Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  He helped push my dress down over my shoulders and then we were together in the dark, skin against skin, hand to hand, mouth to mouth, moving, seeking, finding. I needed everything.

  In that moment as the world exploded, I felt complete, body and soul united, the fractured mess that walked and talked through my life was simply whole.

  We lay there afterwards, wrapped in each other in a way that reminded me of the time before. Before Féile had been stolen, when I had thought briefly that maybe, maybe there was something more than duty and service between us.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, in an echo of other times, times when I had been broken into pieces only he could put together.

  “I feel…” I bit my lip, “good.”

  “Just good? No desire to fly out of windows?” He arched a brow at me.

  “That’s a good thing, no?”

  He didn’t answer as he turned on his side away from me. I traced the branches of the tree that wound over his hip, worrying at the Celtic patterns that lay there, then up across the magnificence of the creature on his back, to the wings that splayed across his shoulders.

  Gideon’s behaviour was a mystery to me at the best of times but he had been behaving oddly since I came back from Avalon. I had thought that it was because of Féile, or the strangeness of his months at the lake. But maybe Alice and Bronwyn were right. Was he not pleased that I might not need him? That I might not need this closeness to restore me?

  “I wanted you to be free,” I whispered into the darkness.

  The darkness ate my words until finally he responded.

  “I’ve always been free.”

  I slipped easily through the crowd in the forum, which parted to make way for the two Celts in their midst. The forum was one of the few public places where the delegates were permitted, making it the most natural location for us to make the switch from Briton to citizen. We made our way to the tent where Fidelma read the palms of the city’s elite. She had reported that the queries they had about their futures now lent towards health rather than wealth or whatever more frivolous concerns had occupied them in the past. She had initially protested at resuming her old position as the wisewoman, but when she finally acquiesced she had insisted on keeping the face of Elizabeth Mortimer, much to Rion’s frustration.

  Our first day here, Rion had insisted we keep strictly to our assumed roles within the delegation to establish ourselves before disappearing for periods to explore the city. Gideon and I, as minor players in Rion’s entourage, were able to slip away quite easily while Bronwyn was too visible as she now represented Gwynedd. Llewelyn had stayed with the army, leading them as far as the borders in readiness while we waited for the Albans to come south, hoping they would arrive before winter but not satisfied to wait in York for them.

  Fidelma looked up and indicated to the screen behind her current client, who was just departing.

  I changed quickly, loathe to leave Gideon alone with Fidelma for too long.

  When I emerged, his stony face explained the heavy silence. He took the neat pile of clothes from his mother and we exchanged places.

  I stood in front of one of the mirrors on the tent wall, my fingers nimble as they pulled my hair up into the intricate styles that were the custom here. It was amazing how my fingers remembered how to do it, when I hadn’t done anything more than a loose tie or braid in so long.

  Fidelma nodded her approval, admiring the outfit Oban had supplied before we left him behind in York. He had been unable to travel into the city as, despite his sister’s power, he didn’t even have the smidge of latent magic it would take to keep from being recognised.

  “Tonight,” she said, “I’ll take you to where I believe the main node is. We can see if we can gain access.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve spoken to Rion. We’re making Féile our priority.”

  “What? No, the ley… we must…”

  “Fidelma,” I said, taking her hands in mine to soften the blow of the change in our power dynamic. “I sense the corruption but the line feels strong to me. It’s not dying. You must sense it too.”

  Her brow creased. “I don’t understand. When we were here last time it was worse. The level of corruption reaching Glastonbury indicated… I assumed the line must be fading.”

  “I believe you.” And I did. Recalling how weak I had felt in those final weeks here, no longer taking the state-sponsored suppressant, I had been susceptible to the line drawing on me, but that drag was much fainter now. Rion and Bronwyn concurred, they had both suffered from the illness on previous visits Rion particularly but so far they felt fine. The line could wait – we had to find Féile.

  Gideon emerged from behind the screen freshly outfitted in another of the looks Oban had whistled up. Our resident tailor had done himself proud. The clean lines and sharp tailoring managed to emphasise style and diminish the impact of Gideon’s physique, as requested, to an astounding degree.

  “How on earth did he manage that?” I asked, running a hand down the lapel in admiration of Oban’s craftmanship. My breath caught as I sensed a shift that I recognised, a disorienting adjustment between what my eyes were seeing and what my touch told me was the truth.

  I raised surprised eyes to amused amber ones. I stepped back and the predatory wolf in Roman clothing wavered and became once more an urbane, average-looking citizen.

  “Oh.”

  “Rhodri helped me figure it out,” he said simply.

  So that was what he had been doing while we were in York.

  I looked again at my reflection in the mirror. It was unnerving. My delegate appearance as a brunette, pale-skinned Mercian stared back at me. Fidelma appeared at my shoulder nodding approvingly as the image wavered until a dark-haired, olive-skinned citizen blinked back at me.

  “What do you see?” I asked Gideon curiously.

  “You,” he said. “I see you.”

  He bowed his head in the formal manner of the elite, and, straightening, offered me his arm, a devilish glint lighting his eye.

