Call of the Kings

by Chris Page

  ‘King Alfred was my role model. I learned a great deal about sovereignty, defense, and governance of people from studying his long reign. Did you become close friends throughout those savage and brutal battles against the Viking?’

  Twilight considered his answer carefully. He didn’t want to open up the old debate about Christianity versus the enchantments because Edward, known as the ‘Confessor’ due to his great piety and deep attachment to the Christian Church, would not agree. He decided to approach the matter from the standpoint of the independence of a veneficus from the monarchy.

  ‘Following Merlin’s subsequent repentance of his role alongside King Arthur, he taught me that we venefici have to be very careful about getting drawn in to the causes of charismatic kings. I was always careful about getting too close to King Alfred, although I did develop a huge respect for his abilities, bravery, and farsighted reforms.’

  ‘Very diplomatic.’ Edward laughed. ‘Your talents are wasted as a wizard - you should become an ambassador.’

  He lifted his hand to his mouth in order that his words would not be heard elsewhere.

  ‘A king’s veneficus should also be a permanent fixture at court.

  Occupancy of the throne of England is a precarious thing. Your skills would prove an invaluable aid in deflecting and dissecting all the gossip, intrigue, lies, and other attempts to usurp the monarchy.’

  This was the opening Twilight had been waiting for.

  Your majesty. Try not to look surprised, but I’m speaking directly to your mind now in order that my words are not overheard by others, some of whom are close by and mean to challenge your position through an armed rebellion any day now. I was approached earlier by a senior earl and his two sons, also earls, with yet another son banished by me to Denmark, to see if I was interested in joining them. Following this approach I briefly read their minds, and soldiers are ready to attack at various locations around the country.

  The king’s face drained of all colour and he looked at Twilight in something approaching disbelief. Gradually the black eyes of the wizard revealed their sincerity and the words began to sink in. The king began to nod slowly. Finally he put an unsteady hand back to his mouth, this time holding a silk napkin and muttered.

  ‘A senior earl with two sons who are also earls and another banished can only mean one person. There is a paradox here. It is largely due to the support of this person that I was crowned king in the first place, and I am married to his daughter!’

  It is that person I am referring to. There is no doubt as to his actions. Whatever made him support you has changed, or it may have been his intention all along. Don’t worry, with your permission I’ll attend to it.

  Edward’s pleading eyes gave him away. He wanted Twilight to

  attend to it very much indeed.

  Throughout the meal and this exchange the Earl Godwine had been observing their conversation very closely. He wasn’t close enough to hear them, but his senses told him something was being discussed, and judging by the king’s pallor, he had a good idea what it might be.

  Damn that sorcerer, he shouldn’t have said anything to him.

  Godwine leapt to his feet. Raising his goblet he waited dramatically until all conversation had petered out before clearing his throat. Queen Ealdgyth nudged her husband to pay attention; her father was about to speak. With his oily voice raised to carry across the room, Godwine spoke.

  ‘My lords and ladies. I wish to drink a toast and a pledge to our beloved king and my precious son-in-law and the noblest liege of England. Edward, I pledge my complete support and loyalty to you and consider myself your most obedient, patriotic, and trustworthy subject. My lands are your lands, my men are your men, and my heart is yours to command . . . and will be always. With this wine I will also take this morsel of bread.’ He held up a small piece of bread. ‘May this morsel of fine bread choke me if even in thought, dear Edward, I have ever been false to you.’

  With great ceremony he placed the morsel of bread in his mouth and pointed his pewter goblet in the direction of the king. Receiving a nod from Edward and a great beaming smile of pride from his daughter, the queen, he upended the goblet to wash the bread down as a round of cheering broke out from the assembled diners led by his two sons.

  Then he began to cough and splutter and gasp for breath. By the time his two sons got to him and started bashing him on the back it was too late.

  He had choked to death . . . the prophetic morsel of bread had exacted the ultimate price.

  As his very last gasp met with the immovable, impermeable obstruction lodged in his airway, a clear voice entered his mind.

  ‘The final moment of your treacherous eternity has just arrived, Godwine. Good-bye.’

  Chapter 4

  ‘Thank you for that great welcome. Although I have only been here a few short days, I feel as if I already belong among you.’

  Following the high-profile death of their father, both Harold and Beorn Godwine were exiled to Denmark by King Edward for their part in the attempt to take over his crown. In Denmark they were reunited with Swein, their younger and psychopathically deranged brother, still with Edgiva, the former Abbess of Leominster, and a man who never let a day go by without thinking up ever more lurid ways of killing Twilight for his part in Swein’s exile. Although the Godwine brothers had no proof that the old wizard and his young tyro were involved in the death of their father by the now infamous morsel of bread choking, there were too many coincidences about that evening to discount it.

  So, united in purpose and country of exile, the Godwine brothers began plotting their revenge against the veneficus, his upstart Irish tyro, and, of course, the crown of England.

  It would not be long in coming.

