“My lord! But… how come you here?”
Myrddin gave an inner sigh of relief. So the illusion held—she saw whom she might expect, the Duke Goloris.
“Where else would I be?” he asked. “Fair lady, this is no night for wars or sword-dealing.”
She came away from the window, dropping the edge of her cloak. Now he could see that indeed this one was fashioned for the joys of bedding, although he could look on her without that stir of confusion he had felt when Nimue unveiled her body in invitation. She was indeed beautiful, this Duchess Igrene, but it was a beauty one might view in the Roman images of their goddesses. Now she regarded him with a small, almost secret smile, and he guessed that in some things she could rule her old lord as completely as Uther wished to rule Britain.
Make an end to this play, something within Myrddin bade him. In this room, which was scented with woman and a life he knew nothing of, he was as uncertain as a stag who suspected a trap. His hand went out to a small side table on which there providentially stood a tall bottle of glass brought from overseas and two beautifully decorated goblets.
“The night is cold,” he said. “I would have wine for the warming.”
Igrene laughed low and sweetly. “There are other ways of warming one, lord.” Slyly she motioned toward the bed.
He forced a laugh of his own. “Well enough. But first, pledge me in a cup, lady. Then we shall perhaps try your way to see which is best.”
She pouted, but waited until he had poured a measure of wine into each goblet, then docilely accepted the one he held out to her. He pretended to drink, but she emptied her cup in a couple of swallows.
“My lord, you are not usually so behind in such matters.” She came closer so that the flower scent which clung to her skin grew stronger. Making nothing of her nakedness, she raised her hands to unbuckle his cloak. “Lord, you are not yourself this night…”
Myrddin wanted to jerk back, away from her reaching hands. By sheer will he kept still. Setting aside his goblet, he caught her hands and held them tightly clasped within his own, watching her with an anxious eye.
Now he caught and held her gaze. The playfulness faded from her expression. Her face smoothed, as if she no longer saw him in truth, but some vision which stood between them.
Gently, after a long moment of that locked gaze, Myrddin drew her to the side of the bed, settled her within it. Her eyes were still on what only she saw. Lying back among the pillows, she made no move as Myrddin left her.
The window was already well open to the night; the curtain of hide and the shutter meant to keep out the chill were both pushed far back. He made sure they would remain so. The woman on the bed muttered drowsily, her words not meant for him but for the vision he had planted in her mind.
Outside there was a fluttering sound. Myrddin averted his head and went swiftly from the chamber, threading his way, his heart beating fast in spite of his struggle for control. A guard stood at the postern and yet did not see the slight man who flitted by.
When he reached his previous observation point, a height above Goloris’ hold, Myrddin turned. The moon was bright and clear. Some distance away flames leaped, where the lesser folk were celebrating Beltane. His night had been well chosen: only a small fraction of the keep’s inhabitants would be within the walls tonight.
He could not see the window which lay to the seaward side of the tower. What happened there now was not his affair, he must only preserve the hallucination with Uther. With a heavy burden of weariness resting on him, Myrddin made his way back again to the hidden camp and sat for long hours there by the sleeping men.
With dawn Uther stirred. Though he opened his eyes he did not look about him with any recognition. Instead he got to his feet like a dazed man, his hands reaching forth to grasp something which was not there.
Myrddin scrambled up quickly. With the very tip of a finger he touched the king’s uplifted head, directly above and between the eyes. And from his mind flashed the signal he had waited so long to give.
“Awake!”
Uther blinked, looked about him in the gray light. He yawned and then saw Myrddin. A frown knotted between his eyebrows.
“So, sorcerer, it would seem your magic works!” He spoke with a sour note in his voice. “You have done as you promised.” There was no triumph or satisfaction in his tone. Instead his eyes avoided Myrddin’s and he turned his shoulder to the younger man, shutting him out, or hoping to.
And Myrddin realized that, having slaked his lust, as he believed, Uther now felt shame for the act. He would not welcome in his sight the one who had aided him to an action he wished to repudiate.
“If I have done as I promised, and to your satisfaction, Lord King, then let me depart. For I have no liking for courts,” Myrddin wearily made answer. He had half expected that Uther would turn on him, but not so suddenly. And he did not want to lose the High King’s favor entirely, for this night’s work was not yet complete and his further part required some thread of connection with the court.
“Well enough.” Uther had turned completely away. He did not even glance in the other’s direction, but regarded his sleeping men. “Ride where you will, when you will,”
Myrddin accepted the dismissal with a dignity of his own, not bowing his head in any courtesy he did not feel, but rather walking back to where their mounts had been tethered. There he loosed his pony—for that means of returning to his own place he believed Uther owed him—and he rode away, without a single glance toward the King, nor beyond to where that keep rose beside the sea. But he was no more than over the crest of a small hillock when he heard the thud of hooves, saw a man riding at the best speed to which he could push his foam-bespattered mount.
“The High King?” he shouted at Myrddin. “Where is Uther?”
That anyone would know of this secret expedition was a vast surprise to the youth. Yet so certain seemed this rider that Uther was in the neighborhood that obviously whatever message he bore was of the utmost urgency, enough to break the veil of secrecy.
“Why do you seek the High King?” Myrddin demanded. Any change in the state of affairs was of importance for his plans also. “Have the Saxons sounded their war horns?”
The man shook his head. “Duke Goloris—he was slain in battle yesterday. The King must know—“
Myrddin pointed to the way he had come. “You will find the High King thereabouts—“
The messenger spurred on before he had even completed his sentence. As Myrddin kicked his own horse into a steady trot, he considered the importance of what he had just heard. Duchess Igrene would learn only too soon that her lord had been dead before that hour she would remember on Myrddin’s implanted orders. And Uther would now find his way clear to take openly the woman he had professed to find desirable above all others. What bearing would such a marriage have on the life Myrddin was certain Igrene now bore within her body?
Would the High King, relying on his own memory, accept the child to come as his own? And what would happen if and when Uther discussed this happening with the Duchess? Myrddin had read the King’s self-disgust clearly in the few words they had exchanged. What would come out of that shame?
There would be more than half a year to pass before he could learn that. His own task had been made clear. The child born of this night’s work was to be hidden—hidden in me north with one who still had a fraction of the Old Ones’ blood and who would be alerted with certain words Myrddin could utter. He saw no reason why he should not make his preparations now, so he did not turn back by hidden tracks to the cave and his solitude, but rode north.
The Ector he sought, he discovered some weeks later, was lord of a small holding which lay high among crags and steep valleys. He was esteemed by his neighbors, but never mixed much with them except in times when they must unite for mutual defense. And his people were noted as being extraordinarily averse to letting strangers settle among them. Ector had taken his own cousin to wife, for his line was ever known to wed within certain bonds of kinship, and he was a young man.