The Hallowed Isle Book Four (22 page)

“A messenger,” he said grimly, “who rides at too headlong a pace to bear good news.”

Medraut had taken Luguvalium. The chieftains of the Selgovae, still resenting the taxes Artor had laid upon them a dozen years ago, had joined him in a swift drive southward, and Morcant Bulc of Dun Breatann, denying his father's treaties, had joined them. The main body of the Picts had not yet appeared, but their most likely route would be eastward through the Votadini lands. Artor had been aware of the danger, and ordered Cunobelinus to stay where he was and defend Dun Eidyn. But if Medraut held one end of the Wall and the Picts the other, the king's force would be caught in between.

The solution, obviously, was to attack Medraut first and destroy him. Artor got his men to Luguvalium in two days of hard marching and was preparing to attack the fort by the time Guendivar, following more slowly, caught up with him.

The wind carried a faint reek of something burning, and the air resounded with the yammering of crows. Guendivar
gazed up at her husband, searching for words with which to say good-bye.

All her life, she had heard stories of Artor's battles, but she had never before seen him armed for war. The gilded scales of his hauberk gleamed in the sunlight and his mantle was of the purple of emperors. The big black horse stamped and snorted as he reined it in outside the little church at the edge of the town where he had taken her.

“Stay here, my heart—” he said, leaning down to touch her hair. “If we destroy them here, I will come for you, but if they flee, we will be pursuing, and you will be safer behind us.” His shield was new, but the horse's harness and Artor's leather leg wrappings and the heavy wool tunic showed signs of hard wear.

“But how will I know—”

“If we win, I daresay someone will tell you.” He laughed, his teeth flashing in the close-cropped beard. It was threaded with silver, but his hair still grew strongly. Her hands clenched as she fought the desire to bury her fingers in its thick waves once more.

“And if we lose—” His face sobered. “You must stay hidden and make your way south somehow. Do not fail me, my lady, for if I fall, only you can pass on the sovereignty.”

“Do not say it!” she exclaimed. “I will not lose you now!”

“Guendivar . . . I will always be with you. . . .”

Behind him a horn blared and the king straightened, sliding the helmet he had carried in the crook of his arm onto his head. With nasal and side-flanges covering most of his face, he was suddenly a stranger. The stallion reared and Artor reined it around. The men of his escort fell in behind him, and then they were away.

The queen stared after them, and only when the echo of hoofbeats on cobblestones had faded did she allow the tears to come.

All through that endless day she prayed, kneeling on the worn planking of the church's floor, though she hardly knew which god it was to whom she addressed her prayers. About the middle of the afternoon, she heard a great clamor that gradually diminished until there were only a few dogs barking,
and then, one by one, the voices of the people of the town.

Presently the old priest who served the church came back again.

“The king is safe, or at least he was an hour ago. But the Perjurer broke through his lines and fled with most of his men, and our army has gone after him, save for a detachment left under Prince Peretur to guard you and the town. Let us praise the Lord of Hosts, who gives victory!”

At night the Forest of Caledon was full of whispers; the wind continuing its conversation with the trees. Merlin felt the vibration through the trunk behind him, just as it thrummed through the shaft of the Spear at his side. Sitting so, his thoughts matched themselves to the long slow rhythms of the forest, and the rustle of leaf and twig became the words of a dialogue between the Goddess who lived in the earth and the God.

As the journey continued, the Druid understood them ever more clearly. By day he clung to the pony Ninive had brought for him, riding by balance. At night, when the girl lay breathing softly by the embers of their fire, Merlin became a tree, drawing from soil and sky the energy he needed to go on. But the earth drummed with distant hoofbeats and the wind rang with the crying of ravens, calling their kindred to a great killing, and he dared not succumb to the forest's peace.

And each day the hours of twilight lengthened as the season turned towards the solstice, all powers drawing together to resolve the conflict that had unbalanced the land.

