Chapter Text
The last thing that she remembered was dying. It was a curious feeling, with blood dripping between her fingers and the very air around her becoming strangely soft, folding around her like fine linens. Then there was an impression of whiteness, and the drift of magic across her skin, before the world faded away from around her.
It had been many years since she had known deep sleep, and this was deeper still. Down into the depths of herself, cold and dark and lonely, and it was difficult to rouse the fire of her anger in the way that she had before. For a long time she let go, without the strength now to hold back the waves of what lay within her.
Somewhere, there was movement. Something might have covered her, might have shut out the sunlight, or it could simply have been night. The pain was dull and distant, and she couldn’t feel the magic that usually filled her. At least, though, the darkness was complete, and there were no dreams to disturb her.
Later, much later, she realised that she could feel her flesh once again. Her side throbbed, hot, but not so much as she remembered it being. She was lying on her back, her arms stretched out on either side of her, a heavy coverlet seeming to pin her down. She wondered whether that was just her own weakness, the weakness that soaked through her body like the heaviness of exhaustion. Mustering all of her strength, she flexed the fingers of her right hand just slightly, feeling them tighten infinitesimally before releasing them with a sigh. The sound of movement caught her attention, and she stiffened where she lay, reaching out of the darkness and into wakefulness with fear gripping at her chest.
She had carried a dagger before. Now she could feel only fabric next to her skin. Even her bracelet no longer lay on her wrist, and she felt bare without it.
“Lady Morgana,” said a voice. She opened her eyes to see white fabric above her. “You are awake.”
“I’m still working on alive.” Her voice cracked, but she found the words, even though running her tongue over her dry lips did nothing to help. “I must presume you do not want me dead.”
“On that, I am ambivalent. But of the magic users to whom I have spoken, there are few who did not name you as the most powerful of their kind. The last Priestess of the Old Religion.”
She remembered the words, faintly. There had been so many names. Morgana le Fey, for the longest of times; then she found herself Morgana Pendragon, and it had uprooted her world at the same time as it might just have offered her an answer to the riddles that had plagued her for so long. But much of the time she had refused both, and been simply Morgana, witch, sorceress. Those had been the simplest times.
She tried to draw her arms back into her body, only to feel soft ropes tighten around her wrists. A faint frown drew itself on her face, and she turned to look over her right side. The white band around her wrist might have been discreet, but it held her down more than well enough in her weakened state.
“Ah, yes. My apologies for treating a Princess so, but your reputation does, of course, precede you. And I would rather not have things turn nasty.”
Finally, her mind recovered enough for her to recognise the voice: King Olaf of Powys, for many years a very careful ally of Uther’s. Morgana turned her head so that she could look upon him, but was surprised by what she saw: Olaf sat on a chair beside the bed, slumped forwards with his elbows on his knees. It had not been that long since she had last seen him, but she was quite sure that there were new lines on his face, more grey in his hair.
“The bonds are old, and they are meant for magic-users. You will not be able to rise whilst I have this.” He held up his right hand, a matching white band wrapped around it and tied soundly. “I do not pretend to know how it works, simply that it will restrain you for now. I wish to speak to you civilly.”
“By tying me down? Civil indeed.” She could not help the bite that came into her voice. Anger flashed in Olaf’s eyes and for a moment she thought that she might have already overstepped the line that held her life in place, but he merely wrapped his hands tightly around each other and stared hard at her.
“You hardly left Camelot peacefully. I did not want bloodshed on my hands. No, my lady, I wish to come to an agreement with you. Despite the Five Kingdoms baying for your blood, I am willing to grant you sanctuary – and in return, I wish for you to use your magic for me.”
“You followed Uther in banning magic. But when it suits your own devices, you will use it still?”
He shrugged. “I doubt there is a father in the world who would not do the same.”
The words made her eyes narrow. Olaf was known above all else, even above his skill in war, for how protective he was of Vivian. His only daughter, as beautiful as the late Queen but far more spoilt and petulant; Vivian and Morgana had been of an age when they were growing up, but on the occasions when they had found themselves in each other’s company, they had barely been able to exchange words without Vivian making a fuss or, just as commonly, Morgana producing a wooden sword and proceeding to try to beat the silly chit with the flat of it.
