Shades of Avalon (26 page)

He wrinkled his nose as if sniffing at some foul stench, making the symbols carved in his skin shift. It was a moment before I realized it was probably us he smelled. “Oh, yes. Well, if I am correct in my thinking…”A few side eye glances were shared around the table at that comment. “The pretty one cannot sense her mate because he is being kept in a place with jet stone absorbing his energy.”

“You’ve already said that,” Guinevere reminded him, although he ignored her and continued.

“I suggest we use her as advance warning.”

“I don’t follow.” Triona grimaced, confused.

“You will know as soon as they are on the move.”

Triona’s eyes brightened. “Do we have the Stone to offer in exchange?” She directed the question to Merlin.

Merlin nodded. “For quite some time now.”

I threaded my fingers through my hair and interjected with a sigh. “It’s not that simple, Triona. Believe me, I wish it were—”

She smacked her palms on the table in frustration. “Yes. It is
that
simple. We need to get Caleb back first, and then we can concentrate on stopping Zeal. Getting Caleb back safely must be our primary concern, and so it’s very simple.”

She looked at me with such betrayal in her eyes—my heart clenched in my chest.

“I understand Caleb isn’t your favorite person in the world. Trust me, you’ve made that acutely apparent.” Her tone held an edge hard enough to cut glass.

“That’s not what he means,” Annice explained in a pained whisper.

Triona fell silent, and her eyes tightened. It felt horrible to admit to myself, but relief shuddered through me. I didn’t want to be the one to deliver this particular blow.

Annice’s eyes settled on John and just as fast, darted away. She turned to Samuel, apparently needing encouragement. His lips flattened into a straight line, his eyebrows bunching over the bridge of his nose. He nodded once in a jerky motion. Annice inhaled sharply.

“Well someone better tell the rest of us what’s going on,” Emma demanded although a sick, pallid color had robbed her cheeks of any blood. Amanda squeezed my hand.

“Zeal wants more than the Elixir of Life from the Stone. He seeks to control the Riastradh—the battle frenzy, which as it turns out is a side effect of becoming the Philosopher’s Stone,” Annice told the table gravely.

“When you say ‘becoming’ what does that mean exactly?” Triona asked, raising an eyebrow.

Merlin barked a laugh and pointed at John. “You are the Stone.”

Chapter 20

Swords and Stones

E
MMA
S
NORTED
A
ND
J
OHN’S
E
YES
widened to saucers. His jaw slackened, and his entire body shrank back into his seat.

“We freed Merlin to find the Stone, and we had it all along,” I added matter-of-factly. There were moments I wished we’d left the old coot stranded. His acid candor didn’t help.

“I don’t understand,” Triona said. She hardly moved at all, and she might not have been breathing.

Merlin opened his mouth to speak, but before he got a chance, Guinevere laid her hand on his arm and spoke instead. “No theatrics or embellishments, only what Samuel and I discussed with you earlier.”

“You were angry with me,” Merlin said in an almost whisper, as though it was a secret between them.

“Yes,” Guinevere replied, slipping her hand from his arm and shifting in her seat.

A sad smile tugged at the magic man’s lips for a moment and disappeared. “May I have some chocolate?” he asked with a hopeful note in his quiet voice.

“Later, Emrys.”

“Good, good.” Merlin grinned like a child promised a reward for good behavior.

I lowered my eyes, concentrating on a small scratch on the edge of the table instead of watching the faces around me.

“The first stage is
nigredo
—the destruction,” Merlin said with confidence. “It’s not so unusual for many to reach this stage. For John, it happened at Tara when he discovered the world wasn’t as he believed it to be.

“The second stage is the most important. Some actions can literally split destiny and reality. When this happens, the individual at the point of the change is physically marked, and they have potential to become something more than they were born to be. This stage is
albedo
, a reversal of fortune, a change of fate. For John it happened when Triona wiped his mind and passed some of her magic to him accidentally. It’s the final purification, and stage two is potential in its purest form.”

This was the explanation I’d looked up but hadn’t understood. “Couldn’t it be anyone?” I asked intending to meet Merlin’s eyes. Instead, John drew my attention. His head was lowered, his jaw strained with tension. The muscles jumped under his skin whenever he swallowed. “What I mean is, can’t anyone change their destiny if they choose to? Isn’t that free will?”

Merlin shook his head. “It is not so simple as free will, because destiny has many, many opportunities all leading us to the same destination. Our free will determines only the journey, not our destination. When we try to change our fate, we are essentially traveling the road we were meant to travel. It is our destiny to try to change our ultimate fate and our destiny to fail. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. What happened to Arthur was never meant to. It opened a new road that did not exist before, with a new destination for all on it.”

“What happened to John,” Triona stated, incorrectly attempting to correct his slip.

Everyone looked to her.

“You mean like what happened to John, not Arthur,” she repeated.

Arthur met John’s eyes across the people between them and tilted his head as silent acknowledgment of their kinship. “No,” Arthur answered. “He means what happened to me. Please forgive me if I get this wrong. I am learning much of this for the first time.” He shrugged. “Although it seems as though I knew already. To our knowledge, four people have carried the mark of the Stone—Brigid, the warrior Sétanta, myself, and now John.”

“So,” John began with a guarded expression. “In order to retrieve Caleb, you have to hand me over to the bad guy.”

“Absolutely not!” Emma and Triona exclaimed in unison, their tone somewhere between startled and furious.

John took Emma’s hand and shushed her. “The final two phases?” he prompted Merlin.

“The third stage is
citrinitas
. This is the stage of enlightenment. This is the stage Arthur reached, although he no longer carries the mark. He didn’t finish the transition before he was taken to Avalon.”

