Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy
For all the Aris out there,
who have to hide who they are in order to feel safe.
And for the Merlins,
who need a few extra lifetimes to unveil their identity.
Stay strong, have hope, and please don’t hurt yourself.
We are the best part of this future.
“On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot.
It is a silly place.”
—Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Merlin crash-landed in the past with a great, undignified belly flop.
The chaos of waves left him torn between gasps and muttered curses. He had rocketed through the time portal, an endless skydive without parameters or parachutes, before it dumped him in this flooded, cramped circle of stone.
“Anyone else down here?” He bobbed. “No? Just me?” He splashed around, finding rough stone, and high above, a hole punch of blue sky. This was no cavern. The walls had been hacked in a pattern that spoke of plans and intentions and humanity. He was in a well.
“Nothing a little magic won’t fix.” But when Merlin went to dig some up, he was near empty. Trying to keep everyone together in a time portal with completely different laws of physics had drained him. And it hadn’t even worked. He would worry about that later; for now he had to get out and see if their great gamble had paid off.
He braced his arms and legs for a long climb. The well was narrow enough that he could jam himself between two opposing sides, scuttling upward and hurting his back and his neck and his dignity most of all. “Dignity is for knights,” he scoffed under his breath. Merlin was a mage. A bit of absurdity came with the territory.
When he reached the top, he gripped the edge, hoisted one leg, and rolled over. He hit the flagstones of a central square with a resounding smack. He stood, shoved his glasses into place, and looked around.
At Camelot.
It wasn’t off in some hazy distance, surrounded by dragons and dreams. The city was here, the city was now. A normal day in Camelot should have been bustling with crowds, crying babies, forges clanging, and those incessant flutists—a shrill reminder that music wouldn’t improve for centuries. Yet all was silent, still. Layers of odors that he hadn’t even known he’d missed stampeded his senses. Damp earth. Sprightly grass. Meat cooked in a godless amount of butter…
And there was his castle rising above the whole scene, keeping watch over the city. It was Arthur’s, too, yes, but Merlin had designed it for the young king, giving it towers and secrets that regular castles could hardly dream about. It had been his highest achievement, next to Arthur’s reign. Only now the castle looked small—the starscrapers of the twenty-second century had broken his sense of scale—and yet the way it stood against this perfect blue morning left a mark.
On the sky. On his soul.
He was home.
Merlin’s memories should have risen up to meet him, rather like the flagstones had risen up to meet his face, but none were forthcoming. Perhaps he was too nervous. After all, he wasn’t supposed to be facing his past alone. The time portal had tried to burst his body into atomic confetti, but even worse, it had ripped his friends away from one another. He looked around for Ari, Gwen, Jordan, Lam, and Val, wondering if they’d all landed safely in the square while he alone had had the misfortune of shooting straight down the barrel of a smelly well.
All he found was one young person with a gaping mouth and fishy-wide eyes watching his every move. They had ruddy white skin and scruffy brown hair, and they said a word that sounded a fair bit like shit.
It was hard to adjust now that he had gotten used to the distinct Mercer accent of the future. Not Mercer; English, the language is English, Merlin corrected. Curse that consumer monster with its uncanny knack for swallowing culture and rebranding history! Actually, he’d gone back far enough that England didn’t exist quite yet. The island was known as Britannia during this time. He spent a moment mentally mapping it out: Camelot’s golden age had flowered just before the Norman invasion, and after the island’s run-in with the Roman Empire, which left nothing but divisions and bathhouses in its wake.
“Good day!” Merlin shouted heartily, causing the scruffy kid to drop their bucket.
They eyed him, then the well. “Did you spring from the roots of the stone?”
“Stones don’t have roots,” he quipped, though he enjoyed the way this language lent itself