The Camelot Spell Read online

  Grail Quest

  The Camelot Spell

  Laura Anne Gilman

  For Daniel and Evan Klein

  Contents

  Prologue

  “This is such a remarkably bad idea. There’s no possible…

  One

  “This entire castle has gone mad!”

  Two

  Two of the younger pages began to bawl, sitting on…

  Three

  Birds chirped and tweeted outside the stable, heralding the first…

  Four

  “Do you think they’ve woken yet?” Newt asked.

  Five

  The source of the light was a structure unlike any…

  Six

  Once, just once, I’d like to hear a story that…

  Seven

  They finally settled on heading east by the simple expedient…

  Eight

  “A gain I ask, why can’t magical items be hidden…

  Nine

  The change from sunlight to darkness was gradual; the light…

  Ten

  They rode all through that night and most of the…

  Eleven

  Once years ago, Newt had gotten horribly drunk on a…

  Twelve

  Traveling through magical portals wasn’t the most dignified way to…

  Thirteen

  “They’re not taking us seriously,” Ailis complained. “We saved the…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  WINTER, 12TH YEAR OF ARTHUR’S PAX BRITANNICA

  “This is such a remarkably bad idea. There’s no possible way it will work. It’s no wonder I thought of it.”

  The people of Camelot were well accustomed to seeing—and hearing—Merlin wandering the halls at odd hours, muttering to himself. And so they passed him by with no more than a dutiful curtsey or nod of the head. You didn’t want to distract the king’s most famous and dangerous advisor, but neither did you want to risk his anger.

  He hadn’t turned anyone into a rat in years. But you never knew…with enchanters.

  “The question is,” Merlin went on, walking down a long hallway that led from his tower to the main part of the castle, “was I under a spell when I thought of it, or was I just being particularly stupid that day?”

  One of the many drawbacks of living backward in time, as he did: You knew what you had done because you saw the results of it, but unless you left yourself careful notes—something Merlin always forgot to do—you had no idea why you had done it. Confusing. But then so much of his life, aside from the parts that were impossible, was confusing. One simply got used to it after a while.

  Merlin turned a corner and found himself in an antechamber in the main building. Camelot was one of those palaces where every place you wanted to be always seemed to be the farthest spot from where you were—except this room. This room was in the heart of the castle. This room was, in many ways, the soul of Camelot.

  He commanded the great wooden doors in front of him to open, using the language of magic he had learned years before he knew who he was or what his role in King Arthur’s life would be.

  The magic worked at his command, as it always did. The heavy, metal locks on the doors slid open without anyone touching them, allowing Merlin access into the Room. There was a smaller door set into the great doors that was used by servants and pages to enter and leave during council sessions without disturbing those inside. But Merlin was in a mood today and felt no need to use a servants’ entrance. Besides, the enchanter was taller than most in Camelot and he had no desire to bend over almost double to use the smaller door. Servants’ trousers and tunics might look fine when ducking and scraping; the robes of an enchanter did not.

  The Room was the official Council Room, but nobody called it that. If anyone in all of Camelot mentioned “the Room,” everyone knew what they were talking about. This was the room where King Arthur—the warlord of Britain, the uniter of the tribes against the invaders from Rome—held counsel with his most favored, most wise knights, all of them seated around the great council table.

  The thought was enough to make the ancient enchanter give a disdainful snort as he walked into the Room. Then he sneezed.

  “Someone’s forgotten to clean in here again,” he muttered, drawing his robes aside as he walked through the Room, his soft leather shoes kicking up a faint cloud of dust. The tapestries on the stone walls were dulled, and the floor itself—was that a half-gnawed bone on the floor? Merlin rolled his eyes in an overly dramatic fashion. Some of the knights King Arthur gathered around himself were great fighters, yes, and occasionally one of them had a logical thought in his head, but their manners were deplorable. The greatest of England, pffagh. He made a noise of disgust.

  And this newest idea of the king’s, this Quest for the Holy Grail…pffagh again. The last thing King Arthur needed was to send his men haring about on some foolishness when he should be keeping them close at hand. But one might as well talk to a horse as Arthur once the boy had an idea stuck in his head.

  Perhaps it was not entirely madness. The Grail, beyond its significance as a holy relic, was an object of true power with the weight of a thousand years of history behind it. Although it pained Merlin to admit it, there were things his magic could not accomplish for King Arthur; places where neither magic nor warriors swayed minds or hearts. But this Grail—the Christians’ Holy Grail—might indeed be the answer to that.

  And if Arthur wanted the Grail for more than simply political reasons; a matter of religion perhaps—well, each man must choose his own God, as he sees fit. So long as he keeps his feet firmly on this earth, while he lives on it.

  Despite the dust on the floor, the Table itself gleamed, the entire surface made from a single great oak Arthur himself had chosen. He came up with some astonishingly stupid ideas, yes, but even Merlin had to admit that the Table was a good one. A round table, where none might feel greater or lesser than any other? A table where any man might sit next to his king and lean over to give him counsel? Yes, a good idea. An excellent idea, cementing the petty war-leaders and chieftains to the warrior-king who united them. Though at times such conviviality led men into thinking that they were all equal, and they were not. Some were greater fools than the others.

