Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy Page 0,14

few knights had rushed to Ari’s side, but the dragon ignored them as they hacked uselessly at its ankles. The beast was on a mission.

Arthur dithered, his hand at Excalibur’s hilt. “Pull the sword, you fool!” Merlin shouted. Of course, Old Merlin was right at the king’s side, whispering poisoned nothings in his ear; he couldn’t have Arthur dying because of his own plan to remove Gweneviere and Lancelot. Merlin’s brain trembled. How could he be both trying to kill Gwen and Ari, and trying to save them at the same time? Was he the true bad guy of Camelot? The hidden good guy? The about-to-split-apart-from-time-paradox guy?

A figure burst through the crowd from the castle. Jordan pelted into the courtyard, red-faced from running all the way down from the tower, her sword brandished, hacking at the dragon with an unrestrained fury—every unspent iota of rage she must have built up over months as a handmaiden came out now, her sword hitting the scales so hard the metal sparked. The dragon finally swiped at her with a lazy talon, but Jordan ducked, stabbing the dragon’s leg.

It turned to her with sudden interest.

“Jordan, you fool!” Merlin whisper-shouted. She was going to get herself killed, and she didn’t even like Ari. She pitched her sword and it stuck in the dragon’s thigh, lodged in a paper-thin slit in the armor of scales. The dragon roared flame, forcing the crowd back.

Jordan tried to borrow a sword from a nearby knight, and when he wouldn’t give it to her, she stole it and knocked him out with a swift roundhouse kick.

“Oh dear,” he muttered. Jordan would pay for that one. Merlin hoped the embarrassed knights would wait until the dragon was defeated before tackling Jordan, but they seemed to find her a much more compelling foe. Half a dozen of them wrestled her to the ground and grabbed the sword, while Ari baited the dragon farther from the crowd.

Merlin hummed, raining sparks from the window, hitting Ari’s sword with a bit of magic that would make it easier to wield. Quicker, smarter, able to find the chinks in the dragon’s armor. Ari had a soft spot for a good enchanted sword. The blade glowed with a rainbow sheen for a moment, and Ari looked up to the tower. He awaited her signature smile, but she only gave him a heavy nod and got on with the fight.

Old Merlin looked up, too, as if he’d felt the first ominous drops of rain.

Had he seen the sparks of Merlin’s magic? Had he noticed the change in the sword? Merlin had to hurry, returning to his ransacking.

“Damn dragons!” he whispered fiercely.

“Dragons!” came a screeching echo.

He looked around and saw a dark cloth rustling. He rushed to the end of a large table and whipped away the scrap of dusty old tapestry, revealing a large brown owl.

“Archimedes!” The bird looked far meaner than he remembered, with a harshly hooked beak and an uninviting gleam in his eyes. Even so, Merlin was delighted to find his old friend. “Do you know where the enchantment is to control the dragon?”

“Dragon!”

“Can you do nothing but repeat me?” he asked. “Gods, were you just a glorified parrot?”

Archimedes squinted and motioned his hooked beak across the room at a dusty little cupboard. Merlin rushed over and flung the thing open. Inside was an animated scene. It looked, for all the universe, like a child’s primary school diorama, though it was a complicated bit of magic with several pieces in motion. Stick figures represented Lancelot and Gweneviere, one adorned with a scrap of Gwen’s handkerchief and the other with a lock of Ari’s short, dark hair.

“When did he even have a chance to cut that off?” Merlin asked with a shudder.

The dragon was animated by a single scale, still bloody on the underside.

He shuddered harder.

There, looking on, was a tiny wooden falcon. That piece represented Merlin, and seeing it was like being hit with a sledgehammer of déjà vu. He reached in the pocket of his robes. His own wooden merlin figurine from the market on Lionel was still there.

He threw the scene to the ground, raised his foot and tried to stomp the enchantment apart, but only ended up yowling in pain. This called for magic. He summoned everything he could and sang an old battle song. When he flung his hands apart, the diorama split, stick figures blasting to pieces and the dragon scale shattering. Only the little wooden bird remained unharmed, tottering