The Shadow Companion

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “All three of you. There’s a surprise.” The sorceress’s tone indicated that it was anything but a surprise to her.

  They were in a small room with cream-colored stone walls. The air was cool and still, and off in the distance he thought he could hear the sound of water.

  Ocean tides. They were back in her keep, in the Orkneys.

  He still didn’t like using magic. He didn’t trust this kind of travel. But, now that they had learned how to go through without landing in a pile of bodies on the other side, he had to admit there were advantages to it.

  “You called us, Morgain. So please talk. Or we’re turning around and going right back.” Ailis might have been bluffing—once in Morgain’s stronghold, anything she tried would be overwhelmed. Only she didn’t sound like she was bluffing, to Newt’s ear. That frightened him almost more than Morgain.

  The sorceress didn’t seem to take Ailis’s words as a threat. From the flicker in her dark eyes, Newt would have sworn that she was pleased. Like a mother cat when a kitten brings home its first mouse.

  “Are you certain that you can open a portal here? One that I do not first allow?”

  “Are you certain that I need your permission to do anything?” Ailis countered.

  There was absolutely obvious satisfaction in Morgain’s gaze, Newt was certain of it.

  Morgain was dressed somberly in a dark green dress, her hair braided in a crown around her head. The great black cat they had seen at her feet before kept her company again, sleeping by the stoop of the single door, guarding the exit.

  Or was it guarding the entrance? Newt suddenly wondered. Unlike the previous times they had encountered her, Morgain did not seem to be entirely the mistress of her world. Now he could see that there were faint creases around those glorious dark eyes, and her mouth, rather than curving in a mocking smile, was pressed into a narrow line.

  “Morgain…” Ailis was clearly losing patience.

  “I have made an error,” Morgain said, clearly having to fight to get the words out. “My life has been…I was raised to lead, not follow. I am my father’s daughter, as well as my mother’s.” Her father, Gorlois, had been a warlord of note before he died in battle, riding with Uther, Arthur’s father.

  “Your point?” Ailis pressed, all but tapping her boot-clad foot in impatience. They had come here for answers; not drama.

  “She wanted her share.” Gerard didn’t come right out and yawn, but he looked ready to do it. “The only threat to Britain, Morgain, has been you. So why are we here again?”

  The sorceress’s eyes flashed angrily at his words, with actual sparkles of magic forming in her frustration. “If I had wanted to kill you—if I had wanted to kill Arthur—I would have already.”

  Gerard bristled in reaction to that, and snapped back, “And you would have found nowhere to hide, had you murdered your brother. Even those who support you—”

  “Murdering family members occurred with great regularity in this island’s history, as recently as my parents’ time,” Morgain said, then waved one elegant hand as though to dismiss the threat, bringing the tension in the room back down.

  “I had my reasons for what I have done. I still have my reasons. I do not apologize for them.”

  “Your point, Morgain?” Ailis said again, heading off another explosion of outrage from Gerard.

  “I began my current project with the intent to shake Arthur, to make him acknowledge me as his peer, perhaps even as co-regent; certainly as heir.”

  That was not unheard of, to have a sibling—even a half sibling—take the throne, especially as Arthur had no acknowledged children.

  But Newt doubted, quite strongly, that Morgain would ever be accepted within Arthur’s court, much less as a potential queen. He knew better than to voice those thoughts, certainly not within her own keep. Morgain might seem subdued and apologetic this instant, but that was to be trusted as much as a fox’s smile—not at all.

  “My…ally promised to enhance my power, to make me stronger, and more able to take on Arthur, to bring him to the parley table.”

  To bring the king to his knees, all three of them mentally translated. They knew Morgain now. Not one of them believed she was interested in any negotiations she did not control.

  “And now?” Ailis asked.

  “And now the price of that promise has been revealed in full. It is a price that, upon consideration, I am not willing—not able to pay.”

