The Camelot Spell

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Gerard envied him, for the moment he himself lay down, it seemed every rock in the vicinity had crawled to rest under him, digging into his flesh no matter how he turned or twisted. And likewise, their journey dug into his mind.

  “I so wanted to join the Quest. I wanted to be part of the Grail’s finding, make my reputation, earn my spurs so that everyone would know my name. And now I—”

  Something in the bushes beyond the fire sneezed.

  Newt went from sound asleep to wide awake in the time it took Gerard to come to his feet and grab his scabbard from its resting place. The sword, a sturdy but unlovely length of metal, was gifted to him when he turned ten and was judged ready for a man’s weapon. It rested heavy in his hands.

  Newt, his dagger likely to be useless in this situation, scooted on his hands and knees toward the bushes that had just sneezed, ready to lunge. Gerard watched until Newt was within tackling distance of whatever it was.

  “Show yourself!” Gerard called, willing his voice not to crack. Thankfully, this once, it heeded him.

  The bushes remained still and silent.

  Gerard looked at Newt, who stayed focused on the area the sneeze had come from. His posture was terrible; any half-trained page could take him out. But, remembering their fight, Gerard allowed that the other boy might be useful in an unarmed scuffle if it came to that. Besides, Newt was all he had to work with.

  “Show yourself!” Gerard demanded again, and when there was no response, he made a sharp gesture with his free hand, indicating that Newt should move forward. Newt couldn’t have seen it, but charged anyway, lunging into the shrubbery headfirst.

  “Ow!”

  “What is it? What happened?” Gerard pulled his sword fully out of the scabbard and moved forward, keeping half his attention on the surrounding area, aware that an ambush could come from any direction, at any time.

  Newt reemerged from the bushes, holding one hand to his face. His other hand came forward to show off—

  “A rabbit?” Gerard didn’t know if he should be relieved or angry.

  Newt shrugged. “They scream when they die. Why not a sneeze?”

  Gerard looked at the dun-colored beast twitching in Newt’s grasp and started to laugh weakly as he resheathed his sword.

  “I suppose at least we have breakfast for tomorrow.”

  Newt looked at the rabbit, then at Gerard. “I caught it. You kill it.”

  “You think I can’t?” Gerard bristled at the suggestion. He hadn’t had to do such a thing in years, but he was sure he would remember how. Pretty sure, anyway.

  Newt shrugged, holding the rabbit out for the squire to take. In the firelight the small beast seemed almost misshapen, demonic. Gerard stared at it, then looked up at Newt.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake…” Newt started to say, then opened his hand and let the animal fall to the ground. It recovered the instant its paws touched dirt, and with two strong hops disappeared back into cover.

  Gerard blinked at the expression on Newt’s face: part anger, part embarrassment, and purely defiant.

  “It wouldn’t have kept well on the road, anyway,” was all the other boy said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

  But sleep didn’t come for either one of them. They started and turned at every sound in the night, until dawn found them both awake and ready to move on. A full day and then some had passed since their world turned upside down, and Gerard found himself wondering about the castle. Were they all still safe? Did anyone outside Camelot know?

  “Get up with you,” Newt muttered to the mule, tugging at one of its elongated ears. “We’re not on a pleasure trip, you know.” The mule made a rude noise at him, bit a tuft of his hair, and got a solid thwap on its rear in return.

  “If you’re done making love noises at your lady…” Gerard began, already saddled and mounted.

  “At least I have one,” Newt retorted. He kneed the mule gently in the gut to make sure it wasn’t holding its breath against the packs and, satisfied, hooked the lead rope to his beast’s saddle and mounted. The gelding sidestepped at the weight, then settled down once Newt picked up the reins. He might not be the rider the squire was, but he knew horses better. You took what satisfaction you could. And if it was petty and foolish, so what? It still felt good.

  The sun was at their shoulders when Newt heard the noise. It wasn’t much of anything—it might have been the stream that ran alongside the path they were riding on. Or a squirrel in the trees to their left. Or even a bird following them for some reason known only to birds.

