by Sarah Zettel
Fear.
On instinct alone, Lynet lifted her hand. She passed it between them, the gesture she had seen Ryol make so many times to change and wipe away the shadows of his garden.
Let me see you, she willed the woman before her. Let me truly see you.
For a moment, the veil cleared. For a single heartbeat, Lynet looked into the sword-bearer’s eyes. They were pale blue and ancient, and exhausted from looking out on all those years without rest or respite. Those eyes were wracked with a sorrow that cut so deeply Lynet could not begin to comprehend it. The sorrow she felt around her was but the smallest fraction of what was contained within this pale lady.
In that moment she understood these were not like the sea-women. These were not the free and heartless fae. They had no wish to make this sacrifice. They were trapped here, even as Gareth was. For how long, for how many lifetimes, it was impossible to say, nor was it possible to guess how much blood they had shed.
“God forgive you,” she whispered. “Whatever your sins. God and Mary and Jesus Christ grant you rest, but I cannot let you pass.”
She had the briefest hope the holy names would bring some aid or succor, but the veil closed again over the woman’s ravaged eyes, and once more a dog barked. The beast nearest to Lynet raised its hackles impatiently, and the low growl it gave trembled through the earth.
Belatedly, the true source of her danger finally becoming clear to Lynet.
They will be able to touch you, but not hold you, Ryol said. You are stronger than they. But he had spoken of the daughters of the mist, not their great dogs. They were living creatures, massive and fierce and she stood there with nothing but her bare hands.
The nearest dog bared its teeth and stepped forward another pace.
Bow down, said the sword-bearer. Bow down and accept judgment for interrupting the holy rite.
The sorrow blew away on the wind and in its place came outrage, towering and terrible. Lynet was small and alone, weak and far from home. She was an ignorant child who knew nothing and could know nothing of the glory she had challenged, of the importance of what the man behind her did.
Lynet felt it all, and she trembled, and she let it pass. But it would not do to let these maidens, and their masters know that. So, she forced her tremors to grow, and bowed her head as if in the gravest of shame. She made her hands shake and slowly, she knelt onto the sodden ground.
The very air around her sang. She did right. Surrender was the only right course. The sword-bearer came another step closer, to accept her surrender and bring relief to her for her repentance.
In a single, swift motion, Lynet leapt to her feet and snatched the sword from those white hands. The hilt was solid and heavy. Holding the gleaming silver blade in front of her, she backed away until she felt Gareth’s stone at her heels.
“Hear me,” she said, her heart beating so hard it caused her hands to shake. “None of you shall pass here.”
The lead hound lifted its head and howled. In answer, the daughters wailed. It was a sound like the ending of the world. It beat against Lynet, robbing her of breath and sense. The daughters surged forward, throwing themselves against her, battering her with sorrow and the terrible, terrible sound of their weeping. She could barely feel their blows but the confusion of their crowding, the deafening noise of their weeping threatened to bear her down.
You are stronger than they. You are stone.
Gritting her teeth, Lynet moved. She shoved her way forward and all the maidens fell back until she face the lead hound in front of her. The creature snarled, unleashing a burst of fear, and Lynet raised the sword, and swung it down onto the dog’s neck.
The blade jarred her arms as it contacted flesh and bone with a strangely dull thud. All other sound ceased to be.
The hound gave a rough bark that sounded disconcertingly like laughter and fell back until it stood beside its fellows. The entire pack faced her now, all burning eyes and white fangs and the maidens cowered behind them.
The dogs began to stalk forward, coming together in a mass. Lynet retreated, circling to draw them off Gareth. They wanted her. They would come toward her. She must hold them off somehow, lead them away, give him a chance to come to himself. She could not even see him anymore, but she had no time to spare a thought for that. She must not be distracted from the pack.
