“Guinevere!” Lancelot shouted. The tree pulled Guinevere higher, holding her out over the meadow as her blood dripped, dripped, dripped into the ground. To the roots of all the other trees.
And in the center of the meadow, something else was moving. Writhing beneath the dirt. Waking up.
“Command them!” Mordred shouted. “Make them obey! Maleagant is almost here.”
Guinevere could not. She had done the wrong thing. In the dream, Merlin had told her to fight as a queen—it was the only thing he had told her—and she had tried to fight as a wizard. A tree swung, a low branch swiping viciously at Lancelot. Lancelot ducked under it, falling off her horse. She whistled sharply, and her horse ran from the meadow.
Mordred ran to his horse, but the trees got there first. Roots engulfed his horse and slowly pulled it down. There was a crunching noise, a breaking and tearing sound. The horse screamed once—Guinevere felt the scream throughout her body—and then it went silent.
A root snaked around Mordred’s leg. “Command them!” he shouted.
“Stop!” Guinevere screamed. She was still bleeding, still held suspended. But the trees stopped. Waiting. Listening. She held Maleagant in her mind. Added five more men to him. She put iron in their hands, fire in their eyes. Then she put her hand against the tree branch that held her. She fed the trees the image of Maleagant, of his men. She fed them fire and iron and death.
The trees shivered. The thing beneath her still writhed, like a beast circling unseen beneath the water, sending out ripples. But it had not surfaced yet.
The root around Mordred’s ankle slipped back beneath the dirt. He ran to a spot beneath Guinevere. Lancelot joined him.
Release me, she told the trees. They pushed back. They were hungry. They were thirsty. And she was something new. She could not explain the excitement the trees felt. Recognition, but also delight. They were trees. They had experienced men, they had known blood in the battles with Arthur. Why were they feeling this?
Stop, she demanded. She let sparks dance up and down her arms. The tree recoiled, dropping her. Mordred caught her—staggering, but breaking her fall.
They froze as Maleagant’s cold voice cut through the night. “What did you do to her?” he asked. He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “I do not like my things being damaged.” He loomed in the deeper dark at the edge of the trees, using them as cover. His men circled. Guinevere could hear them, but no one had stepped into the meadow yet.
Mordred set Guinevere down and stood in front of her. Lancelot shifted to protect both of them. “Run,” she said, her sword raised.
Maleagant laughed. “These are your champions? A woman and Arthur’s eel? You were right. The king does not love you, does he? I would send better after one of my dogs.” He paused. “Actually, my dogs are better than your protectors.” He lifted a hand and five riders burst into the meadow.
Their horses reared back, eyes rolling, nostrils flared with panic. Three of the men fell to the ground. The fourth held on. The horse fell instead, rolling over and crushing its rider before struggling to its feet and galloping into the forest after the other horses.
Lancelot spun among them, killing two of the men before they could get to their feet. Mordred did not leave Guinevere’s side. She did not want to look away from Lancelot, did not want to look away from Maleagant. So much was happening.
But she was staring down.
Beneath her feet, hundreds of jet-black beetles burst through the ground like fountains, spreading and scurrying away. Dusty black moths flew up, circling her, disappearing into the night air.
“To me!” Maleagant said. The two men remaining—two had been killed by Lancelot, one by the horse—backed up to Maleagant. As soon as the horses had gone mad, Maleagant had dismounted from his own. He had not set foot on the moonlit meadow. His men stood in front of him, swords raised. Maleagant stared at the quivering trees around them. “You are in trouble, little queen. You do not know what you have awoken here. I can get you out safely.”
Guinevere looked up from the horrors rising from the ground.
Maleagant held out his hand. “Walk to me very slowly and be grateful I am feeling merciful.”
The same darkness pouring out of the earth seemed to rise within her, filling her. The trees had tasted her—but she had tasted them, too. The ancient rage, sleeping for so long, was awake now. Beetles crawled up her, down her arms, over her face. The thing beneath her was almost free. She should be frightened.
She was only angry.
