Jack Whyte - Uther

"I have thought much on it. He died by a poisoned arrow, shot by one of Lot of Cornwall's men."

"Aye, but where?"

Uther had grown tense. "What do you mean, 'where?' In battle, where else?"

"No!" Owain shook his head. "I don't know where you heard that tale, but Uric was in his camp, at night, in the middle of his army when he was killed. Now ask yourself this . . . how came the Cornish there in Uric's own camp? Who was in charge of the King's safety? There were guards who died for their carelessness that night, but who was responsible for assigning all those guards?"

"Meradoc?"

"Aye, Meradoc. Someone arranged things so the Cornishman could pass through ranks of guards. And Meradoc was in charge. He had the guards all killed at once, so great was his rage, for failing in their duty to the King. They were all dead almost before the word was spread."

"And dead men can't speak out, is that what you are saying?"

"You said it, not me."

"That is . . ." Uther's voice was choked with loathing. "You know this? You are convinced this happened?"

"No, I was far away that night, up in the north, so I don't know it. But I know Meradoc and I know his greed, and what his wishes were and are. Meradoc sees himself as High King of the Pendragon Federation, but Uric was already there in place. So, to a man hungry enough and peering through a shuttered door at food on a table, the problem would have seemed simple: remove the obstacle between you and the table, then eat your fill." He moved his legs and rose to his feet. "Is that cause enough for enmity? Ask him yourself, when next you meet him. Now I'm going to sleep. Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

Uther simply shook his head, incapable of speech, and watched Owain walk into the blackness beyond the fire's range.

"I had doubts of my own, but didn't want to voice them to you until I knew more. His words have the ring of truth to them." Garreth's voice came from the darkness of the trees behind Uther's back. Uther sat silent, then spoke without turning.

"How long have you been listening there? I thought you went to bed."

"I did. I couldn't sleep."

"You suspected this treachery of Meradoc's? You should have told me, Garreth."

"Told you what, that I smelled a stink of fish? We live beside the sea, Uther. Anyway, now you know more than I knew. What will you do?"

Uther rose to his feet and picked up his bedroll, then walked away into the darkness without answering. When he came to where Owain of the Caves was stooping to lie down, having spread his blanket beneath the boughs of an evergreen, he stopped and spoke.

"Owain!"

He heard a stirring in the blackness beneath the tree. "Aye?"

"You have a place with me if you want one. Meradoc might yet kill you, but before he does, he'll have to kill me and mine as well, and I intend to give him no chance at that before he dies."

There was silence for a spell, and then the voice spoke from the darkness. "I'll think on that."

"Good." Turning to leave, Uther stopped once again. "Think on this, too, while you're about it. I prefer to do my own killing, with my own weapons. Should you choose to stay with us, you will live in new ways and in new days. And if I ever call upon your services, you will deliver them openly, by my side and shoulder to shoulder with my friends, my companions and my warriors."

There was no response, and he walked away through the long grass, swinging his bedroll up over his shoulder and thinking deeply.

Chapter SIXTEEN

Daris ap Griffyd, son of Darin and grandson of the revered and long-dead Druid Derwent, stood high above the temple gazing down from the eastern heights of the earthen wall that sheltered the sacred place, vainly trying to empty his mind of distractions. Behind him and far below, the tide of movement and noise that had driven him away in a vain search for peace and quiet showed no sign of abating. It was, he knew, the inevitable accompaniment to a great gathering of people, but, coupled with the discord of his seething thoughts, it made it impossible for him to concentrate on what he should be doing. Grimly, conscientiously, he squeezed his eyelids shut and forced himself to focus upon what must be.

He would stand here again tomorrow, in this precise spot, but on that occasion he would be dressed in the spare but splendid regalia of Chief Druid, his bright red robes brilliant in the sunlight, his beard and his long white hair brushed and carefully combed beneath the leafy corona of mistletoe that would crown his head. The same great staff he bore today, the symbol of his rank as High Priest, would be in his right hand as always. It was a solid shaft of dried and polished oak, its upper length chased in spiralling whorls of beaten silver that swept up to enfold a sun disk of solid gold, a hand's span in diameter. He would stand alone then, too, isolated by his rank. But twelve paces beyond him, on either side, the people of the clans, awed into quietude for once by the solemnity of the occasion, would crowd along the circumference of the wall, waiting for the day's ceremonies to begin. Their presence in the temple itself would profane the sacred rites to be observed there that day, so the top of the protecting wall, where he stood now, was the closest they would come to the ceremonies below.

Daris willed away the vision of the crowd and concentrated only upon the place where they would gather. The triune symbolism of the site pleased him—a circle within a circle within a circle—and he breathed deeply in a pattern of long, regular breaths designed to permit him to immerse himself in its peaceful symmetry and to ignore the debilitating tension in his guts.

The outer circle on which he stood was a massive earthen wall erected by his people when the first rapacious Roman legions came to Britain, hundreds of years before. It had been built for one sole purpose: to protect and defend the hallowed ring of sixteen uniformly quarried and dressed menhirs—standing stones each twice the height of a man—that formed the second circle. This was the original temple created untold ages earlier by craftsmen who might have been Daris's own ancestors, although the ancient legends spoke of another, older race of smaller people who had lived here in the long-forgotten past. Fortunately, the wall had never been required, because although the Romans felt driven to eradicate the Druids of Britain, they never felt a need to invade or own the ancient temples that the Druids had built. In consequence, the original circle of ancient stones remained as it had been since time immemorial.

Twenty long paces, each interval exact, separated each of the standing stones from the baseline of the surrounding defensive wall, and the circle of stones itself was thirty great strides in diameter, the precision of the whole demonstrating that, no matter who the ancient architects and builders were, they possessed quarrying and construction skills the like of which were quite unknown in the land today.

The third circle, carefully laid out within the ring of the menhirs, was temporary, purely ceremonial: Daris himself had supervised its arrangement that very morning. This was a ring of eight large, solid, wooden chairs, each placed with great care five paces in front of a specific stone, so that the chair's occupant sat with his back to that stone, flanked by two others. Each chair was separated from the one directly facing it across the circle by twenty paces, and the chairs were as uniform as the menhirs, save for one. The one designated for the King was larger than all the others, though carved from the same ancient, blackened oak. It sat in front of the menhir at the westernmost point of the ring's circumference and faced directly east, towards the rising sun.

Tomorrow. Daris hoped and prayed, only the King's chair would sit vacant, for the King was dead. Tomorrow, all the seven Chiefs of the Pendragon Federation—given the blessing of the gods—would convene here to choose another King from their own ranks. And when the King was chosen and duly set in place upon the great King's seat, then one of the Chiefs' chairs would remain empty until the King died. Because the Chief ruled by right of heredity, the rank passing from father to son, that succession was usually a formality, with an appointee from the King's family sometimes filling the post during a boy's minority. Only very seldom, when a king died with no son to claim the Chief's chair, was the succession resolved by the elders of the clan council.