The End of Magic

by James Mallory

  But it had not stopped elsewhere. Outside, the world went on without them.

  Gawain was crowned on Christmas Day. He became King of Britain just as his father had once hoped, though the lands he ruled over were much diminished by the inroads of the Saxons to the east. Gawain married his childhood sweetheart, and they had a son named Constans who would come to rule Britain after him.

  The Great Comet disappeared from the sky by the autumn of that year, and slowly the ravages of the wounded land began to heal. Some said it was because Galahad had found the Grail and returned it to Avalon Abbey. Those few who still followed the Old Ways said that Britain itself was the Grail, ever-renewing, ever-full.

  And by the time Gawain died in a rich old age, people already thought Arthur was a myth, for King Gawain was the last of those who had known Arthur the man. With his death, the last link to that age of marvels was broken, and slowly, as Merlin had once predicted, they came to believe that Arthur and all his companions were myths, tales from the morning of the world.

  Frik helped that along, just as he had from the very beginning. He was first Gawain’s court poet, then Constans’s, then a traveling bard.

  He told many tales of the wondrous King Arthur, who had defeated many foes, fought giants and dragons and enchanters, and brought peace and plenty to Britain by saying might must always be used in the service of right. He told of Arthur’s beautiful wife Guinevere, who had loved Arthur’s champion Lancelot. He told of Arthur’s wizard, Merlin, the last of the great enchanters, who had gained the miraculous sword Excalibur and given it to Arthur so that he might prove himself the true King. He told of Herne and Morgan, of Uther and Igraine, of the Lady of the Lake and the Old Man of the Mountain, but in all his tales and stories, Frik wrote nothing of Mab. No one remembered her.

  And others who followed him learned his songs and stories, and added stories of their own, of Mark and Tristan, of Iseult and Perceval. Years passed, and the wheel turned. Slowly the Saxons became Britons, as did the Normans who followed them into Britain.

  Arthur’s story lived on in all of their hearts, each generation telling it over afresh and adding new signs and wonders to it. They told of the wicked and beautiful enchantress Morgan le Fay, but there were no tales told of the Fairy Queen who had given Morgan her power.

  No one remembered Mab at all.

  And slowly the people came to settle on the river Astolat once more, and to build a new city there, though they no longer remembered that Camelot had once stood here. Camelot was not a real city. Camelot was a beautiful dream of a time long ago, before the end of magic.

  But that was outside the room.

  Inside it, Mab readied her last and most lethal attack. Merlin could have no hope of turning it aside.

  And so he did not try. His purpose had not been to defeat Mab himself. The Lady of the Lake’s words had taught him that she could not be defeated, for to make war upon her would only be to give her the power that came through remembering her name, and it was from fear and worship that all the Old Ones drew their power. And so Merlin had planned only to hold her here, to distract her while Frik made sure that the people of Britain forgot her completely.

  And now they had.

  The firebolt rolled through the air toward him, growing larger as it came. Merlin flung himself down and let it pass harmlessly above him.

  It struck the door, and when it hit, it blew a great hole through the door, destroying the cocoon of magic in which the chamber had been wrapped for so many years. There were cries in the corridor beyond as the great glowing bolt of fairy-fire rolled through the people standing there, but it did not hurt them. They no longer believed in fairies or fairy magic, and thus it had no power over them.

  Inside the chamber, when she saw that Merlin still lived, Mab snarled and hissed in pure animal fury. She was staggering with weakness—still dangerous, but only a shadow of her former self.

  But in that instant, Mab thought she saw the path to victory. Through the open door she saw the people gathered in the hall. Frik must have summoned them, Mab decided, in order to try and rescue Merlin from her wrath. But the gnome had played right into her hands. The pain and suffering of the mortals gathered to gawk at her would fuel her waning powers, and their deaths would cause Merlin unspeakable agony.

  “My strength may be fading,” Mab hissed, “but I can still deal with these poor humans! What do you plan to do, use your puny swords and axes on me?”

