The Hallowed Isle Book Four

by Diana L. Paxson

  The hart, wheeling to face the darting dogs, was oblivious to its danger. One dog was bleeding from a gashed flank already, and as Medraut crept closer, the stag’s head dipped and it hooked another, yelping, into the air. Medraut darted forward, slashing at the tendon that ran down the hind leg, leaping back as the beast lurched, three-legged, towards him.

  For a moment he met the white-rimmed gaze, furious and disdainful even now. Then the antlers scythed downward in a wicked slash.

  Medraut leaped sideways, aiming for the spot behind the shoulder where a swift stab could pierce upward to the heart. But the stag was faster. Twelve blades blurred towards him. He dropped his sword and threw himself forward, under the tines, then jumped, grabbing the beast’s neck and jerking up his legs to avoid the striking hooves.

  Overbalanced, the stag fell. Medraut, pinned beneath it, twisted an arm free to draw his dagger, stabbing. His body strained against that of the deer in a desperate embrace, his face jammed against the rank hide, until with a last spasm the stag gave up the battle and lay still.

  “My lord! Lord Medraut!”

  Dimly, he heard the cries. He struggled to sit up as men pulled the carcass off of him. He got to his feet, amazed to find nothing broken, though battered limbs were already beginning to complain. The neck of the hart was a bloody mess, its eyes already dull. He kicked the body and raised his arms, red to the elbow.

  “The old king is dead!” he cried, his voice shrill with release. “The victory is mine!”

  In the eyes of the men around him he saw relief, and wonder, and a feral excitement that matched his own. They began to cry out his name as horns belled victory. In that moment, the forest, and the dead deer, and the shouting hunters were one. He looked at them and felt a visceral jolt of connection, as if the spirit of the stag had entered him. They are mine! he thought. This land is mine! I claim it as a conqueror!

  Bitter as memory, the music of the horns was carried by the wind from the tree-choked valley to the bare high moorland that looked over the sea. Merlin paused to listen, the sprig of thyme forgotten in his hand.

  “Medraut has made his kill,” said Ninive. “Tonight there will be venison for the table.”

  “I would that were all that Medraut brought with him—” The words came from somewhere below Merlin’s conscious awareness.

  “What do you mean?” asked the girl, her fair hair lifting in the breeze.

  Merlin shrugged, knowing neither what he feared nor from whence the knowledge came.

  Eyes narrowing, she gestured towards the plant in his hand. “You said you would teach me. This lore of herbs and healing I could learn at the Isle of Maidens. But you are the prophet of Britannia—teach me how to know. . . .”

  He spread his hands helplessly, letting the thyme fall to the ground. Standing with her face uplifted to the sky, Ninive seemed made of light, her pointed features one with the face of the daimon that lived within his soul.

  “How can I teach you? You are knowledge.”

  “When you look at me, what do you see? And what do I see when I look at you?” She gave him a long, enigmatic look. “What you cannot say, perhaps you can show—” she said softly. Then her voice sharpened. “Speak, O man of wisdom. In the name of your daimon I conjure you. How goes it with the high king in Gallia?”

  Merlin felt the first wave of vertigo and gripped the shaft of the Spear with both hands, thrusting the point into the earth as if to root it there. Vision came and went in waves, so he closed his eyes, feeling the ashwood shaft in his hands become the trunk of a great tree mighty enough to uphold worlds. Supported by its strength, he relinquished his attempt to hold onto normal consciousness and let his spirit soar.

  In the first moments, awareness extended, borne on the wings of the wind. Below him tossed the grey waves of the sea. Then vision began to focus; he saw hacked woodlands and broad fields trampled to mud where armies had passed. In the dim distance where he had left his body, a voice called his name. He knew that he answered, but not what he said to her.

  There was the smoke of a burned village; the air trembled with the echo of battle. Awareness focused further; he saw the standard of the Pendragon and men in battered Roman armor locked in a struggle against big, fairhaired men in high-peaked spangenhelms with gilded figures of eagles glittering from their shields.

