Chapter 41
They packed up camp in the hours before dawn, when the sky was brushed with peachy hues that bled to blue.
As the tents came down, Jenyfer couldn’t help but feel this was it – the moment where everything was about to change.
According to Gaheris, they were only a few days’ walk from the edge of Camlann Plain and beyond it, Dinas Emrys.
The last conversation she’d had with Lamorna played on Jenyfer’s mind.
Had Lamorna been able to convince Mordred to stop this before it began?
If there was ever a time for the unrelenting force of her sister’s will, it was now, but something told Jenyfer it wouldn’t matter what Lamorna said. Mordred had made his choice.
Just as they had.
Arthur didn’t make any speeches. He simply gave those who were gathered with them in the pre-dawn dark the opportunity to turn back. No one did, and now more people than Jenyfer had ever seen in her life began the final part of their trek north.
There was no cover for them to camp beneath.
Nothing but the open sky and the barren waste stretching before them.
Dust coated their boots, stirred to life by hundreds of feet trekking steadily northwards, and caught in Jenyfer’s hair and the back of her throat.
She’d wrapped a spare shirt around the lower half of her face in an attempt to keep it out, but somehow gritty particles found their way into her mouth.
She was a creature of water, and this was the first time she had ever been so far from the ocean.
Irritation was embedded in her skin. Tension lived in her spine.
Her legs ached from waking and her scales itched.
The sun sucked the moisture from her body like a greedy beast.
The Cruitheans looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
There wasn’t a tree or blade of grass anywhere.
If the Warriors of the Light were feeling the heat and horrible dry, it didn’t show on their faces.
The women had not removed their armour – they marched in perfect formation, heads held high, eyes fixed ahead, while everyone human, or near enough, dragged their feet.
When Arthur finally called them to a halt, Jenyfer let out a sigh of utter relief.
Within the hour, hundreds of tents had been erected and the smell of food cooking floated through the air.
An army marches on its stomach apparently.
Someone had said that a few days back, but Jenyfer couldn’t recall who it had been.
Even though she was exhausted and her bones hurt, Jenyfer could not relax.
Her skin was crawling. She sat on the bedroll in her tent while Ordes found them something to eat – she’d noticed he wasn’t using as much magic recently, nor had his wings been on display.
He’d walked with her day after day, his fingers woven around hers.
He’d told her once that magic wasn’t an unending well, that it could dry up.
She knew he was conserving it, behaving like he used to when he believed he was a normal Magic Wielder and not the son of an Old One.
They hadn’t talked about the prophecy since Kernou, about those horrible words and what they meant. In Lyonesse, it had been easy to pretend it hadn’t happened. Part of Jenyfer wished they’d remained ignorant, but even that wouldn’t change the devastating truth.
If they used the Grail, Ordes could die.
Since returning to The Excalibur and seeing what Marsh had unleashed on their friends, their family, Jenyfer had remained angry. It was easier to let fury churn through her blood than to give in to the despair she knew lurked beneath it.
The Stone around her neck agreed. It hadn’t stopped singing to her, a melody that promised death and destruction buzzing constantly in the back of her brain.
Her dreams were filled with water and blood, dust and decay.
They were a soundscape of screams and the rattling of bones, the clang of sword on sword.
It should have been a cacophony, but to Jenyfer, to the Stone, it was a beautiful harmony.
And it was powerful. That music was threaded through her, fuelling the anger, keeping the fear at bay and holding back the terrible loss that she knew she’d eventually have to face.
Her blood was on fire. The desire to hurt something, to be cruel and callous, sat on her tongue and Jenyfer had to bite back sharp words constantly.
She was angry at Arthur’s hesitance, at Katarin’s confidence, at Halymere’s patience.
She was angry with Merlin, even knowing he was a tool like they were.
She was angry at her sister for getting caught up in Mordred’s mess.
Angry at Olwen for giving them the Word, angry at her mother for dying, her father for being a selfish arse who had finally started making sense.
And she was angry at herself for everything.
None of them deserved her anger, the grief disguised as bitterness.
They didn’t deserve her sharp tone or unfair thoughts.
Jenyfer knew the Stone around her neck was driving her emotions.
It was overwhelming to have the Treasure singing to her, to have her song humming away, to have all this music in her head all the time.
