The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [38]
“Very funny,” she said, turning on him. “I was trying to see—”
“Ailis? Witch-child?”
All three of them yelped, Ailis almost fell into the fire. Newt grabbed her by the arm and hauled her out of the way just in time.
The fire spat cinders. Flickers of deep blues and greens jumped up from the wood.
“Did you hear—?”
“No,” Newt said. “I didn’t. And you didn’t either.” He tried to move her away. “Constans, you too, come out of there, now.”
The salamander heaved a heavy sigh, but started to emerge from the flames, when suddenly a hand reached out of the fire and held it there.
This time, their yelps were louder.
“Witch-child? Answer me! I can feel you.”
“That’s not me, that’s Constans,” Ailis managed to say, despite her shock. “Please let go, you’re hurting him.”
The hand disappeared, and Constans scurried out of the flame, the red stripes on its back faded to normal as it reached Newt. Hesitant at first, Newt put a finger to the salamander’s skin and then, discovering that it was still somehow cool, picked it up and let it slide back under his collar.
Meanwhile, where the hand had been, another image was taking shape in the flames.
It was Morgain, her long black hair framing her pale face, backlit by the flames surrounding her. “Witch-child, I need your help,” she said. “All Britain needs your help.”
NINE
“You can’t be serious. Ailis, didn’t we talk about this? Morgain is not to be trusted!”
They had stepped away from the fire, where Morgain’s image still flickered, beautiful and impatient. It was Gerard’s worst nightmare, in so many ways: Ailis being called back by Morgain and Ailis being tempted.
Newt, too, was feeling the same concern.
“She lies, Ailis,” he said to her.
“She has never lied to me. When has she ever lied to you?”
Newt had to think about that. “All right. But she doesn’t tell the truth, either. She’s using you! Manipulating you, and your desires…”
“Who hasn’t?” Ailis looked at him, then Gerard. “What adult hasn’t said to us, ‘If you do that, we can give you this’? Merlin has done nothing but manipulate us to his own ends. Arthur, too. We’re simply tools to them all. Morgain, at least, offers me the chance to become more than a tool. Merlin? Arthur? Sir Matthias? What have they ever given us besides ‘not yet’ and ‘go do this, as well’ as a reward? This Quest, this journey—it isn’t a reward. It’s just another thing they need for us to do. Do you think I didn’t know Merlin wanted to use me as bait here?”
The two boys avoided looking at each other, effectively confirming that they had known.
“You can’t lie on the astral plane,” Ailis went on. “Not effectively; not if you’re not paying full attention to the lie, and Merlin never has his full attention to give to anything.
“But Morgain…She’s never lied to us. She’s been honest, in her own way, with us. Is she the enemy? Yes. But…I don’t think she always was. I don’t think she always has to be.” Ailis was remembering things Morgain had said to her while the girl was held hostage in the sorceress’s castle. This is my land. My blood is pure—purer than Arthur’s. My family ruled long before the Pendragon came here and raised his flag, and it should have been mine. But when my father died…Uther the King decided that my mother would be his bride. And there was nothing she could do to stop him. Arthur came of that union. A boy, and because he was a boy, all the power and the glory went to him. Not the girl-children my mother had borne before. Not the ones with the true power, the magic, the Old Ways in their blood.
“If she says that the land needs us…I have to at least listen to what she wants to say.”
“We barely escaped last time, Ailis!” Newt protested. “Both times, we barely got away! And you want to step directly into the fire and go back into…go back to her? Into her clutches?”
Ailis stood her ground. “Yes.” She stared Newt in the eye, then relented. “She needs us now. We have the upper hand.”
“She wants us to think that we have the upper hand.”
They sounded ready to go back and forth all night, so