Sword in the Stars

by Cori McCarthy

  “They get a little impatient,” Ari admitted. “I promised to train them for knight camp.”

  “You’re not going to have those children fighting dragons, are you?” Merlin asked with a gasp.

  “Of course not,” Ari said, scratching the smaller of the taneens until it panted in delight. “They’re going to ride them.”

  Merlin’s heart buckled at the thought of such danger. He might be a mage, and finally in control of his buried time powers, but he was no longer tangentially immortal. With Nin gone, there was no one to keep plucking him out of near-death experiences. Someday, he would die. But first he had to live, which meant getting used to a certain number of dangerous ideas, especially with Ari in his life.

  “Be back tonight!” she shouted over her shoulder as she ran after the taneens.

  “My wife, the sexy dragon trainer,” Gwen said as if presenting her to the whole universe. Then her voice dropped to a confidential tone. “I finally feel like I can let Ari go without worrying I’ll never see her again.”

  “Good,” Val said. “Because Troy is a mess and they’re going to need you in full retinue, with the black knight. You should go let Jordan know.”

  “Who’s going to run knight camp?” Merlin asked.

  “Yaz can take care of it for a few days,” Val said. “Though I have to admit those tiny knights are very attached to Jordan.”

  In addition to helping Gwen on her more dangerous diplomatic missions, Jordan had forged another purpose—to train a new generation with honor. So far, most of them were failing due to her impossible standards for swordplay. Merlin had been more than willing to enchant their blades, but Jordan had shot that offer right out of the sky.

  Ari grew small in the distance as the taneens took off. She always came back from her training sessions sweating and happy-swearing. “Being a hero looked good on Ari, but I think this is her true form,” Gwen admitted with a quiet glow.

  “I don’t think anyone is meant to play the hero forever,” Merlin said.

  He thought of Nimue, living out a quiet life in Avalon. Her heroic moment would never be met with parades or universe-wide celebration, but most heroic moments weren’t. Each was a single drop in the great flow of time, but every drop mattered. And the right one, at the right moment, could change the water’s direction entirely.

  Ari disappeared, and Merlin wondered how long he had before she returned. He was planning something that required utmost secrecy. He felt the pull to go work on it, but first, there was his actual job to tend to.

  Val and Merlin walked back to the great home that used to belong to Ari’s family. She had decided to take a new, smaller home with Gwen, and gifted this palatial dream with its tiled walls and spilling greenery to the city of Omaira as a library.

  And she’d put Merlin in charge.

  He had entire floors dedicated to myths and legends and their children, fantasy and science fiction. He had a beautiful room filled with books of Old Earth photography. There were dictionaries and encyclopedias and as many cookbooks as he could smuggle, which he kept in what used to be the kitchen, now labeled KAY’S ROOM.

  “Much better,” Val said, lighting up the first of the globes as he placed it near the door that led to one of Merlin’s favorite rooms. A very special collection. “I see you’ve expanded the Arthur section again.”

  “There are so many versions, I really must be exhaustive!”

  “You really must stop time-hopping and stealing books!” Val said. “What if you go back and some caveman whacks you over the head and I never see you again?”

  “There’s nothing worth stealing in the Paleolithic,” Merlin said. “So you have nothing to fear. Though, cave paintings are often considered the precursors to the first developments in literacy, and I could do a quick—”

  “No!” Val said. “This is already too much.”

  “Nobody misses these,” Merlin promised as Val climbed a ladder up the stacks to hang another globe. “I only pinch books nobody is using. And I do good works, too. I rescued quite a lot of manuscripts from the library of Alexandria before it burned down. And I had a lovely chat with the librarian. She wasn’t even worried when I walked out of a black spot in the wall. People in ancient times were much more open to magic.”

  “I guess everything goes in cycles, hmm?” Val said, perusing the new selections despite his complaints. “Look at this!” He pulled out a slim volume. “Tolkien wrote an Arthur story?”

