Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  Eventually, I was led down the hall to the dining table for the negotiations. The Steward of York, seated beside a frozen Fidelma, looked fit to explode. I was led to the foot of the table where Gideon, at his most indolent, sat beside his parents. Facing him, on my left was Marcus beside Bronwyn and Rion.

  Praetorian guards were positioned at the walls where usually servants might wait in attendance.

  The praetor entered and took a seat at the head of the table facing me, waving to a guard to fill his glass and those around the table. He waited until they were all filled and then took his glass, raising it for a toast.

  “To friends and treaties old and new,” he said. When no one responded, he looked around the table. “I see one of our most important guests is absent. But it is far too late in the evening for little ones to join us, don’t you think?”

  Message received, we all duly raised our glasses and drank to the toast.

  Calchas sat back in his chair and proceeded to eat his meal while we all sat stiffly around the table, a set of players waiting for him to give us our lines. But the praetor proceeded to blithely eat his meal as if us sitting down to meals was a daily occurrence.

  Eventually, Richard Mortimer was unable to restrain himself any longer.

  “What did you do?” he snarled at his former wife.

  Fidelma’s expression was bitter as she explained again her discussions during a Treaty renewal over twenty years ago with the seemingly friendly new praetor. “I told him what would happen if the city continued to deal only in technology and ignore the ley lines, that it was not sustainable. That the Lady of the Lake could help.”

  “There was a reason the lady didn’t attend the Treaty Renewals,” the steward growled, his expression thunderous as he listened to the woman he had once called wife attempt to explain the indefensible. “You persuaded her to come here, to tend the line, to put her trust in these…”

  Rion sat in stony silence, his eyes hooded, looking down at the table.

  “She trusted you. You were her closest friend.” He spoke in such a low voice that it was difficult to hear him. “She brought the children.”

  “I don’t know why she did that,” Fidelma responded. “At the time, I thought it meant she knew she would be safe.”

  “But she wasn’t safe,” Rion roared, rearing up out of his seat, the veins pulsing in his forehead.

  Calchas waved back the sentinels who had taken hold of Rion at his outburst, delighted at the drama. Rion’s magic must be suppressed, or Calchas was awfully confident that none of us would defy him while he had Féile. Which was all too true. Apart from the Steward of York, whose concern would be more for the legacy of the lake gift and less for the beloved child, but of all of us he had the least magic in his veins; as a Mortimer his bloodline was ancient enough that he would be stronger than the average latent, but nowhere near as potent as the other bloodlines that sat around this table.

  Fidelma’s lips were bloodless as her body seemed to curl in on itself and Rion shrugged off the sentinels before stiffly sitting down once more. The heaviest of silences resumed. Nobody wanted to provide further entertainment.

  “What do you want?” I asked baldly. I was sick of him. Sick of his games.

  “What we all want,” Calchas smiled. “A happy ever after.”

  I flicked a glance to Gideon whose gaze met mine. Did such a thing even exist?

  “Oh, my dear,” he said, catching our exchange. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. But perhaps something with a little less tragedy could be arranged if you so wish it?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Perhaps Gideon’s— You don’t mind if I call you Gideon, do you?” he enquired, moving on without waiting for an answer. “Perhaps Gideon’s ending might be delayed.”

  “Delayed?” I asked.

  “Hmm, so abrupt. Let’s say his current sentence was to be lifted. What might you be willing to pay?”

  I was confused. Was Calchas really offering to let Gideon live?

  “You will let my son go?” Fidelma asked.

  “Why not?” Calchas smirked at our disbelief that Gideon’s life was on the table despite his recent sentencing on the sands.

  “But I killed your friend,” Gideon pointed out unhelpfully.

  “Matthias Dolon was hardly my friend. You did me a favour.” Calchas’s smile encompassed the entire table, including Marcus who sat gauntly quiet. “Matthias was a thorn; he truly hated everything about the natives. Though he also enjoyed power, and was torn between restoring his son to the York throne and clearing the land of vermin and replanting it with citizens fleeing the Maledictio. What grand plans he had. But I had my own plans, and isn’t this more fun?”

