Isle of Glass (31 page)

He came before the kings as docilely as an ox led to
slaughter, following Jehan blindly, hardly aware of the guards about him. Before
the three thrones they drew away to leave him standing alone. The ambassador
named each of the kings for him, and each bowed a high head: Kilhwch of
Gwynedd, Richard of Anglia, Gwydion of Rhiyana.

The Elvenking regarded him with a level grey stare, and deep
within it a flicker of green fire. Rhydderch started as if struck. For an
instant the mute submission dropped away, revealing the black rage beneath.

“Well met, Lord Rhydderch,” Gwydion said softly, “and
welcome.”

Rhydderch’s eyes hooded; he bowed low. "I came as you
commanded, Your Majesties. What will you have of me?”

“Your company,” Richard said, toying with the heavy chain he
wore about his neck. “I’m glad you came so quickly. It would have been
uncomfortable for us to have to go after you.”

“I’ve always labored to do as my King commands.”

“I’m pleased to hear that.” Richard gestured; Alf brought a
chair. “Sit down and be comfortable. We’re all friends here.”

Rhydderch sat quietly enough. He had not looked at Gwydion
since that first terrible glare. "It pleases me to see Your Majesties so
friendly.”

“Your doing,” Kilhwch said. “Sir. We’ll have to thank you
properly when there’s time.”

“My doing, Sire?” Rhydderch asked, as if incredulous. “How
can that be?”

“You don’t know, my lord?” Kilhwch smiled. “Perhaps my lord
of Rhiyana can enlighten you. He’s tasted your famous hospitality, has he not?”

Rhydderch frowned slightly. “I can’t recall, Sire, that I’ve
ever had the honor of guesting a king.”

“Not even the Dotard of Caer Gwent?”

Gwydion stirred. “Kilhwch,” he said very low. The young
King’s mouth snapped shut. He himself leaned back, cradling his broken hand as
if it pained him. "I’m not what you expected, am I, Lord Rhydderch?”

“You are precisely what the tales say you are.”

“Then you’ll admit that you knew who he was?” demanded
Kilhwch.

The Elvenking raised his hand. “This is not a trial,” he
said. “Lord Rhydderch has ridden hard and far, and he has not slept well of
late. He is hungry and weary, and much bemused, I am sure, by the suddenness of
our summons. Let us eat and sleep; in the morning we may turn to deeper
matters.”

o0o

“I don’t like this,” Jehan said. “I don’t like any of it. I
wish I’d never brought that man back!”

It was very late. The kings had long since gone to their
beds, but he sat with Alf and Morwin in the Abbot’s study.

Of all the praise he had had for a task well and swiftly
done, theirs was the sweetest. But he had not earned it. “He came too easily,”
he went on, “without even trying to fight. Either he’s a complete fool—or we
are, and he’s about to prove it.”

Morwin shook his head. “He’s a clever man and a vicious one,
but he knows better than to set himself against three kings. He planned to
prick them into killing each other, without letting them know who was
responsible. Unfortunately, one of his provocations turned out to be the very King
he wanted to provoke.”

“True enough," Jehan agreed, "but you’re
forgetting something. He looks sane and ordinary, but he’s neither. He’s had a
terrible blow, and he knows he doesn’t have much to hope for. The best he can
expect is to get his lands back, with a ruinous tax on them and a knight’s fee
he’ll have to struggle to meet. He’ll die a pauper, who wanted to be a king.
Who knows what he’ll do if he breaks?”

“He’s here and very well guarded, not in Caer Sidi hatching
war. And tomorrow—”

“‘And seven alone returned from Caer Sidi.’ ”

Alf’s voice startled them both. He had been sitting quietly,
apparently drowsing; his eyes were half-shut, blurred as if with sleep. He
sighed deeply and shivered. “He calls his castle by the name of the Fortress of
Annwn. Death walks in his shadow. How cold it is!”

Jehan opened his mouth to speak, but Morwin hushed him.
Again Alf shivered. His eyes cleared; he looked about as if bewildered. “I must
have been dreaming. I thought someone had died, and Rhydderch had killed him.”

Morwin laid a hand on his brow. It was burning hot, yet he
shivered violently. “No one’s dead, and no one’s going to die, least of all at
his lordship’s hands. Look, Alf. Jehan is back safe and sound, and Rhydderch’s
surrounded by every guard the kings or the abbey can spare. There’s nothing to
be afraid of.”

