Chapter 39
There was nowhere for me to go but back up to the lake.
I made the journey faster than usual, until my breaths seared in my chest with the satisfaction of pain. Grief and rage, rage and grief; I was made of nothing else.
I stopped at the water’s edge, lungs raw and gasping. Up here, the morning light was just broaching the cusp of the valley, a crescent of pale gold reflected across the blue.
“Morgan?” Accolon stepped out from the willow’s shadow. One look at my face and he knew. “What’s happened?”
“I am sick of it, sick of it all,” I said. “How will any of us be free while that place still casts its great shadow?”
I charged past him beneath the leaves, pacing back and forth, swallowing tears. I had never been this way before him. I came to the lake to unyoke myself from the world, not carrying it on my back like Atlas’s burden. We didn’t speak of Camelot for this very reason.
“Am I wrong?” I went on. “All this time—was I wrong about everything?”
“Mon coeur,” he said patiently, “if we are to get anywhere, you will have to give me a clue, at least.”
His easy tone calmed me and I looked at him; in the shade, he looked almost tangible.
New anger sliced through my body like a longsword, that this had all begun with his brutal, unnecessary death, only for me to do worse by refusing to accept he was gone.
My efforts to spare us from sorrow had only led to yet more catastrophe.
Face your failures, your deepest pain, Lancelot’s hard voice echoed back. Seek the whole story.
“Do you know how you died?” I asked.
“Yes,” Accolon said slowly. “Why?”
The answer stuck in my throat, but I managed, “Could you bear to speak of it?”
He moved closer, his proximity thrilling through me as always, followed by the bone-deep agony of it never being enough.
“Of course,” he said softly. “It is just another part of my story. I can show you, if you want me to.”
Again the thought struck with dread resistance, but I had gone as far as I could without facing my greatest fear. Accolon’s death was the very last thing he and I had not shared; our final intimacy.
“Show me,” I told him.
In one stride he was with me and I was taken, swept away from our lake and the present moment, until I felt a change in the air. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a meadow under a blazing summer morning. A buzzard flew overhead, giving its eerie, echoing scream.
I looked around to see a small, shabby keep and half-walled town in the near distance, a scattering of people and horses lining the field. Nothing was familiar.
“Where are you?” I said, but Accolon did not stand beside me as he usually did. I was alone.
Then I heard voices, emanating from a red-and-yellow knight’s tent pitched just behind. I edged inside to find two men in conversation. Neither stirred at my entrance—here, I was the shade, an intangible, invisible presence outside of time.
I saw my Gaul first, standing in full armour not his own, helm under his arm. Excalibur’s scabbard hung at his hip with his sword within, though the pommel was wrapped in brown leather, concealing the silver horse. He looked strong, poised, his face drawn grave.
My heart jolted to see him that way—handsome and alive, immersed in the serious side of his knightly life. Accolon of the past: ready for battle in this mean, frayed tent, unaware of how his day—and his world—would end.
An unkempt man in lordly clothes stood before him, wringing his hands.
“You are our only hope,” he pleaded. “This village of good souls has been besieged by attacks from my brother for months. He will not stop until he lays us all to waste, unless a knight skilled enough answers the duel he has demanded.”
Accolon placed a hand on the stranger’s shoulder. “Have no fear,” he said. “I will answer your brother’s challenge and prove victorious. The people will be saved.”
“God’s blood,” I whispered, closing my eyes. Had a few simple words been all it had taken? How then did Arthur come into it?
I did not have to wait for an answer. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back outside in the meadow, standing on the edge of a crowd. At one end, Accolon sat helmed upon a borrowed horse, lance couched and ready.
At the other end sat his opponent, also wearing a narrow-visored helmet and his sword hilt concealed. It didn’t matter; I would have recognized the imperious set of his shoulders anywhere.
Arthur, carrying Excalibur.
Before I could begin to fathom how this contest came to be, a shout was made, a makeshift flag thrown down. The duellists spurred their mounts and headed for one another.
Two lances shattered on impact, shards of ash spraying into the air. The violence of the joust charge was unlike anything I had ever seen, both knights unseated by the other’s blow. They landed on the ground with bone-crunching impact, their steeds galloping off in shock.
