The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

Gwenwynbar seemed amused. "Aye, and you were here as well, it would seem. How?" That last word fierce as a dirk-thrust.

  But I would have taken a hundred real dirks sooner than tell her of Nia's cathbarr, to besmirch that clean and holy thing with the touch of Gwenwynbar's mind; and though she pressed me sore, I said no further word, and after a while she left off trying.

  "Well. Howsoever you came to know, it makes no differ. You are here now, all of you, and I am here, and Tryffin is here, and Marc'h is coming. Aye, he rides down the cove path even now, and when he arrives you will be seized for the Marplots and trespassers that you are. There are many in the guardroom below, and you will not leave Tyntagel."

  Morgan shifted beside me. "Nay," she said, in a voice of infinite sadness, as if she looked on a terrible mischancing mishap from a very long way away, "it is you, and Marc'h with you, who will not leave Tyntagel. My sorrow that it shall be so."

  Gwenwynbar laughed, but there was a note now of doubt creeping into her confidence and defiance.

  "Marc'h!" she said jeering. "He played well enough the part I allowed him, and thought he ordered the piece himself. A cat would laugh: Marc'h the leader of secession and revolt! Marc'h the lackwit… He was possessed of a grievance, and I needed one with such a grudge through whom I could work my will. The fact that he was kin to all of you made it all the more delightful in the working out; indeed, he believes to this moment that we are true partners in this enterprise—and he will think so, until it is in my interest for him no longer so to think."

  "And then?" asked Morgan.

  "And then I will deal with him as he will soon deal with you."

  "And Tryffin?" That was Ysild, and I closed my eyes at what I heard in her voice.

  But Gwenwynbar did not hear it. "Another tool," she said. "Or a bargaining chip—Do you know, lady, you are much to be commended? He is still yours alone, though it was not for my lack of trying."

  Ysild smiled, and Gwenwynbar actually flinched—a sight that gladdened me beyond all measure. But she said nothing more just then, and in the silence I could hear the noise of the storm outside redouble, the wind slamming into the castle so hard it seemed the walls did shake. After a moment, Gwenwynbar took up baiting Morgan again, though she took care not to try any more magical tricks, at least for now.

  It occurred to me that she was buying time for herself, until Marc'h should get here and could deal with us. It would never happen, of course: Morgan would have acted long before that; and Marc'h had first to get past Lioch and Sherrun down below at the stairfoot, and then there were still Daronwy and Roric in the guardroom… I had a thought, and trying an experimental cough found that I could speak again.

  "Tryffin," I husked, then found my real voice, and called more strongly. From the chamber on the landing above came a glad shout.

  "Talyn? Is that you? A long way from Bargodion, braud—"

  "As you say. But we are all guests this night in Tyntagel; you, and I, and Artos. Morgan is here, too, and Ysild—"

  I omitted to mention the other four of us, lest I tell Gwenwynbar somewhat she was not yet 'ware of; but though I paused, she gave no sign. Perhaps all her attention was focused on us here, and she could spare none for matters farther off; much as Morgan herself, who, we all knew, had the most of her power already committed, to keep them all napping at Kerriwick. Oh, one or two folk under a suantrai, the thing can run itself; but it takes a good deal more than that to keep a whole castle slumbering, and that was another reason why Morgan delayed any strike that she might have to make.

  Gwenwynbar was taunting Arthur now,—it seemed that she was enjoying herself greatly, that this was a moment she had long savored in fantasy, and now it was here at last. She would make the most of it, in her old, mean little way…

  I did not trouble myself to listen to her weasel-words, but was wondering furiously just what part her co-conspirators had played here: Gwenwynbar had earlier boasted that the plan was hers, but I—well, I knew Marguessan, knew her ways of old, and I would have laid crossics to cribbins that whatever Gwenwynbar may have believed, it was merely what Marguessan had pleased she should believe, and no more.

  Too, I wondered what should befall when Marc'h arrived and found us all here in his upper halls. But we were never to know, because just then Ysild of Arrochar came at last to the end of her spancel. Gwenwynbar's gibing, Arthur's pain (the pain he had not let us see, not merely the temporary pangs he had suffered here tonight), Tryffin's desperation, her own long frustration and captivity, and above all Morgan's seeming impotency: All came together, no word or work did spark it off, and Ysild, quite calmly, snapped.

