The Promised King

The Finest Deed, Chapter Four

2009-04-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

Snow. Ice. Blood.

Blood everywhere. Men screaming as their bodies were ripped apart by blades, by beasts, by things unseen from the ground. He fought on, but he could no longer see her before him. She was on horseback now, riding away from him and the war, at the side of another.

He tried to fight, but they were too many. He tried to run but they were too thick. He tried to die but they would not let him. She was gone.

Snow. Ice. Blood.

And then the crows came. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands of crows, beckoned by the promise of warmly slain meat and blood to slake their thirst. A crow landed before him and fixed its eye upon him, and he felt its breath upon his face. It was cold breath, icy breath. He didn't know what crow's breath was supposed to be like, but that wasn't it.

Why had she left him?

The crow lifted from the ground and came straight at him, its beak sharper than the sharpest blade, angling for his eye.

***

"Sir Baigent! A rider!"

And with that, Sir Baigent ap Pelegaunt snapped back from the dream he'd had while dozing on the back of his horse.

"I am sorry," said the soldier next to him. "You looked to be asleep."

"I was." Sir Baigent patted his horse's neck. Arradwen had borne him through many trials, and though she was older than most horses, she still had strength in her bones and she had come to know his manner in the saddle. This war would not be a good time to break in a new steed. "No matter, though. You were right to stir me."

A light snow fell from a gray sky as he awaited the signal. He held his helmet under his left arm, and scratched at his scalp with his right hand, suddenly realizing how long it had been since he had trimmed his hair, which had now grown to a length to which he was totally unaccustomed, although it was now barely shoulder-length and would take a very long time to equal the length of Sir Jules’s. Here he stood, along with two hundred other men, under the eaves of a wood overlooking a grassy valley that was bisected by a small river whose name he had forgotten. Off to his left he heard an approaching rider, whom he turned to greet.

“The King will be in position very soon,” said Estren of the Nine Bards, who had come with the company on this act of engagement. “If he is not already.”

“Good,” said Sir Baigent. He looked over the snow-dusted valley, and over the small army that was now setting forth from its encampment for a day of marching. A week before, Sir Jules’s scouts had spotted this force, sworn to a local lord named Duke Balder, clearly moving toward joining King Cwerith. More than four hundred men, with two hundred horse – this was a large force indeed, and denying its strength to the Traitor Kings would be a distinct blow to Cwerith’s ambitions. King Arthur had pushed his force hard from Badon Hill to intercept this army at this place, and Sir Baigent felt the tension of proximity to the enemy. They were a mere three days’ march from where Cwerith’s main army waited, and the same three days away from the hill that King Arthur had renamed Badon, where their own army lay. Here, halfway between the great armies, a fairly minor skirmish would take place. Minor, of course, would be the scholar’s way of describing it: years from now, if they all survived and there was still of realm of Prydein with a history to be chronicled, the clerics and bards would spare little time for the battle that was about to unfold in this unnamed, unremarkable vale. Sir Baigent, though, knew otherwise. No skirmish was ever minor to the men who fought in it, especially for those who would not walk from this field to fight another.

And as usual, the thought of scholars and clerics brought Sir Baigent’s mind to Lady Gwynwhyfar. He rubbed the sore spot in his side, where he had suffered a bad wound in her name. It had healed fairly well, although like all such wounds he would carry the scar and the ache for the rest of his days. He wondered now how she was enjoying being dressed up each day and paraded in front of hundreds of people who had come to see her like so many gulls on a discarded hunk of bread. He chuckled at the thought, knowing that she would hate it. Her tongue, especially, would not be able to stand the pressure of remaining still for so long a time.

Sir Baigent took a long sip of water from his flask as he studied the vale’s gentle downward slope, which the force below was following. They were in a pretty good position now for an attack – they would have the river, narrow and shallow as it was, barring them on one side, not preventing an escape but not making escape easy, either. But still the signal did not come. What was King Arthur waiting for?

Estren, it turned out, was of similar mind. “I wonder why we are not yet hearing the horns,” he said. “The time seems right for us to strike.”

Sir Baigent nodded. In these last two months he had found little to understand in King Arthur’s strategies, save for the building of the hill-fort on Badon. The King had led attacks against opponents that Sir Baigent would have ignored; and his approach to battle was utterly uncompromising. In some battles the King gave no quarter, while in others he proved merciful beyond that which anyone else thought warranted by the conduct of the enemies. Sir Baigent tried to understand King Arthur, but the man was a riddle made human, in addition to already being a legend made flesh. There was something disquieting about the King that made him hard to approach off the battlefield. And on it? It was as if that sword of his, the blade called Caliburn whose steel gleamed as if reflecting the light of the noon sun even on the days of darkest cloud, brought something forth from deep in King Arthur’s soul each time he pulled it from its scabbard. The King’s eyes always looked haunted, Sir Baigent felt, and that haunted look only gave way to something else when the King rode into battle. And that thing looked for all the world to Sir Baigent like rage. How terribly his first reign must have ended, Sir Baigent thought, for more than the first time.

Now the enemy army below was fording the river. It was indeed shallow, but Sir Baigent found it strange that whoever was leading these men would make his footsoldiers walk though an icy stream like this, no matter how small it was. Did he not realize how cold it was, and the effect that would have—

And a slow smile spread across Sir Baigent’s face. So that was King Arthur’s plan! Duke Balder’s footsoldiers would have wet and cold feet as they squared to fight. “Be ready, men,” he said. “The call will come very soon now, I think.”

He was right. Just as the final portion of the enemy army finished crossing the river, King Arthur’s horns sounded from the wood on the other side of the vale. Sir Baigent watched, fascinated as always, as one hundred horsemen came riding down out of the bordering hills, led by one large and particularly intimidating figure astride a white war horse and whose sword was blinding even from this far away. Behind the King, Sir Baigent could make out Lord Matholyn, close at his side; the former lord of Camyrdin had fought in every major battle since this war had begun. Sir Baigent wished that Sir Jules were here; the sardonic seneschal to Duke Cunaddyr was a passing good warrior himself, but he was a finer scout and was off somewhere putting those talents to good use with his charge, the young Sir Regidan. With the ranks of the Promised King’s army growing with each day, Sir Baigent found it harder and harder to remember all the names of men with whom he fought and whom he led. There were few now that he recognized by name, only by sight alone or by the way they rode. But recognize some of them, he did, and as it had the last time they had fought, six days before, it thrilled him to the core to see those men riding into combat as the horns sounded their approach.

Sir Baigent had seen companies of horsemen who, after years of riding together, had not achieved the level of cohesion that the company King Arthur displayed now. His company moved as one, surging down the shallow hillside, and smashed like a wave into the rear flank of Duke Balder’s army.

The very first men trapped there never had a chance. They barely had time to square and raise their weapons before King Arthur’s cavalry was upon them, and the first lines of men were trampled beneath the hooves of a hundred horse. Then the pace of the King’s assault was slowed, as expected, when Duke Balder’s men ahead of him finally recovered their discipline and squared to receive the attack.

Nevertheless, King Arthur’s cavalry put on a frightening display, led by the King himself, his sword flashing in a lethal dance of light and death. In seconds, the King’s cavalry had cut a swath through the footsoldiers and now reached almost the middle of Balder’s force. A melange of sound echoed up the vale to where Sir Baigent stood, the shouts and screams of men mingled with the ringing of steel and the shrieking of horses and, finally, the blaring of Balder’s horns as the Duke took command of his response to this sudden attack.

Still, even as their progress was stymied, King Arthur’s cavalry refused to be brought to a halt. They continued moving, slower and slower but always moving, now coming parallel to the line of horse that Duke Balder was now arraying to receive them. The King’s purpose was plain – to avoid coming into direct conflict with those horsemen for as long as possible – and it was working. Even from his far-off vantage point, Sir Baigent could see frustration in the way the enemy horsemen carried themselves in their saddles as they waited to be unleashed on these foolish attackers who had thought to take on a clearly superior force. Sir Baigent chuckled, and Estren glanced at him.

“Duke Balder can’t really believe he is being attacked by this small bunch of cavalry and no one else, can he?” Estren said.

“I think he can, and I think he does.” Sir Baigent shifted in his saddle and massaged Arradwen’s neck. “His men have not hazarded a single glance in our direction.”

He picked out Lord Matholyn fairly easily in the midst of the combat. He had served so long at Matholyn’s side, and seen him now in enough battles, that his style was easily identified. Never stop moving for a single second had always been Matholyn’s credo of battle, and even now after so many years of knowing him Sir Baigent was still a bit surprised that Matholyn, a former cleric who had come to his realm by accident of death, could be so fine a fighter. And never indeed did he stop moving, his sword now dark with blood, constantly sweeping from one side to the other. But as strong as Matholyn was, King Arthur was even stronger.

It had begun, of course, on a very cold morning outside the Giants’ Dance, when the King had emerged from the stones and taken on one of the most fearsome opponents Sir Baigent had ever seen. And then it had continued, when they had traveled through the Dance itself to come out onto the fields of Bedwyn. But even then, Sir Baigent had had no idea of this man’s skill with the blade. As the battles had mounted, King Arthur’s skill had only grown, and if Lord Matholyn was a skilled man of motion on the field, King Arthur was a whirlwind. Caliburn’s motion not only never ceased, it never even slowed, and no amount of blood spilled on its blade could ever darken the radiant steel.

Of course, there was only so much that even a warrior of King Arthur’s skill could do against a force that outnumbered his, and Sir Baigent waited for the moment when Duke Balder finally retook control and started pushing his attacker back. That moment was almost at hand. Doubtless Balder was now smiling as he watched his men take on this demon warrior who dared attack men going to Cwerith’s side; doubtless he thrilled to the killing of another enemy. Equally doubtless was that he had little idea of just who the warrior in the silver armor and wielding the shining sword happened to be, and equally doubtless was that he had no idea at all that this was, in fact, a trap – for Sir Baigent was about to sound his own call and lead the rest of King Arthur’s force here into the fight.

“Ready, men!” he said, pitching his voice higher now so his lieutenants would pass it down the line. One hundred more horse, who would be followed by one hundred footsoldiers…this would be a rout. He adjusted his chain-and-boiled-leather armor, slid his helmet over his head, and then drew his own sword, whose blade was not so radiant and no longer shone with the same light as it had when it had been newly forged but was still honed to a keen edge that had tasted a great deal of blood in this war. It was almost time. Duke Balder’s men were starting to respond effectively now, belatedly to be sure, and were moving forward to close around their attackers. King Arthur’s cavalry wheeled about once more, astonishingly quickly and precisely for a unit so surrounded by hostile fighting men, and rode to meet the onrushing counterattack head on. Now, at last, they were completely surrounded; now, at last, it was time.

“To battle!” Sir Baigent shouted. “To battle! Sound the charge!”

Three young boys who stood nearby, and having accompanied this army for exactly this purpose, lifted their great horns to their lips and with a burst of wind from their lungs that belied their stature blew forth in unison the second of King Arthur’s calls to battle that day. Sir Baigent kicked his heels into Arradwen’s flanks, and she sprang forward along with the hundred other horsemen with him. Together they surged down the side of the slope and crashed directly into the exposed right flank of Duke Balder’s force, catching them completely by surprise. The first man to fall under Sir Baigent’s sword never even had a chance to turn his horse and lift his club to face his attacker; he fell with the gaping expression on his face that Sir Baigent had seen on a great many faces lately as on the edge of a blade they had come to regret their choice of sides in this war.

A club-wielding man came swinging at him, and Sir Baigent easily turned Arradwen so that her lashing hooves struck the man down before he could even bring his club around for the blow he intended to deliver. At the same moment Sir Baigent brought his sword back in a savage, forceful motion on his right side, skewering a man behind him. Then, recovering his sword, he squared to face a cavalryman who was now charging him.

Sir Baigent easily maneuvered himself to easily take the main force of the man’s attack with the small buckler shield he wore on his left wrist, and then he brought his own blade around from the right in a countermove that he knew would be parried. The purpose was not now to strike, but to simply draw the man off balance, if he was inexperienced as Sir Baigent assumed he must be, from the awkward way he carried himself in his saddle. It worked to perfection, as the cavalryman tilted too far forward, allowing Sir Baigent to deliver a ringing strike to the back of the man’s head with the flat of his blade, and then swinging around for the killing stroke.

“Come, Baigent! You ride too slow!” someone shouted, and Sir Baigent immediately recognized the voice of Lord Matholyn as he thundered by on his left, leading his charger into the thick of a group of Balder’s men who broke and run as the imposing onetime Lord of Camyrdin smashed into their midst. Sir Baigent grinned and followed him.

From that moment the outcome of this fight was in little doubt. The discipline of Balder’s men, easily broken at first and then slowly restored, was broken anew by the arrival of the second wave of horsemen. Then, when the hundred footsoldiers came streaming down from the hill to make King Arthur’s attack complete, their cohesion and discipline completely fell apart. They had not expected this kind of attack; they had not truly been prepared for any battle at all, expecting instead to become part of a much larger army; and they were weary from their march and cold from the fording of the river. Men began to break for the wood or back up the valley, to be rounded up by the King’s horsemen or picked off by the handful of archers the King had stationed on either side of the vale for just that purpose. Finally, Balder’s men simply began to drop their weapons and lift their arms above their heads in surrender. The entire battle, from first charge to last surrender, had taken less than a single hour.

As Duke Balder’s men were rounded up and as pages and other attendants came down from the safety of the wood to tend to all the horses, Sir Baigent dismounted and came to Lord Matholyn’s side, where he stood with King Arthur and a few other knights whose names Sir Baigent could not just now recall. The King turned and led them on a walk through the battlefield.

“You could have waited a bit longer, you know,” Lord Matholyn said, scowling.. “I’m sure that one of these clods would have eventually found a way to smash one of my knees with a club, or stick a spear through my horse’s gullet. And then you’d be rid of me.”

Sir Baigent shook his head. “And miss the pleasure of attending to your temper, My Lord?”

“Yes, well, you know the silence would gnaw at you in the end.”

Behind them, Estren laughed. Before them, King Arthur held up a hand, silencing them. He was not a man given to this kind of post-battle banter, even after the easiest of battles as this one had been. Their own dead numbered less than thirty out of their original three hundred who had actually come into the fighting, while fewer than two hundred of Duke Balder’s original six hundred still drew breath. They had won many of these small skirmishes since Bedwyn, but this one had been the most successful rout yet. The King participated in the feasts – such as they were, in these lean times – after battles, but he did not allow celebrations to begin while the blood was still oozing from the dead. In this, Sir Baigent thought he was quite wise.

“You did well, Sir Baigent,” King Arthur said, turning to face the knight. “Very well indeed. The tactic worked as I hoped.”

“Thank you, My Liege,” Sir Baigent replied, lowering his head. King Arthur’s praise was not precisely rare, but it was still precious to a fighting man.

The King nodded once, and then turned forward again. He led them to where a young enemy knight sat on the ground, cradling an older man in his lap as tears rolled down his cheeks. The young knight, who was clearly barely old enough to be called anything other than a “boy”, lifted his head and met the King’s gaze.

“This was Duke Balder?” King Arthur asked. The young knight nodded, and King Arthur sighed. “I have seen this same look on the face of too many a young man in my time. You are his son?”

Again the youth nodded as he looked back down at the former Duke’s face.

“Then that makes you the new Duke,” King Arthur said. “Why did this man go to fight under the banner of the Traitor Kings?”

At this the youth looked up sharply. “Better to serve the King who made his own realm than the one who expects to have it given to him,” he snapped through grated teeth. His eyes held their anger for a second, and then the sadness returned. “That’s what my father said,” he added.

Sir Baigent expected King Arthur to rise to anger at that, but he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he sighed. “That is a sentiment I have heard many a time, from many a lord who did not think an anointed King worthy of what another King had taken by force,” he said. His voice was surprisingly soft, devoid of any anger at all. He had indeed heard this claim, each time from the lips of Cwerith’s defenders; and he had heard it in the time before, when he had built his first realm in the time before the Ancients. Many things remained the same, even as the years went by until they could no longer be numbered. “Do you truly think that I do not earn my realm in battle?”

The boy looked up at King Arthur again, and now there was something new in his gaze; it was a look that Sir Baigent had seen in a great many faces since King Arthur’s return, including at first, his own. “You are he,” the young man finally said. “You are King Arthur.”

“I am,” Arthur replied. “And I have seen many men die on either side of the battlefield, some standing for me when they fell and some standing against. What is your name, young sir?”

“Brinan,” the youth replied. “Sir Brinan ap Balder.”

“Not so,” said King Arthur. “Now you are Duke Brinan. Your father the Duke is dead, and the authority that was his now resides in you.”

The boy suddenly looked even younger as he considered that. Sir Baigent glanced sidelong at Lord Matholyn, who knew something of young men coming too early to their thrones. So, he thought, did Cwerith, although he would not react in quite the same way.

“And as Duke," King Arthur went on, "the decision that I came now to offer to your father is now yours to make. Will you and your men go free from this field, or in irons?”

Duke Brinan’s eyes narrowed. “How much fealty would we have to swear before you will let us go free?”

“No more than you would willingly swear,” King Arthur said. “I do not ask you to put aside any loyalties formerly sworn. When my scouts spotted your father leading this company, they also learned that it was his intention to swear allegiance with King Cwerith of Caer Mastagg.”

“He is the High King,” Brinan said quickly.

“Is he?” King Arthur said, even more softly. “Since your father meant to bend the knee to Cwerith, that means that he did not bend the knee to anyone else; and that means that his realm, small as it is, right now lies beyond any bounds of sworn loyalty. I cannot allow you to go on from this place if your aim is still to go to Cwerith’s side, but even if you would refuse to swear to me, I will allow you to go if you will refuse to swear to him.”

There was silence as Brinan grappled with what was being said to him. This was not what he had expected. “You do not demand that I swear to you?”

“I believe that you will, in time,” King Arthur said. “Cwerith is not High King, I am. I was chosen by the Goddess once before, and at the moment of my death she interceded and brought me to a place where I would rest until I was needed again. That time is now, and once more I fight for the throne of Prydein against those who believe that I have no claim to it. But what claim could be greater than the choice of Dona herself, no matter how much blood is spilt in the laying of that claim? No, my young Duke. I will fight for my throne, as I fought here today, but I will not kill without need.”

Brinan looked down at the face of his dead father. “Was there need for my father to die?” he asked.

“As much need as there ever would be in war,” King Arthur said. “So, young Duke, what will you do?”

“I will take my father home and bury him beside his father,” said Duke Brinan. “And then, I shall wait for war to come to my lands again before I choose a side.”

Now Matholyn spoke. “You know, from what you have heard here, that when that happens, it will be Cwerith that brings the war to you, and that you will end fighting against him.”

“It may be so, my lord,” Brinan replied. “But I cannot so easily bend the knee to the man who has killed my father in the last hour, either.”

“Then go,” King Arthur said. “Go, and see to your lands and bury your father. And trouble yourself with things other than allegiances and Kings and wars.”

Later, when Duke Brinan had left with what remained of his men – less than half of what his father had set out with – King Arthur gathered his own men and set out for the return march to Badon Hill. Sir Baigent’s thoughts kept returning to the young man who had been so quickly elevated to a Lordship. He was not certain if King Arthur had made the right decision in allowing this boy to go free, just after killing his father. But perhaps it was the right choice indeed, he thought; perhaps that boy would recall in the future the deeds of the King who had refused to take a single life more than was necessary to win the day. And perhaps the boy would compare that knowledge with the tidings he had received of the deeds of the other King who now vied for the loyalty of lordlings such as he, and perhaps he would judge Cwerith – the King who burned entire cities to the ground and slew every one of their citizens he could find – in a harsher light than Duke Balder had been prepared to do. Perhaps the King had allowed an enemy to live this day, but perhaps he had instead planted the seeds of an ally.

As they rode away from the battlefield, the crows could be heard behind them, already gathering to feast at the dead. It seemed to Sir Baigent that the crows or Prydein were becoming fatter and fatter, with such constant meat to feed them as was littered on fields all across the land. And for some reason he could not guess, the thought of crows feasting upon the fallen bodies made him think of Lady Gwynwhyfar. He shuddered, and suddenly reined Arradwen to a stop.

“Does something vex you, Baigent?” It was Lord Matholyn, who had likewise stopped and looked back at his friend.

“I do not know,” Sir Baigent replied truthfully. He did not know why he should feel suddenly fearful, nor could he fathom why thinking of the Welcomer should make him feel so.

***

“NO!”

Brother Llyad’s shout as he awoke from his Dreamslumber somehow disturbed none of the Druids around him, each of them still deep in their own states of reverie. He used a corner of his robe to wipe the sweat from his brow, sweat that should not have been there given how cold it was. Looking around at the ten meditating Druids who sat in a circle near him, he wondered what it was that they were seeing just now, and why it was that he had been given a vision that was so disturbing as to throw him out of Dreamslumber entirely. He glanced at the ceremonial fire in the middle of the ring, and saw that it had burned down almost to embers. He had been here for quite a long time indeed. Thank the Goddess, he thought as he decided that he had not disturbed any of the other Druids, for his presence here had not been requested or sanctioned. He had crept down here quietly, just after they had begun, meaning to attempt his own Dreamslumber. It had not been the wisest course of action, but Llyad was a man whose ability to resist curiosity and temptation had never been strong. And now he had indeed seen something. Something dark, something fell.

Come to me when the Goddess’s gift of vision has wended its way to completeness, Horius had said before he had left the Druids here alone. Horius was the Chieftain of the Druids, and was thus a man of special reverence to the Oak Brothers. But Brother Llyad felt an additional love for Horius, born of his deep friendship with Horius’s son. Llawann had been Llyad’s companion on the journey from Mona, when they had braved stormy seas to come to Tintagel in search of the Welcomer, but Llawann had been terribly injured when their tiny boat crashed against the rocks and he had later died under the crushing weight of the wolves in that grove where the Fairy had come. But they had found her. They had found the Welcomer.

And now Llyad had seen her again – in a vision marked by darkness and despair.

He rose from his place beneath a tree and beside the circle, and made his way for the path back to the Druid encampment, wondering at the magic of the Dreamslumber as he did so. Many centuries before, so many they could not possibly be counted since they numbered all the way back to almost the beginning of measured history itself, the Druids had crafted lore that allowed them to penetrate into the very mind and heart of the Goddess, if she willed it. In such moments, often the Druids were granted visions – glimpses of things that had once been, things that were now, or perhaps things that might yet come to pass. But the visions were dangerous things, and often given to incorrect interpretation or, as dreams sometimes are, forgotten entirely. The lore of the Dreamslumber had been lost, though, before the rise of the Ancients, and had only been rediscovered in the days after the Cataclysm had wiped the world clean of all that the Ancients had built, when the old lore of the Emrys had at last been found again. It had partially been through the Dreamslumber that the Druids on Mona had begun to suspect that the time for their return to Prydein had come. And now Llyad of Tintagel was the first person who was not sworn to the Druidic tradition to attempt a Dreamslumber, albeit a forbidden one, in many centuries. Perhaps that is why my vision was so disquieting, he thought as he left the tiny grove where the slumber had taken place. Perhaps. But perhaps not.

Llyad came to a stream and followed its course until he came to the larger grove where Horius and some of the others waited. There were several thousand Druids, actually, scattered throughout these forests. But all were within miles of this place, which was in turn just a few hours’ ride from the hill-fort that the Promised King had built and named Badon after the hill were, in the time before, he had won his greatest victory and secured the throne of the land he called Britain. The time would come when the Druids would again scatter across the entire land, but that time had not yet come. Not with the Druids still not trusted by the people, and not with the fell clerics – sometimes called the “Dark Druids” – in the service of King Cwerith. Here, in this spot where the stream spilled over a short waterfall into a wide pool, Horius led the Druids in a hymn to the Goddess and the woods themselves. Brother Llyad waited for the hymn to end, but instead, Horius left the ring of singing Druids and came to join him, with Hugydd – the big man who had once been a knight of Camyrdin but had been taken by the Druids and made one of their own a year before – coming slightly behind him. The others went on singing, the chorus of Druids shifting their tone to accommodate the sudden absence of two voices. Brother Llyad bowed before the Druid chieftain.

“I come to you in peace, Horius,” he said.

“And I accept you in same, Llyad of Tintagel,” Horius replied. “What has brought you hence?”

“I was in the grove,” Llyad said. He knew well of Horius’s disdain for evasion or circumlocution. Still, he fixed his eyes penitently on the ground, unwilling to meet what he was certain would be Horius’s stare of anger.

“You were attempting the Dreamslumber,” Horius said. “Brother Llyad, you are known to me as a man of impulse. Nevertheless, that was particularly unwise.” He sighed. “Come with me, Brother.”

He led Llyad away then, down a different path up a short rise to where three large boulders sat on the ground beside an immense and gnarled oak. The three boulders and the oak’s trunk formed the boundaries of Horius’s home, a tent-like structure that was made of sticks, logs, patches of moss, vines, and brambles tightly woven together to form the walls of the structure. The Druids had seemingly always known of this type of building, and Llyad had become so accustomed to sleeping in such quarters in his days on Mona that he now found the stone buildings of cities uncomfortable. These buildings, crafted from the living materials of Prydein’s ancient forests themselves and allowed to be eventually reclaimed by those same forests, were warm but airy, open and yet comfortable. Nevertheless, Llyad felt some trepidation as he entered Horius’s own hut. It was the same kind of trepidation as he had felt on Tintagel when summoned alone to the Lord Priest’s chambers, he realized, but this was not so much fear for the consequences of a transgression committed as it was anxiety that what he had seen in his ritual dreams might mean what he already feared it would mean.

“Please wait here, Hugydd,” Horius said, and Hugydd obeyed, remaining outside.

The inside of Horius’s home bore little decoration, for the Druids had little use for such things. Living as they did in the wood, and devoted as they were to the service and protection of those woods, they eschewed traditional kinds of adornments for their homes, preferring instead to seek beauty in the natural order of things. Thus, to Llyad, coming into one of Horius’s hut made him feel as if he were entering the very heart of the wood itself. Horius knelt upon the floor, the dirt of which would have been covered over with soft heather in a proper summer but now was bare, and gestured for Llyad to do the same. Then Horius made a gesture and whispered an incantation over a small pile of twigs and small logs in the exact middle of the floor, between the two of them, and on cue a wisp of smoke appeared above them, swirling down from the smoke-hole in the ceiling to the top of the woodpile where the smoke incorporated into flame.

“We thank the Goddess and the wood for allowing the presence of the flame,” Horius said, “for the flame is both the giver and taker of life.”

He and Llyad both bowed before the tiny fire, whose warmth was still welcome to Llyad’s bones.

“Now, Llyad,” Horius said as he laid his hands on his lap, “you would not have come to quickly to confess your transgression had your attempt to join the Dreamslumber not brought something to command your attention. Is that the way of it?”

“It is.” Brother Llyad drew a deep breath, gathering his thoughts for he did not know where to begin, strangely enough for a man who was so often accused of being unable to stop speaking for any length of time. “I don’t know what I saw, Horius. It was so…it was like looking through a dirty and old bit of glass onto a gray and windy day. Like a day when the seas toss and heave, and you cannot tell where the water ends and where the sky begins. I cannot…I do not know what I saw.”

Horius smiled. “And yet, you remember enough that you have come to interrupt my singing of the Veneration,” he said. “Tell me what little you can recall, what little you can describe, no matter how small it may seem. And know that it is often thus for those who descend into the Dreamslumber. That is why our course of action is so often hard to find.”

Brother Llyad nodded. “There was a great deal that even now is disappearing from my memory,” he began. “Images and feelings that I cannot begin to describe. I remember that I felt great fear through much of it…not the fear of confronting the unknown, but the fear of confronting death and the loss of all things. I saw…the dead. And I saw blood.”

Horius bowed his head. “To see blood in the Dreamslumber is never a good omen,” he said. “That you have dreamed of death is troubling. But there is something, somewhere, that you are not telling me.” He raised his eyes and fixed his piercing gaze on Brother Llyad. “You cannot hold it back, Llyad. I must know what it is that you have seen.”

Brother Llyad could not turn his eyes away from Horius’s. His heart began to pound, and the blood rushed in his ears. There was one image, one image only, that he remembered with perfect clarity from the Dreamslumber, and he still saw it each time he closed his eyes. “I saw the Welcomer. I saw Gwynwhyfar. She was…she…” His voice cracked, but he swallowed and forced himself to continue. “I saw her, tied to the stump of a freshly-hewn oak. She was dead, and her blood ran down onto the stump and onto the ground. The Goddess was there, crying over her body, and somewhere else, there was laughter. I saw the Welcomer’s death.”

Horius paled visibly, and he seemed to shudder as if struck. He braced himself on the ground, and gazed up at the ceiling. “Why would you visit this upon us, O Goddess….” He pushed himself back upright, and rubbed his forehead. “I had prayed that this would not come to pass, but it appears that my hopes – as has been so often the case recently – are to be denied.”

“I do not understand,” Brother Llyad said. “What has happened? Do you understand this?”

Horius shook his head. “Not in all of the particulars, my friend,” he said. “This is but one of a thousand ways in which this could have transpired. But it appears that it has done so. In the days after the return of the Promised King and the completion of the Welcomer’s task, I spent a great deal of time in private meditation and communion with the Goddess. I wished to know what role Lady Gwynwhyfar would play once the King had come back, and the deed at the Giants’ Dance was finished. Dona would not simply anoint one to be the Welcomer, and then dispose of that person once the Welcoming was finished…or so I believed.”

“The Finders believe that she may be Arthur’s Queen,” Llyad said.

Horius nodded. “That could indeed be the way of it. She bears the same name, roughly, as his first Queen did; but though the story is lost to us in its entirety, we know it for a tale of surpassing sadness. It may be that the King is unwilling to take a Queen, although the time will come when he will have little choice. Much of the suffering of this day might well have been evaded had King Irlaris’s wife survived the fever and lived to bear him an heir. Alas…it was not the Goddess’s will.”

“Or perhaps it was another power’s,” Llyad suggested. Horius looked at him, and then nodded.

“Yes...but that has little to do with what we now discuss. Lady Gwynwhyfar’s place has vexed me, as it has anyone sworn in direct service to the Goddess. She must have some further role to play, but there is still so much lore that is lost to us, and we have not found any new knowledge even as we complete the tasks laid out for us by the Goddess and outlined by Merlyn Emrys. I had no way of learning what she was to do, or where she was to go. So I waited, alone in my trepidation, saying nothing of my fears to anyone.”

Brother Llyad cocked his eyebrow at something Horius had said. “Your fears?”

Horius nodded. Outside, a breeze freshened, setting a group of wood-chimes Horius had carved from fallen sticks and hung from a nearby tree to knocking. The tiny fire between them flickered, and yet Brother Llyad felt no breeze. Instead, he held Horius’s gaze.

“I have not entered the Dreamslumber in more than two full moons,” he said. Llyad gasped. As Chieftain, Horius was to spend more time in the Dreamslumber than anyone else...but now he had not, in quite some time. “I have not done so because I have feared what I would see.”

“You saw it too!” Llyad exclaimed. “You saw her. You saw the same thing that I saw.”

Horius shook her head. “Not quite,” he said. “And even if I did, we would have no way of knowing that. The Dreamslumber yields a different vision for every person who enters it, and even if it did offer the same vision, there would be the matter of how it is seen – for two people may witness the same event, and still come away with two entirely different senses of what has transpired. Nevertheless, I did see her. She was being taken someplace by force, by whom I know not. She was being brought into the hands of the Dark Druids.”

Brother Llyad shuddered. The Dark Druids were the onetime Priests of Dona who had deserted her and begun to serve her Dark Brother. It had been the Dark Druids, centuries before, whose dark rituals in the forest groves all over Prydein had prompted High King Prystyl to go to war to drive them all away, a war in which no one judged any difference between the truly evil Dark Druids and the benign Oak Brothers. At least the Oak Brothers, though, had been able to flee to Mona; the Dark Druids had been completely wiped out. Until now, that is, for it was said that King Cwerith’s Lord Priest was one of these Dark Druids, and that Cwerith himself actually gave blood at their rituals – rituals where that Lord Priest received visitations from a God in the shape of a great silver wolf.

Horius cleared his throat. “And if the Dark Druids had interest in the Welcomer, then she must indeed still have a great part to play in this war. There is something left for her to do, something crucial, if they desire her death. They would not risk such actions if there were not great reason behind them. And that means that the Welcomer may be in more grave danger than we have ever thought. Curse me for a fool! I waited too long…too great was my insecurity, and too powerful was my indecision. I nursed my fears, and kept them hidden; I waited for more clarity in a time when the only clarity we ever receive is murky indeed. And now, if you have had a Dreamslumber similar to mine, it may be too late. Dona forgive me!” And, with tears flowing from his eyes, he lowered his head into his hands.

“Is there nothing we might do?”

“We are too far away from her,” Horius said. “Her fate will have to rest in the hands of the Goddess. Would that Dona still had the strength to protect her…and now, I fear that other things may be stirring. Dark things that must be avoided.” He lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. “We must make preparations, Llyad of Tintagel. I fear that if the Dark Druids are willing to strike at the Welcomer, they will soon desire to strike at others as well.”

“I do not understand,” Llyad said.

“I am speaking of war,” Horius replied. “I fear that war may be coming to the Druids, in the form of those who dip their hands in blood and so doing seek to shape the fates of men for ill purposes. War, Brother Llyad. Once the Oak Brothers were at war with the Dark Druids, a war in which King Prystyl made no distinctions when he came to it, but a war nonetheless. We must be ready. Come.”

He made a gesture at the fire, and the flames instantly vanished, chilled and extinguished by a puff of very cold air that burst in from the smoke-hole and smothered them. Then he grabbed his cloak and staff and led Brother Llyad outside, where he suddenly stopped and looked around.

“Where is Hugydd?” he asked.

Llyad looked around. The big man, a knight-turned-Druid, was nowhere to be seen.

***

Daylight was fading fast when King Arthur at least signaled the stop and ordered the setting of camp. They had made fairly good time after leaving the valley from where they had sent the new Duke home with his men, albeit disarmed. With luck, they would make Badon by sundown, the day after tomorrow. As it was, the army made camp beside a wide and swift-moving river that flowed down from the hills and dense forests farther to the north. The discipline that had impressed Sir Baigent in battle was also evident in the making of camp as the tents were very quickly pitched, the fires built, the trenches dug and the sentries posted. Though they had marched later than Sir Baigent would have liked, they still had camp made while there was still a bit of light. Horses were fed and rubbed down, food was prepared, and at last there was a meal of dried meat and thick, heavy bread; and then the soldiers settled in to sleep. Estren wandered through the company, performing songs for the benefit of the men, but mostly everyone was tired and wanted to sleep. Battle was exhausting, even in the wake of victory.

“How do you think Cwerith will receive the news of what we have denied him this day?” Lord Matholyn asked.

“No more than a day or two,” King Arthur replied. “Bad tidings, even those which we consider good, have a way of traveling faster than can the tongues that carry them.”

“He will attack soon,” Matholyn said. “We have pushed him too far, and we have denied him and harassed him too much.”

King Arthur nodded. “That is the way of it,” he said. “That is why we have been building the fort at Badon. King Cwerith will very soon seek to bring the war to me. It was this way before.”

“How was it?” Sir Baigent asked, suddenly. King Arthur looked at him, and immediately Sir Baigent regretted having asked the question. But it was something he had wanted to know, something he had wanted so much to hear. King Arthur was such a sad and noble man, but there was still something…something like a wall around him, which sometimes made it seem as though he was merely moving through Prydein, and not really being touched or involved in what happened here. How must it be, for a King torn from his own Kingdom once before, and then brought back to reforge it from remnants so long tattered that not even the smallest memory remained of what had gone before?

“It was very like this, Sir Baigent.” King Arthur shrugged and stirred at the coals of his fire with a stick. “It was very like this indeed, except that I was very young when I became King. The fates are not so different, for a King returned from Avalon or for an unknown boy, barely old enough to serve as squire to the man he has always taken for an older brother, to take an old and fractured land and make it his own.

“There were many battles. Even though the Goddess had given me the sword, and thus had anointed me as King, there were many lords who had spent their entire lives fighting and warring for one king or another, hoping to position themselves with the eventual winner. That was the way things were done, in those times: Kings were made in battle, not chosen by the Goddess. It scared them, to think that a boy should be given what they had not been able to take – and that much of it had been shaped by the hand of a wizard they all feared. Ah, Merlyn…you never told me of this…” He cleared his throat, and went on.

“Some lords swore to me from the first, and those first allies were the most loyal I would ever see. Allegiances given freely are often more solid than allegiances forced in war, although that is not always true, either. But we were strong, and gradually we forced more and more of those lords to bend the knee. Even King Lot, the strongest of them all, finally lowered his banner to mine after the Battle of Badon Hill. And he married my sister, Morgause…but she turned out to be wickeder, by far, than even Merlyn could have imagined. Poor Lot! How it must have hurt, to see his proud and strong sons so easily turned from the path of the Goddess by the machinations of my own bastard son…and how much might have been different, had I not succumbed to darkness for a time and attempted to…” At this point something very dark indeed passed through his eyes. Sir Baigent exchanged glances with Lord Matholyn, who shook his head lightly. King Arthur’s story was such a sad one, it seemed, and now he was here, bound for yet more sadness and pain. And he had said nothing at all of the story of his Queen, whose name was Gwynwhyfar.

Estren finally returned from his tour of the camp a short while later, and he performed for the King and his party The Song of Pastures and Honey by Taryn of Land’s End, a song which was usually sung by mothers to sleepless children but in the Bard’s voice became a loving serenade to more peaceful days. Then, at least, they slept. All of their dreams were touched with the thoughts of the larger battles certain to come, all of theirs except for the King’s.

No one could touch the dreams that passed before the King’s sleeping eye.

***

Baigent leaned back against the thwart of the wooden boat and drove his arms backward and forward, up and down, backward and forward, up and down, underneath the light of a cold, white sun. The salt spray stung his face, but he did not care. The air was bracing, but made him feel strong. He was free: free of war, free of vengeance, free of the cares that had haunted him for months.

The wave he'd been watching finally arrived, taking hold of the boat and propelling it forward. He dug in with the oars, grabbing as much speed as he could. Any second now he would feel the crunch on the hull and the sudden slowing as the boat ran aground on the shores of the beach outside Caer Camyrdin. He grinned in anticipation. He was nearly home.

But the boat didn't run aground, and it should have by now. The waves slowed, and then stopped entirely. The salt spray was gone, and now Baigent realized that he no longer heard the cry of gulls, either. Shipping his oars, he turned to look behind him, to see where the shore actually was. And nothing was there. He was alone in the boat, out in the middle of the sea, or so it appeared: in every direction he saw nothing at all but glass-smooth water. The land was gone, the gulls who always haunted the beaches of Camyrdin were gone, everything was gone.

Baigent rowed for a while, aimlessly, with no clear notion of which direction he should go or even what direction he was going at all. He rowed for a few minutes at first, and then he rowed some more, this time for a few hours. And still he came nowhere, as he moved across a featureless and blank sea. He rowed until his muscles could row no more, and then at last he gave up, shipping his oars and slumping to the bottom of his boat. He allowed himself a single sip from his water flask, and then as night fell around him and as the stars began to shine through the deepening sky, he felt himself falling asleep.

And that was when his boat thumped against the shore.

But the shore of where? That, he did not know. In the darkness, he could not recognize the land that rose before him. It was an island, he supposed, and in the fading light he could see a line of forest that began less than fifty paces from the white-sand beach. He wasn't sure how, since the darkness was shrouding everything in the distance, but Baigent felt strongly that somewhere before him rose mountains, high ones. This was no small island, unknown on an unexplored sea. This was...someplace else.

Baigent waited there, fearing to leave his boat, for a long while. Gradually the moon rose behind him, bright and full, casting its silver light across first the sea and then the beach and then what he could make of the island before him. He could now see the forest before him, and he now realized that it was no forest at all, but an empty city, devoid of all life. The buildings were wrecked, tumbled, fallen. A city that came so near down to the sea, but stopped short of wharf or quay: what manner of strange place was this? Baigent's curiosity allowed him to find his courage once again, and he jumped out of the boat onto the white sand.

"HALT!"

The voice came from somewhere before him. Baigent strained his eyes to make it out, but soon he saw a tall figure moving toward him with a shuddering gait. Whoever this was, he walked with painful effort, dragging one foot behind him and leaning with each step on a stick of some sort. Baigent could not yet make out the person's features, but somehow the voice sounded in his ears familiar.

"You cannot be here! This place is not for you! This place is for no one, until the dark times end and those who left can at last return!"

Yes, the voice was very familiar, but who could it possibly be? Baigent waited by his boat, wishing he had a weapon with him. A fishhook, perhaps – but he had none. Why had he set to sea without so much as a fishhook?

"Go! Go, Baigent! You must leave this place!"

The shadowy figure had used Baigent's name. How could that be-

"Go, boy! You cannot be here!"

And Baigent suddenly felt his entire body go to ice. Only one man had ever called him 'Boy'. But how could this be? How could Baigent's father be here? Where was he, that Pelegaunt was marching toward him?

"Do you totally lack the wits I tried to pass onto you, boy? Away from here! Back to the sea, and back to Prydein! This is no land for you!"

Baigent felt tears on his cheeks. His father, coming toward him, shouting for him to leave this place he didn't know he'd come to: what was this?

And now Pelegaunt stood before him. His features were familiar, although cast in shadow and somehow blurred, as though Baigent were seeing him through a fog, even though he stood just a few paces away. He looked, Baigent suddenly realized, the way he had looked at the moment he had breathed his last.

"Father?"

"This place is not for you, Baigent. This place is for no one, now. The Goddess's dark brother saw to that. This place is not for you."

Baigent felt himself backing up already, toward the boat, in spite of himself. "You speak like a cleric," he said. "In death and in dreams you are as full of riddles as anyone."

"This is no riddle, boy," his father said. "In life I never held with riddling talk, and neither do I do so now. If I speak not clearly, it is because I cannot speak of that which I do not know. But these things are given me, here in this place that awaits the return of those who once dwelt here: You must go back, and you must find her. The Finest Deed awaits you, boy! You do not realize that you have been chosen? That it has fallen to you, after all the ages of the world? You do not see?"

"I do not understand," Baigent said.

"Of course you do not," his father replied. "Go now, Baigent. You cannot remain here, and you know that you cannot. I am dead, and the living need you more than I. Go now! Return from whence you came!"

And with that, Pelegaunt turned and began to walk away, back toward the shattered city whose citizens had gone somewhere that Sir Baigent did not know. Baigent climbed back into his boat and pushed back out to sea, where the ebbing tide began pulling him away. In the moonlight he could now barely make out his father's shadowy form, but nevertheless, one last time he called out: "Father! What am I to do?"

On the shore, Pelegaunt turned back toward his son, and when he replied, he pitched his voice to carry: "You must find your way, boy, and know this: it does not lie with the one you call King, nor at the side of he whom you once called Lord before your lands were stripped from you."

Baigent sat silent in his boat for a moment, thinking on the awful implication of these words. Then, once more, he lifted his voice to his father: "You command me to leave King Arthur? To walk from the side of Lord Matholyn? Why would I do this? With whom will I go?"

Pelegaunt was already turning away from him. "It is not for the dead to command the living, Baigent," came the voice, ever softer until it was little more than a whisper above the lapping of the waters. "With whom will you go? Whom, indeed?"

And then he was gone, and Baigent was again alone on the sea. Again he rowed, away from the island and through the night, until dawn was approaching and again his boat ran ashore, this time on the blood-soaked ruins of the city he had once called home--

***

Sir Baigent snapped awake to discover that he was being shaken.

“Come,” Estren said. “Someone has come whom you will wish to see.”

Sir Baigent looked around the tent and the other sleeping knights and cavalrymen. It was still late, still dark. There were no sounds outside of a stirring camp, although when he had pulled on his cloak and followed the Bard outside, he saw that there soon would be. The eastern sky was beginning to turn the purple of the hour before dawn, and there were men already coming awake to prepare the morning meal and get the horses ready for the day’s ride. But most of the men were still asleep, which should have included Sir Baigent; it was still to early for him to be aroused. Something had happened, clearly enough. “Is it Sir Jules?” he asked as Estren led him through the tents to the King’s. “Have he and Sir Regidan brought scouting news?”

“No,” Estren said. “It is a Druid."

Sir Baigent stopped short, for just a second, before continuing to move. Druids…they were a strange lot, and little ever happened around them that was normal or expected. Estren led Sir Baigent across the camp to a low area, toward the rear, where the horses were kept. All around them were the sounds of grunting beasts and their snoring masters. They came to the very edge of the camp, below which the side of Badon Hill dropped away sharply. Here, waiting for him, holding his steed by the rein, was Hugydd, who had once been Sir Baigent's man but was now one of the Oak Brothers.

