"Let me get this straight," Morgause demanded, breathing slowly through her nose as he hand rested on Baucent's neck. "The Paladins are coming to Nemos, and your solution is to try and invade a Paladin stronghold in Gramaire and hold it long enough for ships to come in - on the word of a smuggler you just met? And even better, your plan for how to do this, is to sacrifice the pair of us to the Paladins and... what? Hope they'll nicely hand over the city?"
"No," Nimue insisted, and stepped forward. Morgause glanced at Gawain over the girl's shoulder incredulously. "I plan to take the city from the Paladins by force, and you and I will be the bait."
"Oh, even better," she replied sarcastically, throwing up her hands. "By all means Fey Queen," she sneered the title. Morgause had nearly breathed fire when she had watched Nimue stand on that bridge and declare herself Queen of the Fey. "You can go off and get yourself killed, but I'll have none of it, thanks."
Nimue's expression hardened and she drew herself up. "I was being nice asking," the girl replied icily. "You don't have a choice."
Morgause's eyes widened. She licked her lips and pushed off the cave wall, approaching Nimue so that she towered over her. Looking down her nose, she whispered dangerously, "And who is going to make me? You? With a sword you can hardly wield? That's adorable," she scoffed.
"The Hidden charged you with protecting me," Nimue said sharply. "Which means that if I'm going, you have to go."
"How dare you-"
"I know you're a lot of things Morgause," the way Nimue said that made it sound as if none of them were flattering, "but you are loyal to The Hidden, and to our people. This isn't just our best option, it's our only option."
It was a terrifying thought, and not the way that Nimue had intended for it to be. She was right - guarding Nimue was meant to be her job. But so was killing the Weeping Monk. Morgause had abandoned her post with Nimue without a second thought, and there had been no hint of dissatisfaction from The Hidden. They had spurred her on, in fact. But she hadn't managed to kill the monk even though she had the opportunity. It scared her - what if that had been intended to be her moment, what if she had lost her chance to end him? But The Hidden had shown no sign of being upset with her, they had not withdrawn - everything was as it always had been.
"I know you don't like me-" Nimue began, and Morgause raised a hand in warning.
"We passed not liking you a long way back. I'd happily throttle you myself most of the time," she seethed. "But, unfortunately, you aren't wrong. The Hidden have ordered me to protect you, and so I will. But if you lead me to my death, Hidden or no, I will escape, and I will leave your useless carcass to the Paladins, do you understand?" she demanded.
"Maybe once you could have killed me," Nimue said confidently, knocking Morgause's hand aside. "But I have the Sword of Power. You're not more powerful than me."
"Correction: I'm not more powerful than the sword. But you? I could burn you alive as easily as breathing," Morgause reminded her darkly. "The sword is the only thing that puts you above me, and when it's gone, you had best remember that you may have been able to make a bit of wind, but it was only with the help of the sword, and it exhausted you. I rode across the countryside at the head of a thunderstorm. If you ever challenge me like this again, you won't live to regret it," she said coldly, and pushed roughly past Nimue. Gawain opened his mouth to stop her, and Morgause froze, glaring at him.
"If you intend to say a word in support of her, then I advise you to hold your tongue."
And with that she was gone into Nemos, moving out of the camp. The Red Paladins were closing in, a Faun had come rushing in with the news only a few hours before, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She would have welcomed a fight. All that was left inside her at this point was wrath and confusion and a desire to unleash it on something. The Hidden had promised her a grand future, had promised her that she would be someone, but they had at every turn lashed her to Nimue, hunched in her shadow. How was Morgause ever supposed to stand out, how was she ever supposed to reach her destiny, with Nimue constantly lording over her?
And the way Nimue had spoken to her - her fists clenched at the memory. It was only Gawain's presence that had kept her from reaching out and slapping Nimue across the face. Without the sword the girl was nothing but a title she hardly deserved to a clan that was all but gone. She was nothing, whereas Morgause had been able to conjure a thunderstorm without conscious direction, and she still reeled at that - it was by far the greatest display of power she had ever managed, only in face of blind panic for her brother's fate. And they had dared to say her goals were selfish? They had called Nimue a queen when all they had ever recognized Morgause as was a better-than-average healer?
