The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [6]
“Where are you going?”
“Must I account for my every movement to you?”
Gerard was taken aback by the sharpness in her voice. He knew that Ailis had a temper, but it seemed extreme in response to a simple question. He had never thought that she would be the one to heed Sir Matthias’s objections, and turn away from him.
She saw his confusion, and her face softened. “I’m sorry. It’s…female things,” she said, and lifted the box as though that would explain everything. Suddenly Gerard didn’t want to know. Female things were not anything a squire needed to know about.
Ailis left the pavilion with an air of relief. The more time Gerard spent with Sir Matthias the more like the knight he became. While there was nothing wrong with Sir Matthias—she certainly preferred him to Sir Daffyd, who stank of stale herbs, or Sir Ballin, a man who never missed a chance to make a comment about the “inferiors” on the Quest—she missed the old, less self-conscious, less officious Gerard. The Gerard who had once waded into a creek to battle a bridge troll only to require rescuing himself, and was even able to laugh about it afterward. Knowing that things had changed for all of them didn’t make the results any easier to bear.
From the way the two of them had been talking when they came in, she assumed that discussions with the monks had not gone well. She could have told them that the night they arrived. The stone walls of the monastery were fine, indeed quality work that would doubtless stand a hundred or more years, but there was no feel of magic to them; no sense of the awe or wonder that Morgain said permeated any area where a magical object had spent any length of time.
The Grail was magical, even if it was not magic itself. Too many people believed in it for it not to be magical. Faith was power.
Ailis believed that magic was power. Not physical strength, but the ability to do, to create. She once shared these thoughts with Gerard. She told him that the Grail is supposed to embody power—the ability to create a High King. She said, “So that’s magic. Because the source of magic is belief. You know it exists, the way you know the wind and rain are real. And so you trust in that belief. Merlin said that. You have to believe.”
“The Grail is more than magic,” Gerard had retorted. “It’s faith. Something you don’t know and can’t prove. You simply have to…have faith.”
Faith might not be magic, but Ailis knew enough now to understand that belief was essential to both. And if you did not believe, you did not succeed.
As she walked, her feet pressed down on grass that hadn’t been trampled by male feet. She followed a trail that led into a narrow copse of trees. Sunlight barely reached through the branches. For a moment, she was plunged into dusk, until the narrow path carried her to a smaller meadow on the other side.
The grass was almost knee-high here, and scattered with small yellow thistles and white bindweed. The smell of dirt and fresh air was a welcomed change from the musty, musky smell of leather and metal that filled the camp.
Satisfied that she was alone, Ailis bent down and placed the wooden box she had brought with her on the ground. She opened it up and withdrew a long, knotted piece of string.
It was a simple spell, one of the first Morgain had taught her. Merlin had said she was to practice. And she was far away from anyone who might notice. All the knights were being scolded by Sir Matthias, and the squires would be taking advantage of the free time to do…whatever it was boys did when their masters were busy.
She wasn’t doing anything wrong. You never knew when you might need to raise the wind—to move sails along or distract the nose of a predator.
Holding the string in both hands, she ran the fingers of her left hand up and down the knots, her lips moving in a soundless invocation.
Once…twice…the third time she repeated it, her voice was barely audible. The wind in the trees behind her rose in volume. A fourth time, and clouds