Sword in the Stars

by Cori McCarthy

  Ari’s mind went black and then bright, as if someone had turned on a burning spotlight. “This armor… you picked it out for me?” She couldn’t help but remember her bizarre earthly landing in the midst of battle, the dead blue knight beside her, and then farther back, inside the portal, that indelible feeling of being pushed. “You separated us.”

  The Lady sighed. “Are you trying to blame me? Is that a thing you need? I haven’t been human in so long. It’s easy to forget.”

  “You tore me from Gwen!” Ari shouted.

  She smiled wickedly. “Like magnets, you two. No matter how tightly they fix together, it never becomes less amusing to pull them apart.”

  Merlin had been so wrong when he called her a bystander, a watcher.

  At best, she was chaotic neutral in a velvet suit.

  “I need to get back to my friends,” Ari said. The Lady smoothed back her perfectly red hair and sighed. “If you won’t let me leave, you show your true colors.”

  “Oh, you need me to be the villain. Villains are terribly commonplace, Ara Azar.”

  Ari knew this argument; she knew this type. “That body I saw, out in the center of the lake, that was King Arthur, wasn’t it? The famed secret of his last resting place is finally known.”

  “Hardly at rest.” Nin chuckled. “But then that’s why you’re here. To make a new deal.”

  “There’s no way I’m dealing with you.”

  “Oh.” She actually looked sorry for Ari. “Did you think we could skip this part? There isn’t anyone powerful enough to refuse my wishes. Well, perhaps there is one person, but he is his own best enemy. Which is endlessly amusing, I can tell you.”

  “You’re talking about Merlin.” Ari felt around for something to hold on to. She had to get some kind of upper hand. “Then he has the power to stop you. Stop the cycle.”

  “The cycle is his prison.” The humor vanished from her pristine face. “And if you wish to free him of it, you will take my deal. I will reunite King Arthur’s spirit with his body. And I will send you and your friends back to your future. The only cost I require is that when you die, your body will become mine, and your soul’s ventures will become my new amusement.”

  The fuck.

  “But I’ll be cursed, like Arthur.” Ari stared into the dark air of the cave. “You forget we nearly have the chalice, and we’ll get the magic we need to make our own portal.”

  “Something like this?” Nin held out a dagger bearing the Avalon crest, and Ari snatched it. “That will make your portal, and what’s more, how about a show of very good faith?”

  Nin touched one of the small pools, and an image swirled. Ari recognized the tower at Camelot where they’d battled that dragon, rebuilt by Old Merlin’s magic. The light outside the arrow slits showed night, while inside the tower was a somber scene. Gwen, in a gold dress, weeping into the bowl of her empty hands. Merlin pressing his face hard into Lam’s shoulder, who was looking down at a narrow bed bearing a very still, very dead Jordan.

  Her skin was the white color of something forgotten in the sun, her neck bloodily bandaged, her sword fallen to the floor. One hand paused over the side as if her last breath had come while she was reaching for it.

  Ari gasped so loudly it echoed.

  “An assassin’s arrow to the throat. She dies uncelebrated, without honor, and your friends lose hope, collapsing into the misery of one of the darkest versions of the Arthurian legend.”

  “This is happening right now?”

  “There is no now. No past. No future. Oh, you’re much thicker than young Percival.”

  “How in the world is this a show of good faith?” Ari asked, shaking with anger.

  The Lady swirled her finger in the dark image, peeling back time until Jordan’s last breath reversed, and her chest began to rise and fall. Simultaneously through the tower window, the night reversed into a purple twilight. Nin flicked her wet fingers at the air, opening a portal. “Now you have the ways and means to save your warrior. I’d call that very good faith, wouldn’t you?”

  A strange light glowed in the Lady of the Lake’s eyes. Was this what hope looked like on such an inhumanly beautiful face? Ari didn’t wait to know more. She lifted her foot, stepped into the portal and was instantly lost in the space between time.

  The day of Arthur’s birthday celebration was finally upon them, but instead of lining up neatly, everything was flying out of Merlin’s control. They weren’t poised to steal the chalice and get the hell out of Dodge. They were standing in a rough circle in the tower, watching Jordan die.

  Well, most of them were.

  Val was still in Nin’s cave—and Ari was flat-out missing. Arthur had returned from Avalon alone, announcing a new peace with the enchantresses but also keeping mum on exactly what had befallen Sir Lancelot.

  Gwen and Lam were arrayed in their finest for the party, which made Jordan’s stark white skin and bloodstained clothes look even worse. Merlin sat beside her on the cot they’d smuggled up to the tower, using a few sparks to help her breathe. It was paltry magic, but it made him feel better, a bit.

  Trumpets blared across the city lit by a purple twilight. Lam looked through an arrow slit to the crowds in the courtyard below. “Avalon is here. Whatever Ari did… it worked.”

  Merlin stood, a childish tizzy of emotions taking over his heart and body. He stamped and shouted, “This is wrong! We’re meant to steal the chalice and then leave this godsforsaken place behind, once and for all!” Gwen and Lam stared at him with a pity he couldn’t stomach. As if they could tell that his need to quit Camelot ran much deeper than he liked to admit. “This era is vile. It’s killing us.” He looked down at Jordan, immediately wanting to take those words back.

  “I have to go down to the party,” Gwen said as she edged toward the stairs, looking physically pained to leave Jordan. “Arthur will want me by his side. He’s been distant since Avalon, but he needs me. Whatever happened to Ari seemed to… scare him.”

  “We’re all scared,” Lam said quietly. “She should be here by now.”

  Gwen, Lam, and Merlin shared a moment of fear so large it seemed to fill the tower. Then a crackle of light exploded at the center of the room. The fabric of reality tore, exposing a dark wound, and Ari stumbled through it with all the grace of a drunk antelope.

  Lam rushed forward to envelop Ari in a hug that also kept her from falling over.

  “How—” Merlin started, but Ari cut him off.

  “No time to explain,” Ari said, getting back to her balance. “We have to send Jordan to our future. Now.”

  “It’s not a bad idea, in theory.” Merlin had considered it: the medicine of the future would be able to heal Jordan where Merlin’s magic and medieval poultices simply weren’t enough. He’d been able to put a basic patch on her wound, but it hadn’t stopped the complications of infection. “The portal magics…” he said, faltering on the logistics of sending her back. “We’re still down one.”

  “The enchantresses just got here,” Lam said. With a quickly mustered smile, they added, “Should I go charm one into helping us?”

  “No need. Here.” Ari pushed a dagger into Merlin’s hand so fast he leaped back, and it hit the floor with a clang. He looked down to find a familiar blade. It was identical to the one Morgana had wielded—and stuck him in the leg with. “That’s all fired up with Avalon magic. A gift from Nin.”

  “Nin?” Merlin cried.

  “We can talk about that later. Right now it’s portal time. Merlin, are you ready?”

  “But we have to wait for the chalice. Arthur should have it in a matter of hours.”

  Ari eyed the windows, the last of the sunset turning Camelot into a rich tapestry of shadows. “You have to trust me. We’re out of time. I’m not letting her die like Kay. Send her back now!”

  “Well, she isn’t part of the Arthurian legend, so sending her back won’t ruin the story. That’s the good news.” The bad news is that it would use up the three magics they ne
eded to get everyone else home. How long would it take them to collect them again? Months? Years? Would Merlin even be able to do it then or would he be too busy wetting his diapers?

  “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, thinking of the staunch knight down in the oubliette, who kept his secret because she understood what it meant to do anything to protect your friends. Your people.

  And Merlin’s people included Jordan.

  He hit a bass note, a sort of meditative chant that he’d learned from some monks in one of the long-past Arthurian cycles. The shards of Excalibur floated gently in the air, forming a circle around Jordan. The dagger glowed in the center, a bright swirling gray like the mists around Avalon.

  “Why is the mage burping?” the black knight asked, eyes still closed, voice a whisper.

  “It’s singing,” he grumbled.

  “You’re leaving,” Gwen said softly to Jordan.

  “Not dying,” Merlin piped in, for clarity. “Back to the future for you.”

  “Trying to get rid of me?” Jordan asked as she muscled her eyes open.

  Gwen kneeled at Jordan’s side, fighting the swell of her dress and the baby hidden inside of it. “You need to get immediate medical attention. We’ll… we’ll be right behind you.” The sunset shone on the tears trailing down her cheek.

  “My parents will help you. Tell them we’re on our way,” Ari said. “We’re coming back to the night we left. Tell them not to be surprised if we’re a bit older.”

  “No.” Jordan struggled, trying to sit up. “You could be stuck here for years. Decades.” She glared at Merlin specifically. “Why are you doing this? It will cost you.”

  “Because we’re family.” Merlin glanced around. “And we need your help in the future.”

  “And I’m outright commanding it,” Gwen said.

  Jordan nodded with effort and then eyed Merlin as he sang. He worried she would blurt out what she’d learned in the oubliette, telling him not to waste his remaining magic—and years—on her. But she refocused on Gwen, thank all the gods. “As you wish, my queen.” Then she looked straight at Ari. “Take care of them.”

  Ari bowed her head, every inch the knight. “On my honor.”

  Jordan laid back, arms crossed over her chest as the shards of Excalibur danced so fast they blurred. Gathering around the Avalon dagger, they became one weapon for a bright, shining moment. Merlin sang as it cut through the last of the day’s perfect golden light, slicing open a doorway of deepest black. Beyond it, stars shone.

  “Home,” Jordan murmured, her pain momentarily shelved, as she rose to her feet with the help of Lam and Ari, and stepped into the future.

  Ari spoke so quietly Merlin almost didn’t hear. “Gwen, why don’t you go with—”

  “Ask me to leave your side and we’ll be in the biggest fight of the century, Ara.”

  The portal resealed with a rush of wind, as if it knew well enough to obey Gwen’s command. The Avalon dagger clattered to the stones, dull metal now, its magic spent. Excalibur’s shards rained down as metallic dust, and Ari looked bereft all over again. Merlin clamped a hand over his face, crying out with pain. It felt like someone had reached into his mouth and ripped out several of his teeth.

  “She’ll make it,” Gwen reassured, misreading Merlin’s pain as strong emotion. “This is Jordan we’re talking about. She’ll… find help on the other side. We sent her back to the night that we left, so Ari’s moms will be right there.”

  “Mmph,” Merlin said in what he hoped sounded like agreement. Spots at the back of his mouth were liquid fire. Four spots, to be exact. When he probed them with his tongue, he found exactly what he feared. His twelve-year-old molars had sunk. And there was no time to mourn their loss.

  Ari sank onto Jordan’s abandoned cot, holding her face in her hands. She was weeping.

  When Gwen and Lam tried to comfort her, she pushed it all away. “I’m fine. I just… I really thought it was too late.”

  “Because Nin showed you the future—Jordan’s death,” Merlin said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “This all reeks of one of Nin’s games.”

  Lam spun on him, their eyes lit with a special urgency. “You said Val was safe in her lair.”

  “She has a lair?” Gwen asked. “That doesn’t sound safe at all.”

  Merlin owed them the truth. “Since we’ve gotten so close to Arthur’s birthday, and the chalice arriving, I’ve been shouting into every watery surface for Val’s immediate release and… nothing.” What had seemed like an innocuous situation only a few days ago was evolving into a standoff.

  “Nin told me she would release him soon,” Ari said.

  “Maybe she just told you that to toy with us,” he countered. Ari’s eyes fell on Merlin’s with warning and care, as if she now knew how frightful the Lady of the Lake could be but didn’t want to alarm the others just yet.

  The trumpets sounded again, and Gwen smoothed her beautiful gold dress distractedly. “If we don’t get down to that celebration now, we’re all in trouble.”

  After sending Jordan to the future, it felt dazzlingly awful to leave the castle and find that they were still mired in the past. The Middle Ages were on full display tonight, a bonfire raging as Old Merlin set off some kind of smoky, lung-infesting fireworks in the courtyard. Merlin and his friends emerged into the haze and roar of the most intense festival he had ever seen.

  And he had, against all odds, gone to Coachella with Arthur 37.

