Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  The thought of Nimue paying such a high compliment to me causes heat to rise to my cheeks, even if it doesn’t sound like her. In our lessons in the caves of Avalon, I always felt like I was lacking in some way. I could never See enough, and when I did, the details were always beyond what she asked me. She pushed me hard every day and never once seemed entirely satisfied.

  “She’s quite demanding, I remember that well, but trust me, she was quite proud of you,” Merlin murmurs, as if reading my mind.

  “You knew her personally?” I ask, surprised. “What, on Avalon?”

  “Oh no, my dear,” he says, mouth bowing into a rare smile. “I haven’t set foot on those shores—it is a place for fey, after all, and their chosen friends. I have never been called either.”

  It’s an easy thing to forget—that Merlin, with all his magic, isn’t fay as far as anyone has been able to see. No one knows exactly what he is or where he came from, but when the Fay War came about, he gave his loyalty to Uther and the humans. The fey never forgot it—even when I’d been there, the fey would curse his name. Except for Nimue, of course, but then I never heard her curse anyone.

  Now, though, I wonder if there was more to it. If she didn’t simply refuse to speak badly of him, but if she actually liked him.

  “But you knew her,” I say.

  His smile grows faraway.

  “You are young, but as unfathomable as it might be, there was a time when there was no Avalon, when there was no Albion. There was only home, and home had no edges or borders. It was infinite.”

  “And it was peaceful,” I say, because while it might be unfathomable to me, it is not an unfamiliar tale. I heard the same from Nimue more times than I could count. But Merlin surprises me, shaking his head.

  “It was not,” he tells me, a snort in his voice. “You think such a thing as peace exists when fey and humans walk together?”

  “But for centuries, there was peace,” I say.

  “For the fey, there was peace,” he corrects, casting me an amused glance. “Of course they found it peaceful. They were the ones in power. They held the reins. How could they not be at peace? The humans, however, were certainly never peaceful. They lived lives of fear and cowering. That much, I’m sure you understand.”

  There’s a draft in the banquet hall, but despite the chill, heat still rises to my cheeks.

  “There were no wars,” I say, pushing forward. “No violence, no plagues. Fields grew plentiful, and no one went hungry. The united world was a utopia.”

  “For the fey,” he says again. “But this is where Nimue and I have always disagreed as well, and you are her pupil. But that is the answer to the question you wanted to ask.” When I frown, his smile grows wider. “Why I am here, and she is there. It’s because the drawing of the lines was inevitable. Her protecting the fey was inevitable . . . as was my protecting the humans. And so here we are.”

  “You’ve made quite a fortune here,” I say, looking out at the great hall, all the people talking and dancing and eating. Though they may not know it, and they would doubtlessly resent him if they did, Merlin has had no small amount of dominion over their lives, and their ancestors’ lives before them. He has shaped them all—us all—shaped this court, shaped this country.

  “I made Uther’s great-great-grandfather a king of a feral and barren land,” Merlin says, following my gaze. “Everyone thought I was mad. But Owain didn’t. So together we built a country and I made him a king. That was what they called me then—the Kingmaker. After all this is done, they might call me that again.”

  My eyes find Mordred in the crowd, standing beside Morgause and holding court with a band of noblemen and noblewomen clamoring for his attention.

  “And what a king you’ve chosen,” I say, pursing my lips. “Mordred will be the death of everything you’ve built.”

  Merlin clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

  “Come now, Elaine. You know better than to share visions,” he says mildly.

  “It’s not a vision,” I say, turning to look at him. “It’s a deduction. Mordred is selfish and vain. Put a crown on his head and power in his fist, and he will bring us all to ruin. You don’t need to be an oracle to see that.”

  Merlin considers this for a moment, his head cocking to one side. “Perhaps,” he allows. “And if I put a naive boy on the throne? One led by his pure heart and gilded ideals, with Nimue pulling his strings? Do you not think that would bring the country to ruin just as quickly?”

