Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge

  MOON LORD:

  THE FALL OF

  KING ARTHUR

  THE RUIN OF STONEHENGE

  BY

  J.P. REEDMAN

  First Published in Great Britain 2013 by Mirador Publishing

  Copyright © 2013 by J.P. Reedman

  Cover art © 2013 by Frances Quinn

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers or author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  First edition: 2013

  Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflects the reality of any locations or people involved.

  A copy of this work is available through the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-909220-72-0

  Mirador Publishing

  Mirador

  Wearne Lane

  Langport

  Somerset

  TA10 9HB

  PROLOGUE

  THE VISION

  The last storm of winter shrieked across the Great Plain, blowing clouds of snow on its boreal breath and painting the stones of the ancestral temple of Khor Ghor with glittering patterns. Icy flakes crept into worn carvings and under lintels and made a frosty beard on the great Stone of Summer with its bowed head and glowering mouth.

  In the heart of the circle the old man stood alone, listening to the roar and shriek of the storm. His face was leathery, brown from the elements, hawk-like in profile; his free-falling hair, once as black as the birds beneath the capstones of the circle, was now a dull slate-grey, sullen and harsh as the stones themselves. He wore a calfskin tunic, fringed with bones and tusks, and a hat of beaver skin protected his head from the blast of the wind. In his hands he carried his seeing stone, a lump of rounded quartz bequeathed to him in youth by his long-dead mentor, Buan-ann, the Old Woman of the tribe in distant Faraon, where the holy mountain God of Bronze rose to heaven, the dark spikes of its summit visible all the way to the Isle of Ibherna. He raised the quartz to his eyes and breathed heavily upon it, his breath fogging the age-polished surface.

  He was the Merlin, high priest of Khor Ghor, the Dance-of-Ancestors… and an old man with fear in his heart.

  “What can you tell me, spirits?” he murmured to the seeing-stone, to the sky, to the thin dark bluestones rising round him like a ring of watchers, frozen tribesmen from some ancient time. “What do you see? Why have I felt fear in my heart from Solstice onwards?”

  The wind howled louder, rising and ululating, filled with malice and the voices of the long dead who did not sleep easy in their barrows. With shaking fingers, Merlin slipped a handful of chosen berries beneath his tongue in order to commune with the spirit-world. Within minutes his vision blurred, dimmed, streaking away into nothingness. Dizziness overwhelmed him and he thudded to his knees in the snow, back resting against the Stone of Adoration, the focal stone of Khor Ghor, standing alone before the colossal arch of the Door into Winter, with its enormous capstone, attached by sturdy mortise and tenon joints, thrust up almost into the lowering snow-cloud.

  In his age-spotted hands the seeing stone grew hot and Merlin fancied could see figures stirring in its heart, playing out some secret, sacred dance… No, not figures, not of men, at least… The image was of the Sun, a wheel of blood, dying over the altar of Khor Ghor as He did every Midwinter on the Shortest Day.

  But this time, in Merlin’s vision, Bhel Sunface did not rise again, as He had risen since the world was forged.

  Instead His light became dim, obscured, a weak thing on the verge of extinction. The Sun in Merlin’s seeing-stone was eclipsed by a Moon as black as jet.

  CHAPTER ONE

  YNYS YRCH

  The King was dead.

  Loth of Ynys Yrch lay upon a bier of woven branches in the cult-house, his body puffed with putrefaction, rancid and purple after a week of death. Seashells covered his eyes, hiding their hideous fixed stare, while his jaw was bound shut with a strip of sinew to keep his mouth from opening in the endless rictus scream of the dead.

  Well might Loth have screamed, his tormented voice echoing in spirit realms both above and below, for he had died not only horribly but ignobly, not on the field of battle or leading his men in the hunt but when he was lounging around his roundhouse with his warriors, drunk and stinking, a captive woman from a coastal tribe upon his knee. One moment he had been dandling the slattern with one hand and slurping from his big, ceremonial beaker with the other; the next he had clutched his throat and toppled to the ground, foaming and retching, the mead spewing from his mouth in a bile-filled fountain. The slave –woman ran off screeching while Loth continued to writhe in the rushes, his face livid and his tongue thrusting from his mouth.

