Tomorrow's Magic

by Pamela F. Service

  “Please, Earl, let's come back and look in the morning. This place is … occupied at night.”

  Earl stood and headed off in a new direction. “I don't think it is normally. They're here because we are. All the more reason I must find that bowl now. Morgan's getting much too interested in us.”

  “But suppose it isn't here either?” Welly said anxiously.

  “I … I think it is. Somewhere.” He continued walking westward, questing like a hound following a scent. As he walked, his staff shed a heatless pool of light about him.

  The others stayed near but kept turning around as they walked. Where the light faded into darkness, it reflected back from watching eyes. Some were low to the ground, some high up. A sudden shriek and something dove at them from the sky. Annoyed, Merlin raised his staff, searing the underside of wings. It veered off, screaming.

  Fearfully lowering her gaze, Heather saw eyes again. Their numbers had grown. “Earl, could we hurry? We're attracting a lot of attention.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said absently. “Keep them back; I've got to concentrate. We're closer now. I know it.”

  “Well, keep your light going!” Welly begged as the flame on the staff faded. It flared up again, but, emboldened by numbers, the things in the dark were closing in.

  Something all teeth and claws darted toward them. Welly swung at it with his sword. It dodged back, but another scrambled in from behind. Heather spun around, nicking it with her blade.

  Suddenly cries and the sound of fighting erupted around them. But who was fighting whom? Even Merlin noticed the change, and his staff shot out a new flare of light, showing a battle raging on all sides. Constant motion confused the picture, but clearly none of the combatants were human. Among them jumped a yellowish creature, jabbing and thrusting with a great pike.

  “Troll!” Heather cried. “He's brought reinforcements!”

  Desperately now, Merlin continued his search as the strange battle surged around them. Suddenly the noise of fighting shrank under a new sound, a flapping of giant wings. Cowering, Heather and Welly stared into the dark sky.

  Great black wings hovered overhead, then lowered slowly to one of the central towers. Now, above the third tier of arches, something crouched like a living gargoyle.

  “Merlin!” a clear voice called from above. “Stop poking about in the dirt. I wish to talk with you.”

  High in the wall, an empty stone niche glowed with green. In its center stood a pale woman, black hair flowing about her shoulders. A hideous creature sat hunched on the wall above her.

  Angrily Merlin looked up. “Perhaps, Morgan, but I don't wish to talk with you.” He moved quickly to where an arch led to a smaller, more intact section of the ancient building.

  “Such a rude child!” The woman laughed coldly. “I've been keeping an eye on you, you know, ever since you slipped away from that incompetent Nigel. You are obviously looking for something, Merlin dear, and I've decided the time has come to see what it is.”

  Motioning the others to follow, Merlin hurried down some weed-choked steps beyond the arch. “If I am looking for something, it is nothing of yours. So you can just take your misbegotten pets back to wherever you crawled from.”

  “But, Merlin, your interest is recommendation enough. Whatever it is, I intend to make it mine!”

  She thrust forward her hand, and a spear of green light shot toward them. Merlin flung up his staff, deflecting the assault. “Troll!” he yelled. “Get your people in here. Now!”

  On the fringes of light, the shadowy forms shifted and creatures scuffled toward them. Merlin jerked up his staff and shot a gob of purple flame toward the figure on the wall. It smashed against the glowing green stone, shattering into a shower of sparks.

  “Poor aim!” came the taunting reply. “But I don't want to play games, little boy. I want what you are looking for.”

  By now, an assortment of creatures had slid down the stairs to join them. Some were thin, wispy things, and others were as chunky as stone. One looked something like Troll, only much larger.

  Merlin leaped again to the top of the steps and shouted something, staff raised high above his head. Snakes of purple flame jumped from the staff to the sides of the arch, then rapidly crawled upward. Spreading along the tops of the walls, the flame encircled the western end of the ruins. Every empty window and broken wall glimmered with purple light.