  “I don’t think you give Arthur enough credit,” I say. “He knows his own mind. And yes, he’s young and idealistic, but he’s also bright. He’s brave. He’s determined.”

  “Perhaps,” Merlin says again. “But none of this is proven. I’m not the only one who sees him that way—look at them, Elaine. They smell it on him, like starving wolves catching the scent of fresh meat.”

  I shake my head. “There are plenty of noble families who have told me their support is with Arthur.”

  At that, Merlin laughs, and the sound is so loud and full I fear it will break him, but he is stronger than he looks.

  “Child, you have spent too much time among the fey with their truth-cursed tongues. You’ve forgotten just how gifted humans are at lying,” he says. “Most of the people you see down there, they don’t care a whit about a pure heart or a valiant spirit. They don’t even care, really, who sits on the throne. All they care about is how they can benefit, and their whims can change in an instant, as you saw at the Choosing of the Knights.”

  I shake my head. “You let Arthur walk into a trap,” I say. “Was it not enough to set him an impossible task? You have to make it even harder however you can?”

  Merlin’s laughter subsides, but his smile lingers, brittle at the edges. “Oh, Elaine,” he says sadly. “The task is easy, compared to what he will face if he actually succeeds. I have no desire for him to fail, or for him to succeed for that matter. I’m not one of the fey, it’s true. And though I’m not human, either, I will admit I have this in common with them: The only thing I care about is how my goals stand to benefit.”

  My mouth goes dry. “And what are your goals?” I ask. “To keep the fey banished and bound to their island?”

  He doesn’t answer, only continues to smile like I said something amusing. After a second, his gaze slides over my shoulder. “I believe the Lady Morgana is requesting your attention.”

  I follow his eyeline to the far side of the room, where Morgana stands by the entrance, waving toward me. It might be the lighting in the banquet hall, but she looks paler than usual.

  “You should go,” Merlin continues. “I’m sure we’ll speak again if you return from Lyonesse.”

  * * *

  IT TAKES A moment for me to place the expression on Morgana’s face as I approach her across the banquet hall because it is one I don’t think I’ve ever seen there. I’ve seen her giddy with happiness, I’ve seen her angry enough to kill, but I’ve never in all our years of friendship seen her truly frightened.

  A handful of courtiers try to stop me, but I barely notice them, hurrying past with nothing more than a smile or a hasty promise to speak soon, but all my attention is on Morgana. Maybe Nimue was right—maybe we truly are two sides of the same coin. Because her fear seeps into me before she even says a word.

  “We found Arthur,” she tells me when I reach her, wasting no time on a preamble. “He’s in his room.”

  “In his room?” I ask, lowering my voice. “The banquet’s important. He needs to be here. People will say he’s embarrassed about the Choosing of the Knights—”

  “I don’t think he cares what people are saying at the moment,” Morgana says, biting her lip before jerking her head back to the entrance and the shadowed hallway beyond. “Come, you should talk to him yourself.”

  21

  LANCELOT AND ARTHUR sit on the edge of his bed, hu
ddled close together. There is a crumpled letter in Arthur’s hand and an open bottle of wine in Lancelot’s, though they seem to be passing it back and forth. When Morgana and I enter, Arthur’s eyes find me, and all of a sudden, he looks like a lost child.

  He opens his mouth once, then closes it again, shaking his head. He holds out the paper to me instead and I take it. Lancelot passes Arthur the bottle of wine and he takes a long drink, wiping away the excess on his sleeve, staining the white cotton red.

  “What I wouldn’t give for good Avalon wine,” he mutters. “This stuff is practically water.”

  I unfold the letter, glancing up at him. “Careful, we leave for Lyonesse at dawn tomorrow,” I remind him. “Last time you tried to ride after a night of too much drink, you vomited all over yourself.”

  Arthur grimaces before shaking his head. “Read the letter, El. It came just an hour ago.”

  The first thing I notice is the broken seal of a wolf’s head. The next is Gwen’s unadorned signature at the bottom, a rough scrawl without flourishes or loops. The message itself is similarly simple.