  ‘I still don’t fully understand how we work and interact with the monarch of the day, whoever he or she may be,’ said a puzzled-looking Tara as she walked with Katre and Twilight through the mighty Destiny Stones at Avebury. ‘We seem to be almost duty bound to help them in their constant battles to stay on the throne against invaders, schemers, and other warlords, yet they are all committed to introducing Christianity to England by any means, a religion in which we are unbelievers. We even helped the Archbishop of Canterbury - the highest Christian in the land - by saving the abbess from Swein, although it turned out to be an exercise in futility in the end.’

  Twilight considered this for a moment before replying.

  ‘There is no rhyme or reason to our decision to help any particular monarch, no code, no specific venefical procedure or training that says we should help kings and queens of a particular persuasion, but you’re right, we do seem to always end up on their side despite their religious fervour. The sad part about it is that in many cases our contribution, judged over the passage of time, appears to be a misjudgement or run against the tide of subsequent history. Merlin went with Arthur at first, then renounced it. I have fought with King Alfred and others against the Viking pretty much all my life, only to see Canute, a Viking king, ultimately take the throne before Edward the Confessor. Now you and I are getting drawn in to Edward’s squabbles against the Godwines. There will be other, probably fruitless venefical liaisons with kings in the future. It’s a personal choice each veneficus makes, although I will concede that our remit is inexorably expanding beyond the borders of Wessex to take in the whole of England as each attempts to strengthen and unite the land under one sovereign. The only thing I can put it down to is that being next to the seat of power enables us to influence the course of history for the better.’

  ‘But we don’t know if we influence it for the better, and should we try to so do anyway? Future venefici will be able to look back and decide whether taking one side over the other helped change matters significantly over the course of history, but not us. All we know is the influence our participation has on the immediate outcome, not its long-term effect. That can only truly be assessed over a period of many tens of years or even centuries. Surely the best way to influence
the course of history for the better is to leave them all alone to get on with their interminable wars and wanton slaughter. Let them kill their way into the course of history without our assistance.’ Tara nodded at her own logic.

  ‘What would we do with ourselves?’ Twilight asked. ‘I must admit that I have grown used to a certain feeling for the excitement and vicissitudes of conflict.’

  ‘I think you have grown to like the big conflicts too much and that is not good for a veneficus. That’s the real reason you spend so much time in the company of kings. It’s their wars, treachery, intrigue, and constant will to dominate that keeps you interested. We should let them get on with it whilst we content ourselves with local issues and the annual handling of the Equinoctial Mists,’ Tara replied, looking at her mother for a contribution.

  ‘You mean such matters as the problem with the Devil’s Pit in Skellighaven?’ Katre said, doing as she was told.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Tara. ‘Leave the kings and queens to fight their big battles while we look after the local stuff. Turn the venefical head back to the everyday and the mundane aspects of nature. Like the wonderful words of that ‘Song of the Venefici’ you taught me.’

  Tara cleared her throat and spoke the lines.

  ‘Kiss the winds and sense the seasons, Smell the rain and know the reasons. Feel the sun, plunge the earth Whisper plant, whisper birth. Run with hares, fly with birds Climb with trees heavenwards. Then you will know the reasons why The earth resides beneath the sky. And if you think it’s yours to change, To redesign and rearrange, Consider your time within its place As no more than a flash in space, And in that flash you would deface The beauty of its timeless place, For no more than a flash in space You would leave your own disgrace So by kissing winds of zephyr light And smelling rain throughout the night And understanding backward sight All your mistakes are rendered right; And this noble place we call our Earth Will have survived you death from birth And all will be as it was before, Your flash in space required a cure.’

  She finished and looked at her teacher with steady green eyes.

  ‘There is no mention of war and kings and conflicts in those prophetic lines are there?’ she said softly. ‘Although a case could be made for:

  And in that flash you would deface The beauty of its timeless place, For no more than a flash in space You would leave your own disgrace.’

  Twilight looked at them both thoughtfully. They had a point and a very good one at that. Since Rawnie’s death he’d become a court conflict addict, drifted away from the codes that hitherto had bound him to the venefical mission. Without Rawnie’s female realism and logic he’d allowed events to take over.

  It was time to reassess.

  ‘I think you’re right and it’s time to get back to nature and local issues. If I have grown to like the big conflicts too much, I will need your help to get over it. War can be an addictive pastime and the withdrawal symptoms difficult to deal with.’

  Katre smiled and grasped his hand. With the other arm around the shoulders of the still-little Tara, the three of them walked back toward the compound. Later, as Tara slept, Katre and Twilight kissed for the first time. Then they kissed again.

  It went on for quite a while.

  ‘I think it’s time we went back to Skellighaven to check on progress,’ said the old astounder the following morning. ‘I was reminded of a further visit when you mentioned it last night.’

  ‘You two go. I’m going to bake some bread. You might not eat and Tara’s getting that way as well, but I need sustenance.’ Katre smiled. ‘Besides, I got a mighty shock the last time finding out that the abbot was my birth father. That place holds too many bad memories for me.’

