The Mage Returns

by Christina D Stewart

  The furniture disappeared and in its place were floor to ceiling shelves filled with leather bound books. Each deep-brown volume had its title inscribed with a flowing gold script that was unknown in any modern language. Merlin took a deep breath, walked to the bookshelf to the right of the door, stretched out his right arm and gently rolled his fingertips across the leather spines of the books on the eye level shelf. He walked across the door to the other side of the room and ran his fingertips along that shelf as he walked slowly to the corner. Slowly but surely, he walked around and around the room touching every one of these old friends on every shelf as if to satisfy himself that after all these years, they had really come back to him.

  On finishing, and arriving back at the door he made a careless flicking gesture to a metal desk and leather office chair that stood in ugly isolation across from the door. A giant roll top desk, of highly polished, straight-grained maple instantly replaced the metal desk. As the metal desk disappeared he began his gesture to the big leather office chair, hesitated, and changed his mind. He saw no reason to get rid of the most comfortable chair he had ever owned.

  A flip of his wrist and the roll top slowly rolled up into the top of the desk. The desk was littered with sheets of paper and at least a dozen fountain pens. Several large books stood upright in the largest cubbyhole and the other spaces were filled with the flotsam and jetsam of centuries of penmanship.

  Merlin pulled the chair away from the desk, pushed it to the side, gently sat down in it, leaned back and swung his ankles up onto the desk's writing surface. He crossed his legs at the ankles, and entwined his fingers behind his head. Comfortably ensconced, once again surrounded by his books, he shut his eyes and allowed his mind to wander and run free.

  It wasn't an aimless wandering, Merlin seldom did anything, however small, without a reason. Both his friends and enemies over the centuries slowly but surely understood this small quirk in his behaviour. Merlin seldom relaxed, seldom took time for himself, and even when it appeared as if he was relaxing or sleeping, his mind and spirit moved restlessly through the world.

  He knew what he was looking for. He done this more than once in the past and knew what his role would be now that the lady had freed him. Both he and the Lady knew he was indispensable for what was to come.

  Fully relaxed, his mind travelled up into Wales. There was simply no indication of his quarry and Merlin's mind started to turn over faster and faster threatening to draw him out of his trance.

  He fought back the emotions and managed to continue sitting motionless. He relaxed himself even further and let his mind wander, letting it pick through the stories and debris of the past thousand years. It wasn't idle searching, he was searching for one specific item.

  A thousand years ago he understood deep in his soul that he was about to pay a price, a very large price for a single moment of weakness. He knew the lady would ensnare him, he could see that coming and there was nothing he could do about it. He knew this was his fate for the immediate future and like many things in his world he simply accepted it. His only mistake was in not understanding how long his servitude would last. He had missed any signs that it would last this long.

  Many centuries ago, he'd gone up a hillside in Wales searching for a specific oak tree. He knew it was there, was young and had more vigour than the other trees. The strength of this specific tree would ensure its survival for the time he'd be away. No longer being able to see his full future, he assumed he would return before the death of the tree to reclaim his power.

  He had found his tree. It was a striving English oak, already taller than its neighbours with a good clear grain and a spreading root system that would suck all the energy the tree would require in the generations to come.

  He'd looked at the 6-foot tall wooden staff he carried in his right hand. Examined it closely and reached out with his mind and spirit to feel the power within the simple piece of wood. It was his conduit to the world of earth, wind and fire and it had served him well for centuries.

  He focused on the staff and transferred much of his power to it. He knew he wouldn't be able to use this power or focus it while in thrall to the Lady. As he felt his life energy leave his body to enter the staff, he staggered with the sudden weakness.

  He'd held the staff at arm's length straight in front of him, and trembled with the exertion of holding something containing that much power in his newly weakened body.

  He'd placed the staff against the straight trunk of the oak and watched in sadness as the tree and the staff melded together into one. As the last vestige of the staff disappeared within the trunk, his left knee buckled and he almost fell. His right hand grasped the tree trunk and held himself upright. In that moment, in that final moment, he saw his immediate future laid out in front of him. He sighed and dropped his chin to his chest in understanding.

  He took two steps backward away from the tree and examined the trunk carefully. There was no sign of his staff and there was nothing marking this tree for common folk to find. The only witnesses to this act of desperation were the wind, the sky, and himself. Not even the Lady had seen this final act.

  He smiled. This tree would survive, and when my trials are finished and my sentences served, I'll retrieve it.

  I may be old, but I'm not stupid, he thought. A grim smile played at the side of his mouth trying, and failing, to turn into a real grin.

  The sound of a raven mocking him rang out and he'd turned and looked up at the beady-eyed bird who was settling onto a branch about 20 feet above him in the nearby tree.

  "Old friend you've come to say goodbye," he said.

  The bird cocked its head looked at him and flew away.

  The old man chuckled aloud. Sometimes a bird is just a bird, he thought.

  Looking back at the tree, he sent the thought, goodbye old friend, I'll see you in a few short years.

  Turning, he strolled down the hill as if he had no cares in the world. Indeed, he didn't as he knew his fate and what awaited him in the gentle rolling lake below. He did know he'd survive. That much he could see.

