The Legend of the King (17 page)

"I already told you. You're forgiven," Gawain said, then he added, "Gary's dead, too."

Lancelot swallowed. "Sir Gaheris?"

"Your cousin Lamorak killed him," Gawain said. Terence blinked, then nodded. He had forgotten that Lamorak was a distant relative of Lancelot's. Gawain continued, "I killed Lamorak. I ask your forgiveness as well."

Lancelot reached out and rested his hand on Gawain's shoulder. "My friend," he said.

"So far so good," interposed Nacien calmly. "But I take it there is another rift to heal. Sir Lancelot, will you come with me?" Taking Lancelot's elbow, Nacien steered him toward King Arthur, who lifted his bleak eyes to glare challengingly at the knight.

Lancelot evidently needed no prompting. Sinking to his knees at the king's feet, Lancelot said gruffly, "Sire, I have never begged your forgiveness for betraying you with your queen. I thought it best to let it be forgotten, but I was mistaken. A wrong that is never forgiven cannot be forgotten. Can you forgive me?"

All who stood within hearing held their breath. Then the king said, "Do you speak of an old betrayal or a current one?"

Lancelot looked up, surprised. "Sire, my relations with Queen Guinevere ended years ago, when I left the court. I thought you knew that."

"And yet she is in your castle now, kept away from me," Arthur said. "What am I to make of that?"

Lancelot's eyes narrowed. "Sire, you cannot think ... I only rescued her to keep her from being unjustly executed."

The king raised one eyebrow. "You thought I would unjustly execute my own wife?"

"But Sir Kai said—"

"Sir Kai said what?" demanded Arthur.

"He sent me a letter saying that you were going to try her for treason and that you meant to have her hanged."

Now Sir Kai stepped in. "
I
sent you a letter?"

Lancelot nodded and rose to his feet. "Bors? Do you have the letter?"

Sir Bors stepped forward, bringing a sheet of parchment and handing it to the king. Arthur examined it for a long moment, then reached into a pocket in his robe and produced another sheet of parchment. While all the court watched, Arthur looked back and forth between the two letters. Then his head sank to his chin, and for a long minute no one spoke. At last the king looked up, his eyes bleary.

"This letter," he said, "purports to be from Sir Kai, telling Lancelot that I have gone mad and intend to kill the queen. It begs him to come and rescue her and promises that no one will stand in his way."

"Arthur, I didn't—" began Kai.

"I know you didn't write it, Kai," Arthur said. "I know your writing, and this is not it. It is, however, identical to the writing of the letter found on Lancelot's desk after he left the court."

"A letter?" Lancelot asked.

"A half-written letter from you to Mordred, promising to join his rebellion."

"No, sire! I never—"

Arthur waved his hand. "I know, Lance. I haven't been thinking clearly for several weeks, but I have enough wit left to realize that we have all been played for fools. Someone—Sir Mador, I would imagine—has been busily writing letters under false names, trying to split up the Round Table. Doing quite a good job of it, in fact."

Terence sighed with relief and heard others around him doing the same. The war between the king and Lancelot was over. But then Nacien cleared his throat gently. "Your Highness?" he said.

"Yes, your excellency?"

"I am glad we have cleared up the confusion, but the matter is not over. These letters ... neither of you would have believed them for a moment had there not been a division between you. We still need to deal with Sir Lancelot's betrayal."

"But all that was over years ago," Lancelot said.

Nacien smiled. "Didn't you say yourself, just a moment ago, that an unforgiven wrong is never forgotten? You're right. In fact, that's quite insightful. Have you ever thought about becoming a priest?"

"Me? A priest?"

"Or a monk. I don't care. You have the aptitude. But that's not the issue now. The issue is that you betrayed the king many years ago and never confessed and were never forgiven."

"I do confess it now, then," Lancelot said. "Before all these present, I confess my sin."

"And I," Nacien said, "receive your confession and assign you penance. You must go from here on pilgrimage. For three weeks, go to every shrine, every hermitage that you can find, and there confess your sins to those you meet. And then, when you have completed your pilgrimage, you must leave England."

On the night of the half-moon, Luneta sat up in bed as if she had been stuck with a pin. "Rhience!" she shouted.

