Morgana Trilogy Complete Series

by Alessa Ellefson

  “What?” I ask, too stunned to react.

  A woman next to her steps forward, dressed in the austere black and white habit of a nun.

  “Seize her,” Sister Marie-Clémence barks.

  Four knights surge forward, their faces set into deep scowls, their eyes gleaming with murder. I take a step back and bump against the patio railing.

  “I didn’t do anything!” I shout, fear making my voice shake. “Why are you coming after me?”

  “We’re putting down a threat like we should have from the very beginning,” Jennifer says, looking pleased.

  “Threat?” I repeat stupidly as the knights inch towards me, their fists aglow.

  Keeping my eyes on them, I edge towards the other end of the patio. “You’re making a mistake,” I say.

  Jennifer’s smile broadens, dimpling her rosy cheek. “Oh, no,” she breathes. “This is definitely not a mistake.”

  Something barrels from the ballroom into the nearest knight, bringing him crashing down, and I immediately recognize the Beaumont girl.

  “Draugar!” someone yells in shock as the dead girl’s fingers rip the man’s clothes and flesh to pieces like tissue paper.

  The knight screams in pain, desperately trying to push the girl away, and there’s an answering roar from the Fey beast down below.

  A low buzz permeates the air as the knights call on their elementals, now facing enemies on two fronts. Using the diversion, I jump over the balustrade, into the snow-packed bushes below, and flee.

  ◆◆◆

  My bare feet pound the frozen ground as fast as they can carry me, around the main building and away from the battle.

  Before I have time to think about where to go, the prison block’s grim walls rise ahead of me, another squad of knights guarding it, weapons drawn.

  I skid to a stop, my eyes darting around for an escape route, but everywhere I look there are knights blocking me. I stomp my foot on the ground and feel myself lift off. But I’m barely three feet into the air when something strikes me in the back and I find myself careening off course. I hit the prison wall with a dull thud, bouncing off it before landing face first into a pile of snow.

  A groan escapes my lips as I try to get back on my feet, only to slip down again, spots dancing in my vision.

  Someone shouts overhead and, blinking, I look up to see two figures flying towards me, surrounded by an iridescent green glow. One of them swings his arm and a large flame arcs through the air, shooting towards me like a comet. I stare at the flaming projectile as it draws closer, crackling sharply as it burns its way through the falling snow. I need to move. Now.

  But my body won’t respond, as if it’s turned into a block of ice.

  There’s a snarl of fury and someone lands in front of me, throwing up a sylph shield in time for the ball of fire to burst against it in a shower of yellow and green sparks.

  “Percy?” I ask, my throat constricting at the sight of the knight.

  But Percy doesn’t seem to hear me and hurls himself into the air towards my attackers. At his sight, the two knights hesitate for a second—a second too long. Percy’s sword flashes between them, its movements blurrily quick. The two men try to retreat, using their elementals as cover, but Percy follows them mercilessly across the sky.

  I peer through the hurtling snow, trying to detect what’s happening, when a sharp cry reaches my ears and I see one of the men plummet to the ground, snow exploding outward from the impact.

  “Get up!” Blanchefleur says roughly, landing next to me. “We need to get you out of here.”

  I lurch towards her, my vision doubling as a splitting headache threatens to make me go blind. I feel myself vacillate on the uneven ground, but strong arms suddenly catch me.

  “Your boy has gone berserk,” Lugh says, his deep, soothing voice rumbling through his thin clothes against my cheek. “Unfortunately, though I am enjoying the sight, it might prove contrary to our plans now that we have decided to join the Gibborim.”

  “Right on it,” Blanchefleur says crisply.

  She bolts straight up into the sky, her crystal sword held before her like a beam of light.

  Squinting against my migraine, I see Percy blast his opponent with a gust of wind, and the other knight cartwheels through the clouds before righting himself again. But Percy doesn’t give him an inch to recover and, sword already swinging down, speeds towards him.

