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Ellen Bonnifield
Paul Bonnifield
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Judith Carol Day
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Kathleen Guler
John Grassby
Harriet Freiberger
Karen Leslee
Edith Lynn Hornik Beer
Graydon D Hubbard
Michala Miller
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Cesare Rosati
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Purchase a book by Kathleen Cunningham Guler at Off the Beaten Path's online Bookstore!

Kathleen Cunningham Guler is the author of the four-part Macsen's Treasure series that includes "Into the Path of Gods," "In the Shadow of Dragons" and "The Anvil Stone." She has twice won a Colorado Independent Publishers Award for fiction in 2002 and 2006, was a bronze medalist in the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the fantasy category, and was a finalist in the prestigious Eric Hoffer Book Award for fiction in 2007. She has studied Celtic history and Arthurian legend for more than twenty-five years in both the United States and Great Britain and has published numerous articles, essays, short stories, reviews and poems. A descendant of the Celtic nations of Wales and Scotland, the author is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the International Arthurian Society. She is currently working on the fourth and final book in the Macsen's Treasure series and anticipates its publication in 2009. Her website is: http://kathleenguler.com , and her blog, "Lighting up Britain's Dark Ages" is: http://kathleenguler.blogspot.com.

Excerpt from
THE ANVIL STONE: Book 3 of the Macsen's Treasure Series© Guler, 2006
Chapter 1

Winchester

Spring, AD 471

The argument began with the first call of the ram's horn.
Deep within one of the palace buildings, voices erupted, loud enough to carry out through an open window. Two men and a woman, their words unsuccessfully hushed, grew insistent, cruel.

Marcus ap Iorwerth paused beneath the window on the rear side of the building and shook his head. For days he had expected the clash. Uther Pendragon, high king of Britain, had once again been caught giving too much attention to a woman, this time the wife of his highest-ranking military commander.

The ram's horn called again. A long, unwavering tone, it signaled the beginning of another day, as they were counted from sunset to sunset. Its lonely howl, a summons to the evening's celebrations as well, seemed more like a warning to Marcus. The haunting strain faded. Winchester's vast, walled compound remained quiet, unresponsive, as if in shock. Not even the brightly colored streamers atop the ramparts fluttered.

Marcus resumed his stroll of the palace grounds. Oh, to be anywhere else, he wished as he started to rake his fingers through his hair then caught himself. He detested the annoying stiffness the coating of beeswax gave it, but it was the only way to keep his thick, more than shoulder-length hair swept straight back and in place instead of letting it fall free in its usual disarray. To wash it out was something more to look forward to upon leaving. So was changing out of his fine wool tunic, breeches and cloak—all nice in rich deep blue with fancy silver decorations but too formal for his taste. And too noticeable.

The ram's horn called a third time.

The squabble between king, commander and woman ceased. Congenial banter gradually replaced it, ringing out from the other side of the building where the main courtyard lay.
A sardonic smile gripped Marcus's mouth. At sunset Uther was scheduled to conduct the ritual in which fealty would be sworn. In the king's eyes, this ceremony was more important than the coronation held several days earlier. Every nobleman, from the highest rank to the lowest, was required to swear. Uther, from the sound of the aborted argument, would be in no mood to forgive anyone's absence.

Ah, well, Marcus told himself, only a few more days…
On his way to the courtyard, he strode into the narrow alleyway between the great hall and the building next to it. A lantern dropped a circle of light onto the flagstone walkway. Placed in the middle of the light, so centered it had to have been deliberate, lay a doll-like bundle of rags stained with black ink.

Marcus halted just outside the pool of light. In that same instant, he recognized the bundle was an effigy fashioned to look like him. The ink imitated his black hair and thick, drooping moustache. Roman letters were scrawled on a narrow piece of cloth tied around the chest, and a slim dagger resembling a sword impaled the figure. Deep red splotches, smeared in places, looked like blood.

"Mid flæsce ond blode ond bane," a raspy voice hissed from behind.

