Sword in the Stars

by Cori McCarthy

  Merlin wanted nothing more than to open a portal to check on them. But he knew that if he saw Gwen and Ari and Val in trouble in the future, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from running—or rather leaping through time—to save them. And he needed to find out how Nin’s story played out. How she went from a time child like himself to whatever she was within her cave. And he still had to learn his new magic backward, forward, and inside out.

  So he waited.

  And he watched Nin.

  It was simple, really, to keep an eye on her. Even though he’d been born an outsider, the village quickly folded around him. It was so much easier to grow up as a boy. He’d always known that, but now he could see it, in the same obvious way that he’d seen the changes in the lake.

  From the moment Nin could walk, she chased. From the second she could hold a sword—sweord—she swung without mercy. At eight, she beat every other village child with a sword her father had made. He was head of the village because, in a time of warriors, he made the best swords.

  “A supplier of weapons,” Merlin muttered.

  Not that he was eager to go up against little Nimue, but she didn’t ask him to fight. Her eyes swung over him as if he wasn’t quite there. One of the funny rules of Merlin’s portal into her past was that they couldn’t seem to interact with each other.

  Nimue’s path was set, and Merlin was still cloaked to her.

  She beat the last of the boys and ran around crowing. But when the boys sulked, Nimue’s father plucked the sword right out of her hand and gave it to the brother who’d been born quickly after she was.

  Nimue’s mother watched this whole mess unfold with a frown. Merlin found himself rooting for this woman to snatch her daughter up and leave. Anglo-Saxon wives were allowed to divorce their husbands, a right that would later be stripped. But Nimue’s mother let the moment pass. She let her small, fierce daughter be punished for her strength.

  Merlin saw Nimue’s face cycle through jealousy, love, guilt, hatred, as her brother swung the sword. In the end, she ran behind the huts where no one else would see her, eyes alight with angry tears. Those same eyes would later glimmer at Merlin, empty.

  That was the day he left the village. He was twelve now, old enough to convince Aethelwyn he’d be fine on his own, to thank her for all that she’d done, and to carve out his own home deep in the woods.

  Nimue needed more time to become the Lady of the Lake.

  And he wasn’t ready to face her, not by a long shot.

  If there was one thing that Nin had said in the cave that bothered him—besides admitting she’d stolen Ari’s spirit to begin another cycle, of course—it was that Merlin used his magic like a child.

  Living in these antediluvian woods without any Arthurs to take care of finally gave him time to figure things out. Of course, he only had a few years to master magic that Nin had been wielding for centuries. The pressure perched on his shoulders, clawing like Archimedes in a foul mood. He started out by building a shelter, impermeable to the elements but transparent, like a thick plastic tent. He fell asleep looking at the moon, dreaming of the future when he would be up there, meeting Ari.

  He woke the next morning with magic on his lips. Music still felt like the best way to control it, perhaps because music itself was a measure of time. The first thing he tried to create was a sandwich. Naturally. He could feel himself borrowing matter from pockets of time where it was fallow, unused, and putting it to work.

  And then it was sitting in his palm—turkey and cheddar and pickles and glory.

  He never took his eyes off Nimue for too long. Every day he changed himself into a falcon and circled over the forest, keeping watch on her village with little rounded eyes. Taking on a different form required reaching for a time when his atoms didn’t hold their current shape, when they could be combined with other atoms in new ways.

  These were small marvels of intuitive magic, but intuition wouldn’t be enough to take on Nin. He needed purpose, patience, ambition. And as the cherry on top, he needed whatever made her so much stronger.

  He spent a year practicing before he smacked into puberty: forward, this time. In the torrent of those first months, his magic fluctuated as much as anything else. He was constantly turning himself into a toadstool without meaning to. His face sprouted reddish hairs, finally replacing the ones he’d lost, which should have made him proud, but why were they so damn patchy? Merlin became nearsighted again; and he allowed himself the indulgence of glasses—snatching a pair of horn rims from some future century, off the nightstand of a person who hopefully wouldn’t miss them. He put them on, fussed with his hair, and hoped that Val would approve of the style.

