Chapter 37
The Excalibur dropped anchor near the rocky shoals north of The Vale.
Thanks to Marsh, they had no choice but to prepare to leave a skeleton crew behind when they went ashore.
Katarin was hiding in her cabin. Everything that had happened since the morning Jenyfer and Ordes had run off had left her shaken.
There was no other word for it. It was an unfamiliar feeling, one that Kat would never acknowledge out loud, not even to Arthur, or even Ordes, who was one of the few people she let through the door.
‘Why did you come back?’ she asked him bluntly as they shared a drink. They would be leaving in the morning. The plan was to trek to the Redcana Forest on the first day, camp the night on the edge of the trees, before starting the journey north towards Dinas Emrys. And Mordred.
Kat hid her shiver with a mouthful of rum. ‘Well?’
‘Would you rather we didn’t?’ Ordes asked.
She shrugged. ‘We would have handled it.’
‘I believe you,’ Ordes said.
Katarin set her glass down and sighed, staring at the rim of her glass until her eyes blurred. ‘No, we wouldn’t have. Marsh would have shot his way through everyone until there was none of us left.’ She looked up, meeting Ordes’ eyes. ‘Where were you?’
‘Kernou, of all places,’ he said quietly, then told her what Jenyfer had done. Katarin said nothing but felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. ‘And then, Lyonesse.’
‘You went back there?’
‘We thought that would be the last place anyone would think to look for us,’ Ordes said. ‘And we were right, for a while. It was the wraith who found us.’
‘The helmsman of the Night Boat? Ankou’s servant?’ Katarin asked in surprise.
Ordes nodded. ‘Ophine has some connection to Jenyfer. How they knew we were there though… I’m finding it difficult to believe Ankou would have sent someone to bring us back. The God of the Otherworld made it very clear he wasn’t getting involved, except to gift us an army.’
‘That may or may not show up,’ Katarin said. ‘I’ve got a feeling that, Otherworldly army or not, it mightn’t be enough, Ordes.’
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘Are you scared?’ she asked him quietly.
‘Terrified. You?’
‘Yes,’ Katarin said. There was no one else in the world she would admit that to.
‘I think I’m more scared for Arthur than anyone else.
Not the idea of a battle itself, but what comes after.
’ She still didn’t know why they left. Arthur had asked her to trust him, so she had.
Now she supposed she was trusting that Ordes had a good reason.
She almost laughed. Just over a year ago, she didn’t trust half of what came out of his mouth. He was a cocky, arrogant pirate.
‘You’ve changed,’ she told him.
‘So have you,’ he said. ‘Or maybe this is who we always were – we needed a push to be our true selves.’
Kat snorted.
Ordes left, telling her to get some sleep, but Katarin wasn’t tired.
She turned her seat around to face the windows behind her desk, opening them wide so she could watch the moonlight dance off the ocean, each tiny wave sparkling with winking silver.
A sea of stars was outside her window, holding her ship aloft.
Katarin swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Would she ever see this sight again?
She put her feet up on the window ledge, crossed them at the ankles and relaxed back into her chair.
Now she was alone, the ache that had been living in her chest grew stronger.
It was easier not to think about a certain dark-haired, prickly Red Sister if she could keep busy.
It was only when she was alone that Olwen intruded on her thoughts.
But she didn’t want to think about Olwen, not yet.
Eyelids heavy, Kat felt herself slipping. The ocean stroked the hull of the ship, a gentle, soothing rhythm, and before she knew it, the slosh of the water became the wind through the leaves outside a kibitka.
Over the shoulder of a slender woman, Kat spied a man.
He was dark-haired, his eyes closed, a sheen of sweat on his pale skin.
She’d never seen anybody with skin like hers.
He was close to death, having eaten the fungi they all knew not to.
He both fascinated and repulsed her with the ragged breaths that tore from his lungs and the way he’d emptied his stomach into a bucket before falling into a sleep he was yet to wake from.
‘Does it take a long time to die?’
Katarin was startled to hear the voice of a child – her voice as it used to sound. She was walking in the past, when she was still Morgaine Tintagel, Chosen of Inanna. Had that happened yet?
‘Hush, Morgaine,’ the woman said.
The dream began to fracture around the edges as Kat tried to remember when she had stumbled into exactly.
‘No,’ she whispered as the woman began to turn to her, but Katarin was thrown sideways, and then she was beneath the trees, watching her younger self poke violently at a bush with a stick. Fury lived in every line of her small body.
