King Lot and his allies are badly beaten and might be destroyed, but Merlin tells Arthur to quit or Fortune will turn on him. The hostile armies will not trouble him now for three years. Arthur and his allies stop, joyful over their success, and Merlin sees that all that happened in the battle is written down. An interlude of peace follows; a seemingly irrational joke by Merlin, then the appearance of an earl's daughter on whom Arthur gets a child who will become, later, a Round Table knight.
Now Arthur, Ban, and Bors go to help King Lodegreaunce with his war and win it for him. There Arthur first sees Guinevere and immediately loves her. Ban and Bors return home, and so do the eleven hostile kings, who find their lands overrun with Saracens and other bandits — lands Arthur would have protected for them, they realize, if they had not struggled against him. They drive out the Saracens and begin to plot vengeance for the battle of Bedgraine.
Arthur goes to Carlyon, where the wife of King Lot and his four sons — Gawain, Gaheris, Aggravain, and Gareth — come to visit, actually to spy. Unaware that Lot's wife is his own sister, Arthur gets a child on her — Mordred. That night Arthur dreams that his land is overrun by gryphons and serpents which burn the land and slay the people; he fights them in his dream and, with great difficulty, slays them. To drive the nightmare out of his mind, Arthur goes hunting. He chases a hart until his horse falls dead. A yeoman brings another horse, but Arthur sits, lost in thought, near a fountain. A mysterious beast comes, drinks, and moves on; immediately afterward a strange knight comes — Sir Pellanor, hunter of the Questing Beast. Arthur offers to take up the quest, but Sir Pellanor says that destiny will allow none but him or his next of kin to kill the beast; then he takes Arthur's horse by force.
