Pair Dadeni {Part Four}

[afterandalasia]

Chapter Eight

That her hands were left loose made it rather easier to ride as the horses pounded westwards, galloping to eat up the miles on the muddy road. Cloaks swished in the night, horses and men breathed steam into the air, and swords and armour clinked lightly as they rode. Morgana’s heart was racing in her chest as her ears strained for any sound of the Hunt above the noise that surrounded her, hands gripping the reins as she rose to move with the horse.

Olaf was at the head of his train of knights, face drawn, eyes set on the horizon where a flicker of lights announced the next village to the west. Each lost woman, each lost girl, had been someone’s daughter and sister, and Morgana held no illusions as to how deep the thought cut him.

They crested the hill, coming level with the village where individual lights could now be seen at windows and doorways. Another howl took to the air, this one quieter, but there was a ripple of tension that ran through the group all the same. It had been impressed upon them that the sounds of the Hunt were lies to fool the unwary, that they drew quieter as they drew closer.

It was followed by a scream. A girl’s, high and piercing, carrying on the still night air and bouncing down from the crowds.

“No,” Morgana breathed, and was herself surprised at the pain in her voice.

There was a whisper of steel as Olaf drew his sword, the silver just visible in the night, and an answering flash of movement as the knights followed his lead. Morgana felt her magic flare, swelling in her as if ready to burst, and the bonds around her wrist tightened in response to the heat that swelled within her. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek against them both, and with her heels urged the horse that she rode to match the speed of the others.

The village was in uproar by the time they reached it. Men and women milled in the square, shouting, waving swords and pitchforks and carrying bright-burning torches. Into their midst Olaf appeared, the torchlight painting him in fire, and wheeled his horse to a stop beside the crowd.

“The King!” someone said in the crowd, and the word spread like a sickness. “The King!”

“There is no time for that,” Olaf snapped, his sword still at his side even though he was shifting his grip on it almost constantly, agitated. “We heard a scream.”

One of the women burst to the front of the crowd, her face pale as milk in the darkness. “My daughter! My daughter is missing – she went to look for her brother, and-”

“Which way?”

Trembling too much to answer further, the woman raised her hand and pointed towards the woods that could be seen as a shadow to the north of the village. Olaf turned, pointed with a sweep of his hand to Morgana and one of the knights beside her, and ordered: “You two. Stay here, find out what you can. The rest of you, with me.”

He turned, moved, disappeared into the night, leaving confusion in his wake. Morgana cursed as she dismounted, stepping forward into the firelight as the knight beside her took hold of the bridles of both of their horses. She could feel the breathlessness of the crowd, the anger and fear that were roiling together and not quite certain which one was going to win out. The last thing that she needed was for either of the emotions to turn against her.

She strode forwards, feeling the crowd flow to form a circle around her, and spread her arms as if to hold them back. It felt hot, powerful; Morgana suppressed the smirk that wanted to rise to her lips at the way she held the people at her fingertips.

“My name is Morgana, Priestess of the Old Religion.” Her voice carried over them, across the night air, and she allowed it to grow strong and swell over them, rolling like a wave. Darkness pressed close, barely held back by the firelight, as she turned on the spot and had them follow her in shifting waves. “The King has come to answer your need for help. But I can feel the magic on these hills, I can feel the Old Religion at the edges of your world. Tell me what you have seen!”

It was like casting a spell, without magic, without incantation or that burning in her blood. The bonds did not need to tighten on her wrists, could not restrain her tongue. For a moment there was no response, just murmuring, and muffled weeping from somewhere within the crowd. Morgana breathed deep, summoned what haughtiness she could, and pointed an imperious finger at one of the men at the front of the crowd, one of the ones around whom the others seemed to cluster, to whom they seemed to throw more glances.

“You! The girl who is missing; what is her name?”

“Enid,” he blurted, as easily as if she had bespelled him.

“How old?”

“Thirteen.”

Young, so young. Truly a girl, not a woman, and Morgana could not but frown at the realisation. Olaf had told her that the oldest of the women had been twenty-three years old, a midwife from the first town of the line. It was still young, terribly young, but at least she had not been a child.

She forced herself to swallow; continued. “Someone said that she went to look for her brother. Is that so?”

The man did not have a reply. She could see it written across his face, in the way that his creased brow fell slack, in the way that his lips pressed together and he shook his head an infinitesimal amount. With a flick of her hair, Morgana spun to take in more of the crowd, more of the faces watching her as curiously and warily as the knight that Olaf had left to watch her.

“Tell me, anyone. Is it so?”

“Yes,” burst out a young woman, probably little more than sixteen herself, stepping forwards from the crowd. The young man beside her was gripping her hand so tightly that both of their knuckles were turning white, and they were both ashen. “Thomos, our younger brother. He’s only seven. The favourite of his sheep did not come in tonight, and he was worried. He slipped out to search, and Enid went after him.”

She did not voice her thanks aloud, could not risk the slightest suggestion that she was not in command of them here, but gave a bow of her head which, she could see, the young woman understood. “And so she went north, towards the woods.” A horn, melancholy, rang out over the night, and she knew that it would be from Olaf’s men. “What did you hear, from the beasts?”

“Howling,” said one of the men in the crowd, older, with almost-white hair and piercing eyes. He held Morgana’s gaze more boldly than the others had done. “The baying of hounds, unnaturally loud, unnaturally clear.”

“Horses?” she asked. “Riders?”

“Not before the King and his men drew close.”

A great howl cut through the air, so loud that it seemed the torches wavered, and people cowered where they stood. Morgana turned to look north, where it had come from. “Stand your ground!” she shouted in return, in the aching silence that came after. “As loud as it is, they are moving away! Their cries play tricks.” Another deep breath, and she could feel the slightest tremble in her fingertips, the headiness not of fear, but of standing at the centre of the crowd and balancing them on her words. “Did anyone see them? Anyone at all?”

