The Hallowed Isle Book Three (8 page)

He was obviously not intending to stay long. The palace was understaffed, and the meal to which they sat down, though well-cooked, was little better than camp fare.

“I don't know why I should be surprised,” said Igierne, taking another spoonful of lentil stew. “When I married him, your father was living on the same thing.”

Artor gave her a wry smile. “A telling argument for any who still doubt my parentage. But in truth, I eat this way for the same reason he did. We are still at war. Icel is holding to the treaty I forced on him last summer, but the Irish in Demetia are making trouble again. I must ask you and your ladies to continue your prayers for us, for I will have to take my army westward soon.”

Igierne sighed. Artor was taller, with a look that reminded her of her mother about the eyes, but his hair was the same nut brown, and his shoulders as broad as Uthir's had been. As Artor grew older, the resemblance sometimes took her breath away. Like Uthir, he was, in public, a Christian. But he knew very well that the priestesses of the Isle of Maidens did more than simply pray. That was not the issue now.

“No one who knew him would doubt that you are Uthir's son. Nor do I dispute that Britannia is still at war. But during all the years of our marriage it was the same. Nonetheless, your father and I managed to live like civilized people. There is no reason you cannot do so as well!”

“But I am not married . . .” he said softly, reaching for the wine.

Igierne stared unseeing at the faded frescoes on the wall behind him, thinking furiously. Every other time she had brought up the subject, he had turned the conversation. Why was he mentioning it now?

“Are you thinking of changing that?” she asked carefully.

Artor looked up, saw her face, and laughed. “Are you afraid I've fallen in love with someone unsuitable? When would I find the time?” He shook his head. “But even old Oesc has managed to find a woman—Prince Gorangonus' granddaughter, of all people. I've just returned from their wedding, where I gave the bride away. I always meant to marry once the country was secure, but at this rate, Oesc will have grandchildren by then.” He took a deep breath. “I'm ready to consider it, mother, though I warn you, I have no time to go looking for a bride.”

Igierne sipped wine, for a moment too astounded by this capitulation for words. “Perhaps you won't have to,” she said slowly. “If my visions have not lied. There is a maiden, Prince Leodegranus' daughter, whom I believe the Goddess has chosen. But you will have to wait for her—she is only thirteen.”

“She is a child!” he exclaimed.

“Any girl who is still unspoken for is going be young—”said Igierne. “Unless you choose a widow, but that is likely to cause complications.” They both heard the unspoken,
As it did for me . . 
.

“I won't force a maid into marriage with a man twice her age,” Artor said grimly. “We must meet before things are settled.”

“I will write to Leodegranus, and ask him not to betroth his daughter until you have seen her.”

“She must be willing.”

“Of course . . .” said Igierne, sighing. She herself had been willing to marry Gorlosius, and that had been a disaster. “Your sister had doubts about marrying Leudonus,” she said aloud, “but she agreed to do it, and that pairing seems to have worked out well, even though he is much older than she.”

She tried to interpret the play of expression on Artor's face at the mention of Morgause. She knew her daughter resented
him
, but Artor had hardly met his sister often enough to form an opinion.

“I have not seen her since we defeated Naiton Morbet and the Picts,” he said finally. “She was . . . magnificent. Three of her boys are with me now, and they tell me that she is well.”

Igierne nodded. “I last saw her five years ago, when she visited the Lake with her youngest child. She seemed troubled, but Leudonus was not the cause.”

“What, then?” Artor straightened, and she knew he was thinking like a king once more.

“Since Medraut, there have been no more children, and Morgause is a woman who cherished her fertility. She wanted me to make her priestess of the Cauldron—I suspect she was looking for a new source of power.”

“I knew you had kept the Sword of the Defender on the Isle of Maidens, but what is the Cauldron?” Artor asked.

