The Lioness and Her Knight Read online

  Lady Morgan nodded briskly. "Very well, then. We shall begin at once—"

  But Luneta shook her head. "No," she said. Both Lady Morgan and Snowflake-Robin looked at her with surprise. "First I must know: Why me?"

  "You're very pert for one of your years, girl," Lady Morgan said austerely.

  "Why me?" Luneta repeated.

  Lady Morgan looked at her in silence for a moment, then said, "You heard what Master Robin said just now. You appear to be attuned to things of this world in ways that others from your world are not."

  "I don't want to be disrespectful to either of you," Luneta said. "But when you step into a tiny pond and find that under the surface it is as large as a great lake, it doesn't take special powers to realize that you've entered a different sort of world than you're used to."

  Snowflake-Robin said with a gentle laugh, "Actually, you would be surprised at the amazing shifts that humans will use to deny the evidence of their own eyes when they don't choose to believe something. Nineteen out of twenty humans who stepped into that water and saw what you saw would have convinced themselves they had simply misjudged the size of the pond."

  "Quite true," Lady Morgan said.

  Luneta shrugged doubtfully. She still didn't feel that she was anything special, but she was willing to accept that she was at least more perceptive in some ways. "And why you? Why are you the one to teach me?"

  A spark of anger glinted in Lady Morgan's eyes. "Is the arrangement unsatisfactory to you?" she asked in a withering voice.

  Luneta swallowed but answered forthrightly. "I don't know that yet. It might be. I just don't see you as the sort of person who would be a patient teacher."

  "No one said I would be patient, child. You'll do well to remember it," Lady Morgan replied, her face stony.

  There was an uncomfortable silence as Luneta and Lady Morgan gazed at each other. Then the elf said, "I suppose I can answer that. You see, you are now in what Lady Morgan just referred to as the 'Other World.' This is the world of faeries and magic and the sorts of things that in your world you generally find only in stories. This world is divided in two. There is the Seelie Court, made of benevolent faeries, and the Unseelie Court, made up of the rest. Everyone in this world and everyone from your world who traffics here must choose which side will be theirs."

  Luneta took this in, then said to the elf, "Yes, I see. You're from the Seelie Court, aren't you?" He bowed, and Luneta added thoughtfully, "And so is Gawain's squire Terence."

  Snowflake-Robin giggled. "Oh, dear me, yes. His Grace, the Duke of Avalon, is very much of the Seelie Court."

  That explained a few things, Luneta thought. Then she looked at Lady Morgan. "But I can't tell about you."

  "As Master Robin said," Lady Morgan said, "everyone must choose. That doesn't mean everyone must choose at once, however. I am—ah—still undecided."

  "And that," said the green man, "is what makes her the ideal instructor. As her student, you will see both sides."

  "That sounds pleasant," Luneta murmured to herself.

  "And now," the elf said with another bow, "I'll be going."

  Luneta turned to him. "Will I see you again?"

  "Assuredly, my dear."

  "And when I see you, I believe I should call you by your real name. It's Robin, isn't it?"

  The little man shrugged. "I am called that as often as anything. Call me as you will, but for myself, I believe I shall always think of myself as your Snowflake." Then he was gone. Luneta stared at the space where he had stood a moment before; then, calm on the outside but shaking within, she turned to face her teacher.

  "Before we begin, I must know," Lady Morgan said imperiously, "if you have ever been taught any magic at all. Did anyone show you any potions or oils when you were a little girl?"

  "Not when I was a girl—" Luneta began.

  Shaking her head, Lady Morgan said, "I wouldn't have believed it."

  "But I did learn a few things when I was staying with Lady Laudine of Salisbury."

  Lady Morgan covered her eyes with one hand. "Laudine," she repeated, with a slight moan. "Don't tell me that was who you were off to visit when you stopped at Camelot."

  "It was."

  "What was your mother thinking? Of all the flitter - wits to whom to hand over one's daughter!"

  "Laudine has a very kind heart," Luneta said defensively.

