Poison (33 page)

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“Do you know what you’ve done?” The Merlin’s wrath was not often seen, which made it all the more terrifying. Instantly the hall cleared, and the courtiers fled to the corridors or the gardens, where they chattered like hungry birds.

“It was the girl, his daughter.”

“Did she sleep with the king?”

“Much worse. She used witchcraft against him.”

“She brought on his illness.”

“With witchcraft!”

“Has she been arrested yet?”

A courtier laughed. “And who cares so little for his life that he will arrest the wizard’s daughter under his nose?”

“Not that a cell could keep her, in any case.”

The Merlin helped the ailing king to his feet, shouting over his shoulder at the girl, “You are no longer any child of mine!”

Inside the king’s bedchamber the magician studied the strange and luminous ring on Arthur’s finger. He could feel its power, its cold magic. When he touched it, it felt like a hot poker going down his throat.

“Can you take this off?” the Merlin asked, although he already knew the answer. The king was powerless against the ring with its glowing blue stone. For a moment the old man hesitated. He knew that what he was about to do would end his life.

The unification of the petty chiefdoms of Britain into one strong nation had become a reality, but it was still fragile. The king still needed Merlin’s guidance. But the structure would break and fall without a king. That was the only thing that was certain. For Britain to survive, Arthur had to live.

He is the land, and the land is him.
That was truer than even Arthur himself knew.

The Merlin scanned the room with weary eyes. Had he made a mistake by spending so much time in this temporal realm? He might have stayed in Avalon, increased his magic a thousandfold, lived the life of a king himself. Well, that was of no importance now, he thought as he assembled the tools he would need—a wand, a scrying mirror, a stone knife he kept in his robes.

He would have to work quickly if the king were to live. The Merlin had never performed this magic before, this last magic, but he knew what he was battling, and he knew what the cost would be.

“My child,”
he said, taking Arthur’s hand. The king’s eyes fluttered open, confused. The lashes were crusted, the whites yellow, the rims red and swollen.
I could not have loved you more.
Thirty-four years before, the Merlin had saved the infant from certain death at the hands of Arthur’s ignorant father, and had seen him safely reared in the home of a generous-hearted knight. From that moment the wizard had watched over the child as if Arthur were the son he’d never had. The magician had virtually abandoned Avalon, the land of his birth, and had brought its secrets with him into the chaotic, violent, changeable, uncertain world of cowen.

With the spectacle of pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone—a clever piece of magic, and one that could not have occurred without some magic from Arthur himself—the boy had been assured of becoming high king over the petty chiefs, whose constant quarreling had kept Britain in the sorry state it had been in since the Romans had left a century before. And now it was so close, the prospect of a powerful Celtic nation ruled by a wise king who commanded the respect of all Britons . . . so close. Too close to let die.

No, my child, my destiny. You must live.

The Merlin touched the blue stone. With a gasp he felt its pulsating, glowing heart, its incalculable power. A fleeting thought:
This may be worth my death, after all.
He wasn’t referring to his sacrifice, to the fact that this last-ditch effort was mankind’s last possibility to overcome the Darkness that had cast its shadow over the world. The Merlin was referring to the feeling itself. This was the Darkness in all its overwhelming power, coursing through the old man’s body. And yes, it would kill him, would twist his mind to evil in the last moments before
his death, would take all the magic he had and render it useless. Yet still, it was worth it.

A sound like the satisfied purr of a great cat poured out of his throat.
Such a feeling of well-being. Really, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to die.

And then, with a swift intake of air that signaled the first stopping of the old man’s heart, he looked down to see the ring on his own finger.

“Yes,” he whispered as the king’s eyes fluttered open.

“Merlin?” Arthur asked in a small voice. “Merlin, have you come back?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he answered, even as his knees buckled and he staggered over to the wall, where his hands slapped against the cool stone surface. The ring shot out a ray of white light. “But now I must rest. The journey has been . . . difficult.”

The king breathed deeply. “Perhaps I will too,” he said, closing his eyes once more. “I’m glad to see you again, old friend.”

“As am I,” the Merlin said, smiling for the last time at the man he had groomed to be Britain’s greatest king. Then he wove his erratic way through the corridors and stairways of the castle to a subterranean place where the royal boats were kept. Beyond the docking channels, cut deeply into the rock, was a tunnel that led to a cave sparkling with crystal formations.

This was the Merlin’s cave. When the wizard had first discovered it, he’d intended to suggest that it might be used as an emergency hiding place for the castle’s inhabitants in case of attack. But as Arthur’s power had solidified, it had seemed less and less likely that such a strategy would be necessary, and the Merlin had granted himself the small luxury of using the area as his personal retreat. This was where he had come in the past
to reflect and plan in crystalline silence. This was where he had decided that Britain and its high king would be the central focus of his skill and his life. And now this unearthly chamber was where he had come to die.

“Father?”

The Merlin, who had collapsed against a column of sheer quartz, struggled to focus his eyes.

“It’s me. Morgan.”

He swallowed once. There was no longer any trace of anger in the haggard gray face.

“Would you have done it for me?” she asked.

“Wha . . . what?” His voice trembled with weakness.

“Would you have died in my place?”

He blinked, uncomprehending, then closed his eyes.

“Would you?” Her voice was high-pitched, urgent.

With a nearly imperceptible movement, the old man seemed to sink into the translucent rock as if it were something soft. “For you,” he rasped, clutching Morgan’s hand. “My son. My king.”

