"So who are you?" Gerard asked.

"I'm me," Newt said, after a long pause. "Morgain was wrong. True names are power, but the name your parents give you isn't always the true name."

"But the magic . . ."

"Gone." He was lying-Newt could feel the magic still simmering, locked away down inside him. But he had no intention of ever calling on it again. Unlike Ailis, he felt no pangs of loss. It wasn't fun, wasn't part of him he liked, but a killing tool, one he had no desire to wield. He was a stable boy, not a soldier.

"Not all magic is bad," Ailis said, with the tone of someone who had argued the point one time too many.

"No," Newt agreed, his arm around her shoulders. Not when you choose it, rather than being overrun by it. Ailis had learned that when she walked away from Morgain and the sorceress's lures. She went back, yes, but under her own terms, her own choice. She walked into that fire with a goal, and never lost sight of it. Just as he chose not to use his. It was his inheritance. But it wasn't his life.

Gerard looked around the cavern again, at the trees, the cave walls, and his two bedraggled and battered friends, then flopped onto his back with a heavy sigh.

"n.o.body," he said with a sigh, "is going to believe this."

"Merlin will," Newt said. "Or maybe he already knows and forgot. Or something like that. Merlin makes my head hurt."

The three friends smiled at each other in weary accord.

Some time later, the three of them staggered out of the melted hole in the cavern's entrance, blinking at the dawn sunlight filling the sky.

"How long were we in there?" Newt wondered.

"No idea," Gerard said. "It felt like . . ."

"Forever," Ailis said. "Forever and a day, and an entire life."

"I'm hungry." Newt's comment was so matterof-fact, it sent them all into fits of laughter. "Well, I am," he protested. "Like I'm all hollow inside. You aren't?"

"I am, actually," Ailis said thoughtfully. "Maybe all the magic we were using . . ."

"Or maybe we just haven't eaten all day. Days. However long it really has been. I'd eat the dragon, if he didn't have all those scales," Gerard said.

"And if taking a bite wouldn't maybe wake him up again?" Ailis said.

"More to the point, anyone have any idea how we're getting home?" Newt asked. His arm was still around Ailis; a combination of bone-weariness and Newt's own relaxation made it seem like the most natural thing in the world. "Seeing as how Ailis has run dry, magically, Sir Tawny's long gone, and we haven't a horse or coin to our names?"

"We walk," Ailis said, ever practical. "At least until I can reach out and contact Merlin again."

"Great. We're dependent on a sorcerer who flies into walls to rescue us. I'm so confident, now." Magical or not, Newt was still Newt.

"It's going to be a very, very long trip." Gerard sighed as he adjusted his pack on his back and started down the hill. "A very, very long trip . . ."

EPILOGUE.

nd so the Grail was won . . . and lost again. How is my dear brother taking that bit of news?"

Morgain called a chair up out of nothingness and seated herself in it, her fur-trimmed gown flowing around her in graceful folds. The chair was a dark wood, ornate but not ma.s.sive, and it suited her perfectly.

Merlin leaned against an invisible wall, watching her with ironic amus.e.m.e.nt.

She was selfish, and single-minded, and dedicated to a way of life that would not come again. And she had focused her entire adult life to destroying the things he had spent his entire life building and protecting: Arthur, Camelot, the future. Yet he respected her greatly, feared her a little, and would never, ever, let her know either.

"Quite well, actually," he said, answering her question. "The powers of darkness were not able to take it away from us, after all-the virtue of his knights and their companions was enough to hold them at bay, and save the land from darkness and despair once again. The minstrels have been singing of nothing else all month. Or is it next month? Or last month? I'm about to go mad from the noise, either way."

"You were already mad, Merlin," Morgain said dryly.

For Merlin, madness was the only way to stay sane and do what he needed to do. It had been too close, this game. Far too close, from start to finish. He had won this round.

His p.a.w.ns-Ailis, Gerard, and Newt-had played their roles perfectly. They had even managed to surprise him: Who knew that the lowly stable boy held so much power within him? The temptation to pry, to pull the berserker energy out of the boy and harness it somehow was almost overwhelming. But he would not do that. Not only would it be wrong, but Ailis would never speak to him again. And he would rather have one willing protege than two unwilling ones.

It was one more than Morgain had.