  His men gathered round trying to rouse him, but he was past the aid of men; his throat rattled and he passed into the shadowy arms of She-Who-Guards, the protectress of the Dead and ancestral bones.

  It was not just the Death-Spirit who roamed that night. Sinister as the Watcher herself, Loth’s wife, Morigau of Belerion, had stolen in to his hut and claimed his corpse, carrying it with the aid of her sons and attendants to the great cult-house that sat in decaying splendour between the two ancient stones circles, Ring of Moon and Wheel of Sun, that stood on a long peninsula between two lochs, one saltwater, the other fresh. Morigau was priestess there, by her own appointment after the mysterious deaths of her rivals, and it was her right to claim the body as Loth’s wife, but men made the sign of evil as they saw her pass in her cloak of raven crow-feathers, with her followers carrying Loth’s corpse high on their shoulders and the terns and sea-eagles wheeling hungrily above.

  In the cult house with its red-painted walls and four jagged stones standing sentinel at the door, Morigau set about performing rites over Loth’s body but she did not speak the words to assist the dead man’s spirit upon its journey into the West. Instead she cursed Loth, uttering dreadful chants to bind his spirit between the Lands of the Living and the realm of the Everliving Ones for eternity. A terrible punishment, the worst one could wish upon the newly dead.

  She had hated her husband.

  “Yes, Loth…” She trailed her index finger over the putrescent cheek of the dead man. The long nail would have drawn blood had there been any left to bleed. “I have my revenge at last. You beat me and humiliated me once too often—I, who am a priestess and of royal house, not some drab to warm your bed! Even worse, you maltreated my beloved boy, my beautiful one, who shall be king after you… and who knows what else he might be one day.”

  The sound of footsteps in the long, tomb-like passage leading to the inner sanctum of the cult house drew her from the reeking bier of her dead husband. Lips curved in a snarl, she groped for the honed flint dagger she always carried concealed in her robes... She knew that unrest grew in the tribe, and that with Loth’s demise she and her four sons were in some danger. She was not loved on Ynys Yrch and rumours had quickly spread about the possibility that henbane-root had poisoned Loth’s last beaker of mead; these harsh whispers were followed by hostile questions about the parentage of Morigau’s boys, Agravaen, Gharith, Ga’haris, and, especially her eldest son, Mordraed who was potentially Loth’s heir.

  Morigau’s lip curled contemptuously, giving her small, heart-shaped face an ugly, petulant look. Agravaen was obviously Loth’s get, a surly boy, with not much of Morigau’s blood in him: pimply, heavy-featured and a dullard, but strong of limb and single minded. Arrow fodder, maybe, but one who would do as he was told w
ithout thinking. Gharith and Ga’haris? Well, most men of the tribes had brown hair and eyes, as did both boys; and who could say for absolute certain who a child’s father was, unless men came to locking their women away from all other male contacts?

  She did not care overmuch what happened to those three anyway, legitimate or not. None of them could compare to Mordraed, her firstborn, her best… the one who deserved the world, and she would give him that if she could.

  She breathed a sigh of relief as she recognised his familiar shadow in the corridor and re-sheathed her secret dagger. Moments later Mordraed strode under the arched door-lintel with its painted red diamonds and lozenges. Her other sons followed on his heels, a pack of eager puppies. Mordraed always led them, caring for his younger brothers in a way that Morigau, their mother, could not bring herself to. She had not wanted such a gaggle of children, only the one who would bring her desires to fruition, but they had come and she had whelped them like a bitch, and farmed them out to whatever village woman would suckle and tend them. Had her will been her own she would have exposed them, giving them to the spirits in return for greater gifts of power for herself but they were princes after all and Loth would have none of it.

