The King's Leash (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 7) (7 page)

Across from him and facing away from me sat a man with short brown hair wearing a navy blue t-shirt.

I hesitated.

There was nothing that identified him, but he was obviously someone Merlin did not wish me to meet. And though I hated that the wizard was keeping secrets from me, I knew as much as I knew anything that he did so with my best interests in mind.

When I was a couple tables away from the two men, Merlin looked up and spotted me. He did not even hesitate as he looked through my disguise and saw who I was. His eyes widened. His mouth dropped open and defeat crept into his eyes. “Morgan, I can explain, I—”

“Explain what?” I asked, my arms crossed over my chest. I glared.

“Explain me,” said the man sitting with Merlin. He had a fine Welsh accent, and for a moment, I thought that was all that was familiar about him.

But when he turned to look at me, and I looked at him, I never wanted to look away. I went still all over as I saw the impossible. I wondered if I was losing my mind. This could not be.

“Sister, it has been much too long,” my brother, the long dead King Arthur said. “You look different.”

With a wave of my hand, my clothing turned black again. My face became normal.

Arthur stood we faced each other. He threw his arms around me. We hugged and held onto each other. I never wanted to let go.

This wasn’t possible. The last time I had seen him was on that long and terrible day.

“Save him,” Merlin had begged me. “Take him to your isle of witches and healers. Take him to Avalon.”

My brother, laid out on the dry grass of Camlann, was still alive, barely. Near him lay the fallen Mordred, already cooling and changing in all the hundred ways the dead do that make them look unequivocally changed. Mordred’s turgid blood pooled around him as he lay, all alone on the battlefield. Not one of his men came to claim him, even though the battle was ended. Cowards, or perhaps they were glad he was dead.

I looked away, willing myself to ignore all the feelings bubbling up within me. I could not spare that dark wizard a second thought. For before me was Arthur. Still breathing. Gasping in air and breathing out pain like a fish yanked from his watery domain.

“Save him,” Merlin begged. “If there is honor among magicians. If there is any love you still have for your brother, save him.”

“Half-brother,” I said absentmindedly as I checked his wounds. “I don’t think….” My words died on my tongue as I saw the fissures of pain running through Merlin. “I will try.”

Upon my orders, Arthur's steadfast men carried him quickly to the shore on a sledge that they pulled between their most fleet-footed horses. I rode alongside them, wincing at every bump along the path. I reminded myself that he was gone, my brother was already gone, and though I was tasked with trying to save him, that was an impossible quest. A grieving wizard had asked me to try to save him, and I did not have the heart to say no. Though Merlin must know, he must, the final outcome of the day whether we took Arthur to my fabled island or not.

We arrived at the water’s edge. It seemed to have taken days.

Small fisherman's skiffs lined the shore, and Arthur's men commandeered one of them. They laid their King and ruler down upon a cushion of blankets, and I sat at the boat's stern, directing the way for the men to row. I kept Arthur's head cradled in my lap.

His head lay heavy upon me and his temperature cooled to the day's ambient chill. I stroked his cheek and whispered to him story after story about our younger days. Our days of running wild through the woods in a long game of stag and hunter, of laughing with our brothers and sisters in front of the hearth fire while our father was off on a campaign and we had the rule of the castle. I whispered to him the names of his most loyal and steadfast knights, and I reminded him that he had yet to avenge Lancelot and Guinevere. If there were any reason to keep on living, surely revenge was one.

The men rowed to Avalon surely and swiftly, with the aid of every spell I could make to hurry us along. When we neared, I saw my mother, aunts, sisters, and even my shrunken grandmother waiting for us in a long line of women dressed in white. They stood upon the rock-strewn shore of my birth island. In the ways of their own magic, they knew I was coming and bringing my brother.

And, I saw in the downward curve on my mother's face, they also knew that they could not save him.

I glanced back down at my brother and ran my hand across his cheek. Ever cooler. His breath came ever fainter.

