Crown of Dreams (12 page)

R
hianna opened her eyes to darkness and silence. She felt bruised all over. She uncurled, threw off the cloak in a shower of small stones and shook the dust from her hair. She could see nothing at all. Was she dead?

She crawled warily towards where she remembered her cousin standing, and something behind her clanked… the stupid chain. She felt around in the dark until she found the sword belt she’d thrown at Mordred and spent some time trying to open the manacle with the point of the buckle. But she couldn’t see what she was doing and kept stabbing her fingers in the dark. She wished she had listened to Arianrhod and put some pins in her hair. She might have picked the lock with them.

Tears came when she thought of how the witch had tricked her into putting her friend in danger. Then she thought of her cousin’s smile as he’d limped away down the tunnel and tightened her fist on her empty scabbard.

He’d left her in here to die!

“You won’t take the throne,” she said
through gritted teeth. “It’s my father’s, and I’m going to get out of here and stop you.”

“
That’s my brave girl
,” said a voice.

Rhianna’s stomach jumped. She spun round, clutching the buckle like a weapon, and stared into the dark. Had one of Mordred’s bloodbeards got trapped down here with her? But it didn’t sound like something a bloodbeard would say.

Then her Avalonian armour began to glimmer, showing her King Arthur’s ghost looking very pale and thin against a slab of rock. It seemed the roof had collapsed, by some miracle missing her on the way down and creating a pocket of air.

“Father!” she gasped. “What are you doing here? This is the Gate to Annwn! You mustn’t go there, or I’ll never get your soul back into
your body in Avalon… how did you get in?”

“
Rock is no barrier to a spirit
,” the ghost said with a smile.
“The magic of the Crown shines brightly. You were not hard to find, daughter. But you must get out of here before the rest of the roof falls.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” she muttered, eyeing the cracks in the rock above her head.

“
Try the other end.
” The ghost pointed to the place where her chain had been staked to the wall, and she realised a crack ran right through the fastening.

Her heart leaped in hope. She groped her way back along the chain and poked the buckle into the crack. After a bit of work and a broken nail, the stake dropped into her lap.

She gathered up the hateful chain in relief,
wrapped it around her waist and fastened her sword belt over the top to keep it out of the way. Grinning, she sprang to her feet and hit her head on the roof. “Ow!” she muttered, seeing stars.

“
Keep your head low,
” her father’s ghost advised. “
The tunnel is not blocked, but you’ll need to move some stones
.”

Rhianna rubbed her head, dropped back to her knees and crawled over to the tunnel. She heaved a large stone out of the way and scraped at the rubble, enlarging the hole. It still looked very small. She’d hoped to see daylight, but more darkness waited ahead. She thought of the underwater tunnel she’d swum through to find Nimue’s cave and Excalibur. This was no worse, not really.

She took a deep breath and wormed her
way through the foul-smelling dark. She had to stop several times to move more rubble out of the way, squeezing the stones past her and pushing them back along the tunnel with her feet. By the time she tasted fresher air ahead, her fingers and toes were bruised and bleeding.

With a final rattle of stones, she crawled out of the tunnel into the larger cave the bloodbeards had carried her through. Then, she’d had a sack over her head. Now, the glimmer of her armour showed her piles of treasure and pale bones.

She stood up warily and picked her way across the lair. There were sharp things underfoot, and no sign of her boots. She found a rusty dagger among the dragon’s treasure and used it to cut up an old cloak that had been lying near the bones. She tied the strips around
her sore feet. Then she studied her prison.

A great wall of rubble blocked the entrance to the lair. Boulders the size of horses reached all the way up to the roof. Her heart sank. She’d never shift those on her own. Could she dig another tunnel between them? She carefully began to remove the smaller stones that filled the gaps between the larger rocks, using the dagger to lever them out.

Meanwhile, her father’s ghost sat down on a pile of the dragon’s treasure and stared at a heap of rags and charred bones lying at his feet. He frowned slightly, as if searching for a memory, then touched the body.

“
Sister
,” he said sadly.
“Why did you have to oppose me
?”

A chill went through Rhianna as she recognised the blackened bones as those
Morgan Le Fay’s spirit had been sitting on earlier.

She glanced uneasily at her father. He kept fading and then shimmering back into view with a start, like someone trying not to doze off. His ghost looked even paler and thinner than it had the first time she’d seen him. Was the witch’s spirit trying to lure him through the Gate to Annwn?

“Tell me more about the Crown of Dreams,” she said to distract him. “Merlin told me its jewels contain secrets, which can only be passed on to another Pendragon. You gave one of those jewels to my mother and told her to give it to me, didn’t you? What secret does it contain?”

