MORGAN: A Gripping Arthurian Fantasy Trilogy Read online

  MORGAN

  An Arthurian Fantasy

  LAVINIA COLLINS

  Published by

  The Book Folks

  London, 2015

  © Lavinia Collins

  MORGAN is comprised of all three books in THE MORGAN TRILOGY by Lavinia Collins. You can also get in paperback or it is available in three single titles separately on Kindle.

  If you like Arthurian fantasy and medieval romance, you will love the bestselling GUINEVERE trilogy also by Lavinia Collins.

  Available in single volumes on Kindle, or as a collected edition in paperback and on Kindle.

  Gripping fantasy romance fiction based on real legend

  Torn from her homeland to marry the young King Arthur, Guinevere tries to get used to her new life in Camelot. Despite Arthur’s somewhat gruff persona she develops feelings for him, but not ones as strong as those for the dashing knight Lancelot who becomes her champion. Torn between two loves, torn between duty and desire, Guinevere must overcome jealousy and suspicion at court, although staying true to her heart will threaten the whole realm.

  If you like historical romance you will love this epic take on one of the world’s most famous legends.

  http://www.amazon.com/GUINEVERE-Medieval-Romance-Lavinia-Collins-ebook/dp/B00QJFVCI4/

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/GUINEVERE-Medieval-Romance-Lavinia-Collins-ebook/dp/B00QJFVCI4/

  That’s right, another complete trilogy by Lavinia Collins for you to enjoy. Comprising these three books:

  Table of Contents

  Part I - The Witches of Avalon

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Part II - The Curse of Excalibur

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Chapter Forty Five

  Chapter Forty Six

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Part III - The Fall of Camelot

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty One

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Chapter Fifty Three

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Chapter Fifty Five

  Chapter Fifty Six

  Chapter Fifty Seven

  Chapter Fifty Eight

  Chapter Fifty Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty One

  Chapter Sixty Two

  Chapter Sixty Three

  Chapter Sixty Four

  Chapter Sixty Five

  Chapter Sixty Six

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  Chapter Sixty Eight

  Chapter Sixty Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy One

  Chapter Seventy Two

  Chapter Seventy Three

  Chapter Seventy Four

  Chapter Seventy Five

  Chapter Seventy Six

  Chapter Seventy Seven

  Chapter Seventy Eight

  Chapter Seventy Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty One

  Part I

  The Witches of Avalon

  For Kay again, because without Kay there is nothing

  Chapter One

  In the fading light, I leant closer to the book, pulling it into my lap. The words were familiar, but unfamiliar. I knew the Latin, but the things it said – strange, and unbelievable. The smell of the vellum – old, dusty, animal – was comforting, and safe, and the feel of the ridges of ink on the parchment under my finger somehow magical, as though my touch were writing the words onto my own skin. Outside, through the open window, it smelled sweetly of the beginning of summer, of fresh-cut hay and sweet apples and firewood burning in the distance. I could hear the nuns calling me from the cloisters, but I did not want to leave the quiet haven of my cell. I did not want to leave the book. I dared to delay a little longer. The nuns would be looking for me, but they had never scolded me badly yet. I wondered if they were afraid to because my mother’s husband was the king of the land, but they should not have been. He hated me, because I reminded him that my mother had had a husband before him.

  When I folded the book closed at last, the sun was dipping against the horizon, bleeding out orange and red at the edge, far away. It made me think of the places in the distance; Camelot, where my mother and stepfather lived, the far, cold North that was my sister’s home, and the lake on the edge of the forest, and across it Avalon, the place where I would go when my education at the abbey was complete. I longed for it already, and the sweet, dark secrets it promised, though I was sure I would miss Amesbury Abbey once I had gone. Amesbury was simple, and it was dull, but it was home.

  As I came down from my cell, I saw two horses tethered in the stables. Horses I recognised. Suddenly filled with excitement, I rushed at a run into the cloister, and there they were, Sir Ector whose lands were next-door to the abbey, and his two sons, one dark, one fair, like two boys from a fairytale. I hung back at the entrance to the cloister garden, a pretty green patch filled with soft grass and winding vines around the stone arches that bordered it. I liked Sir Ector, and if I had been bold I would have run over to embrace him, but my shyness held me back. I did not know if Ector liked me. I knew that I made some people uncomfortable, though I did not know why. But, to my relief, the dark son, Kay, the elder of the two, saw me and his face – which I was just becoming old enough to realise was handsome – broke into a wide smile.

  “Morgan!” he cried, running over and scooping me into his arms, to spin me around. I giggled, despite my nerves. I knew Kay and I were getting too old for these games, for embracing one another like children, but I was always pleased to see Kay, and besides if I had asked him not to, in his excitement he would not have heard me.

