Morgana spotted several standing knights, blue sashes tied around their upper right arms, indicating they were part of Mordred’s army. Encased inside armor suits, many made by the same metalsmiths who worked for pay, not loyalty, it was hard in combat to tell friend and foe apart, so each army had taken to wearing their leader’s colors: Mordred’s blue and Arthur’s royal red. She noted that two of them had eagle plumes on the top of their helmets indicating they were part of Mordred’s elite guard — Guides. She would have to watch those two in particular. The knights were hovering over a prone figure in a once-shining suit of armor. Etched into themetal on the chest was an intricate design of flying dragons that no armorer in England was capable of doing.
Mordred.
Morgana knew that armor well. She walked into the camp as if she belonged. Without a word the knights gave way, allowing her to approach the usurper.
“Move back,” she ordered.
They did as she commanded, except for the two Guides, who could not move away from the man they were programmed to defend. They had no free will, their minds suborned by the machinery of the creature who lay at their feet.
Morgana knelt next to Mordred. The Guides had swords raised, ready to strike her down if she made any threatening move. Like Arthur, Mordred had serious wounds. She lifted his visor and stared into dark eyes that glittered with malice.
“Mordred.”
He nodded. “Morgana.”
“Where is the Grail?”
His eyes shifted toward his tent, a place she also knew. “It is mine. You don’t know what it is.”
“I do know what it is,” Morgana said.
“You know legends and myth.”
“I know the reality.”
Despite his pain, a frown creased Mordred’s face. “How could that be?”
Morgana did not reply.
“Without the stones — the urim and thummin,” Mordred continued, “the Grail is worthless.”
“I think not,” Morgana said. “Or else why would you be here?”
To that Mordred had no answer.
“Morgana is not my real name.”
Mordred frowned once more.
She leaned closer, until her face was just above his. “Myreal name is Donnchadh. I was born on a world far from here. A world where those whom you serve ruled just like they rule here. But we — humans — defeated them. I came here to help these humans defeat you and those you serve also.” She glared at him. “Mordred, better known as Aspasia’s Shadow.”
With that, she slid the dagger she had hidden up the sleeve of her cloak into the opening of his visor, jerking the blade across his neck. A spout of arterial blood covered her arm, but she was already moving, swinging the blade around to block the blow from one of the Guides, while her other hand searched for something around Mordred’s neck. Her fingers, wet with blood, could not grasp it, then she was forced to stand and defend herself against one of the Guides as the other futilely tried to stem the loss of blood from its master.
Morgana had been trained by experts in the martial arts. She stepped inside the Guide’s next thrust and slammed the point of her dagger into his armpit, where there was only leather, no armor. The blade went deep and she levered up on the handle, ripping through muscle until the tip punctured its heart. The Guide collapsed at her feet.
She stepped toward Mordred’s body to finish the job and take the small metal figure, the ka, which hung around Mordred’s neck, but the second Guide was on his feet, weapon ready, shouting for help. The other knights, humans who had been fooled into following what they thought was a man, came rushing in.
Morgana knew there was no hope of getting to the body and retrieving the ka. Not with Gawain dead. If she was killed here, it would be over. She had to find her lover’s body. But first she had to get the Grail. She darted past one of the cumbersome knights, into Mordred’s tent. An object covered by a white cloth sat on a rough field table. As soon as she grabbed it she knew it was the Grail. Tucking it under one arm, she slashed at the back of the tent with her dagger evenas knights poured in the front. Slipping through the opening she had created, she ran off into the swamp, easily outdistancing the knights in their cumbersome armor.
The rays of the setting sun tried to penetrate the mist covering the swamp, creating an ethereal glow that illuminated Morgana as she walked, her cloak muddy and torn from her long afternoon of wandering. She held the Grail, still covered with the white cloth, in one hand, her dagger at the ready in the other.
The place smelled of decay and death. She had already stumbled across hundreds of bodies, but not Gawain’s. She’d also discovered wounded from both sides. Unable to help them, she’d shown them the mercy of the blade. Anything was better than dying slowly in this forsaken place.
She heard splashing to her left front and turned in that direction. Someone — more than one — was moving. As she got closer to the sound she could discern three figures dressed in long black cloaks slowly making their way through the swamp.
“Merlin,” Morgana called out.
The figures froze, and one, the man in the lead, turned to her. “Walking among the dead, Morgana?”
“The dead you are responsible for,” Morgana said as she came closer to the wizard. He had a long white beard and his face was lined with worry.
“I tried to do the right—” Merlin began, but Morgana held up her hand. There was such power in the gesture that he fell silent.
“You know so little, supposed wizard. Ignorant people should not act.”
To that Merlin had no reply.
“Have you seen Gawain?” Morgana asked.
Merlin pointed to his left. “There are numerous bodies in a group about fifty meters that way. Many of Arthur’s court and of Mordred’s followers. It must have been where the center of the two armies met. Gawain and many other knights lie there. But where is Arthur? And Mordred? We did not find them among the bodies.”
Morgana looked past Merlin at the two men with him. They all had an emblem around their necks, a medallion with an open eye inside a pyramid. Watchers. Who had broken their vow and done more than watch.
“Are you just concerned with them?” Morgana asked.
“The Grail and the sword,” Merlin acknowledged with a glance at the cloth-covered object in her hand. “Where are they?”
“Arthur had Excalibur. Percival takes him to Avalon.”
“And the Grail?”
Morgana lifted the cloth from the object in her right hand. She held a golden hourglass figure, eighteen inches high by eight wide at each end. The center, where she had her hand, was an inch wide.
For millennia it had been an object of legend and myth among humans around the world. One could see how it might be confused with a cup, but both ends were solid. The surface was translucent, emitting a slight golden glow. The Watchers with Merlin went to one knee, heads bowed, awed by the object.
“I feared it was lost to Mordred,” Merlin said. “Guides attacked us last night and took it.”
“It almost was lost.” Morgana held her other hand over one of the flat tops. Her skin tingled. She touched the flat golden surface and held it there. The surface irised open, revealing a six-inch-wide opening. Merlin came forward while the others remained in place.
“I feared to do that,” he said. “I do not know how it works.”
“It does not work by itself,” Morgana said. Four inches inside was a small, round depression, an inch and a half in diameter. “A stone is placed in each of these. One on each side.”