The Camelot Spell (7 page)

“You bargain well, little merchant. And I do not want to have the blood of children on my hands.” The King’s Law was harsh enough on murderers, but those who killed children found no mercy in Arthur’s lands. “Your lives are worth…” The leader walked around them, casually noting the quality of their horses and confirming that the other two were indeed clearly marked. “Your horse and the mule. And whatever it carries.”

“Whatever it carries save our food,” Ailis bargained. “Killing children by starvation is no better.” Gerard had kept the map on him, and his belongings were tied to his own saddle. Anything she or Newt
had placed on the mule could be well lost if it let them live. Hopefully the boys would agree.

The leader waved one hand carelessly, and two of his followers began going through the mule’s packs, removing the packets of food and waterskins, first sniffing them to make sure they contained nothing more interesting than watered-down wine.

“Down you get, little merchant,” one of the bandits said, appearing by Ailis’s side with unnerving silence. His hands were huge, and he lifted her down from the saddle without trouble. She held her breath, thankful that she had tucked up the skirt she wore over her trousers in order to ride, praying that the darkness would keep him from noticing her gender.

“Be good,” she said to her horse, patting it on the neck as the bandit led it away. She felt terribly isolated on the ground, and the look Gerard was giving her when he dismounted to take up the discarded foodstuffs made her feel even worse. So when the leader strode toward her, she had to force herself not to run from him, but stand tall, every inch the defiant boy they thought she was.

The other bandits had already disappeared into the darkness with their prizes, barely a word spoken
among them. Their silence was more frightening than anything else.

“You.” The bandit leader gestured to Newt. “Take up your companion, boy. It’s the least you could do.” He vanished into the shadows as Newt moved his horse closer, putting out a hand for Ailis to take and pulling her up behind him.

She could feel Newt’s back tense when she put her arms around him, but this horse was wider and higher up from the ground than she was used to, and she wasn’t going to risk falling—especially since he had the reins. Not that she didn’t trust him, but it was a long fall to the hard ground and…

She suddenly realized that Gerard was still staring at her with that disbelieving, betrayed expression on his face, clearly visible in the moonlight.

“What?” she asked him. “What was I supposed to do? Let them take everything we had, maybe kill us, too?”

“I wouldn’t have—”

“You would have argued, maybe challenged them? And where would that get us, except dead? And no mission, no Merlin. So we’ve lost one horse and the mule. They let us keep most of the supplies, which they wouldn’t have if I hadn’t amused them.”
Not to mention, which she wasn’t going to, what they might have done if they had realized that she was a girl. She shied away from that thought and went on. “You’re afraid that with two of us on Newt’s horse we’ll move too slowly? Do you want me to get down and walk then?”

Neither boy answered. Ailis felt as if they were blaming or, worse, punishing her for their loss of goods. She felt a cold tension burning inside her at their continued silence. It was as though it were consuming everything in its path, leaving her hollow and shaking, caught up in an abyss. Her mouth opened to scald them with her anger, but no more words came out. A tight fist clenched in her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe.

“Let’s go,” Newt said finally, moving his gelding forward and startling Ailis who wrapped her arms around his waist to stay on. He could jibe at Gerard’s pretensions endlessly for the entertainment of it, but seeing Ailis so angry at the other boy made Newt uncomfortable.

“Go?” Gerard repeated stupidly.

“Moon’s going to be overhead soon.” Newt looked up and the others followed suit. It seemed like hours while they were facing down the bandits, but in truth
it had only been a span of minutes. The moonlight still slanted down onto the water, but the path somehow seemed less solid, more of a dream or an illusion. “If we’re going to do this, we’d better do this.”

“If the moon goes down before we get across…” Ailis started to say. She caught herself, remembering the owl winging over the water. There was no room to question: They had to trust the words the woman spoke—and their own instincts.

“We won’t let it. Ride!” Gerard shouted and kneed his stallion toward the lake and the stretch of silvery moonlight that spanned it. Newt’s horse followed close behind. Ailis clung to Newt tighter, her hood falling back and her braid flying out behind her like a tail as they ran. Water splashed around the horses’ legs. Gerard’s ride stumbled, then recovered. The moonlight caught their clothing, the horses’ coats, and their tack and turned everything into shadows of itself.

The water moved up to their knees, soaking them through. Gerard was muttering under his breath, while Newt tried to remember what he knew about how well horses, even laden horses, could swim. Ailis merely closed her eyes and buried her face against Newt’s back, praying as hard as she
could to whichever gods might be listening. Then the hooves seemed to catch on something, and suddenly they were moving on a flat surface and the waters were falling away from their knees, down to the horses’ hocks.

“The moonlight bridge,” Ailis whispered.

“What?”

“A story I heard once. The moonlight bridge will give you what your heart desires….”

