Morgain's Revenge (11 page)

A
ilis felt uneasy. Since the shadow-figure confronted her in the hallway, she had not slept well. She would wake confused and upset, memories of Camelot mixing with nightmares of a winged figure chasing her down endless whitewashed halls, calling her name, whispering something in her ear. Only the arrival each morning of Morgain, to escort Ailis to the tower that held her workroom, made everything make sense again. Morgain kept her safe. When she was working with the enchantress, learning new things, discovering parts of her that Merlin had only hinted about, that was when she felt balanced, alive and whole. Only then would the memories, and the nightmares, slip away.

“Do you know what to do?”

“Yes, Morgain,” Ailis replied. “I know what to do.”

“I won’t be gone long.” The sorceress hovered by the door, clearly torn between staying and going.

“I’m fine, Morgain. It’s a simple assignment, no more difficult than remembering which side of the table to serve first, and in what order. I managed that by the time I was ten!”

The sorceress laughed, as Ailis had intended her to do, then finally left in a flurry of rich fabrics—finer than she usually wore to the workroom. She closed the door behind her and locked it from the outside. The sound of the magical bolt sliding into place should have made Ailis feel protected, safe. The shadow-figure could not reach her here.

But this morning, for some reason, the sensation of being tucked away behind that lock made Ailis feel restless, as if she had forgotten something, misplaced something.

Suddenly, the thought of comparing the ingredients of a wind-calming spell against the ingredients of a wind-calling spell seemed tedious and tiring. She pushed her stool back across the stone floor and looked around. She was bored. And she hadn’t been told
not
to poke around. Not exactly.

A moment later she found herself not at the wooden worktable, with the two spells’ ingredients
neatly laid out, but standing in front of the far wall, which was draped with a heavy sailcloth cover. She wasn’t sure why that cover fascinated her so, but she was learning to trust her instincts. Something she needed was behind there. But what was it?

A flutter of wings behind her made the girl jump. She turned and stared around the empty room. Nothing was there. Nothing at all.

Wings, again. A flutter of air, touching the feather braided into her dark red hair and brushing against her neck.

Find out what she’s up to.

Ailis jumped again at Merlin’s voice; the faint echo slipped into her mind on the tail end of a breeze, and then was gone again.

Merlin?

There was no response. Had the voice been real? Or was it merely her own imagination, colored by his memory? Ailis didn’t know. But the temptation was irresistible: to discover something on her own, and not wait for Morgain—for anyone—to decide that she needed to know it.

She lifted the cloth, almost as though in a trance, feeling the heavy oiled fabric shift under her hands as she moved it aside. If she concentrated on it, that
thought might somehow warn Morgain, bring her back unexpectedly. Ailis told herself:
Don’t think. Don’t trust your mind. Your mind lies to you. Trust your instincts. Trust your voices.

“Oh.”

Tacked to the wall was what seemed to be no more than an ordinary map. A map of the entire island—from the Scottish wilderness and the mountains of Gwynnedd, down to the southern lands and civilized Camelot, and across the waters to Brittany, where Sir Lancelot came from. Then Ailis saw small colored lights—magic, to glow so—hovering just above the surface of the map. Some were a pale blue, others dark red, while some shone cold steady white. They were scattered across the map. She blinked, and let her eyes refocus. Slowly, a pattern emerged, not so much through her eyes or her mind, but somewhere in between, in the same space where she could
feel
the magic that rested in both Morgain and Merlin.

The blue seemed to represent Arthur’s men. His knights, landowners, common folk. The white were Morgain’s allies. Fighters, farmers, and fisherfolk, hedge-witches and minor wizards—followers of the Old Ways who were unhappy with Arthur’s embrace
of the new God and the quest for the Christian Grail.

“Morgain wants to destroy the Quest.” No great surprise there—that had been made plain from Morgain’s very first move. But this was more than the sleep-spell. This involved other people. Warriors. Townspeople. People Arthur thought he could trust, many he thought were loyal subjects, all scattered along the routes to holy places, places a knight searching for a holy object might go. Morgain wanted more than the failure of the Quest, Ailis realized: She wanted the Grail to herself.

But what were those red spots? Try though she might, Ailis could not make that information come to her. The red lights remained a mystery. But clearly Morgain was planning something. That sleep-spell had not been her entire attack—only the first strike of her blade.

And Ailis was stuck here, unable to leave, unable to contact Merlin, unable to do anything, except keep on as she had been doing.

