Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  “It’s healthy to have everything out in the open,” he said, popping a piece of cheese into his mouth, his eyes closing as he enjoyed the flavour. “Marvellous. Here, you must try some.”

  Complying, I picked a piece off the plate he offered me, well enough now to check that it was safe to eat, and bit into the orange cube, the sharp tang bursting to life on my tongue. I expected it to taste like sawdust but the salty crystals brought my mouth to life, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since sometime the day before. I smiled tightly as I took a second piece, buying time.

  “Delicious,” I offered.

  Calchas poured out three ruby glasses of wine, one for each of us, and then waved a hand at me.

  “What would you like to know?” I asked, smiling, my cheeks stretching at the forced movement.

  “Have you enjoyed your time in the Wilds?” he asked, as if I had been out of the city on some kind of holiday.

  “Yes, very much. The land beyond the walls is incredibly beautiful,” I said, responding in kind. “The sky is vast, so much more sky than you can see here in the city. In the summer it is a great expanse of blue with cotton-ball clouds as far as the eye can see. In the winter, the mood of the day changes with the roll of grey clouds, with sun that leaks through, lighting up the hills and forests and lakes. There are miles and miles of countryside, greens and golds and blues, stretching out endlessly.”

  I could see Féile listening, so I spoke for her, describing the castle we lived in and the countryside of the Lakelands. Her eyes lifted to mine as she soaked in every word. I had grown up in the city feeling hemmed in, all the concrete and glass closing in about me, and I had never even known the freedom, the wide open spaces that she had

  “Ah, wonderful,” Calchas applauded, Féile startling at the sharp sound, the light in her eyes dimming. “Why, it sounds as though you didn’t miss us at all.”

  I levelled a dead-eyed gaze at him.

  “No.”

  “Surely you must have missed some things about your life here?” he pressed, as if he was an uncle disappointed to learn his beloved niece had nothing good to say about the privileged life he had funded.

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say and now that Féile had retreated, my own energy had dropped.

  “I’m glad that you enjoyed your time away, but you know that we felt your absence deeply, didn’t we Marcus?”

  Marcus nodded in response, his green eyes miserable. He didn’t seem to know any more than I did what Calchas’s game was.

  “You must have learned so many valuable things in the north,” the praetor commented casually. “I believe you have done all you can to heal the ley for now?”

  My lips twisted sourly. Fidelma must have told him everything.

  He stood and went to the door, speaking to someone outside then returning to the table and rubbing his hands together.

  “Do eat, my dears. It’s important to keep one’s strength up,” he urged with the concern of a parent. We ate in silence, Marcus’s eyes catching mine once as Calchas lifted his glass to his lips, his look beseeching me, but to do what? To say what?

  I lifted a piece of fruit to my lips, nibbling at it in an approximation of enjoying the meal. The rest of my life could be measured in minutes and this was how I was to spend my last afternoon before my inevitable condemnation. But at least I could see Féile, spend what time Calchas allowed with her. Suddenly I wished for this meal to never end.

  “Fidelma and my mother tried to help you heal the Strand ley line.” I returned to our conversation casually. Calchas loved to talk and all I had to do was engage him. What better way to prolong the meal than let him bang on about his clever machinations? “Why not accept?”

  Why murder my mother?

  Calchas’s lips curled up and the eternally convivial host paused before he began his tale in order to refill Marcus’s newly empty glass as he considered my question.

  “I was young, newly appointed as praetor of the city, and I was made privy to the truth of the curse of the Maledictio that was spreading across the Empire. When Fidelma approached me and explained the cause and the cure that she and the famed Lady of the Lake could provide, I accepted. I promised them safe passage.” He shrugged. “I went to the governor, but he was less than pleased to learn of my plans. What could I do?”

  “You killed my mother to redeem yourself.” I stated starkly but without the venom that spewed inside as Féile looked on.

