The Camelot Spell

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “So long as the queen stays out of it, not likely at all,” Gerard replied. He almost bit his own tongue at his indiscretion.

  “Gerard!” Ailis was outraged. “How dare you repeat such, such filth! ’Tis untrue, all of it!”

  “All of what?” Newt asked.

  “Some say that the queen has an uncommon fondness for Lancelot. And has since he first came to court.” Gerard took no pleasure in saying it, but having opened his mouth he felt obliged to continue, if only so that Newt didn’t assume something even worse.

  “Lance? But—”

  “They’re fond of each other, yes,” Ailis said. “As suits a queen and the king’s champion. But no more. The rumors are but evil words thought up out of a winter’s boredom.”

  Further discussion was, to Ailis’s relief, cut short by a flash from the map distracting them all from the topic. They began to look about more carefully and soon found themselves on a level, grassy area large enough, Ailis thought, to hold all of the kitchens from Camelot and room to build a bonfire besides.

  The only cover consisted of five or six scraggly, stunted trees, their leaves barely budding despite it being well into spring, and lower, green, prickly bushes. Still, the place seemed safe enough for a short break. Newt was willing to live rough, but Ailis and Gerard both preferred to warm the dried beef strips in some water to reduce the strain on their teeth and jaws. Moving branches aside to see if there was any deadfall to use in building the fire, Newt let out a low whistle and gestured for the other two to join him.

  Set into the base of the stone face of the cliff, rising perhaps three times a man’s full height and wide enough for a wagon to enter with space to spare, was the entrance to a cave. More of the prickly bushes grew around it, obscuring any path that might have led to it, but the smoothness of the stone indicated that it was not a recent or accidental opening.

  “In there?” Ailis sounded uncertain, hesitant.

  The map pulsed strongly once and then faded entirely.

  “I think that was a yes,” Newt said.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Afraid of the dark?” Gerard challenged her.

  “Not at all. I’m afraid of what might be in the dark. The map points us to where the talisman is. But it’s not so good on telling us where the danger is. Merlin forgot that bit of help.”

  “Next time, we’ll remember to ask for it specifically.”

  “Next time?” Ailis’s voice rose until she realized that Gerard had, against all experience, made a joke.

  “The horses won’t like it in there,” Newt said. “We should leave them out here. Ailis, you can stay—”

  “No,” she said. “No. I—” She took a deep breath. “I will be all right. And I don’t think we should split up. Bad things happen when we’re not all together.”

  “Only once.”

  “Once was enough. Ailis is right.” Gerard took his sword and the map, and squaring his shoulders almost unconsciously, started walking toward the mouth of the cave.

  “Wait a moment!” Newt called. Gerard paused long enough for the other boy to tie the horses’ reins loosely to exposed tree roots. That way each horse would have enough room to move and graze, and should danger threaten, they would be able to pull free rather than end up as another creature’s lunch.

  “All right. Let’s do this.” Newt pulled the dagger from his belt and held it in one hand as though he were about to attack a meal. With the other hand, he reached out and took Ailis’s hand. Her fingers were cold from nerves, and he squeezed them once, gently, as though to say, “Me, too.”

  Together they walked across the uneven ground to where Gerard waited, and the three of them entered the cave.

  NINE

  The change from sunlight to darkness was gradual; the light came several paces into the cave before being smothered by the cool darkness. Newt’s eyes adjusted first and he took the lead, still holding Ailis’s hand.

  The walls were smooth to the touch. The three were soon able to see tiny flecks of light reflecting from them.

  “There’s some sort of crystal in the rock,” Gerard said and then stopped, listening to the odd echoes of his voice moving up and down the walls. “This place is big,” he said after the echoes died down. “Really big.”

  “What do you think made this cave?” Ailis asked.

  “Magic?” Newt’s voice coming out of the darkness seemed somehow detached from the body that was standing next to her and holding her hand. “Everything else we’ve dealt with has been magic—and where else would you store a magical talisman than in a cave formed by magic?”

