Last Sword Of Power (21 page)

Cormac bowed to Goroien. 'I thank you, lady. There is nothing more I can say.' She did not reply and he took the King's hand and led Uther from the hall, following the tall armoured figure of Gilgamesh.

Through the long journey Gilgamesh said nothing. His eyes were distant, his thoughts secret. Cormac's fears grew along with the coin that was now a dark and almost solid shape in his hand.

At last they reached the river and saw the barge waiting at the ruined jetty. The beast on it rose as it saw Cormac, its red eyes gleaming in dark triumph.

Gilgamesh stepped to the barge with his sword extended. The beast seemed to smile and spread its arms, offering its chest; the sword plunged home and it disappeared. Cormac helped the King to the craft, then climbed in alongside Gilgamesh.

'Why did it not fight?'

Gilgamesh removed his helm and threw it out into the water. Then he stripped himself of his armour, hurling it from him. Taking the pole, he steered the barge to the far side of the river, holding it against the shore.

Once more Cormac aided Uther. Ahead of them was the cave-mouth and Cormac turned.

'Will you come with us?'

Gilgamesh laughed softly. 'Come with you? The Ferryman cannot leave his craft.'

'I do not understand.'

'You will one day, peasant. There must always be a Ferryman. But we will meet again.' Turning, he poled the craft away into the shadows.

Cormac took the King's hand and climbed to the cave. High above the light still twinkled, like a faraway camp-fire.

Slowly the two men walked towards it.

Cormac awoke to feel a gnawing pain in his back and an aching emptiness in his belly. He groaned and heard a woman's voice say, 'Praise be to God!' He was lying on something hard and tried to move, but his limbs were stiff and cramped. Above his head was a series of high rafters supporting a thatched roof. A woman's face appeared above him, an elderly woman with kind eyes who smiled.

'Lie still, young man.' He ignored the advice and forced himself to sit up. She supported his arm and rubbed at his back when he complained of pain. Beside him lay the Blood King in full armour; his red hair had grown and white showed at the roots and the temples.

'Does he live?' asked Cormac, reaching for the King's hand.

'He lives,' she told him. 'Calm yourself:'

'Calm? We have just walked from Hell, woman.' The door opposite opened and a figure in white entered. Cormac's eyes flared as he recognised her as the woman in the Cave of Sol Invictus - the mother who had left her child.

His mother.

Emotions surged over him, each battling for supremacy: anger, wonder, love, sorrow. Her face was still beautiful and there were tears in her eyes. She reached for him and he went to her, his arms pulling her to him.

'My son,' she whispered. 'My son.'

'I brought him back,' said Cormac, 'but still he sleeps.'

Gently she pulled away from his embrace, her hand rising to stroke his bearded cheek. 'We will talk in a little while. There is so much to say ... to explain.'

'You have no need to explain to me. I know what happened in the cave - and before it. I am sorry your life has brought you such pain.'

'Life brings us nothing,' she told him. 'Ultimately we choose our paths, and when they fail the blame rests with us. And yet I have regrets, such terrible regrets. I did not see you grow, we did not share the wonders.'

He smiled. 'Yet still I saw them.'

Uther moaned softly and Laitha turned to him, but Cormac's hand took her arm. 'There is something you should know,' he said. 'His mind has departed; they tortured him in ways I shall not speak of.'

Laitha moved to the King's side as his eyes opened. Tears welled and ran back into his hair.

'Don't know,' he said.

Her hands cupped his face. "There is no need to know, my love. I am here; Laitha is here.' His eyes drifted closed and he slept once more.

Cormac felt a cool breeze touch his back and heard the approach of several men. Glancing back, he saw a young knight with short-cropped blond hair and two old men; one was tall, his long white hair braided in the fashion of the southern tribes, the other was thin and slight and walked with a pronounced limp. The three stopped and bowed to Cormac.

'Welcome back,' said the man with the braided hair. 'I am Gwalchmai, and this is Prasamaccus and Ursus, who calls himself Galead.'

'Cormac Daemonsson.'

Prasamaccus shook his head. 'You are the son of Uther, High King of Britain. And our hope for the future.'