‘Morgaine, stop.’
Her mother’s voice. Katarin turned around while her younger self did not. Igraine, red hair bound back from her face, and Ulrian Tregarthen sat not far from them. Their bodies were close together. There was colour in his cheeks now and his eyes were bright – healthy.
Her younger self continued to attack the bush. ‘Why must we?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t want to.’
This was it, Kat realised, the thing she had been avoiding for all these years, the moment when everything changed and her life was ripped apart. This was the moment Ulrian Tregarthen took them both from Cruithea. Kat’s eyes swept over the travel packs sitting near her mother.
Igraine and Ulrian exchanged a look. She nodded and Ulrian climbed to his feet, running his hand over his face hesitantly in much the same way Arthur did.
Kat held her breath as he approached the child she once was.
He was dressed in Cruithean clothes, in the colours of the forest around them.
His hair was long enough to be tied at the base of his skull.
Morgaine shot him a glare and Kat grinned. She’d forgotten how she once was – much like she still was. Quick-tempered and fierce.
But scared. Morgaine was scared. The girl’s eyes shifted to where Katarin stood, and Kat was pulled inside the body of her younger self. Ulrian took the stick from her, his large hand gentle on her back.
‘Morgaine,’ he began.
‘I don’t want to leave.’
He dropped to one knee, his face level with hers.
His eyes were kind. She turned away, wishing he’d died instead, because then this wouldn’t be happening.
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘But I promise you will like Kernou. There is a beautiful beach and when you wake up in the morning you will be able to hear the ocean.’
‘I don’t like the ocean,’ Morgaine mumbled.
‘You will,’ Ulrian promised. ‘You can collect shells. I know you like collecting things.’
‘Feathers,’ Morgaine said. ‘I like feathers not shells.’
‘We have birds in Kernou,’ he said. ‘Elegant white sea birds.’
‘White birds?’ She narrowed her eyes suspiciously – all the birds in Cruithea were brown like the trees or black as the night. Even the owls who occasionally gifted her a speckled feather were brown.
He nodded. ‘White birds.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’ He held out his hand. Slowly, she placed her small hand in his and the dream shifted.
Katarin was in a dark room with her younger self, older than before, but not by much, and her mother, heavily pregnant.
‘No,’ she muttered. ‘Not this.’
She watched the child, glorious red hair hidden beneath a white linen cap, try to help Igraine to sit. A bowl of water and a cloth lay nearby. The water was clear – no herbs floated there.
Of course, Kat thought bitterly. Herbal lore was a heathen practice and therefore heresy in the eyes of her new father’s God.
‘I’ll get help,’ Morgaine declared and rushed past Katarin, flinging open the door.
No, Kat wanted to shout. He won’t listen to you!
But Morgaine had trusted Ulrian with her mother’s life, and her own.
Swallowing, Kat turned to her mother. She sucked in a stunned breath – Igraine was looking right at her. She held out her hand. Katarin, cheeks wet with tears she hadn’t realised she was crying, hurried to her mother’s side, taking her hand.
‘Protect him,’ Igraine whispered.
Kat frowned. Surely she didn’t mean…
‘The babe,’ her mother breathed. ‘Protect your brother. He will need you.’
‘I tried,’ Kat whispered. ‘I am trying.’
‘Promise me, Morgaine.’
‘I promise,’ Kat sobbed.
‘There cannot be darkness without light, and the light that will shine will be his light, as bright and as glorious as he is,’ Igraine murmured. Katarin had heard a variation of those words before, spoken in a magical forest by a prophet who pulled the strings of fate.
The world began to peel away like the skin of a fruit.
‘No,’ Kat said, clinging tight to her mother, but she was torn away, flung through time and space, coming to land briefly in a forest. There was something on her head.
She reached for it, felt the kiss of leaves on her fingers, before she was ripped away again.
She opened her eyes with a gasp, the sounds of the ocean in her ears once more and a ship shifting gently beneath her.
It took them a week to travel through the Redcana Forest. A week of sleeping on the ground beneath the trees. The air was still warm and sultry in the south at night, so Katarin had suggested they forget the tents Ordes had gone to Arcdon for and enjoy the air.
Conversation was brief. She’d run out of words, didn’t have words anymore, but she stuck close to her brother, whose hand constantly drifted to that sword at his hip.
Protect him.