MERLIN watched Wren march up to the wedding dais with fierce determination. She should approach this marriage with joy.
Tears blurred his vision. She had grown into such a beautiful woman! So much like her mother he ached with longing to hold her.
But he had lost her trust and good will by forcing the marriage. Possibly he had lost her love as well. He hoped not. But she would be safe. That was all that mattered.
He should go now. He had a mission to complete in the North before he joined Uther in Dun Edin.
Before he could take one step out of the shadows toward his horse, he caught sight of Dyfrig mounting the dais. Dyfrig resplendent in gold brocade and mitered hat. He carried the ornamental crosier that marked him a shepherd of his human flock.
Fascinated by his twin’s role in today’s ceremony, Merlin blinked away the tears that had filled his eyes moments before. He could have followed the same path as his twin. He could have embraced the Christian Church as his mother wished.
Instead of rich clothing and palaces, he had lonely tracks in the wilderness and simple garb and his harp. He also had Wren. She made all of the loneliness and pain worth the struggle.
He and Dyfrig must stand united again, as they had not been since they were five. Representatives of the old faith and the new had to show their willingness to work together to crown Arthur before the rest of Britain would work together to oust the Saxons once and for all. If Dyfrig wouldn’t come to the crystal cave willingly... Merlin possessed the means to force him. The symbol of unification was much more important than Dyfrig’s pride. The symbol of power... Arthur. Soon everything he had worked for would fall into place. As long as Dyfrig cooperated.
With one last sigh and glance of longing toward his daughter, Merlin set off on his solitary destiny.
“Good-bye, Wren,” he whispered. “Remember the good times we had together, my beloved daughter.”
o0o
“Can’t you move that nag any faster?” Carradoc reached back from his own tall stallion to grab the reins of the docile mare I rode.
“I am not used to riding. If you’d let me walk, we’d make better time.” I tried not to wince as the jostling gait of the horse irritated muscles stretched and bruised by the long ride.
Walking didn’t require concentration like riding. If I strode beside Carradoc and his daughters, I’d have the freedom of mind to puzzle out the mystery of my father’s absence from the wedding ceremony and the appearance of a Christian archbishop wearing his face and form.
Except for the black hair, Archbishop Dyfrig appeared to be the same man as my father. Both wise religious men who counseled the Ardh Rhi. Both reputedly had visions of the future. And both claimed to be the son of a holy sister.
But... My mind slid away from the half-formed thought. Da and I had lived separately for four years while I studied in Avalon. Perhaps I didn’t know him as well as I thought. Perhaps he rode the political winds in whatever guise pleased his current audience.
Carradoc wanted to do the same. Neither cared for truth and honor, only expedience.
I wasn’t likely to get answers while more than half my mind remained fixed on staying upon a horse’s back.
“I am a lord and a marchog in contention for the kingdom of Gorre,” Carradoc bellowed. “You will not demean my position by walking like a common peasant.” His eyes wandered speculatively to the small retinue of servants behind us. From the loudness of his voice, I guessed he didn’t really mind who knew of his displeasure with me.
I held tight to the secret I had gleaned from Uther’s mind as Leodegran of Carmelide repeated to Uriens the handfast vows for his absent daughter, Guinevere. As soon as the couple married, at the Autumnal Equinox, Uriens would be named king of Gorre. Uther and the other kings had never even considered Carradoc for the title.
“Morgaine says you bewitch animals and men. Can’t you do something to the horse to make her gait as smooth as a cloud?” Nimuë smiled at my discomfort. “That nag is so docile a two-year-old could ride it.”
My new stepdaughter rode a high-stepping gelding with ease. She made the animal prance and rear, neatly keeping her seat.
My mare shied away from the high-strung animal. I grimaced at the horse’s uneven steps.
Berminia didn’t bother to hide her giggles. Her fat pony plodded slower than mine.
I yanked the reins away from my husband. A soft springtime mist made the leather slippery, and he lost his hold.
Defiance sat on my left shoulder. I couldn’t allow Carradoc to control me.
