Yesterday's Magic (11 page)

No longer sleepy, Heather sat up in bed, wrapped herself in her soft blanket, and thought. This danger the voice warned of—that might be it. Heather didn’t feel that her own magic was very strong, but if it really was so different, then letting Morgan gain any of it would be dangerous—to the world. Earlier, Morgan had talked about using power to rebuild the world. But any future world Morgan could envision would not be one Heather wanted to share.

Still, Heather didn’t see how her magic could easily add to Morgan’s. After all, she hardly understood it herself. How could she teach it to Morgan—even if the sorceress tried to force her to?

When dawn was just paling the sky, Heather slipped again into sleep. She didn’t wake until Morgan’s sharp voice sliced through to her. “Up! Nearly time for our audience, lazy child! There’s a suitable wardrobe in that closet. Choose quickly.”

Sleepily Heather climbed out of bed and walked to the closet. On a long bar hung a dozen colorful dresses, each more wonderfully embroidered than the last. Her hand lingered on an emerald-green one, but Morgan pulled out another and thrust it at her.

“Here. Red is more appropriate for you today. Dress, and we’ll do something with your ridiculous hair.”

The dress was beautiful, brilliant red embroidered with squiggly patterns of black and gold. It almost hurt her eyes to look at them, but
wearing
the dress, she wouldn’t have to. Heather slipped it on, enjoying the amazing light feel of the material. She noticed that Morgan too was wearing a new dress, black embroidered with red and set with hundreds of small mirrors. In it, the sorceress looked, as always, shapely and elegant. Heather sighed. Despite her own dress and the fancy hairdo Morgan suddenly conjured for her, Heather knew that beauty and elegance were not meant to be hers.

“Those gold sandals,” Morgan said, pointing, “are much more suitable than your old scuffed boots. Put them on.”

At that, Heather balked. “This place may be elegant, but it’s cold. I’ll keep the boots on, thanks.”

The woman shrugged, fastening her own jeweled sandals. “It hardly matters now.”

They were no sooner ready than the stooped old man from the night before was at the door. “Follow. The great Kali, the Duel Goddess, the Destroyer, the Great Mother, the Giver and Taker of Life, awaits.”

The attendant scurried ahead, and Morgan confidently followed. Heather wondered if there was any way
not
to follow. She liked the sound of this Kali person less every minute. But Heather was sure that blindly dashing down some other corridor would only lead to one of those fanged guards forcing her back.

Heather soon lost track of their turnings and the stairs they climbed up or down. But the farther they went, the more she was aware of a sound, a throbbing drumbeat vibrating through her feet and into her ears like the heartbeat of a mountain.

At last they passed through an arch onto a balcony where a broad stairway led down to a huge high-vaulted room. The drumming came from there. Beyond shadowy pillars, Heather could just make out the drummers and twisting, gyrating dancers. That was the only movement in the vast space. Then abruptly the drumming stopped. The figures melted into the shadows, and Heather uneasily followed Morgan down the stairs. The old man did not come with them.

The room was very large and very empty-feeling. At first she thought the floor was covered in mist, but when she stepped into it, Heather realized it was ash, a sea of gray ash. At times it was nearly knee-deep. As they waded through, Heather noticed gray sticks and lumps sticking up through the ash. Bones! She tried not to touch any but winced whenever she felt something brittle crunch under her ash-enshrouded boots.

In the middle of the room, broad stairs rose out of the ash, and gratefully Heather climbed them. They led to a dais curtained off with billowy black drapes. Suddenly the drapes curled aside like writhing flames, and Heather saw Kali.

Sitting on a bone-encrusted throne was a gigantic woman, maybe twenty feet tall. She was black. Not human black, but the black of deepest midnight. And she was nearly naked. Shapely in a way that would have made flat-chested Heather envious had she not been so horrified by the rest of her.

Kali had four emaciated arms, adorned with bone-white bangles. Her long necklace seemed to be a string of human heads, their necks still bleeding over her bare black body. Around her waist, a coiling snake held up her short skirt, a skirt of severed human hands. Under a wild crown of disheveled black hair, Kali’s face was beautiful and horrible. Her lips and flicking tongue were blood-red. She stared coolly at Morgan and Heather with all three of her eyes.

Stopping at a broad landing near the top of the dais, Morgan bowed. “Great Kali, Revered Goddess of Death, Great Mother, Destroyer and Giver of Life, I, Morgan Le Fay, greet you once more.”

Kali continued to stare at them. Heather shivered under the glance of the third eye set in the middle of the woman’s forehead. Then the goddess spoke in a voice like cascading ice, sharp and cold.

“Greetings, Morgan. You have done well since last we met. So much death and destruction passes in your wake. It pleases me. But who is this beside you?”

“A minor magic worker, but young and imbued with new power. I mean her to share in my life.”

“Ah. Yes, it would be time. Your deeds continue to earn my aid.” Abruptly she stood up, spewing new blood from the skirt of severed hands. She gestured to gargoyle-like figures crouched on either side of her throne, figures Heather had taken to be more carvings. “Bind her!”

Instantly the creatures sprang at Heather. Before she could flinch aside, her hands and feet were bound with stout black ropes. She screamed in protest, but Kali only laughed, a deep rocky laugh. She gestured again and two more grotesque figures stepped from behind the throne, each carrying a white bowl. One, filled with bubbling red liquid, was handed to the goddess. The other, an empty one, was placed on the flagstone in front of Heather. She stared down at it and realized it was a bowl made from the top of a human skull.

With one hand Kali made a complicated gesture, spreading and curling fingers. With another she reached beside her throne and grabbed a long curved sword, its blade already dripping blood. With her remaining two hands, she raised the bowl to her lips and drained it.

Crying wildly, the goddess flung the empty bowl into the surrounding sea of ash. Then she leaped over the heads of the watchers, spraying them with blood from her skirt and necklace. Landing on the ash-shrouded temple floor, she began to dance. Again drumbeats echoed in the hall. Great ashy clouds rose and swirled as the giant goddess danced wildly around the floor.

Terrified, Heather struggled with her bindings, but Morgan only smiled and shrugged. “Kali does enjoy herself. She’s the goddess of death, and life as well. But the moon is dark now, and anyway, these days the death aspect is definitely her favorite. She’s been getting so much more of that in the last few hundred years.”

“And you work for her!” Heather yelled accusingly.

“Oh, no. I am very much my own person. But we share common interests, and perhaps together we and others similarly inclined can nudge the world into becoming even more to our liking. Kali has indeed given me a little friendly help now and then.”

“I understand now. That’s what Earl meant when he said you had extended your life by having dealings with death.”

“Why, yes; how perceptive of him. But life and death are two parts of the same thing. One can’t have—or extend—life without death. And that is where you come in, my dear.”

“You didn’t want to learn my magic at all.”

“No, I want to
absorb
it. If I just feed off the death of some non-magical person, it doesn’t do me nearly as much good. But if you are half of what Merlin claimed, you should give me quite an edge.”

By now, Kali’s gyrating dance was drawing her closer and closer. The drums shook the hall like an angry heart. In horror, Heather watched as the goddess and her bleeding sword approached the bottom step. Heather’s eyes dropped to the empty skull bowl at her feet and then raised to Morgan’s greedily smiling face.

Morgan,
she thought with a blast of hate. The sorceress had deliberately deceived her, almost been nice to her. How had she fallen for it again? All that sisterly talk about new clothes, baths, and honey cakes. What a monster this woman was!

Heather closed her eyes and wished desperately for help. She knew there was none outside to call upon. She had only the magic within her, but that had proved of little use up to now.

Yet there would be no more
now
if she did not act.

S
ACRIFICE

A
s they soared southeast, Merlin could barely sense the dark trail that they had followed before. It was there, but only faintly, as if Morgan was either convinced he was dead or had other things in mind besides luring him. The thought made him both more hopeful and more worried. If she was concentrating on her plans for Heather and not him, the result might not be good.

What drew him on mostly now was Heather herself. He could sense her, feel the bracelet he’d given her still clutching her wrist. And the staff that she had given him seemed to yearn for the way they were heading.

And it wasn’t just a sense of direction that led him on. Along this trail flowed a growing sense of urgency. Tired as he was, he didn’t want them to stop and only did so when Blanche refused to go another flap farther without food and a nap. Then she’d swoop down on some scraggly un-suspecting herd, snatch a beast, and land to crunch it before curling up for a brief sleep.

Troll, after gobbling his rations, would immediately drop to sleep beside their magic-conjured fire. Merlin and Welly usually took longer to fall asleep—talking to ease their worry and impatience. During their first brief rest stop, Welly asked a question that had increasingly been bothering him.

“Earl, we’re clearly in a very distant, very foreign country. But I
talked
to people back there, or heard them talking to each other, and I understood them. I thought people in all these foreign countries spoke different languages.”

“They do, and the languages are probably even more different now that peoples are cut off. Your understanding them is no surprise—not to me, anyway, but I guess I never told you, what with all the business when we left Avalon.”

“Never told me what?”

“Remember when I asked the Lady to give Arthur the gift of languages so he didn’t have to struggle learning the way they speak in Britain now? That language had been changing for two thousand years, and he was always such a dunce at languages, I knew it would take him forever. Folk of Faerie, like Troll, naturally have the gift of languages, but we humans don’t. The Lady agreed and suggested she give you, Heather, and me the gift as well. I said fine but that I doubted we would need it. She just looked at me and said that we never could be sure.”

