A well-trained horse would not become skittish in battle and throw his rider. A healthy fisherman would not allow his family to starve, come the winter storms.
And work well-done is the mark of a craftsman—or woman—worth the hire.
This did not sit well with the accepted view of Morgain, the view Morgain herself provoked and maintained, of the vengeful and dangerous sorceress. Of the evil woman, set on taking down her brother’s rightful claim to the title of High King.
It puzzled Ailis. So she did what she did with all things that puzzled her. She put it away in a corner of her mind, and went on with what was in front of her.
“What is this?” she asked, pointing to a series of linked crystals on the table, glimmering blue and gold and black deep within the links.
“Those are not for touching. Or looking too deeply in,” Morgain said brusquely, reaching up to cover them with a dark cloth, shielding them from Ailis’s gaze. “Not everything in this room is so gentle as the bone-warmers.”
Ailis knew she should have felt rebuked. Instead, she turned to another object, this one a polished bone the size and shape of a pigeon’s wing, set in a block of onyx. “And this?”
Morgain looked, then smiled. “That, my dear, is for a woman whose man strays.”
“It brings him back home?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Morgain’s smile twitched, but she refused to elaborate further.
All right, perhaps that might be something evil. Or not. Ailis wasn’t sure—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Here, try this.” Morgain lifted a flat piece of wood off the table and handed it to Ailis. The girl took it hesitantly, almost expecting it to transform into something dangerous, or at least surprising. But it remained a piece of wood.
“Tell me about it,” Morgain demanded.
Ailis looked at Morgain, then back at the wood.
“It’s wood.” She ran one finger along the length of the piece. “A soft wood, not hard. Birch?” Morgain didn’t respond, instead turning to a box of tiny metal figures which she began to sort, almost as though they were threads for embroidery.
The thought made Ailis nostalgic for an instant, for the boring sameness of the queen’s solar. Then she looked down at the wood in her hands, and was absorbed again in the task set to her.
“It has been planed, smoothed. So it’s not meant for whittling. Birch isn’t used for building, nor tools. My cousin…” Ailis stopped. She hadn’t thought of her cousin in years. He was dead now, in the same battle that took her parents, and his parents as well. He would have been a man now, had he lived. “My cousin used to make boats out of birch bark.” Ailis stroked the wood some more, lost in her memories.
Birch is the wood of memory. The wood of remembrance.
The voice didn’t sound like Merlin’s. It didn’t sound like Morgain’s, either. Deeper, more rounded, more feminine than either, and yet powerful at the same time, and it came not from outside Ailis’s mind, but somewhere deeper inside. It was the same voice that had warned her away from looking at the figure behind her in the dining hall.
“It’s meant to…hold things? A box, or a chest…no.” Visions came to her then, of the shelves in Merlin’s study, the upper reaches of Morgain’s library. “Spellbooks. It’s used to bind spellbooks.”
“To bind, yes, and it’s often used as the pages themselves,” Morgain said. “For things that are best carved, not written with anything as flimsy as ink.”
Ailis looked at the blank wood and tried to visualize what sort of spells might be best carved rather than penned. She could almost see the heated prong etching runes into the pale wood, red and char marking the smooth surface in a mockery of the magical characters Merlin had drawn with fire on ice when he gave them the riddle to find the talisman to break Morgain’s sleep-spell.
“You mean a dangerous spell. One that hurts people,” Ailis said.
“Spells are just words, witch-child. They don’t do anything, of themselves. A spell to drive the strength from a man’s body is only a word removed from the one that drives infection from a wound. I’ve cast both, in my time. And will cast them both again. It all depends upon who is asking, and why.”
“And how much you hate them.” Ailis said, daring greatly, speaking for the first time of the one thing that everyone knew. “The way you hate the king.”
Morgain’s hands stilled at her task.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “How very much I hate.”
THIRTEEN
The air smelled of warm horseflesh and dry straw, with an undertone of mold and rot. It was familiar and comforting and disgusting, all at once. Somewhere off to the right side of Gerard’s head, a bug was making a soft chirping noise.
“You awake?”
“No.” Gerard kept his eyes closed, hoping that Newt would take the hint.
“This is a nice inn.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Supper was really good.”
“Yes, it was.” Gerard wished that Newt would get to the point already and let him sleep.
“We should remember to tell Sir Caedor that in the morning—that it’s a good inn, I mean. Since he chose it.”
Gerard rolled over on his side and stared at Newt across the stall they were sleeping in. The hay crinkled underneath, bits of it poking through the blanket and scratching his skin—a small price to pay for the smell and sounds of the horses kept in the stalls on either side of them. But the hay was clean and dry, and there was a roof overhead.
“Out of the only two we saw all day, yes. We should tell him. Newt, what are you up to?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” He was beginning to remember why his first act upon meeting Newt had been to blacken the other boy’s eye.
Newt flopped onto his back, exhaling heavily. “Nothing. Really. I just thought it would soften him up a little.”
