“Gaheris...” I breathed in disbelief. He looked at me, wide-eyed and speechless, shaking his head. Why had he killed her? I had just seen her, and she had been alive and wonderful and beautiful as always. No one had a stronger, brighter sense of life about them than Morgawse. I wanted to scream.
Mordred’s bare feet caught my eye again, and my stomach churned. Lamerocke running across the courtyard. What had Gaheris seen that he could not force into words? What had been so awful that he had acted so terribly? Lamerocke had not been bare-footed when I had seen him run. He had not, even, appeared to come from this direction.
I turned to Gawain. “What happened?” I demanded.
Gawain glanced between his brothers, as though looking for help, or information. I could smell blood. Acrid, iron. I was no longer in any doubt about whose it was. When I got no answer, I strode towards the bedroom door, hanging awfully a quarter open, and Gawain caught hold of me and pulled me back, wrapping his arms around me and holding me against him, as though for his own comfort as well as mine. He rested his head against mine, and suddenly I was aware that I was this huge warrior’s aunt, and that as well as trying to protect me from what I might see in the room, he expected some kind of strength and comfort from me. I put my arms around his, where they wrapped around me at the shoulders.
“Gawain,” I said softly. “Please, what has happened?”
It was not Gawain, but Mordred who answered, and he did not look at me, but stared, hard at Gaheris. I felt Gawain press his forehead against my shoulder, in grief and distress. I rested a comforting hand on the back of his head. His hair, thick and soft, felt like Morgawse’s. I could have cried then, but I did not.
“Gaheris came upon our mother with the knight Sir Lamerocke, and in his anger at the shamethis brought to all our family –” He gave Gaheris a meaningful look, slightly threatening. “In his anger, he drew his sword, and struck at our mother, and the blow cut off her head.”
I felt sick. It was an awful death. An awful death. How could Gaheris have done this? Of course I ought to have trusted in my instinct about him from the start. He had Lot’s impulsive, cruel anger. I leaned back against Gawain, and felt him hold me tighter against him. He was as bereft as I was at the loss of Morgawse. I heard him hold back a sob.
Gaheris did not seem capable of saying anything. He looked between me and his brothers, and turned and left. There was blood on his boots, and it smeared across the floor.
I should have stopped him. If I had had Excalibur in my hands, I would have killed him. Morgawse. I had spent too much of my time parted from her, and now she was gone for ever.
I moved gently from Gawain’s arms, stepping towards the door. I had to see. But, as I stepped towards it, Mordred stepped into my path, putting his hand on the door frame, barring my way with his arm.
“Morgan, you do not want to see,” he told me, his voice cracking. I heard Gawain leave behind me. Clearly, he did not want to linger with Mordred.
“Mordred...” I did not know what to say. I wanted to see my sister.
Mordred grabbed me by both hands, pulling me towards him. He had blood spattered across his face. He had blood on his white shirt, which was not tucked into his breeches. His hair was ruffled through. What had Gaheris seen? Why had he let Mordred speak for him? Gawain, too, had had nothing to say. But whatever Gaheris had seen, he had struck the blow.
“Morgan,” Mordred said, his eyes locked on mine, “curse him. Curse Gaheris. He must pay for this.”
I shook my head. I had to see Morgawse, I had to know it was truly so.
“That is not how it works, Mordred,” I told him, bitterly, wishing that it was. For all his strange, Otherworld gifts he still did not understand. I could not just curse a man to his death.
“Yes it is,” Mordred insisted, and he closed his eyes, gripping my hands tighter. I could smell the blood that was spattered across his face. I could see it drying already in his hair. I felt sick, and I held back my desire to retch. He began to speak, his voice grim and cold. I felt his anger, his curse, run through my blood, feeding off the magic in his blood and mine, and the blood we shared, and the blood on his face. “I curse Gaheris, son of Lot. I curse him on our mother’s blood. May his death be without honour. May his line be without sons.” He paused for a moment, opening his eyes. I could see right into their black centres, black on black, blood mixing with blood. I could not look away. I could not say no. Morgawse was dead. I repeated his words back to him, feeling the magic rush in my blood, and the strength of it coming off him. It was as if all around us was filled with our black desire for revenge.
