“Back to Sorviodunum?” asked Aedfrid.
The Emperor shook his head. Allectus’ treachery had shaken all his assumptions, and until he was healed he dared trust no one’s loyalty. Carausius twisted to look down at his side. Blood welled from the wound, making it hard to see, but he sensed it was bad. Though he had spoken stoutly, this might be beyond the skill of any surgeon closer than Londinium. He straightened in the saddle, gazing westward, where the hills rolled away into blue haze.
“Bind up my side,” he said to Theudibert.
“Lord, this is very deep. We must get help for you.”
“That way,” said Carausius, pointing. “The only healing for this hurt is in the Summer Country. We’ll go back as if we were returning to the town, and turn off as soon as we are out of sight. They will lose time looking for us on the road. Swiftly now, and do not falter because of me. If I cannot sit a horse, tie me to the saddle; if I cannot speak, keep asking for the road to Avalon.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dierna gasped as agony stabbed her side. The thread snapped between her fingers and the spindle rolled across the grass.
“Lady! What is it?” cried Lina, the maiden assigned this month to serve her. “Did a bee sting you, or did you prick your hand?” Her words were lost in a babble of concern as the other women came running.
The priestess clapped her hand to her side and took a deep breath, fighting to control the pain. It was not her heart; the burning ache pulsed lower, beneath her rib cage, as if something had broken there. And the agony was not entirely internal. The skin itself was tender as she probed it carefully; and yet, when they unpinned her tunic, she could see no wound.
No spell or ill-wishing could break through Dierna’s wardings against her will. And there was only one person living to whom she had opened herself so fully that she would feel his agony. She realized that in their lovemaking she had given Carausius more than her body—she had given part of her soul away. She sent her spirit winging outward along the path by which the pain had come, and sensed his longing for her.
“She is elf-shot,” said old Cigfolla soberly. “Lift her carefully, my daughters. We must take her to her bed.”
Dierna got control of her voice again. “It is not…my…pain. I must rest, but you…Adwen…go to the holy well. Someone…is coming…. Try if the Sight will show him to you!”
That whole afternoon Dierna lay in the cool darkness of her dwelling, using all the disciplines she had learned to maintain a state of trance that would put her beyond the pain. Gradually the physical agony became bearable, but the sense of need grew. Carausius was seeking her, but would he reach her in time?
The plan had been a good one, thought Carausius, reining in and drawing breath in deep gasps, but he had overestimated his own endurance. Despite the binding, every step jarred his side to new agony. When it came to a choice between stopping or losing consciousness, he judged it would take less time to pause. But he was having to do so more and more often, and at their previous halt, the rearguard had come galloping up to tell them that the Durotriges were on their trail.
“Let us stop here, lord, and make a stand,” said Theudibert. Carausius shook his head. The foliage was too thick for maneuvering, but not high enough for cover. “Then let some of us continue on down the valley, where the ground is soft and will show our tracks well,” said the warrior, “while you slip away across the heath. With luck they will follow us.”
The Emperor nodded. This way at least some of his men would be saved. It was the only way, he knew, that he would be able to get any of them to leave him. Allectus might be false, but these lads had sworn the oath of a comitatus, and would never willingly outlive their chieftain.
“May Nehalennia bless and guard you.” He called their own goddess to guard them as they thundered away.
“Come,” said Theudibert, “let us go on now, while their noise still covers our own.”
Theudibert had his rein, for it was all Carausius could do now to stay in the saddle; he bit back a cry as the motion sent pain through him in dizzying waves.
This scene was repeated several times during the two days that followed. The Menapians were hardy and used to rough traveling, but the Durotriges knew the land. Though subterfuges might work for a time, eventually their enemies always found them. Carausius could only hope that when he reached Avalon he would be protected by the Britons’ respect for the holy isle.
On the afternoon of the third day, approaching from the east, they reached the marshes of the Summer Country. By this time, Carausius was too weak to sit a horse alone, and rode roped to Theudibert. The marshes were a terrain that the Menapians understood, but no good for horses. Two men were sent off with their mounts. Retaining only the beast Carausius rode, the six who remained began to work their way around the edge of the lake, seeking the village of the marsh folk who could take him to Avalon.
It had not occurred to them that the British, familiar with the country, would know by now where they must be heading and ride ahead along the ridge of the Poldens to forestall them. Carausius, who might have foreseen it, was by this time almost past thinking. He did not rouse until the shock of a sudden stop and an oath from Theudibert brought him upright, staring.
Dusk was falling. Across still water he saw the huts of the marsh dwellers on their poles. Before them, a spur of solid ground curved down from the ridge, and there, silhouetted against the light, a line of horsemen was waiting.
“I will hide you in the marshes,” said Theudibert, undoing the rope that had tied them together and knotting the loose end around his lord’s waist.
“No…” rasped Carausius. “I would rather die fighting. But send Aedfrid to that village. He must beg them to summon the Lady of Avalon.”
A few moments before, he could not have moved, but now, with his foe before him, Carausius found himself able to get off the horse and draw his sword.
“This is good,” said Theudibert as the riders started toward them. “I too am tired of running away.” He smiled, and after a moment Carausius grimaced back at him.
