Simon Hawke - Wizard 4 - The Wizard of Camelot

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THE WIZARD OF CAMELOT

e-book ver. 1.0

for Natasha

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas Malory was born and educated in London, served as a decorated career soldier in the army,

participating in most of the Internal Pacification Campaigns during the Collapse, and retired with the rank

of sergeant-major. Upon retirement, he joined New Scotland Yard's elite London Urban Assault

Division, since disbanded. He left the police force to work with Merlin Ambrosius in founding the

International Center for Thaumaturgical Studies, which eventually grew into the International

Thaumaturgical Commission, and he still holds an honorary seat on its board.

Though he never became an adept himself, he is widely regarded as the co-founder of the Second

Thaumaturgic Age, and played a key role in developing the administrative programs of the I.T.C.,

chairing its first regulatory committee and presiding over its first adept certification programs. Best known

as Merlin's closest friend and trusted advisor, Malory is regarded as the leading authority on Professor

Ambrosius, and is currently engaged in writing the definitive work on his life, Merlin, The Man Behind

The Myth. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and his thaumagene familiar, Victor, in Geneva, Switzerland.

CHAPTER 1

My name is Thomas Malory, and I was there when magic came back into the world. I was there right

from the very start, when the Second Thaumaturgic Age began. It began with one, single, desperate act

born of fury and frustration. It began with one blow of an axe. And that axe was mine.

For most of my adult life up to that time, I had served in the armed forces of His Majesty, and I had

retired with the rank of sergeant-major in the infantry. I had lived the simple life of a soldier. It was often

a hard life, but these days I find myself wishing I could return, if not to the type of life I led then, at least

to the obscurity that I enjoyed. I've gained the status of celebrity in my advanced years, however

reluctantly, and fame is truly something I could easily have done without.

There was once another Malory, Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur. However, he was

no relation and, in those days, I was unaware of the fateful irony involved in my bearing the same name as

his. I was unaware of a great many things back in those days, those dark, terrible days. I was unaware of

the influence fate wields in people's lives. I never really thought about such things back then. There were

more immediate, far more pressing matters to occupy all my attention, matters pertaining to survival.

In the army, I had served with the L.U.A.D., which stood for London Urban Assault Division. It was a

rather dramatic name, but quite appropriate, all things considered. I saw a great deal of action in my time

with the Loo, as we called it, during the International Pacification Campaigns. The word "loo" is British

slang for toilet or, as the Americans might say, the "crapper." And that, too, was appropriate, in its own

way.

I'd put in over twenty years with the service and I was approaching my fortieth birthday. I had a wife,

Jenny, and two small children; Christine, aged eleven, and Michelle, aged nine, and I wanted nothing

quite so much as to find a safe and reasonably peaceful haven for them. In those dark days of the

Collapse, "reasonably peaceful" was about as much as anyone could hope for. And, for many people, it

was a hope never to be realized.

London was a war zone that erupted into full-scale mass street riots on the average of several times a

year The army was frequently called in to quell them. These domestic police actions, taking place in

various large British cities, became known as the Internal Pacification Campaigns. They occurred with

such frequency that the major ones were simply referred to by number, in a rather Yank-like military

shorthand, such as In-Pac 9, which erupted in London, In-Pac 10, which broke out in Coventry, and so

forth. The minor campaigns occurred so often that no one even bothered counting them.

I had seen a good number of my mates go down in those campaigns and I'd had about enough.

I wanted out.

I moved my family to Loughborough, in the Midlands, approximately one hundred miles north of London,

near Nottingham. It was not exactly a small town, but it was a fair distance from London, which was the

point of the whole thing. The level of crime and violence in London had become intolerable and I feared

for my family's safety.

