Ruins of Camelot (44 page)

The falcon and dragon sigils glinted by the light of the diminished fire.  Their emerald eyes no longer glowed, but the magic was not yet gone from them.  She could sense it.

The dragon inched towards her carefully.  Its great head bent over her and nuzzled her, as if to help her up.  As always, its scaly skin was hot to the touch.

"No," Gabriella whispered.  "No more riding.  It is over."

Featherbolt landed on her other side.  He hopped closer and ruffled his wings.

"Thank you, my friends, but it is finished.  There is nothing… nothing…"

She stopped.  Quietly, peacefully, she blinked.  There was, in fact, one more thing.  Mustering all of her remaining strength, she pushed herself up onto her elbows.  Blackness pulsed in her eyes as the blood drained from her, but she willed herself to stay for just a little longer.  She looked through the ruined hall, and her gaze rested upon the ugly metal statue.  It was untouched, despite the violence that had overtaken the place.  The eight skeletal fingers still clutched the cloud of shifting shadows and the haunted, black candle.

"No human can approach it… and live," Gabriella whispered faintly.  "But neither of you… are human."

Both the dragon and Featherbolt followed her gaze.  The dragon's neck creaked ominously as it turned, facing the hideous sculpture head on.  Featherbolt ruffled his feathers and flapped his wings anxiously.

Gabriella felt her strength ebbing away.  Darkness thumped over her with every slowing heartbeat.

The dragon moved first.  It stalked away from her, approaching the sculpture, then turned aside of it.  Its great, sinewy tail swung back, sweeping out over the room.  Then, with a snarl of effort, the dragon heaved back, slamming its tail against the metal claw.  Two of the skeletal fingers crashed inwards at the first blow.  Blood ran from the dragon's tail where the metal had slashed it, and yet it did not pause.  It adjusted its footing, swung its tail back again, and slammed once more against the black shape.  Two more of the fingers crashed away, and the swirling shadows within began to leak out, to diffuse into the air of the room.  Deprived of its protective cage, the force shield was weakening.

Again the dragon smashed at the shape.  This time, all of the claw's fingers were crushed out of true.  Blood poured from the dragon's torn tail, but its work was done.  It took a massive pace backwards, watching as the swirling shadows broke apart, diffusing and spreading, losing their focus.

Then Featherbolt took off.  He soared up into the lofty darkness and circled towards the remains of the black candle's shield.  Fluttering his wings gently, he began to lower through the top of the shadowy cloud.  It spun around him frantically, quickening, but it was too diminished.  It could not fully hold the falcon back.  Featherbolt fought steadfastly against its force, lowering into the midst of the writhing shadows.  Beneath him, the black candle buffeted, fighting the wash of his wings.  The falcon dipped, struggling to keep his balance on the shifting air, and his talons clutched beneath him, reaching… reaching.

The shadowy shield contracted over Featherbolt and the candle, spinning into a raging blur, and still, the bird dipped.  The black flame tattered and streamed wildly, resisting the undeniable rush of Featherbolt's wings.  A whine of power filled the air, growing in pitch and volume.  The talons clawed at the candle.  The flame intensified, grew to a seething, black furnace.

And then everything vanished into a silent, icy blast.  The hall shook and rumbled.  The remains of the hearth fire flared green for one bright moment and then snuffed dark.  A chorus of screams rushed through the space, as if a thousand tortured souls had been withdrawn from their hosts, banished back to their abyss of origin.

And then, finally, silence fell.

Gabriella watched all of this and felt nothing but relief.  Weakly, she looked around the darkened hall.  Nothing moved.  Neither the dragon not Featherbolt seemed to be there any longer.  The horrible skeletal claw was destroyed, bereft of its writhing shadows.  Its candle stand stood empty, bent and dark.

The wizard was no more.  His forces were destroyed.

Feebly, pathetically, Gabriella shifted onto her side, feeling the stickiness of her own blood pooling beneath her.  Her arm seemed to weigh as much as a millstone as she lifted it, reaching for the twin sigils.  She could not do it.  Her hand fell short of the sigils, grasping instead onto another loose object.  It was the cast-off wand, her gift from the wizard Goodrik.  She clutched it weakly and moaned, too exhausted to move again.

And then, blissfully and finally, darkness collected her.  She gave herself over to it.

The Queen's eyes closed, and she knew no more.

I
t was near sunset when Yazim and Thomas crested the hill and saw the tiny hamlet below them.  The village was hemmed in on one side by dense forest.  The other side was marked by sheer granite cliffs, broken with crags and cut by a ribbon of falling water.  The waterfall was so tall that it was reduced to mist by the time it dropped beyond the roofs of the village.

The travelers stopped on the crest of the narrow road, overlooking the sight.

"You knew this was here," Thomas said, somewhat accusingly.

"I did not, I swear it," Yazim replied calmly.  "But I had long wondered."

Thomas frowned aside at his friend.  "Why?"

Yazim shrugged vaguely.  Together, they spurred their horses onwards again, descending into the shadow of the trees and approaching the village.  It was still some distance off, its roofs burning bright with the glare of the setting sun.  In the centre of these, a small stone church stood, its flat bell tower rising above the other structures.

Thomas sighed.  "I thought you said that you did not know the ending of the Princess's story."

Yazim nodded.  "I did say that.  It is true."

"Forgive me," Thomas commented, shaking his head, "but that sounded like the ending to me."

