by Rachel Aaron
Open fields stretched out as far as she could see. The massive clearing ran in a giant circle from the tree line to the shore of Lake St. Clair itself. Along its inner ring, trees the size of DFZ superscrapers stood like sentinels over the beautiful, perfectly round pools of glowing water that nestled like jewels in their gnarled roots. Some of them were festooned with spring flowers, others were covered in autumn leaves. All were bigger than any natural tree could ever hope to grow, but the longer Marci stared, the more she realized bigger was the theme here.
Beyond the giant tree’s shadows, wolves the size of SUVs chased equally giant golden deer across the open fields. They ran like the wind, their bodies moving with supernatural grace, but no matter how they raced, the hunt never seemed to end. The chase just kept going, the wolves and deer moving in endless, interconnecting circles that matched the one made by the clearing itself. It was all circles, she realized. The giant trees, the hunt, even the mushroom rings she could see in the shadows were all locked together in a pattern of circles within circles within circles, all spinning around a rise at the clearing’s center. It was much smaller than Marci’s mountain, more like a very tall hill, but it was clearly the spoke around which all the wheels were turning, and as she watched the whole thing spin, Marci finally realized what she was looking at.
“They’re channeling magic,” she said, eyes wide. “That’s why the power is so thick here. You’re collecting it. This whole place is a giant casting circle!”
“Oh, it’s much more than that,” Algonquin said, gazing down on the circles within circles with obvious pride. “What you see before you is the end result of the largest unified effort my kind has ever put forward. Save for a few stubborn holdouts, I’ve recruited every spirit in North America, plus many others, to join my work.”
Marci’s eyes went wide. Just going by what she could see, that had to be hundreds. No wonder the magic in the DFZ was so much crazier than everywhere else. It was sitting right next to the world’s largest spirit pile. It also explained where Algonquin had gotten the magic to shoot the Three Sisters out of the sky, which was probably the entire point.
“This is the weapon you’re going to use to wipe out the dragons.”
Algonquin blinked in surprise. “Dragons? Why would I waste all of this on worthless parasites like them?”
Marci felt like she’d just had the mountain jerked out from under her. “But…” she got out at last. “You killed the Three Sisters.”
“I did,” Algonquin said, nodding. “But that was merely a target of opportunity. My spirits and I are very powerful, but we build at a fixed rate that’s tied to the natural magic of the Earth itself. Dragons, being interlopers from another dimension, run on their own system. When Estella came to me for help, I saw the chance to harvest a great deal of power off the standard curve while ridding myself of a troublesome infestation in the process.”
The way she said that made Marci cringe. “What do you mean harvest?”
Algonquin looked even more surprised this time. “You didn’t see it?” she asked, frankly disbelieving. “It’s right there in the middle.”
Marci was about to point out that it was dark and her eyes were only human when Algonquin placed a cold, wet hand on her scalp. “Look again,” she ordered, forcing Marci right to the cliff’s edge.
Frustrated, Marci looked again. Thankfully, the moon had risen a bit while they’d been talking, shedding new light over the ever spinning circles. Even with the added light, though, it took her forever before she realized that the hill at the center of the circular clearing—the one all the circles were revolving around—wasn’t a hill at all. It wasn’t even land. It was bodies. A massive pile of headless dragon bodies of every color, size, and kind imaginable, including three absolutely enormous white ones, all stacked neck down so their blood would run down into the ground.
And it was at this point that Marci really regretted eating that bagel, because she was going to be sick. “Ugh,” she said, clapping a hand over her mouth as she stumbled back. “You butchered them.”
“I did,” Algonquin said proudly. “And good job of it, too. Since it’s based around a living fire, dragon magic can be finicky once the creature is dead. I still had a few turn to ash despite my best efforts, but overall, I’m quite pleased. Thanks to the Three Sisters’ hissy fit, I had the perfect excuse for the purge I’d been planning for a while now. They’re not even done draining yet, but the power I’ve already gathered from their blood has put us nicely ahead of schedule, proving yet again that the only good dragon is a dead one.”
