by Hiatt, Bill
No, I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that my ability to learn spells by watching them cast gave me the ability to replicate the light of Jimmie’s goodness, and certainly not whatever power God lent to David. This was, however, all happening in the world Dark Me had created inside my head. If I believed what I created could defeat the darkness—and, more to the point, if he believed it—that would be good enough.
The light that sprayed out of my sword was still grayer than Jimmie’s light, but I could see horror in Dark Me’s eyes. He countered by spraying from his sword, not green flame, but pure darkness. As he did so, he became as he had been when I had first seen him, as did the world around him. He could not maintain his pretense of rightness when defending himself meant drawing power from my basest impulses.
We battled long on that roof. My light met his darkness midway between us, and we each strained to drive our energy forward. Trying to battle the darkness without knowing the way in which it existed in my head, it had seemed much stronger. However, once I realized the true nature of my dark side, and I knew how to deal with it, I could see it really wasn’t stronger than I was.
Sadly, it still seemed equally strong, and my gray light was not quite as effective as Jimmie’s white in countering the darkness, which was winning, inch by inch. Unless I could believe more in myself, I would eventually lose.
The problem was that part of what Dark Me had said was true. Could I believe in myself when I had caused people pain, when I had sometimes failed?
I thought about my friends. The guys believed in me enough to follow me into deadly peril. Carla had done the same, even knowing I didn’t really love her. So had Eva, even with her ambiguous feelings toward me. So had Nurse Florence. So had Khalid, who was really a total stranger. And Jimmie had stuck with me all those years when Dan and I had been hostile, treating me as much like a brother as he had Dan. Could they all be wrong?
What was David’s problem when I first met him? Not that God hadn’t forgiven him. That he hadn’t forgiven himself!
I did my damnedest to put all my mistakes behind me, and the light got a little whiter, but I was still losing ground, though at a little slower pace.
I knew Jimmie wasn’t sinless himself, but he’d had a lot fewer years for self-doubt, and he had never had other people depending on him the way I did, so any mistakes he might have made during his nine years had much less potential to load him down with guilt. That must be why he could achieve such a white light with such seemingly little effort.
I thought about trying to reach Jimmie on the outside and linking to him. Then I remembered what Merlin had said. If anyone else helped me, I would not succeed in reintegrating Dark Me into my personality, at least not completely. I had to figure out a way to beat him, but I was running out of options—and the darkness from his sword was advancing relentlessly upon me.
Come to think of it, beating him wouldn’t be enough. When I integrated my past selves, I had to get each one to realize the situation and voluntarily join with me. I had needed David’s cooperation even to manage an incomplete connection to Stan. I had needed to gain control of Alcina to get Carla back in charge of her body. I had never succeeded in merging or connecting any past life to its current self without some kind of willingness on the part of that past life. How the hell was I supposed to get that kind of cooperation from Dark Me?
What was it he had said earlier? Something like, “You want to think I am pure evil, but I’m not. I’m just willing to look after myself…” If that were really true, then I might be able to make him see “the light,” so to speak. I couldn’t read his “mind” without opening myself to other kinds of attack, so I had to try to reach him without really knowing whether my appeal would work or not.
I had been able to project what I was seeing to him earlier, so unless he had blocked that kind of connection, I should still be able to communicate with him that way. We were, after all, still aspects of the same person, despite our current separation.
Keeping up the light from my sword as best I could, I hit his mind full blast with how much damage I had suffered under Alcina’s spell. He was really already aware of those effects, of course, but he was clearly in denial. Then I simulated, as best I could, how Eva’s mind would react to the same spell and blasted him with that.
“It’s a lie!” he shrieked, obviously bothered by the reality I was forcing on him. “Eva will never feel pain, never want anything except to love me!”
“There will be damage,” I shouted. “I didn’t realize how I was being affected until the spell was broken, but the effect occurred, regardless. People don’t have to know they have cancer for it to be growing within them.”
“It’s not like that! You would have suffered nothing if the spell had remained unbroken.”
“Slavery always takes its toll, even if one is not aware he or she is being enslaved. You have my memories. You know I speak the truth.”
For good measure I worked up as many vivid scenarios as I could about how Dark Me’s schemes might hurt other people, like Stan, and hit him with each one, one at a time. Dark Me tried to resist, tried to deny the truth of my “tricks,” but I could tell he was weakening. He flashed in and out of looking like me; the world around him shuddered repeatedly back and forth between his optimistic vision and my view of the destruction, and I could swear that the darkness radiating from his sword was now speckled with gray.
Realizing what I was doing, he tried to fire images at me, images designed to strengthen my guilt and shake my confidence, but I had prepared for that kind of counterattack and remained blind to what he was trying to show me.
After what seemed like hours, the energy from his sword fused with the energy from mine instead of working against it, and the combined energy ripped the sword from his hand. By now the world around us was chaos; he was no longer able to maintain any kind of consistency. He now looked almost exactly like me, and he fell to the ground, sobbing. I closed the distance between us in seconds, and then I hugged him. (I know—you were expecting me to take his head off in one stroke, or something like that. That might have been more satisfying after all the danger he had created, but it would not have solved the problem.)
