Yesterday's Magic

by Pamela F. Service

  He knew the world was slowly recovering. Gradually the atmospheric dust was thinning, giving them more glimpses of blue sky and producing some earlier thaws. Some plants and animals thought extinct had even been seen. But he knew things could never be quite the same. He sighed. Perhaps it was a good thing that there were so few alive who could remember the world as it once was—and truly mourn the loss. There was just himself and Arthur—and Morgan. He wondered, though, if she didn’t really prefer this twisted world as it was now. It certainly gave more scope for her brand of magic.

  The European shore was bleaker than the one they’d left. Dry grass covered the ground only in spotty patches. Seaside villages showed up as crumbling ruins, and larger cities were rusted skeletal remains.

  But the ruins weren’t totally deserted. A few shapes scuttled into shadows as they passed above. Muties, Welly realized with a shiver. Muties or, worse—creatures from the darker Otherworlds. He’d met some of both with the armies Morgan had recruited to attack Britain.

  As the sun was lowering toward the horizon behind them, Blanche banked into a loop and circled down to where a couple of rocky cliffs enclosed a now-dry river valley. Her riders climbed off, already shivering in the coming night.

  Welly buttoned his fleece jacket and commented to Merlin, “I’m surprised it wasn’t colder riding up there.”

  “Dragon fire. It’s always smoldering inside. Keeps dragons and their passengers, it seems, nice and warm. I guess we have to camp here for the night. Much as I want to, we can’t ask Blanche to fly nonstop.”

  “You’ve got that right, magic boy,” Blanche said from behind them. Welly whipped around, astonished that something as big as a dragon could move so silently. She snorted a laugh at his surprised look. Smoke puffed from her nostrils. “And I’m not going anywhere until I get a proper meal. Thought I noticed a herd of something lurking over there. See you.”

  With a few beats of her wings, she was up and gliding over the eastern cliff, her white shape astonishingly bright in the dusk.

  “Firelit white isn’t exactly made for stealth,” Merlin observed. “But she’s what we’ve got, and anyway, if I can sense Morgan, she can probably sense me. Stealth may not matter.”

  Soon he, Welly, and Troll were huddled around a small magically started fire eating rations brought from York. That outpost of civilization seemed awfully far away to all of them now. Emptiness and silence pressed close around them—as did the cold and dark.

  Twice Merlin started to say something, then lapsed into awkward silence. Finally he got up, paced around the fire, and abruptly sat down again. “Welly, I’m awfully glad you insisted on coming with me….”

  “And Troll too,” their associate added.

  Merlin nodded impatiently. “Yes, I’m glad you came too, Troll. But this is something different.”

  “Oh, me get it. Private human-to-human talk. Troll go to sleep.” Wrapping himself in the blanket he’d draped over his shoulders, Troll rolled up like a bug on the far side of the fire and immediately began snoring.

  Weakly Merlin smiled, then he looked again at Welly. “Like I said, I’m glad you came, but I feel guilty too. Not just for putting you in danger, and gods know there’s certainly enough of that. But because…well, because of Heather. Me and Heather, I mean…Because we’re…”

  “Hold it, Earl. Are you thinking that I’m jealous of you two? Of your being a couple?”

  “Well, you and Heather were close friends at Llandoylan long before you got tied up with me. You’ve been through a lot together, have risked a lot for each other.”

  “And for you, Earl. Hey, Heather and I are friends. But she’s more like my sister. I saw that you two were made for each other long before either of you dummies realized that.” Welly stopped and nervously began plucking at a few brittle strands of grass. “It feels sort of weird talking about this kind of stuff, but I’d do anything for Heather, and I want to see her happy. You make her happy.” Welly blushed and flicked a few pebbles into the fire, watching the sparks fly. Then, taking off his glasses, he began polishing them on a sleeve.

  “Besides, now that I’m one of King Arthur’s famous warriors, girls come flocking.” He laughed awkwardly. “Well, sort of.”

  “True, I have seen you with some very fetching ones.”

  Welly’s firelit face turned even more ruddy. “Yeah, well, they’ve been okay, but not really what I’m looking for, I guess. The right one’s out there somewhere, probably. I’m young yet, I suppose.”

