Our Brave Bree.
I inhale again, stronger this time. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he says, standing up. “If you’re dead set on being here, then you definitely need that Legendborn crash course. But first, you need tea.”
* * *
William wasn’t kidding about the tea.
He makes me wait outside the bathroom for a few minutes while he goes down the hall to a kitchenette. When he comes back, he presses a steaming mug of lemon-ginger tea in between my palms and orders me to nurse it while we talk.
I’m beginning to understand why Sel didn’t fight William’s will. He’s imperious without being arrogant, and has an uncanny knack for being right.
Plus, the tea is delicious.
He sweeps in front of me and leads us down the hall to a navy door at the far end, opposite the elevator. “How many basements does the Lodge have?” I ask.
“Two. The infirmary and training rooms are on the one above, plus some recovery rooms for seriously injured patients. Down here is all the other secret stuff we can’t risk anyone seeing by accident. Artifacts and member documents”—he jerks a thumb at a door we’ve just passed—“are in a cold storage room where we have more control over the temperature and lighting conditions. Fortunately, the oldest items have been so infused with aether by Merlins over the years that we don’t have to worry about them crumbling to pieces.” He reaches the door and punches in another code on the keypad near the handle. “But this is what you really need to see.”
I squeeze the mug between my hands. My heart gives a rowdy thump so loud I worry he can hear it. “No demons, right? You’re not throwing me into a medieval fun house of horrors as some sort of hazing thing, are you?”
He laughs, loud and light. “No”—he opens the door and leans in, searching the interior wall for a light switch—“but ‘Medieval Fun House of Horrors’ would make a great band name.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m grateful for his humor. Another sip of tea, and my stomach is almost calm.
He finds the light switch, illuminating not another room but the landing at the top of a wide spiral staircase.
We take the stairs down two more levels, and he talks as we walk. “Legendborn parents explain the Order and Lines to their children when we’re young. Vassals know enough to be dangerous, but with new Pages like you, the sponsors are usually the ones who fill in all the juicy details.”
“Nick didn’t really have the time,” I mutter as I traipse down the stairs behind him. I didn’t really give him the time, is what I think.
William remains unfazed. “I figured. That’s all right—I kind of like doing the honors.”
We reach a large, damp-smelling room that is empty save an old rug and a few sitting chairs. After he hits another set of overhead lights, he heads to the back. At the very far end is a wall covered by a black curtain that stretches as wide as the room. “After a Vassal swears to the Code of Secrecy and pledges to the Order, someone from their assigned Line explains the origin of the Order and its mission. If they want their kid to Page and have a chance of becoming a Squire, that child is sworn to the Code as well.”
“And that works?”
“Yep.” He unwraps a thick golden rope and grunts, drawing it down from a pulley. “Vassals don’t expose us; most families have been aligned with the Order for centuries, and they have too much to gain socially and financially, even if their kids don’t Squire in the end. Besides”—William grins—“rich people love secrets.”
As he pulls, the curtain draws upward, revealing the entirety of the wall, or what I’d thought was a wall.
Taking up the whole of my vision is the largest single slab of silver I’ve ever seen. Even bigger than the Chapel. It must be three stories tall, reaching all the way up to the far wall of the first floor. Running down the slab are thousands of meticulously carved lines. Every few inches, the lines break for sparkling stars made of gems, then start again below them. The slab is so tall that I have to step back to see it in its entirety.
He crosses his arms and gazes up, up, up. “This is the Wall of Ages. The thirteen bloodlines of the Round Table, and their Scions.”
At the very top of the Wall, embedded in silver, are thirteen fist-size stones. In the center is a white diamond, but the other gems glimmer in various shades of red and green and blue and yellow. Engraved in elegant script above the stones is one phrase: Y LLINACH YW’R DDEDDF.
“The Line is Law,” William translates. “The Order and Vassal colonizers were a blended bunch: Welsh, English, Scots, Scotch-Irish, Germans. But sixth-century Wales is Arthur’s birthplace, so Welsh was the Order’s first language. Some of the old incantations are still in Welsh, like the swyns I use in the infirmary.”
Alice would love this, I think. The history, the Wall, everything. Then I feel a pang of guilt for wishing she was with me. I’d never want her to get hurt, and right now bodily injury seems like the price of admission.
“Potential Scion children are told the lore early and often. First by our parents, then by the Lieges—retired Scions and Squires—then by our parents again when we turn sixteen. That’s the first year our knights may Call on us.” His eyes lose focus as he returns to a story he’s clearly heard many, many times. “At the Round Table’s peak, Arthur had over one hundred and fifty knights at his command. But over time, the Shadowborn Wars, our fight with the Cysgodanedig, cut that number down until only the thirteen strongest knights remained. Merlin and Arthur feared what the world would become should the Table fall, and so Merlin devised the Spell of Eternity: a powerful casting to magnify the remaining knights’ abilities and bind their spirits to their bloodline so that their heirs could forever stand against the darkness. So that the Table would live on, immortal.” William’s voice has dipped low with reverence, or perhaps he’s echoing the reverence of those who told the story before. “When our knights Awaken, their spirit lives again. This is why we call those outside the Lines Unanedig. ‘Onceborn.’ And why we call ourselves Chwedlanedig. ‘Legendborn.’ ”
To be able to trace one’s family back that far is something I have never fathomed. My family only knows back to the generation after Emancipation. Suddenly, it’s hard to stand here and take in the magnificence of the Wall and not feel an undeniable sense of ignorance and inadequacy. Then, a rush of frustration because someone probably wanted to record it all, but who could have written down my family’s history as far back as this? Who would have been able to, been taught to, been allowed to? Where is our Wall? A Wall that doesn’t make me feel lost, but found. A Wall that towers over anyone who lays eyes on it.
Instead of awe, I feel… cheated.
I take a deep breath and turn to William, my voice harsh. “You said sixth century? Wouldn’t each knight’s bloodline include thousands of living descendants by now?”
“Yes, but a Scion is more than a descendant—they’re an heir. The knight’s inheritance, their enhanced abilities and affinity for aether, lives in one person at a time. And that inheritance is only transmitted by an Awakened Scion, one who was Called to power like Felicity was tonight. Think the British monarchy and the line of succession: not every child is heir to the throne, only the eldest of the sovereign. If the heir apparent cannot take the throne, then it goes to their child, or their child’s child, et cetera. If the heir has no child, power flows to their sibling, then their sibling’s kids. And even then, whoever is in line must be eligible.”