The Old Magic

by James Mallory

  This was how it would be, once the people welcomed Merlin as a savior. But Mab had to plan carefully in anticipation of that great day, so that everything would go as she wished.

  She’d been spying on Vortigern. After Queen Ganeida’s death, he seemed to have given up matrimony to concentrate on architecture instead. He was building an enormous castle in the west, named Pendragon in honor both of his own totem, and of the Great Dragon which was rumored to make its lair in that realm.

  The Great Dragon …

  The Great Dragon—Draco Magnus Maleficarum—was the last of its kind. Before Man, the creatures had ruled over the entire world, filling the sea, the air, and the land with their endless fiery combats. But as the eons passed, their numbers had dwindled until only this one was left, the last dragon, its existence little more than a myth. For centuries it had slept undisturbed in a deep cave beneath the soil of Britain.

  She’d change that. Vortigern needed something to worry about to take his mind off Uther. Left to himself, the royal barbarian would probably send assassins to Normandy to strangle the king-in-exile at his school-books. Mab didn’t want that. Once Vortigern no longer had to guard against threats from outside, who knew what might happen to Britain? Vortigern might stop persecuting his people and become a moderate, sensible ruler. He might even make his peace with Avalon, allowing the New Religion to spread its roots deeper into society than it had now.

  No, she couldn’t permit that.

  Reaching out, Mab sorted through a pile of the cracked, drained crystals whose proliferation had so puzzled Frik until she found one that still had some power in it. She raised it in her hand and concentrated on her crystal ball once more.

  The image of the Great Dragon appeared, curled in its cavern nest. Its hide was green and gold and brown, the color of the earth above, and its great wings were furled in sleep.

  Mab held the crystal out over the dragon’s image. Magic drained from the crystal, leaving it dull and inert, and sifted down into the dragon’s body, energizing it.

  Soon it would wake.

  And Vortigern would have more to worry about than a boy-king plotting in France.

  Frik hesitated outside Mab’s sanctum. He’d hoped to leave Merlin practicing Hand Wizardry on his own, but there was no point in attempting to get the boy to study when he was in this mood. It would probably be just as well to let Merlin have some time to himself; Frik was already late for his report to Mab on her protégé’s progress. She insisted on these meetings, even though Frik provided her with daily written reports, and there was nothing to do but go along with her.

  So far Frik had accomplished one of his goals: to keep Merlin from discovering his own uniquely human magical potential. Merlin had comparatively little taste for the disciplines of fairy magic, but Frik had Mab to satisfy, and Mab wanted Merlin to become her champion, a Wizard of Pure Thought who would supplant Vortigern and rule Britain as her instrument. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem possible to have things both ways.

  The magic lessons had been going badly ever since Merlin had come back from Anoeth and begun to study the second stage of wizardry. His progress had become slower with each day, and Frik knew why. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

  Merlin’s heart had already made the choice his mind refused to consider. The changeling had chosen to side with his human half.

  The boy was homesick.

  “Well, how’s he doing?”

  Mab pounced upon Frik the moment he entered her chamber. She looked like some exquisite and dangerous predator. Her jewel-colored eyes shone against the dark painted circles that surrounded them. Her skin shimmered pallidly. Frik realized with a pang of discovery that Mab was as hard and glittering as anything in her crystal kingdom.

  “You’ve read my report?” Frik asked, hedging.

  He had not dared to don any of his many disguises for this meeting, comforting though they would have been. Mab’s temper was too volatile these days, fluctuating between impatience with Merlin’s slow progress toward wizardly perfection and delight at his simple presence in her realm. And what Frik had to tell her would not improve matters.

  “Yes, yes,” Mab said peevishly, “but I want your personal impressions.”

  This is it, then. Mentally Frik crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.

  “He’s certainly got the ability,” Frik began, hoping to start on a high note. “He could be the greatest. …”

  “I knew it!” Mab broke in eagerly. She didn’t seem to—or didn’t wish to—hear the equivocation in Frik’s words.

