The young man’s face turned red as he tried to hold back laughter. “Well, it is your lucky day. I know where the kitchen is. And you can dry your tears. No one will notice you this evening. They are going to burn the queen.” He offered his elbow and she took it, grateful the movement covered her shocked horror. Tonight! Isolde was to be executed that very evening. She had not a moment to lose.
“Thank you! My aunt told me I would find no kindness in the castle, not one drop, but she was wrong. What time is the—what time is the—the bonfire?” Guinevere stumbled over the atrocity of saying bonfire in relation to Isolde, but she did not know what else to call it.
He turned them toward the kitchen. “At sunset. Did you miss the whole trial? It was very sad. The queen wept and the king raged. So, nothing unusual there.” He laughed good-naturedly. “But it is too bad she is a witch. She was always nice to us. My sister thinks it has more to do with King Mark wanting an heir than any witchcraft, but I think she must have been up to something, always locked in her rooms, sleeping all hours.”
“Is she in a cell? I hate to think I am in the same castle as a witch.” Guinevere shuddered. It was not hard to fake. She already felt sick with dread at how little time she had and how complicated her task had become. She had promised Lancelot she would come back.
She was going to break that promise.
“At sunset, you will never have to worry about her again.” He made a whooshing noise and waved his fingers through the air in a gruesomely cheerful imitation of fire. “Kitchen is there.” He pointed to a door. Guinevere could have followed the smell of smoke and burning grease quite easily on her own. “I have to go now. It is my shift to be outside the king’s door.” His chest puffed with pride.
“Thank you. My hero.” She smiled as he turned away, then her smile fell away like a curtain being drawn. If she could not find Isolde, she could find the man who knew where she was. She followed the young man and tore several threads free from her tunic as she walked, knotting them viciously into confusion. It made her vision swim and her steps unsteady, but it also made anyone who might stop her or ask questions simply slide right past without noticing her.
After a narrow flight of stairs and in another dim hallway he paused to spit at a door before continuing on.
It was a gamble. Follow him to the king, or examine the door that triggered his derision? Guinevere paused. The door was bolted from the outside. She could find the king after, if she needed to. She slid the bolt free, then considered the lock. Inside her pouch she carefully moved aside the potion and examined her options. She had thread. Bits of cloth. The tooth from the battered dragon, which certainly would not help. She had none of her iron thread, which was unfortunate. That would have done the trick quite nicely.
With a sigh, she reached into her boot and withdrew the iron dagger Arthur had gifted her. She did not like this magic, either its tolls or the way it felt. She cut the tip of one finger and pressed it against the lock, tracing a simple knot for age. Then she let her blood drip into the keyhole. There was nothing dramatic or showy. After a few seconds, the lock simply fell open, a fine dusting of rust sprinkling out of it. If anyone looked closely, they would think the lock had succumbed to age and the ocean-damp air.
Guinevere leaned against the door, resting her head there. Blood magic asked more than any other type did. She did not know the exact cost of this one. She suspected she had just given up several days of her own life to concentrate the passage of time on this one tiny object. Magic always had a price, paid now or paid later.
She opened the door. The room was dim, its single window shuttered. A cot was in one corner with neatly folded blankets. There were no paintings, no carpets. Sitting on a plain wooden chair near the wall was a woman.
“Who are you?” a voice as soft as a spring bloom asked. Guinevere stepped inside. The woman’s hair was long and full. Her eyes were wide set over a small nose and lips like a budding rose, her cheeks full, her hands dimpled, her generous curves swathed in green cloth. It was impossible not to be a little breathless when faced with such beauty.
“Who are you?” Isolde repeated. “What is happening?” She stood, alarm on her face as she tried to focus on Guinevere but could not manage it because of the confusion knot. “Who are you?” Her voice was rising. She would get them discovered. Guinevere pulled her tunic to her mouth and bit off the threads of the knot, releasing the magic. Her head cleared, like the pressure before a sneeze is released. Isolde took a step back, blinking rapidly as her eyes finally settled on Guinevere.
Guinevere pulled out the purple thistle. “I am here on Brangien’s behalf.”
Isolde’s face drained of blood as she reached out a trembling hand. “Brangien’s flower. Beautiful not in spite of its spiky nature but because of it.” She held the thistle against her chest. “Who are you?”
“Guinevere.”
“The queen?” Isolde’s expressive eyebrows raised nearly as high as her hairline. “Brangien sent King Arthur’s queen to me?”
“Well, it is a group effort. I am here to set you free.”
“And Brangien?” Isolde’s voice shook.
“Brangien is waiting to help. There will be a place for you at Camelot if you want.”
“I could not.” Isolde put her hands over her heart, shaking her head. “It would put everyone there at risk. Brangien and I will have to run. We will have to run forever.”
“We had a plan. It was a good plan. But the timetable is more complicated now that you are due to be burned at sunset.” Guinevere tugged on the window shutters. They were nailed shut. The room was on the second story, and they could probably manage to climb down. But could they do so without being seen? Guinevere was afraid if she used the false-death potion on Isolde now that she had been found guilty of witchcraft, they would simply burn her body instead of interring it in the cave tombs.
