Sorcerer's Vendetta (The Secret of Zanalon) (14 page)

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Imagine that." Her silver hair gleamed white in the patches of sunlight, blue where the sun was blocked by the forest's living cover. Her glossy black cat regarded her with sublimely disinterested eyes.

"Lord a'mercy. And those tongues a'waggin' in the village. Just 'cause I thought to do 'im a good turn. Leas' I kin do's take care o' 'is place. 'e didn't 'ave no 'ired 'elp, seein's 'ow 'e could snap 'is fingers and 'ave the powers that be doin' all the chores. Place'd be getting plenty dusty, anon. Gotta lotta nerve, they do, sayin' I did away with 'im. Imagine. Imagine that."

Then she cackled. "Course they's all too scared to do naught 'bout it.  Fine with me. There'd be scavengers fer sure an I 'adn't taken to carin' for the place. Kinda funny, 'ow 'e got 'em all shakin' in their boots, takin' that title – Sorcerer – and all the time 'e's a wizard. Let 'em think I moved in. You an' I know my place be much more 'omeylike; naught on this earth could pry me from my 'ome."

Reconsidering, she paused. "'Cept maybe lookin' at that damned statue."

She scowled, shook her head, continued her distracted search with a stab at the underbrush.

"Couldn't you just die? Whoooaa, whoooa whoooah, not two days past an' they got it all worked up that I 'locked 'im away inna icy netherworld for a thousand years,'" she intoned in a dramatic voice that she usually reserved for telling scary stories to her grandchildren, meanwhile waving her stick around like a wand. The cat followed the stick with sudden interest, hoping for a game.

She cackled again. "Right. Me. Morgana Nobody who ne'er 'urt anybody. Now I be the big rival of the great Sorcerer. Hah!"

Morgana swung the stick through the brush with disgusted glee. It made a solid thwock, an unexpected sound. She paused. Poking carefully, she pushed back sprigs of young bushes. There, hidden beside the path, she found the cause.

A boot. In the boot was a foot, part of the young man who lay there, a thick tome clutched, open over his chest like a peaked roof settled on a destroyed cottage. He was returning, unseen and unmourned, to the earth.

Most of his body was burned and blackened, save where the book had taken the blast. He had taken a crushing, clawed blow to the head and shoulder. Even without the signs of the telltale fire, she would've known the marks were too big to be anything but the work of a dragon. Only half of his face had been left recognizable.

The old woman's eyes widened. She knew the boy.

It was Hafgan.

Rachel snuggled closer into Merlin's shoulder, sighing. He was drifting into sleep, she following, reluctantly. She savored the feel of his skin, smooth warmth wherever their bodies met. Powerful images, sensations of their loving wandered in her mind; a look, a touch, a lingering soft kiss ... She clung to every moment, trying to engrave them into her being, like precious dreams she strove to keep, their revelations never to be lost. The sweet satisfaction she felt now, she cherished.

Rachel gazed at him, her eyes half-closed, and felt the ache of longing even this close. She could not be close enough to him, even now. Resisting that feeling, she closed her eyes, preferring to honor the deep contentment in the little time she had left. She refused to think about time, the future, because there was none.

Merlin seemed to be accepting his fate better than she, she realized, because it was his own choice.

Now she realized, fully. In the first rush of their connection, nothing existed but that explosion of ecstasy, complete union in an infinite instant. But the next time, she tuned into him on a different level, could feel the tremendous power he was expending, giving to her, and she understood just what choice he had made. That power, she sensed, was the same he might have used to save his life.

She shut all thoughts of regret from her mind. It was done, he had chosen his path, and she would not waste an instant of this sacred gift. Slowly, she stroked his chest under the cloak they now used as a blanket, resisting sleep. In spite of her, sleep slipped into her mind and stole precious time from her.

And left her, instead, an unbidden nightmare.

The more Morgana thought about it, the more obvious it was now what had happened. The state of the body told her Hafgan had been dead for quite a few days, the fact that he was in the area at all showed he must have died the very same day he struck down and robbed his master. The exact cause revealed itself when she pulled the book from his stiffened grasp.

It was open to a page which appeared to be a spell to conjure a horse. But something seemed wrong.  The more she looked at the mystical figures on the page, the more they seemed to shift. When she realized there must be some protective spell on the Book itself, she did the only thing she could think of. She addressed the Book directly.

"Now, see 'ere, I know thou 'ast a guard up, I ain't blamin' thee a bit. Thou took thee good care of this fellah, that's certain. But I 'appens to be a friend 'o thy master---well, not exactly a friend but I be tryin' to 'elp 'im, see? I give thee my word, 'e would want me to be able to 'cipher thee, 'cause otherwise 'e's stuck inna body o' stone."

She placed her hand on the page, closed her eyes. "Strike me now an I be lyin'," she swore solemnly. When she raised her hand and looked, the words on the page were stable. But different.

It was not a spell to conjure a horse. It was a spell to conjure a dragon.

Morgana hurried back to Merlin's keep with his Book clutched close to her chest. Her mind was spinning with possibilities as she placed the Book in an upstairs room, then headed back to her own little house.

Back home, she sat in her rocking chair and pondered her future path, staring at the statue as if it might move at any moment.

All the pieces fit into place. Her spell had worked, in its own way, under circumstances Merlin and she had been unaware of.

Hafgan had been dead already when they performed it. The elementals had interpreted the spell in their own unique way, with the knowledge only they had possessed. It was their efficient way of getting him to a far future, where Hafgan's soul, still merged with Merlin's stolen power, would be reborn. And perhaps Merlin himself, as a statue, could be a part of the imbedded trap within the spell, set to spring.

"Lord a'mercy!" she exclaimed at the revelation, thumped to a stop in her rocking chair. Only her cat gave her a sleepy acknowledgment from her place on the mantelpiece; her eyes slit open, closed again.

"I just might be gettin' young again after all!"

With a final, satisfied puff, she blew away the last of the engraving dust from the pedestal she had created at Merlin's feet.

"Now, that ain't so bad." She slowly straightened, rubbing her back with one hand. "Sure I could'a done it with a spell, like I did with creatin' the pedestal an' gettin' you up on it, but t'aint no 'urry. Gave me mana a bit o' rest, it did; no tellin' 'ow much I'll be needin' to draw thee back through time."

Morgana snorted softly to herself. "All this time stuff's kinda confusin'. Like, fer instance, why didn't thou return as thou promised on thy own? I doubt thou couldst 'ave failed to defeat thy 'prentice, seein's 'e ain't gonna have no recollection o' why thou e'en be after 'im. Mayhaps, 'cause I gave thee this message, thou felt it best not to conflict my plannin' 'ere in the past. Or mayhaps 'cause thou 'ast a touch o' scoundrel in thee, eh? Whate'er, methinks it best not to trust thee entirely."

She crossed to her mantelpiece with the shuffling patience imposed by age and touched the clock centered there, already forming the spell in her mind that would return her erstwhile rival, now tentative ally. And his apprentice, if he had been found.

Link it to the clock,
she decided, and gave a knowing nod.
That way, supposin' 'e's failed for some reason, 'e cain't stop it, e'en by killing me. An 'e tries to destroy the clock, that will set off the spell on the instant.

"I shan't leave thee a crack in the wall to squeeze through," she murmured. She turned to look up into the hate-filled stone face of the man soul-named Merlin, and gave him a wink with her vow.

"An' that I promise thee."

"I will teach thee ...one ... final ... lesson. Look for me. Always. E'en an I must break Death's doors, I will find thee! Hafgan! I will find---"

Rachel woke with a start. Adrenalin released by the echoes of the nightmare of sworn vengeance drove her heartbeat into staccato.

She drew air into her lungs in hasty surges. Pulling back slightly, she turned to Merlin and raised herself on an elbow, holding the edge of the cloak tight to her chest as she looked at him with changed eyes.

The images were sharp in her mind, the eyes of this man now beside her. So close in her memory, he had gazed at her in love. In the fresh nightmare, he had pierced her to the soul in a glare of hatred.

Suddenly her reality shifted. Little things had meaning, more than she had wanted to see. He had summoned Hafgan. She had stepped into his pentagram.

Oh, God ...

Rachel squeezed her eyes shut as they began to burn with shame.

There was more. Waves of intense emotion, unwarranted by circumstances. Strange how knowledge slipped away, yet that which belonged to the heart stayed, imbedded in her soul. At the inn, her certainty, which seemed to come from nowhere, that he had come to kill her.
He had.

And that instant of fury when he mentioned the deadly glyphs of his Book.

I remember ... The Book killed me ... because ...

First, she had been Niniene, and Merlin had withheld his love from her. So she had returned to him, this time to take from him what had kept him from her. His power. She had returned as Hafgan. 
The book killed me..

…
because ...

… I
killed Merlin.

Merlin began to rise out of sleep, his body under a paralysis, his mind clearing slowly. Awareness came with the sound of Rachel's breathing, but something about it wasn't right.

She sounded ... hurt.

The blackest of his fears suddenly rushed in to wrap him in its shroud, squeezing. On its inner canvas was a monstrous projection –
Rachel, her smoky hair grayed, her smooth skin burned, shriveled by the contact of his power, mercilessly draining ...

Noooooo!

He ripped his way through the bonds of the nightmare tapestry, jerked fully awake with a painful shudder and a sharp intake of air into his deprived lungs.

Turning to her, he reached out. His hand froze poised above her.

Rachel lay on her back, the cloak grasped at her breast. She was staring straight up, her knees drawn up slightly, tight. Her physical appearance was unchanged, and yet ...

"Rachel, have I ... hurt thee?" he breathed, afraid of her answer, afraid she could not.

She turned her head slowly, her blue eyes met his. There was a strange mixture of deep regret, longing, and a trace of fear in her eyes. He couldn't bear it, yet even then he wanted her, wanted to kiss her again.

"Please speak, my love ... please," he urged her, trying to control the tightening in his throat, smooth the tremor in his voice.

Her hand drew away from the edge of the cloak, moved toward his, stopped within aura touch. When she finally spoke, his heart dropped.

"Ooh, nooo," she moaned, softly.

The hand curled back like a heat-withered vine, to clench in a fist between her breasts. She turned her face, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Don't ... touch me," she whispered, in a voice hushed with emotion, whether revulsion or shame he could not tell.

The tightness moved to his chest and he found himself hyperventilating. Merlin pushed back from her, feeling like a monster that she had to be protected from, gripped by guilt as if he'd discovered he'd raped her in his sleep. Snatching his breeches, he drew them on under the cloak in one smooth movement. He started to slide back from her, carefully, trying irrationally not to disturb even the lay of the cloak she clung to.

Trying to speak, to plead for her forgiveness, he could force nothing out of his mouth but his strangled breath. Finally, he managed to rasp out something he hoped she would understand.

"I ... I hurt ... thee, I beg ... f ...forgive ..."

That reached her. She turned slowly to stare at him. The look on her face was intent, concerned. Suddenly she shook her head, reached for him. "No," she said, sternly, grasping his shoulder. Her hand moved up gently to touch his face.

"No," she said again. "You did
not
hurt me."

He stared, then released his breath, washed through with relief but still concerned by her actions. Now puzzled, Merlin slid his knees under himself, took her hand in his and pressed her fingers to his lips.

"What troubles th---?"

His words were cut short. The barest flicker of a flashlight struck the trees to his left, a glimmer of light he could almost have imagined. Listening intently, he became aware of sounds behind him, an intruding presence. He whipped his head around, toward the source.

Someone was coming.