The Knight of Lions
By Cretin de Twonk
It was yet another religious feast in the court of King Arthur. Nobody was sure which saint or occasion it was in honour of, except perhaps Merlyn, but everybody pretended to know what was going on. Some time before the seventeenth course the King was wine-soaked, and Queen Gwenevere kindly put him to bed.
Calogrenand took up position outside the door. Dodinas the Barbarian and Dyfed of T'in-Tagel noticed this, and left the table dragging Yvan son of Uhrience in their wake.
"Wait," Yvan said. "I think the Queen deserves a bit of um, privacy, don't you reckon?"
"Oh come on, Yvan," Dyfed laughed. "Where's your sense of intrigue? They've never gone to bed in the middle of a feast before. I bet she gives him indigestion."
"I hope this isn't going to turn into one of those Roman orgy thingies," Dodinas sighed, scratching his loincloth. "I don't fancy getting it on with the servants. Not on top of the bear's toenail soup."
"They wouldn't fancy doing much with you, either," Yvan said.
Calogrenand was bent over with his ear to the wood, a look of intense concentration on his long white face.
"Cal!" Dyfed snapped.
The older knight hurriedly stood up straight. "Just, er...just what do you think you're doing, disturbing the King and Queen?"
"She must be disturbed, marrying a bloke like him," Kay said, strolling around the corner.
"Sir Kay," Calogrenand stuttered. "Lovely. Ah. I was about to tell these fellows a story concerning something that happened to me."
Kay was scathing. "Not trying to catch the Queen in her under-armour?"
"No!"
Yvan's interest perked up. Sir Calogrenand was at least ten years older than him, as well as being his cousin. Yvan knew he was able to tell a good story.
"What happened?" he said.
"It was something that occurred seven years ago," the white knight said. He lost his stutter and sat on the doorstep. Evidently he had remembered something with which to pass the time. "I was riding in the forest of Broccoli, when I came across a strange being--"
"Brocelliand," the Queen said behind Dyfed's right shoulder.
They all jumped, but Calogrenand exploded off his makeshift seat and lost hold of his helmet.
"Excellent," Kay said. "Really excellent. You're very bold and forward now, Cal, and the most polite of us all. It's only natural the Queen will think you're the best with your manners. We failed to rise through laziness, Your Majesty, I'm terribly sorry."
"Kay!" the Queen said. Her eyes glittered at him like sunlight on water. "I think you would burst if you couldn't flay someone with your tongue once a day."
Kay's eyes glittered back, though he was also calm. "I apologise. Cal was going to tell us a tale which it might please you to hear. Knowing him, it's bound to be amusing, if only for the slapstick. In fact, why don't you command him to tell it? He'll run away otherwise."
"Rather not," Calogrenand muttered, staring at his own feet.
Yvan felt sorry for him. "He needn't if he doesn't want to."
"Cal?" the Queen said softly.
"All right." Calogrenand sighed, two pink spots decorating his cheekbones. "If you're all so desperate to hear it.
I was riding through Brocelliand forest, when I came across a clearing being trampled by a herd of wild stags. Sitting calmly on a rock in the middle of the commotion was a large creature that looked vaguely man-shaped and spoke like a man, but--"
"It was a woman?" Kay butted in.
"No," Calogrenand said. "His skin was like boiled leather--"
"Sounds like my aunt," Kay muttered.
"Ignore him," Yvan advised his cousin. “He's always mean. The manure heap will always stink, wasps sting, bees hum, and a bore doesn't know when to stop talking."
Kay glowered at him, face reddening to the roots of his copper hair.
Calogrenand carried on regardless. "...skin like boiled leather. Yes. Big, ugly, though perhaps not according to his mother. Head like a horse, tufty hair. He had plate-sized ears with moss growing out of them, no nose, or something like a cat's muzzle anyway. Owlish eyes, cheeks like a bulldog, tusks like an ancient tiger's. No neck, a long back but twisted and hunched on one side.
I asked him what he was doing. He said he was guarding the wild herd for the Lord of the Wood. I offered him assistance, but he insisted he was fine and told me to keep going until I came to a certain spring in the middle of the forest. He said if I poured water from it onto a specific rock, I would witness a great wonder. I thanked him and continued.