  But he didn’t think so.

  Digging his heels into the gelding’s sides, Newt moved up to ride alongside Gerard. The look on the squire’s face was carefully blank, but his eyes were moving back and forth and there was a drop of sweat on his forehead that couldn’t be explained by the cool weather or the easy pace they were keeping.

  “Wasn’t a rabbit last night,” Newt said quietly.

  “I figured that one out already.”

  Nice to see nerves didn’t make him any softer. Was it something they learned when they became squires? The pages always seemed decent enough, until they jumped up the next level and became too good to talk to servants. The knights were a different matter again. Some good, some not. All too full of themselves. Except Lancelot. Lance was different all over.

  “Your horse is going lame,” Gerard said.

  Newt was startled out of his thoughts by the comment. “He is not! I’ve never had a horse…. You just don’t want to talk about whatever was in our camp last night, do you?”

  “He’s limping. Get down and take a look. He probably has something in his shoe. You were too hasty in grooming him last night.”

  They had spent exactly the same amount of time grooming the night before. In fact, the squire had asked Newt’s opinion on a gash on his horse’s foreleg while he was checking for stones in…oh. That was the game, was it?

  Newt pulled the gelding to the side of the narrow path and dismounted. He looped the reins over one arm as he bent down on the far side, his back to the creek, as though oblivious to anything except his horse.

  He froze at a quiet crunching sound coming from somewhere in the stand of oak trees behind them.

  There it was again, louder without the sound of hooves to mask it. They were definitely being followed! He glanced up at the squire, wondering if Gerard had heard it.

  Gerard moved his beast forward a few steps, as though impatient to be on his way. “Fool of a horse-boy,” he said, the sneer evident in his voice. “Catch up with me when you’re done. And mind the mule doesn’t go lame as well with your inept handling.”

  And with that he kicked his horse into a trot and moved down the path, around a bend, and out of sight.

  Muttering under his breath, Newt pushed against his gelding until it lifted its front right leg enough so that any observer would see him check for the alleged stone lodged in the hoof.

  “Easy, boy. Easy. Let me just see what’s ailing you, hey?” He kept up the soothing patter, hoping that the beast would hear only the familiar words, and not the nerves underlying them. He strained his ears for the sound of their unknown companion, or maybe the sound of Gerard doubling back to—

  “Hai!” Gerard’s shout was followed by a loud, high-pitched yelp of outrage. Newt dropped the horse’s leg and the reins as well, and dashed to the other side of the animal in time to see two figures tumbling down the hill from the tree line. The gelding snorted nervously, and Newt reached back to catch at his mane, patting him soothingly while he watched the two scrabbling in a tangle of legs and arms.

  Finally Gerard got the upper hand, reaching up to grab at his opponent’s face, which was covered by a close-fitting hood.

  The hood came away in his hand, revealing a long red braid attached to a familiar head.

  “Ailis?” Gerard sounded like he had swallowed a frog.

  The servant girl rolled away from the squire, his grasp weakened by shock. Sitting back on her hee
ls, she glared at him.

  “What—what are you doing here?” Newt asked in disbelief.

  Gerard slapped at the cloth of his trousers, trying to get the dirt out of them, and glared sourly back at the girl. “That’s the obvious part. She was following us. The real question is, how fast can she go home?”

  “I’m not going back. You need me.”

  “We do not.” Gerard looked stubborn enough to be part mule.

  “Yes you do! Neither of you knows the first thing about Merlin.”

  “And you do?” Disbelief colored the squire’s voice.

  “More than you!” Ailis clearly wanted to say more but bit it back.

  Despite himself, Newt was curious. Most of the girls he knew were quiet mice, their faces down-turned, their attention focused on their tasks. But this girl glared back at the squire as if she were his equal. She had stood up to them back in the banquet hall. She was different. Why?

  “Witless servant,” Gerard muttered.

