The Book of Mordred (13 page)

Halbert shrugged. "Just stay up there. I would rather not kill you, but I might."

"Momma!" Kiera called again.

Halbert whipped her around and shook her. "Your mother wants you to come with me. Now behave."

Alayna knew she should be upset with the wizard for talking to her daughter that way. But she couldn't say so. She knew she should be upset with Galen for preventing Mordred from doing anything to stop the wizard. But all she could say was "Kiera, behave."

"You leave my mother alone!" Kiera shouted at the wizard. She tried to yank herself out of his grip, and he pulled her in closer to his chest. "Let go of me!" She pushed against him with her thin arms, squirming and trying to drop to the floor, her hands tangled in his robes and the chain of his pendant.

Not strong enough,
Alayna thought in that deep part of herself she seemed unable to reach.
She's just a five-year-old child.

"Stop that!" Halbert shook her harder and jerked her out to arm's length to get her flailing hands away from him. But her fingers had gotten caught. The chain snapped, sending the ruby flying. Immediately Halbert shoved Kiera away and scrambled for the stone.

How interesting,
Alayna thought vaguely, feeling she was probably witnessing something important, but she couldn't think why it was important and speculated maybe it was important to somebody else, not her.

Kiera also scrambled after the stone. Somebody's foot—Kiera's or Halbert's—sent it skittering across the floor ahead of them. Alayna, from her vantage on the landing, could see where it ended but could only think without excitement or worry,
There it is.

Halbert looked around wildly. Kiera, younger, shorter, saw where the stone had come to rest; and she reached it first.

Halbert caught up a step later and clutched at her shoulder to yank her away. She stamped her foot down with all her five-year-old strength.

Rubies don't break,
Alayna thought. But perhaps it was only ruby-colored. Or perhaps holding magic made it fragile. Up on the landing and half the Hall away, Alayna heard the loud
crack!

Her vision momentarily shimmered, then focused to an almost unnatural clarity. She saw Halbert's face freeze in a grimace: She could make out each of the indentations made by his fingers in the fabric at Kiera's shoulder.

Then finally—finally—the invisible hand that had seemed to be smothering her lifted.

My God, Kiera!
Alayna thought. She ran for the stairs. But before she got to them, she saw that incredible wrinkles were forming on Halbert's face. By the time she was halfway down, the wrinkles had become deep fissures. And as she reached the bottom, Halbert dropped to the floor and fell apart like a log that maintains its form while it burns, only to fall into ashes at the slightest touch.

Alayna fell to her knees and swept Kiera into her arms.

She hated magic. She hated it, hated it, hated it.

Kiera was crying, but Alayna felt only tired, and all cried out. In any case, it was over. It was finally over. "Everything is all right," she assured Kiera. "Everything is fine now."

She looked back to the others. Mordred had stopped partway down the stairs. Galen, still on the landing, was doubled over. Obviously, he had been more under the wizards influence than she, and for a longer time. Since Castle Burrstone, she realized now that she thought about it. Halbert had forced his unknightly behavior, which had been the wizards excuse to send them away, so that he could set his guards on them yet play innocent benefactor when ... when...

Alayna shied away from that thought.

"Galen," she called to him, "are you hurt?"

Mordred went back for him, starting once more up the stairs.

Galen straightened. Then lifted his sword.

Mordred stopped. "Galen?"

"We must get the girl," Galen said, his voice gritty and hollow.

Alayna got up from her knees, but Kiera wouldn't let go, so that Alayna had to either stay where she was, or break away. For a moment she hesitated, and Kiera said, "No, don't go. That's not Uncle Galen."

Which, in her heart, was what Alayna suspected, feared. Knew.

Mordred glanced from Kiera's face to Galen's upraised sword, then took a step back. Hesitantly he raised his own weapon. "Galen ..." he said in a most reasonable voice.

Galen lunged.

Mordred blocked with his sword, barely in time.

"No!" Alayna took a step closer. It wasn't fair. Halbert was dead. His effect on Galen should have died, too.

Mordred parried another blow, but disbelief, or perhaps it was friendship, prevented him from taking advantage of the opening Galen had left.

"Galen!" Alayna cried, hoping to call him back to reason.

"That's not Uncle Galen!" Kiera shouted. "Uncle Galen is dead!"

Alayna slapped her and Kiera staggered, finally letting go.

Mordred had slammed against Galen, and—still one step lower—backed him into the wall. "Galen," he said from between clenched teeth. "
Galen.
"

Galen went limp and closed his eyes. "I don't know what happened," he said, sounding weak and confused. "The stone, the red stone..."

Thank God he's come hack to his senses
, Alayna thought.

Mordred must have thought the same thing. He stepped back, and Galen slashed with his sword, obviously intending a decapitation. Mordred jerked back and down.

Almost in time. But he was bleeding where the sword's tip had grazed his cheekbone.

After all the deaths she'd witnessed since the evening began, the injury was nothing. But this was Mordred. And it was Galen who had done it.

Still only halfway to the stairs, Alayna watched in numb horror as Galen kicked Mordred in the chest. Mordred teetered on the edge of the stair. For a moment he seemed to have regained his balance. For a moment. Then he fell backwards, hitting several steps before he rolled over the open side and dropped about twice a man's height into the Hall below.

Galen started down the stairs.

Mordred staggered back to his feet, but when he tried to pick up his sword, it slipped through his fingers and, in fact, he seemed incapable of lifting his right arm.

Galen was halfway down the stairs.

Mordred held onto his right elbow with his left hand and managed to pick up the sword.

And Galen was three-quarters of the way down the stairs.