Nimue screamed, fire streaming from between her teeth up into the sky as she tilted her head back. Her cry slowly petered out, but her hands lashed out, grabbing at nothing in midair and wrenching. The dirt around her exploded as roots as thick as her arm ripped from the ground and twined up and around, forming into a high, arching back behind her, a gently curved flat behind her. Morgause toppled backwards into a throne made of roots, sunlight pouring through the hole she'd burned in the canopy and bathing her face, feeling weak and drained. So much. She had so much power, and yet she was forced to use it in service of a girl who was so completely undeserving. It made her want to scream and cry and tear everything to ribbons until someone, anyone, looked at her, and seemed even mildly impressed. She could do so much, wanted to do so much to help the Fey, but no one, not once, had ever acknowledged her in even the slightest way.
His head was pounding. It had been all day as they approached the Fey hideout through the forest, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. But no, that wasn't exactly true. He had a theory. He thought he knew why God had cursed him with such terrible pain, but he did not want to admit it to himself, how badly he had failed. He had been faced with the Whispering Witch, dazed and vulnerable and so very close to him, and what had he done? He had not struck her down and won a victory for the Church over the Fey. What had he done instead? He had breathed in her scent until he was fairly drugged by it, and then he had tenderly stroked her hair until his fingers knotted in the strands. It would have been so easy, he could have gripped her tightly and driven his dagger up and into her gut, but he didn't.
Why didn't he?
He had no answer for that, and now he had a splitting headache that only increased as he drew closer to the hideout, the place where she surely was.
"The Whispering Witch is mine," he growled the order to his nearest brother, knowing it would be followed. Perhaps if he caught her this time, if he killed her now, God would forgive him his moment of weakness when he was taken in by a pretty face and a soft touch, and he could be free of this accursed pain.
They used the rushing water of the river to cover the sound of their approach as they grew closer, the roar drowning out footsteps of jostling branches tugged by robes and cloaks. He read the Fey signs in the trees, their strange bent-stick symbols that guided other Fey to their sanctuary - a sanctuary that would soon be their grave. If he could be responsible for the raid that struck such a devastating blow to the Fey, maybe it would be enough. Maybe it would be...
Impossible. It couldn't be real, could it?
There on the bank of the river, clinging to a rocky outcropping, was a weeping willow with a swath of grass dotted with wildflowers vanishing under it. It was the place that he had dreamed about, where he had lounged in the shade of the branches under the starlight, the Whispering Witch by his side. But that was only a dream, was it not? And it was his dream. He had never seen this place, so how had he managed to conjure so perfectly an image of this tree and its carpet of flowers?
It... Had he... Had he seen a vision of some kind?
It was worse than he thought. The Whispering Witch was in his head, sending him sinful visions, rooting her way into his mind, planting seeds of evil there. Was this the reason for the pain in his head? Was this God's Light, burning out those dark thoughts and visions that he had been plagued with? Pain was cleansing, suffering burned away the wretchedness, that was one of the earliest lessons that Father Carden had taught him. This, then, was a good thing, and he would take the pain and revel in it and the way it would leave him cleansed from the tainted touch of the Whispering Witch and her wicked powers.
But no, that wasn't the case, because as they moved away from the river they passed into a clearing. Many of his brothers were gathered at the edge of the trees and he moved forwards. They stepped aside for him without even a word, and he saw what had drawn so many of them up short.
Sunlight streamed through a hole in the canopy overhead, but not a natural opening in the leaves. No, it seemed as if a round hole had been burned in the leaves, some of them still showing blackened and crisped edges. The ray of light pieced down, forming a perfect circle around the centerpiece of the clearing. The dirt had been ripped up and scattered, filling the place with the healthy scent of freshly-turned soil. Roots had been pulled up, worked and twisted as if they were clay on a potter's wheel. Thinner branches formed a crosshatch of a seat, thicker branches forming armrests. The back was made of the thickest roots of all, arching up and forming a tall, wide spray behind the seat, finer tendrils weaving together into patterns that, if he squinted, could pass for vines.
"What is this place?" whispered one of his brothers.
"Just like the woods - it's the work of the Wolf-Blood Witch!"
But no, no it wasn't. Between one blink and the next he saw an afterimage, there and gone and wavy at the edges like the spots that danced before his eyes after looking at the sun. It was her, the Whispering Witch, looking worn-out and sad, collapsed back onto the throne. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, one arm resting on the side, hand in a fist, the other propping up her head. The last thing he saw before he blinked and the image vanished was a single droplet sliding down her chin and dropping to the ground. She was crying, and when he looked, the place where her tear had fallen was easy to pick out. Blue flowers bloomed all around the base of the chair, but one was much larger and darker than the others, with a center so deep in color it was nearly purple. He could smell the sugared berries here heavily - she must have sat for a while, and had not bothered with obliterating her scent the way she had at Yvoire Abbey.
"No," he said, and the word cut through his brothers' mumbling. "This was the Whispering Witch. This is her work."
