This I saw in an eyeblink, as I threw wide the doorflap the King's tent and skidded to a stunned halt: I saw Uthyr the King fallen to the floor in a welter of blood, two Arthurs blade to blade above him. A moment of frozen chaos: no sound, no movement—not even the swords sang or shifted—no thought, but only a kind of blank mazed horror.
I know that I cannot have stood there for more than a few seconds at the most; but to me then, and, aye, even now, it seemed I stood so for ages. Then the scene came roaring back to life around me, as the help I had so desperately shouted for came bursting in at my back (only seconds behind me, for all my panicked fret); as I myself moved forward, hand outflung, a mad thought of somehow stopping the fight—and I utterly unarmed, and no Fian to go barehand against six to one together—the only thought in my mind, if thought it could in truth be named.
Words take more time than deeds: All in that same blazing moment, the Fians burst in and I moved forward and the two Arthurs broke their sword's-edge balance, to strike one another down beside the King on the red floor of the tent. Ygrawn, the Queen, I could not see at all.
There was blood everywhere: Uthyr lay as he had fallen, and though I saw that he yet lived, I saw in that same frantic glance that there was little other hope for him. Yet as I looked so, and saw so, through my tears of grief and frustration and fury, even then I was already looking past him, to the two others who lay as unmoving as did he, a little way away upon that ghastly floor.
Under the stress of murder and wounding and combat, the deceit of the lying fith-fath he had set upon himself had passed off Owein Rheged; so that he wore once again his own face and form, not the cheating image of Arthur that, together with the slaughter of the tent-guards, had earned him unchallenged admittance to the King's tent. He was not dead, for our eyes met then,—and I turned away, as much to direct the help I had called for as to no longer have to look upon his face.
That help was already to hand: not only the Fians who had followed on my heels but others who had heard—with deeper senses than hearing—my despairing summons. Tarian Douglas was now here, and Grehan Aoibhell, and Keils Rathen—warlords all three, a few others of our—Arthur's—Companions; and ahead of them every one, my beloved, Morguenna, known to all as Morgan, sister and daughter to the two who yet lay so very fearfully still.
Heedless of the ruin she was making of her guna, without so much as a glance even at me, still less at anyone else, Morgan went to her knees in the midst of that terrible red lake, and put her hand upon her brother's shoulder, to pull him back from its farther shore.
"Arthur, hear me."
To everyone's unspeakable relief, he heard; and, leaning heavily on both Morgan and myself, managed to pull himself to a sitting position. Not so badly hurt as he had looked and I had feared; thank gods for that, at least…
He caught my unsaid thought, as he so often did when I had a thought I would have sooner kept from him.
"Indeed, braud, scarce hurt at all," he said, though all of us there could see that that was a proud lying word: Owein's last thrust had laid open his side. But though it was surely a painful hurt, just as surely it was not a grave one, and I allowed myself to breathe again.
"My mother?" asked Arthur then, with a dart of swift fear in his eyes. Of Uthyr he did not ask; but had cast one hooded look at the limp form that careful hands were now conveying to a field-couch by the tent wall.
Morgan took his hands in hers. "She is well, Arthur look—" She nodded to where Tarian and Keils were supporting Ygrawn between them; though Ygrawn, as usual, looked as if the support of others was the last thing in the seven hells that she required. Uthyr's queen and Arthur's mother, and Morgan's mother also, Ygrawn had been knocked to the floor by Owein when he forced his way into the tent. Yet even so she had not failed to try to protect her lord: The slashes across her palms gave witness to how, unarmed, she had tried to thwart the striking blade. But she had been stunned by Owein's buffet, and had fallen dazed to the floor behind a chest, and had seen nothing past her son swing his own sword and leaping all in one move to the defense of his uncle and his King.
With an unreadable glance at me, Morgan left Arthur in my hands—literally—and went to her mother's side,—while I, for my part, was passionately relieved to pass Arthur along in my turn to the Fian healers who now came crowding up to attend to them all.
That done, I took myself out of everyone's way, to stand by the tent wall where I could shake quietly with none to see me do so. The mood in the tent now was one of black despair and white-hot anger: That Uthyr should be struck down in the very moment of his reclaiming the throne was almost beyond bearing; that Owein, having failed to defeat us in fair fight, should be the sorcerous cause of Uthyr's fall was not to be borne. Even as I stood there I could sense the grim news sweeping outward from the tent, as the dark windstorm we Kelts call camanfa will grow in an eyeblink from a small tight funnel to a whirling wall of destruction.
After a while Morgan came back to me. She had been healing her mother's hurts, and overseeing the Fians who attended to her brother, and watching a while by her father's bedside; and now, with all three of her wounded kindred made comfortable, or as much so as was possible for the moment, she came to me for comforting of her own, walking without a word spoken straight into my arms.
We stood for some time unmoving, our arms round each other, her head bent to mine; there were no tears. After a while I felt her stir and gather herself, but I could not look down just yet to meet her gaze, for a great and shameful reason.
My guilt was by now past pretending, my soul howling in a wordless passion of what-ifs and if-onlys and how-nots. Why had I not been swifter to sense that it had not been Arthur passing by me in the camp-way below the tent but Owein in his counterfeited likeness? Why could I not have been quicker in alerting the Fians and our Companions? How came it that I alone was unarmed on entering the tent? Had I been so, I could have stopped the fight sooner, if only I had come there sooner to start with… And so I tortured myself; but if my guilt was so ungovernable, how much more so Arthur's, who had been in the tent, sword in hand too, and who even so could not keep his uncle and his mother from harm…
"Nay, cariad, do not…" That was Morgan's low rippling voice, so like her mother's, pitched now for my ear alone,—and I forced myself to meet her eyes, desperate as I was for consolation, feared as I was to see in those eyes either hate or blame.
And knew as I looked at last what folly it had been to fear so,—there was a shadow in the hazel depths, but it was pain alone had put it there. "How, then?" I muttered savagely.
"They were giving one another goodnight, Arthur and my parents, when Owein entered. As you saw, he had cast my brother's likeness upon him; a fith-fath, and a good one too"—that assessment given with a sorceress's professional judgment—"if not quite good enough to keep you from pointing the difference." She laid an open palm flat upon my chest. "No blame, Talyn. Had you not seen what you did when you did, who shall say what Owein may not have managed to encompass?"
It was a generous forgiveness,—all the more so since she clearly considered there was naught to forgive, but knew also that I needed her absolving for what I held to be my fault. This she saw too,—but said no more of it, only went on with her careful, controlled account of the night's events.
"It was only by means of that mask that Owein passed by the Fians who stood guard in the faha below the tent."
"But if Artos was already here—"
"Aye so, but the lower faha guards knew not that he had returned to bid the King and Queen goodnight. The Fians by the tent door did know, and so moved to stop Owein—how would one seek entrance who was already within? But he drew on them first, and cut them down, and came inside. My father tried to stop the sword, but—then Arthur—"
I kissed the top of her head, where the dark-gold hair was led and pinned soft and deep and clean-smelling, and after a moment she continued.
Owein had not seen Arthur just at first, and went str
aight for the King; and then Arthur came against him with Llacharn."
Llacharn … I remembered well, as I knew Morgan herself remembered, the winning of that magical sword: how she and Arthur had worked together to gain it, how Arthur had drawn it from the stone, in a secret place of earth, deep below the Forest in the Sea. And yet in the end, not even Llacharn's temper or Morgan's magic or Arthur's arm had been enough to hold off disaster…
I threw a glance at the author of that disaster. The Fians, wild with grief and rage, had dragged Owein up at last from the floor, where all this time he had lain under the close points of a dozen swords. Like Arthur, he was drenched in blood: Uthyr's, Ygrawn's, Arthur's, his own. Again like Arthur, his wounds were not so grave as they had at first seemed, though sore enough; and yet not one hundredth, one thousandth part so grave or so sore as the whole of our army would have had them to be.
I was no more immune to that vengeful sentiment than anyone else: I had not troubled myself to think of Owein until I knew that my dear ones—or at least the two I could reasonably hope for—were reasonably unhurt. Now, as I brought my gaze unwillingly to meet Owein's again, I found myself consumed by the burning desire to rip out his throat with my bare hands.
Never had I felt so about another living being, not even Edeyrn, who had wrought so unspeakably with me and mine. As Druids we are taught unceasingly that all life has value and reason and purpose, even if we in our limited vision can discern none of these,—and not even in the hottest, bitterest battles I had fought by Arthur's side—not at Cadarachta, not at Glenanaar—had I been possessed of such a longing for another's blood.
It seemed that Owein sensed my mood—certainly he felt the weight of my glance, it must have fallen upon him like a sword across his shoulders—for as they began to half-lead, half-drag him out past me he halted, and looked full into my face.
"Mabon Dialedd, I think?" he said, with a small stiff bow and stiffer smile,—the best of each that he might make, under bond and point of sword and pain of wound. "I should have known you long since, Glyndour, if only from that name alone. For five years in Caer Dathyl I had Gwyddno's son beneath my hand, and knew it not."
But the memory of my service as bard in Owein's hall was not one I wished to recall just then… "No more than I knew you, not straightway, when we could not find you after the fight." I spoke carefully, for I did not trust my voice to keep from word-whip—and Druids can kill with a word—any more than I did trust my hands to keep off from his throat. "We thought you had simply skulked away, like the carrion-dog when the lion has shaken his mane."
Owein flexed his shoulders against the ropes that bit deep, fixed so by grim Fians, to take what ease they could in petty vengeance in the face of the greater anguish.
"The skill was not my own that hid me, as your lady"—he bowed here to Morgan, who was regarding him steadily and serenely, with no expression whatever visible upon her face—"knows well. I was dodging her and that thrice-damned Merlynn all day; you'd have thought they had somehow scented me out."
"Treachery has no time a sweet fragrance, and Edeyrn's sorceries never aught but stench." I nodded to the guards. "Take him to the clochan of the Fianna command, and, Keils"—this to Uthyr's warlord—"do you yourself mount watch. We will deal with him when this here is settled."
In the presence of Ygrawn, Arthur and Morgan—queen, prince and princess—I had no business whatsoever giving orders to the King's guards in the King's tent, and still less commanding Keils Rathen. But I was obeyed instantly; and after Owein had been led out, Keils following grimly after, I felt as if a great vile uncleanness had been suddenly washed away.
It seems ages in the telling, but in truth no more than fifteeen minutes had passed since that first terrible moment; the tent was full of folk now, word of the calamity having run through the campment like the Solas Sidhe. And now for the first time I allowed myself to look full at Uthyr, and to hope in the midst of despair. Might it be that the King could yet be saved? He lay still and silent on the low bed, Ygrawn beside him with his hand in both of hers and her eyes fixed on his face. Maybe magic…
All at once the enormity of what had happened here caught up with me, or I with it, and I reeled on my feet as giddiness took me. I was seized and steadied by Tarian, who by, and the friendly hands of others as well. But a torch had gone up in my brain: Gweniver. Uthyr's niece, Arthur's cousin, who had been formally named heir—well, co-heir—to the Copper Crown only a little time past: Surely she had been told of her uncle's wounding?
But even as I thought it, and turned to speak of it to Tarian, the doorflap blew in as on a gale, and Gweniver herself was the wind that flung it wide.
