The Book of Mordred (10 page)

Alayna leaned closer. "Which girl, Galen?" she asked. "Do you mean Kiera? Yes, we're going to get her, as soon as you regain your strength."

Far from reassuring him, her words seemed to agitate him.
Fool,
she chided herself. She hadn't meant to imply blame, but of course Galen would take it that way, fretting that he was delaying them.

"Galen," Halbert commanded.

Her brother's eyelids fluttered open.

"You're safe. You are among friends. Your sister, Alayna, is here. And Sir Mordred."

Galen glanced at each of them in turn, and Alayna grasped his hand.

"Why don't you sit up?" Halbert eased him up, then said to them, "He'll probably be a bit stiff and confused at first."

And, indeed, Galen looked dazed but unworned.

She gave her brother's cold hand a reassuring squeeze and he smiled vaguely at her.
Is his hand supposed to be that cold?
she asked herself.

"He is doing well," Halbert assured her. "Truly he is."

"Truly," Galen repeated solemnly, and Alayna laughed with relief.

Mordred removed Galen's battered breastplate from the chair where he had set it down, and put it on the floor with more of a clatter than was probably necessary. He placed the chair in front of the clothes chest and straddled it, his arms across the back, watching Halbert.

Halbert's smile was tight. "So," he said. "As Sir Mordred has indicated, it is time we begin."

He pulled the shutters closed over the window, making the room ... not dark, but darker.

Toland didn't need darkness for his spells
, Alayna thought. Then she remonstrated with herself. It was unfair to criticize beforehand. Wait and see what would happen.

Halbert took a candle off the nightstand and placed it on the chest at the foot of the bed, in front of the crystal. He touched his finger to the wick of the candle and it burst into flame.

Toland could do that,
Alayna thought.

"Do you have anything of your daughters?" Halbert asked Alayna. "Preferably a lock of hair, but anything that was hers will do,"—Alayna was shaking her head—"or that she had contact with?"

"Nothing," she told him. "Everything was destroyed in a fire."

Halbert looked disapproving, but he said, "Then put your hands about the crystal, and call her name." He gestured, indicating for her to surround the crystal with her hands.

Alayna knelt before the chest and—reaching around the candle—wrapped her hands around the crystal.

"Call her name," the wizard repeated.

"Kiera," she said. She watched Halbert, expecting him to tell her she was doing it all wrong. Was she supposed to shout the name, as though summoning Kiera from a distance?

But he seemed satisfied with a normal tone of voice. He said, "Picture her in your mind."

Alayna did, fervently.

"Move your hands." Once again Halbert gestured, this time his hands separating and moving down, forming a ring with his fingers.

Alayna did as he indicated, her hands encircling the rough, sparkled base from which the clear crystal jutted.

"Concentrate on the shadow the candles flame casts on the crystal. See your daughter in that. Picture her."

The picture that her mind formed was from that last morning in the barn: Kiera turning, looking up, her face covered with tears and filled with pain and sorrow.

It was better than no image at all. After only a year, Alayna missed Toland, dreamt of him almost every night, but could only rarely and fleetingly picture him in her waking thoughts.

"Kiera," the wizard said, as though sensing the momentary shifting of her concentration.

Kiera. Alayna pictured her, in the barn. She stared at the facet of the crystal where the candle flame threw its shadow. Kiera was within that shadow, Alayna told herself. She tried to get her eyes to pick out Kiera's features, caught a glimpse of her wild, ginger-colored hair in the flickering movement of the flame, saw a glint that might have been Kiera's eye reflecting the light of the candle, followed a curve that might have been either an angle of the crystal, or a cheek. Like staring into a dark corner. Like forcing sense out of something half seen in the night. Kiera. Alayna drew Kiera's face out of the shadow. Saw the hair, the eye, the cheek.

Someone in the room took in a breath, shifted, but Halbert's voice, steady and calm, said, "Kiera."

