Book IV of the Arthurian Saga. This volume tells the story of Mordred, Arthur's bastard son by incest with his half-sister Morgause, reared in secret in the Orkney Islands in the hope he would become, as prophesied by Merlin, the doom of her hated half-brother. Mordred desperately fights to deny his destructive destiny against the wishes of his witch-mother Queen Morgause. Here, Mordred is portrayed not as a hero or a villain, but as a fallible human being, an ambitious and powerful man who eventually rose to a position of trust in his father's kingdom, to become regent and eventually, his father's heir.