1/2/1348
Madrid, Spain

I am in so much trouble.

Being in trouble means I'm still alive, though, which is good as that army we've been waiting for descended on Madrid today. Along with assassins armed with nasty little weapons and a wine barrel filled with poison for our gold dragons.

I should probably start at the beginning, shouldn't I?

Strawberries mentioned to Galvin a couple of nights ago, when he mentioned that we could use some gold dragons to counter the white dragons flying our way, that the leader of the Mediterranean tribe of gold dragons happened to be a flamenco dancer who hangs out in the clubs of Madrid. We decided to go dancing, partially to try to find this Armand fellow, and partially to have some fun. Our lives have been particularly lacking in fun, lately.

(I taught Galvin several of the flamenco dances when we were in cleric training together. We must have been, what, fifteen or so? It's funny, now that I think about it--that was me and Contessa and Galvin and Fredericka, and Contessa and I were teaching Galvin and Fredi how to dance. Fredi had two left feet and bowed out early, but Galvin and I had such fun, me teaching him how to lead just like Papa taught me during the village dances. I could have sworn that Contessa had been quietly chasing Galvin for months, at that point, and I was mostly waiting for her to finally catch him. After that night, though, she was suddenly chasing one of the trainees in the class a year ahead of ours--Frejor, I think his name was, from the north. I'm wondering what she saw that night that made her change her mind. Someday, I might have to ask.)

Strawberries found me an actual dress to wear, since I currently don't own any of my own. Galvin and Gavião and I went down to the clubs; I'd never been down to this particular district before, since I spent my cleric training (and did all of my sneaking out) in Provence, not Madrid. We heard Armand's name not so much whispered as slightly shrieked by a woman with an extraordinarily penetrating soprano voice from the table behind us, so it looked like we were in the right place. Galvin and I danced a few dances, and Gavião took his own turn on the dance floor, as well. I had absolutely no idea that he could dance, and quite well to boot. I assume that because he's always so serious around me, that he's always been that way, but he's not. I felt a little bit guilty, because I know that being my knight protector has been a fulltime job, but Galvin reminded me that it wasn't my fault, it was King Louis' for causing trouble for the Order in France.

I was asked to dance by someone who turned out by none other than Armand, the dragon we were looking for. Armand is a terrible flirt and, it turns out, a consummate politician, in the best sense of the word. I suppose you have to be, to lead a tribe of one of the intelligent and charismatic breeds of dragons.

After the dance, we sat and talked. In return for helping us, he asked for a certain amount of money for each dragon that falls, and our promise that if the plague starts affecting reptiles, we will turn all of our efforts to coming up with a cure for it. I'm not so certain that last was a good idea, honestly, but I could tell he wasn't going to accept anything less. He'd also, for coming to talk with us, asked me to dance one more dance with him; he chose a tango for his dance with me. My, *that* was an experience. Armand has a....I suppose you would call it a presence. Intensely passionate and sensual, and the feeling that, for one moment, you are the only woman who exists in the world for him. And that comes through in his dancing, especially in the tango.

I'd almost forgotten that Galvin had such a jealous streak. Armand was right, jealousy does inflame the passions. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Except for this: Galvin and I are going to have to talk, one of these days, about the fact that, as Headmistress, I may have to deal with people like Armand on a regular basis. I'm learning politics, and sometimes I'm going to have to dance closer to the edge than I'd like. That's not going to be easy for him to watch, though I know he trusts me to the end of the earth.

And I found out something about Gavião that I really, really, really didn't want to know. He seems to be, ah, something of a skirt chaser. Or, at least, he is when he's not on duty. The Baroness al Mariatas, aie! The things you don't know about someone you've spent every day for a year with...Gavião showed me a miniature portrait he keeps of her, and mentioned that it was one of *several* miniatures of different ladies he has. I fled in terror. I could swear he was enjoying every minute of horrifying me. On occasion, I suspect that Gavião may be a bad, bad man.

Anyway, came back, updated everyone, went to take care of the horses and Dream, and then was dragged off to bed and didn't have a chance to write a journal entry.

Dream had some things to say to me that require more thought. I wish I could go for long rides by myself these days; that's where I do my best thinking.

How could I live without them? How would I survive my heart shattering again, after I've finally put it back together? I can still feel the anger in me, mixing with grief; our enemies have taken so much from us, and will take more before we're done.

And they have killed Brena and Corison, both of our Irish warleaders. Gavião's face was terrible when I pulled him aside and told him what had happened. Seraphim murdered them and took their bodies back to Dushela, who will be trying to use them to break into the shield that surrounds the Ark. I still haven't the faintest idea what my father is doing there, guarding it; why him? I have certain suspicions, but nothing definite. I hope I get a chance to talk to him once we finally get there.

