Echoes of Avalon (Tales of Avalon Book 1)

by Adam Copeland

  “What’s this?” she asked, bending over to pick something up from the floor next to the throne. It was a sort of jewelry box, on it was a small label that bore Mark’s name.

  Mark looked puzzled.

  “It seems that somebody is feeling sorry for you and wants to make you feel better,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to do this for me, Christianne.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t. Honest.”

  Mark took the package and looked it over. He shrugged himself and removed the wrappings. Inside was an ornate hinged wooden box. This he opened, and displayed the clear glass bauble inside. Christianne gasped at the sight of it.

  “This is no mere gift,” she said. “I’ve never seen such a thing. Surely it is a treasure.”

  They gazed at the object.

  “Curious thing, isn’t it?”

  It appeared to be a glass orb filled with fluid. Inside was a diorama, a tiny graveyard with a dead tree and crosses.

  “Oh, look,” Christianne said, gently taking the thing. She shook it lightly and white flakes began to move about in the fluid like snow. Mark grunted in surprise. He took it back and shook it even harder. When he held it still in his hand to watch the miniature snow storm go into effect, however, his eyes grew big when the object levitated above his palm and jumped to the floor.

  Before the gasps were out of their mouths, the bauble exploded in a silent flash that engulfed the entire keep. It spread from the throne room at the center of Greensprings to its furthest walls in a heartbeat, forming a brilliant shell of white light that pushed air before it, sending a shock wave that bent every tree and shrub in its path. A storm of dust, loose branches, and dead leaves exploded outward from the keep as if a rock had been dropped in a pond, ripples spreading in every direction.

  Unlike such a splash, however, the shell of light did not collapse in on itself and dissipate, but rather solidified, becoming more distinct in shape, and darkening in color. It became a tangible object that encased the fortress under a dome.

  Wispy clouds coalesced over this dome. First in barely discernible mist, then in thick cottony clouds that darkened in hue like the dome itself, from gray to angry purple, then to black. These grew in mass and began to swirl in a clockwise motion, gaining momentum. Lighting flashed in their bowels, revealing every hue of midnight. Bolts licked out in every direction, but most kissed the surface of the dome, which by now was just as dark and opaque as the clouds. Wind blew fiercely ahead of the clouds, and the clouds snuffed out the last sunlight.

  As the dome lurched forward, it grew and engulfed more land. Its surface, though black, was now as scintillating as the surface of a jewel, or a star-filled winter’s night. With its growth, it became more spherical, as if a ball were rising from the earth, holding Greensprings captive at its center.

  As the storm raged outside of the sphere, its inside was a different story.

  It was calm. Almost completely silent.

  It was snowing inside the sphere, and oddly, snowing even inside the buildings. What wasn’t covered with snow was sheathed in ice and frost, and a ghostly light illuminated everything like starlight reflecting off of snow. The only sound was the faintly raspy sound of snowflakes gathering.

  Not a soul stirred, as every occupant of Greensprings was frozen in place like a statue—walking, sitting, working, or playing.

  In the throne room, Mark was still reaching for a falling globe that was no longer there. Christianne stood behind him with hands to mouth. Both had looks of shock in their frost-covered faces.

  #

  “What on earth is happening?” Katherina said, rubbing her shoulders in the cold wind. Loki gazed at the gathering clouds in the sky over Greensprings, the hint of a smile on his face, but he said nothing.

  Katherina fidgeted in the cold. “Do you have blanket or something?”

  Loki seemed in a daze, but said distantly, “Yes, yes of course. In the carriage on the passenger seat.”

  As she moved to the carriage, Loki spied Minion jogging down the road to the chapel, brow glistening with sweat and wet spots ringing his neck and underarms.

  “Master, I did it!” he cried in between gasps.

  The Viscount gazed at the approaching storm clouds. “It would appear so. You left it in the throne room?”

  Minion, bent over on knees catching his breath, nodded.