Murmurs, denials, and she felt a flutter of frustration. If only one person could give her a description, she could think back on what Morgause had told her, the books through which she had searched more recently in search of a cure for Vivian.

Another blast of a horn, and then hoofbeats could be heard in the distance, drawing closer over the ground. Morgana swept towards the side of the circle closest to them, people parting to let her through, as the torches of the knights grew into a patch of light, a swell of figures.

Her heart leapt into her chest as she saw a small figure, bundled in a blue cloak, seated in front of one of the knights, a white shape thrown across the saddle of another. Again, Olaf was at their head, his face seemingly grimmer than ever as he drew nearer, reining in his horse with its wild eyes and nervous steps. Before he even spoke, the woman whose daughter had gone missing darted forward, the older sister following, running to the knight with the child sat in front of him. The knight passed the boy down, for it was a boy with short-cut hair and face glowing white in the darkness. Joint cries of relief and horror went up, and Morgana walked to Olaf’s knee.

“The girl?” she said quietly.

He shook his head, and with a bitter breath she turned her eyes away. “Was there any sign of violence?”

“No, nor that,” Olaf said, matching her tone so that their words were hidden beneath the uproar of people talking about the boy returned to them and the girl still lost. “None until my men set upon them.”

Finally she looked past him, and saw the figures following. One of the men was clutching his arm to his chest, blood seeping around it, whilst another was barely upright in his saddle. Further back, a dark-eyed man kept one hand on the back of the white shape, the white hound, thrown across the pommel of his saddle, as if to hold it in place.

“You have one,” she said, with half a gasp. Olaf merely nodded, looking back at the people, and she realised that by now they would be growing angry, upset, dangerous. Whirling, Morgana drew herself up and walked towards them, and again they parted before her, until only the mother and sister remained, cradling the sleeping boy. Thomos, that was what they had said his name was.

Morgana knelt beside them, and the sister looked up, tears on her cheeks, desperation in her eyes. For a moment she held the girl’s gaze, then turned her attention to the boy. His dark hair stuck in slick streaks to his forehead, and he was icy pale, but he breathed still and seemed uninjured. She rested one hand on his forehead, feeling it wet but of a good temperature, and brushed the hair back out of his eyes.

“He will be well,” she said. “Let him sleep, keep him warm. He will recover quickly.”

His mother gave a sob of relief, hugging him closer to her, but his sister reached out and grabbed Morgana’s wrist like a vice before she could rise to her feet again. “And Enid? What of her?”

“Do not give up hope,” Morgana replied, the words spilling forth before she even put too much thought into them. She could hear the shift of the crowd, the uneasy sound of the horses, feel the eyes upon her. “We will fight for her yet. Look to the west; that is where she shall come from when she returns.”






She had sworn it to them. Morgana cursed herself as Olaf’s train returned to the camp, knowing that she had made a promise and, if she wanted any believability to her name, that she would have to keep it. Or at least be seen to try to. Equally, she knew that she had meant it, that she had wanted in that moment to strip the darkness out of the sky and reveal the girl, Enid, to return her to them.

Olaf retired to his tent, but not alone: the creature that they had slain was bought after them, carried swinging by its legs, and flung heavily onto the desk, still leaking red-black blood. Without waiting to be asked, Morgana followed them, brushing past them to stand at the middle and look over the hound.

For hound it most definitely was, as large as the greatest of the hunting dogs she had ever seen answering to Uther’s call; and save for the mud on its paws and lower legs, and the bloody red of its ears, it was bone-white from snout to thin, whippy tail. It was short-haired, with wiry muscles and solid shoulders, powerful just to look at. Its mouth had fallen open, tongue lolling out, and Morgana peered closer to see multiple rows of glistening pointed teeth. She shuddered.

“That’s like no hound I’ve ever seen,” said one of the knights, stepping forward as well with a look of disgust.

Morgana touched its skin lightly, feeling the hardness of muscle, almost expecting it to twitch. The flesh was still warm, hotter than her touch; hot with magic. “The Wild Hunt indeed,” she said. “They come through tears between the worlds, usually on nights when the veil is particularly thin. Something must be sending them through for them to appear as regularly as this.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Olaf standing a few paces away, one hand against his chin with his thumb running back and forth across his lip. As she looked towards him, he gave her an almost infinitesimal nod to continue.

“I’ve not seen hounds that look like this before, not in any of the books that I’ve read, or any of the scrolls.” She gently pulled back one of its eyelids, revealing blind white eyes rimmed bloodshot-red. Her fingers actually looked like she had some colour when they lay beside its skin. “But there are stories of them across Albion, under various names. What name do you have for them here?”

Her eyes scanned the knights. Olaf had called some of them by their names during the day, but she had not been listening. They had avoided looking at her then; now, they avoided her gaze as well, green eyes flitting from one to the next in search of an answer.

“You know I am not from Powys,” she continued, letting her voice become a lull, hypnotic. “And you are natives in this land, else you would not be knights of it. You will have heard the stories, at your grandfather’s knee, from your grandmother. Stories of the old days, when magic could be spoken of without fear.”

One of them almost looked at her, before tearing his eyes away. He was ruddy-skinned, with curls of dark hair around his ears and almost skimming his deep eyes. There was a recognition in his eyes, a knowledge, and she latched on to it as she walked around the table towards him.

“You’ve all heard of it. Can you remember the name?”

“The Cŵn Annwn,” he said quietly, the words almost lost in the tense air.

Her magic rippled at the words, and she felt as if her eyes were trying to flare gold but were held back by the tightening straps around her wrists. She could feel the magic of the bonds, old, ancient, could feel her own magic wanting to reach out and join with it. Before she could lose the flow of blood from her hands, however, Morgana pushed her magic aside like swallowing down bile.

