The Old Magic (18 page)

*Careful. Here comes the first jump.*

Sir Rupert’s warning came only a moment before he checked, then launched himself into space. Merlin glanced down, but saw
nothing more than a faint glittering below before Sir Rupert jolted to earth once more.

By now the rest of the hunt had caught up with them, and the night was filled with the drumming of many hooves, and the wild
battle-cries of riders further back in the pack. The horses slowed the pace a bit after their first wild rush, and now the
hounds surged ahead in a body, red eyes flashing as they tasted the wind.

“Where are we going?” Merlin shouted to his mount. “What are we hunting?” He could recognize no landmarks in the grey land:
though it was night, it wasn’t fully dark. The same radiance that had lit the day persisted, though dimmer, and the mist that
rose from the ground gleamed like pearl.

“We hunt souls, young wizard,” a rider next to him shouted. He rode a piebald horse, and all he wore was a spotted cat skin
kilted about his waist, and on his head an untidy crown of wild grapes and ivy twisted together. He carried a harp in his
free hand. “We are the Wild Hunt, and all the mortal kind’s forgotten gods and terrors ride with us.” He laughed wildly, and
a few moments later his horse had pulled ahead and he was gone.

“What did he mean?” Merlin demanded of Sir Rupert, but he thought somehow that he already knew. Idath was the Hunt Lord, and
the Lord of Winter, but he was also the Lord of the Dead, Hunter of Souls.

Merlin saw his fellow horsemen in glimpses: the hollow eyeholes of a gilded mask, a crimson cowl that seemed to have no tenant.
Long white fangs gleamed in beastly muzzles, branching horns curled from broad foreheads, and glowing eyes gleamed from beneath
jutting brows. One rider had no head at all, and under his arm in place of it he carried a candlelit orange gourd that had
been carved with a demon face. Merlin closed his eyes very tightly. Those he rode with now were far more inhuman than the
members of Mab’s court in the Hollow Hills.

*Jump,*
Sir Rupert said laconically.

This time Merlin managed to take the jump
with
his mount, rather than being dragged along behind. As soon as they landed again, he realized that something was different.
The air was warmer. He could smell growing things. The sky was truly dark, and far above a fat silvery moon sailed through
the midnight heavens, bright as a coin.

“We’re home!” Merlin said in astonishment.

“Of course, young Merlin. My business is with the race of men,” Idath said. He’d reined in so that Tempus and Sir Rupert ran
side by side for a few moments.

“Was he right?” Merlin asked him. “The man in the leopard skin? About the souls, and being forgotten, and all?”

“No,” Idath answered. His red eyes gleamed below the rim of the helmet, and his white teeth were very sharp. “Let others despair,
let Mab plot and scheme to regain her sovereignty, it is of no concern to me. I will never be forgotten so long as mortals
fear the shadow that comes at midnight, the howl in the dark. I am the Lord of the Wild Hunt, and as long as mortals cower
by the fireside there will be a place there for me also.” He laughed, and spurred his horse ahead, leaving Merlin and Sir
Rupert behind.

Merlin shuddered. He had liked Lord Idath, and a part of him still did, but he recognized that the huntsman he had met in
the castle yard was only one of Idath’s aspects. As Lord of the Dead he was a terrifying figure.

But he did not have time to reflect on such things. The horses were running flat-out, and he had to work to keep his seat.
Mortal hunters would have tired, or slowed, or stood around waiting for the hounds to pick up a scent. The Wild Hunt did none
of these things—its riders rode as if the gates of Hell gaped open behind them.

They reached a road, and ahead Merlin could see the lanterns hung at the entrance of a village. Though the village gates were
chained shut for the evening, the Hunt poured through the gateway as if they were not there at all. The sound of the horses’
hooves changed as they ran over cobbled lanes, and the baying of the hounds echoed through the narrow village paths.

Sir Rupert slowed on the twisting streets, jostled by the riders who surged past him, vying for preeminence. As they raced
onwards one of the horses fell, pitching his rider over his head. The riders following did not have enough room to stop or
turn aside, and crashed into him, collapsing in a desperate tangle of hooves. There were screams from behind as others saw
the obstacle—Merlin could see it, too, but to stop was to be trampled.

