The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [41]
“It has created such a map?”
“Of Albion, yes.”
Albion was the name Morgain used when she was thinking of the Britain of her mothers, before the Romans came; the magical Britain, not the one Arthur ruled.
“My ally used my own flesh and blood in the making, claiming that it will allow me to manipulate spells more effectively. All I need to do is activate the latent magic within. But I fear what it truly plans to do with the map, should I touch the spark within my blood and create the spell.”
“So don’t create the spell,” Newt said, all practicality. It seemed straightforward to him.
“If I do not…” She paused. “We have gone too far at this point. When I called my companion, it granted certain permissions I may not revoke. The ramifications of doing so, of breaking that agreement, would run back along the lines of magic and destroy me.”
“And we care about this?” Gerard sounded as cold-blooded as Newt in this matter. “I’m sorry, Ailis, but seriously. Arthur doesn’t want the blood of his sister on anyone’s hands, but if she brings it on herself…”
“My death will serve the same purpose as if I were to ignite the map myself,” Morgain said. “All those years of tying ourselves to the well-being of the land is a dual-edged sword. As the land goes, so does my strength, my power. And the return is true as well.”
Gerard looked puzzled as he tried to figure out what she meant. Ailis understood it right away. “If you die…”
“Without a child, preferably a girl-child, to carry on the line…” Morgain’s expression turned cold, like the gray clouds of a storm gathering. “If I die, so, too, does the land, unless a successor has been chosen and marked with the blood and soil of the land; vows made must be witnessed, and sealed.”
Gerard started to protest, and Morgain turned her cold face to him. “Did you not understand? In so many ways, I am the land. As Arthur could have been—as he feels the urge to be, but he has chosen to rule differently. And he has no child, as yet, to placate the land.
“Without that, without one of my line to offer ourselves in service, to be the land—crops will fail, wells will run dry, the hunting and fishing returns will decrease, year after year.
“If my ally manages to drain my power into itself, it will control the rise and fall of our fortunes. This land, under its maddened whim…it does not bear thinking of.”
“What can we do to stop it?” Ailis asked.
“Against the companion? Nothing. You do not have the power. Only I can do that.”
“But you said…” Gerard protested, shaken by the idea that she had told them all this merely to leave them helpless.
“I said I need your help, that the land needs your help. And we do.”
Morgain got up from her chair to pace. The giant cat by the door opened its sleepy green eyes to watch her pass, then went back to sleep.
“In my increasing frustration at Arthur’s narrow-mindedness and his failure to take up the old ways, I called this ally to me, at the Well of Bitter Water.”
The phrase seemed familiar to Ailis, but she couldn’t quite remember why.
“I tied myself to my ally,” Morgain went on, “made vows and obligations, as my ally vowed and obligated itself to me in return.
“This is how such magics are worked, witch-child.” Even under the circumstances, Morgain was a teacher, willing her students to understand, as well as accept, what she said. Newt began to see a little of what Ailis found so appealing in the woman. “You must give, in order to receive, no matter who or what you are.”
“So what can we do?” Newt asked, still not quite understanding their role.
“Help free me from my obligation, so that I may strike out against it, without that strike damaging myself as well. In order to be freed, I must know the source of its power—its true name.”
“You called it, and you don’t know its name?” Newt was openly dubious.
Morgain shifted her attention to him. It was uncannily like being the focus of Arthur’s regard.
Newt felt both comforted and disturbed by that reminder that they two were, after all, half siblings.
“Not what it is called, but its True Name, the name