The Beast of Caer Baddan (55 page)

Owain would not stop and wait for the hustling servants to announce his presence.

“Lord Eisu,” he said, neither in greeting to the lord nor acknowledging those with the man.

“Belenus and Derama!” Lord Eisu cried. “Prince Owain! You are alive! And quite scarred! Are you sure you are recovered to be traveling?”

“Save your sympathy, Lord,” Owain replied. “My coming is on another matter.”

“Of course. Of course. Sit down with us.”

Owain did not take a seat.

“Why do you want an innocent woman dead?” he asked, his voice revealing the hatred within his heart.

Lord Eisu stepped back away from him, fright written across his face.

“You traitorous fox,” Owain said. “You attempted murder of your king.”

Prince Inam and Prince Bodvoc were on Owain with their hands on the grips of their weapons. As he drew out his sword, Owain sliced off Prince Inam’s head and then struck Prince Bodvoc square on the jaw with his plated elbow. The boy dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Queen Deire let out a long muffled scream.

“Peace, Prince,” Lord Eisu said, his eyes full of fear. “The king-”

The lord looked like a little mouse caught in a snare, and Owain was the predator who now cornered him.

“You were in a dungeon, Lord,” Owain replied, swinging his sword back and forth before the shaken man. “Locked up like a common thief. You committed treason by following that upstart. King Irael let you live. He set you free. He made you Lord of the Dobunni in your father's place.”

Owain felt that his words themselves could slice into the man.

“I have not forgotten the king’s goodness, Prince,” Lord Eisu said.

“That is the trouble, Lord. You have an excellent memory. He spared your life. And you repay him how? By trying to murder him? And when that does not work, you try to murder a helpless woman holds has a baby in her arms?”

“I beg of you-”

Owain’s last back swing sliced through the man’s defensive right arm and through his exposed neck.

Blood splattered everywhere and rusty-iron smell of a fresh kill filled the hall.

Owain heard the soft cry of Queen Deire, muffled by the hand that she pressed inside of her gaping mouth. He stepped over the body of Lord Eisu and came towards her.

“You need not be afraid of me,” Owain said, his voice gentle and easy.

Queen Deire just stood there, staring at him with horrified eyes and screaming in spite of her hand.

Owain’s confident gaze fell over her.

She was quite a beautiful women, with soft hands and long black hair all bound up around her head. Her huge brown eyes stared up at him in dread.

“Come, Madam,” Owain said.

He spoke gently, turned his body to the side to show her that he was not her adversary, as he had always done with frightened women. He smiled, looking on her with admiring eyes, and held out an empty, open hand to comfort her fear. He would get her out of that hall and away from the carnage.

“Give me your hand, Queen Deire,” he said, and his voice turned soft as creamy butter.

But she took her own hand out of her mouth then and slapped at the air before him as if to beat him away from her.

Owain stepped, his eyes wide with a new revelation. She was not to be conquered by him.

When he had died, what had left this earth was that magical part of his being that convinced people to like him in spite of themselves. Now he stood stripped of his power, and the queen saw him only for what little was left.

“When Prince Bodvoc wakes up,” he said to the servants who were huddled by the far door, “tell him that he is now Lord of the Dobunni.”

He went out of the hall, and the guards congregated around him lest any of the Dobunni guards should dare attack the dominae.

“You did not take his head, Dominae,” the Captain of the Guard whispered.

But Owain was too in shock to make a reply.

Chapter Forty Four: Trials and Tribulations

When Owain returned to the castle, his determined steps took him straight away to the armory and to the statue of his mother.

He saw the perfect likeness of the woman who had given her life up for him over seventeen years before. He felt her tender eyes on his wounded spirit.

“Mam,” he said, bitterly, “what now?”

He had given his life up for the island, yet that was not enough. What he needed was forgiveness from her, his mother, but was at a loss as to how to obtain it.

He slid his weapon from its sheath, his eyes soaking in every detail of its magnificent craftsmanship. The blade, shining in spite of the blood still smeared across it, had been pounded and folded until it created a long, extended diamond.
The whole handle, from the leather strap that wrapped around it to form a comfortable grip to the gold and silver inlay that filled the carvings, showed the height of perfection. It was delicate and strong together, beautiful and terrible combined, and altogether balanced that he could set it across his forefinger, and it would rest there neither falling forward or back. It was an ancient sword made for a warrior of old long since who had stood victorious over all his enemies.