"She will not be yours, you know." Morgain had the not-surprising ability to read him like a book, here in the astral plane.

His skills with women were as bad here as they were on earth. But that did not mean he was totally without a clue.

"She will be her own," he said calmly, calling in a goblet filled with sweet well-water. With a tinge of maliciousness, he made the goblet clear, like ice, and then colored the water the exact shade of turquoise blue of the Aegean, the color of Nemesis's home sh.o.r.es. "Her own, and her faithful Roman's, that is."

Morgain made a face. She had nothing against the stable boy-she had nothing against anyone with magic so deep in their bones. But his Roman blood had cost her greatly, and she resented that. As Merlin knew she did.

"She will be her own," Merlin repeated. "When you and I are gone, and Arthur has fallen, as we both know he eventually will, Ailis and Constans's children will continue."

"Children?" She raised an eyebrow at that. "a.s.suming a bit, are you not? Or have you seen the actual birthing?" His ability to live backward could be useful, if you could pry through the nonsensical patter that so often accompanied one of his bouts of confusion.

"Call it a hunch," he said. "They will have children of magic, on both sides. Children of magic to hold the land; to speak to it and appease it. We rise and fall, and the bloodlines change, but the land adapts. It always has. Your kind were not the first, Morgain. Other blood has nourished the soil over the generations, and will do so again. Even Romans. They loved this land, too. They did not all leave willingly when their empire ordered them to return."

The sorceress clearly did not agree, but chose not to follow up on that point, staring at her opponent for a moment.

"Will they love the land enough, Merlin?" she finally asked. She was not looking for rea.s.surance, but rather asking as one great general to another, conferring on the status of armies marshaling in the field.

"If they don't, it will be their failure, not ours," was all he could say. "Good night, Morgain. Do not try to harm them again."

She laughed then, a sweet, clear, evil laugh. "You do not command me, Merlin. I will harm them or not, as I choose."

He bowed to her, mockingly, and faded from view, his hawk-sharp eyes watching her until every other feature of his body had disappeared. Then he blinked, and was entirely gone.

"As I choose," Morgain repeated, relishing the sound of the words, and then she, too, departed the astral plane, fading into wisps of dark golden light.

Safe and secure in the great stone in the Orkneys, Morgain's physical body slowly stretched, waking out of a deep sleep. Still drained from the effort of defeating Nemesis and protecting her chosen successor, she barely had the strength to raise the waiting cup of hot chocolate to her lips. Her body might be weak still, but her mind was finally clear of Nemesis's malevolent influences. She was her own woman once more and had no desire to hand over any sort of control ever again-no matter what anyone might promise her, no matter how tempting.

Merlin had won this round. But there were endless turns of the day yet to come. And, despite Merlin's pretty words, she was not willing to leave her legacy to chance.

Ailis and the stable boy would marry and have children. No doubt Merlin was counting on their love of the loyal and n.o.ble squire, Gerard, to keep them tied to his precious Camelot. And it would likely be so.

But even loyal knights could be subverted, if you offered them the right bait. Perhaps she would leave Ailis and her friends be, to see what they might, in fact, grow up to become. If Merlin was correct, as well as mad, Ailis might yet become a powerful ally, and her menfolk along with her.

Morgain thought it best to focus on other links in the chain surrounding Arthur's throne first. The great and n.o.ble Lancelot was a good place to start. Incorruptible Sir Lancelot. Finding his weakness would be interesting.

The great cat slept at the foot of her bed, stretched full-length, ears twitching in dreams of chasing giant mice.

With a contented sigh, Morgain went back to sleep, willing her body to heal, and smiling about the plots yet to come. The battle for the Old Ways was far from over, and she'd have many more chances to take action.

And, in the window of her bed chamber, a small owl clucked mournfully, then spread its sawdust-stuffed wings, and flew away.

About the Author.

LAURA ANNE GILMAN is the author of more than twenty-five short stories and three nonfiction books for teenagers. She also edited two anthologies-OTHERWERE and TREACHERY AND TREASON- and is currently writing the bestselling Retrievers fantasy series.

You can visit her online at.

www.sff.net/people/lauraanne.gilman.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Read all of the Grail Quest Books!

Grail Quest 1: The Camelot Spell.

Grail Quest 2: Morgain's Revenge.

Grail Quest 3: The Shadow Companion.

end.