  “Don’t hug the nuns, Kay!” Sir Ector scolded, but his tone was indulgent. “They don’t always like it.”

  “She’s not a nun,” Kay protested, stopping still, but not releasing me from his embrace. He was right. I was not a nun, nor even a novice, but I lived and schooled in the abbey, a painful mercy of my mother’s to keep me from my hateful stepfather’s path. “It’s Morgan.”

  “No, Kay,” his father said, more firmly, “it is the Lady Princess Morgan.”

  I blushed at that. I was not a real princess, nor did I want to be called one. If I was a princess they might send me off to marry someone like they had my older sister, and I kn
ew all too well how little that had pleased her.

  Kay and I had splashed about at the edge of Avalon’s great lake together naked as children, and Kay pouted against the new formality that, as we all grew older, his father grew more and more insistent upon. An impish smile grew across his face, and as his father turned away he snatched me up again and I squealed with laughter. Behind me, I heard Ector sigh, though it was a fond sigh. Kay’s wonderful smile was his mother’s smile. She had been a beautiful lady, with the same sparkling brown eyes as her son, the same charming, irrepressible smile. She had died when I was just a girl, but I remembered her well. She was the reason Ector came with his sons to the abbey so often; the nuns here had nursed her in her final illness, and Ector came often to pray for the wife he had loved.

  I had, too, felt from Kay and his mother the feeling of the Otherworld. I did not know what it was until Kay told me, in whispers, late one night as we lay in the cloister garden side by side staring up at the stars. It was a secret, given in exchange for the names of Cassiopea and Orion, the Plough and the Great Bear. I supposed my knowledge must have seemed great to him, but to me his secret was far more precious. He had told me that we three, his mother and he and I, had the blood of the Otherworld in us, and we could sense it in others like us. He told me that she had taken him, once, to Avalon where the druids lived. Where I would go. Where the Otherworld touched the world everyone else knew. I had not known, until then, what the feeling was at the pit of my stomach when I looked out at Avalon, and from that day, it had had a name. Otherworld.

  When Kay released me from his embrace, I walked over demurely to kiss Ector’s other son on the cheek. Arthur, the fair son, was a few years younger than Kay and me, and still a boy at twelve years old. Where Kay was tall and wiry, with the shadow of a man’s beard, I had noticed, against his chin, Arthur was short and broad with their mother’s golden hair and a boy’s look still, and an open, friendly smile. I liked Arthur, but not as much as I liked Kay.

  By the time we sat down to dinner with the nuns, it was clear why Sir Ector had come with his sons. I had thought it was just to pray for his wife, or perhaps also to see me, to check for my mother’s sake that I was well, or to bring a letter from her as he did from time to time, but I could see the concern on his kind face as we gathered around the long table, and the Abbess said grace, that Ector had come with sad news. When the prayers of the nuns fell silent, and they picked up their hunks of bread to dunk them in the vegetable stew we always ate, Ector cleared his throat, and I turned to look at him. Kay, beside me, looked at his father too, as did Arthur. I got the feeling that they were both reluctant to meet my eye.

  “My Lady Morgan,” Ector began slowly, turning his eyes on me in a fatherly look. “I come, I am afraid, with sad news. Your stepfather, King Uther, is dying. He is in the care of his witch, Merlin, but it will not be long. The chill he took in the winter has not left him. There are men at court saying Merlin has poisoned him, but the truth is Uther is old and weak and death will come for him soon.”

  I did not care about Uther, but I was old enough to understand the danger that the realm would fall into since Uther and my mother had made no heir together. Uther, a hardened warrior, had had no wife before my mother, and no child meant war among the lesser kings of Britain. Besides, I was more concerned about the danger that would befall a widowed queen when her husband was no longer alive to protect her. There would be men thinking already that a marriage to Queen Igraine would secure their claim to the throne. Or her murder.

  “We must move soon to protect my lady mother,” I told Ector, with quiet determination. Ector sighed and nodded.

  “You are young, Morgan, to have such concerns on your shoulders,” he replied sadly.

  I knew he was right, but I did not feel so very young. I had seen wars before; I was a small child indeed when the war that killed my father came, but I still remembered it. The smell of fire and blood, and the sound of horses screaming as they died. I knew what war meant. I also knew what this would mean for me. People would start wanting to marry me, to try take Uther’s place as king of Logrys. However, the obvious candidate was my sister’s husband, Lot, who was already king in Lothian, and who had already three sons, two of whom must have been almost of age.

  So Uther was dying. There would be a new king. But what did that mean for me?

  “I will go with my lady mother back to Tintagel,” I told Ector, mustering up all the sternness that I could. “In my father’s castle she and I will be safe. War is coming, is it not, once Uther is dead?”

