Signy's voice filled the room, cool and clear as ever. "My greatest student," she said simply, and then the moving gold crept over Nial's face, obscuring him.
When it thinned and faded, there was nothing left of the man.
The beautiful face of Signy, limned eerily in the shimmering gold, turned toward Andrie, who stood frozen in place. Watching her, Colin slowly pushed himself to his feet, and limped to her side.
"Daughter," Signy whispered, and small drifting tendrils of gold reached out for her child.
But Andrie shrank back, like an animal frightened by a trap, and felt the reassuring human warmth of Colin's hands on her shoulders. "No," she whispered to those inviting hands.
"My daughter," the ghost of Signy said again, and Andrie understood that it was offering her all the power at its disposal, all the bright magic she had once coveted and always lacked. She could step into that shining mist, and not be consumed by it. She would come out a magician, as her mother had been. As Nial had been. It was what her mother had always wanted for her; it was all the power and glory Andrie should have had. Signy would protect her and guide her as the magic entered into her, filling her up like light, like wine. She could at last be a sorceress; she could have all the magic she had never known.
But she saw again, clearly, the man fading into nothingness before her eyes, and she sensed Colin's presence at her back, and her father, gazing spellbound at the illusion of his dead wife across the hall.
She straightened and said again, "No. I'm not you, mother."
And Signy smiled, but it was the same smile she had always used on her daughter in life: fond, but baffled, exasperated, uncomprehending. She truly couldn't understand.
For the first time in her life, Andrie felt a small pang of pity for her mother.
She started to speak, but the image of Signy turned insubstantial, flickering, and disappeared into the gold. The swirling eddies collapsed inward, falling into a tiny heap of aureate sand on the floor. Even that slowly trickled away, into the cracks between the stones. Finally, there was nothing left but silence.
Andrie looked up and saw her father moving forward blindly, groping after the vanished image. His face was blank, save for a desperate yearning.
Gently, she put out a hand to restrain him and said, "Father. Let her go."
Therin blinked at her touch, as if waking from a dream, and focused on his daughter, perhaps for the first time in years. "Andrina?"
"Yes," Andrie told him, and saw some measure of comprehension in his eyes.
Therin looked past his daughter to the tall fair-haired young man who stood beside her. "I know you," he said, and Colin nodded.
"I used to visit my—my brother, here. Sir. When we were young."
Andrie saw the faint shadow that crossed his face at the word, and slipped her hand into his.
Therin glanced at the two hands, and said, surprisingly wryly, "It seems you now have an interest in my daughter instead." It wasn't quite the voice of the king he had been, but it might have been the voice of a man who remembered being a king. "Will you be staying here for a while?"
Colin looked over at her, and smiled a little, hesitant and warm. "If you would like that," he said. "There will be things to do, first—I'll have to go home; the kingdom needs someone who can start fixing all the problems Nial left behind. But I'll come as soon as I can." Sooner, his tone promised, and Andrie had the feeling that he meant it. His eyes were the same bright green as the frog's skin, she noticed, beneath his pale hair.
Andrie considered this for a minute. She felt an odd sense of lightness, suddenly, as if the weight of the past had finally been lifted: from her home, from her father, even from herself. She might not be a sorceress, but she thought that she could see, looking ahead, a dizzying number of possible futures.
She looked back at Colin. "Yes," she told him. "I would like that."
Shalott's Inn
by Leah Cypess
MZB used to say that the Arthurian legends are the mythos of the English language, the way The Iliad and The Odyssey are for the Greeks, or El Cid is for the Spanish. Given the large cast of characters surrounding Arthur, and the variety of roles many of them play in different versions of the story, there's certainly a lot of material to work with. This story uses familiar elements: Lancelot, Excalibur, and Elaine—but it adds yet another twist to the legends.
Leah Cypess used to be a practicing attorney in New York and is now a full-time writer in Boston. She much prefers her current situation. She writes adult and young adult fantasy, and enjoys traveling, hiking, and spending time with her husband and daughter. You can learn more about her at www.leahcypess.com.
