I fell to the ground, clutching my cheek, too stunned to speak or fight back. The gash inflicted by the metal links of Carradoc’s armor bled freely. It burned clear through to my teeth.
I tried to rise. Protest. Ward off his next blow. He struck me again and again, beating me down before I could recover my wits or strength. I tasted blood. More blood on my face. Pain. Sharp. Dull. Spreading. Blades of pain shot through my veins.
The raven swooped down, flying into Carradoc’s face. It tried to peck his eyes. Carradoc brushed the bird aside with one mighty sweep of his arm while he kicked my ribs and stomach. The raven staggered away, wings flapping out of rhythm, feathers flying in all directions. Rage distorted Carradoc’s face.
“There is no one left to protect you from what you deserve. No one, whore!” Carradoc screamed. “Were you ever faithful to me? You deprived me of a son. You and that pisspoor excuse for an Ardh Rhi betrayed me from the day we were married. Maybe even before. Witches can fake virginity time and again.”
“I keep my promises,” I whispered.
He didn’t listen.
“I keep my promises,” I repeated louder.
“Liar!” Carradoc’s heavy boot landed in my ribs once again.
“I divorce you, Carradoc.” I’d said it once before. One more time and he’d no longer have the right to beat me, or kill me.
“I div...”
He hit me again in the jaw, stopping my words. With the last of my strength I kicked out. Carradoc fell over my outstretched foot. He landed atop me, driving his metal-encased fist into my belly.
I retched and curled into a fetal ball. The exposed roots of the tree seemed to cradle me, begin to grow around me. The roots became my father’s arms. I could see him through my left eye though it was swollen shut and filled with blood. I shrank into the enfolding protection of the tree — the Worldtree that bonded all of the worlds together.
Through a haze of red I watched Carradoc lift his foot to kick me in the head. Get it over with! I no longer had the strength to speak. Kill me and end this pain.
“Leave her, Carradoc,” Mordred said. “The tree already takes her. The ravens wait in the branches to pluck out her dead eyes. Get her half of the seal. We have to get back to Camlann.”
Carradoc hesitated a moment, then lowered his foot. Dimly, I felt him rummaging through the sach at my waist. He’d not find the seal.
Pain engulfed my entire being. All I could do was pray for a quick end. I’d die in Da’s arms. Where I belonged. No, another voice whispered into my mind. Da’s voice? You belong with Arthur, the man you love. The man you have loved all your life.
“We have to cut down the tree,” Morgaine protested. I think she lifted an ax from her saddlebag. She had it in her hands as she stepped up to the tree.
Part of me trembled, waiting for her killing blow. Another part of me tried to rise up and protect the tree. I hadn’t the strength or the will to move and invoke more pain. Crippling pain.
Her first vicious blow sent tremors through the ground. I screamed in new pain, as if the blow had cut into me as well as the tree. The earth trembled and the sky darkened.
Hush, Wren. Let them think you die. Was that the voice of my father or of the raven that still squawked up in the tree? A dozen of its fellows joined the chorus.
“Later, Mother,” Mordred said. “We’ll let Lady Arylwren die here, too. When her spirit is trapped within the tree, we’ll chop it down and be rid of both her and her father forever.”
Yes. Let me die here with Da.
Hold on, Wren. Hold on for Curyll.
A stiff wind rattled the upper branches of the oak. Chills swept over me, and I smelled salt heavy in the air. Thunder rolled in the distance. Perhaps I only heard Myrddin galloping away to tell his mother that I died.
“It’s going to rain soon. Carradoc, get the damned seal and let’s go!” Mordred’s horse pranced in an uneasy circle.
“She doesn’t have it on her.”
“Where could she have hidden it? We searched her room.” Mordred looked to the sky. “We’ll find it later. I don’t want to get wet. It’s not fitting for the Ardh Rhi to return to his capital wet and bedraggled.” He laughed and reared his horse again, spinning it in place.
Carradoc left me as the first icy drops of rain fell through the canopy of tree branches.
It isn’t supposed to end like this! the raven croaked.
Tears mingled with my blood and the rain.
o0o
“Mama?”
A quiet voice roused me from pain-wracked nightmares. A dog’s warm tongue licked blood and rain from my face. I shivered violently in the cold and wet. The wind, born in the coldest reaches of the Western Sea, blew through the clearing. More rain fell. I shuddered again and wished I hadn’t. Every portion of my body ached or bled or both.
“Dana help us. He’s nearly killed you,” Deirdre sobbed.
A cloak dropped over me. The huge dog whined and stood over me, blocking the rain, adding her own body warmth to me. My chill eased a little. But soon the cloak and the dog were soaked, too.
