The Camelot Spell (16 page)

But it worked. Without knowing quite how he had done it, he had driven Morgain into a corner, parrying her attack and slamming both blades into the wall, hers held there by the greater length and weight of his.

It could have ended there, but for Morgain’s greater speed and agility. Somehow she slipped from that cage, sliding her blade out from under his and spinning almost in his arms to go back on the defensive.

Irate at being bested, Gerard slapped at her, missing her blade entirely and taking a stinging cut on his underarm for it. But the flat side of his blade connected just behind her calves as she turned again, and the blow sent her to her knees, twisting as she fell so that she landed on her backside.

Instinct took over again. Gerard was dark with fury at being cut not once but twice. “Yield,” he said, his knee on her stomach, his blade held crosswise against her pale white neck. Up close, she was even more beautiful, her eyes wide and dark enough to
fall into. For once, Gerard was almost glad he wasn’t full grown. He suspected that, had he been older, those eyes would have disarmed him in a way her sword skills had not been able to.

“I have never yielded,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You have never fought me.” It was sheer bragging, and Gerard was sorry the moment the words left his mouth—especially in light of the fact that she had, in fact, almost beaten him. Those deep eyes darkened even more, and he felt her shift, even with the blade to her neck. Then he was knocked over sideways by an unexpected assault, and when he recovered from being slid across the floor several lengths he looked up to see Newt and Ailis holding her down, a dagger lying on the carpet between the two of them.

“Poisoned?” he asked, indicating the dagger Morgain had magicked into existence.

“Most likely,” Ailis said, breathing heavily. Newt had Gerard’s sword and was holding it awkwardly, with the point over Morgain’s face, dissuading her from trying anything else.

“Unlike Gerard, I’m very bad with this thing. I might do something…clumsy with it. Like rip your
face open. That would be a shame, since it’s a very pretty face.”

“Do it,” Ailis said. Her voice was harder than either of the boys had ever heard before. “Kill her.” Under the anger, Newt thought he heard fear.

“The king won’t like it,” Gerard said, coming to stand next to Newt.

“I don’t care. Merlin wanted her dead. He doesn’t want things without reasons, not reasons we can understand, maybe, but reasons. That is enough for me. Kill her.”

“You’ve been beaten,” Gerard said to Morgain. “Your only hope is to use magic again—but Newt will kill you before you can do anything. He has no sense of chivalry. And he will not hesitate to kill a woman, not even the sister of his king.” Gerard hoped that was true, anyway. Newt wasn’t trained for this. How would he do against a human opponent?

“Or,” Ailis said, her fear making her foolhardy, “you might call your servants, of whom I’m sure you have many. But they would see you defeated by three children. And they would never forget that, would they? Their enchanter mistress, the great and terrifying Morgain, brought down by three children, and
two of them mere servants.”

Morgain moved her head as though to respond to the girl’s taunt, and Ailis drew a sharp breath in. “A tear,” she said in astonishment.

“A what?” Gerard paused, caught by the urgency in Ailis’s voice but not really hearing her.

Ailis pointed at Morgain’s neck. Where her shirt had been torn away, something glinted in the candlelight.

With a dubious look at his companion—there was no way she could have seen that from where she was—Gerard placed his hand over Newt’s, using the tip of his sword to catch the chain around the sorceress’s neck. He lifted it away to reveal a thumbnail-sized gemstone the yellow-red of a new flame.

“This?” Gerard asked Ailis. “A trinket?”

Morgain glared up at him, and he lowered the sword just enough to remind her who had won their battle.

“It’s a
tear
,” Ailis said, moving closer so that she could see it better. When Morgain turned that glare on her, she stepped back, out of range again. “Look at it! Can’t you feel it?”

Gerard looked, shrugged, then winced. All he felt were his muscles telling him how much they
wanted to put the sword down and have someone apply a healing poultice to the places Morgain had scored on him during their battle.

“A tear?” Newt asked. He stared at Morgain the way he might a snake about to strike, if you weren’t entirely sure if you were out of its range or not.

“A tear!” Ailis said impatiently. “A tree’s tear. Amber.” On seeing their continued blank looks, she elaborated. “It’s magic. I can feel it.”

“Witch-child,” Morgain said, and her voice was soft again, silky and convincing. “Witch-child, where have they been hiding you in cold, harsh Camelot?”

“I’m not a witch,” Ailis said, taking another step away from that voice.

“My tear speaks to you. My magic calls to you. Have they been teaching you, witch-child? Or do they ignore you, pretend you don’t exist, save all their power for those born with—”

“I’m not a witch!” Ailis yelled, fear and anger mingling in her voice. “Take it from her, Gerard.”