"Hugydd! Why have you come here?"

"Tidings of ill, Sir Baigent," Hugydd replied. "The Welcomer may be in peril."

Sir Baigent felt his flesh go cold, very cold, as he braced himself to hear whatever Hugydd had come to say.

The Finest Deed, Chapter Three

2009-03-01T17:10:00.001-08:00

Upon her return to the Temple, Gwyn bid farewell to Gareth, who had decided to return to the Finders in their encampment in hill country north of Bedwyn. Gwyn tried to conceal the envy in her voice as she did so. How she wished she could don riding clothes and go out into the hills and woods again, and perhaps bring her bow and find a rabbit or even a deer for the pot, and go into the woods where the Druids now held their rites. She wondered what Brother Llyad was up to, now that he was spending almost all of his time with the Oak Brothers. He had not spent a night in the company of his fellow Priests of Dona in several weeks now, and Gwyn rather suspected that he was planning to do as Hugydd, once Sir Hugydd of Caer Camyrdin, had done and actually join the Druids.

Gwyn took her evening meal with the other clerics of the Temple, a quiet affair that was much less exuberant than the meals at Tintagel had ever been – even under the stern eye of Father Reynold, when Father Damogan’s predecessor had tried for a time to institute a regimen of silence at mealtimes, based on something he had read and very likely misinterpreted from the Oracles. She listened to Father Terryn’s Blessing, she ate her small bowl of soup and one hunk of bread, she sang with the other clerics in the Hymn of Thankfulness, and then she went to the Temple library to read. She had found that by far the finest pleasure of being the Welcomer was that no one tried to restrict or direct her reading choices, and thus she was able to read from any book in the Temple library, including some that Brother Malcolm had ruled out until she had passed the Trials. Of course, there were the select books that no one could read except the Lord Priest, so dangerous were their contents, but even so Gwyn had not lacked at all for reading material. She gravitated toward the histories of the savage days just after the Cataclysm, when it sometimes seemed that the entire land had been one great and constant battlefield.

“May I ask what you are reading, My Lady?”

Gwyn looked up from her table. It was Brother Colla, one of the three newly-arrived Priests from the north. He and his companions had been at the evening meal as well, where three additional places had been set at one of the tables. Now he stood beside her in the library, two books under his arm.

“The Dialogs of the Fiery Age by Deryvach Deddyl,” Gwyn replied. “History appeals to me.”

“I’m sure you were a fine student,” Brother Colla said. “But they do not call you ‘Sister’.”

“No,” Gwyn said, shaking her head. “I was a month away from the Trials when…other events transpired.”

“Ah.” Brother Colla nodded. “I suppost that right now you are unsure as to whether you will ever complete the Trials? I think the Welcomer will always have something of a place. Good evening, My Lady.” He wandered off to a table of his own, and Gwyn returned to her book.

What surprised her so much was the way the written histories bore little, if any, resemblance to the events she had heard about from the Bards Estren and Drudwas, and from the Druids who had kept their own oral tradition alive. The histories told of bloody battles with the Druids themselves committing the foulest of acts, and there were inumerable stories of the dozens of petty Kings who ruled tiny kingdoms, and their constant forming of alliances and the subsequent betrayals of those alliances. She had loved these stories once, but now she saw them for something else – a long and horrible tale of death and war and suffering. Now that she was seeing the same kind of story being written for the histories again, she found the old tales far less appealing, even if they now had more lessons to offer than mere romance. She read for another hour, and then she left with all the other Priests and Priestesses for the evening Vespers. It was quite late when, at long last, she returned to her chamber.

Over the last few weeks the routine had begun to wear upon her, and she had found it difficult to drop off to sleep; but on this night, sleep came surprisingly easy, just minutes after she extinguished her candle and pulled her thick blankets up around her. She could hear clerics milling about in the Temple courtyard that her chamber window overlooked, but even their voices were not enough to keep her awake.

On that night came the first dream-vision she had seen since the night after the Promised King’s return.

***

Gwynwhyfar led a familiar white horse by the rein down a path that wound through a wood that was unlike any other she had walked in her dreams. This was no verdant, living wood, but a wood that had once been a wood but was now a desolate wasteland. The withered husks of trees rose about her, and the bushes had all turned to dried scrub and thickets of bramble. Some of the dead trees looked like they had burned, others looked like they had perished of disease, and the air was thick with the musty scent of death and decay. The horse made no sound at all as it obediently followed Gwynwhyfar, but even so she could sense its fear, and when she stopped to massage the animal’s neck she saw that its fur had become damp and its ankles and forelegs had darkened with soot and dirt. The same had happened to her samite gown, and tears welled in her eyes for the dead land all around her.

At length the path came down out of the hills and to the side of a gray motionless sea. Here Gwynwhyfar stopped and waited as the moon rose from the horizon before her – but it was not any moon she had seen before. This moon was much larger, and its color was not brilliant silver but a dull mix of red and pewter, and in the half-light of twilight the moon cast little light of its own. The horse whinnied nervously, and Gwynwhyfar laid a hand on its neck to calm it. When the moon had risen completely, Gwynwhyfar heard the voice from the waters.

“Gwynwhyfar!”

“Lady Nimue?”

“No, child. I am not the Lady of the Lake. I am much older than she, and I think you know to whom you now speak.”

The woman whose voice this was now appeared, walking down from the sky to stand upon the water. Her features were shadowy, as if her body were shrouded by a patch of mist or fog, and Gwynwhyfar could not tell if she was a maiden or a crone, or perhaps both or neither. The lady seemed made of the same stuff as the red moon that hung low in the sky above them, and Gwynwhyfar supposed that she was – for she was Dona herself.

“My Goddess,” Gwynwhyfar said, her voice even less than a bare whisper. She felt like she should bow, or kneel; and yet she only stood still.

“You must stop him, Gwynwhyfar. You must complete the Finest Deed.”

“I do not understand,” Gwynwhyfar said.

“She speaks of me, My Lady.”

Gwynwhyfar turned in the direction from which the deep, male voice had come. Approaching her, along the side of the sea, was a man. He was naked, and his body seemed sculpted like a statue. His golden hair fell in loose curls about his shoulders. In his hands he carried a sword from whose blade dripped a constant stream of blood that darkened the ground on which it spilled. “An interesting weapon, is it not?” he said. “The blood is that of Prydein, and it will continue to flow until the land has no more blood to give. But perhaps just now you wish to gaze upon my other weapon, and perhaps you would like to feels its stab.”

Revulsed, Gwynwhyfar looked away. The man laughed.

“Is it the form that bothers you?” he asked. “I assure you, I can appear to you however you might desire. Is this more to your liking?” His body changed shape then, to that of a giant silver wolf that bared its teeth and gave a single, low snarl. The horse edged away, and Gwyn shuddered. The wolf’s form shifted back to the naked blond man, who laughed.

“I know you, Dark Brother,” Gwynwhyfar finally said. “And I know you for the nameless evil that you are.”

“Nameless?” Dona’s Dark Brother smiled. “I have had many names in all the ages since the beginning of all things. Some of those names are known, far more are forgotten. But you are correct, my lovely plaything: it is time for me to take a name again, and to allow that name to be spoken with fear as well as due reverence. I shall claim another name before all is done, but for now, you will call me, Evnissyen.”

“That name was not yours,” the Goddess said.

“And yet it suits me, does it not?” The Dark Brother laughed. “With him it all began: my first touching of the world.”

“You have inspired many,” Dona said. “And yet, all those who have felt your inspiration have failed.”

“All past events have led to what is now coming,” the man said. They were now speaking of things unknown to Gwyn, of angers and sadnesses inflicted upon the world and suffered by her people in days so long gone by that not even their histories had survived.

“You wonder why you are here, child,” Dona suddenly said to Gwynwhyfar. “You wonder what purpose you are to serve, now that you have fulfilled your journey as the Welcomer. You long to know what place you will serve in the world. Know now, child, that you have walked but one road of the many that lie before you, and that the greatest of all roads still awaits you. The greatest road, and the most perilous. You will need strength, and you will have it.”

“Have done, sister!” The Dark Brother who had taken the name Evnissyen laughed. “This is futile foolishness, and well you know it. This frail blossom will no more withstand the winds that are to come than any of the others whose seeds you scattered into the breeze to take root wherever they might land. Your power is fading with each dawn that rises over Prydein, and my own strength grows with each sunset. You can not even bar me from this place. This child will no more have the strength to restore you than any other of the hopeful saviors you have chosen. How many have walked that road in your name? How many have failed?"

“This girl is different, brother,” Dona said. “And she has Culdarra’s favor. Why must you hate beauty so? Why is all that is good in the world so hateful in your eyes?”

“Because all things that are good in the world fade in time. Only the darkness is permanent.” Evnissyen moved forward and stood so close to Gwynwhyfar that the drips of blood from his sword spattered on the folds of her gown. “Such a lovely creature, thus union of mortal and Fairy. How terrible that she will not live to see the end, when the Wyrm awakens for the third and final time and bears his judgment for all.”

“You tried to kill me before,” Gwynwhyfar said.

Evnissyen laughed. “There will be time for all things in the end,” he said. “For now, I would show you the forces in the face of which you think to make your stand.” He turned toward the sea and made a sweeping gesture with his left hand. Almost immediately the water began to boil.

“Brother!” the Goddess shouted. “Do not do this!”

If he heard her speak, he gave no sign at all. Instead he lifted his hands high and his eyes gleamed.. Gwynwhyfar looked on, helpless and rapt, as the sea roiled and heaved. A bolt of white-hot lightning ripped the air in half and touched down in the middle of the water before them. Gwynwhyfar felt the heat from the lightning on her face, and she blinked her eyes clear as the blast of thunder shook the entire world. The horse screamed, but Gwynwhyfar kept her grip on the rein and tried to calm the terrified beast. And then she, too, felt raw, numbing fear, for something was glowing beneath the waters, and that glow – a red that was redder than blood – became brighter and brighter, and larger and larger. More lightning flashed in the sky above them, and the red glow began to throb and pulsate like a great, beating heart. Gwynwhyfar realized that something was rising from the waters. Evnissyen the Dark Brother stepped out into the water and walked out until it was up past his knees. “COME!” he wailed. “COME!”

And come it did, bringing fire and death with it. The Wyrm of the World rose from the depths of the deepest sea, and it focused its terrible eye directly upon her. Gwynwhyfar had never beheld anything so vast, so terrible before. It was as if all the dark things from all the dreams she had ever had were blended together into this one awful thing that towered before her. The Wyrm looked upon her, and then its mouth yawned wide…and from that mouth came fire, the fire of Cataclysm unleashed anew upon all that they had ever built. Gwynwhyfar’s screams echoed along with Evnissyen’s shouts of glory as the world ended….

***

Gwyn awoke then, gasping as she did so. It had been a long time since she had had one of these “visions” in place of her normal dreams – glimpses into the other world from which part of her came. They had begun on the night of Brother Llyad’s return from Tintagel, they had continued until after the Battle of Bedwyn, when she had said her last farewell to her father…and then, nothing aside from the usual, nearly impossible to remember dreams that came along every night and vanished with each opening of her eyes the next morning. Gwyn lay in the darkness for a long moment, wondering what the return of these visions could possibly mean. Like before, it had been so vivid and real. She could even still smell the smoke of the Wyrm’s fire…

Smoke.

She sat bolt upright. It was not part of her dream at all; she really was smelling smoke. Distant smoke, to be sure, but smoke which should never have been here, in her chamber. Now she could also hear shouts in the distance, and glass breaking. She moved to her window, threw aside the sash, and saw outside the glow of flames. The Temple was on fire.

In the half-light she threw on her breeches, shirt, boots and cloak – this was no time to worry about donning her clerical robes, after all – and moved to the door. Feeling it and finding it cool to the touch, she cracked it open, to discover the corridor beyond full of smoke and her two guards nowhere to be seen. She shut the door and ran back to her window, trying to see if she could get out that way…but the casement was frozen in place, the window was too small to allow her to climb through, the drop to the ground was too far, and in any case she would still have to make her way through the Temple if she got out that way. But why had she heard nothing until now?

Looking further out the window, she saw that the fire was limited to only a handful of windows, all on her level of the Temple. Surely the clerics and City Guard were already fighting the flames. Of course they’d be fighting the flames, girl! she thought. They won’t let the place burn to the ground! But still, she easily imagined the flames moving in the direction of her chamber, as far as she could tell by looking out her tiny window, and smoke was already entering her chamber in a tiny stream from around her door. She looked again, down into the courtyard, with its gravel paths circling a standing stone…and the Priest standing there, unmoving. How strange, she thought – one of the Temple clerics was in meditation in the courtyard while fires burned in the upper parts of the building! Then the Priest lifted his head to meet her eyes, and Gwyn gasped. It was no Priest at all, but the white-haired beggar she had seen that morning, on the docks. Even in the half-light of the moon and the fires, she recognized him. She drew backward sharply, and jumped as there came a pounding at her door, accompanied by a shouting voice: “My Lady! My Lady, come!”

Gwyn ran to the door and threw it open. Standing there, with a scrap of cloth pressed over his nose and mouth, was Brother Colla.

“My Lady! Come!”

“There…there is someone in the courtyard—” Had he set the fire?

The Brother ignored her and grabbed her arm. “Come, My Lady! We must flee!”

Gwyn hesitated, blinked, and glanced around. “But—my guards—”

“I don’t know where they are,” Colla said. “I only thought to look in on you because my own guest chamber is four doors down from yours. The Temple is on fire. We must go!”

“Which way is safe?” Gwyn asked.

“This way.” Colla pointed to the left, which made sense to Gwyn, for that was the way to the great stair and the main corridor to the Temple’s entrance. Pointing to the right, he said, “The flames began that way, but I do not know more than that.”

In the distance Gwyn heard more shouts, probably from guards and clerics fighting the fire. She hesitated once more. “Where are your travel-mates?” she asked.

“They are awaiting us in safety. My Lady, please!”

Gwyn relented. She grabbed an old shirt from her cabinet and held it over her nose and mouth as Brother Colla led her by the hand directly into the smoke-filled corridor.

After they had moved twenty steps or so down the hall, the smoke began to thin considerably, and they came to the first set of stairs down to the next level. Gwyn turned toward them, but Colla pulled on her arm to keep going in their original direction.

“We can’t be sure of those stairs, My Lady,” he said. Gwyn looked askance at him, for there seemed to be no smoke at all rising from this particular set of stairs. Nevertheless, she followed him onward. They moved quickly, almost running, until they came to an iron door that Gwyn knew led into a smaller, lesser-used stair that spiraled downward all the way to the lowest level of the Temple. “This stair will be safe,” Brother Colla said as he pushed open the door. “It will bring us to the bottom level, below the fire. Come!”

Strange that this door isn’t barred like it usually is, Gwyn thought. Brother Colla grabbed a torch from the wall-sconce outside the door, for that would be their only light in this stair. He allowed a slower pace now, and they walked carefully down the stairs. As Gwyn followed him, something stirred in her mind, some small patch of doubt about something she could not bring into sharp focus. She followed Brother Colla down the tightly winding stair, which did in fact lead all the way down to the Temple cellar, where they were met by the two men Colla had accompanied to Bedwyn. The clerics – Brothers Wil and Haddon, Gwyn remembered – had packs on their shoulders.

“Come,” Brother Colla said. “We must get out of the Temple!”

Now Gwyn stopped and stared at the men. There was no smoke down here, and there were no shouts; further, the way Colla was gesturing was down a corridor she knew did not lead to the main gate but to one of the tunnels out of the Temple.

“No,” Gwyn said, backing away. “This is not right—”

“My Lady, surely you already suspect what is the case,” Brother Colla said. “You know why the fire was set. Someone wishes to strike at the Welcomer – perhaps the very person you saw beneath your window. There are dark folk about in Prydein these days, folk who would do anything they could to earn favor with certain powers. I would count myself no servant of Dona if I did not pledge you my service. We are taking you to safety.”

Gwyn shook her head. “Father Terryn would not allow harm to come to me,” she said.

“He already has,” Colla said. “Think, Lady Welcomer. He only allowed two guards to be posted outside your door, guards who were easily overcome. He did not believe in you from the start. Terryn may not be as strong a man as you believe.”

Gwyn shook her head again. This could not be true. Father Terryn had doubted her in the beginning, when they had met at Briston, but not since then. And certainly not now. His doubts in the beginning, when she had met him in that tavern in Briston, had been natural doubts, understandable ones…

And how would this cleric from a tiny village far to the north know any of that?

Gwyn spun and bolted for the stair. She might have made it, had the stair been lit by more than a single torch, but after the first few steps she could not see anything ahead of her, and the constant twisting of the stair combined with the lack of light made her stumble and fall. Seconds later she felt Brother Colla’s hand fasten around her ankle, in a grip that was deceptively strong.

“No, My Lady,” he said. “I cannot allow you to go back up there and into danger. You must come with me. Would you perish in the blaze, burned until your hair was gone and your fair skin was blackened like a lamb left too long on the spit?” Reasonable words, but spoken in nothing resembling a reasonable tone. Colla shifted his grip to her arm and pulled her upright. He was much stronger than she had given him credit for, and in the torchlight his eyes took on a malevolence that she had not seen in any eyes since Maxen’s, that night in the Scarlet King’s fortress. When Sir Baigent had maimed him after he had decided to maim her… “Come now, My Lady. Your escort awaits.”

He did not wait for a reply; he simply fastened his fingers around her wrist and pulled her down the stairs behind him, roughly now, with no pretense toward being gentle. His grip was frighteningly strong, and his fingers were chill. Gwyn’s mind flashed back to her last night on Tintagel, when another cleric had taken her against her will, but that had turned out to be a case of poor planning by Brother Llyad, not malice. Gwyn saw little reason to suspect that this abduction would be the same as that. She tried to resist, to pull away from Colla, but she could not loosen his grip in the slightest degree. He was too strong.

“You are no Priest of Dona at all,” she said. He only laughed.

Now she could hear shouts echoing from up above them, in the stair. They were being followed, which was confirmed when Brother Colla calmly picked up his pace, nearly pulling her off her feet entirely before they again reached the bottom.

“We are here!” Gwyn screamed. “Help me! Help—” That was all she could get out before Colla stuffed a wad of cloth into her mouth, nearly choking her before she could gasp in a snatch of breath through her nose. The scrap tasted horribly unpleasant, but that was the least of Gwyn’s concerns now.

“They come,” said Brother Wil as he bound Gwyn’s hands with a length of cord.

“It won’t matter,” Colla replied. “Bring her.”

Haddon and Wil closed in on either side of her, each dragging her along by an arm as Colla led the way to the entrance to the tunnels. Gwyn nearly wretched, and her eyes filled with tears, when she saw the two Adepts lying there on the cold stone floor, with their necks twisted into impossible angles. Two poor students, serving their duties to the Goddess, now cruelly murdered by these pretenders who had so easily worked their way into the trust of the Temple through subterfuge. How stupid they had been! How foolish, to take these men at their word as soon as they so much as entered the city!

Colla strode past the dead students and shoved open the door to the tunnel beyond, and the two false priests to her either side brought Gwyn through and into the darkness. Colla shoved the door shut behind them, and the iron clang echoed terribly through the dark passage.

“There is no way to bar the door from this side,” Wil remarked.

“You worry too much,” Colla replied.

They strode very quickly now, quickly and confidently, undaunted and undeterred in the slightest by Gwyn’s struggles. Their footsteps echoed on the cold stone, and the only light came from the torch in Colla’s hand. Save your strength, Gwyn told herself. You will need it before long. She wondered just who these men really were…but more than that, she wondered if she would get the opportunity to escape.

They arrived at the junction of all six tunnels. Gwyn recognized the one they now turned and followed: the one that Gwyn knew led to the docks on the Test. This was also the longest of the tunnels, and Gwyn began to falter a bit as she found herself unable to quite keep the same pace as the two men who dragged her between them. She stumbled several times, and once she actually fell to the floor and was dragged back to her feet before she could push herself up on her own. What do they want with me? she wondered, over and over again until the tunnel finally sloped sharply upward again and they came to the end, a great metal gate that led into a dark alley amidst the Bedwyn docks. Here Colla stopped and threw dark cloaks over each of them – they had prepared, they had planned this well – and led them out, into the night.

The outside air was slightly warmer than that of the tunnel, and redolent of water and earth. Somewhere behind them, within the city, Gwyn could hear the clanging of alarm bells, for the fire in the Temple – a distraction first for these men to abduct her from the Temple, and now for them to get her out of Bedwyn entirely.

Her captors dragged her out of the alley, across the street that should have been choked with wagons both empty and laden but was now devoid of traffic entirely, and out onto one of the docks. Here Colla glanced once at the city walls that overlooked the docks, and seeing no one he turned back to the river. Then he lifted his torch and swung it high over his head, describing two great arcs before tossing it into the swirling eddies of the Test where it vanished with a splash and a hiss. As Gwyn watched, another light appeared from across the river – someone over there had struck another torch and waved it in similar fashion before also extinguishing it. Then they waited. And waited.

“This is taking too long,” hissed Wil.

“We have little choice,” Colla said.

“It won’t take the City Guard long to figure out where we’ve gone! We should have set a bigger fire!”

“It will take them long enough,” Colla replied. “They do not patrol the docks as much now, and in any event they will instead suspect that we fled to the entrance beyond the gates. It will take them quite long, indeed, before they think that we made our escape this way.”

“And what of the men on the walls?”

“They will think us starving wretches out to pluck dead fish from the water, if they see us at all,” Colla said. “Silence, now.”

And they waited for a time, in agonizing silence on the docks of the river Test. Gwyn prayed for someone, anyone, to come along, but of course no one did aside from some detestable wretch who shuffled by without paying them any mind whatsoever. Gwyn tried to control her shivering. After what seemed like a terribly brief while, during which not one member of the City Guard came along the walls to see them, a wooden boat emerged from the darkness, angling straight toward them. The two men aboard, one rowing and one at the tiller, might have been twins, so similar was their look: they were both huge men with thick torsos, arms, legs and necks; both wore filthy clothes and cloaks, and both looked like hard, hard men. They pulled up alongside the dock where one of the men tossed a rope up and over one of the pilings.

“Come, My Lady,” Colla said. “Our transport awaits.”

They brought her forward to the end of the dock. Gwyn briefly considered attempting another break for freedom, but she rejected the idea just as quickly, for she would not be able to shout for help with this rag stuffed in her mouth, nor would she be able to reopen the door to the tunnels beneath the city with her wrists bound. Colla started to lower himself down into the boat.

“Stop,” the man at the tiller said. “Payment first.”

Colla stared at the man. “You are late,” he said.

The man shrugged and spat into the water. “If you think you can get this boat across this water by yourself, with those weakling arms of yours, you’re welcome to make the attempt. The Test is a harder river than she looks.” The oarsman grunted in agreement.

Colla sighed and tossed the man a bag of coins. Then he climbed down into the boat, where he stood and received Gwyn as Wil and Haddon handed her down to him as if she were no more than a sack of grain. She sat on the floor of the boat, just in front of the tillerman, leaning up against one of the thwarts. Then the two other false priests descended into the boat, and the oarsman grabbed the rope and thus cast them loose from the dock. At once Gwyn felt the boat bob with the current, and the two men took up the oars and tiller again, guiding the boat hard and fast out of the eddies of the Bedwyn harbor and toward the main channel of the Test. The lights and noises of the city receded behind her, and her heart filled with despair. Had her arms been free, she might well have thrown herself into the water and tried to swim for the shore, but she doubted she could survive the frigid water. Then she felt the sudden shift in the boat’s position as they entered the main current, and the oarsman now worked even harder to keep the prow angled upstream for the ferrying motion across the water. There was no sound except for their hard breaths as they rowed, and the occasional thump as a chunk of ice or wood bumped up against the side of the craft.

Out here, in the middle of the river Test on a moonless night, it was very cold and became even colder when the breeze freshened from the north. Gwyn shivered and tried to shrug her cloak up about her shoulders higher, with limited success. The men surrounding her were obviously likewise cold, pulling their own cloaks on very tightly, but none of them spared a single thought for Gwyn’s comfort, which struck her as an ill omen. As if you have any more need for ill omens, she thought.

Eventually Gwyn felt the current shift again, and she realized that they had arrived at the shallows on the opposite side. There was the grating noise of gravel rubbing against the hull, and the boat lurched a bit as the keel ran aground in the muddy bank. The oarsman in front jumped out and, taking up the rope, pulled the boat even further aground, and then Colla disembarked as well. Will and Haddon rose and pulled Gywn with them as they climbed out on to the bank. The ground here was both soft and hard, being comprised of mud that had been firmed by days of cold and nights of frost, and the only light came from the now-distant city that lay across the river. Gwyn saw that even with the men’s strong rowing, they had been pushed a fair distance downstream.

“Where are the horses?” Colla asked.

“There,” said the tillerman, pointing to a tree that could just barely be made out in the darkness where three horses stood tied to the trunk.

Colla frowned. “Those are the boniest nags you could find, I see.”

The man spat. “I told you that more gold might produce better horses.”

“So you did.”

The oarsman cleared his throat, and his friend shrugged. “Well, if there’s no more need for us, we should be on our way.”

“Yes, you should,” said Colla, and with that he produced a knife from his belt and in one swift, sudden stroke plunged it into the man’s exposed neck. Gwyn gasped, choking as she did so for the rag was still stuffed deep in her mouth. The oarsman sputtered as dark blood fountained from his neck, and his hands reflexively groped at the wound. The sounds he made were wordless and horrible. The other oarsman stood in the boat and brandished a club, but as soon as he reached his feet something whistled past Gwyn’s ear. She did not need to look to know that it was a dart, much like one of the Druids’. The other oarsman’s hand shot to his neck, and he staggered forward before dropping to his knees. Beside Gwyn, Haddon put the blowtube back in his pouch.

“Now, my fine boatmen, I hope you will enjoy your final voyage on the Test,” said Colla as he shoved the man he’d stabbed back into the boat, along with the man who was dying as the poison from the dart worked its way through his body. Colla bent to retake his bag of coins, and then with Wil’s help shoved the boat out into the water where the current took hold of it and pulled it away, down eventually to Bornmuth and the sea. Then Colla and Wil pulled Gwyn to the waiting horses.

“You no longer need this,” Colla said as he pulled the rag from Gwyn’s mouth. She gasped and then took in a deep breath. “We have nothing to fear by you screaming. There is no one to hear you.”

He stood back as Haddon and Wil shoved her up onto one of the horses while Colla tied this animal’s saddle to his own. They would lead her, then, for which Gwyn was somewhat thankful; that was better than being struck unconscious and carried like so much chattel slung on a horse’s back. But they also did not blindfold her, which told her that these men had little fear of her marking the way. Clearly this was meant to be a journey from which she would not be returning. Finally the three men mounted their horses, and then they rode away to the north.

As the night went on, they followed the side of the Test fairly closely, until dawn neared and they came to the first town north of Bedwyn along the river. This, Gwyn remembered from the maps, was a small farming and fishing village called Caer Navvin. It was a small town, not only smaller than Bedwyn but smaller also than Briston had been, and it had avoided being sacked by Cwerith when the Traitor King had marched on Bedwyn by virtue of not having a bridge across the Test. Strangely, the men did not put the rag back into Gwyn’s mouth, even though it looked like they were riding straight into the middle of the town. Surely they would worry about her speaking to someone they saw, or screaming, or doing anything to raise a ruckus that might give her chance to escape, but they did nothing to forestall any such action – except for when Gwyn glanced over at Haddon and saw his eyes fixed on hers and the blowtube in his hand, dart at the ready. So that was to be the way of it.

They approached the wooden wall that surrounded the town, at which point Colla went right up to the gate and pounded on it, twice. The small shutter in the middle of the gate popped open, and the man within peered through and then stuck out his hand, into which Colla put the same bag of coins from before. Gwyn shook her head as she wondered just how many passages would be bought with this same set of coins. With a terrific creak of iron hinges, the gate swung open, allowing them entry. In they rode, with Gwyn following Colla and Wil, and with Haddon directly behind her. The gatekeeper glanced at her, and laughed.

“So this is your game, eh?” he said. “Nabbing the Welcomer herself? Now that I know what you’re up to, I am thinking of upping my price.”

“And you might find that my knife on your throat is more cheaply bought that that,” Colla said.

The gatekeeper grunted as he grabbed a hooded lamp, hooked it to the end of a pole, and gestured for them to follow him. He led them through deserted streets until they came to an equally deserted livery which was occupied by a single wagon hitched to a team of mules. Here the false priests dismounted and forced Gwyn to do the same. Gwyn numbly went along with them, obediently climbing into the back of the wagon while Haddon and Wil saw to the mule team and while Colla gave the gatekeeper more money, leaving him alive. Minutes later they were trundling north again, looking like poor farmers, with Caer Navvin behind them.

Gwyn lay in the wagon, helpless and afraid and exhausted. She had at first expected them to kill the gatekeeper, but of course his presence would be missed far more in Caer Navvin than those two boatmen anywhere else, and obviously they did not mean to risk word of a murder in that small village reaching Bedwyn when the city was already frantic with the disappearance of the Welcomer. Colla was playing this part well. As the wagon bumped along the pitted and rutted roads, neither Haddon nor Wil gave Gwyn a second glance. Colla, though, turned toward her from his seat.

“You should rest, My Lady Welcomer,” he said. “This journey will be long.”

Gwyn stared at him, wondering if he really thought she would be able to sleep just now, given that she was the captive of a trio of murderers. It turned out that he believed no such thing, because he reached into his pocket, and drew forth a small pouch whose contents – some kind of powder – he emptied into his palm and then blew into her face. She coughed as she involuntarily breathed the powder in, and she recognized the smell: it was dried drowsingstem, a kind of mushroom used in healing for its ability to put a person into a very long sleep. She resisted, uselessly, and in seconds she had fallen into a long and dreamless slumber.

The Finest Deed, Chapter Two

2007-07-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

It was dawn at Bedwyn, and like so many dawns of late, it was marked not by the brilliance of the rising sun but by a mere slackening of darkness to gray. At a time when boats laden with goods and grain and cattle and meat should have been visible plying the River Test in both directions from where a young woman once from Lyonesse stood overlooking the waters, now only occasional chunks of ice floated by the battlements of Bedwyn, on their way to the sea.

Lady Gwynwhyfar the Welcomer, as she was called by those who did not know her – she was “Gwyn” to those who did – shivered, despite her thick cloak and furs. Even though it was colder each day, these walls were the only place where Gwyn could truly enjoy the clean air and the distance from the city's noise. Even if the scents of the city were not particularly pleasing these days, it was still a nice change from the constant burning of ritual incense in the Temple. As for the sounds of the city, Gwyn found that she needed them. The silence of the Temple was too unnatural to her ears – ears which had grown up with the ever-present sound of wind and the pounding waves.

The first snow had fallen a week ago, and had taken three days to melt. The first snow…and yet, the summer that had just passed had not been summer at all, but really a snowless winter. Gwyn traced with her eye the lines of fields that should have been seeing harvest just now, and instead were dry and dead – and those fields to the immediate north of the city, which had been ruined in the great battle just two months ago. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized how much time she had spent standing walking the walls. Soon she would eat, which was something she could not say for the thousands who had come to Bedwyn seeking shelter in the face of war. Food had become a luxury, even here in Bedwyn – now Prydein's richest city, following the destruction of Londia by King Duncan of Caledonia.

Gwyn thought back to the days before any of this had happened…before Brother Llyad had returned to Tintagel, before she had learned of her heritage, before she had met Lord Matholyn, Sir Baigent, Estren of the Nine Bards, and the Finders. She recalled the days when she had been deeply involved in studies she would now might never finish, and she remembered noticing that spring was colder than usual. She recalled how the wildflowers had been slow to bloom, how the mushrooms in the caves had suffered in the cold, how the storms had come more frequently and fiercely from the sea. But not a one of her fellow clerics of Tintagel – neither Priest nor Priestess nor mere Adept – had suspected that the slow spring had actually been the beginning of an unending winter. None had seen the signs of the darkness that was mustering its power, even as it did so. Of course, now she could look back and see the things she should have seen all along for what they were, but as Agonnar the Elder had written, “Memory’s light shines brightest, but the price that must be paid for such a brilliant beam is that it only shines on where one has already walked.”

Gwyn heard footsteps behind her, and turned to see Davin ap Danach, Steward of Bedwyn, limping toward her. She had come to like this gruff man immensely in the short time she’d known him, not least because he stubbornly refused to allow his half-century old maiming to dissuade him from mounting the city walls or anything else. This was a man who would do well on Tintagel. “Are you well, My Lady?” he asked. “You should not be awake this early.”

“Well enough,” Gwyn replied, smiling. “I am always up this early, especially here. You know this city is infernally quiet.”

“Quiet?” Davin whistled. “This is a city! You could fit a hundred Tintagels within our walls!”

Gwyn chuckled. “Yes, I suppose you could,” she agreed. “But you still wouldn’t have the sea.”

“Bah!” Davin spat. He had never liked the sea, or water in general. Boats made him ill, and he preferred fighting on solid ground. “At least in Bedwyn it doesn’t smell like salt all the time, and we eat more than fish.”

Gwyn smiled again. On Tintagel they did eat a lot of fish. Of course, they had eaten a great deal of fish in Bedwyn, too, since she had come here – the rivers had not lost their bounty yet, as had the fields – but Davin was right. The air hear smelled of earth, not salt. Gwyn had to remind herself what the sea smelled like, and suddenly she sighed, wanting to see her home once again. “Do you see anything interesting this morning? Anything unusual?”

“Nothing unusual,” Gwyn said. The docks below were mostly abandoned, except for the beggars and derelicts who wandered about such places, looking for any scrap they could find, be it food or cloth or perhaps even a coin that someone had dropped. They all looked the same, man and woman alike: frames bent from so many years of stooping to pore over the dead and soon-to-be. One of these people was not quite so bent, but looked far more ancient than any of the others with his wispy white hair and long beard, and Gwyn’s eye followed this one as he made his way along the docks. Then he chanced to look up and meet her gaze, and something in his eyes – something other than the haunted and hungry look she saw so often these days – made her shudder. She turned away and faced Davin. “Is there any word?” she asked.

“Nothing yet today,” Davin said. “Although it is early, and thus to be expected. I would be very surprised if we don’t have a rider before the sun goes down.”

Gwyn nodded. A month had past since the King had taken the bulk of his army north and east, seeking a better place to establish a base from which he would confront King Cwerith and King Duncan – the “Traitor Kings”. In the wake of the Battle of Bedwyn, King Arthur had pursued Cwerith, diverting him even farther north and keeping him from moving to an easy rendezvous with Duncan, but then he had fallen back, not wishing to overextend his own force even as its ranks were swelled by people who had come from far across the land to fight for the Promised King. Even now, more and more came to Bedwyn, though the King himself had led his march northward. And they had come not just to see King Arthur, but to see the Welcomer who had brought him back.

They had come, partly, to see her.

“The presentation is in one hour,” Davin said. “You should get ready.”

Gwyn nodded. In the days just after she had fulfilled her duty as the Welcomer, she had wondered what her role would be in the Prydein to follow. Would she return to Tintagel and complete her studies, or would she serve some other role. She had even wondered, although she would never say so out loud, if she was to have the same role as the Gwynwhyfar the King had known in the time before: if she was to be his Queen. Nothing had been said of that by the King or by anyone else, and she was not about to bring up the possibility herself.

Davin escorted her back to the Gatehouse, where he led her down into the tunnels beneath the city. Brother Malcolm had told her how he had been taken through these very tunnels himself, when he had been escorted outside the walls to help the healers during the Battle, and for that reason she shuddered every time she walked through them – and also because the tunnels reminded her of the passages on Tintagel that led from the Sanctuary down to the Lord Priest’s chambers. These passages were much longer, though, and they seemed to delve much deeper.

They came to a junction of five such passages, each coming from a different place in the city, and turned into the one that led up to the Temple. Finally they arrived at that heavy door, where Davin lit the candle that sat in a holder beside the portal. Then he rang the nearby bell, and almost immediately the door swung inward, to reveal the two Adepts who stood sentry within.

“Greetings, Lord Davin,” said one of the Adepts. “Be welcome, Lady Welcomer.”

“Greetings,” Davin replied.

“Thank you, Davin,” she said.

“I am at your service, My Lady,” Davin replied. “May you walk in Dona’s light.” He bowed, and then he turned to leave. Even as Steward of Bedwyn, Davin was not allowed into this particular door; it led to places meant only for members of Dona’s Priesthood. Gwyn stepped inside, and the Adepts pushed the door shut and barred it. Then one of them – a boy named Essym, if Gwyn remembered correctly – escorted her through the winding hallways of the circular Temple, tracing a path that Gwyn had only in the last few days begun to piece together, so convoluted was the interior of this particular building. Gwyn had always been gifted with maps and direction, but the spiraling about of these passages flummoxed her, and she was always glad for the guidance.

Leading her up two sets of stairs, into the public level and then past it onto the private, Essym brought her to the comfortable chamber that had almost now become her home. This chamber was slightly larger than the one in which she had lived on Tintagel, and she did not have to share this one with another Adept, even one who was her best friend, as Dana was. Ah, Dana, Gwyn thought. If you could see what has become of me, you would laugh…you alone, of everyone. She would, too. Gwyn knew that much. Dana knew her too well to be overly impressed with her trappings as the Welcomer. She would especially laugh at the two Adepts who had been appointed as her personal attendants. “You have your own attendants?” she would say. “You, who just weeks ago were helping Sister Eylwen sweep out the stables!” Here she was met by Llara and Gerdeddwy, those very attendants, who helped her don her ceremonial robes for the presentation, even though the robes were not particularly complicated and by now Gwyn could put them on herself in half the time it took these two to help her.
Also awaiting her was the one person for whom Gwyn had been able to secure permission to enter this place. “You look tired,” said Gareth of the Finders.

“I am,” Gwyn replied as she picked at the sleeves of her gown. This was the eleventh time she had attended one of these presentations since King Arthur had come to Bedwyn, and the third one this week and still she felt absurd doing this. It was the duty of...a Queen, a Princess, or even a Lord Priestess. Not a onetime Adept who had still not taken the Trials, and who had done nothing but play a ceremonial role since the completion of her mission to the Giants’ Dance. “I awoke too early this morning.”

“You have awoken too early every morning,” Gareth said as she handed Gwyn a cup of wine mixed with water before settling into a chair. “This life does not suit you.”

“Should it?” Gwyn said as she felt an old anger rising. Not so old an anger, actually – but one still sharp when she allowed it to show, which was not very often. It was the anger of inaction. She sipped from the cup, enjoying the cold liquid even though she didn’t normally care for diluted wine.

“No,” said Gareth. “Being put on display for the people of Prydein would not suit me, either. I share your boredom. We have been here too long, I think.”

Gwyn stopped what she was doing and looked at her friend. Gareth had been the ally she and her companions had so desperately needed on their journey to the Giants’ Dance, and she had been the one to remain a month ago when all the others had left with King Arthur to take the war north, including even Estren and Drudwas, since it was the duty of the Nine Bards – those few who were left – to be where the history of Prydein was bring shaped. The Druids too had gone north, for reasons of their own, taking Brother Llyad with them. Of Gwyn’s companions, only Gareth and the Finders had remained near Bedwyn.

“Are you thinking of leaving?” Gwyn asked.

“It is not in the nature of the Finders to remain still for so long,” Gareth said. “We will not find Seren Goleuad by sitting in one place. It is only by seeking that one finds, and we have done far too little seeking lately.” She sighed. “But then, I doubt very much if the Son is to be found while the land is being consumed by this war.”

Gwyn nodded, but said nothing. As deeply as she had come to love Gareth and her people in the last two months, she still found their quest for the lost son of Dona and the Sun difficult to understand. Their beliefs were not reflected by any of the texts she had ever studied in her preparation to enter Dona’s Priesthood, and the idea of a union between the Sun and Moon was not one that had ever found favor amongst the learned clerics of Prydein. Even so, Gwyn had wondered occasionally when the Finders’ nature as a wandering people would win out over their current settlement in the hills just east of the city. Now it appeared that it might be coming to pass. “How soon would you be leaving?”

Gareth shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “This isn’t a good time for the Finders, anymore than it is a good time for anyone else. We are skilled at living off the land, but even the skills we have honed over our years of seeking are being taxed now. And this is a time of war…” She trailed off for a moment, and then suddenly shook her head again. “This is idle talk, of course. I am simply growing uneasy after living for two months so near a city, and actually being in one. The Finders do not normally spend much time within city walls, but that is the way of it now. Our die is cast, and it cannot be unthrown. Forgive my ramblings.”

Gwyn smiled mischievously. “Haven’t I done just that, too many times?”

Gareth scowled, and changed the subject. “What news from the King?”

“None,” Gwyn said. “Although Davin does expect a rider today, though. I suppose that is something.”

“We are too much in the dark here,” Gareth said. “How can we help the King in his war if he will not tell us what is going on? We have waited too long to hear. For all we know, he could be marching into battle even as we speak.”

Gwyn shuddered. She preferred not to consider that possibility. The thought of all those men she knew, riding directly into battle, filled her with fear and disquiet – especially as they would be riding to war against the combined forces of both Cwerith and Duncan, and this time they would not be able to surprise them with a sudden attack by riding through the Giants’ Dance and striking from behind. The next battles would be on single fields, for all to see.

“Ach!” Gareth swallowed the rest of her wine in a single gulp. “I hate thinking of such matters. There is a reason we Finders go to war so rarely: we are bad at it.” She drained her own cup. “I thought I saw some anger there, a moment ago. You really are tired of this, aren’t you?”

“Being put on display, almost as a thing?” Gwyn said. “To be held up for the people to stare at, without any ability to lead the rituals, or even to say anything at all? To have nothing at all to do, even if it is studying the Oracles until my eyes hurt and my back feels like it will never move again? No, I’m not tired of that at all.” She sat down on her bed and glowered at Gareth, who burst out laughing.

“I’m sorry, My Lady,” Gareth said. “Scowling does not become you.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Gwyn replied. “And yet, I still have absolutely nothing to do. I rise in the morning, I walk the city walls just to get a breath of fresh air that isn’t scented with ritual perfumes, I attend ceremonies and sit in with the ladies and meditate and…that’s all. That’s what I have done for two months.”

“You weren’t this confident, just two months ago,” Gareth said.

Gwyn smiled. “There are many things that I wasn’t, two months ago.” She finished her own cup of wine. “I once asked you what place I would have, since I was no longer the Welcomer. You didn’t have an answer then. No one does, still.”

“King Arthur may have an answer to that,” Gareth said. “Have you ever asked him?”

Gwyn shook her head. King Arthur was…she could not say, really, what King Arthur was. She had no idea what she saw when she looked into his eyes. She had no idea what it was that he felt, what it was that he thought, what it was that moved him and stirred his soul. She had spent that first month at his side, always at his side, and yet he said as little to her as he did to anyone else. He was a total mystery, and she had actually felt some relief when he had led the armies north. In truth, she missed Sir Baigent and Brother Malcolm far more. Perhaps, though, the King should be a mystery. How could she claim understanding of a man who had spent centuries asleep on the magical isle of Avalon, awaiting his return to a land where all of the people he had once known would be long dead?

And then there was the Book of the Finders.

The book they had discovered at some point in their travels was the most complete version of the story of King Arthur’s earlier reign ever found. In the pages of that book, Arthur’s onetime Queen had been named: Gwynwhyfar. And the way he had recoiled when she had told him her name…it was as if he'd seen in her a connection to a memory and a sadness that he wanted so dearly to forget. All of that conspired to create a barrier between herself and King Arthur that she was not sure she could surmount.

There came a knocking at the door then, and it swung open to admit two Adepts, followed by Father Terryn himself. Terryn was the Lord Priest of Bedwyn, and as such he presided over all of the ceremonies that took place in the great Sanctuary – like the one that was going to take place now. “It is time, My Lady,” Father Terryn said. “The people are gathered.”

