The Camelot Spell

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Mak moved to get between the two of them, his own voice raised, and two of the servants who were still hanging back watching started to whisper to each other.

  “Enough!” His voice cracked on the last syllable, but Gerard kept talking. “We can’t stand around here saying what if and maybe. Mak, we need to have someone on the wall, keeping watch. You know the pages.” Mak’s younger brother was among them. “Find some of the older ones who can be trusted and set them there with the order to sound an alarm if they see anything—anything at all.”

  Mak nodded, reaching out to snag a black-haired page who had been lurking behind him. “Go find my brother. Tell him to meet me at the front gate with five of his best.” The page, clearly terrified but used to being given run-and-fetch orders, nodded once and darted away.

  “Who put you in charge?” the stable boy asked, standing among the squires as though he had the right to that company.

  Gerard looked the other boy up and down and shrugged. It was a move he had seen the king use several times when humoring someone who had no right to ask questions but would be answered anyway. “I am the oldest squire awake. I have the most training. And”—he never played this trump, not out loud, but to this insolent servant he would—“I am the nephew of King Arthur himself, and so the closest to royal blood in Camelot.”

  He had no real claim to royal blood. Arthur was Sir Kay’s foster brother; they had been raised together, but there were no blood ties between them. Sir Kay was Gerard’s mother’s brother, so he was really related to Kay, but not to Arthur. But hadn’t Arthur welcomed him as family when he came to court? Didn’t he call him nephew? It should count. It had to count.

  The stable boy looked at him grudgingly, then nodded. Gerard’s opinion of him went up…slightly. Sir Rheynold said that a man who could take correction well and without argument was a man worth having by your side. Even if he was a servant.

  “So what are the rest of us to do?” Finan asked.

  Gerard didn’t know. Taking care of the watch had been the first thing he thought of, the first thing his training led him to cover, but after that…his mind went blank.

  “We need to get these youngsters settled down,” Newt said. “And…it’s a little disrespectful, don’t you think, to have your uncle slumped down in his food?” That was directed at Gerard, who blushed a little in anger that he hadn’t thought of that as well.

  “Combine the two,” Robert said. “I’ll make it into a game for them.” He nodded once to Gerard, gave a shorter acknowledgment to Newt, and turned to gather up some of the more alert-looking children. Within minutes, they were swarming all over the hall, lifting adult heads off the tables, wiping faces, cleaning up spills, and setting the sleepers upright in their chairs like so many life-sized dolls.

  Patrick scowled at the activity. “We need help,” he said again.

  “We need Merlin,” Ailis said, then stared back at the boys when they swung on her as though the cat had spoken. “What? It’s an enchantment, isn’t it? And he’s an enchanter, isn’t he? Moreover, he’s the king’s enchanter. So who else would be able to help?”

  “Assuming he hasn’t done it himself,” Robert muttered. “He always was a weird one.”

  Gerard, remembering his odd encounter with the wizard months earlier, had to agree. But still, Arthur trusted the enchanter. He had always trusted him. Impossible to believe Merlin would turn on that trust now.

  “So where is Merlin the enchanter?” Newt asked. “If he’s asleep, he’s not much use to us or his king.”

  “He’s gone,” Gerard said flatly. “He stormed out of the castle a couple of months back.” He still remembered the sound of the front gate slamming shut not by human hands, but by a magical wind that swirled in Merlin’s wake.

  Robert nodded his head, remembering. “Huge row with the king. Hasn’t been seen since. He does that every now and then—picks a fight, disappears. I think he does it because he’s bored.”

  “A bored enchanter is a dangerous thing,” Dewain said, as though he knew the danger firsthand.

  “He wasn’t bored,” Ailis disagreed.

  “Right. And you know that—how? Does Merlin confide in you?” Dewain was scornful, taking his uncertainty out on her.