“The hounds of your land,” she said, turning now to Olaf and meeting his eyes fearlessly. The creatures might have been of her world, but they were of his land as well, their form most likely tied directly to the area in which they had been summoned. Perhaps in Camelot, in Wessex, in any of the other Kingdoms, they would have taken a different form. “And they are not yet finished.”

She knew it, deep down in her very bones, but the knights were frowning at her. “How can you be sure?” Olaf offered the words that she knew they were all thinking.

“Numbers are important. Seven is unwieldy, too large to use. Eight is a possibility: two times two times two times two. But nine is more likely: three times three. Two is a pair, but three is power. A three-legged stool stands firm on any surface; three can be lucky or unlucky, but is never unpowerful.”

“You think there are two more girls to be taken,” said Olaf.

She nodded, resting her hand on the haunch of the hound beside her. It was beginning to cool now, hardening as if it was turning to stone. She supposed that she should have expected that: no creature of magic would die or rot like one of flesh.

“That will be six more days, then,” he added. “It will bring us up to the full moon.”

“Powerful again. Yes, full moon sounds about right.” Echoes of her dreams rebounded through her head, the moon, the hounds, teeth and blood and silver. “There is some greater spell... this is only feeding into it.”

Olaf was staring intently at her, and she finally looked up to meet his gaze. “You are saying that this is not a chance happening, that they were summoned.”

“I have said that already. What I now find myself wondering,” she had to force herself to breathe before she could even admit the weakness, and the realisation caught her by surprise, “is whether the call draws them into this world... or sends them out of another.”

 

Chapter Nine

Without Morgause’s bracelet to keep them in check, Morgana’s dreams rampaged through her. Snatched images remained in her troubled mind: cold darkness seeping through her; silver teeth ripping through soft bloody flesh; a shapeless form that opened a maw full of jagged bones and lunged towards her.

Stifling a cry in her throat, Morgana jerked awake, scrabbling for a knife that was no longer at her belt. It was still dark outside, but she could see torchlight on the walls of her small tent and knew that she would not manage to sleep properly with the memories of pain still in her mind’s eye. Apparently it was not an option to dream of any of the good things that had yet to happen. It would be reassuring, just occasionally, to know that there was a glimmer of hope on the horizon, but perhaps it was not necessary to send warnings for happy occurrences.

It was not raining, but she knew that the dew would have settled on the ground, and on her tent. She remained slightly stooped to avoid the canvas as she rose to her feet to rearrange her clothes and slip her shoes back on before loosely rolling together her blankets and setting them aside. When she stepped out of the tent, the cold made her give just one hiss of indrawn breath before she gathered herself, faint clouds forming in front of her lips.

Not all of Olaf’s men were stirring yet, but there was a feel of unease in the air that could not have allowed any of them to sleep well. Aeslyn had not accompanied them; in her place was a servant who had some basic knowledge in treating wounds, enough to stabilise the two men who had been injured in the fight last night. Light spilled more brightly from the open flaps of the tent that had been given over to them. Morgana spared a glance, but said nothing, making her way over to the quartermaster’s tent to attempt to eat the bread and smoked herring which was being offered to break their fast.

She had been slightly wrong in her estimate: the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky, though not yet visible beneath the horizon. Slowly, colour crept into the grey world, and light with it. It was possible to suppress most of her shivers.

Surely there had been other dreams. Morgana was sure that she had heard of people saying that they had many dreams in a night, was sure that she had dreamt things when she was younger that had nothing to do with telling the future. There was something visceral, not to mention tiring, about her prophetic dreams.

“Morgana.”

At the sound of her name, she turned from where she had been leaning on one of the trees that surrounded the camp.

“Your Majesty,” she replied. Olaf looked almost as tired as she felt, his skin ashen and coarse in the early sunlight.

He gave a rough laugh. “After you ordered me to ride into battle in front of my knights and lords, and last night reminded me of the legends of my own Kingdom? I think that the formalities are perhaps a little overdone.”

“Reminded? Then you have heard of the Wild Hunt before?”

Olaf folded his arms over his chest, bristling slightly, but nodded. “Many years ago. When thunder in the distance sounded like horses’ hooves, and wind through the trees sounded like the howling of dogs... then old men called it the Wild Hunt.”

“And young men laughed,” said Morgana, “because that is what young men do.”

“All too often, yes.”

This time the silence between them was not so pained. Morgana leant her shoulder back against the rowan tree she stood beside, mostly bare now but for a couple of very late sprays of berries. Her wrists chafed, but she refused to rub them in front of Olaf.

“What do you remember of them, then?”

“Not as much as would be useful, I fear,” said Olaf with a faint grimace. “Even then, they were a story told by grandparents, to stop children from going out in storms. It was said that they could carry off anyone, even the strongest warrior.”

“But anyone has not been taken. Young women have, and girls. That cannot be a thing of chance.” It was like lighting a spark in her mind, and strings of fire began to stream out from it across her thoughts. Young women. Hounds. Dreams from beyond the darkness. “Someone has sent them for particular people...”

“Your Majesty!” Before she could even start to put the words together, one of the knights called out, and Olaf turned smartly. The men were looking haggard as well. “The sun is destroying the hound.”

Morgana and Olaf exchanged a glance that contained a frown, and both followed after the knight back to the centre of the camp. The body of the hound had slowly turned to stone over the course of just a few hours after its death, and had been laid down to the rear of one of the tents, with one of the knights to watch over it. It lay still, greyish and slightly rough-looking, tongue lolling out of its mouth and eyes open just a crack. The sun was starting to crest the horizon and send its light trickling across the grass.

At first glance, it looked no different than when it had been placed there the night before. Olaf stood over the body and looked down at it pointedly.

“Well?” he said after a moment.

One of the knights gently nudged the hound’s hip with the toe of his boot, first in the area that was still shaded, and then in the sunlight. In the shade, nothing happened, but where the sun had touched it, the stone crumbled to dust at the lightest touch.

