The Old Magic Read online

  She stepped out into the daylight again, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. All around the shrine and its sacred well there were crude shelters made of wicker and animal skins, where refugees from Vortigern’s endless pogroms took shelter. Some of those hiding here were Christians, Ambrosia was almost certain of it, but in the old days the shrine of the Old Ways had been open to anyone who sought refuge there, and Ambrosia intended to continue that custom.

  “You look tired today, my dear,” Lailoken said. He was a Druid, and still wore the hooded white robe of his order and carried the golden boline hung at his belt, but his oak-grove had been cut down long ago. Since that time he had been a wanderer among the courts of those lords who clung to the Old Ways, but under Vortigern’s rule no one dared any longer to harbor a prophet and seer, lest they be accused of plotting against the king.

  “I’m always tired,” Ambrosia said crossly. “And hungry. But there’s no use grumbling about it. There are hungry mouths to feed, and—”

  She broke off, studying his lined and weathered face. “Lailoken, you look as if you’d been eating green apples. Have you had a vision?”

  “Yes, well … that is to say, I’m not quite sure.” The old Druid’s voice quivered, both with age and with the fear of his own powers that had come with the years of secrecy and hiding. Once he had been a great prophet, able to see into the future and advise men on what the fates held in store for them, but the years of persecution had taken their toll.

  Ambrosia put a hand gently on his arm. “Oh, well, never mind it now. We’ll talk about it later over a nice cup of herbal tea,” she said reassuringly. At least they still had the herbs for that.

  But later never came, and in after years she wondered what Lailoken’s vision had been, and whether knowing it would have done her any good at all.

  The sun was overhead when the riders appeared upon the horizon. Ambrosia was standing beside the sacred well, overseeing the filling of buckets and waterskins that would provide water for cooking and cleaning for all the camp’s inhabitants.

  She squinted her eyes, peering into the distance, trying to see. Her heart sank as she counted the horsemen’s numbers. There were too many of them to be anything but trouble. A trick of the wind stretched their banner smooth against the sky for a moment, and on its dark surface Ambrosia could see the White Dragon. These were Vortigern’s men.

  Lady, save us! Ambrosia breathed a terrified prayer, clutching the amulet she wore as if Mab might truly come in answer to this prayer when she’d come to no other. For one long minute she stood frozen, transfixed by the horror she could envision so clearly.

  Then she found her voice. “Run!” she cried to the startled folk around her. “The White Dragon is coming for us! Run!”

  She dropped the bucket she’d been filling and ran down the hill to the huts to spread the alarm. By the time she got there, the panic had spread, and the fastest of Vortigern’s riders had reached the outskirts of the camp.

  It was a slaughter. The refugees were given no chance to surrender and less to escape. Some of the men fought back, with quarterstaff and spear, but they were cut down like summer wheat. Vortigern’s men rode among the women and children, slashing and stabbing like madmen and setting the torch to everything that could burn. Within moments, the encampment was a hell of smoke, fire, and blood, filled with the shouts of the butchers and the screams of the dying.

  Ambrosia clutched a screaming child in her arms—snatched up as it fled in panic from the riders—and looked around herself wildly for some direction that promised escape. Seeing a gap in the fighting, she began to run toward it, clumsy with the burden in her arms.

  She did not see the blow that knocked her from her feet and sent her spiralling down into blackness and silence.

  The pain harried her back toward consciousness like a watchdog nipping at the heels of its flock. Ambrosia grunted, opening her eyes and coughing from the smoke she breathed. The smell of blood was a sweetish sickly rot that overlay everything like the stench from a poisoned wound. She tried to move, but a great weight lay upon her back and legs, and even the motion of lifting her head brought a bright flame of agony alight behind her eyes. She groaned in pain and frustration, the memory of the attack coming back to her in mocking fragments. She froze for a moment, listening, but there was no more sound of slaughter … only a quiet like that of death.

