The Old Magic Read online

  “No,” Idath answered. His red eyes gleamed below the rim of the helmet, and his white teeth were very sharp. “Let others despair, let Mab plot and scheme to regain her sovereignty, it is of no concern to me. I will never be forgotten so long as mortals fear the shadow that comes at midnight, the howl in the dark. I am the Lord of the Wild Hunt, and as long as mortals cower by the fireside there will be a place there for me also.” He laughed, and spurred his horse ahead, leaving Merlin and Sir Rupert behind.

  Merlin shuddered. He had liked Lord Idath, and a part of him still did, but he recognized that the huntsman he had met in the castle yard was only one of Idath’s aspects. As Lord of the Dead he was a terrifying figure.

  But he did not have time to reflect on such things. The horses were running flat-out, and he had to work to keep his seat. Mortal hunters would have tired, or slowed, or stood around waiting for the hounds to pick up a scent. The Wild Hunt did none of these things—its riders rode as if the gates of Hell gaped open behind them.

  They reached a road, and ahead Merlin could see the lanterns hung at the entrance of a village. Though the village gates were chained shut for the evening, the Hunt poured through the gateway as if they were not there at all. The sound of the horses’ hooves changed as they ran over cobbled lanes, and the baying of the hounds echoed through the narrow village paths.

  Sir Rupert slowed on the twisting streets, jostled by the riders who surged past him, vying for preeminence. As they raced onwards one of the horses fell, pitching his rider over his head. The riders following did not have enough room to stop or turn aside, and crashed into him, collapsing in a desperate tangle of hooves. There were screams from behind as others saw the obstacle—Merlin could see it, too, but to stop was to be trampled.

  “Sir Rupert!”

  *Hush. Let me concentrate.*

  Merlin felt his mount gather himself once more, then Sir Rupert sprang into the air, clearing the tangle of fallen horses by no more than inches. He seemed to hang in the air forever, and landed with a jar that knocked the breath from Merlin’s lungs. The horse scrabbled for balance, his hooves skating over the slippery cobbles, then he regained his footing and bounded out of the way as the next members of the field leaped the fallen horses.

  In moments the town was a dim blur behind them. Merlin realized he was breathless and aching, chilled to the bone with the whipping wind and thoroughly unsettled, but there didn’t seem to be any way to retire from the Hunt, even if he had known somewhere else to go. He was in a gap now between two packs of riders—the entire Hunt was strung out for half a mile, whooping and howling and brandishing torches and captured plunder—and he could see a little of the land around him. The terrain through which they ran seemed strangely altered from the Britain that Merlin knew. The countryside was dotted with lights—not many, but they burned with a fixed white intensity strange to him. The very air smelled different; it held the taint of metal and distant smoke. Close behind him he heard the hoofbeats of an approaching rider; turning to see who it was, he caught a blurred glimpse of a small dark bearded man with the horns of a goat. He rode without saddle or bridle, and his mount ran in blind terror, its coat foamy with sweat. As he passed, he turned suddenly and shouted into Merlin’s face.

  “Go and tell them in Arcadia that great Pan is dead!”

  Merlin recoiled in surprise, dragging back involuntarily on Sir Rupert’s reins. The horse slowed, shaking his head and dancing sideways in displeasure.

  “I’m sorry,” Merlin said apologetically. “I was just startled.”

  *You have to expect a few shocks if you’re going to ride with this crowd,* Sir Rupert answered a little crossly. He stretched out his neck and set himself to regaining his lost speed.

  The thunder of the hooves ahead rang hollowly as the animals passed from turf onto stone once more. They were onto the causeway before Merlin quite realized where he was—they had reached the coast and were still riding west; on both sides of him there was the hissing of the sea as it foamed against the seawall. At the end of the causeway the little strip of land broadened, and a mighty castle was built on the outcropping, but when they reached it, Merlin saw that the castle was long-deserted. The full moon shone down on brave stone walls that were now no more than ruins, the castle’s ancient defenses now a hollow shell. The riders clattered through the forecourt and the inner court—surrounded by the red-eared hounds of Anoeth—then up a stairway to the battlements, their iron hooves striking sparks from the flints in the stone.