The dogs came on, each pressing as close to his fellow to make a solid wall. Then, one-by-one, like inky shadows they melded into one another. Each remaining beast stretched and reformed as their flanks swallowed their fellows until there were only two the size of black elkhounds, grinning at her from their wide muzzles. Then in an impossible blurring of flesh, there was only one hulking, swollen monster towering over her. It no longer looked like a hound. This was a massive black bear, with a bear’s clawed paws and heavy shoulders and blazing, beady eyes.
Absurdly, Lynet wished Colan were here. He knew how to hunt the bear. Holding the sword up and out before her, she retreated but her feet banged against the great stone behind her.
The demon bear before her gave a chuckling growl and lowered its head heavy head. Its teeth still gleamed as white as the mists, as white as the skin of the maidens behind it, and slowly, leisurely, ambled toward Lynet and her stolen blade.
“Hey!” cried another voice. “Hey!”
Gareth?
She’d forgotten Gareth as she faced the final monster, but Gareth had not forgotten himself. He had come to, as she hoped. He had at some moment gotten himself to his feet.
He had also circled behind the monster, and now he waved his arms, as ridiculous as any boy trying to chase a pig from the garden.
“Hey! You great black puppy! What are you doing there?” He reached down and grabbed up a muddy stone. “Are you only strong enough to attack a woman? Puppy! Coward!” He tossed the feeble missile at the monster. It thumped faintly against its pelt. “Face a man if you want a fight!” He scooped up more dirt clods and a handful of pebbles and hurled them to smack and clatter against the beast’s muzzle. “Where’s your bitch of a dam, puppy! Maybe she can fight! Where’re your teeth?”
The monster snapped at the air, bristling and swelling to twice its size. Gareth dodged, putting a listing boulder between himself and the demon, but there were none big enough to shelter him, and for all the monster no longer heeded Lynet and the sword, his vulnerable throat and heart now faced Gareth. The sword shook in Lynet’s hands.
You are stronger than they … But he meant the maidens. Did he? He did not say that.
“Come on, puppy!” cried Gareth. The tremor in his voice drove Lynet into action.
Lynet lunged. Her movement caught the monster’s eye. It whirled around, and hurled itself forward, its fanged maw blocking out all other sights. Lynet brought up the blade and thrust it down the monster’s throat. Its teeth grazed her arms as it jerked itself backwards, gagging and choking and ripped itself from off the sword, nearly tearing the blade from her hands, but Lynet hung on for grim life. She stumbled backward. The monster staggered after her, blood pouring from its muzzle, but it still did not fall. Gareth — she could see Gareth again — rounded the creature until he reached her side, and could take the sword that now dangled limp in her hands. He was still sickly white, and shaking at least as badly as she was. The beast clawed the ground and swung its body back and forth. Gareth lifted the sword so he held it by the hilts and the weapon made the shape of the cross before him. She thought he whispered the holy names as he drove the blade down into the monster’s neck. More blood, an impossible fountain of blood, spurted up to the sky as if to color the mists themselves scarlet.
Finally, finally, the beast collapsed onto the waterlogged ground, and died.
Gareth took two trembling steps backwards. Lynet lurched forward two more so that they stood side-by-side.
As they stood, shaking and panting, fearing that the thing before them might move again, a new sound broke across their awareness. A wordless cry lifted up but not of horror this
time. This shout was of unspeakable gladness. Lynet raised her blurring eyes and saw the daughters of the moor once more. They shone now, so white that to look at them was like looking at the sun. All of them lifted their hands to the heavens, the sound from their throats a single reverberating note of joy.
And they were gone, gone all of an instant, and Lynet knew without question that they were free, each and every one of them.
Lynet looked up into Gareth’s face, and incredibly, not only did Gareth smile at her, but Lynet felt herself smile in return. Around them, the mists all melted away, and they could plainly see the honest shape of the world and how the land behind rose toward the height where the camp waited for them.
Gareth reached out his free hand and Lynet took it gratefully. But they could do no more. Slowly, almost gracefully, they collapsed together beside the hulking carcass of the monster they had slain. Blessed darkness took hold of Lynet then and she fell into it as easily as if Ryol waited at the end.
