“I think there’s a look that all enchanters have,” Merlin told the High Druid making it quite clear that the subject was not up for discussion. “That’s all that it is.”
“I expect so,” Gwydion agreed somewhat reluctantly.
Much to the boy’s relief the High Druid accepted what sounded to Merlin to be a very lame explanation.
“What will you do now, Merlin?” Gwydion asked and the boy was grateful for this change of conversation.
“Return to the Crystal Cave,” he told Gwydion, “There is still so much to do. So much to prepare for.”
“But we are at peace,” Myfanwy said.
“For now we are, yes,” Merlin agreed.
“Can I still come and visit you at Manta Gore,” Myfanwy asked in a quiet voice that Merlin had not heard the Druid girl use before.
Even though Merlin could be ‘infuriating’ the thought of not seeing the Raven Boy again was a hard one to bear.
Myfanwy knew that, as much as she wanted to, she would never see Galahad again and she was surprised at just how much that loss hurt her. She couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing Merlin again as well.
“Of course, you can,” Merlin told her. “You can come any time and as often as you want.”
Once again there was one of his rare smiles on the boy’s face for he had grown fond of the Druids and also of Gwydion’s fiery young daughter.
It crossed the boy’s mind with some relief that this was an emotion that his father, Mithras the Unconquered, would never have felt. It was a comfort to know that much of his mortal mother was in him rather than just the coldness and cruelty of the Elder god.
“You’ll need to watch out for the Deathbringer king when you go to Manta Gore, Myfanwy,” Gwydion reminded his daughter.
“Oh, Uther Pendragon is going to have far more important things on his mind,” Merlin reassured the High Druid. “He will have little time to persecute the Druids or anybody else if it comes to that.”
“Well that’s good news,” Myfanwy agreed.
“What we saw, the Knights of the Round Table, will that really happen?” Gwydion asked the boy enchanter his eyes sparkling once more at the memory of the splendour of what he had seen.
“Yes it will,” Merlin told him. “We saw the Future. King Arthur Pendragon is the Battle King who will fight twelve Great Battles and twelve Great Battles he will win. It will be a Golden Age for Camelot, Avalon and for the whole of Britannia. And at the end Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table will not die but will lie sleeping until they are needed once again.”
There was a great silence between Merlin’s friends for they recognised that the boy had spoken with the Voice of Prophecy.
It had been pretty unnerving even for the High Druid and his daughter who were well used to magic and enchantment. As for Kraak and Grim they never knew what the Raven Boy was going to say or do next. Even so Merlin’s words had carried a Force with them that could not be ignored.
“Now I must leave you,” Merlin said. “Visit me whenever you want Myfanwy, I will be pleased to see you.”
“I will,” the Druid girl promised him.
And with that Merlin the son of the Greatest of the Elder gods disappeared.
There were no spectacularly flashes of light or loud explosions. It was just that one moment the boy was there and the next he was not.
Then in the emptiness that had been created by Merlin’s disappearance came the words that they had all known so well.
But now there was an extra verse added for Merlin still had one task left to complete – and it would be a vital and much needed one that he would perform for the unborn Once and Future King – the Battle King that would be known as King Arthur Pendragon.
Here there was the Fulfilment of Prophecy and a New Prophecy.
When Evil stands at Camelot’s Gates.
Then will come he of the Old Magic,
In a time before the Raising of the Sword
By the Old Magic will Evil fall.
The Unicorn, the Dragon, the Raven and the Undead
Will face those Evils that all Camelot dreads.
By the Power of the Raven Boy and the Power of the land,
Shall all be protected and all Evil withstand.
Enchantment from a future long foretold
That which will summon the boldest of bold,
Comes the white haired boy at first untrusted
He of Lancelot’s line but never corrupted.”
From Mona’s Isle comes the Druid girl
To Camelot’s in its time of black.
Power from the Winter now unfolds
To the Beasts of Magic before untold.
And Evil once more to Camelot shall come
When the Lord of the Dark seeks all to succumb.
And the Hunter shall be raised, the Oldest of Old
So shall the Army of Death by the Dead be scald.
From air and fire and from the god’s own hand,
From beyond Avalon’s wild and pleasant land,
Shall come the sword to the Raven Boy alone
And then, at last, to the Pendragon’s throne.
HERE ENDS THE FIFTH BOOK OF
‘MERLIN AND THE LAND OF MISTS’
THERE WILL BE ONE MORE.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
I have always had a fascination with Merlin and King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. When I was nine years old I won a national competition with a poem that I had written about King Arthur, Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot du Lac. I had to wait a number of weeks before my parents could convince the adjudicators that they hadn’t written it for me. As much as I loved my parents the idea of either of them writing a poem was pretty well impossible. I was eventually given the prize.
My health wasn’t great when I was very young and I spent a fair amount of time in bed (sometimes whole school terms) where I would read and re-read a book I had (with garish illustrations) about the Knights of the Round Table. Later on it was Merlin who always fascinated me the most and when I decided to write a series of books it was to this fascination with Merlin that I turned.
It seemed strange to me that nobody had really written about Merlin as a boy. He always seemed to be some old guy with long grey hair and a straggly beard wearing a ‘pointy’ hat. Lady Mary Stewart covered Merlin’s boyhood in her superb book, ‘The Crystal Cave’, but this was only for the first third of the book and very much a precursor to her main story and her later books about King Arthur, Mordred and others. Certainly it seemed odd, to me, that there had been so little written about Merlin as a boy, after all, before he became the old guy in the ‘pointy’ hat he had to have been young once and, when you think about it, Merlin was the ‘original boy wizard’.
Originally I had seen my stories as CGI animations and initially I drafted out my six books as shooting scripts for a ‘Merlin and the Land of Mists’ animation. As it can take years (if not decades) to finance and produce CGI animation my thoughts turned to releasing my stories as books and the result is what you see here. The books (as they always seem to!) basically wrote themselves and I am frequently asked where the inspiration for Grim, Stormrider, Sir Lauriston du Lac, Myfanwy, Gwydion and the rest of them came from. The answer is that I haven’t got the slightest idea. It was as if they were just waiting to be born into the written word. Galapas and King Uther Pendragon were obviously already part of the Merlin and King Arthur mythology and similarly ‘elbowed’ their way into my books.
Merlin being Merlin has already given me some problems. When I came to draft the six books from the original screenplays I found that episodes five and six very much needed (if not insisted) that they should be one book as they were so closely intertwined. This is what happened so this book five is episodes five and six of my proposed CGI animation.
As I had drafted out the original to be six episodes I (thanks to Merlin) am now one book short of my intended six. I haven’t the slightest idea what Merlin is going to get up to
in the next and final book in this series but that is part of the fun of writing. Often the author (and particularly this author) doesn’t have a clue as to what the characters are going to do – it is a voyage of discovery for us just as it is for our readers. I think that this is part of the fun and challenge of writing books, particularly when they are full of magic, enchantment and the Mythical Beasts of Avalon.
All I know, at the moment, is the title ‘Excalibur End Game’ so we shall just have to take it from there, but one thing that I do know is that life is never boring when Merlin is about.
I hope that my readers have enjoyed this book and hopefully the other four books already published in my Merlin series. They have all been great fun to write.
PJ Cormack
Co. Wexford,
Republic of Ireland.
Merlin and the Land of Mists: Book Five: The Battle for Avalon Page 18