  He splayed his hands out to take in the room, the city, the country – who knew? As far as he was concerned, it was all his. And with magic and technology at his command, who would be able to stop him?

  “What is it you want?” Rion cut across him, as annoyed as the rest of us by his games.

  He licked his lips. “I want her power,” he said.

  “That’s not possible,” I protested.

  “No.” Calchas sighed. “So I must make do with you. In my power.”

  My gut clenched. As predicted, I was trapped, but I was going to make him pay.

  “You’ll let them all go, including Gideon?” I asked. It was more than I had hoped for. “And I have to stay? That’s it, that’s the deal?”

  “Ah, well, I already have everything I need right now,” the praetor said smugly. “So it’s going to take a little more than that.”

  What more could he possibly want? What more did we have to give?

  “I want you to marry Marcus as before. And then, all of you,” he said, lifting his knife from the meal he was the only one currently enjoying and waving it around, “are going to swear fealty to them, to Londinium.”

  “No,” the steward baulked.

  Bronwyn swung to Rion at her side. As the representative for the princes of Cymru and her father in Kernow, she would take her lead from Mercia. Rion sat stone-faced. He couldn’t contemplate this; he had given his life to protecting what he had left, to his country. Surely he wouldn’t agree to this, even to save the life of his friend.

  Fidelma put a hand on Calchas’s arm. “Why to Londinium?” she asked. “Why not to you?”

  Calchas was always one step ahead, and yet I could see the twisted logic. Unlike Matthias Dolon, it wasn’t the appearance of power that satisfied him. It was the control of that power.

  “This way he gets everything,” I said. “And everyone.”

  “No resistance – he gets the whole island,” Lord Richard concurred.

  Bronwyn was horrified. “The Albans will never agree. They aren’t even bound to the current Treaty.”

  “Of course they will.” The praetor smiled. “They very badly want something I’ve got.”

  “Féile,” I provided to the group, as they tried to figure out Calchas’s cryptic smugness. Life in the south with its failing lines was hard; how much harder would the failure of crops be in a land that already required hardiness to survive? “He has Féile and she is the next Lady of the Lake. What we had hesitated at, the praetor has no problem giving: the hand of a child in marriage. Do you?”

  “None at all,” he said.

  “Why would we agree to this?” Bronwyn asked, with a sideways glance as Rion continued to stay silent.

  “Well if you don’t, your tribes will be leaderless, your land will be without the magic that is keeping the curse at bay, and I will still rule the entire island, just with a great deal more dead people in it than there are now.”

  Right.

  A stunned silence fell over the room as the alternative was laid before us. Calchas would see the world destroyed rather than share it. He had worked towards this goal for decades. If he had to let the ley lines die and hundreds of thousands starve then he would.

  “We have no choice,” Rion finally said.
>
  “You can’t agree to this.” Lord Richard spoke slowly, his eyes trained on Rion alone.

  “He already has.” Calchas beamed.

  The crown on the balcony. Rion had seen this coming. Had already bargained his country for my life. For the lives of his people, the life that flowed through his lands. Sacrificing their freedom. And mine. If Rion saw no way out, then the others would not find one.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “But you let Gideon go free. And he takes Féile with him.”

  Calchas’s eyes narrowed. Féile was part of his plan.

  “You get what you want, just not yet,” I said. “You’ll still have me. They’ll bring her back when she’s of age. I want this for her. I want her to grow up with a parent who loves her.”

  “You don’t love her?”

  I threw an evil eye at Fidelma, a sour taste in my mouth. “I do love her. She is my world. But I won’t after a while, isn’t that right, Fidelma? In a few years, I’ll be…”

  I petered out, in apparent horror at the fate that awaited me. I gripped Gideon’s hand beneath the table, begging him to remain silent. He knew, as the others did not, that I still needed him as I had before, that the lady of Avalon’s words had been fork-tongued. I needed him. But I would not have Féile grow up here with me when she could have so much more.