“I am not feeling merciful.” She closed her eyes and released the trees.
The man to Maleagant’s right stumbled, falling against a trunk. Branches grew in an instant, pulling him tighter and tighter. In a handful of seconds, the tree enveloped him, growing around him as it would a rock. But men are so much softer than rocks. So much more breakable. His screaming did not last long.
The man to Maleagant’s left met the same fate as Mordred’s horse. He was pulled down to the earth, embraced by roots. Squeezed and wrung out and broken down. The trees were not wasteful. They would use all of him.
Maleagant slashed at a branch that reached for him, cutting into it with his iron sword. The trees shuddered, drawing closer, leaning over the meadow. Maleagant ran toward Guinevere. He did not run fast enough.
Vines wound up his legs. He hacked at them, but each vine cut was replaced with three more. They thickened, keeping the shape of him, curling over him. They wrapped up to his arm, tightening, until he dropped his sword. He was rooted to the ground now, held fast. He fixed his eyes on Guinevere. The moon had broken free from the clouds, bathing them all in pale white light.
“You are worse than I,” he said, his jaw clenched, neck straining as he resisted the vines twining lovingly around it. “I sought to rule men. What you have awoken will destroy them.”
Guinevere felt nothing. Had she been afraid of something so fragile? So temporary? She imagined the vines entering his mouth, stopping his tongue. They did. They covered everything but his face. It tipped up toward the moon, his cold, dead eyes finally settling on an emotion:
Agony.
Maleagant was dead.
“Guinevere,” Lancelot said. The fear in her voice pierced Guinevere. She shuddered, suddenly aware of the beetles that crawled all over her. Aware of what she had done, and how little she had felt about it.
She brushed the beetles away frantically. The trees shuddered, creaking and groaning as they stretched. “Enough,” Guinevere said. “We are finished.”
But the trees were not. And neither was the darkness. A hand burst free from the ground, grabbing Guinevere’s ankle. Lancelot cut the hand off. It scurried along the ground like a spider, away into the forest.
“What have we done?” Guinevere covered her mouth as she watched another hand form where the first had been cut off. Something was down there. And it was breaking free.
Mordred knelt next to the hand. “Guinevere, I am so pleased to introduce you to the Dark Queen. My grandmother.”
The hand extended, growing to an arm. A hint of a shoulder. The first curve of what would be a head.
“No,” Guinevere said, backing away in horror.
Mordred released the hand. He stood. “Arthur destroyed her body, but not before she sent her soul down into the ground. She needed help in order to take a new form. I could not manage it; neither could my mother. This is miraculous. Thank you.”
“You tricked me!”
He recoiled as though offended. “I tricked you? I am the only person who has not lied to you. I am the only person who came for you.”
Lancelot gripped her sword hilt, stepping in front of Guinevere. “No,” she said. “You are not.”
“How?” Guinevere could not believe it, could not understand. “You are not fairy. You touch iron.”
Mordred twirled
his sword elegantly through the air, the metal singing. “My mother is Morgan le Fay, Arthur’s sister. But my father was the Green Knight. I am from both worlds. Iron bites, but it does not kill. And I am accustomed to pain.” He lifted an eyebrow in wry judgment. “That was a nasty trick you did on the doors at the castle. Like ants swarming over my body every time I went in or out.”
Guinevere forced her eyes away from the monstrosity in the ground to meet Mordred’s gaze. “You cannot let her rise. You know what it would mean.”
“A return to nature. A return to the wild magic at the heart of this country. Do you know who carved Camelot out of the mountain? It was not men. Men came in and claimed it, because that is what men do.” He held his sword and stared at how it caught the moonlight. “I do not want men to die. But they need to be reminded of their place in the world. Someone has to stop them claiming everything worth having. Stop them claiming everyone worth having.” He held out a hand toward Guinevere. “You do not belong in Camelot. You belong here, with the dark and wondrous magic that runs beneath and through everything. You know it is true. Tell me you have not tasted it. Tell me you have not felt it when we touch.”
