Legend of the Sorcerer (24 page)

He didn’t answer. Instead he shifted his attention to Cai. “Malacai, I’m glad you’ve both come. The time has come to talk.”

“Yes, Grandfather, we must.” Cai perched on the edge of the mattress while Jordy took the chair next to the bed. “I
should have come to you sooner. I didn’t want to upset you. But I should have told you what was going on.”

“We all make mistakes,” Alfred answered. “Those made in the name of love are the easiest to forgive.” He shifted on his pillows. “I, too, have made mistakes. While mine are also of the heart, I fear they are far more dire in the consequences they have created.”

“Dilys says you think the kidnapper is Isolde Morgan,” Cai said bluntly. “Do you honestly believe she’d go to these great lengths for a feud that ended more than ten years ago? What could she hope to gain from it? Where does the Dark Pearl fit in to all this? It doesn’t make sense.”

Alfred’s blue eyes were as sharp as his voice was weak. “Oh, the feud reaches much farther back than you can know. That Isolde is responsible for this, I am certain. But then, so am I to blame.” He looked away and his shoulders seemed to sink into the thick bedding.

“Nonsense,” Jordy responded. “There is no way anyone could have predicted that Cai’s book would have triggered this kind of insanity.”

Alfred thumped the bed with surprising vigor. “I knew! Or should have known. I was well aware that the Dark Pearl was the focus of Malacai’s latest work and yet I said nothing. The book was fantasy and this was his finest story yet. I was smug in my assurance that I’d kept the secret safe for so long that I could stave off any threat it might provoke. How wrong I was, and now we all will pay.”

“Alfred, we have people working on this,” Cai said. “The State Department is on it, both here and in Wales. Once we supply them with her name, if she really did kidnap those women, then it will only be a matter of time until the truth comes out.”

“They will never find her or anything resembling the truth. She is far too skilled for that. No, this is a battle that only I can take on.”

Cai went still. “You can’t get involved, not directly.” He gentled his tone. “With all due respect, you can barely leave your bed.”

Alfred started to speak, then stopped. He held their gazes, then took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Perhaps you are right, Malacai. My power has weakened. I have spent these past days doing my best, but I no longer have the strength to hold her off.”

He looked so defeated it broke Jordy’s heart. “Alfred, we can wait for the task force to—”

“No more waiting! I have perhaps ruined what chance I had by wasting these last days. No, I fear I must tell you everything. Joining our forces is the only way to stop her. I had hoped that this would never be necessary, certainly not until you’d had a child of your own. Then the truth would have presented itself.”

Cai looked at Jordy. She knew what he was thinking. If Alfred went off on another one of his rants, getting useful information about Isolde to pass on to Kuhn would be difficult, if not downright impossible. And could they trust any information he gave them anyway when he was like this?

“Alfred, I don’t understand what the Dark Pearl has to do with your feud. Why does she want it, assuming it really exists? Is it so valuable? Enough to warrant kidnapping and torture to own it?”

“Oh, it exists. It’s value as a gemstone would be astronomical on the current market. It is immense and flawless. But that is not why she wishes to possess it.” Alfred patted the bed. “Come, Jordalyn. Sit beside me so that I might hold both of your hands as I tell you a story.”

Jordy met Cai’s eyes once again. He nodded and she sat on the opposite edge of the bed. Alfred took her hand, Cai held his other one.

“I know you have thought me eccentric, even senile,
with all my talk of Arthur and Merlin.” He waved away their discomfort. “Whether or not you believed me hasn’t been an issue, so I have not forced it. Until now. Now it is vital. What I’m about to tell you will challenge your beliefs in what is truth and what can be.”

Both Jordy and Cai sat silently.

“Malacai, you were born into a family whose history predates time as you measure it. You know little of your actual heritage because I determined it was better that way. You were not born of the gift. Your father was. In time, he would have told you of his duties, if for no other reason than to protect you.” His eyes shifted away for a moment. “I disagreed with that decision, and it is only now that I realize he was right. I, too, should have confided in you.”

“Confide what? About Isolde?”