“And?” Gerard didn’t know if it was Arthur’s wisdom or Merlin’s cunning, or just his own knowledge of the fact that Newt didn’t care a whit about Sir Caedor, but he could tell there was a logic at work that had nothing to do with the knight’s mood, softened or otherwise.
“And if things were better between the two of us, you could sleep in the inn itself, the way you should. And not spend the night in a stable like—”
“Like a stable boy?”
“Yes.”
“Newt…” Gerard tried to figure out how to get his point across without using the wrong words or making things worse somehow. “If I had wanted to sleep in the inn, I would have. But they only had one room, even with our script from the king authorizing whatever we needed, and only one bed in that room. I would rather sleep in the stable. Without straw.”
Gerard lay back down and stared at the wooden ceiling. “Besides. He snores.”
“Fair enough. So do you.”
“I do not!”
“Sure you don’t,” Newt said soothingly.
Gerard snorted and pulled his blanket up over his shoulder, indicating that the conversation was at an end, and he was, by God, going to sleep.
“I heard what you said,” Newt said softly, almost to himself. “To Sir Caedor, before supper. Thank you.”
There really wasn’t anything to say to that. So Gerard was silent.
In the small but comfortable room in the Oak Tree Inn, Sir Caedor lay on a narrow bed and stared at the whitewashed wood-beam ceiling. He had wanted nothing to do with this journey. He was supposed to be preparing for the Quest to find the Grail—the greatest undertaking in the history of Britain, the crowning achievement of Arthur’s reign. Instead, he was playing nursemaid to two boys who clearly saw him as nothing more than a hindrance to their own headstrong ways.
Arthur had warned him of this. “They are young yet, and while tested and proven in courage and skills, their experiences are limited. Be their wise right arm, their protector. Do this, and you shall be rewarded.”
In his quieter moments, Caedor could see that
it made sense. He was to be young Gerard’s protector, his teacher. And the best way to teach was often not to lead, but to allow the student to lead, and correct him when he went wrong.
But Gerard did not take well to being corrected. This afternoon had been a perfect example of that.
“We will have your best rooms. And supper, a full supper. Newt, take the horses to the stable, and ensure that they are taken care of.” Sir Caedor swung down from his saddle, bringing out from inside his tunic the script from Arthur—a sheet of parchment that gave them the right to ask for anything short of military aid or treaty, and that Camelot would stand surety for it.
“We have only one room, but it is yours, sir knight. Supper is served in the common room, but I assure you, it is everything you might desire.”
The innkeeper was a slimy ball of a man, stuttering and practically salivating over them. Caedor could only imagine how the man thought to turn their presence to his benefit, perhaps charge the locals a coin each to view the bed the “famed knight from Camelot” slept in, or to eat from the same bowl he used.
“You will stay a night? Two nights? Longer? We can accommodate you better the next night, I will have another room open for your squires.”
“Thank you, no. We will have need only for one night.” Gerard butted into the conversation before Caedor could inform the innkeeper of the same thing. The man looked taken aback that a squire would interrupt his master, and Caedor could feel his jaw begin to grind in frustration.
“If you have only the one room,” Gerard continued, “Newt and I will bed down with the horses. But the meal would be most welcome.” The stable boy, who had hung back while Caedor spoke, nodded and led the horses off.
When the innkeeper bowed and scurried off to make the room ready, Caedor turned to face his charge.
“There was no need to offer to sleep with the horses. I’m certain he could have found a room for you.”
“We have discussed this before,” the squire said, leaving Caedor at a loss. “You must treat Newt with more respect, or we will leave you here, despite Arthur’s request that we include you in our journey.”
The squire stared him directly in the eye in a way that could only be described as defiant. “I mean it. I will leave you here, and report back that you failed in your obligation—failed in the basic task of showing courtesy and respect to your companions.”
Caedor’s jaw worked, but no words came out. How dare this youth, this stripling, this child say such things to him? To reprimand him over how he treated a mere stable boy?
“Accept Newt as a travel companion, not a servant,” the squire said. “Or stay here on the morning when we leave.”
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Caedor knew what he would do when the sun rose. Duty was duty. But it left a bitter taste in his mouth; the taste of ashes and saltwater.
Ailis had no idea what time it was. She wasn’t even really sure what day it was. One faded into the next, no way to set one day off from another. After a while, it didn’t matter. But her brain, confused and filled with new and strange information, could not let go of one question: “Why did you steal me?”
Morgain didn’t bother to look up from the parchment she was reading. “Focus on the spell, witch-child.”
“I am focused.” Ailis thought that she could do this in her sleep at this point. “Why did you steal me from Camelot?”
The enchantress gave a dramatic sigh, placing the parchment down carefully on her workbench. “Have you never seen a shiny button on the ground and picked it up?”
Ailis didn’t need to have it explained further. Morgain had taken her not from any planned intent, but because she thought that Ailis might possibly be useful in some way, at some later time. Or not.
And if not, she would face the fate of all unmatched buttons: being discarded.
Ailis pursed her lips into a tight line, and focused again on the small silver globe floating in the air in front of her. She would show the sorceress. She would show Morgain that she was worthy of not being discarded.
