by Peter David
“What about Merlin?” asked Ziusura. “The little runt seemed to have a good head on his shoulders. Perhaps he might be useful in this matter.”
“I’m still not certain that Merlin has forgiven me for resigning and derailing his plans for my monumental destiny,” said Arthur wryly. “He goes where he wishes. I very much suspect that, if he chooses to become involved in all of this, we’ll be hearing from him soon enough.”
CHAPTRE
THE FOURTH
THE AUDIENCE APPLAUDED wildly for the magician on the small stage as he stepped back and took a bow, smiling pleasantly and bobbing his head in appreciation. There were about a hundred or so patrons in the club, grouped around small tables that accommodated anywhere from two to four people. Some had ordered food, everyone had ordered drinks. But the Magic Shack wasn’t renowned for its cuisine, and the drinks were notorious for being overpriced. Instead the unassuming venue was the premiere spot for magicians in the Los Angeles area who excelled in sleight of hand and close-up magic. No huge, theatrical boxes to be sliced and diced, or vanishing motorcycles, or other such nonsense. This was gasp-out-loud, staring right at it, “How the hell did he do that because I never looked away for a second” magic. This was for the hard-core only. More often than not, half the audience was made up of other magicians who were eager to see what the up-and-comers had up their sleeves, as it were. If you impressed this crowd, you were gooooood.
Merlin Junior impressed them regularly. More than impressed: He baffled them.
Junior was a gawky, eight-year-old boy, with skinny arms and legs, ears that stuck out almost at right angles to his head, and silky brown hair that hung down to the back of his neck. One would have wondered what in the world an eight-year-old was doing in such a place. Certainly his parents would have something to say about it.
But if Merlin Junior had parents, no one knew anything about them. He had simply shown up one evening at the Magic Shack, strode up onto the stage during a brief dead period, and before the manager could haul him off the stage, started doing magic. Astounding magic. Wearing a tank top so that his arms were completely exposed, he snatched cards out of the air with machine-gun rapidity. As he did so, he created a three-story house of cards, whipped a handkerchief out of the air, dropped it over the house of cards—which, despite all reason, actually supported the handkerchief rather than collapsing—made a mystic pass, whipped away the cloth, to reveal a house of cards transformed into an actual dollhouse. This naturally prompted an explosion of applause, which became more thunderous when he tossed the cloth over it once more, did another mystical pass, and transformed it back into a house of cards.
The manager, after congratulating the self-billed Merlin Junior on his brilliance, informed him that he couldn’t come back. That having such a youngster working his place just opened up too many problems. Merlin Junior nodded, said he understood, and then showed up the next evening and did exactly the same thing. Not exactly: This time he had an entirely new act that was even more dazzling than the previous. Word about him began to spread and, by the end of the week, when people were showing up and asking whether Junior was going to be working that night because he was who they had come to see, the manager was visibly sweating and pulling at his lower lip (one of his most typical nervous habits). Relief flooded through him when Merlin Junior strode in to great applause, and when Junior and the manager locked eyes, the latter knew that he had to bow to the inevitable.
The only line he drew was that Merlin Junior could not sit at the bar. “We got people watching this place,” he told the youngster. “The instant your butt hits a barstool, I lose my liquor license, and this place goes belly-up. So that’s off-limits. Understood? I’m not kidding: It’s really out-of-bounds. Got it?”
“Got it,” Merlin Junior said calmly, and there seemed to be a world of amusement in his eyes. The manager was pleased to see, as weeks went by, that Junior stuck to their agreement, never risking the Magic Shack’s liquor license. He paid Merlin Junior a nominal sum for every appearance, plus free food and all the nonalcoholic beverages he desired. Every so often he would sit down with Junior and, asking casual questions, would try to get him to open up about his past. Junior never took the bait. Never discussed his parents, never revealed anything about himself. Eventually, the manager stopped asking.