“Perhaps, if there is ever a season of peace, you can visit the Lake and I will show you. It is a woman's mystery, but you are the High King, and there are some things you have a right to know.” She paused, marshalling her memories. “It is silver . . . very ancient.” She shook her head. “That is only what it looks like, not what it is.. . . The Cauldron . . . is the womb of the Goddess, the vessel from which comes the power to renew the world.”

For a long moment, Artor simply stared. Then she saw a new light come into his eyes. “. . . To renew the world,” he echoed. “Do you know how I have dreamed of it? I have been High King of Britannia since I was fifteen years old, and spent most of that time defending her. Do you understand what that means, Mother? All I have been able to do is react, to try and maintain the status quo. How I have longed to move forward, to make things better, to heal this land! If there is ever, as you say, a season of peace, I will beg you to invoke the Cauldron's power!”

Igierne reached out, and Artor took her hand. Her heartbeat was shaking her chest. For so long she had loved her son, yearned for him, and never known him at all. And now it seemed to her that she touched his soul through their clasped hands.

“I will be ready, my beloved. Together we will do it. This is what I too have been waiting for, all my life long!”

But even as her heart soared in triumph, Igierne wondered how Morgause was likely to react when she learned that Artor had been given yet one more thing that she herself had been denied.

Medraut was telling a story. Morgause heard his voice as she came around the side of the women's sun house, clear as a bard's, rising and falling as he spun out the tale.

“It was old Nessa's spirit I saw . . . hunched beside the fire just as when she lived. And anyone who takes that seat is her prey—first you'll feel a cold touch on your neck, and then—”

From the corner of his eye he saw his mother coming and fell silent. The younger children to whom he had been talking got to their feet, wide-eyed at the sight of the queen.

“Medraut, you will follow me—”

“As you wish, Mama,” he answered politely. She had taught him not to talk back to her before he was three years old.

But as they neared the door she heard a stifled giggle from one of the children, and turning, surprised her son completing a swish of his hips that was obviously an imitation of her own walk. Her hand shot out and she gripped his ear and hauled him after her through the door.

“And what was
that?”
she asked, releasing him.

“Nothing—it was just to make them laugh,” he added as she reached for him again, “so they'll like me.”

Her fingers clenched in his hair, jerking it for emphasis. “You are a
prince
, Medraut. It is they who should be courting
you!
But if you
must
ridicule, attack those who are lower than yourself. It does not contribute to
your
standing to make them laugh at
me!
Do you understand?”

“I understand, Mama . . .” he whispered, and she let him go. His eyes glittered with tears, but weeping was another thing she had trained him out of long ago.

“You are a prince, my beloved,” Morgause added, more gently. She set down the bag she was carrying, and bent, turning him to face her and gently stroking his hair. “Your blood is the highest in the land. And you are the brightest and best of my children. Remember that, Medraut. I will teach you things that none of the others could understand. You must not disappoint me, my little one.. . .” She took his face between her hands and kissed him on the brow.

As she straightened, she saw his gaze shift to the bag, which was twitching and bulging of its own accord.

“Is it alive?” he whispered.

“That is a surprise for you,” she answered gaily, picking up the bag with one hand and offering the other to her son. As always, her heart lifted as his small fingers tightened on hers.
You are mine!
she thought, looking down at him,
the child of my heart and the son of my soul!

“Are we going to do a ritual?” he asked as the turned down the path to the spring. “Is it something that you have been learning from Tulach and her friends?”

“Hush, child, we must not speak of that here,” said Morgause. “What we will do is not one of their rites, though they have helped me to better understand it. You are seven years old. What I will show you today will set you on the road to power.”

Medraut began to walk faster, and she smiled.

By the time they reached the spring, the sun was setting at the end of the gorge, and as it disappeared, the shadow of the cliff loomed dark across the grass. Sounds from the dun above them came to them faintly, as though from another world.

Morgause dropped the bag and hunkered down beside it, motioning to Medraut to do the same.

“This is the hour that lies between day and night. Now, we are between times, between the worlds. It is a good time to speak with spirits, and those that dwell in the sacred springs and holy wells are among the most powerful.”

