The Hallowed Isle Book Three (17 page)

“My lord,” Betiver started forward, dagger already drawn, “there is no need for you to soil your hands—”

Artor shook his head. “A good hunter always finishes off his kill.” He took the dagger from Betiver and knelt beside his foe, laying his sword beside him on the ground.

Melguas twisted, his body contorting as if momentarily overcome by pain. Only Guendivar, coming closer, saw his fingers close on the hilt of the dagger strapped to his thigh. In the moment it took her mind to comprehend what her eyes had seen, Melguas jerked the weapon free and slashed upward beneath the hanging skirt of Artor's mail.

The king jerked away with a muffled oath.

“No good to her—” Melguas began, but Artor, his face suffused with fury, reeled forward, supporting himself on his left hand, and with his right plunged the dagger into his enemy's throat above the silver torque and tore sideways so that the Irishman's head flopped suddenly to the side, his eyes still widening in surprise.

Artor stared down at him, grimacing, then slowly collapsed to his side, blood spreading down the cloth of his breeches.

“Artor!” “My lord!” Gualchmai and Betiver cried out together as they reached his side. Carefully they stretched him out, dragging the mail aside. The dagger had torn the flesh of Artor's inner thigh and all the way up into the groin. The king made no sound, but his skin was paling, and his body quivered with the pain.

“He didn't get the artery—” murmured Betiver, peeling the cloth back from the wound. Blood was flowing steadily, but not in the red tide that no surgery could stop.

“Nor yet your manhood!” added Gualchmai, gripping Artor's shoulder. “Let it bleed for the moment—it will clean the wound. Do you lie now on your right side, and we'll get you out of this mail.”

Guendivar's fists were clenched in her skirts, but these men knew more of wounds and armor than she. There was nothing she could do until they had got off sword belt and mail shirt and cut away his breeches and were looking for cloth with which to stanch the wound.

After three days in the saddle, her own clothes were none too clean, but she had more, and softer, fabric about her than anything the Companions had to offer. She hauled up her skirts and cut half the front of her shift away, folding it into a pad which she bound across the wound with her veil.

“You will have to make a litter,” she told the men. “He cannot ride this way.”

“Aye, and swiftly,” agreed Gualchmai, “before the bastards that got away are bringing Illan down on us to finish the job.”

“Betiver . . . you will lead the army—” whispered Artor as the men began to hack at a young oak tree that clung to the side of the hill. “Take most of the men and head straight for the coast. Pursuit should . .. follow you.”

“And what of you, my lord?” Betiver kept his voice steady, but his face was nearly as pale as Artor's own.

“Gualchmai will take . . . me to the Lake . . . to Igierne.”

“I will go with you,” Guendivar said firmly. Artor, who had not met her gaze since she bandaged his wound, said nothing, and as she stared down the others, she realized that at least for this moment, she was queen in truth as well as name.

When her women came to tell her that a messenger had arrived, Morgause was not surprised—galloping hooves had haunted her dreams. The rider was the man she had sent to be her eyes and ears in Artor's army. As she recognized him, she felt something twist painfully in her belly, and that did surprise her.

“What is it?” she asked, controlling her voice. “Has something happened to the king?”

“He is not dead, my lady,” the man said quickly. “But he is wounded, too badly to continue the campaign. He has left Betiver in command.”

“Not Gualchmai?” Morgause frowned.

“Your son is with Artor. They are progressing by slow stages northward—no one would say where or why.”

“To the Lake—” Morgause said thoughtfully, “that has to be their destination. His wound must be serious indeed, if he goes to my mother for healing.”

To Igierne, and to the Cauldron
, she added silently, fists clenching in the skirts of her gown. Was the injury so severe, or had Artor seized the excuse to gain access to the Cauldron's mysteries?

“What is the nature of the wound?” she asked then.

“I do not know for certain,” said the spy. “He is not able to ride. They say—” he added in some embarrassment “—that the king is wounded in the thighs . . .”

