The End of Magic

by James Mallory

  “Your Highness! There you are!” Dame Linnet cried with relief. Dame Linnet was a plump young woman who favored blue gowns, and her timidity often frustrated Guinevere nearly to tears. Today, however, Guinevere was almost grateful to see her.

  “Yes,” Guinevere answered composedly. “I went to look at the tower, but it was too dark inside to see much.”

  “Oh, but that was because the shutters for the upper windows are still closed. When the glass for the windows arrives from Flanders, it will be bright enough inside to read at midday! Sir Lancelot was just telling us how it would be.”

  Dame Linnet gestured back toward the others, who were gathered about a familiar figure.

  His bronze hair gleamed in the pale sunlight, and he wore a bright blue cloak that Guinevere had embroidered with her own hands, for with Arthur absent she had no one else to lavish her needlework upon. Beneath the cloak he wore a simple linen tunic, but no sword, for Lancelot was a civilized man, from a country so unlike Guinevere’s war-torn Britain as to seem almost mythical. He smiled when he saw her, and Guinevere smiled back, all the shadows and doubts of a moment before gone like morning mist. Nothing bad could happen while Lancelot was with her.

  “Your Grace,” Lancelot said, bowing to her. “I was just explaining how this section of the wall would look once the buildings along the street are finished.”

  “As beautiful as the castle, I trust,” Guinevere answered in a steady voice. Camelot Castle had finally been finished two years before, the second structure to be completed in the Golden City after the great Cathedral.

  “More so,” Lancelot answered. “Providing the architect does what I tell him. And now, ladies—and Your Highness—if you would care to accompany me, I will show you the new marketplace.”

  He held out his arm to Guinevere, and she placed her hand upon it. She could feel the roughness of the sun-warmed linen beneath her fingers, and she fancied she felt the warmth of the flesh beneath as well. Her heart beat faster, and for a brief instant she wished that Arthur had never been born.

  Merlin watched them go from the doorway of the tower. He shook his head sadly. He did not need his wizard’s gift of prophecy to see what was happening between the Queen and Sir Lancelot. And what he could now see, others would soon see. He did not doubt that—for the moment—the friendship was innocent, born of loneliness on the Queen’s part and sympathy on Sir Lancelot’s. Both Lancelot and Guinevere were too proud to casually betray their ideals to gratify a momentary whim—and Lancelot, at least, was so convinced of his moral superiority that he felt himself beyond the earthly temptations of illicit love. Such confidence could be fatal—no one knew that better than Merlin.

  Oh Nimue, Nimue—if you were here, could you stop what I fear is going to happen? Lend me your wisdom to gaze into the workings of the human heart, for there magic is powerless and even the greatest wizard is blind!

  But for Merlin, as for Guinevere, there was no answer, and slowly the wizard turned away and walked slowly through the open gates of the city.

  Oh, Arthur, where are you? You need the Grail, but your people need you more.…

  In the wilds of Cornwall a great keep stood upon the coast, its back to the land. Grey sea-mist veiled it day and night, and the ways to its gates were twisted ones. The gruff fisherfolk who took their living from the grudging ocean swore that Tintagel was only a myth, and that to see the castle looming out of the fog was a promise of dire misfortune. Who had lived in Tintagel, and what had happened to them, was something the fishermen did not know. Their King lived in Camelot, and they had no other lord.

  And that was just the way Queen Mab wanted it. There would be time enough to gain the love of the people when Mordred ruled in Camelot… and Arthur was dead.

  The Queen of the Old Ways gazed out the window at the shifting weave of mist. Once she had ruled all this land and the Land of Magic as well. Now her earthly domain was confined to this one small headland, cloaked and saturated with magic.

  She could no longer remember the day upon which her fight for survival had begun, so long had it endured. Nor could she remember what life had been like before the New Religion had come to Britain, to steal all that was rightfully hers. Once Mab would have mourned the loss of her past, but generations of fighting had burned that softness from her. She did not know when she had stopped believing in a victory that would erase all her defeats, but she no longer cared that the Old Ways—the very thing that gave her life through her worshipers’ belief in her—had been changed irrevocably by the New Religion. Making things the way they once had been no longer mattered to her, so long as she could have victory—and revenge.

