The End of Magic (22 page)

“Sanctuary can only be given by the Church, just as forgiveness is. Once it would have mattered to me, but no longer. Joyous
Gard is no longer my home.”

“You can’t leave!” Lancelot said, agitated. “Where will you go?”

“I will go in search of the Grail,” Galahad responded serenely. “If I cannot live without love, I will love only God, for
God is always worthy of love and never betrays it.”

Lancelot looked away, unable to meet Galahad’s eyes.

Guinevere laughed angrily. “Have a care what you promise, Grail Knight, for there is always someone listening. And there is
no love without betrayal.”

“Then I will never love,” the young knight said simply, “for love is the beginning of death.” He slid his helm back down and
picked up his reins. Without another word, he rode on.

Lancelot gazed after him without speaking. The only one who he believed could have absolved him of his guilt for Elaine’s
death, Guinevere knew, was Galahad, and now that would never be.

“I wanted to love him,” Lancelot said simply.

“Let God do that,” Guinevere answered. “We have each other.”

After a long moment, Lancelot and his lady rode on, through the gates of Joyous Gard.

Merlin left Camelot and walked until dawn. His destination was the Enchanted Lake, for nowhere else could a Door Into Magic
be found in the world of modern Britain, and Mab had told him that Nimue waited at the Door Into Magic. But Mab and her sister,
the Lady of the Lake, were not on the friendly terms they had been in Merlin’s childhood, and the Door Into Magic was probably
not in the center of the Lady of the Lake’s watery domain as the entrance Merlin had used in childhood had been.

*You weren’t planning to
walk
all the way there, were you, Master Merlin?*
a familiar voice asked from behind him. Merlin staggered forward at a sudden shove between his shoulderblades, and turned
to see Sir Rupert gazing at him out of wise brown eyes.

“Sir Rupert, old friend!” Merlin said in delight. “But I turned you out to grass years ago!”

*I’d be a poor friend if I didn’t come when I was needed, wouldn’t I, Master Merlin?*
the enchanted animal replied.
*Where are we going?*

“To the Door Into Magic—wherever it is,” Merlin answered. He swung himself into the saddle and settled his weight on Sir Rupert’s
back. “I may be in for a long search.”

*No. I know where it is.*
Sir Rupert answered. The horse snorted and shook his head, then trotted off.

Sir Rupert moved at his own pace, and Merlin did nothing to hurry him. A great sense of peace had enfolded him. He had brought
a long life of service to an honorable end, and now he went to enjoy the fruit of his labors. In his heart, Merlin did not
doubt that Arthur would prevail. After all, he had Excalibur. And Excalibur would always bring victory to a just man who wielded
it in a just cause.

By midday they had reached the edge of the Enchanted Lake. The boundaries of the lake and the magical domain it encompassed
were always fluid, and today the lake verged upon a vast wild forest whose trees had never felt the blade of Man’s ax. Merlin
could feel its magic tugging at him, calling him home.

He rode along the edge of the lake until he reached a sheer stone cliff that was so tall he could barely see its top. Its
stone face was striped and stippled with the marks that ancient rivers had worn in the stone. In the center of the cliff a
deep fissure led into the rock.

*We’re here,*
Sir Rupert said.

“Nimue!” Merlin shouted. “Nimue!”

His voice echoed back from the rocks on every side, but then, as though it were the spring breeze itself, he heard Nimue’s
voice.

“Merlin. I am here,” she said.

Merlin rode into the shadow of the opening, then dismounted from Sir Rupert and peered into the darkness, testing the wind
that blew from the cave. It was ripe with magic, and the sound of Nimue’s voice seemed still to echo in it, like the faint
aftersong of churchbells.

All magic goes in threes,
Merlin thought suddenly.

Frik had told him that once, long ago. The great tides of a man’s life were threefold: as child, as lover, as victim. Twice
before Merlin had gone into darkness, and each time had changed him.

The first time he had been a child, traveling with Frik into the Land of Magic to meet Mab. What dreams he had dreamed of
his future in those days! That journey had begun with a voyage through a long dark tunnel, and even then he had felt the terror
of the living rock pressing down upon him. When he had left the Land Under Hill, he had left the innocence of childhood behind
him.