  “Val would love this party,” Lam said wistfully as music started up, tabers and drums and some nasal third instrument that Merlin had forgotten but sounded strangely like a synthesizer. “Forget that. He would own this party. Half the boys here would have been writing him sonnets by the end. Do they do sonnets yet?”

  Lam had made a simple offhand comment because they missed their brother, but those words spun in Merlin’s brain. How many of the boys here tonight were cuter than Merlin, and more important, not slipping backward out of adolescence? Was that part of why he had been comfortable letting Val stay with Nin so long? Because in some rotted spot in his heart, he couldn’t bear the thought of Val watching him grow younger and younger until they were an equation with utterly mismatched sides?

  Merlin touched the tender spots on his cheeks where his teeth had just vanished.

  Ari and Gwen veered away from Lam and Merlin. “We’ll find Arthur,” Gwen said. “He’ll be relieved that Lancelot is returned.”

  Gwen steered the still-ragged Ari through the crowds straight to the king, who was standing near the bonfire with Galahad and Gawain to either side. He broke away at once to embrace Ari. She returned the hug in a way that didn’t look fake. Whatever had passed between the two of them on the path to Avalon, they were closer now, which only multiplied the distance Merlin felt. He used to live at Arthur’s side, and now he was a mere bystander.

  King Arthur raised his hand, and the crowds quieted. “Tonight, my feast is graced with one of the finest knights Camelot has ever known. Sir Lancelot is not only powerful in a fight, he has helped bring us new allies and rid our kingdom of those who would cause harm.”

  Merlin started. It was true—Camelot’s golden age was starting to peek over the horizon, and it was largely thanks to Ari. She pushed to make things better, even when it would have been easy to make an excuse and allow the same problems to spin on endlessly.

  Arthur drew Excalibur and it glowed in the firelight, orange and gold, blazing and true. Gwen motioned to Ari, and she sank to one knee, head bowed. Gwen looking on with pride as Arthur touched each of her shoulders with Excalibur’s point.

  “Sir Lancelot, Knight of Camelot!”

  The crowd lost itself in wild cheering.

  Merlin felt cold, despite the riotous bonfire. Ari was safe and the Arthurian legend was back on track. He should have felt hopeful, but between sending Jordan back and seeing this moment, it felt like he was being sealed in the tomb of this story.

  They wer
e supposed to leave.

  Not stay.

  Merlin grabbed Lam’s arm, suddenly desperate to rid himself of a thought. “Did you know that time circles are possible? Down in the oubliette, I was thinking about it. The later scientists of Old Earth called them closed temporal loops. Most lives march from past to future because that’s what the human brain requires to understand things. But time itself doesn’t care about human rules.”

  “So you’re saying… the Arthurian cycles are one big loop?”

  “I thought Ari and Gwen couldn’t be in the story at both the beginning and the end. But if we’re stuck in a circle, there’s no reason they can’t be. They sort of have to be.”

  “That’s wild,” Lam said.

  “It’s worse than wild,” Merlin whispered. “I think it might be my doom.”

  Soon his magic would be drained, his life reduced to the rubble of childhood, and all of his friends stuck in the past. He’d never end the cycle. It would dump him here, back where it started, and leave him for dead.

  But Arthur’s spirit had given him hope that this story could end. Maybe it was still possible. Merlin had to get his hands on that chalice and get them out of here. Now.

  “Carbuncle!” The word scraped against the air. “Carbuncle!” Somehow Old Merlin had picked the least musical, most anatomically upsetting word in the entire language as his nickname. “Come here, boy!”

  “I wouldn’t keep yourself waiting,” Lam said with a pitying look.

  Merlin pushed his way across the courtyard, looking for hints of the chalice everywhere he went. It didn’t seem to have surfaced yet. He reached Old Merlin, who was conducting the party—literally. His hands waltzed in neat patterns, his magic ferrying goblets and cheese and great hunks of meat. People snatched them out of the air, cheering.

  It all looked whimsically adorable.

  It made Merlin sick.

  “There are too few game pies,” Old Merlin said, without so much as tilting his pointy chin down at Merlin. “Tell the kitchens to double their output.”