Pendragon's Heir (53 page)

The obsidian knife…

Mordred struck. Three jabbing motions with the T-hilted knife. Three choking little coughs as Nerys slid to her knees. First the lamp thumped onto the rush-strewn floor, then Nerys followed.

Blanchefleur stared into her dying eyes. Nerys’s bloody lips moved one last time. “
Naciens
…”

Nerys the Fay went into Sarras.

Mordred wiped the obsidian blade against his boot and tucked it back into his pouch. Then he reached down where Nerys’s lamp lay licking the floor beside her, threw it onto the bed, and left, slamming the door.

Branwen gave a little high keening cry, put her arms around herself, and began to shake. Blanchefleur could not cry, not yet; she pushed up her tunic sleeve and pinched herself again. Again, the pain promised no waking from this nightmare.

She slumped down onto the floor beside Branwen, put her arm around her, and sat.

Again, the moonlight shifted. Somewhere out in the summer night of Gloucestershire, a blackbird woke and warbled and fell asleep again.

At last, Branwen stirred and sniffed. “Something’s burning.”

“Mordred set my bed on fire. Again.” Well, the last time, it had been Perceval. But it was all Mordred’s fault.

Branwen wiped tears from her eyes and then stared at her wet hands. “What happens if the door burns?” Her voice held little more than idle curiosity.

“I don’t know. We get stranded here, I think.”

There would be time for that cup of tea with Emmeline.

But Branwen turned to her in concern. “We have to go back. What about Heilyn? And Perceval?”

Perceval? “You’re right,” she gasped, scrambling to her feet. Through the wardrobe door, the flames had spread to the dry rushes on the floor. In a little time the room would be impassable. Blanchefleur stared in dismay. “Where will we go? What if Mordred is waiting for us outside, like he was for Nerys?”

Branwen dragged in a sniff and set her jaw defiantly. “I have a plan. If he means to burn Camelot, he won’t stay inside till it falls on his head. He will wait outside until he is sure we’re dead. So we will hide in here until he gets tired of waiting and goes away.”

It sounded like a terrible plan to Blanchefleur. She said: “Where?”

“In one of the cellars.”

“If the castle burns, we’ll be crushed. If it doesn’t burn, Mordred will keep looking until he finds us.”

“Not in Sir Kay’s secret cellar.”

“Sir Kay’s what?”

“The one he keeps the best wine in, in case it gets stolen. Only he and Sir Lucan know where it is. And me. And I told Heilyn, of course.”

“Sir Kay told
you
about his secret cellar?”

“Well, he likes me! The cellar is quite safe. It lies under the garden, not under the castle. There is a hidden door in the big buttery.”

“Branwen, you’re a marvel. Let’s go.”

Branwen caught her elbow as she went to fling the tapestry back. “Yes, but let me go first. If Mordred is waiting outside, he won’t catch both of us.”

Branwen pulled a sleeve of her smock across her nose and mouth, slipped through into Camelot, and skirted the flames to the door of Blanchefleur’s chamber. She was gone for as long as it took to count twenty before the door swung open again, and God be thanked, it was Branwen, beckoning with a smile. Blanchefleur took one final farewell look at the moonlit hills that had once been her home. Then she stepped into the smoke and heat and locked the wardrobe door behind her.

“Come on,” Branwen was urging. Blanchefleur went gingerly through the smouldering rushes. Here by the bed Nerys lay where she had fallen, with her blood soaking the floor. Near her feet the fire licked the wool of her dress. Blanchefleur reached down, and touched the fading warmth of her cheek, and looked into her eyes.

Empty.

Alive, the fay’s eyes had been bottomless wells of age and knowledge, into which no mortal could gaze for long without terror. Dead, they were like the broken windows of a house than has been plundered. Dead, they were just eyes.

Tears blurred Blanchefleur’s vision. What could she do? What could she say? Nothing came. At last she wiped away her tears, and took the long wooden pin from Nerys’s hair, and whispered, “Godspeed, oldest friend.”

Branwen was standing at the door, and caught Blanchefleur’s hand as she came. Outside, in the passage, no sound of voice or footstep ruffled the silent air. Branwen said, “No one is here. I went up and down the passage and looked.”