Merlin sighed and rolled over with his back to the fire. “The Eldritch have an uncanny way of sensing the future. I wish it was a trait that I’d inherited. Now sleep. As soon as the dragon’s finished digesting, we’re off again.”

As their journey continued, Merlin’s sense of urgency grew, and their rest breaks shortened. Blanche insisted on meals, but at his urging she would just swoop down, snatch some fleeing animal, and munch it in the air.

At times, the land was too barren to see anything for her to snack on. On several of the mountains they flew over, glaciers had advanced far down the slopes, driving away any people or animals who might have survived there. Over one bleak icy stretch, when Welly was wishing he had an even heavier jacket, he heard Merlin mutter, “Faster. We’ve got to go faster.”

At that, Blanche snaked her head back to them. “Be my guest, hawk boy. Sprout wings and carry the others.” She snorted smoke and set them all coughing. “Just give the word that my honor debt is paid, and you’ll see me fly plenty fast—out of your lives.”

“Sorry,” Merlin managed to say between coughs.

“You should be. Where was the other place that batty Baba person said used to have dragons? I’ve half a mind to cut off there anyway and check it out. Maybe there are some good-looking male dragons still hanging around.”

Welly squeaked in alarm, but Merlin held up a hand to quiet him and spoke to the dragon. “If you did that, you’d break the dragon code of honor, and no self-respecting male dragon would have you. Besides, you wouldn’t want to miss the end of this adventure, would you? All the dragons in the old days had sagas or adventure tales revolving around them. When you get back to Faerie, you ought to have something to tell about your extra two thousand years in this world.”

She snorted, drifting more smoke their way. “Don’t try to outsmart me, boy. As it happens, curiosity is another dragon trait. And I really would like to know how this story comes out. But don’t press me. I can always make up the ending if I have to.”

After a time, they left snow and glaciers behind. The mountains ahead were lower. In patches, meager forests covered the bare rocky soil, and small villages showed some human or mutie life. Merlin felt they were close now, and he cautioned the dragon to fly lower.

Hours earlier, the sun had set behind them. The night sky was unusually clear. Tarnished starlight gave everything a ghostly cast. More mountains appeared ahead of them. When Blanche complained it was time to rest, Merlin urged her to go on just a little farther.

“See that mountain that stands by itself, the one with the flattish top?”

“Yep, and it’s a lot of wingflaps away, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I have, but you’re a strong young dragon. I know you can do it. Heather, I sense, is somewhere just beyond that.”

Grumbling steadily, Blanche continued winging toward the mountain. As dawn just grazed the east, they began their circling descent to its summit. They landed on a rough plateau surrounded by jagged pinnacles. Snow crouched in patches among the rocks, and the air, once they climbed stiffly from the dragon’s back, was thin and bitterly cold.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a lot of breakfast just waiting around for me,” Blanche growled. Impatiently Merlin answered, “Look around for rock rats or whatever, but don’t stray far. I need to get an idea of where Heather is and then act quickly. I sense there isn’t much time.”

“Time for what?” Welly asked as he followed Merlin toward the far edge of the plateau.

“I don’t know! But there is something truly evil brewing, and Heather’s in the midst of it. We ought to be able to see down into the valley once we get to those boulders at the edge of the plateau.”

As they neared the boulders, shadows detached themselves and stood before them. People, wearing robes, holding swords. Merlin and Welly drew their own swords, and Troll pulled out his long dagger.

“Who or what goes there?” a voice called from the edge of the boulders.

Merlin ignited his staff with light. “I ask you the same.” Behind them, the three could feel Blanche taking a few protective steps forward.

Gasps and mutters were heard from the crowd in front of them. “Surely these are gods or spirits,” one said. “This may be Vishnu coming to curtail Kali.”

“Or Shiva,” said another.

“Or Rama, the hero.”

Another chimed in, “No, this must be Surya, god of the sun. See his light and the celestial bird he rides.”

A woman stepped up. “Well, surely the one behind is Hanuman, the monkey god.”

Troll jumped forward indignantly, waving his dagger. “Me not monkey! Me Troll, brave warrior!”

Behind him, Blanche spat a glob of flame that landed just in front of the foremost speaker. “And I am no bird!”

Merlin raised a hand as the group cowered back. Quietly he spoke to his companions. “Let’s not start a fight here. I don’t sense anything dark about these people—except fear.”

Then he stepped forward and spoke to the dozen or so people who the spreading dawn now showed them. “We are not gods or spirits. We are foreign travelers seeking a companion of ours who has been stolen away and, we believe, taken here.”

“I know who they are,” said a small voice. A little girl in a ragged dress pushed her way through the crowd.

“Patma?” one man said. “Go back to bed.”

