Why was this book so precious to Blodyweth?
Why would the monk refuse to surrender it, to the point of it costing his life?
Why should the fate of kingdoms rest upon it when only the most learned could hope to read more than a single line of its supposed wisdom?
That posed another question: was it in fact a grimoire? Were those words he could not read in truth incantations scribed in the secret tongue of witchcraft?
As Alymere felt fresh beads of perspiration trickle down the too-smooth side of his face, he made a vow: if he had not learned its secrets before his two years and a day of servitude with Sir Lowick were at an end, he would bring the book with him to Camelot and present it to the king's mage, Merlin, along with the story of the maiden, the Summervale in the heart of the winter forest, the burning monastery and its blind guardians. If the book contained even a trace of magic, for good or ill, surely Merlin would know.
But until that day he would devote himself to learning its secrets. If nothing else, it would give him something to live for.
That night, in the depths of his fever dreams, he heard a haunting melody calling to him, and found himself dreaming of trees and the hunt, chasing a cloven-hoofed piper deeper and deeper into the darkness.
And whilst he tossed and turned in the grip of the dream, the black crow perched upon his windowsill, watching over him.
Twenty-Eight
Alymere drifted in and out of consciousness. His dreams were the worst of it, for in them he wore the face of a monster. His imagination defined him. He ceased to be the young aspirant and became the beast; the cloven-hoofed piper with wild hair and mischievous eyes. He tossed and turned, fever-sweats soaking his outline into the mattress and sheets beneath him. Light played tricks on his mind. There was a single mullioned window in his sick room, and as the sun moved across the sky it conjured the shadowy bars of a gaol all around him.
He was in no doubt that he ought to have died. As it was, he was far from assured of surviving his injuries. The first few weeks were excruciating, but he welcomed the pain, as it proved he was still alive. These bed-bound days were his transformation, the raw pink scar tissue his cocoon. When this agonising gestation was over, when the fevers finally broke and the pain subsided, he would be born into a second life. And, in the madness of delirium, he swore it would be glorious. He welcomed that rebirth, knowing he would be stronger for it, more vital, for he had walked into the very pit of Hell and emerged bearing the Devil's scars, marked but not beaten.
Mildew grew in the corner of his room, masking the smell of his sickness.
His uncle visited daily, sometimes hourly, during the worst of it, but he was not Alymere's only visitor. The woman, Gwen, came to him often, mopping his brow with a wet rag as she tried to take the sting out of the fever. He did not recognise her at first, thinking her an angel. As she took on a more earthly form, plainer and yet more divine for the hard-won creases of life worn into her face, he found himself remembering fragments, splinters of the days leading up to the fire. He saw himself emerging from the burning hovel and his nurse taking the babe from his arms. She was no great beauty, neither was she some reckless girl. She was his saviour. And he tried to tell her so, but the words wouldn't come. His voice cracked, so easily betraying him that it was easier to stay silent.
And always, when she finished pressing the cold wet rag against his brow she brushed his hair away from his eyes and leant down to tenderly kiss the smooth skin between his left eyebrow and the denuded arch where his right had been.
He could not feel it.
That was the bitterest crime of his new body; it robbed him of even the simplest pleasures.
Still, he closed his eyes, as though savouring this one moment of compassion. He closed his eyes not through any rush of feelings, but rather through fear that he might see his own ruined face reflected back at him in her eyes.
And so it went on, day and night, with no sign of his fever breaking or his strength returning.
What came was hunger; deep, gnawing, stabbing, spearing hunger pains. He could not bear to eat, and what he took in he could not hold down. So every mouthful of food, every morsel Alymere tried to digest, caused his stomach to cramp and shooting pains to twist his gut until he vomited it back up. The woman tried broth, but it was no better. The strings of meat and lumps of potato were too much for him. So, in the depths of his delirium she fed him not food, but water. As he shivered and convulsed beneath the piss-stinking blankets, she dripped water from the rag she mopped his brow with onto his tongue, knowing that even a mouthful would send his body into rebellion. Just a few drops at a time, never enough to quench his thirst, but enough, she prayed, to keep him alive.
When he was alone he turned again to the book, clutching it to his bare chest so that his sweat might seep into the skin that bound it, finding another way to bring them closer together. He felt the ridge of its spine against his left side, resting on his ribs. He felt nothing on his right. As he breathed he felt his breaths echoed in the book, as though it breathed with him, augmenting his strength with its own.
But he could still not read more than that first line.
At the height of the sickness, when surely his body was too frail to make it through until dawn, Gwen slipped naked beneath the blanket and pressed up against him. He could not feel her there at first, pressed up against his burned side, but as she moved against him she sighed and he felt her breath on the unburned skin of his neck. She raised her leg over his so that they touched from hip to toe. "Is this what you want?" she whispered in his ear. He turned, moving in to her. She was so cold against his hideous heat. In the near-dark he saw for the first time that she had flecks of yellow in her eyes. It made it seem as though a fire burned within her, too.