  Without a word of warning, without a hint of intent, without, even, a whisper of mood, so swiftly that I scarce saw her motion begin and so soon completed that I hardly saw it end, Ysild drew her shortsword, reversed her grip on the hilt and fired it like a javelin, like the great Spear Birgha itself, straight through Gwenwynbar's slim body.

  No one could have halted it, it happened much too quickly for that. Too quickly even for Gwenwynbar to suffer much: She raised one hand to the blade, as if to pull it from her chest, then looked straight at me.

  "Taliesin," she whispered, "you heard. Tell them. The boar has yet to come against the bear." She closed her fingers round the blade, shivered once, gasped and died.

  Ysild was the only one of us who could move: She crossed almost casually to where Gwenwynbar had fallen, and with one tug pulled free her blade.

  "Well," she said, looking down at her handiwork. "That will teach her to be more careful whose man she tries to meddle with, and whom she seeks for playmates… Better judgment to you next life, Gwenwynbar Gerwin's daughter."

  I stared open-mouthed. This was a side of Ysild I had not guessed; nor, I would wager, a side that Duke Marc'h had ever dreamed of. She met my look, her face remote and terrible as the bansha's that is said to keen for the Name of Formartine.

  "I did not so to Marc'h, Talyn—much though I did wish to—for the same reason that Morgan did not so to this here." She nudged Gwenwynbar's dead body with the tip of her boot. "A fair fight, and a foe worthy of one's blade: Aught else is simply dan's scutwork."

  Morgan looked at me then, and I read in her eyes the same message Ysild had just pronounced, if perhaps differently phrased. We are all instruments of dan, make no mistake, all of us tools of our own devise, and you may rail against it as much as you please; it will avail you less than nothing when it comes to it. But know, too, that sometimes your dan is worked out for you by others, though it be yours still, as truly and deeply as if you worked it yourself. For, in a sense, you always do. Another lesson Gwenwynbar would not have learned from Edeyrn…

  Well, she would learn now, and that too was dan. Learn how better to choose her teachers—Any road, it was out of her hands, and now out of ours as well. I could not say I was sorry she had ended so—Gwenar was ever an evil piece of goods, and what Artos had ever seen in her scheming, shamming, leeching little soul I could never in all my lives imagine—but if I felt for anyone here, I felt for him. And so had not dared to look at him. I dragged my glance his way. He was standing quite still, gazing down at Gwenwynbar's face. Upon that face of his I knew so well, I saw only regret that it should have ended so meanly; not the least regret that it should have ended. Perhaps at last he saw her as she truly was, not as a shining projection of his hopes or reflection of what was good in himself. We do that more often than we like to admit, to those that we say we love: We profess to love them, their true selves, but what we are sometimes loving, in cold truth, is merely the mirror we have made of them to reflect our own souls. Not wise,—but most human. Even Arthur had done it, and even I have done it, and even you,—or if not yet, be very sure you shall. And you will never know it when you do; as none of us know.

  Just now, though, we had other things to concern us, and Ysild was the only one sufficiently in command of herself to do them. Once she had satisfied herself that Gwenwynbar was dead, she had flown up t
he stair to the landing, and was now struggling vainly with the door behind which Tryffin was locked away. She was scratching at the wood and metal with swordblade and her own fingernails, and she was weeping, and talking to Tryffin in a dreadful choked voice that in all likelihood even he could not understand.

  Arthur took an immediate hand; this was something he knew he was at last permitted. He stepped past the body of his onetime wife, came up beside Ysild and moved her gently to one side, laying his right hand on the door.

  "Tryff, step away." The oak slab, a full foot thick, began to crack and shiver before he had finished speaking, the findruinna hasps beginning to glow darkly red. And still Arthur kept his hand to the door: It took less than a half-minute before there was a sudden explosion of splinters of metal and wood; and then Tryffin was through, and Ysild was holding him as if she would never let him go.

