Crossing the Threshold: The Silver Branch, #1

By Ruth Athmore

Sir Medraut, prince of Orcades, died protecting Queen Guinevere after King Arthur's final battle, and Liadain's heart shattered. The world changed as ancient powers waned, mortal ambition drowned mortal virtue, and men chased thrones and kingdoms at any cost. Only a handful of Camelot's knights chose to keep their watch through the long years, defending what was left of Arthur's dream.

Centuries after Camelot became but a fairy tale, Liadain inghean uí Gwynn, daughter of the High King of the Otherworld, longs for death to free her from her immortal grief. Remote, untouchable, alone, she waits for the end of her days.

But a summons from the chief bard of Camelot places Liadain once more in the company of Arthur's faithful knights, on a path that leads to the promise of dreams reborn. If she can survive the quest. If she can face the past.

If she remembers what it means to love.

The epic tale of the greatest knights of the Round Table racing to defeat an ancient enemy transports you to a time when magic warred with honor, and great loves defeated the powers of darkness.

Legendary names of old, and deeds worthy of legend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sebastian & Theodore Publishers
• Release date: Mar 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393651765

Ruth Athmore

Ruth Athmore lives on the prairies of the Upper Midwest, United States with her family and numerous cats, dogs, goats and sheep to keep her busy when she is not dabbling in the affairs of other worlds.  

Book preview

Chapter One

The End of the Beginning ...

The hidden sun turned the heavy mist around them into luminescent grey. Liadain gripped her steering pole tightly as she stood in the stern of the broad-beamed boat. The rough wood slid thin slivers into the flesh of her hands, pinpricks whose pain she ignored. The scent of water and rotting vegetation rose to her nostrils as she drew in quiet, deep breaths. The reason for the deep breaths was seated in the boat on the cushions piled thickly in the bottom, the three queens as powerful as they were beautiful. Their power was a heavy weight, thickening the air until it clogged in the throat, and the purpose of their waiting was a dread that made it worse. Rigid and silent, they watched the mist for the sign they needed.

The mist adorning the water of the Lake, the mystical Lagu whose shores touched all lands of the world.

She clutched her pole harder, aware that the tripartite ring on the middle finger of her right hand glowed white. There were three settings in the ring, one at the base of the finger, one at the middle joint, and one at the base of the fingernail, and the faceted diamonds in each one pulsed in time to her heart beat.  

One...two...three...

The waves nudged the boat closer to the unseen shore, and she jabbed the end of the pole deeper into the muck of the lake bed hidden beneath the silvered water. The boat resisted, its greater weight leaning heavily enough against the pole that it curved, but Liadain wasn’t a frail and ethereal creature. She gritted her teeth and held fast, and the forward motion stopped without even a bump to mark it.  

The golden-haired queen sitting closest to her in the stern of the boat glanced over her shoulder, gazing at her steadily until Liadain looked away. Igraine’s vivid blue eyes were edged in grey, startling when paired with the hair the color of purest gold beneath a summer’s sun. Her deep blue cloak fell around her in graceful swirls, and the edge of the hood framed her flawless, porcelain skin.  

The other two queens—proud and deadly Morgana le Fey and mysterious and powerful Argante—did not look away from their relentless study of the mist. The shore was there, as the faint whisper of the waves breaking upon the sand bore witness to, but they did not dare approach it too soon. They were at the crossroads, where Time could either turn to their purpose or twist to rebound upon them. The power contained in this small vessel had the best chance to keep Fate at bay, but their work must not begin before the right moment.

Which explained her presence when all hung in the balance on the edge of a keen knife. Child of the High King of the Otherworld, she was the surest way to cross between the worlds. For all their power, the three queens were still human if not entirely mortal, and they needed her to both come to this place at this time, and return to the safety of Avalon with their prize.

Her breath caught in her chest, and Liadain gripped her steering pole and thought of a prayer her human friends in Camelot whispered before riding out to battle. Those same men even now fought and died as she waited with the queens, and knowing she could not help them choked the prayer into a silence heavier than the shrouding fog as her heart contracted.