“Vivian is unwell? By some magic?”
“I do not know,” he said flatly. “But I expect you to find out, and then I expect you to fix it. In return for your compliance… I have already had healers at your side, and I will continue to offer you the protection of my court.”
“And if I do not comply?” Though it had not been that long since she had considered Olaf’s court a cousin to Uther’s, there were few parts of her past life for which Morgana could truly say she held any lingering love.
Olaf gave her a pained look, clasping his hands together once again. When he spoke, it took no discerning ear to hear the reluctance in his voice, nor to see it where he broke with her gaze for a moment before looking back once again. “Then I will return you to Camelot,” he replied, “and let their law deal with you.”
A sneer curled her lip, though doubtless it would look more impressive from a position other than the one which she currently occupied. “You think that my brother would have the nerve to kill me?”
“You tried to kill him,” said Olaf quietly. “And even if there is compassion left in his heart for you, I doubt that all of his Kingdom would feel the same.”
To that, Morgana could find no response, and she turned her head away in what was meant to be a haughty toss but ended up being accompanied with a grunt of pain. As if in response to her sharp movement, a ripple of pain spread out from her neck, down across her body, and she was forced to close her eyes whilst the waves receded. By the time that her own heartbeat stopped pounding in her ears, she could hear the door to the room opening, and Olaf’s final words came from rather more of a distance.
“One of the servants will be in soon, to bring you something to eat. I appreciate that you will need some time to recover, but do not expect to abuse that time. The library of Camelot is not the only one which has retained many of its tomes on magic. I will speak to you further in a few days.”
Then the door closed with a heavy-sounding thud, and she was left alone with her thoughts once again.
It was not pleasant, to be trapped in her own head. Once, there had been a time when Morgana had thought wistfully of having time to think, fully and without interruption. Then the dreams had come, and deepened, and bought with them their dreadful knowledge, and slowly drawn her away. Now such a time was a far-off memory. She scowled at the far wall of the room, and tried to slip back into sleep for at least a short time longer.
It was less difficult than she had feared, and though her dreams were filled with the baying of the hunt and the copper-salt of blood, she had long grown used to such. By the time that she opened her eyes again she felt, if not refreshed, then at least less weary than she had before. She again made the mistake of shifting her weight, and pain washed over her, but it was less this time than before, and with a couple of deep breaths she was able to see past it. Her hands clenched into fists and drew back into her body sharply, and it was only when she could see clearly enough to realise such that she realised also that she was no longer tied down. Although the white bands still encircled her wrists – some sort of sateen, she noted dully – she could at least move them.
“You’re awake, then,” said a perfunctory voice. Morgana did not have time to turn her head, at least with the slowness that such an action would have required in her current state, before large soft arms were wrapped around her and she was drawn – hissing with pain, but still generally coherent – to a seated position. The woman did not say anything further as she pushed Morgana’s hair back off her face and plumped the pillows around her, every shift reverberating through Morgana’s bones and making her grit her teeth – though gently, for that action also threatened to pain her.
She shot the woman a glare, the sort that had made knights and councillors quail in their boots for fear of her tongue, not even her blade or her magic. This time, however, it did not have the desired response, and the woman simply hitched up the sheets to cover Morgana’s lap.
Even sitting felt like a great effort, every muscle in her torso seeming to strain just to hold her in place. She pressed her tongue between her teeth to control her breathing, and then the woman was drawing a chair up to the edge of the bed, and holding in her lap a wooden tray with a bowl of porridge, a metal cup and a flagon.
The woman scooped up a spoonful of the porridge, tapped it very gently on the edge of the bowl, and then proffered it up to Morgana’s lips. A sting of humiliation ran down her spine: she had never in her memory been fed like an infant. Now, though, she could not even have raised her arms from her lap, and she parted her lips as she realised that hunger as well as strain was cramping in her stomach. The porridge was milky, sweetened with honey, and she swore that the prickling in her eyes was not tears as she gulped down the mouthfuls offered to her.
