Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott

Author:Anna Elliott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2009-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

ISOLDE PUT A HAND OUT to steady herself as she picked her way carefully down the rocky slope toward the sea. She’d slept, at last, but had woken at dawn’s first light, chilled and sore, every muscle stiff from the night on the cold ground, despite the sheepskin. She had, too, a fierce, throbbing headache behind her eyes. Bran and Hereric had been already awake, and they’d set out almost at once, after a breakfast of smoked fish and cheese and more of the thin, sour wine, keeping to the rough moorland country and avoiding the main roads.

They had met a few travelers—a boy herding goats, a tinsmith pushing his wares in a wooden cart—and passed a few settlements along the way where curls of smoke rose from the roofs and cows lowed contentedly in the fields. The countryside was still ravaged, though, from the recent fighting, and most of the farms they passed were either deserted or burned, pillaged and sacked by the Saxons as they’d made their final advance. Someday, maybe, Isolde thought, the families who’d fled would return to till the fields and dig up the valuables they’d buried beneath earthen floors. But not yet.

Now it was nearly evening, the sun sinking in the west in a blaze of fiery red, the shadows of dusk gathering as they descended toward what Isolde could see was a small cove on the shoreline below. One of the countless inlets that marked Cornwall’s coast, this one too small or too shallow or too far from settlement for fisher-folk to use.

Bran had run on ahead, slithering and sliding down the rough, uneven slope, and Hereric turned to her and made a sign. Nearly there, Isolde guessed he meant. She followed Hereric to the bottom of the cliff path and saw that they stood on the pebble-strewn beach of a small bay, where a narrow stream ran steeply down another channel of rocky slope to meet the sea. A narrow jetty of stones jutted out from the shallows and served as a landing pier for a small painted fishing vessel. Its sails were furled, its bow bobbing gently in the steadily lapping waves.

Close by, Bran emerged from behind a goatskin curtain hung over a stretch of the cliff face, covering what appeared to be the mouth of a cave.

“Come on.” He beckoned to them. “I’ve told them you’re here.”

The mouth of the cave was low enough that Hereric had to duck his head as he slipped inside, and as Isolde followed she found that they stood in a long, narrow chamber carved out of the surrounding rock, the walls tapering to a ceiling only a little higher than a man’s head. A burning rush stuck in tallow cast a dim, flickering light, and the air was chill, damp and smoky and smelling of the sea.

Before her were two men, one half-lying toward the back of the cave on what looked like a rough pile of skins, his form in shadow, so that Isolde saw only his outline as he straightened, starting at their entrance.

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