Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  I pulled back, gulping in air, and I dragged the heels of my hands across my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I eventually managed, my shoulders throwing forward in the effort of pushing the words out.

  He looked back at me astounded. His brows pulled together in confusion.

  “He came home to you,” I sobbed out. “And I lost him.”

  Rhodri’s eyes filled with the same tears that blurred my own vision as he took my hands.

  “No, child,” he sounded horrified. “He found you. He brought you home to us. Our little Catriona. He found you, he found you.”

  My new name on his lips felt right for the first time, a recognition of what Devyn had achieved.

  A tremulous smile broke across his face. “He is still with us. I thought my son lost to me many years ago. But Devyn brought you home. He came home. And home is where he will stay.”

  His hand caressed the side of my face, warm brown eyes willing me to hear his truth.

  “They are all waiting,” he finally said gently.

  I nodded, and he took my hand in his. Oban appeared from the recesses and threw a cloak about my shoulders as we walked through the main entrance and took the path down to the coast. We stood together as the druid spoke words that I didn’t hear and people whose faces I couldn’t see sang haunting songs in a language I didn’t know until the ashes flew into the sky and the wind carried them away.

  “You leave in the morning?” Rhodri asked when we returned to my room after all those who had attended went their separate ways. Devyn’s life and death was too challenging to be celebrated together.

  I shrugged. I was unaware of the arrangements.

  “You’re with child, Llewelyn tells me,” he said softly.

  “Devyn’s,” I confirmed, in case he I might be under the illusion that Marcus and I had been together as we had pretended at Dinas Brân. Llewelyn’s eyes had followed me since the revelation and his hesitation in approaching had finally dawned on me, when I realised the Steward watched me too. The baby’s parentage was only obvious to those who knew better, others might be less certain.

  “My son left us a child.” His hand trembled as he covered his mouth, his face sharp with fear and concern. “I must speak with you though. There is a curse…”

  “We know.” I interpreted his fear, his belief that I would not live long enough to birth my child.

  His head bobbed tremulously. “You’re young, maybe it won’t come to be. Perhaps it is a legend only, we can’t be sure. But I think there may be another. I don’t know how but we must find him, your life may depend on it.”

  I looked up at him clear-eyed, reaching out and taking his hand this time to comfort the fear I saw there. Fear for me. Fear for his grandchild. Rion and his orders be damned.

  “There is a new Griffin.”

  “Truly? How?” he asked, his eyes lighting up in hope, his newfound health apparent for the first time.

  “Devyn knew he was dying and he insisted. There was some kind of transfer of the spirit of the Griffin, I don’t really understand it.”

  His face broke into a smile as the sun through storm clouds. “Then, you will live.”

  He buried his head in his hands as if the weight had become too much for him. I placed a hand on his shoulder as it shook under the impact of the emotional onslaught – grief, hope, fear, relief.

  “My child will live.” I underlined again for him. “I will live because Devyn ensured we would. Even as he lay dying, he thought only of us.”

  “Who?” he asked, raising his ravaged face. “Rion?”

  “Gideon.”

  “The York pup,” he growled before his eyes warmed in rueful amusement. “Then I am to spend the rest of my days wishing Gideon Mortimer health and long life. Does his father know?”

  I shook my head. “We have told no one. Rion thinks there is a traitor, someone who helped Marcus, who betrayed my mother. We don’t want this news getting back to them. They didn’t stop until my last protector was dead.”

  They had tried to kill Devyn before that morning in Anglesey – the poisoning. Marcus had denied being responsible; somebody must have given it to him in the city before we left. Or was the traitor someone we had met after we left the city? Someone we considered a friend – or worse, family?

  If Devyn had never made it here, perhaps I would have gone back to the city with Marcus willingly. After everything, finding myself alone out here in the Wilds, without Devyn here to anchor me would I simply have let myself be pulled back to the life I had left?

  “You knew?” My wayward thoughts backtracked to something Rhodri said. “You knew there was another. How?”

  Rhodri’s gaze was contemplative. “The morning your mother died, she received a vision before we set off for the stone circle she wished to reach. A warning. We had turned around; we knew we were in danger. She told me the oak had given her a warning, that without the Griffin you would be lost and when all was lost the Griffin would be found. She said she saw two Griffins in an entwined knot. We couldn’t figure it out. There is only ever one Griffin, and there were no more males in my family, but she said if we kept Devyn safe then the other side of the knot would work itself out. As I told you before, she made me vow to keep him safe. She must have known that he would find you. He fulfilled his destiny… and now he is gone. But there is a second.”

  “She knew you were in danger?”

  “Aye, I’ve gone over it in my mind a thousand times. If she hadn’t bound my vow that morning, if she hadn’t acted so quickly, would it have turned out differently?”

  “How do you mean?” I asked as he stood jerkily.

  “When she came off her horse, I couldn’t go back for her. If she hadn’t bound it I would have gone back, for her, for you. We would all have been killed, but she had bound me to ensure his safety.” He sighed. “Devyn never forgave me for what happened that day. I never got a chance to explain.”

  “I told him,” I confessed. “He did forgive you. He understood.”