If nothing else, I miss him, and have been missing him for long, long years. I'm nervous about seeing him, actually. I have no idea if he'll recognize me, since I was a child when he was taken away. I don't know if this reunion will be a happy one.

Too many things pulling on me right now. My father, my sister; worry for my friends and those in my charge in the Order; anger with our enemies, sorrow for some things I've done that were necessary at the time.

Speaking of sorrow for necessary things--

Gaius was acting strange earlier today, and then sent me a message spell telling me that the charade we've been playing needed to end. I elected to trust his judgment, and we then had the job of explaining why, exactly, Gaius has been sending information about our actions to Arumaga for the past little while.

Things were touch and go for a while there. Gavião came much closer than I'd really like to pulling Excalibur on me. I now have some idea what it's like to be on his bad side, and I have to say that I honestly didn't care for it at all.

Worse than the terror that I wasn't going to be able to be convincing in my explanations (though I know what I did was necessary, as was hiding it) was the look of disappointment in his eyes. He didn't, in the end, yell at me, in large part I think because the others were there and probably didn't need to hear him scolding me. But in part, he didn't have to, because I already wanted to fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness. All I could think, as he looked at me, was you fool, you fool, he trusted you and you betrayed that trust.

Only time will tell if he'll forgive me.

Galvin is furious with me. I can feel a fight brewing between us, even now; with the excitement of the day we haven't had a chance to talk, but I'm fairly sure that when we do it will be an argument of epic proportions. I have been exceptionally wearing on his nerves the past few days, it seems, and to discover that I've been keeping a secret this large from him...

But I had to. When I began this, Gavião was under the influence of Excalibur, and wouldn't have tolerated this business of double agentry. And Galvin's tolerance of these kinds of games is extraordinarily limited. He knew I was trying to turn Arumaga, and was rather doubtful of even that, thinking it a bad risk to run. But actually talking Gaius into actively betraying us to our enemies is walking quite a bit farther into the shadows than he'd ever go. Even though the only way to kill Morgan le Fay is to have someone we can trust on the inside, even though killing Morgan is the only way to stem the tide of what is happening, accomplishing this by means of games within games is somewhere on the line between dishonorable and abhorrent to him.

And I have to admit that he might be right. I'm not proud of this; but it was the only way I could see to do what was needful.

Where do I draw the line of things I'll do in the name of this fight? I am not innately honorable, like Gavião; nor am I as straightforward as Galvin. I think I begin to see, though, the reason Epona chose me for this particular role at this particular time.

It just remains to be seen if I'll drag all of us through hell with me.

Fortunately, everyone's anger and feelings of betrayal seems to be centered on me instead of Gaius; everyone is placing the blame for this quite correctly. I was willing to play this out to its conclusion, but I am somewhat relieved I'm not going to have to. It's time to pay the piper, as I knew I was going to have to one day soon.

The reason that it was high time for the charade to end was that Gaius needed to tell us that our gold dragons were about to all fall asleep, leaving us without an air defense. It turned out that Arumaga (who is now, it seems, once more Aru) decided to use Gaius to disable all of the gold dragons temporarily so he could simply do a flyby of the city and then head back to Andorra, thus avoiding a battle that would have decimated both sides. He also needed to tell us about there being a spy in the ranks of the golds.

The battle for Madrid happened, and I'm sure that story has been told better elsewhere. We fought off eight assassins who were dressed like barmaids and who were armed with crossbow bolts that exploded on impact into fireballs. I'm afraid Aidan's body got toasted but good.

(Note to self: I desperately need a better weapon for horseback than the lance. I don't get to practice enough with it to be any good. I think a morningstar may be the ticket.)

Things got busy there for a bit. We killed the dragon spy (dragons make terrible prisoners), got some useful information out of the one assassin that we left alive, and made some Very Big Booms. Marcus brought back the leader of the orc army for us, we hired the assassins that has been sent after us (after they were resurrected) to go fetch Teryl, and I'm sure we did some other stuff but I find recounting large battles in anything like a coherent order to be difficult.

Marcus, by the way, is the former Headmaster of Sucellus, who is not even the slightest bit happy about having to convert to Epona and suddenly being led by a girl over twenty years his junior. He is also a scary, scary man, power-wise. I'm going to be trying to work with him as much as I can over the next few months, as unpleasant as that might be, because I want to get his measure and see where in the Order he should be. The problem with integrating Sucellus' people is that they think differently than we do. Where we're passionate, they tend towards the conservative, and try to keep closer to neutrality towards the world.

Marcus is going to be difficult. When I spoke to him, he basically asked me to step down in favor of him, and said that I had gotten the Order involved in a war for no good reason. I'm not quite sure he actually grasps the extent of the forces arrayed against us, and exactly what they want; though the fact that they killed his god *might* be a clue, don't you think?

