by Anna Elliott
“His word?” Kian repeated. “Hereric gave you his word?” His voice was almost expressionless. Then slowly, deliberately, he hawked and spat at Isolde’s feet. “That’s what I think of a promise given to you.”
He raised a hand, gesturing toward the twisted rope of scar on his cheek, his voice roughening in renewed rage. “You see this? This is the mark I carry of your father’s treason.” He paused for breath, his chest heaving, then went on, biting off each word, “I was a soldier, once. One of Agravaine’s men. And when Agravaine chose to follow your cursed father into battle instead of Arthur, my lord king, I was sworn by the death-oath—to fight on the traitor’s side and lose all with Agravaine and the rest who’d been fool enough to believe Modred would make the better king.”
Isolde looked from Kian to the man she’d known as Nifaran and back again. “And so now you’ve decided to turn traitor in your turn? Betray all Britain and enter the pay of the Saxon kings?”
“You vile-mouthed, evil-tongued…” Kian’s jaw worked, one of the gnarled, powerful hands clenching once more on the hilt of his knife. “If I didn’t think you were worth something alive—”
“Kian!” It was Nifaran—Isolde stopped herself—Trystan.
Kian’s head snapped round and he stood a moment, glaring at the younger man. Trystan’s voice had been curt, but now as he looked at Kian his face relaxed, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.
“Christ, Kian, don’t hold back. Tell us all what you really think of her.”
He’d judged rightly, Isolde saw; the real moment of danger was gone. Kian’s face was still set with anger, but the hand on his knife loosed its grip and he let out something between a grunt and a sigh.
Trystan nodded. “All right, then. Leave us, now, Kian. And you, Hereric and Bran. I want to talk to her alone.”
“But Trys—”
“Leave us, I said.”
Isolde saw Kian open his mouth, then, abruptly, close it again. And then, without a word, he turned on his heel and was gone, the curtain of skins at the cave’s mouth swaying after he pushed past. Hereric seemed to hesitate a moment, brows drawn together in a worried frown. Then he turned to go, putting one hand on Bran’s shoulder. Bran pulled away, though, and gave Isolde a quick glance. The suspicious, wary look was back in his eyes, and even in the midst of her fear Isolde felt a surprisingly sharp pang of loss—of loneliness, almost—that the small measure of trust she’d won from the boy had gone.
Bran looked quickly away again and said, lowering his voice, “If she’s going to try to trap you like Kian said, maybe we should stay.”
Trystan cocked one eyebrow. “Think I’m too weak to defend myself against one girl? And her not even a witch?”
Bran’s small, cunning face was momentarily transformed by what was, Isolde thought, one of the most adoring looks she’d ever seen in anyone, adult or child.
“’Course not. But you said—” Bran drew himself straighter. “You said a fighting man’s first duty was to guard his chief. That if he didn’t, he wasn’t worth the sweat off a tattooed Pict.”
For a moment, lines of amusement fanned out around the corners of Trystan’s eyes, and then he clapped one of the boy’s bony shoulders. “Good man. I’ll know you’re guarding my back if ever there’s need. But I’ll be all right. Go on.”
The fierce throbbing behind Isolde’s eyes had returned, and she felt slightly dizzy with the cave’s smoky airlessness. So she waited, struggling, in the silence that followed Bran’s departure, to draw some fragments of courage about her for whatever she had to face now. When at last Trystan did speak, though, the words caught her off guard.
“I’m sorry for that.”
Isolde looked down at the cut on her wrist, the trail of blood across the birthmark dried already to a beaded, blackening line. She was hearing, in the echoing silence of the cave, the hiss of Marche’s whisper in her ear.
If what they say is true, you should be able to make my cock wither and wilt for daring to go where the devil’s already been. We’ve time, now, to see, haven’t we, just how much of a witch you really are.
The black wall in her mind must not have been built high enough. Or maybe there were only so many days that could be forgotten, so many memories put away. Isolde drew in an unsteady breath, then raised her eyes to Trystan’s. Without the beard, his face was lean, the jaw square-cut, with a wide, flexible mouth.
