The Camelot Spell (6 page)

“Poor thing, worn to a wisp by burden of caring for yourself.”

From Ailis it was teasing, and Gerard could take it with good grace. And when Newt’s stomach made a particularly loud rumbling noise as though in agreement with the squire’s request, the evening’s plan was decided.

“Now this…this is a meal!”

Newt and Ailis both raised their mugs to that toast, clinking them in turn against the roasted drumstick Gerard was tearing into. He had declined the weak, watered-down ale that they were drinking, preferring the crystal-cool water that seemed to be the specialty of this town, drawn from the well where they had been sitting earlier.

The tavern was small with barely enough room for the owner to move around the few tables set around a central hearth. There was firewood in it, but because the day had been warm, it was unlit. In the cooler days and nights of winter, though, it would doubtless give off a welcome antidote to the chill.

“What do you think is happening…back home?” Ailis asked, after they had taken the edge off their hunger. She had been about to say “back in
Camelot,” but remembered their story just in time. The other tables were filled with locals, some eating, others simply drinking their fill. From the few snatches of conversation she caught, they all seemed to speak in the baffling manner of the other villagers. Ailis didn’t know if that was good or bad. She’d like to think that it had been Merlin giving them a message through the woman, and that they were among loyal friends. But they had no way to know for certain, so they couldn’t risk mentioning Camelot—not when the safety of everyone she cared about rested on Arthur’s enemies not knowing that for several days now, he had been asleep and not on the throne. The need for the Grail, something she had scoffed at earlier, suddenly made more sense. Even asleep, a Grail King could protect his country, just by the possession of the Grail itself. And maybe it would have deflected the spell in the first place…if all the stories were true.

“Every time I try to think about what’s happening back there my stomach hurts,” she went on. “All the things that—”

“They’ll be careful,” Gerard said sternly. “And anyway, we can’t do anything about it—not until we’re home. By then it will be a story to tell.”

“We hope,” Newt said darkly, biting into his meal with more force than the cooking warranted. Ailis flinched at his words.

“Hope. Yes.” Gerard was doing his best Sir Rheynold imitation, confident and paternal, and failing miserably as his voice cracked on the last word. He recovered, then went on. “That’s all we can do, isn’t it?” The two boys locked stares across the table, both their faces drawn into lines that made them look older than their years.

“It is all we can do,” Gerard said again. “Hope…and finish our part in this by bringing the owl home to roost.”

“Speaking of which…it should be almost moonrise.”

Newt looked regretfully at the remains of his meal, then pulled a mostly clean cloth out of his pocket and wrapped the meat and a thick slice of bread in it. He placed the entire thing back into his pocket.

“What?” he asked, looking up to see the two of them staring at him. “We paid for it. And it’s good.”

Ailis’s lips twitched, and she reached into the deep pocket of her skirt and pulled out a slightly cleaner cloth and did likewise with her own leftovers. When
Gerard made no move to imitate them, she reached over and gathered up the remains of his meal as well. “You’ll be hungry later tonight,” she told him.

The conversation with the innkeeper as they settled their bill was as confusing as any they had heard in this town, but Ailis could almost understand the man as he—she thought—wished them a good evening. If this was what extended exposure to Merlin’s magic did to you, as Newt suspected, it didn’t seem too terrible a price. The people and animals seemed healthy, the town was clean and well kept, and the villagers didn’t seem in need of fighters or battlements to protect it. What was a strange manner of speaking in exchange for that?

The sun had gone down below the rooftops by the time they gathered the horses and the mule from the old man, with an extra coin thrown in by Ailis for his honesty in not touching their saddlebags. Gerard frowned when she took the extra coin from the pouch, but didn’t say anything.

Tying their bags back onto the saddles and mounting took only a few moments. Soon they were moving down the road through town as the air darkened from dusk into night. Once they were past the
town walls, the road widened enough for them to ride three abreast. Trees gave way to fields and the sky spread out over them without interruption.