  “Fool of a squire,” she returned.

  “Might as well let her stay,” Newt said, already tired of watching the two of them spat like cats. He had a feeling he was going to regret this. “I suspect she’ll only follow anyway. And I’m a lousy cook, besides.”

  “So. What’s the plan? We do have a plan, don’t we?” Ailis said.

  Newt looked up from the roasted pigeon he was eating, his expression alertly curious. “I’ve been wondering that as well,” he admitted. “Not that a mere servant like myself—ourselves”—he made a mocking gesture toward Ailis—“need to know such things, when a mighty knight-in-training has it all in order.” Two days in Gerard’s company, and Newt had already figured out how far he could push the squire without rousing the other boy’s true anger. Mocking merely irritated him.

  “Oh, stuff it,” Gerard said rudely, biting into his own roasted squab. “This is good,” he said to Ailis, who merely shrugged off the compliment. They had caught the birds that afternoon; she had only cooked them. She was seated by the fire, now wearing a drab brown wool skirt pulled from the leather bag she had carried with her. Her top was a simple tunic taken from one of the squires, creating an oddly mismatched appearance.

  “Plan?” she prompted her companion. Newt could tease, if it amused him to do so. An advantage of knowing Gerard for so many years was that she could dispense with that when there were more important things to do. She would get to annoying him later, when he really deserved it.

  “I have a map,” Gerard admitted, slowly.

  “A map?” Ailis looked delighted. “That’s wonderful. A map of what?”

  “Of…” Gerard looked deeply uncomfortable. “Of places.”

  “Most maps are of places,” she agreed, folding her hands in her lap and patiently waiting for more information. It infuriated him, she knew. All the more so because he knew she wasn’t going to give up. And from the look on Newt’s face, neither was he.

  “Arrrrgh.” Gerard put his bird down on one of the slabs of bark they were using for platters and stared into the coals of the fire. They had covered only a short distance today, nowhere near where he wanted to be by this point. And meanwhile, the adults and his king slept. And the kingdom was at risk because of it.

  “A map of places King Arthur used to go. Back before he was king, when he was Merlin’s student and they used to go wandering.”

  “Before he married the queen,” Ailis said, nodding. “I remember hearing stories.” The king and queen had been married the year before she and Gerard came to Camelot; years before Newt worked in the stables. “Where did you get such a map?”

  “He stole it,” Newt said suddenly. “Didn’t you?”

  Gerard snarled soundlessly. “It wasn’t as though there was anyone awake I could ask, was there?”

  “Where did you take it from?”

  “Thekingsstudy.” He said it fast, the words running into each other.

  “What?” Ailis wasn’t sure if she heard him correctly, or if the strain of trying to keep up with them on foot for a full day was making her hear things.

  “The. King’s. Study.”

  She hadn’t been hearing things.

  “You stole something from the king’s private study?” Ailis wasn’t sure if she was more horrified or mortified.

  “Wonderful,” Newt said in disgust. “Why not take something from Merlin’s own bed while you’re at it?”

  “Because I’d look very bad as a rat,” Gerard said, tearing the last flesh off his bird and tossing the bones into the coals. “And there wasn’t anything there that was useful, far as I could tell. This looked like it might be.” He reached back into his pack, which he was using as a backrest, and carefully drew out a wooden tube. Inside was a parchment. He unrolled it and placed it on the ground, weighting it down with a rock he pulled from the circle around the fire, careful to choose one that wasn’t too warm.

  Someone had drawn the outline of the isle in a clear, dark hand. The three could recognize the mark that indicated Camelot, and the one that showed Cameliard, the queen’s home, but—

  “What’s that?” Newt asked.

  “Cymry.”

  “Oh. And that?” He pointed to another mark.

  The three of them gathered closer, craning their heads. “I don’t know,” Gerard admitted finally. There was writing in the margins of the map. But from the expressions on his companions’ faces, Gerard assumed that neither of them could decipher the crabbed and faded writing, either.

