The Old Magic (24 page)

Later, when Merlin better understood what Death was, Elissa had not lost that kind of material existence in his imagination,
for even before his training as a wizard and his visit to Anoeth, Merlin had known that Death was simply another land to which
everyone emigrated in the end.

And now both his dearest loved ones would be there.

After a short walk he reached the forest clearing where Elissa was buried, and for a moment he simply gazed at her grave,
sobered by the enormity of what he must do. Then he marked out the dimensions of Ambrosia’s grave beside Elissa’s, scoring
the snow-dusted earth with the edge of his spade, and began to dig.

Magic would have made everything easy, but Merlin had sworn to renounce all the magic he’d learned in Mab’s kingdom and he
meant to keep his vow. He knew he had been created to become Mab’s champion. He wished he could forget it. Her blood ran in
his veins, and each time he gave in to the temptation to use the magic he’d learned, Merlin knew he would become a little
more like Queen Mab, until in the end there would be no difference between them and he would do everything she wanted without
a single qualm.

He had not chosen to be born a child of the Old Ways—his bloodline was no fault of his—but still the knowledge of his heritage
gnawed at him as if it were a guilty secret, something wicked of which he should be ashamed.

At last the grave was dug. His hands and shoulders ached from the labor of digging in the half-frozen ground. Now all that
remained was to lay Ambrosia to rest. He knew that her friends would wish to be there when she was placed in the earth, and
he went in search of them.

He knew somehow before he reached the hermit’s hut that it would be empty, but Merlin went to see what was there anyway. An
early storm had carried away many of the twigs that had made up its walls, and Merlin could see inside to the one tiny room.
It was empty of all possessions, even Blaise’s few beloved books.

The whole area had an air of long desertion. The clearing was full of windblown trash, the fire-pit filled with autumn leaves.
No one had lived here for a long time.

Merlin shook his head, unable to believe it. Where had the old hermit gone—and when? Had Blaise been forced to leave the forest
against his will? How long had Merlin been absent from the mortal world, learning Mab’s tainted magic?

There were no answers to his questions, and Merlin knew there never would be.

With a growing sense of despair, he next searched for Herne. Though he did not know where the huntsman lived, he knew that
Herne would never abandon his beloved forest, or any of his favorite places in it. But though Merlin searched until the light
became too dim for him to see his way, he could not find Herne either.

A terrible suspicion began to grow in his mind, that somehow with a wave of her hand, Mab had erased everyone Merlin had ever
known, so that he would be utterly alone and lonely.
I won’t let you defeat me,
Merlin vowed silently. Wearily he returned to the cottage in the forest that he’d shared with his foster-mother.

The next day, when the sun rose, he laid Ambrosia to rest beside his true mother, Elissa.

There was a small cross such as the Christians used over his birth-mother’s grave, but over Ambrosia’s grave Merlin set no
marker, only a border of white stones around the carefully smoothed and snow-dusted earth. In death as in life, Ambrosia would
pay homage to no god.

The forest around him was stark and still with winter. Snow had fallen again the night before, and now there was a light sprinkling
of white upon the bare black branches. Spring would not come for many months, and for Merlin they would be cold and hungry
months, with Ambrosia’s larder gone and her supplies scattered by Mab’s attack.

But he would survive. The forest was his home.

If Mab thought that either hunger or cold would drive Merlin back to her, she was wrong. There was one last piece of magic
he would perform, to seal his decision for all time.

He knelt at the head of the twin graves and took a small flint knife from the pocket of his coat. He’d found it in the ruin
of the hut, and recognized it as the one Ambrosia used in gathering herbs for her magic, for iron disrupted the life energies
that gave many plants their magical virtue. It would serve as well for this purpose as it had for hers.

He held out his right hand over the fresh grave-earth, and with the knife in his left hand, cut a deep wound in the palm of
his right hand. The pain burned harder than frostbite, but Merlin did not flinch. Blood was magic, words were magic: To swear
in blood was a binding thing, that even the Old Ones must listen to.

