Warriors of Ethandun (3 page)

‘He was older – middle-aged. I couldn't see his face. He was wearing a helmet.'

‘A motorcycle helmet?'

‘I don't know what to call it.' That was true – she only knew its Celtic or Roman name; she did not know what the word was in English.

‘Dan wasn't there when he attacked me. He ran to get me when he realised what was going on.'

‘And what happened to this middle-aged men with a helmet?'

Ursula thought she might have killed him, but she couldn't be sure. It was hard to keep track of events when in a battle and she had been struggling to stay conscious at the time. She'd killed Medraut, but she was not certain that it was Medraut who had nearly killed her. She cleared
her throat. ‘I don't know. I think I passed out. Dan will tell you.'

The two policemen exchanged a look and Ursula found herself wondering what exactly Dan had told them. She had to trust that it wasn't the truth.

Dan looked at Taliesin in horror – he could not say that kind of thing in a police station. Dan glanced at his father, still jiggling his crossed leg, and the officer – his name was Inspector Frith – still staring at him with a look of bored indifference. They didn't appear to have heard.

‘It's OK, Dan – they can't hear us. I've worked a simple charm.' Taliesin grinned, showing newly even white teeth. ‘I thought I'd rescue you. This is no place for a hero.' Taliesin – bard, wizard and former adviser to kings – waved a bony arm and Dan and he were suddenly elsewhere. It took a moment for Dan to recognise that they were standing back in the field near Hastings from where they'd come. The sky was grey with unshed rain and a bitter wind ruffled Dan's hair and he shivered in his thin T-shirt; it was good to be out of that stinking room.

‘So?' Taliesin said.

‘So? Very clever, Taliesin. Thanks. I'm happy for you that you've got your magic back, but I can't just disappear – I'll be in even more trouble and I'm in enough already.
This is my world, Taliesin – it doesn't work like that.' Dan softened his words by forcing a smile. He doubted that it would fool his old friend.

‘Magic isn't the answer,' he added and folded his arms, which were now covered in goose pimples.

‘It is true that magic has been well buried here.' Taliesin sighed. He was no more suitably dressed than Dan and his nose was already beginning to redden with the cold. Dan put his hand on Taliesin's shoulder and squeezed it. ‘It's not that I'm not grateful, Taliesin, and I didn't mean to sound so graceless, it's just –'

‘How can you live here, Dan? All the earth is covered in concrete and the bits that aren't are fenced off and hedged around. The air stinks and the water is fouled and the magic is so locked away. This is no place for a man and especially not a man like you. They can't imprison you.'

Dan took a deep breath of the tainted air. It smelled better than the police station but Taliesin was used to the air of an unpolluted past. ‘I understand what you're saying, Taliesin, but this is my home. My family is here. The police will have to let me go. Ursula is alive and she'll tell them I didn't attack her. There is no real case against me. It might take a few days, but then I'll go back to school.'

Taliesin snorted in derision. He thought literacy weakened a man. It was a Celtic thing. Taliesin had learned all the lore he knew by heart, for a man's memory was his secret stronghold and the written word was only for the weak and the foolish, for men who could not keep their
mysteries. ‘And what will you learn in school, Dan? You know about war and power and the hidden secrets of men's hearts. What more have you to learn?'

Dan refrained from explaining about GCSEs: he did not think it would help.

‘Taliesin, I am grateful for what you are trying to do, I really am, but I have to face this … misunderstanding and then get on with my real life. This is where I belong.'

Taliesin shrugged thin shoulders: ‘What if Ursula wanted to go back to Macsen's world. Would you go then?'

Dan thought about his life with the Celts, about how he had been welcomed among the warriors as a brother, as a son, as one of their own, and he felt a poignant sense of loss. ‘Ursula won't want to go back – she belongs here too.'

‘You think that Ursula will not miss magic? You've only known a little of it, Dan. What she had back then, in Macsen's world – that wild power in her veins …' He shook his head. ‘I don't think you appreciate how much Ursula will miss it – the way magic sings in your blood …'

Taliesin was wrong. Dan did know about that, had felt it for himself when he'd touched Ursula's mind. But none of that mattered. They belonged to their own century, their own world, and that was all there was to it. Taliesin's expression told Dan that he'd understood.

