The End of Magic Read Free Page B

billing
     and cooing with the enchantingly beautiful Morgan le Fay could not irritate her today. She was on the verge of her ultimate
     victory. She could feel it.
    “Show Auntie what you’ve learned, Mordred,” Mab cooed coaxingly.
    Mordred stepped from the shadows at the far end of the hall into a beam of light.
    Arthur’s son had grown into a compellingly beautiful young man. He wore his hair down past his shoulders; through the years
     it had darkened to a shade of red that was almost black. His eyes were a pale grey, brilliant as mirrors. He dressed all in
     black, saying it was the only color left unused after Morgan’s brilliant extravagances, and today he wore a tunic of black
     suede trimmed in matching doeskin, with a double row of silver buttons running down the placket. At his hip he wore a box-quiver
     filled with silver-tipped arrows cut from black hawthorn, and he carried a large double-curved horn bow that Mab had brought
     him all the way from Khitai.
    Across the breadth of the hall, the servants in their dun-colored tunics each quiveringly set an apple atop their heads. They
     stood along the wall behind Morgan’s chair, almost too terrified to breathe.
    “If you five gentlemen don’t stop trembling, I might miss and kill you all,” Mordred called out to them mockingly.
    Their terror increased, but Mordred gave no hint that he noticed it. With inhuman speed he drew and fired, drew and fired,
     over Morgan’s head, sending the next arrow on its way before the previous one had found its target. Their impact was one long
thrum
of sound, as the five apples fell to the ground.
    But only four of them had been pierced. The fifth servant reeled back with a cry of pain, Mordred’s arrow protruding from
     his right shoulder.
    “Ah, less than perfect,” Mab said. It was important that Mordred always be aware of his shortcomings, she felt.
    Mordred’s eyes flared at the rebuke, and his anger, never far below the surface, exploded into rage. He nocked another arrow
     and loosed it at Mab—who caught it unruffledly and dropped it to the floor—and then one at Frik, who was lounging in the corner
     conversing with Morgan. Frik yelped in surprise and seized it only a bare inch from his throat. But Mordred wasn’t done. He
     had nocked a third arrow, and was aiming at his mother… and that arrow would find its target.
    “That’s enough, Mordred,” Morgan said sharply, without the faintest trace of fear. Mordred hesitated, his face still white
     and furious. After a long moment he lowered his bow and smiled without any trace of surrender.
    The years since his birth—few though they’d been as the World of Men reckoned time—had been more than kind to Morgan le Fay.
     Though it was a gnomish illusion, she still possessed the dazzling beauty that had allowed her to bespell a king, and through
     Frik’s magic, Morgan lived a life filled with every form of luxury. Today she wore a jade-green gown in the Roman style that
     Frik preferred, with a massive gold necklace with three long pendant plaques around her neck.
    She watched Mab with her son with a faint flame of jealousy burning in the back of her glorious hazel eyes, for avarice had
     always been the defining principle of Morgan’s nature, and though he was her own son, Morgan resented the gifts that Mab lavished
     on Mordred.
    “You mustn’t get carried away, my sweet,” Mab said. If the murder attempt had fazed her at all, the Queen of the Old Ways
     didn’t show it. “It shows a lack of control.”
    Mordred tossed his bow aside and walked toward the foot of the table, ignoring the further rebuke.
    “And why fire at Auntie Mab and Uncle Frik?” Morgan added, anxious to seize control of the conversation.
    “I do hope the boy was just having fun and it wasn’t personal,” Frik said, coming toward Morgan’s side. He was holding the
     arrow very much as if he expected it to turn into a poisonous snake at any moment—which was not completely