Shadow of Stone (The Pendragon Chronicles)

by Ruth Nestvold

  Contents

  Shadow of Stone

  Prologue

  Book I: Love Remembered

  Book II: Love Ignored

  Book III: Love Discovered

  Book IV: Love Wasted

  Book V: Love Secured

  Book VI: Love Returned

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Glossary

  Characters and Places

  Map

  About the Author

  Praise for Ruth Nestvold:

  "... an excellent up-and-comer. "

  - Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing

  http://boingboing.net/2004?w=27

  "The book is so rich that it is impossible to recount every nuance, every emotion transmitted, each of the author's choices to depart from tradition or adopt unfamiliar elements, while manipulating them in favor of the economy of the narration... It tells the story of war with rawness and realism, love with feeling and sensuality, magic with naturalness and enchantment... Ruth Nestvold truly has my gratitude and commendation for managing to rewrite and re-invent this story of love and war so masterfully, creating one of the most beautiful books I have ever read."

  - Review of the Italian translation of Yseult (Book One of The Pendragon Chronicles) by Valentina Coluccelli

  http://www.diariodipensieripersi.com/2011/03/recensione-la-fiamma-e-larpa-di-ruth.html

  * * * *

  SHADOW OF STONE

  Book Two of the Pendragon Chronicles

  by

  Ruth Nestvold

  Copyright 2012 by Ruth Nestvold

  Cover by Derek Murphy, Creativindie Covers

  Map by Britta Mack & Ruth Nestvold

  First Electronic Edition 2012

  * * * *

  SHADOW OF STONE

  There was once a woman, fair as the moon, who lived most of her life beyond the realm of legend. As she stood beside the grave of her lover, the legend that ended with his death was far from her mind. Her soul felt as dark as the shadow cast by Drystan's standing stone, dark and barren. Love was over, but life was not; she would have to find a way to go on, for the sake of their son.

  This is the story of how Yseult outlived the legend that had been her life.

  Prologue

  Dumnonia, southern Britain, late fifth century

  Here, with my arms curled round the sacred cross

  That in white warning stands above his bones,

  I crouch, with hot limbs pressed against the stones,

  And moan his name, and wail and weep his loss.

  John Grosvenor Wilson, "Isolt at the Tomb of Tristram"

  A cool breeze came from the sea, but the autumn sun shone mild on the party of mourners. Cador clenched his hands tight as a handful of Arthur's companions lowered the coffin into the earth with ropes. It wasn't fair. They shouldn't be here. They should be celebrating victory, not burying Drystan!

  His gaze drifted to the figure of Yseult, standing tall and still opposite him. Her small son Kustennin clutched her hand, imitating her brave stance. The standing stone erected in Drystan's honor cast a wide shadow, but Yseult stood in sunlight, her pale, bright hair catching the late afternoon light.

  Cador tore his gaze away and glanced at the stone. Drustans hic iacet Cunomori filius, "Here lies Drystan, son of Cunomorus." Whoever had engraved the stone had not known his Latin letters well — the "D" was turned around. He had seen such mistakes more than once; it was not kings or monks or magistrates who carved gravestones, it was stonemasons. Cador could have wished this particular stonemason had gotten his cousin Drystan's name right, but even more than that, he wished any mention of Marcus Cunomorus could have been left off the memorial for the son he had murdered. Marcus, though married to Yseult, had never loved her, had agreed to a separation, but then he had killed Drystan in a fit of rage over their affair. Unfortunately, it was Drystan's parentage that indicated his status as a prince of Dumnonia, here in this place where he would have ruled in the natural order of things, and status was what gravestones commemorated.

  A hawk circled above, occasionally emitting a long drawn-out mourning call: kaiee, kaiee. There was something pagan about this burial, far from town, church, or graveyard, alone on the crest of a wild Dumnonian hill with a view of the sea. Drystan would have approved of the location and smiled at the sweet cry of the hawk, but he would surely have insisted on a song to lift the spirits of those who stood next to the grave, weeping.

  Cador cast another surreptitious glance at Drystan's great love — and Marcus's widow. Yseult still did not cry.

  With a muffled thud, the heavy stone sarcophagus reached the bottom of the hole. Kurvenal and Gawain coiled the ropes they held, dropped them over the side, and stepped back, making room for Yseult and her son. Together, she and Kustennin leaned over, picked up handfuls of dirt, and threw them into the grave.

  One by one, the rest of the mourners followed suit, sometimes adding a small memento like a wildflower or a piece of honeyed fruit to ease the prince's journey to the Afterlife or the Otherworld or whatever place the dead went when they left. Quite a crowd had taken the time to make their way here to pay their respects — warriors who had fought with Drystan against the Saxons, their wives and lovers, local farmers and villagers. As opposed to his father, Drystan had been popular among the people of Dumnonia.

  As Cador stepped away from the grave, he had to wipe a steady stream of tears from his cheeks — he was not as brave as Yseult. Or perhaps she had no tears left; he had been there when she had collapsed on the tiled mosaic floor of Marcus's villa, had tried to comfort her while she sobbed in choking gasps.

