The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [68]
“At least it will be good news.” Newt wasn’t too worried. “They need that. Besides, it’s not as though there are that many people to be gossiping. Unless they’ve learned to do it in their sleep.”
“That’s Camelot,” Gerard said, wiping the charcoal off his fingers, leaving a long smudge on the side of his trousers. “Even in their sleep.”
“I know where she’s gone,” Ailis said suddenly, turning to face the two boys. “Morgain. I know where she’s gone to.”
“Where?”
“What? How?”
“Before Merlin left. The reason he left, he’d been fighting with Arthur.”
“I remember,” Gerard said. “Everyone was hiding under the furniture.”
“It was in the solar. Arthur had gone there to hide. Merlin hated going in there, I think the ladies unnerve him, all twitter and giggle.
“But this time Merlin followed him—stalked right in on the king’s heels. He wanted…” Ailis tried to pace as she remembered, but there wasn’t enough room to move, even with only the three of them there. She waved her hands in frustration, trying to recall the actual words. “Merlin said he knew where Morgain was. He wanted Arthur to go there and bind her. But Arthur wouldn’t. No matter what she’d done, Arthur still thought of her as his sister. Merlin was furious, yelling at the king that he was going to lose his kingdom over stubborn, stupid affection for a woman who deserved none of it.
“I liked the name of the place he said she was,” Ailis recalled, thinking hard. “Something about apples…that’s what it was. Appleton.”
“Did Merlin happen to say where it was?” Newt asked.
“I…yes. But I can’t remember!” She rubbed her face with her fists, frustrated beyond words. “Argh!”
“Wait.” Newt had raised his hand to try and comfort Ailis, when he was struck by a thought. “I know how to get there.”
“You do? How?” Gerard turned to stare at Newt, as though to say “You know?”
“Not Appleton maybe, but the Isle of Apples. You get there…by dying.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“No, really,” Newt went on. “I remember hearing once that there was a doorway in the tombs down below the chapel. The story I heard was that it led directly to the land of the dead. But then someone else said no, it led to the Isle of Apples. And the storyteller said they were one and the same. That only the dead might be taken there, and only the damned ever returned.”
Gerard swallowed hard and looked at Ailis. “Do you think Appleton and the Isle of Apples are the same place?”
“Could be. And we don’t have a better idea.” She glanced again at the talisman. The hair which had escaped from her braid during their wild ride back to Camelot fell into her face and stuck to her sweaty skin. “But since we’re neither dead nor damned, that doorway may not work. And even if it does…how do we expect to make Morgain cry? Hold an onion to her face?”
“We need to find her,” Gerard said, his tone brooking no doubts. “We’ll worry about her crying later.”
“Dead people make me nervous.”
“Don’t be foolish, Newt. They’re dead. They can’t hurt you.”
“We have a castle full of ensorcelled people above us, we spent the past six days following a magical map around the land, and we’re about to try and go through a magical gateway to confront a wicked enchanter who also happens to be the king’s sister, and you’re telling me that I’m foolish to worry about dead people? Pardon me if I don’t take your word for that, Mistress Magic-Is-Interesting.”
The crypt was cool and dark, the only light coming from the candles they carried. An even dozen of the squires had wanted to go with them, but the others had dropped back when Ailis, listening to the small still voice inside her, told them that only the three who had started the quest could finish it. She might have been wrong, but after everything else that had happened, she was learning to trust that voice, no matter who it came from.
Besides, as Gerard had pointed out, they needed everyone at the ready to secure the castle, just in case the riders spotted the night before returned with reinforcements.
“Dead people.” Newt