Gerard was too far ahead to hear, but Newt clearly did not believe her. Because she was a girl, Ailis thought bitterly. For all their sniping at each other, the two boys still listened to each other. But not her.

“There’s something else….” She couldn’t remember what, though she knew it was important.

She felt Newt shift in the saddle, as though he were turning to look down at the water.

“Dear God,” he whispered, and she felt him shift slightly again, the muscles in his back and legs tightening. He seemed to lunge forward and Ailis felt him slipping out of her grasp.

Then she remembered what else she had heard about the moonlight bridge and grabbed for him again, this time desperate for his safety, not her own.

“Don’t look. Don’t look!” she yelled, her fingers closing over the rough fabric of his trousers, one hand grabbing at his belt to haul him back into the saddle.

“Please, Newt, don’t look,” she sobbed. She remembered now. “The moonlight bridge gives you a vision of your heart’s desire…. And those who dive in after it are never seen again.”

Maybe they got what they dreamed of. But it wasn’t in this world.

“No,” Newt gasped. His backside was firmly back in the saddle and his hands were shaky on the reins. He was looking straight ahead now. “I’m not looking. Not looking.”

“You saw your heart’s desire?” she asked, curiosity momentarily winning out over fear.

But Newt only murmured, “I’m not looking,” as if to convince himself.

And then they were all three on the sandy shoreline of an island that had absolutely not been there when they first rode into the lake. Newt let out a long, quavering sigh that Ailis could feel through his entire body. She hugged him tighter, trying to say something—she wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe next time he’d listen to her….

Gerard turned his horse to face back the way they had come. Ailis and Newt, reluctantly, followed suit. There was the shore, clear as could be in the night air. As he watched, the moon changed position slightly and the path they had followed shimmered and became only light on the water.

“That was too close,” Newt said, watching the bridge disappear. “How’re we supposed to get back?”

“Go forward,” Gerard said practically. “Look for something on the other side. There may be another bridge.”

“Let’s worry about that after we find Merlin,” Ailis said. “
If
we find Merlin.”

Gerard got down off his horse, making a face as his boots squished with the water inside them. The temptation to take them off and drain the water out was great, but he knew better. Beside the fact that wet leather would be unpleasant if not impossible to put back on, the thought of being caught barefoot and therefore vulnerable in unknown territory was something Sir Bors would never forgive. And Gerard had no desire to be used as an example in a future lecture on preparedness. The fact that nobody would ever know, if he didn’t say anything, never entered into his mind.

“So where do we start looking?” Newt asked. “Anyone have a brilliant plan? Preferably one that doesn’t involve magic, if it’s all the same to you two.”

Gerard glared, annoyed by the stable boy’s continued lack of respect and proper awe for Merlin, if not magic in general, and by the way Ailis’s face fell at Newt’s words, though she never said anything out loud. Newt was, after all, the one who had understood the riddle and gotten them here. Credit had to be given.

“Up there,” Gerard said, pointing to the slight hill at the far end of the sandy ledge they were on.

“Why there?” Newt asked.

“Because there’s nothing here,” Gerard said as patiently as he could. “So we should go higher, in order to see what else is on this island.”

Newt shrugged, placid and sturdy as a carthorse. “All right.”

They led the horses, stumbling and cursing a little when the wet shoes slipped on the grassy hill. There was little light now that the moon was beginning to slide down in the sky, and the air was cool, so they were soon shivering as well.

“Almost there,” Newt said, dropping back to give Ailis a hand when she lost her balance and
almost fell. She resisted taking his offered hand at first, but common sense got the better of her pride. His surprisingly warm fingers closed over hers and tugged her up the last bit of the rise to where Gerard was already standing, looking out over the view.

“What
is
that?” Newt asked. “That” referred to the pulsing gold arc of light off to the left, rising over the trees.

“Magic.” Ailis kept her tone even, despite the urge to be sarcastic. The warm glow that the sight created inside her was clearly not shared by her companions. Not everyone reacted the way she did to the presence of magic. Ailis had trouble remembering that, despite Newt’s constant muttered comments.

“Which means that’s where Merlin is.” Gerard, seemingly oblivious to the sight in front of him and to the tension building between Newt and Ailis, tugged on his horse’s reins and led it slowly down the other side of the hill.

“More magic. I suppose it was to be expected,” Newt said unhappily, right on cue. When Ailis looked sharply at him, he shrugged. “There isn’t any magic in the stables. Just honest horses. I miss that.” He followed Gerard down the incline, still muttering under his breath.

Ailis stood on the ridge a while longer, watching in awe. The hill sloped down into a grassy plain, without a tree in sight. In the middle of that plain was a small house; a small house with clear walls, a top and bottom, that pulsed with pale blue and gold light.

Magic indeed.

