Arthur pressed his thumb as lightly as a whisper against her bottom lip. Then he lifted it. “No more blood.”
“Blood stops. Peace and protection last.” She closed her eyes. But though she was weak everywhere, she could not sleep. It hurt too much. Her blood burned cold, tracing its way through her body with spikes of pain. “Tell me a story,” she said. “Tell me how you defeated the Dark Queen. I have only heard it from Merlin, and you know how confusing his stories are. He starts in the middle and it only gets more jumbled from there.”
Arthur sighed, shifting and sliding down so he lay next to her with his hands behind his head. The weight of him depressed the mattress and she slid closer. Neither of them moved.
“The wolves came first,” he said.
* * *
The wolves came first.
Teeth and jaws coated in the sticky blood of the throats they had already torn. But men could fight wolves, and they did. The wolves melted back into the darkness, repulsed.
Then the insects came. Crawling, biting, swarming. A man cannot fight a thousand wasps with a sword. Merlin called down birds, flocks of starlings and murders of crows, so thick that the rushing of their wings was as a hurricane, the stretch of their wings blocking out the sun. The birds ate the insects.
Then the Dark Queen woke the trees. A forest where there had been none. Spirits ancient but fragile enough to fear men. To hate men. The trees separated the soldiers. Voices cried out in pain, in terror, and the wolves found them.
Merlin called forth fire. He lashed at the trees with terrible force.
The trees felt their brothers and sisters dying. They quaked and trembled. What was the love of a dark queen against the fire of a mad wizard? Better to live for a hundred years before tasting the ax of man than to burn away in a single moment. And so, when Merlin bade the trees sleep, they sank their spirits deep into the soil, away from where the Dark Queen could call them.
Merlin quelled the fire. The men stumbled from the trees. The wolves stayed in the shadows and the darkness. The Dark Queen emerged, ringed by her knights. They wore armor of stone, of roots, of skulls and bones. Snakes, fangs bared, encircled their arms. Bats clung to their backs—wings pulsing, ready to fly into battle.
Merlin told her to stop. She laughed, the sound like the wailing of infants, the cries of women, the dying gasps of men. What will you do, old man, against the water?
The men trembled. They fell to their knees in despair. They were on the shores of a great lake. Birds could not fight water. Fire could not drive it back. Swords could no more cut a deluge than they could grow if planted in the ground.
The Dark Queen raised her hand, calling out their destruction.
The water stayed cold and still. Unmoving.
The Dark Queen screamed in rage, demanding, pleading. But still the water did not join her. Forest and water, ever allies, ever companions, now divided.
* * *
Here, Arthur paused in his telling. The cadence slipped, the images he painted for Guinevere suddenly became less story and more…personal.
“The Lady of the Lake,” he whispered, “chose my side. Just like Merlin. But the rest was up to me.” Then he pulled the story back in place, like tucking a blanket around Guinevere as he told the rest.
* * *
The dread fairy knights charged. Alone, Arthur stood against them. Excalibur pierced them, unmade them. The Green Knight, ancient forest god and unbeatable foe, became dead leaves and branches. The bats released their hold on the Black Knight, flapping blindly away and dropping their liege to shatter like glass against the ground. The snakes fled, the skulls and bones of the Dead Knight becoming lifeless things once more. Where there had been a living nightmare menace, now there was nothing but the detritus of ages past.
The Dark Queen stood alone.
Merlin did not want to kill her. He did not want to see her ended. He bade her retreat as the trees had done. Send herself deep into the earth. Let chaos sleep.
A great stag bolted free from the trees, its eyes red with madness. It lowered its head and charged at the Dark Queen. It impaled her, lifting her high in the air. Her arms were outstretched, her face beatific. Then the stag turned and disappeared back into the trees, the forest claiming the Dark Queen forevermore.
“No,” Guinevere said. The story matched what Merlin had told her in bits and pieces. He delivered stories the same way the grouchy falcon delivered food. A little here, a little there, dropped on the head when least expected. She struggled to sit up as certainty gripped her. “The Dark Queen is not dead. You saw the knights. They were not killed. They were unmade. She was not unmade.”
Arthur turned on his side so they were face-to-face. “I followed her.” He sighed. If the early story was blood-tinged horror, this part was the stage beyond horror. The weariness of unspeakable tasks. “Through the forest. Across plains. Finally, we came to a meadow. I shot the stag. Her body fell. And then…we destroyed it.” He closed his eyes. “The Dark Queen is dead. There are traces of her magic still, the chaos that bites at my borders. Like the village you saw. That used to happen regularly. Now, it is so rare people forget to fear the trees. Soon they will walk and hunt in forests fearing only the things they should.”
Guinevere felt oddly deflated. She should have been terrified to think she might face the Dark Queen, but at least there would have been a target. An opponent. “What should people fear? Other men? Like Sir Maleagant?” She wanted him to tell her what had been in the letter. If she could not define the threat she faced, she wanted to know about all the others.
Arthur sighed. “Yes. Other men. We do not need a dark queen when we have so much darkness within ourselves. But we will beat back the chaos and the darkness. I am glad you are here. I have been fighting this battle for so long. When I lost Merlin, I was alone.”
“I am sorry you had to send him away.”