Ring of Gyges (Misadventures of Loren Book 2)

by Ines Johnson

  It looked like my advice was working. The girl was chatting up Tristan. She leaned in. He let her do most of the talking. It looked like she was eating out of his hands. There might be some hope for Tristan to remain high and dry and not morph into a cleansing product.

  But then the girl’s glance slipped past Tristan for a second. My eyes, along with just about every woman in the bars eyes, snapped to the entryway. Two dark figures crossed the threshold of the establishment. In the door walked Arthur and Lance. All women’s eyes went to them as they swaggered in. But neither Arthur nor Lance aimed to catch a single eye.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” One woman came up and asked Lance.

  “Thank you, but I’m not staying long.”

  “Can I come with you when you go?” she tried.

  Lance blinked. “Thank you.” He paused, likely looking for a nice way to let her down. “But, no.”

  He side-stepped the woman. He and Arthur took the seats vacated by the others and sat. They each slumped down as though they’d both been holding up half the world on each of their shoulders.

  “What took you two so long?” asked Gawain.

  “Morgan,” growled Arthur.

  “Merlin,” growled Lance. He turned back to Arthur. “You realize he’s back there alone with … everyone.”

  I knew that everyone was code for Gwin. Anytime Lance spoke in code, it had something to do with Gwin. But no one said anything.

  “The squires are there,” said Arthur. “So’s the old guard. Merlin can’t get out of the bed. He’s dying.”

  The look on Lance’s face said not soon enough. But he didn’t dare say those words out loud about his leader’s brother. Instead, he rose from his seat. “Still, I think I should-”

  Arthur reached out and handed Lance back in his chair. “Have a drink. That’s an order.”

  Lance grumbled, but he put his hand up for the barmaid. She sauntered over, breasts first. Lance placed his order, barely glancing at the woman.

  I turned to Arthur, only half curious to know what Morgan had done to itch that hard-to-reach-spot at the center of his back. But I had a more pressing query. “Any word on Baros?”

  “Loren, we don’t talk Table business outside of the castle.” Arthur took the drink from the barmaid, caressing the glass like the body of a lover. He didn’t eye the buxom beauty that had delivered the drink.

  Man, half of these virile knights weren’t trying to get any action. I was decidedly raring to be let off the bench. I needed some action, and badly. Problem was, I only wanted one man.

  Baros was my ex. Not just any ex, The Ex. The one you never quite get over and keep getting under.

  But I was done getting under him. I wanted to get on top of him. To pummel him into the ground for what he’d done to me. So, Artie may not be ready to talk about it, but I was going to find Baros and, when I did, it would be on.

  Before I could figure out another way to broach the subject, Arthur’s cell phone rang. It was so strange to see the device in the hands of a medieval warrior, but that was the way of this place and these people. A mix of modern and medieval.

  Arthur’s eyes grew large. “She did what?”

  The entire bar came to a standstill at the sound of his roar. He shot up and made a signal. All the knights fell in formation. I was a bit late to get up and in line. I didn’t know that particular signal. It hadn’t come in the memo along with the secret handshake for knights.

  “What is it?” asked Gawain once we were outside and out of earshot of the humans.

  “The castle kitchen is on fire,” growled Arthur.

  “Are we under attack?” said Geraint.

  “It’s Merlin, isn’t it?” asked Lance.

  “No,” said Arthur. “It’s Morgan.”

  Chapter Two

  “I had it under control.”

  Morgan was covered in soot. Her hands were cocked on her hips, and her features were clear with indignation as she glared at Arthur. There were burn marks on the ceiling of the kitchen. A rancid smell of chemicals and spoiled food filled the air. The glass window had a hairline crack that wasn’t receding. It was growing.

  “Control is what you need, all right,” growled Arthur. “You need to be put on a leash to control you.”

  “Try it, and I will bite you.”

  The two faced off against one another. Tension was thick in the room as their chests heaved.

