Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  A solitary figure in dark martial clothing waited by what appeared to be the main entrance to the castle. Not grand like Carlisle, but the only way in.

  “Father sent me to fetch you in,” the tall man greeted us.

  “Henry,” Gideon acknowledged the other man, his face impassive.

  The man grunted in response and walked back inside without waiting to see if we followed. Was this the brother Gideon had betrayed? It was impossible to tell; both men had an impressive capacity for conveying indifference.

  “Where have you been?” I had barely stepped inside the room before I was enveloped in my brother’s warm embrace. I allowed myself to sink into it for a moment. “We thought you were—” He halted. “You were gone so long.”

  “I can explain.” They had thought I wasn’t coming back, that I was dead even, that I had failed in my attempt to reach Avalon.

  “Yes, please do.” The voice came from across the room where Richard Mortimer, the Steward of York, sat at the head of the table. Llewelyn was there and a few of the Gwynedd lords and ladies I knew from my time in Conwy, as well as some large and fierce looking men and women I didn’t know – Anglians, I presumed. Why did they always look like they were either coming or going from a battlefield? Martial, dour, stoic, and grimly ready to take the head off the next person to cross their path. No wonder Gideon was the way he was. The Griffin leaned casually against the wall by the window. What was I thinking… Gideon must have made them crazy.

  Rion pulled out a seat for me and took the one beside it while Gideon remained standing behind me, a silent predatory presence.

  The steward surveyed me and then his son, his lip curling in a characteristically cold manner.

  “I believe congratulations are in order.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Did you find Avalon?” Rion asked quietly, ignoring Lord Richard’s provocation. He was positioning my answer to be one of strength, not the defensive one into which the steward would have forced me.

  “Yes, I found it; that was the easy part.” Getting in had been easy, too easy; leaving had been less so. Rion didn’t react to the flicker he saw in my eyes, but I knew he had seen it. Later, I promised him. I would need to tell him more than I would share with this gathering.

  “Who and what did you find there? Were they able to help?” Llewelyn asked. He looked older than when I had seen him last, and there was no sign of Rhys who must have stayed behind.

  “I was met by Nimue and others, and they have supplied me with greater power.” I hadn’t even been aware of it when I left. But Gideon had been right; there was a well of power inside me now. A well that waited, deep and wondrous, for me to call upon to do as I willed. And what I willed was to get my daughter back.

  “Call up a breeze now, can you, girl?” Richard Mortimer asked, all too ready to remind me and all present of my failure to save Devyn the last time I had been attacked. Back then I had been drugged, cut off from what little magic I could command, but the truth was that calling on magic had not been instinctive then. It was now. I allowed myself a moment to picture the things that the power inside me would allow me to wreak upon this tiny, fragile man.

  “Yes.” Whatever he saw in my eyes seemed to convince him without having to resort to a demonstration that would have left him substantially less sneery. Because I could feel it now when I contemplated what I could do. It was waiting for me to beckon, a possibility of what could be. No longer did I need to draw from without to build potential within; it was just there waiting, ready.

  “Catriona.” Rion touched my arm to bring my attention back to the waiting room. But it was the hand at my shoulder that centred me, that allowed me to turn away from the mesmerising pull of energy that had come with me from Avalon. I drew a shuddering breath. That had been unexpected. Was that what Viviane had meant by time running out? Not that the power would leave me, but that if I didn’t loose it sooner rather than later, I would leave the world behind for the power… and the power would consume me. This was why the power of the Lakes was different. The lady mostly allowed power to flow through her, to sing to the ley lines. When she did draw power, she didn’t allow it to deepen within her, because it became everything. The grip on my shoulder tightened.

  I focused on Gideon’s hand on my shoulder, focused on each long, capable finger through the layers of clothing that separated us.

  “What?” I asked, blinking. There was no pretending that my attention hadn’t left the room.

  “What did they teach you?” Rion asked.

  “Nothing.” I smiled wryly. It was the truth. Beyond riddles I couldn’t decipher, I realised that what Callum had taught me was enough. I had fundamental control over the power I could draw in from nature – what Avalon had given me was beyond that. Enough for what needed to be done. Enough, I hoped, to bring Londinium to its knees and take back my daughter.

  “Nothing? But we’ve waited for months!” Lady Morwyn protested at this information.

  “It wasn’t months for me,” I explained, as I had done for Gideon, hopefully to a more receptive audience here. “Time moves differently there. For me it was only a few hours.”

  “We delayed for nothing,” Lord Richard said sourly.

  “Not for nothing. I did not leave Avalon entirely empty handed. If your forces are assembled, we can go now.”

  My eagerness was not reflected in the uneasy rustling as the assembled lords and ladies looked around at each other.

  “Catriona, we can’t take on Londinium alone. We are not enough,” Rion explained.

  “Who else is coming?” I asked, confused. Those at the table represented Cymru, Anglia, and Mercia. Bronwyn sat beside a woman who could have been her twin and an older man, so House Cadoc of Kernow must be here too. Bronwyn smiled at me stiffly in greeting.

