Avalon Rising (4 page)

“Riders!”
comes from the gates. I pull back to look upon the citadel, where a messenger bearing the rustand-ivory colored garments of Sarpenic arrives, calling to the few guards left. One guard runs for the main castle.
“Rogues have overtaken Jerusalem!”

And so now Lancelot will know, even though word from the Holy Land never made it here. Though knights from Camelot are lost or missing or seeking our subjects with the kingdoms of España and Caledonia, the Druid warriors are allied with Jerusalem and will surely help. Perhaps Azur is right, though, and the coordinates in my mind would render me a more interesting capture than Jerusalem itself.

But then I can search for Marcus and Owen. If the rogues are attacking Jerusalem, there might not be many on the Grail quest. The news about this attack will serve as a way out of this decrepit castle unseen, but if I am sent away first, I can do nothing.

My hands tremble as the bravery I need comes over me. “Azur. I won’t sit here, useless—”

“Vivienne, I cannot teach you how to create
jaseemat
. The line between alchemy and magic might not be as distinct as I originally thought. It could very well be a border drawn in the sands, now gone up in a wind storm.”

My thoughts race back to how many times I’ve touched
jaseemat
, so close to how my gloved hand feels when pressed against the Norwegian steel, singing into my skin a song so alluring.

Azur continues, “Now that I have had the chance to study the fall of Lyonesse, I have learned alchemy might be the darkest path to magic!”

I grip the edges of the looking glass. “No. Alchemy is instruction to the elements, not something that would tarnish souls—”

“According to alchemy! Believe the liar, Vivienne, and I will show you the fool!”

There’s another cry behind him, and it could very well be that Merlin’s only gotten worse, a shimmer of his form thrashing against the iron vault, begging for opium and magic. His mind might no longer be in limbo, but completely gone, dead. Morgan might have stolen his very being.

“I must go now,” Azur says. “Or he might free himself—”

“Wait!”

But Azur disappears, and I drop Merlin’s looking glass.

It shatters into an ocean of jagged edges.

I stare blankly at the broken glass. My breath is stuttered, and when I take a deep breath, it releases as a sob. My fingers fly to cover my mouth. Warm tears slice my cheeks into freezing glaciers in this wintery haven at the very thought of never speaking with Azur again. Not only that: I’m chained to this spot with no way of finding instructions to create
jaseemat
in Merlin’s writings. Blast.

Blast, blast,
blast!

I breathe in an ugly way, inhaling the cold air and slamming the heel of my boot into the shattered looking glass, over and over until my reflection is nothing more than uneven lines and edges. I’m as useless to the knights as ever, sitting amongst the high winds in a rickety tower, while angry shouts from the main castle tell me the Spanish rogues have seized Jerusalem. Why did I think for a moment that I could be of any help to Camelot?

I shut my eyes, and right away I see Marcus, even though he’s so far away. But to dive into my own memory brings us closer.

“Tell me a story,” I said, shuffling on my side to relieve the discomfort of hay digging into my skin. I leaned on my palm, and my other hand snapped dried bits in half while we waited out the storm in his family’s barn.

When the fire was strong enough to burn without Marcus tending to it, he moved next to me, close enough that I could smell the sweet rain on his skin, but far enough away that I wouldn’t see it dry. The flickering light shone in his eyes, speckling the violet with natural bits of gray and gold. A smirk appeared. “I’m not a very good storyteller.”

“Anything.” I didn’t tell him I needed something to distract me from the contours of his cheekbones and the way his mouth parted every time he looked at me.

But he must have caught on because his eyes were too long absorbed in mine, and suddenly his temperament changed to a lighter one. “All right. There was once an old serf. He enjoyed roasted duck. His wife preferred pork. But he didn’t give a—”

I pushed him away before he could finish, feigning horror. “The language on your mind!”

His lip cocked up in a mischievous grin. “You don’t know the half of it.” When his body swayed back, he was closer.

I could feel the heat from his skin, and my voice shuddered into a whisper. “Then tell me about your home. It’s only fair. You watched me work in the clock tower for years.”

He was bold in how he reached across to set a lock of damp hair behind my ear. His eyes drifted on every detail of my face, and I should have felt vulnerable, but it wasn’t with judgment that he looked at me.

