Doomraga's Revenge (5 page)

Krystallus stared at his father. In a voice as hard as iron, he said, “You never taught me
anything
. Except how to be a terrible father.”

Hallia bit her lip, glancing from one of them to the other.

Merlin’s eyebrows, thicker than brambles, lifted. “And you never taught me anything except—”

“Stop,” cried Hallia. “Say no more!”

But her husband ignored her. “How to be a miserable son.”

Krystallus slowly sucked in his breath. Then, without another word, he spun around and strode straight into the green flames of the portal. A loud crackle split the air—and he was gone.

Basilgarrad slowly shook his gargantuan head. How, he wondered, had the evening’s victory turned so quickly into defeat?

Hallia drew her blue shawl closer, as if a chill wind had blown through the desolate lands around the crater. She looked up at the stars for a few seconds, hoping to find some guidance or, perhaps, some comfort. But the deep lines on her brow showed she had found neither.

Merlin, meanwhile, stared into the shimmering flames that had just swallowed his son—and any chance of an ongoing relationship. Slowly, his coal-black eyes lowered, until he was gazing morosely at his boots.

Hallia turned to him and snapped, “You foolish, foolish man! Don’t you know that he’s become one of Avalon’s boldest explorers? That he’s been through more portals than even Queen Serella of the elves?”

The wizard frowned. “No . . . I didn’t know. I’ve been too—”

“Busy, yes, I know.” She snorted.

Defensively, Merlin grumbled, “I still say it was reckless to bring you here! Even if you did ask, he should have known better. Why would he do such an idiotic thing?”

She strode closer. “Don’t you see, you brainless oaf? By bringing me all the way here, he was trying to impress someone—the person whose opinion matters most.”

“You, of course.”

“No!” She glared at him. “
You
. His father.”

Merlin looked into her face, genuinely taken aback. “Me?”

“How else, without any magic of his own, does he prove himself?” Her voice dropped to a quaking whisper. “How else does he make himself worthy of being the son of Merlin?”

The wizard didn’t answer. He merely turned and gazed into the restless, shape-shifting flames.

6:
M
AGICAL
S
PARKS

Learning a new language is easy—even the underwater words of mer folk, or the whistle-speak of cloud faeries—compared to learning how to raise a child differently than you were raised yourself.

Two weeks later, Merlin and Basilgarrad sat together by a crackling campfire in the Volcano Lands region. Although these flames were markedly different from the green fire of the portal where he’d argued with Krystallus, the wizard watched them with the same silent despondence, lost in his thoughts.

The dragon, meanwhile, lay stretched between a row of small volcanoes. Whenever one erupted, spitting an annoying fountain of superheated lava into the air, he merely rolled over and crushed it. How else to make it keep quiet? Unfortunately, the lava usually found its way to one of the other volcanoes, making it necessary to smother that one, as well. This continued well into the evening, as the realm darkened around them. Eventually, Basilgarrad sighed a deep dragon’s sigh: Volcanoes could be so pesky! Yet another reason he didn’t like Fireroot.

As Merlin’s friend, he knew that it was pointless to try to coax the wizard to talk before he was ready. During the entire time since that debacle with his son, Merlin hadn’t spoken about it—except to Hallia. Soon after Krystallus’s departure, the married couple had taken a long (and, judging from their faces when they returned, tearful) walk together. Then, after a somber embrace with Hallia, Merlin asked the dragon to take her where she wanted to go—to one of her favorite haunts, a rolling region of meadows and glades in the heart of Woodroot that the deer people called the Summerlands. When Basilgarrad returned, the wizard only wanted to talk about work—and suggested they might try to craft some sort of truce between the fire dragons and the dwarves. Although Basilgarrad could sense that there was something else troubling Merlin, something much bigger than this feud in Fireroot, he could also sense that the wizard still wasn’t ready to explain.

In time
, he told himself.
He’ll tell me in time
.

Alas, their efforts to arrange a truce had failed miserably. Hard as they tried, they couldn’t even start a conversation with the fire dragons. Whenever Merlin appeared by himself, the dragons only wanted to battle him to the death. And whenever he appeared with Basilgarrad, they instantly fled into hiding.