  That was the other distracting bit of becoming a teenager again. Merlin lost entire weeks thinking about Val. But he wouldn’t save his once and—hopefully—future boyfriend by looking nice in specs. Val would tell him to be organized and systematic. To push forward to the more complex aspects of time magic. Merlin had been ripping time with a great deal of passion and very little precision, but what else was possible?

  “Let’s start here,” he said, picking a flower, a small white variety that must have gone extinct; it didn’t look like any of the ones he knew. Merlin glared at the petals, the sepals, the fuzzy pollen. He hummed like an angry bee.

  Nothing happened.

  You’re making that poor flower self-conscious, he thought, channeling Val.

  Merlin tried again, less pushy this time. He let the flower be a flower.

  He let the song be a song.

  He waited for the perfect moment, the one when everything changed. When it came, he hummed a little harder, and the flower wilted in his hand. He hadn’t killed it, he’d simply sped past its prime. Now he hummed lighter, softer, making the flower white and lush again, then taking it all the way back to a seed. Then he had to take several naps in a row.

  He could still exhaust his magic, although the longer he trained the more stamina he built. But there would always be an upward limit, it seemed. One of those irksome limitations of having a body that Nin liked to pester him about.

  Not to be deterred, Merlin tried a tree next. A white oak. It should have been the tallest in the forest, its rounded leaves maroon with the deep blush of autumn. But it had fallen long ago.

  “Change, you woody beast!” Merlin shouted.

  That’s definitely going to work, a voice sprang up in his mind. Now you’re a pimpled mage with an attitude problem.

  “Oh,” Merlin whispered, dropping his hands. Here was a person he hadn’t talked to in a very long time, even in his own head.

  Kay.

  His impossible, cycle-doomed father. The one who would have sprayed all the chips out of his mouth if he’d learned this particular, parental twist.

  “Kay was my father,” Merlin stated. Even the trees around him seemed dubious. “Kay is my father,” Merlin tried. Because that was the way of time—if something had been true once, it was always part of the story.

  He didn’t know how to begin missing and mourning Kay as a father. He would never be a child with a bumbling dad who captained the least likely ship among the stars. He would never be taught how to drive that ship by a frustrated and proud parent. There would be no bumbling sex talks while Kay turned magenta.

  Well, Merlin had accidentally walked in on Gwen and Kay on Error once, which was even more horrifying with this new layer of meaning. He’d also stolen Kay’s face in order to break into the pantry. That felt like something a person would do with their father. When he thought about it, paging through the moments of his past, he discovered that he hadn’t lost everything he’d once feared missing. Yes, he’d sent Kairos back to become Old Merlin, made it impossible for him to live out a childhood with his mothers, but he had made it possible for him to find Gwen later on Lionel. To steal some golden days on Error with Kay. To stick it to Mercer on a quest with Ari.

  He looked up and found that he’d righted the white oak tree while he’d daydreamed a
bout his family. It had rooted itself and spread leaves toward the sun.

  That night, when he lay on his bedroll under the manifold stars, he hummed a little song. He thought about hugging Lam good-bye, reuniting with Ari and Gwen, pinballing through space with Kay, kissing Val, even being righteously scorned by Jordan, and the stars spun faster and faster.

  It was coming easier now.

  Having a grip on this magic meant he could do something he’d wanted to ever since he saw Ari staring at the broken shards of Excalibur. A desire that had sharpened each time he saw her mooning over Arthur’s sword.

  With Arthur’s spirit finally put to rest, Ari was no longer the forty-second reincarnation of a dead king. She was so much more than that. Ara Azar, Ari Helix, knight of Camelot and king of the future, lover of Gweneviere, first of her name. He would do everything in his power to make sure that no one laid claim to her.

  Not Mercer. Not Nin.

