Page 55 of The Road to Avalon
What?
Not for a moment did I doubt what she’d said. The nagging fear that we’d abandoned Merlin when he needed us surged back to the surface, cheek-by-jowl with the terror for my son. Both of them in danger. Both of them at risk. Did she mean I could only save one? A terrible choice to make.
But Amhar was my son. My flesh and blood.I’m sorry, Merlin.
“Where is my son now?” I asked.
The woman’s lovely eyes filled with compassion. “You must ride north an’ follow the trail o’ the High King’s men. For he were here last night, a-lookin’ for your boy. I seed him comin’ and warned our princeling. He did flee before his father got here.” She tightened her hold on my horse’s mane. “You mus’ ride fast, Milady the Queen, for I do see your son bein’ bound in chains ifn’ you doan find him quick.”
If I hadn’t been sitting on a horse, I’d have collapsed to the ground. As it was, I sagged forward over my horse’s neck, gasping as the air thickened.
“When?” Archfedd asked, pushing her horse closer to mine, her voice sharp and commanding. “How long ago was my father here?”
“’Twas at sundown,” the woman said. “I did tell your boy to ride north to the city of his kinsman. That he should ride as fast as he could. That time an’ distance were what he did need above everythin’.”
Did this simple countrywoman possess some hint of the power Merlin had? Of course she must, or how would she have seen us coming?
“Then we have to hurry,” Archfedd said. “They won’t have caught him up yet. We can still save him.”
I forced myself back upright, drawing in deep, difficult breaths to steady my racing heart, a hollow feeling of doom already forming in my stomach. “Thank you for the help you gave my son,” I said, the words echoing as though I were underwater. I made a small bow to the woman. “I shall not forget your kindness to my boy.” I turned to my men. “Back to the road.”
The feeling that fate was taking a hand here wouldn’t leave me. Amhar was now fleeing north toward Viroconium, taking the road we’d so lately traveled, and he’d been right here, close to Blestium as we’d ridden past him, all unknowing. We might have been only hundreds of yards apart, yet hidden from one another as if by miles. Every move we’d made, we’d been six steps behind him, as though something, somewhere, didn’t want us to find him. As though no matter how hard I tried, what lay ahead was something I couldn’t change, and Morgana’s hand still directed our lives from beyond the grave.
The roughness of the path back down the hill slowed us, but if we hurried, we’d risk a horse falling and taking a rider with him. I wanted to gallop, but all I could do was walk behind our guide.
At the road he pointed out a rough track heading west. “If’n you takes this path through the forest, it do meet the legion’ry road headin’ north on t’other side of the hill. I’ve done my bit an’ I’m goin’ home, queen or no queen.” A look of relief to be rid of us on his homely face, he turned his pony toward Blestium and kicked it into a shambling canter.
The narrow track, scarcely more than a dusty deer trod, led uphill through thickening forest, before at length descending toward the lower lying wetlands heading north.
In less than an hour we found the Viroconium road, but the sun was climbing higher in the sky, and urgency pressed down on me like some giant hand of fate. Using a switch cut from an elder bush, I urged my ungainly cob into a canter on the rough grass at the side of the road, and my men followed suit. We thundered north through scrubby lowland forest encroaching onto patchy heathlands. Herds of sheep grazed in the far distance, and the odd spooked pony or cow lumbered away from us.
If I’d had a fit horse used to marching, we’d have caught up with Arthur all the sooner, but none of us did. We had to make do with the heavy plow and wagon horses we’d been loaned. To give them their due, they did their best, but by the time we sighted Arthur’s camp up ahead, sweat lathered their coats and they were nearly spent.
Llawfrodedd was first to spot the camp as we emerged from the forest edge into a wide valley sparsely sprinkled with farmsteads. “Ahead. Look.”
I followed his pointing finger.
Sure enough, horses stood tethered to a picket line amongst farm buildings, and smoke rose from a few scattered campfires. Not much of a camp, but a camp, nevertheless.
I thumped my heels into my horse’s ample sides, whipped her with the elder switch, and urged her into a canter. She lumbered across turf pocked with animal droppings, and Archfedd, Llawfrodedd and my men charged after me.
Arthur’s men couldn’t have missed our arrival. In a moment they were on their feet with their swords drawn, reaching for their shields. As I wrenched my poor horse to a skidding halt, they must have recognized me at last because they lowered their swords a little, although they lost nothing of their wary, defensive stance.
They’d set up their camp within a cluster of farm buildings– a couple of cattle sheds, some neat newly constructed hayricks, pigpens, stables and a long, low farmhouse, the thatched roof reaching almost to the ground.
The door of the farmhouse opened. Arthur and Cei stepped out. Cei closed it firmly behind him.
I slid off my horse, and raced to Arthur. “Don’t kill him. Merlin used his Sight. It wasn’t Amhar who killed Llacheu. It wasn’t!” I grabbed hold of the front of his tunic and gave him a shake. “You have to believe me.”
Arthur stood like a statue, looking down at me out of icy, anguished eyes.
I stopped shaking him.
Cei caught me by the shoulders and pulled me away.
Confused, I looked from one to the other of them. “We found Morgana and stopped her from blocking Merlin’s Sight. He…” My voice trailed away at the memory of what Merlin had done to her. Arthur didn’t need to know that… not yet. I gathered my shaky conviction. “He looked. He used his Sight and hesawit wasn’t Amhar. He saw. He told us Amhar is innocent.”
Why were they looking at me like that? Cei’s grip on my shoulders burned like fire through my clothes.
