The Night Dance (13 page)

The tiny mouse sat under the knight’s bed and exulted in her good fortune. Excalibur was sitting on the bed above her at this very moment. The most powerful magic weapon ever created had been hand delivered to her.

It was really just too good!

Morgan the mouse leaned up against the carved leg of the narrow bed and pressed her side into a curve of the wood to itch her wound. The sword certainly delivered a nasty gash. She’d never intended to fight Bedivere, having learned from their last battle how overpowering Excalibur was. She’d just lost her temper when he’d refused to accept the bribe she’d offered.

He was so disgustingly noble!

And smart, too, as it turned out. The fortune she’d offered him would have turned to sawdust the moment she had disappeared with Excalibur. The ticket also would have disintegrated right in his hand.

It would have been satisfying for her to see him realize he’d been made a fool of, he who was making this so impossibly difficult for her. If he had just left
the sword next to the dead Arthur, she could have picked it up from the battlefield and never have had to turn into these ignominious forms or incurred these injuries in pursuit of it.

None of it mattered anymore.

Soon Eleanore would bring in a cup of poisoned cider. Good Sir Bedivere would drink it and fall asleep, never knowing what had hit him. That clod Mary would fall asleep on her own, and the girls would disappear down their hole in the floor.

All that remained was for Morgan to change out of this horrid mouse shape, pluck up Excalibur, and transport out of the room with it. Easy!

“Got ya!” Bedivere’s hand came down and scooped her up, holding her loosely in his closed palm. He opened his hand slightly and peered in at her. “I’ve no food here for you,” he said gently, though to her large sensitive ears his words banged painfully like thunder.

“Come back in the morning, though, and I’ll share my breakfast.”

She scrambled from his hand, needing to escape the unbearable loudness of his voice. He’d said he was going to do something in the morning; she’d understood that much.
You’ll be as good as dead in the morning
, she thought, scurrying through a crack under the floor.

Safely in the darkness below the floor, she wondered what she should do about Vivienne and her daughters. Now that she would soon have Excalibur in hand, it might be time to do away with them altogether.

Yes, it was, most definitely.

The magic in Excalibur would give her the power to kill Vivienne, a thing she had previously lacked.

And with an adjustment in her magical incantation, the enchanted island, along with the stag princes, could become something much more perilous than a seductive addiction. The island could turn dangerous, and the stag princes might manifest, quite unexpectedly, a darker, more deadly side of their animal natures.

This night would be as good a time as any to unleash the wild beasts of her new powers.

The lights in the bedchamber went out and soon Bedivere heard snoring coming from the serving woman’s bed. He had kept his lamp lit and, by the dim light it shed into the next room, he could see a female figure in a nightgown approaching him.

He dared to hope it was Rowena, but it was her sister who pushed aside the half-drawn drapery and entered his sleeping area carrying two goblets and a jug. It amazed him that she could look so much like Rowena and yet emanate none of her warmth or sensual spark. “I thought we might share a drink,” she offered a bit stiffly.

Instantly, he remembered Rowena’s warning. “I thank you,” he said courteously, “but might I request to share it with Rowena? It is she I will ask to wed if I can unravel this puzzle.”

“How do you know her name?” she asked sharply.

“She told it to me…in a dream,” he replied.

She eyed him suspiciously as she set the goblets and jug by the basin on the night stand and went out. He heard the sisters engage in some urgent, argumentative whispering in the bedchamber before the
drape was pushed aside again and, this time, Rowena did step into the room.

In seconds she was in his arms and they were kissing with desperate passion. She pulled back from him, holding up one finger for a pause. She stood close to the drape and spoke more loudly than she might have otherwise for the benefit of her sisters. “Let me pour you a cup of cider.”

She motioned for him to reply with a wave of her hand. “Oh…yes…that would be good,” he said, getting her message.

