Page 19 of The Bear's Heart

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Alezan wanted to have her head. She knew this was where we galloped and was eager to be off. I touched my legs to her side, and she sprang forward from an impatient jog trot straight into a gallop, the bit between her teeth. Crouching forward over the saddle horns, I urged her on. She was arrow fast, and I wasn’t heavy. Her thundering hooves ate up the ground as though she were a thoroughbred racehorse. A glance over my shoulder showed me Merlin trailing some way back on his bay. Further behind him, the half dozen warriors of our escort struggled to keep up.

The wind whipped at my hair, snatching at my short riding cloak, and I drummed my booted heels against Alezan’s side, pushing her to even more speed. Beneath her hooves, the ground rushed past in a blur, the distant dark line of the forest ahead of us drawing ever closer. Her breath came in rhythmic snorts, and beneath me she eventually began to flag. For want of a stick, I whipped my reins from side to side across her neck, and she found another burst of speed. But now she was no longer pulling, and I could feel the weakness of exhaustion in my own legs and arms. I let her slow to a canter, then a trot, and she almost fell into a walk. I gave her a long rein, and she stretched her head and neck down toward the ground, clouds of steam rising from her heaving flanks.

It was a minute or two before Merlin brought his own sweat-drenched horse to a walk beside us. “What was that for?” Anger tinged his voice. “Look behind you. We’ve no guards because they couldn’t keep up. These horses are trained for short bursts of speed in battle, not long-distance gallops.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Nearly half a mile behind us, our guards had slowed their tired horses to a walk.

He reached out and grabbed Alezan’s left rein and gave it a tug. “We need to walk back to meet them. Now.”

Wrenching on the rein myself, I turned Alezan away from him. “I don’t want to.”

His hand had been out ready to grab my rein again, but now he stopped. “Why?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

Annoyance rose to the surface. “Don’t you know? Haven’t you seen it with your Sight?”

He drew rein, and his horse halted. Alezan, exhausted after her gallop, stopped of her own accord. He eyed me up and down. “I realized something was wrong yesterday. Did you bring me out here to tell me about it?”

Had I? After all, in a way this was all his fault. He’d brought me to this world. If he hadn’t, I’d be safely home with Nathan, working in the library, and definitely not pregnant.

“I needed some fresh air.” I gave Alezan a small kick, and she started walking again, but this time in a large curve as Merlin’s horse gradually pushed us around so that we’d soon be heading back the way we’d come. There wasn’t much time.

The words came tumbling out. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anyone to talk to about…about something.” The wind blew strands of my hair, loosened in my gallop, into my eyes, making me toss my head to be rid of them.

He rubbed his stubbly chin. “Well, I can’t give you advice if you don’t tell me the problem.”

Putting my reins into one hand, I laid the other protectively on my belly. His eyes followed the movement.

“Did your prophecy– the one about me– did it…did it mention anything about an heir to Arthur?”

His gaze sharpened. “Not directly,” he said, still looking at the hand on my flat belly. “But it didn’t specify there wouldn’t be one.” He paused. “What about what you know of Arthur from your own time? Is there an heir in the stories you know?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know everything that’s been written. And even if there was an heir, the stories might not have come down to us. They’re all a terrible jumble, and nothing contemporary survives.”

He was still looking at my hand. “Why do you want to know about an heir?”

I swallowed. “You said once that you saw the future, and that mine was tied up with Arthur’s…that I was essential to what he was to become.” My turn to pause. We were now heading back toward our guards, who’d come to a halt in the distance, waiting for us. A brace of partridge flew up out of the grass in front of our horses, startling them. “In that future, was I always there…I mean, to the very end?”

Merlin halted his horse again, and Alezan followed suit. The headlong gallop had taken it out of her. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I saw you with him to the end. If there is one.”

If there is one. What an odd thing to say. There always had to be an end, surely. In the end we all die. But maybe not. The legends said that Arthur didn’t die, that he was whisked away to Avalon by three queens, where he would lie in sleep until Britain’s hour of need. Was that what Merlin meant? Was Arthur really never going to die? I gave myself a little shake. Impossible.

“So you didn’t see my death?” I’d reached the nub of the matter. The words were difficult to say.

He shook his head. “No. You were with him to…the end.”

Relief washed over me. Three months ago the reassurance by someone with the Sight that I wasn’t about to die in childbirth wouldn’t have left me feeling anything other than amused and skeptical. But this world had changed me. I’d got here by magic and seen a sword that no one could pull out protruding from an enormous stone that had appeared in the forum of Viroconium overnight. And I’d met a woman who’d sent Saxon foederati out to snatch me because she’d seen my arrival inside her head. So I believed him when he said I’d be with Arthur to the end. Whatever end that was.

I rubbed my stomach gently with my hand, almost caressingly. If he was right, this meant I wasn’t going to die in childbirth, or from taking those powders Mother Nara had given Maia. Maybe I was going to have this baby and give Arthur the son who would be his heir– an heir who history would forget for some reason. Maybe this baby was meant to be.

“You’re with child, aren’t you?” Merlin said.

I looked at him for a long moment before nodding. I didn’t need to say a word. He might well have been able to read my mind.

“And you’re afraid of dying in childbed.”

I nodded again. Somehow it was easy to tell Merlin all this. He alone knew where I’d come from and had a vague idea of how different our worlds were. Arthur might be my lover, but what I needed now was a friend.

He sighed. “I can’t promise you it won’t be difficult. A woman’s lot in life is hard. In pain and suffering she brings forth sons for her husband, only to see them sicken and die as babes, or grow to manhood and be killed on the battlefield. I cannot say that your baby will even be born living, or that you won’t suffer pain in his birth. I cannot say that he won’t die of illness before he’s weaned, or fall from his horse and die while just a boy. I cannot say he won’t be killed fighting by his father’s side.” He paused. “But I do know thatyouwon’t die. I’ve seen you by Arthur’s side, throughout his reign. You are a fixed point about which this world revolves.”