Authors: Alice Borchardt
“I know.” Lancelot sheathed his sword. He turned away and looked out over the splendor of the mountains, the thin, cold, almost cruel wind keening in his ears.
“I will not say good-bye,” Cregan said. “I cannot think God is with you, but I think we will not see one another again.”
“Likely not,” Lancelot said.
Then they were gone and he was alone with the dead.
If there is death,
Uther thought,
death isn’t turning out to be a bad thing.
He woke in the night and saw a full moon drifting among bright clouds high above the treetops. The tide was out; the sound of the sea on the rocks was splat-splash and whisper. The giant trees that sheltered him sighed very softly as the wind kissed them.
Am I supposed to hate this?
he thought.
If I am, if this is what Igrane and her familiar Ustane think of as punishment, then they have chosen the wrong torture for me.
True, it was a tomb, but he wasn’t buried in it. The earth bed of composted twigs, leaves, and small branches was a soft nest, and the slab that should have sealed him in covered less than half his body. He felt a profound peace. Shadows moved among the trees, and he wondered if he was so weary after his ordeal at Igrane’s hands that he thought,
come what may, I will doze and dream through whatever the night brings.
Then from among the twisted strands and early spring criosers of bracken that floored the forest, the creature appeared and put its paws on the side of his sarcophagus. He saw it was a cat, not very big, with very short legs and a long tail. In the moonlight, he could see it was marked vaguely like a leopard with stripes and spots all over its body. It touched his nose with its nose, a standard cat greeting. He had been saluted by Morgana’s farm cats in the same way when he was five years old. The greetings had ceased when he grew tall enough to overawe the cats. He had forgotten how comforting it was to be graced with cat politeness.
The cat dropped down and he found himself alone again. He could hear the creature’s downhill progress through the undergrowth toward the sea. After a few moments, an apparition appeared that should have been terrifying. It was a massive creature that had aspects of both cat and dog about it. Paws like a dog’s with a long, strong muzzle with a formidable array of fangs, shears, and grinders. It was marked a bit like a tiger, with a vivid array of stripes on the back, spots on the side all black set off by a coat that was almost burgundy even by moonlight.
For a second, he feared it might tear out his throat, but it made no hostile gesture. One hand was lying on his breast. It licked the hand gently and also touched noses with him.
Next, four women emerged from the shadowed gloom. They were tightly wrapped in dark mantles and their heads were hooded.
“Thank you for coming,” the first said as she lifted his hand and kissed it. “Now! Now! We can rest.”
The other three followed suit, each kissing his hand and then vanishing into the forest.
Yes!
he thought.
I had forgotten. Three times I was crowned, once with acorns and oak leaves, once with wheat. And last of all, with flowers. Once for the forest, once for the sown, and once for the meadows and the wide plains. Once for the living, once for the dead, and once for those flowers—the yet unborn.
My blood. Igrane shed my blood here. Not a wise thing to do. It dripped on the floor, leaving a trail through the crypt, a trail the dead can follow to find freedom.
All through the night they came. He lost track, he lost count. Even the big, dead serpent who trapped him slithered out of the darkness to brush his hand with its forked tongue. He turned none away; he denied none the right to its nose touch, kiss, or caress.
Last of all, Ustane arrived. She crouched down, weeping bitterly.
“She is gone and is with the count, Severius. I don’t want to die. Dire as my life is, I want it,” she said as she choked on tears. “Who could know the power that is in you? Who could guess?”
“Power? Is this power?” he asked.
“Can’t you tell? How long is it since you felt pain?”
This was true. The lash marks had covered his body; even the hand on his breast had dripped serum and blood. Now he lifted the hand. He tried to look at it, but the forest was dark now and the moon was low, near the horizon, strangely bared by the silhouettes of the massive trees.
“True,” he said. “I feel no pain. In giving, we receive, and in receiving, we give. I had hopes my death would accomplish some good. If that is true, I have requited the universe for the gift of life and been favored above all other mortals.”
