Merlin's Reckoning

Lancelot and the High Priest killed King Arthur between them, and the kingdom is in mourning while the coronation is already being prepared. Merlin, who is the origin of all magic and taught Arthur for twenty years, does not attend the mourning. He walks into the ceremony while Lancelot is reaching for a crown that is not his. To get Arthur back he has to go through the Lady of the Lake, then a legion of demigods, then Death itself, and he goes through all three. He speaks the resurrection over Arthur in front of the assembled guests. Arthur opens his eyes, gets up and takes hold of his sword again, and Merlin turns to Lancelot and asks in the tone of a man discussing weather whether he thought killing Arthur was the end of it. Twenty years of teaching, he says, was not about how to die. The floor under Lancelot begins to split.