Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  Marcus, who had come with us, whose father was still alive, had betrayed us. We thought we had escaped the reach of the council, that Devyn had triumphed in returning me home. But we hadn’t beaten them. They had given us up, allowed us to leave so we would bring Marcus deep into enemy territory. Marcus, who now knew everything. It had been Marcus’s idea to come to Anglesey, and no coincidence that the sentinels were here when we arrived. No. He had delivered us here.

  How stupidly gullible. The praetor had engineered a similar deception when they had first caught Devyn, releasing him to see where he led them. Praetor Calchas had let him go a second time, but they had never planned for it to be permanent. The realisation trickled into my slow-moving mind. On setting us free, my return had already been set in motion and Devyn had been poisoned, not expected to last until midwinter. With him gone they would have expected that I would docilely return to the fold.

  The man I had thought my friend, who had accused me of selfishness, of only seeing the world through the spectrum of my own needs – he had done this. He had planned it all. If it hadn’t been for the surprise arrival of Gideon and Rion, I would now be halfway to Londinium.

  “How did you know to come after us?” I asked as I turned back to the room.

  The conversation stopped. A moment passed before Rion answered.

  “Gideon found a note in your room. In it you said goodbye, that Marcus wanted to go to York now, and that you were leaving with him. I wouldn’t have followed,” he said, looking at the silent, scarred warrior, “but Gideon told me that it did not match what you had told him, which was that you had promised to return. Why bother telling me the story about York if you were actually going to Anglesey to marry?”

  I absorbed this. I had been such a fool. Marcus had planned everything, had deceived us all along. Had he ever really thought his father dead? Had it just been another part of the lie he told us? The betrayal swirled in my brain until it too sank down into the numbness that filled me.

  I carried Devyn’s ashes back to Conwy.

  How different the outward journey had been – the road a path bathed in moonlight, brimming with hope. I had thought all my dreams were about to be realised. I was going to hold Devyn’s hand in front of a druid in an oak grove with waves lapping the shore and open starlit skies overhead. Instead a nightmare had awaited. The grove had been laden with dead bodies, not petals, and my intended groom had died in my arms. And yet I was married, though not to Devyn. The dark twist of fate tore a self-derisory laugh out of me, surprising both me and the warrior riding alongside me.

  I supposed it was odd given the broken, grieving thing I had been yesterday. Today, I felt as though everything had happened to somebody else; none of it was part of my life. I was just unaccountably carrying a bag that contained all that was left of Devyn Glyndŵr. He had spent his whole life worrying about me, looking out for me, protecting me. Now he was gone, and it was as if he had never existed. Apart from my being here, riding along the coast of Cymru. If he had truly never lived would I now be in Londinium, preparing for a day of shopping and lunch, fussing over my darling husband, the wonderful Dr Marcus Courtenay? I suppose I would, and that version of me was probably happy, perfectly content, playing at life as a grown up until she did her duty and popped out the requisite children.

  I also had a child, I remembered hollowly. How would I raise one out here? Did these people send their children to a school like citizens?

  Of course, they did, though I supposed as a lofty royal my child would have a tutor – like Rion and Devyn had had Callum when they were young.

  Marcus might be back in the city already. I had no real idea how long it took to sail down the coast of Cymru, around the awkward toe of the island, Bronwyn’s ancestral home of Kernow, and along the underside until they came around and entered the Tamesis back into Londinium. Would they creep back in quietly or arrive with a great announcement and be hailed as heroes? There was the small inconvenience of Marcus’s recent trial and labelling as a traitor to the city, but I had no doubt that Praetor Calchas would be able to explain that all away as part of the grand plan to steal a cure from the natives.

  They would have to get Marcus a replacement bride. The void I had left would be hard to fill. Where would they get a new woman with so much magic in her blood to provide babies now?

  Would my daughter have much power? She would certainly inherit mine. The power of the Lakes was inherited directly through the still unbroken matriarchal line. Unlike me, she would be trained in it from the beginning. She wouldn’t stand uselessly on the shore while people she loved were killed. Drug or no.