  Not even to let him embrace the rest of us, eager to greet our friend; though after a minute or two she did so, still clinging to him herself. We longed to talk and tarry, but if Gwenwynbar had spoken true—and it was always possible that the streppoch had not—Marc'h was perhaps already here at the castle. And as soon as the guards below laid eyes on him they would know that the 'Marc'h' who had gone up to the tower rooms an hour since was a lying fraud. They might even know that he was the High King; and they might not care, even, if he were or were not.

  So we disposed Gwenwynbar's body with dignity, on the canopied bed in her own chambers, the sword-wound, which had bled hardly at all, scarce visible now against the velvet guna. Morgan said the speeding prayers for her, spoke her name to the Goddess,—no more could be done for her, and we were not inclined to do any more than this, any road.

  But this we did is the due of any dead Kelt, no matter what the Kelt may or may not have wrought in life. Even Edeyrn had been given this bare necessity of sending; now we gave it to his pupil, and prayed, in all honesty, that both would learn from the errors they had made in these lives now closed, and took comfort that they would. For that is the grace of the Highest, Kelu's gift to us all: that in facing our own errors, ourselves sitting in judgment on ourselves, we learn more truly and judge more rightly than any god there is. Too, we judge by the best that is within us, not the worst; not by sin or crime but by good, and by high purpose. The best thing we have done in the life just past: That is what determines of the soul's choice for the life next to come; and this is as it should be. Evil is all very well when we are in the imperfect body; but it bows to good in sorting the road of the soul, and faiths which claim it does not are telling lies. Remember that.

  Our mission, now, was of the simplest: Get out of here. We had accomplished our main goal, the rescue of our friends,—Arthur's remaining intention—to bring the High Justice of the Ard-tiarnas to bear upon the Duke of Kernow—could be accomplished presently. At the moment, we thought it best to get out of Tyntagel undetected. Tryffin and Ysild could pass themselves off as unwilling captives being taken back to Kerriwick; a deception we trusted the guards would fall for. The thing now was to save ourselves.

  Arthur turned at the door, and gave one last look at Gwenwynbar; I could not see his face. Then he turned to me. "Everything passes," he said with firmness, and led the way down the stairs.

  As I said, our plan had been to slope off unnoticed; or at the least as unnoticed as we could contrive it. So when we heard from below the sounds of fighting, we knew our plan had been altered.

  Marc'h and his small escort had apparently overcome Sherrun and Lioch down at the cove—only at great cost to themselves, as we later learned—and were now in the guardroom, where our subterfuge had been discovered. Now were the buttons off the bladepoints, quite literally: Roric and Daronwy were holding off the entire garrison in the one doorway that led into the castle precincts. Thanks to Marc'h's futile effort out of Kerriwick, the garrison here tonight numbered only some dozen; more seemed hardly needed to hold so defensible a fortress, and of course Marc'h had counted on Gwenwynbar to do the rest. All that was changed now, as we have seen,—but he did not know it just yet.

  We came down behind our friends, who were even more pleased than they might ordinarily have been to see us, and joined in the fight. Ysild in especial seemed possessed of battle madness; with her flying black hair and eyes flaming blue, she looked the very incarnation of the Mor-rian, the War-raven Herself. Tryffin, too,—but that was understandable, they were taking out in battle all that they had endured at Marc'h's hands the past months and years. The rest of us were just fighting for our lives; and, for the Companions, that was no new thing.

  Arthur kept inching his way toward the door at the far end, the door that opened on Kernow, and freedom. Marc'h's hasty arrival had left it ajar, and through it, as I followed close behind Arthur fighting all the way, I could see the ferocious night outside. The moon had broken through the clouds, but it was still snowing, and the wind had fallen off not a jot.

  Before we were more than halfway across the guardroom, though, Arthur found himself blade to blade with his own uncle. The fith-faths we had used to get into Tyntagel had dissolved just now in the fight—no one can keep a magic in place while fighting to save himself; well, Morgan maybe but very few others—and we all now bore our true faces.

  So Marc'h knew his sister's son, the High King, his nephew Arthur, and cared only to slay him here and now Arthur seemed unconcerned—his uncle was even less a swordsman than a sorcerer, and his own supremacy in both arts had long been a given—but it suited him best to take Marc'h prisoner, not kill him here in this mindless desperate squabble. There were things only Marc'h could answer, and answer for, and Arthur was resolved to see to it that he did.

