The Old Magic

by James Mallory

  “Sorry I’m late,” Frik said briskly. “The ship left without me. Coming aboard—” Quickly converting his pocket watch to a bosun’s whistle, he piped himself aboard and leaped into the boat.

  Merlin stared at the strange being. The new arrival had long pointed ears, strange protruding eyes, and was dressed in the most peculiar clothes Merlin had ever seen: a bright red coat trimmed with lots of gold braid and large brass buttons, and wearing a strange sort of three-cornered hat on his head.

  “Who are you?” Merlin asked.

  “Arr, Jim me lad, them as sails with Long John Frik must resign themselves to a life of adventure,” Frik said.

  “But—”

  “Shhh … I has to concentrate, I does. These is treacherous waters, strong currents, unseen rocks …” the creature’s voice trailed off as it muttered to itself.

  Merlin shook his head, confused. He wished that Master Frik had been willing to talk to him. As soon as the ship had sailed into the tunnel he’d felt oppressed, as if the ceiling might be going to collapse upon him at any moment, and he would have welcomed any distraction. Even though the roof of the tunnel was several feet above the top of his head, Merlin imagined he could feel the weight of all the rock above him as though it were pressing on his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

  But he forgot about all his problems when Master Frik piloted the boat out of the tunnel and into what proved to be the first in a series of large underground lagoons.

  Merlin ducked as a sprite whizzed by overhead. Its wings and body glowed faintly, so that it looked as if the air were full of thousands of multicolored fireflies all moving in different directions at once. His jaw dropped as he realized they had entered a vast cavern full of the tiny creatures.

  There was a splash in the water near the boat, and Merlin glanced over to see a beautiful golden-haired woman clinging to the side of the ship.

  “Scat, you!” Frik said, raising his barge-pole menacingly.

  The woman laughed and slipped back into the water. As she turned away, Merlin saw that at the waist her body became a gleaming emerald fish-tail with long transparent fins. She was a mermaid. He stared after her in amazement, and as he looked he could see other rainbow gleams, far beneath the surface of the black water.

  The boat crossed the lagoon, and entered another chamber where the walls were completely encrusted with enormous crystals in many different colors. Each of them gave off a soft glow like the bodies of the sprites in the previous cavern, some of which had followed the boat. Their radiance glittered off the glowing crystals, making the whole chamber seem to be in constant sparkling motion. The effect was like travelling through the heart of a rainbow.

  “Here we are,” Frik said. “Look lively, Master Merlin.”

  Merlin stared hard. In the distance he could just make out an enormous flight of white marble steps leading up to an elaborate portico with tall pillars framing the doorway. The skiff glided over the black water with amazing speed, until Merlin could see a figure standing on the steps awaiting him. Queen Mab.

  The Queen of the Old Ways glittered more dazzlingly than the crystal-covered walls. She wore a flashing crescent-moon tiara of amethysts and black diamonds, and her long sleeveless violet gown was oversewn with the same jewels. On her arms, coiling from shoulders to wrists, she wore diamond-studded bracelets in the shape of poisonous snakes. Suddenly Merlin felt shy, just as he had when he’d encountered Nimue and her party earlier in the day. Mab was so grand, so beautiful. How could she have any interest in him?

  But she was the one who’d created him. Aunt Ambrosia had said so, and his foster-mother had never lied to him. He was Mab’s child as much as he was his real mother’s.

  Seeing the Land of Magic glittering all around him, for the first time his own fairy heritage began to seem real to Merlin. He’d always thought of himself as a normal person, but now he had to accept that he was only half-human; a boy without a mortal father. The other half was magic; sorcerous, inhuman.

  The boat bumped against the dock, wrenching Merlin out of his reverie. When he glanced toward Frik, the red velvet coat and the plumed hat were gone. Frik stood upon the dock, wearing a long blue satin robe that sparkled with embroidery, and a small round hat on his head. His hands were tucked into his sleeves. He bowed, smiling.