He wants to bring the Order back more towards neutral ground. I'm sorry, but it's really far too late for that; and if we attempt to adopt a neutral pose, we'll be run right over at this point. Europe's rivers will indeed run red with the blood of Epona clerics and knights, just as Morgan predicted.

I have half a mind, if I survive the month, to send him to work with Peter, the Russian Headmaster. I'd like to see him attempt to run roughshod over Epona's Bear. The thought of that makes the mischievous little part of my brain squeal in glee.

But I told him to go help Gavião with preparations for battle, and I told him that now is not the time to be mucking with how the Order is organized, so basically he should shut up for the time being and we'd talk when the current crisis is done with. Mostly, I wanted to buy myself some time to get to know how Marcus works with people, and what his strengths and weaknesses are. He does have a point that Sucellus' people need to have a more direct say in what happens in the Order than they have now. I'm thinking we may need to add a few more regional Headmasters, wherever we now have concentrations of clerics we didn't have before. Italy, Greece, and Romania spring to mind.

Church politics make my head hurt, especially unfamiliar church politics. Epona's clerics tend towards the excessively direct, which makes things easier; but having Sucellus' people join us has made things interesting around here.

We spent the rest of today clearing up after the battle; Marcus suggested some good ways to dispose of forty thousand corpses. It's hard, unpleasant work, but it needs doing, otherwise we'll start getting cholera and other diseases, and we've got our hands full enough with the plague at this point that we don't need a cholera outbreak to deal with, as well.

I somewhat wanted to go after the Ark tomorrow, but Riyor is (possibly rightly) worried about his parents, so we'll go to Cartmage and see if we can head the battle there off at the pass. After that, the Ark and my father. I hope, at least.

And then there's Aru, who walks among us once more. I saw him briefly the other night, and his visit confirmed my suspicions. He's made his choice to come back into the light. My faith in him was indeed well-founded.

Oh, I wanted to cheer when he told me that his name was Aru, not Arumaga; but it seemed a trifle undignified and incorrect for the moment, so I settled for a quiet smile in the dark of the stables. I find my reactions to him somewhat odd, sometimes. It feels like he is a stranger I have known forever, like my heart knows things about him that the rest of me does not yet. Very strange, indeed.

A few last notes. We're going to try to do a prisoner exchange: Morgan's pet orc for Gemma, my sister. We haven't seen Tennant in a little while, and I'm starting to get a little worried about him. And I'm starting to have waking dreams, where instead of my being safely asleep and having Dream guide me, I'm wide awake and having visions. Fortunately, these visions usually look only like I've paused for thought or am distracted. They're starting to come more frequently, and I've seen that Morgan's going to be trying to start distorting what I'm seeing. They also want to kill Dream, but they don't know that he's my familiar; we should find Lancelot's saddle sometime soon if we can, so they can continue to assume he's just a horse. They'll attack him in the dream realm, if they can. We'll have to keep an eye out.

Ah, dear Mother. I wish I could be as sure as you seem to be that your choice of me was the correct one. I am not sure how much more sorrow I can carry, and if nothing else in my life is certain, I know that I will have to carry more than I do now. Possibly more than I currently imagine.

I wish I could simply lay some of this down. I'd like to once again simply be Callas de Navarre, a traveling cleric, without an entire Order to worry about, or a war to fight. I know that's not possible right now. But I rather wish it was. I even know who I'd pick to replace me, if he were a cleric again and free of his current obligations.

Speaking of...I wonder what he meant, that he hears my voice every day?

I'm so tired tonight, and still cold. I'm not sure if I'll ever be warm again. But tonight, alongside the sorrow I am holding onto some joy, some things that have actually gone right lately. Arumaga is once more Aru, and that alone is worth celebrating. Madrid still stands, though now we've proven ourselves to be an actual threat, which means that our enemies may start throwing some more serious artillery at us. And there's a chance we may be able to get Gemma out of Versailles before Imbolc. (If I do, I owe Marcus a great debt, whether or not he knows it.)

Tomorrow, Cartmage. First, though, I have to get through that conversation with Galvin I mentioned before. He's out in the stables, taking care of the horses, and he should be back soon.

Here's to the hope I haven't strayed too far into the shadows for him.

And to the hope that we may yet live through tomorrow, to fight another day.

_____________________________

[A piece of paper, undated, stuck between the last two pages of this entry. Crumpled and stained as if with tears.]

This can't be happening.

And yet it is.

Galvin has left me.

I know he's alive, but I can't feel what he's feeling any more.

I am so very, very cold.

[Another piece of paper, just behind the last]

Damn damn damn damn damn damn DAMN. Lazlo is a dream wraith, too.

And he has been fucking with my dreams.

Sleep soundly, Lazlo. Sleep soundly, and wake not when I come for your head.

More when I have the chance.

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