Guinevere's Tale

by Nicole Evelina

  His voice trailed off as his lips met mine, tenderly for once, and he began to move against me slowly, as though stoking his own pleasure.

  “Your father owes me, Guinevere.” He planted a line of kisses from one end of my collarbone to the other. “Were it not for that damned honor debt, you would have been my wife of the highest degree years ago. But then that fool Uriens told Arthur about you, and he swooped in and stole you from my grasp. But now the old man is dead. So”—he leered at me—“how do you think I should best extract payment from your father, from Arthur?” His hand closed around my throat.

  “I can give you all the money owed you and then some, you know that.” My voice shook, though I tried to temper it.

  “But that’s not really the issue, is it? No, your father did more than cheat me out of money. He cheated me out of my rightful wife. Then the king not only did the same—he sullied my name as well. This is revenge on many levels, Guinevere, a substantial righting of wrongs.” He forced me onto my stomach, grabbed me roughly by the hair at the nape of my neck, and entered me with his usual force.

  I cried out in pain. He twisted one hand in my hair and continued to pull, his other hand digging sharply into my right buttock. If only I could have associated pain and pleasure the way he did, I would have been in ecstasy.

  “A son,” he panted. “That will be the ultimate recompense. Then I will be the one with a legitimate heir.” He bit my earlobe. “Arthur is a dead man, and I will get what is owed to me.”

  bering his diatribe from the night before. The impending snowstorm that had driven away the Picts arrived, so we spent the day in close quarters, holed up against the cold and wind. I was on edge all day, waiting for Malegant to make some comment or show some sign of regretting what he’d said, but he treated me as though nothing had happened. The only difference was that he took Aine to bed that night.

  I tried hard not to think about that. I still didn’t know for sure that Aine was related to Malegant by blood, only that he thought she was and she vehemently denied it. Maybe she was right. But then again, this man broke every prohibition in our culture without a second thought. It made my skin scrawl to think he believed her to be his sister and yet saw nothing wrong with their relationship or, worse, carried on anyway. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask Imogen the truth— I really didn’t want to know.

  Imogen interrupted my thoughts with a swift tap on my wrist.

  Guinevere, I am afraid if we do not do something soon, he will tire of you. My son is like a cat with his prey. He toys with it until he grows bored. Then he goes in for the kill. I can already see the joy fading from his eyes.

  “Then what do we do? We have to escape.”

  For a while, we were both silent, caught up in our thoughts. I twisted what I had learned around in my mind, trying to find some weakness, some chink in the armor of Malegant’s plan we could use to our advantage. We were in a tower on an island surrounded by deadly cold water in a valley between mountains. The fortress was nearly impenetrable.

  There was no way the two stout Picts would have crossed that string of a bridge that swayed in the wind outside the window, and neither could we. It was far too icy to try. There had to be another way in. And if there was, there was another way out.

  “How did the Picts get into the castle?” I asked.

  By boat, she signed after setting a mug of tea in front of me. But it is heavily guarded.

  I brought the mug to my lips and breathed in the steam. It was earthy, heavy with the loam of the forest and berries forbidden to mortal lips. I breathed in again, trying to identify the scent. The distinctive smell of burning dried leaves—sage—was the first to assault my senses. Woody rosemary, marjoram, and thyme followed, chased by the sweeter aromas of mint and imported hyssop.

  Imogen smiled. I learned this blend from Argante when she was a young priestess. It opens the centers of the sight and will give us knowledge we seek. Let us drink in honor of our gods. She held up her mug.

  I let the warm liquid flow past my lips. On the whole, it had a pleasant taste, reminiscent of a salad of early spring greens, but once swallowed, it bit back with sharp spiciness that made me want to gag.

  I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, allowing the liquid to flow through my veins. As it took effect, I relaxed for the first time in months. A second mouthful brought with it the sight—a vision of the tower burning while we rowed away to the safety of the far shore.

  I opened my eyes.

  What do the gods say?

  “We set the tower on fire and escape in the boat. But how can that be? You said it was heavily guarded.”

  It is, but not at night. We don’t have enough guards to keep watch at all hours.

  I swallowed the dregs of my tea, tossing around the basic elements of our plan—fire, the boat. What else? How did it turn into action?

  Fire, travel by water. . . I found myself invoking the goddesses associated with our quest—Ellen, the guardian of the ways; Nehalenni, patroness of travelers; and Brigid, the goddess of fire and forge.

  That was when it hit me. Brigid. She was the key.

  I grabbed Imogen’s arm. “The feast of Brigid nears. On that night, the moon is full and will be eclipsed by the sun. That will afford us both distraction, as all cower inside against evil omens, and protection in the darkness. Once we have cleared the lake, we can invoke Brigid and burn this place to the ground.”

  She smiled. Then we must make ready.

  Chapter Ten

  Over the next several weeks, we took measures to be certain we would be prepared for our journey. Imogen sewed small pouches of herbs in our skirts so that we would not be without aid if one of us became sick or injured. On washing day, we smuggled warm cloaks and a change of clothes out of the castle with the soiled linens, using a hollow tree stump at the edge of the lake as a hiding place for our supplies. It was my job to see that a certain amount of food was set aside, along with a few wineskins. Finally, Imogen procured two small daggers—purloined from the Picts, she said—as a means of protection and for use in hunting.

  When all was in place, we waited for the appointed hour. Like everyone Druid-trained, Malegant would be using the feast coupled with the eclipse, the time of greatest power, to perform acts of divination. According to Imogen, his men—in whom he had instilled sufficient misinformation—would be cowering in terror and begging the gods to bring back the moon. That meant we only had to evade Aine to be clear to escape.

  We made certain the day went like any other—serving at meals, sewing, and minding chores—while Malegant and his men sparred and negotiated matters of politics. Once night fell, we ate a quiet dinner, but I didn’t fail to notice Malegant glancing expectantly out the window every few minutes, anticipating moonrise.

  When he finally stood, I made to follow him to bed, but he held me at arm’s length. “You are a priestess. You of all people should know I will sleep alone tonight, with only the bones for my company.”

  I lowered my eyes. “As you wish.”

  Imogen and I retired to the room we shared, and the tower went eerily silent. For a long time, all we could hear was the pop of the logs in the fire and the creak of the walls as they resisted the wind. We had just gathered our things and donned our cloaks when an eerie keening broke the silence. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Beside me, Imogen stiffened.

  We slowly inched along the darkened corridor toward the sound.

  “That is old magic,” I whispered. “Dark magic.”

  I felt it coiling around me, drawing me in like a rope. It was so seductive, so alive. It was the same power I’d tasted on the rare occasions I cursed our enemies, and part of me longed for more. When we reached Aine’s door, the keening reached a feverish pitch. Without thinking, I put my hand on the door to peer inside.

  Imogen pulled me back.

  I could not see he
r signing in the dark, but somehow I knew she was telling me to resist the temptation to watch. She shoved me past the door toward the staircase leading down to the dock.

  Away from danger now, we lit a small oil lamp. Imogen was frantically weaving her fingers, a message that came in fits and starts, as though her hands could not keep up with her mind.

  She was calling the Callieach. You had to step away, else she enter you by mistake. The Dark One is not particular about her vessel. That is magic no one in this land has practiced for centuries. She must have learned it in the Highlands.

  “Is Aine truly yours?” I asked as we neared the door barred tight against intruders.

  Imogen nodded. Her father was my link to Icini gold. Though she never admits it. She believes herself a child of Eire. She shrugged as if to say there was nothing she could do about it.

  We struggled to lift the heavy beam from its catch. Above us, Aine’s keening continued, though it was slowly morphing into a guttural chant. For a moment, I could not move. All I could do was listen, mesmerized by the sound of something my blood remembered though my mind knew it not.

  I started from my trance as Imogen freed the beam with a thud that reverberated throughout the house. We both froze, hearts pounding. Aside from Aine’s uninterrupted chanting, there was not a single sound.

  We opened the door to a cold, clear night. Far above, in the black veil of night, the moon was turning a sickly shade of rose as the sun’s shadow slid slowly across its surface. The wind buffeting the castle tore at our cloaks with icy fingers, as though determined to stop us from reaching the dock.

  Somewhere, an animal’s desperate screech punctuated the silence, the cry of a soul that knows it’s about to reach its end. It could have been deep in the woods across the water, but I had a sinking feeling it came from Aine’s room as part of whatever arcane ritual she was performing.

  We plucked our bundles from the tree stump and headed for the water. But when we drew near, it was clear the boat was not where we’d expected it. Where there should have been depth and shadow, we saw only a reflection of the waning light of the eclipse.

  Imogen stamped her foot and cursed with her fingers.

  “I don’t understand. You said it was always moored here at night.”

  It is. She looked around. He must have locked it up against the wind. Her eyes grew wide. Or he knows.

  We returned our packs to the stump in case we weren’t successful in finding the boat, and I followed her back into the tower. There was only one place large enough to house a vessel.

  Off to one side was a storage room used to house the provisions delivered monthly by a local fisherman whom Malegant paid handsomely for his discretion. Bags of grain sat next to sacks of sprouting onions and nuts, half eaten by the mice, while piles of firewood made an impassable fortress to the far end of the room. Above us hung rows of cheeses and bouquets of herbs. Barrels of salt fish and ale lined the opposite wall. But no boat.

  Imogen stood with her hands on her hips, turning in circles as though the boat was there and had simply been rendered invisible.

  “It’s not here. Let’s go. We can try again another night,” I hissed. I had the increasingly terrible feeling we had been set up.

  We could try the bridge, Imogen signed.

  In my mind’s eye, I recalled the thread of rope and wood being tossed about in the wind. No, we should not dare try to cross it this night. Even if I could have used my powers to calm the wind, in her altered state, Aine was likely to sense the magic and raise the alarm. Silently, I shook my head and edged back into the main room without waiting for Imogen.

