The Third Magic (39 page)

CAMELOT

"W
here are we?" Gwen
asked. Her voice, echoing and tinny, sounded as if she had spoken in-a cavern. She could see nothing. White haze swirled around them all, thick as cotton candy. "Is this a cloud?" She swallowed hard. "Are we dead?"

"Probably," Launcelot answered. "We were the last time. The wizard may well have killed us again. ‘Tis well within his dark power."

"What?"

"Oh, stop." Taliesin's voice boomed, seeming to come from all directions at once, clear as a bell and loud enough to make Gwen jump. "You're not dead, girl. We're merely existing on a plane—a zone, if you will—where you're not accustomed to being."

"And this is where you brought us?" Arthur asked, annoyed. "All we needed to do was to get away from the police. You could have taken us to Tahiti."

"Instead of this nothing," Launcelot finished gloomily.

"What ingrates!" Taliesin sputtered. "Oh, well, I suppose it doesn't have to look quite so lackluster," he said with a sigh, as if he were giving in to a bunch of spoiled children. "I can make it into whatever—well, here's an idea."

Suddenly the entire group found themselves in the middle of the Great Hall at Camelot, seated at a long table piled with meats and roasted fowl and steaming loaves of fresh bread.

"Now this is more like it," Dry Lips said, helping himself to a turkey leg.

MacDaire rubbed his hands together. "How long has it been, boys?" he asked. '"Eh?"

Lugh Loinnbheimionach began to blubber.

"Ah, it's all right, lad," MacDaire said, putting his arm over Lugh's shoulder.

"I miss it," the big man said.

"Aye, we all do," Kay said softly. A hush fell over the room. Even Dry Lips set down his food.

"'Tis but a dream, anyway," Launcelot said bitterly. "Something the wizard's cooked up to trick us into thinking we're home."

"But it
is
home," the Merlin said, walking jauntily down the stairwell. He was dressed in his magician's robes, slightly frayed but still stiff with magnificent medieval embroidery. "This plane exists, every bit as much as the one we just left. We may say 'the past,' as if time were something real that comes and goes, but actually, there is no past. No future. We are here now, as we were then, as we will be."

There was a long silence. The knights stared at Taliesin uncomprehendingly. Finally Gawain, a man of few words, expressed his sentiments by farting.

"Aye, and we all feel the same," Kay shouted, trying to keep his voice from cracking. "You took us from our home to defend the King, but the King's nowt but a poor lad that's had not an hour of happiness for all the trouble you've brought upon him."

"What—why, the nerve—"

"Kay's right," Curoi MacDaire piped up. "Change me as you may into a mute and ugly beastie, Merlin, I owe this much of the saying to the lad I've come to think of as me own son," he said, quaffing a tankard of stout, "as well as the King I honored to my dying day. For it's glad I am he has a young girleen to warm his nights, since all the world around him has gone mad with fear, and will kill him sure for his trouble." He slammed the tankard on the table, to the shouts and thumping of the others.

"That's not true," Taliesin protested. "It was just—"

"And where were you and the other great druids while the peasants struck Arthur upon the head with stones?" Agravaine shouted. "Where?"

"You saw those men with their clubs and noisemakers, the ones called 'cops'!" Fairhands said, his mouth turning down at the corners with disdain.

"I'd like to have seen a one of them try to use one of their cursed sticks on us," Dry Lips said, clunking down his tankard and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"That's enough," Arthur said softly. Absolute silence fell. He moved to the head of the table. "I know you miss this place, this life. I know it's hard for you." He looked down at his hands. "But you know that you're only acting this way because Hal isn't here."

Some of the knights spoke up to protest, but Arthur silenced them with a gesture. He walked over to Launcelot. "I'm sorry," he said, putting his arm on the knight's shoulder. "I know he was your son, and I know you loved him. I loved him, too."

Kay bit his lip. They all knew that Hal was the only father Arthur had ever known.

"Aye, we all did," Launcelot said.

Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat so that he could go on. "He always knew what to do," he said. "And though I'll never be Hal, or even close to the man Hal was, I know what he'd say now. I know because it was one of the last things he said while he was alive. He said, 'We are what we are, and we do what we can.' "

He looked around. The men were all subdued. Launcelot put his face in his hands. "You're all soldiers," Arthur said. "I, too, was once a soldier. I didn't like everything about soldiering, but I know that what Hal said was true: When your back's against the wall, you do what you have to do. We can still make it right."