  “I was there,” she said defiantly, her expression daring them to challenge her further. “In the room, when the argument began.” She paused, obviously trying to remember exactly what happened. “Arthur said something about the Quest, although he didn’t call it that, then. He called it…a mission? And Merlin said there were other things they should be worried about, like the unhappiness someone was stirring up among the border lords, and…and problems inside the castle, too. And Arthur agreed and wanted Merlin to do something about it, and Merlin said he couldn’t—that he was going to be somewhere else then, and no, he couldn’t tell Arthur where because he didn’t know yet, and then it got sort of confusing.”

  There were nods of acceptance around the group. Any discussion with Merlin was bound to become confusing, living backward in time the way he did. Not that any of them really understood what it meant, but it sounded confusing. And none of the adults seemed to understand it either, except the king.

  “What all that means is that we have no idea where the only person who could help us is,” Robert said glumly.

  “We know he didn’t approve of the Quest,” Tynan pointed out. “Isn’t this the sort of thing an enchanter might do to stop the Quest?”

  “If he wanted to stop the Quest, he could have done it without leaving,” Mak said, giving Tynan a look of contempt. “It would have been easier that way. I don’t trust Merlin; I don’t trust any magic-user. But he lives to serve Arthur, same as we all do. And he was the one who sent out the message about the Quest in the first place, so knights outside of Camelot would know about it. Would someone who wanted to stop the Quest do that?”

  “We’ll find him.” Gerard spoke before he realized it, then said more slowly, “I’ll find him.” It’s what a knight would do, and he was the closest thing they had to a knight now. The others should stay behind, safe inside Camelot’s walls, with Camelot’s reputation to protect them—at least for a little while.

  “And how do you plan to do that?” Newt asked, his expression skeptical but his voice neutral.

  “Take me with you,” Ailis said.

  Everyone looked at Ailis, and she blushed red all the way up to her forehead. “I know Merlin. I mean, I’ve talked to him.”

  “So have I,” Gerard retorted. Only once, true, but…“He knows who I am.” Also true, if still more than a little frightening. “He said…he said that I had impressed him. Would impress him. So maybe he meant that I would find him when he was needed.”

  “That’s thin.” Tynan waved a hand in dismissal of the idea.

  “It’s more than anyone else has.”

  “If he’s such a great enchanter, why doesn’t he know his king’s been put under a spell?” Newt spoke again, his chin jutting out stubbornly.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know how he thinks. I don’t want to know how he thinks! If you have a better idea, then tell me.” Gerard didn’t quite fling his arms up into the air in complete frustration, but it was close.

  Robert couldn’t refrain from giving his opinion. “I hate magic. Give me a good sword and a strong horse. They make sense. This doesn’t.”

  “It’s an attack,” Finan said. “There are only two things you can do in the face of an attack. Defend or retreat.”

  “Or find allies,” Patrick insisted.

  “You find Merlin. We’ll defend,” Finan said.

  The other squires said, “Aye” in agreement, their faces now showing excitement and the desire to prove themselves, in place of the former fear and uncertainty.

  “Take me with you,” Ailis said again, stamping her foot on the floor, impatient at being ignored while the boys talked.

  “Ailis, you’re—” She fixed Gerard with a stare that made him rethink what he was go
ing to say. “You’re needed here,” he went on. “You’ve been here forever, you know how everything runs. Take care of everyone. Run the castle. When the chatelaine wakes up, she’ll be so impressed she’ll move you straightaway into…doing whatever it is you want to do.”

  “Urrrgghh.” The servant girl ground her teeth in frustration. “You can’t go alone.”

  “Then take me.” Newt had been silent, standing on the outskirts of the discussion, but now he stepped forward, his gaze intent on Gerard’s face. “I know the roads. I know how to forage and how to scout. The beasts in the stable can be fed by any whelp, so long as they’re able to hold a bucket. And I’d do no good in the running of things in here.” He waved an arm, indicating the chaos inside and the walls that needed to be defended outside.

  Gerard stared at the stable boy, trying to judge the offer. It seemed sincere. He didn’t like him, but Ailis was right: Two of them would be safer on the roads than one. Be fair, he reminded himself. You don’t have to like someone to work with them.