I purchased a house, a small cottage, really, on the outskirts of the town, but nevertheless, it came quite

dearly and wiped out all my savings. There was, of course, no possibility of financing the purchase with a

mortgage. No one was taking any flyers on such things back then. Businesses were failing left and right,

banks and underwriting firms among them, and credit was a nonexistent thing. One paid with cash or one

simply didn't buy at all, and with the economy collapsing, prices fluctuated wildly, not only from day to

day, but from hour to hour

Things grew worse with each passing week, nor was the madness confined to British soil. The Collapse

was a worldwide phenomenon, as everyone knows now, though few people living today have any

firsthand knowledge of what it was really like. That period has since been greatly romanticized in films,

novels, and on television, but it's one thing to see the Collapse fancifully depicted in a film or television

series and quite another to have actually lived through it. Modern generations seem to have a great feeling

of nostalgia for the past, somehow perceiving that period as a time of great adventure and derring-do, but

at the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I must say frankly that young people today have

absolutely no idea what those days were really like. They simply haven't got a clue.

The Collapse was a bloody nightmare. The most densely populated urban areas were hit the hardest, and

those were the places where the violence was the most pronounced. I had wanted to remove my family

from the environs of the city at all costs, and so I bought the house in Loughborough, spending all the

money I had carefully saved over the years. In retrospect, I still don't think it was a bad decision,

considering the circumstances. Cash was at a premium and everyone was liquidating everything they

owned in the way of long-term investments, fighting for the short-term gain.

The Collapse had changed people's ways of thinking. Money was steadily losing value, and so such

things as homes, savings, and investments were losing their value, as well. Sellers were anxious to get as

much as they possibly could, but with no one offering any financing, cash had to be the bottom line, and

so prices fell dramatically. Unfortunately, the value of what I'd saved had fallen dramatically, as well.

With financial institutions failing left and right, I was lucky to have pulled out my money when I had and to

have spent it while it was still worth something. At least we had a home. We had precious little else.

The problem, once I had my family settled in our new home, was how to afford its upkeep. On the plus

side of the ledger, we owned it, free and clear, and we didn't have to worry about such things as taxes

and insurance. No one was writing any policies, because the insurance industry had collapsed, and no

one was paying any taxes, because the beleaguered government had lost practically all ability to enforce

collection, save for such built-in revenues as sales taxes, which had risen alarmingly as a consequence. In

short, the government was quickly going broke. In the meantime, what budget there was went to support

essential services such as hospitals and fire departments, the military and the police, and so forth. Since

the most densely populated urban centers were the greatest drain on these limited resources, the outlying

areas had to go begging and were largely left to fend for themselves.

This meant that if our house burned down, or was vandalized or burgled, neither it nor our few

possessions could be replaced. Food was becoming more and more expensive, and with constant power

outages, rapidly diminishing supplies of heating oil, and the scarcity of gas, we were forced to rely on

wood or coal for fuel. The price of coal had skyrocketed, and the price of cord wood was rising rapidly,

as well. The petroleum reserves had been almost entirely depleted, and what petrol was available was

rationed among essential government, medical, police, and military personnel.

It seemed pointless to bemoan the policies that had brought about such a disastrous state of affairs,

because environmentalists and scientists had been predicting it for years and we had no one but ourselves

to blame. Toward the end, people had started to wake up at last, and serious attempts were made to

practice conservation and responsible resource management, but it was simply too little, too late. The

time had come to pay the piper Everything was going to hell in a handbasket in a hurry.

I had managed to remove my family from London, but to support them, I had to return to the city myself.

There were damn few jobs around for anyone, and what work was available paid very little and was

often done for barter. Thanks to my military background, I was fortunate to find employment with the

Metropolitan Police Department or, as it was and is more commonly known, New Scotland Yard. They

were woefully understaffed considering the job they had to do, and the pay wasn't much, but it was still a

great deal more than what most other people had.

Given the distance between Loughborough and London, as well as the price and rationing of what little

petrol reserves were left, there was no possibility of commuting every day. While the rail lines still ran

somewhat sporadically, half the time the trains were stalled, or else the tracks were torn up by angry

citizens, wanting to strike back at the government in any way they could, all of which meant I couldn't

spend much time with Jenny and the girls. During the week, I lived in London, in a grimy, bug-infested,

little flat, the cheapest I could find, and weekends, as often as I could, I went to see my family. The strain

of separation was severe on all of us, but there was simply nothing else to do. Somehow, I told them, I

would eventually find a way to work it out. Surely, things couldn't keep on growing worse. Yet, day by

day, they did.