Mordred switched the blade to his left hand.

Galen jumped the last step, and Alayna stepped in between, her own sword raised. She said, "I don't know what Halbert did to you, but you have gone far enough."
Galen. Galen! Are you still in there?
she thought. If he didn't recognize Mordred, surely he must recognize her.

"Alayna, get out of the way," Mordred gasped, but he was breathing hard, his sword held clumsily in his left hand.

She said, "Mordred, be quiet. And get Kiera out of here." She was searching deep into Galen's clear blue eyes as she spoke, and she saw nothing there that she recognized. Her voice shook. "If you don't back away, I
will
kill you," she warned her brother.
Back away. Back away.
She could never kill Galen.

The man before her smiled, a smile more reminiscent of Halbert's than her brother's.

His sword came down hard on hers, momentarily numbing her arm to the shoulder.

She slid her sword down and then circled it to the left, but Galen—or what remained of him in this body—could remember old Ned's lessons as well as she, and he was there to block.

"Momma!" Kiera cried.

"Get back!" Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kiera's small form running toward her, her disheveled braids streaming behind. "Get back!"

Mordred was able to intercept her. He grabbed her with his good arm and held her out of the range of the slashing swords. But at the moment Alayna's eyes hovered on them, Galen reached in.

Alayna flinched, her body bending sideways; she felt the pressure of the blow on her ribs, protected only by the leather jerkin. It knocked all the air out of her, but despite the pain, the hit had been a glancing one.

She jabbed, hoping Galen would take it as a feint, but he must have seen her shift balance, and recognized it for the real thing in time to prevent her making contact.

"This is madness, Galen," she gasped, though obviously Galen was beyond rationality. "Halbert is dead."

She was giving ground, using valuable breath to try reason on someone who was no longer there.

They had made a half circle of the room, and now over Galen's shoulder she could again sense, without focusing on them, Kiera and Mordred.

Her feet settled into something vaguely slippery, which scattered. The wizard's remains.

Her arms ached—she had gone into the easier but less agile two-handed stance—and she had a pain in her side, whether from Galen's one hit or from her own ragged panting she couldn't tell. Galen, she realized, was going to kill her. After that, it would take him no time at all to finish Mordred. And then what would he do to Kiera? "Halbert is dead!" she told him in gasps. "
You
don't need Kiera.
He
did."

But with the wizard dead, there was no way to loosen the hold of his spell on Galen.

She tried to move in, but Galen was much stronger, much faster, much better. Any moment she would make a fatal error or he would simply overpower her. There was only one thing she could do.

Pretending to be distracted, she dropped her sword arm. "Kiera!" she screamed, though Kiera hadn't moved. "Get back!"

Galen moved in for the kill, and stepped into her suddenly uplifted sword.

His expression, dying, was neither pain nor anger, but bewilderment. She remembered a time as children, when they'd been walking across a frozen pond, and she had started to slip, and he reached to help her. Just as suddenly, she had regained her balance, but he had fallen before even knowing his feet were no longer under him. That was the expression he wore now in death.

Alayna put her hands on her knees and took great, rattling breaths. The bloody sword dropped from her fingers. But in that position, she could see Galen's face too closely, so she straightened.

Mordred was on his knees, his good arm still around Kiera, his face even paler than hers.

"Momma!" Kiera called, and Mordred let her go.

Alayna took deep breaths of Kiera's fresh clean smell, trying to block out the scents of leather, sweat, and blood. "Oh, Kiera," she murmured.

She had thought there were no tears left in her, but she had been wrong.

"Sitting around waiting is a waste of
time,
" Merlin had once told Nimue. "Waiting is helped along if one is doing something productive
while
one is waiting."

On the particular occasion when Merlin had told her that, he was referring to waiting for a horse to be shod, and what they did while waiting was to visit various shops in the market district, and what they ended up buying was a dozen tiny silver bells that Nimue had sewn onto a ribbon, which she had given to her niece to attach to her new baby's cradle.

But Merlin's advice was often more than it originally seemed—except, sometimes it was less. For all Nimue knew, he might have been trying to teach her something about horseshoes or markets or babies. Or he might not have been trying to teach her anything at all.

Still, it was by trying to be productive while waiting that—five years now since Merlin was gone—she came to be traveling from village to village, offering her knowledge of herbs and medicines, woven together with a small dollop of magic, to folk too poor to go to the bigger towns to be bled by a doctor.

And that was how, specifically, she came to be in the small town of St. George of the Hills, at Reynard's tavern. Most everyone from the town—eventually during the course of a day—passed through there, and Nimue thought it would be a fine place to learn if there were any who needed the services of midwife, herbalist, or apprentice magician.

"Nothing that I've heard tell of" said Dolph, the young man who last year had married Reynard and Yolande's daughter, Romola.

"Oh," Nimue said with a sigh, for she had walked all morning, her feet hurt, and her stomach was as empty as her purse. This was late enough in the spring that she could find wild strawberries and dandelions which, enhanced by magic, would make a meal. Her magic wasn't strong enough to make it a
good
meal, but she would never starve.

"Why not wait and see," Dolph suggested. "Sit down, have a drink."

Nimue's throat constricted as Dolph poured a tankard of very tempting, sweet-smelling mead. She shook her head.

"I don't think we ever paid you for taking care of that toothache Reynard had last spring," Dolph said.

"Oh, but you did," Nimue told him.

Reynard, who was right there, said nothing.

"No, no," Dolph insisted, "I'm sure we didn't. Did we, Romola?"

"Definitely not," Romola called from the table at which she was serving.

"We'd remember if we did," said Yolande.