Under Camelot's Banner

by Sarah Zettel

  Gareth glanced over his shoulder and then leaned close. “Lynet, listen to me,” he whispered urgently. “You are weak. You must regain your strength before you can think of taking that mirror up again. Please.”

  “I cannot, Gareth. I feel it within me now and I cannot escape it.” Fresh fear gripped her as she spoke. It was true though she had not fully understood it until this time. She could not turn her mind away, could not shut the need off from her. “Talk to me a little,” she said suddenly, grasping at straws. “Give me something else to think on.”

  So, Gareth talked. While his knight sat beside the queen and told some long story of some campaign or the other, with all the other ladies sitting around him openly fascinated by the tale or his presence or both, Gareth spoke softly to her of life at Camelot. Daere came with the cool cloth and more of the queen’s tisane. Lynet tried to focus attention on these things, and on Gareth’s gently stream of words that lit his eyes and he told her of the life he loved. He talked of work and play, of small jokes and hurts, of his three elder brothers, all of whom were members of the cadre of the Round Table.

  And yet there was a yearning under all his words, a feeling beyond simple ambition that she could not understand, and she wanted to, because it would tell her of the man behind the summer eyes, and his love of his knight and his brothers, and her. She would understand then, and she wanted so much to understand, so she could believe, so she could somehow find a way past her fear.

  Once more she cursed her isolation, her confinement. If she could only reach out. If she could only find Ryol once more. She felt him, she was sure, in the invisible country, separate from her by the thinnest of veils, by the fingernail thickness of a piece of glass.

  Then, soft as an infant’s touch, she felt him. He stirred just beyond her. My lady?

  Ryol! She reached out eagerly, her should straining at the confines of her body. He was there. He was here. He was with her. With her.

  Lady Lynet what are you doing?

  The queen’s taken the mirror. She could almost see him now, a veil of color and shape behind and beyond the confines of the pavilion. You were right …

  Lynet go back.

  What? The world around her had gone grey, leaving only a narrow tunnel of vision where Ryol’s shadow hovered. Gareth was whispering to her. He touched her but someone took his hand away. She should care for this, but could not. All that mattered was that Ryol was here and the door to Laurel and to home would soon be open.

  But that was not what Ryol said. You must not do this. It is too much for mortal flesh. She could see him more clearly now. He held up his hands in warding and warning. He was old again, stooped and weathered and sagging, his strong arms thin and his face drawn tight and thin. She felt his fear spill over her. Go back!

  I cannot! She’s taken the mirror! I cannot leave Laurel!

  Desperate, tearing need made her reckless and Lynet propelled herself forward into darkness. It pulled her forward on a long tide of absence. There was no sensation save that of rushing movement, of flying faster than any bird of the air. Elated, Lynet stretched out, though she knew not how. She had no form, no limit, no boundary to herself. She was what Ryol had once spoken of being. She was everywhere and nowhere, all things and nothing at all.

  Laurel! She called out with her silent voice. Laurel!

  Light came, and color and sense, but it was not like when Ryol walked beside her. She did not feel as if she stood on her feet and saw with her eyes. It was more that she simply knew all things and knew them all at once.

  She knew that Mesek sat in the old hall, talking amiably with the old men, passing a leather jack of strong beer around, reaching down now and then to scratch the ears of the nearest hound. She knew he watched them all as they yarned away, deciding which one knew the most truth, and it was to this one he’d pass the beer.

  She knew that Peran stood outside the hall, talking with his own men. They were growing impatient, and he was reminding them they must play since they had entered into the game. One of them, tall Laveen who had his ear half-torn off in an old fight, shook his head, saying that it was Peran who entered in the game. In the back of his mind he thought he chief had gone mad, and wondered if tonight he would finally muster the nerve to steal away. Lynet reached toward that thought, breathing her will on it as she might breathe on a flickering coal. Yes, leave. Yes, he is mad. You need not stay. Go home to your own and tell them he is mad. Tell them that.

  She knew Colan stood before his window. Death was in his thoughts, winter cold, implacable death.

  She knew Laurel was bathing. She stood naked in a basin of waters brought to her by Father Lucius from St. Nectern’s well. She’d seasoned them with salt harvested from the sea and she’d prayed over them three times. She would take the water left from the bath and sprinkle it around her bed, and over each threshold of the hall, and she would be safe. Morgaine could no more reach her here.

  Good. That it good, but sister I am here and there is so much you should know.

  She reached for her sister, as she had reached for this place, to bring her close and know her and be known and tell her all she had learned.

  And she could not. It was as if she pressed her hands against a brick wall, or a carving of stone. She knew Laurel was there, she could feel where she had been, but Laurel herself was closed and silent before her, as she finished her bath and pulled a drying sheet around herself to go stand before the fire.

  Laurel, no! You cannot mean to shut me out too! She beat against her sister’s closed self with all her will. But Laurel did not even lift her head.

  She had come all this way to find Laurel, to protect her and tell her all she knew, and she could not even speak to her. Despair rolled over her, and Lynet fell back, all the way back into the long rushing darkness. But now she was without anchor, without goal or destiny, there was only movement without purpose and she could not still herself. Nor could she find herself. Her body was nowhere. She was lost. Lost.

