Clash of Kings (16 page)

‘This charnel house is no place for you, young Myrddion,’ Eddius ordered, as he appeared out of the dissipating smoke like a black scarecrow, streaked with soot. Eddius was covered with the smuts of the fire that now ran in black rivulets down his cheeks and arms in the cold rain. The warrior had a slightly boiled look, and Myrddion realised that the fire had scorched those who had fought it so fiercely. Eddius’s eyelashes and parts of his eyebrows, his beard and even the hair on his arms and legs had been singed and seared away by heat.

‘Aye, Lord Eddius. I’ll tell Gran that you’re safe and will be home shortly.’

‘I’ll return when I’m sure the fire is truly dead,’ Eddius agreed, and clapped his adopted son on his back. ‘You did well, boy. I don’t know that I could look closely on such burns as you dealt with during the night. Fire is our dearest friend, but when it turns on us it becomes our most destructive enemy. I’ll never again take a naked flame for granted.’

Myrddion raised his eyes as he swore wholeheartedly, ‘Nor I, my lord! I’ll swear never to treat fire incautiously again, now that I’ve seen what it can do.’

‘Good lad! Now, off with you. Get you home and rest for a few hours, for I’ve no doubt that your mistress has chores for you once you’ve slept and fed. Don’t keep the healer waiting.’

As Myrddion shuffled along the sea path, his sandals barely lifted out of the damp sandy sod through weariness, he looked at the turgid waves below him with new caution. Water and fire! Necessities if a man were to live. But the gods had provided each of these blessings with a nasty sting in the tail. With every gift, the gods created a curse.

When the villa came into view above the dunes, clean and white in the rain-drenched light, Myrddion’s childlike heart wanted to weep at his homecoming. The familiar old walls promised safety and love, while the landscape around it, full of freshening sea-wind, darkening clouds and slow, heavy waves, threatened his comfort and existence.

Was anything as it seemed?

‘I’m too tired to think now,’ Myrddion said to the rain as it struck his wet body with hard, little gusts. ‘I’ll work it all out later.’

CHAPTER VII

THE BROKEN TOWER

In the forbidding, slate-grey mountains King Vortigern pursed his lips with disgust as he stared up at Dinas Emrys, his ruined fortress, where workers crawled all over the great stones, shaping and moving them until some semblance of order could be reimposed on the chaos of fallen walls.

‘The work goes well?’ he asked his steward without turning his head.

‘Aye, lord,’ the steward replied impassively. ‘As the prophecy demands, Dinas Emrys will return to life.’

‘The prophecy!’ Vortigern snapped vindictively, recalling his chief sorcerer, Apollonius, who had sworn that the gods had told him that the king would perish at the hands of his sons if Dinas Emrys did not rise again. Vortigern had cursed Apollonius and his convenient dreams, but he had ordered the reclamation of the fortress anyway. With prophecies, a wise man always chooses to be certain.

Dinas Emrys had originally been built on a large shelf of rock overlooking the river valley that spread out below it like a green quilt. This narrow, arable valley, and the wealth that came from rich soil, had obviously merited protection in ages past, although Vortigern’s strong right arm and the strength of the tribal kings now maintained peace in the land without the need for an impregnable fortress.

But the king had decided to stir himself and restore Dinas Emrys to its original strength. Any sensible subject obeyed King Vortigern without question, for he was a man of volatile moods and a willpower that was famed for its inflexible, unyielding stubbornness.

In appearance, Vortigern was neither tall nor short, standing at a thickset five feet eight inches. His shoulders were very wide and his neck was thick and muscular, so that his head jutted forward like a pugnacious bull. The similarity was accentuated by flaring nostrils and a broad forehead that bulged over thick, black brows that almost met above the nose.

