The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [52]
“Why not?”
“I told you, back when Arthur first announced this entire Quest idea. The Grail’s not something to be won. It has to be earned. How many times do I have to tell you anything before you listen?”
Gerard dimly remembered her saying something like that. He and Mak had been discussing their slim chances of being taken along on the Quest, and she had come along and doused their schemes and plans.
“We were here when the dragon coughed it up,” Newt said. “That has to count for something.”
“I think…” Ailis looked at Gerard, speculatively. “I think Ger’s willingness to do the right thing, facing the dragon like he promised, had something to do with it.”
He could feel his face turning red. Now that the danger was passed, his thoughts and emotions felt overdone, silly.
“But all it did was make the dragon pass along the Grail,” she went on. “It didn’t give it to us.”
“There’s a difference?” Newt seemed uncertain.
“There is.” On that point, she was definite. “None of us is a bad person—we’re all pretty good, actually. Loyal. Brave. But we’re not without sin. We’re not…Sir Galahad, for example.” Sir Galahad the Pure, as he was known throughout the land, was said to never argue, never fuss, but was serene and mild even under the worst conditions. It was very irritating to most of his fellow knights, even as they admired his piety and goodness.
“If what you’re saying is true, though, I did earn it,” Gerard insisted. But his voice was uncertain, and his gaze flickered around the cavern, settling on anything except the Grail, as though it might rise up and refute him.
“You freed it. Or called it. But if we earned it, why isn’t it all glowing or anything, the way it is in all the parchments and tapestries?”
“Maybe because it needs to be held?”
“Then why isn’t one of us holding it?”
None of them made a move to be the first to pick it up.
“Isn’t not feeling worthy a sign that you’re worthy?” Newt suggested.
Both Gerard and Ailis looked at him. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. Even if it were glowing and singing hymns and calling down angels, none of it would help unless there happens to be a slip of parchment in there that has what we’re looking for. Or did you forget why we’re really here?”
“How can you say that?” Gerard was outraged, his former uncertainty giving way to anger that made his spine straighten even against the pain. “The Grail is everything. It’s what this has all been about!”
Newt bent down and picked the Grail up, his hand closing around the carved stem without hesitation. “To you, to the rest of the knights, sure. It’s a relic, maybe even a powerful one. But it’s not going to save us from Morgain’s companion and whatever it has planned. Only we can do that.”
They were brave words, and true. Unfortunately, he had no idea what to do. And from the look on his friends’ faces, neither did they.
TWELVE
“So…What do we do now?” Newt asked.
Ailis looked around, checking carefully around the bulk of the dragon without getting too close. There was nothing that, as far as she was able to determine, could lead them to the name of the shadow-figure. Giving up, she turned to watch her friends.
Newt was helping Gerard hobble a few steps. Then he stopped and tested the bandages she had tied. The bleeding had stopped, for the most part, and his sword was doing decent second duty as a crutch, which was almost more painful to Gerard, she suspected, than the wounds themselves. They’d have to go slowly, but he would be able to travel.
“Morgain said the answer was here—a Well of Bitter Water.” Again, the reference tickled at her memory, but nothing came of it. “Whatever that is, it’s not in this room…so we must go on.”
“And the Grail?” Gerard asked.
“It waited for decades, inside a dragon’s gut,” she said, reluctant but practical. “It can wait a little while longer.”
“And if we don’t make it?” Gerard didn’t intend for it to sound so harsh, but the question had to be asked.
“We make sure that we make it,” Newt said firmly. “Agreed?”
“I can agree