  “Splendid, then Greensprings is now an anchor point. How poetic. That surpasses my wildest hopes. I’m delighted the globe exploded in the keep and not while being jostled in your pack. I honestly didn’t expect you to survive the journey.”

  Minion blinked, but shook off the statement. “I also took care of something else that was troubling you.”

  Loki raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “The Irishman, I pushed him in a well, and if he didn’t break his neck from the fall he...”

  Loki caught movement from the corner of his eye and knew the Lady Katherina was exiting the carriage. He tried to gesture for his servant to drop the subject, but it was too late.

  “The Irishman? What of Sir Gawain? Did he turn up finally?” she asked. Minion fidgeted. The storm was almost on top of them, turning day into night. “Well, answer me.”

  Loki stepped between her and Minion. “My Lady, don’t worry about it. He is of no concern to you or me. As a matter of fact, nobody in Greensprings is.”

  Katherina’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not convinced you really want to go back there. Trust me, you are meant for bigger and better things. Those people in Greensprings had no right to tell any of us how to act, how to behave. They shouldn’t be evicting anybody. They are the ones who deserve to be punished. Well, I took care of them all. Consider them...preoccupied.” Loki took her hands in his. “Permit me to take you away. Let me make you a queen―my queen.”

  Katherina shook her hands free of the Viscount. “What do you mean ‘preoccupied’? Just because I thought that place silly, does not mean I meant them harm. And I already am queen.” She took a step back, as if seeing Loki for the first time, a hint of a scowl creasing her brow. “What is it with you men? You are like boy with toy.” She pushed past Loki and grabbed Minion about the collar. “What of Patrick, what did you do with him?”

  Loki sighed deeply and bent down to the wooden box, the one that housed many bottles. As the princess interrogated the hapless servant, Loki selected a clear bottle, unstoppered it, and upended the bottle into a napkin.

  “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I guess it was too much to expect everything to go according to plan.”

  He approached Katherina from behind and covered her mouth with the moist cloth. She struggled violently, but he hung on tight, long white fingers clutched over her face. Eventually, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she sagged into his arms. Loki handed her limp form over to Minion, who placed her inside the carriage.

  “Oh dear,” Loki said, his attention suddenly drawn across the brook.

  There, at the edge of the trees, stood the maidservant Aimeé. She started at the sight of Loki staring back at her and Minion putting the slack form of Katherina inside the black carriage. Then she bolted like a deer back in the direction of Greensprings.

  “This is becoming absolutely ridiculous!” Loki shouted.

  “What is, Master?”

  Loki pointed angrily in the direction of the bounding Aimeé. Minion swallowed hard.

  “She can’t do anything,” Minion pointed out. “She’s alone now.”

  Loki shook his head. “I prefer to leave nothing to chance. We need as few loose ends as possible.” He reached behind the chauffeur’s seat and retrieved a crossbow and several bolts. These he shoved into Minion’s hands. “Finish her, quickly.”

  Minion moaned. More running.

  #

  Patrick Gawain was in shock. Though from which the most, the cold water or the fact that the little bastard had pushed him in, he was not sure.
>
  He floundered in the water and tried to orient himself in the narrow well before he drowned. He should have considered himself lucky: the well was old and abandoned but fortunately full of water. He regained his bearings and fought for the surface of the icy water.

  Before he reached it, however, a bright light flashed across the surface, then the water became even colder, if that was even possible. Patrick shed the heavy cloak and swam harder.

  Just when he thought he was going to break the surface of the water, his head struck an invisible barrier. Dazed, he reached out and moved his hands along a cold transparent ceiling. The more he beat on it, the more aware he became that it was a thick sheet of clear ice. He tried moving from one end of the well to the other to only find that it was completely capped.

  His lung burned, and then seemed to cave in. His sight was growing dark and his vision was becoming tunneled. His senses were leaving him, moving out of reach into a din of panic.

  His last blows to the ice propelled him downward and he didn’t have the energy to swim up again. He continued to drift as if he already were a waterlogged corpse. He had been dead for days already anyhow. He just hadn’t laid down yet.

