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

by Sarah Zettel

  Gawain’s tongue froze to the roof of his mouth. What reply could he make? It was too much to comprehend. He could not take his eyes from the tree. Three petals fell like tears onto the forest loam.

  “Lord, the woman …”

  “Made her bargain as you made yours.” The Green Knight still spoke softly, but now there was danger beneath his words. “Do not ask after her again.”

  Shaking, Gawain turned away to face the giant. He should have felt some measure of relief, he supposed. She had clearly meant to trap him, to take his life because he would not give her what she wanted … but he only felt sorrow.

  “There is still a matter to be settled between you and I, my Lord Gawain.”

  Gawain swallowed. He had not forgotten. It was not possible to forget, even as his mind reeled from all that had occurred.

  God forgive me, he prayed. Risa, forgive me, he begged with all the love in his heart.

  He lowered himself onto his knees, and bowed his head, letting the gesture indicate his readiness. The blade, at least, was very sharp, and he had no doubt the headsman had a steady hand.

  He heard the whistle as the axe swung up. Our Father who art in heaven … oh Risa …

  The air over his head rushed as the blade came down. Hallowed be thy name. Give us this …

  Something hot stung the skin on the back of his neck, like a fly’s bite, and there was silence, and stillness.

  Gawain’s ears rang. His heart pounded against his ribcage as if seeking release. His hands began to shake, and the tremors ran up his arms and down again into his torso.

  “Such is my blow, Lord Gawain,” boomed the Green Knight. “Can you stand?”

  For one delirious moment, Gawain was not certain that he could, but he stiffened his sinews and willed his limbs to movement, and they obeyed. Gawain rose smoothly and stood on his own legs before the Green Knight.

  The Green Knight laughed the booming laugh that Gawain had heard from Lord Belinus, and failed to recognize. “Very good, man! Very good indeed!”

  A little warm wetness trickled down the back of his neck. Gawain put a hand to it automatically and when he brought it back down, a red streak of blood smeared his fingertips.

  “That cut is for the kiss.” The Green Knight grinned. “It will heal in time, but perhaps the scar will give you something to think on, eh my lord?”

  Gawain did not understand what was happening. He wished ferverently that Merlin were here. This much was clear, this apparition was a power, one of the old ones whispered about around the fire at night, perhaps, and reviled by the priests as devils and demons of the forest. This was no devil. Gawain knew that much.

  And how much might such a power know? But how little were such creatures disposed to speak?

  He also knew that where there was no other answer courtesy was all, and he went down onto one knee.

  “My lord,” he began, then stopped. “I know no proper way to address you.”

  “Belinus will do.”

  “My Lord Belinus, I seek a woman who was taken from Camelot …”

  “Ah! Risa of the Morelands.” Belinus planted the butt of his axe against the ground and leaned over it. “You want to know where the eastern sorcerer has hidden her, do you?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And for that knowing, what would you give?”

  “Anything.” Gawain knew a moment’s regret at that word, but he made no attempt to retract it.

  “Anything? You say that before me, Gawain? do you mean it?”

  Gawain felt suddenly profoundly weary. He remembered the night in Pen Marhas when he had said to Risa that she was too tired to say anything but what she truly meant. That was how tired he felt now. Let the giant do to him what he would. He had no more heart for this fight. “My Lord Belinus, I don’t know, and I am not certain that I care. I am tired. I am tired of magics and riddles and bold gestures and wondering whether or not I am worthy of my place and my love.” He raised his head and met the old god’s gaze. “I know that Risa has been taken against her will, and that I want to find her and see that she is set free. After that … after that it shall be as it please God. I will make no more bargains and play no more games. Let her come to me fully of her own will or not at all. It is the only way we will either one of us be free to live the lives we were meant to have.”

  The Green Knight looked long at him. Gawain felt all fear, all hope, all thought drain from him like water from a sieve. There was nothing left to him but those last words, and they were enough. To his relief and amazement, he knew in his soul that for this once, what he had done was right, and it was enough.