Morgause stifled a triumphant smile. The queen had borne Artor no child. Whether that was because the words she gave to each of them at their wedding had cursed their bed, or it was the will of the gods, she did not know. But if the king was injured in his manhood, it might be long before he could try again to beget an heir. Gualchmai was known to everyone as Artor's sister-son, the bravest of his Companions. Britannia would find it easy to accept him as the king's heir. And if he refused the honor, she still had Medraut.. . .

“You did well to bring me this news.” Morgause paused, considering the messenger. He was called Doli, a man of the ancient race of the hills. In feature he was fine-boned and dark, devoted to her service by rites of the old magic. Some years earlier she had arranged for his sister to enter the community of priestesses on the Isle of Maidens.

“Now I have another task for you,” she said then. “I wish you to ride to the Lake and pay a visit to your sister. If, as you say, the king's party is moving slowly, you may be there and gone before ever he arrives.”

“And when I am come?” Doli lifted one dark eyebrow inquiringly.

“You will give her the flask I shall send with you, and a message. But this, I dare not commit to writing. I shall record it in your memory, and only when your sister Ia speaks the words, ‘by star and stone' shall the message be set free.

“It is well—” Doli bowed his head in submission, then settled himself cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed and chest rising and falling in the ancient rhythm of trance.

When she sensed that his energy had sunk and steadied, Morgause called his spirit to attention by uttering his secret name. Then she began to chant the message that he must carry.

“Thus, the words of the Lady of Dun Eidyn who is called the Vor-Tigerna, the Great Queen, to Ia daughter of Malcuin. The priestesses will work the rite of healing for King Artor. Add the contents of the flask your brother shall give you to the water in the pool. When you do this, these are the words you must say: 'Thou art a stagnant pool in a poisoned land, a barren field and a fruitless tree. Thy seed shall fail, and thy sovereignty pass away. By the will of the Great Queen, so shall it be!'”

Morgause waited a moment, then spoke the ritual words to rouse Doli from his trance. Then she sent him off to be fed, and went herself to the hut where she prepared her herbs and brewed her medicines to distill a potion strong enough to counter the power of the Cauldron and all her mother's magic as well.

Asleep, Artor was so like Uthir that Igierne felt the pain of it in her breast each time she looked at him. Perhaps it was because he was ill, and the image of how her husband had appeared in his last years was still vivid in Igierne's memory. But Artor was only thirty-four, and she would not let him die. Even asleep his face showed the lines that responsibility had graven around his mouth and between his brows, and there were more strands of silver in the brown hair.

They had put the king to bed in the guest chamber of the Isle of Maidens, where a fresh breeze off the lake could blow through the window, bearing with it the scent the sun released from the pines. From time to time Artor twitched, as if even in sleep his wound pained him. The Irishman's blade had sliced through the muscles of the inner thigh and up into the groin, but it had not, quite, penetrated the belly. Nor had it cut into his scrotum, although the slash came perilously close. The great danger now was wound fever, for the rough field dressing had done little more than stop the bleeding, and during the jolting journey north the wound had become inflamed.

She leaned forward to stroke the damp hair off of his brow and felt the heat of fever, though it seemed to her that the strong infusion of willow-bark tea she had given Artor when he arrived had begun to bring the burning down. When he was a little rested, they would have to cleanse the wound and pack it with a poultice of spear-leek to combat the infection. As if in anticipation of the pain, Artor twisted restlessly, muttering, and she bent closer to hear.

“Guendivar . . . so beautiful.. . .” That he should call his wife's name was to be expected, but why was there such anguish in his tone? “Did he touch her? Did he . . . I have no right! It was my sin.. . .”

Frowning, Igierne dipped the cloth into the basin of cool water and laid it once more on his brow. She knew that Artor had been wounded by the Irishman who abducted the queen, but Guendivar swore she had not been harmed. Why was he babbling about sin?

“Be easy, my child . . .” she murmured. “It is all over now and you are safe here.. . .”

He shook his head, groaning, as if even in his delirium his mother's words had reached him. “She told me . . . I have a son.. . .”