Most people never realize how fragile a thing a city truly was in those days, how little it took to disrupt its

equilibrium. A sanitation strike would have the refuse piling up in mountains within only a few days,

bringing out the rats and giving them a place to breed, and creating an eye-watering miasma of decay that

hung over the city like a poison cloud. A power blackout would bring a city to a standstill, turning people

into feral, looting beasts that preyed on one another in the darkness. A labor action disrupting the delivery

of food and supplies would cause shortages and price gouging, and an oil crisis, whether genuine or

artificially induced by profiteers, would result in a shortage of petrol at the pumps, traffic tied up by cars

waiting in long lines, and tempers flaring dangerously. All these things and more had happened in the past,

and yet each time such an event occurred, people had simply settled back into their usual routines as

soon as it had passed and continued to take everything for granted, as before. And that was how we got

into the mess now known as the Collapse.

It wasn't something that happened overnight, of course. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain slope, it

had started slowly, growing and gathering momentum as it went, until it turned into an avalanche that

swept over everything in its path. The warning signs had been present for years, only they had been

largely ignored. Even when things began to fall apart, people chose not to believe it. One is tempted to

lay the blame on governments and multinational corporations, but the fact, is that the people, all the

people, ultimately shared responsibility, because we should have been the ones to stop it.

There were those who saw it coming, to be sure, who had seen it coming for decades, and their numbers

had grown considerably in the years immediately prior to the Collapse, but unfortunately, they were still

not numerous enough to make a difference. They had tried to do something and had failed, and their

failure had led to anger and frustration, which in turn had led to desperation, which had led to

eco-terrorism. That had been merely the first hint of the violence that would come. My generation had

grown up with it, and by the time I'd reached my teens, the avalanche was well and truly underway and

no one could do anything to stop it.

It is with some amusement that I regard the London bobbies these days, with their return to the traditions

of the pre-Collapse period, and their rather quaint, nostalgically styled uniforms, for in my days with New

Scotland Yard, we looked less like policemen than like SAS commandos in full battle dress. We carried

not billy clubs and whistles, but fully automatic weapons, and our uniforms were not blue serge, but

molded gray fatigues that were known as "urban camo." Our riot helmets made us resemble some

outlandish cross between motorcyclists and astronauts and they were the only way to differentiate us

from the military troops, aside from the word "POLICE" stenciled across our backs in large, black

letters.

And, oh, how I despised those bloody helmets! The army knew better man to be saddled with such a

worthless piece of junk. I longed for the simple metal helmet I had worn when I was in the army, but

some idiot bureaucrat had apparently decided that the riot helmets were not only highly functional, which

was debatable, but that their polarized visors had some sort of intimidating, psychological effect, which

was a joke. In any event, only the greenest rookies used the visors, and not for very long, at that. Most

of us simply tore them off, and many of the hardcore, swaggering, old veterans simply dispensed with the

helmets altogether. Having seen as much, if not more, action as any of the veteran police officers, I kept

my helmet, hot and sweaty as it was, because I'd seen more than my share of head wounds and I had a

family to think of. I did hack off my visor; however; because I couldn't see well enough to shoot worth a

damn with the bloody thing in place. And, sad to say, police officers expended a great many bullets in

those days.

There is a popular program on television presently called Collapse Cops, depicting a team of police

officers (a male and female, of course) "fighting crime during the dark days of the Collapse." There is a

great deal of gunplay and camaraderie, coupled with sexual innuendo (the beauteous Officer Storm

somehow contrives to be caught in her bra and panties at least once every episode), the villainous

perpetrators are all uniformly malevolent, and each program ends with our heroes managing to touch the

lives of several citizens and make their burdens easier to bean I only wish it had been so.

There were, naturally, women on the police force and in the military, but I never encountered any who

were even remotely like the leggy, pouty-lipped Ms. Storm. The women with whom I served were all

serious professionals and there was not a tube of lipstick or an eyebrow pencil to be found among them.