“What?”

“Take it from her! Don’t you get it? A
tear
!”

“Oh,” both boys said in the same instant, their brains finally catching up with their exhaustion. The spell. A tear. That was what Morgain had used, what
they needed to complete the spell’s reversal.

“Let me do it,” Newt said, when Gerard hesitated, unsure how to take the chain from Morgain’s neck without releasing his cold iron sword’s hold on her. And Ailis clearly wasn’t going to go anywhere near the sorceress.

At Gerard’s nod, Newt swallowed hard, then stepped forward and knelt next to Morgain. First a dragon, then a sorceress. He’d been more comfortable with the dragon.

“Forgive me, lady,” he said under his breath. “But I am only a stable boy. My place is to serve, not command. And to do so I must take this from you.” He didn’t really think the polite words would cool Morgain’s wrath any, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try. She merely glared at him as his hands lifted the chain over her head, cupping the amber shape in his palm. He stepped away, out of reach again.

“Run,” Gerard said to them. “Go on, get out of here. Take the tear back to Camelot. Hurry!”

“But…Gerard…” Ailis protested, even as Newt turned to go.

“Do it, Ailis.” His voice allowed no refusal, and when Newt reached out to grab her hand, she went with him.

Gerard waited until the other two were clear of the door back into the courtyard, then made a low bow to the enchantress.

“You lost, my lady. Show some honor in this and allow us to return home unharmed.”

“Honor? You think I have honor?”

“Yes, my lady.” Gerard looked her directly in the eye. “I believe that—despite all I have seen—that you have honor.” She was the king’s sister, after all.

Morgain stared at him and laughed. Even flat on her back, a metal sword to her throat, she still seemed completely, impossibly in control.

“Go home, young squire. Cherish this victory. It is not the end of the game.”

Gerard nodded and, not turning his back on her, walked out of the hall and into the courtyard.

“Why are you still here?” he asked his companions on seeing them standing in front of a wall, the shadowy outline of the doorway revealed if you looked at it sideways rather than directly. Ailis was holding the tear up in front of it by the chain, as though she had been waving it at the walls until the doorway revealed itself. Newt looked torn, as though half wanting to dive through the doorway and half not trusting anything the stone revealed.

“We weren’t going without you,” Ailis said stoutly.

“Idiots! Go!”

Behind them, the sound of a low, long scream echoed, and Ailis turned a shade paler. From beyond the walls around them, Gerard could hear the ocean roar, a thundering sound far beyond any surf or storm he had ever heard before.

“Go!” And he dove forward, arms outstretched to grab each of them, carrying them backward into the half-seen gateway barely a step ahead of the magical storm Morgain had sent to stop them—or, giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she would remain true to her given word, to destroy the tear before they could use it.

And then the swirling abyss within the portal swallowed them, just as Gerard felt the first slap of wind-driven water against his leg, and they were gone.

T
raveling through magical portals wasn’t the most dignified way to travel—or arrive. Gerard shoved Newt off his stomach, and more carefully moved Ailis off his legs. They had been deposited in a tangled heap just inside the doorway on the Camelot side of the crypt.

“Alive?” Newt mumbled.

“Can’t hurt this much when you’re dead,” Ailis said. “I hope, anyway.”

“You’re back! You’re almost out of time! It’s nearly midnight!” Finan had clearly been assigned to wait for them. His eyes were wide, like a frightened horse’s, and he was practically jumping in place from anxiety.

The three stood and helped each other up. They pushed past Finan on the way out of the crypt and moved as fast as they could up the winding, stone
stairs and made their way past the crowd of children that had gathered outside the Council Room.

“Hurry!” Tynan urged them when he met them outside the great door. “I hope to the heavens you have the answer.”

“We do,” Gerard said, clapping Tynan on one shoulder. He followed Newt and Ailis into the chamber. Gerard faltered for a second as his glance took in Arthur and his knights, eerily motionless in their places at the Round Table.
Please, as God is kind, let this work,
he thought with a sense of desperation.

“Who has the talisman?” Ailis asked.

One of the older pages stepped forward holding out a soft white cloth wrapped around the precious object.

“You know what it is, don’t you?” the squire, Dewain, said in awe.

“No, what?”

Dewain shook his head in astonishment. “I saw one once, when my master and I traveled to the Holy Land. It’s an hourglass. Sailors use them to keep track of time.”

The three of them stared at each other, then at Dewain.