  “Shall we?” he asked, mildly flirtatiously.

  I wrapped my arm in the disconcertingly un-muscled one offered to me just as a new client entered the tent.

  “I do beg your pardon,” the woman said on seeing us there.

  I froze. The woman nodded at us politely, her reaction the same as she would have offered any citizen.

  “Yes, these people are just finished,” Fidelma said, ushering us out. “Please come in.”

  We made our way through the forum, weaving between the people in the porticoed corridor.

  “What now?” Gideon asked as we stepped through the forum gates, unhindered by the sentinels waiting by the transports that were for the sole use of delegates – mainly used to ferry us from the Governor’s Palace to the forum – and out onto the bustling street.

  “We wander, I suppose.”

  We strode along the streets, the sights and smells at once so familiar to me and yet also newly foreign.

  The projections from shop windows flickered as they attempted to boot up avatars with the latest fashions in front of us, but glitching when they failed to identify our faces and stored preferences. The twirl and dance of other pedestrians’ avatars, as well as the neon monitors flashing advertisements and news from the feeds, threatened to overload my senses. How did people think with this constant bombardment? But that was the point, I supposed. Who had the space to think, to ask questions, to challenge the status quo when there was so much coming at them all the time?

  In the end, I was surprised at how easily and quickly I was able to tune out the bombardment and simply absorb the wider world of the city.

  I noted the familiar grandeur of the great buildings, their styles reflecting eras of prosperity and austerity side by side in the towers that twined upwards ever higher. I felt the thrum and vibrations of understood rhythms of life here wash past me: the worker dashing to get the last train, the huddles of children walking home from school, the candlemaker
hawking his wares in the window of intense trade that only came every four years with the Briton delegation. There was something about the higgledy-piggledy architecture of this city that had been my home that called to me, that whispered in my ear of ages past, of histories known and forgotten. The sights and sounds were so different to what I had become used to during the last couple of years: the song of the ley line, the vast expanse of fingers of light breaking through cloud over the valleys of Cymru, the rushing waters of the rivers and brooks, the mesmerising reflections on the lakes outside of Carlisle, the defensive huddle of houses in York.

  Maybe Londinium wasn’t the home of my soul now, but it was a home I had once loved nonetheless. It didn’t sing to my soul as the wide-open spaces did. But neither could I deny the rhythms of life to which I was again responding now – sounds and sights I had grown up with. Just as in the north I knew the familiar sound of Gideon’s footsteps in the hall, Féile’s giggle as she played with Snuffles, the harmony of the Belinus ley line at the stone circles in good periods. Here too there were things I knew and that were a part of me.

  Gideon trailed at my side, his mild-mannered façade blending seamlessly into the city streets, but on taking his hand and getting a closer look I saw the signs of stress. His sharp eyes missed nothing, scanning the streets as we walked along, but there was a lot more to take in than he was used to. He looked like the men one occasionally saw at the annual sales in the shopping districts: overwhelmed and in shock. I was struggling with the assault on my senses, senses which were nowhere near as sensitive as Gideon’s must be, especially as the sights and sounds were new to him. I curled my fingers around his and scanned the busy street for somewhere to give him some respite.

  I pushed through the door into the relative calm of a coffee shop. Soft music and the nutty, caramel aroma of freshly ground beans enveloped us as we left the city behind. I could feel Gideon relax instantly.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly, even as I winced at not having seen the signs earlier. I set him in the quietest corner and hurried to place an order.

  “Here,” I said, handing him a small coffee. His entire face screwed up in protest at his first sip.

  “Are you trying to poison me?” he spluttered.

  I was utterly horrified. I had brought him into one of Devyn’s favourite places and served him his favourite extraordinarily strong coffee. I had just done the very thing Gideon had been hung up about for years.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…” My voice cracked.

  “It’s all right. I’ll survive,” he hurried to reassure me before pausing as he took in the full extent of my distress. “You came here with him?”

  I gave a small nod. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I know.”

  “What?” It was that easy.

  “I’ve been thinking about him today,” he said softly. “I don’t know how he did it. How he lived here all those years. Day after day. Never sure if he would find you.”

  “Oh,” I said against the knot forming in my throat.

  “Walking a mile in another’s shoes is… educational.” His eyes looked tired.

  “Have you sensed anything?”

  He shook his head wearily. “It’s a lot, turning on my hunting senses here in the city.” He rubbed a knuckle into his temple. “I know she’s here, but it keeps slipping away. Every time I sense her… all the digital things, the transports, the noise.”

  “We will find her.”

  But two more days of walking, crisscrossing the inner city, gambling that the Council would keep her where security was tightest turned up nothing. On the third, I ventured out alone, despite Gideon’s protests. But I had recruited Rion and Bronwyn to insist he take a break; Gideon could barely hold the glamour anymore, much less extend his senses to seek out our daughter.

  The days were slipping by so fast. I stepped out of the forum onto the crowded street I wasn’t entirely sure what use I was on my own but I couldn’t just sit at another trade discussion. I needed to try.

