Borolet looked up at the tower; Ganelin head-butted him. “Stay and wrestle with me.”

“Thanks, but I really have to be going.”

“You should train. Don’t you want to be a knight?”

“No.” She said it with heavy emphasis.

“You talk like a girl.”

She bristled at this. “Which girl did you have in mind, exactly?”

Abashed, he apologized. “Sorry.”

“I’ll see you both later.” Nimue crossed to the castle’s entrance and climbed the stairs to Merlin’s tower. He was there, waiting for her. Three of his ravens were perched in a row along the edge of the table as if they were scolding her for paying more attention to a red-haired, bare-chested twin than to her lessons.

“Merlin, Britomart knows about me. Did you tell her?”

“Of course not. How do you know?”

“She as much as told me just now.”

“I’ll talk to her and see.” He gestured to a scroll on the table. “See how you do translating that.”

“What is it?”

“Ovid. The Art of Love. I don’t think you have to worry about Brit. I know her pretty well, and she can be trusted.”

“I hope so.”

“She’s my closest friend. And she’s politician enough to know that if you spread a secret around it loses its value. But I promise I’ll talk to her as soon as I can.”

“Thanks. I’m having too much fun to have this end and go back to Morgan’s court.” She wrinkled her nose at the scroll in her hand. “The Art of Love. Why does that seem out of place at Camelot?”

He scowled at her. “The king’s marriage is the king’s affair. Mind your Latin.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s difficult stuff. You’ll have to concentrate.” But after a moment he couldn’t resist asking. “Are you smitten with one of the twins?”

She nodded and smiled, grateful for something to focus on other than Augustan Latin. “But don’t worry. It’s my mind I want to develop right now. I’m not ready for another betrothal, and I won’t be for a long time.”

This caught him by surprise. “You were betrothed?”

“Yes.” Her voice took on a bitter edge. “To Mordred.”

“Good God.”

“Exactly. Why do you think I fled Morgan’s court?”

“I had no idea. Mordred! What a ghastly marriage that would have been.”

“We’d have been as cold and distant as Arthur and Guenevere. ” She smiled sweetly.

He frowned at her again, even more deeply, but rose to the bait. “Theirs was a political marriage, not a love match. Her father, Leodegrance, is a minor king in France. He thought the union would open up opportunities for grabbing land and money here. And Arthur thought the same thing in reverse. It wasn’t long before they reached a stalemate.”

“Poor Guenevere.”

“Poor, nothing. She went into it with her eyes open, as an agent for her father’s interests. As soon as she realized she would never get one up on Arthur, she moved out, found a convenient castle and set up her own court. Why she chose Corfe…” He wrinkled his nose. "Is there an uglier castle in England? They don’t call it the Spider’s House for nothing.”

“At least she had the good grace to realize that a queen of England ought to live in England. She could easily have returned to her father. Give her credit for that.”

“I understand there is bad blood between her and her mother, Leonilla. But she never stops scheming, Nimue. I spend half my time trying to anticipate her plots. She’d do anything to bring Arthur down. And it isn’t just a matter of her father’s business, now. It is personal.”

“I hear she’s coming for the consecration ceremony.”

“Splendid. As if we won’t have enough chaos to deal with.” One of the ravens flapped its wings and flew out the window. “Guenevere has a pet ape. It is always with her; she keeps it on a silver chain. A lot of people have fun trying to tell the difference between it and Lancelot.”

“I’ve seen the queen but never him. Is he…?”

“An athlete. Tall, blond, strong, handsome and dumb as a sack of rocks. In one way it’s not hard to see why she took him as her lover. In another… I’ve never understood why so political a woman as Guenevere would choose a man with no connections. No thoughts.”

“Maybe she enjoys the change.” She held out the scroll. “Somehow this isn’t the kind of thing I want to read just now.”

He turned thoughtful. “No. I suppose it isn’t.” He searched the scrolls on the shelf nearest him and held one out. “Here, this might be more the thing.”

“What is it?”

“The Golden Ass.”

She laughed. “Are you talking about this book or Lancelot? Or Arthur?”

“Stop it. I tried to make friends with Guenevere when she first came here. She’s a smart woman. Very. But when it became clear she’d never stop working against Arthur- against us-I put some distance between us. There is a lesson there for you.”

“Yes, sir.” She turned her attention unhappily to Latin.

The weather turned harsh and stormy. Percival had been expected at Camelot within a week or so of sending the news about the Stone of Bran. As it turned out he was delayed at the Mersey River, which was swollen and impassable, for nearly ten days. Then he contracted influenza and was confined to bed for another five.

Arthur grew more impatient each day without his relic. “Where is he?” he grumbled to Merlin and Mark. “Every-one’s on edge.”

“Try and look at it in a positive way,” Mark counseled him. “If nothing else, the delay is giving Pastorini time to construct a shrine that’s genuinely worthy of such an important artifact.”

“And to waste more of the country’s treasure.” Merlin couldn’t resist adding it.

Arthur glared at him. “I want my stone. It will unify us all, it will stop all the fighting and bickering. I’m so tired of it all. No one knows that better than the two of you.”

“Cheer up, Arthur. If the stone really is what you say it is, maybe it will work a miracle, cure Percy and transport him here.”

“Stop it, will you?” He turned to Mark. “There was a report of a French raid on Dover. Guenevere’s father, most likely. Is there anything to it?”

“No. It turns out it was just a trading ship that was blown off course. You know the weather in the Channel.”

Merlin decided he had needled him enough. Arthur’s desire for some peace at court was quite understandable if not exactly realistic, given his style of governing. But it seemed politic to let him find it out on his own. When the stone arrived and proved to be… a stone, Arthur would realize quickly enough how foolish this enterprise was.

Then finally, more than two weeks after he was expected,word came that Percival was about to arrive at Camelot.

He had always struck Merlin as an unlikely knight. Short, plump, heavily bearded, he was not exactly the picture of chivalry. And he was not over his illness; he coughed nonstop.

But he had the stone with him, and that was all Arthur- or most anyone else-cared about. The king and a small circle of his closest advisors waited anxiously in Arthur’s chambers in the King’s Tower. Arthur paced; the others watched him.

There was always a guard on duty outside the rooms and another at the foot of the spiral steps that led up to them. People filed past them one by one, to wait in the king’s private study. It was where he kept his most precious belongings. In a case fronted with leaded glass rested Excalibur, the sword that was the emblem of his kinghood. It was crusted with gemstones, and somehow, improbably, a shaft of light lit it brightly.

Percival left his horse in the care of a servant and went directly up to Arthur’s rooms. He carried the stone in a flour sack, which hardly seemed the way to transport a powerful relic. Arthur, Mark and Merlin were there, attended by Nimue, Borolet and Ganelin. Out of breath from the climb and covered in dirt, Percy said nothing but produced the thing with a flourish.

And it was not impressive: roughly skull-shaped, caked with mud and soil.