The Dark Chronicles Ch. 03

A last subterfuge was needed, but a simple one. King Lot to go south, perhaps a wider kingdom to make, and the young Artur besides to carry his flag. I would accompany them south, on a horse this time, my donkey done. And respect given to Maer Maerlyn properly this time, not by gaggling children.

People sometimes wonder why I am always in the right place when matters of the land unfold. It helps, I suppose, when I write much of it, Nym Nymue too and the Sisters. By staying one page ahead in the book, we might call it prescience. Do it often enough and it becomes hindsight. But then I spied Artur's blond head, he was tall and slender awaiting on the shore. I remembered back to the black hair of his half sister Morgayne, and realised I knew nothing at all. Blackness in a bottomless cup, Artur like as not to fall in and drown.

I wondered if Nymue had mastered the girl, or whether she too was stumbling in the dark. And here I was, about to lead young Artur south. I shuddered, and my ankle throbbed. The dark Morgayne would be twenty now, the same age Nymue was when she discovered the sun. I pondered the coincidence of that. But the boat was running in fast on a brisk breeze, and I could see a welcome party on the shore. Darkness and dreaming would have to wait.

"Artur, hail," I shouted across the narrowing gap between the boat I sailed in on and the dock he stood upon. "You have grown or I have shrunk, these years. Fellow, how is your sister?" In truth I could ask him this, as Morgayse and Artur shared their mother, Ygraine. The tangle of fathers could wait.

"She is well, Maer, practiced at mothering now, three lads to satisfy her and the old Lot a fourth." Artur laughed, as the not so old Lot standing beside him grinned and slapped his arm.

"Have you come to teach the boy respect, Maer? See how he regards me simple because his sister would marry me? In truth, Maer, I tire of his impudence." Lot's arm around the youth's shoulders confirmed the lie and the fondness of the king. "Truth is, Maerlyn, young Artur is a good man. Tis a shame I have three boys, for he would make a good heir."

I would that Lot gave less of his truth. He made everything I say doubly false and a pretence. This idle talk of kings unnerved me, for I had not yet given my message. Later, in a high hall and before a roaring hearth, would be best. A hot fire stops many a shiver, and a flickering flame can be used to say many sooths. And to roast chestnuts, harvested from the last wood before the sea. I proffered a bag as a simple gift.

"Welcome round my fire then. Come down to the long hall and put your boots up on a bench." Lot turned and swing his cloak behind him. "You can tell us news from the south when we've fed. I've heard rumblings that pen Dragen lies dying. Is there truth in't?"

"Aye, there is truth in that. We must sort out his kingdom, and propose a parly of men round a table to do it." Nym Nymue and I had been busy, scurrying from realm to courtyard to cottage, urging kings and princes to set aside differences and meet on a great field near the Monnow mouth, on the border lands. Lot was respected for his wisdom and would wield good legiance. He was an essential friend and Morgayse a useful marriage. The pivot needed to turn, else the plan fail.

Artur stood by, listening. A wise man, he said nothing and used his ears instead. Whereas I prattle on in my ignorance yet people still consider me wise. I cannot fathom it, but there it is. I fool everyone except myself, yet call me a fool and I'll bow. Jingle, jingle, bells on my cap.

A number of days later we set back onto the sea, to return to the mainland the quicker way. Lot suggested we take his best small ship, Artur to command, to sail to the west and all down the long coast, past the Hebrydes and into the Seas of Malin and Eire. And to continue all around the bulge of Wales and past the hills from where the sacred stones walked, from Prescel high down across the dales. Ten days and nights it took, sailing on; and I to know Artur better and what the Lord Lot said of him, standing by the steering oar or leaning our backs back against the mast.

As we sailed up into the long Syvern channel we passed far off the dreadful beach where Nymue ran from the terrible waves and began her witchery. I swear I saw a high flying white bird on the wing, yet it might have just been me, wistful and longing for her. I glanced to Artur, but he just gazed straight on past the mast, waiting for his destination and guiding Lot's ship with a sure hand.

Lot beside me, I turned to him and asked, "The youth is strong and steady, what think you of him and men, can he command?"

"What say you, Maer? Do you know what I might guess? Is the boy of different blood, under my roof like a cuckoo all these years?" Lot looked me straight in the eye, and for once my lies kept their silence and truth passed my lips, a rare thing.

"Yeay, Lord. Sent by Uthur with his sister to you, to hide from the daily mess of pen Dragen's court, sanctioned and silenced by Nym Nymue and the Sisters." I looked back to Artur. "Does he guess, thinkst you?"

