Amhar his father had called him, the child-name that would fool malign beings into passing him by, and then he was carried in his fox-skin back to Kham-El-Ard, his shrill cries tearing into the twilight. Face wan and strained from the fear and elation of the day, Ardhu had called out to his sister, Mhor-gan, in the women’s birthing house, “Does my wife yet live?’ and when she told him yes, Fynavir would survive to raise her child, he and his chief man An’kelet, as drained and stark-faced as his lord, fell into each others arms and embraced with gladness, though Ardhu had no idea of the true reason for his friend’s relief.
After his harsh entrance to the world, Amhar had thrived well enough, drank milk and grew large with a lusty wail, but he was a strange one, as was quickly noted by the folk of Kham-El-Ard. He resembled neither father nor mother. Although his eyes were green like Fynavir’s and of similar shape, they were a darker shade than hers, a deep rich leaf green with hints of gold, like sunlight dappling a forest glade. Dark, rich red hair grew down his back; in shadow it almost took on a purplish hue, like wild foxgloves. He was taken to having strange fancies and dreams, and on rare occasions he would become very still and far away, as if entering another world… and he would fall to the ground and shake for a moment or two and sometimes utter a strange, unworldly cry as he fell. One of the healer-priests from Deroweth had examined him and suggested that maybe they try to cut a roundel from Amhar’s skull to let any possible evil spirits out… but Fynavir had screamed in horror and Ardhu had grabbed the priest and flung him out the door of the Great Hall at Kham-El-Ard.
“Get the Merlin before we even talk of such a matter, priest!” he shouted after him, and sure enough the Merlin soon came, stalking on his spindly legs up the crooked hill, his jaw-topped staff in hand and the bronze-bound skull of his totem-bird shining on his breast. He had gazed into Amhar’s eyes, drawn his finger from nose to chin and told the boy to follow its path, and asked questions of the little lad that none could hear. And when he was done, he sat back and sighed. “He bears a mark, your son—a mark of the Otherworld. He would doubtless make a good priest were he not the Son of a King. When the spells come upon him, just leave him and watch he does not choke and he will return to you after he had travelled in other realms.”
And so Amhar became known as one touched by the gods, and besides his strange turns, he also began to walk strange paths, daring to walk where others would not… out to the Spirit-Path that stretched across the fields alongside Khor Ghor, bounding the lands of the Living and the Dead, or to the barrow-downs of old Kings, white-capped and shining, where the wind was full of a thousand dead voices. Fynavir sobbed and railed at her son when she heard of his exploits, but he merely hugged her and knew no fear, and no harm came to him.
But his strangeness marked him, and because of this, even at sixteen summers he had not yet become a man. He had a child’s dagger and a youth’s slight bow, and still wore two braids in his hair which would be cut off and burned in a bone-fire when he underwent the manhood rites. The Merlin said often that thought he might make a better priest than heir to the chieftaincy of the West… but Fynavir had never quickened with child again, and Ardhu had refused to think of his son as anything but a warrior who would follow him and continue the line of the kings of old. However, the uncertainty surrounding his path in life had delayed his time of passage beyond that of the youths born in the same year.
Amhar was not angry or resentful as other boys in his predicament might have been. Briefly he wondered why he had to endure what most saw as shame… but soon decided the Ancestors must have some deep design for him. He had suspected the Old Ones’ had favoured him since he was very small and had seen lights that no one else could see glowing amongst the barrows of the plain. Mother had hated those lights, and wept and cried and tried to cover his eyes. She was used to them now, though; she had come to realise her fey son would not change, nor would the Old Ones leave him be.
Amhar gazed ahead into the twilight as he walked through the valley of the Lakes, with the burial ground of kings on his right, hidden from view by a high crest of land, and the curves of the shining river Abona on his left, with the farms of men and the Hill of Ogg the Eloquent in the distance beyond. He could see the river was frozen, the spring coming late this year; white tendrils coiled from a layer of thick ice, and the trees overhanging it were rimed with hoar frost. He curled his toes, wondering if he could spare an hour or two to tie a pair of long, flat bones to his shoes and skate on the surface as he had done when he was younger. But no, the wind was picking up, tossing his hair and reddening his cheeks, and he knew he must not stay out much longer. His intention had been to catch a hare, to make its pelt into a hand-warmer for Fynavir, or even a deer that could bring much cheer to Ardhu the Stone Lord’s table, but he had found no spoor from either beast in that wintry desolation.
