He signed for Lord Monkey to wait, and he hurried among the trees as swiftly as his sore back allowed.
Shining with reflected light from the bloated red sun among the trees, the white arrow stabbed the trunk of a mammoth chestnut tree. Dagonet climbed the crevassed bark to reach the arrow and there found a man-sized hole bored open years ago by lightning.
He peered into its thick darkness and saw nothing. Only after he climbed in and braced his way down through the writhen, cauterized chute did he realize he was not the only occupant.
With tentative and trembling fingers, he felt the smooth roundness and pitted orbits of a skull. His small cry resounded in the enclosed darkness, and he scrambled quickly away. When he sat on the ledge of the hole in the cool dark, he realized he had to go back down. The treasure lay with the skeleton.
Gritting his teeth, Dagonet returned to the arboreal sepulcher. He lowered himself until the skeleton's brisket pressed against him, then felt blindly for jewelry and found none. With his feet, he tapped the support beneath him and heard then the thud of a cask.
Muttering an oath, he embraced the bony remains and tried heaving them out of the tree so that he could reach the cask. At his touch, the carcass fell apart. He spent the better part of that night rigging saddle straps from his horse and the dray cart and crawling back down into the tree, muddling among the scattered bones and trying to hoist the cask.
At midnight, he finally gave up and began hacking at the tree with his sword. The dead wood gave way more easily than he had expected, and, groaning with the pain of his cramped muscles, he used the saddle-strap rigging to lower the cask to the ground. When he pried it open with his sword, black coins of silver caught starlight and gave back the tarnished profiles of Emperor Trajan.
Confronting the Wizard
Morgeu's scarlet robes no longer hid her pregnancy. Yet, large as her gravid belly had swollen, no life stirred within. No matter the fortifying elixirs she drank or the enlivening spells she chanted, the unborn child floated inertly. The enchantress took to her bed in a garret of Camelot, spending ever more time out of her body, searching through the mysteries and secrets of the astral realms for ways to lure her child's soul back into her womb.
Gawain and Gareth feared for their mother. In desperation, Lot confronted Merlin in the wizard's grotto beneath the citadel. The chieftain had vowed to himself that, in deference to his wife, he would strive to avoid the demon-man who had caused her father's death. But Morgeu's increasingly remote condition spurred him to descend the winding stone steps guarded by gargoyles and arcane graven images.
The iron door, embossed with a giant coiled dragon, stood open, revealing flowstones slick and fluted, whiter than snow, some the color of fresh meat, others fiery green. Beyond, stalactites of similar lurid colors fanged from the ceiling. Many hung with globular oil lamps of blown glass that cast aqueous reflections upon a chamber curved and layered as a sea cave.
The natural rock formations of rock scallopings, uvular alcoves, and slag platforms served as work surfaces for the wizard's intricate metal- and glass-shops. Esoteric machineries of bronze pots, copper coils, and whirling vanes stood interspersed among alchemic retorts and alembics aswirl with yolky tinctures and soupy distillates. A tarry reek hung in the air, pungently infernal, an exhalation of hell.
Merlin sat upon a malachite stump loded green with copper, contemplating obscure charts of the heavens hung from the stone teeth of the high domed roof. His head tilted as though listening to the whirring machinery, percolating vats, and the timeless dripping of subterranean leakage.
He seemed oblivious of Lot. Trepidatiously, the chieftain advanced among the ribbed stones. "Wizard—I would speak with you."
"Be gone from this place, Lot." Merlin's stare did not budge from the celestial charts among the hanging spires. "You come seeking mercy for your wife. I have none for her."
"You have taken the soul of my child from my wife's womb."
Merlin turned, slow as a snake, the bone-pits of his long eyes agleam with barbed light. "Your child, Lot?"
Lot stood motionless as a tall eldritch doll. "What?"
Merlin smiled dreamily. "Ah, she has not told you. Then, go."
"I will not go." Lot advanced, eyes baleful. "Whose child does my wife carry? Is it yours?"