  “I fear it is, Morgan,” Ector answered darkly, “but for now you should remain here, at Amesbury. No one will try to harm you in the care of the nuns here, and I will be at court with my eye on Queen Igraine.”

  I nodded, but only because I did not feel brave enough to insist on my point.

  That night I did not feel like playing with Kay and Arthur as they chased each other round the empty cloister, smacking at one another with sticks. Kay was old enough to train as a knight already, and yet it seemed to me the younger brother had the more natural skill at fighting. Kay was faster, more lithe, and yet his little brother seemed to land more blows with his stick, laughing with glee every time that he did. And yet when the time came, Kay would be the knight and Arthur the squire, age rather than ability dictating what role each boy was to take. I only watched for a little while, and then retreated to my room, to the lovely welcoming stack of books at my desk, to read.

  Among the books in the abbey, old and smelling like ash and dust, blood and bone from the vellum they were made of, deep in the library, I had found these books, books that described strange things. Wonderful things. Impossible things. I understood little enough of what they said, at first, but the more I read the more it seemed to me that in them was an ancient recipe of words that would allow a person to change their shape. I wondered what the nuns wanted with books like these, but when I asked them, they told me that no such thing was possible, except when the bread and wine of mass became the body and blood of Christ. I stood before the books that night, and imagined myself turning into Kay. A boy, young and strong and free, without a stepfather King or a woman’s place in a marriage-bed or abbey. I could have a life running free, if I were Kay. But, when I turned to look at myself in the window, reflected against the dark of the night beyond, I just saw my own dull, pale oval face, in its plain setting of long brown hair, staring back, and I was still tall and skinny, and weak as any girl.

  Ector left the abbey the next day to return to court, but with no mother at home to watch over them, his boys stayed and I was glad of it. I supposed they had nowhere else to go. I grew bored quickly alone with the nuns, and I was glad of any company my own age. We walked out, the three of us, to the lake at Avalon, to swim. It was a hot day and on the walk there I felt myself sweat uncomfortably in the black wool dress, the sun beating down heating the thick hair on my head, burningly hot against my skin. The boys, in their thin shirts and light breeches, bounded ahead of me, laughing and running, and I struggled to keep up, holding the heavy skirts of my dress in a bunch around my knees. When we reached the water’s edge, Arthur and Kay threw off their clothes and dived in. I stood at the shore, holding a hand up to my eyes against the dazzling light of the sun on the lake, and suddenly I felt self-conscious. Last summer, when we had done this, we had all been children, and suddenly Uther was dying and I had small but unmistakable breasts and I was noticing Kay in a way that I had not before and I did not want to be naked in front of him. Kay stopped to stand waist-deep in the water and turned back to me. I could see a shade of dark hair across his chest that, too, had not been there last year.

  “Morgan!” he shouted. “Come in!”

  Arthur, following Kay’s shout, turned around in the water, gazing at me on the edge.

  “She’s afraid of the cold,” Arthur laughed. Even on him, as well, I could see the beginnings of the shape of a man; powerful shoulders, a broad chest. I was suddenly no lon
ger sure it was right for me to throw off my clothes and swim naked with them. I was sure if the nuns had known that was what we had set off to do, they would have stopped us.

  “I’m not afraid of the cold,” I said, quiet and defensive. Arthur splashed the water at me with his foot, and laughed as I squealed.

  “Morgan, it’s boiling hot in the sun. Stop being silly and get in,” Kay called, as he turned to swim away from me and Arthur, sensing the potential for competition, swam off to catch his brother up. He would want to try to race to the other side, as he always did. They never made it to Avalon.

  They might forget me if I snuck away, caught up in their games, but it was hot, and last year we had all swum together all summer long in a blissful timeless innocence. While their backs were turned I pulled off the wool dress, and then the undershift and dived in with a splash, feeling the delicious cold of the water rush through my hair, against my face, across the hot limbs of my body, and I opened my eyes against the cool, clear water of the lake. I always felt, as I swam in the lake, that I was being made new.

  I swam under the water for as long as I could, until I spotted Kay’s feet, pink and kicking under the water, and grabbed him by the ankle to pull him under playfully as I rushed up to the surface. By the time Kay caught his breath and bobbed back up beside me, we were both laughing, coughing and spluttering. We looked around for Arthur, but it was apparent where he had gone when Kay disappeared under the surface again and they both came up laughing hard. Kay shoved Arthur more forcefully, still laughing, and Arthur disappeared under the water again, just for a moment, and came up to spit a jet of water in Kay’s face. Kay splashed him back, but it was clear from the wicked look on Kay’s face that a different kind of game had sprung to his mind.

  “Arthur kissed a girl,” he told me, with an arch of his eyebrow. Arthur, blushed and pushed Kay angrily.