Loss

Chapter One

"You have no common sense!"

Arthur frowned at the words, but kept a tight rein on his temper. The close quarters made it sure that there was someone within earshot if they shouted. Instead, he turned his back on his brother and hunched his shoulders against the verbal onslaught. When Kay was angry, no one could find harder, sharper words than he could. And he was very angry.

"I know who that was. I'm not blind! She was Leontes' wife, and now she's Leontes' widow. You need to stay away from her!" He gripped Arthur's shoulder and spun the king around. Of all his warriors, only Kay ever treated Arthur familiarly. Probably because they were brothers, if not by blood. "Do you even know what you're playing at? Do you care?"

"Enough!" Arthur shook himself free, using both hands to push Kay away from him as hard as he could, almost glad when his brother stumbled and fell back against the wall behind. "She's a widow, Kay. I can marry her now."

"Marry your champion's widow." Kay twisted the words into an accusation that arrowed straight to Arthur's heart. "Of course. Why not give everyone a reason to believe that you wanted Leontes out of the way, that you're not the honorable king everyone thinks you are." He came away from the wall to grasp Arthur's shirt in his fists. "You're a fool, stumbling around like a blind man! Don't you understand what people will think?"

"The people who matter won't."

"Who are the people who matter, Arthur?" Kay shoved him away and turned, shaking his head. "God, it's useless to talk sense to you. All you ever think about is yourself!" He stalked away, slamming the door of Arthur's room behind him.

Arthur sank down on his bed. He should have known that eventually Kay would see Guinevere come or go… His brother was a little too protective, a little too close, as if he feared that someone would do Arthur a mischief right here in Camelot, in Arthur's own stronghold. While the others had been shaken by Morgan's penetration to the heart of their home, her murder of Igraine, her almost coronation, Kay had been truly shocked and badly frightened. If Morgan could come here, unknown, unsuspected, taking Igraine's place, wearing Igraine's face, why shouldn't she find her way to Arthur's own chambers and do away with him there? Arthur was only too well aware of how his brother thought; Kay was light of heart for the most part, but he could brood a little too much, a little too long on imagined dangers. And no one could imagine as many dangers as Kay. He was too smart not to think things through from every angle. It was what made him a good marshal, a good advisor, but there were times when it interfered with what Arthur wanted. He always abided by Arthur's decisions – a marked improvement from when they were growing up, and it was always Kay who made the decisions… But he also always let Arthur know where he stood.

And this morning, he had come just a little too early to check on his brother, and had seen Guinevere leave…

"Open the gates!"

The shout drew Arthur to one of the arrow slits in his chamber; looking out, he saw Kay on horseback thunder through the gates at a gallop, and sighed. It was a good thing, he supposed… Kay would ride off his anger and come back with more reasoned arguments. Those were the ones that Arthur feared. Those were the arguments he couldn't dispute; he knew in his heart that it was wrong of him to keep after Guinevere… But he couldn't help himself. Her beauty was a brightness in the great castle; her skin was like fine silk… He always knew when she was near, could always sense her presence, no matter where he was, no matter where she was… He could no more have stayed away from her than he could have flown to the moon… "I love her," he whispered to himself, and his brow furrowed. He had tried to explain that to Kay, but it had made no difference. "I love her, Kay… " He had said the words at Bardon Pass, and Kay had only scoffed. But he felt the words so much more deeply now. Could he say them again and make Kay understand? "I love her! How can I stay away from her?"

The words fell into silence. No one heard them; no one granted him any relief. It tortured him to quarrel with his brother… There was no one else left now. Both their parents were dead; Igraine – his true mother – was dead. Leontes was dead… Merlin had walked out of the castle, weeks ago after Igraine's funeral… All Arthur had in the world was his brother…

He tilted his head back to look up at the sky, ethereally blue. "How can I give her up?" And if he didn't give her up, would he have to give up his brother instead?