A silver-haired woman grabbed the girl’s hand. “No, listen to her. She Sees things sometimes—and Hears them. What do you know of them, Patma? Are they demon servants of Kali?”

The girl shook her head, swinging her dark braids back and forth. “No, Aunt Gutra, they have nothing to do with Kali. There is a girl who a witch-woman brought for Kali. These people here have come to rescue her. But they must hurry. It will happen soon.”

“What will happen?” Welly blurted.

“The sacrifice,” the girl answered as she rushed forward and grabbed Merlin’s hand. The wizard suddenly looked even paler than before. “Come, I can take you near there.”

One man stepped to bar their way. “These are strangers. Is it wise to show them our secret ways?”

The silver-haired woman slapped the man on the arm. “You old skeptic. Clearly these are beings of power. If Patma trusts them, they are to be trusted.” Then she turned to Merlin. “Excuse us, but we live here in the shadow of Kali’s temple and are ruled by fear. We serve her and her followers because we must, but we are not hers—not when she is in her dark moods. Since it is often our children whom she takes, how could we be? Follow Patma.”

The little girl quickly led them to the boulders and through a low doorway concealed between two of them. Endless-seeming stairs led down, lit by narrow gashes in the rock wall. Here and there, passages branched off, but Patma ignored these. Then she darted into one that led straight for a while and then dropped again. Soon they were passing through a series of small caves with their openings overlooking the sprawling ruins below. The cave walls were adorned with carvings and colorful paintings, but the travelers saw these only as intricate blurs as they hurried by. Then came more down-spiraling stairs, more, larger caves. Finally they stopped at a door concealed behind a seated figure of a fat person with a long nose, tusks, and flapping ears.

“Ganesh,” Patma said as she patted the statue’s carved stone toe. “May he bring us luck.”

Behind that door, the passage became low and narrow. There was no natural light, but as Merlin started to light up his staff, Patma whispered, “No light. We will be in the temple precincts soon. There are demon guards about.”

After long minutes shuffling forward in the dark, the ceiling dropped lower. They were forced to crawl. Welly hated tight places, and only the thought of Heather in danger kept him from totally losing control. For Troll, dark underground places reminded him of home. Merlin’s thoughts were focused on Heather. He could feel nothing but her fear.

At last the passage ended between the feet of another statue. Patma poked her head out first, then darted out, motioning the others to follow. As Welly did, he glanced up and saw that this statue had many arms, tusks, horns, and a fierce scowl. He was glad it was only a statue.

For some time, they had been feeling a pulsing in the stone floor, growing louder as they advanced. Now in the narrow hallway down which Patma led them, they could hear that it was drumming. It grew louder and more insistent with their every step. Abruptly the hallway ended in a balcony. With columns and carved stone balustrades, it overlooked a great open hall. Tiers upon tiers of balconies circled the hall, but all except theirs were empty.

Crouching behind the balustrade, they peered through the stone grillwork. Far below, the vast floor seemed covered in gray mist or powder. Rising out of it were stone stairs leading to a throne. It was empty now, but below it, Merlin saw Heather standing in a long red dress, her hands and feet bound. Beside her stood another familiar figure. He quivered with anger. Morgan Le Fay.

Both Heather and Morgan were standing still, watching another figure, a gigantic grotesque woman dancing wildly over the gray swirling floor. She was black as deepest night and all four of her thin arms waved madly, one brandishing a sword that steadily sprayed what looked like blood.

The drumbeats grew more frenzied. The dancer drew steadily closer to the dais—and to Heather. Sword now held upward, step by menacing step, the dancer advanced.

Heather closed her eyes, shutting out the advancing figure of Kali. She must do something
now.

Animal magic, that was all she felt sure of, but there were no animals near to help her. Transformation. Earl had warned of its dangers, but nothing could be worse than the danger closing on her now. She felt the heavy comforting weight of Earl’s bracelet on her wrist.

Furiously she concentrated, and the first animal that came to mind was the rat. Pale gray fur, long whiskered snout, bare whip of a tail, and tiny feet—pink, clawed, and made for scurrying. She knew that rat, every fiber of it. She would be that rat—she
was
that rat.

Shrinking and fading, convulsing inside. Bonds fell uselessly away from her small form. Scrambling over them, Heather the rat pelted down the stairs between Kali’s pounding legs. She dove into the sea of ash. Herself gray as ash, she scampered across the floor, leaving a long powdery plume in her wake.

She heard thumping footsteps as Kali chased after her. Gray camouflage was of little use if she couldn’t see where she was going. Desperately she scrabbled above its choking pall. Crouching on an empty skull, she stared around. Everything looked so large and far away to her rat eyes. Where was a wall, where escape?

Heather squealed as claws bit into her shoulders and lifted her into the air.