  He saw Artor bestriding the body of Gwyhir, hewing Franks with mighty strokes until Gualchmai clove a way through the tangle to stand with him. Horns blared, and a wedge of cavalry bore down upon the fray, Betiver in the lead. The Franks fell back then, running towards the mounts they had left at the edge of the field. Betiver pursued. The long Roman lances stabbed and more blood fed the ground.

  The scene changed then. It was sunset, and within a circle of torches he could see the body of an old man, wrapped in a purple mantle and laid upon a pyre. Artor took a torch from one of the soldiers and plunged it between the logs, then stood back, the flicker of light gilding the hard planes of his face, as the fire caught the oil-soaked wood and blazed high.

  Men crowded around him. One held a cloak like the one that had wrapped the corpse. Artor was shaking his head, but they cast the purple across his shoulders. Others surged forward, shields on their arms, and knelt as the king, still protesting, was lifted. Cheering, they raised him on their shields. Merlin could see mouths opening in unison, heard the echo of their shouting in his soul—“Imperator! Imperator!”

  Awareness recoiled in a whirl of purple and flame, and he opened his eyes, gasping in the red light of the dying day.

  “The king—” he croaked, and coughed, trying to sort through the maelstrom of fading images. “What did I say?”

  “Riothamus is dead,” said Ninive in a shaken voice, “and they have acclaimed Artor as emperor. . . .”

  The Isle of Afallon lay wrapped in the dreaming peace of autumn. Guendivar sat beside the Blood Spring, watching yellow leaves swirl slowly across the pool.

  “He will never return, Julia,” she said sadly. “I feel it in my heart. If they have made Artor emperor, he has his desire. Why should he return to me, or to Britannia?”

  “If you can trust the sorcerer’s vision,” observed the other woman a trifle grimly. The years had changed Julia little, save for the white veil of a sworn nun that covered her cropped hair. “Every day, it seems, we hear a new tale. Some say that it was Artor, not Riothamus, who died.”

  Guendivar shook her head. “He is not dead. I would know. . . .”

  “Because you are his wife?” Julia lifted one eyebrow. “He has never truly been a husband to you.”

  “Because I am Artor’s queen,” corrected Guendivar, “and the land itself would break into lamentation if he departed this world.”

  Julia snorted disbelievingly. “After ten years does the land even remember him? It is you, my dear one, who are the source of sovereignty. What will you do?” After the death of Mother Madured, the nuns had chosen Julia to lead them, and she spoke with authority.

  “Theodoric has sent a ship to Aquilonia for news. I will decide when we know for sure—”

  “If you have time!” Julia rose to her feet, shaking her head. “Artor has been too long away, and Britannia is humming like a hive. If he does not come back himself along with the messenger, he may find that the land has given herself elsewhere! But whatever happens, my queen, remember that there will always be a place for you at Afallon.”

  Guendivar tried to smile. Once she had thought this isle a prison, but now she could appreciate the power that lay beneath its peace. All the disciplines of the nuns barely allowed them to endure the energies that pulsed in the chill waters of the spring. She leaned over the water, seeing her own face as a design in flowing planes amid the spiral flow of the current. She dipped up water and the image dislimned, forming anew in the shining drops that fell from her hands.

  Both women turned at the sound of a step on the stones. It was one of the novices, still nervous before the queen of Britannia.

 
; “Lady, the lord Medraut would speak with you. . . .”

  “He cannot come here,” Julia began, but Guendivar was already rising.

  “Tell him to join me in the orchard,” she said, pulling the veil up over her hair.

  The apples had been harvested, and the leaves were falling. Only a few wizened fruits, too small to be worth the effort to reach them, still clung to the highest boughs. But though the trees were bare, they were not barren, for with the new year they would flower and fruit once more.

  Unlike me . . . the queen thought bitterly. She paced between the trees and turned, frowning, as Medraut shut the gate and came towards her. Lean and well-knit, with the sunlight burnishing his auburn hair, at least he did not remind her of Artor.

