Morgain's Revenge - Laura Anne Gilman [58]
NINETEEN
“Why 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