The Camelot Betrayal

by Kiersten White

  Hild shook her head desperately. “No.”

  Ramm strode forward, knife raised.

  That was when the first bright burst of flame roared from the trees.

  “Drachen!” the men screamed, running. Another stream of fire engulfed the buildings. Ramm was half on fire, flailing as his clothes burned and his beard began to smoke. There was no pleasure in watching this, no victory. Only horror. Guinevere needed to flee and to take the dragon with her so it would not cause any more damage.

  Guinevere grabbed Hild’s arm. “Come with me!”

  Hild took a step with Guinevere, but then looked over her shoulder. “My brother!” She ran back into the camp.

  Guinevere could not drag Hild or force her to come. She had to go. Now. Guinevere ran into the woods, dodging around a burning tree.

  “Stop!” Hild shouted, but her shout turned into a scream.

  Guinevere turned to see what had happened, but a leathery wing whooshed through the air, cutting off her pathway. The wing shoved her against the dragon’s body and she scrambled onto its back to avoid being crushed. It ran, lumbering and crashing through the trees. It had one damaged leg—she remembered that from their last meeting—but its gait seemed more chaotic than the old wound would account for. Screams from the camp were quickly muffled by the forest.

  Guinevere clung to the dragon, wrapping her arms as well as she could around its thick neck. It was far larger than a horse and there was nowhere for her to get a good grip with either her arms or her legs. She slid back, terrified she would fall, and managed to grasp it at the wing joints. Hoping she was not hurting the dragon, she held on with everything she had.

  After a few minutes’ mad dash through the trees, the dragon slowed, stumbling. Then it tripped and crashed to the ground. Guinevere rolled free, one arm caught beneath her. She heard a loud pop and her shoulder lit up with pain. She gasped, on her back, staring up at the sky through the autumn flames of the leaves. There was a rasping noise she could not place.

  She used her good arm to push herself onto her knees, whimpering as she tried not to move her injured shoulder. And then whimpering again at what she saw.

  The dragon was on its side, the terrible rasp issuing from it. Its poor body, already battered and scarred from so many years fighting to survive, twitched. A spear was lodged behind its front leg. Blood, thick and black, dripped from the wound.

  “No,” Guinevere whispered, her hands hovering above the dragon’s chest. “No, no, no.” She looked at the dragon’s face. One golden eye beneath a drooping eyelid fixed on her. She did not want to touch the dragon, did not want to feel what it was feeling, but she owed it to the creature. She put her hand on its forehead beneath one of its great curling horns.

  The leaves. The season of peaceful fire, the whole world burning brilliant and bright. Guinevere calling. Guinevere coming with the dragon so it would not sleep alone. The dragon answering the call. And then—

  Men.

  The men Guinevere had saved it from so it could have one last winter.

  Sleep, it implored her, sending her images of darkness and rest. It wanted her to come with it, still.

  “We have to split up,” Guinevere said. “I am sorry. Please, go. Hide.”

  The dragon answered her call because it thought she had changed her mind and wanted to burrow deep into the earth and sleep, letting the changing world go on without them. She had promised it peace, and instead she had tricked it into another fight.

  She stepped back, her face wet with hot tears. She held out the tooth with her good hand. “Go. I am sorry.” The dragon rolled out a long purple tongue, taking the tooth from her. It limped away into the trees, alone and injured, body and soul.

  Fight like a queen, Merlin had said. Merlin, the liar. Merlin, the monster. Merlin, whose advice she should not want or heed. But she kept fighting like a forest witch, like herself, like him, and everyone and everything around her paid the price.

  It was for the best. The dragon would be safe from her reach. She leaned against a tree, looking back at where they had come from. The dragon’s trail was impossible to miss, a patch of lumbering destruction. She imagined Ramm, his beard smoldering, his dirty knife ready, stalking toward them.

  Cursing herself, she tore out hairs and tied knots of confusion, throwing them over the dragon’s trail. It cost far more than she could afford to cover it up, but she would not let the dragon be found.