“A timekeeper. I’ll laugh about this when we’re
done—after I sleep for about a week.” Gerard took the talisman and unwrapped it. He and Newt and Ailis positioned themselves the same way they did during the last attempt, each of them with a hand on the hourglass. Ailis opened her free hand to show the tear, still attached to the golden chain.

“Ready?” she asked.

Her companions nodded.

As they spoke the words, by now burned into their memory the same way they were burned into the glass, Ailis, very, very carefully held the chain so that the tear balanced on the top of the hourglass.

The amber tear flared a deep red—deeper than blood—and slowly sank into the glass top of the hourglass, leaving the chain still dangling from Ailis’s hand. A second of hesitation, and the now-liquid tear slid through the glass, dropping slowly into the frozen sand.

The entire talisman began to glow brightly, dark red and blue swirling around in a pyrotechnic display of magical sparkles. As they spoke the last line of the spell, the sand quivered and began to slowly fall from one glass chamber to the other.

Something in the air shivered. Ailis felt a cold finger slide down her spine.

Well done. Well done, girl-child.

And she wasn’t sure if it was Merlin…or Morgain.

But Ailis didn’t have time to think on it. Without any warning, the knights seated at the Round Table were awake. They were also confused, hungry, and more than a little disoriented.

“Gerard!” Arthur cried as he turned around in his chair and saw his nephew in front of him, exhausted, mud-filthy, and grinning in company with two equally bedraggled children. “
What
have you been up to?”

“
T
hey’re not taking us seriously,” Ailis complained. “We saved the entire castle, and every adult in it, and they’re not listening to us!”

Ailis and Newt were in the stable—the only place that was currently safe from the renewed flurry of activity within Camelot. It had been two weeks since they woke the castle, and the chaos that followed made a knocked-over anthill seem placid. Everyone had been overworked, trying to repair seven days of missed life. Ailis had finally fled that morning for the relative quiet of horses and horse-boys.

“The king listened.”

“And then did nothing,” she said bitterly from her perch in the hayloft above him. “He didn’t even send anyone out to find Merlin and bring him home! He just laughed and said that Nimue was going to be
the death of Merlin, some day.”

“Could even a dozen knights have gotten Merlin out of there before Nimue was ready to let him go?” Newt asked.

Ailis didn’t have to think about that one. “Probably not…no.”

“There you go. All’s well that ends well, right? Merlin will get himself free eventually, and Arthur’s awake and healthy, and the Grail Quest will go on. And here you are, and here I am, both alive and home, and all’s well.” As he spoke, Newt brought a grooming brush down in one long motion; his other hand rested on the horse’s neck, keeping it calm.

“Don’t talk to me like you do to Loyal,” Ailis retorted. “I’m not that easily placated.”

“No?”

She made an exasperated noise, and threw a clod of straw at him. Most of it landed in Newt’s hair, which was already dirty with sweat and horsehair.

“I just thought that
something
might change.”

“It has.” Newt stopped his grooming and looked up at her. “Look at you.”

Her old russet skirt and borrowed tunic had been replaced by finer garments—a linen smock and wool kirtle, or loose dress, lightly embroidered at the
sleeve and hem. And her ankle-high boots, visible as she swung her legs over the side of the hayloft, were not hand-me-downs, but rather made to suit her foot, from the shoemaker who made footwear for the queen’s own ladies in waiting.

“Pffft. Clothing. That’s my reward for saving everyone. But what about you? They shouldn’t just ignore you like this.”

“They haven’t,” he said, going back to grooming the horse with steady strokes.

“They haven’t? That’s wonderful! But—”

“But why am I still here?”

Ailis looked around and shrugged. “Yes. Not that this isn’t a very nice place, I suppose, but—”

“Because they couldn’t offer me anything more than what I already have,” Newt said, pausing to rub his nose with the back of one arm before going back to his job.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” he said, seeing her frown with concern. “When I need something, I’ll remind them of my service fast enough. And they’ll honor it. That’s how nobility is. I just don’t want anything more right now.”

“Still. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.”

Newt laughed and Loyal turned his head to look
at him curiously. “It isn’t. Life’s like that. Speaking of which, have you seen his majesty’s nephew lately?”

Ailis looked slightly deflated. “No. Well…I have, but only in passing. They’re keeping him busy.” The Quest for the Grail was still set to go out—late, but intact—and all the squires had been hoping to go, Gerard especially so.

“He’s the one who’s changed. I told you. I did, didn’t I? Knights aren’t friends with servants. Not really.”