  “It’s all right,” came Gwin’s soothing voice. She stepped between her lord and her sister, ever the peacemaker. “No extensive damage has been done. We can have this cleaned up by the morning.”

  “With no help from her,” said Arthur. But then he jerked back in immediate shame.

  Morgan’s chin steeled. “That’s right. Blame it on the impotent witch.”

  “I didn’t mean …” But Arthur’s voice trailed off. He would no longer meet Morgan’s gaze. That was a tactical mistake on his part. Morgan didn’t like pity.

  “My hands still work even if my magic is gone. I’ll clean up my own mess,” she said.

  “I’ll help,” I said. After all, it was my fault that Morgan had lost her powers.

  Before the Banduri priestesses brought their battle to the castle, they’d surrounded Morgan and me at the top of the Tor in Glastonbury. Morgan had been cut by the Spear of Destiny. When the blade broke her skin, it leeched out her powers. The only reason Morgan had been there was because she’d followed me.

  “So will I,” said Gwin. “We’ll take care of this.”

  Arthur looked around the room at the show of solidarity between the Galahad girls. That’s what we called ourselves. The three of us were the last descendants of Sir Galahad. One of us, Arthur might argue with and win. But all three of us? He was a smart leader. He backed down.

  He turned to Morgan. “Let this be the last time you play at chemistry in the kitchen.”

  “This wasn’t play,” said Morgan. “I’m a scientist. I was working on my craft. And if I had my own lab and equipment this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “We’ve already been through this, Morgan. We’re not building a lab in the castle.”

  “Then I’ll go away to school. That’s what mortals do.”

  Arthur’s jaw steeled. “It’s not safe. And you’re not mortal.”

  “I’m not a witch, so there’s no threat to me.”

  “Without your powers, you can’t protect yourself.” He turned on his heel.

  “You wouldn’t let me go when I had powers and now that I don’t you still won’t. You can’t have it both ways.”

  But Arthur had already exited the kitchen, and the knights filed out after him.

  “Are you really going to marry him?” Morgan turned on her sister as the men left the room.

  Lance was the last out. I saw his back stiffen at Morgan’s muttered retort.

  “Nothing’s been decided,” said Gwin. But she said it to a retreating Lance who walked stiff as a board. Gwin gazed after him until the door swung shut. Then she sighed and began a spell. She twiddled her fingers and then made a come-hither motion. A bucket rose into the air and began filling itself with water. “Besides, Arthur hasn’t asked again. It’s a moot point since I’m still married.”

  “To a homicidal maniac,” I said.

  I started my own spell, mimicking Gwin’s finger motions. My bucket rose into the air. And then emptied out the dirty water in its belly.

  Gwin smiled encouragingly at me. I was getting better and better with my magic, but there were still kinks to work out. Instead of mopping with clean water, I called a small army of sponges to deal with my mess.

  “I’m not disputing Merlin’s character flaws,” said Gwin. “But he’s dying. And until he’s gone, my vows remain intact. You know, in sickness and health.”

  Gwin’s husband Merlin was thought dead for decades. But he resurfaced a couple of months ago when we learned he’d been siphoning off witches’ powers to keep himself alive. He’d brought the fight home to Cam
elot, but we defeated him. Actually, I did. But I’m not one to brag.

  After all the death and destruction Merlin had caused, he was resting comfortably in the infirmary upstairs. The people of Camelot had enough tolerance and compassion to hear out Judas over supper. It was both awe-inspiring and maddening.

  “You’re not trying to heal him, are you?” I asked. I rung out one of the sponges with a squeeze of my fist and sent it back into battle with the floor.

  Gwin shook her head, waving her hand to repair the crack in the glass window. “Nothing can heal him. It’s only a matter of time before he passes on.”

  “And then you’ll marry Arthur and take your place as the Lady of Camelot?” Morgan’s tone was one of strained nonchalance. She leaned her chin on the rounded handle of a broom. Dust bunnies gathered at her boots.

