The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  We all raced back to the shuttle, which lifted off the ground almost at once, under Daronwy's piloting, to make the quick hop down the coast to Tyntagel. We flew barely skimming the down-crests, and saw below us the progress of the 'fight' with Marc'h's troops. They would not trouble us.

  I took Ysild to a small private cabin aft; after she had changed into garb more suitable for the night's work yet to come, she joined me in the common room and gratefully drank off the shakla, well laced with usqua, that I gave her.

  I watched her as she grew calmer with the realization of safety. She was above averagely fair, yet no bard would have sung her in the role of captivator on her face alone. But as I watched her, I saw at once what Marc'h had seen, and what Tryffin loved. There was a sweetness in Ysild of Arrochar, a great gentleness of spirit that I have known in no other being. She was an unstinting giver of kindness unpoisoned by pity, a generous soul; and it was just this generosity that Marc'h had so greedily snatched at.

  She was not, however, looking very generous just now. And that too, I could see, would have had its attraction for Tryff and Marc'h both: Ysild may have been the sweetest of ladies, but she could snap. And, my Goddess, was she ready to snap this night…

  And what blame to her if she did? She had been beset with unwelcome offers from the besotted Marc'h for the past eight or nine years, though she had given him no encouragement and had, indeed, actively repudiated his suit, even to the point of insult. Marc'h's efforts had only redoubled when Ysild fell deep in love with his own son and heir, and Tryffin with her; according to Morgan's account on the way here, the Duke of Kernow's wrath had been fearful to see, although was her considered opinion that his outrage was due more to wounded vanity and disappointed hopes (Ysild was after all a notable heiress) than to thwarted passion.

  She flushed a little under my regard. "I truly do wish to kill him, Prince Taliesin," she said then. "He did not lay so much as a hand upon me, all the time I was kept in Kerriwick, but for prisoning me, and for what he has done to my Tryffin, I will have his blood."

  "If dan allows, lady," I answered, still watching her face. "And if Arthur permits it; not otherwise. And it is just 'Taliesin.''

  Ysild laughed. "So Guenna said you would say. We were great friends of old, you know, in Coldgates, she and I. You will not remember me, I was a child skittering round the caverns, but I recall you well: Morgan's brother's fostern. I used to hide sometimes near the bards' practice-rooms, so that I could listen to you play."

  "You must have been very quiet."

  "Oh, aye, I was that! But the music—I have no gift that way, and to me it seemed the purest magic." A light of gently wicked amusement gleamed in her astonishing eyes. "I think I was a little in love with you, even; as a girl-child will be with a young man. But then you were gone to be a spy for Arthur; I wept for a week, and promptly fell in love with the Master of Cameron—another older man, I think he must have been all of fifteen."

  "And Tryffin? Where does he come into it?" I held out to her a baldric and gorget, and she buckled them on.

  "I met him eight years ago; strangely enough, at a ceili that Marc'h had hosted for my parents, thinking to win them to his wish to wed me. It was the gra-tintreach for both of us, as if some sorcerer had put a drench in the quaich we shared. I used to tease him, after, that one must have done… But we have loved so long, and would have wed, save that Marc'h would have disowned Tryffin, and my own parents would have been ill pleased."

  "You are of age, and surely you are of firm intent, to decide these matters for yourself."

  Ysild paused in her arming to look down at me, and her gaze was sober. "I think you must yourself have experience of such a coil; you wished to wed the High King's daughter, but for many years you, and she, chose not."

  "Oh aye," I answered, unruffled. "But that was not for Uthyr's opposing the match."

  "Even so, you know how it feels to have your marriage put off. But that is not why I shall kill Marc'h—if it is permitted me," she added with a mocking half-bow. "I shall kill him for the injury, and for the insult, and for the violence he did me and my beloved. Marc'h is a soulless clod, and does not understand the pain he causes others with his cloddishness."

  "Are folk to be slain for being clods?"

  "How are they to learn if they are not?" But she was smiling as she said it; and in the end hers was not the hand to strike Marc'h down.

