Lancelot laughed. “It is not so far if you start on the cliff sides. Now, we are losing the light.”
Before Guinevere could counsel caution, Lancelot had begun to climb. Her speed was breathtaking. While Guinevere did not particularly fear heights—preferring, apparently, to divert all her terror to water—her heart beat faster watching. There was one breathlessly infinite moment when Lancelot’s fingers slipped and she dangled by one hand, but she quickly recovered and finished the ascent, disappearing over the top of the cliff face.
Then the rope cascaded down, reminding Guinevere of her imagined vines. But this rope brought no threats, only protectors.
“I placed the rock away from the edge, so it should warn you before anything reaches the cliff face,” Lancelot called, dangling casually from the rope by one hand as she looked down over Camelot. She dropped neatly to the walkway, then gave the rope a sharp tug. It slithered free and fell to a pile at her feet. Lancelot gathered it back up. “I did not see anything amiss, and I could see for a fair distance.”
“Good. Thank you. Tomorrow I would like to ride out and scout the eastern borders just to be certain.”
“We can find an excuse for that. You look tired. Shall we return you to your rooms?”
Guinevere sighed, sitting and putting her back against the rock. She looked out over Camelot as candlelight began to flicker in windows and along the streets. From up here it was so simple, so tidy. She knew that running a city was anything but simple and tidy. Still, it was a pretty picture with the gray shops and homes, the slate and thatch roofs, the organic pathways of the streets running through everything like seams. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine pulling the whole city over herself like a blanket.
She turned to Lancelot, annoyed to see that Lancelot looked as Lancelot ever did: ready. “You should look tired, too. I need to sleep, but I am afraid of what I will dream.”
“Tell me about the dream that frightened you.”
Guinevere had told Brangien some of it, but she went into more detail now. “It felt like I was experiencing someone else’s dream, or memory,” she said, after explaining it. “It was foreign.”
“But it does not sound like the Dark Queen.”
“No, I agree. I have felt her magic, tasted her power. This was different.”
“The Lady.” Lancelot said it matter-of-factly. Hearing her state it like that made it feel more real. Guinevere doubted herself less. “Did the dream seem threatening?”
“Yes!” Guinevere stopped herself, putting one hand against the stone. She could feel nothing now, which was both a comfort and an annoyance. Had the dream been threatening? During it, she had not been frightened. Even the plunge into the abyss had seemed necessary and welcome. All her terror had been upon waking. “Maybe. I do not know. But why would she invade my dreams? Because Merlin hid me too well?”
“I wonder if…” Lancelot trailed off, hesitant.
“Go on.”
“We heard her, when she trapped Merlin. She accused him of stealing something precious, and she wanted it back.”
“Yes. The sword.”
“That is what we assumed. But what if we were wrong?” Lancelot stared out at the twilight. The lake reflected the sky, luminous with the last, lingering moments of daylight. Guinevere could almost love the way it held on to the light. She wished the lake were the mirror it appeared to be, so she could look into it and discover her own face. Map it like she could map this city. Label and understand and claim it as her own.
“Why would we be wrong about that?” she asked. In the approaching night, her skin looked bled of color, the same shade as the lake. She stared at the lavender veins of her hands, so like the natural channels of a river, feeding the landscape of her body.
“Why would she attack Merlin over the sword, when Arthur is the one who has it? Why would Merlin be afraid she would come after you to get it back?” Lancelot said.
“Well, because…to punish Merlin. He let himself be sealed in the cave so she would not find me and come after me to hurt him.”
“If an ancient power like the Lady of the Lake wanted Excalibur back, she would have it. She allied herself with Arthur. Took his side against the Dark Queen. It does not seem like her.”
“What does she seem like?” Guinevere asked, genuinely puzzled. The light was quickly failing, and she could not see Lancelot’s expression anymore, only an impression of her face, as though viewing her through thick, warped glass.
“I mean, she has no reputation for capriciousness or cruelty.”
“Other than entombing Merlin alive,” Guinevere added wryly.
“Well. Yes. She was devastated over what he stole. But she has never come after Arthur. And you have nothing to do with the sword. You cannot even be around it. Is there another reason Merlin would work so hard to keep you from the Lady?”
Merlin had begged Lancelot to hide Guinevere that day when the Lady attacked him. And he had sent Guinevere to Arthur for protection. Guinevere was also nearly certain that Merlin had put the debilitating fear of water into her so she would not go where the Lady could get to her.
The lake beneath them was dead, devoid of any magic or life. What if Merlin had done that? Had somehow made it inhospitable to the Lady of the Lake as further protection? Guinevere wondered if perhaps Arthur had helped, using Excalibur.
The stars began to pierce the fabric of the sky like tiny needle points. Guinevere did not remember the stars so much as she knew them down to her soul. She had stared up at them for so long they were written on her mind where no one—not even Merlin—could erase them. “What else could he have taken from her, though? And why does it involve me? I— Oh. Oh no.”