  So Merlin created a forge, which was harder than he expected even with the help of magic, and after spying on Nimue’s father for weeks, he learned to melt and combine metals to create iron. His forearms grew absurdly strong and his face covered with soot as he sent sparks into the blue sky, striking a steady beat. He sang the whole time, a song that he’d been writing for Ari and Gwen, the melody forged from great need and greater hope.

  When it was done, the present shone in his hands, looking pretty and far too sharp.

  “Just like Ari likes them.” Merlin chuckled.

  And then he opened one more portal. Instead of walking through it, he sent a gift hurtling through space, toward the very same moon that kept him awake at night, thinking of dingy dance clubs and destiny.

  When Merlin neared the end of his teenage years, he could no longer wait for Nin’s past to take its sweet time. Thankfully, he no longer had to. He knew how to speed things along now. He emerged from the woods, approaching the village, focused on Nin’s story. He sang as loudly as he dared, and time bent to show him the truth.

  A few years passed in a few breaths. Nin stopped trying to fight, stopped struggling to make herself heard in the village. She became withdrawn as magic started to cling to her. Flowers nudged open wherever she walked. Vines slithered toward her. At first she hissed at them, sending them away. Her father ignored her surly new silences. She kept quiet as she learned that the magic nipping at her heels was not a pest, but part of her. A power she might use. That day with the sword had taught her that any great show of force from a girl would not be tolerated.

  So she practiced magic in secret, just as she’d cried.

  Merlin had grown up—or rather grown down—feeling sorry for himself, nursing a hole where his parents should have been. But at least now he knew that they loved him. They would have celebrated him no matter who he turned out to be. Watching Nin grow up with parents who constantly rejected her was a different sort of pain.

  Completely wrapped up in it, Merlin wasn’t ready for the day the raiding party arrived. Warriors screamed their way into the village, spears raised. Nin’s family and neighbors watched in horror as she raised her hand, spread her fingers over her heart, and became the center of a whirlwind of time.

  She didn’t control it with music, like Merlin. She tied it to the drum of her heartbeat. If Merlin had used his magic like a child, Nimue wielded hers as a warrior.

  Would he have to do the same, if he wanted to get the better of her?

  Nimue raised her other hand, and the first wave of raiders clattered apart like broken toys. She eased her grip, giving the rest a chance to run. But they lunged at her, shouting, and she closed her fist tight. They fell apart even faster, until they were only dust clouding the villagers’ eyes.

  No one cheered for Nimue as they had when she was born, which Merlin felt was hardly fair. Had the boys with the swords won the same victory, everyone would have thrown them a feast. Dark berries and deer jerky for everyone. Instead, the villagers hurled a single word at Nimue like mud, like stones. Merlin didn’t know it, but he knew the way they chanted. It was the same way people would chant angrily at women with power for centuries to come.

  Fear beat in Merlin’s chest—and this time it was for Nin. She turned away from her village, empty-handed and headed to the lake where she had been born. The mists came to greet her, to take her to Avalon.

  Days and nights bloomed and wilted while Nin learned about magic faster than any enchantress before her—too fast, according to some. She conquered the secrets of the mind in record time, but there was no celebration for the prodigy of Avalon. She sat at the edge of the lake every night, alone. She touched the water like a lover, but she never took one.

  Merlin sped through more time. Nimue grew until she looked like the woman Merlin knew, but with sadness trapped in every line of her face. And because vicious cycles are vicious, the enchantresses caught wind of an omen. Another raiding party was headed for Nimue’s village, stronger in numbers because they’d heard of a girl with a power greater than any sword. Merlin’s heart found a wild tempo as Nimue ran over the lake, her feet barely touching the surface.

  When she arrived, she caught her father by the arm, told him the omens, asked him to let her protect the village. She could have been a hero, if the word had existed. If her father had let her. But Merlin knew enough Anglo Saxon by now to understand that he wasn’t just saying no to her offer. He was disgusted by it.

  Nimue’s father pointed to her brother—the one who still wore her sword at his belt. He said that the boy would keep them safe.

