THE FATEFUL VISION
The bard’s bowl, when she touched it, felt warm against her palms. For a moment she thought it glowed with a strange, pulsating light…. Not wanting to, still she lifted the bowl and looked … and knew this time the vision would come.
She made one final, desperate effort to resist. But the force of the vision, so ancient and so powerful, was too strong for her. She looked down, down into the bowl’s glimmering depths—and the water swirled and eddied, darkening into a pool of blood.
The bloody pool whirled faster, sucking her in. She clenched the bowl with a white-knuckled grip. A blinding mist rose up from the vortex of the spinning liquid, searing her eyes with its brightness. A final mewl of protest pushed through her lips as the clang of sword against sword battered her ears … and death screams carried on the howling wind. She smelled the tang of hot metal, the acrid sweat of fear….
A mailed knight burst out of the swirling mists. His horse reared, pawing the air, and for a moment he was silhouetted, large and menacing, against a slate sky. He raised his mighty lance and a gust of wind snapped at the pennon, unfurling it against leaden clouds—a black dragon on a bloodred field. With a cry of triumph he whirled and charged….
Dell books by
Penelope Williamson
HEART OF THE WEST
KEEPER OF THE DREAM
ONCE IN A BLUE MOON
A WILD YEARNING
For Derek,
Keeper of my dreams … and of my heart
Their Lord they shall praise,
Their language they shall keep,
Their land they shall lose,
Except Wild Wales.
—Prophecy attributed to the great Welsh
bard Taliesin, who lived in the sixth
century … and perhaps
in other times as well.
1
Wales, 1157
The wind carried with it the stench of burning thatch and the anguished wail of a woman’s scream.
A knight on horseback rode through the sacked town. The wind sent an ell of bright ruby silk floating toward him down the muddy road. The cloth snagged a moment on a broken cartwheel before a gust whipped it free, and it was trampled unnoticed beneath his charger’s hooves. But when a pack of squealing rats darted into the road from a smoldering hayrick, the horse reared in alarm. The knight controlled the enormous black beast easily and without thought.
He passed a wall of burning timber, and the flames flickered in the sheen of sweat on his face, flaring in his flint-gray eyes. A spearman darted in front of him, waving a pitch-soaked brand. Laughing, the man called out the knight’s name as he put the torch to a hovel roof and the straw ignited into a fountain of fire. A hail of cinders and shrieks of terror swirled up from inside. But the knight rode on.
The door of a nearby cottage burst open and an archer reeled across the threshold. He stumbled into the knight’s path to sprawl facedown in a puddle, a ploughman’s sickle buried in his back. Rivulets of blood, like spilled wine, ran from his outstretched hands. A sobbing girl crawled after him. Her tunic was ripped down the front, baring small, blue-veined breasts. Yet the knight passed her by without sparing a glance—just as he failed to see the discarded loot of dented pots and burst sacks of grain that littered the way before him.
On he rode with single-minded purpose out the town’s battered gate, where he pulled up within the shadow of the wall.
His brooding gaze followed the rutted road where it wound along the river toward a castle. In the gray twilight the castle’s sandstone walls took on the black-red color of dried blood. It loomed thick and heavy against the rain-sodden clouds, but in the tower, light glowed from a solitary window.
“Rhuddlan …”
The knight spoke the castle’s name aloud, but there was no inflection in his voice. Just as his face—though streaked with marks from his helm and splattered with another man’s blood—bore no expression. It could have belonged to an effigy on a tomb.
He stared a long time at the keep with its frail speck of light. When at last he turned away, it was with a savage, parting promise….
Rhuddlan, you will be mine.
Behind the shuttered window where a light still burned, a young woman cradled a bowl in her palms. It was fashioned of gold and rimmed with a band of pearls, and for a moment, as she held it, the vessel seemed to glow softly and pulse in her hands. But though she calmed her mind and peered into the bowl’s luminescent depths, she beheld only water and a shimmering reflection of the cresset lamps swinging on the wall above her head.
