The Old Magic (23 page)

And then, as he watched, Ambrosia closed her eyes and was gone, as if a bright candle flame had been quenched, leaving only
the wick behind. Ambrosia’s body remained, lying on the floor of the hut, but the spirit that had been
Ambrosia
was gone, never to be met with again in this lifetime.

Merlin was alone. He would have to make his own choices, discover his own truths without Ambrosia’s help, for all the days
left to his life. The last person who truly loved him was dead.

He did not, in that moment, consider Nimue. For all her youth and beauty, he had known her only briefly. Ambrosia had raised
him. She had been a part of him, understanding him better than he understood himself.

Slowly Merlin rose to his feet. He turned toward the door of the hut, unsurprised to find Mab standing there, waiting for
him.

Always before he had been dazzled by her, a little overwhelmed. But it was as if now his anger had stripped away her fairy
glamour, and she was no longer impressive, even in her elaborate whimsical garb. Despite her high-piled raven hair, Mab was
even shorter than he was, and somehow unreal—a strange, dangerous vestige of an ancient time that was justifiably over, never
to come again.

“You killed her!” Merlin said. He saw clearly now, and at last he realized what the cold hard pain in his chest was: rage.
Rage at Mab, who had lied to him, misled him, deceived him, taken Ambrosia from him.

Taken everything from him.

“No, I didn’t,” Mab said. Her face was as cool and remote as always.

“You killed her like you killed my real mother!” Merlin cried. Some part of him hungered for Mab’s understanding, her grief.
He wanted her to weep for what she had done.

“No,” Mab said, shaking her head. She enunciated slowly, carefully, as though she were speaking to a dull-witted child. “I
only
let
her die.” She smiled at Merlin as if she were pleased to have explained it so neatly.

There is no difference!
His rage boiled over, mastering him swifter than thought. Merlin raised his hand to strike her, his fist plunging toward
her chest as though his hand held a dagger. If he could have killed her in that instant, he would have.

But for all Merlin’s training and untapped power, Mab was still the stronger. His hand stopped inches from her body, held
back by an invisible shield.

“You haven’t the power to strike me,” Mab told him, her voice faintly chiding.

“Watch my power grow!” Merlin cried. He stared into Mab’s eyes, feeding his fury with the lack of remorse he saw there. Mab
had used him, just as she used everyone. When her tools broke she did not mourn them—she merely cast them aside. Nobody mattered
to her.

Merlin called upon everything he knew, everything he was, trying to force his attack home. His hand moved closer, but he still
could not strike. It seemed as though there were some great reservoir of power just tantalizingly out of his reach—something
that he could attain if he could only figure out
how.

But before he could touch it, Mab thrust him aside, as if she’d only been toying with him as she assessed his strength. Merlin
fell sprawling to the floor of the hut beside Ambrosia’s body.

“That was very good, Merlin. I’m impressed,” Mab said approvingly. She spoke as if she hadn’t even noticed his fury and hatred.

“I’ll never forgive you—never!” Merlin shouted.

He struggled to his feet, weak and out of breath. He had no magic left, only the power of his human emotions—and he burned
with his revulsion against all that Mab stood for like a bright torch. For the first time he understood in his heart why the
New Religion despised the Fairy Folk so: Their callous indifference to suffering was as damaging to the human spirit as any
hatred could be. The two races could never peacefully coexist: If the Fairy Folk did not rule mankind as its slaves, then
mankind must destroy them.

“I’m sorry about your mother and Ambrosia, but they were casualties of war,” Mab said at last. It was as if she had just now
remembered that some explanation of her actions might be called for, not as if she meant it. “I’m fighting to save my people
from extinction.”

“I don’t care if you die and disappear,” Merlin said furiously. In that moment he meant it with all of his heart.
Die, disappear, vanish—we have no use for your kind, or for your lying magic!

“I will, unless I fight and win!” Mab assured him seriously. “That was why you were created.”

To help Mab, against people like Ambrosia? He could not bear the thought. To be her servant would be to help her do far worse
than anything Vortigern had ever done. Merlin shook his head, appalled by the knowledge of how close he’d come to becoming
what Mab wanted. In his mind, Mab had become a black serpent, coiling around the things he loved and crushing the life out
of them.

