The Hallowed Isle Book One Read online

He blinked back vertigo. Eating at the king’s table, he had never killed anything before, but he could not admit that while the women were watching him so expectantly. He took a firm grip, feeling the fowl’s frantic heartbeat. Then he twisted its neck, and gasped as he felt the life departing. Hot blood gushed over his hands.

  In the next moment his revulsion gave way to an appalling surge of hunger. Then the priestess guided his arm so that the fowl’s blood dripped onto the altar stone. His own sensations paled before the approach of the god as the light of a candle dims in the sun.

  Argantel was saying something, but he could not understand the words. He saw Igierne reach out, saw her face change as she grasped the hilt of the Sword. Argantel set her own hand over that of her daughter, and together they pulled the blade a handsbreadth further from the stone. Another twist, and the Sword was thrust back. Then the priestess grasped his wrist and pressed his own hand, still red with the blood of the rooster, around the hilt of the Sword.

  “You must twist as you withdraw the blade . . .” her words seemed to come from a great distance, “or it will not move.” Her grip tightened on his hand, but he did not need the instruction, for the blood of his great-great-grandfather was awake within him. Smoothly he turned the blade and felt it slide freely through the stone.

  “Not too far—” said Argantel. “The time to draw it has not yet come.”

  He stared at her through eyes that he knew were rimmed white with the effort of keeping control. A voice that was louder than the drumming in his blood began to speak in his soul.

  “Not yet, man of the ancient blood. You are not the King who shall wield this blade, but the time will come when you shall enable him to claim it. Lift up your eyes, for she in whose womb he shall be cradled stands before you. . . .”

  Ambros looked up, blinking as if he had been staring into the light, and saw Igierne. Her face was shining, and her pale hair flared out around her head like rays of gold, and in that moment she was beautiful beyond mortal imagining. He stared at her, and understood at last that for him she was the Goddess, and that what he felt for her was love. What she heard he did not know, but she stretched out her hand and set it upon the pommel of the Sword, and together, they thrust it home.

  Radiance flared around them. Dazzled, Ambros tried to look back at Igierne, but it was the face of a boy he saw, brown-haired and intent, with Igierne’s blue eyes.

  The treaty talks took place at a shrine north of Sorviodunum, on the edge of the broad central plain. Ambros supposed it must qualify as neutral ground, having belonged to both British and Saxons in turn during the past few years. The Saxons had built a shelter for the meetings—no more than a framework with a thatched roof to keep off the rain. Between the posts one could look out past the last sheltering swales of grass to the broad sweep of the plain. It was an empty land, haunted by memories of peoples so ancient no one even remembered their names. Perhaps that accounted for the unease that had troubled him since the meetings began.

  They had feasted on beef and pork, a raider’s menu. The rich scent of roast meat still hung in the air. But now, at last, the eating was over. When the drinking horns had gone round a few times for men to toast the new treaty, it would be done.

  They sat at long trestle tables covered with an assortment of cloths. Hengest, to emphasize the peaceful nature of this festival, had forbidden the usual barbarian custom in which men came armed to a feast and hung sword and shield behind them on the wallposts. But the Saxons still looked like savages. Ambres sighed, remembering the last time he had come to Sorviodunum with the Vor-Tigernus, when he was still a child. They had dined in one of the great houses of the town, and eaten off the elegant table service that had once belonged to the Roman magistrates. Its pieces were probably scattered through half the Saxon army by now.

  Not, strictly speaking, that it was all Saxon any more. The chieftain sitting next to Amlodius was Aelle, whose Saxons had settled into the coastal lands to the east of Noviomagus. But Hengest himself had peopled Cantium with Jutes and Frisians. There were Franks as well, and others whose names he did not know. The ravens who feasted on the carcass of Britannia were drawn from half a dozen northern tribes, paired one by one with the British councilors.

  Ambros pushed the meat on his platter distastefully aside. Ah Vortimer, he thought, we should have honored your dying wish and buried you on the eastern shore. Then, perhaps, your spirit would have saved us from this day . . .

