Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  “You need to go to Gideon,” she began, without any explanation of her part in last night’s events. “He remains overtaken by the Griffin. When he came to, he was taken by the berserker form once more. They dosed him again, but it wears off quickly while he is in this state. As soon as he gains consciousness, he is overtaken once more. Calchas is displeased.”

  A fact which didn’t appear to alarm Fidelma unduly.

  “So Calchas’s theatrics are impeded. You can imagine my dismay.”

  “You must help. If you do not, he will kill him now.” Her eyes met mine, her chin lowering some, as she pleaded her case.

  “Gideon will not be leaving the city alive. What is it to you? Why should I facilitate whatever charade the praetor has planned?”

  “He is my son, and where there is life there is hope.” Her eyes flicked to the ceiling and upper corners of the room. No doubt our exchange was being observed.

  “I want to see my daughter.”

  “I can’t.” Her hands lifted, spreading aimlessly.

  “Then the praetor will just have to present his little production minus his guest star, won’t he?” A fleeting expression of irritation flashed across her face, similar to the one I was used to seeing on Gideon’s… I needed to go to him. But this was my one slim piece of leverage and I couldn’t miss my chance. I had to hold out. Féile was here, in the city. My path led to the sands no matter what, I was sure of it. This might be my only chance…

  Fidelma nodded curtly, knocking on the door, and speaking briefly to someone on the other side.

  We sat in silence while whoever she had sent to Praetor Calchas came back with a response.

  “How long have you been working with them?” I asked eventually, unable to help myself. Had she been in league with them all this time?

  She didn’t turn her gaze from the window, reminding me of her son. All too often he conducted conversations he didn’t want to face like this. I had always supposed it was because he didn’t care enough to face me. Maybe that wasn’t the reason.

  “Fidelma?” I prompted. She owed me this answer. I still used the name she had taken when she had become a druid, but had her betrayal been earlier, when she had still been Elizabeth Mortimer of York? “Elizabeth? How long?”

  “Since before you were born.” Her voice came low.

  My breath was stolen by this revelation as surely as if it had been a physical blow. But why, why would she do that? My mind reeled as the impact of her words hit me.

  “You’re the one who betrayed my mother?” My words were flat. I could barely manage to say them. She didn’t deny it. “Why?”

  “Magic was becoming extinct all across the Mediterranean, the lines were dying and with it the land. Refugees from all over fled here, and they helped us keep the lines flowing, but there were fewer and fewer of them. And the bloodlines were also thinning out…” She spoke slowly, as if she was exhausted.

  I saw again the map on the wall in Oxford. Scholars in the Wilds had been tracking the progress of the failing ley lines across the Empire for decades. Creeping ever closer to this island on the edge of the Empire.

  “I attended the Treaty Renewal with Richard back then. I met the new praetor and he convinced me he wanted to help, that he understood, as we did, the danger of leaving the Strand line untended, as it had been for centuries. Our husbands objected, but Viviane jumped at the opportunity to help. I went to meet her in the borderlands, and we were to enter the city together.” She finally turned to face me, her eyes hollow as they met mine. “I was nearly at our meeting point when I felt it.”

  Her fists clenched and unclenched in her lap, her entire body vibrating with the anger as if it was new.

  “She was gone.”

  “But why did they kill her? She was coming to help them.”

  Fidelma shrugged miserably. “I don’t know. Maybe Actaeon learned of it. He was a zealot, no matter the evidence that the Strand line was dying and that the curse laying waste to the Empire would inevitably arrive here.”

  Her motivations had been honest; Fidelma, or Elizabeth as she had been then, like my mother, had only wished to heal the land. I believed her when she said she hadn’t known my mother would be murdered. But since then, she had colluded with my mother’s killers. “You let everyone think I was dead?”

  “I didn’t know they had taken you,” Fidelma said earnestly, her eyes pleading with me to believe her. “I swear it.”