“I will never help you,” he vowed.

“You will,” Mab purred, her green eyes gleaming with wolf-light. “I’ll
make
you help me.”

Merlin shook his head mutely. The day had held too many tragic shocks for him to be able to articulate his new wisdom, but
it burned within him, transfixing his soul like a burning sword. This day would always live in his memory as the one upon
which he’d been given absolute understanding of goodness and evil.

And Mab was evil.

The Queen of the Old Ways smiled, confident of her eventual victory. She turned away from Merlin and moved toward the door
of the hut, vanishing as she approached it, going back to her hidden kingdom.

Merlin waited, but nothing more happened. Neither Frik nor any of Mab’s other servants came to torment him. He was alone.
And for the first time he was
on
his own. There was no one he could turn to for help.

Blaise? Herne? Perhaps they could help him, but later. For now, his grief was too raw to admit the existence of anyone else’s
feelings. He picked up Ambrosia’s frail body and laid it tenderly down upon her bed, covering her gently with a blanket. Then
he turned to undoing the destruction Mab had brought to his home, as if by erasing her works he could erase her very existence.

Frik had known the instant Mab returned to the Land of Magic that the news was bad, and he did not feel the need to learn
anything more. If she had returned without Merlin, it could only mean that the boy had successfully defied her, and Frik could
not remember the last time something like that had happened.

It was true that her allies had betrayed her—like Vortigern—or disappointed her—like the priestess Ambrosia—but Merlin was
different. Or at least he had been, assuming he was still the boy who had left here, and not a stag or a tree or an owl or
something even worse. Mab’s magic couldn’t kill, but it could make you wish it had, and when she lost her temper she could
be quite, quite unreasonable. Bearing that in mind, Frik did his very best to become invisible and immaterial.

“Frik!”

It didn’t work, of course.

Mab appeared abruptly in the cavern where Frik had done his best to transform himself into a limestone pillar. With a sweep
of her fingers she dispelled the illusion, leaving Frik standing there in a crouch, feeling faintly ridiculous and very apprehensive.
He’d been wearing a horned headdress and a lot of animal skins, hoping to be mistaken for a cave painting if all else failed.
With a sigh, he banished the clothing, lest it provoke her further, and returned to his plain black garb.

“You let him defy me!” Mab raged.

Not only furious, but petty-minded. Always blaming others even when—
if
—there was no one really to blame.

“Well to be perfectly accurate, he couldn’t have gotten anywhere without the help of your dear sister,” Frik said recklessly.
“If I may say so, Madame, it really would help matters if you two could agree to—”

“When I want your advice, Frik, I’ll ask for it!” Mab snapped, interrupting him. “He thinks he can defeat me—Merlin—but he’s
wrong. He’ll use his magic—I’ll force him to!”

There was no safe answer to make to Queen Mab when she was in this mood, but for the first time, Frik began to really doubt
her superior leadership. She’d plotted and planned for as long as Frik could remember and every single one of her plans had
come to nothing—including the creation of Merlin, the champion of the Old Ways whom she’d had such hopes for. Even the least
suspicious-minded person might begin to wonder whether Mab actually
deserved
to succeed after so many failures, all of which were at least partially caused by herself.

Mab’s head whipped around and she glared at Frik as though she could hear his thoughts. Frik assumed his most servile posture.
This constant abuse had gotten to be very wearing, and he found that now that the boy was gone he missed Merlin’s company
more than he would have expected. Even when the lad was in a temper, he’d never taken it out on Frik. Now Merlin had defied
Mab to her face—and about time, too, after all she’d put him through, if you asked Frik—and of course Mab wasn’t taking it
at all well.

“What are you going to do, Madame?” he asked nervously.

“Come and see!”

She vanished, leaving Frik to guess where she’d gone and find his own way there. The gnome squared his shoulders self-consciously.
It was too much to hope for that the worst was over. Whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Mab barely acknowledged the arrival of her servant when Frik reached her Sanctum Sanctorum. She was gazing into her scrying
crystal, fury fuelling her power.