The second time he had been a young man, carried into the dark dungeons beneath Vortigern’s castle to die. For weeks he had
lain on cold stone, feeling the whole weight of the castle pressing down upon his chest, locked away from light and air and
freedom. That was the moment that had led to Nimue’s maiming, to the beginning of his helpless, futile war with Mab. When
he had entered Vortigern’s dungeons, he had left peace behind.

This was the third. Once more Merlin must make the trip into the unknown. What would he leave here, and what would he gain?

Slowly Merlin walked into the darkness, leading Sir Rupert behind him. The stone passage was narrow and dark, and soon Merlin
had left the pale clear daylight behind, to walk blindly through blackness. A ghost of his old fear of entombment rose up
to taunt him, but this time the magic in the air soothed his old fears. No matter where this passage led him, Merlin was going
home.

Soon the corridor ahead began to fill with light—a ruddy, sourceless illumination that cast no shadows. Merlin walked toward
its source, and soon he had passed out of the cave, and into the Land of Magic that Mab had promised him.

It was a different environment than Mab’s own darkly-brilliant realm, though Merlin did not doubt that it was somehow connected
to that place. But there were many kingdoms within the Land of Magic, and this one was a dominion that had been created to
Merlin’s own measure. It fit him as closely and as well as his own boots did.

He was in a forest. Though the trees were in full summer leaf, their foliage was the brilliant red and gold of autumn, as
if here it was every season at once. Merlin could see each twig and leaf as clearly as if it were noonday, though the sky
far above his head was a velvet starless black, for the light here owed nothing to either sun or moon. The sound of Sir Rupert’s
hooves was muffled in the thick soft drifts of fallen leaves that covered the ground, so that the loudest sound Merlin heard
was the creak of Sir Rupert’s saddle and the soft rush of the wind through the trees. Animals that had never known what it
was to fear man scurried on their way as he passed. Merlin saw rabbits and squirrels, larks and doves, even a young doe with
her fawn beside her.

Every creature that he saw was the ghostly silver color of Otherworld animals, more proof—if he had needed it—that the cave
had led him into the Land of Magic. The very air was filled with the scent of it, a perfume that assuaged a longing deep in
Merlin’s soul that he had never realized was there. He was Mab’s child as well as Elissa’s, and all his life, a part of him
had longed to return to the magical land that had given him being.

Now he was home.

And more than that—both halves of his soul were at last at rest. For this forest was more than beautiful, it was familiar
as are the places of earliest childhood. This was Barnstable Forest, where Merlin had been born—but a Barnstable Forest made
perfect beyond all mortal possibility.

“Welcome home!” Bran the raven called from a branch above his head. Merlin smiled and waved to his old childhood companion.
He knew where he was going now, and his steps quickened as he followed the path that led to Ambrosia’s forest cottage. Even
after so many years, he thought of it as hers; the place where he had first seen the light of day, taken his first steps,
discovered the magic of love.

The cottage was just as he remembered it, for memory always idealizes reality. The curtain was drawn back from the doorway,
and he could see the fire burning in the fireplace inside the cottage. There was a sweet tang of woodsmoke in the air, carrying
with it the promise of a thousand summer afternoons to come.

Hearing his arrival, Nimue stepped out of the cottage, stooping as she came through the low door. She wore the simple white
tunic she had worn at Avalon, but now there was no cowl pinned closely about her face. Once more Nimue greeted the world boldly
and unafraid.

“Look,” she said, and her hand went to her face, caressing the unblemished smoothness of her cheek. “Look where we are!”

Home.
Merlin was home, with the woman he loved. Everything he had ever wanted was here.

Nimue lifted up her skirts and ran to him, flinging her arms about his neck and kissing him unreservedly upon the mouth. Merlin
put his arms around her, trembling and weak with a hope too long denied.
This is what I’ve always dreamed of,
he thought. Home… and Nimue… and freedom.

