Half Sick of Shadows

by Laura Sebastian

  But if he feels it, if he understands it, if he is at all repulsed, he will not show it. Instead, he will look at me the way he did a lifetime ago, like I am the sun in his universe and nothing else exists at all.

  “If I am to die tomorrow,” he will say, his voice a mere whisper between us, “will you stay with me tonight?

  “Lancelot—”

  “I have no right to ask it, none to expect it, but as I am a dying man, I will ask it anyway,” he will say.

  “You are dying because of your own stubbornness.” The words will be rough edged, forcing their way past tears that will have risen in my throat. “And the right you had to ask anything of me died when you betrayed me—betrayed us—with Guinevere.”

  “That wasn’t about you,” he will say, before catching himself. “We never spoke of it, did we?”

  “We didn’t need to,” I will say, yanking my hand out of his grip. “We still don’t. I came to warn you, and I’ve done that. My duty is done.”

  “It wasn’t to do with you,” he will say, ignoring me. I suppose it will make sense, how he will want to unburden his soul in his last hours. How he will want to say what he will never again have the chance to say. “And it wasn’t to do with Arthur, for Gwen’s part. It wasn’t even to do with each other, really. You and Arthur . . . you belonged there, in Camelot. You flourished. The two of you fit in so seamlessly.”

  “It was a duty,” I will say. “His to lead Albion and mine to lead him. We were good at that duty. I didn’t realize that was a bad thing.”

  “I’m not . . . I’m only trying to explain why,” he will say. “I know they say I loved her, I’ve heard the poems and the songs, and I’m sure you have as well. But I didn’t—don’t. Not like that. You know that, know what is between us.”

  “The last time I saw the two of you together, there was absolutely nothing between you,” I will say, taking some pleasure in the venom that leaks into my voice. “That was the problem.”

  “It was a mistake,” he will say. “One I have regretted every moment since. And if that mistake haunts me into whatever next life I find, so be it. But I would not have it haunt you. I love you, Elaine. I made a mistake. There is nothing more to it than that. If you take anything from tonight, take that.”

  The venom simmering in me will dissipate. I will know that I should leave, know that I should leave things as they are, let my anger nourish me the way it has for the last year. But I won’t. Instead, I will sit beside him.

  “Are you afraid?” I will ask.

  “Have you ever known me to be afraid?” he will reply.

  “Yes. Plenty of times,” I will say, staring straight ahead. “You are brave, Lance, but you aren’t fearless.”

  He won’t say anything for a moment, but when he speaks, his voice will be little more than a whisper.

  “The thing of it that makes me afraid isn’t the dying bit,” he will say. “It isn’t the bit where I don’t know what happens next. It’s an adventure, and I am always ready for a new adventure. What frightens me is that I know you won’t be joining me on it. That wherever I go, you will not follow.”

  “Our paths diverged long ago,” I will say.

  “No, you have always haunted me, El. And a part of me has always believed that one day, we would find our way back to each other, when all of this madness is over. I thought I would come to you on Avalon, maybe, when the war was won. It was foolish, I know, but I believed it. Now . . . now there is no hope for forgiveness. Now our paths diverge for good. That is what frightens me, more than dying, more than whatever might come after. It is the first adventure I will embark on alone.”

  He won’t reach for me—I think that if he did, I would leave and not look back. But he won’t reach for me, and so I will reach for him. I will press myself against him the way I did the night we married, as if I will be able to bind myself to him through this life and the next.

  Together, we will watch his last sunrise, but I will not let myself cry until I am back on Avalon and his soul has been claimed by Death.

  * * *

  I WAKE UP WITH cold sweat drenching my skin, my breathing heavy and labored. It takes a moment to recognize not just where I am—my childhood bedroom in Shalott—but that I am not sleeping here alone. Lancelot’s chest presses against my back, skin against skin, and his arm is loose around my waist. When we fell asleep together last night, drunk on wine and giddiness and utterly spent, the arm around me had felt like a comfort, but now it is too much, too heavy, too hot.

