Bernard Cornwell - Enemy of God

‘Drink, Derfel,’ Nimue’s voice said in a whisper that barely carried above the sound of the wind in the oaks. ‘Drink.’

I turned, looking for her, but could see no one. The wind lifted my cloak and flapped some loose thatch on the hall’s roof. ‘Drink, Derfel,’ Nimue’s voice said again, ‘drink.’

I looked up into the sky and prayed to Lleullaw that he would preserve me. My left hand, that was now throbbing in pain, was clasped tight about Hywelbane’s hilt. I wanted to do the safe thing, and that, I knew, was to walk away and go back to the warmth of Arthur’s friendship, but the misery in my soul had brought me to this cold bare hill and the thought of Lancelot’s hand resting on Ceinwyn’s slender wrist made me look down to the cup.

I lifted it, hesitated, then drained it.

The liquid tasted bitter so that I shuddered when it was all gone. The rank taste stayed in my mouth and throat as I carefully laid the cup back on the king’s stone.

‘Nimue?’ I called almost beseechingly, but there was no answer except for the wind in the trees.

‘Nimue!’ I called again, for my head was reeling now. The clouds were churning black and grey, and the moon was splintering into spikes of silvered light that slashed up from the distant river and shattered in the thrashing dark of the twisting trees. ‘Nimue!’ ‘ called as my knees gave way and as my head spun in lurid dreams. I knelt by the royal stone that suddenly loomed as large as a mountain before me, then I then fell forward so heavily that my sprawling arm sent the empty cup flying. I flit sick, but no vomit would come, there were just dreams, terrible dreams, shrieking ghouls of nightmare that screamed inside my head. I was crying, I was sweating and my muscles were twitching in uncontrollable spasms. Then hands seized my head. My helmet was dragged from my hair, then a forehead was pressed against mine. It was a cool white forehead and the nightmares skittered away to be replaced by a vision of a long, naked white body with slender thighs and small breasts. ‘Dream, Derfel,’ Nimue soothed me, her hands stroking my hair, ‘dream, my love, dream.’

I was crying helplessly. I was a warrior, a Lord of. Dumnonia, beloved of Arthur and so in his debt after the last battle that he would grant me land and wealth beyond my dreams, yet now I wept like an orphaned child. My soul’s desire was Ceinwyn, but Ceinwyn was being dazzled by Lancelot and I thought I could never know happiness again.

‘Dream, my love,’ Nimue crooned, and she must have swept a black cloak over both our heads for suddenly the grey night vanished and I was in a silent darkness with her arms about my neck and her face pressed close to mine. We knelt, cheek beside each other’s cheek, with my hands shuddering spasmodically and helplessly on the cool skin of her bare thighs. I let my body’s twitching weight lean on her slender shoulders and there, in her arms, the tears ended, the spasms faded and suddenly I was calm. No vomit edged my throat, the ache in my legs was gone and I felt warm. So warm that the sweat still poured off me. I did not move, I did not want to move, but just let the dream come. At first it was a wondrous dream for it seemed I had been given the wings of a great eagle and I was flying high above a land I did not know. Then I saw it was a terrible land, broken by great chasms and by tall mountains of jagged rock down which small streams cascaded white towards dark peaty lakes. The mountains seemed to have no end, nor any refuge, for as I coasted above them on the wings of my dream, I saw no houses, no huts, no fields, no flocks, no herds, no souls, but only a wolf running between the crags and the bones of a deer lying in a thicket. The sky above me was as grey as a sword, the mountains below were dark as dried blood and the air beneath my wings as cold as a knife in the ribs.

‘Dream, my love,’ Nimue murmured, and in the dream I swept low on my wide wings to see a road twisting between the dark hills. It was a road of beaten earth, broken by rocks, that picked its cruel way from valley to valley, sometimes climbing to bleak passes before it dropped again to the bare stones of another valley floor. The road edged black lakes, cut through shadowed chasms, skirted snow-streaked hills, but always led towards the north. How it was the north I did not know, but this was a dream in which knowledge needs no reason.

