The Dragon's Secret (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 2) (4 page)

“I believe they have maid service here,” I said.

“Aye, lass, but I thought you were all about overthrowing the ruling class,” Merlin said. “Maids. As though we were royalty and needed servants.”

I glared at him.

“Merlin says that a bunch of his stuff is unsafe for anyone to touch but him,” Adam said.

That made more sense.

“So what are we researching?” Lila asked.

“Relics that might be useful for controlling dragons. Groups of modern men on quests. Any and every hunch that might, with luck, lead us to the Red Dragon and his captors,” Merlin said. He cleared off a coffee table full of take-out boxes, dog-eared paperbacks, and video games. Merlin and I settled into soft lounge chairs while Lila and Adam took the couch.

“What’s a relic?” Lila asked.

I glanced at Merlin and then away. There was something about the question that felt deep and connected to him, though I didn’t know why. “The world has always been full of people searching for objects of power. At least for as long as we’ve been around,” I said.

Merlin nodded. “Lesser magicians spend decades hunting down a fabled mirror of truth, or seven-league boots. But anyone worth their salt is always on a relics quest. Some were made by saints and mystics. Others by priests or dervishes.”

“But the most powerful ones were made by Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, or Christ,” I continued. “Made is the wrong word. Relics, as far as anyone knows, were randomly imbued with power when these people touched them. And that power only grows greater as the centuries pass and belief in them spreads across the world.”

“Does that mean God is real?” Adam asked.

I shrugged. “Who knows? I have too much of an anarchic soul to believe in God or his prophets. But relics are real, and they are wildly powerful. Luckily, there are few true relics, and none of them are easy to find. All cultures have a hundred false stories about their relics and where they might be hidden. Should one find a relic, it rarely goes well.”

Merlin and I looked at each other. What we didn’t say: we had gone on a relic quest together, in search of the only relic that mattered, and the journey had come close to poisoning, beheading, and drowning us.

By the time we finally found the Grail, it was an end time for the both of us. Either this was the cup of cups and it would turn us immortal, or it was another fake and we would both perish of exposure and dehydration within the hour. We drank, and the years fell off our faces as a great vitality and green magic surged through our marrow and tissues. When we kissed, the sweetest water the world has ever known lay on our tongues. We both vowed to leave the Grail behind and never seek another relic. Relic magic was much too dangerous.

“So you think they have some kind of relic to control Y Ddraig Goch?” Lila asked.

“It is hard to imagine how else they might control him,” I said. “And if we can come up with a reasonable guess about what relic they have, we can craft a spell for finding it, and then the dragon.”

“We can try,” Merlin clarified.

I nodded. The two of us might be the most powerful witch and wizard in the living world, but our powers were small compared to a relic or a dragon. And we would likely be facing both.

Merlin plunked his black satchel down on the table and reached into it. He pulled out one heavy tome after another.

Of Relics and Runes

The Devil’s Missing Sword and Other Stories

A Compendium of Buddha’s Holy Objects

He took out seventeen dusty books in all.

“Woah,” Lila said. “You have an infinity sack, don’t you, crafty ancient wizard man?”

“One time he took three chickens out of there,” Adam said. “Live ones. He gave them to an old Russian lady.”

Merlin said nothing as he pulled out a sleek laptop and put it on top of the books. “Who wants to research the identities of our enemies?”

“Ooh, me,” Lila said. “I am strong in the ways of the Google.”

We divided up the books between Adam, Merlin, and I, ordered a couple of pizzas from Pagliacci’s, and settled into reading.

“Oh, hello,” Lila said. “Do you know how many links there are to modern-day knights? They all seem to be mostly gamers though.”

“Reading this is just like college,” Adam grumbled. “I understand about every other word. This book must be five hundred years old.”

“Six,” Merlin said. “Let the general feeling of the words wash over you. If anything is of use, it will be clear.”

“Okay, then I think this is a story about a man who found the holy grand anvil and got super strong, but then he was so strong he went a little nuts and killed everyone in his family because they weren’t strong enough. And then he ripped his own head off. Is that possible?”

“Alas, yes,” Merlin said.

Adam’s words itched at my memories. My head throbbed with pain, but nothing surfaced.

We all settled into our books, eating pizza and drinking coffee as the gray April gloom darkened into night.

I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, Adam and Lila had fallen asleep, leaning against each other. They were still recovering from the life essence they had lost, and needed their rest. I watched them sleep and felt glad they had found each other. When Lila discovered what she truly was, it would help her to have a werewolf lover who could understand the transition from normal to under: from belonging to being singular and strange.

Merlin draped blankets over their still forms and brought me a fresh cup of coffee. We moved to the king-sized bed in the other room so we wouldn’t wake them. We spread our books out over the comforter and kept reading. Even though I had no memories of it, I sensed he and I had spent many a night together in bed with piles of books, just like this.

“Anything?” he asked me, as the midnight black outside the window began to lighten toward dawn.

I shrugged. “Yes and no. I know of most of these relics already, though they are each so steeped in myth, who knows what their true powers are?” I sighed. “I fear for the Red Dragon.”

“As do I, and I owe him. Everything.” Merlin spoke his words carefully. “That is a story I have never told you.”

“Tell me?” I asked.

He moved close enough that the length of his leg pressed against mine and told me his story.

7

The Red and the White

“I’ve never told you much of my life before I came to Camelot and served Arthur,” Merlin said. “There was a time that you asked, and I told you a funny story about dragons.” He paused. “The truth? None of it was funny.”

