The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  He saw that I wondered, and nodded. "Oh aye, Glyndour there is indeed more! Tell Arthur Pendreic, and Merlynn my onetime comrade, and Gwyn my brother, and Uthyr whom you are pleased to call your King, that there is another: one whom I myself have instructed, one who has sat at my feet to learn skills and secrets, one whom I have raised up so that all they may be thrown down. And even should I be myself destroyed in the fight to come, or all of them perish likewise this one I have taught may live to rule Keltia in their despite, and raise an heir to follow."

  I did not like this one littlest bit, for I heard the truth in it; and stealing a glance at Gwenwynbar I could see she liked it still less. She seemed genuinely thunderstruck by this revelation, or at least by one part of it: the part about this unknown pupil of the Marbh-draoi coming to rule Keltia, and with an heir too. And I wondered very privately just whom was the real message intended for here: No throne for Malgan after all, no matter what his mother had done to win him one? Or was this merely another ploy of Edeyrn's, lest Gwenwynbar should grow too presumptuous in her role as mother of Owein's—or whoever's—heir?

  Which of course still left the larger question: Just who was this student whose name the Marbh-draoi would not speak? Plainly Gwenwynbar knew, or at least strongly suspected; but Morgan and I were frankly baffled. Whom could Edeyrn have taught, and how, and where and when, that none of us, not even Merlynn, should have known of it?

  But we were destined to know no more of it, at least not then: It seemed that Edeyrn had grown suddenly weary of his little game, for guards entered as at a silent signal, led us away without another word from the Marbh-draoi, put us on our thoroughly unsettled horses and escorted us the short distance down Nandruidion to the mouth of the glen. Here they left us; and, under a white pennon, we made our way back across the debatable ground between the two armies with remarkable haste; the horses just as eager as we to get home.

  But something was naggling at my mind's edge, something Edeyrn had said—or maybe had not said—there in the tower room; and as Morgan and I galloped knee to knee for the safety of our own lines, in the rhythmic pounding of the horses' hoofs it suddenly came clear.

  In his taunting, the Marbh-draoi had spoken of the end he would put to the House of Don, had named Morgan and Arthur and Gweniver and Uthyr. 'You and your brother and your cousin,' he had said, and 'the King your father.' And in our confusion and loathing, the after-effects of the stray-sod and our own long hatred, to Morgan and to me the great omission had not then been apparent.

  Well, it was now, and all too plain… In his enumeration of the Doniaid to whom he would so boastfully put an end, the Marbh-draoi had not once spoken the name of Uthyr's other daughter—the Princess Marguessan, Morgan's own twin.

  "Nay," said Morgan quietly, later, when I spoke of this to her in the privacy of our tent. Her eyes were bleak and set for distance, as if her Sight beheld some terrible future that could not be averted will she or nill she.

  "Nay," she said again. "Nor yet the name of her son—my nephew—Mordryth."

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  '"THOUGH BY TACIT CONSENT neither Morgan nor I spoke our dread to Arthur just then—he had too much already with which to deal, and it had also occurred to us that to speak ill of Marguessan might be precisely what Edeyrn had intended all along, further to fragment the Pendreic kindred—we went straightway to tell him of all the rest; and when we had finished and were looking at him in silence, he steepled his fingers, tapped them twice in Merlynn's old gesture, and looked right back at us.

  "Quite an adventure."

  I was furious. "Oh, do you not dare to take that tack with me, Artos, or I shall swat you into the middle of next sevennight! Does it mean naught to you, that we have been in Ratherne, have spoken to Edeyrn—"

  "—have seen Gwenwynbar and Malgan," he finished for me, with a sad weary impatience. "Much. It means much." Abruptly Arthur rose from his field-chair and began to pace; from where he was comfortably curled beneath his master's desk, Cabal drew in his paws lest they be inadvertently trodden upon.

  "But even so, it is naught for me to act upon just now," he added after a while. "We have Ravens to face, and after them gallain, maybe, and after them Edeyrn certainly. That is enough enemies for the moment, surely. Let it rest there."

