Pendragon's Heir (50 page)

“Fear you?” She smiled. “No indeed, you are no Morgan of Gore,” and she saw him recall who she was and come to his senses. “But I say only the truth, and I do not come to taunt. Last time the King sat in judgement on one of his own, there was war.”

“As there will be if he attempts it again,” Agravain muttered.

“Neither of us desires that, cousin. You know what it is like. Destruction of land and life, with every kind of evil and cruelty. There is much I would do to prevent it.”

“Yet it may be the lesser evil.”

“It may. And yet no king should readily spill the blood of his own subjects… You know that I have influence with the High King.”

Under the glassy stubbornness of his eyes, she saw a flicker of interest.

“You know that he loves mercy better than bloodshed. If I can show him a way to pardon you, cousin, with no injury to his honour, he will take it.”

He came forward another step, eagerly this time, and then caught himself. “Why? What does it profit you?”

“The peace of Logres profits all of us.”

“And say we preserve this peace. Who sits on the throne?”

“Why, the King—”

“You know what I mean.”

She lifted a hand. “The King’s appointed heir, chosen in council. I. And Perceval.”

Agravain’s face darkened. “So. You think the people of Logres will stand by while the true heir is disowned—in favour of a cursed fraudulent
cuckoo?
”

She never heard the insult. The true heir. It occurred to her, with a force that took her breath away, that the prophecy made by Merlin at her birth referred to the Pendragon’s
heir
.

Not to the Pendragon’s daughter.

And if Mordred
was
the King’s son?

She swallowed and looked back up to Agravain. “If Mordred is the true heir, then let him have Logres. I have no wish to set myself against the will of Heaven.”

He blinked, taken aback for a moment by her evident earnestness. “Prove it.”

“If I may, I will. Let it suffice for now that I prove my friendship to
you
.”

“Well?” The sulky note was back in his voice.

“You can still save yourself, cousin. Show the King that you’re willing to make amends.” Blanchefleur came a pace closer to him. “My mother means to appeal the verdict that condemned her to the fire. By her account, she never spoke with Lancelot in the garden, and she never sent him her ring. She didn’t, did she? You are the only one who can tell us what really happened.”

He looked at the floor near her feet and opened his mouth. There was something so evasive in his face that she lifted a hand.

“Don’t lie to me.”

He closed his mouth again.

“Decide whether your life is dear enough to you that you’ll tell us the truth in exchange for mercy.”

Agravain chewed on his lower lip. At last he said, “Very well, I will. But tell the King I want to leave Camelot tonight. I want my horse and arms and food for five days.”

According to her plan sketched out in the dark hours last night, Agravain would leave Camelot with watchers on his trail. But this was too good an opportunity to miss. Five days’ journey? Could she narrow it down further? “Where do you mean to go? The King may ask.”

“Orkney, I suppose.”

He looked into her eyes unblinking, unmoving, and she knew it was a lie.

“I’m sure the King will have no objections.” She went to the door, knocked for the guard, and turned with a smile. “Mind you, Agravain, if the King grants your petition and grants you parole, use your freedom wisely. Don’t lose your wits, and run off to join Saunce-Pité.”

A sudden panic, beating in the air. A fractional hesitation. A laugh.

“That’s hardly likely, is it?”

That was a lie, too.

The door opened and she went down the passage with her blood drumming a victory march. No need now to send a spy with Agravain when he left. She knew where he was going.

More than that. She knew where to find Mordred.

P
ERCEVAL WAS STANDING IN HIS CHAMBER
before breakfast, working the stiffness out of his hip with a series of lunges, when a sharp rap came on the door. He must have moved quickly to open it, but those few footsteps passed like an age.

Not already.

It was Heilyn. He said, “Sir, Sir Gawain has sent word to saddle his horse. I left word for them to prepare Glaucus, and came to help you arm.”

“Well done,” said Perceval, wishing for the first time that Heilyn was less meticulous in his duties. He went back into his chamber and took up the blood-red shield with the golden pentacle and the golden label. Near it was a leathern cover which he had taken from the armoury after the council in the King’s solar yesterday.

Behind him, Heilyn was shaking out his hauberk and testing the straps on his spaulders. Then he heard the whisper of silk.