  Merlin Finds His Staff

  Now, the price of his mistake fully paid, Merlin needed his staff to reclaim his full power. Sitting in his favourite chair, holding it and himself motionless, he closed his eyes.

  As the darkness settled in around him, every muscle in his body relaxed, his shoulders drooped, his chin rested on his chest, and he slumped deeper into the chair. With his body relaxed and helpless, his spirit-mind began to lighten and float. He saw the slender tether of light reaching out of his body to his spirit-mind, tested it and understood it held firmly.

  Knowing he could return to his body with a single thought, Merlin floated free. He toured around the apartment slowly taking in every aspect of his modern life. The newly reappeared shelves full of old, leather bound books brought him joy. The well-ordered shelves were a high contrast to the stacks of magazines and news reports scattered everywhere and perched on every surface in the house. He wandered from room to room. Every room was the same, full of books, full of magazines and old newspapers. The only clean spot in the entire apartment was his massive old oak desk. Spotless and gleaming under ages of beeswax, the desk stood as a beacon in this ageless, experience–crammed life of his.

  He expanded his consciousness, searching for the hillside in Wales where he'd left his staff. He wandered up the hillside, then down and around and realized the tree and the staff were no longer there. Merlin fought down a moment of panic. He let his mind run further. Let it expand thinner and thinner searching out across Wales and then up into Scotland where the remnants of Celtic magic and fae were still strong. He searched around the Highlands and islands of the North where the fae were even stronger, but found nothing.

  He thinned out his energy even further and allowed it to roll southward across the lowlands of the Scottish border and down into England. A few seconds later he felt the spark, knew he'd found it, and focused all of his energies to reach out and br
ing the staff to him.

  He could tell the staff wanted to return to him, but it was bound and immobile. A string of curses rolled off his tongue in the ancient, long-lost language of Babylon. He concentrated his energy to see where and what restrained his power.

  "Bloody English," he said out loud and his eyes opened wide. If anybody had seen these eyes, they would have staggered away with fear implanted forever in their minds from the anger and lightning reflecting Merlin's soul.

  The oak he had used as a resting place for his power was now somewhere in Portsmouth. He'd have to find it, and manually take his power back.

  Why did the English always complicate things he muttered to himself.

  In his anger, he slammed back into his body and the resulting discharge of energy rattled everything in the cupboards, slammed all the the doors shut, and rocked every chair in the house back and forth.

  He heard the door lock snick open.

  Resigned to what he had to do, he stood.

  Merlin on the deck of HMS Victory

  Merlin got out of his car, closed the door carefully and silently, and slowly walked towards the entrance to the Portsmouth Dockyard tourist site. He'd dressed for the occasion with his oldest, and most favourite clothes - old, leather hiking boots, blue jeans and scuffed leather jacket over an old, faded blue, button-downed, denim shirt. His faded clothes matched the mood of the cold, storm-threatening night.

  The power was strongest here, but he still couldn't get a decent enough reading from it to pinpoint it. He knew he was close, but neither he nor the staff could quite get their signals to match. He had to get closer. He wasn't a poor man, one couldn't live for centuries without accumulating a significant amount of money, but he was delighted to be here at midnight to avoid the £35 entrance fee. The gate opened at his touch, and he walked unseen with only the night security lighting attempting, unsuccessfully, to produce his shadow.

  Once through the requisite shop at the entranceway, the locks easily opened to his touch, he slowly turned to face every part of the dockyard. Feeling for the source of the weak signal, he decided it was stronger straight ahead of him. He walked down the roadway, past the various museum buildings, towards an area where he could see masts jutting towards the sky. He raised his hand on an outstretched arm, as if he was shielding his eyes from the glare from the sun. It may have looked out of place on this midnight incursion, but doing so gave him a clearer picture of which one of the three ships was the critical one for his search. He isolated the middle ship and headed in that direction.

  He couldn't see the entire ship as it was in dry dock behind other buildings, but the three tall masts clearly stood out against the night sky overlooking the Thames. He ignored the rest of the jutting masts from the other vessels on display, focussing instead on the faint signal coming from HMS Victory the most famous ship in the British navy.

  That signal didn't increase in strength or tempo as he approached, but continued a steady but intermittent noise below the normal human threshold for hearing. Merlin wondered if whales could hear and recognize the subsonic, drum-beat pounding of a death march, or whether it was simply aimed at him.

  He looked at the grand old ship with her freshly painted hull and upper decks and shook his head ruefully at how low this historic sailing vessel had sunk to become a tourist trap. Gracing the London waterfront, he knew the wood and ship herself would have preferred to venture out on one last voyage. She would've preferred to die as she lived, a powerful memory and force on the world. Instead she sat as one who's time had come and gone and now moldered in a dry dock as a frozen reminder of what she'd once been.

  He stopped walking, looked at the ship, and wondered whether he was thinking about the ship or himself. "Am I relic on display as well, or am I something – a force to be reckoned with yet?" he said out loud.

