Web of Deceit (53 page)

‘The latest news arrived during the early hours of this morning, at some risk to the messenger, master. The Saxons have landed at Anderida and they have surrounded the fortress. Unexpectedly, their warriors have begun
to dig beneath the walls while your loyal subjects rain burning oil and arrows down upon them. Still, the Saxons have not been deterred from their siege and the fortress is dangerously low on fresh food. The advice I have received is that our warriors are reduced to eating their horses even as we speak.’

‘So? Let them wait! I will execute the whole garrison if they surrender – those few that the Saxons leave alive. More important, what have you discovered concerning Gorlois’s plans? He plots treason, doesn’t he?’

Myrddion shook his head. ‘No, my lord, that’s untrue. I have been through the reports of every spy embedded in the Dumnonii retinue and I have no doubt that Gorlois remains true to the west and to the High King. He desires only to return to Tintagel with his wife and daughter.’

Uther grinned like a wolf and something starving gleamed in his blue eyes. ‘He’ll not go to Tintagel – on my oath. Not alive and breathing!’

‘Master . . .’ Myrddion felt the air drain out of the room. ‘Gorlois is your strongest ally and your powerful left hand. Do not remove one arm, like the Roman emperor Valentinian who killed Flavius Aetius, his last great general. Rome suffers now because of that foolish execution and the emperor eventually perished in a welter of his own blood. You are needed in this land, my lord, and the west will fail without you. To sweep Gorlois away to the shades, for the sake of a pretty face, is sheer madness.’

Uther struck Myrddion across the face with his clenched fist. If the king had expected Myrddion to fall, however, he was mistaken, for although the healer was driven backwards for several stumbling steps he somehow managed to keep his balance. Myrddion’s eyes were black wounds in his white face, except for where a red mark was imprinted on his brow and a thin snake of blood escaped from a split in his dark eyebrow.

‘You shouldn’t strike at friends, lord, for you
have too few to antagonise those who support you. I am oath-bound and cannot retaliate.’

‘You?’ Uther snarled and shook his stinging knuckles, where the skin had been split by the hard bones of Myrddion’s brow. ‘The day I fear a healer is the day I consign myself to death.’

Botha would have spoken and moved forward to intervene, but Myrddion raised his left hand and motioned him to hold his position. ‘Do not interfere, Botha. Your trial of faith is years in the coming, so leave me to mine.’

Uther howled and struck Myrddion once again, this time dropping the healer to his knees. Shaking his head slowly, and with his face leaking blood from the mouth, Myrddion rose to his feet, but his hands were still not curled into fists. A part of his brain knew that Uther was baiting him out of a frustrated hunger to shed blood, but the king also hoped to be given the justification to sweep his adviser into oblivion and free himself from his oath to his brother.

Myrddion’s split lips opened as he raised his head. He spat a gobbet of blood to the floor and stared the High King down with eyes that were changing . . . changing . . . and growing colder than the ice packs of the north, more pitiless than anything Uther had ever seen. Myrddion felt the goddess coming and the old fitting began to rise in his mind like the slow uncoiling of her serpents. Yet this time, the shivering creature that was Myrddion was permitted to hear and remember every word that he was forced to utter.

‘Woe to you, Uther Pendragon. You have been given a crown, but it will never be enough for you.’ Myrddion’s voice continued as Uther cocked his fist to strike him once again. ‘Strike me if you wish, but you have set the wheels in motion and Fortuna will now oversee the attainment of all your desires. The wheel turns, and you cannot – will not – stop it.’

‘What are you raving
about?’ Uther’s voice seemed to come from far away, while Myrddion’s voice grew louder and stronger, to fill the whole apartment with a reverberating sound that was hardly human.

‘You will have your woman and may you take much pleasure in her, for she will bring a dowry with her that sows the seeds of your impotence. Although you will fight the Saxons to a stand-still, you will waste your strength in years of war for no honour and little glory. But you
will
take pleasure in the terror you bring into being, out of spite and in raddled old age, and you will kill the only creature on this earth who loves you . . . all to create a failed myth of power.’

‘I am the High King. I
am
Pendragon, so I am no myth, you drivelling fool,’ Uther hissed, but his fists loosened and he took a half-step backward away from Myrddion’s accusatory eyes.