A spark of fire returned to Alfred’s eyes. “Isolde is only part of this. I misjudged her as well as my own abilities. I thought that once she knew you weren’t the one, she would leave us be. And for ten years, she has. The story will take some time in the telling and I will brook no more interruptions.” He slipped his fingers around Cai’s and squeezed. “You will need to open both your mind and your heart. Trust in what you know, not only in what you can see.”

There was nothing to do but follow Alfred’s lead. “For a weak old man, you have an amazing ability to control those around you,” Cai said.

Alfred smiled for the first time in days. “A skill you would be wise to learn, young lad.”

“I tried, didn’t work too well.” Cai smiled, but couldn’t swallow the worry that grew ever deeper. Alfred was teetering on the edge of complete irrationality. He wasn’t sure he’d recover this time.

Cai looked up to find Jordy gazing at him. She had a way of looking into him that was more intimate than a touch. Her heart ached for Alfred, too. But there was something
else there, a spark. She was falling under Alfred’s spell and urging Cai to follow. He sighed inwardly. She didn’t know Alfred like he did.

“I suppose I will begin where it started,” Alfred went on. “The L’Baan’s have existed for tens of centuries. It was known immediately upon my birth that I would be the next Keeper. I was apprised of my future role and prepared for it, but my other skills had to be developed first. I was taken to court as a young boy by my father for training. A Keeper must learn the full extent of his powers if he is to fulfill his duty. It is a long, arduous task, but I was fortunate. For he apprenticed me to Merlin.”

Cai sat up straight. He wanted to indulge his grandfather, but this was too much. He couldn’t just sit here and watch the last of his grandfather’s mind desert him. “Merlin, Grandfather?” he said gently. “That was over a thousand years ago.”

“I asked for only your silence,” he said pointedly. “I will take nothing less.”

Cai frowned, but nodded.

“Merlin was a difficult taskmaster, but I learned my calling well. I spent a great deal of time in Camelot, even traveling with Arthur on occasion. Later on, I would accompany other knights. Perceval on his hunt for the Grail.” Alfred shook his head. “A time that was. Fraught with arguments. Many a time I thought to leave him to it, but we managed well enough in the end. If he knew that Galahad would go on to reap most of the glory …” He sighed, a smile curving his lips. “Ah yes, those years were some of the best of my long life. But that is the way of youth, the memories retaining more luminescence than perhaps the actual time warranted.”

He gestured for his water and Jordy quickly positioned the glass and straw in front of his mouth. He sipped, his mind seemingly miles—or centuries—away. “I was entrusted
with a great deal of responsibility as I moved through various courts and kings over time. But none so powerful as that given to me as birthright. That of Keeper of the Dark Pearl. It would take all of my training to maintain that balance of power. My father knew of that power, as had his father before him. L’Baan’s had been Keepers since before time was recorded. The position was exalted and feared, the Pearl greatly desired, its possession savagely sought. They did not understand that its power was only worthy in that it balanced an equal evil. Wielding it for the sake of greed would bring such devastation mere mortals could not comprehend.

“So, the Keeper before my father, my great-grandfather, secreted the Pearl away. Tales of its powers were passed down amongst the masses but, as generations passed, those tales eventually were seen as myth. After time even the myths were no longer repeated. By the time I became Keeper, knowledge of the Dark Pearl had disappeared from recorded history altogether. I was known to courts and kings as a great magician. But only the Keeper knows of the Pearl and her history, has her secrets, knows where she is hidden. The Keeper and one other.”

“Isolde.” Jordy whispered the word.

Alfred merely nodded. “Isolde is the descendant, yes. She and I came to power at about the same time. She was apprenticed as well, to a magician as powerful as Merlin though his magick was dark, evil, as was the one before him. His realm, and hers by association, never crossed into Camelot. Not then. But I knew from my father of her existence. She learned well, grew far more powerful than even my father had predicted. We met for the first time on the eve of the second millennium.” He fell silent, his expression troubled.

At any other time, Cai would have been enraptured. Alfred spun nothing less than gold. But this was no story.
Not to Alfred. How long had Cai deluded himself that his grandfather’s flights of fancy were harmless? If Cai had been less doting and more vigilant, perhaps he could have found help for him earlier on. But even as he thought it, he discarded it. Alfred’s eccentricities were intrinsic to the man he was. To take that from him would have been like stealing his soul.