  I pull away from him, out of the bed, my bare feet cold against the stone floor. I barely make it to the chamber pot before I vomit.

  Nothing has changed. That vision was even more solid than others I’ve had, full of more details, even recollections of our wedding. Last night, this path became more solid, not less. And the rest of it . . . Lancelot dying in battle at Arthur’s side, Gwen betraying Arthur, mentions of Morgana as a goddess of death. All of those futures are closing in tighter now, no matter what I have tried to do to stop them.

  I rise on shaky legs and dab my mouth with a towel before drawing a dressing gown around my body, tying the satin sash around my waist.

  Lancelot stirs in bed, looking at me through tired, slitted eyes.

  “It’s barely dawn,” he says. “Come back to bed.”

  Tempted as I am to do just that, to lose myself again to sleep and the blissful present, I know that if I close my eyes, all I will see is his guilt-stricken face, hear his voice telling me he is ready to die.

  “I need water. I’ll be right back.” I’m surprised the lie comes so easily, but he believes it, giving me a sleep-laced smile before rolling away from me and burrowing deeper into the covers.

  It’s a strange sight, him stretched out in my childhood bed, naked except the band of gold around his left ring finger. Almost surreal.

  Yesterday was a good day, I think. This was a good choice.

  But I can’t quite bring myself to believe that.

  I grab the enamel hand mirror off my vanity and slip out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind me.

  * * *

  NIMUE’S FACE RIPPLES into being, stretched over the surface of the mirror, skin smooth and eyes untroubled. She looks as she always does, as she always has, as—I suspect—she always will. She blinks her large gray eyes.

  “Elaine?” she asks. “Is everything alright? We discussed this—mirror communications are only for the direst of emergencies.”

  I don’t say anything for a moment, though a thousand words lodge in my throat. There is so much I want to say, so many questions I want to ask her, but none of that manages to push through first.

  “Morgana is gone,” I tell her.

  For a moment, she doesn’t speak. “We knew it would happen,” she says finally. “This is sooner than we thought, perhaps, but Arthur is safe, isn’t he? You did well.”

  “Arthur is safe,” I agree. “He married Gwen three days ago. I married Lance just last night.”

  “I see,” she says, her brow furrowing slightly, trying to see where I’m going with this. It is a comfort, I suppose, to see that she doesn’t know everything.

  I shake my head. “I thought I was so clever, Nimue,” I say. “I thought I had found a way to keep us together, to keep us happy. Morgana agreed to have her magic bound—Gwen did as well, which I thought might end up making things easier. Neither of them were happy about it, but they knew it was for the best. And Gwen married Arthur by choice, was not cornered into it. We were returning to Camelot together, all of us. It should have been enough to keep us from that path. It should have been enough to keep us us. But it wasn’t.”

  It’s her turn to fall silent, though she no longer looks surprised. Instead, she only looks tired.

  “Elaine,” she says, like a warning. But this time, it is a warning I do not heed.

 
“You knew, didn’t you?” I ask her.

  “Most fates can be changed,” she says carefully. “Some are more steadfast than others. When you are as old as I am, you learn the difference. You learn to see people differently as well, learn to see who they are, how they will grow, what choices they will make. You understand these things even before they do.”

  “Then why?” I ask her through gritted teeth. “Why would you bring us to Avalon at all? Why would you make me think I could change things, that I could save them?”

  She doesn’t have an answer to that, not right away. Instead, she glances just past the mirror and takes a deep breath.

  “When Arthur and Morgana came to my shores, she was holding his hand in hers, tight and secure. When I stepped toward him, she thought me a threat, and do you know what she did? She stepped in front of him. That was her instinct—to shield him, even if she had to do it with her own body. She was six. And so I looked at her with her angry, mistrustful violet eyes and I hoped. It was foolish and I should have known better, but hope is a funny thing like that.

