The End of Magic

But the city was not uninhabited.

Shadows of creatures that had once been the Bright Folk of Fairy slunk through its streets, hungering for human prey. Mab
had created monsters in Mordred’s honor, monsters enough to haunt the dreams of children for a thousand years.

The golden stone of Camelot had already begun to crumble, and black weeds had grown up through the blocks of stone. From this
place Mab would spread the blackest of her magic, slaying what she could not subvert, until she had destroyed all of mortalkind
on the Isle of Britain.

Unless someone stopped her.

A
LSO BY
J
AMES
M
ALLORY

Merlin Part 1: The Old Magic

Merlin Part 2: The King’s Wizard

H
ALLMARK
E
NTERTAINMENT
P
RESENTS

S
AM
N
EILL
H
ELENA
B
ONHAM
C
ARTER
J
OHN
G
IELGUD
R
UTGER
H
AUER

J
AMES
E
ARL
J
ONES
M
IRANDA
R
ICHARDSON

I
SABELLA
R
OSSELLINI
M
ARTIN
S
HORT

“M
ERLIN
”

L
EGEND
A
DVISOR
L
OREN
B
OOTHBY

M
USIC BY
T
REVOR
J
ONES

C
REATURE
E
FFECTS BY
J
IM
H
ENSON’S
C
REATURE
S
HOP

E
XECUTIVE
P
RODUCER
R
OBERT
H
ALMI,
S
R.

P
RODUCED BY
D
YSON
L
OVELL

T
ELEPLAY BY
D
AVID
S
TEVENS AND
P
ETER
B
ARNES

S
TORY BY
E
DWARD
K
HMARA

D
IRECTED BY
S
TEVE
B
ARRON

O
RIGINAL
S
OUNDTRACK
A
VAILABLE ON
V
ARèSE
S
ARABANDE
C
OMPACT
D
ISCS

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.

Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

Warner Books, Inc.

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.

First eBook Edition: February 2000

ISBN: 978-0-446-55918-8

For Betsy, Jane, Fiona, Jaime, and Russ,
for all their help and support.
And to MJ, for the usual.

Contents

The citizens of Camelot had fled…

Copyright Page

What Has Gone Before

Chapter One: The Battle of Honor

Chapter Two: The Battle of Loyalty

Chapter Three: The Battle of Sorrow

Chapter Four: The Battle of Shadows

Chapter Five: The Battle of Mirrors

Chapter Six: The Battle of Cruelty

Chapter Seven: The Battle of Deception

Chapter Eight: The Battle of the Forest

Chapter Nine: The Battle of Magic

Appendix A

Appendix B

Further Reading

About the Author

A
t a time when the wicked King Vortigern rules England, Mab, Fairy Queen of the Old Ways, creates Merlin to become a great
wizard who can lead Britain away from the New Religion and back to the Old Ways. She trains him to be a wizard, but Mab’s
thoughtlessness and cruelty soon cause Merlin to despise all that she stands for. When Mab kills Merlin’s foster mother, Ambrosia,
Merlin vows that he will never use his powers except to defeat her.

Undaunted, Mab arranges for Merlin to come to the attention of King Vortigern, and makes Vortigern believe that he must sacrifice
Merlin so that the fortress he is building will stand. Merlin prophecies a great battle between two dragons, which will end
with the destruction of the white dragon, Vortigern’s totem. Furious, the King orders Merlin imprisoned. While imprisoned,
Merlin once more encounters Princess Nimue, whom he had loved many years before.

Mab, still seeking to force Merlin to use his magic in her cause, arranges for both him and Nimue to be offered as a sacrifice
to the Great Dragon. Merlin uses his magic to defeat the dragon, but not before Nimue is hideously injured. Fearing for her
life, Merlin takes Nimue to Avalon Abbey to recover. Though Nimue will live, she is permanently scarred.

Realizing that he must strike out against both Mab and Vortigern, Merlin goes to the Lady of the Lake for help. She gives
him the sword Excalibur, which can only be used by a good man in a good cause. Merlin takes Excalibur to Uther and promises
him victory over Vortigern if Uther will take Merlin’s advice. In a great battle fought on a frozen lake, Merlin destroys
Vortigern and makes Uther King. But Uther is greedy and lusts after Igraine, the wife of Duke Gorlois of Cornwall. Angered,
Merlin takes back Excalibur and seals it in a rock from which only a good man can withdraw it. He leaves Uther’s court to
return to Nimue, but many months later he returns, fearful that Uther’s war will destroy the kingdom he has labored so long
to protect. Realizing that the child that will be born of Uther and Igraine’s night of passion—Arthur—will grow up to be the
great and good King that Britain so desperately needs, Merlin agrees to use his magic to help Uther. But Uther tricks him,
killing Gorlois and leaving Igraine a widow. When Arthur is born, Merlin gives him to Sir Hector to raise. Merlin becomes
young Arthur’s tutor, and Arthur grows up in ignorance of his heritage.

When Uther dies, Merlin makes the young Arthur king, but Lot, the father of Gawain and Guinevere, disputes his claim to the
throne. Arthur manages to make peace between his army and Lord Lot’s, but in the celebration that follows, a mysterious stranger
comes to visit Arthur.

