The Hallowed Isle Book Four (11 page)

A.D.
507—512

A
T
C
AMALOT SOMEONE WAS ALWAYS COMING OR GOING, AND
one got used to the noise, especially now, when a series of hot days in early June had opened every window and door. But the voices outside the small building where the queen did her accounts were getting louder. Guendivar set down the tallies of taxes paid in beef or grain as Ninive came in, her fair hair curling wildly in the damp heat.

“My lady—there's a rider, with messages from Gallia—”

The queen's heart drummed in her breast, but she had learned to show no sign. Suddenly she could feel the fine linen of her tunica clinging to back and breast, and perspiration beading on her brow. But she waited with tightly folded hands as the messenger, his tunic still stained with salt from the journey oversea, came in.

“The king is well—” he said quickly, and she realized that her face had betrayed her after all, but that did not matter now. She recognized Artor's seal on the rawhide case in which he sent his dispatches, and held out her hand. The swift, angular writing that she had come to know so well blurred, then resolved into words.

“. . .
and so I am settled once more at Civitas Aquilonia. The
rains have been heavy here, and there is some sickness among the men, but we hope for better weather soon.”

She would have been happy to share the sunshine they were having here. But if the weather on both sides of the narrow sea was the same, Armorica would be drying out by now. Artor had not been used to write to her when he travelled in Britannia. But now the queen seemed to be his link to home. Deciphering his handwriting was only one of the many skills she had acquired since the king left her to rule in his name.

“The news from the south of Gallia continues bad, at least for the kingdom of Tolosa. Chlodovechus is moving against the Goths at last, and this time I do not think Alaric will be able to hold. For us, it means peace for as long as it takes for the Franks to digest their new conquest. But in another year or two, they will look about them and notice that this last Roman stronghold is still defying them.

“I judge that I have that long to forge alliances among the British chieftains of Armorica that will withstand the storm. Dare I hope to restore the Empire of the West? I no longer know
—
but where once I saw Gallia as territory to be regained, now I see men who have put their trust in me, and whom I must not betray
. . . .”

There was a break in the writing. The remainder of the letter was written in a different shade of ink, the writing more angular still.

“Tolosa has fallen. The Visigoths are in full retreat, and the Franks boast that they will keep them on the run all the way to the Pyrenaei montes and beyond. They are probably correct. Alaric must want very much to put a range of mountains between him and his foes. He will be safe in Iberia, for a time. But I predict that one day a Frankish king will follow, dreaming of Empire. Unless, that is, we can break their pride. Already we are seeing refugees from Tolosa, both Romans and Goths. If they wish to join the fight here they will be welcome. Some, I may send to you in Britannia.

“Watch well over my own kingdom, my queen. You hold my heart in your hands.
. . .”

How, she wondered, was she to take that? Surely, Artor was referring to the land, but for a moment she wondered what it would be like to claim not only his duty, but his love.
She had almost understood it, listening to Merlin's poetry. But even unclothed, Artor kept his spirit armored, and the moment of possibility had passed. It would require some power even greater than Merlin's, she thought sadly, to bring him to her arms. . . .

She tried to tell herself that her husband's absence had at last made her a queen. Was she still fair? She did not know— men had learned that she was better pleased by praises for her wisdom. She had grown into the authority Artor had laid upon her, and discovered that she had a talent for rule. She might have failed him as a wife, but not as Britannia's queen.

But each letter revealed more of the man hidden within the king, the human soul who had guarded himself so carefully when they were alone. Artor had been back to Britannia only three times since beginning the Gallian campaign, brief visits spent settling disputes between the princes or persuading them to send him more men. Guendivar had scarcely seen him.

And she missed him, this husband whom she was only now coming to know. If it was her beauty that had unmanned him, she hoped that she had lost it. She reached for a piece of vellum, and after a moment began to set down words.