“Perhaps it is best for this world that there is no flesh to rot,” said Morgana into the silence that followed. “Safer for the people who live here as well.”

Olaf murmured a faint agreement. “Take it into the sunlight,” he told his men, “and make sure that it is completely destroyed. Do not breathe in the dust, if you can.” It was probably not a necessary warning, but Morgana did not comment on it. “I will have the others break camp, and we will return to the citadel.





Olaf sent a messenger ahead of the main party to say that they were returning, and to summon his council to chamber. Night was falling by the time that they arrived, and cold and tiredness together made Morgana feel as if she could barely stand as she dismounted in the courtyard. She went straight to the king, however, restraining her shaking.

“How much do you want me to tell your council?”

“Nothing,” replied Olaf curtly, rearranging his cloak around himself as one of the grooms led his horse away. Morgana stared at him in offended horror. “I will tell them what we need to know, and say that it was told to us by a member of the village who remembers the Old Religion. I will not implicate you in this.”

“Implicate me! As if they will think I summoned them?”

“As if they will think you have been practicing magic in Powys.” He began to walk across the courtyard, towards the grand steps and the main doors. “As far as they are concerned, you are only allowed in this Kingdom so long as you are not practicing magic. Do so, and it breaches our laws. Besides,” stopping abruptly, he threw out one arm to stop her from re-entering the citadel. It drew her up short, anger driving out the cold now. “I would imagine that they would take the news better from King Olaf than from Morgana Pendragon.”

For once, a reasonable explanation for her silence. “I understand.”

“Thank you.” The arm was withdrawn from across her chest. “Now go, rest. If the pattern holds, we have two more days until the next attack will come. I will set one of my scholars to finding what they can in books, and I will have someone discreetly ask after those who might remember the Old Religion, and even these hounds. I want you to return to thinking of Vivian.”

“Vivian?” Again, his words managed to catch her off-guard, and she turned with a look of shock. After the danger that they had seen, with the limited time that they had to fight it, he still expected her to return to the books and Vivian’s obsession?

He did not explain, simply gave her a look that was part way between anger and pity, and turned to leave. It left her feeling strangely alone again, as if the knights and the servants in the courtyard were a world away and she was watching them through a tear in a veil. Wrapping her arms around herself and pretending that it was to hold her cloak tightly in place, Morgana made her way back to her chambers. She sat beside the fire for a while, watching the world grow darker and constrict itself around her, before finally attempting to sleep.





She almost slept through the night. Darkness and rainbow flames surrounded her, but compared to what she had seen and done, they were not frightening. It was not until the flames wrapped into the form of a face, an unearthly screaming coming from it, that she was thrown awake with a cry of her own.

The sun was risen, though muffled by clouds. Morgana wiped sleep and moisture from the corners of her eyes and wrapped her covers more tightly around her, not sure how she could still feel cold. Her fingers traced her wrist, still raw from being bound and bare without Morgause’s bracelet, and not for the first time she wished that she could roll back the years and wake up with Gwen shaking her shoulder and smiling over her.

A foolish thing, and the sort of dream that would not come true. She let it fall aside as one of the maids entered with breakfast, helped her to dress, and then left her to her own devices. Olaf did not call for her in the morning, or the afternoon, and the books she had been given were to do with the magic that humans wrought upon each other, not upon the wider powers of the world in which they walked.

As evening approached, she wrote out a short message to send to Olaf. It was meant to get his attention, she had no delusions about that: a request to try another route for lifting Vivian’s enchantment, a cleansing ritual. She assumed that he would want to talk to her about it, but instead a note sealed with wax was delivered to her less than an hour later.

As long as you are following the same path as safety as last time, then I trust you. Do as you will.

She glanced over her shoulder, expecting a guard or at least a servant to have lingered to be Olaf’s eyes, but there was no-one there. Her candles guttered. It felt as if there was a pressure on her chest, but it was not so much a weight as a sensation of being held very tightly, and Morgana was certain that she had felt it before. Years ago. She remembered when Gwen had spoken to her, when Arthur had sniped with her, when Uther had loved her and she had trusted him. If the message had been only half its length, Morgana knew, she would have thought it a dismissal and felt anger where now an ache that she did not want to name filled her chest. It was not until she thought again of the white bands now encircling her wrist, holding back the magic which had made her realise what had been hidden from her for so long, that she managed to raise some semblance of herself once again.





The next day, there was still no further word from Olaf. From her window, Morgana could see small groups of the knights on the training field or patrolling and holding heated discussions inside the courtyard, could watch as the fires in the watchtowers along the walls were dragged out and rebuilt. Once, she had helped Arthur to make preparations like this in Camelot.

Camelot had haunted her dreams that night, Arthur as King and Guinevere – not Gwen, not now – as Queen, the shadow of Emrys standing over them seemingly without their even being aware of him. She saw the shadow of a gold dragon spreading across Albion, and wondered what that could mean for rulers like Olaf, Mithian, Godwyn, Annis. If Arthur was to spread the boundaries of Camelot, they would have to come from somewhere. Yet she could feel the strings of magic that reached to him from the future, knew that fate was as inescapable for him as it was for others.

She dreamt of her death again, and even on waking cursed Emrys into the worst fires that the Old Religion or the New could have summoned. Her words sounded impotent and childish on the air.

Once again, Aeslyn helped her to procure the things which she needed. They were simpler this time: white candles, sage and a silver cup, although Aeslyn was very uneasy about handing over the cup itself. Only once Morgana promised that it would not leave Vivian’s room did she assent.

“You don’t normally come in the evening,” said Vivian, looking at Morgana critically. She was working at a drawing in hardened, brittle charcoal, all tight lines. Morgana tried not to look too closely at it, unless it started to look a little like Arthur. “What do you want?”