I slid off the hard saddle into the soft meadow. The scent of burgeoning wildflowers washed by rain caressed my nose, almost masking the odor of wet horse, wet dogs, and tired people. I shuffled my feet a little and drank in the fresh smells of the fields.
“I will walk.” I placed one foot forward, ready to begin the next leg of the journey to Carradoc’s stronghold east of Caerduel and south of Campboglanna, the large Roman fort on the wall.
“What do you think you are doing?” Carradoc dismounted beside me. The mare shied away from his looming presence.
“I am walking. Both the horse and I will be more comfortable. We will make much better time.” As if to emphasize my statement, the mare pranced and rolled her eyes.
“My wife will ride as befitting a noble. I don’t care that your humble birth denied you access to mounts until now. You have married landed nobility and therefore you must ride!” He grabbed for my waist and lifted me onto the saddle. The mare sidled away at first contact.
I landed on my bottom amidst a profusion of sweet flowers. My spine vibrated from the jolt. A small pain compared to the chafing between my thighs.
Thank you, Dawnsio, I silently told the horse. I could communicate with animals, just as Nimuë accused. But I didn’t do it casually or to no purpose, and I always thanked the creatures for the privilege.
The mare nodded in acknowledgment of the message.
“Get up, woman. You’ll learn to control your horse like a lady. I won’t have it said I married beneath me,” Carradoc grabbed my arm roughly.
“My father’s torc is gold, as is a king’s. Yours is only bronze,” I retorted. The sting of Carradoc’s insult burned my cheeks and firmed my determination to remain off that horse. Bards and their families were supposed to be honored equal to kings. My husband considered my father and me peasants, contemptible, barely worthy of his notice. So why had he married me?
Power. Control. Lust. He needed a son.
“The horse does not wish to be ridden, and I do not wish to ride,” I said out loud. Carradoc tried again to pull me up. I relaxed until I was a dead weight against his arm, remaining firmly in contact with the Pridd. This was where I belonged, not atop a horse.
“Since you can’t control your mount, you will ride with me,” Carradoc announced.
I stared at him, not certain what to expect.
Technically he hadn’t broken his promise not to hurt me. His lovemaking was rough and fast, hardly gentle, but he always made certain my body wanted him. He left me sore, mostly from the frequency of his attentions, but not hurt.
Nimuë laughed out loud. I ignored her. All my attention focused on my husband and the huge black stallion he positioned in front of me.
“Easy, Dyn.” Carradoc gentled his restless horse. “Come here, Wren.”
Carradoc lifted me high onto the horse’s broad back, sitting me sideways behind the saddle. His shield, strapped to the side of his equipage, bounced against my back. The high saddle offered me nothing to grab hold of as Dyn shifted his feet. The stallion’s spine rippled, his rigid muscles pounding into my already sore rump.
“Scoot back, Wren, so I can mount.” Carradoc grabbed the pommel in preparation for scrambling aboard the big horse.
I looked down, a long way down to the ground. Gingerly I edged toward the horse’s tail. Carradoc heaved his weight up. Dyn reared.
I landed flat on my back. The world spun around me. Darkness fluttered across my vision. I tried to breathe. Paralyzing pain stabbed my lungs.
o0o
My body cried out for air. Fire on the rampage in my chest blocked each breath.
Panic set heavily on my throat. I couldn’t breathe. The pain was too much. I had to breathe.
Nothing else mattered. I had to get air. It hurt. Dana how it hurt!
Time and time again I tried. Nothing happened but more pain. Red mist clouded my vision. I had to have air.
Between one gasping struggle for air and the next, the pain faded. Not much. Just enough to be aware that I would not suffocate.
Voices penetrated the crimson fog around my mind.
“Now that you’ve killed her, can we get on with this interminable journey?” Nimuë whined.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Daughter? I’d be honor-bound to leave immediately for the war, and I’d have to report my wife’s fate to her father.” He paused. “The Merlin will kill me. Then all that I own will be yours. Do you know the hideous death meted out for the murder of a priest or priestess? The only worse punishment the Druids deliver is for forbidden knowledge in the wrong hands.”