A respectful knock sounded on the chamber door. Everyone else knocked. Kay just barged right in. Arthur almost smiled at the thought; a wistful memory of their childhood days sparked inside him; a time when Arthur had decided to hide out so he wouldn't have to do his chores. He had hid himself a little too well, and had fallen asleep in the great tree that shadowed the river. As he slept the same nightmare he'd had many times came, and he twisted right out of the tree and into the river, and he had had no idea how to swim… If Kay hadn't figured out where he'd been hiding, if Kay hadn't happened on the scene just in time to hear the splash, Arthur might have drowned… As it was, they had both gotten a soaking, and ended up stripping out of their wet clothes and drowsing naked by the water, waiting for their clothes to dry, and that was how Ector had found them… Arthur had indeed missed his chores, and Kay had missed sword practice. Their mother had been worried sick. The tongue-lashing they'd gotten that day had stayed in Arthur's memory for a long time…

He hadn't often gotten a tongue-lashing from their parents… Kay had always stepped in and taken the blame for his little brother. He'd been protective, even then. But he had always been the leader, when they were growing up. Kay was the one who had led them into the forest on a dare, and the one who had taught Arthur to swim finally, the one who had patiently corrected his letters… Arthur wondered if it bothered Kay that now Arthur was the one who led… He wondered how Kay felt now that their roles were reversed…

"Arthur. Sire…" The words were respectful, murmured through the wall. They all keenly felt his pain at the death of his true mother, and their words, their actions, were gentle, as if they grieved with him. They didn't understand that - much as he had honored Igraine - his true mother would always be the one who had raised him. Just as Ector would always be his true father…

But the day was just beginning, and there was work to be done. Everyone depended on him to make decisions, straighten out mistakes, settle arguments… He wished sometimes that Merlin had never brought him here to be king… Wished that the sun-drenched paradise of his childhood still existed in a place he could get back to somehow… Never again, now.

He sighed, and headed for the door.

Kay leaned over the neck of his horse, urging the stallion to faster speeds, thundering across the great plain in front of Castle Camelot. The speed - dangerous in a way, since neither he nor the horse were watching for rabbit holes, and a fall at a gallop could kill them both – stoked the fire inside him, fueled a desperate need to run away from responsibility that seemed just a little too heavy on his shoulders… But at the same time, the gallop took his thoughts off the cause of his quarrel with Arthur… Or at least the obvious cause. If he were honest with himself there were many underlying causes that neither of them cared to face…

He had told Arthur that his kingship changed nothing, but in a sense it had changed everything. It changed how he spoke to Arthur, how he behaved toward Arthur, even how he allowed other people to behave toward Arthur, although it hadn't changed how he felt about Arthur… What one could say to one's much-loved but very irritating little brother, one could absolutely not say to one's king. The much-needed thrashing one could give one's misbehaving little brother, one could absolutely not offer one's king. For one, it was supremely disrespectful, and as marshal his job was to insure that everyone showed Arthur respect. Including himself. Which was a towering challenge at times; Arthur was so very young…

But the point was that where there had been a time when he could have waded in and given Arthur the hiding he deserved for his behavior, now he did not dare lay a finger on the king… Where he could have given a younger brother a tongue-lashing that would have set him straight, now he did not dare say as much as he needed to say. He was still learning the painful lesson of how to guard a tongue he had never bothered to guard before. Still learning how to hold himself back when beating sense into Arthur was the only solution that occurred to him. If Father had lived, Kay might have learned from him how to ease into this new and strange relationship with Arthur, might have studied successfully how to love and protect his brother without disrespecting his king… He couldn't treat Arthur as his young brother anymore – those days were gone past recall, and yet he couldn't rip Arthur out of his heart and his soul as if the boy had never existed. They had been brothers, sharing everything, but what were they now? Oh, they pretended that everything was the same between them, but someday soon, they would have to deal with what had happened and work their way through to something new. With no one to show them how to win through the changes, Kay dreaded what the outcome would be, and wondered if Arthur felt even a tenth as lost as he did… For Arthur everything had always come so easily. He had coasted through life, the golden child, loved by everyone, protected by everyone. That he would end up a king somehow was no real surprise; reaching out and taking what he wanted was Arthur's way.

But how could Kay make him understand, if they didn't even stand in the same situation to each other anymore? How to drive home to someone who had always had everything he wanted that going after Guinevere was a huge mistake?

Because trifling with Leontes' widow could only hurt Arthur's reputation, could only jeopardize his stability on the throne. For all that things had changed irretrievably between them, Kay did not want anyone to think less of his young brother, and he would cheerfully kill anyone who threatened Arthur... But how to keep him safe when he insisted on cutting his own throat?