Vortigern’s hair was very curly, so he chose to keep it cropped close to his skull. Once coal black, his curls were now iron grey and still as plentiful as ever, except for a bald patch on the crown that Vortigern disguised as best he could. In fact, the king was a very hairy man who sprouted white hair in tufts from his ears and nose, and in swirls and curls across his broad back and his barrel chest. His body slaves regularly trimmed this excess, for Vortigern was also very vain, especially of his smooth skin and unlined eyes which were green and set wide apart. Beside his obvious strength, one feature warned even the innocent and the unwary that Vortigern was a dangerous man. His mouth was very small and his lips were red and as full as those of a fair woman, carrying the suggestion of a smile that persisted even when he was annoyed. When rage consumed him, that mouth became ruby red and glistening, as if the choler in his temper lent his lips a semblance of seductiveness. His tongue darted repeatedly between his small white teeth, as if he tasted something pleasant and wished to enjoy its sweetness constantly. His enemies likened this action to the flickering of a serpent’s tongue, implying something reptilian in Vortigern’s nature. More than one victim had been deceived by that voluptuous half-smile, as the cruelty of Vortigern’s justice belied his womanish mouth.

The High King of Cymru was irritable and homesick, so his retainers stepped cautiously in his presence. Vortigern missed Rowena, his queen, and he cursed the prophecy of Apollonius that had brought him to this cold, barren place of flint and granite to oversee the restoration of his fortress.

Rowena’s yellow plaits, so long and thick with their heavy lacings of golden cord, besotted the king. He loved to loosen those plaits, running his fingers, comb-like, through the sword-length of hair as it sprang free of its tight constraints. Rowena’s hair was a wonder, a marvel here in the west of Cymru where redheads and dark-haired folk predominated. Her blue eyes were quite different from the Celts’ as well, in that there was no green or gold in their ice-blue depths, only a circle of indigo around the very edge of the pupils. The blue eyes of the people of Cymru were more interesting, but Saxon eyes were hypnotically pale and cold, like northern skies or salt water.

Sighing despondently, Vortigern sawed on his horse’s tender mouth with the reins and headed back towards his camp. With his personal guard thundering behind him on huge heavily muscled steeds that were more suitable to the plough than to hill country, the king and his warriors set the flintstones flying as they crashed back towards kinder country. Vortigern’s guard, one and all, were huge Saxons who could only ride the heavier farm beasts, and they gripped the reins with a fierceness born out of an inward terror of their animals rather than good horsemanship. Given a choice, Saxons never rode at all.

As protection, and to underscore his authority, Vortigern had rammed an iron cap over his curls. The helmet was decorated with a pair of bronze wings spread wide from its sides, as if gulls’ wings had been turned to red metal. Most of his countrymen were offended when they saw that helmet, for the wings turned a serviceable tribal cap into a piece of Saxon body armour. Under the shadow of the helmet, the king’s face revealed a lifetime of decision-making and authority through its deep furrows between the eyes, the long creases that ran from each nostril almost to his chin and the parallel lines that drew down each corner of his mouth. The king’s irises seemed to trap the light so that no lustre escaped to give them any pretence of geniality. His eyes reminded most men of the frozen earth, caught in the first frosts of winter when life has burrowed deep into the soil to preserve itself from the cold.

‘Find Apollonius and Rhun! I’m growing impatient and summer will be done soon enough. Once winter comes, the fortifications at Dinas Emrys will be too wet and cold for repair. We must hurry!’

As autumn came sweeping in across the mountains, Segontium shivered in its russet and amber cloak of leaves. Myrddion was still a boy of ten, long of leg and sharp of eye, but already he had seen suffering enough, and his joy was clouded by his knowledge of the dangers of the world. Olwyn often caught him looking at her young brood with eyes that were narrowed with caution and fear.

‘What ails you, precious?’ she asked him, as Myrddion watched the two smaller children chase chickens in the forecourt of the villa. She stroked his glossy hair back, and saw a growing number of white hairs over the right temple. Her hand checked its gentle caress for a heartbeat as she recognised the mark of the
far-sight
, as the peasants called it, before her love overcame her superstition.

‘Why do we have to die, Nanna? If the Mother and Grannie Ceridwen know so much, why do they permit everything in the world to be born, only to die so pointlessly? It’s so wasteful, Gran!’

Instead of laughing at him, as many women would have done, Olwyn took Myrddion’s fears seriously and answered them in kind. ‘No one can know the mind of the Mother, my boy, not even one of the priestesses, and wisdom isn’t mine just because Ceridwen is a distant ancestor. I can only guess at their reasons. But I believe that nothing dies, not completely. Our bodies are fragile shells and we can be snuffed out so easily. You saw our frailty at first hand during the fire at Segontium not so long ago. But what happens when flowers die during the winter?’

