by Ben Zackheim
“His beard and eyebrows were singed off,” Russ chortled.
“He’s a funny looking guy without his hair.” Josh said.
“No one saw him for a few weeks. They brought in a bunch of wizards and healers from all over the place. In the end, they got him better, but everyone says he almost died.”
Josh’s tone got less amused. “That was when things started to change around here.” There was a silence between the two now that made Simon uncomfortable.
“What do you mean? What changed?”
“Well, a lot of us had been coming here for summers,” Russ said. “It was kind of like camp. You know, as knights in training. In the fall, we’d all head back home to go to school. The feeling was that we were just the latest generation in a long line of trainees preparing for the prophecy to come true.”
“You mean the return of Arthur.”
Russ nodded. “But after Merlin’s battle with Trejure, our training got more intense. We were told we’d be here year-round. The grownups started to call us the kingdom’s last hope. And there were rumors that Merlin had finally found the descendants of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot.”
“That was the first time those bloodlines had shown up.”
“Yeah, the three most important ones.” Russ made a face like something struck him. “Kind of weird, if you think about it. I always assumed it meant that they had no descendants.”
Josh hopped onto his feet. “Blah blah blah. Come on. Let’s fight! Simon, see if you can take both of us on from the low ground.”
Russ and Josh stood atop a boulder. Simon slashed his way up its side, ducking their blows and relentlessly focusing on their kneecaps. After a minute, he caught them both by surprise with a move that Hector had never taught them. Simon lifted his shield over his head, grabbed his sword by the blade, and slipped it between their legs. Then he turned the sword lengthwise and pulled. The force of the blunt side of the blade against the back of their knees made Josh and Russ fall face forward. When they cleared the dirt out of their eyes and looked up Simon was standing on the top of the boulder, smiling.
The three boys laughed and lay down to catch their breath.
“You’re almost ready to take me on, Simon,” Maille said from the ground below. She swung her bat in large circles.
“Thanks. What are you up to?”
“Got done watching the princess in training. Hut gave her a hard time. It was priceless. Look at this.” Maille swung her bat and a ball of green light bounced on the grass, settled, and became a little replay of Gwen swinging her wand and getting doused in water from her own spell. Like a short video clip stuck in a loop, the little figure cast the water spell on herself over and over again. Maille cackled. Even Russ and Josh seemed to be enjoying themselves.
But Simon felt bad for her. He and Gwen were only trying to make sense out of all this. It didn’t seem right to Simon that people might be enjoying their failures. Maille saw Simon frowning and killed the spell.
“I have to go,” Simon said. His friends watched him walk off.
Simon was overcome with a strange sense that something was wrong.
I should check on the tree.
As he got closer to the clearing where the tree lived, he picked up the pace.
What he saw was horrifying. It was his worst fear come true. He ran back to the castle. He had to find Gwen.
32
“Wait a second. Slow down. So the tree is gone?” Gwen was trying to understand the babble that was coming out of Simon’s mouth. He’d found her in the training field, still drenched from her lesson. She dried her hair with a towel as she listened.
“No, the leaves are stripped off. All of them.”
“But I thought we were the only ones who could…” Her eyes went wide. “Oh, Simon. I think we screwed up.”
“What did I do now?”
“Only we could see the tree. Don’t you see what that means?”
“Means? It’s just one of the hundreds of magic spells that we see pop up every day around here.”
“No. The same spell that hid the assassin and Shadow is probably hiding the tree, too.”
Simon had to think for a moment. He didn’t like the sense of dread growing in his gut. “But if that’s true, then that means the tree could be some kind of a trap set by Shadow’s people.” How could he have been so stupid? Maille was right about those seeds after all. “We need to tell Maille.”
“I think Hut should know first. He’s the most powerful wizard with Merlin gone.”
“But can we trust him?”
“Can we trust her?” Gwen crossed her arms.
