The Old Magic (22 page)

The return trip, sped by the magic of the Lady of the Lake, seemed to go more swiftly than the outward voyage had, and soon
the boat’s keel was grinding along the stones of the shore. The whole landscape was dusted in white, and the trees were bare
of leaves.

It’s winter.

It had been summer when he left, but Merlin had literally no idea of how long he’d been in Mab’s domain. Had it really only
been a few months? Or had it been years?

He had to go home.

Longing for the forest drew him nearly as strongly as his love for Ambrosia, but now Merlin faced another obstacle. The forest
was miles from here, and he did not have Mab’s magic horse to ride home upon. But he did not need Mab’s magic when he could
summon his own.

He searched until he found what he needed: a fallen branch, polished smooth by the elements, that was long enough to serve
as a walking stick—but Merlin did not intend to walk. There were still a few spells that he remembered from his days as a
Wizard by Incantation that would serve him now.

He flung the stave into the air. It did not fall, but hung there against the winter sky as if someone were holding it up.

“Horse and hattock—horse and home—horse and pelatis: Go—go!”

The stave shuddered as his wizard-magic filled it, its color changing from winter-brown to gleaming silver, though each whorl
of the grain could still be seen against the enchanted wood. Merlin quickly straddled it, his hands gripping it tightly. The
enchanted stave rose into the sky and began to move forward with the speed of a running horse. Merlin soared over the tree
tops, borne aloft by magic.

He was going home.

S
omeone was dying.

He’d learned to shut out the warnings over the years—you could do anything with practice—and there weren’t that many people
in Barnstable Forest anyway. All the more reason that this summons to a duty long abandoned took Herne the Hunter completely
by surprise.

Once, long ago, he’d ridden with the Wild Hunt, and when he received the knowledge of a soul about to pass into Anoeth, that
consciousness had meant he must turn and go in search of it to bring it to his master, Lord Idath.

But those days were done—he had relinquished his horned crown and the power of his heritage in the Fairy Realm to become a
simple forester. All who served the Lord of Winter knew that all things must pass, and if the memory of the Old Ways were
fated to pass out of Britain, then Herne vowed he, too, would depart gracefully. Why was he being summoned back to his old
commitments now?

Herne straightened up, gazing around himself for danger as warily as any other forest dweller. He’d been gathering fell-timber
for Ambrosia, and had been just about to shoulder his bundle when the warning came.

Ambrosia.

He knew she was ill—was this her time? There were things he could do to ease her passing and guarantee her safe voyage into
the Summerland, that paradise that the Christians now claimed as their own Heaven. But Christian or Pagan, all were welcome
in the Summerland, and somehow this did not feel like an ordinary summons to guide a wandering soul upon its journey.

Grabbing up his quarterstaff, Herne began to run toward Ambrosia’s hut.

“Ambrosia!” Mab cried again, as the once-priestess tried weakly to get to her feet. This was all part of some trick, Mab was
certain of that. And she was running out of time—Merlin would be here at any moment to misinterpret all he saw.

Suddenly she thought of a plan. Merlin would come here looking for his foster-mother—but what if Ambrosia were gone? Mab could
whisk Ambrosia, her hut, everything the woman owned out of this clearing in the twinkling of an eye, and deposit them where
Merlin would never find them. Soon he would give up looking and return to the Land of Magic.

And to Mab.

She raised her hands to weave the spell.

“You never could leave well enough alone, could you, Queen Mab?” a man’s voice asked from behind her.

Mab spun around, her teeth bared in a feral hiss. A man in green huntsman’s leathers stood in the doorway, gazing at her steadily
with cold grey eyes.

She knew him from long ago, when he had not been mortal, but a huntsman still.

“So, Herne the Hunter—you come slinking back to regain my favor,” Mab said.

Herne did not answer. He looked past Mab to where Ambrosia lay on the floor of the hut, and his expression hardened into anger.

“You always did have a high opinion of yourself, oh Queen of the Old Ways. You were never my liege—and I would defy you now
if you were.” Long ago, Herne had set aside his power in order to become the mortal champion of a people beset by the unjust
policies of a tyrant king—Britain would remember that about him, he knew, when even his name was gone.