“I came to apologise, myself, for... what happened.” It took work to think of the moment in which she had spoken about Arthur and Gwen’s marriage, rather than Vivian’s violent response. “I offer my services as your maid for the evening, to make amends.”

Vivian paused for a moment to consider, then put aside her charcoal and wiped her hands delicately on a white cloth. “If you feel that it is necessary,” she replied, sounding almost as if it was an acquiescence. Morgana could remember a time when she would have kicked Vivian in the shins for such a tone, but now it gave her an odd flicker of hope that the girl she had once known was in there still.

“Your usual maid suggested that you might enjoy a bath this evening,” Morgana pressed gently. Vivian wrinkled her nose, then gave a nod and a faint wave, and turned back to what she was doing. Her fingers traced the paper tenderly, and Morgana could not watch the movement.

She truly had already spoken to Vivian’s maid, but it was to discover how it was possible to even get water up to the top of the tower. The girl, Celia, had showed her how to work the pulley system that had been set up, and had seen to it that the fire was lit to heat the water. Even with the pulleys to ease the work, however, she was breathing heavily and sweating hard by the time that the bath was mostly-full and had steam coiling up from it.

She lit white candles and set them around the edge of the bath, glancing over to see that Vivian was now reading an old book, leather-bound and worn. Or perhaps ‘reading’ was the wrong word when she did not seem to turn the pages. No comment was made, however, and Morgana continued her work, throwing handfuls of sage onto the fire to give an edge of its sweetly pungent smell to the room. She set the silver cup down to one side of the bath, just out of sight.

“Vivian,” she said, as she straightened up again. They had never used titles with each other. “Your bath is ready.”

Something had gone from Vivian’s eyes by then, the haughtiness of her gaze lacking something that had once been there. She stood almost mildly before Morgana at the side of her bath, allowing herself to be undressed, not reacting as her skin prickled with goosebumps.

“Are you all right?” murmured Morgana. Her fingers were resting gently on Vivian’s bare shoulders, just about to slip the chemise away.

“Yes,” replied Vivian. Her voice was a little too thick, the response a little too fast. “Of course.”

There were many things that it could have been, but Morgana had a feeling that too many of them were due to the enchantment that Vivian was under for her to want to hear of them. Instead she let the words drift into the air admit candlelight and soft smoke, and helped Vivian out of her chemise and into the hot water of the bath. She drew in a breath, skin flushing red, but then sighed and closed her eyes as she slipped up to her shoulders in the water.

Morgana drew up a low wooden stool at the side of the bath, risking a glance at Vivian’s face. The princess was staring towards the ceiling, expression distant and a little glazed, but her hands were wrapped tightly around the edge of the bath.

“It helps sometimes,” she said, soft and unprompted, as Morgana was reaching for the hairbrush beside them. “To let the water wash things away.”

She sat upright again, water rolling down her skin. Half of her hair had been wetted, and clung to her skin, but the rest was still in curls around her face. Morgana could still not get used to the higher cheekbones, the thinner wrists, of the young woman she had known. Vivian’s arms curled around her knees as she hugged them to her chest, but she did not protest when Morgana reached out to smoothe water over the rest of her hair.

“It can seem that way,” Morgana admitted. “Water is easier to understand than humans are.”

Vivian gave a brittle laugh which sounded so unlike her that Morgana’s hands shook for a moment. She steadied them and picked up the silver cup to pour more warm water over Vivian’s shoulders.

“I suppose so. Morgana...” she tilted her head back to let water stream over it, half-closing her eyes. There was a slight crease between her brows, which Morgana felt an urge to reach out and smooth away. “Do you think that love really is as powerful as magic?”

For a moment, Morgana’s hands fell still, combing through the blonde hair before her. “I think it is just as complicated, certainly.”

Vivian looked very pale in the candlelight, with not even the faintest of lines around her neck to suggest that she had been out in the sun. Her shoulders were high and tense, and Morgana let her hands slide lower, massaging gently. It hardly made an impression on the tight muscles.

“Your many types of love,” said Vivian. “You were right... maybe there are not words enough to explain love. It is... so much. I did not expect it to be.”

Morgana fought not to breathe faster, or to lean closer, as she let her hands keep working Vivian’s shoulders, oil shining on her skin. It made the beads of water roll off faster. Her magic wanted to arc out from beneath her skin, sink into Vivian’s and heal at least the physical pain that gripped her, but she could already feel the ghost of tightness on her wrists. She never quite forgot the bonds on her wrists; their pressure never went away, as long as she had magic beneath her skin.

“Sometimes I try to think of other things, to distract myself from... from him.” Her voice trembled, and must have refused to speak the name. “It doesn’t seem to work very well.”

“Perhaps you can relax into the water for a while,” said Morgana, surprised to find her throat dry and her voice faint. She cleared her throat. “Let it soak things away. And try to get some sleep tonight.”

“Then what of tomorrow?” Vivian’s voice wobbled outright this time, and her hands released her grip on her knees only to wrap around the edge of the bath again. “And the day after? And every day after that?”

“Don’t,” said Morgana. She knew what it was like, to wake each morning and know – or fear – that this day would be no different than the one before. She was not sure whether she honestly thought it would be better for Vivian to not think of it, or whether she did not want to face it herself. “Do not think of eternity at once, just of the next day. Come on, lie down.”

She gently guided Vivian to lean back again, dipping her hair entirely beneath the water. It swirled around her like captured sunlight, pale gold in the darkness. Vivian’s entire body was ghostly pale, and Morgana found her eyes moving over it before, with a blush, she drew her attention and gaze back to Vivian’s face. Luckily, it seemed to have passed unnoticed.

“My father used to sing me a lullaby,” she said. It was a lie, but felt enough like the truth that she did not regret saying it. Gorlois had sung lullabies to her when she was young, when he was around and between campaigns. They had lingered with her for many years. This, however, was not one of those lullabies. A spell that read like a song; the fingers of one hand gently rubbed Vivian’s scalp as, with the other, she used the silver cup to pour more water over her body. Silver for clean, silver for cleansing.

