Under Camelot's Banner (29 page)

While her ladies hung back, Morgaine approached the cairn with a reverent demeanor. She stood beside it for awhile, with her head bowed. Laurel tried to compose herself to prayer, to banish thoughts of her brother pacing his old chamber with the guards outside waiting for an excuse to exact punishment from him, of her sister tearing herself apart to keep watch over their home, of herself standing hostage to the plots and plans swirling all around her. But prayer would not come, only more anger and the sick, sad helplessness that had dogged her since she had watched Lynet ride away.

While Laurel sank beneath her own thoughts, Morgaine reached out and touched her hand as if in friendly sympathy. Startled off her guard, Laurel looked into the other woman's eyes.

“It is a bitter thing to lose a father to violence,” she said. “I know it well, and I am sorry for you.”

Unexpectedly, a wave of warmth rushed over Laurel. It was such a relief to hear a sympathetic voice. She was surrounded by her folk, but at the same time she was separate and alone. All her family was gone from her, even her beloved sister. What could be worse than that? Although she might be long accustomed to keeping her own council, it had been so hard these past days. She was not even mistress in her own home. She had not realized until this moment how desperately she had longed for a friendly voice, to unburden herself to someone to whom she was not mistress but only friend.

As these thoughts passed through her, she felt again the tang of salt on her lips, brought by the hard winds from the ocean that whipped at her cloak and teased her hair.

But I am not alone. Not here, not now.
She kept her gaze on Morgaine's without wavering.
I will never be so alone that I need turn to you, not like this, Morgaine. Have you not learned that yet from your dealings with our family?

Although Laurel spoke not a word of this aloud, Morgaine nodded once, as if she understood, and what was more, that she approved. Laurel had the sudden feeling she had passed some sort of test, and a fresh spasm of anger shivered through her.

“I have a word I would say to you, Lady, while we have this time to ourselves.”

“What word, Lady?”

“Tintagel.”

Laurel did her best not to stare, but some hint of surprise surely showed in her face, for Morgaine smiled, just a little. “It is a secret to no one that I wish to bring down the murderer and pretender who calls himself King Arthur. Cambryn and Tintagel could be bulwarks in the war that is to come. When it is done, and I and mine have the victory, who better could I ask to hold that great fortress between land and sea? I know your birth and blood well, Laurel Carnbrea, Laurel
verch
Morwenna. That place is naturally yours. I would give it to you.”

Laurel's tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. The sea wind blew hard, mingling the scents of rain and salt. She had been to Tintagel, of course. She had stood at the base of its cliffs, revelling in the rush and the wildness of the waves, hearing the song that was the other part of her own self, the part that must remain unknown, because she had promised her mother that she would protect Cambryn.

Tintagel. Could she live there? Be mistress of the land's end, and bring the two halves of herself together? Go every day and take the sea by the hand?

She looked at the woman before her with sudden, sharp hatred.
How dare you bring me this temptation!
Again, Morgaine only smiled.

“Shall we go, my lady?” Laurel inquired frostily.

“Oh yes,” replied Morgaine. “We have a long way to go yet, you and I.”

To this, Laurel could find no answer at all.

Laurel presided over the evening meal as best as she was able, seeing to it that her guards and her unwelcome guests were all fed as luxuriously as their remaining stores allowed. She knew from Jorey's worried looks that the extra strain was beginning to tell on the cellars. Provision for the
castell
would have to be seen to before many more days had passed. The idea that she would have to seek permission from Mesek and Peran for this basic duty galled her.

Morgaine, for her part, pretended to a distant acquaintance with Peran, and none at all with Mesek, who had reappeared just as the board was being laid. He did not say where he had been, and Laurel did not ask. She was in no humor to accept one more lie. Meg would be able to find out for her, and if Meg could not, Lynet would. Laurel tried to be grateful that all remained civil and polite, and nearly silent. The rain had begun outside, and its drumming could be heard clearly throughout the meal, there was so little noise in the hall.

