The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "Artos," I asked, watching with helpless pain as Companions and auxiliars alike died beneath that fire from the sky, may we not ask help where it is most needed?" When he made no reply: "Let not your traha win over you, to lose the battle!"

  His mouth moved a little at the corners, but still he would not give the order I knew he must give soon, else we were lost: Gweniver must wave the Bratach Ban, to summon help from the Sidhe as had been promised. And so it was that I disobeyed my prince and friend and fostern…

  Muttering some excuse, I backed Meillion and spurred back through the lines. Had I given any real thought to what I was about to attempt, I should have instead gone screaming into my tent, to hide my folly beneath a blanket or table or pillow; but I did not. Rather, I turned Meillion's head to the Raven lines, and began a flanking movement of my own, that would, with luck and dan riding with me, bring me past the enemy to where Gweniver and Keils were beginning to close in from the east.

  Before you say what I know well you are thinking—before you think it, even—let me confess freely that I had for that moment lost my senses. More, it was a liberating loss: I never felt so free, before or since, as I did feel riding breakneck past Ravens who struck at me and my horse. We were winged, we were invisible, we could not be touched—only the grace that shields fools and the hand of the Lady Herself brought us both through without a hurt, and when I think back on it now, in cold blood, it makes my blood go colder still…

  I was, of course, riding to give Gweniver the order to unfurl the faerie flag: the order, you will of course be protesting, that Arthur had not given. That was the heart of the disobeying; for when at the end of the longest hour of my life I reached Gweniver and Keils, I lied, and told her that by the terms of her promise, Arthur did order her to use the Bratach Ban.

  "And so that the order carry truth and weight," I went on lying blithely, "Artos did send me to tell you, and no lesser messenger."

  Now Gweniver was a Domina of the Ban-draoi, skilled a reading truth and falsehood; and I had prepared myself for this as I rode: had built up for myself the picture of what had never happened—Arthur giving me the order, as his foster-brother, to ride and tell Gweniver of his need and decision to ask for help, by way of the faerie flag; had conjured in my mind the image of Arthur's face, grave, troubled, proud, as he gave me the command… bards are good at this sort of thing.

  So I stood there before Gwennach and Keils and spoke, and they, dear souls, believed me. But now it was Gweniver's turn to balk…

  "Well, Talyn; Arthur may so order it, but I it is who must execute. And I am not sure of the need."

  "Lady," I said from the heart of my desperation, "you have sworn!

  "Truly," said Keils, loyally supporting me in my falsehood, though he knew it not. "Your promise binds you, cariad, as sure as it does bind Artos—" His voice carried love and reproof, and she looked away.

  So, I thought very privately in this very public moment, it is true, then: Gwennach and Keils are indeed beloved of one another, and not merely bedmates… It would be most gratifying if I could tell you that at this instant I saw what was to come, saw all the woe and the wonder, the anguish and the triumph… But I did not; I saw only a stubborn princess trying to avoid the nonexistent order of an equally stubborn prince, and in my fury at both of them I forgot that none of this was real in the first place, save of course the desperate need that had sent me on my lying errand, and I exploded.

  "Then if you will not fulfill your word, let someone else do it for you! But in the name of the Highest let it be done now!"

  I will wave the flag." The quiet voice in the shocked silence was Merlynn's. I had not noticed him where he stood in the shadow of his own presence, but I was not surprised to find him there. Nor he, me,—our eyes met, and more than eyes, and I knew he knew my falseness. But I knew too, as we looked on one another, that he knew the truth and loyalty that had prompted it, and understood.

  Understand, aye, came the familiar stern mind-voice, but, Talyn, I do not approve…

  I sent back acceptance of the reprimand, but asked aloud, "That will not go against the instruction of the Queen of the Sidhe? She said that it was to be Gweniver must wave the Bratach Ban—"

  Merlynn's smile was small and his tone dry. "Seli will not object."

  In the end, I did not linger to see the actual performance of the Bratach's summoning: Merlynn—without a word or a visible sign, in the old way I remembered so well—indicated I should be gone, and I knew from of old, also, to take my leave when it was so ordered. All the more readily, since my own fraudulent orders were known to him; but I did not miss the moment even so. I knew the thing when it came.

