Under Camelot's Banner (45 page)

The light was fading around her. The talk growing softer in here, although out beyond the thin cloth wall, it was still lively. The noise pounded against her ears, intolerable because it was not what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear Ryol's voice, and Laurel's. She grit her teeth to keep from crying out. Bootsteps grew closer to the pavilion, and for one wild moment, Lynet hoped it was Hale. She could order Hale to take the mirror back for her, to put it into her useless, useless hands …

The violence of her thought's froze Lynet.
What is happening to me?

“My lady, what is it …?” said Daere. Lynet knew she had gone white. She felt it. The pain pulsed hard in her arms.

I'm going mad. Oh God and Mother Mary. That's what
the matter is.
But she could not say that. She could not say anything, even to ease the worry creasing Daere's face. Beyond her, there was movement around the door, and Lynet looked up mutely, half-afraid now that it would be Captain Hale, and she would not be able to stop herself from telling him to take back what the queen had stolen, to give her back the door to Ryol who was too far away.

Stop!

But it was not Captain Hale. It was Sir Lancelot, with Gareth behind him once more. Knight and squire knelt before Queen Guinevere, and did not seem to see the consternation in the queen's face as she bid them rise. What was she really thinking? Lynet itched to know, to reach out with force of will and pour her understanding into the queen, to flow past Sir Lancelot taking up a cup of wine for himself without, Lynet was sure, having been bid to drink. The queen frowned, but settled back with a cup of her own.

Her hands hurt and itched. Only weakness kept her still.

Help me,
she cried out in her thoughts, to God and to Ryol and Laurel.
Help me!

“My lady,” said a voice. Her whole body jolted and she saw Gareth standing over her.

Help me!
Her hand scraped across the bed coverings, but her voice would not come, because she could not find which word she wanted to speak, the polite words of greeting she must say to keep back the glances and whispers of the ladies around her, or the plea for succor that was rising over the swirl of need and madness that filled her.

Gareth glanced at the ladies, and the frowning queen and back at Lynet's straining form. Daere, for once not sniffing or disapproving brought him a stool.

“I thought you would wish to know that Brendon is doing well, and if his curses are anything to judge by, gaining strength steadily.” He said as he sat. This was for the ladies around them, so they would know the conference they held now was innocent. But more softly he added. “What is it, Lynet? What pains you?”

Lynet licked her lips. Gareth, just a little faster than Daere picked up a cup from beside the pallet and held it for her so she could drink the small beer. The tang of it steadied her a little. Or perhaps it was the urgency and care in Gareth's brown eyes. She could not tell. “The queen has taken the mirror,” was all she could say.

Gareth set the cup down. “Daere, my lady is warm, I think. Perhaps a cloth for her head?” Daere, worried enough to accept a recommendation from the squire retreated. What did Daere see? What did any of them see? She didn't know, she couldn't know, and it terrified her.

“We are but a two days from your home, Lynet,” he said soothingly. “You have done enough. All will be well. The queen will return the mirror as soon as we reach Cambryn.”

“No, you don't understand,” she shook her head frantically. “I mustn't … I can't …”
Mustn't what? Can't what?
She didn't know herself. She only knew that this skin she wore was too tight, that it separated her from too much. She could not remain here, helpless and ignorant while Colan plotted against Laurel, while Mesek and Peran between them decided how to plunder Cambryn. A few days was more than enough time.

Gareth glanced over his shoulder and then leaned close. “Lynet, listen to me,” he whispered urgently. “You are weak. You must regain your strength before you can think of taking that mirror up again. Please.”

“I cannot, Gareth. I feel it within me now and I cannot escape it.” Fresh fear gripped her as she spoke. It was true though she had not fully understood it until this time. She could not turn her mind away, could not shut the need off from her. “Talk to me a little,” she said suddenly, grasping at straws. “Give me something else to think on.”

So, Gareth talked. While his knight sat beside the queen and told some long story of some campaign or the other, with all the other ladies sitting around him openly fascinated by the tale or his presence or both, Gareth spoke softly to her of life at Camelot. Daere came with the cool cloth and more of the queen's tisane. Lynet tried to focus attention on these things, and on Gareth's gently stream of words that lit his eyes and he told her of the life he loved. He talked of work and play, of small jokes and hurts, of his three elder brothers, all of whom were members of the cadre of the Round Table.

And yet there was a yearning under all his words, a feeling beyond simple ambition that she could not understand, and she wanted to, because it would tell her of the man behind the summer eyes, and his love of his knight and his brothers, and her. She would understand then, and she wanted so much to understand, so she could believe, so she could somehow find a way past her fear.

Once more she cursed her isolation, her confinement. If she could only reach out. If she could only find Ryol once more. She felt him, she was sure, in the invisible country, separate from her by the thinnest of veils, by the fingernail thickness of a piece of glass.

Then, soft as an infant's touch, she felt him. He stirred just beyond her.
My lady?

Ryol!
She reached out eagerly, her should straining at the confines of her body. He was there. He was here. He was with her. With her.

Lady Lynet what are you doing?

The queen's taken the mirror.
She could almost see him now, a veil of color and shape behind and beyond the confines of the pavilion.
You were right …

Lynet go back.

What?
The world around her had gone grey, leaving only a narrow tunnel of vision where Ryol's shadow hovered. Gareth was whispering to her. He touched her but someone took his hand away. She should care for this, but could not. All that mattered was that Ryol was here and the door to Laurel and to home would soon be open.

But that was not what Ryol said.
You must not do this. It is too much for mortal flesh.
She could see him more clearly now. He held up his hands in warding and warning. He was old again, stooped and weathered and sagging, his strong arms thin and his face drawn tight and thin. She felt his fear spill over her.
Go back!

