The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [20]
Morgain was able to keep up easily with her companion, her wool dress allowing her full stride. Despite her outward confidence, however, a strange sensation filled her. Part of it was anticipation: Whatever the shadow-figure was ready to show her would be the result of three years of planning. These were long years, filled with setbacks and failures, small successes and a seemingly endless supply of patience. Part of what she was feeling, however, was fear.
But Morgain did not allow fear to motivate her. It simply was not an acceptable emotion. Fear was a weakness to be exploited in others, not allowed in herself. Fear makes one doubt, hesitate.
She had no doubts. No hesitations.
If this was to be as she hoped, then she would adapt it, and move on. There was no failure, not so long as she breathed. It was not the possibility of failure that made Morgain’s breath hitch and her pulse stutter. Rather, it was the awareness that she was, for the first time since she was a child, allowing another to guide her actions. The ghostlike companion was the architect of this particular scheme; she had only a limited role in its creation, for all that she was the cause, the guiding force.
Morgain was not accustomed to not being in control. But to accomplish what her companion promised—a way to humiliate Merlin and to keep Arthur from getting his bloody, Romanized hands on the Grail—she would be willing to compromise. Even give up some control. For a little while.
Down they went, around a spiral staircase, through a doorway cut into the rocky wall, and down another staircase, this one without railings or visible support. It led to a large stone room, deep inside the keep. The entire building breathed around them, resting its weight on the walls and supports. This was one of four such underground rooms, deep in the bedrock upon which her home was built.
Safe. Secure. To all intents magical and practical, invisible.
In the center of the otherwise bare chamber, there was a wooden table, similar to the one in her workroom, only three times the size, to match the scale of the room. It was covered with a heavy cloth made of the same material as her companion’s robes.
“It is done.”
At another time, there would have been satisfaction in those words, or pride, or even relief. The companion’s voice was purely matter-of-fact.
“Let me see,” Morgain demanded.
Invisible hands pulled the cloth back without flourish, revealing a map spread out on the table, covering its entire surface. At first glance, it looked to be merely a larger version of the map upstairs in Morgain’s workroom, without the lights moving upon it, but there was much more vivid, intense detail. The still waters of the ocean were almost lifelike in the way it glistened, and each individual stalk of wheat seemed ready to sway in the breeze, waiting only for the peasants to begin harvesting.
Morgain leaned over the map, looking closely, and was so beguiled that when her companion seized her arm, she was taken by surprise. Even more so when the blade appeared in its slender fingers, the sharp edge scoring a narrow, bloodless line up the inside of her arm.
“What?” It didn’t hurt, but the shock was enough to make her voice rise.
Even as she protested, the companion’s strong fingers had released her. Morgain pulled her arm away, inspecting the damage. As she did, a single drop of blood rose from the cut and then fell, as though slowed by forces beyond magic.
It hit the surface, breaking into dozens of minuscule droplets, and splattered across the trees, fields, and buildings.
And the shadow-figure said, again, “It is done.”
This time, Morgain felt a change in the air around them. Drawn to the source, the sorceress looked down. The map, formerly only lifelike, had actually come to life. Waves crashed against the