The Old Magic

by James Mallory

  “The second stage of wizardry is magic invoked through gestures of the hands and fingers: the Hand Wizard.”

  Frik passed his left hand over the goblet, and the rose curled, withered, and crumbled to dust. Frik set the goblet aside.

  “The third—and highest—stage of wizardry, whose exponents are the supreme embodiment of the mystic arts, are Thought Wizards, who need no words or gestures but by their will alone pierce the heavens and draw back the veil.”

  Mab gestured—Hand Wizardry, Merlin noted with pleasure at his own cleverness—and the goblet full of water leaped into the air to dash its contents into Frik’s face. To Merlin’s delighted surprise, the water stopped, hanging motionlessly in midair.

  “Of course,” Frik said smugly, “only the most supremely gifted personages become wizards of the third stage.” He preened.

  “Get on with it,” Mab snapped, impatient. She snapped her fingers, and the motionless water resumed its interrupted journey, drenching Frik thoroughly and even spraying Merlin with a few icy-cold droplets.

  Frik bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said. Mab flickered and vanished.

  Merlin gaped at the place where she’d been.

  “And now, Master Merlin, we will begin with a few simple drills,” Frik said. “Raise your right hand. …”

  After a couple of hours of Frik’s lecturing, Merlin found it impossible to keep his mind on what Frik was saying. To his dismay, it appeared that Frik intended that he learn everything about becoming a wizard tonight.

  “What on earth—or under Hill—is the matter with you, young sir?” Frik demanded in exasperation after yet another attempt to gain Merlin’s attention.

  “I’m hungry,” Merlin said simply. “The white horse took me away before I had my supper—and Auntie A was making my favorite, buttered parsnips—”

  He stopped, as Frik made apprehensive shushing motions.

  “A word to the wise, young sir. It’s just as well not to mention, well, difficult subjects where Madame can hear. It could be quite awkward, if you take my meaning.”

  Merlin didn’t. He was an active young man used to regular meals, and the fact that there was bad blood between his foster-mother and the Queen of the Old Ways did not occur to him. He regarded Frik hopefully.

  “Oh, very well, dinner it is,” the gnome grumbled. He gestured, and the worktable changed its shape and became covered with a checked red and white cloth.

  “Would M’sieur care to see the wine list?” Frik, too, had changed his form and dress. He bowed low, offering Merlin an enormous sheet of parchment that had a red tassel and cord holding the pages together.

  “No, of course not,” Frik said, whisking the card away just as Merlin’s fingers closed on it. “I have it. We shall leave the matter to Gaston, and allow inspiration to take its course—if that meets with M’sieur’s approval?”

  Merlin wasn’t quite sure what Frik had said. “Thank you for your kindness,” he answered doubtfully.

  To his relief, the meal appeared almost at once. It was a strange and delightful phenomenon, completely different from the simple home cooking Merlin had been used to. Dish after dish was presented to him on silver and crystal platters carried in by swarms of sprites. When he picked up the chicken with his hands, Frik tsked sadly.

  “I’m afraid we must teach you more than magic, Master Merlin,” the gnome said.

  Merlin stared at him blankly, a chicken leg in one hand and a piece of bread in the other.

  “Oh, go on, go on. Camelot wasn’t built in a day—or won’t be,” Frik said, waving permission at Merlin. “Or Pendragon, either. You’ll see, I’m sure. But everything in its own good time.”

  Merlin ate until he felt he could not hold another bite of the wonderful, unfamiliar food. If things like this were what magic was all about, he thought he was going to like it.

  “And now,” Frik said, whisking the dishes out of existence, “we can return to first principles. Repeat after me, Master Merlin: ‘Eko, eko, azarak …’”

  After several more hours of lecturing by the tireless Frik, Merlin began to nod off over his books, unable to keep his eyes open any longer no matter how hard he tried. Though Frik had remembered (when prompted) to feed Merlin, it had not occurred to the gnome that Merlin needed to sleep, since neither Mab nor Frik needed to sleep or eat as mortals did.

  “Master Merlin!” Frik shook him by the shoulder anxiously. “Master Merlin, is something wrong?”