As though sensing Ailis’s thoughts, Morgain smiled, a sly, smug smile of her own, and rose to walk over to where Ailis was working. She leaned her head of shining dark hair over the girl’s red braids to check her progress.
“Gently,” she said. “Gently wins the day.” Then the two of them leaned forward as one to breathe on the sphere, and it dissolved into a spray of noxious-smelling fumes.
“I did it!” Ailis said jubilantly. “I did it!”
“Yes,” Morgain said, leaning back and gazing at her student with pride. “Yes, you did.”
In her fascination with the spell’s result, Ailis completely missed the dangerous glint of satisfaction in Morgain’s eyes.
“The lodestone says we take the left-hand road.” Gerard looked up from the stone hanging from its leather cord over the unfolded parchment. He was getting quite good at reading Merlin’s maps. Once you got past the fear of touching a sigil and setting off some unpredictable protective spell, they were remarkably useful things.
“There is nothing there but a small village,” Sir Caedor said, dismissing the map and the lodestone. “I do not think a dangerous sorceress would be hiding among the fisherfolk cottages. If she were, even a young girl like your maiden would be able to escape, no? To the right, boys. Follow the road to the right,” and he pointed to the fork in the road, to where a small but elaborate watchtower rose. “That is where we must look.”
“Does he never tire of being wrong?” Newt asked quietly. He reached up to touch the scab on his face, feeling the warm glow that spread from his hand into his chest when he did so. It had the feel of King Arthur to it, a wry awareness of bigotry and frailty in even the best of men, rather than Merlin’s more brusque, abrasive affection. How he knew that, Newt didn’t know. But that warmth was all that kept his calm intact, worn to shreds by the endless hard riding and continued uncertainty. Sir Caedor’s negative opinion about Ailis’s fate was not helping matters, either. The boys were trying so hard to stay optimistic, but every day that passed, and every doom-saying comment by the knight…
No. She had to be safe. She had to be. Otherwise there was no point to any of it. He didn’t care about Morgain, or her plans, or Merlin’s power plays. Newt just wanted Ailis to be safe.
“Apparently not,” Gerard said in response to Newt’s question. The squire folded the map into well-creased quarters and handed it back to his friend. Then he replaced the lodestone around his own neck, where it slipped comfortably under the open collar of his shirt.
“Sir Caedor, the lodestone tells us to take the left-hand path. And so we shall.”
The knight muttered under his breath, just as he had every other time Gerard had gainsaid him, but did not protest further.
Finally, Caedor said, “It may be that the village is more important than it looks.”
And that, both boys knew, was as much as they would get from Sir Caedor. It was enough.
“Come on,” Newt said, swinging back into the saddle and gathering up the reins. Loyal shifted, as impatient as his rider to be done with this traveling. “Every hour we waste is an hour Ailis is waiting.”
Left unsaid was the awareness that they might already be too late.
FOURTEEN
“Three touches of air to a dose of water, and…” Ailis’s memory failed her for a moment. Then the voice she had come to depend upon rose up from inside her and supplied the answer. “Grave dust to fill the air,” she finished triumphantly as she meandered through a new hallway.
“So.”
A voice came from out of the shadows, before the speaker came into view, scaring all thoughts of spell-work out of her mind completely. Ailis had heard the ladies-in-waiting speak of their blood running cold, but she had dismissed it as foolishness; the overreaction of women who didn’t understand fear or fright.
She would have whispered an apology for underestimating them, if she could have found enough moisture in her mouth to form t
he words.
“So, you are the girl who has interested our hostess, distracted her from that which she must be doing. This costs me time, that I must be here, and not elsewhere.”
The speaker stood directly in front of her, but Ailis could not have said what she looked like, or if, in fact, she was indeed female. The voice was a strange whisper, as genderless as the wind, and the body…
Ailis could not have focused her gaze on the figure even if she had wanted to. And she didn’t. The warning voice in her head was now a scream. Don’t look at the eyes! Don’t look! Don’t look! So she only had an impression of a silver-gray robe flowing from cowl to floor; a hooded cloak hiding features in shadows, despite the well-lit hallway they stood in.
The hooded figure leaned in, inspecting Ailis the way a cook might have inspected a chicken brought in from the yard. “What is it about you that is of such import?”
Ailis could only shake her head, unable to even stutter out a disclaimer. She had been working with Morgain most of the morning, helping her set up preparations for a major working. This was the first spellwork Ailis had been allowed to watch. She had felt a strange combination of nerves and excitement which had led to her needing to stretch her legs a bit.
Clearly, leaving the workroom had been a mistake. But if Morgain had known that the shadow-figure had returned, why had she not said anything about it that morning when they began their work? And if the danger from this person had passed…
No, the danger certainly had not passed. The danger was right here now. Every instinct she had—ordinary and magical—was screaming at her to turn and run. But there was nowhere to run—nowhere to hide that this creature could not find her. Ailis knew that the way she knew her own breath.
“Tell me, child. Tell me what you are, that I should feel moved to see you again. That I must take note of you, and weave you into my plans.”
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