She waited a moment and was about to call out again when her chamber door opened and her husband entered, bleary-eyed but awake. He carried a candle. "What is it?"

"Something's happened."

Rhience set the candle on a table and sat beside it in an oaken chair. "Something good or bad?"

"I don't know. Neither, maybe, or both."

"Nearby or far away?"

Luneta thought about this for a moment. It was a reasonable question. As an enchantress, her particular gift was in her awareness of others. Where her mother was an instinctive healer, Luneta had a natural ability to sense, even at great distances, what others were feeling and thinking. "Far away, I think. It's my mother."

Rhience said nothing, waiting.

A cold emptiness began to spread from Luneta's breast, hollowing out her whole body. "I think she's dead," Luneta said.

Rhience rose at once. He made no effort to convince her that her feelings might be mistaken, but only took her in his arms and murmured, "Oh, my love, I'm so sorry."

"She's not unhappy," Luneta added. "Mother, I mean. She's all right. Just dead."

"What about your father?" Rhience asked, leaning away from her and gazing into her face. "Can you tell anything?"

Luneta shook her head. "No. It must be very far away. I can sense Mother because of the connection between enchantresses, but not Father." She frowned. "There's something else, too: a lightening of darkness. Some heaviness that's been resting over England has started to lift. There's a presence that ... it's gone. I wasn't even aware that it was there until now, a dark fog that must have been growing gradually, but I can feel it, now that it's clearing. Oh, Rhience, I think everything has changed tonight."

"Not for me," Rhience said firmly. "I still love you. You are still my world, and you are still here. So don't talk nonsense about
everything
changing. Everything else can bloody well change all it wants, but we are still together."

Luneta shook herself briskly and said, "Thank you. Yes, you're right. But what are we going to do?"

"Tonight we'll rest. Then tomorrow morning we'll start for Orkney to check on Sir Gaheris. If your mother has died, he'll need us."

Rhience's steady good sense calmed her somewhat, even as she knew she wouldn't go back to sleep that night. "You're right," she said.

"And I'll stay with you," Rhience said, taking her back in his arms and sliding under the bedclothes beside her. "Lie down. Tomorrow we'll face together whatever there is to face."

As it turned out, they didn't leave for Orkney the next day. After breakfast, while Rhience was giving instructions to his steward for managing their Sussex estates in their absence, the castle gate flew open and a majestic woman with haughty eyes rode a gray palfrey into the courtyard.

"Morgan?" Luneta said, staring at her great-aunt, the enchantress who had trained her.

The proud eyes softened slightly. "Good morning, my dear." Morgan looked sharply around the yard, noting the horses saddled and baggage assembled. "You're going somewhere? Do you know, then?"

"I know that Mother died last night," Luneta said, forcing her voice to remain steady even as she uttered the horrible words. "That's all."

Morgan gazed at her thoughtfully. "You are more gifted than I knew. But is that really all?"

"Something, no,
someone
else died, too, lifting a shadow from the land."

Morgan nodded. "My sister Morgause."

"Morgause is dead?" Luneta said, a spark of hope rising in her breast.

"Yes. Your mother and my sister died last night, and with their deaths this world has changed for people like us."

"Enchantresses, you mean?"

"What else could I mean?" Morgan replied impatiently. "I've been sent to gather all the enchantresses of England and bring them to the Henge."

"Who sent you?"

"Ganscotter himself. The Enchanter of Avalon. The greatest of all the—"

Rhience's sardonic voice broke in. "Ah, you mean Terence's daddy?"

A look of distaste flitted across Morgan's countenance. Rhience had never been one of her favorites. Morgan was used to being taken more seriously than Rhience took anyone. "Yes, Rhience, the father of the Duke of Avalon."

"I've always wanted to meet his papa," Rhience mused.

Luneta looked up quickly at Morgan. "And what about the husbands of enchantresses? Does Ganscotter invite them, too?"

"Yes," Morgan replied. From her tone it was clear that she thought poorly of this inclusion. "They're summoned as well."

Rhience smiled. "Well, please tell Terence's dad that we're honored by his kind invitation, but that we have another engagement."

Morgan's eyes widened. "You don't understand—" she began.