The atmosphere in the trees outside of Gramaire could not have been more tense as Morgause and Nimue rode side-by-side up the path that would lead to the gates of the city. Hatred rolled off of Morgause in waves, and Nimue was a ball of nerves. Neither of them wanted anything to do with the other, and yet they forced to cooperate by loyalty to the same cause.
"Can I count on you for this?" Nimue asked shakily, and Morgause gave her a truly filthy look.
"Of course, my queen," she replied bitterly. She only barely managed to restrain herself from adding, After all, it seems my only purpose in life is to be your pet.
She had begged The Hidden for a sign while she was out in the forest collapsed on that chair she'd made from roots. She had cried and pleaded to be released from Nimue, but while The Hidden had given her flowers - a favorite of hers, love-in-a-mist, also known as devil in a bush - she had not been able to understand what they meant. She wind had just pulled at loose strands of her hair, urging her to think, to figure it out, but the only thing she had managed to come up with was that the Sword of Power was also known as the Devil's Tooth. She had taken that to mean that no, while Nimue held the sword, she had to be by her side, and had left the clearing feeling even more wretched than she had before.
"But for the record, I think this is a terrible plan," she added, and Nimue shook her head.
"It's the only chance we have."
"I doubt that," she replied shortly, and touched her heels to Baucent's flank, urging him on. Nimue clucked to her own horse, and together they emerged from the trees, two white horses keeping step as they rode out and into full view of whatever Red Paladins were on watch at the top of the Gramaire walls. Nimue slowly reached to her side and pulled out the Sword of Power, lifting it aloft in the morning light. Morgause, for her part, lifted her hand and their hair was sucked forward by a rush of air that continued forward, rippling the grass across the open meadow and snapping the flags at the top of the wall around as it hit.
People were shouting, and cries of 'witch' with various epithets before it could be heard coming down from the top of the walls. The alarms bells rang furiously, the sound echoing out to them, and Nimue turned to Morgause.
"Are you scared?" she asked, and the younger girl looked pale and terrified as the gates of Gramaire ground open and the sound of hoofbeats filled the air.
"Of Red Paladins?" Morgause asked dismissively. "Why should we be? The Hidden are with us."
It was strange to think that not so very long ago she had been shaking and feeling ill over the thought of killing the Red Paladins who had stormed into Dewdenn and slaughtered the Sky Folk there. Now, she knew what kind of vicious, violent monsters the paladins were, and she wanted them to pay for what they had done to the Fey. They were killers and liars and hypocrites and if it would free the Fey from them then she would slaughter them all herself, and she would smile while she did it. There would be nothing they could do to stop her and nowhere they could hide.
Red Paladins on horseback came pouring out of the gates of Gramaire, and Nimue and Morgause pulled up their reins, whirling their horses and taking off into the trees, following the clear path of Fey symbols that had been laid for the paladins to follow to them. They reached the spot they had chosen to make their stands and Nimue dismounted, drawing the Sword of Power and dropping to one knee, driving the sword into the ground and bowing her head in prayer. Morgause watched, waiting, as the hoofbeats from the approaching Red Paladins came closer, closer...
They came into view, slowing and stopping when the paladins saw the pair of them in the middle of the path. The red-robed man in the lead drew his blade and stared them down, crying as he did, "There is no escape for you, witches! Surrender your arms!"
"Nimue..." Morgause murmured warningly, and she looked away from the lead paladin to glance down at Nimue. The girl was clearly struggling, bent over, and Morgause saw the way her face was screwed up in concentration, how the Fingers of Airimid would spread and then fall back and then slowly creep further across her face. Nimue was struggling, even with the sword, and Morgause would not allow Nimue's failings to kill the pair of them.
"Enough of this," she hissed, and nudged Baucent with her heels. He reared up and she adjusted her seat, staying balanced easily. His hooves slammed down onto the dirt and as they did roots exploded from the dirt, spearing up and stabbing through the bodies of the Red Paladins. Their horses screamed in fear and pranced nervously as the ground under their feet suddenly began to heave and pitch, and their riders slid from their backs, bodies held aloft by spears of wood thrusting out from the ground, slowly pulsing and boring further into their bodies. Several of the horses, freed of their burden, took off back towards Gramaire. Some paladins were pieced through the stomach, some through the chest, some through the head, but in every case, it was a fatal wound. The men screamed as they were impaled, and those who didn't die immediately wailed and moaned as they slowly bled out from their wounds.
