Avalon Rising (21 page)

A fire-breather blows a mouthful of oil across the lit torch in his hand. Flames flare above the small children who reach into the sky to grab hold of one, cheering in hopes the festival entertainer will do it again. But like a mischievous minx, the fire-breather runs off with those children running after him. The Black Knight saw these memories when his mechanical eye bore into Marcus’s, and therefore, so do I.

I’m a stranger in this land, a phantom never to be seen. I transcend the laws of the world to follow my beloved and witness King Pelles and the people of Corbenic, long before the threat of Morgan le Fay was a whisper in Britannia, celebrate the summer solstice, the Festival of Lights and Stars.

Those honored stars cast their glimmer on the drunken Pelles, and to that, he calls for more ale from atop his wooden throne, under tapestries of cornflower blue and silver strung overhead, mingling with tiny gas lanterns in the courtyard. Subjects dance while Pelles’s nobility watches, their visions as glazed as their minds. Girls’ hair weaves around the red and yellow hydrangea crowns atop their heads. Glorious yellow dresses sway as the crowd claps in rhythm to the minstrels’ song.

I pause from searching the crowd as the song ends and another entertainer steps forward: a girl with long, raven locks whose mask shields her eyes. Her hair is too wild to hide, but a tall hat does its best to try. With dramatic flair, she creeps through the people, a cape about her shoulders, and under it, a small mechanical animal—a bronze rabbit—she sets in the middle of the grass. I take a seat next to Pelles, stinking of too much ale and chicken grease from the plate in front of him.

“Watch, now. She’s been working on this one for weeks,” the king slurs to the man on his other side. I glance over, seeing only the hand of the gentleman in question.

The girl calls for attention. “Gather ‘round, if you dare, to see the mechanical arts distort and amaze!”

She withdraws a long steel wand from the inside of her cloak and casts aside the garment entirely, revealing a lowcut silver gown she wears boldly and happily.

As lords and dandies offer their whistles, she shakes a finger at them. “That’s another show, my lords. One I’m afraid none of you could afford.” The crowd laughs.

She flicks her wand into the air for effect, and the children who’ve lost interest in the fire-breather sit at her feet and giggle. There’s one tap of the bronze rabbit’s head while her other hand sneakily finds the key built into its back, turning clockwise.

“Come to life!” Her voice bubbles with so much confidence that all attention is hers, and when she throws her sleeve off the rabbit, it clatters and waddles around on the grass. The entire company claps politely, and the children gasp in awe at the “magic” they’ve witnessed.

“Wonderful!” Pelles says, standing and clapping, nearly knocking over a goblet of wine in the process. Instinctively, I reach over to steady him, but the man on Pelles’s other side gets there first.

I’m surprised to see Sir Lancelot, young and at ease before Arthur’s death will come to pass. He sits at Pelles’s table an honored guest of Corbenic, a castle he knows well. His smile crinkles his eyes, and his untamed black and curly hair sits about his shoulders as he sips from his own goblet.

Pelles takes his seat and beckons the illusionist over. “Elaine! Come, dear girl!”

The girl makes no motion to remove her mask, running over with a smile as wide as the crescent moon. “It was delightful, wasn’t it?” With one look at Lancelot, that smile softens, and the knight inclines his head politely before looking elsewhere for something to sustain his tired interest.

“Sir Lancelot, I present my daughter, Elaine of Corbenic,” Pelles says mid-gulp of wine.

Elaine ignores her father’s lack of propriety and offers her hand. “I’ve heard great things about you, Sir Lancelot. Many stories I imagine have been wildly exaggerated.” Her smile shines brighter, and she refuses the opportunity to relinquish any boldness on her part.

Lancelot kisses her hand. He holds it in his glove for quite some time as he looks at her. “Terribly so, I’m afraid, if your father was the one to tell them.” He glances to the side where Marcus sits, chin rested in his palm as he struggles to keep his eyes open. Lancelot elbows him. “My squire, Marcus. He’s not usually this dull, but we did just arrive.”

Marcus’s violet eyes shoot open at the sound of his name, and he looks at Elaine, offering a polite nod, which Elaine returns. The girl has handmaids much younger than herself, three of whom huddle in a small circle, pointing at Marcus and giggling, and a fourth bold enough to tap him on the opposite shoulder and run off when Marcus turns to no one standing there.

I watch their encounter closely in case there’d been a chance I missed a romantic spark, but Marcus is distracted enough that he does not speak with Pelles’s daughter. By merely looking at him, I see his thoughts written on his mind: those of Camelot, of his life back in the farmlands, of his mother, his father.

