Sword of the Rightful King Read Online Free

Gareth and Gaheris were at his elbows, speaking, as they often did, in one voice. Few of the servants could tell them apart, but Gawaine could. Even when they traded tunics and linen camisias and breeches and cloaks, disguising themselves as one another, he always knew which was which. It had to do with the way Gareth set his shoulders and Gaheris shrugged. It had to do with the fact that one listened with his head tilted to the right, the other to the left. They had never looked alike to Gawaine, even when they had been babies lying side by side in their cot.
    â€œDo you think they’re an omen? The porpoises?” they asked.
    Since he had so recently thought that very thing, he nodded. “But like all omens, hard to read,” he answered. “Unless you are a mage.”
    â€œA mage!” said Gaheris, shoulders rising up toward his ears.
    â€œLike Merlinnus!” Gareth breathed.
    Neither mentioned their mothers magic. Gawaine wondered if they even knew of it. It was a secret, but not an especially well-kept one. He had discovered it by accident as a ten-year-old, going into her tower room, which was usually hard-warded and locked. He had wanted to show her a doll he had made for the cook’s little girl. Wanted to borrow a bit of fine cloth to wrap the thing in. The cook’s girl had a harelip and no playmates, and he felt sorry for her. He often gave her gifts.
    The door to the tower room had been open, and his mother was gone—off to the high alures to shake her black hair at the sea, no doubt.
    She never knew that he had entered the room without permission. But the memory of that cauldron squatting in the middle of the place—empty then but smelling foully, like a violated tomb—still haunted his dreams.
    Worse still had been the glass bottles full of dead things suspended in heavy water, things that seemed to turn at the sound of his footsteps, and stare at him with their bulging dead eyes. Unborn creatures, most of them, though one—he was quite sure—had been a human child. He could remember the room and how it had made him feel—soiled and damned—as if it had been yesterday and not almost eight years gone by.
    Gawaine folded his hands over his chest, spread his legs apart, keeping his balance without the aid of the boat’s rail. “Merlinnus is a mage, yes. But he is a man first.”
    â€œNever!” said Gaheris, shoulders still crowding his ears.
    â€œDoes he eat?” asked Gareth.
    â€œHe eats.”
    â€œAnd does he get seasick like Agravaine?” Gaheris asked.
    â€œI have never seen him on the sea,” said Gawaine.
    â€œClot!” Gareth told his twin. “Mages cannot cross running water.”
    â€œThat’s fairies,” said Gaheris. “Not mages.”
    â€œThat’s all magic makers.”
    Gaheris drew himself up so that he stood half a thumb’s span taller than his twin. “Mother never crosses water. And she works magic.”
    Gawaine kept his mouth shut.
So they know
. He wondered how.
    â€œFool,” Gareth said. “She came from Land’s End by boat to be Father’s bride.”
    Gawaine threw up his hands. “Whatever you two wish to believe, believe.” He could tell it was going to be a long trip. And longer still once they were at the kings court. He had forgotten what incredible bumpkins his little brothers were.
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    G AWAINE SLEPT but fitfully on the boats deck. It was not the wind tangling in his hair that kept him awake. Actually he quite liked the feel of it, as if it were scrubbing away all that was Orkney from his mind. But a sound on the wind, a strange moaning, niggled at him. At last he sat up, shaking off the blanket, and looked around.
    The twins were close by his feet, spooned together. Hwyll was snoring lightly, well beyond them. In the half-moon’s light, Gawaine could make them all out.
    But Agravaine was missing.
    And the moaning that had disturbed