The Shadow Companion

by Laura Anne Gilman

  And the eyes, the deep-set pits, which caused even Morgain to back down, were flame red; they were, in fact, flames, flickering inside that unholy skull with the heat of a hundred generations of impassioned prayers.

  “Goddess, mother of us all,” Morgain whispered, as taken aback by the revelation as anyone.

  “What is it?” Gerard asked. “What have you called down upon us, Morgain?”

  “Hatred. Hope. Fear. Anger. All the things soldiers left behind, when they returned to Mother Rome to save their own land, abandoning us as callously as they had arrived.” Morgain swallowed tightly. “They broke my people, broke the Queen, brought their own gods, their own laws, all the things Arthur embraced. It seemed only right to use their own remnants, their own gods against him….”

  Something stirred in Newt’s memory: some faded scrap of song or story, his mother’s voice crooning to him, and he blurted out a name.

  “Nemesis.”

  THIRTEEN

  The name rang out in the grove like the sounding of a horn. It was filled with bloodlust, and with it came the knowledge to all of them of what they faced.

  Nemesis: the Roman goddess of vengeance.

  “She’s supposed to have wings,” Ailis said, reeling under the information flooding into her head. “Isn’t she?”

  “She?” Gerard was having trouble with that.

  “Nemesis. The bringer of balance, punishing those who were too fortunate for no cause, those who do evil.” Morgain smiled, a brittle smile that showed too many perfect teeth. “I summoned no small demon.”

  “You called a god!” Gerard was shaking, aware that his sword, his muscles, were all useless, but he was overwhelmed with the desire to do something. Rage overwhelmed him. “You raised a god, made of the emotions of soldiers who hated us!” One of the many lessons crammed down the throats of all squires was that of the Romans who had come to Britain, and while the view in Camelot was different from Morgain’s opinion of Rome’s legacy, one thing that Gerard knew was that the Romans thought the natives to be little more than savages to be tamed, controlled, and absorbed into the might of their empire. Nemesis would have no desire to return Morgain’s vision of Britain to reality—she would rather destroy it all.

  The goddess in question raised one gloved hand, palm open as though to strike, and a blast of power sent Ailis staggering back, bloody scrapes appearing across her cheek.

  “My name will not save you now, no matter what you might once have become. You will die, and the bargain will be sealed,” Nemesis told her, advancing slowly toward the girl. “Balance will be restored. Chaos will return. This land will fall back to that as it was, as it was wished.”

  “That was not my wish!” Morgain protested. “I wanted peace, not—”

  “Your intent does not matter,” Nemesis said. “Only your wish. Only that which was in your mind as you called me. Hatred. Disorder. Justice.” She paused. “Revenge.” The last word was spoken with such loving tones, all four humans shivered in response.

  “My name will not save you now, either, Priestess,” the shadow-figure crooned. “The bargain has been made. Revenge has a cost. All things have a cost. And it is time to pay.”

  Nemesis moved again toward Ailis, only to find her way blocked by Newt and Gerard, the latter forcing his leg to hold him upright while he raised his battered, dirt-and blood-covered sword in an act of useless defiance.

  Off to the side, Morgain lifted her hands and began to speak in a low voice. Ailis, still on the ground, listened for a few beats, then began speaking as well, her words not so much matching the sorceress’s as twining around them, adding to them.

  “Begone, mortals!” Nemesis spat at the boys. Another wave of power knocked Gerard square in the knees, making him crumple to the ground, clutching at his leg. The stained and wrinkled bandage showed new blossoms of red underneath; the wound had reopened with the blow.

  Newt felt the blow, and braced for it—only to feel it instead part and flow around him, like water around a stone.

  His astonishment was matched only by Nemesis’s. The goddess stared the boy in the face, eyes flaring even brighter as she raised her hand for another blow, then checked herself.

  “What’s the matter, can’t do it?” Newt taunted the figure with a sense of tempting fate. A musical hum sounded in his ears, in the layers of bone beneath, under skin, under blood, but he had no time to wonder about it, no strength to listen to it.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gerard, still crumpled and pale, rocking in pain, and Ailis, her eyes scrunched closed, trying to call enough magic to defeat a god. His friends were injured; his friends, who would die, far from home, without the glory that was rightfully theirs.

