Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  The threat hangs in the air long after she walks away. It’s an empty threat, I tell myself. Arthur will pass Merlin’s tests with ease—he has to. But nothing is certain, not even the countless visions I’ve had of Arthur as king. He can still fail. And if he does, Mordred will become king and—perhaps worse still—Morgause will be queen.

  13

  EVERYTHING IN THE tower is covered by a thick coat of dust, casting the place in a silvery pale glow. A ghost of a place with ghosts of its own hiding in each corner. It hasn’t been touched since shortly after I left, I’d imagine, after my father came from Shalott to bring my mother home. Arthur’s great-grandfather gave it to mine when the castle was first built, and it’s been in my family ever since. My father and brothers could have stayed here whenever they came to court, but I doubt they’d want to stay in a place so haunted by my mother’s spirit. I don’t want to stay here myself.

  It doesn’t look so different from the day I left, really—the velvet curtains still drawn closed, the teacups still set out on the table, the couch pillows still indented from where my mother would always lean against them.

  If I try, I can see her there again now, the chenille blanket drawn up to her throat as she surveyed me in my gowns, critiquing the way they fit my figure, the way my hair was done, my posture. I always felt as though I left her presence several inches shorter—another thing she would no doubt find fault in.

  Where my Sight is best channeled through the loom and Nimue’s worked best through a scrying pool, my mother’s prophecies took the shape of words, their meaning twisted and veiled and open to interpretation—every oracle is different, I’ve learned. Nimue told me that if my mother had received the proper training, it wouldn’t have consumed her so fully, that she could have learned how to handle them, but as it was, each time she had a vision, it took something of her mind, something of herself. I saw it with my own eyes that night, how she became someone else, a stranger with my mother’s face, but with hands that hurt instead of held.

  Beware, beware three maidens fair, she’d murmured under her breath as her fingers pressed into my throat until I couldn’t breathe. With bloody hands and divine air.

  I touched my fingers to my throat, suddenly breathless. As if my mother could reach me even through death.

  “Are you alright, El?” Morgana asks, drawing me out of the past and back into the present.

  She walks along the edge of the sitting room, running a finger over the dusty windowsill and holding it up to inspect. The pad of her fingertip is almost black with grime.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her with a smile, though she sees right through it.

  “You’ll have to hire a staff,” she says. “But even then, you shouldn’t stay here alone. It’s too big, too empty.”

  “Are you offering?” I ask her.

  Her smile broadens. “The royal wing of the palace is too stuffy for me, and heavily populated by a never-ending flood of simpering simpletons who will no doubt be clamoring for my demise,” she says. “I would much prefer solitude with you.”

  “People will talk.” It’s exactly what my mother would have said if she were here, but I don’t mean it scornfully, or even as a rejection. Just a simple fact.

  Morgana shrugs her shoulders. “People will talk if you’re living here alone as well. They’ll talk no matter what,” she points out, which I can’t argue with.

  Instead I nod, crossing to the overstuffed sofa, piled with pillows and blankets that were never enough for my mother to find comfort. The indent from her body is still there, as if she rose only a moment ago to fetch a cup of tea, as if she’ll return any moment and chide me for slouching.

  “I want new furniture in here as well,” I tell Morgana, my voice coming out surprisingly level. “All of it.”

  She doesn’t protest, doesn’t tell me I’m overreacting. Instead, she nods. “And how will you pay for all of this—the new furniture, the staff, the gowns you’ll likely need? It won’t come cheaply, and until Arthur is crowned, you won’t get a salary for advising him.”

  “My father has an account with most everyone in the palace. He won’t protest my using it, if he notices at all,” I say. My father has always had too much money and little interest in it. “I’ll write to him, let him know I’ve returned. Let him know that we’ll be arriving in Shalott soon.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a moment. “When was the last time you saw him?” she asks me.

  “It must be close to eleven years now,” I tell her. Saying it out loud knocks the wind from my lungs. Eleven years is such a long time—almost half of my life—but in many ways, the time has passed in the space of a single breath. Will he even recognize me on sight? Will I recognize him?

  “I’ll write to him as soon as I’m settled,” I tell her, though I’m already dreading it. Not because I don’t love my father—I do, even with all the distance between us—but because I don’t know what to say to him, how to begin to build that bridge. “When Arthur’s crowned, I’ll bring one of my brothers to court—the Crone knows we’ll need all the allies we can get in this viper pit.”

  Morgana nods, turning the information over in her mind. “And are they . . . handsome, these brothers of yours?” she asks with a grin. Though I know she’s trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere hanging over us, I don’t doubt that she is, at least somewhat, earnest. Morgana has rarely met a soul she didn’t hope to entice, even if she had no interest in them herself.

  I laugh. “I couldn’t begin to tell you that for a number of reasons,” I say. “But I would be surprised if they weren’t married by now. They’re both close to thirty.”

  Her expression sours at that. “Marriage,” she says with a disdainful scoff. “I’d hoped to have avoided that particular trap by staying in Avalon.”

  “It’s not as though you have anyone to force you into it,” I point out. “Your parents can’t very well marry you off, and Arthur wouldn’t dream of trying.”

