Morgain's Revenge (13 page)

“
Pssst
.”

Newt lifted his head to see a figure in a dirty leather apron gesturing to him. It took a long moment before the dirt-smudged figure, with fair hair slicked back and darkened, resolved into the familiar features of Gerard.

“Wha?”

“Come on!”

Newt found the energy to get to his feet. He walked away slowly, so as not to attract any attention. But it seemed as though the rest of the crew was just as exhausted as he was.

“Where have you—”

“I was sent to get the meats. Borrowed this apron from the butcher’s apprentice. Here.” He handed Newt a similar garment. “They were slaughtering today. They’re delivering all over the island now. Nobody will look twice at us.”

“Nice,” Newt said in appreciation, even as he wrinkled his nose at the smell. Dogs and horses were clean, compared to cattle. But he put the apron on and followed Gerard up the stone-paved road, following the trail the wagons had taken. Straight up to the great fortress they had first seen from the cliff, where Morgain—and Ailis—waited.

“W
hy aren’t there any protections?” Newt wondered out loud.

“How do we know there aren’t?”

“Don’t say things like that. It makes my stomach hurt.”

They had just walked under the great stone-gated entrance to the keep. Other than a glance from a pair of lightly armed guards, nobody had taken any notice of them whatsoever. It was making Gerard nervous. Newt had started at nervous, and was about to move into panic.

“She knows we’re coming.” Newt had begun to sweat, although the eve was cool and there was still a breeze coming off the shoreline, up the rocky hill.

Gerard reached up to touch Guinevere’s silver token, replaced on his arm once they were far enough
away from the boat and its crew for it to be safe to wear. It was silly, but it gave him strength, somehow. He supposed that was the point of tokens. They weren’t magical, not the way Merlin’s blood-gift was, but the reminder that someone had faith in him, believed in him, was power of another sort. “How?” he asked Newt, returning to the conversation as they kept moving forward. If he could keep Newt talking, maybe he’d be able to remain just calm enough.

“Um, she’s a sorceress?” Newt retorted, his gaze darting back and forth as though expecting something to jump out of them from thin air.

An unarguable point that did not do much to calm his nerves. But he kept walking. “She’s not invincible. We beat her before.”

Newt snorted. “She let us win before.”

That was the harsh truth. If Morgain had chosen to use magic against them in their last conflict, they would have been dead; Camelot would have been defeated. She pulled back, and only resorted to magical attack at the last moment, as they fled through the gateway to Camelot.

Gerard suspected then what he was convinced of now; that Morgain had some long-term plan involving Arthur and the Quest. Killing children under his
protection would add an element of risk she couldn’t afford. It was what had kept him optimistic about Ailis’s fate, especially when Merlin seemed to believe the same thing about Morgain’s intent.

He wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not. He thought probably not.

Meanwhile, Newt described the speech he had overheard that sounded like a spell. Gerard had agreed that it was probably a basic defense against would-be attackers.

“If they do that spell on every ship that comes in, and the only way to come in is either by boat, or magic, then so long as you don’t come in via magic they know you’re not a threat, and if you do come in via magic, if you’re not invited, odds are you’re a threat.”

“I wonder why Merlin doesn’t teach us a spell like that.”

“Because there are too many ways to get at Camelot,” Gerard said, bringing himself back to the conversation at hand with mild frustration. “An island is easier to protect, because you have the water as an ally.”

Merlin had said that Morgain would be overconfident. She was arrogant enough to go to Camelot herself. How much more prideful, how much more
overconfident, would she be in her own home? Even if she did sense them coming, she would believe they were no real threat to her here. That was the hope, anyway. Without hope, they should just lay down here and wait to die.

Sir Caedor had already died. But he had met it head-on, not waiting like a sheep.

They passed through the courtyard, a huge open space with buildings on three sides and the great gate behind them. Now they had to decide where to go.

“The lodestone would have been helpful now,” Newt grumbled.

“Well, we don’t have it. Time to go on ordinary instinct and common sense.”

“Ordinary and common, I’ve got,” Newt said. “All right. Young girl, troublemaker, prisoner, but not someone you want to keep in the dungeon.”

“How do you know she wouldn’t—”

“Like you said. Instinct. Common sense. If she’s kept Ailis alive, she’s keeping her…not in the dungeon. Somewhere…secure, but not uncomfortable. Like a hostage.”

