Silver in the Bone, page 35
“You really think a sorceress could perform the ritual?” he asked. “Their magic is as treacherous as they are.”
For a moment, I was speechless. “We’re talking about Neve here. Neve, who loves cat drawings and fungi and learning and created a spell of pure light. Why would you say that?”
Cabell blew out a hard breath through his nose. “You’re right. Neve is different. I just keep thinking…the sorceresses are responsible for all of this. None of this would have happened without them killing the druids.”
Including, my mind filled in, Nash’s death.
I bit my lip until I tasted blood. “Cab…do you want to go back home? We can leave all of this behind. I’d do it in a heartbeat for you.”
He didn’t respond. The leather of Nash’s old jacket creaked as his arms tightened over his chest, and his fists clenched in the material.
“Do you remember,” he said after a while, “that night in the Black Forest when Nash put on a whole shadow play retelling the story of King Arthur’s final battle?”
I laughed despite myself. “God, he had the most horrible sound effects for the battle. His dying-Arthur voice was pretty dismal, too.”
Cabell hummed in agreement.
It was a rare telling of the Battle of Camlann; Nash had never liked endings, especially when his heroes died. After Arthur had left to fight on the Continent, his nephew Mordred usurped the throne, forcing his return to Britain. The battle mortally injured Arthur and killed nearly all of the remaining knights. Only Bedivere was left to accompany the dying king to Avalon.
I rubbed at my arms, trying to ward off a chill. The Children, at least, were quieter now that the brief daylight was coming.
“What made you think of that?” I asked.
“Being around Bedivere, I guess. Wondering how much of the story is true, and how much strength it took for Bedivere to stay here all these years.” Cabell swallowed. “Do you think Nash regretted his choice to look for the ring?”
“Nash never regretted anything in his life,” I reminded him.
“That’s not true,” Cabell said. “He always regretted leaving you that morning. When the White Lady called out to you. I’ve never seen him so scared.”
The mark over my heart ached, burning with its own cold, as if to answer.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Nash,” I admitted. “Not that I want to, but I feel his presence.”
“Yeah?”
“Mostly the stories he told us,” I said. “It’s weird, isn’t it? It’s almost like they’ve all come alive now that we’re here.”
Cabell considered that. Then, catching my shiver, pulled off Nash’s jacket and draped it over my shoulders.
“Thanks,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t need it?”
“I like the cold,” he said. “It helps clear my mind.”
I pulled the jacket tighter around me, wishing I had thought to put on my flannel coat before meeting Emrys.
“Do you think Olwen could be right, and we were supposed to come here?” Cabell asked quietly. “That Nash told us all those stories for a reason?”
“I think he told us partly to explain the relics we were looking for,” I said, “but mostly to amuse himself.”
Cabell looked down at the silver rings on his hands.
“I mean…maybe?” I offered. “Maybe there is more to all of this. Like with all of the stories that had so many variations, we can choose which version we want to believe.”
“And which version of ourselves,” he said.
“Yeah, I suppose,” I said. “What is it you want to believe about yourself, Cab?”
He didn’t answer.
“Sometimes I envy your memory,” he told me then. “Because it’s a place where nothing dies.”
“Your story isn’t finished yet, Cab,” I promised him.
“Maybe,” he said. “But whatever happens, at least you can find me there.”
The dance of flame was as terrifying as it was hypnotic.
In the lean times between paying jobs, Nash had us camp out under the stars. Long after I was meant to be sleeping, I would lie awake and watch the campfire thrash and flicker. I’d try to count the sparks as they rose through the darkness, fading like stars in the morning. And when the flames finally subsided to smoldering ash, I’d sleep.
Tonight, by the time I’d made it back to our chamber, Neve was deep asleep, sprawled out on the mattress. Eventually, I gave up on trying to follow her lead and climbed out of bed. I paced as if I could shake the thoughts loose that way.
When that didn’t work, I settled into the chair in front of the hearth and found my way back to my own ritual, nudging the salamander stones together to create a small fire. Crossing my legs, I propped my elbow against my knee and my chin against my palm. The flames rose from the cold stones, golden bright.
I let thoughts stream through my mind without trying to grasp any of them. Old memories of vaults and primordial forests. Cabell and me in the library. My knife slicing Septimus moments before he was torn apart. The Children rising from the mists. The gleaming bottles in Olwen’s infirmary. The hound racing toward Caitriona. The white rose. Nash’s yellowed bones…
It was the last image that lingered long after the others had settled. That picture of quiet, anonymous death after such a loud and infamous life.
For the first time since he’d vanished, the thought of Nash didn’t bring anger. It only brought an aching at my core. Regret.
Let the dead die, Tamsy, he told me once. It’s only memory that truly pains us, and they release it when they go.
Nash’s memories had come in song, in fireside stories, over the clink of pints, but they were silent now, and always would be. Unlike the sorceresses and the priestesses, who strove to crystallize their memories, who refused to let their lives be forgotten, he would have welcomed the unburdening. He’d always been selfish like that.