Lot pondered it, and scratched his head. "Guess, guess not. I don't know it." He too watched Artur, watching the sea. "The Sisters, you say? Hmmm, they've not stirred for a long while, Maer, not for many a long year's passing." Lot shook his head. "Is it a big turn in the world? I don't wonder it."

I always wonder on it, but can never grasp it fully.

We ran up against a small pier and cast ropes ashore. Lot commanded his troop to take up their arms and to make square behind us, and we marched on like half a legion of old; a small force but a reminder to those who watched. Any king that walked with me, Maer Maerlyn, would be known as mostly wise, despite what I say about mine own wisdom. I watched the crowds as they saw Artur and wondered about the tall, slender youth. "Whose is the boy that Maerlyn brings?"

I saw too the way maids of the villages watched Artur, puffing up their pretty breasts and touching their hair as he passed by. Whispers followed, and as whispers do, spread on ahead of us; so by the time we came upon the Monnow fields an entourage encouraged us on, well met. Curiosity followed on soft paws like a cat. Artur stood tall amongst it all, and seemed not disappointed by the fuss.

Ahead of us I saw the flag of pen Dragen fluttering above a travelling tent, and wondered if it meant the man or the message. Behind and a way off, I saw a smaller tent, and flying from its centre a taller totem, feathers of birds unimaginable flickering in a grey coil of smoke circling up. My old heart thumped at the promise of the white Nymue. She was here. Culmination, surely, of her weave and spell, and still the innocent all unknowing. I watched for Artur, but he was well accustomed as a sailor to rest when the sea heaved and the winds roared, and was sitting with his back to a tree, a dozing there, all unperturbed.

I looked to Lot and said, "I'll go see the Dragen's tent, confirm who it is within, and ponder what next." I looked him fair on. "What see you to wander also amongst good men, to judge their mood and motive, influence it where needs."

"Yeay, Maer, that I will." Lot moved off. "We'll sup tonight with some brother made most welcome to us, and peaceful." He looked over to the tall oak under which Artur sat, all a sleeping propped against the tree. "Yon Artur, he's not easy to excite. I envy that, his steadiness."

"Aye, a good habit in truth. Let him sleep, while he may."

I made my way to the pen Dragen's tent and bowed obedience at its entrance, for even if it was not the king inside, his pennant flew above and was the symbol of Uthur the king. I did not expect to see him within, as even the last time I spoke to him, Uthur was frail and slightly mad in his words, unlikely to travel. And indeed, no king was there; but Ygraine his nearly widowed wife, Uthur's queen instead of the man.

"Lady, d'ost travel without your Lord?" I went to her with a gracious bow, for she was a good woman and had served the king well. And without her, Nymue's weave would be barren and my part in it pointless too. Ygraine's belly suited us.

"Greetings, Maer, well met." She looked at me with fondness, her favourite fool. "Yeay, the king is old and feeble made. We travel on, and he stays at Tyntangel." Ygraine gazed at me, with a small, tired smile. Her hair was silver now, the gold of her youth all gone. A fine woman still and doubtless, not alone. "Have you my son, Maerlyn, have you brought me my boy?"

"Aye, Lady. Up yonder field by the spreading oak, he rests himself, his back against the trunk of it. I will find him when he wakes and bring him here to you, to his mother."

"Thank you, Maer. I've not seen my son grown. He'll be a stranger to me."

"He is your son, Lady. A boy never forgets his mother."

"Nor his sister." I turned at her voice, so soft, no more than a whisper, and gripped the staff in my hand for balance and strength. To see her, the peril to the plan, was to be afraid. I so rarely was afraid. "My brother then, to greet his sister?"

Morgayne stepped from a dark shadow and darkness seemed to follow her, blackening the light like some flickering unholy candle. Her movement into the light was penumbral and dark, the hem of her long gown making a coil of black cloth as she turned. Morgayne was tall, near as tall as me, but I could get no sense of her frame. She was clad in a swirling black gown and a cloak, clinging and falling as she moved, shifting the eye from the darkest black to a shimmering midnight blue. Morgayne's hair was the blackest black that I always remembered and always wanted to forget, the longest hair.

"Lady." No speech, I didn't know what to say. Could I run? No, I'd just fall and foolish be.

"Maer Maerlyn," and my back shivered in a strange seduction that I knew was utterly false. This woman had no love for me, I knew it; yet the way her tongue curled around my name was melodious and a thrill deep in my gut. "Maerlyn, hast brought my brother, to see his mother and his sister?"

