Again Guinevere wavered. She knew that many of her own people—the Others, as Llyr called them—distrusted the Old Ones and despised their way of life. She feared that if Llyr’s presence became widely known, it might cause trouble for him. But Trevor’s freckled face had an honest look, and his brown eyes a steadfast gaze.
“He’s the firstborn son of the leader of the White Foot of Snow Mountain.”
Trevor’s eyebrows rose. “A man of standing, then. He’s a long way from home. Is it permitted to ask what he is doing here?”
Guinevere drew a deep breath. “The Old Ones appointed him my guardian. He protects me.” She resolved to say nothing more. If he had heard of the prophecy, he would understand. If he hadn’t, she would like him all the better for his ignorance.
“I have accompanied my mother to Deva in the hope of meeting Elaine,” Trevor said, honoring her gift of confidence with one of his own. “When Sir Gereint brought the High King’s summons to Powys, he told us that Queen Alyse planned to take her daughter and her ward to Deva. We had long known, of course, that Alyse of Gwynedd had a likely daughter, and Mother saw her chance. Now that I’ve met your cousin, I’ve agreed to the match.”
Guinevere pulled Zephyr to a halt. “You want to marry Elaine?”
“I’m about to begin negotiations for her hand. Are there any objections I should know about?”
“Not from me!” Guinevere cried. “I think it’s a wonderful idea. But … have you spoken to Queen Alyse?”
He laughed. “Not yet. That’s my mother’s task.”
He nodded toward the stretch of road ahead, broad and smooth and well maintained. “What do you say? It’s less than a league to camp.”
Buoyant with joy, Guinevere took hold of Zephyr’s mane and grinned at Trevor. “On the count of three …”
The filly nearly shot out from under her as the stallion leaped forward. Guinevere crouched over the horse’s withers, trying in vain to see the road ahead. Zephyr’s whipping mane stung her eyes to tears, and all she could make out was the broad swath of road and the dark approach of the forest on either side. She could see nothing of the footing. She would have to trust Zephyr for that.
The stallion jumped out to an early lead, but Guinevere held the filly back. She knew Zephyr’s speed. There was time to make up ground. It was more important to keep the filly calm and relaxed. She did not want to repeat that panicked gallop through the woods. In her terror, the filly had flung herself forward, careless of where she put her feet. It was sheer luck the pursuit had ended before they fell or ran into a tree. Now she had to make Zephyr want to catch the stallion, to beat him, to prove herself the best. She stayed calm on the horse’s back, in firm touch with her mouth through the straining reins, and stared at the chestnut’s bouncing rump with eagerness in every fiber of her body.
Zephyr responded by lengthening her stride, lowering her neck, and increasing her speed. The stallion flicked his tail as the filly came aside of him, and Trevor glanced over in surprise. He grinned at Guinevere and slapped the stallion’s side. The race was on.
Again the stallion surged ahead, and again Zephyr caught him. The filly was gaining confidence and beginning to enjoy herself. Side by side and arrow-straight, they flew together down the Roman road, the filly’s long legs keeping pace with the stallion’s powerful strides.
Guinevere urged Zephyr forward gradually, and the horse eagerly obeyed. She sped over the ground, hardly feeling the pace. The stallion thundered at her flank, fighting to keep up. Slowly, easily, Zephyr pulled ahead by one length, two lengths, three. She was moving as Guinevere had never felt her move before—loosely, freely, with joy and confidence in her own liberating speed. There was no question of catching her now. Like Alexander of Macedon’s great Bucephalos, a stallion descended from the winged Pegasus, Zephyr was in a class by herself.
A shout rang in the air. Guinevere looked back over her shoulder and fought to pull Zephyr up. Fifty paces back, the liver chestnut stood trembling with lowered head at the edge of the road. There was no sign of Trevor of Powys.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Accident
“Trevor! Prince Trevor! Are you hurt?”
Guinevere rode back as fast as she dared. One glance at Dancer, who held one foreleg off the ground, told her that he would not be running off any time soon. She slid off the filly’s back and left the two horses together while she began to search for Trevor.