“Sir Rupert!”

*Hush. Let me concentrate.*

Merlin felt his mount gather himself once more, then Sir Rupert sprang into the air, clearing the tangle of fallen horses
by no more than inches. He seemed to hang in the air forever, and landed with a jar that knocked the breath from Merlin’s
lungs. The horse scrabbled for balance, his hooves skating over the slippery cobbles, then he regained his footing and bounded
out of the way as the next members of the field leaped the fallen horses.

In moments the town was a dim blur behind them. Merlin realized he was breathless and aching, chilled to the bone with the
whipping wind and thoroughly unsettled, but there didn’t seem to be any way to retire from the Hunt, even if he had known
somewhere else to go. He was in a gap now between two packs of riders—the entire Hunt was strung out for half a mile, whooping
and howling and brandishing torches and captured plunder—and he could see a little of the land around him. The terrain through
which they ran seemed strangely altered from the Britain that Merlin knew. The countryside was dotted with lights—not many,
but they burned with a fixed white intensity strange to him. The very air smelled different; it held the taint of metal and
distant smoke. Close behind him he heard the hoofbeats of an approaching rider; turning to see who it was, he caught a blurred
glimpse of a small dark bearded man with the horns of a goat. He rode without saddle or bridle, and his mount ran in blind
terror, its coat foamy with sweat. As he passed, he turned suddenly and shouted into Merlin’s face.

“Go and tell them in Arcadia that great Pan is dead!”

Merlin recoiled in surprise, dragging back involuntarily on Sir Rupert’s reins. The horse slowed, shaking his head and dancing
sideways in displeasure.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin said apologetically. “I was just startled.”

*You have to expect a few shocks if you’re going to ride with this crowd,*
Sir Rupert answered a little crossly. He stretched out his neck and set himself to regaining his lost speed.

The thunder of the hooves ahead rang hollowly as the animals passed from turf onto stone once more. They were onto the causeway
before Merlin quite realized where he was—they had reached the coast and were still riding west; on both sides of him there
was the hissing of the sea as it foamed against the seawall. At the end of the causeway the little strip of land broadened,
and a mighty castle was built on the outcropping, but when they reached it, Merlin saw that the castle was long-deserted.
The full moon shone down on brave stone walls that were now no more than ruins, the castle’s ancient defenses now a hollow
shell. The riders clattered through the forecourt and the inner court—surrounded by the red-eared hounds of Anoeth—then up
a stairway to the battlements, their iron hooves striking sparks from the flints in the stone.

When Idath and Tempus reached the top, they jumped, followed by a wave of hounds. The other riders followed, wild as otters.

Merlin clung desperately to his seat as Sir Rupert lunged up the stairs. When he gained the height it seemed for a moment
that the blast of salt wind that blew landward with gale force would be enough to hold them there. In a lightning glance,
Merlin could see that the moon cast a wide silver track upon the glittering water. Then Sir Rupert, too, jumped.

Merlin yelled as his mount fell through the blackness but moments later he landed upon a shifting, springy surface. Sir Rupert
began to trot, slowly building up speed, and as he did, Merlin realized that he could see the other members of the Hunt riding
up ahead. Their mounts ran tirelessly along the moon-track far in the distance, but none of them were galloping over the ground
any longer. Now there was no more beneath their running feet than the storm-driven ocean waves, and still they ran, into the
west.

Merlin never knew afterward how long or how far the Hunt had ridden, or who had joined them, or even if they had coursed any
prey. He rode over sea and land, village and town, and the strange sights he saw blurred into dreams almost at the moment
he saw them. Slowly the world seemed to grow unclear, the sound of the Hunt more distant, as if, no matter how hard Sir Rupert
ran, he was dropping slowly behind.

In the end, the wonders he saw lost all their power to move him, and he was conscious only of a vast dragging weariness—for
though he was fairy-born, Merlin was still mortal, and those who ride with the Wild Hunt must be more than mortal, either
at first or at last.

