The Magician's Mistake (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

Guinevere forbidding me a seat at the high table I had always sat at. Guinevere laughing with her maids about the length of my hair and its dark wildness. Guinevere lying to my brother and telling him that I used my magic against him and
—

“Excellent, Morgan. More teeth gnashing and seizures. What is the matter with you? I have imagined destroying you so many times, but never, in all my daydreams, have you been so out of it. It’s a bit of a disappointment, really.”

I swayed where I stood, barely upright. “All right then, Queen Guinevere. If not Arthur, then you think I stole Lancelot? The man who never met a gazing pool he didn’t adore? I like my men a bit rougher.”

Guinevere scowled. “There is only one man who has ever been a match for either of us.”

I tried not to remember. I didn’t want to, but
—

The Grail in my hands, resting cold against my lips. The cup, overflowing with life and vitality. I longed to drink all of it, yet made myself stop. I handed him the Grail. White light danced all around us. Our fingers touched. “Together. My now and future, for always and ever. My Morgan,” he said.

I came back to myself, laying on the ground again. My knees hurt. My head spun. The world, my world, was broken. That man, he was the love of my life. He was my light, and yet I had no memories of him. I had always thought myself solitary. Alone. It wasn’t true. How had I forgotten him? How was that possible?

“Well, Morgan, this has been fun, seeing you broken and confused, but now the time has come to—”

“Leave her alone,” a voice boomed, and Kestrel stepped out from the darkness behind Guinevere. He stood haloed in bright magic.

Guinevere hissed. “You. Here. Of course you are.” Her voice dripped with hatred. She took a couple of steps to the side and turned, so that she could keep an eye on both of us.

“Took you awhile,” I muttered. I didn’t look at him as I picked myself up from the ground.

“Guinevere set up sticky binding spells all over the damn place,” Kestrel said coldly. “I’ll give you this, white enchantress, you’ve become better at magic through the ages. Though worse in every other way, I assume.”

She scowled and threw a glass ball full of swirling smoke at his face.

Kestrel batted it away with a quick gesture. It veered away from him and smashed into the wall twenty feet to his left. Gray smoke began eating through the wall.

Guinevere threw hateful glances at both of us. “So this is how it ends. Fitting, I suppose, that you would both be here together.”

“And why are you picking on Morgan, anyway, Guin? Your true beef is with me. I couldn’t love you. That’s not her fault. It’s mine and the fact that you are one of the nastier pieces of work this green earth has ever made.”

“No one speaks to me like that,” Guinevere snarled. Metallic magic gathered in her hands. “No one who lives to tell of it. Tell me, have the centuries been full of tender and true love between you? Tell me yes, so that your destruction might be all the more delicious.”

“Um,” I said and bit my lip. I glanced at Kestrel. The man I’d shared the Grail with. The man I’d utterly forgotten.

His eyes burned into mine. He mouthed something.

“What?” I said.

Guinevere’s head snapped toward me. “I said nothing.”

Hurry,
Kestrel mouthed. A moment later he held up his wooden staff, and blasted Guinevere with a gale wind spell. It hit her protection spell and bounced off wildly, moving left and hitting a small bagel stand before bouncing off of that and ripping apart a coffee bar.

I blinked and remembered his hands, holding me and
…
.

Focus. I closed my eyes and reached for my magic, for the wells of power I had spent lifetimes gathering. I drew up hate magic, a huge column of it, thick, choking, and red. I pulled out despair and depression, the twinned gray powers that sought to swallow the world. And anger. So much anger, white hot and burning. I braided it together, quickly, artlessly. No spell-making here, just pure magic. I opened my eyes.

Guinevere faced away from me, sneering at Kestrel as he threw a pink cloud of a spell at her. This one rebounded off her protection spell and floated up toward the ceiling.

I held my palms out in front of me, and let the raw magic flow out of me. It flowed instinctively straight into the amulet Guinevere held in her hand. For a moment the amulet glowed bright as the sun, as it took in the magic that flowed out of me like a raging river.

Before Guinevere had time to sever her open connection to the amulet, that same magic flowed straight into her.

She had used the other women’s life magic to make her young and powerful.

My magic? It would not so easily do her bidding.

It choked her as it flooded into her throat. It distended her belly and wound down her legs. Guinevere let out a low moan and sank to her knees. My foulest magic pulsed beneath her skin and her features blurred. One eye bulged out. Her left arm grew swollen and huge. She screamed. Guinevere fell onto her back and clawed at her own flesh.

And still the magic flowed out of me, into the amulet, and into her.

Kestrel walked closer to Guinevere, watching her thrash on the ground. “You have a lot of darkness in you, don’t you Morgan?” he said, glancing over at me.

He took off his coat and laid it on the ground near the fallen Queen of Camelot. He muttered something, I couldn’t hear what, and the coat fluttered and changed. It darkened and became a door, a passageway, into some other realm.

Wet, wrinkled, and gray hands reached blindly out of that door.

“Do the honors?” Kestrel asked me.

“Gladly.” I kicked Guinevere’s writhing form toward the hole. She was punching herself in the face and hardly seemed to notice her own exit as she fell out of this world and into another.

Kestrel muttered another word, and knelt down and picked up his coat. Just a coat now. The portal was closed.

“You think she’s gone for good?” I asked, looking at his coat. That he wore such a thing on his back? It meant he was arrogant, or had great power, or both.

“Cockroaches. Bed bugs. And Guinevere. She’ll be back. Though it may take a couple of centuries.”

“Kestrel,” I said. “My mind. I—” The memories reached for me, on all sides.

“You don’t have to call me that anymore, do you, lass?”

