Winter's Blossom: The Seasons of Arthur

Chapter 40

The world became a blur for me as I dropped in and out of lucidity. One moment I would be thinking and seeing clearly before slipping back into the fever dreams.

In my dreams my ghosts came to haunt me. A parade marched before my eyes, pausing to look down upon me. I saw Agravaine cut down again, and I screamed my fevered screams at the blood and the spears. 'I died for you.' He told me in an echoey voice that seemed to reverberate in my heart. 'I'm sorry.' I cried, but the ghost was fading as he walked away.

Next in the parade was Elaine. She stood above my bed, tall and pale, her red hair like a fiery halo that burned in the darkness that engulfed her. She stared out into the shadows that Agravaine had disappeared into, before she looked down at me and upon her face the fury shone. 'It should have been you.' She told me in high, ghostly tones as cold as ice and as cutting as a scythe. 'I know.' I wept pathetically at her fading form. 'I wish it had been.' Things would have been so much simpler had I died. Agravaine would still be alive, ready to lead his people in their fight against the invader, to marry his betrothed and be tied to the kingdom with a close kinship to Owain, perhaps made even tighter by a bond formed of grief over the death of their friend and kinsman.

They came, one by one, with their accusations and condemnation.

Enniaun Girt, tall and foreboding. 'Yet another Votadini princeling had to die for your arrogance and ego.' He scorned. And another man, who looked exactly like my uncle but with a softer expression on his face. His eyes more like shining glass than hard flint. 'You are not the man I had hoped you would become.' He told me sadly.

'Father.' I screamed after the man I had never known, begging him to come back. But instead came my mother, timid and tear stricken. 'You were all I had.' She told me with hollow sobs. 'Perhaps you should have died. Your father and I could have had more sons, better ones. We could have been a family...'

Tear streaked Feidlimid. 'You said you loved me.'

Wet eyed Julia. 'You will marry a princess.'

'Who would ever marry you?' Ambrosius demanded harshly. 'You are a nobody. An orphan with naught a proud name you do not deserve. Arrogant beyond your right. You alienate more than you befriend. Only the men you lead will love you, and fear you in equal measure as you spend their lives like copper coins to pay for your ego. You are an insignificant boy in the shadow of great men.'

And Owain, taller than I remembered. 'You are not my brother.' He scorned me. 'Lancelot is my brother. He is a better man than you.'

And there was Lancelot, he did not speak but his laughter rang out, louder and louder so that it seemed to threaten to burst my head. I was hot, so hot it seemed that my hair was aflame and still all I could hear was the mocking laughter, cruel and cutting and I screamed in protest. I denied their accusations as I screamed, and I accepted them too somehow. I cried that I was sorry. That I would make it right somehow. I screamed, but no sound would come out even though the screaming itself seemed to pierce my skull.

I woke suddenly. My breathing was short and sharp. I looked out with wide, wild eyes, hunting fearfully for the cruel ghosts. I painfully pushed myself up onto my elbows, still desperately scanning around me but I saw only a room dimly lit by the faint, flickering firelight from torches. Everything seemed strangely solid, and my body hurt like it had not been hurting for days.

There was movement to my right, and I shrank away from it. I had found the ghost, and now Elaine came to lean over me and like a lost little boy all I could do was shirk back and clutch at covers. But this was not Elaine as I remembered her, the one who had haunted my dreams, both fever and before. There was no fire here. Rather than the blazing halo I recalled her hair seemed almost grey in the faint light, and the blazing eyes were red but not from any inner fire. There was no defiant tilt of her chin as she sought to challenge the world of men, which confined her and attempted to dictate to which deity to whom she must pray. Nor did her expression seem as powerful and hating as they had when she had ghosted past my bed with a burning halo of red gold her, her eyes ablaze with anger and her words spearpoints that pierced into my soul.