'Do not armour me with your hopes,' he told them. 'When this is done I shall return to the Caledones mountains. There is nothing for me here.'

'But you were born to be King,' said Gwalchmai, 'and there is no other heir.'

Cormac smiled. 'I was born in a cave, and raised by a one-armed Saxon who knew more of nobility than any man I have met since. It seems to me that a king needs certain skills - and not just in war. I do not possess these skills and, more, I do not wish to possess them. I have no desire to rule the lives of others. I do not wish to be the Blood King's heir. I have killed men, and slain demons; I have despatched souls to the dark and walked across the Void. It is enough.'

Gwalchmai was about to argue further, but Prasamaccus lifted his hand.

'You must always be your own man, Prince Cormac. You mentioned the Void. Tell us of the King.'

'I brought him back - much good may it do you.'

'What does that mean?' snapped Gwalchmai.

'His mind . . .'

'Enough!' said Laitha. 'The King will return. You have seen him, Cormac, as he would wish no man to see him. But you do not know him as I do; he is a man of iron strength. The rest of you, leave us. Cormac, I have a hut prepared for you; there is food there and Galead will show you to it. Do not overexert yourself; your wounds are healing well, yet still your body will be weak for a while. Now go, all of you.'

For several hours Laitha sat beside the King, stroking his brow or holding his hand. Women came and lit candles, but she did not notice them, and as she gazed down on the careworn face and the greying hair she saw again the boy Thuro who had fled to the mountains to escape the assassins who had killed his father. He was a sensitive boy who did not know how to start a fire or hold a sword. In those far-off days of innocence, he had been gentle and kind and loving.

But the world had changed him, brought out the iron and the fire, giving birth to the Blood King of legend, taught him to fight and to kill and, worse, to hate.

And what a fool she had been. This young man had loved her with all his passion, and she had spurned him for a child's dream. If there was one event in her life that she could reach back and change, it would be the night in Pinrae when the young Uther had come to her and they had made love beneath the two moons. Her feelings had soared, her body had seemed more alive than at any other time of her youth and as the blood had pounded within her, and her body trembled in the ecstasy of the moment, she had whispered the name of Culain. The whisper flew into Uther's heart like an arrow of ice, lodging there for ever. And yet -though she knew it not then - it was not the thought of Culain which had lifted her to such breath-taking heights but the love of Uther.

And she had destroyed it. No, she realised, not destroyed - but altered . . . corrupted with the acid of jealousy.

Culain had once loosed the same arrow at her when they had been asleep together in a cabin near the Queen's palace at Camulodunum. He had moved in his sleep and she had kissed him.

'Are you there, my love?' he had whispered dreamily.

‘I am here,' she had told him.

'Never leave me, Goroien.'

Oh how that had hurt! How she had wanted, in that moment, to strike him, to tear at his handsome face. And was it not that one moment alone which had allowed her, later in Raetia, to spurn him, to send him from her? Was it not that whispered arrow which had caused her to be so cruel upon the Tor?

Uther stirred beside her. Once more his eyes opened and he whispered the two words over and over.

'What are you trying to tell me?' she asked, but his eyes were without focus and she knew he could not hear her. Footsteps sounded behind her, and the shadow of Galead fell upon the King's face.

'Cormac is asleep,' said Galead. 'May I join you?'

'Yes. Is Lekky well?'

'She is, my lady. She spent the afternoon with two of your women drawing unfathomable creatures on a flat stone, using up a great store of charcoal in the process. Now she is asleep beside Cormac. Is the King recovering?'

'He keeps saying, “Don't know.” What is it that he does not know?'

'They tortured him to find the Sword and I would guess that he does not know where it lies. If he did, he would have told them.'

'Yet he must know,' she said, 'for it was he who sent it.'

'I saw his last fight in a dream. He hurled the blade high and screamed a name.'

'What name?'

'Yours, my lady.'

'Mine? Then where is the Sword.'

'I have thought much on that,' he said, 'and I think I may have the answer. Uther could not have sent the sword to you, for he thought you dead. When Pendarric appeared to me, he spoke in what I took to be riddles, but in fact his words were plain enough. He talked of good and evil, and I thought he meant Wotan. He said that I should identify the real enemy and then I would know how to fight it.'