‘You will keep the throne warmed for a man who is far better than you . . . one who will eclipse you without effort or fear. Everything you are will be written on your face by the time of your death and men will rejoice when you take your last breath. You will die alone and unmourned, and a witch will seal your spirit away into eternal darkness.’

The room was so still that Myrddion’s ragged breathing was shockingly loud.

‘So what of you? I’ll see you worm food before that fate comes to me.’

Myrddion laughed and the sound was rusty, like the complaint of hinges on a ruined door to a tomb, or the lid of a sarcophagus being dragged open by impious hands. ‘I will outlive you by decades to see all that you hate most come into being. Fear not, Uther Pendragon, for you’ll not be forgotten, but men will whisper your name in tandem with the hated Vortigern’s as those kings who paved the way for something better. Your crown and your sword will belong to another man whom
you’ll bring into being out of the blood and tempests in your soul.’

Incensed, Uther struck Myrddion again, and this time the healer’s head snapped backward, so that Botha feared that his neck had been broken by the violence of the blow. Slowly, like a young tree struck by lightning, Myrddion fell until he was only a black puddle of cloth on Uther’s floor. ‘Shovel this mess away,’ Uther ordered with hunted, shamefaced eyes. ‘I have a meeting to attend.’

‘I’m sorry, Master Myrddion,’ a voice whispered from far away. Across a vast divide of blackness, the healer heard the voice and wondered vaguely why the phlegmatic captain of the king’s guard would need to beg his pardon in such an ashamed voice. But the effort of thinking was too difficult. Myrddion slipped back into womb-like darkness.

When he awoke the second time, Myrddion tried to open eyes that felt as if they had been stitched shut. Painfully, he struggled to pull apart his gummed lashes while a soft, soothing voice hushed him and placed a cool damp cloth over his face. When the hand lifted away the moist compress, Myrddion discovered that his eyes opened easily and Ruadh’s concerned, frowning features swam into focus.

‘Why are you here, Ruadh? Where am I? I don’t understand what’s happening.’

‘You’re in a small room in King Uther’s hall and I was called to tend to you by Captain Botha over half a day ago. It’s the evening of the third day of the New Year – the tribal kings are meeting and it seems we are going to war. And you, my beloved, must lie still because you have been very ill. I feared that you’d never wake again.’

Disoriented and alarmed, Myrddion’s expert fingers explored the left side of his face, which ached with painful insistence. He found a knot at his temple on the hard skull bone that protected the softer, weaker temple below it. ‘I was very lucky,’ he whispered. ‘An inch lower
and I could have been killed. I feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse.’

Then, because his eyes hurt so much, he closed them for the welcome dark, while his exploratory fingers continued to rove over the swollen contours of his face. He needed no eyes to see what the king had done to him when enraged beyond cool reason. His trained fingers found the split in his eyebrow, the contusion on his cheekbone that bruised his eye and the deep cut across his jawline. Because he understood the value of strong teeth, he checked each one and sighed with relief when he was sure that none was damaged, broken or loosened in its socket.

‘He was trying to provoke me,’ he whispered as he hungered for the luxury of healing sleep. His common sense told him that matters between the High King and himself were finally at breaking point.

‘I understand, master, for Botha told us that he was certain Uther wanted you to strike him in turn, so that he would be at liberty to order your execution. Do you remember what you said to him? Brangaine has told me of your fits, but she also explained that you never remember what you have said.’

Myrddion stirred on the pallet, which was filled with straw that scratched him through the coarse homespun fabric. ‘I remember every word I spoke on this occasion.’

The healer felt, rather than saw, Ruadh’s raised eyebrows and he wearily opened his eyes again to explain. ‘I don’t know if what I said was prophetic or not – or if I was just repeating whatever entered my head during a fit of temper. I do know that I said terrible things to the High King, so I’m surprised that I’m still alive and breathing.’

Ruadh laughed shakily, and Myrddion sensed the tears that lay below her amusement. ‘He must place a high value on you, for you are ordered to take the healers to Anderida to care for his troops. We have waited for you to come back to us.’

‘I’ll not go. Let Uther and his damned war go to the shades unmourned. I don’t care
any more for oaths, honour or threats, so I’m going home, regardless of what the High King tries to extort from me. I’ve had enough of him.’