Glamor was the very least of their concerns and romance between fellow officers was rare. Given the

situation in the streets, I did not know of a single officer; either male or female, who would risk the

complications of a romantic entanglement on the job. As to the malevolent perpetrators and the citizens

whose lives we touched, I only wish that, in reality, the lines had been so clearly drawn. I can best

illustrate with an example, one that stands out in my mind as vividly as if it had happened only yesterday,

for it was the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel's back.

We were called upon to suppress a sniper. The term "suppress' ' was a euphemism for killing the poor

bastard, because with the high level of violence in the streets, there was neither the time nor the

manpower to engage in the luxury of negotiation, even if hostages were being held, which was quite often

the case. Possession of firearms of any sort was strictly illegal, of course, but it was a law that had

become completely unenforceable. The demand for firearms had become so great among the general

populace that a thriving black market existed to supply them and no sooner would we shut down one

basement machine-shop operation than a dozen others would spring up. If a citizen were apprehended

using a firearm in a situation that was clearly self-defense, the usual procedure was simply to confiscate

the weapon and let the poor devil go and seek to buy himself another at a ludicrously inflated price.

However; a sniper was something else again.

By the time we arrived on the scene, a large number of shots had already been fired. Fortunately, no one

had been killed or injured yet, which seemed only a matter of either dumb luck or lousy marksmanship.

In fact, it turned out to be superior marksmanship, something of which I have no doubt, for the fire that

was subsequently directed at us came uncomfortably close, but avoided hitting anyone. No one can

come so consistently close while still avoiding a direct hit without being a very good shot, indeed.

However, when we first arrived, we did not know that, nor would it have made a difference if we had.

Our orders for suppression were specific.

The streets in the vicinity were empty Everyone had prudently fled the scene the moment the sniper

opened up, but we followed procedure and cordoned off the area, as well as making announcements

over the bullhorn that everyone should stay inside and avoid coming near the windows. As per

procedure, the sniper was given one chance and one chance only to give up his weapon and surrender,

and when his answer came in a burst of automatic fire, we proceeded to deploy for suppression.

It was an old and all too well-practiced drill. The sniper had stationed himself in a front fiat on the fourth

floor of a building in a residential section of the East Side. We stationed marksmen on the rooftops of the

opposing buildings, and on the ground as well, taking cover behind our vehicles. Our main concern was

to make certain no innocent lives were lost, but situations of this sort had become so commonplace that

the building's residents had all evacuated the premises within moments after the sniper opened up, exiting

at the rear of the building through the basement corridors without incident. After checking to make certain

none of the flats in the immediate vicinity of the sniper were still occupied, we proceeded with the drill to

take him out.

We moved cautiously, but quickly. Within moments, we had a squad inside the building. My partner and

I were with that squad. My partner, Sergeant Royceton, was a hard-nosed veteran with twenty years

experience on the force. A tough old bird, Ian Royceton could chew ten-penny nails and spit them out as

tacks. We moved up the stairwell to the fourth floor and carefully proceeded down the corridor, toward

the sniper's flat, moving from doorway to doorway and providing cover for each other as we went.

Outside, our fellow officers were laying down some covering fire to occupy the sniper's attention and,

hopefully, divert him from our approach.

We had fully expected to find that he had barricaded himself inside, and as a result, we had brought along

a battering ram and some tear gas bombs. To our surprise, we discovered the door was not only

unlocked, but open. It actually stood ajar We stood so close, outside in the corridor, that from within, we

could hear the sniper firing his weapon and the periodic dropping of empty magazines to the floor

Royceton and I glanced at one another and no words needed to be said. We knew exactly what to do.

We would wait until the next empty magazine dropped and burst in on him while he was in the process of

reloading.

It went off like clockwork. The next time we heard the metallic clatter of. an empty magazine falling to the

floor, I kicked the door fully open and both Royceton and I went in shooting. The poor devil never had a

chance. Our bullets stitched into him and he jerked convulsively, then fell back through the shattered

window glass and down four floors into the street, where his broken, lifeless body lay bleeding on the

sidewalk. A quick and efficient operation, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over and that we'd

escaped unscathed. Then I heard Royceton's sharp intake of breath and he said, "Oh, my God." I turned

quickly, my weapon ready, but it was not a threat he was reacting to.

