Ruins of Camelot (20 page)

Tears filled Gabriella's eyes again.  As always, she resented them.  She blinked, squeezed her eyes shut, and moved towards the window.  It was open, admitting a fresh autumn breeze.  The air was blissfully cool, filled with the scent of crisp leaves and distant storms.  The curtains belled softly.  The baby shifted, coming fully to wakefulness.

Gabriella used her hip to push the rocking chair closer to the window.  Then she sat, cradled her baby, and began to nurse him.

Again, she thought of Darrick.

He'll never see this,
she mused helplessly, testing the waters of her grief. 
He'll never watch his wife feed his child.  Never hold the boy in his own arms, never feel this tiny fist wrapped tightly around his finger.

The tears came now despite her resistance.  They rolled silently down her cheeks even as the Little Prince suckled, oblivious of his own loss.  Gabriella felt as if her sorrow was an ocean, frozen over, and she was walking on it.  She knew the ice would crack soon, and she would fall into it.  It would overwhelm her.  She was afraid of it, afraid that once her grief swallowed her up, it would never let her go no matter how long she lived.

Her chest hitched, disturbing the baby, but he was intent.  He continued hungrily.

Tears hung from her chin and dropped onto her lap, onto the Little Prince's arm, where he snuggled against her.

He will never know his father,
she thought, and her grief began to harden, to develop an edge. 
He will barely even know what he has lost, except for the emptiness, the void where his father should have been.

The tears still came, but her face grew still.  Anyone who saw her would have seen a woman of eerie, almost preternatural calm.  Her chin was raised to the window so that its light fell fully across her cheeks, the line of her nose, and lit the dark glimmer of her eyes.  For several minutes, she did not move.

Finally, the Little Prince finished.  He stirred, stretched languidly, and yawned, making a soft O with his perfect, little lips.  Gabriella looked down at him and smiled despite the tears that were still drying on her cheeks.  He blinked up at her.  He had Darrick's eyes, she saw.

"Sweet Little Prince," she soothed, still smiling.  "Mama's sweet Little Prince."

Outside, wafting up from the courtyard, Gabriella could hear the rising clamour of voices.  The edict had already been posted.  Confusion and alarm were spreading out into the city like tentacles.  Merodach was coming.  Even without his name on the edict, no one doubted the truth of that fact.

"Don't you worry," Gabriella said, her smile fading only slightly.  "Don't you worry, my Little Prince.  Mama will keep you safe.  Somehow…"

T
he next day, Gabriella began to pack.  The sky was stormy, low and sullen, and the wet wind brought a hard chill with it.  Sigrid closed the windows and stoked the fire.

"
Have the servants pack
only
a few gowns
, Princess," the older woman instructed busily.  "There will be no luxury for months' worth of clothing.  We shall have to suffice with wearing the same things week to week."

Gabriella nodded silently, sombrely.

The rest of the castle was a hive of nervous energy.  Meals were hushed, filled with low voices as plans were refined, routes considered, revised, rejected.  Gabriella stayed out of it.  The only time she smiled was when she held the Little Prince, fed him, soothed him to sleep.  His cries, shrill as they sometimes were, were like music to her.  Sigrid watched her with the baby, always prepared to help, but never intervening.  Sigrid loved the Little Prince nearly as much as she, his mother, did.  Gabriella recognised it in the way the older woman looked at the boy, held him, cooed to him even as she worked.

By the end of the second day of preparation, the city already seemed half-empty.  Gabriella stood on her balcony in the blowing chill, hugging herself.  There was less light in the streets below despite the windy darkness.  Many chimneys issued no smoke.  Most of those that were left in the city, she knew, were preparing to leave their homes the next morning, to join the escort to Herrengard.  She couldn't help feeling, despite her father's confident words, that this sight, and the journey that was to follow, signaled the creeping end of Camelot.

"The city needed you," she whispered, speaking to the memory of her husband.  "They needed a hero, just as you said.  You were right.  Perhaps Camelot did need you even more than I did.  But you promised me…"  She shook her head slowly.  "You promised me.  And I believed."

Somewhere out there, the beast that had forced Darrick to break his promise was alive and well.  And he was coming, coming to do to the rest of them what he had already done to her husband.  If he found them, he would spare no one.  Not even her child.

"We are packed, Princess," Sigrid announced, opening the balcony door just enough to speak through it.  "The Little Prince sleeps.  You should as well.  The morning will come quickly."

Gabriella did not move for a long moment.  Finally, she turned back to the light of her quarters.

"Thank you, Sigrid.  Goodnight."

The older woman frowned slightly and blinked, as if sensing something on the Princess's face.  She remained hunched in the doorway, studying her.