  He looked out at the bright blue of the ocean. If only Drystan had remained at Dyn Tagell; he would have been safe from his father there. Cador tasted salt on his lips. They would all have to learn to live without Drystan's laughter now, without his song and love of life.

  A touch on his elbow and Arthur's deep voice. "Come, Cador. We must fill the grave."

  Cador nodded and followed his cousin. Even though Arthur was Dux Bellorum of all Britain, he was not too high above them to shovel dirt on the coffin of a relative and companion. Drying his cheeks, Cador took up a shovel. Next to him, Drystan's man-at-arms and best friend Kurvenal sniffled, tears dripping from the end of his nose.

  Once the turned earth was a brown mound beneath the standing stone, Cador leaned on his shovel, his gaze again seeking the figure of Yseult. She stood at the edge of the gathering, watching the proceedings, Kustennin's hand still in hers. She should have been Drystan's wife; instead, she'd been forced to marry his father Marcus Cunomorus. Look where that had ended.

  With the otherworldly knowledge of the Old Race, Yseult turned and met his gaze, raising her hand in greeting. She regarded him as a friend, he knew that.

  A friend. He wondered if she would ever love again.

  She mounted her waiting gelding and took Kustennin up in front of her. Next to him, Gawain nudged his shoulder. "Let us load up the shovels and be off."

  Cador nodded.

  The sun was skirting the horizon as they pitched the tools onto the wagon. Drystan's stone caught the final rays, glowing bright yellow at the top of the incline.

  "A well deserved warrior's monument," Gawain murmured. "Promise me you will do your best to see that I have such a one too when I die."

  "What makes you think I will outlive you?"

  Gawain chuckled softly. "Perhaps the fact that I am more than a handful of years older than you?"

  Cador forced himself to smile. "True." He didn't want to think about any more graves or gravestones. There was peace in Britain now, thanks to Arthur, and with a little luck, most
of his fighting companions in the wars against the Saxons would live to become old men.

  Together they walked to where their mounts were tethered. Cador glanced over to the spot where he had last seen Yseult, but she and her son were out of sight.

  Book I

  Love Remembered

  Chapter 1

  Lindinis, Kingdom of Dortrig in eastern Dumnonia, ten years later

  But the cities of our land are not populated even now as they once were; right up to the present they are deserted, in ruins and unkempt. External wars may have stopped, but not civil ones.

  St. Gildas, "On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain" (sixth century)

  Cador lifted his face to the sun, enjoying the first warm day of spring. Hands clasped behind his back, he strolled from the villa garden in the direction of the outbuildings in search of his steward, Alun. The roof tiles above the colonnade dividing the forecourt from the working part of the villa glinted a friendly, hopeful orange. Now that the weather was turning, the signs growing clearer every day that the long winter was coming to an end, there was much to be done to prepare the fields for planting. Added to that, the first horse fair of the season was in little over a month. Cador knew that the rest of Arthur's companions, the men he had once fought with against the Saxons, jokingly referred to him as the "farmer king," but he didn't care. He enjoyed villa life, finding far more satisfaction in growing things or assisting at the birth of a new foal than in warfare.

  He inhaled the scent of the irises blooming beside the path, one of his mother's additions when they moved here. After the battle of Caer Baddon, once it had become obvious that the peace of Britain would hold, he had relocated his household from the hill-fort of Dyn Draithou to the Roman villa north of Lindinis, and had never regretted it. Cador had brought his second wife Terrwyn to this small paradise, enjoying five happy years with her — before burying her in the cemetery past the orchard after her death in childbed. Even peace was not without heartbreak.

  Farmer king or not, Cador was still the military leader of his people, and he did a king's duty in regularly training with his soldiers, as well as maintaining a standing army and the defensive site of Dyn Draithou, one of the most important beacons in southern Britain. But he would never again be one of those men who looked forward to the exhilaration of battle. These days, his contribution to the British fighting forces was mostly in horses for Arthur's mounted men — not a small thing, since Arthur's military strength was based on cavalry.

  He passed through the gate from the villa forecourt to the busy yard of the outbuildings, entering another world. This was where the business of the villa took place, and now, on the first fine day of spring, it was full of people and animals: a team of oxen being unharnessed from the plow; servants throwing slops to the pigs; farm workers leaning against a wall, mugs of watered ale in hand, recovering from the day's sowing.

  As he turned a corner in the direction of Alun's offices, the smell of fresh bread wafted towards him from the bakehouse. He smiled, wondering what it was about the scent that induced such a feeling of contentment; as much as he loved roast boar or venison with cherry sauce, the scent of those dishes did no more than make his mouth water. But bread smelled like home.

  Just as he was about to push open the door of the bakehouse and beg a bite of comfort, his mother Enid hurried out of the kitchens, wiping her hands on the apron she wore over her stola. "Cador! I was meaning to go in search of you!"

  He smiled. "Yes, it has been so long since this morning when we broke our fast together. I miss you too, mother."

  Enid chuckled. "You jest, but we really must discuss this evening's meal. Have you received any word whether we can expect Yseult tonight?"

  He shook his head. "I doubt if it occurred to her to send a messenger ahead after she left Dyn Tagell. She is like family, after all."