  “Mother, it is bad news, I fear.” Mordraed crossed the room without glancing at his mother, making the required bow at the sacred shrine at the far end—a dresser similar to that seen in the local homes but larger and more finely crafted, filled with holy objects both on its shelves and under its stone slabs—strange little figurines of blobbed stone with crude eyes pecked on them and fine polished axe heads that were too good to be of use to any but denizens of the spirit-world.

  “Tell me…”

  Mordraed turned on his heel, folding his arms. He taut as a bowstring, every muscle quivering with rage. “The Boneman and Cludd rally the people against us. They cast blame on you not only for father’s death but for the poor catch of fish and failed harvest of the past few years.”

  Morigau stood in silence, staring at her eldest son with her feral dark eyes. Despite the urgency of his words, the terrible truth he was imparting, she could not help but feel a surge of pride and of a fierce, almost unnatural love at the sight of him. I wrought this… . she thought. Me…

  Her son. Surely a man-god blessed by the spirits, born of a coupling of sister and brother, in an act taboo and yet sacred, marking his special-ness.

  In the dim light of the burning tallow cups that ringed Loth’s bier he stood proudly alert, holding a short, composite bow with an arrow on the string. Dark and beautiful, he was like a hero from an old legend—hair the colour of jet fell in loose waves down his back, framing a high-planed face with a nose as straight as a blade and a mouth shapely if stern. Yet none could mistake his male beauty for effeminacy. Although not overly tall, his body was hard and lean, the muscles beneath his jet-studded leather jerkin perfectly developed from years spent mastering the art of the bow.

  He was a deadly archer who seldom missed his mark.

  And if any still believed him weak, fooled by the deceptive beauty of his face, his eyes would have told the truth. Deep as the sea, fathomless, they were a rare dark blue, so dark they appeared almost black, fringed by long lashes that he lowered to conceal his true emotions.

  They were ice-cold eyes, which could at a moment’s notice become blank and pitiless, wholly without compassion.

  Death eyes.

  Morigau, daughter of Y’gerna and half-sister to Ardhu Pendraec, Stone Lord of Prydn, loved Mordraed’s eyes most of all.

  “Mother!” Mordraed’s voice rose, sharp and irritable. When she stared at him with such devouring intensity it made him uncomfortable. “Have you not heard a word I said? Ack-olon thinks it too dangerous for us to stay on Ynys Yrch; he counsels that we flee for the mainland… .”

  Morigau hissed like a serpent, eyes igniting with anger. “How dare he suggest such a thing without consulting me first? What of your birthright? You should rule after Loth!”

  Mordraed’s lip curled. “It would seem many do not believe Loth was my father… . Cludd, his sister’s son, in particular. He has petitioned the Boneman to be instated by Mother-right and men rally to his cause.”

  “The traitors… the traitors…” Morigau cried, and she spat at Loth’s fat, decaying body. The tallow-filled lamps that lit the chamber swirled, and suddenly the sinew supporting the dead king’s chin snapped and his jaw sprang open as if to utter a horrible mocking laugh from whatever underworld his spirit was trapped in.

  The two youngest boys screamed, flinging their arms round Mordraed, whose lightning hands brought his bow to the draw in an instant. He’d kill Loth again, by the Moon he would, if the hateful old bastard were to return from the dead. Like Morigau, he had despised Loth, and the feeling had been mutual; Loth had suspected the boy might not be his from the day he was born and Mordraed had heard the rumours too … snide comments from other boys, whispers behind the hands of gossiping women. He had cared little, for Loth had been harsh and cruel, taunting him and aiming blows whenever he passed by. He wanted no blood-claim on the foul old man… just to inherit his chieftaincy over these storm-tossed isles as Morigau had promised since he was a tiny child, when she had given him a little bronze dagger and told him whenever he was angry to stick it into an effigy made of bones and straw that looked a little like Loth.

