Jack Whyte - Uther

Within the first few moments of their beginning to speak to each other once they were free of the camp, Uther felt a kind of bond between himself and Lagan, undefined and accepted without question or comment, that tacitly permitted them to speak openly without fear. It was a phenomenon that Uther had never encountered before, because it was not in his nature either to be garrulous among friends or to confide easily in strangers, but he merely accepted it and shrugged his shoulders mentally, while Lagan gave him no sign that he was even aware of anything unusual.

Uther started talking about Merlyn, and somehow the topic drifted naturally to his loyalty to his cousin, and then to Camulod and to his own Dragons. Always, however, it swung back to Merlyn, and loyalty and, at length, to betrayal by disbelief, with Uther even broaching the subject of his own doubts and uncertainties. And before long Lagan Longhead began laying bare his own soul in return, talking about his own experiences with loyalty and betrayal, and about his decades-long friendship with Gulrhys Lot.

"Gods, man!" Uther interrupted. "You sound as though you think you lost something of value!"

"I did lose something of value." Lagan glanced sideways and saw the disbelief on Uther's face, and he grinned and shook his head. "But we all see value differently at different times. You never knew Lot as I once did. He has a marvellous sense of the ridiculous, and we have had some wonderful times together, he and I. . . happy times, laughing ourselves sick, weeping tears of mirth until we fell on the floor clutching our ribs."

"Gulrhys Lot? Are you talking about Lot of Cornwall? You can't mean that."

"Oh yes I can, and why not? I stand against him now, but I was his true and devoted friend for nigh on twenty years, and that was not, I promise you, because he was a miserable, treacherous, inhumane bully. He could be all of those things and more when he wished to be, but he never was to me. Never. I never saw that side of him.

"I know people thought me foolish and blind and stupid—even Lydda, my own wife, thought so. She tried to warn me about it many times, but of course, I never listened. I was a man and she merely a woman, so I tried to be patient with her foolishness, told her that she was wrong. Well, she wasn't, and I was the one who proved to be the fool."

He stopped and rode without speaking for a while, and Uther held his peace, knowing that he had not finished.

"You would like him, Uther. You would like him mightily, whether you choose to believe me or not. You would respond to him instantly and enjoy him thoroughly—until you saw through and beyond the living mask he had put on for his dealings with you. He wears a different mask for everyone. Even for me. And he deluded me so well, so damned completely, that for most of my life I would not believe he wore a mask at all, no matter who told me otherwise."

Uther turned himself in the saddle to face Lagan. "How could he be that way with you for so long and not thus with everyone else? And how could you not see beyond it?"

"How indeed?" Lagan screwed up his face and nodded his head, affirming his own thoughts on the question. "When he took my wife and son as hostages against my good behaviour, he lost me forever, but he and I had been close friends as children, and we remained close throughout our growing up. The Lot I loved was the Lot of our boyhood."

Uther grunted his disgust. "I met him when he was a boy, and he was a loathsome pig. I tried to kill him."

"I know, Ygraine told me about that. I remember how sick he was when he came home that year. He was shut up for weeks before they'd let me see him, and I never did find out what really happened. But Lot was fourteen by then, at least fourteen. When I speak of our boyhood, I mean the days when we were children, seven, eight, nine and ten years old . . . the days when we were yet innocent of blood, or adulthood, or sexual corruption. Boyhood. Uther—you must remember boyhood? Surely you had one too?"

Uther smiled, then sobered quickly. "Aye, I had. But you and I were changed by all of those same things. Lagan, and yet you and I are not crazed madmen, pulling our whole world down around our ears."

"That's true. But no matter how low we might think he has sunk, Lot retains a bottomless well of attractiveness and warmth that he can draw from anytime he wishes. And when he finds someone who can be of use to him, or someone who is in a position to provide him with some new benefit, or even someone he wants to influence to his own ends for some specific purpose, there seems to be no limit to the efforts he will make to win them to his way of thinking." Lagan grimaced at the thought. "I've watched him doing it for years, and believe me, he can be incredibly seductive and alluring when it comes to making people do what he wants them to do. He could coax honey from a hungry bear. But you can guess at what must happen time and again: those people who found themselves basking in the warmth and enthusiasm of his attention and approval one week would find themselves abandoned and ignored the next, when his directions changed. And being suddenly removed from light and warmth, then thrown back into the cold shadows among which they had lived before, they felt the cold more keenly, and the dimness of their former lives now seemed like darkness. Do you wonder they became bitter?"

"No. And yet I was thinking that Lot must be too clever to allow that kind of thing to happen, to permit people to think of him that harshly when there's no need for it. It is bad leadership . . . bad kingship. It's bad policy, from every viewpoint." Uther thought about that for a moment, and then dismissed the subject offhandedly. "But then, he's Lot of Cornwall, and he's insane."

Lagan barked a laugh.

Full darkness had fallen on them suddenly, between one word and the next, and both men reined in their mounts and turned in their saddles to look up at the moon, which now lay behind them over their left shoulders. It had vanished behind the edge of a large, fast- moving cloud that blocked out the surrounding stars, but as they sat staring it emerged front its trailing skirts to bathe the world once again in light. Lagan turned away and was making tutting sounds between his teeth, scanning the skies to the northeast.

"Storm coming in. That cloud was moving very quickly, and it's only the first. Look over there, it's as black as Hades. Perhaps we should ride a little faster."

"How much farther do we have to go?"

"Five miles. An hour's ride, the way we were going. We'll be wet long before then."

"Then let's shorten that hour while the light's good."

They kicked their mounts into motion again and prodded them into a canter, riding in silence as they adjusted to the increased speed and the changing shadows. They were on the high moors, and there were no trees or bushes to impede their progress, but both of them knew that the ground under their horses' hooves could be treacherous, strewn with loose stones and pitted in places with the holes of burrowing animals. After about a quarter of an hour of this, the horses began to breathe more heavily and their riders slowed them again to a walk. The sky overhead was still clear, save for the occasional small, unthreatening cloud. The massed storm banks in the northeast seemed to be moving very slowly, despite the speed of the first cloud that had covered the moon.

Uther had been thinking about what Lagan said, and now there was one question remaining in his mind, one point on which he had to be certain.

"Would you still be his friend if he came back and asked you to?"

Lagan glanced quickly at Uther and then shook his head decisively. "No. It's gone far beyond redemption now."

"And does Lot know that?"

It took a long time for Lagan to answer that, but eventually he looked up and shook his head. "No. He has no idea that I feel the way I do."