by M. K. Hume
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This book is dedicated to my two sons, Damian Michael Hume and Brendan Niels Hume.
I take inordinate pride in both of these young men, who have lived their lives with all the best qualities that I have recognized in the Arthuriad such as courage, generosity, patriotism, love of kin, and the nobility of work.
I wish them love, happiness, and a long life, but, most of all, I wish them contentment.
M. K. Hume
2014
Myrddion’s Map of Pre-Arthurian Roman Britain
Myrddion’s Map of the Celtic Tribal Areas
PROLOGUE
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.
—ROBERT G. INGERSOL, Some Reasons Why
The young man dreamed.
Deep below the keel of the leaf-shaped ship, where a pallid moon could not break through the blackness, he sank down and down. Strange fish lit the blackness with lights they carried in the flesh of their bodies, but no sound could pierce these silent waters. Within the strange dislocation of his dream, the young man could breathe the cold water, and his body moved easily downwards without panic.
Just as he began to believe that this sea had no bottom, his naked toes sank into thick, fine mud. Strange elongated shapes, barely visible through the gloom, suggested great weeds with scalloped edges that strove to reach the light far above. As he moved through the water, stirring up small squalls of fine silt to further cloud his vision, he felt something smooth under the sole of his left heel. Rounded like a stone yet brittle in texture, the object had drawn his attention and he began to bend . . . when a voice boomed out of the thick water and almost stopped his heart.
“Don’t touch my treasures, earthworm, or I’ll be forced to devour you.” The voice caused the water to shiver and drove a host of small sea creatures to swim, crawl, and scuttle away from their hiding places nearby.
The young man would have fled himself, but fronds of weeds wound themselves around his legs and anchored him to the ocean’s floor. Terror gripped him as flames belched out of a vast, dim shape and a sanguine light bathed him with its bloody glare.
Now he could see the source of that thunderous sound.
The figure reposed on a bed of polished bones, worn to an ivory sheen by the many-colored scales of her body. The she-dragon was long and seductively sinuous, with a head more serpentine than those of other dragons familiar to Arthur. Sculpted eye ridges rose out of a smoothly scaled forehead of a pale topaz color and shadowed a pair of yellow eyes, slit with vertical pupils that were coldly venomous and wise beyond human understanding. The narrow nostrils still steamed gently in the cooling water. Only the mouth was frightening, for it was filled with carved fangs as long as the young man’s arm. Yet her whole coiled and muscular length, elaborated with a web of delicate, transparent wings and powerful clawed feet, suggested might and the primal energy of water.
“Why do you disturb my sleep, earthworm? You could easily crush my treasured bones under your careless feet. I would become very angry if I were to lose the smallest rib or incur damage to the oldest vertebrae.”
Because the dragon seemed to expect it, Arthur bowed as deeply as the weeds permitted. “I don’t know, Majesty. Perhaps I’m dreaming, but I have no intention of robbing you or of damaging your bones. Where did you find them?”
“Find them?” The she-dragon snickered, and her mirth caused the water and her ossuary to shiver.
“I didn’t find them—I took them! The sailors in my domain were hungry for life, but I am the only being who is permitted to live and breathe in my kingdom, along with those sea creatures whom I permit to serve me—either as food or as amusement. Here, you are the trespasser. And if your bones are sufficiently perfect, earthworm, I will happily take them into my collection.”
The voice crooned out the threat with a hypnotic cadence that almost lulled Arthur into closing his eyes. How easy it would be to submit to those seductive suggestions that offered him eternity in exchange for his vital energy. With a herculean effort, Arthur wrenched his eyelids open and raised his head.
“Come to me,” the she-dragon ordered. Obediently, the waterweeds lifted the young man off his feet so that he hung within an arm’s length of her long pearly teeth. Her forked tongue explored his face with a sensuous knowledge.
Immediately, the she-dragon drew in her breath with a fearful hiss. The eyes flared with a sudden flame, lighting the rosy coral of the scales on her belly. “Who are you, earthworm? I know the shape of your skull and the fine roundness of your hip bones. I have dreamed of the perfect alignment of your vertebrae—but though I would trade all my precious collection for you, I remember that my fore dream forbade it. Yes, dragons can also dream. Who are you to deny me my desires?”
“I’m no one of importance, Majesty, other than an earthworm who longs for the sunlight,” Arthur pleaded with desperate honesty. “I am called the Son of the Dragon by those who know me, but at this moment I am a captive of northern seafarers. I have nothing that could cause harm to you.”
The dark waters shivered as the she-dragon stirred nervously on her bed of skulls. When she spoke, her voice was petulant and her hot breath caused Arthur to flinch away from the furnace that burned inside her.
“You shall become the King of Winter—whether you like it or not! You will renounce what you are, earthworm, so that you can survive in the bitter north and become what you once were—and more! But ask me nothing else, earthworm, for your strength lies with the sun and fire, and both elements would shrivel my scales and turn my beautiful bones to black dust.”
“No! I’ll never renounce my ancestors, even to gain wealth and power. I’m no coward or turncoat,” Arthur howled with a sudden horror that is the way of dreams. “I will return to Arden, I swear, and I will protect the legacy of my father.”