Gwyn sighed. “Then let us go,” she said, and she followed him out into the hallways. Gareth came along as well, and they walked down to the main floor. The halls now became much wider, and the walls were adorned with occasional tapestries and painted murals depicting legendary events from Dona’s lore. Gwyn found these paintings fascinating; they had nothing like them on Tintagel. One of them, in particular, always captivated her when she came to stand before it. It depicted the very first days following the Cataclysm, as three figures – a man, a woman, and a child, clothed in mere tatters and their flesh blackened by soot – emerged from a cavern onto a scorched wasteland, the trees reduced to blackened stumps, the water of a nearby stream gray with ash, and the skies dank and cloud-covered. What struck Gwyn most about this particular painting was two things: first, the features of the three figures in the picture, which were ever-so-slightly touched with the look of the Fair; and second, the orange coloring that tinged the painting’s outer regions, depicting a fire that had not yet gone out, far at sea. It was surely a trick of the light, but each time she came on the painting she thought she could see three spots of gold within the far-flung orange of the distant flames. Three spots of gold, perhaps for the three Golden Ships on which the Fair Folk had come to Prydein from their home which had been swallowed by a sea driven to anger by Dona’s Dark Brother. This painting was to Gwyn both a reminder of the danger they faced, and a powerful emblem of hope in the face of that danger – for even the fires of the Cataclysm had not been enough to scour the earth clean. Life continued, and the land had been rebuilt. Surely that meant for something.

There was no time just now to look on these paintings, though. Father Terryn brought Gwyn into the Great Hall, which led in turn to the largest of the Temple’s four Sanctuaries. This great circular chamber seemed to Gwyn almost as large as all of Tintagel itself, and as was usual for these ceremonies, it was filled with several hundred citizens of Prydein who had newly come to Bedwyn. Even in the chill of winter, so many bodies in one place warmed the air, even before Gwyn felt the heat of the ceremonial fire that burned in the hearth at the exact center of the cavernous room; and even as much incense and scented oils as were being used right now could not totally cover the scent of so many unbathed bodies. As they drew near the entrance to the Sanctuary, a line of twenty Priests and Priestesses emerged from a side alcove to precede them inside. They took up a hymn of thanks to the Goddess as Gwyn and Father Terryn crossed the threshold and made their way along the aisle toward the granite altarstone before the fire in the center. Once Gwyn might have been impressed at the size of that altarstone – but she had been inside the Giants’ Dance. Beside the memory of those titanic megaliths, this stone seemed as a mere pebble.

Upon their reaching the altarstone, the gathered worshipers all sank to their knees. There were no seats or benches in this place; all ceremonies were either held standing or kneeling. It had been thus in Tintagel’s Sanctuary as well, although Gwyn had to get used to the fact that rites were not held outside here. There was not enough room, and they could not require everyone to travel the mile or two beyond the gates to make it so. And that did not take into account the fact of war.

Father Terryn held his staff aloft as the singing clerics reached the high point of their hymn, and then he slowly dipped its tip into the fire. Gwyn had seen this many times now, and she did not watch as the staff became enveloped in fire even though its wood did not actually burn; nor did she watch as the flame at the end of the staff turned from the familiar bright yellow of normal flame to the haunting silver of moonlight. She stood there, calmly, passively, gazing upon the downturned faces before her. All of them, ordinary people who had come from places torn by war or devastated by the winter that had never ended. All of them looking for hope, and who had come now to seek it in her.

“Be welcome in this place, people of Prydein!” Father Terryn did not pitch his voice to carry; he didn’t need to. The Sanctuary was worked in such a shape, with its stone walls perfectly aligned, to magnify and reflect his voice around the great chamber so that even the person farthest away behind him could discern his words as if he spoke into their ears alone. The Sanctuary was, in many ways, a marvel. “Come now into the Goddess’s light, and witness what she has done for her followers. Come and bear witness to the fulfillment of prophecy set down centuries ago, passed first as songs sung by the night’s fire, and then written down a hundred years ago by Ryannon of Tintagel. Hear now her words:

“All things come and pass again, even the dark; but in the end there shall finally come a time of greatest Dark. And the Dark shall drive the Light from the land, the seas will fill with ice and fire, and the fruitful land shall stand in the midst of winter even as the longest days of summer dawn. The People in Hiding shall come forth, and many will be slain; the rivers will run with blood and the trees will suffer the tongues of fire. The finger of Darkness shall touch the earth itself, and death shall bloom like the flowers in spring.

“ ‘Then there shall be a King, and he shall lead the people against the Dark. Before the last of all endings the place that saw battle before shall see battle again, the Wolf shall summon the Dragon, and all will hail the Coming of the King. And the King will rule over a Kingdom of Summer, and those long Kingless will have a standard once more.

“ ‘And this King shall be welcomed by one mortal and Fairy-born, one who walks with the light of both worlds. As the King went into the West after his time before, look to the West for his Welcomer, and be glad of heart when she stands before you.”

He fell silent for just the briefest moment, allowing the words to die away. Then he spoke again, now most definitely pitching his voice to carry: “Behold Lady Gwynwhyfar the Welcomer!”

Now the eyes of all the people gathered in that Sanctuary lifted, and they all focused on her. Gwyn glanced from person to person, and yet their faces made little impression on her. By now they had all begun to look the same, whether man or woman, boy or girl, old and infirm or young and hale. And the expressions were all the same, too, with the same mixture of reverence and awe and disbelief and every other emotion Gwyn could think to name. Thankfully, she did not have to do anything, for the ceremony was not hers to lead. The other clerics began a new hymn, the Song of Thanks to Dona written by Varra of the Northern Forests, one of the oldest and most reverential of all the Goddess’s hymns. This song was known to everyone in Prydein, and one by one the assembled people lifted their voices to join the Priests and Priestesses. Finally Gwyn joined in as well for the final three verses, and at last she was escorted out of the great Sanctuary again by Father Terryn. The voices in the Sanctuary that were still raised in song still echoed through the corridors, giving Gwyn a haunting reminder of life on Tintagel. She had loved dearly to be in the library there, early in the morning, while the sworn Priests and Priestesses attended vespers in the Sanctuary below.

“I’m glad that is over,” Father Terryn said when they were out of earshot of anyone except his and her personal attendants. “It would be easier if we simply paid some artisan to carve your likeness from oak or stone, and be done with it.” Gwyn glanced at him, surprised to hear him say such a thing, and he shrugged. “Forgive me, child, but this sort of thing is grating upon me. The Welcomer you may be, but you are also a person, not an idol. The way you are looked upon troubles me.”

“I suppose it is mostly harmless,” Gwyn said.

“Perhaps,” Terryn replied. “And perhaps I am not truly worthy to decide such things. I did, after all, doubt you as the Welcomer in the first place. This war of ours is making me doubt my own judgment.”

“Father Terryn! Hold!”

They turned to see Amren, Captain of the City Guard, scrambling after them.

“What is it, Captain?”

“A rider,” Amren said. “News from the north!”

***

After changing from ceremonial robes into more useful garb, Gwyn and Gareth joined Father Terryn and Amren for the ride from the Temple to the Keep. Despite the bother of waiting for the guards to arrive to provide their official escort, and despite the way the crowds thronging the city streets mustered as they realized the Welcomer was passing among them, Gwyn was glad they weren’t merely using the tunnels to go to the Keep. “Sometimes,” Father Terryn had once said, “we have to appear where we can be seen. It gives the people pleasure to know that things are still the same, and that we are still here.” Gwyn enjoyed the air despite the cold, she had had enough of the cold and dank tunnels for this day, and the carriage in which they rode was mostly enclosed and private, enough so as to mostly shield her from the shouts and cheers of the crowds that ran to catch a glimpse of her. None could actually touch her, though – that much she knew. Amren’s City Guard was good, for which she was thankful. At one point, she thought she saw amongst the crowd the same white-haired beggar she had glimpsed upon the docks that morning, but the face was gone as quickly as she saw it, and all these hungry faces had long since begun to blend into one.

When they arrived at the Keep, they were brought quickly into the Duke’s Hall. Even now, Gwyn felt a bit of surprise as she walked across the floor of the stark and chill hall, where the only decoration remaining in evidence were the tile patterns inlaid in the floor and two windows of stained glass by Annlaw, the great glasswright who had created wonderful illustrated windows for the greatest citadels in Prydein during the reign of High King Prystyl – of which these two, now that Caer Camyrdin and Londia had both been destroyed, were the only remaining examples. The tapestries and paintings here had been removed to storage for safekeeping, as had the Duke’s throne, which Gwyn was told the Duke never used, anyway. Now the Hall was basically a large chamber, dominated by four stone pillars and torch-sconces and nothing much else. The dais at the end was empty, and Davin had made his own workspace off to one side, against the left wall as one entered. Here was his table, piled high with maps and papers, and several chairs. There was also the walking stick which Davin only used when his knee was too sore to go without. This was where Davin stood near the Duke’s vacant seat with four other men, three of whom were clearly Priests, who bowed before Father Terryn.

“May the Goddess bring us to your table under her shining light, Father,” one of them said. “My name is Colla. I come from the village of Caer Vaelle.” He looked at Father Terryn, who blinked and shook his head. “It lies in the mountains, very near the border of Caledonia,” Brother Colla went on. “These men – Brother Wil, and Brother Haddon – serve the Goddess is villages very near mine. We came south because we have heard of the Welcomer and the coming of the Promised King. Is this she?” He pointed to Gwyn, his eyes wide.

“It is,” Father Terryn said. “Her name is Gwynwhyfar of Lyonesse. But just now, we would rather hear your tidings. We have received little word of the war in recent days, and our patience grows thin.”

“Indeed,” said Davin, turning to the rider. “Have you men any particular news of the war?”

Brother Colla shook his head. “None that would come as any news at all to My Lord Steward, unfortunately. Only to tell you that the people in the far settlements, the smallest villages, are now suffering horribly. Starvation is rampant. The bounty of the streams and rivers is beginning to fade, the animals in the woods cannot be found, and of course the ground has yielded nothing in almost a year. I have said the Rites of Passing too many times as of late, and I fear that when at last I travel north again, it will be to find a dead village.”

Davin nodded slowly. “You are right, Brother,” he said. “That did not come as news. But, ill tidings are no easier to hear merely because they are expected.” He nodded to Father Terryn, who cleared his throat.

“Brothers, if you would go with my Adepts, they will see you to the Temple and the lodging therein. I must remain here. Lord Steward Davin and I have matters to discuss, and this rider’s tidings may not be for your ears, I am afraid.”

“We understand, Father,” said Brother Colla. He and the other two clerics bowed one final time, and then they exited the hall, following Terryn’s Adepts as he had indicated. When the doors had slammed shut again, they all turned to the rider.
“Very well then,” said Davin. “What word, Donaddan?”

Donaddan, the rider, nodded. “Thank you, My Lord,” he said. “I encountered those clerics half a day’s ride from here, and they said they were making their way to Bedwyn to pay tribute to the Welcomer. Thus I gave them escort on the last part of my own ride.”

“Understood,” Davin said. “Now, what of the King?”

“He is near Oxishdown,” Donaddan said. Gwyn searched her memory of all the maps she had studied, and she recalled almost immediately that Oxishdown was a fairly large city located four or five days north and slightly east of Bedwyn, at the western end of the great Vale of Cul Calladan. It was the last city that far inland, before the Wilder Country – the mountains and deep forests north of Cul Calladan that dominated the center of Prydein – began. All of the other large cities and towns north of that region, the few there were, were located either on the sea or very near it.

Davin’s eyebrows lifted, and he whistled. “He pushed Cwerith that far north?” Davin said.

“Aye,” Donaddan confirmed with a nod. “He has taken to encampment on a high hill, the largest encampment I have ever seen. In truth, it is like to be the largest encampment since the days of High King Prystyl. It is a good hill, large and clear with good distance visible in each direction. The King has named it ‘Badon Hill’, for a battle he once fought…before. We also know that King Cwerith and King Duncan have at last joined together, at Cul Calladan's eastern end. A full day’s march now separates King Arthur from the Traitor Kings.”

“Then there has been no battle?” Gwyn asked suddenly.

“Naught but a few skirmishes,” Donaddan replied. “Some blood has been spilt – companies of men found trying to circumvent Badon on their way to join Cwerith, bandits on the loose seeking to prey on the roads during war, and the like. Nothing yet. Nothing large. Nothing like Bedwyn or Caer Camyrdin.”

Gwyn let out a breath, unsure if she should find that news relieving or not. It meant, of course, that the men she knew up there were still alive…but to draw too much hope from that would be folly.

“How soon does the King expect battle?”

Donaddan waited a moment before replying. “I think,” he finally said, “that the King expects battle each day. He does not tell me.”

“Very well,” Davin said. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes, Lord Steward. I am bid by Sir Baigent ap Pelegaunt to give his personal greetings to the Lady Welcomer.”

Gwyn felt her cheeks go red, and she smiled in spite of herself. In truth, it was Sir Baigent, her former Champion, whose fate most concerned her. She admitted this to no one, of course, although she suspected that Gareth was not at all surprised to hear it, given the low breathing noise the other woman made such that only Gwyn could hear.

Davin turned to his table, the one he had placed against the wall after the Duke had left and which was now covered with maps and papers. He dug about for one map in particular. “Oxishdown,” he said. “Oxishdown…let me see…”

Gwyn recalled the maps and the tales of the Bards and in the Oracles and the Histories of that region. War in that part of Prydein would be difficult, and it was amazing that King Arthur had pushed the Traitor Kings so far.

“The King must be planning some kind of attack,” Davin said. “If he has pushed the Traitors back that far, he must be thinking to defeat them altogether in one great battle, and he is offering the same incentive as bait for Cwerith and Duncan.”

“What makes you say that?” Father Terryn asked.

“Because of the lay of the land up in that country, and because he has purposely pushed Cwerith as far from his home as possible. He is also offering himself. He knows that Cwerith views him as a pretender, and that Cwerith will want nothing more than to defeat him in battle and take the throne in a manner beyond questioning. The only vexing matter now is: Why is King Arthur waiting to attack?” He sighed. “Have you any other news, Donaddan?”

“Not from the King,” Donaddan replied. “But there is word from Duke Cunaddyr. He wishes for you to gather able-bodied men and form a protection force to keep the peace. He wrote the orders himself.” He reached into his pouch and pulled out a folded and sealed sheaf of parchment. “He told me to deliver these dispatches directly into your hand.”

“I’m sure he did.” Davin accepted the parchment, broke the seal, and scanned the contents. “Yes, I expected as much. I have already begun.” He dropped the parchment to his table, where it became just one more piece of parchment or paper among many. “The Duke is not so confident as is the King, apparently. He believes that there will be groups of bandits, common criminals trying to curry favor with Cwerith, by harassing Bedwyn and our commerce.” He scowled as he said that last word, and added, “Such as it is.” He glanced up at Amren. “A good thing that we have already started, eh?”

Amren laughed, but without much humor behind it. They had indeed been selecting the strongest looking men amongst the refugees who had been flocking to Bedwyn, and employing them in a kind of militia. It was generally little better than the ragtag group that had fought off the attackers at the Giants’ Dance, since all the truly able-bodied men were sent in companies northward to join the King’s army if they hadn’t gone there already, but as in all things it would have to do.

“Cunaddyr also authorizes me to restrict rationing further when that time comes,” Davin said with a sigh. “That may be sooner than he hopes.”

“I suspect that he knows that,” Father Terryn said. “It is probably as close to a certainty as we can have in these dark times.”

“Certainty is a luxury we have little enjoyed lately,” Davin agreed. He glanced at Amren, and Gwyn could not miss the foreboding in that look. “You may go now, Donaddan. Amren will see to your quarter for the night, and you shall have a fresh horse for your return ride in the morning.”

“Thank you, Lord Steward,” Donaddan said, and Amren escorted him out of the hall. When the doors had again slammed shut, Davin let out a heavy sigh and rubbed his forehead.

“What is it?” Gwyn asked.

"When the Promised King arrived, we all thought that victory would come quickly, that the Goddess would be restored, that the land would blossom again. And yet it was not so. My old bones can still tell that something is amiss in the land, and I begin to wonder if it will still be more than a single King to set right – even one sent to us by the Goddess herself."

Gwyn said nothing to this. There was nothing she could say, really. The same fear had been at work in her heart as well. Instead, she merely took her leave.

The sun-cast shadows were growing long as they rode back to the Temple. The days were becoming shorter. Soon true winter would come, and there had not even been a summer. Even though it had been little more than an hour since she had seen these faces, these people of Bedwyn, somehow they looked hungrier, wearier. And there was nothing she, as the Welcomer, could do about that.

The Finest Deed, Chapter One

2007-06-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

The tiny cottage door opened for the first time in so many centuries that no single history could reckon the years that had passed since the last time, and the lone occupant emerged into sunlight for the first time in a span of equal measure. He stretched his bones again and then leaned on his walking stick as he took in the morning air. The grass covering the cottage’s earthen walls was still green, the only green grass which could be found anywhere in the land the men now called “Prydein”. The branches of the willow tree before him were bare, however, as were the branches of every tree in the forest before him. He sighed and brushed a lock of white hair from his eye. Such a dark time, he mused, but then all times are dark. Darkness is ever ascendant, and now my power can only preserve a tiny patch of grass in the face of the entire realm. But perhaps I can do more than that after all....

He stopped at the well just beside the willow, and filled his waterskin there. Then he slung the skin around his neck, tightened his cloak, and took the first step forward, away from his home where the lore of the ages had been his study matter. He stopped, though, when he heard the familiar screech of a familiar crow behind him.

“No, I had not forgotten,” said the man as he turned back toward his home. The crow stood on the roof of the cottage, eyeing him. It extended its wings and flew to the man's outstretched wrist, where it fixed him with an angled stare. “We must go now,” the man said. “The time has come.”

With his other hand he reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of seed, which he fed to the ageless bird.

“Ah, old friend,” he said as the crow began snapping up the seed, “you sense my fear, don’t you? You know how difficult it is, and what must be sacrificed by those who would take on the deed. And you know, don’t you, all the things that must end before the deed can be done.” He sighed. “How sorry I feel for you, to have naught to attend but the ramblings of an old man. But now you must feel the air through your feathers again. Go and find him!”

And with that, the man released the crow into the air, where it vanished from sight into the gray sky above the forest, heading north. "And I shall find her," the man said, and struck out onto the path that led from his door and into the world of Men.

Then he swung south.

***

The window’s shutters rattled in deference to the unceasing wind that howled outside. The candle on Father Damogan’s table flickered suddenly and went out, extinguished by one of the particularly strong gusts that were not completely stopped by those shutters. Damogan, the Lord Priest of Tintagel, sighed as he straightened up from the book he’d been studying and glanced across the table at his assistant, who had fallen asleep on the table an hour before. Sister Dana, just two months past her Trials and induction into Dona’s Priestesshood, had been working with Father Damogan since Brother Malcolm had left just before those trials...along with Gwynwhyfar, who should have been a Sister now herself but was instead now enmeshed in the affairs of Prydein.

Dana had been Gwynwhyfar’s best friend, and probably would still be if and when she ever returned to Tintagel. That, of course, was not likely. The girl who had turned out to be half-Fairy, who had fulfilled Ryannon's prophecy of the Welcomer and who had brought King Arthur back from Avalon and then made it possible for him to traverse the great distance from the Giants’ Dance to Bedwyn in time to win the battle there against King Cwerith, would surely never again be a student or become a Priestess. Damogan had seen something special in the orphan girl from Lyonesse when Malcolm had brought her here those many years ago, although never in the most free of his dreams had he imagined just how special she would be.

Another powerful gust of wind actually caused the shutter to fly open with a loud bang, awakening Sister Dana with a start. “What is it?” she yelped, even as Father Damogan crossed the room to secure the shutter. Dana threw her arms across the table, to keep the papers and scraps of parchment from blowing away. Father Damogan returned to the table from the window, where he held his hand over the smoking candle and whispered a short incantation which sent a lick of flame down from his fingertips to the wick, relighting it. Glancing at Dana and noting her expression, he shrugged.

“That spell is an easy one,” he said.

“The storm is still raging,” she said. “I wonder if it will ever stop.”

“All things end, in time,” Damogan replied. “The only question is, whether they end for good or for ill.” He sighed. “Long may it be before this storm is spent, but I think that for tonight, we are. We have been working too hard on this, and you need rest if you are to lead the morning Vespers.”

Dana sighed, not wanting to be reminded of that. She’d been nervous enough about her first turn leading Vespers without Damogan speaking of it at every opportunity. She pushed herself up from the table. “Sleep well, Father,” she said. “It will be--”

She was interrupted by a furious pounding at the doors of Father Damogan’s chambers.

“Odd,” Damogan said. “No one should be bothering me this late. See to it, will you?”

Dana was already striding for the door, and when she opened it she found a young Adept standing there. He was terribly wet, he was shivering, and he was somewhat out of breath.

“Grufydd!” Dana exclaimed. “What is it?”

Father Damogan joined them, alarm in his eyes. Grufydd was Sister Moyra’s assistant, in the Chambers of Healing. He would only disturb the Lord Priest in his private chambers for a small set of reasons, none of them pleasant. “What is it, Gruffyd?” Damogam asked. “Is someone hurt?”

“Yes, Father,” Gruffydd replied.

“Can Brother Denys not handle it, in Brother Malcolm’s absence?”

“Father, it is Brother Malcolm.”

Dana felt suddenly ill, and she could see the color drain from Father Damogan’s face even in the dim candlelight of the anteroom. “Father, did you know--”

“No,” Damogan said. “I have received no word of his coming. That is unlike him; he would have sent a message of some kind. How could I not have foreseen it?”

Brother Malcolm had been gone from Tintagel for months -- since the very night Gwyn herself had been abducted by Brother Llyad (even though a letter in her own hand that had come afterward had absolved Llyad of guilt on that score). Malcolm had gone with Lord Matholyn and his men, and though he had sent word on his own several times, he had sent none at all that he was coming back.

“You must come quickly,” Gruffyd said. “Sister Moyra is unsure that Brother Malcolm will survive the night.”

Father Damogan grabbed his cloak and staff as Dana pulled on her own cloak and extinguished the candles. Then they followed Gruffyd out into the corridor and up the passage to the Sanctuary.

The Chamber of Healing had always filled Dana with a sense of mystery. Strange and powerful lore was at work here, but she had never been able to truly fathom it. Though Dana was at least familiar enough with the healing arts that she would not be utterly hopeless in the face of illness or injury, the greater part of the powers that Sister Moyra wielded against hurt and harm were as magic to her. As Gruffyd brought them through the outer chambers into the inner rooms, Dana wondered if she should even be coming along at all – surely this was not her place, even though she was no longer an Adept -- but Father Damogan did not dismiss her.

They came into the room where Sister Moyra stood over a bed, attending the sick person who lay there. A fire roared in the hearth, with a pot of boiling water hanging above it. The shelves sagged under the weight of jars of dried herbs, colored liquids, powders, mushrooms, and nearly every other medicine known and some that weren’t. Sister Moyra drew a square of cloth from the boiling pot, using a pair of metal tongs, and when it cooled enough for her to touch, she folded it and pressed it to the patient’s bare chest. Stepping closer, Dana gasped.

Brother Malcolm had never looked like this, in all the time she had known him. His body was limp and his flesh pallid, and there were both a large gash on the left side of his forehead and a deep wound, still oozing blood, in his left side, just below his ribs. His skin was covered with fine sweat, and his breath was shallow.

“How is he?” Father Damogan asked.

Sister Moyra grunted with displeasure. “That gash on his head isn’t nearly as bad as it looks,” she said. “Gruffyd here has worse when he tripped on wet stone and fell face-down in the stables. It’s the wound in his side that may send him to Annwn.”

“The wound is deep?”

Moyra shook her head. “It’s not how deep it is that worries me. It’s the poison that was on the blade.”

“Poison!” Dana gasped, and Father Damogan turned white for the second time. Poisoned weapons were the tools of brigands, bandits and other criminals. They weren’t even used on the fields of war, yet another part of the legacy of High King Prystyl.

“Has he awakened at all?” Damogan asked.

“Only for moments at a time,” Sister Moyra replied. “His fever is among the worst I have seen, and few of those have survived.” Sister Moyra was not one to soften unpleasant tidings. Dana brushed away a tear.

“Malcolm has always been strong,” Damogan said.

“He will need that strength,” Moyra said as she turned away to change the water in the pot. “I have given him an extract of goldspot. We shall see if that proves as strong an antivenom as the poison which now runs in his veins.”

“Goldspot!” Damogan exclaimed. “How did you come by goldspot? It doesn’t grow in our caves.” From this, Dana surmised that goldspot was a kind of mushroom, although she had never heard of it before.

“You are not the only one with secret knowledge, Damogan,” Moyra said. “I have studied the magic of toadstools for longer than you, and while you have no doubt relied on them for their scrying and knowledge-seeking abilities, I have concentrated on them as part of healing.”

“Of course,” Damogan said. Dana would have found his admission of ignorance on a particular topic surprising had it not come over Brother Malcolm’s weakening body. Then Malcolm drew an audible breath, and his body shifted slightly.

“What is it?” Dana asked as Moyra again drew near.

“It is one of his awakenings,” she said.

“Will he awaken enough to speak?” Father Damogan asked, but Sister Moyra gave no response. Instead she lifted the poultice closer to Malcolm’s nose, allowing him to breathe in its vapors. A second or two later, he drew another breath, sharper this time, and stirred again. His lips moved, although no sound that Dana could detect issued from them.

Father Damogan leaned very closely now, over Malcolm’s face, as the poisoned cleric mumbled. After too brief a time, Malcolm’s lips ceased moving and his body relaxed again as he slipped back into fevered sleep. Damogan sat back on the stool, looking very old in that moment.

“Did he say something?” Dana asked.

Father Damogan nodded. “Dark Druids, he said. Dark Druids.”

Dana shivered, suddenly fearful although she could not know what exactly that meant. Outside, the wind howled louder -- or perhaps it only seemed so.

***

On a field at the eastern end of the great vale of Cul Calladan, King Cwerith ap Cellamma sat atop his destrier, waiting as his trumpeters played the ceremonial call of the Kings of Caledonia, and then he waited for the trumpeters on the opposite side of the field to respond with the ceremonial call of Gwynedd. The banners above him snapped to and fro, blown by a cold and vigorous wind –- the only kind that blew in Prydein these days. His entire army was arrayed behind him, and across this great field, fifty paces away, waited that of his ally, King Duncan of Caledonia. About him was gathered the retinue that he had made in the last several months, consisting of lords who had sworn their allegiance to him, but none of them mattered so much as the man he now waited to meet.

“We’ve come far, Lord Varing,” Cwerith said to his steward, who stood beside him on his own horse.

“We have indeed, sire,” Lord Varing responded.

Cwerith nodded. This was indeed a proud moment, although it was not nearly as sweet as the moment that still awaited him, when he would assume his rightful place as High King of Prydein. And now he would have the strength to do just that, the strength that had eluded him at the Battle of Bedwyn. Gwynedd’s time had come, and all else was mere delay.

Cwerith’s herald stepped forward and shouted his greeting to the other side. “His Majesty, High King Cwerith ap Cellamma, greets the King of Caledonia in friendship! Will King Duncan of Caledonia come forth to parley?”

Cwerith sighed inwardly. In truth, he hated all these ceremonial trappings of Kingship. He found them boring, mere theater for the common folk that had little, if anything, to do with the actual wielding of power. What was important was not the sounding of trumpet calls and the parleys and the pomp of it all; what was important was the power. Cwerith did not crave the love of the people; he craved the power over them that only the High King could wield. But even so, he knew that these ceremonies and rituals were important to remind the people of that power. And thus he went through with it, even though he hated it, for he needed every honor and ceremony that was possible. Too many of the people of Prydein -- his subjects –- were flocking to the banner of this pretender, this...Arthur. Cwerith’s throat clenched as he even thought of the name. The warrior from beyond, sent by the weakening Goddess even as the Dark Brother worked to stop him…the warrior who now claimed to be the Promised King, but who couldn’t possibly be. This Arthur appealed to fools and charlatans and weaklings, not to the men who were the true strength of Prydein.

The true High King should not have to remind people of his Kingship.

Now Duncan’s herald was giving some long-winded reply. “We, the sons and princes of Caledonia, come now to align ourselves with the High King of Prydein! Not since the days long gone by, when King Maccon ruled the cold and hardy lands to the north, has there been such friendship and allegiance between the nations of Prydein and Caledonia. Now at last, the King of Caledonia proudly marches to battle against the enemies of the High King of Prydein. May the banner of Gwynedd long fly proudly above the cities of all our land, and may it long inspire the hearts of men....”

Get on with it, Cwerith thought. His horse, evidently of like mind, stamped the ground and snorted haughtily. Cwerith glanced around at the new lords and allies in his retinue – Gaddamar, who had been first; Lord Paleri of the central wood; and others whose names he could barely recall even now that they had ridden beside him for more than a month. He liked these men very little, and trusted them even less. Sworn allies to a King are as the dandelions in the spring, the saying went, but his truest friends number fewer than the winter robins. How true that was. Irlaris himself had only learned it when Duncan’s banners had appeared on his horizon. The same banners that Cwerith gazed upon now.

At last Duncan’s herald fell silent, and Lord Varing turned toward Cwerith. “My Lord?”

Cwerith nodded, and Varing gestured for the trumpeters to sound the Call of Acceptance. As the echoes from that call died out, Duncan’s party came forward, and Cwerith’s rode out to join them. All the foolish ceremony and staging, just to bring these two men together as Cwerith finally came face-to-face with his truest ally.

“Greetings, King of Caledonia,” Cwerith said. “Be welcome in Prydein.”

“Thank you, My Liege,” Duncan said in a voice that was somehow both loud and mumbling. “I find it hard to believe that not until now have I set foot this far south.” He was a large man, his face pink and his complexion ruddy even in the unending cold. He wore no badge of office on his furs, save for a brooch fastened to his collar almost as an afterthought. Duncan’s helm was dull iron, and the pommel of the sword he wore on his back likewise bore no ornament. King Duncan, Cwerith noted approvingly, was not a man wedded to the trappings of being King.

“No more surprising than my failure to ever travel to Caledonia,” Cwerith replied.

Duncan laughed. “According to the poets, there is much in common between our lands,” he said. “Gwynedd and Caledonia have both long suffered the inattention of Londia." He grinned. "But no longer, I think.”

“No longer,” Cwerith agreed.

King Duncan cleared his throat. “Well, I’d best be on with it, I suppose,” he said as he swung down from his horse with a thud as his large frame hit the ground. He handed the reins to a page who came running up for just this reason, and then he drew his sword and held it on the ground in front on him as he sank to one knee. “I am Duncan ap Darrmot, King of Caledonia. I pledge all my strength, and all the strength of my lands and the men within them, to Cwerith ap Cellamma, High King of Prydein. His allies shall be my allies, his foes shall be my foes, his wars are my wars, and his peace shall be my peace. I shall serve him as long as he or I draw breath.”

Cwerith nodded. “Rise, Duncan ap Darmot,” he said. “I accept your fealty with pride and gratitude. Together we shall forge a new Prydein.” He offered his right hand, and Duncan clasped it as he rose. Then Cwerith said, “Now dine with me, my friend. I would not turn a man away from my table when there is meat to be torn.”

“These are not good days for meat,” Duncan said. “I will welcome such.”

The two men departed then, leaving Lord Varing and the other lords and barons to see to the joining of the armies. They went to Cwerith’s tent to discuss strategy and war, and how they would now move to defeat the menace of the pretender to the south who called himself the Promised King.

***

In a grove in a wood, not too far away from where the armies of Cwerith and Duncan faced each other while their respective lords forged their new alliance, some poor diseased wretch was dragged to the freshly-hewn trunk of a great tree and tied down by Priests in dark robes while another Priest, tall and fat and sweating despite the cold, wiped the silver knife in his hand with a square of blue cloth. Cassion had not performed such a rite in some time – not since the Battle of Bedwyn had turned badly. The King had been angry, of course – how could he not be, since the victory that had been so close to being his had eluded him – but he was still beholden to Cassion and the wisdom and tidings he brought. Cwerith had come too far now, and earned too much, by the light of the Goddess’s brother to turn back. Even if the blood for the summoning had not been Cwerith’s since that day, even if Cassion’s knife had not been pressed to the flesh of the royal forearm in nearly two months, it mattered not. Cwerith was still with him, and the time would come. The boundaries between the worlds were still weakening, and Dona was still on the wane.

“Bind him still,” Cassion said. The wretch, some ancient and withered hermit who would likely break his arms in the course of struggling against the bonds now being fastened around his wrists, would provide no challenge – but blood was still blood, and the God would taste it and approve of it. This, too, Cassion knew beyond all doubt.

At last the wretch was bound to the stump, with his bare chest exposed. Of course, this summoning would require more than blood let from an arm and collected in a blessed flask; this would require blood directly from the chest, still pushed out as the heart beat its last. The freshest blood is the sweetest to the Brother, it was written in the book whose only existing copy now lay in Cassion’s private chamber back at Caer Mastagg. He no longer needed it. He had learned every word in its pages years ago.

“It is done,” said one of his attendants. Cassion nodded and stepped forward, the knife gleaming in the light of the ritual fires. The man on the stump was blubbering and quivering with terror and delirium in his eyes. Once Cassion might have said something to calm him, something to assure him that it would soon be over. Once, but not now. It did not matter in the slightest. He lifted the knife and prepared to receive the power he craved so dearly. Even as Cwerith was making final his alliance with Duncan, there were things to be done…and Cassion needed to know what they were. There was more to do, so much more....

And when the knife had flashed, and the running blood had darkened the fresh-cut stump, and the God had come as he always did, Cassion knew what had to be done. He beckoned to his most trusted servant, a once-rich scion who had forsaken his father’s wealth for true power.

“Do you serve the Brother truthfully, my son?”

“I do,” said the young man.

“Then gather your flock,” Cassion said. “You will perform a great deed. There is one whose blood the Brother still requires.”

***

“I told you I saw a camp here,” said the old man as he pointed across the snow-covered land to the remnants of tents and tentframes. “I told you I saw people.”

“Yes you did,” the crone replied. “And you also said that if we came far enough south we’d find a land of where the streams ran with honey and where the trees were so heavy with apples their branches would almost touch the ground. So where are the apples and honey, love?”

“Do you see this snow, woman? You think there’s honey in the snow?”

“You said there wouldn’t be no snow,” she said. “You said there’d be warmth. I didn’t think you’d mean a half-burned camp that’s already been picked over by the buzzards.”

The old man shrugged. He had said all those things. Now he wished he hadn’t – not because she was disappointed, but because now she’d never be quiet. “Well, we can have a look anyway. I’m sure there’s something of value left.”

The crone stopped short.

“Are you sure about this? We’ve heard bad things about that place. Maybe we shouldn’t go closer than this.”

“Pagh!” The man spat. “They’re just rocks. If there was really magic here, it would have struck us down already.”

The crone looked askance. She did not find this logic very convincing. Everyone knew that there was deep, deep magic in these stones. And the rumors that had reached even their ears, in their cabin deep in the forest far to the north of what had come from...someplace beyond, in this place…a King....

“This is no set of standing stones,” she said. “This is the Giants’ Dance.”

“Pagh!” The man spat again and stalked through the ankle-deep snow toward the abandoned camp just north of the Giants’ Dance. Surely there’d be something good here, something useful – something they could barter for food or goods. The unending winter was an inconvenience, certainly, but this was still a fine time to be a scavenger. Fields freshly bloodied in battle had been a rare thing during Irlaris's years on the throne, but now he was dead and there were two claimants fighting for his throne. What a wonderful time to be a scavenger, even if the battlefield was like this one: small and confined. The battle that had taken place here had not been a gigantic one, as the battle at Bedwyn had been rumored to be. But it was still a battle.

“Near as I can tell,” the man said, “the people camping here were attacked and then they fled, but after winning. I’m not sure why they would leave if they won, but there it is. They put their camp to the torch.”

“Maybe they only beat off their attackers,” said the woman. “Maybe they didn’t defeat them totally. Or maybe this was no permanent camp at all. Maybe they meant to leave all along.”

“Maybe.” The man shrugged. He didn’t care, actually. All he wanted was to find something here of value.

They moved through the burned tents and the wreckage of the place. To their great good luck, the bodies were still here, even though it had been almost two months since this had all happened. The dead were mostly frozen, and thus they had not yet begun to really rot; their frozen eyes still stared from frozen skulls, and their frozen blood still oozed from frozen wounds. It was a bounty the likes of which these two scavengers had never seen. There were daggers still in their sheathes, axes and spears and lances they’d be able to sell, leathers, saddles on the dead horses…it was amazing. As the man filled his arms with more bounty than he’d ever seen from a single battlefield (but less than he’d ever be able to carry), his eyes became wider and wider. Until he bumped into his crone wife again, who was standing over a single corpse.

“This is amazing!” he said. “I’ve never seen a battlefield like this! It was a small battle, yes, but no one has disturbed it! No one’s even walked on it since the snow started falling! The body I just saw, the man was gigantic--”

“We have to leave,” the woman said.

“What?”

"We have to leave. Now."

The man couldn’t believe what he'd heard. She’d never been squeamish before. “Is it the ‘magic’ of that Giants’ Dance? I’m telling you, the magic here is so dead asleep it’ll never come back.”

“There is a reason no one has been here,” she said. Her voice was low. "There is a reason this battlefield has not been disturbed."

The man gawked at her. Something was bothering her, that much was certain. But what? Was it something about the body at her feet? He stepped forward for a better look.

The body at her feet was unremarkable. The snow and the cold had frozen this man’s features, but his most notable aspect was his lack of a left hand. The wrist there ended in a stump that was still bound...his hand had been taken shortly before he had fallen here....

“It’s just a dead warrior,” the man said.

“Is it?”

And that was when they both heard it: the baying of wolves.

“We’ll be safe here,” the man said. “We will light a fire—-”

“No,” she interrupted. “We won’t be safe. Not from these wolves.”

The baying came again, echoing across the lonely, snow-covered field which should have been covered with the grasses and flowers of harvest season. The breeze freshened, coming anew from the only direction in which the breeze ever seemed to come these days: the north. They had known the north wind well, these two; it had driven them from their home when finally they had been unable to further resist the unending winter and the lure of possible warmer places to the south. That, and the word of battles and fields that would need scavenging.

“What wolves are these?” the man asked.

His crone wife sighed. He had never taken matters like this seriously enough. Never. “They are not of this world,” she said. “We have disturbed this place. They have claimed it.”

The man shuddered. The crying of the wolves began again, much closer this time. So close, in fact, that it seemed they were baying from inside the Dance itself. They could see shadows moving within the great ring of stones, shadows amongst the gray monoliths that stood stark against a grayer sky.

“We should not have come,” she said again.

“Come on!” he suddenly shouted. “We can run! We can’t just let them catch us!” He grabbed at her arm, but she refused to move.

“It won’t matter,” she said. The shadows loomed larger, and now their shapes were more definite. The north wind howled all the more.

“Maybe not to you,” the man growled, “but I’m not staying here.” He clutched his bounty from the dead to his chest and ran off across the snow, leaving his crone wife behind. She simply stood there, beside the body of the one-handed warrior. They would come soon. She prayed to the Goddess – her first prayer since childhood –- that they would be quick about it.

And then the wolves came: two gray lieutenants, followed by one silver.

The silver one watched, his eyes impassive, as one of the lieutenants pounced on the woman and made the prayer she'd just uttered come true. The other bounded across the snow after the other fool who had dared violate this place. And then the lieutenants returned and bowed before their master, who stared at the dead, one-armed warrior upon the ground.

It was not yet time. He would have to wait...but waiting is easy for the dead. The time would come, when that Priest in the north got hold of the blood of the girl.

The three wolves, two gray and one silver, turned and walked back into the confines of the Giants’ Dance as the north wind brought new snow to cover the fresh blood on the old.

Coming June 3!

2007-05-30T14:43:00.001-07:00

At last, the announcement that as many as a dozen people have waited for: serialization of Book Two: The Finest Deed will begin on Sunday, June 3, 2007. I know, this has been a long time coming, and even though I'm not even done writing the thing yet, it needs to start getting out there.

The frequency for Book Two will be slower than it was for The Welcomer. Where I serialized that book at two chapters per month, this time out I will only promise one chapter per month, which will appear on the first Sunday of each month unless otherwise noted. Now, I do hope to get ahead of my schedule a bit as I get chapters finished, so there will be times when I am able to post two chapters a month. So as not to cause anyone to miss anything, when each chapter is posted, I will also post in the sidebar the date on which the next chapter will appear.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone who's read Book One. I hope the resolutions to come in Book Two will be worth your wait.

--hiatus--

2006-01-08T10:24:00.000-08:00

[Updated: see below]

The Promised King, Book One: The Welcomer was completed in December of 2005. Serialization of Book Two: The Finest Deed will begin sometime in late 2006 or early 2007; watch this space or my main weblog, Byzantium's Shores, for an announcement of when that will begin.

All chapters of The Welcomer are still available, via the links in the sidebar to the left. Thank you for visiting!

-K.S.

UPDATE: Work has been very slow on Book Two, so it probably won't begin here until late 2006 or early 2007. Meantime, feel free to read my main blog for non-fictional stuff.

Epilogue

2005-12-18T07:27:00.000-08:00

The rush of wind died away, and the air was finally still. She turned toward the beach where the waves lapped the shore. He was standing there, as she had known he would be. As she approached, he turned and faced her. How old he looked, and how tired. Still, he smiled as she drew near, and he lifted his hand to touch her cheek. His flesh was still rough and callused from years of work in the fields and at sea, but his touch was still warm.

"You are so beautiful," said her father. "I see so much of your mother in you. I think she would be proud of what you have done."

"Are you?" she asked.

He smiled. "Oh, little sparrow," he said. "How I wish I could have seen it." He touched her hair and looked around at the cottage and the sea. "This place will always be a part of you," he said. "And so will I. But you cannot return."

"I know," she said. She'd known it all along. There would be many dreams, but none more of her father and the place where he had always sought solace in the waters that had given him his life and his love. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and then he turned and walked away, up the beach until he disappeared into the haze. Then Gwynwhyfar of Lyonesse herself left that place, and never again did she see it -- neither within her dreams nor without.

***

Gwyn stirred, and she heard someone nearby say, "She awakes!" and rush off. Turning toward the nearby source of warmth, she opened her eyes and found that she was in a camp with the Druids and the refugees from Caer Camyrdin. But it was not the camp beside the Giants' Dance: they were surrounded by sparse trees, and the land was hillier. They had left the plain. She looked at the fire beside her -- small, and one of many -- as the Druid who had been sitting beside her came back, with Brother Llyad and Gareth.

"You are looking better," Gareth said. "I feared for you, but Brother Llyad insisted you were stronger than that. I see he was correct."

Brother Llyad handed her a bowl of herb-scented soup, which she drank gratefully even though its flavor was ghastly.

"Where are we?" Gwyn asked.

"We are just past Walding Wood, to the south and west," Gareth said. "It was not safe for us to remain at the Dance."

Gwyn nodded. "What news of Bedwyn?"

Brother Llyad shook his head. "Nothing yet, My Lady," he said. "That's where the King went, isn't it?"

Gwyn nodded. "But that gate is now closed."

Gareth shrugged. "We Finders are used to moving on foot," she said.

"As are we Druids," said Horius, who had just joined them. "My scouts have report that what survived of Maxen's company fled north. That is why we have moved south, toward Bedwyn -- and west, into the hills, in the event that there is another army moving north."

"How long?" Gwyn asked.

"Three days, perhaps four," Horius said. "Provided that we do not encounter any other dangers along the way. But we are prepared. You will be safe." He smiled, and Gwyn nodded and sipped again at the tea. "Was he there, Welcomer?" Horius asked after a moment. "Did you find him?"

"Oh, yes," Gwyn said. "He has returned."

Horius breathed a sigh of reverence. "Dona bless us all," he said.

Gwyn drank the remainder of her soup, allowing the warmth to spread through her body. "How long has it been?" she asked.

"One full day," said Brother Llyad. "We found you at the center of the Dance, and you have slumbered all that time since."

Gwyn thought back to the sensation of falling through darkness…and of Nimue calling out for Amairgen...had he caught her? Had he brought her back? She put her empty bowl aside and drew her knees up close to her chest. "I suppose I shall soon return to Tintagel and complete my training," she said.

"Nonsense," said Gareth. Gwyn looked up at her, and Gareth laughed. "Don't look so surprised," she went on. "Go back to being a cleric, after the things you have seen and done? Absurd."

"My task as Welcomer is done," Gwyn said. "The Promised King has returned."

"None of us knows what tasks the Goddess may place before us, My Lady," said Brother Llyad. "But I cannot believe yours will ever involve translating books in Tintagel's library."

Gwyn sighed. They were right, of course. Whatever place she had now, whatever role was hers to play, it would not be as a cleric. True, she had spent her entire life until just a week ago as an Adept in service to Dona's priesthood; but Fair Folk blood still ran in her veins. She had been the Welcomer, and not only had she been chosen for it -- she had been brought into the world for it. There would be a place for her, Gwyn realized -- even in this time of war and darkness that was descending on Prydein, and even as the light of hope began to shine upon it. What truly frightened her, Gwyn suddenly realized, was not if she would have a place, but rather what that place would be.