He was just about to turn and head home, when he heard a noise, a vague murmur of voices, the words carried away on the shrieking breeze. Cautious even though the lands were at peace beneath his father’s rule, he quickly dived into a bush and stared down toward the Deadlands where the great chiefs and kings lay sleeping in their earthen barrows, silent under a blanket of snow. Were they tossing and turning, trying to wake and speak with him?
His heart began to hammer, a dull thud against his ribs.
But no… the voices were not those of the Old Ones with their grinning fleshless mouths and dry sepulchral whispers that rasped from throats long vanished. A party of wanderers travelled along the downs, heads bowed as they pressed on into the wind.
Trying to capture a better look, he peered through gaps in the ice-rimed bush, pushing aside annoying fronds with cold fingers. What manner of men were these? Who dared to walk in those empty lands where spirits dwelt? As the party drew nearer he could see there were seven in the group - an auspicious number. Two were men in their late prime, bearded and dark-eyed with fatigue, with huge fur cloaks, mangy from wear and weather, dangling from their shoulders. They were guarding a small dark-haired woman wrapped in the sleek hide of a beast unfamiliar to Amhar; she held herself with pride, like his mother, the Queen. A chunky beardless youth with shoulders like a bull marched at her heels followed by two little boys staggering with exhaustion; Amhar guessed she must be their mother, but he was surprised by her lack of concern for them… she did not even glance aside when one tripped on a tree root, fell heavily and started to howl, his voice rising up into the twilight like the tremulous cry of a ghost. Instead it was the final member of the band, bringing up the rear, who strode over to pluck the child from his snowy bed, dust him off, and set him back on the path. A younger man, an adult by his weapons, but not much older than Amhar himself. He had long black hair, the front strands pulled away from his forehead and bound with a spray of feathers from some white seabird, and his cheekbones were sharp as knife-blades through obvious recent deprivation. Despite his thinness he moved with grace, like a wildcat; and he was clearly aware of all that took place around him; Amhar could see him scanning the horizons even as he righted the fallen lad.
Amhar leaned forward a bit further, trying to get a better view of the strangers as they passed beneath the ridge; and underneath him, a branch suddenly cracked. The young man below startled like a frightened horse, and with lightning speed fitted an arrow to the string of his bow. He gazed up to the top of the ridge, and Amhar, darting back into the safety of the foliage, saw the stranger’s face clearly for the first time.
He nearly tumbled over with shock. The newcomer resembled his father, the King, and his aunt Mhor-gan—long-headed, with high cheekbones, narrow jaw, and even, defined features, though Amhar thought the cast of youth’s face was far prettier than Ardhu’s… indeed even prettier than Mhor-gan, who was a woman. But unlike his kinfolk the stranger’s eyes were a deep blue, mirroring the fading sky as they swept the landscape, searching. There was something in those fathomless, unreadable eyes that made Amhar both fearful and elated at once.
Here,
in the form of this dark stranger, was the beginning of his adventure, his quest—he knew it as surely as he knew the Spirits guided him. He wanted to shout out, to hail the youth with Ardhu Pendraec’s face… but it was then his courage failed him, the fear overcoming the coil of excitement in his belly.
Before he dared speak to these newcomers, he must tell his father of their arrival and find out who they were and why they came to Kham-El-Ard, for he was sure that must be their destination. Shouldering his child’s bow, he glanced once more to where the dark man stood with arrow to the string, and then burst from his hiding place and fled along the ridge into the gathering night.
*****
“She has come.” The Merlin stood behind Ardhu Pendraec, high king of Prydn, Stone Lord and master of the Great Trilithon. “As we knew she would. With the boy.”