  His own dinner partner was Godwulf, who had once taught him the Eruli lore. The Saxon thyle had always been hard to read, but tonight he seemed as impenetrable as Hadrian’s wall. In the days when he had cast runes for Vitalinus, Ambros had thought him old. But by now Godwulf must be in his eighties, a truly remarkable age.

  “You are in health, I see. Your gods have been good to you,” Ambros said politely.

  Godwulf smiled. He was missing some of his teeth, and could only eat his food chopped fine. It gave him a more sinister appearance than Ambros remembered.

  “It is so,” the old man answered. “Woden gives victory in the battles of the mind as well as those of the body, and he likes this land. You should make him an offering.”

  Ambros lifted one eyebrow. Powerful the god might be, but all his help had no more than won his people a toehold in Britannia.

  “You may offer to your demon, and I will honor mine,” he said wryly, for the Christian priests would characterize the heathen god and the spirit that spoke to him in his soul alike as devils.

  Or that used to speak to him. These days, he commanded spirits rather than praying to them. He tried to remember how long it had been since his inner voice had counseled him.

  “If different peoples are to live in peace, their gods must make peace as well,” unfazed, Godwulf was answering. “So it was when Woden and the Ase-gods fought with the Wanes. Neither side could conquer, and so they became allies.”

  “Do you mean to put an eyepatch on Lugos and call him Woden-Lugos, as the Romans used to honor Mars-Belutacadros and many another, proclaiming that all the deities of the peoples they conquered were only faces of their own? They are not the same!”

  “Your Lugos is not Woden, not as we encounter him, though they both carry a sacred spear,” agreed the thyle, “but there is a place where they meet. Those who can come there will understand how disparate peoples can become one.”

  “Is Hengest such a man?” asked Ambros, looking at the high table. The Saxon leader sat next to Vitalinus, like an old stallion, scarred and gaunt, looming over a grizzled fox. He sat at his ease, but his eyes were watchful, like a man awaiting the beginning of battle, not one who sighs relief at its ending. Once more, Ambros felt that little prickle of unease.

  “Hengest loves this land . . .” Godwulf said ambiguously.

  “Will he honor the treaty, now that we have given him what he asked?”

  “He will keep the oaths he swears on the sacred ring.” The thyle touched the silver arm-ring, graven over with runes, that he wore.

  Ambros nodded. It was the oath-taking, not the writing of words on parchment, that would bind the Saxon.

  A serving lad bore the mead pitcher past the benches and refilled his beaker. Ordinarily Ambros did not drink deeply, but he had felt the strain of this long war more deeply than he realized, and drinking brought release. He looked at the other British lords and saw that for them it was the same. Faces grew flushed and voices louder; laughter filled the air. The Saxons, eyes bright with excitement, were laughing too, but they were accustomed to deep drinking. Indeed, they were being remarkably temperate this evening, as if they feared to shame themselves.

  The platters of roasted meat were taken away, and the ill-assorted collection of plates. Did the fact that nothing matched matter to the Saxons? Ambros thought of a Saxon warrior he had seen emerging from a burning village, wearing a Roman helmet and a woman’s gown. Perhaps they liked the variety. Perhaps they were naturally perverse. . . . He realized that the mead was affecting him and
set down his beaker.

  “It is good mead,” said Godwulf.

  “It is indeed, but do not your own shopes warn against allowing the heron of heedlessness to steal a man’s wits away?”

  “You are, as always, wise,” said Godwulf with a peculiar smile. He swung himself around and eased off the bench. At the high table, Vitalinus had risen to face the man who had been first his greatest servant and then his greatest foe. A priest stood behind him, holiding a reliquary. Gradually a hush spread through the crowd.

  The Vor-Tigernus set one hand upon the casket. He looked sour, but determined, as befitted a man who was about to swear part of his native land away.