Chapter Twenty
Colan Carbrea dreamed.
He dreamed he pressed through a great wood to an open place. A broad meadow surrounded a lake that lay like a still, dark jewel in the autumn brown grass. All about, the tall dark trees stood guard, and the trees were filled with mighty ravens, their keen eyes and their sharp beaks gleaming. There were so many that it seemed that each leaf in the forest had turned into a great, black bird. They all looked at him, and the clamor of their croaking was like raucous laughter.
Then, the grey surface of the lake quivered. It trembled and it broke, and a mare as black as the ravens charged forth. Panic surged through Colan and he tried to run, but the mare made straight for him, tossing its gleaming black mane and baring its white teeth. The ravens shouted their carrion cries, urging the wild beast on, and no matter how Colan ran he could not reach the shelter of those terrible trees. At last, he tripped and sprawled into the grass. The mare reared over him, and all the ravens laughed to see him throw up his hands as a feeble guard against the hooves that flashed so brightly.
But the hooves came down beside him, and as if this were some signal, the ravens all took flight, rising up in a cloud to darken the sky. The clapping of their wings deafened him, and in their blur of motion they stretched and changed, turning the grey sky to midnight black. The peaceful stars shone down as if through the gaps in the ravens wing feathers.
Colan gaped, his heart hammering hard in his chest, and beside him, a familiar voice spoke.
“Do you know me, Colan?”
Colan scrambled backward on all fours. The mare had spoken, and in the way of dreams, the mare was Morgaine, was the mare, was Morgaine. She was both and neither and he could not make a single sound.
At last, he croaked. “Yes, my lady, I know you.”
“And do you know why I am come to you?”
“No, my lady.”
“Because last night I saw you boldly try to prove yourself to me, and I accept that deed.” She was Morgaine alone then for a moment, and he saw her smile.
“I failed,” he whispered.
“You were sore prevented.”
The ghost. He saw it again, his father’s bloody shade standing before him, its great hands spread wide. Fear stabbed through him, but Morgaine reached out her hand and touched the ghost with one brown finger.
The shade shrank, shrivelled, and changed, and it was Lynet who stood before him. Just Lynet, and all the fear was gone.
Slowly, Colan sat up. “How can this be?”
Morgaine sighed and lifted her hand away. The image of Lynet melted away. “Your youngest sister has done more than I thought. It was the elder I feared, but the younger I passed over.” She shook her head in annoyance. “She found you out, and she moved as she could to save her sister’s life.”
Anger flooded him, the sharp and sudden emotion of one who has been lied to.
Morgaine smiled on him and he felt bathed in warmth. All would yet be right if she could still smile on him. “It is she you must kill, Colan.”
And for all the anger in him, for all he had been ready to murder Laurel who was so much stronger than he would ever be, the idea of striking Lynet down with the same blow repelled him. It was reasonless and he knew it. He’d been ready for the morverch to take her, but she had survived to fight back, as he had. She was so much like him, his little sister. He remembered her as an infant toddling after him as soon as the nurse loosed her from her leading strings. She had frightened him, that was all. Of course she had, for she also loved Laurel. But was that any reason to turn on him yet again? He shook his own head now, unable to reconcile to two colliding needs boiling up within his breast.
“Why? Why must I kill her?”
For the first time, something like pity crept into Morgaine’s voice. “Because, Colan Carnbrea, it is the path you have started down. There was a moment when you could have chosen otherwise, but you did not. Now death is the only choice you have.”
“Why me?”
“Because your sister moves to bar me from this place. Soon I will not be able to enter here. Indeed, I may not be able to touch a one of you. It must be done, and it must be you.”
Colan bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that threatened to spill down. He had thought himself protected against her because he was no longer amazed. He did not know how long he had been snared in this web, nor how much he had spun himself.
“How?” he asked. “I cannot leave this room.”
She showed him. She poured the knowledge into him like wine, and it was heady and bitter and it filled him with a reeling drunkenness of power that in turn filled him with fear of her and of himself and of all that must come after.