‘All right. I'm not a fool. I know obduracy when I see it. I have two things for you. Here is your sword.' Taliesin held out his hand and suddenly Bright Killer was in his fist, as if he were some kind of common or garden
conjuror. Dan's hand ached to hold it – the sword that made him complete – but he wouldn't let himself stretch out his hand to take it too eagerly. Taliesin would see that as evidence that he longed to be a warrior again and that wasn't true. He kept his sword arm down by his side until Taliesin held it out to him hilt first. When he slipped his right hand round the hilt, Combrogi fashion, the sword fitted him like a glove – it had moulded to the shape of his hand when Ursula, worrying about his safety, had lent him her magical strength and overdone it. He smiled at the memory. So? He still liked to hold a sword. That meant nothing. ‘I thought that you might have need of this one day.' Taliesin opened his left hand to reveal a crystal ball. It was the kind of thing Dan thought you might see in a fairground tarot-reader's tent. ‘If you want to go back to Macsen's world, rub it and the Veil will open.'

‘Where did you get that?' Dan thought Taliesin had to be joking.

‘Your yesterday happened three years ago for me. A lot has happened to me since I stumbled through the Veil with you and Ursula. There are places where movement through worlds is more routine. They have learned not to depend too much on their own power. It can be used many times. Oh, and don't worry about Braveheart. He is still safe and if you want to see him again you will find him through the Veil.'

Dan nodded. The Veil allowed a person to skip forward and backwards through time in ways that made his head spin. He still found it hard to understand but he no longer
found it unbelievable. The wind was making his eyes water.

‘It is good to see you again whether it is after a day or after three years,' Dan said, speaking in the formal language of Arturus's court. It was Taliesin's turn to smile.

‘Oh Dan, you are too good for this world – a warrior and a courtier! What will you do shut up in a school without the wind in your hair, without Braveheart at your side, Bright Killer in your hand and an army at your back?'

‘I'll just have to cope, Taliesin, and it will be the harder without you. Where will you go next?'

‘I will go to visit Ursula. I do not think it will take much to make her seek out magic again.'

‘That's cruel, Taliesin. Her place is here. You shouldn't try to take her away. She nearly died in Camlann. She is sixteen and she nearly died. Let her be.'

Dan could not bear the thought of Ursula entering the Veil without him – if she left he'd leave too and Taliesin knew it.

‘You cannot fight her nature for her, Dan. Ursula is “addicted” to magic. Is that not what your world would call it?'

She had managed without it in Arturus's world when only her warrior's strength had been magical, but Dan said nothing. Taliesin was right.

‘It's time I went, Dan. I believe you will see me again, but whether I will see you is another matter.'

They embraced like brothers, like warriors, and Dan found that his eyes were streaming and it was not just from the rawness of the wind.

‘I need to go back to the station, Taliesin, and I cannot take these gifts with me.'

Taliesin waved his arm and the sword and ball disappeared. ‘You will find them again when you need them,' he said cryptically. ‘Dan, what if I send you back and they find you guilty? What then? Promise me you will raise the Veil if that happens – that you will not rot away in a jail somewhere because you think you should.'

‘They won't find me guilty,' Dan said with more confidence than he felt. ‘Give Ursula my … my best wishes.'

‘Oh Dan! What has happened to you? Has this world leached away all your passion? You send Ursula best wishes? You send Boar Skull, the Lady Ursa, the woman you would die for, best wishes? I do not understand this place you call home. It has no soul and it robs true men of theirs. I have to go now, but please, I beg you as an old man with a measure of wisdom, do not turn your back on your true nature. Goodbye, Dan.'

Taliesin stepped away and waved his hand in farewell, and Dan found himself back beside his father and his hyperactive legs, as if he had never been away. There was still some expert sitting beside Inspector Frith, but it was no longer the charismatic Professor Merlin, just a plump woman with a bad haircut and an apologetic smile. It was all very well for Taliesin to talk about Dan's true nature, but his true nature was that of a killer – a ruthless, blood-crazed, merciless killer – and he had to turn his back on that; he had no choice.