Accolon was first to his feet, but when he turned, I saw the jagged end of Arthur’s lance buried in his side, below the rib cage. He glanced down at the injury, then as if it were nothing, put his armoured hand around the splintered end and tugged it out of his flesh.
I yelped, a physician’s horror at the careless removal, but the sound echoed into nowhere.
Accolon touched his split mail in astonishment; the spear wound was not bleeding, due to the scabbard’s power.
I felt the shiver of his confusion, his astonishment at his luck.
I had only ever told him to keep the scabbard close, not what it could do.
His wonder was cut short by Arthur, charging at him with Excalibur ablaze.
Drawing his sword, Accolon parried at speed, staving off blows and landing hard counterstrikes, drawing blood.
Furious, my brother lost focus, swinging too wildly, with a force that would daunt a lesser fighter, but Accolon knew how to exploit.
An hour passed, then another, and still they fought. Arthur was all but spent, staggering the field and bleeding profusely. Any other knight would have already fallen many times, but my brother had always contained more strength than most men on their best days.
Accolon remained unharmed, unable to shed blood and constantly restored by the scabbard’s healing power. I could feel Arthur’s frustration, his disbelief. He was trying his hardest, a legendary warrior getting nowhere, and he was not used to it.
In a ferocious effort, he took an ungainly swing at Accolon’s helm. My Gaul swung up to meet the flailing sword with two-handed strength, and Excalibur flew out of Arthur’s hands, landing several yards away.
The loss of his sword only enraged my brother more. With just his body left as a weapon, he shrugged his shield up and charged. Caught unawares, Accolon managed to batter him back with his blade, grabbing hold of the shield with his free hand.
“Stop,” he told him. “I have fought many men and you are the most valiant by far, but you cannot endure much longer.”
Arthur growled and tried to pull free. “I can endure for however long is needed. I’m as strong as I was when we began.”
Their voices were muffled beneath their confining helms, unrecognizable to one another, but I could hear them as clear as if they stood beside me.
“Listen to me,” Accolon insisted. “I don’t wish to kill you. You have no sword. Yield now, good Sir Knight, and I will insist the brothers arrange a peace that suits us both. For your honour and mine.”
“I will never yield,” Arthur snapped. “I would rather die a hundred times than act the coward you want me to be.”
With a furious burst of strength, he tore the shield away and lunged forwards again, slamming his entire weight into Accolon’s chest. Accolon just about kept his footing as Arthur immediately made another ferocious charge.
He missed and Accolon landed a swooping strike to the gut, gouging through Arthur’s mail.
Arthur buckled, gasping for breath. Blood ran from him like rainfall, pooling in the polished rings of his mail and spattering across the dented shield.
Even with hindsight his stubbornness looked foolish, the defeat he refused to accept.
Yet I knew that his sheer determination would once again mean victory in a situation that seemed impossible.
Here, in microcosm, was my brother’s reign, his rise to power, the undaunted courage and strength that had made him the most formidable High King that Britain had ever seen.
And as I watched him defy the terrible predicament he was in, I felt only understanding.
How many times had I been caught in a similar trap—my weapons taken, the opposition stacked against me, resistance seeming futile—and forged on regardless?
I had fought just as hard, and in worse ways, to survive.
My brother and I charged towards trouble with our tempers blazing and impossibilities damned; it was everything that had once bonded us, and had driven us apart.
Arthur landed hard on one knee, panting as if he was ready to give in, then roared, “I do not yield!” and wrenched back to his feet. He parried one, two, three blows with his shield, but it was splitting like a tree beneath an axe.
My mind spun with confusion. Under no circumstance could this duel end without Accolon striking the killing blow. Arthur was riven with blood loss, Excalibur lay in the grass too far away; even with his strength of twenty, nothing could help him.
Accolon raised his longsword high, a slow arc of silver carving through the air, about to change everything.
So anchored was I to the battle that I did not at first notice that Accolon’s sword had halted, along with the gesturing crowd, while Arthur still struggled to his feet. Nor did I spot the vision of white and violet, approaching ever faster like a swooping dove.
Ninianne. I had forgotten about her.