Children of Avalon

by Meredith Bond

  “Thank you for your concern,” Scai added.

  “I should have gone out with you,” Dylan said, shaking his head.

  “We didn’t expect this,” Sir Dagonet said.

  “No, but I should have. I know Patric and his tricks.”

  “I don’t think this was Patric’s idea,” Aron said. “He seemed almost reluctant to leave. I think he wanted another go at you.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m sure he’ll have it, too,” Dylan said, looking like he’d relish a rematch.

  “We should go, too,” I said, wanting to avoid such a confrontation for as long as possible.

  “Yes, wot, wot? Jonathan and Madeline have packing to see to, and we need to get to Saerdbury,” Sir Dagonet agreed.

  “Thank you so much for your hospitality,” Scai said. She reached out and took Madeline’s hands. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Do be careful, though.”

  Madeline gave her a little smile. “Thank you for everything you did for us. A night’s rest and a meal were small enough payment for saving us.” Her eyes smiled at us all, despite the worry dulling her eyes.

  I was feeling restless. I knew we had to say proper goodbyes, but with those knights gone, I was anxious to get moving.

  “Yes, thank you again,” Jonathan echoed his wife. “And we will be careful. I think we’ll avoid any major roads. I know a way.”

  “Good, good,” Sir Dagonet said.

  Dylan caught my eye and gave me a nod. He was feeling my anxiety. “God speed,” he said, turning to pick up his pack and heading out the door.

  We all had no choice but to follow suit.

  As we were attaching our belongings to our horses I probably didn’t need to, but asked, “Shall we go after those knights?”

  The smile Dylan turned to me made it perfectly clear what he thought we should do. “You read my mind, Bridget. And I didn’t think you had that power.” He laughed.

  “You know I don’t. But I do know you well, don’t I?” I answered, unable to keep a giggle from entering my voice as well.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Scai asked, putting a damper on things. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better to just head straight to Saerdbury and confront Nimuë there?”

  We all looked to Sir Dagonet. He shrugged. “Don’t know. Quite possible they’re headed to Saerdbury, too. Might very well meet them on the road, don’t you know?”

  “And if we catch them, that will be four less knights capturing innocent Vallen,” Aron added.

  “Good point,” Sir Dagonet nodded.

  “If we hurry, we’ll be more likely to do so,” Dylan said, swinging himself onto his horse. “Sir Dagonet are you up for a gallop?”

  The old man sighed, but nodded.

  We took off down the road faster than we had ever travelled before. Scai clung to my waist as we galloped in pursuit of the knights.

  “They can’t be too far ahead of us,” Dylan called out.

  And indeed, they weren’t. We’d only been riding for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, when we caught up with them.

  Sir Dagonet unsheathed his sword and let out a war cry, which made me jump and nearly rein in my horse. The knights in front of us turned and prepared to fight.

  Dylan was leaping off his horse, Excalibur in his hand, almost before we had gotten close enough. But his foster brother, Patric, seemed to be expecting this and leapt from his horse to meet him.

  Aron kept galloping directly toward another of the knights, clearly singling one out. Nearly before the man knew what was happening, Aron launched himself from his horse, landing on top of the knight. The two men fell to ground with a sickening crunch. After that, I didn’t even want to look.

  And it was a good thing I turned away just then because there was one more knight. He dismounted with his eyes on Scai and me. The slow smile that grew on his lips didn’t exactly make me happy. There was a nasty glint in his eye as he waited for us to approach.

  “Can you freeze him like you did last night?” Scai’s voice whispered in my ear.

  My eyes widened. I hadn’t even thought of it. It was so odd having a new power. I wasn’t used to this. And I didn’t know how it worked. Would I freeze everyone in front of me? Would only those whom I wanted to freeze do so?

  I shrugged and gave it a try. I pulled together my power into my core and yelled, “Stop!” throwing all my magic into it.

  The knight right in front of us froze, but the men behind him, despite some turning to see what my shout was about, seemed unaffected.

