The Third Magic (23 page)

THE SUITOR'S REVENGE

A
lmost to the end
of her life, Guenevere had no idea why her horse had been so frightened that it threw her. She had felt the animal's fear, of course; it had rippled through the mare's body like a wave.

She had barely seen the two people before the mare bolted. And they looked innocuous enough. Prince Melwas and his sister, Morgause, who was still a small child. The mare had never minded people, and was in fact rather fond of children, unlike many of the beasts in her father's stables.

Only decades later, on her deathbed, did Guenevere understand the depth of Morgause's power. She had been born with it, a true witch. Long afterward, everyone who had been involved with her—that is, those who were somehow left alive—came to recognize its depth.

Merlin thought about her a great deal in his old age. It filled him with guilt that he had not tried to influence Morgause while she was still young. Had she received the training and knowledge given to others of her ability, she might have become as great a magician as himself. She might have developed her power to the point where, along with Merlin, she could have helped stem the tide of foreign invasions and the constant war that they brought.

Together, they might even have been able to revive the Old Religion, with its values of peace and spiritual mastery, so different from the new ways that men were coming to embrace, ways in which death was the final arbiter of right and wrong. According to the new ways, the man—and there were only men, no women—who remained alive after single combat became the one whose point of view prevailed. This idea, and all the others that sprang from it, would never have taken hold in the Old Religion, where winning and justice were not necessarily the same thing.

And so the Merlin chided himself for not giving Morgause a chance to learn from him in the way he had learned in the days of the great druid centers. Toward the end, though, he entertained another idea: that perhaps Morgause, with all her ability, was not a creature of the Old Ways at all, but rather the embodiment of the new, an evil master-work born to destroy everything she touched, a living sword.

Morgause eventually brought them all down, even Arthur. But she had begun with Guenevere. Begun and failed. The girl's inexperience was undoubtedly the reason why Guenevere had lived. Had Morgause been even a little older, Guenevere's death would have been assured. All of the others had been.

Morgause never made the same mistake twice.

A
t the time she
had set herself to the task of killing Guenevere, Morgause was only eleven years old. She was beautiful, sweet-faced and rosy-cheeked. Even as Guenevere tumbled through the air from her screaming horse, there was a part of her mind that took in the sight of the lovely little girl and thought,
What a sweet child!

Morgause hadn't planned for the mare to shy. She hadn't even planned, at the time, to kill Guenevere. But the shying horse and the sight of Guenevere lying unconscious on the ground were so satisfying to her that the idea soon became inevitable.

Melwas, in a goodwill gesture by Guenevere's father, had been invited, along with virtually everyone from the House of Orkney, to spend the summer on the luxurious estate of King Leodegranz.

The truth was that the chiefdom of Orkney was remote, primitive, and impoverished. Although the chiefs liked to call themselves "kings," their kingdoms were little more than tribal settlements, not much changed from the Celtic clan holdings of a thousand years before. The Romans, though hated, had brought advances to Britain; but when the Romans beat their hasty retreat from the island because they themselves were under attack, Britain had reverted to its old ways.

The more progressive of the chiefdoms—generally, those which had to deal regularly with invasions from Saxon warships—kept in some contact with the outside world. But the inaccessible rural strongholds, like Orkney, had gone back to primitive ways in all respects, from using spears rather than swords as weapons, and eschewing more sophisticated forms of economics in favor of the old barter system. The only reason Orkney had not been gobbled up by another chiefdom was because it was worth so little.

Its chief, King Octa, never left the borders of his lands except for the occasional night foray into neighboring strongholds for the purpose of stealing horses. Since Orkney had changed very little during the Roman occupation, Octa remained the kind of tribal head that his ancestors had been, insular and isolated, surrounding himself with his warriors, spending his evenings drunk, attending to the simple needs of his people. For all events that required more political solutions, he sent young Melwas.