  The tallow cups fluttered again and a swirl of salty sea-wind rushed down the passage. Someone else was coming, brought into the cult-house on the storm…

  Torches flared and suddenly the whole chamber was brightly illuminated, shadows fleeing backwards in a mad umbrous rush toward Loth’s bier. Cludd, the son of Loth’s sister Clotagh, marched sternly into the chamber surrounded by upwards of a dozen men, some carrying fire-brands, other bearing unsheathed daggers and menacing clubs lined with spines of flint. The shaman known as the Boneman strode at Cludd’s side, a scrawny elder with a cloud-grey beard to his waist and a necklace of men’s finger bones jangling against his bony chest. He was the guardian of the crematory hearth in the Temple of the Moon, and was acclaimed oldest man in the tribe, having lived nearly three Moon-Years… over fifty Sun-Turnings. He had staunchly opposed Morigau becoming a priestess from the moment she arrived on Ynys Yrch, a new bride with her belly already swelling—and was the only one of her rivals to live to confront her, for he would not treat with her in any wise.

  Morigau’s face was thunder-hued, her eyes sparking. “You have no right to come here! The spirits will curse you!”

  “It is not the true men of Ynys Yrch who will be cursed,” said the Boneman. “You are the one who is blighted. Your taint has scared the fish from our shores and caused the crops to wither. And so you must go, renouncing all ties to this island.”

  “And if I refuse?” She glared at him, gaze black with fury.

  “You die, and your brood of bastards with you.”

  Cludd, a heavy set man who resembled his uncle Loth, circled round Mordraed, looking him up and down. The youth’s fingers were still on his bowstring, his eyes murderous.

  “You...” Cludd walked in front of him, arms folded over his broad chest which, Mordraed noted, bore two round sun-discs of sheet-gold—an assertion of power and authority, objects that proclaimed his wealth and lineage. “Put down that bow and you may live. I am not a harsh man… I have no real quarrel with you, Mordraed, despite the fact you are the scion of that she-bitch, Morigau. But you are to go from this place and never return… along with those surly whelps.” He gestured to the cowering younger boys and scowling Agravaen. “Gods only know who their fathers might be but I have no doubt they are not spawned of my uncle, Loth. No more than you are.”

  “You dishonour me!” Mordraed snarled.

  “No, that bitch has dishonoured you” Cludd jabbed a finger in Morigau’s direction. “Now go, and take her with you… or you will all be burnt in the Bonefire by the next dawn.”

  Mordraed looked mutinous and would have drawn his dagger, but Morigau, standing near
by, began to waver. If someone, anyone had come to her defence she would have fought her ground. But she would not risk Mordraed in some hopeless battle, he was too important… even if he would not be King of Ynys Yrch after Loth. “We will go,” she cried, thrusting herself between Mordraed and the stocky figure of Cludd. “But this will not be forgotten, Cludd, mark my words.”

  Morigau exited the cult-house, her face almost demonic with despair and rage. The young boys scampered after her, wailing in terror as fat Agravaen pinched and swatted at them, taking out his own frustrations at losing his princely position in the tribe. Mordraed saw him jab his fingernails into Gharith’s arm, drawing blood, and the older youth slapped his chunky hand away, then twisted the fingers back until he yowled like a wildcat. “Stop your foolishness,” he warned Agravaen, “or you’ll never wield dagger or bow again, I promise you, brother.”

  Agravaen scowled at him and pulled himself free, cradling his wounded hand, but he did as bade and ceased to torment Gharith and Ga’haris—he knew his older brother made no idle threats.

  Huddled close together the outcast family hurried down the old path that led to the seashore. Crofters in huts stared out of their doorways, calling curses and spitting—Morigau had been hated indeed, well known for her evil dealings and bloody rites, and now that she had been toppled from power they were not afraid to show their dislike.

  Half way to the shingle spit that faced the nearest point of the mainland they saw two men waving at them, beckoning them on from atop a dune of sand. Morigau’s two loyal companions La’morak and Ack-olon. Not only her protectors, but her lovers of many long years.

  “Where have you been?” shrieked Morigau angrily as the little band neared the waiting men. She struck out with her fists, pummelling one and then the other. “You should have been at the temple, guarding us! Guarding my sons! No, you were off hiding, while that oaf Cludd threw us out like shite into the midden!”