The King's Leash (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 7) (8 page)

Chapter 10

The Sword

“You are bringing Guinevere here?” I said to Arthur and spent the rest of a minute swearing at him.

I stopped when he started chuckling.

“You think this is funny?” I asked.

“Guinevere alive and coming to Seattle? Funny? No. Not in the slightest, but I’m amused that either of you could imagine I would try to rescue that wife. As though I longed to return to the arms of a queen that seduced my best friend, cuckolded me, and made every aspect of my life a misery. Really, you think this is of my doing?” He rolled his eyes.

I felt like slapping his smug expression. Then I felt like hugging him. My brother, my infuriating brother, was here. Alive. Breathing and acting condescending, yet breathing nonetheless.

“Tell me true, you are not bringing Guinevere back?” Merlin asked.

He scowled and shook his head.

“Then who is?” I asked.

“If not Arthur, then it’s likely the Department,” said Merlin quietly, and glanced around him. “They have many projects. We do not know all of what they do.”

Arthur nodded.

I turned to Merlin. “Does this mean Guinevere has been smothered by hands and mouths this whole time? That's—”

“Too much, even for our sweet Guin,” Merlin said. “And no, the realm I banished her to is full of nasty sorts, but the mouths and hands only exist at the doorway. Once in, it gets a bit less drastic, though still not a place for summer holiday.”

“Merlin once told me the realm was hard to open. It is a rare sort of place, and takes the very best kind of wizard to open it,” I informed Arthur.

“An excellent place to stow Guin,” Arthur said.

Merlin brightened with Arthur’s praise.

A flash of ancient jealousy moved through me, for all the many times Arthur had cast favor on Merlin and not me. I banished the thought: it was an echo from over a thousand years ago.

I tapped my fingers against the table. “So if you did not try to open the door, nor I, then who is skilled enough with magic to find and open the door?” I asked.

Merlin shrugged. “I cannot think of anyone.”

“And why do they want her here in the first place?” Arthur asked slowly. “They have never met her, I presume.”

“They wanted you here,” I said. “Perhaps your Department is aiming toward the creation of an amusement park staffed by historic figures.”

A server came by to ask if we needed anything else.

Arthur replied, “More crumpets, milady. Toasted and honeyed, if you please. Keep them coming.” He cast her a glance that I'd forgotten was part of his kingly arsenal. The look managed to be warm and humane, but with a hint, a maddening hint, that he would be pleased if she rose to the occasion and served him well.

The girl’s cheeks pinked and though he was not a king here, not a monarch of this era, she responded to him as though he were.

“Another glare from my dear sister?” Arthur asked. “Are you already beginning to regret my being alive?”

“Never. It is good to have you back,” I said, and laid a hand on top of his. “But this time is far different from Camelot.” I made a mental note to speak to him on democracies, gender, and power at some later date when we had more time. “Enough talk. We need to make a plan about this realm door. Are there specific spells we should make or gather, Merlin, that will help us?”

Merlin shook his head. “We will have to play it by ear. Doors are powerful and unique. I know of nothing in particular that would work against this one.”

“Well, at least we know what it is now. We will bring Lila to close it. I will ask her to use all her powers against it,” I said.

“And Adam.” Merlin held up both hands. “No arguments. We need all the power we can gather. He has been given some interesting weapons.”

I blinked, and the hands were on me again. The teeth and lips and mouths surrounded me. “Yes,” I said. “We'll take him. And brother, you will stay at my store and serve as back-up, should all else fail.”

Arthur smirked. “You aren't going to get rid of me quite that easily, Morgan.”

“In your day, you were important, but a man without magic or supernatural ability will be a liability against the Gray,” I said.

“I have commanded armies. I have fought and won a hundred battles.” His gaze went to Merlin.

Merlin nodded and handed him his infinity bag.

No one, not even I, ever got to hold that bag.

“I will be coming with you,” my brother said as he reached in and pulled out something long and gleaming.

My breath caught in my throat.

Excalibur.

The sword had appeared up in a green glen near Camelot when Arthur was fifteen. With it came a wandering bard who said the sword held with a blessing and a curse: whosoever wielded the sword would be a great ruler during a time of great strife. While some later claimed that Merlin had made it and placed it there, that was untrue. None ever discovered how it had arrived near Camelot nor who had made it.

My father, Uther Pendragon, went to see it, and told all that he had not tried to remove it from the stone, for he was already a great king. Which I and many others took to mean that he had tried and failed.

Uther decided he should make a tourney for it. All the better to bring in the local lords for wine and celebration in the lean days of spring when uprisings were most likely to occur.

The tourney was called with the prize the sword itself, though there would be the usual jousting and mock battles with lesser prizes as well. My sisters started planning their gowns and my bastard half-brothers began dragging boulder-sized rocks around the courtyard.

Me?

I put on my blackest gown and spent the evening drinking thistle tea to keep me awake and sharp. Once the castle grew quiet and the only ones awake were the cold and half-asleep wall watchers, I went to the stables. I found my horse—not mine, not truly, for the bastard daughter did not have her own horse—but Sidan was mine for the hours I had spent brushing burs out of her uncut mane. Mine for pulling rocks from her hooves and taking her out on long runs, even on the bitterest days of winter.

Sidan nickered when I awoke her, and pushed her nose into my hand. I did not disappoint, and fed her a withered apple before I readied her to ride.

The night gatekeeper gave me a long look as I led Sidan to the gate. “Open the side, Aled,” I commanded.

“Is this wise, Morgan? There is much in the world that—”

“Open it, else I speak to my father about your mead pilfering.”

The old man sighed and got to his feet. He unbolted the small gate and opened it just wide enough for one horse and a girl to slip through. “Same as it ever was, the young are foolish,” he growled.