Slowly Lugh nodded. "Truth," he said.

"Can we go on?"

Launcelot came over to stand with him. "Aye," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. "We can. Lead us, my King, and we shall follow you back into hell, if that is where you command us to go."

In the silence that followed, footfalls echoed through the hall. A soldier, from the sound of the walk, steady and strong, perhaps a knight. The men listened, waiting, until he appeared under the arch, in the place where, in days of old, visiting chieftains would stand to receive accolades.

The man was indeed a knight, dressed in a tunic of fine blue wool, covered with a vest of silver mail. "Hello, Arthur," Hal said.

"H
al," Arthur gasped. He
reached for him, but his hand went through empty air.

"You… you're not there," he said.

"Neither are you," Hal answered. "Not in the way you think."

"But I see you."

"Yes. I'm still with you, Arthur. I always will be."

Arthur felt his eyes welling. "Why did you die, Hal? Why'd you have to die?"

"Well, I didn't plan it, if that makes you feel any better," he said. "You know, you don't really know any more after you're dead than you do while you're living."

"No?"

Hal shook his head. "But my guess about why I died is that I was supposed to. I died the last time around when you needed me, too, remember? I found the Holy Grail, but I was killed before I could get it to you. I guess that was to show you that you didn't need it."

"But I did. I died without it," Arthur said.

Hal smiled at him. "You know that doesn't mean anything."

Arthur grinned back. "I know," he said. "Will you stay?"

Hal shook his head. "Can't. I don't belong here."

"Does the Summer Country look like this?" Arthur asked.

"It looks like whatever you want. That's why people call it heaven."

"What does it look like to you?"

Hal looked embarrassed. "It looks like a duplex on the south side of Chicago."

Arthur was taken aback. "That's where I grew up," he said. "Well, sort of. Until all this." He gestured vaguely at the castle and its trappings.

"I know. In heaven, I'm there with you. And Emily. We eat pizza and go to Cubs games. My crazy old father lives with us. We've got a three-year-old Chevy and a cat."

"And you're a cop," Arthur said.

"Yep, I'm a cop."

Arthur's eyes welled. "It doesn't seem like a lot to wish for."

Hal shrugged. "Maybe in the next life," he said.

Arthur tried to touch him again, and failed. "Will you wait for me?" he asked. "In the Summer Country? I won't be long."

"Sure, kid," Hal said. "I've got all the time in the world." He raised his sword, saluting the company. "Be valiant, knights, and true," he called.

Launcelot rose. He balled his right hand into a fist and placed it over his heart. "Godspeed, my son," he said as Hal slowly faded from view.

T
aliesin walked the Tor
until he found the big yellow stone where Excalibur had been placed by the gods. The sword was there, waiting for Arthur to take it once again.

The wolf sat on her haunches beside it. The old man settled onto a tree trunk.

"You did well, walking them through the rock."

"They put me to shame," he said softly.

"Who?" the wolf asked archly. "Those humans, as you would have said, with their worthless, common lives?"

"The boy is going to die."

"Yes."

"Instead of being a King, he became a kind of god."

"That was all he could be," the Innocent said.

"But he cannot be both a god and a human. And he has chosen to be human."

The wolf looked over the breathtaking landscape. "Did you expect anything less of a man who gave up the Holy Grail and its gift of immortality?" The animal seemed to smile. "That one has never needed to be more than he is."

"He could have had a wonderful life, if I hadn't interfered. Arthur Blessing would have been a fine man."

"Yes," she said. "I believe he would have been."

The old man wiped his eyes. "Please teach me the Third Magic, Innocent. I cannot watch Arthur go to his death with such acceptance. It was my fault that his life has become such a horror. It was my arrogance, my unconcern for the consequences of my actions, my foolish audacity..."

"Your love," she said. "You loved Arthur the King so much that you could not accept that his time was over."

"But it was not," Taliesin said. "I know that now. Only his life was over. One life... It's as nothing." He faced her. "Please help me. Innocent. I will do anything, sacrifice anything."

The wolf stared ahead for a long time, her blank eyes unblinking. Finally she turned her head toward him. "Anything?"

"Everything," Taliesin said.

She raised her head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. "Well, well," she said. “That's something new."

