KING ARTHUR! GEE!” RACHEL SHOUTED. “You never heard all the stories about Camelot when you were a kid?”
“I heard something about an American president and Camelot,” Jia said, frowning. “But no, my parents read me stories about Chinese heroes, like Lady Mu Guiying.”
“Who?” Rachel said.
This time, Jia gasped. “The famous general from the Song dynasty, still commanding troops into her eighties? How have you not heard of her?”
Rachel just stared in awe. “I don’t know, but I want to!”
“Wait a second,” Jia said, looking up at the ceiling of Big Ben. “Arthur’s the one with the round shield?”
“That’s Captain America,” Rachel told her. “Also a great hero, but less real.” She paused and looked at Ellora. “Unless you know something?”
“Just about King Arthur, sorry,” Ellora said. “But only one Arthur had the round table.”
“Only one?” Fort and Rachel said at the same time.
“There were actually several,” Ellora said. “From what I saw, it was more of a title than anything: Artorigios, meaning ‘great warrior’ or ‘bear king.’ ”
“Bear king!” Rachel said, and swayed a bit like she was going to faint. “This is everything I ever wanted.”
“But why does it matter?” Jia shouted. “Why do we need to know? Why can’t you just tell us where the book is so we can go get it and fix everything?”
“Because the book of Spirit magic is buried with the last King Arthur, Arthur Pendragon, in his tomb,” Ellora said quietly.
This brought Rachel up short. “Why would he have the book?” she asked, her excitement fading quickly. “It’s evil. King Arthur would have known that. His whole thing was justice and honor. Spirit magic is the opposite of those things.”
“He, ah, didn’t feel that way,” Ellora said, wincing. “In fact, he used it himself to create Camelot.”
“What?” Rachel and Fort both shouted.
“He didn’t take control of his people,” Ellora added quickly. “Instead, he took out their bad impulses. When he was done, no one wanted to hurt anyone else, or steal from their neighbor. It was a paradise.”
Fort began to rub his forehead, far too much coming at him at once. King Arthur, the man who led the Knights of the Round Table, not only wasn’t made up, or the only King Arthur … but had used Spirit magic on his own subjects?
But from what Ellora said, was it really that bad? If he hadn’t taken them over, and instead just basically made sure everyone followed the law by not wanting to break it … wouldn’t that make for a better world?
Or would it be taking their freedom still, just in a much sneakier way?
“Wait, you can use Spirit magic like that?” Jia asked. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know because it can’t be true,” Rachel said, then turned to Ellora. “I don’t care what you think you saw, I don’t believe he’d do something like that.”
“You thought he was made up a few minutes ago!” Jia said.
“Yes, and the made-up version would never use Spirit magic!” Rachel shouted back. “So why is the real one breaking my heart like this?”
Jia rolled her eyes, but Ellora held up her hands for calm. “I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, Rachel, but there’s a reason we’ve all heard about Camelot. It really was like heaven on earth. No one hurt anyone else; no one broke the law. No one even wanted to. Would that really be so bad?”
“Yes!” Rachel shouted, and she and Jia began to argue about it.
But Fort wasn’t so sure, and from the expression on her face, Jia wasn’t either. If Spirit magic made it so no one committed violence, how was that different from a law saying the same thing? Wouldn’t it be better, because the violence would never happen with Spirit magic, but it obviously still did even when there were laws against it?
But Rachel wasn’t wrong, either. Using Spirit magic like that on someone would change them, even if it was for good reasons. And what right did anyone have to do that to someone else?
Unless it was to help more people? Ugh, this was way too big a question for Fort to figure out at the moment.
“Um, we’re going to need to be going soon,” Ellora said, her eyes on the sky outside the clock tower again. What was she watching for? “Forsythe, I’m going to give you a photo of the exact spot we need to teleport to.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded paper.
He took it from her, wondering why this was necessary. It wasn’t like Stonehenge was that big, was it? He started to unfold the paper.
“Not yet,” she said, putting a hand over it. “Wait until right before we go, okay?”
“Uh, okay,” he said, as confused as ever. “Shouldn’t we go now?”
“One more moment,” she said, scanning the sky. She nodded. “Ah, okay, I see him now.”
“See him?” Fort asked, as Rachel and Jia looked over. “See who?”
Ellora pointed, and Fort followed her finger to what looked like a dark dot against the black dome, only visible because it covered the weird glow of the Time magic. What was that?
“Is it some kind of airplane?” Rachel asked, and then gasped. “Oh, right. Him.”
Fort frowned, squinting off into the distance. As the dot grew closer, he began to make out something moving up and down every few seconds, like huge wings flapping. But no bird could be that large. No, the only thing he’d seen that size that could fly was—
“Damian,” he said, his eyes widening. “We have to go!”
“There’s no point,” Ellora said. “He’s going to reach us before we can escape.”
“What?” Fort shouted. “I thought the whole point was to get the book before he does! Why are we waiting around for him to capture us?”
“I didn’t say capture,” Ellora said, then turned to face the direction where the frozen tourists were. “I said he’d reach us first.”
As she finished, a green, glowing circle opened in the middle of the clock tower, right where she was looking, and a dragon maybe half the size of the Old One who’d flown Fort around the world landed with a roof-shaking thump on the floor.
And then the dragon shrank down, its wings disappearing into its back as its enormous front legs pulled up into arms, leaving them facing an annoyed-looking boy in a long, black coat that looked just like his scales had.
“Sorry to burst in on you like this,” Damian said. “But we need to have a little chat.”