‘Good girl,’ Nimue said, and patted Olwen’s hair and I could almost imagine the girl purring as she lay so contentedly at Nimue’s feet. Nimue still stared at me, and I, as I paced between those tall fire-lit tree trunks, stared back at her.
Nimue looked as she had looked when I had fetched her from the Isle of the Dead. She looked as though she had not washed, or combed her hair, or taken any care of herself in years. Her empty eye socket had no patch, or any false eye, but was a shrunken, shrivelled scar in her haggard face. Her skin was deeply ingrained with dirt, her hair was a greasy, matted tangle that fell to her waist. Her hair had once been black, but now it was bone white, all but for one black streak. Her white robe was filthy, but over it she wore a misshapen sleeved coat, much too big for her, which I suddenly realized must be the Coat of Padarn, one of the Treasures of Britain, while on a finger of her left hand was the plain iron Ring of Eluned. Her nails were long and her few teeth black. She looked much older, or perhaps that was just the dirt accentuating the grim lines of her face. She had never been what the world would call beautiful, but her face had been quickened by intelligence and that had made her attractive, but now she looked repulsive and her once lively face was bitter, though she did offer me a shadow of a smile as she held up her left hand. She was showing me the scar, the same scar that I bore on my left hand, and in answer I held up my own palm and she nodded in satisfaction. ‘You came, Derfel.’
‘Did I have any choice?’ I asked bitterly, then pointed to the scar on my hand. ‘Doesn’t this pledge me to you? Why attack Ceinwyn to bring me to you, when you already had this?’ I tapped the scar again.
‘Because you wouldn’t have come,’ Nimue said. Her mad creatures flocked about her throne like courtiers, others fed the fires and one sniffed at my ankles like a dog. ‘You have never believed,’ Nimue accused me. ‘You pray to the Gods, but you don’t believe in them. No one believes properly now, except us.’ She waved her purloined staff at the halt, the half-blind, the maimed and the mad, who stared at her in adoration. ‘We believe, Derfel,’ she said.
‘I too believe,’ I replied.
‘No!’ Nimue screamed the word, making some of the creatures under the trees call out in terror. She pointed the staff at me. ‘You were there when Arthur took Gwydre from the fires.’
‘You could not expect Arthur to see his son killed,’ I said.
‘What I expected, fool, was to see Bel come from the sky with the air scorched and crackling behind him and the stars tossed like leaves in a tempest! That’s what I expected! That’s what I deserved!’ She put her head back and shrieked at the clouds, and all the crippled mad howled with her. Only Olwen the Silver was silent. She gazed at me with a half-smile, as though to suggest that she and I alone were sane in this refuge of the mad. ‘That’s what I wanted!’ Nimue shouted at me over the cacophony of wailing and yelping. ‘And that is what I shall have,’ she added, and with those words she stood, shook Olwen’s embrace free and beckoned me with her staff. ‘Come.’
I followed her past the standing stones to a cave in the cliff. It was not a deep cave, just large enough to hold a man lying on his back, and at first I thought I did see a naked man lying in the cave’s shadows. Olwen had come to my side and was trying to take my hand, but I pushed her away as, all around me, the mad pressed close to see what lay on the cave’s stone floor.
A small fire smouldered in the cave, and in its dim light I saw that it was not a man lying on the rock, but the clay figure of a woman. It was a life-size figure with crude breasts, spread legs and a rudimentary face. Nimue ducked into the cave to crouch beside the clay figure’s head. ‘Behold, Derfel Cadarn,’ she said, ‘your woman.’
Olwen laughed and smiled up at me. ‘Your woman, Lord!’ Olwen said, in case I did not understand. I stared at the grotesque clay figure, then at Nimue. ‘M; woman?’
‘That is Ceinwyn’s Otherbody, you fool!’ Nimue said, ‘and, am Ceinwyn’s bane.’ There was a frayed basket at the back o the cave, the Basket of Garanhir, another Treasure of Britain and Nimue took from it a bunch of dried berries. She stoopec and pressed one into the unfired clay of the woman’s body. ‘A new boil, Derfel!’ she said, and I saw that the clay’s surface was pitted with other berries.