"Please teach me. I beg you."

The wolf got up and sniffed around the grass. "The first great lesson of magic, little bard, is that it is possible." She ate a flower. "The magic wasn't in walking through the rock. It was in knowing that you can walk through the rock. Do you understand the difference?"

"Yes," he said.

"Good. Because all magic stems from that one principle. If one does not believe that spirits exist, one will never see them. If one does not acknowledge one's talent, it will never blossom. To make magic—even the most outlandish and sophisticated forms of magic—one must first accept, with certainty, that the magic is possible. Then the intent must be summoned, enough intent to ride the winds of change. But by then one knows one can do it, doesn't one?"

"So that is the second lesson?"

"After one knows that one can do it, one must know that one is doing it, yes. That is how we Bring the World into Being."

"And so the third lesson..."

"You tell me."

"I think that it must be to know what one has done," he said quietly, "because by understanding all that can happen, the magician can correct his errors."

"At what price?"

He faltered. "I... I don't know that," he said. "But I will pay any price."

"Will you? Can you give up your dreams?"

"My—"

"Your convictions. Everything you hold sacred. Everything you fear losing, you must lose. To perform the Third Magic will mean the destruction of the whole world for you, the death of your gods, the end of your existence." She was silent for a moment. "Can you do that?"

He looked at the sky, as if he were seeing it for the last time. "Yes," he said. "I will let go. I will let it all go."

The wolf looked up at him with her wise, blank eyes. "Then perhaps you are ready." The glass globe appeared in Taliesin's hands. "One last story," the wolf said.

In the globe, the Tor appeared once again.

THE CAILLEACH

3500 B.C.E.

S
he had once been
human, although her tribe had never named her. Born small and silent during the cold times, the girl had not been expected to live through infancy. And though she had lived—had, in fact, thrived—she had remained silent, and so was not given a name.

Later, when the weather became too harsh to live, and her tribe made plans to migrate southward, the girl's family decided to leave her behind as a sacrifice to the spirits who ruled the cold mountaintop, the Tor, where the people had lived for as long as anyone could remember.

She was an appropriate sacrifice. She was special. Although she had never spoken a word of human language, the girl had known how to summon the snakes and bring about rain. As a baby, a hare had Iain across her chest without fear. Her mother once found her on the outskirts of the wood, petting a grown stag between its antlers.

As she grew older, more of her strange gifts became manifest. She could stare at something until the object moved. She could make herself so still that she became invisible. She could Walk Through the Rock, and so appear to materialize in a place remote from where she had been. And once, just once, when an older boy taunted her for her difference from all the others, she pointed her finger at him and caused him to die.

Or that was what the elders said. Perhaps she had not caused his death at all. Some argued that the boy had choked on a bird bone he was chewing. He may have laughed at the girl's outrage, or taken a deep breath in preparation for an onslaught of words he was planning to use against her; or he may simply have choked at that particular time.

But most of the tribe did not see it that way. The girl was
other
, not like the rest of them. The girl drew the attention of the spirits. She was not a safe person to have on such a dangerous journey.

On the day of the exodus, all of the members of the tribe held their hands flat against a wall of the cave where, years before, they had been forced to live by the cold conditions of the Tor. While they held their hands to the damp stone, an artist named Tuwa pressed charcoal powder around each hand, producing a signature for every member of the departing clan.

While this process was going on, the old women wept. They feared change. They feared the coming journey. They believed they would encounter the end of the world, and none of them thought they would live beyond that encounter. Still, they collected their possessions and made ready to leave with the others, because anything was better than staying behind.

They looked at the nameless girl, and then away, their tears drying on their wrinkled faces. No, they would not be left behind.

The children laughed excitedly, looking forward to fighting strange new beasts in exotic lands fit only for gods and demons. They, too, looked over at the girl who did not speak. She stood apart from the others, watching, her face blank. That was what happened to you when you did not listen to your parents, they had been told.

One young toddler ran over to her mother and attached herself to the woman's legs. The mother narrowed her eyes at the nameless girl. Why couldn't she leave now? Having her here during the preparations made everyone uncomfortable. She made a motion with her chin toward the girl, conveying the message that she wanted her to move farther away from her and her young daughter.

