Page 41 of The Faerie Morgana
Morgana’s resolve hardened as she watched them. Morgause would not care that her intention would break the hearts, not only of this gathering of the most simple of citizens, but of the entirety of Camulod, indeed of Lloegyr itself. The craving for power drove Morgause as it drove so many others. That craving had inflamed Uther, had driven the Roman emperor to expand his territory into lands so distant he would never see them, had even inspired some women of the Temple to work to gain advantages, one over the other.
Morgana sipped ale and ate bread and cheese, and wondered if a wish for power lurked in her own heart. It was something to ponder. When this was over—when Morgause was thwarted, and Arthur was safely crowned—perhaps she could take time to think about that. If she lived.
She had given little thought to her own survival. The compulsion to protect the true king had her in its grip, and there was nothing ambitious about it. Her blood burned with it. Her brain had room for nothing else. It filled her heart and charged her muscles. She must stop Morgause, no matter the cost.
The main gate would open in the morning for the people to come into the keep, but Morgana couldn’t wait for that. Whenthe first gray ribbons of summer dawn slipped up the eastern horizon, she crept away from the sleeping camp and made her way around the courtine.
When she had been small, clinging to her nurse’s hand, she had watched one of the stable lads climb the outer wall in a place where a few uneven stones jutted from the surface. She remembered the moment perfectly. The boy was no more than fourteen, but he had been laboring with horses and oxen since he was eight. His legs and arms were muscled and long, and he scrambled from one stone to another until he reached the top of the wall, pulled himself up and over, and stood laughing down at little Morgana and her nurse. As the nurse shook a finger at the boy and told him he should not be doing that, little Morgana had only wished that her own legs would one day be so strong.
Now she returned to the place where she had watched the stable lad climb. The crystals in the wall had begun to sparkle an invitation in the growing light. The man’s body she had assumed was even stronger than her own. Her legs had always served her well, walking or running or foraging, but these were more heavily muscled, the feet bigger, the toes longer. The hands were wider than hers, the fingers thicker and tougher. She swarmed up the wall as if the distances between the irregular stones, places she could grip with her hands and step with her feet, were nothing. In no time she was on top. She stole a moment to savor the achievement, remembering how the child Morgana had wished to do just this, then lowered herself swiftly down the inner side of the wall, her feet landingsafely, softly, on the earth of the keep. The preparations for the day’s ceremony were already well begun. It was a simple thing to blend in among the sawyers, coopers, and carpenters.
It was not quite so easy to gain entrance into the western tower where the queen had her chambers. Morgana cast about for some excuse to enter, and her eye fell upon a baker, a small man, struggling with an enormous basket of loaves for the feast to come. Even as she watched, a loaf fell out of the basket to the packed earth of the keep. She hurried forward to pick it up. “I’m not busy at the moment,” she told the baker. “And my arms are long, yah? I’ll take this down to the kitchen for you.”
The little man relinquished the basket with a groan of relief. “Like to broke my arms carrying that,” he said. “Much obliged, young man.”
Morgana hoisted the basket to her own broad shoulder and strode off toward the lower door of the tower.
After delivering the basket to the harried cooks, it was easy to turn the wrong way as she left the kitchen and dash up the stairwell toward the royal chambers. She passed the great hall, where maids were already setting the huge table with trenchers and spoons and knives. She went farther up, to the floor where she and Braithe had slept when they were here, and on to the floor above. Here she slowed her steps, eyeing the corridors, ducking her head if she had to pass a housemaid or a manservant.
Morgause had taken the rooms that had once belonged to Ygraine. Morgana had not entered the apartment as an adult, but she remembered it perfectly. She knew where thebedchamber was, and the main door into the sitting room. She also remembered clearly the secret entrance into the queen’s dressing room, a narrow door with a low lintel that anyone of height had to duck beneath. It was hidden in a corner of the corridor, easy to miss. It was the door through which Ygraine had led the child Morgana out of Camulod and delivered her into the care of the Blackbird.
Morgana knew, because she had seen, what was happening behind that door. She gathered herself, then entered without knocking or asking permission.