“You are…lying to me, trying to trick me,” he gasped between sobs. “I will not…believe you!”
“You already do,” I whispered gently. “If you did not, the world you have created here would still be intact.”
“I don’t want to die!” he said with surprising force. “I want to live!”
“You will live…within me. That is what you were meant to do in the first place!”
“But—”
“No buts. You remember what it was like with the past selves. So it will be with you. You will be part of me every bit as much as the original Taliesin and all the others are. We can even continue the argument we were having earlier.”
Dark Me considered that as he wiped tears off of his cheeks. “I could make a man out of you yet! I could get you to take what is rightfully ours!”
About the time pigs fly…or I use dark magic again, whichever comes first.
“You can try to move me in that direction.”
“Well, I guess that’s the best I can do for now.”
I hugged him again, and for a moment I thought his acquiescence might be a trick, that he would wrestle free, retrieve his sword, and take off my head with one stroke. Instead, he dissolved in my arms—not dissolved into tears again, just dissolved. He was a cloud of tiny particles all around me. I breathed him in, and we were one being again. (None of my past selves had created such a physical image of reunion; it was apparent to me that Dark Me was a little bit of a drama king.)
In moments the shredded remnants of the world he had created had vanished as well, leaving me free to come out of my trance and rejoin everyone else. It took me awhile to find my way back to consciousness, but at last I could feel David and Dan holding my hands, and I opened my eyes.
Merlin was nodding his hea
d, clearly satisfied. “You have done well, young Taliesin.”
“I’m still going to have to fight temptation for the rest of my life,” I said ruefully.
“As do we all,” Merlin replied, letting his inner demon flash for just a second in his eyes to underscore his point.
I got up off the ground, brushed myself off, and thanked my friends. For a few minutes I was engulfed in a storm of handshakes and hugs—mostly hugs, even from the guys. A handshake was the most Dan dared to offer, though. I nodded to him but decided not to start the conversation. That would have to wait until later. First things first.
“Merlin, you have already done so much for me, but I could use your help getting Carla and Stan back the way they should be.”
Merlin looked a little uneasy, not a common expression for him. “You are the expert in how to deal with past selves, not I.”
I had no idea where Merlin might go after we parted, but I very strongly suspected he would not end up living in Santa Brígida. If I had any chance of getting his help, it would have to be now.
“Merlin, please. You must have some idea.”
“I always have some idea, but whether or not it is the right one is another question. I once thought it was a good idea to trust Nimue, and look where that got me. If you look at Carla, however—and I mean really look—I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
I turned to Carla, scanned her, and discovered that she no longer had two separate presences within her. She was all Carla. Well, not quite. As my past selves had become part of me, Alcina had become part of her. If the process had worked for her as it had for me…”
Apparently Carla could see my question in my eyes. “That’s right, Tal; I have access to all of Alcina’s memories and abilities, including magic. I’m just like you now.”
“Which means you will need training,” said Nurse Florence. “Even before, you were using a little magic accidentally. As someone working at Alcina’s power level, you will have to learn how to control that power.”
“And how not to use dark magic,” I pointed out. “I learned that lesson the hard way!”
Carla seemed supercharged with enthusiasm. “It’s as if I see a whole new world I never knew existed. I can hardly wait to begin my studies. But don’t worry, Tal, I’ll still have time for the band and…other things.” She hugged me, pressing much closer than she needed to, and whispered in my ear, “Like winning you back. I’ll always make time for that!”
As Carla let go of me, I noticed Eva looking at us with, I don’t know, an expression I had never seen on her face. It almost looked like…regret.
You have got to be kidding me! So now, with Carla already fixating on me again, now you’re interested?
I almost had the nerve to pose that question directly, but when Eva saw I was looking at her, she turned away, and my nerve vanished. Well, back to business.
“This is great, but how did it happen? Merlin?”
“If I had to guess,” he said with a wink, since, to the best of my knowledge, he had never guessed at anything, “I would say that Alcina’s own spell worked on her so well that she would do anything to please you. She knew what you wanted, Carla fully healed, and somehow she figured out a way to do it. Perhaps she used the bond between you to absorb some of your knowledge of how to integrate past selves.”
“I spaced out for a few minutes and thought I was dreaming about Alcina and me having a conversation,” said Carla. “She took my hand and just vanished. Then I felt her inside of me somewhere, part of me instead of separate from me, and I snapped back to reality again.”
“Yeah, that’s about how it works if you know how to do it. Merlin, you must be right. But what about Stan?” I did a quick scan and saw with horror just how mangled the potential connections between Stan and David were. “This is beyond my skill to fix.”
“It isn’t beyond your skill,” said Merlin firmly. “It is beyond your power…but that I can help with.” He put his hand on my shoulder, and suddenly I felt strong enough to take on an army…or mend a mind seemingly shattered beyond all hope.
