Ride the Storm Page 17

  Well, okay, some of them did. The over-the-top magic, the endless curiosity, and the put-upon grumpiness were all familiar enough. Plus the whole half-incubus-wizard-born-in-medieval-Wales-serving-a-king-named-Arthur thing. But other things . . . sometimes it had felt like I was reading about another person entirely.

  Like the Merlin of legend hadn’t just switched names, but personalities over the years.

  “Stop interrupting,” Rosier told me.

  “Well, if you’d get to the point—”

  “Which I would do, and faster, if you weren’t constantly intruding to pepper me with questions. Did no one ever tell you that’s rude?”

  I sat back.

  “All right,” Rosier said. “It’s story time.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “There once was a king,” Rosier said. “His name was Uther.”

  “Uther?” That sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Well, not really. His name was Ambrosius Aurelianus, a Roman name for a Romanized Celt, but nobody called him that. It was Arthur’s given name, too, by the way; he was named after the old man. They were both descended from yet another Ambrosius, who was a cavalry officer under the Romans before they left Britain. Caused historians no end of trouble, it has, all those Ambrosiuses—”

  “Rosier.”

  “But Uther was the name his men gave him on the battlefield, meaning terrible or fearsome, and it stuck. And it fit. More so than the title he invented for himself: Riothamus, ‘king of all the Britons.’” Rosier rolled his eyes. “War chief is more like it, of a ragtag group trying to hold Britain together after the legions pulled out. Half his ‘subjects’ were at war with him at any given time, and the other half certainly didn’t consider him—” He stopped, seeing my face.

  “There once was a king,” he said dryly. “His name was Uther.”

  “Okay.”

  “Like his son, he was a great warrior. But unlike Arthur, he lacked an appreciation for the subtler virtues, not to mention any and all social graces. The dogs used to congregate under the table, right where he sat. They knew he dropped enough for a dozen men. Ate like a wild savage, spraying it about.”

  “And this is relevant?”

  “Yes, in fact. Uther was a giant of a man, battle-scarred and weather-worn. His teeth were crooked and cracked from one too many fists to the face. He could barely see out of one eye, from the great scar running a hairbreadth away, which pulled it up as badly as the other lid drooped. It allowed him to leer and look perpetually surprised, all at the same time, which you have to admit is fairly impressive. And then there was that great cauliflower of a nose—”

  “I get the picture.”

  “I doubt it,” he said dryly. “Men don’t live that way anymore, don’t fight like it, either. Even soldiers don’t. Years of hand-to-hand with swords and knives, of hard battles and harder winters, of constant stress and a great group of savages who followed you only due to your being the greatest savage of them all . . . it leaves a mark.”

  “So Uther was unattractive.”

  Rosier laughed. “Yes, in the same way that a skeleton is svelte! He was one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen, even after all these years. Which didn’t matter to his men, of course, who were hardly the courtly knights of the storybooks. The local ladies were happy if they washed the dirt off once a month and remembered to only spit in the corners. But Uther didn’t want a local girl, did he?”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Well, of course not! Or we wouldn’t have a story, would we?”

  “I don’t know. You’re telling this.”

  “I’m trying to,” he said pointedly.

  I shut up.

  “Of course, there were plenty of girls who would have taken him, scars and teeth and warts and all,” Rosier said. “And thought themselves lucky in the bargain. He was powerful and wealthy, by the standards of the day. Which meant you probably wouldn’t be raped by one of the Germanic invaders if you married him, and might have more than one dress to wear. But Uther didn’t want one of those girls. He might have, under different circumstances, the way you might want hamburger if you’ve never had filet—”

  “Thank you for comparing women to beef. I assume you mean he met someone else.”

  “Not someone, some fey. Igraine, daughter of Nimue, queen of what you humans call the Green Fey and the legends call the Lady of the Lake.”

  “What? Wait.”

  Rosier nodded. “That’s what I said. Wait. Let’s discuss this. But no, Uther didn’t want to discuss anything. Uther wanted the wife of Gorlois, Prince of Cornwall—or so he called himself. Everyone was a prince or king in those days, and who was to tell them no? Rome had gone and Britain was up for grabs, and it was winner take all, with the winner looking like it might be the Saxons until the local Britons got some help. But not from Rome. They’d written telling their old masters that they were being overrun, and Rome had written back telling them to join the club. Rome was dealing with Attila at the time—yes, that Attila—and couldn’t help, so the Britons turned to someone who could.”

  “The fey.”

  He nodded. “The Green, to be precise, who were more than happy to assist in return for some of those tolerant British women we were talking about. Always had a problem with their population, did the fey, and that went double for the Green living so close to the Dark and being at war with them half the time. People get killed in wars and have to be replaced, and human women made excellent . . . companions.”

  “Spoken like a true incubus. You mean they were enslaved in a foreign land.”

  “Spoken like a true modern woman, who hasn’t had to deal with living in a perpetual war zone. What you consider enslavement, many of them viewed as escape—from famine, violence, disease, death. . . . In any case, it wasn’t that foreign. People came and went much more freely then, living on both sides of the barrier. Like the beauteous Igraine.”

