by Sarah Zettel
Lady Lynet knelt on a pile of moldering straw. Her hands were cupped together, and a soft silver light unlike anything Gareth had ever seen before shone softly up from them. He gasped, then held his breath, lest he be overheard.
But Lynet heard nothing. She only looked at the light in her hands, her face void of expression, her eyes staring. She did not move. As he watched her for a long moment, his own heart hammering hard, Gareth was ready to swear she had ceased to breathe.
Gareth pulled back until he could not see that faint, fae light anymore. He stared at the shed. Then, he walked back to Brendon’s tent. He sat down beside his fellow squire, and stared at the brazier. There he stayed until the dawn came, not moving, not able to move, only trying again and again to understand what he had seen, and what it could possibly mean.
Chapter Seventeen
Peran.
Laurel stood atop Cambryn’s western-most watchtower and breathed in the air from the sea. She tasted the salt like a balm on her lips, and felt the yearning pull. She heard the faint whispers without understanding them and felt the rhythm of the tide in her blood. She needed these things like she needed the beating of her own heart. They gave her strength, taught her secrets, and helped her keep the distance that let her see clearly enough to keep her promise to her mother.
Peran.
She sent the name out on the wind that was the gift of the sea. That wind wound its way into the yards of the castell. It would slip between the very stones of the hall if necessary and find him. It would wake him from sleep and tease at him like the whisper it was. It would make him find some excuse for the watchful Mesek, and it would bring him up here to her.
Peran.
She had never done this before, not deliberately, not for such a purpose. Yes, the sea wind had carried her messages before, and brought her news when she asked. But the only time she had sought to use the wind to compel a man to her side, it was the searing cry for help she had sent out to their father. The cry that had brought him to his death.
It was no more than a written message would have done, she told herself that morning. No more than as if she’d sent a rider on a fast horse.
But it was more. She knew it then, and she knew it now. But then, as now, she did not know what else to do.
Peran.
She hated the pall of desperation that stood between her and the calmness of mind she had always believed her special possession. But even now, her thoughts would not still themselves, nor had she found any certainty since Lynet had come to her last night. It was not just the news she brought — that Peran was indeed fighting both sides of the conflict that squeezed Cambryn — that so disturbed Laurel. It was that Laurel had seen Lynet so clearly. The shape her sister sent forth was growing stronger, and more real. That could only mean the flesh and blood woman was growing weaker, giving more of herself over to this other existence adrift in the invisible countries.
It was that which frightened Laurel more than anything she could name. There was only Lynet left. She had failed in every other way to keep Cambryn and her family safe. If she failed Lynet, she failed her mother utterly.
No. She gripped the parapet stones. She was done waiting. Help would not arrive soon enough.
Not from the queen, came the treacherous thought.
That was the worst of it. She knew she could summon help instantly, powerful and willing help. The wind whispered of its passage, getting further away, but still it could be reached. If Laurel just stretched out hand and heart, there was another woman, with a soul very like her own, who would hear her. That one had offered her all the power she needed to make sure she was never trapped again, and so that she was never so helpless that Lynet must risk herself as she did …
Stop. Laurel squeezed her eyes shut. Stop.
It had seemed the best idea. Get Lynet out of the keep. Then she could face their enemies without endangering her sister. But what had happened since? She had done nothing. She had sat here, in relative safety, with her shuttle and her needle, with these men breathing down her neck and her own people walking around on tiptoe. She had watched, night after night, while Lynet tore herself in two.
She heard voices below. The wind brought them, softly to her.
“Is she still up there?”
“And like to be all morning.”
“I think we’ve had about enough of this. I’ll go pull her down off her perch.”
“Better you than me, Master.”
“You have anything to say about it?”
“You want to try to comp ell my lady Laurel to go when she wishes to stay, then God help you.” That was Taff. She’d sent word to him by Meg this would come. Good man, he’d obeyed her instructions, although she knew he’d been sharpening his knife, in case, just in case.
She heard the sound of boot soles ascending the steps. The wind swirled around her hems and blew her cloak back from her shoulders.
What are you thinking Master Peran? Why do you believe you’ve come?
The hatch lifted, and fell open, slamming against the stones. A moment later, Master Peran heaved himself out of the hole. His burns had at last begun to truly heal, she noted. Helped by Morgaine, the angry, mottled redness had begun to fade back to the pink of healthy skin, but it was much more pale than his untouched flesh, giving him a strange, patchwork appearance.
“God be with you, Master Peran,” she said.
“You do not seem surprised, Lady Laurel, that I should violate this sacred grove of yours.” He scuffed the stones with his heel.
“Nor am I,” Laurel answered. The sea wind teased her hair ends, circled her waist and drew itself across Peran’s healing skin, waiting for her, not patiently, but waiting all the same.
Peran took a step forward, bending to get a closer look at her eyes. She let him, lifting her gaze to meet his. She could feel the sea light kindling within her. That light filled her, fed by the tide and the wind.
