Chapter 40 Gwenna
FORTY
GWENNA
I crawl. Awkward, messy, impulsive, unsure where I'm going.
Just trying to find Morgan. Trying to get under the smoke and away.
Because they dropped me, took up their swords, and now—clang—right above me, a blade catching blade.
I look up at…Lanz, I think, Lanz, furiously beating back two of them, crack against crack of steel on steel, so near and loud and painful it hurts.
"Go!” he yells.
I don't wait. I scramble. My palms raw on the stone, my knees aching, trying to see, trying to find Morgan, trying to—
A scream. My heart stops. I look back, I can't help it, and watch as one of the Brothers stabs—who is it? Kai? My heart squeezes—right in the shoulder.
No. I have to go. As soon as I get away, they'll follow, they'll stop fighting, they'll run with me, we'll—
I'm at the edge of the steps. The thing, the pillar of salt that once was my friend, stands immobile, faintly sparkling. And I want to scream.
I spin around, still on the ground, and look back towards the chapel doors, panicked, desperate, praying that one of them, any of them, all of them, will make it out of the smoke.
But I can't see anything. Barely see any human forms, let alone who's who.
Just swinging limbs, flashing steel, smacks, and cries. Cacophony.
But they're not looking at me, are they?
I can leave, I can get away, I can go. sSlowly, tentatively, and then all at once, I shoot up, right at the edge, and I'm ready to jump off the steps, ready to.
..I don't know what. Sprint for Camlann House.
Beg the Lady of the Lake for help. Scream my lungs out as a distraction, even though I can barely breathe in the smoke-tanged air.
But someone seizes me. The Prior. Both wrists in one hand. Squeezing so hard, it feels like the blood has stopped.
"Your champions are failing," he says. And I realize it's the first time he's spoken to me directly. "Your friend is gone. Your confession changed nothing."
"Please," I say, trying one last time. "Please, I'll do it. I'll fix it. I'll be what you need me to be. Just, they don't have to die for this."
“To be what you need to be,” he repeats. "The arrogance. The arrogance of a woman. It is too late, demoiselle.”
Anger, impulse, instinct carries the words from my mind to my mouth before I can stop them.
"Arrogance? You yourself said it was me. Said I was marked."
"There can be no perfection in what you are," he says, "for the woman always desires. She is the double-edged sword, wanting all things at all times. Changing without resolving, mutable, never satisfied. She thinks she can be the holy one, while she acts nothing but the whore. She thinks herself worthy, she thinks herself deserving, she thinks herself inscrutable, and yet her nature is inconstant. She cannot be both! She cannot be all!”
The words, the words he's saying, something about them snags in my memory. The thunder, perfect mind. The poem I'd read, back in Camlann, with Cal, that Emrys had picked out.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the one who has been hated everywhere
and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death…
And then something else, another voice. Morgan's, from weeks ago, back in her room.
Think as much as you want, Gwenna, just make sure they're your thoughts.
"But you," the Prior's grip on me tightens. “You are deceit, you are lies, you are inconsistency and trickery.”
Another voice. Emrys's. Why were you not Gwenna?
“You are boastfulness, you are emptiness, you are—"
"No," I say, quiet but certain.
"No?" If the prior has shown any amusement, ever, it comes through now in his voice.
"No," I say. "I'm not."
"You hear her speak?" he says, gesturing at the Brothers who approach now, unarmed, as if the conflict has subsided. "You hear her declare this? Who does she think she is?"
The riddle, the Lady of the Lake, the question I need to answer and never could. But I realize, I know, the Prior hasn't asked me the way she did.
She just wanted to know. It was a simple question. And I overthought it.
“I am…”
I feel it rising in me. Not a definition, not a title, not a role, or a use, or even a name. Just something simpler. The truth.
"I am…I am…” I close my eyes, searching, grasping, feeling, thinking. “…whoever I think I am.” My eyes fly open. “I am whoever I think I am.”
Silence, deep as oblivion.
A rumble, deep in the earth.
Then the voice.
