Vivienne centered all her physical strength and pushed again. Her right arm blasted through the seal, pushed up through the light.
“Come to me!” she shouted to Excalibur, her arm stretched to its limit, her hand spread wide, ready and waiting for it to be delivered.
There was a whistling in the air as the sword was thrown across the lake. It turned end over end and then—
She caught it!
With an ecstatic cry of triumph, she swung it in a circle three times before pulling it below the surface.
Sinking to the bottom of the lake, clutching the sword to her, she gazed at its magnificence. She had imbued it with all the powerful magic at her command, and now it had come back to her with its power intact. She pressed her cheek against the flat of its blade and allowed its invigorating magic to surge through her body, restoring her to new strength.
Pushing off from the floor of the lake she surged upward, this time bursting completely through the magical seal over the lake as she rose in a spray of water. Her joy at being free was so great that it acted as a field of energy that allowed her to hover there in the air.
She expected to see her daughters there on the shore but was surprised to see instead a strapping, handsome man staring at her, wide-eyed with surprise. She had seen his face before in her dream of Arthur’s death on the battlefield. He had sat beside her dying nephew, talking with him consolingly.
Vivienne noticed something else. There was a bat circling above his head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Bedivere Disappears
The shimmering apparition that had been hanging in the air above the lake suddenly appeared by Bedivere’s side. “You have done me a great service,” the stately woman said to him. “I thank you.”
“I did it at the bidding of my king and friend, Arthur, your nephew,” he told her.
Bedivere noticed that, although she looked at him, she was also checking something above his head. Following the direction of her gaze, he saw the bat for the first time. It sat high up on one of the rock ledges, observing them with its red eyes.
“How did you find this lake?” she asked him.
He quickly told her of his strange connection with Rowena. “She is your soul mate,” Vivienne told him, nodding with understanding. “Because of her heightened abilities, she was able to connect with you at your time of great distress. She did it without even trying because her heart is open to these natural currents. You made contact with one another because, in the same way, you too are an open-hearted soul.”
He went on to tell her everything that had happened. She became concerned when he told her how he had seen her twelve daughters depart on golden barges, disappearing around the turn in the lake.
“This bears the marks of enchantment,” she commented to him. “It worries me. Let us go to them immediately.” Laying Excalibur at her feet, she spread her arms over it and it became a luminous sailboat aboard which they both stepped.
Bedivere took hold of its rudder but the boat took off on its own, sailing toward the outcropping in the lake. Vivienne looked up as the bat flew over their heads, quickly getting ahead of them.
The lake grew choppy, tossing the boat. “It’s as I suspected,” Vivienne told him as she clung to the boat’s sides. “That bat is an evil spirit. It might even be Morgan le Fey, the one who first trapped me here. If it is she who has worked this enchantment on them, they are in great danger indeed.”
She lifted her arms, mysteriously moving the sailboat to the shore of the enchanted island. A horrified scream caused Bedivere to pivot toward its source. Rowena was being chased by a creature that was dressed as the stag princes had been clothed but who had become part bull and part dragon. This creature had grabbed Rowena, and Bedivere couldn’t tell if it was trying to press its unwanted lust upon her or to devour her. Eleven other creatures like that one pursued her sisters.
Bedivere was about to lunge off the side of the boat and swim to the island. Vivienne clutched his arm to stop him. Reaching into the boat, she pulled up a cloak and tossed it to Bedivere. “Being a mortal, you cannot go where I will now take you. Put this on so no one will see you there. If you love Rowena, stay hidden from her until the time is right.”
Putting on the cloak, he became instantly invisible.
Vivienne went to the bow of the sailboat and raised her arms. As she brought them down sharply, the scene abruptly changed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Princess Rowena
All at once the creature that had been about to sink its fanged teeth into Rowena’s neck disappeared. She found that she was suddenly sitting in the middle of a ring of very tall, vertical, rectangular stones that stood straight up and which were connected by similarly large stones at the top. Once again, she was dressed in her nightgown and slippers.
She was relieved to have escaped the enchanted island, where everything had suddenly turned ugly—the stag princes changed to monsters, the food rotted, the music dissolved to discordant clanging—at the very moment a disgusting little bat had landed on a table. Although she was thankful to have been whisked away from that horrible scene, she was completely confused now.
Her sisters appeared inside the stone rings, also dressed in their nightgowns and slippers once again.
A lovely woman with long, blond hair was the last to appear among them. She stood by a tall slab regarding them warmly. Rowena slowly recognized her from the vision in the scrying bowl as her own mother, Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake.
“Mother!” Mathilde cried, the next to realize who she was. She ran to the woman and threw her arms around her. Rowena joined several more of her sisters as they surrounded the woman.
Only Eleanore hung back. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “What became of you? Why did you abandon us?”
“My dearest daughter,” the woman replied kindly. “I would never willingly have left you.” She explained to them everything that had happened including how Morgan le Fey had enthralled them with the diversions of the island in order to distract them from finding her.
