“No, no. Clap your hands. My handmaiden will come.”
Somehow she was queenly despite her matted hair and running nose. Lance passed her a square of linen from the tabletop. “You have a handmaiden?”
“Of course. I’m a bloody princess, I am. That’s what Ardana told me to say, if anyone asked—a princess from a tribe in the far north, selected to be Arthur’s bride. Go on—clap.”
Wonderingly, Lance did as he was told. Promptly the ivy rustled and parted to admit the little Anglian girl from the dragon’s cave. Unlike her mistress, she was impeccably turned out in neat linen tunic and apron. Something in her pale blue gaze unnerved Lance to the core. “What’s your name, child?”
“Aedilthryd, sire. Like my mother.”
“Go to the kitchens, please. Have a tisane made up of mugwort—artemisia, they might call it here, or wormwood. The root or the leaves will do. And have them fill a stone bottle with hot water, and bring these things here as soon as you can.”
The child dropped him a curtsey, mechanical and perfect as if she’d been in service all her life. She whisked around and pattered off. Lance watched her go, frowning. “She seems helpful. Did Arthur give her to you?”
“Not exactly. He wanted me to have one of the girls Ardana offered. But I already knew the Anglian child, you see.”
“Did you? Do you remember?”
“I think I used to dream of her. She was hungry and lost, deep in the coils of my cave. I would bring her whatever I’d caught that day—a cow, or a sheep, or… or a man, and when I’d satisfied my hunger, I’d blow fire from my mouth to cook the remains for her. She and her brother would sit at my feet and gobble up the scraps. They weren’t afraid of me. It was a dream, wasn’t it? It must have been.”
She began to weep again. The lonely sound of it pierced Lance to the quick. Gently he laid a hand on her head. “Dream or no dream, the girl’s provided for now. Her brother, too—Art promised.”
“Is he a good man, Lance?”
“The best of men. You’ll be all right.”
Suddenly she sat up. She pushed her hair back from her face and fastened upon him a direct brown-eyed stare. “You love him.”
Truth. There would never be room for anything but truth between Lance and this woman. “With all my heart. My life’s his for the asking.”
“Then… what is my place here? Why was I pulled out of the earth?”
“To do what you said, Guen. To give him an heir, and bring life back to the land.”
“Those words were just a dream too.”
“In that case… In that case, all you can do is learn to love him.” Lance shivered, tried for a smile. “You won’t find it hard.”
“If I’m to marry him, he must sleep in my bed, not yours.”
“I believe that’s the usual arrangement, yes.”
“Oh, Lance! What are we going to do?”
Did she mean herself and Art? All three of them, perhaps, caught as they were in this sudden thicket of magic and fate. “I don’t know. Right or wrong, though, this marriage has been sanctified by the Merlin and the priest, in the sight of all Art’s knights and soldiers. As he is dear to me, so is his honour, Guen. It’s my whole duty to preserve and guard it.”
She put out her hand. Lance took it, and because it was painfully cold, he folded it between both of his. A stillness came over him. The chatter and bustle from the hall faded out. Time began to slip past, only the shift of the leaf-shadowed firelight to pick out one moment from the next. He closed his eyes, and even that demarcation was gone.
Guen began to speak, low and soft. Her voice seemed to come from inside his head. If he opened his mouth, her words would form on his own tongue. “Listen, Lance. Soon these memories too will fade, and I’ll be mortal flesh, a leaf on the stream just like you. When you took my power, slew the dragon with your kiss, you took the force of the ocean and poured it into a narrow little glass.” Her grip tightened on his hand. “This body is weak. It sways and changes with the moon. Insatiable hungers go through it like fire. The dragon understands what she must do, but Guenyvre—all Guen feels is the force of her own desire. Take her back, Lance! Let her be part of the earth and the dragon again.”
“How can I?”
“You and she are one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, God. You must. Feel her hand. You don’t even know which of the fingers are yours and which are hers.”
It was true. He opened his eyes. She had slithered off her stool and was kneeling in front of him. An eerie green glow was fading from her irises. She was just a distraught girl. She tore her hand free, flung her arms around his neck and began to kiss him fiercely, almost biting, as if she were trying to gnaw her way into his skin or out of her own. He gave a cry of fear: grabbed the hair at the back of her neck to pull her away, but to do her violence was beyond him.
The curtain of ivy swept back. Guenyvre froze in his arms. There stood the child Aedilthryd, a goblet of steaming liquid on a bronze tray in her hands, a stone water bottle hitched to her leather belt. Her face was devoid of expression. Her pale eyes glittered like frost. Behind her—so close that she must have summoned them, brought them, lured them here with God only knew what words—stood Drustan, Bors, and all three of the brothers from the Northern Isles. And stumbling up in their wake, pale with horror, only an instant but fatally too late, Guy and Coel.
Guy shoved his way to the front. He turned on the others like an enraged bear. “Get out of this, all of you! Get away.” He swung round to stare at Lance and Guen. Tears were streaming down his face. “Ah, no, Lance. Not you.”
Chapter Twenty
Two guards stopped Lance at the door with crossed staves. He stepped back, the momentum of his run recoiling upon him. He knew the men. They part of Coel’s household: kindly, efficient, ordinary. They were looking at his feet, the air over his head, anything rather than meet his gaze. “Please,” Lance said. “I have to see him.”
“He’s in conference with the Merlin, sire. No-one is to disturb him.” The guard made another inspection of Lance’s boots. “I’m sorry.”
The passageway outside the debating hall was draughty. Two alcoves had been set into the walls to allow the night-watch some shelter. Lance made his way to the nearest and sank down on the bench. He could have dispatched Coel’s guards with one hand tied behind his back, but first he had to recoup his strength. Tremors were running through him, as if he and not poor Guen had been poured out of a vast dragon form and into a weak, cracked vessel. He drew one knee up to his chest. If he opened his mouth, nothing would come out of it except the name of his king—in rage, love, supplication, louder and louder until he brought the house down. He pressed his lips to the back of his hand.