  “Alba,” Llewelyn pronounced determinedly.

  “They will fight with us?” Everything I had been told of Alba had been of their independence. The Romans had never stepped foot on their land in nearly twenty centuries. They had a reputation for fighting, but they had never had to take on the Empire, content in the buffer provided by the southern kingdoms. That they would do so now was unexpected but welcome news.

  “If Alba will join, then there is a chance that Eireann will send forces too,” Rion explained softly.

  “That’s great news. How long before they get here?”

  Rion’s lips tightened. “We were discussing the terms before you arrived.”

  Ah, that explained why they were all assembled here. Of course they hadn’t known that Gideon and I were on our way; we had been expected months ago.

  “What’s to discuss?” If the kingdoms of Alba and Eireann could be persuaded to join us, then we would be unstoppable. If we got the Romans off the island before reinforcements could come, we stood a chance of not just retrieving Féile but pushing them off the island for good.

  “They want Féile,” Rion said.

  “What?” Had I misheard? He couldn’t possibly be suggesting that the cost of getting my baby back was to lose her again.

  “Not now.” Bronwyn spoke up from across the room. Her face pinched. “When she’s grown, they want to marry her to their princeling.”

  My daughter was being bartered just as I had been, her choices in love taken away. But if we rescued her then she would at least have some remaining choices – in how she lived, and that she lived at all, for what did we really know about what the praetor wanted with her? Worry for her squeezed my heart until the lack of oxygen made me weak.

  “I see. You have agreed to their terms?” My priority was getting her back. The Albans were a better option than those who had her now. So she had to marry an Alban prince. She loved Gideon, and he was half Alban; maybe she would end up in an arranged marriage she didn’t mind so much. I glanced over my shoulder; I didn’t mind so much myself, I realised.

  “No.” Lord Richard’s response was loud and final. “We’ll not exchange one threat to the south f
or another to the north.”

  “Why would the marriage make Alba a threat?” I asked. Apart from a stronger tie to Mercia, it wouldn’t overly shift the balance of power.

  “She would have to live there,” Bronwyn said.

  “No, that’s not right. The lady resides in the Lakelands; her husband must join her there.” I looked to Rion for confirmation. It was rare for the lady to travel outside Mercia; she was the great bogeyman in the north, kept far from Londinium, not just as a threat but to do her duty. The lady’s primary responsibility was the ley lines and to be most effective she needed to tend the stone circles in Keswick and Penrith.

  “How would she tend the lines from Alba?”

  “In previous generations the lady has lived further away, and visited only at solstice and equinox. They are prepared for her to travel down a number of times a year. The Mallacht has arrived there too. It’s the only reason they are willing to take on the Empire,” Bronwyn explained. She seemed to be representing the Alban offer at the table; she must have been the one they sent north to ask for aid.

  “The Albans seem to have come to the conclusion that while they can live with the Romans on the island, they are less happy to suffer the corruption of the lines,” Rion said. “They benefited from the vitality you restored to the Belinus line which travels on into Alba, and they traced that change back to your return. It’s got much worse since you left. The land failed to thrive this summer. Throughout the midlands the crops were as poor as those in the Shadowlands. Hundreds will starve this winter. Next year the reserves will be gone and it will be devastating. The Albans sent word that they would negotiate. They fear the slow death that comes with the corruption of the land, and they will act with us to save the lady’s heir, but then they want her for themselves.”

  I met Bronwyn’s concerned face. What choice did we have?

  “What if we refuse?”

  “Given that we’ve seen sentinels use technology outside of the walls…” Richard Mortimer, who had spent his entire life planning for this fight, shook his head and then smiled. “How many of them can you take, girl?”

  I had no idea. Could I bring the walls down? Could I rain storms down on the city for weeks on end? It felt possible, but how many would die? My power would kill indiscriminately; it was a force of nature. I could send a hurricane to Londinium but I would have no control over what happened then. Hundreds of thousands of innocents lived behind those walls, including my daughter.

  The largest force ever assembled on this island would surely be a better option.

  “I’m not sure.” I stood. “I’ll think on it. If you’ll excuse me, we have travelled hard to get here.”

  “You’ll think on it?” came a jeer from behind me. “You think you get to decide our fates?”

  I stopped and didn’t turn around as I said clearly. “I do.”

  Having made such a bold exit, I realised as I arrived in the hallway that I had absolutely no idea where to go from there.

  A familiar touch on my back propelled me forward.

  “You would truly give Féile to Alba?” came the growl from above me.

  “Better Dùn Èideann than Londinium,” I snapped back.

  There was nothing more. Gideon guided me silently through the hallways of his old home.

  “Where are you taking me?” I finally asked as we took a turn up into a tower well off the more open areas of the castle.

  “My rooms,” he said, trying the handle on the door in front of us, as if unsure it would open.

  He looked inside before swinging the door wide and indicating I should enter.