The dream wings dropped me down to the road’s surface and suddenly I was flying no longer, but climbing the road towards a pass in the hills. The slopes on either side of the pass were steep black slabs of slate running with water, but something told me the road’s end lay just beyond the black pass and that if I could just keep walking on my tired legs I would cross the crest and find my soul’s desire at the farther side.

I was panting now, my breath coming in agonized gasps as I dreamed my way up the last few paces of the road and there, suddenly, at the summit, I saw light and colour and warmth. For the road dropped beyond the pass to a coastline where there were trees and fields, and beyond the coast was a glittering sea in which an island lay, and in the island, shining in the sudden sun, was a lake. ‘There!’ I spoke aloud for I knew the island was my goal, but just when it seemed I was given a renewed energy to run down the road’s last miles and plunge into that sunlit sea, a ghoul sprang into my path. It was a black thing in black armour with a mouth spitting black slime and a black-bladed sword twice as long as Hywelbane in its black-clawed hand. It screamed a challenge at me. And I screamed too, and my body stiffened in Nimue’s embrace.

Her arms gripped my shoulders. ‘You have seen the Dark Road, Derfel,’ she whispered, ‘you have seen the Dark Road.’ And suddenly she pulled away from me and the cloak was whipped from my back and I fell forward onto Dolforwyn’s wet grass as the wind swirled cold about me. I lay there for long minutes. The dream had passed and I wondered what the Dark Road had to do with my soul’s desire. Then I jerked aside and vomited, and after that my head felt clear again and I could see the fallen silver cup beside me. I picked it up, rocked back onto my haunches and saw that Merlin was watching me from the far side of the royal stone. Nimue, his lover and priestess, was beside him, her thin body swathed in a vast black cloak, her black hair held in a ribbon and her golden eye shining in the moonlight. The eye in that socket had been prised out by Gundleus, and for that injury he had paid a thousandfold.

Neither spoke, but just watched as I spat the last vomit from my mouth, cuffed at my lips, shook my head, then tried to stand. My body was still weak, or else my skull was still reeling, for I could not raise myself and so, instead, I knelt beside the stone and leaned on my elbows. Small spasms still made me twitch from time to time. ‘What did you make me drink?’ I asked, putting the silver cup back on the rock.

‘I made you drink nothing,’ Merlin answered. ‘You drank of your own free will, Derfel, just as you came here of your own free will.’ His voice, that had been so mischievous in Cuneglas’s hall, was now cold and distant. ‘What did you see?’

‘The Dark Road,’ I answered obediently.

‘It lies there,’ Merlin said, and pointed north into the night.

‘And the ghoul?’ I asked.

‘Is Diwrnach,’ he said.

I closed my eyes for I knew now what he wanted. ‘And the island,’ I said, opening my eyes again, ‘is Ynys Mon?’

‘Yes,’ Merlin said. ‘The blessed isle.’

Before the Romans came and before the Saxons were even dreamed of, Britain was ruled by the Gods and the Gods spoke to us from Ynys Mon, but the island had been ravaged by the Romans who had cut down its oaks, destroyed its sacred groves and slaughtered its guardian Druids. That Black Year had occurred more than four hundred years before this night, yet Ynys Mon was still sacred to the few Druids who, like Merlin, tried to restore the Gods to Britain. But now the blessed island was a part of the kingdom of Lleyn, and Lleyn was ruled by Diwrnach, the most terrible of all the Irish Kings who had crossed the Irish Sea to take British land. Diwrnach was said to paint his shields with human blood. There was no King in all Britain more cruel or more feared, and it was only the mountains that hemmed him in and the smallness of his army that kept him from spreading his terror south through Gwynedd. Diwrnach was a beast that could not be killed; a creature that lurked at the dark edge of Britain and, by common consent, he was best left unprovoked. ‘You want me,’ I said to Merlin, ‘to go to Ynys Mon?’