  The Green Knight nodded his great head, and Gawain was himself again, heart, mind and soul.

  “Very well, my Lord Gawain. Leave here without looking back. Walk away from my mound, turning neither left nor right. Take with you what you find, and if you can find your lady on the way, you will have her.”

  And he was gone. Only the mound and the spring, the forest and the thorn-apple tree remained. Gawain, long past wonder and surprise, began to walk.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You may return to your cell, Ragnelle.”

  Risa lifted her head. She had slipped onto the courtyard floor at some point during the long night. Cold and damp cramped her already distorted joints, and she could not make herself stand. Euberacon loomed over her, tall and imperious, blocking out the sun.

  Biting her lip against the pain, even though she tasted her own blood, Risa unbent her legs as far as she could.

  Return to your cell, her fogged mind repeated the order. No. That would leave Nessa alone, and the woman might not be able to last out the day. And if she could not, it was over. Everything depended on Nessa’s strength. She could not be shut in.

  “But Master,” her tongue was as thick and heavy as her thoughts. “Should I not …”

  “You should do exactly as I say.” To her shame, the anger in his voice made her wince. “Question me again and I may forget I meant to feed you when I return.”

  Hunger raged in Risa’s stomach. She had drunk a little from the fountain last night, but that had stilled it for a few hours only.

  Then something else he had said repeated itself in her confused thoughts.

  Return?

  He was leaving. Leaving!

  “Do not look so pleased,” he snorted. “Shall I tell you where I go?” He bent close. “The Saxons are riding up from the south to join their brethren in the west. The timing is most propitious too, for the best of Arthur’s knights are haring off across the countryside looking for a lost lamb.” He straightened, grinning broadly. “My little witch is busy at present, so I needs must make sure their road is clear.” He grinned and then spoke to the air above her head. “Take her.”

  The taloned hands seized her at once and dragged her across the tiles, then the stones and down the stairs. Risa barely felt the bite of them.

  Euberacon was leaving. The Saxons were rising. Gawain was gone searching for her. The Saxons were rising.

  Euberacon was leaving.

  The hands threw her roughly into the cell, and barred the door behind her. Risa curled up on herself, nursing her hurt, nursing her hope.

  Euberacon was leaving and she was unchained. All she had to do was wait for darkness. That was all.

  But that waiting was the hardest thing she had ever done. Through the window, she heard Euberacon cry out some incomprehensible words and then there was the clop of hooves on the tile, and a wind blew through the little portal, and then there was nothing at all. She paced awhile. She had stood on tip toe until her ankles cried out in pain trying to see if Nessa was able to place the kettle by the fountain, but her little window did not let her see so far. Hunger and thirst made her dull. Waiting made her frantic. He had lied, she told herself. He was watching her. He was testing her. He must be. There could be no other explanation. He knew, he knew, and if she tried to move he would come for her, he would do something worse, God she w
as so hungry … She dropped into fitful sleep, for she did not have the strength to stay awake.

  And she would doze for awhile only to wake and have her thoughts begin their whirl once more.

  Then came a time when she started awake, and her cell was dark. Night had come. The time when the marble fortress dreamed of its true shape. Risa pushed herself to her feet and stared eagerly at the door of her cell, waiting for the illusion to part, waiting to see nothing there but dust and splinters.

  But the door remained, as did the walls, and outside in the moonlight the marble and the tile court was still whole and beautiful.

  What had happened? How was this? Last night she had seen the nightmare played out even though she was awake.

  Last night, she had worn Euberacon’s collar and chain. Had they been enchanted in some way to let her see with both her waking and sleeping eyes? She’d told him she saw the ruin. Did she really believe he would he have put her in here if he had known the room could not hold her?

  No. Oh, no. No. She ran to the door. She pushed at it and it did not move. She pounded at it with her fists. It remained closed. Splinters dug into her scaly skin.