  All this time Arthur had been careful to keep his face turned away from us, and that too I found significant. I glanced at Morgan, but caught only the tent flap closing behind her and the echo of her thought: Better I leave the lads to settle it between themselves…

  Many thanks, lady!, I sent wryly after her, and turned again to Arthur.

  He was not ready for me: Terror washed through me at the gray weariness of his face, and, worse, of his soul. Arthur Penarvon, who never had looked so in all the years I had known him, even in defeat, looked beaten, and my fear redoubled.

  He glanced up at me, knowing that I saw. "How can I fight with weapons that snap in my hand?"

  "What are you saying?" I demanded, with rather more bluster than was usual for me. "Your weapons are far from broken, Artos, and even if they were, still your hand is heavier than most. Nay, braud, you are only weary. So would anyone be, man or woman or Shining One, who has done what you have done since we have come to Tara."

  That brought a smile from him. "A good try—but all the rest of you have done as much, and more, and do not feel so."

  I took his arm and led him like an unresisting child out of the tent, flinging a cloak round him as I did so and pulling close my own.

  "All the rest of us have you to depend upon, that is why we do not feel so and why you do. Walk a little with me."

  The walk became a two-hour perambulation round and about the leaguer. By now it was nearly dark, with low gray clouds hurrying by just above our heads, and it was raining again, a hard rain mixed with sleet and snowstones whipped long by a vicious east wind. But for pure shame's sake I dared not suggest we turn back, nor even lag a little as we walked; though the wetter and colder I grew the more the thought of a fine warm dry tent and something hot to eat came uppermost in my mind.

  Which Arthur of course knew very well…

  "It was your idea we walked a bit," he observed blandly. "Come along then, ollave."

  "To what purpose?" I snarled, for by now I was peevish and frozen and very wet indeed.

  "Is it cross, then?" crooned Arthur. "Is it tired? Ah, the poor bodach—"

  I turned furiously to meet his eyes, sparkling and warm with merry malice in the flaring torchlight—in that perishing cold rain, quite the warmest things around—and began to laugh in spite of myself.

  "By gods but you are a wicked man, Arthur Penarvon, and you will deserve what you shall get."

  "Well enough," he answered comfortably, all traces of his earlier mood vanished into the windy darkness. "So long as I get what I deserve…"

  We were passing Uthyr's tent, and the Fian guards outside the door rattled a salute. Arthur absently returned their duty, but it was not until we were once again indoors—my tent, not his; Morgan was not there, though, not at all to my surprise, Merlynn was—that he began once more to speak openly.

  "This battle shall be the test of me," he said without preamble. "As both you well know… All else has but led up to this day and hour: Gwynedd, Moytura, Sychan, Caerdroia, even Gwennach's great victory—all have been but prelude. The main theme is yet to be stated."

  "Perhaps that is why the Marbh-draoi sought to distract you," I offered hesitantly. "With Gwenwynbar and with Malgan—it may be his thought was that you might hold from attacking Ratherne, did you know your onetime wife and her son were within."

  Arthur laughed shortly. "Edeyrn does not keep them as hostages against Ratherne's investing, nor yet against his own safety,—he has deeper plans than that. Besides, I would wager any stake you like that they have already been taken to a place of greater safety far from here. He would not risk them both so near to me."

  "And
Owein?" I asked presently.

  Across the tent, Merlynn stirred, a quiet presence in his gray robes. "His course is all but run; as is his master's."

  I stared frankly at our old teacher, and he looked back half-smiling. Since the leaving of Gwynedd, Merlynn Llwyd had taken but little active role in the great campaign,—indeed, since Cadarachta he had kept to himself. He had been for the most part silent in all our councils, though Arthur and Gweniver both had consulted him as often as ever in private; maybe even more often than ever, as the fight for Tara took its strange turns.

  But as I looked on him now I wondered if the source of his present certainty came from other knowledge; from sources, let us say, less mortal than might usually be…

  "Patience, Talynno," he murmured. "You will know all in time."