  Gwin didn’t notice her sister’s tone or inaction. Her gaze was fixed on the door where the knights had exited. I know her mind was focused on one knight in particular, and that knight was not Arthur. But neither Gwin nor Lance would admit their feelings for one another.

  Camelot was nothing, if not a soap opera. There were television sets and computers with internet all over the castle. But I hadn’t caught up on TGIT, Thank God It’s Thursday, television since I came here. Nothing could surpass the drama of this place.

  “Is the fascist letting you go on the mission to find your ex-boyfriend?” asked Morgan, turning the attention back to my dramatic love life.

  “Baros wasn’t my boyfriend.”

  It was an automatic response, followed by me looking around worried that he may have heard someone say it. The term was decidedly American and from a long-dead era. I firmly believed that no one over the age of sixteen should ever be caught using it.

  Even when I was a teen, it felt a bit infantilizing. Shy glances, awkward fumblings, stolen kisses? Nope. Those had never been my thing. I was not shy or awkward about my sexuality.

  “Significant other?” tried Gwin.

  I grimaced. Other than my dad, all the significant people in my life had been women. Men came and went.

  True, Baros and I had made the rounds on each other a number of times in the past. And, yes, many of the significant events in my life had happened with him in the vicinity. But putting those two words together significant and other and then pointing them at Baros felt off.

  Morgan put the broom aside and took a seat on the counter. “What was your relationship with him then?”

  Even the R-word made me cringe. There was such a permanence to it. It made my neck get hot.

  “He was my lover,” I answered. “A friend with benefits. A bed buddy.”

  “So, it was just sex?” Morgan nodded appreciatively.

  Gwin frowned at me with a headshake I knew meant ‘don’t encourage her.’

  “Sex and swords,” I amended.

  Baros had been my sword master when my father had been working on the Parthenon restorations in Greece. I’d become a formidable swordswoman by the age of twelve. Baros was the best swordsmen I’d ever encountered. I later found out that was because he was a Spartan warrior, The Spartan warrior, actually.

  Leonidas was once the famed king of Sparta, the one who led the 300 into their ill-fated battle against Xerxes’ Persian army. He’d supposedly died in that battle. But the Greek god, Zeus, had chosen him as he lay dying on the battlefield and made him an immortal servant of the Olympians.

  Lenny had been reborn, but his hatred of Persians survived the rebirth. He’d secretly waged war against the nation and its culture for centuries until his last battle in Eleusis, Greece. He’d sided with the Titans which nearly broke the world and sent Lenny on the run.

  “Why would you want to go after him?” asked Gwin. “He’s hurt you more than once already.”

  “Hurt”—the four-lettered emotion landed heavy on my tongue—“is a big word.”

  “You never get over your first love,” said Gwin.

  “Love,” I choked. “There was no love. I’m not you, Gwin, I don’t believe in that fairytale nonsense.”

  On the grounds of Camelot, inside the four walls of the castle’s kitchen, trash magically made its way into the garbage. Birds chirped outside, but none of them came into the repaired window to help.

  “Why not?” asked Gwin. “Every little girl deserves a fairytale.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not little girls,” said Morgan.

  “That’s right,” I said. “We’re Galahad girls.”

  “True,” said Gwin. “But if anyone deserves a fairytale, it’s certainly us.”

  Each one of us opened our mouths to agree. But the monosyllabic agreement we were about to utter died on our lips. We were Galahad girls. We should’ve been prime candidates for princes. Hell, we lived with a bunch of knights from the storybooks.

  But, here you had, Morgan, a hundred fifty-year-old virgin who’d never been on a date. There was Gwin, who turned out to marry the villain in the story. And then there was me, an ardent commitment-phobe who choked every time she tried to say the R-word out loud.

  “You know what we need ladies?” I walked over to the fridge. “Midnight margaritas.”

  “It’s not midnight,” said Morgan.

  “I’ve never had a margarita,” said Gwin.

  “We’re three witches, lamenting about our love lives, in a kitchen,” I said. “This totally calls for a dancing montage with spirits.”

