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By Root 276 0

except turning and spinning and the endless falling and the endless rising, all at once, until she thought she might throw up. Aware of the bile in her throat, she struck out, her fingers dragging on nothingness that was somehow solid, a thick rope of something that shimmered under her grasp and then disappeared. Other ropes appeared under her fingers, and she grabbed and let them go, categorizing each one even as they were pulled away or faded from her grasp, until a pattern began to emerge. One line went thus, and another went there, and when they moved in such a way the winds came from below, and when they moved like that, the winds came from the side, as though they were being rushed by pulleys through enormous external doors.

She could almost sense how they worked, how they opened and closed. The pattern shimmered in her mind, diagrams appearing on a slate; dry scratchings that began to shimmer with color and light the longer she worked at them. Reaching out to learn more, to touch more, her hand was struck down by something…someone? A quick harsh blow stung, and she cried out, sound in the wind-locked emptiness. Then a cool mint fog settled over her awareness, wiping the slate clean….

THREE

Gerard paid no attention to dignity or manners on his way back to the Council Room. It mattered more that he got there as quickly as possible, not how many people saw him racing down hallways and across courtyards like an untamed page.

Morgain. Morgain in the castle! Was the sorceress here to make another attempt at preventing the Quest from riding out? Or was she finally making an actual strike against King Arthur?

And what did she want with Ailis? Was it revenge for Ailis’s part in breaking her sleep-spell? Or something more—something worse?

Despite the training squires were given on a daily basis, Gerard was winded when he got back to the Council Room. Riding and fighting, even in armor, did not prepare you for sprinting through hallways in such urgent circumstances.

“Hold up, lad. Can’t go back in there gasping like a landed fish,” one of the guards said, placing a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “What’s the cause of you rushing back, against all advice? Nothing’s going on in there at all, save squabbling and gossip, since the king’s been called away.”

That got Gerard’s attention. “What? He has?” Had someone already carried news of Morgain’s appearance and her thefting of Ailis out from under their noses?

“A rider came in from the northern Marches. One of Arthur’s snoops thinks the lord there is planning to use our recent difficulties”—the adults had taken to speaking of the spell as a “recent difficulty”—“to break away and be his own master, rather than pay fealty come the spring.”

The one thing Gerard had learned, to his astonishment, was that the common guardsmen often knew details—not gossip, but facts—sooner and more accurately than even the wisest knight. So he did not question what they told him. His shoulders slumped. He had a better chance of winning this year’s tournament melee single-handed than he did of reaching Arthur now. Dissent along the Marches was what the Quest was to prevent in the first place; the Quest would show the lords in the lands beyond where Arthur held sole rule, who owed their allegiances to King Arthur, that he was indeed the man to rule them. And this incipient rebellion was exactly what Morgain would be hoping to provoke by her actions.

So now Gerard—and everyone else—knew what was going to happen. Arthur would not only go forward with the Quest, but he would do it in as grand and public a manner as possible. He had no choice.

But Gerard wondered, wouldn’t he need to keep men close at home, too, in case the Marcher Lords did try to rebel?

He shook the thought off. It wasn’t his concern. His immediate goal was to find someone who could get the king’s ear and tell him that Morgain had been inside the castle walls and taken Ailis!

“Many thanks,” he said to the guards, and ducked inside the Council Room. He had failed to deliver his master’s message, and that would earn him