‘And another, and another!’ She laughed, pressing the dry berries into the red clay. ‘Shall we give her pain, Derfel? Shall we make her scream?’ And with those words she drew a crude knife from her belt, the Knife of Laufro-dedd, and she stabbed its chipped blade into the clay woman’s head. ‘Oh, she is screaming now!’ Nimue told me. ‘They are trying to hold her down, but the pain is so bad, so bad!’ And with that she wriggled the blade about and suddenly I was enraged and stooped into the cave’s mouth and Nimue immediately let go of the knife and poised two fingers over the clay eyes. ‘Shall I blind her, Derfel?’ she hissed at me. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked her.
She took the Knife of Laufrodedd from the tortured clay skull. ‘Let her sleep,’ she crooned, ‘or maybe not?’ And with that she gave a mad laugh and snatched an iron ladle from the Basket of Garanhir, scooped some burning embers from the smoky fire and scattered the burning scraps over the body and I imagined Ceinwyn shuddering and screaming, her back arching with the sudden pain, and Nimue laughed to see my impotent rage. ‘Why am I doing it?’ she asked. ‘Because you stopped me from killing Gwydre. And because you can bring the Gods to earth. That is why.’
I stared at her. ‘You’re mad too,’ I said softly.
‘What do you know of madness?’ Nimue spat at me. ‘You and your little mind, your pathetic little mind. You can judge me? Oh, pain!’ And she stabbed the knife into the clay breasts. ‘Pain! Pain!’ The mad things behind me joined in her cry. ‘Pain! Pain!’ they exulted, some clapping their hands and others laughing with delight.
‘Stop!’ I shouted.
Nimue crouched over the tortured figure, her knife poised. ‘Do you want her back, Derfel?’
‘Yes,’ I was close to tears.
‘She is most precious to you?’
‘You know she is.’
‘You would rather lie with that,’ Nimue gestured at the grotesque clay figure, ‘than with Olwen?’
‘I lie with no woman but Ceinwyn,’ I said.
‘Then I will give her back to you,’ Nimue said, and she tenderly stroked the clay figure’s forehead. ‘I will restore your Ceinwyn to you,’ Nimue promised, ‘but first you must give me what is most precious to me. That is my price.’
‘And what is most precious to you?’ I asked, knowing the answer before she gave it to me.
‘You must bring me Excalibur, Derfel,’ Nimue said, ‘and you must bring me Gwydre.’
‘Why Gwydre?’ I demanded. ‘He’s not a ruler’s son.’
‘Because he was promised to the Gods, and the Gods demand what was promised to them. You must bring him to me before the next moon is full. You will take Gwydre and the sword to where the waters meet beneath Nant Dduu. You know the place?’
‘I know it,’ I said grimly.
‘And if you do not bring them, Derfel, then I swear to you that Ceinwyn’s sufferings will increase. I shall plant worms in her belly, I shall turn her eyes to liquid, I shall make her skin peel and her flesh rot on her crumbling bones, and though she will beg for death I will not send it, but only give her pain instead. Nothing but pain.’ I wanted to step forward and kill Nimue there and then. She had been a friend and even, once, a lover, but now she had gone so far from me into a world where the spirits were real and the real were playthings. ‘Bring me Gwydre and bring me Excalibur,’ Nimue went on, her one eye glittering in the cave’s gloom, ‘and I shall free Ceinwyn of her Otherbody and you of your oath to me, and I shall give you two things.’ She reached behind her and pulled out a cloth. She shook it open and I saw it was the old cloak that had been stolen from me in Isca. She fumbled in the cloak, found something, and held it up between a finger and thumb and I saw she was holding the little missing agate from Ceinwyn’s ring. ‘A sword and a sacrifice,’ she said, ‘for a cloak and a stone. Will you do that, Derfel?’ she asked.