Earth's Magic (23 page)

“Roots,” Merlin muttered. “I’ve got to get to the roots.” Hurrying again around the tree, he poked at the trunk and the ground with his staff, chanting various opening spells. Nothing changed.

Sil shook his head. “Shut up tight as a locked door.”

“Locked door?” Merlin slapped his head with annoyance. “And I have a key!”

He hadn’t thought of that word since his father had whispered it to him in the imprisoning valley. Yet now, as he closed his eyes, it floated easily into his mind. It rose like a golden bubble from somewhere deep within him, from where it had been waiting in his bones, in every cell of his body. Taking a deep breath, he pressed both hands against the furrowed trunk of the great tree. Slowly he spoke the word.

A moaning sigh swept through the grass, shivering the air. Lower now, the moan seemed to rise from deep within the Earth. Suddenly the ground beneath him opened, and Merlin tumbled in. Spinning downward, he looked up and glimpsed Sil’s startled face staring after him. Then the opening snapped closed like a mouth.

He kept falling. Weblike threads brushed past him. The threads thickened into rootlets. The farther he fell, the thicker they became, until, clutching at him, they began to slow his fall. Then, enmeshed in their web, he finally stopped. Like a hundred gentle, entwining hands, they slowly lowered him farther until his feet touched earth. Then the roots drew away.

Still clutching his staff, Merlin cautiously felt about in the utter dark. The earth where he stood was loose and crumbly, but he groped his way to the edge where newly fallen dirt met hard-packed earth. The only sound he heard at first was his own labored breathing. But as that calmed, another sound took its place—a dry whispering.

Finally he could make out words. “Can you hear us?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Who are you?”

“But can you see us?”

“No.”

“He wouldn’t,” whispered another similar voice. “He is half mortal.”

“Then we shall show ourselves.” Where he was standing, the earth took on a warm brown glow. The glow spread out and up until it revealed that he was standing in a vast cavern with tree roots stretching down and around like twisted pillars.

Merlin looked about, searching for the source of the voices. He could see nothing but the web of roots. Then some of those roots moved and seemed to drop away, landing on the soil. Some looked like crumpled leaves, others like brown spiders with any number of legs. And they had eyes, large, dark eyes that seemed to open onto ancient depths.

“You have come,” a creature said, scuttling forward on a dozen legs. “And you have spoken a word unheard since the beginnings. Where did you hear it?”

“It was passed on to me so that I might take it to you and … and unlock whatever it is that the word unlocks.”

A dry chittering spread like wind through the root-filled cavern. More and more insect-like creatures peeled free of the roots and soil and sifted toward him. “Words, words, words,” they whispered.

The first speaker raised his thin voice above the others. “This word is old, old as the seeds from which we grew, old as the soil from which you are formed. It comes from the time when mortals first thought and their thoughts gave form to their immortal spirits. A time of ancient order, of balance. It is a word of balance.”

“More words, more words, more words,” the whisperings began again until the whole cavern vibrated with the noise. The sound seemed to fill Merlin’s ears and eyes, his mouth and nostrils, like suffocating dust. Then it died away. Another speaker, a crazy-seeming cluster of sticks and leaves, or maybe legs and wings, shuffled toward Merlin.

“Yes, there are more words. You spoke one. It has unlocked two more. Three words in all. Words that the world, spinning into chaos, has been waiting since the beginnings to hear again. Words of balance and of what is to be balanced. Dark and light, life and death, fear and hope. The very first words that bespoke all those things. Are you ready to hear them? Are you ready to loose them on the world once more?”

“If it is not too late,” another voice said. “Too late, too late, too late,” others echoed.

The stick-and-leaf creature whistled the others into silence. “If it is too late, then we die, life dies, the Earth dies. It will all end. But it may not be too late.”

The creature suddenly seemed to grow and thin. It expanded like dust until only its dark, fathomless eyes stared down at Merlin. “Are you ready to try? Are you ready to hear the words?”

Merlin had never felt so unready for anything in his two lives. He wanted to thin like this Earth creature until he had vanished altogether. But the dark eyes held him, showing him briefly the soul of the Earth, giving him its strength where his faltered.

“Yes,” he whispered. Then, more firmly, “Yes, I am ready.”

The words when they came were as if he had always known them, as if he had been waiting since his birth to hear them again. They fell into him and nestled with the other, a burden infinitely heavy and joyously light. A perfect balance.

“Now go,” voices whispered around him. “Go. Take them. Spread them. Plant them. Go. Go. Go.” Echoes bounced and ricocheted around the cavern until he wanted to duck and throw his arms over his head. Before he could, spindly arms or legs grabbed him, or perhaps they were just the waving tendrils of roots. They hoisted him up, passing him to others and others and yet others. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” voices whispered as he passed.

He felt scratched and battered, not from malice, just from haste. Then he was suddenly let loose and flung upward, smashing through a thin ceiling of soil. He rolled over, saw the tree branches and pinkish gray sky. Morning of a new day? A silver dragon face peered down at him.

“About time!” Sil pronounced. “Water’s almost dried up.”

Gasping, Merlin stared at the dragon, then slowly sat up. Sil seemed to have grown again. How long had he been underground? He looked about. The great lake of water that had encircled the tree was reduced to a narrow channel. Beyond it, the wall of fire had dropped to embers, but those still glowed menacingly. Their heat still churned the water, sending veils and spirals of steam flitting from its surface.

“Water!” Merlin croaked, his throat feeling parched with the
dust of ages. “The tree must be protected!” Scrabbling for his staff, he jabbed it into the earth, which had now closed behind him. The result astonished him. A geyser of water shot forth, knocking him and Sil aside and arching into the diminished ring of water. Slowly the protecting lake expanded, and the glowering wall of smoke retreated.

