Chapter 8
EIGHT
GWENNA
The next morning, I wake up in a cold sweat. It’s a few long minutes before my pulse calms down and I remember where I am.
Caliburn. Morgan.
I sit up. The room’s sizeable, almost as big as our double back in Broceliande, with a wardrobe, desk, and loveseat in addition to the bed. I fumble on the bedside table for the time when I realize: I don’t have my phone. They take them when you check in, and I didn’t stop to get mine back.
Instead, I pull my blanketed knees to my chest. It’s a strange kind of relief, actually. Except that I do want to know the time.
Among other things.
A single thought crystallizes in my mind:
Emrys. Answers.
Inside the wardrobe are clothes. My clothes, technically, the ones I’d left behind at Camlann House.
The ones Kingston bought for me.
I swallow hard. I have no choice. And they are nice clothes. No point in denying it. I pick something out—sweater, skirt, fleece tights—get dressed, then open the bedroom door and find—
—no Morgan.
Callahan.
Sitting at the foot of the door.
Awake, but looking tired.
“I’m…sorry,” he says, scrambling to stand up. God, he’s tall. “Morgan got back last night and told me to come in. Said it was weird if I just stood in the hall.”
“Oh,” I say. “No. That’s…”
Fine? I think. Is it fine?
“She has class,” he says. “But she says she’ll catch up with you later.”
“That’s…thanks,” I say. “I’m going to just…” I press my lips together and glance back at the bathroom door. I suppose he’ll be close by until whoever’s next takes over. “And then I need to go see Emrys,” I finish.
Callahan only nods.
Our walk across campus is silent. In the daylight, Caliburn feels less…
overwhelming than it did last night. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it again.
The Classics Building looks like a gingerbread version of itself, frosted out with icicles and a thick smear of snow, and the endless stairs up to Emrys’s classroom get my blood pumping in a way that’s not unpleasant.
And then we’re there. He’ll be in his classroom tomorrow if you want to stop by, Morgan had said. I’m not uninvited.
Still, though. I’m here, but I’m not…here. In any permanent way.
Feeling suddenly sheepish, I knock on the door.
"Please," says the voice from behind it. “Come in.”
I do.
Stepping back into Dr. Emrys's classroom is like walking right into a memory.
Nothing about it has changed—not the bookshelves, the battered desks, the old posters, the ancient radiator—but I see it all differently now, as something lost, vanished, no longer mine.
Because I'm not technically a student at Caliburn.
I withdrew. That was part of the whole process.
Now I'm just here as some kind of…interloper.
But if that's how I feel, Dr. Emrys doesn't seem to agree.
"She returns," he says, smiling warmly. "My star pupil." He strolls over from his desk and claps a hand on my shoulder. "It is good to see you, Ms. Vale. It hasn't been the same without you around."
“Thank you,” I murmur. I glance over my shoulder, but it seems that Callahan has elected to stay out in the hall this time. Less weird here than in a girls’ dorm, I suppose. I turn back to Emrys.
“I…” I press a hand to my forehead. Should’ve eaten something, stupid. "I'm sorry, I don't even know what's going on. I have a thousand questions and..."
"Of course you do," he says, gesturing for me to sit in the armchair that faces his desk and the chalkboard at the front of the room. "I can't promise clear answers, but...I am at your disposal."
I sink into the seat, pin my wrists between my knees. What do I even…
"So you…know about everything," I say, studying him.
"Oh, I don't think everything," Dr. Emrys says, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers together with a chuckle. "I've always struggled with linear A. And I won't even attempt to do my own income taxes."
I smile in spite of my impatience. "You know what I mean," I say. "About the four of them, and Morgan being a—"
"Yes, yes," Emrys interrupts me. "Indeed." He sits back up straight. "Perhaps I should reintroduce myself. Myrddin Emrys. Educator, scholar, linguist, reader of books, tutor of young minds, and mage."
"Mage," I repeat. Mage. Mage. The word echoes in my mind until it’s nearly meaningless, just sounds strung together. "So you practice magic?
“Of a sort,” he says. “Really, I study it more than practice it. A theoretical mage, if I can invent such a thing to be. I strive to know the rhythms of the world, the pulses of her heartbeat, and to know what it might take to channel and bend them for the benefit of all."
"I see," I say. I let out a long breath. "This...I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude. This sounds actually crazy.”
