Chapter 10
Arthur had forgotten how much of his father’s face he shared, but now, sitting on the chair in the cramped medic’s cabin, his father on the bed before him, he couldn’t not notice.
They shared the same shape to their eyes, the same nose and the cut of their cheekbones.
Arthur noticed with a jolt that his father had grown a beard.
He had never seen Ulrian like this, with his hair long and curled, and his face half-covered, hiding the shape of his jaw.
He shifted in his seat and Ulrian startled, dropping the piece of paper he had been given. He snatched it up again but did not resume the muttering Arthur had become accustomed to.
Strange, really, he thought, that one can grow used to madness.
He cleared his throat. ‘Would you like me to help you shave, Father?’
Ulrian shook his head. ‘I had a beard when your mother met me.’
Arthur almost fell off his chair. He leant forward eagerly. ‘My mother? You remember her?’
The eyes Ulrian turned on him were full of shadows and regret, but they were surprisingly clear. ‘She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I was certain the One God had sent her to tempt me.’ He barked a laugh. ‘Perhaps he had.’
‘Why did you go to Cruithea?’
Ulrian fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt. ‘I was sent there by the Sacellum. It was the last place I expected them to send me after I finished my apprenticeship. I had expected to return to Kernou straight away and begin my work.’
‘The Sacellum,’ Arthur mumbled. He sat back, suddenly convinced that the Sacellum had nothing to do with it. This was Ereshki’s doing. He smiled, a snort escaping him. When he looked up again, Ulrian was watching him.
‘Why did you never hear the Word, son?’
Arthur blinked at the question. In all his years, his father had never asked him what he thought about the One God or the Word, or even why he resisted the teachings.
Arthur pulled his hand through his curls and sighed.
‘I don’t know. I did, in the beginning, but as I grew older, it didn’t make sense to me.
Why would the One God want to hurt those who weren’t like us?
Why would He want us to inflict pain on others? ’
‘Suffering can reveal truths, Arthur,’ Ulrian began, but Arthur shook his head.
‘No. Don’t say that to me. I suffered, Father, as did Jenyfer and everyone who didn’t fit into your world order. I can’t recall any great truths being revealed,’ he said.
Ulrian fell silent. He glanced towards the porthole. A slice of moonlight slipped into the cabin, and the sound of water brushing against the hull was unbearably loud. ‘I’ve never been on a ship. They rock too much for my liking.’
Arthur smiled. ‘You get used to them.’
‘Where are we going?’ his father asked. He rustled the piece of paper between his fingers. ‘Is it to spread the Word?’
‘Sort of,’ Arthur said. ‘Tell me about my mother.’
He wasn’t going to lose this rare moment of lucidity.
A smile pulled at Ulrian’s face. ‘She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I loved her straight away.’ He stopped abruptly, his face creasing. ‘She had a daughter. Morgaine. That was her name. Where is she?’
Arthur bit his lip, conflicted. He didn’t feel right telling his father the truth – that it had been Ulrian himself who had tied a child to the sacrificial stake and left her to die. His father was watching him eagerly, so instead, Arthur said, ‘She’s in Cruithea.’
Ulrian nodded. ‘Good. That’s good. There are a lot of trees there.
She liked trees.’ He reached up to run his fingers over his beard.
‘I had a beard when I met Igraine. She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw.’ He bent over the paper again, muttering, and Arthur’s heart sank at the next words that left his father’s lips.
‘She made me kneel. She made me…’ Ulrian grabbed at the legs of his trousers. Frowning, Arthur got up, sitting beside his father on the tiny bed. Ulrian tried to tuck his legs out of the way, but Arthur took hold of his pant leg and pushed the material up, exposing Ulrian’s knee.
He sat back in horror.
His father’s knee was a mess of scars. Arthur grabbed the lantern, bringing it closer. Something glinted in Ulrian’s flesh. Glass. Sickened, Arthur reached for it, but it was embedded too deep for him to remove.
‘She made me kneel,’ Ulrian whispered.
Arthur pulled Ulrian’s pant leg down. ‘I know,’ he whispered. Bile coated the back of his throat. Lamorna, what have you become? He already knew the answer, and the saddest thing was that part of him knew his father deserved it.
It didn’t make it right though.
He left Ulrian clutching his piece of paper and made his way back to his cabin. Arthur’s eyes shifted to the bed and the empty space he had avoided looking at or thinking about.
Smoke curled through the air, throwing a blanket of thick grey over the world.
An ear-splitting roar split the sky, and lightning shot between the rolling soup of smoke and clouds, illuminating a pair of enormous wings as, overhead, two dragons clashed in the air, the sound of their bodies colliding as loud as thunder.
‘Glorious, aren’t they?’ said a voice at his elbow. He expected to see Mordred, but it was the Green Knight standing beside him.
‘They are,’ Arthur agreed. ‘What am I supposed to do with the White Dragon?’
The Green Knight kept his eyes on the beasts circling the sky above them. ‘It’s a weapon, Arthur. Designed to be used as a tool of war.’
Arthur frowned.
‘It was why I created him in the first place,’ Gawain explained. ‘For war against my sibling gods.’
‘Against Ereshki and Inanna?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he’s a sentient being,’ Arthur said. ‘Surely he has more purpose than to fight and die for me?’
‘He is sentient, yes, but he is made of the magic of the earth. He will never truly die while the earth lives,’ the Green Knight said. ‘You carry my sword as well. It is a weapon of war, and it is also possessed of sentience.’
‘But it isn’t alive,’ Arthur pointed out.
‘Isn’t it? How do we truly measure life, Arthur? You hear its voice in your head, you can feel its will. The sword may not breathe the air or have a heart that beats, but it still lives.’
Arthur wasn’t sure what to say to that. He heard the sword, its voice in the back of his mind all the time, so much that he wondered if he was going as mad as his father was. He glanced up at the dragons again. ‘The red dragon,’ he murmured. ‘Is it of the earth as well?’
‘The red dragon is Ereshki’s creature,’ the Green Knight told him. ‘Born of her magic. Of death and blood – the counterpoint to life.’
‘It will die, won’t it?’ Arthur asked.
‘Death cannot die,’ Gawain said simply.
‘Am I seeing what is to come?’ Arthur gestured at the dragons tangled together in the sky above them.
‘You are seeing what has already been and what shall be again.’
The space between the worlds fractured, sending Arthur hurtling into darkness.