Stephen Lawhead - Taliesin

An unthinkable horror met her eyes: men staggered bleeding with cloven heads, or, limbless, sat in mute shock contemplating their severed members. Many more lay on blood-soaked ground staring upward out of cloudy eyes, arrow shafts bristling from their throats and chests.

Avallach was nowhere to be seen, nor was Briseis or her brothers. Charis shrieked and rushed into the nightmare, panic a cold fist in her stomach. She raced among the dead and dying, crying for her family in a voice choked with terror.

She stumbled over something on the ground, fell headlong over it to discover herself in the unfeeling embrace of the half-headed corpse of the queen’s maidservant, Dean. She gathered her feet under her and reeled away. “Mother!” she screamed. “Mother! Where are you?”

The queen’s coach still waited where it had stopped beside the road. One horse had broken free of its harness; the other lay sprawled, sides heaving, four arrowshafts protruding from its stomach. Charis went to the coach. Queen Briseis lay on the ground beside the rear wheel, a long, ragged gash at the base of her throat and another on her wrist where she had thrown up a protecting hand.

Her skin shone with the waxy pallor of death and her unfocused eyes stared fixedly at the vast blue nothing of the sky above, as starkly empty as the eyes that beheld it. There was blood, too much blood everywhere; blood stained the ground beneath her head, stained her broken skin and the torn clothing, and still it flowed from the deep and savage wounds.

“Mother…” whispered Charis. “Oh, Mother…”

Briseis’ eyes shifted but remained empty and softly veiled. “Charis,” said her mother thickly. Crimson bubbles formed at the corner of her mouth. “I… cannot see you, Charis…”

“I am here, Mother.”

“Charis… can you hear me?”

“Yes… I hear you,” she said and bent close, taking her mother’s face in her hands. “I am here. We are safe now.”

“Oh… The others?”

“Safe, too, I think. I cannot find them. I cannot find Father.”

“It is cold here… Cover me, Charis…”

“Yes…” Charis reached for a travel robe from the carriage and arranged it over Briseis. “Is that better?”

“I am tired…” Briseis’ eyes closed slowly. “… so tired… Hold me…”

“No. Please, no!” Charis cradled her mother, pressing her cheek against Briseis’ forehead.

“Take care of them, Charis…” The queen’s voice was the breath of a whisper. “There is… no one else…”

Briseis coughed once as a tremor passed through her body, and then lay still.

When Charis lifted her head a little while later she saw Annubi’s long form shambling through the carnage. She rose from her mother’s side and went to him, catching his hand as he stumbled along. “She is dead… My mother is dead.”

“This should not have happened,” he said, turning neither right nor left. “This was not foreseen.”

“Where are my brothers, Annubi?” demanded Charis shrilly. “Where are my brothers?”

“Safe. I kept them safe,” he answered.

‘ ‘And my father, Annubi-where is he?” She was sobbing again.

“Rode after them… Nestor’s men. They attacked while we slept-slaughtered us in our sleep. Treachery. I have been asleep.”

He stopped and turned to Charis, his features quickening once more. “You said something about your mother?”

“She is gone!” Charis cried. “Oh, Annubi, she is… dead… dead.”

“Where?”

“Over there,” replied Charis, pointing toward the coach.

The seer went to the body, knelt down, and placed his hand against the queen’s cheek. “I am sorry, Briseis,” he murmured. ‘ ‘We saw but did not see… So blind… I should have seen this; I should have prevented it. A royal death… I thought… the High King’s…”He shook his head wearily. “I did not think there would be others. I was asleep… too long, too long.” Charis, standing near, began to sob.

He stiffened and turned abruptly, taking Charis by the shoulders. “No, Charis, there is no time for tears now.”

“I do not understand,” she cried. “I was picking flowers… I heard… I found her…” Her chin began to quiver.

“I know. But you must not think of yourself just now. There are others to tend to. We will mourn later; now there is work to do. I need you to help me with the wounded.”

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, and together they began surveying the horrid scene, searching among the bodies, separating the living from the dead and administering what little aid they could.

Charis worked without thought, senses numb, her hands and feet moving to Annubi’s direction. She helped bind wounds and set broken bones-pulling here, holding there, lifting, tugging, wrapping, tying as Annubi instructed her. They were still so engaged when they heard the sound of horses on the road ahead.

“Hide yourself!” Annubi hissed.

Charis stood unmoving. The seer took her arm and spun her around. “Under the carriage. Quickly!”

At that moment a chariot flashed into view. Avallach, bleeding from wounds to his shoulder and chest, lit from the chariot and came toward them. Charis ran to him, throwing her arms around him. “Father, are you all right?”

Avallach disentangled himself and moved slowly to the queen’s carriage, stood a moment looking down, then knelt and gathered up the body of his wife. He carried his queen to the shaded place beneath the tree where they had been asleep before the attack; he lay her down gently and folded her hands over her breast.

Charis came to stand beside Mm and reached for his hand. “She came back for you,” said Avallach without looking at her. “She was safe but came back to find you.” He pulled his hand away.

Kian rode in just then with the remains of Avallach’s entourage-fewer than half the troop that had left Sarras. The king turned quickly and began shouting orders, saying, “We will ride on to Seithenin’s. I want to reach his palace by nightfall.” He turned to his seer. “Annubi, bring the princes. I want to see them now.”

Shallow graves were scratched in the dust, and the dead buried where they had fallen. The body of the queen was covered and placed in her carriage. Charis was made to ride alone with the body. Annubi, thinking this a harsh and unnecessary punishment, tried to intervene. “Sire,” he offered, “allow me to keep the child with me. You need have no thought for her then.”

“She rides with the queen,” declared Avallach firmly.

By late afternoon, the king’s party was moving again. As the coaches rolled away Charis looked back: a morbid tranquillity had claimed the scene, with bare earth mounds scattered alongside the road and among the trees, and the corpses of horses, already swarming with flies, bearing mute witness to the atrocity that had taken place.

They reached Seithenin’s palace in the dead of night. The gates had long since been closed but were hastily reopened when it was learned who waited out on the road. Seithenin, barefoot and dressed in his night robe, met them in the forecourt of his many-hailed palace. He greeted Avallach and, after a brief consultation, sent his seneschals scurrying back into the palace. Magi appeared a few minutes later and the body of the queen was consigned to their care. “Go with them, Annubi,” Avallach ordered, and followed Seithenin into the palace.

“I will come to you later,” Annubi told Charis. “Eat something if you can.”

Charis nodded sadly. The stewards came for the others and conducted them to sleeping quarters. Charis and her brothers were given rooms in the royal chambers-Charis alone, the princes in rooms of their own.

Bare to the waist, Avallach sat on a stool while a Mage worked over him, cleaning his wounds with an aromatic salve and wrapping them in new bandages. Seithenin sat opposite, his expression fierce but his eyes coolly remote as he listened to Avallach’s recitation of the tragic events of that afternoon.