Guinevere reopened her finger wound and used up precious time on several of the nails until she managed to pry the shutters open. It was nearly twilight. The execution loomed. She thought she could smell woodsmoke; it was probably a constant scent, but it hung like a promise of death. Luck was finally on their side, though. A tree was near enough to the window that they could reach it and climb down. It would also shield their descent from being observed.
“Come on. We will run, and then we will figure it out.” It was not the right plan, but it was better than being burned at a stake. Guinevere held out her hand and Isolde took it.
In the time she had spent asleep, Guinevere’s sense of touch had restored itself. She was privy to the year of torment and terror this gentle woman had experienced at the hands of her husband. Isolde carried the pain just beneath the surface, so much that it took Guinevere’s breath away. And somehow under the pain and around it was hope and goodness and light. All the little ways Isolde had found to give kindness in a life that denied it to her. And the bright burning core of love that Guinevere knew was for Brangien. Doubtless, that core had sustained Isolde.
“Maybe when we get down we could burn this castle to the ground,” Guinevere said, gritting her teeth against the pain still washing over her. She helped Isolde onto the windowsill.
The door burst open, revealing a man in a crown.
Guinevere was face to face with King Mark, the man they had created this entire plan to avoid. Everything was ruined. Guinevere was surprised at how calm she was. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong; all she could do now was respond to whatever he did. She shifted so she was between Isolde and the king.
King Mark surprised her, though. He closed the door behind him, sealing them off from the rest of the castle. “Who sent you?” he asked. She had imagined him looking like Maleagant, a hard man with a hard face. Instead, King Mark’s face was puffy, bloated. Veins webbed out from his nose, and there was something deeply unpleasant about his wet and swollen lips.
<
br /> Guinevere was well aware of what this man was capable of. She had only brushed Isolde’s skin, but what that woman had endured…King Mark was a monster. But Guinevere had meant it when she said that she and Brangien were formidable. In place of fear was fury.
Guinevere allowed a half smile that did not touch her eyes. “You know who sent me.”
“If my brother thinks he can win the throne by taking what is mine, he is sorely mistaken. I will burn him to the ground,” King Mark growled. “But first, I will burn two witches tonight.” He grabbed Guinevere’s wrist. Thankfully the cloth there blocked his skin, as she had no desire to feel what this man was like. She did not need to.
Isolde stayed perfectly still on the windowsill, like a deer frozen in terror.
There were options. King Mark had not called the guards because he did not think Guinevere was enough of a threat that he could not deal with her himself. If she could somehow force him to drink Brangien’s potion, his “death” would cause enough upheaval to cover their escape. And she relished the idea of him waking up in a tomb. But how to do it?
“He should not have sent a woman,” King Mark said, eyeing her. “Not even big enough to keep around for fun. Tell me, Wife, did you really think you could get away?”
Isolde let out a small whimper.
“Get down, now, or I will hurt her and make you watch.”
“Climb out,” Guinevere said. “He cannot hurt me. Go. She is waiting.” Guinevere turned, forcing Isolde to look at her instead of at King Mark. “Trust me.”
Isolde hesitated only a moment, then leapt for the tree.
“Insolent witch!”
Guinevere was ready to make her move as soon as King Mark ran for the window or the door. She could tie a sleeping knot and then—
She gasped, caught off guard as King Mark put his hands around her throat and squeezed. She had no weapons, no tools, no way to make him swallow the potion. He was hurting her—
Spots danced—
He was going to kill her—
No air, there was no air, everything was dark and all that was left of her were the bubbles fleeing upward toward the blackness above, the water waiting to rush in and—
Not again.
She touched her fingers to his forehead, gathered her power in a desperate rush, and pushed. It was an act of panic, animal in its intensity. She had lost sense of who she was, where she was. All she knew was that this thing, this creature in front of her, was hurting her. Killing her. And she would not let it happen.
Guinevere flooded through King Mark’s mind like a river overflowing its banks, destroying indiscriminately. Her vision blurred with his hands still around her neck, and her will surged even stronger.
Only when King Mark fell did she come back to herself. Out of breath, with agonizing pain in her throat, she stood over him, tensed for another attack. He stared at the ceiling, glassy and unfocused, breathing in shallow, automatic gasps.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She had lashed out with magic. Not the careful, contained knot magic, but a wild and ferocious power she did not understand. Only once before had she used her touch magic on a mind, forcing Sir Bors to think he had killed the dragon so the dragon could go free. But she had been careful then. Cautious and precise. Even that had felt like too much, like an act of violence.
This time she had destroyed an entire mind.
She staggered and leaned against a wall, looking down at this man. This monster, yes, but still a man. Had she not hated him for using his power to hurt others? And had she not just used her own power to hurt him? She wanted to be better than Merlin, to do better than he did, and yet once again she found herself using magic for her own needs and leaving destruction in her wake.
Maybe it was not so bad. Maybe he was just sleeping. He was breathing, after all. Guinevere crouched and brushed her fingers across his forehead, then recoiled as though burned.