In the end, it always came back to this terrible simplicity. He had felt it before at the beginning of a battle, when all the plans and preparations had become irrelevant and he stood face-to-face with his foe. But other times he had at least begun the fight unwounded. This time the most he could hope for was to get in one or two good blows before they struck him down.
The clatter of hoofbeats thundered in his ears. One horse misstepped and went down, but the others loomed over him with frightening speed. Carausius swayed aside and stabbed as a rider went past him. Theudibert’s spear flashed and the Briton fell. Another rider was upon them; the Emperor stepped backward into muddy water, staggering to keep his balance, but the horse stopped suddenly, mistrusting the ground. The rider coming toward him also slipped, and grabbed the mane to keep his balance; Carausius’ sword took him in the side.
The moments that followed passed in a series of disjointed images. He stood back-to-back with Theudibert, half leaning against the other man. Carausius felt an impact, and then another, and knew he had been hit, but he was beyond pain. He blinked, peering around him, and wondered if it was darkness or blood loss that was making it so hard to see. More riders came at them; behind him, Theudibert made a sound of surprise, and Carausius lurched as his support disappeared. A last access of fury brought Carausius around, swinging. His blow took Theudibert’s slayer in the neck as the Briton bent to pull out his spear.
Carausius swayed, struggling to bring up his blade. But there was no one left to fight. A dozen bodies lay around him, moaning, or deathly still. Upon the ridge he heard the sounds of battle, though he could not see them. Then they too faded. My brave Menapian boys have bought me this last respite, he thought. I must not waste it.
To his right, the willows grew in a tangle down to the waterside. If he hid among their branches, no one would find him. He was lightheaded with blood loss, but somewhere he found the strength to mak
e his way to the shelter of the trees.
For three days and three nights Dierna had maintained her vigil, as her spirit yearned toward that of the man she loved. By the end of the second day, the contact was becoming intermittent, as if he were moving in and out of consciousness. On the third day, agony reawakened, and with it an anxiety that she could hardly bear. It was not until a little past midnight that she fell into a fitful sleep, full of nightmares through which she fled, pursued by faceless demons, struggling in a bloody sea.
Dierna woke again as the pale light of the longest day was outlining her doorway, and realized that what had roused her was a tap on the door.
“Enter…” she whispered. She sat up, feeling for the first time in three days free of pain. Was Carausius dead? She did not think so, for there was still a weight upon her spirit.
Lina stood silhouetted against the dawn sky. “Lady, one of the marsh folk has come to us. He says there was a fight at the lake edge. One of the warriors made it to their village, babbling that they must find his lord and take him to the Lady of Avalon….”
Dierna got to her feet, surprised to find herself so unsteady, and gathered up her mantle. Lina was already carrying the basket in which she kept her healer’s supplies. The priestess leaned on the girl’s shoulder as they made their way down the path, but by the time they reached the barge, the fresh air had begun to revive her.
They passed through the mists and came to the village of the marsh men, its houses set on poles among the reeds. The little dark folk were up and about already, and among them one tall, fair-haired lad who walked up and down along the shore, peering about him distractedly.
“Domina,” he saluted her in rough camp Latin. “The Durotriges attacked us—Allectus led them. In the fight Lord Carausius was wounded. He told us to bring him. And by the holy gods, we did what he asked.”
“Where is he?” Dierna cut in.
The boy shook his head in distress. “He sent me to the village for help. But the people saw the fighting and were afraid. I understand”—he gazed around him at the little dark folk of the marshes—“they look like children to me, though I know they are men. I went back to the battlefield and found only the dead. But my lord’s body was not among them. The small ones would not stir during the hours of darkness for fear of demons. Since first light we have been looking, but Carausius has not been found!”
The Emperor of Britannia lay half on land and half in the lake, watching his blood cloud the water with crimson in the light of the new day. He had never known that dawn could be so beautiful. The night had been filled with horrors. He had struggled for hours, it seemed, crawling over tree roots and floundering in mud that tried to suck him into its slimy embrace. For part of it he thought he had been fevered, but he was cold now—too cold—he could neither feel nor move his lower limbs at all. This was not how he had expected to meet his end.
The white shape of a swan moved out of the mists that clung to the water and swam past him, graceful as if this were a dream. Lying here, where he could not see the hills, he might have been in the marshes of his own country, where the father of rivers branched into many channels as it sought the sea. In his homeland, he remembered, they had given men to the gods by a triple death. His lips twisted wryly as he realized that he had already suffered two-thirds of it—being speared in a dozen places, and half drowned.
It is a gift, he thought. I have been restored to myself, instead of dying in delirium. The least I can do is finish the job…. With a wisdom from beyond this lifetime he remembered—the Goddess never dies, but the God gives his life for the land. He knew now that he had done this before, by an act of will transformed from the victim of senseless violence to an offering, made in faith that the Goddess would find a use for it somehow.
The rope that had bound him to Theudibert was still tied around him. With clumsy fingers he loosened the knot and tugged it up around his neck, then wound the other end around the root of a tree. For as long as he could, he would stay upright, for the morning was very beautiful, but he did not think it would be for long.
