Most of those crowding around were watching one of the other boxes where a man was talking. Boring, Heather thought. Then abruptly the story stopped on her box, and a man was talking there as well. The shopkeeper reached an arm through the back and turned up the sound.
“… about the crisis. The Prime Minister's warning was issued at eleven forty-five this morning. So far there has been no reply from the Russians. But in Washington, the ultimatum issued by the President yesterday has spurred an emergency session of Congress. We switch now to our Washington correspondent.”
Another face appeared on the screen. Heather glanced away and noticed the worried looks on the faces around her. She wished they'd show the people with horses and long dresses again. She picked another candy from the bag and began licking off the brown coating.
Suddenly Welly was tugging at her arm. “Come here. I want you to see something.” His voice was strained, and he looked ghastly. Heather wondered if he'd eaten too many candies.
“Look at that!” he said when he'd dragged her down the street. In front of them was a shallow wooden stall with folded piles of printed paper on the counter.
“At what? ”
“Those are newspapers. They were printed out every day. Look at the date on these.”
She stepped over and examined the papers. It took her awhile to find the dates above big black words like “Latest Crisis” and “New Ultimatum.” She looked from one paper to another. Suddenly she understood. Fear slammed into her like a club.
“Oh, no! That's the date!”
Welly nodded. “The war, the bombs, the beginning of the Devastation.”
“And we're in London! The only bomb that fell in England fell here.”
“Now we know why Morgan—”
His words were cut off by a horrible scream. The wailing rose like a banshee's cry, filling the air with high keening.
The effect on the people around them was intense. There was a second's pause, then everyone began running somewhere. Children cried, and mothers scooped them up and ran off. Customers poured out of stores, and shopkeepers locked up immediately after them. People everywhere were yelling and screaming, car horns blared, and the streets were clogged with hurrying vehicles.
In the midst of the mounting chaos, Heather and Welly stood frozen with horror. Everyone was running, but there was nowhere to run. Death was hurtling toward them, and there was no escape.
CALLED TO DOOM
Seated on the lone hill, Merlin slowly chewed the food Troll had brought him. He scarcely tasted it, but he knew his neglected body needed the strength. His movements were cool and mechanical. He felt emotionally empty and hoped that if he could stay that way, the pain might fade.
He finished eating, then stood up, unfastening the bowl from his belt. Deciding against using the tripod, he walked to where bare chalk showed like bone through the grass. Raising the gleaming bowl above his head, he turned slowly, exposing it to all four directions. Then, seating himself on the earth, he held the bowl at eye level, tracing a thin finger along the interweaving patterns and murmuring the invoking spell. Setting the bowl firmly into the chalk, he took up a waterskin and filled the bowl nearly to its snake-entwined rim. Whispering a final phrase, he hunched over, blew on the surface three times, and stared into the liquid. He focused his mind on the upcoming battle, on the need to see Morgan's plans.
Timelines and shadowy images swirled in the depths. Careless now of personal safety, he hurled the whole strength of his mind at the vision. But again it jiggled and sidestepped. He felt distantly the waves of power, hearing them like great music, but cracked and oddly out of tune. Briefly he caught the distorted image of a battlefield and felt a sense of place and of incredible importance. But before he could grasp even that one vision, it danced away from him and vanished in the familiar enigma, the explosion of white hate.
With a despairing cry, he smashed a hand against the bowl, staring blindly as it spun away, splashing water over the bare earth.
Clearly it was useless now—an outgrown toy, a thing hopelessly tied to the past. As was he! Was there no way he could fit into this world, to find, to understand its new strain of power? Was there even any reason for him to care anymore? Torn by despair, his mind pulsed like a raw, open wound.
Suddenly a new force hit him. Human need, a frightened cry for help. It sliced into him like a knife, and with it came a brief flash of understanding. Abruptly its plea was cut off by an alien blast of energy. It swept the call away and smashed into his own mind with incredible pain.
The wizard cried out and pitched forward to the ground.