“To my lord and husband, greetings. The weather here has turned hot and fair and we have hope for a good harvest. I can send you some of last year's grain store now, and the taxes from Dumnonia. Gualchmai has brought his wife to Camalot. She is an intelligent woman, well read in the Latin poets, not at all the sort one would have expected Gualchmai to choose. But he is happy with her
—
the wild boy grown up at last. The news from the North is not so good. Morgause writes that your lady mother is ailing. If we hear more, 1 will send you word.
. . .”

Guendivar paused, remembering the lake that lay like a jewel in the lap of the mountains, and the hush that one feared to break with any but sacred sounds. She had been there only once, but the memory was vivid. And yet she had no desire to return. She was a child of the southern lands, and her heart's home was the Vale of Afallon.

* * *

Merlin moved through the forest as a stag moves, scarcely stirring a leaf as he passed. But when he reached the river he was an otter, breasting the surface with undulant ease. When night came, the senses of a wolf carried him onward. But when he noticed at last that he was weary, he sank down between the roots of an ancient oak and became a tree.

Waking with the first light of morning, he thought for a moment that he was a bird. The pain of limbs that had stiffened with inaction brought him back to awareness of his body. He stretched out one forelimb, blinking at the sinewy length of a human arm, furred though it was with wiry, silver-brindled hair. Splayed twigs became fingers that reached out to the smooth, rune-carved wood of the Spear, which he had continued to carry through all his transformations.

With that touch, full consciousness returned to him, and he remembered his humanity. To stay a bird would have been easier, he thought grimly. A bird had no thought beyond the next insect, the next song. The long thoughts of trees, slowly stretching towards the skies, would be better still. A man could remember the message that had started him on this journey; a man could weep, trying to imagine a world without Igierne.

He gazed at the wooded heights above him and knew that the instinct that guided him had led him deep into the Lake-land hills, where once the Brigantes had ruled. A few hours more would bring him to the Isle of Maidens. Animal senses rugged at his awareness—he scented wild onion on the hillside, and grubs beneath a fallen log. Food he must have, and water, but it was necessary that he complete this journey as a man.

When Merlin came to the Lake it was nearing noon. The water lay flat and silver beneath the blue bowl of the sky; even the trees stood sentinel with no leaf stirring. Human reason told him that such calms often preceded storms, but a deeper instinct gibbered that the world was holding its breath, waiting for the Lady of the Lake to give up her own. When he climbed into the coracle drawn up on the shore, he pushed off carefully, as if even the ripples of his passage might be enough to upset that fragile equilibrium.

* * *

The priestesses had set Igierne's bed in the garden, beneath a wickerwork shade. Merlin would have thought her dead already if he had not seen the linen cloth that covered her stir. Nine priestesses stood around her, chanting softly. As he approached, the woman who sat at the head of the bed straightened, and he saw that it was Morgause. The clear light that filtered through the wicker showed clearly the lines that had been carved into her face by passion and by pride, but it revealed also the enduring strength of bone. Distracted by the surface differences in coloring and the deeper differences in spirit, he had never realized how much she looked like her mother.

Igierne's eyes were closed; her breathing labored and slow. Her silver hair rayed out upon the pillow, combed by loving hands, but he could see the skull beneath the skin.

“How long—”

“Has she lain thus?” asked Morgause. “She weakened suddenly two days since.”

“Have you called on the power of the Cauldron?”

Morgause shook her head, frowning. “She forbade it.”

Merlin sighed. He should have expected that, for the power of the Cauldron was to fulfill the way of nature, not to deny it. Morgause spoke again.

“Yesterday she would still take broth, but since last night she has not stirred. She is going away from us, and there is nothing I can do.”

“Have
you
slept?” When she shook her head, he touched her hand. “Go, rest, and let me watch awhile. I will call you if there is any change.”

It was good advice, though Merlin did not know if he had given it for her sake, or his own. Her anger and her need battered against his hard-won composure.

