The Old Magic (19 page)

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.

U
naware 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.

“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.

This was how it would be, once the people welcomed Merlin as a savior. But Mab had to plan carefully in anticipation of that
great day, so that everything would go as she wished.

She’d been spying on Vortigern. After Queen Ganeida’s death, he seemed to have given up matrimony to concentrate on architecture
instead. He was building an enormous castle in the west, named Pendragon in honor both of his own totem, and of the Great
Dragon which was rumored to make its lair in that realm.

The Great Dragon …

The Great Dragon—Draco Magnus Maleficarum—was the last of its kind. Before Man, the creatures had ruled over the entire world,
filling the sea, the air, and the land with their endless fiery combats. But as the eons passed, their numbers had dwindled
until only this one was left, the last dragon, its existence little more than a myth. For centuries it had slept undisturbed
in a deep cave beneath the soil of Britain.

She’d change that. Vortigern needed something to worry about to take his mind off Uther. Left to himself, the royal barbarian
would probably send assassins to Normandy to strangle the king-in-exile at his school-books. Mab didn’t want that. Once Vortigern
no longer had to guard against threats from outside, who knew what might happen to Britain? Vortigern might stop persecuting
his people and become a moderate, sensible ruler. He might even make his peace with Avalon, allowing the New Religion to spread
its roots deeper into society than it had now.

No, she couldn’t permit that.

Reaching out, Mab sorted through a pile of the cracked, drained crystals whose proliferation had so puzzled Frik until she
found one that still had some power in it. She raised it in her hand and concentrated on her crystal ball once more.

The image of the Great Dragon appeared, curled in its cavern nest. Its hide was green and gold and brown, the color of the
earth above, and its great wings were furled in sleep.

Mab held the crystal out over the dragon’s image. Magic drained from the crystal, leaving it dull and inert, and sifted down
into the dragon’s body, energizing it.

Soon it would wake.

And Vortigern would have more to worry about than a boy-king plotting in France.

Frik hesitated outside Mab’s sanctum. He’d hoped to leave Merlin practicing Hand Wizardry on his own, but there was no point
in attempting to get the boy to study when he was in this mood. It would probably be just as well to let Merlin have some
time to himself; Frik was already late for his report to Mab on her protégé’s progress. She insisted on these meetings, even
though Frik provided her with daily written reports, and there was nothing to do but go along with her.

So far Frik had accomplished one of his goals: to keep Merlin from discovering his own uniquely human magical potential. Merlin
had comparatively little taste for the disciplines of fairy magic, but Frik had Mab to satisfy, and Mab wanted Merlin to become
her champion, a Wizard of Pure Thought who would supplant Vortigern and rule Britain as her instrument. Unfortunately, it
didn’t seem possible to have things both ways.

The magic lessons had been going badly ever since Merlin had come back from Anoeth and begun to study the second stage of
wizardry. His progress had become slower with each day, and Frik knew why. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

Merlin’s heart had already made the choice his mind refused to consider. The changeling had chosen to side with his human
half.

The boy was homesick.

“Well, how’s he doing?”

Mab pounced upon Frik the moment he entered her chamber. She looked like some exquisite and dangerous predator. Her jewel-colored
eyes shone against the dark painted circles that surrounded them. Her skin shimmered pallidly. Frik realized with a pang of
discovery that Mab was as hard and glittering as anything in her crystal kingdom.

“You’ve read my report?” Frik asked, hedging.

He had not dared to don any of his many disguises for this meeting, comforting though they would have been. Mab’s temper was
too volatile these days, fluctuating between impatience with Merlin’s slow progress toward wizardly perfection and delight
at his simple presence in her realm. And what Frik had to tell her would not improve matters.

“Yes, yes,” Mab said peevishly, “but I want your personal impressions.”

This is it, then.
Mentally Frik crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.

“He’s certainly got the ability,” Frik began, hoping to start on a high note. “He could be the greatest. …”

“I knew it!” Mab broke in eagerly. She didn’t seem to—or didn’t wish to—hear the equivocation in Frik’s words.

“But he never will be,” Frik added quickly, wanting to have the worst out of the way immediately, before she could say he’d
misled her. Mab froze, staring at him intently. Even the gems she wore didn’t glitter, she was standing so still.

“He won’t get past being a Hand Wizard. He doesn’t want to do it. In his heart, he doesn’t like magic,” Frik said in a rush,
realizing the truth of the words as he spoke them.

For a moment he thought she was going to take it well. Then she flung down the crystal she’d been holding. It crashed into
the pile of expended crystals heaped in one corner of the chamber, and caused them to cascade noisily across the floor.

“Doesn’t like it?” Mab hissed in a bloodcurdling whisper.

She rounded on Frik, her face very close to his, inspecting him minutely as if by the force of her will she could change the
truth behind his words. He’d known she wouldn’t like the news, but somehow he’d also assumed that she would be as resigned
to the facts as he was.

“I—I—I know it’s shocking, but that’s the way it is,” Frik stammered uncomfortably. It was hard for him to imagine not “liking”
magic—to Frik, magic was as universal, as inevitable as the air itself. Yet the fact remained and Frik, at least, was willing
to face it: Merlin disliked magic.

Mab spread her arms threateningly, seeming to tower over her servant in that moment. The gnome half closed his eyes and did
his best to efface himself, even though Mab’s face was inches away from his own. “We’ve got to make him like it! I have work
for him to do,” Mab proclaimed.