The Third Magic (43 page)

THE THIRD MAGIC

T
aliesin stood silently at
the altar stone. They were all gone now, the knights, Hal, even Arthur, for whom he had tried to recreate the whole world. Even the great sword was gone.

Behind him, Titus's body lay crumpled on the grass. No one had come to take it. No other shots had been fired. The weapon that had been used to kill Arthur lay next to the dead man. Such a strange, small thing, the old man thought, yet deadlier than the greatest sword ever made.

Excalibur's time, like Arthur's, had passed.

Nearby lay the dead white wolf. Gwen lifted it off the ground and brought it back to the altar stone.

"Begin," she said, raising her arms in the ancient pose of a priestess.

The Merlin did not question her, or her authority, or her meaning.

He began to walk, widdershins, the wide circle around the Tor, and did not stop until the sun had arced completely across the sky, and the moon rose and faded, and the next day dawned.

When he had completed the spell, the wolf was still lying on the altar stone.

The old man's heart felt like a lump of lead. "Innocent," he whispered. The animal's fur was cold. He stroked it with trembling hands. "I'm sorry," he rasped. "The magic failed." He lay his head on the wolf's still body and sobbed.

"There, there," someone said. A wet tongue licked his face.

He bolted upright. Another wolf panted close to him, its aromatic breath moistening Taliesin's skin. "Earth suit," the wolf said, showing off its pelt. "Easily replaced."

The wolf had blue eyes, and sight to see through them.

Gasping, Taliesin scanned the clearing. "Where is she?" he demanded.

Gwen was gone. So was the man in the meadow, and his spidery gun.

 

 

1996

Chicago, Illinois

"G
wen!"

The girl looked up from her drawing. It showed a fair-haired woman standing over a flat rock on which lay the body of a wolf. In her hands was an obsidian knife.

Her mother bustled into the room. "I'm going now. Make sure you... What kind of scene is that?" She turned the sketch pad. "It looks like some kind of animal sacrifice."

"Oh?" Gwen squinted at it, frowning, for a moment. Then, with a few strokes of the charcoal in her hand, she altered the drawing so that the wolf was one of several, panting eagerly at the feet of the woman.

Ginger Ranier laughed. "I swear, you must be the best artist in the fourth grade," she said. Then, picking up another piece of charcoal, she turned the priestess's knife into a rubber chicken. They both grinned.

"And speaking of artists, your mother the painter is off to school!" She turned around in a circle. "Do I look all right?"

She was wearing a lavender poncho over pants. In her hair was a big pink silk hyacinth.

"You're beautiful, Mom," Gwen said.

"Oh, I'm so nervous! Can you imagine, someone my age getting a scholarship to Cooper Union!"

Gwen kissed her cheek. "You'll do fine. School isn't that hard."

"Well, make sure you don't give Hal and Emily a hard time while I'm gone. Or old Mr. Woczniak, either." The Woczniaks lived in the other half of their duplex. So did Hal's father, Lance, who was senile but still fun.

Ginger collected Gwen's sketch pad and a sweater. "Oh, they said to keep an eye out for Merlin. He's missing again."

"No, he's not." The girl scooped a rangy gray cat into her arms. "He's been with me. He likes to sleep on my feet." Gwen kissed the cat's head. White tufts of fur stuck out over its eyes and beneath its chin, so that he looked like a wise old man with a long beard.

"Well, bring the ugly old thing along," Ginger said, "before Hal has the whole precinct looking for it." She helped Gwen on with her parka before venturing outside.

Next door, old Mr. Woczniak was sitting on a folding chair on the front stoop, even though it was January. He liked to catch some rays every day, he'd explained.

"Catching some rays, Lance?" Gwen asked, as she always did.

"Get inside!" her mother said. "And don't call Mr. Woczniak by his first name. It isn't respectful."

Mr. Woczniak waved dismissively. "See?" Gwen said. "It's okay. And we'll go inside in a minute."

Ginger rolled her eyes. Her daughter was going to be a handful. "Okay, but try not to freeze." She waved goodbye.

"My mom's a pain," Gwen said. "But she's all right."