A rough voice barked in her ear. “Do you see anything yet?”
Arianna jerked, slopping water onto her rose silk bliaut. She set the bowl down onto a nearby chest with a clatter, and wiped at the growing wet stain on her skirt. Tossing a fat brown braid over her shoulder, she glared at her brother.
“God’s death. Nothing is likely to happen with you peering at me like a nervous priest in an alchemist’s shop. As if you expected to see brimstone come curling out my ears at any moment.”
“What I expect is for you to tell me what I need to know.” He spun away from her, then turned back, flinging out his arm and pointing a stiff finger in her face. “You wear the seer’s torque around your neck, yet you are next to useless when it comes to seeing anything.”
Unconsciously, Arianna touched the ancient collar that encircled her throat. It was of bronze—two twisted snakes, their heads meeting in the center with flicking tongues and staring emerald eyes—and in that moment it felt as if they were strangling her. But she tilted up her chin and matched her brother’s anger with her own. “And what of you, Ceidro? You wear a man’s sword around your waist, yet I don’t see you acting the part of a man on this night.”
A dark flush spread over Ceidro’s cheeks. Hunching his shoulders, he turned away from her, and Arianna regretted her hasty words. She went to him and laid her palm against his rigid back. “I tried, Ceidro. But you know it doesn’t work that way. The visions never come on command.”
Ceidro said nothing. Nor did he turn around. Arianna fought back another urge to shout at him. She didn’t want to argue with her brother. It was frustration that caused them to snap at one another. Frustration and fear. Ceidro knew well the visions had never once come when summoned. And when they did appear, rare and unexpected they often left her feeling ill and terrified, having revealed things she’d sooner not know. But her brother, too, was afraid. He wanted her to look into the future and tell him whether he would prevail in the battle he had to fight on the morrow.
She forced him to turn and meet her eyes. She tried a smile. “It’s the cursed Gwynedd temper. But we shouldn’t be fighting one another. Not now.”
Ceidro retrieved the bowl and thrust it at her. “Then try again.”
Arianna looked down at the golden vessel, but she didn’t touch it. It was a mazer, a drinking bowl, and centuries old. One day two years ago a mysterious bard had arrived at her father’s court, saying that he’d heard of the Prince of Gwynedd’s daughter, how she wore the seer’s torque and possessed the filid’s gift of prophecy. He had given Arianna the bowl and told her it had once belonged to Myrddin, the greatest magician and seer who had ever lived. But though she kept it with her always and though the visions continued to appear, sporadic and unbidden, in every mundane medium of water imaginable, from a bathing tub to a rain puddle, Arianna had never been able to call forth a single glimpse of the future in the bard’s so-called magic mazer.
So now Arianna lifted her head to tell her brother that it was no use, but the sight of him stilled her words. In the soft light his thin, beardless face looked pathetically young. Like her, he possessed the Gwynedd features of pointed
chin, sharp cheekbones, and wide-spaced, sea-foam eyes. Tonight, fear showed in those eyes. And lingering traces of a bitter grief. Only a month ago his young wife had died in childbed, and he’d barely had time to mourn before he found himself defending this border cantref and castle against an enemy force twice as large and more powerful than his. And he was but twenty, only a year older than she.
Ceidrop pushed the curved edge of the mazer against her chest. “Are you going to cooperate with me, or no?”
Arianna swallowed hard, forcing a smile. “I’ll try again. But mind, you quit hovering over me like an anxious midwife.”
She was reaching for the bowl when a gust of wind ripped through the thin parchment windowpane, loosening a shutter. It slammed against the wall with a loud bang and Ceidro whirled, his hand flying to his sword.
He flashed Arianna a sheepish smile as he returned the mazer to the chest and strode across the rush-covered floor to refasten the latch. But he stiffened when he reached the window and his hand wrapped around the wooden shutter in a crushing grip. “God …”
“What? What is happening?” That morning the scouts had reported the enemy was on the march, but miles away. Yet through the rent in the window Arianna suddenly smelled smoke and heard an hysterical clanging of church bells from the village that lay between the castle and the sea. “Ceidro?”
