The Book of Mordred (25 page)

But then Nimue spoke again, very gently. She held her hand out, displaying the gold ring. "This ring belonged to Merlin. He was perhaps the greatest magician of all time. He was my teacher, and I loved him, and he was dying. I know what people say," she added in a rush before Kiera could interrupt, "but people are wrong. I did not entrap Merlin and steal his magic: Together we wove a spell and he sleeps safe in Avalon."

Kiera worked on that thought for a moment. "Then
you
must be the greatest magician of all time." Nimue's face went blank at that, and Kiera explained her reasoning: "Since you have the ring, and the ring has both Merlin's magic and your own."

Nimue checked to make sure where each of the others was standing, to make sure no one was within hearing before she answered. "Most of the ring's power is used just to sustain Merlin. Otherwise, it could be a most dangerous instrument." Nimue sighed. "And this conversation is dangerous, too. Only Vivien and the other Ladies of the Lake know. It is
not
to be repeated."

Why was she being so secretive when there was nobody around besides Agravaine and—farther away—her mother and Mordred? "What about Mordred?" Kiera asked.

"What about him?"

Kiera started at the brusque tone. That happened, sometimes, from asking an adult too many questions. Though never before with Nimue. And she didn't truly believe that was what had happened now. "Doesn't Mordred know all about the ring?"

Nimue gazed down the hill. "He knows some of it. With Mordred, it often is difficult to tell how much he has guessed."

But surely you trust him?
Kiera was about to ask.

But she didn't.

She had assumed that Nimue loved Mordred, that she was his lady. And it turned out Nimue didn't even trust him.
My mother would trust him,
Kiera thought. If she had any secrets. Which Kiera doubted. She wondered if Mordred trusted Nimue.

"Go and apologize to your mother for vexing her about magic," Nimue said. Before Kiera could protest that she was always the one who had to do the apologizing, Nimue added, "When we get back to Camelot, I will urge her to let you study with me, if that is something you would like."

"You would teach me?" It was more than Kiera would have dared hope for.

"Enough to keep you out of trouble." Nimue glanced at the sky. "And warn them to hurry or we'll never get home before the rain."

Kiera started down the hill, wanting to run for joy, but remembering that was not lady-like. She could see the two figures and, beyond, she could just barely make out a sparkling band, a stream. But despite the increasing darkness of the sky, the sun shone so bright it dazzled her eyes, and the closer Kiera got, the more the water glistened, until her eyes teared. And the more her eyes teared, the brighter the sun glared.

She momentarily closed her eyes against the brightness...

...and opened them to find herself surrounded by mist. She blinked again, but the gray remained, too thick to penetrate.

She reached her hands out in front, to the sides, but touched only damp air. Gone were the chirp of birds, the rustle of meadow grass in the breeze, the jingle of the horses' trappings from the nearby road. There was only a low drone. And she smelled something, nearby, burning.

Never before had she been caught outside by the vision. "Mother?" Her voice shook. "Mother, I can't see. Where are you?"

She stepped forward, tripped over something large and hard, and fell. The mist shifted. Several paces away, human shapes hovered, but when she called to them, nobody answered. Gingerly she put her hand to the ground. No grass, where there had been grass moments before; just packed dirt. She moved her hand and found what she had fallen over: metal, she thought, but sticky. She snatched back her hand, and found it smeared with blood. The mist shifted again, and she looked into the glazed eyes of a dead knight, a stranger. Then, the gray swallowed him up again.

For a moment she couldn't find her voice. Then, "Mordred!" she screamed.

There! She glimpsed him just off to the right. Inexplicably, he was wearing armor, and he didn't answer. He disappeared back into the mist. "Mordred!" she called again. "Agravaine! Help me!"

She hugged herself to keep from trembling, then saw blood on her sleeve from her hand that had touched the corpse. She shut her eyes, welcoming the friendly blackness, and screamed.

Hands grabbed her shoulders and she inhaled deeply, ready to scream again, but then she recognized Mordred's voice: "Kiera! Kiera! What's wrong?"

She blinked in the sunlight and saw him kneeling on the grass before her. He pulled her close, hugged her, murmured that everything was all right. She pressed her face against him and he smelled clean like leather and horses, and there was no smoke, nor blood, and he wasn't wearing armor after all, but only his own shirt of soft blue linen.

Alayna caught up. She threw her arms around Kiera, almost toppling all three of them. "What happened?" she demanded. "Are you hurt?"

"I..." Kiera held out her hand to show them the dead man's blood, but there were only grass stains on the whiteness of her skin.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Alayna took the hand, examining it for broken bones.

As if she'd be such a baby, to tumble and bawl. Resentfully, Kiera pulled her hand away. "There was a man here," she tried to explain.

"Where?" Mordred's eyes swept the line of trees beyond the stream.

"Here. Right ... here. A dead knight." She realized how outrageous her words sounded—how she herself would react if someone else were to speak the same way.

Whatever they would have answered was interrupted by Agravaine's arrival. "She's not hurt, is she?" Though a young man, he was starting to lose his hair, and he always took meticulous care arranging it to hide that fact. His run down the hill had exposed his high forehead and the thinness on top, but he was too worried to notice. "Is she all right?" he asked, looking down at Kiera anxiously.

"She..." Alayna started to say, but then she gave up.

"Did you recognize the man?" Mordred asked, taking her seriously after all. "Was it anybody you know?"

Kiera shook her head.

"What did he—"

"Stop it!" Alayna commanded. "Leave her alone!"

So ... they both believed.

Mordred gave Alayna one of his cool stares, his gray eyes hard and cutting. Kiera had seen the King back down—once—at just such a look, but her mother, still kneeling, did not.

Nimue finally caught up. "What happened? Is the child injured?"