  Merlin nodded. “You are. But I’m not, not really. One long lifetime and a bit of another, and Heather is the first person I’ve felt this way about. There was Nimue, of course, but that was different—enchantment was involved.” He paused and his voice dropped. “What I feel for Heather amazes me every day. And if I can’t save her from that foul creature Morgan, I don’t feel this life’s worth living anymore.”

  He stared silently at the fire for a moment, then continued. “I know what Arthur said about this abduction being a trap. But I can’t help it—I’ve got to try and save Heather. And I’m grateful that you’re here to help…and that you understand.”

  “Of course I understand,” Welly said.

  “And Troll understand too,” came a squeaky voice from across the fire. “But enough mushy boy talk. Sleep time—before fat white worm come back and burp yucky dinner at us.”

  The two boys had no sooner rolled up in their own blankets than the dragon glided back into their camp. Red smeared her white neck and chest, and her noxious burps produced clouds of smoke.

  “Wild mutant cattle are not bad, really,” she announced, delicately picking her teeth with a claw. “Those extra heads and legs make them extra crunchy. I suppose you want to be off at dawn, wizard boy?”

  “Or earlier,” Merlin replied, trying not to breathe the putrid dragon breath.

  “Right, then. I won’t need to stop for breakfast—I brought back a couple of extras. But don’t even think about sharing them. They’re mine.”

  “Absolutely,” Merlin assured her. “All yours.”

  They were in the air again by dawn. To Merlin, the trail they were following still glinted slimily through the sky. Below it, spreading light from the east showed a bleak landscape. Crumbled villages and abandoned towns gave way to glassy plains where cities had disappeared under balls of nuclear fire. Their southeasterly route took them over some of these and skirted others. That evening, they flew longer than planned so they could camp in a relatively less-desolate spot.

  Blanche went out foraging again, and the others ate an almost-silent meal around their small fire. Over a dark ridge, the night sky still glowed faintly from radiation, like the ghost of city lights that had once twinkled there.

  When the depressing silence grew too heavy, Welly asked Merlin, “Is the rest of the world all like this?”

  Merlin sighed. “I can’t believe it could be. Supposedly the nuclear nations destroyed each other’s cities, and social collapse devastated much of the rest. But some countries never had nuclear arms or, like Britain, had abandoned them by the time the war broke out. We know that muties roam the Continent. But tucked away in places, there must be surviving pockets of less-mutated humanity as well. When Morgan brought her armies from here, they included not only muties but also darker creatures from the Otherworlds. So all of those gates between the worlds are not sealed, and that in itself means there must be enough life in this world to attract creatures from the Other.”

  Merlin took a bite of the dried mutton that made up their dinner and thought about what to say next. “Besides, Heather seems to have moments of mental communication with magic workers elsewhere. There appear to be survivors scattered over the world.”

  “What? She never told me about that.”

  “No, she really just figured it out in the last few days. If only we’d had time to work with it before…I can only hope that Morgan doesn’t learn about that, or whatever she has in mind for Heather could be even wo
rse.” Angrily he slammed a fist down on the gravelly ground. “That’s why I begrudge even these short rest breaks. But dragons are tricky to work with. You don’t dare push them too far.”

  “Dragons!” Troll snorted while huddling closer to the fire. “Don’t know which worse. Riding overgrown worm or sleeping here. This place full of ghosts.”

  Welly nodded and shivered, but Merlin looked sharply into the surrounding darkness. Clutching the hilt of his sword, he whispered, “And perhaps something more solid than ghosts as well.”

  In the smoky black night, patches of deeper darkness flowed silently toward them. Here and there, the low fire-light glinted on what might be an eye or a fang. Quietly Merlin gestured at their campfire. It blazed into a column of violet light. Squeals and growls broke the silence as the light showed a closing circle of creatures. Most seemed more animal than human. Skin flapped from the bodies or glistened with sores. Eyes and limbs were missing or oddly multiplied. Some shrank back from the light or scurried away, but some crouched, ready to spring.

