Spear of Destiny (Misadventures of Loren Book 1)

by Ines Johnson

  Well.

  Kind of.

  Mostly.

  People just needed to know the whole story to understand. But no one ever listened. They all just labeled him a villain and moved on. I'd been cast under the same label back in the human world and it would appear I wouldn't escape it here in the magical town of Camelot.

  The fire had gone out of my hands and my spirit. Looking down, I saw that the wood of the cane that had hidden the magical sword of my grandfather had burned away. The cane had been my father's.

  All that was left was the blade. The steel winked at me under the sunlight. I leaned down to pick it up.

  "Where did you learn that?" Arthur asked.

  "Gwin's been trying to teach me to control the magic. It's just that it's so much—"

  "Not the magic. The swordplay."

  "Oh." I blinked as I looked up at him. "I've been taking fencing lessons since I could walk." I'd learned from the world's greatest masters, including a certain Spartan King forever immortalized in a Hollywood film, King Leonidas. But that's yet another story. "I've been felling men twice my size since I was twelve."

  Arthur studied me anew. I held still, realizing for the first time exactly how much I wanted his approval. That scared me more than the magic rushing through my blood. Waiting for his judgment felt like my skin was being sheared off my bones.

  "I'm not gonna jump through your hoops," I said. "I'll just take my sword and go."

  "You can't leave," said Arthur. "Not with a power you can't control coursing through your veins. You need protection more than you need training."

  "I'm no man's damsel."

  "The truth is, Loren, you're not giving us a chance. You need training—as a witch in addition to a knight. But even before that, you need to earn the respect of the men here if you want to be accepted into our ranks."

  There was that word again. Acceptance. Did I want their acceptance?

  "You're a part of this family," said Arthur. "You belong here with us."

  My arms instinctively wrapped around my middle. Though my parents were both gone, I did have other family, my father's family. But they'd rejected me when I was a little kid. Right after I'd lost my mother. And then again after I lost my father. I'd never expected to hear those words again: you have family, you belong. And Arthur wasn't done.

  "The sword chose you to wield it, but the knights choose who takes a seat at the Round Table."

  "So you want me to be your little gopher?" I hadn't signed up to be in the shadows. I'd spent half my life cast as a femme fatale, a role which, admittedly, I'd cultivated and had the wardrobe and smoky voice to support. But I was done being the villain or the sidekick. I was ready to be the hero of the story.

  "We all had to squire before we earned our seat," said Arthur. "If you want to be treated like an equal amongst the knights, if you want to earn your grandfather's seat, then you'll need to earn our respect."

  I looked around at the bearded faces assessing me. My gaze stuck on Gawain and his sultry eyes. And then I realized, these knights were all men. I could have each of them wrapped around my finger before the week was out.

  "Fine," I said. "Hit me with it. I can handle whatever you throw at me."

  Yeah, right. Two cliché catch phrases in a row? I was clearly asking for trouble.

  Chapter Two

  "These need to be cleaned and polished," said the young man before me.

  My knees buckled as a literal ton of dull metal was piled into my arms. After much debate, where Geraint suggested I be a Chamber Squire and put on a housekeeping detail and it took Lance and Gawain to hold me back from cleaning his clock, it was decided I'd be put in the armory.

  The weapons room inside the castle was a mix of medieval weaponry and modern technology. Steel blades, chains, and shields covered the wall of one corner, while guns of every shape and size were arrayed on another. In the farthest corner, computers and electronic gadgets buzzed and beeped. In a third corner were weights, punching bags, and sparring dummies. It looked like the knights had covered all the bases of medieval, modern, and high-tech warfare.

  Inside the armory with me were three other squires on weapons detail this morning. There was the curly headed Yuric who was so thin he looked like the wind would knock him over. And then there was Maurice who looked like a mountain. The pair reminded me of the nursery rhyme of non-fat eating Jack Sprat and his portly wife who ate no lean.