There was really nothing like Calybs in the whole island.

“And I'm no longer worthy of it,” Owain muttered.

He laid it down at the bronze feet of his mother's statue and turned too leave the armory.

His eyes caught the one figure that had been added since his death. There, in the most prominent place in the room, stood a statue as big as Owain and exactly proportioned to him.

He stared at a bronze version of himself.

The wide neck and strong jaw Owain still possessed, but the lips and smooth face of the figurine he knew had been destroyed on his own flesh.

“Agh!” he cried aloud, anger and frustration building up within the shattered pieces of his heart. 

Shifting his weight onto his left foot, he brought his right leg high up above the statue's base. As he turned his body, his armored shin collided with the bronze legs.

The metal cracked, severing the wood within it, and the whole statue tumbled down. It hit the tiled floor with an echoing smash and rolled to the corner of the room.

Owain marched off, leaving it where it lay.

A thorough wash was needed after any war, however small that fight might have been, and Owain was particularly grateful for the warm, clean water. It seemed that an eternity had passed between his purposeful entry into battle against the Dumnonni and his return to Baddan two nights before. Two nights and two baths could not erase the pain from his soul.

When Owain was dried and dressed, he walked up stairs towards his rooms, but stopped as he noticed Gratianna's door further down the passageway. He knew that he should go in and kiss her before she was asleep, but his tortured soul would not allow it. His hand pushed his own door open and he went in, without another thought.

All of his things were the same, his clothes, his furniture, everything, yet he was so different. He had been admired by everyone. Now he was feared, hated, and abhorred. Where he had seen love and respect in the faces of the people, he now saw pity or revulsion.

Owain threw off his embroidered robe and fell onto his bed.

He slept in that bed only a few dozen times every year, for most of the seasons had been spent traveling with his Army. Now, he did not wish to rise from it.

Owain saw the Dumnonni king before him, their swords clashing wildly in the shrinking space that separated them. His own weapon caught the king's and pushed it out of the way. He jammed his iron-clad forearm onto the leather gorget that protected the man's neck, and forced the king up against the wide trunk of an old oak tree.

The Dumnonni king was Owain's foe, an enemy to his clan, and had been so since long before either of their births. King Tudwal's father had set fire to Cear Corin the Capital of Glouia. Prince Victor, Owain's uncle, had sacked Caer Dore the Capital of the Dumnonni people. King Tudwal had kidnapped Owain's aunt, Gratianna, and forced her to marry him. Owain's father had rescued her and killed King Tudwal's father in the process. The list went on, with neither meaning nor end.

And then Owain, in some fleeting whim, felt that he could destroy that long held tradition.

“Surrender!” he ordered, somehow believing in his conceited heart that the Dumnonni king actually would submit to him.

“Never!” King Tudwal replied, for it was not in Owain's power to end the feud between their clans.

As Owain pulled his arm back to run the king through, he felt the hairs on his arms and at the back of his neck stand, as if they sensed some unseen danger. The air around him seemed to fill with fright.

He did not stop but thrust his sword into the King Tudwal's neck, even as the king raised a defensive arm against him. Owain felt the weapon halt, stuck firmly in the body of the tree behind his enemy, and the king's iron armplate push up against his face.

At that same moment, the world went white.

Owain's eyes stung, and his attentive ears caught no sound at all. A violent shiver rushed through his whole being, making his teeth chatter. The heinous odor of scorching flesh seemed to smother him, and in one flashing thought, he knew that it was his own body that burned.

He was lifted up high into the air and thrown up against what he thought must be another tree trunk. His body then dropped to the ground and he touched the earth beneath his hands. He trembled, as he felt the cold rain fall down and beat on the iron scales that covered his back.

“Am I dead?” he muttered.

Then darkness took him.

Owain sat up with a start.

He was still in his room, on his comfortable bed. He was at home in Caer Baddan, the place of his birth. Everything around him was unaltered, yet he himself was so changed because of his death.

For if anyone had ever died, surely that was Owain.

Died and gone to Hades and now returned to this retched life, half dead and rotting as the dreaded Ankou. Had he not dealt death out to man like an agent of the god of the underworld? And stripped of any goodness he might have had within him, he now was beaten and broken, left to the people's disdain.