The Shadow Companion

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Gerard looked at Newt to read his reaction. Sir Matthias was spluttering in confusion as to what had just happened. Without speaking, Newt turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Gerard to try and calm the knight down.

  Hours later, Gerard was finally able to slip away from Sir Matthias, who had seemed determined to fill the squire’s every moment with errands and small, foolish details. He found Ailis, as expected, back by the fire where Morgain had first summoned them the night before.

  She was sitting cross-legged in front of the now dead fire, her trousers visible underneath her skirt. She had not been wearing them before. Her long red hair was braided around her head, the way Morgain had been wearing hers, and a leather sack was on the ground in front of her.

  “What happened back there?” he asked, sitting beside her, feeling exhaustion pull at him. They had not slept much the night before, and as dusk rapidly approached, his limbs became heavier, and his brain more fogged.

  “Merlin tried to put a geas on us.” Gerard looked at her blankly. “It’s a spell that would not allow us to leave the camp.”

  “You broke it?”

  Ailis nodded. “I suppose I did, yes.” She saw Gerard’s look, and shrugged. “I was very angry. And I know Merlin; I know how his mind works, so I had an advantage—besides, he wasn’t expecting me to do it.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m still angry.”

  “At Merlin.” He hoped. He didn’t think he had done anything for her to be angry about. He was occasionally stupid, but he’d never tried to manipulate or force anyone into doing something against their will.

  “Yes, mostly. At everyone, but especially Merlin, for being such a hypocrite. Ger, I don’t believe that Morgain was lying. I think she was truly scared. And anything that scares her…”

  “Scares me, too,” Gerard admitted. It was the truth.

  “I’m going,” she said without further comment.

  “Obviously,” Gerard said dryly, and placed his own bag down on the ground next to hers. He sat down beside her. “We can’t take the horses.” They didn’t own the horses they had been riding; they were loans from Arthur’s stable. Going without permission for an emergency, they could justify borrowing the beasts. Leaving against explicit orders…that would be theft. There was a moral line he was very clear about not crossing.

  “I know,” Ailis said. “I think I can work something once we’re outside of camp. But I won’t know until I try it.”

  She hesitated, then added, “I’m stronger than I was before. Calling Merlin…I pulled him from the sky, Gerard. Even knowing him, I shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

  “You think it’s Morgain?”

  “Actually, I think it’s Newt’s salamander.”

  Gerard laughed. Then he realized that she wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even smiling.

  “The salamander?”

  “It climbed into a fire and wasn’t consumed. It was attracted to my magic. Clearly it’s magical, somehow.”

  “But it prefers Newt, not you.” The moment he said it, Gerard realized his mistake in pointing that out. But she only sighed.

  “Yes, I had noticed that. And yes,” she said with reluctance, “I am…”

  “Jealous?”

  “Jealous,” she admitted. “A little. Mostly, I just don’t understand it. Newt hates magic. He doesn’t trust it. But…”

  She rested her head against his shoulder for a moment. Gerard felt an absurd sense of loss. He grew nostalgic for the days of their youth.

  “Go talk to him,” he said finally. “Maybe…maybe he’s been feeding it tidbits, or something. Or maybe salamanders notoriously like the stink of horseflesh on humans.”

  That got a faint laugh out of her. “We all stink of horse at the end of the day, Gerard. Except those who smell worse.”

  “Talk to him.”

  “And say what? Newt, I know you hate magic, but that pet you’re so fond of? It’s magic, completely magic. In fact, it might even be made of magic.”

  “He liked the griffin,” Gerard offered, referring to the great beast they encountered at Morgain’s keep, a beast that had kept Ailis company while she was held hostage there.

  Ailis made a small, mysterious smile, but merely said, “Sir Tawny wasn’t a pet. Not his pet, anyway.” She clarified. “Newt wasn’t carrying him around with him.” She shrugged, throwing the question off. “I’ll worry about it when we get back. Are you ready to go?”