  “He definitely has more sense than that,” she says, shaking her head. “What about you? Surely the prime adviser to the king will be a bride in high demand.”

  I glance away so she can’t see my cheeks turn pink. There was a time when a husband and children were all that my future contained, when even as a child myself, my mother was scheming and laying traps to catch me one. There was a time when it was all I thought I was capable of.

  “I think you’re greatly overestimating my appeal on the marriage market,” I tell her. “My proximity to the king might be a boon, but it comes with my own power, which Camelot men don’t tend to find appealing, not to mention the fact that my Sight makes for a strange and frightening trait in a wife.”

  Morgana shakes her head, looking out the wide window and leaning on it, likely coating her dress in dust, though she hardly seems to notice.

  “And Lancelot?” she asks, almost tentatively. “You brought him all the way here, after all. Might as well make an honest man out of him.”

  I shake my head. “Lancelot is here for Arthur, not me,” I say, though even as I say the words, I hear him back on the shore. And you? Do you need me there, too, Shalott? “Besides, he hasn’t been raised for monogamy.”

  “He hasn’t been raised for court, either, but here he is.”

  I swallow, but Morgana must see there is more I’m not saying. She’s always known me too well.

  “I imagine it must be difficult for an oracle to make commitments,” she says after a moment. “I suppose you can’t help but see the myriad of ways they go wrong. How do they go wrong?”

  I bite my lip. There’s always a risk, discussing visions with others, but in these visions, at least, Morgana had no part. So I tell her the truth.

  “Oh, the ways you’d imagine, really,” I say, trying to keep my voice casual. “I’ve seen him have his affairs, seen him leave me, seen us hurl words at each other designed to do not
hing but maim.”

  “Affairs,” she says, tilting her head to one side.

  Trust not the girl with the golden crown, she’ll take what’s yours and watch you drown.

  Part of me wants to tell Morgana about what I’ve seen of Lancelot and Gwen, to tell her about my mother’s prophecy, but the words die on my tongue. Speaking them aloud will give them power.

  “It’s Lancelot,” I say instead, shaking my head. “The affairs can’t be the most surprising bit. You know how he is.”

  “A couple of years ago I might have believed that,” she says, her violet-gray eyes surveying me in a way I don’t think I will ever grow accustomed to. “But there hasn’t been anyone else in some time.”

  It’s true, as far as I know. In the beginning, when we were mostly stolen moments and passionate kisses, neither of us made any bones about the fact that there were others—not just for him, but for me as well. And there was never a moment, in my memory, when we decided to see only each other. It just happened—no one else held my interest anymore, and it seemed to be the same for him.

  “I’ve Seen my heart break,” I tell her, keeping it as simple as I can. “More than that, I’ve Seen the rest of me break as well, and I’ve Seen the world break around us.”

  Morgana smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “That’s a bit dramatic. Everyone’s heart breaks, El. Just because you can see it coming doesn’t mean you can avoid it altogether. Besides, I’d wager you’ve seen more than just the bad bits.”

  That I can’t deny, though it almost makes it worse, in a way.

  “It’s good to see Morgause is as vile as ever,” I say to change the subject. “I thought for sure you were going to hit her.”

  “Oh, I likely would have,” she says, laughing. “But I must admit, the face she made when you insulted her dress was somehow even more satisfying. How did you do that? It sounded like a compliment, but it wasn’t.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “It’s easy to pick up on once it’s been directed at you a few too many times.”

  “I don’t want to pick up on it, though,” she says. “I miss Avalon already. But one day, we’ll go back. You said it yourself.”

  I move to stand next to her by the window, staring out at Camelot, at the tall border walls, at the taller trees peeking over the tops of them. Somewhere out there is Avalon, far in the distance and cloaked in mist, but there all the same. I feel its presence in my soul, the faint tug of home.

  “Yes,” I tell her, thinking about the vision I had of us on the cliff, older and utterly changed but still us. “One day, we’ll go back.”

  For better or worse, we’ll go back.

  14

  THE FIRST DAYS at court pass in a blur, so busy and overstuffed that by the end of each day, my mind is too exhausted to scry at the loom, and instead I tumble into my childhood bed and a deep, dreamless sleep that is never quite long enough.

  Morgana hires a staff to clean and cook, and though they are perfectly competent at their jobs, I suspect she chose them largely because they don’t seem to fear us. They bow and curtsy and always put a lady before our names, but they also hold our gazes and talk and don’t skitter in the shadows every time either of us enters the room. It’s quite possible they go home to their families each night and tell them stories of the witches they work for, but if they are afraid of us, they hide it well, and that is all I can ask.

  When I lived in this tower with my mother, I never had a single guest before Morgana, and my mother didn’t either. Besides the servants, the tower was a lonely wasteland, and my mother and I were little more than two ghosts floating through it.

  Now, though, the tower is never empty. From morning on, if I’m here, there is someone waiting to speak with me. When I do leave, I always return to a queue that winds down the steep stairway. I discuss Arthur while I eat breakfast, while I visit the seamstress, while I take my exercise walking in the gardens. I construct the history of his life for them, painting a picture vivid enough that he ceases to be just an upstart boy who appeared out of thin air and begins to at least resemble a living myth—a lost prince, returned home to take his rightful place on the throne. I spin a story they want to believe—and, more importantly, a story they want to repeat over and over and over again until the great myth of Arthur becomes larger than life.