And then I saw it before me. Gaheris, standing in a crowd, unarmed. The day was dark, overcast. The vision was so strong that I was sure I felt slight, spitting raindrops against my skin. He stood in his surcoat, no sword at his side. As the vision expanded I saw that he was holding someone, his hand gripped hard around their bare arm. It was Guinevere, in her underclothes, her hair loose. Her lip was swollen and split, a small line of dark dry blood threading down it. They were not looking at one another. When was this? Before or after I had seen her side-by-side with me? I knew what he was doing. He was taking her to be burned for treason. It couldn’t be anything else. There was no other way Arthur would let one of his knights drag his Queen through a crowd in her underclothes. I had not thought he would have her killed. Was this what I was leading us to? Certainly, it would be the end of Arthur. I had not wanted to cause her death in the process, but I was too deep in to turn back. The sounds were coming now, too. I could hear the crowd shouting around them, and I could see that at the other side of Guinevere, his grip much lighter than that of his brother, stood Gareth. He looked lost, and sad, unable to understand what had brought him to that moment. He looked reluctant. Gaheris on the other hand looked bored, and Guinevere’s arm under his grip was already turning red.
I heard screaming, but I could not see where it was coming from. Not until the crowd split in two before them and a black horse reared over them. I looked up. It was Lancelot. His head was bare, but he was wearing his mail, and he had a sword in his hand. His eyes were wild as though he did not see anything before him apart from Guinevere. Gareth saw him before his brother did, and shouting his brother’s name, he stepped forward to push Gaheris from the path of Lancelot’s sword, which was crashing down towards him. Gareth was not fast enough, and the blow sliced through both brothers at once, spattering Guinevere with blood. I saw her mouth open in a scream, but I did not hear it, because the vision, that had been so painfully vivid, suddenly passed away.
I stared at Mordred, feeling the dread spread through me. I felt cold and heavy, and awful. How many innocents were going to die before Mordred and I got what we wanted? Gareth. It was Gareth whose blood I had taken to give myself my black magic powers, whose blood had made Mordred strong with them, too. It was his innocence that had bought me this strength, and it was going to kill him. No. I was not going to do it. There had been enough death. I had already lost enough.
“Undo it, Mordred,” I demanded.
“Why?” He was defiant, aggressive. He stepped towards me, pulling his hands from mine, threatening.
“Gareth,” I said, firmly. “You will kill one brother for revenge on the other? No, Mordred.”
Mordred shrugged. “It is too late to be undone.”
“Don’t you care?” I shouted. “Don’t you care if an innocent man dies?”
Mordred grabbed me hard by the front of my nightdress, pulling me up towards him. I could feel the terrifying strength in his hands, but I knew that well enough. No, it was the mania in his eyes that frightened me now, the hollow conviction that he was right, and that everything he did was without error if it got him what he longed for.
“There are no innocent men,” he hissed, holding me there for a moment, then throwing me back. I felt shaken and bruised. I had, truly, lost control of him. Worse. I had lost control of myself. I had said his black words back to him. He had made me c
omplicit in it all, in all of the darkness of it, and the horror. I was suddenly aware of how long I had been staring into the void, without even knowing it.
I knew that he would not turn back, he would not relent until he had got every last thing he intended to get, but I had lost too much. Morgawse, for whom I had done anything and everything without question, was gone, and I had no one left. I was not going to plunge innocents into the blackness I could feel yawning up around me. I had been willing when it was only Arthur who was to be harmed, but Mordred had no compassion, no mercy. I would not be a part of it any longer. He would kill them all until there was no one to stop him. He would turn on me, too, if I stood against him. I had created something beyond my power to control. I had not expected him to be so strong, or so ruthless. I had seen a child. I had not understood.
I had no choice now. There was only one person who might have the power to stop him. Nimue.