The ghost frowned at her.
“Something to do with the Grail, I think… things are hazy now
my spirit’s out of my body, but Mordred must not wear that crown with my jewel restored.”

“No chance of that!” she said, snatching up a broken spear to use as a lever on the boulders. “He wants to destroy it, not restore it.” She had to get out of here before her cousin got the jewel off Arianrhod.

Her father’s ghost became even paler.
“Then we haven’t got much time, daughter. If Mordred destroys my jewel and wears the Crown of Dreams at the Round Table, my knights will have no choice but to give him the throne of Camelot. The Crown chooses the rightful heir according to the old Pendragon bloodline, and if my jewel is missing there’ll be no record of you. Mordred will be the only candidate.
”

Rhianna paused in her digging to stare at him.

“That’s stupid! The knights won’t give the throne to Mordred. They know I’m your daughter now – you were there at midsummer when the queen told everyone I was heir to the throne. Sir Bors and Sir Lancelot aren’t going to let some silly magic crown decide who rules them! Don’t they write important things like that down? They wrote down the treaty I made with the Saxons last year. Anyway, the throne’s still yours! When you return from Avalon, you’ll take the Crown back from Mordred, won’t you?”

She tried not to think of what might happen if she failed her quest and couldn’t bring her father back.

The king sighed.
“I can remember so little of Camelot. It’s like a dream to me now. Maybe you are a dream, too? My daughter, who rides a fairy
horse and wields Excalibur… it sounds like one of old Merlin’s songs. And now Merlin’s out of the way, it’ll be easy enough for Mordred to wipe us both from history.”
His ghost faded again.

“Merlin’s not dead yet.” At least, she hoped not. Where was the druid when they needed him? But even a small hawk wouldn’t be able to get through this wall of rock.

“
You can’t rely on Merlin
,” her father said, frowning again as if trying to remember something else.

“Then I’d better hurry up and get out of here so I can remind everyone we exist, hadn’t I?” she said, forcing a grin. She didn’t like to see her father so sad. She hoped he would cheer up a bit once she got him back into his body.

Renewing her attack on the rubble, she jammed the spear under a boulder and leaned
all her weight on it. The spear snapped, and she stumbled against the rocks, bruising her shoulder.

She flung the broken pieces of wood at the blockage in frustration. “Oh, this is hopeless! I’ll never get out this way.”

Suddenly, the air in the cave seemed less fresh. Rhianna sat down on the treasure to catch her breath and looked for her father’s ghost, barely visible now in the shadows. What had he said?

Rocks are no barrier to a spirit.

“I know!” she said. “You can walk out through the rock the same way you got in here and find Elphin and Cai. They’re in the woods two valleys away… or they were when I last saw them.”

How long ago had she worn the crown and
seen her friends through the shadrake’s eyes? She could have been lying buried under this mountain for days. Mordred might already have taken her father’s jewel off Arianrhod and be sitting on the throne of Camelot. She shook her head, refusing to think of that.

“They saw you at Lady Nimue’s lake when you chased Mordred and his men away in the summer,” she continued. “So maybe they’ll be able to see you again. Then you can lead them up here, and they’ll bring the knights to dig me out.”

It seemed so simple, she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

He gave her a worried look. “
I hate to leave you here in the dark with Morgan Le Fay, daughter. She is strong in this place. She might try to drag your spirit through the Gate.”

Rhianna forced another grin. “She already tried, but I’ve got to die first and she can’t kill me herself. Mordred had some candles down here. I’ll find them when you’re gone, and keep working on this side until my friends and the knights get here.”

Her father’s ghost reached for her hands. She felt a brief warmth as his fingers passed through hers.
“You’ll make a stronger Pendragon than Mordred,”
he said.
“I’m proud to have such a daughter
.”

Then he got up and walked into the rock, and the last glimmer of light from her armour died.

Her father was proud of her. Even if she didn’t get out of here, she’d die happy.

But she wasn’t going to die. She wouldn’t give Mordred and his witch mother the satisfaction.

She spent a bit of time searching for candles, but Mordred must either have taken them with him, or they had been buried under the rubble with the rest of her stuff. She didn’t know how she would have lit them, anyway.

She worked more slowly in the dark, feeling around every stone before she removed it, in case she made a mistake and brought the rest of the mountain crashing down on her head. Sweat trickled down her back every time she heard an avalanche in the depths of the hill, but she didn’t take off her Avalonian armour. Its magic had protected her so far.

Time passed. How much time, she had no way of telling, except by the ache in her
arms and a terrible thirst caused by the dust in her throat. She wondered if Mordred had found out where she’d left her father’s jewel yet. She kept thinking of her cousin marching through Camelot’s corridors, and of Arianrhod’s promise to guard the jewel with her life.