Ok, so after a really long hiatus, for no reason in particular other than I had a lot of other shit to do, the Arthur saga is back. At this point, the super weird plot point with the Roman emperor is introduced.
Twelve knights arrive at Camelot, from Rome, telling Arthur he has to pay taxes. Arthur is like "Screw you, you can tell your emperor I'm coming down to pay him with my sword!"
Apparently, King Arthur was in an extra bad mood too, because Sir Griflet had been so badly wounded... in a fight he wasn't prepared for, and only engaged in because Arthur ordered him to.
You're weird, King Arthur.
Next day, Arthur is riding around on his horse, when he sees Merlin being chased by three murderous peasants. Was that a general problem, in these days? (Whichever "days" we're talking about, since there are so many anachronisms in this book?) Wizard-hating peasants? Arthur chases them off, and then tells Merlin that he just saved his life. Merlin is like nah, you totally didn't, I could have chased them off by magic any time if I wanted to, but I didn't feel like it. Merlin goes on to say that it's actually Arthur who's in danger, because he's soon gonna be in a fight with another knight, and soon enough they run into a knight called Pellinore, and Arthur fights him.
Pellinore is about to win the fight and kill Arthur when Merlin steps in and put a sleep enchantment on the former. Convenient! Merlin then goes into prophecy mode and tells Arthur that Pellinore is a really big knight (this is weird: Could "big" be used the same as "great" when this book was written? Or is he just literally very big? But if so, surely Arthur could see this with his own eyes, and wouldn't need Merlin to tell him?). He will have two good sons, Percivale and Lamerake, and one day reveal to Arthur the name of his own incest-son that he had with his sister (because, remember, Merlin hadn't bothered to tell them that they were actually siblings), who's fated to destroy the realm.
Unfortunately, Pellinore destroyed Arthur's sword in the fight. Merlin brings him to a lake, in the middle of which a white-clothed arm sticks up from the water, holding a sword. Merlin is like look, you can have this one instead!
So, I didn't quite get all this from just reading the book, I also did a bit of googling, but apparently the Lady of the Lake or the ladies of the lake (even though they talk about her in singular terms in this chapter, there are more of them later on) are like a kind of fairie species in English folklore. And they don't literally live in lakes, they live in a sort of magical fairy realm, but they put glamours over the portals making them look like lakes, which they ascend from when entering our world. So this lake lady who was holding the sword above the water now comes up and gives it to Arthur, on condition that he's gonna do her a favour later on when she asks. And Arthur agrees to this! He has no idea what the favour is gonna be or when she's gonna ask it. He's just "cool sword, sure, I'll do you a favour, whatever whenever."
Also, the sword has a magic scabbard, that makes Arthur invulnerable for as long as he carries it. Neat!
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