For Camelot's Honor by Sarah Zettel Read Free Book Online

and sinew tear and screamed aloud. The hawk soared up again, Elen’s blood pouring as red rain from its wings.
    Elen stood mute and stunned in her pain, her fresh blood staining her dress and cloak. The thunder of hoofbeats shook the ground and the shimmering air. A rider appeared over the crest of the hill, his cloak flapping behind him. A spear was in his hand and he hurled it impossibly high into the blinding blue sky. It pierced the hawk like an arrow and the blood-stained bird dropped to the earth at Elen’s feet. It clutched her heart in its talons and the horseman’s spear had split her heart and the bird’s in two.
    Elen looked at the horseman, and saw under his helm he had eyes the color of the evening sky. She spread her hands, now covered with her own blood.
    â€œYou have slain me,” said Elen, and she fell into darkness.
    Thunder boomed.
    Elen shot upright. Sweat drenched her and her heart pounded frantically against her ribs. A draft curled damp and heavy around her throat, and she shivered hard. All about her, sleeping women snored, sighed, and muttered to themselves, turning and reshuffling beneath their blankets, pulling closer together for warmth, but none woke, save Elen.
    Elen wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop her shudders. She could still see the blood raining from the hawk’s feathers, and the eyes of the rider who looked at her so steadily.
    What does it mean?
Elen shivered again and outside the wind whistled under the eaves, calling out the souls of the sleepers to come and play.
    Elen tossed her blankets aside and found her shoes and woolen over-dress by touch. Shuffling her feet, she threaded her way carefully through the maze of beds and pallets, earning a grunt and a sleepy curse here and there as her toes prodded backs and hands. At last, her hand found the threshold and the door and Elen made her way into the great hall.
    In the center of the hall, a few embers had been uncovered in the central firepit. In their orange glow, Elen saw her mother sitting on her stool wrapped in her grey, fur-lined cloak. She looked up as Elen came forward.
    â€œSo. You feel it too, my daughter?” She looked towards the doors as the rain knocked hard against them. “There is more than wind and thunder out there tonight. I fear your brother will be drowned, but he insisted he be allowed to go out to the sentries, just to make sure none of Urien’s men come back to try more mischief.”
    Elen knelt at her mother’s feet, huddling between the woman and the fire for her warmth. Adara lifted her chapped and swollen hand and stroked her daughter’s hair in a gesture Elen had known since she was a child. “I dreamed, Mother,” she said.
    Adara nodded, as if she already knew. “Tell me your dream.”
    Elen told her of the hawk and the blood, the horseman and the spear.
    â€œMother, It think it was Geraint, Arthur’s man.”
    â€œAre you certain?”
    Elen thought carefully, searching her feelings. “No, but it was very like him.”
    Adara blew out a sigh. “Bad to worse. Very well, daughter.”
    Elen bit her lip to silence a curse, against Urien, against Camelot, against prophecy and dreams. Why could they not be left in peace? It was all their father had wanted, all their whole family had ever wanted. “What do we do?”
    â€œTonight, nothing. Tomorrow … it may be we must call on a tie of blood to settle the truth of these things.”
    â€œBlood?” The word sat Elen up straight.
    Mother nodded. “You know of Arthur’s cunning-man, Merlin?”
    Elen frowned. “The one they call No Man’s Son?”
    â€œYes.” Mother’s gaze grew distant, watching memories much more than the glowing coals before her. “He may have no father, but he had a mother, and she and my grandmother were kin.”
    There were as many tales of Merlin as there were of Arthur, and like Arthur, not