  It took her nearly an hour, wounded as she was, to struggle from beneath the body of the dead man whose corpse had concealed the fact that she still lived from Vortigern’s marauders. At last she stood, bloody and aching and sick, in the middle of an ash-covered ruin that had once been a holy place. It was twilight, and the sun was setting in a sky as red as the blood-soaked earth beneath her feet. The unburied dead lay all around her—man, woman, and child slain for no more reason than that they were here. She walked among them, searching, hoping to find someone who had survived as she had, but there was no one else alive. All were dead, butchered, their possessions looted or burned around them.

  At last Ambrosia looked up the hill. Vortigern’s men had been thorough. Some of the stones of the shrine had been pulled down and a fire set there. Its smoke was still rising in an oily black column. There were bodies there too, the bodies of those who had fled to the sanctuary in fear and hope, but they had received no answer to their prayers save the cold steel of a sword-blade. This place was a holy refuge no longer, merely another place that had been broken by the king’s will.

  And no one had stopped him.

  No one had come to their aid.

  No one had answered their prayers.

  “Damn you, Mab.” Ambrosia’s voice sounded harsh and rusty, like the cry of the ravens who flocked here to feed on the dead. “Do you hear me, you midnight hag? I said damn you, and all your heartless kind! Why didn’t you help us? Don’t we matter to you?”

  She looked down at the amber talisman she wore, the symbol of the triskelion spiral crowned by a horned moon that marked the covenant she had sworn to the Old Ways, and suddenly she could bear to wear that mark no longer. She jerked at it, breaking the leather cord from which it hung, and flung the amulet as far from her as she could.

  “Well if we don’t matter to you, Lady, then you don’t matter to me—not you, nor any god under heaven. Never again. I’d rather worship a stone statue like the Christians do. It’d be more honest.”

  With dragging steps Ambrosia began to walk slowly away from the scene of so much death and pain. She did not look back.

  She did not know how long she wandered, weak and sick, across the war-torn land. No one bothered her, for who would interfere with a madwoman who wept and laughed and sang as she walked and ranted against unseen presences? She ate what she could beg or steal, and drank from streams and standing ponds, and mourned her dead and cursed her gods as she wandered.

  And at last she came to Avalon.

  Avalon Abbey had been the first outpost of the new religion in Britain. Kings had risen and fallen, but all had left Avalon alone, for it was known the length and breadth of the land that a new kind of magic ruled here, and even kings were wary of what they did not understand. First a chapel, then a church, then a convent and hospital had been built upon that tiny outcropping of land on Britain’s western shore, where Avalon endured from century to century, its green mist-shrouded heights rising up out of the tidal flats like the bulk of some primordial sea-beast.

  And though all the world knew that the new king feared nothing under heaven or beneath the earth, even he did not disturb Avalon’s peace, for the finest healers in all the land dwelt there, and even a king may some time need to be healed.

  Elissa had first come to the Abbey as a tiny child in her mother’s arms. Her mother had been Queen of Orkney in the North, but King Constant’s dream of a unified Britain had left no room for queens and northern kingdoms. The war he made sent Queen Morgause fleeing with her infant daughter to the sanctuary of Avalon, and she died there soon after—some said of a
broken heart. Elissa had grown to womanhood within the sound of Avalon Abbey’s tolling bells, a princess without a country. Though she had received offers of an honorable place in many a nobleman’s house, in her heart Elissa did not long for what was lost. Elissa had thick dark hair and sparkling eyes and a tendency to freckle if she stayed too long in the sun. She was cheerful where her mother had been grand, pretty where Morgause had been beautiful. The peaceful life of the holy sisters suited her, and she asked no more than to be able to spend the rest of her days here in Avalon.

  But she was young, and it was summer, and even the most contented of Avalon’s inhabitants could be forgiven for playing truant from an afternoon of weeding the garden to curl up against the sun-warmed wall of the apple orchard and dream. And after all, she was not yet one of the holy sisters, vowed to obedience, merely a young postulant who might someday become a novice.