"The thing is," Rhience explained, "we were just off to Orkney to check on Sir Gaheris. With Lady Lynet gone, he'll need—"

"Sir Gaheris? Then you don't know that part?"

"Don't know what?" Luneta demanded.

"It was your father who killed Morgause, and he died doing it."

"Father's dead, too?" Luneta repeated blankly.

"Yes, perhaps I should have said so earlier," Morgan said.

Rhience at once stepped to Luneta's side, tenderly placing his arm around her shoulders. Now he glanced at Morgan with disdain. "Perhaps you
should
have," he said.

"It slipped my mind," Morgan snapped.

Luneta barely heard this exchange. For all that she was like her mother, she was even closer to her father. In her youth, Luneta had fought with her mother fiercely and often, but she had never been able to sustain anger against her father. When she tried, her wrath dissipated in his presence. He would simply grin at her, disarming her with his amused acceptance of whoever she happened to think she was at that moment.

"I'm sorry, lass," Rhience said softly, and his voice and intonation were so like her father's that she was oddly comforted.

"So you'll be coming with me," Morgan stated. "Come, we have other Ladies to gather."

Luneta looked up to see Rhience watching her, waiting for her decision. "I ... I think we should, Rhience." He nodded and held her hand while she mounted, then kept holding it while they rode away with Morgan.

Over the next two weeks, they gathered twelve other enchantresses, all of whom were stunningly beautiful. Upon completing their training in magical arts, enchantresses were offered a choice of three gifts, one of which was the gift of breathtaking physical beauty. Evidently that was the most popular choice. Luneta, who like her mother had chosen a healing potion instead, began to feel out of place in the growing cavalcade. She glanced speculatively at Rhience, who was gazing on the backs of two ravishing golden-haired sisters who rode ahead of him. "See something interesting, dear?" Luneta asked.

Rhience glanced at her and chuckled. "I was just thinking how lucky I was to be married to you," he said.

"Really?" Luneta asked suspiciously.

Rhience nodded and explained earnestly, "Yes, because I shan't lose you in the crowd. It's so easy to tell you apart from the others, you see."

Luneta tried to stifle her laughter but failed. She snorted in a very undignified way, spraying her horse's neck.

Rhience handed her a kerchief, and she wiped her nose. "Seriously, I was only half joking about telling enchantresses apart," Rhience added. "I was just trying to remember which of those two girls was Felicia and which Patricia. As far as I can tell, they both look like your friend Laudine. Isn't it odd that the more beautiful a woman is, the more she looks like every other beautiful woman?"

"How lucky for you that you married a fright like me," Luneta said dryly.

"Yes, isn't it?" Rhience returned, smiling with simple pride. "Provident of me, really. I'm often surprised at how clever I am."

"Whereas I'm no longer surprised at all," Luneta replied mournfully. "Resigned, more like."

Rhience grinned, acknowledging a hit, and they rode on in comfortable silence. They were nearing the Henge, a great circle of stones in Salisbury that had been set in place—so people said—by Merlin himself, and they had only one more enchantress to summon: Lady Laudine. Laudine was an old friend of Luneta's—married, in fact, to her cousin Ywain—and Luneta was mildly pleased that she was going to see them again. Laudine was silly but goodhearted, and Ywain was a knight of great honor and courage. Then Luneta sighed with sudden disappointment. "Oh, bother," she said. "I was looking forward to seeing Ywain, but I suppose he's off fighting with Arthur now."

Since leaving Sussex—where they heard only vague whispers of rebellion—they had learned much that was alarming about the state of the kingdom. They had traveled north, through London, to Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, then headed west into Wales, south through Gloucester and Bath, and in all these places they had heard about Mordred's White Horsemen. Most of these reports had ended with dire predictions of catastrophe and collapse, but Luneta doubted such forecasts. She couldn't believe that anyone would be able to muster an army against the wisest and most generous king in England's history, or that any such army could succeed against the fellowship of the Round Table.

"You don't really think that Arthur's in any danger, do you?" Luneta asked Rhience.

Her husband looked grave. "I don't know," he said. "I've never heard things like this before."

"But reports of disaster always get exaggerated in the telling," Luneta pointed out.