She said, her voice cold and hard, “Sorry for what? If you mean the cut, it will heal. And if you mean what your companion Kian said, I’ve heard worse—and from worse men even than him.”
Trystan rubbed a hand wearily along the length of his jaw, and Isolde saw that his tunic was stained on one sleeve with what looked like dried blood.
“I meant for what Kian said. I’m sorry for the cut, as well, but I thought you’d prefer it to being bound hand and foot and thrown into the ocean to see if you’d drown.” He paused, then added, “He’d have killed you in another minute.”
Isolde felt a chill ripple through her again, and she studied the man before her, trying to judge how far he might be trusted. His face was harder to read than Hereric’s, but she remembered again that she’d liked him, despite his hostility, back in Tintagel’s prison cell. And she remembered, too, the way Bran had looked at him. Any man who could inspire devotion like that could not be entirely corrupt.
Isolde let out her breath. Bran trusted Trystan, certainly. But that hardly meant she could do the same. She felt a pang of something like regret.
She would be desperately glad to be able to trust someone, believe in one man’s honor enough to think he’d not do her harm. To rely on someone besides herself.
Isolde looked down again at the scratch on her wrist, then asked, abruptly, “How did you know the birthmark was there?”
Trystan was silent a moment. Then, with a brief, involuntary exhalation of breath, he dropped down once more onto the pile of skins. “Saw it when you were setting Cyn’s wrists.”
Isolde nodded, slowly. “And is Trystan your real name, then?”
He looked up at her, an expression she couldn’t quite read in the blue eyes, and seemed to hesitate before he said, “It’s the name I was born with.”
“And are you planning to do as Kian said?” she asked. “Turn me over for ransom to Marche’s guard?”
Trystan shifted position, resting his arms across his upraised knees. Then he said, still watching her, “Any reason I shouldn’t?”
“If it hadn’t been for my giving you the knife, you’d still be a prisoner at Tintagel. That’s how you escaped, isn’t it? You couldn’t have gotten free if you’d been unarmed.”
He looked at her a moment, blank-faced. “Of all the—” Isolde saw his jaw tighten. “Yes, right. I should be eternally grateful to you for allowing me the privilege of cutting my own throat—for you can’t tell me you expected I’d use the knife any other way. I should be grateful to you for deciding to grant your miserable little dribble of mercy only after I’d killed Cyn.”
He stopped. His voice had risen, and now he burst out, with sudden violence, “Mother of God, Isa—”
He stopped abruptly, clenching his jaw and drawing a ragged breath, but before Isolde could speak he’d gone on. “Is there any reason you couldn’t have given me that knife a day earlier? Cyn would be here—alive—instead of being a heap of ashes to be kicked and pissed on by Marche’s guard?”
Isolde tried to call back the warming anger she’d felt when confronting Kian. But she seemed to see, in the curls of smoke that rose toward the cave’s ceiling, a heap of smoldering ashes outside Tintagel’s gate.
“You chose the day and the hour of Cyn’s death,” she said at last. “Not me.”
Trystan was silent a long moment. Then he let out his breath. “True.” Slowly, the anger died from his face, leaving it weary and suddenly bleak. Then: “And no. I’m not planning to turn you over to Marche.”
“No?”
“No. For one thing,
whether you believe me or no, I’d not ask Hereric to break his word. And for another—” he stopped and laughed, shortly. “For another, I can see Marche’s face if I approached him to bargain for your ransom. I’d be back in his bloody prison cell before I could say two words.”
And that, at least, Isolde thought, I can believe.
Trystan was still watching her, and he asked, abruptly, “Want to tell me why Marche’s guard should be after you, as well?”
Isolde didn’t answer, and after a moment he shrugged again. “All right. Doesn’t make much difference, I suppose.”
He shifted position, then sucked in a sharp breath, his mouth twisting in a spasm of pain. Isolde, watching him, felt again that brief tug of something like the Sight, but even as she reached for it, it slid away and was gone.
“Hereric said you’d need of a healer.”