The words, in Saxon, tore through Marcus like spikes of ice. He jerked around. An unkempt man with reddish-brown hair glared from the shadows, his face like a snarling wolf.
The man fingered a small rock hung on a cord around his neck like it was a talisman. His snarl deepened, teeth showing, dark eyes full of anger. "Mid flæsce ond blode ond bane," he repeated. He spun back out of the light and fled.
Marcus snatched up the effigy. By the gods, he had never wanted think of those words again, let be hear them. So many years had passed and he still did not understand their meaning, but their sound he remembered well, far too well. He swore. With the effigy gripped in his hand, he raced after its deliverer into the darkening yards behind the palace.

* * *

The ram's horn blared once more.

Claerwen of Dinas Beris waited in the center of the courtyard. The last time she had been there was in winter, and the yard had been stark, cold and nearly empty except for soldiers.
Originally an enormous Roman villa that had long been neglected, it was now in the midst of the high king's renovations. He was bringing it up to his standards—actually a display of his taste for ostentation. Around her, all dressed in the grandeur of their finest clothing and gleaming silver, gold and pewter jewelry, people gathered in clumps. Gossip rippled like heat waves.

"Claerwen?"

She barely heard the voice call her name above the growing din of talk. On tiptoe, she stretched up to search for its source. Lord Ceredig of Strathclyde, the most powerful ruler among those of the northern kingdoms, strode towards her. Towering and husky in spite of his six-and-fifty winters, he threaded his way easily through the crowd.

She greeted him, received a light kiss on her cheek in return.
"Where's your husband, lass?" He pushed aside his faded red hair, blown across his face.

"Marcus?" Claerwen frowned at the concern in Ceredig's warm brown eyes. "He told me to wait for him here. Something is wrong?"

His voice lowered. "There's been an argument."

Claerwen half-smiled. "Between Lord Gorlois of Cornwall and Uther, about Gorlois's wife, Ygerna?"

"You've heard?"

"It was bound to happen, no? We've all been here more than a fortnight. Could anyone have missed how the king's eyes constantly wandered to her? And how she smiles in return, ever so willingly? He will tire soon enough, once he finds another pretty face."

Exasperation curled Ceredig's lips. "I've been told he and Gorlois have argued several times now. The king refuses to leave her alone. And she won't even try to avoid him. This last argument was not the usual nonsense. It was serious."

"Enough to break with Gorlois?" Claerwen's smile faded. Uther had been declared high king only recently, soon after the assassination of his older brother Ambrosius.

Ceredig exhaled as if to rid himself of the facts. "Uther is livid. He's ordered the gates locked. His excuse is to force Gorlois to stay here and swear fealty. In truth, it's to keep him from removing Ygerna from Winchester. But Gorlois is absolutely outraged. He vowed he will never swear."

A riffling gust of wind set the gauze veil Claerwen wore over her tawny-brown hair to swirling. She caught the ends and shivered. "Why would Uther squander alliances after all the work Ambrosius did to build them?" she asked. "Especially this one? It's too important."

"Gorlois controls most of the war bands Ambrosius built," Ceredig added. "And they don't respect Uther the way they did Ambrosius. With his temper, Uther could easily lose that control."

Discomfort pervaded the air. Claerwen draped the veil again and wished she had worn a light cloak. Her lamb's wool gown of deep teal-green was warm enough, but she still felt chilled.

"Then this could be why Marcus hasn't come yet," she said.

"You know him…he would try to forestall the break…or at least make it less severe."

On the dais before the great hall, the high king's tall and lanky nephew, Prince Myrddin Emrys, strode out from behind a screen of drapes. "Merlin, the Enchanter," the whispers began to haunt across the courtyard. Claerwen remembered when the epithet, prompted by his uncanny gift to foretell the future—a mysticism sometimes called "second sight" or "fire in the head"—had begun among the common people and spread throughout the population. Because of it, he was both admired and feared by peasant and noble alike. When she had first met him, she discovered she possessed the same gift.