  The hum tried to grow, but was pressed down by another noise; the serpentine sound of Nemesis’s voice, hissing unfamiliar words Newt could almost make out. A spell, or some magic was trying to freeze his bones, shatter his will.

  Something stirred deep inside himself, in an area he had never even noticed before. Something large, and hot, and ugly, the brute cousin of what he had felt when Merlin tried to enforce his will over them earlier. “Come on, knock me over! You’re so powerful, so scary—do it!”

  Unnoticed by any of the two-legged figures, the salamander crawled around in the banked fire, the activity stirring the coals back to life.

  Nemesis snarled, but no further attack came, neither verbal nor physical. Clearly, the avatar wanted to strike Newt down, the same as the others…but something prevented it.

  Newt grinned at it, the way a dog grins at prey just before it strikes.

  “You hate this land so much? Drawing on all the frustration, the anger, whatever, of all those soldiers who called on you? Fine. Feed off that. But there’s something you didn’t think about, in your plan.

  “My da’s father was one of your damned soldiers. He raised my da to be a proper Roman boy, only it didn’t work out that way. He wed a local girl, got her with a local-born son. And I’m not the only one, I bet, descended from your soldiers and living off the land you’re so intent on wiping out.”

  Newt didn’t know where all this knowledge was coming from; it was as though, with the information about Nemesis, other things, other memories had been shaken loose. His father had died when he was very young, but his mother had told him stories and sung him Roman songs. She had passed along an awareness, faint and forgotten though it had been, of all the blood that ran in his veins.

  Blood that ran hot and fierce now; a soldier’s blood, a warrior’s blood. He had to fight, rend, protect.

  “Go on, strike me!”

  The next blow rebounded off Newt’s chest and struck back at Nemesis. Newt swayed, but stayed on his feet, a barrier between Nemesis and Ailis. The girl was still trying to find some chink in the avatar’s magical armor.

  The goddess had come here through Morgain’s invitation. But the basis of her strength was the blood of the soldiers who had invoked her name, generations before. Newt carried the blood of both within him, native and invader. Nemesis might strike at him, but not destroy; not without breaking the forces which allowed her access to this land, this land’s magic, in the first place.

  “If you’re going to do something,” Newt said, panting, to Ailis, “do it now.”

  Near the well, Gerard had rolled onto his side and fought through the pain in order to stand up.

  “Ger…get away from here.” Gerard was the one with the Grail. If Newt could keep Ailis safe, and Gerard could somehow get the Grail to Arthur…

  As though sensing the direction of Newt’s thoughts, Nemesis paused, then, with a snarl, leapt not at Newt, but Gerard, even as the squire tried to get to his feet to get away.

  “No!” Ailis called, the sight breaking her concentration.

  Newt’s blood heated to boiling. Destroy the threat. Words flowed from him, harsh, ragged-edged words that none of them, not even Newt, recognized, and his arm drew back as though to throw something.

  A long be
am of light, shaped like a spear topped with a dark red point, appeared in his grasp.

  He repeated the phrase, his voice getting louder, and let the spear fly.

  It never left his hand—it was his hand, the light coming from it somehow fused with him—but a bolt went through the air, into Nemesis’s shoulder, nonetheless.

  Newt chanted another phrase and raised his left hand. In it, a straight, double-edged blade of light appeared. A gladius, a stabbing sword used by warriors in Newt’s grandfather’s day.

  Newt’s face twisted into something fierce, almost inhuman, and he rushed at Nemesis, the magical gladius held low and flat, aimed directly for the avatar’s ribs.

  The two met in a burst of black light; Nemesis tinged in purple, Newt in red—the color of dried blood.

  Somewhere inside Newt, under the rage, a soft chime sounded again, and was swept away.

  Morgain made her way to Ailis’s side, having given up on her attempts to attack the companion. “It consumes him,” the sorceress said, watching Newt. “Whatever magic he’s using, it eats him alive from inside.”