  I shrugged. “That’s it. I guess it only works at close range.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing,” she said. She got down and walked around the frozen knight.

  “Do we have any rope with which we can tie him up?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. And I don’t think I can stop Sir Dagonet or Dylan to ask them.”

  Scai laughed. “No, I guess not.” She gave a shrug and disappeared only to reappear a minute later with a heavy stick in her hand.

  “Okay, unfreeze him.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe we could just drag him off somewhere.”

  Scai considered this but then shook her head. “No, I think he’d be too heavy. And then there’s nothing to stop him from coming right back. We don’t know how long your magic will last.”

  “Good point,” I said. “Okay, stand back.” She took a few steps back behind him.

  I thought warm thoughts and willed the man to unfreeze.

  “Are you waiting for me?” Scai said sweetly, as he jolted back to life.

  The knight spun around, but was greeted with a smack with Scai’s stick. Unfortunately, all she hit was his arm. It didn’t seem to faze him at all. He looked more surprised to see where she was and hardly even noticed that she’d hit him.

  Scai wasn’t the best fighter in either skill or aggression, nor did her powers lend her any special weapon she could use in battle. I hopped down from my horse and pulled the energy around me into a fire ball. The only problem was that I didn’t have the best aim and I really didn’t want to hit Scai.

  I took my time, carefully aiming and then screamed “Go!” just before letting it fly. Scai disappeared and the fireball hit the knight in the shoulder. For a second he just stood there, stunned, not knowing what had hit him. If only I had taken the time to put even more energy into it, I might have taken him down with that. But I hadn’t, so the energy merely shocked him, maybe burned him a little.

  Scai reappeared at his side and smacked him again with her stick before zipping away again, giving me a clear shot to throw another fire ball. I didn’t waste a moment, but gathered another one together and lobbed it at the knight.

  “Hit him in the head, Scai!” I called. I had no idea where my sister was, but clearly hitting him in the arm or stomach wasn’t going to really hurt the guy. The knight didn’t have a helmet on, however, so a blow to the head might actually do some damage.

  Clearly she’d heard me because in the next second, after my fire ball sailed off to one side, missing my target altogether, Scai reappeared next to the knight and gave him a good whack to his head.

  The man stumbled forward, so I tossed another fire ball at him hoping to get him while he was confused. It hit him in the chest, but again, because I hadn’t put a lot of energy into this one it didn’t do a lot of damage.

  It was hard to focus when there was so much else going on all around us. I stopped and concentrated. Blocking out all the other noises around me, I closed my eyes for a minute and pulled on my fire, building the strongest energy ball I could. I formed it in my hands, moving the energy inside of me to the ball and concentrating it to keep it small and tight.

  I was just about to open my eyes to aim when a great rumbling came from behind me. I jumped out of the way of a wagon just seconds before it would have hit me. All of that energy was gone!

  Dylan, Sir Dagonet and Aron, as well as the knights they were fighting, scattered out of the wa
y of the wagon. But it was what was in the wagon that captured my attention—no, not what, who. My brothers! All five of them. As well as that horrid man from the pub.

  For a minute I couldn’t breathe. My brothers were shackled into the wagon. I could see their hands held awkwardly in the air, kept in place by the bands of iron, even as they were all seated around the edge of the wagon.

  Nimuë!

  Yes, the old priest was sitting on the bench next to another knight who had been driving. Fury like nothing I had ever felt before burst out of me along with a shriek. The wagon burst into flames. The old wood easy tinder for my anger.

  “No! They’ll be burned alive,” Scai screamed and sent a gust of wind to put out the flames. It was so sudden and so hard, the flames extinguished immediately.

  It hardly took a breath of time for the knights who’d ridden up with Nimuë and the wagon to attack Sir Dagonet, Dylan, and Aron. Although they’d stopped fighting to get out of the way of the wagon, with the new attack, they all went right back at it, only this time they each had two knights to fight.

