Newt entered the room, finding a large open workspace already holding four other people: Ailis, Gerard, Morgain, and the shadow-figure, standing in the center of the room. Above the table in front of him, a hammered metal bowl hung in midair, simmering over flames that seemed to come from nowhere, causing a thick, noxious, purple-colored fume to rise into the air.
“Get out!” Morgain turned to face them, her expression savage, lips pulled back from her perfect teeth in a horrible snarl. “Get out of here!”
“Morgain!” Ailis cried, and was shoved away by a wave of the sorceress’s hand. She staggered a few steps then regained her balance, glaring at her teacher with almost equal anger. “Morgain, no! Think about what you’re doing!”
Whatever it was that Morgain was doing, Ailis was afraid of it. That was enough for Newt, who was getting ready to grab his friends and run like the hounds of the wild hunt were after them.
“I have thought. For years I’ve thought. And now the time has come to act.”
Morgain turned back to the pot, holding her long-fingered hands over the smoke. “Let those who stand against me, in white-stoned towers, let those who stand against me, in Camelot’s golden hour; let them come to this, in night’s darkest moment: chaos, confusion, the white-foaming madness!”
Ailis let out a sob as Morgain dropped a pinch of some other substance into the foul pot, and stirred it, then began her chant again.
“Let those who stand—”
“Lady Morgain,” Gerard interrupted her, sounding as Gerard never had before, in the short time Newt had known him. Even Ailis seemed taken aback by the timbre and forcefulness in his voice. “You conspire against your rightful king, ruler of these lands, and in doing so commit crimes for which you must be judged. For the sake of your ties to him, and the blood you two share, cease now, and he may yet again show you mercy.”
The laughter that came from Morgain’s mouth made the hair on the back of Newt’s neck rise, and even Ailis blanched, as she had not when the words of the spell were first spoken.
“Little fool. Arthur has never once shown me mercy, never once shown me any regard at all, save for his own vanity and pride. King of all Britons? Not here. Not on these islands. Not over these people. They are mine. And they shall have what is theirs—and know me as their savior. You foiled me once, but this time, I shall succeed.”
“It is the Grail that you seek,” Gerard said. “But it is not yours for the taking, sorceress.”
Her snarl widened. “It is already mine! It belongs to the Old Ways, not the new—a chalice of blood-infused power. I shall hold it and rededicate it, and with its power take back that which was stolen from me.”
Newt could see Ailis taking Morgain’s words in, like blows to her body, and his heart ached for her.
“Kill that boy-child, and be done with it,” the figure ordered. It did not seem to consider Gerard a real threat, but Morgain was fixated on the squire’s words.
“You see the Grail only as a means to an end, not for the glory of itself, its history. You don’t understand what it means to the man who holds it.” Gerard was working up an impressive temper himself.
“The man who holds it, little squire?” Morgain’s voice was so sharp it could have harvested an entire field of wheat. “You make a great assumption, there. The Grail is power. That is all. Power is everything, for the world is split into those who have it, and those who do not. My people demand it of me. The chalice of legend, the cup of holy blood, will be their protection, and I will be their protector.”
“Protect them against whom? Arthur is a fair king, a just leader and—”
“And a man.” Ailis cut into Gerard’s outrage with a clear, carrying voice. “He is only a man, a mortal, magic-less, and as such not suited to bear such a powerful object. The balance of power is delicate, and no warrior raised only to metal and fire can understand what must be done.”
The shadow-figure hissed in displeasure at Ailis’s insolence. Gerard looked at Ailis as though she had lost her senses entirely. But Morgain smiled at Ailis approvingly, some of her venom diluted. “Yes. Arthur is so dedicated to his way, his Cup of the Christ, he does not remember the Old Ways, the ways he was born into.”
Gerard clearly had no idea what the two women were talking about, but Newt did. Most of the knights were Christians, or claimed no particular allegiance, and Merlin always kept his own thoughts to himself on such matters. Because of that, it was not often spoken out loud. But there were many within Camelot who looked to the Old Gods; the trinity of Mother, Maiden, and Crone as opposed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the warrior-goddess Athena, the death-gatherer Ankou, or others, unnamed and half-forgotten with the influx of the followers of Christ.