“Exactly like a hostage,” Gerard said. “What did Arthur do when we had those princelings last year?” He was speaking to himself, not expecting Newt to
have paid any attention to the dealings of the court. “A high room, something with a view, maybe. Where there’s limited access but not a sense of punishment, as such.”

“Like a tower.” There were three towers in the fortress, two short and somewhat stubby, and the third tall and elongated.

“Maybe. But…” Newt looked around, under the guise of being an awestruck butcher’s apprentice traveling somewhere he had never been. “Or there.”

Newt jerked his chin to indicate a section between the two shorter towers, a single layer suspended in midair that overhung the courtyard where they stood. There were no windows along its length, not even any slits where bowmen might stand defensively, as might be expected in such a structure.

It looked wide enough to contain rooms, rather than merely being a corridor. If it did—even if it didn’t—it was a good place to start.

The only problem, they discovered, was getting to where they thought they wanted to go. They had found the doorway easily enough; there were four entrances to the fortress, one placed in each corner of the keep, each with its own design on the arch over the door and a single guard who watched them with oddly
slanted green eyes as they passed, but did not challenge them. Once inside, things became more difficult.

“No wonder she doesn’t have more guards,” Newt said in disgust. “She doesn’t need them. This place is a maze!”

“A maze is easy to get around in,” Gerard disagreed. “It’s all just a question of figuring out how it was designed.” But he was frustrated as well as nervous, now, and while the seasickness had worn off, it was replaced by the itchy feeling between his shoulder blades that he always got just before the start of a practice tourney. It felt like someone was watching him, studying him, trying to determine the best way to knock him off his horse. Morgain? Or…

“This place…this place wasn’t designed. It’s alive.”

Newt swallowed hard. “Was that supposed to make me feel better? Because it didn’t.”

They had been walking forever, it seemed, down a hallway carpeted with a thick green rug that ran its entire length. There were doors set into the cream-colored stone walls. They checked the unlocked doors that led into chambers of various sizes and furnishings, but all were empty with no signs of recent occupancy.

“At least we haven’t found any skeletons of strangers who wandered in and walked until they died.”

“This is no time to develop a sense of humor,” Gerard said.

Newt blinked. “Who said I was joking?” Then he grinned, more out of stress than actual mirth.

“Hah.”

“Seriously, though,” Newt said. “We could do this for days.”

“What do you suggest then? If we still had the lodestone—”

“It wouldn’t do us any good. It wasn’t taking us to Ailis. It was taking us to Morgain’s home. Well, here it is and here we are. Besides, do you really think any of Merlin’s magic is going to function accurately inside Morgain’s own lair? Not without Merlin along to work it, and there’s no way he could have gotten onto this island.”

A fact the enchanter had to have been aware of. “Otherwise occupied” had been a way of saying “I’m sending you where I can’t go.” Merlin was a master of not quite lying.

“So what do you suggest?” he asked Newt. The other boy had more experience being sneaky than he
did. Gerard was pretty sure about that.

“Ever lose anyone in the woods?”

“No,” Gerard said, giving him a look that clearly questioned if the other boy had gone frothing mad.

“You don’t chase after them, that just gets you both lost. You let them come to you.” Newt stopped and planted his feet, raising his hands to his mouth and cupping them around his mouth. Taking a deep breath, he bellowed: “Ailis! Ailis, we’re here!”

The hallway echoed with his words, the stone bouncing them back, loud enough to make them both flinch.

“You are
insane
!” Gerard turned and waved his arms at Newt in his agitation, his face flushing pink. “Morgain—”

“You would rather wander around forever without a clue? Besides, I doubt anyone heard us. This place—”

There was an odd noise coming from ahead of them, a heavy rustling noise, and both boys froze.

“Uh-oh.”

“Grrrooooowwwlllp?”

The door at the end of the hallway slowly opened, and something poked its way through.

A giant bird, was Gerard’s first thought. But
what was a bird doing in there? Then more of the body came through—a long, pelted, sinewy neck, coated in a thick shag of hair, followed by massive paws and shoulders.

“By all that’s holy!” Newt yelped. “A griffin!”

Trust Newt to recognize a creature, no matter how magical.

“Should we run?” Gerard asked.

“Where?” Newt replied, staring in delighted fascination at the creature coming toward them in an oddly cat-like, belly-to-the-ground crawl. “Back down the hall? It will be on us in an instant. Into one of the rooms? And wait there for how long?”

“So we sit and get eaten here?”

