All the same, it was one of the less pleasant moments of my life, standing there on the earth of Tara—Tara!—and gazing upward into the night sky as small spurts of flame flared briefly beyond the Criosanna and went out. Beside me, Morgan sighed and was silent.
Ygrawn stared upward with grim satisfaction. "So much for that, then," she said, more to herself, I think, than to us. Then, as if recalling our presence: "I have ever found it easier to go forward when a way back did not tempt."
And though somehow I doubted that Ygrawn Tregaron had ever in her life found herself tempted to retreat, I loved her too much to dissent.
But we were here now, right enough; we had been landing all night in shuttling aircars from the various ships, and were already settled, even, in a sort of makeshift leaguer. Yet though by blowing up the ships Arthur had announced our presence on the planet in flame and thunder, still no counter had come our way: For all the note the Marbh-draoi had so far taken of us, we might as well still have been tweaking him back on Gwynedd.
"That will not last," said Morgan, with a touch of her mother's grim humor. She had been less ebullient than her brother about the choice of Moytura, and I suspected, and dreaded, that she had good cause to be so. With the single exception of Merlynn himself, and even then not always, Morgan could See clearer and farther than anyone in Keltia, and she never failed to recognize what it was she Saw; though it did not follow that she always told others what it might be.
This time, though, I had a thought as to what it might be, and, once our tent was up and we had seen Uthyr and Ygrawn comfortably and safely settled and had gone to our own bed, I taxed her with it.
"It is that mysterious errand you keep hinting at for Artos and me, is it not?"
I had not meant to bring it to bed with us; early in our time together Morgan and I had pacted that we should not fall asleep with a problem still between us, and by and large we had held to that, though it had meant more than a few sleepless joyless nights. But true it is that even Druid and Ban-draoi spouses do fail, sometimes, to see what it is that troubles their mates—we are mere sorcerers, not infallible mind-readers—and Morgan and I had had our share of flaming battle and freezing rage.
But tonight she would not answer my askings, and I in turn was less than warm to her advances.
"Well then, what would you?" she said at last. "You are stiff as a sleaghan, and not where it counts, either,—what is on you?"
"On me?" I said, annoyed and astonished. "Oh, not much! Only Edeyrn, and Owein, and Uthyr, and Artos, and you, and Gwennach and Keils—"
"Gwennach and Keils?" she asked, exasperated in her turn. "What of them? They are happy with each other, their work does not suffer for it, they and Arthur seem to understand one another perfectly—is there a problem in it somewhere?"
"You tell me. Do you See aught coming from it?" She was silent so long I thought she had fallen asleep, "When she spoke again I knew I had been right in sensing trouble to come.
Much will come from it. Heirs to two crowns. War on Kernow. Thirteen Treasures restored and lost again. Kin-e and kin-slaughter. Faithless love and loveless faith and lovng faithfulness. A triad squared."
She shivered suddenly and burrowed into my side. "Oh Talyn," she said then, and now her voice was her own again soft, unspeakably weary, "and my brother thinks Edeyrn is the worst foe we shall have to face in this? Then gods help us all."
Though I held her close and comforting, more than that she would not say.
* * *
* * *
Chapter Seven
IF, AS MORGAN HAD SEEN, Edeyrn was not to be our direst enemy, at least he was our most immediate; and it did not take him overlong to make that known to us in no ambiguous way.
We had set up our camp, as I have said, at Moytura: an ancient place whose name means 'plain of towers.' Once there had been a small city on this site, but it had perished in the wars that had followed Brendan's reign,—still, name and memory endured alike, and now it became once again a place of battle.
Arthur had ordered our leaguer so that we might defend ourselves at once should an attack come; and it was well he’d done so, because on the third day after our landing we once again crossed lances with Owein Rheged, and this time he did not come quite so well away…
Give Edeyrn this at the least: When he chose to move, he did so swiftly and he moved from strength. Though we had numbers over Owein, he had the inestimable advantages flowing the land and having a more certain supply train had we. I will not afflict you with details of the disaster that First Moytura, less a battle than a calamity. Suffice it to say that for once Arthur's eye for ground deserted him utterly. Even a grapple-iron cannot hold where the rock it bites in is no rock but sand… The same tactics that had worked so brilliantly against Owein at Cadarachta were here totally thwarted, the great hinge of the army balked from swinging free. Our left crumbled like a child's beach-fort when the tide is running; before we could pull back far enough to regroup, Owein's horse had disintegrated our line completely, and we were scattered and chased as we ourselves had done to Owein below Agned.
By nightfall we had managed to fall back far enough so that no more soldiery pursued, back into the hilly country lying east of Loom-end and south of the Avon Dia, where Arthur had not wished to go. We lost thousands, tens of thousands, maybe; because of what came after, the full count was never known. We were cold, wet, hungry, many of us wounded, all of us sunk in gloom.
Which gloom did turn to near-despair when a grim-faced Betwyr and Daronwy, assisted by two tall Fians, brought into camp an Arthur who seemed all but dead where he stood.
The makeshift camp seemed all at once to shatter and re-form around its injured leader: Elen Llydaw appeared out of nowhere, her healer's satchel clutched to her breast; quiet messages were sent to Ygrawn and Gweniver and Morgan; some went to Uthyr's tent to inform the King and others to the lines to tell key captains.
It was not like Cadarachta, this time; I could tell that from one look at Arthur's face, and more from Elen's, as she and Morgan carefully cut away the red ruin of his tunic.
As ruined as our hopes… There was a terrible wound in his side, from which blood was slowly seeping; other hurts too, but lesser by compare. He was conscious, but had not the strength to turn his head; he knew I was there, though, and his glance flicked sidewise to me where I stood.
"I asked for a healer, and they send me a tunesmith—" He was racked by coughing; with one casual gesture across his eyes, Elen put him out so that she could work unhampered.
"I always liked the way you do that," I remarked, trying to mask my terror with banter, as Merlynn came swiftly and silently in to join us.
"Never mind that. Come here and help me." Elen took the dermasealer from her satchel and motioned me to her side. I began to clean away with care the dark beaded blood, saw now the wound's ragged edges, tipped white and red.
"It is a deep hurt—the sutures must be layered in." Elen was talking more to herself than to the rest of us who hovered round; I was vaguely aware of Morgan gently shooing everyone else out of the tent, even her mother, as Elen began to work, Merlynn helping to keep Arthur asleep and still.
I watched with wonder and satisfaction as she drew the laser tool through the deepest places of the wound, stitching with light; saw the lacerated innards seaming together, the smooth shining muscles knitting up where they had been sliced through, nerve and sinew melding before our eyes. It was slow, careful work; but once the blood vessels had been sealed back in place, Elen closed the upper layers of tissue and fused the skin closed over all. The work had taken three hours and more, and we were near as exhausted as Arthur, who was still deep entranced, must surely be, or would be when Elen allowed him to wake.
"That is one miraculous bit of inventing," Elen was saying to Merlynn. "All Keltia will ever be grateful to her whose mind made it real… No more bleeding, I think, and no real pain,—though he has lost much blood, and for about a fortnight he will feel as if a h
orse had kicked him in the side."
'How did he come to this?" I asked, for as yet there had been no time to learn; I had been too busy, and in any case those who might have told me had all been banished from the tent by Morgan.
"Sheer heedlessness," said Daronwy, who now came back in with Ygrawn and Gweniver. "And uselessness too… He had no business even being there where he was,—but Artos who could keep him away?" She swayed a little where she stood, and I caught her before she fell over. "Nay, hara, thank you but I am only tired, I promise! Give you goodnight, then."
I saw her to her own tent—she was quite as capable as Arthur of pushing herself to the point of collapse, or worse—then looked in on Uthyr, but he was once more asleep, and I had not the heart to waken him even with word of his nephew's healing; and any road, the King had pain and hurting of his own with which to grapple.
When I returned to Arthur's tent, I was surprised to see Merlynn sitting vigil by the field-couch. He fixed me with a stern gaze.
"If you do not go at once to your bed, Talyn, and get some sleep, I will put you out even faster than Elenna's healer's trick can do… He is well enough, and will sleep until sunset tomorrow,—go do the same. I shall watch him for you."
