And around them, the thickets were stirred to beauty by birdsong and the summer breeze.
“He is taken,” Gawain told Uther.
Uther kicked at the sand, clothes, and skull piled in the road. The three, Cai, Gawain, and Ena. With the exception of Gawain none of them would look him in the eye.
Uther’s face was hard as a mountain crag.
“When?” he asked.
“Probably before we left Tintigal,” was Gawain’s reply. “This thing—” he gestured toward the remnants “—was likely only intended to fool us for a short time.”
Ena closed her eyes. She placed her hand over the child in her belly, thinking, I can plead pregnancy. She glanced up at Cai’s set face. Not that it will do much good. He will likely hang the father beside both mother and child. There is a chance the two men will escape. Uther won’t want to irritate his own family or break off an alliance with the king of the Outer Isles, Gawain’s father, Lot.
“I left him to go with Ena,” Cai said.
Gawain’s eyes closed. “I left him to dally with a woman.”
“Yes,” Uther said. “And I with seventy brave men at my beck and call. I let him go to his room alone. Let us not try to assign guilt.”
Uther sensed relaxation in the three confronting him. They had been afraid they would face the irrational, unleashed fury of a king.
And there was fury enough in him. But he hadn’t become high king of the Britons by being unable to control his emotions, and he hadn’t held power so long by engaging in self destructive savagery.
These three loved the boy as much as he did. Yes, he thought, turning away. He would love to hang, or better yet, burn or crucify someone, or even several someones. But certainly not his sister’s grandson or a prince of the blood like Gawain.
As for the girl… God! Might as well hang his son’s horse. It was standing in the road beside the remains of the semblance, looking as bewildered as the humans gathered there.
“I don’t know if it’s any comfort to you, my lord, but I believe we were all hoodwinked. I cannot think we were all remiss, not all at once— by accident.”
Uther glanced back at Gawain.
“Sometimes,” Gawain continued, “magic is most powerful when it is least seen.”
Uther remembered Gerlos long ago being driven to despair by Igrane’s desertion. He had used Merlin then to destroy the king of Dumnonia. Somehow Gerlos knew within the hour that Igrane lay with the Pendragon. And later, Uther had felt responsible for Gerlos’s despair and suicide. Now he was certain that Merlin had sent the news of Igrane’s betrayal to Gerlos.
“The last thing I should be guilty of right now is rashness or folly,” Uther said. “Speak.” He turned to Gawain. “You know more of magic, Hawk of May, than any of us. What is your thought?”
Gawain said, “Likely he—Arthur I mean—is not at Tintigal any longer but has been taken somewhere else. The Saxon pirates who harry our shores are in Merlin’s debt—deeply in his debt. And Arthur would have been given to them to transport God knows where. If you return to Tintigal, I think you will find the causeway to the mainland held against you; and your brave oath men will die in large numbers to win admittance for you. If, indeed, they can. Merlin’s personal guard will die to a man to keep you out. And likely, when they are dead, the queen and her lover will be gone also.”
Uther nodded. His mind turned inward. I should, he thought, do nothing, at least nothing right now. Sometimes that was the most difficult thing to do—nothing. I must speak with Morgana in the ancient land of the Silures—Wales, those damned Saxons called it. Typical oftheir arrogance, that they should name the ancient rulers of this country foreigners.
Before the Romans, the Silures, his people, had begun to enter the larger world of cities and trade. But when the Romans came, they went back to their forests. The low mountain meadows of their land offered rich summer grazing to cattle, sheep, and horses. The valleys were drowned deep in sometimes impenetrable forests. The tribes moved among them, clearing land to plant and then, as quickly, leaving when and if the Romans made too much of a nuisance of themselves.
The Romans demanded tribute. Not knowing much about the people they had no idea how much they could demand. As a result, they got almost nothing. And the Silures themselves organized their customs in such a way as to avoid the conquest and exploitation to which the other tribes had been subjected.
How they loved threes—and every Silurian had three identities: his family, his tribe, and his, or for that matter, her, warrior society.
Hawk of May, Gawain, was one of the people of the hawk, born, as it was thought, of the union of his mother with a hawk. There were others, many others.