  Merlin yawned, squinting up at Frik through sleep-blurred eyes. “Ohhh … What time is it?” he asked.

  “Time?” the gnome echoed blankly. “What has that got to do with …” his voice trailed off as comprehension dawned. “Oh, I say! You were asleep! It must be that touch of mortal in the woodshed; you know, I’ve heard it often comes out in the most amazing ways. Very well, then, come with me if you would, Master Merlin.”

  Still half-asleep, Merlin followed Frik out of the schoolroom and down a long corridor where hands of living stone came out of the wall, handing between them the pair of flaming torches that lit Frik’s and Merlin’s way. Groggy and disoriented, Merlin did not even note this latest wonder.

  “Here you are, sir, our best rooms, with hot and cold running water nymphs and a lovely view out over the mermaid’s lagoon …” Frik said in round plummy accents. He’d shed his schoolmaster’s costume for a tight red jacket with several rows of gold buttons down the front and a pillbox hat trimmed with golden braid.

  The walls were encrusted with clumps of crystals, as though they’d grown there. The furnishings consisted of a large wardrobe and a bed that Frik had plucked out of the time-stream because it had looked so inviting, all gleaming brass and bed-knobs and patchwork quilts. It was completely strange to Merlin, but not so much so that he didn’t recognize it as a bed. He staggered toward it and was asleep before he lay down.

  Frik tugged off his shoes and tucked him beneath the covers. When he was finished, he gazed down at the sleeping boy.

  “What strange little creatures you mortals be,” Frik said.

  “But how did you get all that mud on your skirts?” Mistress Ragnell demanded. “I think the dress is quite ruined, my lady.”

  “I fell into a sinkhole,” Nimue admitted, before she thought. She was determined to keep her promise to Merlin, but she hadn’t realized how difficult it would be.

  Aneirin and all the rest of her party stared at her with expressions of shock and disbelief. “And how did you get out again?” Aneirin asked. He handed his cloak up to her and Nimue wrapped it around herself, grateful for the warmth. Her gown was wet and the day had turned cold, and she already missed Merlin’s company.

  “A hermit,” Nimue said quickly. It was not quite a lie. She did not know for sure that Merlin was not a hermit, and such creatures were commonly known to live in woodlands such as Barnstable Forest.

  “Praise God that you were delivered from such a terrible fate!” Mistress Olwen said, crossing herself piously. The others—including Nimue—echoed her gesture out of habit.

  But Nimue suspected somehow that it was not God she had to thank for her rescue, but an older, darker power that the new Church wished very much to forget.

  A hour later the little party stood before the gates of Lord Lambert’s castle. Nimue was relieved to have reached their destination before the sun set. The forest that had been welcoming in daylight had become dark and forbidding with the onset of twilight.

  Lord Lambert was very solicitous once he heard of Nimue’s misadventure, and soon she was soaking in a hot tub of perfumed water, sipping mulled wine as her servants did what they could to repair her muddy gown.

  She wished she had not let Merlin leave. She was a noblewoman—she should have commanded him to stay beside her. She would have liked to present him to stuffy old Lord Lambert and seen the man’s eyes pop with shock, especially when Merlin did more of his magic.

  Nimue shook her head, smiling at her own foolishness. As well order the tide not to ebb as o
rder Merlin. Even having known him for only a few scant hours, Nimue already thought of Merlin as embodying the same untamed spirit of freedom that filled the forest and other wild and lonely places. She wished she had that sort of bold courage, but she suspected she did not. The rebellion, the defiance that others talked of so easily was something Nimue could not easily imagine in herself. The years she had spent at Avalon Abbey made her hate the thought of setting her will against someone else’s, of the willfulness and argument that led to open conflict—and, between nobles, to skirmishing and worse.

  Yet in Britain today, it seemed as if everyone must rebel in the end.

  When Merlin awoke again, he barely had time to remember where he was before Frik bustled in with a large tray covered with food. The gnome rushed Merlin through his meal, and then hustled him back to the library to resume his studies of First-Stage wizardry.

  “Why is there such a hurry?” Merlin wanted to know.

  “You must master every facet of the Art Magical before you can become Mab’s champion,” Frik answered. “We’ve no time for idle questions.”