  “But he never will be,” Frik added quickly, wanting to have the worst out of the way immediately, before she could say he’d misled her. Mab froze, staring at him intently. Even the gems she wore didn’t glitter, she was standing so still.

  “He won’t get past being a Hand Wizard. He doesn’t want to do it. In his heart, he doesn’t like magic,” Frik said in a rush, realizing the truth of the words as he spoke them.

  For a moment he thought she was going to take it well. Then she flung down the crystal she’d been holding. It crashed into the pile of expended crystals heaped in one corner of the chamber, and caused them to cascade noisily across the floor.

  “Doesn’t like it?” Mab hissed in a bloodcurdling whisper.

  She rounded on Frik, her face very close to his, inspecting him minutely as if by the force of her will she could change the truth behind his words. He’d known she wouldn’t like the news, but somehow he’d also assumed that she would be as resigned to the facts as he was.

  “I—I—I know it’s shocking, but that’s the way it is,” Frik stammered uncomfortably. It was hard for him to imagine not “liking” magic—to Frik, magic was as universal, as inevitable as the air itself. Yet the fact remained and Frik, at least, was willing to face it: Merlin disliked magic.

  Mab spread her arms threateningly, seeming to tower over her servant in that moment. The gnome half closed his eyes and did his best to efface himself, even though Mab’s face was inches away from his own. “We’ve got to make him like it! I have work for him to do,” Mab proclaimed.

  Even though he’d exerted himself to deliberately mislead and manipulate the boy, Frik had developed a sneaking admiration for Merlin—his resourcefulness, his stubborn human integrity. Merlin’s dual heritage was tearing him apart, anyone could see that. The boy was suffering, yet all Mab thought about was her plans, her desires.

  “The truth is, he wants to go home!” Frik said, goaded into honesty.

  “Home?” In an eyeblink, Mab was on the other side of the chamber, her image shimmering with fury. “Home?” she repeated, as if demanding an answer from the hoarded crystals. “Home?” she said again, at Frik’s side and more furious than before.

  “Bring him to me.”

  But Merlin had unwittingly placed himself beyond the reach of Mab’s wrath. When he’d left the schoolroom, he’d gone looking for some place that didn’t remind him of his failures. But no matter where he turned, all he found was vast underground caverns, deep subterranean lakes, forests of crystal that he’d seen a thousand times before. The immense oppressive weight of the rock seemed to press down on him, crushing him into immobility, and Merlin yearned desperately for the vast open spaces of the forest in which he’d spent his childhood. He wanted to go home.

  Home. He slid down the wall and sat down on the floor, leaning his head and back against the wall. The cold of the stone sank into his flesh like some malign opposite of sunlight, its chill making his muscles ache. He held out a hand and stared at his fingertips. Right hand … left hand … it didn’t matter: In his heart, Merlin knew that he wasn’t living up to his full potential. He’d been summoned here into the Land of Magic to learn, but all he’d learned was that he’d never match Mab’s skill with magic—or even Frik’s. He was not willing to do the things that they did.

  But what could he do—what was he supposed to be, if not her champion? He’d wanted to do right, to be good, and he was
farther away from understanding what that was than he’d ever been. Merlin closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, wishing he could breathe in the familiar scents of home. But all he could smell was dampness and stone and water, the sterile dead odors of the crystal caves. The sense of being trapped, imprisoned in a desolate vault was frighteningly strong.

  He shook his head, almost overwhelmed by the sudden bleakness of his thoughts. I don’t belong here. I don’t know what to do. I need someone to show me the way! he thought desperately.

  In the rock above his head a spark of light blossomed. As it grew in intensity, the rock seemed to become transparent, until for all its massiveness it seemed as insubstantial as water. And through that water a glowing figure moved, dressed all in a long flowing silver gown. A necklet of live fish swam like brilliant captive stars around her neck.

  “Why did you call me, Merlin?” the Lady of the Lake asked.