  “Ready as I can be, walking into a probable trap without Merlin’s protection or the king’s blessing or any backup save ourselves…” Gerard got to his feet, picked up his pack, and offered Ailis a hand as she stood up as well. “You’re the one with the map. Where are we going? And how are we getting there?”

  Suddenly Newt was standing behind them, his pack on his back and the salamander’s head sticking out from inside. If he had overheard any of their conversation, his face didn’t show it.

  “What, you thought I wasn’t coming?” he asked, seeing their astonished expressions. “We’ve always been in this together.”

  Ailis smiled and handed Newt the map, and walked off, trusting them to follow her. He unrolled it and scanned the markings quickly.

  “That’s…”

  “Uh-huh,” Ailis said.

  Newt handed the map to Gerard, and hurried to catch up with the serving girl.

  “Do you know how long it will take us to get there?”

  Gerard looked at the map, and muttered a curse. The area marked, their destination, was a familiar one. A cave in the far northern highlands; the cave where they had found one of the pieces of the talisman that had broken Morgain’s sleep-spell.

  That cave was home to the dragon Gerard had promised to return and fight, on the day he was made a knight.

  “How are we going to get there?” Gerard asked, his voice rising in dismay. At least it didn’t crack like the first time they had encountered the dragon, and his voice had still been changing.

  “Maybe we won’t even see the dragon. Maybe whatever we’re looking for is outside the cave.” And maybe this was all a cruel joke on Morgain’s part, sending them there. He wouldn’t put that past her at all.

  “It’s going to take us forever to get there,” Newt said, echoing his thoughts.

  “Don’t you two trust me?” Ailis asked, waving in passing to one of the knights standing on the perimeter of the camp, as though the three of them were simply out for an evening’s walk. Hopefully the fact that they were not leading horses would cause the guards to overlook their saddlebags.

  “I hate it when someone asks me that,” Newt said to Gerard. “Don’t you?”

  “We’re not walking,” Gerard guessed. “Ailis…”

  His half-formed suspicion about the cause of Ailis’s earlier smile was correct. There, crouched in the shadows cast by the afternoon sun, his stunning golden feathers glinting in the light, was Sir Tawny, the griffin Ailis had befriended during her stay in Morgain’s keep.

  “Morgain’s sending us to do her business,” Ailis said. “She won’t mind if we borrow him for a little while.”

  “We’re going to…ride that?” Newt looked like he wasn’t sure if he should be nervous or excited.

  “Unless you want him to carry you in his claws all the way.”

  “I don’t think so, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Riding will be…fine.”

  Ailis laughed at him, going forward to greet the griffin. The great beast’s head, shaped like an eagle’s but as large as a draft horse’s, ducked to meet her, allowing her access to the feathers tufted over its ears, keeping the fiercer curved beak from her soft flesh.

  “We’re going to ride that…” Newt’s tone had gone from disbelief to awe. There was a makeshift rope harness attached to the creature’s catlike body, with knotted loops where feet and hands could be inserted for gripping, but otherwise there was no saddle, no reins, no way to stay on or control the winged beast.

  “I think I�
�m going to be sick,” Gerard said.

  As it turned out, Gerard was fine, straddling Sir Tawny’s neck, staring down at the villages they flew over, trying to estimate the size of each one by how many rooftops he could count, while Ailis clung to the other side of the griffin and whispered in his ear, encouraging him to fly just a little longer, just a little farther, there was a good boy.

  Newt, clinging to the rope harness, wondered if closing his eyes was better than keeping them open, and tried not to throw up on the poor, patient griffin’s feathers.

  “Look at that!” Gerard called out. “Over there!”

  “No,” Newt moaned, refusing to look.

  “It’s all right,” Ailis said, the wind carrying her words back to him. “We’re here. Hold on…”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?” Newt asked, then gulped and turned a deeper shade of green as the griffin banked and folded his wings, going into a steep descent, right into the side of a mountain. Even knowing that there was a plateau there, where they had left their horses during the first visit, didn’t make Newt believe they were going to land as anything other than a splat against the rocks.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Ailis said in his ear, while trying to stifle her laughter. They were safe and on solid ground.

