Sword in the Stars

by Cori McCarthy

  “You’re alive!” he cried. “Well, that’s something. I saw what you did in the courtyard. It was brave. And ridiculous. But mainly, brave.”

  The compliment only seemed to intensify her anger. “When I learned Earth history on Lionel, I heard not one mention of real dragons. Such creatures were treated as storybook villains. How did I face one today?”

  “Oh, I’ve got this,” he said, happy to have something to focus on besides the death-hole they’d been pushed into. “It’s hard to see the truth of history beyond what we’re taught. Whatever is passed down, we remember. When we first landed here, I had to remind myself that many existences—people and dragons and more—were revised right out of history by later scholars with rotten agendas.” She looked intensely horrified, and Merlin’s chest tightened in agreement. “People have used many hateful weapons over time. Forced forgetting is a powerful one.”

  The meaning of the word oubliette rose in his head, unbidden. “From oublier,” he muttered. “To forget.” This wasn’t a place of punishment; it was a means of erasing enemies from existence.

  “I devoted my life to a planet that sought to re-create this era,” Jordan said. “Yet the codes of honor I live by are not honored here. If they were, no one would have pulled me from battle. Who stops a knight from slaying a monster?”

  Merlin tried to shake off the sticky feeling that, today, he had been the story’s true monster. “These unevolved grubs see a woman with a sword as an equal threat.”

  “Gwen assures me Arthur is different,” she said. “That he sees strength in unexpected places. Yet he let his men throw me down here.”

  “A lot happened during the fight,” Merlin said, springing to Arthur’s defense even after all this time. “He’ll let you out, I’m sure of it.”

  Jordan nodded stoically. “Mayhaps Arthur is the spark of hope that became Lionel.”

  “Mayhaps.” He found himself back at the strange circular notion of this story. His friends featured at both the beginning and the end. They were all caught up in it—or trapped in it. With Gweneviere and Lancelot’s roles confirmed, it didn’t seem like a stretch to hope that Lamarack and Percival would take their original places in the story, as knights of the round table. Merlin’s heart jolted at the thought that Val would be in Camelot soon—the story required it.

  A fresh wave of sewage sloshed into the oubliette and Jordan drew back. “Will you use your magic to free us?”

  “Oh, no. This is a test,” he said. “My old self wants to know if I have power. He stuck me down here to see if I would escape. Which is exactly why I can’t.”

  “You’re stuck in a battle of wills with your previous self?” Jordan clucked her tongue. “The odds are not with you, mage.”

  “I’m just as magical as he is!”

  “And less ruthless. The old man would put a child down here.”

  Merlin’s brow furrowed, magnifying his headache—until he realized she was talking about him. “In that irrefutably harsh way that you have… can you tell me how old I look?”

  She squinted. “Like you can barely mount a full-grown mare.”

  “Years, please.”

  “Fourteen?”

  That was improbably young, even for his backward aging. Were things speeding up? Why was he tumbling toward infancy so fast? He thought of the feeling after he’d crushed the diorama. Every time his magic drained, it left him feeling exhausted. No—not just exhausted. Aged.

  “It’s my magic,” Merlin muttered. “Every time I use it, I get younger.”

  “You only noticed this now?” she asked.

  “When a person is very old, there isn’t much difference between six hundred and four hundred.” His voice no longer cracked over the spines of his words. It was higher, sweeter. “Between sixteen and fourteen? The alterations are… stark.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  Jordan’s hand went to her waist in an automatic motion—to draw the sword that she would never be allowed to carry in Camelot. “Is there anyone else in here?” Merlin asked, spinning around.

  “No,” she said. “I looked.”

  “Merlin.”

  He knew that even-handed tone, that lovely silvery laugh.

  “Nin,” he said. “How are you in the castle?”

  The Lady of the Lake wasn’t able to leave her cave. Her bound nature had always been a comfort to Merlin.

  “My waters give me a way in,” Nin said, the puddles at his feet rippling. “My lake becomes the mist, clouds, and rain of Camelot. I can be where I wish, and I wish to be present for this moment. You have finally discovered that your magic is tied to your aging. Now you’ll have to stop using it to help those companions you refused to leave… otherwise you’ll leave them permanently.” Nin’s laughter burst with bubbles.