“Stillē mīn wōgeres,
Se mōna biþ lihtan,
Rīce, ic ābiddee,
Ābȳwe mīn heortan.”*

Vivian’s lips moved faintly in time with the words. The tune was easy, floating, though her throat almost constricted on the last words, her magic twisting like a fish in a trap as it tried to connect with the spell that she spoke.

“I like it,” Vivian murmured. Her eyes were closed, but Morgana felt a tingling in the skin beneath her touch. There were few to no royal families that did not have some flicker of magic in them, some old strain long-dormant. With the trappings of magic around her, she was hoping that the one in the line of Powys would come to the forefront.

When Morgana sang it the second time, Vivian hummed along, lips tracing some of the words. The third time, she sank, quietly but true.

Gold glittered through her eyelashes as she sang, and then she gave a strangled choke and shot upright, grasping at her throat. A whine came from her throat and her face flushed, her body jerking as she tried to breathe.

“No!” Morgana stumbled to her feet, dropping the silver cup into the water and scrambling to Vivian’s side instead. She pushed hair back off Vivian’s face, cupped her cheeks and tried to get her to turn her head round. “Vivian. Vivian, look at me. It’s okay. Come on.”

She managed to drag in a breath, then a second. Morgana hooked her hands underneath Vivian’s armpits and pulled her upright, water sloughing off her and splashing on the floor. The candles had guttered out around them, and the smell of sage was starting to get bitter on the air.

“Vivian,” said Morgana, more sharply this time. Vivian stumbled out of the bath and into her, boneless and shaking, breath heaving in her chest. “Calm down and get control of yourself immediately.”

Somehow, more than anything else that she had said, this made Vivian look up and focus her eyes on Morgana. “My throat,” she managed to squeeze out.

“It must be something in one of the oils,” said Morgana. This time, the words did taste like a lie in her mouth, but she told herself that they were for Vivian’s good and that, should she ever lift the spell, she would apologise for everything that she had done. One of Vivian’s robes was nearby, and she managed to struggle into it and sit down on the bed whilst Morgana called for one of the maids to make sure that every drop of the bathwater was moved well away. “I did not expect this to happen.”

Vivian was shivering, but it was cold more than anything else, and as she wrapped her robe around her and sat close to her warming pan that seemed to be fading as well. “So many unexpected things,” she said. “My world has turned so unexpected in these recent years.”

“That makes two of us.”





She coaxed Vivian into bed, smoothed the coverlet into place over her, and let the fire burn low but lit a candle at the side of the bed. To her surprise, Vivian fell asleep very quickly, her face turned towards the pillow as if to shield her eyes from the outside world. Her words still rung in Morgana’s mind: these last years, turned so unexpected.

Four years ago, things had been so simple. Morgana le Fey had been the Ward of King Uther Pendragon, set to inherit her father’s lands when she turned twenty-one and hand them over, in turn, to the man that she married. Probably a knight, or at least a man loyal to Arthur, her brother, the future King. Vivian ferch Olaf of Powys was to inherit her Kingdom in her own right, although doubtless her husband would expect her to share at least some of her power with him. He would have to be a brave man indeed to have met with Olaf’s expectations.

Then Morgana’s dreams had overcome Gaius’s sleeping medicine, and magic had crept back into her life. Its strike against Vivian had been sharp; the one which had made Morgana fall had been more insidious, serpentine, eating away at her until nothing but a husk remained of what she had once been. She missed some parts of her former self, though not many. She certainly found herself missing Vivian, who for all of her arrogance had been intelligent, honest, and fast preparing for her role as Queen.

They had been close to each other’s equals, and had fought like cats until they realised the fact. After that, the fighting had been a little more genial. Vivian had actually said once that she wanted to reconsider the ban on magic when she became Queen, and generally to look at the ‘assumptions’ – the word was tart on her tongue – that her forefathers had made. It would have been unthinkable for Morgana to admit that she actually respected that idea.

The moon was high by the time that Morgana returned to her own chambers, taunting her in silver through her leaded window. She could almost see it creeping to fullness, its circle becoming perfect and unending.

“We are not yours yet,” she muttered, and realised only once she was half-asleep that she was speaking for humans, and against fate. Had she been any more awake, she would have rolled her eyes at herself.
 


*Rest my love/ The moon is alight/ Powers I ask [you]/ Cleanse my heart.

Chapter Ten

It was when she awoke with pain in her chest and claws slashing through her throat she knew the final girl would be taken from the citadel. Five days had passed since they had returned to it, four since she had attempted again to lift Vivian’s spell, and three since Olaf and his men had ridden eastwards with grim determination in their eyes.

They came back with no more bodies of hounds, but one of their dead men on a makeshift bier. Morgana had watched the pyre burn as sun set, and clenched her fists so hard that she thought she might have drawn blood from her skin.

She all but ran from her chambers to find Olaf, who seemed to never be sleeping in recent days, and tell him what she had dreamt. He had not known, it seemed, that her dreams would not also be suppressed by the bracelets he had used to bind her.

“Prophecy and magic are different things,” she explained. “They take different paths in the world.”

He frowned, but nodded in acquiescence, and took her at her word in the coming days. The last young woman taken had been only nineteen, and snatched from inside the very house where her family had tried to hide her. As far as possible, all of the young women and girls of the citadel were sent home away to their families, or were bought inside to be guarded by as many of Olaf’s men as could be gathered.

“Would Arthur come?” he asked suddenly, on the morning of their last day. They knew that barely twelve hours remained until sunset. “If we were to call, would Camelot answer?”

The best knights in the Five Kingdoms. Of course, she had always called them that, but now they were something more altogether. Morgana could feel the strands of fate weaving into the men that surrounded Arthur each time that she thought of them, feel them becoming something altogether more than they could know.