He reached out to touch her with his right hand, but felt nothing as his palm rested on her cheek; the skin dead where it had been torn away and fused with the infernal book. The fever tormented his mind. Through his one good eye he saw not Gwen, with her well-worn face and her sad smile, but Blodyweth in all of her radiant beauty. He gave himself to her, welcoming her like death, sure in the knowledge that this night was to be his last and that all of his pains would end here, in this bed, in the arms of the maiden who haunted his dreams. If this was love, he welcomed it. If it was not, he would cherish it still, for he had felt nothing like it in his short life.
On the window ledge the watching crow unfurled its wings and cawed raucously. The silver moon threw the shadow of its wings across the wall behind the bed, and as she straddled him, taking what should have been the last of his life into her, the four of them joined — Alymere the Burned, the beautiful maiden of the Summervale, the woman who now wore her face, and the crow — and when release came, so too did rebirth.
His fever broke within their communion and as he fell back, spent, her fingernails digging deep into the scars of his chest, she knew he would live, inside her and out.
She lay down beside him, her head on his chest, breathing in his sweat and listening to the shallow rise and fall of his breathing. She whispered words of love like an incantation, but Alymere was beyond hearing them. He drifted into dream, once more transformed into the cloven-hoofed piper, though now he led Blodyweth on a merry dance through the very glade where they had first made love. She did not catch him, and her laughter rose above the melody of his pipes, filling his head and his heart while he slept on. Ahead of him, through the trees, he saw a man he knew better than he knew himself — though as he neared the mask melted, shrivelling until all that remained was bone and a death's head grin. His father turned and bolted, disappearing into the trees. The piper gave chase. Every time the dead man glanced back over his shoulder Alymere saw he wore a different mask, and the last mask before he woke, sweating and screaming, was that of his uncle, Sir Lowick.
Long after the bird had flown, his bed-mate still wore the shadows of its wings.
Come morning she was gone.
Twenty-Nine
He pushed himself out of the low bed and walked unsteadily toward the window. Even those five steps were enough to exhaust him. He leaned heavy on the windowsill. Beads of sweat ran down his brow, but this was the honest sweat of toil, not the sickly sweat of fever. His head pounded and his mouth was drier than a witch's withered teat, but these things only reminded him that he was alive. And today was a good day to be alive.
Shades of green were the first thing he saw of the new world beyond the window. The snow had gone. Spring owned the land. Pollen blew on the wind and the sky was a ceaseless cobalt blue. Alymere threw the window open, eager to breathe in the fresh air.
This was his father's house. This was the room he had grown up in as a child. Once, so much of his life had been lived in these four walls, though they seemed so much smaller now. Here he had rescued fair maidens, slain dragons and quested for lost treasures. Here he had bent his knee before the great kings of the land and fought side-by-side with the grail knights for the honour of Camelot. Here he had loved and lost and won the hands of the fairest, worn their favours and been welcomed to the Round Table a hero. Here he had been a child.
He had so many memories of this place, not all of them good.
Behind him, the chamber door opened. He didn't turn.
"It's good to see you up and about, my lord," Gwen said. He saw her reflected in the glass. Her hair was pinned up and she looked a good ten years older than the last time he had seen her. She hesitated by the edge of the bed. Her coyness was touching, but given what they had shared, seemed misplaced. He turned away from the window and walked towards her, managing three unsteady steps before he stumbled forward into her arms. She caught him easily and Alymere leaned in, his lips only inches from her ear, and whispered, "Thank you." They were the first words he had spoken, and they came in a voice that wasn't his own. The smoke had damaged his throat every bit as much as the flames had damaged his face.
He held her a moment longer than was necessary, then leaned back so that he might look at her properly. She did not pull away from him, but neither did she seem entirely comfortable with his scrutiny. Was he so ugly that even a dried-up old maid couldn't bear the sight of him? The thought burned. He felt his anger well up then, and imagined for a moment lashing out to strike the woman across the face. The intensity of feeling shocked him. He swallowed it down, though at his side his hand trembled as though with palsy. She had saved his life and in repayment he imagined striking her? She had been nothing but kind. It didn't matter if she only cared for him out of guilt or honour, because he had saved the child — her child, now. She had been at his bedside day and night when others had left him alone to live or die.
He stepped out of the embrace and turned away, unable to bear the shame of his own thoughts. She watched him through the streaked glass of the window. It was not so easy to hide in such close confines and he wasn't strong enough to walk away from her. How could his mind sink so low? How could he fail to see the good in a simple act of kindness? She had brought him back to himself the only way she knew how. There was no devilry in it. Shame burned in him as hot as any lingering damage from the flames. He looked away.
"I should leave," Gwen said. She sounded unsure, frightened, as though she sensed his inner turmoil and just how close he had come to lashing out. But she didn't move. She was waiting to be dismissed.
"No, please," Alymere said. "I am sorry. Stay."
"If you wish, my lord."
"I do. I owe you my thanks," he said, sinking down onto the bed.
"You do not owe me anything, my lord. It is I who owe you, for the gift you gave me. You saved the lives of two people that day." He thought for a moment she meant the mother, but he remembered too well the look in her dead eyes and the funeral pyre. "With my John gone, and so many of my friends, you gave me something to live for in that little girl. I would not be here without her."
