The Camelot Spell (5 page)

He froze at a quiet crunching sound coming from somewhere in the stand of oak trees behind them.

There it was again, louder without the sound of hooves to mask it. They were definitely being followed! He glanced up at the squire, wondering if Gerard had heard it.

Gerard moved his beast forward a few steps, as though impatient to be on his way. “Fool of a horse-boy,” he said, the sneer evident in his voice. “Catch up with me when you’re done. And mind the mule doesn’t go lame as well with your inept handling.”

And with that he kicked his horse into a trot and moved down the path, around a bend, and out of sight.

Muttering under his breath, Newt pushed against his gelding until it lifted its front right leg enough so that any observer would see him check for the alleged stone lodged in the hoof.

“Easy, boy. Easy. Let me just see what’s ailing you, hey?” He kept up the soothing patter, hoping that the beast would hear only the familiar words,
and not the nerves underlying them. He strained his ears for the sound of their unknown companion, or maybe the sound of Gerard doubling back to—

“Hai!” Gerard’s shout was followed by a loud, high-pitched yelp of outrage. Newt dropped the horse’s leg and the reins as well, and dashed to the other side of the animal in time to see two figures tumbling down the hill from the tree line. The gelding snorted nervously, and Newt reached back to catch at his mane, patting him soothingly while he watched the two scrabbling in a tangle of legs and arms.

Finally Gerard got the upper hand, reaching up to grab at his opponent’s face, which was covered by a close-fitting hood.

The hood came away in his hand, revealing a long red braid attached to a familiar head.

“Ailis?” Gerard sounded like he had swallowed a frog.

The servant girl rolled away from the squire, his grasp weakened by shock. Sitting back on her heels, she glared at him.

“What—what are you doing here?” Newt asked in disbelief.

Gerard slapped at the cloth of his trousers, trying
to get the dirt out of them, and glared sourly back at the girl. “That’s the obvious part. She was following us. The real question is, how fast can she go home?”

“I’m not going back. You need me.”

“We do not.” Gerard looked stubborn enough to be part mule.

“Yes you do! Neither of you knows the first thing about Merlin.”

“And you do?” Disbelief colored the squire’s voice.

“More than you!” Ailis clearly wanted to say more but bit it back.

Despite himself, Newt was curious. Most of the girls he knew were quiet mice, their faces down-turned, their attention focused on their tasks. But this girl glared back at the squire as if she were his equal. She had stood up to them back in the banquet hall. She was different.
Why?

“Witless servant,” Gerard muttered.

“Fool of a squire,” she returned.

“Might as well let her stay,” Newt said, already tired of watching the two of them spat like cats. He had a feeling he was going to regret this. “I suspect she’ll only follow anyway. And I’m a lousy cook, besides.”

“So. What’s the plan? We do have a plan, don’t we?” Ailis said.

Newt looked up from the roasted pigeon he was eating, his expression alertly curious. “I’ve been wondering that as well,” he admitted. “Not that a mere servant like myself—ourselves”—he made a mocking gesture toward Ailis—“need to know such things, when a mighty knight-in-training has it all in order.” Two days in Gerard’s company, and Newt had already figured out how far he could push the squire without rousing the other boy’s true anger. Mocking merely irritated him.

“Oh, stuff it,” Gerard said rudely, biting into his own roasted squab. “This is good,” he said to Ailis, who merely shrugged off the compliment. They had caught the birds that afternoon; she had only cooked them. She was seated by the fire, now wearing a drab brown wool skirt pulled from the leather bag she had carried with her. Her top was a simple tunic taken from one of the squires, creating an oddly mismatched appearance.

“Plan?” she prompted her companion. Newt could tease, if it amused him to do so. An advantage of knowing Gerard for so many years was that she could dispense with that when there were more
important things to do. She would get to annoying him later, when he really deserved it.

“I have a map,” Gerard admitted, slowly.

“A map?” Ailis looked delighted. “That’s wonderful. A map of what?”

