ENVY

By Meriades Rai

Guinevere, the disgraced Lady of Camelot, was riding in the fields beyond the outskirts of the kingdom when another figure on horseback crested the distant rise of the east hill, hunkered down against the squall that had been sweeping in from the coast all morning. Guinevere stilled her mount and waited. She was acquainted well enough with death to recognize a harbinger of tragedy, and here it arrived in the form of her own faithful handmaiden, Margaret.

At first sight Guinevere remained as beautiful as she ever was, tall and regal in the saddle with her icy blonde hair plaited into a coil and rendered fine as faerie wing by the mist and rain. Every inch the Queen, even in exile. At close quarters, however, the anguish etched into her aquiline features was plain, not least about her eyes that had once shone as bright as sapphire but which now resembled the flat, unremarkable hue of ditch-stone.

Guinevere was a woman already cowed by the misery she’d endured in weeks past. One glance at Margaret’s grim countenance was enough to break her.

“Tell me,” the Queen said, in tender voice. “Which of my men has fallen this day?”

Young Margaret, ruddy and flame-haired, bowed her head in sorrow. “Both, milady,” she whispered. “Word speaks that Our King met the traitor Mordred upon the battlefield and that Lancelot, though dishonored in the eyes of Camelot for his treasonous… dalliance with yourself… and sentenced to be hanged for his crimes, nonetheless claimed his place among the Knights of the Table amidst the tempest of steel and blood. With regret, I must inform milady that Mordred personally inflicted mortal wounds upon both Lancelot and the blessed King—”

Guinevere raised a hand. She perched motionless for a breath, her skin a ghastly pale as she stared out into the bleakness of the rain—but then she fell, slumping against the neck of her snow white mare, and her grief erupted in a flood.

“What is this?” she screamed, her hand now a fist brandished at the heavens. “What manner of world permits such atrocities? That a man might fall, a King of men, like some common rake gutted for his string purse in some darkened alley…? No. No, I refuse to accept—”

“Responsibility for your actions?”

Guinevere recoiled as if pricked by an arrowhead, though these words were more vicious still than any shaft loosed from willow. She slowly raised her head and stared with an air of disbelief at the red-haired girl she’d known since a babe in arms. In the hitherto mournful eyes of that fresh-faced scrub she now saw wickedness, a flicker of triumph and delight… and in that instant she understood that faithful Margaret was gone and that another had usurped her place. An enemy of the kingdom, whose dark magicks—bartered and stolen from the worst of demonkind, if rumors told true—had plagued Camelot unremittingly for so many years that her taint was now unmistakable.

“Morgan.”

The maid laughed and cocked her head, the fiery tint of her hair darkening to the black of murdered crows even as Guinevere looked on. “Milady,” she hissed, her voice dripping with scorn. “How pleasant to see you again, although in such… heartbreaking circumstances.”

“This is all a trick, then…?”

“Trick? Oh no. No, not at all. I’m not above crafting the most meticulous deceits, as you know, but in this instance the truth is exquisite enough in itself. My nephew has indeed slain both your lovers and abandoned their carcasses to the birds.”

Guinevere trembled, gripping tight to her steed with what little remained of her strength. “Then your kin murdered a man you also loved,” she spat. “Lancelot—”

“He turned me aside and gave his heart to another. To you. And that was a rejection Morgan Le Fay could not allow to pass unpunished…”

The body of the maid twisted then as the cruel spirit that now inhabited it bristled with anger, her eyes a smoldering dusk. “Do you want to know how it made me feel?” the witch named Morgan Le Fay breathed. “The predominant emotion it stoked in me, to observe your previous kingdom from afar? Not hatred, although there was certainly a measure of that; nor despair, though this sentiment too doesn’t find me a stranger. No, sweet thing, my reaction was envy. Can you comprehend that? Morgan, the Faerie Queen of All Things Dark, regarding the love and contentment of her cursed half-brother and his simpering wife not with derision but with a covetous eye. There was much gratification to be had watching you destroy everything by bedding the most celebrated Knight of the inner circle, of course, but even then there was the rage… the sheer disbelief that you could have purposely despoiled the perfect equilibrium of your existence just to satisfy some carnal urge – ”

“I loved Lancelot! I loved him!”

