The Dark Chronicles Ch. 04

Part Four - Ties that Bind

"Follow me, Artur, follow me!" Morgayne's high laughing cry echoed in the long stone corridor as her pattering feet ran ahead, faster than he could run. Artur never could catch her, the room would always be still when he reached the doorway.

"'Gayne, Gayne, stop hiding," Artur called into the dark room. He heard a rustle of straw, and a sweep of cloth along the floor. "Where are you, Gayne?"

"Here I am, Artur, you know I'm always here." And his sister would jump up and wrap her arms around his back and pull him down to the floor. The straw would prickle his back as she pulled the linen shirt over his head. Morgayne would slowly stroke Artur's untidy blond hair from his eyes as she held her brother close to her breast. Her skin was always so warm and soft, so soft.

"I'm always here, Artur...."

Artur shuddered from sleep. His arm, thrown out from under the bed clothes, knocked against a low wooden shelf, rocking little carved statues standing there all in a row. He sat up, rubbing his forearm where it had banged against the wood, shaking his head to clear it from the dream. The dream.

He remembered the first time his sister appeared in his head, years before. He'd returned from one of his long sea voyages to the round island where the ice ran into the sea and volcanoes spat smoke and rock into the sky. The island where his first girl lived, the one who showed him both hunger and laughter with her legs spread wide and her arms wrapped tight around his back. The one who stole into his snug sleeping sack every night and risked the wrath of her father. His first girl.

But she wasn't his first girl. Back on his own island, the dark black eyes of his sister gazed at him every time he woke from the dream. Every time was waking twice, and as he grew older Morgayne's hands were always slow, so slow.

Artur hauled himself up from the bed, and pulled the long pelts of wolf and marten around his naked limbs for warmth. His morning cock was hard, harder still from the dream as it always was. He shuffled from the sleeping chamber, his head still echoing, and made his way outside to the stone gutter. Artur leaned his head against the wall, and with one arm held back the heavy pelts. He gripped the hard length of his cock and pushed it down away from his gut as best he could, it stood so high and hard. After some settling breaths, he let go a long piss, a hard jet driving against the wall, and his cock slowly eased and let him run the stream down the wall.

"Ahh, fuck, that's better." He shook the last drops, and looked down at his prick, still thick and long. "She haunts me, that is certain."

In his mind's eye, Artur replayed the vision of Morgayne as she crouched above him on the rock, displaying the dark lips of her cunt right above his head. He'd felt a curious power flowing from the stone and through the mist as he pulled loose the dagger Scalibur and felt its force. But he knew without doubt it was the thick coiled hair of his own sister, her naked cunt there in front of him real and raw, that surged up the first throb of seed from the base of his spine.

"I'm the fuck, not this foul sorcery!" Morgayne's words still rang in his ears, now and at night when he stroked white cream high onto his chest. A king without a whore, his own sister there instead. Artur smiled a wry smile to himself. It's a strange way to start a kingdom. He shook his head to clear the fog.

Artur knotted belts about his waist and wandered slow and thoughtful across to the main hall, greeting the pig boy and the five girls who kept the goats and chickens, and knew the best herbs in the gardens.

"Lord, the morning greet you, sire." Their voices were quiet in a respectful harmony, but the youngest girl was kicked in the shin by her older sister to make her bob down faster. Artur smiled as he saw it, winking at the little one in a conspiracy. Her little smile delighted him.

"And it greet you." He paused for a moment. "Emmelyne, the oldest mothering goat. Is she birthed yet, her belly so big?"

"No sire, it must be soon." Emmelyne replied with a shyness and a pretty blush. The king remembered her name and the state of her goat. She would run to tell her mother.

"Ah good. Her cheese will sweeter be, if kids sup from her teat and we share a bit of her milk." Artur moved on, his easy charm a natural thing. "Rednock, your pig is too loud on the mornings, I cannot hear the crow of the cockerel."

"Sire, yes Lord, I'll...." Rednock stopped, seeing the king's grin and his laughing eyes.

"Don't worry it, lad. Methinks we need a new cockerel that knows a proper voice, not a new pig."

His diplomacy done for the day, Artur entered the main hall and found fresh bread there. He asked the cook for eggs, and sat with his back to the fire while they were cooked. By the time his meal was ready, the last vestiges of the dream had cleared from his mind, and Artur could think clearly. He was a practical man - he dreamed, his prick throbbed and jetted as a consequence, he awoke and was alone. All in his head then, these dreams, no matter, nor anyone to see. Morgayne's darkness spilled around him and was gone into the night, hidden there and silent.