“What father, fool? Is it the king or the cuckold?”
The waters began to shiver and the reeds and waterweeds were torn away from his limbs by a sudden warm current that pulled him upward, away from the she-dragon and her ossuary of human bones. “Leave me, earthworm, for you will bring misfortune to all souls who try to bar your way. Kings will perish because of you, and disease will dog your footsteps although you will remain unscathed. Your curse is to live for all time and to become part of a legend that no one credits, so leave me be!” Her voice followed him as he was thrown towards the light. “Leave me to sleep until the oceans boil.”
The voice still shivered along Arthur’s nerve endings as his head broke the sea’s surface. Water poured from his nostrils and mouth, and the young man discovered that he could scream—so he did.
As the sun burned his flesh and he felt his hair begin to smoke, Arthur woke to find himself in a cold, brutal morning.
A red sun tore free of a charcoal sea. Regardless of the hot color, the cold ate into him like a knife of ice. The young man winced as a shaft of sunlight stabbed through his half-closed eyelids and forced him to open his eyes, until he groaned as a sudden pang lanced through his head. Already, the dream had receded, overtaken by the actuality of his captivity, the memory of the ambush on the northern road, and the desperation of his party’s situation. His breath steamed in the frozen air.
Barely awake, he sat upright with his back against the huge mast while a
vast woolen sail snapped and soughed above him in the freshening morning breeze. For a moment the claws of the dragon, dyed into the wool, caught the dim rays of light and stretched down towards him, as if the she-dragon had animated the painted cloth.
“Lift me up and carry me away, Majesty,” he urged. “To death if needs be—for I have failed in my appointed task. Lady Blaise will not wed Gilchrist of the Otadini and Maeve will never return to Arden; and it’s my fault. My friends are held captive, and I have managed to lose my father’s knife. My sword is taken, but because Maeve and my charges are still alive I can’t even throw myself into the sea. Do what you want with me, but send me no more dreams.”
A small hand snaked out of bundles of wool on the rough-cut deck to interrupt his brief indulgence in self-pity. Grimy fingers grasped his own with surprising strength, and a tousled head appeared out of a nest of mangy furs. The girl shook herself vigorously and uncurled her body to rise and lean against his side.
“Don’t be such an ass, Arthur! We’re in enough trouble without our strongest warrior having fits of guilt and talking of killing himself.” The girl’s hand and the comfort it brought mitigated the harshness of Blaise’s irritated lecture. “Grow up, you silly boy! You’re years older than me and you’re still complaining about honor and a lost knife. For heaven’s sake, aren’t we in enough trouble? Jesus alone knows where these savages are taking us! While you’re going on about the dishonor of being captured, Maeve and I have to worry about rape by some hulking great giant.”
Arthur tried to remonstrate with Blaise, a girl who was little more than a child despite her brusque manner, but his words of protest caught in his throat. The child was right: he was being self-indulgent. “We’re depending on you to take care of us, Arthur. We need you to focus on our escape. Please . . .” For the first time, Blaise’s careful and courageous facade cracked at the edges, and Arthur could hear the terrified tremor in her voice. He drew her close to him so that her wild curls tickled his chin.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll do better in the future. Just remind me of our real priorities if I should slip. Now go back to sleep, little one, while some darkness still remains. I’ll keep watch for both of us till sunrise.”
Blaise snuggled her head into the hollow of Arthur’s shoulder and ignored the generations of societal rules that forbade contact between the sexes. For his part, Arthur felt the shame and misery that had greeted him on waking dissipate slowly, to be replaced by something akin to hope. Despite his dreams Arthur was little more than a boy, still too young to be capable of visualizing his own death. Therefore, a new resolve made him sit a little straighter as he vowed silently to do everything a man could do to save Eamonn, Maeve, and Blaise from harm. A lost knife could be found again, a sword could be won, and each new day would bring the promise of escape a little closer.
As the captives dozed, the sun began to rise higher to light the lower edges of wide cloud banks with a line of scarlet and gold. The tops of the wavelets from the ship’s wake to the eastern horizon were caught in flakes of gold so that the sea and the sky were a symphony of grey and black, gilded and embellished with vermilion, carmine, and sanguine. The seascape was wild and beautiful, but Arthur was suddenly blinded with tears that trembled on the edges of his lashes. Stubbornly, he brushed them away.
His eyes ranged across the horizon, from the darkness that still blanketed the western sky on the far side of the vessel to where the white globe of incandescence was mounting through the clouds in the east.
In every direction, there was nothing except an endless expanse of water. No smudge of distant land, no seabirds squabbling over prey, no other vessels of any kind. Just the long slow swell of deep waters around them and below them. And only a frail vessel lay between him and the lightless depths beneath the planks of the hull. Arthur’s dream returned to haunt the edges of his imagination, so he could almost hear the she-dragon of his dream snigger as if she waited for his clean white bones to sink down to grace her hellish bed.
