“We can't leave you,” Heather shouted. “You need us to—”
“I don't need you!” His voice was high and frantic. “I don't need you. I don't need anybody! I have to be alone. Always!”
Grabbing their shoulders, he spun them around and shoved them back up the road. They stumbled ahead a few steps, then stopped. Heather stamped her foot angrily and turned back. “Earl, that's not …”
She fell silent. There was no one to be seen.
Her shock exploded into anger. “So who cares?” she shouted. “Who cares if you don't need us? The Penroses do! They have a place for us. Go on and be alone!”
The only answer was a vast silence and the whisper of drifting snow.
“What now?” Welly whispered. “Do we really turn back?”
Heather was shaking with misery. “I thought that's what I wanted. But I also thought he needed me, needed us. Maybe the Penroses really do. I don't know. What else is there?”
She turned and walked slowly up the road. Welly followed. They trudged on, heads bowed, silent as the wilderness around them.
Finally Heather stopped and raised her head. “I'm so confused. Maybe we ought …”
A dark figure stood on the road ahead. Morgan.
THROUGH THE FURNACE
The woman had an ageless beauty. Raven-black hair flowed free from her hood, framing a pale face and eyes of emerald-green. She smiled sadly.
“So, he left you. That's like him. Always thinking first of himself and his own mad plans.”
“No,” Heather asserted. “He wanted to protect us.”
“He didn't want you tagging along and being a bother. But that's his way, always using people for his own ends.”
“That's not fair!” Welly protested.
“Fair? Has he been fair to you? He dragged you away from your home, your schooling. He subjected you to discomfort and dangers, most of which you couldn't understand. Think about it—have you ever been so miserable in your lives? Cold and wet, not enough food or sleep, always afraid? ”
Heather shook her head slowly. “He didn't mean to …”
“He meant to use you. You were helpful in escaping from Llandoylan, in carrying provisions. You kept him company and amused him. But he's through with you now; you're becoming a hindrance. So he's left you alone in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from home.”
Heather stamped her foot, angry at herself as much as at Morgan. “No! That's not true! None of it is! What he wants is right; it's good. When he finds …” She stopped short.
“Finds Arthur?” Morgan smiled at Heather's horror. “Don't fret. You haven't let out any secrets. I knew that must be his idea. He has a fixation about it, you know. But Arthur's dead. He died in battle two thousand years ago. His bones are dust, like the rest of Merlin's dreams.”
“But he …,” Welly began.
Morgan looked down at him, her green eyes wide with sympathy. “It's sad, really. Arthur was Merlin's life. He can't accept a world without him. He wasn't there that day to see him die, so now he grasps at fairy tales. It's a sick, mad obsession, and he'll probably follow it to the end of his days. But he shouldn't drag others with him.”
The two children stood silent and confused.
Morgan extended her hands toward them. “Come. I never abandon friends in the wilderness. You have a place with me.”
They pulled back. “No!”
“Come, now. You followed him because you wanted adventure, to be part of something grand. You've had danger and hardship, but hardly adventure. Come with me and belong to a noble adventure! Oh, no doubt Merlin's filled you with lies about my evil powers. Certainly, I have power, but power can be used for good! Look at this wreck of a world. Look at the chaos, the stupidity! What is needed is order and direction. I can give it that.”
She smiled, stepping toward them. “You two are of this world's elite. Together we have the knowledge to remake this world, to overcome petty objections of the ignorant. And if you join with me, you can share this power. You can be as you want to be, as you are inside. And all the world will see you like that.”
She reached out and took their hands. “Come, let me show you what you can be.”
Heather looked into Morgan's green eyes, deeply into those eyes, and saw there her own reflection. It was her, it was Heather McKenna. But there was a difference. It was the real her: She was beautiful. Her hair was soft and thick and flowed about her shoulders, the pale blond of winter sun. And her eyes were the ice-blue of a rare bright sky.
