The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [39]
“And that is why I’m not going to tell him,” Ailis said.
“Ailis!” Gerard couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You cannot just leave the Quest like that!”
“You mean I can’t just ride off on the word of a strange female without telling anyone—least of all Sir Matthias—where I am going or why?”
Gerard’s first reaction was to retort, “That was different.” He managed to bite back the words before they doomed him to one of her wicked glares, or worse. He didn’t think that she knew how to turn him into a frog yet…but he wasn’t willing to risk it.
“Besides,” she went on, reassured that neither he nor Newt had any comments to add. “I won’t be riding off—Morgain’s offered to make a portal…and I won’t be going entirely without a word. You two will be here to explain.”
Ailis turned her back on them and walked back to the fire. “I’m ready,” she said.
No sooner were the words out of Ailis’s mouth than a ring of flame appeared over the fire, growing in size until it was an Ailis-sized oval rising out of the embers, crackling and snapping silently in the air.
As magic went, it was simple, but no less impressive for it. And without a single glance back, Ailis stepped through and disappeared.
“I don’t know about you,” Newt said. “But I’m not staying behind to explain this.”
In two strides he was at the fire. With a third, he was through.
Gerard hesitated half a breath, then checked to make sure his sword and dagger were firmly attached to his belt, and followed.
He had no sooner gone through than the portal closed, almost on his heels, with a cold whoosh of air followed by an audible snap.
In the silence that followed, the small fire flickered once, as though someone had stirred the flames, then died.
“Ailis?” In the distance, within the cool stone walls of Camelot, Merlin lifted his head from his work, and sniffed the air like a hound scenting a new trail. “Huh.” He shook his shaggy head and returned to the complicated spell he was waving, muttering, “I could have sworn I heard her….”
“All three of you. There’s a surprise.” The sorceress’s tone indicated that it was anything but a surprise to her.
They were in a small room with cream-colored stone walls. The air was cool and still, and off in the distance he thought he could hear the sound of water.
Ocean tides. They were back in her keep, in the Orkneys.
He still didn’t like using magic. He didn’t trust this kind of travel. But, now that they had learned how to go through without landing in a pile of bodies on the other side, he had to admit there were advantages to it.
“You called us, Morgain. So please talk. Or we’re turning around and going right back.” Ailis might have been bluffing—once in Morgain’s stronghold, anything she tried would be overwhelmed. Only she didn’t sound like she was bluffing, to Newt’s ear. That frightened him almost more than Morgain.
The sorceress didn’t seem to take Ailis’s words as a threat. From the flicker in her dark eyes, Newt would have sworn that she was pleased. Like a mother cat when a kitten brings home its first mouse.
“Are you certain that you can open a portal here? One that I do not first allow?”
“Are you certain that I need your permission to do anything?” Ailis countered.
There was absolutely obvious satisfaction in Morgain’s gaze, Newt was certain of it.
Morgain was dressed somberly in a dark green dress, her hair braided in a crown around her head. The great black cat they had seen at her feet before kept her company again, sleeping by the stoop of the single door, guarding the exit.
Or was it guarding the entrance? Newt suddenly wondered. Unlike the previous times they had encountered her, Morgain did not seem to be entirely the mistress of her world. Now he could see that there were faint creases around those glorious dark eyes, and her mouth, rather than curving in a mocking smile, was pressed into a narrow line.
“Morgain…” Ailis was clearly losing patience.
“I have made an error,” Morgain said, clearly having to fight to