Dawn of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

MY FATHER’S MEN were gone.

  They should have been hard at work, clearing earth from the tunnel they had made on the eastern side of Dinas Ffareon. But the forest was utterly deserted, and the black mouth of the tunnel, when we reached it, yawned silent and empty as a tomb.

  I drew the prisoner inside, rearranged the cover of brush and branches over the opening as best I could. In truth, what else could I do? The prisoner had kept pace with me as best he might—and truly, better than I could have hoped—as we had made our way through the chill, dark night, skirting the thick forest along the base of the hill.

  But the walk had tired him. He was pale and sweating, muscles shivering as though he fought at every moment a grim battle to stay on his feet. And dawn was breaking, pale-gray light beginning to spill like a cascade down the hillside. We could not risk remaining out in the open much longer; Vortigern’s patrols might be rare in the usual way, but he would surely send out searchers when he woke from the night’s drinking and found his proposed sacrifice to the gods gone.

  “Sit.”

  The prisoner didn’t resist, but sank down as I bade him onto the ground, though still with an echo of that spare, focused economy of movement I had seen in him before. A warrior’s training, too, had been carved deep into his muscle and bone.

  I had given him my cloak to cover himself, and a pair of Bron’s breeches that rode low on his hips and ended well above his ankles.

  But apart from that, I had had no boots nor other clothing to offer him. I could see, now, in the faint light of dawn that filtered through the branches, that his feet were pale with cold and bleeding from a dozen and more scratches, as were his hands and arms. He braced his forearms on his knees and lowered his head, and I heard the harsh rasp as he fought to control his breathing.

  The opening of the tunnel had been braced with split timbers to hold back the weight of earth above and around. I sat down opposite him, leaning against one of the wooden beams. The prisoner’s eyes, bleak and gray in the pale half-light, met mine.

  “What now?”

  I gave him the answer I had already decided on, the only answer I could find just now. “We wait. What else can we do? Vortigern’s guardsmen will be out and combing the forest for you soon.”

  He nodded once, moving as though the effort were almost too great, but then rubbed a hand across his face as though he were trying to keep alert.

  “Your father’s men?”

  “I don’t know.” Now that we had stopped moving, I was realizing how utterly exhausted I was, as well. I heard a quiver in my voice, and gritted my teeth to stop the words shaking any more. “I don’t know what’s happened to them. They should be here.”

  All the might-be’s seemed to flash in an instant through my mind: my father’s warriors lying dead somewhere out there in the brooding forest, staring up at the lightening sky with sightless eyes. Vortigern’s men tearing aside the branches that concealed our refuge, here, and dragging us out and back inside the fortress walls.

  I pressed my eyes closed, then looked at the man opposite me. “You See the future. Don’t you?”

  “Is it the future?” I had the impression he spoke without conscious control, as though the words had wrenched themselves free to hang between us in the dim stillness. He ran a hand down his face again and went on. “I don’t know. I don’t know whether what I See actually comes to pass. I don’t—”

  He had regained control now; he stopped, gritting his teeth as though biting off any further words, then looked down at the ground and said, in a different tone, “The ground here—it’s wet. We should make sure it’s safe to stay before we do anything else.”

  I followed his gesture and saw he was right, the tunnel’s earthen floor was muddied, the footmarks my father’s men had left filled with little pools of dirtied water. At least it showed they had been here, and not long ago.

  “Do you have flint?” the prisoner asked.

  I dug in the pack I had brought and found flint and tinder both, wrapped in a scrap of oilskin to keep dry. A branch from the covering at the tunnel’s mouth and a torn length of my cloak made a makeshift torch. When he had it lighted, the prisoner led the way along the muddied ground, deeper into the center of the hill.

  The torch’s flame cast wild, dancing shadows on the earthen walls, and my heart quickened, all weariness forgotten, for truly I did not know what we would find. My father’s men worked slowly, bracing the walls as they went, and knew what they were about. But there are ever dangers in work of this kind, and a sudden cave-in could have buried them.

  The air grew danker and chill as we made our way along, my companion holding the torch aloft. And then he stopped, so abruptly that I bumped against his back.

  “This must be why they stopped work—why they’re not here now.”

