Earth's Magic (26 page)

B
ATTLE

D
izzily, Merlin sat up, relieved to see he was still clutching his staff. It was daytime. The sun, shrouded by smoke as well as cloud, showed a scene of battle. Banners bobbed and surged, most familiar to him, some not. But the battlefield itself was seething with an assortment of creatures he had never imagined. Some were human; some seemed less or more than human. Some were amazing, some horrifying, and all seemingly bent on destroying each other. But in all of this chaos and violent confusion, there was one person he knew he must find.

If it wasn’t already too late, the words he held must be set free. Heather could do that. She could send them around the world. But where on this chaotic, shifting battlefield could he find her?

He spun around. The tunnel he had stumbled from was gone. The grassy surface of the earthen mound was unbroken. Desperately, he scrambled up the sides of the mound. Once this must have been the burial place for some ancient chieftain, but he had no time for proper reverence now. Standing at its summit, he scanned the battlefield.

To his right, what looked like a nest of black vipers was spewing from a gash in the earth. Swooping down on them were
giant birds, or winged humans, he couldn’t tell which. They attacked each other in deathly silence, while above them the air clouded with feathers, blood, and venom.

In contrast, considerable sound came from a conflict directly behind the mound. A giant spotted cat with a headdress of feathers snarled at a huge black lion whose mane flickered with red flame. Growling hatred, the lion lunged, and the two tumbled over and over in the dust.

Merlin forced himself to look away. He couldn’t watch skirmishes. He certainly couldn’t join in. He had to find Heather. She could be anywhere, but most likely, he thought, she would be near Arthur. He scanned the battlefield. Off to his east and in another spot along the north edge of the plain, whole armies were battling. The clashing of metal and screams of hate and pain reached him clearly. The Red Dragon banner—that was what he needed to find.

Many banners jostled above the armies, but the clouds of dust obscured them. Then he looked to the sky and caught his breath. Side by side, a great white dragon and an even larger black one were locked in swooping, soaring battle with a pair of misshapen griffins. He squinted to see if Morgan was riding one. Then he looked away. He couldn’t afford to be diverted even by Morgan now. Their old enmity would have to wait.

Suddenly he spied another flying shape, much lower, hovering over a clash in the northwest. A flash of red, a smaller dragon. It was carrying someone. Arthur!

Scrambling down the mound, Merlin tried to keep his eye on that speck of red. But the dragon must have dropped lower or landed. He could no longer see it above the surging combatants. Still, he ran in the direction he’d last seen it.

A giant, hairy man lumbered toward him waving a club. Without stopping, Merlin smashed him aside with a burst of
purple light. He kept running but had to dodge out of the way as two beasts rolled toward him, roaring, clawing, and biting as they came. One was a great white bear, the other some sort of giant horned rat. He swerved around them and had to veer aside again to avoid a squadron of ghouls engaged in hand-to-hand combat with leafy wood sprites. Swords flailed, and the air mingled with cries and the smells of rotting flesh and wood smoke.

Finally finding a clear stretch, he ran full out, only to duck as an enormous red bird, trailing feathers of flame, swooped low over him. A massive green snake that had stayed coiled quietly in the grass suddenly sprang up to meet the bird. Merlin again had to jog aside in order not to be drawn into their deadly battle.

He was so busy trying to avoid clashing enemies on all sides that he caught his foot and toppled on the grass. Scrambling to his feet, he looked at what he had stumbled over. A body lay sprawled beside him. The poor man was bleeding from long, jagged gashes across his face and chest.

Torn between helping and continuing on, Merlin groaned, then knelt down. The man was still breathing. He coughed, spewing blood into the air, then opened his one good eye. The big man gasped.

“Earl. Earl Bedwas!” he cried weakly. “You were right. She betrayed me. Used me and betrayed me.”

Nigel broke off, coughing again. Instinctively, Merlin spread a hand over his bleeding chest, sending out tendrils of healing power. “I’m sorry, Nigel, healing magic’s not what I’m best at.”

“You shouldn’t bother,” the other gasped. “The treasonous witch! She promised … promised I’d be High King if I brought you or Heather to her.”

Instantly Merlin felt more like killing than healing, but he forced himself to keep calm. “And you did what?”

“Brought her Heather. Morgan just struck me down and took the girl away.”

“Where?”

“Don’t know. West, I think.”

Abruptly Merlin stood up. “I’ve done what I can for you. I’ll send help.” Instantly he was running west. Soon he encountered a contingent of soldiers charging along the edge of the battle looking for the best place to attack. Soldiers from Carlisle, he thought. Grabbing one, Merlin pointed back the way he had come. “The King of Glamorganshire is back there, hurt. Send help.”

Before the soldier could reply, Merlin was off running again. He fought to ignore the varied warriors, the nightmare creatures and figures out of myth that were everywhere, but a flash of gold in the sky caught his attention. A dragon was diving straight toward him. “Goldie!” Merlin cried as the dragon’s clumsy landing nearly knocked him over.

“Come quick,” Goldie rasped. “Rus hurt bad.”

Rus, Merlin thought. The dog was seldom far from Heather. Without warning, Goldie sank claws into Merlin’s shoulders and hoisted him into the air. For some distance he skimmed painfully over the grass until Goldie suddenly dropped him into a tangled gorse bush. Lying beside the bush was Rus. His body was very still, but at the noise of Merlin’s crash landing, both heads lifted and whined feebly.

“Rus, what happened?” Merlin cried, then remembered that only Heather and the dragons could really talk with the dog. He turned to Goldie.