  It would be there as long as she was awake. It would be gone only when she dreamed, when she was powerless to act.

  He knew that. She’d told him herself, while she thought she was being so clever with her lies.

  Risa slumped down to the floor, burying her face against her knees like a child. The grotesque tusks that grew from her mouth tore at her skirts. She wept. She could not stop herself. She was so tired. She was so hungry. She hurt so badly. She could not last, not anymore. She had shot her one bolt. For Nessa would be discovered soon, and the kettle could not be left out there more than one night.

  She was lost.

  She had no power, she never had. She had eyes to see, and that was all, and now her eyes were not even her own. Risa of the Morelands had been sewn up tight inside the skin of the slave-monster Ragnelle, and she would die in there, pining for want of air.

  Pining for want. What is it every woman wants? He thinks he knows what women want. Trapped inside. Trapped inside the mists and fog. Sewn inside …

  Slowly, Risa lifted her head. Carefully, she wiped away her tears.

  She had the answer. She knew. She had seen it.

  The ruin was inside the marble fortress, sewn inside it, as she was Risa sewn inside the skin of Ragnelle. There was no sewing in the world that did not leave a seam, and seams could be felt, even when they could not be seen. If you were careful. If you knew what you were searching for.

  Risa closed her eyes and laid her hands against the door. She felt the knotted wood beneath her fingers, pitted and aged, but solid. She held her breath and in her minds eye, she pictured the empty threshold she had seen in her nightmare. She strove to remember the way the stones had begun to sag and separate, the way the boards had lain like jackstraws on the earthen floor, how she had dragged her nightmare chains across them.

  The door stayed solid beneath her palms. Despair sent shivers down her arms. She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed. She must not give in. There must be a way.

  I saw it. I saw it. The threshold was empty. The door lay in pieces on the ground …

  On the ground.

  Risa knelt. The door was in splinters. It had rotted to pieces. It lay there, useless to anything but the worms and the beetles.

  Her hand touched the soft and crumbling fiber of wood succumbing to age and damp. Her heart leapt into her throat and her eyes nearly tore themselves open. Like a blind woman, she felt her way forward. Damp splinters brushed her skin. Dank and spongy wood parted under her palms and shifted beneath her knees. Biting her lip hard, she reached to her side.

  She felt the empty threshold and the cool, broken stones.

  Risa crawled forward on hands and knees. The rotting wood gave way to dank earth, and her forehead brushed more rough-cut stone.

  Holding her breath, Risa opened her eyes. She was in the corridor. She saw the stones beneath her hands, but she felt cold dirt. She had it. She had it.

  She moved carefully. The footing was treacherous, for although her eyes saw smooth and well-fitted flags on the steps, her feet felt the broken and crumbling stones. She sloshed through mud as she made her way across the wonderful courtyard. It was dizzying, seeing one thing and feeling something completely different. Her mind rebelled against it.

  No. Risa closed her eyes to let herself concentrate on touch, on truth. Do not give into the lie.

  The kettle waited beside the fountain, just where she’d asked for it to be when she thought she would be spending another night in chains. Risa ran to it, slipping in the muck she could not see. She all but collapsed against it, gripping its iron sides with both hands.

  And for an instant, she saw the ruin, the muddy yard, the broken fountain. Then it was gone, and there was only the illusion, serene in the moonlight.

  She lifted the kettle’s lid, and inside saw her treasure trove; a length of rope, a bundle of hops, a handful of barley, a screw of cloth that surely held the malt, a bundle of rope as thick as her thumb, kindling and flint, and nestled among it all, a single brown egg.

  This is ridiculous, said the part of her mind that had already sunk beneath her fear. This is insanity.

  Yes. But there is only one place where I might find my answers, and it is only insanity that will get me there.

  She laid out a small nest of kindling. Her hands shook, but she stilled them. What she did now must appear natural, casual, an every-day thing. That was how it went in the story. It told of a young woman who needed to lure a demon from her family’s mill. By going through the motions of brewing in eggshells, so the tale went, she had roused the thing’s curiosity, and it had come too close and she had been able to trap it.