Let the dead die.
And any memory of my parents along with him.
My eyelids grew heavy. I didn’t fight the insistent pull of exhaustion.
The air turned to dark water around me as my mind sank deeper and deeper into unconsciousness. Flurries of bubbles streamed toward the retreating light at the surface until, finally, I reached a soft bed of earth. Silvery shells rose as the dirt dissolved beneath me, pearly and sinister.
Not shells. Bones.
I tried to scream, but water filled my mouth and lungs. I pushed away, but they were everywhere, shivering and clattering as they started to assemble themselves. Their pieces fitting together into monstrous forms that crawled forward, grasping at my legs.
My fingers brushed ice beneath the silt and I gripped it, tearing it free.
A sword. In my hand, the blade blazed with blue fire, the fire that burned in the hearts of stars. It roiled the water until it became a barrier of light against the shadowed world.
I surfaced from the dream, my lungs burning with a harsh gasp.
Clutching at my head, I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the dizzying spin of the room before I vomited.
A soft knock sounded at the door. I looked up, bracing myself—uncertain if the dream still had me in its grip.
Neve sighed softly in sleep behind me. I looked around, taking in the familiar sight of the room with growing composure. Real. This was real.
There was another knock, as faint as the first.
I forced myself onto unsteady legs and went to unlatch the door.
Bedivere stood in the darkness, clutching a lantern. He had dressed fully in armor—far more than he wore while on watch—and had a sword at his side.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered, stepping into the hall and shutting the door behind me. “Is it Cabell?”
He inclined his head toward the stairs and I followed, surprised at how quietly he moved, despite the metal that covered his body.
“I am sorry to have woken you,” he said, his voice low. “I would not come to you except in grave need. I must ask you to do something for me.”
“I don’t like the sound of ‘grave need,’ ” I whispered.
He let out a soft breath that might have been a laugh in any other circumstance. “I long to believe the ritual could save the isle.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my pulse jumping. “How do you know it can’t?”
“High Priestess Viviane,” he said. “She came to visit me when I lived away from the tower, keeping watch over my king. In that time, she told me of the need for rituals to be performed as written. They are commands from the Goddess, and must be followed, or else they are doomed to fail.”
My hands felt numb with the cold. With dread.
“So…what? You’re saying it’s pointless to try?”
“No,” he said. “They must try, only with the true athame.”
“But it was lost…” My voice trailed off as I saw his look of guilt. “You know where it is?”
The old knight closed his eyes. “To my great shame, I was the one who took it. I had no knowledge of its importance, only that the High Priestess carried it with her always, and I thought it hers and cherished so deeply that it should be buried with her as well.”
Realization flared in my mind. “Caitriona said they burned her body.”
“Some of it, yes.” Bedivere’s expression turned tortured. “I have lied to them and forsaken my own honor in doing so. I could not abide the idea that her gentle soul would not be reborn. I pulled her bones from the fire as the others slept and buried them in the place where all High Priestesses are borne back to the Goddess.”
The athame isn’t lost. The words lit a flame in my chest. The ritual will work.
“You’re going to get it,” I said, “aren’t you?”
Bedivere nodded. “I must. If I tell the priestesses, they will try to go themselves, and it is my wrong to put right. And so I come to you with one request. If I do not return, tell the others what’s become of me. Remind Cabell of his strength.”
My mind raced. This couldn’t happen. Bedivere was needed here, in so many ways, by so many. His fighting ability, his guidance, his work with Cabell. My brother was already walking along a cliff’s edge, and if the one person who could help pull him back didn’t return…
He would never recover.
And I would never forgive myself.
A calm surety took hold of me. Everyone had a role here. The Nine and Neve needed to perform the ritual. Emrys needed to help them grow what food they could. Bedivere was an experienced fighter who could keep them alive. Cabell needed the chance to learn control over his curse. The Avalonians needed to keep the tower secure and themselves alive.
No one was expendable enough to take this risk.
No one except me. One of the few people here who had experience opening and searching tombs.
The Goddess led you here to us. All of you.
I didn’t believe in fate—it seemed like an excuse to blame your troubles on something bigger than yourself. But I couldn’t deny how the others had fallen into place here, serving some greater purpose as surely as if they’d been led to it by the hand.
This…this was meant for me.
“Will you do me this service?” Bedivere asked.
“No,” I said. “Because I’m going in your place.”
His shock was palpable. “I cannot let you go. It must be me. There is no other choice.”
I wasn’t above using his guilt against him. “How would you feel if there was another attack while you were gone and you weren’t here to help them? Where’s the honor in that?”
He was still shaking his head.
“You must know a way to get out of the tower without having to go through the Children,” I said. “And you must think you’ll be able to reach the burial site before nightfall. That means I can do the same.”
