God be with us. The prayer was all the anxiety icing her spine would allow. Alyn had the fierce determination of a man with a quest, his thoughts consumed with it as he looked ahead, yet without really seeing.
Kella was tucking the extra food from her breakfast into the bag behind the wagon seat when she noticed a worn leather satchel stuffed with something, given its thickness.
“What’s in that?” Such bags were common among teachers, priests, and scholars. “Did Mairead give you a manuscript from the archives hidden in the mountain?” Perhaps something that would help Alyn.
“Nay!” he said, so sharply that she jumped. “And let no one touch it, save me. No one, not even you.” He pinned her with an intense look. Unlike the warm one that met her earlier, this one was absolute, unwavering as stone … cold stone.
“What’s in it?”
Alyn closed his eyes. “Something I pray I will not have to use.”
“How?”
Without warning, Alyn pulled the cart horse up short. Kella toppled forward, caught by his arm. Behind them, Egan made an exclamation of surprise as he and Brisen struggled to soothe their startled mounts.
Alyn threw up his hand, signaling silence.
Ahead, on hearing the creak of the wagon stop, Idwyr turned his horse back. “Ye smell ’em too?” he whispered.
“What?” Kella mouthed. She neither smelled, heard, nor saw a thing out of the ordinary.
Except that the birds had gone silent in the trees on both sides of them.
Alyn’s soft reply chilled her. “We’re being watched.”
Someone had been watching them, and Alyn thought he knew who. Idwyr’s men investigated and found a scrap of blue-and-black cloth hung on a blackthorn bush. Errol blue and black, most likely, which meant they had been noticed yesterday during Kella’s fit. And Prince Lorne did not want Kella jeopardizing his marital bliss with the Princess Morgana.
Horse tracks farther along indicated at least a dozen men. Enough to accomplish Lorne’s objective. Twelve warriors against a wizard, an unarmed priest, and two women. Even with Egan, Alyn’s small group had been in grave peril. Yet, for some reason, their enemy abandoned their plans and rode off.
“What do ye think happened?” Idwyr scratched his balding head, bemused.
“Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, thy habitation, ” Alyn repeated from the psalm he’d heard sung throughout the night, “there shall no evil befall thee.”
There was no other reasonable explanation. Like there was none for his sacred visitation. It had begun as a dream. A nightmare Alyn had relived many a night. He was on his way out to a lecture. While Abdul-Alim heated a newly mixed concoction over a small flame, he turned to search the shelves where Alyn arranged various ingredients in meticulous order so that the blind alchemist might not select the wrong one.
But this time, the dream revealed a new detail. Something fell as Alyn opened the door and stepped through it. His teacher had inadvertently knocked a package that Alyn had prepared for a local apothecary off a shelf.
Alyn started back into the workshop to fetch it when the teacher inadvertently stepped on the leather-bound parcel. There was a crunch of a breaking jar. Then a flash of light and fire that consumed all until Alyn awoke in agony days later.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
The voice of Merlin Emrys woke Alyn. Soaked in perspiration, he blinked in disbelief at the apparition of the old priest before him. In spite of the relief that washed over Alyn, that he’d not caused his teacher’s death, new alarm edged it out.
Alyn would welcome his old friend, but this could not be Merlin. “Begone in the name of Christ, demon, for I’ll have naught to do with necromancy. The earthly Merlin is dead, absent from his rotting body and present with the Lord.”
Alyn grasped his cross, useless silver without the faith he clutched even more.
To his amazement, Merlin dissolved into a pure light form that stood in starbursts of even more light, forcing Alyn to shade his eyes. “Well discerned, prophet. But I come with a message from God.”
“Prophet?”
Suddenly the form expanded with unfolding wings, singing. “Glory be to God the Father, God the Son in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.” The deafening praise sounded as if all the angels of heaven chorused with him.
Now Alyn doubted his sanity. Somehow he found himself out of the bed and on his knees, trembling in awe. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t take his eyes off the light form.
“You must speak the Word of God to kings and priests alike.”