“Onto my back, quick,” the dragon shouted.

“Are you sure that you’re strong enough to carry me, that you can get high enough?” Merlin asked as he tucked his staff into his belt and scrambled onto the scaly silver back. “Flames can shoot up high.”

“Of course I can—Yikes!”

Like arms, tree branches reached down, grabbed Sil and his clinging passenger, and hurled them upward. Like a ball, they were passed from branch to branch until, at the very top, they were flung out into the sky.

His wings freed now from branchy fingers, Sil spread them like sails and soared eastward. Below, flames did shoot up like vengeful torches but could not reach their height. Lying flat on the dragon’s back, Merlin peered down between rising and falling wings. The black and red of the fire was moving away from the tree. But it wasn’t dispersing or dying. Like a fat snake, it was shadowing their flight, moving in a new scorching path across the plain.

Merlin knew there was no point in urging Sil to go faster. This was a young dragon that had never flown this high. Nor this far. He was making all the effort he could. From this height, Merlin could see the vast African landscape stretching in all directions, with snow-crested mountains edging the west. He didn’t know where in this vastness Gnabu and his people lived, but he hoped the fire would spare them. Then he forced his concentration on the view ahead. Many rock outcrops broke
through the grasslands in the distance, but he was unsure which was their goal. Yet Sil’s course seemed straight and sure.

Gradually the dragon began to drop lower. His wingflaps seemed more labored. The rasping of his breath was almost drowned out by the crackling of fire now close below them. It was joined by roaring from new vigorous columns of flame spreading toward them from different directions over the plain.

Lower still. The smoke now clung about them, blinding as fog. Through it, Merlin glimpsed glowing red flames lashing at them like hungry tongues. Sil screamed as flame licked his belly, scorching the underside of his wings.

The dragon dropped like a stone.

B
ETRAYAL

T
he ride toward Salisbury Plain was a long and lonely one for Heather. She was glad that Welly and Takata had returned from their mission. Mounted now on horses instead of the huge white dragon, they usually rode beside her in the column. Blanche herself, when not off foraging, generally took up the rear of the marching column, effectively discouraging harassing attacks from any of the dark creatures occasionally seen lurking about.

Arthur’s army had now grown considerably. As they rode along, Welly and Takata eagerly told Heather about the shires they had visited and the promises they’d received of forces that would join them by the Solstice.

“You should have seen people’s faces,” Welly laughed at one point, “when we’d first land with Blanche. Well, actually, you didn’t see their faces long because they were usually running away. But then curiosity would draw them back, and their duke or duchess or whoever would come out and talk with us. It really strengthened the royal message to have a dragon carrying it.”

Grinning, Takata added, “And the two mighty warriors riding the dragon helped too. Most of the troops we met with were fairly well trained, but they needed their courage bucked up. We
did that and taught them a few new maneuvers as well. Your friend Wellington is quite an impressive warrior, you know. And it’s not all stuff I’ve taught him either.”

Welly blushed and pushed his glasses up more firmly on his face. “Well, it was Takata who was really impressive, her and Blanche. People saw that those rumors they’ve heard about dragons and legendary kings just might be true.”

As they kept relating their adventures, Heather was glad to see the two of them so happy together, working so closely as a team. But the sight also made the emptiness beside her seem more painful. She ached to have Earl with her or to be with him.

When she wasn’t riding with those two warriors, Heather struggled to keep her mind focused on communicating so she wouldn’t drown in brooding. All her contacts around the world reported the same thing. Dark forces were moving. Battles were pending. Some skirmishes had already begun. Some of the enemy Otherworld creatures that were described to her made her shiver. Walking carrion reeking of decay, beasts that were all teeth and claws, creatures that sucked blood through wavering tentacles.

Sometimes, she admitted, the forces reported on their side sounded as outlandish, if not as horrifying. Every Otherworld had them. Spirits that shifted form, from rock to tree to human. Creatures part animal, part human. Gigantic brutes and tiny sprites. Beings with many arms or with no shape beyond that of a mountain or a flame. And, of course, there were the Eldritch and the animal spirits, and the impossibly wonderful things such as unicorns and flying lions. And jaguars.

The barriers between worlds seemed to have weakened steadily. Everywhere Otherworld creatures were spilling into this one. Although her contacts reported having their hands more than full, many also said that their people were using newly
opened passages and sending troops to Salisbury. From everything that the army saw and heard as they passed through the countryside, it seemed that the other side was on the march as well. Dark things were sighted, livestock was vanishing, and people who went out at night were often never seen again.

Any information that she thought might be useful, Heather immediately reported to Arthur and Margaret. Though she was quiet and businesslike, the royal couple couldn’t help but notice how pale and distracted the girl looked. When the army camped at night, it was usually Margaret who saw to it that Heather ate enough and that she slept near the royal tent. The Queen also made sure that Kyle the royal harper played only heartening tunes when she was about, not sagas of magical power and danger.

Heather knew she was being useful staying here, but she still fretted that she was not helping where it really mattered—where Merlin was going, where his secret quest might decide all of their fates. And where danger and death might lie in wait for him. If only she could help him, she thought.

And then one day it occurred to her that perhaps she could. She herself spoke to only one voice in Africa. But there were others. Voices to whom she mind-spoke knew of others. Ravit spoke to others.

Fervently she called in her mind to all she could reach. She begged their help, told them what was needed. Then, like all the world, she could only wait.

Dutifully Heather continued filling that void of waiting by passing on the reports and fears incessantly flooding into her head. When this got too overwhelming in the evenings, she would leave the bustle at the heart of camp and find somewhere on the fringes to try to calm herself and focus. It was then, one night, that she received the forwarded message from Merlin that gave her hope, hope at least that he was alive. For now.