  Conwy rose up as imposing as ever, its grey granite walls a deterrent to all aggressors. If we had been here, we would have been safe. There were subdued throngs of people in the courtyard when we entered through the gates. News of the sentinels’ attack on the Holy Isle would have preceded us. Dry words, conveyed by a messenger, not the kaleidoscope of blood and fire and bodies and violence that it had been.

  Many people crowded the courtyard. Llewelyn would have called the townspeople in behind the castle walls when news of the attack reached him. Now, here they all stood, gawking at our arrival despite the heavy freezing rain. Did we look the part, the small group of smoke-grimed warriors and bloodied druids trailing in after the tragic King of Mercia and his newly recovered sister? What was my role? Was I still seen as the beloved Lady of the Lake returned to heal the land anew, or was I now reviled as the betrothed of the man who had caused the slaughter of the holy folk and stolen their medical supplies? Was Devyn part of my story to them, the disgraced Griffin, childhood friend of Rion Deverell, the Oathbreaker who returned with the resurrected lost lady? His role in the story was done – did they care that he would play no further part?

  Did they know that my own path ended with him? I didn’t know the road ahead. Where did I belong now? I had no home. Where did I go from here?

  Hands reached around my waist and I blinked, realising that everyone had dismounted while I sat on my horse in the middle of the courtyard. I limply allowed the giant hands to lift me from my seat to the ground, holding carefully on to the bag that was hooked across my shoulder.

  My body was small beside Gideon’s and for a moment I almost succumbed to the urge to lean in. To hide from all these people. There was deep silence as they watched us all, the surviving druids in their bloody, dirt-stained robes, the warriors with their martial gear soiled by pyre building, never having raised so much as a sword.

  I squirmed away as Gideon tried to pull me closer and threw my shoulders back. I was not entertainment. I was not here to be the object of those pitying gazes.

  I stopped in front of Llewelyn, Prince of Gwynedd. His hair was soaked into his skull, the lack of curls making his head seem smaller. His partner, Rhys, had his arm around him.

  “My lady.” His eyes fell to the bag I now cradled in my arms. They all knew, then. Of course, a full report would have been conveyed to the ruler of these lands. After all, he was uncle to the dust I held – all that was left of Devyn. Llewelyn’s eyes were dark too. I couldn’t bear them.

  I walked by him towards the entrance to the great hall. Stumbling against a tall man standing on the steps, I heard a growl from Gideon behind me behind me as the stranger put his hands out to steady me. I looked up to see the cold grey eyes of a handsome, older man directed at Gideon and a caustic smirk as he took his hands back in no great hurry.

  I blinked in recognition as Oban extricated me from my dripping cloak, clucking at my wet hair and clothes where the fur-lined cloak had failed to protect me from the elements. He wrapped my bare shoulders in a warm woollen shawl while I held on to the bag. He had helped me into the ruined velvet dress that I was surprised to find I was still wearing. Had it only been the night before last that he had laced me into the beautiful gown for the Solstice festivities?

  I stood there, unsure of where to go. With so many people inside the walls, did I still have the room I
had left behind with the paltry possessions I had picked up since leaving Londinium?

  Llewelyn appeared at my shoulder. He went to put his arms around me, but I backed away with an awkward step, straight into the ever-present hulking body of the dark warrior who seemed to have become my new shadow. I twisted my head around to glare up at him. He was not Devyn. He needed to leave me alone.

  A huffed laugh had me turning to face the unfamiliar visage of the man I had stumbled against a few moments earlier, and I levelled a deadened glare at him too for good measure.

  “My lady,” Llewelyn called my attention back to him and without a further attempt to touch me, indicated that I should precede him into the great hall.

