The King's Wizard Read Online Free PDF Page A

surroundings. “You mortals have no sense of the fitness of things; how appalling.”
    Merlin shrugged. Frik drew himself up, seeming to recollect his purpose. “Anyway. I’m here with a message from Queen Mab.”
    “Naturally,” Merlin said with a faint bitter smile.
    “She’s going to punish you,” Frik announced portentously.
    “She hates me,” Merlin explained kindly. Perhapsthe explanation was even necessary—human emotions were largely a mystery to the Fair Folk.
    “No,” Frik corrected him with schoolmasterish fussiness, “but she’s rather disappointed that you’ve refused to use your magic
     powers.
Why
won’t you use them, Master Merlin?” Frik asked mournfully.
    “Because Mab wants me to!” Merlin snapped. The hot force of his anger surprised even him—after so many years, he’d thought
     his feelings for Mab had hardened into a cold hatred. He turned away from Frik, staring up and out through the grille, yearning
     for the open air. The night was clear and bitterly cold.
    “You will in the end, you know,” Frik said, with what almost sounded like compassion in his voice. He touched Merlin’s shoulder
     gently. “She’s a terrible enemy, Master Merlin, and a very poor employer. Well, I mean, I could tell you
stories…!
But enough of my problems—” There was a ripple in the darkness, and Frik was gone in midsentence.
    Merlin stretched his cramped arms, then blew on his fingers to try to warm them. Mab thought that confinement in this dismal
     prison cell would do what Merlin’s self-imposed forest exile had not… but she was wrong.
    If Mab is a terrible enemy, Frik, then so am I. She’ll see that before this is over. I will not rest until my dead are avenged—the
     dead, and the living as well. …
    Princess Nimue slipped along the castle wall. Pendragon Castle seethed with activity, and the news that Winchester had fallen
     to Uther had seemed to maddenVortigern. Nimue’s father was one of Vortigern’s captains, loyal to him since before he became king. But after Vortigern executed
     Hawdes and Aerlius on the mere suspicion of treason, not even those who had been loyal longest dared to do anything that might
     anger him.
    It had been a relief to everyone when Vortigern had finally ridden out to inspect the army massing a few miles away on the
     Downs, and Nimue had seized her chance. Vortigern’s special prisoner was sure to be somewhere in the dungeons, and with winter
     coming on, the worst of the cells were the ones that were open to the outside air.
    The first few cells Nimue checked were empty, but at last she came to one that was occupied. At the bottom of the narrow slanted
     shaft she could see a man dressed in deerskin and rude homespun lying on a crude cot.
    “Merlin?” Nimue whispered softly.
    He roused at the sound of his name and saw her. As he climbed from his bed and made his way stiffly to the window, Nimue could
     see how pale and haggard he looked. Ill as he was, though, his face lit up at the sight of her.
    “Nimue!” he said.
    If he climbed the rough wall as far as he could and stretched toward the sky, and she knelt and thrust her arm down between
     the bars of the grate, their fingers could just touch.
    “Merlin—it
is
you!” Nimue said, holding his fingers through the harsh iron bars. The years had turned him from a boy into a man, and there
     were new linesof care and worry in his face. “You said we’d meet again,” she said, remembering that long-ago day. “I thought I recognized
     you last night when they brought you in… they said you were a wizard.”
    “I am,” Merlin said, before he remembered Nimue was a member of the New Religion. Christians hated wizards with a special
     intensity because of the power of the Old Ways that flowed through them. But no shadow of that prejudice touched Nimue’s face.
    “Not much of one, if you can’t even escape,” she said, teasing him gently.
    “I can, but I won’t,” Merlin said. “I’m