  Tyntagel stands, as I have already said, on a headland that is all but island. The only landward way to reach it is down a needle-thin ravine through which a small stream threads its racing course to the sea. On both sides of the tiny valley the rock walls rise up sheer and holdless; we would be like fish in a keeve if Marc'h's soldiers came to the edges above. We did not dare send up the shuttles to cover our venture, even,—they would have spotted the craft in an instant, and may well have slain Tryffin out of hand.

  So we did what Morgan had said all along that we would have to do, and counted on magic… Perhaps three hours after Ysild had been returned to us, eight riders, cloaked and hooded in heavy sheepskin against the flying sleet and snow, picked their way down over the ice-glazed stones toward Tyntagel. Had any marked their faces in passing, he would have been surprised to see the Duke of Kernow, Marc'h himself, riding lead, with a lady close behind him who seemed, incredibly, to be that very same one he had kept for the past twelvemonth mewed up in Kerriwick. As for the others, they too bore faces well-known in Kernow: Brychan, the Duke's right-hand man; Demelza, a cousin of Marc'h's late wife, Senara, who had served as lady-in waiting to Ysild in her captivity; other warriors and household lords.

  It was not true, not a word of it: Morgan was 'Demelza,’ I 'Brychan,' and Arthur himself was 'Marc'h'; Daronwy and Roric, and two newer Companions, Lioch and Sherrun, made up the number. Only Ysild turned her true and unveiled face to Tyntagel.

  It was more than glamourie, less than fith-fath; not true change, but an illusion deeper than surfaces—on that Morgan had insisted, and Arthur had seconded her unstinting, as if they sensed more than simple tricks would be needed here. And, as usual, they were right.

  I pulled my hood closer around my face and ran my tongue over lips cracked with cold; to my surprise, the taste was salt. Straining to see through the whirling whiteness, as we came around the last bulwark of rock, I suddenly knew why. Sand began to mix with the wind-whipped snow, tiny flakes of shingle lifted off the stony beach that lay at the track's end. I dismounted, holding my snorting pony close under his muzzle, and stared at the scene before me.

  The cove that lay below Tyntagel was a roaring cauldron this night, the water lashed by the vicious wind out of the north. Thickened with falling snow, the seas looked like milk on the boil; tremendous even in the shelter of the cove, they were running far up the shingle with a sound like a thousand drums. What it must be like out on the open ocean I did not wish to think, and muttered a brief and heartfelt prayer for the fisherfolk along that coast this night, that their curraghs had all come safe to land.

  Ysild came up beside me. "The path lies up there,—it is narrow and very steep, and only two may go abreast. We must leave the horses here."

  I looked where she had pointed, and am not ashamed to tell you that I whimpered just a little; which unmanly sound was thankfully lost in the wind's scream. What seemed a track no wider than my body clung to the rockface, ascending at an impossible pitch; and so huge were the seas by now that every tonn-mhor, the mighty ninth waves that are kings of the eight who go before them, climbed clawing up the path we must now set ourselves to tackle.

  Add to that the wind that tried to prise us like winkles off the cliff; the grit that bit into our skin, the sleet likewise, the spray that soaked us and then froze in hair and beards and crimbeuls—the only good thing was that the gale's fierceness kept the snow from building up on the path beneath our feet. And then there were the guards we would have to deceive when we came to the gate at the clifftop, and the folk within the castle… I moaned again, and
followed Arthur and Ysild up the track.

  At the top of the approach there was a two-towered gatehouse with a small faha before it; to either side the castle walls were smooth and unbroken, looking as if they had been hewn from the headland's rock, not builded—as perhaps they had been.

  Now came the first test of Morgan's magic: Glancing in turn at me, at Morgan and at Ysild, Arthur turned his back on us and hammered on the gate of Tyntagel with the hilt of his sword.

  A port was opened in the gatehouse and a light shone through. "Who comes?"

  "Marc'h." Arthur's voice was gruff and clipped, altogether unlike his own. "Open up, man."

  "My lord!" The guard seemed about to weep. "Her ladyship has given me orders—I must ask you for the password."