Lance Woczniak smiled. "You've got the cat," he said, delighted. "Did he try to turn you into a toad?"

"Nope."

"He'll do it if you give him a chance," he said. "Your kitty was a wicked sorcerer once, a long time ago...."

The cat yowled in protest and streaked away.

"I don't think he likes it when you tell that story," Gwen said. She herself had heard the story many times. It had been Mr. Woczniak, in fact, who had given Merlin his name.

"He's a cranky old critter," he said.

 

 

Munich, Germany

A
s soon as he
turned the key to his apartment, Titus Wolfe knew that someone was inside.

He also knew who it was.

"No precautions?" Lucius Darling asked from his position on the living room sofa. "Not even a gun?"

"Would it do any good?" Titus asked.

Darling laughed. "Surely you don't believe the stories about Cronos," he said.

Titus did not answer. He did believe the stories. Nearly everyone in the Coffeehouse Gang was dead, and those who remained alive had no illusions about their safety.

Cronos was coming. It was just a matter of time.

"Why are you here?" Titus asked.

Darling's face was somber, his eyes filled with regret. "I think you know," he said softly, taking out something that looked like a large Swiss army knife—lightweight, leggy, a metal spider that opened into a handgun in less than one second.

Titus said nothing. It would do him no good to plead for his life, he knew. Not with Cronos.

It was just a matter of time, and his time had come.

 

 

Chicago, Illinois

T
he alarm at the
Riverside National Bank was ringing. Ten-year-old Arthur Blessing had seen two men running down the sidewalk a minute earlier, and wondered idly if they were bank robbers.

His hands were cold. It had snowed while he was in school, so he had stopped in the park to enjoy it before people walked all over everything. Usually Gwen came with him on these excursions, but she'd had to get home early so that her mom could leave for art school. Besides, she'd be staying at his house anyway, so big deal.

He checked in his jacket pocket to make sure the bird's nest was still there. It was old, probably left over from last spring. The wind must have knocked it out of the trees.

It was small, maybe a wren's nest, made of fine hairlike filaments, and almost perfectly round on the bottom. It was hard to believe that birds could make something so complicated.

Gwen would like it.

She had kissed him once. He hadn't told anyone.

His sneaker, which was stiff and freezing, banged against the curb. The impact made the bird's nest fly out of his hands into the gutter.

"Damn it!" he shouted. The neighbors would probably tell Hal they heard him swearing, but he didn't care. Angry, he stooped to pick it up. Luckily it was cold enough so that the gutter wasn't filled with gunk the way it usually was. He blew at it carefully, in case there was dirt on it.

And then he saw, lying beside where the bird's nest had been, another treasure. It was a cup, he guessed, although it had no handles. In a way, it looked like the little cups in the Japanese tea set that Emily kept in the dining room and never used.

He picked it up. No, the Japanese cups were a lot prettier than this. It was made of some greenish metal, and was so banged and dented, it looked like it was a hundred years old. Still, it was interesting, in a way.

He held the cup and the bird's nest side by side, comparing them. Maybe Gwen would rather have the metal thing. It would be more useful.

And it was warm. That was the strange thing. It was so warm in his hands that it nearly vibrated.

Actually, now that he thought about it, it felt wonderful. As if everything in life were going his way, and everyone in the world were on his side. He felt... well, like a King. This cup—

"I beg your pardon, sir." A distinguished old man tipped his hat to him. It was one of those brimmed felt things that people in old movies wore when they went mountain climbing. It had a little feather on the side.

"Me?" Arthur said.

"I seem to have lost something around here," the old man said. "A cup. Actually, it's more like a bowl... I say, I believe that's it!" He pointed to the cup in Arthur's hand. "Er ... that is, would you mind?"

Arthur kicked at a stone. He had liked the cup. Sulking, he handed it over.

"Oh, jolly good!" the old man said. "Here, I'll make you a trade." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Inside it was a small resin replica of a wolf.

"A white dog," Arthur said, examining it from all angles. "What are its eyes made of?"

"Moonstones," the old man said.