  Guiltily he looked around quickly, and then smiled because there was no one in earshot to hear the ramblings of an old man. He clasped his hands behind his back, slowly walked the length of the Victory, turned at the magnificent bowsprit and paced, as if he was inspecting the ship, to the stern. Having accomplish this, he smiled because in doing so, he had triangulated the location of his staff. It stood squarely at the centre of the sailing craft in front of him.

  Pulling himself erect, and squaring his shoulders he marched to the gangplank. He stopped there and looked up at what was now a metal ramp with with fenced in sides and handrails instead of the simple wooden gangplank that was used when the boat was first launched.

  Things change, he thought, things change and not necessarily for the better. Taking slow steps, one by one, he ignored the handrail. I'm not at the point of needing a hand rail yet he thought, and added under his breath, "Stupid bureaucratic rules."

  On deck the interpretive signs were clear about where he should go and what he might consider looking at but he had only eyes the mainmast. It was too large to have been constructed out of a single tree. As a made mast, it was considered a work of art as the shipwrights had carefully joined some of the straightest-grained spruce in the entire Empire. He sent his power into the wood feeling deep within its core to the source of the signal - a length of good old English oak - put there for strength by those long-dead shipwrights. And within that 12"x12" oak heart was his staff.

  He smiled to himself with he thought it was good thing they didn't try to saw his staff in half. If a metal saw blade tried to penetrate or release the power within that wood, there was no telling what mayhem would have resulted. He laughed out loud and then glanced around. There were no other people within earshot.

  He walked smartly to the mast, looked at it, smiled and reached over with his right hand and leaned up against the mast. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and focussed all of his attention and power through his hand. He felt his power slice through the spruce like boiling water through a cube of ice, and only stop at the centre of the mainmast when he touched the chunk of old oak. As he touched the wood with his open, questing fingers, he directed all of his energy and power towards it. He called his staff's name, one that only he knew, silently out from that locked vault in his mind. He felt his hand tingle, he felt the power surge through it into the wood. The spruce gently vibrated around his arm as it transmitted the call through to its oak heartwood.

  Lying in the heartwood, right at the centre of that magical strength, was his staff. It quickened. It felt Merlin's call and in responding, drew upon the strength it had been husbanding for centuries.

  Merlin imagined his hand opening, pictured the staff moving away from the heartwood, felt it smooth well-worn surface touch his open palm. He closed his fingers around it and felt the staff's recognition.

  The moment the staff touched Merlin, it awoke from its deep hibernation. It recognized the hand, it felt Merlin's energy field and it surrendered itself as one does inside a marriage. In a very real sense Merlin and the staff had joined themselves both physically, spiritually and mentally and had supported each other down through the ages. The parting had been hard for both of them and had only been accomplished so successfully by mutual agreement and need.

  While not fully sentient by itself, the staff had a unique form of energy that enhanced Merlin's abilities. In turn, when in full partnership and contact with Merlin, the staff became self-aware. It was indeed like a marriage where each has its own powers and abilities and characteristics as individuals. But joined together, a good partnership lends each of them strengths beyond what each can achieve as individuals.

  The staff pulsed in rhythm to match Merlin's heartbeat. The two stood as one for ten seconds as every molecule in their respective selves rebuilt into their old partnership. When Merlin opened his eyes, they were once again a unified team of energy and persona.

  Merlin closed his eyes again to center all of his newly recovered power on the staff. He slowly but surely pulled the staff out towards him. As the staff moved through the wood, the two of them filled in behind them with wood of an equal density so the
mast would not be weakened. The closer it got to freedom, the stronger the staff became. A smile erupted on Merlin's face and he laughed out loud. He felt his feet want to break into a dance but restrained them.

  Merlin smiled and addressed the old ship in a soft whisper. "Old girl, my goal here today is to simply reclaim my own. My goal is not to hurt you. Please let it go."

  The staff moved a little quicker, quarter inch by quarter inch, towards Merlin. Merlin drew on their combined power and brought that magnificent piece of magic out into the modern world and freedom for the both of them.

  He laughed out loud as the shape of the wood appeared on the outside edges of the mast. Small sparks were shooting off every inch of his exposed skin with the immense power he and the staff were generating. There was a crackling in the air and Merlin smiled as he congratulated himself for being smart enough to do this at night to avoid the tourists.

  The staff stopped very briefly as it touched the wide iron bands encircling the mast. Merlin concentrated on the iron and created holes in it. It was a myth that pure iron stopped his power, but he didn't advertise the fact.

  When the staff emerged into the moonlight for the first time in the ages of modern man, the staff released an energy burst, a shout, and exultation to the universe. That cry of freedom was so strong it threatened to deafen all who existed in these fae realms.

  Merlin stood silently looking at and, once again, falling deeply in love with his staff and its energy. There was no blaze of light, there was no visible manifestation of the union. A human observer would see only an old man resting his forehead on the wood as if in prayer.

  In the world of fae however it was if a signpost had exploded. It was the human equivalent of spotlights shining on the magical pair and fireworks exploding high in the sky. It was a burst of exuberant energy and love so great that none in the fae world could, would, or should ignore.