Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [60]
For the first two days, Gwen did her best not to leave her father’s side, and it was the purest of good fortune that it was her turn to act as his squire and page. She had an idea that Anna Morgause had brought her sister with the idea of getting her wedded to the king. She remembered what had been told her, of how Eleri had armored him against enchantments, and from almost the moment she set eyes on the pair, she was horribly afraid of what might happen.
And Morgana? As the queen? Lording it over Gynath, and her? The thought made her sick.
It appeared, however, that the same thought had occurred to some of the other women—and was just as revolting to them as it was to Gwen. After the first night, Bronwyn, under the excuse (inspired no doubt by Gwen) of keeping Morgana from being disturbed when Gynath arose for her morning work, took Gynath to sleep with her among Eleri’s women.
By the third night, when Gwen was lying wakeful, restless under the double burdens of a bright full moon and a heart full of anxiety and mourning, she heard the sounds of several people slipping away from the castle. She left her rug and blanket, pulled on her shoes, and followed the shadowy figures as far as the Stones.
And that was when she was seized from behind by a pair of strong hands. A third hand was clapped over her mouth, smothering her yelp.
“Go back to sleep, Gwen,” Bronwyn hissed in her ear. “We are armoring the king against the enchantments of that trollop and her sister. This is a women’s war, and not magic for you. Keep yourself and your power as Epona would have you.”
In the moonlight, one of the figures huddled about the altar stone turned her face toward Gwen. It was Gynath, and it seemed to Gwen that it was more than the moonlight that made her seem pale. The other woman let Gwen go as Bronwyn took her hand away, and with a shiver, Gwen crept back to her rug and a restless sort of sleep.
Whatever they did, it left Gynath listless and dull the next day, but it seemed to have worked. The king was courteous but distant, and Anna Morgause’s eyes held an annoyance and bafflement that heartened Gwen.
Then it was Anna Morgause’s turn to make some sort of trial.
Now, in all this time, both the queen and her sister had made a great pet out of Little Gwen, begging the king to release her from her ordinary work to play page for them, complimenting her, even praising her “charming manners” at meals. Gwen truly thought that they would use Little Gwen as their next means to get at the king, pointing out that she needed a mother, and how much she and Morgana doted on each other. That was a fearful thought, for Gwen couldn’t see how Bronwyn and the others could armor her father against that.
But instead, Gwen woke with a start on the first night of the waning moon. At first, she couldn’t think what would have woken her—especially not feeling as if a terrible storm were about to break. The sky was utterly cloudless, there was no hint of disturbance, and yet the longer she lay there, staring at nothing at all, the more certain she became that there was a disaster building, some horrific deed about to happen. She had made her bed, as usual, near the wall of the castle, and without thinking much about it, not far from the window of the solar where the king and queen had slept. But it was when she heard whisperings that sent chills up her back coming from that slit of a window, she knew that must have been what awakened her. It sounded like two women whispering to each other. The queen and her sister, surely.
Those whispers were—not right. Not clean. She couldn’t make out the words at all, but the very tone made her feel ill.
And when she heard the scream of a rabbit from inside that room,