“I imagine so,” Uther said, wiping his eyes. “I imagine so. But my son—” he began, then he saw Arthur’s face go blank. He knew the look. The boy didn’t want to talk now. Oh, no. The girl’s genealogy was known to him, and everyone along the coast had heard the predictions of the oracle that were spoken of even by the most backward peasants. But the women of her line—men were mere adjuncts of its supernatural women members—never boded any good for the families they married into. Yes, Riona had been the wife of a minor Irish king, one so unimportant that Uther couldn’t remember his name. But the man had been much older than she was and was several years dead when Riona conceived this child.
The queen’s reputation didn’t include promiscuity. She would by no means lie with just anyone. There was no telling what sort of being she’d summoned and seduced to create this offspring. It was said that when Dugald saw the breeding queen, he received a blow that stretched him senseless on the floor for a half hour. Trough the tale no doubt had grown in the telling, the thought that this child might become his daughter in law was disconcerting to Uther.
Arthur was announcing a welcome feast for his father’s oath men. Cheers were ringing out all around Uther, and he was swept along up the stair toward the citadel.
The feast was turning into the sort of drunken rout Uther expected. Quarrels had erupted in Anglia among the landowners. The Saxons chose up sides and joined them. God, what a broth of mischief that had been. He had been campaigning there for the last three months. The conditions along the coast were miserable. Pirates had taken advantage of the disorder to raid the villages there, and then the inland lords started hanging those fleeing pirates. He wasn’t sure if he had quelled the disturbances or if famine and plague had simply exhausted all the participants so much that they no longer had a will to murder each other. Now there was this worry. A woman of… no, her reputation was not dubious, rather, more frightening. Someone threw more of the green branches on the fire and a cheer rose all around him.
The room darkened as the fire sank down. The man who brought the herbs to the fire staggered back to the table. Remarkable… he could still walk. Uther was sure a good many of them were sunk into complete paralysis by the mead and the steam rising from the fire pit. A good third of his men were Saxons, and they were much addicted to the stuff. And they had little chance for pleasure in Anglia. They would make the absolute most of this opportunity tonight.
Hemp, they called it, and burned it in their sweat baths, especially the rosin given off by the weed and its rudimentary flowers. As far as he was concerned, it made his skin feel as if he were being attacked by a legion of insects, crawling all over his body, and it also gave him diarrhea. Since he had to remain until the last man passed out, he hoped that he wouldn’t get a lethal enough dose of the nasty smoke to bring on his usual reaction. God help them, this was their idea of fun, and he wanted them to enjoy the feast. They deserved something after the last two months in hell.
He glanced over at Arthur. Apparently his son didn’t enjoy drunkenness either, because he imbibed very little and spent most of dinner in close conversation with Cai. It concerned Uther that he hadn’t been able to corner the boy and get the full story of what happened from him. But then, he was secretive about his own business, and Uther knew why.
God, did the boy have to pay for his sins? When Igrane’s husband raised the standard of rebellion against him, he had accepted marriage as the price of her betrayal of Gerlos. Now he detested her and didn’t trust her lover, Merlin, either; but, here again, with Merlin he was caught in his own trap. If the druid hadn’t supported him when he succeeded his father, he didn’t know if he could have persuaded the southern Romanized nobles to accept him. As it was, he had to crush Gerlos in Dumnonia and steal his wife. Christ! The smoke made him dizzy.
Then he had fostered the boy with Cai’s family in his own land. Morgana lived near the sea. He’d had to take Arthur by force from Igrane in order to bring him to Morgana. He wasn’t a man to strike women, but that day had been a nightmare that rode with him ever since. He was sure Merlin was responsible for that—the dreams. He had broken Igrane’s nose and her jaw when he took the boy; and, no doubt, she had now a large and vicious ax to grind. So he endured the torture of his recurring nightmares stoically.
Almighty God, it had been worth it, though. Merlin still got to tutor the boy, but only under the watchful gaze of Morgana; and his sister’s people had not failed him. He smiled grimly, remembering the tale told about the women of that family. Some deserters from the legions at Isca Silurum and armed brigands descended on their stronghold. They thought to have an easy time of it, since the men were away; but the women—yes, those women—made trophies of every man jack of them, and they resided now among the other heads swinging from the rafters of the hall. He had been shown a few on his last visit and the remains of the legionary equipment they carried with them.