And I was not about to argue with my teacher.
"My own fault," said Arthur cheerfully,—it was just past sunset of the following day, and as Merlynn had predicted, Arthur had just now wakened. He was sitting up, even; eating—rather slowly and carefully—some savory mess from a blue bowl.
I took a seat by the tent wall and watched him for a while. "You have heard of the battle, I take it?"
A muscle leaped along the line of his jaw before he could control it. "Enough to content me," he said carefully. "Or rather, all I need to know, for the knowledge is scarcely contenting… I have long wondered what defeat must feel like, and now that I have come to it, it does not seem to be so dreadful as I had thought."
"Dreadful enough," I said. "We lost many, and we could ill afford to lose any at all."
The pain was back in his face. "Of the Companions?" he asked quietly.
"None lost," I answered, and his eyes closed briefly in thankful relief. "But Tryffin was hurt near as badly as yourself, and Tanwen and Kei and some others"—I named them—"and Elenna has been busy this past night and day."
"What news of Owein?"
"Surprisingly, very little. He has pulled back into the Strath Mor, and, I am told by the scouts, waits there like a spider to see what may bring us back into his web." I repented of all the ill news, and sought to cheer him. "But, you know, Artos, we did not lose so many as we did fear; and Keils and Tari managed to bring us here to safety, and our store of food and arms more than sufficient. We are in far less parlous case than we might be, or deserve to be."
"You mean than I deserve to be," remarked Arthur, setting aside his empty bowl and leaning back upon piled pillows. "Though you are too civil to say so… Well, I admit it freely: This is my fault and failing, and I should have heeded those of you who tried to turn me from my course. Is that what you wish to hear?"
"Is that what you wish to say?" I countered. "It does you no good, Artos, and us still less, for you to call hard upon yourself for one mistake—even such a mistake as this. Aye, it is grave,—and aye again, it was you gave the order for it. But it is neither the worst nor the end for us, and we need you now more than ever before."
He was silent for some moments, then shifted on his pillows, his mouth tightening in what may have been either a smile or a flinching, and he wishing to hide it whichever it may have been.
"What of the King my uncle?" he asked quietly. "I have not seen him since the day of our landing."
"Methryn looks after him," I said, glad to be able to offer at least this comfort. "He is as he has been, and was feared only for you this day past."
With a move so swift and decisive it took me by surprise, Arthur threw back the light coverlet and, a little less surely, got to his feet.
"Then I must go and show him otherwise." He swayed like a willow in a windstorm, and caught at my shoulder even as I leaped forward to support him. "If you will help me to get there."
When Arthur said he had seen Uthyr the King but once since we had landed on Tara, he spoke knowing that all the time he was one of the scant handful who had done so. Save his immediate kindred and closest officers, none of us who had sailed with the fleet from Gwynedd had caught sight of the man in whose name we had sailed.
This was as Ygrawn the Queen would have it: Since her lord had been given his unhealing wound at Cadarachta, she had grown a very lioness of protectiveness and guarding, controlling all access to the King's person, restricting even the commanders who came to report to him of our position. Merlynn alone could come and go as he willed.
And Uthyr seemed content to have it so: Never robust, less dynamic than either of his late brothers, nonetheless he had over the past thirty-odd years that I had known him exhibited a toughness like a findruinna wire, fine but near unbreakable, and in all the months since his wounding I had seen no diminishment in that capacity for endurance.
Even now—even as I had helped Arthur, moving slowly and carefully, into the King's tent, had given him my arm to lean on as he made his bow to his uncle (whose protesting dismissal of such obeisance had, of course, been ignored in its turn by Arthur), I had bent a sharp glance on Uthyr, to see if aught had altered; and for all of me I could not see that it had.
So now I sat beside Ygrawn, at her request playing somewhat upon a rather inferior harp that was the only one to hand—Frame of Harmony being safely stowed in my own tent—and pretending, as was she, not to care overmuch to hear what Arthur and Uthyr were saying to one another over against the tent's far wall.