I didn’t remember, but I knew all too well that there were many ways to mask the truth and hide inside easy words. I watched Merlin as he spoke. In truth, I couldn’t look away.

“It started with a king.”

“Most folly does,” I murmured.

“King Vortigren came to Dinas Emrys to escape the Saxons and build a great castle on the hill—a fortress that none would be able to conquer.”

Dinas Emrys: flashes of a grassy hill fluttered before my eyes.

“Vortigren gathered the best masons in the land, and they came to build the great walls of his castle. Each night when they finished, they put away their tools and walked down to the valley to sleep. Every morning, they awoke to find their tools scattered and broken, and their well-made walls destroyed.

“On and on it went, with any night watchmen being slaughtered and wall after wall felled. Soon enough, Vortigren sought out sorcerers and magicians. They told him the castle ground must be watered with the blood of a child human born, but fathered from the under world.”

A memory came to me of a servant girl gossiping that Merlin’s father was an angel. Or perhaps an incubus wearing feathered wings. I did not know which was true, or if either was.

“Vortigren meant to sacrifice you?” I asked.

“Yes. I was all of ten when he took me from all that I knew and told me that my humble life would have great value serving him. When I learned what he meant to do at the next full moon, I knew I must do something clever and save myself.” He sighed. “And so clever I was. I snuck out in all blacks and went to Dinas Emrys, where I spied great magic spewing up from the ground and destroying everything on that hill. Instinctually, I threw up a protection around me. I knew nothing of magic then, but discovered on that night that I had some inborn abilities.”

“When the magic died down on the hill, I followed tendrils of it down into a cavern, down and down and deeper still until I came to a great underground lake so placid that it was like a mirror where my lantern shone. On one side of the lake lay a slumbering white dragon and on the other, a red one. As I stood and watched, they awoke and made keening sounds. Neither noticed the small boy cowering in the rocks while they fought a magical battle against each other for hour upon hour until they both fell asleep from utter exhaustion. I saw that they had ropes of bright magic that lay twisted around their necks. The ropes were some kind of magical leashes that led to something buried in the middle of the lake. What, I do not know. But as I sat there a similar leash crept out of the water and moved toward me, like mist across the land. I moved away from it, and it slowly followed. Before it reached me, the dragons awoke again. I yelled at both of them that I could break one of the tethers that held them there. For you see, my father had left me with one thing: a rowan branch that he swore would do whatever I bid, one time.”

“They screamed at me that they were not tethered, but were there of their own free will, fighting each other in order to get what lay in the lake. I told them they were leashed to that thing, and once I said it, they both could see and feel it. They were furious and fought each other more. I moved carefully around the lake, keeping away from the ever-creeping leash that sought to bind me. Before long, the mighty dragons fell into another deep slumber.”

“The next time that they woke, I told them again that I could free one of them, but only one. This time, they bargained slyly for their freedom.” Merlin smiled sadly. “How desperate they were, and how powerful the boy with the one magical branch felt. I knew no empathy, only the thought that this could be the beginning of some great destiny of mine. Finally, toward dawn, the Red Dragon offered me something truly valuable, and I took her up on it.”

I thought for a moment about what it might be, and then whispered, “A first born son.” It was an ancient and common thing to promise. An easy thing to give in the moment and a terrible price to pay later on.

Merlin nodded. “A dragon’s egg. I set her free. Instead of destroying the white dragon and going after the relic in the lake, the Red Dragon destroyed his tether, and the both of them flew away. I emerged from the deep cavern not to become a murdered sacrifice for the strangeness of my blood, but to be revered. I told everyone I had bested the two dragons who had fled from me, and was named the greatest magician of the land by King Vortigern.”

“All of it was based on a lie, but I was soon schooled by the Old North’s true magicians, and I took to it well. By the time I came to Camelot, I was not the best magician in the land, not by far, but I was a solid wizard.”

“Before I went to collect my dragon’s egg, the Dragon Mother came to me in a series of dreams and begged me to not take her egg. But I did, and had him imprint on Arthur so that my King’s power could be as vast as a dragon’s. In doing so, I took away the Red Dragon’s natural right to a childhood amongst his own kind. I took a wise and beautiful creature from his people and turned him into a weapon that killed many men. And I would have let the Red Dragon die on the battlefield, in the hopes that his magic could resuscitate Arthur, never mind that it was obvious to all that it could not. I would have that shame always sitting on my back, if it wasn’t for the grace of a wise lass reminding me there should still be decency, even in the darkest times.”

Merlin looked out the window and wouldn’t meet my gaze.

I slipped my hand into his. “We are none of us comparable to our own legends,” I said. “We are both plagued by the weight of years and terrible deeds.”

Merlin sighed. “You have no idea how long I’ve carried that secret with me. No idea how long I’ve thought it would make you hate me, if you ever knew.”

“Eleven hundred years, give or take a century?” I said.

“You do know. Only you. When we were together, Morgan, when we were in love, I wanted so much for you to think I was a good man. I hid this and other truths from you because
…
I could not risk losing you. I have often wondered if you discovered some truth about me and that drove you away.”

I waited for any memories to surface that would tell me if this was so.

I remembered nothing.

8

Widdershins

When Merlin finished his tale, he leaned back against the bed and yawned. I had the absurd urge to fluff his pillow and tuck him in. Before I could decide if that might be the act that would break down the wall he kept between us, magic poured in through the windows.

It invaded the room, lighting everything with a glaring red light. The magic turned the room flat, shadowless, and ugly. It wrapped around my soul as rage, thirst, and then fire filled me.