The knife went spinning from Moira’s grasp. It flew up out of the trench and Moira lunged after it, throwing herself half out of the excavation trench as the blade went skittering down the slope just out of reach.
Jenny saw Moira’s body arch away, and dived for her assailant. Stiffening her arms, she struck Moira in the small of the back. Unbalanced, Moira flipped up over the edge of the trench. She slid forward on her stomach and snatched up the knife; gathering her feet under her, she turned toward Jenny once more.
This time, Jenny was ready. As Moira turned and stood, she pulled one of the metal grid sticks from the soft earth and swung it with all her might, sweeping Moira’s feet from under her.
“No!” she screamed. Tumbling backward, she struck the sharply angled slope, slewed sideways, and started to slide. She tried to flatten herself to the rock to slow her descent. “Exis gorim fortis!” she cried, scrabbling for a handhold.
Her hands flailed, fingernails scratching. But the bare stone did not yield and the angle dropped away beneath her. Sliding faster, gaining momentum, she struck a rocky outcrop and was pitched into the air.
Moira screamed again — a hissing, spitting sound like that of an enraged cat — and Jenny watched her sail out in a graceful arc as she plunged down and down onto the wave-washed rocks far below.
James was there beside her as the echo of Moira’s final, defiant scream faded into the startled cry of the frightened gulls. “It’s over,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “She’s gone.”
Embries stood at the summit, surveying the scene below. He and Dr. Fuller had been alerted by the shouts of security personnel, who were now swarming all around the scene, alternately chattering into their microphones, listening to their earpieces, and desperately assuring the royal couple that everything was now under control once more.
Within moments a police cruiser had reached the rocks, and Embries watched in stony silence as Moira’s battered body was dragged limp and lifeless onto the boat. As the launch bobbed on the ocean swells, Embries raised a hand to his eyes as if to shield them from the sun and whispered, “Good-bye, Morgian.”
Epilogue
As James extended his hand to pull her up beside him on the cliff top, Jenny heard him say her name, and the world seemed to take a peculiar sideways lurch. In that instant, everything was changed. She saw her husband not as the man she knew but as a stranger dressed in a leather cuirass studded with tiny iron rings. His hair was long, and bleached by long hours on horseback in the sun; he wore it in a gold-clasped braid at the side of his head. A whitewashed shield was slung over his shoulder, and a well-used sword hung at his hip. He was leaning on the haft of the longest spear she had ever seen.
A wide band in the shape of a serpentine, tail-swallowing dragon gleamed on his upper arm, and a thick golden torc encircled his throat. His cloak was purple, the color of the emperors of old, and it was folded on his shoulder and secured with a brooch shaped like a winged dragon. He was watching her, his lips curved in a smile of pride and admiration.
Rhys stood a little way off, resting his arms on the iron rim of a large oval shield which had been whitewashed and painted with the sign of the cross. A great hunting horn hung from a strap across his chest, and the blade of his spear was whetted to a keen brilliance.
She heard a rustling of wings beside her, and Embries was there — a young man now, with a wild mane of long dark hair and a cloak made from the wing and tail feathers of ravens and crows. Sunlight glishtened on the black feathers in darkly iridescent rainbows, and flecked his pale eyes with fiery gold. He carried a staff of oak topped with a curl of ram’s horn inlaid with a delicate silver tracery of ancient Celtic design. His shirt was midnight blue woven with threads of silver which glinted like stars. On his feet were boots of soft leather, and he wore a wide leather belt on which hung a feathered pouch.
“Behold,” he said, his voice resonant with an authority she imagined even the wind might obey.
She looked down at herself, and saw that she was dressed in the garb of a warrior queen. Her cloak was scarlet, and bordered with red-gold key work; her shirt was white linen, over which she wore a mail shirt of tiny silver rings. A small shield rimmed with iron hung on her shoulder, and her sword was slender, long, and sharp. Her hair was braided, the plaits bound and held by a silver boar’s-head brooch. Her boots were soft white leather, and her belt was woven leather decorated with overlapping shells.
Raising his staff, the Wise Emrys stretched out his hand. “Behold!” he said again. Tilting his face towards a radiant sky, he said, “Lo! In Myrddin’s hand she comes through the quickening glow, joining her noble husband, who stands to look upon his realm and ponder thus: is the King made for his kingdom, or kingdom made for King?
“While beleaguered and downcast the Britons sang, doom in shocks split the burning gloom. Lo! God’s holy fire revives, the flame of life bestirs itself from ashes not yet spent. The Singer at the Dawn of the Age, the Bard at the Gate of Time, rouses, rises, and shortly wakes! The spark of Avalon glows, fades, and glows again. Lo! The Summer Realm’s ancient throne knows once more her master and her lord.”
And as the Wise Emrys spoke, she saw that the island of bare, blasted rock miraculously changed. All around her, like a sunstruck emerald aflame in a silver setting, was a land green and blooming with the first blush of summer — the fairest of Britain’s seven isles, surrounded by a gleaming silver sea. It was Avalon as it had been once long ago… and would be again.
About the Author
STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD (www.stephenlawhead.com) is an internationally acclaimed author of mythic history and imaginative fiction. His works include Byzantium and the series The Pendragon Cycle, The Celtic Crusades, and The Song of Albion. Lawhead makes his home in Austria with his wife.
Books by
Stephen R. Lawhead
PATRICK
AVALON
BYZANTIUM
THE PENDRAGON CYCLE
GRAIL
PENDRAGON
ARTHUR
MERLIN
TALIESIN
THE CELTIC CRUSADES
THE MYSTIC ROSE
THE BLACK ROOD
THE IRON LANCE
Credits
Cover art by Paul Stinson
Stephen R. Lawhead, Avalon: The Return of King Arthur
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