* * *
* * *
Chapter Two
SHE HAD OBVIOUSLY HEARD of the events in the King's lodging; but though her face was a little paler than usual, her mouth a little more tightly set, her expression, like Morgan's, gave otherwise no clue to her feelings. She swept one blazing glance round the tent to see how things did stand, and why, and with whom: noting those who were present, those not, how they seemed, what they did or did not do or say, what was or was not betrayed by their voices or gestures or eyes,—then went straight to her uncle, kneeling by his couch on the other side of Ygrawn.
Friends though we were from our youth—and one time more even than friends, though that one time only—still I rated no more from Gweniver just then than a curt nod, the which, even so, clearly conveyed 'Aye, I see you,' and 'Aye, glad that you are unhurt,' and 'Aye, you did well'; while Arthur—co-heir with her to Keltia, after all, by Uthyr's own decree; not to mention being her pledged lord of three hours' standing, also by Uthyr's decree—rated not even so much as that, though she had seen straightway how it was with him.
All at once I could not bear one moment more,—and turning on my heel, not looking to see what anyone thought of it or did about it, in any case not caring, I grabbed up my cloak and went out into the cold unquiet night. I have little memory of where I went, only that I walked fast and with purpose; or so at least did I try to do, for at every step people caught at my arm or my cloak like imploring children, full of fears and tears and questions, and at every step the rumors grew wilder and the askings ever needier and my responses terser and, aye, even impatient and unkind. That last I could not help: For I was frightened too.
At last I found myself once again on the little hillock where I had already stood twice that day with Arthur, and so often before that alone in my dreams. I was seeking some answers and assurances of my own, and until I found some, from whatever source supplied, I could have no comfort for anyone else.
In my desperate need I stared out into the darkness that rose up before me like a wall in the west. To the south stood the enemy camp, or what was left of it after our forces had broken through; and our own lines to the north, where quartz-hearths sparked and torches stood before almost every tent.
But all at once I was not seeing any of it: I was seeing a hall I had never yet seen in life, that great chamber far away on Tara where my father had died; and yet I was standing on a cliff above what had once been Gwaelod, that was now only the blue skin of the sea over the bones of a drowned land; and also I was standing on a hillside across from a small bright city in the Arvon hills, a chestnut-haired boy of my own age watching hawk-eyed from a little way away,—and again that same hillside, only now it was night, and the little city was bright with laser-fire from attacking ships that swooped and darted in air, lights like corpse-candles that flared and flickered and went out.
I trembled in the grip of the vision, but it had me fast now, unrolling before my othersight like a tapestry of years: everything I had ever seen or would ever come to see—a gray-hulled boat with a silver mast moving toward me over wild waters; five riders upon the breast of a green hill; a ship falling like a shot swan into the red throat of a firemount; a wounded king with three veiled queens round about his bier.
At that sight I started forward uncontrollably with a cry
, for the king bore the face of Uthyr; but as soon as I stirred, the pale pain-filled face shimmered, like a pond's surface ruffled by the wind, and when the shimmering had stilled again, the face of the king was the face of Arthur, and he was not wounded but dead. And all around was a bare and blackened land, sere trees, blood on snow, ruined crops, choked rivers, parched earth, dead seas and dying skies.
When I came to myself I was whimpering like Cabal in a thunderstorm, and Morgan's arms were round me. I clutched at her as if she were my last hope in a dying land; she drew my head down into her lap, twisting her fingers in my hair, summoning calmness into me as steady and warm as a candleflame.
After a while I felt sufficiently recovered to sit up, though I took care to keep myself well-coddled in Morgan's arms, my head against her breast. I began to speak, trying to frame in words some of what I had seen, but she was there before me.
"I know it all, cariad," came her voice in the air above my head; and though that voice was soft as ever with love and solace, something in it rang faintly ominous, like the far-off chime of a sword being drawn from its scabbard. "I have Seen, too."
I twisted in her arms to stare up into her face. "Say you so? Then perhaps it is you can tell me: What of Uthyr? That was no ashling I saw just now, lady. That was an-da-shalla, if ever I knew it!"
The Oak above the Kings Page 2