The Age of Knights & Dames Page 19

  Into the caverns they went. It was hot and stuffy, like the belly of a volcano. Clay lost his sense of direction as they passed through grottos and passageways.

  “We’ll rest here for the night,” the Watchmaker finally declared.

  “You’re sure?” Clay asked.

  “You want to go further, be my guest. We’ll be safe here until morning.”

  The Watchmaker settled into a small alcove, telling Clay to keep watch if he was worried. A few minutes later, the mountain man was sawing logs more efficiently than the fortissium blade.

  Exhausted but unable to sleep with all that was on his mind, Clay set aside the Watchmaker’s axe and pulled out his pocket watch. As before, the time read midnight.

  He sighed in disappointment. How he had wished that his clock would move backward, that his soul would reignite with bravery, that he could fight the Dreadnaught and the witch and the dragons. But if anything, the fight at Cliffside Tower and his shock in the Bridgemaster’s home had proven how far removed he was from his courage. Starting a magic flame for Dembroch seemed impossible.

  Clay turned the watch over and examined the gears. He tried to relate the whirring circles and clicking teeth to his past, but nothing spoke to him. It was as perplexing as ever.

  Sighing in discouragement, Clay stowed away his pocket watch. He glanced over at the Watchmaker and caught sight of the belt. A half dozen pocket watches hung there, letting out soft ticks.

  Clay’s eyes fell on the leftmost watch. That was the one the queen had looked at earlier. She had looked so graven, as though the ill fate found within were unstoppable.

  Curiosity getting the better of him, Clay slunk to the Watchmaker’s side. He unclasped the watch from the belt and examined it. Gears whirred within. Clay tried to read into the gears, to see what the Watchmaker could see, but nothing spoke to him and no secrets were revealed.

  He unclasped the front. It sprung open, revealing the clock face. He blinked, not understanding.

  The queen’s watch read a minute to midnight.

  Beside him, the Watchmaker grumbled in his sleep. Clay returned the watch to the belt and hurried back to the other side of the cavern, his brain spinning.

  His own watch was at midnight due to the lack of childhood spirit within. His innocence was gone, as was his bravery. It was no surprise his watch said he was dead of heart. It was how he felt.

  But the queen? She was full of vim and vigor, courtesy and spirit. Which meant, if her childlike spirit was well and alive, the watch revealed something else.

  Was it the imminent end of Dembroch? Was everyone’s pocket watch a minute from midnight?

  No, Clay remembered. The Watchmaker’s was at nine-o’clock. Dembroch’s impending disaster was still twelve hours away. Whatever was affecting the queen was personal. But what?

  For reasons Clay did not know and could only begin to guess, the queen was dying. And, based on the pocket watch, she had very little time left.

  CHAPTER 32:

  Honest Hours

  “This is going to hurt,” Queen Coralee warned

  “Just do it,” I insisted.

  I was laying on the cold, hard ground. A fire—not a magical one, just a normal sticks and sparks one—burnt close by.

  We were at the mouth of the mage’s caverns on the northern shores of Dembroch. The sand bar of Whittlesea with its far-off beach hut village and strange, dismembered scarecrow on its southern tip glowed under the moon. Ryderwyle seemed to howl at us with its swirling winter storm. Waves crashed onto the rock shore. I tried focusing on it to distract myself from the impending pain.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I nodded, bracing myself. My poor little heart beat fast, but it ached a little with each beat, which was worrisome too.

  The queen began to lift my dislocated arm, angling it to be perpendicular with my body. I bit my tongue; every inch sent spikes of agony down my body. My heart pumped painfully.

  “So you’re cursed, huh?” I grunted. “From birth?”

  The queen stopped.

  “Must we talk about this now, Sir Nicholas?” she asked.

  “I…well, no, I was…just trying to distract myself,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Let us distract each other with a different topic,” she requested. “May I ask about what you said while we were in the castle, when the witch held me captive?”

  My stomach dropped. All the physical pain seemed to melt away for a moment, replaced by fear and guilt.

  “Did you mean it?” the queen asked.