This particular night, Merlin Junior took his customary seat near the back of the Magic Shack. There were a few small tables in the rear of the bar area: Not actually at the bar and therefore not out-of-bounds. It was at these tables that Merlin usually seated himself after he performed, since they were in the shadows and nobody noticed him there. He offered a tired smile up to the waitress as she placed a glass of water in front of him. “Thanks, Flo,” he said.
“You killed tonight, honey,” Flo told him.
“I’ve killed in the past, but not tonight.”
She laughed at that and patted him affectionately on the shoulder. “You’re something else, honey,” she told him, and headed over toward other customers.
“You have no idea,” said Merlin. He extended his index finger, touched the surface of the water, and smiled as it transformed into wine. He took a sip and sighed deeply.
He heard the young woman before he saw her, the chair scraping across the floor, being pulled from a nearby table (since he only had the one chair at his). Looking up across the table, Merlin blinked owlishly at the young woman who was now seated opposite him.
She was a stunner, he had to admit that much to himself. It had been quite some time since Merlin had looked at any woman in that appraising sort of fashion. He’d had far more important things on his mind, and besides…he looked like an eight-year-old, for God’s sake. Nevertheless, he took in her long blond hair, her eyes that were a curious mixture of blue-green. Unlike so many Los Angeles women who looked like walking skeletons, this one’s face was actually full, with a healthy red glow to the cheeks. Her lips were wide, her nose small and delicate. She was wearing a blue dress that tied behind her neck.
“Devil with the blue dress on?” he inquired, one eyebrow raised.
“You were amazing tonight,” she said.
“I know.”
She laughed at that. “Not exactly the modest one, are you.”
“Modesty is overrated.”
“I bet.” She extended a hand. “I’m Vivian. Vivian Mercer.”
Merlin stared at her for a moment, regarding her suspiciously. Then he shook the extended hand curtly. “Merlin,” he said.
“Not ‘Merlin Junior’? That’s how they bill you.”
“I know how they bill me. It was my idea. See a child billing himself ‘Merlin,’ and it’s preposterous. Everyone knows Merlin is an elderly man with a long white beard. But I call myself ‘Merlin Junior,’ and that makes it seem more reasonable to people somehow.”
“And do you care what people think?”
“Not particularly. Or…at all, really.”
“Then why…?”
“Because it pleases me to do so,” he said, sounding a bit cross. “I’m not accustomed to having to explain myself. Now did you come over to harass me or…?”
“No! No, not at all!” She looked concerned, but then smiled widely, and Merlin had to admit to himself that she did indeed have a dazzling smile. “I was just…well, see, I’m a bit of an amateur magician myself, and I was just wondering if you might give me the slightest hint of how you did some of the tricks you performed tonight…”
“Ah! Well, wonder no more.”
“You will?”
“Not if you were the last woman on Earth…which, by the way, wouldn’t be that much of a hardship if you asked me.”
“Wow.” Vivian sat back in her chair. “You don’t seem to have a high opinion of women.”
“I’m eight years old. I’m not supposed to. Although, for what it’s worth, I don’t have much of a high opinion of practically anybody.”
She suddenly reached over and took his hand, staring at his p
alm. He tried to pull away, greatly irritated. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You have an amazing life line,” she said, her eyebrows raised so high they were practically intersecting. “It’s what I thought.”
“What is?”
“You have a very old soul.”
Merlin yanked his hand away, shaking it off as if he’d shoved it into something unpleasant. “Leave my soul out of this. In fact, leave me out of this.”
“Hey, Junior!” It was Flo, and Merlin had never been so happy to see the waitress in his life. She was standing next to Vivian, scowling, as she addressed her comment to Merlin. “This lady bothering you, kid?”
“Yeah. She is, actually.”
Her hip outthrust, Flo said tartly, “You got nothing better to do than bust a kid’s chops, sweetheart? Don’t you think maybe you should pick on somebody your own size…or generation, for that matter?”