At the Isle of Maidens, Morgause woke from evil dreams. It lacked a week to midsummer, and the priestesses were preparing for the festival, but her nightmares had been filled with blood and battle. She saw Artor and Medraut facing each other in battered armor, fury stamping their faces with its own likeness, and felt the perspiration break out on her brow. In that confrontation she sensed some great turning of fate, and it filled her with fear.

She left her chamber, calling to her maidens. “Pack journey food and blankets. Nest and Verica, you will come with me.”

“But Lady,” they protested, “what about the sacred rites, the festival?”

“This year the Lady of Ravens is celebrating her own ritual,” she said heavily. “I must be at the Wall by Midsummer Day. . . .”

“Midsummer Eve . . .” said Goriat, surveying the winding river and the bluff above it, where lights twinkled from the old fortress. “At home, the clans will be gathering to light their solstice fires, throwing flaming brands high into the air to make the crops grow, and carrying the torches through the fields.”

“In the South, also,” answered Artor.

He felt as if he were thinking with two minds, one part evaluating the site's military potential while the other appreciated the beauty of the scene. The fort stood on a crag with a steep escarpment. Below stretched flats through which a small river wound. The higher ground was astir with men and horses as the Britons settled in.

“How strange that this stream should also have the name of Cam,” the younger man said then.

The king shrugged. “Britannia is full of rivers that turn and wind in their courses, and I suppose many of them must bear that name.” He walked along the riverbank, his officers following.

“You must wish it was the one that runs near Camalot.”

“Only if I were inside its walls,” Artor answered with grim humor. “If I must attack a fortress, I am glad it is not a place of my own building. Camboglanna was strong once, but now it is in disrepair, and Medraut is not provisioned for a seige.”

“He has trapped himself, then—” Goriat grinned.

Vortipor shook his head. “Not if the Picts arrive to relieve him. That's our danger. He can't outrun us, so he hopes to outwait us—”

“—Until he outnumbers us. I see.” Goriat squinted up at the fort. “The old Romans built well. To see that ragtag of northerners occupying Camboglanna galls my soul! An attack
uphill from this side would be difficult, and I don't suppose the far side is any better.”

Peretur shrugged. “The Wall joins the edge of the fort on both sides and there is only one gate, still in good repair.”

Goriat turned to Artor. “We'll have to winkle him out of there somehow, my lord.”

Artor's gaze was still on the river—the gleam of late sunlight on the water shone like Guendivar's hair.
I have been fighting too long.
He sighed.
I want to take her with me somewhere they have never heard of warfare
—
perhaps the Blessed Isles.
But he had to fight one more battle. If he could win that one perhaps he would be done.

“I'll send a message. Medraut has run from me twice now. If force won't budge him, we'll see what shame will do.”

They gazed up at the road that crossed the overgrown vallum ditch before the walls. Dark figures moved on the walkway above it, bows in their hands.

“I'll deliver it,” said Goriat with a sigh. “We were brothers once. He might hesitate before ordering those archers to shoot me. . . .”

Above Camboglanna, two ravens circled, then swung out over the river and settled, calling, in the branches of a gnarled thorn tree.

Raven wings filled Merlin's vision with fragments of shadow. He clung to the saddle bow, drawing breath harshly, willing the wheeling world to slow. Over the tumult in his head he heard someone calling him—

“My lord, I have found the spring!”

He opened his eyes and found Ninive, a fixed point around which the world stilled to comprehensible shape and meaning. The ravens were at Camboglanna. Here, there were only the irregular flitterings of wren and tit, and the musical gurgle of a tiny stream.

Before him, the narrow leaves of young rowan trees moved gently in the breeze, their edges gilded by the westering sun. Below spread a hawthorne to whose twigs a few fading white blossoms still clung. Beyond them he saw a noble oak tree.

“The water flows from that outcrop of rock just beyond the
trees—” Ninive danced back across the jumble of fallen leaves and mossy boulders. Through the tangle of branches loomed the side of the hill.

“It is the place. . . . The headwaters of the Cam,” he muttered, nodding as he recognized each feature of the image that had haunted his dreams. “And the day—have we come too late? Tell me, what is the day?”

