After creating the magical pathways to Lord Lludd’s quarters – which turned out to be the super fancy ones I’d found on my first tour of the castle – and creating a few others just to give the cats more access to the castle, I went outside to find Mora, knowing her training should be about done for the day.

We sat outside the castle on a grassy slope where we could lean against the castle walls, watch the town below, and munch on apples.

“So what’s training like?”

She pulled at a strand of her very curly, fiery red hair.  “Not great, but Carodoc says it’s normal, that it takes a while to adjust.  He knows who my father was, so I think he expects a lot of me – but he’s going to be disappointed.”  She sighed as she accepted a slice of cheese I offered and munched on it.  “I’m not good with the wild magic,” she explained.  “You know, unformed stuff.  If I channel it, I’m good.  But elemental mages don’t channel magic.”

To demonstrate, she picked up a pebble and, after quickly glancing around to make sure no one was watching us, set fire to the pebble.  She handed it to me automatically, which might have been an issue if I wasn’t immune to fire – probably best not to do that to humans, generally.

I was intrigued, because channeling magic wasn’t my expertise.  “You can do that with all sorts of magic?”

“Well, it doesn’t work so well with, like, air magic, or earth, on a pebble like that.  Water or fire works best, but if I can get the air magic to work, I can levitate stuff.”  She took a bite of her apple.  “Earth magic is the hardest, though, because it doesn’t channel easily.  It doesn’t want to move at all, and definitely not to form around other other things.  The only thing I’ve really had success with is getting it to catch wagon wheels.  I think with some practice I could get it to catch boots and things like that, but we didn’t have enough extra shoes around the druid village to try – we did have some broken wagon wheels, though, which is why I could use those.”

I considered this.  “The theory should apply to other surfaces, but maybe it’s easiest because wagon wheels are made of wood, which is closer to earth to begin with.”

Mora seemed to like this idea, but shrugged, too.  “I dunno.  I can’t practice much here, there’s too many people around.  It’s kind of weird to be able to use magic around humans, you know?  But I have to be careful, too, because I’m supposed to just be a mage, and I don’t want to do anything mages don’t do.”

She seemed worried about this, but I wasn’t sure that anything would actually happen if someone did find out she was a druid.  After all, there was no longer a formal death sentence for being an Arcane.  Still, I understood why she was afraid of it, especially after what happened to her father.

Mora started fidgeting with the grass again.  “Would you be mad at me if I didn’t tell you everything last time?”  She burst out abruptly.  “I didn’t mean to lie, I just wasn’t sure about telling you, but then I thought about it, and it seemed like a good idea.”

She glanced around again, still not seeing anyone nearby, but lowered her voice anyway.  “Apart from my father, my grandmother had two other children – my aunt and my uncle, both druids.  My uncle married another druid and they had my cousin.  He’s about my age, but he’s a lot stronger than I am.  It’s kind of been a point of contention, actually, because to my uncle’s wife, I’m not ‘as druid’ because I have a mage father, even if I have the same ancestors as my uncle.  And she’s always made a point of bragging about my cousin.  It’s not that I don’t like him, but sometimes it feels like he’s expected to be the star and I’m expected to be invisible?”

She sighed.  “The reason I was sent and not him wasn’t because my mother and grandmother thought I’d do better.  It was because my aunt – my grandmother’s daughter – she gets visions.  And she had one about me.”

Images flashed in my mind.

Mora, looking fierce and focused.  A sword raised in both hands, aimed at the ground below here, where Arthur was looking up at her, out of breath, like he’d been knocked down and realized he was at a disadvantage.  Mora raising the sword – then bringing it down in one decisive movement.

Mora floundered around, trying to figure out what to say, so I did it for her.

“Your aunt saw a vision of you with a sword, bringing it down on Arthur?”  I smiled dryly at her shock.  “Sympathetic vision.  I haven’t had one before, but I know what they are, and apparently your mention of your aunt’s vision let me share what she saw.”

Somewhat to my surprise, she cringed a bit.  “But I don’t get it!  My grandmother and mother are so convinced that the vision means I’ll succeed where even my cousin wouldn’t, but I don’t – like – how?  I still don’t see how I could ever do that!”

I used the small knife I’d borrowed from the kitchen to cut us each another slice of cheese while I thought.  “Did your aunt – the one who had the vision – agree with the idea?”

Mora shrugged.  “She doesn’t get visions often and she’s super indecisive about them when she does get them.  Apparently she had one when she was young and she thought she knew what it meant, but it turned out really bad and her friend lost her life.  Ever since then, she’s not willing to actually say what she thinks about visions and won’t try to translate them.  So my grandmother and mother just decided it has to mean what it looks like.”  She gave me a curious look.  “You don’t think they were right?”

“Visions are impermanent.  They can change.”  I leaned my head back to look at the sky.  “Like clouds, they look very certain one moment, but the next can disappear in the wind.  When they’re repeated to others, the likelihood of something interfering with the initial vision increases.  For this reason, many of those who have visions prefer to keep quiet about the details.  Not to mention, people often misunderstand them.  The one having the vision often has the best chance at understanding it, perhaps subconsciously, even if they can’t explain why they feel a particular translation is correct – even if everyone else thinks a different translation applies.  The one who had the vision is in the best situation to guess the meaning.

“On the other hand,” I went on slowly, now watching some ants explore the core of my apple, “the vision your aunt saw seems fairly concrete.  What it means, though, isn’t as clear to me.”

