It would take more than panicking piglets to frighten a Druid. Tanaburs, dressed in a dirty grey robe embroidered with hares and crescent moons, stood in the entranceway and raised both hands above his tonsured head. He carried a moon-tipped staff that he turned sunwise three times, then he howled at Merlin’s Tower. A piglet whipped past his legs, then scrabbled for a footing in the muddy gateway before dashing downhill. Tanaburs howled again, motionless, testing the Tor for unseen enemies.
For a few seconds there was silence except for the snapping of the banner and the heavy breathing of the warriors who had climbed the hill behind the Druid. Gudovan, Merlin’s scribe, had come to stand beside me, his hands wrapped in ink-stained cloth strips as a protection against the chill. “Who is it?” he asked, then he shuddered as a wailing shriek answered Tanaburs’s challenge. The shriek came from within the hall and I knew it was Nimue.
Tanaburs looked angry. He barked like a fox, touched his genitals, made the evil sign, and then began hopping on one leg towards the hall. He stopped after five paces, howled his challenge again, but this time no answering shriek sounded from the hall so he put his second foot on the ground and beckoned his master through the gate. “It is safe!” Tanaburs called. “Come, Lord King, come!”
“King?” Gudovan asked me. I told him who the visitors were, then asked why Gundleus, an enemy, had come to the Tor. Gudovan scratched at a louse under his shirt, then shrugged. “Politics, boy, politics.”
“Tell me,” I said.
Gudovan sighed as if my question was evidence of an incurable stupidity, his usual response to any query, but then offered me an answer. “Norwenna is marriageable, Mordred is a baby who must be protected, and who protects a prince better than a king? And who better than an enemy king who can become a friend to Dumnonia? It’s really very simple, boy, a moment’s thought would have yielded the answer without you needing to trouble my time.” He gave me a feeble blow on the ear as retribution. “Mind you,” he cackled, ‘he’ll have to give up Ladwys for a time.”
“Ladwys?” I asked.
“His lover, you stupid boy. You think any king sleeps alone? But some folk say that Gundleus is so passionate for Ladwys that he actually married her! They say he took her to Lleu’s Mound and had his Druid bind them, but I can’t believe he’d be such a fool. She’s not of the blood. Aren’t you supposed to be tallying the rents for Hywel today?”
I ignored the question and watched as Gundleus and his guards stepped carefully through the treacherous mud-slide in the gateway. The Silurian King was a tall, well-made man of perhaps thirty years. He had been a young man when his raiders had captured my mother and cast me into the death-pit, but the dozen or so years that had passed since that dark and bloody night had been kind to him for he was still handsome, with long black hair and a forked beard that showed no trace of grey. He wore a fox-fur cloak, leather boots which reached to his knee, a russet tunic and carried a sword sheathed in a red scabbard. His guards were similarly dressed, and all were tall men who towered over Druidan’s sorry collection of crippled spear-carriers. The Silurians wore swords, but none carried a spear or shield, evidence that they had come in peace.
I shrank away as Tanaburs passed. I had been a toddling child when he had thrown me into the pit and there was no chance that the old man would recognize me as a death-cheater nor, after his failure to kill me, did I need to fear him, yet still I shrank from the
Silurian Druid. He had blue eyes, a long nose and a slack dribbling mouth. He had hung small bones at the end of his long, lank white hair and the bones clattered together as he shuffled ahead of his king. Bishop Bedwin fell into step beside Gundleus, proclaiming a welcome and saying how honoured the Tor was by this royal visit. Two of the Silurian guards carried a heavy box that must have contained presents for Norwenna.