King Arthur: Dragon's Child: Book One (King Arthur Trilogy 1) by M. K. Hume

Author:M. K. Hume
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Headline Review
Published: 2009-02-05T06:00:00+00:00

Uther sensed that his final destiny was fast approaching. He knew that age was about to defeat the iron fist of his mind. His skin was thin and its papery surface bruised and bled easily. His bones supported neither flesh nor muscle beneath his wrinkled skin, and he realized his remaining vitality was slowly rotting from deep inside his body. His chest pained him, his ankles and feet were swollen to twice their natural size and they were blue and cold to the touch.

Uther wasn’t afraid of physical death, and he had few regrets about how he had achieved his ends during a long and bloody life - except for the seduction of Ygerne. All things considered, her amazing beauty had not been worth the scandals, the trouble and the tears she had showered over him in the many years since he had first seduced her and stolen her from her first husband, Gorlois of Cornwall.

And now, when he should have been entitled to lay down the sword, draw peace from his confessor and live out his last days in a semblance of comfort, Ygerne had sent him a nasty and dangerous tool of revenge.

Artorex! Even the name, with its unambiguously regal Rex, was an insult to Uther’s rule. He should have smothered the brat himself when Ygerne’s midwife shoved the tiny, whining bundle into his arms. At the time, he feared that Ygerne had borne one last child to her dead spouse, a son who might one day claim Uther’s throne to settle the blood debt he was owed.

But he, Uther Pendragon, would never surrender his crown so easily.

‘Lucius! That sodding, pious bastard!’ Uther swore pungently, describing the Bishop of Glastonbury in soldier’s terms.

Lucius of Glastonbury had taken up the squalling infant and had sworn to Uther that he would never see the brat again. At the time of Ygerne’s travails, Uther hadn’t yet recognized the grasping power of the Church of the Christus - but he understood its ambitions now. The troublesome brat had been grown to manhood in a faraway place, safe from Uther’s arm, and had been raised more as a Roman than a Celt - as was that Satan-spawn, Lucius. The boy had been trained from birth to be a weapon against Uther Pendragon, led by the trusted Myrddion Merlinus, who had plotted against him and guided his enemy’s path to manhood.

Uther fumed impotently and hurled his silver cup feebly against the wall, where it rolled pitifully in the red lees of wine. How like spilled blood the wine appeared. He could no longer remember a tenth of the men he had killed, but the Boar of Cornwall’s face had never left him, waking or sleeping. After all, that filthy cow, Morgan, never allowed him to forget whose child she was, and how his wife, her mother, would never truly love him for the treacherous crimes he had committed in the name of lust.

‘Damn the bitch!’

He should have had her strangled - but he desperately needed her skills with herbs and magic spells.

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