  And then there was Baysle, the squire who'd handed me the pile of weaponry. Not basil, a favorite herb of mine and the best part of a true Italian Margherita pizza. The word basil was said with a soft-sounding 'A' that ended lightly on the final consonant. The way Baysle said his name when he introduced himself it sounded like he was vomiting out the Ba sound and then choking on the ending consonant; Bah-Zil.

  The kid was handsome. But he was the kind who knew it. I pinched my nose at the airs he put on.

  Baysle wore the seal of Sir Geraint, letting me know he was the knight's personal squire. Which by default made him a douche-in-training. He squinted his green eyes at me. Angling his body away, he took a second glance at the priceless bounty in my arms and then squinted back up at me.

  "Best to stay inside the armory while you get those done," he said.

  The kid was lucky my arms were full of swords so I couldn't reach out and wring his neck. But then again, my arms were full of swords. I could drop all but one and slice the pipsqueak in half.

  I didn't miss the judgment in his assessing gaze. Nor his conclusion about my morals. Early in life, I'd been cast as a villain. The role had been thrust upon me by a number of circumstances. None of them I'd actually auditioned for, mind you.

  It started before I was born. My mother had run away from home to be with my dad. When she did, she took something with her from her family. It was an heirloom passed down from father to son. But by the time she'd been born, there had been no more sons born along her family line. Only daughters.

  Anyway, the item my mom had taken had been the sword of her grandfather, Sir Galahad, first of his name. I hadn't known I'd been wielding a magical sword in the skirmishes I'd been getting into all my life. I'd simply thought I was a bad ass. And I was.

  The sword hadn't taught me my awesomeness. I'd learned those lessons on my own. The sword had enhanced what was already there.

  I'd brought the sword back a quarter century later, not knowing what it was until I'd dropped it in the moat in front of the castle. The Lady of the Lake had emerged and handed the sword back to me, proclaiming me as its rightful owner like another royal orphan. Prophetic, I know.

  But still, I was watched as I walked through these halls. I knew the gazes upon me looked at me as someone who might steal. It didn't help that I'd come to these halls as the guest of someone who had stolen from these people in the past.

  My bestie, Nia, had brought me here weeks ago. She was the Wonder Woman of history, rescuing ancient sites and artifacts from zealous developers and tomb raiders. I'd tagged along as her sidekick when she came to help the knights out on their last quest. Nia admittedly had grabby hands for ancient things and we'd both gotten antique boners when we'd been let inside the medieval castle.

  Speaking of bones, that's how she and I met.

  When I was still a girl, my dad had told a necessary lie based on an unbelievable truth. It had cost him his reputation, his livelihood, and perhaps even his life. Nia had helped me to unravel the mess that my dad had made and restore the Van Alst family name. But those in the antiquities world still looked at me with a squint in their eyes when they heard my last name.

  For a time, when I'd been on my own, I'd worn that bad girl label like a badge of honor and I was good at it. Being the daughter of an archaeologist, my fingers were a bit sticky when it came to prized artifacts. I'd been known to raid a tomb or two in my past. I also had an eye for art and could easily copy just about any painting I saw and pass it off as the real deal.

  But that was all backstory. That li
fe was so six months ago. Wow. Had it been that long? I'd met my best friend, upgraded from villain to a heroine's sidekick, and learned I was a witch. Now, if I could just get past these stupid trials, I'd earn my stripes as a bona fide hero and take a seat as a knight at the Round Table.

  So, I'd put up with Bah-zil, the twerp's, abuse. For now.

  Baysle went to the opposite side of the room where the electronic gadgets, computers, and modems, and tablets were kept. He sat down behind one such console. His head disappeared, and I heard the unmistakable tone of an Xbox being powered on.

  I looked over at the other two boys around me. They ignored Baysle and got to work on their duties. These boys were all in their teens, though they had been on the earth before I was born. Sure, they looked like teenagers with the beginnings of facial hair and limbs still being grown into. But each of these guys was at least twice my age in actual years.