Morgause glanced down, and she could feel as her own Fingers of Airimid receded into her skin. Nimue was on the ground, her mouth open in surprise, her grip on the Sword of Power slack.
"Is that was you were after?" Morgause demanded, and Nimue's head snapped up to look at her in disbelief.
"How?" she breathed. "I was trying, but I couldn't-"
Morgause stared down at her coldly. "I told you a while ago, Nimue. You're not the only one that The Hidden talk to. You're not even the one they talk to most frequently." She jerked her head in the direction of Gramaire. "Come on, your grand plan isn't over yet. We still have things to do."
Nimue hesitated for a moment, and Morgause couldn't deny that there was something really pleasant about seeing the girl who had presumed to give her orders and boss her around be humbled, to see that even with the Sword of Power, Nimue herself wasn't strong enough to do the things that Morgause could simply will to happen, and Morgause delighted in the fact that when Nimue mounted her horse once more, she looked over at her with more than a little dose of wariness.
Together they made their way up the path again, the roots with their dangling bodies that might have blocked their path bending back and out of the way as they passed, and as they went, Morgause said a silent prayer for all the Fey that these men had killed, that they might know peace now.
They stepped once more from the trees, and as they did, the cry went up once more from the top of Gramaire's walls. "The witches! The witches, they're there!"
This time they didn't stop just in view of the city. This time they continued to ride forward up the path that led into Gramaire's gate, where a sea of red robes was waiting to kill them, shifting nervously and seeming uncertain about actually bringing the weapons clutched white-knuckled in their hands to bear against two women who were supposedly powerful she-demons.
Riding abreast of each other, Morgause and Nimue passed under the stone archway and into the city, where they were greeted with an impenetrable wall of red robes standing before them. The men's faces were a mixture of hatred, fear, and disgust, and Morgause stared down her nose at them all as the whispers spread through the crowd.
"Surrender your arms!" Nimue called to the crowd. "Or meet the fate of your brothers in the woods!"
"Leave her!" roared a voice, and the crowd parted to let a man through. He was probably in his thirties, with the tanned face of someone who had worked outside for the vast majority of his life before taking up the priesthood, and curly hair. The other Red Paladins parted for him without question. Clearly, he was the one in charge in Gramaire.
He drew his sword, staring them down, and proclaimed, "Vallus shall serve your heads to Rome on spears!"
Morgause snorted. "And you would be Vallus, then? Forgive me if I am not afraid of a single man."
But there was cause to be. She could undoubtedly flee, but she wouldn't. The force that they had sent inside ahead of them to take the parapets had not yet come into view. Arthur, Kaze, and Gawain still needed time to get into position, which mean that they had to stall.
Nimue slid from her horse while Morgause stayed mounted, and Morgause saw how the girl was shaking with fear at facing a man in combat. Once more, Morgause thought that if Nimue had any kind of sense she would have asked any of the number of fighters that she knew how one used a sword, but she never had. And now she was left trying to hide her nerves by fussing with her tack, trying to buy herself time and hoping that in the next second their reinforcements would appear on the parapet and she wouldn't have to draw her blade at all.
The jeers from the Red Paladins were growing louder. They cried out in support of their man Vallus and hurled insults and epithets and the pair of them. They could also see that Nimue was afraid to fight, and they called her a coward. Morguase, who had yet to dismount, heard the same things being said about her, picking up into a fevered pitch the longer that Nimue continued to dither about and delay.
"Do you want me to do it?" Morgause finally snapped at Nimue, who spun around and gave her a dark look in reply. Finally, Nimue drew her sword and turned to face her opponent, and Morgause relaxed a little in her saddle, eyes darting up, but there was no sign of anyone on the parapets yet.
"Come on witch, fight me!" Vallus yelled, and came it Nimue, sword coming in for a brutal strike.
What followed was a passable display of swordsmanship from Vallus and a truly pathetic one from Nimue. Vallus had several inches and a few dozen pounds on her, and he threw her about easily. His second strike knocked her to her ass on the ground, and Nimue was forced to fling herself face-first into the dirt to dodge the third. The fourth sent her back into the dust when she tried to rise.
"Nothing there, brothers!" Vallus called, and Nimue managed to get to her feet and try to attack. Vallus easily blocked her strikes before fully side-stepping one, sending Nimue careening into the wall of Red Paladins. They grabbed her and shoved her back into the fray, jeering even more now that she had revealed how pathetic her swordsmanship was.
"Nothing to fear here, brothers, nothing to fear!" Vallus joined in the jeering, blocking Nimue's clumsy strikes. "What you see is a child!" He smacked her side with the flat of his blade, driving her to her knees with a cry of pain, the sword falling from her grip. When Nimue tried to rise, Vallus kneed her in the face, throwing her straight back down.
