“I…I don’t know.” The words were torn from her throat; the sensation of claws dragging along the flesh of her neck and mouth was so real she could almost taste the blood welling up and splashing her tongue.
“She is no one.”
The relief Ailis felt at hearing Morgain’s voice behind her was immeasurable. She would be happy to be no one, of no importance forever, if that figure would just stop staring at her. All Ailis wanted was to turn tail and hide behind Morgain’s woolen skirts, like a child threatened by a snarling dog running home to its mother.
The shadow-figure’s attention was not so much distracted as split. Ailis could feel the power of a cold wind, but it expanded to include the sorceress as well.
“You are a fool, Morgain. Would you jeopardize all that you have worked for? Delicate wheels are in motion, at your command. Do you hesitate now?”
“I am not hesitating,” Morgain said, her voice still and hard, like the woman Ailis had first encountered, the cold and powerful sorceress Morgain Le Fay, scourge of Camelot. “All will be as we have planned it. Arthur will feel the weight of my hatred, and I shall have my revenge. The witch-child does not change that. The witch-child changes nothing you need be concerned with.”
Ailis almost stopped breathing, willing them both to forget she existed.
“You think not. You know nothing. Fool mortal. Fool woman. Allow this, and all your plans will come to nothing. Arthur will gain the Grail, and you will fade from history, forgotten and unmourned.”
The air in the hallway seemed to grow even colder, and Morgain drew herself up to her full height—a warrior-queen afraid of nothing, beholden to no one. Her face twisted in anger, the even white teeth suddenly showing like the fangs of the great cat she kept as a pet. “I am your hostess. I am she who called you to these shores. Forget that at your own peril.”
Ailis still couldn’t breathe. She didn’t dare breathe. Warrior-queen or no, evil sorceress or no, couldn’t Morgain feel how dangerous this stranger was? It was like keeping a dragon on a jeweled leash; fine until the dragon tired of the game and snapped the leash and devoured you in one bite.
“You know nothing of peril,” the figure spat.
“I know everything of peril,” Morgain spat back. “Do not push, Old One. I brought you to these shores, and I can still send you hence.”
A hiss from the shadow-figure, a warm note of anger cutting through the cold wind, and when Ailis blinked, it was gone.
Morgain muttered something in a language Ailis did not know, but the girl could agree with the thought it conveyed, and sighed in relief.
Then Morgain let out a deep breath, and turned to face Ailis. Her expression was calm, controlled, her perfect features perfect once again.
“And now, witch-child, back to work.”
In the face of that calm control, Ailis swallowed the questions she desperately wanted to ask, the salty tang of blood a reminder that there were things she did not want to be involved with any further, if she could possibly help it. This was a dangerous place. A bad place. Despite the contentment she had discovered here, a part of her mind still remembered that Morgain was an immense danger, an evil woman, the enemy of Arthur and Merlin, and therefore of Ailis as well.
Do not think on things you cannot change. There was no doubt that it was Morgain’s voice, soothing the raw edges of Ailis’s mind. Focus on who and what you are, who and what you may become. That and that alone you may control.
It was good advice. Ailis wrapped herself again in that soothing tone and took comfort in its words as the two went back up into the workroom and closed the heavy wooden door behind them.
“This is where Morgain is hiding?” Newt, remembering the glories of the Isle of Apples, was incredulous.
“According to the lodestone…yes.” Gerard shrugged, as though to deny responsibility for the answer.
“Well, it’s not much to speak of, is it?” Sir Caedor said. “Not that I was expecting Camelot in miniature, but I at least thought there would be streets.”
In truth, the village barely earned that name; a double handful of wood and stone houses built not along any discernible row or road, but scattered as though by whim and chance along the shoreline. Narrow paths wound around each building, created not by hoof and wheel, but by human feet. Gerard could hear the faint chatter of voices—children, he determined—off to the left, but there were no adults to be seen. The sun was well-risen in the sky, however, so it was entirely likely that every adult in the village was called to work. Gerard didn’t know anything about the patterns of coastal life; he had been born to fertile farmlands and was fostered in a rocky domain where livestock, not fish, were the main concern.
