But no time. She had a far greater first duty. When the day was at last finished, her real work began.
During the droning conversations of the day, Guinevere had imagined knots, in infinite combinations and possibilities. It had been a useful exercise, making her realize a simple sight knot to see magic would not have worked. Sight knots could work with a specific target, but asking her eyes to see something unknown would be too taxing for such a delicate sense. She could have blinded herself.
Knots could enhance and direct what already existed; they could stop things. But they could not make her senses do something new. Knot magic was pedestrian. It was about binding magic to a task, not discovering new things. But surely she could find a way. Her fingers twitched, tying imaginary knots.
And then she realized the solution. It was not her eyes that needed to see better. Her eyes took in only what the world presented to them. Her hands were what could take information not readily given. Her hands sensed things her eyes never could. If she could enhance that sense, extend it, then she would have what she needed.
She wrapped herself in a robe and hurried outside, up and up and up the castle to the alcove. It was the middle of the night. If she were caught, no one could see what she had been doing. And she could claim difficulty sleeping while Arthur was away. Once she was tucked in away from the wind and any eyes that might spy her, she got to work.
She used hair, not thread, since she needed as much of herself as she could afford. She looped the strands around her fingers, tying an altered version of a knot for extending sight. Her fingers tingled with the rush of her pulse. The blood was caught there, pooling, throbbing. Guinevere stumbled, leaning against the outer wall of the alcove. Everything else in her body was light and distant, her whole self seeming to dwell in her fingers alone.
So she held out her hands and she felt.
She started with the city. There were tiny warm spots scattered throughout, and she noted the location of each. She let her hands roam over Camelot. A few pinpricks of darkness, but they vanished like smoke beneath her hands before she could determine what they were.
She took a deep breath. The next one she wanted to avoid, but she would not turn away from her duty. She pushed her hands to the lake. And she felt…
Nothing.
She shuddered, chilled straight through. There was an absolute absence of magic. This was the lake that had held the Lady. This was the lake that had delivered Excalibur to Arthur. And now? A still void.
Trembling, the demands of the magic already draining her, she hurried past it, pushing her hands out, out, out among the fields, among the regions surrounding Camelot. They were not as lifeless as the lake, but they were dormant. Nothing sparked or seethed until she got to the area where she had lost Rhoslyn and the knight. It crackled like a campfire, warming her hands.
She collapsed. The strands of hair around her fingers snapped. The blood returned to its normal flow. She wondered when feeling would return to her hands, and suspected this awful pins-and-needles feeling would continue for some time.
She had found some leads, but it was the absence she discovered that bothered her more than anything. A lake that size, with that history, should have had some magic. As she stumbled back down the stairs, her hands throbbing and agonizingly numb at the same time, she tried to understand what it could mean.
A dark possibility seized her. If she could channel herself into her hands to make them more powerful than ever, who was to say that the dark magic of the world could not be made to do the same?
What if someone was siphoning all the magic of the lake, all the magic of the land? And what would happen when they amassed enough?
She had to get to Rhoslyn. She had to stop her.
* * *
For the first time in her life, Guinevere wished for a sword.
She had anticipated fighting magic, not people. But this was why she was here. Whatever it took, she would face Rhoslyn and her knight, and she would come out triumphant.
She slipped into the darkness of sleeping Camelot. The streets hummed and whistled with the wind from the lake. She shivered, remembering the cold void. But that was not her mystery. In her mind, the warm spots of magic burned like the afterimage of the sun. Sliding from pool of darkness to pool of darkness, feeling more like the night than like a person, Guinevere found the first location. It had been the most familiar to her, after all. The edge of the cliff where the patchwork knight had twice eluded her.
Her hands were numb and useless, but she had her eyes. She searched and searched for something amiss, something that did not belong.
After several frustrating minutes searching the rubble and detritus of crumbling foundations, she realized her mistake. The magic was hidden in something that did belong. Almost. She reached down and picked up a perfectly smooth, rounded rock. Like the one Rhoslyn had dropped. This time, she saw what she had missed before. Someone had knotted magic into the rock itself. It held something. A spell, a memory, a curse—she could not tell. But she knew what she was looking for now.
She hurried through the night. Seven rocks at seven separate points in the city. Seven anchors of magic. She could not bring them into the castle—it would break their magic before she discovered what it was.
It was nearly dawn. If she left now, she could reach Rhoslyn within hours. But she would not be able to explain her absence or her actions. It would mean defeating the threat but destroying her role as queen. She could not easily come back to it.
The darkness enveloped her, bade her keep moving.
If she did this for Arthur, she would be fulfilling her purpose but losing her place at his side. She closed her eyes. She would prepare today, then leave tonight. It would keep until then. Sagging under the weight of the coming dawn, she hid the magic rocks and then hurried back to her room.
She only just beat the sun. As soon as night fell, she would hunt. She crawled into bed, planning her attack.
Brangien opened the door as soon as Guinevere closed her weary eyes.