“Only fair?” he challenged me, his voice striving to tease, but too quiet to fool me. “I told you my life from the tops of parapets, nearly falling to my death. All to make sure you wouldn’t leave to carry out some tedious errand.”

“And nearly fell twice!”

He shrugged. “All right. I could tell you about my father. He didn’t always live in Camelot. His life was a secret one my mother and I know little about. I grew up hearing few stories about his life.” His eyes were shining at the nostalgia surrounding us, but as it dawned on him what tales those would be, he grew more serious.

“Stories about his time in Lyonesse.”

The black lace is still in my hand, and I wrap it twice around my wrist, securing a ruthless knot. I lean on the desk, and my arm brushes against the skeletal form of Caldor. I glance at its petal-like copper feathers, at how meticulously I engraved the veins of each. But all I see are flaws in such an ugly machine. The hinges on the wings are too creaky. The wingspan doesn’t extend as fluidly as it did before. And when Caldor looks at me with those dark beady eyes full of
jaseemat
life, I see the face of a creature who might wish its true creator had fixed it, not a handmaid.

A rush of fury comes over me. “I should never have wasted time on you, stupid falcon!”

I shove Caldor away, but its feet are much closer to the table’s edge than I thought, and it trips, catching the wind with its wings, but too late. Caldor spirals as it strives to reach flight, but crashes straight into the wall, falling to a nearby windowsill. Its pitiful black eyes stare emptily across the way, and its wing falls broken, reflecting the village below.

I sigh in annoyance at myself. That’ll be a few hours’ worth of repairs.

A dark shadow passes in my periphery. I glance back at Caldor’s cocked wing in time to see the shadow’s reflection in the copper. That of a man, but warped in the rounded wing of the falcon, upside-down and smudged.

I step toward the window for a better look. The mirror’s glass crunches under my boots, but all I care about is the village below. When I reach the window, I pull Caldor aside and peek down for myself.

The blacksmith is still at work, despite the chaos. I frown at the late hour, the furnace still hot. In the same spot where Azur’s aerohawk landed six months past, he lifts his mask from his face, but the gas lanterns in the street are too dim to make out any features. He doesn’t seem bothered by the cold in only a white tunic and brown trousers, typical serf wear.

I look closer. He goes behind the workstation and pulls up the door to the cellar, stepping down.

And then a realization hits me, and I curse my lack of foresight these past few months and my habit of leaving the swinging stone door
open
.

The catacombs.
Oh, how Merlin would scold if he knew. It never occurred to me that the blacksmith would come across the stone door on its axis to the world beneath Camelot. I don’t know which is worse: someone prodding at my alchemic work or someone in a realm with magic still lingering there.

I don’t give it a second thought: I run down the stairs for the cellar. My feet land squarely in front of the stonewall leading to the catacombs. It’s wide open, chilling my blood and cautioning me about the possibility of forthcoming danger. As I peer down, I watch the fiery dance of a lantern move about with each step the blacksmith takes. I clench my fists to gather courage and set my hand to the steps’ wall to follow him.

My footsteps are soundless because of the inferno dancing on the pyre. But then I must pause as the blacksmith’s words silence the flames in exactly the same accent Merlin would employ. “
Ahzikabah.
”

I gasp. The blacksmith knows how to ask of the demigods safe passage into the catacombs. Impossible … unless he’s followed me before.

He presses onward, and so do I. The doors open, revealing the pitch-blackness of the fireless room. When he walks inside, the flames from his lantern jump for the wall, illuminating the entire space until they reach the heavy, iron furnace across from the door.

The blacksmith reaches the center of the catacombs and turns, his silhouette distinguished against the rubble of broken cobblestone and gemstones torn free by Victor’s iron claws. I pause at the door, hidden by darkness. The blacksmith is perhaps twice my age, tall and burly. His hair is pitch black, and he runs his fingers through the back in a manner I find remarkably familiar. He studies the room and continues on to the other side.

He stops past the furnace, pressing his palm against the wall, and glances up, muttering. The wall shudders and unhinges from the labyrinth of pipes and metalwork. Through a long, humming creak, they move backward into an empty space.

I thought I knew these catacombs well, but there’s so much more that Merlin never told me—unless he didn’t know about this passageway himself.

