The Old Magic (16 page)

There was blood everywhere. Blindly, Vortigern turned away from the sight, shoving through the press of men at his back until
he was past them. He ran down the stairs, shouting for his personal guard. By the time the night was through, no man in Ganeida’s
army would be left alive.

And in the bedchamber above, Mab surveyed her night’s work … and smiled.

After his adventure in the Forest of the Night, Merlin felt as though he were seeking the answer to a question without knowing
what the question was. That impulse drove him onward, through ever more esoteric books and ancient scrolls. He studied harder
than ever before, though at times his studies made him feel as if he were wading through quicksand, working very hard but
making little progress. He enjoyed the pure knowledge, but more and more the study of magic made him feel as if he were doing
something unfair, something that could lead only to trouble. Slowly Merlin was coming to the realization that if he were to
become a full wizard and Mab’s champion, he might be forced to do things that he despised.

He wished that Blaise or Herne were here for him to talk to; the only people he saw were Mab and Frik. The pixies, trolls,
and small fluttering sprites who were Mab’s court, elvenkind diminished by time and human disbelief, hardly counted as conversational
companions, and Merlin had seen no other creatures here in the Land of Magic. And while Merlin still trusted Mab and Frik
to have his best interests at heart, a seed of doubt had been planted in his soul by what he had seen in the Forest of the
Night, and slowly, day by day, the seed was growing.

“Good morning, Master Merlin,” Frik said, sweeping into the room in his cap and gown.

Over the passing weeks, the library had come to take on the look of an old-fashioned schoolroom. There was now a lectern at
one end of the long table before the fire, and a chalkboard behind it, its surface covered with detailed drawings of pentagrams,
sigils, and magic circles. In one corner of the room an athanor bubbled furiously, the result of Merlin’s dabbling in alchemy.
A worried-looking frog wearing a tiny gold crown sat atop a shelf in a deep glass bowl, slowly blinking its bulging eyes.

Merlin trudged into the room with a book under his arm, his hair still damp from his morning wash. He sat down in his seat
and opened his book with a sigh.

“Is something wrong?” Frik asked archly.

Merlin shrugged. “It’s just that …” he stopped. He wasn’t certain what was bothering him. He only knew that something was.

“Well, do go on, Master Merlin. I’m certain that all of us are terribly interested in your deliberations,” Frik said cuttingly.

“All of
who?
” Merlin demanded with sudden unpent intensity. “The two of you are the only ones I ever see; is anyone else left? You and
Mab talk about the Old Ways—but I’m not sure what they are or even if any of them are left! I just—”

“Oh, dear,” Frik said quietly. “A certain person
did
neglect your education, didn’t she? You’d suppose that a bit of gratitude would have been in order after all that Madame
did for her, but I suppose long association counts for nothing. Well. I can see that certain reparations must be made. Master
Merlin, what do you know about the true nature of the world?”

After several weeks of study, Merlin knew the answer to this question by rote.

“The world is composed of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Each of these realms is ruled by its Elemental King: the Sylph for
Air, the Undine for Water, the Salamander for Fire, and the Gnome for Earth.” Frik bowed to acknowledge this truth. Merlin
continued. “The world is composed of three realms for men, three for the Dark Forces, and three for the Bright. The three
worlds of men are Anoeth, the Land of the Dead; the mortal world which we know; and the Land of Magic, which lies within the
Hollow Hills beyond the Enchanted Lake. …”

“Yes, yes, yes, very good,” Frik said, unimpressed by his pupil’s recitation. “But don’t you wonder why Anoeth and the Land
of Magic are counted as part of the world of Men when mortals only go to one of them after they die and never go to the other
one at all?”

Merlin stared at him blankly. Frik had never spoken to him this way before.

“
Think,
Master Merlin!” the gnome begged him. “They’re called the Three Realms of
Men
.”

“Is it … because mortals used to travel through all three?” Merlin asked hesitantly.