The attempts to talk with the dwarves proved no more productive—for different reasons. While expressing their heartfelt gratitude to Merlin and Basilgarrad for rising to their defense, the dwarves clearly didn’t like the idea of sharing their labors—or their wealth—with the greedy dragons. They listened skeptically as Merlin described a possible treaty where the dragons might do some of the heavy work needed to excavate underground, and melt down ore with their fires, in exchange for some of the jewels that would be mined. But no sooner had Merlin finished speaking than a voice boomed loudly, “Bah! We might just as well give them all our treasures right now.”

The wizard knew that voice well: It belonged to Zorgat, chief elder of the dwarves, someone Merlin had hoped would see the wisdom of his words. The old dwarf, whose silver beard stretched down to his boots, stood as still as stone, arms crossed on his chest. Not even the dwarf raven pacing on his shoulder, occasionally nibbling on his ear, distracted him. He merely stared grimly at Merlin.

“My friend Zorgat,” the wizard had replied, “won’t you at least—”

“No,” the dwarf declared, cutting him off. His eyes, the same silvery hue as his beard, glinted like the facets of jewels.

Merlin protested, “Won’t you even consider this idea?”

Zorgat scowled, tugging on his silver beard. All at once, he reached over his shoulder and pulled an arrow out of his quiver. He held it in his hand, twirling it, watching the black obsidian arrowhead gleam darkly.

“Peace,” he said, “is only possible when two people see their destinies as one—bonded like the head and feathers of an arrow.”

Merlin nodded, suddenly hopeful.

Zorgat suddenly grasped the arrow with both his gnarled hands and broke it over his knee. Peering straight at the wizard, he tossed the two broken halves aside. “Where there is no bond, there can be no peace.”

All around the elder, dwarves grumbled in approval and stamped the ground with the heads of their battle-axes.

For a long moment, Merlin gazed right back at the old dwarf. Then he strode over to the spot where the two pieces had landed. Picking them up, he carried them back to Zorgat, and placed them at his feet.

“When the time comes that you are ready to think anew, to try to end this violence, send me this arrow—with the shaft repaired.”

“Merlin,” the dwarf replied, “that will never happen.”

“You have lived long enough, my friend, to see the wisdom of my words. And to see some things happen that no one would ever have believed possible.”

The elder grunted. “Still, this will never happen.
Never
.”

Dwarves being thoroughly stubborn people, that had ended the meeting. But it hadn’t, by any means, ended the concern that Basilgarrad could see etched on Merlin’s face—concern that ran deeper than dwarves and dragons.

And so now . . . Merlin and Basilgarrad sat together by a campfire’s crackling flames. The stars of Avalon, bright as ever, had begun to emerge. But Merlin’s mood could not have been darker. He sat on the ground, leaning his back against the dragon’s lower lip, occasionally tossing magical sparks into the campfire.

Basilgarrad, for his part, occupied himself making diverse smells—the more bizarre, the better. This served both as entertainment and as a way to obscure the heavy, sulfuric odors of the volcanoes. So far he’d managed to produce the aromas of bubblefish popping, acorns roasting, a mudslide congealing, a field of purple mushrooms going stale, and lightning striking an overweight frog.

Hmmm
, he thought, savoring the scent of scorched frog. What an enjoyable—and totally useless—pastime! Was there any reason, other than entertaining himself on a night like this, that he’d been given the unusual power of casting smells?

Rolling his body just enough to squash another irksome volcano, he concluded,
Maybe that’s reason enough
.

Merlin hurled another spark into the flames, then glanced up at the dragon’s immense snout. “You know, Basil . . . I’m worried.”

The dragon remained quiet and still, even resisting the urge to squash another spray of lava. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. And he wanted to give Merlin whatever time might be needed.

“Very worried,” the wizard continued. “About the plight of the weaker creatures we’ve been helping—more and more often recently. Dwarves, mist faeries, lilac elms, and the rest. And also about the rise of the stronger creatures we’ve been battling: fire dragons, dactylbirds, ogres, and shape-shifters.”

He drew a long, slow breath, absently toying with a magical spark on his fingertips. He flicked the spark onto the back of his hand, then rolled it across his knuckles. “But the truth is, Basil, I’m even more worried about something else.”

“Which is?”

“Avalon.” Merlin threw the radiant spark into the campfire, watching it sear a sizzling arc through the air.