  Time was running out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Donna,” a voice hailed me from behind.

  I walked on, sure I must have been mistaken.

  “Donna,” it came again, insistent. “I want to help.”

  My breath became short, but I refused to turn around. I had only just started my search today. How had I been identified so quickly?

  An object was pressed into my palm. I looked at it and stopped short. It was a charm, sewn onto a wristband – not the one I had given to Marcus, an older shabbier model. I pulled the charm and twisted it to reveal the Celtic symbol that sat hidden on the reverse.

  I lifted my eyes to the crooked smile and lined face of a man I had never met before.

  He placed his hand over my own and activated the charm.

  “I’m Linus,” he said. “Devyn’s friend.”

  “Right,” I said warily. He could be Linus, or he could be anyone.

  “There is somewhere we could go, talk more freely, if it please you, donna,” he said, catching my sense of caution.

  I needed a friend in the city, someone who could help in my search. Someone who could move about more freely than I could. I squeezed the hand that held mine before releasing it and examined his face. Trust was not something I gave too freely these days. I gripped the charm in my hand. Could I trust him?

  Could I afford not to trust him?

  “Okay,” I said.

  His crooked smile broadened and he took off, turning once to check that I was following him before he barrelled onwards, ducking down alleys and dashing up connecting walkways that all led east. We passed through Bishopsgate, him always staying a few feet in front, within sight but never so close that we appeared to be together. I pulled my cloak close around me, hiding the fine cut of my clothing as best I could. Luckily my cloak was nondescript enough not to attract unwanted attention.

  Finally, he dodged into a familiar doorway and up shabby stairs to wait for me in an open doorway to a room that was filled with memories: shouting at Devyn for deceiving me, laughing in jubilation after we got Marina out, kissing him… I closed the lid on the box that threatened to spill over, its contents something I could not deal with right now.

  “So, you’re Linus,” I said.

  He waved me over to the seat by the wall.

  “I am, donna.”

  “Do you know who I am?” I’d had time to think on the way here – he shouldn’t have been able to recognise me.

  “I do. I don’t know if the boy told you how we met. I’m able to see past illusions and glamours and suchlike.” His face clouded. “He’s gone, they told me. I was so sorry to hear it. He was a good lad.”

  “How did you find out?” Rion had told me that the flow of information across the walls was squeezed tighter than ever these days.

  “I was still in the Shadowlands when word came out of York. Tales of an attack and the Griffin dead. I didn’t know what that was rightly, but the Briton folk, they were full of tales of the young lad what run off to find his lady. I knew right off it had to be him. He found you, didn’t he? Said he would. Never knew anyone in my life more like to make the stars do what they were told.”

  I smiled thinly, recognising the man I’d loved in the young boy Linus had befriended. Even as I cursed the stars that had betrayed us so terribly so soon after we left here.

  “Why did you come back?” Surely he would have been safer in the Shadowlands, and to come back to his old flat seemed particularly foolish.

  “I had to. People need my help. I couldn’t just see myself safe.”

  “You know that the praetorians tracked Devyn. They may know about this place.”

  “It has been four years. Devyn put heavy charms on this place that make it safer than anywhere else so I had to get it back when I returned. And most importantly, I am not the same man.” With these words, his face changed appearance. “I am a latent. My on
ly skill is in glamours. That was how I met Devyn – I saw through his.”

  “I can’t stay long,” I said. “I have to be back for a banquet this evening.”

  “I won’t keep you, donna, but I wanted to tell you who I was and that I’m here for whatever you need.”

  “Do you know where my daughter is?”

  “Daughter? Is that why you’ve come?” His brow crinkled. “I thought, maybe you were here to help.”

  “Help who?” I asked, curious. He had risked a lot in approaching me, and apparently it had not been just for my sake.

  “The latents what are ill,” he said slowly. “I thought you might help us with getting them out.”

  “No, I’m sorry, Linus,” I said slowly. “But why do they need to get out? There is medicine now. Aren’t they able to come forward, get the medicine?”

  His eyes widened at this, his crooked mouth twisting.

  “Those meds only go to the elite. Nobody from here ever sees the stuff they brought in a few years ago. “

  After everything Marcus had done, all of his so-called purer motives, he had failed them. Just as he had failed me. Bitterness ran through me, deep and unrelenting.

  “What’s more, nobody from round here would put their hand up to try,” Linus continued. “We’re locked in like mice in a trap, no way out, not for us in the stews. No papers good enough to get you through the gates these days unless you’ve got a clean bill of health, and there’s nobody from round here that ain’t got some taint in ’em.”

  “Taint? Magic, you mean?”

  “I mean in the blood. Ain’t just latents they take now. Anyone what’s got a smidge of Briton blood seems to fit the bill.”

  “Fit what bill?”

  He sighed, pushing his hair back with his hand. “We don’t know. Can’t figure it out. Even the hackers, they’ve tried everything, but there’s no sign of it, no sign of the truth anywhere.”

  “What truth?”

  He looked at me as if I were the one speaking in tongues.