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  Chapter Fourteen

  BUT FIRST DID COME THE FIGHTING, the bitterest sword-play, bar none, that ever I have seen; and that is not to be wondered at, when you consider the stakes for which we fought that day; we, and others…

  Yet even while I fought, one corner of my mind ran on like a babbling stream amid the tumult, half-heard, half-heeded: What of Edeyrn? Where, in all this final stour, was the Marbh-draoi, and what doing?

  A good question, and one that more folk than I alone were asking; yet all no closer to an answer just yet than I myself. And it was to all of us a question of most paramount importance: Since Morgan and I had been his reluctant guests in Ratherne—had it truly been only a day since, it seemed centuries since our ride up that little glen—no news had reached our ears of Edeyrn's whereabouts, or indeed of his actions, and this vast silence, this emptiness where the Marbh-draoi should have been, made me restless and afraid. It had been presumed by Arthur and others that he had merely gone to ground in Ratherne, directing his fight and his forces from the center of his web, like the king spider he was; but I was not so sure, and more others were unsure right along with me. Simple enough for Edeyrn to have escaped altogether through the postern gate, as it were: back up the high Dales, down along Pass of the Arrows, and from there almost anywhere in Keltia, on planet or off.

  "Nay," said Arthur when I taxed him with it in a lull of the battle,—said with great authority too, as if he had quartered for Edeyrn like a hunting-dog and had 'found' on some plane past the physical. "Nay. He is near. If not in Ratherne then nearer still. He will show himself in time. We shall know him when he does."

  And so we did.

  The fighting had turned toward our leaguer again, the line bending like an overstrung bow, coming dangerously near to where Uthyr and Ygrawn watched from behind a triple fence of the best Fians we could muster, with an inner ring of Companions as well. I had appointed myself captain over those Companions—with Arthur's fervent approval—and lest you think this some soft sinecure of a position, let me tell you we saw more than our fair share of fighting, throwing off in one hour alone three waves of most determined attackers. Clearly Owein Rheged had been set to destroy Uthyr at whatever cost, and just as clearly we were not about to let him succeed in his errand.

  I glanced anxiously behind me at my royal charges. Ygrawn caught my eye and gave me a smile of utmost serenity—and I knew that smile from of old, knew that the care-naught was genuine and was heartened thereby. But Uthyr—Though most of his advisors had protested against it, it was by Uthyr's own choosing that he was here at all; and so, of course, Ygrawn's. They had come to do battle in the only way they could, by their presence; it was for them the fior-comlainn, the truth-of-combat, and if they died for it, well, that then was dan.

  Even so, I knew as few others did what it had cost Uthyr to follow us on campaign, as he had done all the way from Cadarachta on Gwynedd. The unhealed magicked wound he had been dealt there had grown all the more painful the nearer its bearer came to its source: Owein's arm may have struck the sword-blow to the King's thigh, but that blade had been guided by Edeyrn, and it was his venomed sorcery that had held sway ever since in Uthyr's blood. Even Morgan and Merlynn had not been able to heal it, only to bate somewhat its agonies,—as for Uthyr
, he was a king, and he was King of Kelts, and he bore his wound as he had borne the wounding of his land.

  My attention was claimed by a Raven who had broken through the Fian ring; I dispatched her almost without thought, and looked out again over the field. Even the best-seasoned bow-wood comes at last to the breaking-place, where it must either snap back to the upright or else shatter altogether… and just now we were not so far off it.

  But for the most part it had been such battle as we were well used to, men and women, warrior against warrior; even the gallain mercenaries raking us with fire from space were such as we knew how to fight. Yet now came an adversary of an order altogether different, and no shame to tell you that our hearts fainted and fled before his coming…

  It was the sorcerers who sensed it first, the Druids and Ban-draoi who fought like the rest of us with sword and bow and spear, as well as with less gross weaponry: a sense of shadowing, as when on a hot unstable summer day you turn round at a vague feeling of something behind you, and startle to see towering halfway to space a black anvil of cloud, on which by Gavida's arm will be forged the lightning.