  Merlin turned toward the voice, startled, and saw a woman he had never seen before. Her eyes were the pale blue of wintry skies, and her hair and eyebrows shimmered with the whiteness of fresh snow. She moved languidly, her hands fanning to hold her place, as though the stone in which she manifested to him was in truth the liquid it appeared to be. He could tell she was a powerful creature of magic—yet he did not know who she was. Mab had introduced him personally to most of the denizens of her realm and told him about the rest … but who was this pale shining creature?

  “I didn’t. …” Merlin began.

  “You did,” the bright lady corrected him, smiling.

  She seemed to radiate a wonderful unfettered aura of freedom; a stillness that was not passivity, but instead such a mystic insight and enlightenment that Merlin sensed she had no need to rush fruitlessly about constantly doing things. It was in some strange way the opposite of all the magic that Merlin had learned in his sojourn in the Hollow Hills: a wisdom that lay not in doing, but in knowing, and Merlin’s heart opened to it as if this were his true nature.

  “Who are you?” he asked. He sat up, leaning toward her and pushing the hair out of his eyes.

  “I am the Lady of the Lake,” she told him. Her voice was soft, humming with power, a chorus of possibilities. “How are you getting on with my sister Mab? We two don’t get on.”

  The Lady of the Lake was Mab’s sister? That made matters even more puzzling. Merlin trusted his instincts, and his instincts told him that the Lady of the Lake was good and wise. It seemed as if Mab’s decision not to speak of her sister must be deliberate, but what possible reason could there be for it? Were they enemies? As far as Merlin knew, all the fairy kind agreed with Mab’s plan to bring back the Old Ways—how could someone whose own existence was at stake not wish to see the Old Ways brought back?

  “Why?” he asked, with a directness verging upon bluntness.

  The Lady blinked slowly, her hands moving with hypnotic deliberation at her sides. “I don’t approve of what she’s been doing,” the Lady answered. Her voice was remote. “Creating you and letting your mother die like that.”

  The words seemed to press down on him as if they were the stone that hung over his head. His mother! He’d visited Elissa’s simple grave deep in the forest many times, wondering about the woman who had given him life. Aunt Ambrosia had never spoken of his mother to him, and now, with an awful certainty, Merlin knew why. It was because his Aunt Ambrosia had been careful never to speak against Queen Mab.

  “She let my mother die?” he said slowly.

  A sensation for which he had no name was growing in Merlin’s chest. It was as destructive as fire, as cold as the water of the Enchanted Lake, as hard and unyielding as the crystals that Mab so loved.

  “Oh, dear,” the Lady said mournfully. Her pale beautiful face remained expressionless, though her voice held regret. “I shouldn’t have told you, but it just slipped out.”

  She let my mother die. Mab let my mother die. Merlin was stunned, as if he were trying to understand a lesson beyond his comprehension. He got to his knees and then to his feet, hugging himself against the cold of the cave and gazing into the Lady’s moon-pale eyes.

  Somehow he’d always assumed that Mab cared for him as a mother should. Aunt Ambrosia had loved him, and he’d presumed that Mab, who’d created him, loved him just as his foster-mother did. He’d been able to do all the strange and sometimes frightening things she asked of him because he’d thought she had his ultimate good at heart.

  But Mab had killed his mother, and the illusion of her compassion was stripped away, leaving Merlin enveloped in confusion and bewilderment. Why did Mab want him if she did not love him? If she was not being honest about that, what else had she been dishonest about? Did she truly want him to be her champion? Did she mean him to kill for her?

  Ambrosia would know. His foster-mother would understand his bafflement and distress. She would know how to straighten things out. She would tell him the truth.

  “I want to go home,” Merlin said in a low voice.

  “You should,” the Lady of the Lake said. “Ambrosia is very ill.”

  “No,” Merlin said in horror. He understood in that moment how Nimue had felt as she sank into the quicksand: Safety was visible, but it was slipping away and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Now Merlin’s security was disappearing with the danger to his foster-mother Ambrosia.