  “I wish you would leave me permanently.” He couldn’t believe that Nin was still bothering him after all this time. He’d thought he was done with her until she grabbed him out of Ari’s big standoff with Mercer, offering him one of her rigged bargains.

  “Are you sure you want me gone? I thought you might like to say hello to Percival.”

  “Val?” He fought the urge to dive headfirst into the filthy puddle. “Val is with you?”

  “Don’t fret, little Merlin,” she said. “He’s perfectly safe in my cave.”

  Val’s static, distant voice called out Merlin’s name through the water.

  He started to shout, but Nin said, “There, you see? All is well in Camelot.”

  And with that, the water fell still, and the Lady of the Lake was gone. Merlin felt slightly better, knowing where Val was. Having proof that he hadn’t been captured or accidentally dropped down on another continent centuries before air travel. But hearing Val’s voice had kindled the need to see him again. And Nin’s meddling left a bad taste in his mouth—worse than the seamy, sodden air of the oubliette.

  “How do we get out of this time period without your magic, Merlin?” Jordan asked. It was, miraculously, the first time she’d ever called him anything but mage.

  “Who said anything about not using my magic?”

  “The witch in the puddle,” she answered, literal to the bitter end.

  He couldn’t bring his friends all the way back to this time period and then leave them to fend for themselves. Magic was his only power. Without it, Merlin was nothing but fourteen going on thirteen. “I won’t abandon you all to Arthur’s story and hope for the best,” he said, “even if each spark brings me closer to infancy.” And after that? Death by young age, to quote Ari, once upon a time in the future.

  “Ari and Gwen won’t agree to this,” Jordan said. “They care for you.” She didn’t add anything about herself—either caring or being cared for. He wondered how often she’d been left outside of their tight-knit group. But that was what she had chosen: the life of a stalwart champion, a distant hero.

  And Merlin was a mage, to his bitter end.

  “We simply won’t tell them, will we?”

  Ari’s schemes to get Gwen alone failed, but then, Gwen had always been the true schemer in the relationship. While passing through a dark antechamber, leaving the rambunctiously feasting knights and nobles in the great hall, Ari felt a sharp tug on her armor and found herself behind a tapestry. Gwen was a sudden miracle in her arms, pulling Ari down by the chest plate, stealing a kiss so heated it left Ari spinning and steaming.

  “Um, hey there.”

  “Three months and you say hey there?”

  “Words aren’t a high priority at the moment, to be honest.”

  Gwen smiled, and Ari kissed her again until the mess of Camelot faded. In her mind, Ari was kissing Gwen against a backdrop of crystal stars and vibrant galaxies. During a time when two girls in love meant two girls in love. Dragons and misogyny could fuck right off.

  They parted slowly, faces pressed together. Gwen shivered. “Your armor is freezing.”

  “Sorry.” Ari’s hand cradled the back of Gwen’s feverishly hot neck. “Are
you sick?”

  “I’m always too hot, but that could be pregnancy or the hundreds of yards of cloth I’m stuffed into,” Gwen said, breath tight. “Your fingers are so cold. Feels wonderful.” Ari ran her hands over every inch of Gwen’s available skin. By the muted light of a distant lantern, Ari watched Gwen’s eyes close, her mouth slipping open. Ari’s hands paused on the warm, hard stone of Gwen’s stomach. “Weird, I know,” Gwen said. “But it actually makes me super horny.”

  “How is that different?”

  Gwen smiled wickedly and pushed Ari with her body. Ari’s armor crashed against the stone wall behind the tapestry. They froze. Ari’s pulse pounded as they held their breath and listened, mutually grasping how much they gambled for this stolen moment.

  “Jordan told me you were cast out of the portal far away,” Gwen said, touching Ari’s face with soft, sweet fingers. “That it took you months to get here.”

  “Yes,” Ari whispered. “This one was the worst.”

  “Worst?”