"Enough!" With an annoyed grimace, Merlin stood. "I will not answer for Morgeu. Be gone from here, pagan Lot. Be gone or you will know pain without remedy. Go—and do not ever return!"
Lot backed away, intimidated by the wizard's wrath. He tripped over a glossy step, spun about on his hands and knees, and scampered out of the grotto. Fright unreeled through his limbs, and he tripped twice more on the spiral stairs, appalled to imagine Morgeu in the arms of the gruesome wizard.
Unspoken Wishes
Preoccupied with plans for countering the internecine war that Severus Syrax pressed upon him, King Arthor dispatched Cei to Tintagel to oversee the transportation of the Round Table and the Holy Graal to Camelot. Cei went reluctantly. He still cringed with dreadful memories of his tour of hell, and he wanted to serve his king on the field of battle, not on diplomatic missions—especially those of magical portent.
During the journey south through Cymru and the lands of the Dumnoni, Cei stopped at every church, chapel, and chantry he encountered and sought blessings from the holy residents. He feared the king's mother, well aware of her reputation as a powerful priestess of wicca and beloved of the pale people. No matter to him that she presently served the Savior as abbess in a convent devoted to charity for the needy, he staunchly prepared himself to meet the mother of the woman who had cast him into infernal darkness.
The afternoon he arrived at Tintagel, a storm thrashed the coast. Tintagel reared dimly against banks of green clouds and twisted cables of lightning. Lay brothers in sack habits stabled his horse, and nuns in gray linen gowns escorted him to a central hall warmed by a large hearth. A score of indigents sought shelter here from the storm, and the nuns had seated them at a long table and provided a meal of salt fish boiled in milk and butter.
Cei declined a private meal in a chamber of his own and, after drying himself by the fire, ate among the destitute. To no avail, he tried politely to decline a summons to meet with Ygrane in her private quarters on the western terrace, hoping to defer their meeting until the morning and the promise of less ominous weather. The nuns could not disobey their abbess, and they led him by both of his brawny arms up the broad staircase to the expansive suite that opened on the western prospect above sea-thrashed cliffs.
Ygrane stood before the Round Table, the Graal in her hands. At her back, through the colonnade arches of the terrace, wings of rain flapped.
"Cei—my son's stepbrother, I welcome you as a mother. Please, do not kneel before me. Rise, brother of Arthor. Why are you so pale?" She pressed the Graal into his hands. "Hold this chalice to your heart. Its grace will heal your troubles and answer all your unspoken wishes."
Cei accepted the chrome goblet laced in gold, and at its touch, his dread did vanish. Serenity enclosed him. As the abbess had promised, his unspoken wishes came clear: Ygrane's face opened before his gaze to the soul within her—an immense field full of wild wheat and sunlight spilling over—and he knew then he had nothing to fear from this good woman.
The Spiral Called Eternity
Cei spent a joyful week at Tintagel abbey, working with the lay brothers by day, helping to repair storm-damaged roof tiles, driving the daily wagon of prepared meals to the local hamlets to feed the sick and elderly, joking and laughing with the nuns as they toiled together in the busy spring gardens around the castle, and chatting easily and amiably in the evening with the abbess about the day's work.
As though he were her own son, she visited him each night before he slept and confided in him memories of her childhood as a peasant in the hills of Cymru and of the faerie who visited her like wasps of flame and of the Druids who took her from her family to teach her the occult lore of their an
cient lineage and to make her their queen.
From Ygrane, Cei heard about the spiral called eternity. "The Celtic truths are the same as what our Savior preached," she told him in a voice of lullaby. "Our people have long known of the trinity, Abred, God's struggle to create the world through evolution, Gwynedd, the triumph over evil that our Savior has attained, and Ceugant, the radiant rays of God's love, the Holy Spirit. Each of us is on the spiral journey to the eternity of God, guided by the Holy Spirit. Through every form that can hold life, under water, on earth, in air, we evolve, knowing every severity, every hardship, evil, and suffering until we become worthy of goodness by knowing everything. And that is why we must endure what is painful, my son, for it is not possible to know all without suffering all."