  I looked past him, and saw that the tunnel ended, not in the cave-in I had feared, but in a wall of solid gray rock, glistening and dripping with moisture in the fire’s dancing orange light. I should perhaps have been frightened. We were deep underground, and there was always the danger that the seeping water would cause the tunnel walls to collapse.

  But there was a strange, austere … beauty, I suppose, in the scene before us. As anything ancient and immovable must be called beautiful, in its way. The torchlight glinted off the rock’s smooth, rippling face, sparking the drops and running rivulets of water to glowing jewels.

  It was like a strange, earth-weighted sanctuary, or a shrine to some god of roots and rock and earth. And I felt, standing there, as though we did indeed stand in the singing presence of one of the Old Ones, who had passed from flesh into spirit to dwell forever in hollow hills like this one.

  Perhaps my companion felt it, as well. Or perhaps he was only too exhausted for words. But we neither of us spoke, not until we had made our way back along the tunnel, back to the sunlight that poured through the entrance like some age-old answer to whatever lay buried deep within the soil.

  I forced my lips apart to ask, “Is it safe for us to be here?”

  “I think so.” He was squinting as though the bright sunlight hurt his eyes, and sat down again, tipping his head back against one of the bracing beams. “If we stay here, near the entrance, we’ll have time to get out if there’s a collapse. And it’s a better hiding place than any other, just now.”

  He rubbed his eyes, and I had the feeling he was reaching towards some bleak reserve of strength. Then he looked up at me. “Tell me what happened last night. Tell me how we came to get away from Vortigern.”

  I had meant to ask him if he could See aught of our future, now. But I could feel the shivers of the nightmare darkness still twisting beneath the surface of his control. Or perhaps I only saw it in the tautness of his neck and shoulders, the white lines about the corners of his mouth; a healer learns to read bodies as well as minds.

  Instead I drew out my healer’s kit. “Let me tend your injuries and I’ll tell you the whole.”

  He had opened the leg wound again. I could see the stain of fresh blood through the breeches I had given him, nearly black in the shadows of the tunnel. But it was in truth for myself as much as for him that I had offered to see to his wounds. Changing bandages, checking stitches and applying salves to the multitude of cuts and scrapes on his skin: these were all familiar, anchoring and steadying me as I spoke.

  I gave him the story of our escape from Vortigern’s fort. And I thought that I managed well enough at holding my voice steady, at keeping the lingering sliver of ice under my breastbone from entering my tone. But when I came to letting loose my arrow at Vortigern’s guard, the prisoner shocked me by putting a hand over mine.

  “You had no other choice.” He spoke quietly, the blue eyes steady on mine, and all his energy and intensity of focus audible in the words. “No other choice but to stand there and die. You can’t blame yourself for choosing life.”

  And then he drew back, took his hand from mine and looked
away, as though shocked in his turn by the current of energy that had leapt between us at the touch. Or perhaps it was only I that had been caught by surprise; even after he had withdrawn the touch I felt the heat of his skin on mine. I was conscious, all at once, of how alone here we were.

  I bent to take out the food I had brought. Handed him a slab of bread, which he tore into at once with ferocious, concentrated appetite.

  “Have you—” I stopped. “Whether your visions show the true future or no, have you always been able to See as you do now?”

  I thought for a moment he would not answer, or would choose to misunderstand. For a long moment he simply looked at me, muscles flickering along the grim line of his jaw. But then: “Always?” He gave a short, harsh bark of a laugh, eyes still bleak and hard. “I don’t know that, either. I’ve had this—this”—he sketched a brief, angry gesture in the air with one hand, finishing by spreading his palm out as though unable to find the word. “I’ve had this—whatever this is—since I woke in Vortigern’s prison cell three days ago. But before that, I don’t know. Before that, I don’t know anything at all.”

  He glanced down at his own body, at the bruises that marked him, mottled purple and yellow across his chest and rib cage like lichens on one of the standing stones to the old gods. He laughed shortly again. “Vortigern could have peeled my skin off, inch by slow inch, and I still wouldn’t have been able to tell him what he wanted to know.”

  He spoke more rapidly, now, as though he had tapped some inner welling of poison that must now gush until it ran dry. “I might as well have been born in Vortigern’s god-cursed fort. I’ve no memories from before. Not even my own name. I didn’t even recognize my own face when I saw it in the water you brought me to wash in on one of these past days.”