Morgana was a priestess of the war goddess, whose name she bore. From the youngest child to the eldest grandfather or grandmother, they played at farming and worked at war. They hadn’t done badly by Arthur. He’d brought the boy along with him when he went to clean out a nest of brigands at Venta Icenorum. The pirates had landed, massacred the people there, burned a villa, and were raiding among the other villas in the countryside. He and his oath men rode in to clean them out—a king’s duty. He lost the advantage of surprise when one of the lookouts escaped his bowman, and they were able to muster in the pasture on the edge of the village.
He hadn’t seen the dry streambed in time; it was too thick with new grass. The ground was butter soft, and his horse went in to the fetlocks. He went flying, like a green youngster, right over the front of his saddle, somersaulted, and landed at the feet of his enemies. He found he couldn’t move, and spared a thought that he hated to orphan the boy so young… when he saw a war horse fly over him and his fallen mount. It landed in the faces of the cutthroats charging in to take his head, and his adolescent son turned into a killing machine before his eyes.
Too close to the nearest for a clean stroke, Arthur was forced to improvise. He sliced the horse’s head off. The beast fell, overbalancing the man on his back. With a twist of his blade, Arthur cut his throat. The man on his left and Arthur’s right drove down with a battle ax. Arthur jerked his war horse into a rearing climb, hooves pawing at the sky, and the ax missed. Arthur drove his sword through the man’s throat and out the back of his leather helm.
Even on the ground, counting his last seconds of life, Uther admired the strength of wrist and arm it took to disengage the sword and carve off the last warrior’s head and arm in one scooping cut. Too many, Uther thought. The boy is a marvel, but there are too many, because more of the pirates were pressing in on all sides. But then Cai and Gawain were there, and Uther realized as heir apparent, Arthur must already have oath men of his own. Cai favored a mace, the head weighted with lead and covered with long spikes. It took the arm of a bear to swing it, but then, Cai was of the Bear order, the warrior sodality of his tuath; and Uther knew, true to Morgana’s word, he had probably been initiated into the select group—men and women—of the Bear.
Uther had sprained his wrist, twisted his knee, knocked out two teeth, and broken one of the bones in his upper jaw; but he didn’t consider himself badly hurt and was conscious when Arthur, Cai, and Gawain carried him from the field. The physician gave him opium when he had to pull the root of one of his teeth; the other was gone, leaving only a hole. Between the pain of his broken jaw and the considerable additional discomfort of having the tooth root cut out, he was still awake when the screams began. He woke Cai, who was sharing the tent with him.
“What is that?”
Cai ruffled his thick, dark hair with one hand. “The prisoners,” he said. “I wanted to hang them, but Arthur saw what they had done in the village, and he gave them to the people. The people were mostly women.”
On the other side of Cai’s cot, Arthur was sleeping the sleep of the just. The noise didn’t bother him.
The opium must have worked, because when Uther woke again at dawn he felt well enough to ride. After they mounted, they rode past the church to water their horses. The church was of the kind built with drystone walling in the form of a cross. It had four doors. A fresh hide was nailed to each door. The hides were human.
Uther looked up from his cup. God, that damned smoke. He could barely see, his eyes were tearing so badly. He peered over at the bench where Arthur and Cai had been sitting and saw they were gone. Better than half the men in the hall were draped over the benches or passed out on the floor.
Uther gave a sigh of satisfaction. God, he thought. The idea of my bed waiting, warm, soft, clean, and comfortable, is sweeter than wine or women or even gold, the throne of power, any of the things 1 sought after so urgently in my youth. Stiff, he pushed himself upright. A half dozen of his men—they were sober—accompanied him. He was their king and might never be left alone. They shared his chamber, guarding his sleep, and when he reached it, his bed was all he had wished for. The sound of his closest companions settling in for the night followed him into his dreams.
Sometime well before dawn, he woke, both smelling and hearing the sea. The tide was going out. He could tell from the sound of the waves. Someone was in the room.
