“How fast can you get us back to the citadel in this heat?” Mordred asked. “I can remove your barding if that would help.”
Rook laughed, the sound of waves crashing against rock. “Child,” he said, shifting his weight back onto his powerful hindquarters. “Hold on. Try not to fall.”
That was the only warning the kelpie thought sufficient before he broke into a maddening gallop. Mordred lowered himself against Rook’s neck, winding one hand into his long mane. It felt like flying, he imagined, or perhaps being a very small thing on the surface of a deep, swift river current. Mordred was sure only a few moments had passed before they had traveled a quarter-day’s ride, trotting through Camelot’s front gates. Rook was winded, his coat soaked with sweat, so Mordred dismounted and led him to the stables. He needed to alert Guinevere. Perhaps Morgana and Nyneve, too.
Breathing hard in the heat, Mordred and Rook had almost reached the path to the stableyard when something rumbled beneath their feet. Both the changeling knight and the kelpie stumbled to a halt, even though a passing ladies’ maid and a group of squires continued as if nothing had happened.
The rumble came again, but no stone shook loose. No one screamed. The land seemed to writhe beneath Mordred’s feet, as if something were trying to escape. Old, powerful magic surged, dry and metallic on the knight’s tongue as he gasped for air, falling against the kelpie’s shoulder. The massive destrier faltered, too, his legs nearly going out from beneath him. And then, just as quickly as it arrived, the magic dissipated, settling back into the ground.
Heedless of anyone who might observe, Mordred and Rook exchanged a long, worried glance. “Throw a bucket of water on me,” the kelpie instructed, his voice booming in Mordred’s mind. “Then we are going back out.”
“Do you have any idea what that was?” the knight asked in a quiet voice, grabbing the reins and leading the kelpie up the hill to the stableyard.
Rook gnashed his jaw, the three hundred years he had walked this land suddenly evident in his dark, toad-like eyes. “Yes,” the kelpie replied. “Yes. I am terrified that I do. For now, I need water, faerie child.”
Mordred left Rook in the stableyard, throwing the reins over a fence, and ran to the well. A few grooms looked his way in concern, but no one got in his way as he filled two large buckets with water, returning to Rook’s side. He recruited one of the grooms to help him remove Rook’s barding and tack. Mordred had just drenched the kelpie with the second bucket when two women came rushing up the hill into the stableyard.
“Two horses, now!” Morgana commanded. The grooms pitching hay in the yard looked at each other. “I saidnow,” thesorceress snapped. “And do not give me bloody palfreys. I do not require destriers, but they must be fast.”
Satisfied when the grooms scampered away into the stable block, Morgana took a deep breath. At her side, Nyneve had already sighted Mordred. His breath caught as he remembered this morning, her head pillowed against his shoulder, the curves of her body pressed into his.
There had been a moment right when she awoke. Nyneve had raised her head, those meadow eyes like daylight dancing on the surface of a stream, and looked at him as though she could see into him. He had stopped breathing, his hands closing in fists because he could not tangle them in her hair and kiss her until she forgot the horrors of their world. For the barest of seconds, Mordred had thought she might bring her mouth to his, or perhaps grab him by the tunic and draw him close. But then a knock sounded at the door, and none of those things had happened.
Now, the Druid girl made her way over, cool and collected, as though only he was still impacted by the night they had shared.
“Did you feel it?” Nyneve asked in a low voice, scanning the yard.
Mordred nodded. “Rook and I are going back out. Do you have any idea where it came from?”
Morgana strode over to his side, gathered up her long hair, and began to braid it into a single plait. “We were practicing some scrying and wanted to make sure Merlin and his murderers had gone to the outpost as ordered,” she whispered. “It will not surprise you to know they did not. So we looked for them. And Nyneve found them, somewhere out by the chalk cliffs.”
“The chalk cliffs? That is incredible,” Mordred replied in awe, looking at Nyneve with a start. That was a vast distance to scry for a mortal. The Druid girl’s face flushed, but he toldhimself it was the oppressive heat and not his praise. He nearly forgot about the deeply troubling thing they had all just felt until Morgana spoke again.
“Evidently, something quite powerful was displeased when we found their true location,” she said. When a stable boy approached, leading a sensitive chestnut mare, Morgana snatched the horse’s reins.
“Terrible idea,” Mordred interjected, taking the reins back from Morgana and handing them to Nyneve, who accepted them without a word. “Falcon will not tolerate your riding, Morgana. Take King instead.” He gestured to the amicable bay gelding with a wide white blaze down his face that another stablehand was leading from the stable block.
His guardian scoffed but relented, accepting the gelding’s reins. As the women mounted, Mordred re-tacked Rook, though he left the barding on the fence. It was a difficult thing to act as though he had not felt a god-like power roil beneath his feet. They rode out of the citadel at a tame trot, only breaking into a gallop once reaching the cover of the King’s Wood.
Rook, insulted by the presence of the horses, made them stop at a streambed. He called on two of his fellows to carry Morgana and Nyneve. They left Falcon and King in the clearing, glamoured to divert unwanted attention.
“I hate riding kelpies,” Morgana moaned as she swung onto the back of Rook’s slim friend, its coat silvery in hue instead of brackish green.
Nyneve, on the other hand, looked positively thrilled to mount the larger of the two kelpies, who had a roached mane and a long scar along its flank. She was a magnificent thing, her skirts hiked up to ride astride the kelpie, a dull slant of sunlight turning her hair to an inferno. His heart pressed against his ribs in heavy beats, as though it were reaching for the Druid girl.
It was a desperate thing to live in a world so broken that the fierceness with which he loved Nyneve Or’Afon was meaningless. It would not keep her safe or mend her heart. It would not re-weave his Threads or alter his fate. He was always going to leave her in the end. Thank the gods she felt nothing for him.
With one last look over his shoulder at the Druid girl, Mordred closed his legs around Rook. The kelpie leapt forward, thundering out of the forest and then moving into that slippery, river-quick gait.
He could not have said how long it was before Rook slowed beneath him. The smell of sea salt filled Mordred’s nose as he held up one arm to shield himself against the battering winds of the coastline. Judging by the position of the sun and the few stars the knight could see, this was a remote part of the Isles, just outside the lands under Arthur’s rule.
“Well?” he asked Morgana, turning to look at the sorceress. Her eyes were narrowed as she peered at the cliffs.
“If we had not experienced what we did,” Nyneve called, raising her voice above the wind, “I would never think there was anything here at all.”
“Precisely,” Morgana agreed, giving her new pupil a little smile. “Mordred? Perhaps put your Fey senses to use?”
It was difficult with the wind and the way he felt around Nyneve, wound so tight and completely out of control. Mordred had been hoping the sorceresses would be able to guide this endeavor, leaving him to simply swing his sword at anything that bothered them. Instead, he dropped Rook’s reins and closed his eyes. He let his glamour slip away, announcing to the landscape around him that he was part of it. Often, the woods and mountains and rocks would hide things from those with mortal blood. But the cliffs remained recalcitrant even for him, the grass blowing in just the same way it had when they arrived.