But it kept beating.

She wanted to reach out to the battlefield on this foreign shore, where mortal strength failed as weariness and wounds took their toll. Her memories of those men were of friendly smiles, warmth, and affection, all the things a woman who came to the court without friends or protectors needed the most. Their voices rumbled with the strength of men who wore plate armor for hours on end while fighting both from horseback and on foot. And when the armor came off, they were men of gentility and kindness to the women who held their oaths of fidelity and respect.

They were the knights of King Arthur, and many were her friends.

Liadain!

Argante’s reproof snapped across the air, a whisper that held the promise of thunder, and she stiffened instinctively, braced for the blow that would come hard on its heels. But the Queen of Avalon didn’t follow through. Instead, she sat with her back rigidly straight and watched as the tendrils of ethereal white mist curling around the carved prow of the boat.

Morgana’s fingers whitened where she clasped them in her lap, but the older sister of the king didn’t look around. Her mother had taken the measure of the High King’s daughter upon whom the success of this venture depended, and the skilled sorceress had already dismissed Liadain from her thoughts.  

A horse whickered somewhere on the shore ahead of them, the uncertain query of a war steed whose master was unable to guide him. Without waiting for a signal from the queens, Liadain pushed hard against her pole, and the boat surged forward. She pushed again, anxious to find the source of the sound, bracing her feet against the sturdy wooden deck and putting her weight into the motion.

After what seemed like an eternity, the keel grated against the shore, the forward momentum wedging it deep into the sand. The mist parted enough to show the undergrowth and the ancient boughs of trees fringing the shore, but little else.  

No sun, no wind, no life.

The boat came to an abrupt stop, the sudden lack of motion throwing the occupants forward. She should have cowered under the anticipation of their wrath, but she didn’t. Her focus was on the shore. She wondered who had already died here, and who were fading out of this life as their blood soaked the ground beneath them. She feared the answer to the question as much as she feared ignorance.

No answers came to her. Liadain couldn’t leave the boat to go in search of them; the queens needed her, and the man they waited for needed her power more than the knights who had fallen around him.

The horse whickered again, a gentle sound at odds with the turmoil that must be raging not less than a mile away. But battles ebbed and flowed, and here, on this little piece of land, there was preternatural peace as they waited to preserve what little they could of what had been gained.

Liadain held her breath. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare jump over the side of the boat and splash through the shallows to find the horse and end this tense waiting. But then the mist thinned directly in front of the boat, and she forgot about waiting and wished desperately they were still out on the water, ignorant of what waited for them on the land.

The tall knight walked with a pronounced limp, the right side of his armor and surcoat drenched in dark blood. His left arm hung uselessly by his side, the missing hand proclaiming his identity as surely as the blood and gore-spattered shield hanging at his back. Most of the blood was his, proven by the simple fact that the man draped over the black horse he led was so pale of skin that he surely had no more blood left in him to lose. The horse walked with his head low, and the occasional stumble of his broad hooves betrayed his own weariness.  

Morgana rose to her feet, her hand outstretched across the water. Hurry!

Sir Bedwyr, war leader of King Arthur’s forces, led his black war horse into the shallows, hanging on to the harness with his hand to avoid falling himself. Exhaustion carved deep lines in his face and shadowed his dark eyes, and when he reached for his king, his usually steady fingers fumbled dangerously.

Hurry! urged Morgana again, not daring to touch her brother yet, and too aware their time was shortening perilously. Quickly!  Before it is too late!

Wedging his useless arm underneath the limp form of the king, Sir Bedwyr slid him from the back of the horse and into the boat. The queens scrambled indecorously to take the weight of the king’s body, making room for him to rest on the cushions. Morgana pillowed his head upon her lap, and Igraine and Argante knelt on at his side and feet, their whispered prayers floating across the waves as they sought to bind his life tighter still to his failing mortal flesh.  

Bedwyr stood in the shallows, the reins of his black horse dangling into the water as he swayed. Liadain stared hard at him, drawing his exhaustion and hurt into her own body, and giving him of her strength so he would be able to make it back to the healers who would tend to him.  