  “I’m in command.” It wasn’t a question.

  Newt shrugged, neither agreeing nor arguing. Gerard eyed him suspiciously, then declared, “All right. We leave at first light.”

  The boys moved off in a group, discussing strategies for either finding Merlin or defending the castle. Ailis, left behind, bit the inside of her cheek to keep the tears from spilling over. She wasn’t sure if she was more scared or angry. She knew she could help. She knew it.

  Foolish child. Come to me.

  Ailis started, not sure if she had really heard the voice in her head or imagined it. She looked around the banquet room. The squires and pages and other children had left. She was the only one awake in the Great Hall.

  At first there was only the unnatural silence of the sleeping court. Then, every bit as strange, she heard the voice again.

  Child, hurry.

  She was certain she hadn’t imagined that. “Merlin?” she asked uneasily.

  But there was no answer. The voice was gone.

  THREE

  Birds chirped and tweeted outside the stable, heralding the first light of dawn. Newt lay on his straw pallet in the back of the stable, surrounded by sleeping bodies—both human and canine. It was all perfectly normal…except for the fact that not one of his fellow servants was snoring. The grooms and the stable master had all fallen under the spell.

  Newt couldn’t remember a morning of his life when he hadn’t woken to the sound of snores.

  “Something to be said for spells,” he told himself as he rolled out from under a coarse blanket, shoved one of the hounds off his pallet, and ran a hand through his hair. No use to even try and tame it—he was born with hair going all different directions, and he would die that way.

  Moving past the sleeping bodies, he gave a passing caress to the inquisitive equine noses thrust over stall doors, and emerged into the dawn, blinking sleepily. A bucket of cool water pulled from the well got him reasonably clean and awake, as much as he could be on only a handful of hours of sleep. His face still hurt, but the bruises from his tussle with the squire seemed to be fading already.

  Had that fight really only been yesterday? It seemed years ago. Magic did that. It made time strange. Time and people. He had hoped never to be entangled in anything even smelling like magic ever again, and here he was, in the thick of it.

  No, in the thick of it would mean I’d be sleeping, he thought, his sense of humor reasserting itself as he woke up a little more.

  Newt went back into the stables, packed his few belongings into a leather saddlebag, and placed it carefully over a stall door.

  “Stop that,” he said to the bay mare who tried to nibble on the straps of the pack. “You’ll be fed soon enough.” He hoped. Bold words, to volunteer himself for this fool’s errand, but he doubted the ability of even the best squire to keep these beauties in line and cared for. What was he thinking, to leave them? His life was here; his purpose was here, with these animals.

  Newt smiled wryly. He was thinking that for all his brave posturing and loud words, the king’s nephew would be lost on the road by himself. Newt would wager money he didn’t have that the boy had never been on his own for a night, much less a whole journey to who knew where. If this trek to find the enchanter was to succeed, Newt would be needed.

  Tugging his boots on and knocking the worst of the horse dung from them, Newt made one last futile attempt at making his water-slicked hair behave. He set his still-aching jaw and walked the unfamiliar distance from the stable to the great wooden doors of the castle.

  Stable boys, like servants, didn’t use the main entrance. He hadn’t been thinking clearly the night before when he’d run through these gates to see if what had struck the stable could be explained by someone in power. Now, though, the very act of walking on the polished stone floors made his heart shake in fear, half expecting someone to grab him by the ear and toss him back into the straw where he belonged.

  But no one did.

  The only souls he saw in the hallways were two pages, red-eyed and rumpled. Newt tapped one on the shoulder, feeling guilty when the boy jumped as though he’d been bit on the rump.

  “Where’s the squire Gerard?”

  The smaller and blonder of the pages pointed down the hallway. “In the Room.”

  “The what?” The entire castle was made of nothing but rooms!

  “The Room. The Council Room,” the boy said in a tone that clearly indicated his opinion of anyone who needed it spelled out for them.