Morgan smiled crookedly with Margaret’s mouth. “Yes,” she murmured. “But not enough to maintain the secrecy of your illicit liaison, instigating the unraveling of the kingdom… and leading to this. The day of Arthur’s death, and the passing of Kingship—and control—to Mordred. It was your betrayal that has initiated the fall of Camelot, milady. Know that I only leave you alive now to dwell upon this, so that the guilt may eat you alive from the inside.”

Guinevere moaned, disgusted with her own weakness in adversity as much she was distraught at her loss. “Arthur’s Camelot will not just crumble without him,” she said, quietly. “Others will stand against you. Sir Percy for one.”

“Ah, of course. The famed Sir Percy of Scandia, a mortal man forged into a champion of the realm by the enchantments of Merlin and now known as The Black Knight…?” Morgan’s smile became a sneer. “A worthy opponent, I would admit—if not for the fact that Mordred lies in wait at Garrett Castle to end your paladin’s life even as we speak. The last champion of the realm will fall, Guinevere… and there’s nothing that you, fragile and pitiable adulteress who was once Queen, can do to prevent it.”

Morgan Le Fay laughed then, and even in the moments that followed—as her invading spirit relinquished its hold upon the body of the young handmaid Margaret and skittered away upon the wind and rain—so that cruel merriment lingered. Guinevere saw Margaret fall, a lifeless husk now that her soul had been obliterated by Morgan’s commandeering of her body, and she wept anew.

So much death, so much pain… and, worst of all, the accuracy of the witch’s declaration. There was nothing she could do to alter the inevitable course of events from hereon. Arthur and Lancelot were dead and Sir Percy would surely follow, Morgan and Mordred would subsequently rise to a terrible pedestal of power, and there was nothing she –

You can seek vengeance.

Guinevere shuddered as she heard the voice upon the wind. Was that…? No. Not Morgan, not this time. So who…?

I can show you the way. I can guide your delicate hand to administer punishment for this crime. You can become a spirit of vengeance.

“Who are you?” Guinevere whispered.

I am… a friend, milady. The enemy of thy enemy. I am the flame that burns eternal. And I can give you everything you need, right here, right now, to set out upon the path of retribution. Do you accept?

Guinevere gripped the mane of her snow white mare, her pale hair and skin glistening in the rain, and in that moment a spark caught light in the dark hollows of her eyes.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Bequeath to me, then, this flame. For I’ve nothing else left but this.”

There was laughter again upon the wind, every bit as mocking as that of Morgan Le Fay.

Then you shall ride, said the ghostly voice. O, like those before you and those to come, you shall ride!

“The Devil himself rides out this day,” Sir Percy of Scandia informed his wife, the Lady Rosamund. “You must be gone from here.”

He stilled the woman’s protests with a kiss, gathering her and then each of his children in turn in his arms. The gentleness of his embrace was at odds with his grim countenance, his slim body sheathed in armor of silver and midnight blue, his face almost entirely masked in a wrap of black cloth and blue helm. He wore a scabbard at his waist, crested with an ornate hilt. He was the Black Knight of Camelot, and this sword was the sacred Ebony Blade, hewn from ancient rock fallen from the stars and molded by the sorcerous hand of Merlin… but it wouldn’t be enough. In his heart Sir Percy knew that, and thus he dismissed those he loved from his presence before approaching his home, Garrett Castle, where he knew that his enemy lurked in ambush to perpetuate his lunatic bloodlust.

And so it was soon after, beneath skies so darkened with storm clouds that day became night, that Sir Percy arrived alone at Garrett Peak and the castle that overlooked the bleak English moorland—and the fiend Mordred and his men set about finishing what they’d begun on the battlefield where Arthur and his knights had been slain.