  Against Merlin. Against Arthur. Against everyone who had betrayed her, thwarted her plans, destroyed her shrines and her worshipers, changed her by the very way they thought of her, through curses where there had once been prayers. They had made her what she was, and they would pay the terrible price.

  She would give them Mordred, whose very name meant “the fear of death.”

  She had learned from her failures, for this time Mab would not leave the raising of her champion in someone else’s hands. She would mold her child—her Mordred—from his first breath to the moment he fulfilled the destiny she had decreed for him: ruler of Britain, destroyer of Arthur, Camelot, and the New Religion.

  And Merlin would be there to experience every moment of her triumph. Mab smiled, telling over her dreams of the future the way a miser might gloat over his hoarded wealth. Killing Merlin was no part of her plan. She wanted him to suffer, to agonize, to yearn for what he had lost. She did not mean him to escape that.

  But Mordred was still a young man, untutored in the Old Ways, and Arthur was still far away from Britain. Even Mab could not quite see how to take a throne away from someone who didn’t currently have it. Defeating the Queen alone would be no sport. Let Guinevere destroy herself with Lancelot first; her betrayal would soften up the people until they were happy to welcome Mordred as their rightful King.

  But for the moment Mab truly did not have any interest in what went on in Britain. She had her dreams of future glory, and she had Mordred. She walked away from the window and took her place at the long table in the great hall of Tintagel.

  Unlike Arthur’s Round Table, this table had a definite head and foot, and Mab was seated near the head. As five of the castle servitors shuffled into the room, their eyes rolling with terror, Mab’s brow wrinkled as she tried to remember what they’d originally been before Frik had transformed them with his magic. Mice, she thought, or perhaps rabbits. They certainly looked like scared rabbits at the moment, but no matter how terrifying his forms of amusement, no one in Tintagel was brave enough to rebel against Mordred.

  As the years had passed, Mab and Frik spent more and more of their time at Tintagel, until the castle was nearly as magical as the Land Under Hill. Mab lavished all of her care and attention on Mordred. She had erred in leaving Merlin’s raising to Ambrosia, and the old priestess had corrupted him with soft human emotions. Mab would not make the same mistake twice. She would burn all the softness from Mordred’s heart, leaving it as hard and crystalline as her own. Every game, every gift that she gave him was aimed toward this, toward the day when he, her perfect instrument, would take his rightful place as King and sweep the New Religion and all its works from the face of Britain.

  She glanced around the Great Hall at Tintagel, and even the sight of Frik in his ridiculous swashbuckler’s disguise billing and cooing with the enchantingly beautiful Morgan le Fay could not irritate her today. She was on the verge of her ultimate victory. She could feel it.

  “Show Auntie what you’ve learned, Mordred,” Mab cooed coaxingly.

  Mordred stepped from the shadows at the far end of the hall into a beam of light.

  Arthur’s son had grown into a compellingly beautiful young man. He wore his hair down past his shoulders; through the years it had darkened to a shade of red that was almost black. His eyes were a pale grey, brillia
nt as mirrors. He dressed all in black, saying it was the only color left unused after Morgan’s brilliant extravagances, and today he wore a tunic of black suede trimmed in matching doeskin, with a double row of silver buttons running down the placket. At his hip he wore a box-quiver filled with silver-tipped arrows cut from black hawthorn, and he carried a large double-curved horn bow that Mab had brought him all the way from Khitai.

  Across the breadth of the hall, the servants in their dun-colored tunics each quiveringly set an apple atop their heads. They stood along the wall behind Morgan’s chair, almost too terrified to breathe.

  “If you five gentlemen don’t stop trembling, I might miss and kill you all,” Mordred called out to them mockingly.

  Their terror increased, but Mordred gave no hint that he noticed it. With inhuman speed he drew and fired, drew and fired, over Morgan’s head, sending the next arrow on its way before the previous one had found its target. Their impact was one long thrum of sound, as the five apples fell to the ground.