The Stone, when it spoke to her, sounded like her father – sometimes it was encouraging, Melodias’ smooth voice in her head, and sometimes it was scathing, mocking, dripping with sarcasm while it reminded her of everything she’d done wrong and every wrong done to her.
She loathed the Treasure but was unable to take it off.
Whenever her hand reached for it, intent on ripping it away, it would sing her the sweetest song, like a lullaby.
It was capricious and volatile, like the ocean, like her father, and it was a connection to him that she didn’t want but could not separate herself from.
Jenyfer knew the sword was affecting Arthur. She could see it on his face, the tightness, the worry, the hint of darkness – it was more than war and battles to come. More than Modred and the hurt that Jalen had inflicted. The sword was a weapon of war, and it wanted violence and blood.
Marsh had learnt that. Who else would?
Ordes, in contrast, was himself – calm and controlled.
If his mother’s Treasure was impacting him in any way, Jenyfer was not aware of it.
She barely saw it, and he never spoke of it.
She was worried that, one day, the Bow of Mists might decide to take what it wanted, like its former mistress.
Ordes was not selfish or cruel like his mother.
He was not enigmatic and mercurial like his father. He was simply… him.
Niniane would come for him and her Treasure, Jenyfer was certain of it. When she did, goddess or not, she wouldn’t get the chance to lay a finger of magic on him. Not if Jenyfer could help it. She didn’t know how she’d stop it, or if it was even possible, but she’d find a way.
By the time Ordes returned with food, Jenyfer had lost her appetite. ‘I need to be somewhere else,’ she muttered. ‘Away from this camp and all of these people.’
Ordes set their soup down. ‘Alright. What do you suggest?’
‘The mountains,’ Jenyfer replied, a sudden thought cutting through the music in her head.
‘I’ve never seen them up close. Whenever I went to the stone circle in Kernou, I would always stop and stare at them.
How did they get there? Who made them? Lamorna would have told me the One God did.
’ She shook her head; her thoughts began to slide to her sister, but she pulled them back to the present. ‘I’d like to see them.’
‘The mountains it is then,’ Ordes said. ‘I’d like that as well – plus, I’d like a moment alone with you. I feel like we haven’t had that for a long time, that we haven’t been able to stop and just be…’
He held out his arms. ‘Come here. I want to try something.’
Jenyfer stood, curious, and let him close his arms around her.
‘Do you trust me?’ he whispered.
‘Always.’
Magic rippled over her skin followed by a strange sort of pressure that felt like she was being squeezed tight. Jenyfer closed her eyes, her face screwing up. The world dissolved around them, and when she opened her eyes, she was still in Ordes’ arms. Looming above them were the Nemhain Mountains.
She pulled back to look at him in surprise.
He shrugged. ‘Olwen can do it with her magic – that’s how she got Arthur to The Teeth, so I figured—’
Jenyfer kissed him. ‘You’re incredible, you know that?’
‘You’re biased,’ he replied, smiling.
She laughed. Then, ‘Ordes, what are we—’
His eyes snapped to the growing dark around them, and before Jenyfer could ask what was wrong, he’d pulled her behind him. Fear skidded the length of her spine as Ordes flung out his hand, then yanked it back. A body came hurtling from the shadows to land on the ground in a heap.
Jenyfer’s mouth went dry as, like a puppet on a string, the figure’s head jerked up. ‘Bryn?’ she choked out.
‘It’s not Bryn, not really.’ Ordes’ voice was sharper than she’d ever heard it.
Bryn made a sound deep in his throat – an animalistic growl, followed by a guttural moan, like he was in pain. Something was terribly wrong.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ she whispered.
Bryn groaned and turned bloodshot eyes on Ordes, his whole body twitching and trembling.
He was still on his knees, unable to stand with Ordes’ magic pinning him to the ground.
‘You can see it, can’t you? What lives beneath my skin?
’ His voice was lower and rougher than Jenyfer remembered, and now that she looked at him properly, she realised how dreadful his appearance truly was.
His skin was sallow, beard thick, growing down his neck.
His cheeks were sunken. He’d lost weight, but his shoulders were broader, and he seemed oddly taller.
Lamorna had told them the truth. Jenyfer bit her lip.