The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [20]
“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