A quiver seemed to pass through the forest when their lips met. Merlin tried to lose himself in the moment, but to his wizardly
senses, this place rang with the sound of magic, closing around the two of them, locking them tightly together. He felt Nimue
shudder against him as though she felt it too, and clutch him as securely as if she would protect him from dangers as yet
unseen.

A moment later she drew back, holding his hands and gazing at him with the open peaceful love he had longed to see on her
face all these years. Nimue had weathered the storms of her life and come at last to this safe harbor. She was at peace with
herself at last, and that made her more beautiful than the removal of any scar possibly could.

“Come,” Nimue said, laughing as she tugged at his hand, urging him toward the cottage.

“Wait,” Merlin said reluctantly. He gazed around himself, feeling the frisson of magic. “This is all Mab,” he said, reminding
them both. No matter how innocent a paradise this appeared, it had all been created by Mab.

“Oh, forget her!” Nimue said in loving exasperation. “We’ve wasted so much of our lives together already. Now it’s our turn,”
she whispered, coming into his arms once more. “Isn’t it what you always wanted?”

Nimue’s honesty and openness convinced Merlin that there could be nothing to fear. Sincerity was the one weapon Mab could
not wield. For whatever reason, Mab meant them to be happy.

Merlin followed Nimue into the cottage, and here, too, everything was perfect, just as he’d always dreamed it would be.

Afterward, they lay together on the wide bed and talked of their lives. Merlin spoke of Arthur, of Mordred, and the pain that
he had expected to feel was curiously muted. It was as if he spoke of events long in the past, events that no longer had the
power to hurt. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, even Mordred, all were figures in a tapestry of myth, a tapestry woven long ago.

From that moment began a golden time in Merlin’s life. His days held the carefree recklessness of childhood, but with the
wisdom of age Merlin was able to savor their rarity, their perfection, even as he lived them. There had been so little of
joy in Merlin’s life, so little peace for a man torn always between his fairy and mortal natures, that he never tired of this
tranquillity.

Perhaps this was what the Christians sought from their Paradise; days of unending bliss without the possibility of sorrow.
And Nimue was there with him, a part of that joy. Together he and Nimue ate and slept, laughed and made love, wandered through
the forest and bathed in its crystalline pools in the eternal day that had no twilight.

But nothing is eternal.

The forest provided everything they needed, but water must still be drawn and firewood gathered. One day—he did not know how
long after he had passed through the Door Into Magic—Merlin was walking alone in the forest. Each stone and tree around him
was familiar to him from childhood.

Save one.

It was an old oak, its trunk bent and gnarled with the storms it had weathered. It stood apart from its fellows, alone in
its solitary majesty, and Merlin had never seen it before.

Where had it come from? Everything here beyond the Door Into Magic was an exact counterpart to something in the Barnstable
Forest of his childhood, and so this must be as well. But a tree this magnificent took centuries to grow. It didn’t just appear
overnight. If it had been in the forest in which Merlin had spent the first years of his life, he could not have failed to
see it.

Cautiously, he approached the tree. Was its manifestation an omen—and of what? He reached out—

It was summer, but the air was cold and the vegetation sparse, and somehow he knew that little the farmers had planted this
spring had grown. The air was filled with a thin dry fog that veiled the sun and left a film of black grit on everything,
even the food and the surface of the water. In the west, the tail of the wandering star stretched across half the sky, turning
the heavens to blood and night to day. The ground beneath his feet vibrated with the tramp of marching men, and in the distance
he could hear outcries, and the clashing of swords.

Merlin drew back with a gasp. The spell of contentment that had enfolded him since the first moment he had kissed Nimue was
gone, shattered by the feel of the tree bark beneath his hand. Once more he remembered the outside world, where Arthur faced
Mordred and war reclaimed a land which had not known it for a generation.

It is nothing to do with me,
Merlin told himself.
Once, perhaps, but no more. Those days are through.
I
am through. This is where I belong now.

But he was troubled, and took care not to go to that part of the forest again.

In the days following Mordred’s declaration of war, Arthur rallied his men to oppose the usurper. Barons who barely knew that
the King had returned to Britain received curt summonses to come with their men-at-arms to Camelot.