The dragon’s enormous eyes opened wider. “I thought you considered these battles mere nuisances—
growing pains
, you called them.”

“Early on, I did. Then, as they gathered momentum, I started to worry. More than I wanted to admit. To myself, let alone to you or Hallia. But that near-disaster two weeks ago—when we had to fight not just one errant dragon, but a whole army of them—well, that confirmed my worst fears.”

Basilgarrad’s huge tail thumped the ground, causing a small landslide on the nearest ridge. “Fears for Avalon.”

“That’s right, my friend.” The wizard’s tufted eyebrows drew together. “Our world, as you know, is unique—a thoroughly unlikely experiment, a testing ground for bold new ideas. Can all these diverse creatures live together in peace? Can all these wondrous places survive forever? That’s what Avalon is about, nothing less.”

He leaned forward, taking his weight off the dragon’s jaw. For the first time, he turned to peer upward, straight into the huge eye above him. “And, Basil . . . I fear the experiment is starting to fail.”

The dragon released a rumble from deep in his throat. “Why? What is happening?”

“I don’t know! I’m still not even sure this isn’t just a coincidence, a time of random troubles with no greater meaning. Like a season of heavy rains.”

“These rains, though, bring death.”

The wizard nodded grimly. “All I am sure about is that I’ve been traveling constantly, through all the realms, trying to keep the peace. You’ve been doing the same, I know—though I’ve tried to spare you as much as possible. That’s why I only call you for emergencies.”

“Which happen now every day,” replied his huge companion.

“So it seems.” Merlin struck his fist against his knee, which caused a spray of sparks to burst from his knuckles. “This is a crucial time for our world. Our idea. If Avalon can get a good start, get through this, this . . .
rainy season
, then it could live forever! Our experiment could succeed! And if not . . .”

He shook his head, letting his dismal expression finish the point. “That is why, Basil, I’ve been calling on you so much recently. And why I’ve been traveling constantly—even when I knew my long absences were painful to Hallia. The stakes are just too high.”

Drawing a slow breath, he added, “She understands now, at least in her mind. But I’m not so sure about her heart.”

“I suppose,” said the dragon with surprising gentleness, “that when it comes to matters of the heart, even a wizard has a little to learn.”

“More than a little.” Merlin flicked some new sparks at the campfire, watching them sail through the air and land in the crackling embers. “Just look what a good job I’ve done with Krystallus.”

“You can’t blame yourself for—”

“Yes, I can, Basil. The truth is, I’ve done to him exactly what my father, Stangmar, did to me. And what his father, Tuatha, did to him. I’ve pushed him away—probably for good.”

The corners of the dragon’s mouth turned downward. “It’s too bad, really, that he didn’t inherit some of your magic. Then you would have had more to share as father and son.”

Merlin scratched his black beard thoughtfully. “No, that’s not it.” He twirled an especially long hair. “The problem wasn’t
his
lack of magic. It was
my
lack of confidence. You see . . . I always feared I’d do as badly as my own father did with me. So I stayed away, worried that if I spent too much time with him I’d do the wrong thing. And now I see what folly that was! I ended up doing exactly what I wanted to avoid.”

For a long moment, neither spoke. Volcanoes spurted occasionally, illuminating the night air, while the campfire sizzled and crackled. At last, the wizard found the words to continue.

“What I understand now—too late to help Krystallus—is that magic comes in many forms. Some are simply harder to see than the more obvious ways of wizards and dragons.”

“You mean . . . like his skill at navigating portals? It’s a rare gift that you could, I suppose, call magic.”

“You could,” answered Merlin, “but I mean something even more subtle . . . and mysterious. The way a seed sprouts into a tree. The love between two people. The light that sparkles in the wings of a butterfly, or the eyes of a child. Those things, I would say, are the essence of magic.”

“And you would be right.” Basilgarrad thumped his tail again, crushing one of the smaller volcanoes into a smoking pile of cinders. “Magic is all around us—in every seed, every leaf, every person.”

Merlin nodded, forming a spark in his hand. He peered at it, rolling it from his fingertip down to his palm, before tossing it into the campfire. The spark glowed bright for a few brief seconds as it sailed through the air, then vanished in the flames. Quietly, more to himself than his friend, he repeated, “Every person.”