In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy)

by Sarah Zettel

  Head hanging low, the woman turned and walked one weary step at a time back the way she had come.

  Risa stared after her, a lump rising in her throat, her own woes forgotten for that moment.

  Then, she saw the others.

  In the manner of dreams, she saw them one at a time. As soon as she turned from one, that one was gone, and she was alone with another person, entirely different, but just as blind, just as suffering.

  She saw a youth wielding a broom as tall as he was, frantically sweeping at the clay and mud of the courtyard. The broom bristles swished against the ground, sounding so much like the sea Risa thought she might see the foam from the breaking waves.

  A man, chained like she was, dragged his shackles up the winding stairs to the southeast tower. Each step was an unspeakable strain. His face, his whole being was slack, devoid of hope or any plan beyond the next step. Two demons — red-skinned, black-horned and leather-winged fluttered around behind him, laughing at his struggle. The man’s strength failed him and he crumpled forward, dashing his chin against the unforgiving marble, his body a helpless weight in its chains. He rolled down the hard and unforgiving steps until he lay still, bruised surely, perhaps broken, at the bottom.

  The demons leaned over his still body, sniffing like dogs over a kill.

  “Is it dead?” asked one.

  “It wishes it was,” replied the other, pawing delicately at the man’s head. “But it will be here again tomorrow.”

  Then the other one looked up, and saw Risa.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” shrieked one, leaping into the air. “Is it flesh or is it foul?”

  They dove toward her, as the ravens had done. Panic and fury lent Risa strength despite the chains, despite the weariness, and she swung her arms, swatting at the fiends, but they just cackled in delighted laughter, flying out of her reach.

  “Again! Again!” cried one in foul delight. “The others do not give such sport as this! Again!”

  Its companion swooped low, and Risa ducked. “How is it she has eyes and they have none?”

  “Ah! For it is her body he wants confined, her mind he has other uses for.”

  “Him! Him!” screamed the first of the fiends. “Has he fallen yet? Has he?”

  They flew away, up into the night sky like leaves caught in the wind, and up at the top of the tower, balanced on the slumping stones of the battlements, she saw Euberacon. Around him in the air there hung a flock of demons, shining with their own eerie light. They were bloated and grotesque. They were pinched and withered with long grasping fingers. Some were as beautiful as angels, others had red and black faces distorted by fury. They slumped in the air as if as weary as Risa, or they gamboled, displaying their bodies to him, enticing him to reach out, to stretch his arm too far, so that he might lose his careful equilibrium.

  They were waiting for him to fall.

  “Yes,” she whispered. Fall, fall! Let them take you, let them break you on the stones. “Yes!”

  She wondered for a moment whether Euberacon saw the demons before him, or if he was as blind as the others she had seen. But then he looked down past his shoulder onto his tiny, dark domain and she saw his face clearly. She expected him to smile, to gloat at her bound in chains of nightmare, but he did not. She saw only fear written across his face. Around him the demons flocked, greedy and ready.

  Then, it was over and Risa woke. Dawn’s light streamed in through the tiny window and showed her the solid stone walls and the closed door. All was as it had been when she felt asleep. Including, she tightened her fingers and relief rushed through her, the knife she held hidden in her sleeve.

  What was that dream, or could it have been another vision?

  What does it mean?

  The cell offered no answers. The stones around her looked and felt as solid as they had been before. There was no way to make any ablutions or to refresh herself. She smoothed her hair down with her free hand, then she worried one of the ribbons out of her loosening braid. Clumsily, she bound the knife to her forearm, her heart in her mouth the whole time. What if the invisible servants were here to watch what she did? What if they had alerted Euberacon? Or would they just dart their clawed hands down and seize her only hope?

  Were they demons like the ones she had seen in her dream?

  She stood and folded her arms, letting her sleeve fall over the knife and its hasty binding. She could feel its edge against her skin. It would cut her if she moved too quickly. Worse, the ribbon would not hold for long. She would have to find her chance or make one quickly.