Ardhu sat on a fallen tree within the darkness of the wood behind Kham-El-Ard, down by the Sacred Pool, where, many Sun-Turnings ago, Nin-Aeifa, the Lady of the Lake, had gifted him the sword Caladvolc. Brown from years of riding in the sun, his face was grim, his youth fled, although in his green-dark eyes were vestiges of the young warrior he once was, full of fire, the conqueror of many and scourge to those who threatened Prydn’s shores. A short beard that left his cheeks clean hid a small scar he had acquired from a sea-raider, and the first traces of grey glittered amidst his dark hair.
“Why, Merlin?” he questioned, sighing. “So many years have gone by and we heard nothing. Sometimes I almost fancied both she and her whelp were dead; life is harsh in the North.”
“Morigau is harsher.” Merlin’s eyes were narrowed, his lips thin lines. “Her life there only strengthened her; tempered her will like strong metal. Hatred of you and all you stand for has kept her wrath ablaze when others’ inner fires would have died to embers.”
“What should I do?” The King grasped the hem of the High Priest’s deerskin robe, shiny with the fats that he rubbed in to keep it supple, and clattering with attached bones of animals and men. “Guide me, my mentor. All these years I have ruled well… and yet this woman and her brood bring me fear as no enemy from over the sea ever has! I do not want her at Kham-El-Ard.” He struck his fists against the tree trunk, showering rotten shards of bark. “By Bhel Sunface, she already has come too near… Amhar spotted her party coming across the downs, and her brat drew his bow upon him. Gods, what if he had fired…”
“It is no use pondering what might have happened,” Merlin interrupted. “That leads to madness. No harm came to Amhar.” He began to pace, stroking his thin grey beard, fine as mist around his narrow, age-beaten face. “We must deal with the problem at hand… what to do with your sister and her children, if they have come to stay, which is what I expect. Her sons, if raised away from her influence, may yet grow to be doughty and loyal men who may serve your cause… Remember, the blood of U’thyr your father runs in their veins as much as Morigau’s. It is better they grow to manhood under our tutelage than under hers.”
Ardhu stared up at Merlin, eyes darkened by tree-shadows. “But what about… him… Mordraed? He… he is already a man; is it too late.”
Merlin’s breath hissed between his teeth; he glanced away as crows cawed, as though laughing, in the swaying canopy of branches above. “I do not know, my friend. Only the spirits know and often they mock at us men, and try to deceive. Now come, let us go and prepare for the arrivals and make what we can of this unexpected meeting.”
*****
Mordraed stared up at the Great Hall of Kham-El-Ard, high on its crooked hill. He felt over-awed, though he forced a look of cold indifference onto his features. Nowhere in his travels with his mother had he ever seen a building like the one that rose above him, stoutly made of huge felled oaks that had been carved and polished. It shone in the sun like an earthly abode of the gods; he half-expected Bhel himself to burst through the lintelled doorway and burn all of Ardhu’s enemies to ash.
But that was a foolish thought. He sneered inwardly at himself for his flight of childish fancy. Bhel did not walk amongst men. And the only one who would burst from those doors would be his mother’s foe… his foe… his uncle Ardhu Pendraec. His uncle… and his father…
A knot of hatred mingled with revulsion curled below his breastbone. Why should Ardhu have such an abode, when he had committed such an unnatural crime with his sister? Even when Mordraed had been deemed Loth’s heir, nothing on the Ynys Yrch could have matched the opulence of Kham-El-Ard; the monuments of the Northern Isles had been the greatest structures of their time, the very source of the religion of the Stones, but they had been decaying these last five hundred years till they were mere shells of what they had been. He felt suddenly very mean and poor and insignificant, as if he were some unworldly rustic playing at being a prince. He glared at the people gathered on the hillside, the watchful warriors and gold-decked women who had come down from Ardhu’s Great Hall to greet the strangers, believing they were judging him, laughing behind their hands at his ragged clothes and uncouth ways.
Shoulders tense, he began to stride up the hill, following the wide, white path rutted in the chalk, ascending the heaped ramparts with their tall palisades and rows of stakes that could impale a man to the core. Ga’haris and Gharith trotted along behind him, big-eyed, craning their necks in both delight and fear, trying to take in all the sights and sounds of this new, alien place. Agravaen was like some lumbering halfwit, jaw agape, his breath railing noisily through his open mouth. Morigau was pinched-faced, sour, pushing forward between her two protectors, Ack-olon and La’morak, who looked as if they wished they were anywhere else but here.
