The Hallowed Isle Book Four (25 page)

Morgause could sense Artor's pain even when she was not beside him. The infusions of white willow she gave him did little to dull it. She had fed him a stew of leeks and caught their scent from the wound. She was sure now that there was a perforation there, and putrefaction in the belly, and when delirium set him babbling of old battles she was almost glad.

Before the Cam reached the Salmaes firth, they turned aside into the river that flowed north from Voreda, and moved upstream, towing the coracle where necessary by ropes pulled by men on the shore. Each night was just a little longer, and it seemed that the king's strength ebbed with the lessening of the sun's power. He was still fighting—she thought sometimes that was why he so often dreamed of war—but more and more often, consciousness fled entirely to give his tortured body a few hours of uneasy rest.

When they came at last to Voreda, they paused to construct a horselitter, and began the final part of the journey into the hills.

Morgause took a deep breath. Always, in the great hills, there was a living silence, a mingling of wind in leaves and the voice of waterfalls, or perhaps it was the breathing of the mountains themselves that she heard. Overhead, a raven rested on the wind. They had halted in the shade of a stand of birches to breathe the horses just before the last rise, and in the quiet, that hush filled her awareness.

The heavy warmth of the lowlands had sapped strength of mind and body, but Morgause felt new vigor flowing into her with every step she took into the hills. As she walked back along the line to check on Artor, it seemed to her that surely he must be the better for it as well. And indeed, she found him awake, staring around him with fever-bright eyes.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“We are just below the circle of stones on the brow of the hill.”

The king nodded. “I remember.”

“Beyond the next turning the trail runs downward. Soon we will see before us the Lake and the Island.”

“I do not think I will ever come there—” said Artor with a sigh.

Morgause took his wrist, and felt the pulse flicker like a guttering candle flame. Guendivar and Ninive had dismounted as well, and seeing them talking, came to join her.

“What is it?” asked Guendiver, bending to smooth the sweat-soaked hair back from Artor's brow. “Is there more pain?” Morgause could hear the effort it took to keep her voice even.

“Oh, my beloved,” he breathed, “it is beyond pain. The sinews of my being are withering, and each step frays them further. I cannot go on. . . .”

“My king,” Betiver said desperately, “we are almost to the Lake!”

Ninive took Morgause's arm. “Lady, let him wait in the circle; perhaps he will draw some strength from its power. Cannot we run ahead and bring the Cauldron here?”

Ninive had been a priestess at the Lake, thought Morgause. She was her granddaughter, heir to her power—perhaps the Goddess spoke through her now.

“The circle of stones . . .” echoed Artor. “I can feel it calling. Sister, if you have forgiven me for the wrong I did you by my birth, let me rest there. . . .”

“My brother,” she asked, “can you find it in your heart to forgive
me
?”

He shook his head a little. “Our son's blood cancelled all debts, Morgause.”

“I will go,” she said softly, though her voice shook. “Wait for me, Artor! Wait for me!”

As she started down the trail, she heard his whisper behind her— “I will . . . if I can. . . .”

Artor lay upon the breast of the mountain, embraced by the open sky. He could sense the strength of the stones like a royal guard, he himself at their center, and the hill on which they stood surrounded by mountains, and this land of lake and mountain itself the still center of the circles of the world.

They had wished to build a shade above him, but he would not have it. He needed the light. He breathed more easily here
than he had in days, but he had no illusions about his condition. From time to time the dark shape of a raven moved across his field of vision.
Soon
, he thought,
I will come with you. Be patient for just a little while.

In his lucid moments it had gradually come to him that his disintegration had progressed too far for even the Cauldron to heal. Its power was to restore the natural order, and Nature's way, for a body so wasted as his, was to let the spirit go.

The kingdom he had ruled from Camalot was ended, and who would guard Britannia now? He twitched restlessly, remembering the young foxes of Medraut's prophecy. What would come to the land if one of them should try to set himself above the others, brandishing the Chalybe sword? Even the priestesses of the Isle could not guard it against a determined attacker—

He must have moaned, because suddenly Betiver was leaning over him. “My lord, do you need water?”

