Until now.
And now it was her secret, as well.
There was not room in all of Britain for two powerful Druids to hold this same, volatile piece of information. She smiled, whispering into his ear and nibbling at his neck, and plotted and planned and smiled up into his trusting eyes. When the fortress walls were nearly complete and Myrddin's work essentially done, Covianna put those plans into action.
"I must leave for Glastenning Tor," she told him that night. "I have stayed longer than I should at Caer-Badonicus. I worry for my kinsmen's safety. I wish..." She allowed her voice to trail off forlornly.
"You wish what, my dearest heart?"
She brushed fingertips against his lips, drawing a deep shudder from him where he lay joined with her. "I wish that you would come to the Tor, for just a little while, even for a day, to overlook our defenses. Your advice would be worth so much, Myrddin, for you see with eyes other men do not possess. You see the strengths and weaknesses of a place, even as Artorius sees the strengths and weaknesses of an army. And you could personally collect from the smiths of my tribe our treasure trove of fine swords and spear points, made against just such a contingency and stored away at the Tor. You could see them safely back here, to arm the defenders of Caer-Badonicus with them."
"When the work is finished here..." he began.
"But there is nothing further here that needs your supervision. The walls are up, the cisterns roofed over and filled, the sluice gates and the decoys built, and the houses and cattle byres are going up at a grand pace. There is no reason, really, why you could not slip away for a day or two, to help my kinsmen prepare the Tor for invasion."
"An invasion which may never come..."
She frowned, converting the irritation into a look of worried fear. "There is no way to know that, for sure, and I would never forgive myself if I failed to do everything in my power to protect my kinsmen. Please say you'll come."
And he did, shuddering all the while.
They left at dawn, bidding farewell to King Melwas and King Cadorius as the rain continued to pour from leaden skies. "I'll not be gone more than a day or two," Myrddin assured them, "just long enough to see to the defense of the Tor's abbey and the townfolk at its feet. The runners coming in from Caer-Durnac assure us the Saxons are yet a week's march away, more than enough time for me to see to the Tor's defenses and return."
"God go with you, then," Cadorius clasped his arm, "and bless you for your help at Caer-Badonicus. Without you, we would have been lost, I fear. Come back to us as soon as you may."
Despite the steady rain and biting chill of the wind, Covianna enjoyed the ride home more than any other journey she could remember taking. It was perhaps twenty miles from Caer-Badonicus' windswept summit to Glastenning Tor, and considerably less than that from the Tor to the sea. Each day when the tides turned, the River Brue and the broad sweep of salt marshes meandering lazily along its low-slung, flood-prone banks, mile upon water-logged mile of them, filled up with brackish water flowing inland with a swirl of muddied currents.
With the tides and the filling of the marshes, the strange, upthrust jut of land known as Glastenning Tor rose up from the marshy lowlands, spending fully half of every day as an island, completely cut off from the rest of Britain despite nearly twenty miles between its shores and the sea. When the tidal marshes drained again, it spent the other half of its day as a high and dry hill firmly joined to the mainland once more, but surrounded by treacherous bogs, pools of brackish water, and long, landlocked oxbow lakes where saltwater fish swam in surprised dismay to find themselves cut off from the sea, easy prey to the thousands of waterfowl and wading birds and canny swamp foxes living in the marshlands.
The Tor never failed to inspire a ripple of awe down Covianna's spine. It was the Great Mother's teat, so the old stories ran, from which flowed the milky white spring dubbed Chalk Well. The whole of the Tor roared with underground water, buried rivers of it, pouring through deep caverns and spilling out into springs in a dozen or more places, here milky white, there blood-hued and iron-rich. Maps Covianna had been shown as a girl, learning from her elders the carefully hidden truths of the Tor, had revealed the great hill's sacred outlines in all their astonishing, mystical wonder. The Tor was the Mother, Her left breast jutting skyward where She lay on Her side, left leg outthrust in a long and elegant sweep ending in a perfectly formed human foot.
Her right leg was tucked up beneath Her, in the birthing position, with Her open birth canal spread wide, giving life to a little hillock just beyond Her sacred vulva, a hill which rose from the earth like an infant's head emerging from its Mother's womb. Bride's Mound, it was called, this infant's-head hill that was Covianna's actual birthplace. The Tor was beautiful and holy, filled with mystery, a place where Covianna's mothers and grandmothers had, for centuries, kept their greatest treasures and their sacred forges, down in the secret caverns, deep inside the body of Mother Brigit, who gave eternal birth to Virgin Bride. It was on Bride's Mound the smithies had built their reputations and their trade, not daring to profane the Mother's body with their anvils and hammers and glowing forges or the glass houses where Bride's silica-rich sands gave birth in turn to the lustrous glass for which the whole complex of hills and caverns had been named.
She smiled when she could finally trace the outlines of the great labyrinth of the Tor, an earthwork so ancient, no one in Covianna's line could remember the building of it, only that it had been, from time immemorial, the only way into and out of the Tor, with its quiet, wealthy rooms and snaking passages one had to follow—like Theseus hunting the Minotaur—in order to reach the summit. The labyrinth's pattern could be clearly seen across the wide, marshy floodplain, and smoke from the smithies rose black against the sky from Bride's Mound. Sight of her home never failed to lift Covianna's spirits. Her fingers itched to take up hammer and steel again, to forge some wondrous new blade to fit the stolen scabbard in her baggage. She chuckled aloud, imagining Artorius' rage when he discovered it missing—and apparently, at the hands of the disgustingly virtuous Morgana. Emrys Myrddin, riding beside her, smiled at the sound of her laughter.
"It is a long time, I think, since you have been home."
"Too long," she agreed. "There is much here I have longed to show you."
"I have heard wonderful tales of Glastenning Tor. I visited once, as a young man, but only the forges. It will be a pleasure to have you show me its secrets."
Laughter burbled up again, as wild and delighted as the water rushing through the heart of the Tor. "The Saxons long for the same thing, I think. I have heard the minstrels whisper that they call it Glastonbury, the glass mountain, where magic is done by the wizards and the smiths who hold the Tor."
"The Saxons," Myrddin chuckled, "consider an ordinary sword a thing of magic, forged by the gods they worship. They buy theirs, I am told, from the Franks. Which is why," he sighed, "they are so anxious to capture the southwest of Britain, to take the Tor and all your family's secrets. And why I agreed to come look over the defenses."
"For which I am forever grateful."
A cry went up as they approached the little town which lay sprawled on the flanks of the hill, spreading out down the long, slender leg of land toward the Goddess' outthrust foot. As the rain slacked off to a mere drizzle, children came running from cottage doorways, shouting the news to their parents and older siblings. Smiths emerged from the forges, wiping sweat and soot and thrusting tools into the pockets of their leather aprons. Covianna led the way along the safest path through the marshy bogs until they were close enough to be recognized.