Morgayne's hand appeared from the depths of the gown with such a curious slowness, and I watched with a chill as she touched my arm, such familiarity yet she controlled it. The heat from her touch! I expected coldness. My old cock roused at her, betraying me, stirring at the animal heat of her. I did not expect it, nor want it either.

"What a shame my brother cannot see his father, all alive, yet nearly dead." I doubted somewhat, that she truly thought it. "I cared for the king so long, so carefully, all a sitting by his bed." Her voice continued in a low whisper, slightly husky, ever so vaguely a low song as if she were remembering. "He sipped from my cup, Maerlyn, mine own silver cup, all filled up with juniper berries and sweet honey."

Morgayne's eyes were black. "What a shame I cannot see my father, Maerlyn. I was such a little girl when my father was taken away, all dead, a funeral pyre." She raised her eyes to me in a slow movement, not blinking, like an owl turning its head. "Sweet honey, Maerlyn, it hides so many tastes."

I looked to Ygraine as her daughter spoke and saw her shrink away, a fearful look and helpless. I remembered her words: Morgayne is a difficult child to love, yet I must. I'm her mother. Not easy then, the daughter; rarely loved.

"Oh Maerlyn, do you wonder my sweet love for you, my honey in a cup?" Morgayne's voice remained low, teasing me and a torment. "I see it in your eyes. You doubt my love. Don't doubt, my Lord...." Her words were poison, sweet as syrup; her cup too, I would not drink from it. "Oh Maerlyn, why do you look at me so?" She laughed, a low laugh, and my guts churned and swam.

"How is your ankle, Maer? Does it make you sore?" The horror. Morgayne looked right at me, and swirled the tip of her tongue, blood red, over a long finger and with her little white teeth, pearl white, nipped at her own flesh. She looked aside at me from under the fall of her hair, and if she were a golden maid it would have been a flirt; but she was Morgayne, and it was malice black. Her smile was innocent and sweet, yet corrupted most foul. Mine ankle twinged and she laughed, low in her throat. How did she remember that? She was less than two years old, still swaddled, yet she remembered the worst of me.

"Go from me, magician, leave my mother too." Morgayne's look at me was obsidian black and full of scorn, her toying no longer pretty. I retired from the tent with the best grace I could, and knew it wise to keep quick caution around the black Morgayne. "Go find your little white feather, dabbler, and sup at her dried up tit. I don't need you here." The venom in her voice was worse, because it was still seductive and low. "You're worse to me than a blathering priest and his sanctimonious eyes."

I scurried away, shocked at her black malice. My ankle throbbed, yet my cock a throbbing too. Hangst your head in shame, little brother, her honey is black like tar, bitter sweet. Don't taste it.

I shuffled around the rows of tents for a time to clear my mind of Morgayne's malevolence and to settle my wits, and in truth to lose the heat from my cock and uprising balls. The truth of her was terrible lust, as if she could draw it from me like a poultice does a wound, sucking up my own poison and dandling it in her slow, delicate hands. Morgayne's fingers on my arm were hot like fire when I expected cold, yet left a wantingness all through me. Was it me, I wondered, that made it so, or could she find weakness in every man and turn it so?

Feeling shamed and mortal, and lost from my certainties, I slowly made my way to Nymue's tent and a purer place, already seeking penance and a higher grace. But a warning too. If Morgayne could reduce me to a stupid cock high wreck with just a single touch, and I supposedly wise, what might she do with a weaker, stupid man? I laughed at mine own feeble thoughts. Morgayne's danger, and I saw it now - what might she do with a stronger man? I was uncertain and uneasy. Morgayne danced me widdershins and her spirals unspiralled, yet there she was, right at the very centre of things.

I found the entrance way to Nymue's small tent and stuck my head within. A small fire burned in the centre of the floor, and over it a small cauldron hung, beaten and patterned with a pair of opposite heads. They looked apart like Janus the old Roman, coming and going, both ways at once. So I knew the white Lady considered this place to be a centre of time and an axle around which round wheels would turn, and the turning upon us, so soon.

Her favourite stone circles told of centres and spirals and all things undone. Look the other way and things tightened and spun. Ah me, I should know by now not to breath in her air, Nymue's smokes and scents always do this to my poor brain, spinning it so quickly I was giddy and stumbled. Or was I just too tired now for all of this, wanting sleep like a baby and my head on a sweet breast, a heartbeat soft under my ear?