“Do not travel to that far shore,” I whispered to him. “There is so much for you to do yet, Arthur.”

And though the vast majority of his goals were ones I did not agree with, all of me wanted him to live. All of me wanted my brother to be around and if in all our days all we did was bicker and fight while he staged stupid wars and battles, so be it. I wanted my brother alive.

The witches of Avalon waded into the water, wetting their long white skirts. They pulled our small boat in to shore. Dozens of competent hands moved in unison as they carried Arthur from the boat. We laid him down in a spot of flat sea grass not far from the shore.

They circled him and then dropped to their knees, leaving me a space to sit at his head.

“Sister Morgan,” they said and touched my shoulder. They brought me water. They fell silent as they read the signs of waning life on my brother’s paling face.

My mother sat beside me and touched my arm. “He is gone soon, Fay Morgan. He has very little aura left,” she told me.

I was so young I did not yet see auras. This was my first death, close up.

The witches of Avalon sang for Arthur as though he was one of their own. They placed spells on him, little ones to bolster his spirit and dampen any pain.

I learned that day that a death is much like a birth, and that like midwives, we accompanied Arthur as far as we could and then watched as he slipped away, as he went utterly still. His eyes rolled open, sightless and dulled.

We buried him quickly and with little fanfare, as was the way of my people.

Chapter 9

The Department

I let go of Arthur and stared at him. I had felt his warmth and the way his chest expanded and contracted, full of breath. Of life.

“How?” I whispered. “What is this?”

“Sit,” he said with a voice that I hadn't heard in over a thousand years. With a voice that, in truth, I had forgotten. But now the pitch and tone of it rang so familiar.

I hugged and held him for another long moment.

Arthur was alive. Here stood my brother: a man killed too young. My brother, a king, and not a terrible king but far from a good one as well.

“Sit,” he ordered as he let go of me a second time.

“Sit,” Merlin echoed. My wizard wore a strange mixture of sorrow and joy on his face as he watched Arthur. He too seemed hungry to look upon this long lost face.

I stared some more, and then managed to stumble down into the chair.

“How long have you been keeping my living brother from me?” I asked Merlin. Angry words, but I felt more puzzled than anything.

“It's… complicated.”

It was indeed. But how and why? And why did Merlin seek Arthur out after our attack in the faerie realm? I leaned back in the high backed wood chair. I shied away from looking at Arthur, but then when my eyes met his, I couldn't look away. He was here. He was here in this far-flung age. I noticed a sort of silvery magic coming off of him, from near his middle. I tried to examine it, but something within it deflected me.

It was the same sort of magic from Adam’s Sheriff star, I realized. Which filled me with ever more questions. “Have you been alive all along?”

“No. Or yes. But no,” he said and sighed. “Gods, it’s a strangeness, but for me, I saw the both of you, looking more or less the same, not long ago. Not long at all.”

A server came by and asked if I wanted a crumpet or a scone. I ordered a crumpet with butter and black coffee. “Bring the whole pot.”

As soon as she was gone, I asked, “So you were long dead and then resurrected?” I watched him breathe. He wasn't zombie nor litch folk. Nor was he wrapped around and through with a reanimating force. He looked… alive. Well and simply human.

“No,” Arthur said. “I never died, not fully.” He sipped his tea.

“Lies. For one, I saw you die. And two, if you’d walked this Earth all the while I did, I surely would have heard whispers of your existence.”

“There are people, who can do things,” Arthur said and leaned forward. “Government people. People clever with both science and magic. The Department saved me.”

Which explained the silvery energies from around his middle. He too wore a star, like Adam. “How?”

Arthur wetted his lips. “They have a sort of limited time travel. They were able to find where my body lay and put me in a stasis. I was suspended in time until a month ago when they unthawed me and used magic and modern medicine to revive me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They are the Department of Under Development and Recovery,” Merlin said. He scooted away from me, as though I might hit him.