Who was he to judge if this fantasy world was where his grandfather chose to go when his time on earth was drawing to a close? If it gave Alfred peace, then Cai would find peace there as well.

“I could have finished it that night,” Alfred went on. “But I was arrogant. She taunted me with her designs to take the Pearl from me, to shift the balance of power to evil. I all but dared her to try.” He snorted in disgust. “She was an apt pupil and I had to spend enormous amounts of time and energy to maintain my edge over her. Energy better spent elsewhere.

“Our battle continued for centuries more and with all my time spent staving her off, my continuing studies in the realm of magick, and time spent in service to kings and their crusades, I remained alone. This was not my father’s dying wish. I knew I must find my mate and produce an heir to my position. Were I to die without benefit of an heir to my powers, she would win. I could not let that happen. Yet I had to marry wisely. Not every union would produce a Keeper. I was fortunate. Meet her I did, and our union made us more powerful still. Isolde was furious and went into seclusion for the duration of our time together.

“Your grandmother died in giving birth to your father. It was both the greatest and most tragic day of my life. But I knew as soon as his eyes opened and he looked upon me that we had succeeded. She had not given her life in vain.” Alfred suddenly gripped his hand. “Her life pulsed in your father, and his pulses in you.”

Cai could only stare into his grandfather’s fierce blue eyes and hold on.

“And yet I have no special powers,” Cai said quietly.

“Your father did not love as wisely as I. He was not a focused pupil. I fear I doted on him too much and with not as firm a hand as I should have. But he was all I had. Isolde had not shown herself in over a century and I naively thought I had all the time in the world to show him the way. I let him wander and as a result he fell in love with your mother.” Alfred smiled warmly. “She was a lovely creature, full of life and energy. I could not fault him for wanting the union. I didn’t encourage it, but neither did I worry overmuch. I knew his time would transcend hers and that he could go on to produce his heir with the right mate.”

“Instead he had me.”

Alfred nodded. “Indeed he did. And a fine lad he sired in you. We knew immediately you would not carry the gift, but that didn’t lessen his love or devotion to you. I worried that time was wasting. Isolde had surfaced once again, gloating a bit over my mistakes with your father. He had come to live here in Florida and had no interest in his lessons with me. Yet, I still believed we had time and let him have his youthful fling.” His eyes grew glassy. “Had I been more strict, he would never have fallen prey to that faulty plane machinery. His magic should have been strong by then.” He lifted his hand and stroked Cai’s arm.

Once again he seemed to fade out. Cai looked over at Jordy, but her gaze was focused rapturously on Alfred’s. Tears made her eyes look like bright, glistening emeralds. She was completely transported. Cai found his own smile, even as his heart ached. Alfred’s own life might be waning, but his true power hadn’t abated one bit.

Alfred cleared his throat. “I gladly took on your care, knowing that the seed for salvation lies within you. I kept
you here, away from Isolde’s prying eyes, raising you myself, encouraging our cloistered lifestyle. When the time came, I would guide you to your mate, see that you produced the heir to the Pearl.”

Cai surprised them both by grinning.

“You find this humorous, young sire?” Alfred demanded.

“It’s just that some of the women you’ve tried to hook me up with don’t, uh, exactly seem to meet the criteria of this perfect mate I’m supposed to find.”

Cai expected to be blasted for his insubordination, but instead Alfred’s cheeks colored slightly and he shifted a bit, picking at the sheets. “Well, I wasn’t getting any younger. Your complete inability to maintain an ongoing relationship with any woman, much less the perfect mate, was more than a little alarming. I knew I would not have centuries with you as I did your father.” He harrumphed. “I did what I had to do.”

Cai didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He could have done both, and perhaps that was Alfred’s lasting legacy. The idea that this incredible man would leave him forever hit him hard and swift. He leaned over and kissed Alfred on the cheek. “I love you,” he said. “I wish I had the words to explain all the reasons why.”

Alfred’s eyes misted and he didn’t seem to know what to say. He cleared his throat and gestured for more water, which Jordy provided. “I love you like my own son,” he said finally. “I only kept you here to protect you. Perhaps if I’d told you sooner, encouraged you to live more openly, I’d be training my replacement by now.”