"And I wouldn't be here without you, of that I am in no doubt. You saved my life."
She sat down beside him. There was no intimacy in it, no gentle brush of thigh against thigh, nothing to suggest that they had been lovers. But at least the fear seemed to have left her, and for that he was grateful. If she did not fear him, perhaps he should not fear himself?
He began to doubt his memories.
Had their bodies really joined in communion or was that another fragment of delirium? Some dream-image conjured by his feverish mind as it sought to find a way back from the brink? Why would she have crawled into bed beside him? She was old enough to be his mother. He looked her in the eye but saw nothing beyond gratitude there. He made a decision, then. He chose to believe it did not happen.
"Tell me about the little girl and your new life," he said, kindly. "What did you call her?"
"Alma," she said.
"And do you feed her soul as she does yours?8 Is she happy, Gwen?"
"Yes, my lord, I believe she is."
"That is good. I am not sure we can ask for more, can we? Children should be happy. They should not have to know about death," he was talking about himself then, about his father and this place. "Gwen, do you ever think you see ghosts?"
She thought about it for a moment, although she couldn't know why he had asked. "No, my lord."
"Nor I. More's the pity, for I should dearly like to see my father one last time. To say goodbye. I was born here, do you know? In this house. I lived so much of my life here, and then my father died and everything changed."
"I am sorry."
"There's nothing for you to be sorry about. This is my life; I have long since made my peace with it. But that does not mean that every now and then I do not think about what it would be like to speak to my father man-to-man. It is one thing for a boy to say I love you, it is unconditional, but it is quite another for a grown man to share such a bond, I think."
"Perhaps it is so, my lord, but who is to say that unconditional bond ever changes? Who is to say that a son's love isn't always unthinkingly given? Would it even make a difference?"
"I never got to say goodbye," and there it was, the one regret of his life expressed in six simple words. He didn't need to see ghosts, not when there were so many memories alive in everything around him. "Help me, Gwen. I would get out of this house. It only makes me maudlin."
"Is that wise, my lord?"
"Perhaps not, but when is anything I do considered wise? I am still allowed to hide behind the folly of youth for a few more days yet." He held out his hand.
She helped him to rise, taking much of his weight on her outstretched arm. Alymere wasn't ashamed to lean on her. Together they walked slowly to the door. The pain of it was evident on his face, and even before they reached the threshold she questioned again the wisdom of over-exerting himself. Alymere shook off her concern with a brusque shake of the head, which he immediately regretted but refused to admit. "I would feel the spring air on my face and remember how it feels to be alive and well, not sick."
That day they made it as far as the hundred-year-old apple tree in the centre of the lawn. They sat in the shade of it while Alymere gathered his strength for the short walk back. The main treeline of the forest was still hundreds of yards distant. It seemed like forever away. Every muscle burned.
"What of my uncle?" he asked, plucking a yellow buttercup from the grass and stripping its petals one by one.
"He carried you all the way from the sea in his arms. It was truly a miracle. He carried you for three days before he collapsed, finally, in sight of the house. Even then he would not rest. He summoned healers and watched over you day and night when first you returned, my lord, worrying as a man would for his own son. But when it became clear that there would be no quick healing and there was little these men could do for you, he had no choice but to ride south to Camelot and report the attack on Medcaut and the slaughter of our villages to the king. Not that he has confided in me, but I believe he plans to urge the king to raise arms against the North. His only ins
truction was that we tend the fields as usual, for no matter what, we would all need to eat."
"Ever practical," Alymere agreed, especially if there were to be more mouths to feed. His blood ran cold at the thought of what such an act of war would mean. Blodyweth had promised so ominously that if the Devil's book were to fall into the wrong hands it would mean the end of Albion as they knew it, but how could civil war against the northmen be any less devastating? "When did he ride out?"
"When the weather broke, my lord. He has been gone near two weeks."
Two weeks. More than long enough to ride to the Seat of Albion and back alone, if you flogged the horse, but not with a war party. Supply lines would slow them down greatly. He had to assume this meant war was coming to his home. It was impossible to believe, looking up at the endless blue sky and hearing the music of the grasshoppers' wings and the birdsong.
They walked together back to the house, and within minutes Alymere succumbed to exhausted sleep.
The walk became a ritual, with Alymere gaining strength every day. The exercise was cautious at first, no more challenging than climbing the staircase unaided, though even that had him reliant upon the wall more than once for support. Before the week was out they made it as far as the treeline and back without rest.
Still his uncle had not returned.
Seven more days and Gwen was sitting in the shade of the old apple tree watching him run, first no more than a gentle loping stride, the distance more important than the speed with which it was covered, and then pumping his arms and legs furiously as he gave every ounce of strength he possessed to the sprint. Frequently his body buckled beneath the exertion and his legs betrayed him, but sheer determination always had Alymere back on his feet before she could come to his aid.
Afternoons, he stripped off to the waist and gave himself to physical labour. His body tanned with the sun, or part of it did. The scar tissue left by the burns whitened where the old skin browned, making him appear even more like a man of two aspects, two souls.
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