The Old Magic (6 page)

“A boy,” she said with relief. “It’s a beautiful boy.” With no mark of the Old Magic anywhere on his red wrinkled body, something
that was a great relief to Ambrosia. Whatever force had begotten him had left no surface marks. She tucked the child into
its mothers arms. Elissa’s face was shiny with sweat, her eyes great sunken wells of pain and suffering. She touched her baby’s
face with trembling fingers, then held the tiny squalling bundle out to Ambrosia once more.

“I’m dying,” Elissa whispered.

“No, no,” Ambrosia said soothingly, though she feared the girl was only telling the truth.

“You’ve done so much for me, Ambrosia. You took me in when good Christian souls cast me out to die—now I ask you to do one
thing more.” She paused, gasping for breath, her face grey with the effort she made.

“Rest, child, rest—there will be time for this,” Ambrosia said soothingly. She began to move away to lay the baby in the cradle
Herne had made for him, but Elissa grabbed a fold of her skirt in a deathly grip.

“No! You must … you must look after my baby, Ambrosia. Teach him about the Grail—the magic of the loving heart. I beg you—I
beg you, Ambrosia!” As she struggled to pull herself upright the bleeding began again, fresh blood staining the bed linens
a deep crimson. “Swear it!
Swear!
”

Words were power; it was the first thing every acolyte of the Old Ways was taught. Ambrosia hesitated only a fraction of an
instant, knowing that the words she spoke here would bind her spirit as unyieldingly as iron shackles would bind her body.
“I swear,” she said, and took the infant’s life into her keeping. “Now sleep,” she added, as Elissa’s desperate grip on her
skirts relaxed. “I’ll take care of the child.”

Elissa fell back to the bed, her eyes closing. Ambrosia turned away from the bed, the child in her arms. When she glanced
up, she gasped in astonishment.

The Queen of the Old Ways stood in the center of the hut, dark and jewelled, with her misshapen servant cringing behind her.
Her face twisted in a dreadful parody of a fond smile as she saw the baby, and she held out her arms. Ambrosia stared incredulously
at Queen Mab, the warm living weight of the child in her arms, and all she could think was:
I loved you once. Loved you, hated you, wanted you to come back … it’s all gone now, burned away to cinders.

“Let me see the child!” Mab hissed in her harsh crow’s voice. Her voice had been beautiful once. Mab herself had been beautiful
and loving, once. But that was a long time ago, before Constant had begun his persecutions of her people. And now, despite
the imperious tone, it was obvious that Mab was attempting to be ingratiating. Slowly Ambrosia held out the child.

Mab took it in her arms and gazed down at it, her painted face showing honest emotion. Ambrosia could see that as much as
it was still possible for her to love anything, Mab adored the baby.

So it really was you at Avalon, was it, Queen of Air and Darkness? I thought I recognized the stamp of your handiwork. This
trouble is your doing.

Mab raised the child in her arms and held it up toward the roof of the hut. “I name this child Merlin!” she cried, her voice
a harsh cry of triumph.

“Well, while you’re making gestures,” Ambrosia snapped, losing patience, “save the mother. She’s dying.”

Mab glanced past Ambrosia to the bed. “No, she isn’t,” Mab said smugly, handing the baby to Frik. “She’s dead!” She smiled
triumphantly at Ambrosia.

Poor child. A pawn in a chess game of queens and kings.
Ambrosia walked slowly over to the bed and pulled the coverlet up over Elissa’s face. “Sleep easy, child,” she whispered
sadly. “May angels fly thee home.”

She rounded on Mab. “What’s your excuse? Why didn’t you save her?” Ambrosia demanded.

Mab stared at her with wide cat’s eyes, her expression smooth and unmarred by guilt—or even by the understanding that she
ought to feel any. “She’d served her purpose,” Mab said, shrugging dismissively.

“‘Served her purpose’?” Suddenly it seemed as if Ambrosia could feel all the anger seething within her that she had been unable
to feel on that long-ago day when Vortigern’s riders had overrun Mab’s shrine. “Served her purpose? You’re so cold, Lady,
that if I punched you in the heart I’d break my fist!” Ambrosia turned away, going to the basin beside the bed to wash her
hands. “And to think I once served you in the Old Ways!”

“Then you changed and became a Christian!” Mab sneered.