“Arthur protects his own Kingdom,” she replied, though she remembered riding to Ealdor at his side. “His thoughts are of his borders.”

She knew that one day those borders would spread, but that time had not come yet. More years, a while longer; fate did not worry about such little scraps of time.

“It would be too late anyway,” said Olaf, as if it was an afterthought. She did not question him further on the matter.





The moon was full over the citadel as the night wrapped itself around them. Magic lay thick in the air, so dense that it seemed to have forced the clouds out of the sky, so that with every breath Morgana could feel it being drawn into her lungs. Feeling magic against her made her almost want to weep, but it was wrong, suffocating, forcing its way into her. She knew as well that she was not the only one who could feel it; the knights and guards around the citadel moved tensely, hands at their sword pommels, eyes trained on the horizon.

She was walking the parapets alongside them, watching the same land and feeling the same sharp winds. Uther had finally bowed to a request to find her black clothing to wear, and though it was a dress rather than a robe she was relieved by how much better she felt wearing it. Grounded, tied in place; were it not for the ties now itching on her wrists she might have felt right again.

The men were a little frightened of her. She didn’t particularly care for the fact, but it was better than antipathy, better than the way they had treated her before. Olaf listened to her words and questioned only in order to seek more information, not in challenge. She knew that she was treating him differently as well. As confidently as she had ever addressed Uther or Arthur, but with the respect that one reserves for people not part of one’s family. Earned, rather than expected. It had been a long time since she had felt able to address someone in such a way.

The sound of baying shattered across them, so loud that it seemed to make the stones of the citadel shudder. “Hold!” Olaf called. “They are a way off yet!”

Her hands rubbed at her wrists nervously, plucking at the bands, still shining white despite the grime which she had expected to see gather on them. Morgana looked towards the east, not sure what she was expecting to see, wondering whether the shimmer that she saw on the horizon, spectral as a heat haze, was real or imagined.

“They’re coming,” she called to Olaf. He looked round, caught her eye, and nodded.

“Men, with me.”

Despite the stories that had been told of the hounds, they seemed to be only faster, stronger than their earthly counterparts – not capable of different things altogether. A few of the guards remained on the ramparts, but the knights followed Olaf, down to the courtyard, then to the wide ground outside the castle walls. Usually there would be animals grazing here, watched by shepherds, but they had been called in for the night and only cold clear air met them. Not even a fog gave them shadow.

Morgana followed as well, though without her magic and with no sword she was not sure what she could do. Turning, she let her eyes scan over the castle walls, the citadel crowning the motte in the centre of them. Fires and candles lit up the windows like eyes in the darkness, all-seeing, watchful over the land. Her eyes trailed up, to Vivian’s tower highest of them all, and saw the light there as well. Whether Vivian was still thinking of Arthur, or had realised the danger in her land, she was still awake.

Her attention moved back to the battlefield as a couple of the knights started, drawing their swords. A flicker of white on the horizon, nothing more, but Morgana felt her heart rise into her throat all the same. Olaf did not pause, but drew his sword as well, prompting the rest of them to follow suit. Morgana clenched her fists in impotent anger.

She had asked for a weapon. Olaf had hesitated, just once, before turning her down. She supposed that she was a danger still, if a lesser one than the hounds.

Another howl; loud, almost deafening, but not shaking the very world around them. The knights fanned out, watching, and Morgana stepped back behind them and wished for steel or magic in her hands. More flashes of white moved among the trees, and then a fog began to creep up from the ground, so thick that she could barely see the silhouettes of the men around her. Past her ankles, her knees, moving upwards until it swallowed them whole and muted the light that spilled down from the walls.

“My Lord,” one of the knights called out, his voice so firm that it felt forced to Morgana. “Should we withdraw into the courtyard?”

“No, stand firm!” Olaf replied. “They are but animals, and we know they can fall to our swords. Hold your ground.”

This time, it was not a baying but a growl that rattled through the air, with a metallic edge to the sound. Morgana felt the hairs on the back of her arms standing on end as one of the knights called, “Beasts, ho!” with just the slightest touch of panic in his voice.

She heard the sound of metal meeting with flesh, the snarling of a hound, louder than any dog she had ever heard. The loud breathing of the knights, then more sounds of fighting, grunts and cries of pain, growls and snarls. It surrounded her, ate through to her, but none of the Cŵn stepped near.

Wood crashed behind her. Morgana whirled where she stood, raising her hand and feeling the words of the Old Tongue come to her lips to force the fog from the sky. They choked themselves in her throat, and the bonds around her wrists clenched until it felt like her bones were clicking together, and instead she started running.

“Olaf!” she called. “They have broken in!”

“Fall back to the courtyard!” Olaf called, his voice muffled in the fog but audible still. Curses intermingled with the sound of moving men as the knights drew back, and Morgana snatched a torch from the wall to hold like a club in both hands. Within the walls, the fog thinned so fast that it seemed to form a wall through which they stumbled. One of the knights had blood on his sword, blood smeared across his face, teeth gritted in the grimace of blood-thrill.

The white hounds bounded after them, lunging out of the fog as if they were solidifying out of it. One of them came within an arm’s length of Morgana; she swung the torch hard, striking the beast’s shoulder in an explosion of sparks. It yelped, knocked from mid-air onto its side on the ground, and rolled to try and scramble to its feet in the same instant that she struck it again, this time in the face. Fire flashed in her vision. She drew her arm back a third time, but then there was a blue cloak beside her, a knight’s sword plunging into the creature’s belly and ripping it open. The skin tore open like paper, flesh cleaving, but no entrails spilled out onto the air.

“Thank you,” she said in a breath, catching the knight’s gaze. He nodded, stoic, mind clearly still set for battle, and moved on to another.

A spark of silver on the ground caught her eye, and she stooped to grab it from among the cobblestones. It was a knife, not long and not ornate, but a better fit in her right hand than the torch had been.