“All roads lead to…what?” Sir Caedor wondered out loud, tracing the direction with his gaze. “Down to the sea. And what is of such interest in the sea?”
“Their livelihood,” Newt said in a tone of amazement. “This is a fishing village. Everyone here takes their living from the ocean.”
“Information. We need more information,” the knight went on, ignoring Newt entirely. “The lodestone sent us here, to a place from which we can travel no farther, so there must be an answer of some sort waiting for us. Let us go and inquire, if we can find a soul to speak with.”
The two boys rode their horses forward, and followed Sir Caedor down one of the wider, more clearly defined paths, down a slight incline to where three larger square buildings partially blocked their view of the water down below.
“Do you know what you’re going to say, to convince someone to let us borrow a boat?” Newt asked.
“I was thinking about invoking Arthur’s name,” Gerard said. “We are on his business, after all.”
“You think they’ll believe that?” They did have a parchment with the king’s signature on it, the same one they had used to gain a room at the inn. Inns were used to that sort of thing, but the odds of anyone in this rough place being able to read were slim, at best. And even if they could, they would likely be disinclined to give over something as valuable as a boat to three strangers, so far from Camelot’s immediate reach and reward.
“Well, we do have a knight with us,” Gerard responded. “Maybe they’ll be impressed by that.”
“Optimist,” Newt muttered, dire down to his toes. Gerard laughed for the first time in days.
He was optimistic, or at least optimistic in this regard, on this day, this hour. They were close, the lodestone had led them well, and he had confidence in Ailis. She was well. She would remain strong until they could rescue her. They could accomplish anything so long as they held together. Sir Caedor might not believe it, but Gerard knew Ailis; knew her better than anyone.
“You! Sirrah! Stop when I speak to you!”
“Oh, drat!” Newt said, and they both continued forward, too late to stop Sir Caedor from accosting a man walking toward them, away from the shoreline.
“Getcher hands off me,” the man growled, then blanched at the sight of two more riders bearing down on him.
“Sir Caedor. Release him.”
“He was insolent!”
“Release him.” For just an instant, Gerard sounded like the king. So much so that Sir Caedor’s hand released the man of its own accord, in an instinctive reflex. Wow, Gerard thought, but couldn’t stop to enjoy the moment. Newt dismounted, holding Loyal’s reins so that he stood off to Gerard’s side. It was a planned move on Newt’s part; not of a servant but as a well-treated companion of lesser social standing. With luck, that consideration would offset Sir Caedor’s poor manners and reassure the man enough so that he would speak to Gerard without fear.
“I apologize,” Gerard said now. “We have been riding for many days and we had hopes that you might be able to aid us.”
The stranger looked at Gerard warily, glancing first at Sir Caedor, then at Newt, and then to Gerard again.
“With what?”
“We are in need of a guide to the home of Morgain Le Fay.”
T
he villager stared up at them, his weathered face creased even more as he scowled. Then his mouth worked, and he spat a yellowish globule that hit Gerard on the leg.
The squire didn’t flinch, not even when Sir Caedor pulled his sword from its scabbard, ready to slay the villager where he stood.
“I have offended?” Gerard asked, as mildly as he could, while Newt moved to be ready to restrain Sir Caedor, if needed. How, Newt wasn’t sure. But he would give Gerard time to ask whatever questions he needed to.
“You are offensive,” the villager said. “You ride here, you grab, you demand, you would disturb the Lady Morgain—why? What business have you with her?”
“The king has sent us to parley with the Lady Morgain on matters of importance to him, and to her.”
“Then the king should have sent you the means and direction on how to visit her,” the old man said. “None here will convey you without her own request.”
