The Hallowed Isle Book Four (2 page)

To be alone was frightening, but it carried with it the heady taste of freedom. Throughout the years of his growing, his mother had always been present even when she was not physically there, as if the belly cord still connected them. And then, three months ago, when the full moon hung in the sky, the link had disappeared.

For weeks he had been half paralyzed with terror, expecting every messenger to tell them that Morgause was dead. It was Cunobelinus, riding through the great gates with his men behind him, who informed Medraut that his mother was at the Lake with the priestesses of the Isle of Maidens, and that from now on Cunobelinus himself would serve as regent as well as warleader for the northern Votadini, and rule from Dun Eidyn.

The new regent was civil, and his people treated Medraut as a royal prince when they had time to notice him at all. It was not loss of status that had sent him southward. It was the thing he had learned while he still feared Morgause dead that burned in his belly and had driven him here to confront her. It was hard to admit anger when one was torn by the grief of loss. But his mother was still alive.

Medraut was free to hate her now.

“What are you doing here?”

Medraut spun around, for a moment too astonished not to have sensed that his mother had entered the small, whitewashed chamber where the priestesses had placed him to answer her. Tuned since birth to her presence, he should have vibrated like a harpstring when its octave is plucked. But the link between them was broken; if he had doubted, he felt the truth of that now.

“Without a word, you abandoned me. Is it so surprising I should come to see how you fared?”

Morgause eyed him uncertainly. Clearly she too felt the difference in the energy between them, all the more, he reflected angrily, because she had not been expecting it. Obviously she had not known their bond was broken. Since she went away she had not thought about him at all.

“As you see,” she said finally, “I am well.”

His eyes narrowed. “You are changed.” And indeed it was so, though at first glance it was hard to describe what had altered. Where before she had always worn black and crimson, now she was dressed in the dark blue of a senior priestess on the Isle. But that was only external. Perhaps it was the fact that her high color had faded that made her seem different, or the new silver in her hair. Or perhaps it was the aura of power, almost of violence, that had always surrounded her, that was gone.

Medraut probed with his inner senses, as she had taught him, and recoiled, blinking. The power was still there, but leashed and contained. It occurred to him that her inner stillness might, if anything, make her stronger. A frightening thought, but it would make no difference, he reminded himself. After today nothing she did could hurt him anymore.

His mother's shoulders twitched in a shrug—a subtle, complex movement that simultaneously suggested apology, pride, and oddly, laughter. She looked at him directly then, and he shivered.

“So are you.” Her voice was without expression. She asked again, “Why did you come?”

“To accuse you—” The words came out in a whisper, and Medraut cleared his throat angrily. “You killed her. Without a word to me. You had Kea murdered! Why?!”

He had expected disdain or anger, but not the flat incomprehension with which Morgause gazed back at him.

“The slave girl!” he said desperately. “The one I slept with at Fodreu!” How inadequate those words were for what Kea had done for him, making of her forced choice a gift that transformed him, as if by receiving his first seed, she had given birth to him as a man.

For a moment her eyes flashed in the way he remembered, then she sighed. “Did you love her? I am sorry.”

He cleared his throat. “Sorry that I loved her, or that you had her put down like a sick dog?”

“At the time . . . it seemed best to ensure that there should be no child,” Morgause answered at last.

“Do you truly believe that? Surely you wisewomen could have made sure any child she might conceive was not born!” He shook his head, temples beginning to pound with the sick headache that came from suppressing rage. “If death was a fit remedy for inappropriate conception, you should have hanged yourself on the nearest tree when you found yourself pregnant with me!

“You did not kill her because of my child,
Mother
. . .” all the bitterness Medraut had carried so long poured out at last, “but because of
yours.
I think you ordered Kea's death because you feared I might love her more than you!”

Morgause's hands fluttered outward in a little helpless gesture that snapped the last of his control.

“Well, you failed! I hate you, Queen-bitch, royal whore!” He flew at her and discovered that even without stirring she still had the power to stop him, shaking, where he stood.