“Christ Jesus save us,” Ceidro said on an intake of breath.
Arianna’s mouth went dry and her knees trembled as she joined her brother at the window. The town below was ablaze, gilding the lowering clouds and the distant sea with an iridescent glow. Flaming brands were reflected in the blades of countless weapons, flickering like hundreds of fireflies against a night sky. As they watched, a woman fled up the road toward the castle, a knight on a white charger pounding after her. Arianna held her breath, expecting the man to cut the woman down with a slash of his sword, but instead he leaned over and jerked the woman up by her arm, throwing her facedown across his saddlebows.
“God curse the English and their Norman masters,” she whispered, almost choking over the fury that squeezed her chest.
Ceidro stirred beside her and Arianna heard an answering tremor of hatred in his voice. “Aye … God curse them all.” Then he added fervently the oft-repeated prayer: “And God grant the Cymry victory.”
Though outsiders called their land Wales, the people who dwelled within its dark forests and misty mountains called it Cymru. They called themselves the Cymry, and they could not remember a time when there hadn’t been war. All their lives and the lives of their fathers and grandfathers had been spent in a desperate struggle for their freedom against first the Saxons and then the Norman invaders. Still they believed and they dreamed of liberty, and the bards sang of a time when the great King Arthur would arise from the Isle of Avalon, where he slept, to lead their people in one final and victorious battle against their enemies.
The bards sang, too, of Arianna’s family. Of the House of Cunedda, lords of Gwynedd, direct descendents of the great heroes of Britain. The sons and daughters of Gwynedd were the embodiment of the past and the caretakers of the future. They ruled over a quarter of Wales and their duty was to keep the dream of freedom alive.
But it was at times like these, Arianna thought as she watched the town burn, that it was easy to despair.
Behind them, the door crashed open beneath a heavy fist. Their cousin, Madog, stood beneath the arched entrance, his peaked helmet brushing against the curved stones, his big hand curled around a longbow. He looked huge in his quilted leather gambeson with its thick layers of rag padding.
“The high-and-mighty bastards have sent a messenger demanding our surrender,” he reported, a sneer curling the thick lips beneath his drooping mustache. “They’ve promised the villeins and cotters will be released—unharmed they say, though we know how the maggots do lie.” He snorted. “All freemen are to be ransomed, of course. And they want an answer within the hour.”
Ceidro’s face grew even paler, but he said nothing. Madog waited, the tense flexing of the hand that gripped his longbow his only movement. Of course we will never surrender, Arianna thought. But it was Ceidro’s place to answer the insulting challenge.
Above the moans of the rising wind, Arianna could hear the blare of trumpets and the shouts and pounding feet of the men being summoned to defend the battlements. “Tell the Norman cur we will never surrender,” she prompted her brother. “Not as long as there is a man or woman in this castle left alive to draw breath. Am I not right, Ceidro?”
Ceidro started as if awakening from a trance. “Aye …” His lips thinned into a tense grimace. “Tell him we’d rather burn in hell. Or better yet, simply cut off his messenger’s head and toss it back to him over the ramparts.”
Madog showed his teeth in a wide grin and turned to go. But Ceidro stopped him. “Wait, there’s something else. I …” He flicked his tongue across his upper lip. “How do you reckon they got to us so fast? I thought Father’s army was supposed to be between here and the English border.”
Madog shrugged his hulking shoulders. “They came up the coast by boat. And they’ve brought a lot of equipment with ‘em—catapults, sappers, scaling ladders, and the like. ’Tis my thought they aim to put us under siege.” He flashed another white-toothed grin. “But we’ll be all right, if we hold them off long enough for your da an’ your brothers to whip King Henry’s puny army.”