  “He did?”

  I gave him a small nod. His whole body seemed to relax. That vow that he had kept hidden from the world, was known to the person to whom it needed to be known. Not an excuse. But the truth.

  “I was drugged.”

  “What?”

  “They think I didn’t have enough magic to do anything. But I do. I do. I could have done something. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t reach it. Marcus gave me a drug, a suppressant. I couldn’t do anything.” The words tumbled over each other. Each word a shard set free. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t do anything.”

  A hand came up and lifted my chin.

  “Then you know.”

  It wasn’t his fault that he had ridden away. It wasn’t mine that when Matthias shot Devyn I had been unable to do anything.

  I nodded.

  “There is nothing more to be said.”

  I exhaled as he pulled me into his chest, melted into his warmth. It wasn’t an excuse. It was the truth.

  “Catriona,” he breathed out the syllables of my birth name. “Here. When you were last in my arms you were barely more than a baby yourself. I can scarcely believe this is real.”

  “I wish he were here to meet her.”

  Rhodri’s eyes watered, and his voice wavered as he responded. “I am heart glad at this news. I shouldn’t be. It was reckless of you both to be together; he should have known better.”

  “He did.”

  Rhodri raised a scandalised brow that reminded me the evidence would suggest otherwise.

  “I mean, he didn’t know,” I said, flustered, my cheeks heating. “That is, he didn’t know I was Catriona Deverell.”

  “Then how did you figure it out?”

  The heat flared on my distressed cheeks. “Erm, after, y’know… We… uh… The bond clicked in. He was horrified.”

  Rhodri’s face broke in the smile of a younger man as the event I couldn’t put words to dawned on him and chuckled. “Was he then?”

/>   “Absolutely. I didn’t know what was going on. Suddenly I could…” I realised he was the one person who might be able to explain the Griffin bond. “Did you and my mother… could you feel her emotions?”

  He sobered, his expression melancholy once more. “No. It’s a known part of the lore, and you and Devyn already showed signs of it when you were a baby, but for most of us, we only sense when the lady is in distress, in danger. I only sensed it once.”

  A servant came in bearing a meal with Bronwyn following close behind her. She looked at us both assessingly and seemed pleased with how she found us.

  “I’m not leaving until you eat – both of you,” she announced, flipping her wild black hair behind her and throwing herself into a seat by the fire. “Now that you are well again, uncle, you need to get your strength back.”

  When Llewelyn came by to check on his brother, he found him regaling us with tales of Devyn as a child. It was a profoundly involved story regarding a neighbour’s child, a boar, a holly bush, and a wooden sword. Llewelyn, who was familiar with the tale, soon joined in, adding pieces that had escaped Rhodri’s memory but which were much relished details.

  As the day sank into evening, the lights were lit, and more food arrived. I caught Bronwyn glance at the door and found that Rion hovered there, deeply engrossed in the story Callum was telling – a tale which included the mischievous young Prince of Mercia. His eyes flickered across the scene and met mine. My jaw hardened, I blinked, and he was gone.

  Having delayed our departure for the funeral, Rion insisted on returning to Mercia the next morning. I said goodbye to Rhodri after breakfast in the great hall. Bronwyn promised that they would see me after the baby came, with a pointed look at Rhodri that if he had planned to fade away now that Devyn was gone, he had a new reason to live.

  I entered my room to check that none of my few belongings remained and discovered that my shadow had returned, having been absent while Rhodri was around. Gideon stood leaning against the wall looking out the window.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked coldly.

  He turned and levelled a gaze at me.

  “I wanted to check on you,” he offered carefully. He had hovered at a discreet distance over the last week, never engaging me directly.

  “This is my room. You need to leave.” I needed to be alone, needed time to prepare myself to leave the one familiar place I had here beyond the walls. to take the journey to the home to which Devyn had promised to deliver me.

  “Leave,” I repeated.

  He took a step towards me. I put a hand up to fend him off.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said.

  He stepped back as if slapped.

  “I wasn’t.”

  My lip curled. “You weren’t what? Going to try and touch a woman in love with another man against her will, another man whose body is barely cold?”

  My words were cruel… and, I knew, untrue.

  His face greyed, his head going back as if struck by a blow. “That’s not what I was… that’s not what happened between us.”

  “Isn’t it? You think because we are married that you can step into Devyn’s place. That you are the Griffin and the man I love. You are neither of those things. I can’t feel you, I can’t sense you the way I could sense him.”

  The thought terrified me. I couldn’t bear the idea that he and I would share that bond. That I would have another connection like that.

  “I’m not trying to step into Devyn’s place, but we are about to leave for Carlisle. I only wanted to ensure that you have everything you need.”

  Rion had sent him then. Rion, who also only approached me in public. I had a vague feeling that I had said terrible things to him. He had earned them.

  “No, I do not have everything I need,” I said, making plain that what I needed was not in his gift to give me. My face was hard, my tone hard too, as if I were encased in granite. I couldn’t bear it.

  But I had to move on. I had to leave here. I had to move on without him.

  With Gideon at my side.

