by Sarah Zettel
‘I remember when you first came to me here. I remember I worried how you would feel, so far from your home. I took you – do you remember? – up to Jove’s Seat above us, so you could see the whole country you were queen of now.’
He was struggling to get his hands under himself, so he could push himself upright. Laurel crossed the room again, meaning to hold him back down, but he caught her hand before she touched him. His eyes stared ahead, blind to all but the memory unreeling itself before him.
‘I remember how the wind spread your black hair out, that hair you would gift to all our children, and how your eyes shone as you looked on the river and the firth and all the valley spread out below us. I remember how you saw the beauty of it then, and how beautiful you were in seeing it.’
Laurel’s throat tightened and tears pricked at the back of her eyes. She could see it clearly, this moment from so long ago, before the war that had taken his wife and broken him. It was heart-wrenching to think of Lot as a young man, proud and brave, of that other queen, the one whose hair was as black as hers was white, who had consented to ally with him.
Who had loved him. Who had dragged him and his heirs into this war because of the blood in her veins.
‘You should rest, my lord,’ Laurel murmured, and began to draw her hand back.
But he held tight. ‘Stay,’ he whispered, and Laurel was not certain whether he spoke to his memory of Morgause, or to her. ‘Stay here a little.’
A tear brimmed in her eye and fell, trickling slowly down her cheek. ‘If it is what you wish.’
‘Just a little,’ he murmured. ‘Just a little.’
She held still, sitting beside him, letting him hold her hand, letting it bring the memories of other times so long gone, while the world outside slowly darkened. Night and shadows. Night and cold creeping in on the stealthy wind’s back, wrapping them both in its own blanket, setting skin and nerve on edge. This was not a wind that came to serve, but to spy, to bring the scent of danger to season the smoke from the fading coals.
‘I must build up the fire, Your Majesty.’ As gently as she could, she extricated her hand from his. He let her go this time. His eyes had closed. Perhaps he slept again. Good. It would give him a measure of peace. It would be brief enough.
She added fuel to the fire built in the corner beside the door. There was no place for a proper hearth. Perhaps she should tell Byrd to bring in some braziers, if there were any. She shoved her stray locks back under her veil. There was so much to do. She was sure she was forgetting a thousand things. She wanted to rest, to sleep as she prayed Lot was doing even while he stirred uneasily in his clean bed.
Then, Cait and Jen pushed open the doors, struggling to carry the weighty chest between them. She gestured for them to set it down in the corner. They obeyed and straightened, both of them swaying on their feet. Both waited, ready to obey the next order, and both, plainly, prayed it wouldn’t come.
Laurel let out a long sigh. ‘Very well, my women. You’ve done more than enough today. I want you to go into Ceana. Make sure she shows you someplace clean and safe where you can spend the night.’
Sparrow Jen looked like she might faint with relief. But Cait mustered herself enough to put up feeble protest. ‘But, Mistress, you …’
‘My place is here tonight. Go both of you. I will send for you if there is need.’
Jen curtsied, plainly a little guilty at her own eagerness to be gone. Cait followed suit, more slowly. Laurel inclined her head, and stayed where she was until they had both closed the doors behind them.
Laurel let out a long sigh. Then, slowly, like an old woman, she knelt in front of the chest, opened the lock, crossed herself, and removed the treasure she had coerced from Queen Guinevere.
‘Now, Your Majesty, perhaps I can give you one night of peace.’
She had hoped to lay the scabbard across the threshold, but there was no way for it to be done without the relic being plainly visible. So, as carefully as she could, she slid it under the king’s makeshift bed, and drew the coverings down to hide the gleaming silk. Then, she pulled a packet of the precious salt she had taken from the stores out of her girdle and walked three times sunward around the bed, tracing a salt circle around the king. Salt was life and cleanliness. It was a gift of the sea, and one of the most ancient protections there was. She had no idea if it would do any good against Morgaine, but it surely would not hurt.
And its presence would help disguise whatever blessing the scabbard might confer on this night.