I followed his gaze and, through the open bedroom doorway, I saw the bodies lying on the bed, upon the

blood-soaked sheets. On the night-stand beside the bed, we found the heartbreaking note that he had

left. I have since tried to forget that note, and though the years have blurred the memory, so that I can no

longer recall his exact words, the substance of his last message to the world is with me still, and there is

no forgetting it.

He was not, apparently, a well-educated man, and that was reflected in the poor syntax of his suicide

note, for in effect, it was exactly that. His tone was simple and despondent, deeply woeful, and in a mad

sort of way, it even sounded reasonable. He began by addressing us, the police, his executioners. He

started off with an apology. He stated that it was not his intention to hurt anyone, a remark that was

diabolically incongruous with the corpses on the bed, and that he hoped no policemen or innocent

bystanders had been harmed by any of his bullets.

"I will try my level best," he wrote—or words to that effect—"to avoid hitting anyone," and he went on to

say that if, by accident, someone was killed or wounded, that he did not mean it and was truly, deeply

sorry.

I listened as Royceton read the words out loud to me and I recall how stunned and mystified I felt at the

crippled logic the sniper's twisted mind displayed. Here, he had murdered his entire family, and as he had

written the note, possibly with their freshly slain bodies on the bed behind him, he stated his sincere

intention to avoid hurting anyone and apologized profusely in the event he had. It seemed, however; that

he did not consider what he'd done to them to be an act of murder; but an act of mercy, of release from a

life that had become unbearable.

I stared at their bodies as Royceton continued to read from the note, and even tough-as-nails Royceton,

hardened, seasoned veteran of two decades of street combat, could not stop his voice from breaking.

There lay the sniper's wife and his two young daughters, about the same age as my own. He gave their

names. I still recall them. Suzanne, his wife, and daughters Barbara and Irene. He wrote about their

desperate plight, so similar to that of all too many others. They were cold and hungry, and he could find

no work that would allow him to provide for them.

His wife was ill and bedridden, though the illness was not specified, and his eldest daughter; Barbara, had

begun to prostitute herself for food. She was thirteen. He had been out, searching unsuccessfully for

work, having been given notice of eviction if he could not come up with the delinquent rent by morning,

and he had returned to find his wife and children arguing. Irene wanted to do her part to help and join her

sister on the streets. Irene was nine.

What occurred afterward was something we would never know, for he began to relate what happened,

then broke off, ending with one more apology, this time to God, and then he signed his name, James

Whitby, in large and bold, flourishing script, as if with his final signature, he had tried to impart some

importance and dignity to his name.

His actions were not, of course, those of a sane man. The poor devil's mind had snapped. It was possible

he was unstable to begin with, but there was also the haunting possibility that he had been as sane as any

one of us and that, in his last extremity, his reason simply had fled. The most curious thing was that he had

told us virtually nothing of himself. He was, and would remain, a cipher

He had signed his name, in big, bold letters, and yet he had said nothing about who and what he was. He

had made no personal statement. He had died as he had lived, merely another average, insignificant little

man whom one would never notice on the street, a man who, one might infer, held no pretensions, but

cared about his family and did whatever he was able to get by. And when all his best efforts came to

nought, and he saw his family suffering in result, his wife sick, one daughter degraded and the baby of the

family wanting to degrade herself as well to make up for Daddy's shortcomings ... Well, he apparently

broke down and decided death was preferable for all of them, a release from a life that was no longer

worm living.

I remember Royceton dropped the note down on the bed, not intentionally, he had simply let go of it, and

it fluttered onto the bloody chest of little Irene. Royceton shut his eyes and turned away, then murmured,

"You know, I can almost understand the poor sod."

