You cannot marry me,” Ilsa gasped.
“Why not?” Arawn lifted his brow enquiringly.
“Because…because I am not your subject,” she said, grasping.
“You are in my forest,” he pointed out.
“I am from Brandérion. Brandérion belongs to King Budic. I answer to him, not you.”
“Ah.” He looked at Uther. “Do you know the place?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Uther admitted. “It is at the far north of Budic’s borders. That way.” He pointed in the correct direction.
Arawn crossed his arms, considering her once more. “You are Budic’s subject, yet you hunt on my lands?”
“Deer don’t know about borders.” She shrugged.
Arawn shook his head. “Budic will be amenable to the match. Again, I ask. Who are you? Tell me your name and your sire’s.”
Ilsa shuddered. “I will not marry you. You kill your wives.”
Uther uttered a short, low laugh.
Arawn nodded. “That is why I must find another. You know about the curse that dogs my land?”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to die.” She glanced at Uther. He had let her arm loose, although he stood too close for her to try bolting. His reactions were quick and he was strong.
“If you are the one to break the curse, you will not die,” Arawn replied. “This drought that inflicts all the kingdoms of Brittany—Budic’s and mine, Guannes and Morlaix…you would see the drought broken, would you not?”
“It would end if I married you?” she said, amazed.
“If you bear my child, then yes,” he said. “Tell me who your father is and I will speak to him.”
She shook her head, as her middle cramped. This was all happening too quickly for her to absorb. The talk of marriage and children was moving far beyond the point she was still snagged upon. “You are not listening. I will not marry you.”
“Not even to save your kingdom?” Arawn asked. “For that is why I would contemplate such a madness…and it is madness, I admit. The curse will not break until my child is born. I must take a wife to do that, and quickly. You are here before me. I will marry you.”
The trembling spread. “My father would not allow it,” she said, a desperate bid to outmaneuver the man’s reasonableness.
“What man would not want his daughter married to a king?” Uther said. “Although, if you insist upon refusing a king, I will escort you back to your home.”
She shuddered. She needed no imagination to be certain how that journey would end.
Arawn shook his head. “No, Uther. I will not force the woman into this. She must agree willingly.”
“I do not agree,” she said. She gritted her teeth together. “Not at all.”
Arawn considered her, his hand stroking his rough chin. “Will you at least tell me your name?”
She swallowed. “Will you let me go, if I do?”
“Will you agree to listen first? Properly listen, I mean—not simply stand and nod?”
“If I really listen, will you let me go, afterwards? Free—with no escort,” she added quickly, glancing at Uther. Uther smiled.
“If you will promise to listen,” Arawn said, “I will let you go afterwards, free to return alone to your home.”
Ilsa gathered the cloak back around her again. She felt cold. “My name is Ilsa.”
“Ilsa.” Arawn frowned. “An odd name. A pretty one. Uther, would you and the men withdraw? I would speak to Ilsa alone.”
“Only if she gives me her weapons, first,” Uther growled.
Arawn raised his brow at her.
Ilsa hesitated. To allow herself to be stripped of every defense was intolerable. Yet, if she agreed, she would be one step closer to safety, perhaps even with the stag and the purse.
She slid the bow off her shoulder, then the strap of the arrow pouch and gave them to Uther. He held out his other hand. “Knife.”
She pulled the knife out and held the hilt out to him.
“Now…” Arawn began.
“The other knife, too,” Uther said heavily.
Ilsa glared at him. He stared back.
She sighed and bent and pulled the small knife from her boot and slapped it onto his hand.
“Do you have more knives?” Arawn asked, sounding both amused and startled.
“I don’t mind searching her to find out,” Uther said.
She shuddered. “Nothing more,” she said quickly.
Uther’s smile told her he had threatened to search her to force her to speak the truth.
Arawn stepped aside and waved toward the trees on the other side of the faint trail they were standing upon. “There is a fallen tree there we can sit upon to speak. After you.”
Ilsa forced herself to turn and put her back to Uther. She moved through the trees toward the big trunk the king had pointed to. As she went, she scrubbed at her face with the corner of her cloak. There was no need for the disguising mud. It had not served her well, anyway.
Her skin was dry and dusty when she was done. Her hair had dried into solid curlicues around her face, too. She rubbed at them, breaking away the crusty mud. It was in her brows, too.
The log was as high as her waist. Ilsa contemplated how she was to sit upon it, or perhaps she could lean against it.
Arawn held out his hand. “Let me help you.”
She stepped around his hand, thrust the toe of her boot into a crevasse in the log, and stepped up onto the broad log. She walked along it to where the king stood, then sat and drew her knees up against her chest and looked at him.