When she had finished Laurel straightened and pressed her palm to her forehead. Weariness dizzied her.
Perhaps she cannot come here. This was once a holy place. Perhaps that is enough.
But that was only wishful thinking. Laurel went to the doors and pushed them open, standing to face the night, as if testing her own nerve.
The courtyard was settling down for the night. The cows and oxen snorted as they lowered themselves to their knees, and the horses in their stables called their good-nights to one another. The wind was filled with the homely smells of animals and straw. She could make out a glimmer of light from the doors of the hall. She hoped Ceana was managing the service all right. She wanted to be there, instructing, helping, but it was more important that she be here, so Agravain could attend to other matters. They could lose no time in establishing his authority with those who remained in the hall, and with those who had followed him so far.
The clouds scudded across the moonless sky. The salt scent of the wind was muted and the air was chilled. Rain soon, coming in over the land in all likelihood. Staring into the summer’s dark, all that she had seen, all that Morgaine had forced her to see, rose before her mind’s eye; the battle and slaughter, Agravain dead beside his brother, Lynet on her knees, her bloody hands raised to the sky, and herself … not there.
You were gone to the sea years before.
Movement startled her and Laurel gripped the doorway. A silhouette moved between the shadows of the animals and their keepers. A heartbeat’s worth of looking told her it was Agravain.
Oh, husband, why couldn’t you have been selfish this once? Why did you come here to face this?
But she knew the answer. He could not do otherwise and be himself.
Why did you come to see me fail before her? This last thought was soft and treacherous, it prowled the back of her mind as she straightened up and schooled her face into an expression of calm and dignity.
Agravain himself looked anything but dignified as he stepped into the firelight. His hair was rumpled and his eyes hollowed, but the weariness of soul she had seen before was not there.
‘How is he?’ asked Agravain.
‘As you see,’ Laurel stepped aside. ‘He sleeps peacefully.’
‘Praise be.’ Agravain murmured as he moved to his father’s bedside. He looked down, taking the full measure of the man lying there in a stupor of whisky and approaching death. King Lot twitched in his sleep, and his son’s shoulders twitched in answer.
‘I have seen the miracle you worked in that blighted hall, Laurel,’ Agravain said softly. ‘I cannot thank you enough.’
Laurel at first thought to make some appropriately modest remark, but Agravain raised his head to look at her over his shoulder. In the face of such feeling as she saw there, mere courtesy would be an insult.
‘I could not have wished for such help, or from such a steady source.’ Agravain spoke softly, as he always did when he was at his most serious. Laurel felt a lump in her throat, made half of need, and half of fear.
You are gone to the sea years since. What had made her desert him? What truth was there in that lie? It must be a lie, surely it was a lie.
But what truth made her believe she could do such a thing?
Haltingly, almost bashfully, Agravain stretched out his arm. Laurel crossed the chapel swiftly and let herself be folded into his hard embrace. For a moment, they did nothing else but stand there, each taking strength and comfort from the other’
s presence, reminding themselves that what lay within their hearts was real. New and confused it might be, but it was real nonetheless.
That moment was all they were granted. The wind blew hard once, laying the fire’s flame sideways and sending the wisps of salt skittering like snow across the floor.
Lot’s eyes flew open.
‘She comes.’
FOURTEEN
Lot moaned and twisted, pain flushing his sallow skin. Laurel reached at once for the whisky jug. Lot tossed back and forth, and saw Agravain standing there. His head lifted, the muscles of his neck straining like cords to the breaking point.
‘Traitor! Bastard traitor!’ He cried. ‘You bring her here! I should have known! You who did this!’
‘No …’ began Agravain, frozen by the ferocity of his father’s sudden attack.
‘Kill you with my own hands!’ Lot grappled with the coverings. ‘Should have killed you all! You’re her children! Every one of you, hers!’
Something was coming. The suspicious, tentative wind changed, turned sour as if wafting over the midden. It grew heavy and cloying, a. storm wind to bring crows and other creatures of ill omen.
Laurel forgot the whisky jug and instead moved to bar the door.