She finished with a grin, but Marci was still fighting to keep her stomach down.
“Don’t act so disturbed. It’s no worse than what you mages do when you pull magic out of chimera horns or whatever other body part is in vogue these days, or what the dragons do themselves for that matter. They’re the ones running around using their dead grandfather’s teeth as weapons.”
Much as she hated to, Marci had to give her that one. “Fine, I get it,” she grumbled. “Everyone is horrible. But that still doesn’t explain why you’re doing this.” She glanced at the circle again, doing a rough calculation in her head. “From circle size and magic density, I’d estimate you’re hoarding enough power here to drown the DFZ another dozen times. Why? What’s it for?”
Algonquin looked down at her. “Do you always ask this many questions?”
“I’ve found it’s the best way to get information,” Marci said. “And since you’re not a dragon, I don’t think you’d show me all of this just to brag.”
That joke at the Heartstrikers’ expense went over much better than Marci had anticipated. Algonquin looked absolutely delighted, throwing her head back with a bright, musical laugh. “You certainly do know how to play to power,” she said, wiping her eyes. “A very useful survival mechanism for one as lowly as yourself. But seeing how I brought you up here precisely to answer the question you just asked, I’ll oblige you. Look again at the dragons, and tell me what you see at their base.”
The last thing Marci wanted to do was look at that grisly pile of corpses ever again. But curiosity eventually overpowered her disgust, and she looked, peering down through the now-bright moonlight at the pile of dead dragons. She was morbidly searching for a telltale Heartstriker feather when she saw it. At the base of the pile, in the spot where the draining dragon blood formed a large, circular pool on the sodden ground, something was moving.
Her first thought was that it must be a trick of the wind and moonlight. It was just a puddle of blood on the ground. Even from this distance, she knew it had to be far too shallow for anything to swim in. And yet, the longer she stared at it, the more convinced Marci became that that was exactly what was happening. There was something living in that pool of dragon’s blood and mud. Something big.
“What is it?” she whispered, squinting in the dark.
“What I told you at the beginning of this,” Algonquin said, her watery voice trembling with excitement. “That is a Mortal Spirit. My Mortal Spirit.”
Impossible.
Marci jumped. She’d been so distracted by the craziness going on in front of her, she’d completely forgotten that Ghost was still in her arms until he wiggled free.
You can’t own a Mortal Spirit, he said, his voice wavering between a cat’s angry yowl and the Empty Wind’s deep, unearthly rumble. We are the products of mortality. Just as the glaciers carved out your bed, lake spirit, we are what remains when human fears and hopes dig gouges into the magical landscape of this world. You can’t own or control us any more than you can create us.
By the time he finished, Marci was staring in shock. Her spirit must be feeling better if he was making speeches, but how did he know all of that? When she’d asked him about Mortal Spirits before, he’d claimed to be as ignorant as she was.
I was, Ghost purred in her head. Amelia told us, remember?
She choked a little. And you just took her word for it? About your own nature?
A nudge rolled through her head, almost like a shrug. It felt right.
Marci didn’t know what to say after that. Algonquin, however, was full of ideas.
“Well, well,” she said, crouching down to look at the glowing cat eye to eye. “The walking death can speak. And here I thought you were just playing kitten to string the mortal along.”
Ghost hissed at her, raising the fur on his back, and Algonquin stood up again with a smile. “Neither of you is as special as you think,” she said, turning back to Marci. “Mortal Spirits might be shaped by humans, but they’re born the same way the rest of us are. All you need is a well and enough power to fill it, and pop, you get a spirit.”
“That’s what you’re doing here, isn’t it?” Marci said, the words bursting out of her as everything came together. “All this magic isn’t for a weapon or even your own power. You’re using it to fill a Mortal Spirit so that it’ll be born ahead of all the others!”
