Avalon Rising (3 page)

Missing.

The word is an executioner’s drum thundering in my mind.

“What do you mean?” My voice wavers. It was only months ago that I last felt Marcus’s hand in mine, and suddenly the idea of never holding it again …

My father eases closer, as though preparing his daughter for bad news before worst. “We don’t know for certain they’re missing,” he whispers, sneaking a sharp eye toward Kay while Lancelot drinks his ale faster now.

Kay leans back in his chair. “Then where are they, Lord William? Did they vanish into thin air? Did they seek Camelot’s subjects and become lost in the same void? Did they find the Grail?” He scoffs, shaking his head before taking a large gulp of ale. “They’ve missed their checkpoints. That’s what you get when you send a company of fools with Galahad. He’s too inexperienced, Lancelot, and not nearly aggressive enough. I’ve told you this before.” My father leans over the table. “Do not insult Sir Galahad’s infantry, Sir Kay. My boy is out there.”

“Yes, so I heard. Master Owen, Galahad’s squire.” He swallows a mouthful of ale and sets his goblet on the table.

“I must admit, you couldn’t ask for a better mentor than
Galahad the Pure
. But where is Master Owen now?” My breath bursts from my lungs as though someone punched me. “Owen?” To hear this spoken of my brother is much worse than what my mind could conjure up on its own.

Lancelot glances at me. “The group split up. There was a conflict. Not relating to the Spanish rogues, but from within.” His eyes look disturbed. Galahad is a brother to him.

All eyes watch me. I glance at Gawain, who with one look tells me he, too, has known of this for perhaps days.

He mentioned tests. How a man of the sword might slice the throat of his companion. What sort of sinister dangers might have fallen upon Galahad’s infantry?

I force myself to breathe, and it feels like I’m drowning. “You all knew.” I’m too angry to form words. “When were you going to tell me?” But instead of facing my father, I face the one who would understand more than the rest. Gawain holds my gaze for a long moment before speaking. “If we heard of Sir Marcus.”

I should say something, but no words come. My lips form the letters, but no breath races to help. I need to be strong like the men sitting around me, but I’ve never felt more like a child.

Finally, I find my voice. “Marcus is missing, too?” “Yes,” Lancelot says. “Word arrived two nights past of an argument between him and Owen that started it all.

Your boy is headstrong, William.”

My father sits back in his seat. This was not news to him, but he doesn’t like hearing it again.

Lancelot’s attention returns to me. “Owen has a thirst for power. Who knows what was said amongst them?” I watch the scene in my mind’s eye: my brother unleashing rage upon Marcus after Owen found error in something as simple as a mistake in direction. The crossbow on Owen’s back suddenly aimed at Marcus’s throat.

I think of Marcus forced to unsheathe his sword, crafted by the blacksmith when he was knighted, unexpectedly vicious and strong when he needs to be. Perhaps something worse happened—like their brawl over Owen betraying Lancelot and Guinevere resurfaced. A spiteful remark about loyalty from Marcus. A quick jump to violence from Owen. Merlin did say there were sleeping demons in my brother.

It’s easy to imagine Owen reacting violently, but not Marcus. “What sort of conflict would they fight over?” Lancelot reaches into the pocket of his gentleman’s jacket and tosses a thin strip of black lace on the table.

Each of us looks at the small trinket, but I’m the only one to recognize it. Without even a touch, I remember its delicate feel as I tied it around Marcus’s wrist before he headed into Morgan’s war. Owen told me to be careful when it came to my heart and how Marcus made it flutter, but when my brother told me what deal Marcus had made with Lancelot about finding the Grail, and how it would let him relinquish his knighthood, I’d thought all was for given.

But the truth very well may be that the knights disbanded over something as simple as Marcus and me. Now, Lancelot doesn’t hold back. “All the messenger knew was that Marcus was the first to go missing, one month past. No one’s heard from him since.”

Guinevere’s abandoned furs fall from my shoulders to the snowy ground, but the chill doesn’t affect my sprint back to the clock tower. My father bellows at me to return—he’s much closer than I thought. Suddenly, his hand grabs my arm, and I spin to look at him.

“Let me go,” I say with not an ounce of emotion stitched into the words. “Let me go. Now. Please.”