They talked a while more, of nothing in particular -- when suddenly there was a bird's call -- repeated three times, very quickly. Gareth jumped up. "Matt and Calloch return! That is their signal!"

The entire camp roused as the returning riders entered the camp after not being seen for hours. And with them were two other riders who both wore the device of Bedwyn, and Gwyn recognized the one with the long hair and sardonic grin.

"Look lively, Regidan!" Sir Jules said to his younger companion as he approached Gwyn and bowed before her. "Here she is: the Welcomer." Gwyn smiled at both men, and she nearly laughed at the expression of near terror on Sir Regidan's face. If he was older than she, it was not by more than a matter of months. "I'm glad to have found you, My Lady," Jules went on. "King Arthur dispatched a number of us to seek you out after the battle -- which we won -- and he will be grateful to learn of your safety. So will a great many others, I expect. People are already asking about the Welcomer." He bowed again, and then he grinned as he leaned forward and said so that only she could hear, "No one will be happier to learn of your safety than Sir Baigent -- although I think he will also be angry that I found you before he did."

Gwyn felt herself blush.

***

Dana nocked the arrow, drew back the string, and let the arrow fly. It struck the target nowhere near the center, but she was improving. She had sunk four consecutive arrows into the target, her best result yet. Won't Gwyn be surprised! she thought as she went to recover her arrows. Then she saw Father Damogan walking out to join her, and she hastily dropped the bow.

"Did you send for me, Father?" she asked quickly. "I am sorry, I--"

"All is well, child," Father Damogan said, laughing and holding up a hand as he came near. "I did not send for you, and your tasks have been done well. No, I come to ask you to accompany me to the bridge. A rider comes, from the east. I think we are to have news."

"What news?" Dana asked as she gathered her arrows and bow to accompany Father Damogan to the bridge. She had long since learned not to ask just how it was that he could know a rider approached, before any was even seen on the horizon.

"News of Gwynwhyfar," he said. He stopped then, and seemed to sniff the air. "Tell me, Dana -- how long since we felt a southern breeze?"

Dana considered that. It had been a long time indeed.

***

The days after the Battle of Bedwyn were full days indeed. King Arthur Pendragon was presented to the people, and word was sent to all Prydein that the Promised King had returned. But along with those good tidings went calls for war, for the Traitor Kings still lived, and even now King Cwerith was marching to join his ally, King Duncan; and as for King Arthur, he too was planning to march northward, to the Vale of Cul Calladan and a final reckoning with those Traitor Kings. There would be more battle and more death, but for now, there was also hope for the people of Prydein, starting with the people of Bedwyn. The peaceful days of Irlaris's reign were over, and Londia was gone; but there was again a King, even if he would have to fight to forge the realm anew. Though the days were still cold, somehow they felt a bit warmer.

A procession was held for the Welcomer and her companions on the morning she at last came to Bedwyn. Gwyn rode with Sir Baigent at her side, and behind them came Estren and Brother Llyad, Lord Matholyn and Gareth, and others; leading the procession were Father Terryn and Brother Malcolm. Gwyn gazed down upon the lean and weary, but also hopeful, faces that were turned upward to see the Welcomer. So many who would have died had she not succeeded -- and so many who might still die, when war came again.

The procession reached the Keep, where it was joined by King Arthur and Duke Cunaddyr. Then the procession moved again through the city, out through the Widow's Gate and up to the great mound where slept the bravest of Bedwyn's souls through the ages. There had not been room here to inter all those who had fallen in the fields of this most recent battle -- new mounds now rose on those very fields -- but this was where they gathered to pay tribute to them all. Here the King's procession was met by another, this one consisting of Druids and led by Horius; and when both processions stopped, Estren and Drudwas came forward to sing the work they had composed together, for voice and harp and pipes: the Coming of King Arthur and the Acts of the Welcomer.

During the singing of the new work, Gwyn looked on each of her companions: Brother Llyad, whose faith had been so unwavering; Gareth, who had been the ally needed so desperately at the journey's darkest hour; Lord Matholyn, whose fiery nobility was now tempered by deep sorrow; Estren, whose words had been of such comfort; Brother Malcolm, to whose wisdom she had always turned, and whose eyes were now haunted by the horrors of war he could never have imagined just a short while ago that he would see. Finally she looked at her Champion, Sir Baigent. Perhaps there would be such time in days to come for her to express adequately her gratitude for all that he had done, but for now she waited until his gaze met hers, and then she smiled. He smiled back, and she listened again to the words of the two Bards, wondering if future Adepts would struggle at their learning as she herself had struggled to learn the words of the Bards who had gone before.

As she stood in the southern breeze, not felt in so very long in Prydein, Gwynwhyfar wondered many things.

Here ends Book One of The Promised King.

The tale concludes in Book Two, The Finest Deed.

Chapter Twenty-two

2005-11-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

Maxen was not the only one who heard the baying of the wolves. They were also heard by the sole spectator of the combat between the Promised King and the one-handed warrior who fought him.

Gwynwhyfar of Lyonesse watched from behind the great stone, safely within the boundary of the Giants' Dance, as King Arthur and Maxen dismounted and faced one another. As Maxen pressed to the attack, she heard in the distance the voices of those wolves, and she knew then that Maxen was no longer a mere agent of Gwynedd. He had been claimed by Dona's Dark Brother.

The air in the Dance shuddered, and time outside the Dance seemed to slow. Gwyn turned to the larger battle and watched as deaths that should have taken seconds were instead stretched out horribly. One of Maxen's men struck a defender -- some poor peasant wielding only a scythe whose blade was rusty and dull -- with a club, crushing the man's skull and sending blood and pieces of bone flying everywhere with terrible slowness. She saw Estren as well, and Hugydd; both fought with multiple opponents, not yielding at all. Gwyn saw Murron of the Arrows, standing with several peasants also armed with bows; the Chief Archer of Camyrdin was selecting targets and picking them off with astonishing accuracy, while her new comrades tried their best just to hit Maxen's attackers but missed more often than not, and in a few horrible instances actually struck their own fellow defenders. Gwyn wished for her own bow, even though like most of these people she had never used her bow against anything other than a rabbit or pheasant.

Then she saw Sir Baigent, as the gigantic Fflud attacked him from horseback. She screamed, a long and terrible scream, when Fflud's immense axe came down. Even with the slowing of the passage of time, she could not tell if Sir Baigent had dropped before the axe had fallen or after. Gwyn's heart nearly exploded as the baying of the wolves drowned out every other sound.

Standing there inside the Giants' Dance where and when the boundaries between the worlds were at their weakest, Gwyn saw everything transpiring at once: the fighting between the Finders and Maxen's men; the other refugees trying to escape; the battle between Maxen and King Arthur. And more than that: she saw a battle raging miles to the south, on the fields north of Bedwyn. She saw the scavengers moving amidst the ruins of Caer Camyrdin and Londia. She saw the snows coming south from the frozen reaches of Caledonia. She saw the gray waters of the sea rearing in terrible waves to pound the rocks below Tintagel and all along the coast of Lyonesse. In this place, in this moment, all of Prydein was hers to see -- all Prydein and more, for she could also see the Lord of Annwn fighting to withhold his dominion over the dead, and the Fair Folk striving to maintain the light in the face of encroaching shadow. And beyond it all she saw the shadow of the great silver wolf, looming over the world entire, pacing back and forth as if awaiting escape from a cage. As if waiting for the moment to pounce.

She turned her attention back to the battles before her. King Arthur parried Maxen's attacks with astonishing speed, but Maxen's attacks came ever faster, ever stronger, ever fiercer. Though King Arthur was able to parry Maxen's attacks with calmness, he was able to launch no attacks of his own. It was a horrible reprise of the earlier duel, in the Scarlet King's fortress, but this one was for all Prydein.

Elsewhere, the Finders were being pushed back, having lost their advantage of surprise; and Sir Baigent -- where was Sir Baigent?

Your champion will fall.

The voice of the silver wolf sounded in her ears.

All your Champions will fall. I shall make it thus.

Gwyn shivered. Maxen, Fflud, all the men of Gwynedd here and at Bedwyn -- they were all being pushed, powered, by the Dark Brother on this single day when he could reach from beyond and pour upon the world all of his dark strength. He was doing all of this, but there was nothing that the Goddess could do to forestall him. Dona was bound in the same way that her Dark Brother was bound -- she could not reach throught he boundaries to touch the earth, until such time as all the boundaries had fallen. She could only act through earthly agents, as her brother was now doing. But her agents were not as strong as his, and the day was coming when he would be able to touch the world himself.

So you see the truth, foolish girl. You see how it all ends. Dona's power fades more with each passing day, and I shall rise ascendant in the end.

The air in the Dance shimmered around her, and for the briefest of seconds Gwyn was no longer on the Central Plain but in the middle of a deep winter wood, dead and dank. The stones were gone, replaced by lifeless oaks, and the ground about her was littered with bodies -- the bodies of Fair Folk who were being slaughtered by two wolves and a pack of feral dogs. And beyond it all stood the silver wolf, grinning with dripping jaws. She tried to send herself back to the Dance, and for a second she was there -- it seemed that Gwyn, too, had some power here on this day -- but she could not hold on, and she was pulled back to the scene of the murder of the Fair Folk.

You cannot flee. You are mine.

Gwyn turned and, in spite of the silver wolf's words, fled into the wood.

***

Sir Baigent had, in all his years, never once moved as fast as he did at the moment Fflud swung that axe of his. Strangely enough, to him it did not feel fast -- it felt slow, terribly slow, as he dropped to the ground. He waited for the moment when the axe would cleave his skull in two, but the moment did not come and he felt a swish of air, soft as a maiden's kiss in the springtime, as the axe flashed through where his head had been.

Then the horse itself was upon him, and with no thought at all Sir Baigent thrust his blade straight up, into the animal's unprotected belly. His wrists nearly snapped, his arms were almost ripped from their sockets, and the sword was torn from his grip as the beast landed beyond him and tumbled to the ground. The air filled with the stench of entrails and the poor animal's shrieking drowned out all other sounds as Sir Baigent pushed himself back up and moved to recover his sword from the dead horse's guts even as Fflud rose from where he had fallen and turned to face the knight. The look in Fflud's eyes was one of total wrath, and Sir Baigent sighed as he planted his feet and squared his stance to face the giant man. Nearly every joint and muscle in his body was dead with pain, and yet he still had to fight the toughest combat yet.

And as Fflud came at him with that awful double-edged axe, Sir Baigent imagined -- for just the march of a single heartbeat -- the sound of howling wolves.

***

Gwynwhyfar fled through the strange wood, following no path because there was none to follow. She could only throw herself around the trees and over the bushes, all the while trying to ignore the sound behind her of the pursuing wolves. She spared no thought for where she was or what this place might be; the only thought she could muster was to wonder why the snarling, chasing wolves hadn't yet caught her and ripped her flesh from her bones.

Ahead of her she made out what appeared to be a clearing, and she ran even faster, as hard as she could. She pushed her way through the suddenly thick underbrush, thorns and brambles snagging her cloak and robe and tearing at her skin beneath. Bursting into the clearing, she discovered another Giants' Dance, but this one not for giants: it was much smaller, its stones only man-sized, and they were arranged not around some kind of mystical altar but around a cairn. Gwyn ran for this second Dance, but before she could get there the silver wolf's lieutenants exploded from the wood and bounded, snarling, into her path. She stopped, and froze. From behind her came the breaking of branches and the crashing of leaves as the silver wolf himself entered the clearing, and she turned to face him.

Foolish girl, he said in her mind. Had you remained where you were my power would still be bound. But I tricked you into the realm of the Powers, where I can touch you and where I can slay you.

Gwyn flinched. Of course it was true: the Dark Brother's abilities in the world were still limited, so he could only act through agents like Maxen and Cwerith. So he had lured her here -- tricked her here -- where he could kill her, further weakening the Goddess. Gwyn felt stupid and angry. Dona's Dark Brother had Kings and warriors as his agents on earth; Dona had…a girl from Lyonesse.

The wolf stepped forward, and Gwyn braced herself for its attack. But then there came the sound of hunting horns, very near and all around them, followed by the barking of hounds. Gwyn recognized them even as they smashed through the underbrush and into the clearing, for she had heard these hunting horns and the barking of these hounds before. The hounds of Culdarra came forth and stood between Gwyn and the wolves, and then the Goddess of the Wild Hunt herself came into the clearing, riding her great horse and holding her bow at the ready, with an arrow already nocked.

"This form is ill-chosen, Nameless One," said Culdarra. "I have hunted many wolves, and you'll not be the last. You have leave neither to enter this place nor to touch this girl."

The silver wolf only laughed. It is you who are without leave here, Huntress, and this form suits me. This girl has come here unwelcomed and unbidden, and thus I deem her life forfeit. Not even you may deny this, and you may not mark her now that I have claimed her. Not even my dear fading sister has that right.

"Blind as ever, Dark One," Culdarra flung back, "and twice as foolish. Think you that I have come to mark her now? I have already done so!"

Gwyn felt a sudden hotness then, near her neck. It was the brooch that the Huntress had given her. She pulled down her cloak and the neckline of her robe to reveal the brooch, and the silver wolf howled as if pained by the very sight of it.

This betrayal means nothing, Huntress, the Dark Brother said. My will still holds sway here. I have naught to fear from you or the lapdogs you have sworn to my dear sister.

Culdarra smiled -- and with no more warning than that she gave a short, sharp whistle and her dogs snapped to the attack. Instantly the clearing erupted into conflict between the hounds of the Huntress and the lieutenants of the Dark Brother. Culdarra looked to Gwyn. "Flee, child!" she yelled. "Flee to the circle!"

Culdarra's voice shocked Gwyn into action, and she ran for the small stone circle. When she was inside, time slowed again and the air shimmered so that, just as before, she could see all the battles that were being waged at once: at Bedwyn, where Cwerith's armies were even now pushing Duke Cunaddyr's forces back against the city walls; at the Giants' Dance where King Arthur Pendragon fought a one-handed warrior enhanced by the Dark Brother's power, and where Sir Baigent squared to confront another; and finally in this clearing in the place of the Gods where the Huntress battled Dona's Dark Brother. Two of her hounds were slaughtered, then another, and then still another. Would Culdarra herself die so that Gwyn might escape this place? And even if she did escape, breaking through to Prydein again, would any of it matter with the Dark Brother taking advantage of the weakness between the worlds to flood his power into his agents?

Then Gwyn felt something nearby, something powerful. Something within the nearby cairn was calling to her. Something was there, something important. Culdarra had bought her time to find whatever was there, and the Dark Brother had been about to slay her to keep her from finding it. Her death was not important to him just because she had been Dona's agent; he did not want her to find whatever was buried here. Thus she ran to the side of the cairn and began moving the smooth, white stones aside.

NO!

The silver wolf's roar was louder than anything Gwyn had ever heard before -- louder than the thunder of the summer storms, louder than the sea at Tintagel as its pounding of the rocks echoed in the mushroom caves. She ignored it and continued throwing the stones aside, as quickly as she could. She had to find what was here.

***

Sir Baigent was wondering where the damned wolves had come from as he parried Fflud's attack. The impact of the axe upon his blade made him shudder with a series of new pains: his shoulders and wrists flared, his ankle throbbed from where he'd turned it before, and there were more, not even considering the wound in his side that Maxen had inflicted during their duel. He knew that if he survived this war he would carry these scars and some of these pains, echoing in his bones, through all the rest of his days. Survival, though, looked more doubtful now than it had at any point in this entire affair. He ducked another of Fflud's attacks, but not soon enough to completely avoid the flat of the axe striking his back as Fflud moved by. He had hoped to strike on his own, but the force of even a glancing blow by the huge man pushed all the air from Sir Baigent's body, and he was only able to dodge another blow as he gasped for air.

Goddess have mercy, he thought. He had never seen a warrior move in the way that Fflud was moving now; this once-immovable object had been transformed into a terrifying blend of strength and speed that belied his immense size. Sir Baigent could only hope to last in this fight, hoping and praying that the other man's strength would fade over time even as it appeared to do the exact opposite.

He parried another attack, and as he did so the howling of these wolves -- as horrible a sound as Sir Baigent had ever heard -- became louder and wilder. These wolves were not natural, in the same way that Fflud's strength -- as well as Maxen's and that of his men -- was not natural. He made a quick inside feint and somehow managed to give Fflud a nick in the leg, but it was not enough to bring him down. As he circled away and turned to face the new attack that was already on the way, he realized that this battle was not Camyrdin against Gwynedd; it was the Goddess against her Dark Brother. He dodged another attack and jumped beyond the range of Fflud's backswing, and as he did so he hazarded a glance to King Arthur, still about thirty paces away. The King, still battling Maxen, was being pushed back -- just as Sir Baigent was.

His body burned with pain as he met yet another attack.

***

Gwyn kept tossing the stones aside, trying to unearth whatever was buried in this cairn; but the stones were heavy, and it seemed as if new stones were appearing atop the cairn to replace the ones she had displaced. "Goddess let me succeed in this," she whispered. A single tear fell from her eye, dropped down to the stones....

...and then the stones, obeying the tear shed for their sake, vanished utterly, disappearing like a puff of smoke in the wind. The cairn lay exposed before her, and in it lay a corpse garbed in tattered, moldering clothes. Gwyn peered at the corpse's rotting face, and then she gasped and retched at the same time. Even though the man in the grave had been dead for many years, she recognized him.

It was her father.

She covered her mouth and looked away, even as the coins on his eyes slid away revealing empty eye-sockets, the eyes long since rotted away. And then the corpse's mouth opened, and it spoke.

"Little Sparrow...do not dig me up...."

Gwyn longed to beg his forgiveness, for this and for so much…but then she realized that the voice had not been his. Her father had not sounded like this. And he had not been buried, but pushed out to sea in a boat with the ebbing tide. This was not him; this was an illusion.

She closed her eyes, swallowed, and reached into the grave. As she expected, the body disappeared just as the stones had, leaving behind a hollowed-out barrow in which lay two items, each wrapped in black cloth. Lifting the wrappings aside, she found a chalice so tarnished it was almost black, and a spear whose shaft was rotting and whose head was rusted away to almost nothing. Gwyn glanced up at the battles -- all of them, raging in all the worlds, but finally on that between the silver wolf and Culdarra the Huntress -- and she made her decision. She picked up the spear.

As she lifted the spear from the cairn, the wood of the shaft became firm and brown again, and the spearhead became sharp and clean even as the chalice dissolved as though it had never been there at all. Hefting the spear, Gwyn turned to face the battle before her. Culdarra looked at her and smiled, and Gwyn lifted the spear. She had never thrown one before, and she would have only one chance. She waited for Culdarra to maneuver the silver wolf so that its back was to Gwyn, even as one of the lieutenants broke free of the hounds and surged directly at her. There was only time for Gwyn to shout "Camyrdin!" as she hurled the spear with all of the strength she could summon. The weapon arced over the gray wolf that pounced upon her even now, and Gwyn fell back, toward the empty cairn. She glimpsed the spear burying itself in the left haunch of the silver wolf, and as the cairn closed around her the wolf's scream -- which was very like a man's -- filled the air. And instead of coming under the jaws of the lieutenant, Gwyn fell into blackness.

***

The next attack was the strongest yet, and it was all Sir Baigent could do to avoid being cleft in two as he dodged the flashing axe. He would not be able to parry another attack like that, or probably even evade one. It was almost over, the dark certainty of it forming in his mind as he saw the faces of his father and brother and the lady whose Champion he had been one last time...

...when the howling of the wolves suddenly stopped, as if it had never been.

And before him, Fflud lurched, ever so slightly, as he came about for his new attack. It was only the tiniest of changes in his manner, the smallest of differences in the big man's stance. A less experienced warrior might not have seen it at all; certainly none of these townsfolk or farmers would have, perhaps not even Estren or the Finders. But Sir Baigent was an experienced warrior, and he did see it: that Fflud's unnatural strength had deserted him. Sir Baigent ignored all of the pain in his body as he leapt forward, his cry of rage and determination being wordless as he gave voice to something that came from even deeper recesses of his soul than the name of Camyrdin.

Fflud was still strong, and he was still a skilled warrior, and he squared his axe to fend off the knight's blow. But his reaction, though fast enough, was directed to stopping the blow that he expected, not the one that the knight delivered. Fflud braced to turn aside the certain thrust of Sir Baigent's sword toward his stomach, but Sir Baigent instead dropped his blade down and brought it about, using the flat of the blade to smash against Fflud's knuckles where they gripped the handle of his axe. The axe dipped slightly -- a few inches, perhaps a hand's width -- giving Sir Baigent the opening he needed. He swung the sword around, and now he thrust the blade past Fflud's axe and into the huge man's belly, all the way up to the hilt. Fflud's eyes went wide, and his immediate gasp was quickly followed by the spitting up of blood and bile as he staggered backward. Sir Baigent stepped forward and pulled his weapon free and, for good measure, struck Fflud's head from his shoulders before the big man could fall.

***

Maxen launched another attack, then another, and then still another. He would wear this Promised King down, minute by minute, until the time came to strike the last blow. How could this man hope to rally Prydein, when he was so easily defeated? How could this weakling be the hope of the Goddess? What foolery! Maxen drank in the power of the Dark God, rejoicing in the voices of the wolves--

Which suddenly were not there.

It was as though something deep within him, at the very center of his soul, had snapped in two. His newfound strength, that had been given to him in a moment of fire and agony, was utterly gone. And worse was that this man he fought, this Promised King, had seen it too. Now came the Promised King's sword, blazing white with the light of the sun.

Maxen parried the attacks as best he could, but he could already see that it was hopeless, and despair filled him. He had been so close to victory, but now the day was lost. And moments later, so was he.

Maxen watched as the flames engulfing his sword, the flames of war loosed upon the world by the Goddess's brother, flickered out entirely, leaving behind a strip of blackened steel that shattered the next time it met the Promised King's sunlit blade. Maxen let the useless hilt fall, and it clattered to the ground. Then he closed his eyes, and whatever thoughts were in Maxen's soul at that moment, they went unspoken as the Promised King's blade flashed horribly and plunged forward, stilling his heart forever.

***

Sir Baigent had cleared less than half the distance to the Promised King, intending to aid him in his fight, when he saw Maxen falter and his sword stop burning. He stopped in place as Maxen was struck down, and the Promised King turned to face him. Almost unaware that he was doing it, Sir Baigent sank to one knee before this man; and thus did Sir Baigent ap Pelegaunt, once seneschal to Lord Matholyn of Camyrdin, become the first man of Prydein to pay homage to King Arthur Pendragon upon his return from Avalon.

"Rise," said the King, and Sir Baigent did so, meeting the King's gaze. Sir Baigent wanted to weep, for all the words written by all the Bards and poets could never express the nobility that he saw in this man's eyes.

"Do you fight for me?" asked the King.

"I fight for you," Sir Baigent replied. "And for all Prydein."

"What is your name?"

"Baigent ap Pelegaunt."

King Arthur nodded. "Then fight with me, Sir Baigent."

And fight they did.

***

"I am here, child."

"Nimue? Where am I?"

"You are between the worlds, and thus being, you can see them all. Look now, on what you have wrought this day."

The air shimmered, and Gwynwhyfar saw the battle at the Giants' Dance. She saw that Maxen and Fflud were dead, and she saw King Arthur wading into battle with Sir Baigent at his side. The tide was turning; without their Captain and his second, Maxen's men lost their discipline and were now being pushed back.

"The day is won," said Nimue. "King Arthur wins his first battle, just as he did when the Kings of what he knew as Britain gathered to oppose the young boy who alone had pulled the sword from the stone."

Gwynwhyfar tried to take comfort in the victory, but even though it had been hard achieved and hard won, she could not. Instead, she looked to the other great battle that was taking place at that same time, leagues to the south. This battle was not going as well -- not nearly as well. It was clear that Cwerith's armies were going to win the day. There were simply too many of them, and their last push now across the field was unrelenting, unyielding.

Gwynwhyfar searched through the crowds of war and found the faces she knew. There was Matholyn ap Macholugh, fighting almost alone in the midst of a throng of Gwynedd men, and even though his cloak was tattered and his armor was soaked in blood and filth and exhaustion was writ upon his face, he still fought as if all the souls lost at Caer Camyrdin had found their expression at last in their onetime Lord. Elsewhere there was Sir Jules, whose swordplay was fast, spare and lethal -- not at all like the wry humor he had displayed on that night in Briston. There, standing upon the rise just outside the main gates, was Duke Cunaddyr, hiskeen eyes following the progress of the battle even though lurking in their corners was the knowledge that this battle was a losing one.

Gwynwhyfar's gaze, shaped and focused by the ancient magic of the Giants' Dance, took it all in. She looked upon a thousand faces both within the walls of the city and without: the old and infirm, dying of disease and starvation, and the young and strong, dying on the battlefield of unspeakable injury. Finally she found Brother Malcolm, tending the wounded. His robes were filthy, his eyes sunken and exhausted. She watched as he wrapped a length of cloth around the wound of a man who would be dead within hours, if not minutes, anyhow. Malcolm said no prayer over this man, because there was no time for him to do so. He could only whisper the briefest of blessings before moving on to tend another young warrior, whose years numbered the same as Gwynwhyfar's but because of his wounds would number no more than that.

"You must not look on this," said Nimue. "It will bring you naught by despair."

But Gwynwhyfar refused to avert her gaze. "All these people fight for the Promised King," she replied. "How will he forge a kingdom if all those who would fill the ranks of his army are dead? Must all these people die, never knowing that their King has returned? There must be a way, My Lady. A way that they can bridge the worlds, as I have." And she looked again to King Arthur, fighting outside the Giants' Dance.

"This thing you wish to do can be done. Merlyn Emrys built this place with such power as can only be shaped and wielded by one such as he, born of both the worlds of the Mortals and of the Fair. One such as you. But to control such power may destroy you. The Dance will consume your soul and scattering it beyond all the worlds. Think well, Gwynwhyfar: will you do this thing?"

Gwyn did not hesitate. "I will," she said. No other answer was possible. She could already sense the power of the Giants' Dance at Midsummer fading as the day wore on. It had to be now. "I am ready, Lady of the Lake."

"Then hold strong," said Nimue. "You alone can work this thing."

And so did Gwynwhyfar of Lyonesse, born of a man of Prydein and a woman of the Fair Folk, Welcomer of the Promised King, reopen the portal between the worlds that existed on this one day and in this one place.

***

"Behold!" someone cried.

Sir Baigent turned toward the Giants' Dance, and gasped at what he saw there: through the great stones he was seeing Bedwyn and its fields of battle. "How is this possible?" he said.

"It matters not," said King Arthur as he whistled for his horse. "Merlyn once told me of such things. Come, men of Prydein: we ride!"

And as Sir Baigent ran to get his own horse, he heard another voice, feminine and familiar:

"Come, King Arthur!"

***

Power coursed through Gwynwhyfar's body, the power of the earth and of the Goddess and of the Fair Folk. She made of her body and soul a vessel for such power as had not touched the world in days uncounted except by legend. The pain was beyond anything she had ever felt before. The power was consuming her, as Nimue had said it would.

"Come, King Arthur!"

She knew not if the voice was hers, or perhaps Nimue's. Every ounce of her being was given to keeping open the portal which she had forced. And when at last the men had ridden through and out the other side, she finally released the power and felt herself falling through the air as if from a great height.

"Nimue?" she tried to cry out, but she did not even have enough strength to force the word from her lips. She went limp, having nothing else to give. She felt the presence of hard earth, rushing up to embrace her.

"Make ready," she heard someone say.

"Amairgen?"

It was the last thing she thought before her fall came to an end.

***

Lord Matholyn dismounted and handed the reins of his wounded mount to one page and the hilt of his broken sword to another. "Keep this well," he said. "I will want this blade reforged after today." The page nodded and handed Lord Matholyn a new sword, this one bearing the device of Bedwyn upon the hilt. The Matholyn ducked as a fresh volley of arrows soared overhead. Cwerith's men were pushing forward again, his damned archers were exacting a heavy toll, and behind the archers were the men bringing the great ladders which Cwerith's soldiers would scale to storm the walls. Soon those archers would be sending flaming arrows over the walls and into the city, and soon there would be siege engines.

"Well, Matholyn? Coming back to fight?" It was Sir Jules, who likewise had come back for a new horse.

"We have to do something about those archers," Matholyn replied. "We can't mount any push of our own with them down there."

"I'm leading a charge against that hillock," Sir Jules replied, pointing. "Then we'll be able to move some of our own archers up there."

Lord Matholyn frowned. "We won't be able to hold that position for long."

Sir Jules shrugged. "Goddess willing, we won't have to."

But it turned out to be too difficult a task. The hillock was fiercely defended by Cwerith's men, and too many of their own fell in the hillock's taking. Matholyn and Sir Jules had to call the retreat before any of their archers could even arrive. And this was the way of it elsewhere, in every place where Cunaddyr's forces tried to advance or, failing that, merely defend a tiny parcel of land. Lord Matholyn fought on, knowing all the while that victory was impossible and defeat all but certain. He found himself beside Sir Jules again, and the two of them exchanged grim glances. Cwerith's horns rang across the field yet again, and yet again his archers advanced.

"Fall back!" Matholyn shouted.

As he and Sir Jules led what was to be the last retreat, Lord Matholyn barely registered the strange wind that had begun to howl.

***

"The men push forward again," Lord Varing observed.

"I see it," King Cwerith replied. Within the hour his archers would be in shooting distance of Bedwyn's walls, and soon thereafter his men would be able to storm the walls and bring forth the siege engines. Soon, Bedwyn would burn.

He looked to the rise where Duke Cunaddyr's banner flapped in the breeze. He could not make out the Duke himself, but Cwerith knew he was there. You should have surrendered, Cunaddyr. A place at my table might have been yours, a place beside a King. Instead, the blood of your people will swell the banks of the Test.

The thought made him smile, but only for a moment before something happened.

***

Brother Malcolm lifted the man's doublet and gave a single, matter-of-fact shake of his head when he saw the wound beneath. He was past wincing by now, and where once he would have questioned the providence of the Goddess that a man so wounded could still draw breath, now he merely accepted such ill fortune and moved on. To seek the Goddess on the field of battle, he now knew, was folly. He lowered the doublet and moved on to another victim of sword, or axe, or arrow, or club, or lance…it mattered not. He hoped, as he did each time, that the next man would not be so doomed to die quickly and in agony. That hope had gone unrequited too many times this day.

Then he heard the shouting: "Move! Move these men!" It was a Captain of the Bedwyn guard, whose name Malcolm had been told but which he had forgotten in the hours since. This Captain had six guardsmen with him, and they were exhorting those tending to wounded and fallen to retreat. "Move! Move! Move!" they shouted, over and over and over again.

"What is happening?" Malcolm asked when the Captain was near him.

"Archers," the man replied. "The Gwynedd archers are moving into range. It is too dangerous to remain here."

Malcolm shook his head. "They would not shoot on the wounded--" he began, but he was cut off by the Captain's harsh and biting laughter.

"Stand here, then, if you believe that," said the Captain. And just then, as if to reinforce the point, the air above Brother Malcolm's head whistled and the ground nearby thudded as an arrow struck. One of the guardsmen suddenly made a gurgling sound and fell to his knees, an arrow having struck him in the back of his neck and its bloody head now protruding from the front of it.

"MOVE!" the Captain shouted.

Brother Malcolm grabbed the knife he had been using to cut fabric and ran, following the others as arrows fell about them, faster and faster. He did not hazard a glimpse back to see how near they were, but he knew that if they were this close, they would soon be able to loose arrows over the walls and into the city. Behind him, the wounded screamed anew as they were hit, for the tenders of the wounded could not move them all. More and more blood, and more and more death.

Malcolm had almost reached safety -- relative safety -- when the hissing of the air suddenly became much louder and much closer, and his left shoulder exploded into searing pain. The arrow had only grazed him, opening a wound several fingers long that bled profusely. He cried out and tried to press the cleanest part of his sleeve over it. A cleaning and binding, perhaps even a poultice if it could be managed, would suffice -- but in conditions such as these, they might not, if they could even be done in the first place. His own blood, he realized, had just been spilled in battle. He was thinking of that when the strongest gust of wind blasted across the battlefield, nearly knocking him down. Turning to see what was happening, he looked across the field at last. A great flash of light nearly blinded him, and as his sight cleared he heard cheers -- cheers, of all things, and from his own side, the side of Bedwyn. Then there was another sound, not unlike the booming of thunder. With his good hand he rubbed his eyes and looked again.

A great tumult was erupting at the rear of Cwerith's army, and a literal explosion of flame and smoke blasted in the middle of one of the Gwynedd companies, sending bodies through the air along with a cloud of dirt and debris.

"What is it?" someone cried out. Malcolm was about to shake his head, reply that he did not know...

...when he saw, even from this great distance, an armored warrior leading a newly arrived company of men into battle with Cwerith's rear guard, and this warrior fought with a sword that shone with the wondrous light of the noontime sun.

"The Promised King!" Malcolm shouted, caring little if those who heard him thought him mad. "The Promised King is come!"

***

The air shimmered as Sir Baigent spurred Arradwen into the Giants' Dance, just behind King Arthur and with Estren and Hugydd flanking him. He felt the world falling away behind him, and for a second or two it felt like there was no ground beneath them at all. The air shimmered again, and he found himself, along with the entire company -- a small company, but a deadly one -- closing on the rear guard of King Cwerith's army on the fields north of Bedwyn.

Behind him, Jonn hurled two fire-globes, and several of the Finders joined him. When they exploded, bodies and dirt were sent everywhere, and King Arthur led them into the heart of confusion and fray. The pain from Sir Baigent's wounds was forgotten -- still there, but pushed down into a dark place he could not feel. He could not afford pain right now, as he rode into the heart of the armies that had brought the flames and death to his home and people. He shouted Camyrdin! over and over and over again, until his voice gave out. Arradwen, who had carried him on such a hard journey, had never given him surer footing than that which she gave him now. The pools of mud and collected blood, the fallen men beneath her hooves -- none of it made the slightest difference. Sir Baigent controlled her with one hand on the reins, and the two moved as one as Sir Baigent rode behind the Promised King.

If Sir Baigent fought well, the Promised King fought like no other warrior who had ever set foot upon the soil of Prydein. No man there, on either side, was like to ever forget the sight of that great lord, armored and terrible, atop his white steed and wielding the sword that danced with death and light. The orderly ranks of Cwerith's army broke before this tiny company, and like a wave far away at sea the cheers began within the men of Bedwyn -- small at first, but gathering force until all the horns of Gwynedd were drowned out.

On the rise where he stood, Duke Cunaddyr bellowed for his own horns to sound the countercharge, and his army surged forward one last time, led by Lord Matholyn ap Macholugh and Sir Jules. First they swept over the archers who had turned to fire upon the attackers from behind, and then they pushed on, eventually meeting at the center where the Promised King took the lead of the next push, directly into the thickest part of Cwerith's infantry. But here, too, there was time enough for two warriors to greet one another:

"Well met, My Lord," Sir Baigent called, and Lord Matholyn laughed.

"Well met, my friend," Matholyn replied with gladness in his heart that he had not felt in what seemed like so, so long. Even on a blood-soaked field of war there could still be moments of joy.

Sir Jules fell in beside Sir Baigent. "Your hair looks longer," he said.

"I even welcome the sight of yours," Sir Baigent replied.

"To me, men of Prydein!" It was the voice of the Promised King as he led them all to war once again.

***

King Cwerith ap Cellamma had always been quick to rage. It was a trait common to the Kings of Gwynedd, born of living in a cold, wet castle by the side of the sea. Thus it was to Lord Varing's great surprise that he did not react with furious temper to the sudden decay of his army from disciplined host to bedraggled bedlam.

Cwerith's voice became cold, his commands clipped and harsh. The orders came faster and faster as he worked to direct his armies together again. He sent this company forward, and ordered that one back; he tried to reform his archers and muster his cavalry. But though he saw what needed to be done and gave the orders as quickly as he saw that need, the execution was another matter. The discipline had been broken, and it appalled him how easily it had happened. This warrior with the shining sword was only one warrior, one man, and the company he had led into his rear guard was a small one, even though they had those exploding missiles. But they fought as men possessed, and their arrival -- unseen by anyone, and accompanied by a fierce wind -- frightened him. Something had happened, of that there was no doubt. Cwerith absently fingered the scabbed-over wounds on his forearm, and he realized the truth: this was no mere warrior. This was the Goddess's warrior.

Cwerith was looking upon the Promised King.

This was the man whose return had been made possible, which meant that the Dark Power's mission to the Giants' Dance had failed. I will speak with Cassion before this day is out, Cwerith thought. Then he gave one last command.

"Sound the full charge," he said. "All men are to advance. We will drown them in a sea of blood."

Lord Varing and his councilors looked askance. Varing, in particular, turned pale.

"What is it?" Cwerith snapped.

"My Liege," Varing began. "We might be able to drive them from the field, but--"

"Say nothing more!" Cwerith shouted as he glared not at his seneschal but at the battlefield. It had to be possible, the day could still be won -- and yet, it was not possible, it could not be won. "We might win the field, but we will not have enough strength remaining to take the city. We may win the battle, but the siege will fail. Is that what you mean to say, Varing?"

Lord Varing slowly nodded. "Your Majesty, we still outnumber them, and when the armies of Duncan merge with yours, they won't be able to withstand you. We must withdraw."

To his credit, Varing held his King's gaze -- unlike this craven coward Gaddamar, who shifted about and looked at the ground as his the tips of his ears turned crimson.

Cwerith shook his head with disgust as he closed his fist around the stone from Caer Camyrdin in his pocket. Allowing this warrior to win the day would embolden those who would challenge and resist his own claim to the throne of Prydein. He remembered the face of stern King Cellamma, cheated out of that which should have been his. He envisioned his father's anger at his son's failure to bring Gwynedd to the High Throne, and he heard his father's voice, echoing through the ages: Do not fail, or our entire line -- all of our fathers, all the way back to the Cataclysm -- will judge your failure. To leave the field when victory for Gwynedd was in your grasp is the foulest of failures.

But then Cwerith's anger rose again, and he answered the voices he heard within him: No. This need not be treachery. You left the field too, Father, and you did it without loosing a single arrow or swinging a single blade. I have dealt the blow that you could never strike, and though I lost this battle as you lost yours, I will fight again.

Unlike you, Father, I will never bend the knee to a lesser man.

And in that moment Cwerith banished his father forever from his soul. From this moment on, no longer would Cwerith fight to right the wrongs of Cellamma's destiny. He would fight to secure his own.

Drawing himself up in his saddle, the King of Gwynedd turned to Lord Varing and said, "Sound the retreat."

***

"Where did everyone go?" Brother Llyad asked as he and Gareth walked through the desolation of what had been the Druid camp. Bodies, broken and dead, were everywhere, and the smoke from the fires had at last begun to clear.

"Tracks," said Gareth. "Many of them, leading right up to the Dance. It looks like they charged in, and through."

"Should we follow?"

"Not yet," Gareth replied. She knelt beside the body of a man she had known -- Padrec, a father whose two sons were with the rest of the company, wherever they had gone. And there were other Finders here amongst the dead. Jonn had brought them into this battle. That's it, then, Gareth thought as she brushed a tear from her eye. I have truly led the Finders to war. She kept moving through the dead, seeking out friends both dead and living. They would need to move on soon. Maxen's men had been driven off, but there was no guarantee that they would not return. But at least their Captain was dead. Matt had found the body of the one-handed warrior, lying beside a broken, scorched blade.

"Gareth! Come!" It was Brother Llyad, shouting to her from the edge of the Giants' Dance, where he stood looking in. Gareth ran to his side, and he pointed into the Dance. "Look," he said.

There was a man there. Standing near the center of the Dance, his back was turned toward Gareth and Brother Llyad as he bent over to put something -- no, someone -- gently down upon the ground behind one of the stones. Then he turned to face the two who watched him. He appeared to be of immense age, with white hair in loose curls, a long white beard, and deep-set, black eyes, and he was garbed in shining robes of white; however, despite his apparent age he also looked very strong and wise. This man gave a single nod of his head that somehow spoke of comfort and wisdom, and then Gareth and Brother Llyad watched as he turned and walked away. And when he went he seemed to vanish into the earth and the air. Silence fell, and he was gone.

Gareth was the first to speak. "Was that--"

"One of the Fair Folk," Brother Llyad replied. He moved forward, Gareth following closely behind, to the side of the person the Fairy had placed on the ground. When they arrived and peered around the stone, they gasped.

It was Gwynwhyfar.

Chapter Twenty-one

2005-11-06T05:52:00.000-08:00

Damned weather, thought Sir Baigent ap Pelegaunt as he followed with his eye the trails of smoke from the burning tents, rising fast into a clear morning sky that was blue to the west and golden to the east as the sun rose. All those days of riding through dank, cold, wet days when the sky was nothing but clouds; all the rain and that one, great storm that had very nearly killed them -- and now that clouds and dark would actually be of use, there was clear sky and sunshine. Sir Baigent absently rubbed his side, pushing the pain from the wound down deep. There would be time for pain later...much later. He lowered his gaze and took up his position with Murron's line of so-called archers.

"They'll be coming now," he said.

"Of course they will," Murron snapped as she turned to face her recruits. "Listen, you -- these aren't rabbits. You're not shooting something for the pot. You're shooting at men, and you're shooting to make sure they don't get up again."

There were distant shouts then -- but not distant enough. Men were coming through the camp, looking for prey. A group of mounted men came around a corner, about twenty paces away from where the defenders stood. Murron of the Arrows did not hesitate.

"Loose!" she shouted, and her band of archers let their arrows fly. There was the rolling thud as all those bowstrings snapped at once, followed by the hiss of arrows in the air. Some of the arrows struck men, some struck the mounts, and some hit nothing at all. Of the men who were hit, only two actually fell; and only one of the mounts came down, the one that Murron had shot herself. She had nocked and loosed two more arrows before she realized that the others were merely looking on their handiwork. "Keep shooting!" she shouted, and the others finally returned to the moment and began shooting again, just in time for the footsoldiers who were now streaming out of the camp behind their mounted chargers.

The air is too damned clear, Sir Baigent thought. The smoke isn't enough. Their only hope was for the fires they'd set to create confusion amongst Maxen's men and provide cover for themselves, but there was precious little of either. Beside him, the Druids stepped up with their blow-tubes and shot darts at the oncoming attackers. More fell, but still not enough.

"Murron!" Sir Baigent shouted. "Fall back!" Hugydd stepped in beside him.

"This is not the finest of plans," the knight-turned-Druid said.

"Fine plans, fine armies," Sir Baigent said. "It seems we are doomed to be without such luxuries."

The plan was simple, on its face: engage Maxen's men near the edge of the camp and then fall back, drawing them farther in -- and then falling back again, and again, for as long as they would follow. The fires would be hotter and the smoke would be heavier, deeper in the camp; chaos and confusion would grow. It was their only hope. The problem with relying on confusion, of course, was that the side trying to inflict it was even more susceptible to it than the other. A well-trained, disciplined force would never rely on chaos and confusion in battle. It was a tactic only for the very desperate.

"Shoot the horses, not the men!" It was Murron shouting. Her archers had been trying to hit the men, as opposed to the mounts. Now they obeyed and did as they should have been doing all along, and the results were good: three horses fell almost immediately. Now the attackers were close enough that Sir Baigent could make out their faces.

"Stand and ready!" he shouted, his muscles tensing and his sword-hand flexing. Maxen's men had recognized the source of their threat and were now charging. Sir Baigent could hear their coarse laughter as they realized that they were fighting a ragtag collection of farmers and displaced villagers, and savored the easy kill. Murron's archers brought down four more horses, and the air filled with the sounds of laughter and screaming horses. Sir Baigent saw that they had at last achieved something of the desired effect: a barricade of sorts, formed by dead or dying horses and their riders who were trapped beneath them.

"Murron!" Sir Baigent shouted.

Murron took her cue perfectly. "One last round!" she shouted. "Aim low!"

Her archers did just that, loosing one last volley of arrows at the encroaching marauders and striking many of them squarely in the legs, bringing them down behind the horses. Then Murron shouted, "Fall back!", and the archers fled backward into the camp, accompanied by the blowdart-wielding Druids.

Sir Baigent looked to the fifty or so men he had beside him: Hugydd and Estren, wielding swords; twenty Druids with clubs, and the remainder comprised of farmers with farm-tools. More men awaited them at their first fall-back position; the task now was to strike a quick blow and then get back to that position. Lifting his sword, he yelled "Camyrdin!" as loudly as his voice would allow, and then he led the charge. He closed the distance to his first man in three long bounds, removing the man's head in a single stroke, and then turning to face the next man before the first had even fallen all the way to the ground. His impromptu war cry was picked up by the others behind him, most loudly by Hugydd.