  But only four of them had been pierced. The fifth servant reeled back with a cry of pain, Mordred’s arrow protruding from his right shoulder.

  “Ah, less than perfect,” Mab said. It was important that Mordred always be aware of his shortcomings, she felt.

  Mordred’s eyes flared at the rebuke, and his anger, never far below the surface, exploded into rage. He nocked another arrow and loosed it at Mab—who caught it unruffledly and dropped it to the floor—and then one at Frik, who was lounging in the corner conversing with Morgan. Frik yelped in surprise and seized it only a bare inch from his throat. But Mordred wasn’t done. He had nocked a third arrow, and was aiming at his mother… and that arrow would find its target.

  “That’s enough, Mordred,” Morgan said sharply, without the faintest trace of fear. Mordred hesitated, his face still white and furious. After a long moment he lowered his bow and smiled without any trace of surrender.

  The years since his birth—few though they’d been as the World of Men reckoned time—had been more than kind to Morgan le Fay. Though it was a gnomish illusion, she still possessed the dazzling beauty that had allowed her to bespell a king, and through Frik’s magic, Morgan lived a life filled with every form of luxury. Today she wore a jade-green gown in the Roman style that Frik preferred, with a massive gold necklace with three long pendant plaques around her neck.

  She watched Mab with her son with a faint flame of jealousy burning in the back of her glorious hazel eyes, for avarice had always been the defining principle of Morgan’s nature, and though he was her own son, Morgan resented the gifts that Mab lavished on Mordred.

  “You mustn’t get carried away, my sweet,” Mab said. If the murder attempt had fazed her at all, the Queen of the Old Ways didn’t show it. “It shows a lack of control.”

  Mordred tossed his bow aside and walked toward the foot of the table, ignoring the further rebuke.

  “And why fire at Auntie Mab and Uncle Frik?” Morgan added, anxious to seize control of the conversation.

  “I do hope the boy was just having fun and it wasn’t personal,” Frik said, coming toward Morgan’s side. He was holding the arrow very much as if he expected it to turn into a poisonous snake at any moment—which was not completely unlikely—and he still sounded breathless and flustered.

  “Of course it wasn’t personal. He likes you,” Morgan reassured him. She took his hand and turned her head to the side to kiss it.

  “I often wonder what he’d do if he didn’t like me,” Frik muttered under his breath, staring directly at Mordred.

  Mordred gazed back expressionlessly. As always, Frik irritated him, but Mordred knew better than to challenge the gnome openly. There would be time enough for that, when Auntie Mab stopped stalling and granted him the power he needed to take the crown. Until then, he had to restrain himself and be nice to the people who mattered.

  “Oh, stop fussing, Mother,” he snapped. “Auntie Mab understands. Don’t you, Auntie Mab?” he appealed, looking toward her.

  “Of course I do,” Mab cooed in her graveyard voice. “You were testing yourself. Now come sit by me.”

  The avidity in her voice was plain to hear, and it soothed Mordred’s wounded feelings. He swaggered over to her, seating himself at the head of the table. Mab, seated in a chair behind him, reached out to stroke his cherry-black hair.

  “You know you’re my favorite, Mordred,” she said wheedlingly. “But you must learn to channel your aggression.”

  “Against Arthur,” Mordred said promptly. That had been the first and most constant lesson of his life: Arthur was the enemy, Arthur must be destroyed.

  “Yes, always Arthur—and Merlin,” Mab added, smoothing Mordred’s hair as though she could not get enough of touching him. Mordred was her future—a future in which the Old Ways would be restored and all those who had dared to challenge her would be punished. “You’re looking pale, Mordred. You’re not eating enough.”

  There was a flash of lightning, and suddenly the whole length of the table was covered with trays of savory delicacies in dishes of gold and silver, plucked from other lands and other feasts through the power of the Old Ways. Morgan sat forward with an expression of greedy interest, inspecting the treats closest to her as if she actually intended to eat something.

  Mordred picked up a morsel of sweet-and-sour chicken and glared at it as if it were a personal enemy. “I already have the strength of ten men,” he said pettishly. He regarded the banquet that lay before him without favor.