“Where did your travels take you this time, my lord?” Elaine asks Lancelot as she takes the free seat across from him.

Lancelot stares at the blue of the sky on the cusp of turning black. His face falls into a subtle state of melancholy. “To the south. Four or five countries. After long enough, you lose track of which is which, isn’t that right, Marcus?”

Marcus, leaning on his elbow now, lifts his head and offers a tired smile for an answer.

Elaine touches the sleeve of Lancelot’s gentleman’s jacket. “Come on, then. Tell me one place. One place I should visit.”

Lancelot stares at the gas lanterns hanging above. “Lyonesse is quite beautiful.”

“But Lancelot,” Pelles calls. “It’s the only kingdom left in Britannia that still embraces magic! Puh!”

“No,” Lancelot replies. “Not all do.”

Pelles and his stewards argue on the matter for some time longer, debating kingdoms and demigods with enough ale and spirits to sustain the discussion long past dawn. Elaine listens with exaggerated interest, rolling her eyes at Marcus once her father has emptied his goblet. Pelles speaks out of turn regarding Arthur keeping a sorcerer in his kingdom, not only a subtle mockery to demigods, but a
“blasted drunk”
as well. Through his ramblings, Marcus and Lena hold their laughs, and Pelles’s advisors rush to quiet their king on the matter.

But Lancelot says nothing after that.

“He doesn’t remember me, does he?”

Marcus opens one eye, but otherwise doesn’t move from his stretched-out position, lying on his back in the grassy courtyard as I find my place in this memory from the following week. In Camelot, it’d be against propriety for a squire to appear so inactive. But Corbenic is different. Marcus glances up at cloudy shapes he might have seen as animals if he’d been a child. Lady Elaine sits next to him by a stream, but her face is shadowed by a hickory tree, and I cannot clearly see her face.

Marcus shuts his eyes again. “What do you mean?” But I can tell by the way he avoids eye contact: he knows exactly what Lady Elaine is thinking. And then the Black Knight shows me another memory from the grand hall only the other day: Marcus had witnessed Lancelot and Elaine when they’d thought they were alone. The memories fly past me as though I’m watching a performance. The knight had strode through the corridor with much on his mind—Lyonesse, for example—and a girlish voice had followed him.

“I see you,”
she had sing-songed.

Marcus had watched a frenzy of raven hair disappear behind long, blue tapestries. He’d witnessed a smile of amusement appear on Lancelot’s face, along with a sense of long-lost fun he hadn’t seen since well before their journey to Lyonesse. Lancelot had run after the girl, calling at her to come out.

“Forget the Grail, Sir Knight! This is your quest now!”
she’d responded.

Once the hallway had ended, Lancelot had tiptoed to her stilled body, his hand trapping her inside the tapestries. When he’d swept them from her face and touched her cheek, her smile had disappeared. She’d leaned in and kissed Sir Lancelot.

Now, Elaine seizes a handful of grass and weeds and throws it at Marcus. “Hey! You got your fill of sleep days ago. Wake up!”

Marcus grumbles as dirt falls into his eyes. Pelles’s daughter certainly commanded an audience wherever she went; if not, she’d force one. She and I are so different from one another.

“Does he remember you? Lancelot?” Marcus looks toward the courtyard, where the knight in question strolls with Pelles, a much happier man now that they were days away from their time in Lyonesse. The next stop, Camelot. “Of course he does. You were in a dream of his weeks ago and haunted him while we crossed the eastern plains.”

Elaine scoffs, and part of her cheek falls into the sunlight. Marcus peeks at her as she blushes at the thought, eyeing the knight who hasn’t yet spotted her. “Do not mock me, Marcus. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to square off with you in the courtyard and put your swordsmanship to shame.”

Marcus laughs under his breath. “Wouldn’t want that. You’re good enough with a blade to beat me one day.”

“Two years past you both were in Corbenic. You weren’t his squire yet; it was a blond boy, the most seriouslooking fellow I’d ever seen. I’m not sure even my father was successful in getting him to crack a smile.”

“Galahad,” Marcus says as the memory clearly returns. He shuffles to a sitting position. “Arthur knighted him a short while after. Were you there? I don’t remember.”

Elaine’s gaze flicks skyward in exasperation, though back in the hickory’s shadows. “You wouldn’t, scoundrel. I was with my father to greet Lancelot. Just a girl of fifteen. Terribly forgettable.”

