Clash of Kings (24 page)

‘Enough!’ Vortigern screamed. ‘Speak no more to me of burning towns and weapons that pierce the sky. I’ll not listen! Take him out of my sight. Gag him if he tries to speak. Take him away!’

Prudently, Hengist clapped one hand over Myrddion’s mouth as he lifted the boy bodily off his feet and carried him out of the circle of light.

Foaming at the mouth, spittle flying and staining his beard, Vortigern raged as he sought to control his anger and his terror. Rowena found herself cowering away from his purple, congested face.

Dumping the boy behind a ruined wall, Hengist checked to see if Myrddion was still breathing. The boy’s limbs jerked as if he was convulsing, as perhaps he was, so Hengist found a short length of wood to ram between his teeth to protect his tongue.

An hysterical roar carried through the still air. ‘Hengist! Where are you? Where is the captain of my guard?’

‘Here, sire,’ Hengist responded, panting a little from the exertion of leaping over the broken wall to answer the frenzied summons of his master. ‘How may I serve you?’

‘Bring me those tricksters, Apollonius and Rhun. They’re missing, of course, now that they’ve proved they desire my death. Only a traitor would require me to kill a seer. Better that they had never lived than that I should hear such words . . . such horrors. Find them, Hengist, and bring them back to me in chains.’

‘That duty will give me pleasure, my king.’ Hengist grinned wolfishly through his beard as he led the guard in a thorough and rapid search of the ruins, the fortress and the road leading down to the valley. They found the magicians within the hour, for the two fools had lacked the wit or the courage to force their horses to leave the steep road and flee through the forests. Although they wept and begged for mercy, Apollonius and Rhun were dragged back to Vortigern in chains.

The king had scorned to leave the semicircular ruin of his tower. The same torches burned low, rammed into the earth by their long wooden hafts, while Rowena and the assembled notables were refused permission to leave the grim circular space where the pool had been excavated. Even the physician, his servant and the peasants with the tin tub were forced to remain within the hellish, fitful light.

‘Apollonius, Rhun, you deserted me without permission,’ Vortigern began, even before the two sorcerers had an opportunity to rise from the ground where Hengist’s warriors had thrown them. ‘Your manners are nearly as poor as your predictions.’

‘Lord, we were ensorcelled by a demon who desires our death. He has blinded our eyes and tricked us, just as he has duped you,’ Apollonius began, his double chins quivering and his fat cheeks whitening with fear.

‘I wasn’t duped! Nor was I ensorcelled, unless it was by you, Apollonius. The Demon Seed told me exactly what was to be found under my tower. I should feed you to the dragons that live there – but such an end brings me nothing. I will use you as you would have used him. Bring fresh torches!’

An expression of relief slid across Rhun’s face, although Apollonius began to blubber like an over-large infant in his terror. Hengist could smell the sharp reek of ammonia as the sorcerer’s bladder emptied in his panic.

‘Oh, so you think you might avoid my justice in the Dragons’ Pool, Rhun? No, my brain is not so soft that I’ll give you a chance of life, or even a speedy and merciful death. Since all the tools are ready, you shall provide the blood. When I raise my tower on new ground, the blood of my sorcerers will cement the stones together and your corpses will be buried under the flagging to drive away all evil spirits.’

‘I warned you, master,’ Rhun began, and his narrow, skeletal face was a study in terror and pride. ‘The runes threatened death. I warned you, so I don’t deserve your punishment.’

‘Someone does, and as you professed to understand so much of the spirit world, your blood will be nearly as good as that of a Demon Seed, wouldn’t you say? I’m actually paying you honour, Rhun. Aren’t you grateful?’

Apollonius fainted, so he proved easy to tie hand and foot, but Rhun chose to fight and was soon bleeding from a number of minor wounds and grazes.

‘In punishment for making your king look foolish, you will both be castrated and allowed to bleed to death slowly. I offered the boy mercy, but you attempted to dupe me.’

‘Curse you, Vortigern, and all your works,’ Rhun began before Hengist thrust a dirty cloth into the spitting, broken mouth.

Vortigern began to laugh. ‘You can’t curse me in any way that I would fear now. The Demon Seed has already cursed me for eternity – because of you. Now, physician, begin. And don’t feel that you need to use a sharp blade.’