“You’re an idiot,” a voice came from the stable door. “At least we know that won’t ever change.”

Gerard was also wearing better clothing than they had ever seen him in. His hair had been ruthlessly trimmed and slicked back, making him seem older, more commanding. But he came in and dropped himself on a bale of hay, careless of his finery.

“I’ve been trying to find time to come see you both. But they barely let me sleep, everyone’s so intent on making this Quest perfect. The things that were done before aren’t good enough—the weapons aren’t sharp enough, the tents aren’t grand enough…even the ones who weren’t behind the Quest before are enthusiastic now.”

Newt snorted at that, sounding like one of his charges. Gerard grinned in agreement and then went on to say, “If nothing else, Morgain getting her fingers into the castle walls scared them that much. They think having the Grail will be some kind of magical talisman in and of itself, to keep her out and to keep Arthur safe.”

“Isn’t it?” Newt asked.

“No,” Gerard said at the same time Ailis said, “yes.”

“Well, which is it?” Newt asked.

“The Grail is magic, of a sort. Just like Morgain’s tear or…or Merlin’s staff, although he hardly ever uses it. It’s where you store up power. Only…” Ailis slowed down, as though she were thinking her words through before uttering them.

Newt ceased grooming to listen. Gerard picked a bit of straw out of his pants leg with an expression of surprise. He was not accustomed to sitting on straw. It was sharper than he expected. Then again, not quite so uncomfortable as a troll’s claws or a dragon’s gaze. He still preferred a well-carved bench.

“Magic is power,” Ailis went on. “It’s not physical strength, but the ability to do, to create. The Grail is supposed to have that—the ability to create a High
King. So that’s magic. Because the source of magic is belief. You know it exists, the way you know wind and rain are real. And so you trust in that belief. Merlin said that: You have to believe.”

“The Grail is
more
than magic,” Gerard said. “It’s faith. Something you don’t know and can’t prove. You simply have to…have faith. And that’s more powerful than anything Morgain might be able to create.”

Newt made a noise in his throat that might have been a sign of dismay and turned back to grooming Loyal so as not to be drawn further into the discussion.

“You think so, do you?” Ailis’s jaw had fallen open when Gerard had spoken, and she shut it now dramatically. “You, who were treating the Grail like a jousting trophy to be won by force of arms not a fortnight ago?”

Gerard had the decency to blush at that reminder. “Well, I’ll have a chance to find out. Maybe.” And now he was finally able to tell them what he had come to the stable to say in the first place. “Arthur has spoken. I’m to go with the knights on the Quest.”

There was a stunned silence in the stable for a long moment, broken only by the sound of horses
biting and chewing their grain. Then Newt smiled. “Haven’t had enough racing about trying to be a hero?”

“Hardly a hero,” Gerard replied. “I’m to be a servant of sorts myself. Fetch-and-carry mostly. I have a lot to learn,” he said, far more humbly than the boy who had started out on a desperate journey weeks before. “Sir Rheynold says it will be years before I can become a knight, and years more after that before I’m ready to go challenge the dragon again.”

“And win,” Ailis said with confidence.

“And win,” Newt agreed.

Gerard smiled, not with bravado but pleasure at the confidence his friends showed in him. “We’ll see. First I have to make my name, somehow, on the Quest, and earn my spurs. Then we’ll see about battling a dragon.”

“Assuming it hasn’t died of old age and boredom by then,” Newt replied. “And don’t expect me to carry your lance or saddle your horse for you, because I have no intention of waiting around that long to see you turn into a dragon-meal.”

“You’ll be coming with us then?” Gerard was grinning.

“We’ll see,” said Newt, picking up a wooden
comb and starting to brush out Loyal’s mane. “If I’ve no other plans more interesting.”

You’ll have your own destiny, witch-child,
a voice said softly in Ailis’s head, even as she smiled at the now-familiar insults being tossed back and forth between the boys below her.
And you’ll show them all what power the old magic can bring….

Ailis hushed the voice, but the echo of the words stayed deep within her. And now it bothered her slightly that she didn’t know if the voice was Merlin’s or Morgain’s. There would be time enough for that later. When the Quest had gone off and Merlin had returned and the queen was paying less attention to what Ailis did and where she went. Gerard and Newt weren’t the only ones who had plans for the future now.

Whatever would happen, it would be because Ailis decided it. She had sneaked out on this last adventure. Next time—and she doubted anything like
this
would ever happen again—she would be involved from the very beginning. She had earned that, more precious than fancy clothing or softer chores.

When Merlin came back, everything was going to change for her.