“Who told you that?” Ambrosia demanded. She looked past Mab to Frik and nodded to herself. “That snooping, smiling blatherskite!
Well, he’s wrong. I’m not Pagan or Christian. I follow my own heart, that’s religion enough for me.” She glared at Mab, ready
to fight for little Merlin.

“Why do you allow her to talk to you like that, Madame?” Frik blustered. He held the squirming newborn child as if he might
drop it at any moment.

“Because she needs me, idiot.” Ambrosia crossed the floor and took Merlin carefully from Frik.

Mab was pacing like a black leopard deciding when to spring. “
Why
do I need you, Ambrosia?” she asked, with as much sweetness as she could summon into her viperish hiss.

“To take care of this child,” Ambrosia answered levelly. She supposed she ought to do Mab the courtesy of being afraid of
her; diminished as she was, the Queen of the Old Ways still wielded vast power. But on the day the shrine had been destroyed,
the Old Ways had lost their power to frighten or overawe her.

“I can take care of him!” Mab retorted.

She gestured, and instantly the hut was filled with a cloud of winged sprites in all the colors of the rainbow. Before Ambrosia’s
astonished eyes they began to build a cradle of rowan twigs lined with soft river moss and birds’ down.

Outside the window, Ambrosia could see that another cloud of sprites hovered around her old nanny goat while a brownie milked
it into a tiny wooden bucket. The inside of the hut began to sparkle as it was decorated with out-of-season flowers and the
colorful feathers of tropic birds. An empty jug on the table began to fill with flower nectar, gathered by an army of pixies.

“Tricks,” Ambrosia sneered.

At Ambrosia’s remark Mab stopped, her head tilted to one side as if she were some great bird of prey as she regarded the old
priestess. Ambrosia braced herself for a fight.

“You need more than tricks to bring up a child, you know. You don’t know the first thing about it, do you? You need patience,
understanding, and love.” Ambrosia sighed, suddenly sad for everything that all of them had lost. “Above all, you need love.
That’s something you had once, but no more.”

She could tell that no one had spoken so plainly to Queen Mab in a long time. Frik cowered back against the wall of the hut,
trying desperately to remain unnoticed. Mab drew herself up, seeming to grow taller in her fury.

“He won’t need love,” Mab snapped. “He’ll have power. Give him to me!” Mab glowered and raised her hand as if she would strike.

Ambrosia held the baby closer.
I do this for you, little Merlin. You have the right to know both sides of your heritage—and who will teach you about humankind
if I don’t?

“You want him to grow up, don’t you?” Ambrosia countered, taking a step backward. “You want him to become a man?”

Mab hesitated, watching her with the intensity of a hungry wolf.

“Nothing grows in the Land of Magic,” Ambrosia said. “Time stands still there, Queen Mab. We all know that. If you want this
child to grow to be a man, you have to leave him here with me to grow.”

“I wouldn’t trust her if I were you, Madame,” Frik said officiously, overcoming his earlier alarm.

Mab turned on him, Ambrosia momentarily forgotten. “When I want your opinion, Frik, I’ll give it to you! The witch has always
had a sharp tongue, but she’s always spoken the truth … unlike
some
at my court.”

She turned back to Ambrosia, but all of her attention was fixed on the baby in Ambrosia’s arms. Mab regarded Merlin with such
a look of longing, almost of love, that it nearly softened the heart of her former priestess.

But Ambrosia knew too well what Mab had become.

“Very well,” Mab finally said. “The boy stays with you—but don’t you try to turn him against the Old Ways, Ambrosia, or you’ll
answer to me! He belongs to me: He’s my son. You can keep him only until his wizard nature awakens within him. On the day
that the power of the Old Ways rouses in him, I will send for him.”

May that day never come!
Ambrosia thought fiercely. She nodded slowly. “That’s fair, Queen Mab.”

“Fair or not, it’s my ruling!” Mab spat. She flung up her arms and vanished in a flicker of light.

Frik remained behind. He and Ambrosia stared at each other for a frozen moment.

“Scat, you bumblewit!” Ambrosia said, shifting the baby to one arm and reaching for the hearth-broom.

Frik hastily disappeared as well.

