The Shadow Companion

by Laura Anne Gilman

  EIGHT

  “This entire Quest has been cursed from the start.”

  The speaker was striding in a circle around his fellows, gesturing grandly, wildly with his hands. “First, the sleeping sickness Morgain cast upon us all, then the uprising of the border lords, and now this.”

  “What, rain?” One of the other men, sharpening his dagger with slow, careful strokes against a whetstone, didn’t look up from his task as he mocked the speaker. “William, it’s rain. So you get a bit wet. You’re always a bit damp, anyway.”

  The knight complaining was neither amused nor distracted. “Endless failures! Had I been given my choice of whom to follow—”

  “You would have chosen to follow Sir Galahad, perhaps? Or Sir Lancelot?” Sir Ruden shook his head. “So would everyone, and the problem would still have remained. Besides,” Sir Ruden went on, stretching his legs out in front of him as though still expecting any moment to find them bound in spider silk again, “they haven’t found it either yet, have they?”

  “They might have,” Sir William said sullenly.

  “William, by all that’s holy, you see plots against you in every move every other soul makes. They would have told us had the Grail been found,” the fourth knight in the group said. He was polishing his boots halfheartedly, not even trying to get the worst of the caked-in mud off the heels.

  “Hah.” Sir William brushed that comment off with a particularly elaborate wave of his arm. “They’d be on their way back to Camelot, bearing their prize before them. They would not bother to send so much as a messenger-bird to tell us—not until they had secured the king’s favor once and for all.”

  “Assuming they bothered to take it to the king at all,” Simon, the knight sharpening his dagger, said.

  “What?”

  “Think of it. The Grail. Power.” Simon’s eyes brightened. “The power of the thing…Are we certain all our fellow knights would bring it back to Arthur, rather than keep it for themselves?”

  “Or take it to another master?” William added, warming to the idea.

  “None would dare!” Sir Ruden was outraged.

  The knife-sharpener shrugged, pragmatic. “Who could stop them? Who would even know to stop them?”

  “You will not speak that way about men of the Round Table,” Sir Ruden demanded in his northern accent, getting to his feet. “They are your fellow brothers in knighthood, I might add.” His squire rolled up the map they’d been studying, smearing the precious inks as he did so, and tried to get out of the way.

  “I am indeed their brother, a member of the Round Table, as well, and may speak as I see fit.”

  “You will not!”

  Sir Ruden launched himself at Simon, but kicked Sir William as he did so, perhaps accidentally, but perhaps not. A fifth knight, who had been silent until then, tried to separate the two men, and received a black eye for his efforts, which made him start swinging as well.

  Gerard got up from the log he had been perched on, and, as the brawl spread, walked away. This was the worst he had seen it, but in the two days of riding since leaving the Shadows, the tension had grown even worse among the knights. Even the ones like Sir William, who were normally calm and thoughtful, seemed infected by some bee-sting of dissatisfaction. Nothing was good enough, be it the horse they were riding, the food they were eating, or the hue of blue of the sky above them. And when the topic turned to the Grail, as it often did, frustration and anger would fly freely.

  Gerard kicked at a rock that happened to get in his way, and wished that he had never heard of the Grail, never dreamed of coming on this Quest. He almost regretted becoming a squire.

  “I don’t mean that,” he said quickly, in case God, or anyone, had been listening to his thoughts. “I don’t.” He couldn’t imagine being anything else, being anywhere else.

  “Even men of valor, even men of great deeds, have the flesh and failures of other men.”

  Merlin had said that, and he even added “and women as well,” before Ailis could gloat. This entire trip had shown him the truth of that.

  It had also shown him men of valor as well. Sir Ruden, for all that he might be short-tempered and reckless, had dealt well and wisely with the spider-things. Sir Joseph had charged in to save a squire who had gotten too close to a wild boar, at risk to himself and his steed. And back at Camelot, of course, there was Lancelot, and Sir Gawain, and his own master, Sir Rheynold.

  But at this rate, he doubted there was anyone in this group who would be allowed anywhere near the Grail, himself included.

