Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [111]
She gave him the fist-to-shoulder salute of the Romans. “Yes, my King.”
“That is my war chief.” He patted her shoulder with approval.
“That is Eleri’s daughter. You fight with your head. My chiefs only know how to fight with their swords. Now come.” He beckoned to her. “Let us go back to the maps. Arthur is my High King and possibly the greatest leader I have ever seen, but no one has ever said he was incapable of being a fool. Though in this case . . . I am not the loser by his foolishness.” He laid one hand on her shoulder. “In fact, he has done me a great favor, in leaving me the finest sword still in my armory.”
And that was enough to take most of the sting out of the insult.
Chapter Seventeen
No one ever said Arthur was incapable of being a fool.
Never had Gwen thought that those words would come back to haunt all of them. But they had. Arthur’s current actions had brought them all to a stalemate.
A chill mist hung knee-high above the ground around a lake and billowed higher above it. It was very quiet; a little splashing somewhere out there in the mist and an occasional call of a loon or some other water bird only made the silence deeper. For some reason, even the frogs were quiet. Gwen glanced uneasily at the great tor that loomed over them all in the predawn light. There was Yniswitrin, the Isle of Glass, rising above that mist that always hung over the lake that surrounded it. At the top, if you knew what to look for, you could see a squat stone tower. That was the abode—or at least, the visible part of the abode—of Gwyn ap Nudd, one of the Kings of the Folk of Annwn, so it was said. Either there beneath that tower, or beneath the waters of the lake, or both, were entrances to Annwn, the Otherworld, itself. On the shores of the lake were two more poles of power. On the one side, a church and abbey of the priests of the White Christ that was over three hundred years old. And on the other, the Cauldron Well, hidden, secret, guarded by the Ladies who had their school here, where it had stood for far, far longer than the church. The three formed a triad of balancing powers, and managed a sort of uneasy truce.
But that was not why they were all here, this army of the High King’s allies. Before them, also on the island, was that reason. Built into the side of the tor, its top barely visible above the mist, was a stronghold made of stone. The fortress of Melwas of the Summer Country, a man who had once been one of Arthur’s Companions, whose blood was at least as old as Arthur’s, and who might have a touch of the Folk of Annwn about him.
A man, and a king. A man and a king who had taken Queen Gwenhwyfar when Arthur was off skirmishing with the Saxons, carried her off to this fortress and was using her as his claim to supplant Arthur as High King. He had every intention of wedding her, according to all the sources, and using the claim of his old blood and hers to take the throne.
And there was rumor about the camp that Gwenhwyfar might not have gone unwillingly.
Gwen rubbed her aching head; this was all a hideous tangle, and it was only getting worse. Arthur had tried to get across the lake any number of times and had not even landed more than a handful of his men at the base of the stronghold. The mist would come up and bewilder them all, the boats would land anywhere but where they should, once a storm nearly drowned them all by all accounts, and the