Alarm rang in my head almost as painfully as the shock to my body from the fall. An almost memory of a gibbering demon waving white petal pincers with fuzzy blood red centers circled around my memory, dribbling pain into my head. What in Carradoc’s tirade had triggered this reaction?
The headache took my attention away from my bruised lungs. They relaxed a little and air flowed more freely into me.
I didn’t stir. I needed to hear more.
“Accidents happen.” Nimuë dismissed his statement with a flutter of her long fingers. “The Merlin will be so grief-stricken, he won’t be able to hurt you. Everyone knows how he dotes on her. Though I don’t know why, she’s so ugly.”
A green faery buzzed by my head.
Shall we drive the man and his ugly daughters mad? he asked. You carry his child, you don’t need him anymore.
A child? Already?
The scent of fresh cedar drifted past my nose. I breathed deeply, determined to keep air moving to the vulnerable new life within me.
I carried a child!
I need to hear how much the woman hates me. She is my enemy and I must share a domicile with her, I replied to the faery. I must protect myself and my child with knowledge.
Cedar landed on my wrist. I couldn’t tell where his companions lighted. They wouldn’t be far off.
“Wren is of the old stock. Sturdy. She will give me healthy sons, something your mother and her successors couldn’t,” Carradoc sneered at his daughter.
“If she lives. You don’t need a son. You have me!”
“I have Roman ideals and Christian blindness to contend with at court. You won’t be allowed to inherit.”
“Then allow me to marry a man who can inherit.”
“The only men willing to accept your acid tongue and bitter heart are too weak of will to be of any use.”
“A weak man would allow me to rule and would look away at other... indiscretions.”
A long silence stretched between them.
I wanted to scream, What indiscretions?
Instead of replying to his daughter, Carradoc knelt beside me. He lifted my shoulders gently. “She breathes,” he announced. “The rest of you continue on. We will follow shortly.”
“I will not ride,” I whispered. Cedar and his companions fluttered through the flowers and grasses, barely visible. They hadn’t gone far, I knew. But they did not like my husband. They had not blessed our marriage.
“You must ride, Wren. If you do not get back on a horse now, you never will.”
“If I must, I will make a show of riding through villages. But not now.”
“Now or never, Wren. Come on, stand up and face the mare.”
“Are you trying to kill your unborn child?”
“We’ve only been married two days. You couldn’t possibly know if you conceived. And I know you were a virgin yesterday at dawn.” He grinned broadly.
“You want me to use my magic at every turn. Do you doubt that such powers would tell me the moment a new life started within my body?” My body couldn’t know, but the faeries had access to knowledge beyond mortal understanding.
Wild joy and swelling pride replaced the doubt in his eyes.
“Walking will tire you too much.”
“Your horses will damage me more. I am used to walking. I need to caress the Pridd and the Goddess with every step,” I said, taking off the shoes he insisted I wear.
He lifted me to my feet then, supporting me until my balance steadied. I took stock of my condition. A few bruises, sore ribs and back, nothing broken. I couldn’t breathe deeply without stabbing pain, but I breathed.
“I will walk beside you for now.” Carradoc clucked to the horses as he gathered their reins in one hand. He kept his free arm around my waist.
“You are a marchog, at home upon a horse. If you walk, you will slow us down.”
“Later you will ride in my lap. I shall linger alone with you a while.” He kissed me hard, leaving no doubt of his intentions. “We don’t need a bed to unite with the Goddess. If you aren’t pregnant now, you will be by the time we reach Caer Tair Cigfran.”
The Fortress of Three Ravens. Three ravens portended death or disaster.
Before I had a chance to consider the ill omen, he kissed me and drew me back down to the ground.
o0o
“How long has your fortress been haunted by three ravens?” I asked as we emerged from the deep forest. We looked across bright sunshine on fallow fields to the shadowed tor topped by a heavily fortified caer. The three ravens in question croaked from perches on the wooden palisade at the second rampart. The weathered thatch of the long hall, just visible beyond the watchtower, looked as black as the ravens’ feathers. The timbered walls had also darkened with age to a similar color.
I could almost imagine Cernunnos lounging along the rooftree. Watching. Waiting for the next death.