The prince, soft, foolish, utterly unlike his father in almost every way, would not have made a good warrior in any case. Perhaps Octa sent him on political missions in the hope that Melwas would bring Orkney into the modern world when he succeeded him. More likely, he just wanted to get his embarrassing son out of his sight and hoped that he would father another son before he died. At any rate, that was why the other kings of Britain were forced to regard Melwas as one of them, and why Leodegranz felt obligated to extend his hospitality to the Orkney contingent for as long as it was desired.

This, as it turned out, was a considerable length of time. Melwas, who had already been sufficiently remunerated for the cancelled marriage with Guenevere, had been growing accustomed to the things that gold could buy in the richer kingdoms when he was called home to Orkney. Melwas's father, far from expressing displeasure at his son's failure to wed the daughter of King Leodegranz, was delighted at this new and bloodless way of robbing distant strongholds, and demanded that Melwas return, taking as many people from Orkney as he could get away with. No point in feeding a lot of extra mouths, Octa reasoned.

So Melwas's entourage, which included all of the old and unattached women and most of the children in his father's circle of acquaintance, came in mid-spring to the fertile lands of King Leodegranz to show that there was no ill feeling between the two kingdoms, and there they remained, feasting nightly, until the latter part of June. And they would have remained even longer, were it not for Guenevere's fall from her horse and Morgause's murderous impulses.

I
t began innocently enough
. Melwas, shocked—though slightly amused—at the sight of Guenevere flying through the air screaming, offered to help.

"I have women here with me," he said, motioning to a gaggle of sturdy females with forearms like bull haunches. Rather than remain in Leodegranz's dank castle, these women had built their own thatch-roofed huts on the grounds, where they kept to themselves and demanded that their meals be brought to them in an unending stream of oxcarts. "They are healers," Melwas said. "They will see to it that the princess suffers no ill effects from this."

Arthur was at a loss. He had judged Melwas to be a dullard long ago, and did not care to see Guenevere in his keeping. On the other hand, no one else was in the vicinity. Guenevere was not capable of riding back to the castle, and the women of Orkney did seem to be formidably competent, so he agreed.

"I'll accompany you back to the castle," Melwas offered heartily. "Guenevere is in good hands. She'll probably be better by morning." He clapped a hand on the young High King's back. "And meanwhile, you and I can have a few ales, eh?"

Arthur was trying to find words to get out of spending any more time with Melwas than necessary, when the young child-princess from Orkney spoke up. "If you please, brother, won't you stay alone with me for a moment? There is something of gravity that I wish to discuss with you."

The girl was so somber and pretty and intelligent, it was nearly impossible to imagine that she came from the same bloodline as the oafish Melwas. She resembled a serious little bird of some kind—silent, thoughtful, never demanding to be the center of attention, and so detached from whatever events swirled around her that one would think she lived in her own little world. She was not at all like a child, though.

"Go ahead," Arthur said affably. "Actually, I've got to get back to Ector's, anyway."

"Oh," Melwas said, pouting. "Pity." He scowled at little Morgause. "Well, what is it?" he fumed as Arthur rode away. "It's important that I make a good connection with the High King, as you know."

"You have Guenevere," Morgause said in her serious, adult way.

"Well, I don't really have her. I mean she's here, but she's hardly—"

"Take her back to Orkney."

Melwas rolled his eyes elaborately. "And why would I do that?"

"To hold hostage," Morgause replied. "You can say that you took her because your honor was broached."

"By what? Her wanting to marry Arthur Pendragon? Can you blame her? He's the High King. He's—"

"You can demand Leodegranz's kingdom in exchange for her."

Melwas laughed out loud. "Is this the sort of thing you think up while you're brewing potions with those hags? For your information, the army of Orkney isn't a tenth of what Arthur and Leodegranz together can drum up."

"Anyone who tries to invade our stronghold will have to go through the hill pass. Our men can pick them off one by one as they try to get through. Then you can make a bargain for Guenevere's life."

Melwas tried to laugh, but his spittle dried in his throat. "A hostage? Good gods, you're serious, aren't you?"

Morgause didn't answer.

"What if they won't bargain?"

