[Wizard of 4th Street 04] - The Wizard of Rue Morgue

by Simon Hawke - (ebook by Undead)

  finger. Billy had picked it up and put it in his pocket. He did not remember putting the ring on, but now he couldn't get it off. Gorlois was now a part of him, as much as Merlin was. He was possessed by the spirits of two powerful arch-mages, the father and the son. And they hated one another.

  "I wish the pair of 'em would just bugger off and leave me the 'ell alone," said Billy in his normal voice. "It was bad enough just 'avin Merlin muckin' about inside me 'ead, but now I've got 'is bleedin' dad to put up with. Between the two of 'em, I'm gonna lose me fuckin' mind!"

  Kira sat down on the bed beside him. "I know, Billy. I know. I wish there was something we could do."

  She took his hand in hers and he felt the hardness of the sapphire runestone embedded in her palm. Wyrdrune stood looking down at him with a worried expression, his long, curly blond hair falling over his face, partially obscuring the emerald runestone embedded in his forehead. Modred looked down at him with concern. His silk pajama shirt was open and the ruby runestone in his muscular chest gleamed darkly.

  "I wonder if it's ever gonna stop," said Billy, wearily. "What does 'e want from me, anyway? I 'aven't done anything to 'im."

  "It isn't you he's angry with, Billy," said Modred. "It's Merlin. Unfortunately, Merlin is a part of you. And Gorlois is still an unknown factor. There's really no way of knowing what he means to do with you. Or how Merlin will respond to it. Thanatos wore the ring for years and was never consciously aware of Gorlois. Morganna, too, although we don't know to what extent she was influenced by the ring."

  "I've rubbed me finger raw tryin' to get the damn thing off," said Billy, "but it's just no use. No matter what I do, it simply won't come off."

  "Do you people know what time it is?"

  A broom came sweeping into the room on its straw bristles, a red nightcap perched atop its wooden handle. It looked like an ordinary, old-fashioned straw broom, except that it had two spindly, rubbery arms with three fingers on each hand.

  "It's four o'clock in the morning, for crying out loud!" it said. "Gevalt! What does a person need to do to get some sleep around here? It's not enough I have to work and scrub and cook all day, but then I have to put up with all this cafe-klatching like a bunch of yentas in the middle of the night?"

  Years ago, Wyrdrune had animated the broom to help his mother around the house while he was away at school. Now that his mother was gone, he had inherited the broom. Unfortunately, after years spent with his mother, the broom had taken on her personality. It stood with its arms on its hips— or at least on the spot where its hips might have been if it had hips—and though it had no mouth or anything even vaguely resembling a face, it spoke to them in an irritated, matronly tone.

  "Doesn't anybody around here keep normal hours anymore? What is it with you people?"

  "Billy had another nightmare," Kira said.

  "Again?" said the broom, its tone softening. "Aw, poor bubeleh. I told you, you should drink some warm milk with honey before you go to bed at night."

  "Thanks, but I'd sooner 'ave the bleedin' nightmares," Billy said, sourly.

  "Well, then don't blame me if you won't take my advice," the broom said in a huffy tone. "Kids today! You talk and talk and talk, but will they ever listen?"

  "Put on some coffee, Broom," said Wyrdrune.

  "Sure, why not?" the broom said. "Just because no one else is sleeping, who am I to get a little rest?"

  "Broom . . ."

  "All right, all right, already, I'll put on some coffee. But you should have something to eat. Coffee on an empty stomach, you'll give yourself a heartburn. How about some nice French toast with cinnamon and maple syrup?"

  "No thanks," said Billy. "I'll just 'ave a beer."

  "A beer? A beer? Four o'clock in the morning and he wants a beer? Oy vey! You'll have a nice hot chocolate and a little French toast to stick to your ribs. Honestly, drinking beer at your age! I never heard of such a thing!"

  "Awright, awright," said Billy, reaching for his cigarettes on the nightstand. "Christ, give it a bleedin' rest, Broom, willya?"

  "Now there's gratitude for you," the broom said. It waved its spindly arms as Billy lit up the cigarette. "Feh! And now you're going to stink the whole place up with cigarette smoke! You shouldn't be smoking at your age, you'll stunt your growth."