“Don’t forget dependent on me,” Algonquin added with a cruel smile. “That’s the most important part.” She looked out toward the horizon where the glimmering lights of the DFZ sparkled in the distance. “The magic is rising, but it’s not there yet. Without me to feed it, my new Mortal Spirit will be no stronger than your sad little cat was outside the city, if it managed to be born at all. But with all of this to back it”—she swept her hand over the interlocking circles of spirits—“it will soon be at full capacity, and wholly dependent upon me to stay that way.” She looked back down at Ghost. “So you see, kitten, you can be both created and controlled. Sorry to ruin your expectations.”
Ghost growled low in his throat, but Marci still wasn’t convinced. “If that’s true, how do you explain my spirit? He didn’t need you.”
“True,” Algonquin admitted. “But I’m afraid your precious spirit was little more than an unintended consequence. A freak mistake born far too soon due to the elevated ambient magic caused by my real work here.”
I am no mistake! Ghost roared, blue eyes flashing as his body began to shift. I was born because you left the ground littered with corpses! This city was built on the dead you created, Algonquin. Hundreds of thousands in a single night, abandoned and forgotten, and all because you were angry about some dirt in your water.
The glowing cat’s shape fell away as he spoke, and in his place was the faceless soldier, his transparent body taut with rage and growing more solid by the word. “Did you think they would not cry out for justice? That their pleas would not be heard? There is far more magic in this world than what you can touch, water sprite. More power than your shores could ever know. Our time is coming, Algonquin, and when it dawns, the dead will have their satisfaction, and you will pay for what you have done.”
By the time he finished, a gale was howling over the mountain strong enough to blow the chairs over. Even Marci was having trouble staying standing, and Algonquin’s body was rippling like water in a storm. But though she seemed to be having trouble maintaining her reflection, her voice remained as calm and cold as the deep lake bottom.
“I know what is coming better than any,” she said, glaring the Empty Wind down. “Ignorant fool. I am the land itself. My anger is older and greater than any pain your precious forgotten dead will ever know. Why do you think I’m doing this?”
The Empty Wind clenched his fists, but Marci got there first, putting a warning hand on the spirit’s ice-cold, ghostly arm. “Actually,” she said. “Why are you doing this? If you’re so certain of your ability to breed a new Mortal Spirit, why bother grabbing us? For that matter, why bother with any of this? You clearly don’t have a high opinion of mortals or our spirits, so why put all this effort into creating a Mortal Spirit of your own?”
“Because a Mortal Spirit alone is not enough,” Algonquin said bitterly. “To actually get what I want, I need the human that controls it.”
She’d thought as much. “You need a Merlin,” Marci finished confidently.
“Not just any Merlin,” the lake said. “The first Merlin.”
That made less sense. “Why does the order matter?” Marci asked, looking at the Empty Wind, who shrugged. “I thought a Merlin was just a souped-up mage with a Mortal Spirit for backup.”
Algonquin looked insulted. “That’s what you think? I already own all the best mages in the world. Do you think I’d spend sixty years and a continent’s worth of spirit effort just to get a slightly better version of what I already had?”
Not when she put it that way. Now that Marci thought about it, something as simple as Mage 2.0 didn’t explain why Amelia had tried so hard to win her over, either. But if power wasn’t the point, what was?
“What does a Merlin do?” she asked. “Why are they so special?”
Algonquin gave her a disgusted look, and Marci’s old rage flared back up with a vengeance. “Don’t look at me like that!” she yelled. “It’s not my fault I’m ignorant! It’s not like there’s anyone around to teach us this stuff. We’re having to relearn it all the hard way. But if you need a Merlin so badly, it might help if you got off your high wave and freaking told me what I’m supposed to do!”
She hadn’t meant to say all that, but at least her explosion seemed to have snapped Algonquin out of her snit. “You really have been around dragons too long, haven’t you?” she said, her voice amused. “Always raging and demanding when you should be thinking.” She tapped the side of her head. “Use your brain, mayfly. What do humans do that no one else can?”