  Beyond the barrier of light, Morgan screamed and hurled a mass of green flame. It shattered harmlessly against the purple wall. Enraged, she rained down volley after volley, but the barrier held.

  “That had better hold long enough,” Merlin muttered as he turned away. “Now, I must find it!”

  The air crackled with light and choked them with the stench of ozone and sulfur. Half-blinded by the glare, Merlin suddenly stepped into nothing. Crying out, he plunged into the ancient crypt, gashing his forehead on a stone at the bottom. Blood ran down his face as he dizzily pulled himself to his knees.

  Still stunned, he stared down into the growing pool of his own blood. Something was there, moving beyond the surface. A figure running through the darkness, running through a fenced churchyard. A guttering torch showed the worried face. Brother Joseph. The now-elderly monk hurried on. Saxon raiders attacking the town. He must hide the church treasures, especially those that had been Arthur's. The Saxons must not desecrate them!

  The robed figure came to an alcove of stones and hurried down the worn steps. At the bottom lay a stone slab and a crude wooden cover. He yanked the cover aside and from his bulging robes pulled out clattering handfuls of things. They glinted briefly in the torchlight before dropping into the darkness of the well.

  The pool of water shimmered and changed into blood. Whose blood? Merlin passed a hand over his eyes. Had Brother Joseph survived the attack? But that was over, long over. And at last the secret had been passed.

  The wizard staggered to his feet. The barrage was still heavy about them, but the defensive purple glow seemed fainter.

  Heather was calling from above. “Earl! Earl, are you all right? ”

  “Yes,” he croaked.

  “The barrier's weakening!”

  Already he was running to the left. “Yes. I'll be back soon!”

  He found what he sought, an opening in the crypt wall and steps leading down. By the light flickering along his staff, he saw a carved stone arch at the bottom. It was later work, but below it was the same stone slab. The hole in it, glinting slightly from damp, was choked with trash and stones. Dropping to his knees, he frantically pulled at the rubble with both hands. Some was jammed firm. He could hear shouts and fighting again from above.

  Desperately he rammed the point of his staff into the stones; letting power flow down the shaft, he pried the fill away. Then, dropping the staff, he reached into the well's cold water, down to the mud beneath. His fingers groped about, touching various objects. But they sought only one and tingled with kinship when they found it. Scrabbling at the smooth, round shape, he pulled it free of silt and water.

  In trembling hands he held it. Its intricate designs were obscured by mud and tarnish. But he knew it, and it him. They remembered so much.

  The shouting from above called him back. Rubbing at the blood still trickling into his eyes, he scrambled up the stairs and emerged into the night. The purple light had faded to a flicker, and all about him creatures were fighting.

  Morgan took no part now, content to watch her minions win from her perch on the broken wall. But when she saw Merlin again, she shouted her triumph. Holding both hands above her head, she drew power about her into a pulsing green mass more potent than anything she had launched before. She hurled it now toward her ancient enemy.

  Merlin recoiled. His staff was below, out of reach. Instinctively he raised a hand to shield his face. The bolt of power slammed downward, striking the bowl. With a deafening blow, it rebounded back. Sorceress and gargoyle screamed as the reflected power sheared off the top of the tower, leaving smoke and
silence behind.

  Groggily Merlin sank to his knees, looking at the now-gleaming bowl in his hands. “Well, that's one way to clean old silver,” he muttered before slumping, unconscious, to the ground.

  THE HILL OF THE WHITE HORSE

  The predawn light was gray and cold. Merlin stared up into it, wondering chiefly about the pain in his head. Slowly he raised a hand to find bandages wrapped around a throbbing forehead. As he struggled to sit up, the jacket that had been thrown over him slid from his shoulders.

  “Well, welcome back,” Heather said, limping toward him. The whole left side of her body was burned, the boot on that side nothing but a few sooty shreds.

  Others hurried toward him. Welly's right shoulder was wrapped in a bloody rag. Rus was missing half of one tail, and a ragged gash running across Troll's forehead ended in a severed ear. Looking absurdly unbalanced, he grinned from ear to former ear.