Trystan seemed to hesitate, then shook his head. “No. It’s not bad. Hereric gets panicked at the sight of blood, that’s all.” He leaned back, flinching again as his shoulder touched the rock wall, and Isolde remembered the lash marks on his back. As though reading her thoughts, her jerked his shoulder. “Looks worse than it is. Though I’m bloody-damned sick of sitting straight and lying on my stomach.”
Isolde’s eyes moved from the bloodstain on the sleeve of his tunic to his face. Not, she thought again, an easy face to read. But she could see even in this dim, smoky light the lines of pain about the corners of his mouth, and the way he held his left leg stiffly out, immobile, against the cave’s stone floor.
Even without the Sight, she thought, I’d have to be blind and feeble-witted both not to know he lies.
“Your leg—is it broken?”
Trystan let out an impatient breath. “I told you—”
But Isolde cut him off. “If Hereric made me a promise, I gave him one, as well. That I’d give you what aid I could.”
Trystan started to speak, but she dropped to her knees beside him and ran her hands lightly along the injured leg, gently probing for a broken bone. At length she sat back.
“You’re right. It’s not broken. Just badly bruised. I’m afraid there’s little I can do beyond telling you to keep off it as much as you can.”
Isolde straightened, drawing back. It had been harder than she’d expected. Having to approach a man—any man. Touch him and smell the musky sweat on his skin. Nausea was rolling through her stomach, and she had to swallow before saying, “If you’re not going to turn me over for ransom, and you’ve no need of me as a healer, am I free to go?”
There was another silence, longer than the first, while Trystan watched her. He was frowning, as though weighing alternatives. Then, at last, “No,” he said again.
Isolde stiffened. “No?”
Trystan drew the knife from his belt and ran the thumb of his injured hand idly along the blade, the scars on the crooked fingers white and stark in the smoky light. “I can’t let you go. Not yet, at any rate. Look”—he glanced up at her again—“you’ll have seen the boat outside. But we can’t sail it when the wind’s from the west like this—we’d be blown straight back to shore. So until it shifts, we’ll have to stay put.”
Isolde worked to control her tone. “That may be. But why should that mean you need to keep me here, as well?”
Trystan’s eyes were still on the knife blade. “Why. Yes, right,” he muttered. Then he looked up, pushing a hand through his hair. “I said I’d not turn you over for ransom to Marche. But the guards will be looking for me, too. And if they find us here, I’ll have need of a bargaining piece. Something I can offer Marche in exchange for letting us go free.”
For a moment, Isolde felt nothing—nothing at all. And then a rush of feeling struck her. It was almost frightening in its intensity, and so overwhelming that it took a moment before she could give it a name. Anger.
Before she could stop herself she said, half choking on the words, “You dirty, bastard-born, cowardly traitor! And what if I refuse to stay? Or do you mean to tie me up as Hereric did? Keep me nicely trussed up till you can use me in your chickenhearted bargaining?”
Trystan’s face showed nothing of answering anger, or even surprise. Instead he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and said in the same flat tone, “I doubt we’ve need to tie you up. Even if you escaped, you’d not get far before Hereric or Kian caught up with you and brought you back. They know the countryside around here a good deal better—and can cover ground a good bit faster—than you.”
Isolde clenched her hands. “Fine, then,” she spat. “So be it. Hide behind a woman’s skirts if you’ve not the courage to face Marche’s guard on your own.”
Trystan watched her a long moment. Then: “If there are gods, they must be laughing themselves sick right now.”
“What—?” Isolde began, but he cut her off.
“Never mind.” He shook his head as though to clear it, then raised his voice slightly. “Hereric.”
The big man must have been standing just outside the cave, for the skin curtain lifted at once and Hereric stepped through. Trystan spoke, using the Saxon tongue, so that Isolde caught only the rough meaning of the words, but she thought he was telling Hereric to take her outside, to see that she had food and a place to sleep for the night and that she was kept under close guard.
Hereric nodded understanding, then reached to put a hand on Isolde’s arm. For a moment, Isolde stood still, her eyes on Trystan. Then she turned abruptly and let Hereric guide her out through the mouth of the cave. The sun had nearly set. The sky was turning from azure to dusky gray, and the shadows were lengthening on the pebbled beach. The stiff sea breeze was salty and cool, and Isolde breathed deeply, trying to steady herself, still frightened by the rush of anger that had swept through her. And not only anger. A furious sense of betrayal, as well.