  I looked around. There was an abandoned air to the rooms which nonetheless had a somewhat familiar feel to them. The colour scheme and arrangement of furniture was not unlike Gideon’s rooms in Carlisle.

  “These are your rooms, but it must be…”

  “More than ten years,” he supplied for me. “My father is more sentimental than he appears.”

  “That’s not saying much,” came Rion’s voice from behind us. He and Bronwyn had followed, it seemed. Bronwyn wrapped her arms around me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, her face reflecting her guilt at selling my daughter to the Albans and relief that I was there at all to be angry at her. “Are you all right? No, of course you’re not all right. We were so worried, we thought something must have happened. We only responded to Dùn Èideannout of desperation. The steward won’t attack without them; he says it would be suicide.”

  I stepped back and put my hand up. I wasn’t able to deal with her sympathy. I needed space; I needed a moment to think.

  “Has there been any word?”

  “Of Féile?” Rion asked. “No, the city is impenetrable. We relied on word from Shadowers, but few are let into the cities now and certainly not ones from regions we trade with. Others got sick and they had to leave. Security inside the walls has never been higher.”

  “What happened in Avalon?” Rion asked, all too aware I had limited what I revealed to the group assembled in the hall.

  “I was met by two women. I think the first might have been our mother, and the second was Nimue, the first Lady of the Lake, and they knew why I had come.” I drew the sleeve back on my dress, showing them the tattoo she had given me.

  “She gave you that?” Bronwyn asked, her eyes widening at the dara knot and the oath it symbolised.

  I looked at Gideon, remembering again that moment we had shared before I descended. We had been of an accord, and it had felt so pure, so clear to me. Would we ever get there again?

  “No, I had that one before I went. But Viviane added the second one.” I traced the curls of the triskelion. “The arms I think represent past, present, and future, and perhaps the Griffin is the centre that holds them, or I am… She spoke in riddles.”

  “And Nimue?” Bronwyn asked.

  I shook my head. “More riddles. That I had what I needed and needed what I have.”

  “And there was no trickery?” asked a gruff voice from the door – Callum. I went to him and sank into his fierce hug.

  I pulled away. “Devyn was there.”

  I didn’t have to share an emotional connection with Gideon to feel the shift in that predatory vibe that seemed so close to the surface since the Lake.

  “He tried to get me to stay,” I revealed.

  Bronwyn gripped my hand; she knew that this was not a temptation from which I would have easily walked away.

  “It can’t have been him,” I said. It was a statement, but I needed them to tell me I was right. “Not Devyn. He would never have asked me to stay while Féile was in danger. Right?”

  “Not Devyn,” Gideon echoed.

  Bronwyn gasped. “I don’t know. They say that in the afterlife, worldly concerns drift away. Perhaps he had forgotten.”

  My heart twisted inside me.

  “Maybe if you had stayed you would have forgotten too,” Rion added.

  It could have been him. Really him, there in my arms. If I had known, if I had believed, would I have stayed?

  What had Viviane said, believe in the present, no… present in belief. If I was in the present I had to have belief in what the present gave me. I frowned at the riddle, the words rolling in my head. Féile was the present. Gideon was the present. I was the present. This me. With these people. Devyn had got me to where I needed to be, I had to trust in that past. And believe in this present.

  “Catriona.” Rion had crouched in front of my chair and gripped my shoulders. “You had to return to us.”

  I blinked and smiled widely at him. Another gift of the now: my brother.

  “I know.” Impulsively, I gave him a peck on the cheek. “I think it was a test.”

  Rion pulled back in surprise, a flush appearing along his cheeks. I flushed in response from secondary embarrassment until I realised that it was probably the first time I had showed him any affection. I had spent so much of the last years tangled up inside myself, pulled and pushed by events over wh
ich I had no control and which all too often had dictated my emotional state – the wear of the ley lines, the handfast cuff, and my connection to Devyn. I supposed, while I thought about it, the meds that the council had used to suppress my magic had also cut me off from a core part of myself. Now I felt whole, and wholly myself.

  “I’m glad you passed,” the usually fastidious Rion said, sitting back on the dusty floor.

  “Me too,” I said, locking eyes with Gideon across the room. And I was glad.

  “What else happened?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I thought, at first, nothing, but over the last few days I have felt more magic running through me than I thought was possible.”

  There was also the strange experience Gideon had endured.

  “There’s something more,” Rion prompted. Gideon narrowed his eyes at me; he was not ready to share what had happened to him.

  “I asked her if Gideon could be freed,” I threw out, in order to satisfy Rion’s suspicion that there was something left unrevealed. “It is unfair that I need him the way I did.”

  Gideon was straight backed as he looked out of the window and I couldn’t gauge his reaction.

  “You no longer need him?” Bronwyn asked lightly.

  “Maybe not. I feel more whole than I did before. She… they both said things about the Griffin’s relationship with the lady being subject to need, that… oh, I don’t know, it was riddle after riddle. I thought I had come away with nothing.” I wasn’t sure what had happened. The whole piece about my need for Gideon was not something I really wanted to discuss in public, or with Gideon most of all.