The girl shrugged. “Then you can marry her," she said softly. "Or kill her."

Unconsciously, Melwas backed away. He loved his half sister, but there had always been something about her that frightened him. Her beauty, perhaps. Or her coldness. Or, even then, her power.

M
orgause was a bastard
, spawned by one of the witch-women his father kept around him. To be sure, Octa had always been more comfortable with them than he had with his wife, Melwas's mother, Branwyn, who had come to him in marriage through an alliance between Octa and her father, the chieftain of Strathclyde. The poor woman had trembled and shaken through the entire wedding feast, so repelled had she been at the barbarism of Orkney and its king.

From the beginning of their marriage, Octa had referred to his wife as "the white girl," referring to the pallor of her skin, which he found unattractive and weak-looking. He had stayed with her only long enough to conceive a son. After Melwas's birth, the chief went back to his women, who all practiced the Old Religion, freely offering him their bodies as well as producing potions for ailments and luck and casting spells against enemies and various demons.

Branwyn found them all appalling. She never adjusted to life in Orkney, and her only pleasure seemed to be in telling young Melwas tales of the delights of more civilized places. She sewed clothes for him that were utterly unlike the leather and hopsack garments worn by her husband and the other men in the tribe: shirts with billowing sleeves, made of fabric as soft as a maiden's hair, sent to Branwyn by her family in Strathclyde, and tunics of brilliantly dyed cloth.

The warriors—for all men in Orkney were warriors— looked at the boy askance, but dared not speak against him. As for Octa, he only shrugged and left his wife and child alone, presuming that they were made of finer stuff than he, and not caring much. When the time came, he thought vaguely, he would make a warrior of his soft, rather fat son. Meanwhile, there were the lusty healer-women who concerned themselves with his body and his spirit.

One of them bore him a daughter just after the death of his wife. He moved the woman into his stronghold to perform the tasks Branwyn had taken on. She would hoot with derision at how little there was to do there, and poke Melwas in his stomach with her finger, telling him how flabby he was, and hold up her own little girl, Morgause, as an example of what an Orkney child ought to be.

Melwas hated the woman. To make matters worse, she decreed that Melwas' job henceforth would be to serve as young Morgause's nursemaid. To him had fallen the task of changing the baby's soiled wrappings and seeing that no harm came to her. The young prince protested, but his father only waved him away.

"It's what you're good for," he said in a drunken haze.

"Oh, it's not so bad," Morgause's mother told him as she swaddled the baby tightly and then hung her by the wrappings on a hook on the wall. "I'll be back to feed her. You just change the cloths when she starts to drip." She walked out of the room, then returned, shaking her finger at Melwas. "And bind her good and tight, mind you. I don't want her falling off."

After she left, Melwas could only stare at the baby hung up on the wall like a moosehead. It was the custom, even in the civilized kingdoms, as his mother had told him. Babies died too easily. To become attached to a newborn was to ask for heartache, as well as the displeasure of the gods. Most were not even named until they were two years old.

Melwas himself had been spared this fate, however, as Branwyn had been so lonely and neglected as a young wife that she had gone against all common sense and allowed herself to indulge in the company of her baby. Fortunately, she told him, her son had lived. Had he not, her bizarre method of child rearing would undoubtedly have been blamed for his death.

Now he was ten years old, alienated from every other male in the tribe, including his own father, untrained in any skills necessary for a warrior, and less valuable even than the dogs used for hunting. Absolutely the only being of his acquaintance who was considered to be less useful than Melwas was this red-faced infant hanging on the wall.

He took her down. Gently, cooing softly, he held her in his arms. The baby gurgled.

"I'll be your protector," he said, kissing the infant's downy head. "We'll be outcasts together."

T
hat was not, however
, to be the case, for even though Morgause and her mother lived in the fortress with Octa and Melwas, from the age of four she spent her days at the women's quarters, where she learned the ancient arts of healing and sorcery. She proved to be quite adept, perhaps the greatest natural witch the women had ever seen, and therefore gained an early reputation for herself, becoming anything but an outcast.