  It was while she was sitting in the shadow of the wall looking out over the land that she saw the old woman.

  Elissa did not question how she could be so certain at this distance that the bundle of rags that lay upon the flats was a woman, or even alive. There was one thing that Elissa knew full well, and that was that the tide was coming in, and no amount of prayer could hold back the running sea. Without someone to help her, the woman would drown.

  Elissa flung herself to her feet and ran through the trees. She reached the bottom of the orchard and lifted her skirts to leap over the wall, agile as any boy, and ran down the path that led to the mainland. The sea-washed stones were cold against her feet as she ran, and she tried to calculate how long it would be until the space between Avalon and the mainland was awash with the running sea. Not long enough to take the time to summon help; what she must do here she must do alone, and quickly.

  Elissa reached the prostrate figure and knelt beside it, turning it over gently. It was, as she’d first thought, a woman. The woman’s hair was streaked with grey, and there were lines of pain etched around her mouth. Her clothes were ragged, but they had been of good quality once. Elissa saw the Pagan signs embroidered on the tunic at wrist and hem and crossed herself hastily, though she did not think that one so injured could possibly mean her harm.

  “Who are you?” Elissa asked. There was no answer. In the distance she could see the shining line of the advancing sea. It seemed as if there was plenty of time, but Elissa knew from experience how fast the sea came in. She shook the old woman gently. “Wake up, wake up—you cannot stay here.”

  Elissa saw the old woman’s eyelashes flutter. The woman’s head tossed from side to side fretfully, and she coughed.

  “Le’ me ’lone,” the old woman muttered, flinging up an arm over her face to shield her eyes from the sun.

  “I can’t do that,” Elissa said reasonably. “I can’t just go off and leave you here now that I’ve seen you. Besides, the tide’s coming in. You’ll get wet.”

  “I don’t care,” the old woman said, but there was more life in her voice now, and it seemed as if she’d resigned herself to living.

  “I’m Elissa. What’s your name?”

  “Ambrosia.”

  Elissa pondered this. “It doesn’t sound very much like a good Christian name,” she said tentatively.

  “I’m not a very good Christian,” Ambrosia muttered. “Look here, girl, if I get up will you shut your row and leave me alone?”

  “Let me help you up,” Elissa said, evading the question. Between the two of them, they got Ambrosia to her feet.

  She leaned heavily on Elissa, and Elissa could feel how thin and starved she was through her rags. When she coughed, her whole body shook. Elissa was a practical person, and began composing a mental list of all the things her patient would need once they reached the Abbey. Though it was only a short distance to the gates, she was all but carrying Ambrosia by the time they reached it.

  “No more, girl. I can’t walk another step. Let me die here,” Ambrosia gasped. Behind them, the sea foamed over the causeway, cutting Avalon off from the mainland.

  Elissa looked around. There was no convenient place she could leave her patient to rest while she went to find the serving brothers to get a litter brought to carry Ambrosia to the hospital. The only building anywhere near was the chapel, and if Ambrosia were truly a worshipper of Pagan gods, she might not be willing to go there.

  But the whole isle is holy ground, and she is already here. There is no other place. The chapel will have to do.

  “Come on. It’s only a little farther,” Elissa coaxed. She half-dragged Ambrosia to the open doorway of the chapel, and carried her inside.

  Once out of the sun, Ambrosia seemed to recover a little more of her strength. She straightened up and looked around, standing unsteadily upon her own feet.

  “What’s that?” she said in a surprised voice. “By the Lady—it’s glowing.”

  “It’s the Grail,” Elissa said proudly.

  Avalon Abbey had been founded by Joseph of Arimathea, who had come from the lands east of Rome seeking a refuge, for in those days the followers of those whom the Greeks and Romans called The Anointed One were weak and few, and everywhere were persecuted. Avalon had been their refuge, the land deeded to them by an ancient Pagan king, and it was here that Joseph had brought the new religion’s greatest treasure: the Cup that their Master had touched with his own hands, the Cup from which he had crafted their link to the Eternal.