“Yes!”
Frik said in delight. “What’s the point of having a space-time continuum if you never
use
it? But of course as Magic began to leave the world, this sort of travel became less popular. Anoeth is not without its dangers,
and it takes great craft and cunning to reach the Land of Magic at the best of times. As they began to forget us, mortals
became fearful and unwilling to seize their opportunities, and now, well, I suppose nobody travels much at all. But
you
must know all three realms well, Master Merlin. Only think how awkward it would be if Lord Idath didn’t recognize you!”

“Who’s Lord Idath?” Merlin asked.

“
That
is precisely what I mean,” Frik said firmly. “What are they teaching children in the schools these days? I shall have a private
word with Her Majesty, dash off a letter of introduction or two …”

“Are you sure this is the right direction?” Merlin asked hesitantly.

Frik had roused him early that morning. The gnome had bundled Merlin into his Aunt Ambrosia’s warm cloak and urged him to
eat a hearty breakfast. Then, with a great air of importance, he had led Merlin out through the doors of Mab’s palace, down
the grand staircase, and back into the boat which had brought Merlin to the Land of Magic. They carried lanterns containing
captive sprites for light, but Frik had refrained from using the occasion to don one of his peculiar costumes. He scuttled
along in his own persona, a dark and faintly twisted figure whose long pointed ears cast a shadow on the cave walls as if
of horns.

They sailed across the dark lagoon, but instead of breaking out into the open air and the Enchanted Lake, as Merlin half-expected,
they sailed to a shore still within the vast cavern. The beach upon which Frik grounded the boat was of bright blue sand,
blue as the October sky, and Merlin paused for a moment to admire it.

“No time … no time,” Frik said quickly. “We’ve miles to go before we reach our destination, young Merlin, and it wouldn’t
do to be late. He’s a very timely person, is Lord Idath.”

Obediently Merlin had followed Frik through the caverns. He became lost instantly, but Frik always seemed to know where he
was going, even when the cavern opened out into that same sunless, moonless landscape that Merlin had seen before in the Forest
of the Night.

He looked around apprehensively, but the only trees he saw were small stunted ones, their trunks and branches as black and
glistening as if they’d been in a fire. Though the light was fairly bright, the diffuse, silvery radiance cast no shadows,
and gave everything a curious flat appearance. Try as he might, Merlin could not see the sun anywhere in the silvery sky.

Beneath his feet, the ground rang as hard as if it were frozen in the depths of winter, and wisps of mist blurred the ground
and the horizon, until it was difficult to see anything at all, but the air was only chilly, and not really cold. A thin cool
wind seemed to blow from no particular direction, and sniffing it, Merlin caught the faint, far-off scent of the sea.

Though this was obviously outdoors—at least in comparison to the Land of Magic—Merlin didn’t feel as if he were much freer.
The earth, for all its flat vistas, seemed cramped, and the sky had no sense of
depth
to it, as if it were merely a piece of painted canvas. Though he knew they were covering a great deal of ground, the landscape
did not change, and they didn’t seem to have gotten anywhere.

“Where are we?” Merlin finally asked, after they’d been walking for a long time. Having been used to living an outdoor life,
the walk was no trouble to him, but Frik seemed to be laboring a little, and when Merlin spoke, the gnome took it as an excuse
for a rest.

“Why … we’re nowhere in particular,” Frik answered, sounding rather surprised to have been asked. “This is the World Between
the Worlds,” he said, as if that were an answer to Merlin’s question. He sat down on a rock, brandishing a fan he suddenly
produced out of nowhere. “It’s quite a long and twisted path, but at all costs we must be there by dark.”

“Why are we going this way, then?” Merlin asked. “You and Mab can appear anywhere you like in the twinkling of an eye. Why
don’t we just go that way?”

“Well, for one thing, Lord Idath does not appreciate it when people drop in unannounced. For another,
you
must learn all the landmarks to the Land of Winter. Someday you may need to go there by yourself—and get back again, too.”

Herne had told Merlin ghost stories when Merlin had been much younger. They’d given him nightmares until Aunt Ambrosia had
told him firmly that they were only stories, and nothing that could hurt him. Discovering now that the shades of the dead
were real and present was an experience Merlin didn’t care for.