The sky swung wildly for a moment, and Arthur shook his head and dug his nails into his palms to quell his rising panic. The carved prow of the vessel and its terrifying dragon sail were only puny attempts by men to challenge the infinity of the ocean. He had seen the might of the waters in his dream when the she-dragon had berated him from her ossuary of drowned seamen. These Dene savages must be dauntless sailors to challenge the empty oceans with such daring.
But where was the land? Wiser sailors hugged the coastlines instead of sailing blindly through the wastes of water.
Just when the young man would have sobbed to give voice to his terror, Blaise stirred in her sleep and stiffened his backbone with her helplessness.
We may be sailing into the unknown, Arthur thought, but the Red Dragon leads the way. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so fearful, for Father is with us. All will be well.
And then, against all reason, the snapping sail loaned him some of the dragon’s mythic power. Arthur felt the shade of his father, and even the tainted spirit of his grandfather, as they settled behind him to protect his naked back. For the first time since the attack by the mercenaries had robbed the Britons of their freedom, he felt a renewed sense of purpose.
God still had a task for him to complete. He must have faith in his own abilities, and, if he could only muster his courage, all would be well.
Chapter I
THE WRATH OF HEAVEN
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife.
—JOHN MASEFIELD, “SEA FEVER”
Wake up and take the bowl, Briton.” The rich tenor voice with the execrable accent attempted to speak Arthur’s language with sufficient clarity to be understood. While individual words were unclear, the meaning was unmistakable.
With his eyes squeezed tightly shut, Arthur attempted to take his bearings. The pitch and roll of waves beneath the hull of the ship reminded him that he was a prisoner of the Dene, while the smell of salt on the wind explained more clearly than words that they were still far from land. Although he strained to catch a faint scent of vegetation or the distant shriek of seabirds, their lack mocked him for being a wishful-thinking fool. He had slept past the dawn, and nothing had changed during his slumbers.
Arthur opened his eyes as slowly as possible and acknowledged Stormbringer, the captain of the vessel, when the Dene leaned over him with a wooden bowl in his outstretched hand. Under close examination, the Dene’s skin was thick, smooth, and golden-brown where it wasn’t covered with curly hair. When he glanced down at the bowl, Arthur registered vaguely that it held an odd concoction of cold seafood. The food smelled pungent and fishy as it slopped inside the receptacle, so his appetite vanished.
Arthur accepted the proffered food, but his expression must have shown his lack of understanding of Stormbringer’s mishmash of language. The young Briton scoured his memory and tried a few hesitant words in the Frankish tongue, bolstered with Latin. He watched as Stormbringer nodded in surprised recognition.
So, Arthur thought, learning snatches of Germanus’s language has proved useful.
When he was a boy, Arthur had labored to speak Frankish and the languages of the Hibernian tribes, primarily to build a link with his tutors, Father Lorcan and Germanus. Unfortunately, the language of the Britons had no written form, but Arthur had become proficient in Latin during his childhood, especially when he had access to the scrolls that Taliesin had passed into his care on the explicit instructions of Nimue, the Lady of the Lake. These scrolls had opened young Arthur’s mind to the art of healing; the stories of his father; the long wars to stabilize the British homeland; and the nature of the Saxons, who became their neighbors and their enemies.
Bedwyr, Elayne, and even Maeve had read Myrddion’s scrolls in those far-off days of peace and studious concentration, and all had learned much that was useful from that remarkable, well-traveled thinker. Arthur had f
ound his own place in the world through the old healer’s stories of Artor and had come to feel pride in his ancestry. As a by-product, he had also become proficient in written Latin.
Although the Roman Empire was now a distant memory, its language remained the one unifying factor in the West. Any man who spoke or wrote Latin could travel from Constantinople to Londinium or from Tolosa to Bremen, and still be understood by members of the local population. Arthur decided Stormbringer was a man of obvious intelligence, but he was unlikely to have had the need to master any written language, Latin or otherwise.
Then Arthur glimpsed the runes carved into a walrus-ivory tablet that hung on a thong around Stormbringer’s neck. Stormbringer tucked the amulet away from Arthur’s prying eyes, but the young Briton wondered at its significance.
“Thank you, Master Stormbringer.” Arthur spoke for his companions as he carefully framed each syllable. “We’re all hungry.”
“So . . . you speak the Frankish tongue,” Stormbringer answered, his blond eyebrows raised in surprise. “You possess a host of talents and inconsistencies, young Dragonsen.”
This man has educated speech patterns for a barbarian, the young man thought. He was disconcerted, but made no comment. Lorcan had cautioned his student against such rash preconceptions, so Arthur decided he should watch and wait before deciding what type of man this Dene really was. Time enough in the future to learn everything he needed to know about his captor.
“Did you know that the Franks were originally a northern tribe, and neighbors of the Saxons?” Stormbringer asked; Arthur realized that he and his companions had fallen into the hands of a knowledgeable man. A moment of reflection convinced Arthur that only a highly respected leader would have been given the task of voyaging into the unknown on a mission of obvious importance. To jump to erroneous conclusions because Stormbringer and his crew were clad in hides and furs, and to decide that their culture was primitive because the Dene ship was held together with pegs rather than nails, would be a gravely wrong assessment of their technical ability.