‘Leave us,’ said Agravain.
Laurel did not even turn. ‘No.’
‘You have no part in this. Go now.’
A poor time to try that lie, my husband. Did he feel it? The sick heaviness in the wind. Did he understand it was already too late?
Lot …
It was the softest of whispers, audible to her blood, rather than her ears. It was the voice she had heard before, but more silken now, and far, far sweeter. Beguiling, seductive, welcoming. Behind her, she felt the king straining towards it. With her own heightened awareness, Laurel could discern his fear, his yearning, his mad, desperate hope that this once, just this once, it truly was Morgause.
Lot, my lover, I am here.
But no. He knew now and his whole face collapsed into fear. It was not her. Again. Ever. It was the other one. The other one.
‘No!’ screamed the king. ‘I beg you! Hide me!’ He clutched at Agravain’s hand. ‘Mercy!’
They’ve laid a fresh bed for us. How pretty …
Agravain could not hear the voice. One glance at him was enough to see that. He could not hear this cold parody of a lover’s greeting that made his father scream in agony.
Laurel stood square on the threshold, barring the entrance with her body and her anger. The witchlights burned in her soul, and they let her see.
A soft, silver wraith slipped through the night. Laurel knew it from the cold, skilled touch of its power. She knew the knife-sharp edge to its smile and its black eyes. Oh, she knew those black eyes.
I will not cower before you. I’ve seen your power. I know your power. I may fall before it, but I will not fear it. I will not fear you.
Blood and slaughter. Gareth dead. Agravain dead. Bronze and black triumphant. Lynet bloody to her elbows as she was the day their father died …
I will not run from you, though you walk with Death himself.
‘Morgaine,’ said Laurel aloud. ‘You will not enter here.’
Ahhhh! It was the sigh of the winter wind through dead grasses. You’re still here, despite all. You are welcome to me, Laurel Carnbrea.
This is not your place. You can give no welcome here.’
‘No, no. Let her in. You bitch!’ screamed Lot, and Morgaine laughed, sweet and silvery as the king shuddered, groaning with helpless, twisted lust. ‘My love, my love, I am here! Oh, God, it hurts. No …’
‘She’s here?’ demanded Agravain. ‘Why can I not see her?’
You are wrong. Laurel Carnbrea. This is my place. I have ruled here ten years and more. Behind you lies my true lover and you cannot keep me from him.
‘Show yourself, Morgaine!’ bellowed Agravain to thin air.
Poor Agravain. Always the ill-favoured one. You must close your eyes very tightly.?
Again, Laurel felt the sick, slick touch of that knife-edged lover’s smile. It slid across her thoughts, drawing the blood of her mind.
She held her ground. ‘Your taunts are nothing, Morgaine. You will not enter.’
The king wept, he lashed out with his fists, and Morgaine just smiled. He screamed and groaned and begged, begged for her to stop, begged for her not to stop.
Promise me lover. Promise me you are mine, always mine … You want this … all this, which I have given to a hundred men while I was yours, a hundred men a hundred times … Poor Lot, are you crying for me? I am here, I am here, I will never leave you … you will never be without me …
He was hard. He was writhing in his bed, strangling on his pain and his lust, and Morgaine smiled.
‘Morgause! No, Morgause!’
Let me give you what you want, lover, let me tell you how I learned so many neat little tricks … Let your son watch us both. He’s mine next …
With all the might of will and power she held in her blood. Laurel seized the wind that circled them, wrenching it to her, heavy with the sea’s salt as it was. It was a wind, it was a winding sheet, and a net. It was hers, and she cast it over the phantom that tormented the king, a rope, a noose, a shroud, to hold tight, to bind …
Morgaine just laughed, and it was only the wind once more, and Laurel stood gaping. That moment’s surprise was all Morgaine needed. She lashed out, mind to mind, spirit to spirit, and the blow sent the world spinning.