  My heart nearly stopped right there, and no mistake. A password was a problem, to be sure, but there were always ways: At worst, Morgan could lift it out of the guard's mind, as a cutpurse might filch a laden pouch, and as unnoticed. But who could be this 'ladyship' the fellow spoke of? Senara, Marc'h's only Duchess, was long dead; and to our knowing he had taken no other lady, being too besotted with Ysild to look with favor on more willing candidates.

  But before any of us could do anything, Ysild had stepped forward, thrown back her hood and lifted her face to the yellow light. Snow swirled round like moths at a cold flame.

  "The word for today is 'tenaigin,' the forced-fire," she said in a clear calm voice. "Now let your master in, and the rest of us; it is scarce Beltane weather this side the door."

  The light vanished, and we heard both a torrent of apologies to the supposed Duke and the gate mechanisms being activated—which latter concerned us more, and as one blew out sighs of relief. Also as one, we turned to stare inquiringly at Ysild. She shrugged under our gazes. "I did not think to mention it—but Marc'h told me every day what the password was to Tyntagel. He did it to torment me, that I should know the word to unlock the way to my lord but not be able to use it." Her smile blazed. "But now I have."

  The gate swung wide, and we crowded inside out of the storm. But Morgan stepped lightly and warily, as a cat will on a narrow planking, looking round her with more than eyes.

  Arthur muttered some curtness to the guard, strode past through the six or so others who watched from their benches near the fire. I held my breath and followed after, escorting Ysild with great show of solicitude. Let them think we are bringing her to see Tryffin, as torture or inducement…

  And apparently that was what they did think, for saving their salutes to Arthur as their supposed master, they showed no further interest in any of us; not even in Daronwy and Roric, who unobtrusively took up places near the doorway that led into the castle proper.

  Which, since Lioch and Sherrun had been left below with the horses, made us four who went after Tryffin. We kept silence as we went; Arthur knew the castle well, he had spent time here in boyhood with his uncle, and Ygrawn had given him detailed reminders before we left Tara.

  "He will be held in the upper castle precincts," said Arthur as I moved up beside him. "The ones built into the cliff behind, with only the sea below the windows—"

  He broke off abruptly, as the sense of danger came to all of us at the same instant. Morgan was the first to react.

  "The power that is here—" she whispered. "The wards—but I cannot tell—"

  "Ah, Princess, can you not?"

  The voice had come from the top of the stair ahead of us. Though all was dark but for the small palmglows we carried, and the sconces along the walls at long irregular intervals, I could discern a figure there, on the landing that, presumably, opened upon Tryffin's place of internment.

  I knew that voice, but could not place it—a rare and troublng thing for a bard, whose trade is all in voices—and daring a quick glance at Morgan I saw that no more could she. But Arthur seemed to have no such difficulty. "Gwenar," he said, and stepped forward to face her.

  Gwenwynbar, once Penarvon, came down the wide shallow steps and halted on the lowest riser. No one doubted for the smallest instant but that she could perceive our true faces through our fith-fath: She flicked a very seeing glance indeed over each of us, laughing outright when she saw me beside Ysild, ignoring Morgan. All her attention was for her onetime mate, yet for long she did not speak even to him.

  She was as lovely as I had remembered her, perhaps more so. Not so showily attired as once was her wont, she stood there in a simple guna, her wonderful hair more red-gold than ever, her face white in the glow of the sconces, so white that the sunspecks sprinkled like stars across her paleness stood out like ugly brown scorches.

  I felt Ysild tense beside me, sensed Morgan's power firmly held in leash. As well it would be: This was no equal opponent, not for my lady, and Morgan had more reason than most to know that a fair fight was the only one worth having. Gwenwynbar's, then, was that power we had all earlier sensed; but how had she come by it, whence learned it, at whose teaching?

  Then I had it, as Morgan and Arthur, and you too, no doubt, had seen it already. I remembered Ratherne; I believe I tried to cry out, to scream it out, just in case they did not know; but my voice was all at once as frozen as the night without. I raised a hand helplessly to my mute throat, and Gwenwynbar smiled.

