Chapter 20 Friends and Foes
Friends and Foes
Like Arthur, Percival and Bertilak were not small, but towering blocks of muscle, the kind of guys who could throw hay bales like they weighed nothing.
He'd once seen Bertilak heave a rock nearly twice the size of his head across a field.
He'd complained it was difficult, and left him sore, but he'd done it.
They, Arthur, and Galehaut had been the overwhelming muscle of the group.
Lancelot and Dred were no slouches, but they had a lean, wiry strength, inclined more toward movement than heft.
To say this was going to be an ugly fight was an understatement.
Behind them, Morgan released her shadows, casting the room in a darkness that would impede their assailants but be withheld from them.
"Galehaut will be the biggest problem," Arthur said. "Do your best to ignore him for now. Lance, focus on Tristan. If Iseult is still around here somewhere, we can use him to get her. I feel that's going to be important somehow."
"She's still playing music somewhere," Dred said. "That's important. I'll deal with Percival."
Then the fight was upon them, Galehaut starting off strong with his own wind magic, turning the small area into a storm of chaos. Arthur countered with earth, but Percival and Bertilak were also earth-elemental fighters.
And Tristan, of course, was fire like Dred. That was fine, though, because Lancelot was the thing that fire feared most. With the lake so close to hand, and the chaotic winds in the air, it was easy to call the water to him.
In moments, the place was flooded with a good three inches of water, and Tristan was soaked head to toe. Galehaut's winds turned everything into a raging storm in a bottle, a feeling enhanced by Morgan's shadows.
Lancelot threw torrents of water at Tristan, dousing him to the point of near drowning.
A heavy splash was all the warning he had, barely in time to dodge and roll away from a killing blow thrown by Galehaut.
Pushing away the hurt, Lancelot focused on his goal, meeting fire with water, driving Tristan back, separating him from the rest of the group, ignoring the rest of the fighting, despite the agony that decision brought.
He had his orders, and Arthur knew what he was doing, so obey Lancelot would.
Even in the midst of the thunderous chaos, he could still hear singing. Dred was right: that mattered somehow, more than they understood.
Tristan was no slouch of a fighter. Nobody in Arthur's inner circle was; each of them had felled armies single-handedly.
The bastard had a mouth on him, but he was also sharp of mind and martial skill.
He'd fought like hell to earn Iseult's hand and protect her from the people who'd wanted her and her mother dead, to make them safe at Camelot.
There was nothing Tristan would not do for his beloved maiden who'd defied the world that insisted she was a man.
So they were evenly matched on tenacity and ferocity—but only one of them had ever won the day by summoning the ocean itself to the fight.
With a scream, he dodged the weakening flames that came at him, wincing at the cloud of steam that followed, pushing through it and throwing himself at Tristan, sending them slamming through a half-open door into the hallway.
He heaved to his knees and threw a punch dead into Tristan's face, knocking him flat, stunning him for precious seconds as he used strips of his own torn tunic to bind Tristan's hands and feet.
One of his skills that most surprised people was an uncanny talent with knots, but if there was one thing life in water taught you, it was how to make certain that things stayed where they were put, and that meant good knots.
Something any fisherman could tell you, and yet they were still surprised the son of the Lady of the Lake herself was good at them.
"Morgan!"
She appeared before him in a burst of sinuous shadow, like smoke in a fancy incense burner. Not a trick she used often, as it was dangerous and took a lot of energy. "The singing is coming from the queen's solar, or somewhere close to that."
"Thank you." Of course she'd had the answer before he could even make the request. That was Morgan.
Rumors outside of Camelot were always that Arthur kept her as a mistress, insulting Guinevere by flaunting his lover at court.
When anyone could tell that Morgan was second to no one, and would never tolerate being so for any person, let alone a man.
Arthur and Merlin were her lovers, and Guinevere her best friend, and only fools believed otherwise for even a second.
Heaving Tristan, bound and gagged and pissed off, over his shoulder, he hied off through the castle, through halls and interconnected rooms until he reached the private courtyard, currently also flooded, that led to the royal apartments.