When she had gone he leaned the Spear against the post, sat down in her place, and took Igierne's hand. It was cool and dry; only when he pressed could he feel the pulse within. He closed his eyes, letting his own breathing deepen, matching his life-force to hers.

“Igierne . . . my lady . . . Igierne.
. . .” Awareness extended; he
felt himself moving out of the body, reaching for that place where her spirit hovered, tethered to her body by a silver cord that thinned with every beat of her heart.

“Merlin, my old friend—”
He sensed Igierne as a bright presence, turning towards him.
“Do not tell me I must come back with you, for I will not go!”
The radiance that surrounded them quivered with her laughter.

“Then let me come with you!”

“Your flesh is still bound to the earth. It is not your time.
. . .”

“The years pass, yet my body only grows stronger. The only thing that held my spirit to the human world was my love for you!”

“When you wandered, I watched over you from the Lake
. . .” came her reply.
“Now I will love you from the Hidden Realm. It is not so far away
—”

He could sense that this was true, for beyond the flicker of her spirit, a bright doorway was growing. He was aware that Morgause had returned, but her grief could not touch him now. From a great distance, it seemed, his mortal senses told him that Igierne's breath came harshly, rattling in her chest. The chanting of the priestesses faltered as someone began to weep, then resumed.

“Your children still need you
—” he thought hopelessly.

“My children are grown! Surely they know I love them. Merlin, you would not condemn me to live on in a body that is outworn! Help me, my dear one. Let me go!”

He was not so sure of that, but it was his own need, not that of Morgause, that reached out and drew the spirit of the younger woman into the link as well.

“There you are, my daughter
—
you see
—” Igierne moved closer to the light.
“This is what I tried to tell you. There is only this last bit, that is a little. . . difficult, and then all will be well. This, too, is part of your training. Help me.
. . .”

He could sense when the turmoil in Morgause's spirit began to give way to wonder.

“You see the doorway opening before you—” The words that the younger woman whispered came from ritual, but they carried conviction now, and resonated in both worlds. “The bright spirits of those you love await you, ready to welcome you home. . . .”

And as she spoke, Merlin realized that it was so. He glimpsed those radiant beings drawing nearer, and recognized, with a certainty beyond the senses, Uthir, and behind him Igierne's parents, Amlodius and Argantel.

“Go through the gate. Let our love support you through your own self-judgment. Over you the dark shall have no power. Farewell—we release you into the Lady's waiting arms. . . .”

Somewhere far away, the failing body struggled for breath, sighed, and was still. But that hardly mattered. For a moment, Merlin's inner vision embraced the brightness and he saw Igierne clearly, growing ever younger as she moved away from them until she was the gold-crowned maiden whom he had loved. And then she passed through the portal. The Light intensified beyond mortal comprehension, and Merlin was blown back into the pallid illumination of an earthly day.

The surface of the lake wrinkled as wind brushed the water. A vanguard of cloud was just rising beyond the western hills. Morgause shivered, though the temperature had barely begun to drop; the cold she felt came from the soul. Merlin, beside her, moved as she had seen men move coming half-stunned from the battlefield.

“It was a good death—” she said aloud. “Why am I so angry?” Behind them the ritual wailing of the priestesses swelled and faded like the rising wind, but Morgause felt her throat hard, the muscles tight, and her eyes were dry.

“Because your mother has abandoned you,” came the deep rumble of his reply. “Even a death less triumphant than this one is a release for the one who passes. We grieve for ourselves, because she has left us alone.”

Morgause stared. For most of her life she had hated this man, the architect of her father's death and her mother's first treachery. Of all people in the world, she had not expected him to understand.

“I remember when my grandmother was dying,” she said then. “My mother wept, while I played, uncomprehending, on the shore. Argantel foretold that I would be the Lady of the Lake one day. For so many years I fought my mother,
fearing she would deny me my destiny. And now that fate is come upon me, and I am afraid.”