  Jumping to his feet, Merlin swept his staff toward the nearest group. Purple fire shot from its tip, charring a few creatures before they left the ground. Welly pulled out his sword and sliced into a translucent many-armed creature loping toward them.

  Troll hurled rocks at the enemy, then fumbled in his bedroll for his small dagger. Suddenly he squeaked and grabbed at Merlin’s coat. “More, lots more coming!”

  Merlin swung around to see a pack of hairy creatures charging from behind a pile of boulders. Before he could even raise his staff, the pack was engulfed in a spray of flame. The remaining creatures looked fearfully into the sky and scattered.

  “I can’t leave you helpless incompetents alone for a minute, can I?” Blanche said as she settled to the ground and folded her wings. “The muties around here aren’t nearly as tasty and have really bad attitudes. Let’s sleep a bit and move on as soon as we can.”

  “I heartily agree,” Merlin said. “And thank you.”

  She snorted a gout of flame. “If I let the one I’m bound to get himself killed, my debt will never be properly canceled. One of those honor things. Now sleep.”

  “Should we set watch?” Welly asked as they rolled out their blankets.

  Flopping on the ground, Blanche encircled the three with her neck, body, and tail. “I don’t think they’ll be bothering you any more tonight. Not with me around. So stop jabbering and sleep.”

  Merlin didn’t find that easy, tired though he was. But he also didn’t find the stench of dragon breath nearly as disturbing as the distant glow of the dead city. Rolling over, he turned his back on that and eventually drifted into troubled dreams.

  For several days, they followed the course Merlin sensed trailing into the southeast. Gradually they saw less outright destruction, though the land below looked bleak and largely lifeless. Some scraggly trees appeared, and occasional figures moved in the landscape. These scuttled for cover as the shadow of the dragon passed over. In other circumstances, Merlin knew, he ought to find out what sort of creatures these were—muties, Otherworld denizens, or perhaps somewhat-human survivors. But no time could be spared for that now.

  Finally one late afternoon found them threading their way into mountains. Merlin wished he had paid more attention to European geography, but as their course was now more east than south, he guessed these were the Carpathians. Here some more trees survived, and they glimpsed planted fields where a few huddled settlements cowered under cliffs or were tucked into narrow valleys. Merlin didn’t sense any other than normal magic about them.

  As they climbed higher among the mountains, Merlin became alert. The trail he had been following for days had, at times, nearly broken, but now it was thickening into more of a rope than a thread. Heather and the magic that had abducted her both felt near at hand. Their exact goal became clear as they glided through a mountain pass and saw an only partly ruined stone castle on the mountainside ahead.

  Merlin leaned forward and called to the dragon, “That’s it—where we’re headed.”

  “That’s obvious enough, wizard boy. The place reeks of magic. So what is your great rescue plan?”

  Merlin hated to admit that he didn’t have much of a plan, not until he knew the situation here. “We could start out by simply swooping down where Heather is and seeing if we can grab her. What do you think, Welly?”

  “A frontal attack? Might work. Obviously approaching on a bright white dragon ruins our chances at stealth.”

  “Well, sorry,” Blanche huffed. “Next time you can walk.”

  Ignoring her, Merlin clutched his staff and closed his eyes a moment. Then, opening them, he focused on a tower on the building’s far right. “See that tower, the tallest one with the conical top? That’s where Heather is. We might as well make straight for there, to test their defenses if nothing else.”

  They felt Blanche’s growl rumbling through her whole body. “I didn’t sign up to be caught in the middle of a magic workers’ battle.”

  “You didn’t sign up at all,” Merlin reminded her. “You were drafted. And those are the orders—unless you can think of something better.”

  “Besides turning and flying back home? All right, in we go.”

  Their steady pace suddenly changed as the wings beat blurringly fast and the dragon shot forward like a spear. The wind of speed blew any shrieks away as they quickly closed in on the tower. Merlin, clutching a dragon scale with one hand and his staff with the other, thought he caught sight of two figures at its arched window.

  Suddenly they jerked forward as the dragon furiously backstroked with her wings. Veering abruptly sideways, she circled around and hovered some three hundred feet from the tower. “Magic barrier,” she gasped. “Nearly splattered myself like a moth against it.”

