Anything might be hiding in those deep folds. Perhaps Lancelot’s instincts were true.
Lancelot reached the crest and paused, waiting for the two of them to catch up with him. He rested his hand on a knee, his boot thrust forward. “Do you feel it?”
“What?” Gawain asked, puzzled.
Tegan nodded. “Avalon does not welcome us.”
“We are interlopers,” Lancelot said in agreement.
Gawain gave a soft snort. “I feel nothing.”
“It does not mean you are immune,” Lancelot said, his tone one of warning. “We must be careful, now.”
Gawain shook his head and peered down the slope before them. “Straight down?”
“The place we seek is ahead,” Lancelot said in agreement. “It is trying to repel us.”
Gawain rolled his eyes. “Down, then.” He strode forward, moving down the slope as if it was the flat earth they had left behind at the edges of Avalon.
Tegan followed and heard Lancelot’s footfalls behind her.
The trees crowded the valley walls and floor, growing densely overhead. The air beneath them was warm and thick and still. It felt as though it was an effort to breathe, even more effort than descending a slope should require.
Tegan fought to keep Gawain’s shoulders in view, as he moved around wide trunks and skirted high roots. She could feel her heart thudding in her temples, even her wrists. She was warm. Too warm.
With a soft sound, she tore the uncomfortably thick cloak from her shoulders and tossed it away. She didn’t hear it flutter to the ground behind her. She might have been deaf, for all she could hear was her own breath and the reverberations of her heart, which worked hard enough to make her chest ache.
“Guenivere!” The barely heard cry was Lancelot’s, and it was far from here.
Tegan whirled and thrust her foot up the slope to maintain balance. Lancelot was not behind her. “Lancelot!” she cried.
No answer came.
Alarmed, she turned, staggering on the uneven ground, to peer through the trees ahead. Where was Gawain? He had moved too far ahead of her…
She stumbled forward, hearing nothing but her heart once more. “Gawain!” She tried to run, but the slope was too treacherous. She was forced to a walk, every step making her boots slide from beneath her. “Gawain!” she shouted once more.
But Gawain did not answer, either.
Gawain made good progress through the trees. Really, the land here was far easier to climb than any rocky dale he’d scaled when he was a lad. The soil was soft beneath his boots, and far more forgiving of missteps and stumbles.
When he heard the trickle of water, his throat closed over with sudden longing. He changed direction, heading toward the sound of water. If it was true that there was virtue in every spring upon Avalon, then it could not hurt to drink from the water.
The pool he found was three paces across and nearly perfectly round. It was edged with flat rocks and utterly still. Yet the trickle of water was loud here, making his mouth seem even more parched. He knelt at the edge of the pool, pushed his cloak out of the way and bent over the water to drink and paused.
He could see his reflection in the water, better than he had ever seen himself in a bronze mirror, and the sight was startling. He examined his features. Was it possible he was growing old? There were lines at the corners of his eyes and a drawn look about his mouth. The man that stared at him had seen much of life. Too much.
A soft sob made him flinch. He looked around, his hand flashing to his knife hilt, his heart hammering. “Who is that?” he demanded.
Another sob, even softer this time, coming from…
“The water,” he breathed, turning to look at the still mirror before him.
Now, instead of his own face, he saw a different vision, one that drew his heart to stillness. For Rhiannon knelt upon a northern crag. He even knew which peak it was. Kings’ Seat, in Strathclyde, the mountain where kings were entombed. Was he being shown the future?
For Rhiannon knelt with her face in her hands, weeping piteously. Sorrow made every line of her body droop.
“Rhiannon,” Gawain breathed, his heart aching for the woman’s loss.
Rhiannon dropped her hands and looked around, startled. It was as if she had heard him. “Gawain?” she whispered, her gaze searching for him.
“I am here,” he whispered.
Her gaze found him. Joy filled her face and her arms reached for him. “Gawain, oh, Gawain!” she breathed. “Come to me!”