It was at that moment that I reached the turning point. Complete and total burnout. I went numb. I had

absolutely nothing left. My memory won't serve as to what, exactly, happened at that point. I seem to

recall taking off my helmet and dropping it to the floor. I may have given my assault rifle to one of the

others, I simply don't remember; but I know that I no longer had it several hours later; when I was on the

train to Loughborough. I recall only one thing clearly, and that was a driving urge to get back to my family

and be with them. I felt an urgency mere words cannot convey I simply wanted to get back and hold my

wife and daughters in my arms and never let them go.

Hie train broke down a short way out from Loughborough and I got out with the rest of the passengers

and walked the remainder of the way. I do not recall how long it took. It seemed like hours, plodding

along the tracks, and it was raining. Not a hard, driving rain, but a steady drizzle, yet by the time I

reached our home, I was soaked through to the skin and shivering. Jenny heard the front door open and

came running out to greet me. Our daughters were asleep, and she had been in bed with them, yet she

was all bundled up, as were they, tucked beneath the blankets in their warmest clothes. They'd been

burning wood for heat. It was all we could afford, and Jenny had run out. There was no money for

getting any more. They had already burned some of the furniture and I, simple fool that I was, had left

behind what little money I had left in London.

Jenny saw the look on my face and tried to tell me that it didn't matter. She was glad to have me home,

and wouldn't the girls be happy when they woke up to see their daddy had returned, but all I could see

as I looked down at their sleeping forms, huddled close together, were the bullet-riddled corpses of

Barbara and Irene. It was as if an ice-cold fist had grabbed my guts and started squeezing. I left the

bedroom and went out to get my axe.

Jenny grew alarmed when she saw what I intended. Chopping wood without a permit was a criminal

offense. She tried to stop me, but I ignored her protests and went out, determined that come what may,

my girls would never share the fate of poor James Whitby's daughters.

Not far from where we lived was a protected natural preserve, all that remained of Sherwood Forest,

once a sprawling woodland, now a fenced-in acreage that was mined and patrolled by guards armed

with automatic weapons. The surrounding countryside had been virtually denuded of trees as cordwood

continued to go up in price and what was not chopped down by individuals for their own use was razed

by opportunistic profiteers who sought to gain from other people's hardship. There was a thriving market

in illegally cut cordwood and the authorities had been forced to take up drastic measures to protect the

few-remaining acres of woodland that were left.

I was not in a reasonable state of mind, but if I knew what I risked, I didn't give a damn. I was in such a

state that I never gave any consideration to how I would manage to carry enough wood back to serve

our needs, even assuming I would not be caught. One thought, and one thought only, was foremost in my

mind. Wood. Wood, Goddamn it! At that point, the thinnest, hair's-breadth of a line separated me from

poor James Whitby. I was on the razor's edge.

The rain was falling much harder as I cut my way through the concertina wire and breeched the fence

without encountering any of the guards, who doubtless believed no one in their right mind would venture

out on such a night. And, indeed, no one in their right mind had. I used my knife to probe for mines as I

made my way farther back into the trees, thinking I would need some cover for my work, and should

probably go some distance in to make certain any noise I made would not attract attention. I passed any

number of small trees I could have chopped down easily, thinking, "Just a little farther better safe than

sorry," and other such nonsense. I have no idea how far I went, but before long, I realized I had lost all

sense of direction. And, in that one moment, however briefly, my presence of mind returned and I

thought, "Dear God, what am I doing?" My family had need of me, and there I was, probably catching

my death of cold, breaking the law and committing a felony, endangering my life and, in consequence,

theirs by my foolishness. What if I was blown up by a mine? What if I was shot in the act of chopping

down a tree, or caught and arrested as I was bringing out... what? A measly armload of wood?

I felt despair overwhelm me and I put my head down in my arms as I lay upon the muddy ground and

wept, the rain commingling with my tears. "Fool! Fool!" I cried to myself. "You're risking everything!

You've walked off the job, left all your money behind in London, you've ruined everything!" And then, as

I looked up, I saw a sight that banished all reason from my mind.