“I swear,” Merlin said in a level voice, as his blood dripped to the earth, “I swear on Ambrosia’s grave and on the grave
of my mother, that I will only ever use my powers to defeat Queen Mab. This I swear.”

He swept his hand outward, sprinkling the earth with drops of blood. At the place each drop of blood had fallen, tiny scarlet
pimpernels sprang up out of season, blooming for a moment before they withered away again with the cold.

So. The earth accepts my vow.

And Mab, Merlin knew, had heard him, but Mab had created him as her tool, and Merlin knew that she would do anything to reclaim
his loyalty, try any trick, take any hostage.

That was why no action was safe.

Once he’d dreamed of being a knight, doing good works and winning the love of fair ladies through his heroism. Today, Merlin
put those dreams aside forever. His only safety from Mab lay in being more cunning than she was, more clever. He would not
follow the path she had set out for him. Instead he would follow the way the Lady of the Lake had unfolded to him. He would
learn wisdom, not magic. He would gather knowledge from every source in the natural world to surpass Mab’s cunning, and he
would win the war he fought against her, because in the end he had to do nothing at all to triumph. He simply had to remain
here, safe in his forest, and let the world pass him by.

That was all.

H
ow terrible can it be?

Lady Nimue told herself that going to see the King could not be very terrible at all, and tried to make herself believe it.
She paced between table and chair and brazier, ignoring the winejug and goblets set out on the table and the warm bed filled
with goose-down in the inner chamber. Though it was late, she could not sleep when tomorrow would bring an audience with Vortigern.

Outside, the wind of the moors moaned against the sturdy canvas walls of Lord Ardent’s campaigning tent. Inside, the thick
woven tapestries hanging from the heavy ashwood tent frame hardly moved, and Nimue was as warm as if she were still home in
her father’s northern castle … though she wasn’t nearly as safe. For Lord Ardent’s tent was pitched on the vast open heaths
of Cornwall, and over everyone in the camp towered the great granite ridge upon which Vortigern meant to build his castle,
the natural barrier whose broad flat top had been used as a thoroughfare by invading armies from the Tuatha de Danaan to the
Saxon usurpers.

Atop its sturdy length Vortigern was building a great castle, so that no one after him would be able to use this route to
conquer Britain, and the construction was not going well. It was autumn once again; the building of Pendragon Castle had begun
years before, and no architect in all of Britain had been able to make the walls stand upon their foundations. The heads of
the failed architects were on spikes surrounding the ruined foundations; Her father said that rumor had it that Gwennius,
the latest one, would be joining his predecessors soon.

For Gwennius’s sake Nimue hoped that rumor lied. She had talked with the worried little man a few times since Ardent had been
commanded to bring her to court. All the good architects were dead, and Gwennius was the unluckiest of what was left; a thin,
fussy, grey-haired man who drank too much and who had been afflicted with a perpetual stammer since he’d taken this new job.
It was no sinecure being Vortigern’s architect, and no long-lasting position, either. Nimue only hoped her own future would
be brighter than Gwennius’s. She did not know what the king wanted of her, and neither did Lord Ardent. Both of them would
have to wait and see, as Nimue had waited these past several years for her future to begin.

Nothing in Nimue’s life had gone as she had anticipated on that last night she had spent within Avalon walls. Her father had
not married her off to the son of a fellow noble as she had feared and expected—though years had passed, the king had refused
to give his permission for any marriage, for Nimue’s marriage would bring an alliance between Ardent, one of Vortigern’s most
powerful barons, and whomever Nimue married. And—as anyone who had spent any time at court realized—even after so many years
on the throne of Britain, Vortigern still saw enemies in every shadow and planned accordingly.

In one way he was right, as he was universally hated. But in another he was wrong, for Vortigern had long since crushed the
rebellion from every heart but one.

Prince Uther’s.