"Ah, Maerlyn, I see you back from Tyntangel. How does my mother?"

"The Lady is well, Lord. The travel was tiring, as you know it from the distance, but your mother is content, I think."

"And my sisters?"

"They are both well, sire. Mourning the king, as you might expect. They tend the grave each day with flowers."

"Both, Maer? I have three sisters with my mother at Tyntangel, yet you only mention two." Artur looked directly at Maerlyn and saw the discomfort in his eyes. "Morgayne unsettles you, Maerlyn, I know it, yet she is my sister too. Don't forget it."

"Sire, I do not forget the Lady Morgayne." Maerlyn looked up to the distance as if he heard a far off call. "Beg forgiveness, Lord, if I accidentally offended thee."

"You make no accidents, Maer." Artur spoke casually, as if it was a passing observation, lightly said. "Best treat my sister thoughtfully. I take no offence, but the Lady might."

Artur rinsed his plate in a pot hanging over the hearth, and placed it back on a shelf for the next man. He dismissed the matter of his sister, and turned to practical things. "Come, Maerlyn, I show you the work done on the defences whilst you were away south."

The Camlann fort took natural advantage of a high, flat topped hill carved and shaped in ancient times. The Romans favoured flatter places and defensive walls for their garrisons, but they were all crumbling now. Princes and kingdoms spread wide across the land, and high places made good sense with their long sight lines and wide vistas. Roads and pathways followed the curves of the ridges and the rivers, forests and woods filled the plains between. The goddess and her people softened the land, and Artur made Uther's kingdom his own.

The Camlann defences comprised a series of banks and ditches, each higher than the last. The entrance way zigged and zagged between the banks, the first turn to the left, "So that we see the newcomers' sword hand," noted Artur, "and their shields made useless."

"Good practice, Lord, like unto a maze. The priestess Nym Nymue would favour it well, it is liken to her favourite spirals."

"Ah, the white priestess, yes." Artur studied the mage. "She has returned to the Isle of Glas, I've heard tell. Is that her truth, Maer?"

"Yeay, Lord, it is no lie." Maerlyn fell silent and his eyes focussed on a far distance for a long moment. He looked back at the young king. "Yet I know not her truth. She is a woman, sire."

"Aye. A woman. Creatures we men can never rightly understand." Artur pondered the older man. "And if you don't understand them, Maer, what chance have I?"

"Any man is wiser than I, Lord, don't doubt it. I would lose my feet if they were not joined to mine own legs." Maerlyn diminished himself as he always did, yet Artur knew him wise with good cunning.

A good engineer, too. They wandered to the centre of the circled hill where a new great hall was being built to Maerlyn's design. Artur was building places for his court, mixing stone and wood together. The rock gave solid foundations, while the tree opened up galleries and high spaces. Soaring arches of strong oak were well braced to support a thick and heavy thatch, while smaller buildings were roofed with wooden shingles, easily made and speedily applied. A blacksmith made nails and sharp axes, and sawyers slid great blades back and forth, forth and back. Artur's court was a village, and in every place, large and small, he had blessed a round table so that every man and woman might sit and be heard, and no-one the head of it.

"And the postern, sire, has it been cut?" Maerlyn was referring to a narrow passage and a steep stair away from the entrance of the fort, to be used for hidden movements in and out of the place.

"Aye, it has. I will gate it and make it secure. Any hidden passage from the fort is also a passage back inside it." Artur again showed his practical nature. "I don't much care for secret ways, but I see there might be a use for it. The opening, 'tis well hid, and I will set a copse nearby to further disguise it."

"Best to hide in plain sight, sire. It is where I do it."

"I thought mist, Maer, is where you hid."

"Mist, sire? I could never master mist. Mist requires true sorcery. I can only manage puddles."

"Yet I felt the touch of a man in the magick, when I pulled Scalibur from the rock."

"Man and woman both, sire, but a woman guide it."

"Ah, I see," the young king replied. "Is that what they do?"

"Believe it, Lord. You can't deny them. Women get what they want, in all their ways."