  A—

  I can’t. I’m sorry.

  —Gwen

  I turn the letter over as if more might be written on the back, perhaps, but it’s bare. Four words. Six, if you count the address and signature.

  “You don’t know what it means,” I say, folding up the letter again, though I hear how my own voice raises.

  “It’s pretty clear to the rest of us, Shalott—and to you as well, I’d imagine,” Lancelot says. “She’s ended things. There is no betrothal.”

  I sit down on Arthur’s other side, handing back the letter and taking the bottle of wine in return. I take a long drink.

  “Gwen’s flighty,” Morgana says, pacing the space in front of us. “This shouldn’t surprise any of us. She changed her mind. She’ll change it back. It’s just what she does. In fact, if she hadn’t broken the engagement at least once, I’d suspect there was something wrong with her.”

  Arthur winces, and I shoot Morgana a look. That doesn’t help.

  “I don’t think any of us know Gwen’s mind,” I say, glancing back at Arthur. “We don’t know where this came from or why now. The last time we saw her, she had no doubts, but that was a week ago. A lot could have changed since she returned home.”

  Arthur laughs. The sound is jarring, cutting through the heavy air in the room like a sharpened sword. The rest of us stare at him, but he doesn’t stop laughing for a full minute, his face turning red and tears beginning to stream down his cheeks.

  “The quest,” he manages between laughs. “The men. Nine men. Nine men to take a country of monsters, and now Gwen isn’t even with us.”

  “She will be again,” Morgana says, but even she doesn’t sound sure.

  Arthur shakes his head, his body still quivering with laughter. “Is that something to risk nine lives for?” he asks. “I should call the quest off.”

  “You don’t mean that,” I say to him. “Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t. If you do, Mordred becomes king and you get branded a coward.”

  That stills his laughter. “And if I don’t want to be king?” he asks quietly. “Every time I’ve pictured it, every time I’ve thought about it, it’s always been Guinevere and me on that throne together.”

  I don’t know what to say at first, so I just take hold of his hand.

  “You’re upset,” I tell him finally. “You’re heartbroken. You have every right to be. But you don’t mean that. I can assure you that you will be a great king with or without Gwen.”

  “I don’t see how we’ll be able to put that theory to the test,” Lancelot says softly. “Without Gwen . . . this quest is truly hopeless.”

  I think about what Merlin said at the banquet, how the quest was almost impossible, yes, but no more difficult than being king would be. I believe in Arthur as king—I believe it with every ounce of myself. So of course he would be able to complete his quest. Somehow, we would find a way.

  “This letter doesn’t change anything,” I say, taking it from Arthur and crumpling it in my hands. I rip it to pieces once, twice, three times, until her words are illegible. “If taking Lyonesse is what we have to do for Arthur to become king, it’s what we’ll do. We’ll leave tomorrow, as planned, and when we get there, Arthur will talk to Gwen. We’ll fix things.”

  For a moment, no one says anything, though I hear the unasked question they are all thinking. Morgana is the one who finally gives it a voice.

  “And if we can’t?” she asks.

  I purse my lips. “If Gwen won’t be our ally, then she’ll become our enemy,” I say, though the words make me feel sick. “One way or another, we are taking that country, and you, Arthur, are taking your crown.”

  * * *

  IT WAS NEVER any secret that Arthur fancied Gwen. He wore his feelings for her plain in the stumbling of his words and the red in his cheeks whenever she looked his way. In fact, within moments of meeting Arthur, there were three things I knew about him with utter certainty.

  He was brilliant.

  He was kind.

  He was completely infatuated.

  Arthur had been only thirteen at the time, but here we were after a decade of friendship, and if you were to ask me to list three things about him here and now, my answer wouldn’t change.

  He is brilliant.

  He is kind.

  He is completely infatuated.