His gaze turned to her, and tears blurred her vision as she saw the despair and dullness in the darkness of his eyes. He had been one who was always kind to her, treating her with respect and forbearance. He was Arthur’s best strategist, loyal and faithful even when duty exacted a heavy price from him.

He would be needed in the days ahead, needed to stand as a power behind the vacant throne as the Queen struggled to hold the kingdom together until the young Constantine could be installed in his rightful place. Their enemies would be eager to devour what they could of Arthur’s people, and only the knights left to the task could hold everything from falling apart.

Her lips parted. Liadain did not dare to speak and break the spells the queens sought to weave, so she shaped the word silently and hoped Bedwyr would understand. He had to understand. It would take time to discharge her duty and return to this shore, but he and his brother knights needed to hold the kingdom together.  

For Arthur’s sake, and for the sake of the world yet to come.

Hold.

Bedwyr blinked, then dropped his gaze to the pale face of the king resting in the boat. What am I to do?

The question wasn’t addressed to her, but rather to the man he had followed faithfully. Arthur stirred at last, his chest heaving as his great heart strove with death, and he looked one last time upon his oldest friend.

Hold fast, said the king, and that was all before the breath was stolen from him.

Liadain didn’t need a command from the queens to know they raced with the dread summoner now. She pushed against the pole, and when the boat didn’t move from its position against the shore, Liadain added the weight of her will. The keel groaned heavily, drowning out the sound the king uttered as the wood shifted beneath him.  

Morgana’s voice rose above it all, beseeching Heaven to forestall what bore down on them with inexorable speed. Igraine keened softly as she held her only son’s hand, her tears dripping on his pale, cold flesh. And Argante sat at his feet, facing Liadain in the stern, her gaze fixed on the dying king’s countenance as if to mark the hour when life passed from him.

The glow from Liadain’s tripartite ring increased the farther they fled from the shore. She was about to give the final push away from the mortal world when something prompted her to look back at Bedwyr, still standing in the shallows with his black warhorse. A flash of movement in the underbrush, beneath the spreading branches of the ancient oaks, shattered the tragic tableaux. A glimpse of grey and white, then the creature broke through the vegetation and arrowed straight into the water.  

Cafall!

Bedwyr’s anguished shout followed the faithful dog as he swam powerfully through the water, his ears up as he struggled to catch the boat carrying his master away. The wolfhound paid no attention to the knight. All his focus was on the boat, and he was not going to be denied.  

She didn’t know what inner stirring made her pause, but Liadain hesitated, and the dog got close enough to put one paw on the side.

The scratch of nails on wood roused the king. He raised his hand weakly, the fingers trembling as his strength failed. Cafall whined, his breath coming in hoarse gasps deep in his chest, and he scrabbled to find a purchase to climb aboard. He could smell his master, and the hound had no intention of leaving Arthur’s side.

Argante turned. The Queen of Avalon gestured, and the dog yelped once as it was lifted from the water and flung back towards the shore. Bedwyr staggered towards the dazed hound, falling to his knees several times until he reached him. He gathered up Cafall as gently as he’d born the king, and carried the dog to the dry ground.

The king’s arm fell away, and Morgana made an anguished sound. Liadain brought up her right hand, the glow from the tripartite ring enveloping her fingers and running down her forearm to the elbow, and thought hard of the Otherworld, where her father ruled the Summer Countries and the light of the Moon was no less welcome than the light of the Sun. The mists around them answered that glow, brightening until the boat with the queens and a dying king floated on a sea of gold and argent.

Water splashed faintly beyond the mist, followed by the mournful howl of a dog who would grieve the loss of his master long after mortal memory faded. The sound wrapped tight fingers around Liadain’s heart, squeezing it within her chest. She knew Bedwyr would grieve, too, and the rest of his brother knights who survived the calamity of the day.  

The thought that there would be too many who would not survive, she put firmly away from her. She could not dwell on that, or it would draw her back towards the world they were leaving. She would come back to them, but not yet. They were too close to their destination, and Arthur’s life was measured in heartbeats now.