  When the three of them had left the last time, the abbot, Kate’s mother, and former husband were suspended in complete terror over the huge drop to the jagged rocks of the Devil’s Pit below as the stunned villagers looked on. Twilight had left their fate in Tara’s hands, although he knew that there was a big difference in actually killing someone and removing their hair or fingers, especially for one so young. He had been through this himself as a tyro veneficus, the first decision to end someone’s life, and had not liked it, despite the constant reminder from the long magus that evil will always resurface if it’s not eradicated.

  It was now Tara’s turn and she had decided that the suspension over the Devil’s Pit was sufficient punishment for all three, such that they would never throw anyone else over the abyss, regardless of their heresy, real or false. After a sufficient period of time babbling in abject terror as they were suspended over the jagged rocks and crashing waves, Tara had waved her father, grandmother, and the abbot back to dry land, where they had collapsed at her feet in a display of pitiful, grovelling supplication. A short speech along the lines of ‘don’t do it again or the next time you will go down into the pit’ from the redheaded tyro met with a wall of sworn redemptions and they left. Twilight fully understood Tara’s reluctance to take a life, and although it wasn’t the judgment he would have taken, as Merlin had done with him, he let her decision stand.

  It was now time to see if Tara’s benefice had worked.

  Immediately when they appeared in the clouds over the village of Skellighaven Twilight knew something was wrong.

  There was the unmistakable trace of a strange venefical aura everywhere. In and around the village, the monastery and, worryingly, the nice big hovel and lands of Nell and Patrick Delaney. Twilight’s worst fears were realized when he saw Tara’s treacherous grandmother walk out of the hovel laughing with her bald-headed son-in-law, Tara’s father.

  It looked as if their treachery had borne fruit and they had occupied the Delaneys’ hovel. So what had happened to the Delaneys?

  ‘Let’s go down there right now and confront them.’ Tara’s voice was strained. She had a bad feeling about the Delaneys and was beginning to regret letting the abbot - she still couldn’t refer to him as her grandfather - and her grandmother and father live.

  ‘Leave it for a while,’ said Twilight gently. ‘Let’s find out who this strange veneficus is and what has gone on. Unlike this new astounder, our auras cannot be traced, so he or she does not know we are here.’

  The bells at the monastery began to ring, and slowly people began to emerge from their hovels and walk up the hill. Herders left their cattle, the soil-tilling tools of plant husbandry were downed, women stopped drawing water and beating their clothes in the river, and the wood chopper ceased his monotonous rhythm. Soon almost everyone from Skellighaven was in the large chapel at the front of the monastery. The faithful had gathered. With twenty-four chanting monks arrayed around him, the abbot walked slowly through the back entrance and mounted his wooden rostrum. With his fingerless hand tucked into the sleeve of his dark brown habit and a huge silver cross on a chain held in his good hand, he stood and surveyed them all until he had absolute silence.

  ‘Dear brethren of Skellighaven,’ he began in a sonorous, arrogant intonation he reserved for speaking down to people, ‘we are extremely lucky to have here in our small community of this great land of Ireland, two great influences to shape and guide us. The first one is the teachings of our great and beloved Saint Columba, who has provided us with a Christian gospel that shines a prodigious light on our everyday devotions and manner of behaviour, and the other one is Saint Patrick, who chased Lucifer out of Ireland and therefore out of the lives of ordinary folk. As you will all know, we here at the monastery have always striven to follow these teachings to the letter, especially in the matter of the destruction of Christian heretics, pagans, and apostates of all colours. To that end we had a tried and tested method of redemption for their wayward souls through the use of the Devil’s Pit. Recent events have, however, made that very difficult, with myself and two other devoted brethren being subjected to a form of torture that was heinous in the extreme . . .’ He paused and glared around at the assembled crowd before raising his good hand high and shouting, ‘Fortunately Saint Columba and Sain
t Patrick both observed our fate that day and saved us from an unjust heretic’s death.’

  There were shouts of ‘Praise be to Saint Columba and Saint Patrick’ from a number of the monks.

  ‘Now I come to the reason for asking you all here today. There has come among us another, third great influence and one which has only recently arrived from Cill Dara, where she has been working with the Gael kings.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Although most of you have met, spoken, and, in some cases, already benefited from the arrival of this person, I want to use this moment to formally introduce her to you . . . Leannan Sidhe!’

  He raised his good hand to the ceiling and again the monks took up the cry ‘Praise be to Leannan Sidhe.’

  The abbot and monks all looked up to the high wooden rafters of the monastery as a figure in a long brown habit with the cowl pulled right down over her eyes gently floated downward.

  Observing the descent the crowd began to mutter and point in excitement.

  Twilight and Tara, themselves suspended invisibly in one of the high corners of the chapel, had been observing the aura of a black-haired, blue-eyed woman in her habit preparing for this great entrance.