King of the May

by Myers, Karen

  Gladly he pulled out of the monster’s head and looked at her, with his mind.

  Her message was articulate, clear, and simple. “Cernunnos,” she thought. “Call Cernunnos.” She pictured a deer-headed man which raised an echo of recognition in him.

  He tried to do as she asked and it didn’t work. He shook his head and roared in frustration. He tried again and felt his body change, bursting out of his clothes, and he was lost to rational thought.

  Rhian was in her room when she felt the sudden eruption of George’s fury through the little beasts she was using to monitor him. This was it, she thought with elation. No more waiting.

  She grabbed her latest bag of food from the cache over the window and casually strolled past the guards into the garden as she had done many times before. She took her usual spot on the bench and hoped that whatever this was would attract little notice before she could get them away.

  She watched through her sparrow in the rafters as George lifted the bedstead and blocked the door with it. She cheered him on, silently, as he destroyed the room but sobered as she realized he was trapped in Creiddylad’s mind and desperately needed a way to escape.

  Let’s get out of here, she thought, and made the bird flutter to catch his attention. As she’d hoped, he came to the balcony to look for her.

  She was scared when she got a look at him. He was shaking with rage, and she wasn’t sure he could concentrate on her. She tried to tell him to invoke Cernunnos, and she thought he understood her, but it didn’t work and he roared and shook his head. Then the roar turned into a bugle and he transformed, not into the deer-headed form of Cernunnos, but into a full-sized enormous red deer, trapped on that tiny balcony in the rags of shredded clothing.

  She worried that the noise would call all the guards. Come down, she thought at him, and the deer shook its head with its heavy antlers, scrambled up on the parapet and leapt diagonally to another balcony on the floor below, and from there to the ground. Its legs scrabbled for traction as it landed, but it seemed to have survived the drop.

  She yanked her pack from its hiding place and stuffed the food sack inside. Holding it behind her with one hand, she approached the postern gate and its two guards. Her longer knife filled her other hand, hidden by her skirt.

  She widened her eyes and gasped, “It’s terrible. It’s gone wild and it’s destroying everything.” She pointed with her head at the deer, more than twice the weight of either guard. She counted on their confusion to dismiss her as a threat, and it worked. They drew their swords and advanced on the stag that came to her.

  It bugled again and struck out at the leading guard with its flailing front feet. She dropped her pack and turned on the other guard and stabbed him in the throat while he was distracted. It was horrible, but she knew it had to be done. When she could drag her eyes away, she saw the deer trampling the corpse of the guard he’d attacked.

  “Enough, lord Cernunnos,” she said. “It’s not his fault. We must leave.”

  She steeled herself and stripped her guard of his swordbelt and took his sword, and she opened the postern gate. Behind them she could hear the uproar rising in the castle.

  The deer bolted through the opening and she ran as fast as she could in its wake.

  The deer waited for Rhian at the crest of a low hill east of the castle. There was a good view of the walls and some of the taller buildings. They weren’t high enough to see all the way down into it, but Rhian could hear shouted commands in the distance and knew that they must surely be organizing a pursuit.

  She planned to repel any horses and hounds sent after them, but she wasn’t sure she could outrace them on foot and she wanted to keep the heavy sword. She needed a horse. She reached out with her beast-sense and found the nearest one, and summoned it. There was resistance, which she interpreted as a rider, so she had the horse rear, and the resistance ended. In just a few minutes, a bay horse trotted up the hill to join them. It bore an empty saddle, and she rejoiced to find saddlebags attached behind. When they paused, she would check to see what they contained.

  Keeping a wary eye on the deer lest it take off without her, she quickly stripped off her dainty dress and donned the clothing she’d prepared, frowning at the delicate boots that were the best she’d been able to provide. She cut her long shift off to a proper shirt’s length and stowed the remnant in her pack. She wrapped the guard’s swordbelt around her waist, tying a knot to make it short enough to hold temporarily.

