Read Online In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) by Sarah Zettel - Free Book Online

lady.”
    “And with you, Aeldra.”
    There was no time to linger. Risa squeezed Aeldra’s hand, claimed her satchel, and opened her chamber door. The corridor outside was still and dark. She could not risk a light. She laid her hand on the cool stones of the left-hand wall and hurried ahead, trying to step only lightly on the rushes underfoot.
    Behind her, Aeldra closed her door, cutting the golden candlelight off sharply, and leaving Risa alone in the dark.
    Risa faltered only briefly. She called to mind what awaited her if she were caught, and that thought lent her speed. Her fingertips found the threshold leading to the staircase and her foot found the first stair. Feeling her way carefully, she began her descent.
    Light flooded the world suddenly, making Risa blink and miss her step. She stumbled, and looked back before she could stop herself, and found she looked up into her mother’s face.
    Mother stood at the top of the stairs, frozen in the flickering light of a tallow candle. Only her eyes moved, as she took in the maid’s brown cloak, the satchel, and Risa’s face peering out of the shallow hood. Risa lifted her chin.
    A single tear glistened on Jocosa cheek. Her mouth shaped words. Risa thought she said, “God be with you.” Then, her mother turned back the way she had come. Within two heartbeats, she vanished into the corridor’s shadows.
    Risa drew the hood down further over her face, more to hide her tears than her visage, and hurried out into the warm, summer night.
    Whitcomb had indeed not failed her. Risa rounded the corner of the brewer’s shed to see him standing in its shelter, well out of the silver-grey light the curved quarter-moon sent forth. His gloved hand, however, held the reins for not one horse, but two. One was Thetis, a grey mare, the horse Risa had learned to ride on. She was no longer so fast or so spirited, but she was still strong and steady, and she knew Risa well. The other was Blaze, a chestnut gelding with a white forehead and fetlocks which Whitcomb often rode as he surveyed the lands for her father.
    Risa stared accusingly at Whitcomb, now seeing that he wore his old leather hauberk and hood, and that he had his long knife at his waist and his bow and quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder. He said nothing, but even in the darkness she could read his face plainly enough.
    I am coming. I will not let you do this alone. If you order me back, I will follow you
.
    “Father will be angry with you when he finds out,” she murmured.
    “I have braved my lord’s anger before,” replied Whitcomb with a grim smile. “And never with greater cause.”
    There was no time for argument. The moon was already well up, and if mother had been stirring, others might be about. In truth, Risa had no heart to try to order him away. His solid presence would make what she must do less lonely.
    Whitcomb held Thetis’s head while Risa stowed her satchel in the saddle bag. Inside she found a number of small but useful items Whitcomb had thought to add — a hunting knife, a spare bowstring, a pair of riding gloves. She mounted the horse and Whitcomb passed up her bow and quiver and handed her the reins. Then, expertly, if a little stiffly, he swung himself up onto Blaze’s back. The horses were longtime stable mates and old friends with their riders, so they stepped up quickly in answer to the lightest of urgings. Despite this, their hoofbeats on the packed earth of the yard sounded to Risa like thunder. She could not help but glance back toward the hall that had been her only home. No light shone in any of the windows, not even her mother’s.
    Tears threatened again, and Risa turned her face quickly toward the night beyond the yard.
    They rode across the cleared fields where the damp air was heavy with the scent of freshly plowed earth. They crossed the chattering beck, its clear water flowing like liquid moonlight over round stones. Both deeply familiar with the countryside, they had no