Morgain's Revenge (3 page)

It was just enough to make him hesitate, and then the glow was gone. The passageway was empty. No glow. No Morgain. No Ailis.

Gerard stared for a moment in disbelief.
How?
How did Morgain get in here? And what was Ailis doing with her?

Gerard scanned the space again, as though hoping that Ailis would reappear out of thin air or that his eyes had been playing tricks on him.

But the hallway remained empty. With a curse, Gerard turned on his heels and ran for the Council Room.

Newt was right. As much as he’d wanted to follow Ailis into that glow, it would have been the act of a fool. Morgain was dangerous. This was a matter for older, wiser, more experienced men. Ailis’s life—and the security of Camelot—depended on it!

Falling and rising at the same time, buffeted by terrible winds, spinning and expanding into an infinite space. No sense of place or time, no sense of anything except turning and spinning and the endless falling and the endless rising, all at once, until she thought she might throw up. Aware of the bile in her throat, she struck out, her fingers dragging on nothingness that was somehow solid, a thick rope of something that shimmered under her grasp and then disappeared. Other ropes appeared under her fingers, and she grabbed and let them go, categorizing each one even as they were pulled away or faded from her grasp, until a pattern began to emerge.
One line went thus, and another went there, and when they moved in such a way the winds came from below, and when they moved like that, the winds came from the side, as though they were being rushed by pulleys through enormous external doors.

She could almost sense how they worked, how they opened and closed. The pattern shimmered in her mind, diagrams appearing on a slate; dry scratchings that began to shimmer with color and light the longer she worked at them. Reaching out to learn more, to touch more, her hand was struck down by something…someone? A quick harsh blow stung, and she cried out, sound in the wind-locked emptiness. Then a cool mint fog settled over her awareness, wiping the slate clean….

G
erard paid no attention to dignity or manners on his way back to the Council Room. It mattered more that he got there as quickly as possible, not how many people saw him racing down hallways and across courtyards like an untamed page.

Morgain.
Morgain in the castle!
Was the sorceress here to make another attempt at preventing the Quest from riding out? Or was she finally making an actual strike against King Arthur?

And what did she want with Ailis? Was it revenge for Ailis’s part in breaking her sleep-spell? Or something more—something worse?

Despite the training squires were given on a daily basis, Gerard was winded when he got back to the Council Room. Riding and fighting, even in armor, did not prepare you for sprinting through hallways
in such urgent circumstances.

“Hold up, lad. Can’t go back in there gasping like a landed fish,” one of the guards said, placing a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “What’s the cause of you rushing back, against all advice? Nothing’s going on in there at all, save squabbling and gossip, since the king’s been called away.”

That got Gerard’s attention. “What? He has?” Had someone already carried news of Morgain’s appearance and her thefting of Ailis out from under their noses?

“A rider came in from the northern Marches. One of Arthur’s snoops thinks the lord there is planning to use our recent difficulties”—the adults had taken to speaking of the spell as a “recent difficulty”—“to break away and be his own master, rather than pay fealty come the spring.”

The one thing Gerard had learned, to his astonishment, was that the common guardsmen often knew details—not gossip, but facts—sooner and more accurately than even the wisest knight. So he did not question what they told him. His shoulders slumped. He had a better chance of winning this year’s tournament melee single-handed than he did of reaching Arthur now. Dissent along the Marches was what the
Quest was to prevent in the first place; the Quest would show the lords in the lands beyond where Arthur held sole rule, who owed their allegiances to King Arthur, that he was indeed the man to rule them. And this incipient rebellion was exactly what Morgain would be hoping to provoke by her actions.

So now Gerard—and everyone else—knew what was going to happen. Arthur would not only go forward with the Quest, but he would do it in as grand and public a manner as possible. He had no choice.

But Gerard wondered, wouldn’t he need to keep men close at home, too, in case the Marcher Lords did try to rebel?

He shook the thought off. It wasn’t his concern. His immediate goal was to find someone who could get the king’s ear and tell him that Morgain had been inside the castle walls and taken Ailis!

“Many thanks,” he said to the guards, and ducked inside the Council Room. He had failed to deliver his master’s message, and that would earn him a cuff against the head. But Sir Rheynold would be able to help him, once he knew the urgency.

Sure enough, the scene inside was no less noisy than before, only now the knights were arguing
directly with each other, rather than trying to make a show for the king.

“Sir?” Gerard came up beside Sir Rheynold, who was talking with several knights of his generation, older men who had originally served King Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon.

“Yes, Gerard, what is—” The knight took in Gerard’s expression and his sweat-beaded face. He took his squire by the shoulder and walked him a few steps away.

“What is it?”

Gerard told him.