“I suppose so,” Merlin said doubtfully. He plucked up a weed that had been growing by the roadside. It looked like a yellow
flower he saw at home, but here the leaves and petals were both grey, as though the soil in which it grew had leached all
the color out of it.

“Now come along, Master Merlin,” Frik said, as though it were Merlin who had been dawdling.

The path into Anoeth angled sharply uphill after that, becoming so steep that in some places Merlin ended up hauling Frik
along after him like a sack of laundry. As the land rose, Merlin could see for a great distance, but all there was to the
grey landscape was mist and rock and the sparse vegetation that was as grey as the earth it sprouted from. He could not even
see the cave-mouth through which he and Frik had entered this realm.

For some time, Merlin had been conscious of a vast roaring sound. As they came closer to the source, Merlin had recognized
it as the sound of a rushing stream, but he was not prepared for what he saw when he and Frik reached its banks.

Alone in all this grey land, the river had color. Its waters were the bright crimson of flowing blood, ranging from dark ruby
to pale vermilion, rushing and foaming along its narrow bed with furious speed. Anyone who fell in would be carried along
faster than a horse could run, his body battered against the black rocks that thrust up from the stream bed like rotted teeth.
There was a sharp tang of copper in the air, and the river steamed as it flowed, as if it really were fresh blood.

“Ah,” Frik said. “We’ve reached the halfway point. There’s a bridge a few yards upriver. We can cross after lunch.” He seated
himself and raised his hands, preparing to gesture their meal into existence.

“Uh,” Merlin said, feeling slightly queasy.

It was not that he was any stranger to death. Life in the forest was an ongoing dance between hunter and prey, where one died
so that the other might live. The wolf killed the deer, and the wolf’s body, in death, became the grass that fed the deer.
All life was a circle, each creature taking its turn to die so that Life could go on. But though Merlin accepted that fact
intellectually, the thought of eating lunch on the banks of a river that looked and smelled like fresh blood was a little
too much for his stomach.

“I think I’d rather go a little farther first,” he said hastily.

After a few minutes’ walk along the bank, they reached the place where the path they were following crossed over the river.
The river cut deeper into its bed, until they were walking along the edge of a cliff high above it. Spanning the torrent was
a bridge the likes of which Merlin had never imagined. The gleaming lacelike structure arched high over the water, and was
made of interwoven sword-blades, their steel gleaming in the pearly light of the Otherworld day. Through the roadbed of the
bridge, in the open spaces left by the latticework of swords, the red river could be seen racing turbulently below. There
were no side-rails. One slip, and the slashed and bleeding body of the luckless traveler would be cast into the torrent.

Merlin stopped and stared. Frik noticed his mystification and assumed a lecturing stance.

“This—as you would know if you’d paid attention to your Geography lessons—is the Bridge of Blades, which spans the River of
Life, which forms the boundary of Anoeth,
which
is where we are going. It may look rickety, but it’s perfectly safe, I assure you.”

“What if I slip?” Merlin asked, looking at the gleaming edges of the swords.

“Don’t,” Frik suggested.

Though from experience Merlin knew that his gnomish tutor was both cowardly and lazy, Frik sprang quickly onto the bridge,
skipping lightly across the span. Determined not to be outdone, Merlin followed him, trying to match his pace.

The bridge surface gave springily beneath his feet, and the blades creaked and sang as they slid over each other. Merlin tried
to keep his eyes on the far shore, where Frik waited impatiently, and to forget the nature of the surface on which he walked.
He succeeded far too well, for with only a few steps to go, he slipped and fell.

For a moment he hung suspended in space, as if he had taken a giant step sideways. One foot hung over the river, the toes
of the other still touched the bridge. He lunged forward, arms windmilling, trying to reverse the direction of his fall, but
his momentum was too great. All he managed to do to save himself was to grab one of the sword-hilts as he fell.

The sword slid a few inches out of the weave, but it held, angled slightly downward and vibrating with the stress he placed
upon it. Merlin clung to the hilt with both hands, desperately trying to hang on. His shoulders ached with the strain, and
his feet dangled above the long drop to the surface of the river, and the misty sky above seemed like a great hand reaching
down to crush him into the earth. His heart hammered with the awareness of the danger he was in.