  “I have to go to her.” He straightened, and gazed into the Lady’s face. “Tell me how to reach her.”

  When he left Mab, Frik went to the classroom, to Merlin’s bedroom, to all the places in Mab’s palace where he usually found the boy. There was no sign of him.

  “Where is he?” Frik demanded in frustration, giving up and returning to the classroom. If gnomes had possessed imaginations, Frik would have said that the room looked more than empty; it looked abandoned, as though Merlin was never going to return here.

  But that was ridiculous.

  “He’s gone,” Mab growled, appearing behind him.

  Frik tried on several different expressions, none of which really fit the occasion. “Gone?” he bleated.

  “He’s on his way home to that viper-tongued witch, Ambrosia.” Mab’s eyes gleamed with fury, and at that moment Frik was very glad not to be her enemy.

  “But—But—But—But how can he get across the lake?” Frik demanded indignantly. The Enchanted Lake was the border between human realms and the Land of Magic. Merlin had not been back in human lands since the day he’d come to the Hollow Hills—even the Wild Hunt, which crossed through all lands and all times, brought the magic of its own domain with it, and no one left the Hunt without Lord Idath’s consent. Frik had been certain Merlin could not escape.

  And the boy should not even have known he wanted to escape, much less have been able to. Not until Time had done its work in the mortal realms, and all who had a claim on Merlin’s human heart were safely dead.

  “My dear sister …” Mab whispered, venom in her voice. There had never been war between the Mistress of Magic and the Lady of the Lake, for their interests had always been too different, but now—or so it seemed to Frik—things were about to change. If the Lady of the Lake had helped Merlin to cross her territory and return to human lands …

  “No!” Mab cried. “Vortigern betrayed me—and now Merlin? Why must everything I love turn to ash? I won’t allow it—I won’t lose him!” Mab vowed.

  “But Madame—” Frik began. Soft words and fair dealing were the only way to get Merlin’s cooperation, and Mab wasn’t inclined toward either at the moment.

  Mab turned on him, her breath coming in a hiss. She gestured, and with the merest thought sent Frik flying across the chamber into the pile of played-out crystals. He landed with a great crash, and at the moment of his impact, Mab clenched her fists against her chest and vanished.

  Merlin did not need the Lady of the Lake to tell him that he was in danger. It seemed to him that he’d been blind and foolish all the time he’d been here in the Land of Magic. Mab did not hate him—but she did no
t love him, either. All she loved was her plan to make the Old Ways supreme once more with Merlin as their defender, and she would destroy anyone who got in her way.

  Even the one she had appointed as her champion.

  As Merlin inched along the cavern paths, the Lady of the Lake swam through the rock above as if it were the water of her lake. Merlin followed her glow through chambers in the crystal caves that he had never seen before, along a twisting route that made him edge carefully between boulders or walk along hunched over to pass beneath the tilting roof. He knew that Mab’s underground kingdom was dangerous to any but his mistress, but at the moment he didn’t care. Nothing was more important than getting home.

  Home to those who did love him. How could he simply have forgotten about Ambrosia, about Nimue, about all his friends? He’d never even tried to send Ambrosia word of how he was!

  That was Mab’s doing. Mab’s was the fairy glamour that clouded minds and led wills astray. Frik had taught him what they were—creatures of magic whose magic was based on illusion and misdirection—but Merlin had thought it was only part of his lessons and never applied it to himself. He knew better now. He’d been so arrogant—he’d thought that just because she wanted him as her champion she wouldn’t do the same things to him that she did to everyone else.

  I’ve been such a fool!

  “Merlin …” The Lady’s echoing voice broke into his thoughts, and Merlin realized that for the last several minutes he’d been able to hear and smell water. They must be getting near to the cave mouth that opened onto the Enchanted Lake—but without Frik to guide the boat through the lagoons and canals that led to the entrance, Merlin knew he had no chance of reaching the outside.