Artor swallowed. “The Sword—bring it here. . . .” He closed his eyes for a moment, until he felt the familiar ridges of the hilt beneath his hand. He tried to grip it, amazed at how little strength remained in his fingers. But even that was enough for him to feel the current of power.

Defender
. . . he prayed,
what is Your will for this blade?
and, in the next moment, trembled beneath a flood of images as he understood what he must do.

Guendivar's hands were cool upon his face, lifting him, and he felt a little water from the skin bag dribble across dry lips. He looked up at Betiver.

“Take the Sword down to the Lake's edge, and with all the power that is in you, throw it in.”

“Artor! It is the strength of the kingdom!” exclaimed Betiver.

“It is—it will always be—so long as it does not fall into evil hands! Take it and go, and tell me what befalls!”

When Betiver had departed, Artor lay back again, waiting for his racing pulse to slow. His frame seemed hardly solid enough to keep the gallop of his heart from carrying him away. His body was an empty vessel being filled by the sunlight,
or perhaps it was the fever that was burning away his mortality as the dross is burned when the Goddess puts on her smith's apron and purifies the ore in the fire.

Artor's skin is so transparent
, thought Guendivar,
he is like a vessel filled with light. . . .
She had always known him as strong and, in his way, attractive; now, with flesh wasted to reveal the pure line of bone, he was beautiful.
And I am going to lose him.
Her stomach churned with the ripple of fear that had become all too familiar since the battle on the Cam.

He seemed to be sleeping, but she could not be sure. Through the link that had grown between them since Beltain, she sensed that for much of the time he lived in the dim borderland between sleep and waking—or perhaps it was the borders of the Otherworld. She had talked to him often on this journey, not knowing whether he could hear her, but there was still so much to say.

“I have missed so much,” she said in a low voice. “Children, and the comfort of your arms through the long years. I weep because I could not give you a true son to carry that sword after you were gone. But to no other woman was this blessing given, to rule beside you as your queen. And if the kingdom we tried to build must fall, still, we tried, and for a little while at least we kept back the dark.”

Gently she stroked his hair. “If you must leave me, I think I will go south again, to Afallon. Would you like to come with me, my love, so that one day we may lie together upon the holy isle?”

She heard a footstep, and looked up as Betiver came up the hill. He was empty-handed, and she frowned. Had so much time passed?

“And see, here is Betiver back again,” she said then, and Artor opened his eyes, so perhaps he had been listening after all.

“Is it done?” asked the king. “What did you see?”

Betiver was staring at the grass. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “The wind on the water, and a splash. What more could there be?”

“The Sword going into the Lake!” said Artor with a
strength that made everyone turn to see. “For you have not done what I asked! Go once more, Betiver, and obey my command, if I am still your king.”

Ravens rose in a black cloud, carking with angry voices as Betiver started back down the hill. Several flapped after him, winged shadows of Artor's will.

Guendivar and the warriors sat in silence, waiting for his return. And yet the time seemed still too short for a man to have climbed down to the Lake and back when Betiver came again.

“Betiver, I trusted you!” The king's voice thinned with sorrow. “For five and twenty years you have been with me, closer than kin! Will even you betray me at the end?”

Betiver stretched out his hands, his cheeks glistening with tears. “My lord, wait for them to bring the Cauldron, and heal you, and take the Sword back again! Or if you must leave us, do not deprive us of the only hope we will have! You have named no successor! How shall we choose a true king, if not by the Sword?”

“You are all my heirs!” the king said strongly. “Everyone who hears my story! And it is not by arms that the heritage I leave you shall be defended. . . .” Artor's head moved weakly against the pillow. “You must find hope in your hearts, not in the Sword. . . .” He tried to speak again and coughed. Guendivar saw he did not have the strength for more.

