Page 67 of The Road to Avalon
Din Cadan. She was going to Medraut.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The search forMerlin and Nimuë proved fruitless. According to several witnesses Cei turned up, they’d left in a wagon with a single man in the front and Nimuë riding in the back, under cover, with the still sleeping or unconscious Merlin. Ten miles from Caer Legeion their trail vanished completely. Seen passing through one village, they’d never reached the next.
In case they’d turned off, Cei dispatched warriors to search a long way to either side of the road, almost taking apart any farm or barn they found, but to no avail. To all intents and purposes, the wagon, and its passengers, had vanished off the face of the Earth. Which made Arthur very angry.
“She was my sister,” he railed at Cei, in the rooms we’d taken over in Morgawse’s house.
“Mine too, worse luck,” Cei muttered.
I watched them in silence, not wishing to intervene but thinking Merlin had done us all a favor and Arthur ought to be grateful, not furious.
“Don’t think for one minute I mourn her death,” Arthur snapped, as if he’d read my mind. “But she was murdered as much as Llacheu was. Merlin has to be punished.”
“Haven’t we done enough punishing?” Cei asked, looking up from where he was polishing his sword with an oily rag. “And don’t you think it’s caused enough anguish?”
Arthur rounded on him. “I’m the High King. I have to see justice is done.”
Cei snorted. “Right.” He bent his head as though to indicate his participation in the conversation had ceased.
Arthur stormed out of the room into the courtyard, the door banging shut behind him.
I looked across at Cei. “Thanks.”
He kept his head down. “Had to be said.”
I leaned my elbows on the table and rested my chin in my hands. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to find Merlin or Nimuë.”
Thatmade him look up. “Oh? Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t want anyone to find them. Take it from me. I know this.” Just like in the legends.
Oh Merlin, where are you? What’s she done to you?Was I the only one grieving his loss?
All the stories I knew about him said that Nimuë, as his protégé and the Lady of the Lake, had imprisoned him in a crystal cave, unable to help his king, before Arthur met his end. With Merlin gone, perhaps forever, Camlann must be just around the corner.
With the search for Merlin abandoned, Arthur declared we were heading back to Din Cadan.
We arrived home four days later, having ridden far enough north to be able to cross the Sabrina by a ford. We took the journey slowly, despite a change in the weather to a light drizzle, as all our horses were tired. The warm rain fell with no respite until we rode through the gates of Din Cadan, at which point it stopped altogether and the skies cleared as if by a miracle.
I left Enfys with a servant and marched straight up to the Great Hall. Without stopping, I strode up the central aisle past the glowing embers in the sunken hearth and into our chamber, banging the door shut behind me.
I had no intention of seeing Morgawse, and still less Medraut. And I didn’t want Arthur intruding on my grief. This was mine, and now I was home, in the safety of my own domain, I could give in to it. I threw off my mail shirt and lay down on our big bed with my face pressed to the pillows and cried. All the unshed tears poured out of me, all the sorrow, the rage, the loss, as though the dam had at last been breached.
A long time later, or so it seemed but I couldn’t be sure, Maia slipped quietly through the door from the chamber she shared with Archfedd and lit the lamps in their little niches.
I watched her through slitted eyes as my chamber sprang bit-by-bit into golden light.
She moved about the room like a wary ghost, tiptoeing from lamp to lamp and finally returning to the table where she lit two tallow candles. The room glowed with a warm homeliness that fell on the empty crib in the corner. Maia had long ago pushed it up against the wall out of the way, when no more babies had come after Archfedd.
Trying hard not to think of Amhar when he’d occupied that crib, I pushed myself upright on the bed.
She turned to face me, her plain face creased and blotchy with crying. She’d known Amhar from a newborn baby. “Oh, Milady,” she whispered. “I’m that sorry for what’s happened.” Moisture glistened on her ruddy cheeks.
I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands to prevent myself from joining her and crying some more. “Thank you, Maia.” I swung my legs off the bed. “Do you know where my husband is?”
Her face darkened. “He be in the Hall,” she answered, lower lip jutting. “Drinkin’.”