  He wasn’t feeling very noble, or valiant, or virtuous today. He had slept poorly, and woken early, only to find Newt and Ailis already awake, washing their extra clothing in a bucket of water by the fire, Newt’s red-striped pet lounging nearby.

  He had seen them laughing and joking, familiar and comfortable. They had not noticed him.

  Once, Gerard and Ailis had been close—the newly arrived page and the orphaned serving girl. Time and new responsibilities had changed that, but they had always been friends. Always.

  “You’re a squire. You’ll be a knight someday, in a few years, maybe. You won’t be able to go on adventures with serving girls and stable boys then.” Ailis’s words, an echo of Sir Matthias’s own words, and Sir Rheynold’s, too, were a bitter companion.

  When they had made camp, after moving out of the Shadows, Gerard had set his bedroll up near Tom, Sir Matthias’s squire, who had an uncanny gift for finding the softest ground anywhere within a campsite. He had thought that the company might be nice, as well. But the other boy was still off running errands, or cleaning tack, or doing any of the endless number of things he was asked to do for Sir Matthias.

  Sir Matthias had no need for his special aide tonight. No one, it seemed, had any need for him.

  All right, enough of that. He was a noble squire, of the blood of Sir Kay, the king’s own foster brother. He was the squire of Sir Rheynold, and temporarily special aide to Sir Matthias, King Arthur’s chosen representative for Camelot on this Quest. He had friends and important work, and his name was known by his king, and by the king’s enchanter. He did not have a hard life. Self-pity was simply not acceptable.

  It was, however, distinctly satisfying sometimes.

  Gerard cleared a space, dug out a depression in the dirt, and set a circle of fist-sized stones around the hole. Not very large, just enough to hold a small fire, as much for comfort as warmth.

  Once he had a decent blaze going, thanks to a handful of twigs and a deadfall of logs, Gerard pulled his bedroll over to sit on. Hugging his arms around his knees, he stared into the fire, glumly contemplating everything that hadn’t gone right since Arthur first announced the great and glorious Grail Quest.

  Something skittered off to his left, and Gerard’s hand reached out to grasp the hilt of his sword, placed carefully beside his bedroll.

  “Oh. It’s only you.”

  The salamander came up beside his elbow, looking curiously at him, then at the fire, then back at him.

  “It’s a fire,” he said. And I’m talking to a newt. Nice, Gerard. Real nice. Could your life become any more depressing? But he was laughing to himself as he thought it.

  The salamander gave off its odd chirping noise, then moved closer and rested its head on Gerard’s hand like a dog might do.

  Gerard, however, felt no inclination whatsoever to pet it. Especially when the thing’s tongue came out and flicked at the fire.

  “Careful. It’ll burn you.”

  He still wasn’t entirely sure about this creature—where it came from, why it seemed so interested in them.

  But if Ailis said it didn’t have the scent of Morgain on it, he was willing to leave it alone for now. Gerard thought it might like the way Newt smelled. Or—and Gerard grinned involuntarily—maybe it heard someone speaking to Newt, and thought they were calling it.

  The salamander slid off his knee and moved closer to the small bonfire, looking back at Gerard, then back at
the fire, almost as though asking permission.

  “What?”

  The salamander merely looked at him and then back at the fire.

  “You’ll burn yourself if you get much closer,” Gerard warned it. The salamander did inch closer, until it was only a hand-span away from the now heated stones, and looked back again at the squire, with what might have been yearning in its small black eyes. Gerard just shrugged, feeling too sorry for himself to really care what it did.

  “Sure, go ahead, burn yourself up for all I care. Just don’t stink too badly while you do it, okay?”

  By the time he had finished the sentence, the salamander had moved with surprising speed into the fire, sliding over the hot rocks like a fish returning to water.

  “Hey,” Gerard said, tempted to reach out to grab it back. “Um. Hey!” Because far from burning itself to a foul-smelling cinder, the salamander was lying in the middle of the fire, its tail curled contentedly around its body as it basked in the flames.