Ambrosia looked around the empty hut, still littered with glittering fairy trash. There was an empty basket on the hearth,
laid ready last night for the child to come. Ambrosia picked it up, setting it atop the table beside the fairy cradle. When
she bumped it, the cradle fell from the table and exploded into a pile of leaves on the floor.

“Pretty things,” Ambrosia muttered, “but they don’t last.”

She set the baby in the basket and tucked him up warmly, then picked up the broom and began to clean the leaves and flowers
and cobwebs the sprites had brought out of the little hut. It took her several hours, but she wasn’t willing to stop until
everything that Mab had brought with her was gone.

She’d dumped the last bushel of leaves at the edge of the clearing, when she looked up to see Herne standing right in front
of her, in the shadow of a large oak.

“I didn’t see you there,” Ambrosia said brusquely. She could see by his face that there was no need to tell him the news.

“I’ve only just come,” Herne said quietly. He indicated the spade leaning against the tree. “I thought that at least I might
dig her grave.”

“You do that, lad,” Ambrosia said. The tears she had held back for so long welled up in her old eyes, and she scrubbed them
roughly away, turning to go back into the hut.

She picked up the jug on the table, half-full with nectar, and went out to finish filling it with fresh goat’s milk. When
it was full, she poured the mixture into a bottle, and then sat down on a stool before the hearth and set about the business
of giving little Merlin his first meal.

She looked down into his crumpled newborn’s face, already beginning to smooth out into infant roundness. He was a beautiful
baby, and he’d grow to be a handsome man—if nobody meddled too much.

She’d been reluctant to make the promise she had to Elissa, but now she was glad she had. With Mab’s blood running in his
veins, Merlin had as great a potential in him for harm as for good. But Ambrosia would love him, and pray that her love would
awaken the heart-magic of the lost Grail in him. At Avalon they taught that Love was the greatest power in the world, and
Ambrosia hoped fervently that they were right.

“Poor little tyke,” she said, rocking him gently in her arms. “No father and three mothers … whatever are we going to do with
you, young Master Merlin?”

S
pring followed winter, melted into summer, withered into fall, and became winter again as the Wheel of the Year spun onward.
The boy learned to walk, and, soon, to run. He ruled over his forest kingdom like a young prince, roaming wherever he chose,
confident and unafraid. It was the greatest gift of all those his foster-mother Ambrosia ever gave him, that though she worried
constantly about his safety, Merlin never knew.

The morning air was cool, and dew still glistened on spiderwebs and leaves as Merlin made his way along the forest path.

He was a gawky teenager—at that awkward age, his foster-mother said, all knees and elbows and good intentions. His wide-set
eyes were the vivid blue of the sky, peering out from a fox-sharp face he had yet to grow into. His long unruly brown hair
collected more than its fair share of twigs and tangles and birdfeathers in the course of each day; Ambrosia scolded him as
she combed them free each night. He wore the same simple homespun that the farmers did, and in his greens and browns he could
blend into the trees nearly as well as his friend Herne, but his sunny open nature saw little need for concealment. He had
never experienced any unkindness or disappointment in all his seventeen years. He was kind to everyone he met, and received
kindness in return, and in his innocence Merlin thought that was the way the world ran.

The basket under his arm creaked as the heavy contents shifted, but the boy simply hugged it tighter. Nestled in the basket
beneath the homespun cloth were a crock of his foster-mother’s apple preserves with brandy, two loaves of fresh brown bread,
and a ramekin of sweet butter—a tempting assortment for an always-hungry teenager, but Merlin resisted them determinedly.
These provisions were for a friend of his—the hermit Blaise, who lived deep in the heart of the forest.

Blaise was a follower of the new religion, but Merlin found nothing odd in that. He had many friends who believed in many
different things. For all people to believe the same thing, Herne said, would be as strange as expecting wolves to eat acorns
or red squirrels to chase mice. Each beast of the forest was true to its own nature, and so it was for every man.

“Merlin—Merlin—Merlin—where are you going this morning?” a voice called over his head.

I could reach out my hand and blast you into a ball of feathers.

The cold angry thought appeared in his mind like a hostile stranger, and Merlin recoiled from it in dismay. He did not understand
the source of such black thoughts, or the suspicion—almost a premonition—that he really did have the ability to act on those
cruel thoughts. Sometimes it was as if he shared his body with a stranger—a stranger he never wanted to meet.