  “This latest chapter of being too far from you.” She slid her hands around Gwen’s hips, bringing her close, a few inches needing to suffice for the planet of longing in her chest. “The first time, when we were fourteen, when—”

  “You kissed me so long behind the stables I actually forgot to breathe and nearly passed out? And you smiled like you hadn’t ever been so proud of your own lips?”

  “I mean, it’s understandable,” Ari frowned playfully. “I legit took your breath away.”

  Gwen pressed a finger to Ari’s mouth. “But then you left, so mad at me.”

  Ari took Gwen’s hand and turned it over, pressing small kisses down the side of her thumb toward her wrist. “It didn’t stick. I crashed on your planet and accidentally married you.”

  “No accident. I don’t have those kinds of accidents.”

  “Then we were pulled apart again.”

  “Don’t skip over the places when we got together.” Gwen pressed in tightly. “I don’t.”

  She pulled out something that glimmered like metal in the low light. It took Ari’s kissing-addled brain a second to realize that she was looking at a Mercer watch. Gwen turned it on, the glow seeming perilously out of place in this age of torches and tallow candles. She clicked through pictures until she landed on one of Ari and Gwen’s clothes in a strewn pile on the floor of Error’s cabin. Ari’s heart lurched with homesickness.

  “You brought a Mercer watch all the way here just to look at these? Merlin will be hopping mad if he finds out. Gwen, he might actually hop.”

  “I needed a piece of our history. Our past,” Gwen said. “I look at these when I miss you too much. They can be… inspiring.”

  Ari’s eyes closed, head tilted back to make a simpering, albeit pleased, sound.

  “We only have moments.” Gwen’s tone turned serious. “You have no idea how hard it was to dispatch my handmaidens to various tasks. They’ll find me eventually. Or realize I gave them the slip and tell Arthur.”

  Ari stroked Gwen’s neck with her knuckle. “You sure Arthur doesn’t know about the baby?”

  “We aren’t intimate, if that’s what you’re digging for.”

  “Because he’s twelve?”

  Gwen scowled. “We’re courting. The process can take years. What he really needs is someone who understands politics. He’s in over his head. Camelot is a powder keg. Old Merlin is a disaster. I’m not sure when the chalice is going to appear, and I only have a month or two before I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Ari’s hands found the baby again, that hard, impossible place that felt both unreal and everything all at once. “We should get home before the time comes.”

  “And put the baby in Mercer’s crosshairs?” Gwen hissed. Ari hadn’t forgotten that the corporation had demanded their child as a price for the rebellion, and the rest of the damn galaxy had acted like that was a perfectly reasonable cost. “Not happening. I’m giving birth here.”

  “You can’t, Gwen. Think of all the ways it could go wrong… even if Camelot doesn’t get wind of the wedlock issue. You shouldn’t have given me that first aid pill.”

  “I had to!” Gwen started to cry. Ari suddenly felt brittle. Powerless. Ari held Gwen close, apologizing until Gwen seized her feelings, smearing tears from her face with her knuckles. “We’ll do what we always do, Ari.”

  “The impossible?”

  Gwen’s small smile was another miracle. “I never doubted you’d come back. Not once.”

  “That’s progress for us.” Ari kissed her, mentally reorganizing her to-do list. If Gwen needed to have the baby here, Ari would make sure it would happen. “Only two weeks until Arthur’s midsummer birthday celebration. Then the enchantresses will come bearing the chalice, I’ll steal it, you’ll give birth, and we’ll all return home to the same night we left. My moms will be waiting to help. We’ll hide the baby from Mercer easily. They’ll still be expecting you to be newly pregnant.”

  Gwen didn’t say anything, and Ari could tell that she had her own plans. Her own doubts or fears or all three. For once, Ari didn’t press her. She gave Gwen space, which ached with distance. “First you have to get Merlin and Jordan out of the dungeons, Ari.”

  “I have a plan for that, too. You’ll see at the melee. Do you think you could convince Arthur to fight on my team?”

  “That’s a hard no. He’s not a fighter.”

  “But don’t you see? That’s a problem. Arthur needs help, that much is obvious.”

  “We should be protecting him, not throwing him in front of swords.”

  Ari grew aggravated fast, tilting toward one of their infamous rows. “He has to toughen up, Gwen.”

