At Avalon's Shore
The waters of Avalon breathed mist as the barge slid silently into the gray. The lake held its breath; even the reeds at the edge stood still, each blade rimmed in dew like a line of silver runes. Arthur’s wounded body lay upon the bier, his armor dulled by blood and shadow. It was strange, the little details one noticed. His crown tilted slightly askew, a crooked symbol of how wrong the world had become as its wounded king was carried into the mists.
Aelwen stood at the water’s edge long after the last oar-stroke vanished, her pale hair catching the damp light. The mist clung, pearl-fine upon her lashes, cool at her throat. Even here she glowed faintly; her skin held that Avalonian shimmer too luminous for mortal flesh. The lake and mists seemed to know her, lapping at the hem of her gown, curling around her ankles like a tame animal. Her mother had been mortal. Her father was not. Fae blood sang in her veins, binding her to Nimue, Lady of the Lake. The Lady had raised her among lilies and mirrors and secrets, but never sent her beyond the mists alone. Until now.
She stepped forward, pebbles scattering underfoot. “Your king is not dead,” she said, her voice carrying over the hush of the gathered knights. Each syllable she spoke rang with the geas that bound her tongue to truth. “He rests now in Avalon, where time and injury are nothing. Take hope: he will return.”
Armor creaked. Men breathed out through their teeth. A raven croaked once from the alder, then tucked its beak under its wing.
Sir Bedivere, grief carved deep into his weathered face, clutched Excalibur’s empty scabbard as if it might snap in his solitary hand. He had thrown the sword to the lake with that same hand. He still felt the loss. “You speak of hope, Nimue’s Hand,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “But what hope have we left? Mordred’s remnants, his splinters, still ride. The Saxons press from the east. Hope feeds no garrison.”
Sir Gawain of Orkney stood apart, a head and a half above many, shoulders broad beneath mail darkened by travel and blood. His red-gold hair caught the last light like embers in a brazier. Though only four and thirty, threads of gray glinted at his temples, lending his bright gaze a stern edge. The knight looked at Aelwen as though he measured her not only as a woman but as prey, weighing softness against strength, testing where he might sink his teeth. “A pretty sentiment,” he said, voice low. “But Avalon has its own designs. Did your mistress foresee this? Did she plan it?”
“Gawain.” Lady Lynette’s voice cut cleanly. She was auburn-haired, eyes keen as a kestrel’s, her palm resting on her sword hilt with the calm of a woman who had already decided not to use it. “Now is not the time for suspicion.”
His mouth twisted. “It is always the time.”
Arthur would reach Avalon's shores before long: The barge was gone. In its place, silence remained. Behind them, Camelot waited. Whole in stone, perhaps, but not in spirit. The Round Table splintered into factions; banners of old friends snapping coldly across the same hall. Saxon spears pressing like a tide. The otherworld's breath slipping under doors at night.
Aelwen lifted her head slowly, peering at those gathered. “Nimue’s plans are her own. But Arthur believed in something greater. Did you abandon it before the mists even closed?”
Bedivere lifted his chin. The grief in him forged to iron. “No. Never,” he said. “I swore an oath. Even if I must stand alone, I will keep it.”
“Not alone,” Lynette answered. “But Camelot bleeds. Stores are low. The north road is choked with deserters and carrion. Oaths will not hold a wall if no one stands to keep it. Nimue’s Hand,” she glanced to Aelwen, weighing the title before she continued, “you say the king will return. How long must we hold?”
How long must we hold? They had only just watched their king vanish into Avalon. Aelwen's mind boggled. How was she supposed to know? But then a thought. Perhaps they only wanted comfort? Aelwen opened her mouth, intending on speaking words of comfort, only to feel the geas tighten around her throat. The pain was not sharp, but it was unignorable. “I cannot say,” she managed, gasping, the words bare and honest.
Gawain’s eyes narrowed, bright and appraising. “Cannot,” he repeated, as if tasting the word. “Not will not.” He took a step closer. The smell of iron and horse and crushed fern came with him, the hilt of his sword nudging the chain at his hip. “So we are to keep a realm in order, and you bring us no.”
“Hope,” Bedivere said, shaking his head.