  It was—oddly—hard to make myself touch him now. But I reached out and touched his head, running my fingers up beneath the fair hair. He hissed through his teeth when I found a place, just above and behind his ear: a hard knot of swelling, where he must have taken a fearsome blow, hard enough to crack the bone. But it had not bled, and he’d had so many other injuries besides this one that I had never found it before.

  “I’ve heard of it happening.” My voice sounded as a whisper. “That a man may take a wound to the head and lose all memory of what he has been. Though not … not the other. That I’ve never heard of before.” His hair was smooth and fine beneath my fingers. I let my hand fall away. “Can you remember any family? Father or brothers? Or a wife?”

  He shook his head. His eyes looked almost Sight-blinded as he stared at the braced earth that formed the opposite wall. But then his gaze cleared as he smoothed the hair back from his temples with both hands. “No.” He braced one hand against the space between his eyes. “I feel as though … as though I’ve been on my own, alone, a long time.” He gave another harsh laugh. “Though how do I know for certain? But I’ve no”—he raised one hand and let it fall, his gaze darkening as though he searched for the right word. “No memory of love or family, nor any feeling that I’ve left anyone behind, waiting and watching for my return. There’s only—”

  He stopped, and was silent so long I thought he meant to stop speaking altogether. But then he said, muscles jumping again in his jaw, fingers curling as though he fought to keep from striking at something, “There’s only this nightmare that comes every time I shut my eyes. It’s all I remember of this past night. Walking through the dead and dying on a field of battle. And knowing that all of it—all the death and spilled guts and the stink of rotting bodies—is my doing. My fault. Knowing that I ought to be one of those lying dead in the mud. That I ought not be—”

  “I know.” I remembered the nightmare vision I had shared during our escape. Grief and blood-soaked guilt, and no memory of anything besides. A warrior, a leader perhaps, who had stood against Vortigern and seen his war band crushed? There was, of a surety, no shortage of those. Though usually the gods had at least granted them a swift death with their men.

  “It might be just that, though. A dream.”

  “Just a dream.” His voice was rough. “I hope you lie better than that if Vortigern ever catches up with us. Still—” his voice changed, and his mouth twisted in a brief, wry smile. “Thank you for trying.” His hands clenched and he looked up at me. “I do mean that. Thank you. For that and for … what you did tonight. It was—” he stopped again, and I saw white dents appear at the corners of his mouth. “It was an act of courage. Even if I have no right to my life, you have saved it for me. But we both know that whatever else that vision is, it’s more than only a dream.”

  “I—” I stopped and looked down at my own hands, Seeing for a brief instant myself in pale green and my brother Arthur, face flushed with drink. The tunnel walls seemed to press in closer; even the weight of my boy’s clothes seemed too much to bear on my skin.

  I looked up at the prisoner again. “There must be a reason, though. A reason you’re still alive.”

  A flash of something hard and bitter crossed his gaze. But then his eyes searched mine and he said, “You believe that?”

  “I have to.”

  He was silent a moment, eyes still on mine. Then he nodded once and looked away, gaze fixed on the opposite wall. “Maybe. Maybe it’s a punishment, then. What I See, now, instead of my own past. Maybe that’s why I was not allowed to die at Vortigern’s hand. It’s as though … as though I’m living time backwards. In the place where memory should be, I see instead … visions. Flashes. Call them whatever you like. But they’re always changing. Nothing is fixed. I look at Vortigern, and I see him screaming as he dies by fire.” The edges of his lips compressed. “Not that I’m likely to grieve over-much if that particular vision comes true. But”—he made the quick gesture of frustration again, raising one clenched hand and letting it fall. “But other times, I see him sitting on a throne, a bent old man, or dying at peace in a tapestried bed. I look at Vortigern’s guards, and I see them gulping ale and getting their miserable, starved looking slave girls with child—and sometimes I see the infants dying before they’re alive a full turning of the moon. Sometimes they live. But it all flows and shifts and changes like … like quicksand. I’ve no notion which visions are true. If any are.”

  I watched him a moment, then said, my voice soft, “Do you see … have you seen any of your own future? Our future, after this?”