My eyes follow the moving wall to the ceiling, where once there was the gemstone mosaic of a dragon that is now no longer whole, but an assembling of sparkling amethysts that survived Victor’s blow. There’s a sharp break where the ceiling ends, and where a long roller chain with rotating sprockets reveals itself. I glance at the blacksmith in time to see him disappear through the break in the wall, the white of his shirt the only indication he’d escaped. Then the walls churn to close the gap.

I certainly won’t be left behind. I close my dress into my fists to lift the hem and run. The stone pulls forward and the sprockets rotate faster. The break is pitch black but the orange glow of the blacksmith’s lantern lets me see a path. The wall’s reassembling speeds up. My feet move faster.

Goodness, what am I doing? I might be crushed to death!

I twist to the side in time to pass through, fingers nearly caught in the stone wall as it slams back into place. Merlin did say there were traps about for curious fingers.

There’s a familiar crack, one that sounds when you switch on a common gas lantern to catch flame. One by one, lanterns line the corridor. At the end, the light is bright.

There’s nowhere to go but forward. But when I reach the end of the path, the burly shadow of the blacksmith steps in front of me, his lantern lifted high, revealing his unmasked face. His face fills with surprise. But he can’t be as surprised as I am.

Because the blacksmith has Marcus’s violet eyes.

Those violet eyes turn to fire. The blacksmith steps toward me, just as shocked as I am.

“What are you doing here? Why did you follow me?” His voice is heavy and raw from so many years working with fire and soot in his trade, but also mixed with the French-sounding pronunciation Guinevere had.

His surprise sets me back several steps. I reach for the surface of the walls for balance.

“You’re—” I cannot say the words for fear I might be wrong.

The blacksmith turns away. Marcus told me all he could find in the farmlands was his mother’s apron. There was never any mention of his father’s body in the fields that Morgan’s drones burned. I wonder if I didn’t just see in the blacksmith what I wanted to see, rather than the possibility that Morgan le Fay actually failed in killing both of Marcus’s parents.

But then the blacksmith glances back at me, and there’s no denying it.

“It’s been you all this time. Does he know you’re alive?” I step inside the dimly-lit room, where the walls are covered with iron workings, trinkets that would catch the wind and turn it into song, twisted black poles morphed into cold, decorative animals. Clocks with cuckoo birds whose delicate iron sculptures surpass Caldor in realism. Wrought-work stools with cold, black blossoms for feet. And a scene of miniature people in a festive, wintery village. All of it, the same decor I saw only once in a barn that no longer stands.

The blacksmith’s face falls, as though he’s given up on his secret. “No, Marcus doesn’t know I’m alive.” His eyes grow heavy, and he looks away. His face is larger than Marcus’s. Wider. But his walk and height are identical. “By the time I’d returned from the infirmary, he was to be knighted. How could I show myself and encourage him to refuse such an honor, when it was to be but a few months before all was said and done? We were serfs. He had the chance to be something better.”

I’m more furious at my own inability to see the truth when it was standing right in front of me than the blacksmith’s deception, and yet. “All this time, you never told me.
He
never told me. You watched me sneak in and out of Merlin’s clock tower for five years, and you said nothing. Did Marcus at least know you worked here?”

I follow him further inside the workshop. In the dead center, he stops in front of an ironwork cross. One made with meticulous detail. With love. In the middle, the name
Elly
formed in long, thick, iron strips and sharpened to angled points. The blacksmith kneels. He glances at me with tears wet on his face. “Give a mourning husband a minute of peace.”

A wave of shame washes over me as he goes quiet.

There are a few moments of whispered prayers. Then he clears his throat and stands, shoulders curving into a hunch as he regards the cross’s craftsmanship. “Of course Marcus knew of my trade.”

I remember the horse-drawn cart departing from Camelot with Marcus’s mother in it. I remember her bright blue eyes as she glanced at me, a stranger, a noblewoman, and how she looked elsewhere when she didn’t recognize me. Naturally, Marcus’s eyes would come from his father, who’d congenially slapped his boy on the shoulder before returning to his work. “Why are you still here? Why did you work in the castle as a faceless man, but keep your name under the guise of a farmer?”

