Ruins of Camelot Read Online Free PDF Page B

the dueling floor.  He glared at Goethe.  Then, as the bigger boy handed his dagger to Treynor and turned to gather his things, Darrick shifted his gaze to Gabriella.  He nodded slowly once.  Gabriella understood.  Goethe had only resorted to the dagger because she had beaten him.  It may be that no one else would see it that way, but it was the truth.
    No matter what the final score revealed, she had won.
     

     
    The candle ceremony always took place at sunset.  The school cathedral was packed to overflowing, stuffy with the heat of jostling bodies, most wearing their finest and least comfortable clothing.  The air was filled with murmuring voices, candle smoke, and wafting threads of incense.  Gabriella watched the incense as it streamed lazily from the altar urns, combining and making silent magical shapes in the air.  Professor Toph, the Magic Master, tended the urns, teasing the ribbons of smoke with his wand and occasionally sprinkling coloured powders onto the flames, which spurted and flared.
    The gathering of students stood on the dais, forming a semicircle around the altar.  In their black robes and hoods, it was hard to tell the girls from the boys.  Indeed, the throng of students seemed to blend into a seamless, black snake dotted with nervous faces.
    "What is that one?" Constance whispered, nudging Rhyss and nodding out over the gathered families.
    "Battle of the Wragnaroth," Rhyss replied quietly.  "There's King Arthur in the lead, see?  His horse is that swirly bit floating in the vault of the apse."
    "I don't see it," Darrick breathed, shaking his head.
    "That's because you don't have any imagination, dearheart," Rhyss sang under her breath.
    Gabriella let her gaze fall from the swirling smoky shapes to the hundreds of people jostling into place on the dim floor below.  She saw Darrick's family near the back.  His father's prodigious, black beard had been combed and oiled so that it glistened in the torch light.  Next to him, Darrick's mother smiled, red-cheeked, and occasionally glanced around in an effort to keep track of Darrick's two younger brothers.  Gabriella saw their tousled heads bobbing and darting through the crowd, oblivious of the solemn nature of the evening's ceremony.
    She lowered her eyes further to the front row of the cathedral.  Most of the attendees were standing of course, packed onto the open cathedral floor, but two rows of stone chairs lined the front of the space immediately before the altar.  Here, the royal court reclined in their formal attire.  Gabriella saw Percival, Destra's father, and the rest of the men in her father's council.  In the centre front, two heavy, wooden thrones dominated the floor, much higher and more ornate than the stone seats on either side.  Gabriella's father, King Xavier, sat in the throne on the right.  The other throne was empty save for a small alabaster vase, carefully sealed with a crystal stopper.
    Gabriella felt a twinge of sadness looking at her mother's ashes, but it was old sadness now.  It had been many years since the attack and the midnight flight, many years since those frightening weeks when Gabriella had not known if her parents were living or dead or even if she would ever return to them.  Now it was all just dusty memories: a small, snowbound cottage, a red-hooded cloak, long nights of lonely fear.  Now Gabriella's mother was barely a wistful dream, a whiff of perfume, an echo of a singing voice.  Gabriella missed her, but she did so with her buried child's heart.  The young woman that had grown around that heart looked on with only a vague sadness, a pang at the lack of something that she could never know.
    Rhyss leant close to Gabriella's ear.  "I hope this does not bore you overmuch," she whispered.  "It may be that you and Darrick will be back here again soon, only then you'll be wearing white instead of black."
    Gabriella blushed and poked Rhyss with her elbow.  "You are incorrigible!" she rasped.