  Time moved differently in Camelot. Or rather, it moved the same, but with the magic flowing through the veins of the people of this small town, time had little effect on them. As long as the witches, wizards, and warriors stayed on the ley line that ran beneath the surface they stayed youthful, moving slowly through life. If they were off the ley line for too long, the absence of the magic allowed their natural age to catch up with them. And then there would be a whole reverse Benjamin Button on their hands.

  "Here," said Maurice, "I'll take those.

  The big guy reached for my load of swords. I was surprised to hear such a gentle voice come out of such a large male. I let him take the swords and bent to pick up a cleaning rag, but Yuric got to the cloth before I did.

  "This isn't women's work, my lady," Yuric said.

  My hackles went up. But not so far. They were doing my chores for me. It appeared boys did a lot of chores around the town and castle. Little pages cleaned while Gwin directed the workings as the Lady of the Castle. The matronly Igraine cooked all the meals but the pages, again all boys, served the dishes during mealtimes. Around the town, most of the shops were owned and operated by women and staffed by young girls.

  I'd fallen into some feminist's wet dream. But there was a problem.

  "I'm a squire," I said, "not a lady."

  I took the rag back and a couple of the swords. I plopped myself down in a chair and got to work. This was actually work I enjoyed, cleaning and sharpening a fine blade.

  Above me, Yuric and Maurice looked at each other. They were Lance and Arthur's squires, two of the most chivalrous knights in the castle. The boys were likely trying to decide how much trouble they'd get into for letting a woman do man's work.

  "What are we polishing these for anyway?" I asked. "Are we going to use them in battle?"

  "Squires don't fight," said Yuric. "We don't even leave Camelot much. Not since Merlin... well, you know."

  Since Merlin had tried to take Gwin's magic and leave the knights to their greatest enemies, the Knights Templars? Yeah, I did know. I'd had a front row seat to that bit of action.

  Merlin, Arthur's older brother, hadn't exactly been the great wizard recorded in the storybooks. He'd been born with magic. But that magic had nearly killed him.

  There were many witches born, but very few wizards. Most boys were born to be knights with just enough magic that they became strong warriors, able to wield magical swords and handle magical artifacts and defend against magical adversaries. When a boy was born with too much magic, the power could render his body weak and leave him ill or even dead.

  That's what happened to Merlin. So, what did he do about it? He acted like a little punk. Throughout his marriage, he siphoned off his wife's magic to keep him strong and alive.

  Merlin's wife was Gwin. Yup, that Guinevere. And apparently, she wasn't enough for him because he took his magic-grubbing hands outside his marriage and went homicidal.

  Merlin had taken the magic of some of the witches living outside of Camelot. But by this time he'd stopped sipping and took deep gulps of their magic which left them for dead. The knights had believed the culprits to be their sworn enemies, the Knights Templars. Imagine their shock when they found out it was the heir to the throne. And worse, he was still on the loose today. Which made the knights even more protective than normal.

  "We train and we do our duties until we're old enough to take our places as knights," Yuric was saying.

  "Sounds boring." I laid down a polished broadsword and picked up a sai. "I usually get into trouble when I get bored."

  "We have a lot of duties," said Maurice. "The knights give us more than enough to keep us occupied."

  "Who is Sir Gawain's squire?" I asked. If I got to clean his personal weapons that might make this whole squire-hazing a bit more palatable.

  Because it was hazing. I had all the qualifications of being a knight, except my sword was on my hip instead of between my legs.

  I looked up when the silence stretched on a bit long. The two boys looked at each other.

  "Sir Gawain doesn't have any pages or a squire," said Yuric. "He used to. But then he faced the Green Knight."

  I snorted as I wiped my rag over the sai's flat side. "That's not real. It's just a-"

  "Story?" said Yuric. "Then we're all stories, my lady."

  I knew the stories about Gawain and the Green Knight. The storybooks told that the knight had faced a powerful warrior that was death incarnate. But that hadn't actually happened in real life. Had it? It would mean that Death was a person.

  But then again, I had met Zeus and his brother Hades a couple of months ago. I'd once thought that the tales of the Olympians had been just stories. And my best friend was an Immortal being who was thousands of years old and nearly impenetrable to disease and decay. And I could now shoot fire out of my hands.

