Chapter 56
Kat could not see through her tears. The clash of steel rang out across the battlefield as the fighting continued. Halymere appeared peaceful in death. Slowly, she got to her feet. Olwen was trembling, her breathing ragged. Katarin found her hand.
‘I tried,’ Olwen whispered. ‘I really did.’
‘I know,’ Kat breathed. Her chest was tight, throat burning. She pushed the tears away – she would grieve later, when it was all over.
‘We can’t leave him here,’ Arthur murmured, wiping his eyes.
None of them moved. If Kat could find Ordes, he could—
‘Arthur!’ A voice bellowed across the wasteland dripping with blood.
Katarin tensed, pushing the hair out of her eyes and glancing around, but the smoke was thick again, embers floating through the air like the fireflies she used to chase beneath the trees as a child in Cruithea.
For a moment, she saw trees covering Camlann Plain. She blinked, and they were gone.
‘Arthur!’
‘It’s Mordred,’ Kat whispered. ‘Arthur—’
‘Show yourself and face me!’ Mordred bellowed.
Katarin could hear the pain in her cousin’s voice. Olwen’s grip on her hand tightened.
‘He killed Halymere,’ she said in a low voice as Mordred emerged from the swirling smoke. ‘I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. Ran him through and then…’
Every nerve in Katarin’s body slowly unwound.
Every muscle turned to stone. This was what it came down to.
Somehow she had known, from the moment this began, it would end this way.
She closed her eyes and slipped her hand free of Olwen’s, then moved to her brother’s side.
Mordred approached, his confident stride one she remembered so well.
He had walked like that as a child, like he knew his place in the world and where he was going.
But all he had brought the world was death.
‘Let’s end this,’ Mordred snarled. He didn’t look at Katarin – his rage was for Arthur. ‘You and me, cousin.’
Arthur took a deep breath and reached for his sword, but before he could close his fingers around the hilt, Katarin lunged across him and drew it instead. ‘Kat!’
‘Stay out of the way, little brother,’ she ordered.
Arthur made a grab for her, but she danced away from him. ‘The sword was made for my hands – you can’t wield it!’ he cried. Olwen was staring at her in horror.
‘Your hands aren’t so different to mine,’ Kat whispered. The Sword’s battle song barrelled through her mind, filled with rage and pain. Her pain. ‘Halymere is dead because of him!’
Mordred laughed and fury like Katarin had never felt flowed through her. She knew it was the sword, but how much of the anger belonged to the Treasure and how much belonged to her? She had no way of knowing.
‘You can’t mean to fight me, Morgaine?’
Katarin flipped the sword in her hands and shifted into a fighting stance. ‘Oh, I do.’
She glanced at Arthur, caught his stricken face before she shifted her gaze to Olwen.
Instead of showing fear, the Red Sister smiled at her, and in that moment, Katarin knew she could do this.
No matter the outcome, she’d do it – for Halymere.
Olwen closed her fingers around Arthur’s wrist, and they were gone in a swirling cloud of red mist and the scent of blood.
‘No!’ Mordred shouted. He bared his teeth, turning his fury on Katarin. ‘I won’t regret killing you at all.’
‘You’re just one more man, Mordred. One more power-hungry stain on this world. A blight. A poison. Look around you.’ She gestured at the barren, bloody earth that surrounded them. ‘Do you see any curses broken yet, cousin? Is there a crown on your head?’
Katarin tested the weight of the sword. Heavier than a cutlass, but strangely light.
She could do this.
‘You think killing me will achieve anything?’ Mordred demanded.
‘It’ll make me feel damn good.’
Mordred laughed again. ‘And then what? You’ll be left with a weakling for a king?’
Katarin took a deep breath. The moment she’d touched the sword, its power buffered against her mind. She truly understood what Arthur had meant about it changing him. She could feel its desire, its thirst for blood and victory.
Mordred’s dark gaze was pinned to her face, and the hatred and desperation there was almost enough to make her lower her weapon, to try and reason with him. But it was too late for that.