  “Just so.” He popped a grape into his mouth. “Things continued as before, on the inevitable slide into a disaster that Acteon was too pompous to address, for to heal the land would require working with magic wielders, and that would never do.”

  “But you never intended to just let the city follow the path the Empire had taken,” I said. I knew him; he had a contingency in place. He’d been gathering strength, collecting senators who he could bring round to his own point of view until Marcus and I came of age.

  “No.” He smiled at my comprehension that having lost the first round he had settled in to play the long game. “When Elizabeth finally ventured back into the city under her flimsy disguise as Fidelma the wisewoman, and approached the newly widowed Senator Dolon, Matthias came to me and suggested that the Britons were there for the taking, that now was the time. I wasn’t so sure. The Empire would send in reinforcements if it looked like we could take the whole island because the land here was still healthy; we would expand the available farmlands and the last thing we needed was to become the refuge of an Empire in its death throes. Why share today when you can have the whole cake tomorrow? It was only a matter of time.”

  Calchas leaned back in his chair, pushing his plate away with an air of satisfaction. “There was no rush. We just had to hold on. The corruption of the ley lines steadied as Fidelma took over at Glastonbury. Matthias had her tend the Strand line at the Treaty Renewals, and that would have to suffice until you came of age.”

  Calchas stood, thoroughly involved in his story. He went to stand behind my daughter, his hands playing with her curls as he continued his tale. It set my every nerve on edge. Marcus didn’t seem too pleased either, sitting mute and stiff beside her. Calchas sent him an amused glance.

  “Then Marcus started to sicken. Matthias sent word to Fidelma, and she sent some marvellous concoction that they had started producing somewhere in the Wilds and that fixed Marcus right up. It also had the unfortunate side effect that it blocked his magic. Then, as you came into your magic, you too began to sicken. Fortunately, Marcus had a steady supply of suppressant which also kept both of your abilities hidden from the authorities. By this time, we had started to look for alternatives to Acteon’s insistence on allowing the ill to die according to the same foolish policy that had already destroyed the rest of the Empire, dried up the leys and then the land. We started to examine the ill, to see if something could be done. And as you have seen, with the right application of technology and magic, we have managed to treat the ley line sufficiently ourselves.

  “How?” I asked. I thought he was burning latents up. What application of technology? “I thought magic and tech don’t work together?”

  “That’s what we always thought. What everyone thought. When the wars finally came to an end and terms were agreed, the ley line here had already been untended for generations. The industrial and technological revolutions had swept away the last traces of magic use within the walls. We saw that the more magically gifted Britons grew ill when they came and would recover once they left. Of course, we know now that it was the ley line drawing on them that made them unwell, but they resolved to avoid the fate of the Empire and Londinium by avoiding technology. To ridiculous lengths, I believe. Is it true that there isn’t even indoor plumbing?” he laughed. “In the Empire, they believed that where there was magic, technology did not advance, so it was stamped out. Exterminated. Everyone stayed in their own corners. Here-be-dragons, superstition, and tradition became reality.”

  “But the blacko
uts?”

  “During the Treaty renewals?” He raised a brow.

  “Fidelma treating the Strand line,” I realised.

  Calchas bowed his head in acknowledgement of my correct guess.

  “So, technology and magic can live side by side.”

  “Oh, yes. Fluctuations in the ley lines can cause blips, but that is manageable. Disruptions can be managed – not at sea and such, but for the most part,” Calchas dismissed. “In fact, we discovered that not only can they live side by side but… well, in truth, we only figured it out after we caught the most interesting hacker. He was gifted in magic and tech. Actaeon, of course, clodhopper that he was, tried to have him killed. I persuaded him that we might find out more if we threw him back into the world to see how he was doing it.”

  Marcus looked up in recognition of this part of the story.

  “And what a find. Not only was Devyn Agrestis using magic but he had discovered our little secret and persuaded her to stop taking her pills. And she didn’t sicken. It turns out our naughty doctor had also decided he didn’t need his meds though he was starting to show signs of illness.”