Instantly the worried troll was beside him, slapping his face with cold flat hands. “Great Wizard! Not be dead. We need Wizard. Troll need Wizard. Please, wake up!”
Slowly Merlin began to hear and feel again, but his mind still throbbed with pain. It was minutes before he could speak even a whisper.
“Troll, I need your help.”
“Anything! Wizard say, Troll obey.”
He struggled to sit up, dizzily resting his head on his knees. “I felt it. Before I was attacked, I felt something new. I think, yes, I think I understand now. A little. But I must go somewhere, help someone first. It has nothing to do with Arthur or future battles. I'm useless there. So is that old hunk of silver.” He looked at the bowl lying lifeless on the grass. “Still, it did give me one thing, and it's important I pass that on. Troll, you must take a message to Arthur.”
His companion looked confused. “Great Wizard be better soon; he go.”
“No, I have to go elsewhere. You must tell him. Here, get me the map from the pack you brought.”
The troll scuttled off. When he returned, Merlin spread the ancient paper on the ground beside him and marked a spot with a lump of chalk.
“Take this to Arthur. Tell him he must move his army southeast to that spot immediately. I don't fully know why, but it is very important that if he is to meet Morgan's army, he do so right there. You understand all that?”
The troll nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, Troll understand. Can tell King. But what Wizard do?”
“If I can, I'll try to join him there, though I don't know of what use I'd be. Now go on, Troll, hurry with the message. They must leave right away.”
Obediently the troll trotted off, but he kept stopping and looking back, reluctant to leave the wizard. Merlin smiled encouragingly and waved until the other was out of sight. Then he sat on the ground in a weary heap.
Yet tired as he was, a tremulous smile played over his lips. True, the bowl was dead, a thing of the past. Magic tied to it had failed to bring anything but an infuriating, veiled sense of the future.
But that first blast of power, that was new. That was the new magic in all its force. And it had come to him when his mind had been torn open to human feeling, without any “thing” transmitting it—anything except the links of friendship and need. As if a curtain had finally been torn aside, Merlin began to see how this new magic must work.
Eagerly now, he stood up. With that pleading cry had come a brief picture, and a fearful one—places of power, places he knew. Heather might not need his companionship, but she needed his help. He would go there.
But that would mean a hard day's ride, and time was short. There was one other way, though he hesitated to take it. It meant using a sort of magic he had never liked. And now, exhausted as he was with his fast and his efforts at seeing, he relished it even less. He wouldn't even be able to take his staff. But perhaps he didn't need that, and there really was no choice.
The sun had already set, leaving a bloody smear against the western horizon. The evening air was cold and fresh. Breathing deeply, he looked up into the wide, beckoning sky. Like dry leaves, whispered words blew from him.
Slowly his shape began to shrink and thin. He stretched out his arms and they spread into wings. With a shrill cry, he launched himself into the air.
The hawk flew off toward the sunset, the last rays rippling his feathe
rs with gold. With powerful thrusts and long, soaring glides, he sped on and on. The land below him darkened into night, but the sky was his world now. Cold wind slid beneath his wings. Smoothly he rode the wind, climbing the sudden warm gust that wafted up from the earth, that lifted him nearer to the stars. Starlight glimmered faintly on his wings; it glinted in his black eyes; it called to his mind.
His mind was a hawk's, and only with a struggle could he hold to any sense of human purpose. He had a goal and he flew there, but his thoughts were of the flight.
There were thoughts, too, of a hawk's body. He fought them, but inside the small, feathered body, hunger grew. He needed food; he needed warm flesh. Slowly he dropped lower and lower to the earth, his course veering into a wide circle, sweeping back over a field. He hovered motionless in the air until there came a twitch of movement below. Like a stone, he plummeted to the earth, talons extended. He heard the squeal, felt claws sink into fur and flesh. Then he was eating, beak splattered with blood, warm gobbets of meat sliding down his throat. Refreshed, he preened his feathers, then rose into the air again. Only the tiniest corner of his mind felt revulsion.
