Read Online Song of the Sword by Edward Willett - Free Book Online Page B

living room. Aunt Phyllis sat in her favourite chair, head thrown back, face slack and mouth slightly open. For a horrible moment, Ariane thought she was dead, that their argument had triggered a heart attack or a stroke. Then she saw Aunt Phyllis’s chest rising and falling. She must have dozed off waiting for me to come home.
    Sleep had smoothed some of the lines in Aunt Phyllis’s face, and Ariane could see a hint of her mother’s features there – a strong enough hint that her breath caught in her throat. “Mom,” she whispered. “Where are you?”
    The moment passed. The woman in the chair was just Aunt Phyllis: a small, vulnerable woman, trying to do her best in a horribly difficult situation. Ashamed of her earlier outburst, and resolving to put things right in the morning, Ariane pulled a pink and green flowered afghan from the couch, spread it over her aunt, and then tiptoed up to her room.
    She spotted Pendragon asleep on her bed just as she was about to close the door, so she left it open a crack to keep the cat from waking her up in the middle of the night scratching to be let out. She pulled her dirty clothes out of the shopping bag and stuffed them down the laundry chute. The leather jacket was a write-off, but she couldn’t quite bear to throw it away yet; instead, she tossed it over her desk chair. She stripped off the clothes she had borrowed from Felicia, wadded them into a lump and kicked them into a corner, then tugged on her warmest flannel pajamas and climbed into bed, careful not to disturb Pendragon.
    She was so exhausted she expected the night to zip by in deep, dreamless slumber. And with Pendragon’s solid little body providing a comforting warm lump against her back, she fell asleep almost instantly.
    But in the middle of the night, she dreamed a new dream...
    A lake the color of copper. The sun a blood-red ball, low in a sky thick with smoke and fog. Fires burning up and down the shore. Red-tinged water lapping red-tinged mud, and in the mud, the broken bodies of men: slashed, dismembered, disemboweled, headless. Wind moaning through barren trees and dying men moaning in the mire.
    Out of the mist lurched a man in chain mail, white tunic torn, armour, clothes, face, long golden hair and thick blond beard splattered with mud and blood. More blood welled over the fingers of his left hand, pressed tightly to a wound in his side. His right arm dragged a sword that gleamed silver and gold even in the dim, hellish light.
    The wounded man staggered through the churned mud, weaving through and stepping over the bodies of men and horses, until his feet splattered water. He took a deep breath, then another, then drew himself up and turned. He spun once, twice, three times, and the third time released the sword, falling to his knees as the blade hurtled out over the lake.
    It flew an impossibly long distance, as though something in the lake were pulling it. But Ariane could no longer see the scene on the shore. She was suddenly underwater, rising toward the surface. Her arm, clad in white damask filigreed with silver and studded with pearls, reached into the cold air. The sword whirled toward her, flashing in the light. Her fingers closed around the red leather and fine gold wire that wrapped the hilt, and she drew the blade into the water. She sank into green-tinged darkness, holding the sword at arm’s length, but even as the light faded, the sword gleamed silver and gold, as brightly as if the noonday sun shone upon it.
    Ariane woke with her heart racing. She lay in the darkness for a moment, staring at the ceiling, then sat up. The light from the hallway no longer shone through the crack in the door. Aunt Phyllis must have gone to bed.
    She recognized the dream from her library research. The wounded man must have been Gawain, or Bevidere, or whatever his name had really been, the last of Arthur’s knights left standing after Mordred dealt the King his deathblow at the battle of Camlann. At the