The Shadow Companion

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “We gathered that much,” Newt said, gesturing at everyone with their parcels packed and horses readied. “Because of the attack?”

  “Yes.” Gerard nodded. “Sir Matthias thinks the entire prophecy was a setup. Half the knights want to go back to the monastery and burn it to the ground, thinking that the monks were agents of Morgain. Sir Matthias had to threaten one of them with a horsewhipping if he even pointed his horse in that direction.”

  “He thinks it was Morgain who cast the trap?”

  Gerard looked at Newt as though the other boy had gone completely mad for even questioning that.

  “I’m just asking,” Newt said, defensively. “There’s no proof. I mean, it’s not as though she was standing there, spell in one hand, spider in the other….”

  “Spider?” Callum asked, perking up. The other three ignored him. Sir Matthias was telling his men, so the entire story would be over the camp soon enough. It was a matter of pride, now, to be the first to figure out Morgain’s intentions. After all, they felt that they did know her best.

  “It has her scent on it,” Ailis said, surprising them both with the admission. “She likes to use tools to do her work for her, and not to have to come out directly. And we already know that she wants the Quest disrupted.”

  “And in a way, that will embarrass Arthur as much as possible,” Gerard added. “Leaving his knights near-naked and bound by creatures the size of their hands? That would please her.”

  “I can’t imagine the knights telling anyone about that bit,” Newt said. “I suppose that would explain the wild stories that are circulating.”

  Gerard shrugged. “I gave a full report to Sir Matthias. He will give a full report to the king. What happened will be known.”

  “That’s not going to make you too popular,” Ailis said.

  “Oh, the knights in question have already convinced themselves that they were the ones who managed to turn the tide, using us as a distraction.” Gerard’s tone was dry, but the way he bent over his meal to hide his face told another story. Yet another chance of glory for him was gone.

  “I’m sorry,” Ailis said.

  “No, it’s all right,” Gerard said. “It keeps you out of trouble, on the magic front.” To this, Callum perked up again, but this time didn’t say anything that might interrupt the flow of information. “And, well, they really wouldn’t have wanted to admit to being rescued by a squire, a stable boy, and a serving girl. They’re already cranky enough as it is. Sir Matthias is worried that a number of them might try to abandon the Quest if something doesn’t change soon.”

  “Can they do that?” It was too much for Callum to bear silently. “Didn’t Arthur…”

  Gerard was more patient with the boy than he had been previously. “Arthur picked the knights out of all the volunteers. He didn’t order them to go—how could he? It doesn’t work that way.”

  “So she shames them, makes them abandon the Quest, and Arthur’s hold on his men is seen as weakened…and that makes others think that maybe he’s not fit to be king?” Ailis was thinking out loud, putting the pieces together.

  “It fits with everything else we know, doesn’t it?” Gerard said bitterly. “About what Morgain wants?”

  “Do you think she has anything to do with the dissension among the knights?” Gerard went on, almost hopefully. He would love for all the unpleasantness he was seeing among men he respected and emulated to be caused by evil magic.

  “No, I think they’re capable of doing that all on their own,” Ailis retorted. Then, seeing how depressed that thought made him, she added: “They’re just people. I used to clean their rooms. Trust me, there’s not a saint among them. Especially the ones who try to claim they are.”

  “What about the salamander?” Newt asked, diverting the conversation before Gerard became more melancholy, or Callum’s brain exploded with what they were saying. He was already reluctant to think badly of his new pet, but reality had to be faced. “Morgain does have a collection of exotic beasts.”

  All four of them turned to look at the saddlebag, and saw the salamander was sleeping, oblivious to the attention.

  “He seems harmless,” Ailis said.

  “Is that a magical opinion?” Newt asked.

  She shrugged helplessly. “He was certainly attracted to my working magic, but that might have been because I was using fire and he was cold. He’s abandoned me quickly enough for Newt, who is totally non-magical, so…”

  Gerard turned to Newt and said, “I think…Ailis is right. We all agree it’s not from around here, but there’s no sign it’s anything other than just a big newt.”

  “Salamander,” Newt corrected him.

  “A big salamander. Little newt.” Ailis ate the last bite of her bread and wiped her face with her sleeve. “What? It was a joke. Remember those?”

  “So I think, unless one of us sees something different, it’s not anything we need to tell Sir Matthias about,” Gerard said. “Callum, this includes you, too.”

  Callum swallowed hard, but nodded, clearly thrilled to be involved, even if it was merely to remain silent.

  “Or Merlin?” Newt asked.

  “We might want to mention it to Merlin, yes. Ailis?”

  She shook her head, realizing that her hair was still hanging loose down her back. Her hands now free, she reached back and started to rebraid it as she spoke. “I tried reaching out to him, before I cast the spell, but he was…blocked off from me. Not blocked like someone was preventing me from talking to him; I know what that feels like. But more like, ‘I’m busy, Ailis, try again later.’”

  “You’d think he’d—” Newt broke off, unable to finish the sentence. Merlin had sent them off on this Quest not only because he believed that they could be useful, but because he thought that Ailis might be somehow contaminated by Morgain’s touch—and so in love with magic that she forgot it had a darker side. It was very odd that he would brush her off without knowing what she was trying to contact him about.