  Her tone was far too innocent for what she was asking, and she was too smart to know it wasn’t just a simple, distracting question.

  “Can we just—just do it,” I said.

  The queen did as I asked, pulling on my arm hard. Pain shot through me and my shoulder let out a sick thunk. My arm popped back into its joint, bone grating against bone. I screamed in agony, a million daggers stabbing through my chest and down my arm. My heart thudded away, pounding harder than it should have.

  “I told you it would hurt,” the queen said.

  As I fought off the pain, the queen tore fabric from her dress. She tied it around my neck and arm, forming a sling.

  We moved to the fire and sat on opposite ends for a while, awkwardly avoiding eye contact, neither of us wanting to start the hard conversations.

  There was so much swirling around in my brain. Sorgana the witch was the queen’s sister. The queen had stripped my friends and I of our titles to protect us. And in seemingly unrelated news, there was a curse.

  After what seemed like hours, Queen Coralee looked me in the eye. There was a pause between us, like the moment before you jump over the edge of a waterfall. It seemed the moment was finally upon us.

  “I will be honest with you,” the queen said, her hushed words full of honesty. “But only if you, in kind, will be honest with me.”

  I stammered a few words, trying to find fault with this, for a way out, but silenced myself. I had proven I was faithful to the queen and she was showing her willingness to trust me in return.

  I nodded.

  “It is settled,” the queen said. “Owing to the fact that I was the first to hide any truth, I shall be the first. It is difficult to explain, so I must begin with the start. Dembroch is cursed, but only because I am cursed.”

  “But—” I began.

  “Everything that has happened these last twenty years,” the queen said slowly, not looking me in the eye, “has unfolded because of me. The death of the king, the flight of our Civium and Hospites, the end of the kingdom’s magic… All of this is my doing. And what a shame it is. What a mark on my soul. The kingdom took me in and trusted me to guide them to prosperity with my king, none knowing I needed the isles’ magic as much as any Hospite. But none of them knew what I brought with me to the kingdom. None of them knew the curse that would one day lay waste to their land. That I would lead it all to ruin.”

  My jaw was hanging. The queen was a Hospite? She had been welcomed to the kingdom to save her from a curse?

  “What is it?” I asked tenderly. “The curse?”

  The queen shifted uncomfortably.

  “It is quite byzantine,” she said.

  I waited patiently. I wouldn’t force her if she didn’t want to say it, but she knew as well as I that an explanation would help shed light on…well, pretty much everything.

  “If you insist,” she said. She took a deep breath and began: “My father was cursed by a witch. Not Sorgana. Another witch of old. And the curse? It was a dreadful one that burdened my father and any children he should have. Therefore, it rests on my shoulders as it crushed his.”

  I felt a stirring in my memory. This story seemed familiar.

  “He searched the world for a way to break the curse,” the queen continued, “but he died in the process. Before the curse affected me—”

  “Wait,” I interrupted, suddenly realizing. “Was your father…King Arthur?”

 
The queen looked impressed.

  “Well, yes,” she said.

  I gaped at her. “You’re the daughter of…of King Arthur. Wow. Just…wow. But…hey, wait. I thought King Arthur couldn’t have children.”

  I was pretty sure I remembered my history correctly. In all the history books, King Arthur had only one child: Mordred, an illegitimate child from dalliances he’d had in his young adult years. Several years later, he had married Queen Guinevere and never been able to father another child. Their lack of children had been one of the reasons Queen Guinevere had found solace in the arms of Sir Lancelot, one of the Knights of Round Table.

  “There is much more to the story than history cares to tell,” Queen Coralee revealed. “And far more than I can remember. I only know what was told to me millennia ago.”

  “I may have a way for us to see it,” I said.

  From my satchel, I pulled out the vial of golden magic that the librarian had given to me and the history book the queen had sent long ago.

  I showed the book to Queen Coralee.

  “May I?” I asked, shaking the vial slightly.

  The queen nodded contemplatively. For the first time, I wondered if, perhaps, the queen had sent the book to us not only to hide the secrets of the kingdom’s magic from the witch, but to hide the secret of her curse, too.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  When she nodded, I laid the book open to the tale of King Arthur. I uncorked the vial of storytelling magic and poured it onto the page.