  * * *

  YOU SHOULDN’T TEASE Arthur so much,” Morgana told Gwen one afternoon. The three of us were sitting together in one of the northern meadows, this one so overrun with bright bursts of poppies and chrysanthemums that the ground was nearly more red than green—the sort of poetic metaphor one might choose when describing a battlefield for those with delicate sensibilities.

  We were meant to be gathering poppy seeds for the kitchen—one of the chores Nimue came up with to keep us busy when our days couldn’t be occupied by lessons. It had worked when we were younger, but by then we’d learned that Nimue didn’t care about poppy seeds. She merely wanted us out of the way for a few hours, and it didn’t matter how those few hours were spent.

  It was too pretty a day to spend working, Morgana had reasoned, and Gwen and I didn’t put up much of an argument. We sprawled out together in the meadow, skin warm from the sun, talking about everything and nothing at all.

  “I don’t tease him,” Gwen said, frowning as she pushed herself up to her elbows to fix Morgana with a glare.

  “Elaine?” Morgana said, looking to me. Gwen and Morgana were often at odds with each other, and since Arthur and Lancelot had learned long ago not to get caught up in their arguments, I’d had no choice but to assume the role of mediator when I’d arrived. Surprisingly, the role fit me quite well.

  “You were teasing him a bit,” I said. “This morning. His hair, that mark on his face. Remember?”

  Gwen gave a dramatic sigh and flopped down on her back. “Well that doesn’t count. He’d fallen asleep on a book again, and you saw it yourselves—his hair was ridiculously mussed up, and the book had left its imprint on his cheek.”

  “Of course we saw it. We laughed at it. We made fun of him for it. But you were the only one to muss his hair further, weren’t you? The only one to touch his cheek like you could iron out the mark.”

  Gwen didn’t speak for a moment, and the only sound to be heard was the soft chirp of birdsong in the distance.

  “I touch everyone,” she said. “I’d have done the same if it had been either of you.”

  “Yes, but neither of us is in love with you, are we?” I asked softly.

  Gwen turned her face toward me and grinned. “Really? Not even a little bit? Careful, Elaine, or you’ll hurt my feelings.”

  A year earlier, her flirting might have made me go red in the cheeks or stutter, but like magic, it
was the kind of thing one built up a tolerance for. I met her gaze and leveled my own look at her.

  “I love you. And so does Morgana, though you know she’d never say as much—” Morgana broke in with a snort of disapproval. “But not the same way Arthur does. You know that, and you’re trying to deflect.”

  The grin slipped from her face, and she looked away from me, tilting her face back up to the sun. She was bound to get more freckles like that, but we weren’t in Albion—no one would criticize her for it. I rather thought they suited her.

  “He’s always been mad about you,” Morgana said after a second. “But it isn’t a childhood infatuation anymore. He’s sixteen now, growing whiskers and everything. You mustn’t let it stick, Gwen. You’d do better to break his heart now, ruin him for you, than to let him believe there’s hope when there isn’t.”

  Gwen didn’t reply, instead rolling over onto her stomach and pillowing her arms beneath her head.

  “Gwen?” I asked, turning on my side to face her. “There isn’t hope for him, is there?”

  She opened her eyes to look at me, a cloud hovering over her face, obscuring her usually open and readable expression. Before she could answer, Morgana cut in with a laugh.

  “Of course not, El,” she said. “I know you’ve the heart of a romantic, but you know Gwen and you know Arthur. If there are two people more ill-suited for each other, I’ve never met them.”

  Something flickered in Gwen’s expression, almost like a flinch, but it was gone before I could read it.

  “Gwen,” I said again, reaching my hand toward hers, but she gave it only a brief squeeze before releasing me.

  “Morgana’s right, El. We’re ill-suited. Laughably so. You’ve been to Camelot, you know exactly the sort of woman who will end up at his side. Am I that sort of woman?” she asked.

  “No,” I admitted.

  She shook her head. “No, I will belong in Lyonesse, with my kin. Free to run wild and live unrestricted by corsets or court etiquette or all manner of those shoulds and should nots you’ve talked about. That is happiness for me.”