It comes from everywhere, nowhere, inside my skull and outside my body. Infinite, deep, genderless, resounding, holy. And the whole earth shines forth with a blinding white light.
FEAR NOT: FOR I HAVE REDEEMED THEE
The ground beneath us splits, ruptures apart. Violently flinging me back as a fissure—10, 20, 50 feet deep—pulls into the earth. And the Brothers fall, screaming in surprise. Shattered flagstones raining down.
I HAVE CALLED THEE BY THY NAME; THOU ART MINE
A torrent of fire hails from the sky in a blazing column, reducing more of them to ash.
WHEN THOU PASSEST THROUGH THE WATERS, I WILL BE WITH THEE
To the left, light pours through the smoke.
AND THROUGH THE RIVERS, THEY SHALL NOT OVERFLOW THEE
A murmuring sound builds to a crescendo, crashing, rolling.
A thunderous wave of water shoots from the lake into the sky and pours down in front of the chapel, cracking stones, knocking Brothers off their feet, sweeping them away in a violent flood that misses me, misses all of us, bending away as if sluicing off glass.
WHEN THOU WALKEST THROUGH THE FIRE, THOU SHALT NOT BE BURNED
The water ebbs and dries and then the smoke clears, sucked out of the atmosphere and leaving nothing but air.
And I can see. I can see the chapel. See the massive chasm that's now cracked through the steps.
See the scorch marks of the fire. And see them—Kingston, Kai, Callahan, and Lanz. Standing. Alive.
NEITHER SHALL THE FLAME KINDLE UPON THEE
Kingston doesn't wait. He rushes forward, leaps, strikes at the Prior with his blade. Kai staggers behind him, bleeding, and when the Prior stumbles, he snaps his sword hand up, blocking any retreat with his blade.
FOR I AM THE LORD THY GOD
THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL
THY SAVIOUR
Another rumble, another crack. The steps of the church fully split away from the building as the earth yawns and takes in the rest of the Brothers.
YE ARE MY WITNESSES AND MY SERVANT WHOM I HAVE CHOSEN
Something fizzles on the front of me. I step back, startled, as the yellow crosses burn away, disappear in a tiny burst of sparks, and there is nothing left beneath them, the fabric unharmed.
BEFORE ME THERE WAS NO GOD FORMED
NEITHER SHALL THERE BE AFTER ME
I, EVEN I, AM THE LORD
AND BESIDE ME THERE IS NO SAVIOUR
The Prior, the only one standing. The only thing between me and the four of them. He raises his blade, carefully, but Kingston—
Kingston strikes.
In the back, swift, hard, fatal.
Silence.
BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW
The ground begins to shake and clatter like an earthquake. I stumble and trip as I run for them, frantic, but the earth falls from my feet, and I am plunging, wheeling—until I’m not, for the earth has surged back up to meet me.
And then, violent and rippling outward from where I stand, green. Green everywhere, erupting through stone, spinning with flowers, climbing in vines, bursting from tree branches. Above us, the sky wipes from muddy brown to brilliant blue.
Sunlight. Warmth.
Crack. I look left as the pillar shudders. Plates of salt falling, smashing the ground into nothing until Morgan gasps. Alive. Human.
The chapel tilts, sags, lopsided and pulled in pieces, as climbing tendrils and plush moss and starbursts of flowers clutch at its surface and bloom, basking in the sun.
The breeze is warm. The air smells sweet.
There is light all around us, and they are staring at me, four men all staring at me like I am divine.
I'm laughing and crying, bubbling over, my hands clapped to my mouth in disbelief. At my feet a ring of flowers gently surrounds me. A butterfly drifts by. I laugh harder, hysterical with the force of sheer happiness overwhelming me.
It's over. It's better. We did it. I did it.
I both want to rush for them and stand exactly where I am because I'm crying so hard, I can't get my mind to move my body, and I'm smiling so broadly. I feel like a lunatic, but I can see them. Kingston's solid gaze. Kai's fierce expression. Callahan's broad smile. And Lanz...
Lanz crumples.