Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

My grandfather bellowed and raised his walking stick, lashing King Arthur across the back. He stumbled with a cry, and one of his men struck my grandfather deep in the breast. He fell stiffly, his eyes wide open in shock. His head hit the stone with a clunk.

I sat silent, my ears filled with a rushing sound.

All round me men fought, with knife and chair leg and poker and platter.

Then Taliesen pulled a horn from his belt and blew it. The sound rang out above the clamor and at once I knew for whom he called. That little ship, bobbing at our jetty. Many warriors must be hidden there.

I tried to get to my feet, calling to my grandfather’s men. My men now. No one heeded me. I struggled to find a way through the heaving, struggling mass, but received such a blow to my head, I fell to my knees. That was when Thitis, my dear sweet baby, shrieked and rushed for me.

I swear he did not mean to do it. Even in the horror of that moment, as I saw his blade swing back, its sharp tip slashing across her throat, I swear his shock and grief were as great as mine. For a moment, our glances struck across her tiny, trampled body.

Perhaps that is why I cannot hate him, for I saw his face at that moment and knew that he felt the stretching of time and space to very breaking point, just as I did.

I reached for her, gathered her into her arms, felt her head loll back, lifeless. The pain that struck into my chest was so acute it was as if a spear had caught me there. I was struck mute and paralyzed. All around me men and fay died, but I could not hear, or see, or move. When my grief came it was as rage, a rage so dreadful flame burst from my hands and cleared a path before me.

So I came into my powers, with the blood of Thitis blurring my vision and the shrieks of the dying in my ears.

We prevailed in the end. Of the hundred and fifty men that had crouched in Prydwen ’s bilge beside their boy king, only seven men survived, Taliesen the bard amongst them. We lost three hundred and seventy-three, and our king, and the king’s heir, and my innocence. It was a high cost to pay.

I could have had him executed. I could have fed his entrails to my hounds. Instead, I put my mouth to his wound and sucked out his blood. As he recoiled from me, I went out into the cold starry night and lay down in the embrace of the oak tree’s roots. I slept, I think, a little. My mind wandered in and out of dreams. I flew with a black-winged bird over the shadowed landscape of the future, I listened to the raven’s cry.

When I woke in the morning, I knew many things I had not known before. I rose and washed myself clean, and spat the brown dust of his blood from my mouth. I dressed myself as a queen of the fay, and I took from the armory a sword that had been forged by Gofannon himself, son of Don and master smith. It too was one of the treasures of Annwn.

I took it to Arthur. He was pale, bruised and shaken in his dark cell. He stood up when I came in and faced me with as much of his usual arrogance as he could muster, though he could not help the black dilation of his eyes at the sight of the heavy sword in my hands.

For a moment we faced each other. I stood no higher than his shoulder but I was at least as proud and in no way as frightened. Then slowly I offered him the hilt of the sword.

He took it wonderingly, unable to speak.

“I have seen what is to be,” I said. “You will need the sword. It is named Caledfwlch. Its blade shall never fail you and its sheath protects you from harm. Go from here and do not return. I shall not be so merciful again.”

“But why?” he stammered.

I took a while to answer. I would not let him see the heaviness of my grief, which lodged in my throat like a stone. “The tide is on the turn,” I managed at last. “The evil of the future that contains you alive is far less than the evil of a future with you dead. Though I wish I could tear out your heart for the gods you have abandoned, I know you…” I had to struggle for breath. “…I know you are the only one. Take your sword, take your ship, and leave my realm. Know that it is death for you to sail here again.”

But even as I said these words, I felt the chill of foreboding down my spine and knew that I lied. I did not tell him so, however, and so he took the sword and for another twenty years or more, he fought and triumphed with it.

But that is a tale for another telling. I have spoken here of death and the tasting of blood, but now it is time to show the bright face of the moon, the story of loving and the making of life. For I saw many things that night I lay in the grove with Arthur’s blood in my mouth. I saw it was time to close the doors between the worlds, else all the things of magic would be lost and broken in the times of change and upheaval that beset us. I saw it was time for me to lay aside my childhood and become a woman and a queen.

So, when the ashes of the dead had at last blown away on the wind, I set out with my nine hounds and I went to a place that I knew, where a road of the humans fords the River Alun in the shadow of the Mountain of the Mothers. Such places are often doorways into our world, and so I crossed the threshold and came out into the world of men. I undid my hair, removed all my clothes and sat on a stone, washing myself in the river while my hounds howled about me.

Soon a man came riding along, as I had known he would. This man was Urien Rheged, and though he was not as young and strong as Arthur, he was lusty enough.

When he saw me, dressed only in my long black hair, he sent away all his men and came to me with long, heavy strides and seized me in his hot hands.

“What are you, witch-woman?” he said against my neck.

I said, “I am Margante, daughter to the King of Annwn, who is now dead. God’s blessing on the feet which brought you here.”

“Why?” he asked, and kissed me.

I had not expected his kiss to fire me, and so when I finally answered it was rather unsteadily. “I am fated to wash here until I should conceive a son by a Christian man.”

He laughed and said, “It is far too cold to sit here bathing day after day. Let me see what I can do to help you.”

And so there in the bracken, my son Owain and my daughter Morwyn were conceived, if not in love, at least in eagerness and pleasure.

A year later Urien came back to the Ford of Barking and took away my twin babes, that they may be raised in the way of men. This too was a bitter grief to me, and another resentment to store up against Arthur. For I loved my children and would have given much to keep them safe with me behind the locked doors of Annwn.

I knew, though, that the world of humans needed them. Owain and Morwyn carried with them all the gifts of healing, song and merriment that I could give them, as well as the more troubling gift of foresight. In time Owain would fall in love, betray that love, run mad in the forest and befriend a lion, but all of that is yet another tale. It is enough that you know he learned in the end that love is more important than valor, peace more important than war. For we of the Tylwyth Teg see time differently from you short-lived humans. In the small, black pip of an apple, we see the tree that will eventually flower and bear fruit.

Dot stepped outside into the midday gloom. She scanned the area automatically. No visible threats. She latched the door, though there was little of value—that anyone would find, anyway—in the ex-sewage pipe she called home. But if she left it unlocked, someone in the undercity would take the steel bucket she used to collect acid rainwater.

Her body felt heavy, depleted. From lack of energy or too little… everything, she didn’t know. One of those she could fix. If the sun was out.