“Orders,” Lynette countered. “We will need them before sunset tomorrow if we are to move men without losing more to the hedgerows than the enemy.”
Aelwen met Lynette’s gaze. “My lady, I bring counsel, not commands. I am sent to see the king’s legacy preserved. That is my charge.”
“And who preserves you?” Gawain asked, almost idly. He lifted his left hand and with the back of armored knuckles brushed a stray wet tendril of blonde hair from Aelwen’s shoulder. The gesture was not unkind, not exactly. His thumb paused at the hollow near her collarbone and the brief weight of it turned her breath sharp. He smiled. He'd learned something. “My,” he said, looking back to his fellow knights as he remarks: “Avalon breeds delicate emissaries.”
“Delicacy is not weakness,” Aelwen answered, pink rising to her cheeks.
“No,” Gawain agreed, amused, “but it is a lure.” He let the curl of hair slip from his gauntlet.
The gathered knights began to lead their horses away from the shore. Orkney men clustered around their captain, low-voiced, watchful.
“Walk with me,” Gawain said, not loud, as he stepped away from his men. He did not look back to see if she obeyed.
It was not a request.
They went beyond the standing stones into the hem of trees where alder and ash grew tight together and the ground was soft with last year’s leaves. The others were near enough to hear if she cried out, but the silence between the trunks felt more private than distance would otherwise have permitted.
“You speak of legacy,” he said, turning on her suddenly. He put his hand to the tree trunk beside her head, caging without touch. The lacquered leather at his palm brushed the fine skin at her temple, before settling at the shoulder seam of her gown. His hand pressed, lightly, testing, as he spoke. “You speak of oaths and of faith. But Avalon binds men in chains of riddles. What orders did your mistress give you before sending you into our hall?”
“To preserve Arthur’s legacy,” the half-fae said. “To see that his throne finds worthy ground.”
“And how shall you do that?” His green eyes flicked down to her mouth as she spoke, then back to her eyes. Amused. Interested. “With pretty speeches? Or fae bargains that make slaves of men?”
“With truth,” she answered. “With counsel. With alliance.”
“Alliance.” He leaned in with a smile that looked like a man about to bite. “I wonder what would such an alliance cost me, Avalonian?”
Aelwen drew a breath. Her silver-blonde hair slipped forward, and she made to tuck it back. Gawain was faster. He caught a strand between forefinger and thumb, rolling it once, the gesture intimate in its casualness, improper in its ease. His leather rasped softly against the silk of her hair, and his gaze tracked the movement.
His question.
“That depends,” she said, heat rising in her face, “on what you seek.”
“I seek certainty,” he husked. The low tone suited him. “That Camelot will not bow to Avalon’s sorceries. That Arthur’s throne will not be puppeted by your mistress through her pretty little Hand.”
The geas did not forbid scorn. “Then perhaps you should not mistake every counsel for a chain, nor every shadow for sorcery.”
He huffed a laugh, more approval than anger. “Bold.” He let the strand fall. His hand slid lower, to the inside of her wrist where the skin is thinnest. A single thumb braced lightly over the beat there. “Your heart is racing, little bird.”
She tried to reclaim her hand. His fingers closed, unhurried, then deliberately released her.
He looked past her, past the trees and out over the water, back out towards the last drift of mist. “How long?” he asked. “Days? Weeks? Will Arthur ride out with the harvest? When shall I have to make way for a better man?”
“I cannot say.”
“That answer grows less useful every time I hear it.” Somehow, the towering knight sounded entertained. “Very well. If Avalon has no schedule, Camelot will keep one. Someone must.”
He straightened and the space between them felt cooler. “The realm needs a hand on its reins,” he went on, almost conversational. “And a voice that can be heard above the squabbling of petty claimants and grieving knights who mistake mourning for rule. I have men who will stand and fight. Roads we can hold. And all the wolves in Camelot’s halls fear my name.”
“Wolves?” she repeated.
He smiled. “There are worse things than wolves. Wolves keep shepherds in work.” His gaze lingered, amused. “Camelot is full of wolves. They hunger for the throne, for power, and for anything delicate enough to sink their teeth into.”