  "I'll stunt yer bloody—"

  "Billy . . ." Wyrdrune said. Billy fell silent, scowling. "Coffee and some hot chocolate and French toast will be just fine, Broom. Thank you very much."

  The broom sniffed, a peculiar thing to do since it had no nose, and waddled back out into the kitchen. Billy got out of bed and pulled his pants on over his undershorts. He went over to the sliding glass doors and opened them, stepping out onto the balcony of their apartment overlooking Central Park West. The others came up behind him. They stood for a moment in silence, looking out over the city.

  "You okay, Billy?" Kira asked.

  "Yeah, I guess so," Billy said, drawing deeply on his cigarette. Then he took it from his mouth, frowned at it, and flicked it over the side. "I don't know how he can stand smoking those damn things," said Merlin. He patted his pockets, then waggled his fingers and a moment later, a curved briar pipe and leather tobacco pouch came floating out onto the balcony. He plucked them out of the air and started filling the pipe.

  By now, they had grown accustomed to the rapid changes in personality from Billy to Merlin and back again. Billy spoke with a thick cockney accent; Merlin spoke in a Celtic accent that sounded like a cross between Irish and Welsh. Billy smoked cigarettes; Merlin smoked a pipe and each detested the other's habit. Billy could not do magic; Merlin could.

  "It's a hard thing for the lad," said Merlin, "being possessed on one hand and bound to a living runestone on the other. I feel partly responsible."

  "You're entirely responsible," said Modred.

  Merlin grunted and snapped his fingers. A flame jetted from his thumb and he puffed his pipe alight. He habitually smoked his own sorcerous blend of tobacco, with its ever-changing aroma. As he took his first puff, it smelled like toasted almonds, but an instant later, it had changed, giving off the smell of roasted chestnuts.

  "I wish I could make it easier for him, somehow," he said. "I had never planned on any of this. After I died, I felt my spirit being inexorably drawn to Billy, but it wasn't until I took possession that I realized it was because he was descended from me. The same thing must have drawn the ring to him, as well." He glanced at the fire opal ring. "Gorlois must have used a spell much like the one the Council of the White cast when they fused their spirits with the runestones. His spirit fled his body and entered the ring the moment Uther killed him. I wanted my revenge on him for deserting my mother and now he's come back to haunt me. It's as if fate is punishing me for having misused my powers. And through no fault of his own, Billy's been caught up in it. So here we are, one not-so-happy family, trapped within one body. Strange how fate always has a way of screwing you."

  Wyrdrune smiled. "You're starting to sound a bit like Billy," he said.

  "Yes, there is something rather infectious about his personality," said Merlin wryly. "It's starting to rub off on me, much the way your mother's personality rubbed off on Broom. But if I start speaking with a cockney accent, slap me."

  Modred chuckled. "There was a time, Ambrosius, when I would have dearly loved to do that."

  "Yes, I know," said Merlin, blowing out a vanilla-scented smoke ring. "It's a funny thing. We've never talked much about the old days."

  "The glorious days of Camelot, you mean?" said Modred sarcastically. "I thought that was something of a sore subject with you."

  "It is, in many ways," Merlin admitted. "But you and I are the only ones left from that old time. Actually, since I'm dead, I suppose I don't really count. That leaves you as Camelot's last survivor."

  Wyrdrune and Kira listened silently, with interest. Merlin almost never spoke about those days and even after two thousand years, Modred still felt bitter about his past.

/>   "When I was released from Morganna's spell," said Merlin, "I had only a vague idea how much time had actually passed. While I slept, I had only the dimmest perceptions of the world around me. I knew there had been wars, some truly terrible, and that mankind was accomplishing great things, things we never would have dreamed of in our day. Yet I sensed these things but dimly, as if trying to see through a thick fog. And then I awoke at the height of the Collapse, to see that all of mankind's efforts had led only to another dark age. Over two thousand years had passed and I awoke in the twenty-third century to find the world no better off than when I went to sleep. And I saw that there was still a need for me, a need for magic in the world. I can't begin to tell you how that made me feel. At Camelot, I had failed because I neglected to take into account the frailties of human nature. But here was a chance to start anew. I felt invigorated, imbued with a new sense of purpose.

