Earth's Magic (15 page)

T
he man standing where the tree had stood was tall. His hair and beard were a dark forest green and his skin a mottled brown. He looked at Merlin with dark eyes that slowly seemed to blink into focus. Raising a hand, he pointed to the bronze band on Merlin’s wrist.

“That … that bracelet.” His dry voice creaked with disuse. “Where … how did you get it?”

Merlin tried to keep calm, calm and rational. He looked down at the bracelet and brushed off the powdery gold sap that had dried there. “My grandmother gave it to me, the Lady of Avalon.” When the man kept staring with ever-widening eyes, Merlin forced himself to continue. A sudden feeling of relief and absolute certainty carried him on. “I believe you once gave this bracelet’s mate to my mother.”

The man’s thin lips slowly quirked into a smile—a lopsided smile, Merlin realized, that mirrored his own. “I have long felt my son on the Earth,” he said, his voice slowly gaining strength, “and have hoped, however impossible it might be, that someday we might meet.” The man’s hand as it grasped Merlin’s shoulder felt rough as tree bark and warm as sunshine. “Let us walk. I have been still for far too long.”

His steps were shaky at first, and Merlin slipped an arm around his waist to steady him. But soon they were walking with a matched loping stride around the small, silent valley.

“What do you know of what has passed since your enchantment?” Merlin asked, breaking their silence. “It has been a very long time. About two thousand years.”

“Has it? Yes, I could sense time passing, though I lost count of years. I had little direct knowledge of what was happening
on
the Earth. Arawn isolated me here. No weather enters this valley, no seasons, no birds or insects or anything that could carry tales. Not even wind. But he forgot that as a tree, I would have roots. Deep roots they became, and through them I learned much.”

Merlin’s mind flooded with questions, but he tried to channel them. “You know about what happened five hundred years ago?”

Deep sadness furrowed his cheeks. “Yes. The Earth felt that deeply. Life nearly destroying itself. But there was survival and hope. Yet now I sense that some equally great event is building again. The Earth is vibrating with it. I suspect that is why you have come here. But did my mother send you? She took a great risk if she did.”

Merlin nodded. “She skirted the risk, I hope. She didn’t tell me where to find you or in what form you would be. Yet I had help without realizing it, I think.” Merlin was silent a moment, recalling how Heather had been allowed to know of this quest and accompany him, Heather with her link to animals and her mind-talking even with muties. Then he looked down at his arm.

“And the bracelet must have helped as well. The Lady told me to bring it to you.” Merlin slipped the bronze band off his wrist and handed it to his father and watched as the man slipped
it onto his bark-colored wrist. “She said that you hold the key to bringing down Arawn’s dominion. Is that so?”

His father smiled crookedly. “The prophesy. Dangerous things, prophecies. It’s tricky how they sometimes work. When I was young, I didn’t think I held any prophetic keys. I wanted only life. Avalon was too safe and predictable for me. I traveled to your world. I had adventures there, but most wonderful of all, I met your mother. Oh, she was beautiful and so full of life and hope. I fell helplessly in love with her. I wanted only to be with her. But my father learned of my presence and feared me for something I didn’t have—at least I didn’t have it then.

“Ironic, isn’t it? When he learned of me, in seeking to foil the prophecy, he thought to tear me from life. But in doing so, he turned me into the one being that has roots, which can stretch into the very heart of life. As a tree, I gradually reached into the soul of the Earth, touching its deepest roots. Only
then
was I given the key that he so much feared.”

Merlin sighed. “And now that you are free, you can use it.”

His father laughed sadly, a gusty sound like wind rattling tree limbs. “Oh, no. I do have the key now, but I know that I am not the one meant to use it. My role, it seems, is to pass on that key to the one who can.”

Merlin’s feeling of joy and relief suddenly shriveled. “And who would that be?” he whispered.

The man smiled softly. “You know, don’t you? Not an Eldritch like me, a creature of an Otherworld. And not a creature wholly of the mortal world either. Someone who can move through both worlds and delve to where their roots are intertwined.”

Merlin closed his eyes, feeling he was back where he had started. “But I don’t know where that is. I don’t know what the key is or how to use it.”

“The key I can give you. But as to where and how to use it, I don’t know either. Learning such as I received, learning that seeps up through the roots, is not like knowledge that comes to the brain. All I know is that to use the key, you must seek out the roots, go back to the beginning.”

“The roots of what? The beginning of what?” Merlin tried to keep the edge of hysteria out of his voice.

“Of life. We all, mortal and immortal, came from one seed, one fertile patch where all our oldest, deepest roots entwine. That was where everything sprouted from, growing in balance and harmony. That harmony has long since been shattered, but if you can trace back the roots, perhaps you can unlock the answer. Perhaps that lost balance and peace can be restored.”

Merlin stared at his feet. The uncertainty of everything beat at him. Only gradually did he realize what he was seeing. With the destruction of the enchantment that had held his father, the valley was melding back into the real world. The grass was turning brown; the starlike flowers were withering to pale dust. Around him, the wind felt raw and sharp. The need for change in this world, for setting it right, couldn’t be made plainer. But the way to bring that about seemed even more obscure than before.

He looked up. “Do you have
any
idea where this place of roots is?”

“I don’t know its location, only its feel. But you have been abroad in this world and others when I have not. I am confident that you will find it.”

Merlin cringed inside. More confidence from others that he didn’t feel he deserved. Then slowly he shook his head, answering his own thoughts. Nonetheless, he had been given that confidence. Now he would have to try to deserve it. Or die trying. The world wasn’t giving him other choices.