  When Idath and Tempus reached the top, they jumped, followed by a wave of hounds. The other riders followed, wild as otters.

  Merlin clung desperately to his seat as Sir Rupert lunged up the stairs. When he gained the height it seemed for a moment that the blast of salt wind that blew landward with gale force would be enough to hold them there. In a lightning glance, Merlin could see that the moon cast a wide silver track upon the glittering water. Then Sir Rupert, too, jumped.

  Merlin yelled as his mount fell through the blackness but moments later he landed upon a shifting, springy surface. Sir Rupert began to trot, slowly building up speed, and as he did, Merlin realized that he could see the other members of the Hunt riding up ahead. Their mounts ran tirelessly along the moon-track far in the distance, but none of them were galloping over the ground any longer. Now there was no more beneath their running feet than the storm-driven ocean waves, and still they ran, into the west.

  Merlin never knew afterward how long or how far the Hunt had ridden, or who had joined them, or even if they had coursed any prey. He rode over sea and land, village and town, and the strange sights he saw blurred into dreams almost at the moment he saw them. Slowly the world seemed to grow unclear, the sound of the Hunt more distant, as if, no matter how hard Sir Rupert ran, he was dropping slowly behind.

  In the end, the wonders he saw lost all their power to move him, and he was conscious only of a vast dragging weariness—for though he was fairy-born, Merlin was still mortal, and those who ride with the Wild Hunt must be more than mortal, either at first or at last.

  Finally all was silence and darkness. Merlin drifted through the void for a long time, slowly becoming aware of the stillness. As memory seeped back the peace unaccountably began to trouble him. Wasn’t there something he ought to be doing?

  He opened his eyes with a jerk and found himself staring into a pair of great goggling protruding unblinking eyes.

  “Yah!”

  The gnome had been bending over him to see if he was awake. Merlin and Frik recoiled in opposite directions: Merlin back into his pillows, Frik to the foot of the bed.

  All around Merlin the world as he knew it seemed to clatter back into orderly place with almost tangible force. He was lying in his own bed back in his own room in Mab’s palace. Sprites flitted in and out of the windows, their glow glinting off the crystals that covered the walls.

  Had any of it really happened—the journey to Anoeth and all the rest? He tried to sit up and found that all his muscles were bruised and aching.

  “Ow,” Merlin complained.

  He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and discovered that he seemed to have slept in his shoes. One of them, anyway. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know where the other was.

  “Well,” said Frik bracingly. “And what did we learn from our little adventure?”

  “I’m not sure,” Merlin said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Everything seemed so … peculiar. Even for here. I’m not sure what happened. Was it all a dream?”

  “Ah,” Frik answered. He tried to look wise and mysterious and didn’t quite succeed. “Everything is, in the end.”

  He is more powerful than he knows. Too powerful for us.

  He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the inner colloquy, but one might as well talk to one’s self as to the walls, Frik supposed, since while the walls talked back, they also tended to tattle. And it wasn’t, after all, as if he could have a chatty heart-to-heart talk with Queen Mab.

>   He paced restlessly beside the mermaid’s lagoon, gazing morosely into the depths of the black water and trying to ignore the still small voice that wasn’t conscience, because gnomes didn’t have consciences. And certainly no one who served the Queen of the Old Ways had any right to a conscience.

  Served. Now, there was a bitter word. He was a gnome, an ancient member of a terribly-well-thought-of and magical race. Once he and Mab had plotted together as equals. Occasionally she had even listened to his advice. But paradoxically, she had become more arrogant and more demanding as her influence waned, until she tyrannized him just as Vortigern did the mortal kind.

  Vortigern. A name it wasn’t prudent to utter in Her Majesty’s hearing these days. While it was true that Vortigern persecuted the Christians, there was no distinction in it: Vortigern persecuted everybody. For every Christian who renounced the New Religion, there were two Pagans who renounced all gods entirely, since none of them seemed to be of any help against the tyrant king of Britain. Worse than that, in the years since the Holy Grail had disappeared from Avalon many of the monks and nuns of that holy isle had wandered the land in search of it, and in their travels they preached Avalon’s gospel of love and acceptance. The harsh Christianity, which Constant had imposed upon the people, was being replaced by a doctrine which was … quite tolerable, really, when you came right down to it.