  He looked out over the lights of the city. It was a warm night and the city glowed beneath them like the dying embers of a giant campfire.

  "I accomplished all of that," he said. "I brought back the light. But I brought the darkness back, as well. As the magic I taught spread throughout the world, the Dark Ones sensed it and began to stir. And now they're loose upon the world. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better if I hadn't come back at all."

  He glanced at Modred. "But you . . . you actually lived through all of it. You saw it all more clearly than I ever could. If anyone can judge me, Modred, it is you, who have suffered more than anybody else because of what I've done."

  "That almost sounds like an apology, Ambrosius," Modred said. "That's hardly like you." He sighed. "I'm not sure how to answer you. A long time ago, I might have judged you, but there seems little purpose in it now. You've always had a monstrous ego, but the truth is you didn't orchestrate events so much as you were merely a part of them."

  "Perhaps," said Merlin, "but I can't help feeling that the fault is mine."

  "If the fault lies anywhere," said Modred, "then I suppose it lies with Gorlois. It all began with him. But can we really blame him? He was the last of his kind. Here and there, sprinkled throughout the world, were people like you and me, half-breeds, descended from the mating of an Old One and a human, but there was no way he could know them and with each succeeding generation, the strain became more and more diluted. You and I were born immortal, or at least with a lifespan impossible to measure in strictly human terms. Wyrdrune and Kira, descended from my mother's sisters, but removed by many generations, will probably live out a life-span much closer to the human norm. Gorlois was the last of the Old Ones. He knew his race was dying with him. And in a way, I think I can understand exactly how he must have felt."

  "Do you?" Merlin said. "Then perhaps you can explain it to me. If you truly love a woman, as he claimed to love my mother, then how can you desert her?"

  Modred lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply, gazing off into the distance. Somewhere in the night, a siren screamed.

  "Sometimes, your love is the very thing that drives you away," he said. He paused a moment. "I couldn't imagine living with a woman, loving her, and watching her wither and grow old while I remained the same. What love could stand a test like that? They say there's something fulfilling in growing old together, but for one person to grow old while the other remains youthful and eternally unchanged, no, there's a horror in that, a grotesque inequity that has to be impossible to bear. Year by year, you watch her grow away from you, dying by stages right before your eyes. I don't think that I could stand that. I'm not saying that Gorlois was right in doing what he did, but I think that I can understand it.

  "As for your choosing to shoulder the burden of responsibility for everything that's come about merely because you wanted revenge," he continued, "I frankly think that's ludicrous. You might have convinced my father that he was an instrument of fate, but Arthur was always Uther's son and he had his father's lust for power. Guinevere had somewhat simpler lusts, though they were just as strong. And as for Lancelot, he was a mere child. Arthur might as well have put the two of them in bed together and tucked them in. I fail to see your role in that."

  "Lancelot and Guinevere fell in love because I made Arthur a king first and a husband second," Merlin said. "But Arthur loved them both. Was that so difficult to understand?"

  "No, not difficult to understand at all, " said Modred. "But it wasn't their affair that bothered me so much as the grotesque hypocrisy surrounding it. Arthur and his high-flown code of chivalry. The Round Table was inviolate. We all knew that Lance and Guinevere were having at each other like a pair of randy goats, but so long as no one spoke about it, it wasn't really happening, because Arthur wanted all of us to live up to some ideal standard that was impossible for any normal human being to meet."

  "Except for Galahad, perhaps," said Merlin.

  "True," admitted Modred with a nod, "but Galahad was hardly normal, with his profound spiritual obsessions. To him, Arthur was a god. And Galahad wanted so desperately to believe in the vision Arthur painted. I envied him the touching simplicity of his faith, but I could never share it, even if I wanted to. I saw Arthur as he was, a man so obsessed with his own self-righteousness that he denied anything that seemed to threaten it. He was never able to really look me in the face. His eyes would always slide away from mine. He spoke to me when he had to, but we never really talked. I was a living reminder of his sin and he could not accept that."

