Dawn of Avalon (2 page)

The aging druid who had stood beside Vortigern opened his mouth as though to speak at that, then glanced at the boy and shut it again. He was a stoop-shouldered old man with gnarled hands and a whipcord frame beneath the white druid’s robe and bull’s-hide cloak. His face looked like something carved in wood: rigid and weathered, one eye blinded by the scar that ran down from under his hair nearly to the corner of his mouth.

The prisoner remembered him coming in daily, as well. At least for as long as he could recall.

Vortigern’s eyes darted, snake-like, from the druid to the prisoner and back again. “Are you sure the boy knows his craft?”

“Know his craft? Oh, aye, I think—” The druid stopped, drew in his breath and said, in a flatter tone, “The … boy knows the healing arts well enough.”

“Good.” Vortigern’s eyes were stone-cold, floating empty in the narrow face. “I would not want him to die. At least, not until he has given me the answers I require of him.”

The boy had started to spread some sort of vile ointment on the throbbing, crusted burns on the prisoner’s arms. He glanced down to where the boy was working, feeling the vague surprise he felt every time he looked down at the length of his body. Lean and hard-muscled beneath shirt and breeches that were little more than rags.

The boy was telling a story. Something about dragons beneath the soil. He remembered him telling stories before, as well.

The prisoner let his mind drift above the pain, the black pounding in his skull, the fiery stab of his ribs.

This time, though, something reared up, hungry and dark on the edge of his mind, blotting out the words of the tale. 

Swords clash. My hand slips on the hilt of my sword. Men choke and die. I must—I must—

The prisoner clenched his teeth. Raised himself on one elbow and looked up at Vortigern. “I hope you enjoy failure, then.”

Vortigern’s kick took him in the gut, jarring what felt like cracked ribs. The many-toothed wave of pain swelled to claim him again as the prisoner’s stomach spasmed, trying to wring out every last drop of the cup of water they’d allowed him today.

Whether he actually was—or had been—a man to hold up to torture, he had no idea. It didn’t matter now. His world had narrowed down to three truths, three hard lumps of certainty here in this filthy prison cell:

He was a prisoner in this place.

He had to ensure he died here.

And Vortigern himself would be dead before the moon had waxed and waned another eight times. 

T
HE RAYS of the rising sun stained the heaps of broken building stones to crimson orange. As though Lugh, the sun god, cried rusty tears, or the earth of Britain itself leaked blood from a hundred wounds.

Gnarled and bent in his bull’s-hide cloak and white robe, the old druid raised his hands towards the fiery horizon. The sun glinted in his sightless eye. “Britain lies besieged on all sides. The Picts to the north, the Irish sea raiders from the west. Now you, my lord, are betrayed by your Saxon allies, who gobble our lands in the east like a horde of rabid wolves and leave a trail of broken bodies and blood-soaked fields in their wake.

“You seek refuge in these hills, this stronghold of the Old Ones. But I say to you that your tower walls will never stand until they are watered by the blood of a fatherless child.”

If this were a fire tale, I might begin it that way. And mayhap it did happen just as I have imagined it, I do not know.

The harpers who sing of Glass Isles and faerie-forged swords would say that the weaving of this tale began when the Roman legions had trampled over Britain’s holy springs and sacred groves, driving our gods from the land.

They would speak of a great darkness sweeping like a flock of ravens over Britain’s kingdoms. And say the days in which we now lived were just the lightest feathered tip of the first bird’s wings.

Mayhap Bron did give the prophesy to Vortigern just as I’ve told, against the fiery backdrop of the rising sun; he had to utter it somehow and somewhere and in a way that would sway Vortigern and his warriors into believing the words.

But I never saw.

My part in the story began afterwards, helping a wounded and captive man vomit onto the straw covered floor. 

“The shriek you hear is caused by the clash of two fighting dragons,” I whispered through clenched teeth. “And every eve of Beltaine, they scream in pain and hurt.”

There are those who claim me naught but a king’s by-blow gotten on a whore; many more who say it is from thence my bad blood springs. But I may tell you that my mother was of the blood royal in her own land, and wedded to my father by earth, fire, and air before he had her killed.

Even Gamma, who took me in and taught me from the time I was four, was wont to say that I had a temper like a storm in summer. But I promise you that before that day, I had never had to clench my teeth to keep from smashing something when telling the story of
Lludd
and
Llefelys
and how they captured the two warring dragons who plagued Britain.

The prisoner heaved and retched again. I tightened my hand on the fold of rag I held, watching the knuckles whiten beneath the skin, even as I braced his shoulders with my free arm.

He was a young man, perhaps twenty, but surely no more, with a fall of disheveled, wheat-colored hair that reached to his broad shoulders.

And he had three ribs cracked, at least. Any of them might pierce a lung if he heaved too violently or curled himself forward too hard.

When he had stopped retching, I wiped his face with a fold of the rag, and he let out an involuntary sigh. But he didn’t move, and he rolled onto his back, his eyes fixed on Vortigern.

Are you sure the boy knows his craft?
Vortigern had just asked of Bron.

I scarcely heard Bron’s answer, either, beyond vague awareness that his voice was stiff without the usual west-country lilt.

“You must dig a large pit, and in that pit, place a large cauldron brim-full of mead.” I shaped the words almost soundlessly with my lips. Dipped the rag into a cup of water to wipe the prisoner’s face again. “The dragons will be seen fighting in the sky, but in their exhaustion they will fall and become drunk on the mead. Then may you imprison them in a stone chamber deep beneath the ground.”