  “And then Gwen came, all feral and restless, a monster of a girl, yes, but a monster who loved the two of them fiercely. Who would rip the world to shreds rather than see them hurt. Lancelot was next, the fay boy who was not afraid of humans, who saw them as his own. It became unthinkable to me, that those four would cause one another such hurt. You can understand that—it was an impossibility to you as well. And so my hope flourished. But then you came, and I understood the truth of it.”

  “Me?” I ask, taken aback.

  She inclines her head, gray eyes intent on me, urging me to understand, but I don’t.

  “Tell me, Elaine, what happens after?” she asks. “After Morgana turns to darkness, after Lancelot and Guinevere have their affair, after Arthur is left alone on that battlefield, facing off against Mordred?”

  I open my mouth, then close it again. “I don’t know,” I admit. “He dies—”

  “You’ve Seen him die?” she asks.

  I rake through my memories, searching. I have Seen Mordred’s sword cut clean through Arthur’s stomach. I have Seen Arthur hobbling toward a shore, leaning heavily on Gawain and bleeding.

  But I have never Seen the life leave his eyes.

  “That is what I realized when you came to me,” Nimue continues when I don’t answer. “That what is set in stone would come to pass, that there was little any of us could do to prevent it. But the after? That, we could still control. That, we can still save. At a cost.”

  I think of Lancelot as I Saw him, resigned to his fate. I think of Morgana in my vision from so long ago, washing a bloody shirt that I had sewn with my own hands.

  “Lancelot will die,” I say.

  Nimue hesitates only an instant before nodding. “His life was never meant to extend beyond that day. If you were to deflect every sword point, an arrow would find him. If you managed to shield him from those, he would be struck by a stone falling from the sky. Lancelot is a hero, Elaine, and heroes do not live long lives.”

  “And Morgana will turn,” I say.

  Again, Nimue nods. “The turn is foretold,” she agrees. “You’ve seen her on Avalon.”

  “As a goddess of death,” I say.

  “The cruelest punishment the Maiden, Mother, and Crone see fit to inflict on their children,” Nimue agrees softly. “She and death will not be strangers by then, and her hands will be dripping with blood. She will owe a debt, and she will have to repay it.”

  I swallow. “And Gwen?” I ask her.

  Nimue flinches. “Gwen will end up banished to a convent,” she says, her voice low. “She will die there, powerless and alone and miserable. She will never ride a horse again, never lift a sword, never even feel the sun on her face or the grass beneath her feet. All she will know is walls of stone and stale air.”

  My stomach twists, and I think I will be sick all over again.

  “But if Arthur survives,” Nimue says, “it will be enough.”

  For an eternity of a moment, I can’t speak. I can’t begin to contemplate her words, the implications of them. I’ve Seen other futures, I want to tell her. I know I have. But she’s right—those happier lives have always been woven with spider’s thread—too fragile to exist.

  “You should have told me,” I tell her finally. “You shouldn’t have let me believe I could change things, that I could make a difference.”

  “But you can,” she says gently. “You already have. Perhaps I should have been more transparent about my plans, but you weren’t ready to hear them. You weren’t ready to see beyond the end, to what comes next. You would have seen all that death and destruction and given up, sunken into such a deep depression that nothing would have pulled you out again, and Arthur needs you too much for that.”

  Where’s your line, Elaine?

  “And what about what I need?” I ask her, my voice cracking on the last syllable.

  Nimue’s smile turns sad. “You need them,” she says. “Which is why you are going to get up now and dry your tears and see that that crown ends up on Arthur’s head.”

  * * *

  THE SUN IS bleeding over the horizon when I slip back into the bedroom and let my dressing gown fall to the floor. I crawl into bed beside Lancelot and press my body against his, reveling in the warmth of his skin, in the way his arms come around me, gentle and secure, in the noise he makes, low in his throat, in the scratch of his stubbled cheek against my shoulder.