  It was like that now, that same feeling of sick dreading anticipation, knowing something frightful is at hand but not knowing what, nor yet for whom. It was terrible, and it grew steadily worse: Morgan came to me with a face gray with unwellness, and I could do naught to help her for that I was even sicker myself. Even Merlynn seemed less rock-strong than usual; as for the common run of folk, they were suddenly adrift, liege and foe alike, purposeless, swords hanging in slack hands, staring mazed, as if they had all as one trodden upon the stray-sod.

  Stray-sod… At that my mind leaped back to focus; the word I had thrown up to the forefront of my brain out of the sick whirling vagueness gave me something hard and bright to cling to, leading me out of my fog…

  I clutched at Morgan's arm. "Edeyrn," I croaked. Then, louder, clearer, "It is Edeyrn, his doing, his coming…" She started to object, then caught the certainty from me and knew it. "See. He comes now."

  And I began to shiver, as below me every Kelt on that field, man or woman, Companion or Raven, was shivering alike. For what came now out of the valley of Nandruidion was no man nor yet wizard, but something out of the deep soul of Keltia, a nightmare legend like the Mari Llwyd, the Ghost Mare, or the Avanc, the frightful water-dragon whose roaring can be heard in the flood; but this was different.

  Over the eastern end of the battlefield, down where Nandruidion debouched into the Great Glen, had hung a pall of shadow that was not entirely the smoke and dust of war. Out of it now stalked stiff-legged something tremendous, something black, blue-black, without ears, without a tail; the curve of its back was as a treeless hill, and the bristles of its mane were raised so high and sharp that a horse could have been impaled on each one. It moved slowly, and the ground shook where its cloven feet did set down,—behind it came seven of its kind, but lesser.

  I believe I made some small sound, for Morgan took my arm,—but she too was trembling as she looked. Only Merlynn seemed unmoved; he had come to join us from Gweniver's campment not long since, as if he had known he would be needed.

  He it was who spoke its name. "Torc Truith."

  It made it no easier, hearing the thing named. "Edeyrn has sent it; has called it up against us," I managed to choke out past my fear.

  Even in that moment, my old teacher Ailithir was still, it seemed, alive and well, for the glance he spared me then I had seen often before, in my schooldays at Daars.

  "Nay, Talynno," he said gently. "It is Edeyrn."

  Then of course I understood, and was violently sick; and I was by no means alone. It seemed the end of hope, and what we should all have expected, for Edeyrn to take the shape of the Great Boar to come against us. No other dwirnmer-creature out of Keltia's dark soul could have set more fear and horror in us: the Boar who reappears after he has been burned and eaten, to throw souls upon his bloody tusks and lead heroes to hell. I wiped my mouth, and mastered myself, and forced myself to look again upon it.

  By now it had lumbered well out into the Strath, and not only our forces but his—its—own drew back before it. I tried, as bard, to objectify the thing, to set words upon it, as if by doing so I could ease the horror and loathing. But words were not enough, and nothing could abate the awfulness of the slow, the terrible stiff-legged stalk that sent it rolling a little from side to side as it came on, like a ship in heavy seas.

  Arthur had joined us, with Tarian and Grehan and Kei and some others. I looked round for Gweniver and Keils, but could not see them in the increasing murk that the beast brought with it; Uthyr, in his polechair, was with Ygrawn, still in their ring of Fians, a little way off to my left. I dragged my gaze back, croaked out a question to any who might be still capable of answering.

  "Those who come behind it—who are they?"

  "They but follow their master as they have ever done," said Merlynn, never taking his eyes off the thing. "They are the four who went with Edeyrn when he broke from Dinas Affaraon, and the three who joined him after. Renegade Druids, traitor Pheryllt—their names are known, but I will not speak them, not yet."

  Oh aye, later perhaps? But I took care not to send out my thought; or, at any rate, no farther than Morgan, who pinched my arm but said nothing. By now I was recovering myself, a little, could even shift my horrified gaze from the oncoming shape of evil-working to look at the others around me.

  Morgan's face was lifted like the sunrise against the noisome murk Edeyrn brought with him; it was almost as if all his evil had at last taken visible form, clinging around the image of the Boar like muck from some astral pigsty. Uthyr, still in his throne-litter, was whitefaced but calm,—Ygrawn looked thoughtful, even judgmental. Most of the Companions had mastered themselves as I had, and their faces had all the same grimness.

