MERLIN: THE KING'S WIZARD

Book 2: Merlin

by James Mallory

Genres: Arthurian; Magical Realism; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Mab is the powerful Queen of Magic, but her cruel evil has turned the wizard Merlin into her implacable enemy. And Mab's sister, the Lady of the Lake, comes to Merlin's aid, giving him Excalibur. The singing Sword of the Just, held in the stone grip of a sleeping giant, released only to the hand of the man Mab most fears . . . A good and true Christian King, Merlin's student . . . King Arthur Pendragon. But Mab has her own disciple -- or pawn. For, in a monstrous act of sorcery and sin, Arthur's half-sister, Morgan Le Fay, gives Mab the weapon she needs to ravage Arthur's kingdom and Merlin's dreams of peace . . . A child. Mordred. And the Magic that raised a kingdom may be the Magic that destroys it.

Release date: May 12, 2009

Publisher: Aspect

Print pages: 307

Sample

Mab, Queen of the Old Ways, desperately seeks a champion to preserve her people from destruction and destroy the New Religion:
Christianity. At first she chooses Vortigern the Saxon, but when Vortigern takes the throne, Mab discovers that he cares for
nothing but himself, and the devastation becomes even worse.


Enraged, Mab vows that she will create a champion for Britain who cannot betray her, one who will be both wizard and king:
Merlin. But Mab’s powers have grown too weak for her to do all she wishes, and she is forced to implant the spark of Merlin’s
life in the young novice Elissa, one of the Guardians of the Grail at Avalon Abbey.


Elissa’s pregnancy causes her to be cast out of Avalon, and Merlin is born in Barnstable Forest, under the watchful eye of
Ambrosia, who was once a
priestess of the Old Ways. When Mab comes to claim the child for her own, Ambrosia demands that Mab leave young Merlin for
her to raise, hoping to teach him human love to balance Mab’s thoughtless cruelty.


Mab agrees, but says that on the day Merlin first uses his magic he must come to her to be tutored in the Ancient Arts.

Merlin grows to manhood among the forest creatures unaware of his true heritage, but when he rescues the Princess Nimue using
magic, Mab sends for him. Still unaware of Mab’s plans for him, Merlin journeys to the Land of Magic, where he is instructed
in the Old Ways by Queen Mab and her gnomish servant Frik.


But the destiny Mab sees for him is one that Merlin is increasingly reluctant to accept, and when Mab’s sister, the Lady of
the Lake, tells him that Ambrosia has fallen ill, Merlin hurries home to her.


Mab, fearing Merlin’s untimely departure will deprive her of the champion she needs to restore the Old Ways, reaches Ambrosia
before Merlin does, demanding that Ambrosia send Merlin back to her. When Ambrosia refuses to tell Merlin to do anything but
follow his own heart, Mab lashes out in anger, leaving Ambrosia dying. Merlin, stumbling over the body of his foster mother,
realizes Mab is evil. He tries to fight Mab, but fails to defeat her because he has not yet mastered the highest levels of
magic to become a Thought-Wizard. Merlin swears he will never be what Mab wants him to be, and vows he will never again use
his magic except to defeat her.



Mab, feeling that Merlin’s capitulation is only a matter of time, abandons him to his solitary life in the forest, waiting
for the day she can use Vortigern to make Merlin break his rash oath.…






His name was Merlin, and he was the child of the Queen of Air and Darkness and a mortal maiden. His human mother Elissa had
died when he was born, and he had grown up happy and free in the deep forest under the care of his foster mother Ambrosia… until the day that the Queen of the Old Ways, Queen Mab, had taken him to learn the arts of magic in her land under the
hill.


To become a wizard.

At the time it had seemed like such a simple thing to become a wizard, passing through the three stages of magic to become
a Wizard of Pure Thought, but Merlin had quickly realized that things weren’t simple at all. He’d come to perceive that Mab
saw him as nothing more than a pawn in her plan to restore the Old Ways to a Britain increasingly falling beneath the spell
of Christianity—and that Mab saw no difference
between Good and Evil, so long as she got her own way.


Perhaps it came from being half-human, but Merlin did see a difference between Good and Evil. Under his foster mother’s guidance, Merlin had chosen the ways of the Good, and that
simple choice had set him and Mab upon opposing paths. He would do anything to keep from becoming her tool for changing the
world from what it was to something it could no longer be.


Inevitably the day had come when Merlin had fought against his magical mentor.

“I’ll never forgive you—never!” Merlin shouted. He held his foster mother’s body in his arms.