Before me, scarcely twenty yards away, was the largest oak tree I had ever seen, the grandfather of all

English oaks. Its spreading upper branches were as thick as my thigh, its aged, gnarled trunk so wide that

several men with their hands linked together could not encompass it. There it stood, an ancient leviathan,

enough wood to keep my family warm for years to come. I stared at it, my gaze traveling up its trunk to

its lofty canopy of branches, and I went absolutely mad.

I stood and gripped my axe in both hands, raising it high overhead, and I screamed as I charged the tree

like some battle-maddened, Hun barbarian running at a Roman phalanx. In that moment of absolute

insanity, I had become one with the slain James Whitby. The tree became the focal point for all my fury

and frustration, my grief and helplessness, my anger at the whole damned world. I could have chopped

away at its gargantuan trunk until the crack of doom and never have had a hope of felling it, but that

thought never occurred to me. It couldn't have occurred to me. I wasn't thinking, I was just reacting, like

a wounded beast that had been brought to bay.

I struck the tree a blow with all the power I could muster. The force of that blow ran up through the axe

handle, through my hands, up my arms into my shoulders, and in the next instant, I was flying. I landed on

my back some distance away, momentarily stunned and on the verge of losing consciousness. I felt a

throbbing, tingling sensation all over my body, not unlike that which I had once experienced as a child

when I had stuck my finger into an electric socket.

At the precise moment that I struck the giant oak tree with my axe, a bolt of lightning had come lancing

down from the clouds and hit the tree. As least, that was my first impression, because it seemed there

could have been no other explanation. Certainly, it never would have occurred to me that the lightning

could have come not from the sky, but from within the tree itself.

As I recovered from my shock, I raised myself up slightly and stared at the smoking remnants of the tree.

My vision was still somewhat blurred, but I could see that as large as it was, the oak had been split

completely in two, right down the middle, from its uppermost branches straight down to where its trunk

rose from the ground. Smoke swirled and eddied all around it, and as it slowly dissipated, I saw what

appeared to be a figure standing in the cleft.

I blinked, and shook my head, and blinked again. My first quick impression was that I had been

illuminated briefly in that flash of lightning and now some guard stood over me, but the man I saw was

dressed nothing like a guard, and he carried no weapons, save for a long, slender wooden staff.

He wore some sort of robe, emblazoned with curious symbols, and he wore a high, conical hat. He had a

long white beard and snowy hair that fell well past his shoulders. And as I stared at him with disbelief, he

looked down at me and said, "Greetings, good sir. My name is Merlin."

CHAPTER 2

It seems impossible to imagine these days that the name of Merlin would not instantly be recognized,

even without Ambrosius appended to it, but back then, Merlin was, at best, part of an obscure legend, a

piece of folklore, a onetime curiosity to academics who had occasionally debated whether or not he and

King Arthur had ever actually existed. And those debates had ceased with the coming of the Collapse.

The legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table had once fascinated schoolchildren all

over the world. Scores of books had been written on the subject, both novels and scholarly studies, and

the story had also been the basis for films, television programs, comedies, dramatic plays, and musicals.

Graduate students had written papers on the subject, and historians had searched for the authentic British

king on whom Arthur had supposedly been based, as they had searched for Merlin, the legendary wizard

who had been his mentor and advisor. That time had passed, however

Universities had closed during the Collapse, for there had been no one to attend them. Schools had

become little more than poorly operated day-care centers over which a pall of gloom had hung, for

teachers had left the profession in droves, driven out of it by the sheer necessity for survival, and those

who watched over the largely empty classrooms, save for a few diehard idealists, were often barely more

educated than their students. Anyone capable of finding work of any kind, regardless of how young or

old, was either working, out looking for work, or preying upon those who had it. Faced with the disaster

of the Collapse, people had ceased regarding education as a priority. Mere survival had become

challenging enough.

I had grown up during the Collapse, and though I'd had some schooling, I had joined the service as soon

as I was old enough and my real education had been shaped by the events I lived through. I had always

loved to read, however, and in my childhood, I had been exposed to the story of King Arthur, but that

had been over three decades earlier and a lot of water had flowed under the bridge since then. In any

event, the memory was hardly foremost in my mind at that particular time, which was not surprising,

considering the circumstances. I did not connect the name of Merlin with King Arthur; and consequently,

it meant nothing to me.