Newt didn’t bow to any gods, not local, not Roman, not from far-off lands he had never seen. But that didn’t mean he didn’t believe they existed. And far too many were being invoked in this room for his comfort.
He touched the band on his arm and acknowledged the humor of finding comfort in a purely human-given gift when facing dire magics.
“Arthur might learn, if he were given the right guidance,” Ailis said, her feet taking her in small, slow steps closer to Morgain, almost as though she didn’t know she was moving. “If someone who was loved by the Goddess, versed in the Old Ways, were to have access to his mind, and his heart…”
“Ailis, don’t be a fool…” Gerard hissed.
“They took him from me,” Morgain said, her anger sparking again. “Merlin took him from me when Arthur was but a babe. And raised him as his own, he who had no right to a child!”
“Then should you not take him back? And restore him to the Old Ways?” Ailis suggested.
Gerard started to protest, about to draw further attention to himself. Newt gave in to the urge to kick the squire, hard, in the shin. When Gerard turned to glare at him, Newt returned the look with his best “shut up, then” expression, hoping that his friend was smart enough to figure out that Ailis knew what she was doing. She was the negotiator, the one who had kept them from being killed on their first journey. And, more to the point, magic was inside her, the way it was inside Morgain. No matter how Newt himself might distrust magic, right now it might be their only chance to survive.
“It is too late for that, witch-child,” Morgain responded, turning back to the potion. “Arthur is a grown man now. He has shown he cannot be persuaded, nor turned from his path.” Her voice sounded almost as though she were smiling on the inside. “He is as stubborn as all the rest of our family, in truth.” The levity disappeared. “And for that stubbornness, as the rest of us have suffered, so must he.”
Ailis nodded slowly, as though agreeing with Morgain, even as she reached the woman’s side, one hand rising as though to take her teacher’s hand in her own.
“Morgain…” the shadow-figure warned.
Newt shifted and dropped the silver band, intentionally distracting the shadow-figure, even though it made his skin crawl to do so. The thing tracked him with a malevolent gaze, hatred seething so furiously that Newt could practically feel it. What had he ever done to this being? Why did it seem to hate him and Ailis so much, but not Gerard? Whatever the reason, his trick was working. The figure was paying attention to him, and Ailis was almost to the worktable.
Whatever you’re planning to do, Ailis, he thought, do it fast!
“Ailis,” Gerard said, his voice pleading. “Why are you doing this? Why are you siding with them?”
“Maybe because you’re wrong, Ger. Maybe because you’ve always been wrong.” She shot him a glance filled with scorn, then turned back to the table and her teacher.
Ailis reached out to investigate the contents of the steaming bowl. Before Morgain could slap her hand away, as she clearly meant to do, Ailis had taken a handful of the smoke and clenched it into her palm, chanting frantically: “Isolate, inviolate, insulate; protect the blood, all the blood, from harm willful or missent.”
“Nooooooo!” the shadow-figu
re roared, lunging for Ailis, the noise rising and filling the entire room until Newt thought his ears would bleed, his head explode. He felt the floor rushing up to meet him in a distinctly unpleasant manner.
I hate magic, was all he could think.
TWENTY-TWO
“Witch-child, no!”
Morgain’s cry was overridden by the shadow-figure’s outburst, but Ailis heard her nonetheless. She reached for the anguish in that voice instinctively, trying to ease her teacher’s concern even as the magical counterattack knocked her backward, off her feet, and slammed her into the wall.
“Get away from her, Le Fay. This has gone on too long. The threads are tangled, the future misdirected, and she is to blame.”
“You may not have her. Not her. She is the only daughter I will ever know.” That was Morgain, standing between Ailis and that awful, horrible, terrifying slithery whisper of a voice. Ailis wondered if she was dead—if they were all dead, and this was hell, and that the devil had come to claim them.