  Remembering how it had gone the previous day, Risa tried the door. It swung open easily. Evidently, the sorcerer desired her presence.

  Good, she thought grimly, steeling herself. For I would be near to him.

  Risa mounted the stairs to the courtyard. The sun poured down, careless of Risa’s captivity. A table covered in cloth of silver had been set beside the fountain. Euberacon sat there, loaves of bread and bowls of jellied meats before him. A woman bustled to and fro, setting down another bowl, this one of deep red preserves, adjusting linen and setting out another cup and knife. But that was not what caused Risa to stare. She knew this woman. This was the one she had seen the night before in her dream trying to draw water with a sieve.

  How is it she has eyes and they have none?

  Ah! For it is her body he wants confined, her mind he has other uses for.

  The woman curtsied to the sorcerer, her face serene and alert. Risa could not see her eyes. Euberacon nodded, and the serving woman took her leave.

  “You are prompt this morning,” said the sorcerer. “Good. Come here.”

  Yes. Risa did as she was told, coming to stand before him, arms folded tightly across her chest.

  The sorcerer spread a slice of fresh brown bread with jellied meat and took a bite. Risa was ashamed to find her mouth watering.

  “Tell me what you saw last night,” he ordered.

  The details of her nightmare sprang instantly into her mind’s eye, but Risa just tightened her hold on her own forearms. She felt the shape of the knife beneath the cloth of her sleeve. The ribbon was already loosening.

  Find the chance soon or make it.

  “Did you hear me?” the sorcerer’s voice took on a dangerous edge.

  “I saw nothing last night,” she said. “I slept in a cell behind a locked door. What could I have seen?”

  “You are a liar,” said the sorcerer coolly. “I will allow that once only. What did you see last night?”

  What could concern you about my dream? The sorcerer’s eyes were boring into her mind and fear shrank Risa’s heart, but still she said, “I saw nothing last night.”

  The sorcerer rose slowly to his feet. Risa looked up and deliberately shank in on herself, shoving her hands into her sleeves. He stalked around his chair. His shadow fell across her. His eyes drew her close, and she felt her mind slip away from her, all volition draining toward him.

  Clamping down hard on the last of her will, Risa drew the knife. Its edge sliced a fiery line across her skin. She swung it out, but she swung too wide, and only grazed his hand.

  “Slut!” he shouted. Risa did not give him time to say any more. She darted in, knife raised and ready, aiming for his belly. She stabbed upward. Cloth tore and the blade sank quickly through flesh, until her arm jarred against bone.

  Euberacon clouted her hard across the ear, and Risa toppled backward, seeing stars.

  Before Risa’s sight cleared, Euberacon was beside her, his hands gripping her arms, twisting, and his fingers gouging into her tendons. “What? You think I keep my life where such as you can find it?” He dragged her to her feet, and she saw the knife on the tiles. There was not even any blood on it.

  But I felt it, I felt the blow! her mind wailed.

  Euberacon twisted her arms harder, forcing them up and behind her. She kicked backwards, but her feet found no purchase.

  “You will learn, you whore. You will learn who
your master is.”

  Euberacon twisted her arms until the pain burned from shoulder to finger-tip. He kicked at her knees and calves, driving her forward toward the fountain. She struggled but it did no good. The sight of the clear, sparkling water in its beautiful tiled basin filled her with terror. Euberacon gripped the back of neck, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of her neck. The world swirled red and black before her eyes.

  “So you still think you will be saved? Perhaps you think that your knight will have you back and be enchanted again by that pretty face of yours. It has opened so many doors for you, that face. I think it is time you learned I own that face as I own all of you.”

  He thrust her downward. Risa cried out, but her scream was muffled by the water. It filled her mouth and stopped her ears, a gout of it dragging painfully down her throat into startled lungs that gagged and dragged in more water. She thrashed aimlessly, the panicked instinct for survival wiping out all else. But Euberacon’s arm was like an iron bar, pinning her remorselessly down. Drowning, she was drowning. She saw black again and flashes and lines of gold, and her lungs were more filled with water than air, and over the churning of the water she heard distantly a voice chanting, and thought she heard another answer, and then the blackness drew its cloak closer.

