Guinevere's Gamble, Page 6

  Llyr knew that Guinevere would not seek the place, especially if she knew what it was, so the Goddess Herself must have led her there. The thought unsettled him. The girl was not ready for her future, and neither was he. He found himself praying to the Goddess to keep that future from her for years to come.

  Bran stopped so suddenly that Llyr almost careened into him. “Listen.”

  Llyr trembled. He recognized the voices.

  Bran moved silently across the carpet of pine needles to stand in the shadow of a great tree at the edge of the clearing. He made no attempt to hide himself, which would anger the Goddess, but the two girls in the clearing were so focused on each other that neither of them saw him. Llyr did not follow his father forward. He could not. His legs shook, and his feet were rooted to the earth.

  At last the voices stopped. Alia spoke her farewell and retreated from the clearing. She saw Bran almost at once. Making the sign of acknowledgment to the leader, she went to stand beside him. All three of them watched as Guinevere leaped onto her filly and went back the way she had come. When there was no trace left of her presence but a shimmering of sunlight in the air, Llyr began to breathe again.

  Alia turned and saw him. Llyr stiffened.

  “It’s all right,” she said to him in the voice usually reserved for endearments. “I’ve forgiven you.”

  Bran still stared at the place where She With Hair of Light had been. There was no expression at all on his face.

  Alia bowed her head as she addressed him. “I beg the leader’s pardon for running away. I was afraid, and I was ashamed that I could not hide my fear from the elders. Or from Llyr. I came to ask the Goddess to thwart Llyr’s fate. In answer, She sent me She With Hair of Light.”

  Bran turned to her. His eyes asked the question.

  Alia nodded. “She is the one. She thinks herself a lowly and powerless person, but she is not. She must be guarded, and by someone who understands. That is why Llyr was chosen.”

  Llyr’s mouth fell open.

  “You say so?” Bran asked. “You, who have cause to resent her?”

  “She sacrifices herself to a future she dreads,” said Alia. “That is enough for me.”

  “Even,” Bran said quietly, “if it means that you must do the same?”

  Alia faced him, trembling. “Even so.”

  Llyr cleared his throat with difficulty. “Alia …”

  “Follow her,” she said quickly, giving him no time to consider. “It is time to go. She asked me to apologize to you for following you onto the mountain. I make this apology now on her behalf.”

  “Alia …”

  “It is time for you to go, for the king is leaving. If you do not wish to see her, she will wait for you at Deva.”

  If he did not wish to see her!

  “Go with my blessing.” Alia’s voice faltered as her eyes grew bright. “Light with thee walk.”

  She turned on her heel and left him before he could reply.

  Both men watched her disappear back up the hill. Bran put a hand on his son’s shoulder and looked into his eyes. “Do you understand?”

  Llyr shook his head.

  “Alia has been touched by the hand of the Goddess. She sees what you do not: that your love for She With Hair of Light, which shines from you like the clear light from a new torch, and which you are so eager to hide from everyone, is necessary to your guardianship.”

  Llyr could not believe his ears.

  Bran sighed. “You were chosen because you love her. Because you will, without thinking, guard her with your life. The One Who Hears was wise.”

  “I thought,” Llyr whispered, “that you would not approve of my guardianship if you saw her.”

  Bran almost smiled. “You told us it was a matter of perspective. Let us say that now that I have seen her, I understand your point of view. You are lucky that the Goddess has given Alia perspective as well.”

  “Luckier than I deserve,” Llyr mumbled.

  “As you say. Now listen to Alia the Wise and go.”

  “But Mother, the elders, the cave—I have not said farewell.”

  “I will take them your farewell. Do as Alia says. Find your little horse and get off the mountain. It is time to go.”

  Llyr bowed his head. “Farewell, then, Father. Light with thee walk.”

  Bran nodded stiffly to hide his emotion. “Dark from thee always flee, my son.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Deva

  Merlin the Enchanter stood alone at the edge of a wood on a low rise above the Deva road. He stood perfectly still, with less movement than the shadow of the oak beside him. People thought him old for a man of forty, for his skin was seamed like leather and his beard was flecked with gray. But it was also said that in forty years he had lived an old man’s term. Nothing of importance had happened to the Britons in the last forty years without Merlin’s help.