Mab snarled wordlessly. “This is nothing to do with you, Hunter,” she said. “Leave us!”

“If it concerns Ambrosia—or Merlin—then it is to do with me,” Herne answered. “The boy must have escaped your clutches if
you’ve come back here looking for him. I won’t let you trick him into going back with you again.”

Enraged beyond speech, Mab flung out her hand to launch a killing bolt of fairy-fire at her tormentor. But Herne was fast
enough to evade it—he ran for the edge of the clearing, and the cover of the trees.

Mab was there before him, materializing in an eyeblink.

“You cannot stand against me. You have given up much, Forest Lord, to be the champion of mortals who have betrayed the Old
Ways. You are not my equal in power or in cunning.” Mab smiled coldly at him, believing he was now at her mercy. She raised
her hands to dispatch him.

“Perhaps not,” Herne answered. “But I can call on one who is.” He raised his hand, and plucked the Horn of Idath out of the
wintry air.

The Horn of Idath was one of the thirteen sacred treasures of Britain, each as magical in its own way as the Grail of the
Christians, which many said was only the Cauldron of Idath in a new form. So long as all thirteen of the treasures existed,
the realm of Britain would endure no matter what evils beset it. Eons ago the treasures had been lost by their ancient guardians,
scattered across the land and hidden from the sight of men and fairyfolk. Only the whereabouts of a few were known today,
even by Mab’s kind, which had once had the keeping of all of them. The Horn of Idath was one of those few treasures which
remained visible in the mortal world. It had the power to strike terror into those who heard it, to suspend Time … or to call
its maker to aid the wielder.

“You would not dare to summon Lord Idath and his Wild Hunt to your aid!” Mab cried in disbelief.

Herne smiled grimly. “There’s quite a lot I’ll dare, and you know it, Queen Mab. Do you think I won’t tell young Merlin what
you’ve done to Ambrosia? She’s ill and weak—is this how you repay her for raising your boy?”

“She didn’t do that for me—she did it for herself!” Mab cried furiously. She lashed out at Herne before he could blow the
jewelled horn—it spun from his grasp, burying itself in a drift of fallen leaves.

Herne glanced from Mab to the horn. “So it’s still true,” Herne said, backing away from her. “Your magic cannot kill, though
it can trick others into doing your killing for you. Is that what you want to make of Merlin—something that will kill for
you?”

“Silence!” Mab cried.

She might not be able to kill Herne directly, but there were many things she could do to hurt him, Herne knew. And if she
thought to summon a pack of griffins. …

He must reach the horn. Desperately, Herne summoned the magic that was left to him, shaping it into a bolt to strike her with.
She was weaker now than she had been at the height of her power, and if he could force her to change to any of her animal
forms—raven, owl, wolf—she would be vulnerable. Summoning all his strength, he cast his spell.

But his magic had no effect—his power fell away from Mab’s defenses like a glittering fall of ice crystals as it dissolved
into nothingness. And at that moment, Mab struck.

Herne struggled powerlessly as her magic enfolded him, realizing in a last despairing moment of consciousness that Mab was
more subtle than he’d dreamed. He did not need to die for her to win.

His whole body stiffened helplessly. In an instant his toes became roots, tearing through the soles of his boots and seeking
the earth below. His arms were forced toward the pale snowy sky, his fingers lengthening and shooting heavenward to become
a myriad of winter-bare branches. He threw his head back in a silent cry as flesh became wood. His body, his consciousness,
slowed to the vegetable rhythms of the Earth as he became one with the green growing things of the forest. In a moment, Mab’s
spell had worked its transformation, and where Herne had stood a moment before, a mighty oak now raised its branches to heaven.

Mab stepped back, regarding her work with satisfaction. With a flick of her fingers she summoned a swarm of sprites to seek
out and bring the Horn of Idath to her. They found it easily, but it took a dozen of them to lift it, and the sound of their
wings buzzed with the strain as they carried the horn carefully to their mistress. Its pale jewelled curve gleamed in the
winter twilight.