"They make him look blind," the boy noticed.

"Her. She's a female. Is it a fair trade?"

Arthur held the bird's nest in one hand and lay the white wolf inside it. Gwen would love it, he knew. She liked animals. And the blank eyes were very cool.

"It's a deal," Arthur said, holding out his hand. The old man shook it.

"Very good," he said. Then he touched two fingers to the brim of his funny-looking hat, and walked briskly down the street. In another minute he was gone.

Arthur examined the dog statue again before putting it back in his pocket. All in all, he decided, this was turning out to be one of the best days of his life.

 

 

The Present

Cristobal, Brazil

I
n the southeastern quadrant
of the Amazon rain forest, in a ravine fed by a tributary of the Tapajos River, lay an infant. She was nine months old, and left in the ravine to starve. Her tribe, an offshoot of the Waura, had been decimated by leprosy, and the young mother had fled to the city, where she would not be faced with living her life alone in the jungle.

Later, the baby would come to question why her mother had left her. She would long for her and wait for her return. And after that, years in the future, she herself would leave the rain forest and venture to a place she would not even hear of until she was more than twenty years old: America.

Through a series of coincidences she would arrive in New York City, where she would learn European magic from a kindly old white-haired man named Alder Taliesin. In return, she would teach him all she knew about the healing herbs of the rain forest.

But for now, she only wriggled among the leaves and the black earth of the jungle floor. Around her, in a circle, stood monkeys and capabaras and tapirs. In the trees was a panther, ferocious and watchful; and in the river, a cayman. These were her guardians. These were the family who would protect her, who knew instinctively that a special being had come among them.

In the baby's hands was a cup. It was a small, misshapen metal thing that had traveled from the coast of England in the belly of one fish and then another, and on board a boat filled with dead tuna, and in a bucket as chum for shark, and flying high in the beak of a crow. And then for a time the cup had been dragged in a net behind a freighter on the vast Amazon River, and then carried as a drinking vessel on a banana boat traveling up and down the
igarapes
of Brazil's deep interior regions. From there it had been eaten by a cayman that died on dry land.

After the cayman's body decomposed, a howler monkey carried it to its goddess: a tiny girl with black hair that poked out in all directions and shiny, beadlike eyes that saw everything.

Cailleach!
the monkey shrieked. But of course the baby girl could not understand what it was saying.

She had no name, and her life was just beginning.

 

THE END

 

Thank you for purchasing THE THIRD MAGIC! Keep reading for an excerpt from THE FOREVER KING.

The Forever King Trilogy

 

The Forever King

(with Warren Murphy)

 

The Broken Sword

(with Warren Murphy)

 

The Third Magic

 

Other Titles:

 

Grandmaster

(with Warren Murphy)

 

The Temple Dogs

(with Warren Murphy)

H
e was there again
.

The bright orange blaze was scorching, suffocating in the July afternoon heat. Through the din of cracking timbers and the air-sucking whoosh of the impossibly high and angry gasoline flames the frantic voices of the firefighters sounded muffled and small.

Hal Woczniak swallowed. His hands rose and fell in a jerky motion. The features of his face were contorted, still wearing the expression of shock that had followed the explosion. Nearby, sweating and helpless, stood a small army of useless men—six members of the FBI, a fully armed SWAT team, the local police. A heavyset, balding man unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth.

"Forget it, Hal," he told Woczniak.

The house blurred and wavered in the heat. Two firemen dragged a body—what was left of it—out of the doorway.

"Leave him!" Woczniak shouted.

The heavyset man raised a hand to Woczniak's chest, a gesture of restraint.

"Chief, there's a kid inside!" Woczniak protested.

"They know that," the Chief said placatingly. "But they just got here. They've got to move that body. Give them a chance."

"What kind of chance does the kid get?" Woczniak growled. He shoved the Chief's hand away and ran for the house. Into the thick of the smoke pouring from the building, his lungs stinging from the black air, his legs pumped wildly.

"Woczniak! Hal!" the Chief shouted. "Somebody stop him, for God's sake!"

Two firefighters flung themselves at him, but Woczniak leaped over them effortlessly and hurtled himself into the inferno.