“I needed to be close to the wizard,” he says. “You weren’t his only apprentice, my lady, and that is something Marcus does not know. Merlin chooses those who would be of unique and practical use to him.” His eyes dive into an old memory he never entertains when he could choose happier ones instead. “I promised the old fool we’d both see the Grail in Camelot. If I’d found the coordinates to Avalon, I might have been able to bring my family inside the castle. To be a blacksmith wasn’t enough on its own. Bribery, threats. I tried everything.” He leans on the table, and his arms carry a leftover summer tan that would brand him as an outsider. But an iron-masked blacksmith would fade into Camelot’s background when brightly dressed nobility and dandies strolled the village streets.

I step forward. “But Marcus was a squire—”

“Yes, and so Marcus had to become a knight. For his mother’s sake.” His face goes dark with thoughts of the past, and his eyes flicker again to the wrought-iron cross. “Damn the Grail, and damn the idiots who seek it. I’d give anything to see my boy safe now. Six months gone—they were supposed to be back after three!”

I see Marcus whenever I think of the dangers unconquered on the quest, and it is nearly too much to bear. The blacksmith’s fingers weave through his hair, messing it up. For a moment, he looks like his son, and I can no longer watch. I wonder if he knows Marcus is missing. “My lord—”

“You can call me Rufus, my lady.”

I nod, knowing if I were to extend the same offer he’d likely refuse, as Marcus once did. “Sir Kay brought news of Galahad’s infantry.”

“I heard. And now it seems Jerusalem has fallen to pirates of the skies. Word spreads quickly when there are few lips to pass it on.” He rolls up the sleeves to his tunic as though he’s about to get to work. It reveals tattoos across his forearms in an old style. A choppy alphabet scrawled in thick black ink. Fragments of symbols I can’t decipher, symbols I recognize from the linings of Guinevere’s vestments. Alphabets that were etched into the back of the sorcerer’s skull.

Rufus sees me studying them. “Lyonesse … it was a place of magic. To appear as one of them was the safest way to live.”

I look up, unable to stop my eyes from asking the most obvious question. He reads me easily.

“No, I didn’t dabble. I got the markings to protect myself in hopes I’d be left alone.”

He gestures to the pathway. Together, we make our way to the streets in the village. I glance in the distance at the gas lanterns’ glow spilling through the windows in the main hall. My father is there with Lancelot and the others, the only ones left. And the messenger from Sarpenic, surely, to discuss what must now be done about the attack on Jerusalem. The snow continues to fall, but the breeze has subsided, letting flakes drift wherever they will without the force of wind to guide them.

“Forgive me for taking all this time to finally speak with you. I’m sure you understand, though.” He squeezes the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “These damned eyes of ours… I couldn’t risk having him discovered as the son of a man who’d lived in Lyonesse, who had the inked skin of someone who lived there. It would have been next to impossible for him to become a knight if word got of who I was.”

I sift through my recollection of Marcus staring at me in the grand hall during the royal wedding and the way his eyes were so strange. So captivating. So unusual. How I came to be entranced by them.

“Word has it that … ” Rufus stops there, unsure of how to arrange his words, his foot tapping restlessly on the ground. “Marcus won’t be a knight forever, then.”

I find it hard to hold the blacksmith’s gaze. Even harder to recall the memory of Owen telling me so himself. “No,” I say. “That was Marcus’s condition of knighthood—it’d be temporary. Only until the Grail was found. And only if it was by him.”

And then, what? We haven’t spoken of what would become of the two of us, if he’d join me in escaping to some wonderful place once the Grail is safe in Camelot. Although, that was before rogues attacked Jerusalem.

Rufus squints as he regards the midnight blue of the sky. In the light flickering from the gas lanterns on these streets, snow whispers to the ground. The blacksmith kneels in a crouch by his shop as he might have in the middle of a blustery day with nobility passing through, calling to one another with insincere waves and smiles all the more so. Phantoms of serfs might have tipped their ruddy hats toward one another, atop of which goggles would have held together with whatever they could find.

A sadness falls over Rufus’s eyes. “What I wouldn’t give for him to know I’m alive.”

Neither of us is foolish enough to believe that just because word hasn’t gotten to us means Marcus is safe. They’d surely notify Camelot if a knight was killed, no matter what Marcus believed.
“No one will remember me if I don’t return.”
But the simple inconvenience of not having the same communicative alchemic abilities as Merlin and Azur is dreadfully frightening. If Marcus is dying right now, we wouldn’t hear of it until at least a month has passed. A month of his body freezing in the wilderness. I need to find Marcus fast. Before any of this could happen.

“There is a way,” I hear myself tell Rufus.