  With a mirthless grin, she kicked her fine clothes off to the side for Gwythyr to find. Too bad she couldn’t linger to watch his reaction.

  She mounted up and adjusted the stirrups to fit her. “We should go,” she told the deer. She couldn’t bespeak it well, like an ordinary animal, and she felt odd talking to it like a person, but what else was she to do to reach Cernunnos or George, whichever was uppermost?

  She couldn’t tell if it understood her. She thought it had to be more animal in this manifestation than in the hybrid forms, and she wondered if that impaired its comprehension, or maybe a part of whatever enchantment Creiddylad had laid confused it.

  It hadn’t left her, so something must be getting through. She saw the guard’s sword must have caught it along the right front leg, but the wound seemed shallow and the bleeding had stopped.

  The deer turned its head to look at her and stamped its foot. Clearly it wasn’t ready to go yet. She resolved to wait until pursuit on foot was uncomfortably close, if necessary.

  Something caught her eye and she suddenly realized that the ground beneath her was alive with movement. She held her horse motionless while mice, rats, and other small creatures swarmed from the east behind them toward the castle. From where she stood she could make out a shimmer on the castle walls. She reached out, and the walls shone to her with small life, creatures climbing up and over, the leading edge of what she felt beneath her horse’s feet.

  The deer snorted in concentration as it worked and Rhian shuddered. He was filling the castle with vermin. No wonder the pursuit was delayed. She wouldn’t want to be on the other side of those walls tonight.

  CHAPTER 22

  For the remainder of the afternoon and well into the evening, they traveled east together. Rhian let the deer set the route, but she kept the pace to a combination of walk and trot for the sake of the borrowed horse, to keep from exhausting it.

  When she finally told the deer that the horse was tired, it stopped in a small clearing in the woods. A stream ran through it, and there was just enough new grass to satisfy the horse for a while.

  She dismounted and stripped the tack off of the horse and rubbed it down with a wisp of last year’s grass.

  She talked to the deer while she went about her work. “Will you stay with me, or will you be gone in the morning?”

  The deer looked at her expressionlessly.

  “George needs me,” she told it. “You’ve both been hurt.”

  The deer snorted at her but made no move to leave.

  She bespoke the horse to stay in the clearing and hoped that would hold it all night. She wanted a fire, but she had no way of starting one. The little human lighter that she had carried had been taken from her during her abduction and she had no other means.

  A search through the saddle bags had turned up a cloth-wrapped dinner which she eagerly devoured and a very welcome flask of beer, somewhat the worse for all the movement it had endured. She’d hoped for a fire-starter but something to carry water in was almost as useful.

  She tore a strip off the remnant of her long shift and soaked it in the water from the stream. With that, she approached the deer, and it let her clean the cut on its right foreleg. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me bandage that?” she said, and the deer backed away.

  She wrapped herself as warmly as she could and laid down on the ground, prepared to shiver until morning in the chill spring air. The night noises resumed their background presence once she stopped moving.

  After a few minutes, she f
elt the deer approach and stand over her. She thought of the trampled guard and knew a moment’s fear, but then it folded its legs and sank down at her back. She waited a minute, then tentatively reached over her shoulder and scratched its face, and it blew in her ear.

  She snuggled up to the warm beast and finally succumbed to sleep.

  The deer lay awake after his companion had dropped off. Emotions roiled through him, wrath uppermost. He seethed over his betrayal by the woman, though he didn’t understand it.

  He’d killed a man to escape, he remembered the feel of his feet striking him, hard, pounding him into the ground, the sting of the sword. But wasn’t he a man himself? He tried to look at his hand for reassurance, but he didn’t have one.

  He couldn’t think clearly. The smell of a strange horse assaulted his nose, but the scent of the sleeping form next to him was familiar, and the sound of her voice soothed him. I should keep running, he thought, but he couldn’t leave his companion. She helped, didn’t she? I’d still be there without her.

