Free Sample scene for Friday, with Spells (from my new novel Merlin's Charge) !!!

(Prince Arthur, Merlin, Parsifal, and an abbot are on their way to find the "holy grail")

Arthur asked, “Could a dead Saxon someday reincarnate and become one of my sons that I love with all my heart?” Merlin nodded. Arthur shuddered.

They stepped up to the edge of a ravine and as Merlin looked down at the stream, he smiled. “Bless all the toads there’s a bridge here. That water looks enough to get us wet.”

“But…” Arthur pointed at three lizards that lay in the center of the bridge that were so dead they were only skin and bones.

“If you don’t like dead lizards,” Parsifal scoffed, “then kick them into the water as we pass.” He stepped onto the split log planks of the bridge and began to cross but instantly lost his balance and fell backwards into their arms.

Arthur laughed. “What happened to you?”

“Something pushed me! Nay, it was nothing pushing, but I began to spin and I couldn’t keep my head steady.” Parsifal walked onto the bridge again, and his arms flailed in his loss of balance and he fell to the ground. He crawled painfully away. He coughed and gagged. “I feel too dizzy to cross it.”

Arthur asked Merlin, “Is there a spell on this bridge?”

Merlin put out his staff and it seemed to him like he was poking at an invisible force. He finally said, “Aye, it seems so. And it stinks.”

“A ghost?” Abbot Babble Blaise asked.

“Nay. A curse left by someone still alive. An old crone.”

Abbot Babble Blaise warned them all, “There’s a great evil all about us! I feel it; it’s everywhere! I can feel it!”

“Then uncross the spell so we can cross the water,” Arthur ordered Merlin, ignoring the abbot.

Merlin became frustrated. “I’ve no idea what the spell is or who cast it.”

Arthur’s eyes grew wide. “It was the Pict witch!”

“Perhaps, aye,” Merlin agreed but then changed his mind, “but this land is ripe with witches and there’s as many reasons to curse as many bridges.”

Arthur asked, “It isn’t a common spell?”

Merlin carefully crept close to the first wood plank of the bridge and put his hand on it. The wood vibrated. “Nay, it’s not a common spell. Maybe, indeed, it was the Pict witch. I smell her breath. Toads.”

“You can’t uncross it?”

“Nay, not if I don’t know why or what it is. A wizard as old as me doesn’t know that many varieties of bridge spells. I used to leave all that to the trolls. Bridges without trolls are rather modern, methinks. I miss the old days.”