His heart leapt. He drew in a sharp, hard breath. “Ye do not know what you are saying.”
But her smile was glorious. Warm. Heated. And for him.
Tegan came to a halt, breathless, her arm around a tree. Running in this way would not let her hear the others, or anyone else on the island. She drew in deep breaths, trying to control her panting so she could hear. Still, the thickness of the air seemed to muffle her hearing.
She turned her head, casting for any sound at all, as her breath slowed and the wild beating of her heart calmed.
Then she heard it, faint, but clear.
“Tegan!”
It was Gawain’s voice.
She listened for him to call again, so she could fix the direction.
He cried her name once more and her heart fluttered, for his voice was filled with fear.
Tegan ran, dodging trees and throwing up her arm as a shield as bushes whipped past. She hurdled high roots, her direction certain.
Then she saw him waiting beneath a great yew tree.
Gawain moved toward her, relief plain on his face. “There you are. I have just seen…” He shook his head. “I have been so blind, Tegan.” The expression in his eyes shifted. Became warmer. “I have been such a fool.” His voice was rough, thick with emotion.
Tegan drew in a sharp breath. “You have?” Her voice was strained, and with hope threaded through it.
Gawain’s gaze locked with hers. “I looked for love where there was none and failed to see it was before me all this time.”
“Truly?” she breathed. She dared take a step closer to him. She trembled. “You can find it in your heart to love a woman like me?”
He nodded. It was a tiny movement, but elation fizzed in her veins and made her breath evaporate altogether. Winded, she could do nothing but laugh with simple happiness. “Oh, Gawain…”
He held out his hand. “Come with me now.”
Tegan reached for his hand and froze, staring at it.
“Come, Tegan. Be with me.”
Tegan shook her head. “No calluses,” she whispered. Coldness touched her middle, dispersing the warm joy. She backed up a step. “You’re not real.”
She turned and plunged back through the trees.
“Tegan!” he cried after her.
“Not real,” she muttered, running in as straight a line as she could away from that place.
Abruptly, the sound of wind in the trees and the creatures that lived among them became clear to her. The forest was thick with life. Teaming with it. She shook her head, clearing it, and stayed on the line she was following, leaving the disillusion behind her.
She called for Lancelot and Gawain, bellowing their names into the treetops.
This time, when Gawain answered, her relief was real. She altered directions, twisting around trees and bushes.
The clearing where she found him was smooth, with not a blade of grass showing, despite the dappled sunlight coming through the trees. At one end was a spring, surrounded by rocks, but Gawain stood at the other end of it, as far from the pool as he could get, one hand on the trunk of the tree, as if he was propping himself up.
Tegan threw herself against him. He staggered back a step, then propped them both up, his arm coming around her to steady her. “Whoa,” he breathed.
Tegan picked up his right hand and smoothed her fingers over the hard ridges and bumps that a sword left on a fighter’s hand. “Calluses,” she whispered and closed her eyes.
<
br /> “You’re trembling,” he said. “What happened?”
“I saw…you,” she whispered. “But it was not you.”
She felt him twist, as if he was looking over his shoulder. “How did you know it was not me?”
“You told me exactly what I wanted to hear.” She shuddered.
He gave a sound that might have been a gusty sigh or a cough. “I am so contrary that saying what pleases you gave you warning?”
“Yes,” she said flatly.
“Gods…” Gawain breathed. His arm tightened.
Tegan pushed herself away from him and looked over her shoulder, as he had done. “Is that a spring?”
“‘tis naught but a puddle,” Gawain told her. “It runs no deeper than my heel. It was put there to tempt me.”
“Water is a temptation to you?”
“The visions in it were.” He scowled. “We’ve been told, always, that Avalon is a powerful place. In our eagerness, we forgot that.” He pulled out his sword, Durandel, and flipped it to his left hand. He hefted it. “Thanks to Lancelot’s way of fighting, I am as strong with my left as my right, these days.” He held out his right hand toward her. “We should not let ourselves be separated again. Take out your sword. We must find Lancelot.”