Ceidro’s head jerked in a nod and Arianna suddenly felt safe here, deep within the keep. The freestanding tower was made of stone and mortar and around it wrapped a tall shell wall. The whole of this keep stood within the heart of the bailey atop a motte—an enormous and steeply-sided man-made mound. And all of this was surrounded by a wide stone curtain wall that fairly bristled with battlements of arrow loops, merlons, crenels, and hoardings.
Surely, Arianna told herself, the only way such a fortress could be taken would be through guile or starvation. And there was a six-month supply of salt beef, wheat, and ale in the storerooms below.
“Aye, we’ll be all right,” Ceidro said, echoing her thoughts. “As long as we hang on.”
Once more Madog turned to go, but then he hesitated. “Did ye happen to catch sight of the banner yon Normans are flyin’?”
Ceidro’s glance flicked back to the open window. “It’s dark and I—”
“ ’Tis a black dragon on a red field.”
“Black dragon …” Arianna repeated in a harsh whisper.
The Black Dragon … Sir Raine the Bastard … from the Holy Land to Ireland, mothers invoked his image to frighten their children into obedience and young squires spoke his name with awe. He was the base-born result of a union between the powerful Earl of Chester and a castle whore. A knight-errant, without land, he supported himself by ransoming prisoners taken in tournaments and wars, and sold himself and his army to the highest bidder. Ruthless in battle and merciless in victory, he was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a supernatural prowess with the sword and the lance.
He was said to be invincible.
Ceidro stared at the thick iron-banded door long after it had closed behind Madog’s broad back. In the lengthening silence Arianna could hear the hiss of the coals in the brazier and the persistent groan of the wind. She hoped it would storm tonight. She hoped a summer gale would whip in from the sea and the skies would dump rain so that the Black Dragon—whose body at least must be human, even if his soul was the devil’s—would be wet and miserable.
Arianna watched her brother pace the room, from the great curtained lord’s bed to the glowing bronze brazier and back again. His shadow loomed then receded on the blue and gold-spangled walls. Of all her madly brave and reckless brothers, Ceidro was the gentle one. His temperament wasn’t suited to war; he couldn’t even bring himself to slit the throat of a wounded stag. He would be no match for the Black Dragon and he knew it. She pitied him for the uncertainty and fear he must be feeling.
“Cross of Christ!”
Ceidro exploded. He kicked a stool, sending it skidding across the floor to bang against the footboard of the great bed. “How am I supposed to keep this castle with only a handful of men?”
Arianna spoke his name softly. “Father wouldn’t have put Rhuddlan in your hands if he didn’t have faith in you.”
He paused before her, stroking her cheek. “Poor little sister. You should be safe at home, not caught up in this mess with me. I shouldn’t have asked you to come …” His voice trailed off. They were both remembering that she had come to help with the lying-in for his first child, and that she had stayed to comfort him after the birth had gone so horribly and tragically wrong.
“You know how I relish a chance to fight the cursed Normans.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, she held him tight, knowing she received more comfort than she gave. “The Black Dragon has never taken on the House of Gwynedd before. Come the morrow, he’ll be sorry for it. He’ll be feeling like a honey thief caught in a swarm of bees.”
Ceidro emitted a shaky laugh. “Aye, you’re right.” He pulled away from her. “And now I had better go see to my defenses, such as they are. Arianna …”He hesitated. “If the castle should fall—”
“It won’t fall.”
“But if it does, I might be too busy to look after you. Or I might …” He didn’t finish, but Arianna knew what he meant. He might be dead.
“I can take care of myself,” she said, though in truth she could already taste fear in her mouth, like the aftermath of a bitter draught.
Ceidro’s eyes crinkled with genuine amusement. “Aye, that you can. In a close fight you’re probably more lethal than I am.” They shared a smile, both remembering all the trouble Arianna had brought on herself while growing up by trying to mimic the daring feats and athletic skills of her nine brothers.
Then Arianna’s face grew serious. “I know what my duty is, Ceidro. I will never forget my duty.” She was Prince Owain of Gwynedd’s daughter. She would not beggar her family by allowing herself to be captured and ransomed. She would not shame them by letting herself be raped.
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