Claerwen watched Myrddin thrust out a steady gaze of omniscient, all-knowing trust that the coming hours would pass as they should. "He is worried beneath that mask of certainty," she said.

"You've known him a long time, haven't you?" Ceredig asked.
"As many years as I've known Marcus."

"And you are worried as well?"

"Marcus is late." She scanned the thickening crowd. "Will the ceremony proceed?"

"Uther will not lapse in this. To not have every one of his nobles swear fealty, here and now, he will consider disloyalty, and tonight he will be in no mood for forgiveness. Marcus will be no exception, regardless of what he has done for the king."
Claerwen looked up into Ceredig's lined and weathered face. Distantly related to him through her mother's family, she had met him but twice before and then only briefly. Yet she felt comfortable with him. Marcus had known him for nearly twenty years; his fosterage had been spent in Strathclyde's main stronghold at Dun Breatann. Though Ceredig was thirty years older than Marcus, they had remained not only allies but close friends as well, and Marcus always had a ready story about the robust and sometimes outspoken king.

She was worried. Though Marcus could invoke Uther's wrath in missing the ceremony, that could be rectified later. Worse, far worse, she could not guess how many of the courtiers were already aware of the connection between his name, Marcus ap Iorwerth, and that he was a spy. To be publicly identified before most of Britain's important leaders, a face put with his name, could severely compromise the necessary secrecy of his work. Uther knew this, and she could not understand why the high king insisted Marcus must swear publicly rather than in private, especially after he had already proven his loyalty by thwarting another assassination—that of Uther himself.

Several ram's horns blasted, this time in a fanfare, and Uther emerged from behind the screen. The crowd stirred into a cheer. As tall as his nephew but more solidly built, he stood next to a high-backed chair of intricately carved oak and surveyed his nobles.

Claerwen recognized the jeweled gold torque that lay around his neck, the crown of matching design on his brow, and the ceremonial spear in the crook of his elbow. Macsen's Treasure—hidden for safekeeping many years before and subsequently lost—was a collection of sacred symbols of the high kingship. Of the original five pieces, these three had been rediscovered. The remaining two, a sword and a grail, had yet to be found. The grandiose way in which Uther displayed them, Claerwen thought, seemed to cheapen them.

"He won't let the king's recklessness ruin…" Claerwen started with a grimace.

Ceredig laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "What's that, lass?"

"Not after all he's been through…" Her words drifted off a second time. She had seen Marcus suffer so much—far beyond the boundary most men could endure. For years, in his dangerous ongoing quest to deter foreign attacks and encroachment, he had sabotaged the importation of Saxon mercenaries during the reign of Ambrosius's predecessor, Vortigern. At the same time he had manipulated scores of feuding British factions to unite behind Ambrosius and establish him in Vortigern's place. Marcus's reward? Betrayal to Vortigern, then imprisonment, torture, and abandonment to die of injuries, illness or starvation, whichever would have come first. Claerwen glared at Uther. So many times Marcus had come close to death. And all he had ever wanted was to see Britain remain free.

On the dais, Uther nodded to Myrddin, then to his seneschal, who in turn nodded to the man with the ram's horn. A long prelude unfurled, a signal to begin the homage ceremony.
The king's seneschal unrolled the first of many parchments that carried the nobles' names, each identified by a title, a given name and up to three direct ancestors. The first noble was announced. That man extracted himself from the crowd and walked along a designated path towards the dais, his wife and retainers in tow. He halted at the foot, pulled a sword, then moved up the steps to kneel before the king. He offered his weapon flat across his hands, the symbolic gesture of submission to a higher authority.

From where she stood, Claerwen gazed from one face to the next of those she could see. If only Marcus would suddenly be somewhere among them. Name after name was called. She recognized the most well known—kings, princes, queens, clan chieftains—representatives of Britain's more than fifty petty kingdoms and important regions within each. Of those she could not already identify, she tried to memorize. Some names reflected the lingering Roman influence; the remainder bore the older Celtic heritage that had never been wiped away. A few, like Marcus, who had been named by an insistent half-Roman grandmother, carried a mixed name.