He headed straight to the southwest. The waning moon rising behind him cast a watery light over the land below. It transformed his feathers to purest silver. The ecstasy of flight could carry him on and on.
But there was somewhere he was supposed to go, somewhere below. He cared nothing for that now; he wanted only to fly. Yet the thought dragged at him, drawing him closer to the earth.
He shifted his gaze downward to shapes that the moonlight showed sliding beneath him. There, below him now, that was what he sought. His flight circled back, echoing the shape below.
A great circle of earth and stone. The standing stones were far fewer than when his human mind had known them, the buildings more plentiful. He circled again. One ancient stone avenue was gone entirely, but another struck off to the south and east. He swooped along its course until it, too, petered out, and he glided up over a ridge. His mind's vision faded, and the strength of his small bird's body was fast failing.
He must land, touch the earth. Ahead to his right rose a tall cone-shaped hill. With weary wings he flapped toward it; no goal now but to rest. The flat summit rose toward him, and he stretched out his feet to meet it. Weakly he fluttered to the grass. Sleep blew over him before he could fold his wings.
It was the rising sun that finally roused him, brushing warmly against his eyelids, coaxing them to open. When they did, he looked at the appendage stretched out on the grass and wondered why it had no feathers.
Shivering, he remembered and sat up. He hated shape-changing. Others had more of a knack for it and could slip in and out of bodies, always staying in control. It was the sort of skill Heather might well have.
Heather! It was her call that had brought him here. Here?
He looked around. Yes, Silbury Hill, and before that the Avebury circle. But this surely had not been his goal; it had been … His gaze wandered over the horizon, then stopped at a dark grassy scar on a ridge below. The Long Barrow!
He scrambled to his feet. His legs wobbled beneath him, and he was hungry. But his stomach churned at the memory of his last meal. Shunting the thought aside, he hurried to the edge of the hill and clambered down. The ease of flight did not even tempt him now. The earth felt wonderfully solid beneath his feet.
From the foot of the hill, he struck off across fields to the barrow-topped ridge. At its base he found two horses tied to an old stone gate. Grimly he looked up and began to climb, following a faint trail in the weedy grass. Halfway up, something leaped at him. Two paws slammed against his chest; two tongues licked his face.
“Rus! Down, boy. Glad to see me, are you? Where's your mistress?”
Immediately the dog calmed down. Whining, he walked slowly up the hill looking frequently over his shoulders as Merlin followed. When they reached the stones at the barrow's entrance, the dog stopped and, slinking up against Merlin's legs, began whimpering.
“I know, Rus. I have no desire to go in there either.”
“And you needn't bother to, Merlin. She's not there.”
Startled, he looked up. A woman stood on top of the mound, gazing down at him with cool green eyes.
“Morgan,” he said resignedly. Beside him, the whimpering dog pressed harder against his legs.
She laughed. “Merlin, you are so predictable, it's funny. Each time, I trap you with the same bait.”
“Bait?”
“People, Merlin. Love.” She walked lightly down the mound and sat on a flattened stone, swinging her legs like an innocent young girl.
“You need people, Merlin. You may spend lifetimes denying it, but you do. That's why you've never been as good a magician as I.I need only power. I feed on it, grow strong on it. But you need to love and be loved. It weakens you—to say nothing of how easy it makes you to trap.”
“To trap? What do you mean? That attack might have been yours, but not that first call.”
Frowning thoughtfully, the woman plucked a gorse sprig and crushed it in her hands. “No, that was hers, all right. And stronger than I expected. She does have an odd sort of power, that one. But when it comes to dealing with people, she's as weak as you are.”
Laughing, she scattered gorse over the ground. The cold air turned briefly tangy with its scent. “I admit, the amulet didn't work as well on her as I had hoped. After Brecon, she should have been drawn to use it until it ensnared her. She kept fighting it, even ignoring it. But then, it was old and I suspect its powers had gone a little flat. It worked in the end, though.”