  “Follow me, follow me—don’t get lost, don’t get lost,” he chanted in a singsong voice. He had long drooping moustaches, and his half-closed eyes were slanted like a cat’s. As he turned to go, Merlin saw with astonishment that yet another Frik was now facing him—a goggle-eyed gnome dressed in black tight-fitting clothes. He stared, unable to believe his eyes. Frik bowed again—in a different style—and began marching up the long sweeping stair.

  Merlin scrambled out of the boat and hurried after Frik.

  “Your Majesty,” Frik began, as soon as Merlin reached the top of the stairs, “may I present …”

  But Mab was too impatient to wait upon protocol. “Merlin, Merlin,” she whispered lovingly. “You’ve come at last. Do you know who I am?”

  “Queen Mab,” Merlin said uneasily.

  He was not certain what he’d expected the Queen of the Old Ways to be like, but he found Mab oddly disturbing in a fashion he could not put a name to. He knew so little about her—it was only hours since Ambrosia had told him that Mab had created him, and he was still reeling from the knowledge. He wasn’t even sure what the Old Ways were—he knew that they were important, and involved magic, but beyond that he was ignorant. Deliberately kept ignorant, he suddenly realized. Ambrosia and Herne and even Blaise had certainly known about them, but they’d always steered the conversation away from any discussion of them … or of Mab.

  Why?

  Mab held out her hands to him. “Yes-s-s …” she hissed. “I’ve waited so long. You’ve grown handsome and true. I did well when I created you.”

  Urged on by Frik and Mab, Merlin stepped forward. Though the words were fond, the way she said them only increased Merlin’s discomfort. She made him sound like a basket or a pot of jam, just an object instead of a person.

  Mab spread her arms wide and shouted to the thousands of invisible watchers that filled the air. “This is Merlin who comes to save us! He is the great leader who will bring the people back to the Old Ways!”

  Her words echoed unnaturally through the cavern. Instead of dwindling away, the echoes got louder and louder, until it was as if a thousand voices shouted his name at once: Merlin—Merlin—Merlin—

  Come to save us—save us—save us …

  Merlin gazed around himself and felt a sudden flash of blind panic. If he knew nothing about Mab, he knew even less about the Old Ways—how could he save them? I can’t save them—I can’t be what she wants me to be!

  “But come,” Mab said, putting a long be-ringed hand on his arm. It is time to begin your training.”

  Merlin followed Mab through dozens of rooms, each stranger and more colorful than the last. The strange sights he saw ought to have frightened Merlin, and a day or so ago they would have, but he’d seen too much since then. Now the oddities he saw only excited and interested him.

  It seemed as if they walked for hours through the splendor of Mab’s palace before Mab stopped at a door. The door had a face carved into the center of it, eyes closed and mouth hanging open as if it were asleep.

  “Well?” Mab demanded.

  To Merlin’s astonishment the eyes of the carven figure popped open and the mouth smiled ingratiatingly.

  “Yes, Madame. At once, Madame,” the door said, and swung inward.

  Inside was a room that, after all the wonders Merlin had seen, looked almost normal. It had a large fireplace on the left side, with a cheerful fire burning in the grate, and beside the fire, an enormous carven chair, with a large red velvet cushion on its seat. The entire chair was carved and gilded into the shape of lions and dragons and snakes, and the name mab was carved into the large gold crown at the top of the back. The room was filled with sh
elves full of enormous old books that overflowed onto the tables. Books were even stacked in piles on the floor. The room looked as if it were dusty and disused, but instead of dust, the corners of the room were heaped with drifts of crystals, each sparkling nugget larger than a lump of coal.

  Merlin forgot his momentary panic in his curiosity with all the new things to look at. As Mab did not stop him, Merlin began to wander about the room, inspecting things which caught his fancy.

  There was a great crystal ball, clear as water. Inside it there was a city of golden towers. As Merlin peered closer at it, he could see people moving on the streets, birds flying about the towers, and the bells inside the towers moving back and forth silently as they tolled.