The ceremony trudged on; an hour passed, then another. Restless, the crowd grew tired of waiting for the long list to be completed. Alone since Ceredig had been summoned,
Claerwen bowed her head and drew a deep breath. What could she do when Marcus was called and not present?

Someone jostled into her from behind. A light tug on her hair brought her around with a ready glare, but her annoyance abruptly faded. Marcus, face tilted low, brushed the tress with his lips. He stood so close she felt heat radiate from him.
Relief flooded her. "Where—" she started, but when cold, hard nerve flashed in his deep-set black eyes she went silent.

Flushed and perspiring, he was also a bit disheveled, his hair loose from its beeswax coating. The disturbing cast in his eyes deepened. Claerwen recognized the same raw grit she had seen in him whenever he was faced with death or the need to take a life. Troubled, she let her eyes ask what was wrong.

The seneschal's voice interrupted. "Lord Marcus ap Iorwerth ap Sinnoch, Prince of Dinas Beris in the lands of Eryri, the Kingdom of Gwynedd!"

Air hissed through Marcus's teeth. He flipped back the front edges of his cloak and exposed a baldric. Slung loosely over his left shoulder, the wide leather strap held his sheathed two-handed sword.

Claerwen felt his hand slide around her wrist. Narrowed under his heavy brows, his eyes swept from her to the dais. She knew he hated this. His face looked as if he were braving a tribunal in which the only verdict was execution. He started forward with her past hundreds of curious faces.

At the dais's foot, Marcus kept his hand twined around hers. She hesitated, then he nodded—he wanted her to come with him instead of leaving her to wait like all the other nobles' wives. Defiance of tradition, she wondered? Or a show of unity to Uther? They marched up, steps in unison. At the top, Marcus pulled the sword.

They knelt together. Marcus displayed the weapon across his work-calloused palms. With lowered faces, they waited.
Even with her head bowed, Claerwen felt Uther's eyes shift from Marcus to her and back. The king leaned forward. "Must you always do things your own way?" he said with quiet menace.

Claerwen lifted her head a little. Marcus was glaring at the king, and she hoped to find a hint of mischief in his eyes. None was there. Breath held, she cautiously slid her gaze to Uther. Anger convulsed below the surface of his face, but he said no more.
The ritual proceeded. Afterward, Marcus sheathed the sword. Claerwen slid her hand into his and held on tightly as they sifted down through the voluminous waves of courtiers and escaped the yard. With swift steps they crossed the wide portico of the building where they were lodged and went inside, climbed the stairs to the second floor. The corridor there was lined with guardsmen, all heavily armed. Most were men from Uther's house guard. Others wore the personal markings of their clans and guarded the doors of their chieftains or patrolled the hallway's length.

A man bearing the insignia of Dinas Beris saluted when they approached.

Marcus returned the gesture. "Report, Gwilym?"

Gwilym bowed and opened the doors. "All is quiet here, Lord Marcus."

"So be it."

Inside, and with the doors shut behind them, Claerwen ran the locking bolt into place. "Thank the gods, that's done," she said and removed the veil, tossed it on a chair. She watched Marcus move an oil lamp from the anteroom to a table in the chambers' spacious common room. He leaned on the table's edge and stared into the lamp's hissing flame.

Claerwen followed him in. "Marcus?" She squeezed his arm but the muscle and sinew were hard as stone, and she was unsure if he even felt her fingers. His eyes smoldered as much as the black soot that rose from the lamp. A sudden chill swept up her spine.

"Why you were so late?"

His mouth opened and clamped shut again.

She had never seen him so. Bluntness, cynicism, and a sardonic wit that stung, she was accustomed to in his serious moods, but this cold brooding alarmed her. She waited.

No response. No movement.

"What happened?" She brushed her fingers affectionately through the hair that hung over his eyes. Color still flushed his high, wide cheekbones. "Are you ill? Or was it a fight? Are you hurt—?"

"No," he said. One hand came up and clutched her fingers.

"Don't ask."

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