The spring was either man-made to look natural or a freak of nature, I'm not sure which. The stones were fluorspar, perhaps, because the water frothing across them looked like milk in the right light.
Attached to one of the rocks by a golden chain was a bowl made of iron, and a distance from that a standing stone, er...stood. It was pink and porous, which I thought was unusual enough to mark it out as the right one.
However, the chain was not long enough to carry the bowl to it.
After many attempts, I was still unable to hit the rock with the water. My eyesight was not what it used to be. So I drank from the spring, I'm ashamed to say, and waited..."
Here he shot an apologetic glance at the Queen, whose lips quirked into a suppressed smile.
"Once I had directed the, er...percolated water at the stone, a great wonder did happen. A sudden storm struck the forest over my head, gale-force winds strong enough to snap trees, lightning every five heartbeats, thunder so loud I couldn't hear my own breath. Hailstones as big as eggs. Animals ran from it, birds scattered. I fastened myself to the spring's rocks using the bowl's chain and said my prayers fifty times.
At last the skies emptied, and in the fir tree next to the spring all the birds returned to perch and sing until it was weighted down.
Then the antlered boy appeared."
Calogrenand's listeners faltered.
"Pardon?" the Queen asked with caution.
"I swear on my heart blackened with age," the white knight said, "and my body whitened by the water of the spring. A warrior came riding up to me on a dark red horse, clad in armour and waving his lance about threatening to kill me -- but he had no helmet, he was beardless, and there were antlers sprouting from the sides of his head. It was like being assaulted by a tree on a horse. He had the advantage of surprise, and by the time I was mounted on my own horse he was almost upon me.
I did my best. My lance broke, and his knocked me to the ground with as much force as the previous gales. Instead of dismounting to fight with me on foot, however, he rode away, leaving me like I was of little consequence."
"This isn't right," Yvan said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Calogrenand shrugged. "I didn't want you to worry about me."
"You're my cousin," Yvan said. "I will go into the forest of Brocelliand and I will avenge your honour."
"How much did you say you'd drunk?" Kay raised his long, fine eyebrows. "You always talk of avenging when you've been at the wine. You'd avenge the god of verrucas if he stubbed his toe."
Yvan felt heat rushing to his head, but fought to keep his face blank.
"Kay, your tongue betrays you," the Queen laughed. "Everyone sees what a nice, sensible man you are until you open your mouth. Then everybody hears what a madman's tongue you have."
King Arthur's head emerged around the side of the door behind them, hair tousled and eyes heavy-lidded. "Have I missed something?"
Yvan stayed to hear Gwenevere retell the tale to her husband, in order to better recollect the details. When the King announced he would take the whole court to camp at the spring of Brocelliand Yvan resolved to leave before anyone else, without telling anyone or being seen.
"I'll show Kay what I'm capable of," he muttered to his youngest brother as the boy helped to put his armour on and saddle his horse.
"Is it Kay who's got you mad again?" the boy asked, incredulous. "If you hate the man so much, why stay in his company?"
"Because one day I will knock him on his arse in front of everybody," Yvan said. "The helmet goes round the other way, Renn."
"Why not use magic, like your father does?" Renn said. "Or get your father to send his magic crows to peck his face off."
"That would be dishonourable," Yvan said. "Gauntlets are for the hands, boy, not the feet. Kay was the apprentice of my father for a year, and has proved he has no expertise in any kind of enchantment. I would be using an unfair advantage, and he would feel I was mocking his lack of skill. Anyway, you know the Lord Uhrience isn't able to come to court, or send his birds. He agreed to stay away from Arthur after the war. Merlyn sorted him out."
He leaped into the saddle of his grey charger and made it leave the court softly, behind the cover of the small saplings and shrubs surrounding the castle grounds. He managed to get out unseen, and within a day's ride he came to Brocelliand forest.
At first glance, there was something strange about the forest. The sky above the trees, which were very large and contrasted enough to be hyper-real, was blank and white as a piece of parchment. No birds flew or sung.
Yvan found the spring with little difficulty. It was as Cal had described, and the water bubbling out of it was so tranquil and odd it drew the eye and nearly stilled the heart.
He slipped off his horse and found the bowl. In one respect, Cal had lied. The chain was long enough for him to throw water onto the rock easily, but he knew his cousin's eyesight was not very good. The man had never been able to throw anything straight, even as a young boy.
