Description
Chapter 1 – Part 1
Chapter 1 – Part 1
THEN
A curl of raven hair lay between the blades of new spring grass like a serpent. Despair crashed over me like an ocean wave as I reached for Eithne’s hand only to find it cold.
“Lady.” A knight’s voice penetrated my sorrow.
It was the cluster of knights on the hill that had drawn my attention as I frolicked in the meadow. And the knight kneeling over a fallen body with healing magic radiating around him that gave me the first clue of the tragedy that awaited.
As I stood the ground fell away, the grass far further from my head than it had been moments ago. Age was something of a personal choice in the world-between-worlds where I lived, but some things could not be understood by a child’s mind. The magic had aged me, although I couldn’t guess how much. Nor did it matter.
“The Lady is my mother. Do not give me her title before my time,” I said, my voice husky with tears. “Who did this?”
“I can’t say yet,” the knight said. I looked at him for the first time, a large man with kindly brown eyes rich as good earth. “It was not gently done.”
Licking my lips, I tasted tears. “This is Eithne, youngest child of the mortal chieftain. She was my friend.” Barely four summers old in the way mortals counted things. Filled with laughter.
“The woman is Morgana, the chieftain’s wife,” the knight said pointing to a tall body whose face had been smashed beyond recognition. Her clothing declared her status, woolen layers dyed with blue woad to match the swirls tattooed on her golden skin. A silver wolf pelt lay across her shoulders and a matching silver belt buckle with a wolf’s head lay blood-stained at her hip.
“Who would dare?” My gaze fell to Branna, the chieftain’s other daughter, she’d been older than I usually appeared but I’d was fond of her. A serious, dutiful child, my mother often reminded me to comport myself as the graceful Branna.
I fell to my knees beside her, feeling the cold blood soak from the mud of the field through my woolen skirt.
Smoothing a lock of her dark hair from her pale face I said, “This will mean war. Mordred will never forgive this insult to his family.” My mother spoke little of the politics of court, but I was young, not stupid.
When the Roman Emperor recalled the Legio II Augusta to foreign shores our land was left in chaos. The northmen wanted their lands returned. The remaining legionnaires wanted to hold the ground they’d conquered. One could hardly walk for an hour before coming across another tiny village with a king screaming he was the true leader of the land.
Poor Eithne and Branna. There were enough excuses for war already. To be used like a river or field was an insult to my friends.
“How did they die?” I asked. “Was it quick?”
“It’s hard to know,” the knight said. “But, if it gives m’lady comfort, we will know their killer soon.”
I turned and saw his expression was sour. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“We found a gifting knife in Lady Morgana’s belly.”
I shook my head in confusion. “A gifting knife? Why the odd name?”
“It’s a creation of the dark fey of Annwyn.” The knight’s voice was hushed as he spoke of the forbidden place. “Beyond the reach of the Queens and far from the Mortal Coil of men.”
“No good thing comes of Annwyn,” I said, my voice growing sharp with anger and fear. “What gift could possibly come of that place?”
“Power,” the knight said. “A person may, if they are willing, trade a mortal life for the power of the darkest demons who haunt the slopes of Deamhain mountains.”
Bile caught in my throat. Blood traded for power. “That is filthy thing.”
“Aye, m’lady.”
Shaking as I stood I looked at the bodies. “Knight, swear to me they will have a proper burial as is fitting of daughters of the Earth.”
“I swear it, m’lady.” He bowed.
“Sweet Eithne. Bright Branna. Morgana, kindest of mortal kind…” I shook my head. “The Lady Morgana’s wolf pelt, see it’s buried properly too. Their magic is strange to me, but I know the wolf was significant to them.” Once I’d seen her fill the pelt with a breath of magic and send it racing after bandits in the night.
The memory brought tears of longing to my eye.
“Child!” My mother’s voice whipped across the hill with a lashing of magic most potent.
I turned, lifting my chin and squaring my shoulders. “Mother.”
She was beautiful as any carving, tall and dark, coated in rich greens with gold thread and precious stones embroidered along the hem of her dress. In her wrath her uncontrolled magic whipped her black hair like a gale. “Who has done this to you?” she demanded as she climbed the hill, gaping at my change in age. “Who has stolen your childhood from you?”
I sensed more than saw the tension in the knights. They were loyal to Arturus, king of this land, but my mother was the Lady of Camelot, fairy Queen, an unbeaten warrior, they could no more oppose her than a sparrow could stop a storm cloud.
“The knights did nothing, mother. See the bodies? Eithne and Branna were dear to me. Their deaths…” I looked to her for a comfort I knew wouldn’t come. My mother was a fairy Queen unchanging. Compassion was not a gift she’d been born with.
The winds of her wrath stilled as she looked down at the three corpses. “Steward, when did you find them?”
“Minutes ago, Lady,” the knight reported, his voice calm despite her show of strength. He had a sense of power about him a power as well, more than simply the right to pull on the power of the king to heal. “My patrol rode through here and young Gawain spotted a child’s boot at the bottom of the hill. We spread out thinking a youngster wandered from home.”
“A pity that was not the case,” my mother said. Her lips pressed into a thin line of disproval. It was impossible to tell if she were angry with the knight, the killer, or merely the untidy mess left behind.
My mother disapproved of untidy murders. In the nearly four hundred mortal years I’d shadowed her in a child’s form, I’d seen more than one of her enemies vanish with nothing left but a small, satisfied smile on my mother’s lips.
She frowned again at me. “Come with me, child. Steward, have your men dispose of the bodies and report to the king at once. This does not bode well for Camelot.”
I looked at the knight in terror. Eithne and Branna deserved more than to be tossed aside for carrion crows. Sweet Lady Morgana…
A small smile appeared on the knight’s face. He winked at me, and there was the tiniest nod of his head. Enough to give my heart peace. The knight had sworn he would care for the bodies, and he was a knight of the Round Table, a lord in the lands of Camelot, he would never break an oath.