Arthur the Bear. Morgana—yes, Morgana—an Owl. Cai, the Seal. Most belonged to and had been initiated into more than one society. They tied what should have been a very divided people into one, since the societies cut across class, family, tribes, and were purely adoptive organizations. And they accepted both women and men.
How the church hated that, and Uther had been more than once the object of sermons by churchmen who wanted him to deprive women of the right to bear arms. But he turned his face away from the idea. He had no desire to infuriate his people; and besides, more than once the fierce women of the Silures had been the difference between victory and defeat.
He drew Gawain aside.
“How many of the lords of the wild will entertain you in their dwellings?”
“All of them,” Gawain answered. “I am an oath man of the summer king. He is beloved. Morgana saw that they were all feasted.”
“Wise,” Uther whispered.
“None wiser,” Gawain said in agreement.
“Ride on ahead and spread the word.”
Gawain nodded.
“Ask that they hold themselves in readiness for my call.”
Gawain nodded again.
“Caution them to do nothing without my word,” Uther continued.
“But of course I will take the head of that filthy necromancer and his leman, should I happen to stumble somehow upon them… but I cannot think I will be so lucky. The pair will know to keep well away from me or any loyal to me.”
Uther’s hand closed so tightly on Gawain’s shoulder that the young man, strong as he was, flinched.
“I’m sorry. Pray excuse me,” he said to Gawain.
“Not at all,” Gawain answered.
“As for myself,” Uther told him, “I will go and speak to Morgana. I want that bastard Merlin dead! And she will know best how to accomplish that.”
“My lord,” Gawain said quietly to the torment he saw in Uther’s eyes, “I do not think they will kill him. I don’t think they would dare. When Vortigen was murdered, Merlin was sure the Saxons would prevail. But they didn’t. In fact, they were forced to flee in large numbers. What they need is a high king who will accommodate them; and thanks to your artifices, Arthur is the only heir.”
“How did you know that was deliberate?” Uther asked.
“Am I a fool?” Gawain whispered. “You forsook the queen’s bed and have not—since Arthur was fostered with Morgana—lain with a woman who could begin to claim the high kingship for her son. Pleasant ladies all, I’m sure, but very, very low ranking women.”
Uther said, “Yes, every one of them. And I have endeavored not to get any of them with child. It is that, and that alone, that protects Arthur now. But God help the boy, it won’t protect him from the kind of pain those two devils can inflict on him. And are probably inflicting now.”
Again Gawain was forced to flinch by Uther’s grip. “My lord,” he said, “the Veneti call all along the coast to trade and get timber. Word from the lords of the wildwood might frighten the pair, if nothing else.”
“I give you leave to try,” Uther said. “It might help my son and make that brace of reptiles think twice before they commit the worst atrocities. Ride now, and may God go with you.”
I waded out into the water to confront the dragon. He was yet another kind, marked like an orca, almost blue black on top and white beneath. His back was hard with a succession of dark plates, each with a spine, decorating him from nose to tail. His body was very slim, even slimmer than that of the black dragon’s. And his fangs were prominent, even with his mouth closed. They projected from his top jaw past the lower jaw and were visible against his white underbody.
“How many kinds of you are there?” I asked. “Possibly as many as two dozen,” he answered. “Why?”
“I was just curious,” I answered. “It’s not an issue with you?”
“No. Why? Should it be? We are specialized for different purposes. I am a hunter and eat sharks. Red Mane, the first you met, is a plant eater almost exclusively. Deep Diver, the black one—his name is, I think, self explanatory. Silver manes follow the drifting plant beds. I hunt and am fierce. Unlike the silver manes, I fear no storms, am a fast, strong swimmer, and travel in… I voyage… among the lost.”
“Am I then lost?” I asked. “For the moment, but I will bring you home to your kin,” was his reply.
“Not to Tintigal,” I said.
“No! And Igrane has a lot of explaining to do before we ever honor her with our trust again. Now get on. We have some distance to cover before nightfall.”
I obeyed.