  “Beauteous?”

  “Oh yes.” Rosier leaned back against the tree, his eyes going distant with memory. “Hair a river of ebony, skin like alabaster, eyes as blue as a winter’s day—and twice as cold. She inherited her mother’s looks, but little of her magic and therefore decided to live on earth. Yes, war-ridden, diseased, and what have you.” He waved a hand. “Amazing what people will do when they’re smitten.”

  “Smitten. You mean . . . with Uther?”

  He burst out laughing. “No, not with Uther! With her Cornish prince! Or so she liked everyone to believe.”

  “Then why are you telling me all this stuff about Uther?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Uther wasn’t a man to let a little thing like a happy marriage stand in his way. Not when the lady in question wasn’t just beautiful, but so well connected. Uther was trying to unite the Britons to fight the invaders, but petty princes like Cornwall were causing him no end of trouble. They saw no reason why he should lead the fight instead of one of them, despite the fact that he could crush the lot of them if he felt like it. But he couldn’t crush them and the Saxons, too, so something had to give.”

  “And that something was Gorlois.”

  Rosier nodded again. “He was the leader. Kill him, marry his wife to keep the fey alliance, unite the ‘kingdoms,’ and defeat the invaders. That was the plan.”

  “And end up as high king in the process.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t he have? He might have been an ugly, uncouth boor, but he was a smart, ugly, uncouth boor, and damn good on the battlefield. He knew how to concentrate on what was important, and how to keep his people safe.”

  “It sounds like you liked him.”

  “I did. Well enough to help him, in any case.”

  “Help him . . . how?”

  Rosier shrugged. “Gorlois wasn’t the problem, not really. He’d just gotten delusio
ns of grandeur after his marriage, and saw no reason why he should bow to some wild man from Wales. But he couldn’t back it up where it counted; he couldn’t defeat Uther in battle, which would normally have made dealing with him easy enough.”

  “Except for his wife.”

  “Yes. Igraine was the problem. She may or may not have really loved Gorlois; I was never sure. But she definitely loved how easy he was to manipulate. And therefore how easy it was to lay down terms advantageous to the fey but not so much for the Britons. Gorlois essentially did whatever she wanted, and insisted on equally harsh terms for everybody else or he would take his toys and go home, and they could fight the damn Saxons on their own. Yes, she liked her marriage just fine.”

  “But Uther didn’t.”

  “No, Uther didn’t. So he made war on Gorlois, and when the man sent his wife to Tintagel on the coast, for safekeeping, Uther asked for a favor—”

  “Wait. Wait. I know this.” A half-forgotten memory rattled around in my head, something I’d heard once, or maybe read. Something shocking enough to be remembered . . .

  I abruptly sat up. “That was you! You helped him—”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  “You helped him sneak into the castle—”

  “It wasn’t a castle then, and we didn’t sneak. There was no reason to sneak.”

  “—and pretend to be Gorlois!”

  “Emrys gets his ability at illusion from me,” Rosier agreed.

  “You helped him . . . you helped him . . . rape Igraine.”

  And despite everything, despite Rosier’s demon lord status, I was still shocked. And appalled. And it must have come through in my voice, because he frowned at me.

  “Yes, everything is so simple, isn’t it? So cut-and-dried when you aren’t fighting for your life every day, and the lives of your people—”

  “Uther wasn’t fighting for his life! He was fighting for a better position—”

  “He was fighting for his life!”

  Rosier tried to get to his feet, but they were still in process. So he ended up on his proto butt in the mud, glaring at me. It might have been funny another time, but right now I had to struggle not to punch him.

  “Do you think the fey gave a damn about the humans they guarded?” he demanded. “They did the absolute minimum they could get away with—enough to hold the borders, but not to drive out the invaders, which would have removed the reason for their aid, wouldn’t it? They were perfectly content to have the country in a state of never-ending warfare, but Uther—he might have been a man of war, but he wanted peace, lusted after it, much more than he ever did that cold fey—”

  “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it—”

  “—bitch who I doubt ever loved anyone. I didn’t approve of what he was doing—”

  “I’m sure! An incubus disapproves!”

  “She says with such disdain! Knowing nothing about us—”

  “I know enough!”

  “You know nothing! My people do not rape!”

  “No, they just use tricks, like incubus powers—”

  “To enhance, not to overcome. We pride ourselves on our wit, our beauty, our goddamn charm! We do not need tricks!”

  “Yet you helped Uther.”

  For the first time, Rosier looked slightly uncomfortable, but his voice was defiant. “It seemed the only way. The battle was raging that night, and Uther had instructed his men to take out Gorlois, regardless of the cost. He knew the prince’s supporters would break and run as soon as they heard their leader was dead. But that meant he had to get to Igraine that evening, before she heard it, too. Otherwise, she might run off and marry some other, easy-to-manipulate type, and Uther would be right back where he started. He came to me and begged for help.”

  “And you gave it to him.”

