The Traitor's Tale

THE TRAITOR'S TALE

Jonathan Moeller

***

A thousand years ago, the sorceress Antenora betrayed
Arthur Pendragon and the last Keeper of Avalon, but was cursed by
dark magic for her folly.

After a thousand years of regret and pain, Antenora
is desperate to redeem herself...and her chance has come at
last.

But the Frostborn stand in her way, and even all of
Antenora's magic might not be enough to overcome their terrible
power...

***

The Traitor's Tale

Copyright 2015 by Jonathan Moeller.

Smashwords Edition.

Cover image copyright Federico Marsicano |
Dreamstime.com & catiamadio | Dreamstime.com.

Ebook edition published March 2015.

All Rights Reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without the express
written permission of the author or publisher, except where
permitted by law.

***

I cannot remember my name, not after fifteen
centuries, but I do know that I am a traitor.

The human mind was never meant to contain so much
time, and many of my memories have faded into nothingness. I cannot
remember my childhood, nor the names and faces of my parents, nor
the taste of food or the pleasure of the wind upon my face. All
this has been lost to me.

Yet I remember my betrayal well enough.

I was the Keeper of Avalon’s apprentice, her student
and her confidant. Yet when Mordred Pendragon rose in rebellion
against the High King Arthur Pendragon, wielding dark magic as a
lesser man might wield a sword, I was seduced to Mordred’s side.
For I was a vain and foolish young woman, believing power to be my
birthright, and Mordred’s flattering words spoke to the poison in
my heart. I betrayed the High King and the Keeper, and became
Mordred’s advisor and his lover.

But he, too, betrayed me, stealing my power to fuel
his own and leaving me to die. Mordred and Arthur slew each other
upon the field of Camlann, and I was left cursed. I would never
age, but I would never again known pleasure or pain, and my flesh
grew pale and corpselike. My magic fled from me, and I was left
with no power save that of the magic of fire.

In desperation and regret, I fled to the Keeper’s
side, but it was too late. Malahan Pendragon, the High King’s
bastard grandson, rallied the remnants of Arthur’s realm to his
side. The Keeper opened a gate of magic, a portal to another world,
and Malahan and the survivors withdrew through the gate to a new
world and escaped the pagan Saxons.

And the gate closed, leaving me behind forever.

For a time I despaired. But the curse the Keeper and
Mordred’s treachery had left upon me ensured that I would never
die, and eventually I moved past the despair. The Keeper had left
Britannia and Earth, but I tried to take up her mantle, using my
limited powers to fight dark magic as she had once done.

I had a great deal of work to do. The history of
Earth after the departure of the Keeper and the death of Arthur
Pendragon was long and bloody, and tyrant after tyrant arose, many
of them in league with the powers of darkness. I did what I could,
trying to defend the mortals of Earth from dark magic. I also
sought after magical secrets and ancient spells, trying to find how
the Keeper had left Earth for a new world with Malahan
Pendragon.

How I might find her and beg her forgiveness for my
crimes.

For fifteen centuries I searched in vain. As the
years piled on and became decades and then centuries, I forgot so
much. I forgot entire centuries, learned languages and forgot them
again. I even forgot my own name. Around the fourteenth century in
Italia, I encountered a poet named Dante and heard him speak of
heaven and hell and the realms beyond. After hearing his great
poem, I called myself Antenora, after the circle of hell where
traitors met their fate. For I was a traitor, and no matter how
many centuries passed, no matter how many new horrors I saw, no
matter how many memories disappeared into the abyss of time, I
never forgot my betrayal and my crimes. They remained as bright and
as vivid as if I had committed them yesterday.

I never stopped seeking for the Keeper, never stopped
looking for a way to find her.

And then, one day, the answer was given to me.

I sensed a tremendous disturbance in the threshold,
the shadow that Earth cast upon the spiritual realm, the ghostly
double and mirror of the material world. I had lost much of my
magic, but I still possessed the ability to travel to the
threshold. There I found a magical gate opening, a bridge between
two worlds, and for a desperate moment I thought that the Keeper
might be returning. But this gate had been wrought using dark
magic, fell and malevolent, and I released that the Keeper could
not be behind it.

Worse, some dark force was preparing to come through
the gate and seize Earth.

Then I met Morigna and Mara in the threshold, and
they told me the truth.

They were from a realm they called Andomhaim, and
they were companions of the Keeper. Not the Keeper I knew, for she
had died centuries earlier, but her heir and successor. A sorcerer
of tremendous power called the Warden had taken her captive, and
would burn her soul to open the gate and conquer Earth. Morigna and
Mara had escaped the Warden’s bonds through cunning (mostly Mara’s,
I suspected, for she seemed the cleverer of the two), but found
themselves trapped in Earth’s threshold. The Warden’s spell had
joined Earth’s threshold to that of Andomhaim, bridging the
tremendous void between the two worlds, and soon the Warden would
open the gate to allow physical passage, killing the Keeper in the
process.

I could not allow this.

Mara possessed the power to move both her and Morigna
back to Andomhaim. I fought to defend them as she summoned the
power, for the threshold is a dangerous place. The power of the
Warden’s gate had drawn the creatures I called “cockroaches” like
maggots to rotting flesh. They were spirit creatures, shape
shifters, quick and strong and deadly, and they feasted upon both
magical power and the life force of mortals.