“Of…” Gerard looked deeply uncomfortable. “Of places.”

“Most maps are of places,” she agreed, folding her hands in her lap and patiently waiting for more information. It infuriated him, she knew. All the more so because he knew she wasn’t going to give up. And from the look on Newt’s face, neither was he.

“Arrrrgh.” Gerard put his bird down on one of the slabs of bark they were using for platters and stared into the coals of the fire. They had covered only a short distance today, nowhere near where he wanted to be by this point. And meanwhile, the adults and his king slept. And the kingdom was at risk because of it.

“A map of places King Arthur used to go. Back before he was king, when he was Merlin’s student and they used to go wandering.”

“Before he married the queen,” Ailis said, nodding. “I remember hearing stories.” The king and queen had been married the year before she and
Gerard came to Camelot; years before Newt worked in the stables. “Where did you get such a map?”

“He stole it,” Newt said suddenly. “Didn’t you?”

Gerard snarled soundlessly. “It wasn’t as though there was anyone awake I could ask, was there?”

“Where did you take it from?”

“Thekingsstudy.” He said it fast, the words running into each other.

“What?” Ailis wasn’t sure if she heard him correctly, or if the strain of trying to keep up with them on foot for a full day was making her hear things.

“The. King’s. Study.”

She hadn’t been hearing things.

“You stole something from the king’s private study?” Ailis wasn’t sure if she was more horrified or mortified.

“Wonderful,” Newt said in disgust. “Why not take something from Merlin’s own bed while you’re at it?”

“Because I’d look very bad as a rat,” Gerard said, tearing the last flesh off his bird and tossing the bones into the coals. “And there wasn’t anything there that was useful, far as I could tell. This looked like it might be.” He reached back into his pack, which he was using as a backrest, and carefully drew out a
wooden tube. Inside was a parchment. He unrolled it and placed it on the ground, weighting it down with a rock he pulled from the circle around the fire, careful to choose one that wasn’t too warm.

Someone had drawn the outline of the isle in a clear, dark hand. The three could recognize the mark that indicated Camelot, and the one that showed Cameliard, the queen’s home, but—

“What’s that?” Newt asked.

“Cymry.”

“Oh. And that?” He pointed to another mark.

The three of them gathered closer, craning their heads. “I don’t know,” Gerard admitted finally. There was writing in the margins of the map. But from the expressions on his companions’ faces, Gerard assumed that neither of them could decipher the crabbed and faded writing, either.

“What’re those symbols?” Newt asked, pointing to the strange sigil that appeared all over the map in a thin brown ink.

“It’s Merlin’s mark,” Ailis said. She was careful not to touch it, and Newt moved his finger away hastily.

Gerard nodded, taking the parchment and carefully rolling it up again. “I think Arthur made this to
keep track of where Merlin wandered. Where his favorite places were.”

“So we’ll look in those marked places first?” Ailis asked.

“It’s somewhere to start,” Gerard said with a shrug. “He’s not been gone that long, so we’ll head north, begin with the closest and work our way out as needed.”

Neither of the others mentioned that an enchanter need not travel by normal means, and that Merlin might be anywhere by now. Their entire quest was a fool’s errand anyway. Why make it worse by admitting it out loud?

“
D
o you think they’ve woken yet?” Newt asked.

“No.” Gerard didn’t even bother to shake his head. He was staring at the road ahead of them with more concentration than the flat path deserved. He didn’t have to ask who “they” were. The adults. Camelot.

“No.” Ailis mulled over the word. “I don’t think so, either.” Not that anyone could have found them to tell them the news, if they had.

She was riding a horse now—an unnamed, rangy, torn-eared roan gelding with white-rimmed eyes. It looked uglier than a toad, but Newt had picked it out that morning from the others that the local farrier was willing to sell, having sorted through the herd with a practiced eye. Gerard hadn’t wanted to spend the coins, since they only had what the squires had been
able to pool together, but riding double was slowing them down too much, and the mule flat-out refused to carry any more weight in addition to their supplies.