And faster, given that I wouldn’t be traveling in a full suit of armor or with such a heavy load of emotional baggage. But this was the problem with honor—it poisoned you against reason.
Still, Bedivere held firm. “I cannot…”
“If they wake and find you gone, they’ll send out people to search for you,” I told him. “No one will even notice I’m missing.”
His remaining hand curled at his side, his eyes closing.
The knights of Camelot followed a strict code of chivalry; Bedivere would never put his burden on another without cause. It played out time and time again in the stories Nash had told us of life in Arthur’s court. Of quests and challenges accepted.
“I am begging you,” I whispered, my throat raw from the effort it took to not cry. “Please let me accept this challenge on your behalf. Please don’t leave Cabell. I can do this. I can.”
“I do not doubt that—” he began.
I had one last card to play. “You have to stay alive to protect your king until the mortal world needs him again.”
The words struck at him like an icy fist. He staggered back.
“You made a vow to him,” I said. Another strike. “Just as you made a vow to help protect the tower.” Another. “Please, Sir Bedivere. Let me go.”
In the silence, my heart thundered with a single refrain. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t.
But then he bowed his head, and a rush of purpose, of gratitude, broke loose.
“I cannot bear this, yet I must, and may I be cursed for it,” Bedivere said, his eyes pale as they bored into me. “If you truly desire to do this, then ready yourself. First light is nearly upon us and there is not a moment to tarry.”
Clever Emrys had missed one hidden passage, it seemed.
While I quietly dressed and gathered what supplies I had left in my workbag, Bedivere went to the armory to find me a breastplate of woven leather and a dagger he deemed me capable of using without accidentally slicing off my own thumb.
Avoiding Deri curled in repose at the base of the Mother tree, then the eyes of those keeping watch on the walls, I met Bedivere at the kitchen. The air was beginning to lighten and the Children to quiet—a fact Bedivere had not missed either.
“We must hurry,” he said, holding the door open for me. “Dilwyn is an elfin, and it is in her nature to race dawn to be the first to work.”
I was barely inside before he tossed me a sizeable chunk of bread and his skin of drinking water.
Relieved of his heavy armor, the old knight moved with surprising nimbleness to a cabinet on the back wall, holding his lantern up to one of its panels. At the caress of candlelight, the invisible markings there illuminated. Bedivere made as if to trace them with the metal glove that covered his lost hand, only to correct himself and use the other.
“The night comes,” he said.
The cabinet swung away from the wall at his words, scraping over the well-worn stones. The hole hidden beneath it was just wide enough for us to take to its ladder one at a time.
I went first, carefully making the steep climb down. Bedivere followed after ensuring the cabinet was pulled back into place.
With the benefit of his lantern, the underpath revealed itself in all its refined beauty. Unlike the other tunnels, this one was a marvel of arched ceilings and stone columns, the walls painted with wildlife and creatures both familiar and new.
“What is this place?” I asked, trailing after him. A few sprites slept in the alcoves at the top of each pillar, their glow brightening and dimming with each breath in and out.
“This was once the fairy path, used by the Fair Folk shy of humans but eager to trade with the tower,” Bedivere said. “It leads all the way to the sacred grove.”
I felt a twinge of victory at having been proven right. There was at least one way to leave the tower and pass under the Children gathered around the moat.
“Why wasn’t this one sealed?” I asked.
“It is protected by wards born of ancient magic that have yet to fail.” Bedivere turned, holding his lantern higher. “But more vitally, this is the last hope of Avalon. Should the tower fall to ruin, it is the path we will take to the barges, and the mortal world beyond.”
He tore through the thick lace of spiderwebs ahead, clucking his tongue in dismay when they clung to him like a second, filigree skin.
“Do you ever miss it?” I asked.
Bedivere looked back again.
“The mortal world,” I said.
He was silent for a long while, his shuffling steps the only sound between us. “I can scarcely remember it well enough to desire it.”
“What about King Arthur?” I asked, unable to help myself. “What was he like?”
The knight made a gruff noise at the back of his throat. “As righteous a man as they come, but vainglorious. Always seeking more than he was due at the expense of what he was given.”
I blinked.
Bedivere slowed. “He was a king of good humor and skill, deserving of memory beyond death.”
It wasn’t exactly the sort of praise I would have expected from someone who had agreed to watch over a man for a thousand years, but maybe a few centuries of isolation and monotony could sour even the sweetest milk.
“You’ve been stuck watching the guy sleep for a thousand-odd years—you’re allowed a few gripes,” I told him. Then, sensing an opportunity, I added, “I don’t suppose you could give me some directions on where to find whatever’s left of Camelot—”
“We must be quiet now,” he said with a slight edge. “We are not so far beneath the ground that the creatures cannot hear us.”
For once, I did as I was told.
We walked for what felt like a small eternity. Rather than a growing light, the end of the tunnel revealed itself with another ladder. This time, the knight was the first to climb, unlocking a heavy iron chain that barred the hidden door.