Cei wept when he left Tintagel. Had he not been bound by fealty to his king, he would have doffed his sword and his black dragon-bossed corselet and donned a cassock to serve the abbess and her humble, industrious nuns.
He knew that he had his small yet responsible role to fulfill in the salvation of Britain, and as Jesus, who so inspired Mother Ygrane, had given all, he would give no less. Thus, on a luminous May morning, he and a dozen lay brothers affixed an iron felly band to the perimeter of the Round Table and set the colossal wood disk on its side. They rolled it as a great wheel along the Roman highways of the Dumnoni.
Wrapped in lambskin, the Graal rode with Cei, strapped to the pommel of his horse's saddle. Its propinquity intoxicated him with celestial joy. Each day passed through his arms like a lover to be cherished. At night, though the musk of his horse had seeped into his garments and he slept with dead leaves strewn over him, the air felt lambent and aromatic as though he were surrounded by roses.
He dreamt of Tintagel, believing while he slept that he had never left, believing he still labored laughing in the garden fields, still rode the dirt traces among the hamlets delivering meals to the needy, still lay in a fragrant bed gazing through an arched window at the promiscuous stars as Mother Ygrane spoke intimately of the soul's journeys on the spiral called eternity.
Fish Drinking in the River
The ivory shaft and platinum fletch feathers stood in a brook. Golden, twilit water unfurled around it. As Dagonet approached, limping with the pain of his aching, bent back, the arrow toppled over and floated deeper into the narrow stream and away from his outreached grasp. He splashed after it, and it coursed upstream, cleaving the bright current before it.
His sandaled feet sloshing through the cold water, slipping on the mossy rocks, he fell and thwacked his head against a rock. Stars dazzled his vision, and through their spun light he spotted the arrow and seized it.
It stuck from the back of a large fish, a pike, that thrashed in his grasp, then lay still, its mouth wagging as if drinking in the river. I am dying! the fish spoke. I am entering a great light. Once was I a hazel tree. Now am I a fish. Still my soul is the shape of the hazel nut. I think I will be a tree again. And you! You, Dagonet, who killed me for what I carry in my belly—why do you trust a wizard? He loves his magic more than you.
"You speak?"
The fish thrashed in the muscles of water. Dagonet would not let it go. You are surprised I speak—you who lived as Rex Mundi, who climbed the Storm Tree, who walked the horizons of time and faced Hela herself in Sleet Den, the asylum of the wicked dead? You doubt a fish can speak?
"By what power do you speak, fish?"
By the power of the white arrow that pierces my back, Dagonet. And by the clarity conferred on you by brother rock, who kissed your head.
"What do you want of me?" Dagonet lay with his cheek on a slimy rock, staring into the agate eye of the fish. "I cannot release you. I am on a mission for my king. You are his prize."
I ask not to be released. You have already killed me. All I ask is that you look. Look at yourself in the water, Dagonet. Look and see the price that you must pay for your royal mission.
Dagonet painfully pushed himself to his knees and peered at his reflection in a standing wave of the rushing current. Hunched over from his laborious efforts to claim for the king the bird in the stone and the treasure in the tree, he appeared hump-backed—and his facial features seemed haggard and less fair.
You see, Dagonet—Merlin uses the Fire Lord's magic within you. As the angel's power is depleted to fulfill the wizard's lust for treasure to serve his king, you become more of what you were.
"What can I do? I—I must fulfill my mission."
Must you? You are handsome and strong. Make your own way in the world before your beauty is depleted.. What do you care for the boy-king or for Britain?
Dagonet held the fish to his face to reply, but the finny creature had already died, its mineral eyes empty.
"This is our treasure, master," Dagonet sullenly announced to Lord Monkey when he returned to the dray cart and outheld the fish by the arrow that impaled it.
He cut it open the pike to remove the shaft, and a large, iridescent pearl rolled out. The monkey chattered with surprise. As instructed, Dagonet placed the pearl and the arrow upon the dray cart and helped Lord Monkey face in the direction they had come.