  “All right, wise man,” she responded. “Then whose magic made it?”

  Ailis felt him shrug. “Haven’t any idea.”

  The cave narrowed as they walked, then split into two huge chambers; one leading to the left, the other to the right.

  “What now?” Ailis wondered. “Get out the map, Gerard.”

  “Shhhh.” He waved her down, and only then did she realize that she could see them both as dim shadows in the dark. Either their eyes had adjusted or it was somehow lighter back here. “Do you hear that?”

  “No,” Newt said quickly. “Let’s go the other way.”

  “Newt!” Ailis was laughing again, even though the noise scared her into a cold sweat, too. It was low, like the sound of waves pulsing at night, and soft, like snow falling, and sharp, like the crackle of dry wood set aflame. And, somehow…alive.

  “That way,” Gerard said without consulting the map.

  Ailis wanted to argue—that was the direction the noise was coming from—but he was right. She could feel it, weirdly, in her bones, like the way she knew it was Merlin when he spoke to her. She reached out and took Gerard’s hand in her free one. His palm was sweating but his grasp was firm, and they walked three abreast into the left-hand cavern.

  The sound grew even louder, rising and falling with the pounding of their hearts until Ailis began to think that she had been born hearing the noise and would die with it in her ears.

  Then the cavern ceiling rose dramatically, and they stopped dead.

  “Oh, dear God,” Gerard said on a prayerful breath, his voice cracking on the last word. The crystal chips embedded in the walls here glinted even more brightly, picking up the soft golden glow of a treasure hoard piled high and deep on the smooth stone floor. It was larger than anything the three had ever seen before, a kingdom’s ransom in precious jewels and metals; coins, swords, armor, even a great silver-chased chair laying on its side and draped with a Romanesque surcoat that shimmered with a faint green light. Newt stared at it, then looked away, his eyes suddenly hard and shadowed.

  But all that glittering, glowing treasure was dwarfed by the creature that lay curled atop the hoard.

  “Oooohhhhhhh…” That was all Ailis could manage. Her heart, which had stopped on the first sight of the beast, resumed its frantic beating. Even in her panic she could feel a grin of wonder stretching across her face. From the elongated, muscled tail that draped down off the hoard and curled around it on the floor; to the tightly folded wings that hid most of the body; to the thick, arched neck; to the tapered, triangular head that only looked delicate compared to the rest of its body; the beast exuded two distinct messages: magic and extreme danger.

  “That’s a—” Newt found his voice, only to lose it again.

  “Dragon. Yes. I thought they were all dead.”

  “Our worse luck they’re not,” Gerard said. They were all speaking in the smallest whispers they could manage, terrified that the beast would wake.

  The dragon’s silver-blue scales flickered like will-o’-the-wisps, shimmering first here, then there, until it made you dizzy to look at it. The creature’s head shifted, and they held their breath, but the great eyes remained closed. The noise they had been hearing was the great beast’s snores.

  “The talisman’s here?” When Gerard nodded yes, Newt let escape a swear word so pungent that Ailis felt her skin turn pink, a
nd Gerard looked impressed. “Come on, then. Let’s get this done with.”

  They tiptoed around the chamber, trying to spot something in the priceless heap that glowed the same way the first two talismans had.

  “There!”

  “Where?”

  “Up there!”

  Newt pointed, and the other two let their gazes follow. One of the dragon’s scales up on the side of its head was glowing.

  “I’m going to kill Merlin. If we get out of this alive, I swear, I am going to kill him. I don’t care if I have to do it as a rat.” Newt clenched his hand more tightly around his dagger, well aware that it would be completely useless.

  “I’ll help you do it,” Gerard vowed. Ailis just stared.

  “We’re supposed to take a scale off a dragon?” Newt continued, almost too angry to be afraid. “Off a dragon? Ailis, you talk to Merlin. Do it now. Tell him he’s even more insane than I thought before.”

  “It’s not a scale,” she said. “It’s a ring.”

  It was. The dragon wore a single golden ring set into one small, delicate-looking ear which you could only see if you tilted your head and looked at the dragon’s face from a certain angle.

