Morgain's Revenge - Laura Anne Gilman [66]
“She’s not a friend,” Ailis said. “She’s my teacher.” There was a difference clear in Ailis’s mind. Gerard and Newt, comforting behind her, and Sir Tawny, upset at being left behind—those were her friends. Morgain was no friend, but she wasn’t an enemy either. Ailis was pretty sure of that.
“Well, maybe this is another lesson,” Newt said. “Ailis, if we go in there…”
But Ailis had already reached the door and used that same wiggle-finger motion Morgain had used on other doors. It slid into the wall and she slipped inside.
Muttering something Newt couldn’t quite hear, Gerard went in after her. Newt considered turning tail and going back the way they came, but even as he thought it, his feet were carrying him forward. They were in this together, no matter who was stupid enough to lead.
Newt entered the room, finding a large open workspace already holding four other people: Ailis, Gerard, Morgain, and the shadow-figure, standing in the center of the room. Above the table in front of him, a hammered metal bowl hung in midair, simmering over flames that seemed to come from nowhere, causing a thick, noxious, purple-colored fume to rise into the air.
“Get out!” Morgain turned to face them, her expression savage, lips pulled back from her perfect teeth in a horrible snarl. “Get out of here!”
“Morgain!” Ailis cried, and was shoved away by a wave of the sorceress’s hand. She staggered a few steps then regained her balance, glaring at her teacher with almost equal anger. “Morgain, no! Think about what you’re doing!”
Whatever it was that Morgain was doing, Ailis was afraid of it. That was enough for Newt, who was getting ready to grab his friends and run like the hounds of the wild hunt were after them.
“I have thought. For years I’ve thought. And now the time has come to act.”
Morgain turned back to the pot, holding her long-fingered hands over the smoke. “Let those who stand against me, in white-stoned towers, let those who stand against me, in Camelot’s golden hour; let them come to this, in night’s darkest moment: chaos, confusion, the white-foaming madness!”
Ailis let out a sob as Morgain dropped a pinch of some other substance into the foul pot, and stirred it, then began her chant again.
“Let those who stand—”
“Lady Morgain,” Gerard interrupted her, sounding as Gerard never had before, in the short time Newt had known him. Even Ailis seemed taken aback by the timbre and forcefulness in his voice. “You conspire against your rightful king, ruler of these lands, and in doing so commit crimes for which you must be judged. For the sake of your ties to him, and the blood you two share, cease now, and he may yet again show you mercy.”
The laughter that came from Morgain’s mouth made the hair on the back of Newt’s neck rise, and even Ailis blanched, as she had not when the words of the spell were first spoken.
“Little fool. Arthur has never once shown me mercy, never once shown me any regard at all, save for his own vanity and pride. King of all Britons? Not here. Not on these islands. Not over these people. They are mine. And they shall have what is theirs—and know me as their savior. You foiled me once, but this time, I shall succeed.”
“It is the Grail that you seek,” Gerard said. “But it is not yours for the taking, sorceress.”
Her snarl widened. “It is already mine! It belongs to the Old Ways, not the new—a chalice of blood-infused power. I shall hold it and rededicate it, and with its power take back that which was stolen from me.”
Newt could see Ailis taking Morgain’s words in, like blows to her body, and his heart ached for her.
“Kill that boy-child, and be done with it,” the figure ordered. It did not seem to consider Gerard a real threat, but Morgain was fixated on the squire’s words.
“You see the Grail only as a means to an end, not for the glory of itself, its history. You don’t understand what it means to the man who holds it.” Gerard was working up an impressive temper himself.
“The man who holds it, little squire?” Morgain’s voice was so sharp it could have harvested an entire field of wheat.