But before Lenore could answer, a paladin with sallow cheeks entered the temple, blood dripping from his sword.
Lenore used the altar stone to drag herself to her feet. She picked up the dagger on the floor. “Run, Nimue.”
Nimue clutched the bundle to her breast and froze with indecision. “I won’t leave you.”
“Run!” Lenore screamed.
Nimue managed to take a few steps toward the stairs, and the Red Paladin moved to block her. His dull black eyes flicked between Nimue and Lenore.
Lenore was pale and unsteady from loss of blood, but she advanced on the paladin.
“Mother!” Nimue cried.
Lenore looked at her daughter with eyes filled with love and remorse. “I love you. I’m sorry this falls to you. You must find Merlin.” At this she turned and lunged at the Red Paladin with the dagger, giving Nimue a second to escape.
Through eyes blurred with tears, Nimue clawed up the pathway of the Sunken Temple, fighting the impulse to look back, wishing herself deaf to the sounds of struggle below. Clutching the bundle under her arm, she staggered through the veil of ivy and into the Iron Wood. She ran to the lookout where, just a morning before, she and Squirrel had laughed and wrestled.
From here all of Dewdenn unfurled before her. She saw the hill of burning crosses and paladins on horseback charging across the field from the east to cut off those attempting to escape. At the bottom of the hill, another group of paladins freed huge black wolves from their leashes and set them after the remaining villagers. Nimue spun around and raced back into the forest, praying to the Old Gods of the Sky Folk to guide her.
At that moment, the skies above Castle Pendragon boiled and heaved. The archers atop the gatehouse had never seen a storm come on so suddenly and with such menace. They took shelter in the alcoves as lightning pulsed within the clouds and ripples of thunder shuddered the castle stones.
Hundreds of feet above, in Pendragon’s highest flanking tower, Merlin completed painting a large circle on the floor in heavy grease. At the center of the circle lay an open spell book. Out of practice, Merlin double-checked the incantations. He might have lost his magic, but he was still a master scholar of the dark arts. Rising, he pushed aside the feathered talismans he’d hung from the timber in order to position four heavy mirrors, each at opposite angles of the turret. Merlin relit several large candles of invocation that had gone out during the heavy wind gusts. With the candle flames, he kindled a branch of wormwood and waved the smoke about before dropping the branch nto the grease circle, causing it, too, to ignite.
Another peal of thunder shook the castle, and a shout was heard from outside. “We’re coming in! This is bloody madness!”
“No!” Merlin barked, swinging back toward the door.
Outside on the wall, footmen Chist and Borley held on to the bricks as the wind swept through with enough force to lift them off their feet. Driving hail danced off the bricks and rattled their helmets.
“You’ll do no such thing!” Merlin bellowed as he hurried from the turret into the wind and sleet in a state of manic urgency. He pulled himself onto the battlement. His robes fluttered above a two-hundred-foot drop. The footmen reached for him, but he paid them no mind. Merlin muttered incantations under his breath in a language older than Latin. He tied a pouch of powdered crystal and crushed eggshells, mixed into a paste with his own blood, to a twenty-foot iron pole etched with runes. One end he fastened to a banner housing, with the other end pointed to the heaving sky. There was a time when I was the storm, Merlin thought. When the lightning flew from my fingertips and the winds roared at my command. Instead he gripped at the stones as the wind tried to rip him over the wall. But Merlin was defiant. I am no longer the Druid I was, but I am not helpless. I am still Merlin, and I will know the secrets of the gods.
Merlin had attached a flapping scroll with melted wax to the end of the iron pole.
“You were supposed to be holding this!” he roared back at the footmen, referring to the iron pole, but his words were carried away in the storm. A tremendous bolt of lightning drew his eyes skyward. Inside a mountainous dark cloud, the lightning pulsed like a god’s glowing heart, beating once, twice, three times.
Merlin wiped the hair and rain away from his face, not trusting his eyes. Again, the lightning flashed inside the clouds, illuminating unnatural shapes.
“I don’t want to die!” Borley howled as he headed for the safety of the turret.
“Wait!” Merlin called after him, leaping down from the battlement. He grabbed Chist by the shoulders and threw him against the wall.
“What—what’re you doing?” Chist struggled, but Merlin held him fast, eyes shooting back to the light pulsing in the clouds. There it was again. Three shapes.
Merlin turned to Chist and pressed his hand to the three red crowns of House Pendragon against the yellow of his tunic. Then he turned back to the sky. The lightning pulsed again inside the cloud, forming a halo around three red crowns.
“Gods,” Merlin whispered. The signs were finally clear.
A magical child.
The end of prophecy.
And the death of a king.
EIGHT
THE SHELTER OF THE WOOD muffled the sounds of carnage. Screams faded on the wind, until Nimue could hear only her own heaving breaths as she darted along the trails that had defined her since she was born. The map of her past had now become the slender path to her survival. She passed the deer grove and the hollow oak where the finches nested. Out of the corner of her eye, something black shot between the trees. Another flash of black scurried around the den boulders.
Wolves.
She threw her bundle onto the tabletop rock, a wide flat stone—ten feet square—that in kinder times served as a stage for child theatricals and a sun bed for lazy village dogs. Now it was Nimue’s last stand. She climbed onto the rock as the flesh-eaters rushed in from all sides, five of them snarling at the edge of the rock. One leaped halfway onto the ledge, and Nimue drove her heel into its snout, sending the beast sprawling to the ground. But it wheeled around and leaped again. Nimue backed away, cornered.
Behind her was a ten-foot drop, before her certain death at the jaws of the wolves. Another scrabbled onto the tabletop and snatched her boot in its teeth. Nimue screamed, kicking wildly, until the creature fell away, but it was only a matter of time.
A glint of silver caught Nimue’s eye, and she turned to the bundle by her feet. The sackcloth had torn away in one spot, revealing a dark iron pommel carved with a rune of four circles connecting to a center circle inlaid with silver.
“The drought is ended!” King Uther proclaimed, chin held high in victory as servers carried buckets of rainwater and placed them at the center of the feasting table beside the assembled guests. The buckets joined pewter plates of roasted hens, stewed rabbits, pigeons wrapped in bacon, honey-baked partridges, and plump pheasants. The mood was jovial even as the storm continued to rage. Each clap of thunder elicited gasps and applause as Uther stood at the end of the table.
“The gods smile upon us,” Uther boasted.
The assembled banged their knives on the table and chanted Uther’s name and “The drought is ended!”
One nobleman raised a jug of ale. “To the king!”