This fight lasted only a few moments, until Sir Baigent looked up and saw that Maxen's reinforcements had arrived. It was time, whether Murron had the next line ready or not.

"Fall back!" Sir Baigent shouted. "To the next line!" He swung his blade, bringing down a particularly large club-wielding brute and then he moved to disengage. The other men joined him in the retreat, and taking quick stock he saw that they had only lost four men in the initial clash, which was less than he had expected. As they fled deeper into the camp, they left behind a pile of writhing horses and bodies that would hinder the progress of Maxen's men -- or so Sir Baigent prayed.

"Move!" he shouted. These men did not run fast enough. Behind them, four of Maxen's men broke through and made pursuit; Sir Baigent, Hugydd and Estren killed them all. The harper, it turned out, was indeed a fair hand with a sword. Again there was a pause in the pursuit, and this time it was enough for them all to get far enough away. Sir Baigent ran last, grabbing a nearby torch and dropping it onto a line of pitch they had poured just minutes before, across the lane. The line of fire that erupted was only knee-high -- not much of a barrier, and it would burn out in only a minute or two, but it might give them valuable seconds.

A few at a time, he thought. A few at a time, until we've got their number down to where it's a fair fight.

He ran into the smoky haze that was finally settling over the camp.

***

Though neither man could have known it, the name of Camyrdin had been Lord Matholyn's battle cry almost at the same moment it had been Sir Baigent's. Matholyn shouted it over and over again, but the tide of men kept pressing forward, his throat became hoarse, and rage and vengeance in his heart gave way to fighting for survival. And not only his survival, but that of the men beside him and behind him, the men who followed him and rallied around him as the Battle of Bedwyn surged.

A man beside him fell, his skull split open by a Gwynedd war hammer. Lord Matholyn turned to the left and struck Cwerith's man dead with his sword. There was no scream, just a thud. Matholyn found little satisfaction in the killing. It was just one more man amongst thousands who would die today. Death had little meaning here, in this place. He was fighting for a King he did not know, in memory of a city now dead, and in defense of a still-living city not his own. This man he'd just killed -- perhaps he had been a mercenary, or perhaps a farmer from the hills above Caer Mastagg. And perhaps so had been all the men he'd already struck down, and all those still doomed to die beneath his blade before it was all done.

The fighting immediately around him suddenly lulled, and Matholyn hazarded a glance at his surroundings. Ahead of him, a group of Cunaddyr's men were near to capturing a small rise of no consequence other than that it was a definite feature in the field to be won, and a company of Gwynedd soldiers were already coming forward to meet them. Matholyn spurred his horse and cleared the distance to the hillock in seconds. He managed to take Cwerith's men from behind, killing four and throwing the rest into disarray. Thus the hillock was taken, but no cheers went up. The taking of such a small thing in battle only meant that those who had won the moment would now turn their attention to defending it -- or, if they were fortunate, beginning the next advance and the taking of the next rise or dip. The men there simply moved on, digging in to defend a rocky rise that in normal times should have been crowned by crops or wildflowers.

Matholyn looked across the field to where Cwerith was watching the battle and directing the progress of his armies, the spot easily picked out by the size of the banner fluttering above it. Horns sounded now and again, telling one company to advance and another to fall back. He can't be too happy with what he has seen thus far, Matholyn thought as he stole a sip of water from a flask before returning to the fighting. A company of Bedwyn archers was already making for the hillock just taken, from where they would -- it was hoped -- be able to rain down some arrows on a particularly troublesome part of Gwynedd's army.

Cwerith's aim, at the outset, had been to take the field by one massive thrust of overwhelming force, but Duke Cunaddyr's smaller army had proven at least partly adequate to the task of holding ground, and now -- just two hours into the battle -- they had actually regained some of the field they had initially lost. But it still might not be enough. Cwerith had calmly shifted his focus from total defeat to gaining position for his archers, so they would be able to send coming down upon the Bedwyn forces from two sides -- and eventually perhaps even send flaming arrows over the city walls and into Bedwyn herself.

That was all Matholyn could see of the strategy that was shaping the battle. Somewhere to his right he heard a trumpet call sounding a charge that was led by Sir Jules. Matholyn could not tell what objective Jules was trying to achieve, or how this charge would be of import or use now, but it was no longer his place to see such things. Duke Cunaddyr was back by the city gates, and it was his duty to respond to Cwerith's strikes and feints by directing his own men to and fro. Cunaddyr had asked Matholyn to remain at his side to offer wisdom, but Matholyn had insisted on riding to battle himself. "I can offer little wisdom this day that is not better delivered by the edge of my sword," he had said. And thus it had been.

There was a pair of shouts then, coming two spearmen attacking him from behind. Controlling his horse with a deftness of hand that caught the two brutes by surprise, he was able to get around the first spearman before he could compensate, and his strike went wide. An easy thrust of his sword, into the man's face, was all Matholyn needed. He pulled his blade free and turned toward the other man. The spear struck the horse, but the animal's pivot fortunately made the weapon strike only a glancing blow. The horse shrieked and lashed out with its hooves, pounding the man solidly in the chest as it reared; and when it came back down again, it trampled the man to death.

Matholyn decided it was time for a new horse. This one was already fully lathered, and now it was wounded as well. Turning away from the battle, Lord Matholyn rode across the field back to the main gate where he would be given a fresh mount. Then he would go out and fight again. Glancing down at himself, he saw that he was covered in blood, dirt and filth. So much blood.

***

"May the silver light of the Goddess shine upon your path, all the way to the feasting hall of Annwn."

Brother Malcolm finished saying the Blessing of the Dead, and then he removed the prayer bead from the old woman's forehead. Two of the apprentices in the Chambers of Healing came forward to bear the body away, while another stepped in to take up the bedding and carry it to the fires. Brother Malcolm glanced at the woman's husband, but the poor man -- himself thin and weak -- only turned and hobbled away. He will receive the same blessing before long, Malcolm thought as he looked around to see if there was anyone else needing his services just now. Seeing no one, he decided to go for a moment to one of the Temple's four sanctuaries. He had said seven Blessings of the Dead in the last two hours, and there would be more. Just now he needed to see something other than death.

He walked out into the hall and followed the white stones inlaid in the black tile floor. Those white stones formed a path leading to the two sanctuaries in the lowest level of the Temple, which were kept open for the regular use of the people of Bedwyn. Malcolm, being a sworn member of Dona's Priesthood, would have been allowed into the Prime Sanctuary at the center of the Temple, where Father Terryn, as Lord Priest of Bedwyn, would have held official ceremonies, or even in the private Sanctuary on the Temple's top floor, which was for the use of the Priests and Priestesses of the Temple alone. Malcolm, though, actually preferred the plainly-adorned simplicity of this small public sanctuary. Upon entering, he walked past several worshippers to the center of the Prayer Wheel, where he stopped. He had meant to pray, but none of the ceremonial prayers seemed adequate. He was not even sure of what to ask of Dona -- safety for the people of Bedwyn, or victory in the war, or the success and safety of Gwyn in her mission. Perhaps he should ask for all that…he was still considering it when Father Terryn entered.

"There you are," he said. "Come. I have need of you."

He said no more than that before leaving, and Brother Malcolm had to rush to catch up to him.

"What has happened?" Malcolm asked, but he received no reply. Instead, Father Terryn led him into a new corridor and down a set of spiraling stairs, through a heavy iron door which swung open when Terryn tapped it three times with his staff. Now they entered a very dark series of stone passages that smelled of earth and moisture. The way was lit by a glowing jewel atop Father Terryn's staff and a series of small torches, little more than candles, set in the wall every twenty paces or so. Despite the oppressive darkness, Father Terryn moved very quickly. Eventually they came to a junction of such passages, where six strong-looking Adepts waited, each holding a large bundle wrapped in cloth.

"What is this?" Malcolm asked.

"These passages were built two hundred years ago," Father Terryn said. "They provide a secret way in and out of the city. That one goes to a spot just outside the main gate."

"You're sending me to the battlefield," Malcolm said.

Father Terryn nodded. "You will be of use there."

"To say blessings?"

Father Terryn chuckled humorlessly. "The dead will number far too many for you to bless them all," he said. "We need as many to bind wounds as we can spare. You are from Tintagel -- a hard place -- and you have been an itinerant priest, so you have some knowledge of healing." He placed a hand on Malcolm's shoulder and leaned closer. "We who serve in Dona's Priesthood are not often seen as men of strength, but you and I know the truth of that matter. I wish I did not have to ask this of you."

Brother Malcolm nodded. "I serve with all of Dona's grace."

"And you walk under her light," Father Terryn replied.

Brother Malcolm followed the Adepts up the new tunnel. Sparing this many Adepts for the battlefield would leave the Chambers of Healing ill-equipped to deal with the sick and the dying in the city, but that would matter little if the city fell.

To Malcolm's surprise, he heard nothing except for his own footsteps and those of the Adepts -- until they reached the stone door sealing the tunnel's outside end, and the strongest of the Adepts shoved it open. That was when Brother Malcolm first heard the sounds of war, and when he first saw its sights. His heart froze. It was as if he had come to the shores of a lake of blood.

Which, in some sense, he had.

***

"Look! Smoke!"

Gavidd pointed to the Giants' Dance, several miles distant. Hanging in the air above and around the Dance was a great deal of smoke.

"Mercy of the Goddess," Jonn whispered. They were too late. The attack had begun. He cursed himself for not realizing sooner what Maxen had planned to do. "Ride, men!" he shouted to his companions as he kicked his horse into a gallop.

The men of the Finders made no effort at all now to conceal their coming. The time for stealth, for quick attacks under cover of night, was done. Now they would attack their enemy by the light of day, with nothing else to hide them. And though Jonn was mostly terrified by this idea, part of him was also relieved that it should be so. We come, Gareth, he thought as he urged his steed faster.

***

"Burning the camp?" Gareth said, incredulously, as she handed the baby back to its mother. "Well, I suppose it is a time for desperation."

"When has it been otherwise?" Matt growled. "We should be fighting with them, or damnation take me."

"Aye," said Calloch. He, too, had been annoyed when Gareth had commanded them to remain with her to help these people flee.

"Hush!" Gareth snapped. "You are frightening these poor folk. I am sure you will both see fighting soon enough." To the poor woman, she said. "There, mother. Do not move from this place unless you are bid so."

"I can fight!" It was the woman's son, a boy of nine who had not bathed in far too long. To illustrate the point, he brandished an axe handle.

"Then wait to do so until your family is threatened," Gareth said. "And not before."

They had moved away from the camp, away from the Dance, but it would be of little help once Maxen's men came after them. The frozen streambed they followed offered little by way of cover, and once the attackers realized that the people had fled they would be quickly spotted. Delay was all that one could hope for when victory was impossible.

"Keep moving!" she shouted. "We must not stop, even for a moment! It is our only chance!"

An old man in front of her slipped on some ice. Even from her distance, Gareth heard the crunching sounds of his bones breaking. When she came to his side he was moaning in agony, and his ankle was pointing grotesquely in the wrong direction. Two men came quickly to lift him and bear him away, but Gareth shook her head as they did so. He would be dead soon enough.

"In the name of Seren Goleuad!" Calloch cried. "What is the point of all this? The Promised King is going to emerge from that Dance and find a plain full of dead people and an army waiting to kill him!"

Something in his words made Gareth stop in place. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be...but it was.

Gareth had wondered at the incongruity of Maxen's attack, at this very time and place. She had assumed it the poorest of fortunes, but now she realized the truth and she felt herself becoming very cold.

He had known.

Somehow, Maxen had known. He was not attacking a random collection of his King's enemies, nor was he marauding upon the helpless, unleashing his wrath upon the most pathetic opponents he could find.

He was here to kill the Promised King, even as he emerged from the Giants' Dance.

Gareth looked back to the Dance, and the camp now burning around it; she looked at the clouds of smoke now rising into the icy blue sky. And at the very heart of the Dance itself she saw a light, small at first, but soon growing to a white and brilliant gleaming. That light was accompanied by a new wind that whipped the smoke above the Dance into a cyclonic spiral.

It was happening.

***

Sir Baigent struck the man squarely on the head with the flat of his sword, stunning him, and on the follow-through he ran his sword through the man's neck. Somewhere to his right Hugydd was fighting, his sword dancing impressively for a man who had forsaken his life of the blade and more impressively, in fact, than Sir Baigent remembered him ever fighting before. As he and Hugydd carved a path through the attackers, Estren and the farmfolk came in behind, taking advantage of the small amount of confusion that the two experienced fighters were able to create. Meanwhile, Murron and her archers were able to keep Maxen's cavalry at bay. For now, at least, it was all working. They were holding their ground. The fires had served their purpose.

And yet, Sir Baigent thought as he fought off yet another attacker, Maxen had to know what manner of resistance he was facing here. He was no fool. After the first success of the defenders, Maxen had held his cavalry back. It was tempting to think that he did so because of the damage Sir Baigent's hasty defense had wreaked, but the element of such surprise was gone and the defenders now had their backs almost up against the Dance itself. Maxen had to know that he was facing a group of Druids and farmers and villagers, and not a disciplined company of soldiers. He had to know that there was no way that this ragtag group could defeat even his relatively small number of mounted knights. To these peasants, it would be as a full cavalry charge, and they would break in the face of it. Sir Baigent knew that if he were in command of such a force against such an opposition, he would order the charge. So why was Maxen waiting?

A gust of wind came up at that moment, pushing smoke from the fires into Sir Baigent's face. Coughing, he turned just in time to almost dodge an attack by a club-wielding brute; the club landed on his left arm, nearly breaking it. Sir Baigent killed the man with a single sword thrust and then staggered away. That was when he saw the brilliant light gleaming in the heart of the Dance. He wondered what it could mean, and then he realized what it was, and hope filled his heart -- hope that was dispelled when Maxen's horns at last sounded the charge.

He knew, now, why Maxen had waited.

"To the Dance!" he shouted, over and over. "Murron! Defend the Dance!" He yelled it as many times as he could as he began fighting his way back toward the Giants' Dance, from where the Promised King was about to emerge into the midst of an attack -- and Gwynwhyfar would be with him.

He heard a new chorus of shouts and screams. More of Maxen's men were streaming forward. Sir Baigent's blood froze.

"Merciful Goddess!" Hugydd said.

They had tried to reach the Dance in time, but they had failed. All of Maxen's men were now upon them, their task dreadfully clear: to hold these commoners in place, killing them slowly while Maxen's men on horse faced the one who would soon come out of the great stone circle.

***

"They are fighting well," Fflud observed. "We should send in the rest of our men."

"Not yet," Maxen said, holding up a hand. It would not be long now. He felt it stirring within him: desire, dark and lusty, for blood and death. He felt the presence of the Power that had come to him in the form of a great silver wolf.

Soon...very soon....

Pain -- wonderful, wonderful pain -- began to smolder in his left wrist. It was coming. It was--

"Look!" Fflud cried.

It was here.

The wind blasted Maxen, but he took no notice of it at all. What commanded him was the light, burning and terrible, that radiated at the center of the Giants' Dance and the shape that stood at the center of that light. The Druids had done it. They had brought him back. But it did not matter, for in wielding the strength of that Power that had come to him in his hour of darkest need, he would undo what the Druids had made this day.

"Sound the call," he commanded. Fflud relayed the command. Maxen wound the reins around his left forearm. He was unconcerned about the horse remaining true, for he knew that it would. There was no reason for concern. He drew his sword for the moment that was to come, when he would kick his horse in the flanks and ride with a silent war-cry toward the task that, in the moment when his onetime life ended, would become his.

When he would ride to slay the Promised King.

***

King Cwerith ap Cellamma looked out over the battlefield at the city of Bedwyn beyond. His initial push for the field had stalled, but now his armies were gaining position for a rallying push, and he could see that the armies of Bedwyn had been spread out too thin across the field. When the time came for him to order the next full thrust up the center of the field, poor Cunaddyr's forces would not be able to repel him a second time. It was already decided, and all that remained was the playing out of the drama. Bedwyn was showing more resistance than had Caer Camyrdin, but still they would fail. Cwerith allowed himself a smile. Today, Prydein would be his.

Across the field came a horn call that was cut short; one of Cunaddyr's trumpeters had been struck down, and one of Cwerith's own trumpeters returned the call.

"A page returns, My Liege," Lord Varing said.

King Cwerith nodded, and he turned to face the boy who had come running from the nearby hills: one of Cassion's pages.

"What word?" he said.

"I have come from Father Cassion," the boy said, confirming what Cwerith already knew. "He bids me tell you: it has begun in the north."

Cwerith nodded. "Go and get water, boy," he said. "We will have word for you to take to the field."

"Yes, My Liege," the boy said before staggering away.

Cwerith turned back to the battle. One of his companies had broken too far to the east and would have to be summoned back; another had suffered heavy losses and was about to give way entirely. But overall, the battle was going well.

"My Liege?"

"Yes, Varing?"

"Sire, I am wondering -- what is happening to the north?"

"The greater part of our victory," Cwerith said. The greater part, indeed...he wished, not for the first time, that he was able to commune with the Power that was the source of Cassion's strength and wisdom. One day, perhaps -- if he showed his fealty...if he showed his worth as King....

***

Brother Malcolm tied the bandage around the man's thigh. It was a deep wound, but clean; perhaps he would walk again, although he was more like to lose his leg. Malcolm handed the man a cup of water, and the man swallowed a sip or two before lapsing into unconsciousness. Then he moved on to the next, and even one so unfamiliar with wounds of battle as he could recognize a death-wound when he saw it. A sword, or an axe perhaps, had opened the man's torso so that his body was naught but blood and mangled flesh between the chest and the legs. The man's breaths were shallow, rasping; by what cruelty this man should still be breathing at all was beyond Malcolm's imagination. He whispered something, a snippet of prayer, before re-covering the man and moving on. He had now lost count of the men to whom he had only been able to offer farewell. It all became a blur, a horrible blur of blood, bile and defecation and death.

Later he was helping to restrain a soldier whose arms had been taken off at the elbow as an Adept cauterized the wound with a hot iron. The man's shrieks, piercing despite the rag stuffed into his mouth, drowned out the horns that sounded from Cwerith's army. It was just as well. Brother Malcolm would not have recognized those horns for Cwerith's secondary push, even if he had heard them.

But someone else had heard those horns. "They are coming," that someone said.

***

Sir Baigent ignored the pain in his side from the old wound and the pain in his left arm from the new -- and the cut on his forehead, and the twisting of his ankle when he had stumbled over a corpse. He never allowed his blade to stop moving, not for a single second, as he fought through the throng of louts before him. He had no time for pain now, and all the men he killed took on a singular aspect, no longer appearing as separate warriors but just parts of a single, larger foe. He had to fight through. He had to win. But there were still too many by far, and he would not be able to thwart the mounted warriors who now attacked the man who had just come forth from the Dance.

That man was tall in the saddle, tall and impressive -- but at the same time he was somehow smaller than Sir Baigent had envisioned, and from the distance of fifty paces or so he looked even smaller. This is the Promised King, Sir Baigent thought with dismay as the first two of Maxen's mounted knights moved to engage him. Sir Baigent brought his own sword about, beheading an attacker, and then he had a moment in which no one was coming at him, a moment for him to watch what came next. He saw the two mounted men lift their swords, and his heart sank. Everything we suffered, he thought. All of it, to end here, like this.

And then Sir Baigent saw the Promised King lift his own sword.

It was a weapon the like of which he had never before seen. This sword reflected the light of the sun so brilliantly that to Sir Baigent it appeared as though the Promised King held a blade wrought of a piece of the sun itself. He reflexively lifted his hand to shield his eyes, but still he was able to see the Promised King ride forward, straight at the attackers. That bright blade flashed twice with amazing speed, and the two knights fell dead from their saddles.

The Promised King peeled away and circled back to the spot where he had begun, to await the next attackers. Again they came, and again the King rode to meet them, and again the attackers were slain. Something stirred in Sir Baigent's heart. Once more the name of Camyrdin burst forth from his lips, and he rejoined the fight. The numbers against him were still desperate, but perhaps -- just perhaps -- they might be able to win this day. Then he heard the pounding of hoof-beats, and he thought for a moment that Maxen had sent his cavalry to attack the villagers and defenders, until he heard the new war cry:

"Seren Goleuad!"

That cry was followed by the sound of a clay object hitting the ground, and Sir Baigent threw himself down just as the explosion blasted in the midst of Maxen's men.

The Finders had arrived.

***

Rage, black rage, filled Maxen's heart as the explosion ripped through his men. How dare these damned wretches--

It does not matter.

The voice was familiar, and it calmed him. He touched the maimed tissue of his left wrist and pressed on it, savoring the familiar pain. Of course it did not matter if these people came now, with their damned globes of fire. It didn't matter if every one of his men fell here today, so long as this Promised King never left the field alive.

Ride with my strength, Maxen of Caer Mastagg.

The words, spoken in the voice of the silver wolf, soothed him. He looked up to see the King with the blazing sword strike down another man, and the world seemed to him to slow as he spurred his horse forward and began his own ride to the attack. He lifted his sword, and the blade actually began to burn as though it was made of flame instead of steel. The strength of the Power that had saved him -- the strength of the silver wolf -- surged through him as he rode, and his burning sword met the blazing one at last.

***

"Break away!" Fflud shouted. "Stop those men!"

He shouted his command again and again, until the remainder of the mounted knights turned from their attack on the man with the blazing sword and moved instead to counterattack these damned bandits who had found them once again. Fflud lifted his own battle axe and likewise rode to attack, to trample and behead and maim and kill these enemies who had been so flagrant in their refusal to serve the rightful King of Prydein. What luck, what unbelievable fortune, that these fools would be here as well, fighting in the open and under sunlight at last, without the cover of darkness and fire and smoke to protect them.

And there in the front of all the fighting was the bastard from Camyrdin who had taken the mantle of Champion for that whining bitch and maimed his Captain. Easily selecting his target, Fflud steered his horse toward that man -- Baigent was his name -- and positioned his axe for the blow that would send this man to join his countrymen.

***

Out of the corner of his eye, Sir Baigent could see that the men on horse had swung about to attack the Finders. They would trample their own men, the way they were riding. Amazing -- and even worse, Sir Baigent would be among them. He could not disengage from the men he was fighting soon enough. The horses were almost here -- and then there came the unmistakable rush of air as twenty or so arrows flew over his head, into the charging riders. He heard the voice of Murron of the Arrows, shouting in the distance, but he could not make out her words. Glancing about, he saw Hugydd swing his sword, killing a man who died with an expression of shock that he should be struck down by a Druid.

One of the Finders rode by, his horse trampling three men as the rider dropped another fire-globe. The explosion threw more bodies into the air, and Sir Baigent waded into the resulting carnage, using his sword to carve through leather, flesh and bone. Then he heard a bloodcurdling scream, and when he looked up he saw another horseman -- an immense mountain of a man, wielding a gigantic axe -- bearing down upon him.

Fflud, he thought, having only time enough to recognize the man before Maxen's second-in-command was upon him.

***

In his ears Maxen heard the baying of wolves as he arrived upon the Promised King. The King's blazing sword flashed with astonishing speed, but Maxen's burning blade moved with equal speed to parry the blow. He saw the expression in the other man's eyes, and he was confused by what he saw there: calmness, anger and a small amount of fear, but also sadness. He knows he is here to die, Maxen thought. But still this warrior fought bravely and gallantly, almost without fear. After another exchange of sword-strokes, the Promised King moved beyond Maxen's reach and dismounted, moving with a litheness of foot that Maxen found surprising. Nevertheless, such skill would not save this man who fought with the power of a fading Goddess while he, Maxen, fought with the power of the fading Goddess's rising Brother.

Maxen swung down from his own saddle and rushed to the attack. He did not wonder how this man had known he would likewise dismount, for that mattered not at all. He savored the grunt that the Promised King made when he met Maxen's first blow. It would not be long now.

Wolves howled for him, and he drank in the Dark God's power and majesty.

Chapter Twenty

2005-10-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

The sun had only been rising in the place she had left, but here in the place she now entered it was setting. The air was warm, but with the definite crisp of autumn. The tree the crowned the hill before her was in full leaf, but its leaves were red and gold, and they shone in the long light of the closing day such that the tree looked as though it were ablaze against the blue sky. She walked up the rise until she stood directly under its boughs, looking down the other side of the shallow hill on a wide field that ended about six miles distant in a line of wood beyond which stretched the sea. And out there, on the very horizon, she could just make out an island -- enough to see that it was there, but she could discern none of its features. She knelt in the grass beneath the tree as several of the tree's leaves broke free from their branches and fluttered down about her to the ground. Thus did Gwynwhyfar pass from the central plain of Prydein to -- wherever this was.

She looked down at the sword in her hands. She knew nothing about swords, in a practical sense, having only held one a handful of times in her life; but even so, she could tell that there was something very special about this particular blade. First, there was the way it perfectly balanced in her hand, despite its considerable heft and the fact that her hand was unaccustomed to the holding of blades in the first place. And when she removed it from its scabbard, the blade reflected the sunlight no matter which way she moved it, so brilliantly that it was as if she held a shaft of the sun itself in her hand. More even than that, though, was the way the weapon felt...alive in her hand. There was power in this weapon, ancient and elemental power, power akin to that which flowed through the Giants' Dance and which she had felt when she had entered the grove of the Fair Folk with Nimue at her side. For some time she gazed at the fine etchings of tracery along the blade, and she even tested the edge on her finger. The cut it made was so fine that she barely felt it, and the droplet of blood it left on the sword rolled off again, dripping away without leaving any trace at all.

"Who is it?"

Gwyn spun, startled by the voice even though it sounded like a little girl's voice, because there had been no one there before. But a little girl's voice it was. Probably eight years old, she stood before Gwyn with her twin brother -- such he could only be -- at her side. Both wore robes of red, and both had long hair that was strangely white. Gwyn had never seen white hair on a child before, nor had she ever seen eyes that stunningly black. These were the strangest children Gwyn had ever seen.

"It is a woman," the boy said, in a voice that was indistinguishable from the girl's. "And she comes wielding a sword."

"How strange," said the girl. "First that she is here at all, so far from home and walking a path so long untrodden by anyone from the mortal world, and second, that she comes with a sword when it is clear that her skill is with a bow."

Gwyn gasped.

"Indeed," said the boy. "It is ever thus with mortals: what they do is rarely equal to what they are able."

Gwyn's furrowed her brow. She had heard those words before, and might have even been able to place them in the Oracles, had she been anywhere but this strange place, talking to these strange children.

"To see a sword again is very welcome," the boy went on. "It has been a long time since war came here. In fact, when last these fields were bloodied by fallen warriors, it was that sword that did much of the watering."

"Yes," the girl replied. "The blood ran deep that day, and never more than when that very blade, wielded by the father, cut down the son even as the son's blade found its own mark."

"Such horrible fate," the boy said. "A dolorous day, indeed. But then, all days of battle are dolorous, are they not?"

"Surely not," the girl said. "Men make war too easily, 'tis true, but there are times when war is just and when the land can only live again through the bloody death of its sons."

The white-haired boy and girl went on like this for a while, talking back and forth to one another even as they gazed, unmoving and unwavering, upon Gwyn. They did not even seem to be conversing so much as reciting proscribed lines, as in Becham's Dialogues. Gwyn looked up at the sky, to mark the progress of the sun, and she was surprised to see that it had not even moved despite the fact that she had been standing here listening to the two children for a long enough time that it should have shifted even a small, but noticeable, amount. Did time not exist here? or only beneath this tree?

"I'm sorry," Gwyn finally said, interrupting the two children who were not children. "I have lost my way."

"She has lost her way," the boy said.

"Impossible," the girl replied. "One cannot lose what one has never had. Her way is not known to her, so how can she have lost it?"

"That is true," the boy said. "Although we should perhaps try to help her still, since finding one's way is of the highest importance, whether one has had it before and lost it or if one has never had it."

Gwyn blinked. Not even Father Damogan at his most cryptic spoke like this. "I have come for the Promised King," she offered.

The two children turned and looked at one another, as if in some form of communion; then they looked back at Gwyn.

"A King is a strange thing to promise," said the girl. "One's heart, or one's fortune, perhaps; but to promise a King is something odd."

"Do you know where I can find him?" Gwyn asked.

"We know where many things are," said the boy. "The graves of Kings who died young and those who were of great age at their passing. The barrows of where the Thirteen Treasures forever reside are known to us, as is the cavern of crystal wherein Merlyn forever sleeps. Why would you ask for this King, of all the Kings who sup in Arawn's meadhall?"

Gwyn thought for a moment. There were so many reasons that she could have given, but what she said was, "Because I have his sword." She held up the weapon again for them to see. "It is time for him to wield it again."

The children bowed their heads. "Then the sadness begins again," the girl said. "His duty is never complete, never done; his pain, never over."

"But perhaps the cycle ends with this one's coming," said the boy. "That is the place you seek."

The children lifted their arms and pointed to the sea and the misty isle on the horizon. Gwyn stepped forward, away from the children, to get a better look at the isle.

"Go there," said the girl behind her. "That is where the King sleeps."

"It is a long way to travel," Gwyn said. "How shall I get there, and how shall I cross the sea?"

But there was no reply from the children, and when she turned round again, the children were no longer there. In their place stood a tall, white horse that bowed its head as soon as Gwyn met its eye. The animal bent its knee, allowing her to mount. It wore no saddle, but with its first step Gwyn could tell that its footing was solid and true, and she knew that come what may she would not be thrown by this horse. It bore her down the hill, leaving the tree of autumn behind and past two white-stoned cairns that looked only large enough to contain…a child. Gwyn shivered, and not from the breeze.

The horse trotted down from the hill and out onto the field, heading for the distant wood and the sea beyond. The field was a lovely one, its grasses waving in the gentle breeze and the last wildflowers of autumn dotting the verdant landscape with points of white. Several times Gwyn closed her eyes to savor the warmth -- even the crispness of autumn felt warm to her after so much unending winter -- and the scent of those flowers in the air. She realized suddenly how accustomed she had become to cold and ice, to the scents of earth and dampness. The pent-up spirit within her welled up and burst forth, and she suddenly laughed aloud as the horse trotted across the field.

She opened her mouth to sing, but before she could utter a word the horse suddenly slowed to a walk as if its footing had become uncertain. Gwyn looked down at the ground to see what was the matter, but to her eyes it seemed no less smooth and passable than before. She could see no reason why the horse would now be favoring its steps. A shadow fell over her, and she looked up to see that a bank of clouds had moved over the sun; a cold breeze stirred then, a breeze that smelled strongly of the sea. More clouds came, clouds had not been in the sky before. And there were sounds, too, as faint as the waves of the nearby sea had sounded when Gwyn had slept in her home as a girl. They were the sounds of battle: the shout of a warrior on the attack; the clash of swords upon swords; the scream of a soldier being run through. The sounds were intermittent, scattered all around her -- some from far to her left, some from the right, some from behind her. Her head snapped in each direction as she heard each new sound, but she never saw anything other than waving grasses, wildflowers, and the occasional rock. Then there came a new sound, much louder, and directly in front of her: the piercing shriek of a man dying and dying horribly. Gwyn gasped and nearly dropped the sword, but the horse merely sidestepped the dying man who wasn't there.

Now Gwyn saw in the grass the gleam of metal, tarnished but still a bit shiny. There was another, a few paces away; and another, and another. They were shards of armor, pieces of broken blade, shattered helms littering the place once sullied by battle. The bits of metal became more numerous as the horse moved along, and then there were other things in the grass, smooth and white: bleached bones, the bones of the warriors fallen here. The bones were here and there, much as the pieces of metal had been, in pieces themselves, and now Gwyn could see that the horse was carefully choosing its path so as to not step on them. Just as there had been more of the metal fragments, there were more bones, and they were more often together and sometimes still joined together. Gwyn swallowed when she saw her first complete skeleton, still wearing the rusted and rotting armor that in the end had failed to protect its wearer from whatever had struck him down. No longer was Gwyn riding across an ancient battlefield. It was a recent battlefield, and with each step it was becoming more recent: she was riding through the very memories of this place, and the death that had been doled out in such horrible quantity here was now hers and hers alone to behold. She held her head high, always facing forward, trying not to turn her gaze on the remains that littered the ground about her, but it was so difficult -- especially as she realized that the wood was still at least half a mile distant.

The sounds of battle and dying men around her horse were constant now, never fading, but somehow never becoming quite real even as the bleached skeletons became less bleached, and the bones began to bear flesh once again, and the rusting armor rusted less and bore the markings of heraldic devices once again. On she rode, as the battlefield took shape as it had been on the day when the King had passed from the world of men into the world of Promise. When at last the trees drew near and their eaves reached out to welcome her, Gwyn rode across a field covered with fallen men who were either waiting to die or dead already.

There was no path, but the horse did not hesitate at all. Into the wood it walked. Gwyn had not traveled through many woods, but this one was still very different from any she had seen before. The trees were perfectly spaced at even distances apart, with almost no underbrush to speak of, so much so that Gwyn decided that this wood had been deliberately planted this way. Even odder was the fact that the trees before her were in full, verdant leaf, but as she approached them their colors shifted to the reds and golds of autumn, and when she looked back she saw the leafless trees of winter with their leaves now blanketing the ground. The wood passed in time as she rode through it, as the battlefield had reversed.

The ground rose sharply then, which was strange in itself because Gwyn had seen no sign of a hill at all -- in fact, when before she had first surveyed the land from beneath the autumn tree, it had seemed that the ground dipped slowly and steadily toward the sea. She remembered nothing in the lay of the land suggesting a sharp rise in the midst of this strange wood. Nevertheless, a rise there was, and the horse carried Gwyn straight up its side, and as she rode on Gwyn now heard the sound of metal on metal. The sound of combat.

The horse brought Gwyn onto the hilltop. Here they stopped beside a pavilion of red cloth and another horse of gray that lazily munched at a pile of hay that was not there, even though the horse's mouth made the crunching sounds as though it was. That would have been strange enough, if not for the duel taking place in the field on the hilltop, which was without any doubt the strangest thing Gwyn had ever seen.

There was only one combatant, a towering knight in armor painted green, and he was dueling no one. His opponent was the empty air -- and yet his lunging attacks were parried by something. The knight's sword rang against another sword, but there was no other sword, and the knight dodged attacks from -- the air? Gwyn nearly laughed at the sight, but the green knight was putting every bit of his strength into this weird battle. He launched another attack of almost savage brutality, which missed terribly. The knight in green was not just dueling nothing; he was being pushed back by nothing, and for a moment it seemed as though he might be defeated by...nothing. But then he parried a low attack and returned with a devastating slash of his own. There was a sickening crunch as the knight in green's sword made contact with...nothing, which was followed by a thud as the knight's invisible opponent fell to the ground. Then there was another thud as something landed on the ground very close to where Gwyn stood and rolled to a stop. Gwyn felt her flesh go cold as she realized what the unseeable object had to be. The knight in green turned and approached Gwyn and her horse, stopping several paces away. There he planted the tip of his sword in the ground and stood, silent, waiting.

Gwyn had no idea what to do. The knight in green made a gesture that seemed both to beckon her forward and warn her away, and she shook her head. The knight repeated the gesture, and again Gwyn shook her head. The horse snorted.

"He demands a question," someone said nearby. Gwyn glanced down at the source of the words, which was a treestump -- or rather, the head that sat on the treestump. She gasped.

"A question?" Gwyn asked.

"A question which he cannot answer," the head replied. Its voice was awkward, high-pitched, and raspy.

Gwyn glanced at the knight in green, who nodded.

"He wants me to ask a question?" she said.

"Indeed," said the head on the stump. "The knight in green is tortured by his inability to speak. His soul can be at peace only by being asked a question which would not vex the tongue he does not have by his inability to speak its answer."

A riddle, Gwyn realized. Her heart quickened, and not for the first time she wished she had never accepted the mantle of Welcomer -- except that it had not been a thing either for her acceptance or denial.

"Three chances shall be yours," said the head on the stump. "You may ask three times. Choose wisely."

"What if he can answer them all?" she asked, and then she bit her tongue, suddenly praying that this had not been one of her three questions.

"Then your head shall join mine on this stump," the head said cheerfully. "That prospect does appeal to me, My Lady. I would like to have a lovely thing to gaze upon for all my days."

For a brief second Gwyn considered turning the horse around and galloping away -- surely this knight in green could not outpace a running horse -- but she had little doubt it would be futile, if it were even possible. She forced herself to think back to her days at Tintagel. She had encountered riddles before, in come of the ancient tales, but she had always found them to be irritating, wordy poems that turned on verbal trickery, an opinion which had annoyed Brother Malcolm, who loved them. She tried to recall one of those riddles now, any of them.

"He awaits," said the head.

Gwyn thought again, searching her memory, and then she had a riddle, or part of one. She hoped it would be enough.

"What is it," she asked, "that shines with light not its own?"

The knight in green stood still for a moment that, to Gwyn, was horribly long. She waited for the knight's answer, and she was about to sigh in relief that he did not know it...when he lifted his gauntleted right hand and pointed to the sky.

"He says, the moon," said the head on the stump. "Another, please."

The answer was correct. Fool! Gwyn cursed herself. You got that one right yourself, the first time you heard it! Of course the knight would get it as well!

Again she thought back to the places she had read riddles in the books and the Oracles in the Tintagel library. She could almost recall a few of them -- a line here, a phrase there. Almost....

"I am the river that never floods,
I am the road that never turns,
I am the King whose edict is always final,
Against me no man can rebel,
Nor can he refuse to march by my side."

The knight in green made no motion at all, for a longer period than after the first riddle. He only stood there, unmoving, and again Gwyn thought that perhaps she had met the challenge; but then the knight made some gesture Gwyn could not possibly understand but which the head on the stump interpreted: "Time."

Gwyn's heart sank.

"Ask your final riddle, Lady." The head on the stump sounded cheerful, as though this were the most normal thing in all the world.

The knight in green stood, waiting. Every riddle she could remember, few as they were and then only in part, had easy answers that would little trouble her voiceless opponent.

"Ask, Lady," again said the head. "Ask a question which cannot be answered, and go forth from this place."

A question which could not be answered. Gwyn struggled to think of just such a question. Did the head mean a question that could not be answered because no one could have the knowledge to answer it, or did the head mean a question that had no answer? Either way, Gwyn could not think of one.

Think, girl!

She could hear the exasperated voice of Brother Malcolm, as she so often did -- both in reality and in her dreams -- when she could not summon the knowledge that should have easily come. Did this mean that she should be equal to this task?

You are the Welcomer! You must be equal to this, because it is part of who you are! You KNOW what to ask!

The voice was both Brother Malcolm's and her own. There was something she was supposed to know, something she had been given to remember, for this moment alone. Something in her deepest memory, something she could almost recall….

"Ask, Lady," said the head. "Ask now, or go to dwell forever in Annwn, Land of the Dead."

Annwn....

Gwyn remembered a dream then, in which a burial mound had opened and the dead had come forth -- and the Lord of the Dead himself had spoken to her. She tried to recall the things he had said...and then, at last, she had it. She lifted her head and, in a clear and even voice, asked her question.

"Knight in green, what will be the last word in the Song of the Dead?"

The knight in green did not hesitate, not even to consider the question. Instead, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head in reverence.

"Go in peace, Welcomer," said the head on the stump.

The horse began to walk, and Gwyn rode past the knight in green, across the combat field, and into the wood on the other side. This part of the wood was not laid out in as regular a fashion as the first, but now there was a path that led straight through, finally to the side of the sea.

The water sparkled in the sunlight of late afternoon, and the air was clear and cool. Nevertheless, the distant isle was still shrouded, and only the top of whatever lay there -- Gwyn could not tell if it was a sharp outcropping of rock atop a mountain or a spire atop a fortress of some kind -- was visible above the shifting mists. The horse rode down to the side of the water where it kneeled, allowing Gwyn to dismount, the sword still in her hands. She glanced at the horse, which bowed its head to she who had ridden it; and then she turned to face the water where even now a boat was emerging from the mists enshrouding the isle. The boat was white, its prow worked in the shape of a swan and its sails made of shimmering samite, the same as Gwyn's gown. She glanced back and was not surprised to see that the horse was gone. Thus she waited alone for the boat to come to her.

When it neared the shore, it turned and slid up to the bank on which Gwyn stood. She stepped into the boat and stood in its flat bottom for there were no seats. Then the breeze freshened, filling the sail and pushing the craft out to sea. Somehow the tiller moved even though there was no hand guiding it, and the boat swung about and moved across the calm, golden sea toward the misty isle.

As the boat drew nearer the isle, Gwyn became aware of voices raised in song -- three voices, those of women. She tried to attend to the words they were singing, but she could not tell what they were or even if they were words at all. There was happiness in that song, though; happiness and gratitude.

As the boat came to the first tendrils of mist, the cloud suddenly began to recede as if recoiling from the boat's very touch. Quickly, then, all of the mist enshrouding the isle vanished completely, revealing its features for the first time.

The boat was approaching a pier of stone, which was marked by a statue of alabaster in the shape of a woman in a long gown, one hand lifted in a gesture of welcome and the other in a gesture of warning. A path lined with blue flagstones led away from the pier and then followed a spiraling path, all the way around the isle, up to a squat stone building at the isle's highest point. The building's roof was raised toward a great spire, also of alabaster, that gleamed orange in the falling sunlight. The building was circular, and though Gwyn had never seen a building like this before she intuitively knew that it was a sanctuary or temple of some kind. The boat slowed and came to a stop alongside the pier, and Gwyn stepped out. Still holding the sword, she walked up the pier onto the flagstone path.

The stones were cool under her feet, and as she walked across them she realized that they did not feel like stones at all -- more like glass, perhaps, or something similarly smooth. The path's spiraling track took her all around the isle, and yet when she reached a height where she could look back to sea, she could no longer see the mainland from which she had come. As far as she could tell, the isle now rose above a totally empty and featureless sea. She followed the smooth path, up to the sanctuary gate, and despite the fact that it was utterly black inside, she entered without hesitation. And when she passed beneath the gate, the world seemed to shift again as it had when she had entered the Giants' Dance, and her next footfall came down not on stone but on grass.

She was on a wide, clear path that wound through a lush, green wood where the trees were in full, verdant leaf and air was warm and smelled of wildflowers. A pair of butterflies, one black and one white, fluttered past her ear and down the path in front of her. This wood was larger, by far, than the building she had thought herself to be entering, and there was no sign at all of the endless sea.

She followed the path as it looped into the center of the wood where at last she emerged into a grassy grove where a pool fed a babbling stream. Beside the pool, three women in gowns of white samite identical to Gwyn's knelt in the grass beside a blanket on which lay a man garbed in chain armor. It was these women who were singing, but they fell silent as Gwyn entered the grove, and one by one they stood, cast back their veils and faced the Welcomer. They shared the same face but at different ages: the woman on the left was young, a girl barely on the cusp of womanhood; the woman on the right was old, wrinkled and near the end of her days; and the woman in the center was in the fullest flower of her years. They stepped forward, and the woman in the center spoke first.

"Come in peace, Welcomer," she said. Her voice, though she spoke alone, was the voice of all three. "We are the Queens of Avalon."

"Some have named us Faith, Hope and Charity," said the young one, the one on the left, also with the voices of her sisters added to her own. "Other names we have had, so many that even we have forgotten our true names."

"There are those," the crone said, "who would consider it a sadness that our names are lost to us. But it is the strange belief of men that names capture our truest selves."

"It was we," spoke the younger, "who came to the shores of Prydein, called Britain in those days and still so known to this man, to bear away the dying King from the place called Camlann."

"Here we healed him," said the crone. "Here we made him whole again, and here we have held him for the time of his return."

"But be warned, Welcomer," spoke the woman. "You must not bind this man's soul again to Prydein if the cause is not just, for we were granted one intercession only. When he leaves this place, it will be to never return. Come what may if he returns to the world of men, he cannot come again to Avalon."

Gwyn looked at the sleeping warrior and then at the sword she still held in her hands. What the Queens of Avalon had just said was true, and she knew it: for good or ill, she was bringing this man back to Prydein to die.

"He must come," she finally said. "He cannot remain here. You speak of me binding his soul to Prydein, but his soul has ever been bound thus. Avalon is not his place, and he can remain here no longer."

The three Queens each nodded. "So it is said," said the youngest, "and so it shall be." They stepped aside, allowing Gwyn to approach. Gwyn could tell, even though he lay in the grass, that King Arthur Pendragon was a tall man. His long hair, brown but streaked with gray, hung loosely about his shoulders, and his beard and mustache were also flecked with gray. He did not look particularly old, but still his eyes were lined and his hands, folded over his chest, were rough and callused -- calluses formed wielding the very sword Gwyn now held. She knelt by his side, and he awoke at that moment and beheld her with eyes of deeper brown than she had ever seen.