  “That’s new and different,” Gerard said in disbelief. Then again, after a dragon, a troll, a bridge made of moonlight, and a griffin, to name just a few of the things he had seen recently, perhaps it wasn’t so different after all.

  “Does Newt know you can do this?”

  The salamander merely closed its eyes and hummed in contentment.

  “The sad thing is, you’re not even the strangest thing I’ve seen today, much less in my entire life.”

  The salamander ignored him, so Gerard went back to contemplating the sorry state of his own existence. He had gotten as far as wondering why he had not taken more credit for being the one to defeat Morgain at swordpoint, noting how instrumental he was discovering the key to reversing the sleep-spell and awakening Arthur and his court, when a muffled squeak broke him out of his depressing thoughts.

  “Oh. Hello.” He really didn’t want to see Ailis right now. Especially since she didn’t seem at all interested in even looking at him, instead staring past his shoulder at the fire.

  Stupid salamander.

  “It’s not burning,” Ailis said in wonder.

  “No, I know.” Gerard noticed Newt standing behind Ailis, and shrugged. If they were going to go around joined at the hip, they were going to be joined at the hip. “Didn’t know your pet could do that, huh?”

  “No. It’s never done anything like that before. Constans, come out of there!”

  “Constans?” Ailis echoed.

  They both looked at him askance. Newt shrugged, an odd look on his face. “It seemed to fit.”

  Ailis shook her head. “So, it just came over and walked calm-as-calm into the fire?”

  “No, actually,” Gerard said, thinking it over. “It came over and looked at the fire. Then it waited.”

  “For what?”

  Gerard thought for another moment. “For permission,” he said finally. After sitting here with the creature, it seemed perfectly natural to him, but the expression on his friends’ faces made him stop and shrug. At least Callum wasn’t around to hear how foolish he sounded.

  “From you?” Newt was incredulous.

  “I was the only one here,” Gerard pointed out.

  “You built the fire?” Ailis asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And it never did that before?” That question was directed at Newt.

  Newt was still staring at Constans. “I’ve only had it a few days. But no.”

  “It asked permission of the owner of the fire. That’s interesting.” Ailis was leaning so far over to watch Constans, she was in danger of singeing her hair. Gerard reached out and tugged her arm, pulling her away.

  “Wait,” she protested. “I want to try something.”

  She reached out over the fire and tapped one of the flames, muttering something Gerard didn’t quite understand under her breath. “Ow!”

  “Fire. It burns,” Newt said. “So now you know.”

  “Very funny,” she said, turning on him. “I was trying to see—”

  “Ailis? Witch-child?”

  All three of them yelped, Ailis almost fell into the fire. Newt grabbed her by the arm and hauled her out of the way just in time.

  The fire spat cinders. Flickers of deep blues and greens jumped up from the wood.

  “Did you hear—?”

  “No,” Newt said. “I didn’t. And you didn’t either.” He tried to move her away. “Constans, you too, come out of there, now.”

  The salamander heaved a heavy sigh, but started to emerge from the flames, when suddenly a hand reached out of the fire and held it there.

  This time, their yelps were louder.

  “Witch-child? Answer me! I can feel you.”

  “That’s not me, that’s Constans,” Ailis managed to say, despite her shock. “Please let go, you’re hurting him.”

  The hand disappeared, and Constans scurried out of the flame, the red stripes on its back faded to normal as it reached Newt. Hesitant at first, Newt put a finger to the salamander’s skin and then, discovering that it was still somehow cool, picked it up and let it slide back under his collar.

  Meanwhile, where the hand had been, another image was taking shape in the flames.

  It was Morgain, her long black hair framing her pale face, backlit by the flames surrounding her. “Witch-child, I need your help,” she said. “All Britain needs your help.”

  NINE

  “You can’t be serious. Ailis, didn’t we talk about this? Morgain is not to be trusted!”

  They had stepped away from the fire, where Morgain’s image still flickered, beautiful and impatient. It was Gerard’s worst nightmare, in so many ways: Ailis being called back by Morgain and Ailis being tempted.