As she finished her story, their faces were wet with tears, partly from sadness and partly from their extreme joy at having their mother returned to them. Even Eleanore cried with mixed emotions.
“Enough of tears,” Vivienne told them as she hugged each one. “We are together here at the great stone ring, the most special of all places to the people of Avalon, and summer begins this night! The people will be arriving soon, and they will see you reunited with me, their queen, as the great princesses of Avalon that you have become.”
Majestically lifting one hand, she changed their nightgowns into elegantly simple, diaphanous, flowing gowns and caused circlets of wildflowers and leaves to appear around their heads.
The type of music that they’d heard in the tunnels was now amplified many fold with the banging of drums, the melody of flutes, and the strumming of harps filling the circle. From between the spaces separating the stones stepped sorcerers and sorceresses, the mystical inhabitants of the magical island of Avalon.
After they rejoiced to see Vivienne and her daughters, all of them danced in a circle, moving rhythmically to the music. The sisters joined the dance, their feet moving as though they had always done the steps.
The dancing continued until the first line of sunlight rose above the horizon and painted a shining line of vertical light on one of the slabs. The dancing citizens of Avalon walked toward the line of sunlight and, one by one, disappeared into it.
Rowena looked to Vivienne for direction. “Go through,” she instructed her daughters. “I will join later. I must go to Avalon before returning to you. Rest assured that I will follow.”
Rowena was the first to step into the vertical line of sunlight. Once again she was back on the enchanted island, though now it was nothing but an empty island. The sailboat Vivienne had arrived in, sat on the shore.
Rowena climbed into it, feeling that her mother had left it there for her safe return. As
each of her sisters appeared, they boarded the boat.
They were all aboard when Rowena noticed a rocking in the boat as though some thirteenth person had entered although no one had. It frightened her to think that some unseen spirit had come aboard with them.
The boat set sail and the presence was very close to her. She smelled a familiar pleasant scent. Was it him or merely someone wearing his clothing, trying to fool her?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Bedivere Is Trapped
Bedivere wanted desperately to reveal his presence to Rowena. But Rowena had told her sisters that she’d left him behind in a drugged sleep. He didn’t want to take it upon himself to reveal her lie to them.
So he stayed beneath the invisibility cloak, concealed from sight. As they sailed along, he enjoyed the nearness of her. He couldn’t resist the temptation to reach out while still covered with the cloak and lay his good hand on top of hers as she rested it on the side of the boat.
She raised her head, alarmed by his touch and peered at him so keenly that he could almost swear that she saw him. “Who is there?” she whispered.
He squeezed her hand to reassure her. Again, her eyes bore into his, confused, yet somehow seeming to sense it was him. She opened her mouth to speak but was distracted by a dark, winged form swooping above the boat.
“There’s that bat,” she told her sisters, pointing to it. “Why is it flying above us? I’m afraid it might be a witch or evil spirit. It appeared on the island when everything became ugly.”
“That’s true,” Eleanore agreed. “I saw it too. Watch it closely and don’t let it get too near our boat. Throw something at it if it comes too close.”
Bedivere watched the bat closely as it flew along with the sailing boat. Vivienne had been concerned about it, and it had been on the island. He felt sure it was an evil presence and was glad he was there to protect the sisters should someone attempt to harm them.
He became intensely alert, on guard for any sign of danger. He recalled how he’d been attacked by something in the shape of a rock soldier and then in the shape of a wealthy man. Whomever this foe turned out to be, it could take many forms.
The boat was trailing along the shore now, and Bedivere noticed a shape bending into the water ahead of them. Sharpening his focus to see better in the dim light, he realized it was just a rotted tree that had fallen toward the lake.
But how could a tree even grow in this underground place, completely devoid of sunlight?
Something was not right.
The bat settled on the trunk of the dead tree as if waiting for the boat.
Standing, Bedivere wrapped his good hand around the hilt of his sword. He noticed that Rowena was now peering along the shore as well.
The boat sailed close enough to the tree that some of its skinny, uppermost branches came close to its hull. He could see the bat’s red eyes boring into him, as though the creature knew he was there, even through his invisibility cloak. Then the bat moved into the tree’s tangle of dead branches and seemed to disappear.
Bedivere leaned closer to study the dark, dead tree with its gnarled rotted bark and to search for the bat.
Rowena was also scanning the shore. At one point she came so close to him that they were right beside one another. “Bedivere?” she inquired in such a low tone it was almost a mere breath.
As he turned to answer her, a branch clutched at the hem of his invisibility cloak. With a quick yank, it tugged him over the side and strangely agile branches held him fast beneath the water’s surface. The tree’s grip was so tight that no matter how forcefully he thrashed, he could not break its hold on him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Three Forests
Rowena instantly noticed the violent disturbance in the water. She’d felt that something or someone had been pulled past her and over the side. “Stop the boat,” she called to her sisters.
“How?” Gwendolyn shouted back.
