“What is it, Mavis?” Lady Cacher asked.
Mavis looked flustered. “A visitor at the gates, milady. Asks for you specifically.”
“Do you know him?” she asked, confused.
“No, milady, but he says that you will.”
Lady Cacher paled and set down her spiced wine. She steadied herself a moment before rising and smoothing her skirts. She began her walk to the gates, Mavis at her side, but she stopped her. “No, Mavis. I’ll go alone.”
“Are you sure?” she asked her.
She smiled thinly. “Yes, just make sure the babies eat. And that Lord Cacher doesn’t overexert himself.”
Mavis agreed reluctantly. “Yes, milady.”
Lady Cacher resumed her long walk to the gates of House Chastellain. When she arrived there, she saw Merlin through the steel bars, feeding grass to his horse. Both man and animal were filthy from road dust and sweat. He and Lady Cacher stared at each other for long moments.
Finally Merlin asked, “Your family is well?”
Lady Cacher nodded. “All of them. Indeed, I have seven grandchildren.”
“Yours and their every need tended to?” Merlin questioned.
Lady Cacher’s face tightened. “Every last one that a peasant girl could have ever thought to ask for.”
Merlin stroked his horse’s mane. “Now it is time for you to keep your promise to me.”
Lady Cacher took a deep breath, then produced a ring of keys from her skirts and opened the lock of the wicket gate. “Please,” she said to Merlin, and led him into the orchard and to a bench beneath a pair of plum trees. They sat together in a long silence. Then she offered, “I always knew this day would come. But somehow it still seems too soon.” A wave of emotion passed over her. Tears quietly fell. She wiped them with a kerchief and composed herself. “May I host you for the evening? It would give me the opportunity to spend one last evening with them.”
Merlin shook his head. “The hounds are at my heels. We must go now. I will wait for you to say your goodbyes.”
Lacy Cacher read Merlin’s face and saw no yielding there. She nodded crisply and rose to her feet. She walked to the edge of the orchard, where she could see her husband rolling in a heap with her grandchildren. Nearby, her own children laughed and sipped wine in chairs beneath the old chestnut tree. She smiled and savored every detail. Then she slipped into the main house and returned minutes later with a soft leather drawstring bag of clothes. “No goodbyes,” she said to Merlin. “Let them play.”
Rising in the distance, the keep at Dun Lach seemed to have grown right out of the craggy rocks of the shoreline of the Beggar’s Coast. Its towers tilted, and the walls were surrounded by a natural barrier of spiked sandstone, which shielded Dun Lach not only from invaders, but from the punishing tide as well. The coastline was clogged with slender warships. Merlin searched for the Red Spear’s famed vessel, with its fiery lance fused like a horn to its prow, but it was not to be found. Northern archers paused their patrols on the wall to watch Merlin and Lady Cacher ride up to the gates. After a few rounds of muted conversations and dark looks in Merlin’s direction, the warriors at the gate shouted to lift the portcullis.
Shunning offers to freshen up after such a long journey, Merlin requested an immediate audience with Cumber, and so he and Lady Cacher were led up several winding stairwells and into the Great Hall, where the warmth of five roaring hearths painted a far different picture from the grim war camps beyond the walls. It was not only the warmth but the sound: Merlin heard laughter. There was never laughter in Uther’s court. But when Merlin and Lady Cacher entered, Lord Cumber’s booming laugh was shaking the walls, a joy derived from the energetic play of a wolf pup with a hunting falcon, who displayed her wings and clicked her beak and hopped along the stone floor, frightening the pup. The Ice King was barrel-chested and wore a black cave-bear cloak over one shoulder with his sword arm free, Viking-style, pinned by a platinum brooch inlaid with amber, gold, and blue glass. His face was tanned from the sea wind, his auburn hair pulled into a ponytail and his beard close-cropped.
Cumber’s four grown children—two brothers and two sisters—seemed more entertained by their father’s amusement than by the pup’s antics. A history of observing courts gave Merlin the ability to read conditions quickly. Unlike their warrior father, Merlin surmised, Cumber’s children had been raised in courts as political animals. He suspected they would be most resistant and suspicious of newcomers.
And quietly watching all was Hilja, the Ice Queen, regal but understated in her pale blue underdress. Her hair, once the color of straw and now graying, was finely braided. She drank wine from a horn as she spun silk for an embroidered robe. But she missed no details.
Confirming some of Merlin’s theories, Cumber allowed his eldest daughter, Eydis—raven-haired, pale-skinned, with green pigment painted around her blue eyes—to address the new arrivals. “Merlin the Magician. A wizard with no magic sent by a king with no claim.” She turned, smiling, to her sister and brothers, pleased with herself. Dagmar, the eldest brother, and the most like his father in bearing and look, grunted his approval. The smaller Calder rolled his eyes, and Solveig, blond and bejeweled, stared daggers at Merlin.
Merlin ignored the slight. “May I have some tea or sweet wine for Lady Cacher? She is frozen to the bone and has ridden the night through.”
Hilja nodded to one of the butlers, who aided Lady Cacher to a bench along the wall, while footmen brought over a horn and some wine.
“My thanks, Lady Cumber,” Lady Cacher said.
“Shall we also make you a bed or will you state your business?” Eydis asked, chin high.
“Young lady, I am not here to make beds but to make kings.”
Eydis stiffened. “You stand before the one true king, conjurer.”
“Perhaps, if your nights last six moons and all you walk on is snow.”
Cumber’s children looked agitated, their eyes darting to the Ice King, who distracted himself with the nipping pup.
Merlin scratched his beard and regarded Eydis. “Now you have regal bearing. And I have no doubt that someday you will make a fine queen. Unfortunately, you have the manners of an ass.”
Eydis gasped. “How dare you?”
Hilja threw down her spindle.
Dagmar stood and drew his sword. “I’ll have your tongue, dog!”
Calder sat back to watch the spectacle about to unfold.
Only Cumber chuckled, a rolling sound that warbled in the timbers of the ceiling. “You Druids don’t have children. I think that’s why you live so damn long. I indulge mine. It is a weakness you wouldn’t understand.”
“You might be surprised,” Merlin answered. “And while I am happy to act as your daughter’s political quintain in more peaceable times, the war winds blow. Have you a plan, Lord Cumber? For it was a bold stroke taking these ports, but now you seem content to squat upon this foul beach like a hen reluctant to drop her eggs.”
Eydis seethed. “Honestly, Father, are you going to allow him to mock you like this?”
Cumber’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Does Uther put up with this nonsense, Merlin? I have no ear for it. I don’t recall asking your opinion on my military strategy.”