“Yeah, definitely.” Maille had earned his trust a dozen times. But she was also Merlin’s apprentice…
“Fine,” Gwen said. “We’ll tell her. But you’d better be right about this.”
When they caught up with Maille she was speaking to a small man in a wooden wheelchair. The huge wheels towered over everyone’s heads. They moved back and forth on their own, rocking the occupant like a bearded baby. Six metal arms protruded from the back of the machine. Their pincers click-clacked as they swayed along with the bobbling chair. Their sharp fingertips seemed to point at Simon and Gwen as they approached.
“Who’s he?” Simon asked in a whisper. The chair made him nervous.
“That’s Hut,” Gwen muttered. Whatever he and Maille were talking about had them huddled close together.
Hut saw them and put on a kind face.
“Hello, apprentice! And this must be Simon!” The dwarf wizard swiftly rolled up to Simon, his six metal arms outstretched. Simon chose one. The handshake was excruciatingly firm. “I want you to be careful around this one, Gwen,” Hut said. “His reputation precedes him by a thousand years, and several tomes of mythology, for that matter. HA!”
Gwen smiled. Simon tried to. Hut was certainly friendlier than Merlin. That alone bought the wizard a lot of goodwill with him.
Simon couldn’t think of a delicate way to put it. “Maille, do you have a second?”
“Why don’t we tell both of them?” Gwen asked Simon.
“Tell us what?” Hut and Maille said at the same time. Simon gave Gwen a look that would have melted gold.
“They’re both here at the same time!” Gwen said, stubbornly. “That must mean something.”
“Mean something?” Simon said, exasperated. “What do you mean, ‘mean something?’”
“Children, tell me what’s on your mind.” Hut’s demeanor got serious.
So Simon did his best to explain everything. When he got to the part about growing the tree with gold leaves, Maille’s eyes went wide.
“We told you gold is forbidden in New Camelot!” she hollered.
“It was invisible gold!” Simon yelled back. He knew it was a weak argument. He’d been stupid. He knew that. But what was he supposed to do?
“Where is the tree now?” Hut asked urgently, as one of his metal hands settled gently on Maille’s shoulder to calm her.
“But that’s the thing,” Simon said. “The leaves are gone. I don’t know who took them.”
Hut made eye contact with Maille and, without a word, rolled straight through a stone wall. The shattering stone fell to the floor, leaving everyone a little stunned. And dusty.
“Where’s, uh, Hut going?” Gwen asked, shaken by the wizard’s response to their story.
“Oh, Simon. You really did it this time. I told you not to mess with those boxes.”
“Maille, what’s going on?” Simon asked.
“Simon, the reason we don’t allow gold in New Camelot is… SSSH!”
Maille went quiet and held up a hand. After a moment of silence, Simon heard a hollow, distant
BOOM
Maille ran down the hall as fast as she could and dashed up the North Tower stairway. Gwen and Simon followed.
“Simon. I’m scared,” Gwen said.
“Yeah, me too.”
Maille sprinted up two steps at a time. They all eme
rged in the room where Simon had learned the Slipitent sword spell.
BOOM
“There it is again. What is that sound?” Gwen asked Maille, who looked more terrified than both of them. Screams rose from the streets below. Maille used a spell to open all the windows in the room at the same time.
And there it was, flying right for them.
“It’s a dragon,” Gwen whispered, breathless.
33
Fifty feet away, the gigantic flying beast, with skin like an elephant and the teeth of a shark, soared by and let out a piercing screech. Several windows shattered, blanketing the kids in a cloud of glass.
“We don’t allow gold in the city because it attracts Trejure and his army,” Maille said, closing all the window shutters with another spell.
“Is that Trejure?” Gwen asked, brushing some glass off her shoulder.
“If it was, we’d all be dead by now. It’s one of his soldiers, though. Probably a scout.”
Maille paced back and forth, her bat swinging in circles. The wood was beginning to glow yellow, then orange, then red.
“What are you doing?” Simon didn’t like that glow.