"Kiera had some sort of vision," Mordred explained tightly. "Alayna does not want to discuss it." He had turned it around, so that Alayna sounded like the foolish one. Kiera was both relieved and disturbed.

"Ah!" Nimue said as though Mordred's summation had explained all. "Well, Alayna is her mother."

"But she saw—"

"Mordred." Nimue used the same tone on him that Alayna was wont to use on Kiera.

Now they were going to argue, Kiera thought, and it was all her fault. Sometimes she wanted them to argue. Sometimes she thought that if only Nimue weren't there, Mordred would spend more time with her mother. But sometimes she thought this was unfair of her, considering how kind and concerned with her Nimue always was. And now Nimue had promised to teach her. These visions wouldn't be able to waylay her then. "Please, can we go?" she said.

"Are you sure you are well enough?" Alayna asked. "Well enough to ride?" She still clutched Kiera's hand, as though she'd never let go.

Embarrassed by all the attention, Kiera nodded, eager to leave, eager to put this behind her.

Not until they had been riding their horses for two or three miles did Kiera suddenly touch her hair and realize something was wrong. "Oh no," she cried.

"What?" her mother demanded, all wide-eyed and pale.

"The ribbon Nimue bought for me at last year's fair. I must have dropped it."

Alayna closed her eyes.
Silly,
Kiera could imagine her thinking. But she only asked, "Do you have any idea where?"

"Probably back where we stopped," Kiera admitted.

"Oh, no," Alayna said. "We are not going back there."

"I didn't drop it on the hill," Kiera said. "I felt it in my hair while we were walking up. It must have come loose after we got back to the horses. I'm sure of it." Kiera herself wouldn't go back if it meant going down that hill again.

Alayna sighed, eyeing the dark clouds.

Nimue, who had overheard, told her, "I'll get you another this year."

It wouldn't be the same. It had been the most lovely thing Kiera owned, and it had made her look so grown up, so elegant. "Please," she begged. "I can go back by myself. It won't take any time at all. You won't have to wait."

"You would never find it," Agravaine said, patting his own hair, as he had done at least a dozen times already.

"I'll go back with her," Mordred offered, which was the best possible solution. "We can catch up."

Just her and him. It would be worth the lecture he was bound to give about getting along better with her mother. There had been a time all three of them had gotten along better. Her mother hadn't seemed so skittish about everything, Mordred had spent more time with them, and she had played a secret game where Mordred was her father and he was only pretending to be just a friend because ... because ... Kiera couldn't remember what reason she had made up. But it had all changed with Nimue. Mordred visited less often, Kiera learned enough of life to realize he was too young to make a likely father to her, and her mother ... Her mother seemed to find fault with everything.

The ride was pleasant but when they got back to where the horses had been tethered, there was no ribbon.

Mordred looked down the hill. "Wait here," he said. "I will check by the stream."

He had already started when she spotted a patch of pink and lavender in the nearby grass by the road. With a sigh of relief, she picked up the ribbon and then waved it over her head calling out: "Mordred!"

The shout echoed inside her head: "Mordred!" she heard her own voice cry. Impossibly close, he looked up. Turned. Mist swirled about her knees, mist composed of earthly fog and magic and the smoke of battlefields. She heard herself scream his name again, and saw him turn again. Echoes and re-echoes, sluggish repetitions—one moment she saw him head-on, the next, a side view—all in unnaturally sharp clarity. The mist thinned. Mordred stood in armor. He staggered, his eyes in a daze of fear and pain. She was aware both of standing next to her pony Ebony on the road, and of being surrounded by shadows in a land where the gray mist grew and thickened, and she couldn't tell which self was real.

But then his arms were about her again, steadying her—his voice soothing her back to reality. Again the mist thinned, and she could see his face once more, no fear or pain, just concern in the green eyes that watched her steadily.

She shook her head to clear it.

Gray. She knew Mordred's eyes were a dark shade of gray: It was Agravaine who had green eyes.

A tendril of mist reached between them, and she saw Agravaine lying on the stone floor, his eyes wide and empty. Or was it Gareth? None of the brothers of the Orkney clan—Mordred, Agravaine, Gareth, Gaheris, Gawain—none looked especially alike, yet suddenly she realized she couldn't tell whose death she was foreseeing. "Mordred," she whispered, clutching at the solid reality of his hand.

He came back into focus, his eyes the right color this time. "I'm here."

She thought to tell him of the danger meant for him—him or one of his brothers. But when she opened her mouth, the name her voice formed was: "Nimue." She didn't know where it had come from, but she knew it was real. She said, "Nimue is in danger."

He lifted her onto his chestnut-colored horse, then swung up behind. He had them at a full gallop before her poor Ebony knew what was going on. Kiera was aware, without turning, that the faithful pony followed, but the powerful strides of Mordred's mount seemed just short of flying.

The road was narrow here, crowded by the forest, winding and hilly. They rounded a curve, and there was a long, long level stretch, with the rest of their party in sight, traveling leisurely. Mordred never slowed. Kiera saw Agravaine look back, no doubt wondering at their breakneck speed.

In the same moment, seven armed knights broke out from the trees and bushes that had carelessly been allowed to grow too close to the road.

Agravaine saw their raised swords and lances, and whipped out his own sword.

He must have called out a warning, still too far away for Kiera to hear, but her mother and Nimue faced about.

"Down!" Mordred pushed her forward, down onto the horse's neck. Kiera turned her face, and saw that two more knights had broken from cover near them. Mordred had his own sword out. He slashed at one of them without slowing down, then wheeled about and went after the second.

Kiera saw the body of the first knight, caught by the heel of his solleret on the stirrup. The horse made close circles, trampling the bloody ground. She closed her eyes.