Tegan took out her sword and took his hand.
Chapter Nineteen
Every time he neared the place from where he thought he had heard Guenivere call him, Lancelot found the land empty. Yet every time, he heard her just ahead and would continue on.
The trees thinned and the ground grew rocky, with few grasses or weeds to soften it. The walls of the valley grew higher, until what he moved through was a mere cleft, bereft of anything but hard rock to either side and underfoot.
The cleft ended.
Lancelot stepped through cautiously. Taranis had been in his hand all along, but now he raised the sword to a position where he could lift it high or drop it low and be ready for any attack.
He took in the bowl of space before him. It was almost a cavern, with rock leaning over him on either side and trees above them, casting dense shade upon the earth.
On the far side, shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy of the trees and spotted the ground with pools of glowing light.
In the middle of the bowl, though, was nothing. Nothing natural, at least.
There was a fire, burning low, and hanging from a tripod over it, a cauldron larger than Lancelot had ever seen. Runes and old symbols ran around the sides of the cauldron, most of them from dark gods and secret religions long gone. Nimue had not allowed the texts of such gods into her house.
To one side of the fire, as if this was a room in any house, was a high desk and a stool. A book sat upon the desk, the ends clamped open, so the page was revealed. The writing upon the page was close together and too small for Lancelot to read from here, but even the shaping of the letters repulsed him. They were not elegant or clean.
Morgan, Queen of Rheged, sister to Gawain’s witch mother, and sorceress of underestimated powers, stood waiting before the fire. A single shaft of sunlight bathed her, making her dark hair shine and her flawless skin to glow.
She looked impossibly young and slender. She wore a dark green gown which made her seem as though she belonged in this forest, and it did suit her, Lancelot admitted.
The woman looked tranquil, except for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. “Lancelot,” she said, as if she was not surprised to see him. “Welcome to the Vale of No Return.”
“Is that what this place is? You live here?” He looked around once more, as if he had not quartered every angle and spotted the sword and staff leaning against the desk, and the bow and quiver of arrows on the other side, leaning against a tree.
Then there was Morgan herself, a weapon wrapped in loveliness.
“I live in a house by the monastery,” Morgan said, rolling her eyes. “The monks and the folk who live there find my ointments and salves a great assistance.”
“You led me here,” Lancelot guessed. He lowered his sword.
“I led all of you astray,” Morgan admitted. She smiled. “You have been so easy to predict, Lancelot. I am almost disappointed by how simple it was to arrange to bring you here.”
Lancelot shifted on his feet, staying light upon them. “Melwaes was your doing?”
Morgan frowned. “Ah, well, that was not exactly how I planned it. But he is a devout soul, which makes him highly susceptible to suggestion. A dream or two, a vision, seeds arranged in a crucifix inside his morning apple…” She shrugged. “He believes he is saving Guenivere from the heathen king, preserving her for his god.” She gave a simper. “And himself.”
Lancelot gripped the hilt of the sword, his fingers aching. “You arranged the abduction of the Queen…for what?”
“For you, Lancelot.” Morgan held her hands out to each side, as if to demonstrate her vulnerability and openness. “I have done everything for you. You forced me to it, by lingering in that opaque forest of yours. The lengths I have gone, the things I have done, just to catch a glimpse of you…” She shook her head.
Lancelot shuddered.
Morgan took a step toward him. It brought her out of the shaft of light, but the dimmer light did not diminish her beauty. On the contrary, she seemed to glow with her own power.
Lancelot was struck again by the perfection of her beauty. She was everything he liked in a woman. Sophisticated, knowledgeable. Strong.
