Earth's Magic (14 page)

It wasn’t long before they stood at the base of a flat-topped hill, its conical shape silhouetted against the moon-grayed sky. He could see the glow of what might be a campfire at its summit. Then he looked down. A small delegation of shaggy orange people was waiting for him at the beginning of a narrow, rock-lined trail.

“So, you’re a wizard,” one of them chirped. “That what Heather say. First dragons and then a wizard. Quite a night! Follow us closely and avoid traps.”

Soon they had finished the zigzagging maze and were at the top. Merlin hadn’t even dismounted when he saw Heather running toward him. He jumped from his horse, grabbed her, and spun her around. “I thought I’d lost you,” they both said at the same time. Then together they laughed.

Before long, Merlin and Heather were seated side by side near the cookfire. Bowls of stew warmed their hands, and between spurts of talk, they scooped up the meaty broth with carved bone spoons. The dragons and Rus each had a bowl as well, with Sil’s holding nothing but vegetables. Thirty or so
muties sat nearby, some eating, some laughing, all talking. The adventures of the night were told over and over, becoming more elaborate with each telling.

After a while, Ravit shyly sat down beside Heather. “This your wizard friend? I do a little magic too. Not much, but I talk to sheep, of course. And I can move little rocks and stuff by thinking at them.”

“And she’s a mind talker too,” Heather informed Merlin. “She’s got some of the same contacts I have, and some different ones too. They’re from all over.”

“And how old are you, Ravit?” Merlin asked. With everyone here equally covered with hair, he was finding it hard judging anyone’s age.

“I’m twelve. I’ve got a little cousin who’s a mind talker too. But he refuses to talk to any girls. He’s a silly.”

Merlin nodded and smiled. “Part of the mind-talking generation. This is going to change the world—if it survives long enough.”

“Then we’ll just have to see that it does,” Heather said firmly. “Come over here and talk to Grithex. She and some of the older ones—at least I think they’re older; they’re taller anyway—they seem to know something about what’s going on. Maybe they can help.”

Heather led him to where a group of taller muties sat in a circle playing a game that involved quickly moving rocks through a series of scooped-out holes in the dirt. Merlin studied them. They wore an erratic collection of sheepskin clothing held closed with leather belts and some bone jewelry. The amount of long orange hair that covered their stout bodies would have made it difficult to be sure which were men and which women, except that the men seemed to have orange hair on their faces, while the women and children’s features were surrounded by short fuzz.

After introductions, Merlin sat among them and said, “We’re glad we happened to be around when you needed help. Sometimes things that look like coincidences turn out to have meaning.”

A particularly large mutie named Urft whose hair was rippled with gray nodded slowly. “Yep, like life’s all part of a big pattern, a maze.” Then he laughed. “But none of us are high enough up to see it.”

Merlin smiled. “Exactly. As Heather may have told you, we happened to be here because we’re on a quest of sorts. The problem is, I don’t know exactly what we’re looking for. But whatever it is, there’s going to be some enchantment involved. Strong, old enchantment. Do any of you have any sense of a place like that near here?”

The graying mutie shook his head. “This Wales. Lots of enchantment around. Some old, some very old. Most we can’t read. There’s one pocket south of here. And a couple bigger to west. Dangerous places, even the little ones. Safer to avoid.”

Merlin swallowed his disappointment and went on to tell them about Arthur and the coming battle on the Solstice.

“We know,” Urft said. “Word spread. Some of us want fight. Some not. And some, not of our clan, fight on wrong side already. But bad things been troubling us, like we see today; they got to be stopped.” He grinned through his faceful of hair. “You will see some of us on Salisbury Plain maybe.”

By then, Merlin and Heather were almost too tired to keep their eyes open. They were shown to a stone hut where piled sheepskins were obviously used as bedding. But their hosts, excited by the events of the day, still seemed in a mood to party. Before the two guests could fall into sleep, the air filled with strange, wild singing. High voices flooded the night with clicks and warbles, while oddly spaced rhythms were beaten out rock against rock. Sleepily, Heather marveled at the strangeness that
could be found even in their own world. But exhaustion soon overwhelmed wonder.

