Merlin (Pendragon Cycle Series #2)

by Stephen R. Lawhead

Overview

He was born to greatness, the son of a druid bard and a princess of lost Atlantis. A trained warrior, blessed with the gifts of prophecy and song, he grew to manhood in a land ravaged by the brutal greed of petty chieftains and barbarian invaders.

Merlin: Respected, feared and hated by many, he was to have a higher destiny. for It was he who prepared the way for the momentous event that would unite the Island of the Mighty — the coming of Arthur Pendragon, Lord of the Kingdom of Summer.

Author Biography:
Stephen R. Lawhead was born in Kearney, Nebraska on 2 July, 1950. He attended local schools and then Kearney State College, where he majored in Fine Art. He paid for his education by playing lead guitar in a popular local rock band, Mother Rush. While at Kearney State he published numerous poems in college anthologies, and wrote a humor column for the college newspaper.

He married Alice Slaikeu in 1972 and, together they moved to the Chicago area so he could attend Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. He left before graduating when offered a position on the staff of Campus Life Magazine, where he worked for five years. Writing a record review column at Campus Life fed his musical interest; he took on the management of Christian rock band DeGarmo & Key, then left Campus Life to start his own record company in Memphis, Tennessee.

Ariel Records lasted only a year; going out of business on a Friday afternoon in January. On the following Monday morning Lawhead began writing a novel: In the Hall of the Dragon King. The object of the exercise was to see if he could sustain a full-length work of fiction, and support his family – which now included baby Ross, and soon-to-arrive Drake – on a writer's income.

He did finish the book and, with the support and advocacy of editor Jan Dennis, it was published in 1982 by Crossway Books. Eight novels followed, all published by Crossway: the remaining DRAGON KING books, three science fiction novels, and the first three books of THE PENDRAGON CYCLE.

Meanwhile, the Lawheads moved from Memphis to Lincoln, Nebraska, and then to Oxford, England, in 1986 for more than a year while researching and writing Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur. They returned to Lincoln in 1987, but by 1990 were back in Oxford where they now reside.

A strong publishing relationship with Lion Publishing in Britain was forged when Lion published Dragon King, and went on to commission several children’s books which had been inspired by Ross and Drake’s interest in their father’s stories. Additionally, Lion acted – and continues to act – as agent for translation editions of the children’s and adult books throughout Europe and beyond.

Avon Books (New York) and HarperCollins (New York and London, along with their subsidiary Zondervan in Grand Rapids) are both currently commissioning books. The most recent Avon release is Grail, the fifth book in THE PENDRAGON CYCLE, and this will be followed by Avalon a stand-alone novel in which King Arthur returns to modern-day Britain (anticipated publication September 1999).

HarperCollins, who published Byzantium, is releasing THE CELTIC CRUSADES, a series of three books of which the first, The Iron Lance, will be available on 21 September in Britain and in November in the United States.

Lawhead's fascination with historical mythology continues unabated. Having started in fourth-century Britain (Taliesin) he has now worked his way forward to the twelfth-century. What is next? Perhaps a giant step backward. Books about ancient Egypt are beginning to fill his shelves . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668072370
Publisher:	Baen
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Series:	Pendragon Cycle Series
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stephen R. Lawhead is a multi-award-winning author of mythic history and imaginative bestsellers. In over thirty years of professional writing he has established an international reputation and is known for such works as the Pendragon Cycle—a historic retelling of the King Arthur legend—and the King Raven trilogy, a retelling of the Robin Hood legend.

Other notable books include the historical works Byzantium, Patrick, Avalon; fantasy series The Song of Albion and the Dragon King Trilogy; as well as works of science-fiction Dream Thief and Empyrion, and the five-book series Bright Empires. Lawhead makes his home in Oxford, England, with his wife.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Many years have come and gone since I awakened in this worlds-realm. Too many years of darkness and death, disease, war, and evil. Yes, very much evil.

But life was bright once, bright as sunrise on the sea and moonglow on water, bright as the fire on the hearth, bright as the red-gold torc around my Grandfather Elphin's throat. Bright, I tell you, and full of every good thing.

I know that every man recalls something of the same golden sheen in life's beginning, but my memories are not less real or true for that.