It was pitch black inside except for high licks of orange flame that shed no light in the dense smoke. Coughing, Woczniak tore off his shirt and pulled it over his head as he crawled spider-like up the fragile, superheated wooden stairs. A timber broke with a deafening crack and fell toward him. He slammed against the far wall at the top of the stairs. In the blind darkness, a shard of glass from a broken mirror cut deep into his cheek. Woczniak felt only a dull pain as he pulled it from his flesh.

"Jeff!"

Stooped and groping, he found a door. He pulled it open.

The boy will be there, tied to the chair. The boy will be there, and this time I'll get to him. This time Jeff will open his blue eyes and smile, and I'll muss his carrot hair, and the kid will go home to his folks. This one will escape. This time.

But it was not the boy with the carrot-red hair tied to the chair. In his place was a monster, a fire-breathing dragon straight out of a fairy tale, with eyes like blood and scales that scraped as it writhed. It opened its mouth, and with its foul breath came the words:

"You're the best, kid. You're the best there is."

And then the creature, the terrible beast Hal Woczniak had somehow known all along would meet him in this room, cackled with a sound like breaking glass.

Screaming, Woczniak ran up to it and clasped the saurian around its slimy neck. It smiled at him with triumphant malice.

Then, fading as if it had been fashioned of clouds, it vanished and the reality of his life returned. In the monster's place was the red-haired boy, tied to the chair . . . dead as he had been all along, dead as he always was in these dreams.

Woczniak was still screaming. He couldn't stop.

He woke up screaming.

"H
oney. Hey, mister."

Hal gasped for breath. His sweat was slick and cold.

"You musta had a bad dream."

It was a woman's voice. He looked over at her. It took him a moment to orient himself to his surroundings. He was in bed, in a dingy room he reluctantly recognized as his own. The woman was beside him. They were both naked.

"Do I know you?" he asked groggily, rubbing his hands over his face.

She smiled. She was almost pretty.

"Sure, baby. Since last night, anyway." She snuggled against him and flung her arm over his chest.

He pushed her away. "Go on, get out of here."

"Watza matter?"

She's not even angry
, Hal thought.
She's used to it
. He pulled the filthy covers off them both, then saw the bruises on the woman's body. "Did I do that?"

She looked down at herself, arms spread in self-examination. "Oh. No, hon. You was real nice. Kind of drunk, though." She smiled at him. "I guess you want me to go, huh?"

She didn't wait for an answer as she wriggled into a cheap yellow dress.

"What . . . ah . . . What do I owe you?" Hal asked, wondering if he had any money. He remembered borrowing twenty from Zellie Moscowitz, who had just fenced some diamonds for a second-story man in Queens. That had been yesterday. Or the day before. He pressed his fingers into his eyes. Hell, it might have been last week, for all he knew. "What day is this?"

"Thursday," the woman said. She wasn't smiling anymore. Her shoulders sagged above the low-cut bodice of her dress. "And I ain't no hooker."

"Sorry."

"Yeah." She zipped up her dress. "But now you mention it, I could use cab fare."

"Sure." Hal swung his legs woodenly over the side of the bed and lurched toward a pair of pants draped over a chair. They reeked of stale booze and cigarette smoke, with a strong possibility of urine.

There were four one-dollar bills in his wallet. He handed them to her. "It's all I've got."

"That's okay," she said. "My name's Rhonda. I live over in Jersey. In Union City."

"Nice to meet you," Hal said.

"What's yours?"

As he replaced his wallet, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the broken triangle of a mirror above the sink. A pair of watery, bloodshot eyes stared stupidly at him above bloated cheeks covered with graying stubble.

"I said, who are you?"

Hal stood motionless, transfixed by the sight. "Nobody," he said softly. "Nobody at all."

He didn't hear the woman let herself out.

Y
ou're the best, kid. The best there is.

That was what the chief had said when Hal turned in his resignation to the FBI.
The
best there is.

He turned on the tap in the sink. A thin stream of cold water trickled out, disturbing two roaches that had apparently spent the night in a Twinkie wrapper stuffed into a brown-speckled styrofoam coffee container.