  “I assume letting the Griffin stay with me is something you have considered?” I asked, unsure if I was pushing to distract him from the question of Féile or whether some part of me was begging to have him remain with me. If Gideon was with me, there was still a chance, together we would find a way to break Calchas’s grip.

  “And dismissed. Maybe before, but his gift has grown stronger. It’s enough to have you here; his presence isn’t even useful for leverage, or soon won’t be.” Calchas sighed. “Shame you won’t be as delightful as you are now. So reactive, so emotional. Always in love. But this one, no, no, he must go.”

  “And Féile with him,” I demanded again.

  “If you insist. After you’ve married Marcus,” he reminded me. “A proper marriage, mind you. You know how I’ve always dreamed of you two having a family.”

  Children strong in the blood, with magic that he would own. Once he had them… He had promised the Albans Féile, the Lake bloodline was strictly matriarchal, but if anything were to happen to her before she came of age… Would the gift pass to another? One Calchas had not promised away? Horror filled me.

  But then another option whispered to me: the ley line would take me if I let it. Everyone would be free; once they were beyond the walls I could just let go. Calchas’s leverage would be gone. I closed my eyes and nodded.

  “Excellent,” he said, “a celebration. Bring me champagne. A rare treat, as the lands across the channel increasingly fail, these are precious bottles indeed but we have a betrothal to toast.”

  “They’ll need to divorce,” Fidelma pointed out quietly. Calchas looked surprised. For a man who had planned out every step, the fact that he had missed something as obvious as my current marriage was unlike him. He must have been too caught up in celebrating his own splendid cleverness.

  “They are married?” he asked coldly. Interesting, so neither Fidelma nor Oban had told him everything they knew.

  “It is a task of moments,” Fidelma hurried on at the displeased expression taking over Calchas’s face. “Divorce under our laws is merely a matter of mutual consent.”

  “Consent then.” Calchas sounded annoyed.

  Fidelma came around the table, over to our side.

  “Give me your hands.” She took our hands and wrapped them in a cloth, binding them together. “Now say the words.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. Gideon looked mutinous.

  “It keeps you all alive,” Fidelma commanded. “Do it.”

  Gideon’s amber eyes met mine, and the emotions glowing in them did not match the words he spoke.

  “I divorce thee.” My heart felt crushed. I had little memory of exchanging vows, and our marriage had been an arrangement neither of us had really wanted but the words to release us refused to come.

  “Say it,” Calchas roared across the room.

  I jumped, startled. I had been so caught up in the silent communication flowing between Gideon and me that I had barely remembered that there were others present at all.

  “I divorce thee,” I whispered from dry lips.

  Fidelma unwrapped the cloth binding our hands, ceremoniously withdrawing my hand but Gideon snatched his back before his mother could touch him.

  “Well done, Lady Mortimer,” Calchas offered, his tone revealing that it had not escaped him that Fidelma had withheld information. “You’ve managed to separate Cassandra from her Griffin more successfully this time.”

  “What?”

  Calchas smiled at my reaction to his bait, his humour restored. “Who do you think warned us to separate the lady and her Griffin? Who supplied a special little concoction so that he would have time to escort you north but no more than that? With the boy gone, why would you stay? Bonus benefit, we needed you to lead Marcus to the healing druids who could tell him more of the cure.”

  “Why?”

  Fidelma’s shoulders were bowed, her eyes shut tight against the revelation that it was her poison that had laced Devyn’s blood when we broke free of the walls. But not so tight that they could contain the tears that rolled down her face before she covered it with her hands.

  “That was how Marcus knew to make his way to the Holy Isle at midwinter,” Rion seethed. “It always bothered me, how Marcus knew when the legions were hitting Anglesey, and when to have you there. The poisoning could have happened in Londinium, but to have word in Conwy from the city required help on the inside.”

  I looked at Marcus whose head tilted in confirmation. It may not have been by her hand, but Fidelma had supplied the poison and eventually death had found Devyn.