  “Newt…has no magic,” Ailis protested. And yet, it was impossible to deny. It was not a magic as she knew inside herself, the gentle flowing of tides, or the forms Morgain showed her, the brutal powers of earth and blood; it was not even the air-magics Merlin rode.

  “Berserks,” Morgain said. “Madman of the North. It will turn him into a beast. He will not be able to keep going as he is. We must be ready…when his own magic destroys him, that will be our chance. Strike at Nemesis and free me. Free us all.”

  Ailis started to snap at Morgain—she was not willing to accept Newt’s death—when a crackling noise behind her caught her attention. Constans was happily writhing in the coals, the heat making its skin glow with a dark, red-tinged light. Exactly like Newt’s.

  “It feeds off his heat,” Morgain said, following her glance. “When he dies, it will freeze to death, no doubt. Useless…”

  The two fighters shifted stances, Newt’s blade trying another angle, Nemesis blocking it. Newt snarled, an animal sound rising from deep inside his chest. His flame darkened, the red tinge turning brighter, the band of it growing wider, inching toward his body.

  “Not long now.”

  “No!” Ailis’s cry was one of despair, cutting through the loud buzzing in Newt’s ears, resonating in his blood, fueling his strength, his ability to fight, to defend, to defeat, and to rend his enemy. Some small part still aware inside him heard it, recognized it: Ailis, in pain.

  There is a cost, a voice whispered to him, speaking in tune with the small music still trying to hum in his bones.

  You are glorious, another voice said. Glorious and powerful and unstoppable.

  You will die, the first voice said.

  All men die. Die in battle, as is your birthright!

  Magic will kill you, my son. His mother’s voice, the faintest whisper, long-buried in his memory but never forgotten. Magic is not your destiny. Walk away from it. Refuse it. Live free of it.

  There is a cost to magic—Morgain’s ties to the land, Merlin’s backward-aging and absentmindedness, and Ailis’s isolation. His price would be his life.

  He didn’t want to die.

  Then live, the soft hum said inside him.

  The rage snapped at him, like a dog straining at the leash, a horse pulling against the rein. Like the dogs he had trained, Newt gentled the snapping hound, overwhelming it, forcing it down into a lower position within the pack, forcing it to accept him as pack-leader.

  Inch by inch, muscle by muscle, Newt tamed the beast inside him, forced it back into the space it had slept in all his life, slammed a door shut, and slid the bolt home.

  Well done, the Grail hummed to him, pleased.

  And with a brutal back-swipe, Nemesis sent him flying across the grove, landing with a thud against the well. The red faded entirely to black and disappeared.

  FOURTEEN

  “Fools. Mortal barbarian fools.” Nemesis stood before Morgain, having discarded the hooded robe she had worn for so long. Terrible and awe-inspiring, beautiful and horrible; even if you did not believe in the old gods, the goddess was an impressive figure, from the hairless head and fire-lit eyes, all the way down to her clawed feet and back up to the massive wings, which even now flexed and flared behind her; white feathers tipped with purple.

  “Did you think you could cheat Fate? Cheat me?” Nemesis’s rage was focused on Morgain, who had tried to play both sides against each other, clearly planning to take on whoever had won while they were still weakened from the battle.

  The sorceress reacted to this renewed threat the only way she knew how—with arrogance and pride. Climbing to her feet, the sorceress faced down Nemesis. No more pretense, no more civility or shades of alliance. They were just two fierce and selfish powers, battling for dominance over each other.

  Gerard saw all this through doubled vision. He had lost too much blood, first trying to keep up with Newt and Ailis, then in the battle with Nemesis. None of that was going to matter now. It was all over. They had been tricked. No matter what Morgain might want or not want, even now that Nemesis’s control over her was broken, there seemed to be no way to stop the trap from closing around Camelot, perhaps destroying Arthur’s reign forever.

  “There’s one way.”

  The voice was familiar, but Gerard had never heard it before. Like the knowledge of Nemesis, it seemed to come from deep within, planted there by some force. Unlike that knowledge, this had a distinct voice. A soft, deep, chime of a sound, that spoke not in words but tones of color, streaks of light, and peals of sound.