  "Yes, yes, but she must know what is involved in planning a meal, especially when the number of guests at the table changes."

  Cador wasn't sure if that was the case at all, knowing Yseult and her priorities, which tended toward healing the sick and arbitrating between antagonistic regional lords in western Dumnonia. She left meal planning to others.

  "Consider the state of the roads, mother," Cador said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "The rain of the past few days..."

  Enid sighed. "True. Her personal guard will be happy with simpler fare; it doesn't have to be hare stuffed with sage and dried apples or salmon in a sauce of clams."

  Cador smiled. "There are always plenty of chickens to slaughter if we have more guests than expected."

  He found himself wondering if Yseult would send a message using her power of calling, but rejected the idea. Not only did magic take a toll on her energy, it would be a very mundane use of her powers. Besides, from many conversations with her, he knew that magic did not always perform as intended. They would have to be patient and await her arrival in the normal way.

  Just then, a commotion broke out in the direction of the stables, scuffling sounds accompanied by cheering and jeering.

  "Excuse me," Cador said, giving his mother a brief kiss on the cheek.

  He pushed through the crowd to see the two boys in fosterage with him, face-to-face, fists clenched, spoiling for a fight: Yseult's son Kustennin, and Gildas, son of his cousin Labiane and her husband Caw.

  Gildas was also Cwylli's younger brother — a detail that would not have bothered him a few months ago, before he had adultered with her. Now he was reminded of it every time he looked at Gildas. The comforting smell of fresh bread was too far away to help him now.

  "At least I don't have a mother like yours!" Gildas threw at the older boy with a mean smile.

  "What do you mean by that?" Kustennin retorted. "Come on, say it, so I can punch your lying face in!"

  "Unfair! You're bigger than me!"

  "Enough!" Cador roared in the most kingly voice he could muster. He clapped his hands and addressed the gathering crowd. "There is nothing more to see here; go about your work!"

  While servants and slaves returned to their duties, Cador took both boys by the shoulder. Strictly speaking, Kustennin was hardly a boy anymore, having celebrated his sixteenth birthday in February. As old as Cador had been when he fought at the battle of Caer Baddon, the largest battle Britain had ever known — where Cador had seen more death than he ever wanted to see again.

  His two wards accompanied him sullenly out of the yard and to the relative peace of the gardens. "Now, what is this all about?" he asked, fearing he knew the answer.

  "Kustennin tried to hit me!" Gildas said.

  The older boy said nothing, not even bothering to defend himself.

  Cador sat his wards down on a bench in the courtyard and faced them, arms crossed in front of his chest. "And what did you say to provoke him this time?" Cador asked Gildas, fed up with the way he used his smaller size to get away with insulting Kustennin.

  Gildas's eyes widened; he was unused to taking the blame. Cador felt a twinge of conscience. Since last Christmas, his own sense of guilt had led him to overlook the boy's missteps even more. Gildas was three years Kustennin's junior, it was true, but that did not excuse everything — and Cador should not be forcing Kustennin to suffer for the sins of his uncle.

  "I'm still waiting for an answer, Gildas. There are always two involved in any fight, and you are growing old enough now to take responsibility for your part in it."

  Gildas mumbled something about priests, and Cador knew immediately what the argument had been about. Following Yseult's legendary affair with Drystan, many of the Christian priests of Britain had taken to referring to Kustennin's mother as "the unclean lioness of Dumnonia."

  Gazing from one boy to the other, Cador repressed a sigh. His wards both: one the son of a woman he had loved hopelessly for years; the other brother to a woman with whom he had shared carnal relations without love — a moment of mutual comfort that had turned to sin in an alcove.

  Cador wasn't sure what he be
lieved in terms of religion, but he had been raised as a Roman and a Christian, and he could not escape the twinge of guilt whenever he looked at Gildas since his sister's last visit to Lindinis. Yes, before they fornicated behind a curtain, Cwylli had told him that she had just learned her husband Medraut was having an affair. But knowing Medraut had committed adultery first did not absolve Cador from his own crime of going from soothing a woman in need to taking advantage of her pain. And sinning against Medraut in turn.

  Gildas had begun to fidget under Cador's intense gaze, perhaps a good thing. The boy had very little sense of his own wrongdoing, preferring to blame others rather than examining his own behavior. Not that he was the only person of Cador's acquaintance with that particular weakness, but with Gildas, it was unabated.

  "How would you like it if someone insulted your mother?" Cador asked, not willing to release Gildas yet.

  "I didn't insult Kustennin's mother," Gildas protested.

  Cador cocked his head to one side. "You only quoted something you heard, is that your defense?"

  Gildas nodded.

  "Then let us say I heard something once about your mother, something a neighbor said about an affair she had many years ago. But those are not my words; they are the words of my neighbor. Are you telling me that my repeating it would not bother you?" Cador hardly knew what compelled him to voice what he should have kept to himself, even if he had framed it in such a way that it could be taken as fiction. But he had long resented the way Gildas's mother, Labiane, treated Yseult like dirt just because Labiane had not been able to marry Marcus Cunomorus herself.