  Whitcomb had once said there was truth in the oldest tales. Now Risa would find out if her old friend had been right this one last time.

  Her hands shook again. Risa bit her lip with her jagged teeth and tried to concentrate. What would it be most natural to do now? Softly, carelessly, Risa began to sing.

  “Oh, have you seen John Barleycorn, and whither has he gone?

  “Oh have you seen his golden beard and heard his whispering song?”

  She cracked the egg on the side of the kettle, and spilled its meat out onto the ground.

  “Oh they have broken all his stems, oh they have ground his bones to dust,

  “Oh they have baked him in the fire, and tell you this sad news I must …”

  She tried to see again. It was easier nearer to the iron of the kettle. She could almost see the broken stones, and just make out the shadows of Drew and the stable boy struggling at their impossible tasks.

  She could just barely see the shadows of two demons flying like foul bats above her head.

  “What is this one doing? What is it doing?”

  “Has the master set its task? What must it do then?”

  She filled each half of the eggshell with water from the fountain, and then with the greatest of care, she set them upright in the kindling nest, so that each made a little brown cup. It would have been nearly impossible, but her fingers felt the mud and clay and were able to use the soft ground to help balance the fragile shells on their ends. She sprinkled a few grains of barley into each, and scooped in a fingerful of malt, and then, last, she crumbled the dried hops over the absurd brew.

  “What’s it doing? What’s it doing?”

  “I cannot see. I cannot tell. Its eyes are clear. It is not blind.”

  She picked up the flint and struck spark to tinder beneath the brimming eggshells. They trembled. She prayed. If they spilled out now, she would have to begin again and she did not know if she had the strength.

  Something brushed her shoulder.

  “Oh, they have taken off his head, they’ve taken out his heart so hale …”

  She struck another spark. The tinder was slow to catch. Keep your mind on what you’re doing. You
know nothing but what’s in front of you. Nothing but what’s in front of you.

  “She sees, she sees, but what does she do?”

  “Oh, they have boiled him in a vat, and called him nut-brown ale …”

  “She brews!” laughed the demon, just beside her ear. “What fish or fowl or great fool brews John Barley’s blood in an eggshell!”

  Risa snatched at the air beside her, and her hand closed around a skinny, wiry body. Its skin burned her, its scales cut her, and the pain shot up her arms. She threw it hard into the iron kettle and clapped the lid down over it. Gasping, tears of pain and triumph rolling down her cheeks, she leaned against the vessel as it rocked and thumped from the struggles of the thing within.

  “Sneak! Sneak!” it cried. “Thief!”

  “Oh dear!” She caught up the rope and wrapped it around the kettle, tying the lid down tight as the demon beat against it. “The bird I caught for the stew must not have been sleeping. I must build the fire up.”

  “Sneak!” cried the voice inside the kettle.

  Risa hummed loudly as she struck the flints beside the kettle, the better for the creature inside to hear them knocking together. “Oh yes,” she said, her heart hammering so hard and fast in her chest she felt dizzy, terror singing so strongly through her it felt like elation. “Pile the fuel good and high. This is a fine bird for stewing.”

  “No!”

  Risa struck the flints again.

  “No, mistress, please! Let me out!”

  “Hear the little bird!” she made herself laugh and struck the flints one more time. “How funny it is! I have not eaten in days. What could a little bird give me that would be better than dinner?”

  “Whatever you want!”

  Risa’s whole body shook. Nausea filled her empty stomach. Her ears rang with fear and hope. “Whatever I want?”

  “Yes, yes, mistress, please!” the kettle rocked furiously.

  “Do you swear it? Whatever I want?”

  “I swear! By my right hand and my left eye, I swear!”

  Risa loosened her knot. She lifted the edge of the kettle lid just far enough to see the scrawny winged creature crouching within. “I want the answer to a question.”