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"Squire Terence, isn't it?" he asked.
    "Yes, sir?" Terence said, a bit apprehensively.
    "Ah, good," the old man said. "Tell me, how is my old friend Trevisant? I knew that he had taken in a boy to raise."
    "He was well when I left him, sir."
    "He's a great man," Merlin said simply. "But that's why you were left with him." Merlin looked hard at Terence's eyes for a long, uncomfortable minute, then the enchanter nodded and smiled. "I am glad you've come to court," he said. "But I don't choose to tell you why."
    "Thank ... thank you, sir," Terence said, bewildered. Merlin chuckled and continued on his way.
    Terence filled his days practicing with his new longbow until his arms ached and then practicing his horsemanship until other parts did. It was a pleasant life in many ways, but he chafed for lack of occupation. So he was relieved when this tranquil (or tedious) existence was disturbed by the announcement one fine June day that the king was to be married. Sir Leodegrance, who had given the round table to Arthur, was now giving the king his daughter, Guinevere. All the ladies of the court, as well as Sir Griflet and many of the other knights, were in an uproar, ordering new clothes and designing new ways of dressing their hair for the wedding feast, which was to last seven days and end with a tournament. Visiting barons and nobles began to arrive, bearing their wedding gifts and all planning to stay for the feast. Sir Kai, drinking a vast amount of wine with Gawain and Tor and a few others in Gawain's chambers one night, complained that it was easier to provision for a war than for a wedding, but even Sir Kai admitted that the king's wedding must be splendid.
    And splendid it was. All of the lords and ladies wore glittering clothes, so the royal Chapel of St. Stephen was afire with color. Most brilliant of all was young Guinevere, in a shimmering ivory robe with a rich blue underdress and trim, all interwoven with cloth of gold. When she and Arthur kissed, ladies wept and men cheered.
    The feasting began directly after the wedding. Arthur had tables set for hundreds in his great banquet hall. He and Guinevere sat at a shorter table at the head of the hall, and the guests sat at two long rows of tables that ran along each side. In the center of the hall, between the two rows of tables, servants scurried back and forth, carrying roast venison and oxen and boar and platters piled high with poultry and trenchers filled with hot and cold soups and plates of custards and calf's-foot jellies and pastries and stoup after stoup of ale and wine. Terence stood correctly behind Gawain's chair at one of the long tables.
    At midnight of the first night's feast, just as Terence was losing interest in the spectacle and beginning to wish for bed, adventure arrived. From the kitchen came a terrific crash, followed by the sound of a woman in hysterics. More crashes followed, and then the kitchen door burst open. Into the banquet hall bounded a gigantic hart, pure white except for his hooves, eyes, and majestic antlers. It raced down the center of the room, directly toward Arthur. Servants threw down their plates of food and dived under tables. The stag stopped in front of Arthur, then sprang onto the king's table and began running again. Food and wine flew willy-nilly onto the floor and the clothes of the guests.
    At that moment, a monstrous deerhound, as white as the hart itself, burst in from the kitchen, baying loudly. Seeing the hart, it leaped onto the table and gave chase. Ladies screamed, and men bellowed vague commands that no one heeded—"Stop that!" and "Somebody do something!" Terence saw Tor wiping soup from his face, and he heard Sir Griflet scream in an outraged voice, "Look what they've done to my hat!" Two knights whom Terence did not know joined the chase, swinging their swords recklessly and ineffectively. The hart's antlers knocked a chandelier, and shadows from the candles veered crazily back and forth.
    Finally the hart gave