  “I hate both of you,” Newt said as he opened his eyes, pried his fingers off the rope harness, and swung his still-shaky legs over the griffin’s side.

  “Thank you, Sir Tawny,” Ailis said, giving the creature’s feathers a final stroke. “If you can stay, that would be wonderful, but we understand if you cannot.”

  “We do?” Gerard said, then took a step back when Sir Tawny swung that great head to look him directly in the eye. “Of course. Thank you, Sir Tawny. Your aid is most appreciated.” He made a shallow bow to the griffin, and turned away to examine the cave’s entrance.

  The salamander, which had hidden at the bottom of Newt’s sack the entire trip, chose that moment to stick its green head out and extend its tongue at the griffin. The creature made a noise of indifference, and launched itself into the air, wings beating so heavily the gust almost knocked Ailis over.

  “Right,” Newt said, looking around, and relishing the feel of solid stone under his feet. “Let’s get this done.”

  ELEVEN

  “That may be more difficult than we thought,” Gerard said, pointing. The arched entrance into the hill they had used the last time was now blocked by rubble. There were huge, heavy boulders and smaller rocks, the spaces between filled with smaller pebbles and stones.

  “Rockslide,” he continued, looking up the mountain. “Recent, but not the past few days. All the dust has settled, and the grit’s wedged in…it’s rained since then.”

  “So how are we supposed to get in?” Newt asked. He tried to move one of the moderate-sized rocks with his hands, and failed. “You’d need draft horses—a team of them—to get this cleared.”

  “Or magic,” Ailis said, shouldering her way past them. Staring at the pile of rocks, she clenched and opened her hands a few times, thinking, then held her palms up facing the pile, fingers curled in slightly, and whispered something in a language neither boy understood.

  A few pebbles shifted and fell, but otherwise there was no reaction.

  Ailis repeated the spell, speaking louder, with more specific enunciation.

  A rock shifted uneasily, but did not move from its wedged-in nook.

  “That isn’t going to work,” Newt said finally, watching sweat break out on Ailis’s forehead. She wasn’t quite as strong as she thought she was. He wondered for a moment if there was something keeping those rocks in place.

  “Is there any other way in?” was all he asked, out loud.

  “Not according to this map, no,” Gerard said.

  “I don’t remember any other way the last time, either,” Newt admitted.

  “So either we get in through here, or we go home, having failed.” Ailis set her jaw in a stubborn line. “That’s not an option.”

  She walked up to the rockslide, and traced an oval on the rocks with her fingertips, measuring in her mind. Then she stepped back, took a deep breath, and made a motion with her hands, as though she were pushing something, hard, with both hands.

  The salamander poked its head out from under Newt’s collar and looked over his shoulder, seemingly fascinated with what Ailis was doing.

  “Help me,” she whispered to it, and the creature crawled forward a bit more, its narrow tongue flicking out as though tasting the air—or the energy coming off Ailis.

  “As I see it happening, let it happen. As I will it, so mote it be.”

  There was a shimmer in the air, and then a ring of fire appeared, etching into the stones where Ailis had traced the oval. The flames burned white, then blue, then a deep, watery sea green, filling in the oval until the stones were a sheet of fire. All three humans had to turn away, or risk damaging their eyesight. When they looked back, a door had been forced in the rock, just large enough for them to step through.

  “Nice,” Gerard said, and stepped forward without hesitation, his right hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword. Ailis was directly behind him. Newt followed a step more slowly, pausing to run a hand along the edge of the hole. The rocks were fused along the rim into a smooth whole, as though it had always been one piece.

  “Very nice,” he said, impressed despite himself, as he dropped into the cool darkness of the cave itself.

  Inside, he found Ailis on her knees, Gerard trying to lift her up.