  “Great Wizard find bowl and blow away nasty witch. Troll proud.”

  Merlin found his voice. “We'd never have lasted long enough without your recruits, Troll. Where have they gone?”

  “Oh. Some hurt, some killed. They go back. No like to stay around humans. Some muties they not mind. But plain humans scare them.”

  “They don't like us,” Heather said, “yet they fought and died for us?”

  “They not like humans but like to fight! And like witch and friends even less. Besides”—the troll proudly straightened his squat body—“folk of Faerie very learned. Know Great Wizard. Happy to help.”

  “Well, I was happy to have their help.”

  After they had breakfasted, Merlin tied the bowl to his belt by one of the three metal rings at the rim. Welly looked at it, then frowned slightly.

  “Earl, we haven't found any trace of Morgan. Did that blast completely incinerate her?”

  “I doubt it. That bolt did carry most of the power she could muster, but it probably weakened in the reflection. I imagine she's off somewhere nursing hurt body and pride.

  “And speaking of hurt bodies, let me try a little healing magic, at least for the burns and cuts. I can't do much for missing tails and ears, I'm afraid.”

  Soon Heather's burns and the gashes Troll and Welly sported were reduced to tender redness. The painful cut on his own forehead became an angry scar, which Merlin tried vainly to hide behind his ragged black hair.

  When they finally rode away from the abbey ruins, they found fearful, curious faces staring from windows and doors. The events of the previous night could hardly have been missed, and the group's appearance now was particularly impressive due to the presence of the troll.

  Merlin recognized several citizens from the conversation of yesterday. “I'm afraid, sir,” he said to the stout, authoritative gentleman, “that we have ruined your ruins a little further. But King Arthur and your own King will be grateful.”

  “Ah”—the man nodded knowingly—“so you do have something to do with Arthur. All the rumors are true, then? The real Arthur has returned?”

  “Indeed. As has his graybeard wizard. But tell your doubting friend I won't turn him into a goose after all.” He ignored the openmouthed stares and furtive hand signs. “Now, if you want to help defend this fine town of yours, I suggest you send all able-bodied fighters to Uffington. The Kings and Queen may well need them.”

  Their ride eastward from Glastonbury took several days. On the way, they encountered parties of Wessex warriors rallying to their King's call. They also noticed occasional shadowy forms flitting along the roadside, but they felt none of the uneasiness such sights had brought earlier.

  “Troll, are these friends of yours?” Merlin asked one night as they were setting up camp in a ruined farmstead.

  “Don't know most. Faerie is big place.”

  Welly unfastened the saddle girth under his horse's shaggy belly. “But I thought you said your people didn't care much about wars between humans.”

  “They don't,” the troll agreed, looking hopefully at the food bags Heather was unloading. “But this not just human war. Something big coming. That witch call up folk from dark parts, folk we not like.”

  Merlin was squatting down, arranging rocks for a fire circle. “What Troll means, I believe, is that if Morgan's forces have netherworld allies, so do we. Not as many, perhaps, nor as visible. But they're coming from all over. I can feel them.”

  Heather felt them, too, an occasional mist blowing across field or streambed, or dream shadows flitting by while they slept. But she didn't probe at the feelings. And despite its nagging, she firmly ignored the amulet. It had burned at her during the fight, but she hadn't taken the time to try using it. Now she felt she'd seen enough of high magic, and to stifle the stone's stirrings, she took it off and stuffed it in her pack. She was content to be with Earl and the others and to touch at the thoughts of passing animals.

  Merlin was enormously relieved to have the ancient bowl swinging at his side again, but he hesitated to put its old powers to the test. Better to wait until they were back with Arthur, where he could concentrate on it. In the meantime, there would be several days' riding with his friends.

  Friends. He was surprised at how happy that term made him. Heather and Welly and even Troll were here not simply because they wanted to help in what he was doing, but because they wanted to help him, to be with him. The idea was so new it frightened him, though he dared hope that somehow in this new world it might last. Sometimes as they rode along, he and Heather exchanged smiles. He wondered what she was thinking and feeling but couldn't bring himself to harden things into words.