“Leave the surcoat,” he said, tightening the cover around the shield and fitting it to his arm to try its heft.

Heilyn looked up. From the faint worried crease between his eyebrows Perceval knew the squire understood. But he explained it anyway, not just to Heilyn but also to any powers that stood by and watched what Sir Perceval of Wales, Knight of the Round Table, chose to do this day.

“I am going to take in my father, and I have not the nerve to do it wearing his device.”

Perceval was ready and waiting on the Camelot bridge when Gawain rode down from the keep. His father spent no time on defiance, only laid his spear in rest and spurred his horse Gringolet to a gallop. Glaucus leaped forward, scenting war. But Perceval could not shake off a dazed, almost tipsy sense of unreality. The golden pentacle of Gawain filled all the field of his vision, reproaching him for what he meant to do. He seemed to be looking through the eyes of someone far away, and all his reflexes felt muffled by distance.

At the last confused moment his body remembered its old skill, and the wild boy of Wales flung himself headlong from the saddle of his horse as he had on the first day he fought a knight.

Gawain’s lance swept through empty air. He yanked Gringolet around, dropping the spear-point, and his voice echoed in amazement within his helm.

“Perceval?”

Perceval climbed to his feet. “Sir, it is I.”

“Why are you here?”

“The King sent me.” Perceval wished he could see his father’s face. “He begs you to return.”

Gawain sat unyielding and cold as stone. At last he said: “And if I refuse?”

“Sir, then I must compel you.”

“You
dare?
” The words exploded out of Gawain, and his hand clenched on the lance. Perceval lifted appealing hands.

“What shall I tell my mother?”

The lance pointed. “Do not name her.”

“I know she never ceased to love you,” he went on desperately. “Shall I go to her in Avalon, and tell her that you killed yourself in pursuing this feud with Lancelot, and that I stood by and did nothing?”

“Your mother would be wise enough to know there are some things a man may not leave unpunished.”

Perceval stared at the iron front of his father’s helm. “But you are killing yourself by inches.”

“I have heard it.”

Perceval gripped his saddle-horn, pulled himself up, and drew back a little for the charge. “Will nothing move you?”

“I told you once before,” Gawain said with dangerous calm, “that I am content to go my way and let you go yours. But do not think to stand in my path.”

Perceval said: “Forgive me. The King sent me.”

Gawain’s spear crashed down like a gate. Gringolet surged into a gallop. Perceval couched his own spear, but weariness had sunk into his bones. There was a sickening jar as they met, and Perceval rolled in the dust of the road among the splinters of his lance.

He scrambled to his feet and saw that Gawain had already turned.

“Remount,” said Gawain.

Perceval caught his horse and climbed back into the saddle, wincing from his bruises. At the other end of the bridge, Gawain looked for a moment as if he were about to forget the rules of war and use his spear on a knight who had none. Then he struck the lance headfirst into the ground and drew his sword.

This was Perceval’s weapon, and for years he had been unbeaten with the blade. But it was a killing weapon, and he feared to wield it to his full strength. Instead, as they closed on the bridge, Perceval yanked his reins aside, forcing Gawain and Gringolet against the parapet. His left knee ground into Gringolet’s shoulder, hooked against Gawain’s knee, and thus wedged, held.

Gringolet snorted and tried to kick, but there was not room enough even for that. Perceval spoke. “In the name of the King, I am to commit you to—”

Gawain rose in his stirrups and his elbow lifted. Perceval realised what he was doing even as the steel-clad elbow smashed into the side of his helm. His teeth jarred together as he reeled sideways in the saddle; obeying the lurch, his horse stepped out, releasing Gringolet. The next moment Gawain caught him in the ribs with the pommel of his sword. Perceval tumbled onto the bridge with a crash of steel.

Sir Gawain snatched at one of Perceval’s stirrups, worked it off the hook, and flung it into the river. Then he paused, looking down at his son lying on the road.

“Whelp,” he said, and his breath was loud through the slit of his helm. “Since you have declared yourself an enemy and a traitor to your own kin, take this last counsel of me: See to it that your path never crosses mine again, for one of us must die if we meet. I swear it.”

He spurred Gringolet into a gallop and was gone. Perceval rose to his feet and took off his helm, catching his breath as the icy winter air struck his face. Down below, Gawain dwindled on the forest road and at last vanished into the wood.