At the end, when all the others had left their palm prints on the wall and were joking about their black hands, Tuwa the artist led the nameless girl to another wall where the imprint of her hand was made. One hand, alone, left behind. It told the story to anyone who cared to know.

T
he last act before
they left was to take the nameless girl to a deep cleft in the Tor. Only a few accompanied her into the ravine. The rest, including her mother, remained on the rim. They stood silently with their possessions and their infants on their backs, their figures black against the rising sun behind them.

The girl was frightened. One of the elders put his hand over her eyes and told her to keep them closed. He pushed her gently toward the ground, where she waited in a crouching position with her head touching the earth.

Then the elder picked up a rock and threw it to hit her squarely on the back of the head. She fell forward with a cry. The next rock silenced her. Then a third, and a fourth. Blood poured out of her nose and mouth.

Above, on the rim, her mother turned away, her shoulders shaking violently. The sacrifice had been made.

The elders climbed out of the ravine. As they passed the cave where they had once lived, they saw the newly made images of their own hands, looking as if they were waving good-bye.

The other, the one left behind, was not visible to them as they walked southward, toward the warm lands, into the future.

I
n the ravine, a
wolf who had smelled the intoxicating scent of blood licked the girl's face. Then it raised its head, its ears twitching, rotating, its nostrils quivering. Others were coming.

Eight other wolves gathered around the girl, nine in all. Each licked her bloodied face, then moved back into the protective circle around her. They ate no other food. When night fell, they adjusted their bodies into a tense reclining position, straight on their forelegs, backs slightly arched, supported by their haunches. They rested, but did not sleep.

Two days later, the girl moved a finger.

A day after that, she was able to stumble to a stream for water. She drank, slept, sat up, and then screamed. Screamed with all the outrage and terror that her young body had absorbed during those terrible moments when death had hovered nearby, touching her, kissing her with its hot, bloody lips.

She pointed skyward, and a bird fell at her feet, dead. She sank her teeth into its warm neck and drank its nourishing blood.

Then she turned toward the woods above the ravine. A deer, a young buck, burst out from between two trees and hurtled, screeching, to the floor of the chasm.

The wolves followed that with their eyes, but did not leave until the girl clapped her hands and pointed, giving them permission to eat.

While the animals feasted on the meal their goddess had brought them, the girl climbed slowly, on all fours, out of the ravine. She did not go back to the cave, but lived cold in the open air until she had the strength to fashion a rude dwelling for herself out of twigs and leaves.

Later, she would build a house of stone, where wild wolves would come to share her fire. For they already knew what the girl herself would not for many years to come: that her blood was sacred, and gave her the power to create magic.

The Cailleach had been born.

T
aliesin pulled away from
the events inside the globe. He was once again sitting on a tree trunk beside the yellow stone where the miraculous sword waited for its owner. The blind wolf had not moved.

"She had neither speech nor a name to call herself," he said of the girl who died to the world and was reborn into the full power of the ancient magic. "Is this how gods are born, then?" he asked. "Not in fantastic circumstances, as the myths suggest, but in blood and pain, like ordinary humans?"

"Why do you need to know?" the Innocent asked. "Are they no less gods for having been human?"

She lived her entire life in the shadow of the great rock, the Tor.

The woman still had no name. She had no need of one, since she never saw any other of her kind. Indeed, she had almost forgotten the tribe of people who had made sounds with their mouths, the Speakers, who had been so different from her that they had taken her into the ravine and beaten her until they thought she was dead, then left her behind to be devoured by wolves.

Almost, but not quite. She remembered the pain of the beating, and of their leaving. She had thought, when the wolves who had protected her while she healed came to share the warmth of her fire, that her own kind were worse predators by far than these creatures. For generations now, the wolves had brought their young to her, to cluster around her, sleeping in circles, when the nights were cold; but never since the day of her beating had she encountered another human being.

She had been alone for so long that she had begun to think that perhaps she was the only one of her kind in the world. The others had probably been killed, she reasoned. That thought filled her with a terrible longing. Even the pain she had felt when her mother had turned away from her so decisively was better than thinking of her as carrion for the raptors, the eyes that once looked upon her with love now crawling with maggots.

No, she could not bear that. One day they would all return, she told herself. They would come back to the Tor, chastened by their adventures in the wild places, and they would welcome her into their open arms.

And she would teach them what she had learned. For in her years of solitude, the woman had learned to amuse herself by moving things with her mind: food for her friends the wolves; wood for fire.