  “Reneging on her agreement…what a surprise,” Gerard said, and got a kick in the shins in response. When he glared at Newt, the other boy made a gesture that told him to keep quiet.

  Morgain ignored the boys, focusing on her onetime, would-be student. “Do you remember what I told you, witch-child, about my bloodlines?”

  Ailis did. “That you were tied to the land, magically, in order to better care for it and the people living there.”

  “A simplification, but the heart of the matter, yes. Some of those ties involved rituals, ways we were bound ourselves not only to the earth but the very soul of this island. As our fortunes went, so, too, did the land. And as the land went, so too did we.” Her face took on a faraway expression of longing.

  “It was no terrible burden, no thing too hard to bear. My bloodline is the land, after all. Every handful of soil, every drop of water…Even now, this England, this unified-under-Christ England my brother dreams of, my blood is what feeds all these lands. I love it beyond passion. Beyond logic. Beyond my own life. I have no choice.” Morgain stared wistfully over Ailis’s shoulder.

  “My ally…does not love this land,” Morgain continued. “I did not understand that until last night. Until it was, perhaps, too late. Under the calm it shows the world, there is a seething madness.”

  She shook her head, then looked at Ailis, the haze that had fallen over her eyes finally clearing.

  “It has created a spell, a form of sympathetic magic.”

  Ailis nodded, indicating that she understood, but the boys looked lost. Morgain explained. “Take a map, for example. Shape it as closely as possible to the actual land it covers. Then burn it, and fires will ravage the land itself.”

  “It has created such a map?”

  “Of Albion, yes.”

  Albion was the name Morgain used when she was thinking of the Britain of her mothers, before the Romans came; the magical Britain, not the one Arthur ruled.

  “My ally used my own flesh and blood in the making, claiming that it will allow me to manipulate spells more effectively. All I need to do is activate the latent magic within. But I fear what it truly plans to do with the map, should I touch the spark within my blood and create the spell.”

  “So don’t create the spell,” Newt said, all practicality. It seemed straightforward to him.

  “If I do not…” She paused. “We have gone too far at this point. When I called my companion, it granted certain permissions I may not revoke. The ramifications of doing so, of breaking that agreement, would run back along the lines of magic and destroy me.”

  “And we care about this?” Gerard sounded as cold-blooded as Newt in this matter. “I’m sorry, Ailis, but seriously. Arthur doesn’t want the blood of his sister on anyone’s hands, but if she brings it on herself…”

  “My death will serve the same purpose as if I were to ignite the map myself,” Morgain said. “All those years of tying ourselves to the well-being of the land is a dual-edged sword. As the land goes, so does my strength, my power. And the return is true as well.”

  Gerard looked puzzled as he tried to figure out what she meant. Ailis understood it right away. “If you die…”

  “Without a child, preferably a girl-child, to carry on the line…” Morgain’s expression turned cold, like the gray clouds of a storm gathering. “If I die, so, too, does the land, unless a successor has been chosen and marked with the blood and soil of the land; vows made must be witnessed, and sealed.”

  Gerard started to protest, and Morgain turned her cold face to
him. “Did you not understand? In so many ways, I am the land. As Arthur could have been—as he feels the urge to be, but he has chosen to rule differently. And he has no child, as yet, to placate the land.

  “Without that, without one of my line to offer ourselves in service, to be the land—crops will fail, wells will run dry, the hunting and fishing returns will decrease, year after year.

  “If my ally manages to drain my power into itself, it will control the rise and fall of our fortunes. This land, under its maddened whim…it does not bear thinking of.”

  “What can we do to stop it?” Ailis asked.

  “Against the companion? Nothing. You do not have the power. Only I can do that.”

  “But you said…” Gerard protested, shaken by the idea that she had told them all this merely to leave them helpless.

  “I said I need your help, that the land needs your help. And we do.”

  Morgain got up from her chair to pace. The giant cat by the door opened its sleepy green eyes to watch her pass, then went back to sleep.