  Born in the days of Vortigern the Wolf, Merlin as a boy had seen his country at its worst. Vortigern was a brutal man who had come to power by murdering the rightful King, the boy Constans, thereby earning the contempt of his people. After inviting the Saxons in to swell his forces, Vortigern found he had no power to control them. In a bid to save his Kingship, he wed a Saxon queen and sealed his fate. For in the intervening years, the younger brothers of the murdered King had fled to Less Britain, grown to manhood, and raised an army poised for invasion. The elder of the brothers, Aurelius Ambrosius, proved to be a gifted commander. When he and his forces landed on British soil, loyal Britons everywhere flocked to him, and together they destroyed Vortigern and beat back his Saxon allies.

  No one knew how much of this Merlin had seen firsthand. He grew up in Dyfed, a small seagirt kingdom in South Wales, where his mother was said to be a king’s daughter and his father a demon of the night. All his life this superstition clung to him, and he was everywhere regarded as no man’s child and a wizard of profound power.

  While still a youth, he had crossed the Narrow Sea to Less Britain and offered service to Ambrosius. He returned to his homeland with Ambrosius’s invading army and stayed at the great commander’s side until his death. In the space of two years, Merlin saw Vortigern killed, two Saxon hosts defeated, and Ambrosius crowned High King of the Britons. Five years later, when Ambrosius died, Merlin had him buried in the center of the great henge called the Giants’ Dance, whose fallen stones he had raised by magic arts to honor the great commander.

  Afterward, Merlin served Uther Pendragon, the younger of Constans’s brothers. As political advisor, he helped King Uther keep the kingdoms in rough alliance for fifteen years. By this time, his powers of foreseeing and mastery of the magic arts had won him widespread acclaim throughout the land. Yet his finest achievement had yet to be accomplished. For it was Merlin the Enchanter who had brought Arthur into being.

  All Britons knew the tale. At Uther’s crowning, with all his nobles in attendance, the new High King had developed a violent passion for Ygraine, the young wife of Gorlois, the old king of Cornwall, his most powerful ally. And Ygraine, a girl of twenty on her first trip out of Cornwall, had responded to his attentions like a flower awakening to the sun. Although she shunned his advances like a proper wife and spoke not a word to him alone, Uther saw the truth of her passion in her eyes. The fragile alliance of kingdoms that Ambrosius had so carefully stitched together seemed ready to split apart. On Merlin’s advice, Uther had curbed his desires and permitted Gorlois and his wife to return to Cornwall at the end of the festivities. But after a week spent in an agony of body and spirit, Uther stormed after him.

  While the High King’s forces faced the king’s on a Cornish battlefield, Merlin changed Uther by magic arts into the very likeness of Gorlois, and helped him sneak into the fortress of Tintagel to lie undetected with the waiting Ygraine and beget Arthur. For this had always been Merlin’s goal: to bring into being Arthur Pendragon, the man the gods had chosen to stem the Saxon tide and bind the kingdoms of the Britons into a single, lasting Kingdom of
Britain.

  For this he had sacrificed everything else dear to him. He had worked, fought, and schemed with a dedicated ruthlessness to fulfill the prophecy of Arthur’s coming, to raise the boy away from court, to give him the kind of education he would need to be the King the prophecies foretold.

  It had not been easy. People agreed it was enough to age any man. Yet Merlin’s powers—spiritual, intellectual, political, and magical—remained undiminished. Rumor and speculation continued to follow him wherever he went, and superstition hugged him like a robe. Most men feared him, and even the very few who knew him regarded him with awe. In all the world, only one man loved him.

  On this hot afternoon in early October, Merlin the Enchanter turned his fathomless eyes on the faint cloud of dust in the distance, the telltale “road smoke” that betokened the presence of men and horses. The jingle and scuff of a rider behind him alerted him to the approach of Sir Bedwyr of Brydwell, and he waited without moving while the knight dismounted and came up, light-footed, to his side. For a moment they stood in silence together, watching.