"That, my friend, is because you lack imagination.  You resemble your namesake in that sense.  You doubt the bigger plan."

Thomas accepted this as if it were a compliment.  "I see things for what they are, if that is what you mean.  We live in a much different age than did the Princess Gabriella.  We cannot all simply bow a knee and pray to overcome obvious evils.  In our time, there is far less black and white.  Only thousands of shades of grey."

"It is popular to believe that, yes," Yazim acknowledged.

"So what is the great mystery then?  What part of the Princess's tale am I missing?"

Yazim was silent for a long moment.  The declining sun made amber beams through the trees, throwing dapples onto the road before them.  Finally, he said, "There is the question of the vampire armies for one."

Thomas smiled and shook his head.  "Fanciful embellishment.  Come, Yazim.  Even if you believe the rest of the tale, you do not believe that detail, do you?"

Yazim responded with a smile of his own.  "Perhaps," he sighed.  "It is said that there were indeed many rogue armies in that day, not just the one that conquered and destroyed Camelot.  The legends say that none of those other armies succeeded in their marches however.  All of them, for reasons no one knows, simply halted in their tracks.  Some tales even go on to suggest that great numbers of the evil soldiers simply fell over as dead.  There, they were left, lying in their ranks and divisions, to rot on the nameless hills and fields."

Thomas still smiled crookedly.  "Such things do make excellent stories, Yazim.  I shall admit that."

"You are correct," Yazim nodded.  "Many tell such tales even today.  They say that remnants of the villain's undead remain still.  Some of the vampires, they claim, were not beholden to the black candle.  These were the wizard's earliest dark creations, and they live still today, haunting the shadows and hunting by night, infecting their prey with their own horrible curse."  Yazim laughed lightly.  "Such things do indeed make for good midnight tales," he finished, turning to his friend, "do they not?"

Thomas blinked at him and then shook his head and rolled his eyes.

Yazim went on.  "Then, of course, there is the question of the Little Prince."

"But the Prince was killed," Thomas reminded him reluctantly.  "Merodach sent his forces to both hiding places.  Whether the woman Sigrid had believed the Princess's warning or not, she would have been confronted by the villain's assassins in either event.  Surely, you do not suggest that she might have fended the brutes off?"

Yazim shook his head.  "Some say yes, actually.  Some say that Sigrid was a fighter herself in her youth and canny as a snake.  And she had the guard Treynor with her.  Perhaps, some have suggested, they were able to protect the boy together."

"But you do not believe that," Thomas suggested in a low voice, cocking his head.

Yazim sighed.  "No, I admit I do not.  But there are other guesses, other possibilities.  It is far simpler to assume the worst of course, and yet some of us still refuse to abandon all hope in the good.  Like the Princess's husband said, trust is never easy."

"But it is always better than the alternative," Thomas finished wryly.  "You are correct.  Many would disagree with that, you know.  I might be one of them."

They rode on in silence, descending into the valley gorge.  As the road leveled, the trees thinned on the left.  Thomas looked aside through the belt of bushes and weeds and saw the glitter of a small woodland lake.  The sun shined on it like molten gold, nearly blinding him.  He squinted.  Something stood on the far side of the lake, facing him through the distance.  It was a tiny stone cottage, barely visible through the glare.  The structure was overgrown, buried in wild grass and ivy, but not completely hidden.  An ancient, broken vane jutted from its peak.

The scene reminded Thomas of something.  He frowned, thinking, and then remembered.  It had been part of Yazim's tale, the bit where Professor Toph had been telling the story of the Queen's death and Gabriella's midnight escape.  When it was over, the King had looked for his daughter to no avail.  Then Toph had told Gabriella:

"After twelve days, your father remembered a small lakefront hunting cottage that his own father, King William Xavier the Second, had sometimes taken him to as a child…"

It was there that the young Princess and her grandmother had hidden.  It was there, in fact, that they had been stalked by the rogue werewolf and saved by the clandestine intervention of the magical folk: Merlinus, Goodrik, Helena, and their two fellows, one of whom had turned villain barely a decade later… and had probably been a villain even then, albeit in secret.

"Yazim," Thomas said, still peering through the bushes at the glittering lake and the distant forgotten cottage.  "Do you see…?"

But just then, the trees thickened again, cutting off the view.

"What?" Yazim asked, following his friend's gaze.

Thomas squinted through the trees but could see only a flicker of glittering water.  He shook his head faintly.  "Nothing… I suppose."

He thought to himself.  Yazim had said that the lady-in-waiting, Sigrid, had herself been a fighter in her youth.  She had had a canny mind and perhaps even a remnant of witchiness in her blood.  If she had indeed believed the Princess's warnings, she would not have merely escaped to the alternate fortress.  She would have known that
all
of the King's fortresses were potential traps.  She would have taken the baby someplace completely different, someplace no one else would ever know or suspect.

No one, that was, except perhaps the Princess herself.

"… a small lakefront hunting cottage… remote, virtually forgotten by all…"

Thomas smiled to himself.  Perhaps it was a foolish, ridiculous thing to consider—this tempting possibility that Sigrid and the guard Treynor had bypassed the King's fortresses and instead escaped, along with the young Prince, to the secret hunting cottage—but it was too tantalising an idea to dismiss.  Yazim was right.  The flicker of hope, of trust in the good, once it was sparked, was very difficult to abandon.