Jehan brought him a cup of mead. He drank a little; his
shivering stilled. He tried to smile. “I shouldn’t stare into the fire; it
makes me see horrors. And Rhydderch isn’t a pleasant man to think of. Even
Gwydion can’t see very far into his mind. It’s too dark and too twisted and too
wild, like the black heart of Bowland.”

“Don't talk about him,” Morwin said sternly. "Don’t
even think about him. That’s for the kings to do.”

“Low station can be a refuge, can't it?” Alf drank the last
of his mead and stood. “We all need our sleep. Come, Jehan.”

Morwin had risen with him. “I’m not sleepy yet. I’ll walk
with you.”

“There’s no need for you to—”

“What’s the matter, Alf? Do you expect me to be waylaid in a
passageway?

Jehan laughed. Alf paled and shuddered, but did not speak.

When Alf lay on his pallet near Richard’s door, Morwin drew
Jehan aside. “Watch out for him,” he said. “When this mood is on him, he’s apt
to do anything.” Jehan nodded, understanding; he smiled. “Good night, then. God
be with you.”

“And with you, Domne,” Jehan murmured.

The Abbot blessed him and turned away, walking as lightly as
a boy.

Rhydderch lay motionless and sweating under thick blankets.
Across his door, his own liege man snored softly. Outside in the passage, two
knights slept deep, clasping their swords to their breasts. One was of Anglia,
one of Gwynedd.

Carefully he opened his eyes. The moon escaped from its wall
of cloud and hurled a bright shaft across the room, transfixing the hilt of his
sword.

He was not a prisoner. No one had chained him or bolted his
door; the guards were for his honor and protection.

His lip curled. They mocked him, those fools of kings.

Richard, cheated of a war, turned weakling and womanheart.
Kilhwch, who thought himself so clever and so cruel, who set his man to watch
the guest and to kill him—by accident—if he ventured to escape.

And Gwydion. Gwydion, with his bandaged hand which he kept
always in sight, and his cold grey eyes, and his too-handsome face. Huw had had
orders to break that eagle’s beak of a nose; he would lose his own when
Rhydderch won free of this gilded trap.

Rhydderch growled deep in his throat. Gwydion had brought
him to this. Gwydion, who refused to age as a man ought, who looked on his
enemy with cool and royal scorn. He had not been so haughty when Dafydd plied
the hot iron; his blood, royal and immortal though he was, had flowed as redly
and as readily as any villein’s.

With infinite caution Rhydderch rose. He had kept on his
tunic and hose against the cold. Soundlessly he crossed the room.

His hand eclipsed the moonlight on his sword hilt. He froze
for an instant; his guards did not stir. Taking up the sheathed sword, wrapping
himself in his cloak, he crept toward the door.

o0o

The Lady Chapel glimmered softly by the light of the vigil
lamp. It was the fairest of the abbey’s chapels, Morwin thought as he paused in
its doorway, and the most wonderful, walled with a tracery of pale stone, its
altar of white marble inlaid with lapis lazuli. When Morwin was young, some
forgotten artisan had painted the curving ceiling the color of the sky at night
and set it with golden stars.

He knelt in front of the altar and contemplated the face of
the carven Virgin behind it. A gentle face, a little sad, as if it looked upon
the ills of the world and mourned for them. But beneath the sadness lay a deep
serenity.

He did not pray in words. Somehow the Lady of Comfort was
beyond them.

Instead, he remembered. Good things, ill things. Apple
blossoms in the spring; plague in the village. The Brothers chanting the
Te
Deum
; soldiers chanting a war chant, and men screaming. The day of his
ordination, he and Alf taking their vows side by side, each serving the other
at his first Mass. The day he realized that his hands were twisting and
stiffening with age, and that the hairs that fell from the barber’s shears were
more grey than red; and that his friend, who had been a boy with him, had not
changed and would never change.

He sighed. The hands on his knees were like the branches of
an ancient apple tree, gnarled and almost sapless. “And I still don’t have a
likely successor,” he said to the Virgin. “Alf’s wings have spread too wide and
he’s flown too high.
Mea culpa
, Lady,
mea maxima culpa
. I sent
him out, knowing what would happen; that the world would claim him—and heal him
a little.”

Has it
? the calm eyes seemed to ask.

“I don't know. I think it’s too early to tell. The scars are
still too deep.”