She could not suppress the slight whimper that escaped her when, after what seemed like too short a time, no more was forthcoming. Even as a young girl in Uther’s household, she had been aware of the work that must go on to support her, and as she had become older she had made sure that she knew what to do that she might never find herself without a source of food. Only when the whole of Camelot had gone hungry – fool Arthur, fool hunters, she had dreamt of the unicorn dead on the forest floor – had she done so also. Yet now her stomach twisted, and she managed to raise her hands half up before the woman shook her head.
“You’ll make yourself sick,” she said flatly, instead decanting in swift movements the flagon into the cup, and placing it into Morgana’s hands instead. “Here, have some of this.”
She kept her hands wrapped around Morgana’s to assist in raising the glass, and the cool clean water washed over her palate like a blessing. She swallowed as much as she could, then coughed on a wayward trickle and felt water spill down over her chin. The cup was removed once again, and she wiped her mouth with the back of one shaking hand.
“There,” said the woman. “Now, I’ll leave this here,” she placed it on the low table beside the bed, “and someone will be back in a couple of hours.”
Morgana nodded, still almost overwhelmed, and allowed herself to be shifted back to a mostly-flat position once again. The room seemed to have shifted into better focus, and though the pain she felt had sharper edges, she could reach those edges with her mind and feel the finite nature of them. There was something beyond the pain; there would be something beyond the pain. She let her eyes drift closed again and, not quite awake, not quite asleep, waited for the next intrusion.
Interlude
Mist rolled down over the slopes of the hills. The moon was some days past new, a waxing crescent just visible amid the dripping diadems of stars that draped across the sky. The weather was cold; it was likely to turn to frost soon, Rheda thought as she hitched her cloak more tightly around her and hurried along the narrow path home. It was never too easy to be a midwife in these parts, but now winter was closing in fast and Cate had always been the sort of girl to spook easily, something which had only become worse over the course of her first pregnancy.
The path was turning to mud, and she wondered whether it would be worth getting the men to bring up gravel from some of the valleys to harden the way. A slight slip was worth a faint curse, nothing more, until a loud howl, like the largest hunting dog she had ever heard, made her cry out in shock herself and lose her footing on the unhelpful ground.
It had sounded as if it had been almost upon her. Gasping, her breath like a stream of little white clouds in the air, Rheda struggled to her feet again and looked around her, expecting to see the dog appearing out of nowhere. Again came the howling, a great long wail of a sound that set the hairs on the back of her arms standing on end and made her clench her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. It was a little fainter this time, however, and she settled that wherever the dog was, it was getting further away.
“Some fool man letting the beast loose,” she muttered, peering at her cloak in the moonlight and none too impressed to see the amount of mud that was smeared upon it. “Hunting hounds in this land, indeed!” The most common creatures to be found on the hills were humans and sheep, and neither of those were for the hunting. “I hope he chases the damn thing into a morass tomorrow morn.”
Still grumbling to herself, she continued on up the slope, the ground becoming drier and the mist falling away as she climbed. There was something beautifully clear about the top of the hills even on nights like this, dimly green and smoothly rolling, when the air was heavy enough that the clouds could not even settle on them. The wind, however, picked up a little, plucking at stray strands of her hair and plastering her warm wool clothes more tightly against her; that was unusual, but not unthinkable, and all that it did was hurry her steps a little more.
She heard the baying a third time, now very faint indeed and with the tinny echo of distance, and gave a satisfied grunt. It must be moving quickly indeed if it disappeared from her hearing range so quickly.
White flickered on the edge of her vision.
Rheda’s head snapped round, but there was no white, no gleaming brightness, that she could see on the hilltops. Not even beneath the bright moon. She was about ready to acknowledge the night as too long, too arduous, when there was movement once again in the corner of her eye, and she felt herself begin to tremble as, slow and mournful, she heard singing on the cool, night air.
"Chwarae troi'n chwerw, wrth chwarae gyda thân."
The quiet on the hilltops was broken by the screaming.