The monolith absorbed the water. The storm hit, with perhaps five times as much force as the one Cal had told of. The tree above the fountain almost bent in half, leaves and twigs whipped Yvan's skin, trying to flay him. The wind tried to scalp him. The thunder was giants and the lightning was the end of the world.
Within two minutes the squall vanished. Thousands of birds alighted on the tree from nowhere, singing a long, complicated din that made Yvan's head ache.
"You!" a youth shouted.
Yvan turned, a fascinating dread churning in the seat of his stomach. Cresting the rise of a gentle hill came the sight he had come to see: An antlered boy on a red horse large enough to be his father's. His features were sharp and starved-looking, but the hand that held the iron-tipped lance was strong and sinewy.
"You insulted my cousin," Yvan said, already a-horse. He lowered the visor of his helmet. "Get ready to eat your own lance, lad."
The fight that followed was short and sweet. He felt the shock in his chest, and then his lance was broken. The red horse stood riderless. The antlered boy sprawled prone on the ground, his skull cracked and the blood pumping out of the wound staining the leaf-mould maroon.
Before Yvan could dismount to finish him off, the boy dragged himself back onto his horse...and ran.
Unsurprised, Yvan gave chase. Ordinarily he would let a coward run, having no patience when dealing with cowards, but he wanted to know who this boy was and how he came to have antlers attached to his head.
The boy galloped into a valley sunk in the forest floor. Yvan galloped after, but couldn't resist slowing to gape at the surroundings. Everywhere, trees became dwellings for a people unlike any he had ever seen. Animals gazed back at him with human eyes. A cairn of rocks stirred to stare at him and became a troll. It took every ounce of his mental acuity to concentrate on the antlered boy and nothing else.
"I can't be the one with concussion," he told himself.
The back end of the red horse was in arm's reach now -- not that Yvan particularly wanted to stick his arm up a horse's bottom -- but if he could get a bit closer...
Walls grew around him, stalagmites erupting from the soil like sudden teeth, meshing him in. Wherever he turned, there was no door and no gap big enough for a man to squeeze through. The boy had escaped, too.
Now Yvan was starting to get a bit worried. When the denizens of the forest found out their defender was dead, or dying anyway, he would most likely be put to death. If they found him. Yvan did not want to die. As a nobleman and the son of a wizard, his method of permanent exit would be an axe through the neck, but an axe was likely to be as unpleasant as hanging or being burned at the stake.
And who knew what methods of execution and torture these strange folk would have? They were not human. They might have even less mercy.
"Psst!" a voice pssted.
He turned. A slip of shadow melted down the inside of a stalagmite and coalesced into the silhouette of a young woman. She turned sideways-on to him, and a line of white light traced itself down the edge of her body.
Yvan squinted, unsure of whether to speak, or whether he was dreaming from hyperventilation.
"You. Crow-boy."
"My name is Sir Yvan," Yvan said stiffly.
"I know what you are. Can't hide your nature from me, birdbrain."
"What do you want?"
"Don't be rude. I'm here to help."
"I don't require help from a faerie. Sod off."
The shadow pouted. "I am not of the Fey. I am the sending of the Moon."
Yvan snorted.
The shadow-girl placed her hands on her hips. "Fine. If you want me to leave you to your fate, I shall be happy to look down on it. I hear the Shellycoat has an ingenious way of turning your bones outside-in. I think you'd make a better human crustacean. And as for what the Morrigan does --"
"Fine, help me," Yvan begged. "Please."
The Moon-sending held something out. When it landed in his outstretched palm, cold and round, it became a silver ring with a black gem in the middle.
"Wear it on your finger," she said. "Obviously. Make sure you turn it so you are gripping the stone in your fist, and stay very, very still, as if you're asleep. If you do that, the people who try to see you will have their eyes slide off you, and their fingers will feel nothing but the material you rest on."
Yvan glanced around. While they had been talking, light and colour had moved the themselves about. Now they were in a tower room furnished with carpets, plants and couches.
He laid on the nearest couch, a low one with no arms and hieroglyphics engraved all over it. "I'll rest here, until the search for me dies down."
"Good," the shadow said. "And mind you don't make a noise. The slightest cough will pull their attention to you like moths to my own self."
