Culwych raised his spear, and Balin called out, “Do not cast, milord!”
Either he had not been heard above the frantic barking of the hounds, or Culwych simply ignored him. Balin was too far to grab the poised haft, so he put his hunting horn to his lips and blew the recall.
The baying hounds pricked up their ears and ceased their noise. They spun almost as one and streamed up the hill past Culwych. Cavall and Drudwyn, each with a jaw full of bleeding ear, released and bounded back to their master, Arthur.
The bay hounds swarmed around Balin, leaping and licking at his hands. The sow swung around and abandoned her would-be nursery, crashing off into the brush.
Culwych flung his spear. It arced down and struck her in the left ham. She shrieked and stumbled, before tearing off into the woods.
“Damn you!” Culwych yelled in frustration as Balin came up beside him. “That’s the second boar you’ve cost me.”
Balin furrowed his brow. The last boar had been in no danger from Culwych.
“That sow is ready to drop her litter, sir,” said Balin. “If the mothers are killed, the next season’s hunt is spoiled.”
Culwych waved him off and began to trudge back in the direction of the party.
Balin whistled and set the dogs on the sow’s blood trail. He walked off in their wake.
Culwych’s hand gripped his elbow and spun him around. “Where are you going?”
“Your cast was sloppy,” he said, breaking Culwych’s offending grip with a jerk of his arm. “She’s only wounded and in pain.”
“Now I see your intent.” Culwych spat in a rage. “You will kill her and take her back to Arthur as your own prize.”
Balin blinked. Was it possible a cousin of the king could be so stupid? “I told you my intent, sir. If you wish, come along and you may kill her yourself. If you can.”
That last word, he knew, was hasty. He should have ended his statement a few words early, but the man grated on him.
“You insolent dog! Is that how you address the king’s cousin?”
Balin sneered and turned away, but Culwych’s hand went to the hilt of his sword and drew it with a rasp.
That sound and the flash of naked steel awakened his reflexes. He spun and set his spear as he had with the boar.
“Put away your sword, sir,” Balin said evenly.
“How dare you?” Culwych snarled. “You think you can raise arms against me? I’m a prince of Celyddon!” He advanced toward Balin. “Who are you? Nothing! The brother of a murdering hedge knight, the son of a country footman and a pagan whore…”
The man’s chest was inches from the point of Balin’s spear. It would be a simple thing to meet his haughty advance with a single step forward, to cut short his imperious tirade. Balin sorely wanted to.
Then Culwych stumbled on the mossy slope and pitched forward.
The next instant, the steel sunk into the center of Culwych’s chest to the arms of the cross, and the insult to Balin’s mother was choked off in his privileged Welsh throat.
A glittering woman’s ring dangling from a silver chain slipped out of the open neck of Culwych’s tunic as he sagged forward, gasping. The delicate green stones were capped with silver leaves and stems, and set within a fanciful winding device, so as to give the impression of a pair of green apples huddled on a bough. It was much like a ring his mother had kept in a box on the mantle of their cottage.
Culwych’s blue eyes bulged. His breath rattled hoarsely in his throat, and he gripped the haft of the boar spear. With great effort, he tried to pull himself toward Balin, but the cruciform design kept him at bay. Blood dribbled from his lips, and he sagged heavily, his chin dropping at last to his chest.
Balin realized with a burst of cold sweat down the back of his neck that he alone was holding the king’s cousin aright.
CHAPTER NINE
Nimue was lovely.
Many men had told her this, from the time she was very young. Too young, really, to be told such things.
Her father had tried to shield her from the world of men. He had sent her to a nunnery as soon as she was of age, to preserve her virtue from the mousy-haired farm boys who followed her home from market and lingered stupidly at the edge of their land.
But the world of men had come smashing into the furtive, hushed prison of the tallow scented cloisters when the round shield Saxons of Osla Big Knife had raided her abbey. They had carried off all the young girls, putting the abbess and the elder sisters to the sword.
