by Anna Elliott
DAWN OF AVALON
A story of MORGAN AND MERLIN
from the TWILIGHT OF AVALON universe
by
Anna Elliott
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Dawn of Avalon
Copyright © 2010 by Anna Elliott
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Please report errors to Anna Elliott at [email protected] so that they can be corrected in future versions. Anna would also love to hear your comments.
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Author’s Note
ONE OF MY FAVORITE characters in my Twilight of Avalon trilogy is Isolde’s grandmother, Morgan. (Or Morgan le Fay, as she is commonly known in later versions of the Arthur legends). Morgan’s aging voice came to me very clearly as the narrator for the prologues of all three books. And after I’d finished writing the trilogy, she still haunted me. Myrddin (or Merlin), the famous enchanter of King Arthur’s court, rather haunted me as well, and I couldn’t stop wondering what Morgan and Merlin might have shared when they were young, before Morgan’s brother Arthur ever famously became King of Britain.
So here is Dawn of Avalon, the first part of their story and a prequel to my Twilight of Avalon trilogy. In Arthurian legend, Merlin is famous for ‘having lived time backward’ and being able to See the future as clearly as the past. In the earliest versions of the legend of the dragons at Dinas Emrys, Ambrosius Aurelianus, a famous war leader, digs up the dragons at King Vortigern’s command. Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose version of the King Arthur legends I loosely follow, changed Ambrosius Aurelianus to a mysterious enchanter Merlin, giving me the inspiration for the Merlin of Dawn of Avalon.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading Morgan and Merlin’s story. It was a pure joy to write, and I find now that I’m not quite so haunted by them anymore. I think (I hope) they’re happy with the prequel that I gave them, happy that they had the chance to live out their one perfect day.
Although the vast majority of my research comes from books, there are a couple of websites I can recommend to anyone curious to learn a bit more:
For more on the legends associated with Dinas Emrys (called Dinas Ffareon until
renamed after Merlin), see:
www.celtnet.org.uk/legends/dinas_emrys.html .
For more on the etymology of Merlin's name, see:
medievalscotland.org/problem/names/myrddin.shtml.
To learn more, visit me on the web at www.annaelliottbooks.com. Happy reading!
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PROLOGUE
PAIN. HE WAS AWASH in a black sea of it, and each wave gnawed at his every muscle and nerve.
“I said, what is your name?”
The voice made the blood pound blackly behind the pain that had centered itself in his skull.
“Are you one of Uther’s scabby whore-son cowards? Answer me!”
The prisoner’s eyes were still closed, but he could see the other man against the blackness of his lids: a long, flat, gray-skinned face, like a slab of stone marking some ancient warrior’s grave.
By rights, Vortigern ought to have moss-grown spirals tattooed across his forehead.
Dirty straw rustled as Vortigern took a step forward, and the prisoner forced his eyes open, tensing his muscles and clenching his teeth against another blow.
But the boy stood, blocked Vortigern’s way. The scrawny, dark-haired boy the prisoner could remember coming every day with food and salves.
“No.” The lad had a pale, soft-looking face. He might be—fourteen? Fifteen? His eyes looked older than that, but his cheeks were still smooth as a girl’s. “You’ll only drive him unconscious, and then he’ll tell you nothing at all.”
The aging druid who had stood beside Vortigern opened his mouth as though to speak at that, then glanced at the boy and shut it again. He was a stoop-shouldered old man with gnarled hands and a whipcord frame beneath the white druid’s robe and bull’s-hide cloak. His face looked like something carved in wood: rigid and weathered, one eye blinded by the scar that ran down from under his hair nearly to the corner of his mouth.
The prisoner remembered him coming in daily, as well. At least for as long as he could recall.
Vortigern’s eyes darted, snake-like, from the druid to the prisoner and back again. “Are you sure the boy knows his craft?”
“Know his craft? Oh, aye, I think—” The druid stopped, drew in his breath and said, in a flatter tone, “The … boy knows the healing arts well enough.”
“Good.” Vortigern’s eyes were stone-cold, floating empty in the narrow face. “I would not want him to die. At least, not until he has given me the answers I require of him.”
The boy had started to spread some sort of vile ointment on the throbbing, crusted burns on the prisoner’s arms. He glanced down to where the boy was working, feeling the vague surprise he felt every time he looked down at the length of his body. Lean and hard-muscled beneath shirt and breeches that were little more than rags.
The boy was telling a story. Something about dragons beneath the soil. He remembered him telling stories before, as well.
The prisoner let his mind drift above the pain, the black pounding in his skull, the fiery stab of his ribs.
This time, though, something reared up, hungry and dark on the edge of his mind, blotting out the words of the tale.
Swords clash. My hand slips on the hilt of my sword. Men choke and die. I must—I must—
The prisoner clenched his teeth. Raised himself on one elbow and looked up at Vortigern. “I hope you enjoy failure, then.”
Vortigern’s kick took him in the gut, jarring what felt like cracked ribs. The many-toothed wave of pain swelled to claim him again as the prisoner’s stomach spasmed, trying to wring out every last drop of the cup of water they’d allowed him today.
Whether he actually was—or had been—a man to hold up to torture, he had no idea. It didn’t matter now. His world had narrowed down to three truths, three hard lumps of certainty here in this filthy prison cell:
He was a prisoner in this place.
He had to ensure he died here.
And Vortigern himself would be dead before the moon had waxed and waned another eight times.
PART I