“So many stars,” Ailis noted in wonder. Inside Camelot, a servant was always busy with the things that needed doing. She couldn’t remember the last time she had paused just to look up at the sky.

“We’re fortunate it’s clear,” Gerard said, his gaze moving from the sky to the surrounding fields and then back again. He shifted in his saddle, feeling the comforting weight of the sword strapped within easy reach near his leg. Newt had a cudgel he had fashioned from a thick tree branch, and Gerard suspected he could use it at least as well as his fists. But Ailis was unarmed, and the three of them would look like easy pickings to any thief who might be out this evening on this stretch of road.

“And lucky that it’s not the new moon,” Newt added. “Lucky.”

“I don’t trust luck,” Gerard said. “Too flighty.” He caught the look Ailis gave him and added, “Not that I’m ungrateful for it, I just don’t want to rely on it.”

She seemed satisfied, and he let out a shallow breath. She was only a servant girl, yes, but life was much easier when she wasn’t upset.

He wondered what would happen to Ailis when they were grown. Would she still serve at Camelot? Or would she find someone to marry and move away to start her own household? It shouldn’t matter…and yet, somehow, it did.

He cast a sideways glance at Newt. What would he do when he got older? He was good with horses; Gerard saw that. He had probably been good with the hounds once, too, in order to be moved up to the stables. There were many manor-lords who would pay well for a good stable-master, especially one with ties to Camelot.

He had never thought about servants’ lives before. They were just…there. Gerard shook his head, trying to dislodge the uneasy feeling such thoughts gave him.

The three had been riding along in silence for a while when Newt reined in his gelding and pointed. “It’s rising.”

Over the horizon the pale yellow disk of the moon slid through the sky.

“It moves faster than I thought,” Gerard said.

“At first. Then it slows down. And sometimes it stays forever in the sky, even after the sun comes back up. And in the summer it shows up even in the after
noon.” Newt had obviously spent more time moon-watching than the other two.

“I remember.” Ailis was quiet for a moment as they watched the moon climb beyond the distant tree line. “Why?”

Newt looked at Gerard, who focused up into the sky and shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s a story my nurse used to tell me: The moon is a goddess who has lost her followers, and searches each night for new believers—slowing when she thinks she sees them and speeding up again when they turn their back on her.”

“A pretty story, but none of that answers the important question: How do we follow the moon?” Newt asked, returning the conversation back to more practical matters.

“I suppose we could just ride under it,” Ailis said doubtfully, shifting a little in her saddle to relieve some of the pressure in her legs. She had ridden often when she was a child, but never for so long and not for many years. But she would sooner have her tongue cut out than complain in front of the boys, who would take any sign of weakness as proof that she should have remained back at Camelot.

“You want to ride off the road and across the fields?” Gerard asked. All three turned to look at
the broad expanse of fields. Riding through them would mean riding down the crop that was growing there. Even if they were careful, the horses would be destroying food people might need in the winter. And there might be animal holes or hillocks where, in the dark, a horse could stumble and break its leg.

“Bad idea,” Newt said finally, and while Ailis wanted to argue when Gerard nodded his head as well, she gave in. They knew horses, and the road.

“So what then?”

“The road is going in mostly the same direction as the moon,” Gerard decided. “We’ll follow it for as long as we can. It’s not as though we have anything specific to go on anyway. Only a puzzle-rhyme from a madwoman.”

“One that matches the information on your stolen map,” Newt said, his matter-of-fact tone at odds with the tight expression on his face. Ailis looked from one of them to the other and set her heels into her gelding’s side, making him break into a trot that almost shook her out of her saddle. She had never known such boys who disagreed with each other!

“The moon’s moving,” she pointed out. “We should be, too.”

They rode in relative silence for another stretch, each of them deep in their own thoughts. Camelot and the chaos of the Great Hall seemed impossibly far away in the mostly quiet air. The wind touched the trees, the leaves making a faint shimmering noise. Once or twice the sudden cry of something hunting or hunted reached their ears. But otherwise the only noises were the heavy thudding of hooves on packed dirt, the swishing of tails, and the slightly nasal sound of Newt’s breathing.

