“Warrior rings!” I said derisively, and plunged my hand into my belt pouch and brought out a fistful of the things. I had so many now that I no longer bothered to make them. I scattered the rings on the orchard's grass, startling the deer hounds that looked to their mistress for reassurance. “Anyone can find warrior rings, Lady.”
Guinevere stared at the fallen rings, then kicked one aside. “I like King Lancelot,” she said defiantly, thus warning me against any more disparaging remarks. “And we have to look after him. Arthur feels we failed Benoic and the least we can do is to treat its survivors with honour. I want you to be kind to Lancelot, for my sake.”
“Yes, Lady,” I said meekly.
“We must find him a rich wife,” Guinevere said. “He must have land and men to command. Dumnonia is fortunate, I think, in having him come to our shores. We need good soldiers.”
“Indeed we do, Lady,” I agreed.
She caught the sarcasm in my voice and grimaced, but despite my hostility she persevered with the real reason she had invited me to this shadowed, private orchard. “King Lancelot,” she said, 'wants to be a worshipper of Mithras, and Arthur and I do not want him opposed.“ I felt a flare of rage at my religion being taken so lightly. ”Mithras, Lady,“ I said coldly, 'is a religion for the brave.”
“Even you, Derfel Cadarn, do not need more enemies,” Guinevere replied just as coldly, so I knew she would become my enemy if I blocked Lancelot's desires. And doubtless, I thought, Guinevere would deliver the same message to any other man who might oppose Lancelot's initiation into the Mithraic mysteries.
“Nothing will be done till winter,” I said, evading a firm commitment.
“But make sure it is done,” she said, then pushed open the hall door. “Thank you, Lord Derfel.”
“Thank you, Lady,” I said, and felt another surge of anger as I ran down the steps to the hall. Ten days! I thought, just ten days and Lancelot had made Guinevere into his supporter. I cursed, vowing that I would become a miserable Christian before I ever saw Lancelot feasting in a cave beneath a bull's bloody head. I had broken three Saxon shield-walls and buried Hywelbane to her hilt in my country's enemies before I had been elected to Mithras's service, but all Lancelot had ever done was boast and posture. I entered the hall to find Bed win seated beside Arthur. They were hearing petitioners, but Bedwin left the dais to draw me to a quiet spot beside the hall's outer door. “I hear you're a lord now,” he said. “My congratulations.”
“A lord without land,” I said bitterly, still upset by Guinevere's outrageous demand.
“Land follows victory,” Bedwin told me, 'and victory follows battle, and of battle, Lord Derfel, you will have plenty this year.“ He stopped as the hall door was thrown open and as Lancelot and his followers stalked in. Bedwin bowed to him, while I merely nodded. The King of Benoic seemed surprised to see me, but said nothing as he walked to join Arthur, who ordered a third chair arranged on the dais. ”Is Lancelot a member of the council now?" I asked Bedwin angrily.
“He's a King,” Bedwin said patiently. “You can't expect him to stand while we sit.” I noticed that the King of Benoic still had a bandage on his right hand. “I trust the King's wound will mean he can't come with us?” I said acidly. I almost confessed to Bedwin how Guinevere had demanded that we elect Lancelot a Mithraist, but decided that news could wait.
“He won't come with us,” Bedwin confirmed. “He's to stay here as commander of Durnovaria's garrison.”
“As what?” I asked loudly and so angrily that Arthur twisted in his chair to see what the commotion was about.
“If King Lancelot's men guard Guinevere and Mordred,” Bedwin said wearily, 'it frees Lanval's and Llywarch's men to fight against Gorfyddyd.“ He hesitated, then laid a frail hand on my arm. ”There's something else I need to tell you, Lord Derfel.“ His voice was low and gentle. ”Merlin was in Ynys Wydryn last week."
“With Nimue?” I asked eagerly.
He shook his head. “He never went for her, Derfel. He went north instead, but why or where we don't know.”
The scar on my left hand throbbed. “And Nimue?” I asked, dreading to hear the answer.