Truth to tell, my attention just now was all for my foster-mother. Ygrawn was possessed of more inner resources than any ten people I knew, but even she had limits; and as I peered surreptitiously up at her when I thought she was not noticing, I began to wonder if perhaps those limits had not at last been reached; exceeded, even.
I had thought I was being both vigilant and unobserved, and was most discountenanced when Ygrawn began to laugh.
"Ah, Talyn, you might as well just come out and ask how it is with me, it is no good going on so!"
I muttered somewhat under my breath, then, with reddening cheeks, "What gave me away, methryn?"
"Well, that hooded cavebat look you tend to wear when you would observe and be unobserved as you do so… It gave you away as a lad, and it gives you away now." She reached out a slim hand to silence the strings of the harp. "A fair cut below your own; let it be still awhile… Just let you ask, amhic. I will answer as I have ever done."
I set the harp aside with a certain relief and looked straight into the clear violet eyes. "Then I will ask: Are you well, methryn?"
"Well enough," she answered at once. "If wearier than I would wish to be… Nay, Talyn, it is my lord should be the focus of your fears. Arthur knows this, and Morgan, and Merlynn too,—though Gwennach, I think, has not yet seen it."
I felt my blood running cold down to my boots, and against all my resolve glanced over at Uthyr. He was still deep in quiet converse with his nephew; but I could see his face plain where a lamp was casting a golden glow upon it, and in that glow I saw what Ygrawn had spoken of, and I was afraid, and wondered that I had not seen it sooner.
It was the King's face I looked upon, and yet it was also the face of his dead brother Amris who had perished with honor and purpose, and of his brother Leowyn who had died in a pointless drunken brawl. Gorlas too I saw in his face, and even my own father Gwyddno, who had been murdered by the Marbh-draoi's own hand in the hall at Ratherne. It was the face of the Sacred Lord, that ancientest and darkest aspect of rulership: the king who gives his life so that his land might live.
But would even that sacrifice be enough! Would the land live? I did not know I had sent my fearing thought abroad, until I heard Merlynn speak softly, in the mind-voice, for m
e alone to hear.
"Aye, Talynno, it shall live… But more of royal blood that shall be required, to restore the land that is waste."
And I looked where he looked, and saw that he looked on Arthur as he spoke this; and I wished to look and hear no more.
While we licked our wounds in the hills of Ossory—for so the region was called—the weather changed dramatically, and perhaps for the better to our purpose.
It had not yet been Samhain when we left Gwynedd, but here on Tara it was full winter. That in itself did not dismay us. From our days in Arvon, when there had been only the choice of fighting or surrender, we had grown well used to winter warfare—but, as the local folk who now came one by one in secret to our banner did tell us, winter in this part of the Throneworld could be, to say the least, various.
And so it proved: Seven days after the rout at Moytura snow began to fall at sunset, and by morning it lay two feet deep with no end in sight. It fell softly and silently from inexhaustible clouds; it drove against our faces like fleets of tiny needles, whipped by an east wind glassy with ice. The temperature too fell, colder than it was wont in Arvon. It effectively pinned us down in our hilly sanctuary, right enough; but, as Tarian pointed out, if we were held immobile so too was our foe, and that just now was no bad thing.
I did not argue with her reasoning, nor indeed with our case; but gave private prayerful thanks to Beira the Queen of Winter, who rules the snows and frosts. Anything that kept Arthur in one place for the moment was gods-sent so far as I was concerned. And I was concerned, more so than I cared to admit: I had over our years together seen my fostern in many, many moods; but never before, even in the worst of passes, had I seen him so downcast, so—quashed. For the inside of a week he kept to his tent, and Gweniver, Keils and Tari ran the army.
The thought in camp, which I subtly encouraged, was that he was simply exhausted from his wound and the demands of the invasion; the opinion among the Companions, which I feared and tried futilely to scotch, was that Arthur was giving up. Oh, to be fair, not all of them felt so; maybe not even most. But the feeling was there, and it seeped into their bright hope and gallant resolve like an evil mist, to weaken them where they most needed to be strong.
The Oak above the Kings Page 8