The golden light washed over her, curling about her body in a remembered caress. The quality of the air she drew into her lungs on the very next breath changed, more like a nectar than bitter gall, and even as she noticed the change, the gentle golden sun of the Otherworld broke through the clouds overhead to cast a shining path on the water before them.

She steadied the boat within the path. The queens kept their attention on the king, whose skin now had the golden cast of the sun, the grey pallor of death no longer even a shadow. Here where the Ever-Living abided against the end of Time, death could not follow.  

And while Arthur would not die, he would not live either. He would sleep in the moment of their crossing, the power of his blood and his life preserved until Britain would have need of it again.

She steered the boat more swiftly towards the nearing shore. While she was not the most powerful woman in this vessel, she had the advantage of being born to this world and its laws. That knowledge served her well in Camelot, amongst the ambitious who played their games of greed and lust, always seeking their own advantage.  

Peredur once remarked that she had taken hurts in those games that would have destroyed a lesser being. Then he had looked pointedly at his brother knights, and said no more.

The daughter of the High King of the Otherworld might not be great in her father’s Court, but she was most decidedly not lesser in a mortal one.

The keel grated on the sand of the shore, and the servants waiting there hurried forward, the bier upon which the king would rest carried by six of the strongest members of Argante’s household. They lifted him tenderly from the boat, moving him as lightly as a down feather upon a warm summer breeze, placing him on the white samite covering the cushions.  

The queens alighted without a backward glance, their focus on Arthur alone. The households followed, raising their voices in a chant to weave the immutable spell around the king. He would be protected within it, safeguarded against the ravages of passing Time, and kept in the sleep that would preserve the most precious things about him.

Or within him.

Liadain waited until the voices faded into only a memory of the words, then placed her pole against the shore, intending to return to Bedwyr and the inconsolable Cafall. She would have no balm for their grief, but she could share in it, and aid them and the rest of the knights as they healed their wounds, buried their dead and sought to preserve what Arthur had built.

The days ahead would be perilous, but with her presence, perchance they would not end in defeat.

Liadain!

Her name carried clearly across the waves, and she paused, cursing herself silently when she recognized the figure wading through the shallows towards her. Wrikon was not an ill-favored man, but he was faithful to the service of her father, and that often meant that his aims and her goals were set apart from each other, never to find a common ground. If he meant to detain her, then it could only mean her father saw gain in the ruin of Arthur’s kingdom.

And ruin in a king’s demesne often meant the loss of his men and his servants, and even the loss of the dream he brought to life when he took the throne.  

She held tightly onto her thoughts as the dark-haired man rested his hands upon the side of the boat, anchoring it to this place as surely as if he were a great stone. She would not be moving unless he wished it, and the glint of amusement in his dark eyes told her he would not will it for a long time to come.

What are you wishing of me? asked Liadain in a steady voice, betraying none of her impatience. My duty to the queens is done, and they have no more call on me. Not for years and years to come, will they stir from this place, even if the world were to wish it.

Wrikon shrugged. It is not of duty I would speak, but your future, Lady. There are powers moving in the world you left who will destroy you if you stand between them and their desire.

How is this new?  She didn’t glance over his shoulder to the mist turning gold on the shore. Her father could hear everything in his land if he chose, and she did not doubt he was listening even now. My friends will need me more than ever, to give them hope that their travails are for nothing.

"But they are for nothing, Liadain, said Wrikon gently. Mortals die, and their dreams fade from the world they leave behind. It is as it should be. Those who live after Arthur will go down to death in doubt and despair. You cannot change that."

The wood dug into her hands as she gripped the pole tighter than before. A stinging told her without looking that she had succeeded in drawing blood, and it would run down the length of it and into the water, strengthening her tie with this world against the other. A breeze sprang up from the shore, swirling the mist into fanciful shapes as the leaves of the hidden trees whispered.  

Let go of the boat, she said, speaking as gently as he had. I’m going back, and neither you nor the High King can stop me.