“Still on the Isle, if she even lives.” He paused. “I'm sorry.” I stared down the crowded hall. Did Merlin not know about Nimue? Or had he preferred to leave her among the dead? Much as I loved him I sometimes thought that Merlin could be the cruel lest man in all the world. If he had visited Ynys Wydryn then he must have known where Nimue was imprisoned, yet he had done nothing. He had left her with the dead, and suddenly my fears were shrieking inside me like the cries of the dying children of Ynys Trebes. For a few cold seconds I could neither move nor speak, then I looked at Bedwin. “Galahad will take my men north if I don't return,” I told him.
“Derfel!” He gripped my arm. “No one comes back from the Isle of the Dead. No one!”
“Does it matter?” I asked him. For if all Dumnonia was lost, what did it matter? And Nimue was not dead, I knew that because the scar was pounding on my hand. And if Merlin did not care about her, I did, I cared more about Nimue than I cared about Gorfyddyd or Aelle or the wretched Lancelot with his ambitions to join Mithras's elect. I loved Nimue even if she would never love me, and I was scar-sworn to be her protector.
Which meant that I must go where Merlin would not. I must go to the Isle of the Dead. The Isle lay only ten miles south of Durnovaria, no more than a morning's gentle walk, yet for all I knew of the Isle it could have been on the far side of the moon.
I did know it was no island, but rather a peninsula of hard pale stone that lay at the end of a long narrow causeway. The Romans had quarried the isle, but we quarried their buildings rather than the earth and so the quarries had closed and the Isle of the Dead had been left empty. It became a prison. Three walls were built across the causeway, guards were set, and to the Isle we sent those we wanted to punish. In time we sent others too; those men and women whose wits had flown and who could not live in peace among us. They were the violent mad, sent to a kingdom of the mad where no sane person lived and where their demon-haunted souls could not endanger the living. The Druids claimed the Isle was the domain of Crom Dubh, the dark crippled God, the Christians said it was the Devil's foothold on earth, but both agreed that men or women sent across its causeway's walls were lost souls. They were dead while their bodies still lived, and when their bodies did die the demons and evil spirits would be trapped on the Isle so they could never return to haunt the living. Families would bring their mad to the Isle and there, at the third wall, release them to the unknown horrors that waited at the causeway's end. Then, back on the mainland, the family would hold a death feast for their lost relative. Not all the mad were sent to the Isle. Some of them were touched by the Gods and thus were sacred, and some families kept their mad locked up as Merlin had penned poor Pellinore, but when the Gods who touched the mad were malevolent, then the Isle was the place where the captured soul must be sent. The sea broke white about the Isle. At its seaward end, even in the calmest weather, there was a great maelstrom of whirlpools and seething water over the place where Cruachan's Cave led to the Otherworld. Spray exploded from the sea above the cave and waves clashed interminably to mark its horrid unseen mouth. No fisherman would go near that maelstrom, for any boat that did get blown into its churning horror was surely lost. It would sink and its crew would be sucked down to become shadows in the Otherworld.
The sun shone on the day I went to the Isle. I carried Hywelbane, but no other war gear since no man-made shield or breastplate would protect me from the spirits and serpents of the Isle. For supplies I carried a skin of fresh water and a pouch of oatcakes, while for my talismans against the Isle's demons I wore Ceinwyn's brooch and a sprig of garlic pinned to my green cloak. I passed the hall where the death feasts were held. The road beyond the hall was edged with skulls, human and animal, warnings to the unwary that they approached the Kingdom of Dead Souls. To my left now was the sea, and to my right a brackish, dark marsh where no birds sang. Beyond the marsh was a great shingle bank that curved away from the coast to become the causeway that joined the Isle to the mainland. To approach the Isle by the shingle bank meant a detour of many miles, so most traffic used the skull-edged road that led to a decaying timber quay where a ferry crossed over to the beach. A sprawl of wattle guards' houses stood close to the quay. More guards patrolled the shingle bank.