Chapter Text
“But why shouldn’t we swear loyalty to her?” Mordred whispered uncertainly to Cerdan as a group from the adjacent cell was led up the stairs to face their fates in the throne room. The dungeons were dank and unwholesome, and a year in their confines had left Mordred peaky and with a persistent cough. The iron that made up the bars of the cells made his magic feel queasy and weak, as it did for all the other imprisoned sorcerers. But he still had his curiosity.
“Because,” Cerdan said grimly, wrapping Mordred’s cloak a bit tighter around him, “though she has magic, she spurns the true gifts of the Goddess and seeks only her own power. We do not honor her, Mordred. And we will not bow to her.”
Mordred turned this over in his mind for some while, using the new insight as a distraction from his shivers. He had overheard much from the guards, those bored and nervous men who turned their uncertainty into cruelty upon their captives. That was how he knew that the man who had captured Mordred and Cerdan, King Uther, had been overthrown and killed a year ago by his own illegitimate daughter, the witch-queen Morgana. He’d heard how she had tried to curse her own half-brother, Prince Arthur, only for the prince’s servant to intervene and save him using magic. They had fled the castle in the following chaos and the prince was apparently still sometimes spotted in the surrounding countryside. No one said anything about the servant.
Mordred wanted to find such rumors comforting: perhaps the brave prince would return soon and depose his half-sister in turn, and free Mordred and Cerdan and all the rest who suffered in the dungeon. That’s what happened in stories, wasn’t it? But Cerdan told him not to put such stock in stories. Legends were legends for their rarity, after all.
And besides, the window of opportunity for rescue was closing. In the past week, Queen Morgana had begun summoning groups of prisoners from the dungeons and demanding they swear fealty to her, or so said the guards. Those who refused were put to death, and Mordred knew that for certain, because the window at the top of the dungeon wall let out into the courtyard where the executions took place.
There was nothing he could do but sit and shiver and wait and think. And hope. He did as much hoping as he could.
But the time for hope was nearly over. Late in the afternoon, when the sun was casting its long orange rectangle on the opposite wall, the guards came and unlocked their cell door and started hauling everyone out, including Mordred and Cerdan. Mordred clung tightly to Cerdan’s hand, his legs trembling as they climbed the stairs, his eyes smarting in the light of so many torches even as his magic began to recover now that it was away from the iron.
The throne room was enormous and grand, Mordred could see that even through his fearful shaking. There were windows of red and yellow colored glass, and grand lords and ladies in their finery, and knights in brilliant red capes lined the walls. The little knot of prisoners stood close to one another, cowed by the grandeur of the place, and by the woman on the throne at the far end of the hall. She was coldly beautiful, the way an icicle could be beautiful, with her gleaming gown and jeweled crown and glinting eyes.
The witch, the queen, Morgana.
A man stood beside her with a thick book in his hands, and he called a name. One of the prisoners stepped forward, trembling, and the man read out the crime he had been accused of, something called ‘larceny.’ “Swear fealty to Queen Morgana, and your crimes shall be forgiven,” the man intoned at last, and the prisoner fell to his knees and swore. Queen Morgana nodded regally to him, and he was led away, weeping in relief. Mordred shrank closer to Cerdan, only for the man with the book to call Cerdan’s name, meaning he and Mordred had to shuffle forward and face the Queen’s cold justice.
“Another Druid,” the man intoned. “Imprisoned in the final days of K… of Uther’s reign.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the man’s stumble, but then she turned to Cerdan. “Magic is no longer outlawed in Camelot,” she declared grandly. “Swear your loyalty to me, and help me raise our people to our rightful position in the world.”
Mordred peered up at Cerdan’s face, and found it scornful. “You do not even understand our rightful position in the world, Morgana Pendragon. You twist the magic you were blessed with to your own foul ends, and taint the world with your deeds. The Once and Future King is nigh, and Emrys with him!” And he began chanting loudly, making the air in the throne room swirl.
The knights in their flaming red capes advanced at once, brandishing their swords, but the wind sped up, pushing them to the sides instead. Lords and ladies cried out and held each other, and Queen Morgana stood from the throne and flung out her hand, but whatever she intended had no effect Mordred could see.
In the chaos of it all, Cerdan gripped Mordred’s shoulder and bowed his head to speak, just briefly. “I am sorry for the lie I told you, Mordred. Trust in legend. Do not give in to despair. Find the warlock Emrys and the Once and Future King, and we may yet be saved.” With that, he gave Mordred a push, straight into the center of the whirlwind he had created, and shouted a final word.
The last thing Mordred heard before the wind deafened him was Queen Morgana screaming something, harsh and high.
Mordred thumped to the ground and lost all his breath with the impact. Head spinning, he struggled to sit up, and found he was in the middle of a field, already harvested so there was nothing but prickly stalks and some determined weeds. The sun cast long shadows. Some way off to the left, a clutch of houses huddled under the sky. Farther beyond that, the pale shape of the Camelot citadel squatted on the horizon, the tops of its walls and towers showing over the late summer treetops.