Guinevere could not tell him that. Not honestly. And the loss of magic did hurt her. She felt it everywhere: in the weight of Camelot’s stone, the expectations of its people, the relentless erosion of time. She had let it form her into someone she did not know. She had let men claim her.
“What is your true name?” Mordred asked. “You are not a princess from the south.”
She opened her mouth, and—
She did not have it. It had been lost to her. All she was now was Guinevere. She could feel the future coming, creeping ever closer, where even the little magic she knotted into the world around herself would cease working. Wonder would sleep so deeply that it could not be called. Just like Merlin, sealed away in a cave. He had let it happen. He had left Camelot. Given it to Arthur. Given the world to men.
Guinevere understood Mordred’s anger. She felt it herself. Everything wondrous was being unmade, and it was terrible beyond comprehension. But wonder, too, was terrible. The meadow around her was proof enough of that. Was not Maleagant’s death terrible and wonderful in equal measure? The tree’s sentience beautiful and abominable? Trees, magic, wildness were the uncaring opposite of justice. Men demanded justice, revenge. They banished magic to make way for rules and laws. In nature, only power mattered. And she had power.
It had crawled all over her as she watched a man die.
She could not give herself to this darkness. Not after everything she had felt and seen and done as Guinevere. Because of Camelot, she knew what it was to have a family among friends. To love Arthur. To believe in him. She had from the moment they met. There was loss in what Arthur was doing, yes. She finally understood what the dragon had shown her. The kinship it had seen in her. The choice ahead of her.
Merlin had already made the choice to remove himself from the clash of old and new. To let his own magic be sealed away.
To die, even.
Guinevere was not ready to die. And she was not ready to let darkness return without a fight, either.
“We have to stop her from rising,” she said, turning to Lancelot. “I might be able to. But only if you keep Mordred busy.”
Lancelot’s grin was a grim sight in the moonlight. “I can do that.”
Mordred sighed. “Do you know why I never lose?” He rushed forward, kicking Lancelot viciously in the stomach. He swept his sword through the air. Lancelot barely managed to block it with her own. Mordred pushed, shoving her away. “Every moment touching iron, every breath taken in well-ordered, stifling Camelot, every minute near Arthur and Excalibur is pain. My life is pain. What have I to fear from you?” He ducked a swing from Lancelot and kicked out at her knee.
Guinevere hurried to where the Dark Queen was emerging. She had two hands now, shoulders, a spine. Her head was bowed, still not lifted. She moved and shifted, made not of skin but thousands of crawling things, of dirt, of plants. They were rebuilding her. Reaching out a trembling hand, Guinevere placed it on the Dark Queen’s back.
Everything moved faster, the Dark Queen shivering and rising. Guinevere yanked her hands—still covered in blood—back.
She had felt—
Life. Predator and prey. Birth and death. Pleasure and pain. The Dark Queen was all of them. More than human, and less, as well. She was fairy. She was chaos. She would tear down everything Arthur had built. Throw men back centuries. Take away their cities and fields, give them only foraging, hunting, being hunted. Because then she would have dominion over them. She was coming to reclaim the Earth.
And Guinevere could not stop it. No knot she knew could bind the chaos of the Dark Queen. Even touching her fed her more power. Merlin had warned Guinevere to fight as a queen. She had not. And she had awoken something she could not put back to sleep.
She turned to find Mordred standing over Lancelot. Lancelot was on the ground, unmoving, her sword gone. Mordred had his sword raised.
“Stop!” Guinevere shouted.
Mordred lowered his sword. “I have no quarrel with Lancelot. I like her. She defies the boundaries of men. I could not let her strike the Dark Queen, though. She is still vulnerable until she is formed. But it will not be long now.” Mordred moved to the side as Guinevere rushed to Lancelot. Her knight was still breathing, though a gash on her head was bleeding freely.
“Lancelot,” Guinevere said, shaking her shoulder. Lancelot groaned, but did not open her eyes or move.