  Ryol! She cried out. Ryol!

  Direction came to her, and purpose to her motion. Light and color unfurled around her to become a ragged, sloping green hill running down into a black and raging sea. Rain poured down from a fury of lightning-filled clouds. A man knelt on the ground, staring out at the angry waters. His mind was filled with the images of a great city — round towers of gleaming stone, streets paved with mosaics and marble.

  Beautifully tended trees hung with strange fruits that filled the air with a sharp perfume grew beside great obelisks granite and basalt covered with runes and elaborate carvings and painted bright red, green and blue. People in gowns of white wool and blue linen going to and fro about their business amidst the peace and untold beauty.

  Gone. All of it gone and only him left to see. Only him left because he had run away.

  “I thought you might be here.”

  Ryol. He was with her. She could not feel her own shape or shadow clearly, but she was aware of him, his warmth and his sorrow enveloping her the way the rain enveloped the weeping man before her.

  “Why here?” was all she could ask. The memory of the shining city, lost to the waters would not leave her. Through him she saw the dead tossed and tumbled in the darkness.

  “I hoped you would be able to call for me. This is the place where I was last and most myself.”

  The weeping man was Ryol, as he had been, servant to the prince of that great and shining city. He had warned his prince who dallied with the affections of one of the sea-women, only to abandon her. He’d had a great wall raised all about his island home so that the waters could never touch him, but it had failed, and so the sea claimed his life, along with the whole of his city.

  The angry sea would not release the souls of the dead. It was for them that Ryol bargained himself. He would ever become the protector of the sea’s children on land, if the sea released the drowned to their rest, to wait in peace for Judgment Day.

  It was this that brought him to her. It was this
reason that her grandmother gave Ryol’s prison, his garden, himself, to her daughter. It was this reason that mother had refused to look into the mirror. She feared he would draw her back to the sea, away from her husband and her children. She knew all this in an instant, and it was too much. Her voice vanished and her vision thinned, letting all the darkness show through the veil of the raging scene before her.

  Ryol drew closer, and she felt the edges of herself grow clear again.

  Her voice too returned, reed thin and shaking. “What has happened to me, Ryol?”

  He was a long moment answering. Beyond them, his other, far younger self huddled beneath the punishing rain and remembered his old mother sitting in her garden, humming as she spun her thread and tended his sister’s children. “You have reached too far, Lynet. You have pressed past the boundaries that flesh allows.”

  “And you?” she whispered.

  “I also have reached too far. You needed so much, I had waited so long to fulfill my promise, to pay for those souls freed long ago … I gave too much, and now I fear there may not be enough left.”

  She could not find her body. She could not reach Laurel. She barely knew herself from the darkness. Oh, yes. She had gone too far. “How am I to return?”

  So softly her insubstantial self could barely take in the words, Ryol said. “I do not know that you can.”

  Lynet felt herself go very still. She had been warned. She had been warned so many times and by so many who should know, and she had ignored them all. And here I came so desperate not to be the fool any more. Oh, God save me, is there no end to my own folly?

  “I must try,” she whispered. “Please help me.”

  “I will do what I can, my lady. Come with me.”

  As he had so many times before, he took her arm, and led her on, away from the rain and the storm of his own life. He swept the shadows before them, a thousand colored blurs of light and life that sought to wind their tendrils around her and pull her from the path, but she clung tightly to her guide, and somehow remained whole. At last she saw the queen’s pavilion become strong and solid about her. With the unnatural clarity of her night vision, she saw herself lying upon her pallet as if she had been laid upon lay on a bier.

  “What must I do?”

  “You must want,” said Ryol. He hovered just beyond the edge of her vision, looking on her as she looked on herself. “You must want your life and self again.”

  Want? Want what she had rejected so many times, the confines she had raged against. Anger billowed out of her, and the pavilion and her other self on its pallet began to recede.

  Stop. Stop, Lynet. You will be lost.

  She wanted to close her eyes, to fold her hands in prayer, to make some other gesture, but she had neither eyes nor hands nor knees.

  I want my eyes, she told herself desperately. My heart. My body wrapped around me. I want my hands so that I may tend my patient again. I want my voice so that I can speak to my sister, and my queen and to Gareth.

  Gareth. I want to look on Gareth again with my own eyes. I want to feel his hand brush mine and hear his jests again.

  I want to go home. Please. I want to go home.

  She felt the leaden, aching self that she hated. She felt the broken feet and the wounded arms and the isolating flesh, and she cringed and it faded, and she knew what she must do.

  I want to go home. She pulled herself closer to that clay-cold mortality that was also herself, and she embraced it with all the warmth she could summon. Home. Home and self. This is mine and I accept it. I let it bide.

  I accept.

  The darkness rushed up again. Ryol was gone. Clay and earth and pain encased her, and she felt blood and breath and heart. Her eyes flew open, and reflex tried to sit her up, but she fell back onto her pallet, her mouth gaping and gasping but unable to form any word.

  “Lynet?” whispered a voice. “Are you awake? Lynet?”