Yvan laid down and waited. He kept peering around for signs of the Moon-sending, but he couldn't be certain whether she was still there or not. None of the shadows in the room moved, and there was also the mystery of how he managed to end up in a tower when five seconds before he had been trapped in a wood. It must all be magic, he decided, and relaxed.
His attitude to spells and enchantments was so peaceable because Yvan had been exposed to the unusual in childhood. Living in Gore with his father Lord Uhrience, who had fathered him on a falconer's daughter during a raid in the last war, meant that almost every day had an occurrence involving strange fires, the mental control of birds, and other odd usages of the elements.
One week, when he was seven and during his first year of apprenticeship in Gore castle, his breakfast had consisted of an illusion that turned to something foul in his mouth if he didn't see through the enchantment in time: soggy leaves, toadstools, and once, maggots.
The painted doors to the room opened and a long line of mourning people came in. They were led by two men bearing a bier, with the antlered boy lying dead on top of it. There were men and women and children in that procession, or so Yvan surmised by their sizes and voices. One woman who was half moss stood bemoaning the loss of the antler-man while a green-skinned baby suckled at her left breast.
"We must find who did this to Lord Herne," a goat-legged man with gills was saying. His words set Yvan's heart to pounding in all his blood vessels, but the young warrior lay resolutely still.
The funeral party ignored the bier and proceeded to hunt for Yvan throughout the building. Several stayed to prod in all the corners of that room, claiming that as Herne's head wound had reopened and begun to bleed afresh, his killer must be close by.
The moss-woman stayed, and the goat-man, along with the Moon-shadow, who had returned, and a naked demon with bat's wings in the company of a talking deer with red eyes. They looked under all the couches, and behind them. They peered in the window-recess. Reasoning that he may have used a glamour to change his appearance, they shook the mats and stamped on them, and jabbed the furniture fiercely in the hopes of eliciting a response. Yvan barely breathed.
The Moon-shadow glided over the wall to where Yvan lay in a mirror-image of Herne on the bier. "I'll check over here," she said to the others helpfully.
"You have no physical strength," the bat-winged creature said. "We appreciate the kindness, but I had better go and assault the couch. I'll do it more effectively than you."
So saying, the demon-thing hurled itself on top of Yvan's prone body, landing in a place best left alone.
"Nnngh!"
"What was that?" the demon said.
"Er, I was just singing a little dirge," the Moon-shadow said quickly.
Yvan prayed to whatever god there was that they weren't able to smell him or feel him.
"What king of lyric is 'Nnngh'?" the goat-man snorted.
"They sing it in the lands of the trollenkind," the Moon-sending replied. "Sung in trollish, for the deaths of their chieftains."
"Ah," the goat-man nodded.
"Nothing here," the demon sighed in disgust, rolling off Yvan. His skin left a dry, white powder on his clothes. "He can't be here, after all that. Perhaps he's already dead, fatally injured by Lord Herne."
"No," the moss-woman said in a husky voice. "No, he must have followed him here. Otherwise the trap wouldn't have been sprung."
The doors flew open again to admit a wailing woman. She was the least weird of all the beings there, though she screamed and sobbed like a banshee when she saw the body on the bier. She gnashed her teeth, and tore at her long, white hair. She raked at her snow-like, mole-less skin with long nails and silver tears fell from her green eyes to thud as ball-bearings to the floor.
"Whoever did this crime," she cried, "will feel the full force of my revenge. Whenever he -- or she -- is found, bring them to me. I'll dig their eyes out of their head with my dagger, I'll cook their hearts and make them eat -- I'll..."
"My lady," the Moon-shadow said gently. "Be calm. As the ruler of this realm, you need to present a certain amount of dignity."
"Let me grieve, child, and leave me alone!" the lady of the realm yelled, and ran from the room.
Now Yvan couldn't have stirred if he'd wanted to. The second his eyes rested on the woman's face, he knew she was meant for him, and he for her. The turmoil in his brain rendered him motionless for a long time, until the search became half-hearted and he was alone. He wanted Herne's wife. He wanted to learn her name and sing it in her ear. He wanted to drink her tears. He wanted to do the kinds of things no other person had done to her before, like suck her hair or lick her teeth. The poor idiot was besotted with the one person in the world who most wanted him to die a violent death.