“Stop this!” he growls in a low voice striving for patience. His worn blue eyes are heavy with worry and fatigue. “Enough, Vivienne. You’re wasting your time up in that clock tower.”

He won’t let go of my arm, but I haven’t given up. “I can save them. I can find them. Will you
please
let me go?” My voice jumps three octaves into the quiet Camelot night.

But my father’s grip stills me into place, and I hold my breath, waiting for retribution, for discipline, for the order to become a lady whom a lord of Camelot might desire for a wife.

“No. That was the last of it, daughter.” He says in a low voice he uses when there’s sadness attached. I’ve mentioned my place in Camelot too many times, and it’s caught up to me. My father glances about, as though expecting perhaps a nosy stable boy eavesdropping. But we’re alone. “I cannot bear to worry about your safety here. A fortnight past, I sent for an aeroship. It’ll arrive in the morning. You’ll go to be with Guinevere until the others return.”

The others.
My father’s name for those who left the kingdom for safer grounds and who haven’t returned. To go to the same northern nunnery Guinevere fled to after Morgan’s war would save my reputation once Camelot is a united kingdom again. Certainly a more ideal option than to be found as the only lady in these ruins for six months. Quite possibly I could be married off by the time Camelot is rebuilt.

To speak higher than a whisper might mean a scream of protest. “You would have me leave my home all because Sir Kay didn’t like how a handmaid argued with him?”

My father’s gaze is not one of anger at my words, but one of pity. Of perhaps wishing I could have instead been born a boy to follow in his political footsteps. “You would have done well as an advisor.”

I scoff, wishing away the lump of sadness in my throat.

My father could rebuke me for that, but he finds patience somehow. “The world we live in is unkind, even here, in a place that should have been paradise.” He sets his hands on my shoulders so that I look at him. “It won’t be this way forever. Our allies in España, Caledonia, and the Druid lands are helping us search for … for them. It won’t be much longer now.”

I feel my eyes well, but not because of what being sent away would mean for Marcus and me. But because there is no argument I could give my father that would change his mind, regardless of whether it could save his only son. The morning is only hours away. I could be on the northern shores by the next nightfall.

“Please don’t ask me to do this,” I whisper.

My father touches my cheek in a tender way. “It’s for the best. You don’t belong up there.” His eyes shoot up at the clock tower, but he’ll never say the words himself. “Let Lancelot deal with Owen and the … ” He trails off, and I wonder if he and Lancelot have spoken much about Marcus’s affection for me. “He’s a knight now, and he was only a serf. Please, Vivienne. You’ll thank me one day.”

I want to speak up, to defy him, to tell him I won’t live a life decided for me, but the words are lost on my lips, and all I can manage is a bitter response. “No. I’ll never forgive you.”

My father straightens, guarding himself from my words, though certain I won’t leave the castle. And so there’s no reason to keep tight to my arm: no one in this wretched place would accompany me should I try to escape anyway. I run through the snow to Merlin’s tower before my father can see me cry and know that perhaps he was right in believing this skeleton of a kingdom is no place for a girl.

Night is descending, and Camelot will grow colder. Irrelevant—I must leave tonight, before the aeroship my father sent for arrives. For that, I’ll need
jaseemat
. And a hell of a lot of it.

According to my specifications, only
jaseemat
as sophisticated as Azur’s can power my own aeroship to fly high enough to kiss the heavens, fast enough to chase Apollo across dawn’s sky. To reach Avalon. When Merlin and I used the alchemic powder as blood in the copper veins of Victor, it rendered much power. To hell with waiting for a signal from the Lady of the Lake. I need to find Marcus and Owen or I’ll be sent away at the first sight of dawn. A month missing without returning to Camelot? Marcus wouldn’t do that. He’d find a way to send word.

In the clock tower, the wind blasts a tornado around me, its voice taunting me that it might already be too late. I ignore it for the scattered journals and leaves of parchment on Merlin’s desk, scanning the alchemic incantations I’ve come to memorize. But I’ve already gone through these volumes. There’s nothing here about turning charcoal into gold, let alone
jaseemat
.

Azur. I need Azur, though it’s been weeks since I could last reach him. But he might have heard something. And he needs to teach me more about alchemy.