  “There can’t be any danger,” Sir Bedwyr suggested, glancing at the enchanter’s face in the futile hope of reading something there. “Pellinore’s an ally.”

  Merlin did not reply. He kept his gaze on the dust cloud and his thoughts on what it might contain.

  “He has Lord Riall with him, of course,” Sir Bedwyr murmured. “That’s probably why they’re late. But Riall’s nothing to worry about, is he, my lord? He’s little more than his mother’s pawn.”

  Receiving no reply, Sir Bedwyr glanced back down the hill to where he had left his men. His lieutenant signaled that it was time to move if they were to greet the approaching travelers. Sir Bedwyr acknowledged the signal and turned again to Merlin. The man was so still, the air around him seemed to tremble.

  “If Riall’s no threat, who else could be?” Again there was no response. Sir Bedwyr frowned. If there was no threat at all in King Pellinore’s party, why had Merlin the Enchanter come alone to this hilltop to wait for the first sight of them?

  “My lord,” he pressed, “I’m the commander. I need to know if there is danger coming.”

  Not a leaf moved. The air hung heavy and breathless around the stillness of the man. Sir Bedwyr backed off a pace, hairs rising on the back of his neck as a sense of foreboding struck him. “Sir,” he breathed. “I must have an answer. Is there an enemy among them?”

  The dust cloud grew larger. Light flashed from speartips held aloft. Banners began to show their colors through the smoke. Merlin’s black eyes bored into the dust, picking up the gleam of helmets, bearded faces, sweating horses, and a train of men, wagons, and litters. He focused on the foremost litter and caught a gleam of gold, a whiff of scent, and the whisper of women’s voices—

  “Please, my lord!” Sir Bedwyr touched his sleeve. “I must go down to greet them. Tell me what you see. Is there danger there or not?”

  At the touch, the vision shattered, turning the world into a visual maelstrom and thrusting the enchanter back against the oak tree. He gasped once and held his hands to his temples to contain the agony.

  Sir Bedwyr fell to one knee. “A thousand pardons, my lord. But I need to know now.”

  Merlin’s lids closed over blinded eyes. It was a moment before he could speak.

  “There is no danger yet.”

  “Then why—?”

  The enchanter drew a long, shuddering breath. “There is someone in the party I wish to see.”

  “Tell me who, my lord, and I’ll have him escorted to your tent as soon as you’ve recovered. Surely, there is no need for … this.” Sir Bedwyr gestured helplessly at the bent body, rigid with pain.

  Very slowly, Merlin straightened, withdrew his hands from his head, and looked at Sir Bedwyr with clouded eyes. His lips twisted. “Let me be the judge of need.” He gestured toward the road. “Go. Make them welcome. You have nothing to fear from them.”

  Sir Bedwyr knew better than to ask more questions. He thanked the enchanter for the information and hurried back to his horse. If Merlin said there was no danger, there was no danger, and he could reassure the escort. But if Merlin said there was no danger yet, that meant that danger was sure to come. This did not worry Sir Bedwyr overmuch. Considering the work Arthur and his Companions were about, it was no very difficult prediction.

  But as he returned downhill to his men, Sir Bedwyr was seized by a new and acute interest in the arrival of King Pellinore’s party. Whom among them, he wondered, did the most powerful enchanter alive risk such agony to see?

  Guinevere breathed in a mouthful of dust and coughed. Elaine poked her head out between the litter’s curtains. “What is it, Gwen? Is he there? Can you see him?”

  Guinevere coughed again. “Not yet. There’s a group of men ahead, on horseback. They’re probably a greeting party.”

  “Look for a bay mare,” Elaine urged. “Father said the High King rides a bay mare when he’s not at war.”

  “I’ll look. I promise.”

  Elaine retreated behind the curtains, and Guinevere waved dust away from her face. A formation of men and horses blocked the road. The leader, astride a flashy chestnut stallion, raised his hand in greeting. The procession lurched to a halt. King Pellinore rode forward amid his standard-bearers as the dust began to settle.

  “Well?” Elaine looked out anxiously. “What’s happening now?”

  “They’re greeting your father. There’s no bay mare. The knight who leads them wears the same device as the others. A red dragon, I think, on a field of gold. The High King’s badge. But no one is wearing a crown.”