I had, after all, been suffering from an emotional trauma, and I wasn't even thinking clearly The shock

had, to some extent, restored me to my senses, but I was still not quite myself. I gazed at the strangely

garbed old man standing there before me in the rain, in the cleft of that bifurcated tree, which had been

peeled back as if it were a huge banana skin, and all I could do was simply stare at him. He looked

away, and for a moment, he seemed to have eliminated me from his consideration. He took a deep

breath, filling his lungs, men exhaled heavily, stretching and rolling his shoulders, as a man might upon

awakening from a long and restful sleep. He craned his neck back and looked up at the sky, allowing the

rain to fall upon his face, and men he sighed, wearily, or perhaps contentedly. He looked around, men

focused his gaze on me once more.

He stepped down out of the center of the ruined tree, his movements stiff and awkward as he labored to

walk toward me. He seemed extremely old and frail, but when he spoke, the strength and deep

resonance of his voice belied appearances.

"Are you injured?" he asked.

I shook my head, still somewhat dazed and unable to think of anything to say.

"Well, then what are you doing stretched out there in the mud? Get up."

He extended his wooden staff toward me. I reached out and took hold of it, and he pulled me to my feet

with surprising ease for a man of his advanced years.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Tom," I said. "Tom Malory."

His eyes widened slightly with surprise, as if my name sounded familiar to him. "Thomas Malory?" he

said, as if uncertain he had heard correctly.

"Yes, sir." I do not know if I appended the "sir" out of politeness to a senior gentleman, or out of habit

born of years of service in the military, but in any case, he seemed to warrant it, for there was a firmness

and authority about him that impressed itself upon me instantly.

Standing close to him, I could now make out his features clearly. His face was lined with age beneath the

beard, and there were crow's-feet around his eyes, which were deeply set and a startling, periwinkle

blue. His nose was sharp and prominent, with a slight hook to it, giving him something of the aspect of an

eagle. He had pronounced cheekbones and a high forehead. His eyes, however, were his most striking

feature. Aside from their startling, bright blue color, they were very direct and penetrating in their gaze,

and they looked wise. How one deduces or infers such a thing I cannot imagine, save perhaps from

experience of having seen other men possessed of wisdom with such eyes, but the impression was quite

clear and forceful. After all these years, I can still remember that first meeting with complete and utter

clarity, despite the fact that my thinking at the time was anything but clear.

"Thomas Malory," he said again, and smiled. "An ironic twist of fate. An omen. And, I think, a good

one."

I simply stared at him. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

"My name means nothing to you?" he asked, and then he gave it again, this time more fully. "Merlin?

Merlin Ambrosius?"

I felt as if there were a slight tug at my memory, for there did seem to be a vague familiarity about the

name, but I couldn't put my finger on it. "No, sir," I replied, "I don't think so. Have we met before?"

"No," he said with a slight shake of his head. "No matter. Do you live nearby?"

I stammered something about how I lived not too far away, within walking distance. I wanted to ask him

for directions, for I'd lost my way. However, I couldn't seem to form the words. I could not stop staring

at him. It was not so much that he looked so damned outlandish, but there was a compelling presence

about him that commanded my attention. In later years, many writers were to remark upon that, and

expend considerable verbiage attempting to define exactly what it was about him that produced such an

effect, but the long and short of it was simply that the man exuded power He was of slightly less than

average height, and he was quite slim then, though he began to put on weight in later years, and became

rather stout and stocky. However, he was by no means physically imposing, though one somehow

received the impression that he was.

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THEWIZARDOFCAMELOTCopyright©1993bySimonHawkeAllrightsreserved.e-bookver.1.0forNatashaABOUTTHEAUTHORThomasMalorywasbornandeducatedinLondon,servedasadecoratedcareersoldierinthearmy,participatinginmostoftheInternalPacificationCampaignsduringtheCollapse,andretiredwiththerankofsergeant-major.Uponretireme...

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Simon Hawke - Wizard 4 - The Wizard of Camelot

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