The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [50]
“He can’t…” Newt started to say.
“He will,” Ailis said fiercely, but without confidence.
He couldn’t, of course. Perhaps not even the best of knights could have, not against a full-grown dragon. After all, were they not so deadly, they would not be so feared.
“No!” Newt wasn’t sure who had cried out, Ailis or himself, or both. Gerard went down, a gash across his left leg bleeding through his clothing.
The dragon raised itself to full height, clearly savoring the moment.
Gerard got up on his uninjured leg, using the sword as a crutch, and stared back at the dragon. His body shook, but his gaze was steady. Newt tried to look anywhere else rather than see what was about to happen. He noticed that the sunlight coming down into the chamber had strengthened—the sun must have been at such an angle as to shine directly into the opening. One beam in particular caught Gerard’s form, casting a long narrow darkness against the blood-splattered ground.
“The Grail hides in shadows, in long dark shadows. Bring the light, and dispel the shadows. Find the Grail.”
He couldn’t remember why the words echoed in his head at that exact moment. Brother Jannot. Long dark shadows. The Grail. Bring the light, and dispel the shadows.
The dragon had already led the way to one talisman—perhaps it knew the whereabouts of a second, too. Newt wondered how to dispel the darkness. Have Ailis set another fire? But how, without further angering the dragon? What to do? His thoughts were chasing each other in frantic movements—anything to keep from thinking about Gerard and what was about to happen.
“Not a great battle, not one to speak of through the ages, but satisfying nonetheless,” the dragon said in its deep, rumbling voice. “Will you beg for mercy, now?”
“Abide…abide by honor,” was all Gerard said. “Allow my companions to go on their way, with no hindrance, and finish this.”
“That is your only word?” The dragon sounded almost disappointed. “You will not beg?”
“For my companions, on your honor,” Gerard repeated, placing his blood-caked sword on the ground before him. “For myself, nothing save a worthy ending.”
The dragon studied him, then nodded with what looked almost to be a sneer. “Prettily said. I don’t believe a word of it, but despite what the shadowed one said, you did come back and honor your vow, and the way you die does matter to you humans, so I will grant that last request.”
All of Gerard’s dreams, his visions of glory, of being the one to find the Grail, save the fair maiden, capture the evildoer, win renown as the bravest, wisest, most wonderful of Arthur’s knights…it all faded, and he let it go.
What mattered was the here and now. All that mattered was that he fulfill his promise, no matter how mistaken the dragon might be about his worth.
All that mattered now was that Ailis and Newt be free to continue with their own quest, and that Morgain be freed from her unholy bargain, that the threat to the kingdom be removed. He heard Ailis’s cry, Newt’s voice in response, but it was all distant as Camelot, now.
Gerard made his peace with all of that, and bent his head to receive the fatal blow.
Newt thought that he was imagining it, at first: that the strain had made him hallucinate. Then Ailis’s cry showed that she had heard it as well. A chiming noise, gentle as a summer’s breeze, clear as a moonlit night. It made him feel as though all the joy had left the world, and then returned but through a different door.
It filled the cavern, every span of it, echoing off the walls, sinking into the air they breathed, their skin, bones, and blood. It made Newt remember, for the first time in years, his mother’s tears.
He looked up, eyes wide, and saw the dragon rearing back even farther, its head rising to the