In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) (23 page)

He shook his head, cutting off her words. “Let there be no talk of debt between us, Risa.”

She felt herself smile. “What talk shall there be then?”

She had meant it as a joke, but his face remained solemn. Carefully, he reached out and touched the line of her jaw. His touch was exceedingly gentle, and the warmth of it went at once to her blood.

“Shall I say it, then? Does my lady permit her servant to speak his heart before her?”

Risa found her mouth had gone dry. Her heart pounded so that she could feel its pulse in her throat. But she nodded. This once, no matter what happened next, this once, she would hear him say what she longed to hear.

“Then let me speak of love, Risa. If I were granted a poet’s tongue I would fashion you a song that would last down the ages and sear the souls of all who heard it. But as I am, I can only speak in the plainest words. I love you. I love your courage and your noble heart. I love your song and story. I love your face and form, and I shall never cease to love the whole of you as long as God may grant me life.”

Risa had no words to answer him. What words could there be? There was no verse, no vow that could be enough for what she felt. Instead, she kissed him. He was startled for a heartbeat, and then returned the kiss, with passion, with longing, with deepest love.

This then was what the poets told of. This was how one knew. One knew because the whole soul sang of it, because even the broken heart rejoiced.

Both an instant and an age passed before they parted. Risa found herself breathless and strangely light, as if she might fly up into the air at any moment. Gawain, however, seemed to become more solid, as if his declaration of love had given him roots much more than wings.

“Come, Risa,” he said, taking her hand. Even that simple gesture now was filled with his warmth. “Let me get you safe away from here to where there are stout walls and strong friends around us.”

But there was one thing. One last thing before she began this journey afresh. “Gawain, do you think … will Queen Guinevere send for my mother if I ask it? She cannot stay in my father’s hall, not with —”

Gawain did not require that she finish. “I am sure that the queen will do so, as soon as she knows the full story. It may be that Merlin himself will ride out to fetch your mother for you.”

“Thank you.”

Gawain’s eyes sparkled as he bowed. Then, sweeping his short Saxon cloak back with a flourish, he knelt on the road and cupped his hands for her step. Risa lifted her nose haughtily to her stepping-stool and permitted him to help her back onto her horse. He stood and bowed humbly, and when he dared to lift his eyes to her again, Risa could no longer keep her countenance and they laughed, long and loud and freely.

When at last their laughter had spent itself, Gawain mounted his riding horse and turned the animal so it faced the way they must travel.

A thought came to Risa. “Your brother will not be pleased.”

But Gawain only smiled. “Agravain will not be pleased when God Almighty raises him from the dust on the last day. It is far more than mortal man can accomplish.”

Side by side they set themselves on the road to Camelot.

Walking the streets of Caer Ludien, Euberacon saw the ruins of greatness on every side. The temple of Mithras crumbled in on itself, the roads were buckled and potholed, even the bridge had begun to list to one side. There were some great houses that still looked habitable, even well-appointed, but most had fallen down, leaving heaps of rubble to be overgrown by encroaching greensward, or shored up by mud and thatch hovels with wicker fences. Some efforts had been made to repair the wall, at least. Even a Saxon could see the need for defense.

The market was still there. It was a sea of mud, and the tiny warehouses looked as if they could barely hold enough cargo for one of the native’s little coracles to carry. But there were ships berthed at the broad river’s edge. Fat valley sheep milled about in their pens. Tall, blooded horses from Andalucia gazed about with scorn. Men sat at rickety tables, examining samples of metals or artisan work, hunched over their cups, speaking the universal language of barter.

He had heard that in the days of the Romans this place had been bustling, its ports crammed with ships come for wool, enamel, tin, silver, lead and slaves. Arthur was working to restore the Briton’s trade, but so far the results had been meager indeed. The Saxon overlord who held this place was both arrogant and greedy. Arthur had flattered and traded, and bribed and bullied, and had some measure of success. At least now his people could walk here unmolested.