  Speaking of which…

  “You, Gerard,” the enchanter snapped. “Tell someone to clean in here! I don’t care if it is winter and they’re bored out of their small skulls. Arthur cannot call his knights to order when they can’t speak for coughing.”

  He grinned at the startled young creature who appeared in front of him. The boy had been hiding behind one of the tapestries that lined the chamber—the one that showed Arthur taking his sword Excalibur from the stone in order to prove his lineage. The boy had been snooping where he shouldn’t have been, obviously, and hid when he heard Merlin come in. Now he stared at the enchanter, his eyes open wide.

  “There’s no magic to knowing your name, boy.” Well, all right, some magic. How else could he tell the little beasts that passed for pages and squires apart? “As for finding you…you left a trail in the dust. And you’re the only one of your pack who would be in here, touching and nosing where you’ve no right to be. No, no apologies. I admire that sort of behavior. When you’ve got power, then you can play by the rules. Until then, make do with whatever you can find or ferret out.”

  “That’s not—” Gerard started, suddenly realizing who he was arguing with.

  “Not right? Not knightly behavior? Maybe. Maybe not.” Merlin bent forward and looked at the boy closely. The squire’s blond hair had been cut short, the better to fi
t under a helm, and his big blue eyes held something familiar in them….

  “Right. Kay’s nephew, the one who’s been fostered to Rheynold?” Fostering was the current popular practice of sending your boy-children, when they reached a certain age, to be raised in the household of another knight who could train them without letting ties of blood or affection interfere. Rheynold didn’t take many squires, but when the king’s own foster brother asks…

  Without waiting for the squire to respond, the enchanter nodded his head, his own eyes dark and sharp above an eagle’s beak of a nose. “You’ve impressed me, boy, although cursed if I can remember how, since it hasn’t happened yet. Keep up with it, keep up with it! And mind you tell those useless wretches to dust in here!”

  Gerard watched the tall, slender form of the wizard circle the Round Table, waving his hands and still talking until he came to Arthur’s chair. Carved out of a dark polished wood, it was half as large as the other chairs that Gerard had—carefully, cautiously—been sitting in, but otherwise looked the same as all the others, with straight backs and uncomfortable seats. Gerard knew from having served during council sessions that some of the knights brought cushions with them but still found the great chairs uncomfortable. Gerard didn’t care. He wanted to sit at the Table so badly he could taste it. That was what was important: to be one of King Arthur’s trusted companions, a knight proven in valor and honor.

  “As it was done, so let it be done. There.”

  Gerard looked up again to see Merlin scattering a strange, shiny powder over Arthur’s chair, then dusting his hands off as though to get rid of the last flakes. “Not that it does any good, but it might have been far worse without it. Idiot warlords, always having something to prove. And worse when there’s a woman involved, as I should well have learned by now. Especially during the winter. Too many minstrels whining on about courtly love. Pffagh. None of this ‘longing from afar’ nonsense for me. You want something? Go after it. Don’t sit around and moon because you’re too noble to get your hands muddy.”

  Merlin noticed Gerard staring at him. “What, you still here? Go, shoo. Go!”

  Gerard didn’t wait to be told a third time, taking to his heels and leaving the enchanter to whatever he was doing. Sir Rheynold would be furious if he knew Gerard had been lingering in the Council Room where he was not supposed to be.

  “Although,” a little voice that sounded a lot like his own said to him, “I wasn’t exactly alone. Merlin was there. And he didn’t scold me.”

  “Merlin is insane,” another voice in his head countered, this one sounding a great deal like Sir Bors, a companion of his foster father, Sir Kay, and the knight who taught the squires their lessons. “Useful, but insane.”

  And with that voice, the squire could not disagree.

  In the room which held the great Round Table of King Arthur, the enchanter named Merlin looked at his handiwork, but his mind was preoccupied with the young boy who had just fled.

  “Insane, yes,” he agreed with the voice in Gerard’s head. “But oh, so useful!” Now if Merlin could only remember what it was that he knew about this boy, and what role he would play in all that was going to happen.

  Too much happening, the enchanter decided finally. Too many intersections, too many potential outcomes. Too many enemies waiting to strike. Magic could only look so far into the future—and then it all became chaos.

  “Ah well, old man,” he said to himself, chuckling. “That’s half the point, isn’t it? Think how boring it would be if everyone knew where they were going all the time.”

  ONE

  SPRING, 12TH YEAR OF ARTHUR’S PAX BRITANNICA

  “This entire castle has gone mad!”

  Gerard instinctively ducked out of the way as the chief cook sent his assistants into motion with a wave of one muscled arm, flinging flour-dust over everyone within range. The spring morning was warm, and thrice so down here, where the ovens were burning hot and flour stuck to sweaty skin and dampened tunics and aprons. His face already perspiring, the squire hung close to the doorway, mentally cursing his master for sending him down to the kitchens today of all days.