She smiled, her entire face reflecting her elation. King ensorcelled, horse and mule and belongings stolen, traveling while soaked to the skin with Gerard still angry with her—it still made her feel as though the world was a wonderful place indeed.

T
he source of the light was a structure unlike any the three had ever seen before. Gerard and Newt slowed, leading their horses at a snail’s pace. Ailis strode on ahead of them, her braid thumping against her back as she increased her pace.

The glow was, in fact, coming from the house they had seen from the ridge. It was, in many ways, an unexceptional little cottage—four outer walls surrounded four different rooms of equal size. There was minimal furniture inside: chairs, a bed, a table. One room had a fireplace, with a heavy black pot over it, set into one wall. But the hearth was cold and the pot was empty.

Ailis could tell all of this because the walls were clear. As was the furniture. It was like looking into a particularly still pond of clear water and seeing fish
dart right next to your hand even though they were out of reach. Only in this case the dark form moving behind the walls wasn’t a fish.

“Ah. There you are.”

Whatever they had expected to hear from Merlin, it hadn’t been that.

He stood in the doorway, looking at them through the clear door. It was thin, barely a finger’s width, and was cold to the touch.

“An ice house?” Ailis ran her fingers over the wall, fascinated enough to ignore the light that came from inside and played over her, attracted by her motion.

Merlin shrugged; a careless gesture.

“May we…come in?” Gerard asked, uncertain about the protocols of dealing with an enchanter. Ailis, despite her claims of knowing how to communicate sensibly with Merlin, seemed too fascinated by the structure to be any help.

The question made the enchanter laugh. It was a short and bitter noise. “I’d come out if I could.”

“You’re trapped?” Gerard looked around as though whoever had trapped Merlin might suddenly spring from nowhere at them. “How?”

“Who did it? Is it the same person who cast the
spell on the court?” Ailis asked in dismay. That would make sense, but if the same foe could take both Merlin and Arthur, the three of them might as well give up and go home!

All three of them started asking questions at once. Then their chatter stopped. They were abashed at being so rude to the second-most powerful man in the kingdom.

“My life’s never that easy,” the enchanter said, running one hand through his black-and-silver hair, leaving it standing on end and sparking brightly with random magic. “No, my lady Nimue is having her fun with me.”

The three teenagers stared at him: Gerard in disgust, Newt in amusement, and Ailis in sympathy. Nimue was a name whispered in Camelot—a former student of Merlin’s who had enchanted the enchanter, then left him only to return and leave again, proving him no better than any mortal man.

“Oh, dry it up,” he said, seeing their looks. “She played me for a fool and I deserve to stay here until I can find my way out.” Merlin was clearly out of patience with them already.

“If you’re trapped here, you can’t help us,” Gerard said. “You can’t help your king, who is
caught in a bespelled sleep, along with all of his court. You can’t—”

“Dry it up, I said,” Merlin snapped, and even knowing that a magical wall stood between the two of them, Gerard took a step back.

“You know what has happened,” Ailis said, stating a fact rather than asking a question.

“I know,” Merlin said. “You think your lot is difficult? Thank the stars above that you’re not me…. And yes, I’m cranky,” he added before any of them could say anything. “You try spending your days in an ice house. Your posterior gets cold after a while. That woman has an evil sense of humor.”

He looked at the three of them and sighed, the light that always seemed to burn in his eyes fading a little under their worried, helpless stares.

“We have trouble, children. Whoever has done this clearly wishes to stop the Quest from going forward; either that, or it’s the most inconvenient timing in history. And I don’t trust coincidences.”

“Why would anyone want to stop the Quest?” Newt wondered. “Isn’t it just a way to get everyone out of Arthur’s hair for a while?”

Merlin almost laughed at that. “If that were so, Arthur would have sent all the troublemakers out,
rather than his best and brightest. No, youngster, much as I disagree with Arthur about how he is going about this, the Quest is more important than anyone realizes, even Arthur. The Grail is not merely a symbol of rightful kingship.”

“The stories are true?” Gerard blinked, his exhaustion melting away with this revelation. “A man who holds the Grail cannot be defeated?”

“Stories have truth at their soul…or they die. That story has lived for generations. That fact alone is enough to make it absolutely vital that Arthur hold this Grail.”

“Rather than a rebel chieftain,” Gerard said.

“Yes. From the Northlands or across the water. Or, the gods defend us, Rome returning to our shores.” The enchanter shook his head regretfully. “I can help you, children. But only so far. You’re going to have to do this on your own.”

“Do what? How are we…what are we supposed to do?” Ailis had hoped that Merlin would explain the voice she sometimes heard in her head, the voice that had been so clear in the aftermath of the sleep-spell. She wished he would say something she would be able to understand, and explain it for the others so she would not have to.