  The villages they passed while riding eastward were alive with rumor. It was said that a great army had arrived from the North led by Arthur Pendragon and the flame-haired Queen of Scots. They had joined with King Edwin of Wessex at the ancient hill fort above Uffington. From everywhere, would-be warriors, both men and women, were streaming to join them.

  The eagerness of these people to fight and face death awakened Merlin's uneasiness. He saw again the startled face of John Wesley, bloodily clutching the King's banner. How many other such faces would haunt them in the end?

  His somber thoughts lifted slightly when the chalk downs came into view. For miles, they formed a bold southern wall along the Vale of the White Horse.

  As they rode up the shoulder of the downs, Heather looked eagerly about her. A fresh, cool wind rolled in pale waves over the grass and blew wisps of hair about her face. “Did they have a lot of white horses here once?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” Merlin replied. “But the name comes from one horse in particular. It was so old, people had forgotten its origin, even in my time. I wonder if, after all these years, it could still be there?”

  “A horse?”

  “Yes.” Then his voice quickened with excitement. “Yes, look! Look at that hillside.”

  Heather squinted ahead. “I don't see anything, just some scars in the grass.”

  “But they form a pattern. Don't you see it?”

  She stared again. “Well, maybe. Oh, yes. Yes, I see it. A prancing white horse!”

  “Thousands of years ago, people cut that figure through the turf down to the white chalk. And ever since, others have kept it from growing over. I imagine no one knows why anymore, just keeping faith with the past.”

  Welly's gaze rose to the slopes above the stylized animal. “Is that the old fort up there where those people are?”

  Merlin's sigh was tinged with regret. “Yes, we're almost there.”

  As they rode up the steep hillside, what had appeared to be a natural plateau resolved itself into a large enclosure surrounded by a ditch and two massive banks. The ancient fortress's command over the sweeping countryside was dramatic. Only to the east did the shoulder of the downs obscure the view, and there a rock and turf watchtower was already being built.

  As they rode through the camp, only a few heads turned. Many recruits were new since Chester. But then a tall young man with a golden beard came running their way, a
nd attention swiveled onto them.

  “Merlin, you old truant, you're back! You wouldn't believe how I've missed you, prophecies or not.” The King smiled at the others. “I knew your friends would bring you back safe.” Then his gaze stopped at the troll. “And you have a new friend, I see.”

  Merlin nodded toward his one-eared companion. “Troll here is my loyal bodyguard. And”—he lowered his voice—“you may have noticed a few more recruits of his general sort in the shadows.”

  Arthur nodded. “They seem to be gathering in the hills beyond the Ridgeway. Most of our troops are keeping well clear of there, trying not to see anything. But I, for one, welcome the help.”

  “For one?” Merlin questioned. “And how are you and the fiery Queen of Scots getting on these days?” Merlin had seen the lady in question striding toward them, red hair tied back with a golden band.

  Arthur turned and addressed her. “My lady, this old wizard asks how you and I are getting on at present.”

  She smiled as she walked up to them. “About as well as two captive fell-dogs, always at each other's throat and lost without each other's company.”

  She deftly ducked Arthur's mock cuff, and Merlin smiled. He didn't need a bowl of prophecy to see how things were developing there.

  In the days that followed, they settled into camp life with the army growing around them. Merlin finally turned his attention to the bowl. He spent hours sitting by himself at the edge of camp, the bowl filled with water and swinging on a tripod before him.

  He saw visions, but they were confused, oddly removed and displaced, as though glimpsed through a distant window. The more he tried to look at them squarely, the more they slid away, fleeting visions at the edge of sight.

  What he did see was distorted and strange, twisting currents of time coiling through past and future toward a blinding blast of white hate. It had to do with Morgan, he knew, and with battle, but the only message he could extract was a vague compulsion, a need for movement to the southeast.