"Yeay, I think it true. Politicking is the easier thing. Men I can predict and know." Artur turned on his heel. "Come, we could prattle on like this all day and still be no wiser." He smiled, content with his wisdom, or lack of it, this day. "You mentioned steam in a pipe some time ago. Did that speriment run?"

* * * * *

"Follow me, Artur, follow me." Her voice was low, with a slight huskiness, almost lost in the long depths of the corridor. Artur heard the slide of cloth brushing over stone ahead of him, but when he reached the doorway it was quiet.

"Morgayne, are you there?" His voice was a whisper as he entered the room, which was dark, unlit. Artur crept forward, until he felt a hand on his leg and higher, on his thigh. She pulled him down to the floor, and the straw was rough against his back as Morgayne pulled the linen shirt over his head.

"I'm always here, Artur."

She held his untidy blond head to her breast, and slowly stroked his forehead and hair with her long fingers. The flesh of her breast was warm and soft, so soft, and the beat of Morgayne's heart was steady and slow. Artur tilted his head up so his lips touched her throat and felt a pulse there. His hand moved down from her cheek, sliding langourously down her throat until it found a hard nipple on a tight breast. Artur pressed the palm of his hand against her breast and Morgayne sighed.

"Ah, brother, do you love me?" Morgayne whispered low. She held his hand to her breast with her own. Her fingers curled over the back of his hand and held his heat against hers, and her movements were considered and slow.

"Sister, you know it." Artur's voice was barely heard. "I do."

"Show me, then, my king." Morgayne's hand slid down Artur's body, but before she reached his cock he throbbed and pulsed, and woke, panting. His cream was hot and sticky against his gut, and she was gone, dark and gone in the night.

Fuck. Again, she haunts me again. Artur lay still, as his breath slowed and his heart beat settled. His cock was still rock hard as it always was from the dream, but he left it untouched. Before sleep, his hand was enough, but following the dream, never enough. Morgayne's hands in the night were always so slow. His fingers were never enough, not when she was gone in the night.

Artur stirred, and moved to sit up. His hands felt a slight resistance, as if something was loosely strapped around his wrists, then it was gone, something broken, something snapped. He sat up, and looked down at his cock, still thick and hard. Shaking his head slowly, he circled his hand around the wetness on his gut, then smoothed the cream into his skin.

Artur hauled himself up from the bed and wrapped himself in his animal skins, the warmth of the dark wolf around his shoulders. He shuffled to the door, and pushed it aside. The drift of his breath on the cold air was like smoke as he moved outside. The stone was cold as he leaned against it, and steam rose from his piss as he patterned his flow down the wall.

Ah mother, the cold is upon us now, Artur thought, as he finished the piss. He looked up, and for a moment was distracted by shadows on the snow that looked like a trail of footprints. No, some trick of the moonlight, nobody would wander here, not by the king's quarters.

As he returned to his chamber, Artur blew on his hands to warm them. The sudden movement caused some long, fine strands of blackness to drift away from his wrists and fall slowly to the snow, where they lay like the finest cracks, darkest black, the thinnest threads against the whiteness of the snow. They melted away, and could be seen no more.

Artur returned to his sleeping chamber, restless and unsettled, as he so often was when the dream set itself in his mind so solidly. His mind flickered back to his first memories, when just a small boy; and his sister Gayne pulling him around the fortress by his little hand. She would chatter and laugh with him, but lock her lips against all sound whenever an adult passed by.

And the look of black filth she would give the tall thin man whenever he was near. Even as a child Artur knew well not to question that hatred. As a young man, wiser in the ways of passion and power, he sensed it wiser still never to come between two individuals with such an inextricable, inexplicable bond, an unbreakable thing. And yet, he loved them both. The fool Maerlyn who was no fool, and his dark sister Morgayne, forbidden to him through their mother, who crouched above him on the rock on his coronation day.

Artur's mind drifted and wandered, until finally he awoke to the feeble sun, its pale light slowly clearing the morning mist, creeping over the flagstones of his hearth. He crouched by the fire and blew life into its dull embers. Flames flickered and caught on the dry sticks and a carefully positioned log, and the night chill in the air slowly lifted.

He called for a maid to go to the main hall and the kitchen there, and bring back a break fast, and bring back normality too. Artur sought practical and plain people around him, as a foil for the politicking and pretence that went on between kingdoms.

After he had eaten, Artur dressed in warm robes, and set about to the hall. On his way, he saw again the cluster of children leading their animals out of the stables, on their meandering way down to the ponds and meadows below the fort.

