Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (47 page)

“Defenders. Ones who gave the magic you gave back.”

Ashe’s brow flickered down. “You knew about that?”

“Excuse me?” Cole cut in.

“Of course,” Thelma replied.

“But how?” she asked. “No one’s ever–”

“I’m sorry, can we go back for a sec? Gave
what
magic?”

Thelma turned to him, looking mystified. “Your magic.”

“I don’t have any magic.”

The old woman blinked perplexedly.

“Ashe?” Cole tried.

She swallowed. “Actually, you do.”

“Uh, no…” he corrected. “Pretty sure I’d remember that.”

“Didn’t know?” Thelma asked Ashe, pointing to Cole in baffled surprise.

Ashe shook her head. “Nobody did. That’s why everyone calls them cripples.”

The old woman’s eyebrows rose.

“Ashe,” Cole said, sounding more than a little unnerved. “Look, you realize who we’re talking to, right? You can’t just–”

“I’m not,” she interrupted edgily. “And you do. I don’t know how, but you do. Merlin bound it. He took what you have and bound it to make his family into the spell.” She paused. “And I have no idea how, or why, or what the hell that means.”

For a heartbeat, he watched her.

“What the hell’s a paladin, Thelma?” Cole asked, turning to the old woman.

Ashe exhaled, her heart slowing again.

“Defenders,” Thelma repeated. “Watchmen on the hills. The ones who saw how people fit together, connections they shared. Weren’t like the firemen, destroying and burning and creating all those wars. Wouldn’t light the night sky or make wet wood burn. But saw the differences, the samenesses, and protected those they served. Those they loved. Guarded them against what they couldn’t see.”

She paused. “But you gave it up.”

As Cole’s brow twitched down, she shrugged. “Didn’t mean to, I know. Plan was only to help. Give the connections to make the spell and share the sight of who was who, so people didn’t have to be afraid anymore. So many betrayals, back then. So many families lost when friends didn’t turn out to be friends. Paladins couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t protect everyone. So you shared the sight. The connections. Let the others see what you saw, let him use the connections you could feel so he could take the magic from the ones who started wars. Let him use all of it.

“Didn’t think it would take it away.”

The old woman picked at the debris beside her crossed legs. “Never knew he’d need to keep it forever, either,” she mused. “And Merlin didn’t want to. Poor man. Hated what it did. Knew you accepted it, though. Saw the good it made, the lives it saved, even if it cost you. Even if you couldn’t be near your friends anymore. Hurt so much. The magic. Pulled and burned and caused so much pain. Spell did that. Took all your beautiful protections and sight, and made them all backwards. Gave nothing but a view of your world that hurt when you came too close to anyone who wasn’t outside, and used the spell to give your last strength to wolves when they attacked.” She shook her head sadly, her gaze going to the broken windows. “So horrible. So high a price.”

She sighed. “Cost you too, though, I guess,” she continued, looking back at Ashe. “Cost everyone. Nothing without a price. Not like the paladins, of course. Nobody paid like them. But weakened the others. Differences weren’t natural, and needed strength to see. Drained them to see it, though they didn’t really care. Eventually forgot life before the differences came along. Forgot so much when all the pieces tossed up by the war finally came down. Just glad to be alive. Didn’t seem important that everything was out of balance. That new things were over them now, making them strange. Birds fled. Dogs barked. All so very strange. So weak. So much a shadow of what they had been.”

The old woman shrugged again. “Not the same for you. Made you different than them all. Could still fight and bind like Merlin, but had to stand in the middle like him too. Had to hold it all together, both sides. Conduit for the spell. Made you look like them, but not be them. Weakened, but not as much as them. Become the spell, while they were under the spell. Nothing strange on you, no dogs barking at you, because the spell
was
you. What you were. The link for it all.” She paused, the sad expression drifting back across her face. “Hurt so many of my little ones when it fractured all wrong, though. Took so many of them away, when it never should have. But it left you. Her too.”

Thelma gave Lily a tender smile. “Scary, I bet, when you slipped outside,” she added to the little girl. “Even if it was good. You could help. Especially since those bad men slipped outside too.”

She returned to picking at the debris, her smile fading.

