The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [0]
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