  “What’re those symbols?” Newt asked, pointing to the strange sigil that appeared all over the map in a thin brown ink.

  “It’s Merlin’s mark,” Ailis said. She was careful not to touch it, and Newt moved his finger away hastily.

  Gerard nodded, taking the parchment and carefully rolling it up again. “I think Arthur made this to keep track of where Merlin wandered. Where his favorite places were.”

  “So we’ll look in those marked places first?” Ailis asked.

  “It’s somewhere to start,” Gerard said with a shrug. “He’s not been gone that long, so we’ll head north, begin with the closest and work our way out as needed.”

  Neither of the others mentioned that an enchanter need not travel by normal means, and that Merlin might be anywhere by now. Their entire quest was a fool’s errand anyway. Why make it worse by admitting it out loud?

  FOUR

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

  “No.” Gerard didn’t even bother to shake his head. He was staring at the road ahead of them with more concentration than the flat path deserved. He didn’t have to ask who “they” were. The adults. Camelot.

  “No.” Ailis mulled over the word. “I don’t think so, either.” Not that anyone could have found them to tell them the news, if they had.

  She was riding a horse now—an unnamed, rangy, torn-eared roan gelding with white-rimmed eyes. It looked uglier than a toad, but Newt had picked it out that morning from the others that the local farrier was willing to sell, having sorted through the herd with a practiced eye. Gerard hadn’t wanted to spend the coins, since they only had what the squires had been able to pool together, but riding double was slowing them down too much, and the mule flat-out refused to carry any more weight in addition to their supplies.

  They’d been away from Camelot heading northeast for two days now, following Gerard’s map to the nearest of the sigil-marked locations. The narrow track had widened into a true road, the dirt packed down by years of wagon traffic moving from town to town. The trees to their left were balanced by the meadows on their right, filled with quail and rabbits that Gerard proved very good at catching for their evening meals.

  Though she was glad they weren’t going hungry, Ailis was getting sick of meat for every meal. And she hadn’t been able to wash properly since she left Camelot; her scalp itched under her braid, tucked up again under her hood, and she was pretty sure she smelled like dirty horse and dried sweat. Still, if their mission hadn’t been so ur
gent, she might have been enjoying herself. But even if she hadn’t shared the boys’ fears about an unknown enemy lurking somewhere, waiting for word to attack the now-defenseless castle, the thought of her queen slumped over her meal was one she would never be able to wipe from her mind’s eye—the indignity of it so at odds with her lady’s bearing and desires. And so the fresh air, the new sights, and the freedom to wear a page’s cast-off shirt and leggings under her skirt for modesty so she could sit astride like a boy was only half as sweet as it might have been.

  “Town ahead,” Gerard called back. He was riding a few paces in front, his horse more restless than their geldings.

  “Finally.” If they had gone west upon leaving Camelot, they would have encountered numerous towns built in the shadow of Camelot’s walls. East and south were the ocean and the rocky cliffs that Merlin—according to the map—seemed to avoid. North was where the sigils were; where the land was less settled. There lay swathes of woodlands and meadows undisturbed in the years since Arthur took the throne and established the Pax Britannica, the peace of Britain. It was as though nobody wanted to live where so many had died in battle the year after Uther, Arthur’s father, had fallen.

  A shiver went through Ailis. Her parents had died in such a battle, although she had no memory of it herself.

  “Blood fed those trees,” Newt said, as though he had been reading her mind. Ailis forced her gaze away from the towering oaks and onto Gerard noting how he sat so straight in the saddle, even as he leaned forward to stroke his horse’s neck.

  “Are you superstitious?” she asked lightly, truly looking at Newt for the first time. The interesting roughness of his features, fading bruises and all, was a marked contrast from Gerard’s narrow face and paler coloring, although Gerard was showing a few bruises himself. She wondered if there was a connection. Maybe that was why the two boys seemed so uneasy around each other. “Do you believe Ankou will come to collect you if you walk over the resting places of the dead?”