I had strapped the flowers to my waist. Their fragrance drifted around me. And indeed, this was a place of flowers. They grew here in wild profusion. The beaches were covered with them above the tide line, golden sunbursts on succulent stems.
Violet whirls hung over the edges of the cliffs on the waterways we traversed. Mounded bushes covered by white blooms clung with twisted roots to the rocky slopes leading down to the water.
Others resembled poppies, with their brilliant colors of white, red, orange, blue, and all the shades in between—cascaded from steep cliffs adorned with broken rock. The petals of these flowers were thin and soft, and since the water the dragon swam through was dotted beautifully with their petals it was clear these blooms lasted less than a day. All this I glimpsed between patches of thick fog that lay on the water the way clouds rest on air rising from earth on a warm day.
The dragon—who, by the way, was the fastest, strongest swimmer I had ever ridden—swam sometimes around the fog patches so that we basked in the warm sun; at other times he hurried through them, and I was blinded by the thick, oddly chill vapor.
“What is this place? Why are we here? How will we get home?”
The dragon snorted and made an impatient noise. “I have no answers to these questions. At least, none that make sense to me, much less to you. The natural philosophers have some theories that I cannot begin to consider discussing.” This information was delivered in a suitably lofty tone. “But it is sufficient to say this is not a place and we are nowhere.”
“Very enlightening,” I answered.
“Ha! You think that’s bad, you should hear the explanations of our natural philosophers. But we call this the realm of the clawed bird.”
“Makes sense,” I answered. He did have claws on his wings; teeth, too.
“Yes,” the dragon said. “Yes, once he did, now he is no more. Yet we can still come here to gaze at his flowers and sip the honey made from them by the bees.”
“Bees?” I said. As we emerged from a fog bank near a cliff, I saw there were indeed bees here. Bees moreover of all shapes and sizes nesting in hollows under overhangs or small caves in the cliffs overlooking the water. Some, only as large as flies, were yellow, orange, and violet and very swift. Others were black, purple, yellow, and red and large almost as my thumb.
“Don’t be deceived,” the dragon told me. “It’s the little ones that are dangerous and will sting the hell out of you. The large black ones have another kind of protection but in return for an offering will let you drink from their combs. See them, the honeycombs?”
And I did. Some were as long as six feet, sheltered in the overhangs against the cliff face. Magnificent creations of the giant bees, colored all the shades of yellow imaginable—some so dark they were almost burgundy— running the gamut from red to brown, golden orange, dark yellow, sulfur yellow, pale yellow, and subtle greenish yellow, glowing like jewels, bright as their fostering flowers against the gray and black rock.
“The clawed bird hunts the little ones but is in a state of truce with the large black ones, and they supply him with honey for his young. But again I reiterate, don’t ask too many questions here or we might be sent home. You would not care to sojourn again at Tintigal.”
“No.” I shuddered. “But this realm of the clawed bird, it must be somewhere.”
The dragon laughed. “Only to your limited mind, and also to mine,” he added with a touch of humility. “But consider the kingdom of possibility. You would say it was an enormous one, would you not? All those things that might be and all those that ever existed. Our natural philosophers believe that anything that ever struggled into existence carved out its own special niche in that kingdom. And there it will remain irrespective of time, since time does not exist there.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sounds like Kyra’s possible.”
“Hmm?” the dragon asked.
“She tells me to wash down as far as possible and then wash possible.”
“ ‘Possible’ being a euphemism for the human reproductive area?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You ought to be ashamed to play with the language like that. But then, the natural philosophers say you primates are especially gifted that way. But, I’m glad we keep our equipment inside our bodies. Enough said. I’m going to dive, so take a deep breath. And shut up. If you try to talk under water, you’ll drown.”
He was right. I would. You see, we weren’t talking with our minds. We both made sounds. He could make sounds under water, but I couldn’t. I’m certain some sort of mind contact helped us understand each other, but the specifics were verbal.
I took a deep breath and we sank. We didn’t dive. I don’t know how they do that, but it’s very effective. I’ve seen snakes do the same thing. I wouldn’t compare the dragons to snakes, not while they were within earshot. I wouldn’t, because they consider snakes a very much lower life form. But I have no doubt the same principle is involved.