  "He was torn with guilt," said Merlin.

  "Perhaps," said Modred, "but only because he did not live up to his own image of himself. Arthur, who was so pure of heart and spirit that only he could draw Excalibur from the stone—never mind that it was only because you had cast a spell on it so that no one else could do it—that paragon of chivalry and virtue had slept with his half sister and produced a bastard. He could not deny me, but he could not accept me, either. He certainly couldn't love me. And but for my mother poisoning my mind against him, I might have loved him. I really think I wanted to, despite everything Morganna did. But Arthur didn't want my love and so I gave him hate instead. He found that easier to live with. It fit in with his perverse sense of morality. In the end, I think he really wanted me to kill him, although he did his best to make sure that I died with him. That would have tied it all up neatly, I suppose."

  "It was a sad thing," said Merlin. "A tragedy of human frailty and emotions."

  Modred shook his head. "No, Ambrosius, the sad thing is that we all believed that we were caught up in some grand and tragic drama, and because all of us believed it, it came to be perceived that way. The fact is there was nothing grand about it. Nothing unique. Things like that happen all the time. We are all prisoners of our emotions in the end, which is why I've tried so hard to stifle mine. "

  "You seem to have succeeded," Merlin said.

  "No, not really," Modred said wryly. "It only seems that way because I've had two thousand years of practice. I've often been accused of being cold and I've been called a cynic and to some extent, I must admit that's true. Oscar Wilde once told me that a cynic was someone who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. I told him that the term cynic was rather imprecise. I preferred being called a 'post-romantic' He found that quite amusing. But he was wrong in one respect. A cynic does know the value of at least one thing—truth. The reason he becomes a cynic is because he sees so little of it."

  "I wonder if anyone ever really sees the truth?" said Merlin.

  Modred smiled. "Strange that you should say that, of all people. One of the more amusing aspects of the legend that our story has become is the myth that you were somehow living backward through time, that the future was your past and the past your future, so that you already knew everything to come. Unfortunately, you didn't know any better than the rest of us. You merely thought you did."

  "Nevertheless, it was I who gave Arthur the power," Merlin said.

  "You merely gave him the opportunity," Modred replied. "He took the power for himself
and seized it in a death grip. You were not the one who made him a king first and a husband second. Arthur did that all by himself. He set himself above the rest of us. Like you, he was obsessed with the idea of his sense of purpose. If he'd been more attentive to Guinevere, perhaps she wouldn't have turned to Lancelot. But it might have happened anyway. No one can predict such things. But by acting as he did, Arthur only made it easier. You were not the one who failed to take human frailty into account, Ambrosius. Arthur was. He created a code of conduct for us all that was totally inflexible. It did not allow for human fallibility. And it had no room for forgiveness. The ironic thing about it was that he was just as much a victim as Lancelot and Guinevere were. He could not forgive himself."

  "And what about you?" said Merlin. "Have you room within you for forgiveness?"

  "Whom should I forgive?" said Modred. "Arthur? He's been dead for over two thousand years. My mother? I forgave her long ago, but she was unable to forgive herself and now she's gone, as well. You? What is there to forgive, Ambrosius? In spite of what you may think, you've never really done anything to me. My mother always blamed you because you helped Uther satisfy his lust for Igraine and then kill Gorlois. But she forgave you in the end, perhaps because she finally realized that what she had done was really no different from what you did. You were both motivated by revenge and you both paid the price. Both of you were victims. And if Gorlois is listening, perhaps he'll understand that he's become a victim, too. There is an old saying: 'When you embark upon revenge, you must first construct two coffins.' One for your intended victim and one for yourself, as well. Revenge is like a chain reaction. There is no end to it. And sooner or later, it always comes full circle. It always comes back to you. Forgive yourself, Ambrosius. Because no one else can make things right by giving you forgiveness. Not even Gorlois. He must forgive himself as well. Because whenever revenge is the motivating factor, there will always be other victims. Like Morganna. Like myself, perhaps, though I don't truly feel myself to be a victim. Like Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. And, finally, like Billy."