The End of Magic (23 page)

Some, loyal supporters of the Crown, did as they were bid. But more stayed away, flocking to Mordred’s standard, the banner
of the eclipse.

They do not even know why they fight for him, but they do,
Arthur thought bleakly, gazing out the windows of his throne room. All around him, the castle rang with the preparations
for war—in the distance, regular as the beat of a ticking clock, he could hear the ringing of the blacksmith’s hammer upon
the anvil.

Before Arthur had taken the throne, the people had automatically believed that the King was above the law. Many of them still
believed it. It had been Arthur who had been the one to say that the King must be subject to the same laws as his people,
that justice and fairness, not might and force, should rule Britain. But now that Mordred was saying the Arthur placed himself
above the law, the very people who had upheld the King’s new idea were now willing to fight to the death to destroy it.

Merlin had warned Arthur before he left that Mordred had the ability to cloud men’s minds. Now Arthur was seeing what that
ability could do.

I should have killed you the first moment I saw you,
Arthur thought grimly. But in those days—only a few short weeks ago, but it seemed like another life—he’d still had some
ideals left. He’d believed that love could make a difference.

There was a footstep behind him in the throne room.

“How goes the muster, Gawain?” he asked without turning around.

“Well enough,” Gawain answered. “Fewer than we’d hoped, of course. Mordred holds the north and west. He’s struck again at
Winchester, but the garrison there managed to beat him back. The fighting was savage. Mordred’s men fight like animals; the
men are more terrified of him than of the Devil Himself, they say.”

Gawain sighed. “He’s only toying with them, of course. Trying to draw us into a chain of skirmishes that will sap our strength.”

“Of course,” Arthur echoed, turning to face Gawain. Gawain had been a grown man when Arthur had still been a boy. There were
threads of grey in the Iceni prince’s hair now.
We grow old. We all grow old, leaving our life’s work undone.

“It’s me he wants, not those men. If it were my kingdom, my crown, my throne—power—I could understand, even forgive him, God
help me. But that isn’t what Mordred wants. It’s me. He’s out to destroy everything I have given my life to build.”

“You will not lose, Sire,” Gawain said, clasping Arthur’s arm in support. “Mordred is but a beardless whelp—he’ll run from
the first real show of steel, and the rebels with him. And you have Excalibur.”

“I know.” Arthur’s hand touched the hilt of the wondrous sword belted at his hip. For a moment his eyes were far away as he
relived the moment he had drawn Excalibur from the stone.

Mab had been there that night. She had cursed him. The words came back to him as sharply as if she were here with him now.
“His reign begins in blood,”
she had said to Merlin,
“and it will end the same way.”

“But it doesn’t have to be mine,” Arthur said aloud.

“Sire?” Gawain answered, perplexed.

“That was the other thing I wanted to see you about,” Arthur said. “As you know, Mordred is my son. But I’ve disinherited
him. Whoever rules after me, I don’t want it to be him.”

“Sire!” Gawain protested automatically.

Arthur smiled. “I may be King, but I’m still mortal. If—when I finally face Mordred—I die, who will rule Britain after me?”

“I— Well— There are—” Gawain’s words stumbled to a stop. “Aside from Mordred, you have no heir, Arthur,” he admitted reluctantly.

“I want
you
to be my heir, Gawain,” Arthur said. “It was what Lord Lot wanted for you once, you know.”

“I don’t want it,” Gawain said hoarsely.

Arthur laughed. “And I don’t want you to have it! But if I’m dead, I don’t want
him
to have it either, or have a bunch of princes squabbling over my crown the way they did at my father’s funeral. Humor me,
Gawain. You’re still my brother-in-law. Do this for me.”

“Kay will think he should have been the one,” Gawain warned, surrendering to Arthur’s wishes.

“I love Kay, Gawain, but I know him too well. If a problem can’t be solved with a sword, Kay goes and gets a bigger sword.
He’s not the man to rule a kingdom.”

“Very well, Sire,” Gawain said. He knelt before Arthur, more stiffly than he had once but still as readily. “Before God and
beyond death, Sire, I am your man.”

The tent was black. The furnishings were black, the tapestries were black, the pillows were black, even the torches were black.
Mordred liked black.