“You are a prince! Show some control!”

“I am an abomination! I am what you have made me!”

“You will be free of me . . .” Morgause said tiredly. “I will not be returning to Dun Eidyn.”

“Do you think that will make a difference, when every room holds your scent, and every stone the impress of your power. I am going south. Perhaps my
father
will teach me what it means to be a man. He could hardly do a worse job of it than you!”

The long hours in the saddle had given him the time to think it through. His mother had raised him to believe himself meant for a special destiny, and for two years now, he had thought himself true heir to Britannia. But in discovering her treachery, he had begun to question everything, and it had come to him that Artor's high seat was not hers to bestow. Neither would the inheritance come to him through Christian
law. It was Artor himself he must persuade if he wanted his heritage.

“You will do nothing of the kind!” For the first time, Morgause looked alarmed. “You will stay in Alba and inherit the Votadini lands. Artor has all of your brothers. He does not need you.”

“Do you still hate him, Mother?” Medraut asked maliciously. “Or has this conversion to holiness taken even that away?”

“Artor . . .” she said stiffly, “is no longer my concern.”

“Nor am I, mother dear, nor am I . . .” Medraut's fury was fading, to be replaced by a cold detachment, as if the rage had burned all his humanity away. He liked the feeling—it took away the pain. “I am the age Artor was when he became king, no longer subject to a woman's rule. Will you lock me up to keep me from going where I choose?”

“If I have to—” Morgause said shortly.

Medraut laughed as she left him. But when he opened the door to follow, he found it guarded by two sturdy young women who looked as if they knew how to use the short spears gripped in their hands. In some things his mother's lessons still served him well. His first outraged response was suppressed so swiftly they scarcely noted it.

“Have you come to protect me? I am afraid my mother still considers me a child.” He eyed them appreciatively and his smile became a complicit grin. They were young and, living among women, must be curious about beings of a gender they saw only at festivals. In another moment one of the girls began to smile back, and he knew that she, at least, was not seeing him as a child at all.

“Do not say that it serves me right, after all the trouble I gave you, to find an enemy in my son!” exclaimed Morgause, whirling to glare at Igierne, who sat still in her great carven chair. So still—even in the throes of her confusion, Morgause felt a pang. With each day Igierne seemed to grow more fragile, as if her substance was evaporating like the morning dew.

But her voice, when she replied, was strong. “Have I said
so? But if he is rebelling, surely you, of all mothers, ought to understand.”

“That is not what has upset me. Medraut has grown as I shaped him, and now that I no longer desire to do so, I am afraid to loose him upon the world.”

“You shaped him,” observed the third woman, who had been sitting with Igierne when Morgause slammed through the door into the room. “But the wisefolk of my land teach that the Norns are three. You bear responsibility for what has been, maybe, but now your son is becoming a new person, and he must choose what shall be.”

“What do you know of it, outlander?” Morgause spat back. Igierne lifted a hand in protest, and Morgause bit back her next words. She had grown unaccustomed to self-control.

Hæthwæge gazed back at her, unfazed, and Morgause glared. She had been raised to think of the Saxon kind as enemy, and found Hæthwæge's name and race alike disturbing, but Igierne had welcomed her, and in truth, the old woman who had helped to raise the child-king of Cantuware had knowledge they could use.

“I was not happy when the time came for me to give up Eormenric to the care of men—it still seems to me that seven is too young,” Hæthwæge said then. “But it is true that a child needs the teaching of both male and female to grow. Let Medraut's father take him if he needs a stronger hand.”

There was a short, charged silence.

“His father is the high king. . . .” Through clenched teeth Morgause got out the words.

“Ah—and he is your brother. . . .” Hæthwæge nodded. “I know that the Christians are not understanding about such things.”

