Enchanted Warrior

by Sharon Ashwood

  Sudden inspiration darted through her like an electric shock. Clumsy with excitement, Tamsin dropped her backpack to the floor and fumbled with the zipper. She rummaged until she felt the side pocket inside the pack and withdrew her father’s spell book. She cradled it in her hands a moment, feeling the worn leather of the cover against her fingertips. Grimoires had a way of knowing when they’d be needed, sometimes before their keepers did. This was one of those times. She untied the thong that bound it and began turning the pages to find the entry she wanted.

  The page crackled as she finally turned to A Charm to Awaken Those Who Watch. Unlike some rituals, it didn’t call for elaborate preparation. There were no potions or talismans, altars or symbols painted in sacred inks. These instructions had been old before much of that had been invented. This was simply words and will, unadorned and raw.

  She began to read, slowly at first, chanting just under her breath. She felt the vine tattoo on her wrist warming, channeling her strength. The words were in the ancient tongue of witches and, while she knew it well, she hadn’t spoken it since she had learned it from her father. The language felt strange in her mouth, almost like muscles she hadn’t stretched for so long they’d gone to sleep. She felt the mark around her wrist begin to prickle with heat.

  Gawain slowly raised his head, turning to look at her. “What are you doing?”

  “Hush,” she said, and kept reading.

  Magic began to collect in the air. It was not like the blue energy most witches used, because this spell didn’t stem from the modern school of magic. This was older, warm where the Elders’ power was cold. A mist of gold formed above the tomb, the tiny sparks glittering against the gloomy shadows.

  Gawain got to his feet, apprehension filling his eyes.

  She reached the end of the spell, refusing to stop until the words were done. “I know what I’m doing. Now let me work.”

  Tamsin began the incantation again. She had to read it three times from beginning to end for the spell to take effect. Gawain grabbed her arm, interrupting her. “This is too dangerous. To you. To Beaumains. What if Mordred senses what you are doing?”

  “Then we need to hurry.” She stepped back so she could look up into his face. “But we can’t walk away and leave your brother here.”

  A stricken look flashed across his features. Of course he knew that. He was trying to protect her. She could not fault him for that, but she needed his trust.

  “I beat the Lady of the Lake and her gargoyle today. Trust that I’m strong enough to do this.” Her encounter with Nimueh wasn’t quite the same as waking Gareth Beaumains, and she could see the protest gathering in his expression. “If you don’t want me to keep going, I will stop. But if you do, I will give your brother everything I have.”

  Gawain pressed his lips together, clearly struggling, but he nodded. “Go on. I will keep watch.” He stepped aside, giving her room.

  She released her breath, his acceptance easing the crushing tension around her ribs. She began the incantation again. The golden mist had begun to fade, but now it flooded back, brighter than before, with tiny sparks like silvery shooting stars. Magic built in an unseen presence, an invisible visitor that ghosted through the room, almost touching her, almost breathing against her skin. Tamsin wasn’t the only one who sensed it. Gawain had drawn the knife he kept in his boot and had backed away, looking up and down the room as if he sensed watchful eyes.

  He hated magic, but he had chosen to trust her anyway. That meant something, and it gave her strength.

  By the third time Tamsin read the words, she felt the magic drawing upon her reserves. She focused her will, concentrating on the stone melting away like ice from a warm and living body. She imagined the beat of a human heart and warm blood coursing through muscle and sinew. She envisioned the heavy yawn of the newly awakened, the first flame of intelligence lighting the sleeping features. The more intensely she projected those thoughts, the harder she felt the magic sucking at her, drawing her vitality up like a milk shake through a straw. Pressure began to build behind her eyes, and she knew she’d have a headache later. Her knees began to quiver.