  "I am indifferent to the quality of her heart. It can be as kind as she likes, but it will never change the quality of her mind. What did she teach you? Creams for your complexion? Lotions to give you thick, lustrous hair and repair those irritating dry ends?"

  Luneta couldn't help grinning. "Mostly, yes."

  "You will oblige me by forgetting all such foolishness," Lady Morgan snapped.

  "But Lady Morgan—"

  "And you will oblige me even more if you will not argue with me."

  "I was only going to point out that you yourself have an unearthly beauty that must be the result of magic, so it seems that—"

  Lady Morgan's eyes widened. "What do you mean, 'must be the result of magic'? Is it not possible that I am this beautiful without any magic at all?"

  "No."

  Lady Morgan's lips parted, and she stared at Luneta in shocked amazement.

  "For beginners, you're my great-aunt. I don't know how old you are, but you must be at least fifty, and very likely older, so—"

  "If I, in years past, enhanced my beauty with magic," Lady Morgan said in a perilously calm voice, "you may be certain that I was already a beauty to begin with. It was a very different story with your precious kind-hearted Laudine, I assure you! When I began teaching her, she was a tall, awkward, ungainly, and extremely plain girl!"

  Luneta looked at her fuming great-aunt for a moment, then nodded slowly. "That explains it, then. That's why she's so obsessed with keeping her beauty. Poor thing."

  "Believe me, child. Laudine is an object for contempt, not pity."

  Luneta looked into Lady Morgan's stormy eyes for a long moment. In them she saw a barely suppressed anger, and so Luneta turned her own eyes demurely to the stone floor and said, "I beg your pardon for distracting you, my lady."

  In an awed voice, Lady Morgan said, "Good Gog, child. You're patronizing me, aren't you? 'Let's not get the old lady all wrought up.' That's it, isn't it?"

  Luneta hid a smile. "I don't know what you mean, my lady."

  "I have trained a dozen enchantresses," Lady Morgan said, "and not one of them has ever made me lose my temper or has ever driven me to defend myself. Not one of them has dared to interrupt me. And I assure you that not one of them would have dreamed of patronizing me."

  "That must have been dull for you," Luneta commented.

  Slowly, Lady Morgan's icy mask melted. "It was, in fact, you abominable child. Come, let us begin. The first step in magic is to gain control over physical objects..."

  Luneta couldn't have told how long she was in the stone chamber with Lady Morgan. In that windowless room, days and nights seemed irrelevant, and besides, without ever being told, Luneta knew that time itself was different in that world than in the one she was used to. She learned how to manipulate physical objects, even distant objects, without touching them, how to make a piece of wood give off more light than any torch, and how to start a raging fire with a pinch of dust and an incantation. She learned how to hasten and to delay natural processes—so, for instance, she could touch a caterpillar and make it go through its cycle and become a butterfly all in a matter of seconds. She learned to make potions that would either sicken or heal, and various oils and lotions and unguents of more practical value than Laudine's beauty aids—such as the lotion that would soften untreated iron or another that made steel nearly unbreakable. She even learned how to control her own senses and experiences. For example, she could make herself feel no hunger, and she learned a spell that made hot feel cold and cold feel hot.

  "This will be useful the next time I drop something in the fire," Luneta commented.
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  "Not so useful as all that," Lady Morgan replied. "The fire may feel cold to you, but it will still blister your skin. Feelings are not reality, child."

  Luneta also learned the limits of magic. Lady Morgan told her, for instance, that no spell could force a human to do something against his or her own will. "People speak of the philosophers' stone," Lady Morgan said, "that will turn lead into gold. But that's nothing: a mere parlor trick. The true quest of all sorcerors is to gain control over the human will, and hundreds have sacrificed all in the attempt to learn that skill."

  "And failed?"

  "Always. Oh, I don't mean that it's all that difficult to get people to do what you wish, especially men"—the beautiful enchantress smiled to herself—"but it has to be done with guile, not with magic, and even then"—she glanced wearily at Luneta—"it doesn't always work."