Ashe stared, and she could see Cole doing the same. Questions pushed on her, each more incredulous than the last, and for the life of her, she couldn’t seem to find words for any. Brow furrowing, she floundered through the flood of information and, in desperation, latched onto the last thing the woman had said.

“Outside the spell?” she hazarded.

Thelma nodded, seeming confused by the question.

“And is that what happened to you? Were… were you there that night?”

The confusion didn’t fade. “Always been outside.”

“Since you were a kid?” Cole tried.

Thelma looked at him oddly. “Since we made the spell.”

Incredulity bubbled up, hitting Ashe with the sudden urge to laugh. They were talking to a crazy woman. Someone who chatted with her cats in fragments of poetry and used to call the farmhands’ truck a Jabberwocky.

Someone who’d known exactly how the spell worked, had an explanation for why cripples had magic, and possessed more detailed information about the last war than anyone else she’d ever met.

The urge to laugh melted away, leaving her with the sense that her grip on reality had suddenly become unstable.

“Thelma,” she asked delicately. “What exactly does that mean?”

“Just,” Cole added, “
assume
we don’t know.”

Thelma paused. “Made the spell,” she said again. “Didn’t want to. None of us did. But didn’t have any choice. He wouldn’t listen. Always so headstrong, even as a little boy. So talented, but so terribly headstrong. And to have him take the world…” She shook her head. “Couldn’t let him do that to people. To humans. To us. We’d have to hurt them eventually. Always more of them than us.”

“Who wanted the world?” Ashe asked faintly, afraid she might know.

“Taliesin.”

Ashe swallowed hard.

“I would have done it,” Thelma continued. “Bound my little one, but Merlin wanted to protect me. Always so protective of family. Worried the spell might not work and kill whoever took it on. I argued, but he was the stronger one. Both were. Took after their father. If anyone had a chance, Merlin did. And he wouldn’t help unless I was the one who stayed outside. Unless I was the one who stayed behind.”

She glanced to Lily, the smile returning with a touch of melancholy. “Couldn’t know you’d get outside too.”

Ashe shivered.

“Anybody remember where reality was?” Cole murmured. “Because I think we’ve lost it.”

“You were
alive
back then?” Lily asked, putting words to at least one of the questions Ashe could no longer bring herself to raise.

Thelma nodded pensively. Her gaze drifted to the side, losing focus as it went.

“That’s not possible,” Cole said.

Lily looked at him, tremulous credulity in her eyes. “Ashley catches herself on fire and you say people glow,” she pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but–”

“Not common,” Thelma said as if answering him, though her gaze never left the carpet. “Took so much to do. But necessary.” She nodded to herself. “Part of the plan. One spell to bind and one to stay, in case the binding weakened before peace came. Elvis wanted to just pass the spell’s secrets down. To tell the little ones how to do what we’d done. But what if the spell didn’t end the war? What if we failed? What if later someone pushed it harder… and killed?”

She shook her head. “Needed someone to stay. Someone to be strong enough because they were outside. To know the secrets in case the spell had to be put back again, and to guard the secrets so bad people couldn’t use them to kill. And I had to be the one. No one else could.”

The old woman paused, her brow furrowing distantly. “Never knew what it’d be, though. To watch people fade. Babies’ babies fade. To change names over and over to hide, while things went and went and went… and never came back again…”

Her voice trailed off.

Gingerly, Lily reached out and took her hand.

Thelma drew a breath, the ghost of a fond smile rising again. “Always meant for the spell to end eventually, though,” she told the girl quietly. “Wouldn’t have left you with the canyon forever. To bind him and his friends forever. Just had to wait till they’d listen. Till they saw they didn’t need to run the world to be happy, and could have power without burning everything down.”

From the corner of her eye, Ashe saw Cole look away.

“But… it didn’t go like that,” Thelma said, her smile melting. “Made sense at first; so much blood on both sides. But then, when the Merlin’s little ones grew old, and more grew old, and more… it got worse. Cruel. Became everything we tried to stop. They took pleasure in the power. Pleasure in the hurt.” She closed her eyes. “So, so much hurt.”

Ashe shifted uncomfortably.

“And then it fractured,” Thelma sighed. “And I couldn’t do it again. Couldn’t help if it would be like last time. So many of my little ones were gone that night, but… hoped maybe the rest would work it out this time. Even if there was fighting, even with all the blood and hurt between them… still hoped maybe it would be okay.”

