In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) (35 page)

When he was gone, and the door was closed, Gawain picked up the tusk that had been left to decorate his sick bed. It was warm, as if it had been freshly torn from the new-dead beast. It had an edge that could cut a man’s hand were he not careful. The place where the tusk had lain was spattered with drying blood, reminding Gawain of the blood he had imagined on the edge of his bowl of broth, and the blood he’d smelled in his dream. It seemed to him that the smears and spatters shifted beneath his sight, and he fancied that if he looked long enough, he might read them like old runes.

Gawain rubbed his eyes.
What is happening to me? That fever is not so far gone as my lady promised
.

Setting the tusk carefully on the table so he would not be seen to show disrespect to his host’s token — though in truth he would have tossed the grim thing aside if he could — he lay back on his pillows to wait for supper and then for sleep and to pray for tomorrow and strength and health and after that … and after that …

After that, for life.

That night, Risa dreamed. The door to her cell was diffuse, like mist. The threshold around it sagged unevenly and was made of only rough and broken stones. Risa started forward, only to realize her wrists and ankles were weighted down with chains of iron, so heavy she could barely move. She struggled, against the chains and against the profound weariness that filled her. She had to climb the stairs, she had to. So she walked out into the corridor, which was black and dank and solid. She toiled up the worn stairs, her chains scraping on the stones, a harsh grating noise.

Outside, the courtyard was nothing but a ruin. Yet, she could still discern hints of Euberacon’s palace. The memory of clean and gleaming marble coated the filthy, tumbled stones like a silver mist. The tiles were the barest hint of color gleaming thinly across a churned sea of clay and mud. The fountain was a muck-filled bowl in which a little dirty water bubbled up fitfully. The jagged ends of roofbeams lay beneath the moon like a giant’s broken bones. Only one tower stood whole, a thick, inelegant edifice, built for keeping watch against some enemy.

Risa stood there, gaping, at a loss as to what to do next.

Then, she saw a woman trudging toward the broken fountain. In her hand, she carried a sieve made of wood and hair. Her face was sunken with woe and despair. She dipped the sieve into the dirty water and watched, tears running down her face as the water ran out onto the muddy ground. Risa saw then that she had no eyes. She had only pearl-grey spheres where her eyes should have been, spheres to cry and to suffer, but not to see.

Head hanging low, the woman turned and walked one weary step at a time back the way she had come.

Risa stared after her, a lump rising in her throat, her own woes forgotten for that moment.

Then, she saw the others.

In the manner of dreams, she saw them one at a time. As soon as she turned from one, that one was gone, and she was alone with another person, entirely different, but just as blind, just as suffering.

She saw a youth wielding a broom as tall as he was, frantically sweeping at the clay and mud of the courtyard. The broom bristles swished against the ground, sounding so much like the sea Risa thought she might see the foam from the breaking waves.

A man, chained like she was, dragged his shackles up the winding stairs to the southeast tower. Each step was an unspeakable strain. His face, his whole being was slack, devoid of hope or any plan beyond the next step. Two demons — red-skinned, black-horned and leather-winged fluttered around behind him, laughing at his struggle. The man’s strength failed him and he crumpled forward, dashing his chin against the unforgiving marble, his body a helpless weight in its chains. He rolled down the hard and unforgiving steps until he lay still, bruised surely, perhaps broken, at the bottom.

The demons leaned over his still body, sniffing like dogs over a kill.

“Is it dead?” asked one.

“It wishes it was,” replied the other, pawing delicately at the man’s head. “But it will be here again tomorrow.”

Then the other one looked up, and saw Risa.

“What’s this? What’s this?” shrieked one, leaping into the air. “Is it flesh or is it foul?”

They dove toward her, as the ravens had done. Panic and fury lent Risa strength despite the chains, despite the weariness, and she swung her arms, swatting at the fiends, but they just cackled in delighted laughter, flying out of her reach.

“Again! Again!” cried one in foul delight. “The others do not give such sport as this! Again!”

Its companion swooped low, and Risa ducked. “How is it she has eyes and they have none?”