Though why I should feel betrayed I don’t know, she thought. I could hardly have expected anything better from these men.
She raised her hands to rub her throbbing temples, then looked up as Hereric gave one of those strange, half-animal sounds deep in his throat. Frowning, he gestured to her wrists, and for a moment she thought Trystan must have told him to bind her hands again. But then Bran, appearing suddenly at the big Saxon’s side, translated the gestures as before.
“He says he’s sorry for tying you up last night. He hopes he didn’t hurt you too much.”
Isolde looked at the bruises that encircled her wrists. The purpling bruises were overlaid, now, with the chafed, reddened marks of the rope Hereric had used. Slowly, she shook her head and looked up to meet Hereric’s gaze.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t hurt me. The bruises are…no fault of yours.”
THE FIRE HAD BEEN BUILT FAR up on the beach, at a place where the cliffs jutted out and gave some natural shelter from the wind. An iron cook-pot hung by a cleft stick over the flames, and Kian was seated by the fire’s edge. He held a crudely made harp on his lap and was singing—one of the songs of Macsen Wledig, hero who raised an army of Britons and conquered Rome itself in days long faded into the mists of time. Kian’s voice was rough, rusty with age and the rasp of years of battle, but with a strange, haunting note that seemed somehow right for the surroundings: the empty, pebbled beach all around; the open, star-filled sky above; the ocean just below, its steady throb a counterpoint to the song.
Kian didn’t look up as, at a gesture from Hereric, Isolde seated herself at a place opposite his, on the other side of the fire; nor did he so much as pause in his song. Isolde saw his face go hard, though, and knew that however much he might obey Trystan’s orders, he was no more resigned to her presence than before.
Grateful for the fire’s warmth, Isolde rubbed her hands over her arms. She took the bowl of rabbit stew Hereric ladled out and passed to her. The rabbit was tough, stringy, and the stew had little but the meat itself and a handful of wild onions, but she found she was hungry enough to finish the whole, dipping the food up with the slab of coarse brown bread that accompanied the meal
.
When Bran had sopped up the last of the stew with his bread, he turned to her. “I told you Kian was a rare fine teller of stories.” Kian had paused in his singing, and Bran looked across the fire at him. “Tell the one about Ambrosius and Vortigern, Kian.”
Kian looked up from his harp. The scarred, carved-looking face was no less grim than before; nor did he answer Bran. But a moment later, he bent again to the harp and began the song of Ambrosius, betrayed as a child and driven into exile by the treacherous Vortigern, then riding out in triumph when he had grown to a man.
All about them, the dusk was drawing in. Twilight, the time of changing, when the selkies swam in from the ocean and shed their sealskins to become the fairest of men. And if a mortal fell in love with a selkie and wished him to return, she must go to the shore and cry seven tears into the sea.
The voice came without warning on a gust of wind. Morgan’s voice again, from somewhere beyond the setting sun.
A MAN STANDS BESIDE ME. A bent, ugly man, one shoulder crooked, one leg lame, dressed in the white robes and bull’s-hide cloak of a druid-born.
“You know as well as I that Britain will be laid to utter waste if this goes on, Morgan.”
The festering hurt is there. I can no more keep from probing it than you can stop tonguing an aching tooth to see if it still gives pain.
“And you have come to act king’s minion?”
Myrddin’s brows lift. “That was unworthy of you, Morgan.”
I let out my breath. “Do not blame me, my friend. I wonder, sometimes, whether I control what power I have. Or whether it rides me, instead, driving me where it will.”
Myrddin is silent a moment, watching me. “An easy excuse. To blame the fates, and not ourselves.”
“You say that? You who cast my son’s fortune at birth and said he would grow to be his father’s bane?”
The hurt is still there—scabbed over, maybe, by years, but still bitter as bile at the back of my throat. “You may tell my brother Arthur that he is reaping nothing but what he himself has sown.”