In moments, the night once again accepted the beast-driven cart, and before Dagonet turned to find kindling for his fish-roast, the sound of the creaking cart and the horse hooves vanished into the chill forest.
The End of Caprice
King Arthor remained in the war counsel room after the chieftains and commanders left. They had detailed for him the insidious cruelties that Severus Syrax and his warlords had inflicted upon the provinces loyal to the king: farms destroyed, dams breached, vineyards and orchards torched.
All agreed that the king had no choice but to confront Syrax's forces before they overran any more territory. Arthor knew that so long as Bors Bona backed the magister militum, the battle for dominance of Britain would cost many lives. He had asked Merlin to devise a charm that would win Bors Bona's affections—a love charm for a warlord.
"This matter is no easy one," Merlin had confessed. "Though I have scrutinized the star houses of Bors Bona and have found his aspects of affection sufficient to craft a charm, the manner of delivery is essential. Whoever hands him the charm must embody attributes alluring enough to activate his affections. Once activated, those affections will attach to Britain and to you as Britain's high king. Who can evoke such feelings in this battle-hardened and embittered warlord?"
"Create the charm, Merlin," Arthor commanded. "I will summon the ideal messenger."
Eufrasia found the king alone in the war room. "I pray you have not beckoned me to renew our awkward winter friendship. I will tell you directly, Arthor, my heart is given to Dagonet."
"Your father warned me you were mutable." He stood surrounded by map easels and tables mounted with terrain models. "Perhaps Dagonet holds your interest because he is unavailable. He is away raising funds to finance our war against the Foederatus and their British allies—Syrax, Platorius, and Bors Bona."
"My actions have been fickle, Arthor. You saved my life in the Spiral Castle, and though I have repaid that debt to you, I still feel great warmth for the brave young man who risked his life to rescue me from a cruel death. My behavior this past winter—I cannot excuse it. I was inebriated with war—with so many battles and such long traveling. The prospect of winning the love of a king inspired me to act foolishly. Since our arrival here in this elegant castle, I tell you honestly I am more myself. I was wrong to entice you, more wrong yet to call you a boy and dismiss you."
"Eufrasia, I did not call you here for an apology." Arthor opened his palm to expose a small mauve phial with a tiny scroll encased within. He explained to her the nature and purpose of the charm. "You owe me no debt and I have no right to ask you to risk your life for Britain again ... "
Eufrasia plucked the charm from the king's palm. "I will deliver this to Bors Bona—not only for you, because you believe in me despite the graceless way I treated you—but I do this also to mark the end of caprice and the
beginning of what I hope will be a future—for myself and my beloved Dagonet."
[]
Mother Mary, I entrust my future to Eufrasia, a woman whom I have denied, a woman who now flaunts her new love in my face. In truth, I pray for her happiness, for she would have none with me and my polluted soul. Will she serve Britain—or spite me? I pray to you, watch over her. Though she is a pagan, guide her on safe paths to Bors, whose might we must turn to our cause.
The Maker of Snakes
They came in the night, riding by moonlight along paths white as salt. Tintagel itself shone like a craggy chunk of the moon fallen to earth. Past the lay brothers who guarded the gate that was never closed, soldiers rode into the main court and leaped from their horses while they were still moving. They wore the blue tunics and brown riding jackets of the magister militum's elite cavalry and paid no heed to the gray-frocked nuns who met them in the ward. They shouldered past these gentle guardians and stormed up the broad and gracefully curving marble staircase, not pausing to remove their bronze-banded leather casques.
On the western terrace where the Round Table had once rested, they found the abbess in her white habit kneeling in prayer before the cabinet altar that had housed the Graal. They said nothing as they lifted her by her arms and dragged her from the suite.
Ygrane made no protest. She struggled to get her feet under her and allowed herself to be run quickly down the stairs. To the alarmed nuns who tried to block the soldiers, she said only, "Return to your prayers." And to the lay brothers who rushed across the bailey with staves and threshing tools, she loudly admonished, "Put aside violence! Go and pray for our king."
The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3) Page 28
