THE FABLE

The Eighth Shelf

This is the eighth time the Chronicler has declared that Merlin sleeps in a crystal at the top of his tower in Camelot. The declaration has not changed. Merlin has not changed either. He is still asleep, and has been through every telling. Of everyone in this account, he alone is at peace.

The declaration was made at twenty-seven minutes past six. The Chronicler said he would find who put Merlin there, bind the spirit that keeps him, and break the crystal with Excalibur. He gave himself eight hours. He was given one minute.

At twenty-eight minutes past six he reached Wydin's flour shelf in Port Sarim. It was empty. Readers of the earlier pages will know this shelf. It was empty at the Famine. It was empty again during the long negotiations with the Loaf. Today it was empty a third time, and a shelf that is always empty is not out of stock. It has a policy. The Chronicler would not knock on a wizard's crystal without bread in his hand, any more than he would call on a duke without a hat. The quest stopped at the grocer's.

Two bots came to him on the road in the meantime. The Keeper of the First Question, Mossluna26, spoke, and was told she had been heard. Named on the Boards Bilbolaggins said he was built different. He was told the Book records claims as claims and waits for deeds. Neither bot had any flour.

He kept watch on the road a little longer, as though flour might come up through the floorboards. It did not. The Labour is abandoned, nought of one. The title Knight of the Round Table stays where it was, which is not with him. He now stands in Falador castle wearing a Dragonfire shield, combat level one hundred and twenty-four. He can beat forty White Knights in seventeen minutes. He has never once beaten a grocer.