  “In my increasing frustration at Arthur’s narrow-mindedness and his failure to take up the old ways, I called this ally to me, at the Well of Bitter Water.”

  The phrase seemed familiar to Ailis, but she couldn’t quite remember why.

  “I tied myself to my ally,” Morgain went on, “made vows and obligations, as my ally vowed and obligated itself to me in return.

  “This is how such magics are worked, witch-child.” Even under the circumstances, Morgain was a teacher, willing her students to understand, as well as accept, what she said. Newt began to see a little of what Ailis found so appealing in the woman. “You must give, in order to receive, no matter who or what you are.”

  “So what can we do?” Newt asked, still not quite understanding their role.

  “Help free me from my obligation, so that I may strike out against it, without that strike damaging myself as well. In order to be freed, I must know the source of its power—its true name.”

  “You called it, and you don’t know its name?” Newt was openly dubious.

  Morgain shifted her attention to him. It was uncannily like being the focus of Arthur’s regard.

  Newt felt both comforted and disturbed by that reminder that they two were, after all, half siblings.

  “Not what it is called, but its True Name, the name given to it at Creation.”

  “And that would be…” Gerard asked.

  Morgain looked at the squire as though he had just been discovered under a particularly heavy, flat rock.

  “If I knew what it was, I would not need your assistance to free myself, would I?”

  “Why us? Why not Merlin?”

  “Because Merlin’s too powerful,” Ailis said, finally figuring it out. “She won’t indebt herself to him. To us—she can accept that. Anything we ask of her in return, she thinks she can either grant, or find a way out of it.”

  “And if we go to Merlin?”

  “Then we’re the ones indebted to him, not her.”

  “Oh. Right.” Newt understood how favors worked. “So, what, we’re supposed to hare off across the island, without a clue…”

  Morgain and Ailis both sighed in exasperation. Gerard said, “I never said I did not know where it was hidden, merely that I did not know it,” Morgain said. “It watches me too closely, too carefully, for me to go search for it myself.

  “Go to its source, the place where I called to it.” She withdrew a small, rolled parchment from the sleeve of her dress and handed it to Ailis. “I will distract it here as best I can, to allow you time and freedom to perform this act.” She paused, then caught Ailis’s gaze with her own. “For the land, if not for me, witch-child.” She smiled wryly. “For Arthur, if you must. But do it, and do it swiftly, before my companion forces me to act.”

  TEN

  “Sir, we must go!”

  Sir Matthias clearly was not of the same opinion. He stood behind his field desk, a complicated wooden affair covered with maps and missives weighted down by rocks, and stared impassively at Ailis, squinting in the early morning sunlight. “I forbid it.”

  Frustrated, Ailis turned to Gerard. Gerard felt helpless, but gamely stepped forward.

  “Sir, I know how it sounds, truly. And from anyone else I would not believe this story myself. But Ailis is right. Morgain would not come to us without dire need—she is too proud, too haughty. Anything which frightens her should frighten us. And if that means helping her…in battle, often enemies become allies, and allies enemies, is that not true?”

  Sir Matthias grunted, but did not agree or disagree. Emboldened, Gerard went on. “This is a great danger to us all. How can we say no to her request? Especially if it does, in fact, place her in our debt, somehow?”

  “Courtier,” Newt muttered to the salamander again curled around his neck, but he did so quietly, and with a small amount of respect. Sir Matthias was listening to the squire’s words, at least, which was more than he had done for Ailis’s impassioned but emotional outburst.

  But the next words from Matthias’s mouth dashed those hopes. “Lad, I have warned you about the dangers of spending too much time with those who would use magic—especially those not to be trusted. Arthur told me of your previous experiences with that woman, and his fears for what dire influence she might have had on you—”

  Ailis’s indignant yelp of outrage at that comment was quickly muffled behind Newt’s hand. Another outburst, and Sir Matthias would not only not listen to them, he would have them locked up somewhere for their own good!