“Doesn't it?" Dr. Emrys says, agreeing. "And yet, on its face, no more ridiculous than anything prescribed in that chapel over there," he nods out the window, "or prayed for by the gentlemen of Camlann House."
I swallow. “Right. So, they said…”
“They said the truth," he says, "or the truth as they understand it.
They know there is a source of great power in the world—of redemption, solace, healing, divine mystery revealed—and they seek it in their own way, with the full vigor, wealth, and force of the church behind them.
Or," he amends, "a branch of the church.
" He shakes his head. "I confess I do not know too much about the inner workings of the Consistory.
Not something I'm permitted to be privy to.
My partnership with your fellow scholar Mr. Pendragon is something of an…
unusual arrangement, but a useful one. A family with the worldly means to supply the texts that might contain the secrets both of us long to uncover, and me with a long lifetime's worth of knowledge and networks to obtain them. "
At that, my stomach goes icy cold. The library. The manuscripts. Somehow, in the shuffle of revelations, of the chaos of the last day and change, I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten that everything was destroyed and lost.
"I never thought you'd burned the manuscripts," Dr. Emrys says, as though he can read my mind.
And maybe he can. Fuck, I think, then chase the thought away.
"If I'd have been here when it happened," he goes on, "I would have attested as much. No one has more reverence for those artifacts than you, Ms. Vale."
“I…” The simple statement, the absolution, is better than any forgiveness. It's implicit trust and understanding that no, of course I wouldn't. Ever. Never in a thousand years.
I think back to Jessie the therapist just yesterday.
In my professional opinion, Gwenna’s at no significant risk to herself, or others. Frankly, I’m not sure she ever has been.
"But I see why perhaps everyone thinks you did," Emrys goes on, "because things have happened to you that you can't explain."
Now I freeze again, not from dread, but from shock. "How do you know about that?" I whisper.
Emrys goes very still. He studies me for a long moment, then sighs deeply—the sigh of someone who's been carrying a heavy secret.
"Because, Ms. Vale," he says slowly, "I remember it. Or rather, I will remember it.”
I stare at him. "What?"
“Ah, how to explain.” He walks to the window, gazing out at the snow-covered quad.
"Most people experience time like reading a book from front to back.
Birth to death. Cause to effect." He turns back to me.
"I experience it more like...reading that same book backward.
From the last page to the first. I know where the story ends because I've already been there. I'm simply moving away from it."
"You're saying you—" My throat goes dry. "You live backwards?"
"I don't," he admits. "Pure conjecture. But I had an inkling.
There's something about you, Ms. Vale. Something intensely powerful.
Special. Something marvelous. And I don't simply mean the quickness of your mind, although I will admit that's what caught my eye at first. And I'd say the same is true for Mr. Pendragon’s attentions as well.”
I tense my jaw at the second mention of Kingston, but choose to ignore it. “Something special,” I say. “What do you mean, exactly?”
"I mean, Ms. Vale, that if my conjectures are correct, the end of the quest for your four friends lies in…you."
"In me?" I ask, dumbfounded. “In…what? How? I don’t understand.” I don’t understand how that’s possible, I don’t understand what he even means—become what they seek?
“But they're looking for the Holy Grail.
" The words still feel ridiculous to say out loud, but I need to clarify. "What do I have to do with that?"
"What do you know about the Holy Grail, Ms. Vale?" Dr. Emrys asks.
"Um..." I rack my brain. Monty Python references, jeweled-looking cups, a few stupid throwaway lines from The Michelangelo Matrix. "It's a cup," I say stupidly. “From The Last Supper, right? That Jesus used to drink the sacramental wine?"
"Ah," Emrys says, "but is it?" He gets to his feet, shaking a finger in the air, and picks up a piece of chalk. "Middle French, 12th century. You're familiar?"
"In passing," I say. "I've only taken modern French. I was hoping to study it here before I..." I don't finish the sentence.
Emrys doesn't seem to notice. He writes a word on the chalkboard. G-R-A-A-L. "This word," he taps it with a nub of chalk, "means nothing to do with cups. It's more of a platter. And more than that," he says, "how many times does this word appear in the Bible?"
It's a trick question, and I know it. "Zero," I say.
"Correct. We read of cups, certainly, the bread and the wine, but nothing, nothing canonically to indicate that the object itself had anything to do with anything.
It could have just as easily been a holy sandal or a holy perfume bottle.
The grail as such was, I believe, chosen, constructed, and somewhat at random. "