  Gareth. Gareth was there beside her but she could not see him. Her weak, bandaged hand flailed out and found only the canvas pavilion wall. But then she felt it, the pressure of his palm, flat against hers. Understanding came. He was outside the pavilion, on the other side of the cloth wall. Waiting for her to wake.

  She saw him then, clear as day, crouched on the grass, his face drawn and white with worry. He was thinking of her, not believing she had simply fallen asleep, he was thinking also of other women, of one named Morgause and another named Talia, and how he had lost them and lost his father and could not bear to lose her as well and how she must come back.

  With a shock, Lynet realized she knew all these things though she could feel the weight of her own flesh all around her. Then, that knowing was gone, and there was only the press of his palm and his voice. “Lynet? Speak to me, Lynet. Please.”

  “I am … I am here,” she managed to say.

  “Thank God,” he said fervently. “What happened?”

  What happened? The urge to laugh tickled her throat. “I tried to reach the mirror,” she said.

  Silence. She felt his hand tremble through the cloth that separated them. “Lynet, why?”

  Because I am a frightened fool, Gareth. Because I would not listen. Because I do not want my sister to die and my home to fall. “It is done, Gareth. I will not do it again.”

  “Thank you,” he breathed.

  “You must go,” she told him, and it took almost as much strength to form those words as it did to return to her aching body. “You cannot be found here.”

  “I will not be the one who takes any harm if I am,” he answered simply. “For that reason I will go. I’ll come to you in the morning.” His hand pressed once more against hers, and she heard the shuffle and rustle as he stood and walked away. She bit her tongue hard to keep from calling him back.

  Carefully, Lynet lay back down. She felt as if she was made of both stone and glass. She was too heavy to move, and so fragile that if she did she would shatter in an instant. Thirst nagged at her and she could not seem to make herself close her eyes. She’d had enough of darkness, and although the moonlight filtered only dimly through the canvas, it was better than blindness.

  As she stared, she thought she saw images in the thin sheen of the moonlight. She saw rain, and walls, and the tangled selves of lovers, she saw brown eyes and blue, the flash of swords and a long, green trail that lead to nowhere but urgency. And she understood what these were, but she still could not make herself close her eyes.

  Watching the dreams of other women, Lynet lay on her pallet and waited for daylight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Laurel woke to the spring dawn. She sat up in her bed, and breathed deep. The world opened before her eyes and her heart rejoiced. Her sleep the night before had been sound, deep and dreamless. Her defences had proven true. She was not safe, not completely, but she had shelter for her soul now, and Morgaine could trouble her there no more.

  The knowledge that she held that much secure made the thought of yet another day’s confinement easier to bear. Or perhaps it was only that she no longer had an outside will eroding her patience. It did not matter. It was so, and she was grateful.

  In token of that gratitude, she crossed herself and bowed her head in thanksgiving to all the powers that come to aid those in need. She would have to find some good gift for Father Lucius when all this was over. She regretted that she could not go to the watchtower this morning and take what news was to be gathered from the sea winds, but she could not expose herself. If she opened the door of herself wide enough to take in that knowledge, Morgaine could easily slip in.

  Laurel swung her feet out of bed. And I will have to explain to Lynet too. She will be stung by this. Worry touched her. What if it was more than that? There is nothing I can do for her, not and keep our home safe. I must trust her to find her way. I have left too many things undone here.

  Now that she could reason clearly once again, she saw the one thread she had dropped from the pattern, and the weight of that one thread that had almost
unravelled all the rest. She had been focusing her frightened, envious, halting planning on Master Peran, as had been Morgaine’s desire. She had not seen that the time had come and past to trust Master Mesek.

  Laurel dressed herself in her green overdress and plaited a green ribbon in her hair, making herself plain but presentable. She had sent Meg and the other waiting women out of the chamber last night, carrying with them the basin she had bathed in. Clearly, they had obeyed her strange orders to sprinkle the water over the hall’s various thresholds. She would also have to find a way to thank them.

  Her guards, as ever, waited outside her door. She noted that Peran’s man was not the same one who had been there the night before, and she wondered at that.

  Down in the new hall, the boards were laid, and the breaking of the fast begun. The scents of bread and pottage, meats and cheeses rose invitingly. She was able to meet the eyes of her people easily this morning, stopping to talk and answer such small questions as had arisen overnight. She knew those around her saw the worry lifted from her, and felt the hope it sparked in them. Perhaps this thing would be over soon, they all thought. Perhaps they would be free of the strangers watching their lady, and squatting outside the walls of their castell, and it would all end in a return to peace.

  She found Meg fetching another crock of cider and spoke to her about the state of the cellars, and thanked her for her patience.

  “You should know what is left in the cellars, my lady,” said Meg abruptly. “Jorey is most concerned.”

  “As he has been for days.” Laurel saw an urgency in Meg’s eyes and worry crept in to her. “But tell me what we have left in the cellars.”

  Meg began a litany of casks and tubs and loaves. Satisfied Laurel was engaged in domestic concerns, her guards split off, with two heading to the pottage kettles and the third, Peran’s new man, hurrying to join his fellows.