  “He’d what?” Ailis turned her hazel eyes on Newt, curious.

  “He’d have the ability to handle more than one job or thought or conversation at a time,” Gerard said. “He certainly managed to yell at us while talking to himself all the time.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. I wanted to tell you that Sir Matthias said we did well to burn the bodies—I didn’t tell him how we did it—and he is going to request that the monks send someone to say a prayer over the village, maybe pour holy water there or something. It’s the least they could do, since one of their own sent us here.”

  “It would be funny, though, wouldn’t it,” Ailis said, “if the Grail actually was here in this forest somewhere.”

  “If it is, it’s nowhere we’d be able to find it. Not unless Newt has a dog somewhere that can sniff out religious objects.”

  “Monks, yes,” Newt said. “Grails, no.”

  “So where are we going?” Ailis asked. “Or does Sir Matthias just want us out of the Shadows, and doesn’t care where we go?”

  “He thinks, actually, that the monk’s prophecy may have had some truth to it. We were just misdirected. There’s an old tower up the coast, maybe two days away, that is reported to throw odd shadows at the wrong time of day, as though something inside it were glowing.”

  “And that’s where we’re going? To an unpredictable tower?”

  “That’s where we’re going,” Gerard said, shrugging as though to admit that he had no say in the matter.

  “That’s what I love about this Quest,” Newt said to his still-sleeping pet. “All the details we’re getting. You really feel the confidence.”

  “It’s not about confidence,” Ailis said, as exasperated as he knew she would be.

  “It’s about faith.” The boys finished her sentence for her, speaking at the same time. She glared equally at both of them, and glared at Callum, too, in order to make him feel included. Then she flipped her braid back into place and looked up at the sky.

&nbs
p; “Merlin? Can I turn them both into chickens? Please? It wouldn’t take that much magic, and nobody would notice, really….”

  SEVEN

  “The best of Camelot,” Merlin said in disgust, echoing, unknowingly, Sir Matthias’s earlier comment. “May the gods help us all.”

  The owl he was speaking to turned its head and hooted mournfully at him. The fact that the owl had the same reaction, no matter what he said to it, was less annoying than the fact that the beast was actually stuffed with sawdust, and so had no thoughts at all in its feathered head.

  On the other hand, it made for a soothingly placid audience when Merlin felt as though his own head might explode.

  He could not blame Sir Matthias for splitting the knights up; he might even have suggested it himself. Small groups were able to move quickly and be less of a burden on the local communities they passed through…. It was a good move, a wise move. It was something he would expect a seasoned war leader like Matthias to come up with when faced with stubborn knights and an elusive goal.

  Arthur forgot, sometimes, the cost of moving his people from point to point. That was what he had field marshals and stewards for.

  Merlin didn’t care, actually, about the cost. His job was to get things done. The difference between him and Arthur was how they paid the cost of their decisions. Arthur paid out in gold and royal approval. Merlin paid of himself, in aches and pains and loss of essence.

  “I’m far, far too old for this,” he muttered, stretching out his legs and feeling them creak. He had discarded his usual robes for more comfortable pantaloons and an exotic billowing tunic. He would never wear them in public, of course, but for intense spell-casting, the wizards of the far-off eastern deserts had the right idea when it came to comfort.

  On his worktable, four small vials that represented the king’s four groups were set upright, their contents smoking gently, in colors alternating between a thick, smoky gray and flashes of blue, and occasionally spiking into red or green. Red meant he needed to do something, and green meant whatever he had done was working. It was a crude method, but with four bands of knights instead of one to watch, on top of everything else he was being asked to do, crude did the job.

  Two of the vials had sparked a violent red this morning, while a third had a slow thread of scarlet rising in its smoke. He had taken the first two and made an additional spell of protection around them, and the men it represented. The third had required more; he had spent almost all morning putting that flame out. By then, the slow thread in the third had turned to a faint pink, and then faded away entirely; whatever crisis was brewing, it had been dealt with on the ground. That had been Sir Matthias’s group, he noted.

  Merlin rather liked Matthias, even though he was one of those men who worried about the effect of magic on his Christian soul. He wasn’t going to find the Grail, not with his particular prejudices and blind sides. The Grail might be holy from its association with the Christ, but it had been touched by many faiths, many beliefs since then, and all had left their mark on it. As was the inevitable way of all living things.

  Matthias was a perfect example of that: raised by a faerie sorceress, taught by a monk, oath-bound to a Christian warlord of pagan descent…

  It would be an interesting chart to work out, if he didn’t already have so much work to do already. First and foremost: Advise and protect Arthur as he deals with the daily business of his kingdom. Never a simple act, but one he knew well. And he had to keep the general protections in place around Camelot. By now, that was something he could and did do in his sleep. But the fact that Morgain had been able to sneak her way in—that had caused him to yank up all his protections by the roots, checking each one for flaws, and then regrounding them more firmly inside the castle walls—a time consuming and energy-draining process.