  CHAPTER 33:

  The Curse of the King

  White smoke blossomed from the book and covered the queen and I. Our surroundings became an expansive salt flat. Heat mirages danced across the expanse. Far away, set in a mountainside, was a castle of dark stone and sharp turrets.

  “Once upon a time,” I said, prompting the magical storytelling to begin, “King Arthur bested his most terrible foe, Morgan Le Fay.”

  Two figures appeared before us on the salt flats. Dressed in chainmail and bearing a sword, King Arthur fought against Morgan Le Fay, a sinewy woman with regal robes of green. They battled fiercely.

  “My father,” the queen breathed, looking at King Arthur with admiration and wonder.

  Before our very eyes, Morgan Le Fay sent out a blast of green fire at the king. The effort appeared taxing. Her skin rippled and cracked. It reminded me of Sorgana and the physical toll when she used her magic.

  Weakened by her own spell, Morgan Le Fay let up just for a moment. King Arthur took advantage of it and knocked the sorceress to her knees. He held his sword an inch from her neck.

  “Yield,” he said.

  The witch knelt, anger burning in her eyes.

  “Morgan Le Fay,” King Arthur said boldly, “you have been sentenced to death for your crimes against the kingdom. Before you pass through the gates of hell, do you have any final words?”

  The witch clasped her hands, twisting her fingers together.

  “You may have bested me on this day, king, but I shall raze the very legacy you have built,” Morgan Le Fay spat. “I curse you and your lineage. Child shall be separated from parent. Grief shall break your hearts.”

  “Silence, witch,” King Arthur demanded.

  But the curse had already begun. Ivy green mirages of magic flew from Morgan Le Fay’s hands into King Arthur’s body.

  “And when each of your descendants reach the age of thirty years,” the witch continued, “they shall be stripped of their lands, people, royalty, and title, and spend the rest of their days knowing what they have lost.”

  King Arthur exclaimed in protest and swung his sword. With a sick thud, Morgan Le Fay’s body hit the ground, free of life.

  “The curse,” I breathed, fully realizing the ramifications of what had just occurred. “It wasn’t just on King Arthur. It passed to his descendants.” I looked to the queen. “To you.”

  The queen nodded, her eyes still locked on her father. King Arthur stood over the witch’s body, despair wrinkling his face.

  We watched for a while before I remembered I had to prompt the storytelling.

  “Burdened with the curse and his spoils of war, King Arthur…”

  I couldn’t remember what happened next, but the story was already moving forward.

  King Arthur turned his gaze to the castle in the mountainside. A soft wailing came from within. The next second, the scene darkened to near black. When my eyes adjusted, I realized we were in the castle, watching King Arthur walk through its halls.

  This was a deviation from the written story, I remembered, having first seen it while fleeing the witch in the library. It seemed it was time to find out the story between the lines.

  King Arthur entered a large room with a balcony overlooking the salt flats. In the corner of the room was a bed of black satin and, right next to it, a cradle.

  We followed King Arthur to the crib. Inside was a tiny, blue-eyed baby girl. The baby cooed and reached out for the king. He took her in his arms and held her close.

  “Is that you?” I whispered to the queen.

  “I don’t think so,” she murmured, enraptured with the unfolding scene.

  “Child of a sorceress,” King Arthur mused to himself as he regarded the baby. “What horrors you would have lived. What evil your mother would have pressed upon you.”

  The king walked to the balcony, overlooking the salt flats, and drew the baby close, embracing her as a father would a newborn.

  “I christen you Edith of Camelot and take you as my own,” the king said to the baby.

  Beside me, Queen Coralee gasped. I was shocked too. The baby in King Arthur’s arms would one day be Sorgana the witch. She was the “spoils of war” that the book spoke of.

  “Did you know?” I whispered.

  The queen shook her head. “I knew she was my stepsister, but not her true parentage.”