Chapter Sixty Six
I went right then. I thought if I did not, I would not have the strength to climb down from my pride.
Though I had not been there since I was fifteen years old, I remembered every detail of Avalon’s great chapel. I knew Nimue would sense my coming, and I knew that she would be there, though it was the middle of the night. When the great chapel with its gaping windows, its roof open to the sky – which tonight was filled with the bright, sharp points of stars – came into focus around me, Nimue was sat already in the great stone seat of the Lady of Avalon, her long white-blonde hair loose around her shoulders down to her waist. She had looked like a child for so long, I was shocked to see how terrifying and powerful she looked right there. Her sharp-featured face was set with wrath, her ice-blue eyes fixing me through with a stare that went right to the core of me. She was wearing a dress like the one she had made for me, sewn with gems from the neck to the waist, but hers was a pale blue, and swirled through with green like the blue-green patterns of woad that traced across her white skin. She had a circlet of white gold on her head, set with diamonds in the form of the five-pointed star that was the insignia of Avalon. But more than all of this, I felt the strength of her magic coming off her, like a mountain breeze, cold and strong. I had only made it to Avalon alive because she wished it so.
One of Arthur’s knights stood behind her in full armour. From the shield he bore, I knew the man as one named Pelleas. He was famed for his strength, but I had not seen him at Camelot in a long time. He must have been in Avalon, in Nimue’s service.
“Morgan.” Nimue’s voice was stern, and cold, and in the night-time in the hollowed chapel, it rang. I gathered my old woollen cloak more tightly around myself. My feet were bare; I had run from my bed without getting dressed.
Nimue stood to her feet, and I fell to my knees before her. I was not sure if it was her power, her magical strength, or my own body collapsing under the loss of Morgawse, under the realisation of what I had done when I had made my devil’s pact with Mordred. I had given my soul to a demon, and he had consumed it, and it had not satisfied him.
“How dare you come before me, Morgan,” she snarled, walking slowly down the steps before her stone seat towards me. “You disobeyed my order not to plot Arthur’s harm. You burned Merlin’s books. You scorned my favour and my friendship for – for what? To make Arthur’s son into your creature of revenge? And now you have lost control of him, and you come to me begging me to save you?”
She stopped before me. She placed a cold, papery hand under my chin and turned my face up to hers. Her eyes were cold with anger, and I felt it sink into me, like a knife. I had no words for her, nothing to say. I closed my eyes, shaking my head, feeling the tears prick the back of my eyes. All I could think of, over and over again, were the words my sister is dead.
Roughly, Nimue turned my face back up to hers.
“Answer me, Morgan,” she demanded.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
Nimue turned over her shoulder to the knight behind her. “Pelleas,” she commanded. I heard him draw his sword. I could hear the plates of his armour scrape against one another as he moved towards us. I closed my eyes. I could feel myself trembling, I could feel my own awful weakness, I could feel the low, dark creature I had become, and I did not care if he killed me. I did not care if Nimue killed me. I just wanted it all to be undone. All of it. I wanted to wake in the Abbey, and hear Kay shouting in the garden, and run out to see him and Arthur, just two brothers from the farm nearby again. I wanted to hear Ector scolding them like children. I wanted to run with them through the woodlands, and swim in the lake. It was becoming a king that had made Arthur give me away in marriage, changing to a woman that had made me a thing to be bought and sold. He had saved my sister’s life with that marriage. He had saved the lives of hundreds of innocent people in Logrys. I had suffered, but I had suffered as much from my own bitterness as from my marriage. Kay had been right, long, long ago. I had lost the girl who had grown up in the Abbey. Slowly, pieces of her had been taken from me. By Merlin. By Uriens. By Lot. I had blamed it on Arthur and Kay, because they had been there back when I had been sweet and innocent, and life had been good. I had blamed it on Arthur because he had never suffered. I was jealous of him. I was jealous of him, not wronged by him. It had taken me so many painful years to understand it.
