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His eyes widened. "The Irish? Of Dalriada?"
"Indeed. And the enemy of my enemy is a potential friend. A potentially powerful friend. We must find a way to convince this enemy that the Saxons are as great a threat to Eire and Dalriada as they are to Britain. A people looking to expand their borders are generally far happier to marry into a throne and colonize peaceably than to risk their sons' lives in war to drive a native population out. And if they are not happier to begin with, they often can be persuaded to see the advantage of gentler intermarriage, particularly when both groups have much to offer as concerns the safety of the other."
"Do you really think you can persuade the Irish to assist Britain without treachery such as the Saxon foederati used?"
"I do not speak of hiring mercenaries, Medraut. I speak of alliance through the marriage bed."
"But—"
"You will have a great deal more to offer a Dalriadan princess than you now imagine."
His eyes widened once more. "You'll give me a piece of land?"
"More than a piece, should this alliance work out. I have one son to inherit Gododdin and one to inherit Ynys Manaw. What I do with Galwyddel is my own affair."
Her nephew gasped. "Galwyddel? All of it?"
"Most of it, I should think."
He sat down hard on the edge of his bed. "Oh! Aunt, I—I hardly know what to say!"
She laid a finger across his lips. "Say nothing, nephew. I should not have to warn you about the need for discretion in such a proposed alliance."
He shook his head, then nodded vigorously. "I understand, yes."
"Good." She placed a kiss against his brow. "I have had so little time, Medraut, to attend to your needs and education as I ought. Marguase's crimes were none of your doing, but I fear you have been desperately hurt by them and I forget, sometimes, to tell you that you are much honored and beloved."
Tears sprang to his eyes and he turned his glance swiftly away to hide them. He groped with one hand and squeezed hers, able to make no other reply.
"I will see you, then, in the royal villa, when Cutha arrives at Caerleul."
Covia
For years, Covia
"They twist the soft and hard irons together," he had murmured, trailing fingertips across her breasts. "Fold them time and again, eight, sixteen folds per blade, but the finest smiths swore while deeply in their cups that the only proper way to temper such a blade was to lift it smoking and white from the forge and plunge it into the belly of a drunken slave."
"Barbaric," she had murmured, pla
Then Myrddin's exact words had come back to her: the belly of a drunken slave.
Lips twitching with satanic delight, she had ridden out from Glaste
She seduced him with her body, with endless flasks of wine and sultry laughter, led him down into the caverns to show him a secret he would never forget, and allowed him to watch while she forged her greatest Damascus sword blade yet, smiled above the pounding of hammer against folded steel as he drank and exclaimed and drank some more, filling his belly full of liquid.
And then she plunged the sword into it and the young fool died with a terrible scream and a hiss of steam erupting from the wound. She laughed as he died, his blood pouring across Covia
This sword, she would gift to Artorius and laugh each time he praised it. One more gift did Covia
Ten years it had been since she had gifted that blade to Artorius, and eleven battles had he won with it, eleven battles for which she had made very certain to renew the "magical" properties of sword and sheath—"for luck," as she laughingly assured him. The great Artorius, against whom no one could stand in battle, the magnificent Caliburn shining in the sunlight like living flame as he cut down foes who could not stand against the sword's power... And all that "magic" was nothing more than the boiled sap of a common plant found on nearly any oak tree in Britain. She pla
Until that time came, she would simply have to content herself with stirring up trouble within his family. No one had ever guessed the fate of the poor princeling of Dumnonia, whose kin mourned him and puzzled over his mysterious disappearance. And now, it appeared that young Medraut and Morgana were about to hand her another golden opportunity at revenge. She waited patiently until Morgana swept from the room, then slipped across the corridor, tapped at the door, and stepped quickly inside.