The Bloody Cup by M. K. Hume Read Free Book Online Page A

song did not lure Glynn, but the healing trade called him, as it had his father, and he had trailed old Myrddion like a small shadow as the old man collected and prepared his herbs and medications. Seamlessly, Glynn had become his father’s strong right hand and, even now, the lad was treating sick children with feverwort at a village over the hills. The hill people swore that his hands had some magic in them, but they also understood that Taliesin’s fingers were likewise blessed.
    As for Rhys, now sixteen and very full of his mathematical talents, the art of construction was his métier. Tinkering always, he had constructed his mother’s favourite loom, he adored the menial tasks of thatching and he coaxed wood and stone to give up their ancient secrets.
    All three were well versed in the small miracles of the soil and green and growing things, so Nimue had little cause to find fault in any of her tall and slender sons. Rhys was the most powerfully built of them all, recalling ancestors that Nimue had never known. And now that he had heard of a smith in a nearby village who needed an assistant, Nimue expected him to depart for several months before returning to construct a working forge of his own.
    Yet she sighed.
    The wind blew fiercely on their hilltop. Even as they shared their meal in the kitchens with Gerda and her mute, sheepherder husband, Col, she could hear the voices as they called on the night gales.
    ‘Taliesin must leave the hill country to stand with King Artor in Cadbury and beyond,’ the voices told Nimue. ‘Obey us, Woman of Water, for your son is needed. Artor’s way is ending. Although your son is still young in years, you must allow him to finish what his father started, for the Bloody Cup is soon to come.’
    Nimue had heard the voices for three successive nights, and even though she stuffed all the wool in Powys into the corners of her house to silence the intrusive wind, the messengers of her dreams would not be muffled.
    Taliesin reached across the table and stroked her left hand gently, massaging her palm with his thumbs just as his father had once done.
    ‘Why are you so unhappy, Mother?’ he asked. ‘Are there no songs that would lighten your load? Or must I write a new trifle to sing you back to happiness?’
    ‘Whether I want it or not, it’s important that you be at Cadbury by Samhein,’ she told her son, and Taliesin watched her eyes mist with tears. ‘I don’t fully understand why you must go there and I don’t desire you to leave my house in the dead of winter, but the voices tell me that you must record the passing of the king.’
    Taliesin’s mouth gaped, but Rhys laughed in the fashion of a simple countryman at the consternation that was written plainly on his older brother’s face.
    ‘Cadbury? What would I do at such a place?’ Taliesin exclaimed irritably. ‘How could I serve the High King? Father shamed us with his brilliance and my skills are few by comparison. Surely my place is here with you?’
    Nimue smiled ruefully. ‘I wish I could keep you by my side forever, but the wind would never let me rest if I ignored its message. You’ve been called, so you must sing for the High King. You will offer comfort to him with song and fable, and through lessons too, if the great King Artor will listen. He must be told that the Bloody Cup is coming.’>
    Rhys laughed. ‘And what might that be? Did the wind bother to explain itself to you?’ His laughter died as he realized that his words were wounding his mother. ‘Please forgive me,’ he apologized. ‘But the wind, or whatever it is, asks a great deal of you. Father has only been dead one year.’
    ‘Taliesin must go to Artor’s court,’ Nimue repeated. ‘I cannot prevent it, for a mother sends a son down perilous roads if she stands in the path of her child’s destiny.’ A single tear snaked down her cheek.
    Abruptly, Nimue wiped away her fears. Her spine straightened and she tossed back her marvellous