  “The horses are ready. If we would reach Camalot before dark, we must go now.”

  “Why should I go back? If Artor does not return, I am no longer queen.” Guendivar could feel the kingdom crumbling around her, or perhaps it was she herself who was drying up and flakng away. Medraut caught her by the shoulder as she started to turn.

  “Guendivar!” His grip tightened. “You are the source of sovereignty! Britannia needs you—I need you! My lady, my beloved, don’t you understand?”

  She retreated, shaking her head, and he followed, still holding her, until her back was against a tree.

  “Guendivar. . . . Guendivar. . . .” He pulled the veil from her head and, very gently, touched her hair. “You are source and the center, the wellspring and the sacred grove.”

  She stood, scarcely breathing, as his hand moved from her hair to her cheek. This was not the disguised seduction he had tried before. Gentle he might be, but there was an authority in his grip that she could not deny. She turned her head, but he forced it back again, and then he was kissing her, hard and deep, and she felt the power begin to leave her limbs.

  “Artor is gone . . .” he murmured into her hair. “He has abandoned us, and without a king, the princes will tear this poor land apart like wolves. I can lead them, I know it, but only you can legitimate my rule!”

  His hand slid down her neck, pushing the tunica from her shoulder to cup her breast, and she began to tremble, long-supressed responses flaming into awareness once more.

  “Guendivar . . . Guendivar. . . . Marry me, and I will love you as he never could. I know how to serve a queen!” He bowed before her, hands sliding down her sides until he knelt, holding her against him, head pressed against the joining of her thighs.

  “I am your father’s wife . . .” she whispered, fighting to stay upright. If once he got her on her back upon the grass, she would have no power to stop whatever he might do.

  And why am I resisting? she wondered. When had Artor ever come to her with such passion, such need?

  “He has renounced the marriage, and you are no kin to me—” he said thickly. “Come to me, Guendivar, give me the right to rule. . . .”

  “Not here . . .” she whispered. “This is holy ground. . . .”

  Medraut leaned back a little, gazing up at her with darkened gaze. “But you will lie with me, won’t you, my dearest? You will marry me?”

  Guendivar shuddered, her body aching with need. It was too late, she thought. She had no choice, now—she had already given too much away. Without volition, the words came to her. “When you are king. . . .”

  The queen sat in her place in the round Council Hall, an image of sovereignty draped in cloth of gold. Medraut had taken his seat on the other side of the king’s empty chair.

  Soon, he thought, it will be my chair! As soon as the men he had summoned to his Midwinter Feasting agreed. . . . The blazing fire in the center of the circle flickered on faces sharpened by interest, glinted on the softness of fur lined mantles and the glint of gold. The houseposts were wreathed with evergreen, set with holly and ivy and mistletoe.

  To call them together had been a risk, he knew. It might have been safer to simply proclaim himself king. If Artor had left the Sword behind, Medraut could have proved his right by pulling it from the stone. His mother had explained the trick of it, and he was of the blood—twice over, he thought with a sardonic grin.

  But he could call himself Basileus of Byzantium, or lord of the Blessed Isles, and it would mean nothing if no one followed him. He must be acclaimed by the princes of Britannia, or by enough of them to impress the remainder. Camalot was garrisoned with men he had chosen. He had sent word already to Aelle and Cynric and Icel, and knew that they would send him warriors when he called. But to rule Britannia, he needed the support of these men.

  He gazed around the chamber, counting those of whom he was certain, and those he judged weak enough to be swayed. There were some, like Theodoric in Demetia and Eldaul of Glevum, whom he knew would accept no heir until they saw Artor in his grave. The invitations sent to them had all—so sorry—gone astray. Of the older men, he had only Cataur of Dumnonia, who had never been Artor’s friend, with his son Constantine by his side.

  But Martinus of Viroconium, newly succeeded to his father’s seat, would stand behind him, and so would Caninus of Glevum, whatever his father might say. The boys from Guenet, Maglouen and Cunoglassus, though young, came of noble kin. Where the sons were seduced by dreams of glory, the fathers might be persuaded by lower taxes and a more accommodating authority.