She had been aware of what she would find in Morgause’s dressing room, but it was still sickening to see in person. The queen, with only a dressing gown around her bony form, was handing a long, thin knife to a burly, bearded man who wore the garb of a soldier. The light was dim, only a single sputtering candle on the dressing table, but Morgana was in time to see him pocket a fat purse with his free hand while taking the knife by the hilt. A leather jerkin covered his torso from shoulders to hips, and he had wound a dark scarf around his neck, which presumably he would pull up to hide his face. Even as Morgana burst into the room, he was ready to hide the knife beneath his jerkin.
Morgause’s sharp-boned face was pale as milk in the uncertain light of the candle. She gasped and whirled at the opening of the door. She screeched at Morgana, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The assassin shifted the knife in his thick hand, and Morgana knew he meant to throw it at her. She took in the brutalityin his fleshy face, the calculating gleam in his ice-gray eyes. He radiated cruelty and greed, and she knew that to him, murdering a stranger who had burst in at an inopportune moment would be easy, meaningless, an act as natural as breathing. She wondered how Morgause had found him and what her plot had cost her. More than money, she suspected, but her deep sight had not shown her that.
Morgana said, glad of the deep male voice that came from her throat, “You are discovered, madam. Your plot has failed.”
The assassin growled, “You think you can stop us?”
Morgause’s voice was high and thin with panic. “Do it!” she screeched at the assassin. “Do it now! Before he calls the guards—”
Before she finished her command, the assassin’s arm was up and back, the blade of the knife poised between his fingers. He gave a small grunt of effort as he threw it directly at Morgana.
But she was ready.
She felt the furrowing of her forehead, the tension extending down the unfamiliar muscles of her face. Her heart seemed to pause its beating, her lungs to grow still to conserve all her strength. She gathered all of her power into one great strike of her special talent, one lethal blow by that odd gift no one else seemed to possess.
The knife was in the air, halfway between her and the assassin, when it turned, spun as swiftly as a falcon might as it plunged toward its prey. Morgana’s heart jolted as it resumed beating, and her lungs opened for a swift breath. The knife moved so fast she couldn’t follow its progress, and she had notfinished drawing that breath when it found its target. Neither the assassin nor Morgause had time to move or even to cry out.
Morgana had not aimed the weapon. Her blow was a blunt one, like the thrust of a thrown fist or the kick of an angry horse, but it somehow managed to be uncannily accurate. She didn’t know where it would strike until she saw the bloom of blood at the base of the assassin’s throat and heard his terrified choking as the blade buried itself in his neck. He scrabbled at the knife with his fingers, but the useless effort didn’t last long. In seconds, he crumpled. His forehead hit the floor, his arms splayed wide. His lifeless body propped awkwardly on his bent knees in a gruesome posture, as if his corpse were bowing to Morgana.
Blood pooled beneath his head and streamed over Morgause’s bare feet, staining the hem of her dressing gown as her mouth stretched wide, ready to scream.
Morgana crossed the room in three quick strides and clasped her masculine hand over the queen’s mouth. Even in her own form, she was taller and stronger than the scrawny Morgause, but in this body, she was nearly twice the queen’s weight. She shoved Morgause against the wall, her big hand clamped so tightly over Morgause’s mouth that the queen’s eyes widened with the sudden awareness that she could be the next to die.
She was right. It was possible. It wouldn’t take much, a shift of the hand down to her neck, a hard squeeze to close that thin throat, a refusal to let go no matter how she struggled and clawed and shook.
Morgause had shown no mercy to Arthur. Why shouldMorgana, sworn since childhood to protect the true king, show mercy to her?
She found no reason for mercy. What she found was a thread of logic.
If the queen were to die today, there would be no coronation. The entire celebration would be called off. The feast would be canceled, the people sent home in confusion and consternation that such a thing could happen on this very day, within the walls of Camulod.
Morgana had committed herself to seeing Arthur safely ascend to his throne. She could not let it be postponed while his knights searched for the murderer of the old king’s widow.