  “We have labored as hard to frame this treaty as ever we fought on the battlefield,” he said. “And all the harder, because our goal was not victory, but a settlement that would be fair to both sides. The details are written, but to this I will now take oath: that the lands which were formerly those of the Iceni and the Cantiaci shall belong to the Saxons and Angles who now dwell therein, and such other smaller enclaves as are specified in the treaty. I pledge that my people will honor their tenure and recognize their borders. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” He crossed himself, a gesture which was echoed by most of the British lords.

  Godwulf drew the oath-ring from his arm and held it out to Hengest.

  “On the ring of Thunor I swear, and in the name of Woden—this land that we have taken, we shall hold—and as much more as the gods shall give into our hand!”

  He released the arm-ring, and turning, held out his arms to Vitalinus as if to embrace him. “Nimet oure seaxes!” he cried.

  Vitalinus recoiled, but with another step the Saxon swept him into a bear hug that carried him away from the high table and toward the end of the hall.

  Staring in amazement, Ambros caught the first flicker of movement only from the corner of his eye. Then someone screamed. Steel flashed in the light of the torches—a dagger, when by agreement all men had come unweaponed to this feast. Coelius of Eburacum and three others lay sprawled in their blood already. But the Saxons were not having it all their own way. Those who had not been felled in the first moments still struggled with the men who by chance or design had been placed to partner them, who had shared the same meat and mead, making missiles of their drinking horns or laying about them with benches. Eldaul of Glevum had pulled up a tent stake and was using it like a club.

  Following his example, Ambros wrenched a post from the ground and started toward the nearest Saxons, but Godwulf was before him. As Ambros started to swing, the thyle pulled a short wand from his belt and swiftly drew several symbols in the air.

  “Eees—” The thyle drew out the syllables of the bind-rune in a pulsing drone. “Nyd—”

  Ambros felt the air congeal around him; he could still move, but slowly, far too slowly, like a man struggling through a storm.

  Why not kill me? Ambros’s mind raced. Did the old man hesitate to murder one who had been his pupil; or did he lack the power? With that thought, Ambros summoned his own energies, drawing on earth and air as Maugantius had taught him, and where they met in his solar plexus, kindling a fire that shocked through every limb.

  In another moment he could move again, but in those few minutes the British princes had passed beyond his aid. Men lay sprawled all about him, silent in death or groaning while their murderers stood panting above them, still clutching the dripping daggers they had brought hidden beneath their leggings when they came to the hall.

  Ambros forced stiff limbs to carry him across the ground to Amlodius. His cousin’s husband still breathed, but life was ebbing out of him from many wounds, and blood frothed at his lips with every gasp. An animal moan of dismay passed Ambros’s own lips as he bent over him, pressing a corner of the older man’s mantle over the worst of the wounds.

  “No use . . .” The whisper was almost too faint to hear. “Tell Argantel . . . choose Caidiau to rule in . . . Lugu—”

  If Amlodius completed the word, it was too softly for Ambros to hear. His gaze became fixed, and then the soul-light faded like a dying flame and was gone.

  Slowly, Ambros lifted the old man’s body in his arms and got to his feet. The air vibrated with the passage of spirits reft untimely from the flesh that had housed them; they made a roaring in his ears that drowned out all other sound. Where his gaze fell men flinched, but he had no interest in lesser murderers, even Aelle. It was Hengest whom his eyes sought, standing like a deity of carnage in the midst of the slain. Vitalinus, his arms pinioned by a grinning warrior, stood beside him, weeping and shouting words that Ambros could not hear.

  He drew breath, and Godwulf, eyes widening, lifted his staff and began to draw runes of protection. But the spells of the thyle could no longer hold him. Ambros opened his mouth and released the words that all those wailing spirits no longer had breath to say—

  “In the name of Britannia’s gods I curse you, and by the power of all the spirits of this land!” Power shuddered through him and he recognized the oncoming Presence he had sensed when Argantel showed him the Sword. This was not the gentle wisdom of his daimon, but a force that expanded his aura beyond even his own great height.

  “Hear Me, men of the forests and fens and hear Me, you who lead them.” The voice of the god boomed through the hall. “As you have been false to your trust, so shall you be betrayed by those you trusted. As you have usurped the lordship of this land, the leadership of those peoples you have brought here shall be given to another! You have slain the flower of Britannia, but from their bones a host shall rise up to confront you. I will raise up a Defender, and he will strike you with a Sword of Fire!”

