Page 42 of The Faerie Morgana
Slowly, one finger at a time, she lifted her hand from Morgause’s face. “Be quiet,” she murmured.
Morgause drew a tremulous breath and nodded. Her eyes were so wide Morgana thought the lids must hurt. Morgause pressed both her hands over her mouth, stopping herself from crying out. Or begging.
“Here is what you will do, madam,” Morgana said. “You will call a servant to deal with this body. Tell them one of the king’s men defended you. You can describe me if you like. It won’t matter.”
With her hands still covering her mouth, Morgause gave a tiny whimper and nodded again.
“Then you will attend the coronation with your son Mordred. You will both kneel to the new king and swear your fealty. You will see to it that the ceremony is both solemn and peaceful. You will not interfere in any way, or I will come back for you. Do you understand?”
Gradually, Morgause lowered her trembling hands. They were thin and bony and dark, like the claws of a fox. Indeed, her face had the deceitful look of one, too. She whispered, “I do.”
“And,” Morgana added, letting her voice drop as low as it would go, “if you ever again make an attempt on Arthur’s life, yours will end. This is not a threat. It is a promise.”
“Who are you?” Morgause spoke under her breath. “How did you know—”
“I will always know, Morgause. Believe that.”
The queen’s thin cheeks flared pink, then turned sallow again. She let her hands drop by her sides, and she dropped her head in acquiescence. She said in a voice that shook, “Shall I call someone now?”
“I think you should, while your assassin’s body is still warm.”
“Where will you be?”
“Gone.”
17
As Morgause tiptoed gingerly through the pool of blood around the assassin’s body on her way to call for a servant, Morgana slipped through the private door into the empty bedchamber. There she divested herself of her men’s clothes and tossed the whole pile of them out the open window. The tunic and trousers caught on the branches of a tree, where they hung like empty, defeated ghosts. Aware of the need to hurry, she began to change her form.
It was harder this time. She was weary from having held a man’s shape for so many hours, and from having dealt with Morgause and her assassin. She had to summon every last shred of her energy for the transformation. What had come with ease before was now labor. Her toes became claws, but they wavered, becoming toes, then claws, then toes that were half-claw and half-not. Her shoulders and spine shrank, but unevenly, and the tail she expected to sprout grew only halfway and then stopped. She struggled, her head spinning with the effort, her stomach churning. It was hard to breathe, as if her lungs couldn’t work properly in the uncertain frame of her ribs.
She was in this state, half human, half something else, when she heard the clatter of feet on the stair, rushing to the queen’s aid. Morgana pressed her hands to her brow and clenched her belly, forcing herself.
Moments later, a coterie of manservants, led by a guard with his sword at the ready, burst into the bedchamber. Morgause was behind them, pointing. “There! My bedchamber! I saw him go in.” One of the men peered into the room, then turned to Morgause with a shrug. She cried, “He was there!”
The men crowded through the doorway and milled about the chamber, looking behind a curtain, crouching to look beneath the bed, one peeking through the narrow door into the dressing room. Finally, the guard sheathed his sword and turned to Morgause.
“My lady, I don’t see anyone. He couldn’t have got past us. Nor could he have jumped from this window, it’s too high. He’s just not— Sorry, my lady, but there’s nothing in your bedchamber but that cat.”
“Cat?” Morgause shrilled. “I don’t keep a cat!”
“You don’t know it? Pretty black one, with the yellow eyes? It must have climbed in through the window.”
Morgana, sleek and black and nimble on four neat paws, leaped up onto the window ledge and sprang into the branches of the tree below. She ignored the faces that peered out the window after her as she scrambled down the tree trunk and off across the keep. She dodged the feet of the people gathering for the ceremony, dashing beneath the half-built dais, where the carpenters shouted at each other as they hefted timbers. Shedarted past the stables, hissing once at a barking dog, aiming for the main gate.
She paused there to glance over her glossy black shoulder, the tip of her shining tail switching furiously. She looked up, past the excited throng, past the scarlet pennants already hung from the castle windows, signifying that the king—the new king—was in residence.
She was gratified to catch a glimpse of him. He stood in the window, beaming down at his people as they prepared for him to take his throne. His fair hair glowed in the early-morning sun as if he already wore the gilded crown. His blue eyes shone with pleasure, and his clean-shaven chin lifted with pride.
There was also something diffident in his stance, something that told of his awareness of the mantle of responsibility about to fall on his youthful shoulders. Morgana was glad of that, and glad also to see that over the rich tunic he wore, her charm hung from his neck.
Her charms never failed. Even Uther’s had done precisely what she had intended. Whatever the Blackbird’s complaint about the true king ascending to his throne, her charm would keep him safe. Her magic was strong. Had it not warned her of Morgause’s treachery?
She could make her way back to the Isle of Apples, confident that her chief purpose in life had been fulfilled.
Exhausted, she turned away to slink out of the keep, her four legs trembling with fatigue, her tail dragging the ground behind her. She feared she wouldn’t be able to hold her shape much longer. She padded down the slope through the woods, moving asswiftly as she was able. She had told Braithe to meet her on the dock at the Isle, but she no longer had the ability to go so far.
At the dock, she crouched beneath a hawthorn bush, her chin on her paws, her eyes closing with fatigue. She couldn’t do it. She had meant to resume her own shape and row herself back to the Isle, but now that the moment had come, she had not the strength.