  But before he can fell the other knight in two, Blanchefleur’s blade darts in and the two weapons meet in a flash of blinding light. Transferring his rage onto the Fey warrior, Percy attacks Blanchefleur as if she were the devil himself, turning into a maelstrom of cuts and blows that she is finding more and more difficult to parry. I watch, petrified, as Blanchefleur is forced to fall back. Then, even as Percy prepares to cut her open, Blanchefleur thrusts forward and jerks her sword sideways, disarming him. Before he can retaliate, however, the Fey grabs him by the neck, draws him against her, and kisses him.

  Percy’s body goes rigid with shock, then his arms encircle Blanchefleur in a crushing hold, keeping her anchored to him.

  “That will do,” Lugh says against my cheek.

  He strides away from the prison, holding me close to him, then says loudly, “Pigfain! Pigfain! Pigfain!”

  A single, thick beam of silvery light shoots up from the ground at our feet, melting the snow and dispersing the billowing clouds overhead. The ray then splits into three shafts of light, leaving a blazing trefoil knot[77] seared within a glowing circle in the muddy ground.

  The form of a small child materializes inside the light before it dissipates, revealing the small Fey.

  “Greetings, my Lord,” Pigfain says with a pointy-toothed smile.

  “Take her back,” Lugh says, dumping me inside the circle.

  “But I need to—” I start, willing myself to stand back up.

  “Quick,” Lugh says.

  Pigfain grabs my hand and the circle starts glowing again. My head snaps back, a sudden pressure bearing down on me, then the ground vanishes from underneath my feet.

  Chapter 29

  “Hold on tight,” Pigfain’s tinny voice squeaks, his small fingers clenched around mine. “This is turning out to be a bumpy ride!”

  A gust of warm wind swoops us up and about until I’m not sure which way I’m facing anymore, and my stomach heaves with motion-sickness.

  “Hold on,” I hear Pigfain repeat, tension oozing from his voice.

  But another warm blast enfolds me and rips the Fey’s hand out of mine.

  “Pigfain!” I yell.

  I try to look around, but only find myself surrounded in darkness.

  “Pigfain!” I yell louder.

  Then his hand finds me again and yanks me back into a stronger current that brings us tumbling down onto solid ground. I drop to my knees in relief, breathing deeply to get rid of my wooziness while my inner ear readjusts.

  “Thank the Heavens we’ve made it safe,” I say.

  A low laugh greets my words, then a derisive voice says, “I don’t think you should thank the Heavens for this.”

  I snap my eyes open at the familiar voice and find myself staring straight into a pair of golden eyes. With mounting dread, I take in the long, black hair pulled into a low pony tail, giving ample display to the myriad of blue whorls tattooed into his flesh.

  “You!” I breathe.

  “I told you I’d come for you soon,” Mordred says.

  “Where’s Pigfain?”

  “What pig?” Mordred asks. His eyes widen in mock surprise. “Oh, you mean the little rat? Probably back home, crying to daddy. Though it’s hard to tell how these gates work when you mess around with them.”

  I funnel my anger outward and my fists crackle with energy. Mordred moves back a few paces. This time, his look of surprise isn’t feigned, but he smiles nonetheless.

  “I see you’ve started to get a hang of what it means to be Fey,” he says. “But I’ve got years of practice ahead of you, M
organ. So whatever you do is useless. You’re in my territory now. That means you obey my rules.”

  I jump onto my feet, ready to bolt. “What did you do?” I ask.

  “I subverted the portal,” Mordred says, annoyed at having to explain himself further.

  “How is that even possible?” I ask, looking at the ground where an encircled trefoil is seared. Only this time, pairs of double lines are cutting through the circle in between each of the three leaves.

  “Only a higher order Fey is capable of such an easy task, if I may say so myself,” Mordred says in a self-satisfied tone.

  My eyes narrow. “You attacked Camaaloth?” I say, more a statement than a question. I cast my mind back to all those knights slaughtered during the party, none of them prepared for battle. “You monster,” I say, hugging myself tight.

  Mordred’s mirth dissolves, replaced by a disdainful mask. “Depends on where you stand,” he says at last. “In our eyes, I was on a holy mission, to deliver our kind from evil. In fact, you should be thanking me as well.”