  I was tied to him twice over, I realised. This stranger. I had let him touch me, had touched him in return.

  “Griffin,” I snorted. “You will never be him. You have the title but you are not the Griffin. We don’t know that anything happened. You aren’t him. We married to release the handfast, and that it is all. Stay away from me. The thought of your touch makes my skin crawl. I don’t love you. I don’t even like you.”

  Gideon stood unmoving, unblinking. I couldn’t stop the words. I flung them like daggers across the room, each one laced with its own poison… as we had once thought he had done to Devyn.

  “Get out,” I repeated. “The sight of you just reminds me of what you aren’t and will never be.”

  Gideon bowed his head. “My lady.”

  And then he was gone. I felt hollow, empty. Like the room I stood in.

  Chapter Four

  “You found it then?” Callum spoke from the doorway.

  I turned away from the cradle I had just uncovered, in a room that had sat empty for twenty years. They must have sealed it off after Devyn fought to save it for my return. There was a broken stool in a corner, a casualty of the day a boy had fought off grown men in defence of an empty room.

  And here I was.

  Sort of.

  I had drifted around the castle since we arrived in Carlisle. The servants watched me with the same awe and wonder as in Conwy. They so wanted to welcome me, to celebrate, but I was a ghost. I saw them, but it was as if they were on the other side of the glass as I passed by.

  I hadn’t asked anyone for help in finding the room. I had time after all, nothing but time.

  I lifted my eyes to look at Callum. He had come north with us, leaving his life in Oxford to help me, and I wanted to train, I genuinely did, but I was tired. I sat in the rocking chair by the cradle and let its soft rhythm take me. I put a hand over my stomach, which had just started to show signs to all that there was a new life beginning within. I felt close to Devyn here, close to her – our daughter. For the first time since before Devyn died, I slept without nightmares.

  They tried to make me move to the suite of rooms that had been prepared for me, the traditional suite reserved for the Lady of the Lake. But I felt comfortable in the old nursery at the edge of the Queen’s rooms, so people bustled about and furniture arrived to make it fit for an adult. It didn’t really matter. I mostly slept, and when I woke, I wandered around the grounds, uninterested in venturing further.

  Beyond the castle gates lay Carlisle. The town had come out to meet us on our arrival, raising an overwhelming cacophony of sound, cheering and crying at the return of their lady. I had no desire to be on the receiving end of more of that; it was simpler to stay here. There was a garden and my room. Sometimes Rion came, but I couldn’t summon conversation. What was there to talk about? I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. When he had the chance to get to know me, he had been too busy trying to move me about on his chessboard. Now he had no power to move me. I was the most inert piece on the board.

  Oban and Callum would sit with me for hours as I watched from my window. Oban would tell me of all he saw and heard as he found his place here, the way magic was used for things which were solved by technology at home – food preservation, light and heat, cooking even. Callum shared his knowledge of magic and the history of my new home, whether I listened or not.

  As the snows started to clear, the sight of the first snowdrops appearing under one of the trees tempted me outside. So delicate, the green shoots surfacing through the frost-hardened ground, I felt my spirit soar. It lingered over the belled flowers, seeping into the roots below. The next day, when we returned to the gardens, I actually laughed in delight at the carpet of little white flowers that had appeared overnight. But the beautiful sight attracted whispering servants, so I didn’t go there again.

  There was a balcony from my room, which looked out over forests and sparkling lakes. The
dark winter of the forest gradually lifted until one day I came out and it looked as if a magic wand had been waved over the spread laid before me, turning the world green. Vivid, vibrant green as the countryside burst into spring.

  When Callum could lure me out to the gardens, he tried to get me to connect to the energy around me. But while I could sense it, I felt distant, never seeming to connect the way I remembered from before.

  By March my pregnancy was visible to all as Callum persuaded me into an outing beyond the city. The countryside was expansive and lush, utterly different from the bare, craggy, wooded winter of Cymru. The browns of melting winter were replaced by the verdant greens and soft pastels of spring.

  The journey meandered south under open skies and rolling hills along the River Eden that flowed serenely beside us, grass that grew greener than I had ever known possible under our horses’ hooves. The great blue of the open sky was visible for miles and miles until we came to a place that felt as though it was the centre, a valley near Penrith that pulsed with an energy that called to me, at the centre of which was a circle of standing stones.

  There were maybe seventy stones in all, including a tall red one that the high druid of the community there told us was called Long Meg after a Lady of the Lake who had lived centuries earlier. Her daughters formed a circle round her, some of the stones a reddish colour like Long Meg, others a blue-grey, while others still Callum identified as milky quartz.

  “Oh,” I said as I laid my hand on a medium-sized quartz stone and felt something vibrate through me. “That’s amazing.”

  “No, no, no,” Callum fussed, snatching my hand off the stone. “Don’t touch anything. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you at all.”

  After checking no harm was done and once we were at a safe distance his curiosity got the better of him. “What did you feel?”

  “I’m not sure… It was like a hum.” A hum wasn’t quite the right way to describe it though. A noise perhaps, or a sensation… both maybe. “Maybe an energy – not like what I pull from the earth, more like… it’s charged.”