Mora was, understandably, confused.  “What else would using a sword like that mean?”

“When I first got here, I wandered around a bit as a cat, just to get the feel for the place without being noticed.”

Mora seemed confused about this, but she didn’t ask.

“One of the things I saw was the knights’ courtyard and their training.  They do a lot of different training, including fighting with each other with wooden swords.”  I took a small piece of cheese and set it down next to the apple core for the ants to take, too.  “What I saw in the vision honestly seemed more like that.  You, in the vision, weren’t angry.  You were focused and intent, but not angry.  It reminded me of the knights training.  Then, too, Arthur wasn’t afraid.  Surprised, but not afraid.  He didn’t seem to fear for his life.  Initially, the idea of you bringing down the sword seems to only have one option, but does it really?  You could have brought it down next to his head – enough to prove your value in combat, but without hurting him.  The trajectory of the blade more closely resembled that, to me.  It didn’t look like you were aiming for his heart, frankly, and while you could have aimed for his head or neck, it didn’t look quite right for that, either.”

Mora’s mouth was slightly open, but her eyes were bright.  “You mean like a magical knight?  Oh, I would love that.”  Her eyes got all dreamy.  “I used to want to be a knight.  I dreamed about being a brave hero and rescuing girls in peril and stuff like that.  Then my grandmother told me that women couldn’t be knights and shattered that dream.  Only, now Arthur lets women be knights and I wish I could, but,” she sighed sadly, “I’ve never been trained, and you can’t just become a knight without training.  Think of it, though!  A knight who could also use magic.”

I picked up the pebble she’d set on fire earlier, thinking.  “And you can channel magic, something that could be particularly useful for a knight.  You could set your sword on fire or arrows, really anything.  A magic-wielding knight could be a powerful ally.”

She nodded, but sighed sadly again.  “Well, it’s a kind of pointless dream.  It takes years of training to be a knight, and I don’t have that.  I know magic, but nothing about swords.”  She looked wistful, though.

I wasn’t as convinced, but I also wasn’t about to offer her false hope without knowing more.  I wanted to talk to Lanval, and maybe to Ancelote or some of the other women knights.  Maybe they’d be willing to train Mora, although they might also think it was odd for a mage to want to be trained as a knight.

That might be something I’d have to wait to explore.  Maybe if Arthur did genuinely intend to be a friend to Arcane, he’d be open to the idea of a magic-wielding knight.  It was something I wasn’t willing to suggest to her now, before I knew more about Arthur, but I hoped that maybe someday I could suggest it.

It would also mean that her entire reason for being here actually wasn’t to kill Arthur, it was really to be a new kind of knight.  Somehow, that fit better to me, because she didn’t strike me as someone who would be comfortable assassinating a king.  Granted, her family wouldn’t be too happy about it, but I didn’t think she’d succeed even if she tried.

Sure, I knew I needed to stay at least until my own visions were fulfilled.  They seemed to be warning of an event in the future, something that could result in dire circumstances for all of Logres if I failed, but I was positive the danger wasn’t Mora.  She gave off an entirely different kind of feel from the visions I’d seen, and I actually saw her as a much more positive, happy type of vibe than what I’d felt from those visions.

Something dangerous was on the horizon, but I was willing to bet my soul on Mora not being the threat.

I changed the subject, instead telling her about what I was doing, including planning to learn some new professions and helping out my badger friend.

Mora seemed puzzled – not about the badger, but about my planned studies.  “You want to learn to make clothes?  That seems odd.  I thought that was part of the advantages of being a noble!  I was kind of excited about that part of being a mage,” she admitted, “because it meant they make robes and stuff for us, and we can just wear those, and I don’t have to make stuff.  It’s not much fun, you know.”

I shrugged.  “I know a bit, but I want to be able to make my own stuff.  Design new things if I want.  Make things that don’t look like anyone else, even, but make me comfortable.”

Mora still looked baffled.  “Well, I guess whatever makes you happy.  I know a bit, I can teach you, but I’m really a mess at making things.  My mother says I tend to sew parts on backwards or upsidedown, and I swear, I try!  I just don’t see the difference.”  She made a puzzled face.  “So, uh, I might not actually be the best teacher.”

I smothered a smile because honestly, I thought it was cute that she found dressmaking so confusing and yet sweet that she’d still offer to help.  “Don’t worry, I know you’re busy studying as a mage.  I’m planning to ask the seamstress, and Genevieve will pay her, unless I can come up with a way to get her to teach me on my own.”  I had to think over this.  “I’m not really sure what people like her would want in a town like this, at least not something I could come up with.  I’m used to bartering for things with things I could bring from the woods.  It’s not like that here.”

Mora agreed.  “We had money for bartering, but our village was small.  Not like this.”  She nodded towards the town below us.  “We knew everyone, and if you wanted something, you could just ask a favor and expect to help them re-thatch their roof or plant their garden or something like that.”

That I could understand.  But what would a seamstress who worked for the nobles of Camelot want?  Probably just money, but if there was a chance she’d want something I could deliver personally, I’d do my best to get her to help me on my own, without needing Genevieve’s money.

But at least I had that option available, if I needed it, and meanwhile I’d made a friend, and was starting to get my room to feel more like home.

Next up, though, was talking to the king and seeing if Genevieve and Olwen were right – if he would understand me after actually speaking with me.

Only time would tell.