  They didn’t realise that I had been ill. I had been unwell in Richmond, which I had put down to magic use and done everything I could to hide it. Then I had returned to Londinium and Devyn. Without realising it, in being with Devyn I had done the best thing I could for my wellbeing.

  Calchas continued his crowing, barely needing my encouragement, so delighted was he in his own cleverness and at finally having an audience he could boast to, even if that audience were the victims of his manipulations – or perhaps this just added extra relish to the performance. Marcus’s face was grey and expressionless as he listened. How much had he already known?

  “The time was right to make our move. The Empire is crumbling. We just needed to win over the mob and get Actaeon out of the way. And Fidelma provided the answer. She was rather put out to learn that we’d had Catriona Deverell all this time, untrained and underemployed while the ley lines continued to fail. She demanded that Matthias help her get our little Cassandra and the Griffin out. Matthias bargained with her, promising to return Cassandra to the Wilds in exchange for more of the medicine that Fidelma had been supplying for years. She informed us that the raw materials would be useless without someone trained in assembling the medicine. Fortunately, a likely candidate was easily found. The illness was spreading and when Matthias let slip to him that the Wilders had something, well, you know how these scientific types are. He tried to help you escape the night of your prenuptial revels so he could try to discover more.” Marcus had told the truth; he hadn’t been part of it all along. His jaw clenched at learning that far from being the one to suggest we be freed to allow him to go north and discover the cure, he had never been anything more than a rather naïve pawn pushed about by his father and his puppet master. “The good doctor to the rescue of the masses. He put forward quite a compelling proposal, and Matthias and I were all too happy to help you slip Actaeon’s noose. So Matthias engineered your escape, and, well, the rest, as they say, is history.”

  “Except you never had any intention of aiding the masses.” Marcus’s tone was bitter. “You were all too happy to drain their essence and feed it to the ley line.”

  “Oh yes.” Calchas beamed. “I’m forgetting the best part. Not only did your would-be rescuer nearly get you executed, but he gave us the key to strengthening the ley ourselves.”

  “What?” I asked numbly when he paused, waiting for the prompt. It wasn’t enough to monologue his triumph, he had to make me engage, to ask for more. “How?”

  “Actaeon putting Devyn Agrestis on the sands against my wishes was a stroke of luck.” Calchas was practically hovering off his chair. “His blood hit the sand…”

  Marcus brows drew together, reflecting my own confusion.

  “The start of the epidemic,” Marcus crowed, his face grey.

  Devyn had been whipped in punishment for his hacking offence. His blood had sprayed across the sand at my first Mete. In the weeks afterwards, the illness had grown worse.

  “Over the summer, by coincidence”—my fingers clawed to scratch the glee from his expression—“we had a few capital offences of people who also happened to be afflicted by the Maledictio. Guilty, I’m afraid. The results were spectacular.”

  This explained the crowds outside Bart’s by the time I had become handfasted to Marcus. Hundreds of people had become ill and the hospital had been unable to cope. The blood sacrifice in the arena was what had corrupted the line. The leaching that occurred as it faded had twisted it, horrifically strengthened by the blood draining directly into the sands. It was then able to draw even more energy from the population above, causing illness in latents in unprecedented numbers.

  “You’re sucking the life out of people to feed to the line?” That was what I had felt; that was the snarl that I hadn’t been able to untwist. Why I couldn’t release the burned-out souls trapped in the ley line. The blood on the sand was binding them somehow.

  “Well, they were dying anyway. Clever science people figured it all out, and they’ve even managed to hook the ley line into the city grid, so its health can be monitored,” he sniggered at his own joke. “Like I said, magic and tech working together.”

  Tethered together more like. He had somehow harnessed and sickened the ley line and now he was calculatedly feeding it the disappeared. He had turned the line into a grotesque parasite.