Constant’s golden crown sat easily upon the long blond hair of the man who sat in the main room of the elaborate campaign
tent, and his red cape was lined in costly ermine, but beneath these regal trappings King Vortigern wore full battle armor,
his great sword belted at his hip. Even now, at night, safe in his tent, ringed around by guards who were either loyal or
watching one another too closely to dare any treason, Vortigern did not feel secure.

He’d come from holding court in Londinium—another round of dissidents to execute, the only thing that Britain apparently had
an endless supply of—to see how the building of his castle was progressing. If he did not have sons to leave behind him when
he died, at least he would leave monuments. The people would remember him, whether they liked it or not.

Unfortunately, Gwennius was doing no better than his predecessors; he’d have to execute the man soon, Vortigern thought. Not
so much because of his string of repeated failures, but simply because he was tired of looking at him.

It’s more work being a tyrannical despot than most people think.

The years that had passed since he’d seized Britain for his own had not been kind to him. The leonine young king had been
replaced by an aging and suspicious ruler; a king without an heir, whose lands were not at peace.

Let Uther be my heir,
Vortigern thought sullenly. If only the boy would meet him on the field. Vortigern yearned for a proper war instead of the
endless skirmishes that had plagued every day of the last fifteen years of his rule. Things had not worked out the way he’d
expected them to on that night so long ago in Saxony, when somehow he had realized that the Romans were gone and Britain was
ripe for plunder. His body ached with the scars of many battles, but the British continued to defy him, no matter how many
of them he killed. He couldn’t even trust his friends.

A king has no friends,
he thought to himself.
No. Instead, a king has … opportunities.
And one of them had just arrived.

Vortigern settled himself more comfortably in the high-backed chair of state—there was a plate of painted iron between the
wood and the cushion, placed there expressly to discourage daggers in the back—and regarded the man who had slunk through
the formidable protection of his army specifically to meet with him.

Yvain the Fox regarded the King of Britain just as warily. He was a slender nondescript man wearing dark clothes of very good
quality that had nevertheless seen better days. The only jewelry he wore was a thick gold hoop in his left ear and a signet
of grey agate set in yellow gold on the first finger of his right hand, the ring that served as his pass through Vortigern’s
army. He wore a narrow beard, well-barbered, after the fashion of Prince Uther’s court. There was grey in the beard, as in
the curls of the short dark hair, yet Yvain did not appear to be an old man. Neither was he young; he simply
was:
an ordinary-looking, commonplace man who could be forgotten the moment he passed from sight.

It was a highly desirable trait for a spy to possess.

Yvain had just come from France. By ship to Dover, by fast horse to a stronghold of Vortigern’s a few miles from here, and
then by much inferior horse here to this camp in the hours between moonset and dawn—the wolf’s hour, when treason was plotted
and murder done.

Now he awaited Vortigern’s signal to begin his report. There was a silver-chased glass decanter that had come all the way
from Byzantium on the table between them, filled with the finest Cyprian wine, but neither man made a move toward it.

Vortigern, because he did not rule out the possibility that it was poisoned. His visitor, because to take such a liberty in
the presence of his master would be to sign his death-warrant. The king’s temper was widely known to be increasingly erratic,
and Yvain feared to overstep its bounds.

“Tell me the news, and don’t pretty it up,” Vortigern said at last.

“Uther is coming,” Yvain said.

Vortigern snorted and reached for the decanter. He poured two goblets full—blue glass, to match the decanter, set with opals
and the cloudy green emeralds that came from the Far East—and pushed one toward Yvain.

“I heard that last year and the year before. Uther’s always coming, but he never quite gets around to launching his ships,”
Vortigern sneered.

“This time he will. Lionors died last spring. Without the Old Queen to urge caution on him, Uther is hot for battle. He’s
bought mercenaries and ships, and he’ll sail soon from Normandy. I have heard that he plans to summon the countryfolk to the
Red Dragon standard when he lands, and then take whichever of the old Roman walled cities—Winchester, York—will open to him
for his headquarters. He’ll winter there, consolidating his gains, and attack your strongholds with the spring.”