By the time Laurel saw her guests settled for the night, a profound weariness dragged at every limb. She wanted nothing more than to seek her own bed, but there was one thing she must do before then. She sent Meg and the girls ahead to prepare her bed, swearing she would be with them shortly. Then, with her guards in tow and little Tag to carry the rushlight, she reluctantly climbed the stairs. She travelled the long corridor beneath the roof with the storm's voice battering at her ears and its drafts curling around her ankles, until she came at last to her brother's door.

“I will speak with him,” she said to the guard who had been duly posted.

The young man — Tremere's oldest son, what was his name? — looked as if he wanted question the wisdom of this, but he remembered himself in time, closed his mouth and stepped aside. Laurel pushed the door open.

A blast of frigid, wet air slapped against her face. Colan stood at his narrow window, the shutters thrown wide to admit the storm's winds. The hiss of wind and rain hid the sound of her entry, and he did not turn.

A sister's exasperation that was older and deeper than her rage snapped into place. “Are you looking to die of cold?”

Colan turned his head. The badly flickering firelight left dark hollows on his cheeks. His face was covered with a beard of at least a week's growth, which made him look all the more haggard.

“You do not fear to be alone with me?” he asked. His voice was harsh and lower than it had been when he left.

Laurel sighed. Another game. More sparring with words. “Should I?”

“You have seen me do murder,” he answered simply. Simply. Nothing was simple now, nor would it ever be again, not even when his head had left his shoulders.

She spread her hands. “What would my murder gain you?”

He shrugged. “Why should I scruple at one more death?”

Laurel hung her head. Colan was soaked to the skin by now. His dirty tunic clung to his chest and he was shivering. He courted illness by his careless behavior, and somehow this annoyed her more sharply than the fact that she must soon sentence him to die. “You did not agree to be dragged back here to keep me guessing about whether you purpose my death as well as our father's.”

“You believe I agreed to be bound and thrown at your feet?” He spoke the words slowly, with every appearance of incredulity.

“I had thought to feign ignorance,” she said almost to herself. “To let your mistress play out whatever game she has in mind, but now that I see you again, I find I cannot do it.” She folded her arms against the chill wind blowing freely through the chamber. “This is a failure of cunning which seems to run strong in our family.”

“Sister I assure you, if I had my way, I would be a hundred miles from this place.”

“I am sure of that.” She was cold, and growing damp, the wildness of the wind streaming in cut to her heart, breaking patience and thought. “But you chose to deal with the wrong mistress. If I knew she could be this demanding of her servants, surely you must have known it as well.”

“Sister …” Colan held out his hand, suddenly pleading. He was a pathetic figure, rain-drenched and clearly starved. There was far too much of the boy she had helped raise in his eyes.

“Stop it, Colan,” snapped Laurel. “Do me the courtesy of believing I can see through this much of the game.”

He dropped his hand, and the rain on his visage took on the look of tears. “Sister, I swear before God Most High, that you need not fear that I plan anymore with her,” he whispered.

Despair surged around him like the storm winds he had invited in, and, for just a moment, Laurel's certainty wavered. “Why is that?”

“I failed her.” The words caught in his throat and seemed to rob him of his strength. He sat heavily on the low stool beside the fire. “When she says you may do as you will with me, she means just that,” he said to the sputtering flames, as if he already saw his fate there.

How could the sight of his defeat still reach her? With all he had done, how could her heart still reach to him now?

Because I failed him. Had I been true to our mother's last charge, he would not have become this thing.
“How is it you failed Morgaine?”

“Our sister reached Camelot.”

So.
Heart and understanding snapped back into place at once. “Should you not say the
morverch
failed her?” she inquired acidly.

He glanced up at her, his brows raised. “You know of that then? Yes, you would. It does not matter,” he waved his hand wearily. “It was at my urging they rose to prevent her.”