Merlin.. a curious name. Perhaps. No doubt my father would have chosen a different name for his son. But my mother can be forgiven for her lapse. Merlin -- Myrddin among my father's people -- suits me. Yet, every man has two names: the one he is given, and the one he wins for himself.

Emrys is the name I have won among men, and it is my own.

Emrys, Immortal.. Emrys, Divine...Emrys Wledig, king and prophet to his people. Ambrosius it is to the Latin speakers, and Embries to the people of southern Britain and Logres.

But Myrddin Emrys am I to the Cymry of the hill-bound fastness of the west. And because they were my father's people, I feel they are my own as well. Although my mother long ago taught me the folly of this belief, it comforts me -- much, I suppose, as it must have comforted my father in his times of doubt.

And as there is much evil in the world, there is much doubt also. This is not the least of the Adversary's servants. And there are so many others...

Well, and well, get on with it, Mumbler. What treasures from your plundered store will you lay before us?

I take up mystaff and stir the embers, and I see again the images of my earliest memory: Ynys Avallach, the Isle of Avallach. It is the home of my grandfather, King Avallach, the Fisher King, and the first home I ever knew. It was here in these polished halls of his palace that I took my first faltering steps.

See, here are the white-blossomed apple groves, the salt marshes and mirror-smooth lake below the looming Tor, the white-washed shrine on the nearby hill. And there is the Fisher King himself: dark and heavy-browed like a summer thunderstorm. Stretched on his pallet of red silk, Avallach was a fearful figure to a child of three, though kind as the heart within him would allow.

And here is my mother, Charis, tall and slim, of such regal bearing as to shame all pretenders, and possessing a grace that surpasses mere beauty. Golden-haired Daughter of Lleu-Sun, Lady of the Lake, Mistress of Avalon, Queen of the Faery -- her names and titles, like my own, proliferate with time -- all these and more men call her, and they are not wrong.

I was, I knew, the sole treasure of my mother's life; she was never at any pains to disguise the fact. Good Dafyd, the priest, gave me to know that I was a beloved child of the Living God, and his stories about God's Son, Jesu, kindled my soul with an early longing for paradise, just as Hafgan, Chief Druid, wise and true, faithful servant in his own way, taught me the taste of knowledge, awakening a hunger I have never satisfied.

If there was want in the world, I knew nothing of it. Neither did I know fear or danger. The days of my childhood were blessed with peace and plenty. On Ynys Avallach, at least, time and the events of the wider world stood off, remote, trouble was heard merely as a muted distant murmur -- soft like the wailing of the bhean sidhe, the Little Dark People, the Hill Folk, in the stone circles on the far hilltops; distant as the roar of a winter storm cresting mighty Yr Widdfa in the rockbound north.

Trouble there was, make no mistake. But in those sun-sweet days of my earliest remembrance we lived as the gods of an older time: aloof and unconcerned with the squabbles of the lesser beings around us. We were the Fair Folk, enchanted presences from the Westerlands living on the Glass Isle. Those who shared our waterworld of marsh and lake held us in great esteem and greater dread.

This had its uses. It served to keep strangers at a safe distance. We were not strong in the ways men respect strength, so the web of tales that grew around us served where force of arms did not.

If that sounds to you, in the age of reason and power, a weak, ineffectual thing, I tell you it was not. In that age, men's lives were hedged about with beliefs old as fear itself, and those beliefs were not easily altered, nor less easily abandoned.

Ah, but look! Here is Avallach standing before me on a dew-spangled morning, hand pressed to his side in his habitual gesture, smiling through his black beard as he would always smile when he saw me, saying, "Come, little Hawk, the fish are calling -- they are unhappy. Let us take the boat and see if we might liberate a few of them."

And hand in hand we go down the path to the lake to fish: Avallach working the oar, little Merlin holding tight to the gunwale with both small hands. Avallach sings, he laughs, he tells me sad stories of lost Atlantis and I listen as only a child can listen, with the whole of my heart.

The sun climbs high over the lake, and I look back toward the reedy shore and there is my mother, waiting for me. When I look she waves and calls us back, and Avallach turns the boat and rows to meet her and we return to the palace.

Editorial Reviews

A fine storyteller, he brings the Arthurian characters to life without sacrificing any of the haunting pleasures of the legends. — Omaha World Herald

Entertains and tantalizes . . . an exciting and thoughtful addition to the ranks of Arthurian fantasy.— Locus

From the Publisher