The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [61]
The cup seemed to fall forever, but all too soon a splash rose up, hitting the walls of the well, washing away the soot-drawn symbols and leaving the stones clean.
Morgain screamed once in denial, but the goddess’s scream was shriller, high-pitched and piercing, like the howl of the bansidhe, the fairy creature who foretells death.
Ailis ran to Newt, pulled him upright, and checked to make sure he was all right.
Gerard’s heart clenched in pain—after all he had given up, he saw that she went to the stable boy first. Then her hand reached out for his, and he clasped her fingers and let himself be drawn into a three-way hug.
The scream built and built, a hot wind rising around them, powerful thunder crashing inside the cavern until all three had no choice but to cover their ears and huddle together until it stopped.
When they finally uncurled themselves from the ground, everything was gone. Morgain, Nemesis, the well. The ground was scored clean, the grass gone. The nearest trees were uprooted and slanting against each other.
“The Grail?” It wasn’t really a question, but Gerard answered Newt anyway.
“Gone.”
Ailis blinked grit and tears from her eyes, and looked over her shoulder. “Constans! He’s gone, too.”
In fact, the entire fire pit was gone, and with it, the salamander.
“I think…I think facing what I was…what I could be, and then rejecting it. I think I sent it away,” Newt said sadly.
“Because it was magic?”
“Because it was me. In a way. That’s why I named it what I did, I guess.”
“Constans. That’s a Roman name. Like your grand-da.”
“Like me,” Newt corrected her. “Constans is the name my folks gave me. But my ma always called me Newt. Little Newt.”
“Because your magic was tied to fire.”
Newt shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll never know.”
“So who are you?” Gerard asked.
“I’m me,” Newt said, after a long pause. “Morgain was wrong. True names are power, but the name your parents give you isn’t always the true name.”
“But the magic…”
“Gone.” He was lying—Newt could feel the magic still simmering, locked away down inside him. But he had no intention of ever calling on it again. Unlike Ailis, he felt no pangs of loss. It wasn’t fun, wasn’t part of him he liked, but a killing tool, one he had no desire to wield. He was a stable boy, not a soldier.
“Not all magic is bad,” Ailis said, with the tone of someone who had argued the point one time too many.
“No,” Newt agreed, his arm around her shoulders. Not when you choose it, rather than being overrun by it. Ailis had learned that when she walked away from Morgain and the sorceress’s lures. She went back, yes, but under her own terms, her own choice. She walked into that fire with a goal, and never lost sight of it. Just as he chose not to use his. It was his inheritance. But it wasn’t his life.
Gerard looked around the cavern again, at the trees, the cave walls, and his two bedraggled and battered friends, then flopped onto his back with a heavy sigh.
“Nobody,” he said with a sigh, “is going to believe this.”
“Merlin will,” Newt said. “Or maybe he already knows and forgot. Or something like that. Merlin makes my head hurt.”
The three friends smiled at each other in weary accord.
Some time later, the three of them staggered out of the melted hole in the cavern’s entrance, blinking at the dawn sunlight filling the sky.
“How long were we in there?” Newt wondered.
“No idea,” Gerard said. “It felt like…”
“Forever,” Ailis said. “Forever and a day, and an entire life.”
“I’m hungry.” Newt’s comment was so matter-of-fact, it sent them all into fits of laughter. “Well, I am,” he protested. “Like I’m all hollow inside. You aren’t?”
“I am, actually,” Ailis said thoughtfully. “Maybe all the magic we were using…”
“Or maybe we just haven’t eaten all day. Days. However long it really has been. I’d eat the dragon, if he didn’t have all those scales,” Gerard said.
“And if taking a bite wouldn’t maybe wake him up again?” Ailis said.
“More to the point, anyone have any idea how we’re getting home?” Newt asked. His arm was still around Ailis; a combination of bone-weariness