“I understand, Princess. Where will I find the bard?”
“He waits in the apple grove,” she said. “It will not take you out of your way.”
The groom nodded once and hurried off to finish saddling his horse.
Morgian waited until the groom reached the gates and then stepped from the shadows to hail him. “Here!” she called, running after. “Wait!”
The youth reined up. “Princess Morgian.”
“Charis has changed her mind,” she explained, moving to the horse’s head. “I am to take the message.”
The groom glanced back at the palace. “Well…”
“She thought better of her plan,” Morgian went on hurriedly, “and asked me to take the message.” She smiled and entwined her fingers in the horse’s mane. “Some things are better dealt with by a woman.”
“That is true,” allowed the groom slowly. “Perhaps I should”
“Give me the horse. Princess Charis does not wish her message to be delayed even a moment.” Morgian smiled again and reached for the reins.
The stablehand swung himself down and helped Morgian into the saddle. “You may go back to your duties now,” she told him. “I will return to Charis as soon as I have done as she asked.” She flicked the reins and started down the track.
Sitting beneath the bough of an apple tree, Taliesin heard the hoofbeats of a horse coming up the track from the causeway. He stood and went to the grove entrance to meet the rider.
“Morgian!” he said in surprise as she came up, looking beyond her for the one he had hoped to see.
Morgian noticed his glance and said, “She is not coming, Taliesin. She sent me to tell you.”
Taliesin walked slowly toward her. “What did she tell you?” The young woman looked away. “She must have told you something. What did she say?”
“She will not come”
“Tell me!” Taliesin’s voice boomed in the peaceful grove. “Tell me,” he repeated more softly.
Morgian’s face wrinkled with distaste, as if the words she was about to speak were bitter in her mouth. “Charis said, ‘Go to him, Morgian. I cannot. I do not love him, but he will not listen. He will make me go with him. I am weak and I would go-and hate myself for going. We are not meant to be together. My place is here with my father. Tell him I will not come.’ “ Morgian paused and looked Taliesin in the eye, as if defying him to disBelieve her. “That is what she said, and the telling brings me no pleasure.”
“I see,” replied Taliesin. He regarded the young woman carefully. There was no way of telling whether what she said was true. The words she spoke sounded like those Charis might say. But hearing them from Morgian’s lips…
“Will you reply to her?” asked Morgian.
“Yes, tell her I will not leave until she comes to tell me herself. I will not force her to go with me-if that is her fear-but I will hear it for myself from her and no one else.”
“She will not come.”
“Just tell her. I will wait at the shrine of the Savior God.”
“Very well.” Morgian nodded, turned the horse, and started away. A few paces along she called over her shoulder, “How long will you wait, Taliesin?”
“Until Charis comes to tell me herself.” He turned abruptly and started for his horse. He did not see Morgian’s cool smile as she watched him swing into the saddle and ride away.
It was nearing twilight when Morgian slipped unseen into the palace. The torches and rushlights had not been lit and the corridors lay in deep shadow. She hurried along, her sandals slapping the smooth stone, her red-trimmed cloak billowing behind her as she flew up the steps leading to a small upper room. Reaching the door she stretched her hand toward it, and a voice from inside said, “You may enter, Morgian.” With a quick, backward glance, she entered.
The room was dark, steeped in twilight and the rancid smell of spent incense. Objects appeared as dim, insubstantial shadows heaped one on another-a lighted candle might banish them all and reveal an empty chamber.
“Where have you been?”
“I lingered at the orchard for a while. I wanted to see about the apples.”
“Did you do as I told you?”
“Of course.” Morgiaa’s fingers fumbled on the table before her. “Let me bring a light… It is so dark.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he would wait,” replied Morgian impatiently. “Please, it is dark. Let me fetch a light.”
“In a moment, child. After you have told me all.”
She sighed and sat down in a chair beside the table. “I rode to the shrine and met him at the stream. You should have seen the disappointment fill his eyes when he saw that Charis was not coming. But I gave away nothing. I told him Charis would not come, that she did not love him and feared that he would make her go with him, that she wished to stay here in the palace.”
“And?”
“And the singer said he would wait until Charis came to tell him herself. I told him she would not come, but he said he would wait. He told me to tell her this.”
There was a long silence and Morgian became impatient. She leaned forward and reached out toward the shadow before her. “I have told you all. Let roe bring the light.”
The body shifted in the darkness; the chair creaked. “Not yet. What did you do in the orchard?”
“I told you. I wanted to see about the apples.”
“Bah! I know about the apples. What else?”
“Nothing else.”
“Do not lie to me, Morgian. I know you too well.”
“Annubi, let me bring the light!”
“What else?”
Morgian paused. “I went to the caldron.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” Morgian sighed. “There was nothing.”
“Nothing but flames and smoke and vapor… and shapes. What shapes, Morgian?”
“I saw nothing today. There were no shapes.”
“You should have come to me, girl. I would have shown you what you were so eager to see. I would have let you touch the Lia Fail.”
“I prefer the caldron,” muttered Morgian sullenly.
“You know,” Annubi continued, “Charis had the touch. Once. As a girl she often used the stone-the seeing stone, she called it. Sometimes when she thought I did not know she would come to my room. I never troubled to hide it from her. She used it…” The seer lapsed into silence. Morgian moved in her chair and Annubi started. “You should trust me more, child.”
“I trust you, Annubi,” she said softly. “Are you hungry? I will go to the kitchens for food”
“No,” said Annubi. There was a rustling of clothing as the seer stood. “Tonight I will dine with the king. Come, Morgian, let us go down together.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Day by day the spring passed and summer came on. The green deepened on the hillside where sheep and cattle grazed; and in the low valleys the com sprouted and grew into stalks. All the marshland round about the Fisher King’s Tor rang with larksong and blackbird calls. Deer in new velvet ran through woods of beech and hawthorn; black-footed fox chased quail and pheasant through the brake; wild pigs furtively herded their squealing young along the thicket-bound trails; speckled trout leapt in the streams, and pike flashed in the reed-encircled lake.
Taliesin waited at the shrine of the Savior God for Charis to come to him.
While he waited he worked with the pilgrim priests rebuilding the shrine. Most of the shrine’s timbers had been replaced, as had the wicker wattle between the timbers which had then been redaubed with the mud-and-straw mixture and limed. Work was now proceeding on the roof, for which Taliesin and Dafyd were occupied-wading in the bogs, cutting last year’s dried reeds and stacking them in bundles.
The work was not overtaxing and allowed Taliesin to give his thoughts freedom to fly where they would, whether to ponder points of Dafyd’s philosophy or to compose the songs he sometimes sang aloud to the priests’ chorused acclaim. But always his mind turned to thoughts of his people as they took possession of their new lands. And each day, when Charis did not come, his hope dwindled, shrinking away gradually, like the silver dew drying up drop by shining drop in the heat of the day.