  “Scai, take care of Nimuë!” I called. How impossible that might be, I didn’t even want to consider, all I could think about, was my brothers. I had to get them free.

  Heedless of the fighting going on between me and the wagon, I bolted for it, weaving in and out to avoid swinging swords and fists. “Thomas! James! What happened?” I called out as I got closer.

  “Bridget, be careful!” Thomas shouted.

  “Get us out of here,” Matthias screamed.

  “I’m coming,” I said, dodging another sword and then jumping around a knight who suddenly appeared directly in front of me. “Aron,” I called out, not knowing where he was in confusion, “I need you and your bar.”

  Amazingly enough, he answered, calling out “I’ll be right there!”

  A smile flickered onto my lips. I couldn’t help it. Knowing that Aron was there and would help me free my brothers gave me a feeling of warmth and security that nothing else could have. With confidence, I hopped into the wagon and grabbed the shackles around Thomas’s wrists. I was about to start channeling my fire when I remembered the cloth I needed to protect him from getting burnt.

  Reaching under my skirt, I ripped off a swath of my shift and then crammed it around my brother’s wrists.

  He sighed, nearly laughing with relief. “Great idea.”

  “We did this for another wagon full of Vallen yesterday,” I explained as my fire began to heat the metal. I closed my mind to the fighting going on behind me, but my brothers’ shouts of encouragement and groans as someone got hit were horribly distracting.

  “You’ve been busy,” Thomas said, his voice tinged with awe.

  “You can’t imagine,” was all I could answer as I forced myself to concentrate.

  I opened my eyes and looked over at my other brothers. “You don’t think you could stop commenting on the battle? I’m trying to concentrate here.”

  “Oh, come on, Bridget. You can do your thing without us having to stay absolutely silent,” Matthias complained. “There’s a great fight going on. Come on, come on, I want to get out there.”

  I gave him my most severe glare.

  “We can be quieter, Matthias,” James said, giving our brother a warning kick. “If you want to get free, you’ll cooperate.”

  Matthias grumbled, but kept his ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ to a minimum.

  I refocused my attention back to my magic.

  As the metal began to glow red hot, I turned to see where Aron was with his bar. “Aron, I need you now!” I called out, seeing that he wasn’t anywhere near, but still fighting two knights.

  “Uh, right,” I heard him say, looking around. “Sorry, gentlemen, the lady calls.” He then ducked a blow from one of them and sprinted toward me, making a quick stop at his horse to pull his blacksmithing tool from his saddlebag.

  I renewed my concentration on the metal around my brother’s wrist as Aron slipped the flat end of his tool into the hinge and popped it open.

  “Ha!” Thomas said, relieved. He pulled the material from his wrist and dropped it in my lap before jumping out just in time to attack a knight coming up behind Aron. The two men went down in a flurry of fists, but I didn’t have time to watch. I turned to the next brother.

  “Hurry, Bridget,” Peter urged as I concentrated on heating his shackles.

  “I’m trying,” I said, trying not to snap at him. The fear and anger still burned inside of me at seeing my brothers shackled. It made feeding my fire easy, but it still took time to heat the metal.

  There was an “oof!” and then I felt Aron abandon my side. My brothers groaned in sympathy. I didn’t want to look, but I found myself opening my eyes and turning around anyway.

  Aron was picking himself up off the ground as a knight stood over him, his sword at the ready. But Aron didn’t have a sword. He looked angrily at the knight’s sword for a minute, then reached down and grabbed up his metal blacksmithing tool. It turned out to make a pretty good sword. It didn’t have a sharp edge to cut, but it could seriously hurt whoever he hit with it.

  “Bridget!” Peter said, recalling me to what I had been doing.

  “Oh! Sorry. But I need Aron and that bar he has.”

  “Well, heat the iron first, then call him over.”

  I nodded and focused back on my fire. As soon as the metal was glowing red, I turned back to Aron, but he was still deep in his fight and didn’t look like he’d be able to leave it any time soon.