I felt like hitting him. “What is that truly?” I asked.

“None of us know much about them,” Arthur said. “Merely what they want us to know.”

I bit into the crumpet. It tasted like paper in my mouth as Arthur and Merlin, the king and his wizard, told me all that had happened to bring us to this impossible moment.

Merlin gave me a pleading look and then looked away. “Remember when I left with Adam? Before all the nonsense with Hell came to pass?”

I nodded. His leaving had itched at me, what with his not telling me where he was going or why.

“I was… shielding you from the fact that the Department had contacted me and asked to meet with them.”

“This Department, did you know it had any dealings with Arthur?” I asked.

“No idea. In fact, I think that was some later plan they came up with when meeting with me failed. All I knew was that I had heard strange tales, from my wizarding network, about cities of unders growing more subdued. There were theories that something benevolent was exerting influence. Beyond that, I knew nothing.”

“And you went to meet them without telling me? You took Adam and not me?”

“At the Department’s request.”

I scowled at Merlin, but it dropped off my face as my eyes returned to my brother. To Arthur. Here. Somehow and some way connected to the secret government agency that did what?

“I went to meet with them, and they spoke of their many different programs, including their desire to install a local Sheriff that could report back to them and keep unders from endangering the mundane population of Seattle.”

“And you told them, I am sure, that my city needed no such hierarchy. That the unders of this city, of every city, take care of themselves as they ever have.”

Merlin nodded. “More or less. But then they mentioned hundreds of women nearly getting murdered due to an errant and wicked witch, and a dragon that could have leveled the whole city being housed in a warehouse inside the city proper. They spoke of demons swarming across Seattle. That was happening during the meeting, by the way.”

“Yes, and I handled all of that,” I said.

“Indeed, I told them you would. They made sure to let Adam and I know that the offer remained on the table to become Sheriff, and if we needed them, they would help us. For a price.”

“Adam went to them to get Lila back,” I said.

Merlin nodded sharply.

“The fool.”

“Were you him, would you have acted differently?”

“Of course not, but he’s still a fool,” I snapped.

Arthur chuckled. “I can’t believe the two of you are an item. Oil and water. Or perhaps fire and fire.”

I glared at him.

My brother shrugged. “Whatever works. I’m no expert on love besides the most disastrous kind. And it's nice to see, Morgan, that you are still able to get your Irish up quickly and readily. Merlin has been telling me stories about how mellow you've become.”

“Has he? He's been telling me nothing about you.”

“I have been trying to keep you away from the Department,” Merlin said. “With good reason, for there are things, I suspect, that they are planning. That they want to use Arthur, you, and me for.”

Arthur nodded. “Indeed. The Department of Under Research and Development brought me back for a reason. They have not yet deigned to tell me why.”

“Yet they let you run free?” I asked.

Arthur shrugged and patted his hip, where the silver star lay beneath. “I am wearing a doomsday device on my person. They may let me go where I wish, but I would not call it freedom.”

“And they brought you to Seattle because Merlin and I are here?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Many of the Department are gathering here. There is some big project, yet unnamed, that they want me here for.”

“And you have a theory about what it is,” I said to Merlin.

The wizard shifted uneasily in his seat and looked toward the door. “Let us remember, as we speak, the Gray in faerie may be spreading its rot.”

“Which is another way of saying,” I informed my brother, “that now that I am here, Merlin won’t tell you why he wanted to speak to you. He won’t say why he thinks you might be important against this Gray.”

“He is rather good at obfuscations,” Arthur agreed.

“On the contrary, I will name that part of it now that you know your brother is alive,” Merlin said. “Morgan, do you not remember having seen the Gray before? It was a dark night full of shadows and strife, but I would have thought it had made an impression on you. The Gray is a door to another realm. A realm that is trying to open into ours. You may recall, it is where I sent Guinevere to. So I am here to ask Arthur if he is trying to bring his wife back to Earth.”