They’d been away from Camelot heading northeast for two days now, following Gerard’s map to the nearest of the sigil-marked locations. The narrow track had widened into a true road, the dirt packed down by years of wagon traffic moving from town to town. The trees to their left were balanced by the meadows on their right, filled with quail and rabbits that Gerard proved very good at catching for their evening meals.

Though she was glad they weren’t going hungry, Ailis was getting sick of meat for every meal. And she hadn’t been able to wash properly since she left Camelot; her scalp itched under her braid, tucked up again under her hood, and she was pretty sure she smelled like dirty horse and dried sweat. Still, if their mission hadn’t been so urgent, she might have been enjoying herself. But even if she hadn’t shared the boys’ fears about an unknown enemy lurking somewhere, waiting for word to attack the now-defenseless castle, the thought of her queen slumped over her meal was one she would never be able to wipe from her mind’s eye—the indignity of it so at
odds with her lady’s bearing and desires. And so the fresh air, the new sights, and the freedom to wear a page’s cast-off shirt and leggings under her skirt for modesty so she could sit astride like a boy was only half as sweet as it might have been.

“Town ahead,” Gerard called back. He was riding a few paces in front, his horse more restless than their geldings.

“Finally.” If they had gone west upon leaving Camelot, they would have encountered numerous towns built in the shadow of Camelot’s walls. East and south were the ocean and the rocky cliffs that Merlin—according to the map—seemed to avoid. North was where the sigils were; where the land was less settled. There lay swathes of woodlands and meadows undisturbed in the years since Arthur took the throne and established the Pax Britannica, the peace of Britain. It was as though nobody wanted to live where so many had died in battle the year after Uther, Arthur’s father, had fallen.

A shiver went through Ailis. Her parents had died in such a battle, although she had no memory of it herself.

“Blood fed those trees,” Newt said, as though he had been reading her mind. Ailis forced her gaze
away from the towering oaks and onto Gerard noting how he sat so straight in the saddle, even as he leaned forward to stroke his horse’s neck.

“Are you superstitious?” she asked lightly, truly looking at Newt for the first time. The interesting roughness of his features, fading bruises and all, was a marked contrast from Gerard’s narrow face and paler coloring, although Gerard was showing a few bruises himself. She wondered if there was a connection. Maybe that was why the two boys seemed so uneasy around each other. “Do you believe Ankou will come to collect you if you walk over the resting places of the dead?”

“Who?” He looked at her blankly.

“Ankou. The gatherer of the dead. Don’t you listen to any of the old stories?”

“Not much place for stories in the stable,” Newt said.

Since Ailis knew full well that the tales that didn’t come from the kitchens came from the stables, she gave that claim the look of scorn it deserved, making Newt snort with laughter. His expression lightened and made him seem quite…presentable.

“What are you laughing at?” Gerard asked, falling back to rejoin them.

“The stable boy is being impossible,” Ailis said primly, but her eyes were alight with mischief.

“He excels at that,” Gerard said, shooting Newt a sideways glare. It wasn’t quite a warning, it wasn’t quite jealousy, but it clearly said “hands off.” Ailis might be a servant, but she was a member of the queen’s household and Gerard’s friend, besides. Too good for a stable boy to flirt with.

“We need to talk about how we’re going to approach this,” Gerard said, intentionally moving his bay between Ailis’s and Newt’s horses.

“Approach what?” Newt asked.

“The townspeople. Or did you plan on riding in and asking, ‘Excuse me, have you seen an errant enchanter? We require him most urgently back at Camelot’?”

Newt shrugged. “If it would get us the answers we need, yes.”

“It wouldn’t. They’d be more likely to hold us as horse thieves.”

“Even a noble squire?” Newt was mocking, but Gerard refused to rise to the bait.