  They had taken me though, and my family, and Devyn, had been left without both of us. All those lives destroyed. I focussed back on what Fidelma was saying. Now that she could talk, it appeared she wanted to explain it all.

  “Once she was gone, I did everything I could. The impact on the ley line was small at first, but then more people grew ill… it was my fault. I tried to compensate. I gave my life to it. I spent time at Holy Isle as they worked tirelessly to find a way to treat the ill.”

  Gideon had told me that his mother had trained at Holy Isle when he was a child, and that she had taken him with her on occasion.

  “I travelled from one circle to another, aiding where I could. I didn’t go to the next Treaty renewal; the high druid at Glastonbury was dying, and I never wanted to see Londinium again. And for a while, it seemed as if I was enough.” Her hands twisted in her lap, even though her face had become devoid of expression. Or rather, devoid of hope, as she relived those years. “But then all of a sudden it grew worse.”

  “What happened?

  “Poor Lady Courtenay.” Fidelma sighed. “In the years after the Lady of the Lake died, people started to fall ill in Londonium. Then Aurelia Courtenay fell ill. The line had drawn energy from her. She was the strongest magical source within the walls, so she lasted longer than most latents do, because she was from such a strong bloodline. Once she was gone, the Strand ley line declined sharply.”

  The line here had been drawing on the energy of those with magic in their veins for decades; that was what caused the illness, the death throes of a dying line. With Lady Courtenay’s death, a major energy source would have suddenly disappeared and the corruption would have gone in search of more energy further along the line. This was when Fidelma would have sensed the sharp deterioration.

  “The corruption surging up the line was worse than I had ever known it, and I had to come and see for myself. I returned as part of the Treaty delegation. I had changed my appearance when I left York and tending the line had aged me. I thought it would be fine, that neither Richard nor Praetor Calchas would know I was here.” She cast a glance upwards to where the expected surveillance sat, though I knew, as she seemed not to, that the praetor’s home, unlike others, was camera free. “But somehow they did.”

  “The cameras can see through a glamour,” I informed her.

  Her face fell. “So I walked straight into their den unmasked. I approached the new Senator Dolon to confirm it was the Mallacht that had claimed Lady Courtenay and to see whether their son, the last of the Plantagenets, showed any signs of ability.”

  “Why? I thought you had just come to treat the line?”

  She rubbed a hand across her face.

  “I had, but the bloodlines had grown so thin. If Marcus could be trained in magic, could help to tend the lines, then he could be heir to the House of York. I thought there was a chance his father would listen. That he would help protect him.” Fidelma’s voice was barely audible as she tried to defend the choice she had made so many years ago. Having been betrayed once before, she had attempted a different approach but I could already see the praetor’s next moves and the further betrayals ahead.

  “Matthias despised Wilders. He would never have been interested,” I informed her. I knew, as Fidelma hadn’t, that Matthias Dolon would never have done anything purely for the sake of helping others. “Marcus was only ever a means to an end to him. The only reason he would help would be if it increased his own power.”

  Fidelma’s eyes met mine in wry acknowledgement, and she continued wearil
y. “He told me that Marcus was experiencing some vertigo and he seemed desperate to help him.”

  I snorted at that. Saving Marcus would ensure he retained the Courtenay senatorial seat; that was the only reason he would have been desperate.

  “He helped me to sneak in to Mary le Strand on the last night of the Treaty Renewal and work on the ley line. I was able to do a little to tend it on my own. It caused a terrible blackout, but when I returned to Glastonbury I could feel how much better it was.”

  “Matthias couldn’t have got you in without help. Praetorians guard the church over the line. They answer only to one man.” I saw again the sentinels on the banks of the Tamesis riding down my mother, their insignias the silver of the praetor’s own guard. Actaeon hadn’t been the one to kill her and take me. The truth had been staring me in the face from the beginning; my very first vision had told me who was behind it all.

