Earth's Magic (22 page)

They stepped from the shadow of the cave and scrambled down a rough slope. From the bottom, the cave opening was lost in shadows. Merlin studied the rock outcrop, hoping they could find it again. There wasn’t much to distinguish it from other clumps of rock that jutted from the plain.

At Merlin’s frown, Sil said airily, “Dragons have an infallible sense of direction. If you don’t get us killed where we’re going, I’ll get us back here.”

“Good,” Merlin conceded. “Now we just have to figure out where we’re going.” Slowly he scanned the landscape but saw very little that suggested a destination. Far to the west, mountains, tall, snow-capped mountains, edged the horizon. He hoped that wasn’t where they were to head. The mountains seemed very far away. In the Otherworld passages, he had lost all sense of time and doubted time even moved there in the same way. He had no idea how long it was until the Summer Solstice. But at least the tallest mountain peak was something he could fix on. A landmark he could head toward and so avoid walking in circles. Shrugging, he set off to the west.

Progress was slow, the landscape around them unchanging and the mountains not seeming to draw much nearer. Merlin thought of asking the dragon if he could ride on his back so they could cover ground more quickly. But he wasn’t sure Sil was big and strong enough for that yet. He’d always been the runt of Blanche’s litter. And somehow Merlin felt it was important that he kept his feet on the Earth. The power he was seeking he knew to be deep Earth magic. Possibly if he neared its source, he could sense it through his body.

By midday, nothing seemed to have changed except that the air over the plains around him was shimmering with heat, forcing Merlin to take off his woolen cloak and carry it. They saw several flocks of large birds flying high overhead as well as occasional clusters of animals moving in the distance. But now Merlin noticed something subtly different. There was a patch of movement that was coming directly toward them. He stopped and stared. Gradually he could make out two figures trotting through the high dry grass. One looked human, the other was a dog.

Sil sat down and looked at Merlin. “Do we run from those guys, wait for them, or tear them to pieces?”

“Wait for them, I think. Until we learn otherwise.”

So they did. The figures came on fast. Finally Merlin could see that the human was a boy, thin and very dark-skinned. He was carrying a spear. Beside him a mottled gray and black dog was trotting easily, as if it was used to running for miles without tiring. As the boy approached, he slowed and looked doubtfully toward the dragon. Then he put down his spear and walked deliberately up to Merlin.

“You are the one called Merlin? I am Gnabu. I was sent to meet you.”

Again Merlin was glad for the Lady’s gift, years ago, of the understanding of languages. Whatever this boy was speaking, it
didn’t sound remotely like what was spoken in England now. But language wasn’t the foremost question in Merlin’s mind.

“You were sent? By whom?”

“I speak in my mind to a girl in a country called Wales. She speaks to another girl who said you might be coming and that you need help. They said look for a tall, pale man traveling with a big silver lizard with wings.”

At that, Sil snorted a puff of smoke. Gnabu flinched but stood his ground. “Maybe I can help guide you.”

Merlin felt washed with relief. Heather was helping him even though she wasn’t here.

“Thank you, Gnabu. We can certainly use help. I am trying to find a place of roots, deep roots.”

The boy thought a moment, then a grin spread across his dark face. “Roots? Everything here has roots.” He leaned down and plucked up a tuft of brittle yellow grass. Its spidery roots loosed a scattering of dry soil. “Most roots shallow. Deep roots, very deep roots, only in one place. I show you.”

With that, he turned, picked up his spear, and totted off again. His dog had been lying low in the grass, studying Sil. Now it leaped up and dashed after its master. Merlin shrugged happily and followed, with Sil ambling behind.

The land around them was vast, and soon it seemed to Merlin that the time needed to cover it was vast as well. The day wore on. The smudged patch of sun slid behind the western mountains, that no longer were quite in line with their route. Then, very suddenly, darkness fell.

Gnabu led them up onto a high outcrop of rock and, without another word, sat down and started to make a fire, hitting stones together trying to spark a flame in a handful of dry grass.

Merlin, finally seeing somewhere that he could be useful, made a swift gesture, setting a purple flame dancing merrily on a bare, flat rock.