She filled the goblet and he reached out to take it from her, but she shook her head. Crouching, she poured the liquid carefully into a groove between two floorboards. “Here, have another,” she said in the same overly loud voice.

His eyes widened with alarm as he suddenly understood what had happened to his predecessor. These sisters were poisoning each man in order to keep their secret safe.

Rowena sat on the bed and indicated that he should sit close beside her. Glad to oblige he came next to her, encircling her with his arm. She leaned close and spoke into his ear in a barely audible whisper. “Do not drink this cider for any reason. When I leave, pretend to be in a sleep from which nothing can rouse you, but listen for movement in my bedchamber. Follow us with the greatest stealth and bring both of your swords.”

“Are you willing for me to know the secret your father wishes me to uncover?” he asked.

She looked away from him uneasily as though she didn’t know the answer to that. Then she turned back to him with a new determination. “I wish you to find the lake that you seek. I believe I can lead you to it. Perhaps when you find it you will also find my mother who has been missing since I was a child.”

“I seek Arthur’s kinswoman, the Lady of the Lake,” he whispered back, not understanding her.

She gazed into his eyes and nodded.

“Your mother is that lady?” he asked.

“I’ve come to believe so.”

“What shall I report to your father?”

A movement in the drape told him that someone was outside and he put his finger to his lip to caution her. “It seems, fair maiden, that I am overcome with a powerful fatigue I cannot explain.”

“Sleep then, sir,” Rowena said to him as she got off the bed. “I look forward to seeing you in the morning.”

“But I must stay awake to learn your secret,” he feigned a protest.

“Sleep,” she insisted as he crawled under the covers and closed his eyes, pretending to be out cold. “Sleep is what you need.”

He heard her pull back the drape. “What have you been doing all this time?” one of the sisters demanded in an angry whisper. It sounded to him like the sister who had first come in.

“No need to whisper,” Rowena said to her. “He is completely asleep thanks to the potion.”

The other sister stepped into the room and moved the goblets. “Well, I see one of them has been used and is now empty,” she noted, her suspicion seemingly satisfied. “I didn’t think you would go through with it.”

“I told you I would,” Rowena replied. “Now let’s go.”

Observing them through slitted eyes as they moved away, he saw balls of light spring to life in their bedchamber. He heard something heavy, maybe a bed, being pushed aside. There was grunting as the sisters exerted a great effort to open something that had a creaky hinge.

As a youth training to be a knight, he’d been schooled in the practice of stealth. He’d been taught to sneak up on an enemy while wearing chain mail and armor, and so he did not find it difficult now to strap on Excalibur, slide his sword into his belt, slip into his boots, and follow the sisters soundlessly down through the trapdoor.

He kept far back, concentrating on the last pinpoint of dim light in their procession through the tunnel. He made sure not to lose sight of the light, though, fearing that the intense darkness would engulf him if he did.

So intense was his concentration that only after several yards did he become aware of the rhythm of drums and flutes surrounding him. It reminded him
of his boyhood in the hills of the north and he remembered dancing with his sisters on the heather-purple moors. Liveliness crept into his step and he resisted the urge to turn a jig, thinking it would be too ridiculous a thing to do under his current circumstances. Still, the very idea of it caused him to smile.

After a while he could see a soft whitish green glow in the distance, as though the tunnel would come out to a tremendous room illuminated with this gentle light.

Hurrying, he arrived at the cavern in time to see six golden barges gliding away from the shore on the surface of a lake alive with sparkling lights. Strange animal-men with antlers stood aboard the barges beside the sisters, who were now, somehow, extravagantly attired.

He spotted Rowena at the back of one of the barges, her beauty magnified by the splendor of her dress and hair. Completely smitten as he was with her already, he had never imagined that her considerable loveliness could be further elevated so that she appeared to be no less than a princess. But there she was, the most intoxicatingly beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

And then she was gone as the barges turned behind a rocky outcropping and disappeared from view.

