Collum approaches Camelot at last, awestruck by its ancient fortifications, gardens, and the Pendragon iconography everywhere. The town is eerily quiet, and a crook-backed old guard waves him through without challenge. As he wanders the bailey unopposed, he initially fears the court has departed for Caerleon, but he resolves to look around regardless.

Collum dares to enter the Great Hall and beholds the immense Round Table with its hundred named chairs. Inside he finds only four knights: a grizzled man sharpening a knife, a man asleep with his head down, a tall blond contemplating a window, and a dark-skinned knight lying on the table itself. He kneels and announces himself as Collum of the Out Isles, claiming Lord Alasdair as his father, and begs to be judged worthy of the Round Table.

The knights brusquely tell him to leave, citing ill timing. Collum refuses. Recognizing the grizzled knight as Sir Villiars the Valiant, he names him aloud, which provokes Villiars into a fistfight. Despite Collum's training, Villiars knocks him to the floor with ease and prepares to stomp him.

A large one-handed older man intervenes, hauling Villiars off and demanding an apology. Collum recognizes him as the drunk from the Ditchley inn—now sober and revealed as Sir Bedivere, Arthur's oldest companion. Bedivere offers Collum hospitality and a non-sacred chair near the Table, gently coaching him on etiquette. The other knights are introduced: Sir Palomides the Saracen, Sir Dinadan the wit, and Sir Constantine, prince of Cornwall.

Collum notices signs of recent combat on Dinadan and Constantine and wonders where the legendary heroes—Gawain, Lancelot, Bors—are. When he asks whether King Arthur is at Camelot, Bedivere reveals, emotionlessly, that the king is dead, killed at the Battle of Camlann along with most of the Round Table. These few are all that remain.