Chapter 7
Katarin put her feet up on her desk and sighed.
What her brother didn’t know was that when he was not below deck with Ulrian, she was.
She never spoke to him – just watched him, wondering what was going on in his head, and if he truly was mad or if it was a ploy, a way to play on his son’s sympathies.
But then she remembered what that young man, Denny, had told them.
She’d learnt a lesson since they left Kernou.
The worst of someone wasn’t all they were.
Arthur’s care for Ulrian had shown her that.
The man had done terrible things – to her, to Arthur, to countless others – yet the gentle way her brother tended to Ulrian’s needs told her that love and family were a lot more complicated than she had ever realised.
Arthur could have left his father behind to rot in the ruins of the world he had tried to create, but in bringing Ulrian with them, Arthur had shown her, without words, without intent, that care and compassion could still be given to those who had wronged you.
Their mother had been like that. Igraine had not let any personal feelings get in the way of her role as a healer. It didn’t matter if the patient had wronged her or someone she cared about – in her eyes, they were all deserving of her help.
A soft knock on the door pulled Katarin from her thoughts. ‘Come in,’ she called.
Arthur entered, the Sword of the White Dragon strapped to his hip.
He carried the Treasure everywhere now, Katarin had noticed, but she didn’t say anything about it.
She’d seen him wield the weapon in Malist. What had struck her was not the swordsman skill erupting from a man who had only just found his feet and learnt his grip, but the expression on Arthur’s face.
The determination, the focus, the strength in his eyes as he swung that sword.
‘How is he?’ she asked.
If Arthur was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it. He sat with a sigh. ‘I don’t know what to do for him.’
‘What you are doing is enough.’ Her tone was sharp, but she didn’t apologise and Arthur didn’t mention it.
They hadn’t spoken about his choice to bring his father and his ruined mind on board with them.
Katarin wanted to talk about it, but whenever she tried, the words would turn to ash in her mouth.
She wanted to tell her brother he had done the right thing.
Arthur’s frown was deep, and Kat knew it was not his father bothering him.
‘Out with it,’ she demanded.
‘We’re thinking of closing off the realms.’
Katarin blinked. ‘As in, the Old Ones’ realms?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘With the Grail, when we find it and work out how to use it,’ Arthur explained.
‘Then why are you frowning about it?’
‘I don’t know if it will work,’ he said. ‘Or what the consequences of something like that will be. They made this world. Will removing them from it change it?’
‘Of course it will,’ Katarin said. ‘But isn’t that the point?’
‘You’re okay with this idea? You’d never see Avalon again,’ Arthur pointed out.
‘Avalon isn’t my home. I don’t think it ever truly was.’ She rubbed her temples. ‘What does the god of magic have to say about it?’
‘If you mean Ordes, it was his idea,’ Arthur said, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. ‘And don’t call him that to his face – he didn’t want any of this.’
‘I know,’ Katarin mumbled. ‘None of us did.’
‘He was angry with his mother when he suggested it, but the more we think about it, the more it makes sense. If we are to truly reshape the world, start again, then we need to do this. Only… we don’t know how.
It will be up to Ordes to work it out,’ Arthur explained.
‘I don’t have any magic and Jenyfer’s magic isn’t for reshaping worlds.
Well, we don’t think so anyway. There are so many unknowns, and that is what makes it hard.
It means we’re taking an enormous risk.’
Katarin chewed her lip, aware her brother was watching her closely. ‘You should do it, if you can. If Ordes can truly do this with his fancy new self, then do it. And yes, it might be a risk, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying. If no one took risks, nothing would ever change, Arthur.’
Silence fell between them, soft and thoughtful, until Arthur frowned again.
‘Niniane was like a mother to you,’ he said.
‘No,’ Katarin said. ‘She wasn’t. I used to believe she was and she did care for me, but not in the way our mother did. Niniane doesn’t have the capacity to love, in the human sense anyway. I can see that now and I only wish I’d seen it sooner.’
Arthur looked at his hands, resting in his lap. ‘I wish I’d known our mother. I often wonder if I’m like her in any way.’
‘You remind me of Ulrian,’ Katarin replied, then smiled at Arthur’s horrified expression.
‘The good parts of him, Arthur. He was not always a bad man. You have his strength, his tenacity and determination. But you’re like our mother as well, even having never known her.
She was gentle, kind, and compassionate.
She saw the good in people – you do that much better than me.
You got the best of her and the best of him. ’
‘And you? Your father?’ Arthur asked.
‘I never knew him. He was a warrior and he died when I was a baby,’ she said. ‘I saw him in my dreams once – or at least, I think it was him. He smiled at me and told me to be strong, and that was it. I’ve been trying to be strong ever since. I don’t know any other way to be.’
Later, when Arthur left, Katrin saw a lightness to his step that wasn’t there when he’d come to her.
She stretched until her joints popped but did not get up and seek her bed.
She’d slept last night in her chair, feet on the windowsill and the ocean spread out before her.
Her sleep was plagued with branches and roots, with the smell of the earth after rain and the taste of her mother’s cooking.
She made the decision that she would no longer live in the past. It wasn’t the same as avoiding it though – it was a conscious choice to only look towards what was to come.
Katarin was certain Arthur would make the right choices as well.
He already knew what he was going to do – he needed to be certain of it.
Katarin had told her brother the truth. She had been fighting for as long as she could remember.
At first, in Kernou, it was little fights, like wanting to wear her normal clothes or style her hair in the way she was used to.
It was wanting to use her magic and her mother telling her in a soft voice that it was different now.
It was not liking the house when she was used to a kibitka.
Everything had been different and strange, and it led to small rebellions, like letting a pisky into the house in the middle of the night and laughing as the faery destroyed the kitchen, or letting the fire go out and relighting it with magic and delighting in the look on Ulrian’s face.
Then, when Igraine fell sick, Katarin decided she needed to fight harder for the both of them.
She had planted herself in front of Ulrian and demanded he take her mother back to Cruithea, or she would die.
It was then that Katarin, Morgaine, had made a mistake and spoken the words that sealed her own fate.
She told Ulrian she had seen her mother’s death. She told him about dreamwalking, desperate that he understand. Two days later, after he’d locked himself away at prayer and ignored her hammering on the door with her tiny fists, she was tied to the stake and left for the ocean.
Ulrian Tregarthen robbed Katarin and her mother of a future.
After her rescue by Niniane, Katarin had been given the chance to carve a new future for herself.
Niniane hadn’t made her immortal, like a demi-god, and part of her was glad the Goddess of Magic had not given her that gift.
She wasn’t meant to live forever – no one was, not even gods.
Arthur’s choice to close the realms made perfect sense.
The idea would have horrified her once, but now it was nothing more than the Old Ones deserved.
Their time was over.