  But all that meant nothing, because the golden mist had steadied into a thick, constant glow. It surrounded the effigy in a dome, the surface catching rainbows like a soap bubble. Through the haze of light, Tamsin began to see the stone figure shimmer. Change began at the feet, where they rested on the lion’s back. The supple leather boots deepened in color, shifting from stony gray to brown leather. Tamsin nearly faltered in her reading as her heart pounded with excitement. Colors began seeping upward as if the stone was soaking up life from the surrounding cloud of magic. The hem of Gareth’s surcoat changed to deep blue, the mail coat beneath glittering silver. Buckles turned to brass, fur to dark sable, the scabbard of the sword to crimson leather. Finally, the loose curls of hair became auburn. The flush of youthful skin showed the knight was no more than twenty.

  Tamsin finished reading and closed the book, slipping it back into her pocket. Her fingers trembled with exhaustion and the knowledge that she’d done all she could. If her magic was true, Beaumains would wake. He had to. Any other outcome was unthinkable.

  Gawain was beside her now, his warmth a welcome comfort. He slid an arm around her waist, pulling her close. The affectionate gesture was so unexpected she nearly jumped, but then soon leaned against him, needing his strength.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” she replied, hoping with every cell of her body that this would work.

  The golden dome of magic seemed to harden around Beaumains. Tamsin wasn’t sure how long that took, but it felt like months. At that point, it grew dull and opaque. Tamsin imagined it cracking and falling to pieces, but instead it just began to fade in patches. Finally it shredded like mist in the wind, but the effigy remained utterly still.

  Tamsin could feel the tension growing in Gawain as he watched his brother’s unmoving form. Her own body coiled like a spring under pressure, every muscle cramping with the urge to shake the young knight until he woke up. She could still see Gawain in her mind’s eye, kneeling before his brother’s tomb. She would do anything to erase the agony she’d seen in him and prayed her magic had been enough.

  The hope and desire, her need to make it right for Gawain sapped the last of her strength, and she dropped to one knee.

  “Tamsin!” Gawain supported her with one arm around her middle, making sure she didn’t fall. “Are you well?”

  The room tilted, and Tamsin braced one hand against the floor. Gawain wrapped his arms around her, getting a better grip.

  “I’m just tired,” she said. A sense of failure crept over her with a sickly touch, leaving her skin clammy. “I need to sit down for a moment, that’s all.”

  Gawain gathered her up and helped her to her feet, speaking no word of reproach. That, too, meant much, but it left a hollow feeling inside her. She had longed to do better.

  When she lifted her head, her gaze fell on the effigy and she was forced to blink twice. All the color was gone, but that wasn’t all. Where it had been exquisitely detailed before, now it seemed blurred, worn by time to a crude version of itself. Her first thought was that she’d damaged it.

  “Gawain,” she said uncertainly. “Something—”

  A noise made them both turn. Tamsin’s lips parted, but no words came. Beaumains was standing a few feet away, wide blue eyes scanning everything around him. When he spotted Gawain, a profound look of relief flooded his features.

  “Brother, this is a wondrous strange place!” he said in a voice deeper than Tamsin had expected. Then he caught sight of Gawain’s arm around her waist and one corner of his mouth quirked upward. “But it seems you have already found its secrets.”

  Chapter 10

  Nimueh stared out the bay window of the Victorian mansion at the gard
en beyond. A sky the color of ashes turned the thin light to a silvery wash. The mansion was set on a large lot shielded by trees, which provided privacy Mordred liked and scenery he ignored.

  The Prince of Faery lurked by the door, demanding her attention. His presence was a claw hooked into her psychic senses, not quite painful but ready to tear on a whim. It was one of his power games, a way of making her address him first. It would have been more effective if she’d still had the capacity to care.

  “I would have called this scene lovely once,” Nimueh said softly. “I know it should be. There is a lake and willow trees. Even though it is winter, there are many subtle shades of green and gray. And yet, my soul doesn’t feel the loveliness. My mind knows, but my heart does not.”

  “Does that bother you?” Mordred asked mildly. “I thought you pureblood fae were no more than walking corpses.”

  “That is cruel.” She said it without rancor. Once, she would have tried to scratch out his eyes for saying such a thing. She missed that capacity for rage.