“Amulet? What did … ?”
“The best part is that what finally brought her was thinking she was coming here to save you from dire danger. Ironic, isn't it? ”
“To save me? But she … but the note …”
“Ah, yes, the note. A nice little frill of mine, don't you think? I couldn't resist. A chance to twist the knife and let you wallow in self-pity while I laid the trap.”
For all his long life, Merlin had hated this woman. Suddenly, forgetting all his powers, he lunged at her like an animal. Startled, she fell back, slapping him away with a blast of power.
“Temper! Don't lose your subtlety, Merlin dear. Oh, I will miss you! This time I really must dispose of you permanently. But then there will be no one to appreciate the finesse of my powers.”
Merlin had been shaking with anger, but suddenly he laughed until great gusts of laughter battered the cold evening air. “Powers? No, Morgan, your powers are nothing! They're tattered, dying relics. I've only just seen it, but surely you've feared as much. Your amulet, my bowl—they are things, cold, lifeless things. In this new world, trying to channel power through them is like using stone tools when iron is at hand. I don't know what you tried with that amulet, but Heather, novice that she is, was able to resist because she is part of a new power.”
“You're quite mad!” Morgan's eyes flared with anger; then she leaned back and laughed derisively. “I almost hate to put you away now, because that would be a mercy. And you deserve much, much worse.”
The wizard's smile was grim. “You said a moment ago that your power was greater than mine because you had no need for people. Perhaps that was true once, Morgan, but not now. The strongest new magic comes from people, not things. It comes from their hopes, their fears, their ties with each other. Your amulet worked in the end only because it used Heather's need to help … to help someone she cared for.”
His look was pitying now. “You are still a person of power, Morgan, as am I. But keep trying to use it in the old ways, and it will prove a sterile power. You will be helpless.”
“Helpless?” She jumped up, glaring at him. “In a short time, your precious Arthur will see just how helpless I am! I will defeat him and his army utterly. I've worked for years, Merlin, wedging a crack in time, and through it I will call an army, an army of the dead. They will come in such numbers, wreaking such despair, that Arthur's mere huma
n army will freeze in horror, freeze while my forces seize the victory!”
Merlin recalled his persistent vision, the twisting timelines, the blast of white heat and hatred, then that one glimpse of a battlefield. Nothing made sense. “A crack in time? Where could you—?”
“Enough, Merlin! It's been fun all these years, having an opponent almost worthy of myself. But your time is over!”
Reaching behind a stone, she pulled out a charred lump of wood. “Go join your puny friends, if they mean so much to you.” She tossed him the wood. “Catch!”
Instinctively he did. It was like clamping down on an explosive. His self shattered apart, its shreds spinning over an immensity of collapsing time.
Like a leaf, he was swept down an endless dark stream. Eternity flowed past. Then, after timeless time, he seemed to be caught by a web of roots, washed up against the base of a great tree.
Slowly the world stopped rocking beneath him. He felt the softness of grass, the solidity of earth. The air was gentle and warm. He opened his eyes. A massive oak tree spread above him. Beyond it was bright blue sky.
Dizzily he sat up. Beside him, Rus crouched on the grass, both faces looking bewildered. From behind them, a shrill barking shattered the air. Quickly Merlin looked around to see a small curly-haired dog yapping and straining at a leash. On its other end, a pale old man was holding him back and looking thoroughly aghast at the sight of Rus.
“Oh.” Hastily Merlin waved a hand over the mutant dog. One head and one tail became invisible.
Startled, the old man now shifted his gaze to Merlin and his fur-lined clothing. Then he yanked his dog away and went off muttering, “More of those crazy kids. What is the world coming to?”
Unsteadily Merlin got to his feet, looking around in vague recognition. Their world somewhere in the past. Then he glanced down at Rus and laughed. The visible head and tail were offset, leaving room for their invisible companions.
“Come on, you lopsided mutt, we've got to find Heather and Welly. Go on, find your mistress.”
Tomorrow's Magic Page 35