She found him facedown in a shallow ditch, senseless but breathing. She checked as best she could for broken bones, remembering Stannic’s gentle examinations of injured horses, but could find nothing obvious. Nothing she did or said made him stir.
She rose and looked up and down the road. Nothing moved; no hoofbeats sounded in the distance. If only Llyr were there…. She needed to summon Sir Bedwyr. But Llyr was far away and on foot, probably headed back to camp. Would he find her before dark? It was nearly dark now, with the clouds pressing down low and the surrounding forest thick with gloom. The skittish wind had died, leaving the air still and oppressive.
She looked down helplessly at Trevor. She dared not leave him. In his senseless state he could not protect himself from predators or robbers. A shiver ran up her spine, and she scolded herself for foolishness as she glanced around at the looming darkness of the forest.
If there was no one to help, she would have to get Trevor back to camp herself. She might drag him on a sled, if she could construct one from branches and boughs. The only tool she had was a small bronze dagger designed for polite use at table, but it would have to serve. Once she had made the sled, she would find a way to maneuver Trevor onto it. The horses’ reins might be fashioned into a kind of rope, which might then be attached to Zephyr’s saddle … except that she had ridden out today without a saddle. She shut her eyes in exasperation. She hadn’t meant to defy Queen Alyse’s orders; she had simply forgotten to fetch it when she went to the horse lines. In any case, it was too late now. She would use Trevor’s saddle and hope that the queen did not witness her return to camp.
It was not a wonderful plan, but she could think of no other, and it was better than spending the night alone on the Roman road without warmth or light, waiting for rescue. Tucking her cloak around Trevor, who looked ominously pale in the deepening dusk, she headed into the forest with her dagger in her hand.
It seemed like hours before she stopped to rest. A small rain began to fall as she sank down again at Trevor’s side, exhausted, her arms and hands scratched and bleeding from her efforts. The branches she had gathered were woefully inadequate for her purpose, and she had lost her dagger in the first half hour. One jerk too many had separated the blade from the hilt, and the blade itself had disappeared into the under-growth on the forest floor. After that, collecting branches was a matter of yanking, pulling, and twisting with bare hands.
“Trevor,” she said softly, bending over the silent body. “Trevor, it’s Guinevere. Can you hear me?”
She managed to shift his shoulders so that his face no longer touched the dirt, and she freed enough of his cloak from beneath him to make a pillow for his head. “Trevor, please wake up. It’s getting dark and cold. I don’t know if I can make a sled. I need your help. You have to wake up.”
She brushed the dirt from his face as tears rose to her eyes. “Dancer’s lame. He’s bowed a tendon and bruised a knee. You’ll not be able to ride him for a while. He must have fallen on the stone … as you did, I fear. Oh, Trevor, please wake up!”
She took one of his big, calloused hands and squeezed it hard. There was no answering movement in his fingers. But his flesh, although cool, was not yet cold, and his chest still rose and fell in a steady rhythm. She closed her eyes and uttered a fervent prayer to the Christian God, the Kyrios Christos, that Trevor might recover. And then, because her Christianity was new and old habits were difficult to shed, she prayed to the Good Goddess as well. She had no libation to pour upon the ground, but hoped that her tears would serve.
&nbs
p; When she finished, she dried her eyes, tucked her cloak tighter around Trevor’s body, and rose. She had begun to shiver, but work would warm her up again.
“Is he dead?”
She jumped at the sound of a voice behind her. Llyr stood ten paces away, an arrow notched to the bow he held at his side. She stared at him a moment, unbelieving, afraid he was a vision that might shatter if she spoke. Then she saw his pony tethered to a sapling at the forest verge.
“Llyr! Oh, thank God you’ve come!”
Llyr glanced at the two horses standing together on the road in silent companionship. “He fell? He was not attacked?”
“Yes, he fell. The horse must have tripped. I’ve got to get him back as fast as I can, but I’m not sure I can do it alone. No one’s come by. The hunting party must have returned by a different route. I’ve got to get word to Sir Bedwyr. Will you go for me? Sir Bedwyr can send his men back with a litter. I can’t leave Trevor. He’s cold, and he’s senseless.”