  "In time, aye," I agreed. "But in whose time?"

  Arthur laughed. "You sound like Guenna."

  "Aye so," said Merlynn comfortably. "And she is one to ask, do you need further proofs."

  I glanced up, as if at a sudden absence, or awareness of absence. "Where is Guenna? I have not seen her since we came back from Ratherne."

  'She prepares for battle in her own fashion." When I looked my need for further knowledge: "She speaks to the Lady, she and her priestesses,—to the High Danu, and perhaps to the Shining Ones also—did you think the storm had come on its own out of the east?"

  Well, Merlynn would know about that better than would I … "And Gwennach?" I asked; but had no answer forthcoming.

  It was a good and thorny question: I had seen but little of Gweniver since her army, fresh from victory at Moytura, had come up on Edeyrn's other side. She had dared only one visit round the Raven lines, and that a flying one: some hurried speech with her uncle the King, some deep consulting with Morgan and Ygrawn—as priestess to priestesses—and a bitter brangle with Arthur, as to the use of the Bratach Ban in the coming fight.

  When I got to the faerie flag Merlynn deigned to reply. "She is doing as she must be doing. But it will be her choice"—this more sternly, and to Arthur—"to unfurl the Bratach Ban. Even though we may stand in deep need of the help it can bring us, may not win without it, even—still it must be Gwennach's choice and hers alone."

  Just how much it was her choice, we learned next morning, when she and Arthur met again before the battle was joined.

  We had ridden out to join her and Keils and two or three of their generals, on a little knoll well removed from the battle-plain below. Myself, Morgan, Tarian, Tryffin, Coria Rhikenn the Caerdroian leader: no more than that. Ygrawn the Queen remained with Uthyr and Merlynn below.

  We listened as Arthur gave order for battle—he was yet Rex Bellorum, and even Gweniver was bound to obey his commandings—then heard Keils's comment and advising; no surprises there, and Arthur himself modified an order or two according to the advice the longtime warlord gave.

  The surprise came from Gweniver herself, and of us all I think that only Morgan, and maybe Ygrawn, had seen it coming…

  Arthur had spoken of the Bratach Ban, that Gweniver should have it with her in case of need, for need he deemed there would be. "And when it comes time for you to wave it to summon its help—"

  "—I shall not be so summoning." Gweniver's words, clipped though unemphatic, cut across Arthur's like a sgian.

  He took it squarely on. "If you do not, lady, then all we have fought for so long is lost."

  "Then it is lost!" she snapped. "But if I do"—and here her voice grew calm again—"then you shall release me from my promise to wed you. The rest of the contract we swore to between the King's hands shall stand as before—that we shall rule conjointly—but this I swear, Artos: I will not wed. Not with you; maybe not with any."

  Silence then, in which far below us the sounds of the armies readying for the fight floated up to our ears. Arthur flexed his fingers in the old gesture of stressfulness and strain he had had since boyhood, then sighed.

  "And if I so consent, and if you see the need or have order for it, you will employ the flag? I have your royal word on it?"

  Gweniver smiled, and laid her open hand over her heart as pledge of her oath.

  "Be it so."

  "So be it," said Arthur, matching her gesture. He gathered us with his gaze, and we rode with him back to our lines, while behind us Gweniver and Keils and the rest returned to theirs. Though none dared question Arthur as to why he had agreed, and so readily as it seemed, after a few minutes I moved Meillion up to ride leg to leg with him, should he feel the need or wish to, you know, talk.

  "If I had not," he said at once, though I had posed no heard query, "she would have kept that scrap of silk beneath her baldric until Beltain came in winter… I cannot take that chance, Talyn."

  "And the chance you take now? If you two do not wed as Uthyr did bid you—"

  "It is the least ill of my ill choosings. This way, we shall win the fight—well, if such is our dan—and still come to rule Keltia as joint sovereigns, if not as wedded mates. It will be no great sorrow for either of us."