I did not realise that I had been crying until suddenly the brush of Nimue’s fingertips against my cheek, wiping the tears away, brought me back to Avalon, to the open stone of the great chapel, and the vastness of the night sky behind. At Nimue’s back, a crescent moon cut sharp into the sky.
“There is nothing left of me to save,” I choked through my tears. Nimue, suddenly gentle, leaned down and kissed my forehead. “It is too late. It cannot be undone.”
“Morgan,” she sighed, kneeling down before me, brushing my tears away lightly and taking my face in her hands. “It is never too late.”
She did not say anything can be undone, for she knew that that was not true. Morgawse would not come back to life. The knight at her side, his visor still down, his helm still on, slid his sword back into its sheath. Nimue stood, and offered me her hand. I followed her dumbly from the great chapel down to the rooms where I had learned my Black Arts as a girl, and to a room beside her own, where she left me with a drink she told me that she had prepared for me. She had known this time would come. She kissed me on the cheek and left, with the knight Pelleas following behind her.
I drank the drink down in one long gulp and lay back on the bed closing my eyes, without even throwing off my cloak. I did not care if it brought my death. Morgawse was gone, and I was not sure I could stand the pain of her loss, and what I had let myself become.
It did not, though it did bring me dreams, the fierce bright dreams of Avalon. But they were not dreams of the future. They were dreams of the past. Things I had not known. I saw again the argument we had had when Arthur demanded that I be married. I saw myself leave, and Kay leave right after me, slamming the door, and Arthur sink into his chair, running his hands through his hair. Then I saw Arthur standing in a small, dusty church, Uther’s old rusted sword in his hands. There were men around cheering, but Arthur’s face was pale and slack with shock and apprehension. Ector fell to his knees before him and pulled Kay down beside him, and Arthur stared at both of them. He had tears in his eyes. The image before me shifted again, and I watched Arthur gather Guinevere up in his arms, blood running down her legs from whatever Merlin had done to her to get the King’s blood he wanted. Last of all I saw him and Guinevere standing together, she leaning back against him, his arm protectively around her, her hands holding onto his arm as though to steady herself. In the distance, I could see a huge party of knights riding away from Camelot. The quest for the Grail. Arthur had lost more than half of his knights – of his friends – in the search for the Grail. Nimue had demanded sacrifices of him as well. Merlin, too. Arthur, like I, had only wanted to survive.
When I woke in the morning, I had Kay’s words in my head: you t
hink you are the only one who has suffered.
When Nimue came to me in the morning, she smiled and kissed me on the cheek as though she were pleased to see me.
“Did you see what you needed to see?” she asked me, gently.
I nodded. “But I already knew it,” I told her. She put her hands gently on top of mine.
“We always do.” She lifted a hand to rub my shoulder in gentle comfort. I was suddenly aware of how motherly her manner had become, although she had no children of her own. “All is not lost, Morgan. It can be mended.”
I looked up at her, and she gave an enigmatic smile, and kissing me on the cheek again, left. I was not sure how. All I knew was that I had to get back to Camelot before Mordred. I had to stop him. I had been no match for him; with me gone, Arthur would be all the more vulnerable. I had turned my hate on the wrong man for too long. Because of Mordred my sister was dead.
Chapter Sixty Seven
When I got back to Camelot, Mordred was waiting for me. He was in my bedroom when I appeared there, and he grabbed hold of me roughly by the neck of my dress – one Nimue had given me for my return, made with lace and covered in gems like my other gift from her, only this one was a dark, glossy blue – and I felt the delicate fabric tear a little under his grip.
“Where have you been?” he demanded in a whisper.
I shook him off lightly. I had to pretend I still wanted what he wanted, if I was going to have any hope of saving anyone from him. Including myself.
“In Avalon,” I told him. I could not get from my mind the image of him spattered in blood.
There are no innocent men.
He seemed pleased by that. I supposed that he thought I was gathering magical strength in Avalon, to help him. I had helped him to curse Gaheris, after all.
“I hope you are ready for this,” he told me, coldly.
MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Page 49