The halls of the rehab center were filled with a nauseating stench of a greedy, impatient death. It clung to the walls like the slime in caves and made each breath a struggle. To the mortal nose it no doubt smelled like bleach.
My boots jangled with each step, the false buckles cling-clinging against one another each time my heels hit the tile. The sounds echoed in the dark and empty halls.
Finally, I found the room I wanted, 16-B, along the west side of the building looking through a row of bushes to the uninspiring sight of an empty parking lot. Flicking on the light I grabbed the patient’s chart and scanned the looping scribbles until I found his name: Chester Highfrys. It meant nothing to me.
There was magic in the room though. It brushed along my skin like the heat of a bonfire at midwinter.
Something moved in the darkness outside the room. I waited, patient as any predator, but the thing outside was far older and more patient than me. Melehan’s knight had wasted no time in stalking the man who would be king.
I looked at the him, the man in the bed, and saw only a wasted life. Sunken eyes darted around the room unseeing. His skin was thin and yellowing with disease. With a push of magic, I looked deeper and saw the corrosion devouring his organs from the inside out. He was a corpse; he just didn’t know it yet.
“Excuse me,” a querulous voice demanded behind me.
“Consider yourself excused,” I said in perfect English. My accent still had a trace of Scotland, but I hid it well. I was one of the few who liked English, of all the languages in the world it alone made the language of Camelot seem sensible. Our people spoke a pidgin tongue with Latin, Gaelic, German, Norse, and a few other languages thrown in for good measure, but at least most of it made sense.
“Ahem.” A nurse in bright pink scrubs stepped into my view. “Visiting hours were over four hours ago. You need to leave.”
“I am leaving,” I said as my gaze fell on the source of magic that had led me here. Someone – someone with very poor penmanship – had scribbled a death curse on a pad of paper lying next to the bed. “I only came to pay my last respects.” To a man who ever so briefly was a contender for the throne of Camelot. A pity he wasn’t what we needed to survive. I was running perilously short of magic to hold the worlds together.
The nurse crossed thick arms. “You can pay your respects tomorrow.”
My gaze was cold as the icy tarns of the mountains, and less welcoming. “Let’s not lie to one another. We both know his organs are failing and he’ll be dead within the hour.”
Her swarthy skin turned a shade paler. “N-no. He’ll be fine.”
“If you truly believe that, you shouldn’t be a nurse.” I pivoted and walked down the hall again. This time I didn’t have the strength to keep the mortals or their machines from seeing me. Alarms blared and someone screamed for security.
I walked out into the perpetual London rain, leaving the chaos behind me. The magic I carried as Lady of Camelot would fog their memories. Some lingering doubts would remain. A hint or two, or the foggiest thought that perhaps someone had entered the building near midnight, but they’d not remember me.
A figure moved in the darkness ahead of me. Tall, heavily muscled, and built for war, the Black Knight was even worse than his dead lord.
“Lady.” He gave me a courtly bow unsuited to the blackened armor he wore across his chest.
“Go in and kill the man, since that was what you were sent to do. You’d be doing him a favor.”
The streetlamp illuminated sharp cheekbones and a fine, aquiline nose as he looked at the building. “I am not here to perform mercy killings for mortals.”
“Pity.” The death curse I’d seen wasn’t well done, but it would have punched the air out of the knight. I would have enjoyed watching that.
“Lord Melehan will be pleased to hear his throne is once again secure.”
“Lord Melehan would be pleased to hear an egg fell from a basket or a hunting man tripped on a root.” He was a simpleton.
The knight gave me his full, amused, attention. “He is not that far gone.”
“Last time he rode to battle he fell off his horse giggling.”
“That was a mock battle in the courtyard, and the pigs were amusing.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t required to admit that.
“Is there another would-be king for us to chase tonight?”
“Oh, yes, south of here a bit. If you hurry you can beat me.”
I couldn’t see his expression well, but it looked to me like he was almost smiling. “How far south?”
“Just keep going until you find some water, head out another kilometer or so until that armor pulls you down Llŷr’s cold embrace.”
“The sea god isn’t my type.”
“Your choices are between him and Melehan,” I said. “No one else wants you.”
“Put like that…”
If I had to choose between Melehan and drowning I’d pick the drowning, except that my magic allowed me to breath in water same as air. Even in the Mortal Coil where I was cut off from my full power I could have walked the ocean floor if I had the mind too.
I’d considered it once or twice, but I wasn’t certain how far I could go before I was beyond the reach of Camelot and lost all my abilities. Twenty kilometers offshore is not the place to find oneself unable to breath in water or swim. Even worse, wandering risked taking me into a realm that belonged to another Queen.
The rain turned from a drizzle to a full storm as the knight walked away. I saw his outline mount a horse, and saw the light reflect for a moment of the giant great sword he swung with one hand when any other man would have needed two, if they could lift it at all. Only once had I seen his black blade up close, and the thing was nearly as long as I was tall.
In battle I had killed many a man. I watched ones I cared for die. I’d been grievously injured once or twice myself, and the only warrior who made me consider diplomacy was the black knight.
Sighing I wandered back to the building and sat on a metal bench outside the front door. Closing my eyes, I tilted my head up and let the cold rain wash away hot tears. Here, far from the people of Camelot, I could allow myself to feel the growing fear. I let the storm soak me to the bone, until my clothes were saturated and my skin began to pucker with the cold.
Only then did I focus on the scent of lingering wood smoke and the little thatch-roofed hut I called home. There was a tug of magic, a moment of disorienting dizziness, and then I opened my eyes with a gasp as a silver fish swam past. I clawed my way to the surface of the loch and climbed onto the muddy banks of Camelot.
There was a scent of wood smoke here, faded and overpowered by the aroma of wet leaves dying in the last days of autumn.
I rolled on my back to look at the gray blanket of clouds and, out of habit, slipped into a trance to view the magic weaving in and around Camelot.
My mother’s mantle, once thick as armor, was little more than a cobweb shawl. A thin strand stretched from me to the heart of Camelot and the throne of Arturus. It was the only thing keeping the world-between-worlds from crumbling.
In the waking dream state of the trance I could view all of Camelot. I’d been gone no more than a handful of mortal hours hunting the weak magic I’d sensed and in that time Camelot had lost another twenty acres to the encroaching wilds. Mountains had appeared in the first days of the sundering, wicked peaks and deep valleys filled with wild monsters from the fey lands. A perpetual mist seeped through the forest and stole the warmth from the bones. Once lush fields had lain fallow for longer than anyone wanted to remember.
Camelot was dying.
At this rate we would all be ash and dust in less than a mortal year. Far less.