  I close my eyes and press each sensation deep into my memory, careful not to let any tears fall.

  When all is said and done, when the day comes when we are not on this earth together anymore, I will not remember the hurt to come, I will not remember the heartbreak or the betrayal. I will remember only this, and I will smile.

  42

  THE STORY OF our triumph in Lyonesse somehow arrives in Camelot before we do, and when we return, we are greeted by a crowd at least thrice as large as the one that saw us off, all cheering and waving. The crowd flusters Arthur, but he does a good job of hiding it, waving and smiling in turn as he rides in side by side with Gwen.

  For her part, Gwen tries to look the part of the rescued damsel, demure and pretty, but the expectations are already chafing at her more than the sidesaddle she still hasn’t gotten used to.

  Merlin stands at the castle steps, waiting with Morgause and Mordred, who wear matching sour expressions. When we dismount and make our way toward them, Merlin inclines his head.

  “I hear you return to us victorious, young prince,” he says before turning to Gwen. “And married besides. And so you’ve done what your father and many others could not. But there is one task left, and it will be more difficult than the first two combined, though I am glad to say it will be much quicker, and not nearly so far away. Come.”

  Without another word, Merlin turns and walks into the castle, Mordred and Morgause at his heels and the rest of us falling in after.

  * * *

  MERLIN LEADS US through the castle halls and out into a small courtyard at the center. It is not the main one, always bustling with people, but a smaller one off to the east, barely big enough for a single beam of sunlight to shine down on a large, jagged gray stone. But it isn’t the stone itself that stops me in my tracks.

  “What is it?” Lancelot asks from beside me, but I barely hear him. All my attention is focused on the sword hilt sticking out from the top of the stone, embedded with rubies and glinting gold in the sunlight.

  “Excalibur,” I whisper, more to myself than to Lancelot, but somehow Merlin hears me, his eyebrows raising.

  “Indeed, Lady Elaine,” he says, stepping toward the sword. He places his ageless, bone-pale hands on the hilt of the sword and gives a sharp tug, but the sword doesn’t budge from its place. “Legend says that Excalibur was the sword of the first king of Camelot, given to him as a gift fr
om the Lady of the Lake at the time—Vivienne. Upon his death, Vivienne used her magic to bury it in this stone, proclaiming that only a true king of Camelot would be able to pull it from the stone. Though, since that day, every would-be king who has tried to pull it free has failed. Even your father couldn’t manage it.”

  Arthur looks at the sword, brow furrowed. “So you have set me an impossible task,” he says slowly. “Has Mordred tried to free it?” he asks, glancing at his glowering half brother.

  “Several times, I believe,” Merlin says mildly, making Mordred glare harder. “But in my view, Mordred’s claim to the throne is still the stronger one. He is from Camelot, he has been trained for this. His loyalties are not in question. If you are to usurp that claim, it is on you to prove yourself. Pull the sword from the stone, and the crown is yours.”

  Arthur frowns. “Now?” he asks.

  Merlin inclines his head toward the sword. “Give it a try,” he says.

  After everything in Lyonesse, this must seem easy to him. Only a few moments, a single movement, stand between him and what he has been working toward.

  But Arthur is not an idiot, and he knows it is not that simple. I can see it in his expression, in the way he takes hold of the sword and braces his foot against the rock for leverage. He doesn’t expect it will come free, but he tries anyway, pulling with all his might.

  The sword doesn’t budge.

  Morgause is unable to keep a grin from spreading over her face as she clutches Mordred’s arm, though his glower doesn’t fade and he bats her away impatiently.

  “It’s impossible,” Arthur says.

  Merlin eyes him thoughtfully. “I don’t believe it is, young prince,” he says. “You have until tomorrow night at sundown to free the sword from the stone and claim your throne. If you cannot do it, the crown will go to Mordred instead.”