I Am Mordred by Nancy Springer

Author:Nancy Springer [Springer, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 1998-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

To love the sea, I knew, was to love my enemy. When I was a baby, the sea had taken me away from my kinfolk and my mother, starved me, sprayed salt on my tender naked skin, tried to freeze me in its chill embrace, tried to kill me. To love the sea was to love what I ought to hate.

This showed at least that it was possible. For I did love the sea.

I rode southward on a cart trail that led through the fringes of the Forest Perilous, and my heart beat faster at the thought of looking out again over vast water, breathing sea-scented air, hearing once again the cries of the gulls. But I had not ridden an hour before I encountered my first challenger.

I was to grow accustomed to meeting with knights-errant three or four times a day. The rule of King Arthur’s reign was that knights were to fight each other and leave the common folk alone. Camelot was, as I have said, a castle under a spell; the whole realm was rife with knights blundering about, trying to find it, and they all seemed to be in foul temper.

Like this one. In full armor, he burst out of a rowan grove with his lance leveled, charging at me. “Sir, if you love your honor, prepare to joust!” he roared.

In that moment I decided that I loved other things, including my life, far more than my honor. He was taller than I, weighed probably eight stone more, he wore a great heavy sword fit to fell a tree with, and he had not given me time even to buckle on my shield. I couched my lance and met him, but I aimed at his horse’s head. Before his lance could reach me, his poor blameless mount fell down dead. He rolled free of the body and struggled to his feet, drawing his sword, bellowing with rage. “Get down from your horse, coward, and fight!”

“Thank you for the kind offer,” I told him, “but I think not.” I turned my back on him and rode away.

I was to grow accustomed to being called a coward. Three or four times a day.

That first day, however, I met no knights after noon. Blessedly, I left the Forest Perilous behind and challengers with it. I crossed a salty grassland, and—there was the sea. There were the rocks and the gravel shore and the gray glinting water stretching to eternity and oh, but I was glad to stand under wide sky again. In a sheltered cove, a kind of natural harbor, stood a quay, by which a coracle rocked like a cradle on the waves. Far overhead soared an erne, the eagle of the sea.

For three days I traveled along the sea, eating mussels and curlew eggs, falling asleep to the murmur of the waves, scarcely admitting even to myself whom I was seeking: a little boy named Tad, he who was the gift of Lyr, he who was happy.

On the third day, I thought I found him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.