“I’m sorry about your mother and Ambrosia, but they were casualties of war,” Mab said insincerely. “I’m fighting to save my
people from extinction.”

But to fight this war, Mab had sacrificed everything that made life worth living.


“I don’t care if you die and disappear,” Merlin said furiously. Mab had killed Ambrosia out of spite—and to reclaim Merlin’s
loyalty. He knew that in her total heartlessness, the Queen of the Old Ways would try any trick, take any hostage. …

“I will, unless I fight and win!” Mab assured him seriously. “That was why you were created.” To be Mab’s tool against the
New Religion, to bring pain and suffering to thousands just like Ambrosia.


“I will never help you,” Merlin vowed.


“You will,” Mab purred, her green eyes gleaming with wolf-light. “I’ll make you help me.”

But he had sworn a bitter oath on the forest graves
of his mother and his foster mother—both now dead through Mab’s treachery—that he would never use his wizard’s powers except
to defeat Queen Mab.


But Merlin now knew how infinitely clever and treacherous Mab was, and that was why no action was safe. His only safety from
Mab lay in being more cunning than she was, more clever. So Merlin would follow the way that Mab’s sister, the Lady of the
Lake, had unfolded to him in the Land of Magic. Merlin would study wisdom, not magic, and all of Mab’s plots to make him her
tool would fail.


But as the years passed, Merlin realized that though he had not lost his fight against Mab, he hadn’t won it either. Though
Merlin had escaped the twisting paths of the Land of Magic to live safe and unmolested in the forest that had been his childhood
home, he knew that in the world beyond the forest, Queen Mab was still scheming and planning to make her dreams for him come
true.


His visions told him so.

The ability to dream true was not a talent that Merlin had learned in the Land of Magic or a gift granted by the Lady of the
Lake. It was a skill that he had been born with, something in his blood from earliest childhood. Now that he had turned away
from wizardry, Merlin’s prophetic dreams were much stronger, and through the years, he had come to rely on them. Though his
dreams always came true, sometimes they were so confusing that he didn’t realize the truth they contained until it was too
late. But they were the only weapon he had. As a boy, Merlin had cherished
dreams of being a valiant knight, but his wizardhood had forced him to set aside his boyhood dreams long ago.


Through his dreams Merlin watched all of Britain as it writhed in the terrible grip of its tyrant king, Vortigern.

Vortigern the Saxon ruled as he had for Merlin’s entire lifetime. He crushed all rebellion with an iron hand. He was neither
Christian nor Pagan, and there were only two things he could not control.


One was the Great Dragon, Draco Magnus Maleficarum. The fire-breathing monster ravaged the West Country with his insatiable
appetite for flesh. Only magic could defeat the Great Dragon, and King Vortigern was no wizard: instead, the King preferred
to slake the beast’s appetite with flocks of sheep and the occasional virgin sacrifice, rather than fight it and lose. Vortigern
wished to save his army for other things, like his other great nemesis, Prince Uther.


Prince Uther was hungry for more than roast mutton. He was the rightful heir to old King Constant, from whom Vortigern had
stolen his blood-soaked throne. As a child, Uther had been smuggled out of Britain, and grown to manhood exiled in France.
All his life he’d been waiting for his chance to take back what was his by right of inheritance, gathering ships and men across
the channel in Normandy. Now that he was grown, Prince Uther wanted two things: his father’s throne and Vortigern dead. And
he would wait no longer to attain either of his desires.


Merlin’s visions told him that Uther would soon meet the king on the battlefield, but his visions did not
tell him whether the Old King or the Young Prince would win the war to come, nor what the cost to Britain would be of the
winner’s victory.


A high one, no matter who wins, Merlin thought with a sigh. There had never been a year of his life when Britain had been free from the shadow of war. Even
if Uther gave up his hopes of the crown and settled peacefully in France, there would still be war in Britain, for Vortigern
had no heir to set upon the throne when he died, and Vortigern’s nobles watched the aging king hungrily, each one certain
that he would be king hereafter.


Wolves have better manners than that lot, Merlin thought sourly as he opened his eyes, shaking off the last of sleep. His night had been restless, filled with dreams
of dragons and swords.


He stretched and sat up, looking around the snug forest cottage that had been his home from earliest childhood. He had been
born in this very room, to a mother who had died only moments later, the first victim of Mab’s meddling in his life. Since
he had returned from the Land of Magic years before, the little hut in which his foster mother Ambrosia had raised him had
been his home and his whole world.


It was late autumn, a few weeks past Samhain. Unconsciously, Merlin always expected trouble to come at the beginning of the
dark half of the year, and when the festival time had passed, he assumed the rest of the year would be quiet. But the morning
wind had brought him the news that strangers trespassed in his beloved forest. There was danger afoot.