The next morning, the shrouded sun was just inching into the sky when Merlin and Heather stumbled out of their hut. Sil and Goldie were already playing a game in the air tossing an inflated sheep’s bladder back and forth while Rus yapped excitedly below them, waiting to catch any misses. The muties were bustling about, gobbling breakfast, sweeping out huts, and preparing for another day herding sheep. Their guests were welcomed and given bowls of dried mushrooms.

Once they had finished and were saddling up the horses, Ravit came up to Heather. “We keep in touch, okay?”

“Absolutely. Now that we know what each other’s thoughts sound like, I’m sure we can still talk. After all, if we can talk to folk halfway around the world, why not between Wales and England?”

Ravit nodded. “The big ones probably not let me go fight. Say I too young. But let you know what happen here. And you don’t be too brave. Don’t get killed in big battle. I like you.”

Heather hugged the warm, hairy little girl. “I like you too. I’ll try to be brave but not stupid. I don’t want to get killed. I want to see what this world’s like if—when we win.”

After more farewells, two humans, two horses, two dragons, and one two-headed dog set off down the winding trail and into the shallow valley beyond. The snow from yesterday’s storm was already beginning to melt, but the wind was raw. It scudded low clouds over the hills and seemed to carry cold from the snowcapped peaks they could see in the distance. By afternoon, temperatures had dropped again. The half-melted slush froze into jagged lumps. One brief flurry of snow powdered the ground with white. Ahead of them, the wind scudded the white veil along in serpentine waves.

Merlin huddled into his cloak feeling more and more
discouraged. The horses kept unhesitatingly choosing their route, but he was beginning to doubt whether they had any more clue about their goal than the local muties did. Or than he did. He had been given a great charge by both the Lady and his king. And now he feared he was failing them both.

He ached all over from yesterday’s ordeal and was well sunk into exhaustion and gloom when both horses suddenly stopped short. Jolted awake, he wondered briefly if this could be
it
. Urft had mentioned enchanted places, one to their south, and they were traveling south. But then he looked around and realized that the reason for the horses’ stopping here was probably the spring of enticing-looking water bubbling from a rocky opening in a hillside. This hill at least offered some protection from the biting wind, and a small grove of trees had managed to grow in its shelter. “Good enough for a rest spot,” he said as he swung stiffly out of the saddle.

Merlin threw himself down on the crinkly, dry grass, and soon Heather joined him. Together they listened to the two horses slurping up water from the pool below the spring. Then Rus and the dragonlets crashed back along the road from where they’d been exploring ahead and threw themselves into the same pool.

Finally, when they too had dropped panting to the grass, Merlin sat up. “Well, that lot has certainly muddied the pool. I’ll see if I can scoop some unsullied water from the spring itself.” Unhooking a cup from his belt, he walked to the hillside and knelt down by the mossy circle of rocks, pleased to see that the spring was larger and clearer than he had at first thought.

His new sense for the age of things whispered to him that this was a very ancient spring, sacred for untold ages. Tired of such useless information, he shut it out.

Lowering the old, battered metal cup into the water, he was
surprised to feel a swirling current. In seconds the moving water had snatched the cup from his fingers. Cursing, he leaned forward and stared into the deep pool. His cup gleamed on a rocky underwater ledge just out of reach. Lowering his whole arm into the icy water, he had just touched the rim of the cup when he felt something slip off his wrist. His bracelet! The one from the Lady!

Impatiently he hooked up the cup and tossed it away from the spring. Then he knelt on the rim of the bubbling pool. He could see the bracelet glinting as the cup had done, only it was farther down. Gripping a rock at the pool’s edge with one hand, he stretched his other arm as far down as he could. Not quite far enough. Taking a breath, he lowered his head into the chill water to extend his reach. Suddenly the rock he was gripping gave way, and he toppled headfirst into the pool.