  Where were they? He knew, somehow, that there were great rivers on either side, to the north and south. They needed to travel east, but he wasn’t sure where they were going.

  He was hungry. It had been a hard day. He vaguely remembered tearing furniture apart, in another form. He hadn’t been able to make himself browse as they journeyed, not even the fresh young green leaves they passed had appealed to him.

  He dozed, his antlered head upright, throughout the night. Residual rage boiled over and invaded his uneasy dreams.

  For two days more they traveled to the east. Rhian thought they might have covered thirty miles each day. They could have moved faster, but she wanted to spare the horse as much as possible to make up for the limited forage. Her food would hold out another couple of days but she was worried about the deer. She never saw it eat.

  The evening camps were cold and rough, but she was so happy to be free that she didn’t mind. Maelgwn would scold her for not having a way to make a fire, but even that rueful reflection couldn’t dampen her relief. They would find friends soon, she was sure of it, and then she’d reach her family again. Each day’s exhaustion helped to smother the memory of killing the guard. Her arm remembered the sensation of cutting into his throat, and the necessity of it did little to suppress the horror of the feeling.

  Her biggest problem was George. Or Cernunnos, she supposed. Whatever was wrong with him seemed no better in this deer form, but she was touched by his nighttime guard when she slept. That warm alert presence behind her reminded her of the huntsman she knew, and she had hopes he could be helped.

  In any case, the deer seemed to know where it wanted to go, it wasn’t a random route. They were still headed east by the middle of the third day when the deer lifted its head and suddenly changed its course.

  Rhian was startled but caught up, and a few minutes later she heard the sound of horns and the cry of hounds ahead of them.

  They entered a large meadow in the woods and a red deer stag, no longer in antler, swept by them under the branches. Her deer stopped still, a few feet in from the margin, and stamped its foot, diverting the tricolor hounds in full cry from their pursuit. Rhian pulled up alongside him.

  The huntsman following behind entered the meadow from the far side and stopped in astonishment at the sight of the two of them. Her deer sent the hounds back to him, and they laid down quietly, unnaturally still. As more of the hunt staff entered, they joined the huntsman, the width of the meadow away.

  Rhian didn’t know what to do. She watched her deer turn its antlered head and another hound that had been running alone in the woods was swept back into the pack to join his fellows. The huntsman reached for his sword and that decided her.

  She swung her leg over and dropped down from her horse. She stepped in front of the deer and spread her arms wide. The tableau froze for a moment. The hunt staff, all in a blue livery that was unknown to her, paused, uncertain about how to proceed.

  The standoff only lasted a moment. The hunters following behind entered the meadow and slowed to a stop as they took in the strange scene. Behind them, the servants trickled in, until fully half the meadow was occupied.

  The hunters were richly attired and their horses were fresh and strong. Rhian felt especially grubby after three nights in the woods in her makeshift clothing, her hair probably coming undone from her morning braid and covered with twigs.

  Silence returned as the hunters took in the great deer, still strangely in antler at this late season, and its young protector. They glanced at the unnaturally quiet hounds, lying at the huntsman’s feet.

  A lordly gray-haired man rode forward, and a woman followed. They both had a dignity and grace that appealed strongly to Rhian, but she didn’t know who they were and was more than wary of strangers now. Two others came with them, and she was astonished to recognize Rhodri as one of them. He’d been sent to Llefelys’s court, and now she knew where she was.

  Rhodri cried, “Rhian? Is that you?”

  “Yes, cousin.”

  He pointed at the deer. “Is that…?”

  She nodded.

  He gaped, then recalled himself. He turned his horse to face Llefelys and his queen. The crowd was hushed. Nothing could be heard but the occasional clink of harness.

  “My lord king, please let me introduce your kinswoman, Rhian ferch Rhys ab Edern.”

  Llefelys regarded her gravely.