Someone shifted in the crowd. “Bitch!” a woman yelled, and a rock sailed toward Morigau’s head. The missile missed, thudding heavily on the ground near Gharith and Ga’haris; the two little boys clutched each other’s hands and started to snivel.
Mordraed cursed and snatched at his bow, but Morigau shot him a warning look through narrowed eyes. “Hold your hand. Let us give them no more cause to hate us.”
They entered the Great Hall, passing under the carved lintel where the bleached skull of a Sea-Pirate gazed down from where it had been fixed by a bolt of bronze—a warning to the enemies of Prydn. Inside a mixture of shadows and flickering light made the king’s abode seem surreal, a place out of a dream.
The floor was denuded chalk, scraped clean, then strewn with rushes that caught animal dung and the discarded bones from the warriors’ feasts. Oak pillars held up the soaring pitch of the roof and were carved with knot-work, sun-wheels and crosses, and on one was the Guardian of the Dead with her owl-eyes and on another a series of cup-marks that told the cycle of the Moon. Incense cups belched pungent herbal smoke, while clay containers full of lit tallow swung from cross-struts that helped support the reed thatching above.
At the far end sat the man Mordraed knew must be the Pendraec—the Terrible Head.
His father.
The King of the Great Trilithon sat on a low seat draped in bearskin, its back and arms made from sharp, many-tined antlers and the scapula of an aurochs. He wore a helm of beaten bronze and Rhon-gom, the Lightning Mace that signified his lordship, lay across his lap, its polished fossil head gleaming in the fluttering light of the tallow cups. In a sheath of horn the long sword Caladvolc hung at his side—the miraculous blade which men said had come from the subterranean lair of a water-spirit.
As Mordraed had feared, the face beneath the elaborate helm was much like his own. Darker, somewhat rougher in its set, but the marks of close kinship were there. It was a kind face, or so it seemed… but Mordraed knew from his mother that the kindness was a sham. This man, this breaker of taboos, was unworthy to sit on the throne of Prydn. He was a usurper, a fraud, damaged and evil beneath the pretence.
He felt his anger rising and forced himself to look away, to study the others hovering behind the Stone Lord’s seat of Power. Immediately he saw the White Woman, standing like a cold statue in rare, bleached white linen… the one Morig
au had told Mordraed he must take because she was bound to the land, her body the kingdom he must claim. His stomach knotted. She had beauty, but she was old, lines creeping beneath her sea-green eyes, and she was so pale it was as if she were made of snow. Surely she would freeze the flesh of any man who dared to touch her…
His gaze was drawn sharply back to Ardhu as the Stone Lord moved. He had half-risen from his seat and was staring at Morigau, who stood before him, a leaf before the storm. There was no kindness in his face now; it was impassive as a standing stone. “What brings you to my hall, sister?” he asked frostily. “It has been many years since I heard of you, and had hoped to keep it that way. You are a serpent with fangs of honeyed venom.”
Morigau hesitated a moment, then dramatically cast herself at his feet, flinging her arms around his ankles. “My brother, my kinsman, I beg you listen to me!” she wailed. “Great evil has befallen me and mine!”
“As well it might. The spirits will not smile on the likes of you.”
“Loth… my husband… is dead. I am dishonoured… cast out from Ynys Yrch with my children.”
“And this has what to do with me?” Ardhu kicked her away with a swift violent motion; she fell in a heap in the soiled rushes, her black hair hanging in disarray over her eyes.
Mordraed expected her to leap up in anger, casting curses at her brother, but she remained motionless, though two spots of angry colour gleamed on her cheeks. Slowly, she inched forward until she had prostrated herself before Ardhu’s seat yet again. “I ask for your help…” she said in a faint voice, “not for me… but for my boys, who have lost their inheritances… who have lost what was rightfully theirs due to lies and slander.”
Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge Page 3
