Chapter One:

The Return of the Wanderer

I brought spring with me to Camelot.

The great city gates towered above the winding dusty pathway, bold as my father's vision. I paused before the gate, running my fingers over the stones lovingly, tracing the inscription chiseled on the lintel. "Might for right," I whispered, "and thus may it always be."

I had all my father's height and bearing, his coarse red hair and ready grin; in time I would attain his easy grace as well, though at seventeen I was a girl pretending to be a woman, a princess pretending to be a queen. Leaning against the great gate in my rich dark cape lined with mink, I must have seemed part of a vanished age of luxury.

I rapped loudly on the oaken panel. To my surprise, the door swung open on shattered hinges.

Within, that peerless gem of Britain, the Camelot I loved dearer than my own life and pined for when out of sight of those crenellated walls, lay in ruins. Buildings had collapsed into stone cairns; men at arms scavenged through the rubble, constructing mean huts out of the white limestone that made the city glow like a gem of crystal and jasper in the early morning light. Oh, my heavenly Jerusalem, how greatly art thou altered! Ragged men and women hunted food in the filthy thoroughfare; some speared rats on stakes while others roasted cats and dogs in dirty fires in the street. No troubadour's melody, no tremulous plucked notes drifted in the wild spring air, but hoarse cat-calls, barkings, screeches of gutted cats as I closed the door silently behind me, moved with pity and indignity. Disease ate like a canker in their pinched white faces, but worse than the stench of death was the pall of despair, hanging heavy as smoke about the ruined town.

"Camelot?" I repeated it, disbelieving. "I have come to Camelot?"

An old leper shuffled forward. Only his ice-blue eyes visible through his swathe of bandages about his rotting face. He stretched out a hand gross with sores and pustules, his shriveled fingers wrapped in rags. "Where were you when Camelot fell? Where were you when the Table splintered?" His cloudless blue eyes snapped with malice. "Where were you –"

"I was away. The king my father sent me away," I said softly. "Told me of a precious sword in the wilds of Logres, told me I must fetch it, and bring honor to my house . . ."

"And did you discover it?"

I nodded, warily. He leaned forward eagerly; I shook my head. "You would not understand, if I told you . . . you should laugh, and think me mad. But what has happened? Where is my father?"

"He is gone. All of them are gone."

I stumbled back, as if from a blow. "My father? Gone? Where?"

"To heaven or to hell. It matters naught to us." The man snatched me by the arm. He dug his sharp fingernails into the flesh of my arm, drawing me into a deserted alley with surprising strength. I complied, too astonished to protest.

He leaned forward, drawing the rag back from dirty, yet wholesome flesh.

I knew that craggy face. I grinned. "Kay?"

"Not so loud." My father's loyal seneschal and boyhood comrade whispered, "you must not walk abroad, princess. There are men who thrive off lawlessness . . ."

"But some of my father's friends must remain. My kinsmen – where are they?"

"Gawain is dead. Mordred . . . Mordred vanished when disease struck in autumn; he tossed us aside when he could wring no more from us. Your father's tutor the wizard remains; where I know not."

I glanced about the shattered town, the once-glorious city of Caerleon. Already they had begun pilfering stones from the walls, herding swine in the thoroughfares where my father once trod like a god among men. "Where did we go wrong, Kay?"

"When your father lay with that Cornish whore. Ever since that night, we have been fated for a reckoning." He glanced about, taking me by the arm. "It isn't safe for a young woman to walk alone . . . come, I shall take you home; we shall decide upon some course there. But you must dispense with finery." He swept off his grimy cape, tying it about my throat, pulling the hood over my hair. His eyes welled up with tears – stout stolid Kay, my father's doughty man-at-arms, who had not cried at his own mother's funeral. He embraced me tightly, pressing his rough bearded face in my thick red hair. "Perchance Jesu has not deserted us." He held me at arms' length, laughing and sniffling. He swiped his nose with his ragged sleeve, then composed himself. "Come, my child. There is much we must do."