  “Listen to your aunt,” Morgan said from the foot of the table. “And please do something about your hair.”

  Mordred glanced over his shoulder at his patron. She nodded, indicating he was to agree. Mordred knew that his Auntie Mab liked his hair just the way it was. But Mother was jealous and spiteful—Mordred could recognize his own best qualities in another without regret—and yet did not dare to go against the power of the Old Ways. So she sniped at him, and he criticized her, and round and round they went on the Wheel of Years, waiting for the day when each of them might come into their power.

  But Morgan’s day was past, Mordred knew. And his was yet to come.

  “Very well, Mother,” Mordred said reluctantly. He popped the chicken into his mouth and bit down on it savagely, wishing it were her finger. At the other end of the table, Frik was using Mordred’s silver-tipped arrow to offer Morgan a choice dainty, and Morgan had always been easily distracted by her gnomish cavalier.

  She’d never loved him. Only Mab loved him. And then only if he did what she wanted.

  “There’s a good boy,” Morgan said obliviously, the matter already forgotten.

  Mordred sneered once he was sure she wasn’t looking. He wasn’t good, and he was fast leaving his boyhood behind. As soon as he proved himself ready, Auntie Mab would take him to the Land of Magic, and give him the fairy gifts that would make him unstoppable.

  And then…

  Mordred was not entirely sure what came next, but he had his dreams. Smash Camelot, smash Avalon, kill Arthur and every one of his knights who followed the New Religion. Drench the land in blood until all that was left was a void and the howling of old night and chaos come again. He would smash and destroy until there was no one anywhere who had anything that he didn’t have: not love, not light, not family, not hope.

  When Mordred was finished, there would be nothing left.

  He smiled and sat back, humming a tuneless little song under his breath.

  The future was bright.

  It has been seven years since they came here. Nimue gazed at the empty altar before her. Where have they gone?

  She knew she should be keeping vigil, clearing her mind of earthly distractions in preparation for the great blessing she was about to receive. After so many years, she was about to enter her novitiate, taking one more step away from the world and one step closer to God. Nimue had longed for this day down through all the years when she had wondered if she was worthy of it.

  Seven, a
nd seven, and seven again. My life runs on sevens.

  The beads of her amber rosary were cool against her fingers. Instead of praying, Nimue used them to count the years.

  Seven years from the day she first met Merlin to the day she saw him being carried unconscious into Vortigern’s dungeons. Seven weeks of joy to spend with him under the shadow of the old tyrant, until Mab’s plotting sent them both to the maw of the Great Dragon. Then Merlin had brought her back here to Avalon, the place where she had grown up sheltered from Vortigern’s evil, and she had never been able to bring herself to leave again.

  Seven days passed from the day she entered these gates until Vortigern faced Uther upon the field of battle and died so that Uther could regain his throne. Seven days more, and Uther was crowned.

  And seven months after that, all Britain knew their King for a mad and venal man. By autumn of that year Cornwall was dead, and Igraine disgraced. Nine months later Arthur was born—spoiling her count a little—then seven, and seven, and seven again while Merlin raised him in secret on Sir Hector’s estate in the Forest Sauvage.

  Those had been the best years of all, Nimue reflected, for in them she and Merlin had often written back and forth to share their joys and cares, hoping for the day when Arthur would take the throne and the two of them could be together once more, because Mab’s ambitions would be defeated and Britain would no longer have any need of a wizard.

  Then Uther died, and Merlin made Arthur King. And in the aftermath of Arthur’s great battle with Lord Lot, Merlin had come at last to Avalon to take her away with him, and Nimue had wept for joy that the two of them could finally be together.

  Only it was not to be. Mab’s treachery had intervened once more, and Merlin had left in the night. After that there were no more letters, only silence. Weeks later, Nimue had learned the news through the gossip of nuns and messengers, of Arthur’s wedding, his vow.… If Arthur was going away, then Merlin was not free. He would have to stay at Camelot to protect Britain while Arthur was gone.