The Camelot Betrayal

by Kiersten White

  “Long.” Anna smiled. “You will forgive your sister for wishing to stay. She was so disappointed when you left; she could not bear to have come all this way and not be reunited.”

  Guinevere offered a tight smile in response. “Yes, I am glad my father was able to spare her for a bit longer.”

  A shadow crossed Anna’s face. Her smile tightened like Guinevere’s. “As you doubtless remember, it is no great sacrifice for him.” She was angry about something, but the way she said it was intimate, as though her anger should be shared by Guinevere.

  Guinevere chose not to respond. “I can see that my sister is not here. I will call on her later. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day. Please keep her out of the great hall when I am holding counsel, though. I have the duties of the king while he is away, and cannot take time for social calls.”

  “Yes, my queen. I will make an effort to redirect her attentions. Though you know Guinevach.” She said it fondly. Again, Guinevere was expected to be in on some shared information between the two of them.

  “After all these years, I am afraid I do not. Good evening, Anna.” Guinevere held out her hand. It was the best way to get a sense of someone. She would do it to Guinevach as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She should have done it at the gate, but she had been so flustered she had not even thought of it.

  Anna took the extended hand. The older woman felt much the same as she looked: stately, calm, intelligent. But there was a strong undercurrent of intense curiosity. No threat or violence or darkness that Guinevere could sense. Alongside the curiosity was sadness, but Guinevere found most women carried far more of that than they ever showed.

  Guinevere released her hand. Anna bowed and Guinevere left, followed by Lancelot. “Bar the stairway door,” Guinevere said, once they were safely back on the fifth floor. “I do not want her to be able to come down to our rooms unless she goes outside where she can be observed and where she has to cross the magic thresholds.” There was always a guard at the entrances to these rooms when Arthur was home, and Lancelot was here whether Arthur was home or not.

  Isolde was in Guinevere’s rooms, sewing. She smiled but said nothing as Guinevere lowered herself into one of the chairs, exhausted.

  “Shall I direct that your food be brought here?” Lancelot asked.

  Isolde stood, a determined look on her lovely face. “I will do it! That is a job for me. Please remind me if I am forgetting something a lady’s maid would do. I thought I understood the job, but there is so much to learn. It is very exciting.” She seemed genuinely delighted by it. “Sir Lancelot, I will bring food for you, too!” She hurried from the room. Brangien was out, apparently. Guinevere did not know what she was doing but did not doubt it was something that needed to be done.

  Brangien beat Isolde back, though. She rushed in carrying the scent of the evening on her cloak. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright. “News! Several pieces.” She nodded in greeting to Lancelot. “The first: King Arthur will be back in three days.”

  That was good. Though Guinevere did not trust him to deal with Guinevach, she wanted him back in the city so they were fully armed against all threats.

  “The second: your sister’s young maid is worthless. I have never met such an empty-headed young thing. She claims she has known Guinevach for three years now, but she could be lying. I am afraid I do not know enough about Cameliard or your family to verify anything she said. She does not seem bright enough to be a good liar, so either she is not one, or she is the best I have ever encountered.”

  Guinevere nodded. She did not know enough about Cameliard to test the girl, either, but Brangien did not know that. “If she is lying, she will have been coached, so we cannot rule anything out.”

  “I thought as much. Dindrane will come by in the morning to tell us about her meal with Guinevach. And speaking of Princess Lily”—Brangien said it with exaggerated disdain, which made Guinevere snort with laughter—“it appears she was quite busy while we were gone. Rumor in the castle is that no fewer than three knights are considering courting her.”

  “What?” Guinevere frowned. “She is only here for a visit. And she is a child.”

  “She is nearly fifteen. Old enough for a betrothal, certainly. Regardless, she visited every lady still here and flirted with every knight under the age of twenty-five. Already she is the talk of Camelot.”

  “In a good way, or in a bad way?”

  “Who can say? But everyone loves gossip, which means they love Guinevach. She has meal invitations for every night this week, and the next, as well.”

  “Interesting. Thank you, Brangien.” Whatever Guinevach was here to do, she was playing a more complicated game than Guinevere had anticipated.

  It takes so long to create the city. Everything is shaped just so. Everything is ready. Waiting.

  The darkness takes form at the bottom of the city. She looks around, and then she laughs.

  Why?

  Because they are coming.

  Why do you care?

  The question makes no sense. It is not a matter of caring. It is a matter of fact. They are coming, and they will need this city, and it will be ready for them. For him. There will be a wizard, and he will help with the sword. And then—

  Well. When the infinite now became the future and then, the Lady would choose.

  I am bored, the darkness says, buzzing and humming and thrumming. Come and dance with me. She is movement and chaos, brightest life and sharpest death. There is no patience in her, no sense of the power of performing the same action over and over and over until eventually a different result is achieved.

  Still, the Lady loves her, because the darkness is life, and the Lady loves life above all. She nourishes it and makes it possible. It is painfully dear to her, even if she is always separate from it. The Lady flows down her silent and waiting streets and greets the darkness at the end in a joyful embrace. And for that moment, the Lady feels alive.

