The Hallowed Isle Book Three Read Free

known Her spoke in her soul.
    â€œ Fear not. While the ravens ward the White Mount, the Guardian of Britannia will remain.. . .”
    She felt herself falling back into her body, starlight and firelight and the light of her visions shattering around her like a mosaic of Roman glass. Desperately she tried to fix the pieces in some pattern that would retain its meaning, but they were moving too fast.
    â€œ Merlin!” her soul cried, “ Merlin, hear me! Beware the child that is born the first of May!”
    Then it was over, though she ached in every limb. Igierne felt soft hands helping her to sit upright, heard a murmur of shock and concern.
    â€œMy lady, are you all right?”
    â€œI will be . . .” she muttered. Artor —she thought, 7 must speak with him soon . Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes to see the gibbous quarter-moon staring down at her from a sky that was already paling before the first light of Beltain’s dawn.
    At dawn on Beltain, Morgause went out with her women to bring water from the sacred spring. Before sunrise the air was brisk and Morgause was glad of the fleecy cloak she wore. Unbalanced by the great bulge of her belly, she moved carefully, picking her way down the rocky path in the uncertain torchlight and the light of the waning moon that was more deceptive still. From the group of maidens who walked with her came laughter, swiftly hushed. The child in her belly stirred, then stilled. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, the unaccustomed motion would lull him to sleep. He had kept her wakeful half the night with his kicking, as if he could not wait for the womb to open and set him free.
    To walk from the fortress down to the base of the cleft below it and back could take half the morning, and the return climb required considerable stamina. The women, eyeing the queen’s distended belly, had begged her to let one of the chieftains’ daughters who attended her represent her in the ceremony, but Morgause refused. For a girl to take her place in Leudonus’ bed during her pregnancies did not threaten her position, but her condition had not permitted her to dance at the Beltain fires. Morgause would allow no one to usurp any of the other sacred duties of the queen.
    â€œIt will be safe enough,” she told them. “The babe is not due for another half moon.” This was not quite true—she knew very well that this child had been conceived in the rites at the feast of Lugus, and so her pregnancy was now full term. But her other children had come behind time, so she told the lie without compunction.
    Men might speculate, when the queen’s sons were born some nine moons after a festival, but those who did not follow the old ways could never be certain they were not of Leudonus’ begetting. The majority of the Votadini tribesmen believed, like Morgause, that her children were a gift from the gods.
    For a moment vision blurred; the torchlit darkness of the road became the festival ground, and the chill of dawn the warm summer night of Lughnasaid. The people were shouting, a hero came to her in the darkness of the sacred enclosure, filled with the god, and then the dark fire of the goddess reft her own awareness away . . .
    Morgause trembled again, remembering. It was only afterwards, listening to folk speak of the bull-fight and how the young king from the south had saved the fallen priest of Lugus and completed the ceremony, that she understood that it was Artor who had lain in her arms.
    She had considered, in that moment of realization, seeking out the herbs that would cast the child from her womb. But the gods had willed that her brother’s seed take root there. She did not dare deny them. Morgause was built for bearing, but a woman offered her life in childbed as a man marched into battle. Soon, now, the gods would judge both mother and child. And if such a child lived . . . surely he was meant for a mighty