The dragon folded her wings and snorted angrily. “Rus tells me that a hairy goblin thing took Heather and then smacked him with a club when he tried to attack it. His body doesn’t work now, not below the necks.”

“Does he know where Heather is?”

Goldie nodded her gleaming head. “He sees her in his mind. Well, the left head does. Mostly the right one just complains.”

Gently Merlin placed his hands on both sides of the dog’s left head. Looking into those sad, loyal eyes, he felt tears forming in his own eyes. “Rus, I’ll give you what strength I can, but I’m no good at healing, not like Heather. Can you see where she is? Can you show me?” Closing his eyes, Merlin tried to reach into the dog’s mind. Heather was the one who could do this with animals. She’d tried to teach him, but he’d not had much patience for it. Now he must.

He thought intensely of Heather and slowly felt that shared thought binding his mind to Rus’s. Hazily he saw through other eyes. Heather’s eyes? Big, angular shapes were looming over him. Stones. Giant stones. They tilted like hags’ teeth. But two held another stone across their top like the lintel of a doorway.

Gasping, Merlin sat back on his heels. “Stonehenge!” Looking up, he tried to focus again through his own eyes, then scanned the western horizon. Far beyond the battle, he saw it, an angular smudge against the gray sky.

Hastily he sent a wave of healing into Rus, but he knew it was more an easing of pain than a real cure. “Goldie,” he said, clambering to his feet, “I must go to her. I may have helped him a little, but Rus is badly hurt. Move him only very gently. A real healer might be able to do more.”

With a final pat to each of Rus’s heads, Merlin charged off to the west, skirting the fringes of battle, ignoring the outlandish creatures clashing and the horrible cries. He dared not pay any attention to the upheaval around him. If he noticed friends or allies under threat, he’d feel drawn to help. And he must not. He must concentrate on the task that he alone could perform, that he could only perform through Heather. He must keep his eyes solely on the ancient stone circle rising from the grasslands ahead.

Leaving the battle behind, he neared the circle and slowed
his headlong flight. Something was different about it. He had known Stonehenge centuries earlier when he was first young and it was already ancient. But then the great circle was more intact than now. And he had seen it again just last year when he and the others had emerged from a long passage between Otherworlds.

Since then, he could see, there had been no change in the arrangement of the stones. Yet now as he approached it, the gray daylight reflected on something new. It reminded him of sunlight sparkling on dewdrops bespangling a spiderweb. But this web was enormous, totally encasing the stone circle. And the sparkle had a familiar green cast.

Morgan, he realized. She must have used the power of this circle to augment her own, to create a massive cage. What it was caging was suddenly evident. Heather was sitting near the center of the circle on a fallen stone, forlornly watching the distant battle.

“Heather!” he called, redoubling his speed.

“Earl, thank the gods!” She leaped to her feet. “You made it back! Morgan was wrong! She said you’d be stopped.”

“There were plenty who tried,” he confessed. “We’ve got to get you out of there.”

“I’ve tried for hours, but this power net goes over the top and all the way underground.”

Studying it, Merlin slowly approached the crackling net. Then he raised his staff and touched the tip to the glowing strands. Purple sparks exploded with such force he was thrown backward. Scrambling to his feet again, he shook his head.

“Morgan has melded her own power to the power already binding the circle. But she hasn’t delved deep, she’s only using the closest levels. The power here is very old and very deep, and she hasn’t really tapped far into it. Perhaps if I—”

“Earl, look out!”

Heather hadn’t seen the single goblin guard for hours. But now it had crept out from its hiding place and was charging Merlin. At her cry, the wizard swung around, striking the hairy creature with his staff. It grunted at the impact but grabbed hold of the staff and tried to yank it from Merlin’s hands.

He sent purple fire spiraling down its length. The goblin screamed and tumbled back. With a snarl, it turned and loped off through the waving grass.

“It will alert Morgan if it can find her,” Heather called.

Nodding, Merlin tucked his staff into his belt and spread out both hands, splaying them inches from the glowing net. “If I can sense how she’s built and grafted her power,” he said to Heather, who was now standing just on the other side of the net, “I can figure out how to pick it apart. But it will take time.”

“More time than you have, I’m afraid,” Morgan said calmly from the back of a winged beast hovering above them. “I sensed your approach before my oaf of a guard could even think to find me.” With a grating squeal, the winged monster dropped to the ground a few feet from Merlin, and Morgan lightly jumped off.

“If I gave you one more chance to join me, Merlin, would you finally have the sense to do it? It must be totally clear by now, even to you, which side is going to win this battle. Wouldn’t you like to side with the winners just for once?”

“If your side wins, Morgan, we are
all
losers.”

“That, I take it, is a ‘no’?”

“After all these years, did you expect anything else?” he said coolly.

“No, did you?”

Merlin was ready for her lash of green power when it came. He deftly caught it on his staff and hurled it away. He was less ready for her next move. Leaping back, she thrust a hand into
the crackling green net. It hissed, writhed, and unwound itself from the stones. Its tendrils rose out of the earth like maddened green worms. In seconds, she’d drawn all that power into a glowing green ball.

Suddenly freed, Heather leaped at Morgan, who slammed the girl away with a flick of her hand. Merlin cried out, and in that second of his distraction, Morgan hurled the glowing power she’d gathered into his chest. Like a rag doll, he was tossed into the air and spun forty feet away before crashing to the ground.

He groaned once and lay still.

R
ESOLUTION