  Rosier looked at me angrily. “If I hadn’t, many more women would have suffered the same fate as Igraine. There’s no black or white, girl, not in this story. Stop looking for it!”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that ever since Gorlois’ marriage, the fey had been demanding more and more tribute for their aid. The old quota had been relatively easy to fill; as I said, there were always those who viewed Faerie as an escape from violence, want, and uncertainty. They might be slaves, but they’d be slaves with full bellies who slept in safety, and to many in those days, that seemed like paradise. But afterward . . .”

  “Afterward?”

  “It worsened every year. By the time the war broke out, mothers were hiding baby girls, swearing they’d been stillborn. Kidnappings were rampant, with girls forced to move about under armed guard. Battles were constantly breaking out among neighboring clans, just to take prisoners who could be given to the fey instead of the dwindling supply of local girls—”

  “God.”

  He nodded. “And people were starting to ask why they should fight for Uther when the Saxons might at least let them keep some of their women. Something had to give.”

  “But . . . but why did the fey need so many women?”

  “They claimed it was for their border war with the Dark, but I suspect that tension with the Svarestri was more worrisome. And then there was the lucrative trade their slavers had established with the Blue Fey, who might claim noninvolvement in our day, but who bought plenty of fertile human slaves in the past.”

  “But they had to know they couldn’t keep it up forever,” I protested. “Sooner or later, they’d end up more human than fey!”

  Rosier shook his head. “The common practice was to have a wife of pure fey heritage to bear your true children, the ones meant to carry on your name and bloodline. And human concubines to bear your half-breeds, as many as you could manage. The stronger of those, the ones who inherited much of their father’s magic, were kept in Faerie, where they were used as border guards and cannon fodder in the wars. Their lives tended to be brutal and short, although there were exceptions. Igraine, for instance.”

  “But she went to earth.”

  “Yes, as her mother’s emissary. Running the slave trade was her way of proving her value. I assume there was some sort of agreement: manage the humans effectively, and when Gorlois dies, return to take your place at my side. . . .” He shrugged.

  “And did she?”

  “No. I doubt Nimue planned to give her half-human daughter a damn thing; set too many precedents. But in the end it didn’t matter. Igraine had inherited her mother’s beauty, but not her life span. She died a year shy of seventy.”

  “And the rest?” I asked. “The children who didn’t get the magic?

  Rosier lifted a brow. “Where do you think the Changeling myths come from? It wasn’t substituting a fey child for a human one so much as dumping the rejects back on earth, to live out their lives as best they could. The more human of them probably did that well enough, but the rest . . .”

  “The local people treated them like monsters,” I said, remembering a story Pritkin had told.

  He nodded. “And in so doing, provided another headache for Uther, who was constantly being pressed to stop the influx of these ‘monstrosities,’ some of whom lashed out at their persecutors in deadly ways.”

  “Can you blame them?”

  “Perhaps not. But they weren’t always selective in who they killed. In short, the whole thing was a giant mess, and as long as Gorlois remained in power, it wasn’t likely to change. Uther therefore challenged him for his throne, trial by single combat. He sprang it on him in open court, knowing he was too proud to back down in public. But not to slip out of the fortress the night before the duel, and when Uther gave chase, to ambush him. And once blood had been shed, there was no way to avoid war.”

  “And Uther didn’t try very hard,” I guessed.

  “On the contrary. A civil war is the last thing he wanted. That’s why he challenge
d the damn man in the first place. He wanted Gorlois’ forces intact, to help him take on the Saxons. Every death in that war was a loss to him, even the ones on the other side, and he was desperate to cut the fighting short before he destroyed his own army.”

  “So you helped him find a workaround.”

  “Igraine was the key to the fey alliance. Without her, the treaty would have to be renegotiated, probably on even worse terms than before. Thousands would suffer. But once she married Uther, well, he was not Gorlois. And not easily manipulated.”

  “But why would she marry her rapist?”

  Rosier shrugged. “To avoid dishonor. To maintain the alliance that was as useful to her people as it was to Uther’s. And to make his life a living hell, which, I may add, she did in spades thereafter.”

  Good, I thought. And then I thought maybe. And then I decided that I didn’t know what to think. Igraine was a victim, but she’d also been an oppressor, running a trade that had destroyed thousands of lives. But Uther hadn’t been blameless, either. He’d been put in a terrible position, but he’d also done a terrible thing.

  I was beginning to think that Rosier was right. The stories made it easy: here were the good guys, here were the bad guys. Root for this group, hate that one. But the truth . . . was a lot more complicated.

  “And what did you get out of all this?” I asked. Because I knew Rosier. He might have genuinely sympathized with Uther, but there was no way he didn’t find a way to profit from it, too.

  He didn’t even try to deny it. “I longed for peace and stability in my lands as much as Uther did in his, but it was impossible on my own. I expended power as soon as I received it, defending my people, keeping the nobles in line, quarreling with the damn high council—a thousand things. My father had no such concerns, because there were two of us, working together to stockpile power to keep the family strong. With another incubus of the royal line, I could do the same. Instead of a house constantly on the verge of disintegration, we could be powerful again, respected, even feared. I told Uther that we could help each other—”