  Clutching her injured arm to her chest, she began to move in the opposite direction. The dragon had gone east toward the coast, but Guinevere was going west. She tied more knots, dropping them behind her as she went. The world spun in a dizzy blur. It was too much. Her own sense of direction, even her sense of balance, were thrown off by the confusion she had created. She stumbled as far as she could. Minutes or hours passed. She was too disoriented and in too much pain to know. Finally, when she could no longer smell smoke or even see it, she collapsed next to a tree and closed her eyes to rest for a minute. Just a minute.

  * * *

  “Guinevere? Guinevere! What are you doing here?”

  She peeled her eyes open. Everything was fuzzy, as though viewed through a veil. She lifted her good hand to her face to pull away the veil but there was nothing there. Mordred leaned closer and she patted his cheek. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I was looking for something. I saw smoke so I came to investigate, and then I found a very confusing trail that demanded I not notice or follow it, so naturally I followed it. What happened?”

  “I do not want to say. Not right now.” She tried to stand, then gasped in pain and sat back down.

  “Your arm.” Mordred sounded upset. She did not like it. He was supposed to be smiling, trying to kiss her. “Try to relax.” He took her wrist in one hand and her elbow in the other. “I did this for Arthur, once. And he did it for me. Twice. So now we will be even, I suppose.”

  “Did what?” Guinevere asked.

  Mordred pulled and twisted.

  She gasped in shock as the pain flared incandescent and then lessened to almost nothing. Whatever had been wrong with her shoulder was fixed. “That hurt.” She slapped Mordred’s side while he wrapped a strip of cloth around her shoulder and bound her arm to her waist. “I like it better when we kiss.”

  “What?” Mordred paused, his fingers light against the skin of her wrist.

  “This is a bad dream. I do not want this one.” The edges of her vision were still hazy. When she tried to speak, it took several seconds for her tongue to catch up to her words. She wanted to wake up.

  “You prefer the ones where we kiss.” The laughter in his tone made her smile. She had missed the way he could say things without saying them, could laugh without laughing, could confuse her in the most aggravatingly delicious ways.

  “Yes. This is— Mordred, I hurt the dragon. It is sad now, and it is my fault. And I hurt someone, he was bad but what I did might have been worse, and the dragon burned another bad man, and—” She could not see anymore, but this time because of tears. She hated this dream. Hated that her feelings had invaded this space, too. She wanted an escape, a sleep without guilt. But her guilt was too strong and it followed her here. “I am as bad as Merlin.”

  “Far prettier, though.”

  Guinevere glared, or tried to, but then the world was spinning again, blue and brown and orange, and she could not focus. She anchored herself to the green of Mordred’s eyes. “I am being serious.”

  “As am I. You are not as bad as Merlin.” Mordred shifted closer and she lost his gaze, but it was nice being next to him. She felt less like she was about to tip off the edge of the world and tumble into the sky.

  She rested her head on his shoulder. “You asked me who gets to define wrong and why.”

  “I did? And what did you tell me?”

  “I did not have an ans
wer. I still do not. But I can feel it. Right and wrong. Only after, though. Why can I not feel what will be wrong before I do it?”

  “Because then you really would be Merlin, and you would do it anyway.” Mordred shifted as though he would stand. “Are your friends looking for you, or only enemies?”

  Guinevere reached for him, wrapping her arm around his neck and pulling him close. “Lancelot and Sir Tristan and Brangien and Isolde are waiting for me when I wake up. I think. I hope. But stay. Can we just stay here for a little while? I do not want to go back. It is hard and confusing.” Camelot was dreams of the Lady of the Lake, questions about her mother, politics and stress even when she was not faced with dangers like Guinevach. And when she saw Arthur—oh, she would have to tell him, she would have to say all the terrible things she had done.

  The trees were not safe, but at least they were simple.

  “Are you certain?” Mordred’s voice betrayed nothing, but his forehead rested against hers.