They stole down back passages and stairways to the kitchen. This too was deserted; only a cauldron of hot water steamed pointlessly over a dying fire, waiting for the oats that would never come.

“Everyone’s gone,” Blanchefleur said with a swift premonition, hanging back.

“Good.” Branwen took a firmer grip on her hand and marched her down into the buttery, a room sunk below ground and stocked with barrels, bottles, and wineskins.

And also with stranger store.

In the centre of the floor was heaped a great pile of boxes and bundles, but these had a sinister look, for one narrow black thread led from each of them to a thick black rope lying upon the ground, flame-tongued, sputtering and fizzing. All this was visible in the candlelight, for here at last they found another soul.

A woman in the sable robes of a nun, her shadow huge and gaunt in the flickering light, turned at the sound of their entry and smiled with thin red lips.

Blanchefleur saw her face, and all hope died.

“Morgan!”

The Queen of Gore smiled a little more broadly.

“So my errand is done before I begin,” she said.

37

Though all lances split on you,

All swords be heaved in vain,

We have more lust again to lose

Than you to win again.

Chesterton

B
EFORE
B
LANCHEFLEUR COULD MOVE
,
OR SPEAK
, or think what to do next, Morgan glanced down at the sputtering fuse on the floor, and ground it out with her toe.

Blanchefleur lifted her gaze to Morgan’s absurdly wimpled face, and quelled the urge to pinch herself again. “I warn you,” she whispered. “Whatever it is you want from us, you will perhaps win harder than you can afford.”

“I am not here to kill you.”

“Really.”

“Oh, for St Peter’s sake…” Morgan gestured to the dead fuse. “If I wanted you dead, I would have stayed away and let this blow you to the other side of Sarras.”

There was something strange in Morgan’s manner, something new, and suddenly the hair rose on the back of Blanchefleur’s neck, for she had the notion that a different soul now walked and spoke in Morgan’s body. She took a wary step back. “True enough. What else do you want?”

A bitter smile curled half Morgan’s mouth. She said: “I want you to trust me. Now, and without asking questions. I mean to bring you out of Camelot safely, but if we stand here much longer Mordred will come in looking for answers.”

Blanchefleur stood speechless. Her first impulse was to laugh. Morgan lied the way other people breathed. Yet was this the best she could manage? Why no careful web of falsehood?

Did she count on them believing such a threadbare story?

And whether they believed her or not, what hope was there of escape? Not even Sir Kay’s cellar would shield them from an explosion in the next room.

Blanchefleur looked at the stack of boxes and bundles and said, “What is it?”

“Dynamite,” Morgan said, “and you saw it before in the spire of Sarras, for Mordred has the secret of its making, and by your leave I’ll light the fuse and finish us all off before he comes in and finds us.”

She swept the torch down toward the fuse.

“No!”

“Wait!”

Morgan looked up at them, and saw the surrender in their faces.

“Good,” she said. “Now, here is the way of it: I came here when I knew what Mordred intended. In the north passage above the chapel I met Nerys the Fay. When I asked after you, she said you were safely hidden. Therefore she must have given you a key to the other world.”

Blanchefleur made no sign of assent or dissent. Morgan shrugged and went on.

“Mordred suspects you are here. He thinks to destroy the castle and anyone hiding in it, and so he has had Camelot emptied and surrounded so that none can escape. There is only one chance. We must find a door that will weather the blast, and use the key to go through it. Between an apple-tree and a walnut, in the wall between the garden and the town, there is an iron gate. If I light the fuse, there will be time enough to run to the gate and use the elf-key…”

Morgan spoke almost too fast to be understood, but as the words tumbled out Blanchefleur took a step closer, and then another, studying the witch’s face. Branwen dragged at her arm the whole way, speechless with terror.

That was it. Merciful heavens, that was it, that was the thing that was new in Morgan’s manner.

She meant what she was saying, every word. No lies. No mockery.

Blanchefleur gathered her wits and spoke. “I have a key—Branwen, it’s all right—and I know the gate you mean.”

Relief flared in Morgan’s eyes. “Then there is still a chance for us.” She shifted her grip on her torch and looked at the fuse. “Run…”

Blanchefleur and Branwen fled. Branwen took the lead: “I know the quickest way.” But at the door leading into the garden, Blanchefleur pulled her back and broke their stride just long enough to glance into the icy morning. In the drab winter garden, among the smoky blue-grey of naked trees, nothing moved.

