I Am Morgan le Fay by Nancy Springer

Author:Nancy Springer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

10

I RODE THE DEAD KNIGHT’S BLACK HORSE, FOR I HAD the use of both arms and hands, and I needed them and the fierce curb bit and all my strength to control that steed; the big brute wanted to charge, not walk. My hands were blistered by the reins after the first day of struggling with him. Thomas rode the more placid bay, mounting from a tree stump and holding the reins with his one good hand. He sat erect, his injured arm in a sling, his face quiet and proud and much too pale. I knew that for his sake we should have stayed where we were another few days if not a fortnight. But he said he was ready to ride, and I could not help but take him at his word; Avalon would not let me do otherwise.

“If we meet with brigands,” Thomas said as we left our camp, “I won’t be of much help. It will be up to you. Stone them or something.”

His wryness made me smile. “Don’t worry. I will.”

That day we topped the mountain pass. At the crown I managed to tug the black to a prancing halt, and Thomas pulled up the bay, and the two of us looked back into the misty distance behind us.

“I can’t see the sea,” I murmured. What I really meant was that I could not see Caer Ongwynn.

“It’s still there,” Thomas said.

Ahead of us, when we looked that way, lay the blue-veined plain I remembered from a long, boring ride in a canopied wagon when I was a child.

Odd. Scanning that waterscape, I could not find the castle I remembered. I could not see anything that looked like stonework or fortifications or even a village. Or a road. I could not trace where the path we were on might lead us. I saw no boats on the sky blue maze of streams. Except for a shadow in the distance like a green moon, a circle that might have been a mound or a ring of standing stones, I saw no sign that anyone mortal had ever ventured to Avalon.

“Downhill from here,” Thomas said, then settled his feet deeper in the stirrups, swinging them forward to brace himself as we began the descent.

“I am not proud of the company you found me in,” he said out of the blue. “That knight. I’m ashamed that you found me squiring for him.”

“Why? Because he seized upon maidens?” I called over my shoulder to him, for the path was too narrow for us to ride abreast, and the black steed insisted on taking the lead. “Don’t they all do that?”

“Not quite all. He had not done it before.”

“Who was he? Sir Griffin?”

“No. I won’t tell you his name. That way no one can surprise it out of you.”

“I don’t want to know it anyway,” I grumbled, turning my attention to the path, now a ledge winding down the mountainside.

“Of course you don‘t,” said Thomas placidly.

“I don‘t! I’m glad he’s dead.”

Silence while I thought how true that was.

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