  “A ring. We’re supposed to take a ring off a dragon’s ear. And this is easier than getting a scale?”

  “It’s not,” Ailis said petulantly. “Merlin, if you’re listening, this is truly not fair!”

  “Hmmmmmppphhhhh.” A giant exhale of air and sound.

  Ailis looked at Newt, who looked at Gerard, who looked at Ailis. And then all three of them looked at the dragon.

  One great black eye opened, then another, and a puff of smoke rose from the tremendous nostrils. The dragon was waking up.

  “Scatter!” Gerard yelled and all three split up, heading in different directions. The lessons hard-learned under the troll’s bridge came into play almost instinctively. Ailis and Newt went left, crossing and recrossing each other’s paths, while Gerard jinked to the right, stopping short and starting again, all three keeping an eye on each other, circling and dodging so that one of them was always moving away from the dragon and one was always moving closer.

  The dragon raised its head slowly, its neck arching as it rose so that it had a good view of all three of them. Its eyes operated independently, keeping track of two of the three at any given time. Then the head darted forward, cutting one of them off and forcing them to scramble in another direction, until they were reacting from it rather than distracting it. It was old and canny; as canny as Newt, as smart as Ailis, and as determined as Gerard, and the three humans wore out long before the beast did.

  “Stop playing with us!” Gerard roared finally, pulling his sword from its scabbard and racing toward the nest when the dragon’s head darted at him one time too many.

  Newt and Ailis both changed direction when they heard Gerard’s roar. They brought him down to his knees and forcibly dragged him out of the dragon’s striking range.

  “Are you moonstruck?” Ailis demanded in a loud whisper. “Getting killed won’t help anything!”

  “Indeed it won’t,” the dragon said.

  The three of them froze. Dragons. Talking.

  “This is so unfair,” Newt said, dropping Gerard’s leg and folding to the floor in a pose of resigned exhaustion. “Why is everything bigger, nastier, and toothier than we are?”

  Think, girl. Use that brain I suspect you have somewhere.

  “Merlin?”

  “He’s talking to you again?” Newt tried to take his gaze off the dragon to look at Ailis, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Tell him I’m going to kill him.”

  “I don’t know. I think…” She couldn’t take her eyes off the dragon either, watching with fascination as its neck extended, bringing the narrow head closer to them. The dragon’s eyes were huge, bottomless black orbs, and the smoke rising from its red-rimmed nostrils smelled, strangely enough, like the kitchen’s herb garden back home—sweet and spicy and of greenery and dirt, all mixed in together. Ailis found herself drawn to it, swaying on her feet as the dragon’s head moved closer.

  And Newt did for her what they had both done for Gerard. He shoved her hard enough to wake her from the trance the dragon’s smoke had put her in, enough to make her skip back several steps, out of reach of the creature’s sharp-toothed mouth. The dragon was no herbivore, that was clear. And while it couldn’t make a meal of her entirely, its mouth was certainly large enough to take an arm or a leg at a time.

  Ailis wasn’t sure what Merlin had meant about using her brain, if it was Merlin at all and if she wasn’t merely imagining things. She didn’t feel all that intelligent right now. Just scared. Still, she knew she had to try.

  “Wise One,” she said, trying to sound reproachful, the way you would speak to a merchant who was offering less than his best goods as a bargaining chip before starting serious discussions. “Wise One, you see before you three who would trade with you.”

  She had no idea what she might trade for a dragon’s earring. But if it worked for the troll, the trick would be to get the beast interested in the idea. They could worry about details later.

  “Hmmmmmmmm.” The great eyes closed halfway, scaled lids dropping down in a move that fooled no one into thinking the dragon wasn’t paying attention. “Trade? Hmmmmm. What, little human? Why would I do that?”

  The voice was deep and dark, sending shivers down Ailis’s spine.

  “To acquire new treasure without effort.” Her voice ended on an upswing, making it sound like a question, and she cursed herself for it.

