CAMELOT’S BLOOD

by

Sarah Zettel

CHAPTER ONE

    In the fortress of Din Eitien, the king lay dying.  

    Din Eitien squatted on a great black precipice, as old and as solid as if it had been carved from the living rock.  Men who knew nothing but the working of stones and the worship of wells had once come here.  They laid down stones without mortar to shelter themselves from the wind.  Other men, ones who knew the working of bronze and understood the secrets of oak and mistletoe came to cast these ancient ones out.  They wove wicker fences and raised the walls higher.  The Romans drove all before them and took the great precipice after a bloody siege that was still sung of by bards and poets in both lands.  They squared the walls of Din Eitien and built towers to better keep the watch.

    That was four generations ago.  The Romans were fled, but the rock and its many-layered fortress now called Din Eitien remained.  The sons of the bronze workers reclaimed the great place and they ruled on the thrones and the bones of their ancestors.  

Now, Lot, the oldest surviving son of that lineage screamed from the pain of his own passing.

    The king’s screams caused surprisingly little disturbance in that dark keep.  Some men, drowsing in the court under the summer stars, turned and muttered beneath their harsh woolen blankets.  Others, lounging on the parapets while drinking from their leather bottles or playing at bones beside their fires, cursed the noise and kicked the hounds who tried to howl in response.

    King Lot had been in his great bed in his great hall.  A fire burned brightly beside his resting place, and the linens tangled around his arms and legs were the finest that could be provided.  These things brought him no comfort.  Pain tossed him from side to side dragging his cries and his moans from his ravaged throat.  But none dared approach him.  Not one of the cowering women who hovered in the dark doorway brought cloth or herb to their king, even now that the swelling in his legs had so greatly increased that he could not rise.  None of the men slouched at the far end of the hall so much as looked up.

Only the two chieftains who sat on the other side of the fire from the bed made any move.  

    Lord Pedair rubbed his eyes.  He was a grey, old man now, stooped by the weight of the years.  The long nights of watching had left him weary and heartsick.  He had known Lot in cleaner times, when they were both stronger, better men. It was a painful thing to see what Din Eitien had become, almost as painful as to see what had happened to Lot.  The king’s madness had driven away all men of strength and loyalty.  Instead, he had surrounded himself with the corrupt and the cringing, who would follow any order, no matter how mad, as long as they could make plunder the Gododdin, and anyone else who crossed their paths.

“Will he hold long enough for word to reach Camelot?” Pedair asked.

    “I do not know.  They are laying bets in the forecourt now.” Ruadh’s mouth curled into a sneer of distaste.  Time had robbed Lord Ruadh of all the hair on his head and turned his long mustaches pure white.  It had not, however, clouded his eyes nor his judgment.  Like Pedair beside him, Ruadh had ridden to war with Lot in aid of King Arthur.  He was the only other one who offered to take the night watches with Pedair.  The king could not die without witness.

    Lot kicked at his coverings.  His feet were so swollen the skin on them had cracked and the wounds oozed with clear matter.  The stench of illness hung heavily in the great square chamber.   The swelling should be lanced.  Their should be hot cloths and poultices.

    Lot writhed, his torso twisting and his arms flailing at nothing at all.  His head fell toward Pedair, and Pedair saw the king’s face twisted in pain and rage, his cracked teeth bared, his eyes burning.

    “Traitor!” Lot roared.  “Stinking, whoreson traitor!  Come to pick over my bones, Pedair?  Come to dance on my tomb!”  His mouth stretched into a horrible leer.  “Stay then, vulture!  Maybe she’ll take a liking to you next and you’ll be dancing for the devil to her tune!”  He laughed, a sound more harsh and horrible than his screams.  “Dance like me!” He lifted one grotesquely swollen leg and the words died away in a scream of pain.

    “How much longer can he last?”  Pedair whispered when he could speak again.

    Ruadh shook his bald head slowly.  “Not long.  God be praised.”

    “Kill them!” bellowed Lot, his hands clenching into fists, strangling nothing but air.  “God rot them!  Crush them!”  In the next second, his hands fell to the furs and all the anger drained from his face.  “Water,” he rasped plaintively.  “I thirst.  I burn.  Mercy’s sake, someone bring me water.”

    Pedair looked sideways at Ruadh, spat into the fire, and slowly got to his feet.  A pitcher and two wooden mugs stood between the men’s stools.  Pedair filled one with small beer, splashing dark droplets onto the stones.  Slowly, shuffling from the stiffness in his knees, he brought it to the king’s bedside.  Lot looked at him, and for a moment, Pedair thought he saw his liege in the depths of those fever-bright eyes.  He held the tankard to Lot’s lips.

    Fury distorted Lot’s face again, and he lashed out, grabbing and twisting at Pedair’s arm.  Pedair cried out in pain, and dropped the mug, splashing ale everywhere.

    “Poison!” bawled Lot.  “You’d poison your king, whoreson!  I’ll hang your head from my gate!”  He shoved Pedair, sending him reeling back toward the fire.  Ruadh caught him before he stumbled into the flames and helped him to his seat again.

    “He still sees.” Rubbing his wrist and panting for breath, Pedair watched the king sink back onto his bed, plucking restlessly at the furs and muttering his curses.  

“But what does he see?” asked Ruadh.  “We should have sent to Camelot before this.

Pedair watched his king lashing from side to side, as if to avoid a series of blows. “Had there been any way to do so in secret, I would have.”  

    “I know,” said Ruadh.  “I know.”

    The king groaned, a low, harsh horrible sound and for a moment, he strained to sit up, his eyes gleaming in the firelight and his mouth gaping in an evil grin.  But his strength did not hold, and Lot collapsed back onto his bed.  

    “You come,” the words came out between Lot’s gasps for breath.  “Even now you come to me.”

    The wretched king paused, listening to that voice only he could hear, and his face twisted with a deeper pain.  “No.  It is not true!”

    Pedair knotted his fists.  How much longer could he stand to wait?  It was obscene to sit here while a strong man writhed in pain, while his hands clutched the linens and sweat ran down his brow.  

“It is not true!  You are not she!  You are not!  Oh, God, no!  Morgause!  Morgause!  Don’t leave me!”

    Pedair started forward, but Ruadh laid a hand on his arm.  “Do not let him come to grips with you again, Pedair.  He’s killed a man in his fits.  He’ll do the same to you.”

    “Morgause!” the king shouted.  “Morgause where are you!  It is not true!  It is not true!” The last word choked Lot, and the scream faded into weeping and rose again into a scream of rage and pain and the last strength of a man trying to hold back death and despair with nothing but his own broken will.

    The old men bowed their heads and as best they could, they prayed for the dawn.