  Guinevere awoke and sat up with a gasp, looking down at her hands. They were hands. She was real. She blinked until her eyes settled on her own room, her own bed.

  She lay back down, trying to calm her racing mind. Another dream that belonged to someone else. The Lady of the Lake. If the dream was to be believed, Guinevere officially knew where Camelot—the mysterious city on the hill, the wondrous waiting miracle—came from. The Lady of the Lake carved it herself. When Guinevere had mused that it seemed like Camelot was designed to give Arthur status and power, she had not realized how close she was to the truth.

  The joy the Lady had felt at embracing the Dark Queen shocked her, though. And it made her deeply, uncomfortably sad. Because she knew how that story ended. On the shore of the lake, with the Dark Queen calling for her ally and receiving no answer.

  Apparently they had been more than allies. They had been so unalike, and yet capable of understanding each other in a way no living creature could. And the Lady had turned her back on that in favor of Arthur and Merlin. What had the wizard done that undid centuries of the Lady’s careful anticipation and work? She had betrayed the Dark Queen for Merlin and Arthur, and then she had betrayed Merlin, as well. Was it really all because of Guinevere? If Merlin had gone to such lengths to erase the Lady from Guinevere’s memories, there had to be a more sinister reason. Something more complicated.

  But what was more complicated than families?

  Doubtless done with sleeping for the night, Guinevere sat and lit a candle at her bedside. Normally she did not mind the dark, but with the embrace of the Dark Queen lingering in her mind, not as something terrible but as something joyful, she wanted the distraction of fire.

  “My queen? What is it?”

  Guinevere startled. She had forgotten that Lancelot would be sleeping there until Arthur returned with Excalibur. “Another dream.” Guinevere stared at the tiny flame a few seconds longer, wishing
with desperate, painful longing that she could get it to whisper her real name to her. One thing—just one—that truly belonged to her.

  But she had given it up when she came here, and that was that. She blew out the candle.

  “Of the Lady?” Lancelot asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Was there anyone else in it?”

  “The Dark Queen.” It made Guinevere sad, remembering.

  “No one else?”

  “It was a long time ago. When Camelot was new.”

  “Oh, when she made it.”

  Guinevere almost answered yes, but she froze. She was glad she had already extinguished the candle so Lancelot could not see the horror on her face. How did Lancelot know that the Lady of the Lake had made Camelot? No one here knew where it had come from. But Guinevere’s silence gave her away. She heard Lancelot cross the room. In the darkness she could see only the silhouette of her knight, standing next to her bed.

  “There is something I should tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.” Lancelot sat on the side of the bed. “I know the Lady of the Lake. Or at least, I knew her.”

  “How?” Guinevere whispered.

  Lancelot and the Lady

  Excalibur was returned to the Lady of the Lake without ceremony, thrown over the side of a boat as its occupants fled the king who would kill young Arthur before he could fight back. It was not his time yet. She would wait, as she had waited.

  But he was not the only child she had chosen, or the only one she cared for.

  Lancelot stood on the shores of the lake, threadbare tunic not covering knobby elbows. Knees scraped beneath too-thin leggings. Boots stuffed with grass so she could fill her father’s steps. She was tall for her age, underfed but with a frame that could be strong, given time and food and training that she would never have.

  She was alone, and she was about to die.

  Behind her she could hear the band of men, soldiers under Uther Pendragon’s banner but criminals and rapists with or without those colors. They had chased her here, her knife sticky with the blood of the man she had stuck it into while her mother’s body was still warm in the shack they had shared.

  She knew she needed to care for her weapon. To keep it clean. Her father had taught her that, at least. She bent down and carefully washed the blade in the lake as the men approached. Maybe she could get one more of them. It was all she had left. She wished Uther Pendragon were there, that he were the one who would feel the knife as it cut away his life. But she never got anything she wished for.

  Her hands under the water looked distorted. Smaller than they were. Delicate, like her mother’s. A shout from behind her was more animal than man, a sound of rage and violence and hatred of their own weakness, turned to hatred of anything weaker than them. Lancelot closed her eyes and gripped the knife. And then two hands, translucent, circled her wrists and pulled her under.

  When she awoke, she was in a cave. There was a shining expanse of lake between her and the shore, and her attackers were nowhere to be seen. Water dripped along the back of the cave, sounding like laughter as it fell.

  A wave rolled her knife onto the floor of the cave, along with three bruised apples and one flopping, gasping fish.

  The Lady of the Lake had saved Lancelot. Over the next few years, Lancelot retreated to the cave whenever she needed a safe space. She grew strong, fed and protected by the Lady. She trained and worked with single-minded purpose. The Lady had saved her and Lancelot knew what it meant: She was chosen. Chosen to kill the king. To get her vengeance.

  Lancelot got her first sword, old and rusted as though it had been dredged from the very bottom of the lake. No Excalibur for her, shining and perfect, but a flawed, heavy sword that would force her to compensate. To get stronger. Piece by piece, armor was delivered to her from the water, plucked from bloated and rotting bodies left behind in attacks or retreats. And always she had the gentle lullaby of waves lapping the edge of the cave, the extra push of the water as she swam, buoying her and speeding her to and from her excursions into the mad violence of the world beyond the lake.

