Bet they have a lot to talk about, I thought viciously, before Billy jerked me down.
They didn’t notice, despite the fact that the water was no more opaque than anything else here. Because who looks beneath your feet? But I could see them perfectly, walking through nontime as if it was no big deal, as if strolling on the surface of a wavy sea just outside time’s grip was an everyday occurrence. And maybe it was.
They had a word for it, after all.
“That’s just so freaky,” Billy said, and I turned to agree. Only to see him standing eyeball-to-eyeball with some type of shark. The waterway here was a tidal river, according to Rosier, letting out into the nearby sea, and deep enough for oceangoing vessels to make their way up it.
Or oceangoing fish.
“Death has been so much more interesting than life,” he told me, staring at the creature in fascination. “Sure, you give up some stuff—some really important stuff—but then you get to do things like this.” And he reached out, one finger just poking through the skin of time.
And booped the shark’s nose.
“How close to the real world are we?” I asked, as the startled predator raced off.
“Close as I can get us. I am not comfortable with wacky ghost land. We need to get back where we belong—”
“Not with them chasing us.”
Hazel eyes cut to me.
A couple minutes later, I was wading ashore, a long, wooden dock on one side, and the walls of Arthur’s city on the other. While behind, sailors yelled and fell back as the sails they were struggling to furl suddenly went up in flames. Because a ghost tripping on demon power was ripping through the line of ships.
I crouched on the rocky soil near the dock and watched Billy go a little crazy. He almost never had energy to spare, especially lately when I’d been too tapped out to feed him. But that hadn’t been true of Rosier, and he was taking full advantage. On half a dozen ships, barrels hit the ocean waves, lanterns went flying, sailors yelled.
And hot oil flew, causing fires to spring up everywhere.
Eudoxia started while still among the waves, her forehead wrinkling suspiciously. Isabeau looked around from the deck of one of the now merrily burning ships, where she’d just rematerialized. Maybe because searching something when your feet keep trying to float through the floor isn’t so easy.
Or when the massive sails, which had been rolled tightly against the weather, abruptly unfurled, the wind billowing them out to full capacity, causing the ship to jerk hard against the anchor.
Until that line was cut, too.
The mighty vessel careened off toward the opposite shore, the startled Pythia still on board, and Billy swooped down beside me. “I’ll keep ’em busy, do what I can to lead ’em off,” he said, grinning like a maniac.
“Get back as soon as you can,” I said, watching Eudoxia shift to her beleaguered former apprentice. “I’m going to need you. I can’t use the power without bringing every Pythia in history down on my head.”
He made a face, but then grinned again, having too much fun to argue. He pulled me back into real time, my feet suddenly encountering hard rocks and shifting sand, and I watched him zoom away. And then switched my gaze to the forest, scanning for movement among the trees.
I didn’t see any, but they were out there, and Billy was right; this wouldn’t fool them for long.
I turned and headed for Camelot.
Chapter Forty-seven
Despite everything, I took a moment to stare at the real Camelot. According to Rosier, it hadn’t been called that until the thirteenth century, when some French poet decided he liked the name. In all the older texts, Arthur’s main seat was Caerleon, the sprawling stone-built city of the Romans, originally designed to house the six thousand soldiers of the Second Legion Augusta.
And looked like it still did.
On my left was a bustling port town, where white stuccoed buildings with red terra-cotta roofs sat side by side with thatched Celtic structures. Straight ahead, peering over some rooftops, was the old Roman amphitheater, its multicolored pennants shining brilliantly even on an overcast day. To the right, above a rise of ground, were the turreted stone walls surrounding the old city, built by the Second Augusta to withstand tribes of warring Celts. And, finally, on a hill overlooking it all, were the tall gray towers of a castle.
I teared up unexpectedly, I didn’t know why. Something about seeing a legend in the flesh, so to speak. Or maybe it had to do with the way the late-afternoon light hit the city, glinting redly off marble arches and sparkling fountains, and adding life to the gold paint someone had used to carefully pick out the scrollwork on centuries-old porticoes.
Of course, there were other things the light hit, too. Like the many-times-patched plaster that was crumbling yet again; the rusted, salt-encrusted ironwork meant for a drier clime; the wooden roof tiles that had been carefully shaped and painted to resemble the terra-cotta ones that nobody could get anymore; and the once proud Roman road cutting through it all, its surface now pitted and potholed. It looked like a city trying to recreate the splendors of the past, but not getting it quite right.
Yet that didn’t seem to matter so much. In fact, to me, it just made it all the more impressive. Not Hollywood pretty and unbelievably clean, like the only Camelots I’d ever seen, but like people had lived and fought and loved and died here.
Maybe because they had.
According to Rosier, the cracks in the plaster weren’t artistic license but mended bones, the rivers of rust below the old gutters tears of blood, the broken cobblestones fractured teeth. Rome might have built this place, but it hadn’t defended it. It had up and left one day, with almost no warning. Leaving the local people, many of whom thought of themselves as Roman, too, after centuries of its rule, high and dry.
And prey to every invader with a boat and a sword, and every hill tribe looking for plunder.
Until Uther, with his uncouth swagger and keen mind, and a grandfather who’d served in the Roman cavalry. And a son, born in the city his father had bled for, and dedicated to the same goal: holding civilization together. And, for a while, they’d actually pulled it off.
Just like in the stories, the old fortress had become the base for cavalry units trained in the Roman style. And while not quite the knights in shining armor of the fables, they were devastatingly effective against the disorderly foot soldiers of the local chieftains. The revolts that followed Roman withdrawal were put down, the Saxons repulsed, and for one brief, shining moment, peace had reigned. An era that must have seemed truly magical to a people rent by war both before and after.
An era the world would remember as Camelot.