  “No,” Merlin said, answering for them. “We’re going to forget you, Mab.”

  He climbed through the smoking hole in the door, and walked out into the corridor. Frik was there waiting, and Merlin stood beside him. The people around him were puzzled at the disruption of their day, but already beginning to forget what had just happened. Everyone knew there was really no such thing as magic. And none of them had ever heard of Mab, or the Old Ways. All of them stood with their backs to the door. They knew there was no door there, just as there was no chamber behind it, and so they did not see either one.

  “Merlin! What are you doing?” Mab cried imperiously. But of all those gathered in this hall, only Merlin and Frik could hear her.

  Merlin half-turned to look back at her. “You can’t fight us, or frighten us. You’re just not important enough anymore. We forget you, Queen Mab. Go join your sister in the lake and be forgotten.”

  He turned away for the last time. He would always remember her, of course, and so would Frik, but two memories were not enough to sustain Mab’s reality.

  “Look at me!” she cried, and Merlin heard terror beginning to creep into her voice.

  “Look at me!” she begged.

  Of all things, Mab had most feared the oblivion that would come with being forgotten. The Lady of the Lake, the Lord of Winter, the Old Man of the Mountain, had all accepted their fates, and so their memories survived in Frik’s stories, even though no one actually believed in their reality anymore.

  The people in the corridor began to move away, back to their daily tasks.

  But the Queen of the Old Ways had fought to stop time and the normal progression of things, and soon she would no longer be even a memory.

  “Frik!” Mab cried desperately.

  Merlin saw an expression of stubborn anger cross the gnome’s face. Was it his imagination, or did Frik already look more human, less like a creature of the Old Ways? Frik walked away, ignoring his former mistress.

  “Merlin!” Mab wailed. “Merlin!”

  Merlin stayed where he was. He would not acknowledge her, but he owed one last duty to the people of Britain to watch over their greatest enemy until she vanished forever.

  “Don’t forget me, Merlin! I… love you,” Mab croaked at last. “As a son!”

  The Fair Folk could not lie. Perhaps what she said was the truth, or at least a truth. It did not matter. Mab had destroyed Merlin’s ability to love her long ago. It was the greatest of the many injuries she had done him.

  He began to walk away.

  And then there was silence, and the faintest of whispered wailing. Merlin felt the last of Mab’s magic thin out and fade away.

  When he turned, all that he saw through the hole in the door was an empty room, and slowly the door faded, and the room beyond faded with it, and Merlin was alone.

  He had won, but victory did not carry with it the joy and exultation that it ought, for his own losses were so very great. For the first time since his sixteenth year, Merlin found himself without a purpose in the world. The fight he had chosen—that had been his true destiny—was over.

  But unlike the neat endings in the tales of bards, Merlin still had a life to live and a chance to live it. It seemed only days since he had lightly spoken those words to Arthur, but now Arthur was a myth and he, Merlin, the last wizard, was an anachronism, a creature out of time.

  He left the castle. For months afterward Merlin searched for Nimue, for the cave, for the Enchanted Lake and the Door Into Magic. But he never found any of them again, and f
inally he gave up.

  There was nothing now to tie him to Britain, and so he traveled, working at odd jobs along the way, always moving on when people became suspicious of him, as they nearly always did. For Merlin still carried Mab’s blood in his veins. He was half-fairy, and though he aged, he did so far more slowly than mortal kind.

  But age he did.

  The Italian sun was a more generous overlord than the pale sun of Britain had ever been. Though it was barely March, the spring flowers were well established in the Tuscan hills, and the air was soft and gentle with warmth. It was a blessing for old bones. And Merlin was old, grey and bent with years of wandering.

  The staff he had once carried for show and for power served now only as a support to his stiffness. The gnarled wood was still the same, but the wizard-crystal it had once borne was long gone. Merlin thought he had thrown it in the Tiber. Or perhaps the Danube. Whichever river it had been, it was a long time ago.

  These days, everything seemed a long time ago.