  It had always been Praetor Calchas. He had Marcus, and once he had taken me he would have been happy to play the long game in order to have magic under his control.

  Fidelma’s hollow eyes met mine again, her mouth set in a straight line. “I was such a fool. I thought I was helping. My only thought was to save the ley line and Matthias had every reason to help me. Or so I thought.” She shrugged wearily. “Marcus inevitably started to sicken again, much worse this time, and I smuggled in some of the mistletoe medication. It suppresses the magic in the blood, so the line would no longer seek its energy from him.”

  “No. It moved on to others, to the latents in the city. And to me.” At least until the vertigo in my early teens had been held off by the same medication Marcus was being fed. Which was also how Matthias knew the Britons had something that held the illness at bay, knowledge he and Calchas had failed to act on until it served them.

  “I didn’t know. There were no reports of illness at that time in the rest of Britannia. We heard no news of it from Londinium. I thought the Mallacht only affected the strong.”

  “Because the council kept it quiet. You had to realise that people here would be sickening, dying.”

  She turned her head to look outside once more. There was still no sign of the guard returning. What if Calchas called my bluff and refused to let me see Féile? What if he decided that he didn’t need Gideon after all? I squashed down my rising panic. No, I knew him. He lived for this, for the big stage of the arena. He would want to present the mob with the new governor’s murderer. What better way to quiet the unrest that was sweeping the city? The citizenry already felt that somehow the Britons were to blame, but those in the lower classes also knew that the elite had kept the Wilders medicine for themselves. Right now the city was teetering on the edge of civil unrest. What better nudge to give them to ensure they fell in line behind him? No, Praetor Calchas needed Gideon on the sands.

  “By that time, I had become thoroughly washed out. I didn’t feel, didn’t want; the only thing left was tending the line.” Fidelma’s voice shook.

  “But you seemed so kind,” I said abjectly. The woman I had met here and on every occasion since had been so gentle, so compassionate. No sign of the burnout that had all but killed me. Callum hadn’t gone to her for help when I had been near death because we’d thought she didn’t suffer the burnout. We’d thought that my affliction was particular to me.

  “I learned to,” she said. “I lost my family and turned away from my children. I could see how it hurt them, especially Gideon; he was so young. I didn’t care then, but over the years I noticed that people had stopped responding to me and it compromised my ability to get people to aid me in tending the line, so I learned how to appear as if I still cared for others.”

  My soul shuddered. How close I had been to becoming as single-minded, as ruthlessly focussed as this woman. I could hardly imagine the impact of the years of tending the line on her, emotionally and physically, and she’d had no one to help restore that balance. She should never have given so much of herself to the line, had not been strong enough to do so.

  “When you came, you shouldered the heaviest elements. Marina also took on more. I was able to take a rest. I started to allow more of the corruption to leak northwards, and you were every bit as strong as your mother.” She smiled tremulously. “Oh, if she could see you, she would be so proud. And once I’d stopped, I started to feel again.”

  “But you kept helping them.”

  “No, no… I refused. They wanted Féile. I told them I wouldn’t do it. I was going to tell you the truth. I was going to tell you everything.”

  I wanted to believe her, but she’d had plenty of opportunity.

  “If it wasn’t you then who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And last night, you told them we were trying to escape the ball?” I could barely look at her.

  “No. I swear it. When I tried to alert the others, Clachas intercepted me; it was already too late.”

  I saw again how she had stood with Calchas. It had all happened so fast. I hadn’t been able to see her face… It was plausible. And if she really had defied him then the praetor would have delighted in having a close-up view of her face as the noose tightened.

  “The first day we met, did you know then who I really was?” I tried another tack, another weak point in her defences.

  “Yes. Your magic was fractured, buried. I didn’t at first but then there it was, like a bell, ringing clear and pure. So I lied. It seemed like you weren’t directly under Calchas control and The lines in Kernow and Anglia were starting to fade and we needed you. I knew Devyn Glyndŵr would get you out, somehow. The Griffin’s powers… whatever it took, somehow…”

  She glanced around the room, afraid of saying too much. She had told me everything, Why hesitate now?