  He did not look at me as he said this, and I believe it was just then—watching him as he rode, eyes straight ahead, fixed on field and future, that I first knew Arthur Penarvon loved Gweniver Pendreic.

  Not that it mattered so much just then: We had a battle to fight. And before that, Arthur had something perhaps even more frightening to face: He had to tell his mother and his uncle of what he had just done.

  Standing there before their tent, where the King lay in a litter attended by his Queen—Uthyr had determined to be witness to the battle if he had to crawl to the field, and Ygrawn had relented so far as to allow the litter—Arthur told them both of his promise to Gweniver. He spoke as if it had been his own wish and thought to release her from the vow, and though Ygrawn had eyed her son suspiciously, Uthyr had accepted at once the word of his nephew and war-leader, and spoke no word of blame. Indeed:

  "Ah well, perhaps it is for the best after all, Artos. When the time comes for it, both you and she will have the freedom to choose as your hearts will have it. As for the succession, the more branches bear, the stronger-rooted will be the tree—the House of Don has need of many seedlings."

  Arthur bowed in silence, and left Uthyr's presence; and I went with him. We mounted our horses in silence, and in silence rode down the lines.

  "So much for that," he said presently.

  "But do you not think—" I began.

  "Nay, I do not! May I not get on the other side of this small matter with Edeyrn, before I am once more taxed with what I think or do not think?"

  I raised my brows and murmured ironic apology; he flushed, and after a moment turned to me with an air of chastenment.

  "My sorrow, braud—"

  "Naught to sorrow for," I returned. "Though there will be, soon or late…"

  Maybe sooner even than I thought; no sooner had I spoken than Arthur, looking out ahead across the debatable ground between the armies, stood in his irons, then grabbed a white pennon from a nearby tentpole, impaled it on a spear and rode forward at a gallop. I went with him, and as we went I desperately waved a few others to join us: Coria, Daronwy, Tryffin.

  But where was Arthur headed in his mad dash? Meillion labored to keep up with the far fleeter Miaren; indeed, Arthur was already some five lengths in front of us all and pulling away, as if it were a racemeet he rode in and not to a parley.

  Then, as we drew near to the first lines, I saw, and understood…

  Owein Rheged, red hair stirring in the light breeze where he had unhelmed at our approach, looked impassively on me then slid his glance to Arthur. Save that this time it was he who stood afoot, and Arthur who had ridden beneath the white flag, it was as it had been at Cadarachta. Even words were not unlike, though this time it was Owein who spoke first.

  "Arthur," he said, "forbid thy lions."

  And I felt some great galactic balance shift and shudder around me, in that instant; and in that instant I knew that we had won.

 
"Owein," said Arthur, "play thy game."

  They gazed upon one another for the space of ten heartbeats,—then Arthur had swung Miaren round and was galloping once again for our own lines. Was it worth the risk? I sent to him with irritation and all the fear of the last five minutes. Just to plague him?

  But no answer came.

  If you have thought to hear some tale of grandeur and glory, this account of the fight at Nandruidion may disappoint. Oh, to be sure, there was gallantry and valor goleor, and on both sides: Owein's Ravens fought with honor that would have been better seen in a better cause, and we fought as we ever fought. The difference here was that though we went into each fight as if it were our last, Owein's Ravens knew this to be theirs. Still, it came not easy for either side,—not victory, not defeat.

  For one thing, it was purely Ravens we faced here, where in our other battles it had been Ravens and auxiliars together. For another, Owein—presumably at Edeyrn's order—had help from space: The remnant of the hired gallain, Fomori and Fir Bolg mercenaries, had retreated to their ships under Gweniver's goad at Second Moytura; but they had not left Taran space, and now they stood off—again, presumably on order from the Marbh-draoi who had purchased their services—to rake our lines with fire from shipboard sun-guns, space cannon that we, planetside, could not combat.

  Well for us that we still had ships not far off that could: Grehan Aoibhell, fresh from his triumph on Erinna, had brought a force in the last week or so, to act in just such case as they did now. And most effectively, but not before we had suffered many losses.