  “I am not certain about anything. Why are you asking me so many questions? Can you just kiss me?”

  Mordred let out a long, slow breath. “No. Not yet. But I will the next time you ask me.” He gently removed her arm from around his neck, tucking something into her hand where it was wrapped against her torso.

  She leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes. A scent of smoke found her and she wept again, thinking about how she had used the dragon. How sad it had felt, trying to convince her to go with it. “I keep trying to be clever, and it works, but it causes so much damage.”

  “Ah. Yes, that is the price of being clever. We win, and we hurt other people, and we always, always hurt ourselves. Better to be dull and good, barreling through the world like Arthur. It makes things simpler.”

  “You told me I made the wrong choice.”

  “That sounds like me.” He did not rejoin her and she was cold and her shoulder ached and she wanted him back at her side. Branches snapped and broke, and then there was the scent of smoke again. Always smoke. Reminding her of what she had done. Who she had hurt.

  “I wish you would stay with me,” she whispered.

  “And now you know how I feel.” A soft brush of his fingers ignited sparks along her cheek that did not fade as she drifted away on delirium.

  * * *

  “My queen? My queen!” The voice got softer, more worried. “Guinevere?”

  Guinevere peeled her eyes open. “Lancelot.”

  Lancelot pulled her into a fierce hug. It hurt. Guinevere’s face was smashed against the leather armor of Lancelot’s shoulder, a comforting scent. When Lancelot released her, the vulnerability that had been communicated by the rib-crushing intensity of the hug was replaced by determination. Lancelot stomped out the remains of a small fire that was smoking heavily from too much green wood. “That was smart,” she said. “But we do not want anyone else finding you. Are they pursuing you?”

  Guinevere used the tree to leverage herself up. One of her arms was bound against her, keeping it from moving. Her shoulder hurt, but not as much as it should. She did not remember binding it, or starting this signal fire.

  “You are hurt.” Lancelot was careful this time not to make it sound like an accusation as she examined Guinevere’s arm. “You did a good job with this dressing.”

  Guinevere looked at the ground where she had been propped against the tree. There, among the fallen leaves, was a single delicate purple-and-yellow blossom, just like the one Mordred had given her after soothing her burned hand beneath a tree a lifetime ago.

  “Not a dream.” She picked up the flower and stared at it with both wonder and horror. Mordred had been here. He had fixed her shoulder, set up a signal so she could be found by her knights, and then…left. Again.

  Maybe she was still delirious. Maybe the confusion knots she had tied had been far more powerful than she meant them to be. She held up the flower. It was an impossible bloom, far too late in the season for something like it. “Do you see this?” she demanded.

  Lancelot looked alarmed. “Yes?”

  Guinevere tucked the flower into her bodice, pressing it against her heart. It felt like it would disappear if she did not keep track of it, melting in the light of reality like her dreams always did.

  “What happened?” Lancelot asked.

  A spike of guilt pierced Guinevere, as though Lancelot would know she had once again been with Mordred and had not fought him. She could not explain their encounters. First, he proved he wished her no harm. And now he helped her and then walked away.

  Why had Mordred said he had been there? She could not remember. If he was following her or stalking them, why help and then leave? The whole encounter had the quality of a dream, nebulous and impossible to remember details.

  It did not matter. She could not let Lancelot be distracted by chasing Mordred. They had to get to Arthur. And once again, Mordred had done no harm. The opposite, even.

  “I…I got away. There was a fire.” She could not bring herself to tell this truth, either. That she had used the poor dragon and then sent it away. Lancelot would not understand. Hild’s scream echoed through her memory, and she shuddered. She hoped Hild was not hurt. “I used magic to confuse them so they could not track me.” The memory of Ramm rolling on the ground to put out flames that could not be extinguished made her shudder so hard it hurt her shoulder. “I should have waited for the ransom,” Guinevere whispered.