Finally all was silence and darkness. Merlin drifted through the void for a long time, slowly becoming aware of the stillness.
As memory seeped back the peace unaccountably began to trouble him. Wasn’t there something he ought to be doing?

He opened his eyes with a jerk and found himself staring into a pair of great goggling protruding unblinking eyes.

“Yah!”

The gnome had been bending over him to see if he was awake. Merlin and Frik recoiled in opposite directions: Merlin back into
his pillows, Frik to the foot of the bed.

All around Merlin the world as he knew it seemed to clatter back into orderly place with almost tangible force. He was lying
in his own bed back in his own room in Mab’s palace. Sprites flitted in and out of the windows, their glow glinting off the
crystals that covered the walls.

Had any of it really happened—the journey to Anoeth and all the rest? He tried to sit up and found that all his muscles were
bruised and aching.

“Ow,” Merlin complained.

He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and discovered that he seemed to have slept in his shoes. One of them, anyway.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know where the other was.

“Well,” said Frik bracingly. “And what did we learn from our little adventure?”

“I’m not sure,” Merlin said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Everything seemed so … peculiar. Even for here. I’m not sure
what happened. Was it all a dream?”

“Ah,” Frik answered. He tried to look wise and mysterious and didn’t quite succeed. “Everything is, in the end.”

He is more powerful than he knows. Too powerful for us.

He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the inner colloquy, but one might as well talk to one’s self as to the walls, Frik supposed,
since while the walls talked back, they also tended to tattle. And it wasn’t, after all, as if he could have a chatty heart-to-heart
talk with Queen Mab.

He paced restlessly beside the mermaid’s lagoon, gazing morosely into the depths of the black water and trying to ignore the
still small voice that wasn’t conscience, because gnomes didn’t have consciences. And certainly no one who served the Queen
of the Old Ways had any right to a conscience.

Served. Now, there was a bitter word. He was a gnome, an ancient member of a terribly-well-thought-of and magical race. Once
he and Mab had plotted together as equals. Occasionally she had even listened to his advice. But paradoxically, she had become
more arrogant and more demanding as her influence waned, until she tyrannized him just as Vortigern did the mortal kind.

Vortigern. A name it wasn’t prudent to utter in Her Majesty’s hearing these days. While it was true that Vortigern persecuted
the Christians, there was no distinction in it: Vortigern persecuted
everybody.
For every Christian who renounced the New Religion, there were two Pagans who renounced all gods entirely, since none of
them seemed to be of any help against the tyrant king of Britain. Worse than that, in the years since the Holy Grail had disappeared
from Avalon many of the monks and nuns of that holy isle had wandered the land in search of it, and in their travels they
preached Avalon’s gospel of love and acceptance. The harsh Christianity, which Constant had imposed upon the people, was being
replaced by a doctrine which was … quite tolerable, really, when you came right down to it.

Frik shuddered at the direction of his thoughts. Let Her Majesty catch him even
thinking
something like that and he’d have no worries about either the future or his relationship with his employer. He’d spend the
rest of eternity as a plaster lawn decoration, clutching a fishing rod somewhere in Surbiton.

But the fact remained: Like it or not, Vortigern was driving the people into the arms of the New Religion. And the magic of
the Old Ways was growing steadily weaker.

Except for Merlin’s.

He ought not to have been able to do what he did,
Frik worried. The moment yesterday when Merlin had turned himself into a hawk through sheer will and an improperly-phrased
spell was still vivid in Frik’s memory. Fortunately he’d been able to avoid reporting the incident to Her Majesty. It would
have led to quite an ugly scene, and questions that Frik had no way to answer.

Their magic—Mab’s and his and all that of the Old Ways—was a magic of illusion. Nothing they did had any true objective reality.
Their spells drew their power from belief and their effect from trickery. They were a thing of the fairy realm, as ephemeral
as summer snow, though often far more dangerous.

But Merlin’s magic was different. Frik could make himself appear to be a bird. He could use his magic power to fly. But Merlin’s
transformation had been no illusion. It had been as real as wood and stone.

When he forgets his lessons, he’s far more dangerous than when he remembers them.

Somehow Merlin had the ability to dream true—and to make his dreams real.