  “I’m asking a legitimate question,” he said. “I’m not cruel.”

  “Yes, you are. It’s your reason for breathing.” She lifted a shoulder slightly, still staring out the window. “It’s not just beauty I miss. I miss hating you. That much anger felt clean.”

  Once the fae had been the most creative spirits in all the realms. They had danced, laughed, made war and loved like no others. They had been capricious and quarrelsome, generous friends and implacable foes. Now they were dusty shadows bereft of purpose. Worse, they were immortal. There would be no final forgetting to end their loss.

  Mordred himself had been spared. His power made him immortal, but with more witch blood than fae, he had escaped Merlin’s spell. Rather than sharing the fae’s loss, he’d found ways to exploit it.

  “You could drink a soul,” Mordred suggested. “I’m told that restores all your lost perceptions. We have prisoners to spare.”

  Nimueh turned to the prince, a faint echo of disgust quickening her pulse. “It hardly seems worth it. A few hours of feeling, and then the grayness begins again.” Worse was that brief moment when the fae realized what they’d done. The self-loathing was worse than not caring at all.

  “Then have another. There’s no shortage of mortal cattle.”

  “No,” she replied with a dismissive flick of fingers. “Those who’ve taken that road cannot stop. They become the fae version of a drunkard seeking their next bottle. It lacks dignity.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged.

  But Nimueh knew she was right. Addiction was Mordred’s ticket to controlling her kind. Once the fae were trapped, he had a system of reward and punishment to exploit. She refused to step into that snare.

  Again, a faint shudder of distaste passed through her. It wasn’t quite an emotion, but the echo of one. Such episodes came and went like the tingling of a lost limb, leaving her with a sense of profound disquiet.

  Mordred was pacing, his mind obviously on other things. “You failed against the witch.”

  “You failed to tell me that she is strong.”

  “Of course she’s strong. She escaped me,” Mordred snapped.

  Perhaps that was why Nimueh had abandoned the field and let Tamsin Greene go free. The idea of a young witch no one had heard of—one wily enough to escape Mordred—had stirred what remained of her curiosity. In another time, she might even have hoped.

  “You should have crushed her,” Mordred added.

  “Maybe.” Nimueh turned back to the window and the greenery beyond. “I’ll try harder the next time our paths cross.”

  Was that why she’d dropped her car keys? To leave a clue the witch and her knight could follow and maybe, just maybe, put an end to the Prince of Faery?

  Mordred caught Nimueh’s arm, digging his fingers into her flesh as he forced her to face him. “Indeed, you shall try harder. And while you’re thinking of all the ways you are going to carry out my orders to the letter, perhaps you can assist me with some housekeeping. There is another mess I need to clean up.”

  He waved his free hand through the air, describing an arc that shimmered and then darkened into a doorway between place and time. With Nimueh still firmly in his grip, he dragged them through. She felt the kiss of cold, clammy air on her face, and the elegant Victorian parlor disappeared. All at once, she stood in Mordred’s dungeon, deep underground beneath the hills of the faery kingdom.

  Nimueh looked around, certain here at least it was better to be numb. The dungeon was vast and dark, honeycombed with tiny caves that served as cells. Roots crawled through the dirt walls and ceiling of the caves and twined around the limbs of the helpless prisoners, trapping them in damp, black oblivion. Scuttling things rustled in the shadows, the hard shells of their bodies scraping as they passed. Scavengers, Nimueh supposed. There was plenty of dead meat down here in Mordred’s playrooms.

  “You have been keeping busy,” she observed.

  “Housekeeping.” Mordred smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in the expression. “A few of your people still had opinions about my mother taking the throne.”

  The rebels who had escaped Merlin’s spell. “I see.”

  “Do you?” There was threat in the two words. “I wonder if you understand the brilliance of my plans. Conquering the mortal realms is a question of stealth. I could bring an army, thousands of fae warriors, but there is an easier way. The modern world is different from old Camelot. For all their fancy weapons, humans are even less prepared now than they were in the so-called Dark Ages.”

