Free Avalon Rising by Kathryn Rose Page A

north, to the Fisher King. Save him—it must be you . He can unlock the coordinates from your mind and give you something I’ve hidden with him. You’ll need it to find the Grail, and you must guard it with your life.” Then his temperament changes with the taunting lift of one eyebrow. “There’ll be no hope for Azur or Jerusalem or anyone else if you don’t heed my commands. But if all this proves to be too much, and you can no longer bear such magic in a ruthless world, turn back. Won’t you?”
    His eyebrow lifts higher: this is a challenge. He wants to see what I can do.
    I narrow my eyes. “Do not patronize me,” I whisper back.
    The Lady of the Lake lifts her cane high. Her eyes turn white, and her hair follows suit: from root to tip, it paints itself with the hues of snow and starlight, and her tea-colored skin sparkles with a sort of magic I never saw in Morgan. Magic that could never be reined by a human.
    “Hancashi feramitanouski mittererasha intsoh gehennamach!” she shouts in a voice that sends a force of power against the trees and flattens them. “Get to hell, thief!”
    Merlin spins in place and points his emerald-stone cane at the Lady of the Lake. The light bounces off his hand and rushes back at her. She recoils, stepping away from the power. I look out from under the hem of my cloak just as Merlin’s eyes turn completely red with dark magic.
    “Hell is no place for me, demigoddess,” he growls. “I have work to do.” He finds me again, and we struggle to stare at each other with the red magic around him. “Go now, Vivienne! Do not leave without my journals—you’ll need them.”
    I’ve searched those journals a million times for the instructions to make jaseemat , but they’ve come up empty—what could I need them for? “Why? Merlin! I don’t—”
    “Fly north!” he says, and I do not miss the touch of shame that draws his eyebrows together, showing me the bit of humanity still left in him. But then he faces the Lady of the Lake again, a vision of great whiteness that nearly blinds me with power and deafens me with her angry cries. Even when Morgan le Fay unleashed drones and drones and fire onto Camelot, I’ve never seen such power and might before.
    I know there’s no time, and if I don’t leave now, the Lady of the Lake might hold me here forever. With a final look at my mentor, I jump onto my waiting horse’s back. It whinnies with surprise and soars across the ground, hooves clamping on snow and rock and ice. We ride through the woods. Only once do I risk a look over my shoulder at the magical battle. I’m shaking like mad, as though the cold has seeped through my skin and into my bones to forever haunt me with its cruelty. I feel my heart fall into a fit of devastation at the thought that Merlin might forever be a ghost seeking magic to sustain him. I don’t know how he escaped Azur’s vault, if Azur will seek a way to bring him back. If Azur is even alive. I don’t know if my mentor is forever gone, and I don’t know if I’ll now be seen as a thief of magic myself, having followed the orders of Merlin.
    My horse breaks through the woods, and we ride on through the countryside with Arthur’s Norwegian steel trailing behind. At the cusp of the forest before the lake, I spy Rufus waiting. He’s set an iron exoskeleton about my aeroship with the thinnest rods he could forge, and he’s strengthened the main sail. There’s already a fire burning inside the aeroship’s furnace, ready to come to life.
    To see my aeroship in all its grandeur is nearly enough to make me forget the very real and very awful possibility that I might never see Merlin again. But if this was to be the last time, I can never forget what he did. For it is only through his defiance of the Lady of the Lake that I’m able to leave Camelot.
    Perhaps Merlin’s soul was the price for me to know what world I’ll soon face.

NINE
    Rufus calls my horse to a halt. There’s no sign of Merlin or