  "How feels it, Glyndour, to have that which you prize most taken from you? Think how I felt, and know it a fitting punishment for a bard who dishonored my lord's own halls." If my voice was stopped, hers held the hiss of nathairs. "Oh aye, I know all about it! Pity it is I was not 'ware of you back there at Caer Dathyl; you would have harped to my calling, chaunting all before you died."

  The terrible pressure on my throat slackened long enough for me to rasp, "Even Owein, Gwenwynbar—a better lord than you knew, or deserved—knew how bards should be served. See how he was served, in the end, by the master he had chosen—as you will be by yours. Such masters ever abandon their tools in crucial moments."

  My throat closed up again, tighter than before, but I saw that my words had struck. Saw too that Arthur and Morgan knew what I now knew: Back at Ratherne… Gwenwynbar had not sought the Marbh-draoi for refuge alone, had not gone to him only for protection. She had gone to him to learn magic.

  And magic he had taught her, magic she had learned, I could see that as I looked at her now. Magic of a kind, at the least: At the bottom of it all, Edeyrn had still been Druid, and knew well enough the quality of this pupil. Even in his utter bentness, he would not have entrusted any true thing of power to one who was never to be more than an unskilled laborer. He would have taught Gwenwynbar such magics as any industrious student could learn with reasonable effort; but the higher workings, the greater lore, these were not for such as she. No more than they had been for that other dupe of Edeyrn's, Owein; borrowed powers, borrowed plumes…

  Arthur had said no other word since he spoke her name—the shortname only he of all our Company had ever called her. He stood still as wheat on a windless night, never taking his eyes from her face; and it seemed to me that he had expected to find her here. Oh aye, we had guessed and wondered, but the rest of us had thought it more likely to encounter Irian and Marguessan here, not Gwenwynbar. But Arthur, it seemed, had known.

  Morgan now stepped between me and her former sister-in-law. She could destroy Gwenwynbar, and Tyntagel, and perhaps all Kernow, with a word did she so choose; and well they both knew it. Well they knew, also, that she would not.

  "Nay," said Gwenwynbar, eyes fixed on Morgan's, "that would bring you down to my level, would it not, and that you could not endure. Nor would your traha allow it: Hard it must be, to be so noble, so pure, in use of one's great gift. But good is a gift, I say, if it is too good to be used in need? need as now, perhaps—"

  She lifted a hand; and though it was I who flinched, to feel the stroke, it was Arthur who staggered, all fell to his knees in what looked like stabbing pain. Morgan did nothing.

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  WELL, IF SHE
WOULD NOT, I, perhaps, could not; but it seemed at the least that I might try. For I was Druid, you will remember, and no untalented one, though I say it who might more modestly let others do so.

  I saw well enough, though plainly Gwenwynbar did not, that Morgan did not act because she had, simply, not yet come to the place where she would. To use magic was grave business for her: It was not that she held herself above it, as Gwenwynbar believed; only that for her the balances had not yet evened out. When they stood level, when the price of using magic equalled the cost of not using it, then, and only then, would Morgan act from power. Arthur knew it too; it was why he took the pain of Gwenwynbar's spiteful cantrip. And never would he strike back himself at his once-wife.

  I, on the other hand, had no such compunction; if truth be told, I would have gladly given Gwenwynbar a dint to knock her into next fortnight. But that seemed not the best choice here, and though I still could not speak, I did not need my voice to work my other craft. Nor would Gwenwynbar be expecting any such attack from me, but was concentrating all her force on warding off Morgan…

  I wasted no more time—Arthur, no stranger to pain, was by now all but prone on the slate floor at Gwenwynbar's feet—but lashed out sharply with my mind, and was inordinately pleased to see Gwenwynbar stagger and collapse in her turn.

  Arthur got unsteadily to his feet; and, after a moment, Gwenwynbar did also, giving me a glance of unparalleled balefulness, with some grudging respect mixed in.

  "Well, Taliesin. I had not thought it of you. But now I think on it, it was you, was it not, that night I was here with the others?"

  If I had not already been unable to speak, that would have taken away my powers of utterance right there and then. She could not have known, could not have felt my presence that night… But it seemed that she had.

  I felt the chokehold ease again. "You," I croaked. "And Marguessan, and Irian, and Marc'h—all here—