  “But—” Merlin began. Frik hushed him and pointed to a stool at the end of the table. Today the table had been swept clean of books, and all that stood upon it was a large white candle in a heavy squat silver holder in the shape of a gargoyle. Merlin sat down at the foot of the table as he had been ordered, and Frik took his usual place at the head.

  Merlin wished Frik were willing to talk about things he wanted to know, and not just about the things Frik wanted him to know. What did they mean about him becoming Mab’s champion? Would that be like being a knight? What would he have to do?

  Frik rapped his cane on the end of the table, and Merlin, caught woolgathering, jumped guiltily.

  “Now, Master Merlin,” Frik said, “kindly light the candle.”

  Merlin looked around, but there was nothing in sight to light the candle with. He looked back at his teacher.

  Frik rattled off a quick sentence, and suddenly the candle was alight. Frik let it burn for a moment, and then snuffed it out.

  “Now you try, Master Merlin,” he said. “Just do what I did.”

  Merlin reached out and concentrated on the fat stub of white candle in the heavy squat silver candlestick.

  “Alika-nick-ka-nock-ka-nick, fire light and candlestick,” he chanted.

  At first Merlin felt slightly silly, but then he felt the same tingle he had on the day he’d made the branch grow, as if he were a jug and magic was some bubbling effervescent liquid that rushed up to fill him and then spill over. A spark leaped from his pointing finger to the candle wick, and the candle was alight.

  Frik carefully blew it out.

  “Now again, Master Merlin,” he said.

  “But I just—”

  “If you please, young sir,” Frik said severely.

  Sighing, Merlin did it again.

  They practiced for hours. Merlin lit one candle, then several candles all at once, then several candles one after the other, then candles he couldn’t see, candles in glass jars, candles in clay vases. The novelty of his new ability was wearing off fast, and Merlin wished that Frik would go on to something else, even if whatever it was would probably be just as boring. If he were going to be a wizard, Merlin wanted to do useful magic, magic that people could use—not just magic that did what people could do for themselves anyway, like light fires.

  He was about to suggest that to Frik when Queen Mab appeared, flickering into existence like a black flame. She looked expectantly at Frik.

  “Ah.” The gnome got to his feet. “Master Merlin and I were just about to … that is to say, he’s not quite ready yet to, ah—”

  “Go ahead, Merlin,” Mab cooed dotingly. “Show him what you can do.”

  Merlin gaped at Frik in consternation, and stared at the fat silver candlestick upon the table, but there was no help to be found there. Suddenly everything he’d learned that morning had gone right out of his head. Frik looked as nervous as Merlin felt, and motioned him to quickly go ahead.

  “Alika—Um … Alika—” Merlin stammered. What were the words? Five minutes ago he’d have sworn he’d never forget them! He stared at Frik in horror.

  “Go on, Master Merlin,” Frik said desperately.

  Merlin didn’t dare look at Mab. He clenched his fists and concentrated as hard as he could: light, light, light the candle. …

  “Fire light and candle—oh, thorns and weeds!” he shouted desperately, forgetting the end of the spell in his agitation.

  The candle remained unlit, but flowers of all description began to rain down from the ceiling: nasturtiums, daffodils, roses, daisies. They fell into the fireplace and burned with a hiss. They fell into the torches and the other candles and put them out. They landed on the table and the floor and the shelves with soft plopping sounds. And they showed no sign of stopping. They rained down especially hard over Frik, who soon found himself buried in flowers.

  “No, no,” Frik said irritably. “Alika-nick-ka-nock-ka-zam! That’s flowers, not flames!”

  The flowers rained down harder.

  “I’ll fix it,” Merlin said hastily.

  “No!” Frik howled, but it was too late.

  “Alika-nick-ka-nock-ka-zound!” Merlin yelled.

  An enormous alligator fell from the ceiling and landed directly atop Frik, flopping and snapping.

  “Removal, not reptiles!” Frik sputtered. The alligator vanished in a puff of smoke, only to be replaced by a gentle rain of salamanders, newts, and garter snakes.

  Merlin looked around to see how Mab was taking this, but the Queen of the Old Ways had vanished.