  The deer walked around Rhian and stopped in front of her. It transformed to George on all fours, with his head down, nude in the tall grass. There were gasps in the crowd, and several removed their hats. George rose, his face still blank and confused.

  Rhodri blinked, then continued, “And your nephew’s huntsman and great-grandson, George Talbot Traherne.”

  From where she stood, Rhian could see the heavy scars on George’s back, in the shape of an X. She knew about them, but she hadn’t seen them before.

  Rhian made an attempt at a bow in her rough attire, and then burst out, “Rhodri, we need help. Creiddylad was there. We got away but she did something to him, to them.”

  The other man, the one who’d come out of the crowd with Rhodri, bowed to her from the saddle. He seemed young, compared to his king.

  “These wonders have quite surprised us, my lady. Perhaps I can be of help?”

  Rhodri said, “Rhian, this is Morien, Llefelys’s healer.” They both dismounted and handed their horses to the grooms who ran forward to hold them.

  George didn’t move, so they walked across the meadow to him. As Rhodri approached he flinched away, and Rhodri froze.

  Rhian said, “He doesn’t know you. I don’t think he can remember anything. He trusts me.”

  She turned to George. “This is your friend, Rhodri,” she said. “Listen to him.”

  George obediently studied Rhodri and this time he didn’t move away when Rhodri closed the distance.

  Morien hung back and asked her, “You’re using his beast-sense, aren’t you?”

  “It was the only thing I could think of,” she said. “That seems to have been spared.”

  “Please introduce me, then.” He waited patiently.

  Rhian didn’t know what to make of him. He seemed young to be one of Ceridwen’s colleagues, but confident. She glanced at Rhodri, and he nodded.

  “George,” she said, and he tilted that puzzled face to her, “this is Morien. He’ll help you.”

  He looked at her for a moment longer, then turned his gaze on Morien. He stood his ground when Morien walked up and took his face between his two hands.

  He looked lightly into Morien’s mind. It was dense and subtle, but he sensed no malice in it and no guilt involving him. The young man’s mind a moment before had been bright and volatile, and he felt concern and friendship, but this man was much harder to pin down.

  He trusted the girl, and he was tired. He lowered whatever defenses he had and waited.

  Morien voiced his thoughts as he worked, and he listened to hi
m, fascinated.

  “Brutal work,” Morien said, probing. “Overkill. She walled everything away, including whatever she wanted, no doubt. How long ago did this happen?”

  The girl said, “About three weeks. There were drugs that dulled him, too. I think he was able to avoid those after a while.”

  “Yes, they would have been necessary to keep him alive, I imagine. He probably wouldn’t have survived the first days without them.”

  He remembered the earliest memories, fear and panic, and grimaced.

  “Ah,” Morien said, “I think I’ve got it. Prepare yourself, lad, this is going to hurt, like having a tooth pulled.”

  A great pressure pushed against the bare cement walls in his mind and tore through them. He felt as if his foundations were being ripped out, but then the walls collapsed as a river of memory rushed back in and swept them away. He cried out and broke away from Morien, pressing the base of the palms of his hand against his forehead as if he could hold everything in that way and stand against the flood.

  Rage was uppermost, hot rage, both his own and Cernunnos’s. It tainted everything else, and there were good things there that he didn’t want ruined by it. He had to get it under control.

  George whirled away from the crowd and sought privacy a few feet away at the edge of the woods. His hands found the horizontal branch of a wild cherry tree and hung onto it, as if it were an anchor, shuddering with the flood of emotions and thoughts that repossessed him.

  A loud crack surprised him, and he looked down to find he’d broken off the living branch, three inches thick. He slid his hands together and swung it against the trunk of the tree with all his might and it shattered, green wood and all.

  Resolutely he turned around and came back to his original spot. He faced the hunters, still shaking with rage. Without warning, the horned man rose within him and manifested. He made way for Cernunnos, but it wasn’t as complete a division as he was used to, he was more of a participant.