Llyr unstrung his bow and came closer. “You’re bleeding.”
Guinevere looked down at her hands and shrugged. “Scratches. I’ve been trying to build a sled, but my dagger broke. I need an ax to do it properly. Will you go for me, Llyr?”
“Of course.” He came closer and examined her, as if to satisfy himself that underneath the dirt, blood, and tears there lurked no serious injury. “You raced your horse against the boy with spots?”
“Yes, but what does it matter now?” she asked, impatient to have him gone now that he had finally arrived.
Llyr pointed to the forest. “Lead the horses to the wood and tie them. You must get them off the road. Anyone can see them.”
“All right. But I will need your help to move Trevor.”
But Llyr did not want Trevor moved. It was not wise to move a senseless man, he told her. If he had knocked his head on the paving stones, moving him might bring death. He advised her to stay hidden with the horses, even if she heard travelers on the road. Finally, he gave her his dagger for protection, mounted his pony, and rode back into the woods.
Filled with both hope and misgiving, Guinevere watched him go. She hadn’t asked him why he didn’t take the road back. Perhaps his people distrusted roads; perhaps he was more at home in a forest; perhaps he knew something about the use of roads at night that she did not. She fingered the dagger, which was wickedly sharp, and thrust it into her belt. She would lead the horses under the trees and tie them, but she was not going to stay with them and leave Trevor out alone in the rain. She would wait at his side until help came. She was his friend, after all, and if he married Elaine, he would be her brother, too. The hope was a comforting one, and she clung to it while the day darkened and the cold mist strengthened to a drizzle.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Letter to Arthur
Sir Bedwyr sat on a stool before the flare of the oil lamp and peered at the scroll in his hands. He was in his own tent, which opened off the High King’s great tent and which held, among its normal furnishings, a lightweight writing desk. Here he had been hard at work with Arthur’s scribe for most of the afternoon. It had not improved his temper. Like Arthur, he found administrative work tiresome. He had been happy to have this drudgery interrupted by other business, although the other business had proved troublesome enough.
The scroll was a letter to King Arthur, written in a barely decipherable spidery scrawl, but in perfect Latin. Sir Bedwyr deduced an educated mind but not an educated hand. Below the letter, the same hand had drawn a dagger, rather cramped in style, but with every unusual feature of this very remarkable weapon clearly delineated. The signature was that of one Gemina Honoria Lucasta, and below it a lengthy genealogy traced that lady’s ancestors back over a hundred years, on her mother’s side, to no less a personage than Magnus Maximus himself.
“It’s genuine, then?” he asked, lifting the parchment to the light and flicking it between his fingers.
The tall figure of Merlin the Enchanter detached itself from the shadows and approached the lamp.
“I see no reason to doubt that Lady Gemina wrote it. Her mother believed in educating women.”
Sir Bedwyr grunted. “That’s not what I meant, my lord, as I think you know.”
Merlin smiled. It made him look twenty years younger. “Do you ask me to pass judgment on the truth of the contents? All I can say with certainty is that Lady Gemina wishes us to believe the tale.” He shrugged. “We can know nothing about the dagger until we see it. As you yourself have already concluded.”
Sir Bedwyr had the grace to look abashed. It was true he had not been asking for Merlin’s opinion as a man of intelligence, or even as Arthur’s political advisor; he had asked for the certainty of knowledge from a mage. He had asked for Merlin’s power. This was something Arthur had warned him and all the other Companions never to do. For Merlin’s power of foreseeing came from his god and was not at any mortal’s beck and call, not even his own.
Sir Bedwyr dipped his head to acknowledge his trespass. Merlin’s chastisement had been extraordinarily gentle, but then, he was used to such appeals. Everyone, including Arthur, found it hard to believe that the wizard did not know everything.
“Well, you know Riall’s terms, my lord. I can’t accede to them.”
“No.”
Merlin took the scroll from Sir Bedwyr’s hand and scanned the genealogy once more.
“Even if all that’s true,” Sir Bedwyr said, “I’m not about to hand over the kingdom of Gwynedd. Arthur wouldn’t do it. Pellinore’s earned the right to it twice over, even if his wife didn’t have the better claim.”