The Moon-shadow came back later that evening. He came out of his trance to find the light from the window had moved a few metres across the floor.
"What day is it?"
"The same day it was when you came. I think it's time we introduced ourselves, don't you? I am called Lunette in this part of the world. You are the son of a crow-mage, I sense that. But your name is..?"
"Yvan," he replied in a distracted way. "Son of Uhrience. Can you tell me, what is the name of--"
"King Uhrience? Lord of Gore under High King Arthur? I am honoured."
"What is the name of the lady you all serve? The crying woman?"
"Herne's wife? That was the Lady Lauden. She would gladly rip your gullet in half."
"And it would be sweet to me," Yvan said, dazed. "Lunette, help me. I think I'm in love with my worst enemy."
"I know a lot about Love," Lunette said. "When I was a little younger, Love himself tried to seduce me. He made himself human-shaped to be with me, and I did the same."
"What happened?"
"We had a fling. In the end, I broke it off. In those days nobody loved anyone else because Love was fixated on the Moon, and the seas refused to move during my absence. Ships were marooned. I knew if I let it carry on the human race would go extinct,” Lunette sighed. "All right. I'll try to help, but you must be patient. And be still! I hear someone coming."
It was Lady Lauden. She shuffled into the room with silver trails plastered all over her cheeks and a thin trail of golden snot underneath her nose. Yvan thought even her snot was lovely.
Lady Lauden skidded on the ball-bearing tears she had left on the floor and asked, breath hitching, "H-have they found the killer?"
"No, my Lady." Lunette was sombre. "But perhaps you ought to think about who will defend the spring -- and the forest -- now. It's only a matter of time before someone else comes along to water the stone and bring the storms."
"We really should get that stone removed," Lady Lauden sniffed.
"It's rooted to the core of the Earth by the Devil," Lunette said.
"Well, being the Moon, I suppose you know better than most."
"The spring needs a new defender."
"Are you saying I should get married again? I haven't finished grieving for the last one!"
"Yes, but once he's buried, maybe you should consider..."
"Enough!" Lady Lauden pointed to the door. "Out! I wish to be alone."
Lunette bowed, and her shadow flitted away.
Heaving a miserable shudder, Lady Lauden lowered herself onto the nearest couch -- right onto Yvan's lap. He resisted the urge to speak, and kept very, very still. However, he had to take a few deep breaths.
Lady Lauden paused in her sobbing, gaze fixed on the bier containing her young dead husband, but Yvan guessed her attention was elsewhere. The fine hairs on her arms were standing on end.
"Wh-who's there?"
He said nothing. He held his breath until steam threatened to billow out of his ears, and at last the faerie woman stood and drifted out of the room.
This kind of invisible existence is bound to disorientate a person. By the time Yvan next saw Lunette, he wasn't sure how many days had passed. She had been smuggling him food at irregular intervals.
She caught him doing his trousers up at the window.
"You haven't," she said in horror.
"What did you expect me to do?" he demanded, glowing a wonderful shade of crimson.
"You've been going out the window?"
"Well. Yes."
"Just that? You haven't been doing...the other thing?"
"Madam," Yvan said with grave dignity, "I do not go around sticking my arse out of windows."
"But you stick out the other..? Sir Yvan, anyone could have been walking past underneath. Lady Lauden could have been--"
"Oh!" Yvan bit his lip, shuddering to think of shaming his heart-throb in such a fashion. "Lady Lauden! I never thought...how can I ever...is she..?"
"It's fine." Lunette flapped an impatient hand. "I would have told her it was raining, or something."
"Did you want me for something?" Yvan hinted.
The silhouette of the Moon-sending became, if it was possible, a touch darker and more severe.
"Yes. My Lady Lauden desires an audience with the prisoner."
"Me?"
"You. It took a lot of wheedling on my part, but she has agreed to speak with the man who killed Lord Herne. I shall escort you to the Great Chamber."
Yvan did not like the sound of that. "Is she going to have me executed?"
Lunette did not reply, but waited for him to follow her. As they walked, the walls and furniture melted into stalagmites, the carpets turned to earth and stones, and they were on the valley floor again. Lunette pointed at a stalagmite until, supposedly ashamed of itself, it rumbled down into the seclusion of the ground, and they passed out of the trap.