  Mother Mary, help me!

  But this time, the Virgin did not answer. This time, something else happened. She felt it in her bones and in each joint. They twisted, warped and crushed themselves together. The muscles of her face dragged themselves out painfully, snapping and tearing. Her aching eyes screwed in tightly to her skull, shrinking almost to nothingness, while her teeth fought to tear themselves from her gums. The pain overrode the terror of drowning and Risa struggled to scream and not to scream and felt herself tear in two for death to enter in.

  All at once Euberacon’s arm dragged her up out of the water and dropped her onto the tiles.

  For an eternity, all she could do was retch and try to breathe. Her lungs burned. She vomited up clear gouts of water onto the tiles, soaking her hands, sleeves and skirts. At last she was empty, and her breath rasped in and out, and she blinked her eyes clear of tears and ice cold water, and she could feel again.

  She could feel her eyes, small and round and set too close to a nose suddenly too broad and protruding. Her jaw was heavy as a stone, but her head where she was accustomed to the weight of her hair was feather-light. She pushed herself up on her hands, and stared down at them, her tiny, piggish eyes trying to strain out of her misshapen skull. Her hands were unrecognizable. The skin on them was scaled and scabbed. The fingers were splayed and twisted and the yellow nails curled like the talons of some bird of ill-omen. Her wrists stuck out inches past her sleeve, the filthy, yellowing skin clinging slackly to the bones. The only thing left that was recognizable was the ring on her right hand with the great, square emerald winking mockingly in the brilliant sun.

  Risa screamed. She couldn’t stop herself. Terrified at the sight of her own hands, she slapped at them, trying to pull off skin and nails as if they were a pair of gloves. Over her head, she heard Euberacon laugh.

  “It is well then you cannot see that face now!” he crowed, and he seized her collar, dragging her again to the fountain, and leaning her over it. And Risa looked at the wavering water, and she could not help but see.

  Round black eyes that belonged in the face of an animal blinked and stared. Skin stretched tight over jutting brow but hung slack and hollow against cheeks and a jaw that jutted out beneath a spatulate snout where her nose had been. Her teeth, jagged and speckled with black, protruded over her sagging lip. Already, a stream of spittle ran from the mouth she could not close down to her long, wasp-thin neck.

  But her hair, her hair, that her mother had combed and perfumed and braided, her hair that Gawain had called fairer than any crown of gold, her hair was little more than a scattering of black bristles over a scabbed and mottled scalp.

  “Now, listen closely to me,” Euberacon said, his voice barely louder than a whisper cutting through the roaring that seemed to have filled her ears. “I am inclined to turn you out into the world as you are to see whether it is men or the wild beasts that hunt you down first. But if you show me your obedience, if you serve me without question, then I will return your beautiful face, and yes, that mane of hair you are so proud of. It is all for you to choose now.”

  He released her and stood back. Weakened as she was, Risa nearly fell. She barely caught herself on the edge of the fountain. She looked up at him. His snake’s eyes glittered with their triumph. She looked back at her wavering and distorted reflection in the water. She did not need to see what he had done. The smallest movement screamed with the pain and the wrong of it. Fear, fury, wretched sorrow swarmed and sang through her mind. A thousand thoughts wailed like ghosts, first among them the urge to murder the man who stood before her and then take her own life, dashing herself down from the tower against the tiles so no one could see the monster she had become.

  “Well, woman, what is your choice?”

  And she remembered what the witch had said, and she remembered how Gawain had looked at her in love, and she saw again the horror of her own hands and face and looked up into the black and shining eyes of the man who wielded his power without mercy, and she knew she had no choice. Not anymore.

  Slowly, painfully, as if she were an old woman wracked with rheumatism, Risa knelt. She bowed her head until her forehead touched the sun-warmed tiles at his feet.

  “Please, Master,” she said, the voice in her new throat was harsh and her new teeth slurred and slushed the words so they were barely comprehensible. “Please, do not send me away.”