Ten minutes later, Sir Rheynold and Gerard were standing outside the offices of the seneschal, the man who ran Camelot’s household business for King Arthur.

“Have you a message for Master Godrain?” The young clerk who served the seneschal was barely old enough to have grown his first downy yellow beard. He looked as though a chick had gone to sleep on his chin, but he glanced at Sir Rheynold as though the older man was a servant. He didn’t even acknowledge Gerard.

“I would speak with him directly,” Sir Rheynold said, refusing to be put off. He stood in front of the clerk’s desk, his arms folded over his broad chest, and stared back, his leathery, heavily lined features unyielding.

“I am afraid that will not—”

“It will,” Sir Rheynold said, in an equally calm tone. “And it will be,
now
.” When the clerk would have protested further, the knight merely glanced at Gerard, as though to say, “This is how you handle such annoyances.” Rheynold walked around the desk, his stride vigorous enough to take him to the inner chamber’s door before the clerk could leap to his feet and try and stop him.

One hard knock on the door, and Sir Rheynold was casting it open. He walked inside as though it were the entrance to his own bedchamber.

“Godrain!”

The seneschal looked up from his ledgers, then stood, rising and rising and rising from his seat until he towered over the knight. Gerard, standing in the doorway behind his master, thought that Master Godrain would have made a splendid giant, had there been any flesh on those long bones. Instead of being impressive, however, he merely looked hungry.

“I will assume you have good reason to come barging in here like this,” the man said, his dry voice matching his dry complexion.

“My squire saw Morgain in the castle.” Rheynold reached back and caught Gerard by the shoulder without looking, and dragged him forward.

“What?” Godrain blinked several times in confusion, as though that would make the words suddenly make sense. Then he looked closely at Gerard. “You’re the boy who broke the spell.”

“I was one of them, yes,” Gerard said.

“And you think you saw the sorceress Morgain here? In Camelot?”

“Yes.” Though he didn’t just
think
he saw her, he wanted to add. He
knew
what Morgain looked like, better than anyone in this room, probably better than anyone in the entire kingdom, save Arthur and Merlin.

“She was here. Spying, maybe. Or working some worse mischief. I saw her, and there was this green light, a spell, probably. And she took Ailis!”

“Are you sure your boy here knows what he’s saying?” Godrain asked Rheynold, as though Gerard hadn’t spoken.

“I trust Gerard implicitly,” the knight said. In
any other situation, Gerard would have nearly burst with pride to hear his master say that. But now, the teenager could barely restrain himself from grabbing the seneschal by his robes and shaking him like a terrier would a rat. Every moment they delayed, who knew what was happening to Ailis!

“Still. How can we be certain? The idea that Merlin’s protections are not enough to keep her out seems…unlikely.” Godrain’s smile and tone suggested what he thought of Merlin despite his words. “A half-hysterical boy, no matter how well he performed during the recent difficulties…”

“The king himself praised Gerard’s cool head and thinking,” Rheynold said, as though he himself had never called Gerard flighty, or foolish, or hot-headed over the years.

“Please!” Gerard broke into the conversation, not caring that he was being rude. “She has Ailis!”

“Gerard! I know that you are upset, but it’s not as though we can do anything for the girl right now,” said Sir Rheynold.

“Nor is there any reason to do so,” the seneschal said thoughtfully, folding himself back into his chair and looking hard at the two of them. “You say that Morgain was aware of your discovery of her?”

“I…I think so.”

“But you can’t be sure? This is important, boy, so be as certain as you can.”

He tried to think back, trying not to focus on Ailis’s face, but the expression of the woman standing behind her. Other than the sorceress’s beauty, which was unforgettable, what had she looked like? “I…don’t think so. No. She seemed…satisfied. Not worried or startled.”

“Good. If she does not know you saw her, then she will be complacent, perhaps smug. She will be careless, and that may give us an advantage.”

“But Ailis!” Gerard couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was this how Camelot protected the innocent? Defended their people? What about Arthur’s code of chivalry?

“One girl is of no great importance,” Godrain said coldly. “Finding a way to put that witch on the defensive;
that
is important. The king was willing to give Morgain benefit of the doubt before, but the spell has damaged his desire to protect her. This may be the final blow.”

“But—”

“Gerard! Sit down.”

For the first time in his life, in the years he had
spent as part of Sir Rheynold’s household, Gerard locked gazes with his master and refused a direct order.

“I won’t let you abandon Ailis.” It was a knife into his heart to defy Sir Rheynold. But if he was not true to his companions now, how could he ever hope to be a good and just knight? How could he even think of taking his place on the Quest for the Grail if he were not true to his heart?