Thrown onto the back of a huge carthorse used to drag stone up the mountainside, Myrddion was spirited out of Dinas Emrys on the orders of Hengist. The peasant who led the horse down the mountain to an isolated hut a little off the roadway counted the coins in his pocket that the captain of the guard had slipped to him before he disappeared into the darkness.

Behind them, screams rose in the still night like the spiral flight of crows that followed Vortigern’s war parties by day. In crescendos of pure agony, the horrific sounds drove the peasant on and confirmed his view that he would never speak of the strange young master who lay over the neck of his plough-horse. He had stood in the muddy waters of the excavated pit, and felt the fear of an ice dragon that could reach out its wicked claws and widen the hole in the foundations. Then, trapped, it would freeze him and his pick into a statue of ice.

No! If he had his way, the peasant would hand the boy over to the woodcutter and his wife and forget that he had ever set eyes on the Demon Seed.

From a great distance, Myrddion heard the peasant muttering to himself over the shrill keening of men in an extremity of pain. Most of his mind and spirit still danced among the stars and was entranced by the sweet music that the planets made as they glided in their immutable patterns through time and space. No earthly pain or fear could touch the boy with its cold fingers, for he beheld the face of God.

CHAPTER XI

WALKING WITH KINGS

Time is a traitor. It trips men up, makes them late and deceives their minds. Sometimes it runs fast, sometimes it crawls, but through all its tricks and travails it hustles all living things inexorably towards the great nothingness.

And so time deceived Olwyn and Plautenes as they drove their exhausted horses along the crumbling path that led to Dinas Emrys. Twenty heartbeats earlier and they would have seen the patient plough-horse turn off the road and head up a half-concealed track leading into the forest. Twenty heartbeats earlier, they would have spurred their tired horses into a gallop, met the trudging peasant and, in gratitude and laughter, taken Myrddion back to the villa beside the sea.

But time is a traitor – as Myrddion would learn.

The pair of exhausted riders could have seen the flickering outline of a plodding horse through the deep forest – had they known to turn their heads and peer into the darkness. Myrddion was so close to his beloved Olwyn that he would have heard her voice, had he chosen to listen. But Myrddion was far away in his mind, and when the peasant heard raised voices on the roadway he thanked all the gods that the strangers had failed to see him in the oppressive darkness of the forest. So grandmother and grandson passed each other, and remained ignorant of the ironies of chance.

Olwyn and Plautenes rode upwards on a track scoured into dangerous ruts by every downpour, until the sounds of the suffering magicians wove around them like a cruel rope of sound. Terrified by the implications, Olwyn panicked, for she was unable to recognise the begging, gibbering voices. Her blood froze with horror.

‘We should beware, mistress,’ Plautenes hissed. ‘Something terrible is happening at the fortress. Perhaps we should turn back, at least until the morning.’

‘Perhaps Myrddion is the one who is suffering,’ Olwyn hiccuped in distress as a long, ululating scream sent icy shivers down her spine. ‘Dear protector of all mothers, let the noise come from another throat than that of my sweet boy.’

Instead of pausing, as any sensible person would have done, Olwyn was driven on by her love, so that she rode her horse heedlessly over the lip of the plateau to see the hellish work that still continued in the rotted teeth of Dinas Emrys.

Hengist was the first to notice the intruders. Olwyn’s hood had fallen off in that last desperate effort of her horse to mount the crown of the hill, so the Saxon warrior saw a dark female form with red torchlight crawling over her face. He clutched his amulet for protection and shouted a warning to his king.

Vortigern turned from his contemplation of Apollonius’s pallid, cheesy flesh as it quivered in the final extremity caused by his gross injuries. The king saw a woman with long grey hair spurring her horse towards him, her hazel eyes burning scarlet in the fitful light of the torches. Just as Hengist began to draw his huge sword to intercept an attack, the rider dragged up her horse’s head by the reins and the beast skidded to a halt. She threw herself from its back, and ran towards the tableau of pain in the centre of the flickering torchlight.

‘Myrddion! Myrddion! Where are you?’ the woman screamed, so that her thin cries joined with Rhun’s disjointed, crazed wails.

‘You disturb King Vortigern’s administration of justice, woman,’ Hengist roared. ‘Stand to and be questioned by the High King of all the tribes of Cymru and the north.’