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The rain streamed slantwise across the windy plain, sending thousands of tiny ripples across the black surface of the river. It slashed at the bearded face of the traveler riding the dirt road and ran in quick streams over the crumbling bridge that arched over the frothing water. On the bridge, a girl was crying.
The traveler reined in his horse. From this distance, in the dark, the girl on the bridge looked like a misshapen statue, but he could make out black hair plastered to her head and shoulders. He couldn't see her face, and couldn't have separated tears from raindrops even if he had, but the way she was hunched over told him she was sobbing.
Everything about his training pulled at him to care, to go find out why. But his mare snorted and twisted her neck, and he forced himself to loosen the reins. The fate of his liege far outweighed some country lass's forced marriage or low-born beau.
So he told himself, as sternly as possible, and nudged his horse into a walk.
* * * *
Elaine showed up at the kitchen right before dinner, her wet hair bound in a neat braid and her cheeks scrubbed clean of tears. She couldn't scrub away the longing in her eyes, but her eyes wouldn't give her away. No one was going to look into them.
She took the loaf of bread the cook gave her and maneuvered her way into the common room, her mind far away—as far as the endless purple mountains she could see through the windows during the day. The mountains of Faerie, where the river with its clear, bright water originated, looked closer than they were. For her they might as well be half a world away. But at least she could see them.
Usually it was enough. When she was younger, it had never been enough; she had spent her time spinning impossible dreams of following the river upward, growing wings and leaving the dingy inn behind her. Now she was older, and tried to focus on the possible, but sometimes she looked at the possible too closely and her focus exploded. It had happened just an hour ago, and she had been unable to stop herself from running out onto the old bridge, in the rain, like a crazy girl, crying and crying for something she could never have. At times she thought her father was right, and she really was crazy.
The common room was even emptier than usual, which mattered not at all. Her father based his rates on the number of guests available to pay them. Since his was the only inn this close to Faerie, his guests had no choice but to pay.
Today there was only one guest: a tall, husky man with a scruffy black beard and very blue eyes. Elaine didn't even try to guess his age. To her, anyone older than twenty was unimaginably ancient. She curtsied and put the loaf of bread on his table.
"Ale, sir?" she said.
Instead of replying, the man leaned back and regarded her steadily. Elaine stared back with frank interest. He had a light, almost invisible scar along the left side of his nose. "What is your name, child?" he asked finally.
"Elaine." She made her voice pleasant, beginning to regain her interest in the here-and-now. He seemed friendly enough, and his scar bespoke previous quests. When he got drunk, he might tell her about them, and she would hear things she wasn't supposed to know about yet. "I'm the innkeeper's daughter."
"Oh, you are, are you? Your father's a highwayman, did you know that? The prices he charges for a meal would bankrupt a baron."
Elaine dimpled at him and said nothing
.
"He should be more charitable to me." The man narrowed his eyes at her. "I am a knight."
Elaine was unimpressed. Everyone who stayed at Shalott's Inn was either a knight or a madman; no one else would venture this close to Faerie. Knights were usually more courteous than madmen, though there were exceptions.
The knight eyed her for a moment longer. Then he reached out and broke a chunk of bread off the loaf, crumbling it between his blunt fingers as he brought it to his mouth. He swallowed it in one gulp. "Sir Lancelot," he said. "I follow the boy-king—Arthur. He's only a few years older than you are."
"Oh!" Elaine gasped. "You're the one who—"
"Elaine!" a gravelly voice snapped, and she whirled. Her father was striding across the stone floor. "Are you bothering the good knight? I apologize, sir. Get away now, child—you're needed in the kitchen."
"She isn't bothering me at all," Lancelot said. "I'm enjoying her company. The naivete of a child can be very refreshing after the politics at court." Her father continued scowling, and Lancelot added, "I'll pay you for her time."