And really,
Ailis thought, replacing the sailcloth cover,
what else should I be doing?

You are a witch-child
, a voice whispered to her from deep within her dreams.
Your place is near magic.
Morgain’s voice? Or, as she was coming to suspect,
the voice of the place, the magic in its very stones and water? It didn’t matter. That comfortable sense of belonging was sliding back over her, wiping away the alarm and replacing it with the need to be back at her work.

This time, the flutter of wings against her neck was nothing more than the sea breeze coming in through the small window overhead.

When Morgain returned a short while later, Ailis was back on her stool, measuring the quantity of gossamer sand needed for each spell. Morgain didn’t even glance at the covered wall before coming over to check on Ailis’s progress.

“Excellent work,” the sorceress praised, letting some of the tension fade from her face. Ailis could feel herself practically glowing under the older woman’s approval.

So what if Morgain wanted to make trouble for Arthur? There was nothing Ailis could do about it for now, and it was none of her affair, anyway.

“S
how me Morgain’s home,” Gerard uttered in frustration as they left the village. But the lodestone had done exactly that. The three were led to an almost completely hidden path that led around the town and up the rocky cliff. In the distance, out to the east, over cold gray water and under an equally gray sky, they could see the Orkneys. On the nearest of those islands, a stone-walled fortress rose from the ground as though thrust up from the earth itself; immovable, unshakable.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Newt said. “Unless Merlin’s been having a joke on us all this time.”

He sounded as bitter as Gerard felt. The villagers had not been welcoming. Just as the first man they encountered, many of the townsfolk refused to even
speak to the strangers. Finally, Gerard had taken Sir Caedor and the horses away, leaving Newt alone to discover what he could, on foot. The little he had learned was that the first old man was right—no one would guide them.

“We will still need a boat if we try to go on our own.” Sir Caedor sounded even less enthused about the prospect of travel over water than he had about travel over land.

“We should be able to hire a boat in the village,” Newt said. Then he reconsidered, in light of their earlier reception. “Or maybe we’ll have to borrow one without asking.”

“Steal one?”

“Is it stealing if you return it when you’re done?”

“Yes.” Sir Caedor was definitive on that, as he was whenever he and Newt disagreed on anything. Which was almost always.

Newt shrugged. “Then we’re stealing it. You have another idea?”

Sir Caedor clearly wanted to take Newt to task for insolence, but kept his lips firmly pressed together.

Gerard was thankful—he wasn’t sure he was up to yet another round of peacekeeping, especially
when he felt like pitching them both into a well and leaving them there.

Being the leader didn’t mean leading so much as it meant balancing, Gerard decided, turning to look out over the water once again. He felt that strange warm touch inside again, like heated bathwater rising around his heart. He knew this had come from Arthur’s blood-gift.

“Are you there, Ailis?” he asked quietly, touching Guinevere’s token, the silver band that still rested on his arm. “Are you waiting for us to come and rescue you? We’re almost there. Just hold on a little while longer.” He heard Newt ride up alongside him, Loyal dancing a little as the smells of the sea reached his sensitive nostrils.

“So. We’re going over there,” Newt said quietly.

“That was always the plan. We just have to figure out how. Other than stealing a boat, that is.”

“Oh, I said that just to choke him a little,” Newt said dismissively. “About crossing the water, though—I think I have an idea how we can do it.”

“Talk.” Gerard went from distracted to focused, like a dog scenting a hare.

“Did you see, when we were down in the village, how the docks were laid out?”

Gerard leaned forward. He nodded as the other boy spoke, his hands painting a picture in the air.

Sir Caedor was accustomed to not being included in the conferences of his betters—his forte was battle, not strategy. But the way the two boys in his charge were huddled together stung nonetheless. Only the fact that the king and queen had tasked him with their safety kept him from taking their insults to heart. You had to let youngsters gain a little confidence, else they would forever be followers. Arthur was right about that. And it was clear from all signs that the young squire Gerard was being groomed for more than a follower, even if the boy wasn’t aware of it yet. The way the squire had laid down the law back at the inn was proof that he had confidence in his own decisions and the ability to take risks. Caedor had been a squire before he was a knight, and he had heard plenty of older knights and warleaders scream when he did something wrong. He had trained raw youths—and this was not so different, for all that it required a more delicate touch. He understood now that Gerard, for all his tender years, was almost a man. And the stable boy, too, if far too prideful for
his situation in life. So for now, Caedor sat back and let them have their head—until he saw something in the distance that made him frown in concern.