“But the king—”
“We have served the Lady Morgain’s family for generations,” the local said, his voice dripping scorn. “The family that stayed here, walked the sand, same as us. Not some bastard child gone off to warm a fancy chair down in the southlands.”
Sir Caedor surged forward at the insult to the king, and even Newt jerked in reaction. But Gerard stayed them both with a glance and an upraised hand. Arthur had surely heard worse in his years.
“We have reason to believe that she would make us welcome on our arrival.”
“Then she will send a way for you to make that arrival,” the old man said. “’Tis not our place to make it happen.”
They stared at each other, one pair of eyes lined and weighted but still bright, the other road-weary and shadowed. And in the end, it was Gerard who blinked and looked away, feeling the surge of Arthur’s wisdom rising up inside him, even without the scar’s itching.
“Let’s go,” Gerard said, finally. “Perhaps someone down in the village proper will be more open to discussion.”
FIFTEEN
Ailis felt uneasy. Since the shadow-figure confronted her in the hallway, she had not slept well. She would wake confused and upset, memories of Camelot mixing with nightmares of a winged figure chasing her down endless whitewashed halls, calling her name, whispering something in her ear. Only the arrival each morning of Morgain, to escort Ailis to the tower that held her workroom, made everything make sense again. Morgain kept her safe. When she was working with the enchantress, learning new things, discovering parts of her that Merlin had only hinted about, that was when she felt balanced, alive and whole. Only then would the memories, and the nightmares, slip away.
“Do you know what to do?”
“Yes, Morgain,” Ailis replied. “I know what to do.”
“I won’t be gone long.” The sorceress hovered by the door, clearly torn between staying and going.
“I’m fine, Morgain. It’s a simple assignment, no more difficult than remembering which side of the table to serve first, and in what order. I managed that by the time I was ten!”
The sorceress laughed, as Ailis had intended her to do, then finally left in a flurry of rich fabrics—finer than she usually wore to the workroom. She closed the door behind her and locked it from the outside. The sound of the magical bolt sliding into place should have made Ailis feel protected, safe. The shadow-figure could not reach her here.
But this morning, for some reason, the sensation of being tucked away behind that lock made Ailis feel restless, as if she had forgotten something, misplaced something.
Suddenly, the thought of comparing the ingredients of a wind-calming spell against the ingredients of a wind-calling spell seemed tedious and tiring. She pushed her stool back across the stone floor and looked around. She was bored. And she hadn’t been told not to poke around. Not exactly.
A moment later she found herself not at the wooden worktable, with the two spells’ ingredients neatly laid out, but standing in front of the far wall, which was draped with a heavy sailcloth cover. She wasn’t sure why that cover fascinated her so, but she was learning to trust her instincts. Something she needed was behind there. But what was it?
A flutter of wings behind her made the girl jump. She turned and stared around the empty room. Nothing was there. Nothing at all.
Wings, again. A flutter of air, touching the feather braided into her dark red hair and brushing against her neck.
Find out what she’s up to.
Ailis jumped again at Merlin’s voice; the faint echo slipped into her mind on the tail end of a breeze, and then was gone again.
Merlin?
There was no response. Had the voice been real? Or was it merely her own imagination, colored by his memory? Ailis didn’t know. But the temptation was irresistible: to discover something on her own, and not wait for Morgain—for anyone—to decide that she needed to know it.
She lifted the cloth, almost as though in a trance, feeling the heavy oiled fabric shift under her hands as she moved it aside. If she concentrated on it, that thought might somehow warn Morgain, bring her back unexpectedly. Ailis told herself: Don’t think. Don’t trust your mind. Your mind lies to you. Trust your instincts. Trust your voices.
“Oh.”
