A TIMELESS EPIC, A NEW CLASSIC FOR ALL AGES—MERLIN "Once upon a time...no, no, that's not the way to start. You'll think this is a fairy tale. And it isn't". In the terrible years of tyrants and invaders, England's surviving pagans cry out for help to their deity—and Mab, Queen of the Faery realms, creates for them a champion. Merlin. Half human, half Magic; raised in the love of his foster mother, Ambrosia, trained in sorcery by the gnome Frick, destined by Mab to lead England back to the Old Ways. But Mab, once beloved, has grown selfish and cruel, so Merlin turns against her. And their war of magic will change the world.

A TIMELESS EPIC, A NEW CLASSIC FOR ALL AGES—MERLIN Mab is the powerful Queen of Magic, but her cruel evil has turned the wizard Merlin into her implacable enemy. And Mab's sister, the Lady of the Lake, comes to Merlin's aid, giving him Excalibur. The singing Sword of the Just, held in the stone grip of a sleeping giant, released only to the hand of the man Mab most fears . . . A good and true Christian King, Merlin's student . . . King Arthur Pendragon. But Mab has her own disciple—or pawn. For, in a monstrous act of sorcery and sin, Arthur's half-sister, Morgan Le Fay, gives Mab the weapon she needs to ravage Arthur's kingdom and Merlin's dreams of peace . . . A child. Mordred. And the Magic that raised a kingdom may be the Magic that destroys it.

The war between Merlin and the pagan Mab, Queen of Magic, hurtles toward the final conflict. At last, a good King sits on England's throne. But Arthur leaves Camelot on a quest of shadows, while his nemesis, Mab's disciple Mordred, grows into a monster cruel enough to laugh at his own mother's murder. As Mab's growing evil drives away even her loyal servant, the gnome Frick, Merlin, too, is alone—his true love, Nimue, lost to him forever. Arthur is betrayed, facing Mordred at the heart of an apocalyptic civil war. For when Arthur battles Mordred, when Merlin battles Mab, all hope will turn to ashes, all dreams will pass into legend. And not even Magic can survive.