  Merlin peeked over from where he’d been shelving a delicious new acquisition, a book of short stories by Kat Howard with an Arthurian novella. Nin made an appearance in that one. Morgana was rather central. And the Arthur mantle was taken up by a headstrong college girl with a lovely girlfriend and a very loyal dog. Yes, Ari would enjoy that.

  “You know Tolkien?” he asked, as Val paged through the book.

  “Of course I know Tolkien,” he said. “Mercer used to sell replicas of that evil ring. They thought it was funny. One company to rule them all.” Val cocked his head. “I just looked into the future and you looked a lot like Gandalf.”

  “And?”

  “I was into it,” Val said. Merlin blushed his way to the film section. Val rolled the ladder over. “What is this old film you’ve hand-labeled Trash King Arthur?”

  “Oh, that one. It’s notable for being as far from the actual story as humanly possible. Percival is Black, though.”

  “Damn straight, he is.” Val ran his fingers over the neatly filed volumes. “Someone really should write the rest of the story. You know, the cycles that came after the first Arthur? All the way to the end, with your magical sword sticking Nin’s lake into a billion icy bits? Seems like a pretty huge omission if you ask me.”

  “Actually, a pair of twenty-first-century authors came rather close!” Merlin said, skimming through the books and pulling out one with an electric pink, glowing Excalibur on the cover. “They got a few things lopsided, of course. I am a good dancer.”

  Val artfully dodged that one. “What’s this?” He pulled out a folder filled with shiny silver discs. “A whole television show with your name on it! Should we put the lights down low and watch?”

  Merlin pursed his lips. “Quite fun in places, that one. I do like the dragon. But, well, they had a tendency to make it seem as if Arthur and Merlin could be love interests, only to pull out at the last possible second.”

  Val quirked an eyebrow, a double entendre no doubt simmering behind his smirk. When he spoke, it was more frustration than amusement. “Ugh, why would anyone do that?”

  “It was called queerbaiting,” Merlin said, the word like a stone in his shoe. “And it was sadly common in that age.”

  Val made a disgusted face and a retching sound to go with it.

  Merlin had to agree. He’d heard the arguments. That they were just stories. But he knew, from deep personal experience playing a role in one of the most enduring legends in Western history, that stories were never just a string of pretty words on a page or attractive strangers on a screen. They climbed inside your head, reordered things. Tore up parts of you by the roots and planted new ideas.

  Magic, really.

  And not always the sparkly kind.

  Merlin had told himself stories. He’d said he wasn’t a hero because he’d stood beside brave men and played the enchanted sidekick for so long. He had given in to the idea that because he’d once been lonely and lost, he always would be. He’d believed that love was for fools who couldn’t see the inevitable ending. That hope was always going to die, spitted on the end of someone’s sword. But the tales he’d told himself weren’t just wrong—they were dangerously wrong. They were pain and fear buffed to a shine until they glittered like truth.

  Now Merlin’s old stories didn’t just sound like piffle. They sounded like exactly what Nin would want him to believe. It was time for something new.

  “Queerbaiting, hmm?” Val asked, coming down the ladder to slip into his waiting arms. “I feel a sudden, intense nee
d to make out with you.”

  Merlin felt a smile breaking through, bright as the glint of Ketchan sun. “Righting the wrongs of the past again, are we?”

  “Something like that,” Val said, pulling him close. Suddenly Merlin was glad they’d brought new lamps into the library, because they made it easy to see the dramatic dips in Val’s smile, the dark starburst of lashes above his amber-brown eyes.

  Their lips touched, and just as Merlin left the world behind, Val pulled back and pointed at the dust motes that had stopped falling halfway to the floor, the curtains that were no longer rustling in the breeze.

  “Kai,” Val whispered. “You froze the universe again.”

  “That does seem to happen when we kiss.”

  They pushed toward each other, slower this time, and to be honest Merlin didn’t mind if they altered the fabric of reality with how good this felt. Maybe reality could do with some altering. At their sides, their hands swirled around each other and then locked. They kissed for so long he couldn’t tell if it was measured in minutes or hours. When they eventually pulled apart, because the universe rudely had to keep existing, Merlin knew they would be back at it soon enough.

  Finally, a cycle worth getting caught up in.

