Master of Swords by Angela Knight Page A

her palm, and she curled her fingers around it.
    â€œGood luck,” Caroline said in her ear, as the spell took her by the hand and began gently to tug. Lark followed the magical pull as, around her, other Magekind began to mill around doing the same.
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    Arms folded, Gawain watched as young members of the Magekind sought out their new guardians. “Great,” he said to Bors, who was also one of the original Round Table knights. “We’re both going to end up baby-sitting grass-green rookies who don’t know hilt from blade. Dammit, Arthur…”
    â€œYes, well, I’d advise you not to give him a hard time about it,” Bors drawled. “I don’t think he’s in the mood.”
    â€œI noticed.” Gawain recognized the warning signs in his liege’s clipped speech as well as anyone. Sometimes Arthur was open to suggestion, and sometimes you damn well took orders and kept your mouth shut. Otherwise, you caught the flaming edge of that Pendragon temper—if you were lucky. If you weren’t, he carried a grudge. And Arthur could carry a grudge for a long, long time. He’d only recently forgiven Lancelot for his one night with Gwen sixteen hundred years before.
    â€œEither way, we’re going to have our work cut out for us with this lot.” Gawain’s gaze lingered on a young Magus who walked through the crowd with a particularly bewildered expression. “The last couple of generations have gotten soft. Too much television and riding in cars.”
    â€œNot all of them.” Pain tightened Bors’s face.
    Gawain winced, silently cursing himself for his unthinking comment. “Anything new from Richard?”
    Richard Edge was Bors’s son with Meredith Edge, a Maja who’d been the knight’s lover. Despite the brief relationship, Bors had helped raise Richard in Avalon until the boy’s growing violent streak had forced his banishment to mortal Earth.
    Bors shook his dark head. “I haven’t spoken to my son in twenty-six years. His mother and I were afraid he’d start killing people, but as far as I can tell, he’s done nothing but study magic.”
    â€œOn mortal Earth?” Kel asked from his scabbard. “He’s not going to have much luck with it there.” Magic did not work well on humanity’s home, and mortals had not evolved to use it. It took intervention by someone like Merlin or Geirolf to give a human the ability to work magic.
    â€œMaybe,” Bors said grimly. “The problem is, he disappeared a year ago. Meredith was unable to track him. After she died fighting Geirolf’s cult, I had Morgana search for him, but she had no luck either. It was as if he’d vanished right off the planet.”
    Gawain frowned. “He could be dead.”
    â€œMaybe.” Bors expression was grim. “But I don’t like it at all.”
    As his friend brooded, Gawain rocked back on his heels to watch the new Magekind wander around with their enchanted slips of paper.
    A slim brunette attracted his attention. She was petite, nearly a foot shorter than he was, but her body was lushly curved. Her dark hair slid to the small of her back in a fall of silk, and her eyes were huge and brown.
    â€œLook, somebody’s gone and recruited a Playboy bunny,” he joked, hoping to distract Bors from painful memories. He slipped into a mocking singsong. “‘Hi, my name is Bambi, and I’m barely legal. I love puppies and kitties and throwing flaming balls of death at my enemies.’”
    Bors chuckled.
    Kel spoke from his scabbard. “She’s also Tristan’s great-granddaughter.” He always knew those things.
    â€œYeah? Wonder if he’s protective?” Gawain eyed her, still tempted. She might be worth getting on Tristan’s bad side…
    Bors snorted. “We’re talking about Tristan here. He thinks women are only good for one thing, and since