Merlin rolled to his feet, shivering in the cold of
the small forest hut. He’d slept in his clothes: a rough tunic of brown homespun and leggings over which he wore a long vest
of deerskin to protect him from the worst of the winter cold.


Wind whistled through chinks in the thatch of the cottage, and Merlin moved quickly to poke up the fire on the hearth, holding
his hands out to the warmth he raised. Without the use of his wizard’s powers, he was as helpless as any mortal man before
the forces of Nature. Fire was the earliest magic, and a touch of wizardry would warm him, but he would not use his magic
for his own comfort. It was reserved for only one purpose: Mab’s destruction.


As he prepared his simple breakfast of herbal tea and acorn bread, Merlin’s mind was far from the simple homely tasks. What
did the coming of the strangers mean to the peace and quiet of the life he had made for himself here in the greenwood? While
a part of him hoped he would be let to live out his life within the confines of Barnstable Forest, he had always known that
this was an unattainable dream. He had always known that his fate would find him someday.


And suddenly, someday was today.

As he had learned to do over the years, Merlin calmly awaited what was to come. He finished his morning meal and then went
out into the clearing in the forest to meditate. He sank down gracefully into a seat amid a drift of autumn leaves. All around
him the circle of young trees stood like the pillars of a cathedral—a cathedral of the Old Ways that grew from the living
earth, and was not made of dead stone as were the churches the New Religion built.



As soon as the thought came to him, Merlin pushed it away. To think in terms of the Old Ways versus the New Religion was to
fall into the same trap that Queen Mab had, a trap made of hatred and distrust. Merlin chose to walk a third path, neither
of Black Magic nor White Light, a path grey as mist, where everything must be judged upon its own merits. He would not hate
the New Religion or follow the Old Ways. He would simply be as he had always been: Merlin the Wizard.


As he closed his eyes and settled into a meditative trance, the forest seemed to unfurl below him as though he were a bird
soaring far above its leafy canopy. In the eye of his imagination, he could see glints of metal far below, the helmets and
lances of his uninvited guests. They were warriors wearing the sign of the white dragon: soldiers of the king.


Why had Vortigern sent them? Even as he wondered, Merlin knew he would have to wait for that part of his answer. He was only
a thread in a pattern that forces greater than himself had begun to weave long ago, and over the years Merlin had learned
to save his strength for the most important battles.


At midday he finally heard them approach—a troop of mounted soldiers crashing through the winter-killed underbrush. There
were half a dozen of them, and riding at their head was an old man dressed as a Druid, though the reigns of two draconian
kings had managed to nearly wipe that ancient priesthood from the face of Britain.


So Vortigern has discovered he now has some usefor magic? Merlin thought to himself. This should be interesting.


He got to his feet and turned to face the soldiers just as they entered the clearing.

Their captain was a man of a type Merlin knew all too well: a brute, but a clever one, who served a ruthless master with efficiency
and without conscience. The old Druid riding with him simply looked terrified, but despite that he was obviously the real
leader of the little party. “Seize that man!” the Druid blustered, pointing an accusing finger at Merlin.


Merlin tried his most disarming smile. “Welcome to my home, sir,” he said mildly. “How can I help you?”

To live in perfect trust was the first lesson that magic taught. As the years had passed here in his forest home, Merlin had
learned to live and act as if he expected goodness from all men, and such was the power of expectation that he had rarely
been disappointed. Even now such humble sorcery worked its subtle magic. The old Druid dismounted from his horse, and when
he spoke again, his tone was very different.


“Well, er, the king wants to see you,” he said in apologetic tones, taking a step toward Merlin—or more precisely, away from his armored companions.


Now that he was close enough, Merlin could see how the old man’s face was marked by lines of care and worry—though that was
hardly unusual with Vortigern on the throne.


“You have only to ask,” Merlin said gently. Because of his forest seclusion, Merlin had been spared
most of the fear that the ordinary people of Britain faced in their daily lives. But if Vortigern was asking for him, Merlin
knew that Queen Mab must somehow be behind it.


“You’ll come voluntarily?” The old Druid did his best to conceal his surprise. “Ah, that’s good. Most people are reluctant
to meet King Vortigern. In fact, they’re usually dragged in screaming. Not that I blame them,” he added hastily. The last
of the pretense of command seemed to leave him now; as he sighed, his shoulders drooped and he suddenly looked like what he
was: a frail, frightened old man in the grip of forces larger than himself.


“I’m the king’s Soothsayer,” he explained dolefully.