For months, she had been passed among the army, subjected to their vile attentions, made to stumble behind their horses and plunder wagons by a tether which had left scars on her wrists she hid to this day with bands of gold and leather.
Of her own craft, she had escaped them, leaving a Saxon soldier lying dead in his tent, his yellow bearded face cleft by his own axe.
She had wandered for a time, skirting like a nervous field mouse near the clanking armies marching cattle-like to their slaughter grounds, until she had come to the forest of Celyddon and met a woman named Gwendydd, who was searching for her twin brother, a wild man called Lailoken Guynglaff. Gwendydd took Nimue back to her mother’s cottage, a simple stone affair with a thatch room that stood beside a lake, at the edge of an apple orchard.
Adhan, Gwendydd’s old blind mother, had been high priestess of Avalon for a time.
As a nun, Nimue had been taught to fear the magic of Avalon and the witches who called it home, but Adhan and Gwendydd were too kindhearted for her to do anything other than dismiss these misguided teachings and embrace the gentle ways of their ancient sisterhood.
They were the custodians of Albion and the handmaidens of the timeless Goddess whose breath hissed through the trees and whose cool, nourishing blood rushed down the snaking rivers which were her veins. They offered her the peaceful contemplation of the nuns, but with the natural reward of the perennial gardener. Their duty was to honor their Mother by nourishing and defending the Land. It was a fine life.
Then one night, the world of man had once more interrupted her idylls.
Lailoken, the Merlin, returned.
Fittingly, it was in the midst of a torrential storm, and they were finishing up their supper when the door, though barred against the wind howling off the lake, flew open and a terrible blue-painted naked figure of a man, tall and lanky, his black hair and tangled beard adorned with nettles, burst in.
“Who is this woman?” he had demanded, as though he were the master of the house and not its prodigal son. He stepped into the warm light, boldly running his crazed eyes all about her.
Gwendydd had risen and fetched a long mantle of black bear fur from beside the hearth fire and draped it over her brother’s shoulders.
“Brother, this is Nimue, a lady of Garadigan.”
“She is lovely,” he said, as though it were no compliment, but a curse he had lain upon her. He narrowed his eyes. “She will be my downfall.”
She had been startled at this and averted her eyes from his, settling on the gleaming double dragon torc of white and red gold in the form of two dragons entwined about his neck.
Nimue was lovely.
The Merlin, as the Cambion, and the only man privy to the same Sight as the Lady of The Lake, was said to let nothing pass unobserved, and he had said she was lovely.
***
Of the men she had known as lovers, the Saxons had been stinking, rutting boars. Merlin was like a strong but timid stag, insistent and ready always, drawn from the wilderness by her beauty, but ready to bolt back into the trees at the first sign of cruelty.
This strange family had taught her many things; chiefly, they had informed her she was powerful. Adhan and Gwendydd had instructed her in practical power, in scrying rootwork, and small wonders. The Merlin had taught her she could hold sway over men. With but the promise of what the ignorant Saxons had roughly taken from her, she had induced him to teach her things about magic even his mother and sister did not know. Deep, dark ways,
the messy blood and entrails magic of men and devils, those things outside the natural order, which his devil father had imparted upon him. For a kiss, he had shown her the secret way to Avalon, and for a few moments of passion, he had vouched for her with the Lady of The Lake herself.
She had studied the mysteries then at Avalon, with the Merlin her constant companion. But after his departure, the sisterhood had proved a stifling arrangement, too similar to the nunnery with its prohibitions against men and the disapproving looks of the other women. She had opted to return to the world of men and live as Adhan and Gwendydd, planting her guardian apple seed beside her cottage, becoming a warden of Albion, practicing her art for the good of its people.
Then, for the third time, a man had changed her life.
This man, a knight and a Welsh prince, a lithe, golden-haired hart of a man, encased in a skin of gleaming steel. Culwych was his name. He was the first beautiful man she had known.
