Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [82]
“So why doesn’t anyone remember all this?” she wanted to know.
“The Shadow Knights do, but only once they turn to the Dark. Their master, Mordred, wakes their memories. I do not know about the Grail Knights.” She looked as if she knew that part of the story sounded pretty weak. “Possibly Merlin wakes theirs as well. But when they are reborn, they have no memories of their past lives.”
“But—I don’t get it, if they’re reborn over and over and fight the war over and over, why hasn’t anyone noticed until now?” Spirit shook her arm a little, and Elizabeth finally noticed she was holding on to it and let go.
“Because until the spirit in the Tree was freed, they had no leader and no direction,” the girl said simply. “Their conflicts were random, skirmishes rather than battles, and since none of them recalled their pasts, they did not even know why they fought with each other. That Tree is the one here in the Entry Hall. That is why we are all here, because of the Tree.”
“And the spirit was freed when lightning hit it and killed it?” Spirit replied.
Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know, but that is a good notion. I’m not part of that story. I know I keep telling you that, but all I can tell you is what I know—I was just a tiny part of the original story. I never met Arthur, or Lancelot—I only ever knew a few on the side of the Grail or the Shadow.”
“Wait—you—”
“I am a Reincarnate,” Elizabeth said quietly, but with conviction. “I am—was—Yseult of Cornwall. Iseult the Fair. Isolde.”
“Wait, what—Tristan and Isolde, that Isolde?” Spirit’s jaw dropped a little. This was getting crazier by the minute.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Prove it,” Spirit demanded.
Elizabeth looked off somewhere over Spirit’s shoulder, her eyes unfocused. “Ol an tekter a wylys ny yl taves den yn bys y leuerel bynytha. A frut de ha floures tek menestrouthy ha can whek fenten bryght. Avel arhans ha pedyr streyth vras defry ov resek a-dyworty worte myres may tho whans,” she said.
Well, it sounded like another language, and not gibberish. And it sure didn’t sound like any language Spirit knew. She had a smattering of Spanish, some French—Oakhurst insisted you learn Latin and Greek, so she was getting those now—it wasn’t any of those. And it didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard people speak, like Italian, German, Japanese, or Russian.
“I mean, that’s all I can do,” Elizabeth said apologetically. “I can speak Cornish, old Cornish, and no one’s been able to do that in hundreds of years. I speak what we now call Irish-Celtic. I could tell you where to find landmarks in Cornwall and Ireland. But things that I knew are probably not even two stones on top of each other now. The ruins at Tintagel aren’t even from my … lifetime.” She shrugged helplessly. “I know this sounds mad. You look at me and see an American, a sixteen-year-old girl, but I have been Yseult—known I was Yseult—nearly the whole of my life. I thought I was crazy when I first started getting my dreams, except I finally figured out they weren’t dreams after all. They were memories. That’s when I started seeing the Shadow Knights, too. I think they were looking for me.” She shuddered. “I—Yseult, I, we’re the same person, don’t you see? There is no Elizabeth Walker. There’s only Yseult of Cornwall, and I wasn’t on either side originally, and if the Shadow Knights can get me to choose them—that’s more power for them. Plus my Gift. I can see things, past and future, and that would be really useful to them. I think that’s how I ended up waking my own memories, because I saw my parents dead, and I was trying to find out how they died and warn them, but … I got all this other stuff instead.”
Spirit licked dry lips. “So … Breakthrough … Mark Rider, all of them…”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth