Blood and Iron (12 page)

Which made Seeker laugh out loud. Their eyes met; warmth spread through the Seeker's chest. She missed
friends
; she'd been Seeker as long as she'd been mortal, now.

A rattle on the roof slates of the hulking neo-Gothic geology building drew Seeker's attention. She glanced up to see Gharne curled against a chimney like a shadow cast by the afternoon sunlight. The Merlin followed Seeker's gaze and blinked. “What is that?”

“A servant,” Seeker said. “Most can't see him. He's sideways in the world.”

“Seeing auras is trendy.”

“True enough. I could show you some things, but you might want privacy for it.”

“If you think I'm going anyplace alone with you, you're crazy.” The Merlin leaned forward and examined the dolmas, but did not touch them. “Who was that woman with you the other night, by the way?”

“Another Seeker. The Seeker of the Unseelie court.”

“The bad fairies.”

“All the Fae are . . . inhuman in their morality. I'm sure you know the ballads about that as well. I represent the Queen of the Daoine Sidhe. She is very powerful, and very bright. Kadiska's mistress is a Queen called the Cat Anna—”

“Isn't that a Celtic goddess of some sort?”

“Her name has been used so, yes.” Seeker bit into a stuffed grape leaf, savoring tomatoes, rice, the tang of dressing.

“Please continue.” The Merlin's tone was rich with mockery, but it lay uncertain over a brittleness like sugared glass.

She's been lonely too,
Seeker realized.
Accomplished in so many ways. And who can she tell what she sees in the dark of the moon?
“—a much darker figure,” Seeker finished, as if she had not been interrupted.

“Tell me more about the Mage. Dr. Szczegielniak.”

It crossed Seeker's mind to wonder how the Merlin knew that Matthew held a doctorate.
Prescience or research, what does it matter?
“What more is there to say?”

“What does he want with me?”

“The same thing I do,” Seeker answered, picking at the edge of the bench with a thumbnail. “Your wisdom. Your power.”

“Girl—” Carel stopped herself midspeech, drew a deep breath, and planted her free hand on her hip. “My wisdom isn't anything to speak of. Maybe a bit more levelheaded than most—”

“Is
that
all.”

Carel laughed, a rich dark sound that crested up into her singing range. “You expected some panic-stricken Holly-wood reaction? I get weirder things than you in my cereal box.”

Seeker swallowed the last bite of the dolmas. “Really?”

Carel cocked her head left and right, a falcon considering whether to peck. “Not so much weirder,” she allowed. “I could freak out theatrically if it would make you feel better.”

“ ‘Come with me if you want to live,' ” Seeker quoted, drawing another laugh.

“You get many recent releases in Faerie?”

“We learn all the stories, sooner or later. Especially once they start growing into myths. Here's another one: Haven't you ever wanted to see elves, Carel Bierce?”

The Merlin threw back her head and laughed that much harder, allowing herself to be disarmed. “Who hasn't?” she answered after her laughter trailed off, bubbling like that little stream. “I see elves all the time. Every day. There's one picking around in the flower bed up there.” Carel pointed, and sure enough, there was. A gnome, anyway, but it didn't seem the time to correct her.

“Come with me,” Seeker said, letting her power and a little of her position vibrate in her voice, “and I will show you things more terrible than you imagine. Darkness and the Dragon at the bottom of the world: the magic that makes all things whole and then rends them again, bit from bit.”
Keith. Damn you, what are you doing with the Dragon?
“I will show you terrifying truths.”

“And what will your colleague show me should I go to her?”

“Lovely things, no doubt,” Seeker said softly. “The lie is always prettier.”

The Merlin pursed her lips, her eyes like black jade. “What is this thing you feel I might want privacy for?”

“I'll have to kiss you.”
Which is half a lie, and half a truth that isn't really.

“And you're scared if you kiss a woman in public, you'll be tarred as a lesbian forever.” The Merlin's laugh frothed up again, a wave effervescing over the breakwater.

“You're the one with a reputation to worry about,” Seeker said mildly, provoking more laughter.

“Honey,” the Merlin answered, “the whole campus already knows which way I swing. So if you think you've got something that's worth taking risks for, show it to me. Then maybe we can deal.” She stood. “Or leave me the hell alone. I've got a full plate already. So convince me. And then you can explain to me what you get out of it. I still don't believe in free lunches.”

“No,” Seeker answered. “What's in it for me?” She stood as well, wadding the remains of her lunch in paper and pitching them underhanded into the trash. “Better to ask what's in it for my Queen. The prestige of having a human wizard of such power and promise attached to her court. Your strength and wisdom to counsel her, when you grow into it. Alliance. What does the university offer you?”

“Tenure, eventually. I see your point. They protect me, provide for me, and have a claim on my research and my teaching time. Patronage. So what does it get me, and what does it cost?”

Seeker gestured toward Gharne's languid form. He blinked sleepily, eyes like hurricane lamps with the candles flickering inside, and spread inkblot wings across the red-and-gray slates, soaking in the heat of the sun. A mockingbird improvised arpeggios in the branches of the magnolia. Whatever Seeker had been about to say died on her lips.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Seeker said. But she had heard the birdsong, and heard in it meaning plain as words.
Fine fellow, fine fellow—see me; I'm a good provider, strong and smart and fat.

The leaf-mold taste of springwater filled her mouth. She swallowed it and forced a smile. “Hold still. Close your eyes.” She kissed the Merlin on both eyes and then her mouth, awkwardly letting the kiss linger a moment before she backed away.

“Okay,” Seeker said, and Carel opened her eyes and looked around.

“What should I be seeing?” she said, and startled at the sound of her own voice. “What's that?!”

The second sentence came out in English, but the first had been in the fey tongue. “A small magic,” Seeker answered, lapsing into the same formal language. “The gift of tongues. And the Sight, which you had in small measure already. ” She pointed across the gardens and the walkways and the lawns.

“I'd think you slipped me a hallucinogen,” Carel said after a long time. “Everything looks so . . . real.”

“It does, doesn't it? Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To talk to a tree,” Seeker said, and, taking the Merlin's hand in her own, led her along an asphalt path and by the water.

Seeker brought the Merlin around the edge of the little lake at the bottom of a bowl-shaped lawn, holding the smaller woman's hand. A family of three stood beside a white metal sign announcing a forty-five-dollar fine for feeding the waterfowl. The little girl shook bread crumbs to the Canada geese, laughing at the big birds' squabbles. She was blond and fair-skinned, perhaps ten years old. Seeker glanced quickly away anyway, longing twisting inside her. “Tell me what you see,” she said to the Merlin.

Carel struggled for focus. “Everything.” She spread her hands helplessly. “Only brighter.”

Seeker nodded, encouraging.

The Merlin's hands tumbled one over the other like courting butterflies. “It's like . . . late afternoon. When the light is at a slant and the shadows make everything look very
real
.”

“Good,” Seeker said. “That's how it should look.”

Carel stood in silence for a moment, turning her head as if surveying the winter's first snowfall. “Well.” She dusted her hands on her trousers. “Where's this magic tree?”

“Not magic.” Seeker extended a finger up the slope of the lawn. “Just friendly.”

The weeping willow stood at the top of a sweep of moss-green grass, across the street from the English and social sciences buildings. It wasn't one tree, precisely, but rather five trunks grown together in the communal fashion of willows, the cup where they forked making a bower large enough to cradle several people in the palm of its enormous hand.

“When I was here, we called him Old Man Willow.” Seeker walked under cascading, autumn-bright leaves. The willow's massive boughs lofted skyward, ribboning back toward earth in plumes echoed by the fountain. “He likes company.”

“When you were here . . . ?” Carel began, but her voice trailed off into softness. “Oh. My.”

Because the wizened old giant looked up, saw the women coming toward him, and smiled. Or perhaps more accurately, gave the appearance of smiling, because the physical tree did not move or change. Nevertheless, Seeker saw it gaze a welcome as if over the edge of a newspaper. Carel froze, and then took a single hesitant step.

The weeping branches stirred in a wind Seeker did not feel, brushing her hair and then the Merlin's, leaves cool against her cheek. “Welcome, ladies,” the willow whispered, a sound like the rasp of moist earth along the belly of a worm.

Seeker held her tongue and waited.

Carel's eyebrows went up.
You're testing me.

Seeker smiled.
You're right.

The Merlin squared her shoulders. “Good afternoon.”

The big tree chuckled and seemed to settle himself, an old man leaning against the back of a bench. “It is indeed,” he answered. “I've seen you before, but you never stopped to chat. Climb up into my branches. I'm told it's comfortable. ”

Seeker moved forward, taking the Merlin by the elbow. “It's polite,” she said. The crotch of the tree was three feet up; Seeker set one boot on a conveniently gnarled root so polished with footsteps that it resembled a waxed door lintel. Grasping rough bark with both hands, she jumped lightly into the tree.

“I'm tripping,” Carel said.

Seeker offered the Merlin a hand.
“Allez-oop.”

A moment later, and the two women were ensconced among sheltering trunks. “Like a bee in a flower,” Carel said, wonderingly. She laid a hand on the rough, sun-warmed bark. “Are all willow trees so friendly?”

“Most of us,” he answered. “Haven't you ever noticed how many birds and insects make us home?” The branches wavered, and Seeker was struck by how much it resembled the sway of the Merlin's braids. “You'll be able to talk to birds too, soon.”

“Can you do that?” Carel leaned toward Seeker.

“No,” Seeker said, but she remembered the mockingbird and wondered. “But I am Fae, and you're a wizard. I don't know the rules for wizards.”

“She's more than a wizard, little one,” the willow said. “And you! I remember you. Twenty, thirty summers ago. You sat in my branches with a red-haired man. You weren't Fae then.”

“Part Fae,” Seeker answered, more curtly than she intended. “They found me the summer I graduated and brought me home.”

The willow seemed unruffled by her tone. “Welcome back,” he said, and she had an impression that the branches offered her a brief and warm embrace. “Too few of my old friends come back to visit. But there are always new ones.”

“I never knew,” Carel began, and cleared her throat, “that trees were so . . . talkative.”

The willow chuckled gently. “I'm special.” He eased himself on his roots like a storyteller warming to a tale. “Willows have always been more restless than other trees. In the old days, the willow-folk were known for walking at night, even following unwary travelers on the road.” He sighed. “Things are different now. But people do come and talk to me.”

“I'm sorry I never did before.” The Merlin seemed at a loss for words. “What sort of things do you like to talk about?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. There was a girl who used to come and read me Brer Rabbit and poetry. There was a dark-haired boy who liked to sit in my branches and write, and a blond boy with a bicycle who brought his friends here. None of them could hear me. But they weren't what you are, after all.”

“What I am? A . . . wizard?” She still tripped over the word.

Seeker started to interrupt, but she wasn't fast enough.

“A Merlin,” the tree said.

“A . . . like Merlin the Magician. Like that?”

“Like that,” Seeker said. She hadn't been back to talk to the tree since she
changed
. Most willow trees weren't so well educated.
Most willow trees aren't the focal point of a university campus.

“I haven't noticed myself living backwards,” Carel said tartly, studying her fingernails.

Seeker laughed. “I suspect that was a convenient fiction Ambrosius put about to explain his propensity for telling the future and knowing creepy things about people. Most Merlins are prophets of one sort or another.”

“So how is being a Merlin different from being a wizard? ”

The tree seemed to cock his head, thinking. “Wizards, Magi . . . they
learn
magic. Wizards
generate
magic,” he said. “Magi
use
magic. Merlins . . . they
are
magic.”

“Like you two are magic.”

“No,” Seeker answered.
In for a penny,
she thought. “We contain magic, Old Man Willow and I. You—” She paused. Carel watched her, dark eyes glistening intent as a bird's, motionless as a heron stalking a fish. “—are the personification of magic. One to a generation. And not every generation gets one.”