For Camelot's Honor (37 page)

Stop,
she told herself harshly.
If you become so distracted so soon, what will you be when the work begins?

She forced herself to sit and eat and drink well. She needed strength and solidity for there was no telling how long she would be gone on her errand.

At last, she rose. She left the remains of her meal for the servants and without any word, she left the hall. Meg trailed along in silence, her hands neatly folded over her apron, waiting to be given an order.

Or carrying them out already. Elen stopped in front of her door. “I would be alone for a time, Meg.”

“Please, my lady.” Meg's hands knotted into her apron. “His Majesty told me I was to stay with you while he was gone. He was most clear. You were not to be left alone. He will be angry …” she stopped.

Am I not supposed to know how much the king can see?
Elen looked at Meg with sympathy and wondered how long the woman had served in this place.

“Where do you come from, Meg?” she asked.

The question startled the older woman. She bit her lip and twisted her hands in her apron. “From here, my lady. This is my home.” Despite this, all about her told Elen how much she longed to give some other answer.

“Is it?”
Come, sister. I know your tongue as you know mine. You too played on the banks of the Usk as a child.

“Please, Lady.” There was a tremor in her voice. “This is my home.”

“I understand.”
Forgive me for frightening you.
“I ask you to understand. Your king has told me my husband is the kindred of my enemy. I am faint with the news and broken in soul and spirit. I need to be alone for a time.”

Her eyes flickered back and forth, making the kind of calculations the fearful make, but she clearly did not want to be with this lady who asked dangerous questions and might walk one into a trap of words for the king to find.

“I do understand,” Meg murmured to the floor, and she made her curtsey. “I will be in the great hall. I will go no further.”
Was that to me or to him?
Elen wondered.

“That will be good.” Elen nodded solemnly. She went into her room and she waited, listening, until she no longer heard the tread of Meg's sandals on the stone.

Mother Don, she is your daughter too. Watch over her,
she prayed.
And if I fail, please, do not let it fall more heavily on her.

If I fail …
The thought echoed in Elen's mind.
No. Move. Do not give yourself time to think that again.

Some servant had been in the room while she was gone. The bed was fresh made, the clothes tidied and the brazier lit to add its little bit of light and warmth to the sunlight that trickled through the high window. Elen fed the flames well, making the fire fat and bright. Then, as she had done the night before, she wrapped her hand in the cloth of her sleeve and lifted the brazier up.

She left the door open behind her. She cast back one regretful glance at the empty perch. She was already cold, and she felt the hollow within her as clearly as she felt the pain in her wrist and her throat. Then, she turned and faced the darkened corridor in front of her. All the torches and rushlights were at her back. No one brought light to this deeper way.

Come then,
she thought grimly.
All those who have been set to follow me. Let us see where we may go.

Elen plunged into the shadows and silently, they closed around her, swallowing all sign of the other, stronger lights she left behind. She did not dare move slowly. She did not want to give the half-formed fears inside her time to freeze into proper forms. She kept the brazier and her gaze ahead of her, only glancing at the paintings when she needed to be sure they followed the pattern she knew, the plentiful fields, the monsters, the phantoms hidden behind their shrouds of dirt and age.

And always the doors, the closed doors. What would the deepest parts of this place be without the king above them? What roamed free without his hand to keep all the doors closed? Elen wished she had not sent Calonnau away. She felt light headed. Her feet sounded loud against the stones, and she stumbled again and again against the edges that time had tipped up or crumbled away. The cloth of her dress itched at her and rested too heavily against skin. The shadows were thick enough to breathe out fear all around her, and yet the brazier's light hurt her eyes. Her nose and mouth filled with the scents of earth, of mould and loam and less wholesome things. Stones pressed against her on either side and weighed down the world over her head.

It is only fear,
she told herself.
I have been through so much before. It is only fear.

Movement flickered in the corner of her eye.
It is the light.
But she could not stop her eye from glancing in its direction.

The painting moved.

Elen froze in an instant, her throat clamped tight around her breath. At her right hand, the wall was black with grime and spotted with mould. Beneath this curtain of filth, the blurs of color and strong black lines shifted and rippled as if they were alive. The leeched slowly through the grime, as if pressing through a forest's shadows, and became clear.

They showed her a race of people in a hundred forms. They changed to birds and soared through the sky. They changed to fish to swim in the seas, even to the roses that climbed the walls or the stones atop the hills. They sported and rejoiced in their many shapes, and the sun shone down in blessing. In the middle of them stood a man and a woman. Both had bands of gold on their heads. They clasped their hands and raised them high. In her free hand, the woman held a great, curving ram's horn and from the horn flowed a wealth of food, an ocean of milk and golden honey.

This painting was still and placid. The only sign that it had not always been was the shining newness of the colors.

