Ultimate Magic (14 page)

Amazed, Krystallus ran a hand through his hair. Miniature monkeys—what next? Cupping his ear, he could hear the faint squealing and chattering of these playful little creatures. Where had they been hiding? What did they do for water most of their lives? How many other creatures lived in this desert, unseen and undiscovered?

He grabbed his flask. Bending lower, he poured several drops of water on the spot where the monkeys were playing. Shrieking with joy, they tumbled over each other, splashed wildly, and drank avidly from this marvelous new part of their landscape.

Krystallus gave them a few more drops, then stood. Gazing around him, he thought about how much more rich this place was than he’d first assumed. The desert held mountains, forests, and oceans of its own—full of variety, subtlety, and surprising discoveries. He had seen a magical gateway to places he couldn’t fathom. Waves both very small and very large. An enormous dune. A hardy plant, so well disguised it looked like sand—and, for that matter, tasted like sand. A mass of tiny monkeys whose exuberant play lifted his spirits.

And I’ve walked only a few steps.

Turning back to the darkness billowing on the horizon, he resumed his trek. His senses felt fully reawakened. He scanned the surrounding sands, listened to the rustling wind, and sniffed the air for any strange scents. While he still felt the pang of foreboding about this journey, he also felt something more familiar—the thrill of exploration.

19:
D
ISCOVERIES

Why is it that what we do know can save us, but what we don’t know can kill us?

Hours later, Krystallus approached the Haunted Marsh. The golden flash of starset illuminated the sky, sending radiant ribbons across the heavens and signaling the start of night. But he hardly noticed, for his mind was teeming with thoughts of what he’d seen on his journey across the desert.

He paused to lean against an old elm tree that had, somehow, managed to take root in a cluster of rocks under a small dune. Beneath the elm’s twisted branches, now tinted gold by the sky above, he sat down. After wedging himself between two gnarled roots, he pulled out his flask and gratefully took a swallow of water. Then he opened his sketchbook.

On a page that glowed with the golden light of starset, he reviewed his long list of discoveries from that day. He’d seen crowned lizards in five different colors, a giant desert snake (which was, fortunately, slithering up a distant dune), a radiant red butterfly, a three-horned ibex which leaped right over his head, and a family of sand-eating gnomes—in all, twenty-seven new kinds of creatures. And that did not count the luminous whirl of sand that had spun right up to him, stopped as if it were examining him closely, then twirled off in the opposite direction. It could have been a strangely condensed sandstorm, glowing from reflected light . . . or it could have been something else.

He drew a quick sketch of the mysterious whirl of sand, then closed the book. After giving its cover a satisfied tap, he replaced it in his tunic pocket.
What a day
, he told himself.
My first trek through this desert. But not my last.

Looking over his shoulder, he could see, through the branches of the elm, the dense cloud that hovered over the land just half a league away. It billowed and churned, rising high into the sky. The Haunted Marsh. That cloud looked even darker than it had when he began this journey—a bottomless well of blackness.

He scrutinized the cloud. Within its dark, billowing folds, he spied a brief red glow that seemed to reveal a towering form, denser than the surrounding vapors. Maybe it was just the shifting light from starset, now rapidly fading. Or maybe not.
Whatever is hiding in there,
he vowed,
I will find it. And if it’s linked to Avalon’s troubles, I’ll get the word to Basil.

As night deepened, the cloud over the Marsh melted into the surrounding darkness. Krystallus watched, scowling. He knew better than to try to go into that swamp now. No, he’d stay safely camped under this ancient tree until dawn. Then, aided by the return of daylight, he would brave the Marsh.

In the quivering light of the stars, he studied the tree itself. Its knobby branches, once strong and sturdy, seemed to be sagging from age. Or was it from another, more sinister force? Clearly, where hundreds of healthy leaves once budded, only a few frail ones sprouted now. He rapped his knuckles on the root beside him. The wood felt hollow and distressed, making an echo that seemed to moan the words
baaaaack, go baaaaack
.

