Perilous Times

‘I’m not a hero. I’m not like Kay.’ ‘I reckon that might be where we went wrong the first time,’ says the child, ‘creating heroes. Reckon we should have trusted normal people to guard the gate in the first place. Reckon that’s what we should do now.’

Marlowe is looking drowsy, all of a sudden. Stifling a yawn behind his fist. Blinking to stay awake. ‘I’d honestly quite enjoy telling someone about the aliens,’ he says. ‘I’ve been keeping schtum about them for decades, now. There used to be a whole office for dealing with aliens. And then on the floor beneath them were the boys looking after your

His dream stays with him. It was easier to deal with the memories when he knew that he served a purpose. He used to tell himself that he was coming back for a reason. It made everything an ounce more tolerable. He used to tell himself that he was part of Merlin’s plan. Well, he was – just not in the way that he thought. None of what he did was part

This is the same Morgan who once trapped him in the cellar of her castle for three months, back in the old days. The first rumours about him and Gwenhwyfar probably passed as whispers from her lips into Arthur’s ears, to sow discord at Caer Moelydd. He has a glut of reasons to dislike her. But there was always something about her that he faintly ad

I trusted you because it was easy. And I trusted Regan because it was easy. I gave her the sword because it was easy. It meant I didn’t have to do anything. I could just trust somebody else to fix the problem. But I think I’ve figured out now that I can’t keep doing that. I can’t keep hoping that somebody else will come along and magically make eve

Now he knows how to kill a god. You don’t kill them with a magic spear or a legendary sword. You just wait. You chop down trees. You burn wood, and let the fumes into the sky. You poison the oceans. You have to be patient. But eventually you do away with them.

He remembers weird deeds done long ago, in his first life. Dreamlike deeds that seem impossible now. He fought a giant cat on the isle of Mona which had scales and gills and fins like a fish. He slew an army of toad men, wading up to his belly in a flooded cave. He spoke to eagles and crossed the sea on the back of a giant salmon. Did any of it act

Kay can’t stop himself. ‘You just . . . you didn’t even think, did you? All that time ago. About what it would be like, for us. For me and Lance and all the others. You didn’t think for a moment what it would actually be like. To keep coming back and fighting. To keep dying, over and over again. And we all kept going because we thought you had a pl

She wants to bathe in asses’ milk, or the blood of a basilisk, or something else extravagant. A deep cleanse. Sleeping with Arthur again is awaking some very old impulses. It would have to be almond milk, nowadays. But even almonds are bad for the planet. She read that in the New Yorker.