  Next to it was a cap with long earflaps woven of golden mesh with a band of diamonds and rubies around the bottom edge. There were words engraved on the inside, and Merlin felt the magic tingle over his fingers as he touched it. He drew his hand back in surprise, and then turned away from it as his attention was caught by a movement in a cage hanging from the ceiling. When he looked closely, he saw that the cage did not contain a bird, but a tiny white winged horse.

  On the table beneath the cage there was a wide jewelled belt, so small it must have been made for a gnome, and a strange long skull with a single spiral horn jutting from its brow. Next to that was a large box carved of green stone and covered with golden letters in a language Merlin could not read. On the shelf beyond the table was a crystal dome covering a single perfect blue rose, and next to it a pair of tiny slippers barely as long as his hand, completely studded with glittering rubies.

  He picked up one of the crystals that shared the shelving with the books. It was as large as his fist, a deep ruddy golden color. When he touched it, he could almost feel the power resonating into him, a tingling warmth through his arms and body.

  He glanced up and saw Mab smiling at him. She’d seated herself in the enormous carven chair—almost a throne—before the fire and was gazing over the room as if she owned everything in it.

  Still carrying the crystal, Merlin walked back to her, stopping a respectful distance away.

  “Why am I here?” he asked hesitantly.

  “To learn,” Mab crooned. “I’ll teach you to become the most powerful wizard the world has ever known.”

  “Why?” Merlin asked.

  His dreams of the future had never involved magic. If anything, he had wanted to be a knight, a hero, doing great deeds and righting wrongs through the power of his sword. But those had been daydreams, nothing more. He’d never expected to achieve them. And now Mab was offering him something that was both greater than and profoundly different from those half-formed imaginings. He gazed at her, fascinated, delighted, and wary, all at the same time.

  Mab smiled at him proprietorially. “To lead mortals back to us … to the Old Ways.”

  This was the second time Mab had spoken of his becoming the champion of the Land of Magic, and Merlin wasn’t sure that either King Vortigern or his Aunt Ambrosia would approve of the plan. There couldn’t be two kings in Britain—Merlin knew that very well—and Aunt Ambrosia said you had to live in the realities of the present, not the glories of the past.

  “What if I don’t want to be a wizard?” Merlin said warily.

  “It’s your destiny,” Mab said unequivocally. “Remember that branch and how you made it grow?”

  The memory was so vivid that for a moment Merlin was back at the sinkhole, the smell of wet earth strong in his nostrils as he frantically tried to reach Nimue.

  Nimue.

  He’d promised he’d come to visit her tomorrow. In the excitement of discovering the truth about his heritage and travelling to the Land of Magic, he’d forgotten all about his promise. Remembering made him upset and relieved all at once. What if Nimue had found out the truth about him—that he was the child of no mortal father? He couldn’t bear the thought of her looking at him with loathing and disdain. Perhaps it was better if he never saw her again. He looked back at Mab.

  “I don’t know how I did it,” he admitted.

  She smiled as if he’d given her the answer she wanted. “That’s why you’re here—to learn. Oh, Merlin, you’ll soon know the power that’s in you.”

  She held up her left hand, and with amazement, Merlin saw his own arm rise to copy her gesture.

  “And once it’s unleashed, you’ll hold this world in the hollow of your hand!”

  Mab clenched her hand into a fist, and Merlin’s copied the gesture of its own volition, grinding the crystal he held within his fist into glittering powder.

  Merlin stared at his hand—not frightened, really, because no one he’d ever known had been unkind to him, but unsettled and worried, the way the forest animals were before a storm. Mab’s gesture had seemed to have such anger in it, yet he wasn’t quite sure who she was angry with. He brushed away the residue of the shattered crystal, but before he had the chance to analyze his feelings further, Frik entered, grunting beneath the weight of another huge stack of books.

  “Here we are,” said the gnome. “All set for our first lesson.” He’d changed his costume again. Now Frik was wearing a flat black-tasselled cap and a long black robe. He carried a long bamboo cane. Unruly tufts of gingery hair protruded from beneath the edge of the mortarboard, and he wore a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles perched upon the end of his nose.