"You are not one of them," said the Promised King. His voice was surprisingly soft, and not as deep as she had expected. He pushed himself up so he was sitting in the grass before Gwyn.

"I am the Welcomer," Gwyn said, bowing her head. "I have come to bring you back."

He sighed. "I feared it was so," he said. "I have been here for so long, and yet it feels as if I have only just arrived. I do not wish to return."

"You must," Gwyn said. "The country is at war, the boundaries between the worlds are falling, and the land itself is dying. Into such a time a King was promised to come, and you are that King. Things must be put right, and you are the one who must do so."

"Merlyn spoke as you do," said King Arthur. "What is your name, My Lady?"

It was the question Gwyn had dreaded. Nevertheless, she answered it. "Gwynwhyfar of Lyonesse," she said.

King Arthur recoiled as if she had slapped him. How many years it had been, how much time had passed, and yet for him the pain was still fresh. Some wounds, Gwyn was learning, never truly healed, no matter how much time passed after the wounding. King Arthur rose to his feet and stood silently for what seemed to Gwyn a very long time. All she could do was wait.

"Gwynwhyfar of Lyonesse," King Arthur said at last. "Gwynwhyfar." He faced her then, and studied her features. "You do not have her appearance. She was the most beautiful girl in the entire land, with hair like the sun in spring...and eyes that...." He sighed heavily. "When Leodegrance brought her to me it was as if I had never known beauty before. I loved her so...but it was all for naught. Even then the seeds of my fall had already been sown."

Gwyn said nothing.

"In the end, we destroyed ourselves, all of us. Some at the Table blamed the Gods and the Goddesses, some blamed Lance, some blamed her. Some even blamed me, and I blamed my ill-gotten son. And now you wish me to return to that place." He turned to face her again. "I do not want to go back, My Lady. It is too much to ask of me, of anyone."

"I feared you would feel so," Gwyn said as she rose to her feet herself, the better to address the Promised King even though he was still a full head taller than she. "Much of your tale has been lost to us in my time, but we know it for a story of terrible sorrow, when a realm of such glory was undone by many dark deeds, some intended as such and some now, but all dark nonetheless. But the things that were true then, Arthur Pendragon, are true now. You are the Promised King and you must return to Prydein with me."

"No," King Arthur said.

"You must," Gwyn said, pitching her voice higher and harder. "Even now the fields of Prydein are being turned from fields of grain to blood-soaked fields of war, and those fields not seeing battle are still as dead as the unending winter can make them. There are priests at work who serve the darkness, and they are using the blood of the innocent in the rites. Ill powers are at work in the world. That is why I have come here, Your Highness -- that is why so many people have suffered to see me here. And it is why I have been given this sword, so that once again it might be wielded by your hand in the name of Prydein."

She held up the blade, still in its scabbard. King Arthur's eyes widened and his cheeks whitened at the sight of it, and almost involuntarily he reached out to take it. His hand hesitated, though, and he curled it into a fist.

"No," he said through clenched teeth.

"This is your sword, Arthur Pendragon," Gwyn said, pressing forward. "Its hilt was meant for your hand, and here it is again. Deny this and you deny not only Prydein. You deny yourself." She thrust the sword toward him, and again he hesitated.

"What if I fail again?" he asked. "How many more people will I watch die for me and for a dream that is doomed to failure?"

"We can only serve the Goddess in the way most fitting who we are," said Gwyn. "You were not carried to this place so you could live in unending sadness over what was lost. You were brought here to await the time when you could return and build it anew. Take the sword, Arthur, and become King Arthur once more." Again, she held out the sword. He closed his eyes and bowed his head.

"You say I am to return, but the land I knew is long dead," said Arthur. "I would not be returning. I would be coming to a place less familiar than new. Oh Merlyn! the seeds of deception you planted at Tintagel are still bearing fruit." He lifted his face and met Gwyn's eyes. Then he reached out and took he sword into his hands. Holding the hilt in his right hand, he removed the scabbard with his left and then held the weapon up so that its blade once more reflected the sunlight. The sword was blinding, and Gwyn shielded her eyes with her hands. "It feels as though it has never left my grip," he said in a voice thick with wonder. "Bedevere did true, when he threw it back to the Lady of the Lake." He resheathed it.

Gwyn thought of beautiful and ancient Nimue, and again she wondered how deep the Lady of the Lake's part in all this was woven. "Does the sword have a name?" she asked.

"Caliburn," King Arthur replied. "I was the only one who could claim it, and was thus made King."

"And now you are King again," Gwyn said.

"Not so," King Arthur said. "There will be battles to be fought before that comes to pass. It was thus before; even though Caliburn was meant for my hand alone, I still had to wield it in many wars before the realm was mine to build. And, first: we must return."

The three Queens of Avalon stepped forward then.

"And go you will," said the younger Queen. "Return you shall, Arthur ap Uther, Pendragon, High King of Prydein." In her hands she carried Arthur's great helm, and beside her the crone held his cloak and the woman held a small, wooden box ornately carved.

"Long did we wait to bring you here," said the crone. "Long also did we wait beside you, and now, long will we sleep."

"Take these gifts in memory of Avalon," said the woman. The crone placed the cloak on Arthur's shoulders, and the woman opened the box to reveal a silver brooch with a single blue gem. With this brooch she fastened the cloak, and then the younger handed him the helm, which he took under his arm.

"Thank you," Arthur said. "For so much more than this."

"It is the task for which you were ordained," the woman said. "Now go, Arthur Pendragon. Go, and complete your task on earth."

"I would have the Welcomer gird Caliburn to my side," King Arthur said. "It was done by Guinivere before, and it should be so again."

Gwyn nodded and knelt before the Promised King to do as he asked. She could see his strength as clearly as anything, but she could also sense a gentleness in him. Strong and gentle -- like Sir Baigent, and like her memories of her father. When she was done fastening the sword to his belt, she rose to her feet again. "Take me back," he said.

As Gwyn and the Promised King walked away from that place, the three women began to sing once more, their voices shaping a phrase that was lament and farewell. Gwyn and King Arthur came to the thickness of trees, and before passing through the King stopped to look back one final time at the place where he had rested for all these years. The three Queens stood about that spot, their hands joined and their heads raised up, offering their voices to the heavens and sky. A tear rolled down Gwyn's cheek, and she saw King Arthur wipe one away from his own eye. As they watched, the summer trees around his resting place shifted and turned before their eyes to the gold and red leaves of autumn, with those leaves dropping and fluttering to the ground. And as King Arthur turned away, never to look on that place again, autumn came at last to Avalon.

Gwyn and King Arthur walked through the trees and emerged again outside the stone sanctuary, whose walls were now crumbling and covered in moss. Then they followed the spiraling path back down to the dock. The boat was still there, its swan-shaped prow now pointing back to the mainland.

"I remember this boat," said the King. "When last it carried me over these waters, I was dying." He stepped into the boat and, offering his hand, helped Gwyn in as well. Then the boat slipped, easily and gently, out to sea. The mists again formed about the Isle of Avalon, first at its summit and then gradually shrouding all of its features until the Isle entire was gone from view such that there might not have been an Isle there at all.

Finally the boat came back to the mainland, and there it slowed and stopped. King Arthur and Gwyn stepped out onto the ground and stood in silence as the boat floated away until it too disappeared into the mists that covered the sea.

Turning then, they found awaiting them the same horse that Gwyn had ridden before, although now it bore the finest saddle Gwyn had ever seen. The horse lowered its head as King Arthur approached, and he fondly scratched the animal's ears and patted its neck.

"Do you know this animal?" Gwyn asked.

"I seem to," he said. "There were many horses then. Come."

He and Gwyn mounted the horse, and it carried them back through the wood -- but this time there was no silent knight in green to demand riddles -- and back onto the wide, sloping field. Here there were no more sounds of battle, no dying men as before; only a warm field that was quickly turning colder. King Arthur looked around with an expression of deep, deep sorrow.

"This is the place of my last battle," King Arthur said. "Here is where my realm ended. We called it Camlann. And there"--he pointed to the tree on the rise, which they now approached--"there is the place where I last faced my traitorous son. I slew him there, even as he struck me down. That was the wound that could only be healed in Avalon."

They cantered up the crest of the hill, beneath the eaves of the tree, and down the other side. Now the air began to feel colder and colder with each step, and mists -- more mists, but darker and grayer, less a veil than a thick blanket -- formed before and around them, completely removing the world from view. For a moment Gwyn felt as though they were not riding over ground but through air, and then there was ground beneath them again: the stony soil of Prydein. Her gown of white samite was also gone, replaced by her Druid robes of before. A cold wind blew, and there was a very sudden and very brilliant light about them, dispelling the mists entirely and momentarily blinding them. The light faded, or dimmed at least to that of the sun; Gwyn smelled smoke on the air and as she saw the great stones about her once more her ears were met by the sound of steel upon steel, of wood against bone, of men shouting and of men dying. Somewhere in the distance there were horns sounding a call that filled Gwyn's heart with fear.

"So it begins," King Arthur said with a heavy sigh. "Find cover, My Lady. Those robes will not turn aside anything more than a blunt dagger." He helped Gwyn down from the horse, and then he rode forward, beneath the great stones and onto the central plain of Prydein. Gwyn moved forward, hiding behind one of the stones for cover but so that she could see. A company of mounted men was charging, directly toward King Arthur; and she recognized the device they wore: the device of Gwynedd. This, she knew, was Maxen's company. Gwyn had told King Arthur that he would be returning to war, but she had not thought that it would be thus.

And as the men of Gwynedd charged the man who had just returned to claim his kingdom, King Arthur Pendragon turned slowly to face them and pulled Caliburn from its scabbard. The Sword of Prydein blazed with the reflection of the morning sun, and King Arthur lowered his head and rode forward to meet the charge alone.

Thus returned the Promised King to the land of Prydein.

Chapter Nineteen

2005-10-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

"Is there any sign of her?" Sir Baigent asked.

"No," Brother Llyad replied.

"You should eat," Sir Baigent said as he handed the monk a bowl of the thin, grainy soup the Druids had prepared.

"Ah," Brother Llyad said as he sniffed the soup. "I have missed this."

"I'm sure you have," Sir Baigent said as he sat on the ground beside the monk. He had eaten a bowl of the soup, and though he had indeed found it nourishing, he had also found its flavor too close to that of dirt.

"Is Estren resting?" Brother Llyad asked between mouthfuls.

"Probably," Sir Baignet said. "Or perhaps he is singing with the Druids someplace -- I haven't seen him in a while."

"He is the first Bard in more than two centuries to come into the company of the Druids," the monk said. "He is no doubt wondering by what measure he so deserves the providence of the Goddess to also be here for the coming of the Promised King."

Sir Baigent sighed and said nothing. He had some thoughts of his own as to the providence of the Goddess that it would little avail anyone to voice just now.

It was going to be a bright morning. The clouds had all vanished moments after Gwyn had gone into the Giants' Dance, leaving a clear, moon-lit sky that was now taking on the purple hue of just before dawn. The sun would rise within the hour, its morning rays falling upon the very spot in the Dance where Gwyn had entered.

"How long has it been?" Brother Llyad asked.

"Hours," Sir Baigent replied. It had been shortly after the middle of the night that Gwyn had disappeared into the Dance, and since then they had neither seen nor heard a single thing form the great stone circle. Sir Baigent hoped that when the sun rose, perhaps they would be able to see into the Dance -- but he was slightly fearful of what they might see when that time came. After the ceremony had ended and the gathered Druids had walked away -- rather laconically, Sir Baigent had noticed, hardly as if they had just partaken in the most important rite of theirs in centuries -- he had approached Horius and asked what it was that had happened, and what it was that they had seen, and where it was that Gwyn had gone. Horius had not given any answers, because he had had none to give. Thus they had done nothing since then but wait, and rest, and wait some more. Sir Baigent had tried to sleep, and he had even succeeded for an hour -- maybe two -- but no more than that. He had to be awake for Gwyn's return. He had to see this King for himself, this man for whom they had risked so much; and more than that, though he would never say so directly to anyone but himself, he had to know that she was well and that her journey had been a safe one. He was still her Champion.

Sir Baigent looked around at the Druids who milled about the camp. "What do you think is happening now?" he asked.

"I couldn't possibly say," Brother Llyad replied. "Perhaps she has gone to Avalon."

Sir Baigent had actually been wondering what the Druids were now doing, but he didn't feel like correcting the monk. "Avalon?" he asked.

"The place where the King was taken after his last battle," Llyad said. "It is the place where his wounds were healed and where he has spent all the days since, awaiting the time of the Promise when the Welcomer would come for him."

Sir Baigent picked up a pebble and rolled it about in his fingers. Rough, with a sharp edge -- not like a stone from a riverbed. "Does it ever bother you that we're relying entirely on legends and stories and tales where no one knows the truth of the matter? We can't know it for history."

Brother Llyad shook his head. "You still have trouble believing?"

"I've seen too much to not believe, but I haven't seen enough to give myself to it the way you have, cleric."

"Perhaps I've seen too much," Llyad said. "It's always been difficult for us to sort out the truths in the tales. So often, there is no perfect answer to the questions we ask. In that way, is not the work of a cleric like that of the seneschal to a lord? Are your choices ever truly clear?"

"They often are," Sir Baigent said, "but only after we've made them. I think--" He stopped suddenly. He had heard something.

"What is it?" Brother Llyad said.

Sir Baigent cut him off with a hiss. He had heard -- it had sounded like -- but now it was gone. Had he heard it? or were his ears deceiving him, over the sounds of the mostly sleeping camp? How could it possibly be--

He didn't turn south, Sir Baigent thought. He suddenly felt very cold, and by reflex his hand moved to the pommel of his sword, just to make sure that it was there. He isn't marching to rejoin his King. He is coming here. "On your feet," he said as he jumped up.

"What is happening?" Brother Llyad asked.

His answer came not from Sir Baigent, but from the sounding of the horns, distant horns but not distant enough, sounding the call of battle.

"That call--is it--"

"It is the attack call of Gwynedd," Sir Baigent said. "Maxen is here."

It could be no one else, Sir Baigent knew. He ran to join the stirring camp.

***

When dawn rose over Bedwyn, Brother Malcolm took his first look at an army of war. Nothing prepared him for the sight. All the histories of Prydein, all the tales of the bloody wars of years gone by, some penned in his own hand, could not prepare him for the actual spectacle of ten thousand men ready for battle. And here, before them, was the six-thousand-man strong army of Bedwyn. Malcolm could recite the details and dates of so many of the wars that had raged across Prydein, but that was completely different from seeing one, hearing one. The two armies on the field below looked, at once, both vast and small -- although in the case of the Duke's army, it was not an illusion. Cwerith's force outnumbered Cunaddyr's by at least four thousand. Unless they fought perfectly, a siege would be inevitable.

The field was fairly level, so neither force would have the advantage of higher ground. A mile west, off to Malcolm's left, the land did slope down to the river, but the battle would not be waged anywhere near the water, or so Malcolm believed. As was true of most things, that was of no great certainty.

He felt Lord Matholyn's hand on his arm. "It is time," the Lord said.

"You're certain that you want me to come with you?" Malcolm asked.

Lord Matholyn shrugged. "I am hoping that having you nearby will give me cause to hold my temper. When you write the history of this day, I don't want it reported that the battle began because of something I said in a moment of fury." He smiled, but it was without humor, and Brother Malcolm did not return it.

"If anyone on this field has a right to claim anger, it is you," he said.

"The right to anger is not a right I gladly claim," Lord Matholyn said.

The two men walked down from the walls to the main gate, where they joined the party that would soon ride out to parley with Cwerith ap Cellamma, King of Gwynedd and claimant to the throne of all Prydein.

***

At that moment, King Cwerith was putting on his armor, which he had not donned since the attack on Caer Camyrdin. None of the raids or skirmishes since then had required his presence, and thus his armor had sat in the cases that his pages tended and secured through the days of travel. Today, though, his armor was needed. Not that he would be joining in the actual fighting, of course -- a King did not take foolish risks -- but he would not ride unarmored out to parley with the Duke of Bedwyn. Surely Cunaddyr would honor the flag of truce for those few moments of talk, but Cwerith did not trust all of Cunaddyr's men to resist the urge to throw a well-concealed dagger in hopes of ending the war before the battle even began.

He had hoped that this would not be necessary. He had driven his men hard, as few armies had ever been driven, to take advantage of the possibility that the Duke might not return in time. They had very nearly made it. Only a few more leagues per day would have been the difference. He would have been able to overwhelm the city and only then deal with Cunaddyr and his displaced army, whose morale would have been shattered before the battle ever began. It would have been a decisive rout, and all that would remain would be the Kentish Shore now that Duncan had done his part and burned Londia to the ground. Alas…even as the towers of Bedwyn had appeared on the horizon, Cwerith's keen-eyed watchers had spotted the armies of Cunaddyr, filing out of the city and onto the plain to meet them. Their best estimates put the Duke's army at six thousand men, while Cwerith had ten thousand -- odds favoring the King of Gwynedd, but not strongly enough for his tastes.

Baron Gaddamar, that old craven idiot, had actually asked how such a thing was possible. Cwerith had not bothered to answer him, but Varing had patiently explaiend the additional possibilities for moving an army that existed for a city that lay on the banks of a deep and wide river like the Test, a river which led quickly and swiftly to the sea. "Ships?" Gaddamar had asked, incredulous at the concept. Cwerith had, admirably, held his tongue even though surely the Lord of a tiny landlocked parcel like Gaddamar should know about ships. People in coastal towns, after all, still knew about wagons.

"Watch there!" Cwerith said. The page helping him with his armor had pinched his leg.

"Forgive me, my Liege," the page said as he tightened the fastenings.

Lord Varing arrived and bowed. "The party is assembled," the eunuch reported.

"Has Cunaddyr taken the field yet?"

"No, Your Highness."

"Then we have time." He intended to savor this moment, to revel in it, as surely as Irlaris had savored the look on his father's face when he had seen the banner of Macholugh on the side of the King.

He rubbed his arm absently, not really noticing the pain from the fresh offering Cassion had drawn that morning. He never noticed the pain anymore. It had become part of him, like his hand or his foot, and in any event he had other concerns that were more pressing than mere pain.

Lord Varing cleared his throat. "Their gate is opening," he said. "Cunaddyr's party is taking the field."

Cwerith lifted his head to see. A mile away the Main Gate of Bedwyn was lifting. A horn call echoed across the field from the Bedwyn battlements, the traditional call to parley.

"Let us go," Cwerith said as he pulled himself up onto his horse with some help from his pages. Lord Varing mounted beside him, and together they rode to where the rest of his party waited. He would ride with Baron Gaddamar, a few other lords, and six of his best knights. "Return the call," he ordered his own herald, and the call was returned as King Cwerith's party rode out onto the field to meet Duke Cunaddyr.

"How many are with him?" Cwerith asked when they had reached the halfway point.

"Nine," Lord Varing replied. "Four Knights in corner formation, four in his party, and the Duke himself. Strange -- it looks as if he has a cleric with him."

"Unusual," Cwerith agreed. He would not have dreamed of bringing Cassion with him. In fact, he would not have brought Cassion anywhere… "Who is that man to Cwerith's left? He looks familiar...."

Lord Varing squinted as he tried to recognize the man who rode to the Duke's left, slightly behind him. He was certainly familiar...and then Varing gasped audibly. "My Lord, I believe that is Lord Matholyn of Camyrdin."

"I know," Cwerith said, his voice little more than a growl. He had recognized Lord Matholyn even as he had asked. He reached absently into the pouch on his belt and felt for the rock that he had carried with him ever since he had destroyed this man's realm. At least now he knew why they had never found Matholyn's body.

***

The Duke held up a hand, and the members of his party cantered to a stop on the cold field that would soon be a place of the dead and the dying, where nothing would likely grow for at least several growing seasons. Brother Malcolm forced himself to draw a deep breath. This was not remotely like any place he had ever dreamed of being. All this would one day make a fine tale, if there was ever again a time for the telling of tales; but such a tale should be his to write, not to actually be named within its pages as one who had played a part. Malcolm glanced over at Lord Matholyn, whose posture in the saddle was as rigid as ice and whose grip on the reins was so strong that had they been a walnut the shell would already have shattered.

The wind stirred out of the north, preceding the arrival of King Cwerith. Malcolm flinched a bit in the face of the fresh, icy breeze, and the aches in his bones flared. He was really too old for such traveling. He had done a good deal of riding about Lyonesse and Southern Prydein in his younger years -- on one such trip finding a young orphaned girl named Gwynwhyfar -- but now he suffered from saddlesores and aching muscles and he wished for nothing so much as a chair by the fireplace in his Library. He looked forward to getting back there, when all this was over -- and then he looked across the field at the army massed against them, and he wondered if he would ever go back. It had truly not occurred to him, until just that moment, that when the day was done he might very well be numbered among the dead on this field.

He felt a new chill, not from the wind, as the Traitor King's party came to a stop, about twenty paces away from Cunaddyr's. Cwerith's herald separated from the rest of his party, and came alone to the midpoint between the two parties.

"Cunaddyr of Bedwyn," the herald said, louder than he really needed to and in a practiced voice with sharper enunciation than Malcolm had ever heard even from the Bards, "the High King of Prydein would speak with you. Will you come forward?"

Duke Cunaddyr cleared his throat, and his horse stamped the ground twice. "If you mean do I consent to parley with the King of Gwynedd, then I do," the Duke said. "As for the High King of Prydein, I see his flag here, but I do not see Irlaris son of Islinbad before me."

That brought some angry grunts from Cwerith's party, but no one said anything. The King himself, Malcolm saw, maintained a cold and malevolent stare at the Duke, who for now only stared at the herald.

"King Cwerith of Gwynedd is the High King of Prydein," the herald said. "He is High King both by right and by battle, and he requires your audience."

"By battle is clear enough, I suppose," Cunaddyr replied. "But by what right does he claim the throne?"

"Such matters are for the King to discuss," the herald said. "Will you speak with him? He commands it."

The Duke shifted in his saddle. "And if I do not?"

The herald blinked, having not expected this. He glanced over his shoulder, clearly indicating the army behind him. "There will be repercussions," he said.

"Perhaps not the repercussions your King believes," Cunaddyr said. "Bring your King forward. I will hear what he has to say -- on a great number of subjects." Here he took an exaggerated glance over his own shoulder, his left shoulder, indicating Lord Matholyn. The herald scowled before returning to his own party.

Sir Jules, who was riding on Brother Malcolm's right, leaned over. "You look tense, Brother. Does something vex you?"

"Isn't it unwise to anger them so blatantly?" Malcolm asked.

"No," Sir Jules replied. "What is said here matters not in the slightest. This is just part of the game. There will be battle, and the words spoken now won't change that one way or the other. We could spit on Cwerith's cloak, or invite him to dinner -- the outcome will be the same."

"And that," Duke Cunaddyr said, "is an invitation Cwerith would not accept. We use utensils at my table." It was not a particularly funny jape, but the men chuckled anyway. Even poor humor served a purpose. The Duke straightened his cloak on his shoulders. "Here he comes," he said.

Brother Malcolm stiffened. Indeed, here came King Cwerith, with his steward and another man -- an older man, some kind of Lord -- also riding along. Malcolm was surprised by the fact that, despite his fine armor which was splendidly decorated and his powerfully handsome war horse, Cwerith of Caer Mastagg was a fairly small man. He had expected, as claimant to the throne, someone larger.

Cwerith and his attendants stopped a mere five paces away from the Duke, where he turned his gaze on each member of the Duke's party -- each member, that is, except for Lord Matholyn. That was the one gaze he avoided.

"Greetings, King of Gwynedd," Duke Cunaddyr said. "What is the occasion of your presence here?"

King Cwerith cleared his throat. "I am claiming my place as High King of Prydein, and I have come here to demand your loyalty."

Sir Jules snorted at that, just loud enough for Cwerith to hear. Nevertheless, he gave no sign of it.

"High King?" Cunaddyr said, raising his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. "And what of Irlaris?"

Cwerith tossed his head in frustration. "Do not play the fool, Cunaddyr. We are all aware that Irlaris is dead."

"And it is certainly sheer happenstance that you were marching with an army such as this when Duncan deposed Irlaris," the Duke replied. "One might think that this was planned, and that you are not a claimant to the throne but a usurper."

Cwerith's face hardened. "Irlaris was the usurper," he said. "I seek to restore the throne to its true line. Irlaris bought his throne with guile and betrayal. In this he had the aid of certain Lords who previously had been allied with Gwynedd." Here he glanced, for the first time and only for the briefest of intervals, at Lord Matholyn. Matholyn, through some force of will, kept his eyes focused tightly on the reins in his iron-like grip.

"That is not the way the tale is usually told," Cunaddyr said.

"The shaping of tales for the telling is ever done by the victors," Cwerith replied.

"Ask the victor if he has already written the tale of Camyrdin," Lord Matholyn suddenly said. His stare did not waver from his own knuckles, and his voice was little more than a whisper. Still, no man there failed to hear him.

Malcolm looked to Cwerith, and the other man smiled. He actually smiled, and Brother Malcolm shivered to see it. There was no warmth at all in that smile.

"That tale shall be written as what it was: the righting of a wrong done fifty years ago, and the sad fate of a people forced to pay the price for a betrayal half a century gone by."

"Treachery?" Matholyn's voice was like a knife, and now he stared directly at Cwerith. "You dare utter that word here?"

"It is the only word that suffices," Cwerith replied. "Had Macholugh done his duty, those many years ago--"

"His duty to whom?" Matholyn cut in. "To your drunken despot of a father?"

"Mind your tongue, Matholyn. Or yours shall be the first I have cut out, before I execute you." Cwerith's eyes were narrow and his voice had gone even harder.

"Already planning executions," Matholyn said with a harsh laugh. "How like a Lord of Caer Mastagg. The only entertainment in that dreary place is watching the convicted die."

Cwerith bit back a reply, and then he glanced up to the sky. "This winter has done our land so much harm," he said. "I cannot think that your food stores are prepared for a year without a growing season, Cunaddyr. And I wager that they are certainly adequate to the task of waiting out a siege. There are no allies coming to join you. Will you truly doom your people, as did the Lord of Camyrdin when he chose to leave his city even as my armies gathered on his borders?"

It was an obvious ploy, and to Lord Matholyn's credit he did not rise to it.

"Is that to be the way of it, then?" Duke Cunaddyr asked. "Those who join you are spared, while those who do not are subject to flame and steel?"

Cwerith nodded. "A High King can allow neither challenge nor denial of his reign. It has ever been thus -- or have you not heard the tale of the Scarlet King and his sons, and what befell them when they denied High King Prystyl?"

"Everyone in Prydein has heard that tale," Cunaddyr replied. His voice and manner were becoming impatient for an end to this charade of a parley. "Bedwyn is not some citadel sitting atop a hill in the wilderness, I am not some self-styled King who has bought his fortress and his men with all the gold in his possession, and you are not High King Prystyl."

"My name shall eclipse his," Cwerith said. "I will not merely be another High King to be listed among those who came to the throne by surviving a long and bloody war. I will be heralded as the King who brought Prydein through its darkest time, when the Goddess herself lose her power over the affairs of men."

Brother Malcolm shivered anew. Had he heard the man's words correctly? There was a glow in Cwerith's eye that was not the reflected sun, and it filled the Priest with fear, for now he knew what was in Cwerith's mind.

"I will be the King who came in Prydein's hour of darkest need," Cwerith went on, his voice growing in stature. "I will restore the realm and I will be seen as the King whose coming was foretold in our oldest stories."

Cunaddyr's mouth opened and closed, and he exchanged glances with Lord Matholyn. Brother Malcolm could scarcely believe what he was hearing.

"You are claiming to be the Promised King," Duke Cunaddyr said.

"I have been chosen by a Power greater than all Prydein," Cwerith said. "Indeed, greater than the Goddess herself, a Power with the strength to force the Wyrm of the World to do its bidding. A new time is coming, and you can either be a part of its shaping or perish resisting it."

"You are mad," Cunaddyr said. "You have betrayed the Goddess and all of her servants on earth. It is the true Promised King who will come to defeat you."

Cwerith's eyes flashed in a moment of quick anger. "No doubt you wait for the Promised King to come riding from the sky on a great winged horse," he said in a voice that was as full of contempt as could be possible. "Or, perhaps you wait for some King to be escorted back from the Giants' Dance?"

Brother Malcolm's heart stopped for just a moment, and Sir Jules groaned. Neither Lord Matholyn nor Duke Cunaddyr made a sound, but they didn't need to. It was still evident on their faces, and Cwerith laughed. "Yes, I know about the small mission you sent to the Dance in hopes of finding a savior, a man behind whom you could hide from destiny. That mission will not succeed. They will find nothing, certainly no dead warrior waiting for the kiss of some girl; and they will be slaughtered by a force of my men who were sent there days ago."

Malcolm could not conceal his reaction. He knew that he had gone pale, and he gaped at Lord Matholyn, who likewise looked ill. How could he know? Malcolm wondered, desperately.

"The Darkness lies within you, Cwerith," Cunaddyr said. "It is consuming you. No Welcomer has come for you, and your march to war fulfills no prophecy. You have been deceived; by whom, I know not, but the deception is complete and it has consumed you. Turn away from this field, Cwerith. Go back to Caer Mastagg, and pray to the Goddess for guidance and forgiveness, because if you stay on the path you now walk you will surely die."

Cwerith shrugged. "How easily doomed men speak of death, though they know not it comes for them," he said. "I came to this parley for an answer, and I have received it. Know this, Cunaddyr: when next I leave this field, it will be with Bedwyn in flames and your body swinging from a gibbet. And before I head east, I shall pick up a stone to carry with me and remind me of this day, just like this one, which I picked up before leaving what used to be Caer Camyrdin." Now he held up the stone for all to see, and Lord Matholyn breathed a heavy sigh. Cwerith laughed. "Would you like to kiss this stone, Matholyn? A relic of what was once yours, but is now mine as it should have been all these years? It shall be so: before I go from this place, I shall press this stone to your dead lips."

Brother Malcolm winced and shook his head. This man was more vile than he had ever thought possible. Cwerith returned the stone to his pouch and took up his reins again. "Your High King has heard your words and marked them, Cunaddyr of Bedwyn," he said. "And now I mark you for death." He gestured to his attendants that the parley was over, and they turned and began heading back to their army.

"And what price enticed you, Gaddamar?" Lord Matholyn suddenly called out, before they were gone. As Brother Malcolm watched, one of King Cwerith's attendants, an elderly man who looked ill at ease in the saddle, gave Lord Matholyn a surprised glance before turning and following his new liege. Matholyn shook his head when they had gone. "Traitors ever flock to the company of other traitors, though they must know that they too will be betrayed in the end."

"How could he know about the girl?" Sir Jules asked. "If he has truly sent a company of men to the Giants' Dance--"

"We know that there is a darkness in Cwerith's heart," Duke Cunaddyr said. "But I fear we have misjudged the source of this darkness. He does not even claim to serve the Goddess."

Malcolm didn't like the implication. "Can he have turned to the Dark Brother?"

"He will not be the first King to do so," Cunaddyr said. "And we cannot help the Welcomer. All we can do is make our own stand, and hope that we are strong enough."

Brother Malcolm nodded. He was unsure of what to feel now -- fear for himself, fear for Gwyn, fear for Prydein itself, or all of it at once. He rode alongside the Duke and his men back to the city, where he was taken back within the walls while the others remained outside. Malcolm would best serve by going to the Healing Chambers, ready to help tend those already sick and to prepare for the hundreds of wounded to come. He did not need to witness the battle; it was enough that he was here. The history that he would one day write of this day, were he to live through it, would not suffer for material.

Though he did not know it, he was praying over a child dying of fever when the Battle of Bedwyn began.

***

"How do you know these people won't be armed?" Fflud asked. "It appears to be a large camp. They will number two for every man of ours."

Maxen looked at his second-in-command, and then back to the distant camp. "It won't matter," he said.

"What won't matter?" Fflud said. "If it is an armed camp--"

"It won't matter," Maxen said again. There was nothing to question, no reason for Fflud to think. They were going to strike a blow today, the most important blow. So much would be decided, and it would be decided here -- not at Bedwyn, which would be recorded by historians as the moment when Cwerith became High King in truth, but here, where historians would write of nothing at all. How often had that been the case, he wondered; how often had the historians and the Bards written the tale of some battle or toehr event while the real shaping of history was being done someplace else?

It won't matter, Maxen thought. It would not matter if every man in his command died here today. He pressed on his bandaged stump, and thanked the Power that spoke with the voice of the wolves for the sharp pain that reminded him that he was alive. He gazed on the camp and the shadows of the Giants' Dance that loomed over it, and he smiled.

"Sound the horns," Maxen said. "The call to battle."

***

"Did you hear that?" someone asked.

Jonn held up a hand and hissed for silence. He had heard something…the call of a bird, perhaps -- or a thrush or a hawk, coming down for its prey…but those things would have been normal, expected. They would not have been out of place here, as morning rose over the plain. This sound that he had heard was different.

"It sounded like--" someone began, but someone else hushed them. Silence fell over the Finders as they stopped just an hour's ride from the Giants' Dance. What had the sound been? And then it sounded again, filling Jonn's heart with fear as he recognized it for what it was, for what it only could have been.

Horns, sounding the call of battle.

Worse, he recognized the call. He had heard this call before, when he had led small teams of the Finders on their strikes against Cwerith's men.

"To horse!" he shouted. "All men, we ride first!" He turned to Gaspar, the young son of his friend Gavidd. "Remain behind," he ordered. "Stay with the women. We will signal you if it is safe to come to us."

Gaspar swallowed. "And if it isn't safe for us to stay?"

"Then flee," Jonn said.

"Yes, Jonn," the youth replied. He sounded calm, but the fear was in his eyes. Jonn reassured him with a hand on his shoulder, and then he turned away.

"Come, friends!" Jonn shouted. "Prepare your fireglobes! Against Maxen, we ride!"

The men of the Finders, all of them save Gaspar, slipped on their wooden masks before they kicked their horses and galloped away.

***

"How long until they arrive?" Sir Baigent asked.

"You can't judge the speed of an attack for yourself?" Murron of the Arrows said with a scowl.

"I'm testing to see if you still can," Sir Baigent replied.

Murron scowled again, but left her retort unsaid. "A quarter of an hour," Murron said. "No more than that."

Sir Baigent nodded. The mass of Maxen's company could be seen quite clearly now, and it would indeed be here within a quarter of an hour. He spared a backward glance, to where the Druids worked hurriedly to move as many of the refugees to the eastern side of the Dance as was possible. Some of them, though, joined Sir Baigent, carrying bows, and some had weapons of dubious use -- farm tools, mostly, some of which bore a not-very-sharp edge, and three men with very old swords whose blades were dotted with rust-spots. Sir Baigent had little hope that they would be able to make much of a stand against Maxen's soldiers, and no hope at all that they would be able to defeat him. Their only chance, he knew, was in their numbers -- at least five for every man of Maxen's. But few battles were decided by numbers alone. Caer Camyrdin's fate had not been decided by numbers, and the people there had had walls besides.

"All of you! Any of you with bows!" Murron shouted to the various villagers and refugees. "Get up here! You can't do any damage behind us!" Some of these men looked askance at suddenly being summoned to the front of the defense. Not one of them had ever been in any kind of army or battle; they had used their bows to hunt rabbits or some other small animal for the pot, never as a weapon of war against charging men on horse.

"We're not going to be able to do much against them," Estren said.

"I know," Sir Baigent replied. He looked at the Bard, grateful to have at least one person with a sword beside him.

"You're not totally alone," came a voice from behind them. It was Hugydd. His own sword was in his hand -- once an ordinary blade, remarkable now for the device of Camyrdin emblazoned on the pommel -- and he had a group of thirty or so young Druids with him, each wielding an oaken staff or one of the blow-tubes the sight of which made Sir Baigent wince. Sir Baigent gestured at Hugydd's blade, and the former knight-turned-Druid shrugged. "I couldn't toss it away," he said. "It is a reminder of other times. I hadn't planned to use it in battle ever again, Goddess forgive me."

"I'm glad you kept it," Sir Baigent said.

"These are all the men we could spare," Hugydd said. "The others are helping the refugees to the other side of the Dance. Your cleric companion is with them as well. He is a stronger man than he appears."

"Good," Sir Baigent said. "I can tell right now that Maxen is attacking with all of his men, and from the same direction. He is holding nothing back, and he is obviously confident that we will not be able to defend ourselves."

Hugydd looked over the gathering -- a dozen or so archers, thirty Druids, thirty or so farmfolk with sickles and scythes, and three men with real swords. "This will not be enough," he said.

"It's what we have," Murron said. "That's why you were such a bad archer, Hugydd. You never saw possibilities for what you had. All of you were such bad archers...but never mind. Between our arrows and your darts and a handful of brute weapons, we should be able to slow them down."

Sir Baigent looked again out at the approaching force, now no more than ten minutes away and more likely only five, the horsemen leading the way and the footsoldiers immediately behind them. Then he looked back at the now empty part of the camp: hastily abandoned tents, some of them with their campfires still burning. Something stirred in his mind, and an idea began to form. Slow them down, Murron had said....

"Come!" Sir Baigent said suddenly. "There is something we can do. Come with me!"

He led the defenders of the Giants' Dance back into the abandoned camp, where they did as he instructed and began setting throwing all of the remaining firewood onto the campfires and dousing them with what pitch they could find, causing the flames to hungrily leap up. Then they snatched up as much damp cloth as they could -- cloaks, blankets, anything -- and threw those onto the fires as well, and smoke began to rise from them. Then they began to set the tents on fire themselves. Fire served us once before, Sir Baigent thought. Now let it serve us again. He grabbed a torch with his left hand and brandished his sword in his right as he prepared to strike a blow for Camyrdin, for Prydein, for the Welcomer and for the Promised King.

Flames, fire and smoke rose over the Central Plain of Prydein, and then came battle.

Chapter Eighteen

2005-09-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Hugydd set a brisk pace as he led the company out of Walding Wood and onto that last plain where less than half a day's ride away stood the Giants' Dance. Gwyn found little relief in leaving the forest. As the trees around them thinned and then disappeared entirely, a new feeling of dread settled over her. Just a few leagues now separated her from the destiny she rode now to claim. How easily she had accepted it all, even as she learned of her parentage and her place within the world, even as she stood face-to-face with dark powers not of this world, even as she was thrust into the center of events that would decide the fate of Prydein forever. How easy it had all been, until this very hour when her destiny was almost at hand, and she realized just how unprepared she was for whatever was about to be asked of her -- no, what she had been chosen for, appointed for. As the plain sped away beneath Dimnur's hooves, Gwyn found all of her certainty vanishing utterly, to be replaced with fear and raw doubt.

The company stopped only once to water the horses, at a brackish stream that was nearly dry. "First the freezing of the land," Hugydd said. "And now the earth refuses to give its water. I tell you, the land itself is dying." He shook his head and led his beast to the stream.

"Things will return to their rightful order once the Promised King returns," Sir Baigent said. "At least, so we are told."

"That is as we hope," Hugydd replied. "Though I fear it will take more than that. King Arthur's return is only the beginning of what we face, not the end."

The company fell silent. Gwyn gazed absently at the near-frozen grassland that surrounded them. It looked like the right kind of land on which giants might dance.

"Hugydd," Sir Baigent said, "you have not yet asked about Camyrdin."

"Tidings travel quickly for the Druids as well," Hugydd said. He ran his hand along his horse's neck as the beast drank. "Though I am certain you believe otherwise, I am grateful that you were not there. That you and Lord Matholyn still live somewhat softens the blow." He looked into the knight's eyes. "I know you, Sir Baigent. If you are in any measure the man I knew before I found this new path, then I would wager that since you learned of Caer Camyrdin's fate you have blamed yourself for not being there."

"You do remember me well, Hugydd." Sir Baigent chuckled and flexed his hands. "Knowing that I was spared when so many others were not has been a heavy burden. But it seems that the goddess knew that her Welcomer would need a Champion." He smiled at Gwyn, and she returned the smile.

"Ah, yes," Hugydd said. "This man of Cwerith's whom you maimed. You struck the first blow of retribution in Camyrdin's name that night."

"Would that it had been a fatal blow," Sir Baigent said.

"Perhaps it was," Hugydd said. "Such wounds often are. And in any event, it is perhaps fitting, as the blow to Camyrdin that Cwerith intended to be fatal was not entirely so."

Sir Baigent looked hard at his former knight. "Are you saying--"

"There are others," Hugydd said, nodding. "More than a hundred, who managed to slip away through one of the secret gates in Caer Camyrdin's walls."

Sir Baigent drew a deep breath and let it out. He had often wodnered why Lord Matholyn had never sealed the secret gates that were not secret to him at all, and now he knew. "More than a hundred survivors? A hundred...out of fifteen thousand...."

"A hundred more than you had thought at first," Hugydd said. "Most are women and children, and several others whom you may know. When the time comes to rebuild Caer Camyrdin there will be citizens who remember it as it was."

Sir Baigent considered that for a moment, and then he cleared his throat and brushed what appeared to be a single tear from his eye. "We should ride again," he said.

The day was ending, and the sky was darkening swiftly, but the riding was easy now as they followed a road that was as flat as the land around it. As night fell around them, tiny points of flickering yellow light appeared on the horizon before them. The closer they rode, the brighter and more numerous they became. The fires of the Druid camp.

And behind them, Gwyn knew, the Giants' Dance.

***

Maxen lifted the flask to his lips and took a deep draught of the liquor inside. The taste was awful -- Maxen hated such swill -- but it deadened the pain of the bandaged stump of his left wrist. Despite that, he pressed on the bandage with his right hand, savoring the bit of pain that flashed through his arm as he did so. He needed the liquor to make the pain bearable, but he did not want to lose the pain entirely.

He had known other men who had lost limbs. He knew that in time the pain would vanish, although there would be times, when he was alone and in the dark, when he would feel the itching of the hand he had lost and when he would try to flex muscles that were no longer there and grasp with fingers long rotted to dust on some distant hilltop already littered with bones. That was not enough, though. Not for Maxen. He didn't want some small reminder of his maiming, once in a while in the middle of the night. He needed more than a sporadic reminder of what had happened and what had spoken to him from beyond the flames and with the voice of wolves. No, he could not be without the pain. He could lessen it, to be sure, but he could not bear to be without it. It was a part of him now. He would hold onto it and never let it go.

He looked around at the men of his company. None of them returned his gaze directly; none had since that night -- not even Fflud -- and he knew why. By rights, he should be dead or, failing that, fevered and weak with death lingering. One could not suffer a wound such as his and be stronger for it. The men in his company were simple men, and they had fears about such things.

He waited patiently for Fflud to return from questioning the peasant they had found on the road. It wouldn't take long, and indeed it did not as Fflud soon came riding back to where Maxen stood.

"What did you learn?" Maxen asked, wondering as he spoke if the rasp that had entered his voice after that night would ever go away.

"Nothing terribly important or surprising," Fflud said. "He is a sickly fool, and will probably be dead in a matter of weeks anyhow. Besides, he soiled himself at the sight of my blade and--"

"What did you learn?" Maxen repeated, cutting him off.

Fflud blinked. "Your reckoning is correct," he said. "We are on the southern edge of the Central Plain, but the valley of the River Test is still a day's march away. We have taken too long, and we should have gone south around the wood. Now we will not arrive at Bedwyn until well after the siege has begun. The city may even lay in ashes before we can get there and join our King."

Maxen gazed upon the wide plain that stretched away before them. The purpose set before him was so clear now. He would never again be a mere Captain of some small part of the High King's army. He had been chosen for something important….how proud his men would be, when afterwards they finally learned what they had done. He pressed at his wound again and drew a deep breath, savoring anew the fresh stab of pain. Fflud shifted uncomfortably in his saddle.

"Do we march, Captain?" Fflud asked.

"Oh, yes," Maxen said. "But not to Bedwyn. A different battle awaits us. We march east, to the Giants' Dance."

The man he had been would have noted Fflud's expression. The Maxen of before, the Maxen of two hands, would have seen how his second had paled and hesitated before nodding. The Maxen of before would have been swift to anger and would have called Fflud a coward for his hesitation.

But he was not the Maxen of before, and the Maxen of now -- Maxen the one-handed, Maxen the chosen -- took no notice at all of Fflud's reaction. The fears of little men were of no concern to him, and he gave them little thought as he led his army toward its own greatest battle.

