The Storyteller and Other Tales by K V Johansen

Author:K V Johansen [Johansen, K V]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780986497421
Amazon: B01JH4O0SC
Goodreads: 31340376
Publisher: Sybertooth Inc.
Published: 2016-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

The Inexorable Tide

I am an old woman now, and my granddaughter’s children play at battles through my orchard, but I hear other voices in the murmur of the leaves, in the hum of the bees and the whisper of the waves along the shore. I see other forms, so beloved, so familiar, in the mists of the lake that hides our last refuge. I remember.

If Livy and Plutarch teach us anything, it is that time is relentless. It presses on, heavy with the weight of peoples, with Fate and Fortune, and in the end it rolls over us, swamps even the best.

We were far from the best. I was not my father; Amhar had no chance to be his; Mordred was ... simply Mordred. Though valiant in battle, he was not the fiery hero his brother Gawain was, and he was not his uncle; he could have been an Arthur in a different style, a builder and restorer, if Arthur had given us a lasting peace.

It seemed at the time as though he had. The Saxon heathen were driven from Britain, the warring kings and dukes swept into Arthur’s orbit. Merlin was gone, sleeping in his cave, or so the songs already said, and I, his daughter, said nothing to deny it. Now the songs say other things of me, of all of us, and I smile and say nothing.

But Merlin was gone, and the Ladies on their island sent me to the King in his place, which a mere girl could not fill, not in that council of warriors. Arthur listened to me with the respect due my father and my training, but my words lacked the force of my father’s prophecy, the strength of his vision.

The King was restless. He was not a lord for peace, though peace was ever his driving dream. When Hoel in Brittany begged aid against the heretic Visigoths on his borders, Arthur’s answer was shaped as much by desire to be doing as by kinship’s right.

Britain armed. The old heroes, Bedwyr and Cai, Gawain and even Mordred, felt their blood wake again. The young who dreamed of heroism, finding no beauty in the quiet farmstead, the green valley and the cattle grazing, could not be held back. The maids talked of champions, and sighed. Only the old mothers sat by the fire with shadows in their eyes, remembering what could be lost.

And I, I, Nimiane, went to the King.

He was a big man, and Roman-dark. In his presence lesser men dwindled, like candles held against the hearth. I found him with Bedwyr, as was usually the case.

“Cousin,” I said, once we had exchanged the usual courtesies — “cousin” was always the style between us, as it had been between Arthur and my father. “Are you set on going to war for Hoel?”

“Hoel has always been a true friend to Britain,” Arthur said, by which he meant, to himself as well. “He gave me aid when I most needed it. You would not counsel me to turn my back on him now?”

“No,” I said.

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