For a moment longer Morgause stared at her. Then she began, rather helplessly, to laugh. Weathered and bent like an old elder tree, Hæthwæge played the role of a simple village wisewoman very well, but Morgause could see past the mask. If the
wicce
had made light of the danger, it was on purpose, to comfort her.

She was trying to think of a polite rejoinder when there was a knock at the door. In the next moment it swung open
and they saw Verica, one of the young priestesses who had been set to guard Medraut.

“He's gone!”

Morgause felt suddenly cold.

“Did he harm Cunovinda?” asked Igierne.

“Oh Vinda is just fine—unless you call a broken heart a wound,” Verica said bitterly. “I left her guarding a locked door, and when I returned it was open and she was crying her eyes out because he had persuaded her to open it and then left her!”

It could have been worse, thought Morgause numbly. He could have taken the girl with him, and then killed or abandoned her. Who knew what Medraut might do?

“He is beyond your reach, daughter,” Igierne said then, and Hæthwæge added, “He will make his own wyrd now. . . .”

“That is so, but this child's wyrd could shake a kingdom,” said Igierne.

Morgause nodded. What that fate might be she dared not imagine, but she knew where he was going, and for the first time in her life, felt pity for Artor.

The high king of Britannia sat in his chair of state to receive the ambassadors. The basilica at Calleva would have been more impressive, or the one in Londinium, but the long chamber that had once been the pride of the commander of the fort at Isca had been restored when he rebuilt the town's defenses. The walls bore no frescoes, but they had been newly whitewashed, with a bright band of geometric designs painted along the top and bottom, and there were touches of gilding on the columns that ran down the nave. The cloaks of the chieftains and princes who had crowded inside, chequered and banded or bright with embroidery, made a vivid spectacle. Artor had been in Castra Legionis for a little over a month, long enough for everyone in the area who had a petition or a grievance to travel here.

But for this audience Artor had chosen to wear the full panoply of an emperor, and the length of time it had been since the previous occasion was marked by the difficulty they
had in finding a jewel-sewn mantle in a shade that would match the deep green tunic, with its orphreys and apparels of gold woven brocade. That had been when they made peace with King Icel, said Betiver when Artor tried to remember. Then, thought the king as he tried to shift position without dislodging the stiff folds of the mantle, he had wanted to impress barbarians. Today his purpose was to appear as an heir of Rome's imperium before other heirs of Rome.

Artor felt Betiver stir nervously in his place behind the chair and turned his head to smile reassuringly.

“I should have been the one to welcome him,” muttered the younger man. “But I didn't know what to say. Christ! It's been more than twenty years!”

Twenty years ago, Betiver had been an awestruck boy and Artor himself just learning to wield the power of a king, and now the child who had been left with him to seal an alliance was one of the supports of his kingdom.

“He is your father,” Artor said aloud. “He will forgive. It is I who should earn his wrath for keeping you here—”

Then the great double doors at the end of the hall swung open, and men moved aside to clear an aisle as the embassy from Gallia marched in.

Johannes Rutilius seemed smaller than Artor remembered, worn by the years. For the men of Gallia, as for Britannia, those years had been filled by fighting. Rutilius walked with a limp now, and there was abundant silver in his hair. But he still stood erect, and the only change in his expression came when he realized who the warrior standing behind Artor must be.

But the formal Latin greetings did not falter, nor did Artor's welcome.

“Is your lord in good health?” he asked. “He must be ripe in years.”

Rutilius sighed as he sank into the chair they brought for him. “He is old indeed, and not much time is left to him. Hence this embassy. When I came before, we offered you alliance. Now I come to ask for the help you swore to give. Riothamus is dying, my lord, but Chlodovechus of the Franks is in the flower of his age, seeking to extend the Frankish
lands in the north, while Alaric II leads the Visigoths of Tolosa against us in the south.

“The only son of Riothamus, Daniel Dremrud, was killed some years ago, fighting in the German lands. My lord's grandsons intrigue against each other—” He cast a tired glance at a dark young man who stood glowering among the warriors who had escorted him into the hall.