Ustane, kneeling, pounded her fists on the soft forest floor. “She can give me life again if she would. Life. Life! I want it with all my heart and soul. The throb of blood in my veins, the breath in my lungs, the come and go of a heartbeat, the hours of light and dark, the soft beauty of sinking into sleep. The exquisite, exotic pleasure of food, the need for drink, the raw pleasure of quenching thirst. And sex, desire, the friction of flesh on flesh. The moment of raw transcendent beauty when fire pours through your loins, stiffens your nipples, and at last explodes through the flesh until you are drowning in sensation and satisfied, cunt hot, swollen, and wet, welcoming the hammer blows, stiff, deep, and hard, of his brutal and even cruel demanding desire.”
She quieted, panting. “Life. I want it again. I want it forever. This was the hold the dark sorcerer had on me. This is the hold your sometime-wife has that puts her foot on my neck. If I kiss your hand like the rest, I also will become one with the dawn mist, the trees, the cool night air, the soft whisper and slap of the ocean. I, too, will sleep. And I don’t want to. I was but a young woman when Merlin drained my life and energies for his own purposes. I had not lived enough. I was cheated of my due.”
He sat up. “Come with me, Ustane. Bathe in the sea.”
“Sea? What sea? There is nothing but cold stone here and silence. The jewel crystals shine and glitter between the black pillars, spun from the earth when this place was made. The tombs are empty now, and my voice echoes from the stone of ceiling and floor.”
“Ustane, don’t you see the trees or the moon setting on the horizon? Smell the clean, spicy scent of the cold night air? Or hear the summer sea? The waves are growing louder now as the tide is beginning to turn.”
“What madness afflicts your brain? There is nothing here but emptiness and silence. All else is dust!” she wailed.
The sarcophagus lid covered him only to the waist. It was easy to climb out of the lower box.
“What are you doing?” Ustane cried. “You can’t leave me! You must obey my commands.”
Uther found when he stood, his head spun and he felt weak. The winding sheet he wore was stiff with lymph and blood, but oddly, his body seemed unharmed. Igrane had, with her whip, replicated the rite used to take a king’s life in the unhappy event that he must be scarified. Only, if that rite had been performed, he would have been shot to death with arrows. But perhaps the weapon had not mattered so much as the pain and the spilling of blood. He was unworthy of this magic, but then, worth didn’t enter into it. He had accepted the pain, blood, death, when he let his people place the three crowns on his head.
And however great the pain, the blood, and the conurbation visited on him by the fear of death, he had never in the slightest way rescinded his acceptance. The powers had taken him at his word.
Ustane knelt, beating her forehead against the loamy soil, whispering, “No! No! No! It cannot be! There is nothing here!”
She can’t constrain or rule me,
he thought.
But then, nothing can. Not now.
He turned his back on her crumpled form and looked out to sea. And saw in the distance, over the almost silken, smooth, quiet combers, the sky just beginning to brighten in those still, hazy moments before dawn. He made his way, albeit slowly, down to the ocean.
He found himself on a promontory stretching out into the water. To his left, he saw the crystal haven, its domes rising from among the rocks. To the right, the dark trees stretched away along the shore. In some places, they almost reached the ocean.
He stepped down very carefully and something shot away from under his foot, a small crab or fish. The water was cold and the boulder he stood on was soft with long growths of silken waterweed. It was, he thought, like treading on a woman’s hair.
Below he saw more domes. They shone with the palest of light. He found he was standing at the top of a long flight of shallow steps that led into the black depths of the ocean. On either side of the stair, the crystal domes rose, shot with blue light. He was still wearing the winding sheet Ustane and her assistants had wrapped him in. It stank of blood, perspiration, fear, and his despair. It had wrapped his bleeding carcass all night long.
He shrugged it off and the white, stained wrapping fell into the sea. Just at that moment, he heard a sound like a vast sigh and the golden edge of the sun moved above the horizon’s rim, tracing a river of fire across the water. A second later, Aife smothered a scream as he walked out of the sunrise toward her.
He staggered, dizzy with the sudden transition. Then, realizing he was stark naked, he began apologizing.
