tears half-blinding me, I stumbled back to the shelves and took the chalice, still bound in its protective layers of fleece and leather. There was no helping Brenn, but Arthur could yet live.
The chalice under one arm, my skirts pulled high to free my legs, I ran down the hill toward the villa. As I came off the hill with its protective low growth and onto the clear meadow of the valley floor, the scattered sounds of angry men and fighting grew louder. I slowed my steps and tried to catch my heaving breath, eyes scanning for the safest route through the campsites that lay between me and the villa. Most of the fighting sounded to be coming from the campsites on the other side, beyond my view.
There was nothing for it but to take my chances. I scampered across the grasses and was skirting past a torchlit campsite when I heard hoofbeats and looked up to see Mordred riding toward me, Wynnetha mounted before him. As if guided by a sixth sense, Mordred’s eyes found mine in the half-light and his face went slack with shock, even as he reined in his mount, and then turned it to come at me. His shock was melting into fury, and he held Wynnetha with one arm while leaning out with the other as he galloped toward me.
I dashed along the side of the tent and around its back corner, hoping he could not turn so quickly. I heard Wynnetha screaming at Mordred, “Leave her! Leave her!”
“You said she’d been taken back to Gaul.”
“She’s evil, leave her!”
They came around the tent, faster than I’d hoped, and Mordred grabbed the back of my gown and hoisted me off my feet. The chalice dropped from my hold and the horse’s hoof kicked it into the darkness.
“No!” I cried, struggling in Mordred’s grip, trying to turn to see where the chalice had gone. Had I heard a crack? A fatal crack . . .
Then I was belly-down across the horse’s neck in front of Wynnetha, and Mordred was fighting two enraged women, the horse prancing to the side, made nervous by the three people tangled on its back. Wynnetha pushed and kneed at me, trying to shove me off the horse. I did my best to help her.
Mordred clouted Wynnetha on the side of the head. “Stop it! She’s mine.”
“I’m yours, not this viper. I demand you leave her! I will not have her in our home.”
“You demand ?” Mordred roared.
“Look what I’ve done for you, for us! Yes, I demand!” And then Wynnetha bit Mordred’s arm, trying to get him to let go of me.
Mordred cursed, and the next thing I knew Wynnetha was crying out, and then gone. Mordred pulled me up to sit before him in her former space and kicked his mount back into a gallop, heading for the hills.
“Faithless, betraying bitch,” Mordred muttered. “As if I could sleep at night with a snake like that in my bed.”
Behind us, Wynnetha cursed and screamed. I had just wit enough among my panic to ask, “Didn’t you plan this together?”
“Thought she’d be killed in the doing. I’d never want a woman who had murdered her husband on their wedding night.”
He found a path and directed the horse up it; we soon disappeared into the trees and slowed to a walk, lest the horse miss its footing and come up lame in the dark. Mordred must have planned his escape route beforehand, to know of this path. Doubtless there were men waiting for him, protection from which I would not be able to escape.
Arthur lay wounded, dying, and here I was being spirited away by Mordred while the chalice lay in the meadow where Maerlin would never know to look for it, and wouldn’t be able to use it even if he did.
I didn’t have time for this!
I lay my hands over Mordred’s bare forearm and dragged it up until his hand covered my breast. “Give me a squeeze, will you?”
He stiffened in surprise, then howled with laughter and did as I’d asked. “Hot and hungry little thing, aren’t you? I knew you wanted me, knew it all along,” he said into my ear, his breath steamy with lust.
It was his lust that gave me the opening into his mind. I closed my eyes and followed that trail up into his core, where I dug into his black corners of fear, looking for inspiration.
Ah. Perfect.
I pulled up my hem and guided his hand to my sex. He growled and bit my ear, his fingers digging into my soft flesh. But the moment he touched me there, I painted in his mind a vivid image of fungus, of the sort that grew as a shelf on the bark of trees. The fungus coated my sex, growing before his mind’s eye into every fold and my passage, down my thighs, up my belly, and migrating to his fingers and covering them.
