Pendragon's Heir Read Online Free PDF Page A

dawn light, red-gold as the ring which the stranger in the pavilion had given her.

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    For if he live, that hath you done despite,
    He shall you do due recompense again,
    Or else his wrong with greater puissance maintain.
    Spenser
    I T WAS A FEAST - DAY WHEN P ERCEVAL came to the High King’s city of Camelot, riding in an uneasy fog of thought, for he began to wonder if his mother might not have meant something different by her instructions about the ring. Once he had become a knight, he thought, he would go in quest of the damsel of the pavilion, and if he had done wrong, he might yet give her reason to forgive him.
    Camelot castle stood on a hill in a low wide valley opening toward a plain on the south, a labyrinthine many-spired place melting into the noisy little town at its feet. A river came down out of the northern hills to moat the town and castle, the eastern bank of which was good black farmland, but the western bank was weaving forest.
    Llech distrusted the bridge. He stepped onto it only after persuasion, and when he heard the hollow thud of his hooves on the wood he threw up his head and plunged into the crowded street, swerving around to face the echoes when he had reached safety. Perceval, accustomed to riding bareback, kept his seat easily and glanced about for the sentries. They stared, but made no move to challenge him. And no wonder! Turning Llech to continue up the street, Perceval saw farmers, beggars, knights, tumblers, jugglers, minstrels, kegs of ale, and the blazing colours of best clothes.
    Someone called out, “Come and have a drink, stranger!” but Perceval replied, “Not I! I am going to the King.”
    His voice was almost swallowed by a ringing clatter on the bridge. Llech shied around again to see, and Perceval saw a knight in gilded armour upon a mighty horse like a thunderhead bearing down upon them. For a confused moment Perceval’s pony planted his feet and balked. A voice grated out of the knight’s helm, “Way, fellow,” and the iron figure hefted the butt of his spear to sweep Perceval aside. In the nick of time Llech danced out of the way. With a rush the knight clattered past, up the hill toward the keep, leaving merrymakers tossed in his wake.
    “Follow that oafish one,” someone called to Perceval. “He’s off to the King, no doubt.”
    Perceval heard and dug his heels into the pony’s sides. Up the hill they cantered among the protests left in the knight’s trail, and trotted beneath a massive carved door-lintel into a high-roofed hall rippling with bright banners. Here under soaring arches in the light of a hundred high windows stood a great round table in the midst of the hall, scores of men seated around it talking and eating and laughing. Perceval looked once, then again, and his stomach quaked as he realised that he was in the presence of the greatest warriors of the world, each one tried and tempered on the field of war.
    Could he prove himself worthy to sit among them? For the space of a breath he was glad that none of them saw him come in. They were falling silent, staring at the gilded knight, who trotted between the round table and the long straight tables that flanked it on each side toward the King’s seat at the head of the hall.
    Here at the Table the King sat enthroned (pewter-grey hair the King had, and the marks of war on his hands, but piercing eyes that would be wise in judgement); the pale Queen stood beside him with an upraised goblet of silver and glass, and words dying away on her lips. The gilded knight swung down from his horse and strode toward them without a pause. “Who is this,” he shouted, “who is this that stands at the head of the Round Table to pledge them all to truth and virtue, and is herself no better than a common stale?”
    There was the rattle of a chair sliding across cobbles, a raking up of rushes, and a flash of light as a blade was drawn. One of the knights, on the far side of the table, was on his feet, moving—the King,