She glanced to Ashe apologetically. “Never meant to let them take everything but the little flower.”

Ashe looked away.

She wanted to be angry, and deep down, she could feel it bubbling inside. The rage at what could have been. Maybe even should have been. The things they could have been spared, and all the things that wouldn’t have been this way. She wanted to be furious.

But it wouldn’t change anything, or bring anyone back again.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens echoed, the sounds faint and meaningless on the wind. Bits of paper fluttered over the carpet from the destroyed books scattered across the office floor, and beyond the shattered glass, wisps of cloud drifted through the darkening blue of the early evening sky.

“You want to get out of here?” Cole asked quietly, his gaze on the windows.

She nodded.

Silently, they climbed to their feet and helped Thelma rise. Papers scattered away as the four of them made their way to the door, the white flecks sweeping out with the wind to float over the city and leave the office behind.

*****

Defenses rising, Ashe left the portal with Lily at her back. Cole followed, dizzily stepping away from the old conference room door and ignoring Thelma’s quizzical stare.

The Merlin guard filled the first floor lobby, their identity recognizable only through vague familiarity, since they felt nothing like they had before. Strain lined their faces, along with a lack of surprise at the sight of Cole coming through a portal that left her unnerved, and as they spotted her, the nearest of them simply turned away and lifted his phone to his ear.

“She’s here,” he said tersely.

Ashe’s brow drew down and warily, she looked back at Cole.

He didn’t notice. Bent with a hand to his head, he blinked as though trying to steady the floor beneath him.

“Leaning on the wall helps,” she murmured, keeping one eye to the guards.

Cole glanced up at her. She gave a small shrug.

Closing his eyes briefly, he drew a breath. “I’ll be alright,” he said, straightening. “It’s still better than last time.”

His gaze went to the wizards at the end of the elevator corridor. His expression tightened.

“Glowing?” she asked under her breath.

He nodded.

“Good, though?” Thelma interjected. “Not working for the bad ones?”

Cole paused, his gaze flicking from the woman to the guards, and Ashe could read his discomfort at whatever it was he saw. “I guess so,” he allowed.

Ignoring Thelma’s smile, he headed toward the guard, looking as though the wizards were far preferable to the old woman right now. Taking Lily’s hand, Ashe followed.

A portal opened in the conference room door behind them.

“Your majesty!” Elias called, rushing from the shadows with Cornelius and Nathaniel a step behind. “Are you–”

He paused, catching sight of her back. Behind him, she could see Nathaniel register the same. The large wizard’s face went dark, though she couldn’t tell if the anger was for her, the bloodied rips in her shirt, or just both.

“We’re fine,” Ashe said before they could speak. “We’re all fine.”

Swiftly, Nathaniel shrugged off his jacket and swung it around her shoulders, his expression practically daring her to protest.

“We’ve been trying to reach you,” Elias said. “We–”

“Yeah,” she interrupted, shifting uncomfortably in the enormous coat. “I’m sorry. I just…”

She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. They’d been exhausted after fighting their way through the building, and they were protective as hell. In trying to defend her and Lily from Jamison, they almost certainly would have been killed.

But she couldn’t tell them that. The insult wouldn’t even be the half of it.

“Where is the Taliesin king?” Cornelius asked flatly into the awkward silence.

She hesitated. “Dead.”

Cole looked away.

“What’s going on?” she asked, jerking her chin toward the guards.

Elias glanced to Cornelius and Nathaniel. “You should probably just come with us,” he told her.

She tensed, struggling not to show nervousness at the words, and followed him. The guards surrounded them all as the three men headed around the elevator island for the door to the concrete park at the building’s side.

Her footsteps slowed as the windows came into view. Up ahead, Nathaniel pushed open the glass door and then stepped back, waiting as the others continued through.

The Merlin guard ringed the park. At least, she was fairly certain it was them, based on how the others weren’t reacting. Brentworth and Blackjack were there as well, sitting among the wounded beneath the trees at the edge of the concrete, with Katherine and Ermengarde nearby. On the broad steps of the building, Spider, Bus and Samson watched the crowd, nearly motionless and ignoring Harris as he studied them all from a few yards away.