The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [33]
“It did,” Ailis said, greatly daring. “We used it to find you.”
Merlin barked out a laugh. “All right, yes, it did. This one time, it did. But you were lucky. Lucky beyond all belief. The gods had a hand in this, and that always worried me. Never trust the gods, children. Trust yourselves. Trust each other. But trust no gods. They have their own agendas.”
“But, Master Merlin, what does it mean—the riddle? What are we supposed to do?” In his urgency, Gerard overrode Ailis’s attempt to ask Merlin something. He needed specifics. A riddle was nonsense and magic was beyond his understanding. He knew how to hit things, how to ride horses, how to speak well to his betters, and protect those weaker than himself. He didn’t know what to do with this.
“Three talismans, squire of Sir Rheynold. Find three talismans that will revoke what has been done. There is no more time to waste. Leave me to deal with this magic that binds me, and quest your own quest. Now go. Go!”
And with that, Merlin turned his back on them and paced to the other side of his ice-cased prison and stared out into the darkness, his hands folded in front of him, his proud features lifted to the night sky. Their conversation was over. He had nothing more to tell them.
A long moment of stunned and hurt silence passed, then Merlin heard the three youths whispering to each other, followed by the sound of them mounting their animals and riding away slowly.
“The gods laugh at me,” he said morosely when the last noise of their passing had faded. “Children. Why,” the enchanter wondered, “does it always end up with the children?”
From the air around him, Nimue’s voice laughed at him, a warm silver chime that could still stir his blood and make him do foolish things. “Because, dear teacher, they’re the only ones who will forever look for you. They are the only ones who will believe it can be done.”
SIX
Once, just once, I’d like to hear a story that starts ‘And the enchanter told them exactly what to get, and where to get it, and what sort of dangers they would face along the way.’” Newt was grousing again.
“It doesn’t happen that way,” Ailis said from her perch behind him in the saddle.
“Well, it should. Not all the time, because those would be boring stories. But just this once.”
If Gerard hadn’t been so frustrated he would have laughed. Newt was sulking like a five-year-old. From the expression on Ailis’s face, she was having the same reaction to the stable boy’s irritation. The way Newt seemed determined to hate anything that took him out of his ordinary, familiar routine was starting to become more amusing than annoying.
When the three left Merlin in his cage of ice, they had no idea where to go or how to get back across the lake. But they hadn’t ridden for more than a few minutes before a spiral of light left the house and followed them.
“Merlin’s doing?” Newt asked warily.
Ailis stared at the light and shrugged, tucking her braid back under her collar so it wouldn’t hit her back so annoyingly when she rode. “Maybe. Maybe not. If not, it would be Nimue’s work, and for all that she’s a thorn in Merlin’s side, she’s never acted against anyone else. She’s loyal to the king. And considering we don’t have any other guides stepping forward…”
The light moved ahead of their horses, and the three companions let it lead them away from the house of ice and toward the south through a grove of pines.
The moon had set, and with it, full darkness fell over the island. They slept under the pines on a bed of soft needles for a few hours, feeling oddly protected.
They woke with the first rays of dawn sunlight coming though the trees; their guide-light had disappeared. When they emerged on the other side of the grove, they were back on the road where they had met the bandits, back where they had started before riding into the lake.
“Magic,” Newt said again. Gerard clouted him on the shoulder and asked him if he would have rather swum across the lake, or perhaps gone back to the ice house and told Merlin that they were sorry but they