He slumped against a boulder, angry at himself for letting them get away from him. In the next second,
though, he realized that he had finally come to the shores of a lake.

He observed the lights sparkling just above and below its surface. This was what Rowena had wanted him to find!

Unsheathing Excalibur, he waved it above his head.

A low, vibrating hum echoed off the cavern’s high rock walls as the surface of the lake was suddenly covered in blinding light.

The mouse opened one drugged eye as she lay on her side on the dirt beneath the floorboards. Twitching her whiskers, she peered into the darkness.

Ow!
She felt as if her head had been smashed with a skillet!

As she lay there blinking her way back to consciousness, she remembered having run under the floor to escape Bedivere’s banging gong of a voice. She’d been standing under there, waiting for all of them to leave, planning their final destruction, when a sweet liquid had come trickling down on her head.

All she’d done was lick some off her fur to find out what it was and—lights out! It was the last thing she remembered doing.

What shameful ignominy—to be laid flat by her own poisonous concoction! Why on Earth had someone poured it into the floor?

Staggering to her furry feet, she listened. Someone out there was snoring like a thunderstorm.

Although even the slightest movement caused her head to feel as though it might explode, Morgan
crept slowly out from under the floor. Her mouse vision enabled her to see easily in the dark as she scurried into the bedchamber.

The trapdoor was open. The heavily slumbering Mary was the only one still there! Bedivere was gone, too, and it seemed he’d taken Excalibur with him!

Why would he do that unless Rowena had figured out that her mother was the lady he sought and had told him he could find her in the underground lake?

Morgan didn’t know what might happen if that sword intersected with the magic of the lake. The lake might act on it like an accelerator, multiplying its power many times over. It was certainly possible.

She turned back into herself, which lessened the pain in her head slightly. There was no time to be wasted now. She had to get down into the underground cavern and stop Bedivere from throwing Excalibur into the lake.

As she began to lower herself into the opening, she stumbled on the first step. She’d never catch up with them like this and becoming a mouse might be even slower. Making time was essential now.

A look of determined concentration came over her as she shifted shape and changed into a bat. With a flourish of leathery wings, she swooped down into the tunnel.

Vivienne gazed up slowly as the surface of the lake above her began to shine. It was only a shard of light at first, but it rapidly grew until the entire watery roof above her head was ablaze.

She knew that hum, had heard it many times in the course of her training in magic. The last time it had vibrated so intensely was when she created the magic from which Excalibur was formed.

Excalibur!

It was the only thing in the world that could make the magical energies of the universe reverberate at such a speed!

What was happening?

Swimming with all her strength, she made it to the surface and pushed against the bubble-like covering just below the light. It pushed back, but she could tell that it wasn’t as strong as it had been. The magical light over it was weakening its power.

Vivienne centered all her physical strength and pushed again. Her right arm blasted through the seal, pushed up through the light.

“Come to me!” she shouted to Excalibur, her arm stretched to its limit, her hand spread wide, ready and waiting for it to be delivered.

There was a whistling in the air as the sword was thrown across the lake. It turned end over end and then—

She caught it!

With an ecstatic cry of triumph, she swung it in a circle three times before pulling it below the surface.

Sinking to the bottom of the lake, clutching the sword to her, she gazed at its magnificence. She had imbued it with all the powerful magic at her command, and now it had come back to her with its power intact. She pressed her cheek against the flat of its blade and allowed its invigorating magic to surge through her body, restoring her to new strength.

Pushing off from the floor of the lake she surged upward, this time bursting completely through the magical seal over the lake as she rose in a spray of water. Her joy at being free was so great that it acted as a field of energy that allowed her to hover there in the air.

She expected to see her daughters there on the shore but was surprised to see instead a strapping, handsome man staring at her, wide-eyed with surprise. She had seen his face before in her dream of Arthur’s death on the battlefield. He had sat beside her dying nephew, talking with him consolingly.

Vivienne noticed something else. There was a bat circling above his head.