Grail Quest - The Shadow Companion Part 12

"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 roof of the cavern, its expression astonished and angry.

The chime sounded again, rising as the echoes of the first peal faded, and the dragon's entire body convulsed, the twitch beginning in its gut, working all the way up its ma.s.sive torso. Newt could almost see each scale bulge and ripple as something terrible happened within the dragon's body, rising all the way up the dragon's long, sinewy neck.

"He looks"-not even the glory of the sound could stop the comment from coming out of his mouth-"like he's going to throw up!"

The dragon shook its head, swinging its neck back and forth, as though trying to deny whatever was happening. A third chime sounded, this time more insistent, and Ailis gasped. "It's coming from inside the dragon!"

Even as they both realized the origin of the sound, the dragon's mouth opened, and a blast of flame emerged.

Cold flame. Newt realized even as he shielded Ailis with his body. Constans rose up on his shoulder, its neck stretched out to greet the fire, a smaller, more slender version of the dragon. His tongue flicked out in antic.i.p.ation.

The flame broke over the salamander like water flowing around a sword, and flowed past them as formless and gentle as a mother's kiss.

Newt dared to look over his shoulder, and his jaw fell open. Whatever shocks, whatever surprises he had dealt with until now were nothing compared to the sight of what was being belched from the dragon's gut.

It landed a few paces from them, the glow dissipating from around it as it fell. The dragon's body folded in on itself, the great neck coiling back down onto its shoulders, torso and tail curling into a sleeping pose. The glaring eyes flickered shut.

Newt held his breath. The dragon did not move.

The last remnant of the chimes faded entirely, leaving behind nothing but a patient silence.

"Ailis." Newt's voice was hoa.r.s.e, as though he had been screaming for months. He cleared his throat, wincing at how much it hurt, and tried again. "Ailis."

She opened her eyes, pulling away from Newt's protective hug, and looked around, visibly bracing herself for the sight of Gerard, sprawled lifeless and b.l.o.o.d.y on the cavern floor.

He was b.l.o.o.d.y, yes, but still breathing. At least until he looked up and saw the dragon, no longer any threat to him. His skin flushed, then went white, and he fell back to his knees, wincing in pain as he did so.

"We did it," he said in awe. "We found the Grail."

"From the body of the last dragon left in England," Newt said, getting to his feet and walking over on wobbly legs, looking down in wonder.

It was such a simple thing: a plain wooden goblet, scratched and battered from use and age. The wood was dark, with a purple-tinged grain.

"Olivewood," Newt said, then blinked, surprised that he had known it.

Gerard reached out to touch it, then stopped. It was just a cup, a thing that would have looked totally ordinary next to any knight's trencher back in Camelot. But there was no doubt among them what it truly was.

"I wonder if the dragon swallowed it, thinking it was treasure . . . or if someone put it there, for safekeeping." Ailis had gone directly to Gerard, checking his leg, then his arm. She tried to pull strips off her skirt in order to create a bandage. The fabric was tough to tear, so she pulled Gerard's dagger from his belt without him even noticing, using it to slice at the fabric.

"For safekeeping? Ow!" He complained as she tied the makeshift bandage around his leg.

"It makes as much sense as hiding it in a forest," she retorted, taking refuge in arguing. "Maybe . . . maybe the dragon's being magical itself, by its very nature, hid the magic of the Grail . . ."

"How?" Gerard asked.

"Things magical. They feel different." She didn't know how else to explain what she could see so clearly. "I can feel it now, coming off the Grail. I couldn't sense it before, like the dragon blocked it. But what made the dragon give it up? And why is it sleeping now?"

"Who cares?" Gerard's pain and defeat was forgotten as he stared at the prize. "We did it. We won the Grail!"

Ailis pulled the second bandage around his arm tighter than she might have. "Don't say that."

"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 pa.s.sed, his thoughts and emotions felt overdone, silly.

"But all it did was make the dragon pa.s.s 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.

o . . . 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 to that," Ailis said, and Gerard nodded his own reluctant agreement. He longed to take the Grail to Arthur, but what would be the point, if abandoning Morgain's charge left them at the mercy of the companion's evil plans?

"So," Newt said. "There are no ways out except the way we came in. So we go back and take the other pa.s.sage."

He looked around for a place to put the Grail, but his pack was already overfull, thanks to Constans taking up residence there again. The urge to give it to Ailis, rather than let Gerard hold it, flashed through his brain, and he squelched it. The squire would not abandon them to return to Camelot with his prize. Of all three of them, Gerard had risked the most, going against Sir Matthias, facing down the dragon. He had earned the right to carry it, if nothing else. Besides, it would give him something to think about other than the pain, which had to be intense.

"Let's go."

As they walked, Newt felt a strange sense of unease crawling in his veins. Constans seemed to be twitchy as well, crawling out of the pack slung against the boy's back and up to the top of Newt's head in order to see better. After the salamander deliberately dug his claws into Newt's scalp a few times when Newt took specific turns, the boy shrugged and started letting the lizard lead them. It was no worse a way of choosing direction than any other, he supposed.

Constans led them down branch after branch of the main artery, each hallway becoming narrower and darker.

"Your head is glowing," Ailis noted once. Newt's s.h.a.ggy black hair was indeed lit from underneath- specifically where Constans was. The salamander's skin was emitting a faint glow, which picked up the highlights and made it seem as though Newt's hair were made of low-burning twigs, or faint flames.

"There are women back in Camelot who would pay good money to make their hair do that," Ailis said. "Perhaps when we get back, you could sell Constans to them."

"Sell?" Newt clutched at his heart dramatically, as though horrified she could suggest such a thing.

"All right then, loan. For favors in return."

Favors were the coin of the court, in many ways; that and gossip. Newt seriously doubted that any of the ladies would be willing to owe him anything even for the use of the salamander. But it was an amusing thought to pa.s.s time while they walked through dark, stone hallways, trying not to wonder too much about what they would find-if anything.

"Wait." Gerard stopped, resting with the sword's point digging a scratch into the soft rock of the floor under his weight. "Do you smell that?"

"What?"

"Salt.w.a.ter," Newt said, sniffing the air as well.

"In the middle of a mountain?" Ailis blinked, looking between the two of them. "Bitter water . . ."

That had been the phrase she was trying to remember. Back in the Queen's solar, what seemed like a lifetime ago, a young singer had recited a poem from an earlier generation, about a sailor's sweetheart longing for the scent of sea to remind her of the man she missed.

"And bitter water she cried into the well Calling the shape of her master Mastering the water the waves he rode And wishing him home on the next tide."

They picked up the pace as best they could with Gerard's leg slowing them down. Another turn, and the smell of the water mixed with something sweeter but equally sharp.

"Oh."

"That's . . . unexpected," Newt said dryly, holding his nose, while Constans hissed in what might have been agreement or pleasure.

The pa.s.sageway broadened suddenly into a bright cavern so large they could not see the ceiling or the sides. A grove of trees grew in the center, their roots digging directly into the rock as though it were the richest soil.

Newt started listing off the trees he saw there: "Rowan, oak, yew-lots of yew. Ash, hazel-none of these should be growing here. None of them should be growing together."

"Hush," Ailis said, but it was impossible to be annoyed, not in the face of the miracle in front of them.