The air by the river was somewhat fresher than in the warren of the ruinous city streets, with fewer smoky fires and stinking animals wandering free. Little dark men had set up tables, or just stacked up crockery jugs, to sell the black beer and fiery liquor the Saxons were learning to relish along with their native mead. They squatted in the mud or on chunks of broken stone, trading lies and drinks, growing more raucous and unsteady with each round. There would be fights before long, and the traders would have to look to their tents and their sheep.

In the middle of this display of barbarity was a small island of civility. A clean shaven man with his black hair swept back from a high, intelligent forehead wearing a dark blue cloak surveyed the ruffians over the top of a clay liquor cup. He wore a short sword at his hip, and held himself as if he knew how to use it, but his real protection clearly came from the two square men who flanked him with their axes in their hands and their knives in their belts. He conversed with another man who looked to be from Greece, or perhaps Crete. Both were sun-browned and clean, well-barbered and unafraid. Envy gnawed at Euberacon’s heart as he strode forward.

The man in the blue cloak saw the magus approach and touched his companion’s elbow, saying something softly. He set the liquor cup on the rickety table without any sign of having touched its contents and came forward, his hand outstretched.

“Magister,” he said as they clasped each others arms. “God! How do you bear it here? It’s no wonder the Romans fled this place.”

“I prefer life to death, Quintus,” Euberacon replied blandly. It felt good to speak his native language again. The patterns rolled comfortably off his tongue. “But come, give me the news.”

Quintus looked around him, but the only man who might possibly understand what they spoke of stood over by the Andalucian horses, and he already deep in conversation with their keeper. Even so, Euberacon moved them away from the liquor-sellers to stand by a fragment of brick wall that had somehow remained standing. His body guards followed, repositioning themselves to better keep up their watch. “The news is good. Justinian has ideas about tax collection that have upset many.”

Euberacon snorted. “That is to say he means to collect them.”

“The fog has not entirely dampened your mind,” said Quintus with a nod. “Yes, that’s it exactly and both the Greens and the Blues are making noises that something needs to be done about it.”

The idea of those two parties uniting should have been laughable, but an emperor who actually meant to enforce the tax laws might just drive those rivals together. “Have any of them a plan?”

“Not yet, but they do have a man, or a boy at any rate.”

“Who?”

“Hypatius. He’s a nephew of old Anastasius.”

Anastasius had been emperor when Euberacon’s father was a boy. Content with having enough in the treasury to fill the Hippodrome with chariot teams and exotic animal acts, he had never bothered anyone for more than that. Just the sort the richest citizens of Constantinople would prefer to have wearing the purple.

“Has he any strength of character about him?”

Quintus shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen, but that may be all to the good. Justinian has strength of character and to spare.” Quintus was a smuggler. Euberacon had in the past bought a number of jewels and poisons from the man that should not have been sold. If Justinian meant to enforce the tax laws, what else did he mean to enforce and who would he empower to do that enforcement? It was hideously expensive to bribe honest men.

“And Justinian’s woman?”

“You had best learn to call her Empress,” said Quintus, leaning against the broken wall. “They are to be married.”

No
. Euberacon felt his spine straighten one joint at a time. “Impossible. The law forbids a patrician to marry an … actress.”

“Justinian is changing the law.”

Euberacon pressed his hand against the wall. The rough bricks scraped his palm. Theodora, the daughter of a whore and a dead bear-keeper. Theodora was to be
empress
? It could not be. It could not! If she wore the purple … if she was legitimized … he was trapped here in this place of mud and cold. He could never go home. He was lost.

“It will not happen,” he said through clenched teeth. “I will not permit it.”

“Magister,” said Quintus carefully. “You’ll need money to buy your way back in. You are a joke in the city now, the great magus chased out by Justinian’s whore.”

Euberacon ignored that. “Before two more winters have passed, I will have enough wealth even for Byzantium, and then we will make Justinian regret his choice of wife.”