“I have everyone in the end, Le Fay. Even her. Even you.”
Ailis was trying to track their exchange, but almost all of her concentration was focused on the tiny bit of power she still held in her palm. It had been a simple spell, one she had cobbled together as best she could in the moment between realization and action. Born out of equal parts of compassion for Morgain, and fear of what the sorceress might do in her pain and anger, the spell was not a defensive one, but reflexive. It did not strike out against anyone or anything, but deflected the aggressive spell; made it impotent.
Ailis didn’t know how she knew all this. It was as though the knowledge had risen up through the stones, the same way she had known the figure in robes was no friend to her from the instant it walked into the room. Why had Morgain allowed it onto her island? What had it promised her, cajoled her with?
Evil was all in how you looked at it. Morgain had reasons for everything she did. Merlin had reasons. Arthur had reasons. Everyone had reasons.
No matter the reasons, now. What was important now was the spell she held—that she keep it hidden, keep it safe.
Even as she thought that, the shadow-figure raised its arm to make another strike against her. Power gathered, thickening the air until Ailis could barely breathe.
On the floor, Gerard stirred, his hand reaching out to find something, anything, he could use as a weapon. It was useless. There was no way he could stop the shadow-figure. No way any of them could.
The shadow-figure tightened its fingers into a fist, rising to come down on Ailis.
“Morgain…” If only to her own ears, the name sounded painfully like “mother,” and Ailis flinched more from that than the attack about to come. She risked a glance up at the figure’s face, and saw Morgain already in motion, not toward Ailis, but away from her, directly into the path of the shadow-figure’s blow.
“No!” the sorceress cried, and the two adults disappeared in a shower of silver-black sparks that hit Ailis like a storm-wracked wave, lit the entire room into painful clarity, then plunged it into complete darkness as they faded.
Morgain?
Silence.
Merlin?
More silence.
“Ailis?”
In the darkness, she could hear Newt’s voice, reassuringly solid and familiar, then the sound of bodies shifting, picking themselves up off the floor. She lay where she was, feeling aches in every part of her body, but she focused on the tiny glow still intact and still in her hand.
“Are you all right?” Newt, his hands gentle and comforting on her shoulder, urged her to respond.
“I think so,” she told him. “Help me up.”
It took both boys to get Ailis to a standing position. Where they had merely been knocked to the ground by the shadow-figure’s last attack, she had been literally blasted by its magic. Once on her feet, although unsteady, Ailis opened her palm and let the spell-light glow more strongly, lighting her way to the worktable.
“So…tired.”
“Draw on me.” Newt, still supporting her, whispered in her ear. “Draw on us both. You know how. Don’t think—do. Do what you need to do.”
He was right. The knowledge rose from deep within her. She felt strength flow from where their skin met hers, giving her the ability to focus on the task at hand.
The pot still simmered. It was still a threat, however abandoned and contained. Ailis raised her palm over the smoke. Flinching a little from the fumes, she concentrated, and sent the spell back down into the green liquid. The scrap of fumes she had originally stolen met and merged with the source, taking with it the spell she had created.
“It is like cooking,” Morgain had said. Sometimes, adding a single spice changed the entire complexion of the dish. Sometimes, you had to improvise.
“It’s safe now. I think.” Morgain had only shown her the basics of spell-making; everything else she had guessed at. All she could do was her best, and hope Merlin would be able to protect them against anything else.
Merlin.
Merlin?
Child? Ailis?
She caught at that distant voice, anchored herself, then raised her eyes to the far wall where a faint glimmer was forming.
Ropes, under her fingers. Pulleys. Open here, close there, send one way and not the other…
“What is that?” Newt asked, not having seen the transport portal before.
“A way home,” Ailis said, even as Gerard instinctively averted his eyes, anticipating the blast of light that had occurred back in Camelot. She reached out a hand, her fingers flexing and stretching as though manipulating something the others could not see. “Come on.”