“Happiest news, my queen!”
Guinevere sat up, her hands alternately freezing and burning, pricked with pins and somehow still numb. Her eyes could barely handle the dim light of her room after attuning themselves so thoroughly to shadows. “Yes?” she asked, forcing a smile.
“The king has sent for you! We must pack and leave immediately.”
“Oh no,” Guinevere said, sighing. Brangien paused, her arms full of cloaks. She lifted an eyebrow in surprise and alarm. Guinevere flinched, trying to cover. “I do not know what to wear.”
Brangien laughed and went back to gathering. “That is not for you to fret over. That is my job.”
Guinevere flopped back onto her bed, throwing an arm over her face to hide her expression. She had work to do, and no way of letting Arthur know she was needed here. She could feign illness, but maybe Arthur was asking for her for a reason. Maybe he needed her help, specifically. Why else would he send for her?
As long as she was by Arthur’s side, she could be certain he was safe. But it was aggravating. They were going to have to figure out better ways to communicate so Arthur would be able to help her efforts instead of interrupting them.
Arthur. The thought of seeing him again—it had been only days, but they felt an eternity—returned feeling to her heart, if not her hands. Very well. She would be queen today, and avenging protector as soon as she returned.
* * *
The wind whipped Guinevere’s hair, tugging it free from its plait with callous disregard for all the time Brangien had spent wrangling it into submission. If she could not be staging her attack against Rhoslyn and the patchwork knight, at least she was outside the city, with the wind and the wild and a horse. It felt almost like freedom.
“Whoa!” a guard shouted. To her dismay, her horse responded, slowing from a gallop to a trot and th
en an easy walk. Brangien had been left far behind. She was not very comfortable on horses, and it would take her some time to catch up. Guinevere wished the guard were in the same position.
The guard rode to her side, his expression horrified. “Did you lose control of your horse, my lady?”
“Yes,” Mordred interrupted, veering his own horse toward hers. “That mare often breaks into a gallop. I will ride next to the queen to see that it does not happen again.”
The guard nodded, satisfied, and gave Guinevere a polite distance again. Mordred leaned precariously far and put a hand on Guinevere’s mare’s neck. “Your horse is the most obedient and well-trained of our stable.”
Guinevere’s smile, much like her hair in the wind, could not be restrained. “I am sorry. But riding is—” She took a deep breath.
“Freedom,” Mordred said.
“Yes.” She had not realized quite how constraining being queen was. It was a weight that became unnoticeable until shrugged off. But putting it back on made it nearly unbearable. She should not have prowled through the night on her own. Darkness was a seductive freedom, and she had to stay focused.
Or she should have followed the shadows and gone straight to where Rhoslyn was hiding. She would have finished with it by now.
“You are a different person when you are outside,” Mordred said.
Guinevere reached up, trying to tame her hair again. Her hands fumbled the action. They still stung, numb and clumsy. She could feel nothing with them. “What do you mean?”
“You stop pretending.”
She froze.
“Ah, there it is again. You are trying to decide which expression to give me to deflect notice or conversation.” Mordred tapped the side of his nose. “It is easier for you when you are behind walls, trapped by stone and expectations. But out here in the wild you have a harder time.”
Guinevere needed some excuse, some reason why she would behave this way.
“You treat the world with the wonder of a child,” Mordred said, filling in the empty space between them. He looked nothing like Arthur. Arthur was carved from the same stuff as Camelot—regal and majestic. But Mordred belonged out here, with her.
She shook her head, correcting herself. This was not where she belonged.
She needed to choose her words carefully. How to explain that the whole world was a wonder in a way that would not be suspect? She loved the way it smelled, the way it felt. The movement of the horse beneath her. The simple food they would eat when they stopped for a meal. Seeing a new place—seeing any place at all! Of course she could not hide the way she felt. “It was a long time to spend in a convent. Everything feels new outside those walls.”
“Except you traded those walls for different ones.”
“Camelot is incredible!”
Mordred laughed, raising his hands in innocence. “It is. But it is tame. Structured. Sometimes we need a break from that.”
She had planned a far more dangerous break. But he was right. She loved it out here. She would not let the tasks ahead of her steal away the joy of travel and the anticipation of meeting Arthur at the end. The warmth of his smile flashed through her like the sun through parting clouds, and she admitted it was not only the honesty they shared that she missed.
Mordred kept close. Their party was stretched out, the open plain offering no threats, but he always rode next to her. Guinevere had been surprised that he had joined them at all. Bored with the slower pace, she brought it up. “I thought you were the one left behind to take care of Camelot in Arthur’s absence. Why are you coming with us?”
Mordred scanned the horizon. “Your husband would not trust you to travel to him with anyone but his family. And he wants all his best knights with him for this meeting. Camelot can be held against enemies for months with the men in it now. It will keep.”
“What is the meeting?”
“Something with the Picts. Arthur has been active on the northern borders. He will have to play nice and reassure them he is not expanding, merely maintaining.”