For many years he had lived, sleeping and waking, with his hand inches from the sax Morgana had given him when he was twelve and his first beard was cut. It was a beautiful thing, sixteen inches long. The front part of the thick blade was sharpened on both sides up to the hump, which is the strong point of a sax. This thickening keeps the blade from bending or breaking, no matter what. This sharpness on both sides up to the middle allows for quick, easy penetration. Beyond the hump, the blade was sharp only on one side, sharp and saw toothed. Painful, destructive, and difficult to pull out.
The hilt was ordinary, wire wrapped and covered with leather to offer a solid grip. The hand guard was long and narrow, light, yet offering good protection to the fingers. He kept it under his pillow, and the world always looked better when his hand closed around the hilt.
Who the hell could get past his guard? And how the hell did he do it? Uther didn’t doubt for one second that the visitor was “he.” Igrane hadn’t come near him in years, and other women were admitted only by invitation; and of late, he had issued very few such invitations.
The only light in the room came from a hearth in the corner; a smoke hole above it let in brilliant moonlight. It formed a faint, silver haze around the coals. A dark figure loomed, and then the faint light of fire and ice showed him his son’s face. Uther was pierced by a terrible sadness, but if Arthur wanted his life, he could have it. Is not the king’s life always forfeit to the gods for victory in any case? But the boy held no weapon. He was armed, but only lightly, as if for travel or the hunt. The only thing in his hands was a small clay lamp. He was holding it in one hand and shielding it with the other.
When he felt his father’s gaze touch him, Arthur smiled and placed a finger on his lips, calling for silence.
Uther found himself conspiratorially smiling back. He slid out of the bed and followed his son silently. They were out of the chamber and on the stair. Cai was waiting with dark, nondescript clothing for the king.
“If this is about a woman—”
“Sort of,” Cai said. “We are spying on Merlin and Igrane.”
“Amazing,” Uther said. “I have never been able to find out anything about their liaison at all.”
“We have an informant,” Cai said.
Arthur said, “Be quiet.” He knelt before Uther. For a second, Uther was puzzled, but then he realized Arthur was binding up his leggings. “We can explain on the way,” he said, and then they hurried down the stair.
Arthur and Cai traveled on foot. They offered Uther a horse, but he refused it. “I was part of Morgana’s family,” he whispered to them. “I know her insistence on the footman’s skills. I can keep up with you well enough.”
He did, too, though he well knew their youth would have allowed them to move faster. They matched their pace to his, so as not to make him too uncomfortable. The only break they took was when he called a halt because he knew where they were going.
“The place,” he said, “has no good reputation and, moreover, is being claimed by the sea.”
“We know,” Arthur answered. “Did you think they would pick a pleasant, sanctified site for their workings of black magic?”
Cai grunted in assent.
Above, the clouds were flying fast, skimming past the full moon, and the world around them was now light—almost as bright as day but for the thick, velvet shadows—now dark as the final blindness that falls over the eyes of the dying. Arthur and Cai slowed as they approached the coast.
“Will they have begun?” Arthur asked his foster brother.
“Ena says not,” he answered. “They will wait till it clears. If it doesn’t, they won’t act. They need the moonlight.”
When they reached the cove, the sky, burnished by the sea wind, was just beginning to clear. They concealed themselves on the small hill overlooking the twin headlands. Uther couldn’t repress a shiver of fear when he looked down. The cove reminded him of nothing so much as a woman’s spread thighs, and the spring bubbled from a capstone between them. And on the hill where they lay hidden, they might as well have sheltered between her breasts.
“There is no one here,” Uther whispered. “I can’t believe I left my warm bed for this nonsensical adventure.”
“Oh, they are here,” Cai whispered. “My lord, your nose suffers from the Saxon smoke. I can smell them.”
Even by the sea near the source of the spring, the vegetation was lush. There were thick bushes, holly and white thorn, and reeds and cattails clustered in the damp ground. Where the ground was coated with salt water at high tide, samphire crusted the mud. As the sky cleared, something Uther had taken for a rock threw off its cloak and walked into the pooling water of the spring. It was Merlin. At first, Uther thought he was naked, but he wasn’t—only bare chested. He wore a garland of nettles on his head and a deerskin held on at the waist with a golden belt.