I pick up Merlin’s looking glass. A small one the sorcerer cherished for as long as I’d been his apprentice: rounded, metal back with hammered texture and handle inspired by ancient Druid art. I know how to use alchemic properties for communication; to stay in touch with Azur, it became necessary to learn how. As my soul is unblemished of magic, it works perfectly.

The looking glass reflects the haggard look in my eyes, the dark circles beneath, the gaunt cheeks—I haven’t been eating enough. The wind forces me to draw a blanket nearer to my face, tucking against my skin the wild blonde strands that have loosened themselves from my steel netting. I look away from my reflection.

I’ll have to sacrifice some of Azur’s
jaseemat
for this, as Merlin’s is not nearly strong enough, even though to fail at reaching Azur again would be the risk of spending it. I open Merlin’s padlocked safe and seize the mortar and pestle, tossing a pinch of
jaseemat
atop the looking glass.
“Yaty ala alhyah.”

“
Ahlohnfu
Azur Barad,” I whisper, emitting the conjuring instruction in Azur’s native tongue. The alchemy’s alto voice whispers the name back. The surface shimmers like water, and the ripples reveal Azur’s eyes, as though from the bottom of a pond as he stands at the surface. I can’t help but smile through my worry at seeing him, at
finally
seeing him.

“Vivienne,” he says in a voice unnaturally concerned, vowels jagged from his accent and warped through the watery reflection. “This is a surprise.”

The looking glass is now a window to Jerusalem, Azur’s world. And in that world, explosions abound as the alchemist takes cover in a fast crouch. Aeroships move against the skies like hawks: unsuspecting, fast, deadly. I’ve found Azur in the midst of chaos, and suddenly I know why no one in Camelot has heard from the Holy Land.

“Quick, child! I have but minutes.”

“Oh God, Azur. What’s happening? Why haven’t you sent for help? No one here has heard from Jerusalem in weeks!”

His eyes are heavier now, full of things he’s seen since Morgan’s war, perhaps more horrid than the torture the witch inflicted upon Camelot. With a gaze saddened and tired, he breathes for a long, long second, enough time for that gaze to turn vengeful. “Where Camelot was the birthplace of magic, Jerusalem is the inception of mechanical progress, but with that comes vulnerability. We have sent word with a knight from Camelot who was stationed in Jerusalem. He was supposed to have arrived by now. Tell Lancelot to send his knights. I beg of you, Vivienne. The Druids have sent warriors to help with this siege—”

“Is it rogues, Azur?” I run Azur’s instructions through my mind over and over, grasping at every image it shows me of cannons and clashing swords. The images I conjure up are stronger than the alchemist’s words, but I must remember them. “Why would they do this? They seek the Grail, like the rest of the world!” And Avalon is certainly not in the Holy Land. That has been long established.

Azur’s face falls with confusion, like perhaps one of the most tragic aspects of this attack is how he doesn’t understand it. “Send help. Please.”

My hands are shaking, and the cold is no longer the culprit. Another strike of lighting to Jerusalem’s ground, and I realize too late it’s an array of bearings falling like rain. I can help, though it might delay any aid I could be to Marcus and Owen; nevertheless, I raise my voice to match the echoes of cannons. “My aeroship, Azur. I can fly to Jerusalem and get you out of the city! Tell me how to create
jaseemat
—”

But then the blood-curdling scream of a monster trumps the atmosphere, forcing Azur’s eyes shut and me to cover my cold ears with colder hands. Beads of sweat line the parts of Azur’s face I can see. “By Allah’s grace we will be saved.”

This is no longer the spoils of war I’m hearing. This is something worse.

Merlin’s spirit is caged in an iron vault in Jerusalem, anchored to the ground by Azur’s alchemy and the part of the sorcerer still yearning to be a man. A necessary confinement Merlin would agree to, surely, lest his uncontrollable, dragonesque soul were to attack his old friend or others. I don’t know how Azur will return Merlin to his physical body, and I’m not sure I want to.

Azur turns quickly as though to prevent an ambush. “Merlin is drunk with magic and refusing to cooperate.” His eyes turn fierce. “It is nearly impossible. By interfering, I might be damning him to a limbo not of this world, and he was already at risk for a month, when the demon inside him managed to find freedom. Now, with these attacks, I am not as strong a man as I once was. But leave this to Lancelot and the Druids warriors. You, with the coordinates to Avalon, cannot leave Camelot.”