With one stirrup gone, there would be no following him.

A man trudging alongside an oxcart came up the same road and began to cross the bridge, stealing anxious and furtive glances at him. Perceval called, “Ho, fellow. Travelled far?”

The man nodded, ducking his head to look at the ground. When he spoke, it was with an accent Perceval dimly recognised—from somewhere in the north, Sorestan or Estrangore.

“This Camelot?”

“It is.”

“The High King?”

“You have an errand to the King?” Perceval glanced at the cart. Within, under a blanket, lay something like a human body. Then he caught the smell, and his stomach clenched. “Who sends you to the High King, fellow?”

The man looked up. Fear clouded his eyes. “The Silver Dragon.”

Perceval twitched the blanket back to reveal a headless body. From the crook of his own elbow, Sir Caradoc stared sightlessly at the sky.

Perceval gave a wordless cry. Not Caradoc. Not now. Not like this, stripped naked and spitefully used, with the blazon of Saunce-Pité scored into his chest.

“Sir knight?”

Perceval turned and saw two knights from the town, come to a standstill at the bridge’s head. Was he blocking their way? For the moment their devices meant nothing to his numbed brain. “I do not know you,” he said wearily. “What are your names?”

Perhaps the sight of the body in the cart warned them not to take offence at his tone. “Sir Pertisant and Sir Alisander le Orphelin.”

That sounded familiar. “Knights of the Table?”

“Even so,” said Sir Alisander, but the one named Pertisant said, “You must come from far away, not to know of us.”

He had forgotten that his shield was covered. “I am Perceval of Wales.”

Pertisant became all of a sudden very respectful. “Sir, we did not recognise you. May we pass?”

Perceval stared at him for a moment, then erupted into anger. “Go!” He set foot in his remaining stirrup and swung into the saddle. “Off into the forest, to play at being knights? Go! Go!”

Sir Pertisant moved forward uncertainly, but Alisander le Orphelin said, “Sir—?”

“Are you men?” Perceval roared. “Are you knights? Are you brothers of the Table? Can you look upon this murder without tears, without vows of justice? Back to Camelot, you brute beasts, and to arms! There will be deeds of honour to spare for all of us!”

P
ERCEVAL STALKED INTO THE
K
ING
’
S SOLAR
and laid the bloody bundle that was Caradoc’s head on the King’s chess-table.

“The Silver Dragon sends his greetings.”

Only then did he see the other men in the room—the King’s whole council—and the battle-fire dawning on their faces. Someone touched his arm, and he turned and pulled Blanchefleur close. Perhaps for the damsel’s sake, the King did not reach out to unfold the napkin in which Perceval had wrapped the head. “Caradoc?”

Over the top of Blanchefleur’s head, Perceval said, “Yes.”

“I’ll go and fetch Guimier,” Blanchefleur murmured, pulling back.

“No. Send one of the women.” The King rose; both his hands caressed the hilt of his sword. “Lynet, maybe.” He swung around to Bedivere. “Send out the call for a muster. Kay, I need not counsel you how to provision a host. Lucan, have a clerk take down the confession of Agravain. Saddle his horse, take his parole, and turn him loose.”

“The muster?” Perceval blinked. “Agravain? What’s this, sire?”

Lucan was already at the door and Blanchefleur had flung up a hand. “Father, if you’ll have him in here to give his parole, I can guess if he means to break it or not.”

“Let him break it. I’ll punish no man before he has committed his crime.”

“Sire,” Perceval said again, as men and errands flowed past him to the door.

The King turned and gripped him by the shoulder. “Sir Perceval, ride with us to the land of the Silver Dragon. We go seeking Mordred.”

N
O ONE DOUBTED WHAT RESPONSE SHOULD
be offered to Saunce-Pité’s act of defiance. Not until the army of the Table arrived at last on the Silver Dragon’s doorstep, looked about them, and doubted.

They met no resistance as they advanced—not even in the valley stronghold itself. In the village old men and women paused in open-mouthed surprise as they rode over the hill. Sir Breunis’s castle stood closed, but no heads peered over the battlement; no defiance echoed from the walls. Without resistance, the gatekeeper admitted them to an empty and lifeless building.