“Merlin,” I said. And fell as something broke open within me, a terrible wrenching apart of what had held me together. And I remembered.

Some of it, at least.

11

Remembered

I was named after my mother and born on Avalon, the island of apples and fairies, sunshine and rain. I was the eldest born of a large family who loved me. A humble and human beginning, and yes there was magic everywhere with witches, druids, and people of the knowing who used their power well. We had no ruler or monarch, no feudalism or knights to keep their violent order. What need had we of those vainglorious men with their foolish suits of metal? Every day was a long one, full of song, fish, and bread.

Memory flooded back to me, with vivid images embedded with meaning, each one crisp and whole. There was no loss of recollection: all of it lay there in my mind, whole and ready to be remembered. I could have stayed there, in my early days of Avalon, and wrapped myself in the memories of that long ago and long lost childhood.

But I didn’t.

One day my father came for me. His name was Uther Pendragon, and he was a cruel man. A tall and sharp king who forced all his children, all of his many bastards, to come to his castle and serve him.

Life under his thumb was a misery. And yet, we were children and so, like water, we learned to bend around the hard times and claim our lives as our joyous own. When we were not ordered to do our father’s bidding, the children of Uther roamed far in the fields and slept puppy-piled together where we fell. Arthur, the true-born son, ran with us, as wild and fast as the worst of us.

But then Arthur grew up. My sweet and swift brother turned manly: kingly and heavy with crowns and jewels. He wed Guinevere, a political marriage to a distant princess with fine blonde hair. He loved her. He worked to make her laugh, even though she had a way of looking at our world as though it was nothing. I remembered the two of them walking in the orchards, thick with the sweet scent of apple blossoms, as she complained of the mud. Lovely dresses were made for her, yet they were always the wrong color and fit. It didn’t matter, Arthur and every other male watched her and waited for a flick of her lovely eyes, a brief touch of her hand. Her beauty was a magic that bored me, but it was powerful, nonetheless.

Even the magician watched her. He was a quiet and tall boy who came to court to serve my brother. I hated him on first sight, for why did my brother need a magician when he already had a witch-sister who would have done anything for him, if only he had asked? This Merlin bristled with power and became my brother’s greatest confidante.

And what of all of Uther’s bastards? We had no role in Arthur’s court. Our King-brother set us free.

I returned to Avalon for a while, and I remembered my mother braiding my long black hair and asking why I spoke so much of this Merlin, perhaps it was because
…
?

No, Mother. He is vile. He is arrogant and
—

I could speak of him for hour upon hour, to whoever would listen. It was all unfair and unjust, everything that happened at Arthur’s castle, and the sourness of it bled into my love of Avalon and I couldn’t stay there, where life was much too sweet. I ran away, wild and unrooted. Unbound and unclear on what a girl such as I should be in the world. So I made trouble, of course.

Merlin and I battled each other, time and again, as he tried to help those bumbling knights of the round table with their grandiose missions, and I stood in their way. Sometimes for good reason: helping out the small people they sought to trample. Other times? Wickedness was its own fun.

And I could have stayed in those memories, each one like blood on my tongue. I could have explored the battles waged and lost, and the many clever spells made in the age when I was still so young and careless.

But my memories skipped forward restlessly.

Decades later, long after Arthur was dead, as was Lancelot, Mordred, Galahad, and a thousand other proud men. Guinevere had sunk her claws into Merlin by then, and I thought less of him for it. He and I still battled now and then, and we still set traps to ensnare and destroy the other, but with a more measured and practiced magic. He made me better at my craft: I had to outwit him to survive.

We met in battle, on a terrible day full of cold rain and lightning strikes. We fought on the muddy outer edges of Cader Idris for stupid reasons: Queen Guinevere wished her magician-consort to bring her the Plate of the Holy Restoration, a relic reputed to bring the righteous back from the grave. I didn’t want her to have it, for the simple reason of wanting to annoy her and Merlin.

Merlin and I had thrown every spell we had at each other all day long until we came to a flat draw, with neither able to best the other or win the plate from the sarcastic gorgons who called out constant cackling insults to us.

At sunset, I’d slunk away, aching and nursing a rage-headache. I found a small inn nearby and ordered a pint, a plate of lamb, and biscuits. Before my food came, he arrived.

I rose to meet Merlin, my hands shaking from cold and weariness.

“Sit, lass. I have no magic left to fight you, and need my rest. Tomorrow we can battle anew.” He rubbed his eyes.

We ate together, uneasily watching each other. We drank pints. And more pints.

We talked, and once we started, we couldn’t stop talking. For who else could know, truly know, about the intricate trickiness of binding a hawk to one’s will? Or how cleverness could so easily backfire during a hiding spell and make an illumination instead? He warmed me with his tales of battling me, and how many times I’d almost bested him. You are the better magician, he told me.

Witch, I said. And drank more ale. I told him of the times I’d had to go underground to escape his nastiest spells. Of all the times I’d almost given up, but who else would stand against the thuggish knights of the round table?

Heroes, he said.

The inn emptied. The candle stubs grew low. We stumbled upstairs and didn’t discuss what we were doing until we were half-naked and rolling around on a bed together.

“Morgan,” Merlin said, suddenly serious as he propped himself up on his elbows. “I’ve always wanted you. Since my first day at court. I have also, always been scared of you, because,” he held my gaze. “You are you and I am me.”

“Yes,” I said.

I said it again and again that night, as we learned to wage battle together in a new way.

12

Merlin

“Morgan?”

“What?” I muttered.

“Come back, lass.”

I didn’t want to.

“Come back,” he ordered.

“Why isn’t she awake? She wasn’t hurt in the fight, right? She’ll be okay, right? Why is her nose bleeding?” another voice asked.