  When Lancelot was not out training or working, she returned to the cave. But it tormented her, knowing who lived above. When she was sixteen, she tried to climb the cliff to Camelot for the first time.

  She fell a third of the way to the top.

  The water rushed up to meet her, breaking her fall and depositing her with a thump back in the cave. She tried again, and again, and again, until she no longer needed to be caught. She could climb that cliff in her sleep. The cliff to Camelot. The cliff to Uther Pendragon.

  She was ready. She had a better sword now, hard-won in a fight. It seemed most days like everything about her, from her muscles to her voice to her soul, had been hard-won in fights. Strapping on the armor cobbled together from less fortunate fighters, Lancelot tipped her head to the lake and whispered her gratitude. The Lady had given her everything she needed. She was ready.

  It was midnight with no moon, but Lancelot had climbed the cliff so often she did not need to see. She pulled herself over the top and prowled through the alleys, toward the castle. Toward the king she would kill. She turned onto the main street and was surprised to hear a splash. She looked down. The street was flooded.

  Not flooded. Flooding. And the water was rising. Lancelot ran to get ahead of it, but it followed her, swelling into a river and sweeping her off her feet. It carried her from the castle, down a street, twisting and turning until she slammed against a rock. Her breath was knocked from her and she feared she would drown, but the river stopped as suddenly as it had started. Lancelot stood, in pain and furious, using the rock as support.

  She felt the words beneath her fingers. This was no simple rock. It was the stone that had held Excalibur until someone had claimed it. A boy. A stupid child, gone now.

  Lancelot pushed her hair from her eyes, which were blurry with tears of pain and rage. She turned back toward the castle, but her way was blocked by the river, now in the form of a woman rippling in front of her.

  Lancelot, the Lady said.

  Lancelot stumbled backward against the stone in shock. She had been alone for so long. Sometimes she wondered if she was mad, if she was imagining the Lady so she would not have to be lonely. So she could pretend someone out there cared whether she lived or died. Whether she killed Uther Pendragon.

  It is not you, the Lady said, her voice so familiar. Cold and clear and sad and joyful all at once. It is not you, she repeated, and Lancelot hung her head in shame and despair. All her work, all her training, had been for this. But the Lady had chosen someone else.

  I will leave soon, the Lady said, unaware or uncaring that Lancelot’s entire life had led her to this point and was now over. Worthless. Why had the Lady saved her, if Lancelot was not chosen for this?

  You will return my kindness. It was not a question. It was a command. You will know when. The water surged forward, warm and overwhelming, surrounding Lancelot before splashing to the ground and running downhill, no longer the Lady, eager to become the lake once more.

  That night, as Lancelot carefully climbed back down to her cave, she knew with a certainty that nothing would catch her if she fell. She was alone, again. And she would be alone until she found her calling, her quest from the Lady of the Lake. Because she had not been chosen to defeat this evil, but surely, surely out there was some other reason she had been saved.

  “When Arthur defeated Uther Pendragon and I found out the Lady of the Lake had given Excalibur to him, I decided he must be what she had been talking about. So I set out to become a knight. And then I met you, and…and she was right. I knew.”

  Guinevere sat with the story wrapped around her. “Why did you never tell me?” It hurt that Lancelot had kept this from her. As though Guinevere would judge a past tainted by a creature of
magic.

  “Because you were so scared of her. Her actions at Merlin’s cave scared me, too. I had never seen that anger, that rage. It did not even seem like her. And I worried that if King Arthur knew about my connection to her, he would not let me serve as your knight.” Lancelot was quiet for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice was tentative. Searching. “May I still be your knight?”

  Guinevere reached through the darkness for Lancelot’s hand and squeezed. “The first time we clasped hands, it felt right. Like we were meant to be in each other’s lives. Almost like we always had been. You will always be my knight.”

  The Lady of the Lake and Merlin. Both of them had put Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot on these paths. This collision course. But what did it mean that the Lady and Merlin—who had in one way or another created all three of them—were now enemies?

  * * *

  The next morning, Guinevere brought up the dream to Brangien.

  Brangien combed and plaited Guinevere’s long black hair. “Your mind was not empty this time. You have your own dreams back.”

  “Yes,” Guinevere said, toying with a selection of rings. She had three, all the real Guinevere’s. Normally she did not think twice about them, but she wondered if Guinevach recognized any of them. If any of them meant something to her, and therefore had meant something to the real Guinevere. “So our theory that something was pushing the dreams in since mine were empty is wrong. But now that we have Isolde, I suppose it does not matter.”

  “Hmm.” Brangien frowned thoughtfully. “Do you think it is because you have been in the castle for so long? If what you saw is true, then the Lady of the Lake spent a lot of time with these stones. And your touch thing”—Brangien gestured vaguely toward Guinevere’s hands—“could be building up memories of her as you live and touch things here.”

  That had not occurred to Guinevere. It was true that a few times as she touched the stones of the castle she had almost felt something. Perhaps when she was asleep, she was relaxed enough that the full memory of the stone could come through.