Yvan took a few seconds to savour the sky, which was lit by the full white Moon, with glowing clouds sailing past it on an invisible breeze. Lunette flickered, but he still managed to follow her, up the slope of the valley, past various warped trees and cave-mouths. The forest-folk peeked out at him as they moved past, but Yvan was too intent on what the Lady Lauden was going to do to him to take much notice.
"Will she take off my head?" he gabbled. "I mean, I love her, so of course if she wants my head she may have it, gladly I will let her, I would strike it off myself--"
"This is why I think chivalry is a waste of time," Lunette said wearily. "I can see you shaking and perspiring like a witch in a stake-blaze, and yet you spout the words you've been taught are the right thing to say. There is such a thing as common sense, you know. A few days ago you wanted to live."
They were standing next to an arched hole leading into the hollow of a large oak. Its girth was wider than Yvan's arm-span.
"What are you doing?" Lunette said.
Yvan let go of the tree trunk and stepped inside.
The hall that met his eye was vast and high, too big to fit inside a tree. The floor was marble, and in the centre was a dry fountain with a statue of a deer-headed man on top. Tapestries of ivy on the walls rustled and morphed into green faces which leered and poked their tongues out at him. In a corner at the far end was a pile of silks and cushions, and lounging on top of that was the faerie woman.
Lady Lauden sat proud and stern, not looking at him.
Yvan stood as if his feet were trying to put down roots.
"I don't believe it," Lunette muttered. "How can a murderer be shy? Do I have to do everything around here?"
She took Yvan's hand and dragged him towards the reclining Lady. She was strong despite his flesh registering nothing of her touch, apart from a sort of cold whisper.
He knelt, keeping his eyes on the floor. "I am here."
"So you are." The voice that eventually replied was cool, though not as cold as Yvan had been expecting.
"My Lady," he said. "I can only apologise for the misdeed--"
"You will talk when I ask it of you," Lady Lauden interrupted. "Misdeed, hmm?"
"I was the one who killed your husband in single combat. A fatal head injury. I am sorry. If I had known..."
"If you had known he was joined to me, you would have done no different."
Something in her tone made Yvan glance up. She was looking at him with warm eyes, and was that the tremble of a suppressed smile at the corner of her mouth?
"You were fighting to defend your own life," Lady Lauden continued. Her eyes were gold and green like sunlight through a canopy of leaves, and they were fixated on his. "As anyone would do. The death of my husband was an accident. Therefore he is not a murderer, Lunette. He is a warrior."
"Not any longer, if it be your will," Yvan said. "I offer myself to you as a prisoner, in recompense. It's only fair."
Lady Lauden picked a strange fruit out of a nearby bowl, something like a blue pear with tiny hairs on its skin. When she bit into it, the inside was full of amber jelly. "And what if I do not require a prisoner? I don't need to ransom you. Faerie has no use for money, and there is no one I'd exchange you for."
"I am your prisoner whether you like it or not," Yvan said, now less shaky and more certain it was a smile he had seen. "I am the prisoner of your heart."
"Ergh," Lunette muttered in the background.
"Ah," Lady Lauden said. "One of those."
She stood languorously and gave him the rest of the fruit. Not knowing what else to do, he nibbled at it.
"It so happens that the spring of Brocelliand needs a guardian," Lady Lauden said. "Custom dictates it should be the one who I take as a lover. Why it cannot be me, I don't know. Something to do with myself representing the forest, perhaps. It's all part of an ancient magic. What do you say, Yvan? Will you be mine?"
"Yes," he breathed. The fruit was disgusting, but he couldn't stop eating it. Yvan supposed it was his nerves. He ate a lot when he was anxious.
"Good," Lady Lauden said, satisfied. "But first you must be presented to the Council of the Seven, and we must make them think that our union is their idea. Otherwise, they will think I have betrayed them by joining with my enemy against their wishes."
"Well, all right."
She gestured, and Yvan was on his feet. Lady Lauden brought him through a short door in the side of the hall, which was made of white roots twisted together. They had to bend in half to pass through it.
Beyond, seated on logs around a clearing in the trees, was the Council of the Seven: an owl-headed woman, feathers grey and yellow eyes severe; a wolf-muzzled man with black hair braided down his back; a blue-skinned boy levitating above his log and smoking a cigarette butt, eyes sleepy and hair tousled. The other four were more or less humanoid, males and females no younger than fifty or sixty, Yvan guessed. They stared at Lady Lauden in expectation, but ignored him. This was because he had turned Lunette's ring on his finger so the stone was in his palm again.