  Lancelot lifted her onto her horse, then climbed on behind her. “After you are safe with Sir Tristan, I will go back and deliver a message.” Lancelot’s voice was cold.

  “No!” Guinevere half turned, nearly falling off the horse. Lancelot grabbed her and readjusted her seat. She did not want Lancelot to see what had happened. The cost of her ransoming herself. “Ramm has paid. They all have.” Everyone paid the price of her magic.

  Guinevere let her head hang heavy, her mind a jumbled mess of Hild’s scream, the dragon’s sorrow and confusion, and Mordred’s inexplicable kindness.

  “Your safety is all that matters,” Lancelot said firmly, brooking no argument. “If we hurry, we can meet Arthur and his party on the road before they reach the estate.”

  Guinevere’s stomach dropped. With all the terrible truths she needed to tell—and the ones she already knew she would not—for the first time, she wanted to see anyone but Arthur.

  Guinevere and Lancelot rode for an hour before joining a relieved Sir Tristan and a frantic Brangien and Isolde. Guinevere slid to the ground too quickly, nearly falling.

  “You said two leagues to the west!” Brangien’s face was red with anger. “We were supposed to wait two leagues to the west. That is what you meant, is it not?”

  “It is. You did exactly what I asked you to.” Guinevere was exhausted in body and spirit. The price she had paid for the confusion knots had mostly worn off, but it did not change the pain in her shoulder, the lingering unease over Mordred’s actions, and her sadness at leaving Hild behind with men who would never listen to her.

  “Why did you talk about the dragon, though?”

  Guinevere closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. The dragon was better off without her. Surely it knew that now. “In case they could understand some of my words. They would focus more on the dragon than on the detail of waiting two leagues to the west.”

  “How did you get away?” Isolde asked. There was something gentle but knowing in the way she watched Guinevere. Isolde saw all the pain Guinevere was not discussing. Guinevere did not like being so seen, so understood. Not right now. It reminded her of Mordred, which was the last thing she wanted.

  “I started a fire. It is turning into my signature. Come, we should be on the move.” Guinevere mounted her own horse and urged it forward without waiting.

  They rode quickly, only stopping near evening to change Guinevere’s smoke-scented clothing and fix her hai
r. There was nothing to be done about her arm, but Brangien used nicer cloth that matched Guinevere’s dress to redo the wrapping.

  When they hit a road, Sir Tristan ranged out to get their bearings. He surprised them by returning with more men. Guinevere’s heart sank when she recognized Arthur riding alongside him. She was not ready. Arthur’s broad smile froze as he looked closer at her. Her neck was covered, but she could not hide her arm or the strain of what she had been through.

  “Guinevere.” He dismounted and held his arms up to help her. She did not want to get off her horse and lose that barrier preventing them from speaking too closely. But she slid down and let him half catch her and set her on her feet. He embraced her, careful of her arm, and whispered in her ear, “What happened?”

  “Too much.” Guinevere pulled back, smiling. She raised her voice so everyone around them could overhear. “We had good fortune. We were going to wait for Dindrane’s party, but Brangien’s cousin, Isolde, was traveling to Camelot. We crossed paths. She will join my service as a lady’s maid. We decided not to look for the other travelers. I missed you.”

  “What happened to your arm, my queen?” asked the earnest young guard who had been so confused about Yvain and Yvain the Bastard’s knightly lineage.

  “I fell from my horse. It is harder to ride in skirts than you would think.”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “I think it would be very hard.”

  Guinevere laughed. “Then it is exactly as hard to ride in skirts as you think.”

  Arthur took her good arm, angling them toward the trees and privacy. “We can make camp here. No reason to push on today.”

  The earnest guard spoke. “But Aron scouted and said we are only an hour away and the wedding party is already there. They must have left early, too.” Realizing he had just contradicted the king, he bowed his head. “Whatever my king thinks is best, though.”

  “We should push on,” Guinevere said. “I would like to sleep in a bed tonight.” She wanted more time to collect herself. To decide what to tell, and how to tell it.