Ursula was startled awake by a man's voice calling her name. At first she thought it was Dan's voice, then King Macsen's, but when she opened her eyes she saw it was Taliesin.

He was looking exceptionally neat in a white coat, with a stethoscope draped artistically round his neck. He looked quite different from the last time she'd seen him, but she would have recognised him anywhere.

‘Lady Ursa! Living and breathing and more lovely than ever!'

Ursula knew that she was blushing. Taliesin had always had the measure of her.

‘Taliesin! I didn't expect to see you. How did I get here?' It was good to see him – if a little confusing.

‘Dan saved you and I brought you back to this world – with a little help from Rhonwen. Perhaps you also do not remember that? In the end she acknowledged you as brave enough even for the Combrogi. She called you a hero. For her you were the better part of King Arturus, and our Princess Rhonwen of the lineage of druids and
kings is not easily impressed. She is right, Ursula. I will never forget the way you led that cavalry charge – your courage! You made my Combrogi heart sing with pride, girl, and Rhonwen's too. She stayed behind to tell your story.'

Ursula could not hide her surprise. It was Rhonwen, the Celtic princess, sorceress, then Aenglisc priestess, who had first brought them through the Veil and who had been Ursula's enemy from the moment she had first laid eyes on her. Ursula considered this news for a moment. Her last meeting with Rhonwen had not been such a happy one.

‘Camlann changed her, I think,' Ursula said softly, ‘and the magic – the magic changes everything.' She tried not to sound too wistful. ‘So. Here I am, home at last!' she said brightly. ‘What do you think of it, Taliesin? What do you think of the wonders of the twenty-first century?'

Taliesin wrinkled his prominent nose and waved an expressive hand. ‘I could not stay here for all the gold of the gods. It is a terrible place, but I am leaving soon. The question is, what do
you
think of it now that you're home at last?'

Ursula manufactured a smile. ‘I am very happy to be back,' she said with more firmness than she had intended.

Taliesin grinned. ‘I am glad, though I cannot with all the wit in me understand why you would stay here, hemmed in like this, when you could be a princess, if not a goddess, in Macsen's land – and indeed in other lands that I have seen in which your gifts and your beauty would be received with joy and gratitude. I do not understand
why you would stay here in a world without magic.'

At least where there was no magic there could be no terrible sense of loss. Ursula almost said as much, but then the truth struck her.

‘But you have magic here,' she said, and she knew he had. It was not the greatest kind, but it was strong enough to call the Veil and to do other things – quite a lot of other things. She could smell the magic on him and it made her heart beat faster and her palms sweat as if she were having some kind of panic attack. She had never known that there was real magic on her own earth before. She had never felt the slightest hint of it before she went through the Veil. The realisation that magic existed even in her own technological, modern world stunned her into silence.

‘Come with me, Ursula. You are well now and I can fix the bits of you that aren't. Come with me to a place more worthy of you. Why don't you come back and see King Macsen? I know you would find the warmest of receptions.'

Thinking of Macsen did nothing to calm her. Long ago he had offered to marry her. She had known herself a child then, but now?

‘Taliesin, please stop.'

‘I am doing nothing.' Taliesin's expression was all outraged innocence.

‘You are using magic and you are doing it on purpose to sway me.' She could feel it crackle in the air, feel it raise the hairs on her arms and neck, taste it on the tip of her tongue, and yet she could not wield it, she could not get
inside it, let it possess her, let it fill her with its intoxicating power.

‘What magic am I doing?' Taliesin asked, affronted.

Ursula shut her eyes and saw the golden threads of power working in her, healing her, strengthening her broken bones, repairing damage more swiftly than nature intended, giving her back the incredible strength that had all but ebbed away.

‘Please, Taliesin. Stop. You know exactly how it makes me feel.' He did too. She saw that in the hint of cruelty in his smile – that look in his eyes. He was her friend, but he had something of the druid in him and his motivations were not always the purest. He had been locked out of magic in the past and Ursula knew that he was aware of exactly what he was doing to her. It made her obstinate. She did not like to be manipulated.