Hal splashed water on his face. Hands still dripping, he touched the scar on his cheek where the piece of glass had cut him during the fire.

That was the problem: Too much of the dream was real. If it were all dragons vaporizing on contact, he could handle it better. But most of it was exactly as things had really been. The fire, the boy, the laughter . . . that crazy bastard's laughter . . .

—Look, Woczniak, nobody else could have saved the kid, either. You went into the burning building, for chrissake. Even the fire department couldn't get into a gasoline fire. SWAT couldn't go in. You've just spent five months in the hospital for that stunt. What'd you expect, magic?

—Maybe.

—Well, welcome to the real world. It's got psychos in it. Some of them kill kids. That's not the way we want it, it's just the way it is. I'm telling you, you did a good job. You're going to get a citation as soon as you're out of here.

—A citation.

—That's right. And you deserve it.

—The kid's dead, Chief.

—So's the psycho. After four months, you were the one who found him. You were the one who figured out why he went after the kids.

—I was the one who let him kill the last one.

—Nobody expected him to blow himself up.

—I could have stopped it.

—How?

—I could have shot him and covered the grenade.

—With what? Your body? Jesus Christ. How long you been with the Bureau, Hal? Fifteen years?

—Sixteen.

—That's a long time. Don't throw it away just because you got too close to one kid's family. Believe me, I know what it's like. You see pictures, home movies, you have dinner with the parents 'cause you've got nothing else to do at night …

—I'm out, Chief.

—Listen to me. You find a girl, maybe you get married. Things are different with a wife.

—I said I'm out.

H
al Woczniak left the hospital
five and a half months after the fire that had killed Jeff Brown and his abductor. He left with no future and a past he wanted only to forget.

Funny, he thought as he walked down the glistening hospital sidewalk toward the bus stop. He had just spent half a year in the same hospital where the killer had found Jeff.

His name was Louie Rubel, Hal remembered. He had worked as an orderly in the Trauma and Burn Unit from which Hal had just been released. Using the Visitors' Registration records, Rubel would pick out boys of the right age among the visitors and then stalk them on their home turf. Before he got to Jeff Brown, he had already killed and mutilated four other red-headed ten-year-olds. Each murder had reenacted the first killing, that of his better-favored younger brother.

Woczniak led the FBI team that cracked the case just as Rubel was about to murder the Brown kid. It had looked like a perfect collar, with evidence in place, the boy alive, and a confession. No one had counted on the killer's own sense of drama.

As the authorities approached the house, Louie Rubel announced that he had sprayed the place with gasoline. Hal ordered everyone on scene to freeze. When they did, Rubel took a grenade out of his vest pocket and pulled out the pin with his teeth.

The next few seconds were pandemonium, but Hal remembered only silence, a silence welling and gradually filling with Rubel's high, shrieking, monstrous laughter. He laughed until the grenade exploded. He blew himself to bits in full view of the police, the FBI, SWAT, and an ambulance crew.

A moment later the house went up like a torch, but Hal could still hear the laughter.

He had run into the fire, run to save the red-haired boy, kept running even after the shard of glass had ripped his cheek in two and the flames burned away the hair on his arms and chest and head, had run into the upstairs room where the boy was sitting, tied to a chair.
You're safe, Jeff, just a second here, let me get these ropes off you… Jeff…

And he carried Jeff Brown out the window and tried mouth-to-mouth on him right there on the roof while the SWAT boys nearly roasted themselves pulling a tarp over to the wall beneath them. But it was too late.

Hal came to in the hospital a week later. His first thought was the memory of the boy's lips, still warm.

You're the best, kid, welcome to the real world you'll get a citation for this what'd you expect?

Magic?

I
t had been almost
a year since the incident.

The face in the broken mirror above the sink, the loser's face, shook as if it were powered by an overheated engine. His eyes—a stranger's eyes—were glassy and staring. His teeth were bared.

He turned off the water. The roaches returned.

"Screw it," he said. It was time for a drink.

It was always time for a drink.