“You cannot prevail against me, knight,” Mordred snarled, launching his surprise attack from the shadows of a narrow, spiraling stairwell. “I am the rightful King, now – andyou shall be the pariah of Camelot!”

“You, wretch? You? You are no sovereign in my eyes…”

Mordred was a vile specimen of humanity at the best of times, let alone with his ragged clothes and mismatched armor smeared with the blood of his victims and his straggled black hair and beard pocked with stinging flesh. Sir Percy considered the bastard’s very existence an affront and his presence in this, his own home, thoroughly odious… but he knew better than to look upon the man and dismiss him for the sake of appearance. Arthur and Lancelot had been virtually peerless in the warrior arts, yet Mordred had bested them both. Butchered them. The oft-spoken assertion that there was no greater swordsman in England than the nephew of Morgan Le Fay was a brazen claim but a candid one all the same.

The Black Knight was a master of the blade—but Mordred was better. Fortunate then, for Sir Percy, that he possessed an advantage other than traditional weaponskill…

Beware to your left.

The Black Knight spun immediately and cut high with his sword, decapitating the enemy who at that very moment had emerged from a disguised crevice behind a wall tapestry on his left flank. The man fell and blood misted the gloom, sparkling briefly in the guttering light of a single torch bracketed to the stone overhead. As always, the Ebony Blade in Sir Percy’s fist sighed rapturously at the lacerating of flesh but he ignored it. The sword’s supernatural predilection for blood was fierce and wanton, a buzzing of insects at the back of his brain but also the slide of languid fingers over his most intimate skin… it was nigh irresistible. But he wouldn’t succumb, not now. Not… yet.

Ahead. Three.

The voice again, issuing soft instruction. The Black Knight heeded without pause, pre-empting the sudden attack of three more adversaries – Mordred and the last two of his men – from around the next curve of the stairwell. The Ebony Blade disemboweled one fellow then dismembered the second, severing both his forearms just below the elbow with a single strike. The black iron hummed and swooned, and the blood that streaked along its length began to smoke and then soak into the blade itself with indecent relish. Sir Percy grunted and flexed his wrist, slashing left and right with the sword, and when Mordred threw himself back against the wall with a gasp his free hand moved involuntarily to his neck, expecting to find his throat cut. His instinctive reactions had saved him, however. The man’s speed was foremost of his talents.

“Your arm is guided,” Mordred spat, his eyes burning black beneath a wolfish brow. “The wizard Merlin, I wager, whispering in your ear…?”

“He told me how Arthur died. How you stood over him as he lay bleeding and then carved at his face with your knife instead of administering the mercy of a warrior’s death a man such as he deserved.”

“A moment spoiled by my over-eagerness, I admit,” Mordred said. “I would have speared out his eyes and chewed upon them if only I’d had the time for a more… artistic victory.”

The Black Knight thrust and sliced, then parried and skipped backwards, down the staircase, as Mordred met his blows and immediately launched a counter offensive. The bearded man was grinning now, his filthy odor rolling off him in a tide that caused Sir Percy to gag despite his mask.

“Your helpful spirit no longer aiding you, boy?” Mordred snarled. The Black Knight offered no response, but it was true; Merlin’s disembodied voice, which had informed him of Mordred’s butchery on the battlefield and then of his invasion of Garrett Castle, allowing him time to save his family, had now fallen silent when he needed it most. Had some terrible horror befallen Camelot’s wizard just as it had its King? Perhaps Morgan Le Fay herself had –

In God’s name, Merlin’s voice suddenly breathed. What comes?

The Black Knight faltered in confusion, a momentary hesitation and nothing more but he was almost slaughtered because of it.

“What is it?” he snapped.