  Digging down into myself for even more energy, I created a fire ball, aimed and managed to get it right in the face of the man Aron was fighting.

  For once, I actually hit what I was aiming for! I whupped with delight as the man screamed out, probably more in shock than pain. It wasn’t a particularly strong fire ball.

  “Good shot!” Aron said, jumping back into the wagon next to me. He took a moment to give me an admiring smile before using his tool to break apart the shackles holding Peter into the wagon. With another smile and a caress of my arm that sent lovely chills up and down my body, he jumped down to rejoin the fight.

  With those little zings of pleasure still running through me, I sat back to take a much needed break before I had the energy to build up my fire again. I closed my eyes for just a moment, but Piers gave me a little shove. “Come on, Bridget, this is no time for a nap!”

  “Give her a minute,” James said. “That’s got to be really hard work.”

  I gave him a grateful smile, but wrapped Piers’s wrists with my cloth and pulled myself together to start heating the shackles around his wrists. The metal was nearly hot enough for me to call Aron over when strong arms wrapped themselves around me and I was pulled from the wagon.

  “Hey, Thomas,” Piers complained.

  “I’m sorry, Bridget, but I was told to stop you,” my eldest brother said, his voice an odd monotone.

  “Who told you to stop me?” I asked, squirming, trying to get free.

  “Father du Lac,” he said.

  I stopped moving and looked up into my brother’s eyes. They were pained and ever so slightly vacant as if he were fighting Nimuë’s suggestion but didn’t have the strength to do so.

  I looked around for the old priest. Scai was still keeping him busy on the far side of the battle. Somehow he must have gotten to Thomas.

  “Thomas what are you doing?” Piers shouted from the wagon again.

  “Nimuë’s put a suggestion into his mind; he can’t help it,” I shouted back.

  “Well, then, put another in there to counteract hers and get us out of here!”

  I looked up at my brother. I didn’t know what would happen if I tried to do that. I also wasn’t entirely confident in my ability to put a suggestion into his mind. They were never a strong point with me. I struggled within his arms a little more and then realized what I needed to do.

  “Thomas,” I said, quietly, while pulling together my magic.

  He looked down at
me.

  “Freeze,” I said gently, but firmly, adding in the magic.

  He did. I couldn’t believe it, but it worked.

  I slipped out from his embrace. He didn’t move.

  “What did you do to him?” James asked, not taking his eyes off of our brother as I climbed back into the wagon.

  “I froze him. It’s something new I just discovered I can do.”

  “Uh…” Piers said, also staring at Thomas.

  “How long is that going to last?” James asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve only just tried it a couple of times,” I said, going back to heating the metal around Piers’ wrists.

  “You froze your brother?” Aron asked, when he climbed into the wagon at my call.

  “Nimuë told him to keep me from freeing my brothers. It was the only way for me to stop him,” I explained as he broke apart the shackles. He glanced around as if looking for someone, perhaps Nimuë? “Oh.” He jumped out of the wagon just in front of where Thomas was frozen. “I’ll move him out of the way so he doesn’t get hurt.”

  “Thank you,” I called out as he lifted my brother and moved him to the far side of the wagon away from the fighting and action. Aron gave me a smile and then turned and tripped up a knight who was fighting Sir Dagonet.

  “Ooops!” I heard him say.

  I laughed and went to work on the shackles around James’s wrists.

  It only took me a few minutes to free James, and luckily Aron hadn’t gone far. Matthias and the man from the pub were chomping at the bit and telling me to get a move on, but I needed another break.

  As I was trying to get my energy back, I was pulled backwards out of the wagon once again. This time it was one of the knights who was holding me up by the collar of my dress.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled into my face.

  I couldn’t stand being held like an annoying mongrel, and I didn’t like the man’s smelly breath in my face either. In one movement, I gave him a quick kick where I knew it would hurt and set his hair on fire.

  I was dropped as the man rolled in on himself, falling to the ground in pain.