Arawn’s eyes narrowed as his gaze settled on her face. “You are older than I guessed,” he said. “How is it you have not married yet?”
“My father is a choosy man.” She shrugged.
“How has your father fared, these three years of no rain?”
Ilsa dropped her gaze, her heart stirring. “As well as anyone, I suppose.” Her voice quivered, though, giving her away.
“Tell me why you are hunting and not he?”
She swallowed. “He only has one eye and it is weak. Although he was once a master bowman.”
“I see. He can no longer shoot a bow. Yet he could gather and snare and forage. Does he do those things?”
Ilsa traced the ties on her boots with the tip of her finger. “He’s…he is sick,” she admitted.
“A strange sickness,” Arawn said. “His legs cramp…or he has headaches which blind him and leave him helpless. He cannot move from his bed, most days.”
She looked at him, her heart thudding. “Yes,” she whispered. “All of that. How did you know?”
“Because the same sickness troubles people everywhere I go,” Arawn said. “I have seen people collapse in the heat of summer, yet they do not sweat. Their faces turn gray and their skin chalky.”
Ilsa thought of her mother’s face, as she had seen it this morning. “Yes…” she breathed.
Arawn sighed. “It has been a very long three years of watching people suffer. The lack of water causes this sickness, Ilsa. Your parents have given you more water than they have taken themselves.” He was not asking. “I have seen that happen, too. There is no sweating because it is not a plague or any normal illness. Yet before the drought, there was plague in my kingdom. Budic’s was spared, yet you live so close to Brocéliande…were your people touched by plague, Ilsa?”
“People in the village were sick. For the longest time, my father wouldn’t let me go into the village.”
“He was protecting you. Before the plague, my people lost two years’ worth of harvest. We bought grain from Budic and from Guannes and Morlaix, as much as they could spare, yet the years were still lean. They drained the strength my people might have had to combat the plague. You were likely too young to remember talk of the harvest loss. Your kingdom did not suffer as mine did.”
She crossed her arms over her knees as a shiver slid up her spine. “I am no one, your highness. How could marrying me halt such troubles?”
“The Lady of the Lake prophesied that the woman who bore my first child would save my kingdom.” Arawn spread his hands. “You are a woman, who can bear children. Why could it not be you of which the prophecy speaks?”
“If you are wrong, you will kill me.”
“Why would I kill you? You would be the hope of my kingdom.”
“You have killed them all. Dozens of them.”
“You believe my wives died by my hand…” He reached out and rested his hand on the trunk, as if he was weak. “You think I am a monster.”
“Are you saying you are not?”
He hung his head for a moment. “How the story fractures as it passes from mouth to mouth…” he breathed. He straightened. “I have had four wives, Ilsa. Each of them came to their ends through the worst of ill-fortune, barely before I got to know them. I did not harm a single one of them myself. My curse was their doom, though. Know that, before you decide. You would risk the same fate. I will not deny it.”
Ilsa shuddered. “Why would I agree?”
He hesitated. “I could offer you an inducement you would find difficult to refuse. I could promise your parents would never again be in need of anything. They would be cared for to the end of their days. That will happen anyway, Ilsa. Your father will not suffer for your absence. I will see to it. Although I would rather you agree to this because your heart moves you to do so, not because of any inducement I might offer.”
She waited, sensing he had more to say.
“If you take the risk,” he continued, “and agree to help me in this and you are the one of whom the Lady of the Lake spoke, you will save my people from the misfortunes that have struck us for more than ten years.” His gaze met hers. “Your own people, too, Ilsa. For this drought affects us all and you have the power to end it.”
“If I marry you.”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes and rested her head against her knees. She was shuddering, her heart hurting with each beat.
All her life, she had lived in the far corner of the world, unnoticed by everyone. She was a wood cutter’s daughter, with no special talents. She had listened to all the tales about kings and queens and lords and ladies whose grand deeds had changed hundreds of lives for the better. She had always thought such tales to be marvelous stories, to be enjoyed once the day’s lot was done.
Ilsa admired the lords and ladies in those stories for their power to make great changes but had always known she could never be one of them. Now, Arawn was giving her the chance to make such a great change. He offered that power.
If she was the one spoken of in the prophecy. If she wasn’t, she would die.
Only, the heroes of the stories took risks, too. Huge risks. Macsen Wledig lost his life before his work was done, yet he had still changed Britain for the better.
Ilsa thought of her mother’s gray face. Her father on the low bed in the corner of the cot and the soft groans he smothered each time he was forced to move.
Ilsa could ease their pain as she had wished she might. It would not be in the way she had imagined, yet it would have the same affect. She would be able to help everyone in her village, too. And many more…
She lifted her head to look at the king, who waited patiently for her to come to her own decision.
“I will marry you,” she said.