But what shall I say? Alyn thought. His tongue was like a stone, yet he was heard.
The being reached out to Alyn and touched his lips. “Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth.”
Spirit, fire, comfort, peace, love—a myriad of sensations swept through Alyn, over him, and around him, yet only one word could define them all.
Jesus.
Later, when he’d awakened, lying prostrate on the rug covering the stone floor next to the bed, he’d wondered how Kella could have slept through it all, if it had been real.
Who was he to receive such a visitation?
Yet, his conviction would not let Alyn dismiss it or the voice that had haunted him since he’d arrived in Carmelide.
“Glorify Me.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Spread over a sloping landscape up to the knoll where the Fortingall fair took place was an explosion of colorful tents and banners. The scent of roasting meats and baking breads beckoned like invisible fingers, drawing Kella’s small party ever closer until they reached the gate that had been fashioned to take tolls for King Drust from fair-bound folk.
“Fortingall’s folk dinna work for free to keep the roads clear of rock and the grounds fit for walkin’, Father,” a guard said to Alyn as he paid the fee. “We need to work for our livin’, same as you.”
Not that her husband offered complaint. Every clan was responsible for the maintenance of the roads through their property, and in the event of a fair, even more care was expected to keep the land cleared and dry. Alyn was more preoccupied with the armed soldiers watching them with interest as they moved forward. Far keener scrutiny than that given to the travelers ahead of them. Alyn blessed the guardsmen as the wagon passed them by.
Although he had shared the incredible vision that relieved him of guilt on the one hand and charged him with a grim responsibility on the other, Kella’s anxiety grew all the more with the soldiers’ marked lack of response.
“What do you think is wrong?” She moved even closer to Alyn, desiring both his warmth and his strength.
“The enemy is expecting us.” He patted her knee. “But God has given His angels charge over us. Trust Him.” The fierce passion of his commitment was hardly that of the man who was ready to leave all this behind last night.
Kella believed that he believed—though his staff lay within easy reach and the shoulder on which she rested her head was coiled for action. I believe too, Lord. But help Thou my unbelief.
Unlike at Strighlagh’s fair, where Glenarden held a place of honor among other nobles and near the king’s dun, Alyn and Kella left the wagon in a spot among the camps of the visiting lesser clans. Once arrangements were made for the care and safety of the horses and their belongings, the group began their ascent toward a giant yew holding court over the fair as it had for centuries. Next to Kella, Alyn shouldered the satchel from the back of the wagon, protecting it like a mother would her child against anyone who might bump into it.
And no wonder, if it contained the kind of package she suspected.
He had shared with her what had been revealed to him—how Abdul-Alim had dropped a package put together for a local merchant and then blindly stepped on it. The burst of fire had come from the crushed package, not from a mistake Alyn had made in putting away the teacher’s chemicals. That had to be the bundle discerned by Brenna’s gift of second sight, yet understood by no one.
And
Kella’s poor husband had carried that guilt for naught. Though when she’d questioned him as to the wisdom of having such a similar danger in their midst, he simply repeated his earlier words.
“God has given His angels charge over us.”
Kella comforted herself by envisioning a score of angels perched in the giant tree standing over the meeting ground. Below it was a surround of noble campsites and a skirt of vendors at the foot of the knoll. Judging from the colorful banners circling the open arena of the court, it was a hearing day for kings and chieftains, not the general populace.
So it was no surprise when yet another company of guards, one that formed a human barrier around the court assembly, stopped them. A swarthy man with a paunch that betrayed an affinity for excess food and drink stepped forward to greet them. “What kingdom do ye represent?”
“The kingdom of God,” Alyn replied calmly.
The man smirked. “Only kings and princes from This Side are to be admitted, Father.”
“I am Father Alyn O’Byrne, servant of the King of Kings, prince of Glenarden in Strighlagh, and cousin to the High Queen Gwenhyfar.” Alyn held out his hand that the man might see his ring bearing the Grail emblem—the dove.
“King Modred is archbishop of the same church,” observed one of the other soldiers who’d closed in around them. “He’ll speak for you.”