  “Ari, he’s afraid of everyone because people keep trying to assassinate him,” Gwen said. “I wish we could tell Arthur the truth, but we came out of a time portal to steal from you because your ancient, trapped spirit inside my wife told us to doesn’t really roll off the tongue. He might be young and inexperienced, but Arthur wants to be a good ruler in a desperate time, and even if Lionel is light-years away and Mercer repossessed my throne, I haven’t forgotten what that feels like.”

  “So are we working with Arthur or around him, Gwen?”

  “With him, as much as possible.”

  “And you think he can keep up with us?” Ari’s voice slid over those words much like her body longed to slide over Gwen’s.

  “Ari,” Gwen sighed, feeling it, too, pulling her close.

  Footsteps echoed, and Gwen ducked from behind the tapestry, poised at the window. Ari peered out as the footsteps grew louder and then—pop—Gwen froze. Old Merlin hobbled by, sneering. By the time he’d turned the corner, another pop released Gwen from her statuelike state. She glanced around. “Did someone come by?”

  Ari slipped out from behind the tapestry. “That old magical bastard! He froze you so he wouldn’t have to talk to you. What a damn—”

  “Don’t forget he’s our Merlin, too, or he will be someday. It’s impossible to see most of the time, and it doesn’t excuse anything, but… our Merlin’s having a hard enough time with his body changing so rapidly. He doesn’t need to suffer a literal split personality.”

  “You’re right.” Ari kissed Gwen’s fingers. “You’re going to be the best mom, lady.”

  Gwen glowed, stars shining in her brown eyes from the narrow window. “I’m scared. The good kind of scared, I think.”

  “I’m pretty sure that, at least, is the way it’s supposed to be.” Ari leaned in for a kiss, not caring that they were no longer behind a tapestry, but Gwen turned away.

  “Merlin’s right. You shouldn’t have named yourself Lancelot. Jordan showed me the pages of her book… how they disappeared and reappeared. This is a dangerous game.”

  “Lancelot is the knight who loves Gweneviere. Who else could I be, Gwen?” Ari’s pulse quickened. “I have to lie about who I am to survive here. My gender. My time. My planet. Being Lancelot was the only way I could keep up t
his damn charade without completely losing my—”

  “They don’t get to be together, Ari! Not in a single one of the stories. Arthur stands between them. Their love is… thwarted. It’s a tragedy.” Gwen rested her head on Ari’s breastplate, but Ari couldn’t feel her through the armor. “And this? This is going to hurt.”

  Ari’s sword clashed with Lamarack’s outside the stables. They’d left their side open for Ari’s short dagger again. She tapped Lam on their—rather striking—red leather armor with the blade’s handle. “Dead. Again. Your kidneys are important, Lam.”

  “Remember while you’ve been practicing swordplay every day in this medieval paradise, I’ve been mucking stables.” Lam hunched on a hitching post, lifting the snarling dragon of their helmet to reveal a face stained with sweat and dirt. She missed Lam’s makeup and piercings. She missed their near-constant flirtations. It had always been her favorite distraction.

  “Wouldn’t say it’s been a paradise. I killed a kid barely older than Merlin.”

  Lam studied her, waiting for more. “Is this Hector?”

  Ari nodded. “We joined up on the road. He was a runaway. Never stopped singing but he knew all the edible vegetation and how to skin dinner.” She let the rest out fast. “He saw my breasts, freaked out, went to report me for impersonating a knight. We fought and I knocked his head against a rock by accident. He died slowly.” She left off the part about digging his shallow grave with her bare hands. Ari started cleaning her sword.

  “The young here are never young. And the old are dead.”

  “What?”

  Lam wiped their face. “We were still young in our future. In the eyes of the galaxy and government. Not kids, not adults. It’s how we slipped through Mercer’s fingers.” Ari wondered where they were going with this. “Here we’re adults. Middle age. Halfway to a quick death.”

  “Some of us have always been old at heart.” Ari thought of Gwen who was queen at sixteen, married at eighteen, pregnant by nineteen. All on purpose. “I’ve put up with a lot since I arrived on this stupid planet, but if it’s turned my lovely Lam morose, I’ll never forgive it.”