  I don’t lie about Arthur—there is little need to, after all—but I am careful about what information I give and what I withhold. I am conscious of the fact that once these stories leave my tower, they will begin to twist and change with each retelling. I try to ensure that they twist in a way that is beneficial to us.

  When I tell the Duke of Northam about Arthur’s bravery, I tell him how he fought the dragon that lived in the northern caves of Avalon. I tell him how it was a fierce battle, how hard Arthur fought. I tell him that, should he ask his prince, he might even get to see the place on Arthur’s forearm where the dragon singed his skin. The duke listens, enraptured, as I tell him what the dragon was like, how tall and fierce, with fangs sharper than daggers and fire spewing from its mouth.

  All of that is true. But what I don’t tell the duke is that it was merely sparring, that neither Arthur or the dragon—Meerla was her name—intended to do the other harm.

  And by the end of the day, the story has multiplied. The overexcited daughter of an earl told me in hushed tones over dinner that she’d heard Arthur had vanquished an entire legion of dragons, completely on his own. That his sword shot bolts of lightning. That he fought with the strength of fifty—no, one hundred—men.

  The next morning I do it all over again, this time with stories of his wisdom.

  It’s tiring work, but the most unexpected part is that in Arthur’s meetings, almost every lord or earl or duke who comes before Arthur doesn’t come alone. They always bring their daughters along, or if they have no daughters, their nieces or sisters or granddaughters. The girls all stay silent during the meeting, but their eyes rest on Arthur, hungry and confident and promising.

  “I wish they wouldn’t bring them,” Arthur says to me in the brief break between two audiences. “It makes me uncomfortable—like they want something from me that I don’t know how to give.”

  I look up from my sheet of parchment, littered with splotches of notes I’m not sure I’ll be able to decipher later. We’re sitting in the office I had set up for him, sparsely decorated with a large oak desk and shelves of books I borrowed from the royal library. There is a map of Albion hanging on the back wall, though it is more work of art than strategic tool, with its curling ornate script and the country covered with gold leaf. Avalon is conspicuously missing from it.

  Arthur sits behind the desk in a high-backed leather chair that resembles a throne while I sit in an armchair off to the side, a book balanced on my lap with the parchment over it to give me a hard, flat surface to write on. The empty chair on the other side of Arthur’s desk is smaller than both of ours and a few inches lower to the ground, so that anyone who sits on it is dwarfed by Arthur, and even by me.

  “You can’t be that thick, Arthur,” I say with a laugh. “You know exactly what they want—you. Or, rather, your hand. Even if you fail Merlin’s tests, you’re still Uther’s son. And since Mordred is already married, that makes you the most eligible bachelor in the country.”

  Arthur slumps down in his leather chair, ducking his head, as if that can hide how red his face grows. “I’m not eligible, either, though. I’ll be coming back from Lyonesse with Gwen.”

  “I know that,” I say, shaking my head. “But they don’t, and honestly, it’s better to keep that from them as long as we can. Mordred has had years to curry favor with the nobles. You haven’t. Take whatever advantage you can. When you do return with Gwen, everyone will be pleased enough. Bringing Lyonesse into Albion is what they all want. But, in the meantime, giving the court the illusion that one of their family might end up on the t
hrone beside you will give them a reason to support your claim.”

  The furrow doesn’t leave Arthur’s brow. “You want me to lie?”

  “You don’t have to lie,” I say with a sigh. “You don’t have to do anything. They believe you’re looking for a wife—for a queen—let them believe it. That’s all.”

  “Like you let them believe I’ve vanquished an army of dragons single-handedly?” he asks. “Or that the High Lady of Wisdom sought my guidance on Avalon? She asked me for directions to the loo once, and I provided them.”

  “That is guidance,” I say, but I don’t look at him, instead focusing on my notes.

  He doesn’t reply, looking out the window that overlooks the forest to the east of the castle. “I didn’t think it would be like this,” he admits. “I mean, I didn’t think it would be like anything in particular. I never thought about it, coming back here, but if I’d had to imagine it . . . well, it wouldn’t have been like this.”

  “What would you have imagined?” I ask.

  He shrugs his shoulders, and for a second, I think he doesn’t have an answer, but finally he speaks, his voice soft.

  “Like a story, I suppose,” he says. “Where the prince is welcomed home with open arms and crowned and becomes a benevolent king who sits on his throne and uses his power to help people.”

  “Stories make it seem easy,” I say. “The king always has unlimited power and is loved by everyone. They never show how he gets that power, how he earns that love. They don’t show that no one can be universally loved, that there are always those lurking near power, waiting for their chance to yank it away because everyone believes themselves to be the heroes of their own story.”

  He nods, but his eyes are still heavy and troubled. “I wish Gwen were here,” he says after a moment. He looks at me and half smiles. “No offense to you—I would be utterly lost without your help, and you’re one of my closest friends. I love you. But—”