  The village turned Nimue out quickly, still afraid of what she’d done. Even more afraid now that she’d been studying with the enchantresses. But Nimue didn’t return to Avalon at sunset. She crouched outside the village all night. She watched the raiders come. When her brother was the first one they cut down, she didn’t cry.

  She shook her head and twisted her lips into a knowing grimace.

  The slaughter was only beginning when Nin raised one hand to her heart. The other flew into the air, fingers twitching, as cries riddled the air. People fell to the ground without any blows exchanged. She wasn’t just killing the raiders.

  She was killing everyone.

  Her father, her mother, the boys she’d beaten with the sword. Everyone who’d cheered when she was born and chanted her into exile when she turned out to be different. Merlin let out a pure, agonized sound when he saw Aethelwyn running for the woods. He hummed to save her, but the sound was stolen from his lips. He wasn’t allowed to interfere with the Lady of the Lake’s origins, and that meant he watched helpless as the woman who’d taken him in turned to a scattering of bones and hair and dust. Nin had pitched them all forward in time until everyone around her was dead—everyone but Merlin.

  Gods, that felt painfully familiar.

  Nimue marched somberly to the lake, one hand firmly over her heart. She walked into the water without slowing, even as it dragged at her clothes, turned her hair to weeds.

  “No,” Merlin said. “Don’t do this.” His words didn’t reach her, though. And it was too late. It was already done.

  The water welcomed her the way her people never had. The surface broke around her body, closing over her head. But Nin wasn’t content to simply die in the water. After she disappeared from view, her heart-magic worked even as she drowned. The water throbbed, echoing her pulse, and then falling still.

  In that moment, the lake changed—sealed itself off, the little rivers at the edges disappearing. She’d made the lake her own, binding it with her death as she had been bound to it by her birth. She’d stolen a piece of time and started a cycle of misery.

  It started to rain, and every drop felt like Nin.

  Her body washed up, gently nudging the shore. Merlin went and picked her up. She was lighter than he expected, a small part of a massive story, and yet this moment contained the beginning of every downfall.

  Merlin trudged to shore and laid her body to rest. He used his hands and his magic to dig a muddy grave. As
he packed on dark, wet earth, he kept expecting to be stopped. It seemed the story didn’t care what happened after she died.

  But Merlin did.

  Nimue wasn’t his enemy. The Lady of the Lake was. Nin was the spirit that Nimue left behind in the waters of time. Merlin could see it now: she was constantly remaking the tragedy of her own ending. She’d created a cycle of heroic boys with their swords so she could watch them fail.

  Nin had even given Merlin the steps of the cycle. He muttered them as he smoothed over damp, rich soil that still seemed to breathe with life. “Find Arthur, train Arthur, nudge him onto the nearest throne, defeat the greatest evil in the world, unite all of humankind.”

  Merlin had believed he was helping.

  But she’d known it would never work—made sure of it, when she had to. Nin had chosen Arthur, forging Excalibur for him in the waters of her own lake, but she hadn’t chosen him because she could see the promise of Camelot.

  Merlin’s connection to Nin’s waters gave her the perfect window to watch the story spin as the shining boy hero was cut down, his spirit set loose to try over and over again. That’s why she’d kept Merlin alive, even though he might prove the only threat to her existence. She’d needed him more than she’d feared him. So, she’d kept him busy with her cycle and in the dark for as long as she could. And now she planned to start a new string of horrors that fed off Ari—she finally had a girl for a hero and it didn’t even matter.

  Nin didn’t care.

  She only needed more tragedy.

  Merlin knew what it was like to be magical, miserable, and lonely. He had been through ages of pain and actual worlds of hurt. In the end, though, he’d been cared for and learned to let himself care in return. It had been the hardest work of his life, but it was worth it not to wind up like Nimue—even if the Lady of the Lake was the most powerful being he’d ever known.

  And that was the worst irony of them all.

  Merlin let the rain soak him through, finally grasping the answers he’d come all the way back for. He would have to die in the lake to be as strong as Nin.