“By the calculations you gave me at the beginning of this journey, this will be the shortest night of the year,” she replied.

He sat back with a long sigh. “Midsummer Eve. They will fight tomorrow by the river.”

“Can you help?” asked the girl. “Will the water carry your power to Artor?”

“Can anyone turn fate?” he murmured. “Now, at least, I have a chance to try!”

He slid from the pony's back, and with Ninive and the Spear to prop him, made his way to the oak, whose knobbed root made a seat above the stream. There he sat, extending his senses to encompass every part of the wood around him, and waited, as at Camboglanna two armies were waiting, for the dawning of the longest day.

The first sunlight gleamed from the river and from the helmets of the men who stood beside it: Artor's army, in full battle array. Medraut could see them clearly. So could his men. They were talking about the damned letter. Did they think he could not hear?

He had burned the parchment, but the words were burned in his memory.

“
You boast of your courage, but twice now you have run from my wrath. You boast of your right to rule, but the queen has fled you and returned to my bed.
. . .”

Guendivar!
Oh, Artor had known that would enrage him. In dreams he still held her rounded body in his arms.

The hateful words echoed in his inner ear—his mother's scolding voice, speaking his father's words.

“Like a greedy child, you have tried to seize your inheritance,
and by doing so, forfeited all claim! You are coward and craven
—
tainted in blood and corrupt in mind.”

And if I am, Mother
, he thought in bitter reply,
I am what you and he have made me!
And still the accusations rolled on.

“And these things all men shall know for truth if you do not come out and face me, body to body and soul to soul!”

Ravens were circling in the air below, calling out to their goddess the tally of the slain. He had only to wait, Medraut thought furiously, and they would all be safe. But these bloodthirsty fools whom he commanded were chafing to avenge their defeat at Luguvalium.

“My lord,” said Bleitisbluth, “the men are angry. The enemy have been shouting evil things. The Rome-king left a garrison in Luguvalium, and we outnumber them. Better to order our warriors to attack while you still can!”

The raven voices grew louder, blended to a single voice, calling to him.
Guendivar is lost to me
, he thought,
I must serve the Lady of Ravens now. . . .

“Very well—if they are so eager for battle, fight they shall!” Certainty came to Medraut like a spark kindling tinder, and with it a fierce exultation. He reeled off a list of chieftains, their order and numbers. “The remainder will form a reserve force, hidden here, with me.”

Medraut watched from the gatehouse as his army rolled down to meet the waiting force below. The men of the North rode their sturdy ponies to battle, but they fought on foot, with shield and spear. The narrow flats by the river favored them. He had expected that Artor would not be able to use his cavalry to full advantage, and indeed, he could see that the king himself was fighting dismounted.

As the morning passed, the purple cloak was everywhere on the field, the pendragon floating above it as Artor's standard bearer strove to keep up with him. As noon drew nearer, the sun's strength grew.

He is an old man
, thought Medraut,
and it's getting hotter. Soon, he will fail!

From below came clouds of dust, stopping the throat and stinging the eyes. The only color was the crimson of blood,
bright as the cloak of the goddess of battles in the pitiless radiance of Midsummer Day.

What kept Merlin upright was the Spear. He had taken his stand in the space between the oak, the mountain ash trees, and the thorn, just where the waters of the Cam emerged from the stone. His heart galloped like Artor's warhorse, vision pulsing in time to its beat. Increasingly he relied on inner senses, extending them through air and soil until his body no longer contained his awareness. He risked losing focus entirely, but his control would last long enough, he thought, for what he had to do.

“Cast the circle, Ninive—”

The girl's voice rose and fell as she paced sunwise around him, sprinkling the sacred herbs, chanting in the old tongue of her mother's people. She was weeping, but her voice stayed strong, and he had time for a moment of pride. Nine times she made the circuit, and with each circumnambulation the Druid's consciousness drew inward, trading the diffuse awareness of his earlier state for a more powerful and precise connection with the space immediately around him, as if he stood within a pillar of crystal bounded by oak and ash and thorn.