The Camelot Code

PROLOGUE THE SIGHT OF BLOOD

Behind ancient, castellated walls, high in the solar chamber in the eastern tower, the screams of the innocent pierce an old man’s dreams.

Myrddin draws his near-skeletal frame from the rough wooden cot lodged under a narrow slit of a window. Without looking at any timepiece, he knows it is midnight. That the fragile earth spinning beneath the waxing moon is once more being shaken by a storm of evil.

The pull on him is strong.

He wraps his tall, frail form in a thick blue robe and descends a spiral of timeworn steps. At the foot, he catches his breath and braces himself for what is to come.

Again a powerful force moves him.

He shuffles across the dark hall and opens the huge, arched doors at the end.

Blood from the stab wound in his stomach oozes through Amir Goldman’s fingers and spatters the dark floorboards of the antiques store he’s owned for thirty years.

The widower sinks to his knees. He’s dying and he knows it. His deep sadness is not the loss of a few more years. It’s that he’s been robbed of redemption. Denied the chance that his mundane, miserable, scrape-a-living life might amount to something.

Greatness had been within his grasp.

If he hadn’t been greedy, this would never have happened. Instead he’d have closed a deal that the antiques world would have spoken about for centuries. His name would have ranked alongside Gildas and Malory, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes. The big secret would have been out.

And Amir Emmanuel Goldman would have outed it.

Which, he guesses, is why he’s dying.

The Chamber of Prophecies is cold and perfectly circular, lit by a crescent of virgin candles made from the fat of animal sacrifices.

The flames flicker as Myrddin enters. His gaze rises to the vaulted ceiling then falls to the twelve unique stained-glass windows beneath it. Each depicts a man whose existence is as mythical as his own.

He makes his way to a giant font, fashioned from Irish rocks more than five thousand years old.

In the water he sees his straggle of white beard and hair, arrow-slit eyes and creased leather skin stare back at him.

The surface trembles and corrugates. Tiny ripples become waves. The Font of Knowledge rumbles and shakes. Myrddin grips the wide bowl to stop it breaking.

This is what it wanted.

Him.

Raw energy flows into his hands and arms. Seeps into his skin, his blood and organs. Builds in power until he feels like his skin will split and burst.

Myrddin’s mind fills with unbearably bright light.

The vision is starting.

Now he must endure it. Suffer it, in all its painful clarity.

The knifeman kneels beside the bloody floorboards and touches Amir Goldman’s face comfortingly. ‘Don’t fight it. It’ll be over in a minute.’

The old storekeeper feels weak and dizzy. Through blurred eyes, he watches the man watching him.

The killer-in-waiting backs away from the river of red at his feet. He lifts an arm to check the passing time then resumes his patient posture.

Amir’s agony is everywhere now. He slurps for the last dregs of oxygen. His knees curl up. He is foetal and bloody. A fatal parody of how he entered the world over seven decades ago. A grandfather clock beats a soothing tick. His tired eyes close and he counts the silence between the clicks.

‘Amir?’

The hurt is fading now, stroked away by the brush of the pendulum, as soothing as his dead wife’s hand, a touch he’s not felt for twenty years.

‘You still alive, old man?’

He hears a chime and lets go of his last breath. Frees it like a tiny bird from a cage.

‘Amir?’

His eyes shut. The pendulum swings. His wife’s hand strokes his face. Her skin against his. He’s waited so long for her kiss and the warmth of her love.

Across the blood-stained boards, the door opens. A brass bell pings. Amir Goldman’s killer slips into the night.

Death is coming.

Myrddin sees the old enemy on a far-off shore.

He rides a silent brown beast, one that moves with noiseless hooves and many giant mouths to swallow men whole. There’s a flash of blue in Death’s deceitful hand. The burnished steel of a blade peels pink flesh and raises a torrent of red.

Myrddin’s heart prickles with pain. He clutches his chest and sinks to the icy floor, struggling for breath.

He must warn the others.

Thousands of miles away, a man has been murdered.

The Keeper of Time killed in the Cave of Past and Present.

The gates of evil are open. A fresh cycle of bloodletting has begun.