Instead of thrashing near the surface, he found himself plummeting down like a stone. He saw the bracelet as he hurtled past and snagged it with a finger. Deeper he dropped into cold and darkness. Then the shaft twisted, and he was sucked forward along it, then spewed into a deep green pool. Practically out of breath now, he felt the current that had dragged him slowly fade. He flipped over in the deep water and saw lighter green glowing above him. Kicking off from the rocky bottom of the pool, he shot upward and burst gratefully into the air.

Silver drops cascaded back around him as he shook the dark, dripping hair from his eyes. The scene he saw was not what he had expected.

The pool he’d emerged in was at one end of a small, bowllike valley. Its sides were furred with evergreen trees, and the grass that carpeted its floor was a lush emerald green. Although they had ridden for days under dull gray skies, the sky arching over this valley was brilliant blue. Jamming the bracelet back on
his wrist, he paddled slowly to the edge of the pool and took a deep breath. The scents that reached him he recognized as the perfume of flowers, probably from the small white blossoms scattered through the grass. There was also a subtler odor. That was the scent of ancient and powerful enchantment.

Cautiously he pulled himself out onto moss-slicked rocks. Enchantments this strong could be fraught with danger. He looked around but saw no movement, no insects, no birds, no animals of any kind. For minutes, he sat still, slowly drying off in the surprisingly warm sunlight and straining to listen to his surroundings. He heard nothing, nothing at all. No twittering birds, no buzzing insects, not even the rustle of grass in the wind. There was no wind. Everything around him was perfectly still.

He stood up and stared around more intensely. Other than himself, the only living things in this valley seemed to be plants. Besides the flowers and the grass and the pines on the hillsides there was a scattering of low flowering shrubs. But the floor of the valley itself was dominated by a single huge tree. A magnificent oak, the largest he had ever seen, grew in the center of the valley. His father might be somewhere in this valley, anywhere. But if he was to make any sense of this place, he suspected it was to that tree that he had to go.

Keeping tensely alert for any threat, Merlin walked slowly toward the oak. The small rustle of his walking though the grass sounded crashingly loud in this unnaturally silent place. Finally reaching the tree’s base, he stared up. Its moss-softened branches twisted and spread in an intricate filigree against the glittering blue sky. Every branch and twig was just bursting forth with the pale green leaves of early spring. Slowly he dragged his gaze down the trunk. It was amazingly solid and thick, its mottled brown bark deeply furrowed. At its base, great gnarled roots
bulged and then dove into the earth. For a tree this large, he knew, the roots must go very deep indeed.

The enchantment he had felt vibrating in this valley had clearly drawn him into it and then to this tree. But what was he to do now? Carefully he paced around the massive trunk, looking for any opening among the roots, any cleft in the bark. But he found nothing.

Perhaps he should climb the tree. From its crown he could surely see a larger picture and get an idea of what this mysterious isolated valley was all about. Cautiously he climbed onto a large humped-up root. From there he found enough fissures and bulges in the bark to pull himself up to the lowest branch. It was smooth and wide as a footpath, but he didn’t walk along it. Clinging close to the trunk, he climbed from there to another branch and then another.

As he tried to swing to a higher branch still, his bracelet snagged on a jutting knob of bark, and he nearly lost his grip. Letting go of the upper branch, he tried to drop back to the one below, but his arm, bound in the bracelet, was still caught. He tugged downward, and the slab of bark tore away, dribbling his whole arm with sticky golden sap.

Suddenly the entire tree quaked and convulsed, tossing him spinning through the labyrinth of branches. With a painful thud, he landed on the ground. Groaning, he rolled over.

Above him, the tree was shivering violently. Leaves, twigs, shreds of bark, cascaded down, pelting him with dust and sharp splinters. Then he heard deep, creaking groans as whole branches began to break loose. Throwing an arm over his face, he tried to conjure a close protective spell.

The earth shook under him, roots writhed free of the grass, and massive branches crashed down on all sides. Noise filled his head with throbbing pain.

Gradually it subsided. Silence returned. Sunlight hit his closed eyelids, unshaded now by any tree. Cautiously he opened his eyes, blinking against the sun. A figure stood above him in dark silhouette. Merlin scrambled to his feet.

The great tree was gone. He was looking at a man.

F
AMILY