  It blazed with white radiance as it hovered above the altar; a great silver chalice, its lip edged with pearls. There was always someone keeping vigil before it day and night; when Ambrosia and Elissa had entered, the young brother who was watching the Grail stood and stared at them curiously.

  “This is Ambrosia, Giraldus,” Elissa said to him. “She’s injured. She needs help.”

  But when she turned back, Ambrosia was tottering unsteadily toward the Grail’s radiance. Its pale light shone on her face, making her look again as she must have looked as a young girl. The Grail Chapel was not large, and in moments Ambrosia stood before the altar itself. She reached out a hand as if to touch it, but before her fingers could brush it there was a great flare of light, and Ambrosia squealed as she fell backward.

  “Are you all right?” Elissa and the young brother asked almost on the same breath.

  “I …” Ambrosia drew a deep breath without coughing. “I’m more than all right. I haven’t felt this good in years.” She got to her feet, and it did seem to Elissa that she looked sturdier than she had when she’d come into the chapel.

  “The Grail healed her. It’s a miracle,” Brother Giraldus said.

  “Laddie, where I come from we have miracles with our morning tea,” Ambrosia said, fixing him with a glittering hawk-keen gaze. “Still, I’ve got to admit that it was more use than any of Herself’s tricks ever were. Now, who did you say you were?”

  “I’m Elissa. This is Brother Giraldus. Welcome to Avalon.”

  Elissa could see Giraldus puffing up to deliver one of his lectures on the wickedness of the Pagans, but from all that Elissa had seen of them, they did not seem very different from Christians.

  “Avalon?” The name seemed to mean something to Ambrosia. She looked alarmed, as if she expected both of them to jump on her. “Not the Christians’ place?”

  “She’s a Pagan,” Brother Giraldus said in disgust.

  “Pagan or Christian, all are welcome here,” Elissa said firmly. “Yes, we are Christians here, but the Grail’s magic is for all.”

  “Oh, aye, the way it was under the old king,” said Ambrosia, “with the axe set to the root of every tree in every sacred grove.”

  “The false gods must be swept away by the light of the True Religion,” Giraldus said.

  “If it’s the true religion, it doesn’t need our help to prevail,” Elissa said gently. “You saw what the Grail did, Giraldus—can we choose to do less? Avalon’s arts are free to all who ask. Our Lord would ask nothing less of us, for He taught that the love in the human heart is the greatest magic
of all, and here, by the Grail’s aid and example, we try to live that magic. Whoever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, it does not matter within these walls,” she said to Ambrosia. “Vortigern’s war cannot penetrate here.”

  Ambrosia studied Elissa with surprised respect. “Eh, girl, you’ll do. Pity there aren’t more who think as you do.”

  “There will be,” Elissa said, with a certainty that startled even her. “The truth will prevail in the end.”

  In the Hollow Hills at the heart of the earth, Mab listened and heard and felt the outcries of the slaughtered as they grew ever greater. With every murder of her folk she felt the deathly cold of extinction strengthen its grip on her, leaching away her power, her very life—and the lives of all she ruled.

  “No!” her scream of fury struck sparks from the walls of her crystalline kingdom, and hot fury banished the pangs of weakness.

  In the long centuries of war between Christianity and the Old Ways, her heart had hardened. After so much loss, Mab could no longer love as she once had, and after so many deaths honest grief, too, was denied to her. All that was left to her was the need to fight back, to lash out against the tormentors. Weak as she had become, there must be something she could do before all was lost!

  But when she reached the site of the battle that had summoned her, all that was left was crumbling bone and the embers of a battle long over. Victor and victims alike were gone—all that remained was the bones of the dead and the blackened stones of the defiled shrine.

  “Gone … all gone,” Mab whispered.

  But even if she had come in time, there was so little she could have done. Her powers lay in trickery and illusion, and Vortigern’s men feared their master far more than they could ever fear any apparition of Mab’s.