  “Where is it?”

  Directions pried out of the boy, Newt patted him on the head out of sheer maliciousness, and went in search of his road companion.

  The great doors were closed, but the smaller door set into them was open. Newt walked in, hearing his boots echo in a way they hadn’t anywhere else. The squire—Gerard, Newt reminded himself—was standing by the table, one hand resting on the polished surface.

  “It’s just a table,” Newt said. He had been expecting something…more.

  The squire didn’t seem to hear him, staring down into the polished wooden surface as though it were a scrying mirror.

  “It’s not just a table,” Gerard said finally. His voice was raw and raspy from lack of sleep, and it made Newt’s throat hurt just to hear it. “It’s a symbol. Symbols are important. Sometimes they’re all we have.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Newt wanted to be out of this room. It weighed on him, a pressure on the back of his head like a disapproving stare. He knew he didn’t belong here.

  The squire turned to look at him then. His blue eyes were as red-rimmed as the young pages’ had been. Was Newt the only one to have gotten any sleep at all?

  “You’re ready to go?” Gerard asked.

  The night before, Newt had picked out the horses they would take: two sturdy beasts from Camelot’s own stable; quality riding horses, a gelding for him and an older bay stallion that he knew the squires had been training on, neither of them too showy nor overly muscled from combat. He had also arranged for the kitchen brats to provision them as best they could from what was available. Dried meats and bread, probably. “If you know where we’re going.”

  “I’ve an idea,” was all the squire said. And with that, Newt had to be satisfied.

  The sun was just beginning to lift over the hills behind Camelot when they finally led their horses and a heavily laden mule out of the great gate.

  “You know where we’re going?” Newt asked for the tenth time. And for the tenth time Gerard answered, “I’ve an idea.”

  “I hate you,” Newt told him matter-of-factly.

  To the stable boy’s surprise, the squire laughed a clear, shining note. “More so now than when I bested you in fight?”

  “You did no such thing,” Newt retorted, swinging into the saddle and gathering up the reins. His companion did the same, moving with ease despite the boiled leather armor that buckled over his chest and lower legs.

  “I would have, if Lancelot
hadn’t stopped us.”

  “You’re dreaming,” Newt said and kicked his gelding into an easy trot, forcing the squire to keep up with him, not the other way around as would have been expected.

  “You’re an ignorant servant who smells of horse.”

  If the squire thought that was going to insult him, he had a lot to learn. Horse was what he tended, horse was what he would smell like. It was an honest smell.

  They continued in that manner all day, trading mild insults to ward off the fear that lingered just below the surface, until the sun began to set into the western hills. Before the light faded, they found a small stream, hobbled the horses and mule beside it to graze in the soft grasses, then took the pack off the mule.

  Out of the pack—and Gerard suspected Ailis’s hand in it more than the stable boy’s vague directions to the servant children—the squire took two blankets and set them down on the ground where there seemed to be the fewest stones. Meanwhile the stable boy gathered twigs and branches from a nearby copse of trees to build a fire with.

  It wasn’t the way knights would have done it. Knights would have come with more than just one pack animal, and they would have had the proper equipment to raise a simple tent, or perhaps even a pavilion with their banner flying from the top post. They wouldn’t have made do with rough blankets on the ground and a small fire to ward off the darkness and heat the bread and cheese they had brought to supplement the game they were too weary to hunt.

  No, a knight would have handled things much better. But all the knights lay asleep in Camelot’s Great Hall.

  “I’m sorry, Sir Rheynold,” Gerard said to his absent and sleeping master. “I know you say that a good knight always has a plan. I don’t have a plan. I have a hunch. A thought. A maybe. But a maybe is nothing to ride out on.”

  His words were directed up to the stars, but the sound barely carried past his lips. Across the fire, Newt lay on his side, one arm flung over his face, his breathing heavy and nasal in sleep. It might have been any other night of his life, the way he had dropped off into slumber.