  “What happened?”

  “She just keeled over,” Gerard said, clearly concerned. Ailis was sweating even more fiercely now, her skin pale and shining in the darkness.

  “Was…too much, somehow. I don’t know why. I could feel the power…and then it just went away, all fast and sudden and…”

  “And she fell over.”

  The salamander practically jumped off Newt’s neck in his hurry, wiggle-walking to get to Ailis. She automatically put out a hand to catch it.

  “Hey…”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “I think…I got some of that from you, didn’t I? I was right about you being magic. But away from fire, you can’t do much, can you?”

  “What?” Newt was confused.

  “Ailis thinks…from the way it reacted—or didn’t react—to fire, it’s magical,” Gerard explained.

  Newt started to protest, then the events came back to him, and his shoulders slumped. “Yeah. Fine. If he helps you, you keep him, then.”

  The salamander made a squeaking noise, and Ailis shook her head. “He’s yours. He chose you. I don’t think he’d be interested in me at all, except when I’m using magic.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  She managed to laugh. “He is,” she said. Sure enough, once Constans had determined that Ailis wasn’t doing anything interesting, he seemed determined to crawl back onto Newt’s shoulder.

  “All right.” He reached out to scratch the creature under its wedge-shaped head. “But if you need him…”

  “Friends, we’re supposed to be looking for something that will lead us to the shadow figure’s true name,” Gerard reminded them, with his hand still under Ailis’s elbow.

  She allowed him to help her up, leaning heavily on his shoulder with a mixture of gratitude and annoyance. She didn’t try to stand on her own just yet, but they moved forward together, with Newt and Constans a single step behind.

  “Yeah. I’ll be okay. Just…a little dizzy,” she said as they walked down the wide cavern. The walls were as high and as pale as she remembered, though the footing did not seem quite as smooth.

  “Too much magic,” Newt said. “You’re not as strong as you thought you were.”

  “You always this sympathetic?” Ailis shot back in return, clearly irritated.

  “Yes,” Newt replied, pleased to hear the color returning to her voice. “You hadn’t noticed?”

  “Funny.” But she relaxed a little.
He could see it in the way she moved.

  “Humans!”

  The bellow came out of the darkness ahead of them, where the cavern branched off into two smaller tunnels, and Ailis tensed up again immediately. To be fair, all four of them did, Constans included.

  “Uh-oh,” Ailis said. “Guess he’s still around.”

  “Dragon,” Newt explained to the salamander, who dove down the back of his tunic at the sudden, booming noise. “Not like you, even if he does breathe fire. Big fellow, larger than the griffin. Nasty temper, too. And smart. Best stay low in case he eats smaller cousins as well as humans and goats and horses.”

  “He sounds angry,” Ailis noted.

  “Well, he wasn’t exactly friendly the last time,” Gerard reminded them. “He wanted to eat us, remember?”

  “He sounds angrier,” Ailis said nervously.

  “Humans!”

  Gerard had to admit the truth of that. The dragon also sounded like he was getting closer. Fast.

  A flare of light deep in the left-hand passage and a blast of warm, foul-smelling air reached them.

  “His breath hasn’t improved,” Newt said, gagging a little.

  “Does it smell like he’s been…eating people recently?” Ailis wondered.

  Nobody asked her how they were supposed to know what a man-eater’s breath would smell like.

  “We could just go the other way,” Newt said.

  “You mean avoid him?” Gerard asked.

  “I mean run.”

  “We can’t.” Ailis looked terrified, but was stubborn. Both boys recognized the stubborn part. “If what we’re looking for is here, the dragon might know about it.”

  “And you think he’ll tell us? We barely found something to trade with him the last time, remember?” The thing they traded was, in effect, Gerard—or at least a future version of himself. “And we don’t even have horses to offer this time, either.”

  Not that the dragon had been interested in horse-meat then.

  The three friends looked at each other, then down the corridor, where the flickering red light was coming closer.

  “I think—”