“Noble is as noble appears,” Ailis said, gently leaning forward to pat her gelding’s neck as it jerked at the reins.

Gerard scowled at that. He knew he didn’t appear at all noble right now, in his worn leathers and second-best surcoat. By the holy cross, he would mistake himself for a horse thief if he didn’t know better!

“You’re well-born. You can speak the part, certainly. Newt is your servant. You were sent to…ah…” Ailis lost the story as she tried to determine what her role in all this might be.

“You’re my sister,” Newt said suddenly. “We’re going to visit our father. Our master’s son, for a lark, decided to join us. Against his father’s wishes. We’re looking for another old servant, who has since left the household. We have a message to bear him, from our master, which was why we were given leave to go. So it’s vital we pass it along, else we risk our master’s anger when we return without a response.”

He stopped, suddenly realizing that the other two were staring at him as their horses plodded along down the road.

“What?” he asked defensively.

“You were wasted with beasts,” Gerard said with an edge to his voice. “You should have been a troubadour.”

“Now, that was unkind,” Newt said, rubbing his chest over his heart as though mortally wounded.
The squire merely turned his attention back to the space between his horse’s ears.

“It is sound,” Ailis said, running it over in her thoughts. “His plan, I mean. Certainly better than anything I might come up with…and we haven’t much time.”

Since the sturdy brown walls of the unnamed town were coming into view, the boys had to agree.

“Let me do the talking, then,” Ailis said quickly, sensing that Gerard was still unhappy with the plan—any plan—that Newt might come up with.

Unlike Camelot, this town had no guards outside its walls. The three companions rode through an untended gate, then past a low, long building that smelled of sheep, and a stone church without seeing a living soul. Several cottages, close together and bounded by a low stone wall and carefully tended hedges, looked more promising, but whoever lived in them stayed within.

“Over there.” Gerard pointed toward one of the small cottages, and they moved their horses in the direction of a lone figure in its yard.

“Pardon, my lady,” Ailis began.

The woman looked up from the shirts she was laying over flowering bushes to dry, and blinked at
the odd trio in front of her.

“Pardon, but we’re seeking a man—” Ailis faltered here. She was so accustomed to thinking of Merlin as an old man—he had, after all, helped to raise Arthur!—that she pictured him as one. They all did, else Newt would never have thought to cast him as an old servant, long retired. But describing him physically made her realize that he wasn’t actually that old at all. In fact, since he was living backward, it was possible that he was actually getting younger.

Magic,
she thought.
He doesn’t just use magic, he
is
magic.
It was a new idea, an interesting idea, and one she didn’t have time to follow right now.

“We’re in search of a man—a former servant of my master, who chose to go out on his own. Our master tasked us to find him. We were told he might have taken shelter within your village. He is tall and slender. A hawk’s beak of a nose, and dark hair shot with silver…”

Ailis let her voice trail off as the woman merely stared at her. They had no idea what name Merlin might be using, if indeed he used any name at all. Who knew what an enchanter might do? He might not even be in his own form—he might be traveling the countryside as an animal, as a bird; as the rabbit
they had for dinner the night before! Ailis fought down nausea at the thought.

“Might you have seen such a man?” she finished.

The woman looked at each of them in turn, then shook her head. “Sparrows cry. The fox does not dine, but feathers fly.”

The three of them stared at her and she looked back placidly, her wide-set brown eyes as calm as a faithful hound’s.

“Right. Our thanks, madam,” Gerard said finally, making a vaguely courtly bow from horseback, and reining his horse aside and back into the road. The other two followed, Newt more reluctantly than Ailis.

“Strange,” Newt said.

“Mad,” Gerard said flatly.

“She didn’t seem to be mad,” Ailis argued.

“Do you think they all froth at the mouth and roll in the dust?” Gerard shook his head. “Mad. Take my word for it.”

“I’ve seen madwomen before,” Newt disagreed. “She didn’t strike me as such. There was awareness in her eyes, not madness.”