***

A thousand people gathered in that place for Midsummer Night. Hugydd led the companions through the encampment, past refugees of other towns in Cwerith's path who had not been able to flee all the way to Bedwyn; past survivors of Caer Camyrdin who looked upon Sir Baigent and cheered; past the Druids who stood and bowed with reverence as the Welcomer came through their midst. Gwyn actually saw few of these people. Their faces blurred as she rode past. Her gaze was focused instead on the Giants' Dance itself, whose great stones loomed before her at last, after so much travel and hardship.

She had never imagined that the stones would be this big. Surely living in the rock-hewn halls of Tintagel -- always so near the vast, gray sea and the great cliffs which rose beside them -- would have prepared her for the sheer majesty of these stones, but not so. Their size was stupefying. They towered above her, above everyone, even from this distance. The boundary of the Dance was a ring of titanic standing stones that were crowned by equally huge stones lying prone, and Gwyn realized that the Giants' Dance not a mere collection of standing stones but a single thing, impossibly ancient, that had stood here across stretches of time as vast as that great gray sea. Here dwelt a power older than anything except the Goddess and her Dark Brother and the Wyrm of the World itself.

Ceremonial fires burned at equal points around the Dance, with the largest of the fires blazing at each of the four points of the compass; these fires, combined with the hundreds of smaller cookfires that burned throughout the wide encampment, cast a yellow glow into the twilight sky, and yet with all that firelight nothing at all could be seen of the inside of the Giants' Dance. It was as though a cloud had settled within, and no light could penetrate it. Gwyn's heart quickened, for it was into that very darkness that she would soon go.

They rode through the encampment, led by Hugydd...somewhere.

"Where are we going?" Matt asked.

"I'm sure the Druids have a Lord," Gareth replied. "We are no doubt going to see him."

"True enough," Hugydd said, having overheard them. "But we do not call him a Lord. He is our Chieftain."

Calloch was glancing around at the camp, and a strange look passed over him. "The refugees have tents, but the Druids do not. How do you survive the night?"

Hugydd smiled mysteriously. "We draw our warmth from the earth."

"I would prefer to draw warmth from a good fire," said Matt. Gwyn glanced at Brother Llyad, who shook his head.

"Hugydd is having a joke," he whispered. "The Druids use tents as does anyone else. But they only use them when the elements are harsh enough to warrant them. Otherwise, what he said is true." He looked around at the Druid camp, into which they now passed. If he was trying to suppress his joy, he was not entirely successful. This, for him, was as much a homecoming as had been his return to Tintagel. Perhaps more.

They finally arrived at a wide open area, as close to the Giants' Dance as they would come this night. The Dance was still a quarter of a mile away, Gwyn thought, but it felt close enough to touch. Something within it called to her; she felt something stirring within her soul, a deep and powerful yearning to break from the company and ride full-gallop to the Dance and over its threshold. She had to almost physically tear her attention away from the Dance to look upon the group of Druids that now approached them, led by the man who was undoubtedly the Chieftain, so unmistakable was his authority. Gwyn realized that this man looked familiar to her somehow, though she could not place him in her memory; beside her, Sir Baigent stiffened. Hugydd gestured for them to halt.

"Here we dismount," he declared. Gareth, Matt and Calloch all looked askance at this, and Hugydd smiled. "You cannot think to remain on horseback," he said. "The horses will never fit into your tents, to name the smallest concern. Fear not. Your beasts will be well cared-for."

One by one the companions dismounted, and young Druids -- their equivalent of pages -- came forth to see the horses away. Hugydd beckoned the companions to stand and bow before the Chieftain, which they did. Sir Baigent, Gwyn realized, was standing very rigidly; and to her right, Brother Llyad stood with a tear running down his cheek.

"Are these the Druids you knew from Mona?" she asked.

Brother Llyad nodded, once. "And I know this one very well," he said.

The Chieftain came forward and gazed into Gwyn's eyes with the deepest, wisest stare she had ever before seen. His hair and beard were all silver, and his eyes were lined with age. His face was a face of wisdom, and yet his hands -- which he held clasped in front of him -- were hands of toil, large and strong. This was a man who had worked the earth even as he worshipped the Goddess. He stared into Gwyn's eyes for a long moment, and then he finally spoke.

"The Welcomer," he said in a deep voice that reminded her of Father Damogan. "So many Druid Chieftains have labored, for so many centuries, to keep alive the lore of the Emrys. So many have both feared and awaited the day when you would come unto us here, in this place. That such a responsibility has come unto me is a burden I had thought myself equipped to carry -- until now. I see today that it was foolish of me, as it would be foolish of anyone, to wish for such times, but though I must count myself a fool at least in part, I still thank the Goddess for my part in what is to be done this night." He bowed before adding, "I would have your name, if it pleases you to offer it."

"Gwynwhyfar," she said, returning his bow.

"Gwynwhyfar," he repeated, as if the name were the answer to a riddle that had vexed him since childhood. "That name is not new to the tale of the Promised King. I wonder what role you will have to play in the days to come." He turned to face Sir Baigent. "This man I know," he said. "Our meeting this time is a happier one, Sir Baigent of Camyrdin, for we are met with a common purpose. It pleases me that you did not share the fate of your countrymen, because when we last met, in a wood far from here, even then I took you for a man of honor and valor."

"A price was exacted," Sir Baigent said. Gwyn realized now that this very Druid was the same one that Sir Baigent had met in the wood, when he had left one man dead and another sick and taken into the Druids' care. And she remembered, from the knight's tale, this Chieftain's name: Horius.

"We each paid a price, I recall," Horius replied. "Two died that night, victims of ignorance. But you were only required to pay the price once, because you showed wisdom. A more foolish man would have paid a price more dear."

"Perhaps," Sir Baigent said. Horius stepped back and looked at Brother Llyad, who was now weeping openly as he bowed before the Druid Chieftain.

"It honors me to be in your presence again, Llyad of Tintagel," Horius said.

"And I am doubly honored," Brother Llyad replied. His voice was near to cracking.

"You did what you said you would, when spring came," Horius said. "You said you would go to Tintagel and find the Welcomer. I prayed for calm seas for you, though I doubt you had them."

"We did not," Brother Llyad said.

"You did not make the trek alone, did you? Who went with you?"

Brother Llyad hung his head. "It was Llawann," he said.

"Llawann!" Horius exclaimed. His eyes went wide. "But I told him to remain on Mona. Why would he leave, against my wishes?" Horius's tone, Gwyn noticed, was no longer that of a Chieftain. It was more like the concern of a father for his son--

And Gwyn's heart suddenly lodged in her throat. Oh, Llawann…

"We waited for spring, which never came," Brother Llyad said. "We waited for the calmer seas, and yet each day they were as storm-tossed as the day before. We finally realized we had waited almost too long, and that we had to go. Llawann saw the peril, and he would allow the task to no other. Without his skill at sea, I would surely have been lost. And without him, the Welcomer and I would surely have been...." He trailed off, and he looked up at Horius. "He saved us."

Horius lowered his eyes. "He is gone," he said. It was not a question.

"His barrow is beside the lake where the Fair Folk came to Gwynwhyfar," Brother Llyad said. "He accepted the task willingly, with peace and love of the Goddess in his heart. He could not have done a more noble thing."

Horius lifted his head and gave a single nod. "Then in time pride will come to my heart with the sadness fades," he said with a sigh. Then he gestured to the other companions. "A Bard of Prydein, I presume?"

Estren nodded.

"We are part of the same tradition, the Druids and the Bards. I am glad to see our paths become one." Horius turned then to Gareth. "I do not know you," he said.

Gareth held his gaze. "Does the Druid lore speak of Seren Goleuad?" she asked.

"Ah," Horius said. "Finders. I have heard of your traditions. Many things are told of in our lore, but I fear nothing is said of the union of the Sun and Moon. Nevertheless, you are welcome here." He returned to his original position, in front of all the companions. There he spread his arms in a gesture of ceremonial welcome. "This is the Night of Midsummer, when the boundaries between the worlds are lowered and many things are allowed to pass between, some dark and some light -- and none so light as what we seek to bring back tonight. Here, in this place of power built by the Emrys himself, the Welcomer will step through those boundaries and bring Arthur Pendragon back from his long rest in Avalon. The Rites will begin at night's darkest hour, when light is most distant. Come, Welcomer. You must be prepared."

Gwyn swallowed. Her companions had achieved their mission, and their work was done; now she was in the care of the Druids. Two women stepped forward and took her gently by the arms. She glanced back at her companions -- at Estren, whose words had brought cheer on the journey; at Brother Llyad, whose act of rashness had started it all but who since then had been utterly unwavering in his devotion; at Gareth and her mysterious Finders, who had saved them purely by chance; and finally at--

"Where is he?" a voice suddenly shouted.

Gwyn whirled in the direction from which the shout had come. Someone was pushing their way through the crowd of Druids, but Gwyn could not see who it was. Not yet.

"Move aside, you fools! I will see him now!" the person shouted again. A low, sharp voice, but definitely feminine. Beside Gwyn, someone made a gasping sound. To her surprise, it was Sir Baigent.

"Blessed Goddess," he said, and then, turning to Hugydd, "Is it--"

Hugydd smiled broadly. "A surprise to bring warmth to your heart after so cold a journey," he said.

"Move, you damnable dogs!" the person shouted one last time as the crowd of Druids, most of them laughing, parted to allow her through. The woman was short -- fully a head shorter than Gwyn -- but her body was tough and wiry, her face hard, and her walk severe. Her white hair was tightly curled, her lips were set in a frown that looked unbreakable, and she wore simple clothes of leather and homespun. On her back she carried a bow and quiver.

"Murron!" Sir Baigent shouted as he jumped forward to embrace the Chief Archer of Caer Camyrdin. Murron of the Arrows returned his embrace, but followed it with an angry glare -- or at least a glare that appeared angry.

"They said it was you," she snapped. "I didn't believe them. 'Not possible,' said I. 'Inconceivable that my seneschal would involve himself in business like this, and even more inconceivable that he would be so late in arriving.' But it's him, they said. And he brought the Welcomer, they said. 'I'm sure he did,' I told them. 'And I'll wager he grew out his hair and took up archery too.'" She reached up and ran a hand through Sir Baigent's hair, which had grown a bit in the last week although it was still quite short. "I see I was right on one such score, at least."

"I haven't been gone long enough for my hair to have grown much," Sir Baigent said with a laugh. "As for archery, I'm afraid I've failed you again. Despite all your best efforts, the sword is still my weapon."

"Swords," Murron said, and she spat on the ground. "The weapon of brutes and louts. No elegance at all. No beauty, just two witless lugs pounding at each other with edged strips of metal. Pagh!"

Sir Baigent laughed. Clearly this was by no means a new topic of conversation.

"If that is your view of swords," the knight said, "then I shudder to think of what you would say of clubwielders, lancers and pikemen. But perhaps it would please you to know that the Welcomer is an archer herself."

Gwyn blushed as Murron turned to look at her. "So this is the one we've all been waiting for, eh?" She looked Gwyn over, studying her features and finally nodding. "I suppose I can see why. You have that 'fairy' look to you. Well, it stands to reason that you'd be an archer; the Goddess is wise, and archers are the wisest of warriors."

"Thank you," Gwyn said. "But I am hardly a warrior."

"Of course not," Murron said. "You are a pretty thing, but you have the look of a cleric, and thus I do not doubt that your archery consists largely of shooting at piles of hay, the sides of wooden buildings, and small animals to bring back to the pot. Well, do you have a name, girl? or should I call you, 'Mistress Archer'?"

Gwyn bowed lightly. "I am Gwynwhyfar of Tintagel, and before that, Lyonesse. It is an honor to meet you. Sir Baigent has spoken highly of you."

Murron scowled. "I can imagine what might pass for high praise coming from him," she said.

"I know what you mean," Gwyn said, casting a sidelong glance at Sir Baigent, who rolled his eyes. She felt an odd stirring inside her that she hadn't felt in a long time. It was the stirring of mischief. "But now," she said casually, "meeting you after meeting Lord Matholyn and journeying with Sir Baigent, I begin to see what marks the people of Caer Camyrdin."

Murron raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Bluntness," Gwyn said.

Gareth was first to laugh, followed by Sir Baigent and everyone else. Murron did not laugh, but instead gave a satisfied smile that Gwyn suspected was as close to a laugh as she ever came.

"Mirth is ever welcome," Horius said as he stepped forward. "Even in these dark days. But now is the time to prepare for what is to come. The moment approaches."

The Druid attendants again stepped to Gwyn's side. "Come," one of them said.

Again Gwyn glanced at her companions, and then she turned and followed the Druid women to the tent where she would prepare for what she had come to do.

***

As Hugydd led the companions out of the Walsing Wood and onto the plain, Jonn led the Finders around the easternmost tip of the same forest and then to the northwest, where someplace before them stood the Giants' Dance. During a stop for water, Jonn studied the only map they had of this region. It was, of course, woefully inadequate. Only the wood was clearly marked, and the map gave little indication of the distances involved. He only knew the general direction in which they were to go, and he prayed that was enough.

"Come on!" he shouted. "I don't want to tarry here any longer than we need to fill our skins and water the horses."

"Pushing us hard enough, eh?" It was Gavidd, his oldest -- and gruffest -- friend, one of the oldest Finders.

"Not nearly," Jonn replied. "Midsummer Night is tonight, and we must be there to greet -- whoever it is who that girl brings back from wherever it is she's going."

Gavidd snorted. "Well, putting it like that, how could any of us possibly doubt the urgency of the matter?" He bent over to fill a waterskin. "You don't believe this business, do you?"

Jonn shrugged. "I follow Gareth, wherever she may decide to go. Such is my oath, and the way of the Finders."

"That's a fine statement of purpose," Gavidd said. "But it doesn't answer the question asked."

"And as a Finder, you should be accustomed to having questions going unanswered." He said it perhaps a bit more harshly than he intended, but Gavidd only frowned. Far harsher words had been exchanged between the two of them over the years, and still they were friends. Jonn stepped back from the stream and looked over the Finders, the entire ragtag band of them. Here they were, going into what would be the greatest war in Prydein's history, when just days before they had been content to live in their camp, safe and unconcerned with such matters. But then, how safe had they really been? How safe had they ever been? There was no doubting and no denying it: they had chosen a side in this war. Their die had been thrown and now they had to play the number rolled. "Gaspar hasn't returned yet," Jonn said.

"He will," Gavidd replied. Gaspar was Gavidd's son, and he was their fastest and most skilled rider. Jonn had sent him alone to see if there were any signs of Maxen's approaching army, which would certainly be coming this way as they circled the wood on their route to rejoin King Cwerith. The worst possible thing that could happen, in Jonn's view, would be for the Finders to be forced into open battle with Maxen and his men. There was a reason they had struck quickly and at night. Fighting in the open would not at all be like a handful of masked riders lobbing fireglobes in the midst of darkness.

Finally they had rested long enough, or as long as Jonn dared allow them to rest. "Come!" he called. "Time to ride!"

His command was met with groans and protests, but the entire company was ready to ride in minutes, a display of efficiency that would have deeply impressed any commander in any army. Barely a quarter of an hour passed between the time Jonn gave his command and the time when the last of the Finders left the stream.

"How much farther, do you think?" Gavidd asked.

"Half a day," Jonn replied. "Perhaps more, perhaps less. If we--"

"A rider!" someone called out. Jonn glanced sharply to the west, where indeed a single rider could be seen approaching at great speed. Behind that rider was the dark line of the distant wood. Gavidd laughed.

"Here's my son!" he said. "I told you he would return."

"I never doubted that," Jonn said, though in truth he had begun to do just that.

"Greetings," Gaspar said when he arrived. He and his horse were both winded. "Forgive my tardiness. I rode a farther distance than I had planned."

"Why so far?" Jonn asked. "You were not to get so close to them that they would see you."

"And I did not," Gaspar replied. "That was what took me so long -- I had to find them first. It turned out that Maxen's company does not cleave to the edge of Walding Wood, as we expected. They are in the open, marching across the plain."

"What?" Gavidd said. "Are their brains addled? They are late to the war, and they have time to recover if they wish to fight alongside their brothers at Bedwyn -- time they won't make up if they venture too far north."

Gaspar shook his head. "That is what I saw," he said. "I had to ride twice the distance I planned, just to catch a glimpse of them. Nearly killed my poor beast here, getting back in time to tell you." He patted his horse's neck.

Gavidd shook his head in disbelief. "Then those men are truly led by a fool," he said. "Perhaps that Knight did manage to kill Maxen, and that lout Fflud's sense of reckoning is poorer than we thought."

Jonn nodded slowly. He was inclined to agree. There was no reason to leave the wood behind, if they were trying to circle it before turning south. No reason at all. Except--

And Jonn's blood went to ice.

"He is not marching to Bedwyn at all," Jonn said. He glanced up at the darkening sky. Soon they would have to stop for the night. He couldn't march his people in darkness -- but Maxen could, and he would. There was no doubting it.

Gavidd was still confused. "But if he's not going to Bedwyn, then where can he be going?"

He saw the look on Jonn's face before he even finished asking the question, and so he had his answer.

***

The Druid priestesses helped Gwyn to prepare for this last part of her journey by sitting with her in the calm of the tent, giving her cups of strangely fragrant herbal tea, and providing her with a set of Druid robes which felt terribly strange after long days of dirty riding clothes. They also sang Druidic chants and hymns to which Gwyn knew neither the words nor the melodies. Finally they simply left her alone. Even though the tent's walls were thin, fashioned of some kind of animal skin, the din of outside was completely shut out. The silence was no doubt meant to be soothing, and Gwyn knew that she was supposed to find solace and succor in it, but in truth she found neither. She found her heart racing ever faster, her flesh cold, and her muscles trembling. For how could a task such as this be entrusted to one such as her?

Absurd! she thought. Completely absurd! Such a task should fall to someone with the wisdom and power of a Lord Priest, or perhaps a great Lord of some fine realm should be here. It should be Father Damogan here, or maybe Lord Matholyn -- certainly not an Adept who should have been at home, studying for her Trials. A farmgirl from Lyonesse, remade as the Welcomer? Absurd!

And yet, it had to be so, did it not? How could she say otherwise? Who was she to deny the Goddess herself, and say that it had all been for naught -- the hardships endured, the enmities made, the wounds suffered and the sacrifices made? How could she ever face Sir Baigent or Brother Llyad -- or anyone -- if she came back from the Giants' Dance with no one beside her, or worse, never went in at all?

"Malcolm, I wish you were here!" Gwyn said aloud.

But even as she said it she knew that had he actually been here, Malcolm probably would have been little real help. More likely he would offer one of his less-than-clear remarks that were nonetheless oddly satisfying when he uttered them. She even knew what he might say: "It does little good to pine for the road that you wish to travel, for in the end you must still walk the road that you are on." That was her answer, the only one possible, and it calmed her as it had so many times in the past. With those words in her heart she knelt upon the floor of the tent and began to recite the Five Holy Paths as written by Lennynder of Old. She had reached the Third Path when the tent flap swung open, and Horius entered.

"Come, Welcomer," he said. "We begin."

Gwyn rose to her feet, straightened her robes, swallowed several times, and followed Horius outside.

A straight path led from the tent's entry to the edge of the Giants' Dance, and the way was lined on each side by Druids holding candles of yellow beeswax. Behind the lines of Druids were the hundreds of others who had gathered here, some seeking the Welcomer and some seeking refuge from war. At the opposite end of the path, just before the Dance itself, blazed the East bonfire. She would therefore enter the Dance from the East, so that when she returned -- with King Arthur -- he would be coming out of the West, as he had in the time before. Behind it all, the stones of the Dance loomed even larger than they had before.

"This place has been shunned by all who live in Prydein, through all the centuries since the Cataclysm," Horius said, his voice sounding small and distant. The power of the Giants' Dance has forever been reserved for the oldest of Dona's servants, the Druids -- but even we have never dared to venture within the boundary marked by the stones that were set standing here by Merlyn Emrys, so long ago."

"What lies inside?" Gwyn asked.

"The Dance lay dormant through the days of the Ancients, and its purpose was lost to them," Horius replied. "They followed other powers, and the old ways faded into memory. The Dance fell into disrepair and was ignored. Some of its stones toppled, and the Ancients would even chip away pieces of the stones themselves as keepsakes.

"But after the Cataclysm, when the Wyrm of the World rose from his slumber and plunged the world back into fire, the Dance was restored. Its stones were lifted again and returned to their places, and a new power was known here, one that would never falter as it had before. Since then, none have dared venture within the boundary of the Giants' Dance, for fear and respect of what once had been and was now again."

"And now I must enter," Gwyn said.

"You must enter," Horius agreed. "In and through, to whatever awaits inside."

He walked with Gwyn toward the last gathering place. When they reached the point halfway from the tent to the East Bonfire, the line of Druids to Gwyn's left parted, allowing her companions to step through. One by one they came forward to kneel before her. Gwyn was taken aback by such a tribute, and as Gareth fell to one knee before her she shook her head.

"No," she said. "Not this. I am not worthy of such--"

"It is as much for the Goddess as it is for you," Horius said. "Perhaps more. Allow it."

Gwyn still felt that this was too much. Nevertheless, she nodded.

"I never dreamed something like this was possible," Gareth said. "It has been my greatest honor to be even the smallest part of this. Perhaps it will serve as my atonement for…for losing the Finders' Way, seeking revenge instead of seeking the Son."

Gwyn blinked. Clearly she was supposed to say something now, something wise. All she could manage was, "Thank you for saving us." Nevertheless, Gareth smiled as if it had been enough. As she turned away, Horius whispered into Gwyn's ear.

"Part of this night's meaning is atonement -- that of the land for its Goddess. That is why the people who brought you here are voicing their own wishes for atonement before you enter the Dance, because you are Dona's surrogate."

Dona's surrogate. Gwyn nearly laughed at the words.

Next came Estren. Kneeling, he said: "Of all the Bards, to witness this night has fallen to me. I will sing of it as best I can, though my words are hardly the equal of the great masters who have gone before me."

Gwyn laid a hand on his shoulder. "Your words brought light on dark nights -- once in fact as well as in spirit. For that I thank you." The words came easier now.

Then it was Brother Llyad's turn. It did not surprise Gwyn that he was weeping. "My Lady," he began, "I wish I had not handled myself so poorly on Tintagel. I should have trusted your wisdom, that you would see what had to be done. I shall live with that regret the rest of my days."

"Oh, Llyad," Gwyn said. "You did what had to be done, though you are correct in that it could have been done another way. The Goddess is forgiving of poor actions, if they are done by a good heart and they do not come to ill." That last was a quote from some book in the Tintagel library, but as Brother Malcolm had so often told her: "The wisdom contained in those pages was not meant to be contained in the pages of some book to remain on a shelf, unopened, through decades of disuse, but to be lived and used as any such wisdom."

Brother Llyad stepped away, the tears still streaming down his cheeks such that Gwyn feared they would never stop. And then Sir Baigent stepped forward, although he did not kneel. Instead he looked around at the scene: the candle flames, the light of the bonfire, the gathering of the Druids and the displaced, and looming above it all the ancient sightless stones of the Giants' Dance.

"So this is why we did it all," he said.

A smile tugged at the corners of Gwyn's lips. "Is it what you expected?" she asked.

He looked around. "I suppose it is," he said. "And I suppose it's not. I'm just a man of arms, My Lady. I don't know about such things."

Gwyn shook her head. "Once again, you mark yourself less than what you are. Wisdom is not the sole property of clerics and Bards."

"Would you have admitted that several days ago?" he asked.

"Would you have claimed wisdom for your own?" she returned.

"Then you have changed something in the soul of a 'sword-carrying brute' after all," he said with a joking smile.

"And you have helped this 'sheltered, cloistered cleric' to see wisdom on the edge of a blade."

"Well," Sir Baigent said with an extravagant wave of his hand, "in what other way could I possibly have been of service to My Lady?"

Gwyn laughed, he smiled, and then he drew his sword and planted the tip in the ground. Gripping the cross of the hilt, he knelt before her. "My Lady, I regret that you must do this thing alone. That I am your Champion no longer."

Now Gwyn's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Knight of Camyrdin," she said, "it is I who regret that on this last road I shall not walk with your strength beside me." The words came from some part of her heart and her soul to which she rarely gave voice. "But if I cannot have your strength beside me, I will at least carry it inside me. I could not have asked the Goddess for a finer Champion, nor could she have granted me one." She leaned forward, toward Sir Baigent's upturned face, and kissed him upon the cheek. Then, still close, she whispered such that only he could hear: "I owe you everything."

Gwyn straightened, and Sir Baigent rose and returned his blade to its scabbard. "Walk with the light of Dona," he said. And then Horius was back at her side, and Sir Baigent of Camyrdin, the Welcomer's Champion, joined the other companions beyond the line of Druids.

Gwyn took Horius's arm again, and they walked the rest of the way to the East Bonfire. When they reached it, the Druids behind them shifted to form a half-circle around the blazing fire. Horius reached out to one of the Druids, who handed him a black wooden staff. Holding this staff aloft, he began to chant in the ancient tongue of the Oak Brothers -- softly at first, then louder and louder. Unsure of what, if anything, to do, Gwyn stood silently beside him. Behind her, the other Druids began to hum a wordless melody that soon filled the night with Horius's voice rising above them all.

Gwyn had never heard voices like this, not in all her days. The singing of hymns in the Sanctuary at Tintagel had been one of her favorite things about living in that place; the way their fifty or so voices raised in song had filled that simple stone structure had always given her solace and made her feel keenly the presence of the Goddess. She had also heard and loved the songs and dances and ballads performed by the wandering troupes which had occasionally come through Lyonesse. This music of the Druids, though, was completely unlike anything she had ever heard before. A single voice was born out of the multitude of Druids who sang, a single voice in which could be heard the call of the sparrow and the roar of the wild boar and the whales beneath the waves, the wind across the plain and over the sea and through the wood, the rains of spring and the snows of winter. The voice was singing the very song of the earth -- not in its words, but in the music itself and the way the voices blended and in the way Horius's single voice both rose above the chorus and sank beneath it.

And through all that music, Gwyn stood waiting silently. At first she was keenly aware of all the eyes turned upon her, but gradually she became less aware of them and more aware of the clouds that gathered above them, obscuring the full moon and darkening a night that was already near black, and of the power stirring within the boundary described by the towering blocks of granite. She imagined that she heard -- no, she knew that she heard a new set of voices, lifted in a song of their own, unrelated to that of the Druids and yet somehow a part of it. They were the voices of the things in the Earth and above it and below it, the voices of the plain and the sky and the Giants' Dance itself. The stones whispered to one another, and she heard their words though she knew not what they said nor what tales they spoke. The words themselves were long, taking years to speak, and a single one of those words told more than all the words in all the tongues of men.

Lightning flashed in the sky above the Dance, and thunder rolled across the plain. A cold breeze stirred, and it blew with a steady force. Now Horius stopped singing, and he moved again to Gwyn's side and took her arm.

"Take now the first steps!" he cried.

Gwyn allowed him to lead her forward and then back, forward and then back, forward and back again. They walked forward until they were almost close enough to touch the stones of the Dance, but then they turned and followed the Dance's path almost all the way to the Southern Bonfire. Here they swung about and partly retraced their steps to where they had started, and then they went back again. They were tracing a Druidic spiral path on the ground, identical to the spirals Gwyn had seen on the faces of the standing stones they had passed on their journey. They were pacing out that mystic spiral, writ large on the central plain of Prydein, with the Giants' Dance at the center.

When they reached the Western Bonfire -- halfway through the spiral -- a blast of lightning ripped from the sky, touching down in the exact center of the Dance. The light was blinding, and the thunder that crashed over the plain was the most deafening sound Gwyn had ever heard. Beside her Horius flinched, but somehow Gwyn did not; instead, the power of the lightning and the thunder washed over her and soaked into her and became part of her. In the searing flash of lightning Gwyn was able to glimpse something of what waited for her within the Dance: a smaller set of standing stones, and at the center of that, a single, altar-like stone…with something embedded within…

It is time, Gwynwhyfar.

Nimue?

It is I, child. The way is almost complete.

I want to come inside.

You must complete the Path.

Is this what I have come here to do? to walk this Path?

This, and so much more.

Gwyn closed her eyes and, holding them closed, allowed Horius to lead her on the spiraling path as she came to the North Bonfire. The wind blew fiercer, harsher, and yet she barely felt it. The path was all that mattered. Nothing else was important, nothing else even existed -- not the wind, nor the cold, nor the heat of the fires, nor the light of the candles, nor even the passage of time. More lightning came, and more thunder, and Gwyn felt none of it. There was only herself and the Path. Gradually Horius's grasp on her arm slackened and then fell away entirely; she was walking the Path alone now, alone and unguided for she knew the way in the deepest part of her soul. More lightning blasted into the Dance, more thunder smashed the air like the hammer of a giant, more wind whipped across the plain, and still Gwyn walked. She came to the East Bonfire at last, and here she turned and walked straight toward the Dance as Nimue's voice called out to her again.

Come, child! Oh, come!

And then she passed beneath the ancient portal erected by Merlyn Emrys, and she knew calm -- utter calm. This was her place. She opened her eyes and glanced outward, out of the Dance, at the storm that whirled out there but could not be felt in here. She looked down at herself and saw that the plain Druid robes had vanished, and in their place was a gown of shimmering samite that glowed in the candle and firelight, a gown she had seen herself wearing before, but only in her dreams. She walked forward again, and entered the inner circle. A new voice spoke to her then, old and masculine.

Who comes here?

"Gwynwhyfar," she said. "The Welcomer."

At last! My work is complete, and now at last I may rest, for my part in the tale is finally done. My crystal prison now becomes my tomb, as I forever knew it would. Go with strength, Gwynwhyfar!

Gwyn opened her eyes as the voice of the Emrys faded away into the night, never to be heard again. Before her stood an altar of granite, and atop the altar lay a sword and scabbard. She picked up the weapon, and in that moment the great stones around her, and the very plain itself, vanished. Or, perhaps, they remained where they had always been, and it was she who vanished.

In that moment, Gwynwhyfar of Tintagel, the Welcomer, was taken -- someplace else.

Chapter Seventeen

2005-09-04T05:28:00.000-07:00

Davin ap Danach looked up, bleary-eyed, from the papers on his table when Amren entered the chamber. He was actually grateful for the interruption. The papers were reports on the city's food stores, and the news was not good. The stores had been depleted, as expected, by the winter -- but winter usually ended, and this one had not, and so they were not being replenished. Davin had never seen them this low, even in the spring following years of poor harvest. Making things even worse was Bedwyn's swelling population. The hundreds bordering on thousands who had fled their homesteads, towns and villages to the north and west in the face of King Cwerith's invading force had come here, and they had to fed as well. Davin had never understood the impulse that told people facing war that it was better to seek refuge behind a wall that was still in war's path rather than getting out of war's path entirely, but fearful times made for strange thoughts in the minds of men, and this was no different. He had already imposed strict rationing for those already within the walls, and he knew that the time was swiftly coming when he would have to close the gates to any more, leaving those still outside in danger's way. That was inevitable, but Davin well knew that things inevitable are in no way less dreaded.

He looked up from the reports and rubbed his eyes. "What is it, Amren?"

"Forgive the intrusion," Amren said. "There is news."

Davin stiffened. He had known this man for many years, and he well knew the tone in Amren's voice. "Poor tidings are the only ones I seem fated to hear these days," he said.

"And mine to deliver," Amren replied. "A group of riders has just arrived from Caer Bonnyr."

Davin's brow furrowed. Caer Bonnyr was a small village on the Test, about half a day's march to the northwest. It was not a large town, but it was well-known for the quality of its ale and the fact that some of the finest potters in Prydein toiled there. It was also generally held to be the place where the sea country ended and the great expanse of Inner Prydein began, starting with the plain on which stood the Giants' Dance.

"A group of riders?" Davin asked.

"The survivors of Caer Bonnyr," Amren replied.

"Survivors," Davin echoed. Survivors. The air went out of him. Davin stared at Amren. "Cwerith?"

Amren nodded. Davin felt his flesh turn cold, even colder than it already was, and his injured leg throbbed suddenly. He looked down at the table, covered with reports on granaries and food-stores that had just become irrelevant to the task of surviving an unending winter and instead relevant to the task of surviving a siege. He shoved the reports aside, looking for the map that lay beneath everything else. Davin knew the lay of the land around Bedwyn better than any man in the city -- moreso, even, than the Duke himself -- and could find his way, blindfolded and seated backwards on a horse, back to the city from any of the valleys or hilltops in the area; he had even done so several times as a result of a bad throw of the dice when he had perhaps quaffed too much ale to be able to make a wise wager. Even so, he still preferred to be able to actually look at the map. Finding it at the bottom of the stack of papers and reports, he traced with his finger the easy route that led from Caer Bonnyr to the main gate of Bedwyn. He considered the state of the road at this time of year, and the speed that an army the size that Cwerith had amassed could maintain. It all added to one certain and terrible conclusion. "Cwerith will be outside our walls by sundown tonight."

"If he drives his men fast enough," Amren said.

"He will."

"Yes." Amren knew the distance too, and they both knew that even an undisciplined, motley assortment of highwaymen and mercenaries could make the march from Caer Bonnyr to Bedwyn in a single day. Cwerith's army was hardly that.

Davin sighed. "What happened?"

"The accounts are not entirely clear," Amren said. "The survivors amount to five families who lived on homesteads in the hills east of Caer Bonnyr. As near as we can tell, Cwerith's men attacked without warning or parley. They had the village in less than an hour and put it to the flame. They gave the people no chance for surrender."

"He had to do it that way," Davin said. "Had he given them adequate warning, they might have burned the bridge before Cwerith could bring his army across it." There were no bridges over the Test south of Caer Bonnyr. The river became too wide and swift, and all crossings south of that village were by ferry.

Davin rose from his chair and wiped his eyes.

"You have not slept," Amren observed.

"Nor will I," Davin replied. His days of fitful rest were over for now, and perhaps for the rest of his life. It was just as well, for in all the years since his last war he had never truly taken to a night spent entirely in a warm bed. "It is time. I had prayed that this moment would not arrive until after the Duke's return, but that is not to be the way of it. All rations are to be halved, immediately. Our granaries are ill-stocked to see us through a long siege, but we must make them last as long as they can."

"Yes," Amren said.

"Cwerith will be coming from the north. Send word to the men in the relay towers that they are to desert their posts as soon as their fires are lit. Assign all archers in the city to the north walls, and put out the word that we will accept the aid of anyone new to the city who can shoot a bow."

"It will be done," Amren said.

Davin grabbed his cloak for his morning survey of the walls. "As for the people still approaching the city, dispatch the city guard to send them east, until the signal fires are lit. Tell the Guard that all men are to return as soon as the fires are seen, whether there are still people coming or not. There will be no further refuge given in Bedwyn. This is now a place of war. Tell the people coming to go to Londia, the Kentish Shore, around the city and on to Bornmuth -- anywhere but here."

Amren nodded. "And the gates?" he asked.

"Close them," Davin said. "All of them."

***

The morning air was surprisingly still as King Cwerith arose and dressed himself. The scent of the smoke from the burning of the town called Caer Bonnyr still hung in the air, but Cwerith barely noticed it if he noticed it at all. The scent of a town's burning was as constant to him now as the salty air of Caer Mastagg, on the edge of the sea, had been before he had led the men of Gwynedd far enough inland that the sea was no longer in the air. So familiar, indeed, had the smell of smoke become that he could barely remember what the sea's salt spray smelled like.

He finished dressing slowly, stifling a yawn as he pulled his cloak over his shoulders. Cwerith had risen before the sun nearly every day of his life, but for some reason on this particular morning he was still very tired. He thought it strange that it should be so, on this day of all days, when he would lay siege to Bedwyn, the largest city in Prydein except for Londia herself -- at least until he received the tidings that he knew were coming from the east. Today, the final reckoning would begin. He would confront the last of Irlaris's powerful allies; after he had brought Bedwyn down and either forced Cunaddyr to his knee or killed him outright, the remaining lordlings who still opposed him would quickly fall into line or into the grave. Soon he would truly be High King of Prydein. Caer Camyrdin had been retribution -- the retribution of the rightful King, but mere retribution nonetheless -- but Bedwyn would be different. Like the Battle of the Scarlet King that had confirmed High King Prystyl, and the Unfought Battle which had confirmed High King Irlaris, the Battle of Bedwyn would confirm High King Cwerith. Let the Nine Bards sing about that, Cwerith thought as he walked outside to where Lord Varing waited.

"Good morning, Your Majesty," Varing said. "Your horse stands ready." He gestured to the page who stood at attention nearby, with King Cwerith's horse saddled and ready to ride. Several paces behind him stood the four knights who would accompany him.

"Thank you," Cwerith replied as he pulled on a pair of gloves. The air this morning was as cold as any of the winter winds that blew so often at Caer Mastagg. If it is this cold, Cwerith thought, the blood will steam on the stone. "The men are still to be roused at dawn," he said.

"It will be as you command," Lord Varing said. "I must report that some of the people from this village survived and fled before we could take them. They will, no doubt, bring the news of what happened here to Bedwyn."

"Let them," Cwerith said. "Bedwyn will still fall just as Caer Camyrdin did."

"I know it will," Varing said, quietly.

Cwerith stopped for a moment. He did not like the tone that had entered his steward's voice. "Are you vexed by something, Lord Varing?"

"No, Your Highness," Varing replied. "I merely wonder if this…ritual that you go now to attend is as important as Cassion would have you believe. Surely the throne cannot be denied you now."

"Think you so?" Cwerith said. "Do you question the judgment of your King?" His voice was like a slap. The page audibly gasped, and Lord Varing swallowed and shifted backward by a single step.

"Never, my liege," he said.

"Good," Cwerith said. "Cassion is a far wiser man than you, Varing. He understands power. And I am sure that there are any number of men who would suffer themselves to be gelded if I were to offer them the position you now hold."

"But none of them would serve you more gratefully than I, Your Majesty," Lord Varing said with a deep bow, which King Cwerith ignored as he turned and mounted his horse. Then he rode away, accompanied by the four knights as he headed out away from the camp to the place where Cassion and his fellow priests awaited him. He swore under his breath as he left the camp. Varing was the perfect servant: loyal, obedient, and never offering his opinion unless it was asked of him, which in fact Cwerith had just done. But still, Varing did not understand. None of them did.

The others would be there: Baron Gaddamar and his sons; Lord Clastor and Lord Relimach, the most recent defectors to his cause; others whose names Cwerith could trouble to remember -- cowards, all of them, who had sold their loyalties for the promise of lands and power in the new Realm. Cwerith hated these men who would buy what they were too weak or fearful to take or make for themselves, who would march under any banner at all so long as there was a place for them at the victor's table. He hated them, almost as much as he hated men like Matholyn and Cunaddyr and Irlaris -- men who would never bend the knee for the one, rightful King. But Cwerith knew that the cowards of the world were necessary to defeat the brave fools. That was the way of it.

As he rode up and over a small knoll, so that he was no longer in sight of his army, he wondered -- as he had wondered so many times since he had come to know Cassion -- if his father would be proud of what Cwerith had made of his kingdom, or if he would he angered by Cwerith's turning away from Dona. Surely he would have approved, Cwerith told himself -- after all, his father had spoken all of the familiar words to the Goddess, he had said all of the correct prayers, he had observed the Festivals for the Moon -- but after the Unfought Battle, his tone on those days had become pallid, devoid of passion. Cwerith had long wondered if his father had tried to set the Goddess aside, only to fail because the Goddess had been so constant in his life and because he had lacked someone to show him the way to a new Power, as Cassion had shown Cwerith. Gwynedd and Caer Mastagg had never been favored by the Goddess, but it had taken that rogue Druid to show King Cwerith the way to new power. That was what Cassion was, after all: the descendant of the Druids who had been slaughtered and driven away by High King Prystyl. A few of them had survived and kept their dark teachings alive, in the mountains of Gwynedd and the far-flung islands beyond the northernmost reaches of Caledonia. They were the true Druids, not those weak-willed fools from Mona who sang to the trees and babbled about ancient prophecies and Kings promised to people who were barely worthy of the kings they had. No, the Goddess did not favor them -- and if she did not favor them, they would not favor her.

The gathering took place near a stream that flowed down from the shallow hills into the Test. The three ceremonial fires burned in their newly-dug pits, and the priests stood in their central circle. Beyond that circle were gathered the Lords who had joined Cwerith rather than die, the cowards he so needed and so despised. Each of them sank to one knee as he rode up and dismounted; he acknowledged them with a curt nod and moved into the circle where Cassion and his Druids stood -- "Dark Druids", Cwerith sometimes thought of them.

They were chanting in some language Cwerith neither understood nor wish to understand. Cassion spread his arms wide in a gesture of welcome for the King. Cwerith focused his gaze on his high priest, ignoring the unconscious form -- man or woman, it mattered not -- splayed and tied to the ceremonial stone.

"Now among us comes the Majesty of Prydein," Cassion said, shifting to the normal tongue. It mattered little; Cwerith ignored the words Cassion spoke. Instead his thoughts kept turning to the siege and battle that lay ahead, perhaps before this day was out. He thought of the throne that would soon be his, and the crown he would order shaped from gold taken from all the palaces and keeps he had defeated. He imagined the weight of that crown upon his brow, a crown that would be his by the taking and by the making, as all crowns should be.

Cwerith did not think, though, of the blood with which he would water the fields of his new realm -- neither the blood already shed, nor the blood that would be spilled on the fields of Bedwyn on the morrow, nor even the blood that now ran across the ceremonial stone as Cassion drew the knife across the stomach of the offering to the Brother of the Goddess. A King could not be concerned with such things. The only blood that concerned him was his own, which he would soon offer to that God who had come in the dark when the Goddess had not.

Later, when the blood of the living King had mixed with the blood of the dead in payment for the favor of Dona's Brother, Cwerith returned to his army where Lord Varing had done well in his absence: the army was ready to march. There were new tidings, as well: a rider had come from the east, from beyond Bedwyn, from the army of Cwerith's ally, Duncan of Caledonia. As Cwerith heard the rider's news, he realized that his blood had been well-spent indeed. He had prayed to the God for just this news, and his prayers were fulfilled.

***

Davin leaned up against the railing of the battlement, looking down on the chaos that had erupted outside the main gate of Bedwyn in the hour that had barely passed since the gate's closing. He had seen this sight before, or one much like it, years before when he had fought as a young soldier for King Irlaris, and therefore he had known what he would see here; but still he insisted on watching. A man who had to give the command that would bring so much more suffering to so many more people should have the courage to watch them go to their fates.

The area outside the main gate had been a scene of hectic activity before, when the thousands of people fleeing the oncoming enemy had been seeking entrance into Bedwyn, but now it was total chaos as the refuge they had sought was now denied them. Worst of all, Davin could offer no answer to the question these poor souls asked: "Where are we to go now?" They could not go east, for that way lay Cwerith's Caledonian ally and fellow traitor, King Duncan; they could perhaps go south, toward the sea -- but what then, when the war went that way as well, and it surely would?

Davin looked up from the din below -- from the mothers screaming for lost children and the fathers trying to control the horses and the farmers begging entry to trade for food, disbelieving that a city as rich as Bedwyn could now have nothing for the trading -- to the barren farmlands north of the city. Those fields, which on a normal Midsummer's Day should have been worked by the skilled farmers whose toil fed all of Bedwyn, would soon be churned by the feet of soldiers, the hooves of cavalry horses, the wheels of wagons and siege engines -- and after that, the unnaturally fallow soil would be watered by the blood of the bodies that fell there. Years would pass before those fields ever yielded as they had in their best summers gone by. Davin knew of farmfields turned battlefields that had never returned to their original vitality, even forty or fifty years after the last body had fallen. He had fought on a few such fields himself. Some of the blood spilt on them had been his.

Irlaris, where are you? he suddenly thought, as a breeze stirred from the east. The High King for whom he had fought in his younger years, sacrificing the proper use of his leg -- a far lesser price than that paid by many others, to be sure, but a price paid nonetheless -- was now doing nothing to defend his throne and the realm itself from these Traitor Kings. He had sent no one to help Bedwyn, even after the unthinkable fate of Caer Camyrdin.

Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned to see Amren approaching with a fair-haired man whose unkempt appearance indicated that he had just completed a journey of some distance and whose set of pipes, hung round his neck, marked him as some kind of musician.

"Is this a good time for a tune, Amren?" Davin asked. "You know that even in the happiest of times I am not given to dance."

"My name is Drudwas," the man said as he sketched a deep bow. "I arrived just as the Widow's Gate was being closed."

Davin's heart quickened, and yet another feeling of nebulous dread sprang up in his heart. "The Widow's Gate," he echoed. "You came from the east."

"I came from Londia," Drudwas said. His voice had become soft, and grim. "I have tidings."

***

"Which do you need?" Dana asked.

"The blue-stem," Father Damogan replied. "There, toward the back. Do you see them? There are only three."