•

With a strangled sound Morgan dropped the amber stones. Her eyes were flat and dull.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Why?” she countered sharply. “Your father doesn’t love you, either.”

I didn’t answer. My relationship with my father was too complicated for casual conversation. In the end, though, I believed he did love me. He wasn’t very attentive or affectionate, true, but he’d allowed me to stay in Whitfield because he knew how important that was to me. That’s love, in a way. His way. But it took me a long time to figure it out. Maybe if Morgan had taken the time, she’d have found that her father loved her too.

Or maybe he didn’t. Sometimes you just had to live with things that hurt. It didn’t justify destroying all of Avalon.

“Oh, hell. It was a long time ago,” she added. Then she burst out laughing, a harsh, bitter, mirthless sound that let me
know that even sixteen hundred years wasn’t long enough to forget some things.

“When he died in my arms, he was delirious. He thought I was Arthur.”

“I know.”

“So I took the ring from him—it doesn’t hurt me, and it had hurt him more than enough—and then I took his body back to Avalon.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t care for me there, but they revered my father. I wanted to bring him home. I thought they’d be happy that the great Merlin wasn’t left in an English grave. I didn’t think . . . ” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t think that witch would still be waiting to get even with me for knowing her secret.”

“How many other children has she killed since then?” I asked.

“Shut
up
!” Morgan snapped. “Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”

I wasn’t sure. Morgan’s silence had guaranteed the death of countless babies like the one I had seen in my vision. After knowing that, her own suffering just didn’t strike me as that terrible. But I knew she wanted to speak, so I nodded. “Go ahead,” I said.

“As soon as I arrived, her cronies surrounded me. I made myself small so that I could get away, slip through their fingers. But she was fast. I hadn’t even hit the ground before I was encased in this gloppy stuff, like liquid plastic. I remember struggling . . . and feeling like I was suffocating. . . . ” Her eyes filled at the memory. Her hands shook. I took one of them in my own. It felt cold, and I realized how fragile she was, despite her evilness.

“Hey, no pity,” she said, pulling her hand away. She just didn’t know how to be close to anyone, in any way.

“Okay. Then what?” I asked quietly.

Morgan hesitated for a moment, then closed her eyes. “And then it was done. The resin hardened into amber, and I was trapped inside.”

“Like the Muffy girls you put inside the antique dolls?”

Morgan gave me a disgusted look. “Yes, like that,” she said.

“Did you at least feel bad that you did that to them?”

“No,” she said. Then, miserably: “Yes, but what could I do about it?”

For a moment I could only blink at her. “What could you do?” I echoed hollowly. “How about letting them out?”

“Oh, that’d be smart. As if they wouldn’t start blabbing all over the place.”

“You could have erased their memories. That’s easy magic.”

She leaned in toward me. “They were
cowen,
” she said, as if that explained everything.

I looked down at my hands. “A lot of people in Whitfield felt that way too,” I said.

“And stupid. Every last one of them was really, really stupid.”

“So they didn’t count.”

“Not much.”

“And the girl in Avalon? The one I almost killed?”

“She brought that on herself.”

“Then, what about how you’re poisoning everyone else in Avalon?”

She laughed. “I’m not poisoning them, girlfriend.
You
are.”

“How can you not take responsibility for that? For any of it?”

She shrugged. “I just don’t want to. So I don’t. If you do, then I guess it sucks to be you.”

I clenched my teeth together, willing myself not to punch her.

“You’d understand if you’d been me,” she added.

“Understand what?”

“That sometimes you have to forget about being a nice guy.”

“You mean being fair.”

“Fair.” She spat out the word as if it were a bug that had flown into her mouth. “The last thing I saw before the resin hardened around me was my father’s body. The Seer was moving her hands over it, trying to take his magic. Yeah, tell me about fair.”

“What do you mean, take his magic?”

“Don’t you people know anything?” She reached over and touched me lightly on my arm.

“Ouch!” It felt like a hard pinch.

“Ummm.” She smacked her lips. “Your telekinesis tastes like chocolate.”

“You took my magic?”

“Not much of it. Just a little. Here, take some of mine.” She held out her arm.

I shook my head. If I didn’t watch myself, I could pick up a person’s entire history just by touching them. I’d learned how to keep that from happening, but I knew that if I touched Morgan for the purpose of taking something from her psyche or her memories, I’d probably get a lot more than I’d bargained for. Morgan was a liar and a cheat, and she’d called down the Darkness in order to hurt someone who had done her no harm. I didn’t want those things to become a part of me, even for a second.

“Go ahead,” She said.

“No.”

“All right, then. I’ll give you some.”

“Hey, I don’t want—” With a touch of her index finger, she sent a shot of something that felt like an electric hum through my arm and down my spine.

“What was that?” I shouted, angry.

She grinned. “My magic. What does it taste like?”

“It doesn’t taste like anything,” I said testily. “Don’t do that again.”

Actually, it tasted like pears, and while I still had that taste in my mouth, Morgan said, “We could go to South America.”

“What?”

“I’ve given you some of my magic. You can Travel, the way I do. Understand? You can go anywhere you want. The two of us could tear up Rio de Janeiro. Or São Paulo. Both are very nice this time of year.” She held out her hand to me, wiggling her fingers in invitation. “Come on. Let’s go.”