  A slight smile curled at his lips, for now he knew what it meant to have one’s life flash before one’s eyes. Everything, crystal clear. His mother’s worried eyes, David of York’s affable face, Marcus Ionus’ Avangardesque smile, Waylan’s good natured taunting. And Katherina. “Patrick, no man is an island.”

  His heart beat loudly in his ears. The visions and his consciousness seemed to come in flashes that corresponded with each heartbeat, and when his heart slowed, and so, too, did the visions.

  Patrick’s slight smile turned to sadness. Though he was content that all would soon be over with, he couldn’t help but feel that he had failed. Failed just about everything, and was tricked into an icy death by a little ugly servant.

  End, just let it end.

  Patrick’s feet touched bottom as the first of the water began to trickle into his lungs.

  #

  Aimeé de la Chasse scrambled through the forest towards Greensprings, wind and brush snagging at her dress.

  She turned momentarily at the sound of brush breaking behind her. Minion was there and he held a crossbow level. There was a twang! and a whizzing noise, and a bolt thudded in the tree next to her. Aimeé screamed and ran twice as fast away from him.

  She finally crossed the ordered rows of apple trees behind the keep. She didn’t know anything about crossbows, but judging by Minion’s struggle with the weapon, she imagined she could make it within sight of the gate guards before he reloaded.

  She broke through the orchard to the familiar path that lay between the keep and trees, but stopped in her tracks.

  The keep was engulfed by a dark sphere. The towers and some of the walls were still exposed from the surface of the phenomenon, but in the moment she stopped to gape at the sight, the sphere expanded and swallowed a little bit more of the keep.

  The globe was opaque, but with an oily veneer that gave it the appearance of sparkling obsidian.

  Again she heard that twanging noise and the whiz of a bolt next to her ear. She screamed again, and with heart beating and chest heaving, she ran for the Back Door, not knowing where else to go.

  As she approached it, she could alternately see the outline of the Back Door and her own reflection in the sphere’s surface. She stood before it tentatively, not knowing what to do. She touched it gently, and found that it was very cold, but her hand went through it. Like putting one’s hand into water. She withdrew her hand and found that, though cold, it was unharmed.

  Another crossbow bolt shot past her head, and it made her mind up for her. She held her breath and jumped in.

  #

  A warm light engulfed Sir Gawain in the darkness, and he opened his eyes.

  All was quiet. Not a sound was discernible. Not even his previously pounding heart.

  Patrick approached the sourceless light. Walking or gliding―does one bother to make such a distinction in a dream or a vision? Or was he truly dead? He smiled listlessly, at ease.

  No sooner had the smile come to his face, however, than the outline of a man obstructed the light. His sense of contentment turned to one of panic, then rage. It was the hooded Apparition, and what right did his worldly tormentor have being here in his afterlife, anyway? But then it occurred to him that perhaps it had been a banshee, come to guide him to the land of the dead. That would make sense.

  Patrick Gawain stood before the Apparition. He did not know what to do, or what to expect. The warm light was completely blocked off from this perspective, and the dark hood was just as blank as it ever had been. Patrick reached up, and grabbed it. The Apparition did not move.

  As he removed the hood, the light from behind was no longer blocked and for one brief moment, before he was blinded by the brilliance, Sir Patrick Gawain saw the man inside.

  It was himself, smiling with a confident, knowing grin.

  It grabbed Patrick by both of his arms, and he was hoisted heavenward.

  He lost sight of his doppleganger and suddenly realized that he was once again engulfed by darkness and floating in the ice cold water. He was no longer at the bottom of the well, but was rushing towards the icy surface, lungs on the verge of bursting.

  He struck the ice sheet like a missile and exploded into the crisp, life-giving air. He floundered at the surface and gasped, sucking in huge lungfuls of air.

  When he had recovered enough, he made the arduous climb up the side of the well. The rocks were slick, but they were irregular and protruded enough to offer plenty of handholds.