She moved among crowds, and people parted for her, murmuring admiration. She mounted marble steps, and her gown swirled around her, the sparkling radiance of sunlight glittering on snow. As she climbed, it flowed into shadowy folds of deep, cold blue.
She reached the top and sat regally on a chair of stone. The world assembled in awe about her. Surely anyone with her beauty would be given whatever she wanted. But what was it she wanted? Oh, yes, animals. She had always liked animals: deer and squirrels, insects, lambs, and birds. Let them come up. They were there but hesitated, milling about. Animals love her. They will come up to her! How can she go down to them, someone of her beauty, her cool beauty? They need her; they love her. Let them come and show it.
They won't come. They don't need her beauty? They won't give the love due her beauty? Then let them wallow, the stupid beasts. She didn't need them. She had gifts enough. Gifts, yes; she had a gift. She raised her hand for all to see. The jewel flashed purple in her ring.
See, a gift! A gift given for her beauty. No, no, for something else, something when she had no beauty. Given for … friendship. A friend gave her the purple jewel, a gift given for her friendship. A gift for a gift, that was right. Her gift, her ring, was … to make things right. It had a charm to make things right.
She wanted things to be right. They were not right now. They were wrong. She was not beautiful; she did not need to be. She had love and gave love. She needed friendship, and her friendship was needed. Things should be right; her gift made things right. She clutched the ring and its purple stone—purple like her poor friend's fuddled magic. Her friend who needed her. The magic, the charm, made things right, all crackerjack. Cracker Jack!
The dais cracked, and the marble stairs crumbled. She fell down into purple, into warmth. She was loved, and she loved. Needed and was needed. And she was free.
Morgan smiled as she took Welly's hand and led him up a green hill. He bounded up easily because he was strong and lithe. He mounted his horse, his tall warhorse; his glasses fell away and shattered, yet he could see!
And below him he saw the plain of battle. He had made the battle plan and made it for himself. He would lead; all the troops below knew how clever was his plan and how brave his leadership. They cheered and cheered him.
The clash of battle rose from below. His cunning ambush had come about; the battle cry went up, and they shouted his name. Muscular legs gripping his horse's sides, he called out bold instructions. The slaughter was great, and he exulted in it.
Now the enemy broke through and rushed upon his height. He had no fear. Pulling out his great sword, he skillfully guided his steed and beat the enemy back. Nigel and Justin and the other taunters, they shrank back and cried out. The great dukeling cringed before him, and Welly took his sword and plunged it into his body.
The blood spurted red, and Nigel's face crumpled in pain. The boy's friends wailed around him as he lay small and sad upon the ground, and a girl held his broken body and rocked back and forth, back and forth—as another girl had rocked with another dead thing. She had been his friend, that other girl, and he had fought to help her, as another friend had fought to help him.
All below him now wailed in sadness and loss; his troops and the others, the same. He looked down at their pain and agony, and they called out against the misery he'd brought. They cried against his clever plans. He saw them over the head of his horse. His warhorse, his knight's horse. White and smooth, its neck was arched and
its ears pricked forward and pricked his fingers also as he clutched at it in his pocket. His knight, from his friend. He was his friend's knight, his friend who fought for him and knighted him and needed him. His friends needed him. And someone called to him. Called that it would be all right. All right! All Cracker Jack!
The call beat on him, blew at him, swept away the sound of battle. Swept him away, far away. And free.
Masked in invisibility, Earl hurried down the road, ignoring his friends' calls. Every step hurt. But it was hurt himself or hurt them. He had made the choice.
Miles passed as he marched doggedly, fixed on his goal. On his longer legs, he moved faster without his companions. That gave him no pleasure. He strove to keep his mind blank, set only on moving forward. But thoughts kept nibbling at the edges, intruding into the blankness.
He was running. Running from the farm, running from his friends. Running because he could not protect them, protect them from the danger he brought them.
