Web of Deceit by M. K. Hume Read Free Book Online Page B

over again, but up until yesterday she wouldn’t tell me.’
    Myrddion stifled his impatience at Brangaine’s rambling, apologetic explanation. He waited, as did the rest of the party, their eyes softened by pity, interest or shame at their previous indifference to the child’s concerns.
    ‘Willa’s not lacking in wit, Master Myrddion, for all she scarcely opens her mouth. She often knows exactly what I’m thinking before I say a word. And now she tells me she’s scared of the dragon that will burn her up. She says you are taking us to a place where we will be captured, imprisoned and scorned. She seems to have waking dreams just like you do, master, but she doesn’t fit and she doesn’t forget what she sees in her dreams. She just knows things, and I’m frightened for her.’
    ‘Not another soothsayer!’ Cadoc exclaimed acidly, speaking without thinking. ‘You’re bad enough, master, and you fair give me the collywobbles when your eyes get that look about them.’
    ‘Don’t poke fun at Willa, Cadoc.’ Finn cuffed his friend lightly. ‘The Sight is no joke.’
    Cadoc’s frankness was sometimes inappropriate and hurtful, although the scarred healer would never deliberately wound anyone. But he was impelled to fill any silence with words, and these utterances were often too close to the truth for comfort.
    ‘No, it’s not,’ Myrddion agreed. ‘And I hope, for Willa’s sake, that you’re mistaken, Brangaine. But if Ceridwen haschosen the child to drink from her cauldron, then we cannot change what the goddess has decided.’ He gazed down into Brangaine’s eyes. ‘It is possible that one of the Mother’s priestesses might consent to tutor Willa so that she learns the obligations of her Sight and how to control it for the benefit of other people. Have no fears. I assume you are speaking of Uther Pendragon, but I’ll not take the child into the dragon’s jaws. We’d all be safer and happier if she never sees the prince.’
    ‘Thank you, master,’ Brangaine whispered, her lined face transformed by a wide, relieved grin. Her smile was only slightly marred by a missing canine that had been knocked out by a brutal husband, a man who regularly relieved his own fears of the future on her flesh until the day he perished in Vortigern’s army near Tomen-y-mur.
    ‘I, for one, am far happier avoiding the High King and his brother,’ Cadoc added. ‘And I’m sorry, Brangaine, for my unkind jokes. You know I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut sometimes. But that’s no excuse for hurting the feelings of a friend.’
    Brangaine waved away Cadoc’s apology, forgiving him, as always, for the sake of his huge, warm heart. The others murmured their relief and gratitude until Myrddion was forced to acknowledge how apprehensive they had been at the prospect of returning to the ambit of Ambrosius and his brother. Out of loyalty and love, these ordinary people had followed him into the paths of many dangerous and unpredictable men. They had forgiven him again and again for the injuries and the dangers they had experienced in helping him to achieve his ambitions. Bridie had paid a price in pain and permanent disfigurement when she had inadvertently crossed Rome’s former magister militum , Flavius Aetius, at Myrddion’s bidding, so the whole party of healers had cause to fear any future contact with men as unpredictable as Uther Pendragon and Ambrosius Imperator. Butlove of Myrddion had kept them silent while he, high-handed and blind as he often was to the needs and fears of less clever people, had failed to see how deeply they had longed for a quiet life.
    I’ll try to be more considerate in the future, he promised himself silently. I’ve taken their loyalty for granted, while they’ve saved me from the consequences of my stupidity again and again.
    Durobrivae passed under the wheels of the wagon, leaving impressions of the same ruin, hostility and threat in the healers’ deepening dismay. The Saxons