Merlin: Dawn of the Dragonlord

Chapter 10: A Good Book

Chapter 10: A Good Book

He waited until the end of the evening to venture out of his bedchambers.  When the corridors seemed mostly empty, and the guests at the banquet were well into the second or third course, he quietly closed the door behind him and started to walk up the stairs to the court physician’s chambers.  It wasn’t a very long way but he couldn’t be seen carrying a book therefore he chose to hide it under a chain mail.

When he pushed the door opened, the physician almost cried out in surprise.

“Sire!  I wasn’t expecting anyone at this late hour,” said Gaius, standing up and bowing slightly.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” said Arthur, bolting the door behind him.

He noticed immediately that Gaius was half-smiling and glancing in the direction of the wrapped up chain mail.

“If it is mending you need, I suggest you go to the smithy.”

But the prince wasn’t paying much attention to the joke.  His eyes had darted towards the small door at the end of the chamber, the door on which he used to bang whenever he needed something done quickly.  Somehow, Merlin was always there when he was looking for him.  He always jumped and dropped whatever book he was reading, but he was also always ready to do whatever was required.  Nobody, Arthur had recently discovered, could get anything done quite as rapidly as Merlin; when it mattered, of course, not the trivial things like mending clothes or getting his dinner.  He had been assured by Gaius that magic was seldom used for chores and that had been a comforting thought.

“I miss him too, Sire,” said Gaius softly.

Arthur’s mind raced back to where he was and he started to remove the chain mail from the precious book. Gaius’s expression went from mere amusement to total shock.

“Where ever did you get that?” whispered the old physician in wonder.

“There were rumors… So I sent Lancelot on a quest, but that was some months ago.  He had to go through five kingdoms to find this.  He only just came back.  Did you know a book like this existed?”

The physician was stroking the brown cover.  “I thought they were all destroyed, that your father had made sure of that.”  

“It sounds like him,” said Arthur darkly.

He sat down on a stool and gestured for Gaius to do the same.  The light was dim in the physician’s chambers and there was a small but steady blaze in the fireplace.  It seemed like the perfect setting for the secrecy that the presence of the book required.

Arthur placed his two hands on the cover.  “You know what this is then?” he asked Gaius, lowering his voice as low as he could.

“The Book of the Dragonlords,” said Gaius, mimicking Arthur’s whispering.

The prince turned the first page.  He had never been fond of reading.  He had no patience for learning either; only training.  Yet he had read this book from cover to cover in less than forty-eight hours.  It wasn’t a voluminous book and it didn’t have much writing in it; it was mostly family trees.  However the information in the first paragraphs was priceless.

“According to this,” he began to say, “There were five original Dragonlord families.  Each kingdom sent an heir to meet with the High Priests of the Old Religion and the princes were given the power of knowledge and the power to rule over the dragons.  This alliance was supposed to put an end to a hundred years of war on both sides: dragons and men would be united through magic from that moment on.”

Arthur turned the page and he couldn’t help but smile at Gaius’s reaction.

“I knew the legend of course, but to be able to read it with my eyes…” said the physician.