“Deirdre. Flee, now. He’ll kill you,” I whispered through broken lips. “Take Newynog. She’ll protect you.” As she hadn’t protected me when I needed her most.
“Not without you, Mama. If I’d known what they would do, I’d have stopped them. Somehow. Oh, Mama, what do I do first?”
“Leave me. I die.” Feebly I pushed aside the dog’s cleaning tongue.
“No, you won’t die. I won’t let you.”
“Can’t save me.”
“Yes, I can. I’ve rigged a litter behind my horse. I’ll take you to Avalon.”
“The twins. Take twins... flee. Faeries... pool... protect... from Carradoc.”
“The twins are safe. I sent them to Father Thomas with their nurse. Carradoc won’t leave Camlann for a while yet. Dana, help me, I wish Gyron hadn’t sailed with Arthur. He’d have stopped Carradoc. Lie still, Mama. I’ll bring the horse closer.” Her voice faded and wavered. I don’t know if she moved away or if I did.
“Carradoc... He’ll find me... Honor questioned.”
“That man has no honor. I’m glad he’s not my father. He won’t look for you anytime soon, though. Mordred has declared Arthur dead, shipwrecked in this storm. Morgaine saw it in a vision, or so she claims. The kings who remained behind have proclaimed Mordred Ardh Rhi. But there are only three of them, Melwas shifts his allegiance with the wind. There aren’t enough of them to uphold the election if challenged. Carradoc sits at Mordred’s right hand as Champion. That satisfies his honor more than killing you and publicly humiliating me. Why didn’t you divorce him years ago?”
“Promises made in a circle.”
“Too bad he doesn’t believe in promises like you do.”
“The seal. Mordred... can’t rule without it.”
“He’s tearing the fortress apart looking for your half.” Deirdre ran her hands down my arms and legs looking for broken bones. Then down my back. She straightened me gradually, seeking the worst of the hurts.
I think I screamed as she touched my ribs and belly. Blackness for several moments. A burning mission brought me back to semiconsciousness. “I... must go back. Can’t let him find seal.”
“I have it with me, Mama. I sought you in a scrying bowl. I saw you hide it in the mud beside a spring two hundred paces north of this place. Then I saw... I saw this.” A catch in her voice told me just how badly hurt I was. As if the knife-sharp pain didn’t.
“Good girl.”
“I also stole Mordred’s half. He’ll have to wait for a new one to be struck before he can be crowned.” She resumed her efficient examination, and gentle washing of my face.
A little coherency returned to me. If my jaw didn’t hurt so badly, I could speak better. I couldn’t tell if Carradoc had broken it or not. “Mordred needs... Excalibur. It must pass... to him. Arthur... not part from it.”
“Unless the sword is at the bottom of the sea with Arthur and the Companions.” Deirdre bound my ribs tightly with bandages she had brought with her. I groaned with each movement. Then, miraculously, the pain faded from sharp to dull. I could breathe without fear or the feeling of knives penetrating my lungs.
“Arthur lives,” I asserted. I would know when he died. I’d sense it as I had Da’s passing. When Curyll died, I wouldn’t long survive him. The fact that I still lived meant that he did, too. That had been the only comforting part of my vision.
I think I fainted again. But not for long. Every bone and muscle in my body screamed when Deirdre lifted my shoulders and dragged me to the triangular litter behind the horse. I couldn’t suppress a sharp cry.
Newynog whined in distress. She licked and nuzzled me again, all she could do to ease my hurts.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I don’t want to hurt you. But we have to leave now. We have to get you to Avalon.”
“Avalon... deserted.” The ache in my jaw sharpened.
“I know. No one will look for us there.”
My daughter tried her best to make our journey gentle. Once we were well beyond Camlann, she eased up onto the old Roman road. The litter jostled less moving across the smooth paving stones than through open forest. But on that road we were more exposed to the storm that continued to rage.
“Avalon will flood,” I said. I didn’t know if Deirdre heard me or not. She kneed the horse into moving faster.
Twenty miles of straight road took us the better part of a night and a day to travel. Deirdre stopped frequently to bind my wounds, feed me a few sips of water, brush my sopping hair out of my eyes. Newynog stayed close, giving me her warmth whenever we stopped. But she couldn’t ride in the litter with me. The horse hadn’t the strength to drag both of us.
I remember crying out. I remember the fever dreams of ravens pecking out my eyes. Mercifully I passed most of the trip unconscious.
We never made it to Avalon. Spring had been wet. Summer barely acknowledged. Every creek and river filled to overflowing with the constant downpour. Avalon was cut off, the lake village drowning and deserted. We couldn’t even get to the tor to climb above the flood. Arthur had built new fortifications up there occupied by Melwas. We couldn’t be certain he’d shelter us if we managed to climb to his doorstep.