"Kiera," Alayna repeated, and the image of her daughter solidified, appeared captured within the crystal, caught constantly in the act of turning, looking up, waiting expectantly for her mother to make things right. Or chastise her. Or disregard her.

"Kiera," Halbert said, louder this time, more commanding, and now he was the one who was moving, who was stepping not quite in front of Alayna—but up to the crystal.

The image of Kiera shifted again. She was no longer in the barn. The wall behind her was stone: Kiera was sitting on a bed, her arms folded defiantly in front of her. Alayna recognized that stubborn look. A woman—a servant? Alayna assumed she was a servant by the way her hair was tied up in a kerchief, and by the way her sleeves were rolled back and her apron smudged with food stains—a woman sat on the bed next to Kiera, holding a bowl, offering a spoonful of something. Kiera wouldn't look at the woman, the bowl, or the spoon. The woman moved the spoon closer, Kiera turned her head, and the spoon ended up in Kiera's hair. Kiera jumped up, unsettling the bowl so that it spilled. The woman scrambled to clean up, never—apparently—reprimanding.

Halbert made a gesture with his hands, opening and closing his fingers. Slowly the picture of Kiera moved, as though Alayna was backing away.

"No!" Alayna cried, tightening her fingers around the base of the crystal. The rough surface of the base pressed into her hands.

"Shhh," Halbert said, distracted, as though to calm a skittish animal.

Alayna fought to hold the image of Kiera. Someone—it had to be Mordred for Galen was still in bed and Halbert hadn't moved, except for those damn fingers separating them away from Kiera—someone placed hands gently on Alayna's shoulders.

Farther and farther back they seemed to drift from Kiera, so that now they saw more of the room, its tapestries and pillows; now they saw all the room—not a prison, thank God, not a prison. Now they floated out through the window. And still they backed away, though any true observer from this vantage would be a hundred feet off the ground, for the window was in a tower and the tower was part of a castle; and then they were traveling, still backwards, over a stream, over sheep fields, over a forest, into a town, past a cathedral...

"Montford," Mordred said.

The picture rippled as though water had been poured over it, and dissolved.

"Kiera," Alayna whispered, sure her heart was going to break.

"That's the cathedral at Montford," Mordred said. "The castle must be—"

"Bel Bois," Halbert said.

"Bel Bois," Mordred agreed.

Halbert turned eagerly to Alayna. "Obviously she's being treated well and is unharmed."

"This image we have seen," Alayna said, hardly trusting her voice to work: "is it a true image?" Halbert was nodding, but she needed more reassurance. "Is it what actually is happening—now, not in the past, not in the future?" Halbert was nodding his head or shaking it at all the right times.

Halbert reiterated, "For whatever reason she was taken and is being held, she is unharmed."

Mordred still had his hands on her shoulders. She felt light-headed, loose-kneed—possibly from the disorienting backward flight Halbert's crystal had taken them out the window and across the countryside, or possibly just from relief. Mordred's solid presence may well have been all that was holding her up.

"Who has her?" Alayna asked Halbert.

Behind her, Mordred—who obviously knew, for he had named the place—added, in a silken purr, "Seeing, Lord Halbert, as you do not?"

His continuing plaguing of Halbert, his inability to take the man at his word, filled Alayna with annoyance, ballast that at least made her feet feel more solidly planted to the ground.

Fortunately Halbert was too excited to take offense—pleased with himself, Alayna guessed, that his magic yielded such positive results. "Sir Edgar of Bel Bois," he told Alayna. "I didn't see Sir Osric in my crystal, but they're cousins, and one never strays far without the other."

"Is Bel Bois near here?" Alayna asked.

"We can be there by vespers."

"Can we now?" Mordred purred, just the slightest stress on the "we."

Alayna finally turned, but couldn't read anything from his face.

"I believe I could be of assistance," the wizard said. The model of modesty? Or was Mordred's constant goading as irksome to him as it was to Alayna?

"Yes, please." That was Galen, his voice thick and unnatural. He cleared his throat, and sounded more like himself. "I would feel better for it. Wouldn't you, Alayna? In case any of us needs to be pulled back from the brink of death again?"