“Are you sure? Did you make that? Or was it…” and Newt scanned around as though expecting Morgain to pop out at them again.
“Look!” Gerard said, pointing. Through the green glow, all three could see the familiar stone corridors of Camelot, the leg of a chair, and…yes, glimpses of Merlin’s robes, as he floated back and forth!
“Hurry,” Ailis said as the vision shimmered. “It won’t last long. We have to go!”
TWENTY-THREE
“Gahhhh!” Merlin glared at the three of them, then carefully pried himself off the ceiling, and lowered himself slowly back down to the floor. He took a moment to brush himself off and adjust his robes. Then and only then did he look up to meet their carefully straight-faced expressions.
“So nice of you to come by to see me, however unexpectedly. Ailis, child, it’s good to see you.” Merlin looked at them carefully, and didn’t ask where Sir Caedor was, or what had happened to their horses or supplies. Or how they had managed to suddenly appear in the middle of his private rooms.
“You’ve been away for some time,” was all he said. “Arthur’s been gone and back with his Marcher Lords already. I was beginning to become somewhat worried.”
“The Quest?” Gerard asked, focusing on the thing that had been all-important to him not so long ago.
“Is about to ride out, if not the next morning, then the day after that. They have been waiting only for better weather—something stirred up a nasty storm in the north, and we’ve been feeling the effects of it even down here. But come, sit, tell me everything. Ailis, you fairly glow of magic. What have you been up to?”
She opened up her hand, where a trace of her spell still lingered. “Morgain wants the Grail,” she started. “For her own glory, but also because she believes that it’s the only way to protect her beliefs, her way of life, against Arthur. Something about the land, the Old Ways…I didn’t quite understand all of it. But she believes, passionately.”
Merlin nodded, as though none of this was really a surprise to him. “Her family is too rooted,” he said. “Old trees are strong, but they don’t stand forever.”
“She has players on the field,” Ailis continued. “She’s trying to match them to yours, as best I could tell. But I’m not sure what she’s going to do with them. I don’t think she knows, exactly. That was why she was in
the castle, to learn what our plans were. Only…
“There was another…person there in her fortress. Someone with a lot of power, helping her…”
Merlin suddenly looked alert. “Go on, child.”
Ailis told the rest of her story. Newt and Gerard were practically squirming in their seats with the desire to interrupt with their own take on events.
“And then Morgain…they both disappeared. I think maybe she saved us.” Ailis ended. She reached up to touch the feather in her hair as though seeking reassurance from it. Then she used that same hand to reach out and touch Newt, sitting beside her. He tried to smile and closed his own hand over hers, warm and human and comforting.
“This shadow-figure Ailis described…have you anything more to add?” Merlin finally asked the boys.
Gerard shook his head. “It was almost as though I couldn’t look directly at it. Him. Her. I don’t even know what it was. Its voice…the voice scared me. It was like a cold knife at the base of your neck.”
Newt started to say something, then merely nodded his agreement. Anything else he thought of was just from myths, stories from his childhood, things that had no place here in this room.
The enchanter looked carefully at all three of them, each in turn. “All right. There are things the three of you aren’t telling me, but I’ll trust your judgment that Arthur and I don’t need to know whatever it is. And that if you change your minds, you’ll come to me.”
Merlin sat back and looked at them as a whole, contemplating, until all three were squirming in their seats again.
“It’s good that you’re back now. You need to travel with the Quest. All three of you, not just master squire here.”
Newt looked astonished, while Ailis almost fell off her stool in shock. “How?” she asked.
Newt, more pragmatic, asked, “Why?”
“I’ll arrange it,” Merlin said in a way that was not reassuring at all. “And because I suspect that it’s important that you be there, whatever happens. You’ve been marked by this, the three of you. You’ve earned your place, and none may say otherwise. Not merely by being in the right place, but by being the right people in the right place, and not merely once, but twice now. Once is accident. Twice is fate. Three times…” Merlin looked at the three of them, his eyes tired and yet filled with a deep, luminous magic. “Three times becomes legend.”
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