Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

The spring of the second year of my new life arrived and lengthened into a summer that was followed lazily by an autumn in which I was plagued with formless, gradually worsening headaches. Then, after the onset of an early winter, Uther finally returned to Camulod. I had been anticipating his return, because apart from the recurring headaches, of which I had informed no one, by this time I was almost wholly back to being the man I had been before, according to everyone who knew me, and there were many who believed that meeting Uther would be the final step in my regaining my sense of self.

He arrived at nightfall on the second to last night of November, and I remember how glad he was to see me waiting for him with the others in the great courtyard. He leaped from his horse and ran to me, his face split in a great, joyful grin, and swung me off my feet in an enormous hug. I smiled back at him and returned his embrace, but inside myself, where I had learned to conceal my confusion, I felt devastated. The sight of him brought no memories, and my head began to ache again.

I had made two solid, honest friends since my homecoming, starting afresh with each, although they both assured me we had been friends before. These were Lucanus and young Donuil. They accepted me now as I had become, not as I had formerly been, and I loved them both for that. Almost everyone else treated me as they did because of what, or who, I had been. I could see through that pretence instantly and no one was ever able to fool me. Only with these two did I feel whole, because neither made any attempt, ever, to prod me back towards being the Caius Merlyn everyone else was seeking. Their friendship, abetted by the wholehearted and unequivocal love of my great- aunt Luceiia, enabled me to survive a long and brutal winter with a degree of equanimity, enjoying what I had, rather than pining uselessly for whatever it was that I had lost.

Uther, however, laboured hard at accepting me as I was now. His treatment of me was at all times straightforward, open and considerate—sometimes, I felt, too much so. He was scrupulous in his efforts to treat me as his equal and his lifelong friend, but I could sense an awkwardness in him. It came to a head on a sunny morning in March the following year when, during a hard-fought bout with me, he suddenly sprang away from me and grounded the point of his sword. I grounded mine, too, but watched him narrowly; this cousin of mine was a doughty and crafty opponent. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his tunic, his breath heaving in his chest from the exertions we had been sharing, and I was astonished to see tears standing in his eyes.

"By God, Cay, I can't stand this! You're you, and yet you are not. It's like playing with a ghost. You are complete sometimes, and I love the fight in you, and you were ever thus, and yet...and yet, much of the time now you are too different. My boyhood friend Cay simply is not here."

I felt a lump swell in my own throat at the sight of the tears in his fierce eyes, and I stepped forward, arms spread wide to embrace him. Our breastplates clashed together as our arms went round each other and he snorted into my ear, half laugh, half sob, before pushing me away to arm's; length and looking me in the eye.

"I leave tomorrow, Cay. Back to the south. Lot is still alive and fighting fit in spite of all my prayers to the ancient gods to blast his benighted soul to smoke and ashes, and I won't rest until I've cut the head, with my own sword, from his stinking neck. I wish you could come with me, but I doubt it would be wise. You are too gentle nowadays,; Cousin. Stay here, and train, and try to find yourself. I hope when I return you will know me again."

Four days later, missing him already and knowing I was unfit company for any of my friends, I mounted my horse and rode off alone, taking care to avoid being seen by Donuil, who dogged me everywhere, to the little valley my aunt told me I had called Avalon. There, I stood by the banks of the tiny lake, close to the wall of the small stone hut, looking down at the grave that they told me held my lost love and my unborn child. I had come here several times—once with Luceiia and once with Donuil; other times alone. And each time I came I felt guilt, crushing and hopeless, over my inability to grieve for what must once have been most dear to me.

Today my head ached abominably, throbbing so fiercely that I almost felt as though it moved rhythmically in time to the surging of my blood. I knelt by the foot of the grave and began the prayers I had been taught for the souls of the two people beneath me. How long I knelt there I have no idea, but the pain in my head swelled unbearably, and I eventually rose to my feet with great effort, knowing that the time had come to seek out Lucanus and tell him what had been happening to me. As I stood, my head seemed to spin and a dark, reddish mist swirled in front of my eyes. I thought I turned towards my horse, but instead I found myself facing the front of the hut, with its hanging, ruined door. My knees gave way and I felt myself pitch forward, seeing the edge of the door rushing towards my face.

I did not lose consciousness, and as I lay there with my face in the cool grass the excruciating pain inside my skull began to recede, to be replaced by a different, external pain. Eventually I was able to get up again, and then I discovered the source of my new pain. In falling, I had grazed my forehead against the door's edge and gouged a cut that was slowly leaking blood down my face and stinging painfully. Moving with great caution lest I renew the agony in my head, I went to the water's edge and knelt among the reeds there, scooping up the cold water to wash the blood from my face. The water felt wonderful, almost icy, and my head quickly began to clear, so to aid the process I leant forward gracelessly, bracing myself on my bent arms, and ducked my head completely beneath the surface, enjoying the sudden shock as the enveloping coldness chilled my scalp instantly and snatched my breath away. Feeling much better, I knelt erect again and began to flick the excess water from my short hair with my hands, and as I did so, I remember, I froze, motionless, my heart filling up with some enormous, nameless dread, my eyes dazzled by the brightness of the sunlight shimmering upon the waters ahead of me. I heard a drumbeat echoing somewhere, and only after long moments recognized it as the beating of my own heart. The sensations that swirled through me now were different from those caused by my aching head. These held the nausea of terror and the fear of turning my head to look at what I had no wish to see. I heard a ghostly, whooshing sound, the sound of ravens' wings, and then my mind filled with the surging image of a prancing shadow horse, its death-grey, shrouded rider standing in the stirrups, swinging a weapon round his head, splitting the air with the same sound of wings until he swung it at me, hurling me, shattered, into the waters of the mere.

Donuil, my faithful hound, rescued me before I could drown. He had followed me, of course, but knowing I wished to be alone, he had remained hidden, content to watch me, concerned as ever for my welfare and safety; Almost recovered I might be, but to him I was far from myself and therefore I bore watching at all times. He pulled me out, lifted me across my horse and bore me back to Camulod unconscious.

Lucanus took one look at me, it seems, and drilled his hole into my skull again, quickly this time, since the original aperture was plugged only with beeswax. Once again I awoke to find myself immobilized and bound to my bed for months.

This time, however, no further damage had been done. No tabula rasa greeted them on my awakening. My memory was as it had been—complete but incomplete. I mended quickly, but had to swear an oath to Lucanus that I would inform him immediately in future of any aches or pains within my head. Even when I had promised him, he looked gravely concerned and warned me that he had only ever performed his haematoma surgery once on anyone. He had never heard, he said, of the procedure being conducted twice on the same person. He was obdurate in refusing to allow me from my bed before he was convinced that I was, in fact, healing normally. It took six more weeks to convince him of that, and each day and night of those six weeks I was haunted by the death-grey vision that had assailed me by die lakeside. In vain I told myself it had been caused by the deep-seated pressure in my skull, but I could not rid myself of the conviction that something important had occurred there.