  Newt, too, was feeling the same concern.

  “She lies, Ailis,” he said to her.

  “She has never lied to me. When has she ever lied to you?”

  Newt had to think about that. “All right. But she doesn’t tell the truth, either. She’s using you! Manipulating you, and your desires…”

  “Who hasn’t?” Ailis looked at him, then Gerard. “What adult hasn’t said to us, ‘If you do that, we can give you this’? Merlin has done nothing but manipulate us to his own ends. Arthur, too. We’re simply tools to them all. Morgain, at least, offers me the chance to become more than a tool. Merlin? Arthur? Sir Matthias? What have they ever given us besides ‘not yet’ and ‘go do this, as well’ as a reward? This Quest, this journey—it isn’t a reward. It’s just another thing they need for us to do. Do you think I didn’t know Merlin wanted to use me as bait here?”

  The two boys avoided looking at each other, effectively confirming that they had known.

  “You can’t lie on the astral plane,” Ailis went on. “Not effectively; not if you’re not paying full attention to the lie, and Merlin never has his full attention to give to anything.

  “But Morgain…She’s never lied to us. She’s been honest, in her own way, with us. Is she the enemy? Yes. But…I don’t think she always was. I don’t think she always has to be.” Ailis was remembering things Morgain had said to her while the girl was held hostage in the sorceress’s castle. This is my land. My blood is pure—purer than Arthur’s. My family ruled long before the Pendragon came here and raised his flag, and it should have been mine. But when my father died…Uther the King decided that my mother would be his bride. And there was nothing she could do to stop him. Arthur came of that union. A boy, and because he was a boy, all the power and the glory went to him. Not the girl-children my mother had borne before. Not the ones with the true power, the magic, the Old Ways in their blood.

  “If she says that the land needs us…I have to at least listen to what she wants to say.”

  “We barely escaped last time, Ailis!” Newt protested. “Both times, we barely got away! And you want to step directly into the fire and go back into…go back to her? Into her clutches?”

  Ailis stood her ground. “Yes.” She stared Newt in the eye, then relented. “She needs us now. We have
the upper hand.”

  “She wants us to think that we have the upper hand.”

  They sounded ready to go back and forth all night, so Gerard said the only thing he could think of. “Sir Matthias will never allow it.”

  “And that is why I’m not going to tell him,” Ailis said.

  “Ailis!” Gerard couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You cannot just leave the Quest like that!”

  “You mean I can’t just ride off on the word of a strange female without telling anyone—least of all Sir Matthias—where I am going or why?”

  Gerard’s first reaction was to retort, “That was different.” He managed to bite back the words before they doomed him to one of her wicked glares, or worse. He didn’t think that she knew how to turn him into a frog yet…but he wasn’t willing to risk it.

  “Besides,” she went on, reassured that neither he nor Newt had any comments to add. “I won’t be riding off—Morgain’s offered to make a portal…and I won’t be going entirely without a word. You two will be here to explain.”

  Ailis turned her back on them and walked back to the fire. “I’m ready,” she said.

  No sooner were the words out of Ailis’s mouth than a ring of flame appeared over the fire, growing in size until it was an Ailis-sized oval rising out of the embers, crackling and snapping silently in the air.

  As magic went, it was simple, but no less impressive for it. And without a single glance back, Ailis stepped through and disappeared.

  “I don’t know about you,” Newt said. “But I’m not staying behind to explain this.”

  In two strides he was at the fire. With a third, he was through.

  Gerard hesitated half a breath, then checked to make sure his sword and dagger were firmly attached to his belt, and followed.

  He had no sooner gone through than the portal closed, almost on his heels, with a cold whoosh of air followed by an audible snap.

  In the silence that followed, the small fire flickered once, as though someone had stirred the flames, then died.

  “Ailis?” In the distance, within the cool stone walls of Camelot, Merlin lifted his head from his work, and sniffed the air like a hound scenting a new trail. “Huh.” He shook his shaggy head and returned to the complicated spell he was waving, muttering, “I could have sworn I heard her….”