  I'd seen some crazy, magical things happen this year. Like flying ninjas who drank bones. Greek gods who sucked out people's souls. I'd watched a woman come back from the dead after having an ancient witch's magic transferred to her body.

  Oh wait, that was me. But I was hoping to draw the line at death having an appointment with the guy I had the hots for.

  "Magical swords," said Yuric. "A lady in the lake. An enchanted castle. A knight from the line of Galahad who retrieves the Holy Grail for Arthur."

  Yeah, all those stories were now facts I'd witnessed and taken part in. Technically, I was the Grail now. The actual Holy Grail hadn't been a cup. It had been Mary Magdalene who, it turns out, was a witch. She was also Arthur's ancestor. Mary's husband, Joseph of Arimathea, had bucked tradition and hadn't burn his wife's body as was the custom with witches. Instead, he entombed it. If a witch's body wasn't burned the magic stayed alive in her corpse. To keep the magic from the bad guys, Mary Magdalene's powers had been transferred into me as I'd lay dying from a bad guy's knife to my chest.

  "But all the stories can't be real," I said. "Like Sir Bors' tale? After taking a vow of celibacy, he supposedly had a lady and her maidens threaten to throw themselves off the castle battlements. When he refuses, they do jump and reveal themselves to be demons sent to tempt him."

  "That was real, my lady," said Maurice. "God rest Lady Evie's soul."

  I looked between the two of them. Neither laughed like it was a joke. "Okay, okay. What about Percival? Was he raised in a forest by his mother?"

  "Not exactly," said Yuric. "He was raised in captivity, but not in a forest."

  That kind of made sense. Where Geraint's brow was arched in an accent, Percy's brows reminded me of the top of an exclamation point. I expected him to shout bang or boogedyboo at any and every moment. He looked as though he was feral and had a few screws loose.

  The knights' tales from the stories were a soap opera of adultery and betrayal and murder and bed-hopping and You killed my father, prepare to die. I knew all the tales because my mom read them to me as a little girl. She just didn't tell me any were true. But here I was living in the fantasy world in the twenty-first century.

  "We need to hurry up and finish," said Baysle as he powered
down the Xbox. "It's nearing lunchtime."

  "We?" I demanded.

  "Yeah," said Baysle. "We're a team. I'm the leader. Chop, chop." He made a brushing motion with his empty hands. And with that, he headed out the room.

  "Ignore him," said Yuric. "He got his head stuck in a helmet when he was younger."

  "They still haven't gotten it off yet?" I asked.

  Both Maurice and Yuric laughed. I had a couple choicer words about Baysle, but I held my tongue. No sense corrupting the youth the first day on the job. We had time.

  "I think it's good that the knights are integrating," said Yuric. "Lady Morgan says that too many men are trapped in a single sense of masculinity that reinforces patriarchy and male privilege."

  "Yuric?" I asked. "Do you understand any of what you just said?"

  "No, he doesn't," said Maurice. "He was too busy watching Lady Morgan's lips as she said the words."

  Yuric reached over and punched Maurice, but it barely made an impact on the big guy.

  "I don't believe that the genders are equal." Maurice shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "There are things that women can do that men can't. There are also tasks that woman can do that a man should be tarred and feathered if he doesn't take upon himself to do. But I don't think that makes either sex inferior. I'm glad you're here too, Lady Lo."

  "Wow." I sniffed, dramatically. "Thanks guys."

  "All right," said Maurice. "That's enough menstruating. Let's get these weapons put up and get some grub."

  Look at that. It was only my first day at knight school and I was making friends. Which was a world different than when I'd gone to actual school. Score a point for me.

  Chapter Three

  With our duties done, I went with the other squires to put my swords up. A few other squires I didn't know very well came to the door and called to Yuric and Maurice, inviting them to lunch. It didn't surprise me that I'd fallen in with the guys. I'd never been the type to have girlfriends. Likely because women found me intimidating. But I could always pal around with the boys. I was excited to meet some more of my fellow squires.