"Nothing," he hissed once more as he stood over Nimue while she crawled through the dirt, trying desperately to grab the sword once more.
Morgause watched all of this impassively. It was a cruel lesson, but no matter how she or others had tried, Nimue had continued to believe that she alone was all-powerful so long as she had the sword in her hand. She had yet to realize that she had no idea how to tap into the sword's power, could not do it on command, and even as a weapon in her hands it was more a hindrance than a help as clumsy as she was with it. Morgause would step in before Nimue was killed, certainly, but until then, she was entirely content to sit back and watch Nimue reap the rewards of her blinding arrogance.
Arrogance that Morgause knew she herself shared, but hers came from a true understanding of her abilities whereas Nimue had nothing to bolster her confidence in herself. She had no particular skill for tactics, had no mastery of weapons, was not even a passable healer. Summoner she might be, but she was nothing compared to her mother, or to Morgause herself.
Vallus stalked forward and grabbed Nimue by her hair, yanking her upright and brandishing her squirming self before the assembled crowd of Red Paladins. "Now you see!" he roared to them. "Now you see! She is but flesh and blood!"
Nimue reared up, slamming her forehead into Vallus's nose, and he threw her away. Nimue landed even closer to the sword, and now Vallus was distracted, staggering and trying to blink the tears from his eyes while his nose bled freely down his front. Nimue's hand latched around the hilt of the sword, and Morgause sat forward on Baucent as she felt the presence of The Hidden swell in the air around her, pulling baby hairs loose from her braid and sending them dancing in the breeze. She couldn't hear Nimue over the jeering paladins, but she saw her lips moving, saw the plea in her eyes, and then the markings on the blade began to glow a brilliant fiery color.
Nimue staggered to her feet, and the weight of the sword seemed to drag at her for a moment. Morgause lifted her hand as Vallus approached from behind, his own sword raised high, but Nimue spun. With more skill and strength than she should have possessed, the Sword lending her the power she had begged for, she cleaved the monk in two, his guts spilling out to dry in the sun.
As the pieces of the man's body fell to the side, Nimue toppled, the sword loose in her grasp. It was perhaps the most ridiculously pathetic way she could have possibly ended the fight and still won, and as she fell, a voice cried out.
"Drop your arms! Leave your swords and you will be allowed to live!"
Fey lined the parapets overhead, and Morgause trotted Baucent forward, standing protectively over Nimue's fallen body, the horse's neck bowed over her huddled form. She looked up at smiled at Gawain standing overhead leaning against the railing and looking utterly confident as he stared down at the paladins from the end of a long trail of Faun archers, the deadliest shots that the Fey had.
Morgause felt the shift in the air, like something sliding against her skin and then clicking into place, and her head snapped to the side. She saw what The Hidden meant for her to see - a scraggly-haired priest who seemed to be gathering courage for a desperate attack, trying to take down Nimue or Morgause before he was shot. Morgause had felt it before, knew what that electric feeling was, and she let it roil up inside her and lift the ends of her tunic around her. She stretched out her hand, and as the priest made his first step, she swept her arm down. From a perfectly clear sky came a lightning bolt, blazing white light leaving afterimages behind, and the monk who tried to attack was left a smoking, sizzling husk of a body with a singed arrow sticking from his skull. It was impossible to tell what attack got there first, but the point was clear.
Make a move, and you die.
Weapons hit the ground left, right, and center as the Red Paladins realized how truly outmatched they were, even if they did have superior numbers. They were in a killing field, and they could only do minimal damage to anything before they were taken down.
Morgause, who had been standing in front of the gate this whole time, flicked the reins. Baucent stepped out of the way of the gate and she spread her arm wide and tilted her head, gesturing. The Red Paladins who were still alive fled as if the very hounds of hell were upon them, some of them staggering and falling in their rush to get away, other stepping on bows and snapping them as they passed, so eager were they to flee from Gramaire.
As they fled, Morgause watched them all go, glaring after them and daring any of them to challenge her. Something inside of her was changing. She had learned something new, been given a gift by The Hidden. In the past, she had always been far more attuned with air and water, with fire being a close second. But not she commanded roots and vines and easily as Nimue did when before she had struggled. Her tears had made flowers grow, and she had become able to summon lightning from the sky. She was becoming more powerful, The Hidden were making her stronger so that she could fight harder for the Fey, for her people, could strike down the Red Paladins where she found them.
And, when next she found him, she would strike down the Weeping Monk as well.