And foolishly, I set off to find the sword.

The night was dark and foggy, and I got lost a number of times before I found the path, newly made and freshly trampled. It led me to the glen where a stone sat with a sword sticking out of it. And though it seems hyperbole, as I gazed at the sword the full moon broke through the clouds above and made it glow with a silver-white light.

I dismounted and stepped forward and then froze as a shiver ran through me.

I heard no sound and had no sense I could name that told me this, but I knew I wasn't alone.

“Who goes?” I called out.

My horse pawed the ground. Her nose flared.

I touched a stone of onyx in my pocket. I had made a spell and put it in the stone. A protection made of strength and courage magic, but I sensed as I ran my fingers over the smooth surface that it had already come unraveled. I had no one to train me in magic, only my own wildfire desire to be a witch as my mother and grandmother before me.

“I am a witch. I have spells,” I called out. “Come no further or fear my wrath.”

“A witch?” A voice called back. “Interesting to hear, sister.”

Arthur stepped out from between the trees.

“You came here alone?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you tried it yet?” I nodded my head toward the sword.

“Not yet,” he said. “What do you think of it?”

I turned and studied the stone and the sword. “Magical,” I said after studying the fiery bolts of magic that ran through it.

“Good,” Arthur said. “I worried it might be merely a thing of strength.”

“No, it's definitely magical.”

Arthur stared at it as he bit his lower lip. “Shall we?”

“You first?”

“Ladies first, has our father taught you nothing?”

“You mean the brave and bold first,” I answered and strode forward.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and watched me.

I moved across the glen full of thick mud that tugged at my boots. I came up to the stone, as tall as my thighs. I had to step up onto it to get leverage. As I touched the sword’s hilt, the orange magic within swirled up my arms. With it came a song, nearly inaudible with strange syllables and a haunting melody.

I placed my other hand on the sword’s hilt and for a moment did not know whether I wanted the sword to come free or not. Then I felt Arthur’s gaze upon me and of course I wanted it. All us bastards were desperate to prove that we were special in any way. I pulled up on the sword and with one smooth motion it came out easily.

The sword’s song grew as I looked at the gleaming metal. Though I did not understand the song’s words, I knew it meant that with this sword we could rule together. We could kill. Together we could
—

I thrust the sword back into the sword and jumped down from the sword. I swallowed a couple of times. “Easy,” I said. “Your turn.”

Arthur approached more slowly. “You would be able to take it out,” he said. “Now I'll look the fool if I can't. Perhaps only a girl can do it. Perhaps it’s some kind of joke.” He came up to the stone and stood with a plaintive longing painted across his callow and acned face.

“Steady on, brother,” I whispered, curious to see what would happen next.

“You’ll tell no one, whatever happens.”

“Of course.”

He was tall enough that he didn’t need to step onto the stone. He grasped the sword and pulled on it. And, as all of history knows, he pulled the sword from the stone.

Where I had felt horror holding the thing, he smiled and moved it in precise formations through the frigid air. “With this sword,” he whispered.

I took a step back. “Just because you can pull it out, doesn't mean you have to,” I said. “Besides, perhaps any one can do it. Maybe that’s the joke of it. Put it back, Arthur. You have to put it back.”

“For now.” He slid it slowly back into the stone. “But you have to promise me, Morgan. At the tourney, you won’t—”

“Father wouldn't allow it,” I said. “A girl getting the prize? The next prize would be my head. Besides, there’s a bad feeling to the sword. Powerful, but at what cost? It wants blood. Whoever wields it—”

“Will be a great warrior,” Arthur said, and I heard no hint of reluctance within him. “Anyway, race you home!”

He turned and ran for his horse, tethered to a tree just outside the clearing. I sprinted to my Sidan and the race was on. We rode breathless down the path and through the hinterlands surrounding Camelot. Arthur won by two paces.

Days later, I watched as a hundred burly and scarred men tried and failed at pulling out the sword. Then my slight brother walked up and pulled it out easily. Thus I saw the first of his many legends unfold.

I glared at that famed blade and wondered if it might still be mine. Unlike some objects of power, I did not yearn for this one, but rather wanted my brother not to have it.

Arthur’s fingers clenched around the hilt. He held the blade up toward his face, smiling at the murderous weapon. In its day, the blade had cut through flesh like butter. Through armor like the thinnest sheet of metal, cleaving flesh from soul, time and again.

Merlin reached into his bag and pulled out the blade's sheath. An old leather thing, nothing special, but I relaxed when Arthur put the blade in and hung it at his side.

So too did the nervous couple sitting across from us.

“What were you saying about me being useless?” Arthur asked, with steel as sharp as his sword laced through his voice.

I said nothing more, though the whole reason he had been brought forward to this time still made little sense to me. Why go to all the trouble of bringing Arthur to this era? The sword was legendary, but it did not rival a machine gun nor any of the myriad and hideous weapons of war modernity had created.

“Come along then, brother and Merlin.” I stood. Though I longed to learn more, to ferret out all the truths of Arthur and this mysterious government organization, the problem in faerie loomed.

Chapter 11

Death Caps

We all stood in front of the door that led into the faerie realm.

“Lila, Merlin, and Arthur,” I said. “I must caution you again about the Gray. It is—”

“Whatever,” Lila said. “I'll eat it, no biggie.”

Adam, his arm slung around her waist, cast her a confused look.

He had not been there when she'd eaten her father. Perhaps he thought she spoke metaphorically. Young love was not always truthful love. “Stay behind Merlin and I. Follow our lead. We run, if need be.”

I looked at each of them until they nodded their assent.

“Adam, is there something you aren’t telling us about the Department and its machinations with Guinevere?” I asked.