  Merlin didn’t ask Val to come with him to the cave where Error was hidden, for obvious reasons. The empty sandstone loomed around him, the ship sitting idle since its dramatic entrance in the battle of CamelotTM.

  Merlin had an idea. A gift for Ari and Gwen. It was their three-year anniversary, and he figured that their love child was on the hook for a top-notch present after all they’d been through.

  It was going to take a great deal of magic. The first step in the plan was to page through the past until he found the right moment to steal a few specific items. But when he opened a portal, that wasn’t where his feet and his whims had carried him.

  He emerged into a small home on Ketch. He padded down the hall and peeked through an open archway into the living room, where Gwen was sitting with her feet tucked up on a bright couch. Ari was on the floor, slashing around a foam sword.

  They were both older, Ari covered in tattoos and Gwen’s curves back at full strength. They were laughing, waiting. Ari held out the sword, paused, and then a tiny girl burst into the room on the shoulders of a slightly older Merlin. She held Kairos aloft, her little hands just big enough to clutch the hilt.

  “Do you have that, baby?” Gwen asked, leaping up to help her. “It’s heavy. And sharp.”

  “She’s got it,” Ari said, showing her how to hold it, and then sliding seamlessly into the role of a knight in the arena. Merlin—thirties Merlin—roared and steered the girl forward.

  Gwen stood up on the couch just as the girl’s hold on the sword wilted and shouted, in a plummy royal tone, “Avalon is the winner! Ari comes in a close second! Now the queen says it’s time to feast!”

  “Mama! Queen Mama! Kai Dwagon!”

  Slightly older Merlin roared once more, politely, and put her down as Ari grabbed the sword in a bit of seamless family choreography. Avalon rumbled into the kitchen unexpectedly, caught sight of Merlin, and shouted, “The ’nother dragon!”

  Merlin slipped out of the future, and back into the cave. This wasn’t the first time he’d checked up on his soon-to-be sister. They were still ten years away from her arrival, and sometimes it was hard to wait. Avalon was too perfect, and Merlin liked knowing that Gwen and Ari would get the baby that he’d never go back to being for them.

  But this moment wasn’t his gift to them. Some truths people had to come to in their own time. After all, you couldn’t just tell someone they were going to have another magical baby. Not that he’d seen her do magic yet, exactly. But she could pick up the sword. And her name was Avalon.

  “Back to the real plan,” Merlin said crisply. He closed his eyes, cast his mind outward and hummed, looking for just the right time to steal from the past.

  “Not stealing,” he corrected himself. “Borrowing.”

  Merlin had put blindfolds on both of them. Ari managed to get hers pushed up so that she could see a sliver below the bottom, a great shot of her boots, but then Gwen elbowed her until she pushed it back down.

  “What do you think he’s up to?” Ari asked. “Anniversary present?”

  “It’s a surprise, Ara.”

  “I don’t like surprises.”

  “But I do,” Gwen countered. “Let him have his fun.”

  “What about my fun?” Ari said, abandoning whatever Merlin was about to show them for a few stolen kisses. Blindfolded kissing was a good time as it turned out, and Merlin had to clear his throat several times before Ari released Gwen and went back to the ready-to-be-surprised position.

  “Step this way. Lightly.”

  Ari and Gwen walked hand in hand into a portal while Merlin kept a leading grip on the back of her shirt. She wouldn’t lie; her heart trilled. Traditionally speaking, every time she went through a portal, something rotten happened, but she trusted Merlin, and she knew where they were the moment they arrived. Copper in the air. Dim light. Metal grating underfoot. She couldn’t wait for Merlin to say so and tugged her blindfold off. “We’re on Error.”

  Ari dropped Gwen’s blindfold, too, so that she could see what Ari was seeing.

  Merlin threw his arms out before Error’s main cabin. Strings of bright lights crisscrossed the entire space while the small table was bursting with food from what looked like several different worlds and eras. “It’s a throwback party! Happy anniversary!”

  “Surprise!” Val yelled, followed by a full-mouth echo from Jordan who was currently making serious business out of a cupcake with a tiny Excalibur sticking out of the top.