  Ambros could not hear the sound of his own words, but Hengest heard them. Yet if some of the triumph left his face, it was replaced by a stubborn pride that would neither defend nor deny what he had done.

  The warrior who was holding Vitalinus let him go, and the old man sank weeping to the floor, a dead man who still moved and breathed. Ambros wondered if the god would curse him too, but there was no point to it; the man who had been the Vor-Tigernus had destroyed himself, the White Dragon savaging the Red as Ambros himself had foretold so long ago. His very name would be a curse so long as Britannia endured.

  He swayed as the power of the god began to leave him, but enough strength remained for him to bear the body of his kinsman through the door, and no man sought to bar his way.

  “Ambros, what has happened? They told me you had come to the Lake, but not your errand. Is my lord—”

  Argantel’s brisk greeting faltered. Something in Ambros’s face must be conveying the message for which he could not yet find words.

  “You have had no news?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Neither enemies nor news of them can find their way to this holy place without my will.” Her words were proud, but he could see the beginnings of a stricken look in her eyes. His mother had said once that Argantel’s marriage had been a political arrangement. But the priestess had come to care for her Roman commander.

  “I have brought your husband home.”

  Once more his throat closed. His memories of that journey were confused. In Sorviodunum he had found a man who would build him a coffin, and a wagon to bear it, and up the Great North Road he had driven, pausing only to rest and feed the horse, neither knowing nor caring what tales might follow him. It occurred to him now that the goal of bringing Amlodius back to his people was the only thing that had kept him sane.

  But Argantel was a priestess, accustomed to reading men’s souls.

  “He is dead?” Her voice cracked on the words. She must be guessing already that no simple illness or stopping of the heart would have made Ambros bring him here himself, and in such a state as this.

  “They are all dead—” Ambros whispered. “The Saxons killed—” he gasped, and then, like water breaking through a dam, all the dreadful tale poured out of him at last.

  He was weeping by the time he finished. Argantel remained ca
lm, but her stillness seemed the quiet of an autumn forest silvered by a sudden frost. She gave orders for the coffin to be brought into the sanctuary and the horse to be cared for. Hot spiced ale was offered and Ambros drank it gratefully, but when she showed him a bed he shook his head.

  “I cannot rest, not yet. I have pushed too hard and long. Perhaps if I walk along the shore I will find peace. . . .”

  Argantel nodded. “If there is peace anywhere it is here. Thank you for bringing Amlodius back to me.”

  Ambros stared at her. Didn’t she understand? If not for him, her husband would never have gone into danger. She lifted her hand in blessing and left him, and he saw that in those few moments she had become old.

  He took up his cloak and went out, turning down the path that led to the shore. The Isle of Maidens was no more than a few boat-lengths from the mainland. The flat-bottomed barge that had brought over his wagon lay drawn up on shore. He turned away from it and began to pick his way among the rocks that edged the water.

  Hills rose sheer to the south and west and north, dark shapes humped like sleeping beasts against the starlit sky. By habit his gaze found the pole star and he marked the constellations around it. He could name the fixed stars and those that wandered, foretell their conjunctions and oppositions, but he had failed to read Hengest’s heart. He was a fraud and a failure, all his vaunted wisdom worth nothing. He had been a better prophet when he was seven years old!

  Ambros looked back at the clustered buildings. By morning they would all have heard the news and know how he had failed. Indeed, by now all Britannia must know how the Vor-Tigernus’s prophet had walked into the trap and stood gaping while the princes of Britannia were slain.

  How could he face them? How could he face anyone now?

  Before him the dark waters lapped quietly at the shore. Let them swallow him, he thought numbly, and drown his shame. . . .

  Ambros let his cloak fall to the ground and moved forward. The water was very cold, but it did not stop him. Steadily he continued as the water rose to his knees, his waist, his chest. In another moment it would close over his head and he would be at peace.