Merlin looked up from his reading and met the warrior’s eyes. “Tell me how this came into your hands.”
Sir Bedwyr shrugged. “Lord Riall brought it. After everyone left for the hunt, I sent for the scribe to consolidate the notes from this morning’s meeting. We had got only halfway through when Lord Riall begged entrance and would not be put off. He’s been loitering about for days, waiting to see me when I’ve been at leisure. As you know, there hasn’t been any leisure. I confess I was curious about his business here, so when he finally asked for a hearing, I gave it to him. He had a long list of grievances about his father’s treatment at the hands of Alyse and Pellinore, but as they dated to a time before his birth, I took them to be his mother’s complaints.”
He paused, but there was no response from Merlin, not even a breath of movement. Sir Bedwyr reminded himself that complete and utter stillness was Merlin’s gift. It marked him more surely than any speech or gesture. His stillness went deeper than flesh, deeper than spirit, down to the unfathomable wellspring of being itself. It became a force of its own and propelled Sir Bedwyr to further speech.
“Then he told me about the dagger: its accidental finding in the floor of the tomb Lady Gemina is preparing for herself, its inscriptions, its significance to Arthur. He made it sound like something necessary, even essential, to Arthur’s future … to his legend, if you will. Last, of course, he told me his terms.”
Sir Bedwyr rose and began to pace, hunching his broad swordsman’s shoulders as if the available space could not contain him.
“I’m not fool enough to suppose that Arthur would even consider making Riall king of Gwynedd to secure a dagger, whatever its importance. I suppose, sir, I’m asking whether Arthur needs this weapon. Is it part of his …”—he shied away from the word destiny, although somehow it did not seem out of place to speak of destiny when Merlin was in the room—“… his future? Perhaps he should see it, make the choice himself. He wouldn’t stoop to such means to get it, but I can stoop and get it for him.”
He stopped pacing and looked anxiously at Merlin.
The enchanter’s eyes were grave. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s a testament to your loyalty.”
“Sir, it’s an offer.”
Merlin drew on his cloak. “It’s a courageous offer. Arthur would not accept it, but I might.” He paused and said, in a low voice that for all its grav
ity held a note of amusement, “Whatever this dagger is, it is not one of the Things of Power that the god has vouchsafed to Arthur for his reign. His destiny is secure. If that is what worries you, be at peace.”
Sir Bedwyr swallowed. He was used to having his mind read, but never before had Merlin the Enchanter taken him into his confidence. “I shall get the dagger, my lord. I’ll steal it if I can’t force it from him.”
Merlin shook his head. “Wait. It may not be necessary.”
“And in the meantime?”
“Patience. I believe Lord Riall wants very badly to show us his hidden treasure. Why else is he here?”
He bowed politely and took his leave. But he stopped short of the tent flap. “A visitor,” he murmured, and with an apologetic glance at Sir Bedwyr, dissolved once more into the shadows of the tent.
A moment later, a clamor arose outside. A sentry shouted; a sword whined free of its scabbard, followed by the sounds of a scuffle, a cry, and a smothered curse. Sir Bedwyr raised a hand to shade his eyes from the lamp’s glare as the tent flap trembled and something—a shadow, a wraith, he couldn’t quite see what—slipped inside.
Heavy footsteps approached, and the flap was thrown aside. A sentry appeared, breathing hard, his sword drawn.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but did he come in here, the little savage?”
Sir Bedwyr opened his mouth to say, I think so, Bevan. Check in the corners, when he heard himself already speaking. “I’ve seen no one. Take your search outside. I am in conference.”
The sentry cast a frightened glance into the shadows and backed out hastily. “Yes, sir. Very sorry, sir. Don’t worry, we’ll get him.”
Sir Bedwyr waited until the flap closed before turning to Merlin. He was not surprised to find that the enchanter had stepped just far enough into the light to make visible the outline of his face. “Well?” He spoke more sharply than he intended, but he resented lying to his own man, even though, strictly speaking, he had not said anything untrue. “Where is he?”