His eyes steadied on her. “Be honest, Avalonian. Why send you? So young, so,” his eyes tracked the line of her pink flushed cheek, her soft mouth, before dipping further down her body, “innocent. Is the plan to shame us, to soften us, to make us chivalrous? Or does Nimue think a delicate hand will slip where a mailed fist cannot?”
“I carry her charge,” Aelwen said. “No more and no less.”
He stepped nearer, leaning in enough that his breath danced against her skin, warming the hollow of her throat. “And if I decide that your presence in Camelot will be under my protection?” he asked. “Would Avalon be offended if I took good care of its… ambassador?”
“That depends on what you call care, Sir Gawain. Do you seek to claim that which is not yours?"
“Not mine? Lady Aelwen, whatever I choose to claim becomes mine.”
Aelwen did not know what to say to that.
He removed his hand from beside her head as he straightened, expression amused. The half-fae exhaled, suddenly aware of how the bark pressed a little pattern into her spine where she had leaned against the tree without noticing. Somewhere behind Gawain, a squirrel scolded.
“Camelot will test you, Lady Aelwen,” he said, tone turning matter-of-fact. He reached out, as if to adjust a clasp at the shoulder of her gown, and his knuckles grazed the bare skin there. “And so will I.”
He turned then and walked back toward the camp. The mist received him like a curtain swallowing an actor between scenes.
When she returned to the shore, the camp had already taken shape. Orkney banners hung dark as ravens’ wings above a knot of men cutting bread by a campfire. Bedivere spoke low to two boys barely old enough for spurs, showing them how to lash a weather-cloth against the wind one-handed, his voice patient. Lynette oversaw the pickets herself, checking spacing with strides that did not waste steps, correcting a stake with a single efficient kick of her boot.
Lynette’s gaze slid to Aelwen, and took in the wet hair, the pale throat, her flushed cheeks, and the wildness still in the diminutive woman's breathing. “If the Orkneys offer you a cloak,” she said mildly, “take it. Not because you are cold, but because they will expect you to understand courtesy behind it.”
“I am not cold,” Aelwen said, and realized her hands were trembling.
Lynette’s mouth quirked. “I didn't say you were.”
Bedivere approached, the empty scabbard at his hip like a wound that had learned to walk. “Lady Aelwen,” he said. “Forgive me my earlier words. The day has not left me with my best manners.” He studied her face as if seeking Arthur’s answer written there. Finding none, he set his jaw. “If you counsel, counsel me this: we have three roads to Camelot. The lower ford is broken. The ridgeway is longer, but defensible. The middle path runs fastest, and rumor says Saxons watch it.”
“Take the ridge,” Lynette said before Aelwen could speak. “We can arrive a day later and alive.”
“Later? Arrive late, you mean.” Gawain said from his men, not bothering to come closer. “Arrive late, and you arrive to find jackals at the table.” He threw Aelwen a look, a glance that found her as surely as a hand on her wrist. “What says Avalon?”
Aelwen drew herself to her full height, looking between Lynette and Bedivere before she answers Gawain. “The ridge,” she said, certain. “A day is not the difference between a kingdom and a ruin. One arrow in the wrong man is.”
Gawain’s mouth curved, recognizing both the prudence and the refusal to play his pace. “The ridge,” he echoed before lifting his hands in a wry shrug. “Alas, I was looking forward to a fight. We take the long road and teach the Saxons at the short one to miss us.”
The camp settled into its sounds: metal eased to rest, low laughter, the soft clop of a horse shifting weight. Aelwen found a place near the fire, not too near the Orkney knot, not too far from Lynette’s measured orbit. She spread her hands to the heat and watched the moisture gather and bead upon her skin and vanish.
Across the way, Gawain sat with his men, this time with his back to the fire and his face to the dark, as if daring it to approach. He laughed at something a tall spearman said; the sound carried, bright and spirited. Even laughing with his men, he watched. He looked back over a shoulder and flashed Aelwen a smile when he caught her staring at him.
Her cheeks still burned where his eyes had pinned her; her pulse still remembered the pressure of his thumb. She folded her fingers together to quiet the tremor and, in the privacy between breaths, chastened herself. Her purpose had not changed. She had come as Nimue’s Hand. Avalon’s will flowed through her, not Orkney’s. If Camelot tested her, then she would endure. And if Gawain tested her… well then. He would learn that she was no lamb at all.