“You did this, didn’t you?” he breathed. “You called me.”
“I did.”
His hands opened and closed, once, twice. “Why?”
“Because, Master Peran, I would know what truly happened to your son.”
“I thought that was what the queen was travelling all this way to discover. You cannot wait another handful of days?”
“My sister is in danger, Master Peran, body and soul. I will not wait.” The wind blew hard, from her to him, carrying word and breath, will and cold fire. “What happened to your son, Master Peran? You can tell me now.”
This was another deed she had never before committed in cold blood. She knew sometimes that the person before her had spoken only because of her anger, because of the cold light and tide within had her reached out, but she had never called on it before. It would be wrong. Mother’s watchful spirit would not approve. Still, she had known it was hers and it was real. It was power like Morgaine might wield.
Let us see how it may be used against her slave.
Peran’s face slackened and his shoulders slumped. The wind combed his hair back and ruffled his cloak. He turned away to look out over the greening country. It did not matter. Her wind had him now. She had no more need to see his eyes.
“He was a hero, my son,” Peran whispered. Although she could no more see his face, his whole attitude was of a man laying down a burden that had become too heavy to bear. “A hero like the bards sing of. He was taller than I, with hands that could bend iron, and a laugh that could make the willow gladden. He would have lead our people to greatness. Greatness.” He leaned his hands on the parapets. Laurel made no move. The wind gusted hard, once.
“How does illness take such a one?” he asked plaintively. “How does the winter’s cold take his breath and turn his face blue and choke him to death? He was so strong, how could that be?”
Laurel made no answer. She was not Bishop Austell to speak of God’s plan. She wondered what the bishop thought of that plan where he had gone.
“It was enchantment,” Peran
said. “Poison. I knew it. I saw it in his eyes as they looked on death. And when death came … I … I carried his corpse to Morgaine. I laid him down in front of her and begged her to redress what had been done, to give my son back his life.”
Laurel could see him, this proud chieftain on his knees before Morgaine. The body of his son, dead eyes closed at last, lay between them. He did not weep or rage or shout. He pleaded with a father’s grief over something too precious to be regained.
“She told me it was not magic that took his life. It was the illness that gripped him. Then she told me, if it was what I wanted, she could bring him back for me.
“She warned me it was a difficult thing, and that he might not live long. It was against the way of things, but it could be done.”
She could see this too, the sorceress, calm and sympathetic, warning with one breath, tempting with the other. She could have chosen to send this man away, to bury his son and mourn him. But she needed him, and so she took hold of his grief, and she used it against him.
“I told her I would give anything, do anything. She warned me again, and she made me swear. And I did.
“And she lit a fire and she burned resins in it until its flame was green as poison, and she heated an iron cup over that fire. What was in it, I could not tell, but she made me lift up my son’s head and prise open his mouth, and from that cup she poured three golden drops.
“And in my hands he stirred, and opened his eyes, as if waking from his nights sleep. He was alive. My son was alive, and he called me father, and asked why I was crying.”
Laurel had gone cold. Her wind wavered, blowing hard, then dying suddenly away, as if it too wanted to flee from what it heard.
“But he was not the same, my son, now that he returned. His eyes that had been so warm, that had drunk in life so fully, had gone cold. Now he quarrelled with every man over the smallest slight. He rode into battle like Jove in his chariot, always into the heart of it, where the fighting was fiercest. When there was no fight, he prowled about, looking for something he could not find, looking with those cold, furious eyes.
“When, Morgaine sent word that I was to find a quarrel with Mesek, I actually blessed her for it. It would give my son something to do. His restless rages were becoming harder to contain, and men were beginning to whisper.
“So we took some cows to where they would be seen. We left slight guard so that they could be taken. The rest … the rest is as it was, except the end. The very end.” His voice went hoarse and halting with remembered pain. “When he saw the fire, a great peace stole over him, there in the midst of the screaming and the stampeding animals and the men with their knives and their swords flashing. He just stood there, gazing at the flames as if he had never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.
“He walked into the fire. He did not even look back to tell me farewell.
“It was my fault, what happened. I did not watch him closely enough. I did not understand how his death still haunted him. I must serve her, you understand. I must. If I serve her well, she will bring him back again.”
These last despairing words Laurel would not have heard had the wind not carried them gently to her.
Peran’s head bowed down and his whole frame shuddered. Laurel could only stand as she was and watch as he straightened, slowly and painfully, like a much older man.
“What have I been saying?” he asked heavily. “What have you done to me?”
“Nothing, Master Peran,” she whispered. “You have said nothing important. I am ready to go with you now.”
The wind fell away, becoming nothing more than a breeze to blow unimpeded around their heads, full of the scents of salt and spring. The light of the human soul kindled once more behind Peran’s dulled eyes.
“Good,” he said. “And no more of this, my lady. You want to talk to God you do it in the chapel, is that understood?”
“As you say, Master.”
She walked docilely down the stairs before Peran, and she let her guard fall in behind her without comment. She walked to the hall and took her place at board, eating and drinking what was put in front of her, and tasting nothing.