Marcus watches Lancelot laugh with Elaine’s father. Perhaps the knight had a vague memory of a black-haired girl the last time they’d been to Corbenic. “Come now. How could anyone forget you?”

“An excellent answer,” Elaine responds with a winning smile. She picks at the grass. “But Arthur’s court will demand it of Lancelot, won’t they?”

Marcus takes his time to find a suitable response. “My lady, what do you expect from him? He is and will continue to be your friend—”

“Friend?” she says, stumbling on the word and withdrawing herself in a way that seems unusual for Elaine of Corbenic. “I suppose he would think that. Perhaps I’m as forgettable now as ever.”

Marcus stands and offers her a helping hand up. But she refuses and gets to her feet herself, turning away from me. Marcus scuffs his boots across the grass. “Lancelot is a knight of Camelot, bound to the Round Table.”

Elaine shrugs, and it’s an oddly vulnerable gesture. “Perhaps if I were to join you on your adventures, then. Or perhaps if he were to leave the Round Table.”

Marcus’s eyes shoot up to hers in surprise, and instantly, the pitiful girl must know what she is suggesting has bordered on the impossible.

“My lady, don’t lose your heart to someone who could never offer you his,” Marcus says. He takes a step back as strolling subjects make their casual and indifferent hellos to Elaine. “Perhaps Lancelot and I are overstaying our welcome.”

“Perhaps you are.” Elaine’s voice trembles with humiliation, and Marcus hesitates before leaving her to greet to the subjects with a princess’s smile, the biggest lie of all.

Marcus had slept for nearly a day and a half after arriving in Corbenic. Lancelot was involved in assemblies with King Pelles regarding the Holy Grail, so it wasn’t an issue. But after so much rest and inactivity, the wind in Marcus’s sails certainly begged for movement and practice, and now I see his desperation to wield a sword.

The next morning, he finds the artillery room and explores Pelles’s selection of fine, steel-based weaponry. Corbenic is slower than Camelot in terms of implementing firelances and pistolníks in battle, much preferring to employ the mechanical arts to enhance the imagination and provide entertainment at festivals. For years, Pelles asserted a sort of divine perfection in the sword—what could a few cogs and gears add that wouldn’t render the weapon clunky and overstated?

Marcus draws his fingers across the blades glinting on the walls. One by one, he meets and admires them before moving on to the crossbows. I’d never known him to be an archer, but the finely-polished bows of Corbenic made of applewood and sculpted like hourglasses are works of art themselves and beg praise.

“Marcus!” a girl’s voice hisses, breaking his concentration.

Marcus nearly drops the crossbow in his hand as we both spin around to the door. A girl stands there, a heavy hood covering her face, but dark locks spilling through.

“Please don’t make a sound!” She removes her hood from the top of her head and sets a shushing finger to her lips.

Marcus recognizes her immediately, and so do I. “Lady Elaine, I—”

“Please, Marcus. You’re my friend. You can call me Lena.” She checks the corridor to make sure the halls are empty and shuts the door. “But you cannot tell anyone you saw me.” She strides past him and the ghost I am to the swords he’d been admiring and chooses one. With a quick move, she flicks it around her wrist and into a hidden holster at her waist, buried underneath her cloak.

Marcus watches. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving Corbenic.”

His brows shoot up at that. “Leaving? Why?”

Her eyes shine at his, full of adventure. I don’t know why the day before he expected her to harbor feelings of resentment or despair over Lancelot; in these few memories, I’ve seen how Lena is strong in her ability to retain her independence.

“Because I’ve always wanted to. Because there are countries whose tongues I don’t speak. Because I’ve never seen the sea to the south. Shall I go on?”

She finds a selection of monocles that have been formatted to gauge far distances and chooses one for her pocket. “Marcus, I cannot stay. Not when there’s an entire world out there just waiting to be explored. I never realized how badly I longed for the life you and Lancelot live.” Marcus looks up, catching the sadness in her voice when she utters his knight’s name. But he says nothing. “Really, I’m fine,” Lena says, snatching up a rope and winding it around her palm and elbow until it’s a bunched loop. “Besides, the mechanical arts here are nothing more than illusions, and beyond these shores, there are kingdoms where they’ve built entire cities all with labyrinths and passageways. I must see them. There’s even word of an innkeeper in the countryside who’s begun building escape routes in his tavern. I’ve already sent word that I’d work as a barmaid if only he’d teach me—”