arthurian

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

Merlin, do you mind?' It was the King who asked me, a man as old and wise as myself; a man who could see past his own crowding problems, and guess what it might men to me, to walk in dead air where once the world had been a god-filled garden.

My body felt heavy. It grew harder to thrash around, to move at all. I opened my mouth to scream again but no sound came from my blood-soaked lips. My eyelids fluttered closed and the world disappeared around me as I took the last few breath of my life.

Another revolution around the sun and I was still no closer to getting home. Laying on my lumpy mattress in my blood-stained shirt and dusty jeans with my arm over my eyes, I tried to imagine I was lying on Violet's couch. Clara paced in her cell and I let myself believe it was Violet, padding around the kitchen. My memory kicked up the image of her in tiny cotton shorts and a baggy Beatles t-shirt making coffee. My chest swelled and more than ever I wished I could see her face again, hear her voice.

Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

He cupped her head with both hands. __ou__e full of your own kind of magic, and it__ much more rare and beautiful than all the other spells around you. They are commonplace. You are unique.

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here._ __nfortunately,_ he said as gently as he knew how, __t would appear so.

With her face tilted up to his, the subtle edge of moonlight touched along the edge of one high cheekbone, the tilted edge of one eye, and those beautiful, enticing lips. Obeying an impulse he couldn__ put into words, he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his.

Lifting his head, he whispered against her wet, throbbing lips, __oo much?_ Wasn__ that sweet, Consider even. But oh, hell no. She gasped, __ot enough.

Just when I was coping with the idea that I__ necked with a werewolf,_ she muttered. __ust when I was beginning to flirt with the idea of possibly_ possibly inviting sex with a werewolf. I__ trying to imagine how I would tell this story to my best friend. I think it would go something like this: See, I__e never seen him in daylight. He__ just this werewolf guy._ Beside her, he had stiffened. Very quietly, he said, __ex?

Silence then, and the scent of apple trees, and the nightmare sense of grief that comes when a man wakes again to feel a loss he has forgotten in sleep.

Fighting in the name of freedom has too high a price," Merlin sighed as he leaned into his mother's arms.

It is easier to call the storm from the empty sky than to manipulate the heart of a man; and soon, if my bones did not lie to me, I should be needing all the power I could muster, to pit against a woman; and this is harder to do than anything concerning men, as air is harder to see than a mountain.

Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness.

Sir Ector looked into the fire, fidgeting with something in his pocket. "I have something for you," he said at last. "It was your mother's." And he drew out the thing in his pocket and held it up to her. The ring Blanche took from him was antique silver, cabochon-set with a glimmering moonstone. Her mother's ring! Blanche folded it into her hand and held tightly to the only thing her parents had left her.

I did not do it for you, sire." Gawain was deadly serious now. "Death comes to us and all mortals. I shall still lose you one day. But Logres! The only perfection under heaven would fall if I could not save you.

A knight will give a lady a ring from his hand and take a kiss from her lips, when he wishes to love her and serve her all his days," she recited, as she had when he was small. She pulled the ring from the chain and held it out to him. "This ring is the knight's who swore to serve me. Take it. One day you may find a lady to wear it.

Oh, Perceval, a falcon is born to hunt, and so are you. One day you will hunt indeed--but not yet." "Why? Am I not ready?"She looked at him sadly and said, "Give me a little longer.