“Oh, look!” Ailis said, broken out of her own thoughts by the sight up ahead. “Isn’t that pretty?”

“That” was the reflection of the moon, now at a slanted angle overhead, on the waters of a small lake to their left. The waters were so dark as to seem black, and the silver-white light of the full moon created a reflection that appeared to be almost solid. As they watched, it appeared to sink below the waters, twisting and curving until it formed a bridge just below the surface of the lake.

Gerard and Newt both reined their horses in beside Ailis’s to watch the phenomenon.

“It almost doesn’t seem real,” Newt said.

“It’s not,” Gerard retorted, but without any heat. The sight was lovely, almost magical in its effect but
totally natural…merely a trick of the eye.

“Do you suppose—”

Whatever Ailis was going to suppose was lost as a harsh cry and the sound of heavy wings overhead made all three of them duck instinctively. A great owl, its wingspan as far across as Ailis’s outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip, swooped low and continued across the water. The moonlight touched its feathers, turning the grays and browns into silvers and golds, before the bird curved around and flew into the night and disappeared across the lake and out of view.

“By all that’s holy,” Gerard said, and crossed himself almost without thought.

“Magical,” Ailis whispered, still staring as though the bird might return simply because she willed it.

“The owl,” Newt said a few beats afterward. “‘The owl, lonely flier. Moonlight, water, what you desire.’”

The other two turned to stare at him.

“Do you think—”

“You mean—”

They both spoke at the same time, stopped, looked at each other as though expecting the other to continue, and then started again.

“You mean—”

“You can’t mean—”

They both stopped again and stared at Newt. The stable boy shrugged and stared out over the water. No,
Into
the water. He urged his horse into motion, heading down the road toward the lake and the moonlight bridge.

If this wasn’t the place the woman’s riddle had spoken of, he’d eat his saddle.

After a moment, the others followed hard on his gelding’s hooves, holding their breath in anticipation of…something. They weren’t sure quite what.

“Halt!”

Newt had to pull up hard on the reins to avoid running over the figure that appeared in front of them. The apparition was tall, wearing a long dark robe with a hood. For a moment their hearts leapt with the hope that it was Merlin come to meet them.

That hope was dashed as other figures could be seen behind them, seemingly appearing out of the air.

“Bandits,” Gerard muttered, his hand instinctively going to his sword’s hilt as he silently counted their opponents. Too many. If Newt had been trained to fight, maybe…

The horses shifted uneasily, clearly wanting to bolt at this sudden rise in tension.

“I believe this is where you hand over your belongings,” the leader of the bandits said, placing his hand on Newt’s gelding’s neck and moving in close, effectively keeping Newt from pulling any weapon he might have on his person. Gerard swore. Hand moved away from his hilt to rest on his knee. Only a fool fought when there was no hope of winning. Better to use his brain to find an advantage. “Study your opponent,” Sir Rheynold always said. Find their weakness and use it.

“Your belongings, if you would, young sirs.”

“We have none.”

It was an even bet who was more surprised at the clear voice that rang out into the night, the bandits or the trio from Camelot. But Ailis swallowed hard, nudged her horse forward, and kept talking.

“We’re as poor as you. Perhaps more so. If you must take something, take my horse. He’s not attractive, but he is a very good ride, young, and has no brands on him, unlike the others, so no one could claim you stole him, later on.” The two horses the boys had brought with them carried Camelot’s mark on their ears, easily identifiable by any knight or noble these bandits might encounter. There’s no way to insist upon your innocence when you’re riding a
beast you have no legal claim to.

“You might be lying,” the bandit said thoughtfully.

“We might. But you can see that we are not dressed well, riding at night with no adult to protect us. No jewels. No fancy weapons. And we are very young and not much glory to kill.” She put on her very best serious expression, the one the ladies of the court seemed to prefer on those who served them—the proper face, Lady Melisande called it, although she never said proper for what.

It seemed to work on bandits as well, because the leader peered closely at her then laughed.