Ahead, something else was moving, and something beyond that. More paintings, shifting and changing, becoming a tale for her witness. Shadows and the stones crowded close around her as she moved from one to the other.

She next saw Gwiffert. He was easy to know from the spear, the golden hair and the blue eyes. He stood before the man. He was young in this rendering, his face full of mischief. He pointed the spear at the sky. The man and the woman were grinning in return. A game, a bet was being proposed.

The images grew crowded. The man, the king of these wild, enchanted people, assumed many shapes; a stallion, an ox, a bear, a fish, a butterfly, a golden ram. For each shape, Gwiffert took a different one — a rider with a bridle where the king was a stallion, a raging bull where he was an ox, a bear where he was a fish, a hunter where he was a wolf. But it seemed Gwiffert began to tire and his forms grew smaller — a cow, a dog, a quail, and at last, a sprig of wheat, and so the other man became a mouse to snatch up the wheat.

And Gwiffert was Gwiffert again, and he stabbed the tip of the spear against the mouse's neck, trapping him against the ground, and all the wild ones cringed back and shielded their faces from this horror. The queen of them all threw herself at Gwiffert's feet, pleading for her husband's life.

Now, where there had been the freedom and wonder of a thousand forms, there were only small brown mice with small white hands, and the Little King standing over them all. Their king knelt at Gwiffert's feet beside his queen, his head bowed, his tears spilling out on the ground.

As she watched, the dirt crept over the bright colors, hiding them away, turning the mural again to glimpses of color overhung by shadows. Elen was breathing hard as if she had just run up a mountainside, but it was taking all her strength just to stand still.

Ahead, a door swung open. Elen made herself turn so that none who watched would see her paralysed by her fear. For she was watched. The door showed the cool room with its great ewers as she had seen it before, but this time no weeping greeted her. Instead, crouched between the white clay vessels were a host of people. Their hair was long and brown, and tousled as if from a harsh wind. Around their feet and between their fingers scampered the mice with their little white hands. Elen's stomach roiled at the sight. Their eyes were round and black, and within them was all the wildness, all the hunger, she had ever seen in the hawk's eyes. She had thought herself ready, but she had not imagined all these black eyes watching her, nor for the mix of animal hunger and human hate that shone so brightly.

With them stood the woman, great with child, her red jug clutched against her side. Beside her, a tall, slender man leaned against the wall. He too was black-eyed and long-faced, making him appear kin to all the others crouching around him.

“So,” he said, pushing himself away from the wall. “Murderess. You are come to us at last.”

“I have done no murder.”

One corner of the man's mouth turned up in a vicious smile. “But you have. Your hawk killed one of my people. His name was Gwrm. His widow mourns him even now. His children clamor for their revenge.”

Which are they?
Elen's gaze darted around all the crouching people. They looked so much alike in the half-light from her sputtering brazier. She could make out no difference in countenance between them. Even their dress — their long brown tunics belted with twisted grey ropes conspired to disguise male and female. “It was done in ignorance. Had I known who you were, I would never have permitted such a hunt.”

“Nonetheless, it was done,” said the king.

Remember who you are. Remember why you came.
She should not have sent Calonnau away. She could not find root or center. She could barely hold her thoughts in order. “I owe you bloodprice for this.”

“You do,” agreed the mouse king, his eyes round narrowing. “What price will you pay?”

For a moment the fear rushed through Elen that she would be overheard.
It is too late. You are already a traitor to the king here. Tell him.
“The life of your enemy.”

The man sneered. “You do not have it.”

“But I will.”

He laughed, a sound bitter as poison. Around him, his black-eyed kindred smiled grimly. Elen saw the gleam of white teeth as their lips curled back.

“Why do you come here?” Her questioner flung out his arms. “This is not the place he made for you. This is our prison.” He touched the woman's hand, and then the shoulder of a man who crouched before him.

Hold yourself straight. Remember who you are. You come as lady, as chief, as ally.
“I came seeking help.”

He shook his head. “There is no help for any of us here.”

“Then we must help each other.”

A mouse ran across Elen's foot. She felt the tiny claws and fingers scrabbling at her skin and she flinched. The mouse king smiled. “Must we?”

“If it is the only way to freedom, yes.”
Listen to me.
Elen's fingers curled up at her sides. The mice chittered and scrabbled.
Listen to me! There is a way out for us all.

“Freedom?” He frowned, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling and tapping his chin. “What a curious word. I think I heard it once years ago. What does it mean?”

Carefully, Elen set the brazier down on one of the few lidded ewers. Her hands had begun to perspire, the sweat prickling against her palms. An urgency that she could not fully name was building in the back of her mind. “I can bring him down.”

