The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [73]
It could have ended there, but for Morgain’s greater speed and agility. Somehow she slipped from that cage, sliding her blade out from under his and spinning almost in his arms to go back on the defensive.
Irate at being bested, Gerard slapped at her, missing her blade entirely and taking a stinging cut on his underarm for it. But the flat side of his blade connected just behind her calves as she turned again, and the blow sent her to her knees, twisting as she fell so that she landed on her backside.
Instinct took over again. Gerard was dark with fury at being cut not once but twice. “Yield,” he said, his knee on her stomach, his blade held crosswise against her pale white neck. Up close, she was even more beautiful, her eyes wide and dark enough to fall into. For once, Gerard was almost glad he wasn’t full grown. He suspected that, had he been older, those eyes would have disarmed him in a way her sword skills had not been able to.
“I have never yielded,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You have never fought me.” It was sheer bragging, and Gerard was sorry the moment the words left his mouth—especially in light of the fact that she had, in fact, almost beaten him. Those deep eyes darkened even more, and he felt her shift, even with the blade to her neck. Then he was knocked over sideways by an unexpected assault, and when he recovered from being slid across the floor several lengths he looked up to see Newt and Ailis holding her down, a dagger lying on the carpet between the two of them.
“Poisoned?” he asked, indicating the dagger Morgain had magicked into existence.
“Most likely,” Ailis said, breathing heavily. Newt had Gerard’s sword and was holding it awkwardly, with the point over Morgain’s face, dissuading her from trying anything else.
“Unlike Gerard, I’m very bad with this thing. I might do something…clumsy with it. Like rip your face open. That would be a shame, since it’s a very pretty face.”
“Do it,” Ailis said. Her voice was harder than either of the boys had ever heard before. “Kill her.” Under the anger, Newt thought he heard fear.
“The king won’t like it,” Gerard said, coming to stand next to Newt.
“I don’t care. Merlin wanted her dead. He doesn’t want things without reasons, not reasons we can understand, maybe, but reasons. That is enough for me. Kill her.”
“You’ve been beaten,” Gerard said to Morgain. “Your only hope is to use magic again—but Newt will kill you before you can do anything. He has no sense of chivalry. And he will not hesitate to kill a woman, not even the sister of his king.” Gerard hoped that was true, anyway. Newt wasn’t trained for this. How would he do against a human opponent?
“Or,” Ailis said, her fear making her foolhardy, “you might call your servants, of whom I’m sure you have many. But they would see you defeated by three children. And they would never forget that, would they? Their enchanter mistress, the great and terrifying Morgain, brought down by three children, and two of them mere servants.”
Morgain moved her head as though to respond to the girl’s taunt, and Ailis drew a sharp breath in. “A tear,” she said in astonishment.
“A what?” Gerard paused, caught by the urgency in Ailis’s voice but not really hearing her.
Ailis pointed at Morgain’s neck. Where her shirt had been torn away, something glinted in the candlelight.
With a dubious look at his companion—there was no way she could have seen that from where she was—Gerard placed his hand over Newt’s, using the tip of his sword to catch the chain around the sorceress’s neck. He lifted it away to reveal a thumbnail-sized gemstone the yellow-red of a new flame.
“This?” Gerard asked Ailis. “A trinket?”
Morgain glared up at him, and he lowered the sword just enough to remind her who had won their battle.
“It’s a tear,” Ailis said, moving closer so that she could see it better. When Morgain turned that glare on her, she stepped back, out of range again. “Look at it! Can’t you feel it?”
Gerard looked, shrugged, then winced. All he felt were his muscles telling him how much they wanted to put the sword