Somewhere beyond those mists lay the Empress of his heart. Would she know, he wondered, how he had loved her? This gift is for you, he thought, and for the Goddess you serve. I was born across the sea, but my death belongs to Britannia. Perhaps it did not matter. Dierna had once told him that, behind the faces they wore, all gods were one. His only regret was that he had not seen the sea once more.
The sun rose higher, dancing brightly on the water. Those sequined dimples were very like the sunsparks on the ocean, he thought vaguely…and then they were the waves, and the singing in his ears was the wind in a ship’s rigging, and his vertigo the swoop of the craft that was bearing him over the sea. It came to him then that if the gods were one so were the waters, all of them the womb of the Goddess, the most ancient of seas.
Before him, an island rose from the ocean, girded with cliffs of red stone and green fields. In its center was a pointed hill from whose summit the gilding of a temple roof challenged the sun.
He knew that place, and in that recognition knew himself also, with the insignia of a priest upon his brow and on his forearms the dragons of a king. He stepped forward, arms lifting in salutation, uncaring that the body he had left behind slumped lifeless in its bonds.
From across the water he could hear the voice of the woman who from life to life had always been his beloved and his Queen, calling him.
Dierna walked on the lakeshore, calling her lover’s name. Surely now, when Carausius was so near, the link between them would draw her. She knew the others were coming along behind her, but she kept her eyes shut, following a scent of the spirit between the worlds. Success, when it came, was an awareness on both levels that the other part of her soul was near.
Dierna opened her eyes and saw the shape of a man, tangled in tree roots and half underwater, so smeared with mud and bits of reed he seemed already part of the earth on which he lay. Aedfrid ran past her, stopping short as he saw the rope around Carausius’ neck and making a sign of reverence before he reached out and with trembling hands untangled it and drew his lord’s body fully up onto the shore.
The marsh men were chattering in horror, but Aedfrid looked at her in appeal. “It was not a shameful death. Do you understand?”
Throat closing, she nodded. Could you not wait a little longer? her heart cried. Could you not stay to say goodbye to me?
“I will take him and give him a hero’s burial—” said the warrior, but Dierna shook her head.
“Carausius was chosen by our Goddess to be King. In this life or another, he is bound to this land. And through him,” she added as new knowledge came to her, “through him, your people also are bound to Britannia, and will belong to her one day. Wrap him in my mantle and lay him in the barge, and we will make a tomb for him in Avalon.”
Throughout that day, the longest of the year, the Lady of Avalon sat in the sacred grove above the well, watching beside the body of her Emperor. As the wind shifted, she could hear snatches of singing from the Druids on the Tor. Ildeg was taking the part of the High Priestess. Dierna had been trained to suppress her emotions when there was work to be done, but she had learned also that there came a time when even training could not overcome the cry of the heart. An adept bore the responsibility of knowing when that time had come and stepping aside, lest the magic go awry.
And surely if I were in the circle today, I would destroy it, thought Dierna, looking at Carausius’ still features. I am still in my fertile years, but I feel all the Death Crone now….
They had washed Carausius in the water of the holy well and bound up his dreadful wounds. Even now a grave was being prepared for him beside that of Gawen, son of Elian, who according to some tales had been partly Roman too. She would bury him like a king of Britannia, but that was a cold bed for the man with whom she had lain down in joy.
If I dared, I would cast myself into the grave with him, and celebrate the Great Rite as they did in anc
ient days, when the Queen followed her lord into the Otherworld…. But she was not his wife, and that grief weighed on her even more than her loss, and she cursed the pride that had blinded her to the voice of her own heart. For all this was her doing, she saw now—the decisions that had forced Carausius and Teleri into a loveless union and led to Allectus’ treachery had been her own. If she had never meddled, Carausius would still have been sailing his beloved sea, and Teleri would have been happy as a priestess of Avalon. Dierna rocked, hugging her breasts, and wept for them all.
It was much later, when the sounds of revelry had faded and the long dusk of Midsummer was veiling the land, that the grief that had gripped her itself grew weary and Dierna sat up, blinking and looking about her. She felt emptied, as if her tears had washed all other feeling away. But one thought remained. Though she might weep, there were other women who would lie tonight in their husbands’ arms, their children sleeping peacefully nearby, because Carausius had defended Britannia.
A drumbeat, slow as the beating of her own heart, throbbed in the air. Dierna rose to her feet as the procession of white-robed Druids wound down from the Tor. She stepped aside to let them lift the bier, and took her place behind it as they began to move once more. Down to the edge of the lake they passed, where the black-draped barge was waiting to bear the sea lord on his final voyage.
The grave had been dug on the Watch Hill, the farthest island that remained within the mists, the Gateway to Avalon. To those who could not pass them, it bore nothing of interest but a poor village of marsh folk huddled at its foot, just as there was nothing but a few Christian hermitages at the foot of the Tor. But long ago, another Defender of Avalon had been buried there, that his spirit might continue to protect the Vale. The Druids had hailed Carausius by those titles when he came here before. It was fitting that his body should lie beside that of the man for whom that song had been made.