I fought them with all the rage and power I could
summon. I would not be denied now! The Warden’s gate was not yet
open, but the thresholds of Earth and Andomhaim were joined. Once
Mara and Morigna returned to defend the Keeper, I would follow
them. If necessary, I would aid the Keeper, and then I would beg
her forgiveness.

First, though, I had to defeat the cockroaches.

The curse meant I would never die…but that did not
mean I could not be killed.

***

I stood in the threshold, my staff in hand, and
watched the cockroaches approach.

Behind me blazed the ghostly blue flame of the
Warden’s gate, magic so potent and deadly I could scare comprehend
it. Around me wavered the mists and illusions of the threshold.
Specifically, I stood in the threshold’s reflection of Londinium (I
suppose it is called London in the modern era), the shadows of the
city’s people walking past me, heedless of the battle raging
through the threshold half a heartbeat from them. When I had first
seen Londinium long ago, it had been a proper Roman city of brick
and concrete, with a forum and a magistrates’ basilica and an
amphitheater. Now it was a gleaming metropolis of glass and
polished steel, its streets paved in black tar to support
automobiles, its people clad in sleek garments of black and
white.

The cockroaches wore forms in imitation of them, clad
in black suits with white shirts, black ties hanging from their
collars. The resemblance to humanity ended there. Their hands were
claws of gleaming black chitin, and their faces were a ghastly
combination of squid and insect. They made crooning, croaking
sounds as they approached me, dozens of them fanning out in a
half-circle. I backed towards the gate, my long black coat flowing
around me in the cold wind coming from the Warden’s magic. I saw
the cockroaches’ tactics well enough. Individually, they were
cowardly creatures. Together, they could summon a measure of
courage, rushing me in hopes that one of the others would fall.

I struck my black staff against the ground, the
sigils I had carved into its length flaring with harsh
yellow-orange light.

I had lost most of my magic long ago. I still
possessed the Sight, the ability to see the flows of magical power
around me. Once I had been able to command the elements of water
and wind, of stone and earth, but that power had left me. I could
still command fire, could still summon elemental flame to do my
bidding, but I could use it to do nothing but destroy.

I could work only destruction with my magic…but I had
had fifteen centuries to practice, and I had gotten very good at
it.

My staff blazed with fire, and I swept it before me.
A curtain of howling flame erupted from the street, spreading
eighty feet in either direction. I shouted and thrust my staff, my
will driving the magic forward, and the curtain of flame rolled
into the charging cockroaches. The fire was not particularly hot,
not when spread over such a large area, but it was hot enough for
what I needed. The outer shells of the charging cockroaches caught
flame, and they fell back with horrid shrieks, trying to fight the
elemental fire that chewed into their corrupted flesh.

But the older cockroaches, the more powerful ones,
the ones that had feasted on many lives, were not so easily
daunted. They had the ability to wield minor magic themselves, and
they cast spells to ward themselves against flame. They pushed
through the wall of flame, step by step, like men forcing their way
through a gale. My firestorm would not last for much longer, and if
those cockroaches reached me, they would tear me apart.

It would take something more serious to deal with
them.

I took several quick steps back, feeling the storm of
the Warden’s gate. I raised the blackened staff in my right hand
and concentrated, its sigils flaring. A tight sphere of white-hot
flame, perhaps three inches across, appeared at the end of the
staff. My ancient flesh felt neither pleasure nor pain, but
nonetheless I could feel the sheer heat of the little sphere
pulsing against me. I poured more strength into the sphere, all the
flame and magic I could summon, forcing the power into the enclosed
construct. The sphere began to swell, wobbling and spinning, until
it was almost the size of my head.

The greater cockroaches had almost forced their way
through my wall of flame, the gray light of their wards flickering
around them. I turned and ran, my coat flapping around my legs, the
increasingly unstable sphere of fire spinning above my staff faster
and faster. A hideous shriek ran out, and I looked over my shoulder
as the first of the greater cockroaches burst from the dwindling
wall of flame. Six others followed, and they changed shapes again
as they charged, their bodies twisting into a misshapen combination
of squid and hunting insect. Their new shapes let them race forward
in leaps and bounds, halving the distance between us in a matter of
seconds.

I stopped, turned, and planted my feet as I faced the
charging creatures. The whirling sphere of white fire let out a
steady hissing sound. I focused all my will and power upon the
sphere, and thrust the staff.

The sphere leaped from the staff in a lazy arc and
struck the ground at the feet of the charging cockroaches.

There was a blinding flash of white light, followed
by a tremendous thunderclap and a howling gale of hot wind. I
staggered several steps, my coat snapping out behind me like a
banner caught in the wind. I saw one of the cockroaches go tumbling
high overhead, shrieking madly, fire devouring its limbs and
tentacles. Three more of the creatures had been reduced to charred
piles of smoking coals, while a few more ran back and forth,
desperately fighting the flames devouring their flesh. My wall of
flame had faded, but the surviving creatures had seen enough. The
cockroaches fled in all directions, leaving behind dozens slain by
my fire.

I lowered my staff and let out a long breath. Not
that I actually needed to breathe very much, but the old habits of
battle never went away. The cockroaches would be back soon enough.
They were cowardly, but once they had gathered sufficient numbers
they would return. By then, I hoped to be long gone.

To the new world of the Keeper.

I wondered what it would be like. Both Morigna and
Mara had spoken Latin, albeit with a peculiar accent and occasional
unfamiliar words, but it had nonetheless been the style of Latin
that had been spoken in Britannia fifteen centuries past. Clearly
Malahan and the Keeper had taken their language to this new realm
of theirs, to Andomhaim.