The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [40]
“Your point?” Ailis pressed, all but tapping her boot-clad foot in impatience. They had come here for answers; not drama.
“She wanted her share.” Gerard didn’t come right out and yawn, but he looked ready to do it. “The only threat to Britain, Morgain, has been you. So why are we here again?”
The sorceress’s eyes flashed angrily at his words, with actual sparkles of magic forming in her frustration. “If I had wanted to kill you—if I had wanted to kill Arthur—I would have already.”
Gerard bristled in reaction to that, and snapped back, “And you would have found nowhere to hide, had you murdered your brother. Even those who support you—”
“Murdering family members occurred with great regularity in this island’s history, as recently as my parents’ time,” Morgain said, then waved one elegant hand as though to dismiss the threat, bringing the tension in the room back down.
“I had my reasons for what I have done. I still have my reasons. I do not apologize for them.”
“Your point, Morgain?” Ailis said again, heading off another explosion of outrage from Gerard.
“I began my current project with the intent to shake Arthur, to make him acknowledge me as his peer, perhaps even as co-regent; certainly as heir.”
That was not unheard of, to have a sibling—even a half sibling—take the throne, especially as Arthur had no acknowledged children.
But Newt doubted, quite strongly, that Morgain would ever be accepted within Arthur’s court, much less as a potential queen. He knew better than to voice those thoughts, certainly not within her own keep. Morgain might seem subdued and apologetic this instant, but that was to be trusted as much as a fox’s smile—not at all.
“My…ally promised to enhance my power, to make me stronger, and more able to take on Arthur, to bring him to the parley table.”
To bring the king to his knees, all three of them mentally translated. They knew Morgain now. Not one of them believed she was interested in any negotiations she did not control.
“And now?” Ailis asked.
“And now the price of that promise has been revealed in full. It is a price that, upon consideration, I am not willing—not able to pay.”
“Reneging on her agreement…what a surprise,” Gerard said, and got a kick in the shins in response. When he glared at Newt, the other boy made a gesture that told him to keep quiet.
Morgain ignored the boys, focusing on her onetime, would-be student. “Do you remember what I told you, witch-child, about my bloodlines?”
Ailis did. “That you were tied to the land, magically, in order to better care for it and the people living there.”
“A simplification, but the heart of the matter, yes. Some of those ties involved rituals, ways we were bound ourselves not only to the earth but the very soul of this island. As our fortunes went, so, too, did the land. And as the land went, so too did we.” Her face took on a faraway expression of longing.
“It was no terrible burden, no thing too hard to bear. My bloodline is the land, after all. Every handful of soil, every drop of water…Even now, this England, this unified-under-Christ England my brother dreams of, my blood is what feeds all these lands. I love it beyond passion. Beyond logic. Beyond my own life. I have no choice.” Morgain stared wistfully over Ailis’s shoulder.
“My ally…does not love this land,” Morgain continued. “I did not understand that until last night. Until it was, perhaps, too late. Under the calm it shows the world, there is a seething madness.”
She shook her head, then looked at Ailis, the haze that had fallen over her eyes finally clearing.
“It has created a spell, a form of sympathetic magic.”
Ailis nodded, indicating that she understood, but the boys looked lost. Morgain explained. “Take a map, for example. Shape it as closely as possible to the actual land it covers. Then burn it, and fires will ravage the land