Lady of the Lake (22 page)

“I cannot.” Venn shook his head resolutely. “It is my duty. Tegwin told me the land has shriveled as much as it can. Did you see the baskets of grain and corn the gleaners brought to the keep as offerings for the morrow’s first fruits? Leam will starve if I do not summon the rain.”

“Nay, we will not,” Tala responded. “The monks at Evesham have found ways to use the water from the rivers.”

“Nay, Tala. The rivers are dying, too. Don’t tell me what isn’t so. Leam will cease to exist if I do not go. All of you will begin to die this winter, as so many people have done in the land of the Franks and the Lombards. No, I must do my part.”

“But what if this Christian God, the Almighty Father, is stronger than our old gods?” Tala argued earnestly.

For a moment Venn considered her words, then his doubts returned and he shook his head. “It is the only thing I can do, and it is the best thing I can do. I am the chosen one.”

He removed his hand from her tight grip and stood up, looking to the right and left to see who remained in the
hall. The moment was right. Not even a servant lingered in Edon’s hall as Venn bounded onto the window ledge.

“Look for me in Arden Wood, sister. If I see you, I will give you a sign. You’ll know it is I, come again, when you next meet a grown stag bearing twelve points on its rack, honoring each of my twelve years in this cycle of life. Farewell.”

The atheling sprang out the window. He landed in the dusty ward at the base of the keep. Tala bent out across the windowsill, watching his last salute. He sprinted to the open gates of the fortress, then was gone, lost in the strange, unaccountable moonlight.

Tala forced herself to sit back down on her stool. She clamped her hands tightly in her lap, willing herself not to cry. She should be happy, rejoicing in the things that had come true. Everything was as the old druid, Tegwin, had predicted. Venn ap Griffin, the last boy-king, had gone willingly to his sacrifice. No greater love could any king show, than to die for his people.

An hour passed before Edon came quietly to Tala, taking the vacant seat at her side. He gripped the fingers that had last held her brother’s hand. “Tala, answer me this. Can the water of your spring be transported? I fear Harald will not live through this night.”

Tala took a deep breath. It was one thing to heal a small wound such as a burn or a bruise at the spring itself. She wasn’t sure even Branwyn could cure the ills that had befallen the nephew of Guthrum, king of the Danelaw. His blood might be too thin, his time on earth already sealed on the wheel of life.

“What is it you want, Edon? To bring water from the Learn here to Warwick?”

“Aye, for I know Harald would not survive a journey to the well. Will it work, Tala? Can we fetch water here, enough to see Harald regain his strength?”

“We can try.” She nodded.

“Then let’s do it,” Edon said resolutely. He called to Rig and ordered their horses saddled and brought to the keep.

The earth’s shadow was just beginning to fall across the moon as they rode out of Warwick. Tala led the Vikings to her woodland, passing King Offa’s Oak, then leaving the road as they galloped into the forest.

Edon looked only once at the sky, noting that an eclipse of the moon was taking place. Rig made the sign of the cross over his chest before he followed on Edon’s heels, galloping into the dark and haunted wood behind the Celtic princess.

Tala wasted no time taking them on a roundabout trail; she headed straight up the dried riverbed. Even in the diminishing light of an eclipse, Edon saw how many trees were dying for lack of water. It wasn’t very long after that they reached the lake.

They trotted up to the same pool that Edon had dumped Tala in so unceremoniously that very morning. He and Rig dismounted and began filling goatskin vessels with water from the healing stream. Tala sat on Ariel, her gaze fixed elsewhere, looking over the lake.

Then a scream pierced the air.

Edon dropped his goatskin and reached for his sword as he rushed to the edge of the lake. The water, blacker than soot staining an ironmaster’s forge, lay still and ominous like a huge black granite gravestone. Yet Edon could see nothing to fight or defend.

He went back to Tala’s pool and filled the goatskin. Edon looked up as he put the stopper in the bag. Ominous clouds rolled rapidly above the oaks. The wind gathered force, tossing the uppermost branches back and forth angrily.

Again that inhuman scream pierced the air. Edon identified it as a woman’s scream—and one full of terror. This
time, Edon listened for the direction of the scream. It came from across the lake, near King Offa’s hunting lodge. Bounding onto Titan’s back, Edon called to Rig, “Attend me!”