  The door opened and a praetorian guard stepped into the room.

  “Come.”

  “He has agreed to let me see my daughter?” I checked.

  The praetorian nodded, stern faced. “Yes. Now come.”

  “They’re keeping Gideon here?” I had expected to be taken to the arena, or somewhere secure. But rather than the curved sandstone walls of the amphitheatre, we drew up short of that landmark, at the rear doors of the Governor’s Palace.

  They hadn’t managed to get very far before he recovered. When they shot him a second time, they must have opted to secure him here rather than try and cross the city.

  Alvar. I recognised the long-faced praetorian guard the moment his jeering gaze met mine as I exited the transport. He escorted me through the deserted kitchens and back corridors of the palace. On an ordinary day, these halls would be bustling with those who worked here, but now our footsteps echoed back to us.

  We came at last to the ballroom. The blood had been removed and there remained no trace of the events of the night before. Crossing to the large glass doors that opened out onto the inner courtyard, he indicated we were at our destination. His lip quirked as he looked me up and down before opening the doors out onto the day. Sunlight streamed down as the Governor’s Palace was one of the few buildings in the city that had open sky above it – no highwalks, no extra levels of the city over it. This empty space was a luxury retreat for the few, while so many lived in the dark warrens of the city. Alvar nodded to the walls where cameras no doubt now sat.

  “No theatrics this afternoon,” he advised. I assumed he was referring to our previous encounter in Richmond. “We wouldn’t want to have to punish anyone for your bad behaviour, now would we?”

  I was exhausted from tending the ley line and couldn’t have summoned a storm even if I’d wanted to, but I could do something. I would find a way to punish them. Loathsome eel.

  He pushed me out into open space and, taking the path, we curved around the high foliage to the great tree that sat in the centre… where Gideon stood poised, waiting, his amber predator’s eyes trained on me as I rounded the corner. Those glimmering wings unfurled, gold and bronze where the sunlight hit him. There was restrained power in the image that overlaid his own
form. He was the Griffin, but he was also Gideon. And both beings were furious at the shackles that bound him to the trunk of the great tree, restraining him from attacking the guard at my side and those that I could glimpse hovering at the perimeter of the courtyard.

  His neck swivelled in a preternaturally smooth movement as his focus moved to something he spotted in a window on a floor above us. An eerie cry loosed as his entire being strained to go to what he saw.

  Féile.

  There, through the large window above, we could see her with Marcus, who stood stiffly by her side. She was chatting up at him, her dark curls long and streaming down her back. She looked happy and well, and so much bigger. As we watched, a woman emerged from behind them and spoke to Marcus before taking Féile’s little hand in her own and drawing her away. Marcus’s attention turned to someone we couldn’t see, his shoulders bunched and his chin turned slightly toward the window before he too left our view.

  A growl reminded me of Gideon’s presence.

  “No, bring her to me. That’s not enough. I won’t help you,” I said angrily.

  So close. She was so very close. Could I get to her before… before what? Breathe. I could do nothing. I could possibly use what little power had returned to get to her, but what then? Gideon was bound, the others were imprisoned somewhere in the city, and the army was too far away.

  “Prove you can control him first.”

  I blinked at Alvar. Right, Gideon. He was trapped somehow. I started to go to him but was held fast by the guard at my side.

  “Gideon,” I called, but his attention was still fixed on the window where she had been, “Gideon, she’s gone.”

  His stare was brightly intense as he turned his head with that uncannily smooth movement back to me. I had to prevent myself from taking a step back.

  “Gideon,” I said softly, imperatively. His gaze tracked beyond me, continuing to take in his surroundings in a calculated way. He looked like he hovered on the edge of attack.

  I pulled again at the hand restraining me and then glared at Alvar until he gave the nod for the sentinel to release me.