For too long, he sat, disoriented. Why had Cerdan only sent Mordred away? Why not send himself too? He didn’t understand, and he was frightened to be alone, and terribly worried about what Queen Morgana would do to Cerdan now.
But Cerdan’s instructions circled around the worries and fears like a guard dog, keeping them from spiraling out of control. Trust in legend. Do not give in to despair. Find Emrys and the Once and Future King.
He looked around the field, as though Emrys or the prophesied King were going to walk out of the shadows and declare themselves right then and there. Which was foolishness, of course. He had to go find them, Cerdan said. And the most logical place to do that was ‘away from Camelot’.
So, although he still felt shaky, he climbed to his feet and set off directly away from the castle, putting the setting sun on his left.
There was a road at the edge of the field, which was smoother walking, but Mordred was still weak and exhausted and sick from a year in the dungeons, and he wasn’t moving fast or getting far. And when the pounding hoofbeats of a half-dozen horses began to sound out behind him, and he saw the flaring crimson capes of Camelot knights, he knew he had no hope of outrunning them on the open road. Gasping great, heaving breaths that tore at his throat, he went into the trees on the opposite side from the field, knees nearly giving out with every stumbling step.
He could hear the knights shouting as they began to catch him up—triumphant, mocking shouts—but the horses were too large to go quickly with all the trees in the way, and instead had to pick their ways carefully through the bracken and deadfalls.
Panting, Mordred tried to run faster, but the ground had started to rise, and the horses were gaining despite the trees, and the knights were shouting, and an arrow flew past his shoulder and thudded into a trunk only a few paces away, and he would have screamed if he’d had the air. He hadn’t even been this afraid when the knights had captured him and Cerdan a year ago and thrown them in the dungeons.
But just as Mordred was sure his legs would give out and his lungs would burn up, the ground disappeared from under his feet and he fell ten careening feet into a narrow ravine. He hadn’t air enough for more than a rough cry as he bumped over roots and stones and slid to a bedraggled stop when the ground flattened out. His body was ringing in shock, and he couldn’t hear anything beyond his own heartbeat roaring in his ears. But the knights were still coming— he knew better than to think his tumble had lost them—so he laboriously rolled over and started clambering to his feet.
He saw a man.
Mordred shook his head, unsure if his eyes were tricking him. But the man stayed put, half-crouched by the side of a small campfire about twenty feet along the dry riverbed, which is what the gorge really was. He wore battered hunting leathers and a much-mended blue tunic, and his hair was nearly gold in the day’s fading light. He held a sword, and an irrepressible shiver went through Mordred at the gleam of the blade.
Before either of them could make a move, the pursuant knights crested the bank, whooping all the louder for having doubled their quarries. Mordred looked back to the man, hoping to the Goddess Herself that he would prove to be the lesser of two evils.
And thankfully, the man seemed to read the situation immediately, because he turned to face the knights above them and shouted out, “What wrong has this child done you?”
“He flouts the benevolence of Queen Morgana!” one of the knights shouted back, a square-headed fellow with an unpleasant sneer. “We are to return him so he may answer to her, and witness the execution of his compatriot!”
“No!” Mordred cried, and tried again to stand so he might face the knights bravely, only for pain to flare in his ankle. He collapsed, too winded to sob.
“He is just a child!” the man called out. “What threat could he possibly bring to bear that he warrants such pursuit?”
But there was some sort of disturbance among the knights on the milling horses, and one of them came to the fore for the first time. He wore a short beard and had curly hair, and his expression was shocked and vibrant in hope—Mordred recognized the feeling, having striven for it so often in the last year.
“Sire?” he called down to the blond man.
“Sir Leon!” the man called back, lowering his sword slightly.
But before either of them could say another word, the square-headed knight sneered, “‘Sire’?” and leaned across and sliced his blade across Sir Leon’s throat. Blood gushed out, seeming somehow muted against the crimson of the knights’ cloaks, and Sir Leon gurgled horribly and slipped limply off his horse, which whinnied in alarm and danced to the side.
“NO!” the blond man cried.
Over the chaos and hubbub, the leader called, “Kill them,” and another knight raised a crossbow, aiming directly at Mordred.
The following minutes happened too quickly for Mordred to keep track of. He caught snatches, which arranged themselves in his memory later and made enough sense to get on with. The arm of the man holding the crossbow suddenly had a knife sticking out of it, and he screamed and the crossbow fell, the arrow twanging harmlessly into the soil. The blond man was somehow at the top of the bank, laying his sword about on all sides, and the knights were too disoriented to respond properly, and many injuries befell them. There was a bird—a hawk—diving out of the sky to rake at the exposed face of the knights, and the knights were retreating. The blond man knelt by Sir Leon’s body, only to bow his head and close the dead man’s eyes. Then he was back in the dry riverbed, and there was a horse Mordred hadn’t seen before, and the man was lifting Mordred up on its back, and getting up behind him. The hawk—a merlin, Mordred could tell by the size—came and flew just ahead of them as they rode deeper into the woods.