A tale is a lie, and yet not a lie. And a man who hears it may be in pain, and yet not in pain, when caught up in a story where the past breathes and time is an endless curve.

And if my spirit was in those days somewhat soured on the romance of those tales harpers sing, I told them still when working over a man like the one before me now. 

Three days ago, Vortigern’s men had caught him on the edge of the fortress defenses and dragged him in, beaten and captive. Likely a warrior to one of the petty chieftains of Gwynedd, who had opposed Vortigern’s bid for the throne. There surely was no shortage of those.

And Vortigern had crushed them all, before his Saxon allies rose up in revolt. 

Now Vortigern demanded that I keep the prisoner alive long enough that he could be forced into revealing whose man he was, which of the chieftains dared still oppose Vortigern’s reign. 

“None so bad.”

The prisoner was still breathing unsteadily from Vortigern’s kick, and his mouth was torn from a backhanded blow of Vortigern’s fist. A trickle of blood dripped down his chin.

He was not handsome. Even beneath the mottled bruising and the dirt, his features were too sharply-angled and high-browed. But his eyes were beautiful, surely, thickly lashed, and a deep-blue in color, blue as the sea.

Now the sea-blue eyes were implacable and hard and fixed on Vortigern. 

 “None so bad. Though you could use work on the follow-through after a blow. From the shoulder, if you mind what I told you before. But well done, for a king who must seldom dirty his own—”

The words ended in a grunt as Vortigern drove another savage kick into the already cracked ribs. 

Even the half-built walls of Vortigern’s hill fortress seemed to press in around me. Walls of any kind were as yet passing strange to me still, and all the time Bron and I had been here I had felt as though the mere knowledge of the fort’s defensive bounds was enough to peel my nerves raw.

Now my skin felt as though it would split open and the edges of my vision shivered red. Though I managed—just—to keep myself from turning to face Vortigern again.

I had seen hard sights before, the Goddess knew. On the journey here, to Vortigern’s refuge, I had seen a settlement, burned and raided by one of the Saxon war parties that savaged our countryside. My father’s people, or they once had been. Now men, women, and children—even babies—were broken rag dolls, lying in mud.

I had Seen the future Gamma had shown me in the scrying waters before she died. 

Still, it took every last reserve of will to remain where I was, kneeling on the prison cell’s floor. A thin, dark-haired boy of fourteen or fifteen—I could pass for as young as that, dressed as I was.

I had given up on the story, but I spoke those other words silently over in my mind, again and again, like one of Gamma’s charms: a thin, dark-haired, scrawny boy. No threat to any king, however tenuous or unstable his grip on the throne.

Even without turning, I could imagine the flare of Vortigern’s nostrils, the curling and uncurling of his thick-fingered hands. “You know,” he said, “A man can live a considerable time with most of his skin gone. I for one would take great pleasure in peeling off his scabby hide and nailing it to the wall of my fire hall. Who are you? Did Uther send you?”

Vortigern asked that of the prisoner at every turn; I could hear the name now without either flinching or feeling a familiar slow burn of fury. 

Uther, called the Pendragon by his warriors. He it was who had driven the usurper of Britain’s high kingship back into this last refuge, high in the hills of Gwynedd. Uther Pendragon, who besieged Vortigern’s forces now and kept him penned like a wounded bear in a cage, within the stronghold he struggled to build on this ancient hill fort of Dinas Ffareon.

I had sat this way, in this same filthy prison cell, through seven interrogation sessions, now. Had watched as Vortigern kicked the prisoner savagely, or burned him with a glowing brand. The prisoner’s response never varied: he would give Vortigern a blank-faced, dead-eyed look from those sea-blue eyes and spill out answers that were merely a goad. Gadfly bites at Vortigern’s wrath. As though he were trying to provoke Vortigern into hurting him more.

Only towards the very end of the sessions, when he was hurt nearly to unconsciousness, would the nameless prisoner gasp out an exhausted,
I don’t remember. I don’t know.

Now: “All right.” The prisoner still fought to draw breath, but the expression in his eyes hadn’t changed. “I will tell you. I am oath-sworn to the boy, here.” He jerked his head at me. “He is the one whose coming the druids have prophesied. Son of Uther the Pendragon, who shall come from the West, bearing the faerie-forged sword. I am sorry, lad.”—he turned to look at me with an exaggerated, sorrowful leer—“I gave it my best try, but I—”

I did not for a moment imagine that he had intended Vortigern to believe his claim. He had over-acted the speech so badly that even a two-year-old child would have seen through the lie. It was merely another goad, another lash to Vortigern’s fury.

But this was Vortigern, who had ceded great swaths of the eastern short to the Saxon brothers Horsa and Hengist in exchange for the pledge of their swords. Then had seen his Saxon allies turn on him like rabid dogs and drive him back and back again into the Gwynedd hills where he struggled to build this fortress now. Only to find that his tower walls crumbled every time they rose past the height of a man. As though even the land itself were refusing to support his claim to Britain’s throne.

And Vortigern faced now, too, the rumblings of dissent from his own men, not pleased to serve a king who made over whole kingdoms to the Saxon hordes. Or who could not win at battles with Uther, but fell back and back again.

I had heard the sullen mutters and seen the angry sidelong looks as the warriors worked to drag building stones from where they’d fallen in a tumbled heap. And I had treated many foot soldiers, these last weeks, who came to me with mysterious aches or pains and begged leave to return home to their families for the harvest time.