Page 297 of The Daughters of Avalon
Abandoning the man’s corpse, with his breeches trussed about his ankles and a pit in his forehead, they sent his horse traveling south, with an empty saddle, in hopes that it should distract anyone who came searching for him.
Jack took the lead, as Marcella took stock of her arrows, counting them and inspecting them one by one, then returning them to the quiver she kept on her horse.
“Where are we going?” asked Rhiannon after a while, at long last breaching the silence.
“North to the Pennines, then west,” provided Jack.
“Your sisters are at Warkworth,” said Marcella. “’Tis my duty to reunite you.”
Rhiannon breathed a sigh of relief as the witch-paladin reached into her saddlebag and took out a sack full of something Rhiannon assumed must be filberts. Plucking a nut out of her sack, she popped it into her mouth, crunching very loudly, and swallowing before she said, “You appear relieved, Rhiannon.”
Rhiannon averted her gaze from Marcella’s shrewd eyes. “I-I thought?—”
“I know what you thought,” she said, and Rhiannon recognized amusement in her voice. “Apparently, it was agreedupon by all: Seren must be Regnant, but Rhiannon Pendragon is the hope of England.”
“I thought you said?—”
“I know what I said,” Marcella interrupted. “But, truly, do you believe I’d be here if I hadn’t come to believe it as well?”
Rhiannon turned to look at the woman, and Marcella proffered her a nut. Rhiannon shook her head, and Marcella placed it into her own mouth.
After a while, she said, “By the by, I’ve kept the manacles in my satchel, not to keepyouaway fromthem, or to save them to use later, but to keepthemaway fromyou… a subtle difference. Knowing what I know, I’d not have your energy siphoned when we need you most.”
Rhiannon slid the paladin another glance, and Marcella said with a wink, “Cast away,mon amie. You need all the practice you can get.”
“So, then… are we friends now?”
“Of a sort,” Marcella said, with a crooked smile, and just at that moment, a small, bent-legged crow came to perch upon her shoulder. “Well, hello there?” she said, not at all surprised. She handed the bird a nut, as though it might take it, and when it cawed in protest, she put the nut into her own mouth, and said, “Suit yourself.”
“You speak to ravens?”
Marcella’s green eyes glinted. “Paranoosdoes not suit you, Rhiannon. Does she look like a raven? Nay,mon amie, ’tis only a wretched old crow.”
“Caw!” said the bird in complaint, and Marcella laughed.
But there it remained, seated atop her shoulder, watching Marcella eat her nuts, and all the while, Marcella chatted with the creature—a one-sided conversation that didn’t make a bit of sense.
“So, ’tis done?”
“Aye?”
“Good.”
“’Tis a relief, I tell you. I was beginning to believe it all in vain.”
Rhiannon listened intently, but there was nothing at all said to enlighten her. Overtired from a night’s lack of sleep, she decided to mind her own affairs, leave the daft girl to talk to herself. After a while, the crow flew away, and the trio continued in silence.
WARKWORTH CASTLE
After having spent most of these past four years fortifying Warkworth Castle in the event of a confrontation with Morwen, the Pendragon sisters now prepared to abandon their sanctuary. For the time being, their children would remain inside the curtain wall, and this time, Elspeth hadn’t a single complaint over the state of their fortification. Indeed, it was better defended than Aldergh, and, really, more so than Westminster as well.
As a matter of practice, they kept two years’ worth of rations inside the main fortification, and a second, smaller wall—also warded with complex enchantments—prevented anyone from entering their village.
Like thewitchwaterin the motte, anyone entering the general vicinity simply forgot where they were and wandered away.
Using each of their affinities to the best of their abilities, the sisters then cast separate defense spells.
Rosalynde enshrouded the castle with a mist that rolled for two miles beyond the outer wall.