Tacked to the wall was what seemed to be no more than an ordinary map. A map of the entire island—from the Scottish wilderness and the mountains of Gwynnedd, down to the southern lands and civilized Camelot, and across the waters to Brittany, where Sir Lancelot came from. Then Ailis saw small colored lights—magic, to glow so—hovering just above the surface of the map. Some were a pale blue, others dark red, while some shone cold steady white. They were scattered across the map. She blinked, and let her eyes refocus. Slowly, a pattern emerged, not so much through her eyes or her mind, but somewhere in between, in the same space where she could feel the magic that rested in both Morgain and Merlin.
The blue seemed to represent Arthur’s men. His knights, landowners, common folk. The white were Morgain’s allies. Fighters, farmers, and fisherfolk, hedge-witches and minor wizards—followers of the Old Ways who were unhappy with Arthur’s embrace of the new God and the quest for the Christian Grail.
“Morgain wants to destroy the Quest.” No great surprise there—that had been made plain from Morgain’s very first move. But this was more than the sleep-spell. This involved other people. Warriors. Townspeople. People Arthur thought he could trust, many he thought were loyal subjects, all scattered along the routes to holy places, places a knight searching for a holy object might go. Morgain wanted more than the failure of the Quest, Ailis realized: She wanted the Grail to herself.
But what were those red spots? Try though she might, Ailis could not make that information come to her. The red lights remained a mystery. But clearly Morgain was planning something. That sleep-spell had not been her entire attack—only the first strike of her blade.
And Ailis was stuck here, unable to leave, unable to contact Merlin, unable to do anything, except keep on as she had been doing.
And really, Ailis thought, replacing the sailcloth cover, what else should I be doing?
You are a witch-child, a voice whispered to her from deep within her dreams. Your place is near magic. Morgain’s voice? Or, as she was coming to suspect, the voice of the place, the magic in its very stones and water? It didn’t matter. That comfortable sense of belonging was sliding back over her, wiping away the alarm and replacing it with the need to be back at her work.
This time, the flutter of wings against her neck was nothing more than the sea breeze coming in through the small window overhead.
When Morgain returned a short while later, Ailis was back on her stool, measuring the quantity of gossamer sand needed for each spell. Morgain didn’t even glance at the covered wall before coming over to check on Ailis’s progress.
“Excellent work,” the sorceress praised, letting some of the tension fade from her face. Ailis could feel herself practically glowing under the older woman’s approval.
So what if
Morgain wanted to make trouble for Arthur? There was nothing Ailis could do about it for now, and it was none of her affair, anyway.
SIXTEEN
“Show me Morgain’s home,” Gerard uttered in frustration as they left the village. But the lodestone had done exactly that. The three were led to an almost completely hidden path that led around the town and up the rocky cliff. In the distance, out to the east, over cold gray water and under an equally gray sky, they could see the Orkneys. On the nearest of those islands, a stone-walled fortress rose from the ground as though thrust up from the earth itself; immovable, unshakable.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Newt said. “Unless Merlin’s been having a joke on us all this time.”
He sounded as bitter as Gerard felt. The villagers had not been welcoming. Just as the first man they encountered, many of the townsfolk refused to even speak to the strangers. Finally, Gerard had taken Sir Caedor and the horses away, leaving Newt alone to discover what he could, on foot. The little he had learned was that the first old man was right—no one would guide them.
“We will still need a boat if we try to go on our own.” Sir Caedor sounded even less enthused about the prospect of travel over water than he had about travel over land.
“We should be able to hire a boat in the village,” Newt said. Then he reconsidered, in light of their earlier reception. “Or maybe we’ll have to borrow one without asking.”
“Steal one?”
“Is it stealing if you return it when you’re done?”
“Yes.” Sir Caedor was definitive on that, as he was whenever he and Newt disagreed on anything. Which was almost always.
Newt shrugged. “Then we’re stealing it. You have another idea?”
Sir Caedor clearly wanted to take Newt to task for insolence, but kept his lips firmly pressed together.
Gerard was thankful—he wasn’t sure he was up to yet another round of peacekeeping, especially when he felt like pitching them both into a well and leaving them there.
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