  Luneta knew what Lady Morgan meant. One thing that had become clear to both of them during their time together was that they were both used to getting others to do what they wanted, and they had both expended a great deal of energy working on the other. But, since they were both skilled manipulators, they recognized each other's tricks and only ended up frustrating themselves. Luneta had always been proud of what she thought of as her "persuasive" arts—for instance, inducing Laudine to betroth herself to the man who had just killed her husband—but in Lady Morgan she had met her match. Judging from Lady Morgan's frequent mutterings about "mule-headed chits," her mentor felt the same way about her.

  At last, one day—if it was, in fact, day—Lady Morgan said suddenly, "I've done."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I've done. Your training is over. You know as much as any enchantress should know as she begins, and far more than many ever do."

  "I don't know as much as you do," Luneta pointed out.

  "Nor will you ever," Lady Morgan said.

  "I might someday! I don't think I'm so bad as all that!"

  Lady Morgan gave Luneta her almost-a-smile. "If ability were all that mattered, you could be quite as powerful an enchantress as I am. I admit that freely. But you won't, because you don't care enough about magic to devote yourself to it as I have. And even I don't devote myself to it as some." Luneta looked questioningly at her, and Lady Morgan continued, "My sister, Morgause. She cares for nothing but power, both magical and earthly. Thus she devotes her whole life to learning the techniques of power and is a very powerful enchantress indeed."

  Luneta nodded. "But you care for other things more?"

  Lady Morgan turned a direct gaze on Luneta. "Yes," she said. "And I am the weaker for it. I would not use my powers, for instance, to hurt King Arthur—even if by doing so I could rule the world." Then she looked away, to a small cabinet by the fire. "But we have one more lesson. Go to that shelf, Luneta, and bring me the three bottles you find there."

  Luneta did as she was told, bringing her teacher three small crystal vials.

  "These," Lady Morgan said, "are the final lesson of your training. Each of these contains a higher and more powerful sort of magic than any you have yet learned. You may take one of these with you when you return to that other world."

  "What's in them?"

  If Lady Morgan had been less majestic, she would have rolled her eyes. Instead, she said, with only a trace of sarcasm, "Actually, I was about to explain that to you, even without your helpful prompting."

  "I'm sorry, my lady."

  "No, you're not," Lady Morgan said with a sigh. She picked up the first of the bottles. "This vial contains a love potion. Place a drop in a man's drink, and the very first person he sees after drinking it he will love forever."

  "That doesn't make sense," Luneta said promptly.

  Lady Morgan bowed her head in mock humility. "I do beg your pardon. Indeed, I beg pardon on behalf of the entire magical realm for snot meeting your approv—"

  "No, listen," Luneta said. "Haven't you taught me that we can't use magic to influence other people's wills? Well, then, how can we make someone fall in love?"

  "You are confusing two similar things, my dear. It is true that we cannot change a human's will, but we certainly may change that person's emotions. As you grow more knowledgeable, you will learn that there are any number of potions and spells that can cause humans to have certain feelings. But feelings are not the same thing as decisions."

  "That's just splitting hairs," Luneta said.

  "Is it? Let me give you an example. Suppose a man were attacking me. I could, by means of magic, make that man suddenly feel terrified. What I could not do is make him run away; that would be his own choice. A strong-willed man would continue in spite of fear."

  Luneta thought about this for a moment. "So this potion could make someone feel desperately in love with someone else, but it couldn't make him, for instance, keep a promise to the person he loves."

  "That is correct."

  Luneta wrinkled her nose with distaste. "Sounds pretty useless to me. What's the next bottle?"

  "This potion, once taken, will give you—ah, how did I hear you phrase it one time?—will guarantee you an unearthly beauty."

  Luneta smiled, slowly at first, then more broadly. "I see," she said, glancing once, quickly, at her great-aunt.

  "Yes, you impertinent scamp, I did choose this one, if that's what you're wondering."

  "Well, I was, a bit."

  "And so does nearly everyone else, I might add. How do you think your kindhearted bosom-bow Laudine overcame her adolescent plainness?"

