The Guinevere Deception (Camelot Rising 1)

But first, church. Being queen was absurd. The last thing she should be worried about was making an appearance to support a religion she neither understood nor cared about. But it was Arthur’s religion, and thus had to be hers. She rubbed unconsciously at her wrists, tracing the lines where Rhoslyn had been bound. Appearances had to be kept. She had to be above suspicion.

They wandered back to Sir Percival’s manor just as Dindrane hurried out to meet them.

Arthur had built the church in the center of Camelot. It was the on

e new thing he had constructed in his three years as king. They walked there together, Brangien on one side of Guinevere, Dindrane on the other. “You know,” the older woman said, “he was in love with me for a while. The king. Such advances he made! But I thought it best for the kingdom that he find a young wife. One who could bear him many children.”

“You are as noble as you are kind.” Guinevere smiled, grateful for the distraction from her far more real worries. “I am grateful you did not snatch him up when you had the chance.”

Dindrane sniffed dismissively. “He is not really my type. Awful hair. You should make him grow it.” She sat next to Guinevere on the bench nearest the altar. It did not go unnoticed by those already gathered. Dindrane glowed with pleasure at the whispers.

Guinevere had never actually attended a Christian church service before. Merlin had no use for the Romans’ castoffs. But Arthur had taken to it, and Guinevere could see why. Everyone was gathered in the same large wooden building. The ceiling soared overhead. It was simple but elegant. Clean. They all sat on the same level. Everyone listened to the same prayers, performed the same actions. It was an equalizer. And it gave the people something in common with each other. Something to unify them.

Once the service was done—a relief, as Guinevere had had to pretend to understand Latin, which she most certainly did not—she sat through a meal with another knight’s wife. And then called on another. And another. She saved Blanchefleur for last, and made certain that Dindrane was invited. Blanchefleur positively seethed with resentment.

By the end of the day, Guinevere’s head ached as much as her feet did. Performing queenly duties was almost as exhausting as performing magic. Women truly were the stronger gender. All the subtle games they had to play, the ways they teased power from those around them! She had much to learn there.

But no time. She had a far greater first duty. When the day was at last finished, her real work began.

During the droning conversations of the day, Guinevere had imagined knots, in infinite combinations and possibilities. It had been a useful exercise, making her realize a simple sight knot to see magic would not have worked. Sight knots could work with a specific target, but asking her eyes to see something unknown would be too taxing for such a delicate sense. She could have blinded herself.

Knots could enhance and direct what already existed; they could stop things. But they could not make her senses do something new. Knot magic was pedestrian. It was about binding magic to a task, not discovering new things. But surely she could find a way. Her fingers twitched, tying imaginary knots.

And then she realized the solution. It was not her eyes that needed to see better. Her eyes took in only what the world presented to them. Her hands were what could take information not readily given. Her hands sensed things her eyes never could. If she could enhance that sense, extend it, then she would have what she needed.

She wrapped herself in a robe and hurried outside, up and up and up the castle to the alcove. It was the middle of the night. If she were caught, no one could see what she had been doing. And she could claim difficulty sleeping while Arthur was away. Once she was tucked in away from the wind and any eyes that might spy her, she got to work.

She used hair, not thread, since she needed as much of herself as she could afford. She looped the strands around her fingers, tying an altered version of a knot for extending sight. Her fingers tingled with the rush of her pulse. The blood was caught there, pooling, throbbing. Guinevere stumbled, leaning against the outer wall of the alcove. Everything else in her body was light and distant, her whole self seeming to dwell in her fingers alone.

So she held out her hands and she felt.

She started with the city. There were tiny warm spots scattered throughout, and she noted the location of each. She let her hands roam over Camelot. A few pinpricks of darkness, but they vanished like smoke beneath her hands before she could determine what they were.

She took a deep breath. The next one she wanted to avoid, but she would not turn away from her duty. She pushed her hands to the lake. And she felt…

Nothing.

She shuddered, chilled straight through. There was an absolute absence of magic. This was the lake that had held the Lady. This was the lake that had delivered Excalibur to Arthur. And now? A still void.

Trembling, the demands of the magic already draining her, she hurried past it, pushing her hands out, out, out among the fields, among the regions surrounding Camelot. They were not as lifeless as the lake, but they were dormant. Nothing sparked or seethed until she got to the area where she had lost Rhoslyn and the knight. It crackled like a campfire, warming her hands.

She collapsed. The strands of hair around her fingers snapped. The blood returned to its normal flow. She wondered when feeling would return to her hands, and suspected this awful pins-and-needles feeling would continue for some time.

She had found some leads, but it was the absence she discovered that bothered her more than anything. A lake that size, with that history, should have had some magic. As she stumbled back down the stairs, her hands throbbing and agonizingly numb at the same time, she tried to understand what it could mean.

A dark possibility seized her. If she could channel herself into her hands to make them more powerful than ever, who was to say that the dark magic of the world could not be made to do the same?

What if someone was siphoning all the magic of the lake, all the magic of the land? And what would happen when they amassed enough?

She had to get to Rhoslyn. She had to stop her.

* * *

For the first time in her life, Guinevere wished for a sword.

She had anticipated fighting magic, not people. But this was why she was here. Whatever it took, she would face Rhoslyn and her knight, and she would come out triumphant.

She slipped into the darkness of sleeping Camelot. The streets hummed and whistled with the wind from the lake. She shivered, remembering the cold void. But that was not her mystery. In her mind, the warm spots of magic burned like the afterimage of the sun. Sliding from pool of darkness to pool of darkness, feeling more like the night than like a person, Guinevere found the first location. It had been the most familiar to her, after all. The edge of the cliff where the patchwork knight had twice eluded her.