  He was right there. In the old days, every peasant knew monsters were real and most had a few charms around the house for basic protection. “So you do not plan on a full-scale invasion?”

  “No. A handful of fae here and there, strategically placed where the power brokers can fall prey to their beauty and influence. I’m thinking corporate boardrooms, political functions, cocktail parties for the rich and famous. No one will notice the soulless among them.”

  “And then what?”

  “Once the right people are under fae power, numbers won’t matter. Armies and weapons won’t matter. The human realms will be mine for the taking.”

  As plans went, it wasn’t bad. Still, Mordred had forgotten his mother. The mortal realms would ultimately be hers. Unless he meant to fight her for them? That could get interesting.

  They’d reached a long row of cells. Nimueh noticed a spider the size of a dinner plate webbing one of the entrances shut. She turned away. “Why are we here? You said there was a mess to clean up?”

  Mordred waved her forward. She went, although her feet refused to hurry toward whatever he had to show her.

  “I thought, after your unsuccessful venture to capture the witch, that perhaps it was time to review our plans,” Mordred said smoothly. “I find it useful to clarify priorities from time to time.”

  Nimueh stopped when she came to the end of the tunnel. There was a figure huddled in the last cave in the row of cells.

  “I find explanations go better with visual aids.” Mordred nodded toward the bound form.

  “Angmar,” she said softly. The fae was bound to the earth with so many pale, twining roots that he was immobilized. Even so, he’d been in a recent fight because there were savage bruises wherever his clothing was torn away.

  “Angmar is an example of what does not work in my regime. You, at least on days where you do not fail me, are an example of what does. The difference is a spirit of obedience.” Mordred pushed ahead into the cell and grabbed Angmar’s tangled hair, lifting the fae’s head so that Nimueh stared right into his broken face. “Those with souls have difficulty following my orders.”

  Mordred made a gesture before Angmar’s face. The fae’s eyes cracked open beneath swollen, bruised lids and he began to struggle against the roots that pinn
ed him tight. It was useless. A trickle of light escaped through his clenched teeth. Mordred bent down, inhaling it with a connoisseur’s pleasure. Angmar began to howl, the sound rising to a scream of protest and despair.

  His soul. Nimueh’s heart hammered with desperate hunger. It did not matter that Angmar had once been her friend. She yearned to fill the aching void within her. Through the haze of numbness, she was aware that she should be disgusted, horrified, revolted. Merlin had damaged the fae, but Mordred made them monsters by tempting their hunger.

  Nimueh had refused Mordred’s offer to feed her craving, and now he was dangling the bait again. If she took it, she would be his slave. She drew herself up, setting her jaw in refusal, but she couldn’t look away from the spectacle of Mordred tearing out Angmar’s soul.

  “My lord, you don’t need to feed,” she said with cool precision. “Merlin’s spell never touched you.”

  “That’s part of the joy in stealing it,” he retorted. “Excess is its own delight.”

  Nimueh made no response, giving him nothing. With a loud sigh, Mordred stopped, letting Angmar’s head drop. The fae collapsed, sobbing in pain.

  “There’s quite a bit left if you want it,” Mordred said, sulking. His flat expression said that he knew he’d failed to seduce her.

  Nimueh stared at a spot just above Mordred’s head. The urge to wipe him from existence welled up in her like a madness. There were so few things that could kill the faery prince or his mother, and she’d possessed the greatest of them all—the sword, Excalibur. She’d given it to Arthur Pendragon to bring peace to the mortal realms, and now the sword was lost along with the king’s effigy. If only she still had it so that she could skewer Mordred’s slimy carcass!

  That was anger! Nimueh schooled her face, hiding the fact that she’d just had a bout of genuine rage. Sweat slipped down her spine, a symptom of her episode. Mordred could never find out she had a scrap of individuality left or she would end up like Angmar. Mordred’s smile speared her as her gaze slowly, painfully crept toward her old friend’s shuddering form.