  Frik shuddered at the direction of his thoughts. Let Her Majesty catch him even thinking something like that and he’d have no worries about either the future or his relationship with his employer. He’d spend the rest of eternity as a plaster lawn decoration, clutching a fishing rod somewhere in Surbiton.

  But the fact remained: Like it or not, Vortigern was driving the people into the arms of the New Religion. And the magic of the Old Ways was growing steadily weaker.

  Except for Merlin’s.

  He ought not to have been able to do what he did, Frik worried. The moment yesterday when Merlin had turned himself into a hawk through sheer will and an improperly-phrased spell was still vivid in Frik’s memory. Fortunately he’d been able to avoid reporting the incident to Her Majesty. It would have led to quite an ugly scene, and questions that Frik had no way to answer.

  Their magic—Mab’s and his and all that of the Old Ways—was a magic of illusion. Nothing they did had any true objective reality. Their spells drew their power from belief and their effect from trickery. They were a thing of the fairy realm, as ephemeral as summer snow, though often far more dangerous.

  But Merlin’s magic was different. Frik could make himself appear to be a bird. He could use his magic power to fly. But Merlin’s transformation had been no illusion. It had been as real as wood and stone.

  When he forgets his lessons, he’s far more dangerous than when he remembers them.

  Somehow Merlin had the ability to dream true—and to make his dreams real.

  It’s his mortal part. Mortal dreams have power, everyone knows that. Haven’t they almost dreamed us out of existence? Merlin is only half-mortal, but somehow he seems to have combined his powers somehow. He’s unique, and that makes him all the more dangerous.

  Frik stooped and picked up an expended crystal from the ground at his feet. He rolled it back and forth between his fingers. More and more of these were seen lately around the Land of Magic, as the magic in the Hollow Hills seeped away like water from a cracked jug. He shrugged, tossing it out across the surface of the water.

  “Hey!”

  A mermaid surfaced with an angry splash of her tail, the crystal in her fist. She flung it back at Frik with a great deal more accuracy than he had shown. Frik ducked out of the way, cowering behind a rock, then straightened up slowly.

  He’d reached a decision.

  If the magic of Merlin’s mortal part held such power, it was up to Frik to make certain that the boy never discovered his own strength. He’d bury Merlin’s native abilities in fairy spellcraft until the boy was too dizzy with bookish knowledge to even realize what he had. With luck, Frik could extinguish the young wizard’s dangerous mortal magic forever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE COURTS OF MAGIC

  Unaware of Frik’s plans for him, Merlin continued with his studies. He met many strange and wonderful creatures in Mab’s realm and its neighboring lands. He learned of the unseen forces that held the world together, of the secret ways of other worlds that existed beneath the surface and behind the mirrors in the world he had always thought of as real. But most of all, his days were filled with the endless practice of magic.

  He mastered the countless spells that made him a Wizard by Incantation, only to discover that he needed to forget them all again as he became a Wizard by Gesture, for each higher level of spell automatically erased its lower-level counterpart. Each time he learned a Hand spell, its equivalent Incantory spell vanished from his mind, as sometime in the future, if all went well each Thought spell would erase the Gesture it duplicated.

  There were only a few Incantory spells that were not duplicated by Gestures, but those he would remember until the end of his days. As a Hand Wizard in training, Merlin’s days were now spent in the endlessly-repeated practice of gestures—right hand to create, left hand to banish.

  As the days turned to weeks, slowly a vast and profound boredom began to take hold of Merlin. He thought the matter over carefully, for Frik had seen to it that he learned Philosophy in addition to Metaphysics and Etiquette, and eventually he came to realize what was bothering him. His future was a lie.

  When he learned something—when he went on adventures in Mab’s realm or outside of it—that was real, because it affected him and changed him deep inside, in his heart. But the wizardry he was being taught … that wasn’t real. The fairy magic was all based on illusion, cold and heartless and misleading as moonlight. It didn’t affect anything real.