They went out, running under the wall until they reached the place Morgan had spoken of—a beautiful gate, all scrolling iron-work, with a midsummer tree traced in the centre. But when Blanchefleur fumbled the key into the lock and flung it open its inner side was smooth oak and the Vicarage spare room loomed before them again.

They stepped down into the night and turned to see Morgan running through the trees behind them. Blanchefleur whipped the key from the lock of the gate and brought it inside, fitting it to the lock of the wardrobe. Then a thought struck both of them at once, for she and Branwen glanced from Morgan’s flying figure, first to each other and then to the key.

She was still the Enemy of Logres. How much blood was on her hands? And all they had to do was lock the wardrobe door.

For a heartbeat or two they stared at each other, eyes wide, breathing fast. Then Branwen said: “No.”

“No,” Blanchefleur echoed.

Then Morgan was with them, gasping for breath, and Blanchefleur whisked the door shut and locked it.

For a moment there was no sound in the little room but their breathing and the slam of racing hearts in their ears. Then Blanchefleur said:

“Even if the gate is destroyed in the blast, we can use the key to open another door, can’t we?”

Morgan settled herself cross-legged on the floor and shook her head. “From this side of the door only the Elves can do that.”

“But you’ve done it without a key. With Sir Odiar.”

“That was not Elvish skill,” Morgan said. Her voice bristled, but after a little time she spoke again, more softly.

“In Sarras, you used the shadow knife to shear all my power away. Do you not remember? I can open no more gates; the rulers of the air come no more to my call.”

Branwen was wide-eyed in the moonlight. “You have no magic anymore? Blanchefleur did that to you?”

“Yes.”

Blanchefleur leaned her head back against the wardrobe door. How bitter a humiliation must that have been for one of Morgan’s self-conceit? “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had done that.”

Morgan shook her head in the darkness. “Why should you be sorry? The airy ones only desire the destruction of Sarras and the corruption of all mortal flesh. And after they abandoned me I was no more use to Mordred. I looked for a place of refuge, but no one was willing to shield me. Even my lover closed the door in my face, telling me to be grateful he did not turn me over to his new master.”

“Sir Odiar? That must have been before Perceval killed him, of course.”

“Odiar is dead? Then am I avenged.” For a moment there was a fierce note of triumph in Morgan’s voice. Then it faded. “No one would give me shelter, not even my true son, Ywain. Only the church gave me sanctuary.”

Branwen stared. “You truly are a nun now?”

“I will be.” Morgan paused, and went on almost shyly. “So be not sorry for what you did in Sarras. Nothing else could have woken me from those blasphemous dreams. When the light of day stripped away every illusion, what could I do but kiss the Son?”

A nun. It was dark in the Vicarage bedroom, for the moon had set. Blanchefleur stared at Morgan’s dim outline and tried to stretch her mind around this notion. Morgan, erstwhile Witch of Gore and Enemy of Logres, now a penitent and an ally? Could it be true? Yet surely if there was a flutter of deceit in Morgan’s voice she would have heard it?

“You said you met Nerys,” Blanchefleur said.

“Yes. While I was looking for you. She told me you were safe. I have not seen her since.”

“Mordred killed her.”

“Surely not! One does not so easily cut the ties that bind an immortal to life.”

“He used the same obsidian knife as—you remember.”

Morgan drew in her breath. “The knife! Where is it?”

“Mordred has it.”

In the dark, Blanchefleur heard the whisper of air and fabric as Morgan threw up both her hands. “Then how are we to kill him?”

“How? In battle, surely? Mordred isn’t immortal, like Nerys.”

“Not just like Nerys,” Morgan said. She thrummed her fingers gently against the wardrobe. “Hear me: there is something you should know about my second son.”

Blanchefleur felt her heart sink into her stomach. “He’s my brother.”

“Not in the way you mean. Mordred is…” Morgan’s thrumming continued, as if collecting scattered or nervous thoughts. “…made, not conceived. I took a hair from the King’s head.”

In a flash Blanchefleur understood, and recoiled in horror. “The thing you intended to use the Grail for?
You already did it?
”