‘Oh, master!’ Ruadh’s face changed, and now Myrddion could see the tears that spilled unchecked over her eyelids and ran down her face. ‘You can’t refuse, my lord, for Uther will not permit you to challenge his sovereignty.’

‘Help me to my feet, woman, and you’ll see Myrddion the healer walk away from Venta Belgarum and everyone in it.’ Without waiting for assistance, he dragged himself to his feet and stood swaying, his blackened and swollen face contorted with purpose. ‘I’ve had enough,’ he said unnecessarily.

Leaning on Ruadh’s shoulder, he staggered to the doorway of the mean, dusty room, which was clearly used to store broken furniture, bales of rotten fabric and other rubbish. No evidence could have been clearer of Myrddion’s fall from grace and favour. He had been dumped unceremoniously on a filthy pallet in a disused storeroom. No guards barred his path as he made his painful, weaving way through the echoing corridors until they reached the dark silence of the cobbled forecourt. Under a sallow moon, the citadel seemed empty, and Venta Belgarum stilled with a frightened hush that waited on its master’s next order. Painfully, but with determination, Myrddion forced his trembling legs to carry him down the winding streets that led to the House of the Healers.

The few people who were abroad in the night to see Myrddion’s damaged face chose to avoid his eyes, as if even a shared glance could contaminate them. The fear generated by an autocratic ruler extended down into the meanest streets, forced its law-abiding citizens indoors and caused them to huddle around their fires holding their children close to their breasts. Myrddion could sense a dangerous rift in the maintenance of order within Venta Belgarum, and the miasma of fear and tension only firmed his determination
to flee with all his staff at the earliest opportunity.

The house of the healers was dark, although wagons had been loaded and the familiar, welcoming buildings still offered an aura of safety and comfort. The door gaped inward and Myrddion leaned on the frame for a moment, his senses swimming from his efforts to propel himself forward.

‘Come, master, you must sleep if we are to embark on
any
journey,’ Ruadh murmured. ‘Regardless of our destination.’

Her face reflected her despair and she looked much older than usual, so Myrddion wondered if she had told him everything she knew or suspected. Then Praxiteles came and took his right arm and Cadoc moved to his left, and both men carefully and tenderly helped him to his room where he could surrender to the sweet anodyne of unconsciousness.

Before the dawn stole into his bedchamber, Myrddion was roused from a deep sleep by eerie, heart-rending screams that tore apart the silence of early morning. With a jerk, he surged out of his warm covers and staggered to his feet. Shouts, curses and the terrified crying of children followed the initial disturbance, so that the cacophony chased the last dregs of sleep out of his brain.

With some of his old vigour, Myrddion slipped the wooden latch on his door and hurried into the colonnade that led to the women’s quarters. In the atrium, now sweet with herbs and dried flowers, armed men crushed the tender mint, thyme and lavender beneath the soles of their booted feet.

‘At whose command do you disturb the order of this house?’ Myrddion shouted at the melee. Around him, the women crowded close, as if they could draw comfort from his proximity.

Close-cowled, helmeted faces swung in his direction and Myrddion recognised Ulfin in the vanguard of Uther’s personal guard. He looked for Botha’s calming presence, but the tall warrior was absent. Myrddion felt his stomach lurch, for Ulfin would obey his master to the letter
and would be pitiless in the execution of his orders.

‘I believe you’re seeking me, Ulfin. There’s no need to terrify the women and children. I’ll willingly accompany you to wherever you want me to go.’

‘No, healer. My orders don’t only affect you,’ Ulfin replied with a superior, sneering twist of his lips. ‘You’re ordered to Anderida with the other healers.’

‘Then why do you invade my house before full light? Why do you terrify innocents with bared swords, unbidden and uninvited?’

‘My orders are specific, Myrddion Merlinus. My master wishes to ensure that you accompany the army to Anderida, and to ensure your obedience I have been instructed to relay a personal message to you from the High King.’

‘Then give me your message without delay, so you can get out of my house.’ Myrddion’s voice was ragged, for his quick intelligence could imagine several extremely unpleasant reasons why Ulfin would invade his home with armed men.