  Last night Merlin had dreamed. He’d stopped for the night in some country inn, where for a few coppers the landlord would give him a mug of beer and let him—an old man, with an old man’s privileges—sit by the fire.

  There he had dreamed, and in his dream Merlin had seen himself as he had been when he first came to the Land of Magic—so young! Frik and Mab were with him.

  “This is you as you will be,” he heard Mab say, pointing at him as he drowsed by the fire in some country inn.

  The boy looked shocked. “Me? Will I grow that old?” he blurted gracelessly.

  “Have a care, young Merlin!” he said, glaring at the boy and tightening his grip on his stick. Had he really grown so old and grey that this young boy thought him unbelievable? This was his younger self. Perhaps he could help him, warn him about what was to come in his future: Arthur, Lancelot, Mordred. But what could he say that would help? “Try and always stay as young inside as you are now. And that’s another thing. Don’t start giving advice. It always ends badly.”

  “What—” the boy began, but Mab gestured, and Merlin awoke, the dream fading.

  He knew it was a dream. Mab had been gone for many years, and Frik… well, Merlin didn’t quite know where Frik was. He hadn’t seen him since that day they had stood shoulder to shoulder in the halls of Camelot to put an end to Mab forever. Perhaps the gnome was dead, for Mab had taken away his magic, and without it Frik was as mortal as anyone else.

  As mortal as Merlin.

  It was time, the old wizard thought to himself, to go home. He had traveled enough, seen all that the world had to offer, fulfilled all the boyhood dreams that the years had left him. It was time to go back to the place where he had begun.

  It was a bright autumn day in Nottingham, the day of the fair, and Marian had wandered away from her nurse to see the delights the fair had to offer all by her self. Marian was eight years old, and the daughter of the shire reeve—or as the Normans said it, sheriff—who was a very important man in these parts. Her father had given her a whole silver penny to spend on whatever she chose, and Marian wandered among the booths of the fair, trying to make up her mind what she would buy.

  Here were bright ribbons tied in knots that fluttered against the wind, but she had ribbons a-plenty at home, and she had never had a silver penny of her own. There were slabs of gilded gingerbread and barley-sugar candy painted red, but still, the girl did not feel that such treats were special enough to spend her money upon.

  Then she heard the voice.

  Marian had always loved to listen to the bards that traveled through the land performing at weddings and other great occasions. It was said that King John had minstrels in attendance at his fine London court all the year around and so could listen to their songs any time he wished. Marian thought it was a great thing to be king, but even more than she loved the songs they sang, Marian loved the stories the bards sometimes told—old stories, of the days of heroes and marvels. When she heard the man’s voice, she moved toward it as the bee moves toward the flower.

  She reached the edge of the crowd and pushed through them until she had reached a place where she could see and hear clearly.

  The storyteller was an old, old man. His white hair and beard flowed down over his shoulders, and he was dressed in a long raggedy robe that looked as if it had sticks and burrs caught in its weave. As he spoke, he leaned on a staff that seemed to be made from an old gnarled tree-branch. He was shabby and not very prepossessing, but Marian did not care. He was telling her favorite story of all, the story of Arthur the boy-king and how he had defeated the wicked sorceress Morgan le Fay and her evil son Mordred.

  The storyteller told of the great battle Merlin fought as if he had really been there. Marian listened, enchanted, spellbound by his words until at last they drew to a close.

  “I had won. I was trying to smile, but it was the smile of desolation. Inside I felt only the pity of the terror and the waste of it all. Everyone I ever loved, and who ever loved me, all gone, all gone down.

  “But then Galahad returned, and brought with him the Holy Grail, and Spring, and the land became fertile again, and the cycle of death and darkness ended, and so does my story.”

  He turned aside and lay down his staff, and picked up a box, getting slowly and painfully to his feet.

  “And now, if my story entertained or enchanted, you may show your appreciation in any way you think fit… but particularly with money.” He set the box down on a tree stump and looked expectantly at the audience.

