The Lady of Shalott
A/N: This chapter begins a few years before the movie and the end parts are set seven months before the movie.
Italics indicate the knigths dreaming through Elaine's magic...
Chapter I: Inish dreaming
Her horse walked daintily along the pristine beaches, just offshore ahead of her she saw an island covered with a forest. She almost laughed to herself as her fingers brushed over the tattoo of a Celtic knot surrounded by runes that were beneath the rough cloth that covered her stomach. The mark was a magic mark that used her own limited powers and the strength of the earth magic around her, to protect and shield her from harm, it also let her cut through illusions as though they were made of soft butter and her sight was a hot dagger cleaving it in two. If she looked directly at the island it seemed surrounded by a strange haze, as though the forest was a reflection in a pond and she had cast a stone into it. And if she looked just away she saw pristine buildings made of rock standing on it, and is she looked away, the image of a forest returned in full. She allowed herself a smile.
She had found the isle of Avalon, and it was here she would try to repay all the debts she had incurred over the years by her participation in the Woad rebellion. It was here where she would try to find her path through the world, without a sword in her hand and a crossbow strapped to her back.
She remembered suddenly a battle from a year ago, young men armed to the teeth, men who without the magic in her veins and spells worked upon her flesh in the forms of the delicate knots and runes that marked her apart would have defeated her, perhaps. The dark eyes one certainly would have. He almost looked like a Pict, only he was too tall. His hair had been a mass of dark curls, his eyes had burned with a fire she knew well, for it burned in her own, and she had known a horrible sadness, as she rammed her sword through his side.
He had been the beginning. She had taken the lives of many Romans, but on that day she had taken the life of another of her kind, a person drawn into a battle not their own because of a promise made by others. That had been a year ago; she had resolved that day that no more Sarmatians would die if she could stop it. She was in thrall to her father, her uncle and the Wyrd because her grandfather had promised them a new Battle Queen with his magic in her veins to lead their people to victory over the Romans, the Sarmations had bargained away their freedom over a century ago, or so the tale went…
She wished they could be as free as she now was. But knew that to be impossible.
As she turned onto the shallow causeway that lead to Avalon the intricate knot-work patterns on her back tingled slightly as the magic came alive…
Far away in the barracks of the Sarmation knights they began to dream…
He awoke with a start from his feverish dreams, his eyes darting around the room with a look of crazed wildness barely held in check. The tattoos on his cheeks seemed to burn like black marks upon his skin, his dark hair was matted with dirt and blood from where he had fallen in the forests.
Suddenly the memories returned. Eyes like green fire, thick wild hair the colour of the gold that was inlaid on formal Roman breastplates, A wide mouth that was more beautiful then any he had seen, hissing at him in Gaelic. And her swords, bright and shining, a broadsword in one hand, the shorter gladius in the other as she spun like the crazy dancers in the steppes to the east of his homelands. He had watched her moving amongst the other knights, like some wild animal, and he had known as she stepped before him that he could not best her, she was too good. And he realised that she knew it too, his curved sword glinted in the faint sunlight, but hers had seemed to burn.
He tossed in the small bed as lancing agony ripped through him, someone was calling his name, but all he could see were those rich green eyes taunting him to attack, and then just before she struck the blow that had caused him to fall there had been a change to her eyes, to her face. And he knew it in that moment. She did not want to strike him down, she wanted him to strike her. And he also saw suddenly, the wildness fade from her, and he saw the truth in the way her legs seemed to long for the rest of her, of the occasional slightly off movement she made, in the way no breasts swelled beneath her armour… He knew the Inish general, the devil of the northlands, the creature before him who ripped the lives from experienced knights bodies as though she had born to do it, was just a girl.
Just a child… He slipped back into his fevered night dreams
Arthur had looked around the room with tears burning in his eyes. Half his knights were dead, of the nine who still lived three lay in this room. And there was a terrible thing. Each of them had faced her, that blue painted wild thing known as the Inish general. She moved like the tales his mother had told him of the Battle Queen Bodicea, Her eyes even across a battlefield had found his. And he had seen in them an ability that frightened him, she could murder without thought at that moment, but he also saw that she was no older than some of his knights had been when he first saw them, it had been then he had heard her scream in the native language.
The words that had made his blood run cold as ice water as she stood over two of his fallen knights. "They're not Romans, leave them be!" she had cried as she stood over Tristan and Lancelot, her swords red with their blood, and the blood of others she had killed. Percival, Trevian… Their names made him ill to think of them. They had served two-thirds of their time in Briton, to have their lives ripped away by a girl wearing the tattoos that marked her as a follower of the Wyrd…
The Wyrd, even after all the years since when he had seen the olde woman she still made his heart race, he had gripped his father's sword, and at the edge of the field in the Shadows he heard words, soft spoken in his mother's tongue.
