The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [67]
“We don’t have much time,” Gerard said, coming to stand next to her.
“I know. I think…there.” She opened her eyes and walked across the room to a glass-fronted case. Astonishingly it was unlocked. Or it unlocked itself for her—she wasn’t sure which would be more disturbing. But she reached inside and took out three small books, each barely the size of her hand and no wider than her thumb.
“Try this,” she said, handing one to Gerard and looking around for Newt with the other. “Newt!” He was standing by the door watching the children squinting at the written words and trying to compare them to the words on the talisman. When she called he looked up, and the fear she saw in his eyes cut her suddenly, like a knife so sharp you didn’t feel it going into the skin.
“We’re going to need more candles,” she said. He nodded and beckoned to one of the younger helpers.
Ailis took the two remaining books, found a space on the floor that wasn’t already occupied, and opened the first book. The author’s handwriting was terrible, and it took all her concentration to decipher it.
Newt returned at some point with more candles, then disappeared again and came back with two kitchen workers carrying platters of food larger than they were. The meats and breads were consumed almost absently, the sound of parchment scraping against parchment interrupted only by shifting bodies and the occasional indrawn breath of hope dashed by a sigh of disappointment until a page named Bets let out a squeal of discovery.
“What is it?” Gerard asked, hurrying through the crowded room to kneel by the page’s side. “What did you find?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s…” The boy was incoherent in his excitement. “I was looking at this sheet of parchment—it was blank—and then I looked at some foreign words on another parchment, and then I looked again at the first one, and there were words there. It looked like what I’d just been looking at, only I could read it. Only now this page is empty again!”
“Easy, Bets. We believe you.” Gerard gave the boy an encouraging squeeze on his shoulder, then took the blank piece of parchment away from him and brought it over to where Ailis and Newt waited.
Newt looked over the blank page. “That’s a translation spell?”
“Possibly. A useful thing. If we can trust it.”
“We don’t have any choice,” Ailis said. Newt just rolled his eyes.
“None of the magic has steered us wrong,” Gerard pointed out. “It’s only what we’ve done with it that’s not worked.”
“I’d argue that,” Newt said. “But not right now. Read it.”
Gerard held up the blank sheet of parchment, looked at the talisman, and then, after committing the strange words there to certain memory, looked down at the paper.
And the words appeared in common tongue:
Time marches on.
Time cannot stop.
King and maid alike must pass.
Only one tear may set them apart and only one tear may set them free.
Time is the healer.
Time is the killer.
Time is the river which can never be halted.
Begin. End. Renew. Renew.
“One tear…whose tear?” Newt wondered.
The three companions stopped and looked at each other.
Ailis’s eyes lit up with certainty. “Morgain’s tear! She said she wouldn’t shed a tear…”
“But she’s gone, disappeared.” Newt pointed out the problem and then added, “And how do you get a witch to cry, anyway?”
“She’s an enchantress, not a witch.”
“What’s the difference?” Gerard wondered.
“Power,” Ailis said. “And intelligence.”
Gerard sighed. “I was afraid that you were going to say that.”
“All right, everyone,” Newt said, noticing that everyone in the room was watching them. “Go. Shoo. Wait somewhere less dangerous, all of you.” The room emptied out while Gerard found another piece of parchment and a stick of charcoal to write down the translation before one of them misremembered a word.
“Rumors will spread,” Ailis said, absently running her hand over the surface of Merlin’s worktable, careful to avoid touching