He wrenched his hand away, his throat making gagging sounds of revulsion, but I wasn’t finished. The fungus grew up the crevice of my buttocks and leapt to his body, coating his cock and wedging itself in the flesh between balls and body. It grew so fast his skin vanished within the space of three breaths, and in his mind he felt his rod swelling with the invader, stretching painfully with white fungal matter, his balls expanding until the skin was ready to burst.
By then he was shoving at me, trying to dump me from the horse, but I clung to him as long as I could, spreading the vision over his body until he was suffocating in it. At last he succeeded in knocking me from his mount, and I fell into the bushes. He kicked his horse into a canter and thundered away, heedless of safety, knowing only that the worse danger was a small black-haired woman with spiral tattoos.
I got to my feet and ran back down the path to find the chalice.
9
Dawn found a silent crowd of us in Arthur’s chamber, watching the rise and fall of his chest as if by doing so we could prevent Charon from ferrying him across the river Styx. Or to Hel’s domain, or the Celtic realm of the dead, or whatever Underworld one chose to believe in.
Having twice touched upon the emptiness of death myself, I doubted there was any realm at all beyond the one we could see and feel with our senses. It made it all the worse to know that Arthur teetered on the brink of such an abyss.
The braziers and body heat had made the room unbearably fuggy, and Daella got up to throw back the shutters. The first pale pink light of the day touched upon the chalice, sitting on a table amid the paraphernalia of the physician with whom Daella apprenticed, and the surgeon who sewed together or cut off the body parts of soldiers damaged in battle. Only I could see the fine crack through its middle; to an unfamiliar eye it looked only like a facet of the quartz from which it was carved.
Did the crack matter? I didn’t know. I kept seeing the vision in my head, of the cauldron splitting to reveal the green stone. Surely that meant that crack or no, Arthur and Britannia would be preserved.
I hadn’t had the chance to find out. Nothing had come to me on how to use the chalice. I didn’t know the chant. I had called for honey and wine, and I’d poured a pool of honey into the chalice and started to trace the route of the labyrinth with my fingertip, but I had known it to be an empty gesture, meaningless without the spell that had onc
e saved me. There was no knowing in me, no power, to direct the chalice’s use.
Nor in Maerlin.
Was it because Arthur was not Phanne?
I had tried laying my hand on Arthur and connecting with his mind, thinking that that might trigger a response in me, an awareness of what needed to be done, but all I had felt in him was a scattered, confused self, caused by the opium he had been given for his pain.
Or maybe the chalice only worked as death laid its hands firmly upon one, and Arthur had too much life in him yet. I had to place my faith in the chalice letting me know what I needed to know, when the time came.
That time would come, I tried to tell myself. The vision could mean nothing else. Could it?
Daella sat back down beside me. I took her hand. “Are you all right?” I asked softly.
Her lips tightened and a frown creased her young brow; she nodded, although there was a sheen of tears in her eyes. “Is it terrible that I only feel numb about Uern, and can only grieve for Grandmother?”
Daella’s odious brother Uern had been with Mordred, and a few days ago had told her that their grandmother Mari had died during the winter. Then, when the chaos of last night had erupted, he’d tried to kidnap Daella, to return her to Tannet Fortress. Terix had been the one to save her, killing Uern in the process; I didn’t know what effect that would have on Daella’s long-standing crush on Terix. “Your grandmother taught you everything you know, and raised you with love. Your brother thought you a worthless piece of property. Of course you would mourn one, and not the other.”
“I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m not sorry, either. They say blood’s thicker than water, but it’s not always, is it? I feel more like a sister to you than I ever did to him.”
I put my arm around her waist and hugged her.
Uern’s death had been the least important one of the night.
Druce, leader of that northern tribe of Britons between Corinium and Mona, had been killed by Maerlin. Druce had formed an allegiance with Mordred and Horsa, to undermine Ambrosius’s plans for a peace pact that would encompass all of southwest Britannia.