“No, wait!” Tala came to life, fearing that Edon would interfere in the gods’ will. She galloped after him, hot on his heels, to the hunting lodge on the opposite bank.

If it was an illusion of the intense darkness, unhampered by any natural light from the moon, Edon didn’t ask, but he saw the temple very clearly. He dismounted outside it, at a long ramp that cut a straight path into the heart of the vast structure beside the lake.

He could not fathom how he’d been tricked in the day-light into believing that the temple no longer existed. For it was there, solid and very much real, very much a ruin in the coal black night.

Its vitrified spire rose twenty feet above the lake between two sheltering oaks. Rounded sides formed a great semicircular amphitheater.

In the center stood an altar constructed of gleaming obsidian, the color of the shadows. The altar held only one object, a black iron cauldron.

Again that scary scream split the air and made the hackles rise on Edon’s neck. He spun around, searching for something or someone to fight with his drawn sword. There was no one, no warriors come to bar his path and keep him from entering the temple or walking cautiously up the ramp. Rig followed, staying within the reach of Edon’s arm, guarding his back.

They came to the end of the ramp, where it fell sharply away from the raised altar. Before them was a horrendous pit, glistening in the terrifying darkness. Its entire surface was slick and smooth, deliberately glazed by the heat of tremendous fire.

The steep walls were solidly vitrified. Had there been light, Edon knew he would see reflected back at him his
own image. Some ancient inferno had turned all the walls and structures of this place into a slick, mirrorlike glass. No wonder he’d only seen the trees!

And then he saw her. At the bottom of the pit, Embla Silver Throat hacked at walls too steep, too solid and too slippery to climb. An iron grate sealed the mouth of the pit.

“Help me!” she screamed. “Odin, All Father, help me!
Ayeeiiiaa!
Freya, Loki, come aid me!”

She had no weapons to use against the terrors that she faced in the bottom of the deep pit. She chopped at her own shadowy image with her fists and feet.

There were neither druid priests, nor others to witness her suffering. She foolishly fought against her own night terrors, wearing herself out by fighting whatever invisible demons tormented her in the pit’s awesome darkness.

“Tegwin, I know you’re up there, you bastard. Come help me! Damn your eyes, I’ve paid you good coin to kill that boy! Where are you? Tegwin! Tegwin! I’ll kill you for this!”

Rig dropped his hand on Edon’s shoulder as the two of them put away their swords. The last sliver of the moon slipped into shadow and the eclipse became total.

“She is mad,” Rig said uneasily.

They could hear the woman throw her whole body against the wall. Her hands pounded at unseen sights, and she cursed violently, calling upon Harald Jorgensson to take up arms against her. She vowed to kill him anew, slowly and surely.

Edon cast a glance up at the threatening sky, where the eclipsed moon glowed a deep, dark red. The wind tore at the treetops, scattered leaves and dirt across the ground.

“She will keep well enough inside there until the morrow,” Edon said dispassionately. “Let us attend our purpose. Harald may yet live to dispense his own justice. I would not cheat him of that pleasure. We will come back
with ropes and get her out once we’ve taken this water to Harald.”

Edon turned, looking for Tala. “Get our horses and the water,” he called to Rig as he ran down the long ramp. He saw Tala far out on the lake, walking across the water.

“Tala!” Edon shouted.

With the rising of the violent wind, the water in Black Lake changed temperament. It churned in turbulent upheaval. Waves swelled and crashed against its raw, drought-exposed banks. They lashed at Edon as though to drive him back up the shore.

Far, far away from him, on the water’s roiling surface, Tala seemed to float above the tempest. He could see her feet move across the tops of spumy whitecaps. It was as though she stepped on the crests themselves and was held up above the thickening maelstrom by some miracle.

Fear set a huge hammer banging in Edon’s heart Logic told him nothing was as it appeared at Black Lake. He cupped his hands to his mouth, yelling, “Tala!”

Surely his eyes deceived him! She could not be walking on the water, for that would be a miracle! But when she did not turn and come back to him, Edon rushed forward, headless of the danger to himself. Sink or swim, he was going after her. “Tala!”

He splashed straight after her, his feet sinking into the choppy waves only to stay right on top of the water…like Tala did! It wasn’t sand or dirt under his feet in the water, but stone. Flat rocks supported his full weight—carefully laid stone over which the glistening, turbulent waves swirled and eddied—but the depth of the water above the stones rose no higher than his knees.