  Rhys led the way, and I followed him through the hall, which was filled with the press of even more bodies. The damp heat rising from them was an ugly, foetid thing. They pushed back into each other to allow us to pass through. We went through the top corner of the hall, and down a corridor with which I was unfamiliar, until Rhys opened a door on the left. Inside the room was a study of sorts; a large desk had been pushed back against a book-lined wall to allow for chairs to be arranged in a circle.

  Pulling back a seat beside Llewelyn, Rhys inclined his head to me to take my place before he took the seat on the Llewelyn’s right side. Rion took the seat beside me while Gideon loomed behind me as other men and women took their seats. Some I recognised from the trial – the trial during which they had found Devyn guilty of being an Oathbreaker and had condemned him to death. Now that he was dead, were they glad? Did they feel he had got his deserved end?

  Lady Morwyn – who had spoken at great length about how an Oathbreaker couldn’t be trusted, no matter what the justification for breaking his fealty – didn’t meet my eyes now. Neither did Lord Arthfael or Lady Emrick, who had also judged him. The High Druid, Fidelma, who had presided over the trial, sat opposite, her steady, sympathetic gaze making my bones clench. I wanted nothing more than to smash the jar in my hands into her gentle, judicious face. The had condemned him, and they were hypocrites all. A tremble went through the room.

  Then Bronwyn was there, a whirlwind of dark hair and plush velvet wrapping around me. She smelled sweet and fresh, and the jar of ashes dug awkwardly into my ribs as she pressed against me. She pulled back, and her glistening eyes took in the bag I held, lifting them back to me for confirmation that what was left of her cousin was contained within. Her chin started to crumple as I averted my eyes and extricated myself from her embrace. Rion stood, pulling her to him and held her while she swallowed back her sobs.

  I would not break down here, in front of what was clearly a gathering of the great and the good, which amounted to maybe a dozen people in all. This included the lords and ladies who had been here for the trial, some of the druids who had travelled back with us, and a few I didn’t know – maybe they had been here for the Yuletide festivities and I just couldn’t remember them. There had been so many people, all here to see the Lady of the Lake, newly returned from the dead. Rion was the last to take his seat with Bronwyn on his other side. She looked across at me, anguish clear in her eyes as she whispered urgently to Rion. He shook his head, quieting her, taking her hand in his. She was a lady in her own right, but I suppose she was doubly important now as the future Queen of Mercia.

  Also seated in the inner circle was the man at whom Gideon had growled. He was tall but blocky, and had the air of a man who had little patience and expected his every word to be obeyed, immediately.

  “Well, what bloody mess is all this?” he sneered before everyone had fully settled.

  Chapter Two

  Llewelyn threw him a dirty look before turning back to Rion, his hands splayed wide, his eyes red with grief. “What happened?”

  “It appears that Londinium attacked the druids at the Holy Isle to steal the mistletoe harvest.” Rion spoke for us. “They massacred the community to do so.”

  A number of the nobility looked to the robed druids for confirmation of what they surely already knew – as if Rion was making it up, or maybe because they just weren’t ready to believe it. I could understand that.

  “And my nephew?”

  Rion cast a glance at me before he continued.

  “It was bad timing. My sister, Devyn, and Marcus arrived as the attack was ending. Devyn was killed, and Marcus was taken.”

  I looked over at him dumbly. Bad timing? Was he hiding the truth, or was he simply not aware of it? I barely knew this man, but he had struck me as intelligent – high-handed maybe but not stupid. The effort it would take to correct them felt far away. And why should I. All these people and their judgement of Devyn, what would they say once they knew he had brought a traitor into their midst?

  “You let them take Marcus Courtenay? He should never have been here in the first place. The Glyndŵr pup should have taken him to York. He’d have been safe there,” the newcomer growled.

  I bit my lip at the defence of Devyn that seethed inside me. Who was this man and what right did he have to call Devyn names? What did it matter now? My anger seeped away as quickly as it had surfaced.

  “Why were they there? Why did you go after them?” Llewelyn asked, stiff-backed, as if the other man hadn’t spoken.