  “It’s the Quest,” one of the under-bakers ventured from where they huddled near the great brick ovens of Camelot’s kitchen.

  The cook glowered at the boy who’d spoken. “Of course it’s the Quest! Everything has been the Quest for months now! And I, for one, will be glad when they’re all gone and out of my hair”—Gerard, along with everyone else in the kitchen, refrained from pointing out that Cook had no hair—“and we can get back to living like civilized folk!” He caught sight of Gerard by the door and pointed one oversized, flour-covered hand at him. “You. What are you doing here?”

  The squire swallowed hard, reminding himself that in his fourteen years of life, he had faced much worse than Cook’s temper. Well, faced some things almost as bad, anyway. “Message from my master, Sir Rheynold, about—”

  “About that bird of his, I’ll wager, no?” Cook was a fearsome-looking mountain of a man at the best of times. But when he smiled, even brave knights took a step back. “Tell your master the fowl arrived safely and will be a masterpiece when we’re done with it. Rest easy.”

  Gerard personally hated the taste of peacock, especially when the outer layer of flesh was stuffed with roasted pigeon the way his master enjoyed it, but he knew better than to say so. It was not his place, as a mere squire, to speak anything but good of his master’s choices. Especially when the dish was one the king was also reported to enjoy, and Sir Rheynold was currying favor by arranging for the banquet tonight.

  All the knights did it, one way or another, with presents or sweet words or brave actions dedicated to the king and his queen. Arthur was an easygoing man, for a king, but he wore the crown, and the crown had the power. Gerard had lived in Camelot for six years now under Sir Rheynold’s fosterage, and he thought he understood how things went. Power was to be catered to, and you had to establish your own power in turn. Or, in Gerard’s case, maintain the power of the man who sheltered and trained him. That was the way of the world.

  Nodding his head to give the right amount of respect due to a servant of Cook’s ability and reputation, Gerard said, “I’ll tell Sir Rheynold of your assurances. I am sure he thanks you for your attention to this offering.”

  Message delivered, he turned to escape the heat and chaos of the kitchen. He should have gone directly back to his master’s rooms up in the east wing of the castle to see what else might be required of him. But Cook had not been exaggerating about the energy that was filling Camelot. Two months prior, Arthur had announced a Quest. It had come to him in a dream, he said. A great Quest, blessed by God, to search out and find the Holy Grail brought to this island by Joseph of Arimathea from the Holy Land and then lost for centuries after his death.

  The Knights of the Round Table would find it. Restore it. Bring it back to Camelot, where it would be the fitting symbol of Arthur’s kingship, alongside his sword Excalibur. It would be a glorious, wonderful thing.

  For the past week, men had been riding to Camelot to speak with Arthur and explain why they should be honored with a place on this Quest. At the banquet tonight, Arthur himself would proclaim the names of the knights who would ride out on this Quest of his. The entire castle was mad from it; so much so that anyone caught unoccupied was sure to be put to work.

  Gerard never shirked from work…but he saw no reason to look for it, either. Especially, he admitted reluctantly to himself, since the Quest had completely overlooked him. Not that he, a mere squire, would have been allowed to take part, but he was no more immune to the dreams than any other. To be the one who found the legendary Holy Grail, who brought it home to Arthur’s hands and reaped the praise and rewards such a treasure must bring…

  “But first you’d have to be there to find it. And that’s not going to happen now, is it?” he told himself, moving down the narrow side-halls that were used only by servants and the occasional page or squire
in a hurry. No, it wouldn’t be he who found the Grail, even if he had been allowed to go along on the search. One of the knights would find it. Most likely Lancelot, who was the perfect knight, brave and noble and kind even to the clumsiest of pages, although his face was not handsome. Or Gawain, whom everyone called “the Pure.” No, not a lowly squire, no matter how noble his bloodlines might be.

  A page, his young face flushed with exertion, hurried toward him with half a dozen parchments under one arm. “Gerard, Pickleface is looking for you!”

  “Drat it,” Gerard muttered, waving his thanks to the younger boy. If Pickleface—Master Balin, so-called because of the sourness of his expression—was looking for him, it could only be bad. As a squire, Gerard was supposed to be above any duties the page-master might give him, but explaining that to this adult would earn him a sound boxing on the ears and he’d still have to do whatever Balin had in mind.

  On a whim, Gerard took the left-hand hallway instead of the right, and eased open the door in the stone wall to find himself in the courtyard opposite from the stable.

  He crossed the courtyard quickly, then let himself into the stable. The cool shade inside the wooden structure was a relief after the heat of the kitchen. He blinked and let his eyes adjust. It seemed quiet enough, despite so many knights having their horses stabled there. More than fifty had come to Camelot. Of them, twenty-seven knights total, plus their squires fortunate enough to travel with them, would soon set off on the Quest. No more and no less, Arthur had decreed: Nine times three, for a number that was pleasing to him. The knights would be dependent upon themselves, not what they could bring with them, and so all would begin the Quest as equals.