And Laurel was gone, far gone, as far and as easily as she had been before. The chapel and all it held were phantoms, none more real than any other. She stood in the midst of that other battle, there but not there. She could feel nothing. She could only see the fighting, the blood, the chaos. There was no way through it. The ground held her. The air held her. She had no volition. That was all gone. She could only see the bronze knight aim his slashing blade at Agravain’s throat. She knew him now. It was Lancelot, Lancelot du Lac. How had this happened?
Agravain fell, and in the smoke that hung over the battlefield she saw that the horror that would be, had been, was now, was as real as Lot’s dying beside her, could not be undone. There was blood, blood everywhere, and now Lynet was dead too. Their house was torn apart and she stood behind a wall of ice. She had no flesh, no substance, she had given it all away, let it be cast away on the wind, for she had gone to the sea, gone back to the sea, back to the sea …
‘NO!’
Agravain. His hands were on her shoulders, and suddenly Laurel was herself again. The stone around her was solid once more, her flesh her own.
The wind died. The fire shot up straight again. The nightmare battle was gone. Laurel stood in the chapel once more, Morgaine’s silvered shape before her and Agravain, as whole and solid as the stones around them.
Lot screamed as if he had been struck, and Morgaine’s shade wavered, and grew strangely more solid, her face contorted for a moment in utter fury before she smoothed the look away.
She must smooth it away, for Agravain could see his enemy now. He focused on her utterly, moving to stand before Laurel, drawing his knife and balancing himself on the balls of his feet.
‘No, Morgaine,’ he said. ‘It will not be so easy.’
Won’t it? Morgaine spread her arms wide. You want me, Agravain? Come closer. Kill me if you can. It is what you want. Come here.
It was what he wanted. It thrummed through him, a lust as great and as painful as anything Lot felt. Agravain stepped forward. The one he hated and feared, the one who unmanned his father, stole his mother, cursed the whole of his family, robbed him of his life … she stood before him. Another step forward. She opened her arms, welcoming him in.
Bewitching him. His hands went limp at his sides
No!
Laurel made herself move. It took all she had; will and blood and strength, flesh and soul. She felt as if she tore herself out from the roots she did not know held her. The knife fell from Agravain’s dangling fi
ngers, and she caught it up by the blade.
It sliced into her flesh, drawing blood to spatter on the ring of salt she had drawn so carefully. The pain burned but she did not let go. Instead, she grasped Agravain’s hand.
Again, the world grew clearer, and the pain diminished. Agravain shook his head, trying to clear the glamour from him. He pulled away instinctively, but Laurel held him tight. She needed him. He was the anchor here. With him she could be present and not forget herself.
With him, she could remember what was and was not true.
‘Leave here, Morgaine,’ croaked Laurel. ‘You are not here. You never have been.’
You are wrong. The voice was dangerous, sharp as the knife that cut into Laurel’s fingers. I am all that is real here. You are the phantom, the lost, the coward who ran.
She heard the voice, the draining, droning words, but they could not reach past the blood and iron, the touch of Agravain’s hand and the sacred at her back. The sacred. This is not your house, any more than it is mine, Morgaine.
Laurel drew herself up. ‘In God’s name I banish you!’ she shouted. ‘By Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I cast you from this holy place!’
Oh no, Laurel. No such names here. Not between such as we. You are as like to be banished by them as me.
But Morgaine’s shade was not smiling any more, nor did she move. The silver seduction was gone from her voice, and the laughter. She felt it. Laurel knew she did, the final wall before her, the power that was beyond either of them, the power that was life and hope itself. It was called down by the sacred names and willing sacrifice of life and self demanded for love’s sake.
‘But you will go,’ said Laurel, her voice soft, low and dangerous. She felt it too. A power that that came not from the wind, not from the salt, but from the stone. She had known it was there, and she held it by right of blood. Blood to blood, her fresh blood on the stones, the sacrifice of Agravain’s family going back the long generations, the other blood, shed so long ago with an open heart.
Words came, true words this time, the right words. ‘You are nothing but illusion brought here on a whim. Blood and bone prevent you. Heart and will and right prevent you. Begone from here evil dream. Son and stone bar your door. Begone!’