He’d made his choice. Mordred would see this through, to whatever end.
Wind rippled across the plain, sharp and hot. Kat licked dry lips and adjusted her grip on the Sword. She could no longer feel its weight – it was like she was holding air, like the sword was an extension of her arm. She nodded.
Mordred lifted his weapon, twisting it expertly in his hand, the way he used to twirl a stick at her when they were children, pretending to be warriors as they ran beneath the trees. ‘This is where we end up, Morgaine.’
‘It seems like it,’ she said.
‘I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s a coward, but you aren’t. You always stood up to me, even when we were small.’ Mordred hesitated, then took a step towards her, his sword poised to strike. ‘Our final stand. Here, on this broken earth.’
‘Mordred,’ Kat began, but her cousin swung his sword, swift as a snake. Instinct took over, fuelled by the magic of the godly Treasure in her hands and her own will – I don’t want to die. Katarin countered, stepping away, shifting quickly into a defensive position.
The Sword whispered to her. She ignored it, focused wholly on Mordred.
The next strike was hard enough to rattle her bones, a reminder of her cousin’s strength and will.
The fire that burnt in his brown eyes was so familiar that, for a moment, she saw the towering trees of Cruithea and heard the laughter of two children.
There would be no more words between them.
She knew what she had to do – give herself over to the sword.
He’d kill her if she didn’t. She couldn’t match him.
Any love her cousin once had for her was gone.
He was gone. There was nothing of the boy inside the angry, broken man before her.
He was nothing but another tool for the Gods.
She let the Sword of the White Dragon inside her, wondering if this would be the last thing she ever did. The Sword wove its song of blood and battle through her blood. Its melody sank into the very marrow of her.
Mordred clenched his teeth and struck again.
For a moment, Katarin saw a woman with antlers walking towards them.
She shook her head, focusing on Mordred, parrying his strike, her sword singing away.
Her arms were suddenly not her own. Her body was not her own.
The Sword took over completely, and Katarin moved with it, drawn into a deadly dance she had no control over.
She fought it, tried to pull herself back, but the sword had her in its grip.
She saw the surprise on Mordred’s face before she struck again, and again, so quickly he could not keep up.
With a dreadful pained cry, Katarin thrust the Sword of the White Dragon through his chest.
His eyes widened.
Katarin gasped and pulled the sword free. She stared at her cousin and he at her.
A strange, peaceful smile, and he dropped to his knees. Katarin drove the Sword into the ground as Mordred sat there, shoulders slumped, blood running freely from his chest. She hurried over, crouching before him, pressing her hands over the terrible wound she had made.
‘Put pressure on it,’ she told him.
He shook his head, batting her hands away. ‘Stop. Morgaine, stop.’
‘Just let me—’
He caught her wrists. ‘Stop.’
Katarin met his eyes. ‘Mordred…’
‘I’m tired. I’m so tired,’ he whispered. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. ‘Lamorna…’
‘We’ll find her,’ Katarin promised.
Mordred closed his eyes, then toppled backwards. His chest rose feebly, each breath pained and choked. She stayed where she was, and when his chest fell for the last time, so did her tears.
‘Goodbye, Mordred,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
It was oddly silent on the battlefield, the air thick, choked with smoke and death. It lay like a blanket around Katarin’s shoulders, and she wanted nothing more than to throw it off, bury it deep within the earth. She glanced down at her hands, slicked red with Mordred’s blood.
With the blood of her family.
Katarin gasped. The curse! She swallowed, and the words seemed to come from inside her, like they did not belong to her, but to some magic she had no control over.
‘In the name of the Once and Future King, familial blood has been spilled on Camlann Plain.’ She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she expected to see…
something, but the earth remained as dead and lifeless as before.
‘It didn’t work,’ she whispered. ‘I failed.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
A woman stood over her, shrouded in crimson mist. She was wearing a red robe that billowed around her like smoke. Her dark hair was braided, snaking over her shoulder until it almost touched the ground, and her skin was like rich honey. A glyph was etched between her brows – the symbol for death.