The sigh at his ear trembled. An… interloper, he whispered. Something rides forth…

The scream that carried on the wind and rain across the bleak moorland roused the eerie impression of a banshee, a poor, lost soul of Celtic myth cast out into the storm and doomed forever more to haunt the twilight… but the apparition that now approached Garrett Castle was a far worse prospect than any storybook superstition. It rode the darkened land upon thundering hooves, leaving a trail of oddly colored fire in its wake—blue, green, gold, even a hint of smoky black, like the ignition of marsh gas—and the gloom about the creature burned bright with a smoldering glow. It said everything that the Black Knight and Mordred alike faltered in their personal duel to instead observe the arrival of this spectral vision through narrow apertures in the walls of the castle’s nearside turret. For a long moment the pair held their breath, eyes slowly widening in disbelief…

…and then, with a voice that echoed like the axe-crack of splitting thunder, the beast called out to them from below.

“I see you,” it intoned. “The sinner. The slayer of all that was good. I see you. And I bring you the judgment of the Ghost Rider!”

The creature reared back then, and was revealed in all its hideous glory. A lissome, womanly figure clad in blue robes astride a snow white horse, both now transformed by an aura of crackling flames; the steed with red eyes and spilling fire from its mouth and hooves, the rider with a skull for a head, again alight with unearthly burn. No wonder this banshee had screamed, as the hellfire had caught and matured so quickly inside her, searing away her fair flesh and hair and leaving behind colorless bone and black, hollow eyes – eyes that now inclined upwards, in Mordred’s direction.

“By the Saints,” Sir Percy breathed, his sword trembling in his grip. “The Lady Guinevere…? But no. No, it cannot – ”

The Ghost Rider raised a skeletal hand, palm outstretched, and the rain hissed as the darkest of fire flickered about her fingers.

“Vengeance,” she decreed. And then she unleashed the terrible power now seeded in her gut, and in the next instant there was an almighty detonation of fire and stone and iron… and the nearside tower of Garrett Castle heaved and crumbled in its foundations.

Percy. Sir Percy. Answer me, boy!

The Black Knight groaned and attempted to raise his head, but the shooting pains in his temples dissuaded him. He closed his eyes, seeking the comfort of darkness once more.

No. You can’t die yet. Not whilst Mordred lives…

Sir Percy grunted, ignoring his body’s continued protests and forcing himself up on his hands and knees. Mordred alive? He could scarcely believe that he had survived the demolition of one corner of his castle, let alone his enemy, but Merlin’s voice at his ear had never advised him wrongly thus far. His armor now polished with a thick sheen of dust, the Knight pushed himself clear of a mound of debris, snatching up his sword in the process. How long had he been unconscious? Surely no more than a minute or more, considering that the air still swirled with as much stone and dust, and—

“Do not place yourself between me and the one I seek,” a rumbling snarl stated at his shoulder. This wasn’t the voice of Merlin.

The Black Knight turned, eyes wide beneath his mask and helm, and stared into the ghastly visage of the Ghost Rider.

“My Lady…? Is it you?”

Not any more, came Merlin’s whisper. The darkness in this one… so immense… a possession of the soul.

The creature that had once been Guinevere had stepped down from the saddle and now advanced with measured stride, her blue robes alight but—impossibly—not burning away to ashes as they should, and her skull hot and sputtering in the rain like the flame about a candle’s wick. Sir Percy quavered but stood his ground, Ebony Blade raised.

“You would sacrifice your own life to protect the mongrel who butchered your King?” the Ghost Rider hissed, her empty eyes blazing.

“I would protect my Queen from what you are, this… thing inside her.”

“She accepted the spirit of vengeance openly.”

The Black Knight grimaced. “In grief, perhaps. But I’ll not let another soul perish this day!”

Sir Percy hurled himself forward, swinging his sword, but to his astonishment his adversary made no attempt to move aside. Instead the demon—for that was surely what it was now clothed in what remained of Guinevere’s flesh—merely grasped the blade in skeletal fist in mid-air, apparently unconcerned that it might harm her. Perhaps the Ghost Rider considered itself invulnerable. To the Black Knight’s satisfaction, it immediately became obvious that he wasn’t the only one fated to be surprised.

There was an explosion of hellfire and flaming blood and the Ghost Rider screamed, staggering backwards. She held up her hand, now lacking three of four bony fingers, and her hollow eyes flickered.