“Boy, we will not tell you again—” Master Godrain began, only to be interrupted by a commotion from the doorway. The clerk’s voice was raised, protesting against a deeper voice. The words were muffled, but the flurry of noise and excitement stirred Gerard’s hopes.

The clerk was trying to bar the doorway. Then he stopped and, with a resigned sigh, stepped aside. Merlin brushed past him, intentionally pushing the young man away, and walked in.

“I don’t have time for that,” he said over his shoulder to the annoyed clerk. “And I don’t have time to turn you into a rat. Rats are beginning to bore me. Rabbits. Rabbits are good. And if one or three end up in the stewpot, it’s not as though they were doing any good interfering with decent people’s lives
anyway. Might as well feed some folk by example, as it were.”

His gaze fell upon Gerard, and the perpetual scowl underneath that hawk’s beak of a nose seemed to lighten a touch. “Just the youngster I think I was coming to see. Or have I seen you already? No, that was before, this is now. My brains are still a bit scrambled. Too cold for me, too cold,” and he gave a dramatic shudder under the heavy gray wool cape that had been flung across his shoulders.

Merlin seemed to have a fondness for Ailis, speaking to her directly, his voice in her head even over great distances. To have him back now, when Ailis needed someone to champion her, it seemed so much a miracle Gerard could only promise himself that he would say his prayers more regularly from now on.

Merlin’s attention turned back to Gerard. “Now, I think we have matters to discuss, yes? Something you needed to tell me? Or was it that I had something to tell you?” His heavy eyebrows drew together in a scowl that Sir Rheynold seemed to find threatening, though Gerard felt almost reassured. Merlin was reputed to live backward in time, which left him sounding perpetually mad, but after a while it was a
madness that almost made sense. Merlin knew that Gerard needed to see him, that it was important, and that he had the answer Gerard needed. More important: Merlin was here, and the king’s enchanter out-ranked a seneschal.

“You may not interfere here, old man,” Godrain said, not even bothering to rise from his chair again, as though insulting him could make Merlin go away. “In the matter of…such matters, I make the decisions as to whom the king will see.”

“Indeed you do,” Merlin said. “Far be it from me to interfere in such weighty matters as those. In fact, this boy should not be here at all, filling your valuable time with his news. I shall take him away at once, immediately, if not sooner. Boy, with me!”

Afterward, Gerard could never quite remember how they got from Godrain’s chambers to Merlin’s quarters. There was a blurred memory of Sir Rheynold, left standing in the chaos, and a swirl of servants welcoming Merlin back as they went about their business, but it seemed a matter of seconds to move from one end of the castle to another. Was it magic? Or just the confusion that always seemed to surround the enchanter wherever he went?

However the means, Gerard soon found himself
in a corridor that was dry and dusty and clearly off-limits to most of the castle’s population: Merlin’s private chambers. Merlin opened the door with a low muttered incantation, ushered Gerard in, and deposited him in a surprisingly comfortable wooden chair set against one wall. The squire leaned back into it, feeling the wood warm under his backside. He had almost caught his breath when the lions’ heads at the end of the wooden armrests turned and snarled at him. Gerard jumped, but when they didn’t do more than snarl, he relaxed again. Magic. He was beginning to understand Newt’s objections to it.

The enchanter was busy dropping a number of dubious-looking leather sacks into a wooden chest and locking it securely. That done, he turned and looked at the squire. Merlin’s face was lined with exhaustion and his eyes were even more hooded than usual, but there was nothing slack in his attitude. Despite everything, Gerard still felt reassured. This time, Merlin was here. This time, the enchanter could make everything right.

“Now, what happened?”

“I was running an errand for Sir Rheynold, and there was…something felt wrong.” He hadn’t told that to the seneschal, but he had to give Merlin the
whole story. Merlin wouldn’t laugh at him. Well, he might, but he would also know if the feeling of unease was important or not. And if it was important, then Merlin needed to know.

“Wrong like a stomachache wrong, or a tooth-ache?”

Gerard blinked in surprise at the question, then replied, “A toothache.”

“And then you saw Morgain?”

“Then I saw a glow. Not right away, after I’d gone a little farther down the hall. But—”

Merlin held up a hand abruptly, his eyes narrowing. The squire halted, confused. “Stop gawking outside and come in, fool child,” the enchanter said in a deeply cranky tone.

The wooden door to the hallway swung open and a familiar head of disordered black hair looked inside.

“You
are
back!” Newt said in satisfaction. “How did you escape from Nimue? Did they tell you what Arthur said when we told him? And…Gerard? They never told me you were with him—what’s wrong?”

“In, fool of a horse-boy, in!” Merlin said, and something invisible yanked Newt into the room, and shut the door firmly behind him.