Uther turned himself in the saddle to face Lagan. "How could he be that way with you for so long and not thus with everyone else? And how could you not see beyond it?"
"How indeed?" Lagan screwed up his face and nodded his head, affirming his own thoughts on the question. "When he took my wife and son as hostages against my good behaviour, he lost me forever, but he and I had been close friends as children, and we remained close throughout our growing up. The Lot I loved was the Lot of our boyhood."
Uther grunted his disgust. "I met him when he was a boy, and he was a loathsome pig. I tried to kill him."
"I know, Ygraine told me about that. I remember how sick he was when he came home that year. He was shut up for weeks before they'd let me see him, and I never did find out what really happened. But Lot was fourteen by then, at least fourteen. When I speak of our boyhood, I mean the days when we were children, seven, eight, nine and ten years old . . . the days when we were yet innocent of blood, or adulthood, or sexual corruption. Boyhood. Uther—you must remember boyhood? Surely you had one too?"
Uther smiled, then sobered quickly. "Aye, I had. But you and I were changed by all of those same things. Lagan, and yet you and I are not crazed madmen, pulling our whole world down around our ears."
"That's true. But no matter how low we might think he has sunk, Lot retains a bottomless well of attractiveness and warmth that he can draw from anytime he wishes. And when he finds someone who can be of use to him, or someone who is in a position to provide him with some new benefit, or even someone he wants to influence to his own ends for some specific purpose, there seems to be no limit to the efforts he will make to win them to his way of thinking." Lagan grimaced at the thought. "I've watched him doing it for years, and believe me, he can be incredibly seductive and alluring when it comes to making people do what he wants them to do. He could coax honey from a hungry bear. But you can guess at what must happen time and again: those people who found themselves basking in the warmth and enthusiasm of his attention and approval one week would find themselves abandoned and ignored the next, when his directions changed. And being suddenly removed from light and warmth, then thrown back into the cold shadows among which they had lived before, they felt the cold more keenly, and the dimness of their former lives now seemed like darkness. Do you wonder they became bitter?"
"No. And yet I was thinking that Lot must be too clever to allow that kind of thing to happen, to permit people to think of him that harshly when there's no need for it. It is bad leadership . . . bad kingship. It's bad policy, from every viewpoint." Uther thought about that for a moment, and then dismissed the subject offhandedly. "But then, he's Lot of Cornwall, and he's insane."
Lagan barked a laugh.
Full darkness had fallen on them suddenly, between one word and the next, and both men reined in their mounts and turned in their saddles to look up at the moon, which now lay behind them over their left shoulders. It had vanished behind the edge of a large, fast- moving cloud that blocked out the surrounding stars, but as they sat staring it emerged front its trailing skirts to bathe the world once again in light. Lagan turned away and was making tutting sounds between his teeth, scanning the skies to the northeast.
"Storm coming in. That cloud was moving very quickly, and it's only the first. Look over there, it's as black as Hades. Perhaps we should ride a little faster."
"How much farther do we have to go?"
"Five miles. An hour's ride, the way we were going. We'll be wet long before then."
"Then let's shorten that hour while the light's good."
They kicked their mounts into motion again and prodded them into a canter, riding in silence as they adjusted to the increased speed and the changing shadows. They were on the high moors, and there were no trees or bushes to impede their progress, but both of them knew that the ground under their horses' hooves could be treacherous, strewn with loose stones and pitted in places with the holes of burrowing animals. After about a quarter of an hour of this, the horses began to breathe more heavily and their riders slowed them again to a walk. The sky overhead was still clear, save for the occasional small, unthreatening cloud. The massed storm banks in the northeast seemed to be moving very slowly, despite the speed of the first cloud that had covered the moon.
Uther had been thinking about what Lagan said, and now there was one question remaining in his mind, one point on which he had to be certain.
"Would you still be his friend if he came back and asked you to?"
Lagan glanced quickly at Uther and then shook his head decisively. "No. It's gone far beyond redemption now."
"And does Lot know that?"
It took a long time for Lagan to answer that, but eventually he looked up and shook his head. "No. He has no idea that I feel the way I do."
"Are you sure about that?"
Now Lagan snapped his head round in scorn and his voice was a rebuke. "Of course I am sure of that! Were it otherwise, I would be dead, and so would my whole family, from my father to my youngest nieces." He stopped short, clenching his eyes tight shut and scratching at one eyebrow with a fingertip, and when he opened his eyes and spoke again his voice was under control once more.
"I am forced to live a lie, you see, in order to save lives. Not my own—I care nothing for that—but. . . others. I tell you, my friend, you can have no idea how much pleasure it would give me to march into his presence, among all his swarming guards, and tell him what I really think of him and his perverted ways. But do you know the most sickening part of all of this?" He glanced at Uther and then shook his head, answering his own question. "The worst of all of this is that, even as he was having me hunted down and killed with all my clan, he would be feeling hurt and ill-used. The thing you have to understand about Lot is the strange self-love he has. In Lot's own mind, he has no flaws; he can do nothing wrong. It's always the other people in his life who betray him, one way or another. There is never any possibility at all that he might be at fault—What was that? Did you hear something?"
Uther stopped dead, standing up in his stirrups and leaning forward to throw the lower edge of his cloak forward over the head of his horse, blinding it. The animal had been trained to stand quietly and make no sound when covered thus.
"Something," he said. "Sounded like a shout, cut short."
"That's what I thought, too. Can you see anything?"
"No. Shut up and listen."
For a long space of moments there was nothing, and then, from the far side of a slight rise ahead of them, came a clink of metal on metal, followed a short time later by another.
Both men dismounted quickly, Uther dropping his reins to the ground, knowing that would stop his well-trained horse from moving away. He then wrapped his borrowed black cloak around him and moved forward towards the top of the small rise that Lagan was already climbing, bending low and finally crawling forward on his belly to where he could see beyond the crest.
The ground fell away steeply on the other side of the little knoll, stretching down to the deep, dry bed of what must once have been a fair-sized stream, and the entire watercourse, as far as they could see on either side, was choked with heavily armed men, moving from north to south. Directly ahead of where the two watchers lay, between them and the traffic, one man sat apart, being aided by a couple of others, and it soon became obvious that he must have been the one who had shouted out, because one of his companions was holding the man's leg tightly while the other was binding up his ankle, ignoring the muttered litany of curses that poured from his lips. Seeing the fellow squatting there with his leg extended in front of him, Uther thought again about the burrowing animals that abounded on these moors, and how dangerous their excavations were to nighttime travellers.