“Pity you lost your sword during our swim, isn’t it?” Newt sounded oddly calm for someone about to be eaten alive.

Gerard took some comfort from that. Newt was generally pretty much against being eaten, or otherwise made dead.

“Grrrllll?”

“Hello there,” Newt said, staying perfectly still.

“Is it…like the dragon? Is it intelligent?”

“About the same level as a dog,” Newt said, then paused. “At least, I think.”

“You think?” Gerard responded in a harsh whisper. “You
think
?”

“I’ve never actually seen one before. Just heard stories. I think…I think this one’s still a kitten.”

Since the kitten was the size of a large horse, Gerard did not feel at all relieved by that news.

“And what do we do if momma’s still around?”

“Not much,” Newt said. “Hey, boy. Hey there. Aren’t you a good boy, yes you are.”

He was keeping his voice even, conversational, and the griffin seemed to be responding well, rising up off his belly a little and tracking him with his gaze.

But maybe, Gerard thought uneasily, he was just getting ready to spring.

“Grrrrlll?”

“That’s an odd meow,” Gerard said, then reconsidered. How else could a bird-headed cat meow, except oddly?

“I…” Newt seemed suddenly hesitant. “I don’t think he’s meowing, exactly.”

“Exactly?”

“Ailis,” Newt said.

Gerard looked around to see who Newt was speaking to, then his head swung back around like it
was on a swivel when the creature responded:
“Grrrrll?”

“Yes, girl,” Newt said. “Can you take us to the girl?”

The griffin seemed to consider that for a moment, then turned in the narrow space, and headed back out the door he came in through, turning his head back once as though to say, “Well? After all that, aren’t you coming?”

“Holy…” Gerard breathed deeply, but followed Newt when he went after the griffin down the hall and through a pair of swinging doors.

“Sir Tawny! Where have you been?” Ailis’s voice was coming from a room down the hallway. The griffin bounded forward, still uttering its plaintive call. The boys exchanged glances and hurried after, impatient to get to Ailis and get out of this place. It had taken them seemingly forever to reach this hallway, and yet it was just a hallway down from the hallway they had started in. Or so it seemed.

“Magic,” Newt had muttered more than once. “I’m trapped in an entire building made of magic.”

They caught up with the griffin outside a door.
Clearly it was unable to go into the room itself, but stuck its head in to receive scratches on its head. Unfortunately, that meant that there was no way for Newt or Gerard to enter, or be seen by anyone inside the room.

“Ailis?”

“Gerard?” There was total, absolute astonishment in her voice, and then a
“mrowr”
of protest from Sir Tawny as he was eased back out into the hallway.

The three of them stared at each other for a moment, then Ailis was hugging them both, hard, and babbling about how she didn’t think anyone knew where she was, how did they know where she was, how did they find her?

“I saw Morgain steal you,” Gerard finally managed to say. “Merlin sent us here. And ‘Sir Tawny’ led us to you. We’ve come to take you home.”

Ailis blinked at them, one hand reaching out to scratch again at Sir Tawny’s feathers as he snuck his head back in through the doorway. “Home? But…I’m not ready to go.”

Silence fell on the room. Even Sir Tawny seemed taken aback by her words.

“What? Ailis, are you…Morgain! She’s enspelled you!”

“She has not! Newt, you don’t understand!”

Newt glared at her, hands fisted at his hips. “You’re right. I don’t.”

“I didn’t ask to be taken, and I didn’t ask to be rescued, and I didn’t ask to be treated like a piece of property by anyone who thinks that they know what’s best for me!” She paused to gasp for breath, pushing hair off her face as though trying to cool down.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Gerard started, then immediately realized that was the wrong thing to say, even before she turned on him.

“How do you know what I know? You don’t know
anything
. You haven’t…you and
your
life and
your
plans and
your
goals—well, maybe I have some, too, now!”

Gerard opened his mouth to retort. Instead, he waited for a rise of warmth to come and give him wisdom, or cunning. But the spell-touch was silent. Neither Merlin nor Arthur had much luck with women either, apparently.

“And you’ll reach them here, these goals?” Newt asked. His voice was calmer than theirs, slipping into the tone he used to calm aggressive dogs. People responded to it almost as well, and Ailis was no exception.

“I don’t know. But what chance do I have in Camelot? They’ll just put me back in the solar and think that they are doing me a favor.”

“But aren’t they—” Gerard began, then paused when all three—Ailis, Newt, and Sir Tawny—turned to stare at him.