  “One way to save all. Save from darkness.”

  Gerard looked around, blinked hard, forcing his eyes to focus. Across the way, past the two magical figures engaged in a contest of wills, he saw Ailis, looking as bewildered as he felt.

  “Let me go. Let the waters wash the sin, cleanse the soil, free the soul.”

  “The Grail.” Ailis’s lips barely moved, and there was no way he could hear her across the distance, but she could have shouted for the impact it made. Instinctively, Gerard’s hand clenched on the bag, making sure that the cup was still within.

  His first instinct was to deny the words, deny the voice. This was the meaning of the Quest, the key to his future. With it, Arthur’s rule was assured, fame and glory achieved, his name written into history now and forever. Without it, he was a squire whose greatest stories would be buried for the sake of Arthur’s rule and Merlin’s reputation. He would be valued, yes, but never famous. Never one of the knights remembered through the generations.

  He could not do what the voice was suggesting. He couldn’t.

  Then Newt stirred, but just barely. Ailis reached out a hand to reassure him, to warn him against moving too much and attracting Nemesis’s attention again. Newt stilled, then rolled over slowly onto his side, taking in the scene at a glance. The two boys’ gazes met, and Gerard was struck by the despair, the loss, he saw in Newt’s eyes.

  “I tried,” Newt said. “I tried, and failed. I could not use my rage to destroy her.”

  Rage and sorrow filled Gerard, then. A knight was not someone who sought fame. A true knight was one who protected the innocent, the weak; who did what was needful because it was needful, no matter the cost.

  He, Gerard, was still a squire. He might always remain a squire. But he knew one truth that had nothing to do with sitting at the Round Table: There was more to being a knight than honor or fame. There was friendship, loyalty, and love.

  And no one should ever be allowed to look the way Newt looked just then, as though he had given everything, won every battle…only to lose the war. No one who had triumphed over hatred, the way Newt had, should ever think that he had failed.

  Every inch of his body protested, but Gerard unclenched his hand, reached into the leather bag, and withdrew the Grail. It shimmered once in his hold, the echoes of that chiming voice stroking the inside of his ears,
then sound and shimmer both subsided, as though something had hushed it.

  Newt could hear it, and Ailis. Gerard could tell from the way they looked at it.

  Just a cup. Just a simple, wooden cup, stained and cracked. Nothing worthy of note.

  Gerard rose to his feet, feeling his leg wobble underneath him. Moving slowly, cautiously, he staggered to the well. Newt, lying on the grass where he had fallen, looked from the Grail to Gerard as he came closer and nodded, once. “Yes,” his lips moved, although no sound came from them.

  As though watching someone else’s hand, Gerard lifted the Grail over the turquoise waters.

  “No!” The shadow figure had finally noticed what Gerard was doing. She turned away from Morgain to try and stop him.

  And then Newt was impossibly up on his feet, tackling Nemesis; not in a berserker rage, but as a mere mortal soul. His mixed-breed blood, the blood of two lands, was just enough to cause Nemesis to hesitate long enough for Gerard to open his fingers, and watch the cup fall, turning slowly, into the bitter blue waters.

  “Nemesis!” Ailis called, her voice scratched and hoarse, but triumphant. “Leave! Be gone from these lands!”

  The cup seemed to fall forever, but all too soon a splash rose up, hitting the walls of the well, washing away the soot-drawn symbols and leaving the stones clean.

  Morgain screamed once in denial, but the goddess’s scream was shriller, high-pitched and piercing, like the howl of the bansidhe, the fairy creature who foretells death.

  Ailis ran to Newt, pulled him upright, and checked to make sure he was all right.

  Gerard’s heart clenched in pain—after all he had given up, he saw that she went to the stable boy first. Then her hand reached out for his, and he clasped her fingers and let himself be drawn into a three-way hug.

  The scream built and built, a hot wind rising around them, powerful thunder crashing inside the cavern until all three had no choice but to cover their ears and huddle together until it stopped.