Inside was the main hall, a shared space, but from there the quarters were divided with Arthur's apartments to the eastern half, Guinevere's to the western, and the rooms of their friends divided between them.
Properly, of course, men to one side, women to the other. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Through the door to Gwen's apartments, he kicked open the door to the solar and then the secret door that led up to the top of the turret. So far as most knew, the access to it was on the mezzanine overlooking the main hall, but that door led to a small storage space.
He was impressed the game knew that detail, but then again, Maleagant had kidnapped at least five of Arthur's knights.
Up, up, up he went, to the place where Guinevere and her women had spent so many hours, just the four of them.
This was their space, to talk and relax while they sewed, wrote, knit, and so forth, away from the stresses of the court.
Iseult had often played for them, sitting at her favorite harp rather than the ornate one she used to play for the court.
Unfortunately, the door at the top was sealed, both by heavy-duty lock and magic.
Getting water up here to buffet the door would take too long and require too much energy.
There wasn't enough room to break the door the old-fashioned way, and it was far too heavy to do that without special equipment anyway.
Fire would get through, but the only fire magic he had to hand was his prisoner. He didn't have the time to go get one of the others, and they were busy anyway. Think, damn it.
Throwing Tristan to the ground, Lancelot then heaved him upright and shoved him up against the door.
"Open it, Tristan. Get us through this door, or after I've done it myself, I'll kill Iseult slowly in front of you.
Not as some brave hero protecting his beloved, but a worthless loser who couldn't keep her safe.
Exactly the way you always knew you'd die. Open it."
Tristan glared at him with the kind of hate he'd reserved for everyone who said a single cruel word to or about Iseult. A kind of hate he'd never show Lancelot normally. It was all the collar's doing. He knew that.
It still hurt, just like it hurt to fight Galehaut, to threaten Iseult, who had always been like a little sister to him.
Screaming, he threw another punch, slamming into Tristan's stomach. "Is that what you want? To lie there like a fucking coward while I break into this room and kill your beloved because you're too pathetic to save her? Open the door! It's the only chance you'll get to save her before I kill her."
Tristan screamed, loud even through the gag, and fire erupted all around them, searingly painful where it touched skin and reduced his clothing to ashes—but it destroyed the door too, in shockingly fast time, given it was thick slabs of hardwood. But that was fire magic for you.
Using what little moisture he could easily pull from around them to quench the worst of the heat, he busted the door down entirely and heaved Tristan through it.
The whole time, Iseult continued to play, as though completely unaware of her surroundings. This close to her, it was easy to see that was true. Whatever puppet spell was on the others was infinitely worse on Iseult…
Because she was possibly the puppet master by proxy.
Or… the controls being used by the puppet master.
Maleagant, or Ethelfleda maybe. Iseult had earth magic, of the persuasive type, though of the grow roses in winter variety instead of Merlin's carnal magic.
Clearly it could be converted to more insidious use.
He dumped poor Tristan on the floor once more, making mental notes on how he could apologize for the mistreatment, and approached Iseult. Slowly, so slowly, he reached out to gently rest a hand on her shoulder.
Her head snapped up, revealing eyes that were black all the way through, alien and alarming, nothing at all like the deep forest green that so many young knights at court had loved to write poems about in futile attempts to become her new true love. Now just an alarming black void.
Throughout, she still played, like her arms were on marionette strings.
There was blood everywhere—covering her hands, splashed across her dress and face.
There was even blood in her beautiful, impossibly long hair that she'd always been so proud of, a rich, gold-toned brown color that shone like pure gold when the light caught it.
Some of the blood was old, some was recent, some was fresh.
She probably smelled awful, but all Lancelot could currently smell was his own scorched flesh and hot metal. "Iseult! Stop!"
She just kept playing, as though she could not hear him, was not even aware of him, though those black eyes stared right at him.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Lancelot said. He didn't have the craft or skill to overcome Maleagant's terrible magic the slow and careful way.
Drawing his sword, he reached out and grabbed her collar, thicker and wider than those the others wore, a sickly sort of white instead of black.