  “Very good.” He touched the back of her head, and she flinched like a whipped dog. “Your name is Ragnelle now, and will be until I say otherwise. So. Follow me, and learn your new duties, Ragnelle.”

  He walked away across the court and did not look back. Ragnelle, who had been Risa of the Morelands, climbed painfully to her feet and followed behind.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gawain woke to the same stone walls, the same bed and sparse furnishings. He had no idea what time of day it was. The rushlights burned, so there must have been daylight enough for the servitors to be awake and to come and kindle them.

  He swung his feet over the side of the bed and planted them on the rushes. No dizziness came over him this time, and he stood, and remained standing. A few steps across to the chest where his clothes and gear waited told him he was still weak, that his rib still had not healed, but he was better than before. Healed enough to feel the stone walls as a cell about him.

  I need to walk and see the sky, see this land I am in.

  He had only enough time to lace up his breeches before the door burst open, to let in Belinus with Ailla a step behind.

  “Ah!” he cried with satisfaction. “The young eagle is testing his wings! How does this morning find you, my Lord Gawain?”

  Barefoot and barely dressed, Gawain found it difficult to pull together his dignity, but he managed a small bow. “Much better, my host, thanks be to God and your lady.”

  “A dab hand at many things, my Ailla.” Belinus threw an arm about his wife’s shoulders and hugged her roughly. Ailla seemed nothing so much as resigned to the gesture. “Has she told you aught of this Green Temple you seek so eagerly?”

  Did his face seem more shrewd as he asked that question. He did not let go of his wife. “No, my host,” Gawain did not look to the lady to see how she took this query. He did not want to give her away if she was trying to hide something from this man. “She has not.”

  “Ah well.” Belinus released his wife and clapped his hands together. “Perhaps I will bring back news of it today. Rest well, Gawain!”

  He strode away, leaving Gawain and Ailla standing awkwardly before each other. She’d dropped her gaze so she would not have to look at the half-dressed stranger in front of her.

  “If you are feeling well enough, my lord, I would be
most pleased if you would join us at board.” Evidently deciding Belinus was far enough gone she added, “I imagine seeing nothing but these walls is beginning to pall on you.”

  “I will join you with a good will, my hostess,” replied Gawain and he was rewarded with a quick smile before she retreated to let him finish dressing.

  Perhaps today you will tell me what is wrong with you. Perhaps you will let me help you before I must leave. The idea pleased him. Merlin had warned him to remember his honor. Here was a chance to do honor in aiding a lady. If only she would speak and tell him what she held so tightly within her heart.

  Belinus’s hall was an ancient place. No tapestries or banners hung from the rough stone walls, nor even any trophies of war. There were no hearths. The fires burned in the center of the floor, filling the long chamber with smoke and ash. The place held more dogs than servitors. There was no dais. The tables were roughly planed boards with only short cloths to cover them. Lady Ailla stood before one of the fires ladling porridge into a wooden bowl. It struck him how out of place she was here, a delicate flower in a thicket of thorns. Who were her people that they had given such a lady into such a place?

  He walked up to her and bowed before her as his hostess. What few men were in the hall, all dark-eyed with untrimmed beards, glowered, as if they thought her unworthy of such a gesture. Ailla herself seemed flustered and curtsied with the bowl still in her hands. None of the squat, square women came forward to take it from her, so Gawain did so, with another bow. The contents proved to be a thick porridge of lentils and oats. Plain fare, but strengthening. He sat to eat and Ailla served him herself, bringing watered wine and fresh baked bread, butter and honey. For the first time since he had arrived, Gawain found he had a good appetite and he ate with a will. All around the hall, Belinus’s people watched him and their lady, and said nothing at all.

  Well let them stare. There is nothing improper for them to see. “My hostess,” said Gawain. “I would be grateful to see my horses, and something of the land I am in.” He needed to get his bearings, needed to decide what road to take next, and if he could do this and get Ailla out of this dank and smoky place into the wholesome air for a time, that was all to the good.