I cannot! She's taken the mirror! I cannot leave Laurel!

Desperate, tearing need made her reckless and Lynet propelled herself forward into darkness. It pulled her forward on a long tide of absence. There was no sensation save that of rushing movement, of flying faster than any bird of the air. Elated, Lynet stretched out, though she knew not how. She had no form, no limit, no boundary to herself. She was what Ryol had once spoken of being. She was everywhere and nowhere, all things and nothing at all.

Laurel!
She called out with her silent voice.
Laurel!

Light came, and color and sense, but it was not like when Ryol walked beside her. She did not feel as if she stood on her feet and saw with her eyes. It was more that she simply knew all things and knew them all at once.

She knew that Mesek sat in the old hall, talking amiably with the old men, passing a leather jack of strong beer around, reaching down now and then to scratch the ears of the nearest hound. She knew he watched them all as they yarned away, deciding which one knew the most truth, and it was to this one he'd pass the beer.

She knew that Peran stood outside the hall, talking with his own men. They were growing impatient, and he was reminding them they must play since they had entered into the game. One of them, tall Laveen who had his ear half-torn off in an old fight, shook his head, saying that it was Peran who entered in the game. In the back of his mind he thought he chief had gone mad, and wondered if tonight he would finally muster the nerve to steal away. Lynet reached toward that thought, breathing her will on it as she might breathe on a flickering coal.
Yes, leave. Yes, he is mad. You need not stay. Go home to your own and tell them he is mad. Tell them that.

She knew Colan stood before his window. Death was in his thoughts, winter cold, implacable death.

She knew Laurel was bathing. She stood naked in a basin of waters brought to her by Father Lucius from St. Nectern's well. She'd seasoned them with salt harvested from the sea and she'd prayed over them three times. She would take the water left from the bath and sprinkle it around her bed, and over each threshold of the hall, and she would be safe. Morgaine could no more reach her here.

Good. That it good, but sister I am here and there is so much you should know.

She reached for her sister, as she had reached for this place, to bring her close and know her and be known and tell her all she had learned.

And she could not. It was as if she pressed her hands against a brick wall, or a carving of stone. She knew Laurel was there, she could feel where she had been, but Laurel herself was closed and silent before her, as she finished her bath and pulled a drying sheet around herself to go stand before the fire.

Laurel, no! You cannot mean to shut me out too!
She beat against her sister's closed self with all her will. But Laurel did not even lift her head.

She had come all this way to find Laurel, to protect her and tell her all she knew, and she could not even speak to her. Despair rolled over her, and Lynet fell back, all the way back into the long rushing darkness. But now she was without anchor, without goal or destiny, there was only movement without purpose and she could not still herself. Nor could she find herself. Her body was nowhere. She was lost. Lost.

Ryol!
She cried out.
Ryol!

Direction came to her, and purpose to her motion. Light and color unfurled around her to become a ragged, sloping green hill running down into a black and raging sea. Rain poured down from a fury of lightning-filled clouds. A man knelt on the ground, staring out at the angry waters. His mind was filled with the images of a great city — round towers of gleaming stone, streets paved with mosaics and marble.

Beautifully tended trees hung with strange fruits that filled the air with a sharp perfume grew beside great obelisks granite and basalt covered with runes and elaborate carvings and painted bright red, green and blue. People in gowns of white wool and blue linen going to and fro about their business amidst the peace and untold beauty.

Gone. All of it gone and only him left to see. Only him left because he had run away.

“I thought you might be here.”

Ryol. He was with her. She could not feel her own shape or shadow clearly, but she was aware of him, his warmth and his sorrow enveloping her the way the rain enveloped the weeping man before her.

“Why here?” was all she could ask. The memory of the shining city, lost to the waters would not leave her. Through him she saw the dead tossed and tumbled in the darkness.

“I hoped you would be able to call for me. This is the place where I was last and most myself.”

The weeping man was Ryol, as he had been, servant to the prince of that great and shining city. He had warned his prince who dallied with the affections of one of the sea-women, only to abandon her. He'd had a great wall raised all about his island home so that the waters could never touch him, but it had failed, and so the sea claimed his life, along with the whole of his city.

The angry sea would not release the souls of the dead. It was for them that Ryol bargained himself. He would ever become the protector of the sea's children on land, if the sea released the drowned to their rest, to wait in peace for Judgment Day.

It was this that brought him to her. It was this reason that her grandmother gave Ryol's prison, his garden, himself, to her daughter. It was this reason that mother had refused to look into the mirror. She feared he would draw her back to the sea, away from her husband and her children. She knew all this in an instant, and it was too much. Her voice vanished and her vision thinned, letting all the darkness show through the veil of the raging scene before her.

Ryol drew closer, and she felt the edges of herself grow clear again.

Her voice too returned, reed thin and shaking. “What has happened to me, Ryol?”

He was a long moment answering. Beyond them, his other, far younger self huddled beneath the punishing rain and remembered his old mother sitting in her garden, humming as she spun her thread and tended his sister's children. “You have reached too far, Lynet. You have pressed past the boundaries that flesh allows.”

“And you?” she whispered.

“I also have reached too far. You needed so much, I had waited so long to fulfill my promise, to pay for those souls freed long ago … I gave too much, and now I fear there may not be enough left.”

She could not find her body. She could not reach Laurel. She barely knew herself from the darkness. Oh, yes. She had gone too far. “How am I to return?”

So softly her insubstantial self could barely take in the words, Ryol said. “I do not know that you can.”

Lynet felt herself go very still. She had been warned. She had been warned so many times and by so many who should know, and she had ignored them all. And here I came so desperate not to be the fool any more.
Oh, God save me, is there no end to my own folly?

“I must try,” she whispered. “Please help me.”

“I will do what I can, my lady. Come with me.”