"You are too late boy." But still the sword had pulled free, the figure in the shadows had disappeared, and all he was left with was the knowledge that the old woman who had told his mother she would die to resurrect Excalibur had watched him, and done nothing.
Even after all the years that separated him from that encounter he still felt his fear. And the Inish general recalled that fear to him. He looked down at Lancelot, his friend was battling the marks she had left on him with her long-sword. His breathing was ragged and a raging fever sucked his body dry.
The Romans and Britons alike referred to the fiery haired warrior as the 'devil general' for she struck without warning, decimating any Romans who encountered her, often with one deadly strike, but always leaving some alive with the marks of her swords upon their flesh. He had thought long and hard why she would leave alive men whom she could have killed. He had thought before the battle in the woods three days before that it was because she had thought them dead. He knew better now.
She left them alive to tell her story, each opponent she faced was deathly afraid of her before they even saw how she handled her weapons, and once they saw the sharp metal blurring through the air in a mad dance they were doomed.
He knew that if he faced her he would be lying in one of the cots before him, fighting for his life. If anyone posed a threat to his remaining knights it was the girl who had called her pack off today, and with a salute to him had disappeared into the forests, leaving the remaining knights to gather their dead and wounded in despair…
Lancelot had seen him fall, Tristan's knees had buckled first, then he had dropped his precious sword and then slowly he keeled over sideways. He remembered hearing the woman who stood over his friend screaming something. A long sentence followed by a shorter one. He remembered the Woad who was facing him suddenly begin to retreat, he remembered cutting the man down. He remembered facing the Inish general. He remembered her eyes, they were dark green, but they seemed filled with tears, he remembered how strange he thought it that she should have called off her compatriots, and how strange that her eyes seemed filled with an infinite sadness, as though the world was to dark and horrible for her to contemplate. He remembered the way she fought him, her swords moving while her eyes stared into space, her thoughts had been elsewhere, and yet she was holding him off. Suddenly she spun away from him.
"Enough." She said in Latin. He had paused as she looked at him. She began to turn away, he took a single after he and suddenly he felt pain explode from his side, more pain then he had ever known. And all he remembered thinking was that her green eyes were watching him with pity as he fell, and then with the glint of gold from her hair, she saluted him. And disappeared into the forest like one of the Devil ghosts she was named for...
Seven months ago:
The sound of a fountain echoed through the small garden where she sat, her face as always buried in another book. This one was some long dead Roman's book. His name was Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor and General who had died in 180 A.D. ending a golden period for Rome, his book was called 'meditations' and was more philosophy than strategy or pompous self important promotion of the emperor's own 'brilliance as most of the other Roman books on earlier Emperor's of Rome had been.
She spun to her feet suddenly as she heard a rustle of cloth behind her seat. Her warrior's instincts had come instantly to the fore as she looked at the elderly woman who stood opposite her. Viviane was a small dark haired Pict woman with faded grey-blue eyes and had the faintest of aura's to Elaine's eyes. A soft glow caused by her innate abilities with magic. At that moment though Elaine noted another thing in the woman's eyes, bitter sorrow. Elaine waited, the priestess would speak if she had something to say, if she did not she would simply continue on her way.
The eyes studied her, roving over her face and body, noting the fact that the soft white shift that she wore seemed out of place on her muscular form, the delicate embroidery seemed to mock the rest of her appearance.
Viviane looked at the flaming gold hair, it would not stay in braids for long, and thus stuck out haphazardly around Elaine's heart shaped face. The girl's eyes had not become softer as time passed, and the wild look in them had not faded, no matter what attempts any of the sisters made the girl was still attached spiritually by promises and the tattoos branded onto her skin to the warrior's way, startle her and you would find he moving immediately to a defensive crouch, the nearest weapon of any sort seeming to spring into her grip. Even relaxed and just watching as she was now, the girl's entire body was still ready to spring into the attack if necessary.
It was saddening to Viviane as she roved to the slender hands, the calluses had faded but there was still a deadly strength in them.
"You will not find what you seek here."
Elaine watched the woman move away in the one of the buildings, a frown on her forehead, and her thoughts in a tumult.
Lancelot awoke with a small cry from his nightmare. Bright green eyes still burned at him from memory. He looked around his room and waited for his breathing to slow. The same dream again. That single word she had spoken echoing through his mind. 'Enough'
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