Gabriella spoke again, calmly.  "
Goodnight
, Sigrid."

Sigrid straightened herself.  Still frowning, she nodded.  A moment later, the balcony door closed, and she left.

Gabriella waited a few minutes longer.  When she went back inside, she closed and locked the balcony doors behind her.  The Little Prince snored softly from his crib.  Gabriella checked on him, brushing her hair away from her cheek as she leant to gaze in at him.  Then she turned and looked thoughtfully at the trunks stacked near the door.  She frowned slowly.

As quietly as she could, she let herself out of the main bedroom, leaving the door partly open, and crossed into the common hall at the top of the stairs.  The fire in the huge stone hearth was stoked for the night, providing the room's only illumination.  Across from it, glinting mellowly on its display stand, was her battle armour.  She moved to it, still frowning, and laid her hand on the breastplate.  The metal was cold to the touch.  There was hardly a scratch on the gold and steel.  After all, such extravagant pieces were meant for display more than actual battle.  Everyone knew that.

Behind her, footsteps sounded lightly on the stairs and then stopped.

"Your Highness," a man's voice said softly, carefully.  She recognised her visitor even without turning.  It was Darrick's page, Brice.

"Yes," she replied, still touching the metal of her armour.

"I'm sorry, Princess," Brice apologised, apparently struggling with himself.  "I know you did not wish to hear all of my tale.  I understand completely.  But…"

She turned now, looking over her shoulder at the man.  He was only a year or two older than she.  She remembered him from the academy.  "What is it, Brice?" she prodded cautiously.

He pressed his lips together, still standing on the top riser of the staircase, and then sighed quickly, resolutely.  "I thought you should know, Your Highness," he went on, raising his eyes to meet hers, "your husband, Sir Darrick, he… he died well.  He was brave.  He never faltered or begged, even after Sir Ulric was killed right in front of him."

Gabriella had known this of course, but hearing the fact of it from the man who had witnessed it struck her unexpectedly.  A deep pang sank into her heart.

"Thank you, Brice," she said, trying to keep her voice even.  She began to turn away again.

"There's something else, Your Highness," Brice said in a different voice.

Gabriella stopped but did not turn back.  She waited.

"When Merodach killed him…," Brice went on, struggling with the words, "when… when Darrick was dead, the brute saw something on him.  He took it."

Gabriella felt a wave of sudden coldness descend over her, filling her and hardening in her eyes.  "Tell me," she said calmly.

"It was… a pendant," Brice replied in a quiet voice.  "A sigil of some kind.  Dark but with a green stone embedded in it.  Merodach seemed extremely curious about it, almost as if he knew what it was, or that it was… important somehow."

Gabriella still did not turn back to the page.  Her face was a mask of cold anger.  Softly, she said, "Thank you, Brice.  Goodnight."

Brice watched her for a moment.  She sensed it.  Then his footsteps sounded again, receding back the way he had come.

She reached up, covered the sigil at her own throat.  As always, it was warm, its metal rough and heavy.

She let go of the sigil and began to collect her armour.

"Sigrid," Gabriella whispered urgently, shaking the woman in her bed.  The room was adjacent to her own quarters, with only the light of the open doorway laying a golden band across the floor.  "Sigrid, please wake.  I need you to do something."

Sigrid muttered sleepily and then startled, coming fully awake in a matter of seconds.  She sat up in her bed, eyes wide.  "What is it?  Are they here?"

Gabriella shook her head.  "No.  But you must leave.  This night."

Sigrid blinked quickly, shaking her head in confusion.  "But the journey to Herrengard does not set out until morning.  I do not—"

"You cannot go to Herrengard," Gabriella interrupted, clutching Sigrid's shoulder firmly.  "It is a trap.  Merodach's men will already be there, or if not, they will fall upon the caravan even as it travels."

Sigrid frowned in consternation.  "But the King…"

"My father refuses to listen.  He has been warned, but he will not change his plan."

"I don't understand… who warned him?  Why—"

"
I
warned him, Sigrid," Gabriella hissed urgently.  "Darrick died trying to save us all, and my father refuses to trust that.  His council is as stubborn and arrogant as was the idiot Ulric!"

"Do not speak thus of the dead!" Sigrid admonished quickly, growing alarmed.  "Gabriella, you are scaring me.  What is… are you…"  Her eyes widened.  "Are you wearing your…!"

Gabriella drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders.  Her breastplate glinted in the dim light.  "I am sorry, Sigrid," she said, shaking her head sadly.  "I do not have time to explain further.  You must go this night.  Take Treynor with you and tell him it is by my order.  Flee to Amaranth.  You will be safe there.  And Sigrid…"  She stopped, swallowed hard, and went on in a lower voice.  "You must take the baby with you."