  Gwen smiled, crushing him in a huge hug.

  Val wore an interesting grin as Ari gave him a hug. “Give me a heads-up, will you? No, let me guess. My parents are going to pop out from some place, and we’re all going to drink and hang out until—”

  Ari’s words disappeared. A long-fingered hand clapped over her eyes. She would have known that hand anywhere—even if the smell was now mingled with horse and fire and leather armor. She spun around and right into Lamarack’s chest.

  Ari was shouting. She had no control over her excitement as she hugged Lam again and again while they laughed. “How is this even possible?”

  “Magical time baby,” Val crowed. “Kai nicked them from Camelot for a few hours. Surprise,” he finished, poking Ari in the side. “Now we can have a real party, huh?”

  Ari found a few smudges of gray at Lam’s temples and a brand-new wrinkle to their eyes. “You’re older! How long has it been on your end?”

  “Seventeen years,” Lam said, placing their wrist on her cheek. “You look the best you’ve ever looked.” They smiled to Gwen. “I imagine you have a lot to do with that.”

  “Keeping Ari busy is my favorite esteemed position.” Gwen embraced Lam, and they lifted her off her feet.

  Lam looked around the spaceship as if they were in a waking dream. “Arthur and I were on our way through Mirkwood. On a quest to free Gawain, and this person jumped out from behind a tree. I nearly ran him through, but Arthur stopped me.”

  “I did nearly get killed,” Merlin said solemnly. “I have improved my tactics since then. Don’t surprise past humans with portals. It’s a grand rule.”

  Ari felt the universe tilt. Or perhaps it was just the spaceship. Val was on her left, Lam on her right. Jordan was checking out the controls, and Merlin was staring at her straight on with the most tentative, hopeful smile. “Thank you, Kai.”

  “I couldn’t think of a better present than to bring us all together, even if just for a night.”

  Ari felt a familiar stab. This was her family, and they were together… minus one.

  “All of us,” Merlin added, his brown eyes bright with excitement.

  The entire cabin turned quiet while Ari looked around. There was no way… was there? She pushed through them, rounding the empty cockpit, heading st
raight to Kay’s room.

  She burst the door open.

  Kay was passed out on his bed, half fallen off the mattress, boots stuck to the floor and head thrown back. The rest of her friends were right behind her, uttering their own surprised noises as they collided with her back.

  Merlin cleared his throat. “So, here’s a rather enormous condition of the night. Kay is alive, yes, but he’s also, um, trashed. Too wasted to remember this tomorrow, which was my exact plan!” He looked to Ari and Gwen. “I stole him from the afterparty of your wedding to Gwen, which is why we’re having the party here and not on Ketch. I should warn you, though, he’s still rather disgruntled by the idea of your marriage, which isn’t the best way to celebrate your anniversary, but—”

  Ari couldn’t wait a second more. She leaped onto the bed and shook her brother by the shoulders.

  “Hey!” Kay shouted, more alert than anyone would have guessed even if his gray-silver hair was standing straight up. “Where’s that Lionelian whiskey?” He pointed to Gwen. “She knows what I’m talking about.”

  Gwen clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “What are you all looking at?” Kay smacked his own face. “Did someone draw a vagina on me when I passed out?”

  Ari pulled him to his feet and they returned to the cabin where Merlin set the music blazing with a well-aimed spark. Drinks appeared in every hand. Ari watched as Lam and Kay tried to outdrink each other, and Jordan and Gwen leaned shoulder to shoulder.

  Merlin walked by Kay for the second time and gave him a squeeze. Kay elbowed him off, but Ari saw the secret smile, the way Kay never really minded the love, and in truth, he had always been one of the minor gods of it.

  Merlin stepped over to Ari. “Are you happy?” he asked tentatively.

  “More than you know.”

  “I don’t think we can do it again. Even this is a little risky, but…”

  Ari put an arm around Merlin’s shoulders. “You know I like risk. Things have been a little boring since we overthrew the all-seeing time enchantress and straightened out Mercer.”