There was nothing there.
Whoever—whatever—he had been, she had erased it. Washed it all away.
She stood, shaking out her hands, wishing she could remove them, separate them from herself. They felt so much, and they did so much, and she had not controlled them. She had been mindless with terror, whatever had roared to the surface at his attack now receding beyond her efforts to examine it. In truth, she did not want to. She wanted to forget this. All of it. What she had done but also what she had felt from this vicious, vile man when he had touched her. What she had felt from Isolde.
Isolde. Guinevere did not have time to dwell on her own horror. She leaned out the window. Isolde had navigated the branches to the center of the tree, and her face was pressed against its trunk.
“Stay there,” Guinevere whispered.
Isolde looked up in shock. She had not believed Guinevere would win, not really. But at least she had hoped enough to get out of the room. “Guinevere!”
“Give me a few minutes. Do not move.”
Guinevere ducked back inside. She had to do something. Anything. She had to fix this.
She could not fix this.
All their careful planning. All her insistence that she could do it without endangering Camelot. It had all been undone because she could not control herself. One sleeping knot and she could have drugged King Mark. He would have awoken thinking his brother had kidnapped his wife.
But no. She never would have had time to tie the knot. He was never going to let her leave the room alive. She should have walked away as soon as she realized the original plan would not work. It was what she had promised both Lancelot and Arthur she would do. She had betrayed them both.
She closed her eyes, trying to calm her breathing. Isolde deserved to be free. Guinevere could not have chosen to walk away, no matter what she promised.
Guinevere lifted her chin and opened her eyes. It was time to improvise. What was a little more chaos compared with what she had already done? She placed her palms against the far wall. The rough wood was old. Dry. Ready and waiting for Guinevere to destroy it.
She coaxed sparks out, not minding when they bit her hands. The pain kept her focused, reminded her of the costs of these choices. When the wood caught and began to burn, Guinevere threw open the door. She grabbed King Mark under his arms and dragged him into the hallway. His head bumped roughly along the floorboards. At least it was already empty.
“Help!” Her voice was raw and tortured from the damage to her throat, but with smoke already billowing out of the room, she had an excuse for sounding that way. “Help me!”
Three men came running down the hallway. They stopped short at the sight of the king on the ground, Guinevere still trying to drag him farther from the burning room.
“She burned herself alive!” Guinevere wailed. “The queen! She lit herself on fire! The king fainted. She would have killed them both!”
The guards stepped toward the door, but a rush of burning air and smoke greeted them and they shielded their eyes from the heat. Guinevere fought a surge of annoyance that their priority was to make certain the queen was actually dead rather than to help save more lives. “Where are the rest of the men?” she asked. “Where is everyone?”
“Already outside for the burning!” one of the men answered, staring wide-eyed at the flames devouring the room.
Guinevere still had some luck on her side, then. The castle was empty. “Hurry, we must get the king out. Sound the alarm before the whole castle burns!”
This spurred them into action. Two of them picked up the king, carrying him awkwardly down the hallway while the third sprinted ahead, shouting, “Fire!”
Guinevere followed, covering her face with her sleeve and coughing. It was only partly an act to keep anyone from looking closely at her and being able to identify her later. Mostly, it filtered her breathing. With this much smoke already, she doubted the castle could be saved.
“Fire!” she screamed. “Fire!” The stairway was emptying as people flattened themselves against the walls to let the unconscious king pass, then filled in behind them. “The queen is dead!” she shouted for good measure, to help that part of the story settle into place. “Fire! Fire! The queen is dead!” Others took up the call.
Guinevere twisted her hope like a knot, wishing she could encircle the whole castle.
Let everyone get out.
Let everyone get out.
Let everyone get out.
Panicked screams accompanied their passage. Several took up the call that the queen was dead. She also heard some exclamations about witchcraft and, inexplicably, several about a dragon. What if they thought the dragon had done this? It would be in line with all the other damage she had done if this led to a dragon hunt and put her friend at risk.
But she could not very well interrupt those cries with “Only witchcraft, no dragons at all!” She could not draw any more attention. She cut away from the guards carrying the king, breaking off to a side hall where several servants were fleeing. Guinevere used the chaos to tumble out a door with a couple of maids and then sneak to her right, following the side of the castle around to the back.
It was not difficult to find the tree she had left Isolde in. It was framed by brilliant orange as that whole wing of the building was consumed by flames. “Isolde!” Guinevere shouted. Isolde was still clinging to the tree, keeping the trunk between herself and the intense heat. The dry leaves were curling, some beginning to smoke. “Come on!”
Isolde clambered awkwardly to the ground, dropping the last few feet and landing in a tangle of skirts.
Guinevere helped her up. “Are you hurt?”
Isolde shook her head, eyes wide. “What happened in there?”
“We have to go. Now. They think you are dead.” Guinevere took her hand and they ran. They did need to run, but she also did not want to tell Isolde what had happened. She did not want to tell anyone. She never wanted to think about it again.
The Camelot Betrayal Page 13