I let myself flow into Stan, and I used my borrowed might to heal both Stan and David and then to create links between them, links that could survive friction between them, links that could survive even David emerging full force to take over Stan’s body, something that seemed to happen with remarkable frequency no matter how much I warned them.
I tried to take the final step and merge them into one integrated personality, but I couldn’t do it, even with the white-hot power of Merlin behind me. Perhaps they had to do it for themselves. At least I had stabilized their situation for the foreseeable future, and given enough time, I might be able to figure out how to solve the problem once and for all. For now it was comforting to get poor, self-sacrificing Stan back in his own body.
“That’s what comes of being too self-sacrificing,” whispered Dark Me from somewhere in my mind. “Somebody else has to keep rescuing you.” I just ignored him.
Before long Nurse Florence and Vanora started making preparations to bring us back. Annwn time did flow more slowly than our own, but we had been in Annwn for hours, and we needed to get back pretty soon to avoid having to make yet another round of explanations. I suddenly realized I wanted to stay with Merlin awhile longer.
“There is so much I could learn from you. Is there any chance…”
“What?” said Merlin with his unnerving laugh. “Move to your charming little town, masquerade as…oh, let’s see…the high school’s librarian? Dispense wisdom to you under the guise of checking out books? Have tea with the ladies of the lake every afternoon?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“Taliesin, it would actually give me pleasure to pass on what I can to you, but I have the strange suspicion that you will find what you need elsewhere.”
“Is that a prophecy, Merlin?” Under the circumstances, it was a logical question.
“It is what you would call a ‘hunch.’ Regardless, Taliesin, I have been trapped in a tower for fifteen hundred years. Many tasks I was meant to do have been left undone. I need to get the universe back into balance. After that, I think it might be time to start my next life. I should have reincarnated long ago. I never intended to use my powers to stay alive for so long.”
“Did the tower force you to stay alive?” I asked.
“No, I did that to myself. I could have escaped the tower by dying, but I foresaw I should stay here.”
“For what?”
“For this very day, Taliesin. I didn’t know exactly what would happen, but I knew someone would eventually come along who would need my help, someone worthy of that help. I made my demonic fake Merlin to be sure that someone who came along was truly worthy. I figured that anyone who could defeat my double would certainly be worthy.”
“Like someone who could break the unbreakable tower even you couldn’t break wouldn’t be worthy!” I gave as good an imitation of his laugh as I could. Merlin looked momentarily surprised, and then he joined in the laughter.
“That I could have overlooked such an obvious point! Well, everyone makes mistakes!” Interestingly, the original Taliesin had no memory of Merlin ever even coming close to admitting an error. I suppose the old guy had mellowed a bit over the centuries.
I found myself glancing in Eva’s direction and watching how the light from Annwn’s sunrise was sparkling in her strawberry-blond hair.
“Ah,” said Merlin, following my gaze. “That reminds me. Taliesin, I can tell that finding your true love will not be easy, and I can’t help you with that, either. The only one who can is she who was born of the foam.”
Good! Now we get to the riddles.
I forced myself to look away from Eva, but Merlin was already gone. I guess he was not one for long good-byes.
“Tal! It’s time to go.” I looked over to see Jimmie, still in his angel form. Evidently, he had taken a liking to that one.
“Jimmie, I meant to thank you for all
you did today.”
“Thank me by forgiving Dan…for real this time.” I suddenly felt a cold breeze.
“I’ll work on it, Jimmie. That’s all I can promise right now.”
“You’re just stuck with me for a while longer, then.”
“Jimmie, I don’t want to cause you more pain.”
“It’s funny,” said Jimmie, with a big smile. “Since being inside you, the pain seems to have gone away, at least for now.”
“Well, I’m glad you got something out of it! Anyway, Jimmie, if I hadn’t had your light to copy—”
“My light?” said Jimmie, looking confused. “I just reflected what I saw in you.”
Now I was confused, but I pretended I wasn’t.
“Love the angel form, by the way.” I grinned. “That came from that book you had when you were six, didn’t it?”
Jimmie looked at me strangely. “Tal, that was your book, but you did show it to me. I always thought the angel looked like you. It just seemed to fit.”
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it earlier. The face of Jimmie’s angel form did look a lot like me. I could hear Dark Me snickering. I ignored him again.
“This makes me look like your conscience,” said Jimmie. “And that’s who I’ll be until you forgive Dan.”
With that, Jimmie turned and walked toward the others. There was a danger in Jimmie haunting me, even beyond Jimmie’s possible pain, which was bad enough. The danger was that Dan and I would get too used to having him around. Then we would both lose him again. Well, even with that risk, I still couldn’t forgive Dan…yet, anyway.
So there were still a few things left on my to-do list. I had to check Nurse Florence’s theory that the memories I had found in Dan’s mind were false. I had to figure out how I felt about Carla, to say nothing of what to do about it. I had to find a way to merge Stan and David as they should be. I had to help my mom adjust to her new abilities.
And then I had to find a way to do what I should have done in the first place: break the awakening spell and become just plain old Tal Weaver again—no magic, no memories of the long past—just me.