“Her words were madness.”

With that, Newt couldn’t argue. Who but a madwoman spoke in such strange terms?

By the time the sun was shading into the hills, however, the three of them not only believed that every soul in the town was mad, they grew less certain about their own sanity. Every single person they had spoken to responded in the same nonsense patter as the first woman.

“If not mad, then cursed. The work of a sorcerer,” Gerard decided.

“To speak gibberish? A strange curse.” But Ailis could not explain what they had heard any other way.

They had finally collapsed, weary beyond words, by the well in the center of town. They had spent the day questioning one incomprehensible villager after another until all three felt as though their eyes were crossing from the effort of remaining polite. They had left the horses hobbled outside a small stable, paying the old man who ran it to keep an eye on their belongings, and wandered the town on foot, hoping that speaking eye-to-eye would give them better results. But no luck.

“Do you think they annoyed Merlin?” Newt wondered.

“Is there anyone who hasn’t annoyed Merlin at one point or another? But most of Camelot still
speaks plainly.” Newt and Ailis both turned to look at Gerard in disbelief. He noted their stares and shrugged. “Court matters aside. All right, fine. At least they don’t speak nonsense rhymes.”

“Save when they attempt poetry,” Ailis said and broke into exhausted giggles. “Have you
heard
some of it?”

“Too much,” Gerard said in agreement. “But this isn’t that sort of rhyming. It’s…” But he couldn’t put into words what was shifting in his mind.

“It’s a mystery,” Ailis said finally.

“It’s magic. If Merlin comes here often, there has to be a reason. Maybe it’s magic. There are places like that, right? Magical places? Well, magic changes people.”

It wasn’t the first time Newt had given his opinion on magic and it wasn’t likely to be the last, so his companions ignored him.

The three of them sat on the edge of the well, so caught up in their own thoughts that they didn’t notice the soft sound of feet coming toward them until the newcomer spoke.

“The owl, lonely flier.”

Their gaze started low at the shoes, made of worn brown leather, then rose up past the layers of skirts
and tunic, stopping finally at the wrinkled, wizened face of an old woman standing in front of them.

“Old mother?” Ailis asked. “You were saying?” The residents of this town might all be mad, but there was no reason to be unkind.

“The owl, lonely flier. Moonlight, water, what you desire.”

She met their gazes, each individual in turn, then nodded firmly and shuffled off, her obligation seemingly fulfilled.

“More gibberish,” Gerard said in disgust.

“No.” Newt held up a hand. “I don’t think so. It’s not the words. It’s what the words
say
. The people aren’t mad; they just think differently.” He turned to Gerard, his dark eyes alight with an intensity that took the others by surprise. “Give me the map.”

“Wha—”

“The map!”

Gerard looked at Ailis, who nodded slowly. He withdrew the tube from the pack he had brought with him and handed it reluctantly to the other boy. Newt pulled the map out with clear impatience, almost tearing it in his hurry.

“Careful!” Ailis warned.

Newt unrolled the map and stared at it intently.
“There. And there.”

“There what?”

“Water. The owl is Merlin—the lonely flier, the harbinger of death. That’s what they call Merlin outside the castle when Arthur can’t hear. Because whenever he showed up, battles followed. ‘Moonlight, water, what you desire.’ Water…there and there. Both are marked by a sigil.” He pointed to the locations on the map—two lakes, one fairly close to the town they were in—careful not to accidentally let his fingers brush any of the magical sigils. He wasn’t sure whether the inscriptions on the map had power, but anything connected with a sorcerer like Merlin called for caution.

“Where does moonlight come from?” Gerard asked.

“Where the moon would travel?” Newt guessed wildly. All three of them looked up into the sky, searching for that heavenly body.

“We’ll have to wait until nightfall,” Ailis said, disappointed.

“Do you think we could get something to eat that we didn’t have to catch or cook?” Gerard wondered out loud, causing Ailis to pat him consolingly on the shoulder.