‘They appear out of nowhere during the spring and the summer,’ Myrddion replied slowly, with darkly knit brows.

‘Aye. The flower becomes a bulb or a seed that lives under the soil, regardless of how much snow is piled above it. Then, when the winds blow warmly and the snow is gone, the bulb shoots and the flower bursts forth again. If flowers can live, die and live again, then so can we.’

A slow smile grew as Myrddion absorbed this simple concept. As usual, he took Olwyn’s idea to the next logical step.

‘If we are correct, the bulb that looks dead and is hidden in the soil is our soul – the centre of our being. I sometimes wish I could cut open a dead body and try to find this soul that is the most important part of all of us. I will do it one day, but I’m afraid that our spirit is like the warm wind. I think it is invisible, and can grow in another body and allow us to go on and on, like flowers and trees and grasses that live for ever.’

Although Olwyn felt a little queasy to think of her grandson defiling a corpse, she understood his need to know, so she convinced Myrddion that he shouldn’t try such a dangerous experiment until he was older and safe from the superstitions of the uneducated.

‘Remember, Myrddion, that the sun and the moon rule you, which is very strange and miraculous. You have a great destiny for all that you are distrusted by foolish people who believe in demons. One day you might meet your birth father and learn that he is a cruel man, but not a supernatural being. For now, you must understand that wickedness is more terrible and terrifying than a thousand demons or a dozen necromancers. They have no power to harm you, for magic is only a charlatan’s trickery. Walk with an unbowed head and know that I’ll always love you.’

Myrddion was enjoying a wonderful relationship with the healer Annwynn, his teacher and second mother. Since the night of the great fire, the young man had been full of questions that she had struggled hard to answer. Sadly, although Annwynn had the experience necessary to be a great healer, her illiteracy barred the scrolls of the ancients from her understanding for ever, and she recognised this lack in her knowledge. Therefore, not long after Myrddion’s tenth birthday, she decided to give Myrddion the most precious thing she owned.

Myrddion had laboured hard that day. He had harvested the last of the herbs from the kitchen garden, bound them in neat bundles and hung them, upside down, from the smoke-stained rafters of the cottage. In the afternoon, he had gone into the vestigial forest to hunt out any roots, wild parsnips and radish, mandrake, mushrooms, moss and lichen that hadn’t already been harvested during the summer months.

He had returned to Annwynn’s cottage with several full baskets of bounty, his face smudged with dirt, his hands filthy and his feet shuffling with weariness. But, by the shine in his expressive eyes, Annwynn knew that the boy had seen things that had given him enormous pleasure. He was eager to share his experiences.

‘I saw a merlin as it took a rabbit, Annwynn! Such a large victim! I could scarcely believe the bird could lift it, least of all take to the wing with the coney in her talons. The merlin’s wings were barred with white as if winter were here already, and her claws were particularly long and hooked. I couldn’t believe the strength and grace of her, especially as she flew off towards the mountains.’

Annwynn smiled down at her young charge. ‘At this time of year, the birds have young who are not quite ready to leave the nest and need to be fattened up to survive the winter. Needs must, Myrddion, my lad. The female merlin must give her chicks the best chance of survival, so she’ll perform huge feats of strength because instinct and circumstance drive her onward. I have known women who’ve moved heavy stones to rescue injured children when, normally, they could never have hoped to budge such a weight. Love lends strength to all of us, but we don’t know how such miracles come to be.’

‘We know very little, mistress, when all is said and done. So many people die of quite simple things. The blacksmith’s son died of a toothache last week, and I couldn’t believe that a tooth would be capable of killing a healthy young man.’

Annwynn recognised the fervour of intense curiosity that fired Myrddion’s large eyes. She smiled indulgently and tried to explain.

‘You were here and you saw what I did to ease the boy’s pain. Aye, I cut into his gum with a sharp, clean knife and the boy fainted with the shock and the pain. We could see the results. What happened, Myrddion? And why?’

‘There was very little blood, mistress, but a rush of yellow and green pus poured out of the wound.’

Annwynn nodded.

‘I watched closely as you cleansed it. Afterwards, the cloth smelt rotten, as if something had died in his mouth. The stench almost made my stomach empty.’