'And who is the real enemy?'

'Hatred is the enemy. When I saw the Goths destroy that Saxon village, I hated them. And it seemed such a small matter to find Lekky and take her with me. But bringing her here allowed her to meet you and, as you told me last night, it allowed you to see without bitterness. And now, as it should be, you are here with the man you love. And that is the key.'

'Now you are speaking in Pendarric's riddles.'

'No, my lady. Uther did not send the Sword to a dead Laitha. He sent it to his love, thinking that it would never arrive and therefore no enemy would ever find it.'

'What are you saying?'

'It is waiting, my lady. I could not come to Morgana of the Isle, only to the woman who has the King's love.'

The Queen took a deep breath and raised her arm, her fingers open. A burning light grew around them, bathing the room in echoes of fire. Galead shielded his eyes as the brightness swelled, streaming from the windows and doorway and up through a hole in the thatched roof - a straight bar of golden light rising through the clouds.

In his hut, Prasamaccus saw the glow outside the doorway and heard the shouts of the Sisters who had gathered outside the Round Hall. Stumbling out into the night, he saw the Hall pulsing with bars of flame. Fearing for the King's life he limped towards the light, his arm before his eyes. Gwalchmai and Cormac joined him.

On the causeway the men of the Ninth stood in awed silence as the light spread, bathing the Isle of Crystal in gold.

Fifty miles away, in Vindocladia, the Goths also observed the phenomenon and Wotan himself came from his tent to stand on a lonely hillside and stare at the burning light that smote the sky.

Back in the Round Hall, blinded by the brilliance, Laitha reached up and felt her fingers curling round the hilt of the great Sword. Slowly she pulled it down and the light faded. By the doorway Prasamaccus and Gwalchmai fell to their knees.

'He sent it to his love,' whispered Laitha, tears flowing as she laid the Sword beside the King, curling his hand around the hilt. 'I have the Sword, and now I must seek the man,' she said. 'Sit with me a while, Galead.' Her head drooped and her eyes closed, her spirit flying to a dreamscape of tall trees and proud mountains. Beside a lake sat a young boy with fair hair and a gentle face.

Thuro,' she said and the boy looked up and smiled.

'I was hoping you would come,' he said. 'It is beautiful here; I shall never leave it.'

She sat beside him and took his hand. 'I love you,' she said. 'I always have.'

'Nobody can come here. I won't let them.'

'And what do you hope for?' she asked the boy.

'I never want to be king. I just want to be alone - with you.'

'Shall we swim?' she asked.

'Yes, I would like that,' he said, standing and removing his tunic. As he ran naked into the water and dived below the surface, she rose and let slip the simple dress she wore. Her body was young and she stared at her reflection in the water. No lines, no years of pain and disappointment had yet etched their tracks in her virgin beauty.

The water was cool and she swam to where Thuro floated on his back, staring up at the impossibly blue sky.

'Will you stay here with me for ever?' he asked, standing upright in the shallow water.

'If you want me to.'

'I do. More than anything else.'

'Then I will.'

They waded back to the shoreline and sat in the hot sunlight. He reached out to touch the skin of her shoulder and as she moved closer, his fingers slid down over the curve of her breast. His face flushed. Closer still she came, her arm slipping behind his neck and pulling his head towards her. Lifting her face she kissed him gently, softly. Now his hand roamed free across her body. Pushing her back to the grass he moved on top of her, entering her smoothly as her legs slid over his hips.

Laitha was floating on the rhythms of pleasure, and she felt those rhythms quicken and heighten.

"Thuro! Thuro! Thuro!' she moaned. She kissed his mouth and his cheek, feeling the beard that grew there. Her hands stroked the broad back of the man above her, caressing the corded muscle and the many scars.

'Uther!'

'I am here, lady,' he said, kissing her softly, and moving to lie alongside her. 'You have found me.'

'Forgive me,' she said.

'You shame me,' he told her. 'I treated you with disdain and I forced you and Culain together. And for all your suffering, I am sorry.'

'Forgive me anyway?' she asked him.

'I do. You are my wife. And I love you now, as I have always loved you.'

'Do you still wish to stay?'

He smiled sadly. 'What is happening back there?'