  Aine’s chanting had slowed into what could probably have been best described as crooning. She sounded as if she was singing a lullaby. Distracted by the sound, I didn’t see Malegant until I ran into him, forehead knocking painfully into his chest.

  “My love, why are you wearing your heavy cloak in the house?” he asked, fingering a fold of the material.

  I was sweating, highly aware I had been caught. I shivered in fear. “I was cold. I—I can’t get warm.”

  Malegant turned my face toward him with a finger at my chin. He scrutinized my face. “Your face is clammy, and you are deathly pale.”

  “What are you doing down here?” I asked.

  “Aine called me. I might ask the same of you.”

  Aine’s crooning drew my attention again, so it took me a moment to register his words.

  “I—I don’t know,” I said, pretending to be dazed with fever.

  He grasped my hands, and my shaking increased.

  “Your hands are freezing. Let’s get you into bed.” He put an arm around me and guided me up the stairs to our room, calling for Imogen as we walked.

  I would never know how she reached the room before us, but when he opened the door, there she was, as placid as though he had merely interrupted her knitting.

  “I believe Guinevere is ill. Stay with her, will you?”

  Heaviness filled my head as though I really were ill. Imogen helped me into bed, and I lay there, watching the candles blaze and illuminate Malegant’s attempts to see the future in the patterns formed by sun-bleached bones of birds, oxen, and other animals I couldn’t identify.

  Aine soon stopped crooning, and I fell into an exhausted sleep, relieved neither she nor her brother appeared to suspect anything.

  That night, I dreamed of strange things. In my dreams, Aine was still chanting, though I could not see her. Her voice was all around me, coming from everywhere and nowhere. I was flying high above the tower and its island, then past the mountains and trees, then over open countryside. As I passed by, cairns burst open, the dead rising in their shrouds, some still carrying the weapons and finery with which they had been buried. They followed me to the sea, where I landed on a rocky beach. From the water came a cloud of ashes that slowly formed into a procession of souls.

  “Find her!” they commanded. “Find her before She does.”

  Then the dream shifted. Merlin sat up in his bed, drenched in sweat. It was early morning. Without bothering to dress in more than a simple tunic, he ran, barefoot, to find Arthur. My husband was still in bed, and he looked up in alarm at Merlin’s intrusion.

  “Great magic, the like of which I’ve never seen, has woken our ancestors. They come with a grave warning.” To my utter shock, Merlin went on to relay the exact contents of the earlier part of my dream.

  “Who should we find, and who should we fear?” Arthur asked, confused.

  Merlin leveled him with an impenetrable gaze. “I am not certain, but I think they are telling us to find Guinevere. And in answer to your other question—pray my suspicions are wrong.”

  My perspective shifted again, and I was in the throne room. Merlin was describing something to Arthur, Sobian, Lancelot, and Gawain.

  “The auguries confirm it. This is the location of the magic I felt. It was ancient and dark, enough to drive the ancestors from their resting places with a warning. Whatever its source, it must be stopped. I beg you brave men, and woman, to join with me in finding this castle in the glass.”

  As they armed themselves to depart, I saw their destination. It was the very fortress in which I now slumbered.

  Chapter Eleven

  Spring 501

  A few weeks later, as spring was beginning to paint the forest with its first blush of green, Malegant came to our morning meal dressed in his riding boots and traveling cloak.

  “I am going out to begin collecting taxes in the nearby villages,” he announced.

  Imogen threw me a hopeful look behind his back.

  “I am going with you,” Aine pronounced.

  “No, you are not. Someone needs to stay here to guard her.” He gestured to me with his tankard of ale.

  “But I’m bored.”

  “What do I care?” he asked around a mout
hful of bread. “Besides, the fisherman should be here tomorrow with the next moon’s supplies. Someone has to pay him.”

  Aine sat in a huff, her arms crossed like a petulant child’s. “Isn’t that the duty of your wife?” Suddenly she looked up. “You still don’t trust her.” It was a statement, not a question. “And you probably never will,” she added more quietly.

  After the dishes were cleared, Malegant led me upstairs to the room in which he’d first held me prisoner. “Please forgive me for this, but I can’t have you getting any ideas about running away while I am gone.”

  He produced a length of thick chain with twin shackles affixed to one end. The other end was bolted tightly to the wall. He seized my hands and bound them in the iron manacles.

  Immediately, fear formed a leaden lump in my stomach. My hands shook beneath his grasp, but I couldn’t stop them. “What is the meaning of this? In the six moons I have been here, you never once chained me up. Have I done something to affront you?”

  His face hardened. Before I could blink, he struck me full force across the cheek with the back of his hand. I stumbled back, knocking my head against the wall.

  “You heard what I said. It was either this or break your hands again. Which would you prefer? Or maybe your feet too this time?” His voice was cruel as he raised an eyebrow and patted me twice on the cheek. “I didn’t think so.” He kissed me roughly and backed away. “Imogen will be instructed to treat you as before. She will bring your meals three times a day. There is a bit of sewing and a book for you to pass the time. The chain is long enough for you to reach the bed and the necessity pot but not to leave the room. I will return in a few days.”