But what was he running to? He had a quest, a mission. Yet so far he had failed. Would it be any different with Arthur? Could he protect his king, who would surely be in far greater danger? Could he be of any real aid to Arthur in the tasks before him in this shattered world?
Earl stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. Was he of any use to anybody? Even to himself, if he dared not keep simple friendships?
Slowly he walked off the road, noting for the first time that snow was falling. The wind was up, sweeping an empty, mournful howl through the wilderness.
He knew what he must do.
Earl stood in the snow and looked into its spinning whiteness. He let his pack slip from his back. Slowly he took off his coat and cast it away from him, and then his jacket and gloves. He would either become one with this world and learn its rhythms, or he would die in it.
He spread his arms, reaching into the sky, and shouted with his mind, “World of my cold and blasted future, I will be one with you! Either as part of your living pulse, your waves of power and life, or dead as your frozen dust. I will be yours. Take me now!”
He looked up into the swirling snow as he had that day when he'd sought only escape, not knowing the danger of what he did, of losing himself forever. Now he knew. The snow fell lazily from the sky, big soft flakes spinning down toward him. He willed to be one with them, those flakes that swirled down at him, up at him, around with him. His soul thinned into them. He was snow, swirling with snow, swirling on the wind.
Bodiless, he blew on the wind. Blew over the world, blew over the rocks, rasping against their hardness, blew through the trees, jangling their needles with music. He blew through the thatch of houses and churned the smoke of their fires. He blew over the ocean, caressing the water into billowy waves and whipping the crests with foam. He blew high into the sky above the seas and land. He tore at the clouds, shredding them and seeing beyond.
Beyond were the stars, calling in their splendid beauty. He rose up toward them through eternal emptiness, through endless silence. They glowed with the brightness of beginnings.
Yet embers still glowed on the earth behind him. It pulsed with warmth that pulled at him. Pulled him back, back through emptiness; pulled him deep, deep into its core. Its throbbing heat rose outward. It rose up through the rock, through heavy, patient rock that had known only itself, and through higher stone with sunken memories of the sky.
The pulse of warmth rose to the crumbling surface, to the rich soil. Roots sank into it and drew out warmth and life. Plants raised their heads to the sky, bowing in the wind, weighed by the snow, giving nourishment and shelter to life that huddled among them or bounded over them.
The web closed; the patterns settled into place. The swirling snow and empty wind, the pulsing stars, the answering throbs in stone, and the upward surging of life. All were tied in glowing traceries, in interlocking spheres. The web of force and power and rightness was part of all creation and part of him. Part of his cells and consciousness and joy.
Heather opened her eyes. She was lying on her side on an empty road. Snow sifted silently from the sky. A hand rested in hers. She recoiled, but it was not Morgan's hand; it was Welly's. She squeezed it.
He opened his eyes with a befuddled smile. “Is it all right, then? For both of us?”
“Yes. Yes, I think it is.” She looked down at her hand and its glinting purple ring. “But it may not be for him. That was all rot, you know, about his not needing us. He's just a confused kid like the rest of us.” She smiled. “He needs me. I know that now. And he needs you, too.”
“Maybe. But not as his general.”
“As his friend, then.”
“Yes, as his friend.” He stood up, surveying the white, swirling landscape. “But how do we find him when we can't even see him?”
“He won't stay invisible forever. Down this road, someone's bound to have seen him. We'll find him. We have to.”
They started down the southern road, snow slicing across their path in icy blasts. They staggered on against it until the darkness of the storm shaded into the darkness of night.
Dizzy with exhaustion, they took shelter behind a rocky outcrop and slipped into dream-washed sleep.
In the morning, the snow lay deep and quiet about them, but the sky was hazily clear. A smear of orange spread upward from the east. Hastily sharing some bread, the two donned their packs and stepped from their rocky shelter.
They started back to the road and stopped abruptly. Lying half-buried in the snow, some thirty feet away, was a body. Beside it lay a discarded pack, coat, and jacket.