The enchanter’s usual wry sense of humor, his sly wordplay, was missing. He wasn’t smiling here. He wasn’t dancing one step beyond the understanding of mere mortals. He looked worried. And distracted.

“Master Merlin?”

He turned to look at her, and then he did muster a smile. “The little servant-maid. Ailis, yes?”

“Yes.” He remembered her name. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? With enchanters one could never tell.

“Good. You’re here. I couldn’t remember if you would be or not. Smart little girl. Too smart, but you’re going to need that.”

Ailis opened her mouth to follow up on that, her need to know if he was the one speaking to her finally overpowering all her other fears, but Merlin had moved on.

“And so you’d be the horse-boy.” That he said to Newt, who inclined his head guardedly, not sure if he should admit to anything where Merlin was concerned.

“Good. All three here as they need to be.” His eyes focused on them again, meeting their gazes, each in turn. “Listen carefully and look carefully, and remember, because I can only share this with you once.

“Listen, children.” His voice became hypnotic, his eyes darker, his face more stern; the frustrated, mortal man disappearing once more under the deep water of the enchanter Merlin. “Remember. At the cost of your souls,
remember
.”

His long, slender fingers moved, conjuring flame out of air, and the flame etched letters in the ice wall between them:

“Do you have it, children?”

“I think so,” Gerard said, while the other two squinted at the letters, frantically trying to memorize the words as the flame started to flicker and fade. It sounded like the riddles the villagers spoke in. Maybe Newt was right about why they spoke that way. If Merlin spent a lot of time around them, the way the map suggested…

“Don’t think! Know! You must remember. You
must know. You are the sole and only hope our kingdom has.”

“Us?”

Merlin smiled crookedly at him, the majesty of his magical self dispersing and leaving only a man trapped in a house of ice. “Nobody else has shown up; looks like it will have to be you, fates save us all.

“But beware.” He stared at each of them in turn and, mortal or not, his dark eyes pierced them into their hearts. “There is very little time. Arthur needs you, and he needs you to return within seven days.”

“Seven—” Gerard started, then shut his jaw and thought. “Seven days from when it happened, or seven days from now?”

“Seven from the midnight of their sleeping. Seven is a magical number. Would have been easier if it had been fourteen or twenty-one, but that’s magic for you, never considerate…” Merlin’s voice trailed off, his gaze went elsewhere, and then he came back to them with a sharp snap.

“Repeat it, children. Repeat it together.”

It was awkward, each of them remembering the words in a different rhythm, but by the third line they were speaking in unison:

“Into the moment

slides the moment

the moment shattered

one into three

reclaimed by three who are one

and one who is none

three to be claimed

before the moment turns at home.”

Merlin nodded and the light came back into his eyes a little. “Good. Good. You have the map?”

The three looked at each other, almost but not quite beyond wonder that he would know about that as well. Gerard retrieved the map, unrolled it, and held it up so that Merlin could see it.

“Good lad.” He put his hand to the wall, and Gerard, acting on some unspoken command, placed the map against his side of the wall as well, so that all three—palm, ice, and map—were touching. There was a shimmer of sparks, almost too brief to see, and then Merlin took his hand away. “Oh, Arthur, you idiot, did you really think a map like this would work?”

“It did,” Ailis said, greatly daring. “We used it to find you.”

Merlin barked out a laugh. “All right, yes, it did. This one time, it did. But you were lucky. Lucky
beyond all belief. The gods had a hand in this, and that always worried me. Never trust the gods, children. Trust yourselves. Trust each other. But trust no gods. They have their own agendas.”

“But, Master Merlin, what does it mean—the riddle? What are we supposed to do?” In his urgency, Gerard overrode Ailis’s attempt to ask Merlin something. He needed
specifics
. A riddle was nonsense and magic was beyond his understanding. He knew how to hit things, how to ride horses, how to speak well to his betters, and protect those weaker than himself. He didn’t know what to do with this.

“Three talismans, squire of Sir Rheynold. Find three talismans that will revoke what has been done. There is no more time to waste. Leave me to deal with this magic that binds me, and quest your own quest. Now go. Go!”

And with that, Merlin turned his back on them and paced to the other side of his ice-cased prison and stared out into the darkness, his hands folded in front of him, his proud features lifted to the night sky. Their conversation was over. He had nothing more to tell them.

A long moment of stunned and hurt silence passed, then Merlin heard the three youths whispering to
each other, followed by the sound of them mounting their animals and riding away slowly.

“The gods laugh at me,” he said morosely when the last noise of their passing had faded. “Children. Why,” the enchanter wondered, “does it always end up with the children?”

From the air around him, Nimue’s voice laughed at him, a warm silver chime that could still stir his blood and make him do foolish things. “Because, dear teacher, they’re the only ones who will forever look for you. They are the only ones who will believe it can be done.”