The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [26]
He had never thought about servants’ lives before. They were just…there. Gerard shook his head, trying to dislodge the uneasy feeling such thoughts gave him.
The three had been riding along in silence for a while when Newt reined in his gelding and pointed. “It’s rising.”
Over the horizon the pale yellow disk of the moon slid through the sky.
“It moves faster than I thought,” Gerard said.
“At first. Then it slows down. And sometimes it stays forever in the sky, even after the sun comes back up. And in the summer it shows up even in the afternoon.” Newt had obviously spent more time moon-watching than the other two.
“I remember.” Ailis was quiet for a moment as they watched the moon climb beyond the distant tree line. “Why?”
Newt looked at Gerard, who focused up into the sky and shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a story my nurse used to tell me: The moon is a goddess who has lost her followers, and searches each night for new believers—slowing when she thinks she sees them and speeding up again when they turn their back on her.”
“A pretty story, but none of that answers the important question: How do we follow the moon?” Newt asked, returning the conversation back to more practical matters.
“I suppose we could just ride under it,” Ailis said doubtfully, shifting a little in her saddle to relieve some of the pressure in her legs. She had ridden often when she was a child, but never for so long and not for many years. But she would sooner have her tongue cut out than complain in front of the boys, who would take any sign of weakness as proof that she should have remained back at Camelot.
“You want to ride off the road and across the fields?” Gerard asked. All three turned to look at the broad expanse of fields. Riding through them would mean riding down the crop that was growing there. Even if they were careful, the horses would be destroying food people might need in the winter. And there might be animal holes or hillocks where, in the dark, a horse could stumble and break its leg.
“Bad idea,” Newt said finally, and while Ailis wanted to argue when Gerard nodded his head as well, she gave in. They knew horses, and the road.
“So what then?”
“The road is going in mostly the same direction as the moon,” Gerard decided. “We’ll follow it for as long as we can. It’s not as though we have anything specific to go on anyway. Only a puzzle-rhyme from a madwoman.”
“One that matches the information on your stolen map,” Newt said, his matter-of-fact tone at odds with the tight expression on his face. Ailis looked from one of them to the other and set her heels into her gelding’s side, making him break into a trot that almost shook her out of her saddle. She had never known such boys who disagreed with each other!
“The moon’s moving,” she pointed out. “We should be, too.”
They rode in relative silence for another stretch, each of them deep in their own thoughts. Camelot and the chaos of the Great Hall seemed impossibly far away in the mostly quiet air. The wind touched the trees, the leaves making a faint shimmering noise. Once or twice the sudden cry of something hunting or hunted reached their ears. But otherwise the only noises were the heavy thudding of hooves on packed dirt, the swishing of tails, and the slightly nasal sound of Newt’s breathing.
“Oh, look!” Ailis said, broken out of her own thoughts by the sight up ahead. “Isn’t that pretty?”
“That” was the reflection of the moon, now at a slanted angle overhead, on the waters of a small lake to their left. The waters were so dark as to seem black, and the silver-white light of the full moon created a reflection that appeared to be almost solid. As they watched, it appeared to sink below the waters, twisting and curving until it formed a bridge just below the surface of the lake.
Gerard and Newt both reined their horses in beside Ailis’s to watch the phenomenon.
“It almost doesn’t seem real,” Newt said.
“It’s not,” Gerard retorted, but without any heat. The sight was