"Very well," the innkeeper said grudgingly. Only Elaine saw the tiny smile on his face as he turned away. She wasn't needed in the kitchen, and he wasn't at all annoyed to have her out of the way. It was a ploy they used often.
"That's your father?" Lancelot asked. Elaine nodded. "Does he treat you well?"
"Well enough," Elaine shrugged. Her father didn't have much to do with her, as long as she stayed out of his way. "What kind of quest are you on?"
Lancelot smiled. "I'm going to get a sword."
Elaine blinked. "Already?"
He stared at her. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing." She had seen the sword in her mirror, so vaguely that she had been sure it wasn't coming for years. Of course, it might take the knight years to retrieve it from the lake; time ran strangely in Faerie. "Did you meet the queen yet?"
"What queen?"
"The one King Arthur will marry. Isn't she beautiful?"
He was staring at her oddly, and Elaine realized that, in her eagerness to learn where events stood, she had revealed too much. She flushed and looked down.
Instead of questioning her, Lancelot looked away, toward the rippled-glass window nearest them. The rain was still coming down like a dark waterfall, occasionally pierced by lightning. "Were you born here?" he asked.
Elaine blinked, surprised. "Yes."
"I've never met anyone born so close to Faerie. Is it strange here?"
"I don't know," Elaine said. "I've never been anywhere else."
He grinned at her. "Never? Wouldn't you like to see Camelot?"
"No," Elaine said. She had heard much about Camelot, city of towers and royalty, from all the knights and princes. Some of them, after a few cups of ale, could wax quite poetic about the famous city. If she saw it, she might be impressed... and if she was impressed by its purely human elegance, she would lose something. She wasn't sure what, but she knew instinctively that Camelot was not for her.
"You don't know what you're missing," Lancelot said. "I know many ladies-in-waiting who could use a smart, pretty girl like you as a maidservant. You'd have an easier life there, and a future, too. I'll speak to your father about it."
Elaine saw that he would, and that she would be the recipient of his goodwill whether she liked it or not. She didn't argue, just lowered her eyes and said, "Thank you. You should probably wait until you've finished your quest and are on your way back to Camelot."
"May as well." Lancelot leaned back and yawned. He had finished the entire loaf of bread. "Will you be serving breakfast tomorrow?"
"Maybe."
"If so, I'll see you then. If not, I'll speak to your father when I return from my quest."
Elaine nodded, noting that he'd said "when." Most knights, venturing into Faerie, said "if." But of course, Lancelot was a great knight, famed for his dashing exploits and stunning victories. She just didn't know whether or not they had happened yet.
* * * *
That night, she looked into her mirror and thought about Excalibur. The sword appeared instantly, straight and powerful, and she saw that it wasn't vague at all. It was just covered by a thin, fine film of mist that blurred its edges.
The mist was Faerie, which meant the sword was in that shadowy realm, its essence not human. It must have been human-made—faeries didn't mine metal or fashion swords. But Faerie's influence descended through proximity, not through origin. Her mirror had been fashioned in Camelot, but purely human mirrors did not show visions of far-away lands and distant futures. Elaine's mother had been human, but Elaine had lived close to Faerie since the day she was born, and the wild magic that frightened travelers had seeped into her bones.
She saw the sword in the boy-king's hands, covered with bright blood, defending him from his enemies. She saw him wielding it as a man; and as the king grew older, the sword's outlines grew more distinct. Finally the mist was gone, and with it the faerie magic, and then it failed him....
But she never liked to think about that, so she made her mind blank. A skein of thread appeared in the mirror, so large and clear she knew she would see it soon. It shimmered with a color no human had ever put a name to.
Elaine turned from the mirror and went to bed.
* * * *
The next morning, she watched from the window as Lancelot rode away on his white horse, blurred by the drearily persistent drizzle. Then she dressed quickly and ran down to the river that ran from Faerie to Camelot.