“We have a lot to talk about.” Mordred sheathed his sword. “I would say the Dark Queen will explain, but she is not big on explanations. Come, we should move Lancelot out of the meadow. I do not think it will go well for her once my grandmother rises. Lancelot will be safer in the trees. If we can find her horse, maybe it will carry her far enough away. This is not a place for humans. The Dark Queen will show no mercy.”
“Then I will die, too!”
“Guinevere.” Mordred grabbed Lancelot by both arms to drag her across the meadow. “Now you are being obtuse.”
Guinevere ran to the first tree, the oldest. She pushed her palm against it, reaching for the knot that commanded it to obey. She sensed the tree feeling it. And she sensed the tree disregarding it.
“No!” she shouted. She pushed again, harder. If she could get the trees under control, they could bind the Dark Queen. She sank through the bark, remembering how she had changed Sir Bors’s memories. She felt for the tree’s heart, for its memory. Maybe she could—
The tree pushed back. When she finally managed to open her eyes, she was on her back, staring up at Mordred.
“You are not their queen.” His voice was soft. “The forest is hers. It always has been.”
Guinevere crawled back to the tree. She smashed her hand against it. The tree shivered, more with annoyance than anything. She was the bird drilling in, not deadly, merely a pest.
Then a shudder ripped through the tree, through the grove. Fear Guinevere knew, fear she had held her whole life, gripped her. The dread of death. Worse than death. She looked up from the blackest depths, the light shimmering on the surface of the water above her. Remember, the tree pushed. Remember what it is to be unmade.
Guinevere felt a sick twist of nausea. She looked up to see Excalibur pierce the tree.
The cold gripped her; it was terrible and empty. She crawled away, hoping that the trees would go back to sleep. But something else was happening. The tree cracked, going gray. It died before her eyes—dried up and dried out. The leaves fell, crumbling into dust before they hit the forest floor.
Just as her blood had spread, so, too, did the poison of Excalibur. All around the meadow, the trees that had awoken were consumed.
The thing in them that gave them life, spirit, anger and joy and hunger, was gone. Arthur withdrew the s
word. It did not glow in the moonlight. Even the moon was devoured, no reflection along the smooth metal of the blade. Arthur turned.
“Quick, before she is formed!” Guinevere said. “She is still vulnera—” Guinevere felt metal under her chin, against her throat. Mordred lifted her to her feet, holding her against his chest. His arm around her waist. His blade at her neck. They stood between Arthur and the Dark Queen.
“Mordred,” Arthur said. “Release her.”
“I am not yours to command.”
“You cannot want this. You know what the Dark Queen will bring. You know how destructive the magic, how terrible the cost.”
“Who are you to tell magic it cannot exist? You, who exist because of magic! Magic of violence, magic of greed. Men have done worse things with magic than fairies ever dreamed of! You were born because of magic, and you rule because of a foolish wizard, because the Lady of the Lake gave you that hideous thing!”
“He is the bridge,” Guinevere whispered, remembering. “He is the bridge between the violence that was and the peace that might be.”
“Move, Mordred.” Arthur tried to go around, but Mordred followed, keeping himself and Guinevere between Arthur and the Dark Queen. Guinevere could hear her behind them, could hear the skittering and creeping. The growing.
Arthur stepped closer. Guinevere shuddered, her whole body convulsing with the same existential dread she had felt from the tree. She pushed back against Mordred, needed to get away, to be away, to be far away from that thing. From Excalibur.
“If you come closer to her, she will be unmade. Look, she can barely stand.” Mordred stepped toward Arthur, pushing Guinevere nearer to the sword. The world spun. Darkness swirled, eating away at her vision. She was underwater. She was trapped. She was—
Arthur backed away. Guinevere drew a shuddering breath.
“I will let you choose,” Mordred said. “Your mother never had a choice. I am more merciful than Merlin. If you want to end the Dark Queen, you can. But you will have to go through Guinevere to get to her. Excalibur will kill her, too. That is your choice. Kill them both, or kill neither.”
The Guinevere Deception Page 29
