Mordred dragged his hand through his hair, looking up at Oryane and wondering whether he could ask the question he already knew his High King had no interest in answering. “Oryane,” he began. “How did Merlin come by Caledfwlch? And how did he manage to twist it so beyond its nature that a mortal man might wield it?”
“Mordred,” Oryane said with disdain, looking down her long, thin nose at him. “I am hardly at leisure to discuss such matterswithyou. In fact, I do think I have had enough of you for the day. You stink of mortals.”
With that, Oryane stood, unfolding to her full height. He bit his tongue and followed, watching her closely; unlike Ragrshydan, she rarely shut Mordred down entirely.
He rolled up the sleeves of his tunic in preparation for heading back out into the heat. Oryane positioned her body to break the Eyes’ sightline to the table, were either to turn around, and conjured an ordinary-looking linen bag. Wordlessly, she began to pack into it apples, berries, and loaves of bread from the table, muttering an incantation all the while.
He watched her, brow furrowed, trying to listen to the Threads. To his surprise, Mordred realized she was removing all the magic from the food, anything that might harm or bewitch a mortal. Without looking at him, she shoved the bag into his arms, where it immediately blinked out of sight.
“I will escort him to the door,” Oryane declared to the Eyes, her demeanor all haughty power.
Mordred dared not speak a word as he followed her through the halls of the hill and back to the faerie door at the mouth of the underground city.
When they arrived at the entry chamber, she put one hand on his forearm, slowing his pace. “Has Merlin found the gate?” Oryane asked quietly. “In the northwestern wall?”
“No, not as far as I know,” Mordred replied. “Is that how the courier got in? I thought it was only accessible by someone who had recently left the citadel through it.”
“That is not how the courier got in,” Oryane said with a laugh, as if the matter was incredibly silly. Mordred bristled. But then she turned and looked at him just as they arrived in the middle of the chamber. “But it might be how you getout.”
He looked at her, not understanding.
Her fingers closed harder around his forearm. “My goddess made you,” she whispered, her gaze boring into his. “Her lover died to create you. You are strong enough to take this court back from Ragrshydan. I will not see you perish on the field of some mortal battle.”
Mordred only remembered at the last moment that the Eyes guarding the door could see them, if not hear them. He held himself steady even though his mind stumbled. “Councilor, you know that is what I was made for,” he said slowly. “You know what must come to pass if the next Age is to be born.”
She smiled at him, all that sudden fierceness gone in favor of her usual aloofness. “Bring me tidings of Morgana,” she said, louder now, pulling him toward the door. “We can hope she and Merlin tear each other apart. I do hate getting my hands dirty.”
Without another word, she shoved Mordred through the faerie door. He barely had time to send his magic reaching for the northwestern woods of Camelot, nearly lingering too long in the place that was not a place within the door. At the last moment, he felt the Threads catch, and the loamy forest earth was beneath his feet. The working on the pouch of food disappeared. He leaned against a parched oak tree and tried to get his thoughts together. A deep urge rose in him to discuss it all with Guinevere. With Morgana.
With Nyneve, the mortal girl he was probably in love with, who did not seem to care whether he lived or died.
“Fuck,” the changeling spat, pinching the bridge of his nose.
The sack of food in his hands offered him a direction, and a useful one at that, so Mordred began hiking through the woods to reach the villages that prostrated themselves at Camelot’s feet. The drought had hit these communities the hardest. Though Arthur had scaled back the solstice feast, he had not agreed to eliminate it completely, which frustrated Mordred to no end and genuinely enraged Guinevere.
With a sigh, he shifted the weight of the large bag. Since that evening in the study, just before Morgana’s ceremony, he had barely seen Arthur in private, let alone conversed in such an open, direct way that might indicate the king’s plans.
It was only a quarter-hour or so walk to the villages, but by the time Mordred emerged onto the dusty old Roman road, he was drenched in sweat. Though the sun hovered just above the horizon tauntingly, he could not wait for sunset. Instead, he trudged down into the main square that held the markets and craftspeople who served all the surrounding hamlets. As he came up over the hill, he was surprised to find a sea of people out in the heat, ringed in by all-too-familiar brown cloaks.
“It never ends,” Mordred muttered to himself, descending the hill. He hefted the food to his left shoulder so his sword arm was free. Though the knight could fight just as well with either hand, he feigned the typical preference for his right. He only switched to his left when he was fatigued, which was rare.
As he drew closer, he realized that the monks appeared to have brought food to the market square. Mordred frowned. A good decision, hopefully made by Arthur, but clearly orchestrated by someone who had never fed hungry people before. Long tables were set up in the square, the monks fighting to keep everyone in orderly lines. Much better to deliver directly to people’s homes; no one was forcibly unhoused thanks to Guinevere’s policies. Those who chose to live out-of-doors had regular haunts that any knight or guard familiar with the area would be able to relay.
The monks were shouting and shoving people, which was another terrible idea. The villagers were not malicious. They were starving. Prolonged hunger could make even the most even-tempered of mortals fight like a cornered wolf.
Mordred stopped on the edge of the square, calling the villagers who were within earshot over to him. To avoid beingswarmed, he wove a few Threads to induce calmness in anyone who came toward him. But he did not truly need it; many of the common folk recognized him.
“They’re giving the same amount to everyone, whether it’s an old widow like me or a young mother who’s got six mouths at home,” one woman, a weaver named Elora, explained to him. “When we tried to redistribute it to better suit our circumstances, they shouted at us.”
Mordred furrowed his brow, looking over the crowd. Someone awaiting rations from his supply pushed another townsperson, distracting him. Shoving his damp hair out of his face with the flat of one forearm, he called out to the man, only to find he had an infant at home and a mother whose milk had run dry. Thanks be to Oryane, of all people; the sack she had given him not only refused to run empty when it absolutely should have, but it also seemed to have a strange ability to provide the kind of sustenance each person or family needed. Something in Mordred’s bones ached. He had so much power and yet would never be able to do a working like Oryane’s. Sourness bloomed on his tongue.
A sudden commotion in the square drew his attention. When a scream rang out, he handed Elora the sack. “Can you handle this, please?” he asked, to which the weaver nodded solemnly, her eyes filling with fear when a second shout rose from the square.
Mordred thought he might have to fight the crowd, but despite whatever was happening at the center of the square, enough people recognized him and cleared a path, tapping the shoulder of the person next to them and picking children up off the ground. More than one villager warned him of the monks’ behavior. When he finally reached the center of the square, he was appalled to find nothing but mealy bread and bruised apples from last year’s stores. His blood simmered. Arthur’s inner courthad supped on freshly roasted boar with sloe berry jam just last night.
Hoofbeats sounded, and he turned, relieved to find about ten mounted knights trotting into the square. The monks should never have been unaccompanied in the first place. He raised a hand in greeting just as a large group of monks, seemingly for no reason at all, formed a defensive line and shoved the villagers back. Elderly mortals stumbled and fell. Children wailed. Someone cried out a name in anguish.
Mordred pushed through the crush of bodies, his hand on the hilt of his blade. Just as he arrived at the front line, he watched in horror, too far away to stop it, as a monk pulled a short blade and viciously stabbed a woman twice in the stomach. She cried out in agony and stumbled forward. The brown-cloak grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her toward him, the exact same way Mordred might finish someone off in close quarters, too.