And he saw no reason why he shouldn’t have everything decorated just the way he liked it, no matter what anyone else thought,
because when you came right down to it…

I’m going to be the next King of what’s left of Britain, and they’re not.

Mordred smiled his sweetly chilling smile. He sat alone in his tent, Caliban across his knees. The weapon was still as he
had made it when he drew it from the ice, a slender-headed ax with a long hooked blade. Its shaft was the same black metal
as its head, and strong enough to shatter any blade… except one.

Excalibur.

For symmetry’s sake—and in his own way, Mordred was an artist—Caliban should be a sword, so that the black blade and the bright
could clash upon the field of battle. He’d thought about changing it back off and on over the past weeks, but when you came
right down to it, Mordred wasn’t much of a man for swords. Swords meant knighthood, and ceremony, and honor, and Mordred didn’t
care for any of those things. Mordred liked to kill, and he liked to win. And after he’d won, he liked to smash what was left.

An ax was a better tool for smashing things than a sword.

He leaned his head against the back of his chair and half closed his eyes. The red light of the Dragon Star seeped through
a crack in the walls of the tent, working its malign magic. A strange dry for filled the air, causing men to sicken and die,
and spring this year had never warmed into summer. The crops—those Mordred hadn’t burned—had failed in the fields. There’d
be famine this winter, whoever won the battle to come.

Then I’m really doing those sniveling peasants a favor by cutting them down now. But do I get any thanks for it? Of course
not!

Twelve weeks before, Mordred had ridden out of Camelot to York, the northernmost of the great Roman walled cities. But he
hadn’t attacked the city of York, though he’d come at the head of a sizable army. No, he’d pretended to be one of his own
men’s servants, slipped into the city, and vanished amid its teeming populace.

A fortnight later, the fruits of his labors had begun to ripen. Just as at Camelot, there were meetings in cellars, circulated
petitions, an anonymous execution or two. And then the people had risen up, thrown out the garrison, and installed Mordred—
Prince
Mordred, future King of England—as the ruler of York and the North.

Mab had warned him these tricks wouldn’t work on everyone. But as far as Mordred could see, they worked on enough people—and
once you had a mob of well-armed, weak-minded followers, you didn’t need either logic or persuasion: everyone else pretty
much did what you wanted them to.

And when the time was ripe, Mordred would meet Arthur and his army on the field and crush them utterly, then lay waste to
the kingdom in a way that would have turned Old King Vortigern positively
green
with envy.

“You’re wasting time!” a familiar voice hissed. “The power that I gave you to cloud men’s minds will not last into the dark
half of the year!”

“Hello, Auntie Mab,” Mordred said without moving.

A moment later he got gracefully to his feet and stepped down from the black-draped dais his chair rested on. He held out
his hand to Mab. “I’ve missed you so,” he said, leaning over to kiss the air beside her cheek.

“Don’t change the subject!” Mab hissed. “Arthur should be dead by now. Why isn’t he?”

“I don’t like to rush things,” Mordred said sulkily. “And if we’re going to play Twenty Questions, where’s Merlin? With all
I’ve done to Arthur in the past three months, you’d think that damned wizard would be around to pull his prize pupil’s chestnuts
out of the fire, but no one’s so much as seen him.”

“Don’t worry about Merlin. I’ve taken care of him,” Mab said.

“Is it too much to hope you’ve killed him slowly and horribly?” Mordred asked, turning away from her.

Mab didn’t answer.

“I see,” Mordred said, and this time his voice shook with the effort it took to keep his tone light. “Can I offer you a drink?
No? I think I’ll have one. It’s been a long day.”

Mab still said nothing. Mordred crossed to the table, where a decanter of black glass stood surrounded by golden goblets inset
with cameos of carved jet depicting the Seven Deadly Sins. He picked up the nearest one, poured it full, and drank without
concern. No one in his camp would dare to try to poison Prince Mordred… and if they did, well, it simply wouldn’t work. He
did, after all, have the strength of ten because his heart was black.

“What are you waiting for?” Mab demanded abruptly. “You must take the throne before Samhain, or all is lost.”