Krystallus placed his open hand on the tree’s trunk. Beneath the flaking strips of bark, deep gouges ran through the column, cutting all the way into the heartwood. And yet, despite everything—poor soil, lack of water, nearness to the Marsh—this tree had somehow survived.

“You picked a terrible place to grow,” he said, drumming his fingers against the old elm’s trunk. “But here you are, even now. Still alive.”

He nodded, part in admiration, part in sympathy. For he, too, knew something about growing up in difficult conditions—with an absent father whose love seemed always out of reach, with expectations for his own magic that he could never meet, and with the parched soil of a lonely life of aimless wandering. Until he’d met Serella.

Again he turned toward the Marsh. Now that the curtain of night had fallen, he could see almost no sign of the swamp. Almost. For unlike the desert dunes and plains surrounding him, no stars glittered above that place. No light at all penetrated the ominous cloud. Only the absence of light revealed the Marsh’s existence.

Of course, he noticed other signs, as well. That faintly bitter smell on the desert wind—a smell that carried hints of rotting plants, stale peat, and decayed flesh. And also that occasional whisper of sound, a warbling cry of anguish or a distant scream.

One of those sounds pierced the night, a bone-chilling shriek that seemed both far away and perilously close. Krystallus listened intently, scratching the stubble on his chin. That was, he felt sure, the aching cry of a marsh ghoul. Travelers—including the most worldly bards he knew, as well as the seasoned explorers who visited Eopia College of Mapmakers—considered marsh ghouls the most terrifying and irredeemably evil beings in Avalon.

Krystallus, however, didn’t agree. He knew better than to assume they were hopelessly evil . . . especially after he’d discovered the secret tale of their origins. For just a few months ago, he had found something precious. Something rich with information. Something he’d been searching for throughout his life.

Reaching into a tunic pocket, he removed a tattered, leather-bound book, so old that wrinkles creased its cover like the face of an elder friend. Gently, he ran his finger along the binding. Then, with one finger, he tapped the leather clasp that held the book closed, a clasp that wouldn’t open with any amount of force. Not even a mighty giant could have pulled it apart.

No, as Krystallus knew, the clasp would open only with the utterance of a secret password. After weeks of trial and error, and much frustration, he’d been lucky enough to guess the password. And he’d also been lucky in another respect: The password didn’t require any magic from whoever uttered it. All the necessary magic had been stored within the clasp by its maker—Merlin himself.

For this was Merlin’s lost journal, hidden away by the wizard in the final days of his youth in Fincayra. It had lain for centuries in the mist-shrouded trunk of an ancient oak tree—a tree that Krystallus suspected was, in fact, none other than the famous Arbassa. It had taken many years of searching to find the tree, and then, almost coincidentally, to find the old book, but at last he’d succeeded.

Krystallus drew a slow breath, then said quietly, “Olo Eopia.”

Hearing the password—Merlin’s true name, given to him by Dagda before Fincayra merged with the spirit realm—the clasp suddenly stiffened as if it had come to life. All at once, its leather laces untied themselves and the small metal buckle in its center clicked. The clasp fell open.

Krystallus smiled. It felt good, for once, to feel as if he could work a little bit of magic. But his smile quickly faded. He knew that the feeling was only an illusion.

Unlike my father
, he mused,
I don’t have a single shred of magic—something he never understood. Sure, I can use magical objects like this book or an enchanted map—but any fool can do that. There is no magic inside me.
Merlin, he felt sure, never even thought about how much that fact had affected his son’s life. Or how difficult it had made growing up in the shadow of a great wizard.
He never even wondered how hard it must be to have no magic of my own.

Even so, discovering the lost journal had given Krystallus a new perspective on his father. In reading the wizard’s own descriptions of events—many of which had become famous in folklore, stories he’d heard too many times to count—Krystallus realized that his father was, in fact, more than just a powerful figure of mythic proportions. He was also, at least in his youth, a passionate and impulsive person who could be unsure of himself, vulnerable, and even deathly afraid. He was, in sum, not just a wizard but also a human being.

Not so different,
thought Krystallus,
from me
.