  He didn’t know. Didn’t see that it was my fault. I was the reason Devyn had been there. His face was grey and lined: he had lost the last son of House Glyndŵr, the nephew whose return he had barely had time to celebrate. He had been so happy – for himself and for his disgraced brother Rhodri who had survived long enough to see his son return to Cymru. Did Rhodri know? Would Llewelyn have sent word?

  Rion’s jaw locked, his eyes hooded when he answered.

  “Devyn and Catriona were planning to get married by going to the Holy Isle where nobody knew I had forbidden it. We went after them hoping to stop their foolishness.”

  I hated him. I hated him referring to me by that stupid name. Hated him.

  “We would never have been there if not for you,” I said.

  Rion drew a breath and Bronwyn laid a hand on his arm, quelling whatever he had been about to say in reply.

  “How much of the harvest did they get?” Lady Morwyn asked, leaning back in her chair, her lips tight. She was less concerned about why we were there than the impact it would have on her and her people.

  “More than half,” the druid from the Holy Isle, John, answered him.

  “Why were they even after the harvest?” Lady Emrick asked. “I saw no ill Imperial citizens at the last treaty renewal.”

  “The Mallacht is in Londinium too,” the sneery newcomer said. “The illness inside the walls is rampant across the population this last year and despite all of their fancy medicine, the Romans have been unable to do as much as us. People are dying in droves, and they haven’t been able to cover it up anymore. Riots in the streets, unrest in the province like they haven’t seen in generations. As bad as anything that happened in the rest of the Empire over the last decades.”

  There had been a map on a college wall in Oxford that tracked the northwest progression of the illness from the central Mediterranean. I knew this much from the research that had been gathered in the library, if not from the news feeds in Londinium.

  “The illness will be worse in Londinium because the ley line there is almost beyond repair,” Fidelma added, and was ignored for her trouble by the newcomer, not showing even a modicum of respect for one of the most senior druids in the land.

  “How do you know?” Rion asked Fidelma, when the man she had addressed failed to do so.

  “It is inevitable. The Empire has hunted magic to extinction in line with the rise of technology. We tend the lines out here, holding back the decay and the corrupted energies, protecting the western and northern lines as best we can from Glastonbury,” Fidelma explained. “But the line that passes under Londinium has been deteriorating over the last two centuries, ever more rapidly in recent decades.”

  “How do you know there are riots?” Lady Morwyn redirected
the conversation back to the lord I didn’t know.

  “I keep an eye on things. Ever since the lady was killed, we have been vulnerable. If they ever discovered she was gone, we needed to be ready, and I for one was not going to be caught off guard,” he answered. His martial appearance said that he had been more than just keeping an eye on things. This man looked like the very embodiment of constrained violence; I imagined he had spent every day of his life, long before my mother had died, readying for battle.

  “How did they find out we had something that treated the illness?” Llewelyn followed up. It was a good question. I hadn’t been aware of how bad the illness was and I had lived in the city. The exchange of information between the Roman province and the rest of the island was even more limited. I had known next to nothing of what life out here was like, much less that they had a cure, until we had witnessed Rhodri being treated. But Marcus had known.

  “No doubt they have their spies too.” The newcomer’s face twisted.

  Guilt lashed at me. We had brought their spy home with us, brought him deeper than any Shadower could have come. How stupid, how impossibly gullible – it had never occurred to me that Marcus might betray us. But of course, he had never abandoned his position: he had only wanted to help the citizenry. If I wasn’t such a self-centred idiot, I would have realised that Marcus would never desert the people of Londinium to save his own skin. I thought Marcus had fled the city for my sake to save two paltry lives. He had always favoured the many over the one, had always been the noble prince of the city, the devoted doctor. I was an idiot.

  “How will we tell people that Londinium has stolen more than half the harvest?” Lady Morwyn moaned.

  The martial lord stood. “How will we tell them that Londinium has stolen mistletoe? Damn the mistletoe! Sentinels came all the way here and attacked one of our holiest sites.” His eyes narrowed. “How many of them were there? How were they armed?”