She had begun by watching a wren bring blades of dried grass to its nest in a mulberry bush growing out of the side of the Tor. It seemed to be so much effort for the little bird that the woman willed a feathery shoot up off the ground, where a gust of wind picked it up and brought it closer to the nest. Then she willed it again, holding her breath, keeping the bit of grass suspended in the air, moving slowly toward the nest, down and in.

The wren had cast a glance back at her, and she had laughed. But she never thought that what she was doing would be called magic.

The extraordinary things she did were not even difficult. In time, as her powers of concentration grew, she was able to move heavier items—small rocks, fallen branches, rotted wood. Soon she had built a wall around the shelter she had made, a wall made entirely of things that had come to her when she asked.

And too, during her days and years of solitude, she perfected how to Walk Through the Rock, which was much the same thing. Both feats involved seeing objects as they really were—as illusions, reflections, visions. To Walk Through the Rock, she found, she had to disbelieve its seeming solidity.

Her greatest triumph, her initiation, was the yellow boulder. She had seen it in a field, all of a piece, like some great doorway into the earth. She had looked at it for months, touching it, feeling its life, its slow beating heart. All objects had such hearts, she had learned. Living creatures, of course, from the big thumping organ in her own chest to the flutter of hummingbirds, had very distinctive heartbeats. But insects had them too, fast, jumpy rhythms, and so did slugs and tadpoles. The rhythm of trees and plants was quite different, much softer. Not all trees felt the same: Oaks felt square and sticky, willows soft, and rowans exuded little sparks of excitement, and she could feel them all.

The trees breathed, too. When she sat very still, she could see the faint wisps of life exude from their bark and wind around their trunks like smoke.

And then there were the rocks, with their slow life, their rhythm so deep that she had to slow her own body down just to perceive it. It was an ageless rhythm, eternal, lacking all desire.

When the woman could feel the beating heart of the great yellow stone, she knew that she was welcome inside it and she entered it, weightless, soft as a lover, feeling what it was like to be ancient and unmoving, to need neither water nor air, to be complete.

She walked outside of the stone and knelt down in reverence.

And then the stone moved.

At first it only lifted slightly off its earthen bed, revealing hosts of small blind creatures scuttling around in panic. Then, as the woman began to grasp the extent of her power, it moved upward. Grass and dirt fell off it in great clods.

She pointed her finger toward her dwelling at the top of the Tor, and the great stone flew there like a feather on a gust of wind. The sun shone upon its smooth yellow surface as it sailed toward the flat top of the hill and settled there. It gleamed like gold. The woman ran up the hill, panting and cackling with laughter.

On the rock she carved a sunburst, sign of a new day. And next to it, the soot-blackened outline of her hand.

S
he lived there in
her bower for several more years. The woman was quite old by then, and had all but forgotten the tribe that had walked away from her those many years before, when one day she heard voices.

Voices. The sound made by others of her kind. Her heart began to pound. A vision came into her mind, not of the beating or her abandonment by the tribe, but of their laughter, their excitement as they prepared for the long journey into the world, the shy smiles of lovers and the songs of the women as they prepared food.

She missed them, missed them so much that her tongue ran over her lips in anticipation. Then, slowly, she emerged from her fortress of rock and wood and smelled the clean air upon which lay the scent of humans. She stopped short, her nose twitching. They were meat eaters. Closing her eyes, she could think of only one thing: Mother.

The tribe had come back for her! What else could it be? The old woman broke into a crooked lope, waving toward the approaching humans with both hands high in the air. Her face grew tired from the unfamiliar grin creasing it. There was a lightness in her heart that was almost unbearable.

The faces of the newcomers were not familiar to her. But naturally, she thought, how could they be? It had been so long.

How long?
she thought in a sudden panic. How old was she? She had no idea. Her steps faltered. She touched the matted snarl of her hair hanging over her shoulders, and felt suddenly shy.

But what did it matter, she thought. These were the grandchildren of the ones who left her. Grandchildren and great grandchildren! And yet she craned her neck to see if she could catch a glimpse of a woman whose features she strained to remember.

One of the boys, very handsome, picked something up off the ground and then came running at her so fast that she was startled at first. He was smiling broadly. There was a radiance about him that she could actually see, a bright vibrance. It frightened her.