  But two faces stood out amid the unclean vaporous dimness: Arthur's, keen-cut as the bright steel in his hand, looking as if he had seen some great and final question; and Merlynn's, remote as the moon Argialla, a ghost of a smile in the white beard, looking as if he had seen the answer.

  "We must speak with it—with him." I looked around for the speaker, saw to my surprise that it was Uthyr. The King had taken very little active part in any of the fighting, either on Gwynedd or here, once our war had moved to Tara; for him to order a parley was, at very least, surprising.

  Yet Arthur nodded in agreement. "Aye, Lord," he said, and at his gesture Daronwy came up beside him. But before he could give her his command, Morgan stirred.

  "She must not go as she is, not to face—that. I will put a shape upon her of protection—" Reading consent and trust in Ronwyn's face, Morgan smiled, and before Arthur or Uthyr could protest, there came a flash and flutter and beat of wings, and where Daronwy had stood now hovered a she-eagle, her fierce gold eye fixed on Morgan's face.

  With a high harsh bright cry like a horn or a bell, the eagle was gone, her great wings carrying her steadily toward Edeyrn-Boar, who had come to a ponderous halt a lai or so away. The bulk of him dwarfed our little hill, and the malice and hatred in the burning eyes beat upon us like the summer sun.

  Then it seemed as if Daronwy spoke to the thing, for I heard her voice clearly in my head.

  "For the sake of Her who made you, come forth as man, to speak with Arthur."

  I shook my head angrily, as a swimmer will to clear water from his ears; it seemed not possible that I could be hearing Ronwyn's speech with Edeyrn, but looking round I saw that all had heard, and realized that it was by Edeyrn's will that the words did reach us.

  He did not deign to reply, but one of the lesser boars did answer for him; and the name Gwyrch Ereint came unbidden to my mind—he had been one of Edeyrn's disciples at Dinas Affaraon, a gifted Druid who turned when Edeyrn turned, and who was high in the Marbh-draoi's councils and affections. He it was who now spoke, and spoke blasphemy.

  "Evil has She done, Who has forced this shape upon us."

  The eagle that was
our sister-Companion baffed angrily away and returned again, and once more I heard that bright ringing cry.

  "You have taken it upon yourselves, by no act of Hers, and you will sorrow for it, for Arthur will fight, and more with him."

  Then Edeyrn spoke, and his voice was an earthquake that laughed.

  "Torc Truith will not be hunted until you have Gwyn son of Nudd as huntsman. But he is Master of the Faerie Hunt, and will not be stirred nor spared from his own hunting lands."

  Before Daronwy could answer, Arthur had stepped to the lip of the hill, apart from the rest of us, and stared up and across the little distance, straight into the eyes of the Boar, and smiled.

  "It is easy for me to accomplish that, though you may not think so."

  The red-orange eyes blinked, the vast boar-shaped darkness seemed to quiver a little. But before any other could move, Kei, our hothead, had dashed forward, swinging his sword over his head in bright circles, straight at the Boar's cleft hoofs.

  He got in the blow he had so long hoped for—ever since the death of Samhra, his beloved, in the sea-fight on Glora, he had lived only for the chance of vengeance—slicing deep into the sinew of the pastern, even cutting off several of the spear-pointed bristles. But though Edeyrn-Torc shivered as a beast will when stung by a cleggan, he did naught else. Nor did he need to, for a drop of venom, shining like bronze in the dusty light, had formed where the bristles were sheared away with one flick of the great hoof the drop flew out and struck Kei. He fell dead where he stood; Arthur, beside me, flinched, closing his eyes in pain and loss and farewell, and when he opened them again there was no tear that I could see. But tears were there I think, all the same…

  No time just now for sorrow: As if Kei's death had been a signal, the seven boars who followed Edeyrn began to savage the nearby ranks, who still stood rooted in dread; and with horror I saw that they were not tusking and trampling our ranks alone, but those of their own soldiery as well. I looked again at Edeyrn, thought hard and evilly, cared not if he heard: So, your own tools are to be despised and broken Marbh-draoi; did they not serve you well and faithfully enough, in your faithlessness? But I had for answer only the baleful orange stare swinging across our lines, as the creature swung its huge head from side to side, snuffing the air, as if it quested for something, or someone, or sensed something that made it uneasy.