His father continued. “Come, I must pass you the key. Then
I should leave this place and return to Avalon before Arawn senses any change. He may have long forgotten about this old enchantment of his, but soon he’ll feel its destruction. And you and the knowledge of who you are must be kept secret from him.”

Swiftly his father grabbed Merlin’s shoulders and whispered a single word into his ear. It fell into him like a heavy, glowing stone, searing his soul. The word was in no language that he knew, older far than the ancient Welsh of his childhood. It felt as old as language itself. Meaning shivered around it but would not quite reveal itself.

Taking a shaking breath, Merlin gasped, “A word. A word is the key?”

“At the roots, at a time before things were written or even before things were made, power was all in words. A word—that word—will unlock the answer.”

Merlin felt stunned. The world seemed to be shifting and remaking itself around him. He had heard that word only this once, but it seemed to ring back and forth in his head and almost shatter his bones with its weight. Dazed, he barely noticed at first as his father took his arm and guided them to the edge of the valley.

“I wish we had more time together now,” the man said. “We have two thousand years of catching up to do, it seems. But there is too much danger. You must leave this place now. Arawn or his followers must not find you near here or connect you in any way with the breaking of his enchantment.” His serious expression softened. “I suspect, though, that you might prefer going from here by a different route than the one you took getting into the valley?”

Merlin shuddered, remembering the ice-cold water of the ancient well beneath the spring. “If I can.”

“This way, then.” The flourishing trees that had once clothed the enchanted valley were now stunted and sparse. Rugged boulders crowded between them on the steep slope. Merlin’s father unerringly threaded their way upward until they stood on the crest. From there, looking down on the far side, they could see frenzied activity in a little grove. One girl, two young dragons, and a mutie dog were frantically digging at the earth and stones around an old well. Dirt, rocks, and curses were flying, but they seemed to be making little progress. Appearing unconcerned, two horses were cropping grass nearby.

“It looks like you’d better go down to them before they dig away this hillside. That poor spring has been an unassuming sacred site for eons. We don’t want it totally destroyed.” He stared at the scene a moment longer, then, with a quizzical smile, Merlin’s father looked at him. “That bracelet the girl is wearing, is it …?”

“Yes, the one you gave my mother and that she gave to me. I gave it to Heather—as a betrothal token.”

“Good. Cherish her and live a long life with her.”

As his father pulled away, Merlin grabbed his arm. “Will we see each other again?”

“If the Earth survives and balance is restored. We must both do our parts to see that it happens. Good-bye, Son.”

The man, green and brown as the trees, vanished among the twisted pines on the hillside. Merlin ached with all the things he had wanted to say to him. Then his heart was drawn back down the slope. Taking a deep breath, he followed it. “Wait. Stop your digging. Here I am!”

For a stunned moment, all activity below stopped. Then everyone was charging up the hill. First Merlin was met by nuzzles from sharp, smoldering dragon snouts, then came slobberings from double dog tongues. Finally Heather scattered the others with a running leap and a hug.

“You didn’t drown! Where were you? What happened?”

Merlin held up his hands. “Slowly! A lot happened. It looks like the horses and their spiritual DNA thing were right. And the bracelet. The Lady’s clever. All she said was for me to give it to my father. She gave me no hint as to where. But once it was close—thanks to you and the horses—the bracelet sort of took over.”

He frowned a moment, then continued. “And now I’ve been given another quest that I understand even less well than the last one. But in any case, we’ve got to move away from here—and quickly. It’s dangerous to stay here longer. Maybe I’ll develop a better idea of where I am to move
to
when I’ve got my head together again.”

Again Heather hugged him. “I’m just glad to see you back. Next time when you’re thirsty, let
me
fetch the cup of water. I don’t seem to be quite as accident-prone.”

Merlin laughed. “Like I told our shaggy orange friends, I’m not sure there are such things as accidents. At least not for people like us.”

R
ETURN

A
s they rode on south, Merlin explained what had happened, at first disjointedly and then with happy calm. Heather was delighted for him, a boy who had always thought himself fatherless finding a father after two thousand years. But she was worried too.

“Earl, this thing about finding the roots, the beginnings, that doesn’t give you much of a clue.”

“No it doesn’t,” he sighed. “And my father didn’t have a clear idea either. He just said that he had confidence I could find it!”

Heather didn’t say a word. She knew Merlin hated carrying people’s expectations. She also knew he had done it all his life, usually with success.

Finally he continued. “What he said was to look for ‘the beginnings of things.’ Did you read a lot of natural science stuff in the Llandoylan library?”

“Not much. I skimmed a bit, but I really liked fiction more.”

“I didn’t read much in the natural history area either. I seem to remember that all life supposedly began back billions of years ago when volcanic eruptions ignited gas molecules or something, or maybe it was meteor strikes. But I don’t think that’s what he was talking about. It’s got to be when human life began
that he meant, since he was talking about the mortal world and the Otherworlds intertwining. But I don’t know when or where that was either.”

For a while they rode along in silence. At the sight of a pair of boys and their sheepdogs coming toward them on the road, Heather sent a quick mental message to Rus for him and the dragons to duck out of sight. She and Merlin nodded politely at the boys, who turned and watched them, apparently impressed by their heavy cloaks and fine warhorses. Once they were out of earshot again, Heather offered a suggestion to Merlin.

“You know, Earl, we really aren’t far from Llandoylan School. Their library is probably as good as you can find because they made a point after the Devastation of gathering as many surviving books there as possible. We could drop in and ask to use the library to maybe track down this roots thing. Because we’re former students, they’d probably let us.”

Merlin snorted. “We didn’t exactly leave the place on the best of terms, so I don’t know if the ‘former student’ line would help. But as ‘envoys of the High King,’ we might have a little more clout. Worth a try anyway. I sure need some help with this.”