It was there on the bank, caught in some jutting tree roots: a skein of fine linen thread, thoroughly soaked. She caught it up with a kind of ecstasy. Two years ago, the cook had promised to teach her to weave, but Elaine hadn't been interested. She hoped the offer was still good.
She looked down at the limp wet bundle in her hand, and knew that—for whatever reason—she had been offered a key.
* * * *
It was a year before she saw Lancelot again.
During that year the wars drew many recruits, and there were fewer knights passing by on the road to Faerie. Elaine worked steadily on her weaving, using threads of every color she could find to produce a vibrant, shapeless web that could never become a wearable garment. The cook despaired of her.
One sunny morning, she looked into her mirror and saw Lancelot, clear and distinct, with a sheathed sword strapped to his back. She knew she didn't have much time.
Her weaving became the center of her life. The faerie skein was almost finished; she worked ceaselessly, knowing now that what she wove was a web to trap souls and take them to Faerie, where they could form whatever bodies they pleased. Her serving became messy and she never helped with the cooking. Her father swore at her often.
And it wasn't enough. Two weeks later Lancelot rode up to the inn, and there were still two handfuls of faerie thread left.
She was in the common room, serving, when he entered. He started to smile, then stopped and stared at her in bewilderment. Elaine froze, a bowl of stew in one hand, as he looked her up and down.
"How old are you?" he demanded.
"Fourteen," Elaine said.
His brow furrowed. "How long have I been gone?"
Then Elaine understood, and felt sudden sympathy. "A year. How long did you think you were gone?"
"Two days," Lancelot muttered, and shuddered. "I was warned, and yet.... Faerie is too twisted for me. But it was worth it. For Arthur. I have the sword that will make him a great king."
"Did you see the Lady of the Lake, or just her hand?" Elaine asked curiously. She had never been able to tell; mist shrouded the mirror when she focused on Faerie.
Lancelot looked at her sharply, but all he said was, "Where's your father? I want to discuss taking you to Camelot."
"He'll make you pay a lot," Elaine said, knowing the ploy wouldn't work even as she said it.
Lancelot smiled thinly. "I can handle him."
She pointed him to the kitchen, where her father was annoyin
g the cook, and fled upstairs. The loom was waiting for her. She pushed her chest of clothes against her door and began to weave.
The sun brightened into noon and faded into dusk, and still she wove. The moon faded in and out of wispy clouds. She worked feverishly, eyes bright, feeling wrapped in a dream. She had to finish before morning, before Camelot. No amount of magic thread would help her once her soul had felt the touch of purely human splendor.
She finished as the sun was rising, a faded pink above the river. What she had woven was uneven and haphazard, ends unraveling already. But the faerie thread ran through it.
She stood, and uncertainty hit her.
She moved to the mirror and stared into it, looking for a reason... and it came. She saw herself riding with Lancelot to Camelot, gaping with childlike awe at its magnificence. A beautiful lady with ice-blonde hair took her as a maidservant, and she learned to love the feel of silk and velvet. She grew up beautiful—and Lancelot, watching her grow up, fell in love with her.
They would be happy forever. Happy and utterly human. Lancelot would never cast a longing glance in the direction of his liege's queen. And without the first spark of discord that cracked Arthur's utopia, his kingdom would last forever.
Then Elaine knew what it was the faeries wanted to prevent—why they had sent a colorful skein floating down the river. Why they had handed her soul an escape, and a key. She was fated to go to Camelot, but fate could cut two ways.
She saw herself and Lancelot, utterly content, and still she didn't move. It would mean the end of Faerie, for Arthur's peace and tolerance seduced the humans away from the worship of Faerie as no persecution ever could. It would mean the loss of something precious deep within her. But she would forget. And she would live the type of life she had never even dared dream about.
She looked away from the mirror, and when she looked back she saw only her own face staring back at her. But her face was dim and blurry... as if covered with a fine film of mist.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII Page 20