She is Morgan le Fay, his half sister and Mab’s pawn. Morgan wants to rule England, and tricks Arthur into begetting a son,
Mordred. When Merlin explains to Arthur what he has done, the young King is devastated with guilt, and vows to go on a quest
for the Holy Grail. While Arthur—now married to Guinevere—prepares for his journey, Merlin seeks out a champion to hold Britain
while the King is gone, and finds him at Joyous Gard. Sir Lancelot defeats all of Arthur’s knights at the Easter tourney,
and Arthur feels confident about leaving the kingdom in Lancelot’s hands as Arthur rides off in search of the Grail.

But Mab, scheming to destroy Arthur out of her hatred for Merlin, has caused Lancelot and Guinevere to fall in love.…

I
t was spring again, and Merlin was always most restless in the spring. The spring breeze ruffled the feathers that trimmed
his long cloak, and sunlight flashed off the crystal ball embedded in the head of his wizard’s staff. It was as if the green
life of the earth called to him, wooing him to walk through the tall grass and shadowed forest paths. In his soul, he longed
to give in to the blandishments of the daffodils and bright butterflies that he could see beyond the castle walls and follow
their trackless path. Somewhere out there was the forest hut in which he had been born, the forest in which he had spent so
many happy, innocent years before Mab came to claim him as her champion. Later, he had returned to Barnstable Forest to live
a simple life as the child Arthur grew to manhood in the home of Sir Hector, safe and loved and secure.

But there is nothing in life as constant as change, and just as Merlin’s life had been torn apart years before by the revelation
of his true parentage, so Arthur’s life had been similarly rent asunder when the time had come for Merlin to tell him that
he was not a simple country lad but a prince, King Uther’s son. Arthur had taken the news well, but unfortunately for Arthur,
he had possessed a mother as well as a father, and therein lay the seeds of Merlin’s greatest failure to protect his young
charge.

Arthur had not been the unfortunate Lady Igraine’s only child, and Arthur’s half sister, Morgan le Fay, was rotted through
with ambition. Morgan had wanted the crown, but couldn’t have it while Arthur lived, so she had schemed to become the power
behind the throne. Morgan’s lust for power had caused her to ally herself with Queen Mab, using fairy magic to trick Arthur
into lying with her.

Now Arthur had a son, Mordred, begotten in sin and raised in malice, a boy who lived for the day when he would tear down all
that Arthur and Merlin had painstakingly built together, destroying Camelot and Britain.

Merlin’s gaze traveled toward Tintagel and the west as the breeze ruffled his untidy light brown hair. How old was Mordred
now, and what was he doing? It had been nearly seven years since Merlin had last seen him, and even then the boy had been
growing unnaturally fast. Seven years ago the King had not yet been married, had not yet declared his intention to go on this
disastrous quest for the Holy Grail.

But Mordred was surely still a child. There would be years in which to decide how best to deal with his menace. And today,
Merlin faced other problems. He sighed, resting his weight on his staff. The stone walls of Camelot that he lived within so
much of the time seemed to cut off all light and air—even when, as now, he stood upon the highest battlements, gazing toward
the northern horizon and feeling the warm spring sun soak into his bones.

Old bones, and older every year,
Merlin thought ruefully.
I was a grown man when Arthur was born, and now Arthur is a man grown in his turn. Where is he today, I wonder?

The letters that came from Arthur and the little band of knights that he had taken with him upon his quest to find the Grail
were few and far between. One had come to Camelot three months before, written three months before that, so the freshest news
was six months old now. Six months ago Arthur had still been in France; who knew where he might be now?
Wherever he is, I fear he is no closer than before to what he seeks. The Grail seems always to elude him, glimmering just
out of reach like a will-o’-the-wisp. And he has sought it for so many years.…

As always, thoughts of the Grail led Merlin to thoughts of Avalon, and Nimue.

He had loved her from the moment he had first seen her, more than half his lifetime ago. He loved her still, though he had
not so much as spoken to her since that night many years ago when he had learned of Arthur’s disastrous liaison with Morgan
le Fay. While Mab schemed to destroy Merlin and all he loved, even a letter between the lovers might be too dangerous.

For a moment Merlin’s shoulders drooped with weariness. All he had ever asked of the world was bound up in Nimue’s smile,
but Merlin was not an ordinary man who could allow himself ordinary joys. He had been created by the Queen of the Old Ways
to be her champion, to destroy the rule of the New Religion in Britain, and to return Queen Mab to supreme power. Half human,
half fay, caught between both worlds and never at home in either, for most of his life Merlin had battled toward a goal that
daily seemed to be slipping farther out of reach: freedom for Britain from the tyranny of the Old Ways, and peace and happiness
for her under the reign of a good King.

He had held such high hopes of Arthur, and Arthur was a truly good man. But somehow Merlin’s dream had slipped away with Arthur’s
decision to quest for the Holy Grail. For centuries, Christendom’s great treasure had reposed at Avalon Abbey, but it had
vanished on the night that Merlin was conceived, and had not been seen since. Arthur believed that Britain could not truly
begin to heal from the carnage and treachery of three bad kings until the Grail was restored to Britain, but the king’s abrupt
departure left his new-wed queen, Guinevere, alone to rule the country in his absence.