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Back I Am Mordred Save as PDF
Chapters (26)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Prologue
  5. BOOK ONE
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. BOOK TWO
  11. 5
  12. 6
  13. 7
  14. BOOK THREE
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. BOOK FOUR
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. Epilogue
  25. Sneak Peak of A TALE FROM CAMELOT: I AM MORGAN LE FAY
  26. What’s next onyour reading list?

My fate? My fate? King Arthur’s fate. It was for his sake that I was locked in this losing battle, and no one cared. Even Merlin’s prophecy took no account of me. After I killed King Arthur, would I live? Would I be King? Would I be a happy, blessed Liege King whose goodliness sustained the realm? It was not impossible. King Arthur had started off his reign with a bloody deed, and look at him, so golden, look how folk adored him. After I slew him, would they love me?

I wanted to kill myself for thinking it. His grave, noble face confronted me in the night as if in a scrying mirror, looking at me the way he had the day I had named my quest to him. The proud tilt of his jaw. His smile as he said to me, “Go with my blessing.” The warm mist in his eyes.

I could not sleep.

I would die if fate made me kill him, I thought. Surely I would die. If not by the sword, then I would die of a broken heart.

Why would he not call me son? If only I were his son, I could be good.

Or if only I did not know I was his son . . . .

Damn everything. Damn that pompous old charlatan Merlin with his prophecies and his interference. If it were not for him—

I sat up as if to bay at the moon, my eyes wide. I stared, but I was not seeing the moonlight, the branches shifting and creaking in the wind, the lavender mushrooms glowing in the shadows.

Merlin. He was gone, but—but he was not dead. Through the rock in which he was imprisoned—or the tree, the glass hill, whatever, somewhere in Cornwall—one could still hear him pleading for freedom, legend said.

One could still speak with him.

13

I RODE THROUGH LANDS MORE STRANGE AND DAUNTING than any I had traversed before. No one challenged me, for no other knights rode there. In those western reaches of the Forest Perilous, great tors towered above the trees—they looked like ordinary mountains, yet just as I glanced away, the rocks would wink and grin. At night they roared and laughed. In the morning they might have moved slightly. On the tips of their crags teetered great boulders, some as large as a cottage, rocking as if they would fall. The trees moved when there was no wind. As I passed them, behind my back I would hear the sound of giggling.