“No, you cannot. He is older than your nightmares and stronger than your Mother Don.”

“But he can be fought.” She pressed her hands against her sides. Hands, not claws, not talons. The air was harsh against her skin, like rough cloth. Its touch distracted her. “The Great King would not be if he could not.”

The mouse king laughed again, once, hard and sharp as flint. “You know nothing. You do not know the lives it cost to hide the child after its birth so the Little King would not learn its name. Villages died for it. The mother who bore him could not kill herself fast enough and was kept in her starvation for seven years before she was permitted to enter the grave, and her mouth was stopped with earth because she would not speak. You do not know how many paid to find him the secret that hid his hall from King Gwiffert's eyes. Oh yes, he is a great warrior for all us imprisoned and cowed, and perhaps he would have triumphed, but for you and your man.”

Elen closed her eyes, cut deep by the justice of the words. She wanted to be still for a moment. She needed to be still. She needed not to be seen, to be only a shadow on a cloud. “Perhaps,” was all she could make herself say.

“Oh? Is there a plan little one? Come.” She heard movement and her eyes flew open. The mouse-king had crooked his finger and he beckoned her, “Whisper your plan to the king of mice, and let me take it to my master. He will be well pleased with us both then, and perhaps your suffering will be shorter for coming to your senses.”

“You're … you …” Red haze blurred the edge of her vision.
You are the spy. You are the one who told him what we said.

“What's the matter little girl?” The mouse-king leaned forward, resting his hands on an ewer's open mouth in mockery of her own stance. “Is something lost? Something gone from you that you could ill afford to leave behind?” The crouching people laughed. They shifted their weight on their feet. Were they armed? There were so many of them, did they need to be?

The mice scurried everywhere, climbing over their fellows. She could reach out and pluck up any of them, snatch them up as they ran for shelter. She could do it this instant, break their bones, tear their skin.

To her utter horror, Elen realized what the urgency within her was. It was hunger.

“You do not need to do this.” She felt her tongue pressing against her teeth. She felt the sharp nails at the ends of her fingers.

“Oh, but I do.” He drew the last word out, so that she felt it against her skin, as she felt the Little King when he spoke nearby, as she felt the brush of the fetid air and the sounds of the mice. “I have been so ordered by our king.”

She saw the mice, the sneaking, creeping, chittering vermin all around her. Anger and hunger mixed together in her, pressing the breath from her body and the reason from her mind.

“He is not my king,” said Elen through her clenched teeth.
Hold fast. I must hold fast.

“He is king of us all.” Elen started. It was not the mouse-king who uttered those soft words, but his wife beside him, her milk jug clutched against her side.

“No.”
This much I know. This much is sure.

“But you are not sure,” said the mouse king, as if she had spoken the thought aloud. “You are weak here. You know you are.”

“Stop.”
Let me think. Let me find myself in this again. There's too much stone and I need air. I need the sky. I need the warmth and the cool and to hunt. I am so hungry …

“Why?” He spread his hands again. “I am a liar, a thief and a spy. Why fear the words of such as me? Down here in the dark between the stones. What could you have to fear in this place save for the stones?”

He stalked toward her, moving with the lithe grace of a wild thing. Around her the brown people watched with their black eyes, staring, hungry, waiting. Behind her, she heard the squeals of the mice, sharp and piercing, creeping shadow-dwellers, waiting, always waiting for the thing that was left alone, waiting to snatch it up, to bite it through, to run away and bury it in the darkness between the stones, to never let in the light of day again, to gnaw and crack and nibble at it until there was nothing left at all.

“We are so many,” whispered one voice.

“Hush. There is enough for all.”

They would do this if she did not strike. Strike, break, tear, feed.

She lunged. She could not have stopped herself any more than she could have turned the tide. Arms outstretched, fingers curled into claws, she lunged for the mouse king, crashing through the ewers, heedless of anything but her prey before her.

He dissolved, melting away until there were only mice around her, filthy, skittering mice everywhere, moving too fast for her clumsy body, her useless hands. She screamed in frustration as they swarmed around her, quick as insects, never there no matter how fast she charged and lunged. They laughed, they laughed at their game, and they would turn soon and attack and she must strike. She was so hungry. She must strike.

Her hand came down on fur and living warmth and something squirmed and squealed against her palm. Elen screamed in her delight and snatched the creature up. The little brown mouse bulged about its hips and belly. It was great with child, and that had slowed it down, made it clumsy, made it prey.

Elen grinned, barely aware that the mouse-king was before her again. All her attention was on the thing in her hands.

“Please,” he said hoarsely. “Don't hurt her.”