He had ridden to her door one morning, bleeding over his saddle, having fought his way through a tide of King Carados’ soldiers. His father, the King of Celyddon, had pledged fealty to the High King Arthur Pendragon, the champion of whom both Merlin and the Lady Lile had spoken, the one who they said would be given the sword Excalibur to unite the Land and its people.
She had treated his wounds, tended him like a helpless but obstinate babe, grown affectionate toward him in his weak repose, and loved him when at last he stirred and regained his strength.
Culwych. He had been strong, arrogant at first, but a tender, ardent lover, haughty and entitled in all things but that which mattered most to him. In her he swore he had found at last something worth humbling himself for. Something he did not feel his birthright alone made him worthy of. He was charmingly desperate to prove to her his gratitude and love.
And she had grown to love him too.
They had pledged themselves to each other. He had given her his princely signet and she to him her priestess’ ring. He had promised to return once the rebel kings had been dispatched and he owed no more to Arthur’s service. They would exchange their rings for vows. She would bear him knights and priestesses, and he would make her a queen in time.
She had heard the news of the great victory at Bedegraine and of the rout of the rebel kings.
She had expected to see him ride to her door.
Instead, one morning she had woken to find Merlin standing under her tree, noisily eating an apple.
She had seen little of him since she had left Avalon. If the unearthly Merlin harbored any love for her, if he was even capable of such feeling, he had never shown it. She knew he had been consort to Lile and that he passed among the women of Avalon like a satyr. Some whispered that he had even given attention to his own sister and that that was the source of his dark power, though Nimue, knowing Gwendydd, dismissed this as gossip. Even so, he had departed Avalon and gone to the side of King Arthur without even a parting word for her, so she felt no discomfort in asking him if he had news of her Culwych.
He had said nothing, but only took her hand and pressed the green stone ring she had given her prince into her palm and departed.
She had lain beneath the tree for a day and a night, too stricken to rouse herself. How to live on, when the person who embodied her future ideal was dead in the service of a boy king?
Arthur. These fool knights and their love for a king! What was a knight’s blind, idiot devotion, compared to her love? She hated him now, this boy king, as she would have hated a woman who had seduced Culwych from her bed.
When a shower of rain drove her at last to her feet, she had retired to her cottage and consulted pools and mirrors, falling even to the dark, forbidden ways Merlin had taught her. She had done everything but invoke the primer magic of prayer to God in order to find a path of revenge through the tangled hedgerow of her sorrow.
And then the spirits had revealed to her a terrible curse.
***
Now, Nimue stood in the cold dark hall of King Rience, the master of Snowdonia and Norgales, in Vortigern’s old keep on rainy Mount Aravius, the instrument of her vengeance beneath her white fur cloak, stolen from the Isle of Avalon’s own treasure house. Outside, thunder rumbled like a giant rolling across the roof of the keep. The rain pattered and lightning lit the high windows intermittently with splashes of blue-white fire.
A spindly page drew back the hide curtain and ushered her into Rience’s presence.
Rience was a giant. The tallest man she had ever seen, with impressive even sprawled in repose on his stout throne of oak and horn. The chin of his prodigious curly black beard rested on one massive ringed fist. The other hand idly swirled a deep pewter goblet of wine. The dark eyes beneath his thick black brow regarded her frankly. He was a bit drunk. He wore a wine-red chiton and over his shoulders a long heavy cloak trimmed with fur patches of various textures and hues, as though culled from a bevy of different beasts. On his head was a tall, spiny crown of red metal, and around his neck hung a golden portrait of his late wife, suspended on a broad gold chain.
On one side of his throne leaned a great single edged sword in a furred scabbard. On the other, stood a wiry-haired young shield maiden in a coat of gold chased mail and a jeweled circlet. Rience’s daughter, the mannish Britomart, almost as tall and solid as her father, yet somehow still alluring, like a stately elk cow.
“I was told,” boomed Rience, his deep voice thunderous in the cave-like hall, “that an enchantress had come to see me with a gift. But I see only Nimue, that slip of a girl who once doted on the Merlin.”