Another of the Cŵn came out of the darkness in front of her, but this one turned its steps aside and veered beyond her reach. Its eyes did not even flicker, not turning for an instant to look at her even as she stared and realisation blossomed in her mind.

At first, the girls and young women taken had seemed random. The easiest targets. But magic had deeper ways to work, more powerful threads that it could wrap around people.

They were not random. They were chosen.

The Cŵn Annwn had a target, already chosen from within the castle walls. If not, there was nothing to stop them from finding any suitable girl along the east-west path which they had been following. A glance around at the knights confirmed the thoughts that tumbled in her mind: until one of the knights attacked the hounds, the hounds paid no attention to them.

The target. Where was the target?

Castles were not just the homes of the royal family, not really. There were servants: maids and footmen and cooks; physicians or healers who were not servants in the strictest sense; visiting lords or noblemen; even people from beyond the kingdom. Hundreds of people were within the castle walls, hundreds of women, and she did not know which one the hounds were coming for.

Magic filled the air like a silent thunderclap, and Morgana felt such a weakness run through her that she almost fell to her knees. She wanted to be part of the magic, so much that it ached in her chest. It took all of her strength to pull herself together again and search for what the magic had done.

The darkness itself held the answer. The full moon painted the world in faint silver and grey tones, draining it of colour. Not only had the torch in her hands gone out: the fires in the windows, the bonfires on the walls, had winked out like candles doused instantly in water. Their after-shadows danced like ghosts in her vision.

“Morgana!” Olaf’s voice, warning, cut through the darkness. She could just about pick him out from among his men, his bearing and the crest on his cloak declaring his presence. “The hounds still?”

“No – their master.”

She did not recognise the magic around them. The magic of each sorcerer, witch, or any other magic user had a ring to it, not as fine as a fingerprint, but marked. Sorcerers were rich and dark, like blood-red velvet; Druids were mellow and whole; Morgause had been sharp but strong; Emrys was as black as night and just as deep. The magic she felt now against her skin and in her veins felt old, as cold and hard as stone, solid as ice. It felt worse than Emrys, inhuman; some creature of the Old Magic.

There was no time to think, and she had no power with which to fight it. A slam echoed through the courtyard, heavy wooden doors thrown open with the strength of many men, booming against their stone settings. Morgana turned to the main gates of the castle to see a figure, a wisp of ivory-white against the darkness, and she felt her heart leap into her mouth as she realised that it was Vivian.

“No...”

She ran, instinctively, hold tightening on the knife as her breath burned in her throat and her heart pounded in her chest. Somehow it made perfect sense, the girl with magic already binding her, come to be claimed by magic all over again. Vivian stood at the top of the steps, expression invisible from this distance, arms slightly raised on either side of her. The hounds turned towards Vivian, five of them still standing despite the knights that had cut through their ranks, their four feet faster than Morgana’s two, she faster still than the armoured, fight-wearied knights behind her.

“Vivian!” It was not Morgana; her breath was given to running. Olaf called out to his daughter, voice laced with a terrible desperation. It was the father calling, not the king, and as he called again his voice cracked and fear showed through. “Vivian!”

The shadows of the hounds, shapeless on the cobbles, drew together and became one form. They flowed up into a figure, human or near enough to it, a great black knight with flickering horrors in his armour and fingers that reached out like a creeping sunset. Vivian looked at him mildly; now Morgana was closer she could see her glazed eyes as the Cŵn Annwn surrounded her, now fallen quiet with rasping breath and clicking nails on the ground.

The knight reached out his hand, palm upwards. Dark dust swirled in the palm like a gathering stormcloud. Vivian’s arm began to rise as well, hand trembling, moving slowly, slowly towards him.

“No!” Morgana shouted.

Her voice echoed back off the stone walls, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The knight did not move, but Vivian paused, the slightest twitch downwards at the corner of one lip.

“Take me instead!” No sooner than the words had left Morgana's mouth, the knight was facing her, arm outstretched, so fast he did not seem to have moved between the two. Beneath the line of his helm were eyes like the pinpoints of stars, burning blue-cold as he stared at her. “You want a sacrifice. Take me!”

The open palm in front of her clenched into a fist, and she felt as if iron bands, tighter than any corset, had wrapped around her waist and were crushing the breath from her lungs. He drew his hand towards his chest, and she was dragged, still standing, across the ground, small stray stones thrown up from beneath her feet. In an instant she had crossed the last sixty feet and was standing before him, barely a foot separating them. Horror radiated from him, and from this close she could see his eyes, like huge explosions a universe away, terrible with power.

“You sacrifice yourself.”

His voice sounded like grating stone. Faintly, Morgana was aware that someone was calling her name behind her, that there were still footsteps, still running.

“Yes.”

A flash of his eyes took her in. “Very well.”

Darkness began to swirl around his feet, opening up deeper than the night and painful to look at. Morgana felt the bonds on her wrists tightening, tightening, feeling like they were going to cut into her skin. Ice pressed against her back, pushing her into the knight’s chest, and as the cold swept forward through her felt fear seep in with it.

Her tongue froze in her throat, held secure as much as were her arms to her sides, her body against the knight’s. Wide-eyed, feeling death reach out for her again – she recognised it, had looked into it before – she looked at the men before her, the knights with drawn swords, Olaf. Too far away as the dark started to flash up in streaks around her, cutting out the world first with bars, fast becoming walls.

Through the last gap in the world, the last narrow band that she could see, she looked straight at Olaf. He had dropped his sword to the ground, pulled his glove away, and as she watched he ripped the white band from his wrist. In the same moment, the ones at hers were pulled away, and she felt hot magic hit back against the cold which was consuming her, but then the world went finally black, and she was sucked down into nothingness.

AO3 | Paper Legends | LJ Masterpost
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

View/Download PDF