  “Why?” I repeated. She owed me this.

  Fidelma lifted her head, squaring her shoulders, flinching a little as she took in the man at my side before finally meeting my eyes. Had everything she had told me been a lie?

  “The Griffin would demand that you stayed safe in the north. I saw how you looked at him. You would have done as he asked. I needed you to come to me, or at least to hold the line here until…” She tumbled over her words, her chin dropping as each word fell into an unforgiving void, the echo of it indefensible. “If he was gone… I felt nothing then.”

  She had cared solely for the restoration of the Strand line. I knew myself the all-consuming desire to be made whole that the ley line fostered in a person. She would not have cared for anything beyond that. She had played a double game, told me that Devyn would get me out – which he had – but she had worked with Matthias Dolon to make it happen, and that had been the price. I would never forgive her.

  I couldn’t look at her.

  The guards returned with the requested bottles and a tray bearing two handfast cuffs. I recoiled. It had been years, but I hadn’t forgotten the suffocation of my own will in favour of the state’s until I didn’t know that one had replaced the other. I wasn’t ready. I swallowed. I needed to speak. Marcus glumly lifted one off the tray. I couldn’t take my eyes off the remaining one. It was new.

  “Wait,” I said. “Not yet.”

  The praetor raised an eyebrow, displeased at my last-minute baulking. “I thought we had an agreement.”

  “We do, we do,” I said hurriedly. He had stuck the knife in and twisted it with that revelation and was unprepared to grant the request, I could sense it in him. He loved the drama of balancing out punishment with mercy, to give the pain a twinge of sweetness, a delicious twist of the knife in the wound. “Just let me have some time. Let me have tonight.”

  Calchas narrowed his eyes at me. “There will be no escapes tonight. Féile is not in this building, and she will not be given to your erstwhile ex-husband until that cuff is on your arm.”

  I wouldn’t get to say goodb
ye to her.

  “Please—” I started.

  “No, Cassandra. This is what you asked for, and this is what you will get.” He was annoyed because he had already allowed more than he had planned to give me.

  “At least let me have tonight. I never got to say goodbye to Devyn.” I sent a dark, unforgiving look Marcus’s way. His green eyes met mine, but not in guilt; something else glittered there… Defiance? I looked back at Calchas. He thrived on drama. Surely he wouldn’t refuse me this? My pain, Marcus’s guilt, and possible jealousy, Gideon’s anguish at leaving, this was all catnip to the praetor. “I would like tonight to…”

  Calchas’s eyes widened in faux sympathy at me across the table. “What terrible luck you’ve had with men. Let’s hope third time’s the charm.”

  He waved a hand in Marcus’s direction who, with a bland smile, casually took a sip of his wine, his robe dropping below his wrist, revealing the flash of a wristband.

  “Then I can have tonight?” I pressed. I wasn’t sure why I was pushing this so hard. What were a few more hours? But my soul shuddered at the thought of that metal going back on my arm. My heart hurt at the thought of not getting to see my daughter one last time. I turned to look at Gideon. His eyes met mine steadfastly, burning with the anger he was burying inside for our daughter’s sake. He would live. She would live. I needed to get him to take her far away from here. Once I was gone, Calchas’s hold over the island would be too.

  The praetor rolled his eyes, bored of my demands. “Once you have bid your prospective husband an appropriate good night.”

  Calchas was giving me this one thing, but only at the cost of adding an extra flourish to tonight’s production. I smiled and nodded tightly.

  “What guarantees will you give that you will treat our peoples well?” Rion asked. Now that the crux of the negotiation – my surrender – was over, the kings and princes of Briton were pushing for what terms they could get under the new Treaty which would leave them as nothing more than puppets on thrones.

  I stared at the handfast cuff on the sideboard. My one advantage lay in Calchas underestimating who I was now. I was not the naive youth he had manipulated before, nor was I the fragile burnout that Fidelma saw me as. She didn’t know that Gideon’s presence restored me, or he wouldn’t have been permitted near me. And I was already partially restored.