“Why does he need me, then?” This sounded like politics and military issues, not magical threats. She wanted to help Arthur however he needed, but if she was not essential, she was wasting her time and risking Arthur’s safety. She could almost feel Rhoslyn getting farther and farther away. Having more time to plot wickedness with the patchwork knight.
“What better way to show peaceful intentions than to bring his new bride? It demonstrates that he trusts them and is treating this as a pleasant meeting between friendly allies.”
“So I am a decoration?” Her heart sank, and she gritted her teeth.
“You are a vital piece in a complicated game.”
“Mmm.”
“You do not sound happy with that answer.”
“I am happy to help the king in whatever way I can.” But her face would not give up its frown. Maybe there was more to it. There could be something magic in play, and Arthur was bringing her under false pretenses.
“Well,” Mordred said, “I am afraid your disobedient horse is about to break into a gallop again and I will have to follow. It may be a while before we can get the horse to slow down.”
Her horse was walking calmly. Mordred’s mossy-green eyes twinkled expectantly. She clicked her tongue and tapped the horse’s sides. It broke into a gallop, the wind greeting her once more.
* * *
After a tongue-lashing from Brangien—who apparently felt freer outside the walls, as well, and had no qualms about shouting at the queen for risking her neck and riding too fast—Guinevere was forced to keep her horse at a reasonable walk.
To further emphasize her point, Brangien planted her horse twenty feet ahead of Guinevere’s and kept it there. Mordred grew ever more focused on their surroundings.
The countryside offered no threats, though. In their daylong ride, they passed field after field. The vista of green and gold was broken only by the occasional small town or hamlet. There were not many people in the towns—they were out in the fields, working. But a few children were around, playing happily or watching the mounted procession with open curiosity. Horses were not a common sight out here.
As afternoon stretched out warm and content like a cat, they passed through another small village. A woman and her son sold them fresh bread. It reminded Guinevere of what Brangien had said about the little boy in the village claimed by the forest. When the whitewashed cob houses faded in the distance, Guinevere turned to Mordred.
“Have any forests grown here? Do you have to fight them back often?”
“No.” Mordred looked past her. On the far horizon there was a dark smudge, but that was the only evidence of forestland she could see. Her hand-knotted magic had not reached that far north—she had focused it all in Rhoslyn’s direction. “Magic thrives on blood and wonder and chaos. Camelot is so well ordered, so structured, that magic can find no hold. Arthur strangled it, starved it, and cut it out. He allows no seeds within his borders.”
Well. Except her. But what Mordred said made her curious. Maybe Arthur had done something to the lake, and that was why it was so dead. She would have to ask him. “And that is why he banished Merlin, even though Merlin had always helped.”
Mordred ran his fingers along his jaw, where dark stubble was beginning to peer through his pale skin. “Not all of us agreed that was necessary. But yes. Merlin himself is chaos in mortal form.”
Guinevere snorted. Then she tried to cover it with a cough. Chaotic was an excellent way to describe Merlin. Was it any wonder her memories were confusing jumbles of images and lessons, with gaping holes between?
She closed her eyes at the sudden flare of discomfort, the suspicion that there was more to her missing memories than she was allowing herself to see.
She had to focus, though. She was not here for herself. She was here for Arthur an
d Camelot. Merlin was a risk to associate with, certainly. But surely Camelot could understand the necessity of keeping certain weapons. Most of the city was stone, but the inhabitants still kept barrels of water everywhere in case of fire. They did not want fire, did not set it, but they were prepared to fight it the only way they could. Magic was the same. Keeping someone capable of recognizing and combating it was not the same as inviting magic to take hold within the city.
Was it?
“What if someone attacks using magic?” she asked, keeping her tone as light and innocent as possible. “Who will defend you with Merlin gone?”
“Keeping Merlin in the city was too risky. Like calls to like.” He glanced over at her, then looked quickly away. “Besides, people did not trust the wizard.”
“Why not? He always fought for Arthur.”
“In his own ways, when he chose to, how he chose to. He was bound by no laws, not even Arthur’s. And then there was the matter of Arthur’s birth.”
She wanted Mordred to keep talking, but she had to be careful what she revealed. How much would the real Guinevere have known? “I have heard the rumors. That Uther Pendragon used a wizard to trick Igraine so he could lie with her.” Guinevere shuddered. It was a violent, terrible magic. It could breed only evil. How had it produced Arthur? “I can understand why they would not want another wizard in Camelot.”
“Another wizard? What do you mean?”
Guinevere turned her face to him. “What do you mean?”
“It was Merlin.”
“No.” Guinevere shook her head. The information did not fit. It could not fit. Her chest squeezed, like she had been laced too tightly. “No, it was a dark sorcerer.”
Mordred’s smile was as soft and blue as the twilight falling around them. “Yes. Merlin. That is the nature of magic. When you bend the world to your will, when you twist nature around yourself, where does the power stop? Who tells you to stop?”
The Guinevere Deception Page 14