“The ancients brought the ravens and named it,” Carradoc replied. “For as long as my people have held that fortress we have proudly protected the three ravens.”
I shuddered slightly at the horrible omen.
Contrasting sharply with the darkness of the fortress, the sun shone brightly against a deep blue sky, warming the earth, readying it for the plow and the fertility festivals of Beltane, barely a month away.
I stood beside Carradoc’s horse, grasping Dyn’s bridle, as I had through most of the two-week journey north. No faeries flitted through the forest that filled the rolling hills to the south and west of the tor.
“Come, we must show ourselves to the villagers. You will ride, Arylwren.” Carradoc held out his hand.
I grasped it, placing my foot atop his, and swung up into his lap, twisting so that my hips nestled into his thighs. The little bit of this trip I had ridden, mostly through villages or requesting hospitality from villas and caers on the route, I had sat here. We must have made a picture of newlywed happiness.
A finger of forest along a slight ridge stretched northward, between the village and us. We climbed the hill slowly, twisting around tumbled boulders taller than the horses. The thickness of the trees muted the sunlight. The shady road beneath the trees smelled damp. A faery flitted past my ear, giggling. I knew a spring must burst forth from the earth nearby. The faeries called it home.
Once free of this dark tangle of trees and rough ground, the road wound into the village and then looped up the processional way on the east side of the tor. A gaggle of lop-sided huts came into view as we skirted the next bend. Weeds stretched from the verge toward muddy ruts on the road.
Almost a mile from the base of the hill, the village was closer to the base of the forested hill and the faery haven within the trees than to the protection of the caer. Almost as if it huddled as far away from the lord of Caer Tair Cigfran as it could.
The village huts stretched in a long semicircle facing away from the tor. I imagined the line of houses extending into a complete circle. Remnants of a ritual ditch and bank marked the perimeter of the dwellings. At the center of the circle stood a tall, solitary stone, partially chiseled smooth by men, partially roughened by centuries of changing weather.
Surprised by the proximity of a monolith in Carradoc’s village, I looked closer. Tumbled but not broken stones and quite a few standing stones formed a huge circle. The broken and stony ground, suitable for sheep but not plowing, disguised the pattern. Most of the village huts stood where the circle of stones should continue in an unbroken line. The thatched roofs nearly reached the ground, obscuring the walls. The floors must be sunk below ground level, to conserve building materials and provide extra insulation against fierce winter temperatures and winds. Here and there I glimpsed patches of light gray in a back or side wall. One patch per house. Granite gray. The same color as the standing stones.
I laughed out loud. The villagers had incorporated the sacred stones of their ancestors into their homes. They must accept the stones as a part of everyday life, holding the ancient ways in reverence by habit if not design.
This was a place I wanted to call home. Even before I met them, my heart knew and loved these people more than I could ever love the man who called himself my husband.
In small groups, people emerged from the oddly shaped homes. They stood silently, but respectfully, awaiting their lord and his new bride. No better dressed than most of the peasants of this war-torn land, they weren’t starving, but disease and a winter of poor food had taken a heavy toll on their health. Men, old before their time, leaned upon staves. Bone fever twisted their joints and curved their spines. Most of the women looked haggard. Young men remained in the fields, tending sheep or preparing the fields for plowing. They kept their backs to the procession on the road.
I saw no young women. None.
A few of the men tugged their forelocks as a sign of respect. None of the others bowed or curtsied.
I waved to them, shyly. One woman looked up. A brief smile touched her lips, then faded rapidly.
Carradoc scowled in extreme displeasure. All of the villagers retreated a step or two, as far away from their lord as they could get and still line the road to witness this parade.
“I told the village elders to break up those standing stones. I need them to improve the fortifications of the long hall and the first rampart,” Carradoc grumbled. “They’ll obey or feel my whip on their backs.”
“You can’t punish these people for maintaining the stones of antiquity!” I protested, squirming to get down from Carradoc’s horse.
He held me tight against him.
“Bring ten of these people to the Long Hall. Men and women. They’ll answer for this disobedience,” Carradoc shouted to three men-at-arms who rode with us.
