The Camelot Spell Read Online Free PDF Page B

bunch, a boy with huge brown eyes and a smudge of something dark across his face.
    “Yes,” the boy responded promptly, clearly relieved to be given specific instructions. As Gerard turned to leave, he heard the kitchen boy calling out instructions to the others in a sweet, piping voice.
    Somehow Gerard didn’t think anything else was going to be that easy. The sound of children’s raised voices crying and shouting as he came closer to the Great Hall confirmed his fears. He bypassed the feast, instead heading to the huge outer doors and into the courtyard. Perhaps whatever was happening was restricted to the building itself.
    But outside, under the clear black sky, the situation was much the same. The guards posted to the castle’s perimeter had slumped against the crenellations. Their dogs, cousins to the hound inside, sniffed anxiously at their masters’ hands.
    Gerard found himself retracing his steps of that afternoon, back to the stables. But inside, he found horses unattended and the stable workers asleep in the straw. Gerard looked for the stable boy he had fought with—Newt—but didn’t see him among the sleepers. He paused to move some of the men who had fallen dangerously close to their charges’ hooves, and made sure all the horses were secured, before going back into the Great Hall.
     
    Inside the banquet hall, the chaos had worsened. Almost all the pages were crying now, and more than half the young servants had clearly given up, taking food off the tables and sitting in corners to eat. Gerard’s stomach rumbled again loudly, a reminder that he hadn’t had much to eat, either.
    “Hey!” he yelled, trying to project his voice into the corners of the room.
    The noise went on, the children ignoring his shout as though it had never been voiced.
    “Listen to me!” he yelled again, drawing his voice up from the pit of his chest, the way Sir Bors said to do on a battlefield.
    Ailis, across the hall with half a dozen of the youngest children gathered around her, didn’t even look up.
    “You haven’t the voice for it.”
    Gerard turned and glared at the speaker—Newt the stable boy. What was he doing here? He was still wearing the same stained clothing from their fight, his hair had hay in it, and his eye, Gerard was glad to see, was black and blue and swollen, but his expression was distracted as he scanned the hall. “Nobody’s going to listen to a squire with a squeaky voice.”
    The fact that Gerard’s voice hadn’t yet settled into a grown man’s tones had been a matter of much teasing, some not so gentle, in recent months. Try as he might not to care, the taunt hurt.
    It was true. He didn’t sound commanding enough. Not like a knight at all.
    “When in doubt,” Sir Rheynold always lectured, “stand as tall as you can and do what you must.”
    “What does a stable boy know about leading anyone except horses?” he asked and strode across the hall to the high table where his king and court stillsat, slumped and sleeping. Setting his jaw hard against the thought of what might happen if they should suddenly wake up, Gerard vaulted himself onto the wooden table and stood in the middle of the remains of the feast. He took a deep breath, let it out, and took in another. Then—
    “Be QUIET!” he roared, pulling every memory of every time Sir Bors had ever yelled at the squires, and pitching his voice deep, to carry better.
    It worked. Not every child was silenced, but enough of them. And they all looked up at Gerard.
    “Crying and panicking won’t wake them up,” Gerard declared as sternly as he could manage. “Sitting around stuffing our faces”—the young players and servants who had been doing exactly that looked down at their plates, then back at him, some in shame—“won’t wake them up. And neither of those things will protect us if whoever did this comes after us next.”
    “Oh, that was wise,” Newt said, coming to stand beside the table. “Scare the little ones some