"Emmelyne, has that mother goat birthed yet?"

"Triplets, sire, two does and a buck. They are back in the stables. It is a strange birth, out of season, so I keep them warm."

"Ah, that is well. You must show me later this day, when I return from my ride."

"It will please me, Lord, as it please you." Emmelyne would run again to tell her mother, a bright shine in her eyes for the king's favour. Artur was not much older than the girl, and she sometimes day-dreamed - what would it be like to bed a king? But she was a practical girl, and shook her head, no. Far better to talk to the king about the things she knew, like goats. Every king should know about goats.

And horses. "Rednock. Your pig. Can it grow four long legs and a mane and a tail, and shod itself with shoes and nails?"

"No, sire. It's just a pig." Rednock was encouraged by the king's smile, his laughing eyes. "It snuffles a lot and rolls in mud, but it can't be rid."

"Well then, if I can't ride on your muddy pig, you'd best to the stables, lad, and stir that lazy groom for me. Pray tell him, the king requires a horse, saddled and fed." Rednock turned to run. "Down by the postern gate. Have the groom bring the horse there. Good man."

* * * * *

Artur reined in the horse, and the great beast stamped its hoof in the snow. Its breath rose in clouds of vapour which mingled and spiralled into the cold air. Artur's face and bare hands were chill from his swift ride. He pulled the collar of his cloak up to shield his face from the wind, and then tucked his hands in under his armpits to warm them.

"Walk on, tch, tch," he called to the horse, and it moved on slowly down the narrow path. All around the snow was limpid white, laying a soft carpet silent on the land. The smooth expanse was broken in places by narrow runs of animal tracks, massed and single, no creature to be seen. That was strange, usually Artur would spy some creature moving. On the horizon a stand of bare trees ran along a ridge, their branches thick with the massed nests of rooks. Empty nests now, in the colds of winter, nearing the shortest day.

Suddenly there was a rising burst of movement, and a shock of rooks took flight, their blackness stark against the white snow and the grey sky. What strangeness this, a parly of rooks this cold season? Artur wondered at the birds, normally gone in winter. He reined in the horse with one hand, the other still tucked close to his body for warmth. He watched the twisting spiral of birds as it rose high then circled, before dropping back to the branches. Artur heard their raucous cries from the distance, and looked for the disturbance.

There. A black figure moving slowly along the ridge, a solitary walker. Ah, gone below the line of trees. Artur was puzzled, he was some distance from the nearest village, and did not expect to see anyone around here. He flicked the reins, and the horse walked on, one ear forward and one ear back, alert with some animal sense. Artur sensed a tension in the horse, and leaned forward to calm it, speaking softly and patting its neck. He rode on, alert for something but he knew not what.

The horse kept moving, firm footed on the path which followed the contour of the slope, worn no doubt by sheep making their easy way. As they moved in under the line of trees Artur ducked his head to avoid low branches and cold dripping snow. After a short time he found it easier to dismount and walk ahead of the horse. The trees grew closer and the snow thinned, and the paths split and meandered and finally disappeared completely.

Artur crested the ridge, and below him, some distance away, he saw the black shape of the person walking. Too far off to make out any detail, the figure seemed almost to glide upon the snow, moving ahead at a faster pace. A long straight line of footprints stretched out behind, marking the person's path across the snow. Ahead, at the centre of a long valley through which a small, swift stream flowed, Artur saw a simple stone dwelling. Its roof of thatch was still carrying snow on its northern side, while the southern aspect was brighter in the struggling winter sun, water dripping from the high sloped roof.

Artur did not know the place, and was curious. He thought he knew the ways around Camlann well, but this was a valley and stream he was not familiar with, nor the dweller here. He remounted the horse, tch, tch, walk on. The horse trembled, its eyes wide, and again Artur leaned forward to settle its way. The movement of the figure ahead of him was somehow familiar, but he could not place it.

Slowly they moved up the floor of the valley, the tall, black figure never looking back, the king on his horse always looking forward and drawing closer. The woman ahead of him (she must be a woman, no man so tall would have such a slender build) was dressed in black so midnight dark that the light falling on her cloak was swallowed up, thick and velvet. Her long, jet black hair fell near as long as the cloak to her feet. It was tied in a single band level with her waist, so it billowed like black smoke about her back, and fell like black rain to her feet.