Nimuë licked her lips as if eager for the taste of blood. I had no doubt she’d wield the whip herself if Carradoc allowed any but himself to do the nasty deed. His eyes glittered just as brightly in anticipation.
“There is plenty of rock around to use without desecrating this site,” I replied.
“I gave orders...”
“You are newly wed. You should be happy and forgiving, not vengeful.” I pinched his hand hard where he held me. He loosened his grip enough far me to slide to the ground. I landed with a jolt but remained upright.
“Get back up here, Arylwren.”
“No. Not until you promise to leave the stones alone.”
“I can’t promise...”
I thought about forcing his mind to accept my thoughts. I knew how to do it. But I had vowed not to use my magic to manipulate anyone. We had to make our own choices.
Carradoc and I stared at each other, malice and stubbornness growing between us with each heartbeat.
“Forgive me, Lord Carradoc.” A slight man of middle years and balding head skittered down the road from the tor. His tunic was slightly less threadbare and patched than the villagers.
A huge wolfhound bounded beside him. The shaggy beast ignored the man, halting in front of Carradoc’s horse, pink tongue lolling, ears flopping, slightly perked in curiosity. It looked at me carefully, then approached slowly, nose working.
“Newynog, come,” Carradoc ordered, snapping his fingers beside his thigh.
The dog ignored him while it sniffed my hand. It stood nearly as tall as I and probably weighed twice what I did.
I held still, waiting for Newynog’s judgment. Dogs didn’t usually frighten me. Wolfhounds — war dogs — tended to be fiercely loyal. Until it accepted me as part of Carradoc’s pack of humans I could become a victim of those sharp, meat-tearing teeth. Carradoc would have chosen the name Newynog — hungry — for a reason.
A wet tongue covered my hand, then my face. I grimaced a little as I wiped the dog’s slobber on my sleeve.
“Good girl, Newynog, you know who belongs to me!” Carradoc laughed.
Newynog sat at my feet, leaning her impressive weight into me, demanding I scratch her ears.
Carradoc sobered instantly and glared at the dog. “She doesn’t accept the touch of anyone, sometimes not even me,” he growled, sounding very like a dog.
“I have a way with some animals.” I smiled at the dog and petted her lavishly. Mind pictures of dozing beside a bright fire came to me with great clarity. Our arrival had disrupted Newynog’s nap. But she didn’t mind.
“Diones, what is the meaning of this disobedience.” Carradoc pointed toward the standing stones. “I ordered the stones dismantled and broken up for fortifications.”
“Yes, Lord.” Diones bowed from the waist, nearly pulling out the few hairs that remained on his brow in subservience. “But we’ve finished the repairs to the Long Hall foundations and the rampart walls.”
“In stone?” Carradoc glowered beneath his heavy brows. I sensed disappointment that he wouldn’t need to whip someone. Several someones.
“Yes, Lord. Good strong stone, neatly dressed with square corners, mortared together. Double walls filled with rubble between, just like the Roman wall.” Diones risked a glance upward.
Both Carradoc and I looked up to the soaring walls of the fortress. Sure enough, the wooden planks seemed to be resting atop several feet of smooth stone. Very like the construction of the Roman wall to the north of us. I was sure the wall was visible from the watchtower on a clear day like today. I wondered if the new breaches in Hadrian’s Wall were also visible. Maybe Diones and the others had gone a little farther afield to keep their pilfering of the Roman stones a secret.
“You see, Carradoc, you have been obeyed. We mustn’t assume defiance from your people. Unless you wanted to whip someone for your own pleasure,” I accused him. Newynog licked my hand. I sensed her agreement with my words.
Carradoc didn’t answer me. He just held out his hand for me to climb back onto his horse.
“I’ll walk.”
“You will ride.” He grabbed the neck of my gown and yanked me up onto his saddle.
The villagers all stepped forward as if to aid me, then thought better of it and retreated again. Newynog looked confused. A low rumble erupted from her throat, more a question than a threat. I turned and waved to the villagers, forcing a smile for them, but not for Carradoc. Newynog relaxed a little and paced beside Carradoc’s horse on the twisted road up to the fortress.
I thanked Andraste my husband would leave for the battlefront within a few weeks.