  At the top Patrick flung his leg over the rim of the well, pulled himself over the lip and landed heavily on the snow. He lay there for some time, his breath coming out in huge puffs of steam. The struggle to break through the ice, or perhaps a parting gift from the Apparition, had left his body heated. Whatever the reason, he felt the warmth leave him. After some time, he sat up and gazed in wonder at the sky, or lack thereof.

  How could this be?

  When he had fallen into the well, the day was a typical Avalon afternoon, full of sun and clear skies. Now it was dark as night, but with an eerie luminescence that lit up falling snow.

  Snow? He reached out with his hand and let some flakes collect there and disintegrate into little moist drops. He lifted his face into the cascade. Little crystals pricked his skin. He looked to the drawbridge and saw great stalactites of ice hanging from it and the gate. All was eerily silent. Gone was the revelation of the Apparition and gone was his anger towards Minion for pushing him in. He was in shock.

  After a moment of taking in the fantastical scene, he trudged through the snow to the rim of the crevasse, then to the drawbridge. And just when he thought he couldn’t be anymore amazed, he paused in the entryway. There before him was the usual activity of the courtyard, except horribly frozen in place.

  He slowly passed them. First were a handful of chickens and ducks standing in place like woodcarvings in a garden. Their natural colors were gone, replaced with a bluish sheen of frost and a white mantle of snow. Some appeared to have been readying to leap or scatter, their wings splayed out, but were frozen just before they could make their move. One was tipped over on its spread wing, as if it had been in mid-air at the moment of calamity.

  Next was a villager herding a group of sheep, now motionless with his flock like a life-sized Nativity scene. Patrick peered closely at the man and noted his skin was blue, his eyes white like a dead person’s.

  Patrick backed away, a grimace on his face, and collided with the next victim.

  He turned and an inexpressible sound escaped his throat when he looked up into the face of Sir Jeremiah astride his horse. In his full suit of duty armor, he looked like a war memorial. His usually smiling countenance was twisted grotesquely by obscuring ice.

  Patrick looked to the keep entry and ran for it, bypassing other victims. Inside the door
way, he called out, “Hello, is there anybody there?”

  Only his echo answered. He took a step inside the darkness and waited for his eyes to adjust and he soon found that here too was a strange glow, though slightly different from outdoors. He looked to the sconce on the wall; there was still a flame, but it too was impossibly frozen. It was now a glowing ice sculpture of fire, flickering from within. Snow fell on his shoulders—from the ceiling. He ventured deeper into the keep, having to high-step through snowdrifts. He passed Mother Superior, frozen in the act of handing an apple to a child.

  His feet, which had been blessedly numb, were now starting to ache. Minion’s wet cloak that girded his waist was also starting to stiffen and sparkle with ice. He needed shelter and clothing, and decided to make his way to the Hall for Guests and his room, but at the edge of the practice field his feet ached so sharply that he had to stop and rest at some benches. There, he found a frozen Sir Corbin and he tried to pry off his surcoat, but it shattered in his hands. Patrick stopped for fear of hurting Corbin’s flesh.

  He sat down on a bench and massaged his feet while staring at the eerie images of Trent and Willy flirting with two Lady Guests. He had never realized just how alive Greensprings had been. Likewise, he had never realized just how much it had become home to him, until now. Now that it was too late.

  “My God, what has happened? What do I do?”

  Suddenly, a sound and movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention. He stood and moved closer to the white expanse of the practice field. He lumbered through the deep, flat snow until he glimpsed a form running through the Back Door. It was a girl, crying out loudly as she ran through the snow.

  Aimeé. He picked up his pace and called to her. She heard him and turned her course toward him. Patrick met her halfway, and as she approached she shouted words he didn’t understand. Her face was flushed pink and her hair was loose; he put his arms out to catch her. Then suddenly, her back arched and she screamed as she fell into his arms. He hugged her limp form close to his chest and that’s when he saw the crossbow bolt sticking out of her back.