Even Merlin in his isolation had heard of Lailoken, Vortigern’s Soothsayer. No wonder the old man looked so weary. The poor
creature was hated by the Christians for his pretense of Pagan wizardry and despised by the Pagans for serving Vortigern.
It was a hard life when you fit in nowhere, and no one knew that better than Merlin, who was himself half-fairy, half-mortal.


“An important position?” Merlin asked Lailoken politely. Vortigern was notorious for ignoring advice, no matter what its source.
He wasn’t likely to pay any more attention to his soothsayer than he did to his generals.


“And a fragile one,” Lailoken agreed. “I’m the third Royal Soothsayer this year.”

“He must get through them at an alarming speed,” Merlin commented. He did not need to ask why the
previous soothsayers had retired. There was only one way to retire when you worked for Vortigern.


By now the rest of the soldiers had spread out around the clearing, surrounding him and incidentally cutting off his path
of escape. Merlin saw that Vortigern’s men had come well prepared: all of them were armed to the teeth. More to the point,
they’d brought a spare horse for him to ride.


“He gets through everything at an alarming speed,” Lailoken said gloomily, as if agreeing with Merlin’s thoughts. The soothsayer shuddered, glancing
at the ring of soldiers surrounding them both, and then, as if only now remembering his duty, said: “You are Merlin, the man without a mortal father?”


“Yes,” Merlin answered, wondering why Lailoken was asking. There was no point in denying who—or what—he was: a wizard, created
by the Queen of the Old Ways to be her champion and born of a mortal mother—but a champion who would not fight, and a wizard
who rejected magic.


“I’m afraid the king wants you urgently,” Lailoken sighed. He seemed to sincerely regret his part in the proceedings, whatever
it was.


Without being asked, one of the soldiers led the riderless horse into the clearing. The man’s expression said clearly—though
silently—that Merlin would mount the animal one way or the other. Bowing to the inevitable, Merlin vaulted gracefully into
the saddle, and from that vantage point took a last look around his forest home.


Something within him told him that it would be a very long time before he saw it again.


In moments, Merlin and Lailoken were surrounded by mounted soldiers whose horses were moving at a brisk trot along the road
that led out of the forest, the road that led west… toward Pendragon Castle, and the king.


In the month since the last architect had been executed, little had changed here on the Welsh border. The building blocks
of what was intended to be Vortigern’s most formidable castle still lay scattered across the landscape as if they had been
dropped by an angry giant. The tents that sheltered the members of the court obliged to attend the king here still decorated
the grassy plain near the ridge like bright mushrooms. Beyond them, the tents housing the workers and soldiers spread in somber
and orderly rows. All day long, masons and laborers toiled to repair the destruction of the tower’s last collapse. All of
them hoped there would not be another—none more fervently than the man who huddled over a table of curled velum drawings,
cringing beneath the king’s bright gaze. He was not the best builder in all of Britain, but he was certainly the most unlucky,
for no architect in the last ten years had been able to make Vortigern’s fortress stand.


“It’ll hold this time, Your Majesty, never fear,” Paschent said nervously.

“I never have,” Vortigern said simply.

It was no more than the truth. For more than two decades, the Saxon king had ruled Britain as king by right of conquest, and
he had done it without help from either magic or religion. But Time had taken its toll, and now the aging ruler, his kingdom
beset by threats
from within and without, was willing at last to seek out new alliances. It was why he had demanded that his soothsayer discover
why the tower would not stand, even though Vortigern had never found that magic could accomplish anything muscle could not.


As he regarded Paschent, there was a sudden rumble from behind him.

He heard the screams of desperate men, the scraping sound made by granite blocks as they ground together like monstrous teeth
chewing workmen to pulp. The ground shook as the walls bulged and buckled, spitting out building stones that struck the earth
like the footsteps of giants. Suddenly the air was thick with rock dust and the powdered mortar that rose from the destruction
like morning mist before beginning to drift down the hill. The screams of the dying dwindled to whimpers and sobs, and the
frightened murmurs of the survivors were punctuated with urgent cries for help.


Through all of the upheaval, Vortigern didn’t turn around. He didn’t need to. He could see all he needed to see in the architect’s
face.


“You were saying?” Vortigern’s voice was soft with menace. His hand dropped to the dagger at his belt and he watched Paschent’s
face go grey with the realization of the magnitude of his failure.


“Your Majesty!” a voice called from behind him.

Vortigern turned away from the trembling architect. A troop of his soldiers had just ridden into camp with the soothsayer
at their head. Lailoken actually looked pleased to see Vortigern. This was an event so un. . .