  The muscles in his throat contracted as he swallowed, and he avoided my gaze. “Sometimes. Sometimes I see myself. Dying, by the sword, with these warrior’s marks still on me.” He gestured to the swirling spirals that covered his shoulders and chest. “Other times I’ve seen myself a white-haired old man with a harp, standing beside a king’s throne. But—” He stopped. Still, he didn’t look at me. “I look at you, and—I didn’t see it, at first. Not until you’d told me who you were, and then—”

  He was staring at the tunnel’s earthen wall, and there was the same lost look about his gaze, fearless and yet exhausted beyond measure, as well. My fate, and yet now this man, too, had to bear the slithering premonition of it.

  To hear me tell of it, it must sound as though I had Seen my own future in Gamma’s scrying bowl and decided I could do naught but sit like a terror-frozen hare, waiting for the jaws of destiny to close in. But that is not true.

  It was not merely one future I had seen, but many, branching like veins in a dried autumn leaf. I had seen myself running away, crossing the sea to Brittany on a leaking fishing vessel tossed by the storms. And my brother Arthur was wounded in battle. And without me, without a healer to tend him, he took fever and died. The petty kings and chieftains who had united under my father squabbled away what ground they had gained. And Britain fell to the Saxons, who ravaged and slaughtered their way across the land to the western sea.

  I had seen myself locked away in a house of holy women. I had even seen myself murder the unborn son I wa
s to bear Arthur with a purge of hemlock. In that future, I died, as well, bleeding my own life out along with the child. And without our child—the boy I would call Modred—to fight beside him, Arthur fell in battle and died, choking on mud and blood.

  Future after future, but the tangled threads always unraveled to the same end: Without me, without our son, Arthur would die. Without Arthur, Britain would be utterly destroyed. One path, one future, I could chose, in which Arthur won a peace that lasted at least the span of a man’s life. In which Britain was battered, yet unbroken in the end.

  Hate it as I might, I could not make it untrue.

  And whatever else, I knew at least that the future was no fault of this man’s, save that he was forced to stare down its maw whenever he looked into my face.

  I put my hand across his mouth and said, my voice soft, “I know. It’s all right. I know that, too.”

  His lips were dry, his breath hot against the palm of my hand. But this time I scarcely felt the touch. I felt as though my own blood pulsed along the quivering lines of the Sight. The throb of something deep inside me was echoed a moment later by those same chiming currents I had heard before. Ancient as the oldest tale, or the presence I had felt within the rock at the end of the tunnel. Like a heartbeat of the earth itself, a voice that seemed to breath, Yes. Go on. This day is yours.

  A part—a small part—of me stood back, astonished at what I did. But if I let this chance pass me by, when might another come? I had perhaps only this day, this one day to make mine. And after that, a road to walk that grew narrower with each passing turn of the moon.

  And so I didn’t let myself hesitate, nor even think over-long. I took my hand away and leaned forward, touching my lips to his.

  It was sweet, sweet as a mother’s lullaby or the first drenching rain of spring. For the first time since Gamma had died, I felt real warmth flood through me, and something hard and clenched inside my chest seemed to ease.

  After the first moment, though, the prisoner drew back, hands firm but gentle on my shoulders to hold me away. “I’m not—” The dawn was truly breaking outside our shelter; I could see him more plainly now. His breath came quick and unsteady, but he gave another quick, wry twist of what was almost a smile. “At least I hope I am not the man to take advantage of a girl left without protection and on her own. I don’t—”

  But I stopped him, laying a hand across his lips again. The circling currents seemed to brush, light as birds wings, against my skin. “Please.” I held his gaze. “You say you’ve been alone a long time—perhaps all your life. But here, right now, you don’t have to be.”

  His jaw was stubbled with several days’ growth of beard, rough and prickling against my skin. He exhaled, just a brief burst of air. “You don’t know me. I don’t know me. But I know I’m not—”

  But I stopped him again. I felt as though I had crossed a bridge over a fast-moving current. Or been lifted up and set down, and not in quite the same place I had been before.

  I lifted one finger and traced the angular line of his brow, his jaw. “I know that you are not evil, whatever you may have done. I know that you have courage to face whatever comes. I know that you should not have to bear the burdens you now carry all on your own.”

  He looked younger, now, seen as close as this, close enough that I could see tiny flecks of gold in the sea-blue of his eyes. He might perhaps be eighteen or nineteen, but no more, and no more than a few years older than I.

  I swallowed to keep my voice from wavering. “You’ve seen yourself what the future holds for me. Please let me have this. Let me choose for myself now, with you.”

  * * *