“I wasn’t meaning to pick on him,” Vivian assured her. “I’m just an admirer.”
“Well, he’s a little young for you, sweetheart, so I think it’d be better if you admired him from afar, okay?”
“But I was just—”
“Okay?” Flo repeated in a way that indicated any answer that was other than what she wanted wasn’t going to be accepted.
Vivian looked as if she was going to offer further protest, but then simply nodded, and said, “Okay.” She rose, put out a hand, and said to Merlin, “It was a pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you,” said Merlin, raising neither hand from the table to shake hers.
Her hand dangled there in midair for a moment, then she lowered it and forced a smile. Her gaze wandered over to Merlin’s glass. “By the way,” she said loudly enough for Flo to hear, “I don’t think the authorities would approve of you serving alcohol to a minor.”
“What?” Flo demanded. “What are you talking about? What are you trying to start? I gave him water.”
“Looks like wine to me.”
“Junior, let me see that.”
Merlin had quickly scooped up the glass in his hand when Vivian spoke. He muttered something under his breath and then handed Flo the glass. Flo stared at it for a moment, then looked at Vivian as if she’d lost her mind. “Lady, I’ve been slinging drinks for twelve years now, and I have to say, in my expert opinion…that’s a glass of water.”
Vivian stared at the glass of clear liquid, then half smiled as she looked back to Merlin. “Yes. Yes, of course it is,” she said, and turned and walked out the back of the room.
Flo let out a heavy sigh and placed the glass back in front of Merlin. “I swear to God, I don’t know what gets in some people’s heads sometimes. Junior, if anybody else tries to bother you, you let me know immediately, okay?”
“Sure thing, Flo,” said Merlin. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead he was looking at the door through which Vivian had departed. “Vivian. She had to be named Vivian. Damn, this is ill omened.”
“Why, honey?” asked Flo.
Merlin looked her up and down for a moment, clearly trying to decide what to say. Finally, he shrugged and said, “‘Vivian’ is one of the variant names of ‘Nimue.’”
“I’m not sure how you get ‘Vivian’ from ‘Nim-way,’ but all right, I’ll bite,” said Flo good-naturedly. “Who, or what, is ‘Nim-way?’”
“Nimue is the true name of the Lady of the Lake,” replied Merlin. “One of the wild cards of Arthurian legend.”
“Arthurian? You mean like King Arthur and Camelot?”
“Just like.”
“Which I guess you’d have an interest in, what with your name being Merlin and all.”
“You’d guess right,” said Merlin dryly, swirling the water around in his glass. “On the one hand, she was responsible for getting the sword Excalibur to King Arthur. On the other hand, she seduced the wizard, Merlin, stealing magiks from him, including a spell of imprisonment that locked him away in a cave for cen—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Forever. Then again, what else can you expect from a creature of the water. Her passions and loyalties ebb and flow as do the tides, moving in and out and acted upon by forces mere mortals cannot begin to comprehend.”
“How you do go on.” Flo laughed. “You’re certainly passionate about this Merlin and Arthur business.”
“I was passionate about it. But then my passion…waned.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because,” Merlin said, staring into the glass, “there came a time when Arthur simply didn’t need his Merlin anymore. When their interests no longer overlapped. When Merlin was…irrelevant. Merlin gave Arthur’s life magic, don’t you see. But Arthur turned his back on it, wanting other things from his life. A life that Merlin had no place in. It was a tragedy, and I’ve little use for pointless tragedies.”
“That’s very sad.”
“It is, rather.”
“But honey”—and she shook him by the shoulder—“cheer up! It’s all just stories, when you come down to it. Stories aren’t worth getting that upset about.”
“You’re right, Flo. They’re not.”
She nodded in approval, walked away, and didn’t even notice as Merlin casually transformed the water back into wine. “And it’s all just stories after all…isn’t it.” He tossed back the glass and drank the wine in one swallow. It burned pleasantly as it went down his throat, but other than that, it didn’t make him feel any better.