  Elaine’s face fell in disappointment, then brightened. “The High King has sent his second-in-command to greet us, that’s all. Of course he would. He’s waiting until we’ve had a chance to settle in before he formally receives us. That gives me time to change into a fresh gown and wash this dust off.” She grinned up at Guinevere. “You, too.”

  Guinevere looked down at the film of dust on her tunic. She could feel the fine grit on her skin, even taste it in her mouth. It would take a month of combing to get it all out of her hair. Zephyr shook her head and sneezed. Dust flew from her mane and set Guinevere coughing again. She hoped that Elaine was right and that they would get the chance to wash before they met anyone Queen Alyse thought important.

  She was not in the queen’s good graces at the moment. Yesterday, the queen had been magnanimously silent after Guinevere’s return to Caer Narfon only moments before the party was ready to set off. To Llyr, who had returned soon afterward, she had nodded a frosty acknowledgment that kept him at a distance. Guinevere had expected chastisement, which she knew she deserved, but Queen Alyse said nothing. This was so unlike her, it made Guinevere wonder for a passing moment if the queen was ill. But there was no way to know. Once the procession started moving, the curtains of the queen’s litter closed and she disappeared from view.

  Llyr took his place in the procession as if he had been there all along. When they camped last night in the eastern foothills, he stayed within sight and slung his hammock in a nearby wood. Although she hadn’t had a chance to speak with him yet—which, in light of Alia’s revelations, she was growing reluctant to do—she knew that once they got to Deva, he would be there when she looked for him. His avoidance of her had come to an end on Y Wyddfa.

  The procession began to move again. Peering ahead, Guinevere saw the knight on the chestnut stallion riding at King Pellinore’s side, pointing out the way. His men stationed themselves along the sides of the road, saluting the newcomers as they passed by. Guinevere straightened and collected the filly into a dignified walk, but she could not keep from staring at the escort’s horses. These were not the crossbred animals King Pellinore kept in his stables—part mountain pony, part plow horse. These were creatures of speed and spirit, long-legged and swift, with fine, dry faces and widely spaced, intelligent eyes.

  She shivered in excitement. They looked like Zephyr. They m
ust be the High King’s horses, as Zephyr had once been. She had never seen another horse that looked like Zephyr, and here were twenty of them, each with that wise eye and innate dignity of carriage that made her own filly so dear to her. Had they all been raised and trained by the High King’s master of horse, that knight with the foreign name she could never remember? She decided to seek out the rider of the chestnut stallion at some convenient time and ask him. Perhaps he would agree to take her message of thanks back to Caerleon and the foreign knight himself.

  Up ahead, the trees fell back from the roadside and the procession turned into a wide field. Guinevere could see dozens of tents staked out in clusters, with one large tent—surely four or five tents strung together—in the center. Horse lines had been set out at the edges of the field, and beyond, a sinuous line of gold-green willows marked the course of a river. She could see no signs of a town. All she could see was tents and people emerging from them to stare at the long train of newcomers.

  As King Pellinore’s party passed into the field to their appointed place, Guinevere saw the knight on the chestnut stallion waiting to one side, watching them ride in. He sat the big horse with ease, although the animal was restive, while he carefully examined the new arrivals. Without knowing why, Guinevere tightened her grip on the filly’s reins. Zephyr danced a little, but settled down again once they had ridden by. The knight’s searching gaze slid past her, and Guinevere relaxed. She had promised Elaine that King Arthur should never see her in boots and leggings, and here she was, riding within feet of his second-in-command. But he hadn’t noticed her. She grimaced to herself. He had probably taken her for a boy under all this dust. Everyone always did.

  King Pellinore’s party was given a place of honor near the big tent in the center of the field. It took the king’s men until dusk to set up the four Gwynedd tents: one for the king and his servants, one for the queen and her women, one for the girls and their nurses, and the last for the men themselves. The horse lines were set out behind the tents, not far from the edge of the woods. Guards were posted around the perimeter of the cluster, and the banner of Gwynedd, a gray wolf on a field of blue, fluttered in the evening breeze above the entrance to King Pellinore’s tent.