“I was sent for by Queen Heilyn.”
“Then see her when she is receiving visitors at Dun Gael on the morrow.” The first man jerked his head toward a whitewashed fortress watching over the fairground nearby.
Kella wondered if Alyn noticed that more and more guards were moving their way. And then she saw why. Captain Elkmar and some men from Errol stood a distance away, as if directing them. Elkmar, the captain who would have her and her child dead. If Elkmar had sway with the guards, at the least he could have them arrested.
Angels, stand ready. Because, aside from dining knives, all other weapons had been checked with the horses and their belongings. No swords were allowed within the fairgrounds, though Fortingall’s guards were armed to keep order.
“I must speak to Drust,” Alyn insisted. “It is a matter of life and death.”
“Excuse me, Commander.” Brisen moved up to Alyn’s other side and shoved back her hood, revealing a shining display of silver-shot black hair, braided and wrapped in a crown about her head.
Immediately the commander’s countenance changed from indifference to awe, perhaps even fear. “Queen Brisen!”
“Queen?” Alyn’s astonishment echoed Kella’s own. The healer in the glen was assuredly an educated lady, but a queen?
“I speak for myself and my son, Drust,” Brisen declared with all the authority due a queen mother. “These people are guests of Dun Gael. Unless you would deny a daughter of Bridei entrance as well.”
Bridei—overking of the Pictish nation? Stunned failed to come close to what Kella felt. God had provided a way before they needed it … with an earth angel.
“Nay, milady,” the guard swore. “Never!”
He started to bow, but Brisen caught him. “Captain, I would have no one but you know that I am here. There are some who would cause my guests harm.”
The guardsman gave her a puzzled look. “Aye, Queen Brisen.”
“I shoulda known she was too good for me,” Egan muttered under his breath.
The hurt in her father’s voice made Kella’s heart ache.
But Brisen would not have it. “Love falls where it will, and mine has fallen upon you, Egan O’Toole.” She offered Da her arm. “Will you continue to be my champion, or will you break the heart you hold in those big, callused hands of yours?”
Discovering Brisen’s identity and seeing the marvel and joy upon Da’s face was almost enough to make Kella forget Elkmar. When she did seek him out again, the captain and his men had fallen away, melting into the crowd. No matter. The unseen angels in the tree would keep an eye on him. Perhaps even the one who looked like the glowing Merlin Emrys her husband had seen in his vision was among them.
“Now, sir,” Brisen said to the waiting guardsman, “here is what I want you to do.”
Alyn stood confident, staff in one hand and his bag over his shoulder as a herald approached the dais accommodating King Drust and his royal company. God used the imperfect, including a young, disillusioned priest and a pagan healer. Surely only the Lord could have placed such a benefactress in the right place at the right time. Brisen had fulfilled her role. Now it was time for Alyn to fulfill his.
“Father Alyn O’Byrne,” the herald announced. “Servant of the Grail Church, cousin to our beloved High Queen, Gwenhyfar, and prince of Glenarden.”
Alyn strode into the open grassy area in front of the dais to a ripple of astonishment in the sea of onlookers—all of noble families, mostly Picts. Perhaps some of his mother’s kin were here, but this was not a homecoming. Far from it. His impertinence for insisting on an immediate audience had piqued the curiosity and irritation of everyone, including the king and his honored guests upon the dais.
Only one among them looked relieved. Archbishop Cassian sat at the foot of the dais under guard. A more miserable soul Alyn had never seen, though the priest was unfettered and, if the ruby glass goblet in his hand was any indication, he’d been treated well, as was custom.
“What business have you this day that cannot wait its turn, Father?” Drust demanded. He had his mother’s intelligent gaze, as well as the same dark hair and proud facial structure, though his was more pronounced. Brisen’s grace and patience, however, were sadly lacking.