Then he made the connection, saw what he hadn’t been able to see before. The stone ramp to the temple crossed the lake and the fens! It was a causeway. Feeling ten times a fool, Edon ran after her, his footing sure as he closed the gap between them.

He caught up with her on the far edge of the lake, where the fen was thick and deep, the raw peat exposed and rank from the drought. Edon grabbed hold of her arms, encasing her in his sure grip. “Where do you go?”

“There!” Tala pointed woodenly ahead, to a clearing encircled by oaks. Torchlight cast an eerie glow under the wind-tossed oaks. Edon saw a dozen giant stags, walking upright on two legs. He saw they were men in costumes— mummers, naught else.

In the center of their circle stood an old man in the vestments of a druid. A beard white with age touched his belly. To each side of the druid stood two old Celtic warriors. Edon recognized the one, Selwyn, whose painted torso he’d admired at the gates of Warwick.

“What goes here?” Edon asked quietly, holding fast to Tala. He felt the hair on the back of his neck crawl. He looked for Rig and saw him coming round the lake, leading their horses. “Tell me, Tala, what are they doing?”

She took a shuddering breath, mesmerized by the rite exposed before them. Her young brother mounted a stone platform above the fen, wearing only a breechclout. The tattoo on his shoulder stood out starkly against the white flesh of his thin, naked chest.

At the boy’s throat was the most magnificent torque Edon had ever seen in his life—made of a gold so pure it seemed like a wreath of fire encircling Venn’s slender neck.

The druid raised his hands high in prayer and solemnly removed the gold torque from the atheling’s body. In its place he wrapped a slender knotted cord, a garrote under which he slipped a shaved piece of wood.

Embla Silver Throat’s description of the Lughnasa sacrifice came back to Edon with haunting clarity. He lurched, certain that he knew exactly what he was seeing. His fingers dug into Tala’s shoulders.

“What in the name of God are they doing?”

“They sacrifice Venn’s royal blood to the power and mercy of the gods. He will bring the rain,” Tala whispered. Then her hands flew to her mouth and she broke down, weeping, crying silently in heartbreaking sorrow.

“That’s idiocy!” Edon countered. “Any fool can see its going to rain torrents at any moment. This is obscene, an abomination against the baptism we received yesterday.”

Tala pressed her hands against Edon’s mouth, vainly trying to still him. “No, let it be, Edon. Do not interfere. You will provoke the gods. They will not spare your life a second time.”

“The hell you say!” Edon swore as he pushed her hands away. “I’m stopping this.”

He ran into the clearing as Venn raised a basket of grain to the sky. Lightning swept beneath the scudding clouds. The air crackled. The scent of rain invaded the fen. The oaks tossed violently as Venn held his gift of the first fruits aloft. Thunder rumbled from the thickening clouds, drowning out the boy’s offertory prayers.

The stag men began to chant and sway. The druid raised his staff aloft as Venn poured the grain and corn onto the dried, crackling peat. The black pools were long gone, caked with the black mud that coated the dried-up bog. The soft, unstable earth cracked under Edon’s feet as he strode to the center of the grove and drew his sword.

“Stop this nonsense! Venn ap Griffin, get down from that altar this moment!”

“Lord Edon!” Venn practically choked on the words. The spell cast by Tegwin and the chanting mummers was momentarily broken.

“How dare you, Viking!” Tegwin shouted. “Seize him and throw him in the pit!

“No!” Venn commanded. “You will leave this Viking be!”

“I’m glad you said that, boy.” Edon reached up and
grabbed hold of Venn’s skinny arm, yanking him to the queasy ground at his side. “Otherwise, it would go very bad for you when we return to Warwick.”

“Seize him, I say!” Tegwin commanded. Stafford and Selwyn hesitated, not knowing who to obey, their atheling or the druid.

“No!” Venn put his thin body in front of Edon, shielding him. “I said you will not harm this Viking, Tegwin. Stafford, Selwyn, hear me! Lord Edon is to look after my sisters.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy!” Tegwin snarled. “That Viking can do nothing in this life or in the one that comes after. Kill him, I said!” He pushed Stafford and Selwyn forward, gesturing furiously at the stone clubs they had in their hands. “Do it, I say! Crush his head! Time is of the essence! We must finish the sacrifice.”