“Hmm.” He rode forward, pushing his way into their consultation.

“What?” Gerard was clearly irritated at being interrupted, but Sir Caedor did not back down this time.

“I have not spent much time on the seas—I am no sailor—but it does not seem entirely…natural to me, for the waters to be behaving thus.”

Gerard and Newt left off their discussion and looked to where Sir Caedor was pointing.

“Oh. Uh-oh.”

“What in the name of Camelot is that?” Gerard asked.

“I don’t know,” Sir Caedor replied. “But I don’t like it.”

They turned their horses along the cliff-side path for a better view, and watched as the surface of the ocean frothed and foamed out beyond where the normal whitecaps were forming on top of the ever-rolling waves. It looked almost as though the water was boiling, but just in that one location.

“It couldn’t be natural?” Newt asked. “Some kind
of storm front moving in? Or maybe a waterspout. One of the knights in Camelot was telling stories of those at the Quest banquet, how they form out of nowhere. You can’t see them until they’re almost right on you, and then it’s too late….”

“It might be,” Gerard said. “Do you want to risk it being totally unrelated to us, or our mission, this close to Morgain’s home?”

Newt didn’t. “So, what…we wait it out?”

“If it’s natural, it should wax and wane, as all storms do. If it’s not—”

“It is not,” Sir Caedor said, still watching the waters. His skin had turned an ashen gray, and his right hand was clenching and unclenching on the reins of his horse. “We need to get back to the village. They may not like us, but if this is something dangerous, they need to be warned.”

In accord, they started back down the path, moving as swiftly as they could without risking the horses’ safety on the uneven ground. The path wound, serpentine, and they had their backs to the ocean for several yards. When they faced the ocean again, the waters had ceased foaming.

Instead, a long wake formed behind the giant head of a beast rising from the ocean’s surface, com
ing directly at them. From the size of its head, and the probable depth of the water, Gerard thought the thing might be as tall as Camelot itself.

“God and the saints have mercy,” Sir Caedor muttered. The two boys were struck mute. The beast was coming for them, and coming fast.

“Let the horses go,” Gerard said suddenly.

“What?” Newt managed to take his eyes off the approaching beast long enough to give Gerard a blank stare. Sir Caedor, however, saw where Gerard was going with that thought. He dropped out of his saddle with surprising agility, swinging an armor-clad leg over as though it weighed nothing, and dropping to the ground even as he was tying the reins up so the horse would not stumble over them and break its neck.

“A distraction,” he said. “Excellent. With luck, when it gets to shore, the creature will go for the easy food and leave us be.”

Gerard shrugged an apology at Newt’s accusing look and followed suit. Newt looked as though he might resist, but then did the same for Loyal.

“Sorry, boy,” he said, resting his palm against the horse’s muscled neck. As much as he loved his charges, Gerard was right. It wasn’t much of a
chance, but it was the only one they had. People before animals, and no room for sentimentality.

With a hard, openhanded slap, he startled Loyal into a dash of speed, made easier by the lack of rider on his back. The other two horses and the mule, likewise encouraged, took off up the steep path after him.

The sea-beast’s snake-like head swiveled to watch the animals run. For a long moment, all three humans held their breath, praying that the ruse would work. Then, with a low moan, the serpent turned its attention back to the smaller prey, resuming its gliding approach through the deep water toward the rocky shoreline.

“It’s intelligent,” Sir Caedor said, in a tone of total disbelief. “To go after smaller prey, when it’s that size…”

“It’s not interested in horses. It wants humans. Someone sent it after us,” Gerard said flatly. “And no fair guessing who.”

“Morgain. Perfect. We’re dead.” Newt wasn’t whining, only stating a cold, dry fact as he watched the beast reach the shore and emerge onto the rocky soil.

The beast was like nothing any of them had ever
seen before. One quick glance at Sir Caedor confirmed that he was at a loss as well. Sinewy and sleek, like a sea-monster, it nonetheless moved easily on land, propelled by a dozen thick legs with wide paddle-like paws.

Propelled quickly, Newt realized. Up the steep cliff-side trail directly toward them.

“Run!” Newt urged his companions, turning to take his own advice.

“Where?” Sir Caedor stood tall, drawing his sword. “Where will you go that it cannot reach you?”