All her mind filled with what Peran had said, and what Morgaine had done.
She had thought to hear a tale of simple deceit, something she could threaten him with. Being able to prove him a liar in public should have been enough to coerce him into some bargain without waiting for the queen. But this … what was she to do with this?
And the horror of what she heard was not the worst of it. The true horror was that from a corner of her heart came a gentle whisper: Peran was made a fool of by his grief. Colan by his ambition. I will not be a fool when I bargain with her. I know better than they.
Laurel shot to her feet, startling the whole table, herself included.
“Something amiss, Lady Laurel?” inquired Mesek with his usual wry complacency. “Or has Peran resorted to putting frogs under your chair?”
Laurel glared at him, hatred rising like gall within her. But at least her tongue remained under her control. “I go to the chapel, Master Mesek,” she said calmly. “Would you care to join me?”
“Not if you intend to jump to Heaven,” he said, ignoring the frosty stares of all the Cambryn folk around him.
As he did not mean to prevent her, Laurel strode from the hall, her guard trailing behind. She entered the wooden door, took the water from the fountain, crossed herself, kissed her hand, went to the rail and knelt, folding her hands. For a long time she stared up at the carved scene of death and redemption, but she could only see Peran’s hungry eyes, looking for his own dead son.
Mother of God, what did I think I was doing?
She did not think. That was the problem. Not really. She had not thought properly for days. Not since Morgaine had left behind the lure of Tintagel.
Tintagel. Even now, even with Peran’s words still ringing in her ears, it came to her again — the crash of the sea that shook the cliffs, the wind never without the comforting tang of salt. When it had come time for her to be sent for fostering, there had been a question as to whether she, as the eldest, should go to distant Camelot, or to create closer ties with their nearest and most important neighbor. When her father told her he would consider the matter carefully, she had seen a flicker of something in his eyes. Had it been fear? It had been there again when he told her she would go to Queen Guinevere at Camelot. He saw the disappointment she tried to conceal and laid a hand on her head and whispered. “It is for the best, my child.”
Why the best? What did he fear she would do at that place of sea and stone? What did he fear she would be able to do?
No. No. Lynet rubbed her brow. I must not think this way. I must remember all that has happened. If not what has happened to Peran, then what has happened to Colan, and to father, and to Lynet. I must not forget.
But her mind would not clear. She felt as if there was a weight pressing on her thoughts. The stones of her home were suffocating. Even her morning journeys to the watchtower, to feel the winds and see the birds were not enough anymore. She could not stay here, not for the rest of her life.
No. Not like this. It is only this time. It will be over. Lynet will be here in a matter of days. The queen will come, and it will be over.
She told herself that now as she had told herself before. But she did not feel it, not in the pit of her heart, not as she looked up at Mary, who looked up at her son. She only felt lost and denied.
But how could it be that after all her heart still wished desperately to believe that the salvation she could not seem to find from the Christ above her might come from Morgaine?
Mother, why? Mother what is happening to me? she wailed with the whole of her being, not sure whether she prayed to the Mother of All, or to her own mother, dying beside the fire, holding her hand and trying so hard not to let go. She understood well how Peran felt, for at that moment, she knew she would have given anything, done anything to have her back.
; That realization brought with it a world of understanding, unfolding before her startled thoughts like the wings of some brilliant butterfly.
The temptation that so tormented her was not Tintagel, and it never had been. The temptation was Morgaine herself. That fleeting moment, when she understood there was another being who understood what it was to carry the division between the visible and the invisible within herself, who might teach her what her mother could not, who might help her make peace within herself at a time when all else was threatening war. Who might help banish the feel of Colan — locked in his room staring out his window, pacing his floor, waiting for her to order his death — that never left her, not even in sleep.
Colan had said it. He had warned her with his musings. I thought I had risen above the need I have of her, he had said. She had thought the same, and like her brother, it had trapped her.
Morgaine had brought Laurel to this moment, paralyzed by her own doubts and impotence. Tintagel was only meant to push her over the edge. The real promise was that Morgaine would stand by her and to enable her to embrace her own self wholly.
Above her, the Holy Mother looked up at her Son, who looked up to Heaven. Both in agony, both facing the final loss, the last sacrifice. Had that mother ever extracted a promise from her Son? Made Him swear to protect another? Perhaps those brothers who had waited down below while He sat with his apostles? What did she tell those other children, Laurel wondered, about their oldest brother — their half brother, she supposed — the one who was both more and less than they? What did she tell them when she found out what it truly meant that He was the Way and the Door?
The Door. The open door.
And all at once, Laurel understood. She knew what she must do and what she should have done days ago. It was simple, but it was the one thing she had said she could not do. She needed Lynet’s ways of seeing, she had told herself. It was necessary to know what their enemies were doing and thinking.
In leaving open the door for Lynet, Laurel had left open the door for so many other things as well, and the result had nearly been disaster.