“What is this?” she seethed. “There is nothing of this Earth that can… that…”

She faltered. The flaming skull turned, slowly, and the Black Knight found himself impaled on a dark and fearsome stare.

“The Ebony Blade wasn’t forged of this world,” he said, brandishing his weapon once more.

“So I see.”

Sir Percy breathed deeply. “Lady Guinevere, if enough of you still exists to understand my words… please, fight this unholy essence that has tainted you. I have no wish to—”

The Knight flinched suddenly, his words now ash on his lips. He felt a burning in his side, a blow struck, although he could swear that his opponent had never moved. So how…?

He looked down and saw the blood, and the hilt of a dagger imbedded between his ribs, having sliced through his armor as if it were the finest silk.

“A blade of my own, carved from the same otherworldly rock as yours,” whispered the gleeful voice of Mordred. “As my aunt prophesized would come to pass, this was the only weapon that could breach the magical defenses woven about your person by your accursed wizard. But now you die, my foe. You die. And I shall take ownership of your Ebony sword…”

The Black Knight sagged, his legs weak. He tried to push Mordred away but there was no strength left in him. Such a curious sensation. He… he…

Sir Percy fell, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, his eyes already darkening in the slits of his mask. Mordred slipped the Ebony Blade from the dying man’s grasp without resistance and then turned upon the Ghost Rider with a bark of triumph.

“You see?” he bellowed, eyes bright with madness. “Arthur, Lancelot and Sir Percy, all slain by my hand! King Mordred! King of all things! And you, exiled Queen of Camelot… you think you can stand firm where these men failed, regardless of what witchery has been perpetrated upon you?”

Guinevere, the Ghost Rider, inclined her fleshless head, her hollow sockets flickering with flames from another world.

“The weapon you now wield shall not save you,” she hissed. “The man you’ve just murdered was an innocent. It was the blade that spurred him to spill blood. But you, wretch… you are guilty, your soul black and steeped in sin. Vengeance is not enough for one such as you. You must learn of the pits of Hell and an eternity of red, shrieking penance…”

Mordred laughed and hurled himself forward, slashing from groin to throat, but his blow struck nothing but smoke; this time the Ghost Rider was not given to arrogance, especially against a cursed weapon she knew could harm her. She shifted to one side with unexpected grace, her slender body moving beneath her robes as if it were the flame of a lantern itself, then glided forward with an equally startling strength, hammering a fist into Mordred’s chest. His rib cage splintered, shards of bone rupturing his torso and out through his sheath of mismatched armor like porcupine quills. He staggered, vomiting blood into his beard.

He cried something unintelligible and lurched forward again, raising the Ebony Blade high. The Ghost Rider stepped in beneath his strike and raked the burning fingers of her good hand across his shoulder and throat, pulling a goodly portion of his windpipe out through his filthy flesh along with a measure of clavicle.

The air misted with rain and blood.

Mordred twitched and danced like a broken marionette.

And then the Ghost Rider reached out and grabbed him by the back of the skull, pulling him close, her empty eye sockets mere inches from his terrified face in the moment of his death.

“Penance,” Guinevere whispered, prising the Ebony Blade from the bastard’s fist as he himself had taken it from Sir Percy and then sliding the black point of it up through the cleft of his jaw and out the top of his skull in one graceful thrust.

If Mordred could have screamed as he expired, then he would. He died without words however, his shattered body ejecting stinking rivers of blood and waste as the spirit of vengeance cut his head in half and then, casting the Ebony Blade aside, turned away from the scene of slaughter, her flaming skull bowed.

Was it what you expected? a disembodied voice breathed. Revenge?

The Ghost Rider stilled, her colorful flames guttering in the wind and rain. She said nothing at first, aware that this voice was different from the one that had granted her an opportunity for retribution. Then the woman in her recognized the whisper in her ear.

“Merlin.”

You are an… incongruity, the wizard mused. This was all destined, you see; that Arthur and Lancelot should fall, that Mordred would slay Sir Percy but perish himself in the act, and that the Lady Guinevere should pine away from this moment on. The future is written, just as is the past. But there was no inkling of your presence in my visions…

“You were prepared to sacrifice your champion?”