The knight had a point. They were a long distance from the village, and they did not want to lead the beast there, to unprotected fisherfolk, no matter how unfriendly. Morgain might have sent it after them, but there was no assurance that it could tell one two-legged figure from another. Hiding was out, as well. The nearest rocks would not have hidden them all. The beast was far taller than any of the scrub-trees they might climb, even if it hadn’t been easy to knock those trees down and make a mouthful of them.

Newt noted, even in his fear, that the thing didn’t have much of a mouth, just a narrow slit with a pair of fangs hanging over either side.

And then the serpent-beast’s mouth opened. And kept opening, its jaws unhinging until it could have swallowed Newt
and
Loyal whole, and still had room for a small dog or two.

“We need to jump.”

Gerard said it in such a matter-of-fact voice that it took Newt a moment to process what he had heard.

“Jump?” All three of them risked a glance over the cliffs. It wasn’t all that far, as suicidal leaps from cliffs went. And the rocks below weren’t all that sharp, for the jagged-edged shards that they were. Odds were they might even survive the attempt—at least one of them.

“And what if there’s another one of those beasties in the surf?”

Gerard looked at Newt and flashed him a totally unconvincing grin. “Then you don’t have to explain to the stable master how you lost yet another pack mule.”

“I’m not jumping down there! I’m not jumping anywhere!”

“You have a better suggestion?”

“I want to die on land!”

“I don’t want to die at all!” Gerard retorted.

“Neither of you will die today,” Sir Caedor said grimly. He had been watching the sea-beast as it moved farther up the trail, and his sword-tip was slowly tracking its movements. His face under his helm was tense, but his shoulders were relaxed, his one-handed grip on the hilt of his weapon steady.

“Sir Caedor…” Gerard stepped forward, his hand going to his own sword, still sheathed at his side.

“I swore an oath to bring you boys to your destination safely. I intend to keep that vow.” The tired, irritated traveler was gone. In his place stood the man Sir Caedor had been a decade before, when he stood with Arthur and helped to drive the darkness from their isle. The light of battle was in his eyes, and his lips pulled back in a truly terrifying grin.

“Sir—” Gerard started to protest again, but the older man cut him off.

“Go, boys.”

When they simply stood there staring at him, he shoved his free arm back and hit Gerard square in the chest with full force. “Go!”

The squire staggered back, his arms windmilling slightly, reaching for anything that might stop his fall. Unfortunately, the only thing available to grab was Newt. Unprepared for the hand snagging his
sleeve, Newt fell backward as well. Suddenly the air was whistling past their ears, mingling with the sound of Sir Caedor shouting his battle cry, a clear “come and take me, if you can” taunt to the sea-beast.

And then they each hit the ice-cold water with a sharp and terrifying slap, and everything went dark.

Newt resurfaced into achingly crisp air, with a waterlogged Gerard still clutching his tunic. Holding his friend’s head above water, he set out in slow, awkward strokes, heading toward the nearest islet. He didn’t think, didn’t wonder, didn’t do anything except swim, lugging his burden with a dogged single-mindedness until he felt something bump under his legs and he was able to stand for a moment. He let go of his companion and collapsed to his knees. Newt discovered that the surface under him was slippery rock, and that the wavelets only came to his shoulder. They had made it to the islet.

“Come on, come on,” he encouraged himself, slogging across the last distance until they were actually on solid, barren land.

He heaved Gerard out of the water and examined him. Gerard had a set of nasty bruises on his face
that were already turning a sort of greenish-purple, and there were scrapes and cuts everywhere his skin was exposed. Newt suspected, from the sting of salt water everywhere, that he looked much the same. But Gerard’s chest still moved up and down, slowly, as he breathed, and his color was not all that much paler than usual. So nobody was dead.

Yet.

With that thought, Newt’s gaze was drawn across the narrow channel of water—it had seemed so much wider when he was swimming it—to the cliffs they had just fallen from.

Sir Caedor was barely visible, dwarfed by the monster that reared four or five times his height over him. But the sunlight glinted on his blade as it swung and made contact. The serpent-monster swiped at him in return, but its paddle-legs were less useful on land than they might have been in the water, and the sword had clearly made it wary.

Perhaps once the knight was able to take down the beast, they could regroup and find a way to set out for Morgain’s island. For the first time since their departure from Camelot, Newt started to feel some real optimism. Caedor might not be able to defeat that beast, but he should be able to use his much
smaller size to elude it—the thing was ungainly, like the oliphants Newt had heard of.