Igierne sat back, eyes widening. “Who, Artor?” her voice hardened. “Whose son?”

“Morgause . . .” came the answer. “Why should she hate me? I didn't know.. . .”

“It is all right . . . the sin was not yours . . .” Igierne replied, but her mind was racing, remembering a sullen, red-headed boy sorting pebbles on a garden path. She had assumed the family resemblance came all from Morgause—but what if Medraut had a double heritage?

It was no wonder that Artor was fevered, if this knowledge was festering in his memory. It would not be enough to deal with the wound to his body—somehow, she would have to heal his soul.

The Lake was very beautiful, thought Guendivar, especially now, when the first turning leaves of autumn set glimmering reflections of gold and russet dancing in the water, and the tawny hills lifted bare shoulders against a sky that shone pure clear blue after the past days of rain. But after a week cooped up on the island with the priestesses, she felt as confined as she had with the army, and Gualchmai, who was camped with the other men in the meadow by the landing across from the island, had said he would be happy to escort her on a walk along the shore.

“If we are attacked,” she said bitterly, “let them take me. I am not worth the lives of any more good men.” Throughout that long ride northward, no one had accused her, no one suspected that she had lain in Melguas' arms. In the stress of the journey she had almost been able to forget it herself. But now, with nothing to do, the memory tormented her.

“Lady! You must not say it. You are the queen!” Gualchmai's voice held real pain.

She shook her head. “Igierne is the queen. On the way north Artor needed me, but I have neither the knowledge nor the magic to help him now.”

“Nor do I, Guendivar—I would give my heart's blood if it would heal him, but I have no skill to fight the enemy he battles.” Gualchmai's broad shoulders slumped.

Hearing the anguish in his voice, the queen found her own a little eased. She breathed in the spicy scent of fallen leaves and exhaled again in a long sigh, feeling tension go out of her. Leaves rustled with each footstep, and squirrels chittered to each other from the trees.

“But you fight his other foes,” she said presently. “You are the bulwark of his throne.”

“That is all I desire. I am happier on the field of battle than in the council hall. To deal with the bickering of the princes would drive me to blows within a year and plunge the land into civil war.”

His tone had brightened, and Guendivar laughed.

“Surely the Lady of the Lake will make the king well again, and I will be spared the temptation,” he said then. “She is a wise woman. And she has agreed to take my daughter as one of her maidens here.”

“Your daughter! I did not know you had a child,” exclaimed Guendivar.

“Until last year, I did not know it either,” Gualchmai answered ruefully. “I got her on a woman of the little dark folk of the hills, one time I was out hunting and my pony went lame when I was yet far from home. She is as wild as a doe, but her hair is the same color as my own, and her mother died this past winter, so I must find her a home.”

“What is she called?” asked the queen, finding it as hard to imagine Gualchmai a father as he did himself.

“Ninive—”

So Morgause is a grandmother! Does she know?
wondered Guendivar, but she did not voice that thought aloud.

“Igierne will understand how to tame her,” said Gualchmai. He stooped to pick up a spray of chestnuts brought down by the wind, and stripped off the prickly rind and the leathery shell before offering one to the queen. The nut inside was moist and sweet. “And she will make Artor well.”

“She will,” Guendivar echoed his affirmation. “His fever has been down for two days now, and they tell me that the wound is beginning to heal.”

No man had ever entered the cave of the Cauldron, but in the dell below it, a basin had been hollowed out of the stone foundations of the island which could be filled with water for baths of purification or healing, and here, when there was great need, a man could come. It was large enough for several women to sit together or for a grown man to lie. Here, at dusk when the new moon was first visible in the evening sky, they brought Artor to complete his healing.

The Lady of the Lake sat on a bench at the head of the pool. It was set into the niche where the image of the Goddess had stood since the first priestesses came to the island. Or perhaps before—the image was fashioned from lead, bare-breasted above a bell-shaped skirt, in a style that had been ancient when the Romans came. A terra-cotta lamp cast a wavering light on the image. To Igierne, it seemed that She was smiling.