  I open my mouth to say a few choice words, but snap it shut again—Mordred is right, things weren’t too peachy for me over in Camaaloth either. But that doesn’t excuse his actions.

  “So where are we now?” I ask, looking around the dark plain, stunted trees and spindly bushes growing about in sickly clumps, extending pleading fingers towards a dark, moonless sky.

  A hyena-like laugh echoes around us, raising every hair on my body. My eyes dart about, in search of its source. Then I notice some of the shadows have pooled together on the ground and are rising from the soil to coalesce into five large, spiky carapaces from which dart out wide, scaly heads at the end of long necks.

  One of the figures is taken with seizures before another loud, screeching cackle erupts, making my skin want to crawl off my back.

  “Our escort’s arrived,” Mordred says.

  One of the large Fey throws itself forward then runs on all fours towards me in an uneven gait. At a sign from Mordred, however, it lumbers to a stop a foot away and starts sniffing the air.

  “Smells…familiar…,” it grunts. “Tasted…blood?”

  I push the cold snout away from my legs and regret it immediately as my hand comes away caked in slime.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” I say, wiping my hand on my tattered dress to hide its shaking. “Mordred, can you call your dog back?”

  The creature snaps its jaws at me with a loud clack and I jerk backwards. “No…dog!” it growls.

  Keeping it well in sight, I inch around the creature towards Mordred. “Nice puppy…” I say in a conciliatory tone.

  “No…PUPPY!” the large Fey barks, lunging at me.

  I drop all pretense of bravery and duck behind Mordred who snickers before finally motioning for the monster to stay at bay.

  “What do you want with me?” I ask when the slobbering beasts are a safe distance away, trying to regain my composure.

  “I just wanted to show you a little more of Avalon,” Mordred says, “give you a taste of what you were made for. You see, you and I are not so different from each other.”

  I snort. “You and I are nothing alike,” I say. “I don’t go around killing people for the heck of it, while you…you’re just some crazy sociopath with superpowers.”

  Mordred’s face grows somber and for a second I fear he’s going to strike me. But he just herds me forward. “Let’s get going, we’ve got a schedule to keep,” he says, his voice brooking no argument.

  We march over wide, empty hills, the brittle grass cutting the soles of my feet, and though I know I can heal quickly it doesn’t make the pain any less sharp. Finally, the endless plain of rolling hills comes to an end at the edge of a wide forest of burned trees.

  “This isn’t Avalon,” I say through my constricted throat. “You’re taking me to hell, aren’t you?”

  Mordred’s smile is sharp, as if carved with a knife. “Trust me,” he says, “you’ll soon know the difference.”

  He pushes me forward, into the forest’s charred remains, raising little clouds of ashes with every step. A soft nicker greets us further down and we stop before a tall, dark horse, the creature’s eyes burning scarlet in the obscurity. It shakes its mane, spraying me with salty sweat.

  “Are Dark Sidhe all as disgusting as your dogs and this horse?” I ask.

  “Nessie’s a kelpie,” Mordred says matter-of-factly, drawing close to the demon horse.

  “It looks the same to me,” I retort.

  “But horses don’t eat people for breakfast,” Mordred says. “Now hop on.”

  Reluctantly, I draw closer to the creature, grabbing a fistful of its moss-like mane that reminds me of my early mornings spent sifting through Lake Geneva’s waters. But as I make to pull myself up, Nessie blows loudly and tries to bite me.

  “I don’t think your horse likes me,” I say, skittering away immediately.

  “Kelpie,” Mordred says, annoyance peeking through his mask of command. “And if you keep pissing her off, she’ll find the first opportunity to drown you.”

  Mordred’s hands come around my waist and he hoists me up. I hear the heart-wrenching rend of my dress tearing further as I swing my leg over the beast’s wide back. Then, with one practiced move, Mordred hops on behind me and we set off at a trot, the other Fey creatures easily keeping pace with us.

  We wind our way in and out of the trees, the acrid smell of long-gone fires growing thicker in the air. Occasionally, one of the beasts strays off to the side to snap a burned tree trunk into splintered halves.