“Betiver,” she said with the steel she had learned in ten years as regent for the king, “I command you to do Artor's will, in the name of the love you bear for me. . . .” His eyes lifted to hers, and she saw the desperation go out of them, replaced by a grief as deep as her own.

“Lady,” he answered in a breaking voice, “my son also lies among the dead on Camboglanna's field.”

His steps were slow as he started down the hill towards the Lake once more.

Morgause sat in the bow of the boat, swaying as Nest poled them towards the shore. The Cauldron was cradled in her arms. Ninive crouched before her, holding the bag that held
the medicines and other gear it had taken them all this while to find, for they might have to spend some time on the hill before Artor could be moved again.

We have the time . . .
Morgause affirmed silently, turning on her seat to gaze up the hill.
He is safe in the circle. He will live till I return. . . .

Beneath its wrappings the Cauldron quivered against her belly, as if she held something living. For so many years she had desired it and, seizing it, had herself been possessed and transformed by its power. But for more than a dozen years she had served as its priestess, handling it only with the prescribed and warded touch of ritual. This intimate contact dizzied her.

Brigantia be with me
, she prayed.
Let me work Thy will!

A movement on the shore caught her eye and she leaned forward, staring. “Nest, turn the boat,” she commanded suddenly. “Toward the little beach by the boulder.”

Betiver stood at the water's edge, holding the Sword. Even from here she could see that he was weeping.

“What are you doing?” she cried. “Is Artor—”

“Oh, Lady, he commanded me to throw it in!” Betiver called back, his face working.

The boat rocked as Morgause stood up. Before Artor, the women of her blood had been the Sword's keepers.

“Stop! You must not—” she began, but Betiver was already drawing back the blade, whirling it up and around behind him.

For a moment, at the height of his swing, the Sword seemed to hover, blazing in the light of the sun. Then it flew free, soaring above the water in an arc of flame. Morgause lurched forward, felt Ninive clutch at her legs at the same moment as the Cauldron leaped from fingers that no longer had the power to hold it.

The Cauldron spun across the water like a silver wheel, the Sword drove downward. Where they met, Light flared outward, blinding the senses. But as Morgause fell back, it was not the afterimage of Sword and Cauldron that remained imprinted behind her eyelids, but that of a goddess, reaching up from the waters of the Lake to embrace the god. . . .

***

Artor jerked back to consciousness, gasping.
I am dying!
he thought, but his pain-wracked body still imprisoned him. It was the world that was whirling, to settle at last into a new configuration, and he understood that the perfect balance for which he had been striving since first he drew the Sword from the Stone was at last attained.

“Guendivar!” He reached out to her. “Do you feel it? It is done!”

She caught his hand against her breast, and he felt her heart beating almost as wildly as his own. He grinned as a warrior does at the end of a battle fought past the borders of desperation, and beyond hope, won. In her face he saw a reflected wonder.

“Help me to move—” he said with sudden authority. “Set me with my back against a stone.”

The queen nodded, and men came to lift him, grim understanding in their eyes. They set him against one of the boulders that marked out a rectangle at the eastern edge of the circle, its face worn smooth by the centuries. It made a royal seat, he thought, for the death of a king.

Artor took a deep breath, and let it slowly out. The cold stone warmed against him; a vibration travelled down his spine and into the depths of the earth, then fountained upward. And now he could hear it—the stones were singing, crying out in recognition of his sovereignty. Could not the others hear? He coughed, and coughed again, feeling the bonds that held soul to body fray.

Guendivar knelt beside him, weeping.

“My love . . . my love . . .” he whispered, understanding now so many things. “We cannot lose each other. I will never be far away from you. When my body sleeps in the earth, my spirit will watch over Britannia. . . . Watch with me, my queen, until we are joined once more. . . .”

She took his hand, and Artor smiled. He was aware of voices—Betiver and Morgause and Ninive, panting from their swift climb, but he could not find the strength to speak to them. He let his eyes close.