But she wanted the little thing dead. She wanted this squirming, unnatural creature with its monstrous young wrapped tight within it dead. Its heart beat faster than a bird's in flight. Why did such a thing have heart and mind when she had none? Why did such a thing have life and love when she was lost in worlds within worlds within worlds so far away not even the gods and the dead could hear her?

“Whatever you want you will have. Please.”

The beat of its heart fluttered against her thumb, spurring the pain of her madness with desire for that beating to fill her. The other mice milled around, chittering frantically. They clawed at her skirt, they scrabbled at her feet. She didn't care. She would tear the thing apart with her teeth. She would rip out that beating heart and swallow it whole for her hunger.

And she thought of the Grey Men and their horses devouring the green wheat.

And she thought of the first babe she ever delivered, warm and red and wriggling already struggling to reach its mother.

And she thought of Geraint's eyes as he spoke of madness, and how it swallowed the good man who was his father whole.

And she thought of the Grey Man, the one they had ordered to lead them to this cursed, cursed place and how the hills had echoed with his laughter.
You are his. You are his.

No,
said a voice hard and stern within her. She did not recognise it at first, and then, a long, slow moment later, she knew it to be her own.
No. Any doom but that one.
She bared her teeth.
Gwiffert, I deny you. I refuse you.

But she could not make her hand open. It trembled independent of her will. Her hand and her body both starved, starved for food, starved for vengeance and her fingers were strong, strong enough to crush the little thing she held, to stop the vile, unfair beating of its tiny, tremulous heart.

“Take her,” whispered Elen. “Take her, quick.”

The man, the mouse-groom, snatched his wife from her hand. As soon as the heartbeat was gone from her touch, Elen collapsed to the floor, curling around the pain that filled her hollowness. It was eating her from inside out. The darkness was smothering her. She squeezed her eyes shut and she was alone in the blackness, cold, a corpse who had yet to lie still, already dead and buried down here. The stones of the floor cut and scraped her, and there was no rest, no respite. She was dying. She was already dead. She must die, and all the last sane thoughts were swallowed up by the pain and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt …

Hands caught her and their touch grated against her skin, and the heartbeats they brought smothered her. They prised at her jaws and she screamed. The hearts and the heat pounded at her with a force like cudgels falling.

And then, something cool poured down her throat. She choked and spat, and swallowed. It was rich, it was sweet, it went straight to the ravening pain inside her and stilled it. She swallowed gulp after gulp of it and never had anything tasted so good. This was the food of the gods. This was the first and last blessing. She drank and drank, blind as a newborn babe. For it was milk, she realized, full of cream and tangy from its meadow freshness of it.

She did not know how long she drank. She only knew that the pain eased and ebbed, and though the hearts beat too near and too strong, but the sensation of their pounding became bearable.

Gradually, she was able to put up one shaking hand and pull away from the vessel.

The mouse-groom towered over her, but in front of her knelt the woman. Her brown hair fell almost to her feet. Her belly beneath her brown dress was high and round.
Not yet dropped,
thought Elen's midwife mind automatically.
But will soon.

It was her jar Elen had been drinking from. She held it in both hands. Liquid white filmed its rim, and yet more foamed inside. Where did it all come from? Where were the cows that replenished that vessel? Elen did not riddle on that. Madness still nibbled at the back of her mind. It would come fast, like a summer flood if she provoked it.

Now that she could see again, she could see that the mouse-king was gaping at his bride. His people were around him, men and women once more, all of them hanging back as far as the room would allow. The ewers were tipped on their sides, some cracked in two like eggs, lakes of white milk puddled between the uneven stones, and the two, king and queen, god and goddess maybe, before Gwiffert imprisoned them here, stood in the middle of this domestic chaos and stared at each other.

“Why would you do this?” he demanded. “She is his thing.”

“No, she is not,” replied the woman. “If she were his, she would never have touched me. For if I am dead and our child is dead, what hold will he have over you?”

The mouse king stared at her and she met his gaze with her own cool stare in reply. “I know what I am, my husband. I have thought many times of taking my life to free you.” She turned on her heels to face Elen. “What do you need from us?”

“Your pitcher,” Elen whispered, panting. She had to breathe, breathe, breathe, just to remind herself that there was air enough, that she was not smothering under stones and madness. She was a mess of sweat and spittle and milk. Her dress was soaked. Her hair hung lank and sticky on either side of her face. None of that mattered. All that mattered was that she keep hold of her thoughts, that she keep breathing, despite the cold, despite everything.

“It is our last blessing,” said the mouse goddess. “It is what keeps him amused with us, that we fill his storehouses with the milk that once fed our children. It allows him to force us into the fields of those who have even less than we to steal their grain when they've displeased him. What will you do with it?

“I will call the smith.”

The mouse king laughed, high and sharp. “You may not be his, but you are a fool. You cannot call the smith. None can, save the king.”