Resourceful Deirdre found a deserted crofter’s cottage. The sagging thatched roof leaked. Wild pigs rooted in the corners. But the hearth drew smoke upward and burned clear. A smidgen of warmth penetrated my dreams.
I awoke to the smells of a potion that reeked of betony. Deirdre bathed my wounds with it. She tore up her own shift to renew the binding on my cracked ribs. Then she forced another noxious potion down my throat.
“Where did you learn to mix that awful brew?” I nearly spat out the thick oily mess. My jaw worked. Carradoc hadn’t managed to break it after all.
But my face must be a mosaic of bruises.
“’Tis your own remedy, Mama. You used it on Yvain and Gyron every time they bashed each other in the head too often.”
“I couldn’t have. It’s too awful.”
“Now you know what you put the rest of us through.” She chuckled as she forced more of the bitter brew through my teeth.
Willow bark and mullein I recognized. More betony and the oil of a secret plant from the marshes around Avalon. It shouldn’t taste that foul. But it did.
It also put me back to sleep.
When I woke again, I found my left arm tightly bound in a splint and five stitches closing a scalp wound. I could barely breathe from the bandages wrapped around my middle. The pain returned like an unwanted relative. Almost bearable for a very short time.
“Time to sit up, Mama. I don’t want those ribs to interfere with your breathing.”
“Who told Carradoc that he is not your father?” I asked.
“Nimuë,” Deirdre replied. “Who else would dare? Morgaine confirmed it with another vision.” She clamped her mouth shut on her next sentence.
“What else did they tell him?”
She looked back at me with Da’s blue eyes framed by Curyll’s blond hair, tangled now into a mass of damp curls. The firm set of her jaw, so very like her father’s, told me she wouldn’t willingly say more.
But she was my daughter. I knew her too well.
“The one and only time I made love with Arthur, I truly believed Carradoc dead. I did not break my promise of fidelity,” I reassured her.
“I know that, Mama. I’ve known since I was old enough to reckon days and make sense of the stories people tell. Arthur sent Carradoc home quite suddenly after allowing him to linger in the army camp for over a year. I didn’t know that Arthur was my father but I hoped he was. Most any father would be better than Carradoc.”
“At least he didn’t use you like he did Nimuë and Berminia. He didn’t have Beltane festivals to force you. That is one thing you can thank Father Thomas for.”
“Nimuë’s son was sired by Carradoc, not Grandda.” She looked at me frankly, not willing to spare the hurt.
“How do you know?” I tried sitting up straighter, shocked into alertness. I moaned and slid back into my slump against the saddlebags.
“I overheard Nimuë tell Carradoc. She was two months’ pregnant when she finally managed to seduce The Merlin. She did it to make the world believe The Merlin sired the child. She was laughing that Grandda couldn’t... was scarred and impotent.”
Heat drained out of my face. Nimuë had seduced a nearly impotent man to delude the world into believing the wrong man sired her child. I had done the same thing.
“I know about your grandfather. The gods marked him for an early transgression. He bore the constant reminder that he must remain celibate the rest of his life.”
“Why? Why would the gods demand such a thing of him?”
“In the old days, Druids only learned to prophesy after many years of serious study, of fasting and purification. The gods would take away the gift if the prophet had sex after they had their first vision. From that day forth, they remained celibate.” I lay back, resting before I continued the tale. Deirdre forced some soothing water down my throat. And more of the bitter potion.
“Da had his first vision of the future before his fifth birthday.” I coughed and needed to sleep again. But I had to finish the story, for my benefit as well as Deirdre’s. “Prophecy is a gift and a curse from the gods. After Da lay with my mother one Beltane, the gods decreed that his destiny was not yet fulfilled. They gave him a reprieve, but only so long as he remained celibate.”
“You didn’t lose your ability to see the future, Mama.”
“My life pattern is different from Da’s.” I provided the anchor of continuity to my descendants. They must remember the lessons taught by Arthur and The Merlin. My work was not yet finished.
A husband and children by Curyll, the Goddess had promised me long ago. Children. Plural.
“I need sleep.” And a dream of the next, and last, time I would be with my beloved Curyll. I closed my eye — the left one was still swollen shut — to hide the tears that prickled behind both eyelids. Arthur and Deirdre were my destiny. Arthur must die soon. I had seen it. And so would I.
But I would give birth to one more baby. Arthur’s child.
He’s not dead yet. There is still so much for us to do, a raven croaked using my father’s voice.