  “I’m not a witch,” said Morgan.

  “You’re currently a non-practicing witch,” I said, “which means you qualify. But even better, you are the best chemist in Camelot.”

  With a flick of my wrist, I shoved the sponges off to the side and went to the cupboards to pull out the ingredients. “We’ll need the juice of a green lizard. Also, a handful of white sand from the loch of a sea monster.”

  Morgan giggled as I handed her the lime and salt.

  “Gwin, grab me the cold crystals while I go and get the most important ingredient in this spell from the potions cabinet.”

  Gwin headed to the icebox while I dug around in the liquor cabinet. I immediately found the tequila. I saw a bottle of orange spirits with a label I couldn’t read and figured what the hell.

  “Everything goes into the cauldron,” I said plugging in the blender. “Now flip the switch and let the cauldron bubble.”

  Our giggles mixed with the motor of the blender and the crunching of the ice and the slushing of the alcohol. But that was nothing to when we each took our first sip of the concoction.

  I pointed my finger at a radio in the corner of the kitchen and it began playing music. The three of us started a conga line. We twirled around, waving our arms and swaying our hips to the beat. Morgan took center stage doing a body wave that ended with a hair flip. Then Gwin surprised me, wiggling her hips to the beat and shimmying her shoulders. By the time we got around to my turn, the jig was up.

  “Girls!” came a growling Celtish voice. “What’s going on in there?”

  “Nothing,” we singsonged and then cackled with laughter as we topped off our glasses.

  Gwin managed to turn and lock the door before Arthur or any of the knights could make their way in. This party did not include them. It was girls’ night now.

  Chapter Three

  “Ready. Charge.”

  Geraint’s booming voice sounded over the heaving breaths and heavy boots. The jousting area had been transformed into a blank green and muddy slate. The horses were stabled, and gone were the wooden rail barriers of the tilt. The lances were put away and the quintain targets were shoved off to the side. Out on the training ground of Tintagel Castle, the field was open for all-out warfare. With me at the head of the pack, all the squires charged each other with a battle cry.

  Yes, even though I had been knighted a couple of weeks ago, I was still required to undertake the trials. Something or other about tradition and preparedness. I don’t know? I wasn’t paying attention when Geraint spoke. I rarely did.

  To most
of the women of Camelot, Geraint’s voice was silky and smooth as words rolled off his tongue with a hint of his North African accent. But to me? His voice tended to grate on my nerves.

  However, this new chapter of squire training was actually fun. We were training for what to do in a large battle. I suppose?

  The squires had been broken into two teams. After quarrelling over who were the good guys (my team) and who were the bad guys (the other team), we took our places on opposite sides of the field. When Geraint’s grating voice gave the command, we rammed into each other with vicious glee. It was so much fun!

  We were all armed with swords, and we still wore chainmail over our chests. The steel of the mail was enchanted. The magic easily protected us from the practice swords and shields we used, and it withstood many other magical assaults. But witches and knights did have a weakness as I’d learned in the last battle fought on this very field.

  Bluestones were our own form of kryptonite. The Banduri had brought nearly a ton of the stuff with them during their invasion. As we’d fought the Banduri only a couple of weeks ago, small rocks, pebbles, and dust of the foul stones had seeped into the ground. But with some elbow grease and a lot of magic, the townsfolk had raked all the hazardous debris from the grounds just in time for training to resume.

  At first glance, the training exercise looked like a free for all. But there was actually some order to the chaotic melee. It was basically capture the flag. But the trick was that we all had a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. If you dropped either of your weapons, by force or by happenstance, you were out.

  I spotted my buddy, Maurice, who had gotten swiped up by the other team. I gave him a sorry-not-sorry grimace. His amiable grin morphed into a challenging smirk. Then it was on.

  I charged the mountain of a young man. All six-foot tall and one-hundred-twenty pounds of me crashed into the nearly seven-foot tall and two-hundred-fifty pounds of him. He barely budged. Meanwhile, I felt my teeth rattle in my tonsils.