“Oh, God! Thank God!” she cried as she threw first her mantle, then her arms around him. “I was mourning you and trying to think of how to save myself and the child.” She sobbed. “Come inside before someone sees you. How did you get here? My garden is walled. The gate is barred. I saw you walk out of the sun as it rose by the cypress tree near the gate.”
Her room was very simple, almost spartan. The outside door had a heavy bar across it. The inner door opened on a shallow portico that looked out on a grassy space with a fountain and a few leafless rose bushes. Inside, a narrow bed was against one wall, a chest pushed up against the other. The only other things in the room were weapons, lots of them: spears, swords, shields, clubs, maces, and halberds. They covered every inch of the walls, accompanied by chain mail, leather armor, and two or three different kinds of helmets, boots, shin protectors, and greaves.
“Good Lord!” he said.
But she pulled him toward the bed, climbed under the covers, and pulled the thick, woolen comforter up over both of them.
“I’m so cold my teeth are chattering. I thought you were dead. How can you be alive? You are covered by whip welts, just-healed welts. When did you have time to heal? You look as though you were beaten to death and then brought back. I’m so cold, so cold. I never want to sleep alone as long as I live. Never, never again.”
He held her until she stopped trembling and relaxed.
“How odd,” he remarked. “Until I met you, I thought I was beyond passion. But now . . .”
When he kissed her, he found his lower lip was swollen on one side, and not all the welts on his body were completely healed. But the slight discomfort didn’t trouble either one of them that much, and after a short time, they forgot about it.
“I’m warm now.” She burrowed in against him and sighed very happily. “Did you mean that about the child? You think I could be breeding?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think you are. I know you are. ‘She’ looked at me, her eyes in your face. They glowed the way hers did when She wouldn’t let me die.”
They were face-to-face, embracing. He lifted her chin with one hand and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me. The pair of tumblers?”
She nodded. “Alexia, Alex,” she answered.
“Yes.” He continued, “If I fall, flee with them. They will bring you to my sister. We have invested the ring-forts at Cadbury, Maden Castle, and all the rest.”
She drew in her breath sharply and placed her fingers on his lips. “No!” She hissed the word.
“Listen. I am the king, the Winter King. I must try to stop your brother. Do you understand me? I must. We . . . by now my sister—the Morrigan spirit is in her—holds all the ring-forts. She is a creature of the War Goddess and she will bring mighty war to the Saxons if I do not return.”
Her face was perfectly white, her lips quivered. “He . . . Severius . . . my brother will kill you if he finds out.”
“Then let’s not tell him,” Uther said quietly.
“How will you stop him? Then . . . how will you kill him? God, I wish you would!”
“Where is my harp?” he asked.
She glanced at the chest. “I hid it,” she said. “How . . . I’m cold again. This . . . a king . . . it’s more than I bargained for. They hold the last horse fight today, but nobody, nothing, can vanquish that stallion my brother owns. Some evil lives inside of it. Some evil thing.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “And I will undertake to banish it.”
“Oh, I thought you only a singer. Why must you be a king? Had you been a bard, we might have run away together and been happy. Now . . . I don’t believe I will ever be happy again.”
“Hush.” He cradled her in his arms until she finished weeping. Then he surprised himself and managed to dry her tears again.
By that time they could hear the household stirring about outside the door to her chamber. The slaves had fired the hypocaust that heated the villa and the room was warm. She still had the fine red and black velvet mantle her brother had given him. A shirt, drawers, and trousers were easy. She had plenty of men’s clothing in her room.
She turned herself into a boy; shirt, trousers, boots, and mantle were the male dress of the time. But he was surprised when she wore a fine chain-mail shirt next to her skin and pulled the linen tunic down over it. She wore a long, nasty sax on one side, a dirk on the other. Both were covered by the tunic. She slid a long, slender knife into her boot. Boy or not, she was magnificent. The tunic was soft linen, the trousers blue silk, her boots gilded, and she wore a broad chain of gold set with rubies around her neck.
It was his turn to ask, “Why?”
“If you are right about what you saw—that you saw ‘Her’ in me—then the child is a gift that we—our people—have long dreamed of. She sealed my womb so I could bring a king to my people.”
“The son of a king isn’t always a king,” he answered.