He nodded, gazing into the dark pool with wondering eyes. What did he see? When Morgause was a child she had sometimes glimpsed the faerie-folk. These days, she was learning to do so again, with the aid of certain herbs and spells.

Carefully, she showed him how to cleanse head and hands, and made him drink a little from the spring.

“Make your prayer to the spirit that lives here . . .”

Obediently he shut his eyes, lips moving silently. She would rather have heard what he was saying, but that did not matter now. Presently he looked up at her once more.

In the distance Morgause could hear the lowing of cattle, but by the spring it was very still. But there was a weight to that silence, as if something was listening. She picked up the bag and smiled.

“The spirit of the spring is waiting. Now you must make your offering. Open the bag—”

With nimble fingers, Medraut untied the strings and pulled at the opening, dropping it with a squawk as something white and feathered burst free. It was a cockerel, and it was not happy at having been confined in the bag. But its feet had been tied, so for all its flapping, it could not go far.

“Blood is life,” said Morgause. “Wring the bird's neck, and let its blood flow into the pool.”

Medraut looked from the cockerel to his mother and shook his head, eyes dark with revulsion.

“What, are you afraid of a little blood? When you are a warrior, you will have to kill men! Do it, Medraut—do it now!”

The child shook his head again and started to edge away. Morgause fought to control her anger.

“I teach you secrets that grown men would pay to learn. You will not deny me. See—” she gentled her voice, “it is easy—”

With a swift pounce, she captured his hands and pressed them around the neck of the fowl. The boy fought to free himself, still shaking his head and weeping. Morgause could not afford pity. Tightening her grip, she twisted, ripped the cockerel's head off and tossed it aside. Medraut cried out as blood spurted, but still she held his hands on the body of the bird, and did not know if the tremors that pulsed through their clasped fingers were those of the dying cockerel or of her son.

A.D.
495

I
N THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN, THE PRIESTESSES GATHERED IN THE
largest of the roundhouses on the Isle of Maidens. Mist lay like a veil across the lake; glittered in golden haloes around the lamps. Silent and anxious, some still rubbing sleep from their eyes, they filed in and took their places around the hearth.

Igierne was waiting for them. From sunset of the night before, when her spirit, open in the evening meditation, had received Merlin's message to this moment, she had not been able to sleep at all. Since the beginning of this last and greatest Saxon rebellion, the priestesses had met three times daily to support with the strength of their spirits the Britons' campaign.

But this was the last battle, the final confrontation with the ancient enemy. Through Merlin's eyes she had seen the hill called Mons Badonicus where Artor's army stood at bay, the scattering of campfires on its summit surrounded by a multitude below. The men were tired, food was low, and their water was almost gone. With the dawning, they would stake all on one last throw and ride against the enemy.

The priestesses, huddled in their pale mantles against the chill, sat like a circle of stones, and like the stones, their strength was rooted in the earth of Britannia. With Igierne, they were nineteen—all the senior priestesses, and the most talented of the girls. She signaled to the drummer to begin her steady beat. Then she took a deep breath and let her own awareness sink down through the fluid layers around the island and deeper still into the bedrock that supported them. Slowly her pulsebeat steadied and her breathing slowed. Here, at the foundation of all things, there was neither hope nor fear. There was only pure Being, changeless and secure.

She could have remained in that safe and secret place forever, but though her anxiety had faded, the discipline of years brought her back to awareness of her need, fueled by her determination and deeper even than her fear for her country, to protect her child. Slowly she allowed her awareness to move upward, trailing a cord of connection to the earth below, until she reached the level where her body sat once more.

Igierne lifted her arms, and the drumming quickened. With the precision of long practice, the other priestesses stretched out their arms. One by one they connected, and as the circle was completed, a pulse of power flared from hand to hand. Now, with each breath, power was drawn up from the depths and through the body, out through the left palm to the hand it clasped and onward.