Lady Lauden glanced to where he had been seconds before. "I sense you are there," she murmured. "Wait here until I call you forward."
She strode into the clearing.
"Friends," she said. "You were advising me on whether to take a new guardian. Does your opinion still stand as it was?"
The boy flicked the butt out of his mouth and said in a hoarse old man's croak, "You must take another heart before the sun sets three days from now."
"I have a possible champion here," she said. "If you would question him for me..?"
The owl-woman nodded, and Lady Lauden beckoned Yvan into the ring. By now the fruit he had eaten was having a strange effect on him, as if his mind was not inside his body but somewhere misty and far away. He turned the ring to make himself visible, and his feet moved. He gave Lunette the ring without looking at her.
"What was your name, when you were a mortal man?" the wolf-nosed man asked.
"Yvan, son of Uhrience," he answered, dazed.
"Half-magic already," the blue-skinned man who looked like a boy said in a tone of relief. "How old were you?"
Yvan could not remember. The fruit in his stomach had dampened his perception of time. Now he knew how old trees felt, though he was fairly certain that trees didn't suffer with indigestion.
They asked him more questions, about his childhood and the Crow King Uhrience, and about his time at King Arthur's court. They asked him about Arthur. They persuaded him to show his prowess with a sword on a nearby withered tree, and then the decision was made.
"You must use his heart," the owl-lady said to Lady Lauden. "He is a fine one, and young and brave too, but it is the way of things. I'm sure you understand, dear."
"If you insist," Lady Lauden said. On the way back to the illusion of the tower-room, hand in Yvan's hand, she winked at him.
The gesture sailed over his head unnoticed. He was lead, a sack of sentient concrete. The words she whispered in his ear and got him to repeat back to her were like dry reeds in the wind. Her hands were cold, and when they had finished he lay next to her on the couch like a stone, and asked:
"Erm. Am I dead?"
Smiling, she opened her clasped white fingers to reveal his heart, thumping sluggishly but looking quite comfortable.
"Oh," Yvan said. "This is all rather literal, isn't it?"
"No longer being mortal, you must follow the customs we have here," Lady Lauden said, shutting the heart in an iron casket and returning to stroke his face. Her hands felt warm to him now, and he was numb with cold. "I shall keep it safe for a year and a day. In that time you will prove your love for me, by returning before that time has passed."
"Am I leaving, then?"
"Inevitably. I have not been kind to you, in your opinion. I can sense what you are thinking. Before you leave, defend the spring for me. Defend the woods. Defend me."
"Fine," Yvan said flatly. He stood and let her help him put his armour on. He strapped on his sword, found his horse, and left the valley.
The forest ground was littered with footprints and brightly-coloured tents the closer to the fountain he got, until, resting behind a clump of bushes, Yvan could see the King, and the knights Gawain and Kay having an argument.
Kay was on horseback, the visor of his helmet still up, laughing down at Gawain. Gawain glowered up at him from under his thick, dark eyebrows, nostrils flaring.
That angry expression stirred a memory in Yvan. The man called Gawain had been the best friend Yvan ever had, but he wasn't Yvan any more. Or was he? Would the angered knight recognise him?
"He's run off," Kay was saying. "Son of a carrion-eater, that one. We all know how they behave. They let others do the killing and swoop down to take the spoils."
The copper-haired knight was talking about Yvan, and a faint recollection of hatred rose in him.
"Then let me come and peck out your tongue," he muttered, and swung back into his saddle.
Yvan laid low over his horse's neck and waited for the storm. It blustered and groaned around him but left him and his horse untouched. When the squall had broken itself apart, he charged.
Kay struggled to get his visor down and comprehend the situation. Yvan had his face concealed behind his helmet, and wore no coat of arms. They would not recognise him, he realised with triumph, and his lance shoved into the centre of Kay's breastplate.
The arrogant knight flew off his horse and landed on his arse in front of everybody, just what Yvan told his brother was going to happen. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember his brother's name.
Kay looked up at the heartless faerie knight and said, “Ow.”
Part Two of the serial will be included in the next issue.