  In the most profound sense, it didn’t matter.

  “Now you try.”

  The long table in the schoolroom had been cleared of the clutter of books and scrolls. The familiar—though now rather battered—silver candlestick sat in the middle of the table, and Merlin and Frik sat in chairs on either side.

  Frik had been working with him all week on Summoning Fire by Gesture. Since his sojourn in the Forest of the Night, Merlin had disliked fire intensely. Frik said that fire elementals were the easiest to call, and so the mastery of Hand Wizardry must begin with them, but every time the bright flame flashed into being before his eyes, Merlin could hear the screams of the trapped soldiers in his mind.

  Was that what he was being trained for?

  “Master Merlin!”

  Merlin blinked owlishly, focusing on Frik.

  “If you please,” the gnome said, pointing to the candle.

  Right hand. The flame blossomed at the tip of the wick.

  Left hand. The light vanished as if it had never been.

  “Now you,” Frik said.

  “Must I?” Merlin muttered.

  Sighing, he pointed his finger at the candle. Light. He suppressed a pang of queasiness. Why couldn’t they do something else? Something important. Something worthwhile. The more he learned about Mab’s realm, the unhappier he became. Mab had told him that he was supposed to be the one who would lead the people back to the Old Ways, but Merlin had grown up helping Ambrosia in the forest with the needs of the local farmers and villagers, and he knew that the Old Ways of sacrifice and service to the Fairy Court were things that the people could not bring themselves to return to in these days of war and chaos. The future Mab wanted for him was already a part of the dead past.

  “Now put it out. Left hand, left hand. You must concentrate,” Frik said fussily.

  Merlin reached out his hand, but his mind was elsewhere. He disliked the Land of Magic, but if he condemned Mab, he had to condemn himself, because she had created him and part of her would be in him always. …

  The candle exploded, spraying hot wax all over Merlin, Frik, and the table. Merlin recoiled with a cry.
r />   “That happened because you weren’t concentrating!” Frik sputtered. “Try it again.”

  “I don’t want to try it again,” Merlin snapped, pushing himself to his feet and brushing uselessly at the hardening spatters of candle wax on his tunic and in his hair. “There isn’t any point. There isn’t any point in any of this. None of it’s real.” He turned and stalked out of the classroom.

  Deep in the dark heart of the earth, Mab brooded. The only sound within her sanctum was the muffled creaking and groaning of the rock itself, echoing through the chamber like the far-off music of whales, and the only motion, the faint breeze generated by the beating wings of the sprites who flitted through the air of her underground realm carrying out Mab’s silent commands.

  Here she was supreme, unchallenged, and soon her power would extend over the mortal realm as well. And afterward, who knew? In the end, perhaps even the haughty Lord of Winter would bow the knee in acknowledgment of Mab’s supremacy in the Three Worlds of Men. When Merlin ruled. …

  Mab smiled at the thought of her protégé, her child. He would rule the people of Britain, and she would rule him. She would cast down every Christian church and chapel in the land and raise up vast temples to the Old Ways. She and her people would reign supreme again.

  When Merlin ruled …

  Mab gestured, and an image appeared in the vast crystal ball before her. The globe was so perfectly transparent that it seemed almost invisible; only the reflection of light across its surface betrayed its presence. In its heart, the whole cavern of glittering rainbow crystals and Queen Mab herself were reflected, inverted and in miniature. Now a glowing image of Merlin appeared—not as he was now, but as he would be: a man grown, clad in green and silver armor and carrying a banner with her image upon it. Around him were throngs of cheering peasants, flinging flowers into his path as he rode his gleaming white destrier slowly along at the head of a cheering army toward the steps of a vast gold-roofed temple hewn all out of white marble. Each of its pillars was carved in the shape of a coiled dragon; and great stone serpents roared their defiance from each corner of the eaves. From the roof peak a lofty spire reached high into the sky, and at its apex the symbol of the Old Ways gleamed in beaten gold. On its steps stood nine white-robed maidens. Each maiden had nine acolytes dressed in red, and each acolyte had nine black-cowled servants, and all the people in all the land would worship Mab.