Medraut stood glaring at their captors, shaking with visible rage as he pulled Morgana protectively to his side. For once, she was more than happy to lean against him. As her eyes adjusted to the torchlight, she made out Dallan mac Dalriada's thickset figure and beyond him, Keelin and Riona Damhnait. Keelin bit her lip when she saw the bruises and stains on their clothing from the seasickness.
Dallan mac Dalriada gave a rough-voiced order and they were prodded none too gently into a small boat which had been lowered over the ship's rail and bobbed on the water, making the task of entering it difficult—particularly with all her limbs still trembling. She and Medraut were herded into the bow, while Dallan mac Dalriada, his daughter, and his Druidess sat in the center, leaving the stern for the sailor who rowed them across black water toward an utterly silent town. Waning moonlight picked out the whitewashed walls of cottages, and gleamed ominously along the darkened watchtower of the fortress above the village.
The offshore wind carried a stench so foul, Morgana found herself swallowing convulsively over sharp nausea. She gripped the rough wood hard, trying to distract her senses from that hideous smell. Not a dog barked as their little boat scraped ashore and Medraut jumped out to steady her onto the strand. They waited silently on the beach while the boat went back for several of the ship's crew, who carried torches. Morgana bent to tear strips of cloth from her skirt, wetting them and tying them over her nose and mouth against the foulness on the air. She handed one to Medraut, who hastily copied her example. Even Riona and Keelin accepted the strips she offered, poor Keelin near to vomiting.
A dull anger burned in Morgana's breast that Dallan mac Dalriada would subject his daughter to the horror waiting in this village, where literally everyone she knew and loved lay rotting in the streets. Even from this distance, she could see bodies lying at grotesque angles, some of them visibly gnawed on by scavengers.
The moment the crewmen arrived with the torches, Dallan mac Dalriada prodded them into motion. They walked numbly through street after street, encountering at least a few graves already dug, where survivors from the outlying farmholds had begun the grim work of burying the dead. Keelin began to cry within a few short minutes, stumbling along in her father's wake as he stalked straight through the town and up the long ramp to the fortress gates. What Morgana could see of Medraut's face above the mask was ashen in the torchlight, with beads of cold sweat shining along his brow. Morgana steeled herself not to look too closely into the shadows as they passed open cottage doorways and narrow little alleyways between houses and shops.
When they finally reached the fortress gate, they found bloated dogs, horses with their legs stiffened, grotesque in the moonlight, and pathetic little bundles of fur that had once been pampered housecats. Keelin fell to her knees over one of the cats, sobbing beneath her makeshift mask and uttering a little cry of protest when Riona urged her back to her feet. Morgana's heart broke, watching the distraught girl, but dared not offer comfort; Medraut's eyes shone with unshed tears, even as his jaw muscles clenched in rhythm with the fists he tightened every few seconds. Staring at the charnel-house ruin of the great courtyard, Brenna McEgan whispered silently, Lailoken and Banning must have poisoned every well in town, it couldn't have been anything else, to kill the animals as well as the people.
Morgana, lips trembling beneath her own mask, could not even reply, lost in an agony of grief. She could not even ask what sort of hatred Brenna's world bred, to create such men, when her own world and time had created the likes of Cutha. The Saxon prince had merely used a sword instead of poison. The devastation was just as bad, either way.
Inside the great hall, they found servants lying where they'd collapsed, trying to assist the noble ladies and lords of the royal household. As the torchlight revealed the scope of destruction, Keelin uttered a wild shriek and darted forward, cradling a child's body to her breast and weeping uncontrollably. Medraut's voice came out strangled over a string of curses as he dared Dallan mac Dalriada's wrath to rush to Keelin's side, gathering her close and stroking her hair, very gently prying the dead child from the girl's hands.
"We must bury her, Keelin," he choked out. "Please, you must let her go, there's nothing you can do for her and I would sooner die here and now than see you struck down by contagion from holding what is left of her."
The sobbing girl refused to loosen her hold on the child's body until Riona and Dallan mac Dalriada stepped in to separate them by force. One of the sailors carried the broken little body away, hurrying at the king's urgent gesture. Keelin uttered a wailing protest, then turned and collapsed. Not in her father's arms, but in Medraut's. Dallan mac Dalriada's eyes widened in shock as his child clung to her new husband, shuddering and weeping, moaning what must have been the child's name over and over.
Morgana saw the shift in the Irish king's eyes, that moment of stunned recognition when he realized his child truly did not believe the Britons responsible. And she saw the doubt come surging into his face as well, the first doubt that Keelin and Riona Damhnait just might be correct in that belief. Medraut was stroking his young wife's hair, rocking her gently, helpless in the face of her wild grief and weeping for that helplessness.
Dallan mac Dalriada stumbled toward the nearest chair, which happened to be his own throne, next to the hearth, and sank down onto the cold stone. Wetness shone on his own face, now. He choked out something in a low voice, speaking at some considerable length. When he had finished speaking, Riona touched Morgana's wrist.
"My king would have you know the depth of his regret for treating you so ill, this day. We captured a number of rats, forcing them to drink Lailoken's wine as you suggested, poured it down their throats while holding open their jaws. They all died, just at sunset. He pondered long and hard on this, during the final hours of our journey home, thinking if you had meant treachery against his life, you surely would not have come chasing after him with a warning. Why would you have brought such terrible news yourself, with your nephew in your company, if you had ordered the poisoning of Dunadd?
"Then he thought perhaps you are very clever, intending him to think these things, while plotting yet more destruction while he was distracted by grief. He begs forgiveness, begs you to understand all that he has lost, kinsmen and brave people who trusted him and his father before him, men and women who came to this wild new land, many of them only within the last year, trusting his word that they would be safe to build their homes and raise their families here. Your ship he restores freely, and the brave men who knew what they risked in bringing you with the warning. King Dallan mac Dalriada asks only one thing more of Queen Morgana and King Medraut."
"Name it," Morgana said quietly.
Riona's eyes were hard as flint in the firelight.
"Help him kill the Saxons."