  “I don’t mind effort,” the dragon said. While its expression didn’t change, she could swear the voice was amused now. It was playing with them, just as it had been before. “And yet, you smell different, of places I have not been in many, many years. Perhaps…perhaps you have something that might intrigue me. What have you of worth, to tempt me into giving over something of mine?”

  Gerard got to his feet slowly, trying not to draw too much of the dragon’s attention, and moved just behind Ailis, careful to keep his hand away from his sword’s hilt. Newt, already by Ailis’s side, rocked back onto his heels but otherwise didn’t shift.

  “Ah…” Ailis thought hard. “We have three horses outside, well-fleshed and grain-fed. Excellent eating.” She jabbed Newt with an elbow when he would have protested. “We could bring them to you or let them free for you to hunt, as is your pleasure.”

  A snort sent a darker, thicker cloud of scented smoke rising into the cavern, and the dragon yawned, showing off two rows of wickedly sharp teeth. “I would be more interested in hunting something that gave me more challenge.” The meaning was clear, and Ailis heard her companions swallow hard.

  “I’m afraid I cannot offer you…” Was it better to say more or stop there? She decided that less was better, at least until she knew what the dragon was thinking. Was it a serious counteroffer? Or was the dragon planning to eat them and the horses no matter what?

  Gerard jumped in, his voice surprisingly steady. “You say you have not traveled to where we come from in many years. Few dragons have. Our king would be grateful were you to allow us to take back the item we came for…. And the gratitude of a king is no small thing.”

  “The gratitude of kings is a very small thing. How can one being say a word and bind another to it? Are you this king’s own self, to speak for him?”

  “I…no. But he—”

  The smoke rose in a trio of rings from each nostril. Gerard stopped talking.

  Newt stirred but didn’t say anything. The silence drew out an uncomfortable tension; the dragon, still coiled lazily around its hoard, stared at them with those unnerving eyes.

  “Me.” Gerard looked as startled as anyone that the word had come from his mouth.

  “You?”

  “I’m offering me. Not as food,” he was quick to say. “As a…servant. How many other dragons, Wise One, no matter what their treasure, could boast a squire—a human servant—of their own
?”

  “You wear the armor of another; their sigil is on you.” The dragon’s eyes were terrifyingly sharp, to notice and recognize the design on the left shoulder of Gerard’s jerkin: the emblem of Sir Rheynold’s house. “You cannot serve when you are already sworn. And I would not desire a servant who cannot stay true to his vows.”

  The tones of the dragon’s voice seemed familiar to Gerard, and he fought to stay focused on what it was saying, rather than trying to chase down that familiarity.

  “I have sworn no oaths,” Newt said finally, getting to his feet with obvious stiffness.

  “Nor I,” Ailis said.

  The dragon craned its neck to inspect first Ailis, then Newt. “You are not so well-dressed. You are servants already—there is no satisfaction in having servants serve.”

  “I’ve been sneered at before,” Newt said, his voice shaking with what might have been either fear or laughter, “but never so well with so few words.”

  That earned him one large smoke ring, blown directly into his face. Newt coughed, turning away from the heavy, bitter smell.

  “I’ll make you a vow,” Gerard said, stepping forward until he was well within the dragon’s reach. “Now I am a squire, and sworn to my master’s service. But soon I will be named a knight, and my only obligations will be to my own word. If you give us freely what we came here for and allow us to leave unmolested, when that day comes, I will return.”

  “And serve me?”

  “And challenge you. Fair combat, winner takes all. That will leave us both the subject of legends that will live on forever.” He was taking a gamble—the dragon was not interested in objects, or meals, and was too proud to take servants as such. Pride. That Gerard knew something about.

  “Are you insane?” Ailis asked in a harsh whisper, her hand clearly itching to slap Gerard for his foolishness.

  He merely shrugged, watching the dragon examining them. “Without the ring we might as well die now, because if we can’t wake Arthur, the entire country is doomed. Besides,” and Gerard actually smiled, although his face was white with tension, “why are you assuming he’d win?”