  After that occasion, Merlin never caught Mab watching him at his lessons again, though Frik assured him that Her Majesty was pleased with his progress. The training continued. Merlin’s day was portioned out in measures marked by the turning of the enormous hourglass that Frik kept on the mantel in the library, and his entire world narrowed to the Great Hall where he took his meals, the bedroom where he slept, and the library where he studied.

  He began to feel trapped, like a wild animal that dies when confined to a cage. Though Mab’s underground domain was vast, there was no outdoors to it. Even when he did manage to steal a moment to leave the palace itself, there was no sun nor moon nor stars above his head—only the vaulting roof of the cavern.

  When he’d asked about going outside, Frik had feigned puzzlement until Merlin had realized the gnome was deliberately refusing to give him an answer.

  Was there no way back to the world he’d left? What good was being a wizard if it meant he had to give up the feel of the wind and the smell of the long grass in the summer?

  Three turns of the hourglass to lunch. Six turns to dinner. Three more turns to bedtime, then start again. Each day was exactly like the last, until Merlin’s head felt stuffed to bursting with the knowledge it now contained.

  “Why do I have to memorize all these incantations if I’ll never have to use them?” Merlin grumbled. He gazed at Frik mutinously. By now he’d graduated to lighting torches on the walls and fires in the fireplace with a single command, and he was tired of all of it. The Land Under Hill had lost its novelty value, and Merlin had begun to miss the freedom of the forest and his animal friends with a distracting intensity. He wanted out—back to the world in which he’d grown up.

  “We cannot always guarantee how far we will proceed in our studies,” Frik said pompously, “try as we may. Therefore, every step along the path leading to the exalted heights of the Wizardry of Pure Thought must be scaled. You’re doing quite well in Unnatural History and Technical Hermetics. As soon as you become proficient in summoning fire, we can proceed to memorizing the Twenty-Seven Basic Incantations for Most Purposes.”

  “What fun,” Merlin said, sighing.

  Every evening now, Merlin went to the Great Hall for his dinner.

  The Great Hall was a daunting place. Its silvery walls soared hundreds of feet into the air, toward a ceilin
g lost in shadows. High narrow windows of stained glass glittered with deep rich colors, flaring to brightness when sprites outside flew past them. Between the windows, the walls were hung with banners, each of which glowed with complex and unfamiliar heraldry. One was bright gold, with three hearts and three lions marching across it. Another was blue with a single golden lion. One had thirteen gold crowns on a blue field, another a bright golden woven star on a red field, and another, whimsically, had three silver mice on a black field, a speckled chevron dividing them. The walls of the Great Hall were bright with griffins and leopards and hawks, suns and moons and stars.

  “All the devices which you see were borne by knights in my service,” Mab told him proudly.

  Merlin was seated at Mab’s right hand at the long refectory table that filled the Great Hall. The table itself was a single sheet of black glass, yards long, that hung in midair without any visible means of support. Merlin was not able to count the number of chairs around it. Every time he tried he lost count. But no matter how many chairs there were, the only ones that were ever occupied were his and Mab’s. Frik did not join them; at mealtimes the gnome transformed himself into the perfect servant, and waited obsequiously on the pupil he usually badgered. His behavior puzzled Merlin, but it didn’t seem possible for him to ask Frik about it.

  “What happened to them?” Merlin asked.

  “They died,” Mab said in her husky serpent’s voice. “And left me all alone.”

  I won’t leave you, Merlin thought, but somehow he could not bring himself to say the words aloud. It was almost as if they weren’t true, though he believed they were. The idea of becoming Mab’s champion was one that disturbed him more and more in a way he could not quite explain.

  “Tell me more about the Old Ways,” Merlin asked instead. Both Mab and Frik were quite willing to tell him that becoming a great wizard meant bringing back the Old Ways. Mab and Frik spoke of them as if everyone knew what they were, but Merlin had little idea of what the Old Ways involved save having the magical powers to do precisely as one chose. He was beginning to realize that neither Blaise nor Ambrosia had ever discussed the Old Ways in any detail, and he did not feel comfortable exposing his ignorance to the Queen of Fairy.