Marci had heard this question before, and she answered immediately. “We move magic.”
Algonquin nodded. “And what vanished without a trace or warning a thousand years ago?”
The cliff fell silent as Marci’s jaw dropped. “Wait,” she said at last. “Are you’re saying that we—as in humans—caused the magical drought?”
“Who else could?” Algonquin asked. “Any natural-born spirit will tell you that the magic of this world is like the sea. It ebbs and flows, but it never dries up completely. Not unless something makes it.”
Marci blew out a breath. “And you think a Merlin can do that?”
“I don’t think,” Algonquin said. “I know. Any mage can grab magic and keep it bottled, but only a Merlin with the ridiculous power of a Mortal Spirit behind them could possibly manipulate magic on a global scale. That’s the level of power we’re talking about, and it’s why I grabbed you.” She looked over her shoulder back down at the thing moving in the bloody pool. “Even with the boost I got from the dragons, my Mortal Spirit still has far to go. Even when it is finally born, I’ll still have to find it a proper human capable of controlling it. But you and your spirit are already here, and while you are both pushy, inexperienced, undereducated, and outspoken with far too high an opinion of yourselves, you’re still the closest this world has to a Merlin at the moment. I couldn’t just leave you with the dragons. Do have any idea the damage those selfish snakes could do with a Merlin’s power?”
“But not all dragons are like that,” Marci said automatically. “Julius—”
“Julius is the runt you came to Vann Jeger’s with, correct?” When she nodded, the spirit scoffed. “He’s too young to count. He’ll harden up if he lives long enough, and eventually he’ll be the same as all the others. I should know. I’ve killed more dragons than you can count, and every single one of them was a conniving snake who’d trade his own family for power at a moment’s notice. They came to our plane as refugees, and yet they’ve done nothing but fight amongst themselves and terrorize their new home from the moment they arrived.” She lifted her lips in a sneer. “And the others wonder why I hate them.”
She looked so angry, Marci gave up after that. What was the point of trying to convince Algonquin that dragons could be things other than monsters when Julius was having trouble convincing his own family? There were more immediate problems to worry about anyway, starting with what Algonquin planned to do with Marci now that she had her.
“Is that why you laid a
trap for me, then?” she asked. “To keep the Merlin away from Heartstriker?”
“One of the reasons,” Algonquin said. “Denying your enemy access to a weapon is almost as good as getting one yourself. I would have preferred to grab you earlier, but I didn’t even know for sure what you were until Vann Jeger was defeated and you were long gone. I knew you’d be back eventually—there’s nowhere in the world except the DFZ with enough magic to keep a Mortal Spirit afloat—but I assumed you’d have an escort. Of course, I was expecting the Planeswalker rather than Raven and his tin soldier, but it made no difference in the end. Emily Jackson is as close to a true monster as your kind gets, but neither she nor Amelia is a match for my Leviathan.”
“And what is the Leviathan?”
That was a stab in the dark, but Algonquin smiled as though Marci had just asked something deeply profound. “He’s what happens if I fail.”
Now Marci was getting really nervous. “Fail at what?”
Algonquin looked pointedly at the Empty Wind, who’d gone very still. “Stopping them.”
“You mean Mortal Spirits?” Marci asked, baffled. “But I though the entire point of this was to make one.”
“Yes,” Algonquin said, holding up a single finger. “One. You only need one Mortal Spirit to make a Merlin, and one Merlin should be all it takes to stop the magic from rising enough to fill and wake the rest.”
“The rest of the Mortal Spirits?” Marci clarified, arching an eyebrow. “Why?”
“I know why,” the Empty Wind said, sneering at the water spirit. “She wants to stop us because she’s afraid we’ll be more powerful than her.”
The Lady of the Lakes didn’t even look insulted by that. She simply said, “Yes.”