  “There’s no need to bring the whole forest down, boys,” Mordred says to the monsters after a while. “I said we should make the way obvious, but they’ll definitely smell a trap if we make it that conspicuous.”

  The hyena laugh erupts once again and I wince. Then, out of the corner of my eyes, I see the creatures dissolve into our surroundings, only the shifting shadows betraying their presence.

  Finally, after what seems like hours upon hours of horseback riding and a completely raw bum, the forest grows sparser, the trees opening up onto a wide valley covered in swirling mists.

  Despite the poor visibility, Nessie accelerates to a canter, obviously familiar with the area. I repress a shiver as the sound of a distant howl reaches us, eerily familiar.

  “Seems like you have a friend,” Mordred says in my ear.

  I make to turn around to ask him what he’s talking about, but stop when I feel myself slipping off Nessie’s back.

  “Steady,” Mordred says, his hold tightening around me. “There’s no point in trying to run away. Our escort might seem friendly, but they’re quite feral. We’ve arrived anyway.”

  I don’t bother to contradict him and he jumps off the kelpie before helping me down, then smacks Nessie’s rump. “Go eat!” he tells it.

  The kelpie’s pupils thin into slits. She lets off a shriek, rears, then storms off in a cloud of ash.

  I peer into the thick fog in a useless attempt to see what’s waiting for me, but can barely see past my arm.

  “Enough dawdling,” Mordred says, ushering me into the waiting mists.

  But before we’ve made more than a couple dozen steps, I stop.

  “Can you hear that?” I ask, cocking my head at the light hum that seems to be saturating the air, as if we’re surrounded by high-powered electrical towers.

  “Don’t stop,” Mordred says.

  I’m forced to continue walking for fear of finding myself alone and lost in these strange mists. As we make our slow progress forward, the buzzing morphs into distinctive voices, and I find myself reaching for Mordred’s arm, when the ground suddenly vanishes. I feel myself topple forward before my foot hits a stone step and I let out a string of curses.

  “Watch it, there are stairs here,” Mordred says.

  “You could’ve told me sooner, I mutter as I carefully follow him down.

  As we reach the bottom of the cliff, the fog finally
parts, and my toes curl in the rocky path with relish at knowing I haven’t met my demise just yet.

  “Should we raise the alarm?” a voice asks in a deep and rumbling bass.

  “Don’t be stupid,” another one cackles. “It’ll be AC, for sure. I heard that stupid horse of his.”

  “Or it’s that other creature,” a third voice says. “She’s been howling all over the place tonight.”

  “Yessssss,” a fourth, raspier voice says. “It can sense the change happening….”

  I bite back a gasp as a long wall of spears emerges from the shadows, decapitated heads firmly planted on their spikes. Each and every one of them has had its eyes and mouth sewn shut, as if body-less heads could still see and talk.

  Then, as I’m about to pass the lugubrious fence, the nearest one smiles at me, as if it knows I’m there, and I leap back in shock, smacking my head against one of Mordred’s bodyguards. A sinister laugh rises at my reaction.

  “Ooooh, she’s a pretty one,” a deep voice says.

  The voice belongs to the round head of a bald man, the threads through his eyelids and lips pale against his decaying skin. Its mouth stretches wide, pulling at its sutures.

  “Are you going to let us have her?” another one asks.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Mordred says, who appears quite used to having disembodied heads hold conversations with him. “I still need her.”

  “But it’s been soooo looooong,” an old man’s head whines. “Even Martha’s getting hungry.”

  The first woman’s head seems to shake on its spike in agreement.

  “I said no,” Mordred says, pulling me after him. “Don’t worry,” he adds to me as we leave the morbid wall behind, “that’s just our alarm system.”

  I let out a nervous giggle, probably a result from my lack of proper sleep, food, and those numerous glasses of alcohol I’ve consumed. That, and the nightmarish place I’ve ended up in, and from which I can’t wake up.

  “Here we are,” Mordred says, motioning towards a dark mound.

  As we draw closer, the mound turns into the crumbling ruins of an old fort. A single sentry sitting before the entrance stands up at our approach, arm-length quills sprouting on its back in warning.