“Ah! For it is her body he wants confined, her mind he has other uses for.”

“Him! Him!” screamed the first of the fiends. “Has he fallen yet? Has he?”

They flew away, up into the night sky like leaves caught in the wind, and up at the top of the tower, balanced on the slumping stones of the battlements, she saw Euberacon. Around him in the air there hung a flock of demons, shining with their own eerie light. They were bloated and grotesque. They were pinched and withered with long grasping fingers. Some were as beautiful as angels, others had red and black faces distorted by fury. They slumped in the air as if as weary as Risa, or they gamboled, displaying their bodies to him, enticing him to reach out, to stretch his arm too far, so that he might lose his careful equilibrium.

They were waiting for him to fall.

“Yes,” she whispered.
Fall, fall! Let them take you, let them break you on the stones
. “Yes!”

She wondered for a moment whether Euberacon saw the demons before him, or if he was as blind as the others she had seen. But then he looked down past his shoulder onto his tiny, dark domain and she saw his face clearly. She expected him to smile, to gloat at her bound in chains of nightmare, but he did not. She saw only fear written across his face. Around him the demons flocked, greedy and ready.

Then, it was over and Risa woke. Dawn’s light streamed in through the tiny window and showed her the solid stone walls and the closed door. All was as it had been when she felt asleep. Including, she tightened her fingers and relief rushed through her, the knife she held hidden in her sleeve.

What was that dream, or could it have been another vision?

What does it mean?

The cell offered no answers. The stones around her looked and felt as solid as they had been before. There was no way to make any ablutions or to refresh herself. She smoothed her hair down with her free hand, then she worried one of the ribbons out of her loosening braid. Clumsily, she bound the knife to her forearm, her heart in her mouth the whole time. What if the invisible servants were here to watch what she did? What if they had alerted Euberacon? Or would they just dart their clawed hands down and seize her only hope?

Were they demons like the ones she had seen in her dream?

She stood and folded her arms, letting her sleeve fall over the knife and its hasty binding. She could feel its edge against her skin. It would cut her if she moved too quickly. Worse, the ribbon would not hold for long. She would have to find her chance or make one quickly.

Remembering how it had gone the previous day, Risa tried the door. It swung open easily. Evidently, the sorcerer desired her presence.

Good
, she thought grimly, steeling herself.
For I would be near to him
.

Risa mounted the stairs to the courtyard. The sun poured down, careless of Risa’s captivity. A table covered in cloth of silver had been set beside the fountain. Euberacon sat there, loaves of bread and bowls of jellied meats before him. A woman bustled to and fro, setting down another bowl, this one of deep red preserves, adjusting linen and setting out another cup and knife. But that was not what caused Risa to stare. She knew this woman. This was the one she had seen the night before in her dream trying to draw water with a sieve.

How is it she has eyes and they have none?

Ah! For it is her body he wants confined, her mind he has other uses for
.

The woman curtsied to the sorcerer, her face serene and alert. Risa could not see her eyes. Euberacon nodded, and the serving woman took her leave.

“You are prompt this morning,” said the sorcerer. “Good. Come here.”

Yes
. Risa did as she was told, coming to stand before him, arms folded tightly across her chest.

The sorcerer spread a slice of fresh brown bread with jellied meat and took a bite. Risa was ashamed to find her mouth watering.

“Tell me what you saw last night,” he ordered.

The details of her nightmare sprang instantly into her mind’s eye, but Risa just tightened her hold on her own forearms. She felt the shape of the knife beneath the cloth of her sleeve. The ribbon was already loosening.

Find the chance soon or make it
.

“Did you hear me?” the sorcerer’s voice took on a dangerous edge.

“I saw nothing last night,” she said. “I slept in a cell behind a locked door. What could I have seen?”

“You are a liar,” said the sorcerer coolly. “I will allow that once only. What did you see last night?”

What could concern you about my dream?
The sorcerer’s eyes were boring into her mind and fear shrank Risa’s heart, but still she said, “I saw nothing last night.”