Quintus’s face wrinkled as he looked over Euberacon’s shoulder at the crumbling city. “I don’t want to doubt you, Magister, but … how are you going to find that much gold out here?”

Euberacon smiled. “Even the barbarians have their gilded idols. The one they call the High King, Arthur, has a treasury stuffed with wealth his father raided from the Romans as they fled.”

“You’re going to bring down a barbarian king to bring down an emperor to bring down a woman?” Quintus looked as if he did not know whether to be impressed, or appalled.

Euberacon only smiled. “You will tell the ones who should know in the city that men and treasure will be coming to their aid?”

Now Quintus just looked skeptical, but he shrugged again. He knew Euberacon well enough to know he did not make promises he could not keep. “They will be glad to hear it.”

They spoke of politics awhile longer, of who was heading up the Blues and who the Greens, and of who had decided to throw their lot in with Justinian, and what shape those shifting loyalties were taking, of who was yet living and who had suddenly died. The men of this island thought themselves fierce because they would kill each other over a handful of cows? They knew nothing. In Constantinople, a man could be murdered for training animals too well, or for keeping the horses for the wrong chariot team and no one would think of it twice, as long as the proper bribes had been paid.

Almost no one.

It took awhile, but at last, Quintus’s store of news and gossip was emptied. Regretfully, Euberacon held out his hand again. “I must bid you farewell, Quintus. I have business to attend to here, and then I must go see that an item I have need of has been acquired.”

They clasped arms again. Whatever Quintus thought of Euberacon’s chances of success here, he kept it to himself. It didn’t matter, as long as he told those who needed to know that Euberacon would return, as long as he came back next year to bring the news and to remind Euberacon of the world beyond these shores.

The world to which I will soon return
, Euberacon told himself as he walked away from the trader and the river, heading back into Caer Ludien’s smoke and shadows.
Where I will take my rightful place, and make Theodora wish she had kept hers
.

Euberacon had been meant for a clerk. His father had paid a decent bribe to get him apprenticed to a secretary in the imperial warehouses. It was a good enough position from which he could rise to a reasonable level of prominence, but not so close to the imperial palace that he would have to be made a eunuch to gain an appointment, nor that politics would get in his way, if he were quiet and kept his head down.

That was his father’s ideal. Work hard, take what you were given. Stay quiet and uninvolved, and you could live a good life. He had no ambition, no courage, no ability to understand why his son might be plagued with discontent.

But Euberacon saw a world around him that made no sense, a world of wealth he could never have, of secrets and powers he would never know. So much that was forever shut off, so much that was shifted without warning and yet could not be made to shift by the likes of him. Why? Be content and trust in God, his father said. But how could one trust in a God that was so far away, and who tormented even his chosen people?

He might have learned contentment eventually. He might have become the private secretary for some prominent citizen and found his place in intrigues enough to believe he was actually shaping the world around him in some fundamental way. Instead, however, his master, Lucius decided to give Euberacon access to his library. Lucius, and his father, and his grandfather, it seemed, had all drilled their apprentices by having them make copies of books and public documents, and then keeping those copies for themselves. Euberacon had never seen so many books in one man’s hands before. He spent all of his free time in that bright room with its high windows. He pestered Lucius to teach him Greek and Arabic as well as Latin so he could decipher some of the older texts.

It was in that room, late one night, by the yellow light of an oil lamp, that he found the book on necromancy.

At first he thought he was reading some fable, but it quickly became clear they were recipes — for love, for divination, for finding what was lost, for guarding, for poison. It explained the nature of several of the various demons and of angels, and when they might be summoned, and what they might be called on to do. It explained that any man, be he pure of body and of learning and intelligence, could have this mastery over the invisible.

Such promises were made in the market every day. Tis unguent would bring beauty. That amulet wealth. Euberacon shut the volume and returned it to its place, but he returned to it time and again, reading over the mysteries, wondering if he had been wrong. What if God was not distant after all. What if the divine and the ethereal were close beside him?