He wrinkled his brow. “A moment,” he said, tearing his gaze away from Morgan’s face. “What you have done to see me…and bring me here?” He brought up his sword. “Does that include poisoning my mother?” He moved toward her. “I would not have come to Britain but for that…” he breathed.
An expression skittered across Morgan’s face, too quickly for him to properly read it. “She was only supposed to fall ill,” she said quickly, raising her hand beseechingly toward him. “Dilwyn put too much of the potion in her wine. And then that fool Merlin made her bring it all back up, when he should have smothered the oil with milk or grease.”
“Oil? Let us call it what it was,” Lancelot ground out. “Poison.”
Morgan took a step back. Then another. She squared her shoulders. “I know where Melwaes keeps Guenivere.”
Lancelot paused. “You lie.”
“Look around you, Lancelot. Do you think I am impotent? Think of what I have done, what I have seen in order to do it. You think a little thing like a queen in distress would be hidden from me?”
“She is in distress? Has Melwaes…” His throat was squeezed by invisible fingers. His chest ached where his heart threw itself against it.
“She plays with him,” Morgan said in disgust. “She dangles hope where none exists, so that he will wait just a little longer to earn the reward she will never give him.”
Lancelot held his teeth together to stop himself from making even the smallest sound, which would tell Morgan far too much about his thoughts. He shifted his gaze away from her, for she could read truth in a man’s eyes, too.
“I know where all the pits and traps are,” Morgan continued. “I know where the spells lie in wait for the unwary. When I looked into the oil just now, I saw your friends acquainting themselves with some of those traps. They are lost, Lancelot. And so will you be if you look for Guenivere without my help.”
“You said you know where she is.”
“I know of two places where she might be. The Sight does not show me the path or the door, Lancelot. It just shows me the room beyond the door, with no hint where to find it. But there are few places Melwaes would dare go on this island, and I know where they are.”
“Why would you help me?”
Morgan smiled. It was a soft, sweet expression. “Why, to win your respect and, perhaps, your friendship. I cannot win your love, for that has been already given to another, hasn’t it?”
Lancelot just barely controlled his reaction. He breathed hard, dispersing his dismay and his anger. “You seek my favor,
anyway, knowing that?”
Morgan gave a pretty laugh. “Why not? Oh, do not look at me that way, Lancelot. We both know your love for Guenivere is not exactly pure.” She moved toward him, stopping so that she had to turn her face up to him. He could smell her. A potent brew of womanhood and power. He swallowed.
“I assure you, Lancelot, a night in my arms will be one you never forget,” she breathed.
He traced the outline of her mouth with his gaze. Her lips were full, moist and rich with promise. They hovered just beneath his. All he had to do was bend his head a little.
“A single night is all you ask?”
“I ask for only a night, for I know a single night will leave you wanting more. Yes, just the one night. A night of undreamed pleasure. A night when you can forget everything and just enjoy yourself.” Her voice had become a murmur, a throbbing in his veins.
A screech and great flapping of wings jerked Lancelot’s attention beyond Morgan’s lips, to the edge of the vale. From the bough of one of the great trees, a great white owl took flight, its wings dipping heavily. It cried again, the high, hard call echoing flatly inside the vale. It soared up, into the sunlight, where for a moment, the dazzle turned it into a glowing nimbus of pure white.
Lancelot blinked and straightened. He could hear many things he had not noticed until this moment. The trickle of water. Trees sighing in wind far above. The creak of branches.
And bootsteps on rock.
“Lancelot! Lancelot!”
“Tegan…” Lancelot breathed. He stepped away from Morgan, raising his blade. “Your spells did not lead them astray for long, witch. They are true friends. The friendship you offer is naught but an overture to reach your own vile ambitions. For my mother’s sake, I will never again contemplate even smiling in your direction. If you were not the High King’s sister, I would kill you where you stand.”
Morgan hissed, her face growing ugly. “You will never find your precious love without me!”
Abduction of Guenivere (Once and Future Hearts Book 7) Page 20