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They were here, alone in the dark, while the rest of the knights fought actual darkness.
“You should get comfortable,” Guinevere advised, focusing on the task at hand. “This will take some time, and will look like nothing but finger wiggling and intense staring to you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Searching.”
“For what?”
“I might not be able to be there, but I can get a sense for how the fight is going and make certain there are no other areas of the Dark Queen’s magic we have not discovered.” She yanked out two hairs and tied them around her fingers, similar to the knot for seeing. She had always been able to feel more than was readily apparent, and she used this knot to extend that ability—at painful cost.
Sensation left the rest of her body, and she leaned against the alcove’s low stone wall for support. She felt light and disconnected. For a heady moment she wondered whether she had fallen into another dream and would rush along the streets
or, worse, up the side of the castle to the hidden drop into the lake and the waiting Lady. Closing her eyes, Guinevere took a deep breath, trying to anchor herself.
When she was steady, her hand pushed outward. There were few sparks in Camelot. A warm glow from where Brangien slept. A few cold bites from where her iron knots protected the doors in and out of the castle. The warning that her seven anchored stones along the borders of the city would send should something come near. She shuddered as her hands passed over the void of the dead lake. It still bothered her that no magic existed there whatsoever, no hint of life or warmth. The fields had it, the smallest amount suffused throughout, though nothing that was not natural. To the south she felt the sparks of Rhoslyn’s camp, filled with women banished from Camelot for practicing magic. It was almost like visiting a friend, and she was glad nothing had changed there. She had not seen Rhoslyn since the Dark Queen attacked Guinevere in the forest with a possessed boar and then a spider’s infected poison. Lancelot saved her from the boar, and Rhoslyn saved her from the poison. And then Lancelot had taken Guinevere to Merlin and hidden with her as they watched the Lady of the Lake seal Merlin away. That had been the day that cemented Lancelot’s and Guinevere’s fates at each other’s sides.
With a burst of affection for the knight still at her side, Guinevere pushed north and west, sweeping farther and farther out, but other than the tiny pinpricks of wildlife moving through the night, she felt nothing alarming. Nothing new. Nothing threatening.
Finally, reaching the edge of her endurance, Guinevere threw her sense of magic toward Arthur. There was the line of fire. It was not magic, not in the same way the knots were, but fire was its own sort of energy. Hungry and chaotic and quite close to what the Dark Queen was. Life that could turn to death with a shift of the wind. Unpredictable and brilliant and beautiful and terrible.
She could almost feel it singeing her hands, could feel the dying trees and vines, those lives snuffed out. A retreat of energy, almost like smoke being drawn back into lungs. This was a fight Arthur was winning. And Arthur was—
She had found Excalibur. And Excalibur had found her.
The hairs wrapping her fingers snapped and blood rushed back in spikes. She was staring up into Lancelot’s face, held in Lancelot’s arms.
“My queen? Guinevere!”
“I am—I am fine.” Guinevere was not fine. This was even worse than when Arthur had unsheathed Excalibur beside her just last night. For one brief, horrifying moment, she had felt the cold, empty expanse of Excalibur. It was nothing like the fire or the Dark Queen. Those were hungry, active, bursting with life and destruction.
Excalibur was a void. It was not hungry, and therefore could never be filled.
And there had been a moment—a single heartbeat—when Guinevere had been certain she would be the one to snap out of existence, instead of just her magic. Her silly little knots.
Lancelot did not release her, and Guinevere did not ask to be released. She did not think she could stand on her own. Not yet. Lancelot’s steady presence was the foundation she needed right now. The rock seemed to sway beneath her as if she was on a wretched ferry. She could not tell how tightly she clung to Lancelot’s arm. There was no sensation in her hands, and would not be for several days.
After a few minutes, Guinevere felt capable of sitting. She moved gingerly, resting against the rock, shoulder to shoulder with Lancelot. “They are winning the fight.”
“That is good.”
“But this cannot be it. The Dark Queen is still out there. I would have sensed if she were in the trees. And Mordred, too.” Guinevere was certain she would know him simply by feeling his presence. “They are out there, and with this failure, doubtless they will hatch a new plot, and I do not know how I can prevent it.”
“Do you need to prevent it?”
“Of course!”
Lancelot was quiet for a moment. “Some things you cannot prevent. Not every foe can be predicted, not every move can be anticipated. You can only face them when they appear, as we did today. Successfully. So we do everything we can to be ready. We watch, and we wait.”
“I hate waiting.”
Lancelot laughed at Guinevere’s petulant tone. “Do not imagine us whiling away our days in foolishness. Imagine us as the adder, curled and coiled in anticipation of the strike.”
Guinevere laid her head on Lancelot’s shoulder. “I cannot sleep tonight.” Her hands were somehow both numb and in agonizing pain. It hardly seemed fair, but such was the cost of magic. She shuddered, unbearably cold as she remembered that brief brush against Excalibur.
“We will keep watch together, then.”
“Next time Arthur is away, you can sleep in my sitting room. That way you will be close enough to hear if anything is wrong. And you will not be standing outside in the dark, alone.”