Colan woke.
The mattress ticking was soaked with his sweat and more poured down his icy skin. He lay there, his eyes straining to see in the absolute darkness. For a dozen heartbeats, he tried to pretend his dream had not been a real thing.
But it was, and he knew it. He also knew that he would do as Morgaine commanded, and that by the time he came to it, thought would have driven the fear and regret away, and he would understand it was the only right way.
For that understanding yet to come, Colan Carnbrea began slowly and painfully to weep.
Pain throbbing in her arms woke Lynet. She lifted her head, gazing about her. She lay on her pallet in the queen’s pavilion, dressed in a dry shift of white linen. Both her arms rested atop the bed coverings, swathed to the elbow with white cloths.
“She wakes, Majesty!” called Daere, coming into Lynet’s range of vision. “God be praised!” The maid laid a rough hand on Lynet’s forehead and gazed with real concern into her eyes.
Lynet tried to speak, but her raw throat seized shut, and she could only cough. Daere at once lifted a cup to Lynet’s lips. A few drops of watered wine dribbled into Lynet’s mouth. It felt like the balm of Heaven as it moistened her parched mouth, and Daere gave her a little more.
“You frightened us so, my lady,” she admonished gently. “I think the Holy Mother must be getting tired of the sound of my voice and your name by now.”
Lynet gave the maid a wavering smile, but still could not find her voice. Daere tipped the cup for her once more and she drank a little more of her dose. While she sipped, Queen Guinevere came up beside the serving woman.
The queen’s face was bland. She felt Lynet’s head for fever. Finding none, she lifted first one of Lynet’s arms, then the other, examining the bandages and Lynet’s hands, presumably for signs of swelling, puss, or corruption of the flesh. When satisfied there were no signs of these dangers either, Queen Guinevere glanced at Daere, who set down the cup and hurriedly brought a stool that the queen might sit, and then withdrew.
Lynet tried to ease herself up into a sitting position, but it was of no use. The least motion of her arms was painful and there was no strength left to her. She gazed down at her own distant hands. Between the pain and the tension that filled her, it was all Lynet could do to maintain t
he silence that courtesy required. She wanted to explain, or to have the queen start to shout. Anything, so long as it began now so it could be over with that much sooner.
“So,” said Queen Guinevere at last. “You come to me, demanding my help and protection for you and yours, as your right. Then when I give you that protection and help, I find you’ve lied to me, that you carry with an object of mystical power about which you’ve said nothing, and that you willfully leave my protection so that I must risk more of my own to find you.”
“I am sorry, Majesty,” Lynet murmured. “I …” She lifted her gaze just long enough to see the depth of the anger burning behind the queen’s eyes.
“Well?” inquired Queen Guinevere coldly.
“I could not stand and wait,” Lynet whispered. She tried to put some strength into her voice, but her voice failed her. “I knew something was wrong and that I must try to help him any way I could.”
“Him,” the queen repeated the single word. “Your lover?”
“No! No. He isn’t … he hasn’t …”
The queen rubbed her brow. “I’m glad of that at least.” She regarded Lynet for another long moment, but the tide of her anger had ebbed a little. “Why did you not tell me what you meant to do?”
“I did not think you would permit it.”
A corner of the queen’s mouth twitched. “Perhaps not,” she said calmly. “But had I all the facts in the matter, perhaps I would have decided differently. You did not consider that.” It was a flat statement, and, Lynet could not deny, a true one.
“No, Majesty.” But even as she spoke the words, Lynet bridled at them. She had faced so much that it seemed suddenly insupportable to have this woman, whatever her rank, harangue her. “I did what I felt I must to save a good man.”
Queen Guinevere was not impressed. “And in so doing, you risked your life as well as Gareth’s, and your life at the moment, is infinitely more valuable. Did you stop to think what your sister would do if I came to her bearing your corpse and a strange story of losing you in the fog?”