  Merlin moved toward him to help with the books, but before he reached Frik, the gnome had set the pile down on another table, making a place for them amid the scrolls and other manuscripts. He reached up and pulled down a chart covered with strange and cryptic symbols out of nowhere, and tapped it experimentally with his cane.

  Merlin glanced from Frik to the chart to the pile of books, then gingerly opened the top volume. The page was covered with very small print. It looked like a very long, very dull book.

  “All the magic of the universe and all the spells you’ll ever need are in these books, Merlin,” Mab said, with a gesture that encompassed the entire room.

  “I’ll need a lifetime to read all these!” Merlin said, with a desperate look at the room’s contents.

  “You’ll have a very long life,” Mab answered.

  And I’ll be spending all of it here, Merlin thought despondently. A thought occurred to him suddenly. “If I’m half-mortal, will I die?” His question was prompted mainly by curiosity; at seventeen, the thought of his death was a remote and unreal thing.

  “In the fullness of time.” Mab shook her head sadly, and when she spoke it was almost with reluctance. “We can’t change that. But we can change form,” she offered, as though attempting to distract Merlin from a bitter truth.

  She reached out a hand and grabbed the edge of Frik’s mortarboard cap. When she pulled it off, Merlin gasped as Frik’s whole face came with it.

  The face beneath was completely different: handsome and dissipated, yet faintly cruel. It was painted and rouged, and its thick black hair was worn in tight curls that cascaded down over its shoulders. Stuck to the face at the corner of the mouth was a small black patch in the shape of a star. The new face peeped slyly at Merlin and affected a look of haughty surprise, conjuring a rose out of nowhere and holding the blossom to its nose as it smiled.

  “But it is only an illusion—particularly in his case,” Mab said scornfully. She yanked at the top of Frik’s head, and the new face came off just as the old one had, leaving Frik in his schoolmaster persona beneath. Merlin thought that Frik looked a little disgruntled at being returned to his normal grotesque self.

  “We can hurt,” Mab continued, “but we cannot use our magic to kill—though humans hardly need any help at that from us. Sometimes we can see into the future—”

  As before, Mab balanced a disadvantage with something she thought of as a reward. She waved her hand, and the wall of the library seemed to recede swiftly into the distance. Now, sitting on a stool before the fire, was an ancient, white-haired old man, stooped with age. He was older even than Blaise
, his body twisted and gnarled until he almost resembled one of the ancient oaks of Barnstable Forest.

  “This is you as you will be,” Mab said.

  “Me?” Merlin stammered, shocked. “Will I grow that old?”

  “Have a care, young Merlin!” The ancient grey-beard before the fire roused himself and glared at the boy.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” young Merlin said humbly.

  His old self relented. “But you’re right. The years batter us as storms batter the trees of the forest, and sometimes we forget what’s important. Try and always stay as young inside as you are now. And that’s another thing,” the ancient wizard said, raising one gnarled finger for emphasis. “Don’t start giving advice,” he said in a confidential whisper. “It always ends badly.”

  “What—” young Merlin began, but with a wave of her hand, Mab banished his older self. The fireplace shot forward into its proper place and the room was normal once more.

  “Will I be able to do that?” Merlin asked, enchanted. The thought of always knowing what the future held was a beguiling one.

  “Perhaps,” Mab said evasively. “But you will have to develop your powers, and listen to all that Frik tells you.”

  Mab gazed at him pointedly until Frik drew himself up to his full height and began to lecture in fussy, pedantic tones.

  “Master Merlin, there are three classes of magic; three stages of progression to full wizard status. The first and lowest stage is wizard by incantation, or Voice Wizard; those who do spells and invocations through the power of magic words.” Frik struck a dramatic pose. “Abra-cadabra dev and chort!” he intoned, holding out his hand.

  A silver goblet with a red rose in it appeared in his hand. Frik sniffed the flower appreciatively and then set the goblet aside. With all the wonders he had seen thus far today, Merlin barely noticed.