The Third Magic (41 page)

THE TOR

T
he police lines at
Miller's Creek had been taken down that morning; it had been two weeks since the explosion. In another hour a bulldozer would come to knock down the single tenuous wall that still stood in the rubble that had once been called the Sanctuary.

In the days immediately following the murders, people had continued to come for the healing waters, going past the police lines into the woods, but there was nothing special about the water anymore. The local newspaper quoted a spokesperson for Beecham Laboratories, who claimed that according to extensive tests performed at Beecham and other labs, the water at Miller's Creek appeared to have lost all of its unusual properties.

Since one of Beecham's employees, Ginger Ranier, had been among the murder victims, everyone at the lab had done whatever they could to help the police with their investigation. But neither the photograph taken by the security camera at the lab nor the dismembered finger discovered in the wreckage had served to identify the man she knew as Bob Reynolds.

Whoever he was, it was generally conceded that he had died in the explosion along with a known felon named John Stapp, aka Pinto, who was wanted for the murders of four physicians in Sturgis, South Dakota, a biker named Banger in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Enrico Santori, the security guard at Miller's Creek.

Hal Woczniak's body was never found, and so there were no remains to be shipped. And since he had no relatives, there was no funeral in the part of Manhattan where he had been raised.

The only service for him was going on now, observed by a mourning party of one.

Emily Blessing placed a flower on the broken boards of the wreckage.

F
ar away, in a
plane between life and death, Gwen walked along the shore of a lake. Three thousand years before, six men chasing a wild boar had fallen to their deaths on the spot where she now walked. She could almost see them tumbling through the honeycombed earth, screaming as they struck the rocks at the bottom of the chasm.

"Goddess," she said aloud, about to pray.

She remembered. She had been the fair-haired woman with the obsidian dagger, the priestess.

The incident near the lake had brought her to the Goddess in that distant life. In gratitude for sparing her father, Brigid had left behind the man she loved.

And he in turn had sacrificed the great sword, Excalibur, to win her back.

I will wait forever, if I must.

And they had. They had both waited. And the waiting would go on.

She could picture him, Macsen, trembling as he held it out to her as an offering. Created from his mind and his will and his sweat, Excalibur had been as close to a child of his own flesh as he would ever know. All of his dreams lay within its gleaming blade.

How will you choose? the Cailleach had demanded. The sword of the gods, or the love of a woman?

Suddenly her nostrils flared. She felt the burdensome gift of prophecy stir within her now. She could smell someone coming, one with poison in his blood.

"Goddess," she said again, but this time it was a hiss, a snarl. There would be more death. The air was thick with it.

He was coming to the Tor. Yes, that was it. Coming... to make things right.

She herself had first said those words. She, Gwen, the maiden.

But for the one who was coming, she would need the others. The Mother. The Crone. The Goddess.

She ran toward the meadow where the altar stone lay. Magic was afoot. Strong magic.

The end of the world.

B
y the time Taliesin
returned to the castle, the Great Hall was deserted except for a single servant, an enormously fat woman whose job it was to clear away the dishes and goblets from the previous night's feasting. Taliesin remembered her. "Danna," he said with unexpected delight.

Her expression of calm jollity was replaced instantly by a look of studied blandness. She curtsied to him, her eyes downcast. "Yes, sir," she said reverently.

Taliesin's spirits sank. He had forgotten that this was how servants—and most other people—had always treated him during the Middle Ages, as if he were some otherworldly creature capable of turning her at will into a gnat or a toad.

He put his hands on his hips. "Where's the boy?" he asked querulously.

"In the King's chamber, sir," she said, licking her dry, fear-quivering lips.

"Superstitious peasants," Taliesin muttered as he strode down the hall. The servant woman breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are you in here, lad?" he called before entering the room.

"Yes," Arthur answered. He was seated at the King's enormous carved desk. For a moment the old man was taken aback. The boy looked so natural there. It was as if they had both gone back in time, to when young Pendragon had just taken the sword from the stone and was setting about the business of unifying Britain.

Those had been wonderful years, back in the beginning, when the world was so young....

And then he saw the boy, saw him perhaps for the first time, and realized that, for Arthur, the world
was
still young, still new and brimming with possibility. It was himself who had grown old. The past that Taliesin had clung to so desperately had been his own.

"They've missed this place," Arthur said.

"What?"

The boy pointed toward a high slitted window in the wall. Sounds of horses and men's laughter came from the practice field on the other side of the wall.

"That... Oh, yes." For a time the only sounds in the room were the happy shouts from the practice field. Bedwyr was Master of Horse again, in charge of the gleaming beasts they rode as if they were extensions of their bodies. Kay and Dry Lips and Gawain, veterans all, formed a knot of bawdy laughter as they swapped old stories about former campaigns. Fairhands and Agravaine and Tristan and Geraint Lightfoot, still too young and thin to be pitted against the older men in terms of sheer muscle, but clever and fast in battle. Curoi MacDaire and Lugh Loinnbheimionach, inseparable, the one always looking for trouble, the other always finding it. And Launcelot, solitary, apart, still unable to forgive himself for his humanness.

"I've missed it too," Taliesin said in a small voice.

He was so caught up in his memories that when Arthur spoke again, it took the old man a moment to remember where he was.

"I'm going to need the sword," Arthur said.

Taliesin's breath caught. "Will you use it?" he asked.

"Yes."

Taliesin's mouth felt dry with excitement. Could it be that the Magic would be unnecessary, that the boy was ready, at last, to accept his role as King? "Then you... you'd like to stay here?" he asked.

Arthur smiled. "You know we can't do that. The knights are mine for life. My life. Once I'm gone, they can go back to the Summer Country."

"But that would be just like this place!" the Merlin said brightly.

"Not exactly," he said softly. "I wouldn't be there. Your King would."

