The King's Wizard

by James Mallory

  Merlin did not

  Hesitate again.

  He shouted, weaving a spell out of hand and voice together.

  The long-dormant waterfall burst from the cliff above. The water sparkled in the sun as it sprayed down, dousing the dragon and turning the earth beneath its feet to mud. As the beast wallowed through the mire, trying to reach firmer ground, Merlin gestured again, and a thousand green tendrils burst up out of the ground beneath the dragon’s feet. The shoots swarmed over its haunches, dragging it back toward the ground …

  ALSO BY JAMES MALLORY

  Merlin Part 1: The Old Magic

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  HALLMARK ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS

  SAM NEILL HELENA BONHAM CARTER JOHN GIELGUD RUTGER HAUER

  JAMES EARL JONES MIRANDA RICHARDSON

  ISABELLA ROSSELLINI MARTIN SHORT

  “MERLIN”

  LEGEND ADVISOR LOREN BOOTHBY

  MUSIC BY TREVOR JONES

  CREATURE EFFECTS BY JIM HENSON’S CREATURE SHOP

  EXECUTIVE PRODUCER ROBERT HALMI, SR.

  PRODUCED BY DYSON LOVELL

  TELEPLAY BY DAVID STEVENS AND PETER BARNES

  STORY BY EDWARD KHMARA

  DIRECTED BY STEVE BARRON

  ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE ON VARÉSE SARABANDE COMPACT DISCS

  Copyright

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1999 by Hallmark Entertainment, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

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  First eBook Edition: May 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-60791-9

  For Betsy, Jane, Jaime, Fiona, and Russ,

  for all their help and support,

  and for MJ, for the usual.

  Contents

  MERLIN DID NOT HESITATE AGAIN.

  ALSO BY JAMES MALLORY

  COPYRIGHT

  PREVIOUSLY, IN MERLINE: THE OLD MAGIC

  CHAPTER ONE - THE THRONE OF THE GREENWOOD

  CHAPTER TWO - THE THRONE OF TRUCE

  CHAPTER THREE - THE THRONE OF BATTLE

  CHAPTER FOUR - THE THRONE OF PRIDE

  CHAPTER FIVE - THE THRONE OF BETRAYAL

  CHAPTER SIX - THE THRONE OF REBIRTH

  CHAPTER SEVEN - THE THRONE OF FACE

  CHAPTER EIGHT - THE THRONE OF LOVE

  CHAPTER NINE - THE THRONE OF CHIVALRY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A TIMELESS EPIC, A NEW CLASSIC FOR ALL AGES—MERLIN

  PREVIOUSLY, IN

  MERLIN:

  THE OLD MAGIC

  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.…

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE THRONE OF THE GREENWOOD

  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 ha
d 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.”