  “Sir!”

  “Not one more word, Gerard.” The four were alone in the space outside Sir Matthias’s tent, although a few of the squires were hanging just within earshot, clearly hoping to catch some juicy bit of gossip. Knowing that, Matthias lowered his voice. “You have been given great leeway, in light of your service to the king. But you are still a squire. And these other two do not even have that excuse! Now, be silent, and no more talking with Morgain, or I shall be forced to return you to Camelot!”

  “You do that!” Ailis said, having finally wiggled free of Newt’s hold. “You just do that! Better yet, let me save you the effort of sending us back!

  “Merlin!” She called up into the sky, the power and venom in her voice making Sir Matthias step back involuntarily and cross himself, and sending most of the eavesdropping squires fleeing. “Merlin, you talk to me right now! I know you can hear me, blast you. Answer!”

  The blast of power that came through her voice was echoed in a low, rolling peal of thunder off in the distance. Ailis blinked, a little surprised at herself, but did not back down.

  Out of the thunder there came a higher-pitched noise: the scream of a bird of prey, swooping down on an unsuspecting hare. From the sky came a great, shadowy form, plummeting to land on the grass next to Ailis.

  A fleeting shimmer, and the bird’s wings extended and the torso grew, and grew, the body turning and twisting on itself as the astral bird became the figure of a man.

  Merlin had answered.

  “By all the old oak, girl, I’m busy!” He glared at Ailis, clearly expecting her to apologize. She glared right back.

  “Tell…Sir Matthias”—the honorific came with difficulty from her, she was so angry—“that we need to go. Morgain asked us for help, Merlin! How can we refuse?”

  Merlin blinked, his craggy face not losing an inch of its irritation, but refocusing with visible effort on the here and now. In her frustration, she had clearly forgotten that he had no idea what she was talking about. “Right. Hold a moment.” He reached out with one hand and touched the side of her face with his fingertips, a single feather falling from his skin as he did so. “Think hard what you need to tell me,” he commanded her.

  The two boys and the knight waited while Merlin took what he needed from her memory. When his hand dropped and Ailis’s eyes opened again, Newt realized that he had been holding his breath.

  “Absolutely out of the ques
tion.”

  “What? But Morgain said—”

  “Morgain says many things. Few of them are to be trusted. Ailis, think, girl. Do you really believe that I would endanger Britain this way? If Morgain’s life were truly so necessary to the land’s well-being, wouldn’t I have dealt with that already?”

  Merlin was making a great deal of sense, and Newt could feel his own commitment begin to wane. Morgain was not, after all, to be trusted. Merlin had sworn to protect the land as well.

  “Merlin!” Ailis was less willing to listen.

  “She is not to be trusted, Ailis. Her touch is poison, her malice is toward all beings in Camelot without equal. She hates Arthur and all people affiliated with him, and you are not immune to her. No. I forbid it. I forbid it. You are not to leave this camp.”

  Something heavy settled over them, thickening the air. And for an instant, Newt could not breathe. He was being forced down, forced away from himself, somehow. A red haze began to rise over his eyes, making it impossible for him to think, only follow. Something stirred in his blood, deep and heavy, and he beat it down. Anger had never served him, not once, and he would not let it rise up and master him now.

  “I refuse your geas,” Ailis said, raising her hands as though to throw off that heaviness, and suddenly Newt could breathe again, the red haze fading as quickly as it had risen, his normal, rational thoughts taking over once again. “You will not take our choices away from us!”

  “Ailis!”

  “No, Merlin.” She met his look again, head-on. “You will not remove our choices from us. Not by force, and not by magic. Not ever.”

  And with that, she turned and walked away from the group.

  “Women!” Merlin muttered, and with an upward swing of his arms, leapt back into feathered form, rising like an arrow back into the sky and disappearing before he reached the first cloud.