With a groan, Kay pulled up his horse and stared blankly into the trees that surrounded him, without really seeing them. There were times when he missed his father dreadfully. Ector had always known how to speak to Arthur, had always known exactly the right words to make the boy understand. Kay was woefully unable to deliver the advice, the wisdom that Arthur needed to guide him. The problem wasn't that the king was making the wrong decisions; nor was it that he was making decisions without using his heart… The problem was that he was allowing his heart to overrule his head. He was flinging himself headlong into the hornet's nest without stopping to think what the consequences might be…

He had always said he loved Guinevere… At first Kay had scoffed at the words, feeling that they were as empty as they always had been... But he knew how to read the signs. Arthur was an open book to him, and possibly to anyone else who could read men. He didn't ever limit himself to just one girl. At almost any given moment, there were two or three, and, of course, he never kept away from other people's girls, as Kay had good reason to know…

But Guinevere was different… He saw a different look in Arthur's eyes when the boy looked at her. A longing… A yearning, almost an ache. He wondered that Leontes had never noticed it until the end. He wondered that he himself had never noticed it until the end. He certainly noticed it now.

Casually, he stirred his horse into a canter, weaving in and out of the trees. A half day's ride from here to the east was a small village. A half day's ride to the west stood Castle Pendragon where none of Arthur's men went anymore. Arthur's half-sister – lovely though she was – was a traitor of the worst sort. She had brazenly tried to crown herself in Arthur's stead, and then she had let the nun take the punishment for her. Kay turned resolutely toward the east, the village, and the river…

The scream rose from almost right under his horse, causing the animal to rear up in fright. Kay leaned toward the horse's neck, throwing his weight forward to bring the animal down, at the same time pulling its head to the left, desperate to avoid the girl that flung herself aside. She had come from nowhere, and he wasn't sure how she had gotten so close to him without his noticing. As the horse came down on all four legs, he looked at the girl, keeping a tight rein on his stallion as it danced beneath him.

She was pretty, but very young. Younger than Arthur, barely more than a child, with long dark hair. Kay had never seen her before, and yet – for some reason he couldn't put his finger on – she looked vaguely familiar… She stared at him in such stark terror that he automatically reached out to her with compassion. "What is it? What's wrong?"

She recoiled from his hand, and his voice – though he'd kept it as gentle and quiet as he could - crumpled her to the ground in terror. She sobbed out the answer, trembling. "They're dead… They're all dead… someone came while I…" She moaned and buried her face in her hands, rocking herself as if she could soothe her fears with the motion.

But Kay was utterly lost. There was no village near enough for this girl to have come from. He had heard no screams, no warning shouts, no sounds of conflict. What could she be talking about, and where had she come from? A vague sense of alarm crawled up his spine, but her distress was palpable. He tried to keep the wariness out of his voice. "Where? Can you show me where?"

"You can't help them!" She screamed at him in helpless anger and despair. "You can't do anything for them! They're all dead!"

He drew in a deep breath and said sternly, "Then the king needs to know. And since the king is not here, I will be his eyes."

She looked at him then, her eyes wide in amazement. "You're from Camelot…?" As if the very words reassured her, she rose to her feet, inspecting him from head to toe. "Of course… You're with the king…"

He leaned down to swing her up behind him. "Show me where."

She pointed wordlessly toward the west, and gripped his arm as he reined the horse around. A sharp pain under her fingers made him jump, and she drew back from him, as if the movement frightened her. "I'm sorry! It was my ring… I'm sorry, sir."

He shook his head with a smile. "It's nothing. It just startled…" His voice trailed into silence, as the trees whirled around him suddenly in a dizzying dance. Something was wrong… He turned his head sharply toward the girl at his back, a mistake because it caused everything to spin madly so that he couldn't get his bearings. "What did you do?" It had to have been her. He'd been fine just moments before. Now… He shook his head trying to clear the cobwebs, trying desperately to gain control of the dizziness.

She reached around him to close her fingers on the reins, drawing them from his slackening grip, and when she spoke her voice had changed, deepened into the dulcet tones of a woman he had learned to hate for her part in his parents' death. "You're a gift, Kay. I was hoping for one of Arthur's warriors but I never dared to dream that his own brother would fall into my hands…"

Morgan Pendragon. Kay shied from her hands, unbalanced, and fell from his horse. Stumbling to his feet, he drew his sword, as vague shapes materialized from the trees, but it didn't matter how well-trained he was. Whatever she had done to him had finished him. He swung desperately at the nearest shape, missed, and staggered to his knees. No one closed in on him. They didn't need to; all they had to do was wait…