“Maybe we can turn it around,” Chloe suggested, searching for a rudder but not finding one.
Rowena couldn’t wait. She plunged overboard, swimming toward the churning, splashing water. She’d suspected that Bedivere was with her on the boat. She had to help him.
Diving under, she saw his disembodied leg, kicking madly. Around it, the water swirled. Gripping his leg with one hand she searched with the other until she thought she felt cloth. Tugging, she slowly saw more of him until the entire cape was removed.
She needed air and came up for a breath. The sailboat was a glimmer in the distance. There would be no help from her sisters.
On the surface she saw that the branches of the tree were holding him under the water. They’d gripped his right arm, circling it in a vine. It kept him from pulling out his sword and, since his left hand was unusable, he couldn’t get to it.
Going back under, she swam to him and pulled his sword from his belt. With it, she hacked at the thick vine curled around his right arm and shoulder.
The vine was tough and difficult to cut through. As she worked, Bedivere struggled to loosen the branches, but air bubbles were escaping from his mouth. If she didn’t free him soon he would drown.
Vine tendrils began sprouting from the branches, growing toward her, seeking to entrap her as they’d done with Bedivere. They caught hold of the ends of her hair, coiling it. She batted at them, yanking her hair away as she worked, but as much as she fought them, the vines persisted. If she let them snare her hair she wouldn’t be able to get up for air.
Breathlessness caused her to stop working and go to the surface again. The vines held her so that she could only gulp air with her face out of the water.
When she went back under, she was in time to see Bedivere pull himself free from the weakened vine. He grabbed at the slim vines woven through her hair, snapping them as he pulled her to the surface with him.
The tree snapped its branches at them and banged on the water attempting to grab hold of them once more, but they dove down to escape it. Under the water, a powerful vine shot out and pursued them, seeming to sense their every move.
As they swam from it, Rowena spied a water-filled tunnel with an air space at the top. Remembering what her mother had told them about the many tunnels she’d created, Rowena signaled to Bedivere to follow her. They swam deeper and deeper through the winding turns until they were sure the tree no longer pursued them.
They swam out to a small grotto where the water swirled into a natural pool. They settled on the ledge that ran around its inside edge and caught their breaths. “And I thought I’d be protecting you,” Bedivere said with a laugh.
She smiled at him as they kissed, holding one another tightly.
In a while they stepped out of the water and climbed stone steps. They were still underground but the cavern they had come into was very large, easily three times the size of the cavern they’d been in before. They were in a forest of odd trees whose leaves swooshed gently together, making a sort of whisper. It was light, too; a strange bronze-colored glow suffused everything.
“How can there be plant life without sunlight?” Bedivere questioned cautiously.
These were no ordinary trees, Rowena realized. “They’re bronze,” she pointed out to him.
They walked through this bronze forest watching carefully for any new form of enchanted attack, but soon they began to relax and talk.
As they spoke to one another, Rowena felt an unexpected sadness creep over her. The melancholy appeared to have affected Bedivere as well for his words were full of missed opportunities and misgivings.
“Where do I go now that Camelot is gone?” he wondered aloud. “I have left my armor behind and will never don it again. How could I fight for another king? I have no idea how I will live and so cannot even ask for your hand in marriage.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Rowena said, wrapping her hand around his arm. “I have known every luxury, and it hasn’t made me happy. My life has been spent in a prison. And now that I have found my mothe
r, now that you have freed her, she has gone away to Avalon, and I don’t know where that is. You cannot leave me in that house trapped forever like a singing bird in a cage. Before I knew you I could hardly bear it. Now that we have kissed, I will forever long to kiss you again.”
The thought of going back to her former life without Bedivere overpowered her with grief. She stopped walking as bitter tears flowed down her cheeks.
He put his arms around her tenderly as she sobbed into his chest. When her crying subsided she noticed that ahead of them the trees were different. Silver bushes like juniper grew about six feet tall creating high silver pathways for them to follow.
Bedivere kept his arm around her shoulder as they walked by the silver bushes. “Don’t cry,” he said, comforting her. “I should not have upset you with my hopeless rantings. We will be together from now on no matter what it takes.”
A new wave of hopefulness swept over her at these words. “Always together from now on,” she echoed loving the sound of these words.
“We could go back to the North, I suppose. My family is still there, I believe, and my father is getting older so he might welcome some help with his sheep,” he went on.
“It sounds wonderful,” she said sincerely. “I can spin and wouldn’t mind doing it if there was some purpose for it rather than just idle women’s activity.” She laughed. “Don’t ask me to embroider, though. I’m hopeless at it.”
He smiled and held her tighter. “I never noticed a lot of embroidery going on in my household. It’s beautiful there, you know. I think you’ll like it.”
“I think I will too.”
They hugged, suddenly overflowing with joy, feeling as though all their unhappiness was behind them. Rowena noticed that the trees surrounding them were now golden, like graceful birch trees but with leaves that shimmered like coins and jingled when they moved.