"Maerlyn, dear heart, wither thou? D'ost travel well and bring the boy?" Oh Nymue, to hear her voice and her soft endearments, she always calmed me, and calms me now. I turned to her, and there she was, gazing up at me with her certain look, her lovely eyes. "Ah, Maerlyn, something disturbs you, I can tell it." Nymue took my hand, and I could not help it, I trembled and shook. "Maer?"

"Artur's part blood sister, Morgayne, she is midnight and black. She is a peril to us, Nym Nymue, she is a future we cannot anticipate." I needs make Nymue understand this, for a white witch might know black, and a woman might better know her own sex. I was no good for sensibility when it came to the matter of woman, for I had two heads and their use was interchangeable. I could never function clearly with the both of us, being a man it was one turn or t'other, never mind my age. Never both at once. I only had enough blood in my veins for one organ at a time, and Morgayne drew my blood to my prick like the moon drags the sea to the sand.

"Nymue, you must know it. She is peril, and powerful with it." I squeezed her hands to entrust her with my concern. "I fear her, the dark Morgayne." Yet she thrilled me, and thrills me now.

Nymue sat and pondered, lines drawing in around her mouth. "Fear her, Maerlyn?" She shook her head, and reached for a pouch of seeds on a shelf. "You do not fear, Maerlyn, never once have I known that."

Nymue poured a handful of seeds into her palm, and the excuse of sorting them gave her more time to ponder it, shifting patterns in the grain in her hand. She made the seeds into a spiral and I sensed an absence in the tent as Nymue disappeared into a place inside her head, her finger still a rhythmic turn. She fell into a trancement, all inwards, her finger still a circling. Her eyes rolled back, yet still her finger spun and spiralled. I marvelled how fast she made the spell and dared not almost breath, to wake her from it, mindless.

The turn of her finger grew still. I waited. Outside, a patter of rain blew against the wall of the tent, and her flying cloth flappered above us in a small wind. I wondered if Nymue summonsed it, 'twould not surprise me if she did; or mayhaps it was just the weather, blowing cold. I could encourage animals to howl and crawl, but I'd never mastered the wind, not quite. The white Nymue found great power in the old stones, and knew the mazes too, and all inside her head. I would fail at that skill, I know it. Time is like a sieve and my memories fall through it like sand.

Nymue shuddered, then shook her head as if to clear her way through mist, and the air breathed. "I have seen it, Maer, as far ahead as the Goddess does grant me. The dark Morgayne is inevitable, but not yet." Nymue reached out to me and touched the tips of her fingers to my wrist, and then to her lips as a little bless, a tiny caress. "She is young, Maerlyn, as I was her age once. Dread her yes, but she is not into her power, not yet."

Nymue threw half the seeds to the fire where they crackled and spat, and dropped the rest into her pot where the bubbles rose up and pulled them floating all in. Another of her trancing scents rose to the air and thickened it, yet this once it soothed and settled me.

"Maer, we are near the end of it and the beginning. I know Uthur cannot last many more days, and we will hear a messenger soon. We will have princes and pretenders, thugs and theatricals before we can anoint the new king. Many will think it them, but the Goddess will mark but one. Come see."

She turned to a travelling box and lifted the lid. The hinges scraped like they did once before, such a long time ago. My old mind unravelled it quick and remembered the sight of her, her white gown falling. This storage place for the most precious things was always by her side, kept safe. Idle hands could never figure it, a cunning latch hidden most cleverly. I'd had it made for my old maps by a Chinee carpenter, but gifted it to Nymue one night in May, one year. I can't remember which, nor why. It was so long ago, just yesterday.

Nymue reached within and carefully pulled up a bound leather wrap. It was made from the softest leather, a pale pink like unto a little piglet. Mayhaps as long as my fore arm, but thicker. "Remember when the boy was made into his mother's womb, I departed for to find precious silver and metals and gold?" She laid the parcel on a small bench, un-knotting the tied up straps. "I knew to make a sign, a symbolic thing nobody must doubt, and only one might use." She unfolded the last fold of softest leather, and Nymue stroked it smooth. "Here 'tis, mined and beaten, emblazoned with proper jewels and a pommel dropped from the sky in flame."

I looked upon the object, and indeed knew it would be proof enough, when held up by a king. 'Twas a bright dagger, all silver through its blade, lines and spirals artfully made, curling about and around. At its quillion tips two dark rubies were embedded, and a polished sky stone in each side. I looked to Nymue, and knew it crafted with love and reverence by her hands, all magick woven in by fire.