He hated having no one to talk to. That was the truth of it. For all the times that he had harangued and berated Arthur, he despised the notion that Arthur had absented himself from their relationship. That he had chosen Gwen and a life of fleeing the greatness of his destiny, trading it for a voyage to nowhere that was a remarkable symbol of the wasted opportunity that was Arthur’s great legacy.
This business with Merlin’s hanging about the Magic Shack—entertaining the audiences using magiks that were so simple they weren’t remotely worthy of a mage of his talents—it was just a way to kill time. Time granted him by being practically immortal.
He watched people in Los Angeles rushing about and trying to do everything they could to stave off the ravages of time. Plastic surgery with its nips here and tucks there, drawing tight the skin upon their faces and bodies as if they were trying to fix a drumheads. And all for what? So they could look younger for a little while longer?
Well, he was there to say that looking young for a while longer could be a tremendously overrated business.
“Cheer up, kid,” said one of the club’s regular magicians as he wandered past. “You always look so serious. You know what they say: Youth is wasted on the young.”
“Tell me about it.” Merlin sighed.
CHAPTRE
THE FIFTH
RON CORDOBA HAD no idea at all how the press caught wind of Arthur and Gwen’s return. Technically, that wasn’t actually true. He had some idea, all right. Someone with a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon had blabbed about it…probably someone at Pearl Harbor who had leaked the news to someone else who had in turn fed it to someone else further along the food chain. All he knew was that he had a full-blown security breach and media event on his hands, when all he’d really wanted to do was try and get some solid footing in the situation.
He reasoned that it was too late to start crying about it now. The word was out, and the press secretary was fielding so many questions, so fast and furiously, that Ron felt the need to walk into the pressroom—much to the shock of all concerned, since it was something he rarely if ever did—and announce that this line of inquiry was not only at an end but so were the regular press conferences. He then pulled the press secretary out and ordered all the lights in the pressroom shut off, just to show that he meant it.
This naturally earned him an earful from the press secretary, who pointed out, not unreasonably, that the best way to handle the story was for the White House to control it. But Ron shook his head, and retorted, “Wake up and smell the leak. We’r
e no longer controlling. It’s out there, like a burning factory fire. In my opinion, all we can do right now is try not to spill more fuel on it. And I can assure you, that’s all the press conferences are going to be.”
“But Ron—”
“No buts! The lid is on until further notice. If I see a single off-the-record quote showing up in the Washington Post that could be remotely traced to you, you’ll be gone so fast no one will remember you were ever here.”
He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but the secretary simply nodded, and echoed, “The lid is on.”
Every once in a while, Ron loved having power.
Still, power was only relative. Right now he was seated in the room that was the epitome of power in the country: the Oval Office. Stockwell was behind his desk, shuffling through papers and reading reports, shaking his head in a way that indicated he wasn’t exactly thrilled with what he was reading. Ron was seated alertly in one of the more comfortable chairs, and asked tentatively, “What’s that you’re going over, sir?”
“Reports detailing the success rates of small businesses over the last five years,” said Stockwell, without looking up.
“How’s that going?”
“Eighty-five percent crash and burn every single year.”
“Well, one has to admire the consistency.”
Stockwell afforded him a brief glance. “Indeed.”
One of the president’s aides opened the door partway, and announced, “Sir. He’s here.”
There was no need to explain who the “he” was. Stockwell was immediately on his feet, as was Ron. The aide, with no further preamble, opened the doors wide. Arthur Penn, with Gwendolyne at his side, entered. Coming in directly behind them was Percival. He was dressed in black and was wearing the exact kind of long, flopping brown duster that Secret Service agents tended to despise since they could conceal anything from a pistol to a rocket launcher. Indeed, the agents stationed just outside the Oval Office were eyeing Percival with open suspicion. If Percival noticed that he was being singled out for that kind of scrutiny, he didn’t let it show.