"Yes. Certainly." She looked to Mordred for confirmation, but he had gone to open the shutters.

Alayna felt a surge of resentment. "Is Galen fit to come," she asked Halbert, "do you think?"

The wizard nodded. "Don't concern yourself about him. We just have to worry how we can best enter Bel Bois Castle."

"Why should you be willing to help us?" Mordred asked.

Alayna was ready to hit him, but Halbert only said, "Because without me you would never succeed." He moved to the door. "I'll be ready as soon as I change into riding clothes. There is clothing in that chest that should fit you, Galen." He swept up Galen's breastplate. "I will have another of these sent up from stores. This one is useless now." It had belonged to their mother's father, but Alayna bit back her complaint. The wizard was right.

It would take meticulous hammering out to fix the hole, hammering that in all likelihood would dangerously weaken the metal. Galen, to whom the armor belonged, said nothing, and neither did Mordred, who had spent all that time cleaning the blood off it. Who was she to complain? And by the time she had worked all that out, Halbert was already gone from the room anyway.

Galen got out of bed, with uncharacteristic lack of modesty. Alayna quickly turned her back.

"Truly," she heard Mordred ask him: "How do you feel?"

"Stiff," Galen said. "A bit confused. But fit."

After a hesitation, Mordred said, "Good."

She wouldn't have thought that of him: that he could be so petty and vindictive—nipping like a small dog at Halbert's heels, not even willing to allow himself gladness that Galen was recovered and sound—just because he had been proven wrong. She remembered their conversation of the night before, when Galen had warned that Mordred was a person who would hold a grudge. She hadn't been willing, then, to believe it, though Mordred had admitted it, though it had already been hinted at earlier during the King's council.

Still, he had helped her. She didn't want to be angry with him:
She
didn't want to carry a grudge.

With her back still turned, while Galen dressed, she called over her shoulder, "What were you saying?"

"What?" both Mordred and Galen asked.

"Mordred," she said, but apparently that wasn't explanation enough. "Just before Halbert came in. You started, 'You know...'"

There was a long enough pause that Alayna wondered if he still couldn't place what she was talking about. Then he said, "Never mind." She wanted to turn around, to try to read his expression. Couldn't he remember? Or was it unimportant, one of those things that made sense at the time, but didn't bear repeating later on?

Or was it something he didn't want to say in front of Galen?

The last, she decided, reluctantly. Probably Mordred was going to say something critical of Halbert, and was ashamed to do so in front of one who—simply by being alive—owed more allegiance to Halbert than he ever would to Mordred.

They arrived in the vicinity of Bel Bois about the time evening was turning into night—which was what Halbert had indicated and Mordred hadn't contradicted. That, Alayna reflected, seemed suddenly the best she could expect of Mordred: that he not contradict everything.

They left their horses within cover of the woods, well beyond range where any noise the animals might make could be heard—for Halbert suggested they approach on foot, under cover of darkness.

As though he and Mordred had never argued about exactly the same thing, Galen silently acquiesced, inclining his head in agreement.

This, Alayna thought, was what Mordred had wanted all along, but he didn't accept winning gracefully. Glowering, he turned his back on all of them without a word, and set about tethering his horse with more concentration than was needed.

They walked in silence. They would have, in any case, but the tension among them let Alayna hear her own breathing, her own heartbeat, as though they echoed in the night. The four of them approached as near as they dared, which was only for so long as they had the cover of trees. They could smell the place before they could see it—or, at least, they could smell the dinner: roasting pig, Alayna guessed. Her stomach grumbled at the unfairness of it; she hoped the others couldn't hear. She had eaten only a cold supper her one night at Camelot, forgoing the communal meal in favor of bed, and she had lived on field rations since. The pig that she could smell, she would have been willing to wager, was likely the most delicious pig anyone had ever roasted. She tried not to picture the skin glistening with fat, the meat practically falling off the bones.