Gnabu jumped back, then grinned. “Ravit say you magic person. Me, my magic is mind-talking and making music from rocks. Also,” he added with a grin, “also I’m good at finding people. And I talk to birds. They help me with finding.”

Merlin smiled back. Then, opening the sack at his belt, he pulled out a few dried provisions. He greatly regretted not stocking up on the delicacies at Osiris’s court. “Too bad neither of us has the magic of making food.”

Gnabu shrugged. “You have some food; I have some food. Your lizard friend go find his own.”

Sil was already scrabbling around in patches of earth looking for roots. He raised his dirty muzzle a moment to snort at this new reference to lizards, then went back to digging. Gnabu added food from a pouch at his side to the pile Merlin had made and shared his gourd full of water.

As they ate, new sounds began to reach them from the darkness, the strange, wild sounds Merlin and Sil had heard the night before, but then they had been in the protection of an Otherworld cave. “Are we in danger here?” he asked Gnabu as a particularly chilling roar seemed to be closer.

The boy shrugged. “Yes, but we have fire. I have a spear; you have a sword. We’re all right.”

Merlin picked up his staff. “I have something besides a sword, so we should be a little more all right.” He waved his staff in a circle, and it spread a scarf of purple light around their rocky refuge. It quivered in the air, then sank into the earth. “Come up here and join us, Sil,” Merlin called. “You may be getting big, but it sounds like something out there could be bigger.”

They made room for Sil’s silver bulk. Gnabu’s dog cowered as far away from the dragon as possible, but Sil just looked at him contemptuously, lowered his head, and went to sleep. Merlin was enormously sleepy too but couldn’t help being enthralled when Gnabu demonstrated his music from rocks.

The boy started humming, then began touching rocks. At his touch, each would produce a different tone, some deep, some high and sweet. Casually, he wove melodies that seemed to sing between the Earth and stars.

The heat of the day had vanished, but wrapped in his wool cloak, Merlin leaned comfortably back against a boulder still warm from the day’s sun. He looked up at the stars. The comet here was far higher in the sky than it had been at home. Its warning somehow seemed more sharp and imminent. Still, Gnabu’s music seemed to weave a calm protection between their little camp and the celestial omen. Gradually Merlin felt the songs lulling him to sleep. He slept until the bronze shield of a sun rose over the eastern horizon.

Gnabu was already up and ready to go. “Not much farther now and we see it, where I think you need to go.” He pointed over the plain. It still looked flat and featureless to Merlin, but the boy continued. “There’s a rise in the grasslands there. Hard to tell, but there is. From there you can see it.”

“See what?”

“The tree. Big tree. Biggest tree in the world, my people say.”

As they set off, Sil grumpily got up and followed, though not without grouching about the lack of breakfast. By mid-morning, they were indeed climbing a nearly imperceptible rise in the grasslands. Then they reached the top and looked out. In the distance, there was a dark shape on the endless-seeming plain.

It looked too large for an animal or even a herd of animals, Merlin decided. It might be another rock outcrop, but as he stared harder, he realized that it was indeed a tree, an enormous tree.

“I leave you now,” Gnabu said. “My people’s territory is off that other way. It’s not good that I stray too far. Should I send message to my mind-friend and she to yours?”

“Yes, please do,” Merlin said gratefully. “Tell them we are
well, Sil and I. And thank them, thank them for sending you to us.”

Gnabu smiled and nodded. “I’m glad they did. I’m magically good at finding people, but I’ve never found one like you. I don’t know what it is you do here, but I know it is important. The rocks tell me so. Farewell. You too, Lizard.”

Sil snorted, but Gnabu only laughed. “Very big, grand, beautiful lizard. The rocks will sing of you.” With that, he and his dog trotted off over the plain back the way they had come.

After a moment, Merlin and Sil started down the gentle slope heading toward the dark, treelike smudge. As the day wore on, the clearer the tree became. It was indeed enormous—not just tall but wide. Its feathery top seemed to spread into a vast canopy. As they drew nearer, Merlin began to feel a new liveliness in the earth that kept growing stronger. In the shimmering heat of the plain, the dark object ahead of them seemed at times to waver and change shape, but when he squinted, Merlin could see it still remained a tree.