"I think so," Dana replied as she stepped over a wide pool to get at the tiny patch in the very rear of the cave. It was hard to see, terribly hard. The wind whipped through the cave, lashing at her cloak and Father Damogan's torch flicker wildly. Her initial flash of pride -- when, in the absence of Gwyn and Brother Malcolm, he had asked for her assistance in the caves -- had vanished, and as she tried to keep her footing on the uneven rock in this dank cave, she wished that Father Damogan had chosen someone else for this honor. She found the blue-stems, amidst the red-caps and blacktips and a dozen other kinds that all looked the same and whose names Dana had long since forgotten, and picked one with a flick of her wrist. Father Damogan raised the torch higher as Dana clambered back across the rocks to join him. There she handed him the blue-stem. He held it up and studied it in the dim light.

"They aren't growing nearly as well as they used to," he said. "I fear the enchantments here may be weakening." He put the mushroom into one of his pockets. "We are finished here for today."

Dana followed him back up the cave and outside, into the light of midday. The winds this day were actually calmer than normal, despite the way they had felt in the cave, so out here in the open there was less spray in the air as Dana and Father Damogan walked up the steep path back to the monastery of Tintagel. Just before they reached the top Dana glimpsed over the edge of the path, at the rocks below where just eight days before a boat carrying Brother Llyad and a Druid had come to rest.

Father Damogan led Dana into the Sanctuary and then down the long stairs to his personal chambers. Once they were inside, he removed his heavy cloak and stirred the fire in the hearth. "Each day grows ever colder," he said. "I am not the man I once was. I feel the cold in my bones."

Dana said nothing. She had never really felt comfortable in the presence of the Lord Priest of Tintagel, be it Damogan now or Reynald before.

"Do you think often of Gwynwhyfar?" Father Damogan asked suddenly.

Dana swallowed. He had not mentioned Gwyn to her since Brother Malcolm and the men from Caer Camyrdin had gone after Brother Llyad.

"Yes," she finally said. "I worry for her."

"She is your friend," Father Damogan said. "It is right that you should do so." He began to walk around the room, lighting his many candles. The shutters on his casements began rattled slightly, as they always did. "Brother Malcolm sent back word that she is safe. Did you not find his word comforting?"

Dana tried to think of something to say, something other than "No". If Gwyn was truly safe, she would have been returned here. Instead she has gone on, somewhere else. She wanted to say that...but instead she said nothing at all. Father Damogan smiled.

"My dear, I am told by the Brothers and Sisters here that you are not normally given to silence. So much so, in fact, that your tongue has brought you more trouble than any other Adept here -- possibly excepting Gwynwhyfar herself, of course. And yet, you barely utter more than one word during each hour you are in my presence. Am I that terrifying to the young, even those who are on the cusp of maturity?"

Dana blushed. "When Wisdom's Words are unclear, the wise hold Silence dear." Quoting the Oracles was always appropriate.

"But the heart whose words are not spoken is the saddest heart of all," Father Damogan replied. "You have wondered, of course, why she has not returned to Tintagel -- why she has gone on, perhaps into more danger."

"Her place is here," Dana said.

"Her place?" Father Damogan lifted an eyebrow. "We never knew her true place. We may not know it, even now." He gazed into the flames of one of his many candles. "These are times of terrible uncertainty, Dana -- uncertainty such as I hoped never to see. In time, we may come to understand why things have unfolded as they have -- why these events have transpired, and Gwynwhyfar's place within them.

Dana remained silent. She had no idea at all what he was talking about. Gwyn's place within the recent events? What could that possibly mean? Gwyn was a cleric-in-training -- what other place could she have? Dana looked at Father Damogan. He looked old in the candlelight, really and truly old. He had never looked old to her before.

Someone knocked on the outer door then, and Dana went to answer it. In the corridor stood Brother Brian.

"I'm sorry to intrude," he said. "I have the reports the Lord Priest wanted." He held forward several sheets of parchment.

"Thank you," Dana said, accepting them.

"Are the reports accurate, Brother?" Father Damogan asked, coming over to the door.

"Yes, Father."

"I'm sure they are," Damogan said, smiling kindly. "Your work is always exacting. Return to your studies now -- I'm sure your Adept will have questions for you."

"I hope so," Brother Brian said. "He was boasting about the ease with which he has completed his recent assignments, so I started him translating Eddylraed's Protocols." He grinned, and then he took his leave. Dana smiled inwardly as she handed the reports to Father Damogan. The Protocols by Eddylraed of Snowdon were so impenetrable that there was no established clerical view as to their true meaning, and some commentators had made a fairly strong case that their author had actually been mad. Father Damogan opened the reports and quickly scanned their contents. His expression became grim as he did so.

"Father?" Dana said.

"The state of our food stores," he said. "I wanted to know how difficult things are like to become. Now that I know, part of me would have preferred to remain ignorant."

"We've all seen the dark times ahead," Dana said. "We often speak of it at the table and between lessons. Some of us fear that the winter will destroy us."

Father Damogan looked sharply at her, and then he sighed and nodded his head. "I should not be surprised that such thoughts occur to others besides myself," he said. "Being Lord Priest does not mean that I have sole claim to wisdom or insight on Tintagel. I fear that the darkest tidings yet will soon be reaching us."

Now Dana felt a new, icy sensation in her heart. Father Damogan, like all the Lord Priests, was somehow privy to events that no one else could know had happened -- or, in some cases, were to happen. "What tidings?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. It was to her great surprise, and greater fear, that he gave one.

"Londia has fallen," he said. "High King Irlaris has been cast aside, and a war is now waging for his throne." He paused. "The war in which Gwynwhyfar now goes to play a part."

The icy feeling in Dana's heart became even colder -- like she had gone to stone. She wanted to ask anew what part Gwyn could have in what was likely to be the bloodiest conflict yet fought on the soil of Prydein, but for once -- for just this once -- Dana's quick tongue failed her, and she had no words.

***

"How many men do you make them to be?" Amren asked.

"Ten thousand," Davin replied. He had marched in an army of that size before; now he would have to hold a city against one.

Again he stood atop the battlement overlooking the main gate. This time there was silence, utter silence, from below. The people had fled, all of them. But war -- whether fighting it or fleeing it -- always exacts a heavy price on the old and infirm. The fields just beyond Bedwyn were dotted with fallen bodies, left where they had died for lack of time to bury them. The usual scavengers, then -- some people, some not -- rushed from body to body, looking for any trinket that might be salvaged from the chilling flesh and later used for barter. And beyond that space lay the farmlands which had gone dark under a moving, roiling mass: the armies of King Cwerith.

"I didn't know there were that many people in all of Gwynedd," Amren said. "And that's counting women and children. How could Cwerith put so large a force together?"

Davin shook his head. "It is to our woe that we have taken Gwynedd less seriously than we should have, in many a year. There is strength in that land. We see it before us."

"How long until they get here?" Drudwas asked.

"They are here, Bard," Davin said. "The remaining distance matters not. Bedwyn is now under siege." He glanced up at the darkening sky. At least there would not be battle tonight. Cwerith would certainly not try to storm the city by darkness without first attempting to learn what defenses that city had mounted against him. At least I pray that he does not, Davin thought. There was little doubting that the citizens of Caer Camyrdin had not feared the storming of their city, either. Davin turned to Drudwas. "Tell me, Bard -- have you begun writing your lyric for the fall of Londia?"

"Some lines have come to me," Drudwas replied.

"Was the city taken by treachery?"

"No more treachery than it took for Duncan to march in the first place," Drudwas said. "Londia was taken by force. Duncan simply threw his men against the walls and brought fire to them until they burned. The death of his own men mattered less to him than the city's destruction."

"That is what I fear from Cwerith," Davin said.

The men fell silent for a while. Away beside them, on the next battlement, a burst of laughter from men playing dice -- perhaps the same men Davin had chastised the day before for that very offense. Now, he let them play. The hours before battle were the worst for a soldier, hours that were full of both fear and boredom. Anything to pass the time -- a game of dice between comrades, say -- could only be a good thing.

At some point in the last few hours, a deep rumbling had begun to throb throughout the valley of the River Test. No one could say when it had begun, a no one needed to ask what it was. It could only be the sound of a thousand wagons and three thousand horses pulling them. They watched that army for a time as it slowly came into view, becoming larger and blackening the northern fields like some terrible blight. It was Davin who finally spoke:

"When days of battle come O Lord,

Do not fear and do not cry;

For when the battle's day is done

Your soul will walk with mine

Across the star-lit sky."

"I've always liked that one," Amren said. "Who wrote it?"

"Pyrion the Blade-singer," Drudwas and Davin answered in unison, and then both men laughed. Davin shrugged. "I do know some verses, at least."

That was when a horn of alarm was sounded, somewhere behind them. All along the walls around the city of Bedwyn, that same horn call was answered.

"Odd," Amren said. "That's coming from the river-post."

Hobbling all the while, Davin led the way along the walls toward the river-post, where the walls ended on the bank of the Test and overlooked the harbor of Bedwyn. Halfway there they were met by another soldier, who bowed.

"Sir Steward!" the soldier said. He was short of breath and very agitated. "They said you might be up here."

"I am," Davin snapped. "What is it? Why the alarm?"

"Sir, the harbor is closed as you ordered." He snatched a few breaths before continuing. "And yet, they are coming up the river and are almost here."

Davin took a step forward. "Who?" he asked.

"Ships, Sir Steward! Ships! Fifteen of 'em, fifteen ships, big ones, each one big enough to carry five hundred men. And sir, they are flying the banner of Bedwyn!" Tears welled in the man's eyes, so excited was he. Davin laid a calming hand on his shoulder, though he felt the same thrill.

"Ease, man, ease," he said. "We shall need to keep our wits about us, now most of all." He looked at Amren, and he barely noticed the fact that the pain in his knee had almost totally vanished. "Get the docks ready," he ordered. "The Duke returns."

Chapter Sixteen

2005-08-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

As the company got underway, Gwyn was unsurprised to see that the path they rode did not match what she had walked in her sleeping vision. She wondered to what extent the world of the Fair Folk mirrored that of the mortals.

There was no gently spiraling path that came down to a still pool; instead there was only a normal-looking track that led into the heart of the wood. In her dream the trees had been alive and in full leaf; but now they were bare again, and all around her she heard the creaking as they swayed in the cold breeze. Despite the relative lack of light that reached the forest floor through the dense canopy of wood above them, Gwyn could tell that it was a cold, gray day. This, of course, was no surprise at all -- had there been any other kind of day recently? Warmth was a thing of memory only, as was everything else she had ever known. Every step toward the Druids and her destiny as the Welcomer was a step away from Tintagel and the student she had been.

As they rode deeper into the heart of the wood, the path gradually narrowed. At the outset, the path had been wide enough to ride two-by-two as Sir Baigent had outlined, with himself in the lead position. However, only a short march into the day, the path became narrower until it was a mere track in the leaves weaving its way amongst the trees. Moreover, the trees themselves hung lower and lower until the companions were frequently ducking under particularly low branches.

"We must go single-file," Calloch said.

Sir Baigent scowled. "I don't like going single-file on forest-trails like this. It's too easy for one of us to lose the way, especially if we become spread out."

"Then we must not become spread out," Gareth said.

"Easily said," Sir Baigent said. "Not so easily done." Nevertheless, he guided them into a single-file formation, with Gwyn riding directly behind him.

As they rode on, Gwyn found herself studying the knight. She noticed that he always rode holding his reins in his left hand and with the pommel of his sword under his right. She also heard him occasionally wheeze as he twisted into a position that put pressure on his wound. She thought back to that night at Maxen's camp, and the display of the knight's brutal strength in the duel; at the same time she recalled the tenderness of his touch when he had bound her own wound after the wolfs had attacked her and Brother Llyad. He was a far more complex man than she would ever have guessed originally.

She was snapped out of her reverie by the sharp tugging on her cloak as it became snagged on a bramble-bush. Angrily, she ripped her cloak free, tearing away several scraps of cloth in the process. The thorny cluster of brambles seemed to shrink back to the ground. She glanced up at Brother Llyad, whose features were grim.

"I would swear that the bush reached for you under its own power," he said. "Walding Wood is a dark place indeed."

"Perhaps the Druids made one of their Wards here," remarked Gareth. "It is said that they have power over the living things in the Wood."

"All Mortals have power over the things of the Wood, Gareth." It was Estren speaking. The Bard had ridden close behind them. "Yes, even you. Perhaps it is not the power of which you speak, but you wield it every time you lift an axe toward the trunk of a tree."

"That is not the power I speak of, Harper, but it suffices to make masters of men." Gareth said no more, and now Sir Baigent was glaring impatiently at them. They rode on in silence, and Gwyn kept a tighter grip on her cloak.

They stopped only for the briefest of meals when they came to a tiny stream -- barely one pace in width -- at which the horses watered while the companions ate. Their morning repast had been taken in haste, but now seemed as a feast compared to this meal. "I wonder if the Druids will have food for us," Gwyn said when they were riding again, hoping to break the oppressive silence that fell around them.

"They will indeed," Brother Llyad answered. "They are adept at living off the bounty of the wood, and their supply will be greater than ours. We will not go hungry at their table."

"You know the Oak Brothers to be excellent hosts, it seems," said Gareth. "I hope that your faith applies to all of them."

Brother Llyad fixed Gareth with a frustrated stare. "Do you mistrust them?"

Gareth thought a long moment before answering, a moment that was filled with the sounds of the horses' movements along the trail. Then she spoke.

"No, but I cannot forget what they once were. They were not always the peaceful Oak Brothers, and one can still find their altars in the woods of Prydein. You know the altars of which I speak."

Brother Llyad frowned, nodding. "That time was many years ago, when the Ancients were not so ancient."

"Aye. In those days, when Dona put forth her will again on the Land, she gave her might to the people who would give their lives to see her reign again. And then came the Druids, who thanked the Gods for sending the Cataclysm, for it would allow the forests to grow again. They darkened the forests with their fell rituals, and their Altars still bear the stains from the blood they loosed in their offerings. The skulls of the dead can still be found in those places, and it was well that they were driven to Mona. Peaceful they may be today, but I have been in their groves and I have seen the legacy of their deeds in those days. How have they come to be the benevolent Oak Brothers of whom you claim such knowledge? and how will they stay true to their new, peaceful selves in the days of war to come?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Their history is theirs to know and to reveal. But I know that they do not shed the blood of people, and I know that their ways are peaceful. I cannot deny that there were rituals of blood and death performed in those groves, but I also cannot deny what I myself have seen, on the shores of Mona."

Now Estren spoke. "Much time has passed since those days, and naught has been heard of the Druids until very recently," he said. "They have only emerged from their Isle in recent years, and the Bards have heard of no new rituals of death. If the Druids were once brutal, it is perhaps no longer their way."

"Have you met the Druids, Harper?" asked Gareth.

"I have not. But I will not stand in judgment of them until such time as I stand in front of them. That is the way of the Bards." Estren's was the last word spoken on the subject.

The path now rose up the side of a hill, circling as it approached the summit. Here the forest became thinner; the top of the knoll bore only small trees, and the cover was light. From there they would be able to see the places from which they had come. As they crossed the top of the knoll, they passed through a circle of worn stones that bore very ancient carvings that were so old that it could not be said if they were letters or mere designs. Those stones, aside from the path itself, were the only sign that people had ever walked the top of this hill. Here Sir Baigent held up one gloved hand, signaling the stop. Gwyn looked around and saw that from this place they could see part of the countryside beyond the forest, in the direction behind them. Before them lay only more forest. They were able now to see the weather. The sun was obscured by clouds, but they were high clouds, and the air was clear. "Before the day is done we shall see snow," Calloch observed.

Brother Llyad sighed. "Snow during summer? Evil times are upon us."

Meanwhile, Sir Baigent stood in his saddle and looked long toward the horizon, peering into the lands beyond the trees. The forest to the west thinned out much quicker than Gwyn would have expected, giving way to empty plains. Dimnur snorted, and Gwyn patted the horse's neck to calm him. As they waited, stopped on that hilltop, the wind began anew, sending a fresh chill through the company. Gwyn shook her long hair out of her eyes, and finally Sir Baigent gave a knowing nod.

"There," he said.

Gwyn tried to see what he saw, peering through the trees, and finally she did see it. A column of men was snaking across the countryside, and it was moving northward.

"Maxen's company, or I miss my guess," Sir Baigent said. "As we expected. They will go around this wood to the north, and that gives us a certain freedom, if not a gift of time." He settled back into his saddle and took up the reins again. "We must quicken our pace now," he said.

The company rode on, down into the wood again. The path dropped down a bit, and then rose again slightly, remaining atop a ridge that bordered a wide valley where lay the very thickest part of Walding Wood. This route must have been beautiful in the summer, when the trees were in leaf, but now the going seemed dreary. A sadness hung on the air around them, the sadness of the Earth at its failure to blossom. Gwyn decided once more to break the silence.

"Brother Llyad, what do you know of the Emrys?" she asked.

Brother Llyad's brow furrowed as he considered the question. "The Emrys was the greatest of all the Druids," he finally said, "and the Druids are the heirs of his lore. He was also called Merlyn, and he had some connection to King Arthur. I had hoped it would be contained in the Finders' book, but I could find nothing of him in its pages. Perhaps his part of the tale was over before that book's beginning…" He mused on that for a moment, and then went on. "Even the Druids could not keep all of his lore alive, and much of it was lost. Legend says that Merlyn Emrys was undone by a witch, and that now he sleeps in a cave, hidden for all time. He was part man, part Fairy -- as are you -- and he left behind many items of secret lore which have passed into the hands of the Druids. They knew not the specific time and place of the Welcomer's birth, but certain signs were given them to await, and they knew those signs when they came. The final test came that night by the lake. Then we knew, and our errand was laid clear."

Gwyn's mind raced. "But Llawann died, without being able to take word that I had been found. Do the Druids even know that we come?"

"They hope." His voice trailed off for a moment. "What troubles me is this talk about the blood flowing in the sacrificial groves again. The Druids I know do not do those things. There is more at work here than we know. The Dark Brother's reach is long, and growing longer."

"I never heard much of the Dark Brother when I was young," Gwyn said.

"There are words about him in the most secret of the Oracles. No Adept would ever be allowed to read those pages, though I have long disagreed with my fellow Priests on this point -- it seems to me that ignorance of Dona's Brother is not a position of strength, but I obey the edicts of the Lord Priests who are wiser than I. There was once a Lord Priest of Tintagel who was defeated by the knowledge in those dark books." A shadow passed over him. "Some of the things I have heard…I wonder if Cwerith has perhaps taken interest in--"

"Silence!" Sir Baigent hissed. He jerked to a stop and looked all around, listening intently to the wood. The company had reached the top of a rise, and the path forked ahead of them, with the left fork proceeding atop the ridge, while the fork on the right dropped down away from them into the dark vale they had seen before. At the center of the fork was another Druid standing stone, but this one was no longer standing. It had been toppled not long before, and a chunk the size of Gwyn's arm had broken off and was lying inches away form the rest of the stone.

"Which way?" she asked. No one answered. Arradwen grunted as Sir Baigent circled about, trying to hear whatever it was that he thought he had heard. Gwyn shivered, and she pulled her cloak tighter around herself. Up here on this hill, she felt very exposed.

Estren suddenly sat bolt upright, alarm on his face. "I hear it now!" He pointed back the way they had come. "It comes from behind us."

Sir Baigent moved his horse to the rear of the company to stand beside Estren, where he sat still, staring back up the path. A sound came to them then, and it filled Gwyn with fear. Horns were sounding, hunting horns. She could only hear the briefest wisps of their calls. She had often heard horns in Lyonesse as a child; the nearby woods were often used by the local Barons for hunting, and the air often echoed with their jubilant calls back and forth...but these horns were different. Terrible was their call, a snarling sound that seemed to mock them and sounded as much like the growling of some pack of dark beasts as a group of hunting horns. An answering call sounded from somewhere ahead of them, the first group sounded once more…and then, when the echoes of both calls had faded away, there was a new sound: the barking of hounds.

Sir Baigent tightened his grip on his reins as he glanced back and forth between the two paths before them. Gwyn had not seen so much indecision in his eyes at any point in this journey as was there now, and the sound of the horns was heard again. Gwyn was certain they were much, much closer than they had been before. "I cannot believe that Maxen would release his men for a hunt," Sir Baigent said, "and not in a winter wood such as this, when they are marching to war." He spun about and looked at Estren. "Harper, are those horns mortal?" The words made Gwyn shiver.

"No," answered the Bard. "I fear that we are hearing the Horns of Culdarra. The Wild Hunt is riding again."

The Wild Hunt!

Fear filled Gwyn's heart. The Wild Hunt of Culdarra had not been seen in many years, and even then only in legend. It was said that those who heard Culdarra's horns would not see the next full moon, and that those who were hunted by her Hounds could not escape them long. Gwyn remembered the pictures of Culdarra in the books, pictures drawn from no possible source for no one who saw her lived long enough to pass the details to an artisan. Culdarra the Huntress, oldest of Dona's servants and daughter of Arawn the Lord of Annwn, was hunting again. Another of the boundaries had fallen. Gwyn's heart began to race, and she felt a cold sweat lick at her back.

"Does she come for us?" asked Brother Llyad.

"No mortal knows for whom the Hunt rides," Estren said.

Gareth gave a snort. "It could simply be Maxen's men seeking a boar for their cookfires," she said. "Why would the Huntress come for us? What have we done that would attract her attention?"

"The Wild Hunt is not named Wild for nothing," Gwyn countered. Her voice sounded small in her ears, and she looked down at her hands to see that her knuckles were white from clenching the reins as tightly as they could. Again the horns sounded, and the terrible howling of the hounds grew closer.

"It matters not!" Sir Baigent snapped, spinning his horse around to face the lower path. "If those horns are Culdarra's, we are surely lost. If they are Maxen's, we are lost only if we are found. Our only hope is to flee, and pray that those hounds take the scent of better prey!" With that, he spurred his steed forward, and he began to ride down the right path. He gave no opportunity for further debate, and so it was that the company turned right, into the valley, as the horns sounded through the Wood.

It started off being an easy descent, but that was belied by the fact that the path sharply turned this way and that, weaving a baffling course through the thickest part of Walding Wood. Here the trees grew so tightly together that Gwyn could not tell where one tree ended and another began, and as far as she could see it was all one gigantic tree with a thousand trunks. They rode quickly now, trotting if not galloping, into the deepest dark of the forest. As they moved into the valley, the sky vanished behind a canopy that now seemed as solid as the stone ceilings of the buildings on Tintagel. They rode on, into the dark of the gathering wood.

The path at the bottom was mercifully fairly straight, allowing Gwyn to pay mind to keeping her cloak away from the branches and thorny bushes. Each time her cloak snagged on a bush, she was jolted upward in her saddle before tearing her cloak from the grasp of whatever plant had grabbed her. As careful as she was, it kept happening to her and the others, slowing them as if the forest itself was trying to hold her the company back for Culdarra's grasp. The hems of her cloak became tattered and ripped, and she was hardly alone. At this rate, each of their cloaks would be threadbare by the time they reached their destination.

"There they are again!" Brother Llyad cried. They could hear the horns again, and still the baying of the hounds, which seemed to be growing closer as they rode. Estren nodded.

"They have found our trail, and they are coming," said the Bard.

"Will we be safe when we leave the Wood?" asked Gwyn.

Estren shook his head. "I do not know," was all he said. And the ride through the wood went on. Gwyn had absolutely no idea of the time as they continued. The position of the sun in the sky could not be seen, and it little mattered. It was still winter, and despite the work of the ride she was cold to her bones.

The path steepened, and they all had to lean back and grip their reins tightly to keep from falling. Although the horses were sure-footed, the ground beneath them was not as solid. It was already slippery enough, damp as it was from the recent rains and covered as it was in rotting leaves and grass, and each horse slid a bit on the way down. At one point Gwyn was certain that she was about to lose her balance and fall from Dimnur's back, but somehow she regained her composure and reached the bottom still upright. Matt and Estren, bringing up the rear, were not so fortunate.

It happened when Estren rode a bit too close to a bramble-bush, and his cloak caught on its thorns. He twisted to rip his cloak free of the bush, a sudden movement that on any other patch of ground would have been harmless but on this steep slope had the effect of throwing his steed off balance. The animal tumbled, throwing Estren to the ground as the beast rolled over him and slid, uncontrolled, down the remainder of the slope to crash into the rear legs of Matt's horse. Matt fell to one side, landing on the ground just in front of the prone Bard. The two horses ended in a heap at the bottom of the slope, where they regained their footing and became panicked. The two animals bolted down the path, past the companions, as Estren and Matt both slid through the mud to the bottom of the incline. Matt had the further misfortune of sliding head-first into another bramble-bush. His screams pierced the air as the thorns cut into his flesh on his hands, and his face.

"Get the horses!" Calloch shouted as he whirled about to see to the fallen companions. Gwyn and Brother Llyad moved to one side as quickly as they could, allowing the two racing horses to come through. Displaying reflexes that belied her age, Gareth grabbed the reins of Matt's horse and slowed it down, while Estren's plunged on past Sir Baigent, who kicked Arradwen into a gallop to go after it.

Gwyn, Calloch, and Brother Llyad all returned to help their fallen comrades. Calloch dismounted and helped Matt out of the thornbush. His face and hands were extensively scratched, and he picked broken thorns from his vestments and his cloak, but his eyes were uninjured and otherwise he appeared all right. Gwyn helped Estren turn upright. Somehow he was not terribly hurt after falling beneath his horse, although his right shoulder now seemed to hang at an odd angle, and he winced with pain that was obviously very sharp. She probed his shoulder, and he winced with pain as she did so.

"It is not broken," she said, finding some use at last for having grown up as a reckless girl on a rocky island. "But the joint has come apart. We will have to re-set it."

He nodded, and his voice was hoarse with pain. "I rolled to one side to keep from landing directly on my harp." He winced again as he tried to assess any damage to his instrument, which somehow was still slung on his back. Gwyn looked around at the hill they had just descended as the hunting horns echoed again.

"You won't be able to ride like that," Gareth said, who had come up with Matt's horse in tow.

"I can help him," Brother Llyad said as he dismounted. He knelt beside Estren, who was cradling his dislocated arm. "Chew on this for a moment." He handed Estren a leather strap, which the Bard put between his clenched teeth. Taking Estren's right hand in his own, Brother Llyad gestured for Calloch to come near. "Put your foot there, on his collar. Don't let him move."

"Do we have time for this?" Gareth asked. The echoing sound of the hunting hounds was coming ever closer. Suddenly Gwyn felt the almost-irresistible urge to ride again, as fast as she could, whether her companions could keep up with her or not.

"He'll need his arm if he is to ride with us," Brother Llyad replied. "And his shoulder will be harder to put back into place if we wait."

Gareth nodded, and Brother Llyad prepared. "It will be quick," he told Estren.

Gwyn winced, for she knew what was to come, having gone through it herself when she and Dana had done something rather foolish involving a boat, her bow, and a windy day. She turned as Brother Llyad lifted Estren's arm, but she still heard the sickening pop and Estren's agonized cry, muffled by the strap of leather in his mouth. Gwyn scanned the top of the hill they had just descended, trying to spot any movement, any sign that the hounds had arrived. She saw nothing, but their barks and cries were louder, louder, still louder.

A minute later Sir Baigent returned, having recaptured Estren's wayward horse. The bard was clearly favoring his arm, although it was at least in the correct position. "Can you ride?"

"I don't have much choice," Estren replied. With Calloch's and Matt's help he got back up into the saddle, and although he favored his right arm he was still able to take up the reins again, and again the company rode.

This was now the very darkest part of the wood, and it was all Gwyn could do just to see her companions around her and to stay on the path. Almost no light reached the valley floor, her companions were little more than dark shapes in front of her and behind, and in the darkness Gwyn saw all kinds of small things that she imagined to be snarling hounds, their sharp teeth snapping at Dimnur's hooves…but whenever she glanced back, she still saw no hounds. Yet. She knew they would come.

It was when they reached the bottom of the valley that the trees thinned at a bit, allowing more light. It was gloomy, cloud-cast light, but it was light nonetheless, and Gwyn felt some cheer in being able to clearly see the faces of her companions. Something icy touched her cheek, and she looked up to see that the tree branches were dripping rainwater or dew, she wasn't sure which. The sounding of the horns began anew, even closer. Then they heard the hounds again, so close that now nothing would drown out their cries, barks and snarls. They came at last to the banks of the river that flowed through the valley. Sir Baigent turned around to study the terrain they had covered.

"The hounds will be with us until we cross this river, and we do not have much time to do so," he said.

Matt nodded in agreement. "So much for them taking another scent. Are there no deer or boar in this wood?"

"If those horns are truly the Huntress's, then we offer the meat that is best to her liking," Sir Baigent said. "We must cross the water."

Gwyn took a closer look at the river. It flowed swiftly past banks that would have been grassy in a proper summer but were now bound by mud. The river was wider than three horses end-to-end, and even Gwyn could see that the muddy waters rushed by too fast for their beasts to swim across while bearing riders. She thought of the swollen stream that had killed one of their horses and almost done the same to Sir Baigent and Brother Llyad just two nights before. There appeared to be no way across. "Will this river be enough to keep the Huntress from following us, even if we are able to cross it?" she asked.

Sir Baigent scowled. "I see you still have the habit of asking questions none of us can answer," he said. Gwyn's cheeks reddened, and she bit back an angry retort.

"The Druids were here," Brother Llyad said suddenly. "Look." He pointed to a rock at the side of the river, a perfectly normal rock that had been here since the world began -- except that a pattern had been painted on the rock in white ink, the pattern of the Druid spiral. "They came through here, at this very spot."

"Why would the Druids leave a path to the side of the river with no way across?" asked Gareth. "It makes little sense."

"They must have had a way across," Brother Llyad said. "We must find it."

"Unless they took it with them," Gwyn heard Calloch mutter. She gazed at the spiraling eddies in the water, noticing for the first time how similar they were to the Druidic spirals from the rock and the standing stones. Then she looked to Sir Baigent, who had dismounted and was now probing the river with a long stick he had cut from a nearby tree. He gave no sign that he heard the horns, which were now sounding again. He leaned as far out over the river surface as he could, testing the depth of the water. To his surprise he found that the river bottom dropped sharply just inches from the shore. There was no crossing at this place.

Brother Llyad, meanwhile, had also dismounted and was probing the wood that surrounded the river. There was a strange expression on his face, as though he were trying to remember a name long forgotten. He kept looking up at the trees that were gathered around them. He walked all round them, placing his hands in turn on each of six particularly tall oaks. He then turned back to face the company.

"There is Druid magic here," he announced. "I can feel it."

Now the hounds were baying much louder, Estren was wheezing in pain from his arm, and Gwyn thought she could see dark shapes moving in the hazy distance. Sir Baigent stepped forward. "Whatever you have discovered, monk, I think you had better let us know now before we are at the teeth of those hounds."

"Where we slept last night was only a place on entry to the Wood. This place is their Sacred Grove. Look!" He pointed to the trees. "You can see how the trees in this place have been carefully tended so that only these six, in the pattern of a circle, would grow to their full height. There is a matching pattern on the bank opposite us." Gwyn looked across the river and saw that it was true.

"I have heard of places like this," said Estren. "Have we not known the Druids to worship at the side of the water?"

"This grove is not well-tended," Brother Llyad said. "The Druids have not been able to maintain it -- but we can still see that they--"

"Why are you discussing this, you fools?" Sir Baigent barked. His patience had ended. "Do you know some Druid incantation that will allow us to ford this river? or is there some talisman that might conjure up a bridge?"

Brother Llyad, taken aback, bit his lower lip as he shook his head. Sir Baigent took one last look around, and then drew his blade. "Then we will make our stand here. Form a circle. My Lady, you should string your bow."

Gwyn's blood ran cold, for there would be no escape from the hounds and the hunt that had now found them. Obeying the knight, she dismounted and strung her bow and opened her quiver. The company moved into a rough semicircle, with their backs to the river.

And then the hounds arrived.

Gwyn lost her breath as she looked upon the terrible hounds. Very large they were, their size nearer to that of ponies than any hunting dogs she had ever known. Their lips were curled in snarls, and their eyes gleamed with the look of the kill. Their fur was also unlike any hound Gwyn had ever seen: they were black hounds, but they seemed to possess a silvery sheen, as though they had bathed in moonlight. Slowly the hounds formed a great circle around the company, and a terrible baying began as the hounds gave their own call to arms. Steam rose from the spots where their spittle dropped to the ground. Teeth were bared, horrible teeth, sharper than the sharpest needles. And more and more hounds came, until the forest seemed full of them, all of their ghostly eyes focused on the prey that huddled with their backs to the unpassable river. Gwyn thought, briefly, of wolves beside a lake as she nocked an arrow for her stand against hounds beside a river. Is my journey destined to end between the jaws of some terrible beast? she thought -- and then she saw what was coming up behind the hounds, and all thoughts were driven from her mind.

It appeared to be a horse, although it was huge, larger by far than any steed Gwyn had ever seen. So large was it, in fact, that the trees themselves had to be bent out of the way to let the thing by. The snorts of this great beast were such that they could be heard even over the snarl of the giant hounds. Its fur was of the same color of the hounds, except for a streak of silver that ran up its nose and into its mane, which was itself the color of fire. The chains in the bridle were shaped of silver that gleamed impossibly bright in the dim light of this dark day. But as fearsome as the horse was, more fearsome by far was the figure that rode it.

Unquestionably feminine, the rider was clad in shining armor fashioned of interlocking metal plates. At each joint was a sharp, curving spike, much like the teeth of the hounds. The rider wore a gigantic helm, and long, long hair spilled out from underneath it to encircle her body, almost as a living thing in itself. The helm itself was topped by a set of antlers the like of which could have come from no hart on earth. At her back was a quiver of silver tipped arrows, and she now reached back to draw one and nock it in the terrible bow of thick, black wood that she wielded. So it was that the members of the Company beheld Culdarra, the Goddess of the Wild Hunt.

The Huntress rode nearer and turned her gaze, in turn, on each member of the company. At last she gazed upon Gwyn, and then she lifted the faceguard of her helm. Never before had Gwyn imagined a face so severe, so stern, so angry and so beautiful. Her icy stare, from eyes that seemed as deep as the deepest sea, bore into Gwyn's heart. The young woman desperately yearned to turn her gaze away, but she could not: there was something in the Goddess' eyes that held her and forced her to return the stare. Gwyn lost herself in the deep pools of Culdarra's eyes, as if she were floating in bottomless waters under a black and moonless sky without even the stars, the comforting stars, to offer solace. For an eternity they stood, and as they did, the hounds fell silent. No sound was heard: not the breathing of Gwyn's companions, nor even the grunting of their horses.

Culdarra continued to stare into Gwyn's soul, and Gwyn knew that the Huntress was searching for something, but she knew not what. Even though a distance of twenty footfalls separated the two of them, Gwyn felt Culdarra's touch as surely as if the Goddess were using her fingers. She knew that her soul was laid bare, and she waited. Every secret that was hers, every thought she had ever kept for herself, every wish and longing, every dream -- they were all open for the Huntress's reading. In those few moments she saw the entire content of her life transpire again, but as though she were outside it; and then she suddenly felt something inside her give way, like a dam giving way to the waters held behind it. In that instant, Culdarra was gone from her mind.

The hounds began to bay again as the Huntress lowered her faceguard. The Wild Huntress lifted her bow and drew back the string. The bow thrummed, the arrow flew -- and with a hiss of air and a ringing thump, the arrow embedded itself in the soft soil at Gwyn's feet, its fletched end quivering to and fro. Gwyn gasped as she saw that there was something tied to the shaft of the arrow. And then Culdarra lowered the bow, took up the reins of her great horse, and turned away from the Company. In one great bound the beast carried the Huntress away, and the hounds followed, one by one. Then, at last, the Company was alone again.

It was some time before anyone spoke. "May Dona's favor be upon us always," whispered Brother Llyad.

Gwyn was the first person who was willing to move after that. She leaned forward and pulled Culdarra's arrow from the ground. To her surprise, there was nothing extraordinary about it: a shaft of dark wood, a sharpened head of metal, normal-looking fletching in the arrow's tail. "I don't understand," she said. "It is just a normal arrow. But this...." Her voice trailed off as she untied the object attached to the shaft. It was wrapped in a scrap of black cloth that shimmered like samite. Unfolding the cloth, she found inside a silver brooch that was also in the shape of an arrow. She held it up for everyone to see.

"A gift from the Huntress," Brother Llyad whispered. "She has marked you, My Lady."

"But for what?" Gwyn said. "What does this mean?"

"And why did they not slay us?" asked Gareth. "No person living has witnessed what we have seen this day."

Sir Baigent walked to the edge of the grove and looked after the Hunt, which had left no path. His blade was still in his hand. "They might still return," said the Knight. "We would be fools to remain in this Wood any longer than we must."

"They will not return!"

The companions all spun in the direction of the unfamiliar voice, and in seeing it Gwyn caught her breath in wonder, and Brother Llyad laughed. On the river's opposite bank stood a single Druid, his arms clasped over his chest and the silver pendant of the Druids hanging around his neck. He was garbed in simple breeches and shirt of homespun cloth under a brown cloak, the hood cast over his face. "The Hunt will not return to this Wood this night, and it seems that you have been spared," said the Druid. He was joined then by two more Druids who emerged from behind nearby trees, and the three Druids walked down to the very edge of the water. "Your coming is well-told, and we are well-met this hour. We have awaited you, My Lady Welcomer. It is forever to my honor that I am the one to meet you and, in the end, bring you to the Giants' Dance." He paused for a moment. "And you, Sir Baigent, are also well-met."

Sir Baigent stared at the Druid.

"How is it that you know my name?" he demanded.

"I have learned many things," the Druid replied. "Many things indeed: I have learned the Lore of the Moon, and of the Words that are spoken in the moonlight by the trees. I have learned of the languages of the squirrels, and the tongue spoken by the salmon. I know of the stars, and the names of the Kings who lie beneath the Mound of Annwn. But I have not forgotten things I knew in my life before." With that he drew back his hood, and in shock Sir Baigent stared at him, for this Druid was known to him.

"Sir Hugydd!"

The Druid nodded, smiling. "I was Sir Hugydd, though the title now seems as meaningless as seeking the Wyrm's First Name. I have passed beyond your realm, Sir Baigent, though I remember and hold dear your friendship. When I learned of Camyrdin's destruction, my heart wept. Though my home no longer, it was once home to me, and thus shall always be dear to my heart." He made a beckoning gesture. "It is time for you to come," he said. "Cross the water now. In this place the water does our bidding, and it will bear your weight."

Sir Baigent looked askance at this, and he glanced at the other companions. Brother Llyad was less reluctant, and he stepped forward to the river's brink. He reached outward with his foot, and found that it did not penetrate the surface of the water. Where his foot rested the waters flowed on beneath it. He stepped forward now, out onto the surface of the water.

"I told you there was Druid magic here!" He beamed as he stepped back onto the riverbank, took his horse by the reins, and led the animal across the water to the other side. "You see!" he called, beaming, from the other side. "Their power is strong here! Cross the water!"

Sir Baigent scowled. "Of course, this particular bit of magic would have been much more useful two nights ago," he said, under his breath. But Gwyn heard, and she swallowed a laugh. Now the others followed Brother Llyad, one by one, although the horses nickered nervously while walking on the surface of water.

Sir Baigent stood at the side of the river watching as the companions one by one traversed the river. Gwyn was next to last, and as she waited she gazed at the silver brooch. What could it mean, this object in the shape of an arrow? and what powers did it hold, if it held any powers at all? Surely it must have some power. A goddess such as Culdarra the Huntress would hardly give away a piece of jewelry if it was meant merely to be worn as an ornament.

"It is your turn, My Lady," Sir Baigent said.

Gwyn nodded. Leading her steed by the reins, she followed her companions across the river to the other side, followed by the Knight. Then at last they were gathered on the opposite bank, and Sir Baigent stood face to face with his former knight, who stepped before Gwyn and bowed low.

"This is a finer moment for me than you can know," Hugydd said. "We had no way of knowing from what direction you would come, and there are Druids awaiting you everywhere around here. I and my two Apprentices have attended this wood, in case the path of the Welcomer brought her through here. It was we who laid the Wards which stayed the hand of the Wild Huntress."

"I believed that we were spared because of Gwynwhyfar's presence," Brother Llyad said.

Hugydd shook his head. "You were all marked the moment her hounds took your scent. She would have slain all of you save the Welcomer, who is marked with the favor of the Lady of the Lake, and thus with the favor of Dona. But the Wild Huntress will not hunt within the boundaries set by the Oak Brothers. That lore has never been lost to us. It is to your great fortune that you were able to find your way here, and that we had not yet left this wood for the Rites of Summer. Even now my apprentices here are sending the word to the other Druids waiting in places near to this one and far, telling them to return to the Dance for the Welcomer has come."

Gwyn glanced at the two apprentices in time to see them each release a pigeon into the air, a pigeon with a scrap of parchment tied around one leg. She laughed to see the messenger birds fly off into the gray sky. This, too, had been a bit of Druid lore and it had never been known as such.

"You really are one of them now, aren't you?" Sir Baigent asked.

"I am," Hugydd replied. "They healed me, and they taught me. Horius is as fine a master as I could ever have wished."

"Finer than me?" Sir Baigent said.

Hugydd shook his head. "You were a fine master, but we both know that I was a poor student, ill-equipped to be a knight. I well remember the hours we spent studying swordplay and archery and all the rest of it, and I well remember that I was by far the least of Lord Matholyn's knights. I only attained the title by your insistence that I not abandon the training. This is where I belong."

"In any case," Sir Baigent said, "I have lost a man."

"And gained an ally," Hugydd replied. "Come, we must go. Night will fall soon enough, and the Rites must begin."

"Then we are near to the Giant's Dance?" asked Sir Baigent.

"We are near indeed," answered Hugydd. "We must ride with all the speed our mounts may muster, for the last hours are passing and the time for our gathering is almost at hand. We have no time to spare." As the Druid finished speaking, there was suddenly a very strange sound from Sir Baigent. It took Gwyn a moment to realize that he was laughing. For the first time since she had met him, and certainly since they had learned of Camyrdin, the stoic Knight was actually laughing. "Have I said something funny, Sir Baigent?" Hugydd asked.

Sir Baigent mimicked his former man's tone just now: " 'We must ride with all the speed our mounts may muster...'" Again he laughed, and Hugydd joined in with a shrug. "I still know quite well what you used to be like, Hugydd," Sir Baigent said, still chuckling. "If you couldn't say it in fewer than six words, you didn't say it at all. Now, listen to you!"

"This way of speaking is valued by Druids," he said. "It took a long time for me to get used to it. But we should move."

"Surely there is time for some food, at least?" Gareth interjected. "We have been under hard march for several days now, and we have just fled the grasp of Culdarra's Hunt."

"We may only take as much time as is required for a brief meal, and no more," consented Hugydd. "We have only apples, but perhaps they may suffice to nourish you until we arrive."

The apples were like no other Gwyn had ever seen: somehow they were fresh, even despite the unending winter. Their skin was a bright orange, and her mouth filled with the sparkling juice with every bite.

"May I see what the Huntress gave you, My Lady?" Hugydd asked.

Gwyn nodded, and handed him the silver brooch. He turned it over in his hand, examining it. "No markings or lettering," he said. "It does not appear to bear any particular message; nor can I feel any special power within it except for the power that resides in all things. To my hand, it feels like ordinary silver. But the first thing that Horius taught me is that Druid lore is never complete. This token may be of great power after all, or it may simply be a way for Culdarra to claim you as her own. In either case, keep it well." He returned the brooch, and Gwyn used it to fasten her cloak. Its clasp was good and strong. To claim you as her own… Gwyn preferred not to think much on what that might mean.

The company finished eating in silence, and then Hugydd's apprentices brought their horses. "It is time to go, my friends," he said. "To the Giant's Dance!" And with those parting words from Hugydd the Oak Brother, the companions again mounted their horses.

Gwyn glanced over at Sir Baigent just before getting underway. The knight had a strange look on his face -- almost wistful. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "I'm just remembering Sir Hugydd, the way I knew him. He's right, you know -- I had to work harder with him than I ever did with anyone else. To this day I don't know how he passed our Trials."

"He must have learned something," Gwyn said. "He couldn't be the man he is now without the things he learned from you. And something else -- it turns out that you only lost one man on that expedition last autumn."

Sir Baigent smiled at that.

The company rode forward, toward the edge of the forest and the plain beyond, on which rose the great stones of the Giant's Dance. And when they were long gone from that place, the trees whispered to one another, in that tongue that no mortal had ever heard, of the great deeds they had witnessed in that sacred grove by the swift running waters.