“Is he touched?” Camilla asked bluntly. Beaumont looked shocked but Matis rewarded the laconic response with a snort of amusement. Several of the nearby peasants gasped and some went so far as to fall to their knees muttering prayers.

“Contessa, he has...he has tasted of the Grail, yet to say such a thing…” Beamont trailed off. Both he and his companions looked deeply troubled, torn between what they saw as a living embodiment of Knighthood and what was at best madness and at worst a lie.

“Sir Knight I am no enchantress, fey or otherwise,” Camilla protested quickly. Talk of sorcery made her nervous, it would make anyone who had spent time in the Empire nervous. She was glad that Matis knew her well enough to know that she had as little to do with the arcane as she did with the Imperial Family.

“Talking like that is a good way to get someone burned at the stake,” Camilla added a touch tartily.

“I believe our less educated cousins in Brettonia prefer drowning,” Matis chimed in unnecessarily.  Camilla could feel the smirk behind the words without turning her head. She bent down to push the knights sword down but instead he waited till she touched the hilt of the weapon, then reversed it and kissed the jeweled hit.

“Then I am yours to command m’lady,” he exalted. Camilla cringed back as though she had just touched hot iron. The grail knight stood, he was an impressive man, tall even by imperial standards and his armor more intricate than anything she had seen humans wear. It seemed to combine the sophistication of the elves with the sturdiness of dwarven work. There was an astonished gasp from the peasants behind her and she spun to find several of them falling to their knees.

“I’m not an enchantress! Im a….!” she trailed off, she had been about to say she was a whore from Tilea but that wouldn’t do. Suddenly something hot touched her hand and she yanked it away, looking down to see the hilt of her elven sword radiating some kind of heat. She pulled her hand away puzzled and not a little alarmed.

“In our dreams we saw that you would conceal it, even from yourself,” the Knight told her serenely. 

“In time you will reveal yourself,” he went on rhapsodically. Camilla shook her head in weary defeat, she turned to face Beaumont and his knights they had guarded looks on their face, though the beginnings of awe glimmered behind a few eyes.

“I am not an enchantress,” she shouted though from the looks of thing she might as well have been shouting into a hurricane. Wearily she deflated, suddenly feeling the futility of it all.

“Make camp, get a proper watch set, I doubt any Knights will trouble us here, the Baron of Angolem is old and poor and fighting another nobleman besides, but this close to the forest I worry about the undead.”

Exasperated she stalked away to where her tent was being erected and slipped inside. She sat down on her bed roll and put her head in her hands. These people and this country were insane. If she had any sense at all she would ride off tonight and take ship for… anywhere she supposed. But what was the point of going anywhere without Cydric. The dark forces that had killed him were here, so here she would stay, until she died, or they were utterly destoyed.