“I was sent to Mons Seion on behalf of our High Queen and then on to Fortingall at Queen Heilyn’s request to speak to her about building a church here at Fortingall. But, as Your Majesty knows, much has happened since my departure from Carmelide—”
“That is a lie, King Drust.” Lorne of Errol stepped forward, his face beetled with rage. “My own captain tells me that this man has led a legion of well-armed warriors down from Schiehallion. They hide in the forests about Fortingall ready for his signal to attack.”
Had the prince lost his wits?
Modred, who sat on Drust’s left, leaned forward on his polished rowan staff and peered at his new son-in-law as if so. Even Alba’s littlest children knew that only fairies, the mountain’s priestesses, and their small village inhabited the place.
“My lord,” Alyn protested, “I did indeed lead a group down from the village of Llanarch, but not of warriors. Unless last night’s drink led the prince’s captain to hallucinate. Or mayhap the fairies played tricks upon him?”
Amusement trickled from an uncertain audience. Even Drust’s lips curled slightly.
As Alyn jested, the truth came to him, a vision that raised hair upon his arms. ’Twas all he could do to keep from dropping to his knees, humbled that a legion of heavenly warriors—similar to those who had once protected Elisha—had appeared to Elkmar.
Alyn beckoned Kella, Brisen, Egan, and his Miathi companions to join him. “Indeed, here is my legion.”
The blood rage drained from Lorne’s face as Kella marched forward unscathed, head held high in the confidence of God’s forgiveness.
“I present Queen Gwenhyfar’s scribe, master of five languages, and my wife”—Alyn shot the man who’d so cruelly deceived her an accusatory glare—“Lady Kella of Glenarden.”
Yesterday Alyn wanted to slay him for threatening Kella. But if he was to make his case today, he had to live by the same counsel he’d given his wife and father-in-law earlier. Vengeance belonged to God, not man.
“This, my lord Drust, is my Miathi friend Idwyr, druid of Dumyat’s court,” Alyn informed the audience, “and his good men.”
Besides, the astonishment on Lorne’s face at seeing one of the Miathi with whom he’d conspired was most rewarding.
“Welcome, Idwyr. I am glad that someone from Dumyat is able to attend,” Drust told the little man.
As a chief ovate and equal to a king, Idw
yr nodded rather than bowed. “The only thing close to a legion we seen, yer majesty, was a handful o’ outlaws waitin’ to ambush us.”
Quite the showman, the old wizard walked in a circle around Alyn, Kella, and his men, drawing every eye in the crowd. Then, almost out of thin air, he produced the scrap of material one of his men had found in the forest brush. Surprise echoed all around.
“They was wearin’ these colors and skedaddlin’ like they seen ghosts.” Idwyr lined the cloth in his squinty view with Lorne and his companions. “Well, lookee that!” The old man leapt back as though shocked by what he’d seen. “Looks jus’ like yor’n, pretty man!”
“If that scrap belongs to one of my men, I’ll have his head before the day’s out,” Lorne replied stiffly.
“And lastly,” Alyn continued before Idwyr started having too much fun, “Milady Brisen of Crief, whom I believe Your Majesty knows well, and her guardian, Egan O’Toole, my father-by-law.”
Lorne looked fit to faint. Modred, curious. Cassian, appalled, as if he’d abandoned all hope for Alyn and himself, given Alyn’s heathen company.
But Drust leapt eagerly from his chair and came down from the dais. “Mother!” The king greeted Brisen with a great hug. “Do join us in the shade. I’ll have a seat fetched for you.”
“Son, I have been in the saddle these last two days,” she confessed to him. “Besides, you have a queen at your side now.” She blew a kiss to the fair-haired young woman sitting arrow-straight on the right of Drust’s throne seat.
Queen Heilyn returned the gesture with a polite wave, leaving Alyn to wonder if there was love lost between the two women. Perhaps over Heilyn’s faith … or Brisen’s. “We will talk later,” the healer queen promised. “But do hear this man out, for I believe he holds the ear of at least one god.”
Drust returned to his throne, casting a droll look at Lorne of Errol. “Hardly a legion, sir. I would find myself a new captain.” A louder round of guffaws erupted at Prince Lorne’s expense.
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