  “Master Merlin!” Marian asked, clutching her penny. “Did you ever find Nimue?”

  The old storyteller shook his head. “No, I never found Nimue, or even the cave again.” He shook his head sadly.

  Marian came forward and shyly dropped her silver penny into the box. The story had been worth it. And maybe he really was Merlin the wizard.

  “Maid Marian!” her nurse called, and Marian, guilty, ran toward the familiar cry.

  “What about the magic? Can you still do magic?” a man’s voice called out.

  Merlin sighed. He loved to tell the stories, but he hated the questions that inevitably followed. So often they were questions he had asked himself, over and over. This question was an easy one, though. They always asked about the magic.

  “No,” he said tolerantly. “I got out of the habit—and besides, nobody believes in it any more.”

  The audience that had gathered to hear him was drifting away, back to the other delights of the fair. Merlin looked down into the box. Two or three bronze groats, and among them, one shining silver penny. He wondered who had been so generous. He scooped the coins up and tucked them into a pocket, then glanced up. One of the townsfolk was still sitting on the bench, as if hoping Merlin would continue.

  “It’s all over, friend,” Merlin said gruffly. “There is no more.”

  “It’s not exactly the way I remember it, Master Merlin,” a familiar voice drawled.

  Merlin stared. “Frik?” he whispered in disbelief, peering toward the stranger. “Frik, is it you?”

  The old man on the end of the bench drew back his cowl to reveal the long pointed ears and bulging eyes of a very old gnome—though he did not look quite as old as Merlin.

  “Yes,” Frik said simply, “it’s me.”

  Frik’s hair was white and wispy with age, but he was unmistakably Merlin’s old teacher. He chuckled with delight at the expression of astonishment on Merlin’s face, and Merlin joined him, more lighthearted than he had felt in many years.

  They came together and embraced, two creatures of magic who had survived into a world that no longer believed in their existence.

  “I must say,” Frik said, “you do tell a good tale—terribly exciting and all—but I was intrigued that you chose to omit certain …”

  “Well, that’s how they like it,” Merlin said philosophically. “Besides, I don’t think they’d believe me if I told them how it really was.” He held Frik at arm’s length and studied hi
m. “And how are you doing in this world, Master Frik?”

  The elderly gnome simpered self-deprecatingly. “Well, I mean there will always be a need for the perfect gentleman’s gentleman, and I was and always will be one of the best,” he said with simple pride.

  Together they walked away from the storyteller’s circle. Merlin jingled the coins in his pocket.

  “Meager pickings, Frik. Meager pickings,” Merlin said with a sigh.

  “You’d do better if you gave them some magic,” Frik said judiciously. “Even if they don’t believe in it any more, that’s what they’re always hoping for.”

  Merlin shook his head. “The time for magic is done. It would bring back too many sad memories.” Of Nimue, and all that he had lost. Merlin sighed sorrowfully.

  “As a matter of fact,” Frik said, “that’s why I’m here.”

  He led Merlin around a corner, to where an ancient horse stood patiently waiting. Merlin stared in astonishment.

  “It can’t be—it is!” Merlin whispered as Frik chuckled in glee at the success of his surprise.

  “Sir Rupert!” Merlin moved forward to stroke the old horse’s satiny nose.

  “I found him grazing in a field and we got to reminiscing,” Frik said offhandedly.

  Merlin found a bit of bread in one of the pockets of his tattered robe and held it out for the horse to take.

  “Dear old boy! Shouldn’t you be dead by now?” he asked, still stunned by seeing his old companion from the days of the Wild Hunt once more.

  *No, no… there’s a little magic in me, too,* Sir Rupert said fondly.

  “Oh yes,” Frik said casually. “I almost forgot. Nimue.”

  “What about her?” Merlin said levelly, for the memory of losing her still brought him pain, even after all these years. It always would.

  “Oh, nothing, really,” Frik rattled on in those too-casual tones. “Other than that she was inquiring about you when I saw her last month.”