“Say murder her, Colan. You have not shrunk from the word or deed before.”

Colan picked up a crumb of peat from the floor and pitched it into the hearth. It flared briefly, sending up a scattering of sparks. “As you will,” he said. “Perhaps it is only because I can be reached and they cannot. It makes no difference. It was at my urging, and it did not happen. So, by the reckoning of my lady, the fault is mine.” He spoke the words mildly, as if mentioning some small piece of gossip at a feast.

“You seem most resigned to this.”

He shrugged again. “I am damned Laurel,” he said in a hollow voice. “I know this. I knew it the moment the knife was in my hand. I thought what there might be was good result, much as I thought I had risen above the need I have of her, but there I was wrong once again.” He turned, lifting his gaze once more to her. “I ask you only one thing.”

Laurel folded her arms in front of her. “What is that?”

“Do not give me to the sword,” he said softly, the frightened boy looking out of the man. “Cast me alive into the sea.”

“Why would you wish such a thing?”

The ghost of a smile flickered about his mouth. “I promised the
morverch
a life in return for their raising the storm for my purposes. If I do not give them my own, they will reach out here seeking another.”

This surprised her, but she was certain he meant what he said. In this one way he meant to do right. “Why should you care?”

He shrugged. “Believe what you will, sister, but all I have done is because I do care — for this land, for my kin and all that we have been and might be. I have been wrong in each attempt, but it was not because I did not
care
.” His voice broke on the last word. “This last debt is mine, and I will pay it as best I can.”

She had wanted this to be swift. She had wanted the distance she could put between herself and the world to come to her aid. She had, of all things, not wanted to feel the tormenting ache in her heart or to add one more rage against necessity to her other angers. “I will consider what you have said.”

“Thank you.”

She could not speak. All her words choked her. She marched past him and slammed the shutters closed, slapping the latch into place. Why she did this, she did not know, especially as she could not look at him as she turned on her heel and strode out the door.

The small flock of guards stood there in the hall, waiting for her to make some move or declaration. Stranger and friend alike she looked at them, and saw only ox-like immobility and mindlessness staring back at her. Her teeth ground together in seething frustration. How had it come to this? What sin had she committed that God should punish her thus? What penance would make it right?

Please,
she prayed desperately.
Give me some sign. Any sign. Thy will be done, only show me what it is!

A draft from the storm outside curled around the back of her neck, raising the small hairs. A sense of movement turned her head and in the shadows beside the door, Laurel saw the flicker that meant Lynet was nearby.

She swallowed, uncertain as to whether this was the sign she had begged for, or more punishment.

“I am going to the chapel,” she announced to any who needed to hear. “I would pray before I retire.”

She swept before them, leading her permanent, personal parade down the empty corridors. The storm had brought night early, and the only reasonable thing to do was to seek one's bed. The very thought of sleep weakened her hands and blurred her eyes, but that blessed oblivion was not yet for her.

Her guards could not go armed into the chapel, and were themselves tired enough of the day and of their duty that they did not seek to follow her inside. Instead, they stationed themselves by the door where they could doze and grumble to each other without committing blasphemy.

Laurel took the failing rushlight from little Tag. With a distracted pat, she sent the yawning, blinking child to find his pallet. She used the last of the light to ignite two of the chapel's precious tapers. The flickering orange tallow flame blinked out and the brighter golden candle light blossomed around her. Above the altar, the light moved the faces of the Savior and Holy Mother so that their eyes almost seemed to blink, as if to hold back their tears. Lynet turned swiftly from them. She glimpsed Lynet again, beside the altar, so translucent and still she might have been another of the fading images of angels and prophets that adorned the walls.

Laurel knelt in front of the altar rail, bowed her head and crossed herself. She felt Lynet move closer, felt the warmth of her presence that was the warmth of a living body. Despite this Laurel shivered, for that approach was utterly soundless. There was no breath or footfall or whisper of cloth, just the inescapable sensation of another being beside her.