Britomart smirked at that, making Nimue want to slash the rough beauty from her face.
She drew herself up, unflinching beneath Rience’s heavy gaze.
“As I am a pupil of the Merlin and a daughter of Avalon, you would be wise not to tempt my displeasure, Rience King.”
“I’m sure Merlin taught you much before he cast you aside, my little nymph,” said the giant, rubbing the end of his beard between two fingers, as though to keep it warm.
“I didn’t come here to bear your insults, king,” Nimue said.
“Yes, yes,” he said, sipping from his cup. Wine dribbled through his beard like rainwater finding a path through a tangled shrub. “What’s your gift, Nimue? Some lucky charm? Rabbit’s foot?”
“I bring you nothing less than the destruction of your enemy, King Arthur.”
“Of course you do,” he said tiredly, rubbing his eyes. “See here, girl. It will take more than a few chaws of mandrake or a dash of toadstool power to oust Uther’s bastard from the throne.”
Exasperated, Nimue threw open her robe, displaying the gilded sword in the woven baldric about her thin waist.
Father and daughter both leaned forward as the jewels in the intricately fashioned hilt caught the torchlight. After a moment, Rience leaned back in his seat, his lids slipping down his eyes again.
“A sword?” He shrugged and touched the hilt of the weapon propped against his throne, for the first time deathly serious. “My family has borne Marmyadose since Heracles used it to slay the Hydra at Amymone. It was forged by Hephaestus himself, and two years ago broke the sword of Macsen at Aneblayse before my army was driven off. That is a sure sign from the gods that the High Kingship is rightfully mine. I will not trade my family’s heirloom for that pretty trinket.” His eyes slid to his daughter, still regarding the sword hungrily. “But perhaps my daughter…”
“This sword is not for either of you,” Nimue said, closing her robe over it and breaking the avaricious trance of Britomart, who had taken a step forward at the notion of claiming the sword.
Rience smirked. “What is your intent, woman? To lead my army against Arthur yourself? My daughter would cut my throat in my sleep if I let any woman command troops before her.”
Britomart squared her shoulders and looked as if she might take her father’s sword and cut Nimue down herself.
“This sword is for the one that will shed Arthur’s blood,” said Nimue.
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“You will slay him?” Rience said, befuddled.
“No. Not I. By my enchantment, the king will die at the hands of the knight who loves him best.”
King Rience set his drink down and stared hard at her.
“That is a black curse indeed. Why would you do this, Nimue? My ear to the business of Avalon deafened when my wife died. But my spies say that the Lady of The Lake has thrown her support behind the bastard, and that when next I cross Marmyadose with his steel it will be the blade of the Excalibur.”
“What the Lady of The Lake professes is her own affair,” Nimue said. “I am not blind to the priests that crowd the court at Camelot, nor to Arthur’s pining for the daughter of King Leodegrance.”
A pied raven swooped in through the open window of the throne room and perched on the high sill, shaking the rain from its back. Rience took no note of it, but Nimue did.
“Leodegrance,” Rience murmured. “My old, old enemy.”
“A Christian king, as you know,” said Nimue, watching the raven strut back and forth.
“So his daughter has the bastard’s favor.”
“Her name is Guinevere,” Nimue said. “You and your queen served Avalon in the past, my lord. Will you do so now?”
“I paid service to Avalon as the husband of one of its daughters. My gods are not your gods. Why should I skulk and win by magic and treachery what the might of the arms of Hephaestus,” and here, he brandished the old sword Marmyadose, “have declared is mine by right? No, I will take no part in your witch’s curse. But you have brought me a gift indeed, whether it was the one you intended or not. I will take Arthur’s crown, but it will be on the battlefield in open contest, where none may call my kingship to question, and I will not be beholden to any witch’s favor.”
At his side, Britomart smiled and laid a hand on her father’s arm, then regarded Nimue with contempt.
Nimue curled her lip.
The raven flapped once and flew back out into the storm.
“You will fail,” she predicted and went out of his presence.
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