The old man hung his head. Had the boy known that all along? It had taken himself sixteen hundred years to figure it out.

Arthur Pendragon, High King of Britain, only existed in the Summer Country. This boy might share the King's soul, but his physical life had always been his own. The life which the Merlin had taken from him, and which was now coming to an end.

Trembling, the old man bent slowly until he knelt on the cold stone in front of the boy. "Please forgive me," he whispered.

The boy touched his shoulder, and Taliesin felt a radiance wash over him, as if the sun itself resided in the tips of Arthur's fingers. "There is no question of forgiveness, old friend," he said.

"I will do anything you ask of me," Taliesin said.

"Good." He helped Taliesin back to his feet. "We need to go back. To my time."

"But why?" the old man said, agonized. "There is nothing that awaits you on that plane."

"Just the one thing." Arthur smiled crookedly.

He meant his death. It was coming swiftly. They could both sense it.

"Would it take a lot of magic to send the knights home before I... before it happens?" He took a last look out the window at the men who had cared for him so loyally and lovingly since he was a child, in a world as alien to them as the moon. They should not have to see their child murdered.

Because that was how it was going to happen. He saw that very clearly now.

"I'd like to send them off with dignity and a certain amount of ceremony."

"I understand," Taliesin said, his gaze downcast. "I can arrange it."

Arthur turned back around, calmly, serenely, as if he knew that his life would last for another fifty years.

"I'll tell the men to get ready," Arthur said.

A
rthur called the knights
off the practice field and lined them up. "We're going back," he said. The pleasant breeze stilled, and the air felt suddenly thick. "Tomorrow morning, you will return to the Summer Country, and your proper King."

"But that is you, Highness," Fairhands said.

"No." He smiled. "Although it has been my privilege to know each of you, I am not your leader. Camelot is not my home." He stood tall. "My name is Arthur Blessing. That is who I am. It is who I have always been."

There was a long silence. At last Bedwyr called out, "Then I shall follow you, Arthur Blessing, unto the ends of the earth!"

Fairhands bent onto one knee. "I, too, my lord."

"Aye," Lugh agreed.

In a body, each of the knights bowed before him. Then Launcelot rose to stand before the boy. "Do not put me from you," he said huskily. "For I would rather remain in hell with you than find my way to Paradise."

T
aliesin watched from the
window of the King's chamber. How bravely does he accept his mantle, the old man thought. What a good choice the gods made.

T
hat night, while the
knights and wizards and ghosts slept, Arthur kept vigil by the yellow rock of the Tor.

Here there were no lights except for the stars overhead, no noise except for the forest creatures who moved by night. It was into this dark and silent world that Arthur Pendragon had come, he mused. For the first time in many years, he did not think of that distant being as the Other. The High King had once been a living being like himself, neither man nor boy, but poised between the two, and burdened with a responsibility that he had not pursued.

He sat up. It was true: The great King of the Celts had never sought the crown. He had never jockeyed for power. He had not pursued his own ambitions. He had not even insisted on keeping his woman.

But he had done what he could. Every day until the moment of his death, which he knew with certainty was coming on the day of the battle at Camlan, he had done his best in service to the crown which had been thrust upon his head.

Could he have stopped the Saxon invasion if he had stood up to the petty kings?

Would he have been a happier man if he had kept Guenevere as his queen?

Might it all have been different without the sword in the stone?

A figure appeared in the clearing, her face lit by the light of the full moon.

"Gwen," he said softly.

"Someone is coming," she said urgently. "A man. I think he's going to try to kill you."

He took in this information without emotion. "So that's how it will be," he said.

"We have to get out of here."

"And go where?" he asked calmly.

"I don't know. Back home."

He nodded. "What will you do?"

She hesitated for a moment. "I need to bury my mother," she said.

"Could you check on Emily for me?" he asked.

"Sure, but won't you..." She frowned. "Arthur, aren't you coming?"

"I won't be able to stay long," he said softly.

"Oh." Her face fell. "I'd hoped—"

Another lifetime
, thought the part of her that was Brigid. And for that moment, Gwen knew just how long she had loved this boy.

Slowly he took her in his arms and brought her to him. Their lips touched. A thousand images flashed behind their eyes as they struggled out of their clothes to come together as they had for thousands of years, the two of them, by whatever names they had taken, Brigid, Macsen, Guenevere, Arthur, the boy, the man, the King, maiden, mother, crone. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered now except that they were, however fleetingly, together once again. That at last they both belonged.

She touched his face. "Don't go," she said.

His eyes welled. "It's not my choice."

She made an almost imperceptible gesture of acceptance. "I understand."

"Do you?"

Her eyes were sad, old, wise. The eyes of the dying queen. "Yes," she said. "I do."

"I love you, Gwen," he said.

"I love you, too."

He held her fiercely to him. "I said I would wait for you forever," he said, "and I will. However long it takes, wherever you are, I will find you. I promise you that."

A tear fell from her face onto his cheek. "I'll remember," she said. She kissed him again. "But all we have in this lifetime is tonight."

"Yes."

"Will it be enough?"

"It will," he said.

The moon shone upon them, naked in a field of wild-flowers.

It was all either of them had known of happiness in their lives, and it was enough.

I
n the blue predawn
hours, Arthur, Merlin, and the knights gathered on the Tor.

"Not too close to the stone," the wizard said, preparing the magic that would take them back. "The thicket's grown considerably in sixteen centuries. Wouldn't want to be stuck inside it." He cleared his throat. "Now, then." He shook back the sleeves of his robe.

Then there was one white flash and a moment in which they felt as if they were floating in fog. When it cleared, they were standing just where they had been, except that a huge expanse of impenetrable brambles now surrounded the great yellow stone for a mile in each direction.

Launcelot drew his sword.