Only a Lord of Fairy, such as Herne had been—or a great wizard—could sound this horn to summon her consort, Idath, Lord of
Time and Death. Merlin would be the last of those, and she would see to it that he never suspected the horn’s existence.

Mab took the horn from her sprites and placed it carefully in a fork of the branches of the great oak. When spring came the
leaves would hide the Horn of Idath from sight, and in time the branches would grow over it, trapping it and its magic within
the trunk of the tree for all time.

“Now you may guard this forest forever,” Mab crooned, running her gleaming hand over the tree’s bark.

Now she could deal with Merlin.

The wizard magic in his staff carried Merlin homeward, whisking him through the chill winter air from the shore of the Enchanted
Lake through the clouds that lay over the hills and valleys of Britain. Slowly the landscape below began to seem familiar
once more, and then he was flying low above the road that led from Nottingham Town to Lord Lambert’s castle.

“Hattock and horse—hattock and home!”
Merlin cried.

The reversal of the spell should have caused the flying stave to descend gently to the ground once more, but Merlin was cold,
tired, and worried. The command of the flying spell slipped through the intangible grasp of his wizard’s will in just the
way his control over the candle-lighting spell had earlier.

The stave spun wildly in the air for a moment; Merlin lost both his grip and his balance almost instantly. He was flung through
the air to land with a bruising crash in a pile of fallen leaves. Twirling out of control in the air above, the stave burst
like a dropped jug, spraying splinters through the air before the largest remaining chunks of wood fell to the ground.

Merlin sat up with a groan.

“It serves me right, I suppose,” he said ruefully. He got to his feet, rubbing the sorest spots. He was close enough to home
now to be able to travel the rest of the way on foot. Quickly Merlin began to walk—and then to run—in the direction of Ambrosia’s
cottage.

The knowledge that she was dying brought Ambrosia a great peace. At last she could lay down the tangled threads of the responsibilities
she’d taken up with her life. She’d done as well as might be for all her loved ones. Most of them had preceded her into the
land of Anoeth, where they waited for her in the golden fields of the Summerland. There was only one love that she was leaving
behind.

“Auntie A! Auntie A!”

As if her dying thoughts had summoned him, Merlin burst into the hut. His face was pale with fright at the destruction he
saw all around him—the aftereffects of the rage of a fairy queen. He skidded to a halt and knelt beside Ambrosia where she
lay on the floor in a jumble of household goods, reaching for her hand.

Ambrosia smiled painfully up at him, searching his face with her eyes. He wasn’t much older, but he’d changed in the Land
of Magic; she could see it in his gaze. He was no longer a boy—there was both sorrow and knowledge in his eyes, the glimmerings
of the man he would become. Now Merlin knew all the secrets of his true nature, and till the end of his days he would be forever
trapped between the two worlds of mortal and magic, never to belong fully to either.

But Ambrosia was content.
You’ll never have him for your accomplice, Mab. He’s mine. You gave him to me—to the mortal world—with my death.

“Dear boy, dear boy,” Ambrosia whispered. The easy tears of illness filled her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Merlin asked. His voice trembled as he took in the enormity of the destruction and the pallor of his foster-mother’s
face. He touched a fold of her shawl with trembling fingers, feeling fearful and lost in a way he had never been before. Deep
inside he’d expected to find the forest cottage exactly as he’d left it, but all of Ambrosia’s careful housekeeping had been
destroyed by the fury of a force impossible for Merlin to envision. His childhood home looked worse than if a bear had blundered
into it and smashed everything in a blind rage, and in the middle of this terrible destruction, his Aunt Ambrosia lay dying.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Ambrosia whispered with effort. “Everything’s as it should be now.”

Merlin whimpered, deep in his throat, trying to deny the evidence of his senses. His Aunt Ambrosia
couldn’t
die. He needed her. He would always need her.

He fought back his tears. Ambrosia seemed to be roused by his bewilderment and desperation to give him one last comfort. “Merlin—Merlin,
remember. Only listen to your heart.”

His heart. As though it had ever done anything but confuse him with contradictory warnings he had not understood until it
was too late.