The warrior’s voice cut through the entwined noises of grief and agony and, for a brief moment, a shroud-like silence settled over the dying men and the crazed woman. Plautenes came running to grip her hand, and lead her away from the blood, the gasping last breaths of Apollonius in all his gross nakedness, and the suffering of Rhun, whose baleful eyes had been put out lest he should curse the king with them.

Olwyn’s huge eyes wept tears, but Rhun wept blood.

‘Come away, mistress.’ Plautenes whispered to her, and wrapped her cloak around the shivering woman’s shoulders. ‘Myrddion isn’t here.’

‘I must find out where he is. I must, Plautenes. If he’s dead, I want to return his body to his family. Which among you is Vortigern?’ She peered around the circle of faces, some sympathetic, some sickened, while others remained blank with the seriousness of the night.

‘I am Vortigern,’ the king said. ‘Who are you to flout my judgement with your impious screams and demands?’

Vortigern was a dark, bulky shadow with his back to the torches. She could see the thickness of his form and the power that radiated from his raised head and rigid body. He was dressed to officiate at the execution, with all the regalia of gold, bronze and scarlet wool of a High King, and he thrust his face, chin first, towards her in obvious contempt.

‘My name is Olwyn, daughter of King Melvig ap Melwy of the Deceangli, whom you know. I am the priestess of Ceridwen in Segontium. I claim the goddess as my ancestor and I worship the Mother whose name must not be spoken by men. You have no right to steal my grandson. Were it not for his mistress the healer, we would have been desperate to learn of his fate.’ She gazed directly into Vortigern’s face, so he was unable to tell if she was cowed by his status or half demented with worry. ‘Now you know who I am, where is my grandson?’ Olwyn’s voice rose hysterically, until Vortigern’s brows drew down with irritation.

‘He is no longer here. Be gone, woman, unless you wish to earn my wrath. My sorcerers demand my attention.’

Olwyn muttered something under her breath that Vortigern couldn’t hear distinctly, but he understood the sentiments. His face clouded and Hengist readied himself for trouble.

‘What did you say, woman? Perhaps you are reluctant to speak your thoughts aloud in case I call you to account – regardless of your sex.’

‘I called you a traitor,’ Olwyn answered simply, oblivious of the indrawn breath of the warriors that ringed her. ‘You have betrayed your own people by welcoming mercenaries and Saxons into our lands. You trampled on the honour of the Deceangli tribe when you stole a prince of our house. You have blasphemed against the Mother by stealing her favoured child, and you have insulted Ceridwen, whose is kin to Prince Myrddion. The goddess will punish you for it when she is ready to make you suffer.’

Vortigern acted impulsively and so quickly that even Hengist had no time to intervene. With his gauntleted right fist, he struck Olwyn full in the face, driving her slender body back until she fell like a rag doll on the wet, bloody soil.

‘Mistress,’ Plautenes wailed, aghast.

‘Get her out of here, Hengist. Put her on her horse and pack her off to her family. Hopefully, they’ll teach her to keep her mouth shut.’

Plautenes threw himself down beside his mistress. Her eyes were open and her nose was obviously smashed inward. She neither moved nor blinked and her hands were flaccid and lifeless. A dreadful thought assailed the faithful servant and he bent his ear to his mistress’s mouth. He felt and heard nothing, for no breath stirred her slightly opened lips.

‘Mistress Olwyn!’ Plautenes wailed again, his voice cracking with horror.

‘Get her up, servant,’ Hengist ordered, shoving the kneeling man with his sandaled foot. Plautenes turned a tear-stained face up to stare at the Saxon. Against his will, Hengist felt a touch of cold run up his spine, as if the night had not been terrible enough.

‘She’s dead! The king has driven her nose back into her skull. The bones have breached her brain and Princess Olwyn is dead. Now the goddess will destroy us all.’

Hengist stepped backward, muttering prayers under his breath. Everyone knew that women’s magic was terrible and couldn’t be deflected by threats, prayers or sacrifice. The Mother, and Ceridwen, her servant, would require a blood price for the murder of this priestess and kinswoman. Hengist whispered the news to Vortigern, who looked shocked for a short moment, but then his face transformed with irritation and sulkiness.

‘Prepare the corpse, then, and send it back to her family. I can’t be held responsible for the ravings of a silly woman. I only hit her the once, so her bones must have been weak. Her goddess obviously decided she should die, otherwise the accident would never have happened.’