How dare Merlin place his petty concerns ahead of her own! She was fighting for the survival of an entire
race
—what could one old woman’s life matter against that? Selfish, cruel, obstinate … the boy was a catalogue of the worst human
traits! She’d been a fool to hope that something like Frik could rouse in him a proper appreciation of fairy virtues or make
him understand the nobility of the battle Mab fought. No, Merlin took after his mortal half, short-sighted and petty.

If you want something done right, do it yourself,
Mab fumed bitterly. She’d paid too much attention to Ambrosia’s prattling about love and compassion—she’d tried to be
kind
to Merlin, and only see how well that had worked out! The Fairy Folk were not kind. Kindness was no part of Mab’s nature.
It shouldn’t be part of Merlin’s, either.

Now she would do what she should have done from the very beginning. She would show Merlin the full extent of her power, prove
to him that his rebellion was foolish—and more than foolish: impossible. She would make him understand that the human world
held nothing for him, that she, Queen Mab, was his natural ally, and the reinstatement of the Old Ways was his ultimate destiny.
Uther—Vortigern—she would sweep them both away and bring Merlin back to serve her, if she had to drown all of Britain in mortal
blood.

She gazed into the crystal. It showed her the image of the Great Dragon: Draco Magnus Maleficarum, last of his kind. He had
been born and bred for war, and today at last she would awaken him. She had been tapping the power of her realm for months,
siphoning it into his inert body to slowly rouse him to consciousness and purpose, and now her labors would bear fruit.

Mab clutched a fresh and potent crystal in each hand, willing all the chthonic power of the earth into Maleficarum’s sleeping
body. The great form reflected in her crystal began to shudder, its ribs rising as it took first one laboring breath, then
another.

“Madame, are you quite certain this is wise?” Frik asked, very softly.

“Oh, yes …” Mab purred.

Suddenly, within the crystal, Maleficarum raised its head. The ancient yellow eyes snapped open, blazing with fury, and the
long triangular head on its snakelike neck whipped around as it gazed about its cave. It tried to rise to its feet, only to
be balked by the walls of the cave. For an instant it seemed baffled by its confinement, then suddenly it gave a furious roar,
a sound that echoed from the sides of the cavern with force enough to dislodge stalactites from the ceiling.

But Maleficarum was not done. It roared again, and this time the sound was accompanied by a rush of corrosive flame. The stream
of fire met the wall of the grotto, and the rock seemed to shrivel out of its path, leaving a smoking blackened passage through
the rock. Determinedly, Maleficarum began worming its serpentine body through the tunnel, toward freedom … and prey.

It had slept for a long time, and it was hungry.

“The Great Dragon will ravage the land,” Mab gloated. “Vortigern will build strongholds against its power in vain—Uther will
think him weak and distracted, and plan his own attack in turn. And Merlin will be caught between them, a pawn that each side
will claim as its own weapon. He will not be content to pretend to be a mere mortal—not when he can be a wizard. …”

Frik regarded the crystal-sent image of the monster burrowing through the rock with professional distaste. There was no illusion
to it, no subtlety—nothing but a brute hunger for destruction. Frik’s artistic soul rebelled against the very notion. Where
was the challenge, the skill in winning through brute force?

It didn’t seem fair, somehow.

Not that he would be foolish enough to say any such thing to Mab.

After a few hours of work Merlin realized that there was little he could do to repair Mab’s damage to the forest cottage in
a single day or even a single week. And there were more pressing priorities before him than tidying up his home.

At last he steeled himself to search through the debris until he found a spade. The winter air was biting as he left the cottage,
and the friendly forest around the cottage, trees and woodlands that he had known all his life, now somehow looked oppressive
and alien. He tried to shut out the
lostness
he felt, searching for the landmarks that would lead him to his destination.

He’d first stumbled over Elissa’s grave as a child, long before he’d understood that Ambrosia somehow wasn’t his real mother.
When he’d asked Ambrosia about the grave, she’d explained about Elissa and why his real mother had to go away. She’d done
the best she could, but the child Merlin hadn’t been able to grasp the idea of death: For weeks afterward he’d come here to
sit atop the grave-mound and tell Elissa the things he did with his day, imagining her living just as he did, only in a house
far beneath the surface of the earth. Eventually he’d lost interest, as children do, in what had been little more than a new
game to him, but the idea of Elissa had always retained a sort of determined reality in his imagination, as though she were
present and living but just out of reach.