  “I’ll try to crack it,” Merlin yelled, pointing his staff. A thin beam of purple light shot forward, then shattered into harmless sparks. Concentrating, he increased the power. Purple tendrils spread over the invisible wall, but no cracks appeared.

  “Uh-oh. Trouble!” squeaked Troll from the back. “Bats!”

  Merlin kept focused on the barrier, but Welly looked up, drawing his sword. “Bats? That’s not exactly a big threat.”

  “No! Troll knows. These bad bats. Vampire bats!”

  Frantically Welly began swinging his sword as the cloud of darting black shapes closed in. Most stayed out of reach, though with sickening splats, he hit a few. Twisting her neck, the dragon sprayed the air with flame—incinerating bats but nearly choking her riders.

  Suddenly the barrier dissolved of its own accord. A bolt of green power shot from the tower window. The dragon veered sideways, and Merlin, hanging nearly upside down, shot out a purple bolt that knocked aside the green.

  A hail of green fireballs followed as the dragon dodged. Merlin frantically deflected them. Suddenly Blanche shrieked, tearing the sky with pain. “My wing! Going down!”

  She flipped over and in a ragged spiral dropped downward. Dizzily her riders glimpsed a knifelike ridge of rock and the boulder-strewn ground beyond. Barely able to hold on, Merlin couldn’t focus on any target. He felt hopelessly vulnerable. As his sight swirled past, he glimpsed the tower room glowing green. A massive bolt of power shot toward them. Miraculously, it suddenly seemed to jerk aside, missing them by a few feet and slicing off the top of a rock pinnacle. Then their fall took them over the ridge, out of sight of the castle.

  With a shudder, Blanche opened her half-folded wings, and their plummeting slowed. They came to a rough landing on a rock ledge at the base of a cliff. After realizing they had indeed landed, not crashed, the three passengers crawled off and sat dizzily on the ground.

  Troll was the first to recover. “Dragon tricksy. Big faker!” he cried.

  “I am not!” Blanche insisted. “I’ve got a huge hole in my left wing, and it really hurts! But I did have to get us out of there. We were, as the saying goes, like sitting ducks.”

  “Good stra
tegy,” Welly grumbled, “if it hadn’t nearly dumped us all on the rocks.”

  “Well, it didn’t, did it!” she snapped. “You lot may not be good for much, but at least you ought to be able to hold on.”

  Shaking away the last of his dizziness, Merlin stood up. “Let me look at your wing. I’m not much at healing magic, but maybe I can—”

  “Don’t you touch it, meddlesome boy! I’ll deal with it myself.”

  Sitting on her haunches, Blanche folded her left wing forward, holding it up to her snout. A ragged hole was scorched through the leathery membrane. Black drops of blood welled from the edges and dropped, hissing, onto the stony ground. The dragon grunted. Little gouts of flame burst from her lips and caressed the wound. The bleeding stopped and, to the amazement of the watchers, the gaping wound slowly shrank. Finally the white surface of the wing, though rough in that spot, was again unbroken.

  “There,” Blanche said smugly. “I’ll fly again, though no thanks to you and your insane aerial battles. If you ask me—”

  With a sharp crack, the ground suddenly fell away from under them.

  VIEW FROM THE TOWER

  Days had passed since Morgan stormed out of the tower prison. Desperately Heather wanted out of this place, and she was furious with herself for not being able to get out on her own. But she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be rescued—not by Earl.

  Morgan hadn’t believably explained why she’d been brought here. Surely, Heather realized, her own magic wasn’t strong enough to be of much use to as powerful a sorceress as Morgan. There must be some other reason, and Heather was very much afraid that she knew what it was. She hadn’t been stolen just as a magic worker—but partly as bait.

  If all this was also a trap to lure Earl here, then she was putting him in tremendous danger. The solution was becoming inescapable. It might be better if she just gave up and agreed to join with Morgan—while trying not to really help her very much. Then Earl could live the life he was meant to—helping Arthur build a united peaceful Britain.