  Merlin was also bound to the task of finding the identity of the shadowy figure the children had reported seeing in Morgain’s keep. Arthur and he were in agreement on the fact that Morgain was a threat, but a known one. This new player in the game was disturbing. Anything that shifted the balance of the game they played was to be taken seriously.

  Those three things alone were enough to stress even an enchanter such as himself to near breaking. And Merlin also had to protect the knights on their holy Quest for the Grail, without them noticing that they were protected by that dubious figure of an enchanter, naturally.

  It was necessary. He had not exaggerated when speaking to the girl-child Ailis: It was essential that the Grail come to Arthur, and that the knight who brought it was to keep his eye on the greater glory, not his own enrichment. To do that, Merlin needed to know where they were, and what they were doing at every moment of every day. But he also had to sleep at some point.

  “Merlin, do this. Merlin, accomplish that. Merlin, since you’re not doing anything, can you balance a sword on the tip of your nose as well?”

  Balancing the sword would be easier at this point than trying to keep track of every single knight in each group.

  “The things I do for you, Arthur, and your kingdom…”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the strain between his eyes. There were potions he could make for it, of course, but adding that might distract him from something else he had to do. If only he had a proper student to do it for him…

  “Seafeathers,” he cursed. The girl-child. She had been trying to reach him again. Was it a day ago? An hour ago? His sense of time, never accurate to begin with, had entirely slipped away since the Quest had begun. No, he had no time to spare for students now. Not if he was to do any of the half-dozen impossible things his king asked of him. But that was no excuse for turning her away if she were in need.

  Still. She had reached out, and then gone away. So either the distress had been unimportant, in which case he was not needed, or she had resolved the situation on her own, in which case he was not needed. Or if it was too late now, he was not needed.

  There were priorities. And, as dear as the girl-child and her two friends might have become to Merlin the person, Merlin the enchanter had other things he had to attend to first.

  “She’s a smart girl, Ailis is,” he said to the owl. “And the boys with her—they’ve done well, very well. Toss them into water, they swim. Toss them into the air, they fly. If they need me, they will reach out again.”

  The owl swiveled its head and looked at him, but did not respond.

  “And now for my other problem child,” Merlin muttered, turning to a mirror that was propped against a nearby wall.

  “Show me my king,” he commanded it.

  Arthur was not accustomed to riding out alone anymore. The boy he had been—Wart the orphan boy—had gone everywhere alone, or with just a hound to accompany him. But the High King of Britain went nowhere without a full retinue, a mini-court to watch his every move.

  This evening, he had slipped out, using the secret passages of Camelot they all thought he didn’t know about, the small tunnels and hidden doors.

  He rarely used the secret ways, preferring to keep them for times of great need like tonight.

  A decent distance from the walls and the guards stationed therein, Arthur slid down off the nondescript mount he’d taken from the stables and let the beast chomp at the short grass.

  “I know you’re there,” he said calmly.

  She did him the courtesy of not dragging things out, respectfully not making a splashy entrance. Morgain merely stepped out of the air as though walking through a doorway.

  “Good evening, Morgain. You look well.”

  “You have something you wanted to say? An offer perhaps? A surrender?”

  “Leave my knights alone, Morgain. Leave my people alone.”

  “Your people?” She raised one eyebrow as though astonished. “Have you marked them, as you do your cattle?”

  He sighed, his broad shoulders slumping. “Morgain, I don’t want to argue. I never want to argue with you. Why don’t you understand that what you ask is i
mpossible? The times you remember are gone, long gone. This is the new way, the way of the future. You need to let go of the past.”

  She hissed at him, like an angry cat.

  “You are my sister; my blood.”

  “Only half. And you turned from it, Arthur. You turned from the old ways of our mother, and took up the Imperial banner when it landed in the mud where the soldiers of Rome dropped it as they fled this land.”

  His hand went instinctively to the brooch holding his cloak at one shoulder; an eagle made of silver, its wings outstretched to swoop and strike. “I took what was good of their ways, and what was good of ours, and made something new; something strong. I honor laws made by man. I don’t rule by blood and incantation. Camelot is governed by laws everyone can see, can feel, and can appeal to for justice.”

  His gaze was as impassioned as hers.

  She sighed and said, “You are my brother, Arthur. I remember the day you were born. I held you in my arms, wiped your first tears…before Merlin took you away.” She paused and her normally glorious eyes were filled with an undeniable sadness. “But we have drawn lines and chosen sides. We have nothing more to say to each other.”

  With that, she turned and disappeared back through the air, leaving Arthur standing there feeling alone.

  Back in Camelot, Merlin sighed as he watched his king remount his horse and ride slowly back to the safety of the castle. “Some day you will trust me enough to allow me to arrange these meetings of yours within your own walls, rather than riding out into her clutches,” he told the image, ignoring the irony of asking the man he was spying on to trust him. “Some day she is going to try and harm you, and then where will we all be?”

  But even as he muttered, he knew it was pointless. Morgain would never harm Arthur directly, not physically. She was, as he had said, his sister. And she loved him, as much as she knew how.

  But that would not stop her from doing what she felt needed to be done. And if Arthur could not be equally ruthless, well, it was Merlin’s job to do it for him.