Mordred drank again, leisuredly. So Mab had protected Merlin, hiding him somewhere out of Mordred’s reach, had she? It was
no more than he should have expected. She still loved Merlin best, still wanted to keep him safe. But Mordred had no intention
of leaving any rivals on the field by the time he was through.

None.

The goblet crumpled in his hand, and he set it down carefully.

He turned to face Mab, leaning back against the table.

“I’m waiting, dear Aunt, for the right time. The time when Arthur has gathered together positively every last bit of support
he can possibly muster and gotten it all together in one place so that once I’ve killed the King and every man in his army
there won’t be anybody left to oppose me,” he said as if explaining the matter to a child.

And Merlin will come to save Arthur. He must! And I will kill him, too, and then there won’t be anyone else left, will there,
Auntie? You will have to love me best of all.…

“You’re a good boy, Mordred,” Mab purred, oblivious to the tenor of Mordred’s inner thoughts. She walked over to him and stood
on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “You’ll make me proud of you, won’t you, Mordred?”

“Oh yes, Auntie,” Prince Mordred said. “I quite guarantee it.”

N
imue could hear Merlin singing as he chopped wood for their fire. Though there was neither night nor day here in the Enchanted
Forest that Mab had made for them, they had fallen into a regular pattern of waking and sleeping and performing simple homely
tasks. Neither of them realized that each time they slept it was for a longer period, until one day soon they would sleep
without wakening.

Nimue stirred the porridge for their morning meal and stared into the flames, alone with her thoughts.

They did not make for pleasant company.

With each passing day, Nimue’s secret guilt grew harder to bear. Certainly Merlin had come to the Enchanted Forest of his
own free will, but he had also come because she was here. Though he said that Arthur had no further need of him, Nimue knew
that did not mean that Merlin’s work in the world was done. His purpose was as it had always been: to defeat Mab. And if Mab
still feared Merlin so much that she would construct such an elaborate trap for him, then he must be very near to succeeding.
If he went back into the world, perhaps Merlin could still defeat Mab.

But that was where Nimue’s part came in. She was the one trapped by the Enchanted Forest, not Merlin. She could never leave—but
if Merlin left, he could never return. Nimue would be trapped here forever. Alone.

If Merlin thought about leaving, Mab counted on Nimue telling him that. Begging him to stay. Keeping him here because he loved
her, and turning their love into a weapon for Mab to use against them.

That is not right!
Nimue thought sadly.

But what
was
right? To drive Merlin back out into the world, where men like Mordred and Giraldus waited to destroy him? She had only agreed
to Mab’s bargain to save Merlin because she thought that his work in the world was at an end, and because she believed that
if that were so, then Merlin’s happiness and safety were the most important things in the world.

But Nimue was beginning to suspect that she was wrong.

All through the weeks that followed, the two commanders—Arthur and Mordred—moved their playing pieces across the chessboard
of Britain, never actually coming to grips. Every day the comet grew larger in the sky, and it seemed as if the land were
under a curse of famine and darkness.

Many said that the King was to blame. Arthur had sinned, and the land was blighted because of it. The dragon star was a sign
of his wickedness.

Sometimes Arthur wondered if it was true. A King should rule his land, and he had abandoned it to search for the Grail, just
as Guinevere had abandoned him for love. A King should rule his people, and instead his people flocked to Mordred’s standard
in greater and greater numbers with each passing day.

But Mordred’s army pillaged and raided as Vortigern’s had once done, laying waste to the countryside and terrorizing good
people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone peacefully in their homes. Even though they had abandoned him, Arthur
had sworn to protect them, and he would do his best to do that for as long as he lived.

And so as the red star grew ever brighter in the sky, Arthur gathered together all those who were still loyal to him and prepared
to do battle against his son for the people of Britain.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Gawain asked.

“He’ll come,” Arthur said grimly.

The plains of Sarum were shrouded in a thick grey fog that made it almost impossible for a man to see someone standing six
feet away, but Arthur knew that Mordred’s army was out there somewhere. Perhaps at the edge of the forest. Though he knew
his own army was behind him, he could not see them either. Each day the cursed mist grew thicker. Perhaps soon they would
all be fighting in the dark.