Heather and Welly ran fearfully toward it, then slowed. The sun, just rising in the east, seemed to catch and play along a web of light, a faint intricate tracery that enclosed the snow-covered body. Then the sun cleared the horizon, and the pattern faded.
They hurried to him and dropped to their knees. Heather brushed the snow from his face. “Oh, Earl,” she moaned, and clutched at his hand. It was cold as death. His face was serene and pale as the snow.
The eyelids fluttered, disturbing their fringing of ice. Slowly Earl opened his eyes. “It's all right, then?” he whispered, his voice barely audible.
“Yes, all right,” Heather sobbed in joy. “It's all, all right.”
BATTLE ON THE TOR
Together they helped Earl stand, and, retrieving his things, they led him back to their shelter of the night. Stiffly he pulled on jacket and coat and sat down on a rock. With an easy movement of his hand, he started a fire blazing on the surface of the snow. In minutes, life and warmth were surging through his body.
He spoke little of what had happened. He was again in touch with his power, again in harmony with his world and its forces. That was enough for him to share. But he was interested in the halting accounts of the others' ordeals.
When they'd finished, he sighed. “Once Morgan tapped my weakness and ensnared me in it. And I didn't see until too late. I, a wily old wizard! But you saw her traps and broke them. I'm impressed.”
“We had help,” Heather said softly.
“The only help you had was in yourselves and what your friendship gave those tokens.”
Earl stood up and stretched, feeling every fiber of his being tingling and alive. He extinguished his magic flame with a word. “We've all been through the furnace, it seems. Now, let's see how well we are forged.”
They shouldered their packs and set off together. Before long, Earl led them from the road, striking across country to the southwest. “Have you a better idea where we're heading?” Welly asked.
“Not really. But I'm more certain that there is someplace worth heading for.”
The snow-blanketed fields dropped into a long valley. Down its length ran a dull silver ribbon that flashed back sunlight like the blade of a sword.
“The River Tamar,” Earl announced. “The boundary that divides Devon from Cornwall.”
The river was frozen into stillness. They found its valley strewn with debris from summer floods. Heading f
or the river, they picked their way through bits of tree and brush, rocks, and the occasional scrap of human handiwork. Earl moved more slowly, looking thoughtfully about him. Then he cut off on a tangent across the valley floor until, exclaiming with satisfaction, he bent down and examined something.
Welly and Heather followed to see what he'd discovered and found him kneeling by a young uprooted pine, a few brittle needles still clinging to its boughs. Pulling out his sword, Earl began hacking off the branches. The others squatted down and watched, figuring they'd get an explanation in time. At last, he seemed satisfied. The slender trunk, bare of branches and bark, shone a soft yellow. At one end there remained a gnarled claw where the roots had begun.
Jabbing the thin end into the ground, he declared, “There, a first-class staff.”
Welly looked dubiously toward the slope on the far side of the valley. “You need a staff? It doesn't look all that steep to me.”
Earl flashed him a look of theatrical scorn. “A wizard's staff!” he said with mock thunder, tossing his work from hand to hand, testing its weight. “I was afraid to use one earlier. It helps concentrate power, and the sort of magic I was producing didn't bear concentration.”
Heather smiled mischievously. “You mean we might have had a forty-foot-high purple pie?”
Earl laughed. “Something like.”
They walked to the edge of the frozen river. Standing on the bank, Earl tapped the surface firmly with his staff. “The Tamar's a lot more narrow here than the Severn where we crossed it. This should be frozen solidly enough to walk on.”
Welly and Heather followed him cautiously onto the ice. Its surface had been roughened by the wind but still produced a good slide. In moments, the two were executing glides, swoops, and occasional spills on the frozen river. Earl joined them, using his staff to vault into acrobatics, sometimes ending in a spinning sprawl of arms, staff, and long legs. The valley echoed to whoops and gleeful yells, until at last the three collapsed, exhausted, on the western bank.
Tomorrow's Magic Page 14