“Hungry!” Sil suddenly announced from behind him. “Smells like yummy tubers are here.” Merlin turned to see the dragon digging like a huge dog at a weed-entangled patch of grass. Sighing, he realized he was hungry too. He was impatient to keep moving, but unlike in the Otherworld passages, walking here was as tiring as anywhere else in the mortal world.

The plain around them was scattered with lichen-encrusted boulders. Choosing one, he sat and pulled a strip of dried meat and a slab of stale bread from a pouch at his belt. To rest his eyes from staring at the wavering tree shape, he looked around over the rest of the plain. Dry yellow-green grass, small herds of grazing animals, and no signs of human settlement. He supposed Gnabu’s people must be roaming hunters. He wondered what had happened here during the Devastation. There had likely
been few targets for bombs. But when society and technology had collapsed and the environment decayed, many people had probably perished just as surely.

There were ants at least on the ground. Brushing off crumbs for them, he stood up, then stiffened. Something dark smudged the eastern horizon. A dark streak that throbbed slightly with movement.

Bits of half-chewed roots dropping from his jaw, Sil suddenly raised his head. His nostrils flared. “Know that smell. Don’t like it, not here anyway. It’s smoke.”

Staring at the dark band, Merlin now noticed low flares of light along its base. He nodded. “A grass fire is definitely not good on a big, grassy plain. Let’s get moving.”

More briskly now, they headed again in the direction of the tree, away from the line of fire and smoke. But that line seemed to move faster than they did. And it was troubling more than just these two travelers. To their left, a small band of gazelles undulated past them through the grass. On their right, lower tawny shapes moved, and Merlin realized they must be lions. A flock of long-necked white birds flew overhead. All were heading west, away from the wall of fire and smoke, that now seemed to be bearing directly down on them.

For a moment, Merlin stopped and studied the advancing threat. Somehow it felt like more than just a random natural occurrence. There was something focused and deliberate about it. Merlin turned to hurry on but suddenly faced a more immediate danger. Panicked by the fire, a herd of elephants was stampeding their way. Although they were still some distance away, their great feet shook the earth and their trumpeting rose above the perpetually rasping wind.

Now Merlin and Sil were running to get out of the animals’ path, but they couldn’t seem to dodge them. Hastily, Merlin
threw protective spells around them. The glowing bubbles of power kept them from being crushed. But as the terrified elephants poured around them, the dragon and man were bounced about like footballs, pummeled by massive feet, careening off great gray backs.

Finally the frenzied herd thundered past, leaving the two of them lying shaken and dizzy on the grass. Merlin staggered to his feet and looked back toward the east. The fire was much nearer now. He could hear its greedily crackling flames and smell the acrid smoke.

“The tree!” he yelled. “We can’t let it get the tree!”

“Tree?” Sil answered. “We can’t let it get
us!”
At that, his head snaked down, and he snapped his long fangs into the cloth of Merlin’s cape. With a flip of his head, he tossed the wizard onto his back and began galloping westward. Frantically Merlin grabbed at silver scales with one hand to keep from being bounced off. He desperately clutched his staff with the other.

“Where to?” the dragon called.

Barely able to talk because of the shaking, Merlin managed to shout, “Tree! Get to the tree!”

The landscape bounced crazily around him until he had to close his eyes against dizziness. The miserable ride went on and on. Suddenly the dragon stumbled to a halt. Merlin lost his grip and flew off into the grass. Shaded grass. He opened his eyes and stared up at fluttering green leaves and a vast web of intertwining dark branches.

Weakly he sat up. Sil was staring with huge, frightened eyes back toward the east. Merlin looked as well. The fire, like a living hungry beast, was closing in on them. It roared and hissed, and beneath the curtain of smoke, its flames glowed like blood-red eyes.

“Water!” Merlin said. Grabbing up his staff, he began circling the great tree, spitting out incantations. Where he walked, water appeared, first in puddles and then in pools. By the time he came around to the point where he had started, the pools had joined and spread into an ever-widening moat. It stretched out until it went way beyond the shadow of the tree’s wide canopy, until the tree and the two at its base stood on an island in the center of a new lake.

With some astonishment, Merlin looked at the result of his work and suspected that not all of the power involved had been his own. Beyond the water, the fire had circled as well, unnaturally surrounding the lake. It seemed to eye them hungrily but helplessly.