To safeguard what must come, yes. Camelot is now a ruined kingdom and shall never recover from this day. This is what time and destiny decrees. Sir Percy would have understood. But this…?

“The spirit of vengeance is not bound by the will of fate, magician.”

Apparently not. But then again… perhaps your unexpected manifestation here, now, is part of a larger tapestry? Some thread of destiny yet to be set in stone?

The Ghost Rider turned now, her terrible countenance bright with fiery tears.

My Queen.

“Yes.”

Your grief—and your desire for vengeance—was strong enough to attract otherworldly interest. There is a price for that, just as there is for all things. Ride then, spirit. Ride now the dark paths of this new world.

“So it isn’t to end here?”

I fear not, milady.

The Ghost Rider shuddered, then gazed mournfully at the body of Sir Percy, the Black Knight, lying at her feet. Still. At rest. “I envy him then,” she murmured. “For he now knows a peace that, perhaps, I never shall.”

A price to pay for all things.

Lady Guinevere, the Ghost Rider of Camelot, glanced at the Ebony Blade but made no move to take it. She wondered if it was the only weapon in this world now capable of ending her sorrow. She hoped that, one day, she would find out. She summoned her hellfire horse to her side without another word. As Merlin had said: time, then, to ride. And up above, through the wind and rain and darkness, the storm continued, unrelenting.

“Damn you for your interference!” Morgan Le Fay hissed, her expression livid. “Camelot was in my grasp, but now my nephew is dead and this fiend of yours rides the moors—searching, no doubt, for me. You meddlesome—”

“Hush, little witch. Little human. Remember always to whom you speak, yes? And as for your vanquished kin… well, death is not always the end for those of The Blood, as you well know.”

The dark fires burned, and in their midst there stood a man—an approximation of a man, at least—about whom the flames curled and kissed and licked like a cloak of urgent tongues. The man smiled, his eyes black and gold and his teeth sharp, although not as sharp as the sensuous curl of his horns or the lash of his tail.

Morgan Le Fay stared on, mute with rage, at the image in her scrying pool, and the Dark One stared back. The sorceress would have disturbed the mirrored waters if she could, but such a thing was beyond even her arcane power. When He wished to be seen, nothing could prevent it.

“Every Sin more delicious than the last,” the man murmured, his countenance shimmering in some hot, cloying breeze. “And always the Spirit of Vengeance rises to the occasion. O, such compelling sport…”

“And that’s all we are to you, isn’t it? A diversion from your mundane existence, this puppetry of human souls.”

“You know me well, dear heart,” said the Prince of Hell. And then his smile fell, and his eyes flashed dark as rot as he fixed Morgan Le Fay with his primordial gaze, though a distance of countless worlds lay between them.

“You crossed me once, witch,” he breathed. “I told you that you’d suffer the consequences of that, and never let it be said that every promise I make is a lie. As the Ghost Rider and those who suffer its curse throughout time can attest…

“…Mephisto always wins.”

PENCIL OF VENGEANCE

As with most things Marvel, the history of Sir Percy of Scandia—and, indeed, the entire cast of the story of Camelot in comics lore—is rather knotty in places. I’ve attempted to stay true to established continuity, up to the point where the Ghost Rider becomes involved (Guinevere’s liaison with Lancelot, Mordred slaying Arthur and then ambushing Sir Percy at Garrett Castle, Merlin’s spiritual intervention, etc), but there’s bound to be inconsistencies. For this, to all continuity stalwarts, I apologize.

As for this story’s place in the current Ghost Rider mythology, I hope you will enjoy the other tales in this Spirits Of Vengeance series, and if any other writer wishes to explore the adventures of the newly-cursed Guinevere of Camelot and her quest to seek retribution against Morgan Le Fay, please feel welcome.

Otherwise, let’s all just pretend that this Ghost Rider got up to lots more awesome stuff. Okay?

Cheers,

Meriades Rai