“Charging up. Open that shutter when I say so!” The bat was letting out an odd brown glow. When it darkened to black, Maille yelled, “NOW!”
Simon opened the shutter and Maille released the bat, throwing it outside with a loud grunt.
“CLOSE IT!” Simon slammed it shut. But not before he saw the bat take a sharp left turn in midair and head toward the dragon. After a second, a loud roar shook everything. Maille smirked.
“Bullseye,” she said with a wink.
The air outside the tower turned orange. The dragon was flooding them with fire.
“He can blow all he wants, but this tower is protected from flames.” Maille pulled a much smaller wand out of her sleeve and waved it at a column in the middle of the room. A longbow and a quiver of arrows appeared, leaning against the stone.
“You, get out your training wand,” she said to Gwen. “And you, grab the bow and arrows.” She pointed to Simon.
Archery wasn’t Simon’s strong suit, as Hector liked to remind him whenever he started to feel cocky. But he figured it was better than taking on a dragon with a sword.
Suddenly, a dozen soldiers barged in with bows of their own. The weapons were worn down, as if used for centuries in real battle. Each bow had its own pattern on it, some in leather and some in strands of thin metal. The arrows were almost as thick as Simon’s wrists. He watched as the soldiers lined up, one man per shuttered window.
Simon found a window of his own. He had no delusions that he’d be useful, but he was certainly going to try. He glanced over at the soldier standing next to him.
It was Dergh.
They were about to go into their second fight together.
“Aim true, young Lancelot,” Dergh said with a smile. Simon nodded back.
“On my mark!” A soldier in the middle of the room raised one hand in the air. The men pulled back their strings and aimed. Did he expect them to shoot through the shutters?
“FIRE!”
Every shutter banged open. Each of the arrows, including Simon’s, flew from the tower, blanketing the sky with a lethal layer of missiles. Just as fast, the shutters slammed shut. Simon glanced behind him and saw Maille wielding her wand. She was running the show.
As Simon strung up another arrow, he hoped the citizens below had enough sense to get far away. Their arrows didn’t care where they landed.
“FIRE!”
Again the missiles left the bows as the doors slammed open. This time the dragon’s screech was even louder. It was getting frustrated. And closer. Simon could hear its heavy breath, which smelled of ash.
Fire consumed the tower. It was hot enough to make everyone in the room sweat instantly.
The men were not preparing for another round. Maille and Gwen were conferring in a dark corner. Gwen looked upset. Maille patted her shoulder.
The slivers of sunlight piercing the shutters were blocked by the gliding beast. The tower shook. Everyone lost their balance.
“It’s using its tail to tear us down!” a soldier yelled.
Maille held Gwen steady with a hand on the shoulder. Gwen raised her wand and the window in front of her opened.
Gwen screamed… “HUBBLE DOUSE IMBUE!”
She flew backward from the force of the geyser that erupted from her wand. The stream barely fit through the window frame. It smacked the dragon as it passed. Maille opened all the windows. Everyone ran to see how good Gwen’s aim was.
The monster was flying away, already a small, zig-zagging dot in the sky.
The soldiers erupted in cheers, throwing their hands in the air and smiling at Gwen. A couple of them even bowed to her.
“That was great!” Maille yelled, slapping Gwen on the back. A little too hard, if Gwen’s face was any indication. “He won’t be returning anytime soon. They hate getting wet. They’re like big, ugly cats with no fur. And wings. And that whole fire thing.”
“Was that the water spell you’ve been practicing?” Simon asked Gwen. She was drenched.
“Yeah. I may need some more practice. Will you two please stand up?” she snapped at two kneeling soldiers, who quickly got to their feet.
“You were brilliant!” Simon said, giving her a hug. When he felt her arms wrap around him, he pulled back and looked at the ground. Gwen did the same. The soldiers pretended not to notice the awkward moment.
Simon searched for Dergh. He wanted to ask him if he was any relation to the Dergh who Merlin spoke of — the one who crafted his vambrace — but the elf was gone.