Guinevere looked to Arthur. She must have borne guilt over what happened. I imagined her driving herself crazy in the future, questioning what she might have done differently. I would have.

“For John this came when Triona returned his memory, and it accelerated as he accepted and acknowledged the changes to his world—as he embraced them. The final stage is
rubedo
. Witnessing this is the ultimate goal of alchemists. It’s the complete transmutation on an atomic level. This is rebirth. The phoenix will awaken at Knowth, at sunrise during the spring equinox. The Stone will reach full strength. Blood runs as liquid gold, and the Riastradh takes hold.”

John scowled fiercely, but made no other outward acknowledgment of Merlin’s explanations.

Guinevere took over. “Zeal will want to attempt the ceremony to impregnate Dagda’s cauldron at Knowth with John’s blood. Sun stone—white quartz—surrounding the chamber, and to a lesser degree in the granite of the cauldron, amplifies the power of the sun. It won’t take much blood, and the effects will last a millennium. Drinking from the cauldron will make Zeal young forever. He can be killed, but he will never age. The power of the impregnated cauldron will allow for other things too, the ability to turn any metal to gold for instance, or create a golem—an animated clay figure. Although tales of the golem only exist in myth, if proven true, Zeal could create an unstoppable army.”

When Guinevere paused, Triona immediately pushed for more. “Tell us the rest. Tell me what you don’t want to say.”

“As you wish.” Guinevere’s brow puckered. “He also wants the Riastradh and that is not so simple. Impregnating the cauldron requires little blood, but usurping the Riastradh requires the sacrifice of the being in possession of it.”

I didn’t have to see Triona to guess what she must be thinking—that she did this to him.

“You mean he wants to kill John,” Emma said, alarmed and red faced.

“No one is killing John,” Samuel assured her.

“When is the equinox?” she asked.

“The twentieth of March. Thirteen days away.”

“What happens now?” Emma asked. She tried to cover her trepidation by rolling her shoulders back and holding her chin up. “If Arthur was cured of this Stone thing, that means John can be too, doesn’t it? If he is cured, then this Zeal guy can’t use him.” Her voice grew higher as she spoke until John placed a hand on her back.

“There is no simple cure for your brother to escape this,” Arthur answered. “I have been gone for many hundreds of years. It is possible I would never have seen this world again if you and the others had not rescued me. It seems so much like a dream. I can’t swear I died. However, I believe I came as near as a man can before the Fáidh took me away.”

Triona rested one elbow in the arm of her chair and sank her face into her hand. No one else spoke, all too resistant to suggest trading one of us for another now that we knew the truth. Even Merlin sat quietly with his fingers twisting in his lap.

“Now we face Zeal and fight,” Joshua announced angrily. “We make him sorry he didn’t die that day at Tara.”

“What about Caleb?” I questioned him, knowing he couldn’t forget his brother so easily.

“We mount a rescue.”

I scoffed. “We have no idea where he is. And what about the numbers? It’s us against how many of his people?”

“Maybe handing me over to the Fáidh is the logical choice,” John said carefully as though testing the words on his tongue.

John’s reaction, or rather his non-reaction, was surprising. Without doubt his main concern rested with Emma and keeping her safe, even if it meant leaving her. However, a certain sense of resignation poured from him. He was much like Arthur and his easy acceptance of this staggering fate. His cool confidence brought to mind something Triona told me after Tara and how her abilities seemed as second nature. Just like my ability to control thoughts or what I did in the cave with my blood—it was instinct.

“And then Zeal will kill Caleb just for thrills.” Amanda shrugged and pursed her lips for a moment. “We need to stop looking for simple answers because there are none. Joshua is right. We should make a stand. But we should wait for Zeal to come for John. Use the time to prepare.”

“Okay, then,” John conceded. “What if you hand me over to Zeal, take Caleb back, and then I destroy them from the inside out once this ratchet thing kicks in.”

“You don’t think the possibility crossed his mind already?” Amanda dismissed his suggestion. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a human looking in on all this Guardian stuff, nothing is as easy as it appears.”

“The pretty girl is correct,” Merlin agreed, twirling a lock of his hair through his thumb and forefinger.

“Then we don’t have a choice. We fight,” Amanda stated, tilting her head and considering something. She wanted to walk into a fight we very likely wouldn’t walk away from. My chest constricted as though the air was sucked from the room. I saw a blade sinking into her chest. I couldn’t go through that again.

“No.” The word left my lips before I realized. My heart raced to the point of pain, and all eyes landed on me. I wanted to run, to take Amanda’s hand and walk away from this table, to go back to our life in Camden. In the next second, Amanda’s searching eyes met mine. Her head tilted to the side, and her lips turned down at the corners. Her head shook almost indiscernibly.

“I don’t want you to risk your life again,” I told her, preventing Amanda from asking a question.

Amanda cupped my jaw with her hand. I leaned into her touch seeking comfort, and at the same time feeling it was undeserved. I flinched away from her, and in one swift movement pushed my chair back and stood. I held the backrest, sliding my slick palms over the wood. I hadn’t noticed my palms were sweating. Amanda pushed herself from the table and moved to place her hand on my arm. I shied away from her touch for the second time and scanned the faces around me. All looked at me with varying degrees of judgment and pity. I ignored Amanda and addressed Triona.

“It doesn’t matter what we do. The life we had growing up is over, and nothing will ever be the same. We were naïve to think we could have normal.” I barked a laugh. “Look around you. I dragged Amanda into this. You dragged John, and now Emma, into this too.”

“Ben—” Amanda started.

“No.” I held my hand up. “I’m scared shitless right now, and I keep thinking this is not the life I promised you.”