His expression changed to one of regret, a change that told her exactly how closely he was following her father’s orders. I can’t do that, Liadain. If you go now, when all is in such flux from the movement of the powers upon the face of the earth, there will be a price demanded of all our people that we cannot pay.

Instead my friends must pay for us? she demanded, her hand slipping a little as her blood slicked the surface of the pole. You don’t know what you are asking of me.

But I do, he said, still regretful, and she sensed the power he gathered around himself like a thick cloak on a cold day. "I do know, Liadain. But it isn’t going to change anything."

He struck before she could do much more than raise her hand, the tripartite ring burning hot and white against her flesh. Wrikon was far older than she, a witness to and sometimes participant in the great battles and loves of antiquity. It was he who befriended her when the others in the Court chose to use her, and he had counseled her in caution and cold, logical reasoning as she grew into her own power.

Power that failed her now as he wrapped his will around her and shut the door between the worlds.  

The pole fell from her numb fingers, and she watched as Wrikon caught it before it fell into the water and was lost. She knew why he did it, of course. That much of her blood spread through the water of the Lagu would give her knowledge of what happened anywhere within the sound of the waves.  

That knowledge alone would make her too useful to courtiers and enemies alike.  

Her thoughts veered away from that, away from the ambition that fueled the lust of too many others, both in this world and the world of men. Instead, Liadain focused on the men and women left behind on the mist-shrouded shore beyond this world. She thought of Bedwyr, kneeling on the rocks with his black warhorse beside him and his arms wrapped around the grieving Cafall.  

The hound had sustained wounds during the vicious battle with the enemy, no doubt as he circled Arthur and cleared the ground for his warhorse to maneuver. Bedwyr’s horse was wounded as well, the red of the wound stark and startling against the dark hide.

She tried to go farther, back to the distant fortress where Arthur’s Queen held fast behind the walls, surrounded by a chosen cadre of knights as she waited for her lord’s return. Liadain reached through them, seeking the one who commanded them, the faithful one who would never yield. But her consciousness faded even as she reached, and the enchantment Wrikon wrought settled around her. It bore her down to the bottom of the boat and sank her awareness beneath the waves, there to lie undisturbed until the High King of the Otherworld should allow her to be free again.

The realization that her father still commanded her, that his will was stronger than hers, was a bitter taste on her tongue, and a heavy, oily pain that sunk through her heart and into the depths.

Creature of neither world, barred from her choice and her will, Liadain slept as deeply as Arthur. The world she’d come to love, and the people who had made it a place of light and love, passed beyond her ken and went on with their lives.

Without her.

Chapter Two

The sun rose over the eastern hills, spreading its golden rays over the mist rising from the fields. The sky above was cloudless, clear, and pure in its chill pale blue as the night retreated to the west, ever shrinking before the day. In this young land, the rhythms of the earth and the sky merged with water and air more easily, and their harmony soothed her nerves.

The cup of coffee at her elbow was as cold as the early fall air, the steam of its heat long since dissipated. She didn’t care. The gooseflesh prickling her arms beneath the old quilt wrapped around her shoulders didn’t matter, either. She just rocked in the creaking wooden chair, back and forth, as her still-sharp blue-eyed gaze stared into the fading mist and her thoughts rested on nothing but the coming failure of her body.

Liadain heard the footsteps across the wooden planks of the porch to this old white farmhouse still newer than her body by fifteen centuries. She marked the breath and the pulse of the human woman who watched her with the clinical eye of a healer, and drew the faded, thin material of the quilt closer about her, as if to shield herself from that objective gaze. Dr. Sarah Powell saw too much, and in her current weakness, Liadain feared she would finally guess the answer to the puzzle that had been gnawing at her mind for too many years.

To her surprise, Dr. Powell didn’t stop next to her, but instead went to the sagging wood rail surrounding the porch and stood with her back to the house. She gazed out over the deserted farmyard, where the lack of chickens or geese, or tractors or any other type of farming equipment gave mute evidence that this land had never been about supplying Liadain’s needs. No food grew here that was not from the vagaries of nature alone, and her meat came from places other than here as well.

After