AS IT TURNED out, the townsfolk had been wise enough to scatter to the corners of the kingdom when the dragon attacked. The archers’ arrows took out exactly two chickens (which were quickly replaced by the king, Chester’s first command without Merlin around) and several dozen windows. The local pub decided to preserve its wall of arrows — a testament to the battle that took place there.
The victory was not complete, however. The dragon had settled on a nearby mountainside, where it watched them, smoke bellowing from its nose. Once in a while it would let out a screech that echoed across the canyons and sent a chill down the townsfolk’s spines.
To Simon, it felt like New Camelot was being surrounded. A shadow castle to the west and dragons to the north.
“It’s calling out to the other dragons. This attack isn’t over.” Maille said at dinner. “We need to find that gold and get it far away from here.”
But even as New Camelot quietly celebrated, Simon and Gwen couldn’t enjoy themselves. They were in too much trouble to even break a smile. Maille didn’t waste a second scolding them for being so dense.
“Hm. Only you can see the assassin. Only you can see Shadow. Only you can see the tree. Could there be a connection?” she teased as they ate dinner in Tapper.
Maille told them that, based on the dragons’ behavior during the Battle of 1803, an army of flying lizards would swarm New Camelot within four days. Trejure himself would perch on a nearby mountain to oversee the campaign. The lopsided 1803 attack had been so bad for the Camelot soldiers that it took a year of memory spells and a billion threatening glares from Merlin to whip everyone back into shape.
One detail of the history lesson caught Simon’s attention. According to Maille, the toughest thing to erase from folks’ memory was Trejure taunting New Camelot with a sword he claimed was Excalibur.
Did Trejure really have the fabled sword of Arthur? If he did have it, did it actually have some kind of power?
But, to Simon, the thought that haunted him most was this: If the dragon did have Excalibur, and if Maille was right about his parents, then Trejure possessed the treasure that his parents died for.
34
Hut and Maille kept the reason for the dragon’s attack a secret, so no one called for Simon’s and Gwen’s heads on a spike. They were thankful for that. But the gold eluded t
hem. Simon searched the grounds with Gwen, Maille, and Hut. One thought nagged at them, though no one dared utter it out loud. The gold could be anywhere. The hopelessness of it all began to wear Simon down by midday. The loud, busy castle wasn’t helping his mood. He slipped into the throne room for a break.
As he shoved the doors shut, he heard a sound, like a piece of wood breaking. The crack echoed off the walls. He sensed trouble and, without thinking, leapt backward.
A massive chandelier slammed onto the stone floor where he’d been standing.
He glanced up and saw his færie glaring back at him, clearly upset that its aim was a bit off.
“Hey! What’s the deal?” Simon called out.
The færie stuck out its tongue, then darted for the door. Simon followed.
It flew through the halls, dodging people as if they were props in an obstacle course. It knocked the helmet off a trainee and flew between some poor man’s legs, practically yanking his robe off.
Before he could get his bearings, Simon realized he’d been led to the boys’ quarters. The færie floated in front of Wellwoven’s door long enough for Simon to catch his breath, then flew inside where it hovered over Simon’s bed. A grin crept across its face.
“You sure are a smug bug, aren’t you?” Simon asked, irritated. The færie didn’t like that comment one bit. It frowned and pointed at the bed. “Back off and I’ll look,” Simon said, crossing his arms.
The færie flew up and away to a dark spot in the room. Its neon green eyes glowed through the gloom.
Simon yanked his covers off. Nothing but sheets. He looked under the bed. Nothing. The færie snickered, making Simon more determined to find out what it was up to.
Finally, he flipped the mattress and found a small box underneath. It wasn’t anything ornate, simple wood and an iron latch which clicked open when he lifted it. Inside was an old fashioned key — heavy iron, with four prongs and a big loop on the head.
“What’s the key open?” Simon asked. The færie shrugged its shoulders and flew back out the door, cackling.