  In the fury of the press I found myself out in the snow-choked faha beyond the gatehouse, much, much closer to the cliff-edge than I liked. Roric had already started Ysild and Tryffin on their way down the stairpath to the cove, and daring a glance over my shoulder I saw that Morgan was just following them down. That left Daronwy, who at last sight was holding off three Kernishmen at once, putting forth not half her strength and enjoying herself immensely, and Arthur still inside Tyntagel. Of Marc'h I could see no sign; besides, I was too busy to look more closely, fighting with Brychan, my own other 'self' this night. He had seen the fith-fath, had seen me wearing his face, and he was angrier than a shorn ram, and intended to take it out on me.

  He was doing very well, I am sorry to say. He had beaten me back nearly to the palisade that runs round the cliff top—at one point I even felt it digging into my back, and prayed frantically to whomever might hear me that it would hold under my weight, not break and send me down into the heaving waters below—but I managed to slip under his guard, and ran unheroically for the stair.

  Marc'h saw me shoot past him, and came hard after, himself eager to get out of Arthur's rain of buffets. The Duke aimed a few cuts at me from behind, which I tried to parr but suddenly I felt a searing fire, pain like a whip across my shoulders, and I stumbled on the track.

  He was on me immediately. We had come to one of the several rough widenings in the narrow pathway—little landings, where those who climbed to Tyntagel might pause a while to catch their breath—and here there was room for real swordplay. I could see Arthur, still too far above us to be of any help, and Daronwy farther up the cliff than he; below, Roric and Ysild had turned at my cry of pain, and were toiling up again. But they were weary, and far below, and the path was half-drifted now with mingled snow and seafoam, from blizzard and waves alike.

  So I raised my weapon to meet Marc'h's attack. If he had been a better sworder, it would have been over for me right there, and some other bard would have been telling you this tale—and, it is to be hoped, telling my part in it aright, not to mention well. But I was wounded, and he was older and less skilled, and so we were equally matched.

  We swung a few ringing touches, the swords striking sparks in the charged snowy air, then we grappled together, using sgians for the close work. I was so tired, and my shoulder hur
t abominably; but even so I got a few scratches in on Marc'h, and was just beginning to feel something confident of victory—he was weakening, Arthur was nearly here, Roric only a few steps away—when Marc'h lunged too far out. He went over the stairwall without a sound, and he took me with him.

  It seemed that I fell for miles. Bards have sung for centuries that in such moments you see your life pass before you at speed—you can see the same when you die naturally, of sickness or old age, only then you see it more slowly—but I am here to tell you that you see no such thing.

  Or maybe it was just that it was not yet my time to die, so I did not see what I should have seen; I know not. But something in the feeling of falling brought a long-forgotten poem leaping to my mind, and I chaunted it all the way down, singing myself out like a true bard, until the water came up to take me.

  I was not afraid of death, no Kelt is, that is not our way,—but like most of us I was a little feared of the actual dying—would it take long, would it hurt very much. Neither did I have any hope of surviving the fall: The coast below Tintagel is deep-watered, but it is floored with fanged rocks, and the currents that thread them would carry my body far out to sea, long before my friends could find me. This did not seem to matter, somehow, nor even greatly to distress me; but I had not yet finished my poem when I hit the water, and that, strangely, did.

  The impact must have knocked me briefly unconscious for I have no memory of the actual moment. Still, my senselessness can have been of the instant only, for I did not drown, and I came to myself in the midst of lashing water hills of glassy gray and white crashing together. It was Gwaelod: The sea-doom that I had escaped five decades ago had come at last to claim me. Already the current had me in its jaws, for I was clear around the other side of the castle crag, far from where my friends would be looking for me.

  My friends… Aye, I remembered them now. Saw Arthur's face as I went over the edge, felt Roric's lunging desperate grab for me that caught only my cloak, heard Morgan's wordless anguished mindcry. It no longer seemed to matter, any of it, and after what seemed a long time I came to the end of my song, and began to consider my situation.