  King Arthur continued speaking to his new stepdaughter: “You are free from the tyranny of your mother’s will, just as I shall never sire a child to be afflicted by my curse. Rather, my wife and I shall take you as our own. You shall live free of any curse or witchcraft, so long as I live.”

  I couldn’t help but be impressed by the king. His resolve to do good, to suffer so others could prosper, was admirable. The king was willing to raise someone else’s child and never have his own to end the curse, spare his own future children, and save the offspring of an evil witch. It seemed a high bar that Queen Coralee was desperately reaching to emulate.

  After a moment, I realized the scene had frozen again.

  “You may continue,” Queen Coralee said softly.

  “Okay. So, uh…burdened with the curse and his spoils of war, King Arthur returned to Camelot,” I said.

  The scene transformed before our very eyes. King Arthur mounted his horse. Holding tight to Morgan Le Fay’s daughter, the stepdaughter who would one day be Sorgana, King Arthur urged his horse into a trot and rode off into the sunset. We followed him across the sand flats, through mountains and woods, until he arrived at the foot of a castle. I knew at once that this place, with its thick brambles, the sweeping British hills, and the marked beauty, was Camelot.

  King Arthur took his adopted daughter to the throne room. His wife, Guinevere, waited there for him. He knelt beside her and kissed her hand.

  “My queen,” the king said. “Our greatest foe has been vanquished.”

  Queen Guinevere’s attention was on the baby in King Arthur’s arms, now a few months older.

  “The witch bore a daughter,” the king revealed. “Left alone in the castle. The babe would have died. And you and I…we can raise this child as our own.”

  “You’re a fool, my king,” Queen Guinevere said, a wry look in her eye.

  She stood—and that’s when I saw it. King Arthur did too.

  Queen Guinevere was pregnant.

  I looked to Queen Coralee. She nodded.

  The baby inside Queen Guinevere was the queen standing beside me now.

  �
�Shortly after you left,” Queen Guinevere said to her husband, “the Lord blessed us.”

  King Arthur’s smile soon faded.

  “What is it, my king?” Queen Guinevere asked.

  He told her about the curse of Morgan Le Fay now upon him and his lineage. Never once did he shout or lose his temper. I envied his even temperament. He had the solidarity of a leader.

  “Our child,” King Arthur said, placing a hand on his wife’s abdomen, “will be subject to the curse as well. By their thirtieth year, they will suffer greatly.”

  “What can we do?” asked the queen.

  King Arthur’s jaw flexed and his eyes grew steely.

  “The Lord has blessed us with a child when doctors told us we could not. This child is a blessing. And, by my last breath, I shall ensure that this child lives a full life. They will not suffer this curse. I so swear it, my queen.”

  I looked upon the family—the gallant King Arthur and his promise, the steadfast Queen Guinevere bearing the miracle child that was already doomed, and the stepdaughter Edith, adopted with good intention but surely to be cast aside. It appeared to be the beautiful calm before the storm.

  “After this,” I said, trying to narrate again, “I think King Arthur went looking for the Holy Grail.”

  Prompted by my words, the scene before us changed, showing much more than I had stated. We saw Queen Guinevere giving birth, a wizened old man speaking to King Arthur, the king riding off with twelve knights while the queen watched him go, a cup hovering just out of reach of the knights, then two young girls playing together… I began to lose track of what was happening, but Queen Coralee took the reins.

  “My mother, Queen Guinevere, gave birth to me,” said the queen. “In hopes to avoid reprisal from Morgan Le Fay’s sympathizers, Queen Guinevere and King Arthur struck my name from the lineage records. My father consulted his mentor and confidante, Merlin, and, spreading rumors he was hunting Sir Lancelot for his crimes against the kingdom and the queen, went off in search of a remedy to break or delay the looming curse. His focuses ultimately turned to the Holy Grail, a relic he had pursued for much of his life that allegedly could forestall aging and cure any illness. Meanwhile, back in Camelot, I grew older with my stepsister, Edith, though neither was ever told of Edith’s true parentage. Only my mother let on. Her heart only had room for King Arthur and her rightful daughter, and she shunned Edith whenever the moment presented itself.”