  “Then why go to such trouble to get me to treat it?” After all, that was why he had taken Féile. To lure me here. But it was strong, even if in the most appalling way. I had unsnarled it some but if his intention was to ensure its strength and avoid the fate of the failing Empire, he already had that in hand.

  “Well, we can’t very well go to war while suffering what the people suppose is an epidemic. No, we need the full support of the population. You did such a fantastic job for Marcus and we can’t thank you enough. There are all kinds of reports sweeping the city, rumours of the ill recovering overnight. Isn’t it wonderful? As long as you keep it healthy, no one else has to die. But it’s no matter if you choose not to. We have options.”

  I pictured the stacked vials of blood in the lab again. He didn’t even have to wait for symptoms to reveal latents. He would systematically test the entire population and feed their life-force to the ley.

  He spoke of orchestrating the deaths of thousands as if he was arranging a party, and halting those deaths only so he could begin his war. He had waited until the Empire was weak, Actaeon had been dispensed with, and the Britons… they didn’t stand a chance. Calchas had figured out how to balance magic and tech. With an arsenal of reliable tech weaponry, the Britons would be annihilated.

  “How could you be a part of this?” I asked Marcus. His shoulders were hunched, his body frozen as he digested the reality he had helped construct.

  Calchas was leaning back in his chair, smiling broadly as if it was the most entertaining play he had ever seen. Our reactions were a validation that he had achieved the impact he had sought. I saw it all now, how my mother’s death had occurred and the pieces that had fallen or been manoeuvred into place. It did seem, though, that Fidelma had never purposely acted against me. She truly hadn’t known that I had been stolen until we met at that first Treaty Renewal, and she had tried to bargain for my freedom, had sworn that despite appearances she had not alerted Calchas that we were trying to escape.

  “How did you get Féile? Was it Fidelma?”

  “Lady Mortimer? No, once you were on the other side of the walls, she became most intractable. But there’s always some way to thread the needle,” he said, his eyes lighting up in amusement. “You just have to tailor the solution to the problem.”

  Who? If it hadn’t been Fidelma, then who had betrayed us? Who would have helped Calchas? Who could he have got his claws into? The praetor’s crowing was oddly worded…

  Oban.

  I had barely seen him in York becaus
e he had been busy putting together a wardrobe for Gideon and me, but still, he had been in a strange city and he was shy, usually drawing close to me when ill at ease. But he had kept his distance. I had seen him only from afar, my daughter’s dog at his heels.

  “You threatened Oban’s family,” I said flatly.

  “Just so. He was in our control before he ever left the walls. Always advantageous to have a few carefully placed people on the other side of the border. We thought he would be useful but it worked out beyond my greatest expectations when he went north with you.” He beamed, spreading his hands wide. “I think he hoped Carlisle was beyond our reach. It wasn’t.

  He held out longer than I thought, so very loyal. Information was one thing, but to get him to bring the girl to us we had to use a little more persuasion.”

  I frowned.

  “Yes, he was down one mother and one younger sibling before he agreed to do our bidding.” Calchas laughed delightedly.

  I recalled the timid woman in the corner of his old home, the young children he had left behind with her to go with Marina. Calchas had killed them. Poor Oban. All this time.

  I had hoped to prolong the meal in order to spend precious moments in the same room as my daughter, though she sat out of reach, hunched in her chair while Calchas spewed his triumph. But even for her sake I could endure this no longer. I could not enable his delight at our misery for even a fraction of a second more.

  “Why exactly are you telling me all this?” I asked, disgusted.

  He threw a shoulder up in a shrug. “Why not?”

  Much as he loved an audience, I knew there must be a point in explaining all this. He always had a plan; he did nothing without an underlying purpose.

  “What is it you want?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  “Haven’t you been paying attention, my dear? I want everything.”

  Everything? What did that mean? He had me. The most I could do was tend the line.

  “What do you want from me?” I needed to know. Was there a chance he wasn’t going to kill me?