The sorcerer rose slowly to his feet. Risa looked up and deliberately shank in on herself, shoving her hands into her sleeves. He stalked around his chair. His shadow fell across her. His eyes drew her close, and she felt her mind slip away from her, all volition draining toward him.

Clamping down hard on the last of her will, Risa drew the knife. Its edge sliced a fiery line across her skin. She swung it out, but she swung too wide, and only grazed his hand.

“Slut!” he shouted. Risa did not give him time to say any more. She darted in, knife raised and ready, aiming for his belly. She stabbed upward. Cloth tore and the blade sank quickly through flesh, until her arm jarred against bone.

Euberacon clouted her hard across the ear, and Risa toppled backward, seeing stars.

Before Risa’s sight cleared, Euberacon was beside her, his hands gripping her arms, twisting, and his fingers gouging into her tendons. “What? You think I keep my life where such as you can find it?” He dragged her to her feet, and she saw the knife on the tiles. There was not even any blood on it.

But I felt it, I
felt
the blow!
her mind wailed.

Euberacon twisted her arms harder, forcing them up and behind her. She kicked backwards, but her feet found no purchase.

“You will learn, you whore. You will learn who your master is.”

Euberacon twisted her arms until the pain burned from shoulder to finger-tip. He kicked at her knees and calves, driving her forward toward the fountain. She struggled but it did no good. The sight of the clear, sparkling water in its beautiful tiled basin filled her with terror. Euberacon gripped the back of neck, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of her neck. The world swirled red and black before her eyes.

“So you still think you will be saved? Perhaps you think that your knight will have you back and be enchanted again by that pretty face of yours. It has opened so many doors for you, that face. I think it is time you learned I own that face as I own all of you.”

He thrust her downward. Risa cried out, but her scream was muffled by the water. It filled her mouth and stopped her ears, a gout of it dragging painfully down her throat into startled lungs that gagged and dragged in more water. She thrashed aimlessly, the panicked instinct for survival wiping out all else. But Euberacon’s arm was like an iron bar, pinning her remorselessly down. Drowning, she was drowning. She saw black again and flashes and lines of gold, and her lungs were more filled with water than air, and over the churning of the water she heard distantly a voice chanting, and thought she heard another answer, and then the blackness drew its cloak closer.

Mother Mary, help me!

But this time, the Virgin did not answer. This time, something else happened. She felt it in her bones and in each joint. They twisted, warped and crushed themselves together. The muscles of her face dragged themselves out painfully, snapping and tearing. Her aching eyes screwed in tightly to her skull, shrinking almost to nothingness, while her teeth fought to tear themselves from her gums. The pain overrode the terror of drowning and Risa struggled to scream and not to scream and felt herself tear in two for death to enter in.

All at once Euberacon’s arm dragged her up out of the water and dropped her onto the tiles.

For an eternity, all she could do was retch and try to breathe. Her lungs burned. She vomited up clear gouts of water onto the tiles, soaking her hands, sleeves and skirts. At last she was empty, and her breath rasped in and out, and she blinked her eyes clear of tears and ice cold water, and she could feel again.

She could feel her eyes, small and round and set too close to a nose suddenly too broad and protruding. Her jaw was heavy as a stone, but her head where she was accustomed to the weight of her hair was feather-light. She pushed herself up on her hands, and stared down at them, her tiny, piggish eyes trying to strain out of her misshapen skull. Her hands were unrecognizable. The skin on them was scaled and scabbed. The fingers were splayed and twisted and the yellow nails curled like the talons of some bird of ill-omen. Her wrists stuck out inches past her sleeve, the filthy, yellowing skin clinging slackly to the bones. The only thing left that was recognizable was the ring on her right hand with the great, square emerald winking mockingly in the brilliant sun.

Risa screamed. She couldn’t stop herself. Terrified at the sight of her own hands, she slapped at them, trying to pull off skin and nails as if they were a pair of gloves. Over her head, she heard Euberacon laugh.

“It is well then you cannot see that face now!” he crowed, and he seized her collar, dragging her again to the fountain, and leaning her over it. And Risa looked at the wavering water, and she could not help but see.