For a while longer he remained there, head bowed. The lamp flickered.
It needed refilling, he thought inconsequentially, and smiled at himself. That
was age and power, to worry about lamp oil when his mind ought to be on the
Infinite.

o0o

The abbey was a labyrinth, vast and unlit and stone-cold,
and apparently deserted. Rhydderch’s nose wrinkled at the holy stink of it,
rotting apples, long-dead incense.

Once or twice a monk prowled the empty passages; he hid
until the shadow passed, itching to test his blade on priestly flesh. But he
had promised it a better offering.

Light at once alarmed and attracted him. He inched toward
it.

A heavy door stood ajar. The light shone beyond it, dim and
unsteady, hanging over an altar.

He had found a chapel. From his vantage point he could see a
kneeling figure, a dark robe, a bowed white head. An elderly monk at prayer,
all alone. Rhydderch drew his cloak over the hand that held the sword and
advanced boldly.

“Excuse me, Brother,” he said, softening his voice as much
as he might. “I got up to go to the privy, and I seem to have taken a wrong
turning.”

The monk turned. Rhydderch did not pay much heed to the
sharp-featured old face. They all looked alike, these shavepates; he had
another face before his mind’s eye, quite another face altogether.

“Lord Rhydderch,” the monk said. He did not sound surprised.
“Your room has its own garderobe. Don’t tell me your guard forgot to remind
you.”

Rhydderch ground his teeth. Thwarted, always thwarted. The
damned witch. He picked a man’s mind clean and told the world what he had
found.

The sword gleamed naked in Rhydderch’s hand. The monk
regarded it almost with amusement. “Isn’t that a little excessive, my lord? A
simple request will do. Shall I take you back to your room, or do you have
somewhere else in mind?”

“You,” Rhydderch growled. "I ought to know you.”

The monk smiled. Small and sharp-nosed and deep-wrinkled as
he was, he looked like a bogle from an old nursery tale. “We’ve been
introduced, my lord, though the light’s not good here. Just call me
Brother
and tell me where to take you.”

Rhydderch raised his sword and rested the point very lightly
against the withered throat. “Take me to the Witch-king.”

It did not seem to trouble the monk in the least that death
pricked his adam’s apple. “Well, my lord,” he said, “that’s a hard thing to do.
We’re inundated with royalty here, I grant you, but there’s none who answers to
the name of—”

“Gwydion," snapped Rhydderch. “He calls himself
Gwydion.”

“And what do you want with His Majesty of Rhiyana at this
hour of the night? I can tell you now, my lord, that he’s long since gone to
sleep and that he oughtn’t to be disturbed. Unless, of course,” the old babbler
added, “it’s deathly urgent.”

“Urgent. Yes, it’s urgent. Take me to him!” A red film had
drawn itself over Rhydderch’s eyes; his tongue felt thick, unwieldy; his
fingers trembled on the sword hilt.

The point wavered; the monk winced. A minute, glistening
droplet swelled from his throat. “Now, sir,” he said reprovingly. “There’s no
need to hurt anybody. Why don’t you put your sword down and say a bit of prayer
with me? Then we can decide if your message is important enough to break into a
king’s sleep.”

“If you don’t do as I say,” Rhydderch said very low, “I’ll
hack off your head, tongue and all.”

“It’s a mortal sin to shed blood in a sacred place, my lord.
Not to mention the fact that you’ll have to get past three kings and their men
to escape. And then where will you go? Come, sir. Let me take you back to your
bed, and we’ll both forget we ever met each other.”

He was smiling. Smiling, damn him, as if he were the one who
held the sword, and as if he pitied the poor misguided victim. The witch had
smiled so with those cat’s-eyes of his, not hating, only pitying. Poor
Rhydderch, with his ragged army and his hovel of a castle and his mad dreams of
kingship.

The sword retreated. The monk’s smile widened. “Ah, my lord,
I knew you’d—”

The bright blade whirled in an arc and flashed down.

o0o

Jehan spread his pallet next to Alf’s, undressed and settled
on it. His friend seemed to have fallen into a restless, tossing sleep. He
moved as close as he could without actually touching, and tried to think
calmness into the other’s mind.

After a while it seemed to work, or else Alf had relaxed of
his own accord. Jehan dared to close his eyes.

He drifted lazily between sleep and waking, not quite ready
to let go. A dream hovered just out of reach.

He started awake. Alf sat bolt upright, his face so terrible
that for an instant Jehan did not even know it. The novice reached for him.
“Brother Alf,” he whispered. “Brother Alf, it’s all right.”