  Medraut waited, poised as the hawk that hovers over the field, until all had taken their places, waited until the silence was becoming uncomfortable, before he got to his feet in an easy movement that focused their attention. He had dressed with care in a long tunic of Byzantine brocade dyed a crimson so deep it was almost purple. His black cloak was lined with wolfskin. Around his neck glinted a king’s torque of twisted gold.

  “Lords of Britannia, I bid you welcome. It is the queen who has called you here to council, as is her right. I speak in her name—” He bowed to Guendivar, who inclined her head, her features as expressionless as those of a Roman statue beneath the veil.

  “And why does she—or you—summon us here?” Cataur called out in reply.

  “To take counsel for the future of this island, for ten long years bereft of her king.” He waited for the murmur to subside.

  “Have you had word of Artor’s death?” asked Paulinus of Viroconium.

  “We have had rumors only. There was a great battle with the Franks, and many were killed. My informants saw a funeral pyre and were told that the Britons were burning their king.”

  The outbreak of response to this was sharper. Many here had resented Artor’s rule, but he had also been much loved. Guendivar looked up abruptly at his words, for she believed the confused tale of Merlin’s prophecy, that it was Riothamus who had died.

  “Perhaps he is not dead”—he shrugged—”although I do not understand why, if Artor lives, he has not sent word. Perhaps they have made him emperor, and he no longer cares for Britannia.” Medraut spread his hands. “My lords—does it really matter? He is not here! Is that the act of a lord who cares for his people?” he exclaimed.

  “The season of storms is on us, bad for sailing,” said someone, but the rest of the men were shouting agreement.

  “Is that the way of a Defender of the land? The way of a king?” Medraut continued, drawing more shouts with each repetition.

  He moved away from his seat and began to pace around the circle. “Last year men from the North attacked the coast of Anglia. I led a troop of British warriors, and rode with Icel’s son Creoda to defeat them. We parted in friendship, but do you think the Anglians did not notice that Britannia has no king to defend her? They accepted me only because I am King Artor’s . . . kin.”

  Medraut saw eyes flickering towards his face and away again. They had become accustomed to him—time to remind them who he really was.

  “I spent nearly nine years among the Saxons, and learned their tongue. After a time they forgot to watch their words around me. They are quiet now, but they have not given up their dreams of conquering the rest of this isle. For a decade the fear of Artor’
s name has held them, but a new generation of warriors is growing up who have not learned to respect British arms. Whether by fear or friendship, they must be fettered anew, and this can only be done by a king.”

  The fire wavered as the pressure inside the hall was changed by a gust of wind outside, as if to echo his words.

  “And do you claim the kingship?” cried one of the Dumnonian lords.

  Medraut took a deep breath. For this he had been born; he had been trained up by his mother to be her weapon against the king. Now that Morgause had renounced vengeance, to take Artor’s place would be his revenge on her. And he wanted it, more than he had ever wanted anything, except perhaps for his mother’s love, or Kea, or Guendivar.

  “I do. I have the right, whether you count me as son or sister-son, and I have the will.” His voice rang through the hall. “Artor wasted your sons and your wealth in a senseless foreign war. I will keep both safe in Britannia. He kept a tight rein on the princes of this land; but the Saxon wars are long past, and we can afford to rule with less central authority. There must be one man with the power, and the prestige, to deal with them. All these things I will do as your king!”

  “What says the lady Guendivar?” asked Constantine.

  Medraut turned to the queen and held out his hand. She rose to her feet, paler, if possible, than she had been before.

  “Artor has abandoned us,” she said in a low voice. “Let Medraut take the rule. . . .”

  He bent before her, then straightened, standing of a purpose where firelight would veil him in gold.

  “Medraut!” called Martinus and Cunoglassus, and after them a dozen others took up the cry. They shouted his name till the rafters rang, and when the acclamation died away at last, Medraut sat down in the great carved chair of the king.

  VIII

  BELTAIN FIRES