Was it the heat and the wine that made the rock walls reel and put the cold sickness in his belly? He tried to speak and only a hoarse sound came, without words. Emer’s voice went on, relentless, terrible.
“ Why should you not know—you who are the Cursed One, Rhiannon!”
The rock walls gave back the word like a whispered curse, until the hall was filled with the ghostly name Rhiannon! It seemed to Carse that the very shields rang with it and the banners trembled. And still the girl stood unmoving, challenging him to speak, and his tongue was dead and dry in his mouth.
They stared at him, all of them—Ywain and the Sea Kings and the feasters silent amid the spilled wine and the forgotten banquet.
It was as though he were Lucifer fallen, crowned with all the wickedness of the world.
Then Ywain laughed, a sound with an odd note of triumph in it. “So that is why! I see it now—why you called upon the Cursed One in the cabin there, when you stood against the power of Caer Dhu that no man can resist, and slew S’San.”
Her voice rang out mockingly. “Hail, Lord Rhiannon!”
That broke the spell. Carse said, “You lying vixen. You salve your pride with that. No mere man could down Ywain of Sark but a god—that’s different.”
He shouted at them all. “Are you fools or children that you listen to such madness? You, there, Jaxart—you toiled beside me at the oar. Does a god bleed under the lash like a common slave?”
Jaxart said slowly, “That first night in the galley I heard you cry Rhiannon’s name.”