He opened the book, hearing the faint
crackle
of its binding. The pages, golden-edged and tattered from age, seemed to glow in the trembling light from the stars above. And also, it seemed, from a vague luminosity of their own.

He lifted the open book to his nose and inhaled. Its smell, something like a mixture of worn leather, parchment, and fire coals, filled his nostrils. The aroma, by now familiar, seemed to welcome him.

Lowering the book, he started to flip through its pages, looking for the passage about the marsh ghouls. He realized, with every turn of a page, that this volume was about much more than Merlin. It was, in truth, a treasure trove of stories, dreams, and histories of all sorts of people and places. Many of those stories had never been told before. Other than Serella and the young elf Tressimir, with whom he’d shared the journal, no one but Krystallus knew what marvels those pages contained.

Just before he came to the strange tale of the marsh ghouls, his gaze fell upon a page that had been folded against itself. Carefully, he opened the page, finding a passage that he’d never read before. In Merlin’s messy scrawl, more like the tracks of birds on a beach than penmanship meant to be legible, were these words:

In the days since I fought the magic-eating kreelix, a fight I only barely survived, I have wondered why I was cursed to be born a creature of magic. What do all these powers accomplish, except to make me a target for evil forces who want to kill or enslave me? Why must the people I love most, my mother and sister and beloved Hallia, suffer so much because of my affliction? How I wish I didn’t have any magic of my own!

Stunned, Krystallus blinked his eyes. Had he read correctly? Had his father, in his stormy youth, really called his magic a curse and an affliction? Refocusing on the passage, he read on:

I can only hope that fate has given me these magical powers for a reason. A reason I must discover for myself. Somehow, I need to perceive my magic not as a burden—but as a gift. Something I can use to help the people and places I love. If only I felt confident of measuring up to such an enormous task!

Never mind such doubts. If this is my challenge, I accept it. And I also realize that it is equally difficult, in very different ways, for creatures who are born without any magic. Worst of all, I think, would be the fate of a nonmagical child whose father or mother possesses great powers. The very idea of such a child makes my heart ache, and reminds me how fortunate I truly am.

Krystallus blinked again, clearing his vision enough to read that line again:
The very idea of such a child makes my heart ache.

He shifted his weight, leaning back against the old elm. As he did so, the journal’s magical clasp brushed against his thumb. All at once, he realized something new about the clasp. About the journal. And about his father.

What if Krystallus hadn’t merely been lucky that the password required no magic beyond what already resided in the clasp? What if Merlin had planned it that way—so that even a person with no magic of his own could someday read this secret journal?

He swallowed. What if . . . Merlin had only wanted the journal to be read by someone who knew the wizard well enough to know his true name—Olo Eopia? Someone who could be his own child, a son or daughter yet to be born.

Me,
thought Krystallus.
He wanted this journal to come to me.

In the distance, a shrieking wail arose. Krystallus recognized the sound at once. With a final glance at the passage he’d just discovered, he turned to the section on the marsh ghouls. He’d read the description of their tragic history many times before, but never with so much interest as now.

Long ago in Lost Fincayra, on wondrous meadows filled with flowers, lived a community of enchantresses, the Xania-Soe. They lived peacefully, amassing their wealth not in jewels or weapons but in knowledge. So great was their wisdom, it was said, the wind itself refused to blow over their realm, to avoid spreading dangerous knowledge to others. They learned how to bend time in a magical Mirror, as well as how to coax magical perfumes from the flowers. In time, the very air of that place smelled of magic. Powerful magic.

So powerful that the warlord Rhita Gawr tried to conquer that realm. And nearly succeeded. Unable to stop his invasion, the enchantresses decided to make a terrible sacrifice. Just before Rhita Gawr took control, they threw a curse on their beloved homeland—a curse that made their magical flowers spew poisons and curses into the air. Because no wind blew there, the poisons seeped into the land itself, turning life into death, light into shadow. The enchantresses refused to leave their cherished home, even in its bitter transformation. So they, too, were poisoned. Twisted by rage and grief, they became deadly, ghoulish beings—the marsh ghouls.