‘Ereshki,’ Katarin breathed.
The goddess inclined her head. ‘Yes.’
‘Why are you here? If you’re truly on our side, why didn’t it work? This place is still cursed!’ Kat cried. Her eyes fell on Mordred’s body. ‘I killed him for nothing?’
The Old One glanced at Mordred sadly. ‘This was always his ending.’
‘You used him.’
‘He made his choices. And he would not heed the warnings.’
Katarin shook her head, anger flowing through her. ‘So now what? This was meant to be Arthur’s place – the place where it would all begin, but it’s still cursed.’
‘Do you know how the curse came to be?’ Ereshki asked. ‘A man who lost who he was and couldn’t find himself again. A man who let himself be what he was not. A king, brother to a queen.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Katarin whispered.
In the blink of an eye, Ereshki became Inanna, her ash-coloured hair bound in Cruithean-style braids, the glyph for life between her eyes glowing. Antlers rose from the nest of her hair, vines wound around them. Leaves tumbled around her.
Kat reeled, landing on her backside with a thump. She scrambled through the dust and blood. ‘What…’
‘We are two faces, two voices, two histories, and two futures,’ Inanna said. ‘We are Two in One. To break this curse – to finish what you have begun here – two must become one, like Eseld and Enyon once were.’
Katarin shook her head. ‘I…’
Inanna drifted closer. Kat could not move. The Goddess’s fingers curled around Katarin’s cheek tenderly. They were warm, blazing with heat and light and pulsing with life, with the heartbeat of a forest. ‘Two faces, two lives. But born from one,’ she said.
Her face shimmered, and it was Ereshki who crouched before Katarin.
‘Two must become one,’ the Goddess whispered. Then, ‘Who are you?’
‘Me?’ Kat laughed bitterly. ‘I’m no one. A girl saved by a goddess just so she could use me as a tool.’
‘Only she didn’t, did she?’ Ereshki tilted Katarin’s head back so she could stare into her eyes. ‘So, who are you? A scared little girl on a beach with the ocean lapping at her toes, or a ruthless, fearsome pirate captain who has spent her life running?’
‘From what?’ Kat challenged.
‘Herself.’
Ereshki vanished as suddenly as she had appeared. Katarin did not move, her thoughts tumbling over one another. Her eyes fell on Mordred’s body, on the broken earth beneath where he lay.
‘Two must become one…’ Kat murmured. Mordred wasn’t her brother… yet, she had once loved him like one.
Wind danced across the barrenness of Camlann, taunting and pulling at Katarin’s hair.
She made her way back to Mordred, kneeling beside him.
He looked strangely at peace, like Halymere had.
With a sad smile, she reached out and smoothed the blood-soaked hair back from her cousin’s forehead.
The glyph between his eyes was white against the dark honey of his skin.
They had always been different, destined for different things, although there was no way Katarin could have ever predicted that this was where they would end up.
She rested her hand on Mordred’s chest, closing her eyes. The wind died and Camlann Plain was bathed in eerie silence. Time was suspended around them. She took a deep breath, made herself look at her cousin’s face.
‘My name is Morgaine Tintagel, and I reclaim who I am. In the name of the Once and Future King, I have spilled the blood of my family on this cursed earth.’ Katarin’s voice was not much more than a whisper, hoarse and choked with grief.
Nothing happened. Camlann Plain remained dead.
Kat refused to cry. She took another steady breath, and this time she raised her voice to the sky and placed her bloodied palms on the dirt. ‘My name is Morgaine Tintagel and I reclaim who I am. In the name of the Once and Future King, I have spilled the blood of my family on this cursed earth.’
A forest breeze brushed Katarin’s cheek as the ground around her exploded into life. Grass curled around her fingers and a carpet of brilliant green spread from beneath Mordred’s body, racing across the dead earth until there was nothing but an emerald ocean surrounding them.
Katarin put her face on her cousin’s chest and sobbed.