  "Yes, of course," Luneta said, taking the vial and turning it slowly in her hand. "She would." She looked up suddenly. "But this potion guarantees that the one who drinks it will have great beauty, doesn't it?"

  "That is what I said, I believe."

  "Then all of Laudine's messing about with complexion creams and eye brighteners—it's all silly and unnecessary, isn't it?"

  "Just so. Laudine would be beautiful dressed in rags and with no beauty lotions at all."

  "What an ass she is, to be sure," Luneta said. "What's in the third bottle?"

  "A healing potion."

  "Healing? That sounds useful."

  "Not as useful as all that. It has some limits. It cannot bring anyone back from the dead. It can only be used on a person once—no one cheats death forever—and, most unfortunate of all, you cannot use it on yourself."

  Luneta looked at the three bottles for a minute. The love potion just sounded stupid, and she ruled that out immediately. The beauty drink was a little better, but whenever she looked at that vial, all she could think of was silly Laudine and her fixation on beauty. As for the healing potion, Lady Morgan was right: it had bothersome limitations, and Luneta didn't like having limits. In the end, though, she took up the third bottle and said, "I'll take this one."

  For the first time in Luneta's memory, Lady Morgan allowed herself a real smile. "I was almost certain that you would, although it's rare enough for anyone to do so. Indeed, in all my years of training enchantresses, I've known only one other who did."

  "Only one?"

  "That's right. Your mother," Lady Morgan said.

  Luneta bid farewell to Lady Morgan with genuine gratitude and even, to Luneta's surprise, a certain amount of affection, but her mind was elsewhere. Even when Robin appeared to escort her back to the World of Men, while she greeted him with pleasure, her thoughts were far away. She was thinking of the chilly vastness of Orkney Hall, where her very ordinary mother kept home and estate together.

  Mother, an enchantress?

  It was impossible, but Luneta knew it was true. She remembered her mother riding out in her little cart, drawn by a fat old mare, to visit the sick on the estate. She remembered her mother's exhaustive knowledge of herbs and medicinal plants. She even remembered the tiny windowless room behind the kitchen where she kept these herbs to dry—and no doubt brewed her own potions and prepared her own enchantments. Of course she was an enchantress. The most boring enchantress that has ever lived, Luneta thought bitterly, but
as soon as she thought this, she had to admit that her mother no longer seemed as dull as she had used to.

  "Robin," Luneta said to her elf friend as they walked back through the forest away from the tiny pond, "I don't suppose you know my mother, do you?"

  The little man giggled. "My dear, I've known Lynet since she was your own age. Oh, yes, I know your mother quite well."

  "It seems that everyone does," Luneta said. "Except for me, of course."

  "Quite a promising girl, your mother was," Robin said reminiscently. "I've only known one who showed more potential." Luneta glanced at the elf from the corner of her eye. "Ay, that's right. You." The elf stopped and swept a deep bow to her, and when he spoke again, his voice was earnest. "My dear Luneta, I expect nothing but great things from you."

  Luneta felt a warm glow inside, but she allowed nothing to show on her face. "Instead of talking nonsense, why don't you explain to me why it's so warm? It was early December when we left for the Other World. How long have I been gone?"

  "Just three months, my dear."

  "I see," Luneta said slowly. "And where are we going now?"

  "Why, back where you started, of course, to the good fool Rhience and the right holy Hermit of the Hunt."

  "Is that how Godwulf is known?"

  "It's how I think of him."

  "And are you sure that Rhience is still there? Why would he wait so long?"

  "He was a bit concerned when you disappeared," Robin admitted, "so I took the liberty of speaking to him after I left you with Lady Morgan. I let him know today that you'd be back this afternoon, and he's expecting you."

  And so he was. When Luneta stepped out of the trees into the warm, grassy area before the hermitage—sensing as she did so Robin fading away from her—there was Rhience, leaning against a wooden post in the sun, idly stirring a great cauldron. "Hallo, there, lass," he called.