The Camelot Spell Read Online Free PDF

them? How?” Mak asked.
    “How should I know?” Finan was freckled and red-haired, and so skinny that even on a feast day he looked as though he were about to die of starvation. But he was a good squire—one of the best with a lance, even if he was hesitant to take charge in any situation. “It’s only us who are still awake.”
    Ailis spoke again, her voice steady despite the fear that was sweeping the room. “Do you think it’s happened to everyone…throughout the castle?”
    Gerard turned to Ailis; he’d been about to ask the question she had just voiced. Their earlier disagreement was forgotten as they stared at each other, the situation at hand almost too horrifying to accept. Adults couldn’t just fall asleep all of a sudden. Not all of them. That didn’t happen!
    “Wait here,” he said to her. Then he looked at Finan, including him in the order. “Try to keep the little ones calm. I’ll be right back.”
    Outside the Great Hall, the corridors were empty and oddly silent. Camelot was like a beehive, as SirRheynold always complained. The castle hummed with activity every hour of every day. But now, for the first time Gerard could remember, the beehive was still.
    “Is anyone there?” Gerard called down the hallway, walking forward with his shoulders hunched as though expecting to be attacked at any moment. Or perhaps to fall asleep as suddenly as the knights and revelers had. A faint noise answered him. He hurried his steps and threw open a wooden door to reveal a very young page, clutching one of Arthur’s hounds and sobbing his heart out. The dog looked up at Gerard with large, mournful brown eyes, as though to say “What could I do? The little one grabbed me and won’t let go.”
    The boy was safe enough with the hound, and Gerard had other rooms to explore.
    He went first toward the kitchen. It was the busiest place on a normal day, thrice so on a feast day. If anyone with authority were still awake, they would be there.
    What greeted him, however, was not encouraging. Where earlier in the day the kitchen had moved with purpose and order, now it limped, blindly feeling its way. The youngest children were still turning the spit on which a boar roasted over the flames.Three small figures—boys or girls, you couldn’t tell under the flour that dusted them—were at the huge wooden table in the middle of the room, trying desperately to gather the pastry scraps to roll into something resembling a pie crust. Another child—no more than seven or eight—fed wood into a small fire by the far wall, while a taller one stirred a great black pot that simmered with the smell of warmed cider and made Gerard’s stomach rumble. Despite everything that had happened, his body was still concerned about being fed.
    Cook’s massive form had clearly fallen too close to one of the cookfires and been dragged away; Gerard saw soot and a few singe marks on the man’s clothing. He lay on his back on the floor, the older assistants likewise scattered in sleeping disarray around him.
    “What’s happening?” one of the children called as he saw Gerard in the doorway, not pausing in his work as he spoke.
    Gerard could only shake his head. Only ten remained awake in the kitchen, of the thirty or more bodies he could count, and the oldest of them looked perhaps all of eleven years old.
    Thinking quickly, Gerard realized that he waslikely the oldest person still awake in the entire castle! It was a sobering thought. He put it aside for the moment in order to deal with more immediate problems.
    “Come with me,” he ordered the children. “No, wait, stay here.” They were doing the right thing. If they couldn’t get the adults to wake up, they would still need to eat. “Move the sleepers out of the way, and make sure the food doesn’t burn. Don’t worry about making anything more for the feast; nothing fancy, just basic foods. Can you do that?” He directed his questions to the oldest, most steady-looking of the